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341

The Potential of the Catholic University to Evangelize*
J. Brian Benestad
Assumption College
Worcester, MA

ST. POPE JOHN PAUL IIfirst spoke of the new evangelization in

a speech delivered on May 9, 1983, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In 1992
the pope provided the following explanation of the new evangelization:
“[It] begins with the clear and emphatic proclamation of the gospel,
which is directed to each and every person. Therefore, it is necessary
to awaken again in believers a full relationship with Christ, mankind’s
only Savior. Only from a personal relationship with Jesus can an effective relationship develop.”1 John Paul has also distinguished three stages of evangelization: the initial proclamation of salvation through faith
in Jesus Christ, continuing evangelization or the ongoing education in
the faith of those who are attempting to live out their relationship with
Christ, and the reevangelization of those who have drifted away from
the practice of the faith.2 Ex Corde Ecclesiae (1990) says that “each Catholic university makes an important contribution to the Church’s work
of evangelization. It is a living institutional witness to Christ and his
* Presentation given on March 16, 2013 at a meeting on the potential for evangeliza-

tion and catechesis in Catholic colleges and universities. The USCCB’s Committee
on Doctrine was responsible for organizing this meeting between bishops and theologians from six theological societies.

1

St. Pope John Paul II, Ad Limina visit of Bishops of Southern Germany, December 4,
1992.
2
St. Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, no. 33. I found the references in footnotes
one and two in Avery Dulles, Evangelization for the Third Millenium (see note 4
below).

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J. Brian Benestad

message.” During his 2008 visit to the U.S., Pope Benedict XVI said in
his speech to educators at the Catholic University of America (CUA),
“Fostering personal intimacy with Jesus Christ and communal witness
to his loving truth is indispensable in Catholic institutions of learning.”
By doing this work, adds the Pope Emeritus, the university participates
in the “Church’s primary mission of evangelization.”
The question before us is how the Catholic university fosters intimacy with Jesus Christ and contributes to all three stages of evangelization.
“Christian educators,” says Benedict in the CUA speech, “can liberate
the young from the limits of positivism, and awaken receptivity to the
truth, to God and his goodness.” Intellectual charity “calls the educator
to recognize that the profound responsibility to lead the young to truth
is nothing less than an act of love.” Benedict says that all educators at a
university have the responsibility to lead students to truth and, with the
help of prayer, to live the truth which they propose to them. Otherwise
stated, the faculty must live the faith they profess, seek the truth in their
area of teaching and research, and try to inspire a love of learning in
students, a necessary characteristic of an outstanding university. With
respect to things specifically Christian, this means, at least, that both
professors and students learn, as Ernest Fortin has prescribed, to read
the great authors of the Christian tradition “with an open and free mind.
The problem lies precisely in achieving the necessary freedom of mind.
One does not divest oneself at will of one’s most deeply ingrained prejudices. In this respect, it may be suggested that openness to truth is, not
so much the precondition as the outcome and reward of a certain type
of inquiry.”3
Benedict further argues that all educators at a Catholic university
have a “particular responsibility…to evoke among the young the desire
for the act of faith, encouraging them to commit themselves to the ecclesial life that follows from this belief.” While it is not the primary purpose
of the Catholic university to elicit acts of faith in students, nevertheless,
Cardinal Avery Dulles maintains, a “sound education in conformity
with Christian principles can help individuals to receive the faith and
3

Ernest Fortin, “An Academic Approach to the Teaching of Theology,” in Collected
Essays, vol. 4, Ever Ancient and Ever New: Ruminations on the City, the Soul, and the
Church, ed. Michael P. Foley (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 203.

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grow in it.”4 One could say that theologians have a special responsibility
to prepare the terrain for the development of faith by leading students
to love the truth more than their own opinions or desires. If theologians
understand theology to be faith seeking understanding, if they think
with the Church and use outstanding, readable books, especially classic
texts like St. Augustine’s Confessions, college students will have the opportunity to nourish their faith or to believe for the first time. There are
many other theological works that would provide a similar experience.
I am sure that many theology professors have witnessed their students
come to belief or to a stronger or more informed faith while trying to
master the academic material.
With respect to the third stage of evangelization, Avery Dulles says,
“Reevangelization will involve an overcoming of the separation between
the gospel and daily life in family, work, and society” (34). Addressing
the separation between faith and life is a task of Catholic social doctrine
and ecclesiology. From these courses students will be able to see what it
means to integrate faith with their life. Certain literature and church history courses could also provide the same experience, along with ethics
courses dealing with the professions of medicine and law, and with the
practice of business.
In his meeting with Catholic educators at Catholic University, Pope
Benedict XVI asked some probing questions directly pertaining to
Catholic identity and indirectly to the status of evangelization.
[D]o we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word
made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear (cf.
Gaudium et spes, 22)? Are we ready to commit our entire self—
intellect and will, mind and heart—to God? Do we accept the
truth Christ reveals? Is the faith tangible in our universities and
schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice, and
respect for God’s creation? Only in this way do we really bear
witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold.
4

Avery Cardinal Dulles, Evangelization for the Third Millennium (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2009), 68. Parenthetical citations to this work will henceforth be given in
the text.

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J. Brian Benestad

Catholic universities evangelize when university personnel give personal witness by living their faith at work, at home, and in the public square,
and when they form a compelling Christian community as an expression of their ecclesial faith. “If the Church is seen as a cordial community of love and mutual support, in which all have but one heart and
one soul, it will attract new members almost without trying” (96). Other sources of evangelization are the proclamation of the Word at Mass
and in catechetical programs, the example of the Christian community worshiping at Mass and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
The Catholic university evangelizes when it makes Confession widely
available, provides sufficient Masses on Sunday and during the week,
offers homilies that truly educate students in the practice of the faith,
encourages service as a way to practice charity, promotes a concern for
justice both within and outside the classroom, and teaches care for the
environment as a way to show respect for God’s creation. Students need
continuous help to extricate themselves from the drinking and hook-up
cultures. Faculty and staff need the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the Catholic faith by such instruments as weekend programs
and/or week-long seminars that discuss classic Catholic writings.
Effective publicity is required so that students know where Masses
and Confession take place. In response to a question, students in my
classes recently told me that they had no idea when and where Confessions take place (Masses and Confessions are advertised). Besides
educational homilies, the prayers of the faithful at Mass should, among
other things, teach students to integrate faith into their everyday life. For
example, one could pray that health-care personnel acquire the virtues
necessary to deliver health care to patients or that men and women in
the field of business abide by natural law and/or Christian principles.
Other things promoting evangelization would be administrators praying in public on formal occasions, faculty beginning class with a prayer,
helping the local diocese with its work of evangelization by organizing
programs to educate catechists and, if needed, by providing extraordinary ministers of Communion to local hospitals and nursing homes, in
addition to a number of other services. A striking example of evangelization is the action taken by the Catholic college presidents in Massachusetts before Election Day last fall. They sent out a letter to their
students and to all their alumni asking them to vote no on the ballot

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initiative that would have legalized physician-assisted suicide in Massachusetts. Those letters helped defeat the initiative on Election Day by the
slim margin of 51 to 49.
All of the above will make faith tangible in Catholic universities,
as would requirements that faculty applying for tenure and promotion
explain how they have contributed both to the Catholic identity of their
institution, inside and outside of the classroom, and to the potential development of a Catholic culture more broadly. Avery Cardinal Dulles’s
“strongest recommendation is for Catholic universities to make all their
departments transmitters and builders of Catholic culture” (75). By culture Dulles means “all the customs and institutions that serve to make
life more human. In a more specialized sense, it refers to the exceptional achievements of thought, art, and literature by which people express
their loftiest spiritual experiences and insights” (65). To further convey
what he means by culture, Dulles quotes (75) from an article by George
Weigel:
History is driven, over the long haul, by culture—by what men
and women honor, cherish, and worship; by what societies
deem to be true and good, and by the language they give to
those convictions in language, literature, and the arts; by what
individuals and societies are willing to stake their lives on.
A university education contributes to the shaping of the culture by the
way it approaches the various disciplines. We have seen how the various
forms of relativism taught in our universities have generated a dictatorship of relativism in large swaths of our culture.
Departments in a Catholic university not only provide students with
training in a discipline, but also must contribute to their Catholic education and to the promotion of a Catholic culture. It almost goes without saying that the disciplines will always have to be taught on a high
level and should make students aware of the principal approaches at
the present time to the study of the various disciplines. Sometimes, the
reigning self-understanding of the disciplines will have to be modified
in order to study a subject with the most profit. For example, philosophy
departments should teach love of wisdom, which was so instrumental
in Augustine’s return to the faith. Reading Cicero’s Hortensius generat-

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J. Brian Benestad

ed a love of wisdom in the eighteen-year-old Augustine that eventually brought him to the Christian faith. Philosophy courses should not
be taught in such a way as to train students to be the kind of “critical
thinkers” who take pride in never arriving at truth. Business schools can
teach their students to adhere to Christian principles in their business
dealings and to look at management as a way to promote the talents
of employees. Pre-med and other health-care programs can inculcate
the importance of the virtues in the practice of medicine; pre-medical
programs and medical schools have to deal with all the pressing issues
of biomedical ethics. English and other language programs can make
known high quality Christian authors such as Alessandro Manzoni,
Sigrid Undset, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Evelyn Waugh, Graham
Greene, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy. Good literature has an
amazing capacity to present characters at various stages either on their
way to God or away from him. Social science departments can avoid
value neutrality and deal with questions of justice and the common
good. Psychology, in particular, can be based on a better anthropology
than the atheistic presuppositions of Freud or the determinism of not a
few contemporary psychologists. Departments of economics “will avoid
the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and the materialistic determinism
of Karl Marx” (73). Science programs should interact with the departments of philosophy and theology and teach science students that there
is no inherent conflict between faith and science or faith and reason.
(Last semester I team taught a Catholic bioethics course with a professor
of biology.) The interaction is crucial, because science by itself cannot
generate the moral principles needed to evaluate what it is able to do,
such as embryonic stem cell research, or might be able to do in the near
future, such as cloning. Counseling programs must be revised so that
students are not taught to counsel clients according to a value-free paradigm without a comprehensive view of the good to guide the counseling. In departments of journalism students should learn the importance
of accurate reporting that does not slavishly serve the reigning political
ideologies. Communication departments should make students aware
of the potential bad cultural effects of low-level TV programs that promote a shallow view of life and the acceptability of obscenity and sexual
promiscuity. Catholic law schools could deal with the relation of the
law to justice and Catholic social doctrine in general. “In the study of

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art,” writes Dulles, “religious themes will not be obscured by an exclusive attention to merely formalistic considerations” (73). It is not hard
to imagine both the kind of effect a real Catholic education could have
on millions of students and the kind of culture they would create as they
lived their faith at home, at work, and in the public square. I should also
note that with the proper leadership there should be more freedom in
Catholic universities than in the leading secular universities to make
warranted changes in the study of a discipline.
Giving birth to a Catholic university fully capable of effective evangelization would also require the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae,
especially the General Norms. That work depends on the fruitful cooperation among university presidents, provosts, deans, the faculty, and
N&V
the local bishop.

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 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 349-394

349

Philosophia Obscurans? Six Theses on the Proper
Relationship between Theology and Philosophy
Thomas G. Guarino
Seton Hall University
South Orange, NJ

IT HAS LONG BEEN OBSERVED that ad 529 was a momentous
date. In that year, the Emperor Justinian closed the Academy in Athens—
thus symbolically bringing pagan antiquity to an end—while, according
to tradition, St. Benedict established the abbey at Monte Cassino, indicating the flourishing of Christian life and practice. The Academy and
Monte Cassino provide, then, another trope—along with Athens and
Jerusalem (in the early Church) and Paris and Assisi (in the medieval
Church)—for imaging the relationship between reason and faith.
For Catholic theology, this relationship remains of primatial importance, for understanding it properly means grasping how human beings
may be intelligent and inquisitive thinkers, lifelong seekers after truth,
as well as men and women of faith. Further, one cannot read any serious book of theology without coming up against the correlation between philosophy and Christian faith. Has some Church teaching been
influenced by a particular philosophical position that is no longer acceptable? Has a distinct philosophical approach had a baleful influence
on some later ecclesial formulation of the Gospel? Have theologians relied too strongly on certain thinkers, seduced by Siren songs of reason,
when, Ulysses-like, they should have strapped themselves to the mast so
that they would not be captivated by alien forms of thought?
Of course, the criticism that mere human reasoning is tainting the
Christian faith—that itching ears have traded the sound doctrine of the

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Gospel for the wisdom of the Greeks—has a long and distinguished
pedigree. St. Paul straightforwardly told his readers that “God has made
foolish the wisdom of the world”; and again, “I will destroy the wisdom
of the wise and the learning of the clever I will set aside. . . . For Jews look
for signs and Greeks for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor
1:19–23). Still again, “The wisdom of the world is foolishness in the eyes
of God” (1 Cor 3:19). St. Paul’s concerns continue unabated through Tatian’s attacks on philosophy in his “Address to the Greeks,” through Tertullian’s famous cleavage between Athens and Jerusalem, through Jacopone da Todi’s mocking poems on the allurements of Parisian learning,
through the stern monitum of Pope Gregory IX to the Parisian theology
masters, through the condemnations issued by the bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, through the claims of Peter John Olivi that philosophical
questions are “unworthy of the Christian’s serious concern,” through the
harsh comments of Luther against Aristotle and Plato, through Pascal’s
famous dichotomizing of le Dieu des philosophes et le Dieu d’Abraham,
d’Isaac et de Jacob, and through Karl Barth’s philippics against theology’s
contemptuous toadying to foreign canons of rationality.1 In all of these
thinkers, one cannot fail to hear the comment by the long-forgotten Absalon of Saint-Victor (†1203) who insists, “Non regnat spiritus Christi
ubi dominatur spiritus Aristotelis,” with Aristotle a proxy for any philosophy or philosopher who seeks to usurp the Gospel.2
In each of these cases, the wisdom taught by the prophets of Israel
and by Jesus Christ needs no help from the Athenian Academy. Philos1

See Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos, ed. and trans. Molly Whittaker (Oxford: Clarendon,
1982). For Tertullian, “The Prescription against Heretics” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957), chap. 7, 246. For Gregory IX’s letter of 1228, see Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H. Denifle, vol. 1 (Paris, 1899), 114–16. Also, Enchiridion
Symbolorum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, 37th edition (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1991), no. 824. For Olivi’s attitude toward philosophy, see David Burr, “Petrus Ioannis Olivi and the Philosophers,” Franciscan Studies 31 (1971):
41­­­­­­­–71­­, at 46. For Tempier’s comments at Paris in 1277, see David Piché with Claude
LaFleur, La condemnation parisienne de 1277 (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 74–75. For Jacopone’s poems, see Sons of Francis, trans. Anne MacDonell (London: J. M. Dent and
Co., 1902).
2
Absalon of Saint Victor, PL 211, 1855, col. 37, cited by Serge-Thomas Bonino,
“Qu’est-ce que l’antithomisme?” Revue Thomiste 108 (2008): 9–38, at 15. For textual
difficulties with Absalon’s comment, see Bonino, 15n22.

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ophy serves only to deface and deform the fiery message of the Gospel.
If it is not baldly asserted that faith and reason are at antipodes, then at
least it is claimed that theirs is an uneasy relationship, with philosophy
and theology circling each other as wary and aggressive enemies, each
girding itself for a likely strike.
While forceful reservations have been expressed about philosophy’s
influence over Christianity, the broader tradition has acknowledged a
salutary confluence between faith and reason. One sees this position
championed in those early Christian writers who spoke glowingly of
the role of philosophy, such as Clement of Alexandria who insists that
the Old Testament and Greek wisdom are twin rivers leading to Christ,
through Origen who boldly counsels Christians to take philosophical
“spoils from Egypt,” through the Cappadocians who never finish with
Hellenistic thought, through Augustine’s De doctrina christiana which
reprises Origen’s “spoils” trope for the West, through Boethius who, in a
well-known discussion of the Trinity, counsels his interlocutor to “join
faith to reason.”3
Aquinas, of course, ardently defends the use of philosophy in theological reasoning, glossing St. Paul’s biblical admonitions with the comment that the Apostle warns against trusting in one’s personal erudition,
not in human reasoning per se (De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1). Aquinas’s
confidence in the conjunctive nature of faith and philosophy is also powerfully reflected in the Summa contra Gentiles I, 7 where Thomas argues
for the profound complementarity of faith and reason, principles restated by Vatican I at a time when the Church sought a Christian via media
between currents of rationalism and fideism dominating the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. This medieval assurance in the congruency of
3

Clement, Stromateis, 1, 29; Origen, “Letter to Gregory,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers,
vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956), 393–94; Augustine, De doctrina christiana, 2, 40; Boethius, “Letter to John the Deacon,” in The Theological Tractates (The
Loeb Classical Library), trans. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1962), 32–37, at 37. Boethius’s comment, “insofar as you are able,
join faith to reason” (Fidem, si poterit, rationemque conjunge), is found in his discussion of the principles of unity and diversity in the Trinity. Boethius argues that the
terms God, truth, omnipotence, and immutability can be formally predicated of the
divine substance, but the terms Father, Son, and Spirit cannot be so attributed. Boethius asks his interlocutor either to confirm his investigations or to proffer another
opinion, one reconciling faith and reason.

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faith and human wisdom was to be a guiding force in the founding of
the great Western universities.
But the question remains: How does theology use philosophy so that
the latter does not obscure or deform the Christian message? It is these
two competing approaches, one arguing for evangelical purity and the
other insisting on philosophical plenitude, which gives rise to this essay.
I will examine the proper relationship between philosophy and theology
in six theses, arguing that: (1) the point continues to be made, at times
zealously so, that philosophy obscures the Gospel message, offering only
an alien narrative that deforms biblical teaching; (2) the broader tradition has insisted that the Christian faith is always a “Jewgreek” enterprise, incorporating Hellenic and Hebraic traditions; (3) even while
assimilating all forms of human wisdom, theology recognizes its need
to “performatively discipline” every philosophical (and other) insight;
(4) speculative philosophy has its own legitimate freedom and autonomy; (5) by its “incorporative” nature, Catholicism encourages authentic
theological pluralism; and (6) some capacious metaphysical horizon is
ultimately necessary to subserve properly theological reasoning.
Thesis One: Philosophy Deforms and Obscures Christian Faith
(The Hellenization Thesis)
While reservations about the role of philosophical thinking in theological reflection go back to St. Paul, it is Martin Luther who seized upon
this critique in service to his mission of reforming the Church by purifying her of non-scriptural accretions. As Yves Congar has pointed out, the
principle of sola Scriptura had a long history before Luther, but Luther
used this criterion in a new way.4 For the reformer’s turn to scriptural
exclusivity was accompanied by a deep suspicion of philosophy, particularly the Scholasticism that was seen as badly deforming the foursquare
Gospel. Luther’s attacks on philosophy resulted at times in formulations
which, if taken in isolation, seem jarringly irrational: “Whoever wishes
to be a Christian must be intent on silencing the voice of reason. . . . To
the judgment of reason they [the articles of faith] appear so far from

4

Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions, trans. Michael Naseby and Thomas Rainborough (New York: MacMillan, 1967), 107–18.

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the truth that it is impossible to believe them.”5 And again, “No one becomes a theologian, unless he becomes one without Aristotle.”6
Luther’s spirited critique of Pseudo-Dionysius serves as an example of his legitimate evangelical concerns. The primary salvo launched
by the reformer against Dionysian thought is that it is philosophically
rather than biblically inspired, owing more to Plato than to the Scriptures.7 As Luther says in his commentary on Genesis, “Nowhere does
he [Dionysius] have a single word about faith or any useful instruction
from the Holy Scriptures.”8 Negative theology cannot be rooted in the
Dionysian dialectic of affirmation and negation, in an ascent beyond being and non-being; it can only be rooted in the cross and the suffering of
Christ crucified. Luther’s clarion hermeneutical principle is crux probat
omnia, the cross judges everything, or as he insists, “The Cross alone is
our theology” (LW 25, 287). The reformer’s searing critique of Dionysius’s Platonism was essential because “neither darkness nor negative
theology are ever linked to the cross of Christ in the Dionysian corpus.”9
Luther’s assault on Dionysius is a good example of his desire to develop
a theology rooted only in Scripture and the central events of Christ’s life.
The Bible alone can teach us something about the true God. Dionysius,

5

Luther’s Works (LW), ed. J. Pelikan et al. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959), 23, 99. For
a discussion of Luther’s mixed evaluation of philosophy, see Thomas G. Guarino,
“Spoils from Egypt: Yesterday and Today,” Pro Ecclesia 15 (2006): 403–17.
6
LW 31, 12. Denis R. Janz says that to call reason the “Devil’s whore” as Luther does
(LW 40, 175 and LW 51, 374) “is to invite misunderstanding and caricature.” But
this phrase does not exhaust Luther’s judgment on human reasoning. See “Whore or
Handmaid?” in The Devil’s Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition,
ed. Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 47–52.
7
Partial confirmation of Luther’s judgment comes from Alasdair MacIntyre, who
says, “Dionysius was as much of a Neoplatonist as it is possible to be while also
being a Christian.” See Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities (Lanham,
MD: Sheed and Ward, 2009), 37.
8
LW 1, 235. Cited by Paul Rorem, “Martin Luther’s Christocentric Critique of Pseudo-Dionysian Spirituality,” Lutheran Quarterly 11 (1997): 291–307, at 293.
9
Rorem, “Martin Luther’s Christocentric Critique,” 300. At the same time, Rorem
observes that Bonaventure is a precursor of Luther. While not hesitating to cite Dionysius’s work, the Franciscan simultaneously accents the centrality of Christ crucified, thereby crossing from philosophical nescience to the depths of revelation. See
Paul Rorem, “Negative Theologies and the Cross,” Harvard Theological Review 101
(2008): 451–64.

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Thomas G. Guarino

with his unending philosophical dialectic of negative and positive affirmations, “deserves to be ridiculed.”10
Luther was followed in his attack on philosophy by the young Melanchthon, who famously wrote, at the beginning of his Loci Communes,
“[H]ow corrupt are all the theological hallucinations of those who have
offered the subtleties of Aristotle instead of the teachings of Christ.”11
The young reformer argues: “From the philosophy of Plato was added
the equally pernicious word ‘reason.’ For just as we in these latter times
of the Church have embraced Aristotle instead of Christ, so immediately after the beginnings of the Church Christian doctrine was weakened
by Platonic philosophy.”12 Given this attack, it is unsurprising that both
Luther and Melanchthon shied away from using analogical reasoning as
a means of explaining the Trinity, and “even hinted that the [Trinitarian]
doctrine may be contradictory to reason.”13
In more recent times, it is Adolf von Harnack who is the well-known
coryphaeus of the claim that philosophy increasingly deformed Christianity, leading to the Abfall vom Evangelium that defaced the primitive
10

LW, 13, 111. Balthasar sympathetically evaluates Luther’s critique of philosophy
(and particularly of Dionysius) saying, ”[T]he showy splendor of such cosmic and
mystical piety leads to a forgetting of Christ, and the world of beauty overshadows
the mystery of the biblical glory and one must wait for Luther . . . to bring the sharpness of the crisis to consciousness.” See The Glory of the Lord, vol. 4, trans. Brian
McNeil, et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 320.
11
Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes Theologici (1521), in Melanchthon and Bucer,
ed. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969), 19.
12
Ibid., 23. Several authors have noted that the later Melanchthon became somewhat
more amenable to speculative theology. Oswald Bayer observes that at the height of
Lutheran Pietism, Melanchthon was even accused of slipping Aristotle into the back
door of theology. See Oswald Bayer, “Philipp Melanchthon,” Pro Ecclesia 18 (2009):
134–61, at 135. Also, E. P. Meijering, Melanchthon and Patristic Thought (Leiden:
Brill, 1983).
13
Samuel M. Powell, The Trinity in German Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 23. Powell notes that whereas Melanchthon was at first militantly
opposed to any speculative explanation of the Trinity, he later adopted some use
of the psychological analogy; this change leads Powell to conclude that “its bare
presence in Melanchthon’s thought testifies to its enduring fascination, even among
those most resolutely opposed to it” (28). On the other hand, a recent work about
Luther states, “The difference between Luther and scholastic Trinitarian speculation
is easily overemphasized” (Sammeli Juntunen, “Christ” in Engaging Luther: A (New)
Theological Assessment, ed. Olli-Pekka Vainio [Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010],
60–61).

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355

Church. Of long familiarity to theologians is Harnack’s description of
Christian teaching as “in its conception and development a work of the
Greek spirit on the soil of the gospel.”14 His parallel assertion is that “the
victory of the Nicene Creed was a victory of the priests over the faith of
the Christian people.”15 According to Harnack, the philosophically educated clergy had forced an alien definition on the gospel. Nicene faith itself is here called into question as a Hellenistic import that obscures and
misshapes the simple Hebraic belief in the one God of Jesus of Nazareth.
This Hebraic-Hellenistic disjunction has become an enduring trope, invoked by subsequent generations with varying levels of intensity. It is no
surprise, then, that even at the remove of more than a century, Benedict
XVI at Regensburg felt compelled to attack Harnack’s Hellenization thesis in direct terms.16
Despite his well-known differences with Harnack, Karl Barth echoes
many of the same themes, for Barth, too, stands on restive guard for the
purity of Scripture over and against the alleged philosophical accretions
that have mutilated Christian faith. One may simply point to the prolegomena of Barth’s Church Dogmatics, where both the liberal Protestant
axis of Schleiermacher-Hermann-Ritschl and the Catholic analogia entis
are lumped together as pre-determining schemas inexorably distorting
the Gospel through the imposition of foreign philosophical norms not
drawn from the Scriptures themselves. This is the basis of Barth’s notorious assertion that the analogy of being is the invention of the anti-Christ
precisely because it seeks to force the Gospel of grace into a philosophical Procrustean bed.17 Barth similarly argues that by considering first
the divine nature, rather than the God revealed by Christ, the door was
opened [in the Middle Ages] to the domination of theology by philoso14

Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan (New York: Russell and
Russell, 1958), I, 20.
15
Ibid., IV, 106.
16
Benedict XVI, “Regensburg Academic Lecture” (September 12, 2006). An English
translation may be found in Origins 36 (September 28, 2006): 248–52.
17
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, trans. G. T. Thomson (Edinburgh: T & T Clark,
1949), x. I have treated Barth’s criticisms of analogy at length in Foundations of Systematic Theology (New York: T & T Clark, 2005), 224–30. Balthasar responded to
Barth that the principles of causality and similarity (the ontological roots of analogical predication) exist only in the unicus ordo supernaturalis and so are never purely
philosophical.

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phy: “The fact that the life of God was identified with the notion of pure
being, the fact that the idea of God was not determined by the doctrine
of the Trinity, but that the latter was shaped by a general conception of
God (that of ancient Stoicism and Neo-Platonism) was now avenged at
the most sensitive spot.” The philosophical idea of divine simplicity became an “all-controlling principle, the idol” which devoured everything
concrete.18 Even more devastatingly, Barth says that the concept of God
emerging from natural theology attempts “to unite Yahweh with Baal,
the triune God of Holy Scripture with the concept of being of Aristotelian and Stoic philosophy.”19 And, he continues, “The Lord who is visible
in the vestigia [referring to the vestigia Trinitatis of the patristic era] we
can only regard as a different Lord than the one so called in the Bible.”20
While limiting ourselves to just a few thinkers, we can easily cite
contemporary theologians who repeat this line of thought. Robert Jenson, for example, in his Unbaptized God, attacks Hellenism as a foreign
metaphysics: “The great task of the theological and spiritual history that
leads to the Christianity now divided is reinterpretation by the gospel of
Hellenism’s antecedent interpretation of God.” He continues, “And the
heart of what needed reinterpreting in antecedent Hellenic theology is
its posit of eternity as timelessness, as immunity to time’s opportunities
and threats and so of being as persistence.”21 Jenson’s stark claim that
theology has conducted only an “incomplete exorcism” on “unbaptized
Hellenism” finds echoes in other Protestant theologians, who argue
that philosophy has too often become a theoretical prison, neutering
the Gospel of its salt, light, and power.22 Philosophical reasoning is here
18

Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T
& T Clark, 1957), 329.
19
Ibid., II/1, 84.
20
Ibid., I/1, 399.
21
Robert Jenson, Unbaptized God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 137–38.
22
So, for example, Colin Gunton, commenting on Fides et Ratio, says that underlying
the encyclical “is a conviction that the teaching of the Christian faith, dependent as
it is on particularities, requires foundation in a general philosophy of being.” See his
Act and Being (London: SCM, 2002), 5. Eberhard Jüngel argues that Luther’s chief
philosophical point is that metaphysics fails to understand Christ’s cross, which necessarily negates the traditional divine attributes of immutability and impassibility:
see God as Mystery of the World, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 373. Pannenberg (gently) accuses Thomas of allowing philosophy to
control his treatment of the Trinity in the Summa theologiae. See Wolfhart Pannen-

The Proper Relationship between Theology and Philosophy

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regarded as a pernicious Trojan horse in the City of God, an alien conceptual foundation that befouls the salvific biblical economy.23
Although the Hellenization thesis has been principally associated
with theologians in the Reformation tradition, the claim that philosophy has deformed revelation cannot be limited to Protestant thinkers. At times, Orthodox theologians adopt this line of thought as well
(particularly when discussing Western theology). Sergius Bulgakov, for
example, spends pages attacking the Catholic teaching on transubstantiation, observing that the doctrine is based on the Aristotelian distinction between ousia (substantia) and sumbabekos (accidentia). Bulgakov
concludes that in the Eucharistic doctrine, one notices “an inherent
strangeness in such a degree of dependence of the core of this dogma on
the purely philosophical doctrine of some philosopher, and especially a
pagan one.”24 Of course, Bulgakov is fully alive to the early Church’s use
of philosophy and its adoption of terms such as hypostasis and physis;
he insists, however, that ancient Christianity employed these concepts
in new ways. With the doctrine of transubstantiation, by contrast, “philosophy does not serve theology but theology is a slave to philosophy.”25
A similar approach is taken by Christos Yannaras, who nods in assent to Heidegger’s claim that the Western theological tradition from
Augustine to Aquinas has been typically philosophical: “God is the logically necessary first cause of all beings, and both the ontology and epistemology of the West were built on this logical necessity as a starting

berg, Systematic Theology, vol. I, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1988), 287–89.
23
On the other hand, Anna Williams insightfully remarks: “If Reformation theology
was grounded on the sole foundation of scripture, and that of the schoolmen on a
poisonous cocktail of tradition and human reason, it is hard to explain the marked
similarities between the theology of the two periods.” See A. N. Williams, The Architecture of Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 97.
24
Sergius Bulgakov, The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, trans. Boris Jakim (Hudson, NY:
Lindisfarne Books, 1997), 75.
25
Ibid., 76. Avery Dulles, on the other hand, pointedly argues that the change that occurs in the Eucharist “does not fit into the categories of Aristotle, who believed that
every substantial change involved a change in the appearances” as well. Consequently, the Church uses the term transubstantiation “to designate a process that is unique
and unparalleled.” See Dulles, Church and Society (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2008), 457.

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point.”26 Yannaras argues that the Western emphasis on a rational, conceptual theology—culminating in the proofs for God’s existence found
throughout the Western tradition—is rightly condemned by Heidegger
as mere onto-theology, as the reduction of the transcendent God to a
pedestrian causa sui. This has led, he concludes, to “a kind of ‘spiritual
schizophrenia’ which basically characterizes the Western stance toward
the world and history.”27
Finally, Michael Azkoul has written that Augustine is the origin of
“almost every religious opinion which separates Western Christendom
from the Orthodox Church,” including cataphatic theology, the filioque,
and purgatory. Prompting all of these deviations is “Hellenism, the invisible hand behind Augustine’s innovations.”28 Speaking of Augustine’s
theology, Azkoul says, “Hellenism . . . the elevation of ‘faith’ to rational
knowledge—proved to be his undoing. He yielded to the same temptation [Platonism] by which Origen and other heretics were seduced.”29
Indeed, Augustine’s “attraction to Platonism was very serious, perhaps
fatal.”30
In the eyes of these Eastern Orthodox thinkers, the West is largely
rationalist and conceptualist, profoundly under the sway of secular philosophy, and far removed from the mystical and apophatic East, which
glories in a theology accenting the transcendence and hiddenness of
26

Christos Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God, trans. Haralambos
Ventis (London: T & T Clark, 2005; orig., 1967), 43.
27
Yannaras, “Orthodoxy and the West,” Eastern Churches Review 3 (1971): 286–300, at
288. In a later book with the same title, Yannaras argues that the Western reception
of Aristotle is very different from that found in the Cappadocians or John Damascene. For the West fell into an epistemology which lionized autonomous reason
apart from its social and experiential roots. See Orthodoxy and the West, trans. Peter Chamberas and Norman Russell (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
2006), 52–54.
28
Michael Azkoul, The Influence of Augustine of Hippo on the Orthodox Church (Lewiston, ME: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 265.
29
Ibid., 268.
30
Ibid., 129. But note the work of Reinhard Flogaus, who argues that even Gregory Palamas was influenced by Augustine and such influence is not unimportant,
since for certain Eastern theologians, Augustine is “the chief villain, the heresiarch,”
whose theological errors led the West to atheism and rationalism. See “Inspiration-Exploitation-Distortion: The Use of St. Augustine in the Hesychast Controversy,” in Orthodox Readings of Augustine, ed. George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle
Papanikolaou (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 63–80, at 68.

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God. It is certainly true that the West and East did place the theological
accent differently. James Gill, for example, relates that at the Council
of Florence, the Greeks (even those well disposed toward Catholicism
such as Bessarion) were suspicious of any Western argument that relied
not only on biblical and patristic sources but also on syllogistic reasoning, giving rise to the Greek response that arguments are convincing
only when citing “St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Basil, Gregory the Theologian; a
fig for your Aristotle, Aristotle.”31 But cannot one admit, as did Vatican
II, that Western and Eastern theologians have often developed different
but complementary perspectives, without thereby entailing a division,
or the claim that philosophy has disfigured Christian faith?32
Catholics themselves, while frequently the target of the Hellenization thesis, are not exempt from invoking it. While rarely issuing blanket condemnations of philosophy or Hellenism, Catholic thinkers nonetheless point to select theological teachings as having been obscured by
philosophical intrusions. One well-known instance is the split between
the dogmatic tracts de Deo uno et de Deo trino. This disjunction was
explored by Theodore de Régnon, the French theologian who argued
that Western theology begins with a divine unity that is rationally argued, whereas Eastern thought originates from the triune relationality
of God.33 Fergus Kerr observes that in the English-speaking world, the
story-line usually goes as follows: Aquinas first considered the divine
nature philosophically and only later discussed the three divine per31

James Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959),
227. This Florentine response seems somewhat naïve, given the quantity of ancient
philosophy which the Greek Fathers assimilated (and transformed).
32
Of course, not every Orthodox thinker adopts the Hellenization thesis vis-à-vis the
West. But Paul Gavrilyuk observes that in the quest for a stronger contemporary
identity, some Orthodox writers equate “Eastern Orthodox” with true and authentic, while “Western” becomes a marker for all that is distorted, misguided, or false.
Gavrilyuk notes that “in [Vladimir] Lossky’s scheme, the term ‘Western’ has a very
strong connotation of ‘doctrinally questionable.’” See Paul Gavrilyuk, “The Reception of Dionysius in Twentieth Century Eastern Orthodoxy,” Modern Theology 24
(October 2008): 707–23, at 709 and 715.
33
Theodore de Régnon, Etudes de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité (Paris, 1892–
96). For a recent argument that de Régnon sought only to identify differing but complementary approaches in East and West, see Kristin Hennessy, “An Answer to de
Régnon’s Accusers: Why We Should Not Speak of ‘His’ Paradigm,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (April 2007): 179–97.

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sons, thereby forgetting the specifically Christian God and, in the process, opening a path for Enlightenment deism and even atheism.34 Karl
Rahner is often invoked as one who decried the deleterious effects of
this split between the one and the triune God.35 Balthasar further accuses Aquinas of paying insufficient attention to the concrete events of salvation history; Barth, by contrast, is fully alive to theology as a scientia
de singularibus.36 In these instances, Aquinas’s philosophical thought is
seen as jeopardizing the specificity of revelation.
Also under discussion by Catholic theologians are the traditional
divine attributes of immutability and impassibility. Are these reflective
of biblical truth or are these attributes merely representative of the corrosive influence of Hellenism? The move toward advocating a passible
Godhead had become so widespread in theology that by the 1980s, one
author spoke of the “rise of a new orthodoxy.”37 As Paul Gavrilyuk has
observed, “It has become almost commonplace in contemporary theological works to pass a negative judgment upon the patristic concept
of divine impassibility.”38 Indeed, this traditional attribute has “often
been caricatured as an alien Hellenistic concept.”39 Thomas Weinandy
points out that even Catholic scholars with unimpeachably Thomist
backgrounds, such as W. Norris Clarke, William J. Hill, and Jean Galot,
imply that Christian thought must, at the very least, plot some distinction between God’s ontological immutability and actual relationality if a
properly biblical understanding of the traditional attributes is to be pre34

Fergus Kerr, “Thomas Aquinas: Conflicting Interpretations in Recent Anglophone
Literature,” in Aquinas as Authority, ed. Paul van Geest et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2002),
165–86, at 168.
35
Ibid., 168, citing Rahner’s “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate.’” Kerr
notes that Balthasar (although less frequently adduced) also accuses Aquinas of a
defective Trinitarian doctrine. See Kerr, “Thomas Aquinas,” 169, citing Hans Urs
von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 263–66.
36
Balthasar says that Scholasticism concentrates on natures and essences, which is the
opposite of Barth’s dictum, esse sequitur operari. See The Theology of Karl Barth, 191
and 266.
37
See Ronald Goetz, “The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy,” Christian
Century 103 (1986): 385–89.
38
Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 2.
39
Ibid., 5.

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361

served.40 Immutability and impassibility continue to be discussed, then,
as theologians explore the extent to which these predicates must be further disciplined with the Gospel if they are to bear fruit in Christian life.
Perhaps the highest profile Catholic case in recent decades to argue
that theology has been defaced by philosophy is the signature work of
Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being. Sounding deeply Barthian in his
condemnation of being-language, Marion contends that metaphysics is
“idolic” rather than “iconic,” screening and obscuring the donative phenomenon of revelation. For Marion, the philosophical notion of being,
long a pillar of Catholic theology, is an affront to a proper understanding of the Godhead, because it establishes a constricting horizon within
which the gratuitously given phenomenon of revelation must appear.
Following Heidegger, Marion insists that this approach is nothing less
than onto-theology, the inappropriate wedding of theology and metaphysics.41 Marion has bluntly stated that “conceptual idolatry” has a site
(metaphysics), a function (theology in ontotheology) and a definition
(causa sui).42 He does not hesitate to add, echoing Pascal, that, “The God
who reveals himself has nothing in common . . . with the ‘God’ of the
philosophers, of the learned and, eventually, of the poet.”43 This Heidegger-like polemic against metaphysics has been softened by Marion in
his later works (after some pointed criticism), but the theme has not
disappeared from his thinking.44
Despite the various criticisms that have been lodged, it remains correct to say that the broad Catholic tradition ardently defends the thesis
that theology legitimately assimilates philosophical thought, even if it
40

See Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2000), 136n69.
41
See Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Also, Jean-Luc Marion, “Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Summary for Theologians,” in The Postmodern God, ed. Graham Ward
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 279–96
42
Marion, God Without Being, 36.
43
Ibid., 52.
44
Jean-Luc Marion, “Saint Thomas et l’onto-théologie,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995):
31–66. But Marion can still say, “In order to approach the question of charity, it
is above all important not to suffer the influence of what metaphysics has thought
about love.” See Jean-Luc Marion, Prolegomena to Charity, trans. Stephen E. Lewis
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 168.

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needs to discipline it and to mold it in the image of the Gospel. And this
gives rise to the second thesis.
Thesis Two: Theology Assimilates Philosophy (and All Wisdom)
Of course, the claim that philosophy has deformed theology presupposes the prior theological appropriation of philosophical wisdom. Of
this assimilation the Catholic tradition offers overwhelming evidence,
so we will pass over this thesis quickly.45
As everyone knows, a vital synthesis occurred between Christianity
and Greco-Roman thought in the early years of the Church. In the third
century, Origen used the term “spoils from Egypt” to describe, in biblical terms, the Christian use of ideas emanating, not only from Plato and
Aristotle, but even from opponents of Christianity like Celsus.46 Christians should act as did the Israelites at the time of the Exodus: “With
the spoils taken from the Egyptians . . . were made the movable Holy
of Holies, the arc with its cover . . . and the vessel of gold to hold the
manna, the food of angels. These objects were truly made from the most
beautiful gold of Egypt.” Under Origen’s influence, “spoils from Egypt”
gradually became the major image sanctioning the use of Greek reasoning in Christian thought.47
Augustine borrows Origen’s trope and popularizes it in the West: “If
those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have
said anything that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not
only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those
who have unlawful possession of it.”48 And in book five of his De Trinitate Augustine strives mightily to defend the eternal relations among the
divine persons by utilizing (and transforming) Aristotelian categories.
This appropriation of philosophy is possible because for Augustine, as
45

For examples, see Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 269–310. Also, Z.
P. Thundy, “Sources of the Spoliatio Aegyptiorum,” Annuale mediaevale 21 (1981):
77–90.
46
Origen, “Letter to Gregory,” 393–94.
47
Gregory of Nyssa adduced Moses as the paradigmatic example of “taking spoils” for,
as Acts 7:22 testifies, Moses “received a paideia in all the sophia of the Egyptians.” See
Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1993), 10.
48
Augustine, De doctrina christiana, II, 40.

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363

MacIntyre observes, “philosophical enquiry, even unaided by faith, is a
work of natural reason and nature is never wholly corrupted.” The African’s final verdict on the philosophers of Greece and Rome, “was that,
although they had made various mistakes, ‘nature itself has not permitted them to wander too far from the path of truth’ in their judgments
about the supreme good.”49
Aquinas, of course, was one of the most accomplished theologians
at assimilating the philosophical wisdom of the ancients, freely pursuing
“spoils” from the classical world. To those lodging objections against
borrowing from pagan thinkers, St. Thomas counters that the Bible itself sanctions the use of ancient authors with St. Paul citing Epimenides
and Menander (in Titus 1:12 and 1 Cor 15:33). Given these scriptural
warrants, Aquinas asserts, “It is therefore licit for other doctors of divine Scripture to make use of the arguments of the philosophers” (De
Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3, sc). Sounding much like Origen, Thomas elsewhere
affirms, “Whatever its source, truth is of the Holy Spirit.”50
Six centuries later, John Henry Newman argues persuasively that
assimilating new perspectives is an essential part of Christian life and an
inexorable dimension of the Church’s proper development. The Christian “idea” must inevitably meet and absorb other points of view. This is
the case because “whatever has life is characterized by growth” and any
idea grows “by taking into its own substance external materials; and this
absorption and assimilation is complete when the materials appropriated come to belong to it or enter into its unity.”51 He continues that “the
idea never was that throve and lasted, yet . . . incorporated nothing from
external sources” (186). Assimilation is not without dangers, to be sure,
but it must be undertaken: “Whatever be the risk of corruption from
intercourse with the world around, such a risk must be encountered if
a great idea is duly to be understood, and much more if it is to be fully
exhibited” (39–40).
49

See Augustine, De civitate Dei, 19. 1, cited by MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 31–32.
50
Summa theologiae I–II, q. 109, a. 1, ad 1, cited by John Paul II in the encyclical Fides
et Ratio, §44.
51
See John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894), 185. Parenthetical page numbers in the text
refer to this volume.

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In his response to those claiming that Christianity is a twisted amalgam of faith and philosophy, Newman memorably asserts: “They [his
opponents] cast off all that they find in Pharisee or heathen; we conceive
that the Church, like Aaron’s rod, devours the serpents of the magicians.
They are ever hunting for a fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in
Catholic fullness. . . . They are driven to maintain, on their part, that the
Church’s doctrine was never pure; we say that it can never be corrupt”
(382). Newman concludes that no matter the falsehood attached to a
particular system of thought, the Church can always extract good from
evil because she is heir to the Lord’s promise: “If they [his disciples]
drank any deadly thing, it should not hurt them” (441).
A century after Newman, Henri de Lubac reprises Terence by insisting that “nothing authentically human, whatever its origin, can be alien
to her [the Church].”52 Cyril of Alexandria rightly made use of Plato, as
did Ambrose of Seneca, Aquinas of Aristotle, and Matteo Ricci of Confucius. Such was the audacity of early Christians that they even incorporated the pagan image of “Magna mater” (applied to the Church) into
Catholic theology. This was “a typical example of the boldness of Christian thought which was strong enough to seize, without contamination,
everything which could serve to express it [the faith].”53 This daring, de
Lubac insists, must be duplicated in our own day, with ideas harboring
even Marxist and Nietzschean elements finding a place in some new
theological synthesis, for “in the Church, the work of assimilation never
ceases, and it is never too soon to undertake it!”54 If the salt of Christianity is to maintain its tang, there must be an unending appropriation
of human wisdom. The Church cannot simply revive the Middle Ages
or even primitive Christianity; there must be a continual assimilation of
new ideas.
Hans Urs von Balthasar similarly insisted that Catholic theology
must open itself to every field of thought: Why did Aquinas devote himself to Arabic and Aristotelian philosophy? Why did Möhler avail him52

Henri de Lubac, Catholicism, trans. L. Sheppard (New York: Longmans, Green and
Co., 1950), 149–53.
53
See Henri de Lubac, The Motherhood of the Church, trans. Sr. Sergia Englund (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 1982), 54.
54
De Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. E. Riley (London: Sheed and
Ward, 1949), vi.

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365

self of Hegel, and Newman of Locke and Hume? They did so in order
to transpose natural philosophy to the supernatural order.55 Balthasar
pleads for the renewal of the assimilative imagination in Catholic theology, noting that Aquinas made full use of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.
Surely, “if he had known Buddha and Lao-Tse, there is no doubt that
he would have drawn them too into the summa of what can be thought
and would have given them the place appropriate to them.”56 Theology
must absorb all that is living, whether one finds this in Kant or Hegel, in
Scheler or Heidegger.
The plea of the noveaux théologiens for a renaissance of the absorptive imagination was, undoubtedly, a criticism of neo-Scholasticism’s
attempt to foreshorten the process of assimilation by limiting itself to
Aquinas’s Aristotelianism, as if any further theological advance would
require nothing more than extended glosses on Thomas’s achievements.
In this sense, the nouvelle théologie sought to move in two directions: to
recover early Christian thought and to engage in an enriching dialogue
with contemporary philosophical movements such as existentialism,
personalism, and phenomenology.
In his controversial Regensburg Address, Benedict XVI dealt
head-on with the issue of assimilation, directly attacking Harnack’s
Hellenization thesis and pronouncing it providential that St. Paul journeyed north to Greece (with its philosophical riches) while his path to
Asia was blocked (citing Acts 16:6–10). Benedict has also praised the
Church’s gradual incorporation of Enlightenment themes, noting that,
while one must exclude philosophies that eliminate God, one should
nonetheless “welcome the true conquests of the Enlightenment, human
rights and especially the freedom of faith and its practice, and recognize
these also as being essential elements for the authenticity of religion.”57
Even though the Enlightenment, in its most radical form, was developed against Christianity, it, too, has borne good fruit that the Church
must admire, pursue, and utilize. Perhaps one may see just here a reprise
of Ovid’s insight, Fas est et ab hoste doceri, “It is right to learn, even from
55

Hans Urs von Balthasar, “On the Tasks of Catholic Philosophy in Our Time,” Communio 20 (1993; original, 1946): 155.
56
Ibid., 158–59.
57
Benedict XVI, “Christmas Address to the Roman Curia” (Dec. 22, 2006).

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Thomas G. Guarino

an enemy” (Metamorphoses, IV, 428), a position that has characterized
the Church at least since Origen’s careful weighing of Celsus’s pointed
criticisms of Christianity.
There is no need to multiply examples, since the thesis that the
Church has assimilated philosophical reasoning, for weal or for woe,
is uncontested. But the truly crucial theological question remains. How
are Athens and Jerusalem properly related? Is theology more Greek than
Jew, or more pistos than logos? And precisely which kind of correlation
exists between these terms?
Thesis Three: Theology Must Performatively Discipline Philosophy
(and All Wisdom)
The critical task in the theological absorption of philosophy (and
other disciplines) involves the incorporation of new insights and perspectives without the concomitant loss of substantial identity. How
is Christianity a capacious idea which takes every thought captive to
Christ, as St. Paul counseled (2 Cor 10:5)? This is a particularly important point in the post-Enlightenment epoch when certain philosophers
(the early Jürgen Habermas, for example) endorse precisely the opposite
view: Every thought needs to be taken captive to the Enlightenment,
since all religious claims need to be “publicly redeemed” if they are to
have any role in societal discourse.58
The early Christian writers continuously insist on the theological
disciplining of secular reasoning. Origen, as we have seen, boldly encourages taking “spoils from Egypt,” yet argues that this project must be
undertaken with caution: “Rare are those who have taken from Egypt
only the useful, and go away and use it for the service of God. There
are those who have profited from their Greek studies, in order to produce heretical notions and set them up, like the golden calf, in Bethel.”59
St. Augustine likewise cautioned that while the Egyptians undoubtedly
yielded valuable spoils, they also possessed “idols and heavy burdens
which the people of Israel hated and fled” (De doctrina christiana, II,
58

In recent years, however, Habermas has taken a much more benign view of religious
belief. For a good overview of his developing attitude towards religious discourse,
see Maureen Junker-Kenny, Habermas and Theology (London: T & T Clark, 2011).
59
Origen, “Letter to Gregory,” 393–94.

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367

40). As John Rist has noted, Augustine’s deep attraction to the Latin text
of Isaiah 7.9, Nisi credideritis, non intellegetis, implies that the solutions
offered by the philosophers are incomplete because they lack the guidance of Scripture and the Church.60 St. Basil argues that while Christians
are permitted to entertain the accounts of some classical poets, others
should cause them to stop their ears, like Odysseus before the Sirens. All
Christians, Basil counsels, should learn from the bees, who extract only
honey from the flower. Like them, we should cull the best from pagan
writers, while passing over the rest.61 For all these thinkers, of course,
the salient point is that philosophical wisdom may be utilized, but always subject to the Gospel. As St. Gregory Nazienzen stated, the Fathers
theologized “‘in the manner of the Apostles, not in that of Aristotle,’
alieutikos, ouk aristotelikos” (Hom. 23.12).62
As earlier noted, there is no greater example of this process of assimilation and transformation than that offered by Aquinas himself. But
St. Thomas nonetheless insists that one is in error employing critical
reason if one is “willing to believe nothing except what could be established by philosophical reasoning; when, on the contrary, philosophy
should be subject to the measure of faith as the Apostle says ‘Bring into
captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ’” (De Trinitate, q. 2, a.
3, c, emphasis added). Aquinas then offers his own image, intended to
complement the traditional “spoils” trope: those who use philosophical
doctrines in service to the Christian faith do not mix water with wine,
but change water into wine (De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3, ad 5).63 For Aquinas,
all human learning can be of service to the faith, but it must be adduced
wisely and judiciously, avoiding the dangers of philosophical imperial60

John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 13.
61
Basil, “Address to Young People on Reading Greek Literature,” in The Letters, vol. 4,
trans. R. Deferrari and M. McGuire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934),
365ff.
62
Cited by Georges Florovsky, The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. 1, Bible,
Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972), 108.
63
Armand Maurer notes that Bonaventure quickly challenged this image, warning
that, in any such mixture, the pure wine of Scripture is in danger of being reduced
to philosophical water—the worst of miracles! See Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Reason
and Theology: Questions I–IV of the De Trinitate, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987), xv note 24.

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ism.64 Unsurprisingly, then, St. Thomas sounds the traditional caution:
“In divine matters, natural reason is greatly deficient” (ST II-II, q. 2, a.
4). And he insists that no discipline can be a competitor to theology’s
claims, for these derive their authority and certitude not from fallible
human reason but from divine revelation (ST I, q. 1, a. 5, ad 2).
We have already seen that in the nineteenth century, Newman firmly endorsed the theological incorporation of all human sagacity. Only
by casting a wide net could the idea of Christianity properly flourish,
ripen, and develop. Yet Newman was also insistent on the performative
disciplining of reason by faith. An idea surely grows by the absorption
of external materials, but these very materials are “subjected to a new
sovereign.”65 And while the Church is a vast treasure house of wisdom,
she is always “casting the gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner’s fire
or stamping upon her own, as time required it, a deeper impress of her
Master’s image.”66 The Church, then, is always ingesting new ideas and
perspectives—and, indeed, needs such novelty to thrive and properly
develop. At the same time, the Church molds and measures human wisdom by the Word of God. Such theological measuring is essential; otherwise, the Church’s faith would be “depraved by the intrusion of foreign
principles.” For Newman, the “original type” of Christianity must always
be preserved, even while the Church gains vital nourishment from every
form of thought.67
Henri de Lubac, as earlier noted, boldly called for the assimilation of
new philosophies, insisting that even ideas with a Marxist or Nietzschean stamp would find a place in some new theological synthesis. But to
mark the proper relationship between faith and reason, de Lubac liked
to cite Augustine’s recollection of the divine voice in the Confessions,
“Non tu me in te mutabis, sicut cibum carnis tuae, sed tu mutaberis in
me” (You will not transform me into you [the Lord says], as with your
64

For Aquinas’s warnings against philosophical colonization, see John F. Wippel, Mediaeval Reactions to the Encounter Between Faith and Reason (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1995), 14–28.
65
Newman, Development, 186.
66
Ibid., 382.
67
Of course, the crucial theological issue lies in determining how this “original type” is
preserved, even while allowing for the growth and development that necessarily occurs over time. As Newman realized, this process involves a variety of loci theologici,
including the work of theologians, the sensus fidelium, and the magisterium.

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fleshly food; rather, you will be transformed into me).68 Balthasar, too,
although an early champion of assimilative theology, insisted that every
concrete philosophy must be measured by its relationship to the one
God in Jesus Christ.69 The sovereign and free Lord of the Bible cannot be
encompassed by any system, whether it is Hegel’s Geist, Schopenhauer’s
Wille, or Schelling’s intellektuelle Anschauung. In opposition to philosophical notions seeking to control divine revelation, Balthasar invokes
Mary’s Magnificat: deposuit potentes de sede.70
Joseph Ratzinger similarly argues that the Church’s absorption of
philosophy always involves a transformation. In his well-known book
on eschatology, for example, Ratzinger attacks the oft-repeated claim
that the idea of an “immortal soul” is simply an alien import from
Platonic philosophy.71 In fact, Ratzinger avers, the Church’s teaching
on immortality was determined by Christology. It was Christian belief that made assertive claims upon philosophical anthropology, not
the other way around.72 While Aquinas undoubtedly uses Aristotelian
language—speaking of the soul as forma corporis—this takes on an
entirely different meaning than it had in Aristotle’s philosophy. For
the Stagirite, the soul is entirely bonded to matter, while St. Thomas protects the biblical affirmation that union with Christ overcomes
death. In Aquinas, then, philosophical concepts are marshaled in order to champion what amounts to an impossibility in Aristotle’s own
thought. As Ratzinger would later say in the Regensburg Address, the
Greek heritage forms an integral part of the Christian faith, but it does
so only as “critically purified.”
68

Henri de Lubac, A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, trans. R. Arnandez (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 1984), 69. For Augustine, see Confessions, VII, 10.
69
Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, 257.
70
Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, trans. A. Dru (New York: Herder and Herder,
1969), 34.
71
The recently published Lutheran-Catholic dialogue quotes a contemporary Protestant theologian who says that “the battle against the concept of immortality. . . has
dominated German Protestant theology for the last half-century.” See Gerhard Sauter, What Dare We Hope? Reconsidering Eschatology (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press,
1999), 188. Cited by the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, The Hope of Eternal Life (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2011), 11n42.
72
Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 143–47.

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What is at stake in all of these examples is the epistemic primacy of
theology, a discipline which nonetheless relies on and utilizes philosophy, and, indeed, all of the sciences. It is just this primacy (and precisely
how it is understood) that gives rise to pressing contemporary questions:
How does Catholic theology properly assimilate evolutionary biology,
quantum mechanics, liberation theology, feminist thought, bio-ethical
advances, Nietzschean postmodernity, Whiteheadian process philosophy, Heideggerian hermeneutics, and so the list continues? How does
it refine and utilize every idea while stamping each, as Newman counseled, “with a deeper impress of [the] Master’s image”? The best theologians are well aware that assimilative efforts must be continually underway, for theology, if it is to flourish vigorously, must be in profound
dialogue with all of the academic disciplines. Without such a dialogue,
Newman recognized, the Christian “idea” could not thrive and flourish,
could not become a powerful stream with a broad and capacious riverbed. The theological enterprise, then, must engage the entire treasury of
human wisdom, not only because of Catholicism’s decided commitment
to the conjunction of faith and reason, but also to ensure the continuing
intelligibility of Christianity itself.
But it is one thing to insist on the incorporative nature of theology,
and on the ultimate primacy of the Gospel. There exists little argument
on these points, even from those stressing theology’s mutually correlational dimensions. It is another matter entirely to determine if some particular and concrete use of philosophy or other discipline is fully congruent with the Christian faith, that is, if it leads to some complementary
development which is architectonically and harmoniously related to the
earlier doctrinal tradition. This latter determination is usually not immediately visible and requires an extended process of discernment; it is
the work of time, thought, and the Holy Spirit. Gaudium et Spes affirmed
that “the recent studies and findings of science, history and philosophy
raise new questions which affect life and which demand new theological
investigations” (§62). More recently, John Paul II, in his discourse on
the Galileo case, chided theologians to keep up with developments in
science and, if necessary, to make adjustments to their teaching. Rahner
observed that the assimilative process (which at times requires the elimination of long-held conceptual models) is so sensitive that some fric-

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tion inevitably accompanies this arduous but essential procedure.73 The
continuing theological task is to balance absorption and purification,
learning from every quarter of human knowledge, even while maintaining “identity of type” over time.
Thesis Four: The Relative Autonomy of the Philosophical Order
Whereas theology assimilates and disciplines philosophy (and all
human wisdom), it must be equally affirmed that other fields have their
own legitimate autonomy; they cannot simply be subsumed under, or
made lackeys of, theological reasoning. Indeed, there exists a long Catholic tradition acknowledging the comparative independence of the natural, created estate. One reason for such recognition was the indefeasible evidence that a host of ancient philosophers, without the palpable
benefit of Judaeo-Christian revelation, had penetrated deeply into the
logos-structure of the universe, and also into the existing moral order.
Vatican II affirmed this tradition when stating, “For by the very circumstance of their having been created, all things are endowed with their
own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order” (Gaudium et Spes
§36). And again, “If by the autonomy of earthly affairs we mean that
created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values
which must be gradually deciphered, put to use, and regulated by men,
then it is entirely right to demand that autonomy.” These statements display the classical Catholic theme that the natural sphere possesses an
integral excellence and intrinsic stability.
More recently, the relative independence of the natural order was
ardently defended by John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio.
In this letter, the Pope insists that philosophy and reason have a legitimate autonomy that cannot be suppressed (comprimere), even by the
content of revelation.74 And he reminds readers that the ancient disci73

See Karl Rahner, “Yesterday’s History of Dogma and Theology for Tomorrow,” in
Theological Investigations 18, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983),
3–34, at 13.
74
“Fides et ratio,” in Acta apostolicae sedis, 91 (1999), 5–88, §79. English translation
in Origins 28 (October 22, 1998): 317–47. See also the supporting comments found
at §§48 and 67. Of course, St. Pope John Paul II makes clear that philosophy has no
ultimate “self-sufficiency.” This is why one fittingly refers to philosophy’s real but
relative autonomy.

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pline is “rightly jealous” of its independence. The pope’s intention here
is transparent: the philosophical order—and the created estate generally—possess an authentic autonomy and freedom even “apart” from revelation. So earnestly does the pope defend this position that he eschews,
at least theoretically, the venerable term for philosophy as ancilla theologiae, lest the impression be given that philosophical reasoning does
not have a legitimate sovereignty within its own estate (§77). Reason,
though embedded in the unicus ordo supernaturalis, has an actual, if not
total, independence.
This insistence on the autonomy of the philosophical order has
been taken up by Benedict XVI in several venues.75 For example, in his
2008 discourse to the faculty and students of the University of Rome,
the Pope speaks of the “autonomy which . . . has always been part of the
nature of universities, which must be tied exclusively to the authority
of truth.” And he eulogistically invokes Aquinas who “highlighted the
autonomy of philosophy, and with it, the laws and responsibility proper
to reason.” The Pope even invokes the Council of Chalcedon, observing
that “philosophy and theology must be interrelated ‘without confusion
and without separation.’”76
A careful reading of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI reveals
that while they endorse the independence of the natural order, they acknowledge this as a relative, not absolute, autonomy. As Fides et Ratio
states, in the light of divine revelation philosophy itself must undergo “profound transformations.” And the encyclical makes a clear distinction between the valid autonomy of philosophy and its illegitimate
self-sufficiency (§§75, 77). This is to say that whereas the philosophical
sphere has an authentic liberty, it must ultimately be enlightened by the
Gospel. One may conclude, then, that Fides et Ratio is endorsing the
fuller maxim concerning philosophy’s traditional role: ancilla theologiae
sed non ancilla nisi libera. Philosophy can properly serve theology only
if she is free and independent, always exploring new realms of thought,

75

I have adduced several “Benedictine” examples defending the relative autonomy of
the natural sphere in “Nature and Grace: Seeking the Delicate Balance,” Josephinum
Journal of Theology 18 (2011): 150–62.
76
See “Lecture of Benedict XVI at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’” (January 17,
2008) in Acta apostolicae sedis 100 (2008): 107–14.

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entirely without constraint. Of course, what is said here of philosophy
applies equally to the sciences and to other disciplines.
It is precisely because of philosophy’s authentic autonomy that reason and faith can enrich each other, as Fides et Ratio states, with a mutually “purifying critique” (§100). Joseph Ratzinger expanded on this
point in his 2004 dialogue with Jürgen Habermas: “I would speak of
a necessary relatedness between reason and faith and between reason
and religion, which are called to purify and help one another. They need
each other, and they must acknowledge this mutual need.”77
This marked accent on the autonomy of the philosophical order
makes me hesitant about unreservedly endorsing the claim of the wellknown Thomist Victor Preller, who states, “Aquinas is always writing as
catholicae doctor veritatis. . . . And in his interpretation of Aristotle . . .
he tells us what Aristotle would say after his errors were corrected in the
light of the truth of the Catholic faith.”78 Preller’s formulation properly
notes the priority of revelation in Aquinas’s thought. But one wonders if
his comment entirely protects the autonomy of the philosophical order
as Aquinas understood it. Was St. Thomas always writing (explicitly) as
a Catholic theologian? Or did he recognize that a significant amount of
truth was delivered by philosophical reasoning alone? At times Aquinas
appears to defend positions on purely philosophical grounds, positions
he was convinced that philosophers had safeguarded without the light
of revelation.79
In just this regard, one turns to Aquinas’s campaign against radical Aristotelianism, particularly its position on the nature of the intellect. Against the monopsychism of his fellow Parisian master, Siger of
Brabant, St. Thomas argues that there exists a diversity of intellects in
diverse beings. He states that he could easily prove his case by relying
on the truth of the Christian faith. But he will display the error by ar-

77

Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization, trans. Brian
McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), 78.
78
Victor Preller, “Water into Wine,” in Grammar and Grace, ed. Jeffrey Stout and Robert MacSwain (London: SCM Press, 2004), 253–69, at 262.
79
On the issue of Aquinas as a philosopher, see John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes
in Thomas Aquinas II (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2007), 240–71.

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Thomas G. Guarino

guing on philosophical grounds alone.80 Does Aquinas argue this way
only because he saw the truth of this matter on the basis of faith? Or
did proper philosophical reasoning also deliver to him this correction
of radical Aristotelianism? After all, Aquinas did not hesitate to affirm
philosophy’s powers, even while acknowledging that they fall short of
the contents of faith (De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3, c). Indeed, at the very outset of his magnum opus, St. Thomas insists that philosophy’s unfettered
autonomy is called into question for one reason only: “Eye has not seen,
O God, what you have prepared for those who wait for you” (ST I, q.
1, a. 1). While philosophy cannot be the last word about the world and
humanity, the relative autonomy of the natural order is never evacuated.
Preller’s comment may well reflect the tendency of certain thinkers
to worry about the relative autonomy of the philosophical estate, thinking that to insist even on limited independence is to open the door inexorably to what an earlier generation called “separated philosophy.” There
exists the further fear that this accent on philosophical liberty—even in
a mitigated sense—leads to the kind of rationalism associated with the
radical Enlightenment. For if philosophy, science, and the created estate
generally enjoy a substantial independence, cannot one fairly conclude
that revelation and faith are superfluous accoutrements, prostheses for
which contemporary men and women have no need? Why not live etsi
Deus non daretur?
Precisely this fear of an imperious cultural rationalism appears to
animate statements found in certain theologians. George Lindbeck, for
example, concludes his influential The Nature of Doctrine by stating that
the world must be absorbed into the biblical narrative.81 In one sense
this is true, since heteronomous and alien standards of thought cannot ultimately judge revelation. However, neither can philosophy lose
its proper autonomy by being simply absorbed into theology. More recently, D. Stephen Long, in a generally excellent work, exhibits some of
these same concerns. He worries about a Catholic thought that divides
80

See On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists, trans. Beatrice H. Zedler (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1968), 22. It is true that in this instance Thomas
modifies Aristotle so that he conforms to Christian faith (and on its face this is supportive of Preller’s thesis), but Aquinas is convinced that he is arguing on grounds
that are entirely accessible philosophically, not only theologically.
81
George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 135.

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375

philosophy, particularly metaphysics, “too thoroughly” from theology.82
While Long is right that philosophy must be theologically disciplined,
his work, at times, appears to suffer from the fear of even the relative
autonomy of the philosophical estate.
Instructive about this entire issue of the comparative independence
of the natural order is the thinking of Leo Strauss, who insists on philosophy’s complete autonomy, with no contribution whatsoever from revelation. For Strauss, Christianity has only hampered thinking by continually assimilating philosophy into decidedly theological narratives.83 Because of the theological colonization of philosophy, Strauss continues,
thinking today is much more difficult than it was at the time of Plato.
Plato held that humanity must emerge from a natural cave, but Strauss
argues that there are now two caves obscuring philosophy’s ascent to
truth: the cave of natural ignorance, and the cave of a tradition based on
revelation. This second cave cannot be attributed to Judaism or Islam,
because in these religions there is a decided difference between human
wisdom and the eternal dictates of Divine Law. For Strauss, “it is clear
that Christianity alone has ‘stepped into the world of philosophy.’”84 It
has subjected philosophy to theological control, thereby deforming the
classical tradition and creating unnatural conditions for thought.
Ironically, Strauss’s work purveys the Hellenization thesis in reverse.
It is not Greek thought that has obscured Christianity. Rather, Christian
revelation, with its incorporation of philosophy into a master theological narrative, has damaged the ancient discipline. It is no surprise, therefore, that “Strauss never ceases to highlight what he takes to be the fundamental opposition between Athens and Jerusalem.”85 Strauss argues
that philosophical reasoning needs absolute and unfettered autonomy
if it is to reach truth. His position, then, throws into high relief the fundamental claim of Catholic thought: while accenting the freedom and
82

See D. Stephen Long, Speaking of God: Theology, Language, and Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 65, 258.
83
For an excellent analysis of Strauss’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and religious thought, see John Ranieri, Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss,
Eric Voegelin, and the Bible (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 23. Also
illuminative is Clark A. Merrill, “Leo Strauss’s Indictment of Christian Philosophy,”
Review of Politics 62 (Winter 2000): 77–105.
84
Ranieri, Disturbing Revelation, 23.
85
Ibid., 17.

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Thomas G. Guarino

liberty of the philosophical and scientific orders, theology nonetheless
insists that the light of revelation must clarify and illuminate philosophical discussion.
In summary, Catholic theology holds for the real but relative autonomy of the created estate. Nature has only a relative autonomy, because
it is always embedded in the one and only sphere of grace. In the middle
of the notorious nature/grace controversy of the 1940s, Balthasar gave
a subtle response to both neo-Scholasticism and Karl Barth on just this
point, insisting that, because all of creation is embedded in the supernatural sphere, the deeply Aristotelian term “nature” could be invoked
only analogically. At the same time, Balthasar held that there is a certain
stability and integrity in the natural, philosophical estate itself, even if it
is always transformed and irradiated by divine revelation.86
In certain segments of contemporary theology, there is a strong
accent on the retrieval of biblical and patristic sources, on the entire
project of ressourcement. This recovery, which legitimately accents the
graced world of revelation and faith, should not be placed at antipodes
with the autonomy belonging to philosophy and science. Nor should
this renascence be naively opposed to modernity and the Enlightenment, as if these later movements contained nothing but errors and
blind alleys. The Enlightenment’s mistake was not its affirmation of an
independent and free reason. Such autonomy is essential, and the great
medieval theologians affirmed it. Its error was that, by its positivism and
radical empiricism, the existing real was entirely severed from the fons
et origo of being itself.87 This is what de Lubac meant when he remarked
towards the end of his life that modernity will always know more, it will
always explain more, but it will never understand more, because it has
refused mystery.88 But it would be an unfortunate mistake to allow the
86

For a discussion of Balthasar on this point, see Foundations of Systematic Theology,
224–31.
87
Or, as Alvin Plantinga has recently argued, the Enlightenment’s error was its insistence
that revelation justify itself before the bar of reason. But one cannot give a non-circular
rational argument establishing that reason itself is reliable. Why, then, must the sources of religious belief justify themselves before the bar of rational intuition? See Where
the Conflict Really Lies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 48–9.
88
Henri de Lubac, A Theologian Speaks (Los Angeles: Twin Circle, 1985), 25. This publication is an English translation of an interview of de Lubac by Angelo Scola, which
first appeared in the Italian journal 30 Giorni (July 1985).

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Christian reaction to modernity’s errors to evacuate philosophy of its
proper autonomy and the natural visibility of truth that belongs to the
created estate.
Thesis Five: The Assimilation of “Spoils” from Every Source
Indicates the Necessity of Theological Pluralism
The capacious absorption of “spoils” means, as we have seen, that
the Church assimilates all human wisdom to her evangelical perspective. Precisely because the Church casts a wide net, this incorporative
action inexorably leads to theological pluralism. In the 1930s and 40s,
the nouvelle théologie sought to overcome a conceptually univocal
neo-Scholasticism that had been hegemonic since Aeterni Patris (1879),
in order, thereby, to restore a broader assimilative imagination to theological reasoning. M.-D. Chenu and Henri Bouillard argued at length
for the pluralism characteristic of the earlier theological tradition, while
Yves Congar pointed to the unique witness of Eastern Christianity as
displaying authentic plurality at the very heart of the ancient Church.
Diversity and unity could not be placed at antipodes.89
Bouillard was attacked (and ultimately disciplined after Humani
Generis was published in 1950) for writing in 1944 that a simple study of
history shows that, over the course of time, the Church borrows various
philosophical concepts in order to express her faith. For example, when
speaking about grace and justification, the concepts used by the evangelists, by Augustine, by Aquinas, and by post-Tridentine theologians
differ significantly. But, Bouillard added, these varying formulations are
not incongruously diverse; they are united by a fundamental affirmation: We are justified by God’s grace in Jesus Christ, who empowers us to
live holy lives. Bouillard argued, in other words, that the Church main89

For Chenu, see Le Saulchoir: Une école de théologie (Kain-Lez-Tournai: Le Saulchoir,
1937). A 1985 reprint was issued by Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris. For Bouillard, Conversion et Grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin: Étude Historique (Paris: Aubier, 1944). For
Congar, After Nine Hundred Years (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). Also,
Diversity and Communion, trans. John Bowden (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1985). Of the many recent books on the nouvelle théologie, I have found
helpful Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to
Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Also, Boersma, “Nature and the
Supernatural in la nouvelle théologie: The Recovery of a Sacramental Mindset,” New
Blackfriars 93 (2012): 34–46.

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tains doctrinal unity in and through a variety of philosophical forms
and semantic lexica. The same is true of the term “transubstantiation.”
Catholicism did not always use the Aristotelian language of substance
and accident to explain the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
(and Eastern Christianity did not use these notions at all). Nor does
Catholicism require the language of hylomorphic theory (as used at the
fourteenth-century Council of Vienne) to elucidate the unity of the human person embedded in Christian anthropology. Newer philosophical
forms could and should be sought to mediate Christian teaching precisely because the Church of every epoch must express its faith in formulations that are intelligible. There exists, then, a continuing process
of re-conceptualization, which allows for authentic diversity even while
protecting the substantial identity of doctrine.90
Bouillard, with the nouvelle théologie generally, was urging theology
to widen its philosophical compass beyond the conceptual and lexical
monism of neo-Scholasticism in order to engage in a more robust dialogue with the existentialism, personalism, and phenomenology that
were sweeping European thought in the 40s. The markedly neo-Augustinian philosophy of Maurice Blondel was important to the nouveaux
théologiens, as was the invigorating dialogue with modern thought conducted by Joseph Maréchal. And there were pressing pastoral concerns
as well. When de Lubac published Catholicism in 1938 he was clearly uneasy that France was becoming increasingly Marxist and anti-religious.
One reason for this was that the Church’s scholastic-tinged formulations
failed to resonate with men and women of the day, while various political movements had appropriated the traditional Christian concepts of
brotherhood and the unity of humanity. So, when the series Sources chrétiennes was founded in 1943 to propagate the thought of early Christian
writers, and when Daniélou argued that neo-Scholasticism was largely
outdated, this was not a full-scale attack on Thomism but reflected a
marked desire to repristinate the faith, to restore its evangelical vigor by
widening the store of “spoils” beyond Thomas’s Aristotelianism.91 This is
90

I discuss Bouillard’s position at length, as well as the entire debate over the context/
content approach to pluralism, including the philosophical warrants necessary to
sustain it, and the objections lodged against it, in Foundations of Systematic Theology, 141–67.
91
See Jean Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse,” Études 249

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why de Lubac spoke of the need for contemporary styles in theology and
why he championed the ancient axiom “Diversi sed non adversi,” a maxim indicating that there can be diverse approaches to theological issues
without thereby sanctioning adversarial and incommensurable paths.92
Of course, the importance of authentic pluralism had been defended on several fronts. Gilson had shown, in his careful studies of Aquinas,
Bonaventure, and Scotus, that significant dimensions of plurality had
already existed in medieval philosophy, with very different theoretical
visions underlying a common faith. And Congar had vigorously argued
in 1937, in his ground-breaking Chrétiens désunis, that Christians often
affirmed the same mystery from different perspectives.93 Well before the
nouvelle théologie, one could find this same theme in the writings of Johann Evangelist Kuhn of Tübingen, who insisted that the Church’s faith
could never be “a monotone spiritless repetition of the same concepts
and expressions.” Kuhn argued, rather, that the Church’s preaching and
theology must be geistlich and zeitgemäß, speaking the ancient Christian
faith in the language of the times and making full use of the surrounding
culture.94 As is well known, the authentic theological plurality championed by Kuhn and the nouvelle théologie was explicitly confirmed at
Vatican II.95 In my judgment, the nouvelle théologie and Vatican II (as
(1946): 5–21. The first English translation of this article of which I am aware is
“The Present Orientations of Religious Thought,” Josephinum Journal of Theology
18 (2011): 51–62. For a compact treatment of the issues surrounding the nouvelle
théologie, see Brian Daley, “The Nouvelle Théologie and the Patristic Revival: Sources,
Symbols and the Science of Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7
(2005): 362–82.
92
See Henri de Lubac, “A propos de la formule: diversi, sed non adversi,” Recherches de
science religieuse 40 (1952): 27–40, and Hubert Silvestre, “Diversi sed non adversi,”
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 31 (1964): 124–32. I am grateful to
Marcus Plested for bringing de Lubac’s essay to my attention.
93
See Yves Congar, Divided Christendom (London: Centenary, 1939).
94
J.-E. Kuhn, Einleitung in die katholische Dogmatik, 2 vols. (Tübingen, 1846–47).
95
The most obvious official support for this position is found in the opening speech
of John XXIII (repeated in Gaudium et Spes §62), with its distinction between the
depositum fidei and the modus quo veritates enuntiantur, which led Yves Congar
to remark that these few words summarize the meaning of the entire council. See
Congar, A History of Theology, trans. Hunter Guthrie (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1968), 18–19. Giuseppe Alberigo has called this distinction one of the decisive motifs of the council. See “Facteurs de ‘Laïcité’ au Concile Vatican II,” Revue des sciences
religieuses 74 (2000): 211–25.

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well as Kuhn earlier) sanctioned what may be called “commensurable
pluralism,” meaning by this term that there exists a fundamental unity
of Christian doctrine (taking account of all the necessary qualifications,
e.g., the hierarchy of truths and theological notes), but that doctrine is
now expressed in a wide variety of concepts, forms, and lexica. History itself had witnessed to the fact that diversity and communion were
co-existing realities. The council intended to recover the traditional
theological appropriation of new philosophies, cultures, and languages,
all in service to authentic plurality.
This conciliar distinction between the meaning of a Christian doctrine and the formulation or concept through which it is expressed is
entirely traditional. Already in the early fifth century, Vincent of Lérins
was fully alive to this distinction, exhorting Christians, dicas nove non
dicas nova.96 John Damascene endorsed the same position in the eighth
century, as did Aquinas five centuries later.97 Such authentic pluralism,
of course, is never simply iterative repetition. A new concept or Denkstil
necessarily throws into relief unseen aspects of a doctrine’s truth, bringing forth perspectives and insights which may have been languishing
in obscurity (or adding a welcome and complementary supplement).
By admitting that the traditional affirmations of doctrine could be expressed in new philosophical and cultural forms, the council sought to
make the faith more intelligible to the times, to expose previously hidden dimensions of the mysteries of faith, to allow for legitimate doctrinal development, and, crucially, to acknowledge that the formulations
of Orthodox and Protestant Christians might differently, but complementarily, mediate the truth of Christian doctrine.
Of course, precisely how the identical meaning is preserved over
time and in new formulations requires nuance and sophistication.
96

Commonitorium, no. 22. Vincent argues that although the words homoousios and
Theotokos are not found in the earliest tradition, they perfectly express biblical faith.
Vincent sanctioned not only re-expression; he was an early and vigorous champion
of doctrinal development, eodem sensu eademque sententia.
97
See John of Damascus, On the Divine Images, trans. David Anderson (Crestwood,
NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 71. Gregory Nazianzen expresses the same
thought in the fourth century when he says that there exists “a great deal of diversity
inherent in names” for it is a matter of “meanings rather than words.” See Oration
31.24. For Aquinas, see Summa theologiae I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 1, where he argues that
new words are necessary to express the ancient faith.

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Rahner clearly recognized the difficulties attending this process, warning that “context” and “content” are not easily discernible or separable.98 At the same time, Rahner insisted that, even within the process
of re-conceptualization, one “must of course make simultaneously clear
that the sameness of dogma in the old sense is assured and the effort
to do this must not be regarded in principle as dubious, as a feeble and
cowardly compromise.”99 The underlying issue here is always the same:
How can there be a spectrum of new philosophical forms and concepts
which allow the Christian faith to speak robustly and vigorously in every age—the new wine of the Gospel always in fresh skins?
More recently, Fides et Ratio endorses philosophical pluralism at
great length, a pluralism that ineluctably leads to theological diversity.
The encyclical insists that the Church has no philosophy of her own,
relativizes St. Thomas (even if he remains a unique master), and calls
for a new philosophy which takes account of the entire prior tradition.
This emphasis on authentic pluralism was further strengthened in 2001
when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rehabilitated the
thought of Antonio Rosmini, acknowledging that his desire to surpass
neo-Scholastic language and concepts led to the illegitimate condemnation of theses drawn from his works.100
One significant fruit of theological reflection from Aeterni Patris in
1879, through the fin de siècle Modernist crisis, through the nouvelle
théologie, and down to Vatican II and afterwards, has been to show that
one need not be a neo-Thomist or neo-Scholastic to protect, explore,
or fruitfully develop the mysteries of faith. The truth of revelation is
dependent on neither conceptual nor cultural univocity. Each epoch
98

I outline Rahner’s cautious thought on the form-content distinction in Revelation
and Truth (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 1993), 49–55 and, more
briefly, in Foundations of Systematic Theology, 192–93. Rahner chided the CDF’s
1973 declaration, Mysterium Ecclesiae, for making things easy for itself with the
form/content distinction. Although Rahner himself used this approach, he was well
aware of the difficulties attending the facile invocation of it. See Rahner, “Mysterium
Ecclesiae” in Theological Investigations 17, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 139–55, at 151.
99
See Karl Rahner, “Yesterday’s History of Dogma and Theology for Tomorrow,” 13.
100
I have treated of the intricacies of the CDF’s statements about this case in “Rosmini,
Ratzinger, and and Kuhn: Observations on a Note by the Doctrinal Congregation,”
Theological Studies 64 (2003): 43–68.

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“performs” the truth of revelation in its own day, even while it is in doctrinal continuity with the Church of earlier centuries. Theology, then,
fruitfully explores and assimilates philosophy and every academic field
of inquiry, since penetrating reason can always further illuminate (and
creatively develop) the mysteries of faith.
Thesis Six: The Unique Role of Metaphysics (Commodiously
Understood) in Catholic Theology
Surely it smacks of a performative contradiction to insist that theology must be vigorously pluralistic, and then to contend for the essential
role of metaphysics—capaciously understood—in theological thinking.
Yet that is the argument offered here. For while theology must constantly incorporate fresh ideas, foster authentic diversity, and remain in lively
dialogue with an extensive variety of perspectives, metaphysics, broadly speaking, provides the essential theoretical spine, buttressing (in the
philosophical sphere) theology’s universal and trans-cultural claims.
Metaphysics under Assault
Although the Hellenization thesis extends to several forms of philosophy, it is metaphysics, in particular, that has been regarded as the
primary enemy of biblical teaching and so, of revelation itself. As we
have seen, the principle theological charge is that metaphysics is an alien
ideology, a pre-existing Procrustean bed which seeks to shape and mold
the Christian faith according to its own foreign and intrusive norms.
But metaphysics, of course, has been attacked on philosophical grounds
as well.
Louis Dupré has provided a useful typology for the assault. He notes
that the ancients were constructivists only to the extent that a pre-existing nature or essence could be further refined and cultivated. With
Descartes and Kant, however, there develops a gradual loss of the intelligibility mediated by the form-giving principles of kosmos and physis,
of the truth mediated by nature. The accent is placed, rather, on the subject’s own intense, form-shaping role; humanity itself, not an antecedent
cosmic structure, is the measure of all things. For post-Kantian voluntarism (including, one might add, postmodernity), nature—and, indeed,
any insistence on a discernible logos-structure of the world—gradually

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becomes the enemy of emancipatory freedom, since it tries to shape the
subject according to apriori norms. But only the autonomous person in
his or her sovereign liberty is the proper locus of meaning and truth.101
By the time one reaches Nietzsche, meaning is entirely and without remainder bestowed by human subjectivity. In his parable, “How
the World Became a Fable,” Nietzsche says that the “true world” was
first available to the wise man, the follower of Plato. Later, the truth was
promised to the Christian, the one who was committed to a virtuous
life. In Kantian philosophy, the true world became unknowable, with
reality itself (the noumenon) escaping humanity’s cognitive grasp. Today, Nietzsche adds, positing an “objective world” no longer makes any
sense; it is entirely superfluous. In other words, the “world” does not
possess a pre-existing ratio, nor do human beings have a given nature or
essence; intelligibility is created by every person who has the fortitude to
establish his or her own self-propelled meaning (the very definition of
the Übermensch).102
This attack on the metaphysical structure of reality is also exemplified by Wilhelm Dilthey, an early champion of the antipodean Hebraic-Hellenic typology. In his Introduction to the Human Sciences of 1833,
Dilthey argues that St. Augustine was an early opponent of the truth
mediated by physis and kosmos, recognizing that the interior life of the
spirit is the measure of all things. Crucial here is Augustine’s famous cry,
“I wish to know God and the soul.” When Reason asks, “nothing more?”
Augustine responds, “nothing at all.”103 Dilthey takes this dramatic plea
of the Augustinian soul as the evaporation of cosmology, the dissolution
of metaphysical objectivity. The great theologian presciently recognized
that the inner dynamics of the spirit, not an antecedent “nature,” is the
primary purveyor of meaning.104
Dilthey concedes that Augustine’s work remains scarred by classical
101

Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin,
1990), 50–51.
103
Augustine, Soliloquies, Book, I, 7.
104
Wilhelm Dilthey, Introduction to the Human Sciences, trans. Ramon J. Betanzos (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 231–39. Dilthey insists that Augustine’s
profound concern for self-consciousness “swallows up all interest in studying the
cosmos” (234).
102

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thought. Because the Church was the only remaining power after the fall
of the Western Empire, the responsibility for maintaining civilization
fell to Christianity, and this entailed the adoption of Greek philosophy.
To some extent, then, Augustine’s thought remains bound by the fetters of (neo-Platonic) antiquity. But the essential turn has already been
made. There is a palpable move away from Hellenic objectivity (the cosmic-metaphysical path) toward an accent on subjectivity and interiority.
Augustine’s interest in the soul’s relationship to God gradually dissolves
and corrodes the “metaphysical” dimension of Greek thought.
One may see the influence of Dilthey on the young Heidegger, who,
in his early works, adopts this oppositional Hebraic-Hellenic narrative.105 For example, in The Phenomenology of Religious Life (lectures delivered from 1918 to 1921), Heidegger argues that St. Paul’s apocalyptic
attitude is gradually buried under the weight of Hellenic thinking. In
several New Testament passages, such as Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, there exists a tangible sense of uncertainty and judgment, of
instability and eschatological expectation. But this biblical attitude is
gradually crushed by the fixed thought of metaphysics; a hardened philosophical ousia slowly betrays the primordial experience of the early
Church. Indeed, the original Pauline sense of foreboding is no longer
grasped in late antiquity and the Middle Ages following the penetration
of Greek thought into Christian faith. And so, Heidegger concludes,
“already at the end of the first century, the eschatological was covered
up in Christianity. In later times one misjudged all original Christian
concepts. In today’s philosophy, too, the Christian concept-formations
are hidden behind a Greek view.”106 Theology has turned away from the
genuinely biblical attitude toward the fixed, the objective, the always-already at hand (Vorhandenheit) and, thus, toward the “onto-theological.”
When Heidegger publishes Being and Time a few years later, the explicitly biblical language disappears, although the fundamental themes
remain the same. The entire post-Socratic tradition has been a “forget105

The early Heidegger’s religious writing is discussed at length by Gianni Vattimo
in After Christianity, trans. Luca D’Isanto (New York: Columbia University Press,
2001), 123–37.
106
Martin Heidegger, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 67–
82, at 73.

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ting of being.” The philosophical tradition has been perniciously saturated with ousia, energeia, actualitas, essentia. But these philosophies
of substance have led only to the objectification and reification of being, confusing one episodic “appearance” of being in history (Hellenic
thought) with Being itself. Being is now conceived of as that which is
substantial and ready-to-hand, rather than as irruptive, epiphanic, and
evanescent.
So, Heidegger famously argues, to speak of God in terms of causality, or as Ipsum Esse Subsistens, is to name a god before whom one cannot
dance and sing, a god of the philosophers, but not God himself. This is
why theology can never be a founding and primordial discipline— for
it does not and cannot think Being. It thinks within particular, epochal,
ontic, and regionalized forms of being.107 Philosophy alone is the true
ontological discipline, thinking the very fountainhead of Being, the very
source of the Being/beings distinction. Heidegger’s conclusion is that
theology is not truly thought; it is inattentive to the primordial nature
of Being, to its transitory and evanescent disclosures in time. Heidegger
comes close, then, to the position espoused by Leo Strauss: theology is
simply another “cave” from which true thinking must emerge.
Heideggerian anti-metaphysical thought lives on in contemporary
postmodern thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo and John Caputo. Vattimo, for example, has long argued that philosophical interest in being,
in the ontos on, has waned over time. Indeed, Vattimo’s “weak thought”
(his signature idea) holds that assertive claims about the “logos-structure” of reality, or the “universal natural law,” are no longer tenable. In
fact, the history of Western philosophy (which comes to fruition in Nietzsche and Heidegger) may be read precisely as the progressive dissolution of objectivity and metaphysical assertion. Virtually every educated
person now concedes that there exists no grasp of “truth” that is not
already deeply encased within historically bound predispositions. It is
precisely this lesson that accounts for the contemporary ascendency of
hermeneutical thought which adopts as its slogan, “it’s interpretation all
the way down.” By de-constructing the alleged “structure” of the world,
by exposing the historicity and socio-cultural horizons attending all
107

For Heidegger’s remarks on theology as a regional discipline, see The Piety of Thinking, trans. J. Hart and J. Maraldo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 6.

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thought, hermeneutics has been unveiled as a truly emancipatory philosophy, one that does not force us to conform to a pre-existing “nature”
or definitive cosmic ratio.108
What survives in the educated Christian West, then, is not veritas, with its aggressively metaphysical implications, but caritas (read
as tolerance of all non-violent viewpoints). It is precisely “tolerance”
which describes how the Christian tradition has been “received” by the
great majority of Western Europeans and significant numbers of North
Americans. This is why Vattimo can say, much like Dilthey, “Christianity is a stimulus, a message that sets in motion a tradition of thought that
will eventually realize its freedom from metaphysics.”109 Properly understood (as caritas/tolerance), Christianity encourages us to perceive
humanity as an historical project with the ability and freedom to create
its own norms. With the demise of metaphysics we have learned that
so-called “objective and universal structures” are mere artifice; rather,
“postmodern nihilism constitutes the actual truth of Christianity.”110
One sees in Vattimo’s work (and Caputo’s) an adoption of the traditional Hellenization thesis, with metaphysics, in particular, detrimentally infecting enlightened Christianity.111 The danger lurking in
these thinkers, however, is that one kind of philosophy (the Heideggerian-Derridean approach), accenting the provisional event of Being, the
Ereignis, the Impossible, is simply exchanged for another. Since metaphysics must be eschewed as ontologically inappropriate, faith’s creedal
108

I have examined Vattimo’s thought at length in Vattimo and Theology (London: T & T
Clark, 2009). On the demise of metaphysics, see also the suggestive study of Santiago
Zabala, The Remains of Being (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). For Vattimo’s most recent comments on metaphysical dissolution, see A Farewell to Truth,
trans. William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
109
Gianni Vattimo, “Toward a Nonreligious Christianity,” in John Caputo and Gianni
Vattimo, After the Death of God, ed. Jeffrey W. Robbins (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 35.
110
Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo, The Future of Religion, ed. Santiago Zabala (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 47.
111
Without minimizing differences between them, I regard Caputo’s thought as similar to Vattimo’s insofar as both thinkers urge theology to abandon its metaphysical
captivity. Caputo counsels theology to temper its Hellenistic traditions by fostering
Israel’s prophetic spirit. See John D. Caputo, “Philosophy and Prophetic Postmodernism: Toward a Catholic Postmodernity,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 74 (2000): 549–67.

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claims should now be understood as epiphanic and transitory rather
than as definitive and lasting. In making this move, however, doctrinal
teachings are stripped of their cognitive yield, making them fallibilistic at best and nihilistic at worst. Does such an exchange truly “free”
theology from philosophy? Or is theology now simply enslaved by new
masters?
As Caputo says, theology is a “Jewgreek” enterprise—and so it has
always been.112 But isn’t the Vattimo-Caputo proposal merely an exchange of metaphysical for non-metaphysical “Greeks”? And are the
non-metaphysical Greeks truly more congruent with biblical claims?
Further, does not this postmodern dissolution of historical Christianity into caritas simply duplicate the quintessential move of modernity,
defanging religion by dissolving its “hard” cognitive claims, thereby allowing religion to play a public, societal role only when it is jejune and
toothless? The truly crucial question is this: which Greeks—that is to
say, which philosophical form—best serves the revelatory demands of
the God of Israel who has come near to us in Jesus of Nazareth?
Metaphysics (Commodiously Understood) Is Necessary for Theology
It is my contention that some capacious metaphysical approach is
essential to Catholic theology for the following reasons: (1) Metaphysics points to the participationist structure of reality whereby the mind
ascends, by way of the theater of the world and the intelligibility of the
existing real, to the fons et origo of being and truth; (2) metaphysics, in
the form of the analogia entis, philosophically grounds the predication
of names to God. Without the structure of analogy, all divine attribution is either reduced to metaphor or simply asserted as true absent the
further dimension of intelligibility (precisely how may human concepts
denominate the Infinite) that analogical language (and its ontological
underpinning, the analogy of being) provides; and (3) metaphysics al112

Caputo borrows the expression “Jewgreek” from Jacques Derrida, who in turn borrowed it from James Joyce. The term accents the fact that the Christian tradition is
“miscegenated,” always a combination of biblical (Hebraic) and philosophical (Hellenic) thinking. See John Caputo, Demythologizing Heidegger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 6–8. Derrida explains the term in his essay “Violence
and Metaphysics” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1978), 79–153, at 153 and at 320n92.

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lows for an anthropology that establishes an eidetically discerned human nature or form which helps to explain why stable textual meanings
(such as those found in the Nicene Creed) may be reliably transmitted
over millennia and are not swallowed up in socio-cultural-linguistic
contingency.113
Catholicism has traditionally taught, and Dei Verbum reaffirms,
that in its essential dimensions revelation is universally, perpetually, and
normatively true. As Vatican II says, “God has seen to it that what he has
revealed will abide perpetually in its full integrity and be handed on to
all generations” (Dei Verbum §7, emphasis added). The substance of this
conciliar citation could be easily duplicated, but the point is transparent:
the Church’s foundational teachings are trustworthy and authoritative
across generations and cultures. As the International Theological Commission has stated in one of its most insightful documents, “the truth of
revelation . . . is universally valid and unchangeable in substance.”114 The
point of these statements is that if revelation is truly God’s self-manifestation, then it entails an irreducibly cognitive dimension that is perpetual and irreversible.
It is no surprise, then, that in Fides et Ratio, John Paul II states that
a “theology which shuns a metaphysical approach is unsuited for mediating divine revelation” (no. 83). Why is this the case? Because theology
requires modes of reasoning that can protect and substantiate, in the
philosophical order, the Church’s fundamental doctrinal convictions.
Christian truth claims, as found for example in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed, are intended to be trans-cultural and trans-generational.
While re-appropriated and re-conceptualized in every generation, the
Church’s teachings perdure from epoch to epoch in their fundamental
meaning. But such a belief would make no sense whatsoever if one could
not speak intelligibly about the very possibility of substantially enduring
113

I can mention these points only briefly here. I have defended them at greater length
in Foundations of Systematic Theology.
114
International Theological Commission, “On the Interpretation of Dogmas,” Origins
20 (May 17, 1990): 9. Catholicism, of course, is not alone in this belief. Orthodoxy
holds the same for the creeds and councils of the early Church and, as Geoffrey
Wainwright has said, “For classical Protestants, at least, the Apostles’ Creed and the
conciliar Creed of Nicea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon . . . have always been taken
as the irreversible deliverances and continuing guides of the Tradition.” See Wainwright, Is the Reformation Over? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2000), 39.

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meanings over time. This is why Fides et Ratio states that “philosophy
should confirm the intelligibility and universal truth of its [theology’s]
claims” (§77). Absent such a “confirming” philosophy (that is to say, absent the ability to defend philosophically the very possibility of the universally true, and the very possibility of meaning invariance), Christian
doctrine would rightly be perceived as nothing more than authoritarian,
or even irrational, assertion. But philosophies with a metaphysical range
consistently protect the universality of truth and the stable identity of
meaning in and through vast socio-cultural-linguistic diversity.
One must immediately add that this defense of the metaphysical
dimension of thought is not intended to tie theology to the thirteenth
century or to some constricted understanding of the philosophia perennis. Doing so would be to ignore the insights of Vatican II about authentic plurality. This is why one more cogently speaks of philosophies with
metaphysical horizons rather than simply metaphysics sensu stricto.
Several philosophies are protective of such dimensions without being
neo-Scholastic in kind, as the case of Rosmini (noted above) clearly indicates.
Further, one traditional and obvious defect of metaphysics was that
it failed to take adequate account of the irrepressible horizons of historicity and subjectivity.115 It was just this failure that led Rahner and
Lonergan to enter into an animated philosophical dialogue with modernity. It is why Rahner concluded, “I also believe that one can say that
neo-scholastic theology and philosophy, for all their accomplishments,
are quite passé today.”116 But recognizing the defects of neo-Scholasticism led neither Rahner nor Lonergan to an abandonment of metaphysics, but to its rediscovery in a transcendental (and to some extent
hermeneutical) key. Revealingly, Rahner found Heidegger’s thought
deficient and continued to defend metaphysical themes, including the
universal anthropology developed in his earlier philosophical works.117
115

I have criticized Fides et Ratio because, while calling for capacious philosophical
options, it largely ignores approaches which, although broadly committed to metaphysical thought, seriously engage historicity and human subjectivity. See Thomas
G. Guarino, “Fides et Ratio: Theology and Contemporary Pluralism,” Theological
Studies 62 (2001): 675–700.
116
Karl Rahner, I Remember, trans. Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 88.
117
Rahner states: “Heidegger himself was, of course, convinced that after the pre-Socra-

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Both Rahner and Lonergan insisted that historicity and metaphysics
need not be enemies.
For all theologians, the fundamental issue is this: Which philosophies can sustain faith’s claims? If Catholicism insists (as it surely does,
with all the necessary qualifications) that certain of its teachings are universally true, substantially identical over generations and cultures, then
which philosophies can support this bold assertion? It is just here that
narratives with metaphysical dimensions seem particularly congruent
with the Catholic faith.
Of course, the objections to metaphysics must be taken seriously.
Above all, there exists the concern that metaphysically inspired philosophies will “freeze the flux,” marginalizing the profound effects of historicity and cultural specificity, and thereby dismissing as extraneous
and accidental the political and social interests integral to thought. Is it
not possible that metaphysics, which claims to express the foundational principles of reality, will end by defending structures reflective not
of truth but of shopworn ideology? Given this possibility, prominent
Catholic thinkers have warned about the dangers of metaphysical approaches. One need only witness Jean-Luc Marion’s Heideggerian concern that a metaphysics of presence too easily treats God as a reified
object, thereby missing the gratuitous phenomenon of revelation itself.
David Tracy, for his part, has developed the notion of “fragment” as a
theological form resistant to rationalist totality, seeking in apocalyptic
and eschatological models elements assuring that a steely metaphysics
will not simply bury the “Other” under a reductive system.118
It is important, then, not only to reiterate the necessity of authentic
pluralism, but to insist that theological reflection must incorporate all
that has been learned from phenomenology, from analytical and evolutionary thought, and from various modes of liberative and emancipatory reasoning. If theology must ultimately eschew philosophies such
as Heidegger’s, it is compelled to admit that hermeneutics in general
has forced the discipline to think, and profoundly so, about human emtics . . . a philosophy was being carried out that was based on an ultimate misunderstanding of being. I cannot share this opinion. I consider it false.” See Karl Rahner in
Dialogue, trans. ed. Harvey Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 311.
118
See David Tracy, “Fragments,” in God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, ed. John Caputo
and Michael Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 170–84.

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beddedness in history, culture, language, and tradition. Together with
postmodernism, hermeneutical philosophy has rightly challenged the
ahistorical and wooden conceptualism that was often a hallmark of
metaphysics.
However, if theology were to bypass metaphysical thinking entirely,
it would have only two options: to assert Church teaching fideistically,
without finding theoretical support in the natural, philosophical order
for the universality and perpetuity of Christian doctrine or, conversely,
to concede that Church teachings are, indeed, circumscribed in scope
by the deeply incommensurable layers of socio-cultural-linguistic diversity. In this latter option, theology would need to jettison its defense
of the universality, material identity, and relative meaning-invariance of
Christian doctrine over time. Catholicism has rightly avoided this path,
since embracing it would entail an abandonment of doctrine’s universal
and perpetual truth claims (and, necessarily, would lead to a complete
reinterpretation of the very notion of revelation as locutio Dei). One
may conclude, then, that non-metaphysical approaches, while ultimately unacceptable, make their own contributions, challenging theology to
examine its philosophical convictions so that the decided effects of historicity and contingency are neither ignored nor diminished.119
Conclusion
The Catholic theological tradition places a strong accent on the assimilation of every mode of thought, even those which are seemingly
opposed to the Christian faith. This approach is essential because there
can exist no fundamental opposition between Athens and Jerusalem,
between logos and pistos. But the process of thoughtful appropriation is
neither quick nor easy. The theological incorporation of classical antiquity was a journey of some twelve centuries, from the time of the earliest
Fathers right up until Aquinas. With Vatican II, the Church began the
official sifting and absorption of the fruits of the Enlightenment, a reception that will likely continue for decades and perhaps centuries.
119

This means that theology must take account not only of Heidegger’s primordial notion of historicity, but also of Wittgenstein’s cultural-linguistic web of experience, of
Gadamer’s phronesis-based rationality, and of Habermas’s neo-pragmatic communicative theory, all of which provide salutary cautions to metaphysical thinking.

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This process of assimilation (and purification) must be bold and
undaunting. Echoing de Lubac’s plea to utilize the thought even of
Marx and Nietzsche, Fides et Ratio encourages theology to enter into
“demanding critical dialogue with both contemporary philosophical
thought and with the philosophical tradition in all its aspects, whether
consonant with the word of God or not” (§105). This openness to every
idea, no matter its provenance, is also enunciated in John Paul II’s statement on the Galileo case: “It is a duty for theologians to keep themselves
regularly informed of scientific advances in order to examine, if such be
necessary, whether or not there are reasons for taking them into account
in their reflection or for introducing changes in their teaching.”120 Many
of these themes are also found in John Paul’s 1988 letter to George V.
Coyne, S.J. While lauding those theologians who utilized “spoils” from
Aristotle, the Pope says: “Contemporary developments in science challenge theology far more deeply than did the introduction of Aristotle
into Western Europe in the thirteenth century. Yet these developments
also offer to theology a potentially important resource. . . . Can we not
hope that the sciences of today, along with all forms of human knowing,
may invigorate and inform those parts of the theological enterprise that
bear on the relation of nature, humanity and God?”121
The vital and vigorous appropriation of new ideas, then, is a living one in Catholic theology, encouraged by the popes themselves. As
earlier noted, however, such absorption rarely occurs without a certain
amount of tension and friction. One need only recall the thirteenth-century University of Paris to see this procedure, with all its attendant difficulties, at work. More recently, Rahner has observed that “friction and
struggle” is an integral part of the process when deciding if some aspect
of Christian teaching is essential, or is simply part of an historically conditioned model (using the example of original sin and monogenism). In
service to continuing assimilation, theologians have offered speculative
works in liberation theology, feminist hermeneutics, evolutionary biology, postmodernity—and so the list continues.
120

St. Pope John Paul II, “Lessons of the Galileo Case,” Origins 22 (November 12, 1992):
372. Needless to add, what the Pope says about the physical sciences is true, mutatis
mutandis, for the human sciences as well.
121
“Letter to George V. Coyne, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory,” Acta apostolicae sedis 81 (1989): 274–83, at 282.

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The Catholic Church must encourage this exercise of critical reasoning, recognizing the essential role of the schola theologorum in understanding and architectonically developing the Christian faith. One
profitably turns here to John Henry Newman, who acknowledged at
great length the important role of theological speculation.122 Newman
was well aware that a too-quick resolution of knotty issues illegitimately
foreshortens the essential process of theological debate. Judging whether or not some position is harmoniously congruent with the Gospel often takes decades of thought, debate, and reflection. The authority of
the Roman See is properly invoked, Newman believed, at the end of a
protracted process, after an idea had been debated by a wide variety of
theological courts.123 For this very reason he insists that the theologian
needs liberty; otherwise, “he would be fighting, as the Persian soldiers,
under the lash, and the freedom of his intellect might truly be said to be
beaten out of him. But this has not been so . . . Zosimus treated Pelagius
and Coelestius with extreme forbearance; St. Gregory VII was equally
indulgent with Berengarius; by reason of the very power of the popes
they have commonly been slow and moderate in their use of it.”124 Extended theological reflection is essential precisely because authentic development requires “the slow, painful, anxious taking up of new truths
into an existing body of belief.”125
The contemporary physicist Peter E. Hodgson recently echoed just
this point when discussing the difficulties that Galileo faced: “The consultors were theologians trained in the theology of Aquinas that was
thoroughly integrated with Aristotelian cosmology. The synthesis of
Aristotle had stood for two millennia . . . and was congruent with Catholic beliefs. . . . To them [theologians] it was simply inconceivable that
Galileo, simply by looking through a little tube with lenses at either end,

122

In his important preface of 1877, Newman famously says, “Theology is the fundamental and regulating principle of the whole Church system.” See Preface, The Via
Media of the Anglican Church, vol. 1, third edition (London: Longmans, Green, and
Co., 1901), xlvii.
123
Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), 267.
Originally published in 1864, a new edition appeared the following year. See also,
Via Media, xlvii.
124
Newman, Apologia, 267–68.
125
Newman, Development of Christian Doctrine, 366.

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Thomas G. Guarino

could overthrow this majestic synthesis. . . . It did not take them long to
decide that Galileo’s views were absurd and indeed heretical.”126
Hodgson’s point, like Newman’s and Rahner’s before him, is that
the assimilation of new ideas is never easy, particularly when a specific
paradigm or model has been in long use in the Church. While the magisterium has been entrusted with making the ultimate decision about
the successful absorption of philosophy and the disciplines, it must extend due freedom to theologians as well. And, of course, the magisterium speaks with varying levels of authority, so the judgments rendered,
while authentic, are themselves often contingent and provisional rather
than final and determinative.
Deep within the heart of Catholicism is the recognition that faith
and reason, theology and the disciplines, pistos and logos, are one reality, reflective of the supernatural order instituted by the Creator. It is
precisely through the incorporation (and purification) of new insights
in philosophy, the sciences, and other fields that the mysterium fidei is
more fully penetrated and architectonic doctrinal development properly occurs. It is in theology’s unending assimilation and transformation
of human wisdom, with every thought taken captive to Jesus Christ,
that “the Church, through the unrolling centuries, continuously tends
toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God come to fulN&V
fillment in her” (Dei Verbum §8).

126

Peter E. Hodgson, “Galileo the Theologian,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and
Culture 8 (2005): 28–51, at 42–3.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 395-413

395

Obedience Religious, Christological, and Trinitarian
Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

Saint Meinrad School of Theology
St. Meinrad, IN

THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST u nto death to which St. Paul refers

in his letter to the Philippians (2:8), an obedience promised in the garden of Gethsemane (Mk 14:32–36) and subsequently enacted at Calvary, is for all Christians the model of faithful hearkening to the word
of God both in general and in particular as directing each Christian’s
share in the mission of Christ. It has received special attention, moreover, in the traditions of monks and other vowed religious.1 Christ in
his obedience unto death is the model of monastic obedience according
to the Rule of St. Benedict as, say, of the obedience of the members of
the Society of Jesus.2 In the twentieth century, this same obedience of
Christ is thought to tell us something of the relations within the Trinity
of the Son to the Father. For theologians like Karl Barth and Hans Urs
von Balthasar, the obedience of the incarnate Son is an economic rendering of an eternal obedience to his Father before the foundation of
the world.3 To be sure, there are analogical differences to point out, but
1

See for example John Cassian, Conference 19 of Abbot John on the end of monastic life, where in chapter six the excellence of the cenobitic life is grounded in the
obedience the monk gives to his abbot, since in this way he imitates the obedience
of Christ according to Philippians 2:8, in John Cassian: The Conferences, vol. 57,
Ancient Christian Writers, trans. and annotated Boniface Ramsey, O.P. (New York:
Newman Press, 1997).
2
See section II of this essay, below.
3
For an intra-divine or immanent humility and obedience of the Son, see preeminently Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956), sec-

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Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

they are only analogical, and if these theologians are right, then to say
of a monk that he is obedient to his abbot, of Christ the man that he is
obedient in the garden, and of the eternal Son that he is obedient to his
Father is not to trade on equivocal meanings for “obedience.” On this
view, the obedience of religious life is not only an imitatio Christi, but
just as directly an imitation of the filial relation of the Son to the Father.
This view seems both to increase our wonder at the unfathomable riches
of intra-Trinitarian life, as well as to enhance the dignity with which we
should behold religious obedience, as indeed the obedience of all the
baptized to whatever master, worldly or Christian, is placed over us (Col
3:22–23; Lk 10:16). But there are difficulties.
In what follows, I first examine a prima facie case for saying that the
obedience of Christ has an eternal exemplar in the Trinity. There follows
an examination of a very small part of the rich material on religious
obedience, its nature and conditions. Last, I come back to Christ’s own
obedience, considered economically and theologically.
I. The Obedience of Christ and the Receptivity of the Word
Michael Waldstein has recently argued for a divine obedience within the Trinity, an obedience to be recognized in John’s Gospel and to
which he leads us by proceeding just one step further than St. Thomas
takes us in his commentary on John.4
tion 59, esp. 192–3, 200–4, 209–10. For Hans Urs von Balthasar’s appropriation of
Barth on this point, see Mysterium Paschale (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990), 79–83,
and Theodrama, vol. 5 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 236–9. For his appropriation of Adrienne von Speyr’s very lively if not tritheistic Trinitarian speculations,
see Theodrama, vol. 5, 506–21. Places asserting intra-Trinitarian obedience include
The Glory of the Lord, vol. 7 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 211–18 (with Barth
again), 231, 247–8, and Theo-Logic, vol. 3 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 177–84.
Among the many others beholden to Barth for this teaching, see also Jürgen
Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 202–7, 240–7. For
contemporary discussion of Barth on this issue, see Bruce McCormack, “Divine Impassibility or Simply Divine Constancy? Implications of Karl Barth’s Later Christology for Debates over Impassibility,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human
Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2009), 150–86, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “Intra-Trinitarian Obedience and Nicene-Chalcedonian Christology,” Nova et Vetera (English) 6 (2008):
377–402.
4
Michael Waldstein, “The Analogy of Mission and Obedience: A Central Point in the
Relation between Theologia and Oikonomia in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary

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397

Waldstein admirably highlights the importance of the obedience of
Christ in John. There are not only the passages where Jesus speaks expressly of the command he has received from his Father (12:49, 14:31,
15:10), but the passages about not doing his own will but the Father’s
(5:30, 6:38), of doing only what he sees the Father doing (5:19), of speaking what he hears from the Father (15:15), of being sent by the Father
(8:18, 42; 17:8)—all this moves in the orbit of “obedience.”5
St. Thomas, however, expressly confines the imputation of obedience in Christ to his humanity: in his human will, Jesus “does as the
Father has commanded him” (14:31); he “keeps his Father’s commandments” (15:10). In other words, as a man, through his humanity and
human will, he obeys his Father.
When St. Thomas treats the virtue of obedience in the Summa, its
specifying object is delimited as the command of a superior.6 To command is to move another by one’s own reason and will.7 Correlatively,
to obey is to be moved through one’s own reason and will by the reason
and will of a superior. The situation of obedience evidently supposes two
wills for St. Thomas. Christ can be obedient only in virtue of his second,
assumed, human will, and the commentary on John moves within this
understanding of things.
The Summa recognizes the key role of Christ’s human obedience in
effecting our salvation,8 and this, too, is to be found in the commentary
on John. So, at 14:31:
“And just as the Father has given me a commandment, so do I
act”: which is according as the Father moves him to bear death
by obedience, which arises from love. However, the Father gave
this commandment not to the Son of God, who, since he is the
Word, is also the commandment of the Father, but he gave it to
the Son of man, insofar as he inspired his soul with what is necon John,” in Reading John with St. Thomas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 92–112.
5
Ibid., 99–100.
6
Summa theologiae II-II, q. 104, a. 2.
7
Ibid., a. 1.
8
ST III, q. 47, a. 2.

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Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

essary for human salvation. . . . And that the world might know
this, he says “Arise . . . and let us go” to the place where I will be
handed over, so that you may see that it is not from necessity,
but from charity and obedience that I die.9
This obedience of Christ is a created, human obedience, just as the charity that moves it is a created participation in the love of God.
In the above citation, Christ’s human soul (and will) is given a
commandment as from another will. As divine, however, Christ is the
commandment of God. This is important for Waldstein’s case. Even as
divine, Christ can be said to receive commandments, all of which are
contained in the divine Word as proceeding from the Father. So at 12:49,
“The Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to
say and what to speak”:
All the divine commandments are in the mind of the Father,
since these commandments are nothing but the reasons of
things to be done. Therefore, just as the reasons of all creatures
that proceed from God are in the mind of the Father, reasons
that we call ideas, so also the reasons of all the things we are
to do are also there. Therefore, just as the reasons of all things
come from the Father into the Son, who is the wisdom of the
Father, so also do the reasons of all things to be done. Thus
therefore the Son says, “But the Father who sent me, he gave
me, insofar as I am God, a ‘commandment,’ which is to say that
the Father has communicated it by an eternal generation, both
‘what to say’ interiorly and ‘what to speak’ exteriorly.”10
At St. Thomas’s commentary at 5:30, moreover, we come very close indeed to imputing a divine obedience to the pre-existent Son. “As I hear,
I judge,” the Lord says, “and my judgment is just, because I seek not my
own will, but the will of him who sent me.” “But does not the same will
belong to Father and Son?” St. Thomas asks. He answers:
9

St. Thomas, Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura, 5th ed., revised, ed. Raphael Cai,
O.P. (Rome: Marietti, 1952), no. 1976, my translation.
10
Ibid., no. 1723; my translation.

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399

It must be said that indeed the same will belongs to both; but
still, the Father does not have his will from another, while the
Son does have it from another, namely from the Father. Thus
therefore the Son fulfills his will as the will of another, that is
as having it from another; but the Father fulfills it as his own,
that is, as not having it from another: and therefore he says, “I
do not seek my own will,” which would belong to me originally
from myself, but what is mine is from another, namely from the
Father.11
This is close, but not on the money. St. Thomas says the Son fulfills his
own will as the will of another, not that he fulfills the Father’s will as
another will. Thus, there is no intra-divine obedience asserted here, although for Waldstein it seems to hover in the wings.
Waldstein’s one further step beyond the text of St. Thomas is to
bring it on stage and say that, since the Son loves the Father even as
the Father loves him, this return of love, relative to the commandments
received in his generation, enables us to speak of an obedience of the
Son to the Father before the creation of the world.12 For if there is but
one will in God, it is nonetheless possessed according to the personal
modes of Father, Son, and Spirit.13 The Father possesses it originatively,
and is it; but this same will is and is possessed by the Son only as
something received. If the personal ratification of a received will counts
as obedience, then the Son is obedient not only in his human nature but
also in his divine nature, as well.
This position would moreover seem to be supported by the
recognition that the persons of the Trinity exercise a kind of piety,
honor, and reverence with regard to each other, a position that stretches
from the middle ages through Cardinal Bérulle to Matthias Scheeben,
and which Jared Staudt has recently brought to light.14 Thomas himself

11

Ibid., no. 798.
Waldstein, “Analogy of Mission and Obedience,” 105–6.
13
See Gilles Emery, O.P., “The Personal Mode of Trinitarian Action in St. Thomas
Aquinas,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 31–77.
14
Jared Staudt, “Did Christ Worship the Trinity?” The Thomist 76 (2012): 233–72, at
263–66.
12

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Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

knew of the imputation of filial piety to the Son within the Godhead, as
Waldstein is aware.15 To be sure, it is typical of sons to obey their fathers.
So it is perhaps easier that we would think to line St. Thomas up
with Barth and Balthasar. Still, there is an important objection. Must
not “obedience” be merely metaphorically said here, in that obedience
properly speaking supposes two wills, as St. Thomas seems to suppose
in his comment on John 5:30? Every time we speak of the obedience of
angels or men, we envision two wills belonging to two supposits, two
hypostases of an intellectual or rational nature, two persons.16 Waldstein
counters with the familial model of the Trinity employed by Pope John
Paul II, according to which obedience will find a place in the Trinity
even as in the family.17 Further, he urges the preeminence of the littera
of John over Thomas’s psychological account of the Trinity. According
to the latter, the Word hears the commandments in his very procession
from the Father. But according to the former, John imputes obedience to
Christ without difference or discrimination of natures.18
Directly to the objection that obedience supposes two wills,
Waldstein answers simply and abruptly that it does not. “It is not true
that what is needed for obedience is two wills. . . . What is needed for
obedience is a distinction of persons, and, on the one hand, a command,
and on the other consent.”19 Command and consent so distinguished
seem to imply two wills and not just one. But I let that pass. What is
more foundational in thinking clearly about intra-Trinitarian obedience
is to think about the nature of obedience itself.
II. Perfect Obedience in the Ignatian Tradition
For St. Thomas, obedience pertains to those virtues directed to other persons,20 and in this way Waldstein’s notion of intra-divine obedience is upheld. But further, obedience is a part of observance (observantia),21 and observance a potential part of justice. Observance falls short
15

Waldstein, “Analogy of Mission and Obedience,” 104; see ST I, q. 42, a. 4, ad 1.
Ibid., 106.
17
Ibid., 107.
18
Ibid., 107–8.
19
Ibid., 108.
20
ST II-II, q. 80, a. 1.
21
ST II-II, q. 103, intro.
16

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401

of the perfection of justice and is in that way a potential part because it
does not fully return what is due the other person in question. 22 On this
account, Thomas’s understanding would remove observance and obedience from intra-Trinitarian relations, where the Son’s return to the
Father is, presumably, perfect. As we have noted, obedience bears on the
command of the superior.23 It proceeds from reverence for one’s parents
and so pertains to piety; also, it proceeds from reverence for God, and so
pertains to religion, too.24 It is better than sacrifice because it renders to
God what is most precious, our will.25 In both cases of piety and religion,
it is easy to see why obedience is treated of in the potential parts of justice: we never and cannot repay to our parents, or to God, what is their
due in strict justice, but the least we owe them is to be moved by their
reason and will. As noted, this argues the impossibility of verifying an
intra-divine obedience. But there is yet another way to illumine things.
It is when we consider obedience as a religious act that its incommensurability with divine realities becomes most apparent. Obedience
to abbot or religious superior is, of course, something vowed by the religious, and St. Thomas notes the appropriateness of this promise, in
that those entering religion must follow the directives of the superior
in order to attain to the end of the religious state.26 In the first place, the
end of religious life is the imitation of Christ, who, Thomas notes, was
obedient unto death (in the sed contra, significantly). But also, the supposition is that the novice does not know, and the superior does know,
how to attain this end.
Those who are being instructed or exercised in order to attain a
certain end must needs follow the directions of someone under
whose control they are instructed or exercised.27
The disproportion of knowledge is a clue here to the inability of pred22

ST II-II, q. 80, a. 1.
ST II-II, q. 104, a. 2.
24
ST II-II, q. 104, a. 3, ad 1.
25
Ibid. This is worth saying, since for Balthasar and Speyr, there are lots of intra-Trinitarian “sacrifices,” too.
26
ST II-II, q. 186, a. 5.
27
Ibid.
23

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icating obedience of the pre-existent Son. This clue is taken up by St.
Ignatius Loyola, and provides an essential element in what he calls “perfect obedience.”
In his Letter on Obedience of 1553, Ignatius sums up much of the
collective wisdom on religious obedience in the Latin Church.28 By it
we imitate Christ, who was obedient unto death (2, 21). It makes a holocaust of the religious to God (9, 14), and Ignatius tells his sons that
they thereby vanquish “the loftiest and most difficult part of yourselves,
your will and intellect” (21). Religious obedience is founded both on
the authority of the superiors, the right to teach that Christ bequeathed
to the Church in the apostles, since “he who hears you hears me” (Luke
10:16), and on the vow of obedience the religious makes, whereby he
undertakes to obey the superiors of his order.29 The obedient religious
obeys not the superior as a man, or according as he is thought to be wise
and prudent, but only as the representative of Christ, discerning Christ
in the superior by faith (4, 16).
St. Ignatius distinguishes three degrees of obedience: obedience of
execution, obedience of will, and obedience of intellect.30 Obedience of
execution fulfills the commandment, accomplishing the exterior work.
Just in itself, it is of little worth (5). Obedience of will joins one’s will
to that of the superior, and through that of the superior, to God’s will.
The merit of obedience increases in proportion to the sacrifice of our
will in conforming our desire to the superior’s.31 Obedience of the understanding, in turn, conforms our mind to the mind of the one who

28

The text of the letter in English can be conveniently found in Manuel María Espinosa
Pólit, S.J., Perfect Obedience: Commentary on the Letter on Obedience of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (Westminster, MD: The Newman Bookshop, 1947), 20–30. I cite internally by paragraph numbers. See also the parallel exposition in the The Constitutions
of the Society of Jesus, trans., with an introduction and commentary, by George E.
Ganss, S.J. (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Resources, 1970), part VI, chapter 1.
29
Espinosa Pólit, Perfect Obedience, 69, observes that the jurisdiction of the superior
comes through the Church from Christ, as Luke 10:16 warrants, but the “dominative
power” according to which the superior has the right in religion to command this
individual arises from the will of him who vows obedience.
30
Francisco Suárez, De religione societatis Iesu, Liber IV, De votis, chapter 13, in Opera
Omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1860), vol. 16, finds the elements of this threefold grade of obedience in St. Thomas, ST I-II, q. 90, a. 9.
31
Espinosa Pólit, Perfect Obedience, 81.

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403

commands.32 It is not just that the subject happens spontaneously to approve the practical judgment of the superior, but that he thinks what is
commanded is good because the superior commands it.33 Thus there is
sacrifice not only of will but of intellect. Espinosa Pólit states:
Even though the total renunciation of the will constitutes a
most excellent sacrifice, there yet remains to man something
which can be offered in sacrifice, of much greater value, which
marks him out specifically as man—his reason and judgment.34
In this last degree, one surrenders one’s judgment to that of the superior.
There are two aspects to this surrender of judgment. First, it is
surrendered to God through the superior, to a God whom by faith we
believe (1) speaks through the superior and (2) speaks to us practically from an infinite wisdom and who can by his infinite power arrange
our obedient service to work to the world’s, the Church’s and our own
good.35 But second, even though we do not see the exact motives of the
superior’s command, we ordinarily impute to him a greater knowledge
of the common good and what is to be done in pursuit of it.36 The goal is
“to think the same thing with the Superior in those numerous instances
where the known evidence of the truth does not force it.”37
Ignatius commends humility and meekness in order to render the
religious apt to surrender his judgment (15). But there are three more
particular means conducive to this surrender. First, the knowledge of
faith that the superior is an instrument of God (16).38 There is no religious merit in obedience if it is not offered “to God in the person of
those who represent him,” and who may in fact not be wise.39 Second,
one can “be quick to look for reasons to defend what the Superior com32

Ibid., 101.
Ibid., 102.
34
Ibid., 108.
35
Ibid., 111.
36
Ibid., 117–18, following Blessed Humbert of Romans, O.P., who died in 1277 and
was the fifth Master General of the Dominicans.
37
Ibid., 127.
38
Ibid., 133–4.
39
Ibid., 141–2.
33

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Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

mands” (17).40 And the third means, quite opposite to marshaling as
good an argument for the superior’s judgment as one is capable of, is
that of “blind” obedience (18).
By blind obedience, Ignatius means obeying according as one
knows that it is God’s will that one obey what the superior commands.41
It is blind, not as suspending our intellectual operation or obliterating it,
but, in Pedro de Ribadeneira’s words, in that the religious chooses to see
“with the eyes of another and not by himself.”42
Blind obedience is like faith (18). In faith, we do not have any intrinsic reasons that convince us of the truth of what is proposed to our
belief, and in obedience, we have no intrinsic reasons confirming the
practical wisdom of the superior. Espinosa-Pólit states:
And as in neither of these two cases [faith and obedience] the
understanding is forced to yield assent by the evidence of the
known truths, the will must intervene in order to direct the free
acquiescence of the understanding to the object proposed to it.43
It is precisely the disproportion of knowledge in obedience, between
the subject and God and between the subject and his superior’s knowledge, that makes of obedience something meritorious and pleasing to
God. Blind obedience rests on a higher prudence, that of God working
through the superior (who may himself be prudent or not) and knowing
only that God has commanded what the superior enjoins.44
Before leaving this section, I want first to report the argument of
40

Ibid., 142–3.
Ibid., 151.
42
Ibid., 154. Pedro de Ribadeneira, S.J., died in 1611 and was the first biographer of St.
Ignatius.
43
Ibid., 155–6.
44
Ibid., 166. This view of obedience is not exclusively Ignatian, as anyone familiar with
the spiritualities of the orders will be aware. So Columba Marmion, expounding
the Rule of St. Benedict in Christ the Ideal of the Monk, 5th ed. (St. Louis: Herder,
1926), 269–70, says: “We may theoretically believe that our view is better and more
reasonable than what is commanded us. But we must obey perfectly in action, in the
execution of what we are told to do; we must besides be intimately persuaded that
in the present cases, in concreto, no spiritual harm will result from our obedience,
either for the Divine glory nor for our own soul, but only good will come from it. It
is this intimate persuasion that is necessary to obedience of judgment.”
41

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Francisco Suárez for the perfection of blind obedience, both because
of its elegance and because of the help it gives in analyzing the human
obedience of Christ.45 The perfections of obedience insofar as it depends
on the intellect, Suárez writes, depend first on beholding Christ in the
superior and second on its “blindness.”46
He offers a proof from Scripture and Tradition of both these perfections.47 He follows with an argument based on the dependence of obedience, itself a perfection of the will, on the intellect. Its first presupposition is as follows:
To the extent the will depends on the intellect in its acts, so
also the perfection of obedience depends on the perfection of
the intellect. But the will depends on the intellect as directing
and illuminating or proposing its object. Whence, to the extent
the intellect should have exercised this office in regard to some
bonum honestum to that extent and speaking per se, the action
of the will will also be more perfect.48
But the perfect direction of the will by the intellect—and this is the second presupposition—requires perfect attention to the good proposed
and removal of all thoughts impeding the will’s prosecution of the proposed good.
. . . the right motion of the will per se requires a fitting judgment
on the good to be pursued, but per accidens on the removal of
all thoughts that could impede that striving.49
45

Francisco Suárez, De religione societatis Iesu, Liber IV, De votis, chapter 15, in Opera
Omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1860), vol. 16. I cite by the paragraph numbers of chapter 15
and the page numbers.
46
Ibid., no. 1; 777a–b.
47
Ibid., no. 3, for the first, and very comprehensively, nos. 4–11, for the second.
48
Ibid., no. 12; 782b: “eo modo quo pendet voluntas ab intellectu in suis actionibus,
ita etiam pendere perfectionem obedientiae a perfectione intellectus. Pendet autem
voluntas ab intellectu, tamquam a dirigente et illuminante, seu proponente objectum. Unde quo intellectus hoc munus exercuerit circa bonum honestum, eo, per se
loquendo, voluntatis actio erit etiam perfectior.”
49
Ibid., no. 13; 783a: “recta motio voluntatis per se requirit conveniens judicium boni
prosequendi, per accidens vero remotionem omnium cogitationum, quae possunt
affectum illum impedire.”

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There will be greater perfection of the intellect in so directing the will,
first and per se and “most of all, in a higher consideration of the object,
proposing it under a more excellent motive and goodness [honestas],”
and second and per accidens according as there obtains the greatest privation of thoughts and factors impeding obedience.50
The first requirement is fulfilled according as the subject considers
the superior as representing and acting in the person of Christ and in
“the apprehension of his precept as if it issued from God.”51 This does
not mean the superior cannot err or be deceived, either from ignorance
or malice or negligence, but requires only that the command be not sinful.52 The second and per accidens perfection of the intellect in directing
obedience arises from following the third particular means Ignatius recommends for religious obedience, a kind of “blindness.” The metaphor,
Suárez says, does not mean the subject becomes a brute. However,
this blindness ought to exclude human reasons by which we
would rather be moved to obey the superior, because he is
learned or prudent, or because he orders pleasant things, rather
than on account of the will of God alone. Additionally, it excludes human reasoning by which the subject wishes to examine why the Prelate commands this thing, or why he gives the
order to oneself rather than to another, and similar things.53
Suárez explains that such obedience does not rely on one’s own pru50

Ibid., no. 13; 783a: “ex utroque capite potest esse major et minor perfectio. Ex parte
quidem judicii, tum in majori attentione seu intensione actus; tum maxime in altiori
consideratione objecti, proponendo illud sub excellentiori motivo et honestate; ex
parte autem privationis, seu carentiae judicii, vel cogitationis impedientis, tanto erit
major perfectio, quanto privatio illa major fuit.”
51
Ibid., no. 14; 783a: “Primo ergo merito postulatur ad perfectam obedientiam consideratio Dei in Superiore, et apprehensio praecepti ejus, ac si a Deo egrederetur”; and
783b: “qui sic obedit, non judicat Superiorem esse Deum, sed repraesentare Deum,
quatenus vicem ejus gerit.” See the Letter on Obedience, nos. 4, 11, and 16.
52
Ibid., no. 15; 783b–784a.
53
Ibid., no. 26; 788b: “[additur] caecitatem hanc debere excludere humanas rationes,
quibus moveamur potius ad parendum Superiori, quia doctus est aut prudens, vel
quia placentia jubet, quam propter solam Dei voluntatem. Item additur excludere
humanos discursus, quibus subditus examinare velit, cur Praelatus hoc praecipiat,
vel cur potius sibi quam alteri, et similia.”

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dence, especially on “carnal prudence,” but is an exercise in “spiritual
and supernatural prudence.”54 In obeying blindly, one does not rely on
one’s own practical wisdom, “curiously inquiring about the reasons and
causes of the command.”55 “For just as a blind man is led by another and
as it were sees by other eyes, so in his own way the subject should be
compared in this way to the superior.”56 If a subject had always to understand the reasons and causes of his superior, furthermore, no corporate
human action would be possible.57 And indeed, we must reckon with
the possibility that the subject cannot see the superior’s reasons, just as
a mason cannot in the instant share the art of the architect directing
him.58
A sort of nescience, therefore, is integral to the highest and most
meritorious degree of obedience.
III. Christ’s Human Obedience
That Christ’s obedience unto death merits our salvation is taught by
the Council of Trent in both the Decree on Original Sin (canon 3) and
the Decree on Justification (Chapter 7; canons 10, 32, and 33). Merit
supposes freedom.59 And the freedom of Christ in obeying his Father
is emphasized in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32ff. & parallels)
and by John: “For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my
life. . . . No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord”
(10:17–18). This freedom is evidently, as has been said already, a human
freedom: Jesus, the man, is telling us that he lays down his (human) life
of his own (human) accord.
However, the merit and freedom of Jesus’ human obedience are the
merit and freedom of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity.
And they cannot be what they are unless the free and obedient acts of
54

Ibid., no. 27; 789a: “caecitas haec excludit prudentiam carnis, not vero prudentiam
spiritualem et supernaturalem.”
55
Ibid., no. 27; 789a: “quae non nititur propriae prudentiae, nec curiose inquirit rationes et causes praecepti.”
56
Ibid., no. 27; 789a: “Sicut enim caecus ab alio ducitur et quasi alienis oculis videt, ita
suo modo subditus ad Superiorem comparari debet.”
57
Ibid., no. 29; 789b.
58
Ibid., no. 29; 789b.
59
ST I-II, q. 114, a. 1, resp. and ad 1.

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the man Jesus proceed from a self-consciousness that includes a knowledge of who he is and what he is doing. Unless Jesus knows who he is
and knows the divine plan of salvation, then he can only believe that
he is obediently laying down the human life of the Son of God. Such
faith would be admirable, in its own way, but it is not proportionate to
the dignity of the act of his—the Son of God’s—submission to suffering
and death. Thomas Joseph White argues this point eloquently. Without
“evidential knowledge” of the divine will,
the human mind of Christ could no longer be moved immediately by the will of his divine person. Instead the man Christ
would continually need to make acts of faith in what he believed
obscurely to be the divine will he shared (as God) with his Father. He would have to hope (as a man) that he was doing what
his own transcendent identity (which he also believed in) willed
for him. Christ would not know with certitude, therefore who
he was and what he willed (as God) in each instant.60
Unless Jesus knows who he is and what the divine will for him is, then
we may assert the unity of one agent in two natures, but we will end up
in a sort of operational Nestorianism.
The actions of Christ as man do not reveal the will of God the
Son, but only what Jesus as man hopes is the will he shared eternally with the Father. Such an idea is clearly dualistic since it
prohibits the earthly Christ from being epistemologically proportioned so as to know immediately his own identity and will.61
That Christ as man know who he is and know the divine will requires
that his intellect enjoy the immediate vision of God, since no infused
or “prophetic” knowledge could produce the required certainty of the
knowledge of a divine self-identity.62
It is not the purpose of this essay to defend the traditional teaching
60

Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “The Earthly Christ and the Beatific Vision,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 497–534, at 520.
61
Ibid., 521.
62
Ibid., 517–18.

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409

on Christ’s immediate vision of God, and it is rather presupposed here.63
But it is worth saying that a Christ who only believes but does not know
who he is does not match the portrait of Christ we have either in John
or in the other gospels. More than Matthew 11:27, where Jesus, the incarnate Son, knows the Father exactly as the Father knows the Son, the
deliverance of such things as the parable of the Vineyard in Mark 12,
where Jesus very confidently presents himself as the Son of God, or the
description of the last judgment in Matthew 25, gives us to describe him
as “more than a prophet,” not because he ends prophecy in the way John
does (Matthew 11:9), however, but because he surpasses prophecy in
the same way as does divine Wisdom, and yet—he knows this as a man
(Matthew 12:42).64
For our purposes, however, Christ’s knowledge as a man both of who
he is and of the divine plan, including the divine command to lay down
his life for the salvation of the world, raises an important question about
his obedience. Recall the two conditions of perfect and the most meritorious obedience according to Suárez. The subject apprehends the one
who commands as representing God. Second, the subject blindly refuses
any inquiry of his own as to the practical wisdom of the command.
If we impute the vision of God to the man Christ, then he does not
believe the one who commands represents God his Father; he rather
knows that it is indeed his Father who commands. This is to have the
highest assurance of the good of obeying the command; it is to have a
knowledge of the good of obeying than which no greater could be conceived, if we may borrow a line of thinking dear to St. Anselm. As to the
second condition, however, we seem to have withdrawn the obedience
of Christ from the possibility of enjoying the highest perfection thereof.
For knowing the divine will by vision, he knows that the divine wisdom
has ordained this very command he is to fulfill by his human obedience,
and he knows its convenientiae, the intelligibilities that make it fitting,
both in itself and in relation to the Old Testament. Above, however, we
insisted that the perfection of obedience contained as an essential com63
64

See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 473–74.
For Jesus in relation to prophecy, see Ben Witherington III, Jesus the Seer: The Progress of Prophecy (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), esp. chapter 8. And
for Jesus and Wisdom, see again Ben Witherington III, Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage
of Wisdom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), especially chapter 4.

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ponent a certain nescience—a not knowing of the reasons and causes of
the superior’s order.
Bernard Lonergan dealt with this objection to the perfection of the
obedience of Christ fifty years ago in his De Verbo incarnato. In establishing that the efficacy of Christ’s redemption is an efficacy of meritorious obedience, he introduces an objection.
someone will say that . . . because Christ was endowed with
the highest knowledge, there was necessarily lacking in Christ
the third and highest degree of obedience, which consists in
the subordination of one’s own intellect to the judgment of a
superior.65
Lonergan grants that “Christ knew God by God’s essence,” and so has
knowledge that the actual order of salvation proceeds from the infinite
wisdom of God. But he then recalls the teaching of St. Thomas that,
although the mind of Christ beheld the essence of God, it did not enjoy
comprehensive knowledge of the divine essence, since such is impossible for any creature.66 It therefore follows that he does not know all that
is in the power of God, what the divine agency could have, but has not,
done.67 Therefore, Lonergan concludes:
he was not able to compare the actual order of things with all
other possible orders; and this comparison failing, he was not
able to judge from his own knowledge that this order of things,
in which he was destined to be the “man of sorrows,” was better.68
65

Bernard Lonergan, S.J., De Verbo incarnato, 3rd ed. (Rome: 1964), 477: “Dixerit
tamen quispiam Christum obedisse quidem inquantum praeceptum opus perfecit et
inquantum tota voluntate illud opus perficere interius voluit; at necessario defuisse
Christo, summa scientia ornato, tertium et supremum obedientiae gradum qui in
subordinatione proprii intellectu ad iudicium superioris consistit.”
66
ST III, q. 10, a. 2.
67
ST III, q. 10, a. 3.
68
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 478: “cum Christus homo non cognoverit omnia
quae sunt in potentia creatoris. . . , comparare non potuit actualem rerum ordinem
cum omnibus aliis ordinibus possibilis; qua comparatione deficiente, iudicare non
potuit ex propria scientia meliorem esse hunc rerum ordinem in quo ipse ‘vir dolorum’ fore destinabatur.”

Obedience Religious, Christological, and Trinitarian

411

Therefore Christ does obey with the highest degree of obedience, since
“he does not know from his own knowledge the entire excellence” of
what his Father commands. The nescience required for the “third and
highest degree of obedience” is verified.
IV. The Impossibility of Divine Filial Obedience
As we have seen, the objection that obedience evidently supposes two wills is flatly denied or simply ignored by theologians who, like
Waldstein, maintain that intra-Trinitarian obedience requires only a duality of persons.
In its highest form, however, as witness St. Ignatius, obedience supposes discrete, different acts of understanding in the subject and his superior. Furthermore, a thing is what it is most of all in its highest, perfect
form. It is a thing in its excellence, in its best shape, that most manifestly
tells us its nature. If the best obedience, obedience in its highest form, is
to be verified in the Trinity, then there must be a disproportion between
the knowledge of the Father and the knowledge of the Son, and this
independently of the incarnation and the assumption of humanity by
the Son. Father and Son must in themselves be different precisely in the
scope of what they know.
To the contrary, for St. Thomas Father and Son and Spirit are one
single act of infinite understanding.69 Therefore, the perfection of obedience cannot be verified in the Son’s relation to the Father. It seems, indeed, we must equivocate on the nature of obedience, reserving a special
and unique form for the Trinity, and think something quite other for
the ordinary obedience that informs human societies and organizations.
Do we want so to equivocate? Speaking of change and suffering and
obedience in the Trinity, Balthasar says, “We cannot postulate any alteration as this is found in creatures, nor any suffering and obeying in the
manner proper to creatures.”70 But is there anything left of an obedience
that is not “in the manner proper to creatures”? It is hard to find any
continuity of sense. The very point of imputing obedience to the Son
seems to be lost. We gain nothing in our understanding of the Son’s

69
70

ST I, q. 14, a. 4, “Whether the Act of God’s Intellect Is His Substance?”
Balthasar, Glory of the Lord, vol. 7, 213.

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relation to the Father, and we gain nothing in our appreciation of the
obedience we ourselves are called upon to exercise.
Moreover, that the act of divine understanding is one and the same
for each Person of the Trinity is not some teaching unique to St. Thomas. The unity of operation of the Trinitarian Persons is the teaching of
Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary of Poitiers, and St. Augustine.71 Only so did
the great architects of Trinitarian doctrine in the fourth and fifth centuries find a way to express Trinitarian reality without risk of tritheism.
The imputation of obedience to the Son in his divine nature, therefore,
seems to wreck the foundations of Trinitarian theology common to East
and West.
V. Conclusion: The Distinction of Created Things
from Their Creator
Hans Urs von Balthasar was given to lament the divorce of ascetic-mystical from systematic theology, and he was right to do so. If we
reunite them, however, then we cannot predicate a divine obedience of
the Son within the Trinity. Obedience remains a created perfection, not
a divine exchange between the Persons.
Why do we want it, anyway? It seems to be suggested by the idea
that the tropos or personal identity of the Son finds expression in the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus. It does find expression there, but not
with such one-to-one correspondence between earthly and heavenly realities as some modern theologians desire.72 We should tell a simpler,
less theosophical story. The Son of God became man in order to teach
us to do what he in his divine nature does not and cannot do, which is
to say: to repent, to be humble before the divine majesty, to offer worthy
sacrifice, and also, to obey God. We do not probe further into the di71

See e.g. Gregory of Nyssa, An Answer to Ablabius: That We Should Not Think of
Saying there Are Three Gods, trans. Cyril Richardson, in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward R. Hardy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 261–2. For an
analysis of the Ad Ablabium, see Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to
Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 244–
363, and Giulio Maspero, Trinity and Man: Gregory of Nyssa’s Ad Ablabium (Leiden:
Brill, 2007), esp. 53–60. Ayres, Nicaea, chapter 15, gives the versions of Hilary, Ambrose, and Augustine.
72
See White, “Earthly Christ,” and Bruce Marshall, “The Unity of the Triune God:
Reviving an Ancient Question,” The Thomist 74 (2010): 1–32.

Obedience Religious, Christological, and Trinitarian

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vine mystery by finding these realities somehow already in God in some
super-exemplary Trinitarian form. When we try to do this, we rather
ignore the difference between really distinct natures, divine and human,
the persons of one of which cannot share formally in all the personal
N&V
acts of the other.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 415-443

415

The End of Martyrdom:
Religious Liberty in Liberal Orders
C. C. Pecknold

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

“The revelation of Christ makes visible for the martyr the metaphysical disorientation that marks the false political order.” 1

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEobserved in 1831 that Catholics were

not only “the most obedient believers” but also “the most independent
citizens” of American democracy.2 So it should not be surprising that
when American Catholics face threats to their own religious liberty as
“obedient believers,” they will diligently turn towards the courts for political redress concerning any impending harm. However, this Catholic
confidence in the protection of religious liberty, which it has been presumed liberal orders would inevitably provide in perpetuity, is increasingly eroding.
In 2010, Francis Cardinal George famously commented in remarks
to a group of priests that he expected to die peacefully in his bed, but
that his successor would die in prison, and his successor would “die a
martyr in the public square.” After a martyred bishop, Cardinal George
speculated, there would be a successor who “will pick up the shards of
1

Erik Peterson, Theological Tractates, trans. Michael Hollerich (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2011), 167-68.
2
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Gerald Bevan (London: Penguin, 2003), 338.

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C. C. Pecknold

a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church so
often does in human history.”3 The Cardinal’s words have power because
while they acknowledge that there is no imminent threat of religious
persecution in America—a comparatively preposterous notion, especially given the prevalence of actual Christian martyrs in other parts of
the world today—there is nevertheless an almost apocalyptic suggestion
that some kind of persecution looms on the not so distant horizon that
cannot be repelled in the courts, and thus may demand another kind of
response.
In America and Europe at least, the secular assumption is that
persecution and other forms of religious violence are the result of too
much attachment to religion.4 We belong to an enlightened political
order which has saved us from religious violence, including martyrdom. This secular conviction makes it difficult for many not only to see
the martyr as martyr, but also to see as the martyr sees. This suggests
that contemplation upon the martyr provides an opportunity for us to
think about the intelligibility of Christian witness in a secular age. This
essay is thus an attempt (a) to make an historical argument for why we
tend to think Christian persecution in general and martyrdom in particular is impossible in our modern liberal democratic orders, and (b)
to return to Augustine’s City of God as a seminal source for rethinking
the place of the martyr. The two parts of the essay, then, speak of the
“end” of martyrdom in two senses: in terms of its cessation in the modern, and its completion in the antique. After such a temporal reversal,
the conclusion will return to the modern by way of two Augustinian
theologians who have bridged the modern-antique divide through the
category of the martyr. I will conclude that reflecting upon the martyr
draws us very near to the problem with liberty in liberal orders, including religious liberty.
3

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., “The Wrong Side of History,” The Cardinals Column, Catholic New World: Newspaper for the Archdiocese of Chicago (Oct. 21–Nov. 3,
2012), 1.
4
William Cavanaugh argues that religious/secular distinctions have been constructed largely by narrating religion as the source of violence and division so that the
state could take up the task of securing peace and unity. See William Cavanaugh,
The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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The End of Martyrdom: Making Persecution
or Martyrdom Obsolete?
Reflecting on the French Revolution, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger
of Paris has said that the dispute between church and state in his country
historically
turned on the question of whether there is some “absolute”
that is manifested and embodied in the human institution of
the state. . . . For those who affiliate themselves unconditionally
with the agenda of the Revolution, national sovereignty is ultimately absolute. . . . The sovereign state cannot tolerate citizens
appealing to any other tribunal. But the religious conscience
does precisely that in appealing to God as the foundation and
guarantee of all freedoms.5
Cardinal Lustiger’s observation about a sovereign state that cannot
tolerate appeal to any other tribunal should haunt any serious Christian, or indeed any citizen who thinks that there are tribunals of faith
and morals which are prior to, and transcend the state. There remains
an intimate bond between Hobbesian absolutism and the Lockean social contract, a bond between political absolutism and liberal attempts
to limit power that we cannot easily escape. The narrative of the state
as savior, as a force that comes to limit the power of religion, to limit the presumed “violence of religion” in the wake of sixteenth-century
theological protestations against the Catholic Church, works powerfully
in the background of how modern liberal orders understand “religious
liberty.” With Cavanaugh, I think this narrative is simply wrong. But
I want to examine the mythology from the perspective of the martyr.
There is something about “the myth of religious of violence” that also
encourages us to think about the end of martyrdom too—liberalism sets
out to make martyrdom irrelevant, politically impossible.

5

Emile Perreau-Saussine, Catholicism and Democracy: An Essay in the History of Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 13.

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C. C. Pecknold

Medieval Mystical Migrations—Kantorowicz
In 1957, in his landmark study The King’s Two Bodies, Ernst Kantorowicz demonstrated his own version of “the migration of the mystical”—especially the migration of the idea of the corpus mysticum—from
the Church to a new polity-centered kingship, which he saw standing at
the origins of the modern state. After the thirteenth century, he noted,
such polities, constructed in relation to the Church, needed to endow
political community with a mystical character. He observed the various
ways in which the polity began to be spoken about in terms which made
it “co-eternal with the Church.”6 Kantorowicz noted that just as there
was a migration of the idea of the mystical from Church to state, there
was also a concurrent shift in martyrdom as well: from martyria pro
fidei to martyria pro patria, or put differently, from martyrdom for the
celestial city to martyrdom for the earthly city alone. This was bound
up with the kind of shift that was taking place in the idea of patria itself,
which had become radically localized in the middle ages, in deference to
the Church’s teaching about the mystical, heavenly patria. Kantorowicz
summarizes his point well this way,
The Christian, according to the teaching of the early Church
and the Fathers, had become the citizen of a city in another
world. His true patria was the Kingdom of Heaven, the celestial
city of Jerusalem...For the sake of that communis patria in heaven the martyrs had shed their blood.7
As early as the thirteenth century, but certainly by the fourteenth century, Kantorowicz finds evidence that “the crown of martyrdom began
to descend on the war victims of the secular state.”8 He notes the rise
of a “quasi-religious aspect of death pro patria as a ‘martyrdom’ clearly
derived from the teaching of the Church,” an analogical adaptation of
ecclesiastical forms of martyrdom to civic forms. He notes that this ecclesial “source was tapped persistently, especially in France where the
6

Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 232.
7
Ibid., 234–5.
8
Ibid., 244.

Religious Liberty in Liberal Orders

419

leading politicians began to deploy the forces of religious sentiment
systematically and make them subservient to the undisguised political
goals of the new corpus mysticum, the national territorial monarchy.”9
Now self-sacrifice on the battlefield, for the sake of the political corpus
mysticum, was at least analogous with “the canonized martyrs for the
corpus mysticum of the Church, the head of which was Christ.”10 Similarly, “just as Christ laid down his life for his corporate body, so was the
Prince supposed to sacrifice his life for the commonweal.”11 The chief
problem with the analogy, of course, is the eternal-temporal distinction.
What gave martyrdom pro fidei its essential character was that it conformed to the eschatological revelation of the sacrifice of Christ. To extend martyrdom to the temporal patria was, as Eric Voegelin once put
it, “to immanentize the eschaton,” creating a new mystical patriotism
through a transferred understanding of self-sacrifice, not in witness to
Christ the truth, but for the sake of the patria.12 If the martyr is an occasion for contemplation, this had the effect of also shifting the object of
contemplation away from Christ and towards the temporal patria. This
was possible and arguably legitimate because the temporal patria was so
closely associated with the Church, as the mystical body of Christ, that
it wasn’t seen as a “turning away” at all. Yet by the sixteenth century,
that close association between the temporal and the eternal had shifted.
Kantorowicz pays special attention to the late medieval Gallican origins of these shifts, but early and middle and late modern examples
of political philosophy can be marshaled in support of Kantorowicz’s
thesis that these shifts not only were transferred embodied allegiances
from the body of Christ to the temporal state but shifted the way early
modern thinkers imagined the idea of martyrdom itself: in effect, these
“migrations of the holy” made it easier for people to contemplate martyria pro patria than to contemplate martyria pro fidei. As we will see,
the early modern Machiavelli offers a revealing example of these trends
prior to the formation of the modern social contract tradition.

9

Ibid., 249.
Ibid., 256.
11
Ibid., 269.
12
Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago: Gateway, 1968), 89.
10

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C. C. Pecknold

Pre-Liberal Migrations: Machiavelli’s God
It is often said that Machiavelli was an “objective realist,” the founder of realpolitik, but a close look at the closing chapters of The Prince
reveals him as a passionate and mystical patriot intent on reframing political sovereignty in just the ways that Kantorowicz noted, not only as
a new kind of corpus mysticum, but also as the locus for contemplation
on true sacrifice.
Consider the metaphors he uses for Italy, which he hopes to unify
through an act of political imagination. Towards the end of The Prince,
he exhorts the readers to free Italy from “the barbarians,” in terms oddly reminiscent of Augustine’s The City of God Against the Pagans. The
liberty of Italy is analogous to the liberty of Israel, the prototypical patria. Similarly, Moses is imagined as the prototypical Prince. Machiavelli
writes, “If, as I said, it was necessary for the people of Israel to be enslaved in Egypt to make known the virtue of Moses . . . then at present,
to make known the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was necessary for Italy
to be reduced to her present conditions, and that she be more enslaved
than the Hebrews.”13 Machiavelli likened Italy to “the promised land of
greatness and glory,” and he likened the Prince to a prophet of God,
who must sometimes enslave a people to make known the virtue of the
Italian spirit.
In Machiavelli’s God, Maurizio Viroli notes how Machiavelli understood Moses especially as the paradigmatic ruler who was willing to
do evil for the sake of the common good, and was thus rewarded with
God’s friendship, for God rewards even those who do evil for the sake of
the state—for love of ‘patria.’ In Viroli’s telling, Machiavelli understands
God’s love of nation expressed not only through killing Egyptians, but
by executing 3,000 of his own people in order to instill a sense of terror in them.14 Obviously, in the light of orthodox Christian belief, this
is a heretical view of God—capricious and nationalistic. But precisely
because he thinks that civil religion is necessary, Viroli can commend
Machiavelli’s God. In his view, and presumably Machiavelli’s, Israel is
13

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), 87.
14
Maurizio Viroli, Machiavelli’s God, trans. Anthony Shugaar (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2012), 61-5.

Religious Liberty in Liberal Orders

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not a special patria—except in one sense: her civil religion is exemplary
for all other nations that want to mystically enshrine the prince as well
as the polity.
For more than a millennium and a half, Christ had been proclaimed
as the long-awaited Messiah, and the Church was not only the new Israel but the very body of Christ, an extension of the Incarnation for the
redemption of humanity until the end of time. Yet tellingly for Machiavelli, now a new redeemer is expected—a redeemer which is not exactly
Christ, but is analogous to him, a new Prince. Just the same, he expects
Italy to be a new Israel. He imagines Italy “left as lifeless” and awaiting
“the man who may heal her wounds . . . who can cure her of those sores
that have been festering for so long.”15 It is as if Italy is exiled Israel, a
lifeless Diaspora, which awaits Christ who may heal her wounds, and
unite her in himself. This is precisely what Machiavelli looks forward to:
the resurrection of Italy as a new corpus Christi, as the national head in
which all the cities and towns can subsist in the one Italian spirit. It is a
kind of unholy exaltation of Italy as the body of Christ.
Tellingly, Machiavelli’s “new Israel” is redeemed not by grace but by
glory: “Everything,” Machiavelli writes of Italy, “has converged for your
greatness.” And he exhorts his Italian princes, “God does not wish to do
everything.” God has only led them to the promised land: “the rest you
must do for yourself.”16 The analogy has a vaguely Pelagian ring to it.
Italy could be redeemed and unified only by prudence, political wit, and
force; creating a certain mythology was an essential part of that need to
reconstitute the allegiances of the people around a new body politic. He
paints an image of biblical proportion, drawing on the book of Exodus
most explicitly: “We now see here extraordinary, unprecedented signs
brought about by God: the sea has opened up; a cloud has shown you
the path; the rock has poured forth; here manna has rained.”17 Just as he
likens Italy to Israel, he also likens the Prince to Christ. Indeed, in terms
very much reminiscent of how the Church speaks of itself as the new
Israel, Machiavelli generates a “co-eternal” understanding of the state.
In his distorted view, both God and the Church looked favorably on this
15

Ibid., 88.
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
16

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C. C. Pecknold

shift, and he saw a sign of support for this in the fact that a Florentine
politician, Giovanni de’ Medici, had recently become Pope Leo X (the
very same pope who excommunicated Luther in 1521).
This new, distinctly holy, sense of state sovereignty was set strongly
against claims to “papal absolutism,” which he saw developing in response to the Protestant reforms. As the Catholic Church argued for
the privilege of papal intervention in the ecclesial affairs touched upon
by a sovereign state, the rising impulse was to espouse that republican
liberty must be a freedom from ecclesial action, and positively this was
because the patria itself was to be understood as a power “absolute by
nature.” It is here that we see not only the shift of the mystical from
the Church to the state, but also a shift in the concept of negative and
positive freedom. Now it is the state which sees itself as the protector
of religious freedom, a negative freedom from the “absolutist” claims of
the Catholic Church; and it is the state which also sees itself as the sole
locus of a positive liberty, freedom for religion which serves the ends of
the state securing liberty.
John Neville Figgis notes that such early modern intellectual movements helped to transfer the “halo of sanctity that had hitherto been
mainly the privilege of the ecclesiastical” to “the holiness of the State.”18
It is for this reason that Machiavelli could love his patria more than his
own soul. Indeed, Machiavelli praised the people of Florence for defying
the pope, because they loved their city more than their souls. Shifts in
the locus of liberty, and the migrations of the holy, did not occur, however, without also changing how we think about self-sacrifice. In For
the Love of Country, Maurizio Viroli points out the soteriological and
eschatological dimensions of Machiavelli’s belief that God regards these
Florentinians as “saviors of [their] countries” who will “enjoy eternal beatitude” precisely because they were willing to sacrifice their soul for the
sake of their city.19 As Viroli notes, for Machiavelli, the Catholic religion
was in need of reform, but not necessarily the kind Protestant reformers
offered, and certainly not the earlier reforms, such as those associated with the mendicant movements. The mendicant saints, like Francis
18

John Neville Figgis, Political Thought: From Gerson to Grotius 1414-1625 (New York:
Harper, 1960), 93.
19
Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 38-9.

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and Dominic, encouraged humility and obedience to the bishops. These
were precisely the wrong sort of exemplar, and the wrong sort of citizen,
because they conformed themselves to Christ’s sacrifice, not to the sacrifice which would make Italy great.20 True religion, for Machiavelli, was
only the religion of state—just as the only reason which counted was the
reason of state—and so the true reform of Christianity would come only
from being conformed to the city.21 Similarly, being a “martyr” could
only mean being a martyr for one’s patria, where all self-sacrifice was
ordered to the ends of the state, which now alone seemed to enjoy divine
eternal favor.
Machiavelli’s God sounds very much like the nominalist God of absolute power, who does not act in accordance with the goodness of his
nature but acts capriciously, according to his will—which may, for the
purpose of establishing a people, cause evil.22 The heterodox Machiavelli
understands that the state exists to make citizen-saints, and the pinnacle
act of such citizen-saints is self-sacrifice for country, and thus the citizen-saints exist for the glory of the state. The analogy to martyrs has disappeared. The citizen-saints are not analogous to martyrs, they are the
new martyrs. This tautology is underwritten by a shift in the end of sacrifice, from Christ to Italy. Sacrifice is understood by him no longer in
terms of conformity to Christ’s sacrifice, the true end of sacrifice which
is truly present in the sacrament of the altar, and in the saint conformed
to the reality of sacrifice, but now sacrifice can be understood solely in
terms of the love of country, which is by nature absolute.
Modern Liberal Orders
Included in his analysis in the The Myth of Religious Violence, Cavanaugh intimates that, like Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes also eliminates
the possibility of martyrdom for Christ, but more subtly, and for different reasons. For Hobbes, the absolutist “Christian” state makes martyr20

Ibid., 206.
For a fuller account of these transformations in Machiavelli, see Maurizio Viroli,
From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language
of Politics 1250-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Emphasis
mine.
22
See Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
21

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C. C. Pecknold

dom obsolete. As Cavanaugh writes, “Thomas Hobbes assumed the fittingness of dying for the mortal god, Leviathan. Christian martyrdom,
however, he restricted only to those who died for proclaiming one single
article of faith ‘Jesus is the Christ.’”23 No other article of the faith could
count as martyrdom save that one claim, which was detachable from
other ecclesial and creedal claims. Yet while formally admitting such a
witness to Christ, he materially denied it. For Hobbes, “those who oppose the laws of the civil state for any other doctrine do so for private
ambition and deserve their punishment. . . . There can be no martyrs in
a Christian commonwealth, for one cannot witness to those who already
believe.”24 Hobbesian absolutism, which so carefully circumscribes what
can count as martyrdom, seeks to eliminate especially every possible
cause of disobedience to the state (our mortal god). In this way, Cavanaugh concludes, “Hobbes eliminates the possibility of martyrdom for
Christ.”25 In the words of Figgis, at this point, “the religion of the State
has replaced the religion of the Church.”26
Now an objection will arise. It will be said that modern liberal orders came to save us not only from religious violence, but also from this
sort of political absolutism. Yet these pre-liberal elements of absolutism, which also intimate a kind of religious understanding of political
self-sacrifice, are not absent from the new social contract theorists. If
one believes that there is a very bright line between Hobbes and Locke,
the suggestion that these pre-liberal strands are still potent in the newly forming liberal orders will be most likely rejected. But are not these
pre-liberal elements apparent in contemporary challenges concerning
religious liberty?
Following C. B. MacPherson, the dividing line between Hobbes
and Locke can be understood as wafer thin. MacPherson argued that
both were “possessive individualists” whose social contract theories
each required submission to an overarching political power to secure
an expansive economy.27 In this sense, both Hobbes and Locke can be
23

Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence, 176.
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, 124.
27
C. B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: From Hobbes to
Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
24

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425

understood as “absolutists,” even if Locke has provided a more “tolerant” and gentler version of it. We need not look far to see this point. For
Locke, tolerance was not extended to anyone who would have metaphysical, moral, or theological reasons that could challenge the basic
voluntarist framework of the social contract itself—any ancient, realist
metaphysical or theological challenge to the social contract was deemed
intolerable because it threatened the stability of the liberal order constructed out of the consent of individual will rather than in conformity with an objective Good. For this reason, Locke thought that neither
atheists nor Catholics could be tolerated.28 Why atheists and Catholics?
Locke thought atheists, though they were a very small minority, posed
a threat because he did not think they could develop the kind of virtues
necessary for governing, which he thought included belief in a Creator,
and belief in the moral law—the problem with atheists was that they
followed no “potentate” but themselves. But the more serious threat
was from the more numerous Catholics, who posed a potentially grave
threat because they followed the transcendent dictates of a “foreign potentate” whose teachings could order the lives of citizens to ends which
might contradict the ends of the state.
A thinker like Rousseau—whose anthropology denies basic Catholic doctrines such as original sin, and whose sociology denies the institution of the Eucharist, the apostolic nature of bishops, and the formation of saints through the life of the Church on pilgrimage—can lay
the ground work for a more tolerant embrace of atheists, but Rousseau
expands Locke’s intolerance towards Catholics, indeed, for all Christians. Rousseau revealed his antipathy towards Christians when he declared that “they know better how to die than how to conquer.”29 Yet
the problem for Rousseau was not really so very different from that of
his pre-liberal forefathers. It is not so much that Christians know better
how to die, but that devout Christians would not make good citizens,
because they were ordered not to the general will but to God’s will.30
Would it not follow that, for Rousseau, the only account of sacrifice wor28

John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, first published 1689 (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1983), 50-1.
29
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract (London: Dover, 2003), 95.
30
For a helpful discussion of this point, see Emile Perreau-Saussine, Catholicism and
Democracy, 14-36.

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C. C. Pecknold

thy of contemplation would be those sacrifices that were ordered to the
general will?
Rousseau certainly recognized the importance of religion for politics, and he envisioned a new enlightenment form of civil religion. Other liberal theorists like Montesquieu simply sought to redirect the old
religion. Those were the two modes of the enlightenment approach to
civil religion: either replace and construct a new civil religion, or coopt the existing religion to serve the ends of the state. The American
founders rejected Machiavelli and Hobbes, embraced Locke, and preferred Montesquieu to Rousseau. They used the language of the Puritans
to claim that authentic Christianity entails virtue directed toward the
building up and defense of the republic.31 But in all of this, we can see
the general trend of shifting the locus of liberty, sacrifice, and redemption from the Church to the state in a way which makes plausible the
thesis that the modern state has made us ambivalent or indifferent not
so much to self-sacrifice or liberty, but to self-sacrifice and liberty which
is ordered to anything which precedes or transcends the ends of the
social contract, or the republic, or the nation.
Alexis de Tocqueville, however, stands as an important check
against this narrative—or perhaps he is the first theorist to see clearly
the problems inherent in liberal political principles. Famously admiring the system of localized self-government in pre–Civil War America,
he saw in America forms of the social contract that differed from the
European forms. He saw America as a place which could check all of
these tendencies to centralization and absolutism, and marveled at so
many different creeds living in relative peace and harmony—noting especially the welcome place of Catholics in this American experiment, a
social contract which miraculously seemed not to be at odds with Catholicism. America not only seemed immune even from Locke’s vicious
intolerance of Catholics, but seemed to incline to the very flourishing
of Catholicism.
Yet Tocqueville also worried about our democratic experiment.
He worried that democracy held within it the same absolutism that
can readily be seen in earlier social contract theorists such as Hobbes.
Tocqueville imagined the possibility of a new kind of invisible tyranny
31

Viroli, Machiavelli’s God, 19-20.

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427

emerging in American democracy. In a famous passage of Democracy
in America, he notes that while tyrannous kings of old could discipline
bodies, the tyranny of the majority could discipline souls. He writes:
“Formerly tyranny employed chains and executions as its crude weapons; but nowadays civilization has civilized despotism itself.”32 Where
ancient regimes, emperors, kings, and princes had once used physical
violence, “our democratic republics have made it into something as
intellectual as the human will it intends to restrict.”33 That is, in present-day democracies, Tocqueville recognizes that we are now free of a
certain kind of religious violence: we should have no fear of an auto-dafé in the public square, and on the surface, that seems to be unrelievedly
good news. There will be no “red martyrs,” no burnings-at-the-stake,
no imprisonment for the sake of the Gospel. There will be no visible persecution at all. Yet Tocqueville advises us that this should not make us
think that persecution is not possible. In fact, he writes that “democratic
republics” can become even more tyrannical precisely because their “everyday persecutions” will have become invisible. In democratic republics so deformed, he fears, the tyranny will not be visible. It “leaves the
body alone and goes straight for the spirit.”34 Persecution will simply not
look like it once did, with a Roman proconsul saying “You will think as
I do or you will die.” Rather democratic persecution will be far more
subtle, insidious and pernicious: “You are free not to think like me . . .
but from today you are a pariah among us . . . when you approach your
fellows, they will shun you like an impure creature.”35
Tocqueville fears that the sovereign will of the majority will be worse
than the sovereign will of even the most wicked and capricious monarch
(as Plato also suggests in the eighth and ninth books of The Republic).
“It is the very essence of democratic government that the power of the
majority should be absolute, for in democracies nothing outside the majority can keep it in check.”36 He notes that the power of the majority
is not only omnipotent but also “irresistible.” It is irresistible because
32

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Gerald E. Bevan (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 298.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid., 298, emphasis added.
35
Ibid., 299.
36
Ibid., 287.

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428

the majority has “moral ascendancy” as a collective concentration of
enlightenment and wisdom that would always be lacking in individuals.
The majority has “immense actual power . . . and when it has once made
up its mind over a question, there are . . . no obstacles which might . . .
even retard its onward course long enough to allow it time to heed the
complaints of those it crushes as it goes by.”37 It is “an invisible power
which cannot be bound.” Most famously, he states that this power does
not reside in external forces, but in our daily “habits of the heart”: “habits are forming at the heart of freedom which one day could be fatal to
its liberties.”
Many have read Tocqueville optimistically, suggesting that he only
briefly entertains such worries. But to the contrary, his fears become
more pronounced the longer he observes American democracy. In the
more somber second volume, he returns to this fear of a “civilized despotism.” He imagines: “If despotism were to be established in present-day
democracies, it would probably assume a different character [than ancient despots]; it would be more widespread and kinder; it would debase
men without tormenting them.”38 It is here that Tocqueville expresses
his most famous statement concerning the shadow side of democracy.
The sovereign will of the majority could quite easily become “an immense protective power” that would appear to be “fatherly,” but whose
patriarchy would “keep [people] in perpetual childhood” and would
daily reduce human freedom largely through a deformed understanding
of liberty, equality, and toleration.
Thus the ruling power, having taken each citizen one by one
into its powerful grasp and having molded him to its own liking, spreads its arms over the whole of society, covering the surface of social life with a network of petty, complicated, detailed,
and uniform rules through which even the most original minds
and the most energetic of spirits cannot reach the light in order
to rise above the crowd. It does not break men’s wills but it does
soften, bend, and control them . . . it does not tyrannize but it
inhibits, represses, drains, snuffs out, dulls so much effort that
37
38

Ibid., 290.
Ibid., 804.

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429

finally it reduces each nation to nothing more than a flock of
timid and hardworking animals with the government as shepherd.39
It is common to note the implications of Tocqueville’s concerns for
political tyranny as a “type of organized, gentle and peaceful enslavement.”40 But no one to my knowledge notes that implicit in his worries
about tyranny is a fundamental worry about a new kind of persecution
that cannot be seen. In the “Author’s Introduction,” Tocqueville alerted
readers to his fundamental worry that democracy could become a great
providential blessing (his great hope), or it could become “a kind of religious terror.”41 Does Tocqueville mean that America could become a
terror to religion or that America could become a terror by becoming
a religion? Perhaps he means both things at once. He is certainly well
aware that the founders designed checks upon the threat of majoritarianism, but he nevertheless harbored this very palpable sense that there
remained no guarantee that America itself could not become a religious
terror. What does this have to do with persecution (visible and invisible), and martyrdom (which can only be visible)?
The early church persecutions that Christians had once suffered
under absolutist, monarchical or imperial rule were simpler and more
dramatic; they were more visible but, as a result, they were less effective.
Tocqueville imagined that through the mechanisms of democracy, a tyrannous people could discipline souls in a quiet way, in a way that would
be invisible, and thus more corrosive to souls. Perhaps at this point, we
can admit the plausibility of Hobbesian absolutism still having its way
with us. Perhaps that absolutism has been tempered by Locke and Montesquieu, by fragments of the natural law and the divine law mediated through the Founders and Puritans alike, but Tocqueville does not
39

Ibid., 806.
See Sheldon Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and
Theoretical Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Pierre Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 1996);
Joshua Mitchell, The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and
the American Future (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); and Paul Rahe,
Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).
41
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 15.
40

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C. C. Pecknold

think so. He thinks that not only has it not been tempered, but it can be
more absolute and tyrannical, more persecuting and disciplinary, not
less, precisely because it has found new invisible means for the coercion
of souls. Tocqueville envisions that a new kind of invisible persecution
could emerge. But since martyrdom involves blood and death—and
thus is visible by definition—Tocqueville could not claim that there is
such a thing as an invisible martyr. In this sense, liberal democracy may
never admit martyrs, but it may be the most highly disciplined of polities precisely because it practices forms of coercion that must remain
invisible to be effective.
When we hear the statistics about persecution of Christians abroad,
we are broadly sympathetic, we are pragmatic, and we want to help—
most especially by exporting the blessings of democracy abroad, so as
to eradicate persecution and martyrdom. But for the same reasons that
we think democracy might be the solution to persecution abroad, deep
down, we do not think that persecution or martyrdom is possible here.
But what if that’s wrong? What if Tocqueville’s counter-factual has become factual? What if liberal democracy has not delivered Christians
from persecution, but has developed new, innovative and invisible forms
of it? What would that mean for Christians? What would it mean for the
political order? Most important, should this lead to a counsel of despair,
or to an opportunity for rethinking the relationship between Christians
and liberal democratic orders? In the second part of this essay, I will
attempt to answer these questions.
Christ, the End of Martyrdom
As suggested at the beginning of this essay, recent challenges to religious liberty in the United States have raised the terrible specter of
an impending persecution that could involve visible disciplines, such as
financial loss, imprisonment or even (almost unthinkable in America)
a martyr’s death in the public square. It should now be clear why such
cries fall on deaf ears. For many observers, including faithful Christian
observers, such worries are at best overheated persecution fantasies, and
at worst they trivialize the bloody persecution of Christians in other
parts of the world.42 If persecution and martyrdom are not really possi42

Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of

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431

ble in the United States, then it seems exactly right to call foul on those
Christians who are crying wolf in the public square.
Gerald Schlabach, for example, recently chastised American Catholics for thinking they were persecuted, when the reality was simply that
they had been “outvoted” in their “Constantinian” bid to control the
culture. He writes, “Sooner or later, even while advocating energetically
for more just laws and policies, any church that wades into these waters
must accept that it has gained all the deference it is going to get . . .
minority traditions have known this for a long time. To be outvoted is
not to be persecuted.”43 Schlabach makes a helpful distinction between
being “outvoted” and “persecution.” There is a difference between a law
allowing abortion in America, and state-mandated abortions in China. As long as the state respects the religious liberty of its citizens by
granting exemptions, it cannot be said to be persecuting those citizens.
In Schlabach’s view, Christians ought to temper their temptation to see
state-mandated policies that actively promote contraceptive and abortifacient drugs as persecutorial. They might lament their loss of cultural
control, but they should not delude themselves into thinking that they
are persecuted (even invisibly so).
Certainly when one considers the visible violence against Christians
in other parts of the world, this seems like exactly the right counsel. Yet
the distinction seems to put us back to the point where we have come
to think that persecution (and martyrdom) is not possible in liberal democracies. The worst that can happen to Christians is that they are outvoted, which doesn’t necessarily mean that their will must be conformed
to the majority will. But what if it has that effect? Can we now dismiss
the Tocquevillian notion of an invisible coercion, which perhaps could
take the form of a kind of “religious terror,” in which everything must be
conformed to the needs of the state?
Christians have speculated about an end to persecution before.
Most famously, there was the peace of Constantine, who made Christianity a licita religio in ad 313, a putative end to persecution. The martyrs were still venerated, but it became possible for many fourth-century

43

Martyrdom (New York, NY: Harper One, 2013).
Gerald W. Schlabach, “Outvoted, Not Persecuted: Four Lessons about Religious
Freedom,” Commonweal 134 (October 1, 2012): 22-24

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C. C. Pecknold

Christians to think that persecution might become a thing of the past.
There were very elaborate and hopeful attempts to speculate about a
persecution-free future. Emperor Julian the Apostate, in his brief attempt to return the empire to pagan polytheism, temporarily set such
hopes on hold, but they were soon to return. The hope for an end of
persecution is, after all, a good hope to have if you love your children,
or your neighbors, since persecution is first and foremost always a sign
of a grave injustice against humanity. In the face of “stings of fear, the
tortures of sorrow, the distresses of hardship, and the dangers of temptation,” Augustine thinks it is almost inevitable that every age will imagine
an end to all of this.44 To respond to Schlabach’s concerns, and those of
many others, I want to return briefly to Saint Augustine. In those early
centuries, in which a persecution-free world first became imaginable
for Christians, Augustine sets himself the task of making the martyr
the center of his confident message to a pagan world teetering at the
brink. Then I will conclude the second part of this essay with reference
to two Augustinian theologians, Erik Peterson and Joseph Ratzinger/
Pope Benedict XVI, who provide us with contemporary ways of contemplating persecution through the martyr in the midst of our debates
over the freedom of the Church in liberal orders.
Sacrifice and Martyrdom in Augustine’s City of God
It is more common to associate Augustine’s City of God with his
famous contrast of two cities than it is to associate the work with the
themes of sacrifice and martyrdom. Readers will be aware of the discussion of martyrs in the first book of the City, and also in the last book,
but they might reasonably doubt the prominence I want to ascribe to
them. Nevertheless, I want to suggest that the themes of sacrifice and
martyrdom are inextricable from his two cities narrative, and I hope to
show why this matters for reflecting on martyrdom in liberal orders too.
Consider one of his most concise and famous formulations from the
end of City 18:
The mortal course of the two cities, the heavenly and the earth44

Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 2003), 18.49. Unless otherwise indicated, citations from the City are from this translation.

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433

ly, [are] intermingled from beginning to end. One of them, the
earthly, has created for herself from any source she pleased,
even out of men, false gods to worship with sacrifice; the other,
a heavenly pilgrim on earth, does not create false gods, but is
herself created by the true God, whose sacrifice she is herself.45
Why does Augustine say that the heavenly city on pilgrimage (the
Church) is herself the sacrifice? We would expect him to say, after his
earlier treatment in Book 10.6, that Christ was the true and perfect sacrifice, but how are we to think of the Church as this sacrifice? This is
an extremely important question for understanding our themes. For St.
Paul, it is clear that we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your
[logiké latreia]” (Rom 12:1).46 Augustine is struck by this verse, and especially its connection to the subsequent verse: “Do not be conformed
to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom
12:2). Augustine sees an intimate connection between the body as a living sacrifice in verse 1 and the re-formation of the soul in verse 2 according to the form of the “fire of love,” which he take as an image of the
sacrifice of Christ, which we have “received from his beauty.”47
It should be evident from this that Augustine has a strongly participationist understanding of Christ’s sacrifice. “This being so,” Augustine writes, “it immediately follows that the whole redeemed community, that is to say, the congregation and fellowship of the saints, is offered
to God as a universal sacrifice, through the great Priest who offered
45

Augustine, City of God, trans. William Green (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1995), 18.54. [Sed a vero Deo ipsa fit cuius verum sacrificium ipsa fit.]
46
This phrase, logiké latreia, might be best rendered as true worship, or worship characterize by the logos, but however we render the phrase, the early Church Fathers
rarely fail to connect it with the sacrament of the altar, that is, with the Eucharist.
See Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B., “Worship in the Spirit of Logos: Romans 12.1-2 and
the Source and Summit of Christian Life,” Letter & Spirit 5 (2009): 81; Robert J.
Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background before Origen (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1978), 243; Michael Thompson,
“Clothed with Christ: The Example and Teaching of Jesus in Romans 12.1-15.13,”
Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 59 (Sheffield: JSOT,
1991), 78-86.
47
Augustine, City of God, 10.6.

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434

himself in his suffering for us—so that we might be the body of so great
a head—under the form of a servant.”48 To complete the thought upon
Romans 12, Augustine makes explicit the relationship between Christ’s
sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christians, and the Eucharist:
This is the sacrifice of Christians, who are “many, making up
one body in Christ.” This is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, a sacrament
well-known to the faithful where it is shown to the Church that
she herself is offered in the offering which she presents to God.
Becoming acceptable to God because of what it has received from his
beauty, it seems clear, is bound up with becoming partakers of the divine nature, which has been revealed to us in Christ’s logiké latreia: that
is, a different kind of worship than that offered by the pagans (since he
quite explicitly contrasts this kind of worship with the kind of worship
demanded by “this age”). In Augustine’s view, it is clearly fitting to see
this at the heart of his two cities narrative, as we saw in book eighteen.
After all, the connection is already in St. Paul, who opens his letters to
the Romans by rebuking those who exchanged true worship of God for
unnatural worship of the creature, and “exchanged natural relations for
unnatural” (Rom 1:26). Thus at the heart of his narrative concerning
the contrast of two cities is really a Pauline narrative about contrasting
forms of worship, both marked by sacrifice, but only one being a true
and perfect logiké latreia, the divine form which is worshipped rightly,
and can thus be habituated in Christians as “living sacrifices.”
This tells us a great deal about the importance of sacrifice in Augustine’s City, but very little about martyrdom. Yet the logic of martyrdom
naturally follows. If we return to the end of City 18, we find Augustine
reflecting at length on the martyrs. He has done it before, for example
in the first book of the City, where he contrasts the honor suicides of
Roman Stoicism with “the behavior of Christian women.”49 Or where
he chides pagans who worship false gods, yet received refuge in Christ’s

48
49

Ibid., 10.6.
Ibid., 1.19.

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435

Church, and especially “in the shrines of his martyrs.”50 Each he takes as
signs of the two cities intermingled yet distinguishable from one another.51 Augustine is consistently interested in situating the Gospel “amid
terrible persecutions and the manifold tortures and deaths of martyrs”
precisely because he thinks that the Church is herself the sacrifice of
Christ, which is at the heart of martyrdom.52 It is always the participationist account of sacrifice that shapes his view of martyrdom: “he
suffered, he died, he rose again, showing by his suffering what we ought
to undergo for the cause of truth.”53
It is tempting to think that martyrs are made by kings or emperors
or even heretics. Instead, martyrs are made by God; they have received
the beauty of the divine form. The martyrs are martyrs for the sake of
their enemies. For Augustine, the blood of the martyrs speaks to kings,
throughout history, “by whose laws the Church was being devastated.”54
So the martyr is not simply a sacrifice, but also an evangelist, one whose
body and spirit have become the very presence of the logiké latreia of
Christ. It is hardly a wonder that so many martyrdoms in the early
church were described in Eucharistic terms.55 Augustine sees the martyr not only as an evangelist, and as the presence of Christ, but also as
witness to social and political truth; he hopes that the blood of the martyrs might awaken even persecuting kings to the “true king of the ages”
(vero rege saeculum), whose name “they had ruthlessly tried to remove
from the earth.”56 Could kings or emperors see the truth of the martyr
and thus bring an end to martyrdom? Augustine thinks this is entirely
possible for limited periods of time, but that we should not think that

50

Ibid., 1.34.
There is an unfortunate habit, especially in students but also some scholars, of assuming that permixtum (translated as commingled or intermingled) means indistinguishable. Augustine does not mean this at all, but rather that the two cities are
mixed without confusion.
52
Augustine, City of God, 18.50.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid.
55
See, for example, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, in The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, ed. Kirsopp Lake, trans. William Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1965).
56
Augustine, City of God, 18.50.
51

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C. C. Pecknold

persecution and martyrdom could ever be brought to an end by the rulers of this age, or even by heretics.
Augustine observed (and predicted) in City 18 that as the world became Christian, the devil would increasingly stir up heretics to oppose
Christian doctrine—and these heretics could torment the souls of the
devout in ways that far exceed the harm that kings and emperors could
bring to the body. One is reminded of Tocqueville’s “civilized despotism” in Augustine’s view that heretics could effect a softer, gentler but
more insidious persecution, not of the body, but of the soul. Whether
the persecution comes from kings or heretics, Augustine makes the essential point that the martyr is not caused by persecution, but emerges
as a divine cause of grace in the Church becoming what she is herself,
the sacrifice of Christ. Neither kings nor heretics should be feared for
what they can do to the body and the soul, but they are themselves an
occasion for the Christian to grow in holiness and wisdom. All enemies
of the Church, Augustine says, can thus train the Church in two ways. If
the enemies have the power to do bodily harm (as kings do), then they
train the Church in patient endurance. If the enemies have distorted the
truth of the Christian faith with “perverse notions,” and persecute the
heart, then “they train her in wisdom.”57 Remarkably, Augustine says
that neither kind of enemy can really harm the Church—there is not a
hint of apocalypticism in his embrace of persecution and martyrdom.
There is something pervasively oblative about Augustine’s account
of the Christian life, and the martyr is really an icon of how this should
be manifested in every Christian life, whether there is a threat of physical harm or not. Augustine writes that while an end to martyrdom
might bring “great consolation, especially to the weak,” the truth is unalterable: “all who want to live a devout life in Christ suffer persecution.” Even in times of tranquility, even when those outside the pilgrim
city “do not rage,” there will still be invisible forms of persecution that
are no less real. The Christian will never escape those “who by their
unprincipled behavior torment the feelings of those who live devout
lives.” If not in their bodies, Christians will still “suffer this persecution
. . . in their hearts.”58
57
58

Ibid., 18.51.
Ibid.

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437

It is at this point, at the end of City 18, that Augustine introduces a
new possibility for martyrdom in the post-Constantinian peace. It is the
notion of an invisible persecution from enemies who are (a) all potential
citizens of the pilgrim city, and (b) serve to train Christians to become
logiké latreia. He employs the category of “heresy” for this constant, invisible persecution, and thus ties Christian witness to orthodoxy in a
new way. Regardless of the kind of persecution, visible or invisible, Augustine says that every persecution should bring consolation to the true
Christian.
Against those who would imagine the end of martyrdom, those
“weak” Christians who take consolation in imagining some cessation of
persecution, Augustine cheerfully insists that “no limit can be set to the
number of persecutions which the Church is bound to suffer for her training.”59 Augustine does not mean that there will be no end to persecution.
He means that it is not a limit that we ourselves can set, or should want
to set. Why? Because, Augustine writes, the last persecution will be extinguished by Christ himself, in person, at the end of time.60 To proclaim
any other person or process or polity as the end of martyrdom, in all its
forms, is literally to proclaim an anti-Christ, or another kind of worship.
To proclaim the end of martyrdom, then, is also to try to take control of time: “It is not for you to know the times, which the Father has
reserved for his own control.”61 It is thus not only a doxological apostasy,
but also an eschatological apostasy, one that sees “this age” as an end in
itself. To proclaim, with Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke that martyrdom has been rendered obsolete by “a new order for the ages” would be
an essentially heretical and blasphemous claim that the state has become
the body of Christ and has extinguished persecution. To think that we
have arrived at the end of persecution and to think that liberal democracy has brought such an end would only indicate a false eschatology. Just
when we think we have arrived at the end of persecution, we know that
we have arrived at a false faith, a false hope, and most likely a false love
of patria, which will be distinguishable by false sacrifice and worship.
It sounds like a counsel of despair. Yet there is no despair in his
59

Ibid., 18.52.
Ibid., 18.53.
61
Ibid.
60

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438

counsel at all. Augustine continually counsels Christians not to be
afraid, not to be grieved, but to be joyful and devout, to love one’s neighbors, even enemies. There is enormous hope and confidence, especially
when, at the end of the City of God, he discusses the martyrs. In book
22, the martyrs play a crucial part in his closing arguments to the Romans. The Romans claim that Christians are weak; they claim that they
need to resist Christ, and return to pagan virtues if Rome is to endure.
Augustine retorts: “Martyrs endured the bitter enmity and the savage
cruelty of the world . . . they overcame the world not by resisting but by
dying.”62 Where the pagans offer sacrifices to their gods, Augustine is
keen to emphasize that Christians do not make sacrifices to martyrs, but
that the martyrs have become partakers of Christ’s sacrifice:
We do not in those shrines raise altars on which to sacrifice
to the martyrs, but to the one God, who is the martyrs’ God
and ours; and at this sacrifice the martyrs are named, in their
own place and in the appointed order, as men of God who have
overcome the world in the confession of his name. . . . Indeed,
the sacrifice itself is the Body of Christ, which is not offered to
them, because they themselves are that Body.63
Here Augustine stresses that the martyr has been raised up to conformity with Christ’s Body. That is to say, that martyrs can be named martyrs
only because they have been wholly conformed, in their bodies, to the
sacrifice which is the Body of Christ—and this is why so many miracles
are associated with the shrines and relics: the martyr is evidence of a life
that has participated in the holiness of Christ, which alone is acceptable
to God. Since Christian martyrdom is evidence of a life that has been
wholly conformed to Christ’s sacrifice, the miracles associated with
martyrs are themselves nothing other than “the faith which proclaims
that Christ rose in the flesh and ascended into heaven with the flesh.”64
Augustine once told his catechumens, as they looked upon the Eucharist

62

Ibid., 22.9.
Ibid., 22.10.
64
Ibid., 22.9.
63

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439

for the first time, to “become what you are.”65 In the martyr, Augustine
sees the reality under cover of sacrament revealed in the flesh.
However, Augustine leaves some things unanswered in light of our
contemporary context. How can the Christian be conformed to Christ’s
sacrifice in those times of tranquility which Augustine says will be
marked by subtler, less visible persecutions of the heart? What about the
Tocquevillean possibility? In these next, concluding sections, I will turn
to Erik Peterson and Pope Benedict as Augustinian theologians who call
us to contemplate the martyr, even when persecution might be subtle or
hidden from our view.
Peterson and Ratzinger on the Theo-Political Vision of the Martyr
Erik Peterson, a German theologian of the mid-twentieth century
who was a convert to Catholicism and was also a friend of Karl Barth and
Carl Schmitt, opened his famous essay “Witness to the Truth” this way:
When we enter a church and turn our gaze to the altar, we are
rarely aware that the altar on which the holy sacrifice is offered
contains the relics of martyrs, that it is very often built over the
bones of the martyr. Nevertheless, we should take a moment to
ponder this fact, for the Church’s practice of offering Christ’s
sacrifice over the burial place of a martyr seems to express a very
particular conception of the martyr’s relation to the Church.66
Like Augustine, Peterson understood that the Eucharist was the source
and summit of the Church, and the martyr “made public” the secret of
the Eucharist in a dramatic and visible way. The martyr does not appear from nowhere—the martyr who dies in the public square is formed
in Holy Communion. Peterson admits, much as Augustine does, that
there are times when there are more martyrs, and times when there
are fewer—but to deny martyrdom is to deny the very existence of the
Church.67 That is because, in Peterson’s view, “the martyr demonstrates
65

See, for one instance of this counsel, Letter 227, in Augustine, Letters (Hyde Park,
NY: New City Press, 2005).
66
Peterson, Theological Tractates, 151.
67
Ibid., 157.

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C. C. Pecknold

the public claim of the Church of Jesus Christ.”68 In the martyrs’ confession in the public square, “subject to public judicial proceeding and the
penalties of public law,” the “martyr leaps beyond this world’s concept
of ‘public’ and demonstrates in his words the public claim of another,
a coming new world.”69 The “witness” of the martyr demonstrates the
irreducibly public nature of religion—the public nature of the Eucharist,
sacrifice, and worship—it makes visible an invisible reality, namely the
participation of a human soul in Christ’s Body. Throughout this essay I
have tried to help us face why it is that seeing the martyr has become
difficult for us. But Peterson puts the point differently. Peterson does not
pay attention to whether or not we can see the martyr; he awakens us to
a more important question: Can we see how the martyr sees? He writes:
“The revelation of Christ makes visible for the martyr the metaphysical
disorientation that marks the false political order.”70
Peterson remarks that “the political” (subtly critiquing Carl Schmitt)
“is always tempted to abandon the ultimate metaphysical orientation
and to seek its gods in the world” of power politics.71 The martyr sees
this temptation and this abandonment with clear vision. The martyr sees
the metaphysical disorientation that marks the false political order in a
way that the rest of us may vaguely perceive but cannot see distinctly. In
this way, Peterson does not change the subject. He changes our subjective understanding of the martyr as an object. Modern social imaginaries had made the martyr into an object that must be removed from our
view—but Peterson understands that the point should not be whether
or not we can see them, but whether or not we are able to participate in
their subjective witness to an objective reality. Can we see what martyrs
witness to? If we can, then we are no longer seeing them as objects that
are subject to our control, but we are involved in the faith of the martyr.
That is the real threat of the martyr. Does it matter if the martyrs shed
blood or not if their witness has changed the way we see the nature of reality? If we can see in the same way that the martyrs see, we have a vision
of the sacrifice [the logiké latreia] at the heart of the universe.
68

Ibid.
Ibid.
70
Ibid., 167–8.
71
Ibid., 168.
69

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441

Joseph Ratzinger once wrote that the saints offer a privileged “hermeneutical vantage point where real and unreal could be distinguished, and
communion with God [comes] to light as the locus of true life,” and the
martyr’s death proclaims that “communion with God means a life stronger than death.” 72 And just before being elevated to the papacy, Cardinal
Ratzinger made a very similar point in his Values in a Time of Upheaval:
The crucified Christ indicates the boundaries to the power of the
state and shows where its rights terminate and resistance in the
form of suffering becomes a necessity. The faith of the New Testament acknowledges not the revolutionary but the martyr who
recognizes both the authority of the state and also its limits. His
resistance consists in doing everything that serves to promote
law and an ordered life in society, even when this means obeying authorities who are indifferent or hostile to his faith; but he
will not obey when he is commanded to do what is evil, that is,
to oppose the will of God.73
Ratzinger makes explicit something which is usually left implicit in
Peterson’s more apocalyptic account: the martyr—visible or not—recognizes the authority of the state, and is not opposed to it. The future
pope agreed that the martyr does pose a threat to political orders, but
only insofar as those political orders refuse to see the martyr as martyr.
The refusal to either see the martyr as martyr or to “see as the martyr
sees” is always an indication of metaphysical disorientation, and a refusal to recognize either the limits of politics or anything which precedes
or transcends politics. In this way, both Peterson and Ratzinger agree
that the refusal to see the martyr is a sign of tyranny, but to see as the
martyr sees is a sign of freedom, political and otherwise. Frequently Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI wrote not so much about the martyr,
but about the conscience, as being the only guarantee against tyranny.
Ratzinger once wrote:

72

Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 91.
73
Joseph Ratzinger, Values in a Time of Upheaval, trans. Brian McNeil. (New York:
Crossroad, 2006), 21. Emphasis mine.

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C. C. Pecknold

The destruction of the conscience is the real precondition for
totalitarian obedience and totalitarian domination. Where
conscience prevails there is a barrier against the domination of
human orders and human whim, something sacred that must
remain inviolable and that in an ultimate sovereignty evades
control not only by oneself but by every external agency. Only
the absoluteness of conscience is the complete antithesis to
tyranny; only the recognition of its inviolability protects human beings from each other and from themselves; only its rule
guarantees freedom. 74
Yet notice that the conscience and the martyr have something in
common: they both bear witness to the freedom for the truth, from
within and from without. In this way, perhaps, we can see that both the
conscience and the martyr can work in the same way for the preservation of political freedom, and also spiritual freedom through communion with Christ’s true and perfect sacrifice.
In the first half of this essay, I sought to show the subtle ways in
which modern liberal orders aim to “subordinate religion to the political
order” in one way or another, which is to say that liberal orders aim to
subordinate conscience to the state.75 But in the second part of this essay,
I have wanted to show, with Augustine, that while “the martyrs did not
love the crimes their persecutors were committing against them . . . still
they made use of them in order to deserve well of God.”76
There is no doubt that religious liberty infringements indicate
a metaphysical disorientation in a polity, just as the refusal to see the
martyr as martyr indicates a refusal to see the nature of reality as such.
Cardinal George was not wrong to invite us to contemplate the martyr
as a response to these challenges to religious liberty. But it might not be
forthcoming. We might not see the martyr, and we might find ourselves
in a state in which there is no visible persecution at all. But that does
74

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, trans. Robert Nowell (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 165.
75
Stanley Hauerwas and Michael Baxter, “The Kingship of Christ: Why Freedom of
‘Belief ’ is Not Enough,” De Paul Law Review 42 (1992), 109.
76
Augustine, On Christian Teaching, trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), 1.22.

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443

not mean that there are not shades of coercion to take into account. In
fact, what this essay has tried to demonstrate is that liberal orders have
the potential to effect a more dangerous kind of discipline, one that has
the potential to go unseen.
This is why we need to continually attend to the martyrs. It is precisely the martyr who invites us to encounter the truth, which is finally
what is at stake in every attempt to circumscribe what counts as licita
religio, logiké latreia, libertas, and the verum sacrificium. The martyr is
a seed of contemplation, but a seed that calls us to turn, to change our
point of view, to see the same truth that the martyr sees, and be transformed. If the martyr is seen this way, then tyranny disperses, and the
light of the eternal city illumines our own. Attentiveness to the martyrs
gives Christians in liberal orders the skills to recognize how to resist the
shades of coercion that always seem to fall short of visible persecution.
While the principle of religious liberty enshrined in the American Constitution might continue to provide some minimal protections for “obedient believers,” Christians might find that being “the most independent
citizens” will be increasingly a costly prospect as the general will turns
N&V
away from Christ.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 445-470

445

Dignitatis Humanae—Not a Mere Question of
Church Policy: A Response to Thomas Pink
Martin Rhonheimer

Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy

Introduction

IN HIS REPLY1 to my essay on Dignitatis Humanae, published in

this journal,2 Professor Pink assumes that according to me traditional
Church doctrine held that it was the genuine task and right of the temporal power under natural law to coerce religiously and thus to have the
right of suppressing false religions and of imposing religious truth on
society. According to me, Professor Pink says, Dignitatis Humanae has
given up this doctrine, replacing it by a secular conception of the state
and as a consequence of this doctrinal change concerning the nature
of the state, the Church now has given up her claim to have a right to
coerce religiously with temporal means.3
1

“The Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae: A Reply to Martin Rhonheimer,” Nova
et Vetera (English)11.1 (2013): 77–121. I thank Professor Pink for kindly having sent
me the text of his reply after its publication.
2
“Benedict XVI’s ‘Hermeneutic of Reform’ and Religious Freedom,” Nova et Vetera
(English) 9.4 (2011): 1029–54.
3
See also Pink’s former version of his criticism on: roratecaeli.blogspot.com/2011/08/
on-religious-liberty-and-hermeneutic-of.html. A more expanded version of his argument can be found in Thomas Pink, “The Right to Religious Liberty and the Coercion of Belief: A Note on Dignitatis Humanae,” in Reason, Morality and Law: The
Philosophy of John Finnis, ed. Robert George and John Keown (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 427-42, to which John Finnis has responded very critically

446

Martin Rhonheimer

On the basis of this misrepresentation of my position, which is the
premise of all of his criticism, Professor Pink has an easy task in proving
that I am wrong. For there never existed such a tradition of attributing to the state a right under natural law to coerce in religious matters.
Professor Pink emphasizes—and rightly so—that also according to tradition only the Church had such a right and that only she could licitly
claim to possess it. In his own words: “The state’s past licit involvement
in religious coercion . . . was never under its own authority but was
always under the authority of the Church” (80). This is correct, as far
as Church doctrine is concerned, and there is nothing in my writings
which even implicitly contradicts that truth.
Therefore, to maintain that in my view the affirmation of religious
freedom by the Second Vatican Council is a consequence of having
abandoned a traditional doctrine on the state according to which the
temporal power has a genuine right, under natural law, to coerce in
matter of religion, is a truly bewildering presentation of my position.
Moreover, to assert, as Professor Pink does, that therefore the Church
herself has now given up her right to coerce in religious matters by temporal means, is beside the point. What I said and hold is something
completely different.
I never asserted that according to traditional doctrine the state had
a genuine right—that is, a right under natural law—to coerce in matters
of religion; nor did I say that the abandonment of such a doctrine was
the doctrinal change brought about by Vatican II. My thesis rather was
that according to tradition the Church had the right to demand of the
temporal power that this power be subordinated to the Church’s jurisdiction, in order that Church law might be imposed on the baptized by
means of the temporal power (of the state).
In the factual order of salvation, so this tradition said, the temporal
power of the state, though being a reality under natural law in the order
of creation, was bound, in the order of salvation, to serve the spiritual
power as its “secular arm.” As an ideal in a society formed by Catholics,
this meant that the state had to be officially, constitutionally Catholic.
This is why in my article I have talked of the traditional doctrine as
being a doctrine about “the duties of the state toward the true religion,”
in the same volume, 566-77.

Dignitatis Humanae Revisited

447

and about “the right of the Church to assert its claims by the secular arm
of the state, as an instrument of both temporal penalties and civil consequences.”4 That the state was understood as having “duties toward the
true religion” is not tantamount to asserting that according to this doctrine the Church has such a right under natural law, as Professor Pink
makes the reader believe. It means that in the economy of salvation,
carried out in this world by the Catholic Church, the temporal power of
princes and later of the state is part of this economy of salvation by being
the secular support of the spiritual power. According to this tradition,
it is so not for natural-law reasons but for theological reasons, derived
from revelation and based on the nature of the Christian religion and of
the Church.
This is why in the same sentence I spoke of “the right of the Church
to assert its claims by the secular arm of the state, as an instrument of
both temporal penalties and civil consequences.”5 The point of my argument, therefore, was quite different from how it appears in Professor
Pink’s reply. It was based on a critical review of a tradition which has
been definitively and with sound theological reasons abandoned by Vatican II and the post-conciliar magisterium.
Historical Background
The way this older tradition was formed is long and complex. As
such, it had no roots in Scripture, nor in the Apostolic Tradition or in
the Fathers. In his reply, Professor Pink entirely disregards this tradition
and the history behind it. In the following, I will roughly and in a very
simplified manner summarize this history and the tradition it formed.
To begin with, notice what I wrote about Scripture and Tradition in
my article:
[I]t would be excessive to affirm that these principles of Scripture and Tradition also contain guidelines on the relationship
between the Church and the state, on the duties of the state toward the true religion, or on the right of the Church to assert its
claims by the secular arm of the state, as an instrument of both
4
5

Rhonheimer, “Benedict XVI’s ‘Hermeneutic of Reform’ and Religious Freedom,” 1040.
Ibid.

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Martin Rhonheimer

temporal penalties and civil consequences. It was only in the
course of time and under the influence of different situations
and historical needs that such positions or doctrines were constituted, principally in relation to the Church’s battle for the libertas ecclesiae, the freedom of the Church from civil and political control and oversight. This was an extremely complex process, the stages of which I have discussed in other publications.6
The story begins roughly in the seventh century when, after the
breakdown of the Roman Empire, the Church and her bishops increasingly took over functions of civil government in the field of the administration of justice, public order, and defense. Before that time, the Christianized Roman Empire had been characterized by the typically Roman
idea that religion guaranteed the prosperity of the Empire. The pagan
version of this Roman civil religion was polytheistic; Christian monotheism was seen as a threat to the unity of the multicultural Empire.
After Constantine the Great, however, the mentality changed: the cult of
the one true Christian God was believed to be the basis of the Empire’s
unity, stability, and prosperity. Christian emperors, adopting Arianism,
understood themselves as the supreme bishops and supervisors of the
Church; the Latin Church started to oppose this view, defending the
libertas ecclesiae.
After the sacking of Rome by Alarich’s troops, Saint Augustine established in his monumental work De Civitate Dei the typical Christian
principle of the dualism of powers: the temporal power has the task of
maintaining earthly order and peace; the task of the spiritual power, for
its part, is to make us attain heavenly beatitude and eternal life. The
powers belong to different orders, being mixed, however, on this earth
6

Ibid. At this point, in note 5 I referred to the following publications: Chapter 12 of
my The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2013), entitled “Christianity and Secularity: Past and
Present of a Complex Relationship.” This text was previously published in Italian
as “Cristianesimo e laicità: storia ed attualità di un rapporto complesso,” in Laicità:
la ricerca dell’universale nella differenza, ed. Pierpaolo Donati (Bologna: Il Mulino,
2008), 27-138; in Spanish, see Cristianismo y laicidad. Historia y actualidad de una
relación compleja (Madrid: Rialp, 2009). A much-expanded German version has
been published under the title Christentum und säkularer Staat: Geschichte—Gegenwart—Zukunft (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2012).

Dignitatis Humanae Revisited

449

because the City of God and the Earthly City, respectively, arise in the
hearts of people and are not visible institutions on this earth.
Clarifying, during the Church’s assertion against the power of the
emperors, the relationship between the Church and the temporal power,
Pope Gelasius coined this dualism in his succinct formula: “There are
two things on this earth: the sacred authority (auctoritas sacrata) of the
popes and the royal power (potestas regalis).”7 According to Pope Gelasius, the rulers of this world possess the potestas, whereas the Church
possesses the auctoritas. The potestas is a coercive, earthly power, which
concerns the things of this world, while auctoritas is a sacred power of
a dogmatic, pastoral, and moral nature, which is exercised in the name
of a truth that is, also, the measure of goodness of the exercise of every
temporal power.8 The Gelasian principle did not express an institutional
or juridical supremacy of a spiritual authority over the temporal power;
it only claimed a moral and pastoral supremacy in the sense of Saint
Ambrose’s famous dictum Imperator intra ecclesiam, non supra ecclesiam (“the emperor is in the Church, not above the Church”).9 It
meant that also emperors, kings, and princes of this world are, as faithful, subject to the spiritual authority and pastoral care of the Church. In
the High Middle Ages this will be expressed by saying that the Church
has jurisdiction over them ratione peccati. Yet, this refers not to institutions, but to persons.10
7

Hugo Rahner, Kirche und Staat im frühen Christentum (Müchen: 1951), 256. Gelasius did not say “There are two powers” as many translations erroneously have, but
“there are two things”: duo quippe sunt...—For the later evolution of this formula see
The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350–c. 1450 , ed. J. H. Burns
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 88ff.
8
The distinction comes from the Roman republic: the Consuls had the potestas
while the Senate had auctoritas, but no potestas. It was Emperor Augustus who first
claimed to unite both potestas and auctoritas in his person. This is important to correctly understand the dualistic nature and the importance of the Gelasian formula.
9
St. Ambrose of Milan, Speech against Auxentius (Migne, Patrologia Latina [PL] 16,
1007–1018), cited by Hugo Rahner, Kirche und Staat im frühen Christentum (Document 13b), 184.
10
Notice that in Can. 2198 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, referred to by Professor
Pink, the ratione peccati clause refers to the state as an institution (civilis auctoritas)
and as the secular arm (brachium saecularis) of the Church. This is something quite
different from what is expressed in the formulas of Saint Ambrose and Pope Gelasius.

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Martin Rhonheimer

Things decisively changed with so-called political Augustinism, a
“heterodox” interpretation of Saint Augustine’s doctrine on the two Cities. It was “heterodox” in the sense that it was faithful neither to Saint
Augustine’s position nor to the Gelasian principle, converting the latter
into a doctrine of the subordination of powers.11 It was the time of the
great missionary impulse of the early Middle Ages and the conversion
of the Arian West Goths to the Catholic faith. Now, the temporal power of the princes, kings, and emperors was increasingly understood to
be part of the order of salvation, having thus a sacred function as the
“secular arm of the Church.” The Gelasian principle of the pastoral and
moral supremacy of the spiritual power is increasingly interpreted in
institutional, juridical, and thus political terms. So, Pope Gregory the
Great wrote that “who governs has received his power over all men from
above, so that the earthly city be in service of the heavenly” (ut terrestre regnum coelesti regno famuletur).12 In the seventh century, St. Isidore
of Seville expressed this idea in a somewhat cruder way: the power of
Princes, he wrote, is needed so as to impose “by the fear of punishment
what the clergy is unable to bring about by words alone.”13 This went so
far that, from the ninth century the temporal power of kings and emperors was understood as one of the two ecclesiastical powers, essentially
responsible for helping the Church to fulfill her task, to defend her from
enemies, to create the conditions for her missionary expansion, and to
provide for the clergy.14
“Political Augustinism” did not claim that this was the task of the
temporal power under natural law. On the contrary, “political Augustinism” absorbed natural law into ecclesiastical law and thus sacralized
temporal power. This resulted in the complete integration of the Church
structures into the political structures of the Empire. Charlemagne took
over the title of Vicarius Christi and the anointing of emperors and kings

11

The classical treatment is: H. X. Arquillière, L’augusti­nisme politique. Essai sur la
formation des théories politiques du Moyen-Age (Paris: J. Vrin, 1955).
12
SS Gregorius I Magnus, Registri Epistolarum, Liber III, Epistola 65, PL 77, 663.
13
St. Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, book III, ch. 51 (PL 83, 723-724); the Latin text of
this passage can be found in: Arquillière, L’augusti­nisme politique, 142.
14
Jonah of Orléans, De institutione regia (Jonah was bishop of Orléans, d. 843); for
more detailed information see Arquillière, L’augusti­nisme politique, 149.

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was understood as being a sacrament.15 But, beginning in the eleventh
century, and with Gregory’s VII’s “Papal revolution,” things started to
change.16 Gregory and his successors de-sacralized temporal power, reducing emperors and kings to simple laymen. So he reestablished a conception of temporal power under natural law. The high medieval doctrine of the plenitudo potestatis of the pope claimed the ecclesial power
to be supreme and having the control also over temporal power, essentially secular in its nature, which however had to be exercised in the
service of the spiritual power. This implied the idea that, though being a
reality of natural law and in this sense secular, it belonged to the nature
of the state that it be under the jurisdiction of the spiritual power of the
Church. According to the doctrine of the two swords, also, the temporal
power was originally in the hands of the pope but was given to earthly
princes for its exercise. This actually was a version of the doctrine according to which the temporal power is the secular arm of the Church,
a version, however, substantially different from its modern variants. In
fact, the papal revolution of the High Middle Ages contained the seed of
a truly secular conception of the state, which would develop only many
centuries later.
Moreover, the insistence of these popes on controlling political
power ratione peccati as well as the cultivation by canon lawyers of natural law and the submission even of Church law to natural law, was the
seed of the modern culture of rule of law and human rights. In fact, the
Church did never, and does not today, accept absolute political power. It
claims that every human power has to be subject to higher moral standards of good and evil. For imposing this claim, the Church in the past
used juridical and political means we justly consider today as inappropriate. But at the time, they were perhaps the only available and, despite
abuses and mistakes, the Church became the great legal and moral educator of Western civilization.
However, after the late medieval decline of papal power what first
happened was not the rise of the secular state but something quite dif15

Cf. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).
16
See for this especially Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the
Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). For more bibliography on this and related subjects see note 6 above.

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ferent. The development of pre-modern territorial states and eventually
the rupture of the religious unity by the Protestant reformation gave rise
to the sovereign confessional state, which, not for theological but for
merely political reasons—religious peace and increase and consolidation of absolute state power—established religion: Lutheranism, Calvinism, or Catholicism. For this period it is true what John Finnis points
out against Professor Pink, namely that “the rulers of the state conceived
their extremely coercive repression of heresy and apostasy as the exercising of an inherently secular state jurisdiction . . . rather than as the exercising of the Church’s coercive jurisdiction by an agency conveniently
free from the limitations of the Church’s capacities and character.”17
The modern tradition of the (Lutheran, Calvinist, or Catholic) confessional state delivered the model for the Church’s opposition to the liberal ideas of the French Revolution, mainly its declaration of human and
civil rights, which were seen as collective apostasy of a whole catholic nation. The theological and canonical tradition, rooted in political Augustinism and then reversed by the Papal revolution of the eleventh century
finally, converted—and also perverted—into the modern confessional
state. For Catholic theology, thus, the ideal became the “Catholic state.”
As every reality of this world, the state, too, was seen as a part of the order
of salvation, not genuinely or “under natural law but because in a Christian society and by its due submission to the authority of the Church, the
temporal power was conceived as an earthly order to be integrated into
the order of salvation. Therefore, in a truly Christian world, the temporal
power, not by its own right, but by its being a de facto part of the order of
salvation, has to serve as the secular arm of the Church.18
The problem with Professor Pink’s position is that it simply seems to
ignore history. History cannot be read simply in the light of canon law, as
he does. The development of canon law itself has to be understood in the
light of historical contexts. This is why Professor Pinks misunderstood
the main features of my interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae and why
in my view he does not see the point of Pope Benedict XVI’s claim that
17

John Finnis, “Reflections and Responses,” in Reason, Morality and Law: The Philosophy of John Finnis, 573.
18
This very complex history, which I have so briefly and thus not adequately outlined
in these few lines, can be found in more detail in other publications of mine, most in
detail in my Christenum und säkularer Staat, First Part.

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the Second Vatican Council has to be read according to a “hermeneutic
of reform.” Professor Pink, instead, degrades the Council’s teaching on
religious freedom to a simple tactical move, which, in his words, arises
“from a reform on the level of policy and from accompanying change in
religious and political circumstance, not from any reform of underlying
doctrine” (79).
My thesis was that the Second Vatican Council changed a traditional doctrine, both theological and canonical. However, that doctrine—
like Pope Gregory’s the Great interpretation of Saint Augustine, Isidor
of Seville’s idea of temporal princes imposing clerical preaching by state
power, Jonah of Orleans’s view on temporal power as being a form of
ecclesiastical power, and the high medieval doctrine of the two swords,
used by Gregory VII and perfected by Saint Bernard and Hugo of St.
Victor—was not of any dogmatic value; it was not a doctrine of faith
belonging to the depositum fidei, nor did it belong to the Catholic moral tradition.19 The change was that, according to Dignitatis Humanae,
the state, even in a Christian society, is no longer understood as having
the duty to submit to the authority of the Church, because in principle
the state—the institution—is no longer understood as being part of the
order of salvation, but as substantially secular and in this sense autonomous (or truly sovereign), a character which it does not lose even in a
wholly Christian world.
In fact, what Dignitatis Humanae does is to peremptorily sanction
natural law, that is, it recognizes unconditionally that very secularity
which the temporal power possesses under natural law, that is, by its
nature, a secularity and corresponding political and juridical autonomy
which is in no way diminished by its de facto integration into the order
of salvation. Dignitatis Humanae, therefore, overcomes definitively the
tradition of political Augustinism which was characterized by absorbing
natural law into divine and ecclesiastical law.
19

Especially the idea of referring to the two swords Peter mentioned, according to Luke
22:38, after the Last Supper, was originally conceived by Gottschalk (of Aachen),
chancellor of Henry IV—Gregory VII’s great adversary—as a weapon of propaganda
against Gregory’s attempt to deprive Henry IV of his ecclesiastical powers. But then
Gregory used the formula, converting its meaning, as a weapon against Henry IV.
So, the origin of that doctrine is not theological, but rather political and, in a later
stage, juridical and pastoral. See my discussion of this subject in my Christentum
und säkularer Staat, 97–103.

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Secularity of the state means that the temporal power owns an
autonomy which includes independence from Church jurisdiction and
that therefore the Church has no genuine right to enforce her religious
claims by means of the temporal power of the state. To affirm this kind
of secularity is not only a tactical move and a change in policy, but a recognition of the genuine earthly character of the temporal power of the
state and thus the recognition of (1) its not being competent, precisely
“under natural law,” to enforce religious claims stemming from a religious authority based on supernatural revelation, and (2) of not being
obliged but rather being forbidden, to serve the Church as her secular
arm in imposing Church jurisdiction on civil society.
So, when I say that Dignitatis Humanae implies a change on the level of the doctrine about the state, I do not mean that this change affected
an alleged competence of the state under natural law to coerce religiously; the state was never held to have such a competence. What I referred
to was the doctrine about the role of the state in the order of salvation and,
therefore, the doctrine about the state as submitted to the jurisdiction of
the Church and its duty to serve the Church as her secular arm. This exactly, in the past, was the program underlying the ideal of the “Catholic
state.” Such was not a state which by its own authority, or “under natural law,” should be catholic, but by understanding itself as a part of the
order of salvation and thus being in the service of the Church. Such a
conception, however, implies the state’s being subordinated to the only
institution which genuinely and by its own right, has the authority and
the spiritual means for salvation: the Church.
The Question of the Coercive Power of the Church
From this follows—and here again Professor Pink’s argument
fails—that by negating the Church’s claim of having the right to use the
temporal power of the state to impose her spiritual claims on the faithful I in no way negate the coercive power of the Church in religious
matters altogether, nor do I negate that for such coercion she may licitly
use temporal penalties. My interpretation leaves completely intact the
Church’s right to religiously coerce the faithful with the means proper to
her and established in canon law, for example, by such church penalties
as excommunications, suspensions, interdicts, and similar measures.

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She can do that in order to punish, and defend herself and the faithful
against, heresy, apostasy, schism, or disobedience. She may also inflict
temporal penalties, such as removal from office, removal of benefices,
etc. and all that this implies in real temporal disadvantages. She can even
order—as it is in the case of pedophilic clergymen—those who committed determined offenses to surrender to the police as a condition of
receiving sacramental absolution—which, however, rather implies that
the Church works as the “spiritual branch” of the secular power.
That means that also in this respect I claim only that the Church
has abandoned the doctrine according to which the state has a duty—
not under natural law, but in the factual order of salvation to which
Christians, including politicians and statesmen, belong—to serve the
Church as her secular arm in imposing her religious coercive power on
the faithful. The Church has abandoned this position because she at last
recognizes the substantially secular nature of the state and its consequent autonomy, which is its real nature under natural law. Therefore,
my position is in this important respect exactly the opposite of what
Professor Pink thinks me to be saying.
Moreover, Professor Pink accuses me of negating the coercive power of the Church while, in fact, I only negated the Church’s coercive power through the temporal power of the state. Professor Pink rightly emphasizes that the Syllabus’s condemnations of the denial of the Church’s
right to use coercion by the temporal power (condemned proposition
24) was originated not with the intention of upholding thereby a genuine right of the state, but on account of the Church’s concern to defend her own genuine authority (91). This was exactly the problem:
in nineteenth-century France, the position of the Catholic liberals and
their leader Charles de Montalembert, whose opinions were meant to be
condemned by the encyclical Quanta cura, was not to deny the Church’s
right to exert her spiritual authority by coercive means, but only her
authority to do so through the temporal power of the state. Therefore,
as an attempt at refuting my interpretation, also in this respect Professor
Pink’s remarks are ineffective.

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Pius IX’s Refusal of Indifferentism and the Question of Church
Coercion for the Removal of Heresy
On page 91, Professor Pink mentions that “the Syllabus’s condemnation of the denial of the right to use force or exercise any form of
temporal power for religious ends . . . was fundamentally about the
Church’s authority, not about the authority of the state.” According to
me, it should have been about the authority of the state. This is another example of Professor Pink’s misreading of my argument. However,
I do say, exactly as Professor Pink, that it was fundamentally about the
Church’s authority. It was even more: it was also to defend the unique
truth of the Catholic religion against “indifferentism” or what today we
call religious relativism and pluralism.
Pius IX in fact condemned religious freedom because he thought
it implied the doctrine of religious indifferentism or pluralism, which
is tantamount to negating the unique truth of the Catholic religion. He
thought this, because he took for granted that if there is a true religion,
then political and juridical logic demanded that the temporal power of
the state and the whole society must be subordinated effectively, and
thus in a juridical way, to the spiritual power of that religion. So, inversely, according to his thinking, to establish a right to religious freedom was
equal to denying the existence of the one true religion and, with this,
Church authority altogether. Notice that in that time, both liberal freethinkers and anti-clericals were accustomed to think in the same way,
only inverting the terms: there being in religious matters no truth at all,
so they argued, there must be conceded to citizens a right to complete
freedom in these matters. But this foundation of religious liberty, freedom of worship and of conscience, is equally mistaken. This freedom
does not depend on whether religious truth exists or not. It was with
Dignitatis Humanae that this coupling of the existence of a uniquely true
religion on one hand and the question of the existence of a civil right
to religious freedom on the other hand was finally dissolved. Dignitatis
Humanae even affirms that precisely because this truth exists and man
is bound to search and embrace it, freedom in searching and embracing
it must be guaranteed by the state to all men, even to those who are in
error or do not care about it. The reason is the following, as Dignitatis
Humanae §3 declares:

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457

The religious acts whereby men, in private and in public and
out of a sense of personal conviction, direct their lives to God
transcend by their very nature the order of terrestrial and temporal affairs. Government therefore ought indeed to take account of the religious life of the citizenry and show it favor,
since the function of government is to make provision for the
common welfare. However, it would clearly transgress the limits set to its power, were it to presume to command or inhibit
acts that are religious.
Professor Pink quotes Benedict XVI on page 92, in a passage that
refers to the Church’s right and duty to take measures to prevent heresies
from spreading among the faithful. But he misuses that text in order
to substantiate his thesis of a genuine right of the Church to use coercive means through the temporal power of the state to achieve this
end. However, such a claim is clearly not contained in Benedict’s text. In
consequence, there is no reason to say, as Professor Pink suggests, that
I deny the Church licit use of her spiritual power in a coercive way—for
example, its sanctions for heresy or grave fault against Church discipline. So if Professor Pink writes against me that it “is just historical fantasy to suppose that Catholic endorsement of religious coercion at the
magisterial level was peculiar to a ‘few isolated popes’ of the nineteenth
century,” he is mistaken, because I do not speak of magisterial teaching
about “religious coercion” as such, but I referred to its condemnation of
the modern idea of religious freedom as a civil right.20
I do not negate either that “[t]here is much magisterial and canonical backing for the Church’s direct coercive authority over the baptized,
and in particular for her authority to coerce the errant baptized back
into Catholic fidelity.” (96). However, when Professor Pink adds “and to
call on state assistance for such coercion” he introduces a new element
into his argument for which he could not find very much magisterial
backing, even though perhaps in certain times quite a bit of evidence in
20

It is undeniable that in the High Middle Ages, from Gregory VII, through Innocent
III, and to Boniface VIII, the idea of the juridical supremacy of the spiritual over the
temporal power was fully maintained. However, it is important to understand the
context in which this canonical doctrine and its most famous expression in the “doctrine of the two swords” arose. See for this Christentum und säkularer Staat, 92–103.

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canonical law. But being by its nature human law, and although containing elements of unchangeable divine and natural law, canon law is not
Church doctrine, it is simply law, and Church law changes and adopts
according to Church doctrine, based on the depositum fidei. So, Professor Pink’s argument runs in the wrong way.21
When Professor Pink, toward the end of his essay, writes, “as we
have seen, the Church thought it right to use coercion to remove heresy
altogether from the belief of the baptized, but not to use coercion to
force the conversion of unbaptized Jews or Moslems,” he is, in my view,
obscuring the issue. What traditionally the Church claimed was not
simply to have a right “to remove heresy from the belief of the baptized,”
but to remove it from society altogether and to do this by imposing her
doctrinal authority by means of the temporal power. Also, after Vatican
II, the Church still claims to have the right “to remove heresy altogether
from the belief of the baptized”; she even asserts that she has the duty of
doing so. She does this for example with the help of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of Faith; but also local bishops and local episcopal conferences are called to engage in this task.
However, the issue at stake is that there is a real discontinuity, which
lies in the Church’s abandoning the idea of her having the right and duty
to remove heresy from society altogether and of her having the right to
be supported for this purpose by the temporal power of the state (what
obviously will be possible only in an ideal situation of a “Catholic nation” and of a government run by Catholics). If the Church defends
truth and tries to remove heresy in society altogether, she now wants to
do this by means of teaching, by enlightening consciences, and through
the apostolic, evangelizing, and missionary impetus of the faithful. As
Dignitatis Humanae §1 asserts, “The truth cannot impose itself except
by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once
quietly and with power.” This does not contradict the coercive power
still existing for reasons of protecting faith, especially over clerics and
their preaching and over those who in the name of the Church teach the
ecclesiastical disciplines.

21

See also Pink’s references to the 1917 Code of Canon Law on page 100; this is no
valid argument for proving his case.

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“The traditional catholic teaching on the moral obligation of
individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one
Church of Christ”
On page 103, Professor Pink refers to Cardinal Journet, who was
appointed by Pope Paul VI as a cardinal so that he, a simple professor
of theology at the Grand Séminaire of Fribourg, could participate in the
deliberations on the schema about religious freedom. Professor Pink
quotes Journet in support of his and against my reading of Dignitatis
Humanae §1 where it is declared that the doctrine contained in this text
“leaves unchanged (integram) the traditional catholic teaching on the
moral obligation of individuals and societies towards the true religion
and the one Church of Christ” (104). As I wrote in my article, this statement already presupposes the claim, made in the previous sentence of
Dignitatis Humanae, that in religious matters there must be “immunity
from coercion in civil society.”
Professor Pink asserts that “it is not at all clear what the basis might
be for Rhonheimer’s reading” (104). This is surprising, because the basis is extensively referred to. It is not only the very text of Dignitatis
Humanae, but also No. 2105 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
which not only literally quotes that passage of Dignitatis Humanae but
provides an authoritative interpretation of it.
So, about “the traditional catholic teaching on the moral obligation of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one
Church of Christ,” on page 1036 of my article I wrote the following:
What these duties consist in is specified in what can be considered an authentic interpretation of the debated passage. The
passage is quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.
2105, which explains that it refers to the duty of individuals and
of society of “offering God genuine worship.” This is realized
when, “constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward
enabling them ‘to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality
and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which
[they] live’.” In their personal involvements and activities in
family and professional life, Christians are required “to make
known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in

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the Catholic and apostolic Church.” This, concludes the present section of the Catechism, is how the Church “shows forth
the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over
human societies.” That is, the perspective of Vatican II calls for
the proclamation of the Gospel by the Church and for the apostolate of the Christian faithful so that these penetrate the structures of society with the spirit of Christ—not a word on the state
as the secular arm of the Church, which by state coercion must
protect the “rights of truth,” and in this way impose the kingdom of Christ in human society.22
This means not only that the Council’s doctrine of religious liberty
is compatible with recognizing the fact of religious pluralism, but also
that it cannot be the task of the state to conform society according to the
truth of the Catholic religion. In fact, the famous sentence of Dignitatis
Humanae §1 speaks about a moral duty, not of the state, but of “individuals” and “societies.” It is significant that the text in one of its quotes
refers to the Conciliar Decree Apostolicam Actuositatem, which is about
the apostolate of the lay people, but not on the duties of the state and of
governments.
Against this interpretation, rooted in an authoritative text of the
post-conciliar magisterium, Professor Pink invokes the authority of
Cardinal Journet, referring to his L’Église du Verbe incarné. Now, this
book was first published in 1941, more than twenty years before Vatican II. However, what matters is the view Cardinal Journet defended
during the Council, not what he wrote more than twenty years earlier.

22

This is the integral text of CCC number 2105: “The duty of offering God genuine
worship concerns man both individually and socially. This is ‘the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ.’ (DH 1 §3). By constantly evangelizing men, the
Church works toward enabling them ‘to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality
and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which [they] live’ (AA 13 §1).
The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the
true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church. Christians are called to be
the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all
creation and in particular over human societies.”

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Regarding the duties of society toward God, Journet at the Council said
the following:
Also civil society has the obligation of publicly manifesting the
honor due to God. In consequence, the very civil power must
not ignore the different religious families existing in society and
it is its duty to rely on them so that God be duly honored by all.23
According to this statement, in order to pay due honor to God, the
temporal power of the state need not privilege one religion as the true
one; rather it “must not ignore the different religious families existing in
society.” According to Journet, public manifestations of honoring God
do not need to have a confessional character but rely on the plurality of
religions existing in civil society.
Moreover, Cardinal Journet explicitly rejected in his statement the
older view according to which the Church has a right to appeal to the
State as its secular arm:
Since the epoch of Constantine, and beyond, Church pastors
have appealed more than once to the secular arm in order to
defend the rights of the faithful and to safeguard the temporal
and political order of so-called Christianity. But precisely under
the influence of the preaching of the Gospel, the distinction between the temporal and the spiritual has increasingly become
more explicit and today it is clear for everybody.24

23

“La société civile elle aussi a le devoir de manifester publiquement l’honneur qu’elle
réserve à Dieu. Par conséquent, le pouvoir civil lui-même ne peut ignorer les diverses familles religieuses présentes dans la cité et c’est son devoir de recourir à elles
afin que Dieu soit dignement honoré de tous.” Cardinal Charles Journet, Statement
during the Second Vatican Council, 21 September 1965, Documentation Catholique
62 (1965), col. 1799-80; quoted according to Bernard De Margerie, Liberté religieuse
e Règne du Christ (Paris: Édition du Cerf, 1988), 95-6, at 96 (nr. 4). Emphasis added.
24
“Les pasteurs de l’Église, dès l’époque de Constantin, et au-delà, ont fait appel plus
d’une fois au bras séculier afin de défendre les droits des fidèles et pour sauvegarder
l’ordre temporel et politique de ce qu’on appelle la chrétienté. Pourtant, sous l’influence précisément de la prédication de l’Évangile, la distinction entre les choses
temporelles et les choses spirituelles est devenue progressivement plus explicite et
aujourd’hui elle est claire pour tous” (ibid., nr. 6).

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Journet adds that, in consequence, “the doctrinal principle according
to which the temporal is by its very nature subordinated to the spiritual
is in no way abrogated, but is simply applied in a new way, that is, that
resistance against errors should be carried out with the arms of light and
not with the arms of war.” And this, Journet concludes, is exactly what is
contained in the Declaration; these themes could even be emphasized a
little more, and therefore the text merits to be fully approved.25
Therefore, Professor Pink’s reference to Cardinal Journet is quite
misleading. The reason why Paul VI wanted Journet to participate in
the Council’s deliberation about Dignitatis Humanae was not, as Professor Pink suggests,26 because of his views expressed in his book L’Église
du Verbe Incarné, which on this point reflects the pre-conciliar state of
Church doctrine, but because he knew he would be helpful in convincing
the conciliar Fathers of the convenience of adopting Dignitatis Humanae.
Only a Temporary Prudential Shift of Policy?
Moreover, Professor Pink is mistaken when he asserts on page 109
that according to Dignitatis Humanae individuals possess a moral right
to religious freedom only (1) because of the new Church policy of renouncing the use of state power to implement its jurisdiction over the
faithful and (2) because the state as such has no normative authority to
coerce religiously. This is at odds with the key affirmation of Dignitatis
Humanae §2: “that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in
the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through
the revealed word of God and by reason itself.” This is not a statement
about policy but it means that this right is something given with human
existence itself. Dignitatis Humanae further declares that “[t]his right
of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the

25

Ibid.: “En conséquence, le principe doctrinal selon lequel les choses temporelles sont
subordonnées de soi aux choses spirituelles n’est nullement aboli, mais trouve un
mode nouveau d’application, à savoir qu’il faut s’opposer aux erreurs par les armes de
lumière, et non par les armes de la guerre. Si je ne me trompe, tous ces thèmes sont
bien contenus dans la Déclaration sur la liberté religieuse. Peut-être pourraient-ils
être mis en meilleure lumière. Toutes ces raisons font que l’actuelle déclaration me
semble mériter une pleine approbation.”
26
On page 103 of his article.

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constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become
a civil right.”
For the same reason, Professor Pink’s affirmation on page 110 “that
the Council intended through Dignitatis Humanae to abandon, at least
for our time, the tradition of using the temporal power of the state in the
service of the spiritual power” is misleading. The Council did not teach
this “at least for our time,” as Professor Pink writes, because it certainly
did not and obviously could not want to teach “for our time” only “that
the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of
the human person”! However, what Professor Pink in fact admits is that
the change is on the level of the role given to the state: the temporal
power of the state is not anymore conceived by Dignitatis Humanae as
the secular arm of the spiritual power. That this change is essential was,
in fact, my main thesis. On the grounds of textual evidence, my interpretation seems to me much more plausible than Professor Pink’s idea
that Dignitatis Humanae contains only a momentary prudential change
in Church policy. Professor Pink’s reading, however, rather contradicts
the very text of Dignitatis Humanae.
According to my view, the change brought about by the Council
consists in the doctrinal separation of the two questions: with Dignitatis
Humanae, the Church can defend her coercive power in religious matters and simultaneously postulate a civil right to religious freedom. This
is not because she has abandoned her right to coercion, but because for
reasons of human dignity she now recognizes that the temporal power of the state is not—not even in the economy of salvation—meant to
serve as the secular arm of the Church. This implies a change in the
conception of the state not under natural law, but in its relationship to
the economy of salvation.
In section 6 of his article (“Post-conciliar Official Statements”), Professor Pink refers to Benedict XVI’s 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia and the November 24, 2002, Doctrinal Note from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “On Some Questions Regarding
the Participation of Catholics in Political Life.” He tries to dismiss these
texts by saying “these passages are crucially vague” and that they “possess a pretty low level of magisterial authority in their own right.” What
Professor Pink says in the lines following this statement, however, seems
to me to be erroneous. It is certainly not true, as Professor Pink suggests,

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that Benedict’s affirmation about the Second Vatican Council’s “recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State
with the Decree on Religious Freedom” is only recognition of the fact of
the modern liberal state for reasons of policy. Professor Pink suppresses
the words “making its own” and he also withholds the end of the sentence, which says that with this recognition the Council “has recovered
the deepest patrimony of the Church.”
Moreover, Professor Pink does not sufficiently take into account the
initial context of these affirmations. At the beginning of this section of his
address, Pope Benedict introduced the topic with the following words:
[I]t was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship
between the Church and the modern State that would make
room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant
coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their
own religion.
This, then, was the “essential principle of the modern State” which, with
the Decree on Religious Freedom, the Church wanted “to recognize”
and to “make its own.”
In order to identify this “deepest patrimony of the Church,” finally,
Benedict XVI refers to Matthew 22:21 (“Render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”) and to the
“Church of the martyrs of all time.” He mentions that while the ancient
Church “prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and
thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.” This clearly indicates a
doctrinal change, not on the level of principles or doctrine of faith, but
on the level of its application and the consequences drawn from it.
The “essential principle of the modern state” which the Church not
only recognizes but makes its own is, therefore, precisely the state’s autonomy regarding Church authority and Church law, and its institutional, juridical, and political autonomy regarding any religious authority of
whatever kind. This does not mean moral autonomy—the Church and
Church leaders can licitly intervene in the public forum by means of her
magisterial teaching and by applying pastoral measures to the faithful—
and it does not mean autonomy regarding God (as Gaudium et Spes

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465

explicitly teaches). This kind of autonomy and sovereignty is precisely
what makes the state to be a secular state. Equally, this is the autonomy
clearly stated in the 2002 Doctrinal note of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, when it mentions the “autonomy of the political
or civil sphere from that of religion and the Church” as “a value that has
been attained and recognized by the Catholic Church and belongs to inheritance of contemporary civilization.” This principle of the secularity
of the state is the one recognized by the Second Vatican Council and in
subsequent post-conciliar teaching, including even texts of higher magisterial rank, as for example Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus
Annus (especially chapter 5).
Professor Pink’s Theocratic and Clericalist Interpretation of the
Leonine Doctrine about Church-State Relations
In his “Conclusion,” Professor Pink strangely holds that “if humanity is to flourish, the two [the Church and the state] must unite
like Aristotelian form and matter, as parts of a single substantial unity.”
I don’t know whether Professor Pink really means what he says here,
but if he really wants to conceive the relationship between Church and
state in the metaphysical terms of form and matter, then what he says
is really bizarre. For, the form being the proper principle of structuring
and making a thing formally what it is by its species, this would mean
that the state (or human society), without being led and shaped by the
Church, has no such proper principle of structuring and that it receives
the formal principle of what it is by its very nature and species from the
Church. This, however, is absurd. It is the more absurd if we consider
that, in the case of living beings, the form is properly the soul. So, considering the state and civil society as a unity with proper life, the Church
would be like the soul of the state (or of civil society).
Now, in a sense this is true, but not in the sense Professor Pink holds
it. His conception demands at least a theocratic and extremely clericalist
political regime, for he talks about the Church as a hierarchic institutional body, not of the Church as the body of Christ which includes all
and each faithful. Would he conceive the Church as the form or soul of
civil society in that latter sense, he would be right. His statements then
would be in the tradition of the letter to Diognetus, which affirms that

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Christians are for human society what the soul is for the body—the soul
being the form of the body, which is the matter. What Vatican II teaches
is certainly in this line. It does not teach, however, that the Church hierarchy is that soul. It is rather the Christian faithful living in the middle
of society and fulfilling their task of being leaven of Christian truth and
charity who are like the soul of civil society, even though by saying this
we certainly remain in the genus of metaphors and not real metaphysics.
Approaching the end of his article, Professor Pink even goes so far
as to affirm (on pages 118f.) that the need for divine grace in order to
comply fully and reliably with the natural law makes it an interest of the
state to use its coercive power in support of the Church. Even if that,
objectively speaking and given the weakness of humans in general and
politicians in particular, may be quite true, this would mean that in such
a Christian regime everything that would be in the interest of the state
could be justified by claiming it to be part of natural law and a service
to the Church.
According to Professor Pink, however, the above affirmation shows
the necessity of establishing the true religion as the state’s own religion!
This, Professor Pink even affirms, is the point of Pope Leo XIII’s teaching on the relationship between Church and state. Yet, again he ignores
history and he does not take into account that it was precisely that Pope
who in his 1885 encyclical Immortale Dei §13 wrote (emphasis added):
The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race
to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set
over divine, and the other over human, things. Each in its kind
is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained,
limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the
province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out
within which the action of each is brought into play by its own
native right.
Not only is this absolutely incompatible with Professor Pink’s idea
that Church and state relate to each other like form and matter, but also
the affirmation that each power “in its kind is supreme” (utraque potestas est in genere suo maxima) is an important step toward the idea of the
secular state which, in principle, is sovereign and autonomous regarding

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467

Church power.27 Admittedly, with Leo XIII we have not yet arrived at
Vatican II, but with his program of so-called ralliment, Pope Leo has
moved an important step away from Pius IX’s refusal to cooperate with
the secular state (by his Non expedit, with which he prohibited Italian Catholics from participating in the political life of their country).
Leo’s politics of ralliment (which means both “gathering” and “joining”) intended precisely, at least in practice, to renounce the idea of
an established religion and to exhort the French Catholics to attain the
goal of permeating society and the state with Christian spirit and truth,
not through their imposition by state force, but through the action of
Christians in society and their cooperating with the political institutions
of the secular state. Leo XIII, though not advocating the separation of
Church and state, was convinced that “in regard to purely human societies, it is an oft-repeated historical fact that time, that great transformer
of all things here below, operates great changes in their political institutions.”28 The tragedy was that the French Catholics did not follow Leo’s
vision and exhortations, instead continuing to stick to the idea of the
Catholic state and refusing to cooperate with the republican political
institutions devoted to the French model of laïcité. The outcome of that
refusal, against Leo XIII’s wish, eventually was, in 1905, the extreme
anti-Catholic law of separation of Church and state.
Eventually (on pages 119–21) and surprisingly, Professor Pink concedes that perhaps the Church’s renunciation, with Dignitatis Humanae,
of any use of its right to appeal to state power in order to impose its
jurisdiction on the faithful might not be only a “prudential policy decision” but itself “something morally demanded.” This, “because the con27

I say “in principle” because Leo XIII in the subsequent sentences talks about the
so-called “mixed matters” (mainly marriage and education) which are regulated
according to the following principle: “inasmuch as each of these two powers has
authority over the same subjects, and as it might come to pass that one and the
same thing—related differently, but still remaining one and the same thing—might
belong to the jurisdiction and determination of both, therefore God, who foresees all
things, and who is the author of these two powers, has marked out the course of each
in right correlation to the other.” These questions have traditionally been regulated
by concordats. They do not require Catholicism as state religion.
28
Leo XIII, Encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes for the French Catholics (1892), §17;
the English text is available online on the Vatican Website: www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_16021892_au-milieu-des-sollicitudes_en.html.

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Martin Rhonheimer

ditions may no longer obtain under which baptism could bring with
it the obligations to the Church invoked by canon 2198 of the 1917
Code—to provide state power, if so directed by the Church, to enforce
her ecclesiastical law.” So, according to Professor Pink, if these conditions should change, and again obtain, for example as the fruit of new
and successful evangelization, this moral obligation to concede religious
freedom would vanish and another moral obligation would arise again:
that the Church return to the practice of appealing to the secular arm
of the temporal power to enforce her jurisdiction over civil society. That
this cannot be the meaning of Dignitatis Humanae seems to me clear,
not only for reasons of defending the honesty of the Conciliar fathers,
but also because of the Council’s statement, mentioned above, that the
right to religious freedom is founded in the very dignity of the person.
In Response to Professor Pink’s Last Conclusion
Professor Pink ends his article by stating his view that the state has
a right under natural law to suppress false religions and to impose religious truth on society. Referring to Leo XIII’s doctrine on Church-state
relations, he affirms that behind this teaching “stands a complex combination of highly authoritative magisterial teaching on the duty of states
as well as of individuals to acknowledge revealed religious truth, on our
need in a fallen world for divine grace to live well as a political community, and—essential to the possible legitimacy of religious coercion
involving the state—on the possible duties of the baptized under various
circumstances to the Church” (120, emphasis added).
If there exists a “duty of states as well as of individuals to acknowledge revealed religious truth,” this must be a duty under natural law. If
so, this means that the state has also the genuine right to enforce this
truth, a right which he exerts in cooperation and in the service of the
institution representing this truth, the Catholic Church. Professor Pink
clearly distinguishes the duty of states from the duty of individuals. That
is, he is talking not only about Christian politicians or statesmen having
a duty to do their job in accordance with Christian principles: the state
power itself, by its very nature, has this obligation. Therefore, it logically
must be an obligation and a corresponding right under natural law. So,
it seems to me that at the end of his article Professor Pink is forced to

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469

admit what in the beginning of his article he declared to be mistaken
and even mistakenly attributed to me.
In case Professor Pink would deny that the “duty of states to acknowledge revealed religious truth” is meant by him to be a duty under
natural law, he would implicitly assert that in the economy of salvation—that is, in a Christian nation populated mainly by Catholics and
in the case of a government run by Catholics—the nature of the state
would undergo a change: that such a state and such a temporal power
would not be any more a reality under natural law, but its nature and
its law would be assumed, or absorbed, by the reality of the Church and
by Church law. The power of the state would, in fact, become a kind
of ecclesiastical power. Now, as we remember, this was precisely what
political Augustinism affirmed since the ninth century (recall Jonah of
Orleans, referred to above).
Professor Pink’s error lies in construing Leo XIII’s doctrine on
Church-state relations as a fully coherent doctrine, which it is not. Leo
had the deep intuition of acknowledging the sovereign and political autonomous nature of the state as a reality under natural law, a sovereignty
and autonomy that obtain also under the condition of a Christian society and government run by Catholics. This is why Pope Leo taught the
spiritual and the temporal power to be “each in its kind . . . supreme.”
It is this very affirmation which is at odds with everything Professor
Pink claims, especially with the idea that Church and state relate like
form and matter. Admittedly, it is also at odds with some of Leo’s proper
claims. Leo XIII’s was a teaching on the verge of the Church’s way into
modernity. His teaching is like a watershed from which the view on both
sides is still possible, but it is not a balanced view, because the waters run
only to one or the other side—they cannot remain on the divide. It was
only Vatican II, namely Dignitatis Humanae, that drew out the consequences of Leo’s teaching that the state has a power which is of its own
kind and which in this kind is supreme, not morally, but politically and
juridically, which is the only aspect of interest in this context.

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Conclusion
It seems to me difficult to deny that with Dignitatis Humanae the
Church has declared its will to abandon, on the level of doctrine and
pastoral practice, a long tradition, now recognized as not being part of
Christian faith and morals but rather as running against the deepest
inspirations of the Gospel, the Apostolic Tradition, and the common
sense of the Fathers.
As I tried to elucidate in my first article, Benedict XVI has taught
us that, to adequately understand the obvious discontinuity resulting
from this new doctrinal and pastoral orientation, we must read the
Second Vatican Council, namely Dignitatis Humanae, in the light of a
“hermeneutics of reform.” The teaching of Dignitatis Humanae is not
simply a case of prudential policy, nor even of morally demanded prudential policy, but it is an example of true reform in the Church’s comprehension of her relationship to the world. This reform implies the
abandoning of an older doctrinal and canonical tradition, now considered to belong neither to the nature of the Church nor to the depositum
fidei entrusted to her, and which does not belong to the essentials of
N&V
Catholic morality either.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 471-481

471

Secular Bioethics and Its Challenge
to the Catholic Citizen
Francis J. Beckwith
Baylor University
Waco, TX

IN HIS OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONto the field of bioethics, Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics,1
Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., articulates and defends a Catholic
understanding of bioethics that not only offers a philosophically serious
alternative to secular bioethics but carefully explains why the promise
of secular bioethics—moral guidance untethered to any philosophical
anthropology—is impossible to sustain. In this brief essay I explain the
importance of Fr. Austriaco’s insight and the challenge secular bioethics
poses to the Catholic citizen.
I
Consider an episode of the now-defunct television series “Nip/
Tuck.” In that episode a prospective patient of the fictional plastic surgery practice of McNamara and Troy meets for a consultation with two
of its physicians, Dr. Christian Troy and Dr. Quentin Costa. The patient,
Ben White, is using crutches, and it seems that he is missing the bottom
half of his right leg. He explains: “I have a condition called B.I.I.D., Body

1

Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction
to Catholic Bioethics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2012).

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Francis J. Beckwith

Integrity Identity Disorder. No matter how many psychiatrists I’ve seen
or medications I’ve taken, I can’t stop obsessing about my leg.”
Dr. Costa, assuming that Mr. White had suffered some permanent
dismemberment, replies, “Well, you have suffered a big loss. It is very
natural.” Mr. White immediately interrupts, for Dr. Costa does not understand the problem that the patient wants the physicians to remedy.
Mr. White wants his right healthy leg amputated because he believes that
the leg is an unnatural appendage, for he sees his true self as having only
one leg. He has felt this way since he was 5 or 6 years old. He just wants
a body that corresponds to his personality. This is why he uses crutches
and pretends that he has no right leg. Horrified at the request, Dr. Troy
emphatically declines on behalf of his practice. Mr. White, however, retorts: “You have built your practice on body modification and I am no
different than somebody who’d come to you for a sex change. Would you
turn him away?”
Nevertheless, at the end of the episode we find Dr. Troy operating
on Mr. White while he is under general anesthesia after the latter had
shot himself in the leg and had been subsequently rushed to the hospital. Dr. Troy, though realizing that the leg can be saved, nevertheless
amputates it. The patient’s subjective “choice,” rather than the patient’s
objective good, is what ultimately guides the end of medicine in this
particular case.
This episode, though seemingly farfetched, vividly illustrates the
consequences of a philosophical anthropology that, when incorporated into the practice of medicine, requires that health professionals
act as if there are no basic goods, intrinsic purposes, and proper ends
to which human acts are morally required to conform.2 This is why
2

I say “seemingly” farfetched, because there are actual cases that bring to the
forefront the very issues raised in the fictional case of Mr. White. Take, for example, the case of deaf parents in the United Kingdom who wanted to adopt
a deaf child produced by in vitro fertilization. An account of this case reads: “A
deaf father who wishes to have a deaf child has spoken of his anger that a clause
in new fertility legislation will make it illegal to use embryos with a genetic abnormality in IVF treatment, when ones without the same defect are available.
“Tomato Lichy, an artist and designer, and his deaf partner Paula Garfield, a
theatre director, argue that to prefer a hearing embryo over a deaf one is tantamount
to discrimination and suggests they do not have the same right to life.
		
“The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill permits the selection of a
hearing child through IVF, but embryos with deafness genes will be discarded, pro-

Secular Bioethics and Its Challenge

473

throughout the episode Dr. Troy becomes less confident about what
he owes Mr. White and why, at the end, Dr. Troy finally acquiesces to
his patient’s choice.
II
Although Mr. White’s story is a work of fiction, it serves to accentuate a problem in secular bioethics that should concern the Catholic
citizen. It arises, as we shall see, precisely because secular bioethics relies
heavily on a school of thought that has come to be known as Principlism. It is a way of doing bioethics—profoundly influenced by the work
of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress3—that suggests that health
professionals should assess the morality of their clinical judgments on
the basis of four principles—autonomy, non-maleficence, benevolence,
and justice—while at the same time excluding from their judgements
controversial metaphysical beliefs about the nature of the human person
that are usually tightly tethered to religious traditions. The physician,
in other words, must remain neutral between contested and contrary
worldviews (or, what John Rawls calls, comprehensive doctrines).4 Consequently, these four principles and our understandings of them do not
require that we embrace a particular philosophical anthropology in order to apply them to clinical judgments, even though it seems intuitively
vided at least one other is found to be ‘perfect’.
		
“Mr Lichy said: ‘Being deaf is not about being disabled, or medically incomplete - it’s about being part of a linguistic minority. We’re proud, not of the medical aspect of deafness, but of the language we use and the community we live in’”
(Lucy Cockcroft, “Couple who want deaf child angry at IVF ban,” The Telegraph [11
March 2008], available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1581333/Couple-who-want-deaf-child-angry-at-IVF-ban.html).
		
Although Lichy and Garfield are surely correct that it is morally wrong to discard a human embryo simply because it is deaf, they are mistaken in thinking that in
order to avoid this injustice we must pretend that the child would not be better off if
he possessed the genetic capacity to hear.
3
See Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th
ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013; orig. 1979).
4
Writes Rawls: “A moral conception is… comprehensive when it includes conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as
ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else
that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our life as a whole” (John Rawls,
Political Liberalism, rev. ed. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1996], 13).

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Francis J. Beckwith

that we must know something of the meanings of self and freedom (for
autonomy), harm (for non-maleficence), goodness (for benevolence),
and the common good (for justice), all of which appear, even to the philosophically untutored, dependent on some concept of human nature.
Nevertheless, under a Principlism account of medical practice, bioethics becomes an enterprise in which the health professional can apply
the “ethics” of bioethics without a commitment to any particular metaphysical account of the “bio” of bioethics. This, it seems to me, cannot
be accomplished, since no matter how conscientious a physician is in
attempting to remain neutral between competing worldviews, his judgments will assume some controversial understanding of human nature
and its good, whether he realizes or not, even if that concept of “good”
is most authentically realized in the physician meeting the preference
satisfaction of the patient in the exercise of that patient’s autonomy.
Unsurprisingly, the autonomy principle of Principlism becomes
the primary guide by which the application of the other principles is
assessed. Take, for example, the account of the principle of nonmaleficence offered by Beauchamp and Childress in their book Principles of
Biomedical Ethics, one that has become the standard text in the field.
“[T]he principle of nonmaleficence,” they write, “obligates us to abstain
from causing harm to others.”5 Although no Catholic bioethicist would
dispute that claim, he would go further than Beauchamp and Childress
and interpret nonmaleficence to include a moral obligation for a free
and fully informed competent patient not to inflict harm on herself, with
that understanding of harm being grounded in a human being’s proper ends. But if nonmaleficence is divorced from such a philosophical
anthropology, then it becomes difficult to believe that a fully informed
and competent patient can be harmed if she non-coercively agrees to a
“treatment” that her physician freely administers. How is such a patient
“harmed” if there is no objective standard by which to assess “harm”
apart from the patient’s competence, informed consent, and the willingness of her physician to meet her preference satisfaction? This is why
Beauchamp and Childress ask us to “consider the actions of physician
Timothy Quill,” who prescribed “the barbiturates desired by a forty-fiveyear-old patient who had refused a risky, painful, and often unsuccessful
5

Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 150.

Secular Bioethics and Its Challenge

475

treatment for leukemia. She had been his patient for many years, and
members of her family had, as a group, come to this decision with his
counsel. She was competent and had already discussed and rejected all
available alternatives for the relief of suffering.”6 Although they admit
that Dr. Quill lied to the medical examiner in order to minimize his legal liability, and they do briefly discuss some issues raised by a few of Dr.
Quill’s critics, Beauchamp and Childress nevertheless state that they “do
not criticize Quill’s basic intentions, his patient’s decision, or their relationship.” For “physicians such as Quill do not act wrongly in assisting
competent patients, at their request, to bring about their deaths.”7 Consequently, the moral distance between the fictional Dr. Troy’s meeting of
his patient’s preference satisfaction and that of the real Dr. Quill doing
the same for his patient seems virtually indiscernible.
III
So, absent any common understanding of what constitutes the human good, secular bioethics has little to go on to determine a patient’s
best interests except for the preference satisfaction of the patient herself.
This, as I have noted, is offered as a neutral position allegedly uncommitted to any controversial philosophical anthropology. But is that actually so? Is the primacy of patient autonomy, as understood in secular
bioethics, really neutral between rival accounts of the human person?
It clearly is not. Take, for example, the case of Mr. White, the fictional
would-be amputee. In one understanding of bioethics, which I will call
the Classical Tradition (CT), his request is not morally justified, since
the body’s parts work in concert for the good of the whole human being.
Thus, a physician who performs the amputation violates the principle
of nonmaleficence, captured in the ancient Hippocratic precept to “do
no harm,” even if the patient is competent,8 consents freely, and is fully
6

Ibid, 184.
Ibid.
8
One, of course, could respond to this by suggesting that anyone who suffers from
Body Integrity Identity Disorder (B.I.I.D.) is by definition incompetent. But that simply begs the question, for one could just as dogmatically assert the incompetence of
patients who choose gender reassignment surgery, as Mr. White pointed out in his
retort, or even of Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse to undergo blood transfusions.
Having said that, there are some scholars who argue that some patients who request
7

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Francis J. Beckwith

informed. Of course, a physician, under the CT, could indeed amputate
Mr. White’s leg, but only if it is diseased and its continued attachment
to the body imperils the patient’s life or his overall good (e.g., the leg is
the host of a disease that if it spreads to the brain will result in a lifetime
of serious mental impairment). To justify this act, the physician would
appeal to the “principle of totality,”9 a principle that receives its meaning
from what we know of the human person’s good as a whole. Thus, the
wrong of amputating a healthy limb is determined by what one understands human nature to be and what that tells us about a human being’s
parts, properties, intrinsic purposes, and proper ends.
Consequently, a physician who does indeed honor Mr. White’s request does not believe that he is in fact harming his patient, for if he did
harbor that belief, he would be acting in clear violation of the principle of nonmaleficence. Such a physician clearly would be denying that
the amputation of healthy limbs are in fact competent. See, e.g., Tim Bayne and
Neil Levy, “Amputees by Choice: Body Integrity Identity Disorder and the Ethics of
Amputation,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (2005): 75-86. Bayne and Levy write:
“One might argue that the wannabe’s [i.e., the prospective amputee’s] response to her
somatic alienation demonstrates a form of irrationality. One might think that the rational response to a conflict between one’s subjective experience of embodiment and
one’s body would be to change one’s experience of embodiment rather than change
the structure of one’s body. The claim is correct but irrelevant: the wannabe’s desire
for amputation appears to be born out of an inability to change the way in which she
experiences her body. Of course, it may be that some wannabes would rather change
their actual body to fit their experienced body than vice-versa. Is someone with such
a desire set competent to make a request for amputation? They certainly challenge
our notions of autonomy and competency, but it is far from obvious that they ought
to be regarded as incompetent. It is important to bear in mind that they have spent
many years—perhaps even decades—with a non-standard sense of embodiment.
(Most wannabes report having had a feeling of somatic alienation since childhood.)
Their experience of themselves has been built around this sense, and to require them
to change it is, to some extent, to require them to change who they are. The case is
not dissimilar to a situation in which an elderly person, blind from an early age, is
suddenly presented with the opportunity to regain her sight. The decision to decline
such an offer can be understood as an exercise of rational agency” (81).
9
According to David Oderberg, the principle of totality “is simply a reflection of the
evident metaphysical truth that the parts of a thing are subordinated to the thing
itself; in the moral sphere, this is mirrored by the idea that the fundamental unit of
concern is the human being, so that the parts of the person are morally important
only insofar as they contribute to the person’s normal functioning. If the person can
only survive without a certain part, then the part must go even if the functioning
is thereafter impaired” (David S. Oderberg, Moral Theory: A Non-Consequentialist
Approach [Oxford: Blackwell, 2000], 78-79).

Secular Bioethics and Its Challenge

477

medicine should be practiced by everyone, and not just him, under the
CT.10 The implication would be that the fundamental questions that the
CT is supposed to answer—questions having to do with what activities, practices, and ends constitute the human good—are largely under
the authority of the patient and his preference satisfaction. Moreover,
the lesson it teaches to the rest of the community is that the practice of
medicine does not recognize any normative account of human nature to
which the acts of physicians and patients must conform in order to be
morally licit. This is hardly a “neutral” point of view, even though it is
presented as such.
In the real case of Dr. Quill, a physician cooperates with the suicide of his patient.11 He does not merely withdraw burdensome care at
her request—with the foreseeable though unintended consequence of
death—or merely honor her decision not to undergo treatment for leukemia, both which are prima facie permissible under the CT. 12 Rather,
Dr. Quill becomes an accomplice to homicide, for he provides to his
patient barbiturates, the means of her self-killing, precisely because that
is what she intends to do. As in the fictional case of Mr. White, this act
reveals something about the human good under which the physician is
operating. The CT sees life as a basic intrinsic good that grounds a Sanctity of Life Ethic (SLE): It is always and everywhere morally wrong to
intentionally take an innocent human life. Although life has instrumental value under the CT—for it allows one to experience and participate
in other goods, for example knowledge, religion, friendship, etc.—it has
intrinsic value as well. So, under the CT, Dr. Quill’s act is not justified. It
stands to reason, then, that Dr. Quill does not believe that his patient’s
life had intrinsic value. In fact, his own account concedes as much,13
admitting that his patient’s life was valuable to her only insofar as it allowed her to be independent and remain in control.14 As in the case of
Mr. White, the Quill case teaches the rest of the community something
about the philosophical anthropology under which the physician is op10

See Austriaco, 135–69.
Ibid, 154–55.
12
See ibid., 135–69.
13
Timothy Quill, “Death and Dignity: A Case of Individualized Decision Making,” The
New England Journal of Medicine 324 (7 March 1991): 691–94.
14
Ibid., 693.
11

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Francis J. Beckwith

erating: life does not have intrinsic value. Again, this is hardly a position
that is neutral between contested and contrary worldviews.
IV
For the Catholic citizen, the implications of all this are daunting.
On the one hand, the Catholic citizen is told that secular bioethics is
neutral between contested and contrary worldviews and thus cannot in
principle impose itself on Catholics and other dissenting citizens. On
other hand, as we have seen, secular bioethics in fact affirms, however
passive aggressively, an understanding of the human person that is intrinsically hostile to the Catholic perspective and other accounts that are
within the Classical Tradition. Consequently, as secular bioethics becomes more and more the primary way by which medicine understands
the physician’s obligation to his patients, and as health care providers
and governments that regulate those providers increasingly embrace
this view as normative, it will more and more seem to the physician,
his peers, and a wide spectrum of the Catholic’s fellow citizens that any
dissent from secular bioethics is inconsistent with the patient’s good and
the ends of medicine. Thus, for the Catholic citizen who continues to
believe the secular bioethics promise of worldview neutrality, and considers that promise to be a bulwark against third-party interference with
Catholic institutions, physicians, and business owners who want to live
out their faith authentically, he or she is in for a rude awakening. For, as
we have seen, given the logic of any set of beliefs about the normativity of human action, including secular bioethics, promises of worldview
neutrality will inevitably collapse into the actuality of worldview hegemony.
V
One may, in response, challenge this thesis by pointing out that in
the cases of Mr. White and Dr. Quill no Catholics were coerced to participate in these immoral acts. That is certainly true, but to stop at this
banal observation is shortsighted. For it ignores how practices, such as
medicine, are shaped by overarching beliefs about the human good that
in one generation are offered as optional—because they are contested by reasonable people of good will—but eventually seem incontest-

Secular Bioethics and Its Challenge

479

able and thus obligatory to the next generation of practitioners. This
is because the latter wind up unconsciously and uncritically accepting
controversial anthropological assumptions that, from their lights, the
earlier generation had failed to recognize were integral to the application of these “neutral” principles. Consider, as examples, the issues of
abortion and contraception as they were understood by the U.S. Supreme Court when that court first found a fundamental legal right for
a citizen to procure each.
In Roe v. Wade (1973),15 Justice Harry Blackmun writes, in his majority opinion, that because experts—including philosophers, theologians, and physicians—disagree on whether the fetus is a person, “the
judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not
in a position to speculate” as to the answer.16 Nevertheless, he concedes
elsewhere in the opinion that if Texas (the state whose law was being
challenged in the case) could show that the fetus is in fact a person, this
would undercut the right to abortion, because the fetus would then be
protectable under the Fourteenth Amendment.17
In the Supreme Court’s holding in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965),18
Justice William O. Douglas overturned Connecticut’s anti-contraception statute on the grounds that a married couple’s decision to use contraception is constitutionally protected by a “zone of privacy” that can
be inferred from combining the principles behind several of the Constitution’s amendments and their implications.
Marriage, reasons Douglas, is a pre-political association that is
more fundamental than the Bill of Rights or the Constitution itself.19 He
illustrates this point by drawing our attention to numerous other as15

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S., 113 (1973).
Roe, 410 U.S., 160.
17
“The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline
at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion
of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’
right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant
conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on
reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the
meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment” (Roe, 410 U.S., 157–8).
18
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S., 479 (1965).
19
Griswold, 381 U.S., 486.
16

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Francis J. Beckwith

sociations that the Court had already recognized as protectable under
the Constitution, even though they are not directly addressed by it. The
freedoms of association, to educate one’s children as one wishes, to assemble, and to be a member of groups and parties in order to promote
one’s philosophies and beliefs are all within the scope of the Constitution’s protections.20
So given the Court’s generous understanding of the wide diversity of equally reasonable views on abortion as well as the eclectic range
and variety of associations whose integrity the Court claims to jealously
guard, it would seem that those who defend the Court’s holdings on
abortion and contraceptive use would think it inconsistent with these
holdings to treat these practices as public goods that dissenting associations would be forced to provide directly to others. But, as Fr. Austriaco
points out,21 this is a diminishing perspective in the United States.
Consider the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate. It requires that religious institutions and private
businesses (with some narrow exceptions) must provide contraception
and abortifacient drugs in their employees’ health care plans,22 even if
the leadership of the religious organization or the ownership of the private business believes it is a violation of conscience to cooperate materially with the distribution and use of contraceptives and abortifacient
drugs. This policy represents a significant shift from the sensibilities
found in Griswold and Roe. In those cases there was an understanding
that the fundamental question on which the issues of contraception and
abortion turned—what is the nature of the human person and the proper end of her sexual powers?—allowed for a variety of philosophical
and theological answers over which reasonable citizens of goodwill may
disagree. The HHS mandate, on the other hand, takes the procedural
rights integral to the use of contraception and abortion services as entailing the only correct substantive answer to the question of the nature
20

Griswold, 381 U.S., 482–85.
Austriaco, 247–75.
22
Women’s Preventive Services Coverage and Religious Organizations (1 February 2013), available at http://cciio.cms.gov/resources/factsheets/womens-preven-02012013.html. For a response, see The Becket Fund, “Still Unacceptable and
Unconstitutional: HHS Proposed Rule still leaves religious Americans at risk” (1
February 2013), available at http://www.becketfund.org/hhsannouncement1/.
21

Secular Bioethics and Its Challenge

481

of the human person and the proper end of her sexual powers: she is
an organism ordered toward no intrinsic moral goods, except those she
consciously chooses consistent with her own preference satisfactions
that do not interfere with the similar choices of others. Thus, for an employer that is required by the government to provide health insurance to
all of its employees, it would be inconsistent with that requirement for
the government to allow the employer’s contested metaphysical understanding of the human person (and thus its “religious” understanding of
health) to obstruct the right of its employee to pursue her preference satisfaction that she sees as necessary for her to live an authentic existence
consistent with her own vision of the good life.
This is the problem of secular bioethics in all its glory. The promise
of personal and corporate liberty on the matters of abortion and contraception—as asserted in Roe and Griswold—now seems like a ruse. What
initially appeared as perfectly consistent with the secular bioethicist’s
promise of worldview neutrality—a call for respecting diversity and contrary visions of the good life—seems now to be about permanently eradicating from the public conversation one understanding of the good, the
true, and the beautiful—the Classical Tradition—and replacing it with
another. The promises of neutrality and mutual respect initially offered
by proponents of reproductive liberty decades ago look now in retrospect to be the first of many steps in a hostile takeover of large swaths of
cultural real estate, a project that will not be complete until the Church
N&V
and its people are entirely banished from that commons.23

23

It is an interesting and important question as to whether or not it was the intention of the early advocates for contraception and abortion rights to marginalize the
Classical Tradition from the practice of medicine. However, for my purposes in this
essay, it is beside the point. What is the point is that culture, like nature, abhors a
vacuum. For this reason, promises of worldview neutrality, however motivated they
are by appropriate intuitions about fairness and equality, cannot be kept.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 483-493

483

Theological Foundations, the Sometime Hidden
Background of Catholic Bioethics
Basil Cole, O.P.

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

EVERYONE HAS A DESIRE FOR BEATITUDE,fulfillment, happiness. That explains why human beings always make choices for what
we perceive to be goods, whether real or only apparent. Ultimate happiness, namely the beatific vision, cannot be known by philosophical
demonstration or natural intuition, but only through revelation.1 Pure
reason cannot demonstrate that God will in fact give the means for the
happiness of knowing and loving him forever in a direct manner. While
one could possibly know by reason that there is a natural desire to directly see or understand who has caused us to exist, this knowledge requires a free decision of God’s self-revelation to us, which as persons of
faith we know he has done.
The First Fundamental Inclination of the Human Person
A fundamental desire of the human person is to keep one’s being in
existence.2 As a normal property of this inclination which contributes
to happiness, naturally speaking, everyone desires good health because
bad health eventually leads to chronic pain or death. And while chronic
pain may not lead to immediate death, enduring it often requires heroic
virtue, laced with much sorrow if not also disordered fears as well. From
1
2

DS 3004; CCC 163, 2448.
ST I-II, q. 94, a. 1.

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Basil Cole, O.P.

this inclination for self-preservation and good health comes the whole
spectrum of bioethical conclusions and good medical care.
Bioethics As a Work of Theology
St. Thomas reminds us that after very little consideration based
on common first principles of morality, people can more or less know
“right from wrong” action. But there are some human acts, bound up
with special circumstances, wherein only the wise can know what is
obligatory. Finally some truths about human action can be known only
by divine teaching.3
Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., one of the wise, has written a stellar work
on Catholic bioethics.4 It is a theological synthesis of revelation, natural
law, scientific discovery, philosophical inquiry, and magisterial teaching
of the popes. To adhere to the author’s many conclusions requires divine faith as well as assent in the ordinary and definitive teaching of the
magisterium. Additionally one requires a robust optimism that human
reason can achieve truth about morally good medical actions. But truth
about what? Truth about the journey of life toward ultimate happiness
or beatitude and even toward imperfect fulfillment and joy in this world.
The journey is taken by human action flooded with reason and faith, and
free will choosing wisely certain actions, seeking to insert moral truth in
one’s very being, thereby becoming fulfilled in virtue, the multifaceted
perfections of the human person. Such a journey requires practical wisdom based upon many principles of prudence, applying the norms of
the natural law and revelation as discerned by reason and faith.5
The Role of Faith
What precisely does the faith content of the Catholic Church bring
to the table of bioethical decision making? This article tries to show that
if one does not believe in God, the human person’s fundamental and
unchanging dignity becomes obscured and diminished, if not forgotten,
3

ST I-II, q. 100, a. 1.
Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction
to Catholic Bioethics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2011).
5
ST II-II, qq. 47–52.
4

Theological Foundations of Catholic Bioethics

485

in a sea of conflicting moral decisions about one’s healthcare. What is
truly respectful human service to health becomes subhuman, since the
person is treated as a thing or a product.
The science of theology begins with the creeds and dogmatic definitions of the Catholic faith—some few which can, with much effort, be
demonstrated by reason alone but can be known only to the few who
have the time and talent for such excellent thinking about matters above
human experience. Once one believes in God or knows that he exists as
efficient and final cause of all things,6 then it becomes easier to understand by reason alone that God is at least the maker and by faith that
God creates the universe out of nothing.7 Also, from philosophy alone,
one discovers that the human person is composed in a unity of material
body and spiritual soul. The latter is immortal, since nothing material
can dispatch a spiritual being. (God, though, could theoretically withdraw its existence so that it would lapse into nothingness.) The doctrinal
definition about the composition of body and soul for a human nature
by a general Council of the Church confirms what reason knows.8 Further, faith adds to these truths that each soul is specially created by God9
and has a destiny far beyond what reason can comprehend, namely, the
vision of God, which is beatifying beyond our imagining.10
From a branch of philosophy (metaphysics) upon which the theologian also depends, one knows that all created being, including man, is
limited being. With this truth emerges for moral theology that humans
have limited power or a shared dominion over their bodies. Because of
the fundamental inclination to goodness flowing from human nature
itself, the principle of totality likewise emerges. Namely, one can sacrifice a part of one’s body for the sake of the life of the whole body. From
this conclusion of St. Thomas,11 the bioethical principle of therapeuticity
emerges.12 Thus, one can remove any diseased organ, or a healthy organ
6

ST I, q. 1, a. 3.
DS 3021, 3025 (Vatican I).
8
DS 1440–1441 (Lateran Council V with reference to DS 902 of the Council of Vienna).
9
CCC 34, 366.
10
DS 1000 (Pope Benedict XII).
11
ST I-II, q. 64, a. 7.
12
Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers, “Charter for
7

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Basil Cole, O.P.

causing a serious disease, in order either to preserve the life of a human
being or to alleviate physical pain.
Because God is known by faith as the author of life and death,13 it
becomes easier to understand why no one can, morally speaking, take
the life of an innocent human being. Humans are not the creators of
the human soul, even though we do aid in generating human beings by
giving the material for the soul’s infusion. Death itself is the separation
of the soul from the body,14 although this separation is not known by observation, since the soul is immaterial. It therefore falls to medical science to determine the principal sign(s) of natural death, but not to use
medical means to directly cause death. Furthermore, beyond the scope
of dogma, science and medicine have the responsibility of determining
the signs of death. Further, scientists now argue about the relatively new
and disputed criterion called brain death.
From a practical standpoint, in response to the question of whether
or not someone should request a “do not resuscitate” protocol when the
heart has stopped beating, medical moral science can give advice based
on benefits and burdens.15 Will the person be in a worse condition as
a result of pain management? Are there financial resources to support
the person’s life in such circumstances after being resuscitated? A sound
decision here requires prudence. These very concrete issues and others
require from the bioethicist and the prudent doctor great experience,
knowledge of biology, and often uncommon practical wisdom.
Non-Consent to Probable Teachings of the Magisterium
With the role of teaching the way of Christ, the Church’s magisterium does not always definitively teach what is to be believed or acted
upon; the magisterium gives solid opinion that may be developed over
time, but that ordinarily requires the consent of heart and mind of the
average believer.16 However, theological scholars or scientists may someHealthcare Workers,” 66.
CCC 1502.
14
CCC 624, 650, 997.
15
See Pius XII, “The Prolongation of Life: Allocution to the International Congress of
Anesthesiologists,” The Pope Speaks 4 (1958): 395–98.
16
CCC 892; cf. Lumen Gentium §25a.
13

Theological Foundations of Catholic Bioethics

487

times withhold consent, while being open to changing their opinion to
the contrary, which opinions are grounded in the biological sciences or
theological sources.17 These magisterial teachings are called non-infallible because the light of truth is not clearly available—in part because
they are not taught explicitly in the sacred Scriptures or in the Tradition. Often, it is not yet clear if particular medical interventions produce
harm or benefit to the human person. For example, in bioethical matters, determining the medical signs of death other than the irreversible
stoppage of the heart and the body becoming a cadaver has become a
source of contention among scientists. Total brain death as a sign of
death is seriously questioned today because there is no universal agreement among scientists and doctors as to the tests capable of determining
if a brain is totally dead, contrary to what St. Pope John Paul II taught in
2000.18 Some allegedly brain dead persons have lived for years.19
Human Dignity As a Middle Term
for Many Moral Conclusions of Bioethics
Within Biomedicine and Beatitude, Austriaco often makes reference
to the notion of the dignity of the human person to conclude his arguments against the killing of embryos and fetuses, in vitro fertilization, contraception, and euthanasia, all of which treat human beings as
objects or products rather than persons with dignity.20 Austriaco also
shows how violating certain moral norms upholding human dignity
essentially attacks the basic human goods of man’s nature rather than
enabling the flourishing of that same human nature.
The notion of a person having “dignity” comes from a series of past
theological authors who argued that individuality and personhood are
at the center of what it means to be human and deserving love and respect. Unlike other creatures, man, being free, rational and existing in
and for himself means that each individual is created in the image and
17

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Veritatis (1990), §§27–31.
“Address of John Paul II to the 18th International Congress of the Transplant Society,” (August 29, 2000), http://robertaconnor.blogspot.com/2011/09/brain-deathcontroversy-john-paul.html.
19
See Austriaco, Biomedicine, 195–201.
20
Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (New York: Harper and Row,
1963), 165.
18

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Basil Cole, O.P.

likeness of God and subject to being perfected by virtue. Each individual is also the possessor of inalienable rights.21 Like God, persons can
know and love freely. The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains two
important numbers on this subject:
§356 Of all visible creatures only man is “able to know and love
his creator” (GS 12). He is “the only creature on earth that God
has willed for its own sake,”(GS 24) and he alone is called to
share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this
end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for
his dignity: “What made you establish man in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on
your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her; for by
love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being
capable of tasting your eternal Good” (Catherine of Siena, Dialogue, 4, 13).
§357 Being in the image of God the human individual possesses
the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.
He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely
giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator,
to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature
can give in his stead.
Substantial dignity then begins from the very moment the soul is infused into the body, ordinarily when the sperm and the egg become a
two celled organism, that being at the commencement of human life
must be treated as such, and have certain rights in principle even if the
matter for receiving the soul is not disposed. Further, the Compendium

21

See Patrick Lee and Robert P. George, “The Nature and Basis of Human Dignity,” Ratio Juris 21 (2): 179–93; Mette Lebech, “Towards A Definition of Human Dignity,” La
Cultura della Vita: Fondamenti e dimensioni, ed. Juan De DiosVial Correa and Elio
Sgreccia, Assembla Generale 1–4 Marzo 2001 (Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 2002), 87–101.

Theological Foundations of Catholic Bioethics

489

of the Social Doctrine of the Church,22 adds to this body of teachings:
§153 In fact the roots of human rights are to be found in the dignity that belongs to each human being. . . . The ultimate source
of human rights is not found in the mere will of human beings,
in the reality of the state, in public powers, but in man himself
and in God his creator. These rights are “universal, inviolable
and inalienable.”
Further, the Compendium asserts:
§553 Promoting human dignity implies above all affirming the
inviolability of the right to life, from conception to natural death,
the first among all rights and the condition for all other rights
of the person.
It is now evident why Austriaco appeals so often to the dignity of the
human person and why this becomes a kind of middle term for arguing
against certain medical procedures.
The Role of Burden and Benefit As a Means of Prudential Decisions
in Hardship Cases
Frequently “burden and benefit” arguments of a secular nature,
which are in favor of collapsing fundamental moral precepts, amount
to relieving pain in such a way that causing death seems to be the only
solution. What is often urged as a solution to difficult moral problems
becomes a deeper problem. What is done in the name of autonomy is to
eliminate the person of autonomy. For some secular models of healthcare, life at all costs or involuntary or non-voluntary death become false
norms of behavior. In other words, for the secularist the dignity of the
human person means absolute autonomy to do what someone subjectively thinks will achieve happiness by creating his own moral norms
without reference to human nature itself.

22

Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Citta del Vaticano: Libreria
Editrice Vaticana, 2004).

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Basil Cole, O.P.

A Theological Perspective
These doctrinal underpinnings as well as arguments from philosophy are presupposed in Austriaco’s study. Without them, the perfection
of virtue, compassion for the sick and dying, the role of suffering in the
Christian life, and many of the arguments upholding moral absolutes
often appear dim to the secular philosopher and the non-believer. Instead of truth discovered by reason and affirmed by faith, morally false
decisions emerge based on feelings and the will to choose, following
mere intuition rather than solid principles, with the end of relieving
pain and suffering or conversely keeping a person alive needlessly, at all
costs, as an absolute when he or she is in fact dying.23
The Catholic faith, by contrast, teaches that human beings are sluggish about living the divine commandments and other precepts flowing
from them, because the effects of original sin and personal sin leave
weaknesses in the mind, the will, and the emotions.24 It ordinarily takes
a long lifetime of struggle aided by grace to grow in prudence, justice,
fortitude, and temperance as well as in the supernatural virtues of faith,
hope, and charity.25 The desire for pleasure and the repugnance toward
suffering tend to obscure one’s moral compass, and so humans tend to
choose only apparent goods for the human person, thereby introducing more deficits into one’s personal being.26 Furthermore, faith in the
Incarnation of the second person of the Blessed Trinity aids one to understand how deep is the dignity of the human person, not only created in the image and likeness of God but also recreated in the likeness
of Christ himself.27 The whole paschal mystery of Christ becomes the
source of one’s redemption and salvation.28 The role of grace facilitating
one’s ability to live the life of perfection and virtue in ordinary ways as
well as in the face of suffering becomes essential.29 Without a firm grasp
of these faith realities, the challenges of the life of virtue in sickness be23

CCC 2289.
CCC 400–407; DS 371 (Council of Orange); cf ST I-II, q. 85, a. 3.
25
CCC 2015, 2343.
26
CCC 1861–1863; DS 190–192.
27
ST III, q. 1, a. 2; q. 4, a. 6.
28
CCC 1506.
29
CCC 2366.
24

Theological Foundations of Catholic Bioethics

491

come overwhelming. Moreover, even ordinary virtue can be perceived
as something extraordinary or heroic, especially in regard to sexual morality lived by the principles of chastity before and during marriage. In
marriage itself, unhooked from faith, the decision not to have children
is often made contrary to the natural order by the use of contraception
and even abortion.30 Worse, what is morally good can be perceived as
morally evil, such as allowing someone to suffer when killing him or her
seems to be more reasonable based on flawed thinking, as Austriaco asserts time and again throughout his work. Deep in the heart of bioethics
then is the notion of man as being in the image of God with a dignity, an
intelligible light reached by human reason but very difficult to hold onto
when health trials emerge. St. Thomas Aquinas has the following to say
about the image of God in man:
Because, as Damascene says, man is made in the image of God
in so far as he is patterned after God through intellectuality,
freedom of will, and self-determination; after the discussion on
the exemplar, namely God, and those things which come forth
from the power of the divine will, there remains to be studied
his image, namely man, in so far as he too through his free will
is the principle of his own works.31
Catholic Bioethics Concerns Itself Also with Intimacy with God
For the faith-based person, free human actions done under grace
merit further graces and do not simply strengthen the virtues. One can
become more closely intimate with God, something pure reason does
not know about, when fulfilling one’s responsibilities as part of his plan
for human beings.32 And when it comes to facing the realities of human
pain and suffering, the temptation to play God and to terminate the life
of a patient either to eliminate pain or to reduce costs or to receive an
inheritance, is quite strong.33 For the believer, in the face of intractable
30

Humanae Vitae, §12.
ST I-II, Prologue.
32
ST I-II, q. 114, aa. 1, 8.
33
CCC 2277.
31

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Basil Cole, O.P.

pain, trusting in divine providence means that somehow God permits
this terrible experience only to draw greater good from it, if one only
cooperates with it.34
With all these faith truths in mind, persons of faith do not base their
lives on wishful thinking but on the divine veracity of God who is incapable of deceiving. Therefore, one is motivated by the truth of faith to
rise above the feelings of despair and discouragement when faced with
the trials of incurable or excruciating pain, or having a child with genetic
privations or deficits and the like. God is trustworthy and the truth revealed is indubitable and these problems have meaning and are salvageable as one places indomitable trust in God.35 The non-believer is only
faced with extreme perplexity leading to relativistic decisions based upon
feelings. Whereas for the person of religious faith, by contrast, to violate
one’s fundamental moral and faith principles is to commit grave sin and
so lose sanctifying grace, that attachment to the Holy Spirit which itself is
also something not known by the light of pure reason. This is part of one’s
conscience formation coming from the New Testament.
Austriaco reminds the believer that there are both supernatural and
natural virtues, as well as gifts of the Holy Spirit. At the end of each
chapter, he concludes with a subtitle: “Highlighting the Role of Virtue in
Bioethics.” Obviously, this book is not based upon the vague principles
that were articulated in the more famous work by Beauchamp and Childress36 and that are often called collectively “principlism.”37 Autonomy,
non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice-to-all concerned as the middle principles for making bioethical decisions are simply not enough to
result in virtuous actions either in the patient or in the medical staff of
a hospital. If someone lacks faith in God and divine revelation, human
reason alone, very limited and dim, becomes the light to inform decisions of conscience in the medical field.
In conclusion, Austriaco’s book is ultimately attempting to defend
and to flesh out the meaning of the dignity of the human person and the
34

1 Cor 10:13; cf. Phil 4:10–12; Rom 5:3–5; Jas 1:2–5; et al.
DS 2778 (Pius IX, Qui pluribus 1846).
36
Tom L. Beauchamp and James Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994).
37
John H. Evans, “A Sociological Account of the Growth of Principlism,” Hastings Center Report 30 (2000): 31–8.
35

Theological Foundations of Catholic Bioethics

493

rights of God over the human person. Science and medicine have their
limits because created being is limited. As the then–Cardinal Ratzinger
once said:
Man has within him the breath of God. He is capable of relating to God; he can pass beyond material creation. He is unique.
He stands in the sight of God and is in a special sense directed
toward God. There is indeed a new breath within him, the divine factor that has been introduced into creation. It is most
important to see this special creation by God in order to perceive the uniqueness and value of man and, thereby, the basis
of all human rights. This gives man a reverence for himself and
for others. God’s breath is within him. He sees that he is not
just a combination of biological building blocks, but a personal
N&V
conception of God.38

38

Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, trans.
Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 77.

Nova et Vetera, E
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495

A Contemporary Aristotelian Embryology
Maureen L. Condic

University of Utah, School of Medicine
Salt Lake City, UT

Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.
Pontifical Gregorian University
Rome

IN NICANOR PIER GIORGIO AUSTRIACOfine book Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics, he addresses
a topic that the two authors of the present article have discussed with
him several times, especially at meetings organized by the Westchester
Institute under the leadership of Fr. Thomas Berg. That topic is the beginnings of life—or embryology—as understood by contemporary scientists and by the Catholic tradition.
With good reason, Fr. Austriaco criticizes authors such as Joseph
Donceel for arguing in favor of the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception
of delayed hominization and, therefore, at least in Donceel’s case, for the
morality of early induced abortions. As Fr. Austriaco explains:
According to the theory of delayed hominization, the embryo
passes through stages of vegetative and animal ensoulment before arriving at a human stage when the body is sufficiently organized and developed for the infusion of the rational soul by

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the immediate action of the Creator.1
He goes on then to argue that this approach to embryology is no longer sustainable because Aristotle, followed by Thomas, thought that
“hominization could be completed only after a period of time after fertilization, when the human organism came into being from the gradual action of the father’s semen on the mother’s menstrual blood.” This
gradual action produces (at least according to some interpretations of
Aristotle) first a vegetative soul, then a sensitive soul, and finally a rational (or human) soul. We now know, says Fr. Austriaco, “that the human
organism is present once fertilization begins when the sperm and the
egg physically interact.”2
The present authors agree with this, that is, that the rational soul
is present from the moment of fertilization.3 And yet we also maintain
that, having once rejected Aristotelian biology strictly speaking, based
as it is upon what Aristotle was able to see with his naked eye, the contemporary biologist and/or ethicist can remain philosophically Aristotelian. He or she can maintain that hominization occurs at the moment of
fertilization in a manner consistent with Aristotle’s metaphysics (broadly construed), especially his understanding of the relationship between
form and matter and his understanding of the rational soul. Showing
that this is a tenable position is no mere game: an exercise in which we
try, with no further purpose, to match up ancient and contemporary
ideas. We hope to show that Aristotle’s view of the soul and of human

1

Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction
to Catholic Bioethics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2011), 59. The Donceel article Fr. Austriaco cites is Joseph F. Donceel, “Immediate
Animation and Delayed Hominization,” Theological Studies 31 (1970): 76–105. On
Aristotle’s embryology, see Kevin L. Flannery, “Applying Aristotle in Contemporary
Embryology,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 249–78.
2
Austriaco, Biomedicine and Beatitude, 60. At this point, he cites a reprint of Maureen
L. Condic, “When Does Life Begin? A Scientific Perspective,” Westchester Institute
White Paper Series 1 (2008): 1–18. The reprint appears at National Catholic Bioethics
Quarterly 9 (2009): 129–49.
3
One problem in saying that the rational soul is present from the moment of fertilization has to do with the phenomenon of monozygotic twinning. We do not address
this problem in the present essay; it is addressed, however, in Flannery, “Applying
Aristotle in Contemporary Embryology,” especially pp. 270–75.

A Contemporary Aristotelian Embryology 

497

nature (and therefore a large portion of the corpus of his thinking) is
consistent with modern science.
“No Walking without Feet”
Aristotle’s definition of the soul is as follows: “the first actuality of
a natural body having life potentially”; he goes on then immediately to
say that “such a body is a body that is organic” [De anima ii,1, 412a278]—that is, possessing organs potentially alive with a particular type of
soul.4 As we shall explain more fully below, this definition is packed with
implicit metaphysical content, but we would make only the following
point here at the beginning. An approach based on such a definition
is one of the few ways of avoiding unacceptable varieties of dualism. It
allows, as we shall see, for the separability and immortality of the rational soul, even while it ensures that the human soul cannot be found in
another body or a body of another type: in a dove’s body, for instance,
or even in a basketball.5
The reason why Aristotle held that there is gap between conception
and the moment at which the rational (human) soul enters into the material contributed by the menses of the embryo’s mother is that he held,
as we have seen, that for a soul to be present the corresponding organic
structure has to be present. In the third chapter of the second book of
his Generatione animalium [GA ii,3], Aristotle expresses this principle
in a usefully epigrammatic manner. He is considering the possibility
that the vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls preexist in the embryo,
as distinct from the possibility that they are introduced from outside.6
His position is as follows:
The word “actuality” translates the Greek ἐντελέχεια, which refers to the existence
of something as a substance of a particular type. A “first actuality” is (obviously) the
first state of such a substance. In what follows, Aristotle’s De anima is abbreviated De
an.; other abbreviations include GA for De generatione animalium; HA for Historia
animalium; PA for De partibus animalium.
5
On the immortality of the rational soul, see also, for instance, Martha C. Nussbaum
and Hilary Putnam, “Changing Aristotle’s Mind,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima,
ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1992), 27–56.
6
By “preexisting” Aristotle means already existing either in the semen or in the embryo. In this article we make use of the Revised Oxford Translation (Jonathan Barnes,
ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation [Princeton:
4

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Maureen L. Condic & Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.

Now, that it is impossible for them all to preexist is clear from this
consideration. Plainly those principles whose activity is bodily
cannot exist without a body, e.g. walking cannot exist without
feet. For the same reason also they cannot enter from outside.7
It appeared to Aristotle that, at the beginning of its existence, the embryo has no organic structure—in Historia animalium, he says that early
on the embryo “consisted of a fleshlike substance without distinction
of parts” [ἄναρθρον συνέστηκε κρεῶδες—HA vii,3, 583b9–11]—and
so there is nothing to which a preexisting soul could attach itself. Nor
could such a soul be introduced from without, since it would have to
have in its exterior state a supporting structure; but the sperm, like the
embryo itself, is (according to Aristotle) without any such structure.
He goes on immediately to add that, since reason’s activity is not bodily—indeed, as he puts it, “no bodily activity has a part in the activity
of reason” [GA ii,3, 736b28-29]—it alone enters from outside and so is
divine.8 But, even still, it cannot enter in right at the beginning, since it
depends upon the presence of a sensitive soul (or faculty) whose activity
is bodily and the sensitive faculty itself cannot exist at the beginning,
since no appropriate organ is present then. Just as a sensitive soul cannot
exist in a basketball, human reason—which is different from the reason
present in non-material substances—cannot exist anywhere except in
an animal that has a sensitive faculty.
When Aristotle says that the vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls
cannot be present in the embryo until a supporting organ is present, he
does not mean that the full organ must be there, “up and running”; he
means only that there must be something there—something with organic structure—that will become such an organ and that is moving on its
own in that direction. This becomes apparent in a number of passages.
In GA ii,6, for instance, he says that the embryo must have a “principle
of movement and of generation,” along with the end toward which it is
directed, plus that which it uses in going there [742a27–32]. He eventuPrinceton University Press, 1984]), occasionally slightly revised.
GA ii,3, 736b22–25.
8
In De an. iii,5, Aristotle will argue that (at least) part of the intellect is immortal;
once it is separated from the body and therefore from the sensitive faculty, it cannot
do any thinking, but it does exist. See especially De an. ii,5, 430a22–25.
7

A Contemporary Aristotelian Embryology 

499

ally identifies the organ that contains the principle of movement in animals as the heart [742b36]—which is (as we might put it) the “organ of
origin” for both the vegetative and sensitive souls.9 This organ must exist
from the beginning, for it is that from which grow all the other organs:
Therefore, all the organic parts whose nature is to bring others
into being must always themselves exist before them, for they
are for the sake of something else, as is a principle; all those
parts which are for the sake of something else but are not of
the nature of beginnings must come into being later [GA ii,6,
742b3–6].10
Since this organ is so bound up with movement—it and the principle
of movement are dependent on each other for their very existence—the
moment that there is independent movement in the embryo, necessarily, as much development of the organ as is needed for the presence of
the principle is present. The movement is the key: once that is present
in even a very small, relatively unarticulated part, there is no reason to
deny that the corresponding soul is present. Someone positing its later
arrival would be hard pressed to explain the independent movement
toward that stage at which he maintains the soul arrives.11
Scientific Evidence of Independent Movement from Conception
It is scientifically certain that such a primordium, or principle of movement toward development of the nervous system, exists in the embryo
from the moment of conception. In the instant of sperm-egg fusion,
9

See PA iii,4, 666a11–13, where Aristotle says: “the motions of pain and pleasure, and
generally of all sensation, plainly have their source in the heart, and find in it their
ultimate termination”; see also GA ii,6, 742a32–33, regarding locomotion. See also
GA ii,6, 742b1, where Aristotle says that the heart is in animals the “principle and
end of all their nature.”
10
See also GA ii,4,740a17–21: “Therefore it is that the heart appears first distinctly
marked off in all the sanguinea, for this is the first principle of both homogeneous
and heterogeneous parts, since from the moment that the animal or organism needs
nourishment, from that moment does this deserve to be called its principle, for that
which exists grows.”
11
We have been helped in the formulation of this point by Fr. Stephen L. Brock of the
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome.

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a new cell, the zygote, comes into existence, a cell that is clearly distinct from either of the gametes. This new cell contains all the molecular
components of both sperm and egg, and therefore has a unique material
composition. Moreover, it immediately enters into a pattern of behavior
that is characteristic of an embryo, and quite distinct from the behavior
of gametes. Sperm and egg are specialized cells that are uniquely organized to accomplish fertilization. Once they are fully mature, if fertilization is not accomplished, they persist for approximately 24 hours before naturally degenerating. In contrast, the newly formed zygote enters
into a sequence of events directed toward the ongoing development and
health of the embryo as a whole, building structures and relationships
that will persist for decades until the death of the individual. Clearly, an
independent movement toward maturation (rather than merely toward
fertilization) has been initiated in the zygote.12
Yet what are the organic parts that constitute the primordia of the
nervous system? And is this organic material present from the very beginning? The zygote exists in a very specific state that is uniquely capable of development. There are three basic components of the “program”
for development.13 First, the zygote has specific molecules (transcription
factors, enzymes, DNA binding proteins, etc.) that are unique to the embryo and required for a normal pattern of development. Second, the zygote has uniquely modified DNA and associated proteins (i.e., a specific
epigenetic state) that is not found in other cell types. Finally, the DNA
derived from sperm and egg each carries a particular pattern of maternal and paternal “imprinting” (i.e., chemical alterations to the DNA
that regulate how it is used). These three components work together in
complex ways to generate all of the cells, tissues, structures, and organs
required for life, including the nervous system.
Importantly, this developmental program does not come into existence gradually, but rather all three necessary components are present
from the instant of sperm-egg fusion. Further, this program is specifically human (human embryos do not develop into monkeys or oak
trees), and uniquely individual (even identical twins do not have iden12
13

See Condic, “When Does Life Begin? A Scientific Perspective.”
For a more detailed discussion, see Maureen L. Condic, “A Biological Definition of
the Human Embryo,” in Persons, Moral Worth, and Embryos: A Critical Analysis of
Pro-Choice Arguments, ed. Stephen Napier (New York: Springer, 2011), 211–37.

A Contemporary Aristotelian Embryology 

501

tical developmental programs).14 Thus that which is physically required
for movement toward the maturation of a particular human body (the
primordia of an individual’s mature state) exists from the moment of
sperm-egg fusion onward. This program, inherently bound to the very
structures of the embryo itself, is the “organ” that contains the principle
of movement for the zygote’s subsequent maturation.
The execution of this developmental program (or the movement
of the primordia toward a mature state) can be seen from the very beginning of life. Within a minute of sperm-egg fusion, the zygote initiates a sequence of chemical changes (i.e., the cortical reaction) that will
rapidly block any additional sperm from binding to the cell surface.
This is clearly different from the function of an egg cell (the primary
purpose of which is to bind to sperm). Moreover, the cortical reaction
is initiated by molecules contributed by the sperm, showing that molecular elements of the zygote derived from both parents interact in a
coordinated manner to produce the steps required for normal development.15 Importantly, this initial act of the zygote to prevent fusion with
more than one sperm is not merely directed toward growth (i.e., a vegetative function); oocytes that are abnormally fertilized by more than
one sperm produce tumors that are perfectly capable of cell division or
growth, but they do not undergo development and are not embryos.
Rather, the cortical reaction is directed toward preserving the normal
(diploid) genetic state that is required for development of the embryo
as a whole. Thus, the cortical reaction anticipates the future requirements of the embryo, and can only be understood as the first step in a

14

G. Manchin, “Non-identical monozygotic twins, intermediate twin types, zygosity
testing, and the non-random nature of monozygotic twinning: a review,” American
Journal of Medical Genetics. Part C, Seminars in Medical Genetics 151C (2) (2009):
110–27; W. Czyz et al., “Genetic, environmental and stochastic factors in monozygotic twin discordance with a focus on epigenetic differences,” BioMed Central
Medicine 10 (2012): 93–104.
15
S. Y. Yoon et al., “Recombinant human phospholipase C zeta 1 induces intracellular
calcium oscillations and oocyte activation in mouse and human oocytes,” Human
Reproduction 27 (2012): 1768–80; M. Nomikos, K. Swann and F. A. Lai, “Starting
a new life: sperm PLC-zeta mobilizes the Ca2+ signal that induces egg activation
and embryo development: an essential phospholipase C with implications for male
infertility,” Bioessays 34 (2012): 126–34.

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sequence of events that is uniquely ordered toward the production of
the mature organs of the body.
An Objection
So, it is apparent that, contrary to what Aristotle says (since he
speaks of what he was able to see with the naked eye), there is organic
structure in the embryo right from the beginning. But at this point an
objection can be voiced.16 It might be expressed in the following way:
“You have, indeed, shown that right from the beginning there is organic
material in the embryo that will become (if not impeded) the body of a
mature human being. You have also shown that Aristotle does not require that there be present the fully developed organ that allows for the
presence of the rational soul: what is necessary is organic material that
will, if not impeded, move toward the body of the mature human being.
But is the necessary condition that you have identified (organic material that will “move toward”) enough to satisfy Aristotle’s insistence that
there can be no soul present unless the corresponding organic structure
is present (‘no walking without feet’)? Aristotle requires the presence of
a particular organic structure to which a soul might be attached; but, as
you know, at the very earliest stages of embryo development, the various
cells that will go on to develop into the body of the mature human being
have not yet been assigned to a particular part of the developed body.”
This objection is supported by ample scientific evidence that indicates there is no “particular” cell or group of cells that is exclusively responsible for the formation of the nervous system. Whereas in some
animals, molecular factors that specify a particular pattern of development are differentially inherited by early cells of the embryo, in humans and other mammals, cell-cell communication plays a large role in
determining precisely what path a specific cell will follow (i.e., mammalian development is largely “regulative” rather than “determined”).
Consequently, in many cases, the cells of the early embryo randomly
contribute “descendants” or progeny to multiple mature tissues as de-

16

The following objection is similar to one posed to the present authors by Ryan Madison, Associate Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, University
of Notre Dame. We are grateful to him for the insight.

A Contemporary Aristotelian Embryology 

503

velopment proceeds.17 Even after the earliest primordium of the nervous
system (i.e., the neural plate) has formed, cells that are initially part of
this primitive structure will ultimately leave the developing brain and
migrate throughout the body to contribute to tissues as diverse as the
skull, the skin, and the heart.18 It is only relatively late in embryonic development (during the fifth week) that cells within the forming nervous
system become restricted to producing only nervous tissue.
In addition to the fact that early cells of the embryo are not restricted to an exclusively neural fate, generation of the mature nervous system requires input from multiple tissues that do not themselves make
cellular contributions to the brain. For example, formation of the head,
including the portions of the brain most directly related to rational
thought, requires molecular signals from a primitive gut-derived tissue
known as the prechordal plate.19 Conversely, molecular signals from the
developing eye20 and forebrain21 are critical for the correct formation
of the bones and muscles of the face, despite the fact that these neural
tissues do not contribute cells to developing facial structures. These observations indicate that even relatively late in embryonic development
(eye formation begins approximately halfway through embryonic life, in
the fourth week), there are no “specialized” tissues that are exclusively
responsible for the generation of either the brain or the face. In the vast
majority of cases, multiple tissues interact repeatedly during embryonic
17

The regulative nature of early mammalian development is discussed in detail in:
“The first cell-fate decisions in the mouse embryo: destiny is a matter of both chance
and choice,” M. Zernicka-Goetz, Current Opinions in Genetics and Development 14
(2006): 406–12.
18
M. S. Prasad, T. Sauka-Spengler, and C. LaBonne, “Induction of the neural crest
state: control of stem cell attributes by gene regulatory, post-transcriptional and epigenetic interactions,” Developmental Biology 366 (2012): 10–21.
19
S. Piccolo et al., “The head inducer Cerberus is a multifunctional antagonist of Nodal, BMP and Wnt signals,” Nature 397 (1999): 707–10; C. Niehrs et al., “Dickkopf1
and the Spemann-Mangold head organizer,” International Journal of Developmental
Biology 45 (2001): 237–40; F. Müller and R. O’Rahilly, “The prechordal plate, the
rostral end of the notochord and nearby median features in staged human embryos,”
Cells Tissues Organs 173 (2003): 1–20.
20
P. E. Kish et al., “The eye as an organizer of craniofacial development,” Genesis 49
(2011): 222–30.
21
D. Hu and R. S. Marcucio, “Unique organization of the frontonasal ectodermal zone
in birds and mammals,” Developmental Biology 325 (2009): 200–210.

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development to coordinately produce all of the mature structures of the
body, including the nervous system.
Finally, even on a molecular level there is no single (i.e., “particular”) organic structure exclusively responsible for the formation of
the brain. A curious aspect of embryonic development is that the same
molecules are used repeatedly at different times to generate both different structures and different elements of the same structure. And quite
often, specific molecules function in what appear to be contradictory
ways as a tissue matures. For example, a family of signaling molecules
known as Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (or BMPs) initially inhibits formation of the nervous system, but at later developmental stages, BMPs
are required to maintain specialized populations of neural cells and to
promote normal brain patterning.22 In addition, BMPs play important
roles in the formation of many structures outside of the nervous system,
including limbs,23 kidneys24 and (of course) bones.25 Thus, BMPs contribute to a wide range of developmental processes, and despite their
critical role in brain development, these molecules cannot be seen as “a
particular organic structure to which a soul might be attached.” And so
(the objection would go) the necessary condition epitomized in Aristotle’s epigram “no walking without feet” has not been met.
The Artist and His Material
The answer to this objection, however, is implicit in what we have
already said about the directed movement that occurs right from the
beginning of the embryo’s existence; but there is a passage in Aristotle
in which the basis of the proper response is made more explicit. In it, he
speaks about the first moment in which the embryo moves on its own.
This occurs, he says, “when the active and the passive come in contact
22

A. M. Bond, O. G. Bhalala, and J. A. Kessler, “The dynamic role of bone morphogenetic proteins in neural stem cell fate and maturation,” Developmental Neurobiology
72 (2012): 1068–84.
23
B. Robert, “Bone morphogenetic protein signaling in limb outgrowth and patterning,” Development, Growth and Differentiation 49 (2007): 455–68.
24
J. E. Cain et al., “Bone morphogenetic protein signaling in the developing kidney:
present and future,” Differentiation 76 (2008): 831–42.
25
M. Wan and X. Cao, “BMP signaling in skeletal development,” Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 328 (2005): 651–57.

A Contemporary Aristotelian Embryology 

505

with each other in that way in which the one is active and the other
passive (I mean in the right manner, in the right place, and at the right
time)” [GA ii,4, 740b21–24). He continues:
The female, then, provides matter, the male the principle of
movement. And as the products of art are made by means of
the tools of the artist,26 or to put it more truly by means of their
movement, and this is the activity of the art, and the art is the
form [μορφὴ] of what is made in something else, so is it with
the power of the nutritive soul. [GA ii,4, 740b24-29]
Although Aristotle is speaking here about the very earliest independent
existence of the embryo—at which stage he did not see sufficient structure to support a sensitive or a rational soul—what he says is applicable
at later stages, for he goes on to make this application in the lines that
immediately follow.
The principle of movement—which in the human embryo is the rational soul—is, therefore, like an artist who uses his tools upon appropriate material. In any such scenario, the artist is in charge. He can take
up whatever material he chooses, provided it is appropriate material,
and, when the moment is right, he can shape that material into any part
of the art’s product for which it is appropriate. In an embryo, “the artist,”
although in charge, is also directly dependent upon his material. For the
principle of movement to be a principle of movement, there must be
present the appropriate organic material; but, once the material is there,
the principle of movement is also there. Movement requires both an
active and a passive element.
So, the fact that the cells that are part of the early embryo (for instance) might end up in various sectors of the developed or developing
embryo does not mean that the principle of movement “had no feet”
at that early stage. Such would be impossible: for then the principle
of movement would not be a principle of movement. At the earliest
stage (the one-cell zygote), the principle of movement has feet (i.e., the
appropriate organic material): the molecules subject to the develop26

The word used in this sentence, τέχνη, might also be translated “craft,” so the person
practicing the τέχνη might also be called a craftsman.

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mental “program” of the embryo, which are suitable for the movement
effected at that stage. When the time for cell differentiation arrives, the
feet required for that particular movement are also present. Indeed, in
a sense, at that point the principle of movement has a “choice” of feet27
(i.e., a group of cells, any one of which may be developmentally competent to advance in a particular direction). The embryo is programmed
to assign to some organic material a particular role that other organic material might have filled just as well, just as the former material
might have filled the latter’s assigned role. What material goes where is
in this sense “arbitrary,” although it is not arbitrary that each role must
be filled by distinct organic material. When the embryo moves into
the cell differentiation phase, we know exactly what organic material is
being—and shall be—used in the further development of the embryo,
and in what manner.
Unity and “Random” Selection
The biological evidence also supports the conclusion that the organic material necessary for the presence of the human soul (i.e. the
“developmental program”) cannot come into existence as a consequence
of embryonic development itself. From the fusion of sperm and egg onward, the human embryo is unambiguously a human organism—that
is, an integrated whole being that immediately begins to function in a
coordinated manner to generate the structures of the body in an orderly
sequence. This orderly pattern of maturation is the defining characteristic of an organism at an immature stage of its life cycle that distinguishes an organism from a mere cell. Consequently, it is both illogical and
inconsistent with the facts to assert that the human embryo somehow
“develops” the characteristics of an organism over time. Embryos are
organisms precisely by virtue of the fact that they undergo development
in the first place.
In contrast to embryos, tumors will produce a range of different cell
types, but they do not progress through an orderly sequence of stages
that culminates in a single mature form. They do not “develop” and they
are not organisms. Indeed, if a tumor were to spontaneously give rise to
27

It would be a mistake, however, to speak of a choice such as a rational being might
make.

A Contemporary Aristotelian Embryology 

507

a human baby, this would be an unprecedented and inexplicable biological event precisely because no movement toward maturation pre-existed in the tumor.
How then, do we view the regulative or random aspects of mammalian development? As noted above, the fact that cells may “arbitrarily”
contribute to a particular structure (e.g. the nervous system) does not
make the process of development random. Random cellular events result in the formation of tumors: collections of differentiated cells with
no consistent relationship to each other or to the tumor as a whole. In
contrast, embryos—even embryos with a largely “regulative” pattern of
development—never exhibit the random behavior of a tumor. In embryos, specific cell types arise at predictable times, in specific places, and
in appropriate numbers to result in a characteristic mature human body.
The developmental mechanisms used to produce this orderly outcome
may (at times) involve random selection of a particular cell from a larger group of cells that are all equally competent to take up the task.28 Yet
the outcome itself is entirely determined by the developmental program
that specifies the orderly (i.e., non-random) progression of these events.
And, as we have already noted, this program constitutes the “feet” that
are required for the forward movement of development.
Most species use multiple developmental mechanisms to ensure
that specific cells are produced in the right place, at the right time, and
in the right numbers. There is strong evidence that in the majority of
mammalian embryos, cell fates are determined (or at least “biased”) by
the time the four-cell stage is reached, because of differential inheritance of specific molecular factors from the one-cell embryo.29 Yet in the
minority of cases in which this differential inheritance does not occur,
other mechanisms involving cell-cell communication ensure that the
same outcome will be obtained. These overlapping, redundant mechanisms reflect the developmental program that came into existence in the
28

In embryology, groups of cells with identical developmental competence are known
as “equivalence groups.” See G. S. Stent, “The role of cell lineage in development,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences
312 (1985): 3–19.
29
M. Zernicka-Goetz, “Cleavage pattern and emerging asymmetry of the mouse embryo,” Nature Reviews. Molecular Cell Biology 6 (2005): 919–28; M. Zernicka-Goetz,
“Development: do mouse embryos play dice?” Current Biology 7 (2013): 15–7.

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moment of sperm-egg fusion, and they produce a consistent movement
toward a mature state
Conclusion
We conclude, therefore, that the (broadly construed) metaphysical
principles implicit in Aristotle’s treatment of the early stages of embryonic life are by no means incompatible with contemporary science, at
least with regard to the issues discussed here. Indeed, they shed light
upon what is now known to occur at those early stages. That is to say,
they provide means of accounting for and describing the dynamic unity present in the embryo from the moment of conception. Obviously,
many of the empirically based details of Aristotle’s biology must be rejected; but we embrace readily the philosophical principle that there is
N&V
“no walking without feet.”

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 509-513

509

The Use of Opioids and Sedatives at the End of Life
Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B.
Saint Anselm College
Manchester, NH

Introduction

WE OWE A DEBT OF GRATITUDE to Fr. Austriaco for his fine
work on medical ethics. He brings together effortlessly the fruits of his
own work in biology, the best of the Catholic moral teaching on medical issues, pastoral sensitivity, an awareness of the challenges that our
tradition faces in a secular society, including still disputed questions,
and a masterful integration of the cardinal and theological virtues that
doctors, nurses, and patients ought to bring to bear on the practice of
medicine at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
While Austriaco is nearly exhaustive in his approach, here and there
he hints at the need for further research in some areas. An example
of this is the use of opioids and sedatives at the end of life. He writes,
“(Incidentally, there is now data that suggests that the use of opioids
and sedatives for various medical indications during a patient’s last days
of life is not associated with shortened survival.)”1 It is this issue that I
wish to explore more fully.

1

Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction
to Catholic Bioethics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2011), 139.

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Palliative Care at the End of Life
The use of opioids and sedatives at the end of life is a firmly established teaching in Catholic medical ethics. In the Catechism, we read
the following:
Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to
a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of
painkillers to alleviate the suffering of the dying, even at the
risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity
with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a
means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable. Palliative
care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should
be encouraged.2
Catholic teaching encourages the use of opioids and sedatives
during the dying process, even if their use could hasten death. Such use
has been generally covered by the principle of double effect. The use
of opioids and sedatives is good in that they relieve the dying person
of undue suffering and pain. It had been thought that the side effect
of such use was the shortening of the person’s life through respiratory
depression. But as long as painkillers were used for that end, and not for
the direct killing of the patient, such use could be tolerated as a foreseen
and inevitable side effect of opioid and sedative use. On the other hand,
to administer opioids and sedatives in order to hasten death would be
considered illicit, as it would, in effect, be an act of active euthanasia. So
the evil of shortening the patient’s life would be acceptable as long as the
ends and the means of opioid and sedative use were purely palliative.3
2
3

CCC 2279.
A growing concern among ethicists, left untreated by Austriaco, is the rise of the
number of cases of “stealth euthanasia” in which death is imposed (usually without the patient’s consent) under the guise of pain relief. This issue is itself worthy
of further discussion. See, for example, Ralph A. Capone, Kenneth Stevens, Jr.,
Julie Grimstad, and Ron Panzer, “The Rise of Stealth Euthanasia,” Ethics & Medics
38 (June 2013): 1-4; Ron Panzer, “Contrary to Some, Medical Killings are Occurring in End-of-Life Care Settings,” Hospice Patient Alliance, (April 29, 2012) n.a.,
“Actual Reports of Involuntary Euthanasia Cases in Hospice Settings—(Eleven
Letters),” Hospice Patients Alliance (http://www.hospicepatients.org/actual/hospeuth-cases.html).

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511

This received wisdom has been challenged in recent years by studies
that show that the proper use of opioids and sedatives does not, in fact,
shorten life. We will examine these studies below. If this is, indeed, the
case, the traditional use of the principle of double effect in such scenarios would be rendered virtually otiose. Let us examine the evidence.
Opioid and Sedative Use Does Not Shorten a Patient’s Life
It has almost become a truism in the literature dealing with pain
relief at the end of life that such relief almost inevitably hastens death.
According to many authors, the use of opioids and sedation in terminally ill patients may “hasten death,”4 “’potentially’ hasten death,”5 “actually
speed up the process of dying,”6 or “indirectly and unintentionally contribute to the patient’s death,”7 etc.8 But studies that have been conducted since the 1980s have consistently shown that this is not the case.9
In their article “Sedative Use in the Last Week of Life and the Implications for End-of-Life Decision Making,”10 Nigel Sykes and Andrew
Thorns report that even though more than 50 percent of patients receive
sedation at the end of life for symptoms such as pain, breathlessness
and, more commonly, delirium,11 sedation is usually brief and there is
no evidence that it precipitates death. Rather, the use of sedation is a
response to features of the dying process that have already begun. For
4

Cf. Kevin O’Rourke, “Pain Relief: the Perspective of the Catholic Tradition,” Journal
of Pain and Symptom Management 7 (1992): 485-491.
5
Cf. S.H. Wanzer, D.D. Federman, S.J. Adelstein, et al., “The Physician’s Responsibility
Toward Hopelessly Ill Patients,” New England Journal of Medicine 320 (1989): 844849.
6
Cf. S.C. Klagsburn, “Physician-assisted Suicide: A Double Dilemma,” Journal of Pain
and Symptom Management 6 (1991): 325-328.
7
Cf. F. G. Miller, T.E. Quinn, H. Brody, et al., “Regulating Physician-assisted Suicide,” New England Journal of Medicine 331 (1994): 119-123.
8
For this information, I am indebted to Susan Anderson Fohr, “The Double Effect
of Pain Medicine: Separating Myth from Reality,” Journal of Palliative Medicine
1/4(1998): 315-327.
9
Cf. ibid., 316-319.
10
Nigel Sykes and Andrew Thorns, Archives of Internal Medicine 163 (February 10,
2003): 341–44.
11
Cf. V. Ventafridda, C. Ripamonti, F. De Conno, M. Tambutini, and B. R. Cassileth,
“Symptom Prevalence and Control During Cancer Patients’ Last Days of Life,” Journal of Palliative Care 6 (1990): 7–11.

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Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B.

patients in need of such treatment, it is possible to use ongoing sedation at a level that is both therapeutically effective and safe.12 The same,
they argue, is true for the use of opioids.13 Sykes and Thorns looked at
seventeen studies and the effect of opioid use and survival.14 Regardless
of the kind of opioid used, these studies indicate that their use had not
shortened a patient’s life. The same results obtained even when opioids
were used in conjunction with sedatives.15
There are two consequences that result from believing the myth that
12

Cf. Sykes and Thorns, “Sedative Use in the Last Week of Life,” 344.
See Sykes and Thorns, “The Use of Opioids and Sedatives at the End of Life,” Lancet
Oncology 4 (May 2003): 312–18.
14
See M. Bercovitch, A. Waller, and A. Adunsky, “High Dose Morphine Use in the
Hospice Setting: A Database Survey of Patient Characteristics and Effect on Life
Expectancy,” Cancer 86 (1999): 871–77; T. Morita, T. Ichiki, J. Tsunoda, et al., “A
Prospective Study on the Dying Process in Terminally Ill Cancer Patients,” Journal
of Palliative Care 15 (1998): 217–22; T. Morita, J. Tsunoda, S. Inoue, and S. Chihara,
“Effects of High Dose Opioids and Sedatives on Survival in Terminally Ill Cancer
Patients,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 21 (2001): 282–89; S. Grond,
D. Zech, S.A. Schug, et al., “Validation of World Health Organization Guidelines for
Cancer Relief During the Last Days and Hours of Life,” Journal of Pain and Symptom
Management 6 (1991): 411–22; F. J. Brescia, R. K. Portenoy, M. Ryan, et al., “Pain,
Opioid Use and Survival in Hospitalized Patients with Advanced Cancer,” Journal
of Clinical Oncology 10 (1992): 149–55; R. Fainsinger, M. J. Miller, and E. Bruera,
“Symptom Control During the Last Week of Life on a Palliative Care Unit,” Journal
of Palliative Care 7 (1991): 5–11; R. Fainsinger, K. Louie, M. Belzie, and E. Bruera,
“Decreased Opioid Doses Used in a Palliative Care Unit,” Journal of Palliative Care
12 (1996): 6–9; N. Coyle, J. Adelhardt, K. Foley, and R. Portenoy, “Character of Terminal Illness in the Advanced Cancer Patient: Pain and Other Symptoms During
the Last Four Weeks of Life,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 5 (1990):
83–93; I. Lichter, and E. Hunt, “The Last 48 Hours of Life,” Journal of Palliative Care
6 (1990): 7–15; S. Mercadante, “Pain Treatment and Outcomes for Patients with Advanced Cancer Who Received Follow Up Care at Home,” Cancer 85 (1999): 18–58;
R. Goldberg, V. Mor, M. Viemann, et al., “Analgesic Use in Home Hospice Patients:
Report from the National Cancer Study,” Journal of Chronic Disease 39 (1986): 37–
45; A. McCormack, D. Hunter-Smith, Z. Piotrowski, et al., “Analgesic Use in Home
Hospice Patients,” Journal of Family Practice 34 (1994): 160–64; K. Boyd, “Short Terminal Admissions to a Hospice,” Palliative Medicine 7 (1993): 289–94; K. Turner, R.
Chye, G. Aggarwal, et al., “Dignity in Dying: A Preliminary Study of Patients in the
Last Three Days of Life,” Journal of Palliative Care 12 (1996): 7–13; S. Mercadante, G.
Dardanoni, L. Salvaggio, et al., “Monitoring of Opioid Therapy in Advanced Cancer
Patients,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 13 (1997): 204–12; D. Zech,
S. Grond, J. Lynch, et al., “Validation of World Health Organization Guidelines for
Cancer Pain Relief: A Ten Year Prospective Study,” Pain 63 (1995): 65–76.
15
See Sykes and Thorns, “The Use of Opioids and Sedatives at the End of Life.”
13

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513

opioid and sedative use at the end of life almost inevitably hastens death:
the non-use of such treatments, or their under-use.16 Leaving patients
with untreated symptoms, by failing to use sedatives and by holding
onto a misguided “opiophobia,”17 which results in inadequate pain relief
at the end of life, are not ethical choices.
The Principle of Double Effect is a helpful tool in analyzing many
situations that can occur in the medical setting. It helps doctors, nurses, patients, and ethicists to choose options that those not acquainted
with the principle might otherwise be reluctant to make. For example,
the removal of a cancerous uterus from a pregnant woman is ethically
permissible, according to the Principle of Double Effect. The removal
of a cancerous organ is a good thing. Even though the baby will die as
a result, the death of the baby, while foreseen, is not the means to cure
the mother of cancer. The removal of the cancerous uterus is. The death
of the baby, while sad, is praeter intentionem. The use of opioids and
sedatives at the end of life, however, is a different matter. As the above
studies show, the use of opioids and sedatives at the end of life should
no longer be the subject of a Principle of Double Effect analysis. Their
use is good. Their intended use is the relief of pain and the alleviating
of some symptoms associated with the dying process. If used properly,
opioids and sedatives do not hasten the death of the dying person and
so can be used, if warranted, with peace of mind. No patient should
needlessly suffer because of the unfounded fear of the use of opioids and
N&V
sedatives at the end of life.

16

See I. Higginson and M. McCarthy, “Measuring Symptoms in Terminal Cancer: Are
Pain and Dyspnoea Controlled?” Journal of the Royal Society of Social Medicine 82
(1989): 264–7; M. Boisvert and S Cohen, “Opioid Use in Advanced Malignant Disease: Why Do Different Centres Use Vastly Different Doses? A Plea for Standardizing Reporting,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 10 (1995): 632–8.
17
The use of the word “opiophobia” is found in Robert Maccauley, “The Role of the
Principle of Double Effect in Ethics Education at US Medical Schools and Its Potential Impact of Pain Management at the End of Life,” Journal of Medical Ethics 38
(2012): 174–8, especially 174.

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 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 515-541

515

The Roots of Transhumanism
Steven J. Jensen
University of St. Thomas
Houston, TX

Am I not alone, miserably alone? 
—Frankenstein’s monster to Frankenstein

NICANOR AUSTRIACO, b reaking the mold of the utilitarian-dom-

inated field of medical ethics with its myopic focus upon results and
upshots, gives our attention a refreshing turn toward virtue. He allows
us to delve into the inner workings of the human heart, and to find there
our true human good. In our modern world we can forget that our human good consists not merely in health, pleasure, freedom from suffering, and autonomy. We can forget that our human good is a shared
good, which is realized in acts of love.
The Transhumanist Movement
This renewed focus on virtue and the inner springs of human action,
when applied to what is called transhumanism, reveals a movement that
has lost sight of the simple goods in human life. This movement, which
proclaims a new age of technologically enhanced human beings, promises results and marvels that will free us forever from the woes and evils
that have plagued human history: death and disease, ignorance and selfishness, will all be overcome. I wish to suggest, however, that the accomplishment of these promises is more to be feared than welcomed. It will

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Steven J. Jensen

arise from a sickness of soul that will lead inexorably to emptiness and
despair and ultimately to fresh horrors of human cruelty.
In the long run, good intentions—when pursued without constraints—can be more harmful than bad intentions. Some of the greatest
atrocities of our age have arisen from a misguided desire to accomplish
good. The communists’ angry desire to bring justice to the downtrodden working class has ushered in the massacre of those unwilling to
conform. The desire to create a superior race has introduced the systematic elimination of “inferior” races.
I wish to suggest that the transhumanist movement embodies one
such misguided desire. This movement seeks to enhance human beings,
giving them greater strength, intelligence, perception, and so on, perhaps even creating entirely new powers, such as the ability to fly, or even
powers unimagined as of yet. These new creatures will transcend human
nature, hence the name “transhumanism.”
One might well wonder whether this movement has more to do
with science fiction than with science.1 Perhaps its grand visions are
mostly fanciful; nevertheless, current technologies have some very real
applications, and others are not far in the future. We can use growth
hormone, for instance, to increase a child’s height; we can use stimulants
to increase concentration. In the near future, various proteins, multiplied through gene splicing, may well increase our memories.
It is not so much the technologies—whether real or imagined—that
are problematic; it is the attitudes that necessarily underlie the use of
these technologies. Like its forebear, the eugenics movement, transhumanism will result in terrible deeds. Transhumanism sometimes claims
to be a “liberal eugenics,” purified of all that was evil in the old eugenics.
Nicholas Agar, for instance, claims that the new eugenics will not be
coercive; it will allow people freely to use enhancements or not.2 The
1

Tom Koch (in “Enhancing Who? Enhancing What? Ethics, Bioethics, and Transhumanism,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 [2010]: 685–99, at 687–89) argues
that the promises of transhumanism are mostly hot air.
2
See Nicholas Agar, Liberal Eugenics: in Defence of Human Enhancement (Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) and Nicholas Agar, “Liberal Eugenics,” Public Affairs Quarterly 12 (1998): 137–55. Agar wishes to distance himself from transhumanism by promoting only what he considers moderate enhancements. Nevertheless,
his essential outlook of “liberal eugenics” is generally adopted by the transhumanist
movement. See also Nick Bostrom, “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity,” Bioethics

The Roots of Transhumanism

517

human race will improve by free choice, and not by government intervention. On this view, eugenics is not bad in itself; it just happened to get
linked with an unfortunate philosophy.
But what if the link is not accidental? What if, as Jeffrey Bishop
claims, the very philosophy of eugenics, or of enhancements, is embroiled with excess and coercion.3 Already clouds appear on the horizon,
foreshadowing the storm that will break upon us. Some have suggested
that parents have an obligation to choose a child without defects or even
positively to choose enhancements.4 A neglected obligation sometimes
demands coercion, as in the case of deadbeat dads.5 If the benighted
masses do not follow the pipings of the transhumanists, then they may
need to be forced to comply, for their own good of course. If liberalism
cannot win in the court of free ideas, then it will embed its ideas in the
next generation through technology.6 It is worth recalling that the old
eugenics began with a positive call for improvement but quickly slid into
a negative call to eliminate the unfit.7
19 (2005): 202–14, at 206; John Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for
Making Better People (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 72–85.
3
Jeffrey P. Bishop, “Transhumanism, Metaphysics, and the Posthuman God,” Journal
of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (2010): 700–720, at 713. Koch (“Enhancing Who”)
argues that the new liberal eugenics are not very different from the old eugenics. In
contrast, Nicholas Agar (Liberal Eugenics, 3) claims that Galton, the founder of eugenics, could not have foreseen the evil that would be done in the name of eugenics.
One might well wonder, however, whether he could not have foreseen or he chose
not to foresee? Was the evil done merely in the name of eugenics or was it part and
parcel of eugenics?
4
See Julian Savulescu, “Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children,” Bioethics 15 (2001): 413–26; see also Harris, Enhancing Evolution, 19–35.
5
Dov Fox (in “The Illiberality of ‘Liberal Eugenics’,” Ratio 20 [2007]: 1–25) argues
that just as government requires certain educational and social training, so it will be
obliged, upon liberalism’s own principles, to require certain genetic enhancements.
Robert Sparrow (in “A Not-So-New Eugenics: Harris and Savulescu on Human Enhancement,” Hastings Center Report 41 [2011]: 32–42) provides a similar argument.
Savulescu and Harris think they can avoid this conclusion.
6
For instance, among the things that Persson and Savulescu (in “Moral Transhumanism,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 [2010]: 656–69) wish to program into
human nature is a sensitivity to environmental concerns; they also wish to protect
human beings from religious fanaticism, however that might be defined.
7
For an accessible history of the eugenics movement see Edwin Black, War Against
the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York:
Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003).

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My general claim is simply that the error of transhumanism is rooted in its underlying attitudes. The use of technological enhancements
arises from a sickness of the soul. Most fundamentally it issues from
pride. This pride itself, however, is linked to ingratitude, and these two
vices together bring forth a false love, revealed most poignantly in a
hatred for the weak and imperfect.
One Action, Two Attitudes
Two identical actions, or two nearly identical actions, with nearly
identical results, might arise from quite distinct attitudes (by which I
mean a pattern of motivation); one action might be good and the other
evil, although their upshots are much the same. As Michael Sandel suggests, the act of enrolling one’s child in the best private academy might
in fact be two quite distinct actions.8 For some parents, it might be an
act of love, providing the best environment for the enrichment of their
child. For other parents, it might be an act of heavy-handed control, by
which they hope to assure that their child will get ahead in the world.
Although the two actions are similar outwardly, the child feels the difference. Although he has a host of material benefits, he yearns for the
smallest act of love.
Sandel thinks that modifications of our children by way of technological enhancements are parallel to the case of heavy-handed control;
they are not acts of true parental love.9 The results may be ostensibly
positive for the child: he acquires astonishing intelligence or he receives
a first-rate education. Nevertheless, there is more to life than results.
Our human good is constituted through relations with others. More important than the results of our actions are the attitudes from which they
arise. A small deed done with great love is of far more significance than
a great deed done with meager love, and a great deed done out of anger
or ambition is destructive rather than constructive.
Transhumanists use the analogy with overbearing parenting to their
advantage. Overbearing parents might enroll their child in the best preparatory school, but truly loving parents might do the same. The action
8

Michael J. Sandel, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 49–62.
9
Sandel, Case Against Perfection, 61–62.

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519

of enrolling the child is not, by itself, linked to any particular attitude;
it can arise from either good or bad attitudes. Similarly, someone might
seek enhancements out of a kind of overbearing love, but perhaps someone else might seek enhancements for the true good of the child. Once
again, the action is not, by itself, linked to any particular attitude: enhancements can arise from overbearing love or they can arise from true
love.10
I wish to claim that technological enhancements are different in this
regard. Whereas the use of a good preparatory school can arise either
from good or from bad attitudes, the use of technological enhancements, when done with full knowledge, cannot arise from true love.
Enhancements cut at the core of love; they undermine the very good
that love seeks. In fact, transhumanism is necessarily infected with three
destructive attitudes: pride, ingratitude, and overbearing love. In order
to reveal the link between transhumanism and these attitudes, I will begin with overbearing love, for which our experience provides a more
accessible grasp of its destructive character.
Characterizations of Parental Love
Let us consider two extreme parental approaches, what might be
called true love and what we will call overbearing love. Realistically,
most parents have a mixture of the two kinds of love. They want what
is good for their child for his sake, while at the same time they sometimes promote their child’s good in an overbearing manner that actually
serves to alienate the child and his good. Conceptually, we will attempt
to separate these two loves, considering as far as possible each extreme
in its purity.
In true love, parents seek to share their good with the child; they
want the child to have the good so that he can enjoy it, even as they
themselves do. In contrast, overbearing love, if it can be called love,
seeks the good of the child for some further purpose—for example, for
the reputation of the parents or for the sake of some ideal perfect child.
Junior will be the best tennis player not so that he can enjoy playing
tennis, but so that Dad can enjoy the success of his son.
10

Agar (Liberal Eugenics, 113–16) argues that if we are permitted to change a trait by
nurture, then we should be equally permitted to change it by enhancement.

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True love provides the child with opportunities in order to nourish
his development, so that he can grow in the good. Overbearing love
forces the child to develop. For true love, the ultimate success is seen
as the success of the child; as such, the child is allowed freedom, within
limits. For overbearing love, the child is more passive, and the success
is perceived by the parents more as their own; as such, the child is controlled.
A related point might be expressed as “pre-determination.” Overbearing love predetermines the particular good of the child: Junior will
grow up to be a doctor; he will be in the top 10 percent of his class; he
will be a concert pianist; and so on. In contrast, true love does not decide ahead of time the particular good of the child, but seeks to help the
child develop his own potentials. Obviously, this help presumes some
idea of what is the good of the child, but it is not so firmly set and determined as with overbearing love. In part, the good of the child must
be discovered, a discovery possible for true love because the good of the
child is received; his good is not entirely the making of the parents.
A consequence of this predetermination is disappointment with
failure. Since the goal is predetermined, if the child does not meet
the goal, then he is a disappointment to the parents. When the child
does not live up to the ideal, the parents take out their disappointment
through harsh treatment. Of course, failure can be a disappointment for
true love as well. The sorrow of the parents, however, is not apt to strike
out in angry retaliation.
Self-hatred often arises from a kind of overbearing love for oneself.
An individual sets an impossible ideal, and when he does not live up
to it—when he faces failure—then his own deficiency becomes an evil
against which he strikes out. Likewise, the old eugenics set up an ideal,
and then sought to suppress failure by eliminating those who did not
live up to it. Today, when parents discover that their unborn child has
Down syndrome they often choose to abort him. He does not live up to
the ideal; he is a disappointment that must be eliminated, to make way
for the “satisfactory” child.
Similarly, transhumanism wishes to create an ideal. When human
beings fail from this ideal, I suggest, transhumanism will turn to a kind
of self-loathing, a hatred of the species as it is now realized. It will strike

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521

out in retaliation against those Luddites who refuse to accept its brand
of salvation.
A transhumanist might well object that I am overstating the case.
Certainly, it may be reasonable to see a tendency in transhumanism toward overbearing love. Like an overbearing parent, transhumanism sets
high ideals, a kind of predetermined goal. Like overbearing parents, the
means chosen to achieve this ideal is more forceful, since it is achieved
apart from the child’s cooperation.11
Nevertheless, these points do not establish a necessary link between
transhumanism and overbearing love. They indicate only a tendency.
The same sort of tendency might be found in parents who place their
children in excellent preparatory schools. A significant percentage of
these parents may have a predominance of overbearing love. Nevertheless, truly loving parents can send their children to excellent preparatory schools. Similarly—so the argument goes—using technological
enhancements to bolster the capabilities of one’s child might often arise
from overbearing love. No necessary connection, however, makes it so.
I wish to suggest, however, that there is a necessary connection. The
use of technological enhancements always arises from something besides true love, often from overbearing love, and inevitably, as we will
see, from ingratitude and from pride. Drawing this connection requires
a consideration of a topic to which transhumanism is averse, namely,
human nature.
The Importance of Nature
The good cannot be realized apart from some nature. The good of
a knife is to be sharp and the good of a hammer is to be heavy and dull.
Being sharp just by itself is not good; it is good as realized in certain natures, such as a knife, but not for others, such as a hammer. Similarly, the
human good is the good of a human nature.12 Such goods as strength or
11

This criticism is one of Habermas’s major concerns with genetic manipulations: see
Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2003), 13–
14 and 53–60.
12
Francis Fukuyama (in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology
Revolution [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002]) recognizes the importance
of human nature, but he defines it simply in terms of typical emotions or behavior
(130); the importance of the human function, and the functions of various parts of

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intelligence are good for our human nature, but not for a rock. Unfortunately, in our age we have no clear notion of human nature.13
Any nature involves a direction to some end or good. A knife is directed toward cutting, and by its nature an eye is directed toward seeing.
Similarly, human nature involves some impulse or direction to an end.
We do not create our end or good; it is received from our nature. The
error of transhumanism will be precisely to try to create what can only
be received.
The transhumanists suppose that they will transcend human nature,
but inevitably they imagine another sort of nature, namely, a disembodied consciousness.14 Of course, they are typically materialists, so that
this consciousness is disembodied only in the sense that it arises from
pure structure and can be reincarnated simply by replicating the structure. This consciousness might be realized in a human body, but—they
suppose—it might also be realized in a computer. In either event, we can
attribute certain goods to it, for instance, greater intelligence or greater
power to act.
Transhumanists tend to describe enhancements as instrumental
goods. By promoting enhancements, they need not, so they claim, presuppose any one notion of the good life; goods such as strength or intelligence are universally useful, for every vision of the good life. Transhumanists, then, need not promote one vision of the good life over another, or so they claim.15
Every instrumental good, however, presupposes that there is some
human nature, is lost from sight.
See Bishop, “Posthuman God,” 716, who claims that the word “nature” has lost
its meaning; Elizabeth Fenton (in “Liberal Eugenics and Human Nature: Against
Habermas,” Hastings Center Report 36 [2006]: 35–42, at 39) claims that there is no
fixed human nature, thereby confirming Bishop’s concerns. Human nature, it seems,
is viewed by Fenton and others simply as whatever evolution has now given to us.
14
Persson and Savulescu (“Moral Transhumanism”), for instance, reject the importance of membership in the human species (conceiving the human species, after
the biological manner, simply as mutual fertility) and they argue that we can change
human nature, by which they mean typical psychological dispositions. Unstated
throughout the article is another sense of human nature, which remains unchanged,
namely, a conscious being. R. P. Doede (in “Polanyi in the Face of Transhumanism,”
Tradition & Discovery 35 [2008]: 33–45) claims that transhumanism is committed to
a “Laplacian” consciousness, which ignores the need for the human body.
15
See Agar, “Liberal Eugenics,” 145–48; Fox, “Illiberality,” 10.
13

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523

inherent good, and every inherent good requires some nature of which
it is the good. Furthermore, some goods instrumental to one nature are
destructive of another; sharpening a knife is useful for the knife, but
sharpening a hammer is detrimental to the good of the hammer. If in
fact human beings are not disembodied ghosts that happen to reside in
a biological machine, if in fact we are by nature embodied reason, then
taking away our bodies will not serve our good. We can imagine that
placing our minds into a machine can serve our good, but this wishful
thinking is possible only because we have presupposed something about
our nature; we have presupposed that we are disembodied consciousness. Transhumanism, then, cannot avoid promoting one vision of the
good life over another; it cannot avoid presuppositions about human
nature.
Transhumanists might well ask: why should we so narrowly seek
only the good of human nature?16 Why cannot we pursue the good of
superior beings that will eventually replace us? Transhumanism hopes
to get beyond our particular prejudices, which self-interestedly seek the
human good; it hopes for new horizons. It selflessly admits that our good
is not the whole good; the good of other beings might surpass our own.
A Shared Good
This self-proclaimed nobility of transhumanism, however, is based
upon another illusion, namely, the lie of selfless altruism, which supposes that we can pursue the good just in itself, apart from its being connected with our own good. In fact, no such altruism exists or can exist.
If we seek the good for others, it is because we seek to share our good
with them; we never seek a good that has nothing to do with our own.
I should note that I am not asserting egoism, as if we must seek the
good of others only as instrumental for our own fulfillment. Rather, I
am suggesting that when we seek the good of others, we are seeking not
a solitary good but a shared good. An individual does not seek a good
16

Agar (Liberal Eugenics, 90) wonders why our humanity should matter, although later
he argues that it does; see Nicholas Agar, Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject
Radical Enhancement (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2010). Persson and Savulescu
(“Moral Transhumanism,” 668) think it does not matter whether improvements create a being that is no longer biologically human.

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that belongs only to himself, nor does he seek a good that belongs only
to someone else; rather, he seeks a good that is shared between himself
and others.
In order to understand this point, it will be helpful to examine some
ways in which the human good is shared, ways that will have a direct
bearing upon the question of technological enhancements. I will attempt to illumine the human good through an analogy with works of
art. When an artist paints, he hopes to capture, in the painting, some
share of the beauty that he has perceived and seized within his own
mind. When he succeeds, we say that the painting reflects the genius
of the artist. A single painting, however, cannot capture the genius of
a great artist; only several works together reflect the full measure of his
genius.
In a similar fashion, the human good is a share in a certain beauty,
the beauty of rational nature, which cannot be fully captured in a single individual. A single human being cannot realize the rational good,
most dramatically because he is mortal; he will live but a short time.
Consequently, human beings can attain the rational good only through
an immortality realized through procreation. One individual can realize
the rational good only in a limited slice of time; to realize it more fully,
he must share his good in the prolongation of the species.
Even apart from mortality (which, after all, transhumanism hopes to
overcome), a single individual cannot fully realize the beauty contained
within rational nature.17 Just as the beauty within the artist’s mind has a
diversity that cannot be captured in a single painting, so rational nature
cannot be captured in a single individual. The rational good contains a
variety of elements, including coming to grasp the truth, using the truth
to change the world around us, and using the truth to guide our own
behavior. No individual can completely comprehend the whole of truth;
no individual can realize all the skills and technology involved in changing the world; no individual can fully realize the diverse ramifications of
self-control, which plays itself out in many distinct personalities. Each

17

Leon Kass (in “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” First Things 113
[2001]: 17–24) suggests that mortality has its benefits for the human good. In particular, it can help us recognize our other limitations.

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individual realizes a part of the human good; only together do they begin to reflect the multifaceted aspects of the beauty of human nature.
When we seek our individual good, then, we seek to share in a
greater good. Our good is not solitary; it is had in union with others.
By seeking the good of others, we do not seek a good wholly separated
from our own; rather, we seek “our” good, a good that is attained only
together with others. Just as the members of a soccer team seek the good
of playing together, so those who seek the human good seek to attain it
together.
We fool ourselves if we imagine that we can will for someone a good
in which we have no share. Even the individual who sacrifices his life
for another still seeks a good that is shared, for he has come to see the
good of the other as his good, which is precisely what it means to love
someone. He and his friend share in a greater good, which they attain in
union, even in the union of offering oneself for the other.
Transhumanism, then, does not get beyond human nature, as if it
sought some good in which human nature has no share. Rather, transhumanism misconceives human nature. It supposes that human nature
is simply disembodied intelligence, which can be transferred from a
body to a computer, and which can be elevated in unforeseen ways.
Genetically modified human beings, of course, can still share in the
human good.18 They still have a human nature, and they still reflect various aspects of the beauty found within this nature. The problem, here,
is not that there is no good to be willed; the problem is how the good is
treated. Is it treated as something to be shared? Or is it treated as something to be created?
How do paintings share in the beauty found within the artist? In
part, through being similar to that beauty. There is something more,
however. The beauty in the painting must come about in the proper
manner, that is, it must come about from the artist. If it does not, then
it does not share in the good of the artist. Suppose that some third party doctors up a painting, altering features here or there. Whatever else
these additions might do, they will not help the painting to share in the
good of the artist. Even if they are improvements of some sort or other,
they will not be improvements as a work of this artist. Whatever good
18

Hence, Bostrom (“Posthuman Dignity,” 209–10) asserts that they have dignity.

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they bring about, then, will be no sharing in the good of the artist; they
will distort the original.
By analogy we can see that technological enhancements aim at no
share in the human good.19 As we have seen, the full human good requires diverse individuals, each reflecting various aspects of the overall
good. Human nature realizes the needed diversity, in part, through diverse natural endowments, which are given naturally through procreation. The multifarious individuals are like the “works of art” of human
nature. In short, we share in the human good not only by having features
that apply to our rational nature; we share in the human good insofar as
we, and our features, arise from human nature itself.
All manner of technological reproduction, even those that involve
no genetic manipulations, such as in vitro fertilization, attempt to get
around our origins within human nature. They do not aim to share in
the human good, which is a good that arises from nature. They aim to
create a good of their own. Of course, they cannot entirely exclude human nature, so the offspring still share in this nature. Nevertheless, the
act of “manufacturing” a human being is not an act that seeks to share
in the human good.
Treatment versus Enhancement
Transhumanists are averse to the idea of receiving goods from nature. The gifts of nature, Nick Bostrom complains, are not always good.20
Disease and deformity come from nature, as well as strength and intelligence. If we must receive all our goods from nature, then we will
be left impotent in the face of its evils. If we cannot enhance human
intelligence—because intelligence must be received from nature—then
neither can we correct defective vision, which also comes from nature.
Should we do nothing to correct a cleft palate, because it is a sharing in
the good of nature?
In opposition to this transhumanist argument we find a typical
response, based upon a distinction between enhancement and treat19

In a similar fashion, Agar suggests that radical enhancements might alienate the
enhanced individual, because he cannot share in the human good; see Agar, Humanity’s End, 180–91.
20
Bostrom, “Posthuman Dignity,” 205.

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527

ment. Enhancement adds perfections onto a child’s disposition; healing
or treatment corrects defects within a child’s disposition. Since a cleft
palate and poor vision are defects, we can intervene with technology,
correcting these problems. On the other hand, increasing a normal
child’s height, intelligence, or strength, is not the correction of a defect
but enhancement. It is one thing to correct a child’s eyesight, so that he
has 20/20 vision; it is another to give a child the farseeing vision of an
eagle.21
Transhumanists are unsatisfied with this distinction. They claim that
it has no basis beyond our particular prejudices and predilections.22 We
happen to have set the standard of 20/20 vision, but in fact some people
have better vision, and by way of LASIK we might improve someone’s
vision beyond 20/20. If we are allowed to correct someone’s vision to
the point of 20/20, then why can we not go further? In either event we
are tinkering with the person’s natural disposition. It would surely be
acceptable, if it were possible, to correct the mental defects of a Down
syndrome child. Why, then, should it not be acceptable to take someone
with an IQ of 100 and increase it to 180? Why does the increase from 50
to 100 count as the correction of a defect, while the increase from 100 to
180 counts as an enhancement?
Indeed, the distinction between healing and enhancing can be difficult to discern.23 Even when concrete instances can be readily separated, the theoretical underpinnings of the distinction are unclear. We
readily distinguish, for instance, between therapeutic cosmetic surgery
21

This distinction is defended by James E. Sabin and Norman Daniels (in “Determining ‘Medical Necessity’ in Mental Health Practice,” Hastings Center Report 24 [1994]:
5–13) in order to distinguish what should be covered by insurance (namely, the correction of defect) and what should not (namely, what is not related to defects).
22
See Agar, Liberal Eugenics, 78–81; see also Agar, “Liberal Eugenics,” 141–42; see H.
Tristram Engelhardt, “Persons and Humans: Refashioning Ourselves in a Better Image and Likeness,” Zygon 19 (1984): 281–95, at 281–84; Michael Bess, “Enhanced
Humans versus ‘Normal People’: Elusive Definitions,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (2010): 641–55, at 645–47.
23
For helpful discussions see Erik Parens, “Is Better Always Good? The Enhancement
Project,” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998); Eric Juengst, “What Does
Enhancement Mean?” also in Enhancing Human Traits; Eric Juengst, “Can Enhancement Be Distinguished from Prevention in Genetic Medicine?” Journal of Medicine
and Philosophy 22 (1997): 125–42.

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to correct the scars consequent upon an automobile accident and enhancement cosmetic surgery in order to have a more beautiful nose;
nevertheless, we may be pressed to give a good theoretical account that
will always distinguish between the two kinds of surgery.
In some manner, human nature must be the standard for identifying treatment, since treatment presupposes some prior defect, a defect
that is defined in terms of human nature. Nature is not a kind of statistical norm, as if an IQ of 100 is natural because it is common in current
populations.24 Rather, “natural” refers to what belongs to a human being
in light of the human purpose or function. Given the function of the
human eye, we can define what is natural to it, that is, what is required to
fulfill this function. We can reasonably conclude that 20/100 vision does
not fulfill this function. Furthermore, we can see that the sharp vision
of an eagle is not necessary for this function, and might in fact hinder
the function.
We more clearly distinguish between treatment and enhancement
for concrete functions. It is difficult for us to say what the precise function of the eye is within the overall purpose of human life; of course,
it is to see, but what is the purpose of seeing? If we cannot answer this
latter question, then we will not be able to determine how precise human sight must be; we will be unable to understand why the vision of an
eagle might be a kind of defect for human beings.25 When we look at the
more concrete functions within the eye, however, we readily make the
appropriate distinctions. The function of the lens, for instance, is to let
light pass through and to focus the light upon the retina. Consequently,
we can easily identify certain instances of defective lenses.26
24

Bess (“Enhanced vs. Normal,” 643– 48) criticizes the distinction between therapy
and enhancement because he observes too great a flexibility for what is “normal”
and for what is “healthy.” Similarly, in “A Fatal Attraction to Normalizing: Treating
Disabilities as Deviations from ‘Species-Typical’ Functioning,” in Enhancing Human
Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998, 95–123), Anita Silvers seems to reduce proper functioning to a kind of population average.
25
Juengst (“Enhancement Mean,” 36) points out that we do not have a sufficient account of an overall function of the organism to specify functions for intellectual
ability and moral sensitivity.
26
The recognition that some cases are not clear, most especially for mental dysfunction, does not obviate the distinction between therapy and enhancement. The fact
that people have made mistakes in the past does not obviate the distinction. The fact

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529

Does nature, then, give both good things and defects, as the transhumanists complain? Certainly, if by “nature” is meant something like
“mother nature,” the sum total of all nonhuman causal interactions.27
But no one is suggesting that we must accept whatever comes from nature in this sense. If by “nature” is meant human nature, then what nature provides is a diversity of good things. It does so by a reproductive
power that can sometimes fail. It might fail because “mother nature” intervenes, causing some defect. It might fail because the mechanism itself
is defective (presumably, through some prior intervention of “mother
nature”). In neither event does the defect come from human nature.
As we have suggested, human nature involves a directedness to
some end. Furthermore, we have seen that this end is a shared good.
This end and this sharing must both be received from nature. We cannot
create our own end. We cannot share the good except by receiving it,
and we can receive it only from nature. Among the various “directions”
or tendencies within human nature we find the impulse to share that
nature through having a child. It is this sharing that we must learn to
accept from nature as a true good. Disease and defect are a falling short
from this nature; they represent an opposition to the direction or impulse of nature.
Natural and Unnatural Methods of Improvement
The distinction between treatment and enhancement is only a first
step. It reveals that technological interventions are acceptable when
done in order to treat a defect of nature; it does not reveal that technological interventions to bring about enhancements are wrong.28 Clearly,
that sometimes moral norms or standards have been incorporated into the distinction (rather than using the distinction as the basis of a moral judgment) does not
obviate the distinction. These shortcomings indicate that we must approach the distinction with caution. Some would suggest that our caution should lead us to more
readily place something on the treatment side of the line, so that we can thereby
relieve the sufferings of as many as possible. At the risk of sounding hardhearted, I
recommend the opposite caution, in order to avoid the risk of a cruel kind of false
love.
27
Bostrom (“Posthuman Dignity,” 211) refers to “Mother Nature,” claiming that she
should be jailed for child abuse.
28
Much of the dispute over the treatment/enhancement distinction concerns its use to
determine whether society should support some medical intervention, for example,

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Steven J. Jensen

some attempts to enhance are perfectly acceptable. A man can enhance
his muscles through a rigorous workout program; another man might
accomplish the same enhancement in conjunction with the use of steroids. Is the first approach acceptable while the other is wrong? Or are
the two approaches just two morally indifferent means toward the same
goal? Someone might believe that having his child listen to Mozart increases her intelligence; someone else might choose to splice “intelligence genes” into his child. Both approaches aim at the enhancement
of increased intelligence. Is one approach acceptable and the other not?
Some methods of improving ourselves are perfectly acceptable. Indeed, part of what we have received from nature is the ability to improve
ourselves. By improving ourselves, then, we actually further the good
we have received from nature. Changing ourselves for the better is not
opposed to receiving goods from nature. The very act of improving ourselves is also an act of seeking a good that arises from nature.
If some ways of improving ourselves are acceptable, such as a rigorous workout program, then can we conclude that all ways are acceptable,
including the use of steroids and gene splicing? Or should we distinguish between those that are natural and those that are unnatural? The
distinction is not between improvements without the use of technology
and improvements by way of technology. A rigorous workout program
might well involve technology, such as a treadmill; it does not thereby
become unnatural.29 How, then, is the distinction to be drawn?
Ultimately, we must look again to the good at which nature aims. It
seeks the diverse realization, within multiple individuals, of the many
aspects of human nature. One aspect of human nature that needs to be
realized is self-improvement, as well as the improvement of others. Nait is sometimes thought that we should provide for treatments but not for enhancements. I am making no such suggestion. My use of the distinction is to recognize
that defects do not arise from nature, so that correcting defects is not opposed to
receiving the goods of nature. I am not concerned, then, about the justice or injustice
of supporting growth hormone treatment for two boys, both of whom will likely end
up being 5’3” without the treatment, one of which will have this height from a defect
in the mechanism of growth and the other from his natural genetic endowments. It
is worth noting that having a height of 5’3” is no defect; the defect is in the mechanism of growth.
29
Nor should “natural” be taken to mean simply the current products of evolution, as
Engelhardt seems to suggest (see “Refashioning Ourselves,” 285–86).

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531

ture provides for this self-improvement, giving us the power to realize
our potential. We can improve our physical nature by eating healthily
and by exercise; we can improve our mental nature by study and by providing an environment conducive to learning.
Are there any means of self-improvement (or the improvement of
others) that aim at a good apart from nature? Do any aim to achieve
the good independently, not as received from nature? Any such means,
if they could be identified, would not be seeking to realize the good of
nature; they would be seeking one’s own independent good. I will suggest that some such inappropriate means can be clearly identified while
others are suspect, although less clearly opposed to nature.
Nature has provided the means of dispersing diverse natural dispositions through our power to reproduce. These natural dispositions,
then, are received – as a good of nature – through this natural power.
Any attempt to get around the power of reproduction, whether through
simple in vitro fertilization or through genetic manipulations, is an attempt to achieve the good of nature without nature. It severs us from the
true good, which is a reflection of human nature and not of ourselves; it
leaves us only with our isolated accomplishment.30
The use of pharmaceuticals to achieve enhancement (as opposed
to treatment) is suspect. It is natural to take in nutrients, and some of
these nutrients might be better for us than others; some might lead to
improvements or something like enhancements, whether physical or
mental. It is completely natural, then, to control our diets in order to
improve ourselves. This natural power appears to be hijacked for another purpose, however, when it is used not to take in healthy nutrients but
to take in a chemical directed simply toward a change in our person.
Likewise, the use of technology seems suspect when it becomes, in
some manner, a “part” of us. It is one thing to use binoculars in order to
improve our vision; it would be another thing to implant an enhancing
30

Agar (“Liberal Eugenics,” 139–41) denies any relevant distinction between improvements by way of changing our environment and improvements by way of changing
our genes. He thinks that the distinction hangs upon some notion of genetic determinism. I am suggesting that the relevance derives from the manner in which nature
distributes our genetic endowments. There is nothing magic about genes themselves;
what matters is that they be received from nature. As we have suggested, defects are
not received from nature; in other regards, however, our genetic makeup is received
through the power of reproduction, not through our laboratory interventions.

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lens within our eyes. The former does not change our very selves, while
the latter certainly encroaches upon our makeup. That which we have
received from nature is changed; it is not accepted but replaced.
For the latter two cases I do not claim to have a clear method of
demarcation. The natural dispositions coming through the power of reproduction are fairly straightforward. The natural means of achieving
improvements are less clearly delineated. I do wish to claim that any
means of improving ourselves must also be received from nature. Which
means are received from nature and which are not, however, is not always clear.
Nor do I wish to defend the status quo of current human dispositions, as if whatever is “natural” in this sense is sacrosanct.31 The question concerns the good of human nature, which is our good. That good,
if it is truly to be good, must be received from the directedness found
within human nature. The more concrete question, then, concerns how
we receive something from nature. In one way, we receive the genetic
dispositions through the human power of procreation, although when
these are functionally defective, then the resulting dispositions are received not from human nature but from a failure of human nature. In
other ways, we improve ourselves according to the manner given us by
nature, which will depend upon the direction nature gives us toward
certain ends. Concerning this latter point, the distinction between what
is natural and what is not is unclear, at least to me.
In practice, the precise distinction may not be especially relevant.
Perhaps every instance of the use of steroids for enhancement pursues
some isolated good, an accomplishment apart from nature, but perhaps
not; perhaps some instances fit within the order received from nature.
In practice, however, it seems that the use of steroids arises almost uni31

Fenton (“Liberal Eugenics”) is primarily concerned to argue against the view that
what is natural is sacrosanct, which may not in fact be the position of Habermas,
against whom she argues (see Habermas, Future of Human Nature), although it may
be the view of Fukuyama in Posthuman Future. Like Fenton, Ted Peters (in “‘Playing
God’ and Germline Intervention,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 20 [1995]:
365–86, at 368) seems to oppose this view of the sanctity of nature, claiming that
those who wish to restrict enhancements “tacitly bless the status quo.” I argue, however, that the current gene pool is indeed what we have received from nature; it
should not be meddled with, not because it is ideal, but so that we can truly participate in the good by receiving it.

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533

versally from the attitude of independence, of separation. The use of
steroids is what Sandel calls hyper-agency, an attempt to make my improvement entirely my own.32 Even without a precise demarcation, then,
we can say that the “unnatural” enhancements described above arise,
with near inevitability, from the destructive attitudes that we will now
proceed to analyze.
Ingratitude and Pride
Transhumanism is averse to accepting the good things that come
from nature; it prefers good things made by human beings. Underlying
this preference are the two attitudes mentioned previously, ingratitude
and pride. When someone receives a gift but is dissatisfied with it, wanting something more, we recognize ingratitude. If someone receives a
new computer and complains that it is not powerful enough, even going
so far as to turn it in for another, he is not grateful for the good that he
has received. R. P. Doede sees this kind of ingratitude in transhumanism: “Transhumanist enchantment will… [eliminate] the ‘unchosen’ dimensions of their world and their selves. In this categorical refusal of
the givens of human existence, they will be launched into a thankless
future.”33
When we receive a gift, we recognize that it is not simply our good;
it is a good shared with the giver. As we have suggested, when we receive
the diverse attributes of nature, we accept them as a sharing in the human good; they are not simply our own goods. But if we should desire
the goods of nature—or that which is like the goods of nature—simply as our own, as coming from ourselves, then we would exhibit pride,
which desires a singular excellence. In this case, the excellence is to have
an individual good that comes from ourselves.
The fallen angels suffered from precisely this kind of pride.34 They
did not desire what was evil; rather, their error was the manner in which
they desired the good. They desired it simply from themselves and for
32

Sandel, Case Against Perfection, 26.
R. P. Doede, “Transhumanism, Technology, and the Future: Posthumanity Emerging or Sub-humanity Descending?” Appraisal 7 (2009): 39–54, at 52. Sandel (Case
Against Perfection, 85–95) also emphasizes the importance of gratitude.
34
See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 63, a. 3.
33

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Steven J. Jensen

themselves. They did not want their good to be received from God; they
wanted it to be their own accomplishment. They did not want their good
to be a sharing in God’s good; they wanted it simply to be their own.35
In a similar manner, transhumanism seeks attributes that are truly
good, such as greater strength or intelligence, but it seeks them not as
a sharing in the good of human nature. The unwillingness to submit to
another is typical of pride. In this case, transhumanism does not wish
to submit to the dispensations of nature.36 Consequently, it clings to an
isolated good, a good that is not a sharing in the human good.
Transhumanists might well concede the point. So what, they might
ask. What is the value of sharing in an inadequate good? Why not exceed this natural good? We should seek what is better, and the good of
nature is less than the good that we ourselves can now make. At one time
in human history we had to accept the goods that nature dispensed. We
are no longer so limited. We can now attain to higher things. If, in the
process, we must give up a sharing in some lesser good, then so be it.
Pride can rarely see the folly of its ways, and the ingrate does not
often recognize his debt, even when it is pointed out to him. What is
difficult to deny, for almost anyone, however, is the importance of love.
Consequently, we will return our focus toward love, in the hope of identifying the destructive character of ingratitude and pride.
Self-Hatred
In order to recognize the nature of false love, it will be helpful to
investigate self-love and self-hatred. We do not suppose that low self-esteem arises from a healthy self-love; to the contrary, it exhibits aspects of
self-hatred. Nevertheless, it is founded in a kind of self-love, as is all our
35

Nigel M. de S. Cameron and Amy Michelle DeBaets (in “Germline Gene Modification and the Human Condition before God,” in Desire and Destiny: Jewish and
Christian Perspectives on Human Germline Modification, ed. Ronald Cole-Turner
[Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008], 106–7) note that the simple act of building a
tower was fiercely opposed by God in the Old Testament, not because there was any
inherent evil in the tower, but because those who built it sought their own glory and
independence.
36
For this reason, Sandel (Case Against Perfection, 85–92) argues that the hyper responsibility generated from enhancements will eliminate humility, as well as solidarity with others.

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activity. Paradoxically, it is founded in something of an overgrown selflove. Probably on account of the expectations of society or of parents,
the person wants such a grand good for himself that when he sees by
how much he has fallen short of reaching this ideal, he becomes downcast and self-critical. He is dissatisfied with his own small accomplishments, since he wants greater things for himself.
The person with low self-esteem must learn to accept himself, including his failings and limitations. Acceptance does not mean defeatism, as if a person who accepts his limitations cannot strive to overcome
them; we can earnestly work to improve ourselves. A difficult balance,
however, is required, since the person with low self-esteem is apt to seek
to improve himself out of self-hatred, wishing to rid himself entirely of
his hateful failings. When he fails, yet again, to eliminate his undesirable
traits, he sometimes turns to self-mutilation, whether psychological or
physical. In this manner, enhancements upon oneself might turn out
to be a kind of self-mutilation, an attempt to eliminate the person one
hates and replace it with something new and improved. It is no accident
that the enhancements of cosmetic surgery are promoted in advertisements by convincing people that their appearance is defective.37
How are we to find a balance between defeatism and improvements
arising from self-hatred? By accepting the limited nature of our good. I
do not mean accepting the present state of our good, that is, accepting
the fact that we are now imperfect, although this acceptance will follow;
rather, I mean accepting what it means for us to be good. Our good—
not just now as it is imperfectly realized but even if it were to be fully
accomplished—is limited and partial. Our good is precisely to be a part.
As such, our good, by its nature, is received.
When we recognize the limited nature of our good, then we see
that—despite our failings—we have some share in the good. Indeed, we
see that we are good. Our goodness arises from the fact that we are a
part, even if an imperfect part. As a part, we are ordered to the good of
37

Susan Bordo (in “Braveheart, Babe, and the Contemporary Body,” in Enhancing
Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens [Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 1998, 189–221]), for instance, emphasizes the drive
to convince women that their appearance is defective. This approach might lead to
temporary satisfaction with one’s enhanced appearance but long-term dissatisfaction with oneself.

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the whole, and this very ordering gives us a share in the good. We are
not good through a collection of grand perfections; we are good through
our lowliness, through being a part.38
From his role within the whole, an individual can recognize his imperfections and realize what good he has yet to strive for. He acknowledges, however, that his imperfections must be overcome as received;
they must be overcome not simply from himself. The resulting perfection will not simply be “his”; it will be “ours.” It will belong to all of those
who have helped; it will belong to human nature itself.
From this point follows another insight: he might have to live with
his imperfections for some time. Indeed, it might be better to live with
his imperfections than to attain perfections in the wrong way, as if they
were only “his.”39 It is better to rejoice in his small share of the received
good than to strive after solitary and exalted accomplishments. It may
take him some time to learn how to depend upon others; it may take
him some time to learn how to depend upon his fragile nature. He must
learn to be happy with what he has, with what he has received; he must
learn gratitude.
What of the person who seeks his own exaltation, who seeks his own
good as isolated and independent? According to his own conception of
the good, his goodness is not received; his goodness is not on account of
his being a part within the whole. Rather, his goodness depends entirely
upon his own perfections. Consequently, he learns to hate his imperfections, which are destructive of his only good. When he realizes how
embedded his imperfections are within him, he learns to hate himself.
Self-Aggrandizement
What happens to the individual who does achieve his own exaltation, the one who succeeds rather than fails, perhaps becoming among
the best in his field? Has he not attained a good thing in which he can
rejoice? And should we not take this individual as our model (rather
38

Likewise, Gerald McKenny (in “Enhancements and the Ethical Significance of Vulnerability,” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens [Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998], 222–37) emphasizes
the importance of bodily vulnerability for our human good. He never goes so far as
to find value in our lowliness insofar as, through it, we participate in a greater good.

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537

than bemoan the failed individual with low self-esteem)? After all, we
often suppose that the best way to overcome low self-esteem is by emphasizing our own accomplishments.
Unfortunately, if this individual does in fact seek his own independent greatness, then he is cut in the same pattern as those with low
self-esteem. I do not mean that everyone who accomplishes great things
suffers from psychological inadequacies; rather, I speak of those who
accomplish these great things perceiving them simply as their own and
not as shared and received; these individuals do indeed suffer from psychological inadequacies. They have not learned to love themselves, or
rather, their self-love is distorted.
The individual who rejects his role as part also rejects the shared
good. In rejecting this good, he is preferring some other, namely, his
own individual good, which he prefers because he has perceived it as
better than the shared good. Why? Because it arises from himself, without being received. After all, we readily suppose that a self-made man is
a great thing.
Once he pursues this first independent excellence, then he may go
on to desire another excellence, namely, a greater degree of the good
than he would have insofar as he is a part. He might desire, for instance,
greater intelligence. In any event, he desires his good comparatively, as
better than the good that belongs to him as a part. What he comes to
love in his own good is that it excels; it is better than others.39 In this
state, when he sees someone who appears to excel beyond himself, then
he perceives his own good as diminished. If to be good is to excel, then
to be outdone is to be defective.
Those who pursue this self exaltation are doomed to two kinds of
dissatisfaction. On the one hand, they will be dissatisfied when their
own excellence seems to be outstripped by others. On the other hand,
they will be dissatisfied when they recognize, in their moments of honesty, that their own good is rather limited. They will learn to hate their
true limited selves; they love only the false image they present of themselves. Since they have no goodness from what they are, but only from

39

Bishop (“Posthuman God,” 705–6) argues that when we have no goal beyond ourselves, then we are left only with self-augmentation and constant overcoming.

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Steven J. Jensen

their perfections, they are forced to imagine themselves as more perfect
than is really the case.
False Love
From this portrayal of false self-love, it is not difficult to see how a
rejection of the received good distorts our love of others. Parents who
want super excellence for their children do not really love their children.
Like the person with low self-esteem, they do not desire the good of
their child as a part, as received from the whole. They begin to despise
their true limited child, and they drive him on to ever further accomplishments, so that they can take satisfaction in their imagined ideal
child.
Just as the individual who seeks his own singular excellence perceives no goodness in himself apart from his perfections, so the parents
who seek the singular excellence of their child find no good in the child
apart from his accomplishments. The child is not good insofar as he is
a part; he is good, they suppose, insofar as he excels beyond the part,
independently of any role within the whole. This independent goodness,
however, can only be the goodness of individual perfections. When the
child falls short of this ideal, then he has no goodness in himself by
which he might be loved.
We can see, then, why the love of others always involves a shared
good. A friend is first of all good by sharing in the whole, not by having
a list of perfections. When we desire some good for her, we desire it for
her as she is, as an imperfect part that can become better. If, on the other
hand, she has only the good of her perfections, then we cannot will the
good for her as an imperfect individual; rather, the imperfections must
be removed, and we will anything for her only insofar as she is perfect.
Ultimately, an individual—even when he has a distorted love—
must conceive the person loved as in some manner united with himself.
When the good is conceived as a singular excellence, however, it is not
the union of two parts within a whole; rather, the person loved is probably conceived as an extension of the lover. The perfections of the child,
for instance, are perceived as perfections of the parent.
Typically, the child perceives this backhanded love. He perceives
that the goods he receives—the excellent education, the special training

The Roots of Transhumanism

539

in sports, and so on—are not goods meant for himself. He learns to hate
these goods. He longs for a shared good, a good, however small, that he
has with others, and which the others desire for his sake.
Enhancements and Love
This portrayal of overbearing love may well be uncontested. What
will be contested is the link between technological enhancements and
overbearing love.40 The act of sending a child to a top-ranked preparatory school can arise from true love or false love; in contrast, I claim, an
act of technological enhancement excludes true love. I do not mean that
parents who seek technological enhancements have no love for their
child; rather, I mean that the act of enhancing itself cannot be an act of
true love but only of overbearing love.
Technological enhancements are destructive of love. The pursuit of
them necessarily severs the good from the whole of which it should be
a part. The desire for a good not received from human nature exhibits
pride, a pride that seeks to excel beyond the good of the part.41 The consequent deformed good is isolated, unable to be shared. All that remains
of this good is its excellence. And what of the one for whom this good
is desired? His good also is found only in excellence. The technological
enhancements, then, cannot be desired for the individual insofar as she
is good; it must be desired for her in order to make her good. She is
loved not as a limited part, that is good through her order to the whole;
rather, she is loved only as super excelling. Her limited nature comes to
be hated. Enhancements, then, are a kind of mutilation, a destruction of
the perceived evil in the individual and a replacement with something
more desirable.
The root of this disorder is pride, pride wedded to ingratitude. The
partial good is despised because it is limited. Its first limitation is precisely that it is received, for it is a kind of excellence to create things
40

For convenience, I use the term “technological enhancements” (and even, for short,
just “enhancements”) to refer to the kinds of enhancements that fail to respect the
directedness of our human nature, such that the enhancements are not received
from nature, as described above. I am not suggesting that every use of technology in
order to improve ourselves—even a treadmill—is problematic.
41
Leon Kass (in Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics
[San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002], 129) describes this pride as “playing God.”

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Steven J. Jensen

from oneself.42 What we forget is that it is also an excellence to receive.
When we reject what is received we are ungrateful. By his nature, the
ingrate cuts himself off, holding his good as only his own. Other goods
are disdained.
A single act of enhancing is but one instance of such pride and false
love. This single act, however, might well arise from a more general disposition of pride. At the very least, it will give rise to this disposition.
Once the attitude of enhancement becomes a settled mindset within a
society, then the partial good will be despised; the love of exaltation will
turn to hatred of what is lowly. The Down syndrome child is not wanted.43 “Inferior races” must be purged. Defective individuals are “mistakes” relegated to the fringe of society.44 What begins in the tones of a
high-minded pursuit of a great ideal becomes all that is ugly.
When we see suffering in the world we can take two quite divergent
approaches. On the one hand, we can seek to alleviate the sufferings of
those around us. On the other hand, we can dream of a world without
suffering, which becomes a substitute for the world in which we live. In
the latter case, we learn to hate the world in which we live. In the end, we
do not seek to mend our broken world; we seek to eliminate it, to replace
it. As Tom Koch suggests:
Were enhancement enthusiasts serious about wishing to reduce
harm and improve human potential enhancement, they might
endorse as human rights those programs that improve the life
of persons with cognitive, sensory, and physical differences.…
Were enhancement enthusiasts truly serious about advancing
the lives of society and its members, they might seek not the
reflexive elimination, but the general nurturing of those whose
differences they do not understand. . . . Instead they note with
42

McKenny (“Vulnerability,” 230–35) also argues for the importance of our limitations
for the love of others. In particular, he emphasizes the importance of the vulnerability of our bodies.
43
In his promotion of “liberal” eugenics, Agar suggest (“Liberal Eugenics,” 138) that
the first step of such eugenics might involve aborting a defective child, thereby “canceling out the wrong of the life that would have been lived.” All that can be seen in
such a child, evidently, is a wrong life.
44
See Kass, Defense of Dignity, 130.

The Roots of Transhumanism

541

approval the high rates of second-trimester abortions of fetuses
that would, if allowed to develop, become persons with Down
syndrome. That is, for me, a pity.45
C. S. Lewis emphasizes that we must marvel at a child as a gift received, as someone with whom we can share our good, a good that we
ourselves have received.46 If a child is not a gift, then he becomes a thing
for satisfaction, a source for the parents own exaltation. The child yearns
for love; instead, he gets only “goods.” He has all the things that money
can buy, including exceptional intelligence and superhuman strength,
N&V
but he is alone, miserably alone. And he knows it.

45
46

Koch, “Enhancing Who,” 696–97.
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of the Man (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1947),
32–33.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 543-563

543

Technology, Virtue, and the Brave New World
Stephan Kampowski

Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family

Rome, Italy

Introduction

WITH THE PUBLICATION o f Fr. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco’s
Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics,1 the
current bioethics debate is enriched with a comprehensive status quaestionis that presents a vast panorama of issues, is well-documented, and
is generally well-advised in its judgments. The author is trained not only
in theology and philosophy but also in biology. As he is treating manifold issues, such as artificial procreation, euthanasia, organ-donation,
the brain-death criterion, or the patient-doctor relationship, he steers
his readers through difficult terrain, introducing them to all sides of the
debate and preparing them for his own takes on the issues, which, but
for a few exceptions, seem to be wise ones. The aim of this present contribution is not to write a detailed review of Fr. Austriaco’s work but
rather to engage in a virtual debate on some of the issues about which to
my mind more or other things could have been said. The point here is
primarily to invite further thinking.

1

Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction
to Catholic Bioethics (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2011).

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Stephan Kampowski

Beatitude and the Two Tiers
Let us begin with a question that is already raised by the title. What
is the role of “beatitude” in bioethics? And what is its relation to “Catholic bioethics” of which we read in the subtitle? Does Fr. Austriaco want
to present bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective, making use of
revelation and the Church’s magisterium to pronounce truths that are
valid for all people, or is it a denominational bioethics that is valid only
for believing Catholics who await their final beatitude from God? To
make things even more complicated, Fr. Austriaco introduces the highly debatable theological idea of the two tiers, speaking of the human
person’s “natural ultimate end” and his or her “supernatural ultimate
end,”2 thus raising the question as to which of these supposed two ends
is served by Catholic bioethics. Maybe Catholic bioethics is necessary
only for people who aspire to a supernatural end, while those satisfied
with their natural end could make do with something less demanding?
But are there really two ends? In Summa theologiae I-II, q. 5, a. 4,
St. Thomas speaks of two kinds of happiness, one imperfect form, “as
can be had in this life,” and a perfect form, “which we await after this
life” and which is our final end in God. This is evidently not speaking
of two “ultimate ends.” Admittedly, ST I-II, q. 62, a. 1 leaves more room
for discussion on this point, albeit a highly likely interpretation of that
article would read it in the light of ST I-II, q. 5, suggesting that Aquinas
is simply taking up again the distinction between imperfect and perfect
happiness.
Independent of the question of its possible foundation in St. Thomas, the theory of the two tiers is in itself at least not unproblematic. Apart
from straining the limits of language—in common usage, “ultimate” or
“final” serves as a superlative that does not allow for things beside it—
this notion also makes it difficult to see how Adam “was a figure of Him
Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord,” and how Christ could be
the true human being who “fully reveals man to man himself and makes
his supreme calling clear.”3 The proposal of the two tiers is certainly motivated by the laudable concern to keep grace gratuitous. It risks, however, turning grace into something that is simply superadded, like the
2
3

Ibid., 30.
Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, §22.

Technology, Virtue, and the Brave New World 

545

topping on a cake. Why is it so difficult to conceive that to achieve our
ultimate destiny we could need something to which we have no legal
claim,4 that is, that we need grace, gratuitous by definition, to reach our
one final end, which, due to its exaltedness, exceeds the capacities of our
nature? There are many other things we absolutely need without having
any right to them. These are in fact the best things in life, like love or
friendship. These, to be sure, are not supernatural in that they do not
exceed the capacities of our nature. And yet, they are both necessary and
gratuitous. It may be helpful for the debate to try to overcome any overly
legalistic mindset. As Fr. Austriaco makes clear in a footnote, he is aware
of the debate,5 but to treat this topic well, independent of his final stance,
to our mind he would have needed to say much more on it or leave it
out. In any case, this is a point worth further reflection.
ANT or ANT-OAR
Looking at Fr. Austriaco’s other recent publications, one notes that
he has intervened in a debate on the moral licitness of so-called “altered
nuclear transfer” (ANT) or “altered nuclear transfer-oocyte assisted reprogramming” (ANT-OAR),6 processes which aim at obtaining human
pluripotent stem cells from what its supporters call “non-embryonic biological artifacts created by using genetic tricks to manipulate eggs and
cells”7 and what its critics call “disabled embryos.”8 It is not surprising
that in a comprehensive introduction to bioethics such as Biomedicine
and Beatitude, these procedures find mention. While in his other publications Fr. Austriaco is their advocate,9 it seems that in his book he
wants to leave the issue inconclusive, contenting himself with having
mentioned the debate itself. Hence he closes the section dedicated to it
4

Cf. Robert Spaemann, Rousseau – Mensch oder Bürger. Das Dilemma der Moderne
(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2008), 96, who, speaking about the thought of early modern
theologians, who, for him, are the inventors of the “natura pura,” writes: “The idea
that the human being could be dependent on something that necessarily has the
character of free gift, recedes” (translation my own).
5
Cf. Austriaco, Biomedicine, 30n51.
6
Cf. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, “Altered Nuclear Transfer: A Critique of a Critique,” Communio 32 (2005): 172–76.
7
Austriaco, Biomedicine, 240.
8
Ibid.
9
Cf. Austriaco, “Altered Nuclear Transfer.”

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Stephan Kampowski

by simply saying, “these proposals remain controversial,”10 adding also
a prudential reason that speaks against them, independent of the ontological status of the beings created by them: “There are added concerns,”
he writes, “that procuring the large numbers of human eggs needed to
accomplish this proposal could lead to the commercialization of human reproductive tissue and the exploitation of women, especially poor
women, in the developing world.”11
And yet he prejudges the issue here in a way that is perhaps more
subtle and thus perhaps even more forceful than if had he taken the
position more openly. He does so by the matter of fact way in which
he calls the products of ANT or ANT-OAR “non-embryonic biological artifacts,”12 which is precisely what is under discussion and strongly denied by his interlocutors, such as Adrian Walker, who makes the
case that what is produced is precisely a human embryo, no matter how
defective it has become due to genetic manipulation.13 In any case, the
question of ANT or ANT-OAR invites further reflection.
Conscience and Ignorance
Most of the time, when it comes to classical topics of moral theology, Fr. Austriaco gives highly useful summaries of the classical Catholic
position. Occasionally, however, he commits one or another slip of the
pen that may cause confusion in people who have not previously studied the subject matter. Thus, his treatment of conscience and ignorance
invites a misunderstanding, inasmuch as he suggests that “Hitler and his
Nazi associates believed with sure conviction that their actions, some
involving the murder of millions of innocent people, were good.”14 Not
even by immediately adding, “Their consciences were wrong,”15 does Fr.
Austriaco prevent the reader from getting the impression that what is
being proposed here is that the Nazi criminals acted on a good albe-

10

Austriaco, Biomedicine, 240.
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Cf. Adrian J. Walker, “The Primacy of the Organism: A Response to Nicanor Austriaco,” Communio 32 (2005): 178–87.
14
Austriaco, Biomedicine, 36.
15
Ibid.
11

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547

it erring conscience. If this were true, not a single person should have
been convicted at the Nuremberg trials.
Fr. Austriaco goes on to explain that “[o]ften an erroneous conscience can be traced to ignorance of the moral order, the order of right
and wrong,”16 which sometimes can be attributed to the person’s responsibility and sometimes not. In the first case there is guilt, in the latter not.
In my judgment, our author’s discussion would have benefitted from a
treatment of the first principles of the natural law, which according to
Aquinas “can nowise be blotted out from men’s hearts.”17 This is not to
deny that ignorance of some very fundamental principles of the natural
moral law presents a grave problem. Thus, St. Thomas himself refers to
Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, where we learn that formerly the Germans did
not think that stealing was wrong.18 Hence, it seems that a very fundamental ignorance is possible and the question of how it comes about and
to what extent it excuses from guilt is a very difficult one.
At the same time, we are safe to say that this phenomenon, which
with Dietrich von Hildebrand we may call “value blindness,” is most
often the result of prior sin, so that in some ways it is the effect of making oneself blind.19 And while it is to some extent possible to imagine
a primitive tribal society that has not developed a notion of property
and hence has no objection to what a more cultivated Roman like Julius
Caesar would call “theft,” it is completely implausible that these very
tribes or their descendants some two thousand years later would simply
not consider murder wrong. To our mind, the fact that life is a good and
has to be respected, and that hence murder is evil, belongs to the first
16

Ibid., 37.
Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 94, a. 6.
18
Cf. ibid., a. 4.
19
Cf. D. von Hildebrand, Ethics, new ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1972),
48-49: “Value blindness indeed plays a great role as a root of moral evil, and is in fact
at the basis of many preferences of a lower in place of a higher good. . . . But how
can we account for such a value blindness? If it were a blindness like color blindness,
the result of a mere natural disposition, no one would be responsible for being value
blind and for acting in a morally wrong way because of this blindness. But it is not
the kind of ignorance which makes an action involuntary. Value blindness is in no
way the result of mere temperamental disposition, but rather of pride and concupiscence. Because here a point of view other than the value dominates the approach to
reality; the point of view, namely of what satisfies our pride and concupiscence: we
are therefore blinded to certain values.”
17

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Stephan Kampowski

principles of the natural moral law which precisely cannot be “blotted
out from men’s hearts.” Thus no one can legitimately claim ignorance of
the moral law as an excuse for murder, claiming that he or she did not
know that someone else’s life was a good that needed to be respected.
Everyone can in principle know that murder is wrong. If in a particular
instance, for instance under the influence of the passions, someone does
not know, then this ignorance is necessarily culpable ignorance, an ignorance for which the person him- or herself is responsible and which
is the result of prior sin.20 According to Hannah Arendt’s observations,
even Adolf Eichmann had a conscience, at least in the beginning of his
tenure as director of the logistics of the Holocaust. Only after he had acted against his conscience a number of times did it “[begin] to function
the other way around.”21 Biomedicine and Beatitude thus invites additional thought on the question of conscience and the natural law.
AIDS and Condoms
Ever since Martin Rhonheimer’s provocative article “The Truth
about Condoms,” published in The Tablet in July 2004,22 there has been
a fervent and ongoing debate on whether it could ever be morally licit for two spouses, one of whom is HIV-positive, to have recourse to
condoms so as to reduce the risk of infection on the part of the not-infected spouse during the act of intercourse. The purpose of treating this
topic is not to defend the use of condoms in the case just described. In
fact, while duly noting that as of the time of this writing the Church’s
Magisterium has not yet pronounced on the issue, we personally do not
think the use of condoms is admissible here. The point is rather to seek
precision in defining the moral object of an act. The definition given of
the moral object in John Paul II’s encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor §78
20

Cf. ST I-II, q. 94, a. 6, ad 1: “Sin blots out the law of nature in particular cases, not
universally, except perchance in regard to the secondary precepts of the natural law.”
21
Cf. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New
York: Penguin Books, 1977), 95: “Thus, we are perhaps in a position to answer Judge
Landau’s question—the question uppermost in the minds of nearly everyone who
followed the trial—of whether the accused had a conscience: yes, he had a conscience, and his conscience functioned in the expected way for about four weeks,
whereupon it began to function the other way around.”
22
Martin Rhonheimer, “The Truth about Condoms,” The Tablet (July 10, 2004): 10–11.

Technology, Virtue, and the Brave New World 

549

reads as follows: “In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which
specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the
perspective of the acting person. The object of the act of willing is in fact a
freely chosen kind of behaviour. …[The] object is the proximate end of a
deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the
acting person.” Now, on this view of the moral object, which asks about
what is deliberately chosen by the acting person, Martin Rhonheimer’s
contention that spouses in the scenario under discussion are not strictly
speaking contracepting when they resort to the use of condoms is not
completely implausible. From this, however, it does not in any way follow that what they are doing is morally licit. There are in fact many
sexual practices that are not contraceptive but nonetheless immoral. We
will now try to explain ourselves in more detail.
Following the formulation of Humanae Vitae §14,23 Fr. Austriaco
gives a definition of the contraceptive act that includes the level of intention. We read: “A contraceptive act is every action that, whether in anticipation of a freely chosen sexual act or in its accomplishment, proposes,
whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible.”24
Consistent with this definition, Fr. Austriaco himself can think of a case
where condomic intercourse is not contraceptive. It is a scenario that
is difficult to imagine—at least with regard to condom use—and yet it
works to make the case: “If a rape victim chooses to use a condom, a diaphragm, or a spermicidal jelly, she would not be contracepting because
here she is not choosing to sterilize a freely chosen sexual act.”25 Thus we
see that Fr. Austriaco has included in the definition of a contraceptive
act the intention of the partners to render sterile a freely chosen sexual
23

Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §14: “Similarly excluded is any action which either
before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.”
24
Austriaco, Biomedicine, 95. This definition is lacking the third possible group of actions mentioned by Humanae Vitae, i.e., those actions that take place after the sexual
act (cf. HV §14). A woman who, after having had sexual relations, washes her vagina
in the hope of impeding conception is by that fact performing a contraceptive act.
But this is not the main point here. The point is rather that it is impossible to describe a contraceptive act as a human act without including the contraceptive intent.
Evidently, for a woman to wash herself shortly after sexual relations is not inherently
contraceptive.
25
Ibid., 95.

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act. In fact, for a woman to take the hormonal pill is no more contraceptive by its very nature than for a man to take a very hot bath or for a man
or woman to drink a lot of diet coke. To qualify as contraceptive, these
acts have to be undertaken in view of rendering sterile freely chosen
sexual acts, and not in view of regulating one’s cycle, washing oneself, or
quenching one’s thirst.
If, along the lines of these reflections, Martin Rhonheimer claims
that an action that is not chosen in order to render procreation impossible is not a contraceptive act, one can see his logic. Two spouses, one
of whom is HIV-positive, and who in their sexual activity resort to the
use of condoms in order to protect the non-infected spouse may actually bemoan the sterility of this act. They may even restrict their sexual
encounters to the woman’s infertile period. They are not choosing to
use a condom to render sterile their freely chosen sexual act, and hence
one can appreciate how Rhonheimer wants to conclude that what they
are doing cannot be defined as contraception: “A married man who is
HIV-infected and uses the condom to protect his wife from infection is
not acting to render procreation impossible, but to prevent infection. If
conception is prevented, this will be an—unintentional—side-effect and
will not therefore shape the moral meaning of the act as a contraceptive act.”26 What to our mind is controversial, then, is not Rhonheimer’s
claim that condomic intercourse in the case described is not contraceptive. What is controversial is the further conjecture that this behavior
could ever be morally licit. Evidently “not-contraceptive” is not a synonym for “morally permissible.”
In his essay “Marriage and the Prophylactic Use of Condoms,” Luke
Gormally responds to Rhonheimer, making the convincing case that
only acts of a generative kind can ever qualify as conjugal acts. Much
of his article is in fact about a detailed examination of what can and
cannot count as “act which is per se apt for generation.”27 Here, many
distinctions are in order, such as the one between sterility and impotency and between self-induced sterility and sterility that is not deliberately
chosen. He convincingly concludes that condomic intercourse can never
26
27

Rhonheimer, “Truth about Condoms,” 10.
Luke Gormally, “Marriage and the Prophylactic Use of Condoms,” National Catholic
Bioethics Quarterly 5 (2005): 744.

Technology, Virtue, and the Brave New World 

551

qualify as a generative kind of act. In virtue of its physical structure, one
cannot possibly choose it under this description, and hence it can never
be a called a conjugal act: “If a husband ejaculates into a condom, his
wife is not receiving his ejaculate in her reproductive tract. His chosen
act has, therefore, the character of an act from which generation cannot follow. That generation cannot follow is not a per accidens feature
of the act, arising from biological characteristics of the spouses which
are extrinsic to the character of the performance as such.”28 As long as
there is the barrier of the condom, there cannot be the union in one
flesh and therefore there cannot be properly speaking a conjugal act.29
Hence, we completely agree with Fr. Austriaco when he says, “The physical structure of a human act limits the moral object that can be legitimately chosen to specify it from the perspective of the acting person.”30
Due to its physical structure, condomic intercourse cannot possibly be
chosen under the description of “conjugal act,” no more than can anal
or oral intercourse,31 or petting, or—to give more remote and innocent
examples that no longer even have an outer resemblance of the conjugal act—a handshake, a kiss, or eating with the same utensils. All that
we want to suggest, for the sake of terminological accuracy, is that not
every act that cannot be chosen as a conjugal act is thereby necessarily
chosen as a contraceptive act, which of course does not immediately
mean that thereby it is then morally upright. Anal or oral intercourse
will not be called contraceptive. However, they clearly do not qualify as
conjugal intercourse either, nor do they qualify as morally licit. Hence,
even if we wish to say that choosing to make use of a condom during
28

Ibid., 745.
This is also the judgment of Juan José Pérez-Soba in “L’amore coniugale ai tempi
dell’Aids,” in L’Osservatore Romano, Italian edition (May 25, 2011): 6: “A sexual act
accomplished with the condom cannot be considered a fully conjugal act, to the
extent to which it has been deliberately deprived of its intrinsic meanings. The condom, with its barrier effect, in some way deforms the realization of the sexual act
and not only deprives it of its procreative meaning, impeding fecundation but also
destroys the meaning of being ‘one flesh’ in the sense of the totality of the gift in
spousal union” (translation my own).
30
Austriaco, Biomedicine, 92.
31
In fact, it is with good reason that Gormally compares condomic intercourse to
anal intercourse, when he writes, “A condom is as inappropriate a receptacle for the
deposition of semen as the anus” (Gormally, “Marriage and the Prophylactic Use of
Condoms,” 745).
29

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Stephan Kampowski

sexual relations so as to protect one’s partner against HIV-infection is
not contraceptive, since the use of the condom is not chosen in order to
render the sexual act infertile, nonetheless, the act cannot be said to be
a conjugal act, since the man’s semen is deposited into an “inappropriate
receptacle” as Gormally puts it,32 and so this act would have to receive
a moral evaluation analogous to acts similar to it, such as anal or oral
intercourse or mutual masturbation.
Accepting the conclusion that condomic intercourse can never be
called a conjugal act and hence that it is always going to be morally
reprehensible, is it true, however, that the only way for spouses, one of
whom is HIV-positive, is complete abstinence, as Fr. Austriaco suggests?
Correctly noticing that not even the use of condoms is 100 percent effective when it comes to protecting the other spouse from the infection,
he asks himself what he rightly identifies as the crucial question of the
whole debate: “What does love demand of a husband and a wife when
one of them is infected with HIV/AIDS? In other words, would a husband who truly loves his wife ever take the chance of exposing her to
a lethal virus?”33 His answer is quite clearly expressed: “I do not think
that a husband who truly loved his wife would ever put her life at risk
by having marital relations with her, even with a condom. In the end,
therefore, the only truly authentic Christian response to the disputed
question over the moral liceity of prophylactic condom use in marriage
must be this: Never condoms. Always abstinence.”34
In what follows we want to raise the question of whether recent advances in the medical sciences bring in new relevant factors for these
considerations. What is the meaning of new, highly effective, antiretroviral drugs for married couples affected by HIV? It seems that antiretroviral drugs have by now become so effective that an HIV-infection
is no longer a death-sentence. Whereas in the 1980s, when the HIV/
AIDS epidemic first erupted, mortality was close to 100 percent at 5 to
10 years after the diagnosis,35 antiretroviral drugs have by now made a
32

Ibid.
Austriaco, Biomedicine, 93.
34
Ibid.
35
Cf. Giuseppe Ippolito et al., “Editorial. AIDS and HIV Infection after Thirty Years,”
AIDS Research and Treatment, vol. 2013, Article ID 731983, 3 pages, 2013 (http://
dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/731983).
33

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553

great difference. Provided the infection is diagnosed early, HIV can be
controlled where medications are available. According to a recent study,
due to HIV “7.0 years of life were lost on average,” which is, of course,
bad enough, and yet “comparable to the effect of cigarette smoking.”36
These advances in treatment will need to be kept in mind when moral theologians and philosophers consider what to counsel spouses who
find themselves in the difficult situation where one of them is HIV-positive. We are not suggesting here that there is no problem with risking an
infection. All we are saying is that it may make a difference for risk evaluation whether what one risks is death or injury.37 Here we also need to
keep in mind that on the other side of the balance there is not merely the
question of the fulfillment of the spouses’ sexual urge, but also the question of their being able to form a family or to make their family grow.
The existence of highly effective antiretroviral drugs may affect the
debate also in an additional way. It seems that their use on the part of the
HIV-positive partner significantly reduces the risk of sexual transmission in serodiscordant couples. The so-called “Swiss Statement,” published in 2008 on behalf of the Swiss National AIDS Commission (Commission fédérale pour les problèmes liés au sida), goes so far as to make
the bold statement that “HIV-positive individuals not suffering from
any other STD and adhering to an effective antiretroviral treatment do
not transmit HIV sexually.”38 This study has caused a lot of stir in the scientific community and did not go unchallenged.39 But even if its claims
should turn out to be too categorical and in need of some further qualifications,40 there is no doubt that antiretroviral drug therapy enters as a
36

Fumiyo Nakagawa et al., “Projected Life Expectancy of People with HIV according
to Timing of Diagnosis,” AIDS 26 (2012): 335.
37
And here the question is evidently not whether the infected spouse may risk injuring
the non-infected one, but rather whether the non-infected one may licitly expose
him- or herself to the danger of infection.
38
Pietro Vernazza et al., “Les personnes séropositives ne souffrant d’aucune autre MST
et suivant un traitement antirétroviral efficace ne transmettent pas le VIH par voie
sexuelle,” Bulletin des médecins suisses 89 (2008): 165–69, here: 165.
39
Myron S. Cohen, “HIV Treatment as Prevention and ‘The Swiss Statement’: in for a
Dime, in for a Dollar?” Clinical Infectious Diseases 51 (2010): 1323-1324.
40
The authors themselves note that they are not claiming that upon antiretroviral drug
therapy sexual HIV-transmission becomes literally unthinkable: “La CFS est consciente que d’un point de vue strictement scientifique, les éléments médicaux et biologiques disponibles à l’heure actuelle ne prouvent pas qu’un TAR efficace empêche

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major factor in the prevention of new infections41 and hence will figure
in when it comes to risk evaluation. I am not saying moral theologians
or anyone else should at this point counsel serodiscordant, married and
faithful couples who do not suffer from other sexually transmitted diseases to have intimate relations as if nothing had happened and to rely
on the effects of antiretroviral drugs. The “Swiss Statement” would suggest that one could, but to my mind it would still be wise to have further
research on the matter. What I am suggesting, then, is that moral theologians, or anyone in the situation of having to give advice in this matter,
should keep up to date on the promising scientific developments, which
in the future, once conclusive evidence has been produced, might make
the debate on AIDS and condoms obsolete.42
Appealing to this data, we want to propose that the debate about
whether and how serodiscordant couples can live out their marital intimacy should begin with the question of the morality of risk evaluation,
that is, the question of what love demands of couples who find themselves in this situation, an issue that is rightly identified by Fr. Austriaco
toute infection au VIH” (Vernazza et al., “Les personnes séropositives,” 165).
According to a ground-breaking 73-million-dollar study conducted by the HIV
Prevention Trials Network on “serodiscordant” couples, the infected partner’s use
of antiretroviral drugs reduces the risk of sexual transmission by 96 percent. Cf.
Myron S. Cohen et al., “Prevention of HIV-1 Infection with Early Antiretroviral
Therapy,” New England Journal of Medicine 365 (August 11, 2011): 493–505. This
thorough and comprehensive study has also come to be called “HPTN 052” and was
named “Breakthrough of the Year” by Science magazine. Cf. Science 334 (December
23, 2011): 1628. The findings of this study, however, do not allow a direct comparison between the effectiveness of condom use and the effectiveness of antiretroviral
drug therapy in avoiding HIV transmission. The research compares two groups of
serodiscordant couples: one in which the HIV-positive partner used antiretroviral
drugs (=the group in which HIV infection was 96 percent lower) and one in which
the HIV-positive partner did not assume them. In both groups, however, condom
use was prevalent.
42
In fact, a recent meta-analysis speaks of “the emerging body of literature expanding
on the position put forth by the Swiss National AIDS Commission that unprotected
sexual intercourse is a viable conception and sexual option for heterosexual serodiscordant couples in monogamous relationships if the HIV-infected partner has full
virologic suppression on cART, where both parties understand the limitations of the
available data.” Cf. Mona R. Loutfy et al., “Systematic Review of HIV Transmission
between Heterosexual Serodiscordant Couples where the HIV-Positive Partner Is
Fully Suppressed on Antiretroviral Therapy,” PLoS ONE 8/2 (2013): e55747 (http://
www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0055747).
41

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555

as “the most important question in this debate.”43 Antiretroviral drugs
significantly lower the risk of HIV infection through intercourse without completely eliminating it. Here they are like condoms, but unlike
condoms, they do not prevent the couple from engaging in authentic
conjugal acts. They also significantly lower the risk of dying from an
HIV-infection. Could it ever be morally permissible for spouses to run
any risk, no matter how small, of infecting each other? Could this risk
ever be weighed against the good of children or the good of spousal
intimacy? This seems to be the issue around which the debate should
turn, taking for granted the moral urgency of making these medications
universally available.
Technology and Virtue
Let us now turn to a reflection on the relation between technology and virtue. Fr. Austriaco professes to place an emphasis on virtue
throughout his book and seeks to be true to this emphasis when it comes
to the question of performance-enhancing drugs. He is aware of the
concerns raised by the President’s Council on Bioethics as expressed in
its report Beyond Therapy, aptly summarizing them in this way: “Drugs
used to enhance human function could lead to unfairness and inequality, to overt and subtle social coercion and constraint, to detrimental side
effects that would undermine the individual’s health and well-being, and
most significantly, to the distortion of true dignity of excellent human
activity.”44 What is truly surprising is that Fr. Austriaco then proceeds
to balance the considerations proposed by the Council—considerations
which to a large extent are based on the question of the meaning of human activity and excellence or virtue—precisely by a reference to virtue
ethics: “In light of our emphasis on virtue in bioethics, however, I also
suggest that we could address the moral concerns raised by cognitive
enhancers—and other biotechnological interventions that could enhance human function—by asking the following question: would use of
these cognitive enhancers allow the human agent to grow in virtue and
human excellence?”45 The Council’s response to this question in Beyond
43

Austriaco, Biomedicine, 93.
Ibid., 224.
45
Ibid.
44

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Therapy would clearly have been “no,” and that precisely in the light of
what one may call a virtue ethics, the main argument in point being
that biotechnological enhancement risks substituting itself for virtue,
providing an easy shortcut to obtain excellent results without having
to develop excellent dispositions.46 Fr. Austriaco, by contrast, seems to
suggest that in some cases, taking performance-enhancing drugs may
actually increase virtue when he writes: “In some scenarios, the use of
these psychoactive drugs could help the human agent to better attain the
end of his vocation in the service of the common good without harmful
side effects. For instance, taking cognitive enhancers to help an air traffic controller to more accurately and efficiently keep track of airplanes
would be laudable. It would make the individual a more excellent professional.”47
To our mind, these last affirmations bear some further reflection.
First of all, to approach this issue, it may be good to recall some of the
reasons why we are fighting so hard against doping in sports and academics. Why not legalize performance-enhancing drugs tout court and
allow Lance Armstrong to keep his Tour de France titles? There is, of
course, first of all the question of health. It does seem to be a fact of
experience that every drug that actually has effects also has side effects.
The side effects of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids have been
well documented.48 There is furthermore the risk of negative long-term
effects that are not immediately measurable and obvious. The existence
of effective drugs that enhance performance of any kind “without any
harmful effects”49 is entirely theoretical. The idea is not contradictory in
itself, but in the real world such substances are hard to come by,50 and we
46

Cf. The President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the
Pursuit of Happiness (New York: ReganBooks, 2003): 141: “What is at stake here
is the very meaning of human agency, the meaning of being at-work in the world,
being at-work myself, and being at-work in a humanly excellent way.”
47
Austriaco, Biomedicine, 224.
48
Cf. President’s Council, Beyond Therapy, 137: “With drugs like steroids, the grave
long-term health risks are well known: they include, among others, liver tumors,
fluid retention, high blood pressure, infertility, premature cessation of growth in
adolescents, and psychological effects from excessive mood swings to drug dependence.”
49
Austriaco, Biomedicine, 224.
50
The President’s Council expresses itself in this way: “With looming biotechnical

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557

have every reason to believe that these will never actually exist. A general legalization of performance-enhancing drugs in sports would put an
even greater pressure on athletes to make use of them than is the case
already today. Whoever wanted to be competitive would have to make
use of them. To be a competitive athlete, then, would mean to be obliged
to risk ruining one’s health. The ban on performance-enhancing drugs is
first and foremost at the service of the athlete’s health.
As the President’s Council’s report Beyond Therapy quite rightly
points out, however, there is still another reason for the ban on doping
in sports. The argument is perhaps a little less tangible than the one
from health, but nonetheless it has a convincing force. It regards the
question of how much the athletes’ activity can still be called their own,
once they are using performance-enhancing drugs.51 This is now truly
an argument from virtue. Use of these substances puts athletes in danger
of being alienated from their activities. We are so disappointed about
the manipulations that went on at the Tour de France because we admire
the athletes’ human performance as the result of natural endowment,
serious training, and intelligent strategy, while in fact it now appears
that the athlete with the best pharmacist has won.
The Council convincingly argues that athletic competition is not
simply about being the fastest and strongest absolutely speaking, but
about being the fastest and strongest as a human being and not as a
cyborg.52 All of us can be as fast as a Tour de France cyclist: we just have
to get on a motorbike. But then, obviously, the speed is no longer the
powers like genetic muscle enhancement, the side effects are for now uncertain. But
until proven otherwise, it makes sense to follow this prudent maxim: No biological
agent powerful enough to achieve major changes in body or mind is likely to be
entirely safe or without side effects.”
51
Cf. Beyond Therapy, 129: “[O]n the plane of human experience and understanding,
there is a difference between changes in our bodies that proceed through self-direction and those that do not, and between changes that result from our putting our
bodies to work and those that result from having our bodies ‘worked on’ by others
or altered directly.” Cf. also ibid., 130: “When we seek superior performance through
better training, the way our body works and our experience and understanding of our
own body at work are more closely aligned. With interventions that bypass human
experience to work their biological ‘magic’ directly… our silent bodily workings and
our conscious agency are more alienated from one another.”
52
Cf. Beyond Therapy, 142: “[I]t is not simply the separable, measurable, and comparable result that makes a performance excellent—but who is performing and how.”

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result of our performance but rather the motorbike’s. Doping is analogous. It is evidently more sophisticated, but there is a real way in which
the principle of the performance is no longer in the human being, but in
something else: a technique that takes the form of drugs or similar aids.
In sports it is human excellence we wish to see and admire: virtue and
not technology.
Now in the case of air traffic controllers, one may say that what is at
stake is not the possibility of being able to admire them. What matters
is that they perform their job well to ensure the safety of air travelers. It
seems that here only the first argument against performance-enhancing
drugs can count: the question of health. If one were able to make sure
that drugs with no or minimal side effects can be administered, then it
seems that these indeed should be used by air traffic controllers, policemen, soldiers, truck drivers and all people who need to be alert as they
are performing their job, so as to increase public safety. We immediately
see that the logic by which one proposes the administration of performance-enhancing drugs to air traffic controllers applies to many other
groups of possible recipients. Why only air traffic controllers? There are
many people who perform jobs of great responsibility. If we begin with
some groups of people, the use of these drugs inevitably will become
universal in the long run. We are not saying this because we believe we
have prophetic powers. We are basing our assertion simply on the fact
that there is no inherent criterion to stop short of universal administration once one starts with some people. Thus we have to ask ourselves
whether we could want the use of performance-enhancing drugs to be
the law of the land.
If our conviction is that we couldn’t, that will largely be for the same
two reasons for why we regard doping as wrong. And these reasons
count for society as a whole just as much as they count for each individual. In philosophical discourse one may imagine indeed a world in
which performance-enhancing drugs do not have any side effects. As
we have just said above, in the real world in which we live, however, it is
practically unthinkable that there should be highly effective drugs without any negative side effects. Is it morally licit to ask a certain group of
professionals, such as air traffic controllers, to risk and ruin their health
for the sake of their job? This could hardly be so. And thinking of society at large, could we really want a society composed of Jason Bournes,

Technology, Virtue, and the Brave New World 

559

highly effectively drilled and technologically shaped for a certain task at
the highest human cost, not even to speak of constant headaches?
But, for the sake of the argument, let us for a moment enter into the
ivory tower of philosophy and grant the counter-factual assumption of a
highly effective drug or technique without unwanted side effects. What
could be wrong with administering innocuous performance-enhancing
drugs to air traffic controllers and a few other well circumscribed groups
of people? The brief answer is: a whole lot. It would mean asking a whole
professional group to abdicate their humanity in order to be allowed to
exercise their profession. It would mean to ask of them that their job
performance be no longer the result of their own excellence or virtue
but rather the result of a pill. To be an air traffic controller certainly
carries with it a weight of responsibility. And persons engaged in this
profession can correspond to this responsibility in many human ways,
some as simple as making sure to get enough sleep when they are not on
the job, others perhaps a little more demanding, such as watching one’s
diet or making sure to keep one’s body in shape by getting enough exercise. All this would then be made unnecessary through the use of a drug.
Air traffic controllers are then as alienated from their job performance
as doping athletes are from their athletic performance. Could it ever be
licit to ask people to perform a job in which they are no longer allowed
to be human? If the job is so complex that it can no longer be done by
one “unenhanced” human being, then maybe it should be broken down,
so that it can be done by two or three. What should not be done is to
treat human beings as if they were machines.
Furthermore, it is at least an open question whether a machine or
a cyborg can always deliver results superior to that of a natural human
being. When on January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger and
his crew managed to land their aircraft smoothly on the Hudson River
after all the engines of his Airbus 320 had failed because of a bird strike
shortly after takeoff and they had to control their plane as if it were a
glider, they performed a heroic feat that—I think we are safe to say—no
machine could possibly have accomplished. And one may at least ask
whether in their case performance-enhancing drugs could have taken
the place of prudence, circumspection, and truly human excellence.
The present age is highly tempted to replace virtue—human excellence—by technology to get results without efforts. We would like to be

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strong but do not like to exercise; we would like to lose weight, but do
not want to adjust our diet; we would like to limit the number of our
offspring, but do not fancy temporary abstinence from the pleasures of
intercourse; we would like to know, but we do not like to go through
the process of learning. Hence we seek the solution in a pill or a similar
technological device that saves us the trouble of forming ourselves by
our own volitional control. Technology can be the easy shortcut. The
danger with shortcuts is that sometimes they make us miss our aim.53
The Brave New World and the Meaning of Our Bodiliness
In what is a very comprehensive book, Fr. Austriaco also discusses
the difficult question of what to do with embryos produced in the process
of in-vitro fertilization which then are not implanted but rather cryogenically frozen: the so-called “spare embryos” who have been “exposed
to an absurd fate.”54 We do not actually want to propose a solution to this
problem here. The only thing we feel urged to say on the issue itself is
that the first evident step toward a solution has to be to stop the practice
by which these embryos are being produced. This being said, our aim is
actually rather to reflect on Fr. Austriaco’s proposal, which to our mind
touches on the very meaning of our bodiliness. Rejecting, to our mind
wisely, the possibility of “spare embryos” being implanted in the womb
of an adoptive mother, he still pleads for a kind of adoption: “Adoptive
parents . . . could pay to maintain the cryopreservation necessary for
the survival of their child until incubators capable of bringing him to
term are invented.”55 In other words, for Fr. Austriaco, the solution to
the problem of frozen human embryos ultimately lies in the advancement of technology, and more specifically, in the invention of what he
calls advanced incubators, but which would really be artificial uteruses.
The human side of the solution, that is, “adoptive parents” who pay for
the ongoing cryopreservation of these human beings, is necessary only
because this technology is not yet available. In what follows we would
53

For a critique of biotechnological utopianism see Stephan Kampowski, A Greater
Freedom: Biotechnology, Love and Human Destiny. In Dialogue with Hans Jonas and
Jürgen Habermas (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013).
54
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Vitae, I, 5.
55
Austriaco, Biomedicine, 109. Cf. also ibid., 237.

Technology, Virtue, and the Brave New World 

561

like to reflect on whether artificial uteruses could ever be the solution
of any problem or whether they themselves would not constitute a new
problem, in fact, one of extraordinary proportions, which would make
surrogate motherhood seem to be something deeply humane.
In his considerations about technology as the subject of ethics, Hans
Jonas points out how every new invention, once it exists, for good or
ill becomes part and parcel of the human condition. It is hence wise
to consider whether we should want to direct our research efforts into
a certain direction or not.56 As difficult as it was to invent the nuclear
bomb, it is much more difficult to rid the world of it than it was to fill
the world with it. It is no doubt a feat of medical science and technology
in recent decades to have significantly increased a baby’s viability outside the womb. Incubators have saved the lives of many children who,
because of difficulties during the pregnancy, were born early, and no
one wants to doubt the blessing these devices present. It is, however, an
observable fact, noted by psychologists, that children who were born
prematurely carry with them some additional burden, risking developmental problems.57 The lost weeks or months of shelter, warmth, and
safety in the mother’s womb will later make themselves felt. This does
not mean that they will necessarily be scarred for life. It is just to say that
a preterm birth is an issue that needs to be dealt with and can be dealt
with as any other handicap, though a handicap it is. What we want to say
with this is that spending time in one’s mother’s womb is not optional.
A mother is not just a sophisticated incubator that could just as well be
replaced by an artificial womb or another woman’s womb. A mother
is not simply someone who gives the ovum. Given the profoundly human significance of gestation and birth, an artificial uterus would be the
great abomination. It would be the final realization of Aldous Huxley’s
anti-utopia, a Brave New World, where people are no longer born, but
rather “decanted.” The dream or rather nightmare of the artificial uterus
follows along the same premises as the practice of surrogate motherhood, but it is worse, inasmuch as it completely deprives a human being
56

Cf. Hans Jonas, “Wertfreie Wissenschaft und Verantwortung: Selbstzensur der Forschung?” in Technik, Medizin und Ethik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987),
76–89.
57
Cf. Carla Arpino et al., “Preterm Birth and Neurodevelopmental Outcome: A Review,” Child’s Nervous System 26 (2010): 1139–49.

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in his or her coming to be from any kind of interpersonal context. The
crime of surrogate motherhood lies in its confusing the child’s identity.
Who is the mother? The one who donated the ovum or rather the one
who carried the child to term? Experientially there is little doubt that
it is the one carrying to term, the one who gives birth, and of whose
warmth and care the child will be deprived soon thereafter. But at least
the child was allowed to have a mother: a woman to bear the child in her
womb and to give the child birth. A human being made to grow in an
artificial uterus would be deprived of this most basic human experience.
The fact that human persons spend the first nine months or so in
their mother’s womb is not simply a brute biological datum but has profound personal significance. We come to be and develop in another:
this is a fact of profound anthropological import.58 We are originally
related, and these original relations are formative of our very identity.59
The personal and human significance of gestation and birth can hardly
be overestimated.60 I do not believe that Fr. Austriaco is unaware of these
truths, and I do not assume that he is an advocate of artificial uteruses
in themselves. He simply proposes them as a possible solution to a deep
moral dilemma. What we would like to ask is simply whether the solution is not much worse than the problem.
Beside other things, we will have to keep in mind that artificial uteruses, once they became available, would be used not only to resolve the
dilemma of “spare embryos,” but would evidently find a larger application. Human beings would then be able not only to replace the human
58

Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, “Truth and Freedom,” Communio 23 (1996): 27: “[T]he child
in the mother’s womb is simply a very graphic depiction of the essence of human
existence in general. Even the adult can exist only with and from another.”
59
Cf. Livio Melina, Building a Culture of the Family: The Language of Love (Staten
Island, NY: St. Pauls, 2011), 13, who argues that the relationships that bear on our
origin or by which we bear on someone else’s origin are at the foundation of personal
identity: “[T]he relationships that are constitutive of personal identity [are]: recognizing oneself as child in order to become a spouse and thus to become a father or
mother.”
60
See Hannah Arendt’s crucial idea of “natality” as she develops it, for instance, in
her The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958) and,
on Arendt, also see Stephan Kampowski, Arendt, Augustine, and the New Beginning
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008). For the anthropological and philosophical
implications of birth in general see also Stephan Kampowski, Ricordati della nascita.
L’uomo in ricerca di un fondamento (Siena: Cantagalli, 2013).

Technology, Virtue, and the Brave New World 

563

act of love that is usually at the person’s beginning with a technological
act of production. They would also be able to provide a technological
solution to the human person’s growth and development, outside of any
interhuman context, creating beings at whose beginning there has never
been a single act of human love:61 not at their conception, not during
their gestation, not at their birth. That this would be an act of grave
injustice toward them hardly needs to be mentioned. Whatever else bioethicists should do, in my view one of their goals should be to prevent
artificial uteruses from ever being invented.
Conclusion
As I said in the beginning, the issues I have raised in this brief essay
are meant to be an invitation to further reflection, taking Fr. Austriaco’s
helpful book as a point of departure. Among other things, we have dealt
with the question of how married couples afflicted by AIDS can live
their conjugal life in a morally upright way, suggesting that the debate
may actually find new perspectives by recent developments in medical
science. On the topic of virtue and technology, and in particular as this
refers to the issue of human enhancement, the last word has not yet
been said and further discussion seems welcome. And finally, the question of what our biotechnology does to our relational identity as human
beings who derive from others will certainly remain an issue worth further conversation. With his Biomedicine and Beatitude Fr. Austriaco has
provided us with a valuable status quaestionis of the current bioethics
debate that is at the same time thought provoking so as to spark further
N&V
and ongoing reflection.

61

They would of course still always be loved by God.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 565-574

565

Catholic Bioethics after Beatitude and Biomedicine:
A Response to My Colleagues*
Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.
Providence College
Providence, RI

TO BEGIN, I WOULD LIKE TO THANKmy colleagues for their
thought-provoking comments elicited by my book,1 an introductory
text that I never imagined would trigger such a stimulating intellectual
exchange among scholars and theologians of first repute. In a unique
way, each of their essays has challenged me to think about and to imagine how Catholic bioethics will be in the future. What will Catholic bioethics be like, after Beatitude and Biomedicine? Rather than address each
essay separately, I have decided to organize my response by focusing
on three not-so-new frontiers of engagement for Catholic bioethics—its
engagements with science, with technology, and with society—that will
continue to challenge philosophers and moral theologians.
First, there is the ongoing philosophical engagement with contemporary science. As several of my colleagues have rightly noted in their
contributions to this symposium, Catholic bioethicists need to develop
a true and convincing philosophical anthropology for the twenty-first
*

As a college professor, I know that first editions of introductory texts contain both
minor and not so minor errors. Beatitude and Biomedicine is no different. And so,
I thank all those who have sent me suggestions for revisions, both the contributors
to this symposium, and others, which will help me to better the manuscript for a
second edition. Further suggestions for corrections are welcome.
1
N. Austriaco, O.P., Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).

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Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.

century, one that preserves the teleological orientation of the human
organism. Recall that for the classical tradition, the good for a particular organism is that which perfects its nature, that is, that which is desirable.2 Therefore, to recover a realist account of the good—both the
individual good and the common good discussed by Dr. Jensen in his
critique of the transhumanist movement—we will need to reimagine an
Aristotelian teleology for modern biology. This is a work primarily of
speculative reason.
Dr. Condic and Fr. Flannery show us how we can undertake this important task. In their essay, they conceive of the human embryo in Aristotelian terms and then reconcile that view with the most recent findings of human developmental biology. Their description is a robust one.
However, I have a small but, in my view, important quibble with it. In
their account, they propose that embryogenesis is driven by a “program”
of development that consists of three basic components. This reference
to a “program” is unfortunate. It brings to mind images of a plan or of a
template that governs the developmental process, in the same way that a
conductor or a music score drives the behavior of a symphonic orchestra. Most people imagine that DNA is this program.
But if there is anything that contemporary biology has learned, it is
that living organisms are self-organizing systems. There is good empirical data that suggests that the mammalian embryo too is a self-organizing system whose origin can be traced back to fertilization.3
Self-organization is a process in which pattern at the global level emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower-level
components of the system.4 However, the rules specifying interactions
among the system’s components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern. In other words, in a self-organizing system, pattern emerges among the parts without reference to
2

Cf. ST I, q. 6, a. 1: “For a thing is good according to its desirableness. Now everything
seeks after its own perfection; and the perfection and form of an effect consist in a
certain likeness to the agent, since every agent makes its like; and hence the agent
itself is desirable and has the nature of good.” (English translations are taken from
the 1947 Benziger Bros. edition of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province.)
3
S. Wennekamp et al., “A Self-Organization Framework for Symmetry Breaking in
the Mammalian Embryo,” Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 14 (2013): 452–59.
4
S. Camazine, et al., Self-Organization in Biological Systems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2001), 8.

A Response to My Colleagues

567

the whole. In this holistic, systems perspective, there is no program.
There is no template. And DNA does not have a privileged master molecule status within the cell. It is just one important molecule—yes, a very
important molecule—but just one among many other equally important
molecules interacting with each other in the dance that we call life.
To illustrate this systems perspective, a self-organizing orchestra
would perform without a conductor or a musical score. Instead, in a
self-organizing orchestra, an individual musician would seek to play
his instrument in harmony only with the musicians close to him. Some
of these musicians would play with several other players, while others
would harmonize their instruments with only one other musician in the
group. In this way, once initiated, the symphony’s music would emerge
in an unorchestrated and unpredictable but still bounded manner. The
Great Chorus of the Ainur described by J. R. R. Tolkien in his Silmarillion comes to mind.5 Like this self-organizing symphony, human embryonic development is a process driven by the local interactions among
the molecular parts of the whole. It is a process triggered by fertilization.
To conclude, as I have explained in greater detail elsewhere, an account of the organism that de-emphasizes its program or its template
and re-emphasizes its pattern of interactions or its state space, in the
jargon of systems theory, has the added advantage of allowing us to recover formal and final causality in biology.6 In a real way, final causality
emerges from a robust notion of formal causality.
Finally, I think that two other quaestiones that need to be addressed
in this first frontier of engagement for Catholic bioethics include the
reconciliation of evolutionary theory and this Aristotelian philosophical
5

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House Inc., 1999),
1–12.
6
N. Austriaco, “Substantial Forms, Living Networks, and Natural Ends: Recovering
the Teleology of St. Thomas Aquinas in Biology,” in press. For earlier descriptions
of the systems perspective that I have been developing over the past few years to
recover the formal and final causality of Aristotle, see my essays: “On Static Eggs and
Dynamic Embryos: A Systems Perspective,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 2
(2002): 659–83; “Immediate Hominization from the Systems Perspective,” National
Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 4 (2004): 719–38; and “The Soul and Its Inclinations:
Recovering a Metaphysical Biology with the Systems Perspective,” in The Human
Animal: Procreation, Education, and the Foundations of Society, Proceedings of the
X Plenary Session, 18–20 June 2010, The Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas
(Vatican City: The Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2011), 48–63.

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Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.

anthropology, and the rapprochement between experimental philosophy—I am thinking here especially of the situationist critique of virtue
ethics7—and the classical tradition. This will involve bringing the behavioral economics of Daniel Kahneman and the evolutionary psychology
of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby into conversation with the natural
philosophy of Aristotle and the theological anthropology of St. Thomas.
I propose that reflecting on the evolved origins of the human appetitive
powers would be one way of doing this. This approach would also allow
us to incorporate some of the theological considerations raised by Fr.
Cole—fallen human nature, unruly powers of the body/soul composite,
and personal sin—into an Aristotelian explanation of the evolved rational animal that is intelligible in a post-Darwinian society.
Second, there is the ongoing moral engagement with contemporary
medicine and its associated technologies. Bioethics is a dynamic field of
inquiry because of the rapid developments in these affiliated sciences. It
has to continually adapt its moral findings to incorporate new discoveries and new insights. This is a work of both speculative and practical
reason.
Take the disputed question of whether or not a married couple
can avail themselves of condoms if one of them is infected by HIV. As
Prof. Kampowski rightly notes in his contribution, the development of
Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART), a multidrug regimen
that radically reduces the viral load of HIV—whose efficacy was confirmed by epidemiological studies that appeared after the publication
of Biomedicine and Beatitude—has altered the context of our moral
discernment. Couples on HAART dramatically reduce the risk of cross
infection. Unfortunately, however, HAART is not cheap. Currently, the
lifetime cost of this pharmacological regimen is estimated at $13,024 per
patient (in 2010 dollars), in the United States.8 This puts it beyond the
reach of most HIV-positive couples, the majority of whom live in the
developing world, especially in Africa. As I will discuss in more detail
7

For a recent summary of this empirically based critique of virtue ethics, see Gopal
Sreenivasan, “The Situationist Critique of Virtue Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics, ed. Daniel C. Russell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2013), 290–316.
8
K. A. Gebo et al., “Contemporary Costs of HIV Healthcare in the HAART Era,”
AIDS 24 (2010): 2705–15.

A Response to My Colleagues

569

below, poverty is the unspoken context of many bioethical questions
today, a reality that Catholic bioethicists need to address, especially in
the pontificate of Pope Francis. So for these poor HIV couples and until
HAART is made more widely available in a more just distribution of
drugs, it is still never condoms. Always abstinence.
Both Prof. Kampowski’s contribution and Fr. Guevin’s essay on the
use of opioids at the end of life illustrate well how developments in medicine can and should influence the ongoing work of practical reason.
Their contributions remind us that in Catholic bioethics, we must not
seek metaphysical certitude in our moral judgments, because the medical and technological context of these prudential decisions can and do
change. Our goal should be to attain moral certitude, a fact not often
appreciated by the lay faithful.9 Moral certitude should be enough.
As Dr. Jensen has observed, however, the most significant challenge to bioethics from the emerging technologies is the ever-present
temptation to enhance human nature. This will not be an easy question
to discern prudentially, because the lines between treatment and enhancement, and between improvement and enhancement, are not clear.
Take Prof. Kampowski’s comments on the use of cognitive- and performance-enhancing drugs. He argues that any use of these enhancers
should be ruled out a priori because they inherently dehumanize us,
even when they are used in noncompetitive scenarios to enhance the
abilities of air traffic controllers who serve the common good. Kampowski writes: “Could it ever be licit to ask people to perform a job in
which they are no longer allowed to be human?” But is it really that
simple to rule out these enhancers tout court because they dehumanize
(or better, superhumanize) us? Air traffic controllers already use cognitive and performance enhancers. College students use them as well. We
call them coffee and chocolate. The caffeine in coffee stimulates brain
activity, and the flavonoids in chocolate (and in wine, tea, and blueberries) enhance memory and cognitive processing.10 Even eating the common over-the-counter nutritional supplements ginseng and Omega-3,
9

For discussion, see my “Scientific Certitude, Moral Certitude, and Plan B,” National
Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11 (2012): 623–27.
10
For one recent review, see Astrid Nehlig, “The neuroprotective effects of cocoa flavanol and its influence on cognitive performance,” British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 75 (2013): 716–27.

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Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.

and smelling the common kitchen herb rosemary,11 have been linked
to improved brain and memory function. And yet, I do not think that
air traffic controllers or college undergraduates taking either caffeine or
flavonoids (or smelling rosemary!) to enhance their performance in the
air traffic control tower or in the classroom would be considered any less
human than their non-consuming counterparts.
Is the difference between permissible and non-permissible enhancement—would it be better to say, between improvements and enhancements?—just a matter of degree, or is it a difference in kind? At
this point, I am not sure. There is still much to think about, because it
is difficult to tell when and if micronutrients or bioactive molecules of
any kind would make us anything other than the “natural” human being
that Prof. Kampowski would always want us to be. Nonetheless, as Dr.
Jensen suggests, I think that the solution to this bioethical conundrum
lies in a comprehensive consideration of the human good as established
by our evolved natures, and in a deep reflection on the virtues and the
vices, both individual and communal, that undergird our desire to enhance ourselves, and others.
With regard to performance enhancers specifically, I also propose
a tentative principle that builds on Prof. Kampowski’s insightful comments, which could help in this prudential discernment: Performance
enhancers that facilitate but do not replace those activities that lead to
the development of virtue in the agent seeking to serve the common
good are morally licit. This guiding principle would rule out the use of
enhancers that give one person an unfair advantage over another in a
competitive situation, but would possibly allow their use in scenarios
that expedite human excellence in the service of one’s neighbor.
Third, there is the ongoing evangelical engagement with our secular, postmodern, and liberal society. As Prof. Beckwith emphasizes in
his contribution, our secular society espouses a comprehensive doc11

For ginseng: H. Sorensen and J. Sonne, “A double-masked study of the effects of
ginseng on cognitive functions,” Current Therapeutic Research 57 (1996): 959–68.
For Omega-3: R. Narendran et al., “Improved Working Memory but No Effect on Striatal Vesicular Monoamine Transporter Type 2 after Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Supplementation,” PLoS ONE 7 (2010): e46832.
For rosemary: Mark Moss and Lorraine Oliver, “Plasma 1,8-cineole correlates
with cognitive performance following exposure to rosemary essential oil aroma,”
Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology 2 (2012): 103–13.

A Response to My Colleagues

571

trine that is not neutral, despite the protestations of its cheerleaders. It
is inherently antagonistic to the classical tradition and to the gospel. In
this way, the Catholic citizen living in New York City today is no different from the Catholic citizen living in first-century Pergamum (cf.
Rev 2:12–17). In both times and places, the Christian finds himself in a
society that embodies practices that are inimical to his faith.
How are we to evangelize and to transform this rival culture? In my
book, I suggest that Alasdair MacIntyre’s approach of tradition-constituted inquiry would allow us to engage secular reason on its own terms
to show that it is unable to justify even the two most basic assumptions
of a liberal society—that all human beings have rights such that certain things cannot ever be done to them, and that all human beings are
equal.12 In my experience, this argument can force individuals into an
epistemological crisis that opens them to the truth.
Here, I would like to comment on a more practical question: How
are we to speak about and to advocate for Catholic bioethics to an increasingly skeptical and secularized audience? In my view, Pope Francis
shows us the way to an evangelical Catholic bioethics. To summarize
my reading of his pastoral strategy, I would like to reflect upon three key
words, as the Holy Father is apt to do for his daily homilies at the Casa
Santa Marta.
First word: Joy. Over and over again, the pope has reminded Christians that they are called to joy. I read this as both a theological and a
philosophical claim. As St. Thomas Aquinas clearly taught, every human
agent seeks his happiness in everything that he does.13 This includes the
woman who is seeking an abortion, the dying patient who is seeking
physician-assisted suicide, and the man with gender dysphoria who is
seeking a sex-change operation. Rather than condemning their actions
outright as damnable—a stance often associated with so-called “judg12

Biomedicine and Beatitude, 257–63. For a demonstration of secular reason’s inability
to ground a liberal account of human rights and of human equality, see Nicholas
Wolterstorff, Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy, ed.
Terence Cuneo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 177–226.
13
Cf. ST I-II, q. 1, a. 8: “If, therefore, we speak of man’s last end as of the thing which
is the end, thus all other things concur in man’s last end, since God is the last end
of man and of all other things. . . . Hence it is evident how the objections are solved:
since happiness means the acquisition of the last end.”

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Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.

mental” Christians—the evangelical Catholic bioethicist should first
listen to these persons to discover their reasons for believing that these
ends would make them happy. Only then can he explain why these ends
would not, in fact, give them the authentic good for which everyone
yearns. Only then can he explain that the way of virtue is the only sure
way to happiness. We need to emphasize that the moral claims of the
classical tradition are all linked to the realization of joy. Abortion, physician-assisted suicide, and sex-change surgery are inherently disordered
because they lead to suffering and to sorrow.14 The moral alternatives
do not.
Second word: Mercy. Pope Francis’s motto, “miserando atque eligendo” [“by having mercy, by choosing him”], emphasizes God’s mercy,
which the Holy Father reminds us was understood by St. Thomas to be
the greatest of virtues, as far as external works are concerned.15 If the
Church is called to be a field hospital after battle, as the Pope imagines,
then the evangelical Catholic bioethicist needs to acknowledge that he
is speaking bioethics to the walking wounded. He is speaking to sinners.
And so he must speak about mercy.
St. Thomas observed that most people seek the good not in reason
but in the passions.16 We are driven to act by our often inordinate passions. And so, we fall into sin. And yet, as we noted above, we all want
to be happy. We especially want to be happy with ourselves. And so, we
cannot admit to ourselves that we are sinners, because this cognitive
dissonance would not be conducive to our wellbeing and our happi14

It is not commonly known—probably because it would be politically incorrect to
speak about it—that a long-term follow-up study of transsexual persons undergoing
sex reassignment surgery in Sweden revealed that the surgical procedure does not
alleviate the mental distress and suffering experienced by these patients: C. Dhejne
et al., “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment
Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden,” PLoS ONE 6 (2011): e16885.
15
ST II-II, q. 30, a. 4, ad 1: “We worship God by external sacrifices and gifts, not for
His own profit, but for that of ourselves and our neighbor. For He needs not our
sacrifices, but wishes them to be offered to Him, in order to arouse our devotion and
to profit our neighbor. Hence mercy, whereby we supply others’ defects is a sacrifice
more acceptable to Him, as conducing more directly to our neighbor’s well-being.”
Quoted by Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium §37, note 41.
16
Cf. ST I, q. 49, a. 3, ad 5: “[M]ore men seek good in regard to the senses than good
according to reason.” Also ST I-II, q. 9, a. 5, ad 3: “The majority of men are led by
their passions, which the wise alone resist.”

A Response to My Colleagues

573

ness. Thus, as sinners, we cannot and will not be able to hear anything,
especially any moral claim, that will challenge this favorable self-understanding of ourselves. As a post-abortive woman once explained to
me, she could not hear the pro-life message because she would then be
compelled to acknowledge that she had killed her child. As a woman
and as a mother, she could never do that. She could not live with herself.
This is why the Christian gospel of mercy is an essential ingredient
of Catholic bioethics. This is why, in my opinion, the most important
paragraph in Pope John Paul’s encyclical on life, Evangelium Vitae, is
section 99, where he speaks directly to women who have had an abortion: “The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his
peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To the same Father and his
mercy you can with sure hope entrust your child.”17 A sinful society cannot hear the truth claims of the classical tradition without the assurance
of mercy. As the same post-abortive woman explained to me, there was
only one reason why she was able to speak about her abortion, only one
reason why she was finally able to admit to herself that she had killed her
unborn child, and it was this: As soon as she stopped speaking, I would
absolve her.
Third word: Poverty. Everyone knows that the poor have a special
place in the heart of the Pope named after the poverello. The poor should
have a special place in the heart of every Christian too, including that
of the evangelical Catholic bioethicist. As a bedrock principle of Catholic moral theology, the preferential love for the poor and the vulnerable should enjoy the same pride of place in Catholic bioethics that it
does in Catholic social teaching. This will allow scholars to discover that
the sick poor’s limited access to prescription drugs and to basic health
care—including HAART—and the adverse impact of contraceptive use
and of abortion on the families living in already impoverished inner-city
neighborhoods, are legitimate concerns for reflection and for advocacy
in Catholic bioethics. In response, evangelical Catholic bioethics should
speak about and promote the virtue of magnanimity to encourage those
who have, to contribute to the well-being of those who do not.
It is also striking that so many of the emerging technologies often
discussed among bioethicists are so expensive that they are within the
17

St. Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, §99.

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Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.

reach of only the wealthiest citizens of our society. Does anyone really
think that a poor patient on Medicaid could realistically be treated with
induced pluripotent stem cells? In response, an evangelical Catholic
bioethicist should also advocate for biomedical innovations that have a
greater potential for directly improving the health of the impoverished.
One possibility, for example, involves groundbreaking research that revealed the health benefits of intermittent fasting on patients undergoing
chemotherapy and on patients struggling with diabetes.18 As evangelical
Catholic bioethicists, we should enthusiastically talk about and promote
social practices that encourage fasting and the virtue of temperance,
not only because they will help the body as biomedical research has
revealed, but also because they will help transform the soul. They will
ready all of us for beatitude.
In the end, considering the impact of health care and of health care
delivery on the sick poor is fitting for scholars who are also disciples of
a Lord who commanded that His followers should invite the poor, the
crippled, the lame, and the blind, to every banquet that they host (cf. Lk
14:13). Inviting the poor into our seminar rooms and into our conferences would also change the perception of those in our secular society
who often see Catholic bioethics as a plank of right-wing politics. I regret that Beatitude and Biomedicine ignores the poor. Future editions
N&V
will not.

18

C. Lee and V. D. Longo, “Fasting vs dietary restriction in cellular protection and cancer treatment: from model organisms to patients,” Oncogene 30 (2011): 3305–3316;
and J. E. Brown et al., “Intermittent fasting: a dietary intervention for prevention of
diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” British Journal of Diabetes & Vascular Disease
13 (2013): 68–72.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2014): 575-598

575

Book Reviews
Catholicism and America: Challenges and Prospects edited by
Matthew L. Lamb (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2012), 174 pp.
A BOOK THAT ADDRESSESthe relationship between Catholicism
and America must do three things. First, it must be mindful of the fundamental relationship between the city of God and the earthly city. Second, it must address the relationship of the Catholic faith to modernity,
since America is a regime formed in and formed by modernity. Third,
it must address those characteristic features of America as a modern
regime that provide particular challenges and opportunities for Catholicism in America. Father Matthew L. Lamb has brought together an impressive body of contributors to address precisely these things in his
new edited volume, Catholicism and America: Challenges and Prospects.
They come from many different disciplines and from several different
backgrounds: there are members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, such as
Cardinals Francis George and William Levada; university professors,
such as Peter Augustine Lawler and Daniel J. Mahoney; university administrators, such as Thomas S. Hibbs and Michael Dauphinais; and
public intellectuals and denizens of the world of think tanks, such as
George Weigel and Michael Novak. They can all be identified as broadly
conservative, although they represent a reasonably broad range of conservative Catholic thought.
For the most part, the contributors to the volume understand the relationship between Catholicism and America as in tension but with the
possibility of rapprochement. The relationship bears tensions common
to all relationships between earthly cities and the city of God, but it also
bears features peculiar to the American regime. The contributors are
distinguished by the degree to which they think such a rapprochement

576

Book Reviews

likely or possible, and what form such a rapprochement would take. The
book therefore addresses the challenges America poses to Catholics in
remaining faithful to the Catholic faith, and the challenges Catholicism
poses to America in remaining true to herself and true to the natural
and divine law.
The book has three sections. The first section addresses the challenges that Catholicism issues to America in order to improve American
life; the second reassesses the project of John Courtney Murray to think
about Catholicism and America together and tries to place that project
in context today; the third section deals with Catholic higher education.
The challenges that Catholicism issues to America are rooted in what
the authors regard as imperfections in the theoretical inheritance of
America, so it is fitting to end the book with a section on the university,
which is where the work of cultivating the intellectual virtues in young
citizens takes place in the highest degree.
The opening chapter of the volume by Cardinal George is a reflection on Pope Benedict XVI’s ecclesial thought on the hermeneutic of
reform within continuity, as it applies specifically to Vatican II and the
Church’s social doctrine. The Church, George reads Benedict as teaching, characteristically applies her teachings to new historical circumstances in such a way that the truths of the faith do not change, although
the applications to different circumstances must. In every age, therefore,
the Church must formulate new accommodations, so as to enculturate
the faith without the faith ceasing to be itself. The western phenomenon
of secularization, however, in its particularly American instantiation,
provides a hefty challenge according to George. The question must be
asked, is there a point at which the Church needs to stop accommodating
a culture that is increasingly hostile to anything that represents a standard of transcendent judgment beyond itself? In George’s words, “Are
Catholics’ commitments not compatible with the demands of American
democratic philosophy and practice, at least in some sense?” George
rejects the solution of liberal Catholicism as confusing the Church and
the world and identifying the earthly city with the city of God. He does
not give a direct answer to the question in his chapter, but the tone of
his contribution betrays his pessimism: secularism proceeds apace to
the detriment of the relationship between America and the Church. He

Book Reviews

577

has elsewhere predicted, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in
prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”
The lingering question posed by Cardinal George is taken up directly by Daniel J. Mahoney and George Weigel in their contributions later
in the volume; Weigel is followed and supplemented by Michael Novak.
Both Mahoney and Weigel criticize, implicitly and explicitly, Cardinal
George’s pessimism; both allege there to be more resources to draw on
in America for the harmony of Catholicism and America than they
understand the Cardinal to admit, but both proceed on very different
grounds.
Weigel offers his contribution by way of a reflection on John Courtney Murray’s We Hold These Truths. In that work, the great twentieth-century theologian attempted to think together Catholicism and
America, arguing that the American founding and resulting national
character is far less alien to the Catholic faith than previously had been
thought by most. Weigel’s chapter, entitled “Truths Still Held?” includes
a helpful summary of Murray’s book. His argument is that the particularly American problem of secularization is the result of discontinuity
in the American tradition itself, encapsulated especially by the recent
abandonment of the natural, moral law by elite American institutions
on which the American founders relied. The challenge that Catholicism
issues to America, therefore, is the challenge to be true to her deepest
self, which is founded on authentic, natural rights and the natural, moral
law. The implication of Weigel’s argument seems to be that what is most
deeply American is not fundamentally in tension with Catholicism.
Michael Novak concurs with Weigel, but presses Weigel (and Murray) even further. Novak argues that Murray cherry picks from the
American founding to make his points. What Murray leaves out, however, would only help his argument. Novak does not say why Murray
cherry picks, although his almost parenthetical association of Murray
with Leo Strauss’s reading of the American founding may be instructive.
Strauss and Murray, Novak avers, may not have been as completely on
board with America as their surface arguments indicated. Although Novak only calls Strauss and Murray’s omissions “odd,” it does seem that
Novak’s own embrace of America is far less critical than either of the two
twentieth-century greats. For instance, Novak says that “the sharp line
Strauss drew”—and by extension Murray, as well?—“between the an-

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Book Reviews

cients and the moderns seems far too severe, for example—more Continental than Anglo-American.” Strauss and Murray both acknowledge
the American debt to the very Anglo-American Locke, although he was
transmitted with a Jeffersonian flavor. The degree to which Novak views
American secularism as problematic, then, is the degree to which America strays from her Lockean—and therefore more Catholic-friendly, in
Novak’s view—founding and toward more virulently anti-Catholic European strains of thought.
Daniel J. Mahoney agrees with Weigel and Novak that Cardinal
George is “right to criticize the excesses of ‘American culture,’” but “it
is another thing to identify them with our regime principles as such.”
Unlike Weigel and Novak, Mahoney does not see the challenges posed
by America to Catholicism necessarily to be the result of a rupture or an
infidelity to her founding principles, although certain historical factors
have exacerbated the tensions between the two; rather, Mahoney argues
that philosophic liberalism as such is incompatible with Catholicism.
Liberalism’s notion of liberty as pure indeterminism is what is problematic, rooted as it is in the voluntaristic moral theory of autonomy.
Philosophic liberalism, especially in its instantiation as modern democracy, provides many good things, including, as Marc D. Guerra mentions in his chapter, “civic peace, religious freedom, self-government,
and constitutionalism.” But it also cultivates indifference to the truth
and therefore gives way to despotism, both the soft despotism Tocqueville worried about and the hard, late modern despotisms of fascism
and communism. The Church can, however, provide a bulwark against
the nihilistic self-enslavement of man toward which philosophic liberalism, in either its Anglo-American or Continental forms, perversely
and helplessly leads. Christianity can help marry freedom, sought in a
harmful way by liberalism, and communion, sought in a harmful way
by fascism and communism, in a liberty under God. After all, Mahoney
reminds, human beings are free only when they understand that they
themselves are not God. Mahoney therefore does not understand Christianity and America in terms of “essential compatibility”; rather, drawing on the thought of the French philosopher Pierre Manent, he calls
for “a fulsome prudential accommodation between the Church and the
liberal order.” Through this accommodation, the Church would help to
preserve the various good things that have been secured by liberalism

Book Reviews

579

that liberalism cannot preserve on its own; also by this accommodation,
liberalism’s tendency toward harmful voluntarism and isolating individualism would be moderated.
Matthew L. Lamb, Peter Augustine Lawler, and Marc D. Guerra
concur with Mahoney in essentials. These three contributions, combined with Mahoney’s chapter, provide the most valuable part of the
book. Taken together, they are able to situate the challenges posed by
America to Catholicism in a long intellectual history.
Matthew L. Lamb, in a manner reminiscent of the arguments of Bernard Lonergan, shows how the advent of nominalism and voluntarism
in the late medieval period and the work of the Reformers sundered
faith and reason, and thereby led to a cycle of decline that has ended in
massive moral and political problems, including wars on a scale never
seen before, the Holocaust, and the dictatorship of relativism. What is
obscured along the way most significantly, for Lamb, is the distinction
between the sensible and the intelligible, so crucial to the birth of philosophy and to adequate theology. (Thomas S. Hibbs later takes up this
refrain in his criticism of modern American education, arguing that,
like the Athenians addressed by Socrates at his trial, universities now
care more for the body than for the soul.) As Lamb continues to show,
nominalism ends up elevating the will over the reason, with the resultant separation between science and morality. The Church’s task at the
beginning of the third millennium, which constitutes her challenge to
America, echoing Pope Benedict XVI, is to recover “the full sweep of
intelligence and reason,” from the narrowness and self-limitations of
modern thought.
Lawler’s chapter provides a contribution to the task that Lamb outlines. What is needed, Lawler argues, is the science of theology; that is,
a theology ordered to the knowledge of God; but not just any God. The
particular Christian contribution to the science of theology, which, after
all, Aristotle also practiced, is that the God who is logos is also personal and erotic. Both the Greeks and Christians, therefore, ridiculed and
argued against the unreasonable religions of the pagans. Yet, Lawler argues, the difference between Aristotelian and Christian theology is that,
for Aristotle, “the realm of human freedom, finally, is a mythical idea,
one that must be rhetorically supported but for which there is no scientific evidence.” The Christians respond that this does not correspond to

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what we experience and know about ourselves and our lives. As a matter
of fact, we know of no instance of minds functioning to know the truth
except for the minds of free persons. The philosopher or the physicist,
therefore, cannot be accounted for through Aristotelian theology or on
the basis of modern natural science, which attempts to be just as impersonal as Aristotelian theological science. Similarly, for John Locke, Lawler argues, the word (logos) is just a weapon “we use to secure our being
against nature and without God.” Locke teaches that nature is finally
indifferent to us, and God is merely a past-tense, deistic, impersonal,
unerotic God who exercises no care for us. The problem for Americans
is that they are taught by Locke but also formed by Puritan Christianity. Defending our freedom and autonomy against the encroachment of
impersonal science, Puritanism has successfully de-Hellenized religion;
Lockeanism and its accompanying de-Christianization have simultaneously “emptied our freedom of any real or ‘transcendent’ content.” But
Christian theology, by virtue of its anchor in logos, is able to oppose the
unreason of the pagan Greek and Roman religions as well as the sheer
voluntarism of modern political philosophy. The wholesome teaching of
the Christian science of theology, therefore, is that logos is most deeply
personal. In light of Christian theology, freedom comes to light as deeply personal and as teleologically directed toward the transcendent God
whom men can really know. The Catholic Church can therefore help
to moderate and harmonize the complementary deficiencies in the two
legs of the American Founding: Lockeanism and Puritanism.
Marc D. Guerra addresses and builds on Lawler’s observation of the
perils of impersonalism in science, especially when it is coupled with a
flight from reason toward voluntarism and nominalism in morals and
politics. Guerra echoes and expands on Mahoney’s call for a “prudent
way of coming to terms with democracy’s discontents and modern
philosophy’s disenchantment of the world.” Catholic political thought
is able to identify what is good in any given, concrete political order
and defend it because of its transcendent viewpoint, including the good
things of modernity and America. Nevertheless, Catholic political
thought is also well-suited to critique what is harmful. It sees, Guerra
says, the dehumanizing effects of modernity’s complacency about truth
and of modernity’s claim that nature is indifferent to human persons;
it sees also philosophic liberalism’s reduction of human beings to ab-

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stract, rights-bearing individuals with no natural ties to family, friends,
and God. Natural limitations and obligations, which are imposed on us
without our consent, far from enslaving us or constricting our freedom,
humanize our lives and help us to live well as the kinds of beings we
really are.
Guerra’s criticisms are not reserved solely for non-Christians, however. He argues that the flight “from the concrete, limiting realities of
citizenship and political life can have its Christian analogue.” Christians
need greater reflection on the fact that the political order is a limited
good, incapable of realizing the perfection of the human being, but that
it is nevertheless good, and not to be despised for its limitations. Christians are too often tempted to skip the concrete particularity of political
life for the justice and peace of the kingdom of God, or to delude themselves into thinking that the full blessings of justice and charity—rightly
understood to be an eschatological reality—can be had on earth in what
Pope Paul VI called a “civilization of love.” The problem is that “[b]y
directing the political and international order to an eschatological horizon where justice is perfected by charity, such statements put unrealistic
weight and expectations on the limited but genuine good that can justly
be achieved in political life.” Christians need the moderating virtue of
prudence to situate political life properly.
Catholicism in America is a delightful volume to read. It is a dialectical journey through many different phases of the argument about the
place of Catholicism in America and the challenges posed to America
by Catholicism. The diversity of the contributors and the artful arrangement of the chapters gives the reader the opportunity to be swept into
the ebb and flow of the arguments. The forcefulness of the arguments,
along with their depth, manages to preserve both the sense of urgency about what is at stake and the contemplative distance necessary to
consider the matter well. All of the contributors are deeply concerned
to provide a firm basis for Catholics to be good Americans, but more
especially to allow Americans to be good Catholics while carrying out
their duties and obligations as Americans. There is obviously room to
criticize what has been omitted; after all, this is a relatively short book.
Could there be room for a more libertarian entry? Or for a proponent
of the New Natural Law? Or for a more Chestertonian localist? Perhaps.
But ultimately the book is about the exercise of prudence in the relation-

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ship of Catholics to America, and the editor has managed to assemble
a group of Catholics dedicated to the proposition that Catholicism and
America are neither incompatible nor fully compatible, and therefore
the tension-ridden relationship must be navigated carefully lest the
Catholic citizen be guilty either of despising the world or of capitulating
to it. The volume succeeds, therefore, as a moderate, Catholic defense of
America, while also leveling trenchant yet friendly criticisms. In Guerra’s words, the Catholic can, as the volume’s contributors demonstrate,
“affirm what is genuinely good about liberty and democracy and simultaneously refuse to affirm, in contrast to the modern state, that these are
N&V
the highest or only human goods.”
Thomas P. Harmon
University of St. Thomas
Houston, Texas
Orthodox Readings of Aquinas by Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012), xi + 276 pp.
MARCUS PLESTED h
 as written a very important book. Orthodox
Readings of Aquinas is a study of the past 650 years of Eastern Orthodox
engagement with Thomas Aquinas, and more broadly with the western,
Latin tradition that Aquinas embodies. But this is no merely descriptive,
dispassionate history; Plested tells us at the start that he is writing to
question the dominant “grand narrative” current in Eastern Orthodoxy
today: “This book exists to explore the strange divergence between Byzantine and modern Orthodox readings of Aquinas and, more generally,
to probe the whole question of East versus West in modern Orthodox
theology” (4).
In this finely researched and winsomely written survey, Plested begins with a word about method. He proposes to use the icon as the lens
through which he will examine the relevant texts and figures. Applying the technique of what he calls “multiple perspective” to the two figures who serve as the opposing archetypes of the East and West, Plested opens the study with two fascinating chapters, the first on Thomas
Aquinas and his reception of the Greek East, the second on Gregory
Palamas and his reception of the Latin West. His goal is to show that

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“the Christian East is not quite as ‘Eastern,’ nor the West as ‘Western,’ as
is generally assumed” (5).
Noting the “historical turn” in Thomist studies, Plested unveils a
picture of Aquinas that shows his Byzantine stripes: his “love for and
grounding in the Greek Fathers” (15), his Christology which is “Greek
in character and emphasis” (20), and his work overall as “bathed in this
orientale lumen” (17). Historical studies of Aquinas have shown decisively that he can no longer be judged as an “out and out rationalist,” as
many Orthodox assume.
Plested praises Aquinas for his theological achievement: “His was
a blindingly original theology. But it was original in the best sense of
the word, plumbing the depths of the tradition, reaching back to the
sources and origins of faith in order to underpin a truly creative, truly
original, theological vision” (21). Even more importantly, Plested sees in
Aquinas an approach to East-West issues that can serve as a paradigm
for us today: “Thomas is a fine example of one who, without doctrinal
compromise, sought to bridge the gap between the competing traditions
through greater knowledge, understanding, and respect” (28).
The study of Gregory Palamas’s reception of the Latin West is equally illuminative. Pointing to the “significant encounter with Augustine in
Palamas’s works” (29), Plested shows how Palamas was as “essentialist”
as Augustine in his trinitarian theology and made positive use of Augustinian trinitarian analogies, even while rejecting Augustine’s account of
the Filioque. Still, in Palamas we can find what Plested calls the “Orthodox Filioque” when it comes to the “extension to human beings of the
uncreated grace of the Spirit” (38). The conclusion is that there is “an
underlying congruity” between Palamas and Augustine, and that Palamas himself showed a genuine openness to Latin theology.
Plested takes special aim at the modern Orthodox rejection of the
scholastic method as somehow foreign to true Orthodox theology. Citing the scholastic method found in such Eastern giants as Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, and John of Damascus, Plested poignantly demonstrates that scholasticism is not only not foreign to the East, but is rooted
in the Eastern theological tradition: “If by scholasticism we understand
not some caricature of untrammeled reason but rather the careful and
ordered use of reason to explicate and define revealed truth, bolstered
by an appeal to patristic and philosophical authority (strictly in that or-

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der), then it is undeniable that this method is perfectly proper to and
indeed rooted in the Byzantine East” (46).
In the long central section of this study (chapters 3-6), Plested surveys a wide variety of Orthodox readings of Aquinas. He divides his
account into three stages: (1) the Byzantine stage, from the first full encounter with Aquinas until the fall of Constantinople (1354-1453); (2)
the Ottoman era, from 1453 until the mid-late nineteenth century; (3)
and the modern era (late nineteenth century to the present). This makes
for fascinating reading, and we are greatly in Plested’s debt for opening
this window onto a much-neglected narrative. Here we discover the degree to which Aquinas’s main writings were circulated and (often) appreciated, even if critically, in the Greek East throughout most of this
period. And here we encounter a set of figures (e.g. Nicholas Kabasilas
and George Scholarios) who stand as models for the kind of sympathetic but critical engagement of the West by the East that Plested wishes to
recommend.
The survey of the modern period is most instructive for the present state of East-West relations. Plested points to the Slavophile school
in particular as momentous for the development of Orthodox thought.
Championing an East-West theological polarity, and nurtured on German idealism and romanticism, “Slavophile theology represents the
emergence of something rather new: a dialectic construct of Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is defined by the Slavophiles not so much for what it
is, but for what it is not—that is, as non-Western” (181). This “theology
of opposition” then came to characterize much of Orthodox theology
throughout the twentieth century.
With nuance and balance, Plested offers summary evaluations of the
great Orthodox figures of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
among whom are Vladimir Soloviev, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov,
Vladimir Lossky, Georges Florovsky, John Meyendorff, John Romanides, Christos Yannaras, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware, John Zizioulas, and Olivier Clément (one could have wished for a brief word on
Frs. Alexander Schmemann and Thomas Hopko). In Plested’s narrative,
Bulgakov and Lossky are held specially responsible for championing an
oppositional theology, while Romanides and Yannaras are credited with
taking up the most extreme form of this all-out assault on the West.
On the other side of the ledger, Florovsky and Ware are specially com-

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585

mended for avoiding an oppositional approach to the West. Florovsky,
with his project of a neo-patristic synthesis, is identified as “something
of a hero of this study” (203), and Ware is named “perhaps the most
unimpeachably balanced and nuanced expositor of the Orthodox tradition in modern times” (215). Notwithstanding their efforts (and those of
others), Plested sums up the present situation as one in which “the EastWest paradigm remains deeply entrenched in Greek Orthodox theology
and Aquinas definitely persona non grata” (213).
In his concluding chapter, Plested sharpens his arguments and offers new perspectives for us to consider. His first and chief conclusion
concerns the long-entrenched paradigm of the fundamental incompatibility of the East and West: “Preeminent among those stereotypes ripe
for rejection is the hoary assumption of theological dichotomy between
Christian East and West” (220). The entire volume’s effort in multiple
perspective provides one long argument against the truth of this supposed dichotomy. Second, Plested wants to overturn the assumption
that from the beginning there was a pitched battle between Aquinas and
Palamas in the Byzantine world: “The widespread assumption that there
was a clear-cut confrontation between Palamism and Thomism in the
Byzantine world is certainly overdue for revision. There was no such
confrontation” (221). Finally, he submits that a “critical but constructive
mode of reception,” found among many Orthodox interpreters of Aquinas, remains open for Orthodox theologians to emulate in the present
(222).
Orthodox Readings of Aquinas is a critically important book for Orthodox and Catholics alike. To the Orthodox, Plested throws down the
gauntlet, calling for an end to a theology of opposition in favor of a generous and confident Orthodoxy that recognizes kinship with the West:
“The oppositional theologizing that has dominated Orthodox discourse
in the twentieth century is, then, a sign of weakness rather than strength.
. . . A self-confident Orthodoxy has no need of a caricature of the West
against which to model itself in reaction. . . . A self-confident Orthodoxy
can afford to be generous” (226). Plested sees “no contradiction between
an uncompromising Orthodoxy and a positive but discerning appropriation of Aquinas” (227).
For Catholics, Plested’s presentation of “a distinctly Byzantine image of Thomas” who is “as much at home on the shores of the Bosphorus

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as by the banks of the Tiber or the Seine” (224), calls for a new awareness
of the Eastern influence upon this most Western of theologians. If the
West is less guilty of a “theology of opposition” than the East, it can certainly be charged with sometimes practicing a “theology of ignorance”
regarding the East in general, and the East’s influence upon Aquinas in
particular. Moreover, Catholics can learn the same lesson about a generous, open, and critical engagement with the East, especially with the late
Byzantine period and the theology of Gregory Palamas.
The main thrust of Orthodox Readings of Aquinas could be summed
up as a plea, directed especially to the Orthodox, to leave behind a theology of opposition and to engage the West and Aquinas with openness
and respect, all the while holding fast to the Orthodox tradition. But
the arguments—so effectively laid down—point to a further goal, a goal
touched on by the author at one or two points, but not developed. This
is the goal of healing the long schism between East and West. The author
observes, when commending the example of Aquinas, that “the conscious pursuit of catholicity and consistent hermeneutic of orthodoxy
evidenced in Aquinas provides a paradigm for any serious approach
to healing the ongoing schism” (28). And he concludes the study with
moving words that speak of the congruity and even consanguinity of
the two traditions: “Such an appropriation would serve to demonstrate
the fundamental congruity and, so to speak, consanguinity of Greek and
Latin theological traditions. Such an appropriation would . . . enable Orthodoxy to be true to itself, true to its inherent catholicity and to an orthodoxy neither occidental nor oriental but ‘one in Christ Jesus’” (228).
The proximate goal is a renewed engagement by both East and West,
beyond the polemics of opposition, grounded in a recognition of a “consanguinity of theological traditions.” But the true and final goal is not
merely positive engagement; it is “the healing of the schism” that has
lasted a millennium and more. Marcus Plested’s study, and the wise perspectives that he commends, move us down the road toward that final
N&V
goal.
Daniel A. Keating
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, Michigan

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587

Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic
Citizenship b
 y Eric Gregory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2008), xv + 417 pp.
TOWARD THE END of his rich and insightful monograph, Eric
Gregory proffers an equally insightful statement from one of his mentors, Oliver O’Donovan, in which the latter describes modernity as “a
great carcass around which a shoal of shark-toothed narratives forever
wheels and hovers” (365). The quote is descriptively powerful. For decades now, the task of narrating the genealogical accounts of our present situation has fallen to the philosopher and the theologian, with the
somewhat understandable result that both blame and credit have subsequently fallen to a number of key historical figures. Few figures, however, have received as much of this attention as St. Augustine.
Yet Gregory’s book stands in a relatively newer tradition of inquiry:
that increasingly prominent school of thinkers who have plumbed the
depths of Augustine’s works with a fresh eye toward generous and careful exegesis of the texts and a desire to appropriate them in fruitfully
constructive ways. Thus, rather than simply add to the countless narratives and genealogies that seek to unqualifiedly defend or upend modernity and its troubled offspring (including liberal democracy), Gregory’s ressourcement effort simultaneously identifies and exhibits what he
takes to be a central feature of Augustinian political thought—namely,
ambivalence toward concrete political orders, which are construed as
necessarily contingent realities. This ambivalence is premised upon a dialectical tension between an affirmation of any political order’s capacity
to facilitate the procurement of certain genuine goods and criticism of
its capacity to stifle such procurement.
In this vein, Gregory has sought to re-envision liberal democracy
as a laudable development in the modern world, and one that finds its
most meaningful resources in the thinking of Augustine. Thus, the book
serves as a dual defense of liberal democracy and of the fifth-century
bishop whose thought is credited/blamed with spawning some of its
central tenets. This dual defense proceeds by way of charting a via media between political theories constructed in either positive or negative
engagement with Augustine’s thought: those which prioritize sin and,
therefore, the penultimate need for constraining measures (e.g. Rein-

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hold Niebuhr); those which prioritize love, especially in terms of its expression in the confessional Christian community (e.g. John Milbank);
and those which fear that the insertion of love into the dialogue of political engagement necessarily engenders unjust coercion and paternalism
(e.g. Hannah Arendt). In particular, Gregory attempts to navigate this
middle way with a rudder he has fashioned out of robustly theological readings of Augustine in conversation with the Bishop’s historical
context. Yet the defense is truly more than a defense, in that it does not
merely ward off those who object to liberal democracy as a worthwhile
endeavor; rather, Gregory takes an offensive stance by actively envisioning a civic posture that is fully Augustinian, precisely by being fully attentive to the love side of the love-sin dialectic.
Thankfully, it is with the same exegetical care and irenic tone shown
toward Augustine that Gregory also treats his modern interlocutors.
The first half of the book mostly rehearses, critiques, and appropriates
the school of (broadly) Augustinian political “realism” (e.g. Niebuhr),
along with its cognate in social contract theory (e.g. John Rawls). This
allows Gregory to own the heritage bequeathed by a theological anthropology that is serious about sin, while also suggesting that this narrowness of emphasis fails to do justice to the human condition, to civic engagement, and to Augustine’s more complex vision for the cultivation
of human flourishing within the civitas terrena. In their acceptance of
a dichotomy between love and justice, Gregory argues, the realists and
social contractarians fail to see the role of love as motivation for political action, sometimes even within their own theorizing (109). This
assessment of realist political theory begins to crescendo positively as
Gregory highlights what he takes to be somewhat modest movements
toward a healthy affirmation of love in the civic realm (e.g., Jean Bethke
Elshtain, Edmund Santurri, and Timothy Jackson). Yet the crescendo
reaches its fullest expression when he points to political theorists and
activists whom he identifies as broadly Augustinian because of their simultaneous attention to the realities of sin and to the necessary place
of love in theoretical dialogue and in action: Paul Ramsey, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gustavo Gutierrez. Yet what makes Gregory’s effort to
highlight these exemplars particularly interesting is that it is set within
his engagement with feminist critiques of modern, “rational” conceptions of justice and morality that do not rightly attend to an “ethic of

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589

care” (151ff.). In a way, King, Gutierrez, and Ramsey sketch for Gregory a path toward taking up this critique in what he understands to be
a roughly Augustinian manner. Still, he mostly takes for granted their
ties to the thought of Augustine rather than bolstering his argument by
making explicit references to Augustine’s texts.
Before considering Gregory’s engagement with another liberal critique of an Augustinian civic liberalism motivated by love, it is necessary to mention that he must also address still another set of interlocutors, represented most notably by John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas.
Unlike nearly all others, these discussion partners offer a critique from
outside the project of liberal democracy, at least ostensibly. Gregory
rightly points out that Milbank in some ways anticipates Gregory’s own
constructive proposal—namely, the revival of love as a (the?) central
principle in a robustly theological political theory—even though Milbank’s approach is in some ways starkly at odds with that of Gregory. It
suffices to note that, in Gregory’s final assessment, Milbank and Hauerwas’s distrust of the secular tends to force these thinkers into an almost
exclusively ecclesiological framework. In this way, he suggests, they
struggle to realistically and relevantly affirm the possibilities of engagement between the Church and the world by envisioning either a form of
theocracy or a form of secession (141, 148).
In the final chapters, Gregory ventures to show why a significant
dose of love in the realm of civic engagement is not an inevitable invitation to paternalism and unjustifiable coercion, contra Arendt. Gregory’s
primary task is to show how Augustine’s conception of love as desire is
not eventually swallowed up by the harmful self-love it aims to ward off,
and, relatedly, how the relationship between loving the neighbor and
loving God—with explicit reference to the (in)famous uti/fruidistinction—does not end up meaninglessly sublimating the former to the latter. This he does mostly by references to what he understands to be Augustine’s mature position on uti/frui, in which love for God is non-competitive with love for neighbor and, instead, protects one’s neighbor from
the self ’s inordinate (and otherwise inexorable) desire for destructive
forms of possession (343ff.). This argument relies heavily on a reading
of Augustine provided by Raymond Canning but is also funded in part
by Gregory’s appropriation of Augustine’s Christologically-driven theology of kenotic Trinitarian love (324). Thus, acknowledgment of the

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necessarily dynamic nature of human love qua desire, checked against
the forma Servi of amor Dei, gives rise to a civic form of engagement that
does not fear launching off the safe shores of mere respect and into the
deep but plentiful waters of love, where it expresses itself as friendship
(350ff.). This rather basic antidote is meant to begin filling in the gaps
that an ostensibly thin or cold conception of justice inevitably leaves
behind. Friendship also works to overcome the harsh public/private distinction born out of Arendt’s skepticism concerning love, and it returns
Gregory to what he had cited as central to the work and thought of Gutierrez, King, and Ramsey.
Even if Gregory has made some headway in the face of Arendtian
concerns by the means of richer exegesis of Augustine’s animating theological principles, he nonetheless faces the challenge of making sense of
the Bishop’s misstep with respect to the Donatist controversy and the
use of force therein. In this Gregory readily concedes the indefensibility of Augustine’s position regarding coercive force under such circumstances, while nonetheless offering some contextual explanations (not to
be confused with excuses). These explanations include his recognition
that, on account of imperial safety and unity, Augustine viewed the situation as sufficiently “political” or civic—rather than merely ecclesial—
such that he thus deemed state intervention to be necessary (301–2).
In the end, Gregory rightly points out that Augustine’s proto-liberalism
suffered in some way from the lack of a principle he may well of helped
to spawn—namely, the distinction between civic and ecclesial powers
and jurisdictions (299).
Attention to the title of this book is important for those concerned
with political theory and its systemic implications or implementation.
Citizenship is truly at the heart of Gregory’s constructive project and
the utilization of a distinctly theological anthropology afforded to us
by Augustine. What serves at times as an apology for liberal democracy
in the face of staunch post-liberal critiques is to a greater extent a summons to (witting and unwitting) adherents of liberal democratic ideals
to meet the challenges posed both by critics and by concrete circumstances, primarily through a revival of loving civic engagement. As such,
the argument focuses on casting a vision for precisely what it claims: an
ethic. Those who are looking for more technocratic or structural assessments and suggestions from Gregory will mostly come up short, save

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for the few occasions when he points to grass roots organization and to
the principle of proximity in terms of the “distribution” of love; however, this may be due to the fact that an ethic is something one expects
individuals, not bureaucracies, to adopt. It is by no means unreasonable
to hope that such an ethic could be embodied in the concrete decisions
of policymakers, who do not cease to be citizens when they begin to act
“officially”; however, the limited audience of Gregory’s argument must
be noted, given that it resides in the ambit of theological discussions and
seems designed to engage the (Augustinian) Christian citizen and not
all civic liberals.
This raises a range of questions, some of which go mostly unanswered in Gregory’s monograph. Some readers may be vexed by critical
concerns about how the Augustinian civic liberal is to conceive of love
and virtue within the civitas terrena, especially with respect to the roles
of grace and the sacraments. Or, to put it in terms more specific to Augustine’s own conceptual lexicon, these concerns touch upon rather difficult questions regarding Augustine’s final assessment of pagan virtue.
However, lack of explicit attention to this theme is partly mitigated by
the book’s more modest aim: an apology for a civic “ethic” to be adopted
in the concrete lives of Augustinian (Christian) citizens. Furthermore,
a general take on the matter is offered implicitly or at least along the
way, using Augustine’s matter-of-fact affirmations of the (limited) integrity of natural love and using more general affirmations of the goodness
of Creation. Other readers may wonder about the place of the Church
within Gregory’s vision for a civic ethic of love. No doubt, personal responsibility is a non-negotiable factor in the cultivation of a corporate
ethic. Yet Gregory does not buttress his critiques of Hauerwas’s and/
or Milbank’s ecclesial maximalism with his own conception of how the
Church qua unified, sacramental, confessional body plays a role both
in forming faithful and loving civic liberals and in representing, corporately, the loving ethics of Augustinian civic virtue. More narrowly,
much more could be said concerning the place of Trinitarian and Christological doctrine in the life of the Church qua political community.
With respect to the exemplary roles that the Incarnate Christ and the
intra-Trinitarian bond of love play in the life of the individual, Gregory is helpful (178–79, 239–40); however, one wonders in what ways
personal and corporate liturgical/contemplative practices play in the

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formation of a community animated by love. Other critiques might center on whether the rather simple, even if profound, thrust of the book’s
constructive proposal—namely, the necessity and viability of cultivating
an ethic of loving friendship in the civic sphere—represents a significant
achievement. Yet in today’s world one would be hard-pressed to show
that it is not.
Gregory’s irenic style and mostly careful exegesis of all discussion
partners is certainly winsome. At times it feels like a friendly dialogue
carried on with O’Donovan by means of numerous references to his
thought. However, one can get almost lost in the brisk movement of the
argument as it skips along through a dizzying array of interlocutors and
secondary sources, even to the end of making a few related points several times over. Still, these deficiencies are far outweighed by the erudition
and clarity of Gregory’s book, as well as its commendable aims. N&V
Ty Monroe
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit by Anthony
Briggman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 320 pp.
IRENAEUS OF LYONS has long been viewed as a pivotal figure in
the history of Christian doctrine. With Origen of Alexandria, he is esteemed as an early theological “systematizer.” Like Origen’s later On First
Principles, Irenaeus’s Against Heresies is frequently hailed as a “systematic” work. It exhibits a captivating intellectual coherence unparalleled
by its predecessors. Often, however, such praise fails to offer more than
uncritical fawning. Furthermore, Irenaeus’s trinitarian theology is liable
to the criticism that it is actually “binitarianism” masquerading as trinity-talk. Against both quasi-hagiographical and binitarian readings of
the Bishop of Lyons, Anthony Briggman’s monograph documents Irenaeus’s role in the rise of early Christian pneumatology.
A number of historical commitments regarding second- and
third-century pneumatology present themselves as Briggman’s story
unfolds. The book begins and ends by setting Irenaeus within a larger
narrative framework—namely, the “three-stage” pneumatological narrative proposed by Michel Barnes. In the first stage (100–200 A.D.), ear-

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ly Christian pneumatology is “Jewish-Christian.” With the second stage
(Tertullian and Origen), the Jewish “superstructure” of Christian pneumatology is rejected. That rejection generates a “low” pneumatology.
The third stage is a late-fourth-century revival of “high” pneumatology.
Irenaeus’s action in this drama is to have set out the most sophisticated
and robust account of the Trinity on offer at the end of the “first stage.”
The monograph comprises seven chapters. The first chapter begins
prior to Irenaeus, with Justin. We learn that Justin’s trinitarian convictions were hamstrung by his persistent binitarian orientation: Justin
failed to differentiate the identities and activities of the Word and the
Spirit. Justin’s failure leads to a soft (my term) Spirit-Christology. Irenaeus, on the other hand, was no mere “binitarian.” Briggman draws an
intellectual-historical boundary line through the middle of Against Heresies. By the time Irenaeus sat down to write Against Heresies 3, he had
produced a pneumatological account that “supersedes that of Against
Heresies 1 and 2 by so large a degree that it may be best to regard his
reasoning in the first two Books as the most advanced theology of the
Spirit of the previous generation” (45). Briggman’s attribution of development to Irenaeus on this score is significant. If he is right, we will need
to speak of an “early” and “late” Irenaeus when it comes to the question
of pneumatology.
The monograph’s later chapters delve more deeply into Ireneaus’s
trinitarian theology. By Chapter 5, we have reached Irenaeus’s wellknown deployment of the “Two Hands” model for the divinity of the
Spirit and the Son. With this model, Irenaeus unites the Son and the
Spirit to the Father-Creator, thereby subverting the gnostic claim that
the flesh is created by a lesser deity. The model originates as a Jewish
tradition from Asia Minor that was also known to Theophilus of Antioch. Irenaeus’s identification of the Spirit with Wisdom enables him to
out-narrate the gnostic myth of Sophia and her impassioned fall. As we
might expect, Irenaeus might have thanked his polemical poise against
the gnostics for his trinitarian proto-orthodoxy.
The first half of Chapter 6 is devoted to dismantling John Behr’s account of Irenaeus’s theological anthropology. According to Behr’s reading, Irenaeus taught that the Holy Spirit is present not only to those
who believe in the Son, but to all human beings, as an essential component of the human being. Briggman sifts through each of the texts to

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which Behr appeals for support, wresting them away with meticulous
argumentation. In fact, Irenaeus held to a strictly bipartite anthropology
(body and soul), and, Briggman argues, the Holy Spirit gives life to all
not by its presence, as Behr claims, but only by dint of its instrumentality in creation. The Holy Spirit is, however, an essential component of the
perfect human being, the human being in Christ. In Chapter 7, Briggman shows why Irenaeus cannot be charged with “Spirit-Christology” or
angelomorphic pneumatology. This demonstration finally distinguishes
Irenaeus from Briggman’s initial account of Justin as “binitarian.”
One of this book’s strongest features is that it is an excellent book
on Irenaeus that does not stop at Irenaeus. Briggman’s skillful analysis of Justin Martyr is sympathetic but not naïve, and his evaluation of
Theophilus of Antioch as Irenaeus’s source is shrewd. His placement of
Irenaeus within a narrative that includes Justin, Origen, Tertullian, and
Novatian is illuminating but not overstated. Briggman explains how Irenaeus’s Two Hands model provided a stronger account of the Spirit’s
identity as Creator than Origen’s could. Origen’s anti-monarchian attribution of “Wisdom” to the Son weakened the Spirit’s role in creation and
thereby undermined the Spirit’s divine identity. Tertullian and Novatian
likewise failed to identify the Spirit with Wisdom. After Irenaeus, an
age of “low” pneumatology would persist until the middle-to-late fourth
century.
Briggman’s attention to detail and forceful argumentation give teeth
to his reading of Irenaeus. His contestations of John Behr’s account of
Irenaeus’s pneumatology give those teeth an edge. Though the word
“rich” is cliché in reviews of academic books, a better descriptor for
Briggman’s monograph is hard to find. Students of the history of the
doctrine of the Trinity in late antiquity will discover in this book a resource worth knowing—even if Oxford’s prices keep them from knowN&V
ing it without access to a research library!
Kellen Plaxco
Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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595

Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters
of Faith and Morals, 43rd edition, edited by Peter Hünermann,
Helmut Hoping, Robert L. Fastiggi, Anne Englund Nash, and Heinrich
Denzinger (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 1399 pp.
HEINRICH JOSEPH DENZINGER’S (1819–83) Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum, first published in Würzburg in 1854, was intended
to be a compendium of creeds, definitions, and declarations on matters
of faith and morals. His work has served theologians well and is now
in its 43rd edition. Under the editorship of first Schönmetzer and now
Hünermann, the text was greatly expanded and brought up to the reign
of Pope Benedict XVI, but these expanded editions were available to
the theologian only in Latin, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. For
the last 55 years, English speakers have had to make do with the 30th
edition of 1957, translated by Roy J. Deferrari. This new English translation, therefore, is indeed most welcome.
This edition, like former editions, contains two parts. The first contains creeds, and the second part contains documents of the Church’s
magisterium, beginning with Pope Clement I and concluding with documents from Benedict XVI’s pontificate. These documents are presented
in the original language with an English translation in a parallel column.
Many of Deferrari’s translations are retained, and the English translations of those texts that have been added since the 30th edition come
from a variety of sources. Most notably, Robert Fastiggi has provided
a number of excellent translations of these newly added older documents, while many of the translations of recent magisterial texts have
been taken from the Vatican website. Those who have been using the
30th English edition will find that one of Schönmetzer’s revisions was to
add to each document a short historical introduction and a brief section
describing the various editions of the work. Hünermann has continued
to expand this addition.
This edition contains a number of useful aids that the editors have
added to make the volume easier to use. A helpful introduction taken
from the 37th edition explains the history of Denzinger’s Enchiridion
and its various editors and critics. The work also contains “suggestions
for the theological use of ‘Denzinger.’” This section contains a brief theological reflection on the nature of the Church’s magisterium, which for-

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tunately situates the Church in the context of its mission to bear witness
to the gospel. It then discusses the authentic teaching role of the magisterium as well as the various criteria by which one can recognize an
authentic act of the magisterium. This introductory section ends with
the now obligatory warning against engaging in “Denzinger theology.”
At the end of the text, a systematic index covers the various areas of
dogma, and an index of scriptural references is particularly helpful. An
appendix to the marginal numbers of the 1963 edition and the earlier
editions is included to make cross-referencing easier. Finally the editors
included a list of translators and translations used for the various texts.
It must be noted that a number of problems with the text have
plagued the work since Adolf Schönmetzer, S.J., almost doubled it in size.
Hünermann’s additions are similiar. First, a disproportionate amount of
space is devoted to the documents since the start of the Second Vatican
Council. The years 1962-2008 are covered in pages 846-1185; thus 29 %
of the text is devoted to only 2.3 % of the Church’s history. Is it really the
case that more than one quarter of the authentic acts of the magisterium
occurred between 1962 and 2008? Second, much of the new material
is of limited doctrinal use, and the editors seem to have lost sight of
the original raison d’etre of the Denzinger text that its title suggests. As
noted, Heinrich Denzinger’s intent was to provide the theologian with
a compact yet complete sourcebook of doctrine. No longer is this book
simply a collection of creeds, definitions, and declarations on faith and
morals, since much of the material added since the 36th edition does
not fit into these categories.
Consider, for example, the inclusion of the following lines from Sacrosanctum Concilium: “The revision of the liturgical books must carefully attend to the provision of rubrics also for the people’s parts” (DH
4031), or “Besides the commission on the sacred liturgy, every diocese,
as far as possible, should have commissions for sacred music and sacred
art” (DS 4046). Neither of these quotations is a doctrinal statement; they
are simply statements directing that some particular act take place. Now
if the council asserted that these acts were moral acts and that, as such,
the objects of the acts were good, then one could understand their inclusion in the text. This is not, however, the case. Also included are texts
that are rather obvious prudential judgments, such as: “Because liturgical laws often involve special difficulties with respect to adaptation, par-

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597

ticularly in mission lands, men who are experts in these matters must
be employed to formulate them” (DH 4040). Prudential judgments have
always been included in the text, including the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, but these were prudential judgments about
doctrinal or theological issues.
A similar problem appears in Hünermann’s inclusion of certain
texts from Gaudium et Spes. Consider, for example, the following lines
from Gaudium et Spes: “As for the family, discord results from population, economic and social pressures, or from difficulties which arise between succeeding generations, or from new social relationships between
men and women” (DH 4308), and “Now many of our contemporaries
seem to fear that a closer bond between human activity and religion will
work against the independence of men, of societies, or of the sciences”
(DH 4336). These statements do not even pertain to faith and morals;
they are merely historical or sociological statements about the state of
affairs in the 1960’s.
This problem is compounded by the curious omission of portions of
texts that either are of a doctrinal character or are immediately relevant
to determining the doctrinal qualification of a text. One such qualification, for example, is missing from Chapter One of Dignitatis Humanae:
“Indeed, since people’s demand for religious liberty in carrying out their
duty to worship God concerns freedom from compulsion in civil society,
it leaves intact the traditional catholic teaching on the moral obligation
of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one church
of Christ” (Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:1002). Why
would one leave out a council’s qualifying intention with respect to previous doctrinal statements? Another example of an important omission
is footnote 1 to Gaudium et Spes. “The constitution is termed “pastoral”
because, while dependent on principles of doctrine, its aim is to express
the relationship between the church and the world and people of today
. . . The constitution should therefore be interpreted according to the
general norms of theological interpretation and with due regard, especially in the second part, for the naturally changing circumstances of
the matters treated” (Tanner 2:1069). This critique also holds true with
regard to older texts: often important parts of documents are neglected
that help the theologian determine the intention of the magisterium.
For example, the Council of Constance’s condemnation of the errors of

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Wycliffe (DH 1151–1195), as recorded in the Denzinger text, contains
only the list of condemned propositions, leaving out the council’s important introductory material. (See Tanner 1:408 to 1:411.) Without this
type of information, the current text fosters the very thing that it tried to
avoid in its prefatory essay, i.e. “Denzinger theology.”
Both Schönmetzer and Hünermann have done the Church a great
service by adding the historical matter, which helps to contextualize
the magisterial pronouncements, and by bringing the text up to date
through the papal magisterium of Benedict XVI. But the editors need to
decide what they want the purpose of Denzinger to be. Do they simply
want a collection of documents that are historically interesting from a
theological perspective? Or do they want what the text was originally
intended to do: to provide the theologian with a handbook of authentic
acts of the magisterium? In either case, the future editions need to undergo a thorough revision. One hopes that they return to the original
intention of Denzinger. Despite these drawbacks and limitations, this
N&V
text is decidedly welcome.
Christian D. Washburn
St. Paul Seminary
St. Paul, Minnesota