VOL . 11, N O. 2 An introductory text to the moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Nova et Vetera Spring 2013 • Volume 11, Number 2 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.: In Memoriam M ARK S. L ATKOVIC Living the Good Life Cloth $24.95 eBook $24.95 978-0-8132-2145-8 978-0-8132-2146-5 Nova et Vetera SPRING 2013 Steven J. Jensen C OMMENTARY Sacramental Causality ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. S YMPOSIUM ON FAITH The Character of Divine Faith R EINHARD H ÜTTER The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge N ICHOLAS J. H EALY, J R . The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life S TEVEN A. L ONG The Virgin Mary and the Church T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. S YMPOSIUM ON M. J. S CHEEBEN Why Scheeben? B RUCE D. M ARSHALL Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate E DWARD T. OAKES, S.J. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati The Catholic University of America Press T RENT P OMPLUN 1-800-537-5487 R ICHARD S CHENK , O.P. Grace as the Gift of Another Order Online: cua.press.edu Substantial Union in Scheeben R. J ARED S TAUDT Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. B OOK R EVIEWS Augustine Institute A NNE M. C ARPENTER , J OHN D. L OVE , G. J. M C A LEER , G ILLES M ONGEAU, S.J., C. C. P ECKNOLD, A NDREW V. ROSATO, J OSEPH G. T RABBIC Nova et Vetera Spring 2013 • Volume 11, Number 2 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal S ENIOR E DITOR Georges Cardinal Cottier, O.P. C O -E DITORS Reinhard Hütter, Duke University Divinity School Matthew Levering, University of Dayton M ANAGING E DITOR R. Jared Staudt, Augustine Institute A SSOCIATE E DITORS Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College Gilles Emery, O.P., University of Fribourg Paul Gondreau, Providence College Timothy Gray, Augustine Institute Thomas S. Hibbs, Baylor University Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas Bruce D. Marshall, Southern Methodist University Charles Morerod, O.P., Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg John O’Callaghan, University of Notre Dame 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. Contributions should be prepared to accord as closely as possible with the typographical conventions of Nova et Vetera. The University of Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition) is our authority on matters of style. 3. Nova et Vetera practices blind review. Submissions are evaluated anonymously by members of the editorial board and other scholars with appropriate expertise. Name, affiliation, and contact information should be included on a separate page apart from the submission. 4. Galley-proofs of articles are sent to contributors to be read and corrected and should be returned to the Editors within ten days of receipt. Corrections should be confined to typographical and factual errors. 5. Submission of a manuscript entails the author’s agreement (in the event his or her contribution is accepted for publication) to assign the copyright to Nova et Vetera. NOVA ET VETERA The English Edition of the International Theological Journal ISSN 1542-7315 Spring 2013 Vol. 11, No. 2 Benedict M. Ashley, O.P. (May 3, 1915–February 23, 2013): R.I.P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M ARK S. L ATKOVIC 303 C OMMENTARY Sacramental Causality: Da capo! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. 307 S YMPOSIUM ON FAITH What Is Faith? The Theocentric, Unitive, and Eschatologically Inchoative Character of Divine Faith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R EINHARD H ÜTTER 317 Simul viator et comprehensor: The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N ICHOLAS J. H EALY, J R . 341 The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and Their Indispensability for the Christian Moral Life: Grace as Motus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S TEVEN A. L ONG 357 The Virgin Mary and the Church: The Marian Exemplarity of Ecclesial Faith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. 375 S YMPOSIUM ON M ATTHIAS J OSEPH S CHEEBEN Why Scheeben? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B RUCE D. M ARSHALL 407 Scheeben the Reconciler: Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E DWARD T. OAKES, S.J. 435 Matthias Joseph Scheeben and the Controversy over the Debitum Peccati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T RENT P OMPLUN 455 Grace as the Gift of Another: M. J. Scheeben, K. Eschweiler, and Today. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R ICHARD S CHENK , O.P. 503 Substantial Union with God in Matthias Scheeben . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. JARED S TAUDT 515 Good Extrinsicism: Matthias Scheeben and the Ideal Paradigm of Nature-Grace Orthodoxy . . . . . . . T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. 537 B OOK R EVIEWS Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology edited by Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray . . . . . . . . A NNE M. C ARPENTER 565 Church, State, and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine by J. Brian Benestad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J OHN D. L OVE 568 Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History by C. C. Pecknold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G. J. M C A LEER 572 The Promise of Christian Humanism: Thomas Aquinas on Hope by Dominic Doyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G ILLES M ONGEAU, S.J. 575 Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction by Karen Kilby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. C. P ECKNOLD 578 Treatise on Human Nature: The Complete Text (Summa Theologiae I, Questions 75–102) by Thomas Aquinas, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A NDREW V. ROSATO 585 Whose Community? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church by Merold Westphal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J OSEPH G. T RABBIC 588 The English edition of Nova et Vetera is published quarterly and provides an international forum for theological and philosophical studies from a Thomistic perspective. Founded in 1926 by future Cardinal Charles Journet in association with Jacques Maritain, Nova et Vetera is published in related, distinct French and English editions. The English edition of Nova et Vetera welcomes articles and book reviews in theology, philosophy, and biblical studies that address central contemporary debates and discussions. We seek to be “at the heart of the Church,” faithful to the Magisterium and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and devoted to the work of true dialogue, both ecumenically and across intellectual disciplines. Nova et Vetera (ISSN 1542-7315) is published by Augustine Institute, 6160 S. Syracuse Way, Suite 310, Greenwood Village, CO 80111. All materials published in Nova et Vetera are copyrighted by Augustine Institute. © Copyright 2013 by Augustine Institute. All rights reserved. This periodical is indexed in the ATLA Catholic Periodical and Literature Index® (CPLI®), a product of the American Theological Library Association, 300 S.Wacker Dr., Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606, USA. Email: atla@atla.com, www.atla.com. Nova et Vetera Subscription Rates: • Individuals: one-year $35.00, two-year $65.00, three-year $95.00, Student $25.00 International: one-year $55.00, two-year $95.00, three-year $145.00, Student $35.00 Web and printed: one-year $40.00, two-year $75.00, three-year $105.00, Student $30.00 International Web and printed: one-year $60.00, two-year $105.00, three-year $160.00, Student $40.00 Web only: one-year $30.00, two-year $55.00, three-year $80.00, student $20.00 • Colleges, Universities, Seminaries, and Institutions: one-year $80.00, two-year $145.00, three-year $210.00 International: one-year $100.00, two-year $185.00, three-year $250.00 Web and printed: one-year $90.00, two-year $165.00, three-year $240.00 International Web and printed: one-year $110.00, two-year $205.00, three-year $280.00 Web only: one-year $70.00, two-year $125.00, three-year $180.00 To subscribe online, please visit http://store.augustineinstitute.org. For subscription inquiries, email us at nvjournal@intrepidgroup.com or phone 970-416-6673. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 303–5 303 Benedict M. Ashley, O.P. (May 3, 1915–February 23, 2013): R.I.P. M ARK S. L ATKOVIC Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, MI A VERY long life—such as the remarkable one that Benedict Ashley lived—does not guarantee that the individual has used those many years well. Fr. Ashley used his many years on this earth—almost a century—to advance the Kingdom of God as a priest philosopher-theologian. But before turning his life to Jesus Christ (he was baptized in 1938) and entering the Dominican Order in the 1940s (he was ordained in 1948), Ashley was a follower of Marx, not the Master. His autobiography, Barefoot Journeying (New Priory Press, 2013), could very well be titled From Socialism to the Savior. In the pages of that large book you will find Fr. Ashley’s “conversion story” told in both prose and poetry. The many poetic writings of his that are included give us great insight into the mind and heart of a man who, at the University of Chicago in the early 1930s, had the hope of becoming a novelist and poet. I first met Fr. Ashley in August of 1988, when I was assigned to be his graduate research assistant after beginning studies for an STL degree at the just-founded Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, DC. As the cliché goes, “It seems just like yesterday,” and not twenty-five years ago. I was privileged to take six courses with Fr. Ashley and, as a Father Michael J. McGivney Fellow, to work with him on various writing projects for two academic years. What impressed me most about him was his humility, despite the incredible breadth and depth of his learning. We students would often lament that when our Fr. “Benny” passed away, a great deal of knowledge and wisdom would pass with him. Thankfully, our esteemed teacher lived two plus decades more after those early days of the “JPII Institute”—the unassuming Fr. Ashley 304 Mark S. Latkovic was the original “pillar” on which it stood—and his nearly two dozen books and hundreds of articles will live on even longer. (Many more were in the works or awaiting publication when he died.) When one looks back at Fr. Ashley’s incredibly full life, as he himself does in his autobiography, one thereby immerses oneself in a virtual “Who’s Who” of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Catholicism. From his birth in May 1915, during the First World War, to the second decade of the Third Millennium, we encounter the figures of his esteemed teachers Mortimer J. Adler (himself a convert to Catholicism in his mid-90s; he died at age 98) and Robert Maynard Hutchins in the “Great Books” program at the University of Chicago. We meet other revered teachers such as Waldemar Gurian and Yves Simon at the University of Notre Dame (where Ashley received a doctorate in political philosophy in 1941). We come in contact with his Dominican confreres William H. Kane,William A.Wallace, and James A.Weisheipl in the 1950s. (Ashley studied for a doctorate in philosophy at the Aquinas Institute in River Forest, Illinois, earning it in 1951.) From there, we move to the 1960s and the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), the events and debates surrounding it, and the controversy over the encyclical of Pope Paul VI on birth control, Humanae vitae (1968). Barefoot Journeying takes us all the way up to our present day, with its own debates, especially over the foundations of morality, biotechnology, secularism, and more. What may impress one most about Ashley’s thought is the deep familiarity with and respect for modern science that is on display in many of his best-known writings. Already, in the early 1950s, Ashley was collaborating with his fellow Dominicans in founding the Albertus Magnus Lyceum (1951–69)—a think tank of sorts to bring modern science and theology into dialogue with each other. For these “River Forest School” Thomists, modern science is largely continuous with Aristotelian natural philosophy/natural science. Further, they have argued, St.Thomas’s metaphysics must be grounded in a sound philosophy of nature lest it lack a solid foundation. Ashley was still thinking about these questions up to the end of his life, evidenced by some of his most recent books, the magisterial The Way toward Wisdom (2006) and How Science Enriches Theology (coauthored with John Deely, 2012). But Ashley has also taken the thought of St. Thomas and applied it fruitfully in the areas of the body-person, moral theology, bioethics, apologetics, and psychology, to mention just a few areas. His Theologies of the Body (1985/1995) is a massively learned work that ranges over many different understandings of the human person, from the perspective of a variety of fields—ancient philosophy, Christianity, secular humanism, and Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.: R.I.P. 305 modern science among others. Ashley’s Living the Truth in Love (1996) is what he calls “a biblical introduction to moral theology”; it is organized by the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues, which themselves are coordinated with each other. Health Care Ethics, now in its fifth edition (2006), is Ashley’s (and his late co-author Kevin O’Rourke, O.P.) major contribution to theological bioethics. Choosing a World-View and Value-System (2000) is Ashley’s effort to show the truth of Christianity by bringing it into dialogue with other, non-Christian religions. Hence, its subtitle: An Ecumenical Apologetics. And Healing for Freedom, to be released in 2013, is Fr. Ashley’s attempt to bring to bear “a Christian perspective on personhood and psychotherapy.” In Barefoot Journeying, the last book to be published during his lifetime, Fr. Ashley also brings us into contact with Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas—his two favorite philosophers. Also, Ashley’s family and many friends (Herbert Schwartz and Leo Shields, to name only two) are spread out across his autobiography like the Great Plains of Kansas and Oklahoma, where he was born and raised. As with all stories of friends and family, there is much joy as well as much heartbreak—the “trials,” as he calls them. You can read about such people and events in his engaging memoir. Many know Ashley only in his many public roles: for example, as priest, author, teacher, lecturer, educator, consultant, and administrator. Unlike his scholarly works, in Barefoot Journeying Fr. Ashley reveals himself in a more personal way, decade-by-decade. But more importantly, he reveals our “wisest and best friend” (ST I–II, q. 108, a. 4), whom he came to know these last six and a half decades—the one who transformed him. That friend is Jesus Christ. I consider myself very blessed to have known Fr. Ashley and studied with him. I will miss him but forever treasure his memory. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 307–316 307 Sacramental Causality: Da capo! ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. St. John’s Seminary Brighton, MA I N 1956, the Irish Jesuit Bernard Leeming (1893–1971) published an article entitled “Recent Trends in Sacramental Theology.”1 This publication put into print a talk that the author earlier had given at a meeting of theologians in Devon, England.Those who cherish the memory of another Jesuit, the Canadian Bernard Lonergan, recall that Father “Lonergan always attributed his basic intellectual conversion to the course he took in the Catholic doctrine on Christ in the fall and spring of 1935–1936 with . . . Bernard Leeming.”2 Twenty years later, Leeming’s 1956 article “Recent Trends” alerts us to another kind of intellectual conversion: the turning away from a centuries-long tradition of scholastic reflection on the proper mode of sacramental efficacy. Specifically, Leeming announces an evolution in the treatment of sacramental causality, an evolution that owed its direction to certain Catholic theologians who were active prior to the opening in 1962 of the Second Vatican Council. “The intransigent disputes,” Leeming wrote, “about ‘moral,’ ‘physical’ and ‘intentional’ causality have far less prominence and the effort [in the mid-50s] is rather to incorporate into synthesis the differing elements stressed by different theologians.”3 The author dubs this trend toward synthesis “inclusive.” This “inclusive” project—again, the description comes from Leeming— has continued to unfold for more than half a century within Catholic This essay was delivered as a lecture at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Catholic Theology held in Washington, DC. 1 Bernard Leeming, S.J., “Recent Trends in Sacramental Theology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 23 (1956): 195–217. 2 Richard Liddy, Transforming Light, Accessed lonergan.org/online_books/Liddy/ chapter_seven_lonergan.htm (5 May 2012). 3 Leeming, “Trends,” 204. 308 Romanus Cessario, O.P. theological circles. Today, however, not only have the varieties of causal explanations been left behind, but the very notion that the sacraments do something within the order of grace receives scant attention, even though the Catechism of the Catholic Church plainly sets forth this Catholic doctrine.4 Of course, a few Catholic theologians may make their own the verse of the Psalm: “Similis factus sum pellicano solitudinis, factus sum sicut nycticorax in domicilio” (Ps 101:7).5 Still, since the mid-twentieth century, Catholic theologians by and large have forgotten about the topic of sacramental causality. No better confirmation for this judgment can be found than that given by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, now emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels, who, in 1999, opined at the Catholic University Leuven that the classical views of causality are “extremely difficult to uphold today” and that it remains a task to investigate “what is the specific causality of the sacrament, and how does it function.”6 What the Flemish Cardinal announced holds good as we observe the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.Thus the title of my brief conference,“Sacramental Causality. Da capo!” Take it from the top! What, one may inquire, has become of the work of those who, on Leeming’s account, had begun to build a theological irenicism among the disputants in Catholic sacramental theology? Before trying to answer this question, it may be useful to mention Bernard Leeming’s appreciation for what he called the “ ‘inclusive’ trend,” that is, the trend toward synthesis. It is genial, wrote the Irishman in 1956, “but sometimes results in a lack of clearness and a blunt facing of the problems.”7 Fifty-seven years later, the very least that one might observe is that the obscurity remains. Further, the decline in sacramental administration and reception—statistically shocking for the sacraments of healing and at the service of communion—has coincided with an effervescence of the problems. In other words, theologians today occupy themselves with matters other than sacramental causality. The few Catholic theologians who make an effort to incorporate references to the sacraments in their writings produce what I would consider an apologetic for participation in the sacramental life of the Church. 4 For example, see CCC, no. 1225, emphasis added: “In his Passover Christ opened to all men the fountain of Baptism. . . . The blood and water that flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Jesus are types of Baptism and the Eucharist, the sacraments of new life (see Jn 19:34). From then on, it is possible ‘to be born of water and the Spirit’ (see Jn 3:5) in order to enter the Kingdom of God.” 5 From the Sixto-Clementine edition of the Vulgate. 6 Cardinal Godfried Danneels, “Current Challenges for Sacramental Theology,” Antiphon 5, no. 2 (2000): 44–45. 7 Leeming, “Trends,” 204. Sacramental Causality 309 Given this long duration of Catholic theology’s failure to attend adequately to the nature of sacramental causality, not a few Catholics probably require a refresher course on those “intransigent debates” that especially occupied theologians from the late sixteenth century until the mid-1950s. For those who would find Albert Michel’s 159 columns in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique off-putting,8 I am happy to report that Reginald Lynch, O.P., has recently completed at the Dominican House of Studies a thesis for the ecclesiastical degree, the Licentiate of Sacred Theology (S.T.L.). His work succinctly recalls the principal moments and issues in the history of scholastic exchanges about how the sacraments communicate divine grace to their privileged recipients.9 The spectrum of the classical mainline opinions runs from the Nominalists’ theory of occasional causality to the Thomist teaching on physical causality. Moral causality and dispositive or intentional causality fall somewhere in between the weak occasionalist account and the strong physicalist account of how the sacraments of the new dispensation instrumentally and efficaciously bring about the new creation.10 We further learn from Lynch’s research that Bernard Leeming held the view that the Council of Trent, in order to avoid endorsing a particular theological theory as a truth of divine faith, adopted the word “confer” (conferre) instead of “cause” to describe the bestowal of divine grace that the sacraments effect.11 If Leeming’s conjecture is accurate, we easily can imagine why, during the period after the Council of Trent (1545–63), the debate about sacramental causality first grew “intransigent” and then, after the Second Vatican Council, practically disappeared. Of the twenty-four occurrences of the word “cause” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, only one refers even broadly to the sacraments: “The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being.”12 At the same time, there are about twenty-five instances of the Tridentine verb “to 8 “Sacrements,” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. 14.1 (Paris, 1938), 485–644. 9 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P., “The Sacraments as Perfective Instrumental Causes of Grace,” S.T.L. diss., Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, DC, 2012). 10 See CCC, no. 1127; “Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify [Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1605; DS 1606]. They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies.” 11 See Bernard Leeming, Principles of Sacramental Theology (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1963), 10–12. 12 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1325. Romanus Cessario, O.P. 310 confer” used with respect to sacramental actions.13 Most Catholics of our period, however, find the notion of the conferral of grace as incomprehensible as the classical views that attempt to explain how the sacraments causally supply divine grace to the rightly disposed person who receives them. This is all the more true when one reflects that the use of the word “confer” suggests a schema of “causal” thought that owes its origin to a particular school of natural philosophy. Unless one finds it satisfactory to explain the sacraments by appeal to the crudest of mechanical explanations—for example, sacraments may be thought of as so many full pitchers of water that a person pours into empty glasses on a table—the language of both Aquinas and Trent return us to a framework of potency and act. In other words, the common language of the tradition requires causality in order to capture what the sacraments do in a person’s life. Today’s Catholics, on the other hand, are wont to think more in terms of act than of potency. Indeed, many Catholics and other Christians have been tutored and encouraged to think of themselves as actualized, whether by God, Uncreated Grace, the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit, or, what is most frequent, their own gifts and talents, albeit generously assisted by one or several or all of the foregoing divine helps. When one thinks of himself as preemptively replete with divine gifts, there is no reason to seek out a cause that would explain and strengthen the life of grace. When people think of themselves as irrevocably caught up in the rhythms of divine grace, they do not pay attention to the causal means that are able to restore them to this state after they have fallen away from it. One of the indices bishops use to determine parish closings is called the sacramental index. Dioceses count the sacramental administrations that take place in a parish in order to determine its viability. In some places in the United States, at least, the statistics suggest a sharp decline in the number of people who seek out the sacraments of the Church.14 Other explanatory reasons may be cited. From the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, factors other than the intransigency among Nominalists, Jesuits, Dominicans, and (occasionally) other clerics influenced the eclipse of sacramental causality. Explanations of sacramental causality that depend on robust accounts of instrumental causality underwent the most complete eclipse. Consider a few of the well-known contributors to the eclipse of Everyman thinking causally 13 Seventh Session, Canon 6, DS 1606: “aut gratiam ipsam non poentibus obicem non conferre . . .” 14 For example, see the 2012 pastoral letter on evangelization by Saint Louis Arch- bishop Robert Carlson, “Go and Announce the Gospel of the Lord,” p. 5 at archstl.org/files/Pastoral_Letter.pdf Sacramental Causality 311 about anything: (1) Philosophical interest in efficient causality succumbed to popular enthusiasm for modern methods of scientific explanation. William A. Wallace devoted his long and respected career to studying this evolution. In 1972, he wrote: Causality was never completely relinquished as a source of scientific explanation from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, although many were dissatisfied with the causes that had been proposed by their predecessors and in their place sought to expound “true causes” of physical phenomena. Each successive formulation seems to have introduced a slight change in the meaning of causality, however, until finally the notion of causal explanation was rather completely linked with determinism and predictability along quite mechanistic lines.15 As a result of this progression, Everyman regards causality, if he or she regards it at all, negatively. (2) As the supervision of sacramental causality shifted from theologians to canonists, the sacraments began to be treated as if they were predominantly juridical realities. Prior to the Second Vatican Council, professors who taught sacramental theology customarily trained in canon law. Everyman came to view Catholics as bound to unreasonable ritual practices, such as not brushing one’s teeth before the taking of Holy Communion, or to intricate regulations that put strains on human relationships, such as the observance of the laws concerning marriage. (3) Other contexts of explanation, such as liturgiology and the social and philosophical studies of religion, drew academic attention away from the classical treatment of sacramental causality.16 A complete examination of this factor would require access to the as-yet-unwritten book on how the Liturgical Renewal of the twentieth century has influenced contemporary Catholic dogmatic theology. In any event, one thing is sure. Everyman subsumes sacraments under Liturgy. (4) The introduction of a new species of causality, namely, symbolic causality, dovetailed with certain currents in modern philosophy. Everyman measures sacraments intentionally. 15 William A. Wallace, Causality and Scientific Explanation, Medieval and Early Clas- sical Science, vol. 1 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1972), 23. Also see Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012), 384: “Most of those who unknowingly conflate their metaphysical assumptions with the findings of the natural sciences regard the relationship between science and religion as a competitive, zero-sum game.” 16 See my “The Sacraments of the Church” in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 129–46. 312 Romanus Cessario, O.P. These four developments and other determinants—for example, the fact that disputes among proponents of moral causation and physical causation track closely the disputes on divine grace and human freedom—resulted in a large-scale displacement of the classical categories that facilitated prior discussions concerning sacramental causality. Little wonder that Cardinal Danneels animadverted that the classical views on causality are extremely difficult to uphold today.17 Asking a contemporary Catholic to articulate the causality of the sacraments is a little bit like asking a software developer to create an iPad app that could untangle the lines of argumentation mounted during the “Congregatio de Auxiliis”! • • • It pleases me to recall the witness of the theologian who was instrumental in my own intellectual conversion. The Irish Dominican Eugene Colman O’Neill, late professor of theology at the University of Fribourg, is one of the few sacramental theologians who maintained his identity as a sacramental theologian during the period that witnessed a massive retooling of the sacramental theologian into that new breed of professional called the liturgical theologian. Toward the end of his career, when treatment for the cancer that would eventually take his life forced him to spend sabbatical time in the United States, Father O’Neill composed the book that, in my view, provides the bridge from the alleged intransigency generated by the disputes of post-Tridentine scholasticism to the restoration of interest in the questions associated with sacramental causality.18 Originally published in 1983, O’Neill’s Sacramental Realism affords a good example of what I understand as Ressourcement Thomism.That is, O’Neill reads closely and judiciously Aquinas and his commentators in order to guide his theological thinking and to keep it, well, Catholic. One may fairly observe that Father O’Neill enacted Pope Benedict’s XVI’s hermeneutics of reform ante nomen. To illustrate what I mean, allow me to quote an especially rich excerpt from O’Neill’s chapters. He is talking about alternative accounts of sacramental causality advanced by mainly European theologians—those, as O’Neill says, whose spiritual homeland is Paris: The medievals, had they wanted to say of the sacraments “they cause because, and to the degree that, they are symbols,” had sufficient command of Latin to say it clearly, and clarity was a tool of their trade. In fact, they used the word “cause” in their sacramentology because that 17 Danneels, “Challenges,” 44. 18 Colman E. O’Neill, O.P., Sacramental Realism: A General Theory of the Sacraments (Chicago: Midwest Theological Forum, 1998).The essay was originally published in 1983 by Michael Glazier, Inc. Sacramental Causality 313 was the term they used to speak of God’s creating the world; a St. Thomas used it because he considered that it could be extended to signify as well the active intervention of Christ in the symbolic act of the sacrament; and he then went to the trouble of explaining that he was choosing this word so as to make it clear that an exclusively symbolic account of the sacraments does not measure up to the tradition of the Fathers (Summa theol., III, q. 62, a. 1; ib., ad 1).19 “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy’s!”20 And you don’t have to be Thomist to take an interest in sacramental causality.Whatever pertains to the well-being of Catholic theology at the service of the Church must interest the Catholic theologian. Many recent developments point to the urgency of restoring interest in sacramental causality. A proper understanding of how the sacraments accomplish what they are said to accomplish affects directly the everyday life of Catholics. Recently Pope Benedict XVI told a group of specialists in questions pertaining to the internal forum: “The New Evangelization . . . begins in the confessional.”21 Still, how many Catholic theologians would understand adequately the points that Father O’Neill makes in the above-cited two—yes, two—sentences. As I have remarked, O’Neill exhibits some of the best of Ressourcement Thomism.22 At the same time, the Catholic Church commits us to Truth, not to a specific theological theory, even though she does commend some theologians more than others. For example, Blessed Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, makes his own the words of Pope Paul VI in the Apostolic Letter Lumen Ecclesiae, and he refers to Saint Thomas as the “Doctor of Truth.” Overall, Pope John Paul II clearly associated himself with a long tradition of papal support for the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor.23 19 O’Neill, Realism, 127. 20 Henry S. Levy and Sons, popularly known as Levy’s, was a bakery based in Brooklyn and most famous for their rye bread. They are best known for their advertising campaign “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy’s,” which columnist Walter Winchell referred to as “the commercial with a sensayuma” (sense of humor). 21 Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Participants in the Annual Course on the Internal Forum Organized by the Apostolic Penitentiary, Paul VI Hall, Friday, 9 March 2011: “The New Evangelization, therefore, also begins in the confessional!” 22 For an introduction, see Ressourcement Thomism: Sacra Doctrina, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life, ed. Reinhard Hütter and Matthew Levering (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010). 23 See Pope John Paul II, 1995 Encyclical Letter, Fides et Ratio, no. 44, which cites Pope Paul VI, 1974 Apostolic Letter Lumen Ecclesiae, no. 10: “Tale autem studium quaerendi veritatem eique totis viribus inserviendi—quod S. Thomas censuit munus totius suae vitae proprium idemque docendo scribendoque egregie 314 Romanus Cessario, O.P. Generalizations about the state of Catholic theology and practice easily leave those who make them open to sed contras. So let me express my ardent hope that pulpits and catechetical sessions brim over with sound sacramental instruction. Still, a large body of evidence intimates that catechists and preachers do not expound the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments, especially about the nature of their causality. Other thought forms have intervened along the line. What makes statements such as those that follow so parlous arises from the fact that many persons can easily understand them. What Arius did to the Incarnation, certain modern theologians have done to the sacraments. In a word, we encounter easy-to-understand rationalizations that seduce the populace. Here are a few samples of topic sentences from lessons given within the Church about the sacraments: “Sacraments are not just ritual acts that give grace but opportunities for people already in God’s grace to celebrate that fact through symbolic activity.” Or, “Sacraments are special moments that can heighten our awareness of God’s grace meeting us everywhere, changing us.” One last one: “In sacraments, we gather to celebrate our belief in God and God’s care in liturgical ritual, and to live out or affirm Jesus’s values, and to encounter Jesus and through Him, God.” No need to analyze the errors. All one needs to know is that these sentences have been copied from a handout for an adult RCIA program. So some aspiring Catholics were misinformed about the seven sacraments of salvation.What provokes a certain melancholy is the suspicion that those who are taught to think of the sacraments, for example, as expressions of communitarian symbolic activity, are the high-end consumers of popularized post-conciliar theology. As a result of this kind of catechesis and preaching, for most Catholics today, the sacraments remain cultural features of a fading bourgeois religion.The question of what supernatural change they effect in the person who receives them is as irrelevant to the Catholic faithful (and some priests) as the disputes that Bernard Leeming described as having reached a state of intransigency in 1956.24 • • • It is not difficult to translate the technical language of sacramental causality into user-friendly language. For example, one may say that each of the seven sacraments changes us. The kind of change differs according to the sacrament. Baptism makes us justified. Confirmation makes us witnesses. The Eucharist makes us lovers. Marriage makes a man and a woman explevit—efficit, ut ipse merito appellari possit «apostolus veritatis» et omnibus in exemplum proponi, qui docendi munere funguntur.” 24 Some Catholics criticize the efficacy of the sacraments, however; for example, see Garry Wills, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition (New York: Viking Adult, 2013). Sacramental Causality 315 husband and wife. Holy Orders makes a man a priest. Penance makes a sinner effectively penitent. Holy Anointing makes a dying person ready to see God. Cardinal Cajetan offers a hint on how to reignite interest in sacramental causality. We find it in his commentary on the tertia pars of the Summa theologiae. In question 62, article 6, Aquinas asks, “[D]id the sacraments of the Old Law cause grace?” To which Cardinal Cajetan appends his summary, and his advice!25 The title is clear. There are two negative conclusions in the body of the article. The first is: The sacraments of the old law did not confer grace by their own power. This is proved by the authority of the Apostle. The other conclusion is: The sacraments of the old law did not confer grace by a power residing in them from the passion of Christ. This is proved by the common difference of the conjunction of any cause to the thing to be caused [causandum] either through the use of exterior things, or through an act of the soul. The first is of an efficient cause, and because of this is prior in existence. The second, however, is of a final cause, and because of this it is able to be posterior in existence. Underneath this common difference is taken up the specific difference between conjunction to the passion of Christ through the sacraments, and [conjunction to the passion of Christ] through faith. Conjunction [to the passion of 25 Titilus clarus. In corpore sunt duae conclusiones negativae. Prima est: Sacramenta veteris legis non conferebant gratiam virtute propria. Probatur auctoritate Apostoli. Altera est: Sacramenta veteris legis non conferebant gratiam virtute in eis habita a passione Christi. Probatur ex communi differentia coniunctionis alicuius causae ad causandum vel per usum exteriorum rerum, vel per actum animae: quia prima est causae effectivae, ac per hoc prioris secundum esse; secunda autem est causae finalis, ac per hoc potest esse posterioris secundum esse. Sub hac enim differentia communi subsumitur in speciali differentia inter passionem Christi coniungi per sacramenta, vel per fidem: ita quod per sacramenta coniunctio continetur sub coniunctione per usum exteriorum rerum; et coniunctio per fidem continetur sub coniunctione per actum animae. Et sub hoc procedendo descenditur, et quod passio Christi est prior secundum esse sacramentis nostris et posterior sacramentis veteris legis, ac per hoc nostris quidem sacramentis passio Christi coniungi potest ut causa activa operans per illa, priscis autem non potest coniungi ut causa activa operans per illa, quod est intentum conclusionis: et quod passio Christi ut finalis causa coniungitur per fidem tam nobis quam antiquis. Et propterea utrique salvamur per fidem passionis Christi : sed non utrique per sacramenta virtuosa ex passione Christi. Non tamen superstitiosus erat usus illorum sacramentorum: quia adhibebantur, etsi non ut virtuosa, tamen ut signa fidei virtuosae. Sta igitur, Lector, in formali differentia inter coniunctionem per fidem seu actum animae ut sic, et per sacramenta seu usum exteriorum rerum ut sic: et videbis differentiam in littera subtiliter positam inferre sacramenta nostra esse virtuosa, et antiqua non. Et memento, Novitie, quod de coniunctione causali, seu causae ut sic, est sermo: ut non fallaris ab importunitate digredientium ad ea quae sunt per accidens. 316 Romanus Cessario, O.P. Christ] through the sacraments [i.e. sacramental conjunction] is contained within conjunction through the use of exterior things. Conjunction [to the passion of Christ] through faith is contained within the conjunction through the act of the soul. And by proceeding from this [difference] one discovers, that the passion of Christ is both prior in existence to our sacraments, and posterior to the sacraments of the old law; and because of this the passion of Christ is able to be conjoined to our sacraments as an active cause operating through them. However, [the passion of Christ] is not able to be conjoined to the [sacraments] of old as an active cause operating through them. This is the intent of [Saint Thomas’s] conclusion: the passion of Christ as final cause is conjoined both to us and to those of old through faith. And furthermore, we are saved in both cases through faith in the passion of Christ, but not in both cases through the sacramental power of the passion of Christ. Nevertheless, the use of those former sacraments was not superstitious, because they were useful even if not as [intrinsically] powerful at least as signs of a virtuous faith. Therefore, [dear] reader, maintain the formal difference between conjunction [to the passion of Christ] through faith or an act of the soul as such, and [conjunction to the passion of Christ] through the sacraments or the use of exterior things as such. [If you maintain this formal difference in your mind] you will perceive this difference in the article—subtly posited—and infer that our sacraments are [intrinsically] powerful and that the old [sacraments] are not. And remember, [dear] novice, that [Saint Thomas] is speaking about causal conjunction or of a cause as such, so that you are not tricked by the importunity of digressing into those things that are per accidens.26 May I respectfully suggest that Cardinal Cajetan’s advice to the novices may serve well Catholic theologians of the new evangelization. To adapt a phrase of the late Richard John Neuhaus, we may find ourselves at the N&V threshold of the Ressourcement Thomist—the R.T.—Moment. 26 I acknowledge my indebtedness to Brother Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., who graciously provided me not only the text but also the translation. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 317–40 317 What Is Faith? The Theocentric, Unitive, and Eschatologically Inchoative Character of Divine Faith R EINHARD H ÜTTER Duke University Divinity School Durham, NC The “door of faith” (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. —Pope Benedict XVI1 I. Introduction ON October 11, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI announced in his Apostolic Letter “Porta Fidei” a Year of Faith. It began on the day of its official announcement and will end on November 24, 2013, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. During this Year of Faith it seems to be especially fitting to inquire into the nature of faith. What is faith?2 This question may initiate a philosophical inquiry into the nature and characteristics of belief and into the corresponding act of assent. The branch of philosophical inquiry to which such an investigation belongs is contemporaneously called “epistemology.”3 The question “What is faith?” 1 “Porta Fidei (cfr Act 14,27) semper nobis patet, quae in communionem cum Deo nos infert datque copiam eius Ecclesiam ingrediendi.” These are the opening words of Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Letter “Porta Fidei,” promulgated as a motu proprio for the indiction of the Year of Faith. (www.vatican.va/holy_ father/benedict_xvi/motu_proprio/documents/hf_ben-xvi_motu-proprio_ 20111011_porta-fidei_en.html) 2 An earlier and briefer version of this essay was delivered under the same title in Washington, DC on May 24, 2011, as the presidential address at the Annual Conference of the Academy of Catholic Theology, whose topic was “Faith— Theologically and Philosophically Considered.” 3 John Henry Newman’s 1870 classic An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (with introduction by Nicholas Lash; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 318 Reinhard Hütter may, however, initiate an inquiry that is genuinely theological in nature and hence formally different from a philosophical inquiry into the nature of belief and assent.4 Because the aspect under which something is studied constitutes the unity of the inquiry, the formality that constitutes the unity of theological inquiry (in distinction from philosophical inquiry) is the specific intelligibility afforded by faith in revelation. The formal description “what is intelligible in the light of divine revelation” is constitutive of theology as sacred teaching, sacra doctrina.5 The following considerations are going to rely explicitly on the distinct intelligibility that divine revelation grants. In short, they form an exercise in sacra doctrina. This exercise in sacra doctrina, however, takes place in an intellectual context quite different from the one in which Thomas undertook his theological inquiry into the nature of faith. For after the turn to the subject had achieved its first full flowering in the new anthropocentrism of Renaissance humanism, theological inquiry into the nature of faith became increasingly (though not without ongoing significant resistance from the 1979) represents a conceptually rigorous effort at clarifying philosophically matters of belief and assent, an intellectual achievement that anticipated key insights of recent analytic philosophy. For a lucid interpretation and defense of Thomistic epistemology in conversation with contemporary analytic philosophy, see Paul A. MacDonald, Knowledge and the Transcendent: An Inquiry into the Mind’s Relationship with God (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). 4 “Formally” is the condensed adverbial indication of the “ratio formalis obiecti,” the precise aspect under which something is the object of a specific scientific inquiry. 5 In Summa theologiae (ST ) I, q. 1, a. 3, Thomas Aquinas puts the matter in the following way: “Sacred doctrine is one science [una scientia]. The unity of a faculty or habit is to be gauged by its object, not indeed, in its material aspect [materialiter], but as regards the precise formality [secundum rationem formalem obiecti ] under which it is an object. . . . [B]ecause Sacred Scripture considers things precisely under the formality of being divinely revealed, whatever has been divinely revealed possesses the one precise formality [in una ratione formali obiecti ] of the object of this science.” Thomas specifies further in ST I, q. 1, a. 7: “[I]n sacred science [sacra doctrina] all things are treated under the aspect of God; either because they are God Himself; or because they refer to God as their beginning and end. . . . This is clear also from the principles of this science, namely the articles of faith, for faith is about God. The object of the principles and of the whole science must be the same, since the whole science is contained virtually in its principles.” (All citations from the ST are taken from the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province [New York: Benziger Bros., 1948; repr. Christian Classics, 1981].) For a philosophically astute analysis of Thomas’s reception of the Aristotelian concept of “scientia” (first and foremost from the Posterior Analytics) and for its analogical application to sacra doctrina as a scientia subaltern to the scientia Dei et beatorum, see John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). The Character of Divine Faith 319 Dominican Thomist tradition) dazzled by the phenomenon of self-reflexive subjectivity. And consequently it became acutely preoccupied with a new question: “How can the subjective consciousness achieve absolute certitude, “certitudo super omnia,” of a truth that is genuinely supernatural? Under theocentric conditions, Thomas’s inquiry into the nature of faith began and ended with God and was thus essentially grounded in the divine truth on which the certitude of faith was understood to depend objectively. Differently put: according to Thomas, the certitude of faith is first and foremost a function of its cause, divine truth.6 Under anthropocentric conditions, however, matters changed dramatically.With Renaissance humanism, the self-consciousness of the human subject moved into the center, not only as the investigating subject, but now primarily also as the investigated object—and the absolute certitude of faith is now sought first and foremost in the primary object of investigation, the human subject.7 In consequence, many of the post-Tridentine Catholic theologians became preoccupied with the absolute certitude of subjective consciousness: “How can the believer become certain of the supernatural or divine nature of the motive of his or her assent to divine revelation?” And so in the context of their increasingly complex and comprehensive theological treatises “De fide,” numerous post-Tridentine Catholic theologians came to dedicate a special section to the discussion of this particular question, a section that came to be entitled “De analysi fidei.”8 Around 1585, Gregory of Valentia, S.J., was the first to introduce the term “analysis fidei.” From the early seventeenth century on, the “analysis fidei” made a veritable career, especially in Jesuit Baroque scholasticism.9 Most notably and most famously, Francisco Suarez, 6 Only secondarily is the certitude of faith also dependent on its possessor. See ST II–II, q. 4, a. 8. 7 Drawing upon Wilhelm Dilthey’s characterization of Renaissance humanism, Karl Eschweiler states felicitously: “All [theoretical and practical] judging was rooted and ended in the self-consciousness of the homo-homo.” (My translation; R. H.) (Karl Eschweiler, Die zwei Wege der neueren Theologie: Georg Hermes— Matth. Jos. Scheeben. Eine kritische Untersuchung des Problems der theologischen Erkenntnis [Augsburg: Filser, 1926], 33.) For a thoughtful treatment and astute analysis of the ways Eschweiler’s theology eventually became fraught with severe problems of a primarily political nature, see Thomas Marschler, Karl Eschweiler (1886–1936): Theologische Erkenntnislehre und nationalsozialistische Ideologie (Würzburg: Pustet, 2011). Eschweiler’s book Die zwei Wege der neueren Theologie has, however, lost nothing of its heuristic fecundity and analytic relevance for understanding Catholic theology and especially the theology of faith in the course of and after the modern turn to the subject. 8 Eschweiler, Die zwei Wege der neueren Theologie, 35f. 9 The principled anthropocentrism of Renaissance humanism began to have a tangible effect on Jesuit Baroque scholasticism. The flowering of this effect took 320 Reinhard Hütter S.J., in his treatise De fide,10 and Cardinal Juan de Lugo, S.J., in his respective treatise De virtute fidei divinae,11 set off and framed a complex and highly involved discussion of the “analysis fidei” that deeply influenced all subsequent treatises “De fide.” Even for the opponents to this form of “new theology of faith,” Suarez and Lugo became the standard points of reference and of critique.12 Concordant with the modern turn to the subject, in most of the subsequent treatments of the “analysis fidei” the rational psychology of the act of faith took the center stage of the philosophical and theological energy invested into the theological treatise “De fide.” Eventually, this treatise dealt almost exclusively with a critical inquiry informed by rational psychology into the ultimate foundation of certitude (“certitudo super omnia”) of the self-reflexive subject, that is, of subjectivity per se. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, the anthropocentric emphasis only intensified, to the point of reducing faith to an exclusively natural rational act of belief (rationalism) or to an essentially a-rational taste or feeling for supernatural truth (fideistic traditionalism)—though not without notable exceptions.13 Eventually the First Vatican Council, in the dogmatic shape in what eventually came to be called “Molinism.” The “liberum arbitrium” with which Renaissance humanism was obsessed (see Erasmus of Rotterdam in his dispute with Martin Luther) became the linch pin for the Molinist construal of how God’s grace and the human will relate in the order of operation. God’s grace and the human will are two independent, co-ordinated factors, upon the concord or discord of which the course of events depends—a course of events that, according to Molina, falls fully under the scope of divine foreknowledge of future contingents. Fueled by the anthropocentric turn of Renaissance humanism, the post-Tridentine Jesuit Baroque scholasticism of Molina, Suarez, and Lugo conceived of human free will as a genuine partner of the divine salvific will. 10 Francisco de Suarez, S.J., De triplice virtute theologica: fide, spe, et caritate, Vol. XII in Opera Omnia (Paris, 1856–78). 11 Juan de Lugo, S.J., De virtute fidei divinae (Lyon, 1646). 12 For an accessible summary with encyclopedic fecundity and characteristic evenhandedness, see Avery Dulles, S.J., The Assurance of Things Hoped For: A Theology of Christian Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), esp. 54–58 and 105–7. And for a comprehensive analysis of the various accounts of the “analysis fidei” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, see Aloys Schmid, Untersuchungen über den letzten Gewißheitsgrund des Offenbarungsglaubens (Munich, 1879). 13 The Dominican Thomist tradition resisted these developments consistently. Other exceptions reflecting a different intellectual pedigree would be Johann Adam Möhler’s Symbolik, oder Darstellung der dogmatischen Gegensätze der Katholiken und Protestanten nach ihren Bekenntnisschriften (1832), Johann Evangelist von Kuhn’s Einleitung in die katholische Dogmatik (1859), and John Henry Newman’s Catholic ouevre. Dulles perceives a notable resemblance between Adam Möhler’s pre–Vatican I theology of faith and Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s post–Vatican I theology of faith. Both abandon anthropocentrism. Dulles states: “In its essentials The Character of Divine Faith 321 constitution on the Catholic Faith, “Dei Filius,” exposed and condemned the errors of what arguably are two distinct though mutually exclusive offshoots of anthropocentrism—a naturalist rationalism and a supernaturalist fideistic traditionalism.14 Both reduce divine faith: the former to a “rational faith,” a rational examination—propelled by real doubt—and eventual justification of the truths of faith before the bar of reason (a pure interior natural rationalism of the self-reflexive subject);15 the latter to a fideistic and a-rational, purely tradition-mediated “givenness” of the faith that would habituate and form the person lingustically and affectively for the eventual reception of an interior supernatural and supra-rational selfmanifestation of God (a pure interior supernaturalism of the subject).16 After the Fathers of the First Vatican Council had reasserted the proper doctrinal framework for a Catholic theology of faith, the later nineteenth century and the twentieth up to the Second Vatican Council witnessed a lively debate over the “analysis fidei” among the likes of Joseph Kleutgen, S.J., Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Pierre Rousselot, S.J., Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the Dominican Thomist School.17 The debate of these years might best be characterized by the tension caused, on the one hand, by the attempt to mediate what were seen to be legitimate modern anthropocentric concerns with the older theocentric patristic and medieval tradition Scheeben’s approach to faith resembles Möhler’s final position. Both of them were opposed to systems that base faith on inner experience or rational selfassertion, thus making it, in effect, a conquest of the human spirit. Instead they called for a radical shift whereby anthropocentrism is abandoned. Faith, they affirmed, is a reverent submission to a word that comes from above, a personal word of address from a gracious God. Only those who are willing to become like little children, trusting in the word of another, can enter into the household of faith” (Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For, 91). 14 Regarding the former, see DH 3010 and 3014, and for the respective canons, see DH 1035 and 1036. Regarding the latter, see DH 3009, and for the respective canon, see DH 3033. Here as well as in the following, DH stands for Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, revised, enlarged, and, in collaboration with Helmut Hoping, edited by Peter Hünermann for the original bilingual edition, and edited by Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash for the English edition. 43d ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012). 15 For the prototype of this trend, see the works of Georg Hermes (1775–1831). 16 For the prototype of this trend, see the works of Louis Eugène Bautain (1796–1867). 17 Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For, chapters 4 and 5. For an exhaustive study of the complex debates over the inner constitution of the act of faith in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Catholic theology, see Roger Aubert, Le problème de l’acte de foi: Données traditionelles et résultats des controverses récentes (Louvain: E. Warny, 1958). 322 Reinhard Hütter and, on the other hand, by the attempt to overcome what was understood to be an anthropocentric distortion by a theocentric rectification. (My essay quite obviously belongs to this latter strand.) What has become ever stronger though, it seems, in the second half of the twentieth century, that is, after the Second Vatican Council, is a considerably deepened turn to the subject endowed with libertarian and self-transcending freedom. In not a few quarters of contemporary Catholic theology, the act of faith has become the fulcrum of the unfathomable freedom of self-transcending subjectivity, the act of all acts—in which we achieve ultimate self-realization—even if such self-realization be conceived dialectically as the very self-abandonment to an Other.18 The subject who believes asks what the nature of the act is that he or she undertakes when he or she believes; what kind of epistemic status the beliefs of the believing subject have; what the nature of the certitude is that pertains to those beliefs; how the subject acquires these beliefs by way of the intellectual and volitional operations of the mind; how the beliefs the subject holds might have developed historically and might still be developing; how they are psychologically, socially, and culturally informed or even conditioned; and how those beliefs might inform the subject existentially and pragmatically. And so, much of contemporary Catholic theology of faith in Europe and in North America seems errant in the maze of self-reflexive subjectivity, Catholic theology now being predominantly absorbed with the autonomous rationality—of the subject; with the existential authenticity— of the subject; with the prelinguistic, primordial religious experience—of the subject; with the unfathomable libertarian freedom—of the subject; with the primordially and inescapably graced nature—of the subject; with the unavoidable construction of religious meaning—by the subject; and last but not least, with the socio-historical, cultural, and economic location— of the subject. One lesson learned in retrospect is that once Renaissance humanism had entered and once Molinism had penetrated ever deeper into the maze of self-reflexive subjectivity, it seemed close to impossible for contemporary Catholic theology of faith to find the exit. All paths seemed to turn inexorably to the center of the maze—the modern subject. In light of this situation, it does not seem to be surprising that in 18 This self-reflexive subjectivity plays itself out quite differently in English-speak- ing Catholic theology (Terrence W. Tilley, Inventing Catholic Tradition [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000] and idem, Faith: What It Is and What It Isn’t [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010]) and in German-speaking Catholic theology (see e.g. Markus Tomberg, Glaubensgewißheit als Freiheitsgeschehen: Eine Relecture des Traktats ‘De analysi fidei’ [Regensburg: Pustet, 2002]). The Character of Divine Faith 323 recent years the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has set up unequivocal theological signposts in order to guide Catholic theologians in their consideration of the question “What is faith?” into the direction of the exit from the maze of modern subjectivity. In his recent encyclical letter Spe Salvi, in the very important seventh paragraph, Pope Benedict XVI gives the following magisterial answer to the question “What is faith?” and thereby, arguably, offers Ariadne’s thread to an errant contemporary Catholic theology of faith. I understand Spe Salvi’s teaching in the crucial seventh paragraph to be nothing less than a salutary magisterial invitation encouraging a fresh start for re-conceiving the theological inquiry “De fide” in the early twenty-first century. To this end, Spe Salvi offers pertinent impulses that aim at overcoming the modern turn to the subject and theology’s subsequent entrapment in the maze of self-reflexive subjectivity. At the very least, the encylical letter clearly invites theologians to rethink critically the disproportionately privileged position that the rational psychology of the “act of faith”—the “analysis fidei”—has traditionally played in many if not most modern Catholic treatises “De fide.” The pertinent part of the seventh paragraph of Spe Salvi states: In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews (v. 1) we find a kind of definition of faith which closely links this virtue with hope. . . . ‘Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen.’ For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia. The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads: Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium—faith is the ‘substance’ of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. (§7) At this point in the encyclical letter, significantly, the Holy Father turns to no other theological authority but Thomas Aquinas in order to elucidate the nature of faith: Saint Thomas Aquinas, using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see. The concept of “substance” is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say “in embryo”—and thus according to the “substance”—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: a whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty [my emphasis; R. H.]; this “thing” which must come is not yet visible 324 Reinhard Hütter in the external world (it does not “appear”), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. . . . Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet.” The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future. (§7) This passage is informed by a tacit yet striking theocentrism, which should not be too surprising; for in this very part Spe Salvi passes on an important teaching from the First Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Catholic Faith, “Dei Filius,” a constitution that is meant to check and correct the anthropocentric distortions of the understanding of divine faith, distortions that emerged in Catholic theology subsequent to and in response to the Enlightenment. Consider the opening lines of the constitution’s third chapter, entitled “De Fide,” which amount to nothing less than a formal definition of the essence of divine faith: Since human beings are totally dependent on God as their creator and lord, and created reason is completely subject to uncreated truth (veritas increata), we are obliged to yield to God the revealer full submission of intellect and will by faith. This faith, which is the beginning of human salvation, the catholic church professes to be a supernatural virtue, by means of which, with the grace of God inspiring and assisting us, we believe to be true what has been revealed, not because we perceive its intrinsic truth by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God himself, who makes the revelation and can neither deceive nor be deceived.19 The passage concludes with a citation of Hebrews 11:1. In continuity with the formal definition given by the Fathers of the First Vatican Council, Pope Benedict XVI understands Hebrews 11:1 to offer a kind of definition of faith. I will follow suit in the following theological reflection on the nature of divine faith. For it seems to me that it is this kind of definition of faith—as interpreted in Dei Filius and Spe Salvi—that enables us to break free from the anthropocentrism that is the root cause of the disproportionate attention given to the psychology of the act of faith. Given the reading of Hebrews 11:1 advanced by Dei Filius and especially Spe Salvi, three features should hold the place of primacy in a theo19 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 2: Trent—Vatican II, ed. Norman P. Tanner, S.J. (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 807. The Character of Divine Faith 325 logical analysis of the nature of that faith that the tradition rightly calls “divine faith”: First, habitus: “Faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see.” Second, substance: “Through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say ‘in embryo’—and thus according to the ‘substance’— there are already present in us the things that are hoped for.” “Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a ‘not yet’.” “Substance” denotes here a tangible beginning of an eventual fulfillment; it indicates that faith is in a concrete way eschatologically inchoative. Third, the Veritas Increata, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, which—as we will see—is the all-important formal object or motive cause of the act of assent. In light of what should hold primacy in a theological inquiry into the nature of divine faith, Dei Filius and Spe Salvi urge contemporary Catholic theologians to turn their attention to the reality that precedes and that elicits the act of faith, to the reality that makes the act of faith the kind of act it is and brings about the infused operative quality that makes possible and facilitates the act of faith. In order to get an initial handle on this change of perspective and direction, we could do a lot worse than go upstream and listen again to the very source to which Spe Salvi points us in paragraph seven, the theology of the doctor communis, Thomas Aquinas. However, lest my ressourcement in the theology of the doctor communis comes across as a merely antiquarian enterprise, I will “book-end” my considerations, with Thomas as a magisterially proposed theological point of reference on the one side and, on the other side, with a theological interlocutor who—at least to my German sense of theologically qualified time and chronology—belongs to the very immediate theological past, who is, in short, in many ways still a theological contemporary: the great nineteenth-century dogmatic theologian Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1835–88). Both Aquinas and Scheeben will assist greatly in gaining a deeper theological understanding of the magisterial signposts that point to the exit from the maze of self-reflexive subjectivity. II. Thomas Aquinas If, indeed, according to Spe Salvi, faith is the beginning of eternal life, then the direct object of faith—that which precedes and determines faith— should be that whereby the human being attains eternal life. Hence, the object of faith cannot simply be true things about God, but must be God himself. In Thomas’s crisp language: “Fidei objectum per se est id per quod homo beatus efficitur.” “The direct object of faith is that whereby [the Reinhard Hütter 326 human being] is made one of the Blessed” (ST II–II, q. 2, a. 5). “Actus autem credentis non terminatur ad enuntiabilia, sed ad rem.” “The act of the believer does not terminate in a proposition, but in a thing” (res here in the sense of reality which can be a thing or a person) (ST II–II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2). In order to appreciate the act of faith and the specific infused habitus or principle of activity that makes the act of faith possible, one must first and foremost inquire into the relation of the act to its proper object. It is the object that specifies the act, which in turn specifies the respective habitus. Consequently, at the beginning of the secunda secundae of the Summa theologiae, Thomas opens his treatise on the first of the three theological virtues, faith, with a consideration of the object of faith, moves then to the act of faith, and finally considers the habit and virtue of faith. In one of his very first essays, Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., rightly regards the object of faith to be the very key to Thomas’s treatise on faith.20 By extension, we should add—and this is, incidentally, a side thesis of my essay—the object of faith is the key to a proper understanding of the theological significance of the three essential features of faith identified by Dei Filius and Spe Salvi: first and foremost, the veritas increata, secondly, the eschatologically inchoative substance, and finally, the supernatural habitus. Heeding this magisterial signal, a theological consideration of the question “What is faith?” should turn first to faith’s object, the “obiectum fidei.” 1. Obiectum In light of the contemporary ordinary English meaning of the noun “object,” “obiectum fidei” is an admittedly less than felicitous technical term, a term that had its remote origin with Aristotle’s epistemological considerations and made a steep career in Western medieval philosophy and theology. Contemporary connotations of “object” collide head-on with what “obiectum” actually denotes. But once rightly understood, “obiectum fidei” provides the key to understanding what kind of act faith is, and what kind of habitus it is that must facilitate this kind of act. Let me state up front in a nutshell the proper denomination of “obiectum”: “The term [obiectum] ‘object’ stands for the reality, thing or person, that engages an act.”21 What needs to be highlighted is the verb “engage.” 20 M.-D. Chenu, O.P., “Pro supernaturalitate fidei illustrando,” Xenia Thomistica 3 (1925): 307. 21 T. C. O’Brien, O.P., “Appendix 1: Objects and Virtues,” in St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae. Vol. 31: Faith (2a2ae 1–7), English translation, introduction, notes appendices and glossary by T. C. O’Brien. Reprint of the 1974 original edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 178. The Character of Divine Faith 327 The medieval thinkers deployed “obiectum” in connection with apprehensive and appetitive powers that convey “whence the act of apprehension or appetition originates.”22 Lawrence Dewan puts the complex matter succinctly: In the case of apprehension, “obiectum” expresses movement from the thing toward the soul. In the case of appetition, it expresses movement from the soul toward the thing. This suggests that in using the word “obiectum” concerning an apprehensive power, one is expected to imagine something moving from the thing apprehended to the one who apprehends: perhaps the best illustration would be sound traveling from the gong or bell to the ear. Color, for example, would be imagined as behaving somewhat similarly. The “obiectum” would be what is hurled at and strikes the observer. To call something an “obiectum” would be something like calling it “striking,” “a striking thing.” On the other hand, in the case of motive or appetitive powers, the “obiectum” is “that which we go for,” the target of our pursuit, that at which we hurl ourselves.23 The powers of apprehension and appetition are passive potencies; they are receptive of their objects before their specific activities are actualized. The “obiectum” has a causal function upon the act of apprehension; it is from the “obiectum” (let us say, color) that the act of apprehension (seeing) receives its specific determination that distinguishes it from other kinds of acts of apprehension (hearing or smelling). Since the “obiectum” determines the act, Thomas takes it as operating after the manner of a formal principle. For this reason the “obiectum” is denominated as “formal objective” or “formal object.” In his early commentary on Lombard’s Sentences Thomas offers a helpful summary of the precise meaning of “formal object”: Because everything acts to the degree that it is actual and so through its form, and because for the passive powers the object is the actuating element, therefore that aspect of the object to which a passive power is proportioned is that which is formal in the object. And in reference to it powers and habits are differentiated, because they derive their species from this formal aspect of the object [i.e. formal objective].24 I will return to the topic of “formal object” later in this essay. 22 Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “ ‘Objectum’: Notes on the Invention of a Word,” in idem, Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 414. 23 Ibid. 24 In III Sent. 24, 1, i. Translation by T. C. O’Brien, “Appendix 1: Objects and Virtues,” 181f. 328 Reinhard Hütter If you gain a distinct sense that by considering the full meaning of “obiectum” you are leaving behind the epistemic presuppositions entailed in the Cartesian rupture between res cogitans and res extensa as well as those entailed in the Kantian rupture between the transcendental ego and the “thing in itself ” (das Ding an sich)—you are right. You are, as a matter of fact, being directed to the exit of the maze of modern subjectivity with its interminable succession of aporetic epistemologies. According to the realist epistemology of the philosophia perennis, there obtains a primordial causal, that is, specifying, engagement of the apperceptive faculties by the “obiectum,” which precedes and indeed enables the secondary epistemological reflection of this dynamic.25 Moreover, this engagement of the act by the object presupposes an order between human beings and their world.We see the color of the apple, we hear the sound of the bell, we feel the wetness of the rain. “Obiectum” denotes realities, persons, and things in view of our distinct engagement by them and interaction with them.26 By virtue of our apprehensive powers we are receptive to persons and things, and by virtue of our appetitive powers we interact with persons and things. They become “obiecta,” not by any change in themselves, but by being known and desired in a term that might best be characterized as “intentional union.” As T. C. O’Brien aptly puts: With respect to knowledge, it is the actuality of being itself that “allows” knowledge and to which the knowledge is a reaction. In the case of appetition, it is the goodness, therefore the actual being, of the object that prompts and evokes the corresponding love, desire, hope.27 It is at this very point that we come to appreciate fully Thomas’s teaching that faith, hope, and charity are theological virtues—they facilitate acts of faith, hope, and charity, which have God as their respective “obiectum.” This means that God unites Himself to the human in such a way that the human can know, hope in, and love God, for—remember— 25 Besides the recent book by MacDonald, Knowledge and the Transcendent, see the two classics of Thomist epistemology: Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge (Distinguish to Unite), newly trans. from the fourth French edition under the supervision of Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1959), and Étienne Gilson, Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, trans. Mark A. Wauck (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986; reprint 2012). 26 See chapter 5, “Perception and Abstraction,” in James Ross’s important book Thought and World: The Hidden Necessities (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008) for a lucid and astute defense of what amounts to an essentially Aristotelian-Thomist epistemology (absent scholastic technicalities) in conversation with and critical engagement of contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. 27 O’Brien, “Appendix 1: Objects and Virtues,” 182. The Character of Divine Faith 329 “obiectum” denotes here the term of an intentional union of cognition and appetition. God becoming “obiectum” does not change God, but it reduces cognitive and appetitive powers to certain kinds of acts—in short, it specifies them. These acts in turn specify the operative habitus that empower the intellect and will to perform acts that entirely surpass their natural orientation. Consider Thomas’s terse statement: Now we derive from God . . . knowledge of truth. Accordingly, faith makes us adhere to God, as the source whence we derive the knowledge of truth, since we believe that what God tells us is true. (ST II–II, q. 17, a. 6) However, God is not just the material “obiectum” of faith insofar as we believe truths about God and in relationship to God. Rather, by clinging to God himself as the very motive of our assent to the content of faith, we reach God in his very being. And so Thomas stresses: When we believe God [by faith], we [reach God himself] by believing [credendo Deum attingimus]; for which reason it was stated . . . that God is the object of faith, not only because we believe in a God [credimus Deum] but because we believe God [credimus Deo]. (ST II–II, q. 81, a. 5)28 Believing God by faith, cleaving to God by hope, and loving God by charity denote three kinds of acts facilitated by the three theological habitus that have God as their “obiectum.” We have reached the point where we must turn to the “obiectum fidei,” the “object of faith.” Because faith is essentially an act of the intellect—cum assensu cogitare—the “obiectum” receives a title appropriate to the intellect’s orientation: prima veritas, first truth, a concept we encountered in Dei Filius under the slight variation veritas increata, uncreated truth. 2. Prima Veritas Truth does not reside in things but in the intellect. But what is the case for the human intellect must supereminently be the case for the divine intellect. Truth resides first and foremost in the divine intellect, first truth, prima veritas, or with Vatican I, veritas increata. Jesus can truthfully say “I am the truth” because he is the Son of God, the Word Incarnate, begotten Truth. As Thomas puts it in De Veritate, q. 1, a. 7: “[If] truth is taken properly in whatever pertains to God, it is predicated essentially; yet it is appropriated 28 I have modified the English translation of the Dominican Fathers. They translated “attingere” with “reaching out to,” which does not do full justice to Thomas’s intention. Rather, “attingere” must be translated with “to arrive at,” “to reach.” 330 Reinhard Hütter to the person of the Son.”29 To predicate truth essentially of God means that truth is identical with the divine essence: His being [esse suum] is not only conformed to His intellect, but it is the very act of His intellect; and His act of understanding is the measure and cause of every other being and of every other intellect; and He Himself is His own existence and act of understanding [et ipse est suum esse et intelligere]. Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him but that He is truth itself , and the sovereign and first truth [ipse sit summa et prima veritas]. (ST I, q. 16, a. 5) All created things, in virtue of their participation in the act of being, can be said to be true insofar as they conform to their divine exemplar. And sure enough, for human beings, as endowed with intellect, this means that we can participate in God and God’s knowledge by inquiring into created truth. But what happens when the summa et prima veritas becomes “obiectum” of a cognitive act? Specified directly by the summa et prima veritas, the act must be a participation in an entirely more perfect supernatural manner of divine knowledge. “Believing God, we reach God himself ” (ST II–II, q. 81, a. 5). It is thus that prima veritas (not truth from God or about God or in relation to God, but the prototype and exemplar of all truth) as “obiectum fidei” specifies the act of faith, which in turn specifies the habitus of divine faith. But now we must remember that faith is not vision: “Faith is the ‘substance’ of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). First truth in its proper species is “obiectum” of the blessed in heaven. Only insofar as it does not appear is the first truth the “obiectum” of faith.30 But how then does the “obiectum” engage the intellect and thus specify the act of faith? Thomas gives us a clue right at the beginning of his treatise on faith in the secunda secundae: The object of every cognitive habit [habitus] includes two things: first, that which is known materially, and is the material object [materiale obiectum], so to speak, and, secondly, that whereby it is known, which is the formal aspect of the object [formalis ratio obiecti] (ST II–II, q. 1, a. 1). 29 St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth.Vol. 1: Questions 1–9, trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J. (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1994), 36. 30 De Veritate, q. 14, a. 8, ad 3: “First Truth, insofar as it appears in its proper form, is the object of the vision of heaven. But, in so far as it does not appear, it is the object of faith. So, although the object of both acts is the same thing in reality, it differs in intelligible aspect. The object thus formally different makes the species of the act different” (St.Thomas Aquinas, Truth.Volume2: Questions 10–20, trans. James V. McGlynn [Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1994], 245. The Character of Divine Faith 331 We are returning now to the crucial distinction between the material “obiectum” of faith (credere Deum), believing in God, and the formal aspect of the “obiectum” (credere Deo), believing God himself. 3. The Formal and the Material Object of Faith By distinguishing between the formal and the material “obiectum” and by also taking “obiectum” as final end toward which the will is directed, Thomas identifies a threefold relationship between the act of faith and its divine “obiectum.” In order to express this threefold relationship, he adopts the popular Augustinian formula, widely used in the tradition (ST II–II, q. 2, a. 2). I introduced it partially already above: “Credere Deo,” to believe God—faith is the reverent submission to God as revealer, the acceptance of God as prima veritas. This is faith’s formal object. “Credere Deum,” to believe in God—faith is assent to what God has revealed, first and foremost about himself. This is faith’s material object. Both “credere Deo” and “credere Deum” indicate the intellect’s relationship to God. Finally, “credere in Deum,” tending toward God. Faith is a dynamic movement into God. This aspect signifies the intellect’s act informed by an affective union with its end, charity. This threefold relationship between the act of faith and its “obiectum” does not designate three distinct acts but rather the three aspects constitutive of every consummate act of faith. Hence, while being essentially an intellectual act, trust and affectivity are integral to—as Thomas would put it—“living” or “formed” faith.31 When God engages the human intellect and thus becomes its “obiectum,” God engages the intellect first and foremost formally, as first truth, who reveals himself in the Person of the Word—Scripture and Tradition constituting “one single deposit of the Word of God,” as Dei Verbum 10 teaches.32 31 ST II–II, q. 4, a. 3: “[T]he act of faith is directed to the object of the will, i.e., the good, as to its end: and this good which is the end of faith, viz., the Divine Good, is the proper object of charity. Therefore charity is called the form of faith in so far as the act of faith is perfected and formed by charity.” O’Brien states, as tersely as rightly: “Only in one who loves God does faith reach its fully intended meaning as the beginning of eternal life” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae. Vol. 31 [2a2ae 1–7]: Faith, 125). For a brilliant and exacting study of the precise correlation between the theological virtues of faith and charity in Thomas’s theology, see Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., By Knowledge and by Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005). 32 We do not have to go very far into the theological past in order to find a clear expression of the “obiectum fidei” under the title of “first truth.” In 1910, in the Motu proprio “Sacrorum antistitum,” Pope Pius X states: “[F]aith is not a blind inclination of religion welling up from the depth of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the inclination of a morally conditioned will but is the 332 Reinhard Hütter For most theological uses, the distinction between the formal and the material objects of the act of faith suffices, the formal object being, as Dei Filius states, “the authority of God revealing.” However, if we want to attain a deeper appreciation, on the one hand, of “the authority of the first truth who is revealing,” or differently put, the “truthfulness of God in speaking”33 and, on the other hand, of what aspect of the formal object specifically accounts for faith being a supernatural, infused habitus—the beginning of eternal life in the believer—then we are well advised to avail ourselves of the time-honored distinction between the mediating formal object “by which” (quo) and the terminative formal object “which” (quod ). The mediating formal object “by which” (obiectum formale quo) is the authority of the first truth in revealing, the truthfulness of God in speaking; it is the medium by reason of which the term is attained, the personal God who is supreme and first truth.34 The term attained is the formal object “which” (obiectum formale quod ), by reason of which the material object is attained. Moreover, the terminative formal object “which” (quod ), by way of the act of faith, specifies the supernatural disposition of faith. Romanus Cessario puts the terminative aspect of the formal object succinctly: “As a theological virtue, the virtue of faith unites the believer—through the mediation of Christ’s human nature and historical ministry—to the persons of the Blessed Trinity.”35 It is this intentional union that accounts for the stable disposition of faith to be nothing less than a supernatural, eschatologically inchoative habitus. III. Matthias Joseph Scheeben In order to demonstrate that the distinction between the formal object “by which” (quo) and the formal object “which” (quod ) is of ongoing theological relevance and far from simply a specious invention allegedly concocted by Baroque scholastics, I turn now to Matthias Joseph Scheeben. In his theology of faith, he conveys—in ways still pertinent for genuine assent of the intellect to a truth that is received from the outside by hearing [ex auditu]. In this assent, given on the authority of the all-truthful God, we hold to be true what has been said, attested to, and revealed by the personal God, our Creator and Lord ” (DH 3542). 33 Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For, 188. 34 Ibid.: “In adhering to God as revealer the believer accepts God as the one whose word is supremely deserving of assent, trust, and obedience. The authority of God who speaks is inseparable from the authority of God’s word, but the word as created reality cannot be the formal object, or motive, of faith.” 35 Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 61. The Character of Divine Faith 333 contemporary Catholic theology—the theological substance behind the important conceptual distinction between the formal object “by which” (quo) and the formal object “which” (quod ). One of Scheeben’s unquestioned achievements as the leading German dogmatic theologian of the nineteenth century was the retrieval of the essential supernaturalism of the Christian faith in the aftermath of the grievous distortions inflicted upon the understanding of divine faith, especially by rationalism, but also by fideistic traditionalism. Scheeben developed his mature theology of faith in the first volume of his monumental Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics,36 which began to appear in 1873, only three years after the abrupt termination of the First Vatican Council. I shall rely here, however, on a later and slightly more comprehensive version of his theology of faith, a fifty-seven column monographic entry in the fifth volume of Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchenlexikon from the year 1882.37 In this late version of Scheeben’s theology of faith, which appeared only six years before his death in 1888, he had the opportunity to expand and nuance his earlier account, and more importantly, the opportunity to react to his critics, first and foremost his erstwhile Roman teacher, Joseph Kleutgen, S.J.38 The single most important dogmatic 36 The edition I have been consulting is volume 3 of Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Josef Höfer: Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, Vol. 1: Theologische Erkenntnislehre, 2d (Freiburg: Herder, 1948). 37 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, “Glaube,” in Wetzer und Welte’s Kirchenlexikon, oder Encyclopädie der katholischen Theologie und ihrer humanen Hilfswissenschaften,Vol. 5 (1882), 616–74. We get an initial idea of the richness and complexity of Scheeben’s theology of faith from the simple fact that it takes him eleven sections—each comprising several subsections—to cover the topic in all of its aspects and ramifications. He treats of, first, the name and notion of faith as such in German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; second, the concept and nature of theological faith; third, the motive causes of faith, its formal object, and its character as objective divine faith; fourth, the material object of faith and its character as a transcendent faith; fifth, the motive causes of faith’s credibility and its character as reasonable faith; sixth, the Church’s presentation of God’s Word, the authority of Church doctrine and its character as Catholic faith; seventh, the grace of faith as its supernatural cause and faith’s character as supernatural; eighth, human cooperation and faith’s character as an act of human freedom; ninth, the resolution or reduction of faith to all its constitutive principles; tenth, the properties of faith that constitute or complete its specific perfection; and, finally, eleventh, the necessity of faith (that is, faith as a necessary means of salvation; and faith as a matter of obligation due to a precept). In the handbook chapter as well as in the later lexicon monograph, we encounter a fully integral, non-reductive account of the nature, structure, and plenitude of the Christian faith. 38 Unsurprisingly, the conflict pertained to the “analysis fidei,” which Kleutgen once called the “crux theologorum.” For an all too brief characterization of the 334 Reinhard Hütter point of reference for both versions of his theology of faith is, of course, the 1870 Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, “Dei Filius” from the First Vatican Council. All sections of his treatment presuppose this dogmatic constitution, and large portions of it consist of an interpretation and further unfolding of the Council’s teaching on faith. 1. The Mediating Formal Object of Faith “By Which” Let us first turn to the mediating formal object “by which.” Scheeben illuminates the theological substance of this indispensable aspect of the formal object by drawing upon the analogy of the social phenomenon of natural authority in contexts in which assent is demanded and willingly given. He calls this phenomenon “authority faith.” Authority faith is “a firm holding as true, or a decided judgment of the mind, that does not rest on its own insight or direct acquaintance . . . with the object of that judgment, but on the insight or knowledge made over to us by another intelligent being.”39 In his recent important monograph on Scheeben, Romance and System, Aidan Nichols felicitously renders Scheeben’s core concept this way: “To ‘believe’ in the appropriate sense of the word is to enjoy a conviction whose ‘ground and norm’ lie elsewhere, in the entertaining of truth by another.”40 “Authority faith” arises essentially from the respect and esteem of the person who gives witness and who teaches, from the dignity of the person and his or her spiritual and intellectual perfections.41 “Authority faith” is the more perfect and the more pronounced, the more completely the one who witnesses and teaches due to his superiority over the hearer can duly claim or even command faith from the hearer. The ultimate witness and perfect teacher not only offers his judgments as the foundation for the hearer’s convictions but also prescribes his judgments as the norm for the hearer’s convictions. This authority is, of course, far from an extrinsic and presumptuous imposition upon the believer. After all, the authority of the “auctor” that stands behind every “auctoritas” and who requests assent to the truth of the Gospel is none other than the self-same “auctor” of the very act of faith itself, insofar as it is this “auctor” who makes the act of faith possible in the first place, and as its engendering principle must be cooperatpoint of conflict, see note 43 below, and for a helpfully concise discussion see Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For, 90f. 39 Handbuch,Vol. 1, p. 287; translation from Aidan Nichols, O.P., Romance and System: The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben (Denver, CO: Augustine Institute Press, 2010), 22. 40 Nichols, Romance and System, 22. 41 Scheeben, “Glaube,” 620. The Character of Divine Faith 335 ing in it.42 The “auctor” of faith is God, externally as well as internally. “Authority faith” is thus nothing else than one side of the self-same coin of which faith’s essential supernaturalism is the other side. Differently put, faith’s mediating formal object “by which” (quo) and its terminative formal object “which” (quod) are one and the same “obiectum,” in the words of Dei Filius, Veritas Increata, the Truth Who is “auctor” of all. The “auctor,” exercising authority, offers himself as the reliable ground for the certitude of the requested assent. Because it is God who proposes himself in such a way, it is most fitting and proper to respond with “authority faith.” Scheeben regards the relationship between parents and children as the principal paradigm for the way “authority faith” arises naturally in human relations. The parents who speak authoritatively and thereby demand the child’s assent, vouch in virtue of their moral truthfulness that they require faith only for what they themselves understand to be true, and to the degree that, because of the proper functioning of their intellect, they can exclude the danger of error. Consequently, the content of their speech can be held true by the child based on their integrity and authority as well as if it came directly from the child’s own insight. The trust, respect, and obedience of the child to its parents are integral components of the child’s genuine freedom, its proper flourishing toward adulthood. The child’s relationship to the parents serves as the prime natural analogue of the relationship between God, the “pater spiritum” (Heb 12:9) and all created spirits: divine faith is grounded in a relationship in which the authority and credibility of the one who speaks are exhaustively and exclusively entailed in the divine nature of the speaker.43 “Authority faith” is essentially an assent to truths because of the authority of the one who speaks.The assent of the intellect is commanded by the will in virtue of the respect and trust that the person speaking elicits and the credentials the person has. The assent proper to authority faith does not arise from a theoretical inference or a practical judgment, though such inferences and judgments may indeed precede faith proper in some way to prepare the assent integral to the act of “authority faith.” The assent integral to the act of divine faith, however, entails its own intellectual motive, because the divine credentials must, of course, be perceived and understood by the intellect in the very assent of divine faith.44 This means that, in the case of genuine theological faith, God 42 Ibid., 621. 43 Ibid., 622. 44 In his 1873 Handbuch (312f) Scheeben had criticized Lugo’s and Kleutgen’s construal of the intellectual motive of faith as overly rationalistic, as a mechanically logical operation by way of which the believer demonstrates to him- or herself the truth of the content of faith. Kleutgen responded by charging Scheeben with 336 Reinhard Hütter presents himself as “auctor” to the person externally by word and sign as well as internally as God Who Speaks—the intellect being illumined by the light of faith. Theological faith thus is divine faith in the sense that the authority to which the believer submits and the credibility to which the believer assents are essentially contained in the divinity by Whom the believer is addressed. This is, in short, what is at stake in the mediating formal object “by which” (quo). 2. The Terminative Formal Object “Which” Let us now turn to the terminative formal object “which” (quod ) that accounts for the intentional union between the human intellect and the persons of the Blessed Trinity. According to Scheeben, it is this aspect of the formal object of faith that, by way of the act of faith, determines the transcendent formal causality of the theological faith, its character as a supernaturally infused habitus. In virtue of the assent of faith, there comes about such an intimate and perfect union and assimilation of the believer’s knowledge with God’s knowledge that the supernatural formal causality issues in nothing short of an inchoative participation in God’s own life and knowledge and, consequently, in some tangible anticipation of the supernatural knowledge of God in the beatific vision.45 Scheeben goes so far as to use the term “transplantation” (Überpflanzung)46 in order to describe how, in this most intimate intentional union, the power and dignity of the divine knowledge comes to be implanted in the believer’s faith. Scheeben regards this “transplantation” of the power and dignity proper to the divine knowledge to be the truly divine certitude appropriate to the dignity of the Word of God communicating itself not only externally but also internally to the believer. This certitude is decidedly theocentric: it rests in an intentional union that anticipates the beatific vision. In other words, certitude is caused by the inchoative intentional union the final end of which is the formal union (by way of the lumen gloriae) of the intellect with God in the beatific vision. The intentional excessive voluntarism; he regarded Scheeben’s construal as it was advanced in the Handbuch (replacing God’s veracitas as the decisive intellectual motive of faith with God’s auctoritas) as theoretically unsustainable. In his later monographic lexicon entry, Scheeben responded to Kleutgen’s criticism (633f) and admitted that the acknowledgment of God’s infallible knowledge and truthfulness are integral to the intellectual motive of faith. This acknowledgment, however, he insists is not produced by an implicit syllogism but rather is concomitant with the acts of reverence and attachment, trust and faithfulness produced by the will as God introduces Himself externally and internally as “auctor.” 45 Scheeben, “Glaube,” 654f. 46 Ibid., 625. The Character of Divine Faith 337 union means that the human intellect is elevated beyond itself by God to the very height of the divine principle and receives a certitude that corresponds to the dignity of this principle. The one who has divine faith in virtue of grace adheres to the first truth itself as it is in itself, such that the prima veritas can unfold itself in the intellect of the believer with the will and judgment of the human submitted to the first truth.47 So far, we have seen Scheeben’s way of substantiating what is at stake in the notion of faith’s terminative formal object “which” (quod ): a theological account that grants a profound theological intelligibility to the Church’s teaching that divine faith is a supernatural, infused, and eschatologically inchoative habitus of the intellect. IV. The Material Object of Faith Let us finally turn to the material object of faith, the first truth revealed. Here I will have to be all too brief, because a proper consideration of this important topic would go far beyond the scope of this essay. In a nutshell: The material object includes God as the res reached by the act of faith and everything else that God reveals, not only as factually true but also what God promises and commands. Because divine faith, however, is not vision, it must be received, held, and communicated according to the means of the recipient, that is, of human life in statu viatoris (and not in statu visionis). What is utterly simple in the mind of subsistent Truth can be assented to by the believer only in a composite manner. Therefore God chooses an instrumentality conducive to human understanding and to the nature of giving assent—truth-bearing statements that can be sufficiently grasped in order to enable a simple assent. These propositions of faith can in no way be instruments extrinsic to the divine communication of the truth. Rather, as instruments of God’s own truthfulness, they participate in the one formality or meaning that constitutes divine faith.48 God as first truth in being ( prima veritas in essendo) and God as first truth in speaking ( prima veritas in dicendo) cannot be divorced from each other. Nor can the first truth in speaking be divorced from the proper instruments, the propositions of faith. Consequently, it is erroneous to reduce these propositions of faith to the status of “activating symbols” or “effective channels” of an essentially ineffable mystery.49 47 In Newman’s terminology, the one who has divine faith suspends the principle of private judgment in matters of faith, while the one who lacks divine faith submits matters of divine faith to the principle of private judgment. Scheeben cites Thomas, ST II–II, q. 5, a. 3, ad 1. 48 Cessario, Christian Faith and the Theological Life, 57. 49 Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For, 194. 338 Reinhard Hütter Such a move also jettisons the first truth as faith’s formal object. Rather, assent is given to the content of the creeds because they are revealed by God, the prima veritas, who does not deceive and cannot be deceived. The propositions of faith are absolutely integral to the material object of the faith, the res that is reached by the act of faith. V. Conclusion We have reached the preliminary end of these reflections on the question “What is faith?” For at this point we can appreciate the full weight of Thomas’s pithy statement from De Veritate, q. 14, a. 8: “[F]aith, which through assent unites [the human being] to divine knowledge, has God as its principal object, and anything else as a consequent addition.”50 Scheeben transposed Thomas’s teaching into the image of “transplantation” (Überpflanzung). The “obiectum fidei” is for both theologians the key to understanding divine faith as the personal, intentional union between God and the believer. The object of faith is not an abstract reality but the Blessed Trinity, both first truth and perfect beatitude. As unitive and as eschatologically inchoative, divine faith is utterly theocentric. Divine faith is elicited by and is directed toward its “obiectum,” the first truth, Who is not some abstract truth, but Subsistent Truth, the Blessed Trinity. Now we are in a better position to appreciate the full theological implications of the teaching of Spe Salvi on the nature of divine faith: the “obiectum fidei” is the key to understanding the theocentric, unitive, and eschatologically inchoative character of divine faith. The essentially supernatural “obiectum fidei” is the key to understanding the infused habitus of divine faith itself as supernatural, first, in mode (quoad modum), because the habitus is supernaturally caused and directed to a supernatural end. Secondly and surpassingly, on account of the intentional union between knower and known, between believer and the divine truth believed, the infused habitus of divine faith must also be substantially supernatural (quoad substantiam). Divine faith is a tangible downpayment, a substantive foreshadowing (in Spe Salvi’s felicitous words: “in embryo—and thus according to the substance” [§7]) of the beatific vision in glory. What about the direction to the exit of the maze of self-reflexive subjectivity into which the modern turn to the subject got us? By now, the guide to the exit I propose should be all too plain. Considering up front the “obiectum fidei” under the title of first truth is Ariadne’s thread, and it will eventually lead a modern Catholic theology lost in the maze of modern self-reflexive subjectivity to the exit. The subject as agent of the act of faith 50 St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth, Vol. 2: Questions 10–20, trans. James V. McGlynn, S.J. (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1994), 245. The Character of Divine Faith 339 is neither faith’s cause of nor the arbiter of its content. Hence, by being barred from playing a constitutive role, the subject is healed and elevated to play the proper participatory role of a creature ordered and, in virtue of living faith (viz., divine faith formed and thus perfected by charity), drawn into the beatitude of the Blessed Trinity. The subject’s free act of assent is facilitated by a disposition that cannot be acquired but is elicited and informed by the divine personal truth. As Scheeben aptly put it: “As little as human beings can justify themselves, as little can they make themselves have divine faith.”51 The subject is far from being erased, reified, or diminished; the subject is rather rectified (should I say “eccentrified”?) and elevated in the course of being engaged by faith’s object. Consequently, risking the danger of painting with an all too broad brush, I hazard the claim that in the contemporary transition from the modern turn to the subject toward the postmodern despair about and flight from modern subjectivity, genuine divine faith and its proper theological understanding must unavoidably issue in an inversion of anthropocentrism, that is, the restitution of proper theocentrism. It would be, however, an anthropocentric error to assume that anthropocentrism and theocentrism would relate to each other like two sides of the same coin, such that an inversion would be simply like turning a coin upside down. Entertaining such an erroneous assumption, however, would mean becoming imprisoned by a false image of this particular inversion. Rather, such an inversion would be more like a true “reformatio”; for anthropocentrism, in principle, must reduce God to a function of human fulfillment and happiness; and, because of the unavailability of a rationally fully satisfying theodicy, the fate of much of modern religious anthropocentrism is its eventual decline into atheistic humanism.52 Theocentrism, by contrast, due to the surpassing nature of the gratuitous ultimate end of the human being, viz., eternal communion with God, allows for the perfect beatitude of the human being in concert with and as part of the perfection of the whole cosmos.53 Consequently, nota bene: neither in the inchoative 51 Scheeben, “Glaube,” 656. 52 Eschweiler (Die zwei Wege der neueren Theologie, 265, n. 8) rightly observes that a certain form of modern mysticism that displays theocentric rhetoric is nothing but the acme of religious anthropocentrism (“God in us,” Jesus in us”).The 1200-page study on the emergence and intellectual history of modern atheism by Cornelio Fabro, published in English translation in 1968, has lost nothing of its pertinence for coming to understand the insidious consequences that are entailed in the modern turn to the subject for our capability to behold the formal object of divine faith, the first truth: Cornelio Fabro, God in Exile: Modern Atheism from its Roots in the Cartesian Cogito to the Present Day, trans. and ed. Arthur Gibson (New York: Newman Press, 1968). 53 Far from announcing the anthropocentric turn (as some twentieth-century interpreters of Thomas erroneously claimed), the Christocentrism of the Summa 340 Reinhard Hütter perfection in via nor in the final perfection of the beatific vision is God ever a function of a human fulfillment and happiness that would be an end in itself to which God might offer eternal assistance—as an anthropocentric eschatology will have to assume, of course, erroneously. Rather, human fulfillment and happiness in the beatific vision are the gratuitous specific human realization of the whole cosmos participating in its final end, God, so that the life of the Blessed Trinity “may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), as a theocentric eschatology rightly holds. By way of the simultaneously infused theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, the Christian achieves in this life an intentional union with the Triune God and—far from being destroyed—is inchoatively but unfathomably perfected. For a precise characterization of the inchoative as well as unfathomable nature of this perfection in statu viatoris, I will leave the last word to the doctor communis. It was Scheeben’s theological genius to maximize Thomas’s profound insight in his own teaching: As [a person] in his intellective power participates in the Divine knowledge through the virtue of faith, and in his power of will participates in the Divine love through the virtue of charity, so also in the nature of the soul does he participate in the Divine Nature, after the manner of a likeness, through a certain regeneration or re-creation. (ST I–II, q. 110, a. 4) And in his discussion of the missions of the Divine Persons in ST I, q. 43, a. 3, Thomas famously states: There is one special mode belonging to the rational creature wherein God is said to be present as the object known is in the knower, and the beloved in the lover. And since the rational creature by its operation of knowledge and love attains to God Himself, according to this special mode God is said not only to exist in the rational creature, but also to dwell therein as in his own temple. This is nothing but the objective reality that “ ‘in embryo’—and thus according to the substance” subsists in living faith, the presence of “things that are hoped for: a whole, true life” (Spe Salvi 7), the life of the Blessed Trinity. The Year of Faith seems to me to be nothing less than the Church’s urgent invitation to a new evangelization that aims at rediscovering the surpassing treasure of divine faith. “The ‘door of faith’ (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church” (Porta Fidei 1). N&V theologiae—Christ the incarnate “Deus pro nobis” as its capstone—is genuinely theocentric in that the ordo salutis is ordered essentially to the participation in the blessedness of the Triune God. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 341–55 341 Simul viator et comprehensor: The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge N ICHOLAS J. H EALY, J R . John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family Washington, DC I N THE prologue to his treatise Contra errores Graecorum, Thomas Aquinas writes, “[T]here are some things in the sayings of the ancient saints which seem doubtful to moderns [modernis].”1 He gives two reasons for these questionable statements. First, the emergence of new errors with regard to the faith requires Catholic theologians to speak with greater circumspection. Secondly, many things which sound right in the Greek language often do not sound right in Latin, since the Latins and the Greeks confess the same truth with different words. Responding to these difficulties, St. Thomas offers an important principle for interpreting theological texts. He writes, “If certain points in the statements of the ancient fathers seem incautious, their statements are not to be ridiculed or rejected; on the other hand neither are they to be overextended. One ought rather to interpret them reverently [exponere reverente].”2 The reason for this reverence is not simply filial piety toward the fathers of the Church; it is grounded in something deeper and more objective; namely, the common faith that we confess.3 1 Aquinas, Contra errores Graecorum, prol. 2 Ibid. 3 In the twentieth century, Henri de Lubac rediscovered the central importance and fruitfulness of this principle of theological interpretation. The task of understanding and making known the “deep and permanent unity of faith” across the tradition is, he suggests, the unifying concern of his writings: “Without claiming to open up new avenues of thought, I have sought . . . to make known some of the great common areas of Catholic tradition. I wanted to make it loved, to show its ever-present fruitfulness. Such a task called more for a reading across the centuries than for a critical application to specific points; it excluded any overly 342 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. There is a teaching common to the medieval saints that has become doubtful to many, if not most, modern theologians. I am referring to the idea that the earthly Jesus possessed an immediate, or face-to-face, vision of God—the same vision which constitutes the blessed state of the saints in heaven. In the third part of his Summa theologiae, Aquinas attributes a threefold human knowledge to the Incarnate Son.4 Through his beatific knowledge, the human soul of Christ, from the first moment of his conception, sees the divine essence and knows in the Word everything that has ever existed or that will exist in the future. In addition, Christ possessed infused knowledge—a prophetic knowledge arising from “the Word of God imprinting upon the soul of Christ, which is personally united to Him, the intelligible species of things” thus allowing his human soul to “know things in their proper nature by intelligible species proportioned to the human mind.”5 Finally, reversing his earlier view, Aquinas teaches in the Summa that Christ possessed “acquired knowledge,” or knowledge caused by the natural operation of the active intellect. “By this knowledge Christ did not know everything from the beginning, but step by step . . . and this is plain from what the Evangelist says, viz. that He increased in knowledge and age together.”6 preferential attachment to one school, system, or definite age; it demanded more attention to the deep and permanent unity of the faith, to the mysterious relationship (which escapes so many specialized scholars) of all those who invoke the name of Christ. . . . So I have never been tempted by any kind of ‘return to the sources’ that would scorn later developments and represent the history of Christian thought as a stream of decadences; the Latins have not pushed aside the Greeks for me; nor has Saint Augustine diverted me from Saint Anselm or Saint Thomas Aquinas; nor has the latter ever seemed to me either to make the twelve centuries that preceded him useless or to condemn his disciples to a failure to see and understand fully what has followed him. . . . What I have more than once regretted in highly regarded theologians, experienced guardians, was less, as others made it out, their lack of openness to the problems and currents of contemporary thought than their lack of a truly traditional mind (the two things are, moreover, connected)” (At the Service of the Church [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993], 143–45). 4 ST III, q. 9, aa 1–4. For recent interpretations of St. Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s knowledge, see Jean Miguel Garrigues, “La conscience de soi telle qu’elle était exercée par le Fils de Dieu fait homme,” Nova et Vetera (French edition) 79 (2004): 39–51; Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation According to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002); Romanus Cessario, “Incarnate Wisdom and the Immediacy of Christ’s Salvific Knowledge,” in Problemi teologici alla luce dell’ Aquinate, Studi Tomistici 44:5 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1991); Guy Mansini, “Understanding St. Thomas on Christ’s Immediate Knowledge of God,” Thomist 59 (1995): 91–124. 5 ST III, q. 9, a. 3. 6 ST III, q. 12, a. 2, ad 2. The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge 343 The principal reason why St. Thomas ascribes beatific knowledge to Christ is that human beings are brought to their final end of beatitude by the humanity of Christ. Hence, he argues, “it was necessary that beatific knowledge, which consists in the vision of God, should belong to Christ pre-eminently, since the cause ought always to be more efficacious than the effect.”7 Far from denigrating or overlooking the true humanity of Christ, Aquinas’ ascription of beatific knowledge is premised on the soteriological importance of Christ’s humanity. This traditional teaching regarding Jesus’ immediate or beatific knowledge of God has been a flashpoint for several controversies within Catholic theology at least since the late 1930s, when Paul Galtier published a book on the unity of Christ.8 First and foremost, the question of Christ’s knowledge brought into focus a divide or chasm separating exegetes (especially practitioners of historical critical exegesis) and dogmatic theologians.9 Both Raymond Brown and Karl Rahner called attention to this chasm, sometimes described as a contrast between a “Christology from below” versus a “Christology from above.”10 7 ST III, q. 9, a. 2. 8 Paul Galtier, L’Unité du Christ (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1939). 9 See especially the collection of essays edited by H. Vorgrimler, Exegese und Dogmatik (Mainz: Grünewald, 1962). For a survey of more recent literature, see Pablo T. Gadenz, “Overcoming the Hiatus Between Exegesis and Theology: Guidance and Examples From Pope Benedict XVI,” www.stthomas.edu/spssod/ pdf/quinn/Gadenz_Overcoming_th.pdf. 10 In an influential essay written in 1962 Rahner sought to bridge this chasm by shifting the terms of the discussion to a consideration of Christ’s consciousness. Karl Rahner, “Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and Self-Consciousness of Christ,” Theological Investigations V (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), 193–215. In Jesus, God and Man: Modern Biblical Reflections (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1967), Raymond Brown presents “the contribution that the biblical evidence makes toward our understanding of Jesus’ humanity.” In a chapter titled “How Much Did Jesus Know?” Brown advances his own tentative conclusions: “To sum up, the way in which Jesus speaks of God as Father certainly indicates that he claimed a special relationship to God. But it remains difficult to find in the Synoptic account of the public ministry any incontrovertible proof that he claimed a unique sonship that other men could not share. . . . Jesus had a human soul and thus a human intellect. Can theology admit that this intellect was also a tabula rasa, activated not by infused knowledge but by human experiences, as are other men’s intellects? In this case it would have taken Jesus time to formulate concepts. . . . One would then be able to say that his knowledge was limited, but such limitation would not at all exclude an intuitive consciousness of a unique relationship to God and of a unique mission to men” (91–95). The crucial question raised by Brown’s minimalist position has been admirably formulated by Christoph Schönborn: “It is not irrelevant whether Jesus knew why he was dying. In what sense should we take Paul’s statement, 344 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. Secondly, the question of Christ’s beatific knowledge ignited a discussion within dogmatic theology regarding the mystery of the hypostatic union and the psychology of Jesus Christ, true God and true Man. Particularly in Germany, the 1500th anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon provided an occasion for reflection and debate on the ontological structure of Christ’s divine and human consciousness.11 In France, Jean Galot penned a series of books and articles that articulated a foundational criticism of the traditional view that Christ possessed the beatific vision.12 The debate concerning Christ’s human knowledge has continued to generate interest as witnessed by the International Theological Commission’s 1985 document on this theme and the recent exchange between Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. and Thomas Joseph White, O.P.13 In the words of the Theological Commission, “the Church attaches maximum importance to the problem of the awareness and human knowledge of Jesus. We are dealing . . . with the very foundation of the method and mission of the Church in all its intimacy.”14 As Aquinas correctly discerned, which obviously had great existential importance for him: ‘He loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20)? Paul, and the primitive Church before him, believed Jesus’ mission to be of universal significance and breadth. How far can we—must we, may we—assume a thematic consciousness of this breadth? What does ‘pro me’ or ‘pro nobis’ mean? The great figures in the history of salvation, from Paul to Thérèse of Lisieux (d. 1897), have understood this ‘pro me’ in such a concrete sense that they lived from a sure faith that Jesus ‘loved me and gave himself up for me.’ ‘When he was dying,’ Jesus must ‘have known, in a mysterious but real way for whom he was giving up his life; otherwise it is not he who saves us, and his death remains an external event in relation to us [citing J. Guillet]’ ” (God Sent His Son: A Contemporary Christology, trans. Henry Taylor [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010], 175–76). 11 Cf. Das Konzil von Chalkedon: Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3 vols., ed. A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht (Würzburg: Echter-Verlag, 1951–54); Engelbert Gutwenger, Bewußtsein und Wissen Christi (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1960); Helmut Riedlinger, Geschichtlichkeit und Vollendung des Wissens Christi, Quaestiones Disputatae 32 (Freiburg: Herder, 1966). 12 Cf. Jean Galot, La conscience de Jésus (Paris: Duculot-Lethielleux, 1971); Vers une nouvelle christologie (Paris: Duculot-Lethielleux, 1971); Who is Christ? A Theology of the Incarnation, trans. M. Angeline Bouchard (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1981); “Le Christ terrestre et la vision,” Gregorianum 67 (1986): 429–50. 13 In chronological order: Weinandy, “Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,” Pro Ecclesia 13 (2004): 189–201; White, “The Voluntary Action of the Earthly Christ and the Necessity of the Beatific Vision,” Thomist 69 (2005): 497–534; Weinandy, “The Beatific Vision and the Incarnate Son: Furthering the Discussion,” Thomist 70 (2006): 605–15; and White, “Dyotheletism and the Instrumental Human Consciousness of Jesus,” Pro Ecclesia 17 (2008): 396–422. 14 “The Consciousness of Christ Concerning Himself and His Mission,” in International Theological Commission: Texts and Documents 1969–1985, ed. M. Sharkey (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989). The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge 345 the question of Jesus’ human knowledge is eminently soteriological. What would Jesus’ death and Resurrection mean if he did not know for whom he was giving up his life? Our hope for eternal salvation hinges on our being able to confess with Paul that “the Son of God loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal 2:20). My aim in what follows is to consider some of the recent objections raised against the idea that Christ possessed the beatific vision and then to suggest a line of reflection that responds to these difficulties. Accordingly, Part I will introduce the current state of the question by considering two objections to the traditional view as represented by Thomas Aquinas. Parts II and III will sketch an initial response to these difficulties by way of reflecting on the filial mode of Christ’s human knowledge.The core thesis I want to defend is that the earthly Jesus possessed the beatific vision, but that the nature of this vision or knowledge cannot be determined simply on the basis of general considerations about knowledge pursued apart from meditation on Christ’s filial communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit. The point is not that the metaphysics of knowing is irrelevant, but that what it means to know and to be known by God is supremely revealed in Christ’s life-giving death and Resurrection. I. Two Objections to Christ’s Beatific Knowledge The first objection is the most widespread. It is rooted in an assumption that the true humanity of Jesus Christ precludes beatific knowledge. A few citations will serve to illustrate the logic of this objection, which often functions more like an atmosphere rather than an argued position. The French theologian Jean Galot writes, “[A] Jesus whose soul would have been continually immersed in the beatific vision would have only assumed the exterior appearances of our human life . . . His resemblance to us would only have been a facade.”15 Wolfhart Pannenberg concurs: “[T]o attribute to the soul of Jesus a knowledge of all things, past, present, and future, and of everything that God knows from the very beginning, in the sense of supernatural vision, makes the danger more than considerable that the genuine humanity of Jesus’ experiential life would be lost.”16 In the eyes of these authors (and many more examples could be cited), the condescension of the Incarnation involves the acceptance of the limits of the human condition. Human consciousness is always situated in a particular historical and cultural setting.The claim that Jesus knew everything that has ever existed from the first moment of his conception seems to make of 15 Galot, “Le Christ terrestre et la vision,” 434. 16 Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), 329. 346 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. Jesus a superman standing outside of history. Did Jesus have nothing to learn from Mary about the faith and the prayers and the hope of Israel?17 This concern for the true humanity of Christ finds support in a number of passages in the New Testament. Not only did Jesus, in the words of Luke’s Gospel, “increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2:52), but Jesus seemed to be ignorant of certain things. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Incarnate Son had to “inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience. This corresponded to the reality of his voluntary emptying of himself, taking ‘the form of the slave.’ ”18 In this context the Catechism cites Mark 6:38, where Jesus asks his disciples, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” And John 11:34, where Jesus, referring to Lazarus, asks, “Where have you laid him?” We could add the scene recounted in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus asks the woman who was healed by touching his clothing, “Who touched my garments?” (5:30). Finally, there is the celebrated text of Mark 13:32, “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the Son, but only the Father.” It is significant that both Irenaeus and Origen had no difficulty ascribing ignorance to the incarnate Son. Irenaeus took this to be the plain meaning of this passage from Mark’s Gospel.19 In the wake of Arian theologians casting doubt upon Jesus’ divinity by emphasizing especially the imperfection of his knowledge, it became extremely difficult for subsequent authors to admit any ignorance or growth in knowledge on the part of Jesus. This statement that not even the Son knows the hour was commonly interpreted to the effect that Jesus did, in fact, know the hour, but he did not wish to reveal it. Even as careful and sympathetic a reader of patristic theology as Christoph Schönborn suggests that “this attempt by most Church fathers to gloss over the ignorance of Jesus is unsatisfactory.”20 17 In ST III, q. 12, a. 3, Thomas Aquinas explicitly rejects the possibility that Christ “learned from other human beings,” arguing that “it did not befit his dignity that he should be taught by any man.” There are many reasons why this teaching of Aquinas cannot represent the last word on the subject, the most important being that it is difficult to reconcile with an adequate understanding of Mary’s mediation (both at the natural level and in terms of introducing Jesus to the faith and prayer of the Jewish people). Developing an insight of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Christoph Schönborn argues that “[h]uman self-awareness is inconceivable without relationships with others. . . . Openness to and dependence on others are an essential part of human self-awareness: first of all, to the mother, the first person to whom one relates. . . . [W]e may and must assume that Jesus came to know himself through others, and, like any child, especially through his mother” (God Sent His Son, 188). 18 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 472. 19 Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, II, 28; cf. Origen, in Matth. PG 13, col. 1686f. 20 Schönborn, God Sent His Son, 167. The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge 347 In summary, the true and unabridged humanity of Christ, confirmed by the Council of Chalcedon and clearly evidenced throughout the New Testament, involves a voluntary accepting of the limits of the human condition in time. The truth of the Incarnation seems to be at odds with the idea that the earthly Jesus had an immediate vision of God and knew everything in the Word. The second objection, which is closely related to the first, is based on the argument that the beatific vision is incompatible with the reality of Christ’s suffering on the Cross. Galot writes: “[H]ow can we attribute to a Savior who is filled with heavenly beatitude these words: ‘My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?’ . . . The cry of Jesus on the cross makes manifest the depths of a suffering that is incompatible with the beatitude of vision.”21 This objection touches a profound mystery. Most would admit that it is difficult to reconcile the mortal anguish of Jesus in Gethsemane—his extreme fear and sadness—with the supreme blessedness and peace that is the fruit of seeing God. The Dominican exegete François Dreyfus, rightly in my opinion, draws a connection between Jesus’ mortal anguish in his Passion and the words of Paul that Jesus “was made sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21) and “became a curse for us” (Gal 3:13).The testimony of Dreyfus is particularly significant because he is a strong proponent of the idea that Christ possessed the beatific vision. He writes: “Jesus wanted to place himself in solidarity with sinful humanity by sharing not in the sin but in its consequences: weakness, doubt, sadness, anguish, distancing from God. . . . Jesus really wanted, on Golgotha as in Gethsemane, to undergo the consequences of the sin which distanced and separated from God.”22 Recent magisterial teaching has confirmed this line of reflection. In his apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini, Pope Benedict XVI writes: As the cross of Christ demonstrates, God also speaks by his silence. The silence of God, the experience of the distance of the almighty Father, is a decisive stage in the earthly journey of the Son of God, the incarnate Word. Hanging from the wood of the cross, he lamented the suffering caused by that silence: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mk 15:34; Mt 27:46). Advancing in obedience to his very last breath, in the obscurity of death, Jesus called upon the Father.23 21 Galot, “Le Christ terrestre et la vision,” 434. 22 François Dreyfus, Did Jesus Know He Was God? (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988), 122–24. 23 Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, 21 (my italics). In Deus Caritas Est, 12, Pope Benedict describes Jesus’ death on the Cross as the “culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him.” Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. 348 The precise question that needs to be probed is whether and how the beatific vision is compatible with what Pope Benedict calls “the obscurity of death” and “the experience of the distance of the almighty Father.” There are, of course, several other objections to the thesis that the earthly Jesus possessed the beatific vision.Thomas Weinandy, for example, develops an argument based what he claims is necessary for a proper understanding of the hypostatic union. He suggests that the conventional way of asking and answering the question of whether Christ possessed a vision of the divine essence unwittingly makes the human nature a second subject alongside the Son.24 Weinandy also develops an argument based on the biblical teaching that the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection is essential for perfect beatitude. Just as our final blessedness with God includes our resurrected bodies, Christ’s humanity, which is the instrumental cause of our salvation, attains its final perfection of beatitude only by undergoing death and rising to new life. In the Letter to Hebrews we are told that the Incarnate Son “learned obedience” and was “made perfect” (2:10, 5:9, 7:28) through suffering and death. It is the crucified and Risen Christ who is the “source of eternal salvation” (Heb 5:9) and the “mediator of the New Covenant” (Heb 9:15). In light of these difficulties, it is perhaps not surprising that many contemporaries reject as untenable the traditional thesis that Jesus possessed the beatific vision from the first moment of his conception. The Jesuit theologian Gerald O’Collins stands for many when he writes: “The comprehensive grasp of all creatures and all that they can do (which Aquinas holds to belong to the beatific vision) would lift Christ’s knowledge so clearly beyond the normal limits of human knowledge as to cast serious doubts on the genuineness of his humanity.”25 “[H]ow could he have genuinely suffered [and how could he have truly endured trials and temptations] if in his human mind he knew God immediately and in a beatifying way? . . . For these and related reasons it is hard to endorse Aquinas’s thesis that the earthly Jesus’ knowledge included . . . the beatific vision.”26 Jean-Pierre Torrell and Joseph Ratzinger (among others) share this reservation regarding the Thomistic account of Christ’s beatific knowledge.27 24 Cf. Weinandy, “Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,” Pro Ecclesia 13 (2004):189–201. 25 Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 256. 26 Ibid., 255–56. 27 Jean-Pierre Torrell, “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science du Christ,” in Saint Thomas au XXe siècle, ed. S. Bonino (Paris: Éditions St. Paul, 1994), 394–409; Joseph Ratzinger, “Bewußtsein und Wissen Christi: Zu E. Gutwengers gleichnamigen Buch,” Münchener theologische Zeitschrift 12 (1961): 78–81. The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge 349 II. Filial Knowledge In what follows, I would like to sketch an alternative approach to the traditional teaching that in my view promises both to deepen our understanding of it and to overcome the typical objections to it as it were from the inside. I begin by recalling the principal reason Thomas offers for Christ’s beatific knowledge of God. The humanity of Jesus Christ is the instrumental cause by which God brings us to our final end, the visio dei. But a cause must be more potent than the effect; therefore, the soul of Christ enjoyed the immediate knowledge of God. This soteriological teaching has ample support in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of John, where we are told, “no one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known” ( Jn 1:18). According to John, eternal life consists in knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ whom the Father has sent (cf. Jn 17:3). At the same time, these passages from John open a perspective that situates Thomas’s teaching on the visio dei within a more explicitly trinitarian context. When the Gospel of John refers to Jesus’ knowledge of God, the object of his knowledge is not simply the divine essence but the Person of the Father. In terms of both his self-awareness and his relation to God, Christ’s deepest identity is to be the Son of the Father. The Gospel of John is resolutely centered on the Father. It is not, in the first place, christocentric but patro-centric. The Father is the origin and goal of everything. His eternal love of the Son, which constitutes the Son through the gift of eternal glory, gives to everything its inner logic and dynamism. . . . In the first place, the Father’s love shapes and determines the identity and life of Jesus as the Son who receives himself from the Father and accordingly holds himself completely at the Father’s disposal in his mission to the cross. The mission of Jesus is an expression of this identity: it expresses his life as the eternal Son and it is the concrete mode in which the Father’s love is extended and continued in the world.28 Within the hypostatic union, then, Christ’s distinctly human consciousness and knowledge unfold and develop within his mission and as an expression of his mission—a mission which is a prolongation of his eternal procession from the Father. François Dreyfus offers a concise summary of Christ’s filial identity and filial knowledge: 28 Michael Waldstein, “The Mission of Jesus and the Disciples in John,” Communio: International Catholic Review 17 (1990): 311–33, at 332. Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. 350 If we return to the Gospel . . . there is one thing which is quite striking. Jesus doesn’t speak of himself, his own greatness, his own dignity, but only of his relationship with the Father. . . . Jesus does not manifest himself directly as God, but as Son of God, Son of the Eternal Father. . . . This is absolutely essential. Jesus doesn’t have an awareness of being God by some sort of reflexive consciousness, but through his glance and look of filial love toward his Father. . . . In his look of love toward the Father Jesus sees that the Father has given everything to him . . . and that this total gift is completely reciprocal: ‘All I have is yours all you have is mine.’29 This last point is crucial. Jesus’ relation to the Father is characterized by reciprocal self-giving or self-communication. Both as God and as man, Christ receives himself as a boundless gift from the Father and he offers his life back to the Father in gratitude. Let us shift back for a moment to the metaphysics of beatific vision. According to Aristotle, knowledge involves an identity or union; the identity in act of knower and known.30 Along the same lines, Aquinas writes that “vision is made actual only when the thing seen is in a certain way in the seer.”31 Usually, this presence of the seen in the seer is mediated by a species, either sensible or (in the case of intellectual vision) intellectual. Because, however, it is not possible for the essence of God to be seen by any created likeness or similitude, God himself must be both the object and the “species” mediating beatific knowledge. Finally, because the natural power of the created intellect is not sufficient for a vision of the divine essence, “it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height”: the lumen gloriae or light of glory.32 The tradition has always been mindful of the mysterious character of the visio dei, in which God is both object and medium of knowledge. Heavenly beatitude is nothing less than a deifying participation in God’s own life and knowledge. The key question concerns the nature or form of the union between God and the human intellect. What must we say about this form if we take seriously the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that the “innermost secret” of God’s revelation is that “God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange”?33 29 Dreyfus, Did Jesus Know He Was God?, 106–7. 30 Cf. Aristotle, De Anima III, 4. 31 Aquinas, ST I, q. 12, a. 2. 32 Aquinas, ST I, q. 12, a. 5. 33 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 221. The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge 351 Here, too, it is the Gospel of John that gives us the key to answering this question. For John one of the privileged images for the union of knower and known is an exchange of life and love that entails mutual indwelling. “The glory which thou has given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one” ( Jn 17:22–23). The perfect communion of knower and known is reciprocal indwelling characterized by giving and receiving.34 Emphasis on this indwelling does not imply rejection of Thomas’s teaching concerning God’s presence to the beatified intellect as both its object and its “species” but, on the contrary, reveals its most concrete meaning.35 The identity in act at the heart of knowledge includes all of the modalities proper to an inter-personal exchange of love. III. Response to the Objections We are now in a position to reconsider the two objections noted previously, beginning with the second. In a nutshell, this objection holds that the vision of God is incompatible with the mystery of Christ’s suffering on the Cross.The answer to this objection is that Christ’s life-giving death (viewed in light of the Resurrection) is the supreme expression of what it means to know God and to be known by him. This is why John uses the language of “glory” to describe the crucifixion of Jesus. Several passages in the Fourth Gospel draw a connection between Christ’s hour of glory and his “laying down his life” ( Jn 10:17) in death.36 This is the “hour” when his human existence speaks plainly and eloquently of the mystery of the 34 D. C. Schindler has elaborated the philosophical underpinnings for this ideal of knowledge as communion in Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004); and Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008). See also Adrian J. Walker, “ ‘Sown Psychic, Raised Spiritual’: The Lived Body as the Organ of Theology,” Communio: International Catholic Review 33 (2006): 203–15. 35 This will appear to be a category mistake only to those who are committed to the proposition that specifically supernatural truths, as such, have nothing intrinsically to do with metaphysical truths. But granting that our mode of access to these truths is different, and granting that truths having to do with God’s inner being cannot be derived from truths about created being, or even being in general, how does it follow that truths about God’s inner life, once revealed, should have no intrinsic bearing either on how we approach creaturely being or on what we discover through our study of it? Does God’s being Trinity, then, have nothing to do with the way in which he is ipsum esse subsistens, the transcendent first principle of the being studied in metaphysics? 36 See, especially, Jn 2:19–22; 3:14; 7:39; 12:23–34. For an analysis of John’s understanding of Jesus’ death, see Ignace de la Potterie, The Hour of Jesus: The Passion 352 Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. Father. As Ratzinger shows, Christ’s dying is an act of prayer, a receiving and handing over of himself to the Father.37 The point, then, is not that Christ does not undergo what Pope Benedict calls an “experience of the distance of the almighty Father.” The point is rather that even this experience is an expression, adapted to the economy of the Incarnation, of Christ’s filial mode of knowing. It is sheltered within, and reveals, the perfect communion of Father and Son, precisely as the concrete meaning of beatific cognitive union. It is helpful to contrast this interpretation of the filial knowledge of Jesus with two alternative accounts of how to reconcile the visio dei and the paschal mystery. The first is represented by Jean Galot, who claims that in order for the suffering and the abandonment of Jesus to be real, the beatific vision must be absent or lost during his Passion. I think this position is mistaken, although it contains an element of truth. The suffering and the experience of abandonment are real, but precisely as ensheltered within and revealing to the eyes of faith the Incarnate Son’s perfect and beatifying love and knowledge of the Father.38 and the Resurrection According to John:Text and Spirit, trans. Gregory Murray (Middlegreen, England: St. Paul Publications, 1989), 11–39. 37 Joseph Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One: An Approach to a Spiritual Christology, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 24–25. 38 An important passage from John Paul II sheds some light on the mysterious simultaneity of a real abandonment and perfect knowledge of the Father. In Novo Millennio Ineunte, 25–26, he writes: “ ‘For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor 5:21). We shall never exhaust the depths of this mystery. All the harshness of the paradox can be heard in Jesus’ seemingly desperate cry of pain on the Cross: ‘ “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani ?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ’ (Mk 15:34). Is it possible to imagine a greater agony, a more impenetrable darkness? In reality, the anguished ‘why’ addressed to the Father in the opening words of the Twenty-second Psalm expresses all the realism of unspeakable pain; but it is also illumined by the meaning of that entire prayer, in which the Psalmist brings together suffering and trust, in a moving blend of emotions. In fact the Psalm continues: ‘In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you set them free. . . . Do not leave me alone in my distress, come close, there is none else to help’ (Ps 22:5, 12). Jesus’ cry on the Cross, dear Brothers and Sisters, is not the cry of anguish of a man without hope, but the prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father in love, for the salvation of all. At the very moment when he identifies with our sin, ‘abandoned’ by the Father, he ‘abandons’ himself into the hands of the Father. His eyes remain fixed on the Father. Precisely because of the knowledge and experience of the Father which he alone has, even at this moment of darkness he sees clearly the gravity of sin and suffers because of it. He alone, who sees the Father and rejoices fully in him, can understand completely what it means to resist the Father’s love by sin. More than an experience of physical pain, his Passion is an agonizing suffering of the The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge 353 The second account, which is closer to the position of Aquinas, claims that Jesus continued to have the beatific vision in the upper regions of his soul, but he freely decided not to allow the bliss of this vision to overflow into the lower levels of his soul. Although this account has the merit of safeguarding the essential truth of Jesus’ perfect communion with the Father, it remains one-sided. It is not one-sided on account of some general consideration regarding the incompatibility of beatitude and suffering, as with Galot’s account. Rather, it is one-sided because it does not sufficiently take account of the fact that the Father and the Son wish not only to overcome the sinner’s alienation from God, but also freely to use that alienation—against its own inner logic—to express the filial dimension of the Son’s knowledge of the Father, and, in particular, what might be called the infinite refusal to grasp that is a constitutive feature of that filiality. If the consummate form of beatific knowledge is a participation in the “eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Spirit,”39 then there are good grounds for claiming that Jesus possessed and revealed beatific knowledge in his paschal mystery. By the same token, the common mistake in both of the interpretations of the paschal mystery sketched just now is to assume in advance an over-determined conception of what it means to know and to be known by God, and then to ask how it is possible for Jesus to see the divine essence while suffering abandonment and death. In other words, the usual way of posing the question precludes the possibility that the mystery of Jesus’ life, death, and Resurrection is the final measure of what it means for a creature to participate in God’s knowledge. Put another way, both of the positions sketched above tend to affirm a strange juxtaposition between the earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth and the promise of eternal communion with God. Jean Galot, for his part, claims that “Christ did not live a heavenly life here on earth either in the intellectual or in the affective sphere. He did not have the immediate vision [of God].”40 It is worth pondering exactly what Galot means by “heavenly life” in this context. Did the Son leave the bosom of the Father in becoming man and going to the end of love? Is our hope for “heavenly life” something other than the hope of participating in Christ’s life, soul. Theological tradition has not failed to ask how Jesus could possibly experience at one and the same time his profound unity with the Father, by its very nature a source of joy and happiness, and an agony that goes all the way to his final cry of abandonment. The simultaneous presence of these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects is rooted in the fathomless depths of the hypostatic union.” 39 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 221. 40 Galot, Who is Christ? 357. Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. 354 death, and Resurrection and thereby entering into the life and love of Father, Son, and Spirit? On the other side of the modern debate, Romanus Cessario offers an interpretation of Aquinas’s teaching that Christ is simul viator et comprehensor—a wayfarer and a beholder. He writes: “If we affirm that Christ possessed the beatific vision during his earthly life, we do not therefore maintain that the beatific vision directly influenced his daily life. The beatific vision remains paralyzing, and no creature can act as a result of it.”41 If we think of the beatific vision in terms of Christ’s knowledge of the Father, the New Testament teaches us exactly the opposite: “the Son can do nothing of his own accord; he does only what he sees the Father doing” ( Jn 5:19). His food is to do the will of the Father who sent him. His daily life and his prayer are permeated with beatific knowledge of the Father. If Cessario’s words were true simply as stated and without qualification, it would be difficult to maintain the soteriological significance of the daily life and human action of Jesus of Nazareth. But it would also be difficult to maintain the beatifying character of heavenly beatitude: how, in fact, could a beatific vision that “paralyzed” creaturely action be at all beatifying for a free intellectual being? Doesn’t Thomas describe our beatific knowledge as the “highest” operation of our created intellect?42 Instead of claiming that the visio dei is unrelated to Jesus’ daily life, a more promising and more traditional approach is to re-conceive the meaning or logos of eternal beatitude in light of the mission of the Son. The mission of the Son, which involves accepting the limits of a genuine human existence and human knowledge, is a prolongation and expression of his eternal procession from the Father.43 It is not just that Christ is simultaneously viator et comprehensor, as it were on two juxtaposed levels of his human consciousness. Rather, it is in being a pilgrim that he is also a beholder, and it is in being a beholder that he is also pilgrim—without confusion and without separation. Christ’s vision of the Father is “missional”: filial knowledge adapted at every moment to the mission that extends the Son’s eternal procession as man within the limits of space and time. In his final encyclical letter, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, John Paul II describes the Eucharist as “a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn 15:11); it is in some way the 41 Cessario, “Incarnate Wisdom and the Immediacy of Christ’s Salvific Knowl- edge,” 338. 42 Aquinas, ST I, q. 12, a. 1. 43 Cf. Aquinas, In I Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 1: “Sicut processio temporalis non est alia quam processio aeterna essentialiter, sed addit aliquem respectum ad effectum temporalem, ita etiam missio visibilis non est alia essentialiter ab invisiblili missione.” The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge 355 anticipation of heaven, the ‘pledge of future glory.’ ”44 “Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist,” he writes, “need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. . . . With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the ‘secret’ of the Resurrection.”45 This teaching applies analogously to the mystery of beatific knowledge of God. In the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the secret of the visio dei. In this gift of communion, we are initiated into the Son’s interior disposition of gratefully receiving himself from the Father and offering himself back to the Father in knowledge and love. N&V 44 John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 18. 45 Ibid. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 357–73 357 The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and Their Indispensability for the Christian Moral Life: Grace as Motus S TEVEN A. L ONG Ave Maria University Ave Maria, FL Introduction T HE Christian moral life is widely and correctly understood to be not merely the life of natural virtue, much less of disordered nature consequent upon original sin. St. Thomas clearly teaches the divine character of those infused actual dispositions whereby we are oriented toward intrinsically supernatural beatitude. As he puts it regarding the theological virtues in his Scriptum on the Sentences: To the third question it must be said that in all things which act for an end there must be an inclination to the end, a certain ‘inchoation’ of the end, otherwise, they would never do something for an end. But the end towards which the divine generosity has ordained and predestined man, namely, the fruition of himself [of God], is in every way elevated above the faculty of created nature, for ‘neither has the eye seen, nor the ear heard, nor has there arisen in the heart of man what things God has prepared for those who love him’ (1 Cor 2:9). Therefore, by his natural powers alone, man does not have a sufficient inclination to this end, and thus it is necessary that something be superadded to man through which he would have the inclination to that end, as by his natural powers he does have an inclination to the end that is connatural to him. And those things that are superadded are called the theological virtues for three reasons. First, as to the object: For, since that end to which we are ordained is God himself, the inclination that is prerequisite [to this end] consists in an operation that regards God himself. Second, as to the cause: For as that end is ordained for us by God not by our nature, so 358 Steven A. Long the inclination to the end is worked in us solely by God; thus it is that these virtues are called theological, as though created in us by God alone. Third, as to knowledge: The inclination to this end is not able to be known by natural reason but rather by divine revelation; therefore, the virtues are called theological since by the divine word they are manifest to us, for the philosophers knew nothing of them.1 It is manifest that faith, hope, and charity are divine gifts that in no way are mere products or effects of created human nature. For the end to which these gifts order us is God Himself, and the inclination that is required for this end accordingly consists in an act regarding God Himself; further, “as that end is ordained for us by God not by our nature, so the inclination to the end is worked in us solely by God”; and, finally, “The inclination to this end is not able to be known by natural reason but rather by divine revelation” and so these virtues of faith, hope, and charity, are fittingly known as theological virtues. It might be thought—as indeed, it has been thought, for example, by Scotus—that the theological virtues, the natural moral virtues, and grace, are all that is required to orient the Christian believer to the beatific vision. St. Thomas, applying further the metaphysical judgment that potency and act are really distinct, discerned that acts are specified by their objects and ends. Accordingly, acts of moral virtue ordered to an intrinsically supernatural beatific vision could not be merely natural acts, because their end is supernatural. Thus, infused moral virtues are for St. Thomas part of the armory of the Christian soul. Working in us in much 1 Super Sent., lib. 3, dist. 23, q. 1 a. 4, qc 3 co: “Ad tertiam quaestionem dicendum, quod in omnibus quae agunt propter finem oportet esse inclinationem ad finem, et quamdam inchoationem finis: alias nunquam operarentur propter finem. Finis autem ad quem divina largitas hominem ordinavit vel praedestinavit, scilicet fruitio sui ipsius, est omnino supra facultatem naturae creatae elevatus: quia nec oculus vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascendit, quae praeparavit deus diligentibus se, ut dicitur 1 corinth., 2, 9. Unde per naturalia tantum homo non habet sufficienter inclinationem ad illum finem; et ideo oportet quod superaddatur homini aliquid per quod habeat inclinationem in finem illum, sicut per naturalia habet inclinationem in finem sibi connaturalem: et ista superaddita dicuntur virtutes theologicae ex tribus. Primo quantum ad objectum: quia cum finis ad quem ordinati sumus, sit ipse deus, inclinatio quae praeexigitur, consistit in operatione quae est circa ipsum deum. Secundo quantum ad causam: quia sicut ille finis est a deo nobis ordinatus non per naturam nostram, ita inclinationem in finem operatur in nobis solus deus: et sic dicuntur virtutes theologicae, quasi a solo deo in nobis creatae. Tertio quantum ad cognitionem, inclinatio in finem non potest per naturalem rationem cognosci, sed per revelationem divinam: et ideo dicuntur theologicae, quia divino sermone sunt nobis manifestatae: unde philosophi nihil de eis cognoverunt.” The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life 359 the way that acquired natural moral virtues do—in a rational and discursive manner—the intensification of the rational principle is specifically adapted not alone to the medicinal healing of nature in its own order which is one effect of grace, but also and principally to the elevation of the moral life to the supernatural end. This essay addresses three points. Understanding the necessity for the gifts of the Holy Spirit is aided by understanding the need for infused moral virtues. Likewise, the understanding both of the gifts and of the virtues implies a wider consideration of nature and grace. For these reasons this essay will first address the necessity for the infused moral virtues and Thomas’s teaching regarding nature and grace—particularly with respect to the natural inclinations—after the Fall of man. Second, I will offer a few remarks about the gifts of the Holy Spirit in relation to the moral life in general, focusing specifically upon the gift of counsel, which is aligned with acquired and infused prudence, and on the gift of fortitude, which is aligned with the moral virtue of fortitude. Third, I will briefly address the crucial importance of the divine motion bestowed to man—exemplarily in the instance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit—for the Christian moral life. I. The Need for Infused Moral Virtue and Considerations of Nature and Grace The need for infused moral virtue is partially to be understood in terms of the effects of original sin. Thomas, for example, suggests in the course of citing Augustine in Summa theologiae II–II, q. 135, a. 2, ad 3, that without grace man turns to concupiscence. But he swiftly observes that this is what he calls a penal exaction “resulting from the first sin”—a penalty consequent upon original sin, and not a function of human nature in itself. For, were it a function of human nature in itself, then human nature in itself would have been created corrupt, with a preference for the private good rather than for the common good. Thus in the Summa theologiae I–II, q. 109, a. 3, Thomas writes: Now to love God above all things is natural to man and to every nature, not only rational but irrational, and even to inanimate nature according to the manner of love which can belong to each creature. And the reason of this is that it is natural to all to seek and love things according as they are naturally fit (to be sought and loved) since “all things act according as they are naturally fit” as stated in Phys. ii, 8. Now it is manifest that the good of the part is for the good of the whole; hence everything, by its natural appetite and love, loves its own proper good on account of the common good of the whole universe, which is God. Hence Dionysius 360 Steven A. Long says (Div. Nom. iv) that “God leads everything to love of Himself.” Hence in the state of perfect nature man referred the love of himself and of all other things to the love of God as to its end; and thus he loved God more than himself and above all things. But in the state of corrupt nature man falls short of this in the appetite of his rational will, which, unless it is cured by God’s grace, follows its private good, on account of the corruption of nature. And hence we must say that in the state of perfect nature man did not need the gift of grace added to his natural endowments, in order to love God above all things naturally, although he needed God’s help to move him to it; but in the state of corrupt nature man needs, even for this, the help of grace to heal his nature.2 The reply of St. Thomas to the first objection in article 3 is also instructive. There he teaches that: Charity loves God above all things in a higher way than nature does. For nature loves God above all things inasmuch as He is the beginning and the end of natural good; whereas charity loves Him, as He is the object of beatitude, and inasmuch as man has a spiritual fellowship with God. Moreover charity adds to natural love of God a certain quickness and joy, in the same way that every habit of virtue adds to the good act which is done merely by the natural reason of a man who has not the habit of virtue.3 2 “Diligere autem Deum super omnia est quiddam connaturale homini; et etiam cuilibet creaturae non solum rationali, sed irrationali et etiam inanimatae, secundum modum amoris qui unicuique creaturae competere potest. Cuius ratio est quia unicuique naturale est quod appetat et amet aliquid, secundum quod aptum natum est esse, sic enim agit unumquodque, prout aptum natum est, ut dicitur in II Physic. Manifestum est autem quod bonum partis est propter bonum totius. Unde etiam naturali appetitu vel amore unaquaeque res particularis amat bonum suum proprium propter bonum commune totius universi, quod est Deus. Unde et Dionysius dicit, in libro de Div. Nom., quod Deus convertit omnia ad amorem sui ipsius. Unde homo in statu naturae integrae dilectionem sui ipsius referebat ad amorem Dei sicut ad finem, et similiter dilectionem omnium aliarum rerum. Et ita Deum diligebat plus quam seipsum, et super omnia. Sed in statu naturae corruptae homo ab hoc deficit secundum appetitum voluntatis rationalis, quae propter corruptionem naturae sequitur bonum privatum, nisi sanetur per gratiam Dei. Et ideo dicendum est quod homo in statu naturae integrae non indigebat dono gratiae superadditae naturalibus bonis ad diligendum Deum naturaliter super omnia; licet indigeret auxilio Dei ad hoc eum moventis. Sed in statu naturae corruptae indiget homo etiam ad hoc auxilio gratiae naturam sanantis.” 3 “Ad primum ergo dicendum quod caritas diligit Deum super omnia eminentius quam natura. Natura enim diligit Deum super omnia, prout est principium et finis naturalis boni, caritas autem secundum quod est obiectum beatitudinis, et secundum quod homo habet quandam societatem spiritualem cum Deo. Addit etiam caritas super dilectionem naturalem Dei promptitudinem quandam et The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life 361 In the body of the article and in Thomas’s response to the objection, we see a twofold need for divine aid. First, and chiefly, because supernatural charity, as a participation in the very love of God, is distinct from the natural love of God, as the supernatural fellowship that results from the divine elevation is distinct from love for God merely as “the beginning and the end of natural good.” But secondly, owing to the effects of sin, because “we must say that in the state of perfect nature man did not need the gift of grace added to his natural endowments, in order to love God above all things naturally, although he needed God’s help to move him to it; but in the state of corrupt nature man needs, even for this, the help of grace to heal his nature.” Nature must be both elevated and healed. It is not alone the elevation of nature to the divine friendship in sanctifying grace that is lost by original sin—nature herself, which has been divinely further ordered in and by grace beyond its proportionate end, is harmed in the Fall even within its own limited proportionate order. The human will, having been elevated to the height of divine friendship in sanctifying grace, cannot upon rejecting such grace and the divine dominion simply rebound into an order of natural love for God, because it has already rejected a nobler gift of God Himself. Accordingly, as St. Thomas stresses, after the Fall it requires grace for man properly to love God even with a properly natural love. What is true of the noblest inclination is proportionately true of the whole inclinational life of man. For Thomas, it is with natural love, even prior to divine charity, that we aboriginally flow forth from creation loving our Creator above ourselves. When this rational inclination is diminished, the whole ethical life shivers with the tremors of alienation. St. Thomas makes clear in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 85, a. 1, resp., that nature is, in part, destroyed by original sin. He identifies three senses of human nature: (1)the principles and properties of human nature; (2)the natural inclination to virtue; and (3)that gift of original justice conferred upon the first parents of the human race. He states that the third (the gift of original justice) is destroyed by sin; the second (the natural inclination to virtue) is diminished by sin; and the first (the principles and properties of human nature) is neither destroyed nor diminished by sin (for, were the principles and properties of human nature diminished or destroyed it would be impossible for humans to be damned, because the damned would not be human!). Because the root of our natural inclination to virtue is the rational nature, this inclination cannot be wholly snuffed delectationem, sicut et quilibet habitus virtutis addit supra actum bonum qui fit ex sola naturali ratione hominis virtutis habitum non habentis.” 362 Steven A. Long out—even the damned possess it, for it is the source of their unending remorse of conscience. The tendency of the rational creature to God cannot wholly be eradicated. Yet our natural inclination to love God more than ourselves is diminished by sin. And, being the capstone of the law, this diminution in the natural love of God is bound to affect all lesser rectitudes, much as the weakening of gravitational force attracting a body toward a planet diminishes motion on the part of the totality of the object and not merely on its most advanced part.The need, then, of divine aid in the practical life— not alone by reason of the intrinsic need that our moral life be adequated to the higher verities and the intrinsically supernatural character of the life of faith, hope, and charity, but by reason of the need for a genuine healing of proportionate natural inclinations—is clear. It is here that we come to the consideration of infused virtue. For the mode in which the infused moral virtues work is rational and discursive. Reason is fortified and elevated so as to be able to discern the practical implications of the Christian life and to remediate the wounded natural inclinations so that action is befitting both to the proportionate natural and to the ultimate supernatural end. But the mode of operation is befittingly discursive, and acquired natural virtue is still necessary because the external obstacles to right action must be overcome in singular acts, and the habitus of overcoming such obstacles retains its nature. Here, too, grace presupposes nature.The infused moral virtues, as it were, animate a “moral body” that is natural, not only enabling the human creature to move toward the supernatural end, but vivifying, unifying, and ordering the natural virtues which are necessarily required as essential to the human good. If it is true—as it is—that the infused virtues have a medicinal function with respect to natural virtue, it is also true that natural virtue is ineluctably necessary for man’s spiritual progress. Although infused moral virtues provide a higher ratio to the moral life—as for example the Christian has a higher reason for temperance than merely natural health—and although they fortify one’s rational inclinations to the proportionate natural good, warring against the effects of the Fall; nonetheless such virtues are constrained by the limits of rational discursive operation and presuppose the dynamism of the creature toward natural proportionate good (a dynamism which it aids from above, since, though the mode of infused virtue is rational and discursive, its origin is strictly supernatural). However, it follows from this analysis that, were man to possess only the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, the natural acquired virtues, and the infused moral virtues, the motion of man to his last end would still not be secure. For man’s rational discursive power as applied The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life 363 to action—prudence—falls short of divine omniscience and so cannot pretend perfect extension to all things.Thus the contingency of the moral life with all its unexpected hazards and blessings would not yet be adequately governed by Providence in its motion toward the beatific end were man to enjoy only the theological virtues together with infused supernatural virtue and natural virtue. It is the gifts of the Holy Spirit that address this lacuna. These gifts bestow a principle that is not simply mediated by man’s rational discursive insight but rather capacitates the rational creature to be directly governed by God Himself, and under the activation of which the agent moves itself toward the supernatural end by being moved by God. II. The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Grace as Motus The gifts of the Holy Spirit perfect man in a higher way than do acquired and infused virtue. In question 68, article 1 of the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae Thomas writes that the human virtues “perfect man according as it is natural for him to be moved by his reason in his interior and exterior actions. Consequently man needs yet higher perfections, whereby to be disposed to be moved by God.”4 The entire passage is worthy of note: Now it is evident that whatever is moved must be proportionate to its mover: and the perfection of the mobile as such, consists in a disposition whereby it is disposed to be well moved by its mover. Hence the more exalted the mover, the more perfect must be the disposition whereby the mobile is made proportionate to its mover: thus we see that a disciple needs a more perfect disposition in order to receive a higher teaching from his master. Now it is manifest that human virtues perfect man according as it is natural for him to be moved by his reason in his interior and exterior actions. Consequently man needs yet higher perfections, whereby to be disposed to be moved by God.These perfections are called gifts, not only because they are infused by God, but also because by them man is disposed to become amenable to the Divine inspiration, according to Isaiah 50:5: “The Lord . . . hath opened my ear, and I do not resist; I have not gone back.” Even the Philosopher says in the chapter On Good Fortune (Ethic. Eudem., vii, 8) that for those who are moved by Divine instinct, there is no need to take counsel according to human reason, but only to follow their inner promptings, since they are moved by a principle higher than human reason. This 4 “Manifestum est autem quod virtutes humanae perficiunt hominem secundum quod homo natus est moveri per rationem in his quae interius vel exterius agit. Oportet igitur inesse homini altiores perfectiones, secundum quas sit dispositus ad hoc quod divinitus moveatur.” 364 Steven A. Long then is what some say, viz. that the gifts perfect man for acts which are higher than acts of virtue.5 By the gifts man is disposed to become “amenable to the Divine inspiration” and to be moved “by a principle higher than human reason.” That is to say, the end of the action to which God moves man through the gifts of the Holy Spirit is not merely the proportionate natural good but supernatural beatitude. In the second article of this same question 68,Thomas writes: Accordingly, in matters subject to human reason, and directed to man’s connatural end, man can work through the judgment of his reason. If, however, even in these things man receive help in the shape of special promptings from God, this will be out of God’s superabundant goodness: hence, according to the philosophers, not every one that had the acquired moral virtues, had also the heroic or divine virtues. But in matters directed to the supernatural end, to which man’s reason moves him, according as it is, in a manner, and imperfectly, informed by the theological virtues, the motion of reason does not suffice, unless it receive in addition the prompting or motion of the Holy Ghost, according to Romans 8:14–17: “Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God . . . and if sons, heirs also”: and Psalm 142:10: “Thy good Spirit shall lead me into the right land,” because, to wit, none can receive the inheritance of that land of the Blessed, except he be moved and led thither by the Holy Ghost.Therefore, in order to accomplish this end, it is necessary for man to have the gift of the Holy Ghost.6 5 “Manifestum est autem quod omne quod movetur, necesse est proportionatum esse motori, et haec est perfectio mobilis inquantum est mobile, dispositio qua disponitur ad hoc quod bene moveatur a suo motore. Quanto igitur movens est altior, tanto necesse est quod mobile perfectiori dispositione ei proportionetur, sicut videmus quod perfectius oportet esse discipulum dispositum, ad hoc quod altiorem doctrinam capiat a docente. Manifestum est autem quod virtutes humanae perficiunt hominem secundum quod homo natus est moveri per rationem in his quae interius vel exterius agit. Oportet igitur inesse homini altiores perfectiones, secundum quas sit dispositus ad hoc quod divinitus moveatur. Et istae perfectiones vocantur dona, non solum quia infunduntur a Deo; sed quia secundum ea homo disponitur ut efficiatur prompte mobilis ab inspiratione divina, sicut dicitur Isaiae l, dominus aperuit mihi aurem; ego autem non contradico, retrorsum non abii. Et philosophus etiam dicit, in cap. de bona fortuna, quod his qui moventur per instinctum divinum, non expedit consiliari secundum rationem humanam, sed quod sequantur interiorem instinctum, quia moventur a meliori principio quam sit ratio humana. Et hoc est quod quidam dicunt, quod dona perficiunt hominem ad altiores actus quam sint actus virtutum.” 6 “Sic igitur quantum ad ea quae subsunt humanae rationi, in ordine scilicet ad finem connaturalem homini, homo potest operari per iudicium rationis. Si tamen etiam in hoc homo adiuvetur a Deo per specialem instinctum, hoc erit superabundantis bonitatis, unde secundum philosophos, non quicumque habebat The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life 365 Thus, matters with respect to “man’s connatural end” are subject to the judgment of reason, although even in these matters one may be aided by special motions bestowed by God; but those things bound up with man’s supernatural end exceed the genuine but imperfect governance of human reason, and so human reason requires the help of a higher divine motion terminating in the strictly supernatural order: “the prompting or motion of the Holy Ghost, according to Romans 8:14–17: ‘Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God . . . and if sons, heirs also.’ ” As Thomas articulates in the very next article, article 3: Now it is evident from what has been already said, that the moral virtues perfect the appetitive power according as it partakes somewhat of the reason, in so far, to wit, as it has a natural aptitude to be moved by the command of reason. Accordingly the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as compared with the Holy Spirit Himself, are related to man, even as the moral virtues, in comparison with the reason, are related to the appetitive power. Now the moral virtues are habits, whereby the powers of appetite are disposed to obey reason promptly.Therefore the gifts of the Holy Spirit are habits whereby man is perfected to obey readily the Holy Spirit.7 These gifts of the Holy Spirit are exceeded in perfection by the theological virtues. The theological virtues stand to the gifts of the Holy Spirit as the intellectual virtues that perfect reason itself stand in relation to the moral virtues that perfect appetite in relation to reason. The intellectual virtues being nobler than the moral, the theological virtues are nobler than the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and accordingly the gifts of the Holy virtutes morales acquisitas, habebat virtutes heroicas vel divinas. Sed in ordine ad finem ultimum supernaturalem, ad quem ratio movet secundum quod est aliqualiter et imperfecte formata per virtutes theologicas, non sufficit ipsa motio rationis, nisi desuper adsit instinctus et motio spiritus sancti, secundum illud Rom.VIII, qui spiritu Dei aguntur, hi filii Dei sunt; et si filii, et haeredes, et in Psalmo CXLII dicitur, spiritus tuus bonus deducet me in terram rectam; quia scilicet in haereditatem illius terrae beatorum nullus potest pervenire, nisi moveatur et deducatur a spiritu sancto. Et ideo ad illum finem consequendum, necessarium est homini habere donum spiritus sancti.” 7 “Manifestum est autem ex supradictis quod virtutes morales perficiunt vim appetitivam secundum quod participat aliqualiter rationem, inquantum scilicet nata est moveri per imperium rationis. Hoc igitur modo dona spiritus sancti se habent ad hominem in comparatione ad spiritum sanctum, sicut virtutes morales se habent ad vim appetitivam in comparatione ad rationem. Virtutes autem morales habitus quidam sunt, quibus vires appetitivae disponuntur ad prompte obediendum rationi. Unde et dona spiritus sancti sunt quidam habitus, quibus homo perficitur ad prompte obediendum spiritui sancto.” 366 Steven A. Long Spirit require, and are animated and regulated by, faith, hope, and charity. However, in relation to all other virtues, whether speculative or practical, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are more noble. As Thomas writes in article 8: the gifts perfect the soul’s powers in relation to the Holy Spirit their Mover; whereas the virtues perfect, either the reason itself, or the other powers in relation to reason: and it is evident that the more exalted the mover, the more excellent the disposition whereby the thing moved requires to be disposed. Therefore the gifts are more perfect than the virtues.8 The intellective gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and counsel are not only speculative but practical, because they extend to the direction of conduct toward the final end of life, which end is also the First Truth assented to through faith. While with respect to natural truth, the speculative “by extension” becomes practical—because the practical intellect “knows truth just as the speculative, but ordains the known truth to operation”—Thomas teaches that the intellective gifts of their nature are not only speculative but also practical. Thus for example, Thomas argues regarding the gift of understanding in question 8, article 3 of the secunda secundae of the Summa theologiae that “the gift of understanding extends also to certain actions, not as though these were its principal object, but in so far as the rule of our actions is the eternal law, to which the higher reason, which is perfected by the gift of understanding, adheres by contemplating and consulting it, as Augustine states (De Trin. xii, 7).” Regarding these intellectual gifts and their differentiation, Thomas teaches in question 8, article 6 of the secunda secundae: Accordingly on the part of the things proposed to faith for belief, two things are requisite on our part: first that they be penetrated or grasped by the intellect, and this belongs to the gift of understanding. Secondly, it is necessary that man should judge these things aright, that he should esteem that he ought to adhere to these things, and to withdraw from their opposites; and this judgment, with regard to Divine things belongs to the gift of wisdom, but with regard to created things, belongs to the gift of knowledge, and as to its application to individual actions, belongs to the gift of counsel.9 8 “Quia dona perficiunt vires animae in comparatione ad spiritum sanctum moven- tem, virtutes autem perficiunt vel ipsam rationem, vel alias vires in ordine ad rationem. Manifestum est autem quod ad altiorem motorem oportet maiori perfectione mobile esse dispositum. Unde perfectiora sunt dona virtutibus.” 9 “Sic igitur circa ea quae fidei proponuntur credenda duo requiruntur ex parte nostra. Primo quidem, ut intellectu penetrentur vel capiantur, et hoc pertinet ad donum intellectus. Secundo autem oportet ut de eis homo habeat iudicium The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life 367 Just as prudence—which is right reason about things to be done— includes a speculative element that could be known apart from practical application to the good of an operation, so likewise counsel, like the other intellectual gifts of the Holy Spirit, involves the speculative element of “judging these things aright” and knowing that one ought to adhere to the things proposed to faith for belief. While in the instance of counsel this knowledge is for the sake of the application of these judgments to individual actions, nonetheless, this judgment “belongs” to the gift of counsel “as to its application to individual actions.” Although wisdom, understanding, and knowledge all are not only speculative but also practical, it is most crucially the gift of counsel that enables man to overcome the limits of his rational prudential knowledge, so as to be directed by the God whose providence extends to all things.Yet the life of the theological virtues and gifts is in unison, so that the perfection of faith, hope, and charity is the foundation for the perfection of the active dispositions or supernatural habitus which are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Thus, for example, the growth in charity implies by its nature a corresponding development in the gift of wisdom. The right intellectual judgment of divine things is predicated on a connatural knowledge of and sympathy for the divine life that is an effect of the charity that unites us to God (ST II–II, q. 45, a. 2, resp.). Whereas human reason cannot grasp all the contingencies that pertain to action, God governs all these things, so that man’s prudence needs to be perfected and aided through being moved by the Holy Spirit, which pertains to the gift of counsel. Human prudence is insufficient surely to govern man’s practical life even when it is fortified by acquired and infused prudence, because these work in an essentially rational and discursive way, within the limits of our reason. Further, infused prudence presupposes acquired prudence, since only through action itself does man acquire the habitus of overcoming extrinsic difficulties, whereas infused prudence fortifies and elevates human reason itself. Potencies are known in relation to acts, and acts are known by their objects and ends. Since man cannot, within the limits of human reason, grasp all the contingent singular circumstances that pertain to the perfection of action, only being directed by God through the gift of counsel he can overcome this defect. Of course, since the entire universe belongs to God, God can use any created good as the occasion or instrument for the giving of counsel, and so there is no opposition between the ecclesial rectum, ut aestimet his esse inhaerendum et ab eorum oppositis recedendum. Hoc igitur iudicium, quantum ad res divinas, pertinet ad donum sapientiae; quantum vero ad res creatas, pertinet ad donum scientiae; quantum vero ad applicationem ad singularia opera, pertinet ad donum consilii.” 368 Steven A. Long good and the gift of counsel, inasmuch as the habitus of counsel may be moved to perfect act by the Holy Spirit in relation to the direction of the Church’s teaching and preaching, or to spiritual direction, or to sagacious writings: the gift of counsel is not in its essence a nomadic individualist possession but rather an active disposition given by God whereby He moves one strongly and surely to move oneself well.10 The gift of counsel is aligned with prudence, as a higher regulative principle governs a lower one, for as Thomas puts it in the ad 3 of question 52, article 2, in the secunda secundae, “The mover that is moved, moves through being moved. Hence the human mind, from the very fact that it is directed by the Holy Spirit, is enabled to direct itself and others.” This passage, together with many others like it in Thomas’s writing, gives testimony to what one might call the “premotive form of the Christian moral life”—the centrality of the divine motion whereby man is inwardly and freely moved to act toward the supernatural end, which surpasses our natural limitations, a motion that has its cognate or corollary even with respect to purely natural good.11 The necessity for the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the moral life thus is not merely topical but genetic. First, the moral life as such requires the aid of grace, both for the healing of inordinate inclinations after the Fall and for the elevation of man’s prudence to take stock of the more profound ratio which the life of faith gives him for virtuous conduct. But the mere elevation, revitalization, and fortification of reason in its intrinsic operative perfection relative to the life of grace does not remove the limits of discursive rational nature itself. If man is to be moved surely to God, in a way befit10 I am more than indebted here to the sage analysis of John of St. Thomas, and to the beautiful consideration and explanation of his reading of St. Thomas on these points offered by Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., in his essay “John Poinsot: On the Gift of Counsel,” in The Common Things: Essays on Thomism and Education, ed. Daniel McInerny (Mishawaka, IN: American Maritain Association, 1999): 163–78. 11 Thus, even at the level of proportionate natural good, as St. Thomas writes in ST I–II, q. 109, a. 1, resp., “But it is clear that as all corporeal movements are reduced to the motion of the heavenly body as to the first corporeal mover, so all movements, both corporeal and spiritual, are reduced to the simple First Mover, Who is God. And hence no matter how perfect a corporeal or spiritual nature is supposed to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless it be moved by God. —“Manifestum est autem quod, sicut omnes motus corporales reducuntur in motum caelestis corporis sicut in primum movens corporale; ita omnes motus tam corporales quam spirituales reducuntur in primum movens simpliciter, quod est Deus. Et ideo quantumcumque natura aliqua corporalis vel spiritualis ponatur perfecta, non potest in suum actum procedere nisi moveatur a Deo.” The natural motion of the will is possessed both by those who apply it further to act, and by those who do not; and one cannot “proceed to act” save insofar as the will is moved from potency to act with respect to its own self-determination in freedom. The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life 369 ting the infinite power of God and the neediness of man, active dispositions to be governed more intimately and directly by the divine wisdom, love, and mercy need to be inculcated in the human soul. This is particularly manifest in the gift of counsel, because here the mind of man is moved by an exterior counsellor, the Holy Spirit, regarding what is to be done. Both the respondeo and the reply to the first objection in question 52, article 2, bear this out. First, the body of Thomas’s answer: A lower principle of movement is helped chiefly, and is perfected through being moved by a higher principle of movement, as a body through being moved by a spirit. Now it is evident that the rectitude of human reason is compared to the Divine Reason, as a lower motive principle to a higher: for the Eternal Reason is the supreme rule of all human rectitude. Consequently prudence, which denotes rectitude of reason, is chiefly perfected and helped through being ruled and moved by the Holy Spirit, and this belongs to the gift of counsel, as stated above (Article 1). Therefore the gift of counsel corresponds to prudence, as helping and perfecting it.12 The reply to the first objection is also arresting: To judge and command belongs not to the thing moved, but to the mover. Wherefore, since in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the position of the human mind is of one moved rather than of a mover, as stated above (1; I–II, 68, 1), it follows that it would be unfitting to call the gift corresponding to prudence by the name of command or judgment rather than of counsel, whereby it is possible to signify that the counselled mind is moved by another counselling it.13 The counselled mind is moved by another counselling it; and when it is moved to an instrinsically supernatural end, this requires supernatural 12 “Respondeo dicendum quod principium motivum inferius praecipue adiuvatur et perficitur per hoc quod movetur a superiori motivo principio, sicut corpus in hoc quod movetur a spiritu. Manifestum est autem quod rectitudo rationis humanae comparatur ad rationem divinam sicut principium motivum inferius ad superius, ratio enim aeterna est suprema regula omnis humanae rectitudinis. Et ideo prudentia, quae importat rectitudinem rationis, maxime perficitur et iuvatur secundum quod regulatur et movetur a spiritu sancto. Quod pertinet ad donum consilii, ut dictum est. Unde donum consilii respondet prudentiae, sicut ipsam adiuvans et perficiens.” 13 “Ad primum ergo dicendum quod iudicare et praecipere non est moti, sed moventis. Et quia in donis spiritus sancti mens humana non se habet ut movens, sed magis ut mota, ut supra dictum est; inde est quod non fuit conveniens quod donum correspondens prudentiae praeceptum diceretur vel iudicium, sed consilium, per quod potest significari motio mentis consiliatae ab alio consiliante.” 370 Steven A. Long counsel. All the gifts are infused active dispositions rendering the agent susceptible of immediate inspiration and direction by God. This is also manifest in the gift of fortitude. St. Thomas describes the gift of fortitude as permeating the Christian moral life. One notes the body of his response to question 139, article 1, of the secunda secundae of the Summa theologiae: Fortitude denotes a certain firmness of mind, as stated above (123, 2; I–II, 61, 3): and this firmness of mind is required both in doing good and in enduring evil, especially with regard to goods or evils that are difficult. Now man, according to his proper and connatural mode, is able to have this firmness in both these respects, so as not to forsake the good on account of difficulties, whether in accomplishing an arduous work, or in enduring grievous evil. In this sense fortitude denotes a special or general virtue, as stated above (123, 2). Yet furthermore man’s mind is moved by the Holy Spirit, in order that he may attain the end of each work begun, and avoid whatever perils may threaten. This surpasses human nature: for sometimes it is not in a man’s power to attain the end of his work, or to avoid evils or dangers, since these may happen to overwhelm him in death. But the Holy Spirit works this in man, by bringing him to everlasting life, which is the end of all good deeds, and the release from all perils. A certain confidence of this is infused into the mind by the Holy Spirit Who expels any fear of the contrary. It is in this sense that fortitude is reckoned a gift of the Holy Spirit. For it has been stated above (I–II, 68, 1 and 2) that the gifts regard the motion of the mind by the Holy Spirit.14 Through the gift of fortitude the Holy Spirit expels all fear that our moral action is futile—a fear that easily turns to despair—and supplants 14 “Respondeo dicendum quod fortitudo importat quandam animi firmitatem, ut supra dictum est, et haec quidem firmitas animi requiritur et in bonis faciendis et in malis perferendis, et praecipue in arduis bonis vel malis. Homo autem secundum proprium et connaturalem sibi modum hanc firmitatem in utroque potest habere, ut non deficiat a bono propter difficultatem vel alicuius ardui operis implendi, vel alicuius gravis mali perferendi, et secundum hoc fortitudo ponitur virtus specialis vel generalis, ut supra dictum est. Sed ulterius a spiritu sancto movetur animus hominis ad hoc quod perveniat ad finem cuiuslibet operis inchoati, et evadat quaecumque pericula imminentia. Quod quidem excedit naturam humanam, quandoque enim non subest potestati hominis ut consequatur finem sui operis, vel evadat mala seu pericula, cum quandoque opprimatur ab eis in mortem. Sed hoc operatur spiritus sanctus in homine, dum perducit eum ad vitam aeternam, quae est finis omnium bonorum operum et evasio omnium periculorum. Et huius rei infundit quandam fiduciam menti spiritus sanctus, contrarium timorem excludens. Et secundum hoc fortitudo donum spiritus sancti ponitur, dictum est enim supra quod dona respiciunt motionem animae a spiritu sancto.” The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life 371 this fear with an infused confidence that all that we do and suffer is in the grace of the merciful God efficacious for attaining the infinite good of beatitude, and is thus either impetrative or meritorious in communicating this same grace to others. “A certain confidence of this is infused into the mind by the Holy Spirit Who expels any fear of the contrary.” Without such confidence, how could the wayfarer not be overcome with anguish for the stark contingency and failure that visibly characterize so many noble and necessary efforts? How could it otherwise not fail to be the case that not faith, hope, and charity, but doubt, despair, and fearridden revulsion at suffering and terrestrial failure would overtake the believer on his way to God? But the Holy Spirit infuses the mind with fortitude, enabling the believer to move toward the most difficult and sublime goods confidently despite the enormity and indeed certainty of terrestrial opposition. Of course, as Thomas notes in the reply to the third objection in the same article: The gift of fortitude regards the virtue of fortitude not only because it consists in enduring dangers, but also inasmuch as it consists in accomplishing any difficult work. Wherefore the gift of fortitude is directed by the gift of counsel, which seems to be concerned chiefly with the greater goods. III. Conclusion One recollects the words of question 52, article 2, ad 3 of the secunda secundae: “The mover that is moved, moves through being moved. Hence the human mind, from the very fact that it is directed by the Holy Spirit, is enabled to direct itself and others.” One also remembers the words of St. Thomas from De malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4: When anything moves itself, this does not exclude its being moved by another, from which it has even this that it moves itself. Thus it is not repugnant to liberty that God is the cause of the free act of the will.15 As likewise one recollects his teaching in ST I, q. 83, a. 1, ad 3: Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause,Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just 15 “Similiter cum aliquid mouet se ipsum, non excluditur quin ab alio moueatur a quo habet hoc ipsum quo se ipsum mouet. Et sic non repugnat libertati quod Deus est causa actus liberi arbitrii.” 372 Steven A. Long as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.16 It is hardly credible to suggest that men and women today no longer need or wish to enjoy the experiential savor of divine wisdom, or the gift of understanding, or knowledge, or to be counselled by God, or to be infused with fortitude, in their moral lives, to say nothing of the gifts of piety and fear of the Lord. The moral challenges of life, and the infinite elevation of the last end, provide the strongest grounds possible for desiring divine aid. This aid is bestowed and strengthened in the sacraments and is effectual for the perfection both of contemplation and action. It is crucial to understand that this aid is real, and that it is neither a violation of human freedom for the human will to be moved freely and efficaciously by God, nor foolish to desire it. Only with divine aid will the mind of man be able either to contemplate supernatural truth or to apply such truth as a rule governing action. The Christian understanding of God’s providence as extending to, and governing, man’s motion to both proportionate natural good and final supernatural beatitude—the realization that, as Thomas puts it in question 22, article 2 of the prima pars of the Summa theologiae, “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being,” and that consequently as he puts it in question 91, article 2, of the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae, “all things subject to Divine providence are ruled and measured by the eternal law”—is thus arguably the principal formal element of the Christian understanding of the moral life. And this doctrine of the premotive form of the Christian moral life is particularly manifest in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, where not only the origin but the very mode and the end of the motion are supernatural. In explicating this teaching, St. Thomas seems correct in affirming that it requires and implies an intellectualist understanding of free will as deriving from the nature of reason in relation to choice rather than as an absolute liberty of indetermination constituting an answering infinitude to God’s; and that 16 “Dicendum quod liberum arbitrium est causa sui motus; quia homo per liberum arbitrium seipsum movet ad agendum. Non tamen hoc est de necessitate libertatis, quod sit prima causa sui id quod liberum est; sicut nec ad hoc quod aliquid sit causa alterius, requiritur quod sit prima causa eius. Deus igitur est prima causa movens et naturales causas et voluntarias. Et sicut naturalibus causis, movendo eas, non aufert quin actus earum sint naturales; ita movendo causas voluntarias, non aufert quin actiones earum sint voluntariae, sed potius hoc in eis facit; operatur enim in unoquoque secundum eius proprietatem.” The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Moral Life 373 it also presupposes the metaphysics of the absolute transcendence of God. But nowhere is the premotive form of Christian moral life so palpable as in Thomas’s teaching regarding the divine motion imparted to the soul through the gifts of the Holy Spirit; for only as moved and governed by the divine gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord are human contemplation and action well and fruitfully ordered toward eternal beatitude. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 375–405 375 The Virgin Mary and the Church: The Marian Exemplarity of Ecclesial Faith T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC HOW does the faith of the Virgin Mary in her earthly life illumine our understanding of the mystery of the Church, and of the lives of all the Christian faithful? I would like to consider in this essay the exemplarity of the faith of the Virgin Mary with respect to the ecclesial body of Christ. The idea touches upon the interrelation of a set of competing claims in modern Catholic theology. First there is the claim that the Second Vatican Council understood the mystery of the Virgin Mary as something within the domain of the mystery of the Church, an understanding represented by the controversial decision of the Council Fathers to include the Mariological statements of the council within the context of the ecclesiological document Lumen Gentium.1 In one reading of this viewpoint, the Virgin Mary is an archetype of our salvation in Christ because in her person she instantiates in an ideal fashion the process by which divine grace transforms human nature. The Christocentric perspective of the Council is thus seen as ecumenical in orientation, and Mariology is reconfigured around the concerns common to all Christians of the doctrines of salvation and sanctification in Christ. Against such an aspiration—so it is often said—an important minority position sought to give theological priority to the prerogatives of the Virgin Mary (manifested by a separate document on her mystery). A second, completing claim thus emerges. On this view, the mystery of God’s grace at work in the Mother of God is not reducible to the life of grace among other believers, for we cannot simply assimilate the intelligibility of her mystery into the immanent circle of all 1 Cf., Lumen Gentium, c. 8, para. 52-69. See also the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 963-75. 376 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. other Christians. Her privileges are sui generis and an acknowledgment of them forms an integral part of the doctrine of the faith. Her mystery is not entirely reducible to the perspectives of a doctrine of sanctification applicable to all others.2 Of course, the two perspectives need not be opposed to one another. Arguably, the ecclesiology of the Council Fathers did not cause them to underemphasize the irreducibly distinct sanctity of the Virgin Mary and her unique role in salvation history as the Mother of God.3 If it did not, however, then how are these two truths inter-related: the ecclesial exemplarity of the Virgin Mary and her uniqueness as the Mother of the Redeemer? How ought these two truths to be simultaneously understood? In this essay I would like to consider in three stages the topic of the Virgin Mary as a model of ecclesial faith. I will do so by recourse to themes found in the doctrine of grace of Thomas Aquinas, especially as it relates to the unfolding of the divine economy. In the first part of the essay I will consider Aquinas’s doctrine of faith in three respects: in terms of the teleology of faith, its ontological degrees of perfection, and its communal character. In the second part of the essay I will consider more briefly the anthropological process of development in faith as it is related to love, particularly with regard to the question: how can faith grow through the occasions of joy and suffering? In the third part of the essay I will consider three mysteries of the life of the Virgin Mary, with respect to her faith: her divine maternity at the Annunciation, her meritorious compassion at the Cross, and her divine queenship in the Assumption, at the term of her earthly sojourn in faith. The goal is to show in these three mysteries how the characteristics of faith elaborated in part one of the essay (which are common to all the faithful) are exemplified in the life of the Virgin Mary, who, like all other Christians, grew in faith both through joy and through suffering. However, these same mysteries of grace are also expressed or realized in her in an absolutely unique mode, one that is not partaken of by another person in the divine economy. As I will argue in conclusion, however, the uniqueness of the 2 “The theological commission had carried into the plenary session two different opinions on this matter. Cardinal König of Vienna explained the view of those who desired that there be no separate schema about Mary but that the text on the Mother of God be integrated into that on the Church. In this way the statement about Mary could be integrated into the total ecclesiological picture. Cardinal Santos of Manila expressed the opposing view of those who wanted a separate schema on Mary. As is well known, the vote . . . resulted in a slight majority in favor of those who wanted the text on Mary integrated with that on the Church.” Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, trans. H. Traub, G. Thormann, W. Barzel (New York: Paulist Press, 1966), 59. 3 As noted by Ratzinger, ibid., 60. The Virgin Mary and the Church 377 Virgin Mary is not something purely extrinsic to the ecclesial life of believers. On the contrary, her prerogatives are intrinsically related to the ecclesial communion of the Church. They are various ways that she affects the lives of all believers, shining forth simultaneously as the Mother of the Redeemer and the Mother of all the faithful. Part I. Ecclesiology: Faith as an Ecclesial Mystery A. The Teleological Character of Faith Let us begin with the final purpose of faith as it is present in all who have it, and with the corresponding question of what is anthropologically common to all who have faith. This requires us to pose, however, the basic question of the purpose of the divine economy itself. Why or toward what purpose does God create the human person and give the grace of faith to human beings? In the twentieth century, it became common to consider faith’s eschatological orientation as its defining feature and to reinterpret human existence in light of faith, over and against secular accounts of the human person. Karl Barth and Rudolph Bultmann each had their own well-known appropriations of and responses to Kantian and Heideggerian philosophies in this light.4 Yet the topic was not alien to classical Christian culture. On the contrary, the final end of the supernatural life is a fundamental theme in Aquinas, who sees the activity of grace in the human person as eschatological in orientation. For instance, he treats the question of the universality of the priesthood of Christ precisely under this rubric: why is it that Christ fulfills the prophetic foreshadowing of Levitical sacrifice (ST III, q. 22, a. 2)? How is it that the priesthood of Christ endures forever and mediates salvation for those in every age? Interestingly, the answer is given in terms of the vocation to sanctification common to all human persons. Aquinas re-reads the history of Christ’s own sacrifice and Old Testament ritual sacrifice in light of a common fundamental Pauline theology of grace that Aquinas thinks explains the thread of continuity underlying the divine economy. Human beings in every age are potentially receptive to the graces of justification, sanctification, and eventually divinization (or eschatological union with God).5 What was only hinted at opaquely in the 4 Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief 1922 (Zürich:Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1999); The Epistle to the Romans, trans. E. C. Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968). Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology:The Presence of Eternity, 1954–55 Gifford Lectures (New York: Harper, 1962). 5 ST III, q. 22, a. 2: “Now man is required to offer sacrifice for three reasons. First, for the remission of sin, by which he is turned away from God. . . . Secondly, that man may be preserved in a state of grace, by ever adhering to God, wherein his 378 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. pre-Christian economy and was implicitly foreshadowed in the Old Covenant rituals has come to fulfillment in the sacrifice of Christ, who is God made man. In this way, Christ’s priesthood unveils the purpose of the whole economy. In him the graces of union with God have been poured out, then, bringing to fruition and making manifest the dynamic process that was previously hidden yet implicitly present from the beginning, “before all ages” (2 Cor 2:7; Eph 1:4). Christ’s uniqueness, then, is not opposed to universality. Rather, we see in light of Christ that the dynamic of grace is universalized, as St. Paul rightly identified. We know, in Christ’s new economy, the common work of grace as it is structurally effectuated in all who are predestined: this occurs by justification in faith, sanctification in charity, and eventual divinization by way of the eschatological vision of God. All authentic pre-Christian activity of authentic sacrifice, then, was undergirded by this identical mystery of salvation, albeit in less readily recognizable forms. Abraham was justified by faith, sanctified by his obedient love of God, and divinized by way of the beatific vision. His grace is specifically the same as ours, as Paul makes clear in Romans 4.6 And this is the case as well for all who outside the economy of baptism are saved by grace (Heb 11:1-6). Faith, then, for all human persons who receive and cooperate with this supernatural, infused virtue, is ultimately ordered toward the eschaton. It has no other purpose and intelligible final end than this: it is dynamically ordered toward the beatific vision.7 In what faculty of the human subject or what powers of the soul is the work of faith enrooted? “Neither eye has seen nor ear has heard, nor the heart of man has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). Paul clearly understands the vision of God as a higher mode of knowing than that to which we might attain by our natural peace and salvation consist. . . .Thirdly, in order that the spirit of man be perfectly united to God: which will be most perfectly realized in glory. . . . Now these effects were conferred on us by the humanity of Christ. For, in the first place, our sins were blotted out, according to Romans 4:25: ‘Who was delivered up for our sins.’ Secondly, through Him we received the grace of salvation, according to Hebrews 5:9: ‘He became to all that obey Him the cause of eternal salvation.’ Thirdly, through Him we have acquired the perfection of glory, according to Hebrews 10:19: ‘We have a confidence in the entering into the Holies’ (i.e. the heavenly glory) ‘through His Blood.’ Therefore Christ Himself, as man, was not only priest, but also a perfect victim, being at the same time victim for sin, victim for a peace-offering, and a holocaust.” [All translations of the ST are from the 1920 English Dominican Province Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947).] 6 See on this ST II–II, q. 2, aa. 6-8. 7 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 3. The Virgin Mary and the Church 379 powers.8 It is something that utterly transcends us. At the same time, it is something we clearly can aspire to in faith: “For now we only see as in a glass darkly . . . but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor 13:12). It is to this intuitive perception that Paul aspires in Philippians 1:21–24 in saying that he should be better off with the Lord after his death than he is in his current life in the body. But if faith is intrinsically ordered to the vision, then it introduces the mind into an intimacy with God that is not something intrinsic to our native human capacities or range of knowing. In other words, just because it is ordered toward the vision, the supernatural faith therefore necessarily both transcends the intellect’s natural realm of knowing and sanctifies the intellect.9 Faith is given into the intellect.10 This transcendent character and aspiration of the grace of faith, however, allows us to see at once the fittingness of the willed character of faith. Faith is received into the spiritual faculty of the intellect but maintained vibrant and alive only in love, by the graces of charity and hope active in the human will ( Jas 2:20).11 This is the case precisely because of the supernatural character of faith: it not something unavoidable or inherent to human nature but is a gift that must be received in and through free action. Love and hope are also required for the exercise of faith because of its eschatological dynamism: we are invited in faith to be united with the very life of God, by love in this life and by vision in the next. Such a union in this life, then, is only imperfect and initial. Consequently, it requires the ongoing activity of charity so that the heart might be sanctified in a stable union with God despite the absence of immediate evidence of the promises of faith.This form of union is also by its very nature hope-filled: it has an eschatological horizon.12 It tends toward the vision in desire or aspiration to possess God. In his commentary on the Creed, Aquinas refers to this eschatological orientation 8 See Aquinas commenting on this point, in ST I–II, q. 5, a. 5. 9 ST I–II, q. 3, aa. 4 and 8. 10 ST II–II, q. 4, a. 2. 11 ST II–II, q. 4, aa. 3–4. 12 St.Thomas Aquinas, Theological Compendium II, c. 1: “We naturally desire to know truth, and when we do know it, our craving in this direction is satisfied. But in the knowledge of faith man’s desire never comes to rest. For faith is imperfect knowledge: the truths we accept on faith are not seen. This is why the Apostle calls faith ‘the evidence of things that appear not’ (Heb. 11:1). Accordingly, even when we have faith, there still remains in the soul an impulse toward something else, namely, the perfect vision of the truth assented to on faith, and the attainment of whatever can lead to such truth. Therefore. . . . after faith, the virtue of hope is necessary for the perfection of Christian living.” Theological Compendium, trans. C. Vollert, S.J. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1947). Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 380 by use of a spousal metaphor. “Faith is like a marriage” he says, because it unites us to God.13 The union has taken place already in this life, and yet it is anticipatory of a more profound unity that is to come in the vision of God. This spousal form of faith—by which it unites us to God—has a Marian exemplarity, to which we will return below. B. Hierarchy (degrees of perfection) Hebrews 11 offers homage to historical biblical figures who exercised the theological virtue of faith to a heroic degree. The problem or quandary of the hierarchy of perfection of the grace of faith is ensconced in that text. On the one hand, the mystery of supernatural faith is present across the ages, not only among Christians and Jews, who have received explicit revelation from God, but also among “holy pagans,” who were sanctified by the grace of God outside any visible encounter with the covenant of God.14 This understanding of grace suggests a movement toward universality or common extension. The same supernatural faith is available to at least some persons in every age since the beginning of the world. On the other hand, there is, by the very nature of the encomium, the presupposition of exemplarity: some have lived the mystery of faith to exceedingly perfect degrees and therefore are models for us. Here there is a movement toward a notion of intensity of degrees of faith and a sense of hierarchy among those who are sanctified by faith. Aquinas understands there to be a unity within this twofold truth, such that a deeper consistency emerges. On the one hand, he has a striking doctrine of the homogenous and identical character of supernatural faith across time and culture. The grace of faith tends inherently in all its recipients toward the knowledge of the same, identical divine subject. Faith is a mystery of coming to know the Triune God, revealed in the Incarnation by the person of the Son, Jesus Christ. Consequently, all faith in every age tends implicitly toward the cognizance of this mystery.15 In order to articulate this possibility within a seamlessly unified divine economy, Aquinas distinguishes between implicit and explicit faith.16 That is to say, faith knows degrees of explicit development. The first parents of the human race, even before the fall, he speculates, must have had explicit awareness of the mystery of God and even of the Incarnation, but they had no explicit awareness of the reasons for the Incarnation (as it would come to 13 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Creed, Prologue. 14 Hebrews 11:4-7. Cf. Jean Daniélou, S.J., Holy Pagans of the Old Testament, trans. F. Faber (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1957). 15 ST II–II, q. 2, aa. 7-8. 16 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 5. The Virgin Mary and the Church 381 pass in response to their sin, which God permitted and foresaw, but in no way willed).17 After the fall, all men of good will can come to know the Triune God and the Incarnation by faith implicitly, if they consent to believe by grace not only that God exists but that by his providence he cares for those who seek him.18 Gentiles before the time of Christ, then, could know God in faith explicitly insofar as they confided themselves to his providence and sought the remission of their sins in prayer and sacrifices, in ways that gave outward expression to inner instincts of supernatural faith, charity, and true contrition.19 The Scriptures affirm that there have been and are such persons.20 The recipients of the Old Testament revelation, meanwhile, benefited from more explicit revelation of the mystery of God. Aquinas thinks that certain Old Testament prophets foresaw explicitly that the God of Israel would in some mysterious way enter history to save us (by his Incarnation and Passion), but most did not explicitly foresee the paschal mystery of Christ.21 They adhered to these mysteries implicitly insofar as they sought in faith to obey the Law of God that typologically signified Christ.22 Even after the coming of Christ and the age of the apostolic deposit of faith, when objectively revelation knows no addition, Christians who live subsequent to the New Testament revelation explicitly know in faith who the Triune God is, and how human salvation has been offered in the mystery of Christ and the Church, but they do not have an explicit knowledge of every potential teaching of Catholic truth contained in the deposit of faith.23 Thus the explicit understanding of the deposit of faith grows through time through conceptual precision and greater theological understanding.24 Aquinas considers there to be a unique structure of Trinitarian and Christological faith implicitly common to all believers. However, from these brief observations it is also clear that a hierarchy of faith emerges even in the midst of this commonality.The source of a hierarchy of perfection in faith can first be enunciated by the degree of explicit knowledge of the revealed truth. To one extent this is a matter of the objective public revelation that obtains in a given age and is made available to the adherent to the revelation. Those who come after Christ potentially have a 17 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 7, corp. 18 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 7, ad 3. 19 ST I–II, q. 103, a. 1; ST I–II, q. 98, a. 5, ad 3; In IV Sent. d. 1, q. 2, a. 6, sol. 3. 20 In Heb. XI, lec. 2, 576-79 [Marietti edition]. 21 ST I–II, q. 103, a. 2. 22 ST I–II, q. 102, a. 3. 23 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 6. 24 ST II–II, q. 1, aa. 9–10. 382 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. greater degree of familiarity with the mystery of God who reveals himself to us in history than those to whom that revelation remains unknown. In another way, however, there is the perfection of the adherent’s subjective assimilation of the revelation.Thus in any given age or time and place, two persons with relatively similar objective degrees of revelation may have differing degrees of explicit subjective apprehension of the mystery that is given to them to know. Aquinas here distinguishes between the Maiores and the Minores of both the Old and New Covenants, between those who attained to a greater degree of insight into the mystery, and those whose knowledge remained more implicit and less developed.25 This differentiation of knowledge is not based, however, uniquely on what we might call a theologically developed awareness of the object of faith. Theology is an acquired science, not an infused one, and so it can be the occasion for growth in faith, when it is rightly motivated by a love for the divinely revealed truth, and especially when it is informed by the intellectual gifts of the Holy Spirit. But theological acumen need not translate into an objectively greater degree of the possession of the habit of faith. The contrary is at times manifest: the theologically educated mind of someone who believes in the revelation of God less avidly. This is why saints who are theologians are more illuminative than theologians who have neglected the call to holiness. Aside from theological reflection, however, the deepest mark of differentiation of degrees of faith comes from two other factors, one extraordinary and one more common. The first is the extraordinary information of one’s faith by the grace of prophetic insight. There are members of the people of God down through history who have received the graces of a higher, more elevated manner of grasping the object of revelation. I am referring here to prophetic species or divinely revealed insights into the mystery of God.These do not alleviate the grace of faith but qualify it by granting the recipient a deeper knowledge of the divine mystery. Classically, theology ascribes such insight to the Old Testament prophets and in an especial way to the Apostles, who taught the Church and whose teaching gave rise to the New Testament.26 Their “explicit” knowledge of the mysteries of Christ came through the concrete familiarity they shared with him in his human life, but it came also from the plenitude of prophetic knowledge that they received by the gift of the Holy Spirit subsequent to the Resurrection of Christ. A more common form of special understanding, however, is that given by the intellectual gifts of the Holy Spirit, and particularly the gifts of under25 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 6. 26 ST II–II, q. 171, a. 1; q. 174, a. 4, corp. and ad 3. The Virgin Mary and the Church 383 standing and of wisdom.27 These qualify those habits of the human intellect which correspond in Aristotelian epistemology to nous or intellectus (intuitive insight into realities) and to sophia or to sapientia (seeing all things intellectually in light of the sovereign first cause of all things).28 While faith is common to all believers who have the infused intellectual habit, this faith is qualified in some more profoundly than in others, according to the degree in which they receive the gifts of understanding and wisdom. The former gift allows the intellect—even under the veil of faith—to perceive or penetrate more deeply into the structure of the mystery of God. This gift is contemplative insofar as it allows the mind to understand more readily the connections of the mysteries to one another and to adhere to the presence of God in faith, by way of a greater or more intense love.29 Such insight focuses the movement of the will toward the mystery of God in his goodness and so traditionally it is seen to lead to the beatitude of purity of heart. “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5: 8). The gift of understanding elevates our vision of God in faith, purifying the heart so that it moves out into God in a love that is more transparent and pure.30 The gift of wisdom, meanwhile, has the capacity to move the intellect by connaturality with God to perceive all other realities in light of God’s love. What happens in the world is read “from the inside” by faith with a penetration that perceives within all things the hand of God, however obscurely. This gift is associated traditionally with the beatitude of pacification.31 “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God” (Mt 5: 9). The gift of wisdom elevates the mind to contemplate all things in light of God’s mystery and the goodness of his bounty expressed through the mystery of Christ and the paschal mystery. It therefore unites all things under a single gaze, giving order to the unfolding of events in light of Christ. It gives peace to the heart, inspired by understanding of this higher evangelical order.32 Due to the degrees of explicit knowledge of divine revelation, of prophetic insight, and of gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as differences of theological learning, believers across time have varying degrees of perfection in the habit of faith. This range of perfection affects the common good of the Church as her mystery unfolds through time. 27 ST II–II, qq. 8 and 45. 28 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VI, 6-7. 29 ST II–II, q. 8, aa. 4-6. 30 ST II–II, q. 8, a. 7. 31 ST II–II. q. 45, a. 6. Aquinas appeals here to the authority of Augustine in De Serm. Dom. In Monte I, 4. 32 ST II–II, q. 45, aa. 2–3. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 384 C. The Communal Character of Faith The beatific vision is itself a mystery of common life. If God is the transcendent common good of the whole cosmos, then spiritual creatures who enjoy God by the direct vision of his essence partake of the greatest communitarian shared life. For this reason, Aquinas underscores that the beatific vision has an intrinsically communal character. This is the case for two distinct but related reasons. First because the vision of God is one shared by all the blessed, such that their joy and restfulness derive from the same source. All possess the vision of the unique Triune God. Second, however, they also all know not only God but also one another each in his or her uniqueness, and complementarity.This is not a collective knowledge merely of a conglomerate of individuals but is the participation of each one in a shared life that is common to all. They are therefore happier because of a shared life, a collective happiness, obtaining for each one personally in a distinct way but impossible without participation in the whole. In the glory of heaven, two goods above all fulfill with joy the blessed: the possession of God and the common society of the saints (communis sanctorum societas).The ‘complement’ of the saints is their common society . . . that is to say, their habitual company, because there are always with one another, both angels and men . . .33 This collective life is also marked by degrees of perfection in love and in insight into the mystery of God that are attained by individual human beings and angels, and such a hierarchy of sanctity is not something alien to this collective good; rather, it enriches that very good and gives rise to it or helps to constitute it. The difference of degrees of holiness is not a source of mutual alienation or spiritual sorrow but a source of mutual friendship and enjoyment. There is a mutual and reciprocal delight among the blessed to encounter the distinctness of graces that each one receives, including hierarchical degrees of participation in the divine nature.34 Consequently the blessed are fulfilled by God, but are also— precisely in their distinct degrees of deification in God—a source of friendship to one another. They are partakers in a mutual shared life in which each enriches the happiness of the others. What is it that accounts for the differentiation of degrees of beatitude in heaven? Is it not the degrees of faith during one’s earthly life that we have alluded to in the previous section of this essay? Formally speaking, it is not, because sanctification in the vision is based not on the intensity 33 In Hebr., XII, lect. 4, 706-7 [my translation]. 34 In Hebr. XII, lec. 4, 708. The Virgin Mary and the Church 385 of faith, per se, but on the intensity of love.35 The degree of beatitude we attain to in the world to come directly correlates with the degree of charity, supernatural love, that we attain to in this life. While knowledge is assimilative, charity is appetitive and, in a sense, spiritually ecstatic. It takes us out of ourselves into the other, in this case, God, who is the transcendent good who is loved above all by grace. But in just this way, because charity in this life opens the spiritual soul to the mystery of God’s own life, conforming the soul’s inward powers to God himself by an eccentric movement of the self out into the divine, therefore divine love is the most perfect and most proximate disposition for union of the spirit with God by vision.36 Love, in a certain sense, stretches the spiritual faculties to dispose them to divinization by an incomprehensible, utterly transcendent reality in a way that knowledge alone cannot do. This being said, the degrees of faith we attain to in this life are, of course, not accidental to the degrees of beatitude that are made possible in the next. The degree to which we grow in faith is itself dependent in great part on supernatural love. So, for instance, we seek God in faith, both by theological scrutiny and by prayer (assisted by the gifts of understanding and wisdom) because of the motions of divine love. At the same time, however, greater knowledge attained in faith can be the occasion for a growth in love: if we know God more profoundly, we are simultaneously invited to love God more intensely. This chain of knowing unto love, and loving unto knowledge, progresses ideally throughout one’s life and up into the illuminating graces of the vision of God. Among members of the city of God the intensity of such knowledge is diversified, based on love, including love of the divine truth, in this life already and in the world to come as well, in the final graces of beatitude. The diversity is complementary because the common life of heaven is one of shared knowledge and love: not a seminar of exchange of ideas, exactly, but a mutual conversation of delight, of delectatio, moved from within by the common inhabitation of the Holy Trinity, prompting all minds and hearts to partake of and communicate truth spiritually grounded in a shared life in God.This diversity is also Christocentric. The blessed are united and diversified in various ways by the graces of knowledge and love they receive from Christ, and thus they are also united in Christ. Not only as God but also as man, he is the source of their perpetual illumination.37 As God the eternal Logos of the Father, he is the eternally begotten wisdom by which the mind of each one is specified and fulfilled and in whom one might know the immanent presence of the 35 ST I, q. 12, a. 6. 36 Ibid. 37 ST III, q. 22, a. 5, corp. and ad 1; a. 8, a. 6. 386 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Father and the Holy Spirit. As man he is also in a subsidiary way the measure of human beatitude. No one knows and loves humanly with such a degree of grace as does the Lord Jesus Christ, who is in his human nature the instrumental and exemplary cause of the inner graces that animate the blessed from within.38 All of their graces are derived from him, not only because he has merited their salvation during the course of his earthly life, but also because he is the instrumental efficient cause of their new life in God.39 He directs and wills humanly the graces they receive eternally, in concord with the divine will that he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit.Thus Jesus is the perennial source of grace for the entire Church.This is precisely the image of the last chapters of the Apocalypse, which envisage the humanity of Christ illumining the whole of the holy city of God. “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rv 21:23). II. Anthropology: The Development of Faith, amidst Joy and Suffering A. The Development of Faith as Related to Love In the second part of the essay I will consider more briefly the personal process of development in faith as it is related to love, particularly with regard to the question: how can faith grow through the occasions of joy and suffering? To consider this issue in more detail I will return briefly to the question of the interrelation of knowledge and love, and subsequently to the interrelation of growth in faith and growth in charity. When he examines the mutual interrelation of knowledge and love in De malo, q. 6, Aquinas helpfully distinguishes a twofold form of primacy: one by which the intellect moves the will and the other by which the will moves the intellect.The first pertains to the knowledge of the object, that is to say, to intellectually apprehended knowledge of a given truth, with the appreciation of the ontological goodness of the reality that such knowledge makes possible. We can love only what we first know, and consequently in coming to know we gradually discern the appetible or desirable (lovable) dimensions of that which has being. In this way, he says that the intellect specifies or orders the movements of the will, by providing the heart with objective content in the order of the good. At the same time, the mind is itself moved from within by the will, to look to and to seek to discern the truth of what the heart finds appetible. So, for instance, a habit of mind can form in favor of philosophical reflection 38 ST III, q. 7, a. 9; q. 8, aa. 1 and 5. 39 ST III, q. 48, aa. 3 and 6. The Virgin Mary and the Church 387 because of a love of the truth, or a habit of economic prowess due to a love of good, vibrant stewardship of resources or due to the indulgence of a taste for excessive wealth. The will has a primacy then, not of specification of object, but of exercise of the faculty of knowing. How our knowledge develops repetitively depends upon the habits of the will and the exercise of love ordering from within the inherent inclinations of the intellect. If the intellect’s specification of the will is objective, the will’s influence of exercise upon the intellect is tendential. How, then, does this twofold form of primacy affect the process of sanctification in the development of the theological virtues of faith and charity? Evidently, in a sense that is utterly basic, charity and hope—which are supernatural movements of the will—presuppose faith, which illumines the mind. We can aspire to perfect supernatural union with God in love only if we already have some imperfect supernatural knowledge of God, and one which implies a promise. Knowledge of God in faith engenders hope and love, but if this is the case, then when the specification of the intellect is more acute, a more intense desire and love for God become possible. Growth in more elevated forms of faith permits the occasions for more profound forms of charity.The other form of primacy obtains also, however. As the will deepens in its love for God and tends toward union with him more ardently, this love affects intimately from within the life of the intellect, so that the life of the mind will tolerate no disunion from the object of love.The love of God can fix the mind in the life of contemplation but also introduce it into the habitual process of seeking God, across the spectrum of all forms and activities of speculative and practical knowledge. Love unites and informs the lives of Christians so that all that they do comes to be ordered in some way toward God, made connatural to his higher wisdom and divine life, through the medium of love. Love causes us to come under the sway of divine truth at depth levels in the self that are otherwise inaccessible except by love, but that in turn cause the inner light of the mind to tend toward God more incessantly. This process of mutual influence in this life is ultimately ordered toward union in the next. Due to the intensity of the love we bear for God in this life, the life of the intellect will blossom in the eternal life of the world to come with the vision of God that is proportionate to our supernatural desire. As St. Catherine of Siena was wont to say, “the greatest thing on earth is desire,” because this desire for God disposes our intellect immediately to the deifying radiance of the glory of God himself, who, while he remains unseen, acts as a hidden cause to draw us into utter relativity to himself, under the form of expectation.40 40 See, for example, the recurring theme of desire in St. Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue, “A Treatise on Divine Providence.” Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 388 B. The Development of Faith amidst Joy and Sorrow It remains to examine briefly the relation between contrasting human states of joy and sorrow as they are related to the growth or development of faith. In speaking of both of these human experiences, we should note three things: first, how each implies an emotional (or sensate passionbased) response and a simultaneous spiritual disposition; second, how each affects the person in the core of his being as a spiritual being capable of loving; and third, how this capacity for love in the face of joy or sorrow affects the overall exercise or growth of faith. Of course the idea is to transition from this more general anthropological account to the specific question of how the Virgin Mary is, in and through the joyful and sorrowful mysteries of her life, a model for Christians in the growth in personal faith in Christ. Joy and sorrow are words that can simultaneously denote both spiritual (intellectual) states and affective (passionate) states of our being, affecting us in our unity of body and soul as embodied persons.41 Therefore there is an inherently flexible range of significations to our language when we employ these terms: the joy of a truly mystical experience is distinct from the joy a person might have from falling in love.42 The transports entailed can be more or less sensible or spiritual, and according to a gradient of nobility of objects, from the joy of listening to music to that of winning money at the lottery. Sorrow likewise has an identical set of conditions that is inherently varied, depending on objects and ways of attaining that object.That is, we can become sorrowful over the demise of a relationship, or the poor health of a friend, in a more passionately felt or in a more spiritually interior way. What joy and sorrow have in common, however, albeit as contraries in a common genus, is that they both pertain to the possession of some kind of important good. We experience joy, both spiritual and sensible, in the presence of a good that is given to us to possess in some kind of stable fashion.43 We feel sorrow at the loss of a highly desired good that has fallen out of our reach or which is absent from our possession.44 Both experiences, then, presuppose the intellectual awareness of the good in question as well as an intuitive judgment regarding its possession or absence. They also require a desire and love for the object, whether present and beloved in its accessibility or absent and mourned. 41 See the helpful study of the passions by Nicholas Lombardo, O.P., The Logic of Desire (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011). 42 ScG I, cc. 89-90; ST I–II, q. 31, a. 3; q. 35, a. 2. 43 ST I–II, q. 33, aa. 3–4. 44 ST I–II, q. 36, aa. 1–2. The Virgin Mary and the Church 389 When supernaturalized, the experiences of joy and sorrow revolve around the givenness or absence of great spiritual goods that either are God himself or that conduct us in and through the economy to God himself. We can rejoice supernaturally, in faith, in the presence of God or mourn spiritually his absence. This presence or absence is felt along a spectrum of conditions, due to the range of effects through which we might perceive or know the presence of God. For instance, through the conditions of basically natural goods, like the conception of a child or the death of a child, we can come to experience, not only great natural joy or the grief of bereavement, but also the supernatural perception of God’s providence, felt as either a source of consolation or a mystery in which we are profoundly tried. More immediately supernatural effects can also affect the soul deeply, as when we experience the joyful presence of Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist, given to us to contemplate and possess spiritually, albeit under the veil of faith, or when we experience a deeper, divinely inspired restlessness: the absence of God as a purifying cure or salve that burns into the soul a mourning for God in his divinely felt absence. Joy and sorrow, then, alternately, in a myriad of ways, affect the soul in its perceptions of the effects of God in his economy, as each person is challenged to find God faithfully among the presences and seeming absences of divine providence in the midst of human affairs. Our capacity to love is directly attained through this process in converse ways. By the spiritual presences of God that elicit joy, the aspirations of the heart can flower through the stable or habitual possession of God.The habits of the will are turned incessantly, habitually toward God as the greatest good the soul can aspire to possess. By the spiritual absences of God, on the other hand, the aspirations of the will toward God are tried (so that one might cease to wish to find God at all). But they can also in such trials be strengthened, particularly by the endurance and perseverance of love in and through the nights of God’s seeming absence, or the dis-investitures endured at the hands of his divine providence. Consequently, the habitual growth of love, as the greatest of goods in human life, finds itself set over and above the extremes of joy and sorrow, presence and absence, consolation and trial, and love is able potentially to thrive and develop in either. It is not surprising then, that God’s providence should make use of these extremes wisely (and of all that is in the seeming middle between such states) to invite the soul to deeper surrender to God in love. This process of enduring growth in love, amidst the contraries of joy and sorrow, then, touches immediately upon the growth of faith as well. To love in view of union with God by the instigations of charity instills in the soul a desire for God and a vital tendency that can incline the 390 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. intellect from within, even in the midst of deep darknesses of faith, or even despite the seeming completeness of a joy-filled sense of God’s presence in faith. Love pushes the thirst for knowledge further and in turn inspires a desire for the fullness of the truth, a desire for the intellect’s stable possession of the vision of God, and a desire for enduring and everlasting happiness. This inner motion of love in view of truth, in view of the contemplation of the one thing necessary, can be honed, and in fact purified and fortified, by the gifts of God and the trials of life, so that the growth in faith is a constitutive part of the supernatural development of the human person.The poignant gifts of God’s providence, whether more distinctly supernatural or natural, can be referred back to God as the source of every good, in view of the vision of God. The trials of absence or of the loss of the most cherished of created goods can be borne despite all grief in view of the hope and consolation of union with God, in view of the promised good of heaven. Thus faith grows, or can grow, habitually, in joy and sorrow, in view of the eternal destiny of each human being who is called to divine life. III. Mariology: The Mysteries of the Life of the Virgin Mary and Her Growth in Faith A. The Immaculate Conception as a Disposition What has been discussed up to this point is in fact a prelude to speaking about the growth in faith of the Virgin Mary, which is no mean task. In what follows I will be presupposing the fine exegetical treatments of New Testament Mariology by such scholars as Marie-Joseph Lagrange, André Feuillet, René Laurentin, and Ignace de la Potterie.45 Furthermore, I will not be considering but will only be presupposing two fundamental dogmatic truths that form the background to any proper consideration of the Annuciation: the mystery of the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception in grace and that of her virginal consecration to God sometime after the dawn of the life of reason. Both of these mysteries are integrally related to the divine maternity of the Virgin Mary and are in fact ontological preparations or dispositions for her becoming the Mother of God in the Annunciation. Traditionally, the majority of theologians have considered that the Virgin Mary from the time of her 45 See Marie-Joseph Lagrange, O.P., Évangile selon saint Luc, 2d edition (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1921); René Laurentin, The Truth of Christmas: Beyond the Myths (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982); André Feuillet, S.S., Jesus and His Mother, trans. L. Maluf (Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Press, 1984); Ignace de La Potterie, S.J., Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant, trans. B. Buby (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1992). The Virgin Mary and the Church 391 conception received a greater plentitude of grace than any angelic or human creature has received even at the term of his or her existence.46 The idea seems to be implicitly present in the teaching of Pope Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus (1854).47 Marian holiness in the order of faith, hope and love, the infused virtues, as well as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, must begin at a higher echelon than exists for any other creature subsequent to an entire lifetime of cooperation with God’s grace. And yet two caveats are necessary: first, this need not involve any extraordinary form of consciousness in the Virgin Mary, if by that we are referring to charismatic or prophetic phenomena. According to the traditional understanding, her faith is primarily contemplative and not apostolic in expression. Her extraordinary understanding of the mystery of Christ, to the extent that it must have existed, was integral to her personal, maternal relation to Jesus and to his mission, which was in turn interpreted publicly by the apostolic Church. Second, whatever plenitude must have existed prior to her pregnancy with Jesus the Word incarnate, she must also have undergone a tremendous growth or development in faith, hope, and charity subsequent to the Incarnation and by way of her participation in the redemption. In what follows I will consider briefly three mysteries of the Virgin Mary’s life—the Annunciation, her suffering at Golgotha, and the Assumption—with a view of considering her faith under two aspects in each case. First, in what sense is her growth in faith amidst joy and sorrow indicative of a life of faith that she holds in common with all believers, albeit realized in her person to an extraordinary degree of perfection? Second, in what ways does she live each of these mysteries not only in an exemplary fashion but also in a radically unique, and in a certain sense incommunicable, way, due to her personal privileges of intimacy with God? In answering these questions we can begin to discern in what sense 46 For the examples of this teaching from the historical tradition, see Jean-Baptiste Terrien, S.J., La Mère de Dieu et la Mère des Hommes. D’Après les Péres et la Théologie. Tome II (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1954), 191–234. 47 Ineffabilis Deus, prologue: “From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world. Above all creatures did God so love her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater, and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully.” 392 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. the faith of the Virgin Mary is the exemplar of the faith of the Church. B. Joy of the Annunciation: Discovery of the Person of the Word and the Divine Maternity If we begin to consider the faith of the Virgin Mary in relation to the mystery of the Annunciation, we can first identify her solidarity with all believers in this mystery, even as we underscore that her faith in this mystery must have been lived to an extraordinary degree of perfection. Here the classical vision of St. Augustine is pertinent, who teaches that at the message of the Angel the Virgin Mary conceived in her mind and heart the truth of the Word of God, before she conceived him in her womb.48 In other words, Augustine underscores her noetic solidarity with the human race in faith, as the first of all believers to receive the fullness of the New Covenant understanding of the eternal Son. “Behold, Mary, you shall conceive in your womb and bear a child . . . and he shall be called the Son of the Most High” (Lk 1:31–32). Evidently, the term Son of God—in the Aramaic context of first-century, second-Temple Judaism, as well as in the Greek-speaking Christian Church of the author of the Gospel of Luke—could know a varied array of significations.49 Nevertheless, the Church traditionally and in modernity has perennially maintained that Luke is teaching us a truth about the reality of the faith of the historical Mary: that at the Annunciation she begins to understand explicitly the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, albeit in a way that does not do violence to the cultural mode of understanding she possessed at the time. That is to say, she begins to know explicitly, in however veiled a fashion, of the reality of the existence of the Son of God, who is conceived in her womb, of the Holy Spirit, by whose power he is conceived, and of the Father, who is the God of Israel, and who has also sent his Son into the world as the descendent of David. To this idea we should add that there must have been present in the soul of the Blessed Virgin the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and perhaps infused forms of knowledge as well, sufficient to penetrate into the mystery of the faith to a unique degree. Her understanding of the person she conceives is necessary if she is to be the mother of this person qua person, but it is also congruent with her own uniquely perfect form of sanctification, by which she is conformed spiritually, inwardly to the life of God who has come to inhabit among us. The contemplative virginity of Mary that 48 Augustine, Sermo 25, 7: PL 38, 937. 49 See Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007). The Virgin Mary and the Church 393 preceded the divine maternity in her life of faith now takes on a new intensity and depth by virtue of the fact that she comes to know God explicitly on such a profound level in the mystery of the Incarnation. We are not obliged, nor is it necessarily advisable, to attempt to recreate a Marian psychology of the Annunciation event, and appeals to private revelation that claim to do so are perhaps always in some way inherently defective as theological tools for understanding the revealed mystery. Furthermore, they can be unambiguously subjective in tone, or betray their non-Semitic cultural situatedness in ways that make them simply a-biblical. Equally problematic are revisionist theologies that attempt in Kantian fashion to construe Marian psychology from within a spacio-temporal Jewish context, so as to identify her inner categorical moral stances as a prelude to a critique of modern political or ecclesiological institutions. By contrast, however, Catholic theology can safely treat the Most Holy Rosary as a trustworthy locus theologiae, or theological source of reflection, if we understand it as an expression of the supernatural sensus fidei of the whole people of God, meditating upon the Gospel collectively in faith, down through the ages. Thus we could safely affirm a rather modest claim based upon the Rosary as a source of theological insight: that the mystery of the Annunciation is for the Virgin Mary a joyful mystery. Joy, as we have discussed above, is a spiritual experience of exultation of the appetitive powers stemming from the secure possession of a good that is present in a stable way. The new revelation of the mystery of the inner life of God to the Virgin Mary in the Annunciation is in fact inevitably the source of her more intense possession of God in faith, and thus it is the invitation to a new form of joy. By her free acceptance of the will of God, that she become the Mother of Jesus, Mary experiences what in one sense is most natural to a female human person: freely and lovingly to become the mother of another human being.Yet she experiences this as the locus of the presence of God in a new and utterly unique way. The miracle of her conception of the child Jesus, then, must be a mystery of joy, as is, fundamentally, the subsequent experience of her maternity of the child Jesus, through embryonic and fetal gestation, as well as birth and early childhood. The Virgin Mary can therefore also experience the time of the development of Jesus in her womb as a time of development of love and faith. What she comes to know in meditation upon the mystery that is at work in her makes possible a deeper love of God, just as knowledge specifies the appetites of the will. This movement of the will in turn inclines faith ever more to seek to penetrate more deeply into the mystery of God, in 394 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. contemplative fashion.The Annunciation, then, is the beginning of a new life of discipleship in the heart of the Virgin Mary, as one who seeks to come to know the Son she has conceived and to perceive the meaning of his life and his mission. This joyful experience is lived in solemn domestic privacy, in one sense, presumably accompanied uniquely by the explicit and contemplative faith of Joseph. However, it is also implicitly ecclesial. The mystery of the eventual mission of the Christ child looms large behind the framework of the time of the nativity, as exemplified by Matthew’s gentile wise men and Herod’s wrath. The mission of God is coming into this world, and Mary in her faith adheres to the fullness of that plan, known only imperfectly, however it will eventually unfold. Despite its joy, the faith of the Virgin Mary is also ordered toward the beatific vision, and so it is experienced also as a veil, and under the form of obscurity. The angelic prophecy may be believed, not seen, as is the case with the identity of the Son she has conceived. Her maternity is not without its initial inward trials, then, even as it is the source of indiminishable joy. Luke shows this in the occasion of troubled faith Mary manifests in the Annunciation (Lk 1:29, 34), in the trial she experiences at the prophecy of Simeon in the temple (2:33–35), and in the discovery of the child Jesus in the Temple at age twelve (2:49-51). There is a theme of a joyful but also obscure Marian faith in this infancy narrative of Luke, suggesting the inherently imperfect and therefore open character of the faith of the Virgin Mary, which tends by its very structure toward the cross and toward the mystery of beatitude. In all of this, I have underscored Mary’s solidarity with the human race in her faithful awareness of the mystery of the Incarnation. Her understanding of the explicit revelation of the mystery of the Triune God is in a sense first in the historical order of unfolding, and it is most perfect in degree. Her act of faith serves as a kind of immanent measure of the Church’s Trinitarian contemplation.50 However, there is also an irreducibly unique character to her maternity as well. We can identify this briefly by discussing the personal character of her motherhood, and this from two sides; pertaining to the person she gives birth to, and to the personal character of her maternal act as a human act. When St.Thomas speaks of the mystery of Mary as the Mother of God, he asks the decisive question: Is the Virgin Mary the mother of the person of the Son?51 Of course he is thinking about the anti-Nestorian definition 50 See in this respect, the reflections on the Marian character of the internal devel- opment of the Church in Jean-Miguel Garrigues, L’Epouse du Dieu Vivant. Marie plenitude trinitaire de l’Église (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2000). 51 ST III, q. 35, a. 1. The Virgin Mary and the Church 395 of the Council of Ephesus: by virtue of the hypostatic union, Christians must attribute all the human and divine characteristics of Jesus to a single subject, the person of the Word. Jesus gestated in the womb of Mary and she gave birth to him. Consequently she is the mother of the person of the Word, even though the hypostatic subject of the Son is uncreated.52 This is the case precisely because the man Mary begot is himself personally God the Son. To speak about this mystery in more depth, however, Aquinas applies to this singular case of motherhood the doctrine of non-reciprocal relativity, which is otherwise known as the doctrine of mixed relations.53 Analogies exist with respect to creation, the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ, and the Eucharist. Creatures, for instance, are utterly relative to God, who is himself in no way ontologically relative to or dependent upon creatures for the qualification or determination of his transcendent being.54 In the hypostatic union, then, the human nature of Christ that is united to his person is utterly relative to the divine nature that is the author of the created human nature, but the inverse is not the case.55 The divine nature remains immutably inviolate and unchanged in its perfection and splendor, by its union with human nature. So likewise, with some differences in concept, the accidents of bread and wine that remain in the transubstantiated host and chalice are utterly relative to the glorified humanity of Christ, who is present substantially “in” them and whom they manifest ontologically and symbolically simultaneously. But the glorified Christ is himself not rendered ontologically relative in any way to the changes to which the accidents of the Eucharistic species are subject, as when they are moved about in a chapel, consumed by the faithful, or preserved in a tabernacle.56 Something like this is the case in the unique motherhood of the Virgin Mary as well. Unlike any other person born of woman, the man born of her is not ontologically relative to her or dependent upon her in any way in his very person as God. Nevertheless, that she is the true mother of this human being does affect intimately the well-being of the body and soul of Christ as man. As man, Christ is deeply relative to and affected by his relation to the Virgin Mary. We could also say that as a person who is human he is profoundly dependent upon her in his development in utero, his infancy, and his childhood. But insofar as he is divine, the Lord is in no way dependent upon the Virgin Mary, whereas she is utterly relative to him in an ontologically non-reciprocal way, since he is 52 ST III, q. 35, aa. 1 and 4. 53 ST III, q. 35, a. 5. 54 ST I, q. 13, a. 7; q. 45, a. 3. 55 ST III, q. 2, aa. 7-8. 56 ST III, q. 76, a. 6, corp. and ad 3. 396 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. her creator.57 There is no clear parallel here to any other instance of human maternity in history, nor could there be. Mary, in her very act of caregiving, is always at the most basic and most radical level the Mother of God, even when she truly assures the physical life and development of her Son, as a human being. Furthermore, this mystery is one that characterizes her own typically human act of motherhood from within its most intimate core. For we must acknowledge that when it is lived out in a perfectly human way, as the result of a virtuous life based in free human acts, motherhood entails a fundamental personal choice of some kind (for instance, the choice to marry and to welcome generously children that come naturally from that marriage). Yet in the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her choice to give birth to the Christ is made not formally by natural motives, as noble as these might be, but uniquely in faith, in obedience to the angelic prophecy. Consequently, not only the initial human acceptance of her becoming a mother, but also all of her subsequent maternal referentiality to the child she bears is informed at its core by a personal act of supernatural faith that structures all that she is and does. She chooses freely to be the mother of the Son of God, and her maternal acts of love and the subsequent interpersonal development that ensues are entirely informed or circumscribed by the mystery of the Incarnation to which she assents freely and by charity. Consequently, while her motherhood is something immanently human, it is also something utterly divine, and indeed, everlasting because of the person to whom it refers, and to whom it makes her personally relative in this unrepeatable way. She alone among all women is—both by grace and by nature—the Mother of God. C. Sorrow of the Crucifixion: Congruous Merit and the Unique Intercession of the Compassion of the Virgin Mary If the natural joy of motherhood can be assumed into the supernatural mystery of the divine maternity of Mary, then the natural vulnerability and struggle with the loss of one’s own child by death is also incorporated into the development of her faith, in the mystery of the crucifixion. Sorrow, we noted above, is a spiritual and emotional grief that comes from the loss of possession of an important good, a loss that affects us in our intimate capacity to love and in our deepest desire for happiness. By the experience of the seeming absence of God, or of the assistance of his providence, the aspirations of the will’s desire for God can be severely tried. However, they can also be strengthened in such trials, particularly 57 ST III, q. 35, a. 5. The Virgin Mary and the Church 397 by the endurance and perseverance of love in and through the nights of God’s seeming absence. What appear to be the dis-investitures of the self endured at the hands of divine providence can become the occasions for growth in the most immovable form of faith and hope, directed at God in unconditional and subsequently utterly stable fashion. The tradition rightly accords this form of development to the faith of the Virgin Mary during the course of the crucifixion of Jesus, as indicated in Spartan but unmistakable fashion by the Gospel of St. John.The gospel writer notes that the Mother of Jesus stood at the cross ( Jn 19:25), Stabat Mater. And as the subsequent canonical tradition of iconography of the Church would legislate theologically, Mary may not be depicted as wilting at the cross, because the sensus fidei of the Church assures us that she alone, in fact, did not lose the faith through the duration of the crucifixion event.58 If this is the case, then her faith in the course of the paschal mystery continued to grow and to develop amidst sorrow, and indeed, the deepest possible natural sorrow and angst conceivable, that pertaining to the witness of the death of one’s child. Based upon the loss of this natural good alone, it would be necessary to affirm that the faith of the Blessed Mother attained to heroic proportions of self-surrender and trust in God that was made possible only through the reception of extraordinary supernatural graces of hope and love, by means of which her faith was lifted up into God even amidst the turmoil of her Son’s execution. Nevertheless, to say this is in fact still too minimalistic, since it is a firm judgment of the Church that the trial of the cross for the Virgin Mary pertained not only to the loss of natural goods that were of the most extraordinary kind, but also to the inner spiritual graces that she received for the duration of the event. That is to say, it is a doctrine of the faith that Mary not only understood something of the mystery of redemption that was unfolding in the crucifixion of her Son, but that in some deeper sense, in spite of the trial of intelligibility this represented to faith, she consented, or abandoned herself, to the will of her Son and to the will of God. Mary believed that her Son’s death was redeeming the world, and she acknowledged this truth in the innermost depths of her heart and her 58 Lumen Gentium, 58: “[T]he Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross, where she stood, in keeping with the divine plan ( John 19:25), grieving exceedingly with her only begotten Son, uniting herself with a maternal heart with His sacrifice, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this Victim which she herself had brought forth. Finally, she was given by the same Christ Jesus dying on the cross as a mother to His disciple with these words: ‘Woman, behold thy son’ ( John 19:25–26).” (Translations taken from A. Flannery, O.P., Vatican Council II, Vol. 1 [Newport, NY: Costello, 2004].) 398 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. person, in union of prayers with her crucified Son, and in loving and unconditional faith in God.59 By faith alone, she “sees” into the depths of the mystery of the compassion of God and perceives the unmerited mercy that springs from the cross for all human beings. The gift of herself is a conformity not to the violence of human beings (which she, like us, can see is utterly wrong) but to the response of God to give without measure the grace of salvation even from the cross, through a superabundance of love. Classically, this participation of the Virgin Mary in the mystery of the crucifixion by way of her inward acts of faith, hope, and love is deemed her “compassion,” and this act of union with Christ crucified is understood, in the longstanding theological tradition, to have had a meritorious character. Here we begin the transition from what the Virgin Mary holds in common with us (albeit in a wholly exemplary way) to what is unique to her alone. However, the transition is a subtle one, and in a certain sense, not an abrupt one. We have first to make a distinction in the order of merit, not between Mary and all other redeemed persons, but between Mary and all others together in distinction from Christ. Here Aquinas takes up and develops the traditional language of merit by distinguishing between that merit which is condign, or “of full dignity,” and that which is congruent, or “fitting in kind.”60 Condign merit is reserved to Christ alone, because he alone can truly atone for human wrongdoing in a radical and utterly righteous way. Aquinas underscores that God need not have redeemed the world by means of the Incarnation and suffering of the Son, and had he not done so, he could have redeemed the world by sheer mercy, without undue prejudice to divine justice.61 However, it is more merciful, Aquinas argues, to redeem the world in justice, in and through the righteousness of Christ, who satisfies for human sin in the fullness of justice before God, substituting his human obedience and charity in place of our defective lack of love and obedience.62 Because of the plenitude of Christ’s grace as man and the dignity of his person as God, his acts of reparation on our behalf bear within them an infinite dignity. The merits of his passion then are utterly sufficient and even superabundant as an atoning offering for all human sins.63 Furthermore, this condign merit that comes from Christ alone is made ours, or given to us by way of participation, in faith and the 59 Cf. Lumen Gentium, 58. 60 See ST I–II, q. 114, a. 6. 61 ST III, q. 1, a. 2; q. 46, a. 1, corp. 62 ST III, q. 46, a. 1, ad 3; q. 1, a. 1. 63 ST III, q. 48, a. 1 corp., and a. 2, corp. and ad 3. The Virgin Mary and the Church 399 sacraments, so that we are justified by faith and baptism in Christ, with the very merits that Christ possesses as the head of the Church.64 Congruent merit, meanwhile, pertains not to Christ but to the purely derivative graces of merit that come from Christ or that are given by him as graces to those who participate in his mission, in such a way that their prayers and good deeds accomplished in faith are a kind of participated wellspring of grace given to others. Here we are no longer speaking about an order of just necessity but only one of pure gratuity, in which Christians are invited to participate in Christ’s giving of divine life to others by their prayers and actions, not because God needs them, but because God by grace has wished them to cooperate in the mission of Christ, out of a shared life of friendship with God in charity.65 Such intercessory merit is merely fitting, rather than condign, but it is truly fitting. This association of Christ and the saints is the expression of a deeper wisdom and love of God who wishes to assimilate the saints into his own work of salvation, by a sheer mystery of gift. This assimiliation is an expression of the power of the all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ to redeem the world. The congruent merits of the saints in respect to others do not detract from the office of Christ as high priest, but rather are expressions of the riches of his one and true saving priesthood. Their graces unveil the riches of the inner plenitude of the redemption accomplished by him alone. With these qualifications in place, we can note first, of course, that the Virgin Mary’s act of union with Christ crucified by way of her faith, hope, and love is meritorious only in the order of fittingness, by a congruency of God who wishes her friendship with Christ to stand at the center of the divine economy of salvation at Golgotha. She is there while the mystery of redemption unfolds in its most ultimate hour. Her action adds nothing to the grace of her Son, but on the contrary, insofar as it is truly inspired by God, derives entirely from him and returns to him in prayer. It is she who is assimilated into his mystery of redemption in a preeminently Christocentric fashion.66 64 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 3; III, q. 8, a. 1. 65 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 6; II–II, q. 23, a. 1. 66 See Lumen Gentium, 60, which intimates the distinction employed above: “There is but one Mediator as we know from the words of the apostle, ‘for there is one God and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as redemption for all’. (I Tim. 2:5) The maternal duty of Mary toward men in no wise obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows His power. For all the salvific influence of the Blessed Virgin on men originates, not from some inner necessity, but from the divine pleasure. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on His mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its 400 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. However, there is a sense in which she is also unique and unlike any other person precisely in the way she participates in this event. Aquinas alludes implicitly to the idea in his commentary on the angelic salutation of Luke 1:26–28: The plenitude of grace in Mary was such that its effects overflow upon all men. It is a great thing in a Saint when he has grace to bring about the salvation of many, but it is exceedingly wonderful when grace is of such abundance as to be sufficient for the salvation of all men in the world, and this is true of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin. Thus, “a thousand bucklers,” that is, remedies against dangers, “hang there from” (Sg 4:4). Likewise, in every work of virtue one can have her as one’s helper. Of her it was spoken: “In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue” (Sir 24:25). Therefore, Mary is full of grace, exceeding the Angels in this fullness and very fittingly is she called “Mary” which means “in herself enlightened”: “The Lord will fill your soul with brightness” (Is 48:11). And she will illumine others throughout the world for which reason she is compared to the sun and to the moon.67 Aquinas’s etymological rendering of the name of Mary is seemingly inaccurate. The theological idea regarding her congruent merits, however, is quite clear. First, the Virgin Mary intercedes in union with Christ in the very hour of the crucifixion, understanding at some level what is taking place and uniting herself to him in prayer on behalf of the redemption of humanity. Therefore, her merit is differentiated from that of all other saints by the fact that it is universal in extension. She alone participates with Christ in the redemption of the entire human race in and through the event of the cross. This participation is derivative and adds nothing to the grace of Christ upon which in fact it depends entirely. Yet it is real nonetheless and is willed by God as an expression of the fullness of his divine mercy. Second, however, Mary’s meritorious participation in the redemption of others is not only the most extensive in kind, but also the most intensive. She accepts in faith the crucifixion of her Son in a unique power from it. In no way does it impede, but rather does it foster the immediate union of the faithful with Christ” (emphasis added). Compare this to St. Pius X in the 1904 Encyclical Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum: “We are, then, it will be seen, very far from attributing to the Mother of God a productive power of grace—a power which belongs to God alone.Yet, since Mary carries it over all in holiness and union with Jesus Christ, and has been associated by Jesus Christ in the work of redemption, she merits for us de congruo, in the language of theologians, what Jesus Christ merits for us de condigno, and she is the supreme Minister of the distribution of graces.” 67 Thomas Aquinas, The Angelic Salutation, trans. Joseph B. Collins (New York, 1939). The Virgin Mary and the Church 401 intensity of holiness, derived from the inner perfections of grace that enshroud her soul by virtue of her immaculate conception; by that holiness she is free to cooperate in faith in this mystery with a profundity that is proper to the Mother of God alone. In doing so, she becomes from within her divine maternity, at the cross, the mother of the Church, the mother of all the faithful, for all the redeemed. John’s Gospel portrays the symbol of this mystery in Jesus’ decision to make the Virgin Mary the adoptive mother of the beloved disciple: “Woman, behold your son; son, behold your mother” ( Jn 19:26–27). It is because she is the Mother of God in faith that the Virgin Mary allows herself to be conformed to the mission of the person of Jesus even amidst the crucifixion, in her meritorious compassion for the crucified Lord. And it is precisely in living out her motherhood toward Jesus in this way that she becomes—in the order of grace and by her intercession—the mother of all the faithful, the mother of the Church.68 D. Glory of the Assumption: Beatific Vision and the Queenship of the Virgin Mary When we consider the passage of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the beatific life of glory, we must of course affirm that this is accomplished by the assumption of her body and soul into heaven. It is perhaps theologically advisable to follow the more traditional understanding of the Assumption: that this event was preceded by a true physical death of some kind, in which the Mother of God, though sinless, was conformed in faith to the death and resurrection of her Son.69 This was a final earthly expression of her union with the crucifixion, albeit one that announced the near-immediate transformation of her body and soul into the state of glorified life, an event patterned ontologically after the example of the risen life of Jesus Christ. What has this event to do with faith? In effect, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is the place of encounter, where faith attains to its final term or purpose, transitioning into the beatific vision of the life of God. It is also where the communal dimension of grace has its deepest expression and realization. The Virgin Mary is in her faith in the midst of death a model for all Christians of the passage by grace into eternal life. Here, it is interesting to note, we are not dealing with a mystery characterized particularly by either joy or sorrow, by either the presence or absence of God, but rather by the stillness of a deeply oriented contemplation that 68 See the remarks to this effect in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 964-65. 69 See Bl. John Paul II, “Mary and the Human Drama of Death,” L’Osservatore Romano, 2 July 1997, 11. 402 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. has nothing left to desire other than deifying union with God. In other words: at the end of her earthly pilgrimage the Virgin Mary, who never ceased to grow in faith, hope, and charity, had attained to the plenitude of grace to which she was destined in this life. The faith of the Virgin Mary at death, then, is the nearest it ever will be to the fulfillment of the life of grace toward which it tends inherently: the vision of God.Vision, however, tolerates no intermediary, and it is only ever immediate. In the proximate preparation for the deification of her soul’s spiritual faculties, then, the soul of the Virgin Mary in faith and charity enjoys the deepest proximate union to God possible without the presence of the vision per se, and as a prelude to the vision. Some theologians, understandably, then, have characterized this event as a moment of extreme darkness of faith, but also of complete calm.70 The darkness comes from the character of faith exercised in this extremely elevated mode. No prophecy, no mediation, no grace of ecstasy or consolation—however exalted—can substitute for the vision of God toward which the soul tends and to which it aspires under the supernatural influence of grace. Consequently, the obscurity of faith is most intense and extensive in the hour of her death, conforming the powers of the soul to God and preparing them from within, as it were, for deifying union.Yet this darkness is not angst-ridden or tormented but is utterly peaceful. This is on account of the will: the love by which the Virgin Mary is transported into God is so utterly elevated at death that she possesses the object of her desire in hope with a sureness and fixity, a calm and a depth of totality that is unique and that unites her soul with the mystery of Christ—even through death—in a way that is utterly final, peaceful, and solemn.The Virgin Mary dies in Christ without even a shadow of disunion. The irreducible uniqueness of her life appears in this mystery more poignantly in her resurrection, or glorification in both body and soul. Evidently the glorification of her physical body prior to the time of the universal resurrection is an extraordinary privilege that shows forth in a unique way the fruits of Christ’s redemption. The Virgin Mary is in this mystery particularly the New Eve, the most solemnly redeemed creature of God.71 Nevertheless, the glorification of the soul of the Virgin Mary 70 See, for example, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Mother of the Saviour and Our Interior Life (Rockford, IL: Tan, 2003), 134–38, and the treatment of the Dormition by Marie-Dominique Philippe, O.P., in The Mysteries of Mary: Growing in Faith, Hope, and Love with the Mother of God (Charlotte, NC: Saint Benedict Press, 2011). 71 CCC, 966-67: “The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians. . . . By her complete adherence to the Father’s will, to his Son’s redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary is the Church’s The Virgin Mary and the Church 403 by virtue of the beatific vision also communicates to her a distinct set of privileges. By her beatific vision the Virgin Mary has a unique degree of insight into the essence of God and deifying familiarity with the persons of the Most Holy Trinity, evidently, stemming from this ground of union: the depths of charity that she attained to in her earthly life by virtue of the grace and predestination of God. Furthermore, however, her vision pertains not only to the incomprehensible essence of God but also to the members of Christ’s body, whom she is given to know in God in an elevated and mysterious way, with a universal extension that she shares with no one other than Christ. In other words, in her beatific vision the Virgin Mary is given to perceive the life of the Church, and to know the members of Christ’s mystical body, in the light of the life of God. What this knowledge must be like completely evades us, but that it is real is inevitably a doctrine of faith, for the Blessed Virgin is a universal patron and intercessor for the whole of the Church in a way that is not proper to any other saint, and this is possible only because of the graces of intellectual illumination that she receives in the vision of God. It follows from what has been said that the Assumption introduces Mary into a life that is centered around the Triune God and the knowledge of the risen Christ, but which also is perfectly ecclesial in scope. Not only does she possess the deepest intensity of the vision of God that is found in any creature, outside of the sacred humanity of Christ, but her vision is also of the greatest extension, as it extends to the perception of the personal uniqueness and holiness of all the members of the Church, in heaven and on earth, in their hierarchical perfections and complementarity. She is, as it were, the apogee at the central heights of the geometrical splendor of heaven, by which its frame receives its balance and symmetry, all in subordination to Christ, from whom the whole edifice receives its foundation and cohesion. Although the relationship of the Virgin Mary to the redeemed—and indeed to all those who receive grace from Christ—can be thought of in terms of her maternity, which endures in heaven, it is also the case that by the universal scope of her intercession, there is a distinct way in which we should attribute queenship to her with respect to the activities of divine providence. Here it is a question of the ways her contemplative desires and intercessory prayers are inspired gratuitously by God in view of the effects model of faith and charity. Thus she is a ‘preeminent and . . . wholly unique member of the Church’; indeed, she is the ‘exemplary realization’ (typus) of the Church.” The Catechism explicitly references here to both Lumen Gentium 53 and 63, seemingly aligning the theology of Mary as the New Eve with the ecclesiological implications of the Assumption. 404 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. he wishes to engender in the world (Rv 22:17). We can say that not only are the graces of Christ distributed in accord with the accompanying prayers of the Virgin Mary, but also that ordinary events that come under the scope of God’s providence in the natural world—that of angels and men, as well as physical and animal creatures—can be subject in some way—at least at times—to her prayers as well. She can be treated then, not only as an eschatological forebear of the world to come, in whom Christians look to see the potential realization of our own destiny in Christ. She is also a portal of grace, as the Latin chant states: an intercessor and guardian whose prayers accompany, in some real and vivid way, the earthly life of the Church during the course of her pilgrimage in faith. Conclusion: The Marian Exemplarity of Ecclesial Faith We began this essay with a question. How are we to understand the inner relationship of the ecclesial exemplarity of the Virgin Mary and her uniqueness as the Mother of the Redeemer? In what sense is her faith characteristic of the Christian life, yet realized to an exemplary degree, and to what extent are her privileges as the Mother of God unique and incommunicable, and thus in some sense outside the common ecclesial life of the faithful? In answer to this question we can pose three basic conclusions. First, the graces that the Virgin Mary shares with us as Christian believers and those that she possesses in a unique way are clearly to a certain extent distinguishable, but they are in no way inseparable. The perfection of her faith, for example, as a grace that she shares with us, and in which she is exemplary, is due at base to the graces of her immaculate conception and the privileges associated with the divine maternity. Her congruent merits, both in her earthly life and in her heavenly intercession, are the highest instantiations of mysteries of saintly intercession that are shared by others. And yet they are present in her as a person uniquely bound to the destiny of Christ such that she is a unique creaturely intercessor on behalf of all other human beings. The boundaries between her inclusion in the common polity of the Church and her transcendence of that polity are not entirely distinct. She is above us (in a way that should inspire no alienation), even as she with us. Second, then, as she is the exemplar of the development of the faith of the Church, one can consider the Virgin Mary as the “type of the Church in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ” (Lumen Gentium, 63). Theologians sometimes speak in this sense of Mary as the “immanent term” of the inner development of the life of the Church. Just as the Church develops “outwardly” toward the transcendent God, and toward greater degrees of participation in the grace of Christ, so she The Virgin Mary and the Church 405 develops “inwardly” toward a more Marian state, a state of more perfect union with God exemplified by Mary, who remains in this sense the eschatological icon of the Church.72 In the words, once more, of Lumen Gentium (68): “[J]ust as the Mother of Jesus, glorified in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come, so too does she shine forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come, as a sign of sure hope and solace to the people of God during its sojourn on earth.” Third, the unique privileges of the Virgin Mary are of importance, not only to a proper theological understanding of God’s work of salvation, but also in the ordinary lives of Christians. Her immaculate conception, personal consecration, divine maternity, meritorious suffering at the cross, her assumption and her queenship: because of all of these, the Virgin Mary transcends in some real sense the common life of other Christian believers. However, and this is the key idea to hold all else together: precisely in her “transcendent” privileges that make her unique, the Virgin Mary is essential to the common good and the shared life of all believers in the Church. It is because she alone is the Mother of God and the Mother of all the redeemed that a shared common life with her in the grace of Christ forms an integral part of the supernatural good of all believers. An analogy (which is only proportionate, and acknowledges the differences!) can be made here with the Eucharist, the headship of Christ as the source of all grace, and with God himself as the “common good” of the whole universe. Each of these sublime realities transcends the common life of the Church to differing degrees, and yet that common life is possible and sustained in being only by and for a shared participation in these various “transcendent” goods. It is precisely the sharing in these goods (however imperfectly) that constitutes in some fundamental sense the common patrimony of the Church. The Church is a place where creatures can come into sanctifying union with God, by the grace of Christ and through communion in the body and blood of Christ. So likewise, the Church is a place where human beings acquire a supernatural familiarity with and likeness to the Mother of God, in faith, and by the grace that calls them forth into a communion in which she is the preeminent member. There is no opposition here between the unique privileges of the Virgin Mary and the common life of the Church, for they are not one and the same, but the latter is enriched in a singular and irreplaceable way by the presence of the former. The Virgin Mary is and remains not only the preeminent Christian disciple but also the Mother of the Church. N&V 72 See the development of this theme in Garrigues, L’Epouse du Dieu Vivant. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 407–33 407 Why Scheeben? B RUCE D. M ARSHALL Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX The Cologne Professor I N THE summer of 1888 Matthias Joseph Scheeben died in Cologne, having spent most of his fifty-three years teaching dogmatics and moral theology in the archdiocesan seminary there. Catholic Germany mourned his passing. He was well known as Germany’s most persuasive scholarly defender of Vatican I’s decision on papal infallibility and as a profound and impassioned advocate of the Church’s freedom in the Kulturkampf, Bismarck’s determined but finally unsuccessful effort to subject the Catholic Church to the control of his new German state.The theologically informed also knew him as the author of three outstanding works of dogmatic theology: Nature and Grace,The Mysteries of Christianity, and the massive Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, left unfinished at his death. Scheeben was a prodigious theological writer. In addition to these three major dogmatic works and several shorter books, he produced a continuous stream of articles, pamphlets, and reviews in learned and popular periodicals, many of them quite long. With an academic humility unthinkable today, most of these articles were unsigned, especially those in the two annuals he founded and edited, Das ökumenische Concil vom Jahre 1869 [The ecumenical council of 1869], published 1869–1871, and its successor Periodische Blätter zur wissenschaftlichen Besprechung der großen religiösen Fragen der Gegenwart [ Journal for the scholarly review of the great religious questions of the present day], published 1872–82.1 He was deeply convinced, moreAn earlier, and much condensed, version of this essay appeared as “Renewing Dogmatic Theology” in First Things 223 (May 2012): 39–45. 1 Naturally this makes the precise extent of Scheeben’s bibliography difficult to determine. Karl Eschweiler, author of what remains one of the most important 408 Bruce D. Marshall over, that rigorous dogmatic theology had great practical and pastoral value for ordinary Christians. It cannot be said that Scheeben himself ever quite succeeded at casting his theological insights into a form accessible to those outside the world of academic theology, though admirers of his early book Die Herrlichkeiten der göttlichen Gnade (The Glories of Divine Grace), first published in 1862) will contest that judgment. Others would later take up quite effectively the task of presenting his ideas to non-specialists. Unlike many of his most prominent (or notorious) contemporaries, theologians like J. J. I. von Döllinger, Johannes von Kuhn, Anton Berlage, Franz Hettinger, Jacob Froschammer, or the young Herman Schell, Scheeben never held a university appointment. In their day the influence of others often exceeded his own, especially at the academic centers of the great renaissance in German Catholic intellectual life after the defeat of Napoleon, places like the universities of Tübingen, Munich, Mainz, and Würzburg. Despite this, and despite the sometimes lamented complexity of his theological writing, for generations Scheeben had more staying power than any other Catholic theologian of his time. His major dogmatic works were repeatedly republished in Germany up into the 1960s and enjoyed the rare privilege of new life in an annotated scholbooks on Scheeben, suggests that the Cologne professor wrote practically everything in these annuals over a period of fourteen years, save where an article is explicitly ascribed to someone else. “The first four of these fourteen volumes were almost entirely written by Scheeben himself, as was the greater part of the ensuing ten—and in the year 1873 appeared the first volume of his monumental Dogmatics!” (a publication that runs to 915 pages in its original edition and takes up two volumes of the later Gesammelte Schriften). Karl Eschweiler, Die zwei Wege der neueren Theologie: Georg Hermes—Matth. Jos. Scheeben. Eine kritische Untersuchung des Problems der theologischen Erkenntnis (Augsburg: Benno Filser, 1926), 306. This book is now available in an online edition prepared by Thomas Marschler of the University of Augsburg: opus.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/ opus4/frontdoor/index/index/docId/1421; the quoted passage is on p. 125 of the digital edition, n. 10. On Eschweiler’s own significance—he was a gifted historian of modern Catholic theology who ended his life an ardent Nazi—see Thomas Marschler, Karl Eschweiler (1886–1936): Theologische Erkenntnislehre und nationalsozialistische Ideologie (Regensburg: Pustet, 2011). 2 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Gesammelte Schriften, 8 vols. (in 9), ed. Josef Höfer et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1941–67; hereafter GS ). This edition contains the four works already mentioned (Natur und Gnade, Die Herrlichkeiten der göttlichen Gnade, the Mysterien, and the Dogmatik), and a final volume of “collected essays” (Gesammelte Aufsätze). The latter is devoted mostly to the intricate controversy during the 1880s between Scheeben and Theodor Granderath, S.J. over the formal cause of divine adoption, against the background of Trent’s teaching on justifying grace. As such it presents only a small (though important) selection of Scheeben’s vast output of essays and reviews. Why Scheeben? 409 arly edition.2 They were also translated into other European languages, including English (the Dogmatics, alas, only in highly truncated form).3 Among the many outstanding German-speaking Catholic theologians of the nineteenth century, posterity has treated only Johann Adam Möhler with similar generosity. And unlike Möhler, Scheeben became the source of a substantial popular and semi-popular theological literature, especially in Germany during the time between the wars.4 After the Second Vatican Council interest in Scheeben vanished, almost without a trace. Now, however, signs of a revival are beginning to appear.5 3 As its subtitle indicates, Wilhelm and Scannell’s A Manual of Catholic Theology is “based on Scheeben’s Dogmatik,” but is not a translation of that great work, which occupied Scheeben for the last twenty years of his life. It offers instead a drastically abridged English version of Scheeben’s text that eliminates most of the exegetical and historical material, and includes sections on justification, the Church, the sacraments, and eschatology that were produced independently by Leonhard Atzberger to complete the work after Scheeben’s death. Joseph Wilhelm and Thomas B. Scannell, A Manual of Catholic Theology: Based on Scheeben’s “Dogmatik,” 2 vols. (3d ed., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1906). 4 See, e.g., Jules Tyciak, Gottesgeheimnisse der Gnade (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1935): “The present work . . . attempts to make use of the fruitful ideas of the great Cologne theologian M. J. Scheeben, and apply them to the religious life” (p. 5). This is the first in a series of books in which Tyciak sought to draw on “the fruitful ideas of the great Cologne theologian” in order to present the central topics of Catholic theology to a lay audience in a rich but accessible way. See Christus und die Kirche (Regensburg: Pustet, 1936); Erlöste Schöpfung (Regensburg: Pustet, 1938); Mariengeheimnisse (Regensburg: Pustet, 1940); Die Mysterien Christi: Von sakramentaler Wirklichkeit (Paderborn: Bonifatius Verlag, 1940), of which a second, revised edition appeared under the title Der siebenfältige Strom: Aus der Gnadenwelt der Sakramente (Freiburg: Herder, 1954); Der Kelch des Heiles: Gedanken über die Opferwirklichkeit der Kirche (Düsseldorf: Bastion-Verlag, 1947). In a similar vein, see Georg Feuerer, Unsere Kirche im Kommen: Begegnung von Jetztzeit und Endzeit (Freiburg: Herder, 1937), and other works of this author; also Carl Feckes, Die bräutliche Gottesmutter (Freiburg: Herder, 1936), a selection and paraphrase of the Mariological sections of Scheeben’s Katholische Dogmatik (Book V, §§274–282). Popularizations of Scheeben on Mary appeared in other European languages as well. The two-volume English Mariology attributed to Scheeben (trans. T. L. M. J. Geukers; St. Louis: B. Herder, 1946, 1948) is based not on Scheeben’s original German, but on a later Flemish rendering of the Marian material from the Dogmatik (see vol. 1, xxxiv). It therefore has to be used with caution, although it has the merit of aiming (unlike Feckes and others) to present the whole of Scheeben’s mature theological treatment of the Mother of God. 5 See, e.g., Michael Stickelbroeck, ed., Über die Eucharistie und den Messkanon (Regensburg: Pustet, 2011), which presents two substantial essays by Scheeben on the Eucharist that originally appeared in the journal Der Katholik in 1862 and 1866. The first of these (“Das Geheimnis der Eucharistie”) prepares the way for 410 Bruce D. Marshall There is, I think, no secret to Scheeben’s endurance. When they know him, Catholic thinkers regularly see in Scheeben a uniquely gifted speculative theologian. The term “speculative” is Scheeben’s own. It may give pause, suggesting a kind of theology untethered to the scriptural and traditional sources of Christian faith, and guided mainly by the theologian’s own powers of invention. Modernity has made Catholic and Protestant theology alike rather too familiar with the figure cut by this sort of speculative theologian—the theological virtuoso restlessly ambitious to think new thoughts, to go where no one has gone before. For Scheeben, though, speculative theology is precisely the opposite of virtuoso invention. It is the mind’s effort, directed by the light of faith and the teaching of the Church, to understand the Christian mysteries with as much rational rigor and breadth of vision as the half-light of this life will allow. “Speculative” theology is for Scheeben the same thing as dogmatic theology, with an accent provided by the Latinate resonance of “speculate”—to see clearly the truths of which one speaks. When carefully studied, Scheeben’s writings not only yield rare insight into the mysteries of Christian faith; they draw the attentive reader, body and soul, ever more deeply into the mysteries themselves. Several generations of readers have been right, I think, to see the Cologne seminary professor as perhaps the finest dogmatic theologian Catholicism has produced in modernity, that is, since the great age of Catholic theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In fact his dogmatic accomplishments make Scheeben more important now than he has ever been. For Catholics in the last fifty years or so have almost completely ceased to do dogmatic theology. Save for a handful of admirable holdouts, we have practically given up the fruitful speculative enterprise of a millennium. The mind’s effort to understand the Christian mysteries we now effectively treat as a thing of the more or less distant past, once done by others but no longer to be done by us. The deep things of God, the mysteries of his own life opened up to us in Christ, we think we need not, or fear we cannot, search out. Scheeben, more than any modern theologian, can show us how to get started again.6 Scheeben’s fullest treatment of the Eucharist in Die Mysterien des Christentums, while the second (“Studien über den Messkanon”) offers his detailed reflections on, among other things, the Eucharistic epiklesis and the Mass as sacrifice. Also encouraging is the appearance of a book-length study of Scheeben’s theology in English: Aiden Nichols, O.P. Romance and System: The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben (Denver, CO: Augustine Institute Press, 2010). For a brief but helpful bibliography of Scheeben’s major works and some of the most important secondary literature, see pp. 500–503 of Nichols’s book. 6 By Scheeben’s account, speculative theology had already fallen into widespread discredit in his own time, even among the theologically educated. “People see in Why Scheeben? 411 A Theologian’s Virtues Here I will sketch the character of dogmatic theology as Scheeben actually practiced it, by identifying the intellectual virtues embodied in his work—the virtues needed to write profound and enduring speculative theology. Scheeben himself offers an elaborate account of the nature of dogmatic theology as the science of the Christian mysteries, especially in the last section of the Mysterien and in the massive presentation of what makes for “theological knowledge” that constitutes Book I of the Katholische Dogmatik.7 I will advert to this explicit treatment of the aims and conditions of speculative theology, but my main interest lies in getting clear about the virtues manifest in Scheeben’s actual treatment of central dogmatic issues. Of these, five in particular stand out. 1. Scheeben habitually talks about God. He exhibits, to put the point more precisely, an intense focus on the supernatural mysteries of God’s own nature and life, the full range of divine mysteries at the heart of all Christian faith and teaching. Call this the virtue of pertinence, or relevance. 2. Scheeben is an immensely learned theologian. He knows intimately both Scripture and the normative teaching of the Church, not least the momentous doctrinal decisions of his own time. More than that, he knows at first hand a massive amount of the Catholic theological tradition, from the Fathers to the present, from East and West, especially the traditions of dogmatic theology originating in the medieval universities and continuing largely uninterrupted to his own day. 3. Scheeben’s theology is rationally rigorous. He makes precise and often elaborate conceptual distinctions, identifies relevant objections to his ideas and offers detailed replies to them, and articulates his it nothing but difficult, abstract, uncertain, and unfruitful—if not positively dangerous—intellectual speculation. But,” he goes on to say, “I harbor the strongest conviction that precisely this kind of theology is of the greatest significance for the true and high formation of the mind and heart.” Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Die Mysterien des Christentums (GS II, ed. Josef Höfer, 3d ed. [Freiburg: Herder, 1958]), xii. Cyril Vollert, S.J., omits Scheeben’s Preface, and thus this passage, in his otherwise generally reliable translation of the work: The Mysteries of Christianity (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1946; hereafter Mysteries). I will provide references to this and other English versions when they are available, but all translations are my own. 7 See Mysterien, §§104–110 (Mysteries, 731–96); Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik: Erstes Buch: Theologische Erkenntnislehre (GS III, ed. Martin Grabmann, 3d ed. [Freiburg: Herder, 1959]). 412 Bruce D. Marshall interpretation of the Christian mysteries by vigorous and frequently intricate argument. 4. Scheeben is a boldly speculative theologian. He seeks the deepest possible understanding of the mysteries of Christianity, not simply one by one, but as a whole and in their luminous interconnection. 5. Scheeben undertakes theology in humility, with reverence, joy, and submission before the divine mysteries he only seeks faithfully to serve. I will say a bit about each of these virtues—the dogmatic virtues, we might call them—as they are manifest in Scheeben’s theology: pertinence, learning, rationality, boldness, and humility. This may help give us a sense of why Catholic dogmatic theology, certainly in its fullest and purest embodiments, requires not simply one or another of these virtues but a theologian in whom they are all conjoined. It may also help us appreciate how Scheeben offers a theological standard to which we once again ought to aspire. (1) Theos and Logos That theology should talk about God, and the theologian be the true “God intoxicated man,” may seem too obvious for comment. Scheeben thinks it essential, though, to specify the distinctive way in which dogmatic theology speaks of God. Dogmatics is a unique sort of discourse about God, in two ways. In the first place, not all true statements about God belong uniquely or properly to dogmatic theology. A whole range of truths about God, countless in number, concern primarily the creatures upon whom God freely bestows existence. These truths concern, more precisely, the panoply of created natures. All such truths about creatures implicate truths about God, since God is the source from which every creature receives its existence and nature in toto, and the goal at which the existence of every creature aims in a way suited to its nature. This range of truths about God comes into view, we could say, on account of God’s communication or impartation to creatures of their own natures, and not on account of any communication of his own divine nature, especially a communication to creatures. Dogmatic theology considers truths of this sort, but they are not its own special province. Were this the only sort of truth about God available to us, there would be no need for theology properly speaking, that is, for dogmatics. Another, immeasurably more sublime, range of truths about God concerns the communication and impartation of his own nature, of the Why Scheeben? 413 divine nature itself. These truths concern, in other words, not God’s bestowal of a nature other than his own, a nature that by definition must be created, but God’s bestowal of the one uncreated nature as such. This “communication, revelation, and glorification of the divine nature” happens, Scheeben argues, in three irreducibly distinct ways.8 1. Eternally and without any contingency, the Father communicates the one divine essence or nature in its substance and totality to the Son by generation, and Father and Son communicate their one nature in its substance and totality to the Holy Spirit by spiration or active procession.That the divine nature, source and goal of creatures, is and can be the nature of persons who are themselves originated or produced—that the one divine essence subsists as a Trinity of divine persons—is the most primordial of all mysteries and the source of any possible communication of the divine nature to creatures.9 2. Temporally and freely (thus contingently), the triune God makes his own uncreated nature that of a creature in the Incarnation of the Son. More precisely, the triune God joins a created nature—our own—to his nature in the person of the Son, so that God is this human being Jesus, and this human being is God. The personal and hypostatic union of the divine and human natures, whereby a divine person subsists in the nature of a creature, is the most complete and intimate way in which the divine nature can be communicated to, or shared with, a created reality. 3. Again temporally and freely, the triune God bestows upon the human creature a participation in his own nature by grace, and ultimately by the glory of immediate vision. By uniting us with the incarnate Son, grace brings about a participation in the divine nature so intimately deifying that we become even more than Jesus’ brothers and sisters and the Father’s adopted children.We become members of the natural Son, 8 On what follows see especially Mysterien, §104; the quoted phrase is from GS II, 621 (Mysteries, 737). Cf. Katholische Dogmatik I, no. 31 (GS III, 26–27). 9 That the divine essence as such subsists as the Trinity of persons, and therefore cannot be adequately known save by knowing the three persons, is also the teaching of St. Thomas: “In the manner in which it is presently known to us by its effects, the supreme goodness of God can be understood apart from the Trinity of persons. But when it is understood as it really is, in the way the blessed see it, [the divine goodness] cannot be understood apart from the Trinity of persons” ( prout videtur a beatis, non potest intelligi sine Trinitate personarum). Summa theologiae II–II, q. 2, a. 8, ad 3. What Thomas says of the bonitas Dei goes, of course, for the divine essence itself, in all of its perfections. 414 Bruce D. Marshall and therefore “really enter into the very same personal relationship in which the Son of God stands to his Father.” As members of the incarnate Son “we are, in a sense, one Son of the Father with him,” so when we call upon the Father of Jesus as “our Father,” we lay claim to filial relationship not merely similar to that of Jesus himself, but “to one and the same relationship by which [God] is the Father of Christ.”10 Rooted in Romans 8:14–30, this understanding of divine adoption as full membership in Christ is of recurring importance in Scheeben’s theology. God freely gives us, his servant creatures, the entire deifying inheritance of his natural Son (cf. Rom. 8:17 and 29) and so really makes us no longer his servants but his children, those upon whom he has poured out by grace “what eye has not seen and ear has not heard.” By supernatural grace we receive from God what we could not even suspect there was to give until it was actually given: all that he has eternally bestowed upon his only-begotten Son by nature.11 This direct share in the one filiation of the natural Son of God is irreducibly trinitarian; it is complete only in the unique or proper mission, and thereby the personal indwelling, of the Holy Spirit. “We become similar to the natural Son in the highest way precisely because we are not only conformed to him but also personally possess the same Spirit within us whom he possesses.”12 Our union with the natural Son, perfected in the possession of his Spirit, is the most complete and intimate way the divine nature has been, and probably could be, communicated to created persons, that is, persons who are not themselves divine. This mystery of grace and glory gathers around it a wider field of teachings pertaining to the communication of the divine nature to created persons, including the luminous mysteries of original justice, the Eucharist, the Church and the sacraments, justification, transforming consummation, and predestination, and also the “dark” mystery of sin.13 These mysteries of the divine nature “in itself,” beginning with the supreme mystery that the divine nature exists as substantially communicated, as given and received, form the truths about God unique to dogmatic theology. Dogmatics has its own domain, not shared with any other science, 10 Mysterien, §57 (GS II, 318; Mysteries, 383). 11 For a particularly rich elaboration of this idea, see Natur und Gnade, ch. 3, §2 (4th ed., in GS I, ed. Martin Grabmann [Freiburg: Herder, 1949], 69–90); English trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J., Nature and Grace (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1954; reprint Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 116–49. 12 Mysterien, §30 (GS II, 145; Mysteries, 169). 13 See Mysterien, §104 (GS II, 622; Mysteries, 737–38). Why Scheeben? 415 that is, with any other rationally rigorous way of knowing, especially of knowing about God. This suggests the second way in which dogmatics forms a unique sort of discourse about God. Dogmatics properly treats of God not as his nature is distantly reflected in the natures he creates but as his nature is in itself, in the innermost trinitarian depths of his own life. The divine mysteries of which dogmatic theology treats are therefore beyond the reach of any created nature when left to its own powers. If we are to know of them, God himself, whose interior mysteries they are, must tell us of them, as a friend discloses his inmost heart to a friend.This God does, above all in the Church’s sacramental life and teaching. That God opens up his innermost life to us is sheer generosity on his part, a gift to which no creature has any natural claim. As a result, we can apprehend as true what God teaches us about his own life only by faith, that is, by a light beyond nature which God himself must give us, and not by the natural light of reason itself. As reason cannot reach, or even suspect, these mysteries on its own—that God is triune, that God is incarnate, that God deifies the creature by grace are truths alike unavailable to it—so reason, once guided by faith in these mysteries, cannot form concepts adequate to an understanding of them. To be sure, some understanding of the truths God teaches us about his inner life is available to us here and now, but we see only dimly, as in a mirror.The mysteries of God appear to us in the half-light of dawn, still shrouded in a divine darkness which we cannot remove by faith, still less by reason. “A Christian mystery,” as Scheeben defines it, “is a truth made known to us by Christian revelation, which we cannot attain by reason alone (mit der bloßen Vernunft), and of which reason cannot take the measure with concepts, after we have attained it by faith.”14 Dogmatics, which knows these mysteries and seeks to understand them, therefore has not only a domain or subject matter unique to it but also a distinctive way of knowing and understanding the truths with which it is properly concerned. Scheeben underlines the point that speculative or dogmatic theology, in order to be a rationally rigorous body of knowledge that stands on its own (a science), needs not simply a way of knowing, a perspective, we might now say, unique to it among the sciences; it needs something of its own to know. Theology’s way of knowing depends, in fact, on the nature of what it knows. 14 Mysterien, §2 (GS II, 11; Mysteries, 13); cf. §104: a mystery of Christian faith is a truth that natural reason on its own “can neither know as real nor grasp in its essence, other than through analogous, and therefore always dark and inadequate, concepts” (GS II, 615; Mysteries, 733). 416 Bruce D. Marshall Theology needs the light of faith just because what it knows is beyond reason’s grasp. Even when the supernatural mysteries with which theology properly deals are created realities—and both the hypostatic union and sanctifying grace are created things (respectively a relation and a quality belonging to a creature)—these creatures are accessible only to theology’s way of knowing. As the term or outcome of the temporal missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit, these twin mysteries of saving history found a supernatural order of divine self-giving. In their innermost reality the missions of the Son and the Spirit are, as Scheeben likes to put it, the free “extension” (Ausdehnung) or “continuation” (Fortsetzung) of their eternal processions. Knowledge of the missions and their created outcomes therefore requires knowledge of the processions on which they depend. It presupposes faith’s apprehension of the original mystery: that there are processions in God. Only theology’s way of knowing, its access by faith to the mystery of the Trinity, opens up the further field of supernatural mysteries that are uniquely its own to know.15 If theology differed from other intellectual disciplines only by knowing from faith’s perspective the same things other disciplines know by reason, it would be hard to see why theology need exist at all. It would only see in the half-light of faith created realities that other disciplines see in the full light of day.16 From this we can perhaps discern how essential a lucid distinction between the natural and the supernatural is to the very possibility of dogmatic theology. Lacking a clear distinction not only between nature and grace but between the whole domain of the supernatural and everything natural, we will, at best, be unsure what our enterprise as theologians is supposed to be about. For whatever reasons or motives, Catholic theology since Vatican II has generally exhibited confusion about what distinction, if any, to make between the natural and the supernatural, even when it has deliberately used the terms. As a predictable result, theologians now talk about anything and everything, on the assumption, or in the hope, that they are thereby already talking about God, or at least providing a relevant basis for such talk. Among the most common topics for theological discourse in this unsettled situation are (1) formative personal experiences, whether of the individual theologian or (more likely) of the group with which she or he most 15 The missions of the Son in Incarnation and the Holy Spirit in grace, Scheeben argues, “call forth an order of things which becomes apparent as a real unfolding and revelation of the inner core of this mystery [of the inner relationships of the divine persons], and which can be thoroughly understood and fully conceived only in and from this mystery.” Mysterien, §24 (GS II, 115; Mysteries, 136). 16 On this cf. Mysterien, §104 (GS II, 618–19; Mysteries, 735). Why Scheeben? 417 identifies; (2) social, political, and economic conflict; and (3) other theologians. It sometimes seems as though such discourse is meant to count as theology simply because psychological description or social theory is overlaid with a patina of piety, expressing our anxious hope that God will keep trauma and disaster from being the last word in our personal and social existence. Or because the theologian we are repeating or expositing (Rahner or Balthasar, for example) was, we assume, a formative dogmatic thinker, our exposition of him is also supposed to count as dogmatic theology. Even when theology that takes these currently common topics as basic is clearly in earnest about speaking of God, however, ambiguity about the proper subject matter of theology dims its chances of success—or, more precisely, of being able to tell when it had succeeded. The interior mystery of the divine nature, the mystery of the substantial communication of the Father’s nature to the Son and the Spirit, and so the mysteries of the Father’s will to share that nature with rational creatures by the missions of the Son and the Spirit, are simply not accessible to us from our apprehension of created substances, their natures, and their activities, including our own.The mysteries are intrinsically supernatural, and as a result suprarational. Consequently, no analysis of psychological and social reality, or of any created nature as such, no matter how rationally rigorous and inventive, can provide us with a knowledge of God as he is in his triune self, and as he has generously willed to be for us. For God has, within the counsel of his inner life, determined to be the giver of a supremely intimate share in his own triune life as the final goal of our existence, by the Incarnation of the Son and the grace of the Holy Spirit. Theology can never succeed in speaking of God as Christians know him by drawing the supernatural mysteries of God’s nature and will down into the sphere of creatures and our naturally available knowledge of them. At best it can speak of God by this means only as the remote source of creatures and provider of their natural goal. Understandably, no Catholic theologian will be satisfied with these limited conclusions, however justly warranted. Of course anything and everything, including every aspect of experience and society, nature and history, can be an appropriate subject matter for speculative theological reflection. Precisely as a theologian, Scheeben himself wrote extensively on the social and political problems of his time, especially as they bore on the Church’s resistance to the state under the Kulturkampf, and the persecution that resulted.17 But as he saw clearly, 17 See, for example, his long essay “Das Martyrium,” in Periodische Blätter 2 (1873): 353–76, 385–403, 504–23, 548–65. Scheeben’s teaching at the archdiocesan seminary in Cologne came to a halt in November 1875, when the seminary was closed by the Prussian government for refusing to comply with the “May laws” 418 Bruce D. Marshall nothing becomes a genuinely theological topic for reflection save by being drawn into the sphere of the supernatural mysteries that are the proper subject matter of theology. Or better, created substances, natures, and activities, open as such to reason’s gaze, belong to theology just insofar as they can be drawn into the light that shines from the sphere of the interior mysteries of the divine life, and can thereby be placed in an intelligible relationship with these mysteries. The light radiating from the supernatural mysteries is, in fact, the light of faith, which as such alone gives us access to the mysteries themselves. Genuinely theological talk of creatures presupposes faith’s knowledge of the divine mysteries, a knowledge that cannot stem from creatures and that no creature can provide for itself. (2) Learning The reader of Scheeben soon becomes aware that he was a staggeringly erudite theologian. This is immediately obvious in the Dogmatik or Natur und Gnade, but Scheeben cannot keep it entirely hidden in the Mysterien, even though that book was intended for a less specialized audience. Developing his distinction between being the Father’s adopted daughter or son, and the yet more intimate relationship that comes with being a living of 1873. Among their provisions, these statutes placed Catholic seminaries under the direct control of the state in all matters, from their curriculum to the daily ordering of their internal affairs. Having already served a prison sentence for refusing to cooperate with Bismarck’s regime, Paul Melchers, the Archbishop of Cologne, was again threatened with arrest after the seminary was closed. He left Germany to spend the next ten years living in a Franciscan monastery in the Netherlands, his ancient see effectively vacant. The 55 students were put out in the street; Scheeben and the rest of the small faculty and staff were allowed to continue living in the building. The seminary did not reopen until October 1886, less than two years before Scheeben’s death. For an account of these events see Norbert Trippen, ed., Das Kölner Priesterseminar im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Siegburg: Verlag Franz Schmitt, 1988), 103–23. See also Nichols, Scheeben, 10–12, which draws on David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994). Blackbourn offers a vivid depiction of Catholic life and its struggles in Bismarck’s Germany, centering around the Marian apparitions in the Saarland village of Marpingen in the summer of 1876. (These Scheeben defended effectively in the Catholic press, while sharply criticizing the Prussian government for its heavy-handed efforts—including the military occupation of Marpingen by a detachment of the Prussian army—to repress the devotion spawned by the apparitions. For this he was charged and tried under the May laws, but acquitted.) For a recent description of the Kulturkampf in the wider context of Church-state conflict in nineteenth-century Europe, see Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, from the French Revolution to the Great War (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 320–36. Why Scheeben? 419 member of the Father’s natural Son made flesh, Scheeben refers to the Oeuvres de piété of Pierre de Bérulle, whose work remained widely known in the Catholic world of Scheeben’s time. He further observes that particular insight into this matter may be found in the writings of Jacobus Naclantus (in the vernacular, Jacopo Nacchianti, O.P., c. 1500–1569). The substantial quotation he offers from Naclantus’s Enarratio augustissimi Regni Christi both clarifies his own meaning and indicates added precedent for his views: “Having been given the Spirit of adoption, and by him not only established as brothers and coheirs of Christ, but transformed into his branches and members and even (if it is permitted to speak this way) absorbed into him . . . we go from being adopted sons to being, in a way, natural sons, and we entreat the Father not only by grace but, in a sense, by nature.”18 Articulating his idea that the mission of the Holy Spirit culminates in “the substantial hypostatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit into us,” and thereby in our “possession of his substantial being” as hypostatic divine love, the person who is the perfect fruit of the love of the Father and the Son for one another, Scheeben suggests that we study Luis de la Puente’s Expositio moralis et mystica in Canticum Canticorum.19 This mammoth commentary on the Song of Songs—really a series of discourses (exhortationes sive sermones) “according to the tropological sense,” and running to well over a thousand folio pages—Scheeben praises as the finest work of its author, a Jesuit spiritual writer of the early seventeenth century whose name he assumes his readers will know.20 He does not leave us to forage alone in the wilds of this vast commentary but points to a specific passage that develops his point about the immediate union of the just with the Holy Spirit in the Spirit’s personal or hypostatic uniqueness.21 Scheeben’s citations are not merely 18 Mysterien, §57 (GS II, 318, n. 24; Mysteries, 384). For this passage in its original context, see Iacobi Naclanti Clugiensis Episcopi Operum, vol. 1 (Lyon: Sumptibus Antonii Baret, 1657), 480bB. Scheeben’s proximate source, however, is the Oratiorian Louis de Thomassin (1619–95), of whose vast Dogmata theologica Scheeben makes frequent and fruitful use. For the passage just quoted, see Dogmata theologica Ludovici Thomassini, vol. 4, ed. Pierre-Félix Écalle (Paris:Vivès, 1868), 114a. 19 Mysterien, §29 (GS II, 138, and n. 8; Mysteries, 162, n. 13); cf. Katholische Dogmatik II, no. 1071 (GS IV, 451). 20 R. P. Ludovici de Ponte . . . Expositio moralis et mystica in Canticum Canticorum, continens exhortationes, sive sermones, de omnibus Christianae religionis mysteriis atque virtutibus, 2 vols. (Cologne: Apud Ioannem Kinckium & Paris: D. de la Noüe, 1622; reprint Siegburg: Verlag Franz Schmitt, 1987). The phrase “secundum sensum tropologicum” comes from de la Puente’s Preface, where he gives a precise explanation of how he is going to read the Song. 21 When Jesus prays to the Father that “the love with which you have loved me may be in them” ( Jn 17:26), this should be understood, de la Puente argues, in 420 Bruce D. Marshall decorative but informative, and his readers today are virtually certain to learn much about the history of theology that they did not know. Here I will not try to canvass the full range of Scheeben’s engagement with the theological tradition but will only make a few observations. His regular and sometimes extensive use of the Greek Fathers, not only Athanasius and the Cappadocians but later writers as well—especially Cyril of Alexandria, whose work he knows in detail, and for whom he has an obvious affinity—should perhaps lead us to question the common assumption that an interest in the Eastern tradition, and in the Fathers more generally, entered modern Catholic theology only with the ressourcement theologians of the mid-twentieth century.22 He draws more or less constantly on the great theologians of the Middle Ages, from Anselm to Bernard of Clairvaux and the Victorines, and from Alexander of Hales (that is, the Summa Halensis) to Bonaventure, Albert, Aquinas, and Scotus. Only the intellectual tradition stemming from Ockham fails to elicit a sympathetic hearing from him. Scheeben shares in the general disregard for “nominalism” in the Catholic theology and philosophy of his time, which typically saw Ockham and his school as a destructive force that could not be assimilated into the revitalization of scholastic thought, and especially Thomism, then underway.23 the following way: “He did not say, ‘May you love them with a love like that with which you have loved me,’ although this would also have been true, but he exalts this love even more highly by saying, ‘May the very uncreated love by which you have loved me from all eternity be in them.’ ” This uncreated love is the person of the Holy Spirit, with whom believers, as Paul teaches, are “sealed” (2 Cor 1:22). “This signing and sealing,” de la Puente observes, “is nothing other than the union of the Holy Spirit with the soul. Just as a seal, when joined to wax, imprints its own shape ( figuram) upon the wax, so the Holy Spirit, who is uncreated charity, imprints grace and created charity, which is a likeness of the Spirit himself, upon the soul when he is joined to it and kisses it (Song 1:1).” Expositio moralis et mystica in Canticum Canticorum, 75A–B (my emphasis). 22 The Greek Fathers, Scheeben argues, had a clearer appreciation than the Latin Fathers of the properly supernatural character of grace, which they saw as first of all the supreme perfection of created rational nature and not only as a healing remedy, however needed, for nature’s wounds. See Natur und Gnade (GS I, 1–2, 58–60, 65–78); Nature and Grace, xviii–xix, 94–98, 109–29 (the latter with numerous texts from Cyril and the Cappadocians). See also Mysterien, §76 (Mysteries, 530–35), focused on Cyril’s account of the Eucharist as a nexus of all the supernatural mysteries of Christianity. 23 Nominalism caused “the rich and fruitful ideas of the thirteenth century to evaporate, [and] destroyed the living content and harmony of Christian truth by frivolous arbitrariness and hair-splitting precision” (Katholische Dogmatik I, no. 1064 [GS III, 466]). Scheeben here briefly summarizes a narrative of which his Roman teacher Joseph Kleutgen was the chief originator, though he also cites Why Scheeben? 421 In particular Scheeben’s use of the thirteenth-century scholastics (including Scotus) is remarkably catholic. He does not as a rule play them off against one another, or adhere to a particular school, but makes constructive use of all of them, usually in mutually reinforcing ways.24 This is quite clear, for example, in his nuanced treatment of the motive of the Incarnation and its relation to sin, where he follows St. Thomas in holding that the Incarnation is contingent on the fact of sin but, with Bl. Scotus, sees the Incarnation as realizing goods beyond the remedy of the evil which occasioned it, in particular, creation’s glorification of the Creator quo maius cogitari nequit.25 Perhaps most impressive to the contemporary reader, though, is Scheeben’s vast knowledge of early modern scholasticism, from Cajetan to Cano and Soto, Medina, Bañez, Gregory of Valencia, Suarez, Bellarmine, Ruiz de Montoya, and Ripalda, and on to eighteenth-century scholastics like Gotti,Viva, and the Wirceburgenses. To this must be added Scheeben’s extensive assimilation of the “positive theology” of Denis Petau (Petavius) and Louis de Thomassin, who synthesized the explosion of scholarship on the early Church in the seventeenth century into large-scale biblical and patristic renderings of the chief doctrines of the faith.26 All this learning was not the work of an unusually superannuated lifetime. Much of it was already in place by the time Scheeben published the Mysterien in 1865, at the age of 30. Yet this only stands to reason, Scheeben the contemporary historians of philosophy Albert Stöckl and Karl Werner as sources for it. On this reading, later associated especially with Étienne Gilson, Ockham and nominalism mark the more or less willful demolition of the whole scholastic enterprise that had reached its high point in Aquinas. For an informative account of the way specific philosophical commitments of the time shaped this influential (though now widely rejected) narrative of the medieval scholastic tradition, see John Inglis, Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1998). Russell L. Friedman offers a balanced appreciation of the merits and limits of “the Gilsonian paradigm” in Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), chapter 4. 24 Scheeben’s practice consistently makes this clear, but he is in any case explicit about it. Thus, e.g., the Preface to Book I of the Katholische Dogmatik: “[I]n the choice of our own sources and models, we have especially followed St. Thomas and the schools more or less closely dependent upon him, but have also taken into account everything good and valuable that we have found, particularly the works of the undiluted and original Franciscan school, which was so worthily and brilliantly advocated by Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure” (GS III, xxxiv). 25 See especially Mysterien, §64 (Mysteries, 418–30). For more on this, see the next section. 26 For Scheeben’s appreciation of these two “epoch-making” practitioners of “patristic-historical theology,” see Katholische Dogmatik I, nos. 1098–1099 (GS III, 481–82). 422 Bruce D. Marshall seems silently to suggest. If we want to do speculative theology, we must learn how from those who have done it especially well, not only at one time or another, but in every age of the Church. These are the deep wells from which we must drink. Remarkable as it is, Scheeben’s erudition is not simply the work of a genius whom few of us can hope to emulate. His learning did not differ in kind from that expected of any academic theologian in the European Catholic world of his time. It was the work not only of Scheeben but of the rich theological culture he inhabited, when that culture met with an unusually capable and receptive mind. The theological culture that produced Scheeben and many others has largely disappeared. With it has gone much of the possibility of dogmatic theology such as he was able to write. The virtual disappearance of the theological culture apparent on Scheeben’s pages, itself the labor of centuries, has many causes. No doubt one of them is the bright line Catholic theologians have habitually drawn for several generations between the time after Vatican II and the time before it. The theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, up to the time of the Council itself, is for the most part labeled “neo-scholasticism,” and thereby dismissed. The theology of earlier centuries, having been written before the Enlightenment, may sometimes be of real interest, but the interest is purely historical. Any such theology comes from a world too different from our own to help us address our present needs and problems, at least in any direct way. To the extent that theology between the Enlightenment and the Second Vatican Council retains any value, it lies in having prepared the way for the changes the Council would later bring. This is obvious in the case of the theologians working in the generation before Vatican II, who were themselves among the formative figures at the Council, such as Congar, Rahner, and de Lubac. But a few nineteenth-century theologians are sometimes counted as more distant preparers of the way to the world of postconciliar theology, including Scheeben himself.27 Only the theology of the recent past, it seems, has intrinsic value. All other theology matters only in relation to where we are now, and a theologian’s learning is measured mainly by the extent to which she or he draws on extra-theological texts—in (continental) philosophy, literary theory, postcolonial theory, and so forth. 27 Thus a volume of snippets from Scheeben’s writings appeared as part of a German series with the title Wegbereiter heutiger Theologie [Those who prepared the way for today’s theology], along with volumes on Möhler, Hirscher, Döllinger, and others: Matthias Joseph Scheeben, ed. Eugen Paul (Graz: Styria Verlag, 1976). Why Scheeben? 423 Scheeben, however, views the relationship between theology past and present quite differently. He practices what has lately come to be called, with reference to the Church before and after the Council, a hermeneutic of continuity. On his reading, a very broad swath of theological material is relevant to present speculative work, from the ante-Nicene Fathers to his own contemporaries. Unlike his teacher Joseph Kleutgen, he does not have a preference in principle for “the theology of earlier times” (in Kleutgen’s case, primarily a Suarezian reading of St. Thomas) over that of his own day. Conversely, unlike some of his own near predecessors and contemporaries (Georg Hermes and Döllinger come to mind), he sees no bright line in time, before which theology cannot address our present questions—whether that line be the Enlightenment, Kant, Hegel, or whatever. The speculative theologian may find either old tools or new ones useful in his task of understanding the faith. He has no reason to assume in advance that only one sort of tool will do the job. (3) Rigor and (4) Boldness As a theologian’s virtues, rational rigor and speculative boldness go together. Careful distinction and inference alone can make for speculative developments genuinely warranted by Scripture and Church doctrine.Warranted speculative reflection is the ordinary means by which we come to see more clearly the fathomless riches of the divine mysteries presented to us by Scripture and Catholic teaching. Without rational rigor, speculation easily degenerates into arbitrary invention. Rigor without speculative audacity, while fine as far as it goes, is unlikely to help us move beyond the articulation and defense of individual doctrines to a perception of the luminous interconnection of all the divine mysteries, what Scheeben calls their “wondrous harmony.”28 When rigor and boldness come together, dogmatic theology is—among the other characteristics it acquires when practiced well—deeply systematic. At just this point, dogmatic theology is perhaps also at its most creative, though, as we shall see momentarily, true speculative creativity comes not from trying to be creative—from self-conscious virtuosity—but from humbly seeking to understand the divine mysteries as God wills in love to make them known. Creativity is a mere byproduct of this effort. There is much to be said, of course, about the role of reason in theology, and the significance of argument, rather than mere temporal proximity (or, for that matter, distance), first person authority, or pragmatic usefulness in sorting out true theological claims from false, and pertinent 28 Mysterien, §4 (Mysteries, 19). 424 Bruce D. Marshall from irrelevant. Likewise there is much to be said about the distinctive illuminating power of speculative reason in theology, when applied with rigor and boldness to understanding the mysteries of faith. For the moment, though, a brief example from Scheeben’s treatment of “the significance and motivation of the incarnation” may help to give a sense of what can happen when rigor and audacity come together.29 Among the more arresting features of recent Christology, both Catholic and Protestant, is a marked shift away from traditional understandings of the cross. For many contemporary theologians, the Passion and cross of Jesus are not primarily about redemption or liberation from sin, if indeed the suffering of Jesus is seen to have anything at all to do with our deliverance from sin. Instead the cross has come to be chiefly about the problem of evil. Where it was once assumed to be the cornerstone of Christian teaching about redemption from God for sinful humanity, the cross is now often the cornerstone of a certain sort of theodicy, a certain manner of justifying the ways of God to suffering humanity. It is no longer about (or chiefly about) what we must offer God in order to be acceptable to him, but about what God must suffer in order to be acceptable to us, and worthy of our worship. The cross is mainly, if not solely, where God himself fully identifies with and experiences our suffering, even to the point of God-forsakenness, and so becomes a God in whom we suffering humans can believe.30 With this goes an important corollary, a widely asserted speculative connection: Jesus cannot have had the immediate vision of God in his earthly life. Had he possessed the visio, it would have impeded, if not entirely eliminated, his real identification with our suffering on the cross—above all, the very possibility of an experience of the hopeless absence of God. But this compassionate identification with us nothing may be allowed to impede. So the claim that Jesus must have had the visio from the outset of his human existence, shared by Catholic and Protestant theology alike from the Middle Ages well into modernity, has to be wrong. If Jesus did have the direct vision in this world, the earliest it could have come was at his resurrection from the dead.31 29 The phrase is from Scheeben’s title to Mysterien, §64 (Mysteries, 418). 30 For more on this Christological outlook and some of its main advocates, see my essay “The Dereliction of Christ and the Impassibility of God,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 246–98. 31 These now common ideas about the cross and the limits of Christ’s human knowledge may reflect deeper shifts in Christian piety over the last century or more. But they are in any case theologically widespread. Why Scheeben? 425 In one way Scheeben agrees with this current Christological trend.The chief purpose or end of the Incarnation of the Logos is not humanity’s redemption from sin. At this point Scheeben embraces a claim commonly made in the Franciscan theological tradition since the middle of the thirteenth century and subject to many interesting variations. In Scheeben’s own version (and here he differs from many in the Franciscan tradition), the Incarnation remains contingent on sin, and is occasioned by sin, even though repair of the damage wrought by sin is not its primary purpose. In God’s ordering of the world he has actually made, the Incarnation thus remains intimately linked to the cross. As a result, the chief purpose of the Incarnation (however that purpose is understood) will have to be realized or accomplished on the cross, and not apart from it. At this point, though, Scheeben parts company with the current Christological trend.The primary purpose of the Incarnation, even at the point of the cross, cannot be God’s identification with our misery, real though that is. Still less can it be God’s subjection to that misery at its most extreme point, the paradoxical acceptance by God of the human experience of the absence and silence of God. Precisely the cross attests that the ultimate purpose of the Word’s becoming flesh is “the glory of Christ and of God himself,” such that by way of the Incarnation, even the creature offers up “the infinite glorification of God.”32 Having thus distinguished the Incarnation’s overarching purpose from the particular manner in which the purpose is realized, Scheeben confronts the speculative challenge of explaining how the cross accomplishes the ultimate aim of the Incarnation when that aim could have been fully realized without sin, and so without the cross.This speculative challenge has its roots in the Bible, and not simply in Scheeben’s theology. At “the hour” of his Passion and cross, Jesus entreats the Father to glorify him and promises to glorify the Father in return ( Jn 17:2), completing the glorification of the Father he has accomplished “on earth” (17:4). Jesus’ imminent Passion is evidently at once the Father’s glorification of him and his own glorification of the Father. Yet the glory about to be visible in Jesus’ Passion is just that glory he had in the Father’s presence “before the world was made” (17:5). Current Christology regularly unites Jesus’ eternal glory to his temporal glorification of the Father on the cross by suggesting that some form of proto-Calvary, a primordial kenosis or distance from the Father, is already constitutive of Jesus’ eternal glory with the Father, and is now simply manifest on the cross. Had Scheeben no other reason to reject this recourse, mere consistency would be enough. Assuming (as he does) that 32 Mysterien, §64; the quoted phrases are from GS II, 346–47 and 350 (Mysteries, 419, 423). 426 Bruce D. Marshall suffering and death are inseparably linked to sin, to hold that the chief purpose of the Incarnation is not the conquest of sin rules out the possibility that intimations of suffering and death might seep into God’s original intention to become incarnate in the world, let alone into the eternal, glorious being of the Son with the Father before the world was made. The cross must accomplish, in its own way, a divine purpose that could be accomplished without it. From before the foundation of the world the Son fully possesses the Father’s glory. The Son becomes flesh, Scheeben argues, in order that creation too may radiate the glory of God, by joining in the Son’s infinite glorification of the Father.To the mediatorial office of the God-man, in particular to his priesthood, belongs the work of bringing humanity to share in his own eternal glorification of the Father. And since humanity includes both the material and spiritual sides of creation, the whole creation glorifies the Father in this act of the incarnate Son. “As mediator for creatures before God, he offers up to God the hymn of an honor and praise equal to his glory.”33 This, the creature’s perfect praise of the creator, certainly involves self-donation and subjection to the Father, but as such it does not include, let alone require, suffering and death. In fact, suffering may seem to diminish the creature’s praise and to occlude the presence of the God he seeks to glorify. That might be true if we considered suffering only in terms of its impact upon the creature who undergoes it against his will. For ourselves—that is, when it comes to our own happiness—we rightly decline to suffer willingly except to acquire some benefit that outweighs the suffering. Since God incarnate has no benefit to acquire, it might seem unfitting, if not morally unworthy, for God not simply to assume flesh, but to assume flesh susceptible to suffering and death. For others, however, we hope we would be willing to suffer not only to acquire some good for them but above all simply out of love for them. Why else, strange as it seems to us, would “the saints love suffering, and nothing more than suffering,” unless willingly to suffer for others is most fully to offer ourselves to them in love, and so “to show them by suffering our love and admiration, more than by all the works we do for their benefit, or all the goods we give them”? This is not only the noblest, the morally purest, form of suffering but “the purest selfsacrifice and the most exalted virtue.” 34 33 Mysterien, §62 (GS II, 340; Mysteries, 411). 34 Mysterien, §64 (GS II, 352 [the saints], 351; Mysteries, 426, 425). Some strains of current theology will perhaps see here a masochistic (or sadistic) exuberance about suffering, but Scheeben obviously declines to offer any valorization of suffering for its own sake, or even for the sake of the sufferer. Suffering that Why Scheeben? 427 Jesus’ glorification of the Father, the perfect completion of the work he took flesh to do, is his free acceptance of fathomless suffering out of love for others. In Gethsemane and on Golgotha, the other whom Jesus loves in total surrender and donation of self is the Father who sent him, and this love of the Father unto death is precisely his perfect glorification of the Father. He accepts this suffering out of love for us too, of course— but the love for us that he enacts on the Mount of Olives and on the cross above all offers us a share in his own prior love for the Father, and so in his perfect glorification of the Father. The glorification of the Father that comes to pass in the Passion and death of Jesus thus has, as it were, several layers. At the heart of the matter is the only-begotten Son’s ceaseless glorification in love of the Father from whom he is, a love the same now and forever as it was before the foundation of the world. Now, though, the Son offers this glorification in our flesh, as an act not only of divine but of specifically human love. He makes, in fact, that total gift of self which every creature at heart longs to offer the Father in thanksgiving and gratitude. As the human act of the only-begotten Son, this gift of God incarnate succeeds in being a human offering of infinite worth, adequate to the Father’s glory. So far suffering and death have not entered the picture. The incarnate Son’s total selfdonation to the Father does not as such require suffering and death, and in a world without sin that donation would take place without the Passion and the cross. In the world we actually inhabit, though, disfigured as it is by sin, the incarnate Word’s human act of total self-giving to the Father will take place by way of suffering freely accepted, and will be complete only in death. What glorifies the Father in the garden and on the cross is not, then, Jesus’ suffering as such but the fearsome intensity of the love, for the Father and so for us, with which he accepts it. Thus Scheeben employs the traditional idea that the chief end of the Incarnation is to realize goods not contingent on the conquest of sin— on his account, creation’s unsurpassable glorification of its God—to solve the speculative problem posed by John 17. The cross repairs, indeed, the damage done by sin, but it does so precisely by being the Son’s enactment comes upon us against our own will, whether at the hands of others or from impersonal forces (such as those that cause our bodies to decay) simply diminishes us. Suffering we accept for the sake of a good that results may enhance rather than diminish us (e.g., aerobic exercise, which contributes to bodily health), but since voluntary suffering of this kind ultimately stems from selfinterest, its moral worth, while real, is necessarily limited.The suffering Scheeben really does valorize—the suffering that comes to pass on the cross, and in the hearts of the saints who take up the cross—is of supreme moral worth just because it is neither involuntary nor self-interested. 428 Bruce D. Marshall in our flesh, under the conditions of sin, of his eternal glorification of the Father. “The revelation of the glory and love of God reaches its summit” when, on the cross, God “makes sin cooperate with its own defeat even in its greatest triumph. Sin celebrated its triumph when it strove to, and really did, slay God’s anointed. But when Christ apparently succumbed to [the power of sin], at the same instant he undertook the supreme act of adoration and glorification of God, which not only compensated for sin but drew from the poison of its sting the most precious honey. His act turned sin’s intention into its opposite, and humiliated sin more deeply than even the eternal torments of hell could do—and thereby prepared for God a triumph such as would not have been possible without sin.”35 Among the merits of Scheeben’s solution to this particular speculative problem is his success at uniting the cross with the Son’s eternal glorification of the Father, while not allowing any taint of suffering and death, let alone any proto-Calvary, to enter into the person-constituting relationships between the Father and his only-begotten, and so into the Son’s eternal glorification of the Father. Keeping any hint of the cross out of the processions of the divine persons also helps him avoid the temptation to see the chief purpose of the Incarnation as the divine identification with our misery that undoubtedly does take place in it. Theologians who give in to this temptation tend to look for ever more extreme forms of suffering for the incarnate Son to undergo, ending in the Son’s abandonment or rejection by the Father. Seen in this way, the cross becomes the final outworking of a primordial conflict and opposition within God’s own being—a proto-Calvary.36 In Scheeben’s theology of the cross, by contrast, Jesus not only loves God in his Passion and death (as theologians of divine abandonment also 35 Mysterien, §64 (GS II, 353; Mysteries, 427–28). Here, it should be observed, Scheeben fundamentally follows St.Thomas. Christ’s Passion is a more than sufficient recompense for the whole offense of humanity against God, Thomas argues, not simply on account of “the magnitude of the suffering he assumed,” but above all “on account of the magnitude of the love (caritas) with which he suffered” (ST III, q. 48, a. 2, c). St. Thomas is speaking of the satisfaction that Christ accomplishes in his Passion, which of course presupposes sin; Scheeben’s gloss is that satisfaction is the fruit Christ’s love for, and glorification of, the Father bears under the conditions of sin. “The fruit [of Christ’s moral action] is found in the supreme glorification of God at which Christ’s actions aim; satisfaction for all the dishonor done to God comes with this” (Katholische Dogmatik, Bk. V, no. 1005; GS VI/2, 41). 36 The Hegelian provenance of this modern theological trope is important to understanding it; see my essay “The Absolute and the Trinity,” Pro Ecclesia (forthcoming). Why Scheeben? 429 insist) but out of this love offers up to God on the cross the supreme creaturely act of adoration and glorification. An experience by Jesus of the most extreme possible Godforsakenness, his entering into the abyss of nothingness where God is not, might be compatible with a certain kind of love for God, with the servant creature’s acceptance and endurance of all that comes from the hand of God (thus Job 1–2). It is not, however, compatible with the perfect love of charity, with the filial friendship with God that rejoices above all in the adoration and glorification of the Father, and offers up to him at this moment, on Calvary, the supreme glory and praise due to him as God. A radically forsaking Father presumably cannot be the object of this act of love, but only the Father in his supreme goodness, in his infinite glory as God. And a radically forsaken and abandoned Son cannot offer this act of love, but only a Son whose human soul is filled with the glory of God, who knows exactly what he is offering and to whom he is offering it—a Son who, above all on the cross, lives in the possession of the immediate vision of God, and sees the face of the Father. Thus Scheeben is deeply right, I think, to say that the cross and death of the incarnate Word can only be the apparent triumph of sin. They cannot put Christ in hell (or beyond), infinitely far from the Father. As he willingly enters into death, Christ has already offered to the Father the act of perfect love and adoration of which the devil sought, by that death, to deprive him, and all creation with him. When his friends lay Jesus in the tomb, sin has already been forever humiliated, the devil is disarmed, and death “no longer has any power over him.” (5) Humility Reading Scheeben gives one the clear sense that he thought of humility as a speculative virtue, indeed the virtue sine qua non of the dogmatic theologian. Modern theology has made familiar to its practitioners the figure of the virtuoso theologian. The theological virtuoso, at his best a thinker of great learning, surveys the whole of the Christian tradition, especially in its reflective moments, with an earnest desire to improve upon the past. He seeks an insight previously unpossessed, or possessed by only a few, in the hope that by it he can set right unresolved problems in the tradition, or problems heretofore unrecognized. Such problems, those worthy of the virtuoso’s effort, will naturally be systemic in nature, not mere isolated difficulties of the sort that a good doctoral dissertation suffices to clear up. In modern Protestant theology, virtuosity has been pretty much a vocational obligation for the dogmatic theologian, since only systemic insight making 430 Bruce D. Marshall good the shortcomings of the past justifies writing a dogmatics in the first place. But Catholic theology has not been without its own virtuosos. Perhaps the most striking feature of Scheeben’s theological writing, at least to this reader, is his utter humility before the divine mysteries he seeks to understand. Like all real humility, it stems not from timidity or abjectness but from love and gratitude to the God who, solely for the good of his creatures, has exalted us beyond all that we could otherwise ask or imagine by opening up to us the innermost treasures of his own life. Immensely learned though he is, Scheeben is wholly indifferent to virtuosity. He seeks in love to understand with all the resources of mind and reason what he knows, above all, can be understood only by the poor in spirit. Unsurprisingly, then, Scheeben concludes the Mysterien by finding in Mary’s humility “the ideal of reason,” precisely the reason of the speculative theologian. “As the call to be the mother of the God-man . . . raised Mary from a lowly handmaid to the Queen of all things,” he writes, “so there is no greater distinction for reason than its call to cooperate with faith in producing theological knowledge. In this way reason is raised above its natural lowliness to the highest nobility.Yet as Mary also . . . was taken up to be the Mother of God precisely through the humble obedience of the handmaid of the Lord, and as Mother of God retained the humility of the Lord’s handmaid, so reason can take faith into itself only through a humble recognition of the rights of revelation, and an obedient submission to the call of God.”37 Why Scheeben? More by what it did than by what it said in so many words, Vatican II urged a renewed engagement with the scriptural and patristic sources of the faith, a ressourcement. Of this there has been much, and historical study of the Fathers and the medievals flourishes among Catholic theologians.38 The Council certainly did not recommend, either by what it said or by what it did, an abandonment of dogmatic theology or of the scholastic traditions which have so deeply informed Catholic theological speculation since the Middle Ages. Yet Catholic theology quite soon began to take the Council as proclaiming a release from captivity to “neo-scholasticism,” an opprobrious designation of uncertain, but often 37 Mysterien, §109 (GS II, 662–63; Mysteries, 786). 38 Whether Catholic biblical scholarship exactly flourishes is another matter, due mainly to continuing perplexity (hardly unique to Catholics) about how to integrate historical-critical exegesis into a properly ecclesial and theological interpretation of Scripture. Why Scheeben? 431 very broad, meaning and application. Coupled with this was a cheerful dismissal of the innumerable “manuals” or “handbooks”—many, like Scheeben’s Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, actually far too bulky to be carried about by hand—which had been the standard literary form for comprehensive dogmatic theology in the Catholic world since at least the early nineteenth century. The thought, no doubt, was that new and more fruitful forms of speculative theology would rise up to take the place of the scripturally barren and rationalistic, crabbed and hairsplitting manuals.This has not happened. The rejection of established dogmatic traditions and approaches has led not to new and more vital forms of Catholic systematic reflection but to the effective disappearance of dogmatic theology altogether. While the decades since Vatican II have certainly seen a renewal of Catholic theology on many fronts, it would be hard for even the most optimistic among us to claim that speculative theology has been one of them. Here I will not try to reflect on the causes of this unanticipated development, or to belabor the unwelcome consequences for the Church when Catholic theology loses much of its ability to articulate the meaning or content of the faith as a whole in a precise and persuasive way. I simply want to underline the absence of dogmatic theology as an obvious fact of Catholic intellectual life today. Of course many Catholic theologians will deny that it is a fact and will point in proof to Rahner, Balthasar, or Lonergan (perhaps all three) as undeniable examples of renewed, post-scholastic forms of dogmatics. The standard Scheeben sets for dogmatic reflection may cause one to wonder, though, about the extent to which any of these formative figures of recent Catholic theology ought to count as a dogmatic theologian in the first place. A brilliant and searching theological essayist (before he began, in the 60s and 70s, repeatedly to travel the same well-worn tracks and, not coincidently, to leave his scholastic past ever farther behind), Karl Rahner’s one late attempt at a more comprehensive dogmatic statement, the Foundations of Christian Faith, even his admirers mostly regard as unsuccessful. In both style and substance, the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar is at once remarkably original and, to put it gently, eccentric. He is Catholic theology’s leading recent candidate for a modern-style virtuoso, and it belongs among the curious developments of the postconciliar era that some now hold him up as the norm and model for all Catholic theology. Whatever their intrinsic merits (on which the jury is out and will remain so, I suspect, for many years), Balthasar’s theological proposals do not so much renew dogmatics as require a genuine dogmatic renewal in order for us to assess them adequately. 432 Bruce D. Marshall Bernard Lonergan clearly was a dogmatic theologian of remarkable gifts, at least in his writings on the Trinity, Christ, and grace. But he too produced only pieces of a dogmatic theology, and the genuinely dogmatic parts of his corpus are also those which have had the least influence. No doubt this is due in part to their having been until recently available only in Latin, but it has to be said that Lonergan’s impact as a whole has been considerably less than that of Rahner or Balthasar. For the moment, though, let us grant that, as many now hold, the dogmatic contributions of these three exceptional theologians (or at least one of them) will prove to be of enduring value. If so, this only underlines the disappearance of dogmatic theology as a fact of contemporary Catholic intellectual life. Rahner, Balthasar, and Lonergan have certainly produced followers, but their followers have not done dogmatic theology. Whatever their own intentions, all three of them have been influential not primarily in prompting others to talk about God but in prompting others to talk about them. Why, it might fairly be asked, should the disappearance of dogmatic or speculative theology be thought of as a problem? The sort of work Scheeben did may be gone, or nearly so, but whether Catholics, or anybody else, should care about getting it back is another matter. We ought to care. Dogmatics is the application of human reason, at once rigorous and submissive, to the highest matters of divine truth. It is often argued, not least by Pope Benedict XVI, that when religious belief rejects the proper ministrations of reason—when it tries to carry on without the dogmatic virtues—it offers an open door to moral abuse in the name of religion, and at worst to murderous fanaticism.With at least equal vigor (though with considerably less support from the wider world) Benedict has argued that reason, when it rejects the light that faith alone can provide, cannot help falling into relativism, moral and otherwise. Without the transcendent purpose provided by the dogmatic virtues, reason— submitting not to the gentle light of faith but to the nihilism that reduces reason to a sinister technical instrument in the hands of the will to power—eventually inflicts upon itself a mortal wound. That faith and reason need each other, though in different ways, is of course a deep laid principle of dogmatic theology—in a sense, the originating principle of the whole enterprise. In the influential formulation of St. Thomas Aquinas, robustly embraced by Scheeben, the grace of faith does not eliminate natural reason but presupposes it, since divine teaching presupposes a reasoning being who, as such, can be taught. At the same time reason finds its perfection in the knowledge faith gives, which heals reason’s wounds and lifts reason up to know the deep things of God. Why Scheeben? 433 Different religions may have different ways of looking at the role of reason in relation to what they believe. In Catholic Christianity, though, the deep things of God are meant to be searched out by the rational creature, as the rational creature is meant by God to find its perfection in the knowledge and love of the divine depths. God reveals the secrets of his innermost life, and the sublime destiny he holds out to us there, so that the mind can receive them, ponder them, and begin here and now the journey toward its destiny in God. The deep things of God can be revealed to us in no other way. To give up on the most diligent and comprehensive application of human reason to the highest mysteries of Christian faith is not to honor these mysteries but to hold them at a safe distance. Seen only from afar, the divine mysteries may seem vague to us and so make no intellectual and moral demands on us. Our distance gives us the impression that we can make of them what we will yet still know them as they are, or know them as much as we need to do. But we deceive ourselves. If we would receive the mysteries of God, we must allow ourselves to be drawn close to them with Mary’s humility and to ponder them—as she has done— to the furthest limits of our creaturely reason. Failing to cultivate the dogmatic virtues does not leave us free to approach the mysteries of faith in other ways. It is not to receive them at all. In the deepest sense the value of dogmatic theology, and the need for it, lie in the interior of the Church’s faith itself. But what flows (or fails to flow) from the Church’s interior life has a deep impact on her flourishing as a public communal and institutional reality. Vital speculative theology enables the Church to articulate the meaning and content of her faith as a whole, and down to the most beautiful detail, in a precise and persuasive way. When speculative theology languishes, the Church loses much of her ability to say clearly what should be believed and why it should be believed—not only to outsiders whom she hopes to invite in, but above all to herself and her own members. We cannot create, or re-invent, an almost vanished theological culture at will. As we cannot reproduce by mere effort the learning Scheeben found necessary for speculative theology, so we cannot generate by mere effort the balance of rigor and boldness by which he carried it out. But we can read what he left us, let him lead us to others, and pray for the humility he brought to the task. The way back to a renewed and vital theological culture is long, but this is surely a good place to start. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 435–53 435 Scheeben the Reconciler: Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate E DWARD T. OAKES, S.J. Mundelein Seminary Mundelein, IL R EPUTATIONS come. Reputations go. On occasion they even return, often with such renewed vigor and éclat that historians are at a loss to explain the intermediate neglect: How could so powerful a mind ever have lost a hearing? What Shakespeare called “the bubble reputation” is fickle indeed. In the field of historical theology, the premier exhibit for these ups and downs in reputational fortunes is of course St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/5–1274): Three years after his death, his writings met with early condemnation by the Archbishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier; but their author was canonized a generation later, in 1323, and Rome suspended Tempier’s condemnations in 1325. Later, during the Enlightenment, even orthodox Catholic authors, including the most vigorous apologists for the faith, had little time for him;1 even later, most Roman universities in the nineteenth century—especially during the long reign of Pope Pius IX—regarded him with suspicion because of his denial of the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception.2 But soon after, he experienced a sudden resurgence with the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical 1 Consider the case of Pascal, easily the most influential Catholic apologist of the Enlightenment era: “The metaphysical proofs of God are so far removed from man’s reasoning, and so complicated, that they have little force. When they do help some people, it is only at the moment when they see the demonstration. An hour later they are afraid of having made a mistake” (Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. Honor Levi [Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1995], 63)—not exactly a ringing endorsement of Thomas’s quinque viae. 2 See Romanus Cessario, O.P., A Short History of Thomism (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 58–59. 436 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. Aeterni Patris in 1879,3 after which he virtually monopolized the curriculum of Catholic seminaries, both philosophical and theological, until the wind-shear of Vatican II grounded his influence yet again.4 But lo and behold, he is now enjoying another resurgence, shown not least in the existence of this journal. Another example of such reputational vicissitudes might be (in a minor key, of course) Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1834–1888), the nineteenthcentury German theologian who was highly regarded in the twentieth century until, again, changes that came about through the postconciliar outlook led to widespread neglect of his writings.5 But that too seems to be changing, shown not least by this specific issue of this journal. In the rest of what follows, I wish to propose one area in particular that proves Scheeben’s ongoing relevance: the contemporary nature-grace debate. I will suggest that this debate has now reached a kind of stalemate— 3 “In the eighteenth century the Dominicans had 25,000 members in the whole Order. The Napoleonic Revolution left them with almost none. For a time they remained under a cloud at Rome because of their opposition, which was traditional, to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. In 1876 they were still only 3,341. But when that doctrine was defined, and even more when Pope Leo XIII turned to St. Thomas Aquinas as the philosopher of the Church and entrusted the Dominicans with the duty of caring for his texts and propagating his doctrine, they began again to expand.” Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes: 1830–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 516–17. 4 Revue Thomiste dedicated two issues to the theme of anti-Thomism from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. See especially Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., “Qu’est-ce que l’antithomisme?” Revue Thomiste 108, no. 1 (2008): 9–30; and Michel Fourcade, “Thomisme et antithomisme à l’heure de Vatican II,” Revue Thomiste 108 no. 2 (2008): 301–26. Complicating the issue further is of course Thomas’s debt to Aristotle, who has endured his own turbulent history of vicissitudes, especially when it was realized that his cosmography had to be jettisoned in the wake of Copernicus and Galileo and later when his notion of the fixity of species had to be at least radically modified after Darwin: “[I]n the minds of some Catholic writers, Scholasticism relied upon outdated Aristotelian concepts and definitions that served no useful purpose in terms of understanding the natural world.” Alexander Sedgwick, Jansenism in Seventeenth-Century France: Voices in the Wilderness (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), 9. Faced with that challenge, some Thomists try to disengage Thomas from Aristotle (Étienne Gilson), while others try to defend Aristotle’s more permanently valid metaphysics by disengaging it from his more strictly scientific hypotheses (Ralph McInerny). 5 No less a luminary than John Courtney Murray wrote his dissertation in 1938 on Scheeben; it was later republished as: John Courtney Murray, S.J., Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s Doctrine on Supernatural Faith (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1987). See also John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Root of Faith: The Doctrine of M. J. Scheeben,” Theological Studies 9 (1948): 20–46. Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 437 but that if Scheeben’s contributions are brought back into the discussion, he will prove to have shown all along the way around the current impasse. I Debate on the nature-grace issue in the twentieth century has consistently run aground on this dilemma: how can the gratuity of grace be preserved without disengaging grace from man’s nature? Can grace be both gratuitous and relevant, both gracious and fulfilling, both unexpected yet the healing of a felt misery (“I once was blind, but now I see”), both a new creation and the restoration of the old? The expression “the gratuity of grace” refers to the fact that God does not owe the human race his benevolence, that we have no claim or right to grace.This lack of any human claim on God holds true even of our first parents before their fall: complaints from them about the living conditions in the Garden of Eden would have been, to put it mildly, unsporting and unseemly. But any claim on God would be especially out of place after the event of sin—that is, after humans deliberately rejected God’s offer of fellowship with himself. It has long been a proverbial example of human folly when the (no doubt apocryphal) defendant, who has been hauled up on a charge of murdering his parents, throws himself on the mercy of the court because of his new status as an orphan. So too with the human race after the fall: we have no one to blame but ourselves. So the fact that God has in fact continued to act to save man, even immediately after the fall (Gn 3:15), should astonish us with the Lord’s unexpected benevolence: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. . . . But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace that you were saved” (Eph 2:1, 4–5). Yet, once grace has been given, further questions arise: Are we allowed to feel more than just the appropriate gratitude for having received this gift we could never have merited or deserved? That is, does the unmerited gift of grace cast a retrospective light on our past life of sin so that we are also permitted to feel relief that we have been rescued from a plight that we had long recognized prior to receiving grace? Is grace, then, like a trace mineral (zinc, for instance) whose absence from one’s diet leads to a kind of vague physiological malaise whose discontents (caused by factors not yet suspected) were never fully appreciated in their outermost extremity until the homeostasis of good health returns but which nonetheless had earlier led to a felt listlessness that went on for years? In other words, does grace heal the soul’s prior malaise in a way that makes grace seem, at least retrospectively, like the answer to a spiritual exigency, 438 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. defined here as a crying need that had all along caused man to ache for grace ever since his expulsion from the Garden of Eden—a longing, moreover, that he had been noticing all along? The usual answer in modern theology, starting with the condemnations of Michael Baius (1513–89) and Cornelius Jansenius (1585–1638)—both of whom had answered Yes to those questions—has been that man cannot have been given an inherent, innate exigency for grace, under the Aristotelian rubric that natural desires cannot be in vain.6 Applying that Stagirite axiom, theologians argued as follows: if God had implanted an exigency for grace as part of our very nature, he would accordingly “owe” us grace, which would of course destroy its gratuity, making it no longer truly grace but something we could, horribile dictu, “count on.”7 While this denial of a natural spiritual exigency is plausible—even inevitable in the wake of Baius and Jansenius—a problem lurks if that answer 6 “We call a shoe pointless when it cannot be worn. But God and nature create nothing that is useless.” Aristotle, On the Heavens Book I, ch. 4 (271a30). The context here is actually not human artifacts but Aristotle’s discussion of the necessarily circular orbits of celestial bodies. The application of this principle, which properly belongs in Aristotle’s long-superseded astronomy, to theological discussions of nature and grace is ironic indeed. At all events, and only adding to the irony, both Baius and Jansenius accepted that premise too, which is why they held that original sin had so devastated human nature and not just merely deprived our first parents of the grace of original justice: because grace and nature belong together, they reason, loss of grace necessarily means the ruin of nature. Although they came to diametrically different conclusions about the way grace operates in postlapsarian man, they both wanted to stress the devastating effects of original sin on human nature, for which Aristotle’s axiom proved useful. Condemnation of these views obviously required that orthodox theologians make a firmer distinction between nature and grace, which then proved an important catalyst for the Thomist commentators. But because the commentators also accepted Aristotle’s principle that nature does nothing in vain, they were perforce compelled to posit natural ends in man that were independent of his ultimate felicity in heaven of enjoying the beatific vision. 7 The Stagirite applies the same principle to biology too, of course: “Again, some members of the class of fishes are neither male nor female, as we see in eels and a kind of mullet found in stagnant waters. But whenever the sexes are separate, the female cannot generate perfectly by herself alone, for then the male would exist in vain, and nature makes nothing in vain.” Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals Book II, ch. 5 (741b2). How this “master of all who know” (as Dante called him) would have adjusted his axiom had he studied a colony of bees cannot be guessed, whose drones are “useless” (useless for reproduction, that is). Also, the operation of this principle in the nature-grace debate makes it difficult to account for Paul’s insistence that “creation was subjected to futility, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it” (Rom 8:20). Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 439 becomes too one-sided. For Scripture teaches that all of creation (and not just the human spirit) does indeed “groan” for its fulfillment in Christ: We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no longer hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Rom 8:22–27) What makes this passage so fascinating is the way Paul easily ascribes a natural longing to all creation (which can hardly be said to have “sinned”); yet he goes on to assert a further longing instilled by grace. Crucially, that longing is one for adoption. Now adoption refers to a legal status to which obviously a person has no claim: even a bedraggled, desperately hungry, rag-clad waif cannot go to a court of law and demand to be taken in by any family of his arbitrary choosing. Certain rights accrue naturally to natural-born children; adoption, however, is a freely bestowed legal status by which the one being adopted is (as we say) “graciously” allowed to belong legally to a particular family. My hapless parents were stuck with me and my dreadful infantile caterwauling upon my entrance into the world; but I have no claim to the estate of Bill Gates. (The novels of Charles Dickens, especially David Copperfield and Great Expectations, often hinge on this universally recognized reality.) Yet, to swing back to the other side, and sitting uncomfortably alongside passages about our adoption by God, Paul frankly avows that all things were created through Christ and for Christ (Col 1:16b), which obviously entails this conclusion: that any radical separation from Christ must result in an essential suffering, a suffering that comes from our natures as creatures—who have been created aboriginally with natures meant for union with Christ. Based on that insight, Henri de Lubac was led to insist that there can be no such thing as a currently obtaining reality called “pure nature,” that is, a nature operating independently of the creative and redeeming presence of Christ: For this desire [for union with Christ] is not some “accident” in me. It does not result from some peculiarity, possibly alterable, of my individual being, or from some historical contingency whose effects are more or less transitory. . . . It is in me as a result of my belonging to humanity as it is, that humanity which is, as we say, “called.” For God’s call is constitutive. My finality, which is expressed by this desire, is inscribed upon my very being as it has been put into this universe by God. And, 440 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. by God’s will, I now have no other genuine end, no end really assigned to my nature or presented for my free acceptance under any guise, except that of “seeing God.”8 Since the tradition against which de Lubac was reacting went back at least four centuries, and was built on papal condemnations of Baius and Jansenius (who seemed, said de Lubac’s critics, to rely on the same arguments he was now using), his book set off quite a controversy, which only died down after Vatican II ringingly validated his point in Gaudium et Spes, its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which solemnly taught: “For, since Christ died for all men, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and that divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit, in a manner known only to God, offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.”9 In the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, the postconciliar consensus bequeathed by de Lubac has come under attack for its alleged excessive “intrinsicism,” that is, for its positing a too-close connection between the exigencies of unsaved man and the free bestowal of divine grace. For once grace becomes too tied to nature, then everything seems a grace and all our aspirations are interpreted as antecedently validated by grace. The effect of that assumption then makes the sacraments seem like mere ritual validations of what is already a graced state.10 8 Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, translated by Rosemary Sheed, introduction by David L. Schindler (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 54–55. With this principle in mind, and considering how well it was established in Scripture (including, by the way, the Prologue to John’s Gospel), de Lubac could look back on the previous history of the pure-nature tradition with considerable sarcasm: “When St. Augustine uttered his famous declaration ‘You have made us for yourself, O God . . . ,’ he never anticipated that one day in the twentieth century this would be taken in a purely natural sense. When St. Thomas Aquinas said ‘grace perfects nature,’ he did not foresee that what he said about the completion or perfecting of nature would be retained, while the grace which effects that completion would be left aside. . . . When St. Thomas further said ‘This immediate vision of God is guaranteed to us in Scripture’ (ScG III, chapter 51), he could not have supposed that one day people would attribute to him the idea of another vision of God, equally ‘direct,’ which could be obtained without reference to anything promised in scripture” (ibid, 38–39). 9 Gaudium et Spes §22; cited from The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (New York: America House Press, 1966), 221–22. 10 Recall the last line from George Bernanos’s lovely novel, The Diary of a Country Priest: “Grace is everywhere.” While in a certain sense true (since God is ubiquitous to his creation), when it is used as a dogmatic principle, problems quickly arise, not least how to establish the sheer transcendence of grace, its utterly unexpected boon to miserable creatures such as ourselves, its awesome reversal of a Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 441 It is widely recognized that Vatican II did not bring about the fruits expected of it. Cannot the doldrums of the postconciliar Church be traced, at least in part, to the hegemonic sententia communis of theologians, nearly all of whom after the council held that extrinsicism was dead and that intrinsicism had won out? If the concerns of those redoubtable opponents of nouvelle théologie are not adequately addressed, what happens to the transcendence and gratuity of grace? No wonder, then, they say, the Bible is treated solely as an artifact of the ancient world to be studied using methods drawn from the study of other ancient texts. No wonder the folksy style in liturgy took over, with its translations of the Mass into a Montessori vernacular and its insistence that “active participation” be judged by levels of camaraderie achieved during worship.11 While these realities are hard to gainsay, there still remains the theoretical issue to resolve: how to keep grace both gratuitous and yet also meaningful to the human condition, a genuine response on God’s part to a genuine plight on man’s. The reopening of this part of the debate is largely due (at least in the United States) to two theologians and their recent books, Lawrence Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God and Steven Long’s Natura Pura.12 Both books are, in effect, saying: “Hold on a minute, let’s not be too hasty here now.” Besides noting the pastoral woes attendant upon a too-easy intrinsicism, they highlight some important historical and theoretical considerations that militate against de Lubac’s thesis.13 past life of sin and persecution (Paul and Augustine serving as the models here), its sheer splendor in contrast to our miserable, grubby lives. 11 If this historical connection seems implausible, given the arcane nature of the debate (how many church musicians or high school catechists, after all, would have read Surnaturel ?), recall that de Lubac attributed the growth of secularism to the advocates of a pure-nature theology, as if Enlightenment philosophes spent their time pouring over Renaissance commentators on pure nature—an arcane debate if there ever was one! 12 Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters, 2d ed. (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010); cited henceforth as Natural Desire. The dissertation carries the same title (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001). Besides being more accessible, the second edition has translated all the texts that the dissertation had cited in the original language; and many of the arguments have been made clearer and more cohesive. This will be the edition quoted throughout this article. Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010); cited henceforth as Natura Pura. 13 The rest of this section will represent a summary of my account of these two books, which was recently published in this journal. See Edward T. Oakes, S.J., “The Surnaturel Controversy: A Survey and a Response,” Nova et Vetera 9, no. 3 (2011): 625–56. 442 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. Feingold’s case against de Lubac is primarily historical and exegetical: he claims that de Lubac chose his texts from the Thomist corpus too onesidedly and that a proper survey of Thomas’s extensive writings will show him to be, at the least, more nuanced than appears from de Lubac’s own tendentious selection of texts. Just a few examples will suffice for our purposes here, such as this key text from De veritate: Man by his nature is proportioned to a certain end for which he has a natural appetite, and which he can work to achieve by his natural powers. This end is a certain contemplation of the divine attributes, in the measure in which this is possible for man through his natural powers; and in this end even the philosophers placed the final happiness of man. But God has prepared man for another end, one that exceeds the proportionality of human nature. This end is eternal life, which consists in the vision of God in his essence, an end which exceeds the proportionality of any created nature, being connatural to God alone.14 At the very least, this passage (and many others cited by Feingold) shows that a tension lurks within the Thomist corpus. Long accepts the reality of that tension and builds upon it to come to a more “analytic” solution, that is, one that does not depend so much on exegesis as it does on some new thinking via Thomas’s views on natural law. First, though, he makes this concession: It helps to put to rest the exegetic difficulty. It is without doubt true that there is a problem in the very texts of Aquinas, and a problem which seemingly does not allow much room for maneuver with respect to its solution: because the doctrinal points which constitute the elements of the problem—one is almost tempted to say “constitute the contradiction”—are starkly and clearly stated in St. Thomas’s text. Yet the realization that there are indeed two sets of texts, one of which was not merely an interposed corruption, itself marks a decisive advance toward correct interpretation of Thomas’s teaching. . . . The second set of texts hedges about, and delimits, the possible signification of the first set, and vice versa. That is, on the supposition that we do not wish to suppose St. Thomas’s texts to exhibit raw incoherence, then we need to read these texts in relation one to another.15 14 De veritate q. 27, a. 2; emphases added. 15 Long, Natura Pura, 13, 15; emphasis in the original. He gives samples here: “On the one hand, we have St. Thomas’s argument that to know God is the end of every intelligent substance (Summa contra Gentiles III, 25), that there is indeed a natural desire for God (ScG III, c. 25; and Summa theologiae I–II, q. 3, a. 8); and that no natural desire may be in vain (ST I, q. 75, a. 6; Compendium 104). On the other hand, we have his clear affirmation that human and angelic natures are Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 443 But these tensions can be resolved, Long claims, by an attention to the Thomist approach to natural law. Consider this passage from the prima secundae: If man were ordained to no other end than that which is proportionate to his natural faculty, there would be no need for man to have any further direction on the part of his reason besides the natural law and human [positive] law, the latter of which is derived from the former. But since man is ordained to an end of eternal happiness, which exceeds the proportion of man’s natural faculty, as stated above, it was therefore necessary that, besides the natural and the human law, man should be directed to his end by a law given by God. . . . But to his supernatural end man needs to be directed in a yet higher way. Hence, the additional law given by God, whereby man shares more perfectly in the eternal law.16 Now, since no one has ever claimed that St. Thomas considered the natural law to be a mere “hypothesis,” meant only to guarantee the gratuity of the divine law, Long is able to draw this inexorable conclusion: “The proportionate capacity of human nature is not a fiction, it is not a limit concept, it is not merely ideational; rather, it is something created by God.”17 In other words: “Created nature in all its ontological density is not the theologian’s posit; it is God’s effect.”18 So we seem to have reached an impasse, one perhaps bequeathed to us by Thomas himself and made more complex by the denial of pure nature in Baius and Jansenius. As it happens, Scheeben too uses natural law in his argument but in ways that differ notably from Long’s reading, as we will see in the next section. Yet he also insists time and again on the need to distinguished based upon their differing natural and proximate ends whereas their supernatural beatific end is the same (ST I, q. 75, a. 7 ad 1; Quaestiones de anima a. 7 ad 10).” Long, Natura Pura, 13. 16 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 4, resp. and ad 1. 17 Long, Natura Pura, 201. Further: “Human nature is a real principle in the human person, and its species is derived, not from the ultimate supernatural end of beatific vision, but from its proportionate natural end” (ibid., 200). But far from cordoning off the natural law into a separate realm independent of the drama of salvation history, Long fully admits their mutual interpenetration: “Nothing in this, however, is to suggest that the natural end in its proper integrity and completeness may be attained apart from grace in the actually existing providential order. Nor can the ultimate supernatural end be attained by one who rejects the impress of the divine wisdom in the natural law and its dominion over his actions. For both natural law and the lex nova are participations in the eternal law” (ibid., 200–201). 18 Long, Natura Pura, 64; emphasis in the original. This paragraph repeats what was said in Oakes, “The Surnaturel Controversy,” 646. 444 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. draw a radical distinction between nature and grace lest grace’s gratuity be lost and the supernatural reality of the Church get absorbed into some quasi-Hegelian world-process. In doing so, however, he equally insists that we must “distinguish in order to unite” (to borrow Jacques Maritain’s motto for his own work); and so to Scheeben we now turn. II One reason the influence of a neglected theologian can return is because later generations come to realize that this unfairly ignored theologian has already solved a controverted problem even before the controversy arose. Such, I maintain, is the case with Matthias Joseph Scheeben on the issue now before us. For what he has managed to do, at least in my estimation, is to concede all the distinctions necessary for keeping grace gratuitous and nature as a correlative reality independent of grace (thus validating Feingold’s and Long’s concerns); but he made all those distinctions for the purpose of showing how nature and grace exist and live in an intimate union, made more intimate precisely because they are distinct realities (thereby addressing de Lubac’s concern that grace not get so cordoned off from the reality of nature that it becomes irrelevant).19 Scheeben scholars have long noticed his insistence that grace must be defined over against nature, which cannot be done unless nature is granted its own self-subsistent reality independent of grace. For example, Aidan Nichols makes bold to put it this way: Right from his earliest work, Natur und Gnade of 1861, Scheeben has insisted on an extremely sharp distinction between nature and supernature, nature and grace. Indeed, were one [to go] looking for texts to illustrate what early twentieth-century critics of neo-Scholasticism called “extrinsicism” and mid-twentieth-century theologians of the nouvelle théologie movement “a two-storey model” of the nature/grace relationship, one could do a lot worse than quarry some texts from Scheeben’s writings.20 19 I owe this insight to Andrew Swafford of Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. Mr. Swafford and I are of course hardly alone in our estimation of “Scheeben the Reconciler”: “The sympathetic citation of his work by twentieth-century theologians as different as Hans Urs von Balthasar, a child of the socalled ‘new theology’ of the 1940s and 1950s, and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, champion, in the years immediately preceding the Second Vatican Council, of ‘strict observance’ Thomism, attests to his mediating role.” Aidan Nichols, O.P., Romance and System: The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben (Denver, CO: Augustine Institute Press, 2010), 19. Feingold also speaks highly of Scheeben: see Feingold, Natural Desire, 118–19. 20 Nichols, Romance and System, 288. Cyril Vollert, Scheeben’s Jesuit translator, agrees: “His most notable contribution to Neo-Scholasticism is his service in Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 445 What is more, Scheeben clearly held to a theory of man’s twofold end, an idea that de Lubac found especially repugnant but which Scheeben seems to have taken for granted, based on the irrefragably obvious anthropological data in front of him (and us) of stunted human ambitions terminating in death. In his words: “Rational creatures, with the nature they have, cannot improve indefinitely. Their progress lasts just so long as the development of their natural faculties will last. But since their natural faculties are finite, the development of rational creatures must also have a determined and limited end.”21 Similarly, Scheeben anticipates the teaching of Pope Pius XII in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis when he frankly asserts the possibility that God could have given man—had he so chosen—a purely natural end: “In addition to the supernatural order of human development established, revealed, and inaugurated by Christ, man has a natural order, based on his nature. This would be the permanent order destined for man if God had not decreed something better. . . . This means that a purely natural state would be possible, that is, a state without any genuine supernatural elements.”22 So important for Scheeben is this rigid distinction between nature and grace that he finds it not just in the Thomist commentary-tradition (where all agree it is to be found), and not just in Thomas himself; he also traces the distinction back to the early Fathers of the Church (which de Lubac presumably would have found preposterous). These Fathers, he claims, “insisted that grace does not merge with nature and that it even possesses a certain autonomy.”23 To add to the anti–de Lubac side of the bringing the supernatural, in its full purity and beauty, back to the center of theological thought.” Cyril Vollert, S.J., “Introduction,” Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co.: 1954), xiii. 21 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace, trans. by a monk of St. Meinrad’s Abbey (New York: Benziger, 1886), 46; emphasis added. Further: “The Church necessarily supposes that there is a natural goal and end; for it teaches that the end now appointed for nature, consisting as it does in the beatific vision of God, is absolutely supernatural, and is to be communicated to us by a special grace. And yet there must be a necessary end for nature.” Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 93. I thank Andrew Swafford for drawing my attention to these two quotations. 22 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 86–87. 23 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, xix: “The Greek Fathers . . . considered grace in its supernatural and divine excellence, as a perfection that surpassed even what was true in the created world of nature. They saw grace in its relations with the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist. Against rationalistic Nestorianism they pointed out that grace, like the Incarnation, has a supernatural, mysterious connection with the Godhead; against the Manichaeans, Gnostics, and Eutychians they brought to light the difference and opposition between 446 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. ledger, other passages imply that Scheeben would have been quite flabbergasted by de Lubac’s claim that the pure-nature thesis led to secularism. For him quite the opposite is true: [T]he crisis [of secularism] has not yet been completely settled, and it will not be settled until the supernatural order is frankly, adequately, and radically distinguished from the natural order. . . .Whenever these truths are not assigned their own exclusive sphere and are intermingled with truths of the natural order, they are necessarily confused with the latter, and therefore not only lose their organic union with truths of their own kind but suffer a dimming of their own light.24 In other words, without a resolute distinction between nature and grace, apologetics becomes impossible, which was also a principle of neoThomist attacks on de Lubac. Astute observers will notice, however, a decided shift in accent that has taken place here from the standard neo-Thomist approach to apologetics. As Gerald McCool points out, standard manual apologetics, based on Thomas’s treatment of the so-called praeambula fidei (truths of natural theology that could be proved by reason alone), started with purely rational arguments (for the existence of God and the like) and only then proceeded to those truths that could be known solely by faith. According to these Roman Thomists: “By preserving that distinction [between faith and reason], scholastic philosophy could mount strong philosophical arguments for the credibility of revelation without compromising the transcendence of Christianity’s revealed mysteries.”25 But then—at least in McCool’s analysis—that style of apologetics had completely lost its ability to address the operative assumptions of the “cultured despisers” of Christianity living in the nineteenth century: Late nineteenth-century idealists considered the historical “facts of Christian revelation” proclaimed by its authentic witnesses as matters of no significance to them. Since man’s interior life of consciousness required no knowledge of such external facts either for its intellectual or for its moral development, historical Revelation could be simply nature and grace. . . . With remarkable penetration and incisiveness these Fathers, notably Cyril of Alexandra, triumphantly combated the naturalist and rationalist tendency that marked Nestorius and that had earlier appeared among the Arians. They remain the best allies in our conflict with modern rationalism. Yet they have been hardly studied at all” (ibid., xviii–xix). 24 Ibid., 13, 15. 25 Gerald A. McCool, The Neo-Thomists (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1994), 34. Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 447 dismissed out of hand. Even if Christ had lived, and [even] if the alleged witnesses of Revelation had told the truth, these were just external facts of history.They were no different from thousands of other singular facts which ancient historians could verify. Brute, singular facts like these were completely “extraneous” to the vital needs of a consciousness whose immanent development must be directed by its own universal laws. On principle then, extrinsic historical facts, like the life of Christ or the preaching of St. Paul, could not be matters of concern either to the philosopher or to the philosophically enlightened intellectual. He had no need to know them. In fact, since they were useless distractions which might impede the progress of his inner life, he would be well advised to ignore them. The current Catholic apologetics had been devised to answer the arguments of eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers who were willing to debate the claims of Christian Revelation. But late nineteenth-century idealists had no intention of debating with Christian apologists. As a matter of principle, apologists were to be denied a hearing.26 For all these reasons—so effectively described by McCool—Scheeben realized that apologetics could only be, in the last analysis, simply good theology, that is, a theology that displayed the strictly supernatural character of Christianity from the outset. Such a move of course did not mean for Scheeben any concession to liberalism, which the Modernists took as their starting point in order to make the Christian message plausible to their skeptical contemporaries. Quite the contrary, Scheeben was intensely anti-liberal.27 But his stress on the supernatural as the key locus for apologetics does come close to de Lubac’s concern that the Church’s supernaturally validated message must be seen to address the real concerns of the age. Both Scheeben and de Lubac agree that apologetics will be chasing after a mirage if it vainly tries to address putatively self-sufficient 26 Ibid., 47. 27 John Courtney Murray even goes so far as to speak of Scheeben’s “hatred” of liber- alism: “One might perhaps best characterize these [early] years by calling them the period in which the one great theological hate of Scheeben’s life was kindled to flaming intensity—his hate of rationalistic and naturalistic religious Liberalism. It may seem strange to speak of hate in connection with a man of Scheeben’s quiet temper; however, the passion does show itself in the texts in which he attacks this particular error.” John Courtney Murray, S.J., “The Root of Faith,” 24. Nichols expresses the same point, albeit without Murray’s psychologizing attribution of “hate” to Scheeben: “Ultramontane Scheeben certainly was. . . . However, Scheeben’s articles in defense of [Vatican I] were essentially occasional pieces, unrepresentative of the general tenor of his theological work.” Aidan Nichols, O.P., “Homage to Scheeben,” in Scribe of the Kingdom: Essays on Theology and Culture,Vol. I (London: Sheed & Ward, 1994): 205–13: here 205–6. 448 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. secularists using arguments drawn from their own self-justifying and closed-off rationalism. But where Scheeben shows his greatest divergence from the manual school, a divergence best represented recently by Feingold and Long, is in his next step: his insistence that nature and grace must be kept conceptually distinct in order to make their “nuptial” union more effective: “When grace is transformed into the light of glory, the union will become an indissoluble spiritual marriage, a matrimonium spirituale ratum et consummatum. The freedom of nature at the side of grace will cease, because it will be thoroughly pervaded by grace and taken up into grace.”28 Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said that we are bewitched by language. Metaphors are our fate. Under that rubric, Scheeben’s change of imagery has a way of blocking the worst implications of the notorious two-tier model of the nature-grace relationship, with a “supernature” sitting atop nature, like a penthouse atop a skyscraper. As Nichols explains: Scheeben’s principal organizing metaphor for the nature/grace relation is very different. It is drawn not from architecture but from marriage. It is nuptiality. Yes, he makes a sharp ontological distinction between nature and grace. But he treats nature and grace as intimately conjoined in a matrimonial bond, co-inhabiting, according to the divine covenant, in a connubial relationship, inter-penetrating in life and love. Scheeben is not only a theologian of the difference between the natural and the supernatural, he is the theologian of their connubium as well.29 Of course a mere change of imagery won’t accomplish much without an argument demonstrating why nature and grace belong together in married bliss. For that we must turn to what is perhaps Scheeben’s most radical move: his grounding of the nature-grace relation in the bond between the human and divine natures of Christ in the hypostatic union. What Scheeben points out is that Christ’s human nature is (of course) a part of creation, but not his divine nature—which is, well, divine. While this sounds obvious (and is), its implications are vast. For one thing, it means that God’s power to create and sustain the universe in being is not the same as his power to become incarnate; and since the whole point of the Incarnation is to restore man to friendship with God, this means that the union between man and God effected by grace requires far more than “topping off ” nature with a superadded gift: 28 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 337. 29 Nichols, Romance and System, 289; all italics in the original text. Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 449 In the ordinary created thing, God is present only as its maker and conserver. Without His presence in this way, things could not exist. But in the soul having grace He is present as sanctifier, giving Himself to the creature and sharing with him the holiness of His own being. This recalls the way in which God the Father is in His only-begotten Son. . . . Thus, as the presence of the Father in His Son is different from His presence in creatures, similarly the presence of the Holy Ghost in the souls of the just is different from His ordinary manner of dwelling in creatures.30 That Scheeben means the word “similarly” as no mere rhetorical flourish or as a kind of vague resemblance becomes apparent when he goes on to establish what the grounding of the nature-grace relationship in the Incarnation actually entails: now we should no longer speak of mere adoption but of something between “adoptive” and “natural” sonship, something that, in his words, “closely interlaces the adoptive sonship with natural sonship.”31 Elsewhere, he radicalizes the Johannine concept that believers are “born of God” ( John 1:13c) in this way: Every child that is born receives its nature from its father. Therefore, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is called Son and the First is called Father, because the Latter [that is, the Father] has shared His own Divine Nature of being with the Former [the Son]. . . . When through grace we receive a sharing of the Divine Nature and of the divine life, it is then true in a strict sense [im eigentlichen Sinne] that we are born of God.32 Especially in his later book The Mysteries of Christianity, Scheeben hammers away at this point: just as the hypostatic union means the substantial union of God and man in Christ (“hypo-static” being the Greekrooted equivalent to the Latin-rooted word “sub-stantial”), so too the union of God with the Christian is “similarly” substantial. Indeed, as substantial, this union means that grace can no longer be conceived as coming to man from without: Thus the incarnation of the Son of God is the real basis for the adoption of the human race, and likewise conducts that adoption to a consummation that is unique in its sublimity. . . . This fatherhood is not merely imitated in God’s relationship to man, out of sheer grace, but is joined to man substantially. . . . The Incarnation raises the human race to the bosom of the eternal Father, that it may receive the grace of sonship 30 Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace, 74; emphases added. 31 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1946), 385. 32 Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace, 100; emphases added. 450 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. with all of its implied dignities and rights by a real contact with the source, rather than by a purely gratuitous influx from without.33 “Rights-talk” of course entails talk of obligations: If I have a right to free speech, the government has an obligation to respect that right and cannot throw me into jail for publishing a broadsheet. If I have a right to the free exercise of religion, you have an obligation not to interfere with that right. If I decide to worship Amon-Re, you’re just going to have to grit your teeth and put up with my folly. If I have a right to privacy, you have an obligation not to tap my phone or record my phone conversations without my knowledge or permission.34 Given that indissoluble connection between rights and obligations, one would think that Scheeben would shy away from speaking of any claim we have on God, or any “right” we have over God, that being the surest way to undermine—indeed deny—the gratuity of grace. Of course, he would grant that nothing in the sin of Adam and Eve ever obligated God to save them and their progeny by sending his Son, which he did solely out of love ( John 3: 16). But once the incarnation took place, Scheeben frankly speaks of God’s “obligations.” Notice how he uses the modal verb “must” applied to God here: If, then, the human race . . . becomes the body of Christ, and its members become the members of God’s Son, if the divine person of the Son of God bears them in Himself as His own, then, with due proportion, must not the divine dignity of the Son of God flow over to men, since they are His members? Must not God the Father extend to these members the same love as that which He bears for His natural Son, must He not embrace them in His Son with one and the same love, inasmuch as they belong to Him?35 33 Scheeben, Mysteries, 384–85; emphases added. 34 I am deliberately phrasing the correlation between rights and obligations in the way criticized by Mary Ann Glendon in her Rights Talk:The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: The Free Press, 1991); she scores this formulation for the way it expels the intermediate terms of virtue and responsibility: “The American rights dialect is distinguished not only by what we say and how we say it, but also by what we leave unsaid . . . [the] habitual silences concerning responsibilities” (76). The binary logic of rights vs. obligations also neglects any standard for adjudicating rights in conflict (like the right to a free press vs. the right to a fair trial). But this very situation highlights the oddity of Scheeben’s way of speaking of human rights vis-à-vis God and of God’s (therefore correlative) “obligations” toward humans. But he does so—as will become clear in the next few paragraphs— because of the way he radicalizes the kind of “adoption” we receive from God. 35 Scheeben, Mysteries, 377–78. Here one is reminded of a line from de Lubac: “There can be no question of anything being due to the creature. But, one may Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 451 As Scheeben continues to reflect on this analogy throughout The Mysteries of Christianity, the language he uses grows more radical until his formulations become very nearly eye-popping: Because of Christ this sonship is no longer a mere adoptive sonship, since we receive it not as strangers but as kinsfolk [als Verwandte], as members of the only-begotten Son, and can lay claim to it as a right [und sie als ein Recht beanspruchen können]. The grace of sonship in us has something of the natural sonship of Christ Himself, from which it is derives. Because we are not mere adoptive children, because we are members of the natural Son, we truly enter into the personal relationship in which the Son of God stands to His Father. In literal truth, and not by simple analogy or resemblance, we call the Father of the Word our Father, and in actual fact He is such not by a purely analogous relationship, but by the very same relationship which makes Him the Father of Christ.36 In this way Scheeben seems to have answered, by anticipation, the objections raised by Feingold and Long.37 Yes, much is lost when the concepts of nature and grace are too quickly collapsed into each other. Yes, the existence of natural law itself testifies to ends purely natural perhaps say, it remains true none the less that once such a desire exists in the creature, it becomes the sign not merely of a possible gift from God, but of a certain gift.” Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 207. 36 Scheeben, Mysteries, 383; emphases added. Nor are these views to be found only in Mysteries. In other writings, he shows himself equally comfortable with talk of “rights”: “As children of God, we have a far more intimate relation with God than adopted children have to their father. . . . We are his heirs and we have a right to this inheritance. This right is based on our birth.” Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace, 100–101. 37 Geniuses are like that: they anticipate. I am reminded here of what Harold Bloom said of Shakespeare:“[This is] Shakespeare’s most idiosyncratic strength: he is always ahead of you, conceptually and imagistically, whoever and whenever you are. He renders you anachronistic because he contains you; you cannot subsume him. You cannot illuminate him with a new doctrine, be it Marxism or Freudianism or Demanian linguistic skepticism. Instead, he will illuminate the doctrine, not by prefiguration but by postfiguration, as it were: all of Freud that matters most is there in Shakespeare already, with a persuasive critique of Freud besides. The Freudian map of the mind is Shakespeare’s; Freud seems only to have prosified it. Or, to vary my point, a Shakespearean reading of Freud illuminates and overwhelms the text of Freud; a Freudian reading of Shakespeare reduces Shakespeare, or would if we could bear a reduction that crosses the line into absurdities of loss. Coriolanus is a far more powerful reading of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon than any Marxist reading of Coriolanus could hope to be.” Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Riverhead, 1994), 24. 452 Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (ethics being fundamentally a teleological discipline).Yes, the case of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics proves that a purely human “thriving” (eudaimonia) is an entirely appropriate standard for adjudicating purely intra-human ethical issues, and one for which the revelation of the biblical God of the Ten Commandments is not necessarily required. But as early as his book Nature and Grace we find Scheeben insisting that, for a Christian, natural law has already been subsumed into the divine “law” of discipleship, of sonship, so that for a Christian there really is no such thing as an independent natural law: Who can fail to perceive . . . that the doctrine of supernature, which is an elevation of human nature above its own level, clarifies and specifies the transcendence of Christian morality over all philosophical, rational, and rationalistic morality. . . . Philosophical ethics, in the sense of a system set up in opposition and defiance against theological morality, is unquestionably not a true and genuine morality. For in the present order purely natural relationships do not exist alone and apart, and therefore cannot be made to prevail in isolated self-sufficiency.38 Even more ringingly, in the Epilogue to this early book and just a few pages before its end, Scheeben calls for an end to a Christian ethics conceived as a heteronomous imposition of alienating rules. In Christian discipleship morality is lifted up to something greater and higher—not in the Hegelian sense of aufgehoben (suspended, rendered invalid), but in the sense of being raised up to make us what we have always been destined to be: How poverty-stricken and mean Christian morality appears when it is regarded merely as the morality of man (that is, the ethics based on man’s natural moral dignity as found in his reason and free will) rather than as the morality of the sons of God! . . . To grasp the truth that we really are Christ’s brothers, we must go into the question of our conformity with Him in His divine no less than in His human nature. And grace may not be regarded merely as a corroborating factor in moral life; it must be apprehended and presented as the new foundation of that life, pertaining to a higher order.Then we shall develop a true moral theology, as distinct from a moral philosophy.Then we shall be able to preach from the pulpit a morality that shares in the excellence of dogmatic theology, a morality rooted in faith, grace, and the mysteries of Christianity.39 38 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 275; emphasis added. 39 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 343. In other words, Scheeben is trying to get away from Augustine’s notion of grace as mere auxilium (aid for living the moral life) and preferring to put the stress more on the notion favored by the Eastern Fathers of grace as the agent of our apotheosis, divinization. Resolving the Nature-Grace Debate 453 In other words, and in conclusion, the knotty and still unresolved debate over the nature-grace relationship can be resolved, but only by grounding that secondary problem in the prior and greater mystery of the incarnation. After all, the incarnation is that mystery that Thomas himself called the one that “among the divine works most especially exceeds reason; for nothing can be thought of which is more marvelous than this divine accomplishment, that the true God, the Son of God, should become true man” (Summa contra Gentiles IV, 27.1). And one of the most astonishing parts of that marvel is that Jesus, the very incarnate Son of God, could say to us, iam non dico vos servos . . . vos autem dixi amicos: N&V “I no longer call you servants, but friends” ( John 15:15). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 455–502 455 Matthias Joseph Scheeben and the Controversy over the Debitum Peccati T RENT P OMPLUN Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, MD IN 1954, the Second International Mariological Congress celebrated the centennial of Pio Nono’s Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus in Rome, and over the next four years, the Academia Mariana Internationalis published its proceedings in eighteen volumes bound as twenty-two books.1 Saying so will mark me as a Tridentine alarmist, but I think it fair to admit that the briefest perusal of these volumes will sound the depths of the great ‘Marian silence’ that descended upon theology after the Second Vatican Council. Although many people have a great hunger for Marian doctrine, and books both academic and popular are published apace, very little in contemporary Catholic theology can match the depth or richness of Mariology in the 1950s. There were vast dogmatic treatises, such as Roschini’s three-volume Mariologia, a wealth of specialized historical monographs on now-forgotten Mariological pioneers, and a wealth of articles on almost every possible aspect of Mariology from almost everyone who was anyone in the world of Catholic theology.2 As a case in point, the 1 Virgo Immaculata: Acta Congressus Mariologici-Mariani Romae Anno MCMLIV Cele- brati, 18 vols. in 22 tomes (Rome: Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1955–58). Similar volumes representative of the state of the art are the proceedings of the First International Mariological Congress in 1950, Alma Socia Christi, 13 vols. in 15 tomes (Rome: Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1951–53). These two sets are the indispensible starting points for anyone interested in Mariology before the Second Vatican Council. A smaller, more general, all-English set is Juniper Carol, ed., Mariology, 3 vols. (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1954–56). 2 Gabriel M. Roschini, O.S.M., Mariologia, 2d revised edition, 3 vols. (Rome: Angelus Belardetti, 1947). Other important Mariologies of this period include those of Benoît Henri Merkelbach, O.P., Mariologia (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 456 Trent Pomplun eleventh volume of the proceedings of the Second International Mariological Congress was devoted entirely to a controversy that had been raging across several theological journals—the controversy over Mary’s debitum peccati—and the table of contents reads like a who’s who of Mariology in the 1950s. Pride of place went to Jean-François Bonnefoy, the great Franciscan theologian, and he was followed by José Delgado Varela, O. de M., Alejandro de Villalmonte, O.F.M.Cap., Isidro de Guerra Lazpiur, O.F.M., Pedro de Alcántara Martínez, O.F.M., José de Aldama, S.J., and Gabriele Roschini, O.S.M., among others. The volume concluded with a solemn disputation introduced by Charles Boyer, S.J., and conducted with no fewer than twenty-five theologians participating in thirty-three stages. In addition to many of the theologians who contributed articles to this volume, the disputation included the Dominicans Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Rosarius Gagnebet, and Aloisius Ciappi, as well as the great Scotist textual scholar Carolus Balić. Nor did the contributors ignore Matthias Scheeben’s contributions to this controversy. Charles Feckes, the Scheebenist from Cologne, contributed an article on his master’s understanding of the debitum peccati, and Thomas Plassmann, a Franciscan heavily influenced by the great Romantic, participated in the solemn disputation.3 Matthias Scheeben’s contributions to Mariology are well known—if not always read—especially his notion of the Blessed Virgin’s ‘bridal motherhood’ ( gottesbräutliche Mutterschaft ). Now, after Scheeben’s brilliant theological syntheses have gone unread for almost half a century, Aidan Nichols has reminded English readers of Scheeben’s great originality. The Dominican theologian praises Scheeben’s highly holistic sense of the theological tradition and personal theology of the “unique meta-order Incarnation,” but he saves the best wine—Scheeben’s Mariology—for last.4 Nichols provides an able summary of Scheeben’s teaching about the 1939); Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Mariologie. La Mère du Sauveur et notre vie intérieure (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1948); Juniper Carol, O.F.M., Fundamentals of Mariology (New York: Benzinger Bros., 1956); and Juan Alfaro, S.J., Adnotationes in tractatum de Beata Virgine Maria (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1958). I will provide references for various historical studies and ex professo treatments of the debitum peccati at appropriate points throughout this essay. 3 Charles Feckes, “Quid Scheeben de B. V. Mariae debito contrahendi maculam senserit,” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 11 (1957), 333–42;Thomas Plassmann, O.F.M., “Uno eodemque decreto. Maria Immaculata praedestinata in Sacra Pagina,” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 3 (1955), 174–97. The solemn disputation in which Plassmann and the other theologians participated can be found in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 11 (1957), 456–99. 4 Aidan Nichols, O.P., Romance and System: The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben (Denver, CO: Augustine Institute Press, 2010). Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 457 Virgin and makes a valiant attempt to unpack much of his rather compact presentation of the basic elements of Mariology. To do so with Scheeben’s views on the debitum peccati is an especially onerous task, as his views on this highly technical controversy are difficult to characterize—to say the least. Scheeben professed himself dissatisfied with the arguments provided by many Mariologists before him, and he attempted to provide an alternative to the typical formulations of the problem, although later Mariologists have disagreed whether Scheeben proved successful in the task he set for himself. Charles Feckes, for example, thought that Scheeben’s position was not merely original, but brilliant. Juniper Carol, on the other hand, claims, “The only originality in Scheeben’s theory is to be found in the fact that he deduces it from his peculiar doctrine concerning the socalled ‘bridal motherhood’ of Mary.”5 Otherwise, Carol remarks, Scheeben’s view is “substantially the same” as that proposed by the Jesuit Martín de Esparza Artieda (†1689), except that Scheeben uses the term debitum materiale whereas the Jesuit used the term debitum extrinsecum.6 One feels, when presented with such an arcane objection, that one has a lot to learn before passing judgment on either Scheeben or his critics. I will attempt to do so nonetheless, although I beg the reader’s patience as I try to untangle this rather complicated controversy. In what follows, I will outline the basic positions taken by various theologians on the debitum peccati and show to the best of my ability how Scheeben understood his position in light of his predecessors’. I will point out what he borrowed from the Mariologists of the baroque age, and what he might have learned from them. In doing so, I hope to show that Scheeben’s contribution to the debate is quite creative although it largely fails to meet the standards set by the Mariologists of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. I. The Immaculate Conception and the Debitum Peccati If any topic should be tossed in the dustbin of decadent scholasticism, the controversy over Mary’s debitum peccati might well be the leading candidate, for rarely has there been a debate so complex for which the payoff 5 Juniper Carol, O.F.M., A History of the Controversy over the “Debitum Peccati” (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1978), 188–89. Anyone familiar with these debates will note how heavily I depend upon Carol’s immense bibliographic research. 6 Martín de Esparza Artieda, S.J., Immaculata Conceptio B. M. Virginis deducta ex origine peccati originalis (Rome, 1655), cited by Carol, History, 189. I have not been able to find a copy of this book, and a quick run through his Cursus theologicus (Lyons: Petri Bordae, Joannis & Petri Arnaud, 1685) did not turn up any significant Mariological reflections. 458 Trent Pomplun appears to be so small.7 Even the theologian steeped in scholasticism will find his head spun round and round by the technicalities to which early modern Mariologists subjected the Blessed Virgin Mary. One is tempted to feel sorry for the lowly handmaid as she undergoes yet another operation, under the care of a steady stream of doctors, who, although unfailingly attentive, lie in wait to pierce her heart with yet another distinction. In truth, however, the debate about Mary’s debitum peccati takes us deep into the heart of our understanding of the Incarnation and original sin, and it raises several important methodological questions about the theological role of counterfactuals. If, at root, it raises questions about the devotion that we owe the Blessed Virgin, and indeed the adoration we owe her divine Son, the debitum peccati can hardly be ignored, even if it remains, like Mariology itself, a somewhat specialized taste in Roman Catholic theology. Since Pius IX promulgated Ineffabilis Deus in 1854, Catholic theologians have followed the line of reasoning on the Immaculate Conception first laid down—or at the very least clarified—by Blessed John Duns Scotus.8 The formal definition of the dogma is as follows: “We define that God has revealed the doctrine that holds the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and 7 Historical and theological studies of the debitum peccati are legion. In addition to Carol’s History, among the most important general treatments include Enrique del Sdo. Corazón, O.C.D., “La Inmaculada en la tradición teológica española: la sentencia sobre el debitum peccati: 1595–1660,” La Ciencia Tomista 81 (1954): 513–64; Alejandro de Villalmonte, O.F.M.Cap., “La Inmaculada y el débito del peccado,” Verdad y Vida 12 (1954): 49–111; J. M. Alonso, C.M.F., “De quolibet debito a B. M. Virgine prorsus excludendo,” Ephemerides Mariologicae 4 (1954): 201–42 (this is but one of many articles Alonso has written on the debitum); Jean-François Bonnefoy, O.F.M., “Quelques théories modernes du ‘debitum peccati’,” Ephemerides Mariologicae 4 (1954): 269–331; idem, “La negación del ‘debitum peccati’ en María,” Verdad y Vida 12 (1954): 102–71; Ovid Casado, C.M.F., “La Inmaculdada Concepción y su problemática lapsaria en la mariología española de 1600 a 1655. Estudio de teologia positiva,” Ephemerides Mariologicae 7 (1957): 5–96; idem, Mariología clássica española, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1958); J. M. Delgado Varela, O. de M., “Exención de débito según los mariólogos españoles de 1600 a 1650,” Ephemerides Mariologicae 1 (1951): 501–26; and B. Ocerinjáuregui, O.F.M., “Exención del débito y del fomes peccati en la Virgen María,” Verdad y Vida 5 (1947): 419–51. 8 The locus classicus is Duns Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 3, q. 1, in B. Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia IX (Vatican City: Typis Vaticanis, 2005), 169–91, especially 174–75, 176–78, nn. 17, 21–25. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 459 constantly by all the faithful.”9 Of course, there is much of interest in Ineffabilis Deus aside from this formal definition, and a great deal of the debate that followed in its wake takes up various aspects of the Apostolic Constitution, especially as it adopts and shapes earlier papal and conciliar teaching on the special privileges of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Following Scheeben, however, we will focus primarily on the dogmatic definition. Borrowing (but modifying) a list from Juniper Carol, I would highlight six points of the dogma.10 It is de fide: 1. that Our Lady was immune from all stain of original sin; 2. that God granted the Virgin this immunity at the very first instant of her conception; 3. that the Virgin’s immunity was due to God’s singular grace and privilege; 4. that her immunity was granted in view of the merits of Jesus Christ; 5. that her immunity was granted by way of preservation; and 6. that Our Lady was therefore saved by Christ.11 The Church, however, has not defined the following points: 9 Pius IX, Bulla “Ineffabilis Deus,” 8 Dec. 1854: “Declaramus, pronuntiamus et definimus doctrinam quae tenet beatissimam Virginem Mariam in primo instanti suae conceptionis fuisse singulari Omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio, intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis, ab omni originalis culpae labe praeservatam immunem, esse a Deo revelatam, atque idcirco ab omnibus fidelibus firmiter constanterque credendam” (DS 2803). 10 Juniper Carol, O.F.M., “Reflections on the Problem of Mary’s Preservative Redemption,” Marian Studies 30 (1979): 19–88, at 21–22. 11 Carol feels that it is de fide that Mary was redeemed by Christ, although strictly speaking the text mentions Christ not as Redeemer but as Savior. Many, if not most, theologians consider the two concepts to be identical, and a case can be made that the best way to interpret the text is as if it said Christi Jesu Redemptoris, since these are the words of the text of Alexander VII, Breve “Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum,” 8 Dec. 1661 (DS 2015). The Mariologist Juan Alfaro feels that Mary’s redemption is at least proxima fidei. Cf. J. Alfaro, “La fórmula definitoria de la Inmaculada Concepción,” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 2 (1956), 201–75, at 270–71. Still, a case can be made that the Apostolic Constitution changed the title Redemptoris to Salvatoris precisely to include the position of several theologians who argued that Christ preserved Mary from contracting the stain of original sin by His glorification rather than by His Passion as such. Indeed, the Church has never felt a need to reduce Christ’s mediation to redemption alone, however much individual theologians have been tempted to do so. 460 Trent Pomplun 1. the specific parameters of the original sin from which Mary was preserved immune;12 2. whether the expression ‘all stain’ (omni labe) includes immunity from the infectio carnis, from the debitum peccati, or from concupiscence; 3. whether the phrase ‘by a singular grace’ (singulari gratia) is to be understood in the sense of a special ‘exclusive’ grace, as sanctifying grace, or as a divine favor; 4. whether the word ‘privilege’ is to be understood in the sense of a ‘dispensation’ or an ‘exemption’ from the law; 5. whether God foresaw Christ’s merits post praevisum lapsum;13 6. whether God’s foreknowledge of Christ’s merits was by His scientia simplicis intelligentiae, scientia visionis, or scientia media sive conditionata;14 7. whether Christ saved His mother per modum glorificationis, per modum redemptionis, per modum satisfactionis, and/or per modum sacrifici;15 nor 8. whether the word ‘revealed’ is to be understood formally or virtually.16 12 As Allan Wolter remarks, to interpret Mary’s privilege fully, a theologian must adopt some definite theory about the nature of original sin but, while the Church has corrected several erroneous theories about its transmission and consequences, she has never defined its precise nature. Allan Wolter, O.F.M.,“The Theology of the Immaculate Conception in Light of ‘Ineffabilis Deus’,” Marian Studies 5 (1954): 19–72, at 21. It might be noted here that theologians often presented their views on original sin in light of several other complex issues, such as the possibility of a natura pura, the nature of final ends, etc. 13 Later in this essay I will say more about the celebrated controversy between Thomists and Scotists about whether the Word was predestined ‘before’ or ‘after’ God foresaw the Fall. 14 I have added number 6 to Carol’s list, since theologians of the baroque era almost always interpreted Mary’s predestination in light of these categories, which designate God’s knowledge of all possibles in Himself, His knowledge of all things that He does in fact create, and His knowledge of future contingent acts of free agents. As a corollary to the sixth and seventh items on the list, we might note that Ineffabilis Deus does not define at what moment in the signa rationis Mary was predestined to the Divine Maternity. 15 Here, too, I have modified Carol’s list in light of his mistaken claim that Christ’s meditation must be thought of as redemption per se. Baroque theologians taught several theories about how Christ saved Mary by His glory, redemption, satisfaction, and/or sacrifice. Of course, much hangs on how one defines each of these terms, and whether Christ redeemed the Blessed Virgin sensu proprio. I will return to this issue in the final section of this essay. 16 The methodological issues undergirding this question are extremely complex, encompassing questions about the scientific nature of theology, the development Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 461 Theologians who tackle the Immaculate Conception professionally have generally interpreted the topics on the first list in light of the topics on the second, and Scheeben is no exception this to rule.The debate about the debitum peccati is, of course, a debate about how to interpret the omni labe of the formal definition, although the debate precedes Pio Nono’s dogmatic definition by several centuries. Although I will touch upon most of the aspects of this debate in passing, it bears noting that Scheeben’s ex professo treatment of the debitum peccati is principally concerned with the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh items on the second list. So, if one accepts that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived immaculately, the field for theological reflection is still rather wide, and we can get a sense of this latitude by exploring the various options the theologian has in explaining the second item on the second list: the debitum peccati. The Roman Catholic theologian might, for example, argue that the Blessed Virgin, who as a child of Adam still stood in need of the Savior, inherited the ‘debt’ (debitum) of original sin without inheriting its ‘stain.’ This indeed of doctrine, and modern Biblical hermeneutics. In the lead up to the formal definition of the dogma, Perrone had already noted that Dominican theologians such as Torquemada, Cajetan, or Melchior Cano rejected the Immaculate Conception because it could not be deduced with metaphysical necessity from some other truth revealed in Scripture or tradition. In other words, these Dominicans rightly noted that Scotus’s teaching on the Immaculate Conception, which was based on an argument ex convenientia, seemed to imply that theology could not be a science based solely on ‘conclusions.’ That Ineffabilis Deus used Genesis 3:15 as its ‘prooftext’ only heightened the methodological difficulties. For a review of the difficulties of squaring Ineffabilis Deus with developments in Biblical hermeneutics, see the competing accounts of Gabriel M. Roschini, O.S.M., “Sull’interpretazione patristica del protoevangelo (Gen. 3, 15),” Marianum 6 (1944): 76–96; Heinrich Lennerz, S.J., “Concensus Patrum in interpretatione mariologica Gen 3:15?” Gregorianum 27 (1946): 300–318; Tibertius Gallus, S.J., Interpretatio Mariologica Protoevangelii (Gen. 3, 15) tempore postpatristico usque ad Concilium Tridentinum (Rome: Orbis Catholicus, 1949); idem, Interpretatio Mariologica Protoevangelii posttridentina usque ad definitionem Immaculatae Conceptionis, 2 vols. (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1953–54); Jean-François Bonnefoy, O.F.M., Le Mystère de Marie selon le Protévangile et l’Apocalypse (Paris: J.Vrin, 1949); and Dominic Unger, O.F.M.Cap., The First Gospel: Genesis 3:15 (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1954). (This last work has an extensive annotated bibliography on the problem.) For a quick survey of similar questions about Ineffabilis Deus and the development of doctrine, see Allan Wolter, O.F.M., “The Theology of the Immaculate Conception in Light of ‘Ineffabilis Deus’,” Marian Studies 5 (1954): 19–72, esp. 30–61. For background on the modern theologies of dogmatic development, see the excellent work of Guy Mansini, O.S.B., “What is a Dogma?” The Meaning and Truth of Dogma in Edouard Le Roy and His Scholastic Opponents (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1985). 462 Trent Pomplun is the classical ‘debitist’ position, first advanced by defenders of the Immaculate Conception in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It simply foregoes specifying the nature of this debt, and is sometimes referred to as a debitum simpliciter. Many theologians, however, have attempted to specify the nature of this debt in order to better understand the blessed Virgin’s singular grace and privilege, her predestination, and ultimately her relationship to her divine Son. If, they say, we understand the debitum peccati as the universal necessity to contract original sin, it can be said to have two conditions. In the first place, anyone conceived in the normal manner is said to fall under this necessity because Adam is the natural head of the human family. In the second, anyone so conceived is said to be included by divine decree in the very act of disobedience by which Adam lost the grace given to him in Paradise, because Adam is not merely the natural but also the moral head of the human family. The first condition imposes original sin upon Adam’s descendants by a ‘remote necessity’ (debitum remotum), while the second imposes it upon them by a ‘proximate necessity’ (debitum proximum). Thus a Roman Catholic theologian might argue that Mary, because she was conceived in the normal manner of all men and women, should have contracted original sin, but did not, because God, by way of a special dispensation, suspended the law that requires all men and women to be included in the will of Adam. The Blessed Virgin would then be said to have inherited a ‘proximate debt’ to Adam on account of being conceived by a normal act of seminal generation. In such a model, Mary is included in the will of Adam—she is subject to the universal law of original sin just like anyone else—but God suspends the application of the law so that she may be conceived immaculately. On the other hand, a theologian might argue that God exempted Mary from being included in the will of Adam, thereby preserving her from contracting original sin, although she still suffers the effects of the Fall because she is a child of Adam. The Blessed Virgin would then be said to have inherited only a ‘remote debt’ from Adam. Being conceived by an act of seminal generation, Mary still falls under the universal necessity to contract original sin; she is not, however, included in the will of Adam. One maintains no more than that Mary would have contracted original sin had she not been preserved. In a nutshell, if one asserts that Mary inherits a ‘proximate debt,’ she is included in the will of Adam, but the penalty is suspended, while if one asserts that Mary inherits a ‘remote debt,’ she is not included in the will of Adam, and so does not incur the penalty. Stated positively, one might say that in the first case, God preserves Mary from the stain of original sin, even though she remains under its necessity, being conceived according to the normal manner and being included in the will of Adam, while Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 463 in the second case, God preserves Mary from the proximate necessity of contracting original sin, such that she is never included in the will of Adam, even though she remains under a remote necessity, inasmuch as she is still conceived in a normal manner.The operative distinction in this case is between Adam’s natural and moral headship. Later we will spend some time discussing whether this distinction amounts to the sort of unnecessary hairsplitting that often burdens scholastic theology. For now, it suffices to note that Scheeben found it very important. A theologian might also argue that God preserved Mary from every debt of original sin, whether proximate or remote. In this fourth and final position, God predestined Mary independently of Adam’s sin, and so preserved Our Lady not only from original sin but also from the necessity of contracting it. The advocate of the nullum debitum or ‘exemptionist’ position still maintains that Mary, being conceived in the manner of all human persons, is a true child of Adam, and further that her salvation is owed to the grace of Christ. She participates in the suffering of her Son, but she is under no strict necessity to do so. Although the ‘exemptionist’ position is most often associated with Franciscan theologians, it claims adherents from a number of religious orders. Of course, its Scotistic pedigree must be acknowledged, since it applies the reasoning of the Marian Doctor’s account of Christ’s predestination to his famous argumentum ex convenientia for the Immaculate Conception, in which Mary is ‘redeemed’ in “the most perfect manner.”17 At root, theologians who argue that Mary is preserved from any manner of necessity to contract sin will deny that seminal generation imposes any necessity to contract original sin upon children so conceived, but is merely a conditio sine qua non of incurring original sin. In other words, conception after the normal fashion gives rise to no more than the possibility of contracting original sin. So—just in case you have not been keeping score—there are four basic positions a Catholic theologian may take with respect to the debitum peccati. He may: (1) simply assert Mary’s need for Christ’s grace without 17 This somewhat Scotist wording was adopted by Pius XII, Litt. Encylc. “Fulgens corona,” 8 Sept. 1953: “Neque asseverari potest hac de causa minui Redemptionem Christi, quasi iam non ad universam pertineat Adami subolem; atque adeo aliquid de ipsius Divini Redemptoris munere ac dignitate detrahi. Etenim si rem funditus diligenterque perspicimus, facile cernimus Christum Dominum perfectissimo quodam modo divinam Matrem suam revera redemisse, cum, ipsius meritorum intuitu, eadem a Deo praeservata esset a quavis hereditaria peccati labe immunis. Quamobrem infinita Iesu Christi dignitas eiusque universalis Redemptionis munus hoc doctrinae capite non extenuatur vel remittitur, sed augetur quam maxime” (DS 3909). 464 Trent Pomplun specifying the nature of the debt (debitum simpliciter); (2) assert that Mary has a proximate debt, falling under the natural and moral headship of Adam (debitum proximum); (3) assert that Mary has a remote debt, falling only under the natural headship of Adam (debitum remotum); or (4) assert that Mary has no debt to sin whatsoever (nullam debitum). Sometimes the debitum proximum is called a debitum personale or a debitum intrinsecum. Sometimes the debitum remotum is identified with or subdivided into other forms, such as a debitum naturale, a debitum radicale, a debitum materiale, or a debitum extrinsecum, or at the very far end of the spectrum, a debitum conditionatum, a debitum virtuale, or a potestas peccandi.18 I will outline several variants of these positions in the course of this essay. We need not follow all of these forking paths. Beyond the debitum simpliciter, perhaps the best way to remember the most important variants of these basic Marian counterfactuals is this: debitum proximum (should have), debitum remotum (would have), potestas peccandi (could have), following the American rather than the British usage of the auxiliary verbs.19 A quick reminder, though: in contemporary Roman Catholic theology, all of these positions are explanations of the Immaculate Conception. Of course, the theologian who denies that the Blessed Virgin was conceived immaculately retreats into ‘maculism’ and so places himself beyond the pale of Catholic theology. II. Matthias Joseph Scheeben on the Debitum Peccati Scheeben presents his account of the debitum peccati as an interpretation of Ineffabilis Deus, and I think it will be helpful to follow him in this respect.20 As almost every commentator has noted, Scheeben’s account is rather difficult to follow.21 He moves very quickly through several sets of distinctions as he provides both a theological and a historical summary of the controversy in light of Ineffabilis Deus. Scheeben seems to have assumed that any reader should be readily acquainted with the dozens— if not hundreds—of theologians who are now quite less well known than 18 This is only the beginning of the seemingly endless way theologians have divided the debitum. Some, unhappy with the language of ‘proximate’ and ‘remote’ necessity, have suggested ‘moral’ and ‘physical,’ ‘actual’ and ‘virtual,’ and so on. Carol judges most of these to be unnecessarily subtle shadings of the more common language of ‘proximate’ and ‘remote’ necessity, although I am inclined to think, with Scheeben, that the subtle shadings matter. 19 In this way of simplifying the debate, I differ from Juniper Carol. See footnote 28 for Carol’s presentation. 20 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Handbuch der Katholischen Dogmatik V/2, §279a in Gesammelte Schriften VI/2 (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1954), 387–99. 21 Carol, for example, remarks that Scheeben’s “characteristically involved style makes it somewhat difficult to categorize him properly.” Carol, History, 186. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 465 they were in Scheeben’s day or, for that matter, than they were during the 1950s. I obviously cannot claim to know these sources as well as Scheeben did, and I cannot claim to understand his argument perfectly, so the interpretation that follows should be considered tentative at best. The subject of Ineffabilis Deus, according to Scheeben, is Mary considered first and foremost as a person.22 The Apostolic Constitution, he says, has nothing to do with Mary’s conception considered actively, as the generative actions of Joachim and Anne, or even passively insofar as Mary is considered the fruit of her saintly parents. Rather, Mary’s person has its origin “in the same principle” (in demselben Prinzip) from which the privilege of her Immaculate Conception springs, because she owes her existence to the creation and infusion of her soul by God.23 This singular grace and Mary’s origin from God are connected “formally” (formell ), so much so that the two actions, conception and redemption, can be said to be one divine action. Indeed, Scheeben is so taken with this mystery that he thinks we might well speak of Mary’s conceptio divina or conceptio a Deo in addition to her conceptio humana sive ab homine. Mary’s conception is immaculate not only because it proceeds from God, but also because it makes her holy and immaculate in her very origin. It secures her against any stain or stigma associated with human intercourse after the fall. The first thing we should note about Scheeben’s presentation of the debitum peccati is his emphasis on Mary’s person. One of the things that we will soon see is that Scheeben wants to recast the distinction between the debitum remotum and the debitum proximum in terms of Mary’s person. By doing so, he is laying the foundation for deducing his notion of the debitum from Mary’s predestination to be the bridal Mother of God. Two things should be kept in mind before proceeding. First, Scheeben believes that Mary’s preservation from the stain of sin is formally sanctifying. In the terms of our second list above, he wants to make it clear that the singular grace by which God establishes Mary as Mother of God is not a mere favor. When the Blessed Virgin is conceived immaculately, God does not 22 As Bachelet himself noted, the bishops expressly wanted the wording of Ineffa- bilis Deus to exclude any possible revival of the old scholastic debates about whether the Virgin’s body or soul was the subject of the privilege. F. X. Bachelet, S.J., “Immaculée Conception,” in DTC VII/1 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1921), cols. 846–1218, at 1203. On Bachelet, see the bitter review of Jean-François Bonnefoy, O.F.M., “Quelques théories modernes du ‘debitum peccati’,” Ephemerides Mariologicae 4 (1954): 269–331. For a detailed account of the history of the dogmatic definition, see Vincenzo Sardi, La solenne definizione del dogma dell’Immaculato Concepimento di Maria Santissima: Atti e documenti, 2 vols. (Roma: Tipografia Vaticana, 1904–5). 23 Handbuch V/2, p. 391, n. 1670. Trent Pomplun 466 merely protect her from the stain of sin, He engenders a positive reality. If we see the Blessed Virgin’s sanctity as a mere negation of original sin, and not as a true supernatural radiance, we will fail to understand the nature of this mystery and so be led into a series of mistaken views about the Mother of God. Secondly, we must always bear in mind that Mary’s purity is not the result of liberation from a sin that she has already contracted, but rather is properly preservative. With these two qualifications in mind, Scheeben interprets the words ab omni originalis culpae labe praeservatam immunem to indicate that Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin before it could have any effect. In this respect, the sanctifying grace that God granted to Mary in the very first instant of her existence excludes original sin entirely. Mary is not only preserved from all defects and blemishes belonging to original sin materially, she receives original sanctity and justice at her conception. But, Scheeben quickly adds, these words of the definition in no way require us to deny that Mary sinned in Adam “ideally” (ideell).24 It is important to recognize that Mary can still be implicated in Adam’s personal sin, which affects his posterity as the head influences the members, and that she still in some respects can be said to fall under the shadow of sin. She can suffer, for example, and die. At this point, the pressing issue for Scheeben is not whether Mary might be subject to any debt or law consequent upon the sin of Adam, but rather whether its stain is effectively communicated to her, and indeed this is the classic form of the Immaculate Conception that one finds in most late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury manuals of dogmatic theology: by the Immaculate Conception we mean that, while Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin, she still remained under its debt insofar as she stood in need of the merits of Jesus Christ. So far, so good. The words intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis indicate the ground on which the granting of this privilege is based. As Scheeben says,“Mary also stood in need of this merit of redemption in order to obtain freedom from this stain, and because of this, in her case the necessity of being subject to this stigma would have existed, had not Christ gained her freedom from it.Thus Mary’s freedom from the stain of sin always bears the essential mark of a liberating, saving, or redeeming action.”25 Although 24 Handbuch V/2, p. 392, n. 1672. 25 HandbuchV/2, p. 393, n. 1674: “Maria auch des Heilsverdienstes des Erlösers bedurft habe, um jene Freiheit von der Makel zu erlangen, und daß folglich bei ihr die Notwendigkeit bestand, der Makel zu verfallen, wofern Christus ihr nicht die Freiheit von derselben verdient hätte. Darum hat die Bewahrung vor der Makel immerhin wesentlich den Charakter einer befreienden, rettenden oder erlösenden Tätigkeit.” Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 467 Christ does not save Mary from an evil that had already attacked her, He still saves her from the necessity of incurring that evil. The evil from which Christ protects the Blessed Virgin is neither vague nor indefinite. It does not menace her from the outside or from some vaguely defined future in which she might sin; the issue at stake in the debate about Mary’s debitum peccati is her salvation from a necessity that binds her by the very fact of her being human, that is, by the existing ‘laws’ consequent upon her origin in and solidarity with her tainted ancestor Adam. The debitum peccati, while not a ‘necessity’ in the strict sense, is still a legal or quasi-legal ‘liability’ (obnoxium), a ‘necessity of incurring the stain’ (debitum incurrendi maculam), a ‘stain contracted or drawn from one’s nature’ (contrahendi trahendi cum natura maculam), or simply a ‘being born with the stain’ (nascendi cum macula).26 Scheeben notes that theologians disagreed about how to explain these terms. Proponents of the debitum proximum argued that Mary, considered as a child of Adam, was deprived of the grace of original sanctity and justice on account of the debitum incurrendi maculam, but that, considered in terms of her person, this necessity was offset by the grace of redemption such that the forfeited sanctity and justice were thereby granted to Mary in the first moment of her existence. In the more traditional way of presenting the debitum proximum, Mary thus falls under the will of Adam and can be said in a sense to fall under the shadow of his sin, insofar as God was under no obligation to give her that grace. According to proponents of the debitum proximum, the chief difference between Mary and the other offspring of Adam is that God granted her the grace of redemption before the stain of sin could be incurred. In other words, the grace that preserved the Blessed Virgin from the stain of sin is anterior to the stain, but posterior to the debt of incurring it. Mary does indeed fall under the law of sin as a child of Adam and Eve, but God does not pronounce the penalty due to her according to that law. She should have incurred the punishment under the law, but she does not. Her preservative redemption, we might say, is best thought of as an act of supreme mercy. Proponents of the debitum remotum, on the other hand, felt that this understanding of the debitum placed, as Scheeben wittily has it, the new Eve in a state of dependence on the old Adam.27 The Blessed Virgin, they felt, fell under the law of sin only in the most attenuated fashion. Scheeben himself identifies several variations of the debitum remotum. One group— Scheeben does not name names—reduced Mary’s implication in the law of Adam to a nominal participation, indeed to a mere condition, such that 26 This list is from Handbuch V/2, p. 393, n. 1675. 27 Handbuch V/2, p. 394, n. 1677. 468 Trent Pomplun the debitum would have been incurred had it not been prevented by an infusion of grace. In this case, such preventative grace is anterior to the ‘fulfillment’ of the debt, although the debt remains in principle.This is one classic form of the debitum remotum called the debitum conditionatum. It maintains no more than that Mary would have contracted original sin had she not been prevented from incurring its debt. A second group, closely related to the first, rejected Mary’s implication in the law of Adam even nominally, maintaining that debitum could have been operative had not God prevented its application by a special privilege. This second group, in other words, stands against the first group much as the proponents of the debitum remotum stand against the proponents of the debitum proximum. In this case, the grace whereby God preserves the Blessed Virgin is altogether anterior to the incurring of the debt. At best, one might say that Mary has a mere potestas (or potentia) peccandi based upon her human nature, that is, that she could have contracted the debt had God not prevented her from doing so by a special privilege. This variant is generally considered the most attenuated form of the debitum remotum, at least if one does not include the various nullum debitum positions in this category. These various oppositions can often be quite confusing, since theologians use the phrase debitum remotum to cover a wide variety of positions: some as a mere conditional, some as the ‘condition’ of human nature under sin, and some as the ‘condition’ of human nature considered abstractly, that is, as having the power to sin.28 For this reason, Scheeben notes that the debitum remotum can also be considered in terms of the way in which God grants the singular privilege of the Immaculate Conception. Some theologians maintain that Mary was not subject to the necessity of incurring the stain of sin because, since she was set apart from Adam, the law could not rightfully extend to her person. Here, Scheeben says, somewhat subtly, that while this debt is still a remote debt, insofar as 28 Carol, History, 7, distinguishes the ‘conditional form’ of the debitum from the debi- tum conditionatum, stating that the simple conditional (i.e., if Mary had not been preserved, she would have contracted original sin) differs in significant logical respects from the debitum conditionatum strictly considered (i.e., if Mary had not been preserved, she should have contracted original sin). In this respect, these two conditional forms mirror the debitum remotum and the debitum proximum without explicitly stating the relationship Mary bears to Adam’s natural and moral headship, or whether her singular privilege is best thought of as a dispensation or as an exemption from the laws of solidarity. I am not always sure that the theologians of the past, such as Robert Grosseteste or John Duns Scotus, deployed such phrases with the same self-consciousness as later theologians, and I am not always sure that all later theologians have either; it seems to me that several theologians speak of the simple conditional form as a debitum conditionatum. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 469 it has been turned away from Mary’s person and limited to its principles, the singular grace of Mary’s conception does not in itself limit the power of original sin to include her nature. In somewhat simpler terms, we might say that the debitum remotum implies that Mary would have fallen under the law, but was granted a dispensation. In any event, other theologians, Scheeben says, interpret Mary’s unique privilege as an exemption from the law of Adam and thus make her entirely independent of him. In this form of the debitum remotum, the law could not justly extend to Mary’s person or nature at all, and the necessity of contracting sin has been limited so radically that the only sense in which these theologians accepted a debt of incurring the stain is that God did not withhold from her the ability to participate in its effects voluntarily. Here, note that Scheeben presents the nullam debitum, or the ‘exemptionist’ position, as the most attenuated form of the debitum remotum insofar as Mary can still participate in the Passion and death of Her Son. Finally, Scheeben notes that the debitum remotum can also be presented under a twofold form according to the manner in which one conceives Mary’s predestination in light of Christ’s own predestination. Some theologians, he maintains, believe that Mary is predestined in concreto as Mother of the Redeemer of sinful mankind, such that Christ’s death operated for her as merit, but not as satisfaction, strictly speaking. Others, however, claim that Mary is predestined with Christ absolutely prior to the prevision of sin and thus independently of Christ’s redeeming death. As we shall see, this additional distinction will be very important for understanding Scheeben’s contributions to this rather technical controversy in Roman Catholic theology—as well as his own failure to understand some other, equally important, contributions. Scheeben, then, has outlined a series of classic oppositions in modern Mariology: First, the debitum peccati simpliciter can be divided into a debitum proximum and a debitum remotum. Secondly, the debitum remotum can be divided into a debitum conditionatum and a simple conditional (or potestas peccandi). Thirdly, the debitum remotum can also be divided according to whether Mary is granted a dispensation from the law to which she was subject as a child of Adam or whether she is exempt from that law altogether. And fourthly, the debitum remotum can be divided into whether one considers it in terms of Mary’s predestination absolute or in concreto. Not all of these positions are mutually exclusive, nor is this (exhausting) list actually exhaustive.29 For our purposes, we might note that Scheeben has 29 Scheeben’s presentation appears to imply that the distinction between consider- ing Mary’s grace as a dispensation and as an exemption is simply another way of expressing the difference between the debitum conditionatum and the potestas peccandi. Strictly speaking, one does not need to identify these categories; in fact, as I 470 Trent Pomplun conveniently omitted the debitum simpliciter, the first position I outlined above, presumably because it does not allow him to set his massive theological erudition into motion. He has also folded the nullum debitum, the fourth position above, into his discussion of the debitum remotum. If we consider the second list above, we might say that Scheeben, after dividing the second item on the list, the debitum simpliciter, into the debitum proximum and the debitum remotum, and then dividing the debitum remotum into the debitum conditionatum and a simple conditional, has divided the debitum remotum according to the fourth distinction, namely whether one understands Mary’s privilege as a dispensation or an exemption; according to the fifth, whether Christ’s merits are foreseen post praevisum lapsum, and (as a corollary to the treatment of Mary’s predestination), according to the seventh, that is, whether Christ saved His mother per modum glorificationis, per modum redemptionis, per modum satisfactionis, or per modum sacrifici. It is important to bear in mind that here Scheeben is presenting not merely the various views on the debitum peccati, but indeed a schematic history of the controversy itself. So Scheeben claims that the opinion that favored the debitum proximum prevailed until the seventeenth century, although the opinion that favored a debitum remotum gained ground after the Council of Trent. In fact, Scheeben is so impressed by the Council’s declaration on Mary that he feels it necessary to point out that Ineffabilis Deus does not deny every form of the debitum proximum. Indeed, he sees the bull as a necessary corrective to excessive formulations of the debitum remotum, especially those that might cause one to doubt whether Mary’s preservation from original sin was a real liberation. The debitum remotum, which Scheeben attributes to Eadmer in embryo, but more properly to Ambrosius Catharinus and the school of Toledo, can at best be defended only in its first form, in light of the merits of Christ’s redemption. According to Scheeben, proponents of the second form of the debitum remotum, which depends upon Mary’s absolute predestination, deny that her grace is a grace of redemption, and so run afoul of the dogmatic definition. In fact, Scheeben even evinces concern that the first form of the debitum remotum only maintains the grace of redemption under duress. Among this welter of theological opinions, then, Scheeben opines that only two are serious contenders: a debitum proximum or a debitum remotum considered in terms of Mary’s predestination in concreto. Given the way in which he has set out the controversy over the debitum peccati, it is not difficult to see why Scheeben favors these two positions: both emphasize hope to show later in this essay, this confusion is caused by an equivocation in the word debitum. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 471 Mary’s person. Variations on the debitum remotum that treat Mary only under the aspect of her human nature, or which treat her predestination apart from the concrete order of salvation history, are all so many abstractions according to Scheeben. Although he does not quite put it this way, Scheeben might be seen to anticipate a point made by many modern Mariologists, namely, that debts, even metaphysical ones, concern persons, not natures. Scheeben, however, professes himself dissatisfied with both positions, at least in the way that theologians have often presented them, and feels that the theologian can avoid their difficulties if he carefully considers Mary’s preservative grace in light of her predestination as Mother of God, an approach, he says, that will yield an “easier” (leichtere) formulation of the debitum peccati.30 Now Scheeben has reached the point to which all of his reflections have tended. The words singulari Omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio bring us finally to the special character of Mary’s privilege, and indeed to the essential mark of her person (Personalcharakter). For the conception of Mary, according to Scheeben, stands between that of ordinary mortals and that of Christ’s own blessed humanity. Like all ordinary human persons, Mary owes the formation of her body to natural propagation and she owes her personhood to the infusion of her soul into her body by God. Like Christ, however, Mary’s soul and body were sanctified in a wholly supernatural manner at the very moment of their union. In Christ’s conception, the debitum peccati was radically and essentially excluded, since it is formally incompatible with the holiness of His divine person. Conversely, in Mary’s conception, the debitum peccati is excluded not essentially, but rather by a special grace of election and by Mary’s predestination as Mother of God. For Scheeben, the divine conception of Mary’s soul is related by analogy to the formation of the sacred flesh during Christ’s own conception, since it is the action of the Holy Spirit which effects both. For this reason, Scheeben says, [a]s long as Mary’s original destiny as Mother of God is thought of only in a general way, it cannot be said that it demanded, essentially and unconditionally, a permanent freedom from all original and personal sin that might have preceded her maternity and thus that it contained a metaphysically valid proof of this very privilege. On the other hand, the fittingness of this privilege can be seen at once to be absolutely necessary if, as I have already explained, Mary’s original destiny as Mother of God is thought positively in its concrete Gestalt, the essential mark of her person, namely, a bridal, spiritual, and matrimonial 30 Handbuch V/2, p. 395, n. 1678. 472 Trent Pomplun grace of a maternity that is accomplished in and with the creation of Mary’s person, indeed in the union of Mary with God and Christ.31 It is only from the vista afforded by Mary’s bridal motherhood that the grace of her Immaculate Conception can be properly related to the merits of Christ. Only here, Scheeben says, can we see that Mary is predestined not abstractly as the Mother of Christ, but concretely as the Mother of the Redeemer, and thus she could and indeed should obtain these graces by the merits of her Son. In this way, the freedom from sin granted to Mary in light of Christ’s merits rests on an intimate union with God and Christ that embraces Mary’s entire being in the very first moment of her creation, such that she cannot be said, either chronologically or naturally, to belong more to Adam than to God and Christ. In fact, God created Mary as a daughter of Adam for the sole purpose that she was to be the Mother of the Redeemer, and as such her bodily relationship to Adam is already and always subservient to both her bodily relationship to her Son and her matrimonial relationship to God. Mary’s bodily relationship to Adam, in short, cannot assert itself in any way. It is held in check, even “paralyzed” ( paralysiert) by her ontologically prior relationship to Christ. The grace of redemption consequently not only precludes Mary incurring of the stain of sin, it even cancels in Mary any share in humanity’s common debt to Adam. Although it may be said that Adam sinned for Mary, in the sense that he forfeited and lost for her the original justice that she would have inherited had he not sinned, it cannot be said in any way that Mary sinned in Adam. Mary rather was born in Christ and thereby preserved by a singular grace and privilege from the necessity and indeed even the concrete possibility of sinning. Thus, Scheeben concludes: The person of Mary, considered materially, abstractly, and secundum quid, that is to say, according to her natural origin and being as the product of 31 Handbuch V/2, p. 397, n. 1682: “Solange man indes die ursprüngliche Bestim- mung Mariens zur Mutter Gottes nur in dieser Allgemeinheit auffaßt, läßt sich nicht gerade sagen, daß dieselbe wesentlich und unbedingt eine stete, dem effektiven Eintritt der Mutterschaft vorausgehende Reinheit von aller ererbten oder persönlichen Sünde fordere und mithin einen metaphysisch stringenten Beweis für dieses Privilegium enthalte. Dagegen erscheint die Konvenienz sofort als eine stringente Notwendigkeit, wenn man die ursprüngliche Bestimmung Mariens zur Mutter Gottes ausdrücklich in der konkreten Gestalt auffaßt, wie sie oben beim Personalcharakter Mariens als gratia maternitatis erklärt wurde, nämlich als eine mit und in der Erschaffung der Person Mariens vollzogene bräutliche, d. h. geistig-matrimoniale Assoziation und Angliederung derselben an Gott und Christus” [emphasis in the original]. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 473 natural propagation, or according to the nature she shares with other human beings and by which she is related to Adam, is subject to the law and community of sin and is liable to be bound by it. However, considered formally, concretely and simpliciter, that is to say, according to the essential supernatural mark of her person, or as this uniquely consecrated person, as the product of a special creative decree of God, she is exempted from that law, and its bonds have no hold upon her.32 Scheeben thus offers three disjunctive pairs to replace the more typical language in which the controversy over the debitum peccati had been framed: materiale/formale, abstractum/concretum, and secundum quid/simpliciter. It appears that Scheeben believes the pairs apposite, if not synonymous. The first disjunction, in which Mary’s person is considered materially, abstractly, and secundum quid, is meant to take account of the truth contained in the more traditional language of the debitum proximum. The second disjunction, however, limits this debt so that it is rendered not only ineffective but indeed powerless to affect Mary’s person formally, concretely, and simpliciter. God annuls the law that binds Adam’s posterity in Mary’s case not because she does not need redemption, but because she is predestined to be the Mother of the Redeemer. Mary is not, in other words, merely a product of the first Adam, but she is more properly the fruit of the heavenly Adam, and for this reason, Scheeben concludes that the debt that should be excluded from Mary is formal, but not proximate, and the debt under which she falls is material, but not remote. A few things might be said about Scheeben’s solution. Its most obvious aspect is Scheeben’s rejection of the traditional way of casting the difference between proximate and remote debt in terms of the difference between moral and natural headship. If we define debt in the typical way, as Mary’s need of a Redeemer, it certainly seems that if we deny a debitum personale, we deny the very fact of her personal redemption. This indeed is the most forceful argument against the debitum remotum, and it appears that Scheeben largely agrees with this criticism. Inasmuch as the debt is a real debt, it must concern Mary’s person, and so Scheeben first 32 Handbuch V/2, p. 399, n. 1685: “Die Person Mariens sei allerdings in sich selbst, materiell, abstrakt und secundum quid betrachtet, d. h. nach ihrem menschlichen Ursprung und Wesen als Produkt der natürlichen Zeugung, oder nach ihrer Natur, welche sie mit den anderen Menschen gemein hat und durch welche sie mit Adam zusammenhängt, dem Gesetze der Gemeinschaft der Sünde unterworfen und die Verstrickung in dieselbe ausgesetzt. Aber formell, konkret, und schlechthin betrachtet, d. h., nach ihrem übernatürlichen Personalcharakter oder als diese bestimmte gottgeweihte Person, als welche sie Produkt eines besonderen schöpferischen Ratschlusses Gottes ist, sei sie jenem Gesetze entzogen und der Verstrickung in die Sünde unzugänglich” [emphasis in the original]. 474 Trent Pomplun recasts the traditional distinction in terms of Mary’s person considered simpliciter and secundum quid. Formally, Mary is excluded from any debt of sin, on account of predestination to bridal motherhood. In the concrete order, she can in no way be said to sin in Adam. She is, in other words, wholly free from inclusion in his moral headship. Materially, however, Mary does indeed lose the original justice that was Adam’s, and she loses this in her person, but she loses original justice, not because she sinned in Adam, but because Adam sins for her. In other words, it is Mary’s person that is subject to the debt of sin (as in the debitum proximum) and not merely her nature (as in the rejected forms of the debitum remotum). And yet, Mary’s person suffers from the loss of original justice (as in the acceptable forms of the debitum remotum), but without being included in the will of Adam (as in the debitum proximum). So, according to Scheeben, in the debitum proximum, Mary stands under the debt as a person, and grace intervenes to prevent the incurring of the stain. For the first form of the debitum remotum, Mary’s nature stands under the debt and grace intervenes before she can incur the debt as a person, and for that reason she does not incur the stain. Scheeben’s proposed solution, in a nutshell, is to synthesize the best aspects of both theories. In his account of the debitum, Mary stands under the debt as a person considered materially, and the grace of Christ’s concrete redemption intervenes to exempt Mary from incurring the debt in her person considered formally, and for that reason, she does not incur the stain.The debt is proximate, and not remote, insofar as it concerns Mary’s person (and not her nature), but the singular grace and privilege of her Immaculate Conception constitutes a personal exemption so profound that she cannot in any sense be said to be dependent upon the sin of Adam, even remotely. Like the Subtle Doctor, then, Scheeben wishes to assert that Mary’s predestination as Mother of God is ontologically prior to the permission of sin; like the Angelic Doctor, Scheeben wishes to present Mary’s active holiness and supernatural radiance wholly in terms of Christ’s redemption. Scheeben has asserted that Mary’s predestination as bridal Mother is prior to her inclusion in the sin of Adam.That inclusion, however, while truly personal, is subverted, indeed, turned to the good, insofar as Mary truly participates in the economy of redemption in a positive and voluntary manner. No less an authority than Juniper Carol objects to Scheeben’s formulation. “Does the debitum materiale introduced by our distinguished theologian,” he asks, “constitute a real, true debt of sin, or are we dealing here with a verbal artifice calculated to evade the troublesome theological difficulties involved, and also a clever ruse to conciliate both sides of the controversy? This question, which has long haunted us, is not so easily Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 475 answered. The author’s own apparent contradictions heighten the difficulty.”33 One cannot be faulted for thinking that Scheeben falls into the very problem of which Thomists accuse the followers of Scotus. Does Scheeben’s formulation make Mary’s person subject to two separate divine decrees, one that includes her under the debitum and one that does not? Does God exclude Mary formally from sin in a logically prior decree, but include her in the sin of Adam materially in a logically subsequent one? Juniper Carol seems to think so. How, he asks, can Scheeben affirm that Christ’s merits obliterated both the necessity and the possibility of her sinning—“Has any anti-debitist spoken more clearly?”—while also claiming that Mary lost original justice—“Is there any truer debitum than that?”34 It would appear that the contradiction is manifest, but Scheeben is not without the means to answer these objections. In fact, these are the very sorts of objections that overpopulate the Mariological literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In order to evaluate this charge, we need to look a bit more closely as the history of the controversy over the debitum peccati. III. The Debitum Controversy: What Scheeben Left Unsaid Mariology has a complex history, and Scheeben’s presentation of it can easily cow the contemporary theologian unfamiliar with its complexities. If my summary, plodding though it may be, seems to leave much unsaid, it is only because Scheeben’s presentation of this material is brisk—to say the least—and he simply presumes that the reader knows these distinctions and their history, so much so that he rarely even mentions the theologians associated with them. When he does grace us with a name, the reference is often quite cursory, as when he drops the names of Ambrosius Catharinus and the “school of Toledo” as if they should be perfectly obvious to the reader. Scheeben’s judgments also follow quickly, and sometimes, I fear, too quickly. With this in mind, the reader should be warned of two dangers. First, Scheeben provides only the most cursory explanation of the technical terms used in this debate, and one can be easily misled by his rather loose usage if he is not aware of the general history of the debate about the debitum peccati. Secondly, Scheeben does not indicate to the reader that the meanings of these terms change as debates about the Immaculate Conception are transformed into debates about the debitum peccati itself. For our purposes, it is sufficient to point out that this controversy is actually much more complex than Scheeben’s summary lets on. If we explore its sources 33 Carol, History, 187. 34 Ibid.,187–88. 476 Trent Pomplun a bit more thoroughly, we will be able to explain some of Scheeben’s more obscure references, but we will also be able to better understand his position in light of a much larger, but now largely forgotten, context. In fact, as I hope to show in the following section, numerous Mariologists of the baroque age advanced positions that look very much like Scheeben’s own, and they often did so with far more complex and far-reaching arguments. Indeed, many notions that contemporary theologians believe to be unique to Scheeben, such as his presentations of Mary’s predestination, Personalcharakter, or her role in the ‘unique meta-order of the Incarnation,’ have seventeenth-century antecedents. A brief look at the history of the controversy over the debitum peccati, then, will put us in a better position to evaluate Scheeben’s contribution to this debate. Like many theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Scheeben seems to have seen the debate largely in terms set out by Cajetan and Ambrosius Catharinus. By presenting the debate about the debitum peccati in the rather attenuated forms of Cajetan and Catharinus, however, Scheeben has unintentionally set himself the task of working a field that had already been well plowed, a fact that should be apparent to anyone who has read even a small amount of Mariological literature. Pace Scheeben, the first theologian to speak of Mary’s debitum peccati explicitly is the anonymous author, most likely a Franciscan associated with John Peter Olivi (†1298), who penned Ms. D.6 359, held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence, between 1294 and 1296.35 In fact, the full range of positions on the debitum peccati had already been expressed in the first half of the fourteenth century, although hardly in the developed forms in which we see them in baroque Mariology. After Robert Grosseteste (†1253), Franciscans such as William of Ware (fl. 1290s) and John Duns Scotus (†1308) generally used a simple conditional form. Grosseteste, for example, taught that Mary’s soul was purified at her conception not from a sin that was present, but from a sin that would have been present had she not been purified.36 Just after Scotus, Franciscans such as John de Basso35 On this manuscript, see Jean-François Bonnefoy, O.F.M., Le Vén. Jean Duns Scot, docteur de l’Immaculée-Conception. Son milieu, sa doctrine, son influence (Rome: Casa Editrice Herder, 1960), 260. It was first noted by Victorinus Doucet, O.F.M., “P. J. Olivi et l’Immaculée Conception” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 26 (1933): 562. 36 Servus Gieben, O.F.M.Cap., “Robert Grosseteste and the Immaculate Conception, with the text of the Sermon Tota pulchra es,” Collectanea Franciscana 27 (1958): 221–27. Cf. William of Ware, “Quaestio: Utrum B. V. concepta fuerit in originali peccato,” in Quaestiones disputate de Immaculata Conceptione B. Mariae Virginis (Ad Claras Aquas, 1904). Strictly speaking, the simple conditional form, before any other qualification, does not require one to hold any position in the controversy over the debitum peccati, and Franciscans have appealed to the authority of Duns Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 477 lis (†1333) and Francesco Rubio (†1334) already speak of a debitum virtuale; the Carmelite John Baconthorpe (†1346) holds a debitum remotum; the Augustinian Thomas of Straussbourg (†1357) teaches a potentia naturalis; and the martyr St. Peter Paschasius (†1300) argues that God predestined Mary before all creatures and so placed her completely outside the reach of sin. In this respect, the Mercedarian martyr is often thought to be the first person to teach the nullum debitum, or ‘exemptionist’ position explicitly. The debate between Juan Segovia (†1458) and Juan de Torquemada, O.P. (†1468) at the Council of Basil (1431–48) is the real point of departure for the controversy over the debitum peccati.37 Whereas previous authors had debated whether Mary’s soul was sanctified or preserved from sin, Segovia was the first theologian to outline a comprehensive argument for the Immaculate Conception. His argument can be summarized in seven points:38 1. Three conditions must be met to contract original sin: (a) Adam must sin, (b) a person must descend from Adam via seminal generation, and (c) the person must be included in Adam’s sin by a law of solidarity established by God Himself. 2. The debitum peccati depends exclusively on the person’s inclusion in the sin of Adam; if he or she is excluded, no debitum obtains. 3. Mary is predestined ante praevisum lapsum; hence, she is not included in Adam’s sin. 4. Mary, predestined together with Her Son, forms one principle of redemption for all of Adam’s children. Scotus for the entire range of ‘debitist’ and ‘exemptionist’ positions. Carolus Balić, O.F.M., De debito peccati originalis in B. Virgine Maria investigationes de doctrina quam tenuit Joannes Duns Scotus (Rome: Officium Libri Catholici, 1941). Bonnefoy provides the point of departure for modern interpretations of Duns Scotus. For Jean-François Bonnefoy, O.F.M., see the sources in footnote 7. 37 Juan de Segovia, Septem allegationes et totidem avisamenta pro informatione patrum Concilii Basileensis, ed. Pedro de Alva y Astorga (Bruxellis: Typis & sumptibus Balthasaris Vivien, 1664 [Reprinted, Bruxelles: Culture et civilization, 1965]). 38 Here, too, I have modified Carol’s list. Cf. Carol, History, 19–23. On the debate between Segovia and Torquemada, see Giacinto Ameri, O.F.M., Doctrina theologorum de Immaculata B. V. Mariae Conceptione tempore Concilii Basileensis (Rome: Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1954); and Pedro de Alcántara Martínez, O.F.M., “La redención y el débito de María según Juan de Segovia y Juan de Torquemada,” Revista Española de Teología 16 (1956): 3–51. 478 Trent Pomplun 5. Mary’s role in the redemption of Adam’s children is not merely passive but active: she is both Theotokos and Dispentrix of All Grace. 6. Since Mary is an active Co-Redemptrix and principle, with her Son, of our spiritual life, she cannot have been spiritually dead in Adam. Indeed, Adam received Christ’s grace through Mary. 7. Since Mary descends from Adam nonetheless, it was possible that Mary could have contracted original sin, had she not been preserved by Christ’s grace. A potestas peccandi thus suffices to explain Mary’s redemption through the merits of her Son. Keep in mind that Segovia’s argument was meant to establish the Immaculate Conception. His opponent, Juan de Torquemada, O.P., did not argue against a particular form of the debitum peccati: he argued against the Immaculate Conception itself.39 In fact, Carol can say that Torquemada’s critique constitutes an “exhaustive encyclopedia” against the Immaculate Conception.40 With that in mind,Torquemada rebuts Segovia point by point: 1. Only two conditions must be met to contract original sin: (a) Adam must sin, and (b) a person must descend from Adam via seminal generation. 2. There is no law that connects the former to the latter; if there were, God would oblige us to sin. 3. Christ is not predestined ante praevisum lapsum, nor is Mary. 4. Christ, and Christ alone, is the principle of our redemption. 5. Mary has no role in our redemption except to be Theotokos; consequently, she cannot be Co-Redemptrix. 6. Since Mary is not the spiritual mother of Adam, there is no reason to exclude her from his sin. Indeed, the grace of Adam’s original justice, not being redemptive, is the gratia Dei, not gratia Christi. 7. The claim that Mary contracted sin de jure (de debito) but not de facto is meaningless. Since Mary descends from Adam, Mary contracted original sin. In fact, if she had not, she could not have been redeemed by Christ. 39 Juan de Torquemada, O.P., Tractatus de veritate conceptionis beatissime virginis, pro facienda relatione coram patribus Concilii Basilee (Rome: Apud Antonium Bladum Asulanem, 1547 [Reprinted, Bruxelles: Culture et civilization, 1965]). 40 Carol, History, 21. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 479 Several things might be pointed out about Torquemada’s rebuttal. Of principal importance is his rather skillful deconstruction of the juridical tones of the debitum. How, he asks, can we say that God established a law including all in Adam’s sin? If this were true, Mary would have violated God’s law by failing to contract sin. Truth be told, Torquemada’s objection is too clever by half. Of course it is ridiculous to claim that the ‘law’ obliges the person to sin—that much is obvious—but certainly the Dominican does not deny that penalties can be justly meted out to those who sin. Similarly, Torquemada’s argument against the juridical understanding of God’s law, though it would prove to be very influential among Dominicans who rejected the Immaculate Conception, has not proven particularly effective against other conceptions of the debitum—as we shall see later. Torquemada also advanced a theological argument: God, he argued, could hardly be said to have shed His blood to redeem a person whose preservation from sin He had decreed from all eternity. Although Torquemada did not address the signa rationis of God’s decree, we will see that this debate would prove to have a very complicated history indeed. Although Segovia and Torquemada prepared their treatises for the Council of Basel, the fathers at the council did not resolve the issue of the Immaculate Conception, and so their treatises languished until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when theologians adapted their arguments for use in the later controversy over the debitum peccati. Still, much was clarified about the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in the conciliar age. Many theologians discussed the problem in the lead up to the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), but a formal definition of Mary’s immunity from sin would not be forthcoming until the Council of Trent (1546–63). That council’s teaching, though, is admittedly oblique, since it does no more than declare that it does not intend to include the Virgin Mary in its discussion of the universality of sin.41 The council does, however, reaffirm the apostolic constitutions on the Immaculate Conception of Pope Sixtus IV, Cum praeexcelsa and Grave nimis.42 What we see at 41 Conc. Tridentinum, Sessio V, 17 June 1546: Decretum de peccato originali: “Declarat tamen haec ipsa sancta Synodus, non esse suae intentionis, comprehendere in hoc decreto, ubi de peccato originali agitur, beatam et immaculatam Virginem Mariam Dei genetricem, sed observandas esse constitutiones felicis recordationis Sixti Papae IV” (DS 1516). 42 Sixtus IV, Const. “Cum praeexcelsa,” 27 Feb 1477 (DS 1400). In light of the controversy that would soon follow in Seville, Toledo, and Alcalá, the warnings of Sixtus IV in Grave nimis were indeed prescient. Const. ‘Grave nimis,” 4 Sept. 1483: “Sane cum s. Romana Ecclesia de intemeratae semperque Virginis Mariae conceptione publice festum solemniter celebret, et speciale ac proprium super hoc officium ordinaverit: nonnulli, ut accepimus, diversorum ordinum praedicatores in suis 480 Trent Pomplun the council, however, is that the theological argument had shifted since the Council of Basel. This is nowhere more apparent that in the respective positions of two of the figures who immediately preceded the Council of Trent, the Dominicans Tommaso da Vio (1469–1534), or Cajetan, and Lancellotto Politi (1483–1553), or Ambrosius Catharinus. For Cajetan, Mary’s ‘total’ preservation from original sin is a heretical position.43 For Cajetan, a ‘total’ preservation would mean that Mary was conceived (1) without the caro infecta; (2) without a debitum personale; and (3) without concupiscence. Indeed, for Cajetan, redemption implies redemption from all three of these conditions. The fathers, he pointedly remarks, make no distinction between original sin and some debitum—note Cajetan’s similarity to Torquemada—so it must be said that Mary, even if she is preserved from personal sin, comes into existence with an infected flesh and a debitum proximum that is itself the ‘beginning’ of original sin. If the caro infecta is, at the very least, an instrumental cause in the transmission of original sin, then Mary could be sanctified neither in instante infusionis, much less ante infusionem animae. In this respect, Cajetan’s theology of the debitum stands at the juncture between medieval debates about the sanctification of Mary’s soul and the modern debate about the debitum peccati. His own notion of the debitum personale is meant to shore up the older Augustinian notion of the caro infecta, even as he argues for the need of Mary’s soul to be sanctified. Of course, if God preserves no more than the soul of the Virgin, her body remains subject to the penalties of sin. Cajetan’s views were hotly contested by his confrere Catharinus, whose views evolved from a slight worry about Cajetan’s formulations to outright hostility to his views.44 sermonibus ad populum publice per diversas civitates et terras affirmare hactenus non erubuerunt, et quotidie praedicare non cessant, omnes illos, qui tenent aut asserunt, eandem gloriosam et immaculatam Dei genitricem absque originalis peccati macula fuisse conceptam, mortaliter peccare, vel esse haereticos, eiusdem immaculatae conceptionis officium celebrantes, audientesque sermones illorum, qui eam sine huiusmodi macula conceptam esse affirmant, peccare graviter. Nos igitur huiusmodi temerariis ausibus . . . obviare volentes motu proprio, non ad alicuius Nobis super hoc oblatae petitionis instantiam, sed de Nostram mera deliberatione et certa scientia, huiusmodi assertiones” (DS 1425–1426).To be fair, Sixtus IV also condemned those who charged deniers of the Immaculate Conception with heresy, since the Magisterium had not solemnly declared the dogma. 43 The chief texts of Cajetan are his commentary on the Summa theologiae I–II, q. 81, a. 3, and De Conceptione B. Mariae Virginis ad Leonem Decimum Pontificem Maximum [in Opuscula omnia, tom. 2 (Venice: Apud haeredes Iacobi Iuntae, 1588)]. The chief secondary source for this debate is Giacinto Bosco, O.P., L’Immacolata Concezione nel pensiero del Gaetano e del Caterino (Florence: Edizioni “Il Rosario,” 1950). 44 Ambrosius Catharinus, O.P., Annotationes in commentaria Cajetani (Lyons: Apud Mathiam Bonhomme, 1542); idem, Disputatio pro veritate Immaculatae Conceptionis Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 481 Catharinus, at the beginning of this controversy, agreed that Mary should have incurred the stain of sin, and so professed himself in favor of a debitum proximum, although he did not believe that Mary came into existence with the caro infecta as a penalty for sin. Since he was less concerned to connect sin and concupiscence to seminal generation, Catharinus wound up advancing a position that looked not unlike Segovia’s—although the Dominican most likely did not know of Segovia’s arguments directly. Like Segovia, Catharinus felt that the person, in order to contract or incur original sin, must be included in Adam’s sin by a law of solidarity established by God Himself. Mary, however, being exempt from this pact, could not have been included in the will of Adam. For this reason, at most she incurs a debitum remotum, and whatever debitum she may have inherited by way of seminal generation from Adam was ‘cancelled’ by the sublime graces of her predestination to the divine maternity. To put it in simpler terms, no penalty (as such) is befitting the dignity of the Mother God. How indeed can one claim that God penalizes Mary’s body for sins that her soul never committed? As many Scotists would later point out, Catharinus lays the foundation for the ‘exemptionist’ argument, but he refuses to build upon it and indeed shies away from what appear to be the necessary consequences of his thought.45 Whatever one makes of the myth that the council fathers piously consulted the Summa theologiae during their disputations, in this respect at least, Ambrosius Catharnius won the day. After Trent the debate shifted decisively from a debate between maculists and immaculists to a debate between those who felt a debitum proximum was necessary to secure the Blessed Virgin’s redemption, those who felt a debitum remotum was sufficient, and those who increasingly argued that Mary was wholly free of any debitum peccati whatsoever.The historical touchstone for these debates was a series of doctrinal conflicts that started when a Dominican, whose name is lost to history, preached against the Immaculate Conception in Seville on September 8, 1613. Not surprisingly, a number of pious Franciscans objected, and by 1615 the entire town was embroiled in controversy, with disputations, beatissimae Virginis Mariae (Rome: Excudebat Antonius Bladus, 1551). For a modern edition of Catharinus’s most “Scotistic” work, see F. M. Paolini, O.F.M., ed., De eximia praedestinatione Christi Fratris Ambrosii Catharini Politi, O.P. (Bastia: Typis Imprimerie Moderne, 1937). On Catharinus, see Domenico Scaramuzzi, O.F.M., “Le idee scotiste di un grande teologo domenicano del 1500: Ambrogio Catarino,” Studi Francescani 4 (1932): 269–319; 5 (1933): 197–217. 45 Hieronymus Montefortino, O.F.M., “Dissertatio Theologica fueritne beatissima semper Virgo Maria immunis a debito contrahendi peccatum originale?” in Joannis Duns Scoti Summa theologica, tom. 5, after qu. 27, art. 5 (Rome: Ex Typographia Sallustiana, 1903 [1737]), 318–22. 482 Trent Pomplun demonstrations, festivities, poems composed pro and con, musical ditties, etc.46 In 1615, Franciscan theologians bearing a letter from the Archbishop of Seville, en route to Madrid to ask King Philip III to request a papal intervention, stopped in Toledo to inform its theologians of the controversy and to garner support for the cause.This led to a public disputation on the debitum peccati that sparked a controversy so wide ranging that theologians referred to it for more than a century. For our purposes, it is not necessary to outline the dramatis personae of this controversy, but only to note that the “Toledo affair” made the controversy over the debitum peccati one of the most important theological debates of the seventeenth century. Judging by the number of monographs published on the subject and the intense passions expressed in them, the debitum peccati might very well have been the successor to the infamous de auxiliis controversy as the most hotly debated topic of the day. A number of rather important consequences followed upon the Toledo affair. First, the Toledo affair led to the popularization of the nullum debitum position beyond the Franciscans and Mercedarians.47 It led many theologians, such as the Carmelite Juan Lezana (†1659), the Jesuit Ferdinand Chirinus de Salazar (†1646), and the Augustinian Aegidius of the Presentation (†1626), to write immense treatises on the subject that would lay the groundwork of much of the later debate.48 Secondly, although a small number of Thomists, such as the Carmelite Dominic of St. Teresa (†1660), appeared to argue against the Immaculate Conception, the Toledo affair did 46 For competing accounts of the “Toledo Affair,” compare Enrique del Sdo. Corazón, O.C.D., “La Inmaculada en la tradición teológica española,” at 521–28; Benito Prada, C.M.F., “Las disputas teológicas de Toledo y Alcalá y el decreto de la Inquisición Española sobre le débito,” Ephemerides Mariologicae 3 (1953): 501–51; Pedro de Alcántara Martínez, O.F.M., “La redención preservative y el débito remoto,” Salmanticensis 1 (1954): 301–42; and Jean-François Bonnefoy, O.F.M., “Sevilla por la Inmaculada en 1614–1617,” Archivo Ibero Americano 15 (1955): 7–33. 47 Nichols glosses Scheeben’s reference to the Toledo School as the “( Jesuit) School of Toledo” (Romance and System, 459), but this is clearly a mistake. The Toledo tribunal that served as a touchstone for much of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Mariology concerned the statements of Franciscan theologians at Toledo, not Jesuits, and the most important Jesuits that argued against the debitum were not from Toledo. 48 Ionne Baptista de Lezana, O.Carm., Liber apologeticus pro Immaculata Deiparae Virginis Mariae Conceptione (Madrid: Apud viduam Alphonsi Martin, 1616); Aegidius a Presentatione, O.S.A., De Immaculata B.Virginis Conceptione (Coimbra: Apud Didacam Gomez de Loureyro Academiae Typographum, 1617); Chirinus de Salazar, S.J., Pro Immaculata Deiparae Virginis Conceptione defensio (Alcalá: Ex Officina Ioannis Gratiani, 1618). Salazar, in fact, wrote a number of fascinating Mariological works. See, for example, the ‘hypermystical’ readings of Mary in his Expositio in Proverbia Salomonis, 2 vols. (Paris: Ex Officina Hieronymus Drouart, Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 483 much to solidify the teaching of the Council of Trent and give the debate its decidedly ‘modern’ cast.49 It is impossible to summarize the Mariological works that followed the affair at Toledo. A brief look at a few shows that many of Scheeben’s favorite themes are already present among the best of the baroque writers on Mary, who developed them with far greater precision and amplitude than Scheeben.The Jesuits, generally eclectic, proposed theories of the debitum proximum or debitum remotum, although a few exemptionists can be found among their ranks. Still, the theologians of the Society of Jesus emphasized Mary’s co-redemption more than other schools. Many of them also incorporated theories of the scientia media into their Mariological syntheses. On the other hand, Mercedarians, such as Sylvester de Saavedra (†1643) and Juan de Prudencio (†1657), tended to explain God’s predestination of Mary in terms of His scientia simplicis intelligentiae, and so might be seen to anticipate several modern ways of framing the question. If any school adopted a party line, it was the Franciscans, who by the end of the seventeenth century were almost without exception exemptionists. In fact, by the middle of the seventeenth century, Scotists such as Francisco Castillo Velasco (†1641), Angelo Volpi (†1647), and Tomás Francés Urrutigoyti (†1682) had interpreted the conditional form of the debitum as an implicit argument for the ‘exemptionist’ position. To do so, they did no more than interpret Scotus’s teaching of the Immaculate Conception in light of his argument concerning the predestination of Christ. In Scheeben’s terms, these Franciscans entered the stream represented by Catharinus, but since their original impetus was provided by Scotus’s own insights—and because they were under no obligation to try to present those insights in Thomistic terms—they were free to develop the ‘exemptionist’ tradition in a more far-reaching way.50 Not only did they reject a debitum peccati, proximate or 1637) or Canticum Canticorum Salomonis allegorico sono & prophetica, mystica, hypermystica expositio productum, 2 vols. (Lyons: Sumptibus Petri Prost, 1642). 49 Dominic of St. Teresa, O.C.D., Collegii Salmanticensis FF. Discalceatorum Cursus Theologicus, tom. 4, tr. 13, disp. 15 (Venice: Briconci,1678), 492–578. This is the most extensive treatment between Salazar and Montalbanus. Opponents suspected Fr. Dominic of arguing against the Immaculate Conception, and the disputatio was turned over to the Inquisition. Although the Carmelite theologian issued a thorough defensorium, the tribunal asked that the offending disputatio be removed from subsequent editions of the Cursus. Although Fr. Dominic’s position that Mary was in fact an ‘enemy of God’ before her redemption would be effectively ruled out of bounds by Ineffabilis Deus, Carol (History, 105) credits him with “thoroughly” demolishing the arguments for the debitum remotum. 50 Scheeben appears to distance the later Scotist tradition from the teachings of Scotus himself, remarking that the Subtle Doctor never applied his arguments 484 Trent Pomplun remote; they may be credited as the first explorers of the positive nature of Mary’s preservative redemption. Indeed, pace Nichols, Franciscan theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries pioneered what he calls the ‘Sophiological’ reading of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Angelo Volpi, for example, argued that Mary belonged to the unique ‘hypostatic’ order.51 Indeed, Franciscan theologians, developing Scotus’s insights about the predestination of Christ, tended to relate the grace of Mary’s predestination not to Christ’s Passion, but rather to His glorification as such.52 One sees this argument rather dramatically developed in Tomás Francisco Urrutigoyti.53 Similarly, Francisco del Castillo Velasco and other Franciscans argued that one could not be subject to a debitum peccati and a debitum about the predestination of Christ to Mary. (Cf. Handbuch V/2, §279b, pp. 417–20, nn. 1709–13.) Be that as it may, Scheeben provides no real reason why this couldn’t be done. 51 Angelo Volpi, O.F.M., Sacrae Theologiae Summa Ioannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilissimi, tom. 3, part 4, disp. 72, art. 1 (Naples: Apud Lazarum Scorigium, 1646), 295–96: “Scotus in 3. dis. 16 in calce respondet omnia haec divinitus ex parte conceptionis Christi, & Mariae relata ad inferiorem ordinem naturae praesertim corruptae miraculosè esse credenda. Similiter miraculosa simpliciter in sua causa, quae illum supremum hypostaticae unionis fundat ordinem.” On Volpi, see Giovanni M. Conti, O.F.M.Conv., La predestinazione e la divina maternità di Maria secondo il P. M°. Angelo Volpi O.F.M.Conv. grande teologo scotista del seicento (†1647) (Rome: Pontificia Facoltà Teologica O.F.M. Conv., 1947); idem, L’assunzione di Maria nell’Opera Mariologica del Angelo Volpi celebre teologo scotista del seicento (Rome: Miscellanea Franciscana, 1947); Antonio Di Monda, O.F.M.Conv., “L’Immacolata nell’opera mariologica dello scotista Angelo Volpi, O.F.M.Conv. (d. 1647),” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 7/2 (1957), 241–73. 52 By the seventeenth century, this is practically a common teaching of the Scotist tradition. Compare, for example, Juan de Rada, O.F.M., Controversiarum theologicarum inter S. Thomam et Scotum super Tertium Sententiarum Librum IIIa, controv. 5, art. 3 (Venetiis: Apud Ioannem Guerilium, 1618), 219: Filippo Fabri, O.F.M., Disputationes Theologicae in Tertium Sententiarum, dist. 7, qu. 3, disp. 20 (Venice: Ex Officina Bartholomaei Ginami, 1613), 111; Angelo Volpi, O.F.M., Sacrae Theologiae Summa Ioannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilissimi, tom. 1, part 4, disp. 5, art. 3 (Naples: Apud Lazarum Scorigium, 1642), 70; Bartolomeo Mastri, O.F.M.Conv., Disputationes Theologicae in Tertium Librum Sententiarum, disp. 4, qu. 1, art. 2 (Venice: Apud Valuasensem, 1661), 303; and Lorenzo Brancati de Laurea, O.F.M.Conv., Commentaria in III Librum Sententiarum, tom. 1, art. 2–3 (Rome: H. Manelphii, 1682), 260. 53 Tomas Francisco Urrutigoyti, O.F.M., Certamen scholasticum expositivum argumentum pro Deipara ejusque Immaculata Conceptione (Lyons: Sumptibus P. Borde, 1660). On Urrutigoyti, see Pedro de Alcántara Martínez, O.F.M., “La redención de María según el P. Tomás Francés de Urrutigoyti,” Verdad y Vida 9 (1951): 47–84; and José de Pijoan, O.F.M., “La Inmaculada Concepción en Francisco Guerra y Tomás Francés Urrutigoyti,” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 7/2 (1957), 182–208. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 485 gratiae simultaneously.54 The most detailed presentation of this position, and indeed arguably the most extensive treatment of the Immaculate Conception ever, can be found in the vast three-volume Opus theologicum of the Capuchin Salvator Montalbanus de Sambuca (†1722).55 Picking up a trend initiated by earlier Franciscans, Montalbanus argued against the debitum remotum by remarking that a hypothetical debt cannot be contracted at all and argued against the debitum proximum that it is by nature incompatible with grace. It is thus impossible, he argued, for anyone conceived immaculately to be under any necessity to contract sin, just as Adam, being created in sanctifying grace, was under no actual necessity until he sinned. In this respect, Montalbanus argued that all one needs, strictly speaking, to account for Mary’s preservative redemption is the future contingent possibility that Mary might have sinned had she not been preserved. After Montalbanus, these arguments become canonical for Franciscans, who begin to devote more attention to working out the various aspects of Mary’s unique preservative redemption, as we see in the case of Carlos del Moral (†1731), who provided a complex discussion of Mary’s threefold praeservatio radicalis, praeservatio formalis, and praeservatio perfectissime consummata in light of the predestination and Passion of Our Lord.56 In such systems, Mary participates in Christ’s Passion and death directly, as it were, with no sin, original 54 Francisco del Castillo Velasco, O.F.M., Subtillissimi Scoti Doctorum super III Senten- tiarum librum, tom. 1, disp. 3, qu. 1 (Antwerp: Apud Petrum Bellerum, 1641), 530: “Respondetur nihilominus, quia sicut in ipsis non sunt simul pro eodem instanti gratia et peccatum, sed in instanti in quo est gratia verificatur modo non est peccatum, sed ante hoc instans erat; ita similiter neque in illo instanti est debitum, sed ante illud instans erat. In conceptione autem Virginis non possumus plura instantia considerare sicut in baptizatis, sed tantum unicum instans, in quo non possunt contradictoria verificari.” For a modern variation on this argument, Allan Wolter has proposed a debitum justitiae. Cf. Allan Wolter, O.F.M., “The Theology of the Immaculate Conception in Light of ‘Ineffabilis Deus’,” Marian Studies 5 (1954): 19–72, at 68–69. 55 Salvator Montalbanus de Sambuca, O.F.M.Cap., Opus theologicum tribus distinctum tomis in quibus efficacissime ostenditur Immaculatam Dei Genitricem utpote praeservative redemptam, fuisse prorsus immune ab omni debito tum contrahendi originale peccatum, tum ipsius fomitem incurrendi, 3 vols. (Palermo: Typis Gasparis Bayona, 1723). On Montalbanus, see Rainero de Nava, O.F.M.Cap., “La redención de Maria según P. Montalbán,” Estudios Franciscanos 55 (1954): 255–79. 56 Carolus del Moral, O.F.M., Fons illimis theologicae Scoticae Marianae, tom. 2, tract. 3, disp. 1, qu. 2, art. 3 (Madrid: Ex Typographia Thomae Rodriguez, 1730), 67–71. On Carolus del Moral, see Isidro de Guerra Lazpiur, O.F.M., Integralis conceptus maternitatis divinae juxta Carolum del Moral (Rome: Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1953); idem, “La gracia inicial de la Inmaculada en la Mariología de Carlos del Moral,” Verdad y Vida 12 (1954): 203–29; idem, “La Virgen Santísima cabeza secundaria del cuerpo místico de Cristo en la Mariología de 486 Trent Pomplun or actual, to dull her union with her Son.We need not belabor these points here; suffice it to say, Franciscan theologians extended Mariology to quite striking lengths. It is difficult to say whether Scheeben intentionally minimized the importance of the great Scotist commentators in his own theology. Scheeben was probably only dimly aware of their influence himself, since the Dominican and Jesuit traditions, with which he was more familiar, had made a series of rather important concessions to Scotism over the centuries and did not always bother themselves with reading such works in detail. In any event, many of the high points of the controversy over Mary’s debitum peccati go unmentioned by Scheeben, who generally marginalizes Franciscan sources other than Scotus and rarely acknowledges the debts he owes to earlier Jesuit writers. That said, Scheeben’s brief historical account can be misleading. When he says, for example, that moderate opponents of the Immaculate Conception since the time of Cajetan maintained a debitum incurrendi maculam in order to maintain that Mary’s sanctification truly resulted from Christ’s redemption, he obscures one very important point: the technical phrases in this controversy were introduced not in debates about the debitum peccati but in debates about the Immaculate Conception. The debate between Cajetan and Catharinus, like the debate between Torquemada and Segovia in the previous century, largely concerned the need to include the caro infecta as a condition of redemption. Not to put too fine a point on things: Cajetan was a maculist, and Catharinus, for his part, a proponent of an attenuated debitum remotum. The language of the debitum proximum was proposed in order to prove that Mary was not immaculately conceived.57 This is a point that is far too important to gloss over. In the seventeenth century, theologians were already pointing out that the theologians of the Middle Ages, when they spoke of a debitum peccati, really meant what modern theologians called a debitum proximum. The debitum remotum, they argued, was little more than a clever way to reconcile Mary’s Immaculate Conception with her passive redemption. Such a debt, as has been pointed out by a long line of commentators, cannot be Carlos del Moral, O.F.M.,” Estudios Marianos 18 (1957): 231–58; and idem, “El débito de pecado y la redención de la Virgen Inmaculada en la mariología de Carlos del Moral,” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 11 (1957), 137–88. 57 I am somewhat nonplussed by Aidan Nichols’s remark (Romance and System, 457) that Cajetan introduced the terminology of the debitum peccati into theology in order to rally his Dominican confreres to support the Immaculate Conception. Suffice it to say, this is not the usual presentation of Cajetan’s position in the scholarly literature, which generally presents him as a ‘moderate’ opponent of the doctrine. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 487 a real debt.58 At best, it is merely a nominal debt, or a debitum conditionatum, but such an abstract conditional should more rightly be expressed as a potestas peccandi. In other words, the debitum was a necessity for those who supported the Immaculate Conception during the Middle Ages. Its role was to guarantee that Mary was redeemed in the most perfect manner while denying that she contracted sin. For this reason, those who denied the Immaculate Conception believed the debitum to be a fiction or a theological grotesquerie. As more theologians outside of the Franciscans and Mercedarians began to accept the arguments for the Immaculate Conception, the debitum continued to play the role it had for the immaculists of the Middle Ages—even as they subjected it to countless refinements—while the traditions that had done the most to support the Immaculate Conception adopted the arguments of the medieval maculists against the debitum in order to advance the ‘exemptionist’ position. As Carol remarks in his discussion of Torquemada, “Ironically enough, it was not the defenders of Mary’s original purity, but rather its opponents, who unwittingly furnished us with some of the most cogent arguments against the theory of the debitum peccati in Our Lady.”59 Scheeben is similarly misleading when he says that all theologians before the definition of the dogma in 1854, even those who taught the Immaculate Conception, agreed that a debitum must be accepted in one form or another in order to safeguard Mary’s grace of redemption. While it is true that all theologians agreed that some debt was necessary, many still denied the notion of a debitum peccati.60 Several theologians asserted 58 Carol, History, 5, argues that a debt, properly speaking, “presupposes that a person depends upon the physical and moral headship of Adam.” Carol follows a long line of theologians who have argued that a debitum remotum or debitum naturale is not a debt at all. Compare, for example, Ionne Baptista de Lezana, O.Carm., Liber apologeticus pro Immaculata Deiparae Virginis Mariae Conceptione, cap. 32 (Madrid: Apud viduam Alphonsi Martin, 1616), 143–144r; Ambrosius de Peñalosa, S.J., Vindicae Deiparae Virginis de peccato originali et debito illius contrahendi rigore theologico praestructae et a nemine hactenus ex professo discussae, disp. 3, cap. 4 (Antwerp: Apud Hieronymum Vendussium, 1650), 92–96; Ioannis Eusebius Nieremberg, S.J., Opera parthenica de supereximia et omnimoda puritate Matris Dei, par. 4, sect. 5 (Lyons: Sumptibus Claudii Bourgeat & Mich. Lietard, 1659), 509–11; and Carolus del Moral, Fons illimis theologicae Scoticae Marianae, tom. 2, tract. 3, disp. 1, qu. 1, art. 1 (Madrid: Ex Typographia Thomae Rodriguez, 1730), 3–22. 59 Carol, History, 23. 60 Scheeben tends to ignore the nullum debitum, as he presents the positions of Ambrosius Catharinus and the Franciscan School of Toledo as the end of the spectrum. I am inclined to think that the Franciscans at Toledo taught exemptionism, although several theologians have claimed that they taught an attenuated form of the debitum remotum. As Scheeben links them with Catharinus, it 488 Trent Pomplun that the Blessed Virgin’s only ‘debt’ was a debitum gratiae. If we fail to note this point, we will quite seriously misunderstand a great deal of the very best Mariological literature. In this respect, Scheeben looks quite like F. X. Bachelet, S.J., who would later claim that the only two positions were those arguing for proximate and remote debt respectively, even though he clearly knew of the works of Jesuit exemptionists such as Juan Perlín (†1638), Ambrosius de Peñalosa (†1656), and Joseph Eusebius Nieremberg (†1658)—even Montalbanus.61 Whether this reduction betrays bias or ignorance I cannot say, but it is a common feature of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century treatments of the debitum. Scheeben’s distinction between the gratia Creatoris and the gratia Redemptoris obscures—whether willfully or not, I do not know—the fact that, for most of the participants in the celebrated controversy over the predestination of Christ, the operative distinction is between the gratia Glorificatoris and the gratia Redemptoris. Here, after struggling mightily to recast largely Scotistic arguments in Thomistic terms, Scheeben finally introduces a distinction that truly begs the question, for he attempts to exclude the Scotist position by defining predestination solely in terms of redemption, when this is exactly the issue under debate. At the very least, Ineffabilis Deus cannot be interpreted in this exclusive sense—a point I will address in the final section of this article. Scheeben, however, seems to have been only dimly aware of the fact that Scotists ably answered these doubts for some time. Montalbanus, for example, takes care to note that the first logical instant in which God predestines Christ and Mary independently of sin, although it abstracts from the modalities of subsequent signa, contains the subsequent signa and their modalities virtualiter, such that all of them together form one total, integrated plan.62 Perhaps the most serious weakness of Scheeben’s account is that he does not attempt to differentiate the various notions of debitum offered by previous theologians. Although he rightly noted that the debitum was not seems that he believed them to have taught a debitum remotum. In fact, Scheeben’s prejudices generally prevent him from recognizing a debitum gratiae as the Franciscans present it. 61 F. X. Bachelet, S.J., “Immaculée Conception,” cols. 1156–60. 62 Montalbanus, Opus theologicum, tom. 2, tract. 3, disp. 4, qu. 3, cap. 8, 440. This, of course, is a fairly common move among Scotists. Filippo Fabri argues that subsequent signa are still contained in and embraced by Christ’s ‘total’ predestination. Fabri, Disputationes Theologicae in Tertium Sententiarum, dist. 7, qu. 3, disp. 20 (Venice: Ex Officina Bartholomaei Ginami, 1613), 111. Juan de Rada remarks that the Incarnation of the Word is a particular act of divine providence that includes omnia media ad decreti executionem. Rada, S. Thomam et Scotum super Tertium Sententiarum Librum, controv. 5, art. 3 (Venice: Apud Ioannem Guerilium, 1618), 220. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 489 a strict necessity to commit sin, he rather hastily describes it as a quasilegal ‘liability’ (obnoxium), a ‘necessity of incurring the stain’ (debitum incurrendi maculam), a ‘stain contracted or drawn from one’s nature’ (contrahendi trahendi cum natura maculam), or a ‘being born with the stain’ (nascendi cum macula). It is not clear to me whether these terms and phrases are meant to be vaguely synonymous or whether Scheeben simply adduced them as various ways in which previous theologians had defined the debitum peccati. Perhaps Scheeben was satisfied to note that the debitum could not be a strict necessity, but this is a rather pedestrian point. When we look at the remaining phrases, it is clear that the theologian who wishes to impose some order upon them needs to provide a fairly sophisticated account of how original sin is naturally ‘incurred’ or ‘contracted.’ Indeed, the very difference implied by the quasi-legal ‘liability’ (obnoxium) and the various forms by which one is said to be born with, contract, or incur the stain highlights one of the chief ambiguities of the debitum peccati controversy itself, namely, whether the debt is thought primarily in terms of Mary’s nature or her will. In this respect at least, Scheeben’s account is vastly inferior to many early modern and contemporary accounts of the debitum peccati. A common feature of works in the wake of Salazar, for example, is the careful delineation of the relationship between the debitum peccati and ‘necessity.’63 Aloysius Novarini, Cler. Reg. (†1650) anticipated aspects of modern arguments about the ambiguities of juridic and nomological definitions of the debitum in the seventeenth century. As Novarini cleverly remarks, water does not have a debitum to be dry, nor does fire have a debitum to be wet. Indeed (he asks), did Adam or the angels have a debitum peccati before their fall?64 Just as Scheeben does not give a full account of the history of the controversy over the debitum from Scotus to Cajetan, he seems to flag as he tracks sources after Bartolomé Medina (†1580) and Francisco Suárez (†1617). Chalk it up to Romantic prejudice, but Scheeben, who otherwise shows such a capacious and tolerant attitude, looks down on the “arbitrary” and “tasteless” Mariology of the baroque age, which he characterizes as 63 See, for example, Sylvestre de Saavedra, O. de M., Sacra Deipara seu de eminentis- sima dignitate Dei Genetricis immaculatissime, vest. 2, disp. 19, sect. 5 (Lyons: Sumptibus Laurentii Anisson, 1655), 397–98; or Dominic of St. Teresa, O.C.D., Collegii Salmanticensis FF. Discalceatorum Cursus Theologicus, tom. 4, tr. 13, disp. 15 (Venice: Briconci, 1678), 496–97. For an especially expansive treatment, see Montalbanus, Opus theologicum, tom. 1, 265–328. 64 Aloysius Novarini, Cler. Reg., Electa Sacra, in quibus qua ex Linguarum Fontibus . . . subque Virginea Umbra ita Virgines Mariæ laudes exhibentur, lib. 4, excurs. 18 (Lyons: Petri Prost, Philippi Borde & Lautentii Arnauld, 1647), 65–67. 490 Trent Pomplun lacking “sincerity” and “tact.”65 Truth be told, one can hardly secure an adequate assessment of the Marian literature of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries if one singles out Pietro Spinelli, S.J. (†1615), Pierre Bérulle (†1629), Giambattista Novati, Cler. Reg. (†1648), Theophilus Raynauld, S.J. (†1663), Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (†1704), and Virgil Sedlmayr, O.S.B. (†1772) for distinction. These authors may be representative of general trends, but they can hardly be thought to represent the best Mariological literature of the baroque age. Among Jesuit authors, with whom Scheeben is most comfortable, the highly influential treatise of Salazar goes unnoticed, and although Scheeben rightly notes the importance of Suárez in the previous century, his appeal to the popular works of Peter Canisius (†1597) and Christopher de Vega (†1672) among the Jesuits, or St. Bernardino (†1380) and Juan Cartagena (†1617) among the Franciscans, must be seen as slights, however unintentional, of the real masters of baroque Mariology, namely the Franciscans Volpi and Urrutigoyti, the Jesuits Perlín, Peñalosa, and Nieremberg, and the Mercedarians Saavedra and Prudencio. Scheeben mentions Philip of the Holy Trinity (†1671), indeed a talented theologian in his own right, but without mentioning far more important contributions by other Carmelites, especially Lezana, who is arguably the first theologian to devote an entire monograph to the problem of the debitum, or Dominic of St. Teresa, the author of the ill-fated, but influential, treatment of the Immaculate Conception in the Salmanticenses. Arguably the two most important Mariologists of the eighteenth century, if not in the history of theology, the Franciscans Carolus del Moral and Salvator Montalbanus de Sambuca, are unknown to him. Now, I am inclined to think that Scheeben’s arguments in favor of a proximate debt, but against a remote debt, are persuasive, at least insofar as they highlight the need to think of Mary’s debt in terms of her person. At the same time, I am inclined to find the arguments in favor of a proximate debt unbecoming of the active role the Mother of God plays in salvation history. In this respect, I think Scheeben’s intuitions are sound, even penetrating. But the Mariologists of the baroque age anticipated these intuitions 65 Handbuch V/2, § 274, p. 336, n. 1561: “Das 17. Jahrhundert brachte eine Unzahl mariologischer Werke . . . , großenteils in wissenschaftlicher Form, aber vielfach nicht ebenso mit wissenschaftlichem Ernst und Bedacht geschrieben, von denen die uns nicht zu Gesicht gekommenen Schriften von Spinelli (Thronus Dei) und Novatus (De eminentia Deiparae) durch Gediegenheit hervorragen sollen. Dagegen repräsentiert die Theologia Mariana des Jesuiten Christoph. de Vega so recht die in jener Zeit bei vielen blühende exzentrische Zopftheologie, die sich alle möglichen Willkürlichkeiten und Geschmacklosigkeiten erlaubt und mit neuen grotesken Gedanken kokettiert, weshalb die neuen Auflagen dieses Werkes in unserem Jahrhundert ein großer Anachronismus sind.” Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 491 and developed the arguments in support of them more fully than Scheeben. Among the Jesuits, Suárez, Gregory of Valencia (†1603), and Gabriel Vásquez (†1604) are the most prominent theologians who argued against the debitum remotum in favor of a debitum proximum on the grounds that a debitum remotum was not sufficient to secure Mary’s redemption sensu proprio.66 Like Scheeben, Gregory of Valencia and the Dominican Bartolomé Medina thought that the ‘exemptionist’ position was rash, if not heretical.67 On the other hand, Jesuits such as Perlín, Peñalosa, and Nieremberg also argued that the debitum remotum was a harmful fiction, but they hoped to advance the ‘exemptionist’ position.68 Not surprising, other Jesuits, such as Didachus Granado (†1632) and Juan de Lugo (†1660) divided the debitum into more exotic forms in order to overcome the divide between the debitum proximum and the debitum remotum.69 Vast numbers of theologians offered extensive theologies of Mary’s co-redemption that emphasized the priority of her active redemption in the matter of the debitum. Many of Scheeben’s ‘Sophiological’ arguments about the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, were anticipated by Salazar’s argument that God ordained Mary’s entire existence to grace and glory, such that her passive redemption is wholly taken up in her active co-redemption.70 In all 66 Francisco Suárez, S.J., In Tertiam Partem D. Thomae, qu. 27, disp. 2, sect. 2, in Opera omnia, vol. 19 (Paris: Apud Ludovicum Vivès, 1856), 28–29; Gabriel Vásquez, S.J., Commentariorum ac Disputationum in Tertiam Partem S. Thomae, tom. 2, disp. 116, cap. 5 (Ingolstadt: Ex Officina Typographica Ederiana, 1612), 20–22; Gregory of Valencia, S.J., Commentariorum Theologicorum, tom 2, disp. 6, qu. 11 (Lyons: Sumptibus Horatij Cardon, 1619), cols. 557–74. 67 Bartolomé Medina, O.P., Expositio in Tertiam Partem D.Thomae, qu. 27, art. 2 (Salamanca: Typis haeredum Mathiae Gastii, 1580), 589–96, at 592b: “Primo conclusio. Haereticum dogma est, si quis dixerit beatam Virginem sic fuisse a peccato originali praeservatam, ut nihil illius incurreret.” 68 Juan Perlín, S.J., Apologia scholastica sive controversia theologica, pro Magnae Matris ab originali debito immunitate, dist. 1, cap. 2 (Lyons: Sumtibus Iacobi, Andreae, & Matthaei Prost, 1630), 7–8; Ambrosius de Peñalosa, S.J., Vindicae Deiparae Virginis de peccato originali et debito illius contrahendi rigore theologico praestructae et a nemine hactenus ex professo discussae, disp. 1, cap. 4 (Antwerp: Apud Hieronymum Vendussium, 1650), 50–52; Ioannis Eusebius Nieremberg, S.J., Opera parthenica de supereximia et omnimoda puritate Matris Dei, par. 4, sect. 6 (Lyons: Sumptibus Claudii Bourgeat & Mich. Lietard, 1659), 511–12. 69 Didachus [Iacobo] Granado, S.J., De Immaculata B.V. Dei Genetricis Mariae Conceptione, disp. 3, cap. 22, sect. 2 (Seville: Apud Franciscum de Lyra, 1617), 90v–92; Ioannis de Lugo, S.J., Disputationes Scholasticae de Incarnatione Dominica, disp. 7, sect. 3 (Lyons: Sumptibus Philippi Borde, Laurentii Arnaul, & Claudii Rigaud, 1653), 129–33. 70 Chirinus de Salazar, S.J., Pro Immaculata Deiparae Virginis Conceptione defensio, cap. 24, sect. 9 (Alcalá: Ex Officina Ioannis Gratiani, 1618), 184–85. 492 Trent Pomplun of these concerns, Scheeben inherits a long tradition of reflection, and his position on the debitum peccati maps fairly directly onto an earlier tradition, especially among the Jesuits. Although a detailed analysis of such influence is beyond the scope of this article, I should note that it makes perfect sense that many Jesuits would attempt to mediate or overcome the divide between the debitum remotum and the debitum proximum, since many prominent Jesuit theologians had advanced starkly differing views on the controversy, and these theologians are the very theologians whom Scheeben’s own tutors in Mariology would have known best. Almost every Mariologist of the baroque age was also concerned to spell out the exact relationship between Christ’s and Mary’s predestination in relation to sin. Much of the modern debate about the debitum peccati concerns the degree to which Mary can be said to be redeemed sensu proprio.71 Part of the confusion, of course, can be laid at Scotus’s feet, since he did nothing to clarify what he meant when he declared that Mary depended more on Christ, as she was redeemed in a most perfect manner. At root, it seems difficult to make sense of the “preservative redemption” implied by the Immaculate Conception, since the notion of redemption seems by definition to imply that the person redeemed has fallen victim to sin. Some theologians, such as the Jesuit Augustine Bernal (†1642) or the Carmelite Peter of St. John (†1682), have simply bitten the bullet and claimed that Mary was not redeemed.72 In such readings, Mary is saved and preserved by the grace of Christ, but, never having been a slave to Satan, strictly speaking she has no need of being redeemed. Of course, most of the theologians who argued for an ‘exemptionist’ position or the debitum conditionatum still argued that Mary’s preservative ‘redemption’ did not rest on a debitum peccati but on a debitum gratiae. Here, much of the debate concerned whether Mary’s redemption was sensu vero et proprio or merely sensu improprio. The Jesuit Francisco de la Torre (†1584), for example, argued that all that is necessary for Mary to be ‘redeemed’ broadly speaking is Christ’s preservative graces.73 Salazar argued that redemption 71 Juniper Carol, O.F.M., “The Problem of Mary’s Preservative Redemption,” passim. 72 Augustine Bernal, S.J., Disputationes de divini Verbi Incarnatione, disp. 10, sect. 3, no. 32 (Zaragosa: Typis et sumptibus Regii Nosocomi, 1639); Petrus a S. Joanne, O.C.D., Maria stellis coronata, Ms. Bibl. Desierto de las Palmas (1675). I have not seen either of these two works, although I suspect their arguments are clear enough from the premises. Both are cited by Carol, “The Problem of Mary’s Preservative Redemption,” 24. For the latter work, Carol depends upon a book by Ildefonso de la Inmaculada, O.C.D., De Immaculata B. V. Mariae Conceptione apud Carmeli Teresiani Ordinem (Rome: Ephemerides Carmeliticae, 1956), 136. 73 Francisco de la Torre, S.J., Epistola de definitione propria peccati originalis ex Dionysio Areopagita, & de Conceptione virginis & matris Dei sine peccato ex scriptura Angelicae Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 493 requires only a potestas peccandi.74 Both of these eminent Jesuits also distinguish between Christ’s elevating and redeeming merits. Franciscans such as Montalbanus also expanded the notion of Christ’s merits to include the ‘total’ Incarnation from conception to glorification, and so could claim that Mary was ‘redeemed’ apart from the Passion. In this sense, they said, Mary was redeemed sensu improprio.75 A cursory glance at the Mariological literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also indicates the wealth of topics that Scheeben did not integrate into his discussion of the debitum peccati, such as the signa rationis of God’s decrees; protological concerns about original justice, natura pura, and original sin; distinctions between God’s scientia simplicis intelligentiae, scientia visionis, and scientia media; and the voluminous debates, to which Scheeben only briefly alludes, about the predestination of Christ ante praevisum lapsum. Scheeben, of course, has quite profound and creative treatments of most—if not all—of these topics: he simply does not integrate them into his treatment of the debitum peccati or, for some of the topics, does so only in the most cursory of ways, and his outline cum history simply cannot do justice to the full scope of arguments about the debitum peccati. This should not reflect poorly on Scheeben, of course. The ever-shifting terms of this long controversy are related to a series of such complex doctrines that it is nigh impossible to summarize any of the book-length treatments of the subject in the early modern period. At the end of the day, the treatments of Mary’s Immaculate Conception by Lezana, Salazar, Montalbanus, or del Moral simply cannot be reduced to mere ‘positions’ or ‘types,’ not even by a theological genius of the stature of Matthias Scheeben. Although my quick historical summary of the controversy cannot claim to be any better than Scheeben’s, I hope it is sufficient to have demonstrated two things. First, much of our confusion about the controversy stems from an equivocation in the term debitum itself. Secondly, theologians have deployed these terms in an almost kaleidoscopic display, and their meanings shift quite dramatically as the theological controversy shifts from a debate about the Immaculate Conception in the thirteenth century to a debate about the debitum necessary to establish the Blessed Virgin’s dependence on Christ after the promulgation of the dogma six centuries later. Even if we Salutationis & testimoniis antiquorum Patrum (Ingolstadt: Ex Officina Davidis Sartorii, 1581), 26–27. Here, it might be noted that proponents of the nullum debitum often found inspiration in the Areopagite’s notion of preservative grace. 74 Chirinus de Salazar, S.J., Pro Immaculata Deiparae Virginis Conceptione defensio, cap. 24, sect. 4 (Alcalá: Ex Officina Ioannis Gratiani, 1618), 172. 75 Montalbanus, O.F.M.Cap., Opus theologicum, tom. 2, tract. 3, disp. 4, qu. 3, cap. 9, 445–48. 494 Trent Pomplun make allowances for the change in the way the technical phrases are deployed, especially after the Council of Trent, it is ultimately misleading to present the great variety of early modern Mariological positions in terms of the positions of Cajetan and Catharinus. Even if we modify the technical phrases used by these two great doctors to represent arguments that would be deployed in favor of the debitum proximum and the debitum remotum after the promulgation of the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, we cannot responsibly ignore the other forms of (far more developed) theological reasoning that were brought to bear on this discussion. The Debitum Peccati after Scheeben: A Concluding Note Ineffabilis Deus, like many teachings of the Magisterium, is broadly inclusive.While the bull adopts several arguments of Scotistic origin, especially the designation of Mary as proprium Dei opus primum, if anything it minimizes the modern Scotist aspects of the dogma and presents the Immaculate Conception in a form amenable to all traditions. All four of the basic positions that I outlined above, after all, remain viable options in Roman Catholic theology. The only position Ineffabilis Deus formally excludes is maculism. This openness led to a revival of interest in Mariology after the promulgation of the dogma in 1854, and almost all of the theories to which I alluded in the last section found ardent supporters between 1854 and the promulgation of the Blessed Virgin’s Assumption in 1950. When we look at developments in Mariology after Scheeben, however, we see that, although all of his concerns were echoed in twentieth-century treatments of the debitum, almost no theologian adopted Scheeben’s solution to the problem.76 If we look back to the great Mariological debates of the 1950s, we will see that many of Scheeben’s best insights led theologians to assert positions for which Scheeben himself cared very little. In fact, far more theologians advanced the ‘exemptionist’ position or inclined toward the most attenuated forms of the debitum remotum, such as the debitum conditionatum or the potestas peccandi, the very positions that Scheeben wished to exclude as legitimate solutions to the problem. In order to understand this phenomenon, we need to look at two questions to which Scheeben only alluded, namely, the questions of whether God foresaw Christ’s merits post praevisum lapsum, and whether 76 Few modern theologians beyond Feckes and Plassmann followed Scheeben’s presentation of the debitum materiale, although one notable exception was Schillebeeckx. Cf. H. Schillebeeckx, O.P., “Mutua correlatio inter redemptionem objectivam eamque subjectivam B. M. Virginis in ordine ad ejus maternitatem erga Christum et nos, ut principium fundamentale Mariologiae,” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 9 (1957), 305–21, at 308. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 495 Christ saved His Mother per modum glorificationis, per modum redemptionis, per modum satisfactionis, and/or per modum sacrificii. When Scheeben warned against the absolute predestination of Mary, he was following a hoary Thomist tradition. In fact, Scheeben’s reduction of Christ’s saving action to redemption, his claim that all graces after the fall of Adam are the graces of Christ, and his general rhetorical opposition of ‘absolute’ predestination to the ‘concrete’ facts of salvation history are standard loci in the longstanding debates about whether Christ was predestined ante praevisum lapsum or post praevisum lapsum. Although this debate is typically miscast as a debate about whether the Word would have become incarnate even if Adam had not sinned, it is more properly considered a debate about whether Jesus Christ is the (secondary) final cause of creation. I trust this old debate between Thomists and Scotists is familiar enough to readers of Nova et Vetera that I need not rehearse it in detail here.77 Suffice it to say that many of the debates in the debitum peccati controversy mirror the debates about the predestination of Christ, and many of the same theologians who wrote ex professo treatments of the former also wrote about the latter. In fact, Scheeben’s own treatment of these issues follows a tradition in the Society of Jesus articulated most forcefully by Toletus and Vásquez, whose appeals to the ‘concrete’ order of salvation history were aimed squarely at the two traditions in early modern theology that could claim to be these Jesuits’ chief rivals, namely Cajetanian Thomism and Scotism.78 In other words, the Jesuit theologians who attacked Scotus’s views as ‘heretical’ also attacked Dominican theologians for conceding too much to the Subtle Doctor. Sometimes in the heat of battle, these fervent Jesuits forgot that no less an authority than Thomas Aquinas judged the so-called ‘Scotist’ position on the predestination of Christ to be reasonable.79 In any event, much of how 77 Here, too, Juniper Carol provides excellent bibliographical material. Juniper Carol, O.F.M., Why Jesus Christ? Thomistic, Scotistic and Conciliatory Perspectives (Manassas, VA: Trinity Communications, 1986). Carol builds primarily upon the vast work of Francesco Risi, Ord. of St. John of God, Sul motivo della Incarnazione della Verbo, 4 vols. (Brescia: Tipografia Mucchetti & Riva, 1897–98). In some respects, Risi’s four-volume work remains unsurpassed; he located and analyzed texts, for example, that no one, not even Carol, has discussed in the century since the publication of his work. 78 Francisco de Toledo, S.J., Ennaratio in Summam Theologiae S.Thomae Aquinatis, tom. 3, qu. 1, art. 3 (Rome: Typis S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, 1870), 50; Gabriel Vasquez, S.J., Commentariorum ac disputationum in Tertiam Partem S. Thomae tomus primus, disp. 10, cap. 4 (Ingolstadt: Andreas Angermarius, 1610), 211–14. 79 St. Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis, dist. 1, qu. 1, art. 3: “Alii vero dicunt, quod cum per incarnationem filii Dei non solum liberatio a peccato, sed etiam 496 Trent Pomplun one views the debitum peccati in light of this question depends upon how one defines ‘redemption,’ and this brings us back to the difficulty of interpreting the words intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis. Must we say that Mary is ‘redeemed’ rather than ‘saved’? If one says that Mary must be redeemed, how does her so-called ‘preservative redemption’ merit the name? Is Mary redeemed sensu proprio? Does redemption sensu proprio commit one to a view that Christ saved His mother per modum glorificationis, per modum redemptionis, per modum satisfactionis, or per modum sacrificii? Strange as it may seem, Ineffabilis Deus led to a backlash against Duns Scotus among non-Franciscan writers. Six decades after the dogma’s promulgation, Norbert del Prado, O.P., could still repeat the Cajetanian maxim that Mary’s ‘total preservation’ from original sin was contrary to the Catholic faith.80 Even as late as the 1950s, there were theologians who claimed that Ineffabilis Deus officially sanctioned the debitum peccati, and so made the nullum debitum position heretical.81 These theologians argued that since the very existence of Christ and His mother depended humanae naturae exaltatio, et totius universi consummatio facta sit; etiam peccato non existente, propter has causas incarnatio fuisset: et hoc etiam probabiliter sustineri potest.” Compare Summa theologiae III, q. 1, a. 3. 80 Norbert del Prado, O.P., Divus Thomas et Bulla dogmatica Ineffabilis Deus (Freiburg: Ex typis Consociationis sancti Pauli, 1919), 119: “Praeservatio totalis B.V. Mariae a peccato originali videtur esse contraria fidei catholicae.” Compare P. MarínSolá, O.P., L’Evolution homogène du Dogme catholique, 2d ed. (Fribourg: Librarie de l’Oeuvre de Saint-Paul, 1924), II, p. 323, n. 209: “Une Immaculée exempte de tout le contenu du péché original, exempte, en d’autres termes, de toute debitum, est évidemment une Immaculée qui n’a été rachetée, d’acune manière, pas même redemption préservatrice. Or une Immaculée, sans aucune distinction, est erronée, sinon hérétique” [emphasis in the original]. This rhetoric continued to be influential for decades among Thomists, as we witness in Charles Journet, Esquisse du développement du dogme marial (Paris: Editions Alsatia, 1954), 131–33, where he claims that Duns Scotus denies that Mary was redeemed by Christ. I suspect that this was one of the reasons that Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. said, “It is Scotus’s glory to have shown the supreme fittingness of the Immaculate Conception, and Thomists should consider it a point of honor to admit that their adversary was right in this matter.” Bonnefoy was less patient. “Eh! bien, non!” Cf. “Quelques théories,” 281. 81 G. M. Roschini, O.S.M., “Il problema del ‘debitum peccati’ in Maria Santissima,” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 11 (1957), 343–55, at 353. Compare these remarks to the same author’s Mariologia, tom. 2, part 2, p. 90; or Emile Suaras, O.P., “Contenido doctrinal del misterio de la Inmaculada,” Estudios Marianos 15 (1955): 9–52, at 26, 28–31. Roschini gave voice to this common prejudice when he said of the Immaculate Conception, “In hac re valde exaggeratum est et adhuc valde exaggeratur meritum Scoti.” Cf. Roschini, O.S.M., Mariologia, tom. 1, part 2, p. 264. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 497 upon God’s previous foreknowledge of sin, that Ineffabilis Deus excluded not only exemptionism but also a Scotist view of the predestination of Christ. Fervent debitists who denied that Mary was predestined independently of sin, such as Norbert del Prado, O.P., Francisco Marín-Solá, O.P., Emile Suaras, O.P., and Charles Journet, insisted that a strict debitum personale et proximum was necessary to secure Mary’s redemption by Christ sensu proprio. They also insisted that Mary’s need of redemption in no way affected her singular purity. Of course, to assert that the debitum involves a moral disorder is directly opposed to the teaching of the Church. If the debitum does not involve a moral disorder, from what exactly was Mary redeemed sensu proprio? This objection highlights one very important ambiguity in many accounts of the debitum—such as Scheeben’s—that wish to incorporate what they take to be true in the debitum proximum and debitum remotum: such accounts seem to argue that a person can stand under a debt and be free from it at the same time. As we note this logical contradiction, perhaps we should remind ourselves why theologians such as Scheeben wished to reconcile or synthesize these two positions. For many theologians, a debitum remotum simply cannot provide the basis for Mary’s personal redemption by Christ and cannot ensure that her redemption is a true redemption. Indeed, as we saw above, Scheeben himself gives voice to both of these concerns. Still, many theologians of no less talent feel that the debitum proximum, while it secures Mary’s redemption, fails to protect her singular freedom and innocence.82 Here, though, I think we might see the trouble advancing upon Scheeben’s—or indeed any—attempt to reconcile these two notions of the debitum peccati. How do we speak of a debitum that is personal, which nonetheless involves neither inclusion in Adam’s fall nor inclusion in the moral disorder that results from it? Doesn’t this make the debt remote, rather than proximate? Doesn’t this open Scheeben to the very arguments that he himself advanced against the debitum remotum, or—to even greater devastation—the voluminous arguments marshaled against it by baroque theologians themselves? Debitists like Scheeben clearly felt that, in interpreting Ineffabilis Deus to imply that Christ saves Mary per modum redemptionis, they were safeguarding Christ’s status as the unique Mediator between God and humankind. It is not clear to me, however, how the predestination of Christ and Mary independently of sin detracts one whit from Christ’s status as the unique Mediator. No one denies that Christ is predestined 82 See, for example, Llamera’s response to Suaras. Marceliano Llamera, O.P., “El problema del débito y la redención preservativa de María,” Estudios Marianos 15 (1955): 170–223. 498 Trent Pomplun to be the Savior of the human race, but nowhere does Ineffabilis Deus say that the Incarnation was conditioned by sin.83 The argument assumes that the bull supports the Thomist position on Christ’s predestination only because it interprets Christ’s merits solely per modum redemptionis, but, as we have already seen, there is a rather extensive tradition that does not regard this as the only acceptable view of the matter. In fact, Franciscan theologians such as Pedro de Alcántara Martínez, Alejandro de Villalmonte, and Crisóstomo de Pamplona continued to reject the claim that Ineffabilis Deus excluded any notion of Mary’s absolute predestination with some vigor in the 1950s.84 Like Scheeben, these Scotists generally argued that the debitum remotum was a harmful fiction, at least insofar as its attenuated forms could still be called ‘debts.’ Many Scotists after Ineffabilis Deus simply argued that the debitum conditionatum and the potestas peccandi could not be called ‘debts’ at all. In either case, the Scotist tradi83 Carol (History, 177–78) argues that the text refers to the Incarnation as the “first work of God’s goodness” ( primum suae bonitatis opus), although strictly speaking the text says that the Incarnation was decreed to fulfill or “complete” the “even more profound mystery of the first work of God’s goodness.” Carol seems to distort the meaning of the text here: it seems the more natural reading is that the first work of God’s goodness is the creation of the world, and that the Incarnation brings creation into the fullness of God’s original plan. In this respect, the text sounds quite frankly Cajetanian, at least to the degree that it implies the triple order of nature, grace, and the hypostatic union. Still, one might argue, as indeed Carol does, that the Incarnation is the first work of God’s goodness in actu primo, which the Redemption brings to completion in actu secundo. Indeed, no theologian can legitimately maintain that the creation is an “even more profound mystery” than the Incarnation. Although the bull is somewhat vague on this point—perhaps purposefully so—it seems amenable to each of the major positions on the predestination of Christ as well as each major position on the Immaculate Conception. In any event, it is difficult to square a robust debitist reading with the passages in the bull that maintain Mary was “never subject to the law of sin” and flourished “outside the ordinary and established laws.” Note, too, the force with which the bull interprets the classic Augustinian locus: whenever there is a question of sin, no mention is to be made of the Virgin who received grace enough ad vincendum omni ex parte peccatum. 84 Pedro de Alcántara Martínez, O.F.M., “La redención preservativa de María,” Ephemerides Mariologicae 4 (1954): 243–67; idem, “La redención de María y los méritos de Cristo,” Estudios Franciscanos 55 (1954): 195–253; Alejandro de Villalmonte, O.F.M.Cap., “La Inmaculada y el débito del pecado,” Verdad y Vida 12 (1954): 49–101; Crisóstomo de Pamplona, O.F.M.Cap., “La redención preservativa de María y el requisito esencial de la preservación,” Estudios Marianos 15 (1955): 153–67. For the state of the art of Capuchin Mariology in the 1950s, see Melchior a Pobladura, O.F.M.Cap., ed. Regina Immaculata: Studia a Sodalibus Capuccinis Scriptua Occasione Primi Centenarii a Proclamatione Dogmatica Immaculatae Conceptionis (Rome: Institutum Historicum Ordinis Fr. Min. Capuccinorum, 1955). Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 499 tion tended to accept the arguments for the debitum proximum against the debitum remotum, and then eliminated the debitum proximum in favor of a nullum debitum or a debitum gratiae. By redrawing the map in this way, the Scotist tradition sometimes accepted the debitum conditionatum and the potestas peccandi as variants on the ‘exemptionist’ position. In such cases, they argued that Mary has neither ‘need’ nor ‘liability’ to contract sin unless two conditions are met: she loses the grace entitled to her as a daughter of Adam, and she fails to be given grace by God at her conception. In other words, that she loses the grace of original justice does not in any way ‘obligate’ Mary to sin; it merely makes sin possible. If we implicitly assign blame to Mary, if she herself is responsible in any way for losing the grace of original justice, we admit that she was subject, at least temporarily, to inappropriate passiones, and we thereby deny that Mary was redeemed in the most perfect manner and deny that she participated in Christ’s redemption in the most perfect manner.85 Still, if one accepts that Mary was redeemed sensu proprio, the very meaning of the word seems to imply that the Virgin be saved from sin de facto or de jure. Of course, the bull defines as dogma the position that Mary was never captive to sin de facto. Must she then be included in Adam de jure, and so fall under the debitum peccati? Carol, it must be admitted, struggles with this argument. On the one hand, he ardently supports the absolute predestination of Mary, but, quite against the grain of the general Scotist tradition, he tries to argue that God willed Christ’s passibility and even death before the prevision of sin.86 As a result, Carol himself prefers to say that Mary was redeemed sensu proprio by an analogy of proper proportionality.87 If one wishes to keep the notion of a preservative ‘redemption,’ it seems to me the easiest response is to say no more than Mary’s ‘redemption,’ being most sublime and perfect, is redemption sensu proprio, and that when we use the term to refer to our own redemption, naturally enough, we do so only by an analogy of attribution. In other words, if we wish to keep the term ‘redemption,’ we should also allow for the possibility that Mary’s redemption is redemption simpliciter and our redemption is redemption secundum quid. This need not trouble us in the 85 For F. O’Neill, Mary has no debitum passibilitatis: God’s singular grace ensures that she cannot fail in her mission. As a result, she neither ‘contracts’ original sin nor ‘contracts’ suffering and death, just as Christ Himself cannot be sad to contract suffering and death. Like her Son, Mary ‘assumes’ suffering and death as part of her mission as Mother of God and co-Redemptrix. Cf. F. O’Neill, “The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Alleged Debt of Sin,” Irish Ecclesiastical Record 22 (1923): 70–83. 86 Carol, Why Jesus Christ? 133–35. 87 Carol, “The Problem of Mary’s Preservative Redemption,” 30. 500 Trent Pomplun least, for the Blessed Virgin, predestined in one and the same decree as her Son, as proprium opus Dei primum, belongs indeed to the hypostatic order, and so possesses a dignity than which a greater cannot be thought. Why indeed would her redemption, which was most sublime and perfect, be otherwise? The only ‘necessities’ that impinge upon her are the necessities of fulfilling her mission as Mother of God. That said, some modern theologians, such as the prominent Mercedarian Mariologist Bienvenido Lahoz Laínez, have argued that we need not say that Mary is ‘redeemed’ at all.88 It seems to me, at least, in light of the general tenor of the Scotist tradition, that one could very well say that Mary was preserved by Christ’s merits, but prescinding from His passibility as such, such that she was saved per modum glorificationis. Indeed, we might very well have to jettison the term debitum—or at the very least purge our theological lexicon of several of its customary meanings. The lay theologian William Marshner, for example, feels that much of the confusion that surrounds contemporary debates about the debitum peccati arises from two sources: equivocations in the term debitum and failures to understand the logic of counterfactuals. In the first case, Marshner points out that debitum can have civil, juridical, moral, natural, and merely counterfactual nuances.89 While the roots of the term are found in the civil order, and applied by extension to the juridical and moral orders, Marshner quickly dismisses such jurido-deontic treatments of the debitum as being inadmissible to the case of Mary. In short, he argues, there is no ‘law’ that mandates that Mary should sin, nor even any that would subject her to the just punishments due to sin. As he cleverly remarks, if the transmission of original sin is governed in any way by ‘laws,’ these could not be the sorts of laws that one might actually disobey, and so the analogy fails. That said, if by debitum we mean something like a regularity of nature, in the way that we speak of something ‘having to happen’ when sufficient conditions arise, we get closer to the true sense of the term but produce some odd results, philosophically speaking. Such nomological debita, however, lead to the contradiction of saying that something that did not happen was ‘necessitated’ nevertheless, a position 88 Bienvenido Lahoz, O. de M., “La Santísima Trinidad y la Santísima Virgen,” Estu- dios 1 (1945): 66–144, at 141: “Salta a la vista que lo mismo el espíritu que la letra de las palabras de la definición ‘ab omni originalis culpae immunem’ excluyen de la Santísima Virgen toda relación de pecado, y por ende, todo débito y necesidad de redención.” Carol does not note that Lahoz goes on to argue a position that looks like those of the baroque Scotists, namely, that Christ’s merits can be “más amplios y profundos que los puramente redentivos.” 89 William Marshner, “A Critique of Marian Counterfactual Formulae: A Report of Results,” Marian Studies 30 (1979): 108–39, at 113–14. Scheeben and the Debitum Peccati 501 that Marshner judges to be “preposterous.” Consequently, Marshner thinks that many of the confusions that surround the debate about the debitum peccati can be cleared up if we recognize that we use the term debitum “doxastically,” that is, to express what ought to follow logically from one of our beliefs about the world. In Marshner’s doxastic treatment of the debitum, when we say that Mary ‘ought to have’ contracted original sin, we do no more than assert that, in light of its universality, Mary’s contraction of original sin was to be expected. The fact that she did not contract original sin is the counter-example by which our belief that she would or should have contracted original sin is falsified. Marshner goes on to demonstrate that, once this doxastic use of the debitum is granted, a strict application of the logical of counterfactual requires one to deny all forms of the debitum proximum and debitum remotum as meaningless or tautological. Marshner does admit the possibility of a coherent account of the debitum peccati that is nomological, as long as Mary is neither obligated nor necessitated to sin. In this case, all that one needs for such as nomological debitum is the assumption that Mary’s case is sufficiently like ours to justify the inference that a sufficient condition for the contraction of original sin did not in fact obtain in her case. Such, for Marshner, is what the debitum conditionatum wishes to express, although calling this a ‘debt’ or ‘necessity’ is misleading at best.90 If we retain the debitum conditionatum but reject that it is a debitum in anything but name, it might be worth noting that the two living scholastic traditions that reject both debita are also the two traditions that have had, pace Nichols, quite a lot to say about the unique meta-order of the Incarnation, namely, Scotism and Cajetanian Thomism. Cajetan and his followers famously posited a threefold order of nature, grace, and the hypostatic union in their attempt to absorb John Duns Scotus’s insights on the predestination of Christ without subscribing to the Franciscan’s position on the ‘motive’ of the Incarnation. Followers of Scotus, on the other hand, in order to advance the ‘exemptionist’ position in the debitum peccati controversy, taught that Mary belonged to the hypostatic order. I believe that Scheeben’s uneasy relationship with these two traditions causes him no small amount of confusion, especially in the way he presents the 90 Marshner thinks enough of this alternative to the strict nullum debitum that he subjects to a thorough refutation in the remainder of the article. I do not think that Marshner’s demolition of the debitum conditionatum is strictly valid, but I do think that he gives us ample reason to see it as little more than a weakly expressed variation on the nullum debitum, much in the way that the simple conditionals of Grosseteste and Scotus can be expressed more strongly in fullbodied arguments for the debitum gratiae. 502 Trent Pomplun controversy over Mary’s debitum peccati. In any case, both Scotism and Strict Observance Thomism provide interesting solutions to the dilemmas posed by Scheeben. If we treat Mary as a natural child of Adam, one is led along the path that leads from Cajetan to Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, who asserts a debitum conditionatum.91 Is the natura pura that undergirds Cajetan’s threefold order abstract? Yes. Must we deny it on that account? No. Inasmuch as it allows us to understand the mystery of Mary’s dependence on Christ in a truly metaphysical fashion, the modern form of the debitum conditionatum is not only acceptable but salutary. Now, what the debitum conditionatum expresses abstractly through the analysis of the order of nature, the exemptionist position expresses concretely from the vantage of final causality. The astute reader might note that on this interpretation, the only thing that separates the strict Cajetanian position from the historical position of Blessed John Duns Scotus is maculism itself. Remove maculism—as Ineffabilis Deus obliges us—and the natura pura by which we conceive Mary’s relation to Adam leads straight to the classical debitum conditionatum. This simple conditional, however ‘abstract,’ still tells us quite a bit about the concrete order of redemption. That is an argument for another essay; for now, we need only to remark that the modern theologian most faithful to the historical position of John Duns Scotus is in fact Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Scheeben could have followed either of these paths. His theology includes aspects from each, but his inability to distinguish them, at least on this issue, seems to involve him in unnecessary confusions. That Scheeben’s theology is undergoing something of a renaissance is of course a great good thing. We can do much worse than to read the great Romantic’s theology. Seen in a broad light, it develops much of what was great in the positive theology of the baroque age and so anticipates the return to the fathers espoused by many of the brightest lights of twentieth-century theology. Scheeben the Romantic, however, anticipated another trend in twentieth-century theology that is less than salutary, namely, the denigration of the great baroque commentarial traditions. Despite his wide reading in scholastic theology, he simply does not do justice to this particular portion of our Catholic tradition. But then again, who does? At the very least, I hope this essay has shown that, however profound and creative Scheeben’s Mariology might be, it is but a channel to much wider and adventurous seas. N&V 91 Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., {Appendix: De sollemni disputatione circa debitum peccati originalis in beata Virgine Maria} in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 11 (1957), 456–99, at 459. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 503–13 503 Grace as the Gift of Another: M. J. Scheeben, K. Eschweiler, and Today R ICHARD S CHENK , O.P. University of Eichstätt Eichstätt, Germany “As God does not change by his condescension, so man is not swallowed up by being exalted.” —St. Leo the Great1 I. Pre-negotiating the Interpretive Situation W HY Scheeben? Even prior to this symposium, the basic answer to this question must have seemed obvious. A conference today on Matthias Joseph Scheeben will be interested in renewing the sense of grace and the supernatural, widely recognized as the core and focus of Scheeben’s thought. But this immediate sense of purpose leads directly to a second question that is more difficult to answer:Why is it that the renewal of our sense of grace and the supernatural is so urgent and difficult today as to require help from Scheeben? Why do we need to look back to the nineteenth century, or with it, to look back behind the various phases of scholasticism to patristic thought, both Latin and Greek? What is the charitological problem today, for which we are looking for help by investigating Scheeben’s work? The quest to identify what was promising or deficient about Scheeben must therefore begin by identifying what challenges us today. Some twenty-five years ago, in preparation of a commemorative volume that was to appear in 1988 on the centenary of Scheeben’s death, the then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1 Leo the Great, Epistula 28, Ad Flavianum, 3–4 (PL 54, 763–67): “Sicut enim Deus non mutatur miseratione, ita homo non consumitur dignitate” (cf. Officium lectionis, Ad sollemnitatem Annuntiationis Domini). 504 Richard Schenk, O.P. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote a necessarily brief letter to accompany the volume.2 He recalled there the late-twentieth-century context, one that has changed but little since then, for understanding this “Grundwort of Scheeben’s theology,” the supernatural or, simply, “supernature.” Cardinal Ratzinger recalled first the reasons why the term had been discredited by Henri de Lubac and avoided by the Council.3 In opposition to the appearance of the “Zwei-Stockwerk-Theorie” (that nice but unnecessary upstairs addition to an already adequate bungalow), . . . Lubac had wanted to make visible once again the dynamic ordering of both realms to one another, which implied that human beings cannot come to rest in mere nature. It had not been about eliminating the supernatural; quite to the contrary, it had been an attempt to shift the supernatural as the authentic directional signal and arrow of our entire existence back into the center of Christian anthropology. But now the polemical attack on the doctrine of the double “Stockwerk” was reinterpreted as a general rejection of every sort of “dualism”; even the very distinction of nature and supernature was declared illegitimate. Initially, the elimination of this supposed “dualism” had seemed slanted rather toward supernaturalism: all of reality was to be interpreted Christologically; but quickly, now, the whole tendency flipped over into a flat naturalism, which reduced even the Christological to the commonplace of human existentials. And once Christianity’s new, “supernatural” dimension has been denied, then its promise must also be reduced to the realm of the natural, to “this-sidedness”: political messianism and the banalities of immanentistic theologies were and remain the necessary consequence of this loss. Bound up along with this, there occurs simultaneously a terrible reduction of what it means to be human, which is now reduced to what can be done and shown off. The whole world of what is interior or higher is left to languish.4 The road to the recovery in our own day of an ability to be attentive to the mysteries of grace in both theology and ecclesial life is therefore not simply a matter of asserting the universal presence of grace or denying the distinguishability of grace from our nature, making the de facto 2 J. Ratzinger, “Geleitwort,” in Vari Autori, M. J. Scheeben teologo cattolico d’ispirazione tomista (Studi Tomistici 33) (Citta del Vaticano: Pontificia Accademia di S. Tommaso e di Religione Cattolica 1988), 9–13 (translation mine). 3 Cf. also de Lubac’s letter of 12 November, 1961, to J. Maritain, admitting that Scheeben’s introduction of the term supernature into scholastic theology was “maybe not very fortunate”; quoted by René Mougel, “The Position of Jacques Maritain Regarding Surnaturel: The Sin of the Angel, or ‘Spirit and Liberty’,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought, ed. Serge-Thomas Bonino (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009), 59–83, here 72f. 4 J. Ratzinger, “Geleitwort,” 11ff. Grace as the Gift of Another 505 nature that we always already experience into the primary locus and universal embodiment of the supernatural. That would simply repeat the “flip” that Cardinal Ratzinger described as leading from verbal affirmation of the supernatural to its existential redundancy; a flip that would lead at most to an inflationary supernatural, to “cheap grace.” To recognize the gift of grace is to recognize both the presence of a high good in our lives and its free source in Another. The cause of the supernatural seems to be something like that of King Lear: it is not necessarily the daughters who praise Lear most lavishly who are then most attentive to his legitimate claims. The question that we have to ask of Scheeben is whether his work and reception offer resources that allow us today to treasure more intentionally grace and faith as the rich and free gifts of Another.5 The goal of reading Scheeben and following his development and reception must be the retrieval of the capacity for that discrimen gratiae et naturae that is demanded for the flourishing of each; a goal toward which the legacy of a Joseph Kleutgen or even a Georg Hermes might, if not quite Cordelialike, still be able to make a contribution, as if we could say of them what France says to Lear of his most reticent daughter: Is it but this—a tardiness in nature, Which often leaves the history unspoke That it intends to do? (Lear I 1) But, then, again, why, or in what sense, Scheeben? And when? Those who have studied Scheeben’s own development and that of his reception6 tell us of changes in both. In the first of two remarkable essays published in the “Scheeben year,” 1988, Leo Scheffczyk traced how Scheeben increasingly came to portray supernature as the goal and meaning of human creation itself.7 Although Scheffczyk applauded the reduction of the 5 Cf. the positive expectations of John Courtney Murray, “The Root of Faith: The Doctrine of Matthias Joseph Scheeben,” Theological Studies 9 (1948): 20–46; and Matthias Scheeben on Faith:The Doctoral Dissertation of John Courtney Murray, ed. D. Thomas Hughson, Toronto Studies in Theology, vol. 29 (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1987). 6 Until 1880, Scheeben’s development was driven in part by his ongoing controversy with Joseph Kleutgen (†1883) and other representatives of the Roman school of Jesuit neo-Scholasticism.The resultant diversity within Scheeben’s own development allowed for a diversity within the reception of Scheeben as well. This shift would modify what might still have been considered the extrinsicism of nature to grace in the famous early work of 1861. Cf. i.a. David Berger, Natur und Gnade (Regensburg: S. Roderer, 1998), 156–62. 7 Leo Scheffczyk, “Schöpfung als Vor-Ordnung der Gnade. Zur Schöpfungslehre M. J. Scheebens,” in Vari Autori, M. J. Scheeben teologo cattolico d’ispirazione tomista 506 Richard Schenk, O.P. extrinsicism implied in the work of 1861, he also mentioned at least four times in passing the bothersome appearance of too close an affinity of the later position to the supernatural existential of Karl Rahner. Scheffczyk felt compelled to take up this theme more directly in a second essay, in which he sought to distinguish the organic from the transcendental model of union between nature and supernature.8 Taking up a characterization suggested by Karl Eschweiler, Scheffczyk sees in Scheeben’s “organic” model a less thorough-going union of nature and supernature. The heterogenous organs of any one organism, the distinct phases of its growth, its real distinction from other organisms are all aspects of the organic that Scheffzyk sees Scheeben employing to qualify the union of nature and grace and to underline their abiding difference and even opposition. In that same brief letter that Joseph Ratzinger wrote for the Scheeben volume of 1988, the Cardinal singled out three areas of Scheeben’s thought for our attention: Scheeben’s thought was first of all centered in the supernatural.The twenty-six-year-old Scheeben came close to spelling out the issue here, when, at the very beginning of Nature and Grace, he points to the need to identify the “difference,” even the “opposition,” but also the “union” of nature and grace:9 Unterschied, Gegensatz, Verbindung. Does Scheeben’s legacy help us to do this, or does the dazzling glory of their union blind us to the “charitological difference” necessary for us to recognize grace as a gift? The second feature of Scheeben’s thought singled out in the letter of 1988 just cited is a consequence of supernature, the sense of mystery that belongs to genuine theology and ecclesial life (what Aidan Nichols in his recent study of Scheeben translates as the “mysteric”).10 As Ratzinger’s letter put it: (Studi Tomistici 33) (Citta del Vaticano: Pontificia Accademia di S. Tommaso e di Religione Cattolica 1988), 205–25; on Rahner cf. 206, 211, 217f., 220, 222. 8 Leo Scheffczyk, “Die ‘organische’ und die ‘transzendentale’ Verbindung zwischen Natur und Gnade. Ein Vergleich zwischen Matthias Joseph Scheeben und Karl Rahner aus Anlaß des Scheeben-Gedenkens,” Forum Katholische Theologie 4 (1988): 161–79. 9 In his English translation, Cyril Vollert renders “Unterschied, Gegensatz, Verbindung” in this context as “difference, opposition, and union”: cf. M. J. Scheeben, Nature and Grace (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1954; reprint Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009), xvii. 10 Cf. Aidan Nichols, Romance and System: The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben (Denver, CO: Augustine Institute Press, 2010), 101–14. To illustrate the “continuity of principles,” John Henry Newman had written of the nature of theology and the interpretation of Scripture less than twenty years before Scheeben’s Nature and Grace in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845: Part II, 7: Application of the Second Note: Continuity of its Principles): “In Grace as the Gift of Another 507 What is essential to the world of faith is precisely what is entirely other: it provides a new beginning in history: that which cannot be deduced or derived, but precisely as new can only be disclosed from itself, when one risks that leap into what is new, what is not derived. That is what is meant by the word “mystery.” Where this dimension is not accepted, when what is considered Christian is reduced to what can be derived generally, then what is essential to a biblical faith doesn’t even come into our pervue. Theology of this kind misses its true object. Theology only begins with this courage for the mysteric, reflecting on faith and recognizing faith as the preception of the new and underived. Scheeben placed the greatest importance upon this inderivability, this complete disguishability of levels. This is the basic thought of his Mysteries of Christianity, which seems to me in turn to unfold the basic intuition of his entire theology. . . . A theology that speaks of what is new and cannot be reduced simply to the principles of our reason.11 But, if “what is essential to the world of faith is precisely what is entirely other,” how does what J. Ratzinger noted as a third central concern of Scheeben avoid making both supernature and the mysteric “Lebenswelt” seem like the fruit of one’s own being? Present already for example in the reflections on sonship in Naturand Grace, it is a dimension difficult to comprehend that Scheeben would stress increasingly as his worked progressed. In Ratzinger’s words, it is “the core of the whole controversy,” but one that calls into doubt the looser sense of union proposed to distinguish Scheeben’s model from the transcendental-idealistic ones: . . . the doctrine of the non-appropriated indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the human soul. . . . Although logical considerations actually appear to enclose the three persons of God in the interior of His essence and to make them incommunicable to the outside; and although, from the other side, human beings cannot transcend the limit of their finitude, so that an immediate contact with the infinite seems impossible, although therefore from both sides there are necessary reasons that seem to speak against it, Scheeben wants to hold fast to the realism of this mystery in all its like manner the contempt of mystery, of reverence, of devoutness, of sanctity, are other notes of the heretical spirit.” “It may be almost laid down as an historical fact, that the mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together.” 11 Ratzinger, “Geleitwort,” 10, citing M. J. Scheeben, Die Mysterien des Christenthums. Wesen, Bedeutung und Zusammenhang derselben nach der in ihrem übernatürlichen Charakter gegebenen Perspective dargestellt (1865); cf. Manfred Hauke, “Das Faszinierende der göttlichen Gnade. Zur charitologischen Ästhetik bei M. J. Scheeben,” Forum Katholische Theologie 9 (1993): 275–89; and already Michael Schmaus, “Die Stellung Matthias Joseph Scheebens in der Theologie des 19. Jahrhundert,” in Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Der Erneuerer der katholischen Glaubenswissenschaft, ed. Carl Feckes, et al. (Mainz: M. Grünewald, 1935), 29–54. 508 Richard Schenk, O.P. consequences: that God has ways as person to touch the person and as God to be with his creature really and not just by way of mediations.12 II. Karl Eschweiler’s Reading of Scheeben in the Context of His Times The relation of “Unterschied” and “Gegensatz” to “Verbindung,” the relation of the difference and the opposition of nature and grace to the union of nature and supernature in human persons, as well as the relation of Scheeben’s thought to the wide variety of transcendental-idealistic systems cannot be resolved without closer attention to Scheeben’s nineteenthcentury context. Aidan Nichols’s recent study of Scheeben’s theological synthesis between “Romance and System” has shown again the value of looking closely at Scheeben’s own contemporary context. One of Nichols’s sources, the 1926 study by Karl Eschweiler, Two Paths of Recent Theology: Georg Hermes and Matthias Joseph Scheeben, has always been acknowledged as a classic in this regard.13 The tragedy of its author, Karl Eschweiler, was arguably that he had a better grasp of controversies that had entered the twentieth century from the eighteenth and nineteenth than he had of those which first manifested themselves in the twentieth.14 Thanks to the recently completed Eschweiler study project carried out by Thomas Marschler at the University of Augsburg, we now have better access to Eschweiler’s works than ever before. Not only have Eschweiler’s philosophical dissertation on Augustine and his Scheeben study been made easily accessible again (the latter in digital form), but his 1921 theological dissertation from Bonn, Der theologische Rationalismus von der Aufklärung bis zum Vatikanum. Ideengeschichtliche Studien zur theologischen Erkenntnislehre and his habilitation in theology from there the following year, Die Erlebnistheologie Johann Michael Sailers als Grundlegung des theologischen Fideismus in der vorvatikanischen Theologie. Ein ideengeschichtlicher Beitrag zur theologischen Erkenntnislehre, have now been published for the first time.15 These studies 12 Ratzinger, “Geleitwort,” 12f. 13 Karl Eschweiler, Die zwei Wege der neueren Theologie: Georg Hermes—Matthias Joseph Scheeben. Eine kritische Untersuchung des Problems der theologischen Erkenntnis (Augsburg: B. Filser, 1926). 14 Cf. now Thomas Marschler, Karl Eschweiler (1886–1936):Theologische Erkenntnislehre und nationalsozialistische Ideologie (Regensburg: Pustet, 2011).The author thanks Prof. Marschler for generously sharing several pages of this important study just prior to its publication. 15 Karl Eschweiler, Die katholische Theologie im Zeitalter des Deutschen Idealismus. Die Bonner theologischen Qualif kationsschriften von 1921/22. Aus dem Nachlaß herausgegeben und mit einer Einleitung versehen von Thomas Marschler (Münster: Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2010). Grace as the Gift of Another 509 by Eschweiler on figures including Benedikt Stattler and Leibniz/Wolff, Georg Hermes and Kant, Anton Günther and Hegel, as well as J. M. Sailer and Jacobi were completed just prior to Grabmann’s first edition of Scheeben’s Nature and Grace in 1922, and they sharpened Eschweiler’s understanding of the ongoing remarks by Scheeben on the thought of his contemporaries, the service that he still provides for us today. The key to Eschweiler’s reading of Scheeben’s modern context is perhaps best found in chapter four,16 after he has already presented individual chapters on Georg Hermes (II) and on Scheeben (III). Where Scheeben had frequently situated his argumentative goal between excesses of self-confidence and self-doubt, Eschweiler now sees Scheeben’s sense of genuine theology as the interplay between two kinds of light, the lumen infusum of grace and the lumen naturale. Eschweiler identifies in Scheeben’s analysis fidei two general patterns of failure in understanding this interplay of lights, and he assigns two subgroups to each pattern of failure. There are on the one hand “monistic” patterns that fail by identifying only one source of light. As examples he suggests various forms of neo-Augustinianism that would attribute all theological light to grace, but also the various forms of rationalism that attribute all important and reliable religious light to nature, refusing to place any credence in divine authority. Among the many varieties of rationalism are the systems of Stattler, Hermes, and Günther, relying on the philosophies of Leibniz/Wolff, Kant, and Hegel respectively. On the other side of the ledger, that other general pattern of failure in understanding the interplay of light in theology is called “dualism,” paying distant respect to some under-utilized dimension, while concentrating on its alternative.The two subtypes here are exemplified by a fideism of experience over doctrine (Sailer) and what Eschweiler, happily or not, called “Molinism,” meant to identify a wide spectrum of scholasticism which insists on a realm of knowledge and will that is initially free of any inclination toward God. Because the so-called “dualistic” models focus on just one element, there are ways in which they overlap with their monistic counterparts; there are fideistic parallels to Augustinianism, just as there are Molinist approximations to Hermes. Eschweiler’s special interest is in restoring to theology a vitalized if differentiated unity, whereby the theological sub-disciplines that are not immediately informed by faith in auctoritas divina would be brought back into a whole that is moved first and foremost by such a faith. This primary attention by faith to the auctoritas divina is what finally differentiates a third general pattern of theology as genuine in contrast to 16 Eschweiler, Die zwei Wege der neueren Theologie Georg Hermes—Matthias Joseph Scheeben, IV i, 3: 204–18. Richard Schenk, O.P. 510 the two failed patterns. Eschweiler calls it the “teleological type,” marked by the “mens sancti Thomae,”17 because of the desiderium naturale visionis Dei that inclines it from the start to seek faith in the “authoritative” word of Another, to seek new life that is the gift of Another, to seek a sonship that is not one’s own by previous right or generation. The chief feature highlighted by Eschweiler is its trust in the auctoritas of Another, which gives it what could be called a dialogical, interpersonal, or responsorial dimension. It is this responsorial dimension more than its organic or developing character that arguably distinguishes Scheeben’s thought most clearly from the active self-transcendence of a Karl Rahner, whose analysis fidei seems in this regard more reminiscent of Günther than of Hermes. Although Hermes’s appropriation of Kant is named explicitly by Eschweiler as one exemplification of the rationalist subset of monistic theories on grace and nature, the second chapter also had identified laudable aspects in Hermes’s thought. Hermes’s apologetic goal had restricted the best use of reason to the sheer affirmation of God, while claiming only a far weaker sense of how his mysteries might be understood. One might here see the foreshadowing of the Bultmannian association of a non-objective understanding of the word of God with a keen sense of God’s addressing me by it (that “Anrede Gottes,” which the more radical Bultmannians around F. Buri and H. Braun would dismiss as an inconsequent retention of mythology). Scheeben’s sense of supernature and of the mysteric character of theology demands at least a parallel recognition that more is at stake in theology than what my native powers can easily grasp. The “new path” that Eschweiler suggests as a synthesis nearer to Scheeben than to Hermes is a theology designed to be vibrant both in its dialogical recognition and in its understanding of the mysteries of God. Eschweiler summarizes his chapter on Hermes as follows: In the second chapter—‘Georg Hermes, the theology of critical reason’— the first of ‘The Two Paths of the Newer Theology’ is presented: and indeed in its most rigorous and, if you will, its most classical execution. Once its complicated way of thinking is unravelled, the critical theology of Georg Hermes no longer looks like that frightful ghost of theological rationalism, as which international theology had once portrayed it. Hermes is least of all a rationalist, much less a naturalist. It is merely a methodological step that leads him to isolate the essence of reason from faith. Admittedly, he applies this methodological isolation seriously and so radically reduces theological knowledge down to reason’s iudicium credibilitatis. If the method is applied seriously, without merely 17 Ibid., 216. Grace as the Gift of Another 511 feigning isolation, the pure essence of reason, methodologically isolated from faith, becomes automatically a tool of whatever contemporary philosophy is considered at the moment absolutely necessary.18 If Hermes’s vision of theology is not without its merits, so the other of “The Two Paths of Newer Theology,” namely Scheeben, despite typifying the teleological method, is not without its limitations. Eschweiler describes what he sees as Scheeben’s merits and limits shortly after publication of The Two Ways in answer to objections from the Jesuit faculty at Innsbruck.19 Conversely, the second of “The Two Paths of the Newer Theology” is characterized by this, that it allows theological thinking to enter as purely as possible into a believing understanding of the ideas of revelation and the ecclesial tradition. It is exemplified here by the great example of “Matthias Joseph Scheeben—Theology drawn from Faith” (third chapter). Both Scheeben’s theory of faith and his general doctrine of grace show that this theologian, perhaps the greatest theologian that was bestowed upon the Church in the 19th century, has overcome the spirit of early modernity in Catholic theology by overcoming Molinism and by pressing on to the principles of genuine Thomism.20 While describing Scheeben as “the most precious blossom ever bestowed upon the springtime of new scholasticism,”21 Eschweiler criticizes not his practice but his notion of theological method. And that critique suprisingly does not associate his theory with Sailer’s fideism. However, in theological epistemology Scheeben is still stuck in the parallelism of a method of pure reason here and of pure faith there. He doesn’t himself practice this kind of theological reason isolated from faith. In contradiction to his own doctrine of faith and grace, but, rather, quite in accord with Molinist principles, he allows this parallelism of “a double form of theology” to continue.22 18 Karl Eschweiler, “Eine neue Kontroverse über das Verhältnis von Glauben und Wissen,” Bonner Zeitschrift für Theologie und Seelsorge 3 (1926): 260–76, here 261; cf. Eschweiler, “Eine neue Kontroverse (II),” Bonner Zeitschrift für Theologie und Seelsorge 4 (1927): 155–60. 19 Cf. the review of Eschweiler’s book by Johann Stufler in Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie 50 (1926): 326–36; as well as Johann Stufler, “Molinismus und neutrale Vernunfttheologie,” Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie 51 (1927): 35–59. 20 Eschweiler, “Eine neue Kontroverse über das Verhältnis von Glauben und Wissen,” 261. 21 Eschweiler, Die zwei Wege, 24. 22 Eschweiler, “Eine neue Kontroverse” (I), 261. Richard Schenk, O.P. 512 III. Responsoriality and Being a “Child of God” Eschweiler interpretated Scheeben’s sense of faith and theology as trust in Another and as a unique option in the midst of the many post-Cartesian turns toward self.23 It is also this feature in Scheeben’s thought that led him to that third characteristic identified by Cardinal Ratzinger in 1988: the doctrine of the immediate presence of God in the supernature of the human person. Eschweiler traces its origins to Scheeben’s sense of faith: The image of the relationship “child-father” characterizes the original sense of Scheeben’s theory of faith. . . . The analogy is perfect. The interpretation of religious faith as a relationship of creaturely dedication and divine authorship could not have been expressed in a more tangible image.24 Eventually the development of this image will move Scheeben into a unique place, not only in the modern history of Western theology, but in the context of the older Western theological tradition as well. The tension involved in Scheeben’s interpretation of God’s unmediated indwelling and the problems it poses for that acknowledgment of alterity needed for recognition of the gift of adoption become evident only gradually. The homo iustus is given in a natural-supernatural reality. Is he to be a child, who belongs entirely to the father in a natural community? But only one is the natural son of God, one in being with the Father. Human beings in the state of grace are “accepted” as children of God. The nobility and consecration of their divine being is “created grace.” They are conscious of their created nobility, children not by natural bonds.Therefore it is possible for them to conduct themselves as friends of God, self-guiding, come-of-age.25 The tension-in-unity between friend and child will remain in Scheeben’s thought, even as he begins, under the inspiration of Cyril of Alexandria, to place increasing stress on the dialectic between a gratia increata and the new and fragile beginning implied by a gratia inhaerens. The four essays collected in volume VIII of Scheeben’s works on the controversy concerning the Council of Trent and the formal cause in those who are justified by their becoming children of God document the external and internal difficulties with which Scheeben struggled as he 23 For Eschweiler’s positioning of Scheeben between the “fideismus” of Sailer and the “rationalism” of Hermes, cf. Marschler, Karl Eschweiler, 128–33. 24 Eschweiler, Die zwei Wege,150f. 25 Ibid.,157. Grace as the Gift of Another 513 developed his uncommon doctrine. The editor of the volume, Heribert Schauf, who had followed this theme in Scheeben’s works as no one else had,26 sees here another point of comparison with the theology of Karl Rahner, who for his part underscored the exceptional character of Scheeben’s doctrine of the Trinity.27 Tracing that affinity and its aporetic would lead beyond the necessary limits of these reflections. Scheeben manages to see the abiding sense of self that makes possible the charitological difference, not just in a notion of friendship that would balance the notion of child of God, but also within that notion itself. In the volume of the Handbuch katholischer Dogmatik dedicated to the theology of grace, Scheeben singles out among the gifts of the Holy Spirit timor filialis as a formal principle of all the gifts. Timor filialis had long been understood as a principle of alterity, a reverence for the other that contains an awareness of one’s own finitude. Thomas Aquinas had argued that, precisely in the creaturely finitude that is essential to it, timor of this kind would remain even in patria, so that the blessed might be fully blessed by their awareness of the gift of Another. It is this qualification of humanity’s supernature that will be needed to re-center Scheeben’s legacy if it is to find a lasting place in the future of Catholic theology. Scheeben’s sense of timor filialis must be taken as the key to interpreting his theology of adopted sonship and the gift of the supernatural. N&V 26 Cf. Heribert Schauf, “Scheebens Lehre von der Einwohnung des Heiligen Geistes,” Pastor Bonus 48 (1937): 11–26. Rahner’s 1960 contribution to the Festschrift for A. Stoher: Karl Rahner, “Bemerkungen zum dogmatischen Traktat ‘De Trinitate’,” also in Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, Vol. 4 (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1960), 103–33, e.g. p. 108, where Rahner praises Scheeben and Schauf for their willingness to cast off the conceptual restrictions of created grace. 27 Cf. Karl Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 515–36 515 Substantial Union with God in Matthias Scheeben R. J ARED S TAUDT Augustine Institute Denver, CO I N Romance and System: The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Aidan Nichols describes Scheeben as “above all a theologian of human deification.”1 The scriptural foundation for the Church’s teaching on deification is found in 2 Peter 1:3–4: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.”2 Scheeben unpacks the meaning of this passage in a traditional manner: “We must receive a sort of new nature, not by the addition of a new substance or by the implanting of radically new faculties in the soul, but by a transfiguration and elevation of our whole nature with all its faculties to a higher sphere.”3 Traditionally, deification has been understood as the elevation of our nature by a sharing in the divine operations: knowing and loving God as he knows and loves himself. What is particularly striking about Scheeben’s writing on deification, which he treats in each of his major works, is not his articulation of this traditional understanding but rather his bold exposition of how God shares his very substance with the graced soul.4 1 Aidan Nichols, O.P., Romance and System: The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben (Denver, CO: Augustine Institute Press, 2010), 287. 2 RSV, 2d Catholic edition. 3 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (New York: B. Herder Co., 1954), 11. 4 In his Scriptum super Sententiis, Aquinas makes the distinction between the ways in which rational and non-rational creatures attain to God—the first being, he says, 516 R. Jared Staudt Nichols describes Scheeben’s position on “participation in the substance of the divine nature”5 as follows: “There thus comes about a communion (koinônia) in the divine substance, or, better, says Scheeben, a ‘co-possession’ (Mitbesitz) of divine life by God and the graced creature.”6 Whereas Scheeben was more cautious initially on the point of substantial union, even from the beginning of his career he wrote boldly on how we do not just imitate the divine nature and life but are intrinsically united to God in his inner life. In the Glories of Divine Grace, he writes: “God . . . enters substantially into the soul . . . and unites Himself so intimately with such a soul that it seems He wills it to be a part of His being.”7 And further: “We are then truly made one spirit with God. This does not mean that the substance of our soul ceases to exist, but it is so intimately united with God that in a certain manner there results from the union one whole. . . . The fire of the Divinity penetrates our soul and takes it to Himself, making it seem identical with God Himself.”8 Although these two statements are cursory and appear in his early translation and major reworking of Joannes Nieremberg’s seventeenthcentury work on grace,9 this idea can be traced through the rest of his “according to substance.”The full quotation is as follows: “Other creatures, although they follow the divine likeness because of the operation of God Himself, do not, however, attain God according to substance; and therefore although God is in them, they are not, nevertheless, with God. But the rational creature by grace attains God Himself, inasmuch as he loves Him and knows Him; and therefore he is said to be with Him, and on the same score he is called capable of God as His perfection, by way of object; and because of this he is even said to be the temple of God and to be inhabited by God” (In I Sent., d. 37 Expositio Primae Partis Textus, trans. Francis B. Cunningham, O.P., in The Indwelling of the Trinity: A Historico-Doctrinal Study of the Theory of St.Thomas Aquinas [Dubuque, IA: The Priory Press, 1955], 196). 5 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, ed. M. Schmaus (Freiburg: Herder, 1948), III/IV, 398, as quoted in Nichols, Romance and System, 92. 6 Nichols, Romance and System, 92, quoting Scheeben, Handbuch, III/IV, 399. Malachi J. Donnelly, S.J., summarizes Scheeben’s position as well: “This substantial cohesion, insofar as it consists in this, that the substance of one being at least partially belongs to the other being, is called a communion, or community of substance” (“The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit according to M. J. Scheeben,” Theological Studies 7, no. 2 [1946]: 236). Donnelly, however, is not comfortable with the term substantial union and says it should be “sedulously avoided” (ibid., 279). 7 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace: A Fervent Exhortation to all to Preserve and to Grow in Sanctifying Grace, trans. Patrick Shaughnessy, O.S.B. (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 2000), 126. Parenthetical in-text references to this work will appear, for example, as “GDG 126.” 8 Ibid. 9 Cf. T. L. M. J. Geukers, “Introduction,” in Mariology, vol. 1, trans. T. L. M. J. Geukers (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book, Co., 1946), viii. Substantial Union in Scheeben 517 corpus. Though not following this development chronologically, I will use all of his major works to present thematically his treatment of this inner, and even substantial, union. I will begin by looking at how the soul shares in God’s Trinitarian life; continue by examining the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the example of Mary; and finish by treating the relation of substantial union to the soul. After presenting his position on substantial union, I will engage criticisms of his thought and offer some clarifications using the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Before engaging Scheeben’s position on substantial union, I will make two more general points. First is the difficulty of speaking of God having substance. Aidan Nichols specifically addresses this point in Scheeben’s thought. Defining substance as “the ground or bearer of attributes,” Nichols states in relation to God: “In an analogical sense, we can speak of substance in God. . . . And the reason is twofold. Reason one: God is the ‘absolute ground of his own attributes and at the same time is these attributes in a manner most perfect since they are identical with his substance.’ Reason two: all other substances can only be bearers of their attributes as they are ‘primordially caused and upheld by the power of God.’ ”10 The second general point is to note the background to the controversy over substantial union. Scheeben was taught the position of “substantial unification” by Passaglia and Schrader in Rome, which brought him into contact with the position of Petavius on substantial union with the Holy Spirit through an exclusive proprium, a union proper and exclusive to the Holy Spirit in distinction from the other divine persons.11 In Nature and Grace, Scheeben 10 Nichols, Romance and System, 180–81, italics original, quoting Scheeben from Handbuch, II, 41. Nichols defines the substance of creatures as follows: “When we speak of the ‘substance’ of a creature we have in mind that which is the ground or bearer of attributes and, as such, is really distinct from them all” (ibid). 11 On Scheeben’s mentors, see Nichols, Romance and System, 91, where he states: “For Passaglia and Schrader, Uncreated Grace means a ‘substantial unification’ between the just and the divine persons, the union with the Spirit bringing with it a union with the Father and the Son, while Franzelin presents created grace as (simply) a necessary disposition or foundation for the real relation of the graced person to the indwelling of God.” On the exclusive proprium theory of Petavius, see Donnelly, “The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit according to M. J. Scheeben”; idem, “The Inhabitation of the Holy Spirit: A Solution according to de La Taille,” Theological Studies 8, no. 3 (1947): 445–70. For an overview of the discussion of indwelling in relation to a proprium in mid-twentieth century theology, see John F. Macfarlane, “Recourse of Theologians to St. Thomas for the Proprium Theory of the Indwelling” (S.T.L Diss., St. Mary’s University, 1966). Scheeben was also profoundly influenced by the Greek Fathers on this point, especially Cyril of Alexandria. It is the influence of the Greek Fathers that assisted him in forming his profound position on the Spirit’s inhabitation. See Donnelly, 253–54. 518 R. Jared Staudt explicitly distances himself from Petavius, but in The Mysteries of Christianity he refers to Petavius positively and comes to see the presence of the Holy Spirit within the soul as a substantial, and even hypostatic, presence that cannot be deemed mere appropriation.12 Malachi Donnelly does not see this as merely adopting Petavius’s position; rather, he sees it as the move toward a new theory which Donnelly deems a non-exclusive proprium, meaning that the soul has a direct relation to the person of the Holy Spirit; unlike Petavius’s theory, this does not exclude the other persons but actually entails union with them as well. I mention this at the outset, not to engage in an exposition of the controversy, but to note that many scholars have accused Scheeben of holding Petavius’s questionable position.13 Although Petavius did influence Scheeben on the Spirit’s inhabitation, that need not hinder an appreciation of Scheeben’s unique contribution. Trinity What distinguishes Scheeben’s position most from the position of simply imitating the divine nature is the emphasis on participating in the Trinitarian relations. It is by entering into the divine relations that one shares in the very substance of God, rather than simply imitating him.The foundation for this sharing in the divine life is the communication of the divine substance itself within the Trinity. Scheeben portrays the relation between God’s life and our share in it in the following passage: The first and highest [communication] is the substantial communication and diffusion of the divine nature from the Father to the other two divine Persons. The second is the hypostatic union of the Second Person with humanity. The third is the union of the God-man with all other men in the Eucharist and in grace, with the purpose of conveying to them, from the very source of the divine goodness, all the richness of God.14 I will follow this order provided by Scheeben in my exposition, which begins with how we are related to God’s communication of his own substance within himself. 12 Nature and Grace, 198n8; The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1946), 167. Parenthetical in-text references to this work will appear, for example, as “MC 167.” Robert W. Gleason, S.J., in his book, The Indwelling Spirit, devotes a chapter to Scheeben, where he emphasizes the development of his position and also his reliance on the Greek Fathers for his position of substantial union (New York: Alba House, 1966). 13 Cf. Donnelly, “The Indwelling,” 244–52, in which he gives a summary of criticisms, and also Bernard Fraigneau-Julien, P.S.S., “Grâce créée et grace incréée dans la théologie de Scheeben,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 4 (1955): 337–58. 14 Nature and Grace, 342. Substantial Union in Scheeben 519 In his chapter on the “Significance of the Trinity” in The Mysteries of Christianity, Scheeben speaks generally of how the Trinity reaches us through grace: “[The Trinity] thrusts the branches of its interior organism into the organism which is modeled upon it; that is, it exhibits itself in the order of grace as a prolongation of the eternal productions and processions, and really introduces their eternal products into the creature that is endowed with grace” (MC 147). This occurs in such a way that the soul is related and joined to each person of the Trinity.15 Beginning with the Father, Scheeben states that “the Father extends His hypostatic fatherhood to us” (MC 493), so that “this fatherhood is not merely imitated in God’s relationship to man, out of sheer grace, but is joined to man substantially” (MC 395). This relation to the Father leads us immediately to our relation to the Son. It is by adoption that we are made God’s sons, and this occurs only through participation with the eternally begotten Son. Though we are adopted, Scheeben argues that this sonship is a real one that brings with it all the prerogatives of having the Father as a true father. For instance: “In this way the child of grace is made mystically and supernaturally one with the Father in a relation that should be called physical rather than moral, and that in itself pertains to no creature but to God’s only-begotten, natural Son alone.”16 Our sonship is not juridical, but, Scheeben says, it is actually natural.17 Because the Father is the source of the Trinitarian relations, we share in the Trinitarian life by virtue of our relationship with the Father.18 Through adoption we have a very direct relation to the Son in that we participate in his begottenness from the Father. The first procession is the basis for entrance into God’s life. The Father substantially communicates himself to the Son, and he extends this substantial communication to us: “The communication of divine life to the creature and to mankind is 15 In The Mysteries of Christianity, Scheeben asserts and then asks the following: “Hence this sojourn of God in our soul is beyond doubt real and substantial. But is it also hypostatic?” He answers: “Yet the individual persons, too, as distinct from one another, can give themselves to us for our possession and enjoyment” (160). 16 Nature and Grace, 140. 17 Cf. Matthias Joseph Scheeben, La dogmatique, vol. 3, trans. Pierre Bélet (Paris: V. Palmé, 1881), no. 847 (This is a French translation of Scheeben’s Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik. I am providing the numbers from within the text instead of page numbers so that it will be easier to find the passages in the original German. There is an English abridgment and adaptation as well: Joseph Wilhelm and Thomas B. Scannel, A Manual of Catholic Theology: Based on Scheeben’s Dogmatik [New York : Catholic Publication Society, 1901]); The Glories of Divine Grace, 96. 18 Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, 115. 520 R. Jared Staudt further to be regarded as an extension and continuation of that communication of life which is transmitted from the Father to the Son in God” (391–92). Scheeben further says that “our participation in the divine nature and divine life becomes a reproduction of the fellowship in nature and life which the Son of God has with His Father, as their supreme, substantial oneness requires” (481). We become united to each divine person, but our conformity to the Son is greatest. This conformity is no mere imitation but a union based on substance. The importance of substantial union for Scheeben is that it ensures that we genuinely and fully share in the divine life. We share in the Son’s life by sharing in his generation: “But the ultimate factor in generation, the substantial connection between begetter and begotten, would be lacking if the Son of God did not unite Himself to us in His substance and take us up into His substance” (MC 493). The soul truly has a divine birth, which can even be called a reproduction of God in the soul,19 so much so that the soul is, “as it were, of equal birth with God” (MC 205). As an important caveat, it should be noted that Scheeben is careful to point out the infinite distance between our sonship and that of the Son,20 though he also unites them by the substantial union of the one to the other. Just as the relation to the Father necessitated speaking of the soul’s shared sonship with the Son, so this filiation necessarily requires union with the Holy Spirit.21 If we most resemble the Son, it is because of the Spirit’s presence: “Filiation itself does not consist solely in an accidental resemblance, received from God with the divine nature; it consists also in the co-possession of the proper spirit of God and of the substance of the divine nature.”22 The Spirit in a special way enables the soul to possess the divine substance. Scheeben argues that “the first procession terminates in the second,” that of the Holy Spirit, “who is the product of the union between the Father and the Son” and “brings about the union between God and the creature which imitates that relationship” (MC 144, 145). The gift of the Father and the Son in the Spirit as the gift of their own substance is the most important element of Scheeben’s understanding of substantial union with God.23 Not only is the Spirit substantially present in the soul 19 The Glories of Divine Grace, 12. 20 Cf. La dogmatique, III, no. 844. 21 C.f., P. Alvaro Huerga, O.P., “La Pneumatologia de M. J. Scheeben,” in M. J. Scheeben: teologo cattolico d’inspirazione tomista, Studi thomistici vol. 33 (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1988), 147–57. 22 La dogmatique, III, no. 863. 23 Cf. La dogmatique, III, nn. 841, 856; The Glories of Divine Grace, 74; Nichols, Romance and System, 93. Substantial Union in Scheeben 521 through indwelling, but his indwelling is also the means of union with the other persons.24 Scheeben speaks of the Spirit as “substantial breath” and “effusion,” “substantial grace,” divine “seed,” and “informing the soul.”25 He also speaks of the Spirit bringing about a “substantial cohesion,” and “substantial society” with the soul.26 The Spirit is the substantial gift of God, which unites the soul to God, allowing it to enter and participate in the Trinitarian relations. Due to the importance of the Spirit in substantial union, I will return to this point when speaking of the soul directly. Incarnation Although it is in examining the Trinitarian relations that we see the substantial union of the soul with God most directly, this union presupposes the substantial unification of the second person of the Trinity with human nature in the Incarnation. In fact, Scheeben describes the Incarnation in terms of bringing about unity with the internal life of the Trinity: “The Incarnation sets up a real continuity between the Trinitarian process and the human race, in order that this process may be prolonged in the race.” Indeed, this continuity implies “real contact with the source.”27 The basis for this extension of the Trinitarian life is the hypostatic union. The Son has taken upon himself human nature so that “the divinity not only gives of its life to the human nature, but combines with it to form one substantial whole, as the soul does with the body.”28 This substantial whole is the foundation of our substantial union with God. 24 For a treatment of the Spirit’s indwelling that expounds not only St. Thomas’s view but also other major scholastic writers, see Francis L. B. Cunningham, O.P., The Indwelling of the Trinity. Cunningham states that the scholastic tradition commonly held the following points: “The three divine Persons really, personally and substantially dwell in man,” and “the indwelling of God in the soul is a real presence, i.e., physical and substantial, not merely moral” (36, 80). 25 La dogmatique, III, nos. 856, 862, 856, and 841. On informing the soul, Scheeben speaks of the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit as “the most important constitutive element of divine filiation, in the sense that it [the Spirit’s inhabitation] contains a participation in the substance of the divine nature, a society, a unity, a substantial cohesion with God. The Spirit of God, in a certain sense, appears by his substance as the ‘form which informs the soul,’ or as forma constituens esse divininum.” Nichols comments on this passage, pointing out in particular the role of the Greek Fathers, especially Cyril of Alexandria (Romance and System, 91–92). 26 La dogmatique, III, nos. 841 and 840. 27 The Mysteries of Christianity, 385. Further down he states that “we enter into Christ’s personal relationship with the Father,” so that the “substantial unity between the Father and the Son is to be communicated to the creature” (397; 407). 28 Ibid., 318. In case the word combines should cause alarm, Scheeben clarifies in the next paragraph that the hypostatic union “unites them [the distinct natures] in 522 R. Jared Staudt In Scheeben’s view, the Son of God became Incarnate chiefly for our deification, that is, to bring about a union like his union with our humanity.29 This idea is brought out in The Glories of Divine Grace, though Scheeben makes an important clarification: “Thus we distinguish in the sacred humanity of Christ a twofold deification. The one consists in its personal union with the Eternal Word, the other in its glorification by divine grace. True, we are not so intimately united to God as is the humanity of Christ, but we do really exist in and for God, and this union finds its best illustration in that union that exists between the Divinity and humanity of Christ” (GDG 157). Although we do not just become one with Christ by sharing a common humanity, in adoption we “are made substantially akin to [the Father] as a truly divine race.”30 As a member of Christ’s Body, the soul can be said to share in Christ’s “divine dignity” (MC 377), and “divine holiness and splendor” (MC 378), because Christ’s Spirit is also the Spirit of His Body, “substantially dwell[ing] in it . . . manifest[ing] His divine energy to it and in it” (MC 395). The Incarnation has brought about a new, divine humanity, which shares in Christ’s divinity, through his union with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Eucharist Just as Scheeben says that the Incarnation brings Christ’s divinity and humanity into a substantial whole, so he says that the Eucharist does with us, forming a “real, physical, substantial union,” as “the essential function of any food is to combine with the one partaking of it in the formation of a single substantial whole.”31 In the Eucharist we become “homogenous” one personal, hypostatic whole, without at the same time merging or fusing them into one nature.” 29 Cf. ibid., 488. 30 The Mysteries of Christianity, 408. He continues: “For such a union of man with God the Father is unthinkable unless we were meant to participate in the prerogatives and the life of the divine nature, just as the Son participates in the majesty and life of the Father by His substantial oneness with the Father. This living union, the root of which is substantial union, can be nothing else than participation in the divine nature by the grace of sonship” (emphasis mine). 31 Ibid., 483. The Eucharist is essential in bringing the effects of the Incarnation directly to the soul. The soul who receives the Eucharist is joined to the Incarnation, as Scheeben describes: “For, if the Word is made flesh by assuming flesh, is He not to some extent incarnated anew when He makes those who partake of Him in the Eucharist His members, and as such takes them to Himself?” (ibid., 486). For more on the Eucharist in Scheeben, see B. Fraigneau-Julien, P.S.S., “Le mystère de l’Eucharistie et l’incorporation au Christ selon M. J. Scheeben,” Revue des sciences religieuses 31 (1957): 249–74. Substantial Union in Scheeben 523 (MC 525) with Christ: both his divinity and his humanity dwell in us so that we share not only in the hypostatic union but also in his procession from the Father.Thus, there is a “reproduction” and even a “perfect replica” of God’s inner life given to us through the Eucharist, which Scheeben describes powerfully: To bring this union about, the Son of God, made man, unites Himself to us in His humanity in the most intimate, substantial fashion, to form one body with us, as He Himself is one Spirit with His Father. And as He Himself has the same nature and life as the Father, by virtue of His spiritual oneness of essence with the Father, so by His ineffable union of body with us He wishes to make us share in His divine nature, and to pour out upon us the grace and life that He has received in their entire fullness from the Father and has communicated to His humanity.32 The Eucharist is representative of Scheeben’s position that God truly wants to make us substantially one with him. This oneness is brought about not only through becoming like him, but also through truly sharing in his inner life. “Christ is the substantial . . . bond” that unites “widely separated opposites” (MC 407), and the Eucharist is a “substantial incorporation” (MC 482) with that bond.33 The Eucharist is a “substantial union” with Christ, and through this union, a union with the entire Trinity (MC 482). The important Eucharistic doctrine of transubstantiation also plays a role in understanding how the Eucharist leads to “supernatural union 32 The Mysteries of Christianity, 481. Scheeben relates the Spirit’s role in dwelling in the Body of Christ, which I touched on in the last section, with the Eucharist: “Our fusion with the God-man into one body, of which the Fathers speak in such bold terms, is conceivable only if we are filled with His divine Spirit, with the vital force of His divinity, and if we are wonderfully fused with His divinity into one Spirit. We must become one Spirit with God in as true, profound, and real a sense as Christ is perceived to be one body with us in the Eucharist” (ibid., 488). 33 Joseph Ratzinger, while not using the terminology of substance, articulates a similar view, using the image of marriage in relation to the Eucharist: “What we developed previously in terms of the image of eating now becomes more perspicuous and more comprehensive from the point of view of the image of love between human beings: in the sacrament, which is an act of love, two subjects are fused in such a way as to overcome their separation and to be made one. Hence, the Eucharistic mystery, precisely in being transformed by the idea of nuptiality, remains at the heart of the concept of the Church as described by the term ‘Body of Christ’ ” (Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, trans. Adrian Walker [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996], 38–39). 524 R. Jared Staudt with God.”34 Transubstantiation is the “model and efficient cause”35 of the soul’s transformation in Christ, because “the transubstantiation of the bread into the real body of Christ produces and prefigures a supernatural and very remarkable transformation of Christ’s mystical body by assimilating it to its head” (MC 501). Scheeben is clear that our substance is not altered in its essence, but by being joined to Christ it receives “new quality modifying its own substance.”36 Although there is not a new substance or even a substantial transformation of the soul into the substance of Christ, there is substantial joining, so that Christ “takes the partaker to Himself, not by transforming his substance, but by joining him substantially to Himself, as a member that belongs to Him and is animated by Him” (MC 484). This substantial joining does not make one into God’s substance, but it does allow a “supernatural participation in the divine mode of existence predicated of Christ’s body” (MC 476) and consequently leads through a union with his Body as a member to “a possession and partaking of God in His divine substance” (MC 526). The Eucharist manifests and makes present to the soul God’s desire for union with it, a union that does not stop until the substance of the soul is united to the very substance of God. Mary Before completing my survey of substantial union by looking at the effects in the soul, I want to examine the supreme example of this union in Christ’s mother, Mary. In Mariology, Scheeben’s treatment of Mary in the Handbook of Catholic Dogma, translated as a distinct book, Scheeben ascribes many unique privileges to Mary. Mary’s privileges extend to 34 Mysteries of Christianity, 479. The entire sentence reads: “In the thoughts and feel- ings of every Catholic the idea of a supernatural union with God is inseparable from belief in this mystery [i.e., the Eucharist].” 35 Ibid., 502. In the same passage Scheeben links transubstantiation with the Incarnation: “As we have explained and contended throughout the course of exposition, only the absolutely supernatural elevation of human nature to participation in the divine nature stands in proportion to the elevation of Christ’s humanity to hypostatic union with the divine Word, as to its exemplary and efficient cause. In the same way it is only the sublime and mysterious transformation of our nature resulting from that elevation which is proportionate to the conversion of bread into the body of Christ, as to its model and efficient cause.” 36 “What the [created] spirit receives is not, of course, a substance, but a new quality modifying its own substance” (Nature and Grace, 130). Cf. The Mysteries of Christianity, 379; The Glories of Divine Grace, 43. Scheeben also states that in this substantial union “the two substances coexist without confusion” (La dogmatique, III, n. 843). Substantial Union in Scheeben 525 substantial union, although, upon further investigation, Mary appears to have to a fuller degree what each soul is called to possess.37 Scheeben argues that Mary was given “the substantial grace,” “the grace of the divine motherhood . . . analogous to the grace of the union,” which is “essentially . . . nothing else than the divine being of her Son, granted to the mother and infused into her.”38 God desires a union with every soul, but he has brought one about with his mother in an exceeding fashion, which Scheeben even deems an infinite dignity.39 Her substantial grace is ordered toward complete union with Christ, which is so great that “she is . . . assumed into the person of the Logos as His bride in such a way that she exists only in and through her relation to the divine person of her Son. And this relation conditions and defines her entire existence.”40 Although this privilege pertains uniquely to Mary “at the outset of her origin and also forever” and to such a high degree, her union with Christ is nevertheless an image of deification for every soul. To have life only in and through the divine life and to be joined to the divine persons as spouse is the call of every soul, but it is manifested foremost in Mary. Not only do we see in Mary the most perfect example of God’s work in the soul through substantial grace and the union of marriage, but also we find the true spouse of the Holy Spirit most fully in Mary. Her union with the Spirit is so profound that Scheeben goes so far as to say that she “is as a kind of incarnation of the Holy Ghost,” because the Spirit “forms with her 37 One area already pointed out above is how the hypostatic union is an analogy for the soul’s substantial union with God. 38 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Mariology, vol. 1, 205; emphasis mine. On Mary’s substantial union with Christ, cf. Nichols, Romance and System, 443–44. On the importance of this divine motherhood, as a spousal motherhood in particular, see P. Marie-Joseph Nicholas, O.P., “Le concept de maternité dans la théologie mariale de Scheeben,” in M. J. Scheeben: teologia cattolico d’inspirazione tomista (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1988), 351–59. 39 “Rightly named, therefore, is this loftiness of her nobility and dignity when it is called infinite, not indeed in an absolute sense, yet in a very real sense. Infinite in so far as it contains such a participation in the essentially infinite dignity of God, or resembles it so closely that, apart from God Himself, no higher is imaginable, neither can it be equaled or measured through any other dignity possible to a created person” (Mariology, 219–20). 40 Ibid., 205. On the prior page Scheeben makes clear how this grace is embedded within her very existence: “The grace of the motherhood makes Mary a person of supernatural nature or order, in the same way as Christ is constituted a truly divine person through the grace of the union.” In another location he also states: “In like manner [as between Holy Ghost and the Logos] the mother of the Logos is connected with Him through the fact that the Logos through His love gives her His person and assumes her into a union with His person, which is the closest imaginable in the relation between two persons” (ibid., 180). 526 R. Jared Staudt one undivided whole and is embraced in her composition as her soul.”41 This can be seen as the highest substantial union of God with a creature. Mary is “informed” by the Spirit, “thus as one moral person with Him so that He forms the seal of her personality.”42 Mary’s role as divine mother and cooperator in Christ’s mission of redemption is possible because the Spirit dwells in her so fully. All that she does is informed by the Spirit, who marks her life with his presence. She finds the very constitution of her being and action in God, through a personal union with her Son in substantial grace and a moral union as one whole with the Holy Spirit. This teaching may be bold enough of itself, but what may be more bold is that, though Scheeben holds Mary up as a unique example, he also speaks in largely the same terms of God’s desired union with each soul. The Soul In the soul, as we saw in Mary, we observe both a substantial union with God and a personal union with the Spirit. Substantial grace is understood for Mary as having her life, even the very constitution of her being, defined in relationship to the second person of the Trinity. Likewise, we see that substantial union grounds the soul’s life so much in God that the soul seems to exist as one with him.43 In the supernatural life, the creature begins to live in God, depending on him for the ability to live in a way that exceeds nature. Scheeben says that “to some extent God’s essence takes the place of the creature’s essence, in the sense that the creature’s supernatural faculties are radicated immediately in it.”44 To be raised to the level of union with God requires that God share his inner life with the soul to enable it to do what it cannot normally do and to live a life beyond its natural capacities. This sharing of the divine life with the soul, Scheeben considers a “copossession of the divine substance,” by which “the substance of the divinity fills the creature and informs it in a certain manner.”45 The result of sharing the same substance is a unity between God and the soul, which does not make them strictly one thing together, but nevertheless can still be called a moral union, and even a physical union to some degree.While 41 Ibid., 215. 42 Ibid., 181. 43 “As the creature, raised above itself and deified, loses its imperfections, so in its supernatural union with God it casts off its natural, solitary condition and its dependence on self, to exist no longer in itself and for itself, but in and for God” (The Glories of Divine Grace, 157). 44 Nature and Grace, 138. 45 La dogmatique, III, nn. 866, 863. Substantial Union in Scheeben 527 God and the soul maintain their diverse substances absolutely, they also share one substance together in a communion, which depends on God’s gracious sharing of himself. Scheeben describes this kind of union of two separate beings sharing one being, when “part of the substance of the one is passed into the substance of the other and thus forms with the substance one being in the other being.”46 Scheeben is not saying that the soul becomes indistinguishable from God, but that it depends on God so greatly as to be in a “common and organic life” of dependence on him.47 This shared life is so strong that there is “fusion in one sole being,”48 once again understood as the life of the one dependent being existing only through its union with the other, sharing the life and substance of the other as its own without losing its own substance. It is important to recognize that Scheeben is speaking in light of the spiritual life. The soul does not lose its natural constitution; rather, its natural life is so infused with God’s supernatural life that in the realm of the supernatural it lives only in and through him. Union with God is the end of the spiritual life and this is obtained only by God directly sharing his inner life with the soul. When the soul possesses God’s life it has a union of substance, which means that it approaches God while having God within itself. This creates a sort of identity between God and the soul. The language that Scheeben uses to talk about the creature’s unity with God is surprisingly strong: “Only grace raises man to such a high degree of similarity—even to a certain equality with God—that the distance between God and man is spanned” (GDG 116). And further, using a traditional image: “As the iron is in the fire and fire in it, absorbing and consuming it entirely, so that they no longer appear distinct, so the fire of the Divinity penetrates our soul and takes it to Himself, making it seem identical with God Himself ” (GDG 157).49 God does 46 Ibid., no. 842. Other relationships of shared substance can be found between a father and son, spouses, branches and roots, and members of a body and its head. 47 Ibid., no. 873. 48 Ibid. Scheeben clarifies that although there is “the substantial presence of God in the creature,” there is still “intact the difference of persons” (ibid.). Cf. The Glories of Divine Grace, 41. 49 This surprisingly strong language is echoed in the writings of the great mystical Doctor of the Church, St. John of the Cross: “God will so communicate His supernatural being to [the soul] that it will appear to be God Himself and will possess all that God Himself has. When God grants this supernatural favor to the soul, so great a union is caused that all the things of both God and the soul become one in participant transformation, and the soul appears to be God more than a soul (The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, bk. 2, chap. 5)”; “Having been made one with God, the soul is somehow God through participation. Although it is not God as perfectly as it 528 R. Jared Staudt not leave any part of the soul untouched by his life, but floods it completely, “absorbing and consuming it entirely,” making it like him by the gift of his life within it. This intimate sharing of God’s life makes the soul so like God that, though its nature remains intact, its supernatural life makes it divine. This new existence can only be understood as being derived from God in complete dependence. This is how one can understand Scheeben’s statement that “we belong to God’s kind in the same manner as the palm tree belongs to the class of plants, and the lion to that of animals” (GDG 21). Taken at face value, this statement would seem problematic, but Scheeben indicates that deified creatures can derive their divine life only from participating in God’s own life. The result is not that “we become new gods” but that the soul is given “something which God alone is by nature,” a “reflection of the glory which is peculiar to Him and above all creatures” (GDG 26). Scheeben speaks of sharing in God’s “eternity” (GDG 27), the “holiness which is proper to the Divine Nature” (GDG 74), as examples of how we share in God’s life. The most important way of sharing in God’s life is that his essence becomes present to the soul in the manner in which it is present to himself. Scheeben elsewhere explains this as follows: “This object [God’s essence] must be brought into contact with those faculties in a way similar to that by which it is immediately, substantially present to the inner life of God Himself. . . . It must be truly present in them, so much so that if it were not already present everywhere, it would have to be substantially lodged in the creature for this very reason and purpose” (MC 159). Just as Mary’s grace of motherhood consisted in the divine being of her Son being lodged within her, so also the substantial grace given to each soul entails the divine being, the essence of God, being lodged within the soul, present to it even as it is present to the Trinity itself. This is the intimacy and union that God desires with each human being. The Holy Spirit had a crucial role in realizing this substantial grace in Mary and has this role in the soul as well. Scheeben points to “the possession of the Holy Spirit as substantial grace.”50 Donnelly explains the crucial role of the Holy Spirit in bringing about substantial union with God: “Being the substantial bond of union between the Father and the will be in the next life, it is like the shadow of God. Being the shadow of God through this substantial transformation, it performs in this measure in God and through God what He through Himself does in it (The Living Flame of Love, stanza 3, verse 5)” (quoted in Charles Journet, The Theology of the Church, trans. Victor Szczurek, O. Praem. [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004], 86–87; emphasis added by Journet). 50 La dogmatique, III, no. 862. Substantial Union in Scheeben 529 Son, the Holy Spirit appears as Their intermediary in Their union with the just soul.”51 God brings about a substantial unity of being with the soul through the imparting of a substantial gift. The Spirit, as God’s substantial love, draws the soul into the love of the Trinity.52 Scheeben states that “God, whose being is the same as His love and perfectly one with it, enters substantially into the soul which He has made worthy of love through grace and unites Himself so intimately with such a soul that it seems He wills it to be a part of His being” (GDG 126). It is love, the Holy Spirit, that unites the soul to God as one with him. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit makes God’s substance present to the soul, not simply in regard to the substance itself, but even hypostatically. This reveals the real breakthrough in Scheeben’s teaching on deification. The soul does not simply become like God, which it does of course, but it also enters into God’s Trinitarian life and becomes specially related to each divine person.53 Scheeben’s explication of the divine missions, which has been controversial, argues that they involve “the necessary conception of a real, substantial, and hypostatic entrance of the Son and the Holy Spirit into our souls” (MC 159). The criticism against such a position is that it violates the principle of the unity of the divine operation ad extra.54 Defending Scheeben from this charge, Donnelly argues: Whereas . . . the divine processions do not enter formally into creation (they are rather presupposed), on the contrary, under the form of quasiformal causality, they and their eternal products can at least be conceived as entering formally into the grace-life.This will be an ‘influence,’ a formal communication of the divine being (of course, in a finite manner, from the side of the recipient soul); but it will not be an action. It will be a union, a tractio of the just soul into trinitarian life. Although it is indeed presupposed, efficient causality, an ‘action,’ formally has nothing to do with such an ‘influence’ of the divine Persons; for an efficient causality does not enter formally into any union.55 51 Donnelly, “The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit according to M. J. Scheeben,” 268. 52 “In the concrete the name Holy Spirit signifies the spiritual substance of God as it is in the third person” (Nichols, Romance and System, 93, quoting Scheeben, Handbuch III/IV, 407). 53 “Evidently, then, all three persons come to us and give themselves to us, inasmuch as they are one with the essence, and in the essence with each other. Yet the individual persons, too, as distinct from another, can give themselves to us for our possession and enjoyment” (The Mysteries of Christianity, 160). 54 For the magisterial foundations of this principle see Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, trans. Patrick Lynch (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1955), 72. 55 Donnelly, “The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit according to M. J. Scheeben,” 251. Rahner describes this quasi-formal causality as follows:“He does not merely indirectly 530 R. Jared Staudt As mentioned above, Scheeben does argue for a particular union with each divine person, though a union that does not exclude the other persons.The Holy Spirit, as the substantial gift of God, particularly serves to unite the soul to the Trinity. He dwells in the soul as his temple and also leads to the indwelling of the other persons, acting as “intermediary.”56 The Holy Spirit’s hypostatic presence in the soul is the means by which the soul is substantially united to God in his inner Trinitarian life.The Spirit brings about substantial union, because he is the love of the Father and the Son. Aidan Nichols describes the importance Scheeben gives to this relationship with the Spirit: “The Spirit’s union with graced human beings, though never less than moral, must be more than moral for it is hypostatic. Pneumatic union, in joining human beings with God, unifies as intimately, on its own level, as does the “one-ing” of body and soul in each of us, or that of Godhead and manhood in Christ.”57 Body-soul unity and the hypostatic union are the examples that manifest how closely the Spirit unites himself with the soul. Though Scheeben does not speak of each soul as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, this substantial presence certainly makes the Spirit present in a radical way. Speaking of the Spirit, Scheeben states: [W]e possess this love not only in the general sense in which we say that everyone who is loved possesses the love of another. We possess it in its substantial nature and its hypostatic outpouring; it is substantially in us. . . . The same love with which the eternal Father loves His Son is in us as it is in the Son, in its inner essence and with its inner effusion; it is our own property and rests upon us: “that the love wherewith Thou has loved Me” says the Son to the Father, “may be in them.”58 God’s substantial love dwells in the soul through the Spirit, allowing the soul to possess this love as its own. Possessing what belongs to God substantially in the Spirit comes only by being possessed substantially by the Spirit, because the “relationship of possession is essentially reciprocal” (MC 165). Scheeben explains further: give his creature some share of himself by creating and giving us created and finite realities through his omnipotent efficient causality. In a quasi-formal causality he really and in the strictest sense of the word bestows himself ” (Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel [New York:The Crossroad Publishing Co., 2010], 36). Rahner takes up the issue of a personal relation with each divine person at length in The Trinity (24–28, 34–38, 77), which he describes as “each one of the three divine persons communicates himself to man in gratuitous grace in his own personal particularity and diversity” (ibid., 34–35). 56 Ibid., 254. 57 Nichols, Romance and System, 94. 58 The Mysteries of Christianity, 162, quoting Jn 17:26; Scheeben’s italics. Substantial Union in Scheeben 531 “If by grace the Holy Spirit dwells in us with His divine substance as the object of our possession, He likewise dwells in us as the proprietor of our soul and our whole being” (MC 165). We belong to the Spirit in a way that is “truly hypostatic and proper” to him. The Spirit takes possession of the soul in a manner not exclusive of the “other divine persons” but rather “for them.”59 The Spirit “makes us adoptive children of God” (MC 168), so that we “belong to the Father and the Son” (MC 166), conforming to them by “personally possess[ing] within our very selves the very same Spirit that” they possess (MC 169). Thus, the “hypostatic relationship” (MC 385) the soul has with the Spirit becomes the means by which it shares in the inner divine life.The Spirit initiates “a fellowship of the creature with the divine persons through Him and based on His procession from them and His entrance into the creature” (MC 172). The “bond and seal” that one receives from the Spirit’s indwelling unites the soul to God in the same way that the Spirit “is the bond and seal of the absolute unity of the Father and the Son” (MC 170). Substantial unity with God occurs through the Spirit’s indwelling, which brings about a proper relationship with him, and through him as the substantial unity of God, with the Father and the Son. The hypostatic gift of the Spirit deifies by bringing about a co-possession of the divine substance, so that the soul shares in the mutual possession of the divine life in the Trinity. Evaluating Scheeben’s Position I began this article by referring to the classical text of the Church’s teaching on deification in 2 Peter 1:3–4.Though Scheeben makes reference to this passage often, another key passage he relies on is John 17:20–26: I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, 59 Ibid., 166. Ralph del Colle explicates the importance of the proper presence of the Spirit hypostatically: “With respect to the Holy Spirit, he is not only donum Dei but donum hypostaticum as well. By the latter is meant that the Holy Spirit is not just the channel of divine love or is present through gifts, but that the Spirit is present in the creature as a hypostatic identity. Scheeben therefore proposes that the Spirit is not only the efficient and exemplary cause of our sanctification through the mediation of sanctifying and created grace, but also the formal cause in terms of divine giftedness (pledge of the divine love between Father and Son) and indwelling—i.e., uncreated grace. This proper or formal indwelling is not separable from union with Christ, for it makes us sons and daughters in the Son ( filii in Filio)” (Christ and the Spirit: Spirit-Christology in Trinitarian Perspective [New York: Oxford University Press, 1994], 44). 532 R. Jared Staudt that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one . . . [and] that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. ( Jn 17:20–23a, 26b)60 This passage is remarkable in that it specifies how one becomes a partaker of the divine nature by being in the divine persons, sharing their unity and their love. This is the significance of being a “partaker of the substance of the divine nature” rather than simply partaking of the divine nature through imitation. For taking this bold position, Scheeben has certainly been criticized. Fraigneau-Julien accuses him of “exaggerations in his expressions.”61 Scheeben’s position is also accused of doing violence to “established metaphysical principles, to Scripture, and to the Fathers,”62 and as being “hazardous and venturesome.”63 He is criticized, most significantly, for his “leap from substantial presence to substantial union.”64 It is easy to understand hesitations about certain of his formulations of substantial union with God. The case against Scheeben’s articulation of substantial union is that it blurs the distinction between the Creator and the creature.65 In particular, it may be possible to see divergences from the classical articulation of deification, as Daniel Keating has articulated it. First, Keating lays out that “the two basic principles of the concept of participation as found in the Fathers and in the Christian tradition are: (1) that which participates is necessarily distinct (and distinct in kind) from that which is participated in; (2) that which participates possesses the quality it receives only in part.”66 And further down: “We never become consubstantial (one in being) with the 60 Another text with parallels to Scheeben’s argument might be seen in 1 Cor 6:17: “But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” 61 Fraigneau-Julien,“Grâce créée et grace incréée dans la théologie de Scheeben,” 358. 62 Donnelly, “The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit according to M. J. Scheeben,” 248. 63 Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit, 47. 64 Donnelly, “The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit according to M. J. Scheeben,” 246. 65 The concern of blurring the distinction between Creator and creature, and also of a distinct personal union with one of the divine person, while not addressed particularly to Scheeben, can be found in Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis Christi: “But let all agree uncompromisingly on this, if they would not err from truth and from the orthodox teaching of the Church: to reject every kind of mystic union by which the faithful of Christ should in any way pass beyond the sphere of creatures and wrongly enter the divine, were it only to the extent of appropriating to themselves as their own but one single attribute of the eternal Godhead. And, moreover, let all hold this as certain truth, that all these activities are common to the most Blessed Trinity, insofar as they have God as supreme efficient cause” (§78). 66 Daniel A. Keating, Deification and Grace (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), 98. Substantial Union in Scheeben 533 Father as he is; rather we are inserted by grace into the divine communion of Persons.”67 Although Scheeben certainly does not deny the distinction of the Creator and the creature, or the only partial possession of divinity by the creature, or that the creature does not become fully consubstantial, some of his statements do give this impression. On the other hand, one could appreciate the depth and spiritual significance of Scheeben’s account of substantial union. One becomes like God because God has given himself to the soul to be one with it. The soul becomes God insofar as it has its life solely in God, which is necessary if it is to live a life beyond the confines of created nature. To share in God’s own happiness, his eternal and infinite knowledge and love of himself, the creature must be infused, not just with God’s nature, but also with God’s inner communication of himself. God gives his entire self as gift, a gift that, when accepted, makes God and the soul co-possessors both of God’s life and of the creature’s. The two become one in an eternal marriage, where their natural substances are not confused but belong to each other in mutual possession. This is the goal of substantial union: the eternal life of the soul existing in God as one with him forever.While speaking of the Eucharist, Scheeben points to this reality: “This natural, or essential, substantial union of men with Christ, and through Christ with the Father, is necessarily connected with the union of glory” (MC 491). This eternal union of glory is so profound and so far beyond the confines of the creature that only substantial union with God can account for it.The soul does not simply exist alongside of God for eternity, but exists in and through his life.The significance is that Scheeben’s articulation of substantial union not only affirms that we partake of the divine nature but describes how. God places his substance in the soul, uniting the soul and God as one. Is there a middle position that accomplishes what Scheeben proposes without entering into metaphysical difficulties? Francis Cunningham proposes that Thomas Aquinas holds to a position of substantial union, by which the soul is united to God in a real and even physical union.68 This union, however, occurs by God presenting himself as the supernatural object of the intellect and will. Aquinas, himself explains the difference between this kind of union, based on operation, and one that is based on 67 Ibid., 102. Gleason notes that there is ambiguity in Scheeben’s thought for want- ing to insist on a substantial union, but then hesitating to accept the consequences of this position. He asserts that Scheeben, in the end, only asserts a moral union (77). However, Scheeben made clear, as referenced above, that he was asserting a union that was not merely moral, but also physical. Nonetheless, ambiguity over the precise nature and extent of a substantial union with God remains. 68 Cunningham asserts that this is the common position among the scholastics. See Cunningham, The Indwelling of the Trinity, 80. 534 R. Jared Staudt being: “Moreover, human nature is lifted up to God in two ways: first, by operation, as the saints know and love God; secondly, by personal being, and this mode belongs exclusively to Christ, in Whom human nature is assumed so as to be in the Person of the Son of God.”69 Thomas Gilby, commenting on Aquinas, lays the metaphysical foundation for this union of operation. Speaking of how the mind is considered physical and how it enters into union with things known, he states: The mind, for [Thomas], is physical, that is, it is part of nature, for by physical a Thomist does not mean bodily chiefly. It is the highest form of life, not some camera; a noble energy by which the subject, unlike a material substance which is imprisoned in itself and can never be anything but a stone or a block of wood, goes out and mingles in the life of others without ceasing to be itself. It is the power of possessing them, not caging them in concepts. Knower and known become one, and this is true of all forms of knowledge. The perfection of the knowledge is in proportion to the immediacy of the union, a partial union in the lowest forms of knowledge, complete identity in the highest knowledge.70 69 ST III, q. 2, a. 10, corpus. It should also be noted, however, that Aquinas does use the language of substance in relation to the Spirit’s indwelling in the soul: “The Holy Spirit, of course, since He is God, dwells in a mind by His substance and makes men good by participation in Himself ” (Summa contra Gentiles, trans. Charles J. O’Neil [New York: Hanover House, 1957], IV, ca. 18). In treating the divine missions, Aquinas further explains the nature of the indwelling in a way that clarifies that this substantial presence is by way of operation: “For God is in all things by His essence, power and presence, according to His one common mode, as the cause existing in the effects which participate in His goodness. Above and beyond this common mode, however, there is one special mode belonging to the rational nature wherein God is said to be present as the object known is in the knower, and the beloved in the lover. And since the rational creature by its operation of knowledge and love attains to God Himself, according to this special mode God is said not only to exist in the rational creature but also to dwell therein as in His own temple” (ST I, q. 43, a. 3, corpus). In addition to the natural mode of God’s presence to the creature and that of grace, Barthélemy Froget adds that there is a third, the highest substantial union of man and God, which is found in Christ alone by virtue of the hypostatic union. He quotes St. Thomas in his Commentary on the Sentences as follows: “In the third mode of union, namely that of Christ’s humanity with the divinity, the creature attains to God no longer by its operation but also in and by its very being” (The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Souls of the Just according to the Teaching of St.Thomas Aquinas, trans. Sydney A. Raemers [Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1952], 64, quoting Sententiae, lib. I, dist. xxxvii, q. I, a. 2). Thus, full substantial union of God and humanity is found in Christ alone. 70 Thomas Gilby, O.P., Poetic Experience: An Introduction to Thomist Aesthetic (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1934), 20–21. Emphasis original. Substantial Union in Scheeben 535 Knowledge creates a union, which Gilby says can even be understood in terms of substance: “The mind desires to hold substance immediately and completely, and will not rest until it does.”71 This union through knowledge also necessarily entails the will’s movement toward the substance of the thing: “He who is drawn toward something desirable does not desire to have it as a thought but as a thing. . . . The object is present to reason as a representation existing in a spiritual way, but this is not enough for love, the likeness of its object must at least be present in a physical manner of existence.”72 The will completes the union of knowledge by drawing the knower into a loving union with the object known. What Gilby has said thus far applies to all knowledge, but he also relates that these same principles apply to knowledge of God: “God is experienced because He is physically present in the mind. . . . [M]ystical knowledge of God is by affinity and nature, and comes about by a real not representational assimilation of the mind to divine things. The mind does not mirror divine truths, it lives them. Knowledge by sympathy demands real union of lover and beloved.”73 The beatific vision, the highest form of knowledge attainable by the human subject, results in the most profound union. Gilby explains that “perfect knowledge implies perfect union. This is achieved in the vision of God and nowhere else. Only God can flood the mind wholly, only by knowing Him in perfect immediacy can our knowledge be really ultimate.”74 This ultimate union is understood in terms of substance: “No substance can enter the mind entirely except God.”75 The soul becomes one with God through this knowledge, sharing in his substance, without ceasing to be itself. Cunningham, drawing upon the same understanding of knowledge, summarizes St. Thomas’s position on substantial union in the life of faith as follows: “In the divine indwelling, the Most Holy Trinity is really and substantially present in the souls of the just by reason of sanctifying grace: not precisely insofar as it is an effect of God, but by reason of the operations (or habits) of love and knowledge of which grace is the root, the presence of immensity being presupposed.”76 This indwelling is “real and substantial,” though attained through the operations of the intellect and 71 Ibid., 31. 72 Ibid., 34–35. 73 Ibid., 59. 74 Ibid., 66. 75 Ibid. 76 Cunningham, The Indwelling of the Trinity, 191–92. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange states that “grace makes us participate really and formally in this Deity, in this eminent and intimate life of God, because grace is in us the radical principle of essentially divine operations that will ultimately consist in seeing God immediately, as He sees Himself, and in loving Him as He loves Himself ” (Christian Perfection 536 R. Jared Staudt will, which attain “the Persons as objects present to us and within us.”77 God, by presenting himself as an object of the intellect and will, enables the soul to share in his own perfect knowledge and love of himself. This sharing in God’s knowledge and love is a participation in his Trinitarian life. Whereas this happens most fully in the beatific vision, this substantial union begins even in the theological life of the soul on earth. Conclusion Scheeben’s thought, centered on a theology of deification, can provide fruitful stimulus in understanding how the soul enters into union with the Triune God by participating in his Trinitarian life through grace and enjoying the fruits of the Incarnation in the Eucharist. These claims deserve attention, even though Scheeben’s description of the manner in which deification occurs aroused the suspicion of his critics by its boldness and his pushing of established boundaries. Thomas Aquinas may provide the means of evaluating Scheeben’s position and incorporating what is of lasting value, while not overstepping the limits of the theological tradition and metaphysical truths. N&V and Contemplation according to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross, trans. M. Timothea Doyle, O.P. [Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2010], 56). 77 Cunningham, The Indwelling of the Trinity, 197, 198, emphasis original. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 537–63 537 Good Extrinsicism: Matthias Scheeben and the Ideal Paradigm of Nature-Grace Orthodoxy T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC Gigantes erant temporibus illis. T HERE are two competing narratives that most strongly have marked modern theology in its quest to interpret the history of theologies of grace and nature. Both of these narratives posit a dichotomy of extremes, so to speak, through which orthodoxy must pass. On the one hand there is the influential narrative of Karl Barth, who posits a vision of gracenature orthodoxy that is Reformed, and that claims to pass between the extremes of liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. On the other hand there is the narrative of Henri de Lubac, who posits a vision of grace-nature orthodoxy that purports to be Augustinian, and that passes between the extremes of the naturalist extrinsicism of Cajetan and Suarez on the one side and the integralist views of Baius and Jansenius on the other. These two visions attempt conceptually to do different things and in fact are in some fundamental ways deeply opposed to each other. Thinkers of the generation that followed Barth and de Lubac were deeply influenced by one or both of them; those subsequent thinkers sought in various ways to maintain a via media between truths found in their respective theories. We see this notably in the writings of Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Gottlieb Söhngen, and Joseph Ratzinger. Nevertheless, what I would like to do in this essay is to introduce briefly the respective views of Barth and de Lubac in order to compare them in turn with the grace-nature paradigm of the young Matthias Joseph Scheeben, in his early work, entitled Natur und 538 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Gnade.1 (This work was published in 1861 when Scheeben was twenty-six.) What, according to Scheeben, are the extremes to be avoided in the domain of the doctrine of grace-nature relations, and how should we understand the history of orthodoxy? What I will argue is twofold: First, Scheeben has a more profound and comprehensive vision of the composition of orthodoxy in this domain than either Barth or de Lubac. Second, his scholasticism is not a deficit, hindering his capacity to articulate an insightful narrative history of orthodoxy, but is rather the presupposition of its success. I When speaking about the relations of grace and nature, is not possible to map the concerns of Karl Barth and Henri de Lubac onto one another in an isomorphic way. Each of them was profoundly affected by the two world wars of twentieth-century Europe, and each was confronted by the challenge of the secularization of his own native culture, a concern expressed particularly though not exclusively through the composition of academic theology.Yet one was a Catholic and a Jesuit writing in France in the wake of the Modernist controversy as well as the rise and fall of Action Française, while the other was German-speaking Swiss, teaching initially in Germany and influenced by the internal conflicts of nineteenth-century Protestantism as well as the rise of National Socialism. Both were concerned with the challenge of post-Enlightenment “modernist” interpretations of Christianity, the response to modern “philosophical anthropologies,” the politics of fascism and socialism, and the relation of Church to culture filtered through the discussions of nature and grace. Here I wish to focus in a necessarily selective and determined way on the narratives of grace-nature orthodoxy that each one articulated and in particular upon the way each understood the truth to lie in between two extreme errors to be avoided, or between a respective Scylla and Charybdis. Such a comparison helps bring to the forefront some illustrative differences between the two figures. First, take Karl Barth. We can readily hone in on the interpretive paradigm of nature and grace that he formulated in the first volume of the Church Dogmatics, published in 1932.2 This is the early mature period of 1 The critical edition of the work is found in volume I of the Gesammelte Schriften: Natur und Gnade (Freiburg: Herder Verlag, 1949), edited by Martin Grabmann. All citations from the work in English are taken from Nature and Grace, translated by Cyril Vollert, S.J. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009). 2 Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik I: Die Lehre von Wort Gottes 1 (ZollikonZürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1932). I will refer to the English translation by G. W. Bromiley: Church Dogmatics I:1 (London: T & T Clark, 2003). Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 539 Barth’s thinking, at the time of his debates with the Jesuit philosopher Erich Przywara regarding the analogy of being, as well as his rejection of the Lutheran theologian Emil Brunner’s natural theology, and his strong criticisms of Georg Wobbermin and others who were the inheritors of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism.3 In this first volume of the Dogmatics, Barth is clearly seeking to articulate what he takes to be a distinctly Reformed understanding of the relationship of grace to nature and of faith to reason over and against two competitors whom he identifies as extremes along a spectrum, but who both share a common error as well, one which Barth wishes to detect and diagnose critically. On the one hand, Barth identifies in Roman Catholicism an institutionalized, dogmatic understanding of Christian revelation that is maintained in a unified fashion by recourse to the instrumentality of the Church’s magisterium (a society of human persons), and that therefore posits the capacity for ongoing human mediations between man and God.4 These mediations are themselves possible, according to Barth, only if one maintains an excessively optimistic and in fact dangerous sense of over-reliance upon the natural powers of human nature to cooperate with grace in a habitual fashion, by human initiatives.5 That is why Barth interestingly connects the theology of the Virgin Mary’s sanctification, the guidance of the Vatican’s authoritative magisterium, and the use of natural theology within dogmatic theology as three instances of a unified Catholic error with respect to the relations of nature and grace, an error he describes somewhat imprecisely under the rubric of the analogia entis, the analogy of being.6 Nature is so analogous to God and to God’s grace that it possesses within itself a sufficient set of conditions with which to cooperate with grace, whether in the domains of merit in the saints, in episcopal and papal authority, or in the practice of philosophical theology. Or so Barth understands things. 3 On this context, see the essay of Bruce L. McCormack, “Karl Barth’s Version of an ‘Analogy of Being’: A Dialectical No and Yes to Roman Catholicism,” in The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Anti-Christ or the Wisdom of God? ed. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 88–144, as well as McCormack’s study Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909–1936 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 4 Barth, Church Dogmatics I:1, 67–68, 75, 257–61. 5 See especially, CD I:1., 68. 6 CD I:1., xiii, 40–42 (where Barth cites Scheeben in this context), 69 (where Scheeben is again cited), 119–20, 239–40. In Church Dogmatics I:2 (originally published in 1938) trans. G. T. Thomson and Harold Knight (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 144–46, Barth explicitly analyzes Catholic Mariology in terms of the Catholic doctrine of cooperative sanctifying grace and the analogia entis. He repeatedly cites both Scheeben and Aquinas in this context. 540 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. On the other hand, there is the extreme error of a modernist Protestant reinterpretation of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, reduced to or reinterpreted as a truth about human religious anthropology. Christ is a symbolic cipher for a religious dynamism within man by which he seemingly inevitably aspires to union with God. From Schleiermacher to Ritschl to Herrmann and Harnack, liberal Protestantism has in various ways diminished the distinction between grace and nature, opening man’s nature from within by way of a native religious sense, toward a transcendent goal of union with God.7 Christ is the religious man who represents the fulfillment of this natural human aspiration, himself a sign of God’s presence in human history drawing all persons into union with the divine, or of this dynamic process coming to its intrinsic fulfillment. For this tradition, of course, the aforementioned institutionalization of Roman Catholicism represents an arbitrary human attempt to control the divine in exceedingly ascriptural, dogmatic, and unreasonably overly institutional terms. For the Catholicism of Barth’s time, the modernist reinterpretation of liberal Protestantism represented a naively naturalizing form of religion that eclipsed and ignored the revelatory and supernatural content of Christianity as such. For Barth, however, both traditions have in common that they overestimate the capacities of the human in relation to the divine and the capacities of nature with respect to grace.8 Over and against both the liberal Protestants and the Roman Catholics, Barth wishes to reaffirm the gratuity and transcendence of the grace of Christ (a Reformed sola gratia) in the face of what he takes to be a Pelagian exaggeration of the innate capacities of human nature.9 Correspondingly, then, he articulates his version of a distinctly Reformed epistemology; in his version, we are given knowledge of God ever only through grace alone, in rejection of any purported “natural theology,” and this against Emil Brunner, his compatriot in the re-appropriation of classical Protestant scholasticism.10 He claims also against Brunner that there 7 See CD I: 1, 20, 36–38, 62, 252–54. 8 CD I:1, 67–68, 75, 257–61. Barth makes explicit in these texts his comparisons of the Roman Catholic magisterium and “Protestant Modernism” as two extremes in the same genera: “. . . one can scarcely fail to see the inner connexion between the Roman Catholic view and the Modernist view. The assertion of fellowship between God and man in the form of an operation beyond the juxtaposition of the divine and human persons, beyond the act of divine and human decision, is at least common to both even if one has to remember that this synthetic operation is regarded as man’s work on the side of Modernism and as God’s on that of Roman Catholicism” (68). 9 For the ascription of the title see CD I:1, 200. 10 CD I:1, 27–36. Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 541 is no natural “point of contact” in the human person in which grace might find a native home, but that grace alone must always actually create (by a grace wholly extrinsic to human nature) the capacities for our personal response to God.11 Likewise, Barth also condemns repeatedly all appeals to human religion as a dimension of Christianity, against the naïve humanism he perceives alike in both liberal Protestantist “philosophies of religion” and in Roman Catholic sacramental liturgy.12 Henri de Lubac composed his famous paradigmatic analysis of the history of grace-nature theologies in the ten years that followed the publication of Barth’s first volume of the Dogmatics. His writings of this period were worked together into the composite and well-known book of 1946, Surnaturel.13 It must be said that de Lubac’s vision of the history of doctrine certainly does not map smoothly onto that of Barth’s. There is not a very deep concern to see, in German liberal theologies of the recent precedent age, the origins of a new Pelagianism. Nor does de Lubac engage in any discussion or diagnosis of Catholic or Protestant versions of liberal “modernism” as they were manifest in the controversies of early twentieth-century France.14 Rather, the work of de Lubac begins from the consideration of the theology of Michael Baius (1513–89), the Belgian theologian of Reformation-era Louvain, whose work was originally condemned by Pope Pius V.15 Baius’s teaching gave impetus to the eventual rise (a generation later) of the Catholic heresy of Jansenism. De Lubac demarcates Baius’s theology as one historical extreme and portrays it as embodying an error that a healthy grace-nature orthodoxy must seek to avoid. Writings of Baius were condemned by Pius V in 1567 for, among other reasons, the notion that the distinction between grace and nature in human beings obtains only as a result of the original human fall from grace. Prior to the event of original sin, or original rupture from God, there was a kind of integration, or identity of grace-nature unity, such that human beings not only were naturally ordered toward the life of God but 11 CD I:1, 426, 462. 12 CD I:1, 36, 203–4. This is a theme in Barth’s early work. See especially CD I:2, 297–325. 13 Henri de Lubac, S.J., Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946). 14 The Protestant “modernism” that Barth wrote against was not seamlessly cordoned off from the Catholic group of thinkers whose works evoked that same title. On the contrary, the context for the 1907 Encyclical of Pius X Pascendi dominici gregis suggests that the letter intends to warn Catholic scholars regarding ideas stemming from both German and French Protestant theologians. See Pierre Collin L’Audace et Soupçon—La Crise du Modernism dans le Catolicisme Français (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1997). 15 De Lubac, Surnaturel, 15–37. 542 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. would have naturally merited heaven by their “ordinary” actions of charity.16 “The integrity of the first creation was not the undeserved exaltation of human nature, but its natural condition.”17 De Lubac wishes to distinguish clearly his position in contrast to the theological anthropology of Baius as an extreme to be avoided. The human person, in his or her created nature, is distinct from the grace he or she obtains in view of eternal life, and this is the case both prior and subsequent to the mysterious event of original sin.18 Divinization is not natural to the human race. On the other extreme, however, there lies the scholastic theology of nature and grace formulated near the time of Baius and Jansenius, principally represented in the works of Cajetan and Suarez, two influential authors whom de Lubac associates in this regard.19 This extreme is characterized by an appeal to a theory of pure nature over and against the integralism of Baius. Human nature, for Cajetan as for Suarez, has its own intelligible, purely natural end that is distinct from the gratuitous supernatural destiny to which human beings are called by grace.20 (De Lubac famously claims that such a viewpoint is alien to both Augustine and Aquinas.)21 Therefore there is an intelligibility to human nature without reference to grace and the corresponding theoretical possibility of a purely natural state of being that is integral in some sense in itself without reference to the economy of salvation.The human person characterized in this way can be understood philosophically without reference to the supernatural order. Consequently, grace is now extrinsic to the constitution of the human person’s teleological fulfillment as such.22 Such nature-grace extrinsicism, it is said, prepares the groundwork for an eventual Enlight16 Henrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum (1954 edition), 1001 and following. 17 Condemned proposition 26 (Denz., 1026, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, The Sounces of Catholic Dogma [Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto, 1955]). Lubac, Surnaturel, 30–32: Here, interestingly de Lubac cites Scheeben’s critique of Baius approvingly: “Baius calls natural . . . what is in reality supernatural. By this alone he implies not that that which is already determined is elevated to a superior form, but that that which has no form in itself receives one by grace” (32, trans. mine). 19 On the conjoined criticisms of Cajetan and Suarez, see Surnaturel, 101–28; 226–92. De Lubac mentions a host of others, but he clearly wishes to challenge the modern scholastic traditions of the Dominicans and the Jesuits alike, and he does so in part by underscoring a perceived set of problems common to these two authors. 20 Ibid., 117–24. 21 See, however, the alternative interpretation of Aquinas offered by Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010). 22 De Lubac, Surnaturel, 437 18 De Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 543 enment secularization that sees revelation and grace as something alien to the basic natural good of man.23 The integralism of Baius and Jansenius collapses the formal distinction of nature and grace into one another problematically, thus failing to respect the gratuity of the supernatural order. The extrinsicism of Cajetan and Suarez, meanwhile, divorces or separates human nature’s teleological realization from the mystery of the supernatural.The only way to navigate between the extremes is by making a distinction. Against Baius, human nature is formally distinct from the mystery of supernatural grace. Against, Cajetan and Suarez, however, human nature is intrinsically and innately ordered toward the supernatural as its unique final end.24 By grace the human person is fulfilled gratuitously in that incipient desire for God that animates the human heart innately by virtue of its nature as created spirit.25 It is clear that Barth’s grand meta-narrative of nature-grace orthodoxy and de Lubac’s do not overlap perfectly well. In fact, they contain noteworthy points of direct contrast and radical incompatibility, as well as interesting places of potential alignment. Both are motivated in part by a distaste for the vision of high scholasticism, at least the Thomism of the Counter-Reformation commentators and their modern inheritors. Both appeal in diverse ways to classical Augustinian principles, as re-read through the Reformation/Counter-Reformation period. Both distrust any appeal to an autonomous order of nature and suspect all such appeals of incipient Pelagianism.The differences, however, are more illuminating. Barth alone, for instance, is really interested in the “bad intrinsicism” of nature-grace identification in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century liberal Protestantism/modernism. More to the point, in reacting against this tradition in a distinctly Reformed way, he denies any real point of contact specific to human nature, even one by which that human nature in se would potentially be subject to elevation to the order of grace (even in the sense of a Thomistic obediential potency, which de Lubac would consider far too minimalist and which he criticizes in Cajetan). Barth is far more extreme in this respect than Suarez or Cajetan. Consequently, it is clear that Barth’s early theology would tolerate no appeal to an “innate” or “intrinsic” appetite for the supernatural of the kind identified by de Lubac. Any such appetite would have to be re-interpreted Christologically as the result of the actualizing (i.e. non-habitual), extrinsic work of the Holy Spirit of Christ in the human person. Consequently, it would be possible from the Barthian point of view to associate by analogy de Lubac 23 Ibid., 153–54, 174–75. 24 Ibid., 433. 25 Ibid., 456–57, 485–88. 544 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. and Schleiermacher, no matter how distasteful this might seem to Catholic thinkers. Nature, for both thinkers, is always, already on the way toward religious union with God.26 Meanwhile, de Lubac alone is worried about the kind nature-grace identification of Baius and Jansenius that would bear points of contact with the thought of Luther: an absence of a clear distinction between grace and nature prior to the fall, wed to a doctrine of nature’s total depravity after the fall, especially in light of the loss of divine charity. Because of the prior identification (before the fall), the fallen state is a maimed state of nature (nature without grace is hardly recognizable), where the natural integrity of the person is radically compromised. The natural powers of the soul are radically disrupted.The mind is always darkened with regard to knowledge of God, and the faculty of the will is always necessarily motivated by selfish acts. Grace comes, then, to such a fallen human nature in an utterly extrinsic fashion. It is an alien presence that would seek to rehabilitate a humanity radically turned away from the goodness of God. De Lubac could readily see in Barth a continuation of this kind of anthropological pessimism found in Baius and Jansenius (Catholic cousins of Luther and Calvin) and could associate this form of thinking with a “bad extrinsicism” that fails to acknowledge sufficiently the inalienable intrinsic orientation of human nature toward God, even in the fallen state. What is clear from these brief observations is that the true theological “combative interlocutor” for each of the two thinkers in question is quite different. For one thinker (Barth) it is really liberal Protestantism and modernism which require refutation, while for the other (de Lubac) it is modern Catholic scholasticism and secularism (simultaneously in some sense, since he interprets secularism to be a form of scholastic rationalism).27 Neither thinker, however, has a paradigm of explanation that allows the ideas of the other to be accounted for sufficiently, or that proposes a thorough analysis of the ideas that the other presents as 26 Suggestions of such an argument appear in Jürgen Mettepenningen’s Nouvelle Théologie—New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II (New York: T & T Clark, 2010), which claims (appreciatively) that there is a formal continuity between the nineteenth-century Catholic movements affiliated with the rise of “modernism” and the work of de Lubac and his contemporaries. 27 De Lubac’s refutations of Baius are attempts to distance himself from radical forms of Augustinianism that would undermine a sufficient sense of the distinction of grace and nature, whereas Barth’s refutations of Roman Catholicism—while sincere—are an attempt to distance himself from liberal Protestant accusations of crypto-Catholicism. In other words, each thinker, in his criticisms of his opponent’s perceived enemy, is really trying to protect himself against accusations from his opponent that would identify him with that perceived enemy. Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 545 normative. And yet both narratives continue to run parallel in modern theological circles, where each is continuously rehearsed as the central paradigm for interpreting the tasks of modern theology (and sometimes the two are so rehearsed simultaneously, as if they were compatible). The contrasts between the two suggest not only that they are intrinsically opposed but also that neither offers a fully comprehensive explanation of grace-nature orthodoxy. Of course, strategies of reconciliation exist. The most noteworthy are the contrasting theories of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Rahner wishes, against de Lubac (and no doubt with some overtures to German Lutheranism), to safeguard some stronger measure of the gratuity of grace to nature, while he reacts against what he takes to be the excessively naturalizing tendency of scholastic conceptions of nature.28 This leads him to reconsider nature not as inherently ordered toward the supernatural (by virtue of its own intrinsic principles) but as “always, already” ordered toward God by the ever-present “structural” gift of the supernatural-existential: a gratuitous grace that changes nature from within “from the beginning,” so that no pure nature ever exists, but only nature ordered or oriented toward God. Balthasar, meanwhile, in his The Theology of Karl Barth re-reads de Lubac and Barth in light of one another.29 His interpretation is ingenious, because it identifies a potential but hidden place of overlap between the two thinkers: the critique of natura pura in de Lubac and the critique of natural knowledge of God in Barth. Barth argues that the intelligibility of creation (reality as analogically related to God) is perceptible only in light of the covenant of God with man in Jesus Christ. Therefore human nature, too, is ultimately intelligible only in light of Christ. Balthasar merges aspects of this idea with the de Lubacian anthropology of Surnaturel. Only because God is man in Christ can we discover the true nature of man, which is that characterized by the natural desire for God. The gratuitous extrinsicism of Christ who has been given by the Father illumines the world so that we can see in grace that we were “always, already” naturally (intrinsically) made for supernatural union with God in Christ. De Lubac’s “point of contact” is reformulated and reread in light of Barth’s Christocentricity. As is well known, these two solutions contrast with each other. Balthasar saw Rahner as one who was implicitly naturalizing the world 28 See Karl Rahner, S.J., “Nature and Grace,” in Theological Investigations IV, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), 165–88. 29 See especially Hans Urs von Balthasar’s The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 267, 295–302, 327–34. 546 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. of grace (finding grace in a human existential anthropology to the detriment of finding grace in Christ and in the Church’s revelation). Rahner suspected Balthasar of a Christological Gnosticism that introduced eccentric speculations into Trinitarian theology while it retreated into an overly fideistic methodology that failed to engage sufficiently in the existential and historical perspectives of his age. Whatever the merits of their mutual criticisms, it seems in retrospect that neither of them devoted sufficient attention to the question of the irreducible structures of human nature that exist in distinction from the mystery of grace, and indeed that exist in distinction (but not separation!) even from the mystery of the Incarnation as such. Just to ask one indicative question, for instance, what real theory of natural law or virtue ethics can be found in either of these thinkers? In keeping with their respective theories of nature and grace, how could one articulate a genuine moral theology, especially one that takes sufficient account of the rational intelligibility of the natural law? Like de Lubac and Barth before them, Rahner and Balthasar both underestimated the dangers of integralism: the collapse of the orders of nature and grace into one another. They fear that the affirmation of an autonomous natural order will lead inevitably to a loss of our sense of the need for grace. However, their theologies also pay too little heed to the structure of nature, in its integrity or relative intelligibility, and correspondingly tend to subsume nature prematurely and thus unconvincingly into the world of the supernatural. Alasdair MacIntyre has argued in a number places over the course of the last few decades that the medieval tradition of philosophy and theology afforded a kind of poise and balance that has since been eviscerated and that has given way to a fragmented presentation of singular truths, often juxtaposed or contrasted, when in fact the partial truths of various perspectives are in need of a deeper theoretical basis from which to be reunited in accord. Take, for instance, Kant’s emphasis on moral reason and Hume’s emphasis on moral sentiment: each excludes the other (as they are posited by these respective thinkers), but each also can be seen to find some accord with the virtue theory of Aquinas, in which prominent place is given both to the education of moral sentiments and to the deliberations of moral reasoning. Hylomorphic realism can be seen, then, to afford a greater and more prescient context for understanding the human person than the truncated anthropologies of many influential moderns. Clearly this kind of thinking advances the idea, not only that not all scholasticism was bad, but that the scholastic traditions of classical Christian thought contained profound forms of insight that have often been eclipsed. What then might we say of the scholastic theology of the young Matthias Scheeben, partic- Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 547 ularly in his treatment of nature and grace? Perhaps here we can pose a MacIntyrean kind of thesis with regard to Scheeben. His thought offers us a more comprehensive perspective on the grace-nature paradigm than either Barth or de Lubac, but one that takes account of many of the critical concerns of each, without the respective deficits of each. In a word, Scheeben is able to hold together a “good extrinsicism” of grace to nature and a “good intrinsicism” of the inherent potential of the nature of man for elevation to the supernatural order. Precisely because of this (essentialist) scholastic perspective, he is also better able to articulate the typologies of a history of grace-nature orthodoxy. His scholasticism is not an obstacle to the elaboration of a dynamic historical understanding of doctrine but is rather its precondition. II At the age of seventeen, Matthias Scheeben was sent to Rome in 1851 for studies in view of the diocesean priesthood. He was educated at the Gregorianum under the guidance of the Jesuit fathers who initiated the Thomistic revivial of the mid nineteenth century, thinkers such as Kleutgen, Passaglia, Perrone, and Franzelin.30 (The latter in particular directed Scheeben’s research.) This is the same movement that was to influence Gioacchino Pecci, later Pope Leo XIII (1878 to 1903) and the eventual author of the encyclical Aeterni Patris, on the renewal of the Christian philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (in 1879). Scheeben consequently was acutely aware of classical scholastic conceptions of the relations of faith and reason, such that his early thought seems like a striking precursor to the Dei Filius document of Vatican I, upon which the older Scheeben was in fact to write a commentary.31 Nevertheless, the cleric from Köln was above all a theologian. His speculative thought was deeply influenced by Aquinas, whom he interpreted through the filter of the scholastic commentary tradition of the Society of Jesus (above all, Suarez and Gregory of Valencia). Simultaneously Scheeben was also deeply indebted to a nineteenth-century revival of interest in the Greek patristic tradition, and was sensitive in particular to Cyril of Alexandria’s conceptions of grace and divinization. Significantly, he maintained the idea of a profound doctrinal continuity between patristic and scholastic understandings of the mysteries of the faith (while recognizing their differences), seeing no intrinsic opposition between the two. It was a time of true theologians. 30 See A. Kerkvoorde, “La formation théologique de M.-J. Scheeben à Rome (1852–59),” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 22 (1946): 174–93. Die Constitutionen des Vaticanischen Concils, ed. W. Molitor (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1870). 31 In Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 548 The early work Nature and Grace was published some ten years after Scheeben first came to Rome, so it was in a sense the immediate product of his doctoral studies. It is also a work of extraordinary synthesis, conceptual clarity, and spiritual depth. The work is imperfect theologically on a number of fronts, most especially with regard to its failure to sufficiently acknowledge Aquinas’s teaching on the wounds of sin. (Scheeben fails to identify in Aquinas, for instance, the teaching on the incapacity of the fallen human person to love God naturally above all things, without the help of grace.)32 Nevertheless, it must be esteemed to be above all a kind of masterpiece of scholastic spiritual thought, filled with a rich interlacing of speculative analysis, historical interpretation, spiritual commentary, and penetrating philosophical reflection. Scheeben was a very ingenious and very spiritually profound twenty-six-year-old. His analysis of the current spiritual crisis of his age, the religious intellectual crisis of modernity, is based upon the identification of two competing and equally mistaken spiritual trends in modern Europe. Each in fact also has roots in antiquity and each knows a series of diverse but unified manifestations that have cropped up cyclically in diverse forms, often in repeated opposition to one another. The Church’s doctrine and reflection have developed, then, in contradistinction to the respective partial truths of these two traditions. So Scheeben, also, like Barth and de Lubac after him, is trying to navigate a middle way between extremes. In fact, he explicitly portrays Catholic grace-nature orthodoxy in this sense.33 On one extreme, he identifies a development of thought running through the course of western European intellectual history that he terms “Pelagianism,” and that he sees as the most prevalent temptation of the era of post-Enlightenment Europe.This is the view that “man’s nature [carries] within itself at least the seed of [all] the good which it [can] ever reach, including the Christian good; no more than some favorable influence from the outside [is] needed to develop that seed to full maturity.”34 The principle is not posed by recourse to a historically naïve conceptuality. Scheeben notes on the one hand a Christian form of Pelagianism stemming from the idea’s namesake, one that takes seriously the existence of grace “materially” but that is confused “formally” about the human capacities and inclinations that pertain to the order of grace and those that pertain to the order of nature.35 This form of thinking would find 32 Cf. Summa theologiae, I–II, q. 109, a. 3, contrasted with Nature and Grace, 54–55, 84, 87. 33 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 1. 34 Ibid., 1. 35 Ibid., 4. Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 549 explicit adherents in modernity in the theology of Socianism, for example.36 The deeper idea of Pelagianism develops, however, in modernity by way of an intellectual stance toward grace as something wholly extrinsic to the good of man’s nature. Scheeben sees in Enlightenment skepticism and rationalism, which reject the existence of the supernatural, the existence of more than a philosophical (rational) set of arguments. These are anti-theologies and are derived in part from a non-rational choice against the mysteries of faith. Kant’s philosophy, for instance, presents a speculative agnosticism that rejects natural knowledge of God and simultaneously rearticulates the goals of Christian morality.37 Yet it does so not only by recourse to philosophical principles but also in explicitly antisupernaturalist terms. For Kant, the supernatural mystery of Christ is not considered philosophically even as a possible reality but is reinterpreted reductively as an exemplar of a purely philosophical (natural) moral ideal. Whereas human nature can accomplish the moral good solely by its own powers, grace is seen as something extrinsic and even opposed to human freedom to do the good. What classical Pelagian theologies instinctually avoided or failed to render explicit, modern secularism has adopted self-consciously: the thorough-going conviction that the intrinsic good of nature can and should be realized by human powers alone without recourse to grace. This is coupled with the idea that the ultimate final end of man is something wholly natural to him, in no way transcending the inclinations of his innate powers. In his comments on modern rationalism, Scheeben is not only preoccupied with the emergence of post–Christian Europe; he is also explicitly seeking to engage the rise of modern Catholic rationalism in nineteenth-century Germany and Austria. As Aiden Nichols has shown, Scheeben sought throughout his career to counter programmatically the theories of Catholic theologians like Franz Anton Staudenmaier and Anton Günther.38 For these latter theologians, the mysteries of 36 Ibid., 1. 37 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, I, I, 2, trans. N. Smith (London: Macmillan, 1990), 120ff.; II, I, 1, esp. 368ff.; idem, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. A.Wood and G. Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 6:60–6:66. 38 Cf. Nature and Grace, 35, n. 2, where Scheeben mentions Staudenmaier explicitly; Aidan Nichols, O.P., Romance and System:The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben (Denver, CO: Augustine Institute Press, 2010), 69–70: “Staudenmaier’s refusal . . . to contemplate a middle ground between the pantheistic confusion of divine and human on the one hand, and, on the other, a (merely) moral union with God by the fullest possible enhancement of natural faculties, cannot but impart a ‘rationalist coloring’ to his doctrine. . . . For Scheeben, all this is the intellectual 550 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. faith seem to be interpreted as entities known by an unfolding process of reasoning initiated from a purely natural set of intellectual starting points. We might say today that Scheeben is arguing against an “evidentialist” epistemology of Christian apologetics that claims to derive positive knowledge of revealed mysteries in themselves from the initial consideration of purely natural rational principles (or to reduce the knowledge of the former to that of the latter). In his later dogmatic Handbuch Scheeben will in turn underscore the continuity between Catholic rationalism (represented by a figure such as Döllinger, who refused the dogmatic claims of Vatican I) and the modernism of liberal Protestantism subsequent to Schleiermacher. Both allow post-Enlightenment claims regarding the possibilities of what reason can and cannot understand naturally to enter into the determination of the dogmatic content of supernatural mysteries as such. In other words, both blur the inevitably necessary distinction between natural reason and divine revelation, co-opting revealed truths too aggressively, interpreting them as if they pertained to the domain of natural reason.39 What has been described thus far pertains to one extreme, or set of positions, that Scheeben wishes to avoid. What about the other wing of the twofold error? This is the error of European spirituality that has tended toward an excessive pessimism that disparages the inherent goodness, integrity, and intelligibility of nature, especially human nature as it is subject to being naturally ordered to the moral good and toward God. Scheeben locates the prototypical instantiation of this error in Manicheanism, but he also sees later, less crass echoes of it in the teaching of Luther, Baius, and Jansenius. Evidently, then, he finds in Augustine, the “doctor of grace,” the original balance of an affirmation of the essential goodness of human nature (against Manicheanism) coordinated with an affirmation (against Pelagianism) of the necessity of the life of grace for the healing of the human person wounded by sin and for his union with God by charity in this life and eschatalogically in the beatific vision.40 It was because of an exaggerated emphasis on the teaching regarding the inherently fallen character of human nature without grace analogue—an analogue in the realm of knowing the true—to Pelagianism in ethics, itself a mis-direction in the matter of loving the good. Like ancient Pelagians, modern Swabians or Austro-Germans have overlooked the ‘double ontological order’—nature and grace—to which Catholicism is committed.” 39 Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, vol. I, Theologische Erkenntnislehre, ed. M. Grabmann (Gesammelte Schriften III; Freiburg: Herder, 1948), 42, 43. (See on this point, Aidan Nichols, Romance and System, 127–28.) 40 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 23. Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 551 that the teaching on the inherent integrity and goodness of human nature as distinct from divine grace was sometimes seriously obscured. . . . this very teaching of the Church and its whole substructure as supplied by St. Augustine [against Pelagianism] were exploited to the advantage of the other error. The Church had established the doctrine that the true life of the soul had not only been obstructed by original sin but had been completely eradicated, down to the last root, and that consequently the soul had lost all its power and tendency to reach its original [supernatural] destiny. The heretics drew the false conclusion that the soul had forfeited all higher life, all power for all true morality and religion, as well as the capacity for any good; it had become evil and corrupt either in its substance (Luther), or in its faculties (Baius), on in its inclinations ( Jansenius).41 Scheeben, then, develops the idea (however roughly hewn) of a point of continuity from ancient distrust of the goodness of nature down through the Reformation era, and one that he sees affecting judgments with respect either to the substance of nature (the doctrine of radical depravity) or the moral powers and inclinations of nature. In the case of the latter, he rightly sees that a Baius-Jansenist “integralism” so associates grace and nature prior to the fall, that in the wake of sin human nature is unintelligible without grace. The integrity of what man is (particularly in the moral domain of human willing and the natural end of man) is not decipherable except in relation to the “formal wholeness” afforded by grace.42 Thus the real (ontological) distinction between nature and grace becomes difficult to sustain. Interestingly, as he did with the post-Enlightenment form of “Pelagianism” that is secularism, Scheeben again carries his narrative of heresy types into modernity and identifies what he takes to be the contemporary spiritual inheritor of integralism. In a parallel to rationalism as a form of epistemological works righteousness, modern integralism can also be found in the noetic domain. The novelty of Catholic “traditionalism” or “fideism” that developed in the nineteenth century claimed that the human person is not rationally intelligible, whether formally or teleologically, except in light of grace and within the domain of revelation and doctrinal tradition. This error, a distant inheritor of Manicheanism, is seen by Scheeben as a contemporary reinstantiation of integralism, now reinvented in the domain of theological epistemology in confrontation with the crisis of modern secular reason.43 Evidently there are parallels between 41 Ibid., 2. See also 4–5. 42 Ibid., 54–55, 79–80. 43 Ibid., 9, n. 3, 54–55, 83. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 552 what Scheeben is criticizing here and the later thought of Barth.We might well say that Scheeben’s critique is pitted against what today emerges as an exclusively theological, tradition-based Christian post-modernism that fails to accord to philosophy a role essentially distinct from that of theology in the identification of natural structures and ends. This “integrative” vision (so Scheeben argues) collapses natural reason and supernatural faith into one another, standing in direct opposition to the emergence of antisupernaturalist rationalism. The two positions are locked in an interminable conflict, each side considering the other a radically opposed aggressor.Yet, Scheeben suggests, neither side is telling the whole truth. How then does Scheeben propose to navigate between the two extremes (in my language: Pelagianism/naturalism/secularist progressivism vs. Manicheanism/integralism/post-modern traditionalism) that he has identified? Here he adopts the fundamental distinction that will structure the basic argument of his work: that between the “order of nature and the order of supernatural grace.” Everything that constitutes a thing’s essence as a component part [of that reality] is natural. . . . [T]hose qualities and adornments that do not constitute the essence of a thing, but are so exalted that they greatly surpass what the thing is equipped by its origin to have, are supernatural.Those powers which in no way emanate from a thing’s essence and substance but transcend its level are supernatural. . . . [T]he last end (and in the case of rational creatures, full consummation in beatitude) which a being is meant to attain is supernatural, if the destiny is such that the being can neither make itself capable and worthy of it by its own dignity or its preparatory activity, nor reach it by its own powers.44 This twofold distinction is envisaged by Scheeben as extending across three domains: those of being (or essence), knowledge, and love. This means that man enters into a twofold relationship with God through a twofold nature he receives from Him. In the first place, man receives human nature from God, along with his existence, and thereby enters into relationship with Him as the Creator of this nature. . . . However . . . man receives from God not only a nature proportionate to his proper mode of being, but a higher nature (which is accidental, not substantial) whereby he is refashioned on the model of the higher, divine nature. . . . It further places him in a new, special relationship with God, who now draws near to man in His own essence, and not only as Creator of a nature foreign to Him.45 44 Ibid., 27–28. See also 11–15. 45 Ibid., 12. Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 553 The distinction of nature and supernature extends from the essence or nature of man, who is transformed by the supernatural activity of grace, into the domains of knowledge and love. Man is naturally capable, not only of understanding certain determinations of created being, but is also capable of orienting himself toward natural knowledge of God (albeit of an indirect and inferential sort). Likewise, he is capable only by grace of a distinctly supernatural knowledge of God, of an entrance into the contemplation of divine mysteries withheld entirely from the gaze of man in a merely natural state.46 A similar duality exists in the order of love. Man is naturally ordered toward the love of God above all things, and toward natural acts of religion (worship and piety directed toward the Creator). Only by grace, however, is man indwelt by the deifying presence of supernatural charity, such that his own acts of willing and ethical decision-making are conformed to the mystery of God’s own essence and life.47 Natural being, knowledge, and love are truly distinct in their formal determinations and final ends from all that pertains to the realm of the supernatural. The latter realm utterly transcends the natural and is inaccessible to it, except by the gift of God. With this gift, however, human nature is exalted beyond itself into a stable communion with the higher mystery of the Triune God. In light of these characterizations of nature and super-nature, theology can helpfully counteract the twin errors identified above. Against Pelagianism it underscores the reality of the supernatural, the ultimately supernatural destiny of the human person, the epistemological prerogatives of divine revelation (apart from which we can know nothing of the inner mystery of Trinitarian life), the necessity of grace for eternal salvation, and the transcendence of the life of grace with respect to all human natural powers of knowledge and love. Against integralism it insists on the relative integrity of human nature, the natural capacity for philosophical knowledge of God and the human person, “reasons of credibility” regarding the truth of the Catholic faith, proportionate ethical ends that are proper to human nature, and the capacities even of wounded human nature to achieve some moral goods by its own powers.48 Of course Scheeben’s distinction stems from the classical scholasticism of Aquinas and his subsequent interpreters, and as such it was not articulated (at least in a fully developed form) in the patristic era. Scheeben’s historical interpretation of the gradual emergence of the distinction, however, is not naïve. On the contrary, his portrayal of the historical 46 Ibid., 13–14, 83–84. 47 Ibid., 13–14, 82–98. 48 Ibid., 33–45, 49–59. 554 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. development of the Church’s theological clarity is intriguing. For he sees Pelagianism as a theory that is initially conceptually “impure” (i.e., vague: “nature can obtain its ultimate ethical purposes without grace”) and which undergoes progressive development and clarification. In this sense, modern naturalism is a more pure form of an idea that originated in an imperfect or hesitant way in antiquity.49 Analogously, the thinking of modern integralism also took the crude and somewhat ill-stated ideas of antiquity’s religious pessimism and reformulated them in a more technical and incisive way. It is seen by Scheeben to have obtained a more formal, pure way of thinking in the age of the Reformation, as a reformulation of radicalized Augustinianism over and against the ambitions of renaissance humanism.50 Meanwhile, Aquinas (against the backdrop of medieval Albigensianism) had developed an appropriate sense of the dignity of human nature and its capacities, in part through an identification of distinctly philosophical principles that had their own integrity but which could also be put into the service of theology. At the same time, he also revived a robust sense of the primacy of grace and of the supernatural destiny of man, which he put into the service of classical Augustinianism (against the Latin Averoists). It is not surprising, then, that the Church should have recourse to Aquinas’s principles in the Reformation and modern periods, as She was confronted with the progressive clarification of this dual challenge from two opposed extremes. On the one hand, Catholicism in modernity has confronted an intensifying sense of the integrity and intelligibility of the natural realm, but accompanied by the attempt to absolutize this dimension of reality over and against the co-existent reality of grace. On the other hand, the Church confronts the competing absolutization of the world of grace to the detriment of any idea of the ontological, moral, or intellectual integrity of the nature of the human person considered in distinction from the life of grace. While opposed in species, Pelagianism and integralism are generically united by a common error: each fails to recognize sufficiently the real distinction of the orders of grace and nature. Consequently, because of the modern history of the unfolding of these extremes (in competition with one another), the Church has been invited to render more explicit conceptually what has been implicitly present ontologically and logically from the inception of the Christian religion. The duplex ordo of grace and nature, faith and reason, natural and supernatural ends and inclinations, philosophy and theology—all of this is inscribed in the very order of reality, and theology must acknowledge this truth if it is itself to remain realistic. Failing 49 Ibid., 6–10, 91–92 50 Ibid., 87–88 Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 555 to do so, it tends by nature toward an insufficiently supernatural modern liberalism or an insufficiently rational modern traditionalism. As long as we do not accept the doctrine of two provinces and orders of knowledge, or regard the higher merely as a more perfect evolution of the lower without a new foundation of its own, or look on the foundation of the order that is left [i.e., the foundation of nature as it pertains to the order of grace] as a simple expedient for promoting the naturally restricted development of that order; in general, as long as we recognize only one basic order of knowledge and yet desire to remain faithful to the positive teachings of the Church, we shall not be able to reconcile those teachings but must fall into one or the other of the extreme errors condemned by ecclesiastical authority, depending on which one we retain.51 III How, then, might we compare Scheeben’s ideal paradigm of grace-nature orthodoxy with those of Barth and de Lubac respectively? Evidently, simple schematizations are not possible. It is certainly not evident that Scheeben’s paradigm is superior in every way. Nevertheless, we can try (in allusion to the ideas of MacIntyre noted above) to say in what sense the scholastic analysis of the theologian from Köln allows us to explain or articulate adequately the errors identified in turn by Barth and de Lubac, while also offering what is a more comprehensive perspective, free in various respects from their particular limitations or partial perspective. Toward this end it is helpful to identify briefly those ways in which Scheeben attempts to articulate (1) what we might call a “good intrinsicism” that shows the ontological harmony or compatibility between human nature’s innate spiritual ends and the proposed work of revelation and grace in us, and simultaneously, (2) a “good extrinsicism” that emphasizes the radical gratuity and transcendence of the order of grace to that of nature. In both these respects, Scheeben differs (profitably in my opinion) from both Barth and de Lubac. To begin with, we can consider how Scheeben’s understanding of the natural ends of man differs from the anthropology of Barth. In seeming counterpoint to the Swiss Reformed theologian, Scheeben underscores the philosophical capacity of the human intellect to attain to natural knowledge of God and to a real, if apophatically qualified understanding of the divine attributes of the one God: 51 Ibid., 8. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 556 [T]he knowledge of God that [nature] can and ought to obtain . . . is predominantly a knowledge of God derived from the beauty and greatness of sensible nature. This is the way the human mind, including that of pagan philosophers, ordinarily comes to a knowledge of God, and sacred Scripture itself teaches that man is impelled by nature to know God by this process (Cf. Wisd. chap. 13; Rom. 1:17ff.).52 This is coupled with the affirmation of a final natural end of the human will: the exercise of the natural love of God above all things, which Scheeben claims informs in human beings the natural virtue of religion. “Love of the good, which is inherent in the will, can and must rise toward the good and repose in that Good which is the good of every good. All the love which the spirit naturally has for itself leads back, under nature’s guidance, to its Author.”53 Evidently it is difficult to think of two affirmations (natural theology, natural religion) that could stand in more direct opposition to Barth’s theology of fallen human nature’s innate capacities. Scheeben’s point is to underscore in a qualified way the intrinsic openness of human nature to the gratuitous gift of divine life. Grace is not wholly alien to the human person’s spiritual nature. This is not to say, however, that this Catholic vision of theology falls into the forms of Pelagianism that Barth perceives in the Roman theological tradition. On the contrary, Scheeben affirms that the reality of the natural ordering of the human person toward God (by knowledge and by love) cannot procure in any way the sufficient conditions for the “merit” of grace. He is deeply opposed to this “semi-Pelagian” idea with which he is well acquainted, and he underscores instead that grace alone can procure the sufficient conditions for a response to grace in man.54 In keeping with such an idea, he develops at length the Thomistic teaching that grace is not only a moral energy given to the human person (coming to complete our natural tendencies) but a new and higher supernatural life formally distinct from human nature.55 The human person is naturally and intrinsically oriented toward God, but this inclination does not suffice to permit us to cooperate with the life of grace. Nor does it efface the real distinction between 52 Ibid., 83. 53 Ibid., 80. Scheeben qualifies this affirmation. In the fallen state, the exercise of this natural love of God is hampered by the effects of sin. See 83–84. 54 See Nature and Grace, 83, including n. 4, which refers to Denz. 1036, and the condemnation of Baius’s thesis that any philosophical articulation of an order inscribed in man toward the natural love of God must necessarily diminish the merits of the Cross of Christ, and (n. 1037) imply a Pelagian concept of human nature. See also 292–93. 55 Ibid., 150–71. Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 557 the order of grace and the order of nature. The natural orientation toward God does makes us innately open to or capable of the gift of grace, but it is not inherently spiritually proportioned to the gift of divine life.56 And yet the two orders do have to be coordinated, precisely so as to be united even while remaining perpetually distinguishable. For if there is not a natural disposition toward God inscribed in our natural appetite for knowledge and love, then this new and higher life (because it relates man to God by supernatural knowledge and love) will also be utterly extrinsic to human nature, and therefore violent to it or inassimilable for it. In this case one of two results obtains.The human being can be considered intrinsically (naturally) secular such that grace is something alien to human flourishing. Or one will be able to maintain the idea of a graced supernatural knowledge and love as the perfection of the human person only by assimilating human nature to that end (for example, by ‘re-reading’ all of nature in an artificially Christological fashion), such that the relative integrity and philosophical intelligibility of nature (and the real distinction of nature and grace) are jeopardized or abandoned. With Barth, meanwhile, Scheeben does share the common concern for the affirmation of a sufficient sense of the transcendence of God’s grace to our human nature. Like Barth, he sees that only a sense of the radical discontinuity between the two orders can safeguard the strictly supernatural character of divine revelation and the epistemological primacy of theology with respect to other sciences. The two thinkers thus make common cause against what both perceive to be the “Pelagianism” of nineteenth-century modernism, especially liberal Protestantism. Scheeben appropriately couples this tendency of thought with the analogous developments in nineteenth-century Catholic rationalism. Different though the two movements may be, both seek in some way to reinterpret classical Christian mysteries that are formally supernatural in light of the cultural norms of post-Enlightenment philosophical reason. In that way they each obscure (in different ways) the supernatural gratuity of the knowledge of Christ and its utter transcendence with respect to the limits of unaided human reason. In addition, however, Scheeben notes the hidden point of unity between liberal Protestantism and the integralist traditionalism that contests it. Both extremes fail to see that human reason has an intrinsic natural form distinct from the supernatural but inherently open to it as well. One side (post-Kantian liberal Protestantism) claims that human reason is not capable of felicitously finding higher completion in 56 Ibid., 27, 31–32.This is the explicit teaching of Aquinas. On the inherent “dispro- portion” between the orders and ends of nature and grace, see the clear parallels in Aquinas, De Veritate q. 14, a. 2; q. 27, a. 2; In III Sent. d. 27, q. 2, a. 3, ad 5. 558 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. supernatural revelation as traditionally understood, because classical dogmatic Christianity is not in harmony with the natural aspirations of reason, now more liberated in its modern, “Enlightened” form. The other side (integralism) claims rightly that the former way of thinking originates from an erroneous and overly simplistic conception of the autonomy of reason, but it concludes from this problematically that human reason has no distinguishable determinate form except in subservience to the gift of divine revelation. Even when Christian reason might raise its head above water for a moment to make philosophical arguments based on natural principles, it is always, already being swept away in the tide of theology and is thereby continually dissolved into divine revelation. Neither side acknowledges sufficiently the intrinsic harmony-in-distinction of reason and faith, of nature and grace. With de Lubac, Scheeben argues that a distinction of nature and grace has to be maintained, such that grace is “formally” or essentially extrinsic to or distinct from the formal essence of human nature, contrary to the understanding of Baius.57 Nevertheless, Scheeben argues that the form of a natural entity is intelligible as such only because one also understands its teleological end or purpose. Consequently, he argues, if like Jansenius one thinks that the unique natural final end of man is supernatural, the formal intelligibility of human nature dissolves into a vaguely identified “tendency toward grace or toward the supernatural.”58 Even if grace and nature are formally distinguished, unless there is a distinction of final ends as respectively and irreducibly twofold—natural and supernatural—then integralism of the two orders still inevitably results. Only they who blindly persist in error can deny the principle that was established above and is so clear in itself, that the aspirations and rights of nature cannot reach beyond the horizon of their active power. That was the mistake of the Jansenists and of some theologians who unfortunately sided with them. They admitted that nature did not have the resources to see God’s essence as it is in itself, but maintained that nature had a positive desire and title to the beatific vision as its natural 57 On Baius, see Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 5, 83, 93. 58 Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 277–93, has analyzed the posi- tions of Jansensius with regard to the natural desire to see God (which Scheeben is reacting against) and has rightly shown parallels between them and a number of ideas found in de Lubac. (1) There is an innate appetite for the vision of God in man, and this vision is the only possible beatitude for a rational creature. (2) However, grace is required for its realization. (3) No pure state of nature is possible. (4) Love of God is possible only by grace and not by a natural love of God alone. (De Lubac qualifies his affirmation of the first idea, and might not admit the last idea, though it is not clear that he does not.) Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 559 end. This contention seems to us to be not only false but to involve a contradictio in terminis, an intrinsic contradiction.59 Scheeben seems to be concerned that if a uniquely supernatural end is proposed to human nature, then this nature loses its formal intelligibility. Why would this be? Because filial adoption by grace becomes an intrinsic dimension of the spirit’s essential character. “Nature” and “grace” consequently cease to denote coherently realities that are truly distinct. In contrast to de Lubac, then, Scheeben maintains the integrity of a purely natural final end. (Indeed, he does so with a classical Jesuit insistence that is much more emphatic and less unqualified than one finds in the treatment of this topic by the Dominican commentatorial tradition.) The natural and supernatural ends of man are not on a par, however, but are hierarchically subordinated such that grace can elevate the inclinations of nature without doing any violence to it.60 Scheeben weds this idea to his insistence on the transcendence of grace to nature by appeal to Aquinas’s notion of obediential potency. Human nature is not directly and proportionately ordered to the supernatural (by a natural potentiality, like the eyes’ capacity for vision), for to affirm this would imply an integralist confusion of the orders of grace and nature. Rather, human nature, because of its spiritual life, is intrinsically open potentially to being elevated freely by God into the life of grace, in view of the beatific vision.61 Of course a stance like this places Scheeben squarely within the heritage of Cajetan and Suarez. He affirms the relative integrity of nature (replete with the twofold end) and the obediential potency of natural inclinations for elevation to supernatural life in God.62 Nevertheless, for 59 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 80. 60 Ibid., 65–66, 111, 117, 121. 61 Ibid., 40. See n. 4. Scheeben rightly sees that Aquinas employs the concept of obediential potency to discuss the relation of human nature to sanctifying grace (cf. ST II–II, q. 2, a. 3; III, q. 1, a. 1, ad 3).This reading of Aquinas is something that Gilson, de Lubac, and Laporta all denied but that has recently been convincingly demonstrated by Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 136–65. 62 In Nature and Grace, 61–69, it becomes apparent that Scheeben follows Suarez (Opera Omnia [Paris:Vivès Edition, 1857], Tome VII [De statibus humanae naturae], Prolegomenum IV, cap.VIII–IX) in arguing that human nature in the fallen state, though deprived of the gifts of supernatural grace, nevertheless preserves its natural integrity such that the fallen state of human nature is virtually identical with a “state of pure nature” had man been created without the gift of grace.This viewpoint is universally contested by the Dominican Thomist tradition, which argues that fallen nature is wounded and less capable of the natural good than it would have been in a state of pure nature. Likewise, Scheeben at points (55, 81, 84 n. 5) suggests that in a fallen state man can by his own powers (with the assistance of a 560 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Scheeben this theological stance is clearly not extrinsicist in the sense that de Lubac (mistakenly?) takes it to be. On the contrary, to return to the supposition against Luther, Baius (and Barth): only if there is a naturally proportionate inferior final end both open to and not identical with the supernatural end can the latter come to the former not only as truly gratuitous but also as something not wholly alien. Scheeben’s “good extrinsicism” is something relatively balanced. He sees grace as simultaneously elevating and fulfilling the intrinsic aspirations of human nature for the true and the good with regard to God. Without the duality of ends, the gratuitous elevation would be eclipsed.Without the capacity for integration of the two into a unity of life, the true harmony of grace and nature would be indecipherable. In fact, while it is too schematic to summarize things in this fashion, one could say that the early Barth maintains a radical equivocity (alien otherness) of grace to nature while de Lubac’s Surnaturel risks tending toward a univocal identification of the two (in the realm of final if not formal causality). Scheeben, meanwhile, maintains an analogy. Likeness without identification allows for an integration or marriage of grace and nature that does not elide the difference between the two, while still maintaining the radical otherness of grace, revelation, and the supernatural with regard to all human capacities and innate inclinations. In addition to this comparative indication of the strength of Scheeben’s views, we can consider last at least one way in which his analysis of gracenature orthodoxy examines key questions left unexamined by Barth and de Lubac. This has to do with the necessary philosophical question that Scheeben poses to the Enlightenment anti-supernaturalist tradition: just how natural is naturalism? Unlike Barth and de Lubac, Scheeben’s theology is capable of asking in strictly philosophical and rational terms whether the decision to close culture off to supernatural influences is itself warranted. In other words, if there is a natural end in man that tends toward the pursuit of philosophical knowledge of God and that, were it exercised correctly and not in a disordered way, would even tend to the natural love of God above all things, then the secularized person is a naturally conflicted being. Indeed, he is an irrational and unnatural being. If this is the case, then philosophical reason is able in a limited way (within the limits of divine auxilium) love God naturally above all things. This is a teaching disavowed by Aquinas himself as well as by the subsequent Dominican commentatorial tradition. The natural love of God is possible in man’s fallen state only if the reparative work of grace is present, even though the natural love of God remains in creatures graced with the supernatural love of charity (see, for example, ST I, q. 62, aa. 1 and 7, and ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3). Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 561 reason alone) to diagnose this condition and anticipate the mere possibility of divine revelation and authentic human religiosity. The point of this argument is not to suggest that a philosophical articulation of arguments for the existence of God and for the validity of religious worship of God will efficaciously deliver a secular culture from its anti-religious instincts. The point is that a de-Christianized, irreligious reason is also an unnatural reason and that Barth and de Lubac have insufficient conceptual resources at their service to adequately articulate this truth that was underscored by the First Vatican Council. Correspondingly, a re-Christianization of culture depends not solely on the work of grace and on theological instruction (though these above all are required) but also on a philosophical wisdom that seeks to articulate a natural understanding of reality to a naturally wounded human reason (as Leo XIII and John Paul II have argued in Aeterni Patris and Fides et Ratio, respectively). Even if grace is necessary to human healing, within the work of grace and not apart from it there are salves that sound philosophy alone can provide and without which theological teaching will become intrinsically handicapped. Rational knowledge of God and philosophical understanding of the natural law form an integral part of sacred theology, which means that they also have their relative integrity that must be respected even from within a science of the supernatural.63 Surely the Church in the modern world is confronted with the challenge of communicating a sense of the mysteries of the faith, but She also is charged with the challenge of reawakening a renaissance of human reason invested in the study of God’s natural world and the natural ethical order of man. The latter effort is not something that must occur existentially “outside” of theology and its culture, for the aids of grace and divine revelation are in fact greatly needed in the development of sound philosophical perspectives. And yet this philosophical effort is also distinguishably natural and rational, even as it is placed at the service of Christian culture. Scheeben’s scholasticism in this respect is a model of integration of natural and supernatural tasks within one interweaving vision of theology. IV We can conclude this study by briefly underscoring our second thesis: Scheeben’s scholasticism is not a deficit hindering his capacity to articulate an insightful narrative history of orthodoxy. In a sense, rather, it is the presupposition of its success. Presumably, of all nineteenth-century 63 Aquinas, ST I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2. 562 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Catholic theological figures, Newman and Scheeben stand out most prominently. However, there is no equality of influence between the two in the contemporary Church. Newman has an undisputed preeminence as a Catholic thinker of the modern era and is in many ways a precursor to the existential and historical reflections of many mid-twentieth-century Catholic theologians, figures such as Congar, de Lubac, Balthasar, and so on. But it needs to be asked: to what extent is a coherent narrative history of the development of doctrine or of the evolving religious opinions of the self possible in the absence of a genuinely scholastic typology of doctrines that examines the essential content of contrasting and developing positions? Or to ask the question more provocatively, after the eclipse of scholastic doctrinal theology, to what extent does the narrative of the Church or of the modern Christian self break down for lack of content and of the essential structure that study of the mysteries of Christianity alone provides? This is not to intimate that Scheeben and Newman should be contrasted, nor that historical ressourcement and scholastic study of the structures of the mysteries of Christianity should be opposed. It is to imply the opposite: that the dichotomy between these two worlds is exaggerated and overwrought. What is so powerful in Scheeben’s vision of the historical unfolding of doctrine is that he can identify how core ideas that persist across time unfold in analogical but unified ways. He can do this because of his scholastic understanding of the structure of the realms of nature and grace, pointing out how diverse aspects of being are subject to analysis by the same idea in different historical ages. For instance, what he terms “Manicheanism” or “Pelagianism” are in fact nuanced notions, which he employs to depict the developmental unity present in a range of historical opinions, each pertaining either to our human essence or to our knowledge or to human ethics, and so on. The history of opinions in its diversity and unity ultimately derives from the structure of being in its diversity and unity, because different historical epochs devote attention to one area or aspect of reality more than others.Traditional ideas can be redeployed innovatively in new contexts in order to consider an ontological terrain that has not previously been considered sufficiently. To study the relation of these various ideas diachronically, then, it is necessary to be able to compare them synchronically in relation to the whole ontological terrain that they (variously) seek to analyze. To do this, however, it is necessary to have a “vision of the whole”: a scholastic analysis of the essence, capacities, and ends of nature and grace respectively, a vision that allows for the coordination and evaluation of the history of opinions that has developed through the course of time. One may fairly dispute whether or not the conceptual map that Scheeben draws is sufficiently complex, nuanced, or accurate. However, it Scheeben and Nature-Grace Orthodoxy 563 seems fair to say that what he rightly sees is that there is no genuine historical theology without a logically prior speculative theology. Schebeen was himself a gifted and remarkably insightful analyst of the history of doctrines and he had a profound spiritual and scholastic vision of the development of the human person under the influence of grace. Perhaps we know too much about the poverty of modern scholasticism and too little of its riches. In the face of secularization and generalized religious ignorance, the renewal and vitality of Christian theology in the near future will no doubt depend upon a return to the central mysteries of Christian teaching in the domains of Trinitarian theology, Christology, moral theology, and the interrelations of nature and grace. As an illuminating example of the renewal of Christian doctrinal theology in the midst of the modern world—and specifically as an example of the renewal of scholastic theology—the theologian of Köln has much to offer us. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2013): 565–600 565 Book Reviews Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology edited by Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 ), vi + 583 pp. G ABRIEL F LYNN and Paul D. Murray have arranged a large collection of essays in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, with topics ranging from the ressourcement’s multiple lines of historical inheritances, to its central representative figures, to assessments of its legacy. The introduction, written by Flynn, gives the work’s intent as the following: “This volume is essentially about theology and history. It attempts to articulate the history of the ressourcement movement, its antecedents and leading exponents, and to assess the relevance of their prodigious theological output for the contemporary churches and modern society” (16). Such an ambitious goal might well fragment most works into a series of fractured sketches, but Ressourcement manages to cohere around its major theme while also presenting its diverging complexities. The volume is divided into four parts: “The Ressourcement Movement: History and Context” (23–201), “Central Figures of the Ressourcement” (205–302), “Ressourcement as a Threefold Programme of Renewal” (305–51), and “Ressourcement and ‘the Church in the Modern World’ ” (355–522). The first two parts of the book revolve around historical concerns in sections that attempt to discover the historical roots of the movement and to summarize the charismatic figures who comprised its works. The second two parts are more akin in theme to theological reviews, measuring the nouvelle théologie’s interest in renewal and reform, and the appropriation of that interest alongside a response to the modern age. Part of the volume’s intricacy is rooted in its two-pronged desire to understand the ressourcement movement in both its history and its theology. This double goal broadens the range of the work and layers it with overlapping perplexities as history and theology converge. The work’s duallensed perspective makes its overall assessment complex and open, and 566 Book Reviews Ressourcement reveals the dense relationship between theology and history as a whole through its articulation of a specific era of theological history. Some of the most helpful and informative essays in the volume are to be found in its first two sections, where the entanglements of history receive the most attention. Here essays lay out the various open questions asked of the ressourcement movement’s historical roots and give summaries of its essential figures and actions in the first half of the twentieth century. Jürgen Mettepennigen’s review of the four historical stages that led from the 1930s into the Second Vatican Council is the most cogent and expansive summary of the era in question, and so it is something of a puzzle that his essay appears so late in the volume (172–84). Several articles explore the important figures who preceded and influenced the movement: Francesca Murphy’s essay on Étienne Gilson (51–64) and Michael Conway’s essay on Maurice Blondel (65–82) serve especially important roles. Yet the most important predecessor to the nouvelle théologie is Modernism, which is to say that the complexities of the Modernist controversy colored the controversy of the nouvelle théologie.The Modernist controversy influenced many of the ways the theologians of the “new theology” responded to theological problems: they were anxious not to be confused with Modernism, and yet their fascination with the role of history in theology at least superficially mirrors Modernism. At the same time, the Modernist controversy influenced how other scholars perceived the nouvelle théologie, as the latter movement’s opponents worried over a theological relativism that appeared to reflect what had been condemned in Modernism. Because of the importance of this controversy, many essays spend themselves in attempts to uncover the differences and similarities between Modernism and the nouvelle théologie, and Gerard Loughlin’s essay is perhaps the most programmatic here. Still, the question appears repeatedly in other essays, and increasingly scholars observe how the Modernist question itself casts Thomas—or rather, various Thomisms—in perhaps the most important underlying role in the drama between the nouvelle théologie and its opponents. Both Gilson and Blondel precede the nouvelle théologie with important re-reads of Thomas Aquinas’s work, re-reads that essentially begin the unearthing of Thomas from beneath the neo-Thomism that dominated Catholic theology in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The nouvelle théologie is characterized at first by Dominicans like MarieDominique Chenu, who are interested in keeping Thomas’s theology and in recovering history, which they—especially Chenu—see as the same task. Essays from Hans Boersma (157–71), Janette Gray (205–18), and Gabriel Flynn (219–36) help to show the ways Thomas haunts both the theologians of the nouvelle théologie and their detractors, and it is the diffi- Book Reviews 567 culty of these varying Thomisms that holds many of the different historical essays together and relates them to one another in both contradiction and coherence. Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, and Yves Congar—more famous members of the nouvelle théologie—receive texture and context in these essays on Thomas and Catholic theology. The renewal of Thomism in the first half of the twentieth century accompanied several other renewals in biblical studies, liturgy, and ecclesiology both within and outside of the Catholic Church. These renewals, reviewed in Part III, help to transition Ressourcement from a historical survey into an assessment of the theological influences of the nouvelle théologie, a project that occupies Part IV. The nouvelle théologie’s ambitious recovery of the patristic era and of Thomas Aquinas, and the influence of these recoveries on the Second Vatican Council and subsequent theology are, if anything, more complex than the roots of the movement itself. Brian Daley’s essay on Dei Verbum and the nouvelle théologie (333–51) is an especially lucid, representative essay on the power of the movement’s impact on the theology of Vatican II and thus on the theology that followed the council. Essays like Daley’s help to unravel the ways the theologians of the nouvelle théologie, while enduring controversy, ultimately helped to reshape the way Catholic theology carries out its reflections from the academy to the official Church.The influence of nouvelle theologians extends outside of Roman Catholicism, and articles like Paul Murray’s (457–81) and John Webster’s (482–94) reveal the ecumenical vitality of the nouvelle théologie in the present age. Here, the importance of knowing the nouvelle théologie’s historical-theological roots, and thus the relevance of a volume such as this, become self-evident. Each of the four major sections of the volume is a composite assessment of the ressourcement movement, voiced through the varying concentrations of the essays that rest together. The composite quality of the volume makes it difficult to summarize, especially as the various scholarly retellings of the battles with Garrigou-Lagrange and other neo-Thomists, and of Pope XII’s harsh assessment of the ressourcement in Humani Generis begin to bleed together. Such is the weakness of a work as large as this, and one with so many contributors. At the same time, the multi-faceted nature of a multi-authored collection serves as the appropriate form for a movement as complex and far-reaching as the nouvelle théologie. What becomes clear about the nouvelle théologie is its multitudinous character: united by a common interest in the renewal of liturgy, ecclesiology, and ecclesial mission (cf. 3), the forms of that renewal are as varying as the figures encompassed in it.This does not make the nouvelle théologie opaque; rather, it emphasizes the force of its theological and historical interests, 568 Book Reviews which were vigorous enough to attempt the re-appropriation and renewal of the entirety of the Christian tradition. This was the grand ambition of the theologians who made up the movement, and their ambition does not close with their deaths. Their ambition, it is implied, is to be the ambition of the present day. The edited volume, Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, thus serves its topic well and achieves its goals in such a way as to encourage the theologians of today to continue to mine the riches of the theologians of the past, including those of the nouvelle théologie. N&V Anne M. Carpenter Marquette University Milwaukee, WI Church, State, and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine by J. Brian Benestad (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011 ), xii + 500 pp. B RIAN B ENESTAD spans so many significant issues and considerations in his excellent 500-page introduction to Catholic social doctrine that this review can provide only a taste of this remarkable book. Professor Benestad treats complicated and sensitive issues with subtlety and yet at the same time offers a broad and comprehensible introduction from which an interested reader, whether in the classroom or not, can profit wonderfully. Benestad states his purpose at the outset: “The purpose of this book is to give an accurate account of the Church’s social doctrine for the inquiring Catholic and non-Catholic on the basis of authoritative Church sources—for example, papal encyclicals,Vatican Council II, statements of Vatican congregations, and statements of the United States bishops” (9–10). He adds that he will distinguish the authoritative Catholic teachings from some opinions held by prelates with which Catholics could legitimately disagree (10). In his first chapter, Benestad identifies the broad need for education in Catholic social doctrine, and then distinguishes it from political philosophy with help from Pope Benedict and de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In his introductory chapter, Benestad sounds familiar notes from Pope Benedict’s writing on Catholic social doctrine about the objectivity of moral norms over and against relativistic standards (11–13), the obligation to help the poor (13–14), and the significance and content of conscience (18–22), among other concerns all with obvious respect and admiration. Next he looks to de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and sees “how liberal political principles have . . . both affected the way Americans live and the Book Reviews 569 way they understand and practice their faith” (27). Although Americans tend to divide rights from consideration of man’s ultimate end, we usually act in light of some truths (31). “America the Beautiful” expresses cultural concepts (e.g., “liberty under God”) that indicate a possible openness to Catholic social doctrine, but Benestad believes that Catholic universities, insofar as they can educate students to “think intelligently about the moral and legal requirements of democratic regimes,” will be the linchpin for general acceptance of Catholic social doctrine in American society (32). He hopes that Bl. John Paul II’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae will eventually initiate renewal of liberal education in Catholic universities (32). In Part 1, Benestad defines human dignity both as a “permanent endowment,” inherent within our identity as created in God’s image and likeness, redeemed by Christ, and destined for heaven, and as the achievement of communion with God (38–39). Our dignity requires that, despite temptations, we act virtuously, according to the natural law, and necessarily respect the rights of others. Understanding human dignity as a commission to virtuous action is “the best way of advancing the cause of rights” (80). Benestad is sensitive to the Hobbesian origins of modern discourse on rights, the influence of Locke on the American founders, and the subsequent interposition of historicism, relativism, and Nietzschean autonomy (54). The author outlines Mary Ann Glendon’s Rights Talk to help identify “the problems that emphasis on rights can cause” (58). After this lengthy chapter on human dignity, human rights, and natural law, Benestad considers the meaning of the common good. Benestad offers the standard definition of the common good found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The sum total of the conditions of social life which allow people, either as groups or individuals, to reach their own perfection more fully and more easily” (108). He emphasizes the final component of this definition, thus tying the common good into his conception of human dignity as goal-oriented. Benestad returns to virtue, particularly that which flows from grace, as the primary means through which human beings should seek the common good. With the virtue of charity at the center, Benestad connects social morality with personal conversion (113–14). He draws on Aristotle, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, Aquinas, and Pope Benedict to present the tradition on virtue ethics, and he uses two novels, including Jane Austen’s Persuasion, to illustrate virtue theory. Virtue, and Aquinas’s “legal justice” specifically, figure prominently in Benestad’s discussion of social justice. He believes that this virtue, as it directs acts of all the virtues to the common good, can help clarify the nature and requirements of “social justice” (151–52). In his view, Catholic 570 Book Reviews laity must take every heroic initiative to establish a just social order, and the clergy are charged to educate the laity and give them an outline of the common good (167). Benestad moves from these reflections to consideration of law and public policy as a means to the common good. Benestad states: “In a liberal society government will not have the primary responsibility for promoting the full range of the common good” (170). Nevertheless, on his view, government can and should contribute to the common good within the limits of subsidiarity, although the practicalities of such interventions may be debated legitimately (168–69). The author spends the vast majority of this chapter examining several burning issues: the question of same-sex marriage, the protection of life in all its stages, and the role of biotechnology in dehumanization. Benestad employs the arguments of Mary Ann Glendon and Leon Kass to help present Catholic social doctrine on these matters. In Part 2, Benestad claims that the Church, the family, and the university are “the three most important agents of civil society” (215). In the three chapters that follow, Benestad discusses the roles of bishops, priests, and laity in contributing to the political community. He relies on conciliar, papal, curial, and national bishops’ conference documents to substantiate the claims he makes about Catholic social doctrine in these areas, while conducting penetrating analysis, especially of the U.S. Bishops’ Faithful Citizenship. Benestad details specific tasks for families, and, following Augustine’s thought, claims that Catholic universities “must educate students to love what is good . . . which requires professors who love their faith and love their students” (312).The author affirms that Catholics must engage in public life through discussion and action despite attempts to privatize religion (253). Benestad considers this engagement for the common good “a logical implication of human dignity” (280). In Parts 3 and 4, Benestad takes up several important issues under social morality, including property and stewardship, and international relations. Benestad turns to the writings of Leo XIII and Bl. John Paul II to explain Catholic social doctrine on economics, work, and poverty. When considering immigration, he takes principles from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the 2003 joint pastoral letter of the Mexican and American bishops, Strangers No Longer (338–39). Benestad also collects insights from Mary Ann Glendon’s 2006 article in First Things, agreeing with her that forming specific policies “will require enormous dedication, intelligence, creativity, and goodwill on the part of all concerned” (341). Next Benestad considers approaches to environmental sustainability. The author presents the arguments of the Neo-Malthusian movement, and then offers a broader proposal for environmental concern from Book Reviews 571 the perspective of Catholic social doctrine. From a Catholic perspective, Benestad emphasizes the role of the family and the importance of conscience in proper stewardship of creation (365–71). He believes that the current sustainability movement opens the door to consider the essential elements of a sustainable community, including several spiritual and moral criteria, but the movement at present is “too narrowly conceived,” particularly in its assault on human dignity, to be successful (374). After this, Benestad takes up the international community. Professor Benestad sets out to present the foundational principles that “should animate the international community” (377). Benestad claims that Bl. John Paul II sought to direct international attention away from autonomy and toward solidarity and the common good (381). He explains that the Compendium focuses on facilitating “the unity of nations through the Church, morality, and law, and promoting development” (381). Benestad summarizes Pope Benedict’s April 2008 speech at the United Nations as a call for international solidarity to promote lasting peace and sustained development (384). The author mines Mary Ann Glendon’s Traditions in Turmoil for analysis of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights and the controversial 1995 UN Women’s Conference in Beijing (390–400). Benestad claims that, according to Catholic social doctrine, actors in the international community should promote the dignity, rights, and duties of the human person, and then he offers a list of ten principles to guide the international community in its efforts (400–402). The author examines just-war principles in the last chapter of Part 4. Benestad considers contemporary ideas about just war in light of the thinking of Augustine and Aquinas. He draws attention to Augustine’s view that peace will be realized through the moral unity of citizens and rulers with God in “the practice of all the virtues” (403). Benestad raises several important considerations under jus ad bellum and jus in bello categories, employing scholars like John Courtney Murray, Paul Ramsey, James Turner Johnson, John C. Ford, and George Weigel. He spends a few pages on pacifism and conscientious objection, with some reservations about the absolute denial of corporate self-defense by military means (421–26). From this point, Benestad moves to the conclusion of his work. Over and against the proponents of religion as a private affair, Benestad claims that excluding religion from the public square harms the common good as it hinders the promotion of true justice, which is based on “theological and philosophical views of the good” (443–44). Benestad holds up Pope Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate as an example of a respectful critique of liberal democratic regimes. He follows this up with an appendix that contains a 20-page analysis of Caritas in Veritate, concluding that Pope 572 Book Reviews Benedict holds up the practice of the virtues by all participants in modern economies as more important than self-interest or any structures established through policy or law (466). Benestad rounds out his text with an 18-page bibliography that ranges across the spectrum of social morality. Brian Benestad has produced a remarkable volume on Catholic social doctrine that offers many treasures for the interested reader. In Benestad’s view, human dignity, with its double foundation in human identity (as created in the image and likeness of God, redeemed by Christ, and destined for heaven) and vocation to action in favor of human fulfillment, stands at the center of Catholic social doctrine. The common good rests on human dignity and stands with it as the guiding light of Catholic social doctrine. Virtue recurs often as the means to the common good and the proper response to God’s calling. Benestad has obvious love for the contribution of Pope Benedict to Catholic social doctrine, and he repeatedly looks to Mary Ann Glendon for arguments and insights. Church, State, and Society is the best introduction to Catholic social doctrine I have encountered, and it is well worth the investment. N&V John D. Love Mount St. Mary’s Seminary Emmitsburg, MD Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History by C. C. Pecknold (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010 ), xxii + 174 pp. T HIS book tells a story, and tells it well. The story has been gestating in the theology departments of American universities for about two decades. Many of the founding ideas for the story were penned by academics who endorse Pecknold’s work on the covers of the book. It is not a story found in the papal encyclicals of the Catholic social thought tradition, however. Carl Schmitt is the origin of the story though he barely figures in this brief work. Schmitt, a genuinely original and provocative thinker, is commonly associated with the claim that politics is always a manipulation of more original theological categories. Pecknold takes us from the Greeks to the present to show that this is a true insight into Western politics. He offers a synthesis of recent American scholarship to make his case rather than grapple with the knotty Schmitt. Is this account plausible? Few working in the political science departments of the modern university would find it remotely plausible. Attached to Schmitt myself, I would side with Pecknold, but I have reservations about how Schmitt’s basic insight is developed here. Book Reviews 573 Pecknold is a good, clean writer and credit is due for the fact that he boldly tells his story. As we all know, far too many academic books are barely readable. Pecknold has a lean style that recommends itself but he sets himself an extremely difficult task: Offering a brief guide to the development of the relations between religion and politics from the Greeks until our times. Most would be wary of trying to write such a book. To think: You would need an intimate knowledge of the Greeks, the Middle Ages, early and late Modernity, and besides a rich knowledge of religion and theology, politics too, and so necessarily history, the arts, and philosophy. I can think of only six people who might successfully write such a guide: Benedict XVI, MacIntyre, Taylor, and the Frenchmen Remi Brague, Pierre Manent, and Philippe Nemo. Likely there are people I’m forgetting, but I’ll venture few can think of many other names to add to the list. Perhaps someone might retort saying: “It’s a guide, so stuff will be left out, some corners cut, some facts garbled.” This reaction reverses an important point: A guide is even harder to write; it demands a surety around the details so one can convincingly abstract from the fine texture to take the reader through the broad expanse of history. In this regard the book falters on the first page, where we learn something false: Aristotle was from Athens; he was not. The story of the book was always going to be a tough sell, and a young member of the Academy likely to struggle more. The ambition of the book is complicated further by the fact it is not merely a short guide to the history of the West’s theologico-political life but a call to a certain kind of politics. I think it fair to say political theology is still an emergent field of analysis. The book should have opened with a clarification of the aims and boundaries of this method, because political theology has, in fact, two different origins. Starting this way would have given the reader a useful setting for Pecknold’s own politics, about which he is very clear. Political theology first began with the anarchists who wanted the revolutionary period of the West to attain new degrees of purity. Schmitt’s political theology is a reaction to anarchism. For anarchism, it was not enough for the American colonists to shed their imperial masters, nor the French to kill their king, aristocrats, priests, and nuns: The West needed to be purified of all hierarchy, obedience, superstition, and inequality. The anarchists invoked political theology as a method to root out lingering theological categories, which had infiltrated and corrupted economic, social, and political life. Pecknold does not want this kind of purity, but he does hanker after purity. In this he is little like Schmitt. He wants to identify how the Enlightenment, liberalism, and markets trade, for their authority, 574 Book Reviews on the sense of community first accomplished by the Eucharistic community of the Church (104, 110, & 139). The book wants to show that the Church is weakened when ignorant of the way that secularism offers a mangled image of its own life, an image all the more subversive because it satisfies people precisely by drawing on what is best in the Church (83). This is a potential use of political theology, and Tracey Rowland is a good example of how effective it can be in clarifying Christian conscience when done carefully in specific studies. It is far from Schmitt, though, and the deeper resources of the Catholic social thought tradition. Pecknold wants Christians to be loyal to the Eucharistic community and to free themselves thereby from loyalty to nation (93, 104, & 119). In this conception, the Christian is transnational and local, experiencing a civic life centered about parish altars, where a true and universal community is daily renewed (138). Unfortunately, Pecknold does not discuss an alternative. Distributists, like Chesterton and Scheler, were localists who nonetheless were proud of what a carefully crafted national culture could offer the human spirit. Pecknold requires another premise: Christians are pilgrims on this earth and so strangers to national lands (28–29 & 118). This is a popular idea in universities, and many argue that it has strong biblical warrant, but it is no part of Schmitt’s political theology, nor does it resonate with the encyclical tradition. Pecknold’s drive to a purity politics explains his skepticism toward natural law, and this skepticism gets at a basic point. He rather mangles the point. In a rather curious commentary on Caritas in Veritate (no other encyclicals figure in the book) Pecknold argues that Benedict opposes a regard for truth to natural law in the development of conscience (154–55). Perhaps Pecknold is thinking of Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Dialectics of Secularization (69–70), where the usefulness of natural law to contemporary moral theology is doubted. The opposite is stated quite clearly in Caritas in Veritate (sections 59 & 48). Following a long ancient tradition, Thomistic natural law affirms public authority as a guarantor of public safety. The reality of crime and war requires the vigilance of a public authority, which, for Aquinas, might be a city, a dukedom, a kingdom, or even an empire. In the Catholic social thought tradition built on Aquinas, localism is not merely welcomed but on account of subsidiarity morally required. At the same time, solidarity legitimates (in many circumstances) a national public authority. Indeed, in certain circumstances, such an authority is morally required.The Distributists, following leads given in Leo XIII’s On the Condition of the Working Classes (1891), rightly saw that rejection of national cultures and their capacities would offend solidarity. Book Reviews 575 Schmitt, ever the dramatist, puts the Thomist point far more provocatively.Walls express the fault line between friend and enemy. Most primordially, what sets this fault line is a sacred orientation: Communities, argues Schmitt, always spread out from their altars. The religious and public authorities are inextricably linked, therefore.This is the axiom of Schmitt’s political theology. Pecknold expresses horror at Constantinianism (“From a certain angle, this “domestication” of the church can be seen as persecution by other means” [31]) but this can only baffle Schmitt. This is why the book should have opened with methodological clarity. Pecknold’s Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History is a book with sharp claims that prompt other clear thoughts about what is at stake in good theology. Not a bad thing to say about a brief guide. N&V G. J. McAleer Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, MD The Promise of Christian Humanism: Thomas Aquinas on Hope by Dominic Doyle (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2011 ) xi + 233 pp. T HIS book, winner of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, seeks to move beyond the nineteenth- and twentieth-century disputes between atheistic and Christian humanism. Dominic Doyle convincingly argues that at the heart of these disputes is the question of whether belief in a transcendent God helps or hinders human flourishing in the world. Doyle proposes a theological expansion of the roots of Christian humanism in light of a renewed interpretation of the theological virtue of hope as understood by Thomas Aquinas. Doyle sets out his argument in three parts: he first examines the status quaestionis; he then proposes a close exegesis and creative extension of Aquinas’s treatment of hope; and finally, he applies this Thomistic understanding of the virtue of hope to the question of offering adequate theological grounds for a renewed Christian humanism in the twenty-first century. The tradition of a genuinely Christian humanism, Doyle argues, is rooted in the Incarnation and the consequent positive theological assessment of the humanum; in light of this positive assessment, Christian humanism “aspires to some form of synthesis—intellectually, between faith and reason; and socially, between church and culture” (5). The recent renewal in Christian humanism exemplified by the work of Nicholas Boyle and Charles Taylor has brought to light the challenge of holding together a concern for the human good and an insistence on religious transcendence. 576 Book Reviews The Taylor/Boyle project is limited by its lack of explicit theological articulation. This lack, Doyle posits, leads to cascading failures: an inadequate differentiation between nature and grace, with a consequent failure to integrate the theological virtues; an insufficient exploration of the specifically Christian link between desire for the common good and the drive for religious transcendence, making it difficult to distinguish a genuinely Christian humanism from a generalized religious humanism. Retrieving the work of earlier theologians who rooted Christian humanism in the theological virtue of faith, Doyle shows that such a grounding leaves open the question of the form which Christian life, understood as being conformed to Christ through acting in the world, must take. This is where the theological virtue of hope comes in, since it is precisely concerned with practical living out of belief. Thus, the theological sources of a renewed Christian humanism “must not only include the assent to a particular doctrine [i.e. the Incarnation] that makes a humanism distinctly Christian; it must also include the fundamental process whereby this Christian vision becomes embodied” (38). Hope attains God as both present good (auxilium) and future good (full communion in beatific love), and these two dimensions of the good correspond precisely to the two elements of a renewed Christian humanism. Doyle turns, in the second part of the book, to a careful exegesis and extension of Aquinas’s doctrine on the theological virtue of hope. In light of criticisms leveled against Aquinas’s teaching from such authors as Moltmann and Wolterstorff, Doyle proceeds to show that, far from separating religious transcendence and concern for the common good here and now, Aquinas’s treatment of hope brings to light how the orientation to religious transcendence empowers and anchors concern for the common good here and now, and how present human goods participate in and mediate the future good of communion with God in the fullness of eschatological loving. Doyle’s exegesis proceeds in two steps. First, he brings to light the three key theological presuppositions that frame Aquinas’s teaching on hope: Creator and creation are not competing causes; the human person naturally desires God; and God’s grace perfects human nature. The explanation of creation’s participation in God’s existing is masterful, as is the explanation of creation’s reditus to God as final cause. The uniquely human dynamic of reditus to God in freedom is helpfully brought to light, and the explanation of the need for grace is a model of clarity, especially why the will’s desire for the beatific vision is genuinely super natural. Chapters three and four are one of the most pedagogically and systematically satisfying presentations of Aquinas’s teaching on theologi- Book Reviews 577 cal anthropology that I have read. The account of the theological virtues is excellent, and Doyle’s decision to preserve the movement from universal to particular in relating chapters three and four is most helpful. The proposal articulated at the beginning of chapter five and developed through chapter six, that the three theological virtues can be understood as the potency, motion, and act of a renewed Christian humanism, is novel and quite interesting. Faith and charity cannot properly be said to involve motion toward God in their essence. Only hope properly involves motion, which is the reduction of potency to act. Faith is thus the specific potency for a Christian humanism; charity is that potency fully reduced to act. Hope moves the believer toward that end through God’s auxilium. Specifically, such an understanding of hope brings to light the necessarily cruciform nature of the believer’s quest to promote the common good in light of a genuinely transcendent orientation: “insofar as hope encounters difficulty, it deepens the engagement with the Christian narrative, from assent to the doctrine of the Incarnation to appropriation of the reality of the Cross” (114). In the context of developing his argument linking eschatological hope and the present good, Doyle makes excellent use of analogy and the ontology of participation that grounds it, generating a complex account of the authentically human so as to dialogue positively with secularity and retain some critical purchase on it. One of the most interesting elements of his account of analogy is its ability to recognize the reality of struggle and the paschal dimension of Christian living in the world. Christian hope, as presented by Doyle, “unites within a single virtue what modern culture repeatedly drives apart: the desire for religious transcendence and the concern for the human good.” It thus supports Christian humanism at the precise point where it is tempted in modernity, “the failure to relate historical emancipation and religious salvation” (145). The author models, in his concluding chapter, a deeply respectful engagement with a multitude of authors across the political and theological spectrum. In particular, his response to the work of Tracey Rowland is perspicacious, respectful, and forward moving, overcoming the false dilemma of what he calls a pessimistic Augustinianism versus a naively optimistic secularism. The presentation of the Second Vatican Council in light of the virtues of faith and hope is interesting and tantalizing, but it is in need of further development, specifically by bringing forward more explicitly some of the details of his exegesis and extension of Aquinas to address such questions as whether one finds the virtue of hope articulated in the self-understanding of the Council, or whether it is in the implementation of the Council’s humanism that the need for a theological 578 Book Reviews grounding in hope has come to light. Much more convincing is the analysis of the contrast between Christian humanism and religious fundamentalism in terms of the opposition between hope and security. This is a very helpful and enlightening theological explanation that can engage more sociologically and politically oriented analyses. The work is well researched and very well written. The exegesis of Aquinas is solid and rooted in a multiplicity of texts, including many not usually studied for an understanding of Aquinas’s teaching on hope. The endnotes (62 pages of them!) contain a wealth of commentary and insight in their own right. This is a rewarding work that bears a second and third reading. N&V Gilles Mongeau, S.J. Regis College at the University of Toronto Toronto, Canada Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction by Karen Kilby (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012 ), xii + 176 pp. H ANS U RS von Balthasar has enjoyed more than two decades of theological appreciation since his death in 1988. While theological progressives, as well as conservative Thomists, have hardly embraced his thought, it is fair to say that Balthasar is broadly viewed as a stock figure of creative fidelity to the Catholic tradition. The vast majority of studies done on Balthasar may raise modest criticisms here and there, but, on the whole, scholars working on Balthasar find his “theo-dramatic” project to be creative, coherent, and compelling—and in continuity with the great tradition.This appreciation is due not only to the content of his work but also to the post-conciliar context of it. Many bishops have embraced Balthasar as an antidote to a theological liberalism that some believe has harmed the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. Because of Balthasar’s friendship and theological proximity to Joseph Ratzinger (together they founded the journal Communio), many have seen the election of Pope Benedict XVI as a kind of implicit imprimatur, lending Balthasar a kind of magisterial authority by association; there is a proper caution about how to criticize the theology of the great Swiss theologian, who is regarded as a faithful “son of the Church” today. However, the tide may be turning toward a more complex appreciation of Balthasar which includes vigorous yet balanced critique. Karen Kilby’s “very critical” introduction to Balthasar indicates just such a direction. Rather than critique this or that aspect of Balthasar, while affirming the whole, Kilby’s approach is to affirm this or that aspect of Balthasar, yet critique the Book Reviews 579 whole form of his theological method and the conclusions about God and persons to which she says his method inevitably leads. Kilby is a Catholic theologian teaching at the University of Nottingham. Most of her research has been critical of contemporary trends in theology—she has written important critiques of Karl Rahner, as well as of social trinitarianism. Trained originally as a mathematician, and then as a systematic theologian at Yale Divinity School in its postliberal heyday, Kilby takes an analytical approach to Balthasar that might strike his most fervent disciples as “shallow” or even boring compared to the aesthetic depths and ecstatic heights of Balthasar himself. After pointing out in the introduction the various difficulties of “finding one’s way around Balthasar” and the fundamental difficulty of criticizing Balthasar (a central theme of the book), her first chapter, “The Contexts of Balthasar,” introduces Balthasar as an “unfettered” theologian who was not really intellectually accountable in a university setting or in the Church, which gave his work a freshness but also entailed significant risks, which she sees in his overall tendency to take a comprehensive “God’s eye view” of theology. She treats his training as a Jesuit, and his subsequent departure from the Society of Jesus to found a secular institute with Adrienne von Speyr (whose influence Kilby considers crucial), as evidence that his context was less attached to structures of accountability and more attached to the mystical visions of a woman who understood herself as living on earth and in heaven at once. She also addresses here the influence of Henri de Lubac and especially Karl Barth on his theology. This sets the stage for the next four chapters, which deal with his theological method through his “central images” in chapters 3 and 4; then in chapters 5 and 6 Kilby strategically utilizes her methodological critique to interrogate his doctrine of the Trinity and his nuptial mysticism. Noting the difficulty of any critical approach to a theologian who wrote so much, Kilby sets out not to deal with the details of his work but to first attend to its style, its method, and its central images, which she counts as four: the picture, the play, fulfillment, and the circle. “The picture” refers to the way in which Balthasar constantly commends us to “see the Form,” not so much as a drama but as a picture. Here she sees Balthasar as too much the comprehensor and not enough the viator in his theo-dramatic approach. The viewer of the picture either sees the form or does not; there is no “continuum or gradation” in seeing the form (57). In this regard, Kilby tends to read Balthasar as a kind of all-or-nothing Barthian. I could not help but wonder, however, if reading him in this way was already to miss the dialectical nature of Balthasar’s method and his lifelong attempt to argue in favor of Erich Przywara’s account of analogia entis. 580 Book Reviews “The play” is the image that Balthasar himself is more readily drawn to in his Theo-Drama trilogy, and here Kilby excels at interrogating this image, since she rightly understands it to be central to what is most problematic about his understanding of God as fundamentally dramatic. “God is himself, even apart from history, to be conceived through theatrical analogies: the eternal relations of the persons of the immanent Trinity are fundamentally dramatic, and, rather dizzyingly, Balthasar proposes that all of history can be thought along the lines of a ‘play within a play’. . . a drama which takes place in the space opened up by the more fundamental drama played out among the persons of the Trinity” (58). Kilby makes no initial judgment about this, but it is clear that she sees Balthasar ostensibly responding to Barth’s Christomonism—which allowed no room for human agency—through this dramatic category that gave human beings freedom in which to act in a divine drama. But implicit in this image is also the ghost of Hegel’s god, with his categories of transcending the lyrical (experiential) and the epic (objective) with the dramatic (61). For Balthasar, it is God’s drama in which we are participating, and which will draw all spectators to eventually become fellow actors “whether they wish to or not” (62, citing Balthasar), which may nevertheless limit human freedom in another way. Here the theological implications for the doctrine of God, anthropology, and eschatology come immediately to the fore. Kilby defers her theological critique for her chapter on the Trinity, and on nuptial mysticism respectively, but here provides a light critique of his subjunctive account of universal salvation, Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? She is primarily concerned here to point out that Balthasar’s central aesthetic images emphasize the wholeness of the form. Kilby worries that his tendency to make confident, comprehensive claims “seems to lead to a theology which allows little room for argument, little space for a reader to question and disagree” (65). Her fundamental methodological concern is pronounced as a question: Does differing from Balthasar’s survey of all of world history “in relation to God, and God’s inner life” finally mean “the absence of faith” (65)? In treating the central image of “fulfillment,” Kilby is more ambiguous. She speaks of the “fulfillment pattern” in Balthasar, and notes two ways of seeing fulfillment. Either the fulfillment pattern in Balthasar means that Christ fulfils what is present but only confused and partial (79) in an absolute way, or more contingently and in ad hoc fashion, the fulfillment pattern in Balthasar simply marks “a certain habit of thought” (80). This is an ambiguous critique. She clearly favors the contingent over the absolute in Balthasar, yet she consistently finds that the problem with his approach precisely is to be found in his absolutism. Does she mean that we cannot Book Reviews 581 be sure that Christ is the fulfillment of all that is good, or does she mean that we cannot be the ones who decide what counts as fulfillment? Something like the latter seems to be her point, for she states: “To suppose that all things must be related to Christ is one thing, but to suppose that one can know the relation of all things to Christ is quite a different thing” (81). Once again, the image of fulfillment becomes another occasion to ask her central question about whether his high view of Christ is not too closely united with an excessively high regard for his own comprehensive gaze. Her final discussion of Balthasar’s “aesthetic imaginary” treats the less pronounced image of “the circle” in his work. This is largely a cipher to critique the “circularity” of his descriptions—that is, the elliptical nature of his thought—and to decry the absence of actual arguments which would make his thought more open and accountable to criticism. The image of the circle might, however, suggest something contrary to her point: the image of the circle, in the hands of the “perspectivalism” of Nicholas of Cusa, who certainly influenced Balthasar, usually is seen to exhibit a certain kind of epistemic modesty, even a mystical apophaticism, that she so clearly wants from Balthasar. She implicitly recognizes the possibility of this rebuttal, stating that “in his very affirmation of the fragmentariness, the perspectival nature, of all theology, Balthasar frequently positions himself above it” (91). There is something absolute, she fears, even in his epistemic modesty! She recognizes the paradox: “on the one hand we find the profound insistence on theological humility . . . on the other hand there is Balthasar’s theological procedure, which silently presumes his own comprehensive grasp and control of the material” (93). These methodological critiques of Balthasar are often well made, and I share her worries, but there is the nagging suspicion that she has not fully appreciated the delicate dialectical balancing act of Balthasar, nor fully attended to the apophatic checks against the excesses that concern her. It may be that Balthasar’s apophatic checks fail, but unfortunately she barely touches upon them at all. No chapter in the book resonated quite as positively with me, however as her chapter on the Trinity.The previous chapters take the reader deep into methodological reflections on the task of theology, but they tend not to be very theological themselves. That problem is rectified in chapter five, which is one of the best summary critiques of Balthasar’s doctrine of God that I have read recently—itself worth the price of the book. And it is here that we can see the fundamental reason why she spends so much time establishing the central images in Balthasar as all tending toward a single conclusion: the methodological reflections are finally ordered to the end of her critique of particular theological mistakes which she thinks are not accidental but essential to the entirety of his thought, and not problems here and there. 582 Book Reviews Balthasar is famous for his reading of the “Cry of Dereliction.” When Christ asks why God has forsaken him, the Son is proclaiming an absolute rupture from the Father, and thus the Cross is understood as the revelation of the eternal kenosis of the Son in the Trinity. The Cross thus reveals to us the “Trinitarian substructure”: the Father “strips himself, without remainder, of his Godhead and hands it over to the Son” (99, quoting Balthasar). Rather than stress, as is traditional, the intimacy and inseparability of “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” Balthasar stresses the opposite, speaking even of an “absolute, infinite distance” between the Persons. Kilby might have added that a great cloud of witnesses—St. Athanasius, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas—would attest that the kenosis to which St. Paul refers in the Christ hymn of Philippians is a kenosis which does not occur in the inner-life of the divine economy, but is a kenosis into “the economy of the flesh.” Balthasar, however, interprets kenosis not as something which refers to the divine condescension only, but that the kenosis of the Son into the economy of the flesh is simply an unfolding of a kenosis in the Triune God’s eternal inner life. It is not exactly like Hegel (or Feuerbach)—projecting the dialectical unfolding of the Absolute into the immanent frame of history—but rather like the dialectical unfolding of the infinite distance between the Trinitarian Persons in the economy of time. Kilby studiously avoids any genealogical examination of Balthasar’s relation to Hegel. (She does not see Balthasar as being as closely allied to Hegel as Moltmann is, but it is clear that she sees the influence as a cause for concern.) This is one of the strengths of the work, in fact, because she does not rest her critique on whether or not Balthasar is either indebted or resistant to Hegel; rather, she focuses on how Balthasar knows what he claims to know. How does Balthasar know that the “Cry of Dereliction” is the revelation of an eternal kenosis within God? Kilby observes two routes by which he arrives at this knowledge. The first is through an analytic understanding of the Trinity. In an attempt to avoid Barth’s modalism, and thus to affirm the distinctions between the Trinitarian Persons, Balthasar believes that an “infinite distance” or “infinite space” between the Persons must be affirmed (107). The second route by which we can know of this innerTrinitarian distance is by way of the Cross: “It is only from the Cross and in the context of the Son’s forsakenness that the latter’s distance from the Father is fully revealed” (107, quoting Balthasar). In a manner consistent with the methodological worries exhibited throughout, Kilby replies that neither reflection on the Trinity nor reflection on the Cross has yielded this knowledge before, so why should we take it on faith that Balthasar has a privileged viewpoint on God’s inner Book Reviews 583 life? Why do we have the “sense that Balthasar knows very well what he is describing . . . a theologian who seems very well to know his way around, to have a view—even sometimes something that seems remarkably like an insider’s view—of what happens in the inner life of the Trinity” (112). Balthasar, she intimates, writes less like a theologian of God’s mystery, and more like a novelist (114). Her essential charge is that Balthasar is making things work according to criteria that seem external to the tradition, “transgressive” of the bounds of traditional theology, and confident in knowing “more than can be known” (114). This all touches upon the very lively topic of divine impassibility and immutably, which have been central affirmations of the tradition until the twentieth century, when passibilism became fashionable in post-Hegelian German theology and post-Whiteheadian American theology. To be sure, Kilby recognizes that in some sense Balthasar does not quite “bring suffering into the Trinity. But he does speak of something in the Trinity which can develop into suffering, of a ‘suprasuffering’ in God, and, as we have seen, of risk, of distance, and of something ‘dark’ in the eternal Trinitarian drama” (120).The great risk of Balthasar’s theological novelty is that despite his differences from them, he is “divinizing the tragic” in ways that are very similar to the passibilists that he critiques. Kilby finds that the result is that Balthasar introduces divine darkness into the divine light, coalescing divine love and divine loss into an image of a suprasuffering God who does not seem to fit well with the vision of Christianity as “good news” (120). The chapter achieves its desired effect, and I agree with the way in which she favors divine impassibility against modern passibilist trends. My worry is that while she aims at the right target, she does not quite see the target clearly enough. Balthasar is, in fact, performing a very subtle balancing act (“on a knife’s edge” as he puts it), which is intended to invert the very problematic nature of post-Hegelian passibilism. Balthasar is trying to find “perfection” language for divine suffering—“suprasuffering”—but fails to do so in a way which fully conforms to the logic of Chalcedon. As Gilles Emery has pointed out, Balthasar fails to identify the eminential term of suffering in God, which, Emery notes, is not suffering at all, but divine Charity (following Maritain). Although Kilby does cite the work of Gerard O’Hanlon, in which the latter defends Balthasar as a kind of impassibilist, further attention to the contemporary literature on divine impassibility would have refined her critique, as well as supported and strengthened it. To be fair, her critique of Balthasar on the Trinity asks not only about the darker theme of abandonment and distance but also about the Father constantly surprising the Son, and the intra-Trinitarian “faith,” which makes clear that her concern has not so much to do with a theological 584 Book Reviews concern about God’s nature but really derives from her basic methodological critique of Balthasar as inventor of wildly implausible metaphorical characterizations of the divine Persons. Kilby’s final chapter concerns Balthasar’s “nuptial mysticism.” Her basic critique here is that Balthasar’s imagery in his ecclesiology and anthropology is dominated by sexual intercourse. The active-passive and the givingreceiving metaphors that he utilizes in his account of male and female persons are, Kilby thinks, fundamentally derived from sexual relations. She is troubled by Balthasar’s “asymmetrical” account of men and women, which seems to affirm that women are “both secondary and equal to men” (146). While Balthasar can talk about every cell of a person being male or female, Kilby suggests that gender itself might be superseded by the category of the sexual union. This “sexual reductionism” (138) is another instance of Balthasar’s making the biblical and traditional data fit his strong hermeneutical lens, which cuts like a hot knife through cold butter. Balthasar consistently argues “from his nuptial scheme rather than to it” (144). While it suits her thesis to argue as she does about his nuptial mysticism, I think she misses the real target, which is not nuptial mysticism per se but Balthasar’s relational ontology. Where Kilby wants to see an absolute nuptial hermeneutic, it seems to me that Balthasar’s insistence that persons simply are relations makes it possible for him to enter into various sexual confusions and reductions with respect not only to human beings, male and female, but also to Christ and the Church, the clerical and lay states, and the Eucharist itself.That is, confusions in his Trinitarian theology might provide a more important key for understanding the problems she rightly identifies in his nuptial mysticism, even as the nuptial understanding of the Church remains intact. (Does Kilby think that the rationale for male priesthood is defeated by defeating Balthasar’s nuptial mysticism?) Her conclusion confirms a widely held suspicion, namely that the real way that Balthasar knows what he claims to knows, what justifies his theological novelty, the reason for his comprehensive confidence, is his trust in the mystical experiences of Adrienne von Speyr. But Kilby also carefully disconfirms this suspicion that Balthasar is at heart an experiential, constructive theologian: “Although Balthasar may be susceptible to such a reading at times, we do not for the most part have to read him this way, and we ought to avoid it if we can” (160). Charitable reading, in fact, requires that we consider other possibilities. One of the virtues of Kilby’s book is that she repeatedly points out that there are other ways of reading Balthasar. She admires that Balthasar is a theologian at prayer, that his is a “kneeling theology,” but she wonders if this is always true. In her view, Balthasar’s work is “not in fact so much reminiscent of one who prays as it is of one Book Reviews 585 who directs the prayer of another. . . . One can quite easily hear in his works the overtones of the retreat director, speaking intimately, directly, confidently to his audience, working to bring them to the point of breaking down their barriers, of becoming open afresh to the gospel” (160–61).This is at once a very critical and a marvelously generous conclusion. What she commends to the theologian in her concluding epilogue is a much more apophatic approach, which she sees exemplified in theologians as disparate as St. Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth. The combination of those figures reminded me that the book is dedicated to George Lindbeck and is marked by his Thomistic-Barthian synthesis (also developed in a different, and more explicitly apophatic, way by Victor Preller). There is certainly great wisdom here in commending a greater apophatic reserve in theology, but I was left with the nagging doubt that she had made this point at the expense of downplaying the dialectical, analogical, and apophatic dimensions of Balthasar’s theology. Kilby tends rather to reduce his apophaticism to moments that do not finally temper his theological excess. That might be true (in fact I think it is true), but she does not demonstrate this. Balthasar’s thought is frequently allied to Origen in the book, but she neglects the import of Maximus the Confessor and PseudoDionysius. Such lacunae will surely be noticed by Balthasarians, who are certain to accuse her of misunderstanding his project. Just as Thomists might be tempted to embrace all of Kilby’s criticisms because they confirm their own suspicion of Balthasar, Balthasarians will be tempted to circle the wagons in a defensive posture. Both responses to such a book would be a shame, given the excellent criticisms she offers and the charity with which she offers them. Kilby’s book provides a welcome, vigorous, yet charitable critique of a theologian whose work is strong enough to take it. N&V C. C. Pecknold The Catholic University of America Washington, DC Treatise on Human Nature: The Complete Text (Summa Theologiae I, Questions 75–102) by Thomas Aquinas, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2010), xiii + 353 pp. A LFRED Freddoso is currently working on a new translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. In 2009 he published a translation of the entire Treatise on Law from Summa theologiae I–II, questions 90–108, and his translation of the Treatise on Human Nature is now available as well. No one familiar with Freddoso’s previous translations of Aquinas, Ockham, Suarez, and Molina will be surprised to learn that he has produced a very 586 Book Reviews readable translation of the Treatise on Human Nature that captures the nuances of Aquinas’s thought. We already possess good English translations of the Treatise on Human Nature. For this reason the value of a new translation largely hinges on small decisions, such as how to render a given word or phrase. Judged by this standard, Freddoso’s translation is an overwhelming success. At every turn his translation reflects careful consideration of what Aquinas intends to communicate to his reader. Consider the difference between Freddoso’s translation of a section of ST I, q. 76, a. 3 and the 1920 English Dominican translation of that section. In this place, Aquinas is considering the view (which he attributes to Plato) that a person has more than one soul because souls are differentiated on the basis of the corporeal organs through which they operate. Against this view, Aquinas cites one of Aristotle’s arguments for holding that the different powers that use corporeal organs still constitute only one soul. While the argument from Aristotle addresses the issue of appetitive and sensory powers, Aquinas goes on to comment on an ambiguity in Aristotle’s position regarding how the intellectual power is distinct from the other vital powers of a man. In our two translations, Aquinas writes: (1) But with regard to the intellectual part, he [Aristotle] seems to leave it in doubt whether it be only logically distinct from the other parts of the soul, or also locally. (English Dominican translation, emphasis in original) (2) However, as regards the intellective soul, he seems to leave it in question whether it is separate from the other parts of the soul “only conceptually or also spatially” (solum ratione, an etiam loco). (Freddoso) Aristotle seems to express himself ambiguously regarding what kind of distinction exists between the intellectual and other powers of the human soul. Freddoso’s rendering of loco as “spatially” rather than “locally” makes what is at issue much clearer to the reader.This kind of care and thoughtfulness pervades Freddoso’s translation. In other places Freddoso’s translation decompresses Aquinas’s terse Latin. Consider, for instance, how he renders a passage from Summa theologiae I, q. 76, a. 1, where Aquinas writes about the different powers that a rational soul confers on its subject: For instance, the soul is that by which we first and foremost assimilate nourishment (nutrimur), have sensory cognition (sentimus), and move from place to place (movemur secundum locum); and similarly, the soul is that by which we first and foremost have intellective understanding (intelligimus). Book Reviews 587 To see the distinctiveness of Freddoso’s translation we can compare it with the 1920 English Dominican translation and with Robert Pasnau’s recent translation: (1) “For the soul is the primary principle of our nourishment, sensation, and local movement; and likewise of our understanding.” (English Dominican translation) (2) “For the soul is the first thing through which we are nourished, through which we sense, through which we engage in locomotion, and— likewise—through which we first think. (Pasnau) The latter two translations are more literal renderings of Aquinas’s text without, however, being guilty of “translationese.” Freddoso’s translation of the text is longer because he draws on the basic principles of Aquinas’s thought in order to draw out some of the implicit nuances in this passage. Thus, for instance, Freddoso’s translation indicates that sensation is a type of cognition. Also, Freddoso renders Aquinas’s statement about the nutritive power of the soul in a way that makes clear that it is an active power. This way of translating Aquinas will delight the expert and instruct the beginner. One of the main reasons for publishing sections of the Summa in individual, treatise-length volumes is to make them available for classroom use. The publication of Freddoso’s translation now gives teachers a choice among at least three one-volume editions of Aquinas’s writings on human nature. Aside from Freddoso’s volume, there is a volume edited by Thomas Hibbs (Hackett, 1999) whose selections from the Summa are drawn from the 1920 English Dominican translation and from Anton Pegis’s revision of that translation. Robert Pasnau has also edited and translated a volume devoted to Aquinas’s writings on human nature (Hackett, 2002). Each of these volumes has its own advantages and disadvantages when compared to the others. The main advantage of Hibbs’s volume is its inclusion of material drawn from Aquinas’s commentary on De anima as well as some of Aquinas’s writings on the will and the passions from the prima secundae. Some, however, may find Hibbs’s volume less useful, since it includes only twelve of the twenty-eight questions that make up the Treatise on Human Nature from the prima pars of the Summa theologiae. Anyone looking for a volume that focuses more extensively on that treatise will do well to consult the editions by Freddoso or Pasnau. Pasnau’s edition includes questions 75–89 from the Treatise on Human Nature as well as eight appendices with short excerpts from other works by Aquinas. Freddoso’s volume, on the other hand, covers the entire treatise on human nature (questions 75–102). The additional questions included in Freddoso’s translation—on matters 588 Book Reviews such as God’s production of the human soul and various matters related to our prelapsarian state—will make Freddoso’s edition especially attractive to those with theological interests. One of the chief advantages of Pasnau’s volume is the very fine commentary that he includes with his translation. Freddoso’s translation has a table of contents and an index of names and topics, but it includes neither an introduction nor a commentary. While both Pasnau and Freddoso are very able translators, they have a different approach to their work, inasmuch as Freddoso usually draws from the established English scholastic vocabulary that has been widely used in translations of ancient and medieval authors, whereas Pasnau sometimes departs from this terminology. Thus, for example, Pasnau translates habitus as ‘disposition’ and liberum arbitrium as ‘free decision’, whereas Freddoso renders these as ‘habit’ and ‘free choice.’ Freddoso’s skill as a translator of scholastic texts and his deep knowledge of Aquinas’s thought have produced one of the most readable and precise translations of the Treatise on Human Nature currently available.This places us all in his debt and should make us eager for the publication of future volumes of his translation of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. N&V Andrew V. Rosato The College of Saint Mary Magdalen Warner, NH Whose Community? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Her meneutics for the Church by Merold Westphal (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009 ), 156 pp. I T IS a well-worn cliché that continental authors are obscure and unreadable. But the writing of such thinkers as Heidegger, Derrida, and Levinas does in fact often justify the cliché. Merold Westphal, however, has invariably been an exception to this unfortunate state of affairs in continental philosophy, always writing with lucidity and cogency. One thing that makes Westphal’s work over these past forty-some years so valuable is that this lucidity and cogency is typically in the service of expositions of continental figures like Heidegger, Derrida, et al., who lack Westphal’s gift. This gift is once again on display in Whose Community? Which Interpretation? The book is part of a series edited by James K. A. Smith of Calvin College for Baker Academic that bears the title “The Church and Postmodern Culture.” In a preface to Westphal’s volume, Smith says that the series “presents an exciting opportunity for contemporary philosophy and critical theory to ‘hit the ground,’ so to speak, by allowing high-level work in postmodern theory to serve the church’s practice” and explains Book Reviews 589 that the goal of the series is “to bring together high-profile theorists in continental philosophy and contemporary theology to write for a broad, nonspecialist audience interested in the impact of postmodern theory on the faith and practice of the church” (7). At the moment there are four other volumes in the series by Smith, John Caputo, Carl Raschke, and Graham Ward.1 The aim of Westphal’s contribution is suggested in its subtitle: showing what contemporary philosophical hermeneutics can teach us about how to approach Sacred Scripture. The philosophical hermeneutic theory drawn upon is primarily that of Hans-Georg Gadamer, but there are also appeals to Ricoeur and, to a lesser extent, Heidegger and Derrida. Other thinkers also play important parts in this volume, especially Kant, who has been a major influence on Westphal from the very beginning of his career.2 We might sum up Westphal’s main argument thus: contemporary hermeneutic theory awakens us to the fact that our finitude and our consequent inability to have a complete overview of things entail that (1) interpretation—whether of facts or texts—is unavoidable and that (2) there will always be an irreducible multiplicity of interpretations. This is likewise true for the interpretation of Sacred Scripture and has implications for ecumenism and ecclesiology: the various Christian traditions must recognize that none of them has—cannot have—the right interpretation of Scripture and so they must develop greater mutual respect and be open to learning from each other. In Chapter 1 Westphal takes the first step in his argument by making his case for the unavoidability of interpretation. The villain in Chapter 1, and throughout the book, is “naïve realism,” or just plain “realism,” since apparently Westphal does not think that there are any important distinctions to be made among those who identify themselves as realists (cf. 18–19).3 The 1 J. K. A. Smith,Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (2006); J. D. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (2007); C. Raschke, GloboChrist: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn (2008); G. Ward, The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens (2009). 2 One of Westphal’s first publications attempted to draw out the theological import of Kant’s epistemology: “In Defense of the Thing in Itself,” Kant-Studien 59 (1968): 118–41. 3 In personal correspondence with the author he explained to me that in fact he does not equate naïve realism with realism tout court, since the anti-realism that he espouses does accept “what Kant calls empirical realism.” According to Westphal, this is “the realism that apprehends things as they should be apprehended relative to the categories, prejudices, conceptual schemes, etc. that are in play, understanding that 590 Book Reviews realist is the person who believes both that there is a world “out there” independent of what we think about it and that our thoughts and judgments about it can correspond to it as it really is. But Westphal thinks that the first proposition—that there exists a world independent of our mind— is insufficient to distinguish the realist because “in spite of appearances, no one really denies this” (18).The second proposition, about our minds being able to correspond to reality, is what realism is all about, and it is also the problem with realism and what makes it the enemy of the hermeneutic proposal that Westphal seeks to defend. Kant is “the paradigmatic antirealist. He insists that we don’t know the ‘thing in itself,’ the world as it truly is, but only the world as it appears to human—all too human—understanding” (19). Westphal, however, as he does elsewhere, revises Kant’s a priori: the structures that shape our understanding of the world are not necessary and universal to human knowers but are contingent and historically relative (cf. 152). Every claim about the world will then be an interpretation; I can never legitimately say that I “just see” the world as it is, I can only say that this is how I see the world, this is my interpretation of the world, which will be determined by my historical situatedness. The realists of biblical interpretation, Westphal contends, suppose that they can uproblematically “just see” what the text means, that no interpretation is necessary, naively overlooking the perspectival character of their readings. To help us understand his general point Westphal borrows a couple of visual images from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.4 The first is the figure of a box in which we can see the lines that connect all eight of its corners (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H). Westphal rightly points out that, depending on how we look at it, either ABDC or ABFE could be considered the open top of the box. A good argument could be made for either one, neither can be excluded, both are acceptable interpretations. It would be wrong to insist that only ABDC is the open top or only ABFE these lenses through which we see the world give us particular and contingent ‘realities’ and not the unqualified reality of the, for example, Aristotelian-Thomist realist claim. This is what I mean by anti-realism. There is ‘truth,’ the right account relative to a contingent and particular lens, but no ‘Truth’ free from any ‘contamination’ by such relativity. It corresponds to the Kantian distinction between empirical realism and transcendental idealism except that the transcendental idealism is not grounded in a set of universal and necessary categories but in a variety of historically, culturally, linguistically contingent and particular language games.” Because this clarification comes from personal correspondence and is not part of the book itself, I have decided not to adjust my evaluation in light of it but thought that it would be nevertheless helpful and fair to include it in a footnote. 4 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, II.xi. Book Reviews 591 is. Westphal next employs the famous “duck-rabbit” drawing (which Wittgenstein himself had taken from Joseph Jastrow). The figure is drawn in such a way that, again, depending on how we look at it, it could be interpreted either as a duck or a rabbit. Finally, Westphal presents a poem about six blind Hindustanis who, each unable to see the elephant that they are touching, interpret it according to the part of the beast that they happen to be examining. The poem concludes: “Though each was partly in the right / they all were in the wrong!” Westphal hastens to add that he is not suggesting that, with regard to interpretation, “anything goes.” Of the box example he says “even though there were two correct answers to the question ‘Where is the open top?’ it does not mean that every answer is correct. ACGE, CDHG, EFHG, BDHF could all be seen as open sides, but not as the open top” (24). Of the duck-rabbit he says, “[O]f course it would be quite wrong to say the figure is a moose or a spider” (24). And of the Hindustanis he asserts that they were all right about parts of the whole but wrong about the whole itself and their mistake (in logic we would call it the fallacy of composition) was to take a given part for the whole. But how has realism—understood as identical with the claim that our minds can correspond to a reality independent of them—been refuted, or even seriously challenged by these examples that Westphal offers? Has it not rather been assumed? Surely the ability to adjudicate between the various interpretations of the box, the duck-rabbit, and the elephant all take for granted that the judge has a correct understanding (i.e., his or her mind corresponds to reality) of what the interpretations are about. Could I say that interpretations X, Y, and Z are possible while A, B, and C are not unless I knew the thing that is being interpreted? In the case of the duck-rabbit, for example, do I not have to know that it is a drawing that could be reasonably interpreted either as a duck or as a rabbit? We might also ask whether realism, as defined by Westphal, logically excludes multiple legitimate interpretations of the same reality, as he appears to believe it does. If I might be permitted to turn for a moment to someone who accepts the correspondence theory of truth, Thomas Aquinas, is it not a basic epistemological principle of his that a reality that is materially or numerically the same can be reasonably understood under different formalities? Thus, in a baseball a geometer sees a sphere, the natural philosopher sees a matter/form composite, a metaphysician sees an essence/existence composite, and so forth, and all have a concept of the ball that, secundum quid, corresponds to a mind-independent reality. Aquinas would be surprised to hear that truth as correspondence entails a hermeneutic theory of only-one-legitimate-interpretation-per-fact. To be 592 Book Reviews sure, Aquinas would not deny that mistakes can be made (and that we are even more often in error than in truth, as he says in the De Anima commentary) and therefore that some interpretations are just wrong, but he would not agree that several different interpretations of the same thing cannot all be right in a certain sense. The formal object/material object distinction is just one way Aquinas would recognize the possibility of multiple legitimate interpretations. This is not the place to consider the other ways. Moving on to Chapter 2, here Westphal offers a brief synopsis of the work of two of Gadamer’s influential nineteenth-century predecessors in hermeneutics, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey. Westphal outlines four key features of their romantic hermeneutics. (1) There is first what Ricoeur calls the “deregionalization” of hermeneutics: an attempt to develop a theory of interpretation that would apply not only to, say, religious or legal texts, but to all culturally significant texts regardless of subject matter. (2) Next there is the notion of the “hermeneutic circle”: the continual to-and-fro movement in interpretation between part and whole in literary terms (e.g., from chapter to book and back again) and in extra-literary terms (e.g., from text to author and back again). (3) The goal of interpretation is taken to be an understanding of the mind of the author; this is the so-called “psychologism” of romantic hermeneutics. (4) Lastly, there is the aim of arriving at the right interpretation, which is thought to entail an escape from our own situatedness (which makes our readings merely perspectival) and to be achievable through construction of the proper hermeneutic method; this is the so-called “objectivism” of romantic hermeneutics. Dilthey expects that finding and using the right method will deliver us from the “anarchy of opinions,” that is, from interpretive relativism (cf. 31–33). Gadamer rejects the psychologism and objectivism of romantic hermeneutics, but before Westphal turns to his exposition of Gadamer he presents Nicholas Wolterstorff ’s critique of psychologism in Chapter 3 and in Chapter 4 his own critique of the objectivist hermeneutics of literary theorist E. D. Hirsch, Jr. For Wolterstorff the chief aim of interpretation should not be trying to win access to the private inner-life of the author’s mind. “It is nothing of the sort,” he explains. “It is to discover what assertings, what promisings, what requestings, what commandings, are rightly to be ascribed to the author on the ground of her having set down the words she did in the situation in which she set them down. Whatever the dark demons and bright angels of the author’s inner self that led her to take up this stance in public, it is the stance itself that we hope by reading to recover, not the dark demons and bright angels” Book Reviews 593 (41–42).5 Westphal is pleased by Wolterstorff ’s rejection of psychologism but worries about his objectivist tendencies, which Westphal believes are in evidence when Wolterstorff writes that the issue in interpretation is “whether one’s conclusions are correct, whether they are true—whether the discourser did in fact, by authoring or presenting this text, say what one claims he said” (43).6 Commenting on this remark,Westphal suggests that in Wolterstorff ’s opinion interpretation “seems to be a fairly simple matter of getting it right or getting it wrong” (43). Like Wolterstorff, Hirsch eschews psychologism but endorses objectivism. As a hermeneutic objectivist, Hirsch maintains that the goal of interpretation is a reading of the text that is “universally” or “absolutely” valid (47). Such an interpretation will attain to “the meaning of the text”7 (47) which is “one, particular, self-identical, unchanging” (47).8 And it is the author and the author alone who is “the determiner of textual meaning” (47); nonetheless, the author’s intention, Hirsch believes, is not about “private experiences, or mental processes, much less the author’s personality. Authorial intention is about the public, shareable meanings the author offers us” (48). As with Wolterstorff, Westphal is glad for Hirsch’s renunciation of psychologism but takes issue with his objectivism and his privileging of the author as the sole determiner of textual meaning. According to Westphal, Hirsch’s hermeneutic theory is partly meant as a bulwark against an “anything goes” style relativism that would eliminate the author as the arbiter of textual meaning, but, Westphal urges, Hirsch seems to be tilting at windmills, as he never identifies anyone who actually defends this sort of relativism, and Westphal himself insists that no such person exists. Moreover,Westphal queries, why should we suppose that the reader has no role to play in determining the meaning of a text? Is it not possible that the author and reader co-determine textual meaning? Whatever the truth may be, Westphal asserts that the reason Hirsch is so adamant about the author as sole determiner of meaning is that, in Hirsch’s view, it makes possible the stability of meaning that is necessary if we are ever to be able to claim that we know what a particular text is saying. But for Westphal this ideal is not self-evidently desirable and may even be dangerous. Is not this vision, he asks, “the product of a particular tradition, one that includes Plato and Descartes, whose ideal of knowledge 5 N. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 93. 6 Ibid., 181. 7 E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967), 5. 8 Ibid., 47. 594 Book Reviews is largely determined by mathematics?” (54–55). Returning to the question of the interpretation of Holy Writ, Westphal asks: “Should those of us interested in interpreting the Bible assimilate its texts to a series of equations?” Scripture itself,Westphal maintains, hints at the necessity of a more pluralistic hermeneutics, since it seems to think that we need four different authors to interpret Jesus. “Must we assume that our interpretation is the only right one and that all the believers throughout Christian history who depart from our party line are simply wrong?” (55). In Chapter 5, still setting the stage for his exposition of Gadamer, Westphal invokes Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Ricoeur against Hirsch’s privileging of the author. Discussing the theories of the first three together, Westphal argues that they show that the author and reader are in fact co-creators of textual meaning and, furthermore, that neither of the two creates this meaning ex nihilo but they create through languages and traditions that they have inherited. Despite their “death of the author” rhetoric (the phrase that Roland Barthes seems to have coined in his famous essay by that title), what this French trio really aim to do, Westphal tells us, is not to eliminate the author but to de-center him and direct our attention to the multiple sources of meaning in any text. Ricoeur, making a similar point, will speak of the text’s “autonomy”: the text has a life of its own that, although it stems from various sources, is not wholly reducible to any one of them. But on the basis of any text’s plurality of meanings Ricoeur—Westphal is keen to stress—does not advocate an “anything goes” hermeneutics. He thinks methods can be developed—in connection with Scriptural exegesis Westphal suggests grammatical-historical analysis—that permit the reader to distance himself from the influence of his cultural frame of reference and intelligently “argue for or against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them, and to seek for agreement, even if this agreement always remains beyond our reach” (67).9 Chapters 6–9 are taken up with a presentation of Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory. Many of the essential points that Westphal hopes to make through an appeal to Gadamer have already been made in the first five chapters. What the four chapters on Gadamer do perhaps is deepen those points and put them into Gadamerian language. To begin, Gadamer observes that we are all shaped by the multiple traditions that find their intersection in us and thus each one of us is what Gadamer calls a wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein, “an historically effected consciousness” 9 Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, ed. and trans. J. B. Thompson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 213. Book Reviews 595 (74). Another way of putting this is to say that our traditions endow us with “prejudices” (Vorurteilen), which are inescapable. Maybe we can slough off old prejudices and adopt new ones, but we can never achieve the Cartesian ideal of existing without prejudices (Heidegger’s claim about the impossibility of pure authenticity is obviously in the background). Because it seems that no two people have the exact same set of prejudices and because all of our prejudices cannot become completely transparent to us, the author’s and reader’s understandings of the text will never completely overlap and there will even be meanings in the text that the author did not intend. Consequently, textual interpretation cannot just be a matter of finding out what the author intended. But even if this were our aim, it could never be definitively achieved, since our prejudices would always prevent the total correspondence of understandings. His account of the relativity of interpretation notwithstanding, Gadamer does not believe that all interpretations are equal. For Gadamer, textual interpretation is best likened to an artistic performance, such as of a play or a symphony. Every performance will be different and yet each is bound to the strictures of the work itself. As Westphal explains: “Because the presentation is ‘bound’ to the work, the former cannot be ‘arbitrary’ but must be ‘correct.’ In other words, if I am playing Hamlet I am not free to say ‘To fish or not to fish’ instead of ‘To be or not to be.’ Nor am I free to play an A-flat every time the score of the Hammerklavier Sonata calls for a C-sharp” (104). But, we might ask, is this claim sufficient to extricate Gadamer from the vortex of “anything goes”? It is fine to say that the interpreter is “bound” by the work or text, but is it not the very meaning of the work or text that Gadamer tells us is undecidable? We are tempted to ask in reply to Gadamer’s appeal to the text as the authoritative standard: Whose text? Which interpretation? I am certainly not unsympathetic to Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory and I understand the complexity of the problem. Still, I wonder whether Gadamer’s principles are consistent. Gadamer thinks that the reader of a text does well to understand himself as a partner in conversation or dialogue with the text rather than as a disinterested observer of the text. The latter attitude is out of place because, presumably, it is the attitude of those who suppose that there is a single right way to understand the text. There are four vital features of Gadamer’s notion of interpretation as conversation, according to Westphal. First, as readers, we must be open to what the text is trying to tell us, even if it goes against us. Second, the questions that the text poses to us should provoke us, not so much to try to find answers as to propose other relevant questions. Third, we should be humble enough to let the Book Reviews 596 text lead us wherever it goes and not insist on continuing to assert our own opinions. Fourth, our goal in trying to understand the text should not be the victory of our viewpoint but “being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were” (117).10 This last has to do with what Gadamer calls the “fusion of horizons” (Horizontverschmelzung): our worldview is enlarged by another worldview communicated through the text. Westphal says that Gadamer’s concept of “dialogue with the text implicates a dialogue among readers” (117), for “the changes in my horizon that reading and listening, questioning and being questioned lead to may or may not represent a deepened understanding of the subject matter” (117). Being in dialogue with other readers of the text can help me in this respect. Similarly, the six blind Hindustanis “might have come to a less inadequate view if they had shared their insights with one another and in the process broadened their horizons” (117). Is Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory right? Westphal evidently thinks that it is. Indeed, Westphal claims that it “describes what actually happens when individuals and communities interpret classic texts” (120). But this assertion of Westphal sounds suspiciously like realism and its belief in the mind’s ability to conform to reality, does it not? Consistency, of course, would dictate that Westphal not hold up Gadamer’s theory as the only possible correct one. And as Westphal has shown himself over the years to be a committed anti-realist, I have no doubt that he is quite prepared to embrace this consistency. The book’s next two chapters develop the Gadamerian conception of the relationship between textual interpretation and dialogue into a proposal for biblical hermeneutics, ecclesiology, and ecumenism. Toward this end, in Chapter 10, Westphal weaves together Gadamer’s ideas with the liberal political theory of John Rawls and the “communitarian” moral and social theory of Alasdair MacIntyre. According to Rawls, modern democratic societies can thrive only when the majority of the adherents of the various secular and religious “comprehensive doctrines” on offer are unwilling to impose their beliefs and values on other citizens and when there is an “overlapping consensus” among these groups about a form of political justice that entails promoting the rights of all citizens to free and equal citizenship. Westphal believes that this conception of Rawls can be appropriated as a model for how the many Christian traditions, which together constitute “the church of Jesus Christ” (133), should relate to each other. Since no single tradition can claim to have the one true interpreta10 Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. J.Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall, 2d ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 379. Book Reviews 597 tion of Scripture, it is best for all to work together to form an overlapping consensus—which Westphal sees as a type of Horizontverschmelzung—on certain doctrinal points that are not unique to any of the traditions but which all accept.While Westphal says that MacIntyre’s communitarianism, with the social homogeneity that it prizes, is politically dangerous, it is not without its ecclesiological uses. It will not do for showing us how one tradition should comport with another but it can instruct on the internal organization of each tradition. “Communitarianism can be the model of the comprehensive integrity of the particular traditions that constitute this plurality [of the church of Christ] and that keep Christianity from being reduced to its least common denominator” (133). The theme of Chapter 10 is continued into Chapter 11. It seems that any overlapping consensus that the different Christian traditions might achieve, although important for peaceful, constructive relations among Christians, will probably be insufficient for providing meaning for the whole of Christian life. For such meaning the individual traditions— understood in a communitarian way—with their “rich networks of beliefs and practices” (139) would appear to be indispensable. Westphal also finds the “perspectivism” of MacIntyre’s brand of communitarianism theologically useful. He notes that MacIntyre’s moral/social theory teaches us that “different traditions have not only different conceptions of justice but also different conceptions of rationality” (141). So, substantive debates cannot be resolved by appeals to “Reason” since the meaning of reason fluctuates between traditions. A similar consideration applies to theological debates: “Christians who appeal to ‘Scripture’ as the highest criterion, right and proper as that is” are not “immune from the questions, ‘Whose Scripture?’ ‘The Bible according to whom?’ ” (141). Are there any real life examples of the liberal/communitarian ecclesiological and ecumenical model sketched by Westphal? He offers the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed in 1999 by the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity as just such an example. Since the document was signed only by Lutherans and Catholics, Westphal acknowledges that it is not yet a complete overlapping consensus. But he thinks that it still gives us some kind of picture of what he has in mind. We come now to Chapter 12, the book’s final chapter. Westphal realizes that Scripture is not a merely human document (although it is also that) but “the Word of God” (147), the Holy Spirit having inspired its human authors. What is more, the Spirit aids believers in the interpretation of Scripture: “the Holy Spirit was not only directly involved in the creation of the Bible . . . but also continues to guide the church in understanding 598 Book Reviews it” (149). He adds, however—drawing in different ways from Barth and Levinas—that we must distinguish between the purity of God’s selfcommunication, which Westphal calls “revelation” in the strict sense, and “religion,” which is the impure, imperfect human interpretation of revelation. Our goal should be to open ourselves as best we can to God’s revelation, but given our hermeneutic finitude, it will always be “an unfinished task, approximated to a greater or lesser degree as we become better or worse listeners to the Word of God” (155).While in revelation “God speaks to us καθ᾽ αὐτό, our hearing is always religion, that is, human, all too human” (155). Religion, therefore, must see itself as “relative and penultimate in spite of its perennial tendency to take itself to be absolute and ultimate” (154). And this is how Westphal would have each Christian tradition understand itself too. Hence, again, his plea for a Rawlsian ecclesiology. Westphal himself belongs to the Reformed tradition—as some of his views may have already intimated—but the book is addressed to Christians of all traditions. In the present venue it makes sense to ask about the book’s value for Catholics. Gadamer and Ricoeur have a history in Catholic theology, even at relatively high levels. John Paul II invited them to the Summer colloquia he held with intellectuals at Castel Gandolfo. And the Pontifical Biblical Commission includes summaries of their theories in its 1993 document “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church.”Though there was definitely an interest in continental hermeneutic theory in an older generation of Catholic theologians, I am not certain how strong this interest is among the present generation.Westphal’s book might serve as a useful introduction to continental hermeneutic theory for this new generation, although there are also books on the topic by Catholic authors.11 For those Catholic theologians already familiar with the likes of Gadamer and Ricoeur, Whose Community? Which Interpretation? could help to deepen their understanding. I do not think many Catholic theologians would quarrel with the idea that our understanding of revelation can always improve, that we are never at such a state that we could not understand it better. “As the centuries succeed one another,” Dei Verbum states, “the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her” (§8). This is just a way of putting the widely accepted notion of development of doctrine. And again, few Catholic theologians would have trouble accepting that there can be multiple valid interpretations of Scripture. Is not the “fourfold sense” of Scripture a very traditional teaching? And consider Aquinas’s hermeneu11 For example, G. T. Montague, Understanding the Bible: A Basic Introduction to Bibli- cal Interpretation (New York: Paulist Press, 1997). Book Reviews 599 tic liberality: “Even if commentators adapt certain truths to the sacred text that were not understood by the author, without doubt the Holy Spirit understood them, since he is the principal author of Holy Scripture. Every truth, then, that can be adapted to the sacred text without prejudice to the literal sense, is the sense of Holy Scripture.”12 Here, in a nutshell, seem to be some of the key things that Westphal wants to get from Gadamer: plurality of interpretations, limits for valid interpretation, and the human author’s non-mastery of the text. But Catholic theology does not take the above considerations to exclude the possibility of definitively settling certain disputes: the Arian, Monophysite, and Sabellian interpretations of Scripture, among others, have been definitively set aside. On the Catholic view, we can get our interpretations right enough, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to be able to close some doors. It is the business especially of the Church’s magisterium, likewise guided by the Spirit (without which it could do nothing), to make such determinations binding. But it is not obvious that Westphal would accept the legitimacy of such theology, or this teaching office, or their marginalizing gestures. I see no reason why he would not want to include Valentinians or Pelagians in the larger church he envisions that is respectfully striving for overlapping consensus. Here we pass directly into Westphal’s dubious relativizing of all Christian traditions. Catholic theology cannot follow him very far here. Whereas there is no problem with accepting that non-Catholic traditions (the Eastern Orthodox traditions, who have a privileged rank here, are a separate case) all contain many elements of truth, Catholic theology holds that there is a oneness to the Church that is not only invisible but visible. No doubt Westphal sees this as hubristic, as grossly lacking in epistemic humility, since it would appear that, for him, the Spirit only hovers over the historical, visible Church but never works in and through her, being indissolubly wedded to her. While we might try to convince him that this latter conception of the Church is what is taught by revelation itself, his “hermeneutics of suspicion” (another, quieter theme in the book, which there was no time to treat in this review) would “see through” every attempted defense of this “dangerous” ecclesiological vision.13 At that point perhaps we must see that our “spade is turned” and that the only option left is to follow Wittgenstein’s advice and say: “This is simply what we do,” or more aptly: “This is simply what we believe.” 12 Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia, q. 4, a. 1. 13 Westphal’s most sustained case for a Christian hermeneutics of suspicion appears in Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998). 600 Book Reviews Despite these important points of difference, which cannot be overlooked, there is still much that can be learned from Westphal’s informative and challenging book, and I think that anyone who finds the topic intriguing will discover that it is definitely worthy of study. N&V Joseph G. Trabbic Ave Maria University Ave Maria, FL A critical survey of contemporary philosophy of mind that introduces Thomisitic hylomorphism as the most viable solution to the mind-body problem. James D. Madden Mind, Matter, and Nature Paper $34.95 eBook $34.95 978-0-8132-2141-0 978-0-8132-2142-7 The Catholic University of America Press 1-800-537-5487 Order Online: cua.press.edu THE AQUINAS INSTITUTE for the Study of Sacred Doctrine PUBLISHERS OF THE WORKS OF SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS Currently in print: Summa theologiae Commentaries on the Letters of Paul Forthcoming August 2013: Commentary on the Gospel of John Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew • Latin and English in parallel columns • durable hardcovers with sewn bindings • designed for ease of use in study To order, visit www.theaquinasinstitute.org