Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 1-17

1

The Rights of the Family
Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, CA

IN WHAT FOLLOWSI am going to claim that the family is at the “heart

of society.” By “heart” we usually mean the core and center of a thing. It
is to be argued that the family stands at the heart of society in the sense
that it is in the middle between the state and the individual, mediating
both. This mediation is important to the functioning of human society.
In its absence, society is in danger of drifting into either individualism or
collectivism.1 Worse yet, it may be more likely to end up a dysfunctional
cooperation of both, a cooperation of Narcissus and Leviathan.2
My stronger and more fundamental claim is that families are not
only useful for the proper functioning of society, but that they are bearers of fundamental rights that any state has to respect.3 We ought to
1

One thinks of the socialist attack on the family and the hope that it might eventually “wither away”; in the Soviet Union, apartments were often intentionally designed with a space insufficient for family meals. Many children that grew up under
these conditions live on the streets today; cf. Tobias Jersak, “Ein Schlupfwinkel für
die Kinder der Straße,” Kath.net/Katholische Nachrichten, January 17, 2009, http://
www.kath.net/news/21859.
2
Cf. a suggestive piece published in a more popular venue by Anthony Esolen, “The
Alliance of Narcissus and Leviathan,” Catholic Answers Magazine, http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/the-alliance-of-narcissus-and-leviathan. While Hobbes
and Rousseau have different visions of the state, they fundamentally agree that the
human person is asocial. And both attempt to eliminate intermediate societies such
as the family. At the end, individuals relate only insofar as each submits to Leviathan,
i.e., the state, which alone is constitutive of all human relationships.
3
While Aristotle saw the family as basic to society (Ethics VIII, ch. 12), and the Uni-

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Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

think not only of the rights of the individual or of the common good at
large, but of the rights of families. These rights are sui generis and can be
derived from neither the individual nor the state. Rather, family rights
are based in a fundamental relationality4 of the human person, which
cannot be understood apart from the biological relationships in which
these rights are rooted.
I am going to establish this claim by arguing three successive points:
(1) family rights are not reducible to individual rights, (2) family rights
are not derivative from the common good, and (3) family rights are
rooted in biological relationships.
1. Family Rights Are Not Reducible to Individual Rights
A notion of family rights would be superfluous, if these rights could be
reduced to the rights of individuals or constructed out of their contractual relationships. Rights and duties would then be based on what two
or more individuals have agreed upon, that is, they could be derived
from the wills and rights of the individuals. If there are family rights at
all, they would have to be understood on the model of the social contract—ultimately a form of individualism.
With regard to families, the suggestion might then be that family
rights are rooted in the decision of two individuals to contract marriage.
Marriage itself as a contract would appear to fit into social contract theories of human society.
However, neither is the relationship of the couple exhaustively explained by a contract, nor do the implied children enter this family by a
contractual choice.
versal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 16/3) acknowledged its rights in principle,
a formulation of family rights seems to be a recent development, emerging for the
first time in Catholic thought, particularly a Synod of Bishops in 1980, John Paul II’s
Familiaris Consortio (1981), and a Charter of the Rights of the Family by the Holy See
(1983), addressed to all nations Christian and non-Christian; and one might add
Benedict XVI, The Human Family: A Community of Peace (Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2008). What is lacking is a philosophical
conceptualization of this notion. I have explored some aspects in more detail in
“Are There Family Rights?” Angelicum 88 (2011): 201–29. I will continue to refer to
Catholic documents as the most consistent available source in these matters. The
argument itself, however, does not depend on the faith of the Catholic Church.
4
African and feminist thought has in other ways also emphasized relationality as contrasted with individual rights.

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3

The Couple
For the couple itself, the decision to get married has implications that go
beyond a mere contract. If it were a mere exchange of goods and services,
then the notion of a contract might be sufficient. And indeed, this kind
of exchange is certainly a part of the reality of marriage: shared bank accounts and merging of households and other goods, exchange of services
(cooking, providing income, doing laundry and other chores, caring for
and defending the other person)—all of these are part of what marriage
is. But these elements are not the essence of marriage, for they might be
found in other living arrangements among friends and caregivers as well.
The essential exchange here is not one of goods and services, but of
persons.5 Such an exchange affects the very identity of the persons involved.
Personal identity is typically articulated in personal names. Now
on the one hand, our names tend to locate us in a family tree, in a
genealogy. In Western custom, the surname or family name identifies
this place within the greater whole of a family and its relationships. If
the point of reference were instead the larger collective—for example,
the human species—then we probably would not name individuals,
but number them; we would treat them as specimens.
On the other hand, a mere first name alone might fall into the same
problem: a personal name like “John” or “Susie” is a first name that
might single out an individual. Individualism therefore might put the
emphasis on this first name (and certainly contemporary individualistic
culture has shifted to a first name basis). Yet, if this name were all that we
have, then our pure individuality would coincide with pure anonymity:
Which John? Which Susie? How many Johns and Susies are there in the
5

This includes a decision over the rest, i.e., the whole of one’s life: “This conjugal communion sinks its roots in the natural complementarity that exists between man and
woman, and is nurtured through the personal willingness of the spouses to share
their entire life-project, what they have and what they are: for this reason such communion is the fruit and the sign of a profoundly human need” (Familiaris Consortio,
no. 19). The entire person is given in marriage. For Kant, in the Metaphysics of Morals, only the right to dispose over the whole person can give one the right to dispose
over a part (which is of course to be thought of as mutual)—not to take a person in
its entirety is tantamount to an objectification of the person; C. Langewellpott, W.
Mackenthum, W. Dreier, H. P. Schweizer, and J. Frese, “Familie/Ehe,” in Historisches
Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 2 (Basel: Schwabe, 1972), 899. This might also be
one of the problems of cohabitation.

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Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

whole collective of society or humanity? Paradoxically, the part of our
name which is not purely individual (our surname, shared with other
family members) is precisely the name that allows us to identify John
or Susie as more determinate individuals (albeit not infallibly) – as, say,
John Kowalski or Susie Morales.6
In marriage, this surname typically changes, indicating a change
of identity for the persons involved. For what happens in marriage is,
again, not an exchange of goods and services, but of persons. If this exchange were one-sided, the result would be slavery; but if the exchange
is mutual, then the result is to make the two persons one. Now this unity
implies a change of identity for each of them. Their unity as well as the
new identity is expressed in a common family name. The fact that today
this frequently does not happen anymore might be more indicative of a
problem than an argument to the contrary.
This change of identity is therefore also a change of location within
a system of families. The change consequently affects not only two individuals, but the extended families as well, even beyond the nuclear family. Marriage extends family relationships beyond blood relationships:
All the members of each family are now related to all the other members
of the other family. They are “in-laws”—with, for example, responsibilities of care, and certain demands for exogamy that now extend to the
other family as well.
While one might try to think of all these elements as merely agreed
upon in a marriage contract, most of these family members were in fact
not asked for their agreement. Nor do the two contracting individuals
retain their previous identity purely and simply. They are no longer the
ones that entered the contract; their new reality has transcended a mere
contract into a different dimension of relationality that affects others as
well. The new reality that emerges from their covenant, the new family,
transcends mere contractual arrangements.
6

It is from these families that they receive even their first name, which is indeed their
“given name”—given by their families even before they were conscious of their own
existence. We know who we are only in identity and difference within genealogical
family relationships. Characteristically, orphaned children and those begotten in
(heterologous) artificial ways, have trouble answering this fundamental question.
Cf. Paul W. McNellis, “The Family and the Analogy of Gratitude,” PhD diss., Boston
College, 1993, 68.

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Children Do Not Enter a Family by Contract
What has just been said can be further explicated by noting that this
essential “exchange of persons” has an end beyond itself; marriage by its
very own nature is not an end in itself.
Human beings enter many kinds of relationships and contractual
unions, based on love or other interests. What distinguishes marriage
from all these specifically is not the presence of love, but the fact that it is
the place where the next generation originates by an act of procreation.
What this means is that marriage cannot be understood apart from children and therefore apart from family. Marriage is not for its own sake—
just as little as the acorn is there for its own sake, but has its end or telos
in the oak tree. Marriage can no more be understood without the family
than the acorn without the oak tree. This is so not by the choice of the
marrying individuals, but because of the biological facts pertaining to
the origin of human life.7 The act by which marriage is consummated
and that the couple desires is by its biological nature designed to produce offspring.8 While this might not be most immediately on the mind
of those consummating their marriage, their experience will often be
one that transcends their “twosomeness.” It might be articulated as being submerged in the larger forces of nature, which strives to propagate
the species. Or it might be, as in the Catholic understanding, God’s presence as creative of a new human soul. In either case, the act of begetting
is not an act of conscious fabrication, but rather a self-forgetful act, in
which greater forces are at work. The child is the objective correlate of
this subjective experience. Both objectively and subjectively, marriage is
about more than just two persons. Marriage aims at the origin of other
7

This biological fact, insofar as it is normative (which will be discussed below), might
put limits on the choices of both the parents (children not as a right, but as a gift
emerging from this biological fact) and the government (a right of parents at noninterference against a government’s attempt at restricting their number of children,
e.g., China’s one-child policy).
8
It is noteworthy that in this regard sexual acts of two persons of the same sex will
necessarily be frustrated. This frustration is real, considering that proponents of
“same-sex marriage” also claim a right to have children and family. They do understand that children are part of what a family is, yet their acts cannot achieve that
telos, which aims at children resulting from their own desired union (two becoming
one flesh in a child, merging their genomes). It is reasonable to suppose that no
legalization of same-sex marriage will eliminate this frustration.

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Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

persons—persons that are the very image of the one-flesh union of the
spouses. Children, in their own flesh, merge the genome of their parents, and parents will delight in this image of their union.
At the same time, as persons, children are also more than a delight
for their parents, or an appendix of their relationship. Their existence is
not a matter of their parents’ wish fulfillment or satisfaction.9 Persons
are, as Immanuel Kant emphasized, ends in themselves, not means to
other ends. These persons, then, will have their own individual rights
that put the parents under obligations.
Does this mean that we are now combining three individual rights?
Are we now confronted with a contract of three persons, such that family rights are derivative from a contractual union of three persons? This
does not seem to be the case, for children do not enter their families by
contract. We no more choose our parents than they choose us.10 Contrary to an individualistic worldview—perhaps most radically expressed
by Jean-Paul Sartre, for whom everything becomes a choice—most of
our life is constituted by circumstances that we do not choose. Such circumstances are part of our finitude and will depend on our location in
space and time. This location, however, is in turn determined by the
family that we are born into. A short list of those things that we do not
choose but that depend on our families of origin might illustrate this.
We do not choose: our name, our religion, our race and skin color, our
sex, our mother(!)-tongue or father(!)-land, our IQ, our health, our genetic code, our parents, our siblings or the absence thereof, our country
and culture, our date of birth and the age we are born into, and our social location. Our family of origin even determines our very belonging
to the human species with all its implications, that is, our fundamental
biological constitution: our need for sleep or food and hydration, our
mortality, even our inability to be everywhere at once, our temporality.
As a result, children are radically “dependent rational animals.” They
are not contractual partners of their parents. Just as the identity of their
9

That is, there is no right to have children at any price or by any method—but this is a
moral limitation, not a limitation by government—although the government might
have the duty to make this moral limitation respected.
10
This, of course, does not exclude the necessity of consciously deciding for and affirming our childhood and vocation in the family; cf. Benedict XVI, The Human
Family, no. 6.

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parents has become dependent on the marriage they have entered, so the
very identity of children depends on the parents from whom they are born.
All of this does not mean that the family trumps individual rights. In
fact, with this radical dependence on the family come dangers of being
profoundly damaged by family relationships. That is why in extreme cases
the state can interfere with Child Protective Services. Child abuse does, of
course, remain a violation of individual rights and so the larger collective
is obligated to come to the aid of the individual. The institutions of the
common good provide the necessary solidarity where subsidiarity fails.
The rights of individuals within families have not always been constant. The observation of historical and cultural changes need not imply relativism; some changes can be seen as progress, and any variation
is at least subject to evaluation. We ourselves, after all, are not always
consistent and as such subject to evaluation. Unlike the people of the
ancient Roman society, we do not grant family fathers the right over life
and death (the ius necis, considered a right of the pater familias)11—yet
in cases of abortion we today again seem willing to grant this right to
mothers. While in archaic societies family members are often collectively punished for the misdeeds of their relatives, we would consider
this an abuse of individual rights; yet, even today incarcerating a family
father will often deprive the other individuals of a family of income and
protection. Such variations and inconsistencies do not mean that the
rights themselves cannot be made consistent, but precisely that we need
to evaluate the various claims in the larger context of families.
This includes correlating family rights with individual rights. Rights
of individuals can be violated if one thinks of families too much in collective terms. Still, the fact that in many cases individual rights (and obligations) do trump family rights does not mean that family rights are derivative from individual rights. It only means that individual rights constitute
a negative boundary for family rights, which in turn are presupposed.
11

The Christian religio seems to have trumped the Roman family pietas for the sake of
the individual; cf. Lk 14:26. (NAB: “If any one comes to me without hating his father
and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot
be my disciple.”) This is emphasized by Rosemary Ruether, Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 25ff. But obviously that does
not make Christianity inimical to the family; rather, the Church’s own well-being
“passes by way of the family” (Charter, L), which is an image of the Trinity (Familiaris Consortio, no. 11).

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Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

2. Family Rights Are Not Derived from the Common Good
If family rights are not derivative from individual rights, but in many ways
presupposed, are they perhaps derivative from the larger common good?
If so, then the state would be more fundamental than the family.
The state would precede the family logically, even if not historically. Accordingly, the state would have the right to define what a family is. The
state might then further have the right to assign family members to their
families and regulate their relationship according to considerations of
the common good.12 In some cases the state appears to do so legitimately: by enforcing, for example, the incest taboo and the duty of exogamy,
the state might require the family to remain open for the good of the
larger community. However, this does not mean that the incest taboo is
itself an invention of the state.
Other laws might even produce a genuine conflict with family
rights, which could not be the case, if family rights were the product
of the state to begin with. The historical record seems to show that the
state finds itself in conflict with independently existing families and
their rights rather than being the ground for their existence. For example, Sophocles’s Antigone dramatizes how the universal law of the state
violated the right of the family to bury its members. The latter right
is not a matter of mere selfishness or unrightful particularism of the
human family. In Sophocles’s view it is a genuine right, and in fact even
a duty of family members. While the state has its legitimate rights and
claims, they are often difficult to harmonize with family rights. This
would not be the case, if these were derived from the former. At times it
can even be difficult to determine which of the two—state or family—is
embodying a form of illegitimate particularism: The laws of the Greek
polis tried to undermine the “international” family ties of its aristocratic members. Here we find the family being a threat to the state precisely
because it had a wider reach, and was more universal than the state.

12

This seems to be happening currently in a California bill (SB 1476) allowing children
to have three legal parents to accommodate the biological impossibility of samesex marriage (itself a redefinition of marriage and the family by courts as public
institutions). Jennifer Roback Morse, “Why California’s Three-Parent Law Was
Inevitable,” Public Discourse, September 10, 2012, http://www.thepublicdiscourse.
com/2012/09/6197/.

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Either way, the relationship has been one of conflict in the past, and
remains so today.13
Might adoption indicate that the state is in charge of arranging family relationships? After all, here the state seems to arrange for family
membership beyond blood relationships. It is a contract, into which at
least the parents enter by choice, and it is a contract not with the child,
but with the community at large. Parenthood appears to be delegated by
and therefore derived from the state.
On the other hand, adoption is the exception that proves the norm,
rather than being itself the norm. Why is it the exception? Because adoption itself cannot be understood without the background of biological
families. The very existence of the child presupposes the biological background; it is not provided by adoptive procedures, but presupposed by
them. Adoption is precisely the exception that is trying to remedy the
situation in which the biological family is missing. If such a family is present and functioning, the state cannot take away the children for the sake
of adoption. It seems evident that this would be a crime and a violation of
family rights14—which would not be the case, if the family were derivative
from the state. Indeed, the institution of adoption tries to restore orphans
to families; that is, the assumption is that the family is a more natural place
for children to be than a collective state-run orphanage.15
What about the right of the state to impose burdens, such as taxation, on families for the sake of the common good? Does not the common good trump the family in this case?
It does not, for such burdens require justification (just as the taxation or expropriation of individuals does). Indeed, the common good
itself, which requires such burdens, arguably cannot be defined without
13

Another instance of family relationships reaching beyond state boundaries are families of emigrant workers. Cf. the Charter, art. 12: “b) Emigrant workers have the
right to see their family united as soon as possible. c) Refugees have the right to
the assistance of public authorities and International Organizations in facilitating
the reunion of their families.” On the other hand, families have obligations beyond
themselves, for the larger common good, e.g., for the poor (similarly, Familiaris
Consortio, no. 47).
14
The Soviet Union considered children as belonging to the state or party; McNellis,
“The Family and the Analogy of Gratitude,” 55.
15
The same would of course be true for orphanages run by religious sisters or other
private institutions. Cf. also ibid., 82ff.

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Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

reference to the families. Families largely constitute this common good;
they spell out its meaning.16 The common good defined apart from family structures remains exceedingly abstract. It will be based only on basic
needs, not on a form of life.17 It will refer to asocial individuals and their
satisfaction, while ignoring the fact that the human person is essentially
relational. Relationality implies needs that cannot be provided for by
either the individual itself (which would not be relational) or by the state
(which is impersonal). We all have a need for some deeper relationships
with other particular persons—some by choice (friendship), others by
familial affinity. It seems likely that the kind of intimacy and affectivity
that is needed and normal in families would be experienced as disgusting and intrusive, if it were to be provided by the larger society.
The family, on the other hand, provides in its relationality an irreplaceable training ground for selfless18 and responsible behavior.19 It is
important to notice that this does not exclude a kind of favoritism that
16

E.g., schools are to support families and the economy is for the family, not vice versa. The Charter of the Rights of the Family emphasizes that the family is not only a
unique place for transmission of life, but also that it is uniquely suited to teach and
transmit cultural, ethical, social, spiritual, and religious values; Charter, letters D
and E; cf. Familiaris Consortio, no. 28. All of these are crucial elements of the common good, which becomes concrete in the life of the family. MacIntyre would see the
family as too small; cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (Chicago:
Open Court, 2001), 133–34. Still, local communities could very well be conceived as
networks of families, or “family associations” (Charter, art. 8).
17
This would leave us with the bare juxtaposition of hedonism and administration: “It
is as if the heart of man had fallen out, leaving only brains and belly.” Esolen, “The
Alliance of Narcissus and Leviathan.” In application to our topic, the government is
the brain, the bare physiological needs and wants are the belly—while the family is
the heart of society.
18
“The mark of any society is concern for the common good, and where better than
in the family do I learn that I have goods that are not simply mine but ours? Parents
and children, each with their private goods, must give precedence to the shared or
common good of the family if it, and they, are to flourish.” Ralph McInerny, “The
Marrying Animal,” Catholic Thing, June 2, 2009, http://www.thecatholicthing.org/
content/view/1673/2. This can require struggle and bargaining; Charter, letter F. Cf.
Amarthya Sen, “Gender Inequality and Theories of Justice,” in Women, Culture and
Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan
Glover (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 259–73, esp. 260ff.
19
In Europe, Otto von Habsburg suggested giving voting rights to families, because individuals without families cannot be expected to vote from a concern for the future
common good (including the ecology), whereas concern for one’s children educates
in such responsibility.

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11

makes it legitimate to prefer family members in situations of triage.20 Under normal circumstances and all things being equal, our obligation to
family members is prior to our obligation to other people and to the state.
In this relationality, the family can fulfill functions that the state
cannot, which illustrates the family’s important subsidiary role in society itself.21 And, indeed, family rights are important for spelling out the
importance of the principle of subsidiarity, by virtue of which the larger
society should not assume responsibilities that can be fulfilled on the
local level, including the family. At the same time one must not make
the mistake of thinking that family rights are derived from the family’s
functionality, that is, from the family’s practical and economic usefulness. All subsidiarity is based on who we are as human beings, not on
considerations of utility.22 As embodied rational beings we are relational
yet finite in whom we can relate to in an embodied and personal way.
Our biological family is a first point of reference for such finite relations.
Asking us to relate to all of humanity on the same level would be profoundly dehumanizing. Governments themselves take a similar stance
when they (legitimately) ask us to consider national interests before
those of other nations.
This means, conversely, that the state does not have the primary responsibility and duty to provide for children (education, clothing, and
feeding). This is the responsibility of the family. It is important to notice
the danger that, if family structures were to be destroyed or missing,
the state would have to assume this role by default. This can be illustrated in matters of education, particularly religious education. To educate
children in a faith or to raise them as atheists or agnostics (itself a form
of religious education) is the responsibility of parents, which they fulfill according to their conscience and best knowledge.23 In the absence
20

I.e., against the suggestion that we need a utilitarian calculus to decide whether we
can save our own children before we save those of others. While Hume is sometimes
quoted to the contrary—“Thus the relation of blood produces the strongest tie the
mind is capable of in the love of parents to their children, and a lesser degree of the
same affection, as the relation lessens”; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature,
Book II, Part II, Sect. IV, Of the Love of Relations—it is not clear that this has normative implications for Hume; for him it is a fact, not a value.
21
Including economic and other support by extended families.
22
Cf. also Esolen, “The Alliance of Narcissus and Leviathan.”
23
The Charter, art. 5, sees the conferral of education in continuity with the conferral of

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of family structures, the state would have to decide in which religion
children are to be raised, or whether they should be deprived of any
religious upbringing, as the “new atheists” demand. Neither choice is a
neutral option, nor can a choice be avoided.24 In other words, the state
would be required to establish a state religion—such as Christian, Muslim, Mormon, or atheist.25 Obviously, no one would want to give the
state this kind of responsibility. But since children themselves are not in
a position to decide for themselves, the only other option is to support
families in their choice.26
These considerations are all the more reason to hold that families do
not derive their rights and existence from the state.

life itself by the parents. The right of parents to educate their children also includes a
right for governmental protection of children “from the negative effects and misuse
of the mass media.” Ibid.
24
To wait until children are old enough to decide for themselves is already a decision
to deprive them of something possibly important to their childhood. Considering
the nature of the case, it might be similar to not teaching children a language until
they are old enough to choose their mother language. The consequence would be
that they would never learn any language.
25
The awkwardness can be shown by an example, curiously mixed with that of adoption: the governments of Spain and Morocco agreed that Moroccan children adopted by Spanish families must be raised as Muslims; this obliges the Spanish government to establish a “control mechanism” that would enable Moroccan religious
authorities to monitor the children until they reach the age of eighteen to ensure
they have not converted to Christianity; cf. Soeren Kern, “The Islamization of Spanish Jurisprudence,” Gatestone Institute, February 20, 2013, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3595/spain-adoption-islam.
26
This might be generally true for the transmission of culture, language, and traditions.
These, too, are not consciously and purposely created by the state (or any individual). For religious education, cf. Dignitatis Humanae, no. 5: “The family, since it is a
society in its own original right, has the right freely to live its own domestic religious
life under the guidance of parents. Parents, moreover, have the right to determine, in
accordance with their own religious beliefs, the kind of religious education that their
children are to receive. Government, in consequence, must acknowledge the right of
parents to make a genuinely free choice of schools and of other means of education,
and the use of this freedom of choice is not to be made a reason for imposing unjust
burdens on parents, whether directly or indirectly. Besides, the rights of parents are
violated, if their children are forced to attend lessons or instructions which are not in
agreement with their religious beliefs, or if a single system of education, from which
all religious formation is excluded, is imposed upon all.”

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13

3. Family Rights Are Rooted in Biological Relationships
From what principle are family rights derived, then? As an alternative to the derivation of matters of justice from either the individual or
the state, thinkers like Michael Sandel suggest the readmission of Aristotelian considerations of virtue and related teleological notions as an important contribution, even in matters of marriage and the family.27 Taking
an even stronger position on the underlying biology, Alisdair MacIntyre
now accepts the “metaphysical biology” of “dependent rational animals.”
Indeed, if we are dependent animals by virtue of our biological nature,
then we are also for biological reasons relational. Our biology produces
a reciprocal indebtedness with normative implications.28 I would like to
suggest that families are the locus in which these normative implications
generate rights that are sui generis.
If membership in a family can be traced neither to the choice of
parents and children nor to a decree of the state, then it can only be
of biological origin. The question is whether biological facts can have
normative implications. I claim that they do. Contrary to the modern
assumption of a radical distinction between “fact” and “value,” “ought”
and “is,” the facts of nature do have normative implications. For Hans
Jonas, parental love is the paradigmatic moral response for an ethics
based on responsibility—a responsibility that emerges from a fact; it is
an obligation that one contracts, not by contract, but by biology.29
We all assume the normative implications of biological facts when
we say that someone “ought” to go to the doctor, or that we have a “right”
to health care in order to restore the biological functioning of our human organism. The biological functions of our human organism do indeed imply moral claims and even human rights. Basic biological needs
such as food or sleep are the basis for claims of social justice, health care,
and other rights.
This is not different for family rights. As we have seen, a family starts
with a conscious decision by a couple for marriage, that is, by two per27

Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2009), 253ff.
28
MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals.
29
Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1985), 130.

14

Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

sons who are not biologically related. But this is merely a starting point
with consequences that transcend contractual decisions. From this
starting point there is constituted a whole new reality with obligations
that seem to have no other foundation than the biology of procreation.30
Consider the fact that women become vulnerable physically and
emotionally by the fact of childbearing, and that this seems to imply
certain claims to protection and support, primarily from the husband.
While this might be considered the right of an individual (the wife), the
primary respondent is a family member.
With these procreational relationships comes a biologically rooted distribution of family roles. Much as this is called in doubt today,
some biological and hormonal facts are so basic that they can be ignored
only at the peril of committing an injustice against the vulnerability of
women.31 Furthermore, the need of children for their mother is different from their need for their father. Children might therefore claim an
intrafamiliar right to the presence of both parents—a right that is rooted
in the biological differentiation of the sexes.
Even more basic are the rights of children for food and clothing.
The primary respondents of these rights are again the parents (who in
turn have a right to wages that can sustain a family32). The parents are
responsible for the feeding and clothing of their children, not the nextdoor neighbors or anyone else. Only the parents are held accountable
for neglect. There is no other reason for this than that these children are
their biological offspring. Again, biology has normative consequences.
Parents also have the duty to educate their own children—but not
30

This is true even for the emerging relationships to in-laws; for these respective families are themselves families only by virtue of procreational relationships.
31
Such claims are acknowledged by Sen, “Gender Inequality,” 264ff. The lack of the
same thing might turn out to be more crippling to one sex than to the other (e.g., different types of nutritional needs, especially for pregnant women; there might be also
different psychological needs). Susan Wolf, “Commentary on Nussbaum,” in Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, ed. Martha Nussbaum
and Jonathan Glover (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 105–15, esp. 114. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (25/2) entitles motherhood and childhood
to special care and assistance. Generally speaking, both the making of differences
where there are none and treating people identically where there is no identity lead
to injustice.
32
For the Catholic understanding, cf. Pacem in Terris, no. 19–22; the Charter, art. 10, acknowledges that a “family wage” should make it possible for the mother to stay home.

The Rights of the Family

15

those of other parents.33 Accordingly, they are held accountable for the
mischief of their children. This implies in turn a duty of children to
obey their parents (but not a duty to obey the parents of other children,
except by expressed delegation from their own parents). Parents have a
right to punish their children,34 but they would surely protest, if their
neighbors would try to do the same to their children. Even abortion
advocates, while claiming the right to end the life of their children in
the womb, would typically protest if other people would attempt to do
the same in their place.
Rights and duties based on biological descent are not limited to
the care of children. Indeed, caring for elderly parents is the primary
responsibility of their own offspring, who thereby reciprocate the care
given them as children.
Children are also the default persons to make end-of-life decisions
for their parents. While the elderly might transfer this duty to others, in
the absence of a spouse the children are the default respondents—and this
not through designation by the state, but simply by biological relatedness.
Likewise, children are the default recipients of the inheritance of
their parents. The state might tax this inheritance, but to take it away
entirely would be a confiscation of family property that would constitute a violation of family rights. Inheritance rules are not an unjustified
favoritism, but are meant to help guarantee the stability and survival of
the family and its persistence over time.35 Inheritance is therefore a right
of the family as such, and is independent from the persistence of the individuals (whose death is, after all, precisely the cause of the inheritance
case). The family has an identity that outlasts that of its constitutive individuals; it is a subject of rights that include the right of being sustained
by the property that is passed on through the generations.
Finally, the emotional bonds and the mutual trust that are generated by biological relatedness also constitute rights and obligations. A
33

Teachers have this right to educate by delegation from the parents only. According to
the Charter, art. 5, parents have the right to freely choose a school and remove their
children from classes conflicting with their moral and religious conviction.
34
This punishment is not retributive, but educational and therefore limited; as mentioned above, it does not include the death penalty. Teachers have a right to punishment by delegation from the parents only.
35
Charter, art. 9.

16

Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

first indication of this fact is that family members do not have to testify
against each other in court, because this would violate the fundamental
and important bonds of trust in the family.36 Also, detainees have a right
to remain in contact with their families (and care has to be taken that
the family is adequately sustained during the time of detention).37
Also, while emotional bonds cannot be generated on demand, they
are important for the healthy development of children. The family is the
irreplaceable source for such bonding and in this the most fundamental school and “language of peace.”38 In this sense, too, “man does not
live by bread alone,” and merely feeding children in large anonymous
communities (as perhaps Plato envisioned) is not enough. Again, this
constitutes a right of children to the presence of both parents, without
which they might never develop the necessary and basic human dispositions.39 For example, without the love of their parents and the trust
developing from it they will typically become incapable of any other
learning required from them in later life. For any learning requires a
minimum of trust in those from whom one is to learn. Not having had
the opportunity to learn this trust as a child will lead to a lack in this basic human disposition. Children cannot become “independent reasoners” (MacIntyre) unless they have been dependent reasoners first.
But such emotional bonds are not only important for children.
Children in turn are themselves a source of human development for
their parents, such as requiring responsible action from their side. Forgiveness and gratitude in both directions are arguably learned primarily
in family relationships. At one stage or another, the generations will be
dependent on each other, parents on their children, and children on
their parents. Family membership constitutes asymmetrical, chronolog-

36

A Chinese policy demanding public denunciation of family members is a clear violation of such a right. McNellis, “The Family and the Analogy of Gratitude,” 56.
37
Charter, art. 9d; likewise, neither immigration nor deportation must be allowed to
separate families permanently.
38
Benedict XVI, The Human Family, no. 3.
39
If this implies a right to know one’s parents, then Plato’s suggestion that children
should not know their father is a clear violation thereof. Children conceived by heterologous IVF are typically in search of their father—often with good reason, because unintentional incest has become possible. Further thought might be given to
the duty of the state in these matters.

The Rights of the Family

17

ically structured relationships of indebtedness that are fundamental to
human existence.
Apart from other considerations, this should also play a role in divorce laws. Here the rights of children might too often be neglected.
According to Allan Bloom, divorce is worse for children than the death
of their parents, because unlike death, divorce is voluntary. Children’s
experience is that, if human relations can be dissolved in this voluntary
manner, then why could they not be dissolved similarly between parents
and children? The threat of abandonment and the impossibility of trust
seem implied, even where divorce does not actually take place. This
threat affects children not merely emotionally, but on the level of their
very self-understanding. The philosopher Robert Spaemann points out
that children have to think of their father and mother as a unit in order
to understand their very own identity. They literally are the one flesh
union of their parents by combining their genetic material. And this
confirms once more that family relationships are irreducible; they even
constitute the basic identity of their individual members.
In conclusion, family rights are not derivative, but sui generis. The
family is a “society in its own original right.”40 Families are constituted not by contractual but by biological relationships of their members.
Children do not choose their parents any more than parents choose
their children. Families are not founded for the pursuit of a common
interest. They are a communion of persons who do not share a common
goal, but one another.
Families mediate between the state and the individual, and cannot
be deduced from either of these opposites. While the state and the individual cannot be deduced from the family either, the family can in turn
make both state and individual more intelligible than they would be in
themselves. Families display the fundamental human nature in its biological and relational roots—roots without which humanity would be
crippled. The family might be the prime analogate for what human community is, mediating individual and state, yet irreducible even to this
mediating function. One cannot derive the family from any other principle. One has to have seen and lived family life before one can know it.

N&V

40

Familiaris Consortio, no. 45, quoting Dignitatis Humanae, no. 5.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 19-27

19

Without Gloss:
Francis of Assisi and Western Catholicism
Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M., Cap.
Archbishop of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA

I WANT TO START WITH A SIMPLE STATEMENTof fact. All
Christian life is a paradox. What I mean is this.
In Isaiah 55, God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts
[higher] than your thoughts” (8–9). Then in the Gospel of Matthew,
Jesus tells his disciples, “You therefore must be perfect, [even] as your
heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48).
Scripture tells us that God is utterly different from us, vastly higher
than us. Then it tells us to become like him. Therein lies the paradox.
The task seems impossible. And yet we know it to be possible. We know
it through the witness of the saints. In Hebrew, God is called hakadosh,
“the Holy One,” with the word kadosh meaning holy. Our English word
“saint” derives from the Latin word sanctus, which means the same
thing: holy. Holy does not mean “good,” though holy people are always
good and often—though not always—nice. St. Jerome was certainly holy
and good, but “nice” might not be the first word that springs to mind in
remembering him.
Holy means “other than.” It means different from the world; set
apart from the profane; sacred. The saints are ordinary men and women—persons with every kind of talent, weakness and personality—who
took a different path, one step at a time, away from the routine hab-

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Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M., Cap.

its of the world. They fell in love with God. They followed him. They
conformed their lives to him in simple ways that became extraordinary
ways. And now their example and their intercession give us hope that
we can do the same.
I mention all this because my job here is to consider “St. Francis and
Western Catholicism.” And I want to do it by posing three questions:
Who is Francis, this pope? Who was Francis, the man of Assisi? And
after eight hundred years, what, if anything, can a man from the Middle
Ages teach us about being alive and free and human?
So first: Who is Francis, this pope? The short answer is, I do not
know. I am not sure anyone really knows yet, outside the Holy Father’s
friends and close coworkers. A number of Latin American bishops have
told me how different the pope now seems from his years as a bishop
in Argentina—much more outgoing and ebullient than they remember.
But these are their thoughts, not mine. I did have the privilege of working with him for a month in November and December 1997 when we
were both delegates to the Special Assembly for America in Rome. He
was an impressive man. He had a keen intelligence, a healthy realism
about the problems facing the Church in our hemisphere and a strong
emphasis on evangelization. But these are just anecdotes from a long
time ago.
I do think we can draw some conclusions from the example he already gives us. He has a deep sense of the continuity of the Church. The
respect he shows to Benedict, the Pope Emeritus, literally has no precedent. And his affection for Benedict clearly comes from the heart. On
April 27, 2014, he canonized two of his predecessors; the two greatest
men of the Second Vatican Council—Pope John XXIII, who had the vision and courage to convene it; and Pope John Paul II, who helped draft
some of its key documents and who embedded the meaning of Vatican
II in the life of the postconciliar Church.
John XXIII and John Paul II are perfectly paired in sainthood. In
canonizing them together, Pope Francis places them as bookends to one
of the central events in Catholic life since the Reformation. They were
untiring in their discipleship. Zealous in their love of God and God’s
people. And also thoroughly human in their complexity.
John XXIII saved Jews from the Holocaust as a Vatican diplomat.
He radiated warmth, humor and a concern for peace. He worked a rev-

Without Gloss: Francis of Assisi and Western Catholicism

21

olution in Catholic thought and life. And he also frowned on the worker-priest movement in France and forbade Catholics from voting for
the Communist Party. John Paul II helped bring down the Soviet bloc.
He worked vigorously for the purity of Catholic teaching. He defended
the rights of workers, the suffering and the unborn. And he was also a
profound shepherd of mercy—a message that runs through his whole
pontificate, from his encyclical “Rich in Mercy” to his placing Divine
Mercy Sunday on the universal Church calendar.
Pope Francis stands in this line of great recent popes. But in choosing the name “Francis,” he also makes himself distinct from it.
Until now, every pope of the last two hundred years—no matter
how gifted or how saintly—has been, in a sense, a prisoner of war. The
Church has centered herself in Europe. Every pope in recent history has
been a European. And the civil war for Europe’s soul that began before
the Enlightenment and ran through the bloodiest century in history—
the twentieth century—continues today in Europe’s denial of its Christian roots and its self-destroying battles over marriage, family, sexual
identity, and euthanasia.
Europe has exhausted itself. Europe has exhausted the world. And
so, when John Paul II called for a “new evangelization,” maybe he spoke
more prophetically than he could know. Maybe a genuinely new evangelization can never be achieved except by a new voice with a new spirit
from a new world. Pope Francis is no stranger to poverty or violence,
the plague of corrupt politics or the cruelty of human trafficking. But
neither is he a child of the Old World, with its cynicism and despair, its
wars and its hatreds.
Francis seems to be something different. He embodies a Christian spirit older than Europe’s civil war and younger than its fatigue
and loss of hope. He is a surprise; disarming, improbable, the kind of
man no one could have predicted—a surprise that keeps unfolding
into more surprises.
There is something stunning about a pope who—for the first time in
history—takes the icon of Christian simplicity and poverty as his namesake, and then tries to live like he means it. There is something exhilarating about a pope who worries about “Christians whose lives seem like

22

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M., Cap.

Lent without Easter.”1 Who warns that “an evangelizer must never look
like someone who has just come back from a funeral.”2 Or who takes a
detour in a teaching document to talk in plain language about the mechanics of a good homily.3
I asked above, Who is Francis, this pope? The answer is an anomaly.
He is a Jesuit with a Franciscan heart. What does that mean?
The early Jesuits played an immense role in the Counter-Reformation and the intellectual renewal of Catholic life. Their legacy goes well
beyond the Society of Jesus. It still helps to shape the life of the Church.
Our two previous popes—Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger—were
world-class, formidable minds by any secular standard.
But we live at a time when science, in the name of reason, seems to
undermine the credibility of reason itself. We live in a time that is not
just anti-ideological, but in many ways anti-intellectual. It is not that
people have forgotten how to think. Rather, too many of us think badly,
or just do not like thinking at all. We have no common body of beliefs
to inform our public logic and discourse. As Alasdair MacIntyre might
say, we are all emotivists now. And religion, when it is not portrayed as
a dangerous source of hatred, is cast instead as a kind of organized sentimentality; an outlet for pious good will.
Pope Francis is so intensely popular because he embodies what the
world imagines St. Francis was like: a mendicant and troubadour, not
a judge and not a scholar. The Holy Father clearly has a sophisticated
mind formed in the spirit of Ignatius. But what appeals to the world
about Pope Francis are his serenity and informality; his passionate embrace of the poor and the outcast; and his studied avoidance of condemning anyone.
Whether that popularity can last in the face of the pastoral challenges facing the Church is an issue for the future. How the Pope speaks
and acts over the next twenty months on matters like marriage, family
and sexuality—issues of burning interest to the media of the developed
world—will have a big impact on the way he is treated by the press. In
the end, popes lead. It is the nature of their ministry. And leaders inev1
2
3

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §6.
Ibid., §10.
Ibid., §§137–59.

Without Gloss: Francis of Assisi and Western Catholicism

23

itably displease somebody; sometimes a great many somebodies. But of
course the real St. Francis never turned away from a task simply because
it was hard.
That brings me to the second of the three questions I posed for this
essay: Who was Francis, the man of Assisi?
Francis Bernadone—born in 1181 or 1182, died 1226—has been
a magnet for pious stories almost since the day of his death. The wolf
of Gubbio is a legend—lovely, but not true. And there is no evidence
that the saint ever said, “preach the Gospel always; when necessary use
words.” And the famous Prayer of St. Francis—“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace”—dates only to 1912, when it appeared in La
Clochette, a small French spiritual magazine.
We do rightly remember Francis for his joy and freedom of spirit. These qualities deeply marked the man. And through the man, they
have left a lasting mark on Western Christianity. But there was a great
deal more to Francis than a gentle love of nature. A Capuchin friend of
mine once said that if the real Francis were alive today, quite a few moderns would see him as a religious crank. He was demanding on himself
and demanding on his brothers. Poverty, chastity, and obedience are
wonderful ideals when we read about them in the foggy past. Living
them is another matter. And Francis took his vows and the Rule of his
community utterly seriously. He expected his brothers to do the same.
Actually, Francis battled with his brothers quite often, especially
when they wanted to water down the inspiration that God had given
him. In the year 1221, just a few years after the Franciscan community
began, some three thousand friars gathered with Francis for a general
chapter. And the ministers—the brothers who led the community—
wanted to change the Rule. They wanted to modify it to the times, and
make it less demanding.
Francis fought that vigorously. He chose the following verse from
Scripture as the theme for his preaching that day: “Blessed be the Lord
my God, who trains my hands for war.” He spoke those words to his
brothers as he began his sermon. And he won the day. The Rule was
later modified anyway, but not that day, because Francis knew how to
fight zealously for what he believed was right. Like Mother Teresa and
so many other saints all through Church history, Francis was holy and

24

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M., Cap.

good and kind—but when it came to matters of faith and principle, he
was never soft.
The key to Francis was a kind of holy radicalism. He liked to say that
“the saints lived lives of heroic virtue, [but] we are satisfied to talk about
them.” Francis himself never felt satisfied with pious words. He wanted
to act on the things he believed. He called his brothers to live the Gospel with simplicity and honesty. And that is why he used the words sine
glossa—“without gloss”—in his Testament. He saw that the Gospel was
not complicated, but it was demanding and difficult. The theologians and
Church lawyers of his day had written commentaries called glosses. And
these glosses were very good at either explaining away the hard parts of
the Gospel, or diminishing our need to follow Christ’s demands. Francis
wanted none of that. He wanted to experience discipleship at its root.
Francis lived in an age of political confusion in Europe; a time of the
great, inhuman heresy of Catharism in France and Italy, and constant
warfare between Christians and Muslims around the Mediterranean.
It was also a time of deep corruption and clerical infidelity within the
Church. But the medicine Francis used against that corruption was a
witness of obedience, encouragement, reverence, and service—not rebellion. He knew instinctively that people are converted by love, not by
rejection or fear or anger.
In his biography of Francis, Augustine Thompson—the Dominican author—notes that Francis had a passionate devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. It was the heart of his life. The Mass was the grounding
for all his work. There is no way of reinterpreting Francis in generically
do-gooder or humanitarian terms. He had hard words for those who
oppressed the poor, but even harsher words for those who ignored the
Eucharistic presence. Francis had a special horror of
the cheap and tarnished chalices and filthy linens that [many
priests of his time] considered good enough for use in worship.
Francis’ sense of beauty and decency, which he had mortified
by choosing to live amid poverty and outcasts, had not been
deadened. Its object was no longer fine garments and meals for
himself, but items dedicated to the Lord who died for him.4
4

Augustine Thompson, O.P., Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

Without Gloss: Francis of Assisi and Western Catholicism

25

He goes on to say that Francis
demonstrated his devotion [to the Church] by kissing the hands
of any priest he met . . . He begged the brothers who met a priest
on horseback, especially one carrying the Blessed Sacrament, to
kiss the horse’s hooves rather than wait for the priest to dismount.
Francis wanted that ‘subjection to all’ which was so much a part
of his conversion, to be a lived reality among the brothers.
Again: Who was Francis, the man of Assisi? G. K. Chesterton, his other
great biographer, put it in these words:
St. Francis [was] a Lover. He was a Lover of God and he was
really and truly a Lover of men . . . [And] as St. Francis did
not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but
Christ . . . [To Francis] his religion was not a thing like a theory,
but a thing like a love affair . . . What gave him his extraordinary
personal power was this: that from the Pope to the beggar, from
the Sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into
those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis
Bernadone was really interested in him; in his own individual
inner life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being
valued and taken seriously and not being added to the spoils of
some social policy or the names in some clerical document.5
This is the love that the apostles must have seen when they looked into
the eyes of Jesus. It is the love, I suspect, that Pope Francis wants people
to see in the eyes of every Christian and in every element of Catholic life.
That brings us to the third and final question I posed here: After
eight hundred years, what, if anything, can a man from the Middle Ages
teach us about being alive and free and human? That term “Middle Ages”
is a curious one. It is implicitly negative. It consigns an entire civilization to a kind of trough between waves. And it fits perfectly with the
5

University Press, 2012), 61.
G. K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi, in St. Thomas Aquinas/St. Francis of Assisi (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 196–97, 266–67.

26

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M., Cap.

vanity, the ignorance, and the amnesia of the modern era—an era that
clings to its delusion that reason precludes religious faith, in the same
way drowning sailors grab for a life raft.
The philosopher Rémi Brague once wrote that “Christianity was
founded by people who could not have cared less about ‘Christian civilization.’ What mattered to them was Christ, and the reverberations of his
coming on the whole of human existence. Christians believed in Christ,
not in Christianity itself; they were Christians, not ‘Christianists.’”6
We need to remember that simple lesson. The Catholic faith is not
an ideology. It is a romance. It is a love affair with God. We are a people
who believe in Jesus Christ—not the ideas, but the person of Jesus Christ,
crucified and risen for our sake purely out of his love for us. And living
the Catholic faith should be an experience of gratitude and joy that flows
from a daily personal encounter with God’s son and a communal relationship with God’s people.
There is a reason the Church calls St. Francis the vir Catholicus,
the exemplary Catholic man. Francis understood that gratitude is the
beginning of joy, and that joy in this world is the aroma of heaven in
the next. He reveled in the debt he owed to God for the beauty of creation, for his friends and brothers, and for every gift and suffering that
came his way. He treasured his dependence on the love of others, and
returned their love with his own. He gave away all that he had in order to
gain the deepest kind of freedom—the freedom to pursue God, to share
God with others, and to experience life without encumbrance or fear.
Maybe the best thing we can do is to compare what we know about
Francis with the terrain of American life all around us—terrain we
adults, including we adults in the Church, helped to create. We worship
autonomy. We are jealous of our time and our privacy. Our economy
runs on a steady catechesis of entitlement and dissatisfaction. And billions are spent every year on a nonstop creation of one new appetite
after another. That is not living. That is not even really human.
A young married friend once quipped that having fun is to joy, as
having sex is to love—they ought to go together in a rightly ordered
way. And when they do, life is beautiful. But too often they just do not,
6

Rémi Brague, The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophical Explorations of Medieval
Christianity, Judaism and Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 21–22.

Without Gloss: Francis of Assisi and Western Catholicism

27

because fun and sex become things to take, things to consume. And joy
and love can only grow in a heart that gives.
Acquisitiveness makes us poorer and hungrier in the only things
that matter. In turning away from that kind of life, Francis became fully
alive; a man free to think and act without excuses, without compromise,
without glosses to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ more comfortable
and less liberating. Here is the point: We can make the same choices
Francis did, one person, one family, one Christian community at a time.
And if we do, that begins a revolution, the only kind that achieves anything that endures. Our continued interest in St. Francis is the proof.
Eight centuries after he died, here were are, still moved and still drawn
to the life of an Italian poor man in rags. So are millions of others.
Scripture says, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and
all these things shall be yours as well” (Mt 6:33). We need to consider
two simple questions: First, do we believe the Word of God or not? And
second, if we do believe, then what are we going to do about it? We
renew the witness of the Church, not with techniques or programs or
resources, but with the zeal and purity and obedience of our own lives.
That path leads to the kind of freedom and joy that no one could ever
take from Francis, and no one can ever take from us.
From the cross at San Damiano, Jesus said to Francis: “Repair my
house, which is falling into ruin.” Those same words are meant for every
Christian life and home and parish. How we respond is up to us. N&V

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 29-37

29

St. Francis and Pope Francis1*
R. R. Reno
First Things
New York, NY

OUR WORLD IS TAKENby Pope Francis. I would guess that if we

were to stop one hundred random people on the street and ask them
about the Catholic Church, we would get a few thumbs up, but mostly ambivalence bordering on dislike or at least distrust. Indeed, some
are likely to express an articulate hostility. And yet, ask them about the
current pope, and, if my secular friends and relatives are any indication, I would venture the responses will be significantly more positive.
Whether the ugly body rust of the sex-abuse scandals or bitterness over
the Church’s intransigent refusal to conform the new consensus on sex,
marriage, and the family—or simply the general impulse in our society
to hit the mute button on religion—Catholicism generally rankles. By
contrast, the pope pleases and brings a smile.
This is so because our Jesuit pope has many Franciscan qualities
that arouse something deep within us. The original celebrity, Francis,
was and remains a central archetype in the Western spiritual imagination. When we see his form embodied, however imperfectly, however
partially, we tend to swoon, which is exactly what has happened. Here,
for example, are a few Franciscan parallels between St. Francis and Pope
Francis that may explain, at least in part, his general popularity.
As we marinate in irony, the direct bluntness and simplicity of St.
* This essay was originally delivered as a talk at the Catholic Center at New York
University at a conference on St. Francis sponsored by First Things and the
Thomistic Institute.

30

R. R. Reno

Francis bring us up short, and at the same time his compassion reassures
us that if we have the courage to show ourselves in our spiritual nakedness we will not be shamed, ridiculed or mocked. The current pope
represents to us something of this powerful combination of immediate,
unmediated demand and warm consolation. His famous “who I am to
judge” response to a question about homosexuality can be interpreted as
Franciscan in this way, especially when paired with his earlier remarks
as cardinal that gay marriage is “of the devil.” I would submit that it is
the Franciscan sense of his statement—the consolation of solidarity in
an atmosphere of heightened spiritual demands—that encourages many
liberal Catholics who, interestingly, do not believe he will change the
Church’s teaching. (This stands in contrast to the secular media, which
cannot see anything other than affirmation in any pastoral expression of
the enduring welcome of God’s forgiving love.)
Moreover and more importantly, St. Francis embodies the tremendous power of humility and renunciation—an alluring, bewitching
possibility in our age of grasping accumulation. From the moment of
his presentation to the world as newly elected, this pope’s many public
gestures have evoked the way of lowliness. His decision to wash the feet
of prisoners on his first Holy Thursday as pope provides an obvious example. But more powerful, I think, has been his renunciation of papal
isolation. Unique among major leaders, he moves through the world
without the thick security buffer that separates the Davos worthies from
everybody else.
And then there is a third Franciscan charism—unpredictability and
a general disregard for the mundane requirements of institutional continuity. Pope Francis manifests these qualities as well. It gives many secularists and liberals hope that he will toss over centuries of magisterial
teaching about the hot-button issues secularists and liberal care about,
which pretty much boil down to sex and erasing the male-female difference. It also gives people like me heartburn, just as St. Francis did many
centuries ago.
But I am becoming ad hoc, and perhaps a little ad hominem. Therefore I want to step back and probe more deeply the Franciscan archetype. It is about more than simplicity and compassion, much more than
foregoing a fancy Mercedes for a plain Jane Ford or being kind to animals. If we have a clearer picture of what makes St. Francis so import-

St. Francis and Pope Francis

31

ant in the Western spiritual imagination, we can return to Pope Francis
and ask two questions. First, what does Jorge Bergoglio’s unprecedented
choice of Francis as the name for his pontificate foretell about what he
discerns as the Church’s greatest need today? And, second, what does
it say about twenty-first-century America that we find a pope named
Francis so attractive?
Fr. Augustine Thompson has worked to distinguish the historical
Francis from the image of the saint that animates the popular imagination. In this essay, however, I want to stick with the Francis of faith
rather than the Francis of history. It is this figure that St. Bonaventure
presents in his Life of Saint Francis. There his identity has little to do
with the emerging mercantile culture of medieval Italy or the particulars
of life in Umbria. Instead, Bonaventure presents him as a “herald of gospel perfection.” This is so because St. Francis embodies two important
theological truths: poverty and literalism.
Poverty is a biblical motif we could say (rightly) that St. Francis
“owns” in the West. Bonaventure returns to this theme again and again.
The great saint is a lover of “holy poverty”; he embraces “sublime poverty,” queen of the virtues and root of perfection. “None was ever so
greedy of gold as he of poverty,” writes Bonaventure, “nor did any man
ever guard treasure more anxiously than he this Gospel pearl.” As Dante
describes, Francis weds himself to Lady Poverty, an image meant to draw
upon and transform Boethius’s description of Lady Wisdom. In Francis
we learn that matrimony to poverty is the surest path to God.
Bonaventure gives an extensive catalogue of St. Francis’s ever-renewed commitment to poverty. He declares it the foundation of his
order, insisting that his followers accept the most stringent conditions
rather than allow themselves to be seduced by the illusion that any degree of wealth is consistent with gospel purity. Bonaventure recounts an
incident on the road where St. Francis refused to pick up a purse full
of coins that his brethren wished to use to give to the poor, correctly
seeing it as a snare of the devil. When invited to dine with bishops, he
begs crusts of bread in advance of the meal. One Easter at an isolated
hermitage there were no neighbors to beg from, so St. Francis resorted
to asking his fellow friars for alms. In all things St. Francis took the way
of renunciation, always seeking self-emptying and dispossession rather
than possession.

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Poverty is closely connected to the second Franciscan motif, which
is literalism. The great saint’s spiritual imagination is no more richly
adorned than were his humble hermitages. Just as he stripped off life’s
softening luxuries, he removed anything that might soften God’s word.
His call first came in a dream. He saw himself among gathered soldiers
emblazoned with the sign of the Cross—and so he immediately presented himself to a local count to serve as a soldier. At this point, a divine
voice intervenes, telling him, in effect, that he should not be an idiot.
The dream was meant to be interpreted spiritually, not literally! And St.
Francis does exactly that. He sees that we cannot serve Christ unless we
achieve a victory over ourselves—and then redoubles his literalism by
immediately applying the teachings of Jesus to his life: “Take no gold,
nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two
tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff.” (It was only after receiving the stigmata
that St. Francis could be convinced to wear sandals, in this instance as a
humble hiding of the richness of divine grace.)
A similar literalism characterizes his response to a voice speaking to
him from the cross of Christ in the dilapidated Church of St. Damian. It
said, “Go and repair my House.” So he sets about to raise funds, triggering thereby the confrontation with his father that leads to his disinheritance, thus providing the divine inheritance of poverty and securing the
literal fulfillment of Jesus’s teaching that you will be hated by your mother and father for his sake. The bull-headed literalism of his response to
the divine voice brings him to an almost absurd state. Stripped of all
financial resources, he is reduced to carrying uncut stones to the church
to contribute to its rebuilding. Just so does Francis take on the form
of Christ most fully. The spiritual meaning of the Gospel is the literal
meaning of Christ’s way of the Cross.
The literalism of St. Francis and his poverty go together, as St.
Bonaventure makes clear in his carefully stylized account of how St.
Francis was called to follow Christ, received the charism of holy poverty,
and founded his order. This linkage is not simply a narrative one—the
fact that by trying to rebuild the churches near Assisi, St. Francis set in
motion the sequence of events that led to the confrontation with his father, dispossession, and recapitulation of Christ’s burden carrying love.
There is also an important conceptual link: both testify to the immedi-

St. Francis and Pope Francis

33

ate availability of obedience to God’s command. Put differently, both
demonstrate the real possibility of holiness.
It is easy for us to mock literalism as a plank in the fundamentalist platform. This is a mistake, for literalism encourages a disposition
toward the Word of God that prevents us from hiding in a self-generated fog. Some years ago I was with an academic friend. He is a game
theorist with a skeptical mind. He is also a conservative Protestant. As
he explained his work with a prison ministry in Texas, I found myself
somewhat surprised and asked him why he was involved. He looked at
me and said, “Well, more than a decade ago I realized that when Jesus
tells us to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and visit the prisoner, he
actually means it. And there are prisoners in Texas. So I signed up to
visit them.”
The literalism of St. Francis is like my friend’s—and it makes God’s
commands immediate. The same goes for his spiritual imagination more
broadly. St. Francis did not have a conceptual mind and did not think in
terms of kenosis or the “metaphysics of gift” or the notion of “cruciform
existence.” Instead, St. Francis interpreted what it means to be Christlike in a literal way. Again, Dante sees with clarity. In the Paradiso, Francis loses all the particularity of his life and become a pure allegory of
Christ. The theological insight is powerful: to be spiritualized, to be supernaturalized, is to become a perfect mirror of Christ, which means to
imitate and conform to him in a literal way. Put somewhat differently: in
St. Francis we see that the most spiritual reading of the passion narrative
is a literal one. Thus St. Francis is most fully “supernaturalized” when he
received the stigmata, the grace of the most literal possible conformity
to Christ on the cross.
The immediacy of poverty is easier to explain and in many ways
much more powerful. It is a spiritual ideal we can achieve in an instant—if we will but do so. Poverty requires no resources, no talents, no
achievements, no status, no family connections. Anyone can wed himself to Lady Poverty. Nothing stands in the way—except, of course, for
our unwillingness to take the way of renunciation. And because poverty
is the form Christ takes, to say that poverty is immediately accessible is
to say that a deep conformity to Christ is immediately accessible, which
is to say that a supernatural life in God is immediately accessible. As St.
Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans (paraphrasing somewhat), we do

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R. R. Reno

not need to wait around for just the right set of dogmas to be defined or
spiritual disciplines to be fine-tuned. No, as Moses teaches, “The word is
near you, on your lips and in your heart.”
When Jesus tells the rich young man that he must sell all his possession and give the money to the poor, the immediacy of literalism and
poverty come together. There is no ambiguity about the command—and
there is no impediment whatsoever to its being obeyed, no impediment,
that is, except for the greatest one, which is our ongoing acquiescence to,
even positive affirmation of, our bondage to sin and death. Moreover, it
is important to remember why Jesus commands the way of poverty to
the rich young man. It is for the sake of perfection, which is to say for
supernatural life in God.
The Franciscan interpretation of this parable sees the perfection obedience promises as conformity with Christ’s self-sacrificial love. We are
deified insofar as we are made Christ-like, insofar as we drink the cup he
drinks. By my reading of our tradition in the West, this interpretation
has become canonical, at least tacitly so. The most fundamental influence
of St. Francis has been to make poverty—a profoundly Cross-centered
mode of life—the paradigmatic Western mode of theosis. Instead of the
icon of the Pantocrator, in the West we fix upon what St. Bonaventure
describes as the superluminous darkness of the cross. For this reason, it
is the begging friar in his rude habit who becomes an indispensible aide
to contemplation. We are bewitched by St. Francis, because in him we see
the face of Christ.
Pope Francis is a Jesuit, not a Franciscan. Nevertheless, the name
he has chosen indicates that he wishes his pontificate to draw upon the
charism of St. Francis. (This is by no means at odds with the Jesuit tradition. St. Ignatius himself wished to imitate the heroic sanctity of St.
Francis.) This charism involves much more than making the poor the
focal point of concern, which is after all a perennial commitment of
the Church. Pope Francis consistently offers himself as a servant, not
a prince. This has been the trajectory of the papacy over the last generation or two. (One thinks of John XXIII’s refusal to be carried in St.
Peter’s on the papal throne, and John Paul I’s refusal of the papal crown.)
But with Pope Francis the renunciations of supereminence are more
emphatic. It was much reported that as the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires he rode to work on the bus. Since his election he has refused

St. Francis and Pope Francis

35

the papal apartment and Prada shoes. These are symbolic, of course, but
symbols matter. Recently, a Protestant friend spoke to me about a recent
meeting he attended in Rome. A papal audience was arranged. He was
moved by the fact that Francis asked the group of academics to pray for
him. My friend intuitively grasped the mendicant spirit of the request.
Pope Francis engages in a spiritual mode of begging.
Pope Francis also echoes St. Francis’s literalism. He is given to blunt,
spontaneous statements. His homiletical style is unadorned, and Evangelii
Gaudium, the recent apostolic exhortation, is straightforward. I cannot
imagine him embarking on a series of sermons of the sort that were as
intellectually ambitious as John Paul II’s on the theology of the body. Nor
can I see him writing theologically rich and evocative encyclicals, as did
Benedict. Pope Francis seems the vicar of simple Gospel truths simply
stated. And he often bears witness to them more eloquently in deed than
in speech—a good Franciscan tradition.
The unadorned style and rhetorical directness of Pope Francis is itself a mode of poverty. The Church has a rich intellectual tradition—
artistic, philosophical, and theological. But the current pope seems to
largely renounce its use, not for the sake of launching some sort of new
tradition, as many did after Vatican II—Rahner, Lonergan— but for the
sake of a kind of rhetorical poverty, a stripping-down of the Church’s witness to straightforward Gospel truths. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are
the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
I speculate, therefore, that Jorge Bergoglio’s choice of Francis reflects
his reading of the signs of the times. Put simply: the age of Christianity’s
reign over culture and society in the West has come to an end. Perhaps
we have a few small and pleasant fiefs. We can gather in places like the
Catholic Center at New York University: little Lichtensteins in the great
empire of the modern secular university. But for the most part we have
neither place nor voice. Whether we like it or not, we are impoverished.
In this context, the message of Pope Francis seems to speak against the
idea that we should form a robust counterculture. Instead, he seems
to envision the Church in a mendicant mode. Rather than building a
neo-scholastic redoubt, we are to bear witness in our poverty. Instead of
St. Benedict, we are to imitate St. Francis.
This is of course a false dichotomy. We need be able to give an account of the hope that is within us—and do so in articulate, intellec-

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R. R. Reno

tually sophisticated ways. But, as I have tried to show, the Franciscan
charism of poverty is one of immediacy. While we must surely renew
and rebuild the intellectual life of the Church, we can conform ourselves
to Christ right now. We can bear witness right now. There is nothing
about the poverty of our cultural dispossession and our intellectual
marginality that prevents us from saying, “The Lord is risen.” In fact, it
is perhaps easier.
What does it say about our age that the Franciscan gestures of Pope
Francis so enrapture people? Poverty has a perennial spiritual power. In
his account of the life of St. Francis, Bonaventure frequently draws attention to this. It seduces cardinals and tames wild beasts. It softens the
hearts of Saracens. That is true today as well. Pope Francis’s simplicity
romances the editors of the New York Times.
That said, perhaps our age has a special need for the Franciscan witness. We live in a paradoxical time of expansive possibilities combined
with a feeling that life is a long trudge toward a distant, inaccessible
goal. This contrasts with the leitmotif of Bonaventure’s life of St. Francis,
which is the nearness and immediacy. St. Francis needed only the will to
answer the divine call
Let me give two examples.
Although we are coddled to an unprecedented degree—warm, well
fed, entertained, ministered to by modern medicine—we are anxious
and fearful. Perhaps because we are aware of how much we have to lose,
our first impulses are toward self-protection, which we do through accumulation. When we are young, we build our resumes, accumulating
as many credentials as possible. Then we set out to accumulate wealth.
In all this, it is striking how much we think we need—and it is even
more striking how deeply we are motivated by fear. Getting a college
degree has become a “necessity.” We scramble for credentials that are
not so much stepping stones to a goal we aspire to as so many layers of
armor that will protect us from economic peril.
The habit of irony in our time is powerful cultural expression of this
impulse toward self-protection. Irony creates a safe distance between us
and our social contexts. It is a way of being with others without revealing oneself, a way of clothing one’s existential nakedness. “Whatever”
has become a dismissive gesture that insulates us from the emotional
dangers of disappointment.

St. Francis and Pope Francis

37

In any event, we feel trapped. In some sense, that has always been
true. Modern capitalism did not invent greed, and if our age is uniquely
preoccupied with accumulating wealth, it is because we have relaxed
our attitude toward honor and status, a fixation that enflamed men in
earlier centuries. Moreover, we are all pinioned by death. But our age
intuits something perverse about our current entrapment. Surrounded
by unprecedented wealth, we fear deprivation. In an age of hypercommunication, we fear revealing ourselves to others.
In this context of fear—and I want to emphasize that we are motivated by fear today much more than a grasping ambition—the pope’s
Franciscan qualities have a special resonance. The Holy Father’s gestures
of poverty and his blunt style remind us that what we desire—the joy
of genuine freedom and fullness of life—are right there for the taking.
They are immediately available. We need only say “yes” to Christ’s clear
N&V
words: “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 39-55

39

Saint Francis, the Catholic Church, and Islam
Carol and Philip Zaleski
Smith College
Northampton, MA

Part I: Francis and the Sultan

OF ALL SAINTS,Francis of Assisi is the most transparent and the

most opaque. His goodness, his generosity, his humility, his courage,
his troubadour heart and mind, invite us to rush toward him, trust him,
thank him, pray joyfully for his intercession. He is a man without guile,
and we respond to him with a newfound innocence of our own. This
is the transparency of which we speak. Yet at the core of Francis lies
a mystery. Every historian, theologian, novelist, playwright, and poet
who attempts to understand Il Poverello grinds to a halt before this terra incognita. This is not, as with Francis’s near-contemporary Dante,
the enigma of transcendent art, its sources or genius; nor is it, as with
our own near-contemporary Einstein, the parallel enigma of the origin
of profound insight into the natural order. It is a deeper, more vexing
mystery, one that Francis exhibits to the highest degree, and one that
each of us must address, embrace, make his or her own: the mystery
of holiness. What allowed this man, what could possibly allow anyone
born of man and woman, to be known—inaccurately, but we see what
is meant—as the Second Christ? How did it come to pass that this man
rebuilt the Church, rekindled the faith of millions, received the stigmata
upon his maculate flesh? These mysteries will never be and can never be
fully resolved, for they are intimately linked to the Mysteries of Christ
and his Cross. Thus Pius XI, in his 1926 encyclical, Rite Expiatis, quotes

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Carol and Philip Zaleski

approvingly the remark of one of Francis’s earliest biographers, Thomas of
Celano, that in “all [Francis’s] efforts, public as well as private, he turned to
the Cross of Our Lord, and from the moment he began to live as a soldier
of Christ, the divers mysteries of the Cross shone round about him.”1
This nimbus of mystery shines around many chapters in Francis’s
life. One such is the saint’s celebrated encounter with Sultan Al-Kamil
in 1219 AD, in the midst of the Fifth Crusade. About this encounter
little can be said with certainty, reminding us that one of the delightful
ironies of historical research is that events about which we possess few
or no details sometimes possess the greatest gravitas. This meeting of
Christian saint and Muslim head of state has been described and misdescribed, analyzed and misanalyzed in a torrent of books, essays, articles,
and speeches that shows no sign of abating. Our intention is to look at
this and other encounters between Christians and Muslims in order to
see what the Church and the ummah (the Islamic community) can learn
from them; for the future of these encounters, we believe, is of vital importance for the happiness of humankind.
In 1219, the year that saint met sultan, Francis was thirty-eight years
old. It was five years before he would receive the stigmata, seven years
before his death. Approved by Pope Innocent III in 1209, his Order was
flourishing, although he suffered mishaps galore while attempting to
spread his teaching abroad. He had been shipwrecked on the Dalmatian
Coast in 1211 en route to Jerusalem and two years later had fallen sick
while sailing to Morocco; in both cases he had been forced to return to
Italy. His 1219 trip to Egypt would prove, therefore, to be a watershed.
The other key figure in the celebrated encounter, Sultan al-Malik
al-Kamil Naser al-Din Abu al-Ma’ali Muhammed, may be unfamiliar
to many readers. A nephew of the great Saladin, Al-Kamil became sultan of Egypt in 1218, while the Fifth Crusade was in full flower. This
Crusade, initiated by Innocent III and his successor, Honorius III, harbored a high ambition: to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land, a goal
that required toppling the Ayyubid Dynasty in Egypt. The key to this, in
turn, was the seizure of the port city of Damietta, about 120 miles north

1

See http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_
enc_30041926_rite-expiatis_en.html.

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41

of Cairo. When al-Kamil became sultan, Damietta was already under
siege by armies from several European nations.
Al-Kamil was a skilled military strategist, but another side of his
character emerged as soon as he took the throne—that of a seeker of
peace. He extended several truce proposals to the Crusaders, most notably an offer to surrender Jerusalem in exchange for a European withdrawal from Damietta. These proposals were swiftly rebuffed by the
considerably less irenic Cardinal Pelagius, leader of the crusading army;
nevertheless, in 1229, ten years after Francis’s visit, al-Kamil would
achieve his greatest triumph for peace, a ten-year truce with Frederick II that remains a model of judicious balance, in which the Muslims
returned Jerusalem to the Crusaders while retaining possession of the
Temple Mount and its holy places, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Al-Kamil was also, and surely not incidentally, deeply interested in religion, as described by al-Maqrizi, a Muslim historian who
flourished two centuries later:
Al-Kamil much loved men of learning, preferring their society.
He was passionately addicted to listening to the traditions of
the Prophet. . . . He loved discussions with Muslim divines, and
had a number of curious problems on jurisprudence and grammar with which he would examine scholars, and those who answered rightly he advanced and gave them his favor.2
During the intense heat of August 1219, Francis arrived at Damietta, along with Brother Illuminato and other companions, having set
sail from the heel of Italy’s boot with a likely stopover in Rhodes. St.
Bonaventure, in a passage from his Major Legend of Francis, provides a
clue to Francis’s thoughts en route to Egypt. Francis, Bonaventure tells
us, saw two lambs and declared to Illuminato, “Trust in the Lord, brother, for the Gospel text is being fulfilled in us: Behold, I am sending you
forth like sheep in the midst of wolves.” What was his aim, in this extraordinary adventure? Almost certainly just what it appeared to be to
his contemporaries: the conversion of the “wolves,” as most Christians
2

Al-Maqrizi, A History of the Ayyubid Sultans of Egypt, trans. R. J. C. Broadhurst
(Boston: Twayne, 1980), 229.

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saw them—that is, the sultan and his court—perhaps mingled with desire for his own martyrdom. As Dante puts it in Paradiso XI: “In thirst
for martyrdom, he had preached Christ and them that followed Him
in the proud presence of the Sultan.” Franciscan sources emphasize the
desire for martyrdom, non-Franciscan sources the wish to convert.
Upon his arrival in Damietta, Francis was appalled by the cruelties of
the siege. Dominican scholar Augustine Thompson, author of a recent,
richly informative biography of Francis, believes that the sight awoke in
the friar “memories of his own traumatic military experiences.”3 Francis
began to rush about, first warning the Crusaders of impending doom
and then turning his attention to the Muslim enemy across the Nile,
petitioning Cardinal Pelagius to allow him to approach the sultan in
order to teach the ways of Christ. At first Pelagius refused the request,
either worried about Francis’s safety or concerned that al-Kamil would
mistake this private initiative as a state-authorized mission to negotiate
the siege. But Francis was a master at badgering others (in a most holy
way), and the Cardinal capitulated.
Soon after, Francis and Illuminato sailed, without armed escort,
across the Nile and into the enemy camp. Muslim soldiers surrounded
them, believing them to be deserters ready to convert to Islam. When
they realized their error, threats and manhandling ensued. Francis responded by shouting Soldan! Soldan!—“Sultan! Sultan!”—and the two
friars found themselves in the presence of al-Kamil.
We know little of what transpired during the meeting (or meetings,
as the encounter extended over several days); what we do know is based
upon second- or third- hand evidence presented by Bonaventure, by
Jacques de Vitry, a French historian and bishop, later a cardinal, who
was present at Damietta, and by more remotely placed medieval chroniclers. Sifting the sources, it is difficult to discern whether al-Kamil initially saw Francis as a potential convert or as a political agent in disguise.
Francis, however, made it clear from the start that he was in Egypt to
preach the Lord and thereby convert the sultan. Al-Kamil predictably
summoned his theologians; Francis helpfully offered to be decapitated
if he failed to convert them as well as the sultan. Needless to say, he
3

Augustine Thompson, O.P., Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2012), 67.

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43

failed; al-Kamil and his mutakallimun (scholars of kalaam, the science
of theological discussion), seasoned and devout Muslims one and all,
were no more likely to be persuaded of the truth of Christianity under
these conditions than Francis was likely to be converted to Islam. The
mutakallimun considered the friar an advocate of shirk (polytheism)
and recommended immediate execution. Thankfully, the sultan stayed
his hand.
Instead, he and Francis engaged in a discussion that lasted a few
more days and that, at least at first glance, led nowhere. At one stage
in the proceedings, according to Bonaventure—a careful researcher
who sought out eyewitnesses and who may have heard this particular
tale first hand from Illuminato—Francis offered to undergo a trial by
fire, during which he and the Muslim religious authorities would walk
through a conflagration, “so that you will recognize,” as Francis put it,
“which faith deserves to be held as the holier and more certain.”4 When
the sultan declined this proposal, explaining that the mutakallimun
would prefer other approaches, Francis offered to try the flames alone,
declaring that if he suffered burns, it would be suitable punishment for
his sins, but if he came through unscathed, the sultan must acknowledge
Christ as God and Savior. Al-Kamil rejected this as well, pleading fear
of an unruly response by his subjects; he may also have been unwilling
to see the little friar killed in what he surely perceived as a futile gesture.
Augustine Thompson rejects the authenticity of this episode, both because he believes it does not match Francis’s character and because he
rejects all such events not found in contemporary records. We must bear
in mind, however, that Bonaventure, while not a contemporary of Francis, interviewed for his biography many who knew Francis well, that
ordeals by fire were well attested in twelfth-century Italy, and that, as
French medievalist André Vauchez points out, Francis would have been
aware of the Old Testament Canticle of the three children in the furnace
protected from the flames by divine intervention. In any event, the sultan closed the conversation, pressing upon Francis and Illuminato gold
and silver gifts. Francis, ever in love with Lady Poverty, explained that he
4

St. Bonaventure, “The Life of St. Francis,” in Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into
God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, trans. and ed. Ewert Cousins (New York:
Paulist Press, 1978), 270.

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would accept only food. He and Illuminato then returned to the Christian side of the Nile, Damietta fell to the crusaders, a ghastly sack of the
city ensued, and appalled by the violence, Francis quit Egypt for Syria.
This remarkable encounter has given rise to an array of strange,
sometimes comical, interpretations. Thus we have Jacques de Vitry in
1226, just seven years after the encounter, painting a portrait of a vicious sultan charmed into submission by an angelic friar; the portrait
of Francis rings true, but that of al-Kamil is clumsy propaganda. Leaping forward to the twentieth century, we find that historical accuracy is
still in arrears, as witnessed by the following nonsense from Idries Shah,
renowned Sufi, bestselling author, and spiritual mentor of Nobel Prize–
winning novelist Doris Lessing: Shah informs us that from his youth,
Francis “was connected with the Sufis,” that he visited Egypt not to convert the sultan but to explore his Sufi roots, that in the Muslim court
“he found what he was looking for,” that as a result “the atmosphere and
setting of the Franciscan Order is closer to a dervish organization than
anything else,” and that Francis’s vision of the six-winged seraph is, in
reality, a Sufi allegory!5 In a more sober analysis, some modern historians have argued that Francis was indeed, as al-Kamil suspected, on a
secret mission to negotiate peace with the Egyptian forces. There may
be a grain of truth in this admittedly speculative assessment, for Francis,
as we know, always preached peace. In the prologue to his Mind’s Journey to God, Bonaventure reminds us that “at the beginning and end of
every sermon [Francis] announced peace; in every greeting he wished
for peace; in every contemplation he sighed for ecstatic peace.”6 Nonetheless, there is no evidence that Francis opposed the Crusaders’ aims;
indeed, as Thompson points out, Francis never discusses war in his writings. For the holy friar, the way to peace ran not through political manipulations but through Christ, the Prince of Peace; we may conclude,
therefore, that the best evidence continues to support the belief of most
historians that Francis visited the sultan in order to usher him and his
court, through conversion, into the realm of the Prince of Peace.
This understanding receives additional support from an important
5
6

Idries Shah, The Sufis (New York: Anchor Books, 1971), 257–65.
St. Bonaventure, Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey Into God, The Tree of Life, The Life
of St. Francis, trans. and ed. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 53.

St. Francis, the Catholic Church, and Islam

45

passage in Francis’s Earlier Rule, completed by 1221, shortly after his
visit to Egypt. In chapter 16, Francis describes his recommendations
for missionaries to the Muslims (whom he calls “Saracens”) and other non-Christians (whom he calls “nonbelievers”). He begins with the
same words of Jesus from Matthew 10:16 that he voiced while sailing
to Damietta, “Behold I am sending you forth like sheep in the midst of
wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Francis
then delineates two—and only two—ways for Christians to live “spiritually” among those of other faiths. The first is to dwell among them as professed Christians, bearing witness to the Faith, yet without “arguments
or disputes.” The missionary must be, as St. Peter wrote in his first letter,
“subject to every human creature for God’s sake.”7 We may recognize
this as the method adopted many centuries later by Blessed Charles de
Foucauld. The second method described by Francis is for Christians to
go among nonbelievers as proselytizers, declaring the word of God and
the necessity of baptism. This is the method that Francis employed with
the sultan. In one sense it failed, for no conversion resulted. What lesson
should we draw from this? That Christians should no longer preach the
Gospel or make disciples of all nations or baptize in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? That all efforts at active conversion
are off the table? As the most famous Christian convert of all (St. Paul)
declares with rhythmic regularity in his greatest and most famous letter,
“God forbid!” Preaching Christ is incumbent upon all Christians—just
as the invitation (da’wah) to Islam is incumbent upon all Muslims.
We may uncover the true lesson of Francis’s mission by examining
the ways in which it succeeded. Above all, we should note Francis’s adherence to the divine admonition to be wise as a serpent, harmless as
a dove. Such was his behavior from start to finish, even if we wish that
he had been less extravagant in a few of his tactical gambits. As a result of his caution—an expression of his love—there was no bloodshed,
no bitterness during the encounter. He never attacked Muhammad, the
sultan, or the mutakallimun; it has been often observed that throughout
his life, Francis never spoke ill of any man. While in Egypt he exhibited
7

Francis of Assisi, “The Earlier Rule,” in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1: The
Saint, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap., et al. (New York: New City Press, 1999),
74–75.

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Carol and Philip Zaleski

genuine tact and palpable purity of heart, qualities that induced the sultan to recognize his strange visitor as a holy man. Francis made a lasting
impression, too, on the sultan’s advisors, so much so that one of them,
the jurist Fakhr ad-Din al-Farisi, has the famous encounter memorialized upon his tombstone.
In describing Francis’s excellences, it is important to note that the
sultan, too, was wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove. Al-Kamil surely knew and treasured the great hadiths on kindness and generosity of
spirit, of which the following are characteristic:
Allah is kind and loves kindness and gives for gentleness what
he does not give for harshness nor for anything else.
Do you know what is better than charity and fasting and prayer?
It is keeping peace and good relations between people, as quarrels and bad feelings destroy mankind.
These principles of mutual respect and courtesy—grounded, as we shall
see, in a shared understanding of the human being as a creature dependent upon God for his very being—had played, in fact, an important role
in earlier Christian-Islamic encounters. A long tradition of majalis—sessions of the caliph’s court, devoted, among other matters, to religious dialogue between Muslims and representatives of other religions, can be
traced back to the second Islamic century (the eighth century AD). We
possess numerous accounts of these interfaith gatherings; most are literary fictions, but two appear to be authentic. The first recounts the meeting of Catholicos Timothy I, patriarch of the East Syrian Church, and
al-Mahdi, the third Abbasid caliph, in Baghdad in 781 or 782 AD, just a
century and a half after the death of Muhammad; the second describes
the encounter of Bishop Elias bar Shinaya of Nisibis with Vizier Abu
l-Qasim in southeastern Turkey in AD 1026–27. These two majalis encompassed discussion of most Christian-Muslim flash points, including
prophetology, the nature of the Qur’an, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity,
and so on. What strikes one immediately is the unfailing courtesy, sincerity, and goodwill of the participants. When Timothy meets al-Mahdi,
the caliph tells him that “if you accepted Muhammad as a prophet, your

St. Francis, the Catholic Church, and Islam

47

words would be beautiful and their meaning fine,” to which Timothy declares that Muhammad “deserves the praise of all reasonable men because his walk was on the way of the prophets and of the lovers of God,”
and that the Prophet led “his community away from evil and [drew]
them to what is right and virtuous.” The encounter between Bishop Elias
and the vizier is even more heartening, for during this meeting—two
centuries before Francis met the sultan—the two men adumbrate some
tentative ground rules for successful Muslim-Christian dialogue. Elias
tells the vizier that “if [your] purpose in this talk is the knowledge of our
doctrine and acquitting us of the ugliness that is attributed to us, I will set
forth what I have. But if the purpose is disputation and debate, I ask [you]
to excuse me from it.” To this the vizier responds, “I believe that every
Christian is a successful praise-worthy monotheist, even if he does not
acknowledge the prophethood of Muhammad. And the only condition
of inquiry is a thorough examination of the question and of the counter
position. So attribute what comes from me in reply to sincerity and to no
other motive.”8 Sincerity here is used in the sense detailed a century later
by al-Ghazali in his magisterial Revival of the Religious Sciences:
Action without intention is drudgery, whereas intention without sincerity is ostentation. . . . Sincerity without truthfulness
and exactitude is but a scatter of dust.
This teaching, in turn, is beautifully condensed in the following hadith:
“God says ‘Sincerity is one of My secrets, which I consign to the heart of
the servant I love.’”
It is this sincerity of heart that Francis perceived in the sultan and
the sultan in Francis, and that has come, thank God, to inform and
inspire the best of Christian-Muslim dialogue today. The chief representative of this approach during the past hundred years was the great
French scholar of Islam Louis Massignon (1883–1962), a friend of
Blessed Charles de Foucauld, a brilliant authority on early Islam and
Sufism, in particular al-Hallaj, and a devotee of the Blessed Virgin, who
8

For a superb account of these and other majalis, see Sidney H. Griffith, “The Monk
in the Emir’s Majlis: Reflections on a Popular Genre of Christian Literary Apologetics in Arabic in the Early Islamic Period,” in The Majalis: Interreligious Encounters in
Medieval Islam, ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 13–65.

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in 1931 became a Franciscan tertiary, taking the name Ibrahim. This
name is a key to Massignon’s perspective on Christian-Muslim dialogue,
for he was convinced that recognition by Christians and Muslims of a
common spiritual descent from Abraham would lay the foundation for
peaceful solutions to conflicts that plagued North Africa and the Middle East in his time and continue to do so today. Reasons abound, as we
discuss below, to question his presentation of Abrahamic consanguinity;
nonetheless, the ardor, beauty, and scholarly integrity of his Christian
love for Islam remain exemplary.
During February 1934, along with Mary Kahil, a Melkite Christian,
Massignon visited Damietta. The two pilgrims knelt in prayer before
the altar of the abandoned Franciscan Church, on or near the site where
Francis and the sultan had talked seven centuries before. There Massignon and Kahil vowed to form an intercessory fellowship, which they
called by the Arabic name of badaliya (substitution), pledging to enter
as far as possible into the inner life of Islam. In addition to offering aid to
those in need, they prayed, in a most audacious request, to be allowed to
take on the suffering of their Muslim neighbors. This was an extraordinary sacrificial act, based upon the principle of witnessing without proselytizing. A few months later, the fellowship received the blessing of Pius
XI. In time, Massignon’s views on Islam spread through much of the
Catholic hierarchy, deeply affecting the thought of Cardinal Montini,
the future Paul VI, and profoundly influencing the generous approach
to Islam as an Abrahamic religion in major documents of Vatican II, in
particular Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate.
Part II: The Church and Islam: Recent Developments
Let us now look at these two critical documents, in order to determine
what they say—and what they do not say—about the Church and Islam.
Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, promulgated on November 21, 1964, by Pope Paul VI, begins, as the title suggests,
with Christ the “Light of the Nations”; and in exploring the mystery
of the Church that Christ founded, it seeks to relate those outside the
Church to those within her fold, describing them in a series of concentric circles. Closest to the center is the Jewish people, a people “most
dear to God”—“for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the

St. Francis, the Catholic Church, and Islam

49

calls He issues.”9 The next circle belongs to those who acknowledge the
Creator, foremost among them “the Muslims, who, professing to hold
the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God,
who on the last day will judge mankind.”10 In a yet more remote circle
stand all “those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for
it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour
wills that all men be saved” and those who through no fault of their own
are not aware that they seek God.11
A year later, Paul VI promulgated Nostra Aetate (“In Our Age”), the
Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, affirming that “the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true
and holy” in all the world’s religions and expressing esteem for Muslims
for the special reason that “they adore the one God, living and subsisting
in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,
who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to
even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of
Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.”12
Monotheism and Abraham are the two main points of connection
mentioned by Nostra Aetate. But there is more: Muslims revere Jesus as a
prophet, honor his virgin Mother, await the Resurrection and judgment
of the dead, strive to live morally, and serve God with prayer and disciplined self-sacrifice. Above all, Nostra Aetate tells us, “this sacred synod
urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all
mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.”13
These words, as Benedict XVI put it in an address to Muslims in Cologne, amount to a Magna Carta for the Church’s dialogue with Islam.
Like the Magna Carta, Nostra Aetate charts a new direction. We are to
begin anew, forgetting the past—one hears an echo of St. Paul “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (Phil
3)—and working together for the common good. Like the Magna Carta,
9

Lumen Gentium §16.
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Nostra Aetate §§2, 3.
13
Ibid., §3.
10

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Carol and Philip Zaleski

Nostra Aetate does not legislate, it only reorients. It does not minimize
the differences between Christianity and Islam. It does not even mention, let alone interpret, the Qur’an or the Prophet Muhammad. Instead,
Nostra Aetate shifts our focus to the exemplary lives of the millions of
Muslims with whom we share our planet.14
In this respect, Nostra Aetate reflects the open-endedness of a council convened to regain the Church’s voice and vision for the modern
world rather than to answer a particular disputed question. Pope Benedict, who had been one of the periti during the heady days of the council, came to think, as he said in a candid reflection on Nostra Aetate
two years ago, that “in the process of active reception, a weakness of
this otherwise extraordinary text has gradually emerged: it speaks of
religion solely in a positive way and it disregards the sick and distorted
forms of religion which, from the historical and theological viewpoints,
are of far-reaching importance.”15 In other words, Benedict cautions, it
is possible to read Nostra Aetate as if it were a charter to abandon judgments where religion is concerned.
For example, some Christians, perhaps under the inspiration of
Massignon, have become rather giddy about the idea of Abrahamic religions. If we share the faith of Abraham, the thinking goes, why bother about the details? Abraham is the model of hospitality toward the
stranger, the other, the angel in disguise; we can emulate this hospitality
by tracing our family tree back to Abraham and fostering a common
Abrahamic creed: the creed of the hanif, or natural monotheist. As children of Abraham, conscious of the inadequacy of all humanly constructed images of God, we should wear our theological commitments lightly.
Hans Küng and his former pupil and younger colleague at Tübingen
Karl-Josef Kuschel have called this program “Abrahamic ecumenism.”16
The problem with the notion of Abrahamic ecumenism is that we
are not one household of faith (as the word ecumenism would imply).
14

See the discussion by Daniel Madigan, “Nostra Aetate and the Questions It Chose to
Leave Open,” Gregorianum 87, no. 4 (2006): 781–96.
15
“It Was a Splendid Day, Pope Benedict Recalls,” L’Osservatore Romano, October 11,
2012, http://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/it-was-a-splendid-day-benedictxvi-recalls#.U4k6DfldV8E.
16
See the discussion by Reformed theologian Cornelis (Kees) van der Kooi, “Towards
an Abrahamic Ecumenism?” Acta Theologica 32, no. 2 (2012): 240–53.

St. Francis, the Catholic Church, and Islam

51

And though we share Abraham, we do not agree on his significance,
as Jon D. Levenson has convincingly shown in in his masterful study
Inheriting Abraham: the Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. Summing up his argument informally in an essay for The
Jewish Review of Books, Levenson borrowed a line from George Bernard
Shaw: “if ‘England and America are two countries separated by a common language,’ then Judaism and Christianity are two religions separated by a common Abraham.”17 Far more then, are Jews and Christians
separated from Islam by our vision of Abraham.
Why separated by Abraham? Because for Islam, Abraham is essentially a Muslim prophet, a destroyer of idols who with his beloved son
Ishmael rebuilt the Ka’aba as God’s house on earth. The points of connection to the Abraham of Genesis are fascinating, but Islamic tradition
holds that Abraham’s true history and identity are as much obscured as
they are revealed by the Genesis account.
We are also separated by a common Jesus: Jesus seen through Muslim eyes is the son of the Virgin Mary, not the Son of God; the bringer of
the Gospel, not its one great Subject; he was persecuted for his prophesy
but not crucified;18 he is expected at the end of time but is not the true
End for which creation longs. Honest dialogue with Muslims must necessarily bring out these differences, and they are far from trivial.
By the same token, honest dialogue means, for Christians, a fuller
appreciation of who Muhammad is for Islam. There have been Christians, as far back as the Enlightenment, who professed admiration for
Muhammad as a preacher of natural theology; they read the early suras
of the Qur’an as a lyrical restatement of the design argument, a pure
monotheism of the desert, free from the Church’s suffocating thicket
of doctrines and rites. But the Muhammad of Islamic tradition is far
more interesting. Tradition characterizes him as the perfect man: a devoted husband and father, exemplary in his conduct of business, defender of widows and orphans, ideal statesman and judge. More exalted
still, Muhammad is the man of light, created in the beginning from the
17

Jon D. Levenson, “The Idea of Abrahamic Religions: A Qualified Dissent,” Jewish Review of Books, Spring 2010, http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/244/
the-idea-of-abrahamic-religions-a-qualified-dissent/.
18
Gabriel Said Reynolds, “The Muslim Jesus: Dead or Alive?” Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 72, no. 2 (2009): 237–58.

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Carol and Philip Zaleski

primordial light, so full of that light that he cast no shadow.19 The light
that shone through the previous prophets from Adam to Moses to Jesus
was but a partial reflection of Muhammad’s own radiance. The miracles associated with the Prophet’s career were subordinate only to the
miracle of the Qur’an itself; Muhammad commanded the trees to bend
in prayer, he ascended to heaven to receive his divine commission, he
will intercede for his community on the last day, he is the final prophet, the seal of the prophets, and the only messenger to transmit God’s
words without distortion. In every way he is the “beautiful model,”
whose words and deeds, habits and customs (sunna), transmitted by the
authorized hadith literature, form the foundation of Islamic ethics and
etiquette, jurisprudence and spiritual life. One can no more understand
Islam without the traditional biographies and saying sources than one
can understand Judaism without the Talmud or Christianity without the
Fathers and the Councils.
We are also divided by a common monotheism. The beauty and
power of the monotheism of the Qur’an is its confession of God’s majestic transcendence—and the response of communal adoration this confession elicits. The beauty and power of the monotheism of the Gospel is
its message of divine humility, of the Son who emptied himself and took
on the form of a slave; of the “hands that had made the sun and stars” yet
“were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle”; of Christ crucified
and risen; of humanity ruined and redeemed. As St. John Paul II observed in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, not all monotheisms are alike:
Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are
given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel,
God with us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no
room for the Cross and the Resurrection. Jesus is mentioned,
but only as a prophet who prepares for the last prophet, Muhammad. There is also mention of Mary, His Virgin Mother, but
the tragedy of redemption is completely absent. For this reason
19

See Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration
of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1985), for a rich survey of traditional literary and devotional expressions of esteem
for the Prophet.

St. Francis, the Catholic Church, and Islam

53

not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very
distant from Christianity.20
To Muslims we are hardly recognizable as monotheists when we confess
our faith in the Communion of Persons in the Blessed Trinity. When we
speak of the “wonderful exchange” by which we gave Christ the power
to die, our words must seem strange, if not shocking. Similarly, it is a
challenge for our Muslim friends to convey the depth of their veneration
of the Prophet to us, or to open to us what would otherwise be the sealed
letter of Divine love received by so many Muslim saints and mystics—in
the light of which the claim that the God of Islam is “never Emmanuel,
God with us” needs to be rethought. But if we are truly friends, we can
meet this challenge.
This is the point of Nostra Aetate. There is all the difference in the
world between learning abstract facts about another person’s religion
and looking at the world as seen through another person’s eyes. When
we look at the world through another’s eyes, we find a new point of
departure: neither polemics about what divides us nor platitudes about
what unites us.
What does the world look like as seen through the eyes of Muslims?
It looks like a gift. And we are in no doubt as to the giver, for his signature
is everywhere. Wherever we look there are signs, ayat, of God’s power
and sovereignty. Thus Sura 56 (Al-Waqi’a, “That Which Is Coming”):
Consider the seeds you sow in the ground—is it you who make
them grow or We? . . . . Consider the water you drink—was
it you who brought it down from the rain-cloud or We? . . . .
Consider the fire you kindle—is it you who make the wood for
it grow or We? We made it a reminder, and useful to those who
kindle it, so glorify the name of your Lord.21
What does my own life look like? That, too, a sheer gift. Christians and
Muslims differ in many crucial points of theological anthropology, but
20

John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994):
92–93.
21
M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, trans., The Qur’an (New York: Oxford University Press,
2005), 357.

Carol and Philip Zaleski

54

we have at least this much in common: we know that we are creatures.
We know this, perhaps, even before we truly know that there is a God.
We are made out of dust, or similar lowly stuff—a blood clot, a drop
of semen, a clinging form, a clump of cells, a bit of clay; and the dust
itself is made, theologians tell us, out of nothing. To be a creature is to
be marked by contingency, by fragility, by near-nonentity. Though we
possess an immaterial soul, we are not the source or support of our own
existence. Compared to God, all creatures—humans, angels, animals,
jinn—are almost unreal. God alone is real, al-Haqq. “What is man that
thou are mindful of him?” (Ps 8:4).
Yet that is not the whole story. We are dust with dignity. The Scriptures, both Bible and Qur’an, after reducing human beings to dust, turn
around and attribute to humankind a dignity surpassing even angels:
“Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with
glory and honor” (Ps 8:5). Hence, in the Quranic account of the creation
of Adam, God commands the angels to prostrate themselves before a
creature that by all indications occupies a lower rung on the scale of
being; and the refusal of Iblis (the Devil) to submit to this command is
the moment of his arch-rebellion and fall:
We said to the angels, “Bow down before Adam,” and they did.
But not Iblis: he was not one of those who bowed down. God said,
“What prevented you from bowing down as I commanded you?”
and he said, “I am better than him: You created me from fire and
him from clay.” God said, “Get down from here! This is no place
for your arrogance” Sura 7 (Sura Al-A‘raf, “The Heights”).22
We are dust, or clay, made for a purpose; we possess a dignity beyond our wildest dreams, not because of some irreducible excellence,
but because we have an Author who gives us a share, apportioned to
our nature, of existence, rationality, and love. To be a creature is to live
in hope that the God who made us will remake us; that when the story of our life is over, we will see him as He is and become who we are.
Gaudium et Spes tells us that “When God is forgotten . . . the creature

22

Ibid., 94–95.

St. Francis, the Catholic Church, and Islam

55

itself grows unintelligible.”23 By the same token, when creaturehood is
remembered, God and humanity draw near.
We believe that this shared vision of our creaturehood (more than a
vision, really, for all of us feel it in our bones) has practical implications.
It is a fundamental common ground, not one that requires theological concessions; and it places Christians and Muslims, in the context of
secular societies, on the same side of a host of moral and social issues.
From our creature consciousness comes a certain ethic and aesthetic of
adoration, embodied in the beautiful act of prostration, which takes the
breath away whether one witnesses it in the daily prayer of Muslims, or
in the solemn rites of Christian ordination and consecration to religious
life. From our creature consciousness comes a sense of modesty. From
our creature consciousness comes an instinct for repentance, and a repertoire of penitential disciplines to direct that impulse and correct morbid exaggerations. From our creature consciousness comes an awareness of death and a concomitant commitment to cherish the life of the
unborn, the elderly, and the disabled. Our common ground is imperfect
and often fraught, but our opportunities to make common cause, in a
world that has lost its sense of creaturehood, are inexhaustible.
Creaturehood is, of course, the great theme of St. Francis; his hymn,
the Laudes Creaturarum, popularly known as the “Canticle of the Sun,”
has its roots in the Laudate Psalms—especially Psalm 148—and the
Benedicite Canticle (the Song of the Three Children in Dn 3: 52-88).
Far from being a sentimental paean to our animal friends, the Canticle
of the Sun calls upon creatures to praise their Creator; far from treating
all creatures as equivalent, they suggest that each creature is designed to
praise the Creator according to its own gifts. It is the exultant humility
of il Poverello, his penitent joy in honoring God—rather than his quixotic mission to convert the Sultan—that makes Francis the paradigmatic
N&V
figure for dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

23

Gaudium et Spes §36.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 57-86

57

In the Name of Jesus Christ: A Few Historical
Perspectives on the Functioning of Authority in
Biblical Interpretation
Timothy Bellamah, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

IN HIS RECENT STUDY“Ecclesial Exegesis and Ecclesial Authority,”
Matthew Levering explores the fascinating relationship between biblical
interpretation and ecclesiology, that is, how perspectives on the Church
and ecclesial authority affect biblical interpretation and vice versa. By
comparing the exegetical models of two notable contemporary biblical
scholars, Brevard Childs and Stephen Fowl, with that of a medieval one,
Thomas Aquinas, he argues persuasively that the work of the last may
serve in our time to show what it means to participate in ecclesially mediated “divine doctrina.” Levering observes that while both Childs and
Fowl find much to admire in Aquinas’s approach to Scripture, both find
him insufficiently critical, the former faulting his seemingly eisegetical
employment of theological and philosophical authorities, and the latter
criticizing his apparent oversight of alleged shortcomings in the institutional Church’s interpretation. Levering, by contrast, finds Aquinas exemplary both for his actual exegetical practice and his interpretation of
ecclesial authority.1 The causes of this disagreement are surely too complex for an adequate accounting here, but one matter is conspicuous,
namely, the lack of a common understanding of the concept of author1

Matthew Levering, “Ecclesial Exegesis and Ecclesial Authority: Childs, Fowl, and
Aquinas,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 407–67.

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Timothy Bellamah, O.P.

ity, particularly ecclesial authority. Whereas Childs and Fowl tend to be
suspicious of its compatibility with divine revelation, Levering does not
hesitate to declare its mediation of Christ’s authority in the world.2
In a recent essay on ecclesial authority, Nicholas Lash draws attention to the interesting ambiguity of the concept of instruction, and describes the difference between instruction as education and instruction
as command. Noting the importance of avoiding confusion of the two
senses, he goes on to say that it is more important to avoid subordinating the former to the latter.3 This is well and good, but Lash’s article
seems to take for granted a narrow understanding of ecclesial authority,
suggesting that it is merely an instrument of governance, separate from,
if not opposed to, the Church’s teaching activity.4
What follows is intended to complement Levering’s inquiry by surveying the complex provenance and development of the concept of authority in the Church’s exegetical tradition. This will be for the sake of
showing that Aquinas’s understanding of ecclesial mediation of sacred
teaching is more easily clarified if explained by way of the Roman concept of auctoritas, as appropriated by the Church’s exegetical tradition,
than by the modern English term “authority.” Further, this will allow us
better to appreciate the Church’s own understanding of her mediation of
divine revelation, as expressed in Dei Verbum.
To see that the Latin and English terms are not always interchangeable we need look no further than the Vatican’s official English translation of the aforesaid document. Dei Verbum § 10 describes the Church’s
authority in the interpretation of Scripture as follows:

2

“A richer metaphysical account of the reality depicted in Scripture would avoid this
clash of competing agents and do justice to how the Church both is and is not the
kingdom, and thus how the visible Church does, and does not, embody and mediate
Christ’s authority in the world.” Ibid., 428.
3
Nicholas Lash, “Teaching or Commanding: When Bishops Instruct the Faithful,”
America, December 13, 2010, 17–20.
4
“Nowhere in ‘The Splendor of Truth’ does John Paul II discuss disagreement in the
church or the duty of episcopal authority to monitor and guide it . . . ‘It is for ecclesiology,’ said Robert Murray, S.J., an English Jesuit, ‘that [the term] magisterium
till about the mid-nineteenth century referred to the activity of authorized teaching
in the Church. The use with a capital ‘M’ to denote episcopal and especially papal
authority was developed mainly in the anti-Modernist documents.’” Ibid, 18–19.

The Functioning of Authority in Biblical Interpretation

59

But the task (munus) of authentically interpreting the word of
God, whether written or handed on, (8) has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, (9) whose
authority (auctoritas) is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.
This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it,
teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly,
guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord
with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit,
it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.5
In this case the English translation’s “authority” corresponds to the Latin
auctoritas. But the two are not always equivalent. Elsewhere in the document’s English version, “authority” appears four times, only once supplying for auctoritas.6 In two of the other three instances, it stands in for the
Latin magisterium,7 and once it is gratuitous, that is, lacking any basis in
the editio typica.8
It is no part of the present study’s purpose to quarrel with these
translations, which strike this author as fair enough. But their variability
5

“Munus autem authentice interpretandi verbum Dei scriptum vel traditum (15)
soli vivo Ecclesiae Magisterio concreditum est (16), cuius auctoritas in nomine Iesu
Christi exercetur. Quod quidem Magisterium non supra verbum Dei est, sed eidem
ministrat, docens nonnisi quod traditum est, quatenus illud, ex divino mandato et
Spiritu Sancto assistente, pie audit, sancte custodit et fideliter exponit, ac ea omnia
ex hoc uno fidei deposito haurit quae tamquam divinitus revelata credenda proponit.” Dei Verbum 10.
6
“Cum autem verbum Dei omnibus temporibus praesto esse debeat, Ecclesia materna
sollicitudine curat, ut aptae ac rectae exarentur in varias linguas versiones, praesertim ex primigenis Sacrorum Librorum textibus. Quae si, data opportunitate et
annuente Ecclesiae auctoritate, conficiantur communi etiam cum fratribus seiunctis
nisu, ab omnibus christianis adhiberi poterunt.” Dei Verbum 22.
7
“Ut autem Evangelium integrum et vivum iugiter in Ecclesia servaretur, Apostoli successores reliquerunt Episcopos, ipsis ‘suum ipsorum locum magisterii tradentes’”; “But in order to keep the Gospel forever whole and alive within the Church,
the Apostles left bishops as their successors, ‘handing over’ to them ‘the authority to
teach in their own place.’” Dei Verbum 7; cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. III, 3, 1 (PG 7, 848).
“Patet igitur Sacram Traditionem, Sacram Scripturam et Ecclesiae Magisterium.” “It
is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority
of the Church.” Dei Verbum 10.
8
“Ecclesia materna sollicitudine curat”; “the Church by her authority and with maternal concern.” Dei Verbum 22.

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on the matter at hand suggests that the equivalence of auctoritas and
“authority” may be presumed only at the risk of misreading the above
passage of Dei Verbum as well as other similar magisterial declarations.
Often enough such equivalence is indeed taken for granted even by
theologians taking a specific interest in the matter. Richard McBrien has
observed that “authority and power are not the same thing,”9 only to
conflate the two concepts in a subsequent discussion.10 And after noting
the English term’s origin in the Latin auctor (author), he dedicates several pages to describing its basis in the Old and New Testaments, and in
the writings of the early Church.11 And yet, the notion that the auctoritas
mentioned by Dei Verbum has a clear biblical basis runs up against the
term’s near absence from the Vulgate and its striking rarity in the earliest
Christian literature.
Roman and Early Christian Origins of the Term
Here something must be said about the concept’s background, not only
for the Fathers of Vatican II, but also for early Christian Latin ones such
as Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine. To begin with the Bible, while
the term “authority” is commonplace in modern English translations of
the New Testament, auctoritas appears in none of the Vulgate’s corresponding passages.12 On one occasion where the NAB employs the term
“authority,” the Latin equivalent is sublimitas (1 Tm 2:2), on another it is
imperium (Ti 2:15), and on another, to have authority corresponds to the
Vulgate’s dominari, to dominate (1 Tm 2:12). In all the other cases, the
Vulgate counterpart is not auctoritas, but postestas, and this usually to
translate the Greek ἐξουσία. However well the English “authority” may
9

Richard McBrien, Catholicism (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1980), 817, 818–22. A
similar discussion also appears in his “The Nature and Use of Power in the Church,”
Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America (1982): 38–49 (40–42).
10
Ibid., 818.
11
Ibid., 818–22.
12
The NAB New Testament employs “authority” fifty-seven times, usually as an equivalent for the Greek ἐξουσία, generally defined as ability/capability/power. A typical
example is the NAB’s translation of Mk 11:27–28: “They returned once more to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple area, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders
approached him and said to him, ‘By what authority are you doing these things? Or
who gave you this authority to do them?’” Where the NAB uses “authority” to render
ἐξουσία/ἐξουσίαν, the Vulgate employs potestate/potestatem, not auctoritas.

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61

render various terms of the Hebrew and Greek originals of the biblical
texts, neither Jerome nor any other Latin translator of the same texts
saw fit to use the term auctoritas to render any of them.13 As for nonbiblical literature, though commonplace in Church documents since the
late Middle Ages, auctoritas is virtually absent from the Latin texts of
the Church’s earliest councils and entered into the Church’s lexicon only
gradually, first mainly in reference to Christ or the Scriptures, later in
reference also to the Church.14
13

The term’s sole appearance in the Vulgate is in 1 Kgs 21:7, where Jezebel mocks her
husband Ahab for failing to take hold of Naboth’s vineyard: “A ruler over Israel of
great authority (grandis auctoritatis) you are indeed!” His wife Jezebel said to him,
“Get up. Eat and be cheerful. I will obtain the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite for
you.” For a concise account of the production of the Vulgate, see Biblia Sacra Vulgata,
ed. R. Weber (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007), xxxiii–xxxvii.
14
From the Latin texts of the Council of Nicaea (325), it is virtually absent in any of
its forms (making only one passing appearance, with no bearing on the Church’s
teaching authority): “Hoc autem omnibus aliis concessum est, nam in Meletii persona non placuit propter insitam eius insaniam et morum procacitatem atque temeritatem, quo nulla potestas auctoritatis concedatur homini praevalenti ad easdem
insolentias reppedare.” “Concilium Nicaenum I,” a. 325, Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, curantibus J. Alberigo, J. A. Dossetti, P. P. Joannou, C. Leonardi, P.
Prodi, consultante H. Jedin (1973), 5–18 (18). About one generation later (345–48),
at the western end of the Mediterranean, in the decrees of a council at Carthage, it
appeared once in connection with the prohibition of re-baptism (against the Donatists): “Discussus est titulus necessarius rebaptizationis in quo plus schismatis
rabies delitescebat et adhibita moderatione legis uigor et auctoritas custodita est,”
Concilia Africae 345–525, Concilium Carthaginense a. 345–348 (ed. Munier, 1974,
CCSL 149, 4). The term appears nowhere in the Latin texts of the First Council
of Constantinople (381), Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, 24–35. In the Latin
version of the decrees of the Council of Ephesus (431) the term appears four times,
once in reference to the traditions of the Holy Fathers, the other three in connection
with Christ: “Haec sunt sanctorum patrum traditiones, haec divinarum scripturarum praecepta; sic aliquis et quae sunt misericordiae divinae et quae sunt auctoritatis, deifice loquitur; haec meditare, in his esto, ut tuus profectus manifestus sit omnibus, Paulus ad omnes dicit.” Ibid., 49. “Unitum ergo carni Verbum Dei secundum
subsistentiam confitentes, unum adoramus Filium et dominum Iesum Christum,
non seorsum ponentes et determinantes hominem et Deum velut invicem sibi dignitatis et auctoritatis unitate coniunctos (hoc enim novitas vocis est et aliud nihil)
nec item Christum specialiter nominantes Deum Verbum quod ex Deo est, nec alterum similiter Christum specialiter qui de muliere natus est, sed unum solummodo
Christum Dei Patris Verbum cum propria carne cognoscimus” 51; “Unus igitur est
Christus Filius et dominus, non velut coniunctionem quamlibet, ut in unitate dignitatis et auctoritatis, hominis habentis ad Deum; non enim potest unire naturas sola
dignitatis aequalitas” 52; “Si quis in uno Christo dividit substantias post unitionem,

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For the provenance of the notion in the West, we must look elsewhere. Political philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—notably Theodore Mommsen,15 Max Weber,16 Carl Schmitt,17 Hannah Arendt,18 and more recently Giorgio Agamben19—have noticed that
the concept is specifically Roman, and that in antiquity it had no precise
counterpart in Greek, as it has none in modern Western languages. This
is not to say that it is untranslatable, but that translating it in any given context requires choosing from among several possibilities. No one

sola eas societate coniungens ea quae secundum dignitatem est vel etiam auctoritatem aut potestatem, et non magis conventu ad unitatem naturalem, a(nathema)
s(it)” 59. In the decrees of Chalcedon (451), the term makes three appearances, once
in reference to the Gospels (evangelicas auctoritates) and the other two times in reference to the bishops: “Sed in hanc insipientiam cadunt qui cum ad cognoscendam
veritatem aliquo inpediuntur obscuro, non ad propheticas voces, non ad apostolicas
litteras nec ad evangelicas auctoritates, sed ad semet ipsos recurrunt et ideo magistri
erroris existunt, quia veritatis discipuli non fuerunt” ibid., 77; “De quo si fideliter
atque utiliter dolet et quam recte mota sit episcopalis auctoritas, vel sero cognoscit
vel si ad satisfactionis plenitudinem omnia quae ab eo male sunt sensa, viva voce et
praesenti subscriptione damnaverit, non erit reprehensibilis erga correctum quantacumque miseratio, quia dominus noster verus et bonus pastor qui animam suam
posuit pro ovibus suis et qui venit animas hominum salvare, non perdere, imitatores
nos suae vult esse pietatis, ut peccantes quidem iustitia coerceat, conversos autem
misericordia non repellat” 82; “Confitentibus autem decrevimus, ut habeat auctoritatem eiusdem loci episcopus misericordiam humanitatem que largiri” 94. In the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the term appears 13 times, in reference
to the Old and New Testaments, the Church, the apostolic see, bishops and prelates
generally, and the Council and its decrees ibid., 230–71; cf. 234 (2x), 237, 238, 241,
249, 250, 253, 254, 262, 263, 270 (2x). In the decrees of the Council of Trent, auctoritas appears forty times, usually in conjunction with the term “apostolic,” and
then often in connection with the Holy See’s apostolic authority (e.g., “interveniente etiam auctoritate sanctae sedis apostolicae, apostolica auctoritate confirmatis,
auctoritate apostolica”). In the documents of Vatican II, the term is ubiquitous (it
appears twenty-one times in Lumen Gentium, thirty-one times in Gaudium et Spes,
etc.).
15
T. Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, 3 vols. (1871; reprint, Graz: Akademischer
Druck, 1969).
16
Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965).
17
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty,
translated as Political Theology by George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1985).
18
Hannah Arendt, “What Is Authority,” in Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in
Political Thought (New York: Meridian Books, 1961).
19
Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

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63

English term can render it accurately in every situation.20 Considerable
attention has been given to the influence and posterity of its titular form,
as it was conferred upon the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. In addition to the title princeps (first citizen of Rome), he held that of auctoritas
principis to designate his supreme moral authority, and this in addition
to the powers designated by the terms potestas and imperium. Agamben has noticed that in its first instance the title belonged to the fathers
(patres) of the Senate,21 and has drawn attention to its distinctness from
juridical or political power, potestas, and military power, imperium. In
times of crisis, such as the fall of the Republic,22 civil war, or the threat
of invasion, the normal functioning of juridical institutions is suspended and replaced by a state of exception. Whereas potestas belongs to a
function circumscribed by law, auctoritas attaches to a person and is not
bound by law. Further, whereas the public office conferring potestas is of
limited duration (in the Roman republic normally one year), auctoritas
is enduring. As Richard Heinze has put it:
Every magistracy is a pre-established form, which the individual enters into and which constitutes the source of his power;
auctoritas, on the other hand, springs from the person, as something that is constituted through him, lives only in him, and
disappears with him.23
In short, whereas potestas is legally conferred by an office, auctoritas is
embodied by a person, and makes its presence felt precisely when the
normal functioning of offices and legal institutions is suspended, as in
times of crisis.
In its various forms the term auctoritas is commonplace in the literature of the Medieval Latin West. On the face of it, one could suppose that these writers, living in a pre-Reformation, precritical, medi20

Ibid., 75.
Ibid., 77.
22
Historians have variously proposed the appointment of Julius Caesar as perpetual dictator in 44 BC, the defeat of Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the Roman Senate’s grant of extraordinary powers to Octavian under the first settlement and
his adopting the title Augustus in 27 BC, as the defining events ending the Republic.
23
Richard Heinze, Auctoritas, 1925, 356, cited by Agamben, State of Exception, 82.
21

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eval Catholic world were more fond of authority than we are, living as
we do in a society that has made it a dictum to “question authority.”
But medieval writers themselves leave little doubt that the auctoritas of
their vocabulary is quite different from the “authority” of ours. Thomas
Aquinas’s reflections on the conditions for waging just war on tyrants,
both those who have usurped power and those who have become tyrannical after acquiring it legitimately, serve as a warning against taking
for granted that he would have disagreed with the modern concern to
“question authority.”24
As appropriated by early Christian writers, auctoritas soon had
theological senses and was used particularly to designate God’s authorship of creation. So for example, Tertullian asks Marcion rhetorically,
“Tell me, Marcion, does your god base the authority (auctoritatem) of
his law on the work of the Creator?”25 Christian writers eventually extended the scope of the term to include prophets and other biblical authors, normally in connection with revelation. So, for example, Gregory
the Great describes the prophet Ezekiel:
Since those to whom the prophet was sent were of such depravity and obstinacy, who would not see that the person of the
prophet should be despised by men so perverse. But behold authority (auctoritas) is attributed to the person, as it continues:
And you will say to them, Thus says the Lord (Ezek 2:4).26
Gregory is concerned to point out that Ezekiel’s auctoritas derives from
his status as a prophet. Shortly afterward in the same homily, he notes
that anyone who lives in God has dwelling within the auctoritas of the
divine Word:

24

See Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 40 (quaestio “De bello”), and De regimine principum.
“Dic mihi, Marcion, de opere creatoris deus tuus legi suae adstruit auctoritatem?”
Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, V, ed. E. Kroymann (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954),
CCSL 1, 718.
26
“Cum uero tantae prauitatis tantae que obstinationis sint hi ad quos propheta mittitur, quis iam non uideat, quia persona prophetae a tam peruersis hominibus despici
ualeat? Sed ecce auctoritas personae tribuitur, cum subditur: Et dices ad eos: Haec
dicit Dominus Deus.” Gregory the Great, Homilae in Hiezechihelem I, hom. 9, ed. M.
Adriaen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), CCSL 142, 127.
25

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65

And because all of us who live in God are instruments (organa) of
truth, often it speaks through others to me, and often through me
to others, so the authority (auctoritas) of the good Word should
be in us, so that a superior may freely speak rightly, and a subordinate may humbly not refuse to bring forth good things.27
So understood, auctoritas is divine in origin, but participatible by the
recipients of divine revelation, by believers.
But it was Augustine more than anyone else who provided a theoretical framework to explain the functioning of auctoritas in matters of
faith. As he put it, “What we understand we owe to reason, what we believe to authority; what we opine, to error.”28 Medieval biblical commentators made this a stock expression. Augustine was less interested in the
status auctoritas confers on an auctor than he was in its epistemological
function, its bearing on what we know and how we know it. In his perspective, it belongs to the sphere beyond reason. Whereas the Romans
viewed auctoritas as most clearly manifest in those states of exception
wherein the functioning of legal institutions was suspended, Augustine
understood it to allow us to know and think where reason is suspended,
in those matters accessible by faith alone.
Medieval Studies of Auctoritas and Authorship
Alistair Minnis has noticed that medieval literature is a world governed by a continuous, if not homogeneous, theory of authorship, which
he defines as a literary theory based on the two distinct but inextricably
linked concepts of auctor and auctoritas.29 During the second half of
27

“Et quia omnes qui in Deo uiuimus organa ueritatis sumus, ut saepe per alium mihi,
saepe uero aliis loquatur per me, sic nobis boni Verbi inesse auctoritas debet, ut et
is qui praeest dicat recta libere, et is qui subest inferre bona humiliter non recuset”
(CCSL 142, 129).
28
“Quod intellegimus igitur, debemus rationi, quod credimus, auctoritati, quod
opinamur, errori. Sed intellegens omnis etiam credit, credit omnis et qui opinatur;
non omnis qui credit intellegit; nullus qui opinatur intellegit.” Augustine of Hippo,
De utilitate credendi 11, ed. J. Zycha (1891), CSEL 25.1, 32.
29
A. J. Minnis has observed that the concept of auctor was inseparable from that of auctoritas: “The writings of an auctor contained, or possessed, auctoritas in the abstract
sense of the term, with its strong connotations of veracity and sagacity.” Medieval
Theory of Authorship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 10.

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the thirteenth century, biblical commentators paid unprecedented attention to the problem of explaining the relation between divine and
human authorial roles. The interest they took in the human authors of
the books on which they commented was keen—the prologues to their
commentaries are preoccupied with them. These prologues also contain
the commentators’ most explicit and elaborate methodological considerations, as well as the introduction of the various analytical techniques
to be applied elsewhere in the commentaries.30 Originating in the study
of profane literature, these introductions to the author and his work,
or accessus, became a standard feature of biblical commentaries in the
latter part of the eleventh century. Eventually they were simplified according to an established pattern including the examination of the author’s intention and mode of exposition, as well as the biblical book’s
title (intentio, modus agendi, and titulus). Subsequently, twelfth-century
masters, notably Peter the Chanter and Stephen Langton, structured
the accessus around an introductory biblical verse, generally taken from
some book other than the one at hand.
With the development of university exegesis during the first half of
the thirteenth century, commentators adopted another framework for
the prologue, explaining a given book in terms of Aristotle’s four causes. Discussion of the author’s intention, or of the book’s purpose, was
considered under the heading of its final cause, its mode of exposition
under that of its formal cause, and its title or subject matter under that
of its material cause.
Not surprisingly, the matter of auctoritas normally appears in connection with the efficient cause, the auctores, as authorship was understood to be twofold—the primary efficient cause was the divine author,
and the secondary efficient cause the human one. In the prologue to his
commentary on Isaiah, Albert the Great connects the prophet’s auctoritas directly to divine revelation:
For such a prophecy Isaiah is therefore to be commended. And
30

See my The Biblical Interpretation of William of Alton (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011), 26–40; Gilbert Dahan, “Les Prologues des Commentaires Bibliques,” in
Les prologues médiévaux (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 427–28; A. Sulavik, “Principia
and Introitus in Thirteenth Century Christian Biblical Exegesis with Related Texts,”
La Bibbia del XIII Secolo, Millennio Medievale (Firenze: Galuzzo, 2004), 269–87.

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67

indeed the revelation of this dignity is understood, because not
by a fallible human spirit, nor by a mendacious demonic spirit,
nor by vain mathematical conjectures has it been accepted, but
inspired by the Spirit of truth itself, 2 Pt 1:21: “Not by human will
has prophecy ever come, but the holy men of God spoke inspired
by the Holy Spirit.” And so appears the authority of revelation
(auctoritas revelationis), and as Augustine says in his Literal Commentary on Genesis, “The authority of Scripture is greater than all
perceptiveness of human wits” (De Gen. ad lit. I, 37).31
Albert continues:
So therefore in the aforesaid theme, the author (auctor) is commended by his name, by the congruity of his name and the
(book’s) matter, by the authority (auctoritatis) of revelation, by
the quality of his vision, by the piety of his intention, by the usefulness of his work, and by the fidelity and firmness of these. 32
But the matter could also come up in connection with a given book’s
formal cause, that is, its mode of proceeding, or modus agendi (sometimes modus procedendi, very much like what modern scholars call its
literary form), as we see in the prologue to the commentary on John’s
Gospel by William of Alton, a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas. The
text is worth presenting at some length:
An understanding servant is acceptable to the king. These words
are written in Proverbs xiv (35), in which principally the scribe
31

“A tali igitur prophetia Isaias commendatur. Et idcirco revelationis istius dignitas
intelligitur, quia non spiritu humano deceptibili nec spiritu mendacii daemoniaca
nec coniecturis vanis mathematicis est accepta, sed ab ipsa spiritu veritatis inspirata
(2 Pt 1:21): ‘Non uoluntate humana allata est aliquando prophetia, sed spiritu sancto
inspirati locuti sunt sancti dei homines.’ Sic ergo patet auctoritas revelationis et, sicut
dicit Augustinus, Super Genesim ad litteram, ‘maior est huius scripturae auctoritas
quam omnis humani ingenii perspicacitas’ (De Gen. ad lit., I, 37).” Albert the Great,
Postilla super Isaiam., prol. (ed. Ascendorff, Opera, t. xix, 3a).
32
“Sic ergo in preinducto themate commendatur auctor a nomine, a nominis cum materia congruitate, a revelationis auctoritate, a visionis qualitate, ab intentionis pietate
simul et operis utilitate et a dictorum fidelitate sive firmitate.” Ibid., 4b.

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of this Gospel is commended, and consequently the Gospel itself, since the commendation of an author redounds upon his
work . . . What is noted secondarily in these words is the fourfold cause of this work. The material, by the saying to the king,
because this book is about Christ, who is the king of kings with
respect to either of nature that is in him . . . It is objected, Ecclesiasticus 3 (22): Do not inquire about lofty things33; because
in Proverbs (25, 27): The searcher of majesty will be overthrown
from glory. Response: Majesty is not to be searched in a spirit
of elation or curiosity or ill will, as with the heretics, but such
searching is good when done in a spirit of piety for the declaration of the faith, 1 Corinthians 2 (10): The Spirit searches even
the depths of God34. The formal: understanding, incomparably
understanding the divine nature, to extol the human nature and
the existence of both in Christ. First it is about the divine nature; afterwards it is about the human. It deals with both sublimely, indeed with certitude, not however with the certitude of
demonstration, which evacuates faith, since it compels assent
whether one like it or not, but with the certitude of authority
(certitudine auctoritatis). Augustine: “What we believe we owe
to authority . . .” Therefore this scripture proceeds by the mode
of narrative, not reasoning. This certainty, though modest in
other sciences, whose discoverers are men capable of lying, is
greatest in this one, which the Holy Spirit inspired. Augustine,
On Genesis: “The authority of this scripture is greater than the
perspicacity of all human genius.”35
33

Sir 3:22: “altiora te ne scrutaveris et fortiora te ne exquisieris sed quae praecepit tibi
Deus” (ed. R. Weber, Stuttgart, 2007 = W)
34
1 Cor 2:10: “Spiritus enim omnia scrutatur etiam profunda Dei” (W).
35
“Acceptus est regi minister intelligens. Hec uerba scripta sunt Prou. xv, in quibus principaliter huius euangelii scriba commendatur, et per consequens ipsum euangelium,
cum auctoris commendatio redundet in opus . . . Secundario notatur in hiis uerbis
quadruplex causa huius operis. Materialis, per hoc quod dicit: Regi, quia de Christo qui
est rex regum agitur in hoc libro quantum ad utrumque naturam que est in eo . . . Obiicitur, Eccli. iii: Altiora te ne quesieris; quia Prouer.: Perscrutator maiestatis opprimetur a
gloria. Responsio: Non est maiestas perscrutanda spiritu elationis uel spiritu curiositatis
uel spiritu malignitatis ut heretici, set spiritu pietatis ad assertionem fidei bonum est, i
Cor. ii: Spiritus scrutatur etiam profunda Dei. Formalis: Intelligens, intelligendo enim
diuinam naturam sine comparatione, extollere humanam et utramque esse in Christo.

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For William, the Gospel’s formal cause, or mode of proceeding, is
John’s incomparable understanding and extolling of Christ’s divine and
human natures. About these natures John teaches with certitude, not of
demonstration, but of authority (certitudine auctoritatis).
If the framework of this scrutiny is Aristotle’s efficient cause, its
broader methodological implications appear in William’s analysis of
the author’s form or modus agendi. In the background here is the larger
thirteenth-century consideration of the question of whether theology
is a science. Alisdair Minnis has drawn attention to the stimulus this
controversy provided to exegetes’ analyses of the stylistic complexities
of biblical texts.36 While a complete account of this history lies beyond
our purposes, we will note that Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), one of
the earliest and most important thinkers to take up the question, described a variety of biblical modes of exposition and set them in marked
contrast to the scientific mode. He effectively separated biblical exegesis
from science by distinguishing quite sharply between human science
and divine science. Whereas the former, on his view, appeals to the intellectus, or faculty of intellection, the latter appeals to the affectus, that
is, the mind’s faculty of desire. And whereas the intellectus operates by
division, definition and ratiocination, the affectus functions by precept,
example, exhortation, revelation and oration. The Bible, as he would
have it, is not a scientific work because it operates by stimulating pious
affections and by treating of realities having to do with salvation:
Prius agit de diuina, postea de humana, de utrumque autem agit sublimiter, ut patet
certitudinaliter; non tamen certitudine demonstrationis, que fidem euacuat, cum hominem uelit nolit ad assencientum agat, set certitudine auctoritatis, Augustinus: ‘Quod
credimus debemus auctoritati.’ Et ideo hec scriptura procedit per modum narrationis,
non ratiocinationis. Hec autem certitudo, licet in aliis scientiis sit modica, quarum inuentores sunt homines qui mentiri possunt, in hac autem est maxima quam Spiritus
sanctus inspirauit, Augustinus, Super Gen.: ‘Maior est huius scripture auctoritas quam
omnis humani ingenii perspicacitas.’” William of Alton, Postilla super Iohannem, Prologus (MS Saint-Omer 260, f. 110ra–va); cf. Augustine, De Gen. ad lit., ii (ed. J. Zycha,
1894, CSEL 28.1, 39). Worth noting here is that William parts with the Latin commentatorial tradition—including Albert, Bonaventure, and Thomas—which had followed
Augustine in holding that, whereas the first three Gospels were primarily concerned
with Christ’s humanity, this one is mainly concerned with his divinity.
36
Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 119–33. The present discussion is largely
indebted to this work. On the emergence of explicit reflections on the scientific character of theology during the thirteenth century, see the capital study of Marie-Dominique Chenu, La Théologie comme science au xiiie siècle, 3rd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1957).

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It is to be said that the mode of science that is by way of the
comprehension of truth by human reason differs from the
mode of science that is by the affect (affectum) of piety by divine
tradition. The first mode must be definitive: divisive, collective;
and this must be the mode of human sciences, because the apprehension of truth by human reason is explained by division,
definitions and reasonings. The second mode must be by precepts, examples, exhortations, revelation and oration, because
these modes belong to the affect of piety (affectui pietatis), and
this mode is in sacred scripture.37
The following won by this view was considerable. Among others, the
Dominicans Richard Fichacre and Robert Kilwardby, and the Franciscans Robert Grosseteste and William of Middleton largely adopted it,
though generally substituting the term aspectus for intellectus. Despite
the significant differences between their conclusions, all emphasized the
primacy of the affectus.38 And yet, some of the writers who used the terminology of aspectus and affectus were capable of viewing theology as a
science. Bonaventure employed this language throughout his works, but
in his Breviloquium affirmed the scientific character of theology:
The foregoing shows that theology, though admittedly broad and
varied in matter, is nevertheless a single science. Its subject, as
the One by whom all things have been made, is God; as the One
through whom all things receive their being, is Christ; as that for
the sake of which all things are done, is the work of restoration;
37

“Dicendum quod alius est modus scientiae, qui est secundum comprehensionem
veritatis per humanam rationem; alius est modus scientiae secundum affectum pietatis per divinam traditionem. Primus modus definitivus debet esse: divisivus, et
talis modus debet esse in humanis scientiis, quia apprehensio veritatis secundum
humanam rationem explicatur per divisiones, definitiones et ratiocinationes. Secundus modus debet esse praeceptivus, exemplicativus, exhortativus, revelativus, orativus, quia ii modi competunt affectui pietatis; et hic modus est in sacra scriptura.”
Alexander of Hales, Summa Theologica, Tractatus introductorius, q. 1, cap. iv, a. 3
(ed. Quaracchi, Opera omnia, t. iv, 1948, i, 10). This text has been presented and
discussed by Chenu, La Théologie comme science, 40–41. For a discussion of its date
and authenticity, see ibid., 38.
38
Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 120–27; Chenu, La Théologie comme science,
37–57.

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71

as that around which all things revolve, is the unique bond of
love linking heaven and earth; as that with which the whole content of the canonical books is concerned, is the body of faith as
such; as that with which the whole content of the commentaries
is concerned, is the body of faith as intelligible, for according to
Augustine’s work De utilitate credendi: “What we believe we owe
to authority, what we understand, to reason.”39
Though less frequently, Aquinas also appealed to the affectus/aspectus
distinction, and famously argued for the scientific character of theology, effectively submitting the realm of auctoritas to rational inquiry.40
William of Alton, too, made abundant use of the distinction, even if his
own view of the scientific character of theology must on the presently
available evidence remain a matter of speculation. Worth noting here
is that the commentators of the period generally engaged in a rigorous
reflection on biblical modes of exposition, substantially the same endeavor as that enjoined upon interpreters in Dei Verbum 12:
The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular
circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture.
Medieval writers described authorial modes even in their commentaries on nonbiblical writings. In his proemium to his commentary on
Boethius’s De Trinitate, Thomas Aquinas follows Augustine in naming
two modes of discussing the Trinity, by authorities and by rational arguments (rationes), and points out that whereas Ambrose and Hillary

39

“Ex his patet quod licet theologia sit de tot et tam variis est tamen scientia una cuius
subiectum ut a quo omnia est Deus ut per quod omnia Christus ut ad quod omnia opus
reparationis ut circa quod omnia unicum caritatis vinculum quo caelestia et terrestria
connectuntur ut de quo omnia in libris canonicis comprehensa credibile ut credibile ut
de quo omnia in libris expositorum credibile ut intelligibile secundum Augustinum, De
utilitate credendi, quia ‘quod credimus debemus auctoritati quod intelligimus rationi.’”
Bonaventure, Breviloquium I, 1 (Opera, Quaracchi, t. v, 20a).
40
For a few examples, see Thomas’s In I Sent., prol. a. 3, qa 2; De Ver., q. 14, ad 3; ST I,
q. 1, a. 2.

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proceeded by way of the former, Boethius employed the latter.41 Subsequently, he cites the aforementioned remark of Augustine to point out
that Boethius’s argumentative mode of proceeding leads to the certitude
of truth, whereas the same cannot be said of mere appeal to authority:
Third, he treats of the formal cause when he says: “arranged
according to a reasoned plan,” and he indicates the mode of
treatment under three headings. First, since he proceeds by argumentation, he therefore says, “arranged according to a reasoned plan.” For a question discussed even over a long period
according to probable reasons but still with doubt is, as it were,
without form, not yet laying claim to the certitude of truth; and
hence it is said to possess form when reasonable proof is added,
through which certitude regarding the truth may be attained.
In this it provides for understanding, because “what we believe,
we owe to authority, but what we understand, to reason,” as Augustine says.42
On view in the excerpt above is the analogical character of auctoritas.
The merely human authority Thomas has in mind here arises from
probable arguments. Unlike reasonable proofs, such reasons are incapable of leading to certitude. We shall see that neither Thomas nor his
contemporaries doubted that statements supported by auctoritas of another sort could indeed engender certitude.
41

“Modus autem de Trinitate tractandi duplex est, ut dicit Augustinus in I de Trinitate,
scilicet per auctoritates et per rationes, quem utrumque modum Augustinus complexus est, ut ipsemet dicit. Quidam vero sanctorum patrum, ut Ambrosius et Hilarius, alterum tantum modum prosecuti sunt, scilicet per auctoritates. Boethius vero
elegit prosequi per alium modum, scilicet per rationes, praesupponens hoc quod ab
aliis per auctoritates fuerat prosecutum.” Thomas Aquinas, In Boethii De Trinitate
proem., 9; cf. Augustine, De trin. I.
42
“Tertio (proemium) tangit causam formalem in hoc quod dicit: formatam rationibus, et tangit modum agendi quantum ad tria. Primo quantum ad hoc quod argumentando processit; unde dicit: formatam rationibus. Quaestio namque quamdiu
probabilibus rationibus sub dubio exagitatur, quasi informis est, nondum ad certitudinem veritatis pertingens, et ideo formata dicitur esse, quando ad eam ratio additur, per quam certitudo de veritate habetur. Et in hoc providit intelligentiae, quia
quod credimus, debemus auctoritati, quod intelligimus, rationi, ut Augustinus dicit.”
Thomas Aquinas, In Boethii De Trinitate I, 5.

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73

A Few Kinds of Authoritative Sources
On the rare occasions when late medieval biblical commentators
refer to authoritative Christian figures collectively, they generally call
them sancti, rather than patres.43 The collective reference to auctoritates
is considerably broader, often including even profane writers, especially
on matters of philosophy.44
Profane Writers
Commonplace in medieval biblical commentaries, references to
non-Christian authors are normally appeals to figures whose authority
is delimited to a specific field, such as Josephus on the history of the Old
Testament,45 or Aristotle on philosophy.46 Even if one may wonder about
their real weight in such cases, it is clear that their qualification as auctoritates had dramatic implications for the manner in which they were
cited.47 What follows is an example from William of Alton’s commentary
on Ecclesiastes:
Therefore it says 7,8Calumny, which is, of course, the imposi43

A case in point: “Vnde Augustinus, Ieronimus et alii sancti.” William of Alton, Super
Ecl. 12, 12, mss. Basel, Univ. Bibl. B III 20, f. 112vb; Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 493, f. 165r.
44
On the meanings of sancti, magister, and auctoritas and the principle of concordia
auctoritatum for the interpretation of authoritative texts in theology and law, see
Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding St. Thomas (Chicago: Regnery,
1964), 126-155 .
45
E.g., “Beth: edificavit in giro meo, id est obsessio Caldeorum uel Romanorum
uallauit me ne pateret fuga; et cirvmdedit me felle, quasi dicat: in ista obsidione
potatus sum aqua putrida que per fel intelligitur, Iere. ix: Cibabo populum hunc
abscinthio; et labore, corporis, Caldeis resistendo et etiam Romanis, ut narrat
Iosephus.” William of Alton, Super Threnos 3, 5 (ed. cit., 261); cf. Flavius Josephus,
The Jewish War (trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1997, Loeb Classical Library 203, 210, 487).
46
E.g., “Dicit ei Ihesvs: Mvlier crede michi, quia discentem oportet credere, secundum Philosophum.” William of Alton, Super Io. 4, 21, ms. Saint-Omer, Bibl.
mun. 260, f. 121b; cf. Aristotle, De sophisticis elenchis ii (165a37; trans. Boethius,
Aristoteles Latinus, vi.1, ed. B. Dod, Bruxelles-Leiden, 1975, 7; rev. William of Moerbeke, Aristoteles Latinus, vi.3, ed. cit., 78).
47
Ceslas Spicq has observed that it became common in the schools of the twelfth century
for profane authors to be considered auctoritates, albeit inferior ones; Esquisse d’une
histoire de l’exégèse latine au Moyen Âge (Paris: Vrin, 1944), 77.

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tion of a false accusation, disturbs the wise, specifically, the
reformed. To the contrary, Seneca says: “No disturbance falls
upon the wise.” And Proverbs 12 (21) says: Whatsoever shall
befall the just man shall not make him sad. Response: These authorities (auctoritates) speak of the perfect wise man, whereas
this passage speaks of the imperfect one.48
Even if William provides no definition of auctoritas, his mention of it
here is telling. A problem has been created by Seneca’s remark that the
wise man cannot be perturbed, an assertion apparently at odds with the
biblical text. Though a pagan, Seneca is an auctoritas on the matter at
hand, wisdom, with the consequence that his sayings on the matter must
be interpreted according to the principle of concordia auctoritatum. Put
simply, his remarks must be in basic agreement with those of all other
authorities on the same matter. In university interpretation, questions of
this sort were normally approached with the aid of the tools of dialectics, and this for the sake of grasping the various authors’ intentions. The
previous solution rests upon a distinction between two different senses
of sapientem—whereas Seneca was talking about the perfect wise man,
Solomon had in mind the imperfect one.
Sancti
It has been said that when referring to authorities, medieval theologians
submitted them to a “reverential exposition” (expositio reverentialis),
leading them around by a “wax nose.”49 Examination of their methods
48

“Dicit ergo Calvmpnia, que scilicet est falsi criminis impositio, contvrbat sapientem, scilicet correctum. Contra, Seneca: ‘Perturbatio non cadit in sapientem,’
Prouer. xii: Non contristabit iustum quicquid ei acciderit (Pr 12, 21). Responsio: Ille
auctoritates loquuntur de sapiente perfecto. Hic autem loquitur de imperfecto.” William of Alton, Super Ecl. 7, 8 (MSS Basel, Univ. Bibl. B III 20, f. 104va; Madrid, Bibl.
Nac. 493, f. 150r). Cf. Bonaventure, In Ecl. 7, 8; Seneca, Ad Lucilium xi, 85.
49
On the exegetical principle of exponere reverenter, with particular reference to
Thomas Aquinas, see Chenu, Toward, 144-149. For a lucid criticism of his account,
see Giles Berceville, “L’autorité des Pères selon Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue des Sciences
Philosophiques et Théologiques 91 (2007): 129–43, esp. 138–41. In connection with
an authority’s “wax nose,” Chenu refers to Alan of Lille, “Auctoritas cereum habet
nasum, id est, diversum potest deflecti sensum,” De fide catholica, i, 30 (PL 210, 333).
See also Joseph de Ghellinck, Le mouvement théologique du xiie siècle, 2nd ed. (Brug-

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75

for citing authoritative texts tells a different story. It was not typical of
them to get around discrepancies between authorities by veiling them
in anonymity.50 Nor did they presume to substitute their own words for
those of a given author in attempting to express what the author “wished
to say.” If the reverential exposition is understood as a method by which
the meanings of authoritative sources are subordinated to the systematic
requirements of homogenous thought constructions, then we may say
that these commentators avoided the practice. More typical is William
of Alton’s exposition of Jesus’s encounter with Nichodemus, where we
find him interested in the term spiritus. According to Chrysostom, Jesus’s statement “The wind blows where it wills” (Spiritus ubi uult spirat
in the Vulgate of Jn 3:8) refers to the motion of the wind directly and
to God’s action metaphorically. For Augustine, it is a direct reference
to the action of the Holy Spirit. The disagreement is lost on none of
William’s contemporaries. Hugh of St. Cher,51 Albert the Great,52 and
Thomas Aquinas53 mention both views and present them as alternatives.
Hugh and Thomas discreetly refrain from connecting the latter interpretation with Augustine. Bonaventure explicitly opposes the two54 and
William follows suit, saying without hesitation that Augustine contradicts Chrysostom:
The wind (spiritus) blows (spirat) where it wills and

3,8

es: Éditions De Tempel, 1948), 233–35; Jacques-Guy Bougerol, Introduction à l’étude
de Saint Bonaventure (Tournai: Desclée, 1961), 58–59. In his consideration of a few
of the vexed questions concerning Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of Aristotle,
Jean-Pierre Torrell proposes that Thomas submitted the philosopher to an expositio
reverentialis, which he explains as follows: “A ce point précis Thomas se sent autorisé
à se substituer à lui pour le prolonger et lui faire dire des choses à quoi il n’avait
même pu penser. La reconstitution historiquement exacte de la pensée d’Aristote ne
l’intéresse pas pour elle-même.” Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions du
Cerf, 2002), 348–49. Without passing judgment on the accuracy of this remark, I
note that nothing of the sort can be said of William’s treatment of authoritative texts.
50
For an overview of the usage of the Fathers in medieval exegesis, see Gilbert Dahan, “Les Pères dans l’exégèse médiévale,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et
Théologiques 91 (2007): 109–26.
51
Hugh of St. Cher, Postille, in Io. 3:8 (ed. Venetiis, t. vi, 296va).
52
Albert the Great, In Io. 3:8 (ed. Borgnet, t. xxiv, 122a–b).
53
Thomas Aquinas, In Io. 3:8 (ed. Parma, t. x, 346a–b).
54
Bonaventure, In Io. com. 3:8 (Opera, t. vi, 281b).

Timothy Bellamah, O.P.

76

you hear its voice. Chrysostom relates this to the wind, which
is said to “blow where it wills because its gusts are naturally unhindered. Its sound is called its voice (vox).” Nevertheless, Augustine contradicts this exposition, saying “The wind (spiritus)
blows (spirat) where it wills because it has in its power the heart
of anyone it illuminates”.55
When he deems it necessary, William shows no hesitation in setting aside
the position of an auctoritas. In his comments on Jesus’s encounter with
the Samaritan woman at the well (Jn 4:20), he mentions Chrysostom’s
contention that the mountain to which she referred—“Our fathers
adored on this mountain”—was the same as the one on which Abraham
was to sacrifice Isaac. Here, too, Hugh of St. Cher,56 Albert the Great,57
and Aquinas58 also mention the interpretation. Presenting it as one of
several alternatives, they leave it unchallenged. Bonaventure leaves it
unmentioned. William calls it false, despite the support of no less an
auctoritas than Chrysostom:
Our fathers, namely, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, worshipped on this mountain. According to some, with whom
Chrysostom would appear to agree, the woman pointed to the
mountain on which Abraham intended to sacrifice his son. But
this is false, because that was Mount Moria, as Genesis 22 (2)
makes clear. 59
4,20

55

“Spiritus ubi uult spirat, Crisostomus exponit de uento qui dicitur spirare ubi
uult, quia habet a natura alationem non prohibitam; uox eius dicitur sonus. Augustinus tamen huic expositioni contradicit: Spiritus ubi uult spirat, quia habet in
potestate cuius cor illustret.” William of Alton, Super Io. 3, 8 (MS Saint-Omer, Bibl.
mun. 260, f. 117va). Cf. Chrysostom, In Io. hom. xxvi (PG 59, 155); Augustine, In Io.
evang. tract. xii (ed. R. Willems, 1954, Turnhout: Brepols, CCSL 36, 124).
56
Hugh of St. Cher, Postille, in Io. 4, 20 (ed. Venetiis, t. vi, 306va).
57
Albert the Great, In Io. 4, 20 (ed. Borgnet, t. xxiv, 168b).
58
Thomas Aquinas, In Io. 4, 35 (ed. Parma, t. x, 366a).
59
“Patres nostri, scilicet Habraham, Ysaac et Iacob, in monte hoc adora<vervnt>,
secundum aliquos, quibus uidetur consentire Crisostomus, mulier ostendit montem
in quo Habraham uoluit immolare filium. Set hoc falsum est, quia iste fuit mons
Moria, ut patet Gen. xxii (Gn 22:14).” William of Alton, Super Io. 4, 20 (MS Saint
Omer 260, f. 121rb); cf. Chrysostom, In Io. hom. xxxii (PG 59, 186).

The Functioning of Authority in Biblical Interpretation

77

Chrysostom’s authority affords him no pious exposition. To the contrary, he is flatly contradicted. Obviously, there can be no question here,
either for William or any of his contemporaries, of auctoritas understood as a law in itself that had to be accepted.60
All the same, authoritative texts constituted a body of knowledge
the recourse to which was integral to thirteenth-century pedagogy. It
remains for us, then, to further consider their methods for citing them.
Medieval commentators were not unprincipled in this respect. When
commenting on John the Evangelist’s remark (Jn 11:2) that Lazarus’s sister Mary was the one who anointed Jesus’s feet (Jn 12:3), William of Alton lays down a clear rule and demonstrates its application. In question
here is whether this Mary is to be identified with the unnamed woman
who wiped Jesus’s head with perfume in Matthew’s Gospel (26:7), and
further, with the unnamed sinful woman who washed Jesus’s feet with
her tears, dried them with her hair, and then anointed them with oil in
Luke’s Gospel (7:37–38).61 William presents the views of four authorities, no two of whom agree. Then he sorts through all of this by appealing to still another authority, the Church:
It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment
and wiped his feet with her hair, below chapter 12 (3) and
Matthew 26 (7), whose brother Lazarus was sick. It is asked

11,2

60

Such is the understanding of auctoritas, which Chenu contrasts with the sayings of
masters (dicta magistrali), which could be set aside without scruple. Toward, 136.
61
The conflation of the three figures stands as another example of liturgical influence
upon biblical exegesis. Before William’s time and during it, Mary Magdalene was
identified with the “sinner” of Lk 7:36–50 and with the sister of Martha and Lazarus
of Lk 10:38–42 and Jn 11 in preaching and the liturgy of her feast day. See Nicole
Bériou, “La Madeleine dans les sermons parisiens du xiiie siècle,” in La Madeleine
(viiie au xiiie siècle) (Rome: École française de Rome [1992], 269–84. Translated as
Modern Questions about Medieval Sermons: Essays on Marriage, Death, History and
Sanctity, ed. N. Bériou and D. d’Avray (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull ’Alto
medioevo, 1994), 323–99. There is an abundant literature on the development of
medieval devotion to Mary Magdalene. In addition to the other collected essays in
La Madeleine, see Victor Saxer, Le culte de Marie Madeleine en occident des origines
à la fin du moyen-âge, 2 vols., Cahiers d’archéologie et d’histoire, 3 (Paris: Librairie
Clavreuil, 1959; Katherine Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2000). For a brief overview with extensive bibliography, see P.-M. Guillaume, “Marie-Madeleine,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité 10 (Paris: Beauchesne,1980): 559–75.

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whether this would be she who figures in Matthew 26 (7) and
Luke 7 (37). Chrysostom, “First it is necessary to say that this
was neither the prostitute of Matthew 26 nor the one of Luke
7. They were full of wickedness, but this one is honorable and
devoted.” Therefore, according to him, there were three women. Commenting on Matthew, Jerome says, “Let no one think
them to be the same who poured oil on his head and on his feet.
The former washed with her tears and wiped with her tresses
and is manifestly called a prostitute. Of the latter, nothing of
the sort has been written. And so, according to Jerome, there
were two women. Also, the one who appears in Luke 7 is called
Magdalene, from the village of Magdalo. This one is from Bethany. To the contrary, the Glossa: “This sinner anointed . . .” etc.,
and nearly the same is said in the Glossa on Matthew 26 and
the Glossa on Luke 7, “Mary the sister” etc. Augustine seems
to hesitate, saying “Behold, the sister of Lazarus (if, indeed, it
was she who anointed the Lord’s feet with ointment, and wiped
with her hair what she had washed with her tears).” Response:
It is to be said that the saints are quite capable of disagreeing on
matters pertaining to fact, but not on those pertaining to faith.
Nevertheless, the Church holds that they were the same, and
that what Jerome and Chrysostom say to the effect that they are
not the same is to be understood with respect to the identity of
status, because she was changed from one status to another.62
62

“Maria avtem erat qve vnxit Dominvm vngvent<o> exter<sit> pedes eivs
cap<illis> <svis>, infra xii (12, 3) et Mt. xxvi, cvivs frater Lazarvs infirmabatvr. Queritur utrum ista sit illa de qua Mt. xxvi (26, 7) et Luc. vii (7, 37).
Crisostomus, ‘Primum quidem illud necessarium est dicere quoniam non hec fuit
meretrix que in Mt. xxvi, neque in Luc. vii. Ille enim plene mali Hec studiosa et
honesta.’ Ergo secundum istum fuerunt tres. Ieronimus supra Mt. dicit: ‘Nemo
putes easdem esse que super capud effundit unguentum et que super pedes. Illa
enim et lacrimis lauit et crine tersit et manifeste meretrix appellatur. De hac autem
nichil tale scriptum est.’ Et ita secundum Ieronimum sunt due. Item, ista de qua
Luc. vii dicitur Magdalena a Magdala castro. Hec de Bethania. Contra, Glossa:
‘Hec peccatrix iunxit’ etc. Et fere idem, Mt. xxvi in Glossa et in Glossa super Luc.
vii: Maria soror etc. Augustinus uidetur dubitare dicens: ‘Ecce ipsa soror Lazari, si
tamen ipsa est que pedes Domini <unxit unguento> et tersit capillis.’ Responsio,
Dicendum quod sancti in talibus que pertinent ad factum bene possunt dissentire,
set in hiis que pertinent ad fidem non. Ecclesia tamen tenet quod eadem fuit et

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79

In a stroke, William gainsays Chrysostom and Jerome, and settles a question left open by no less an authority than Augustine.63 Hardly reckless,
he has limited their authority according to a principle: the inerrancy of
the sancti encompasses matters of faith, not questions of fact. Over and
against them, he invokes the authority of the Church (Ecclesia tamen
tenet). The interpretation he calls the Church’s appears in the Glossa ordinaria, the main source of which, in the event, is Bede.64 To be sure,
Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas arrive at the same
conclusion, though with greater discretion.65 Thomas leaves the impression of preferring Augustine’s interpretation, though he refrains from
resolving the matter explicitly and provides no general rule here for interpreting the sancti.66 In none of the above cases do we find any of these
quod dicunt Ieronimus et Crisostomus non esse illam, intelligendum est quantum
ad ydemptitatem status, quia mutata fuit in alterum statum.” William of Alton,
Super Io. 11, 2 (MS Saint-Omer, Bibl. mun. 260, f. 143ra).
63
First he quotes Chrysostom as asserting that each of the three narratives concerns
a different event and a different woman. Next, he cites Jerome to the effect that the
events described by John and Luke are the same, yet different from the one described
by Matthew. Then he mentions the further complication that the woman mentioned
by Luke is commonly said to be (dicitur) Mary Magdalene. Despite the difficulty
this presents for identifying her with the Mary whom John says is from Bethany,
William finds three glosses from the Glossa ordinaria asserting that all three Gospel
accounts concern the same woman, though not necessarily the same event. Finally,
he quotes Augustine as tentatively identifying the Mary of John’s narrative with the
sinful woman of Luke’s and suggesting that there were two anointings. Augustine
says nothing here of Matthew’s account.
64
Homiliarum euangelii libri ii, ii, 4 (ed. D. Hurst, 1955, Turnhout: Brepols, CCSL 122,
209–10).
65
“Et hanc sententiam tota tenet occidentalis Ecclesia.” Albert the Great, In Io. 11, 2
(ed. Borgnet, t. xxiv, 436a). For once less discursive than William, Bonaventure leaves
unmentioned the interpretations of Jerome and Augustine and contradicts only
Chrysostom; in discussing the possibility of disagreements, he refers to the authors
in question as expositores (Bonaventure, In Io. com. 2, 2; Opera, t. vi, 272a). As well as
the figures William names, Albert and Thomas include Origen, Ambrose, and Gregory; yet passing over their other differences, both classify these authors according to
a single criterion—whether they identify Mary of Bethany with the sinner of Luke’s
Gospel. Bonaventure, Albert, and Thomas all leave unmentioned the question of
identifying Mary of Bethany with the woman of Matthew’s version, and only Albert
brings up the question of her identification with Mary Magdalene. As does William,
Albert invokes the Church’s authority to settle the question. Cf. Beryl Smalley, The
Gospels in the Schools c. 1100–c. 1280 (London: Hambledon, 1985), 210.
66
“Secundum ergo opinionem Augustini manifestum est quod peccatrix illa de qua
dicitur in Luca, est Maria ista.” Thomas Aquinas, Super Io. 11, 2 (ed. Parma, t. x,

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Timothy Bellamah, O.P.

masters attempting to homogenize the thought of his predecessors.
In the closing comment of the preceding excerpt we find a fine
example of a reverential exposition. William brings two of the sancti
around to his own determination without trying to “bend” the thought
of either—immediately preceding his conclusion is an unambiguous acknowledgment that neither Jerome nor Chrysostom agrees with it. His
reconciliation rests on the retrieval of an element of each one’s interpretation that can be squared with his own. He allows that they are correct in holding that the two biblical narratives concerned two different
women, insofar as they concerned one woman in two different states, as
a sinner and as a penitent. His attempt to synthesize the two interpretations rests on a distinction, not a forcing of the texts. Whatever one
may make of his solution, it cannot be dismissed as a retouching or redressing of sources. Betraying little interest in cosmetics, it is a perfectly
transparent exercise in dialectic.
For one of Thomas’s most extensive theoretical reflections on ecclesial authority and the related matter of disagreement with the visible
Church, we turn to his treatment of heresy in the Summa theologiae (ST)
II-II. Here, he limits the authority of the saints by referring to that of
the Church, unambiguously identifying the pope as its principal holder:

489a). Elsewhere, it is not at all uncommon to find Thomas invoking the Church’s
opinion as authoritative. What follows are a few examples drawn only from his biblical commentaries: “Manifestum est autem ex praemissis quod apud Iob et amicos
eius eadem erat opinio de Daemonibus quam nunc ecclesia catholica tenet, ut scilicet ex angelica dignitate per peccatum corruerint.” Super Iob 40, 10 (ed. Leonina, t. xxvi, 215b); “Item error quorumdam dicentium, Ioseph ex alia coniuge filios
genuisse, et hos vocari fratres Domini, quod ecclesia non tenet.” Super Io. 2, 12 (ed.
Parma, t. x, 336a). The following two examples concern the dating of Jesus’s baptism:
“Sed ista opinio non videtur vera pro tanto, quia non concordat opinioni ecclesiae:
tenet enim ecclesia, quod tria miracula sint facta in die epiphaniae, scilicet de adoratione magorum, de baptismo et de conversione aquae in vinum.” Super Mt. 4, 12 (ed.
Parma, t. x, 42a–b); “Sed Ecclesia tenet contrarium. Credimus enim quod eodem
die quo Dominus baptizatus est, revoluto anno, factum fuerit miraculum de vino;
et postea revoluto anno, prope Pascha, Joannes fuerit decollatus; et quod ab isto
Paschate circa quod Joannes fuit decollatus” Super Io. 2, 2 (ed. Parma, t. x, 336a). For
the last reference I am indebted to G. Berceville, “Les commentaires évangéliques
de Thomas d’Aquin et Hugues de Saint-Cher,” in Hugues de Saint-Cher, bibliste et
théologien, ed. L.-J. Bataillon, Gilbert Dahan, P.-M. Gy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004),
173–96, 189, n. 23.

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“By no means should we accuse of heresy those who, however
false and perverse their opinion may be, defend it without obstinate fervor, and seek the truth with careful anxiety, ready to
mend their opinion, when they have found the truth,” because,
to wit, they do not make a choice in contradiction to the doctrine of the Church. Accordingly, certain doctors seem to have
differed either in matters the holding of which in this or that
way is of no consequence, so far as faith is concerned, or even
in matters of faith, which were not as yet defined by the Church;
although if anyone were obstinately to deny them after they had
been defined by the authority of the universal Church (auctoritate universalis Ecclesiae), he would be deemed a heretic. This
authority (auctoritas) resides chiefly in the Sovereign Pontiff.
For we read [Decret. xxiv, qu. 1]: “Whenever a question of faith
is in dispute, I think, that all our brethren and fellow bishops
ought to refer the matter to none other than Peter, that is, to the
authority of his name (sui nominis auctoritatem), against whose
authority (auctoritatem) neither Jerome nor Augustine nor any
of the holy doctors defended their opinion.”67

67

“Ad tertium dicendum quod, sicut Augustinus dicit, et habetur in decretis, XXIV,
qu. III, si qui sententiam suam, quamvis falsam atque perversam, nulla pertinaci
animositate defendunt, quaerunt autem cauta sollicitudine veritatem, corrigi parati cum invenerint, nequaquam sunt inter haereticos deputandi, quia scilicet non
habent electionem contradicentem Ecclesiae doctrinae. Sic ergo aliqui doctores dissensisse videntur vel circa ea quorum nihil interest ad fidem utrum sic vel aliter
teneatur; vel etiam in quibusdam ad fidem pertinentibus quae nondum erant per Ecclesiam determinata. Postquam autem essent auctoritate universalis Ecclesiae determinata, si quis tali ordinationi pertinaciter repugnaret, haereticus censeretur. Quae
quidem auctoritas principaliter residet in summo pontifice. Dicitur enim XXIV, qu.
I, quoties fidei ratio ventilatur, arbitror omnes fratres nostros et coepiscopos non
nisi ad Petrum, idest sui nominis auctoritatem, referre debere. Contra cuius auctoritatem nec Hieronymus nec Augustinus nec aliquis sacrorum doctorum suam
sententiam defendit. Unde dicit Hieronymus, haec est fides, Papa beatissime, quam
in Catholica didicimus Ecclesia. In qua si minus perite aut parum caute forte aliquid
positum est, emendari cupimus a te, qui Petri fidem et sedem tenes. Si autem haec
nostra confessio apostolatus tui iudicio comprobatur, quicumque me culpare voluerit, se imperitum vel malevolum, vel etiam non Catholicum sed haereticum, comprobabit.” ST II-II, q. 11, a. 2, ad 3 (cf. Augustine, De trin. I, 10; Gratian, Decretum,
P. II, causa xxiv, q. 1, can. 12).

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Timothy Bellamah, O.P.

Late medieval commentators’ reception of auctoritates was uncritical
neither with respect to the authenticity of the various works travelling
under a given authority’s name, nor with respect to their content. After
repeatedly citing the De spiritu et anima as Augustine’s in his Scriptum
on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and up to the thirteenth disputed question De veritate, Thomas Aquinas rejected its authenticity—and so its
authority—in the fifteenth (De ver. q. 15, a. 1, ad 1). More telling is his
blunt contradiction of Augustine’s assertion, important enough, that
the humanity of Christ is more closely united to the Son than the Son
to the Father:
Because what is urged in the argument “to the contrary” rests
upon what is false—namely, that the union of the Incarnation
is greater than the unity of the divine persons in essence—it
must be said to the authority of Augustine (dicendum est ad
auctoritatem Augustini) that the human nature is not more in
the Son of God than the Son of God in the Father, but much
less. But the man in some respects is more in the Son than the
Son in the Father, namely, inasmuch as the same supposit is signified when I say “man,” meaning Christ, and when I say “Son
of God”; whereas it is not the same supposit of Father and Son.68
Thomas follows his reproof with an attempt to save something of Augustine’s remark, noting that there is, in fact, a greater verbal unity
between the humanity of Christ and the Son than between the Son
and the Father, insofar as the terms “man” and “Son of God” refer to
the same supposit, whereas the same cannot be said of the terms “Father” and “Son.” However reverent, Thomas’s show of dialectic is by no
means dishonest, as it involves no attempt to misrepresent or obscure
Augustine’s intention.69
68

“Quia vero id quod in contrarium obiicitur falsum supponit, scilicet quod maior sit
unio incarnationis quam unitas personarum divinarum in essentia, dicendum est ad
auctoritatem Augustini quod humana natura non est magis in filio Dei quam filius
Dei in patre sed multo minus, sed ipse homo, quantum ad aliquid, est magis in filio
quam filius in patre; inquantum scilicet idem supponitur in hoc quod dico homo,
prout sumitur pro Christo, et in hoc quod dico, filius Dei; non autem idem est suppositum patris et filii.” (ST III, q. 2, a. 9, ad 4; cf. Augustine, De trin. I, 10).
69
Albert the Great put forward a similar qualification of John Damascene’s authority:

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83

However pedantic such usage of authoritative citations may appear to the modern reader, it was considered an indication of mastery
in the medieval university. Requiring arduous labor and considerable
editorial ability, compilatio of the sort these exegetes engaged in was an
enterprise highly regarded in its own right. Presupposing a thorough
command of the biblical text and its entire commentorial tradition,
it was intended to result in compositions surpassing the originals in
complexity as well as organization, and this for the sake of classroom
instruction of future preachers. In his exposition of John 7:15, William
of Alton attributes mastery of just this sort to the greatest auctoritas of
them all, Jesus Christ:
And the Jews were amazed, Mt. 13: All were amazed at
his teaching; Saying: How has he become learned without
having studied? They knew that he knew letters because in his
teaching he adduced authorities (auctoritates).70

7,15

From his knowledge of authorities, Jesus shows himself learned, but neither William nor any of his contemporaries imagined that the Lord’s
auctoritas derived from learning. They understood it as nothing less
than God’s own knowledge. In the prologue to his commentary on
John’s Gospel, Thomas Aquinas presents John the Evangelist as the perfect contemplative, whose authority derives from his participation in
God’s self-knowledge.
I saw the Lord seated on a lofty and elevated throne, and all the
land was filled with his majesty, and the train of his garment filled
“To the authority of Damascene, it is to be said that it is not only by reason or thought
that the (divine) Persons are distinguished, because this would be Sabellianism.
Hence, this auctoritas is to be understood cautiously.” “Ad auctoritatem autem Damasceni dicendum, quod non sola ratione vel cogitatione personae distinguuntur: quia
hoc esset Sabellianum. Unde caute intelligenda est auctoritas, scilicet, ut rationem
vocet relationem personalem quae realiter persona est, et cogitationem intellectum
distinguentem personas per hujusmodi relationes personales.” Albert the Great, In I
Sent. d. 1, a. 14, ad 1 (ed. Borgnet, t. xxv, 33b).
70
“Et mirabantvr Ivdei, Mt. xiii: Mirabantur omnes in doctrina eius; dicentes:
Qvomodo hic litteras scit, cvm non didicerit? Sciuerunt quod sciuit litteras,
quia auctoritates docendo adduxit.” William of Alton, Super Io. 7, 15 (MS SaintOmer 260, f. 131vb).

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Timothy Bellamah, O.P.

the temple (Is 6:1). These are the words of a contemplative, and
if taken as if put forward from the mouth of John, they pertain
well enough to the declaration of this Gospel . . . However, in
John’s contemplation of the Incarnate Word, a fourfold height is
designated, namely, of authority (auctoritatis), hence he says: I
saw the Lord; of eternity, hence he says: seated; of dignity or nobility of nature, hence he says: on a lofty throne; and of incomprehensible truth, as he says: elevated. By these four ways the
ancient philosophers attained to the knowledge of God. Some
attained to the knowledge of God through authority (auctoritatem), and this way is the most efficacious . . . And so, since the
whole course of nature proceeds and is directed to an end in an
orderly way, we must posit something higher which directs and
governs them as Lord, and this is God. This authority (auctoritas) in governing is shown to be in the Word of God, when he
says: Lord . . . So therefore the contemplation of John was high
with respect to authority (auctoritatem), eternity, dignity, and
the incomprehensibility of the Word, which he hands on to us
in his Gospel.71

71

“Vidi Dominum sedentem super solium excelsum et eleuatum et plena erat domus a
maiestate eius et ea que sub ipso erant replebant templum. Ys. vi (1). Verba proposita
uerba sunt contemplantis, et si accipiantur quasi ex ore Iohannis euangeliste, prolata
satis pertinent ad declarationem huius Euangelii . . . In hac autem contemplatione
Iohannis circa Verbum incarnatum quadruplex altitudo designatur, scilicet auctoritatis, unde dicit: Dominum; eternitatis, cum dicit sedentem; dignitatis seu nobilitatis
nature, cum dicit: super solium excelsum; et incomprehensibilis ueritatis, cum dicit:
et eleuatum. Istis enim quatuor modis philosophi antiqui ad Dei contemplationem
peruenerunt. Quidam enim per auctoritatem Dei in ipsius cognitionem deuenerunt,
et hec est efficacissima uia . . . Et ideo cum totus cursus nature ordinate in finem
procedat et dirigatur, de necessitate oportet nos ponere aliquid altius quod dirigat
ista et sicut dominus gubernet: et hic est Deus. Et hec gubernandi auctoritas in Verbo Dei ostenditur cum dicit: Dominum . . . Sic ergo contemplatio Iohannis alta fuit
et quantum ad auctoritatem et quantum ad eternitatem et quantum ad dignitatem
et quantum ad incomprehensibilitatem Verbi, quam nobis in suo Euangelio tradit.”
Thomas Aquinas, Lectura super Ioannem, proemium (cf. ed. Marietti, 1952, no. 1–6.)
With slight modifications, the English translation is that of James Weisheipl and
Fabian Larcher, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, part 1 (Albany, NY: Magi
Books, 1980). The Latin text is from a provisional recension drawn from the known
manuscript witnesses to an exemplar at Paris.

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85

Contemplating the Word of God, the source of all authority, the Evangelist partakes of it, and thus hands it on to us by his own words. In this
perspective, authority enables communication and it itself communicated, drawing its beneficiaries into the life of God.
Conclusion
In the opening question of the Summa theologiae, Thomas takes up the
question of whether theology is argumentative, and entertains an objection to the effect that arguments must proceed either by reason or
by authority. The objector has pointed out that reason is inadequate to
the science’s end, God, and that arguments from authority are unfitting
because they are weak and therefore incapable of leading to certitude.
At the outset of a lengthy reply, Thomas defends the use of theological argumentation from authority by grounding the said authority in
revelation, and by making a remarkable declaration about revelation’s
recipients—they have an authority (auctoritas) that must (oportet) be
believed. He goes on to say that whereas arguments proceeding from
human authority (super ratione humana) are the weakest of all (infirmissimus), those proceeding from divine authority are the strongest (efficassimus), while those proceeding from the doctors of the Church are
employed as probable (probabiliter). He adds that even the philosophers
may be cited as auctoritates, insofar as they were able to know the truth
by natural reason.72
72

“Ad secundum dicendum quod argumentari ex auctoritate est maxime proprium
huius doctrinae, eo quod principia huius doctrinae per revelationem habentur, et sic
oportet quod credatur auctoritati eorum quibus revelatio facta est. Nec hoc derogat
dignitati huius doctrinae, nam licet locus ab auctoritate quae fundatur super ratione
humana, sit infirmissimus; locus tamen ab auctoritate quae fundatur super revelatione divina, est efficacissimus. Utitur tamen sacra doctrina etiam ratione humana,
non quidem ad probandum fidem, quia per hoc tolleretur meritum fidei; sed ad
manifestandum aliqua alia quae traduntur in hac doctrina. Cum enim gratia non
tollat naturam, sed perficiat, oportet quod naturalis ratio subserviat fidei; sicut et
naturalis inclinatio voluntatis obsequitur caritati. Unde et apostolus dicit, II ad Cor.
X, in captivitatem redigentes omnem intellectum in obsequium Christi. Et inde est
quod etiam auctoritatibus philosophorum sacra doctrina utitur, ubi per rationem
naturalem veritatem cognoscere potuerunt; sicut Paulus, actuum XVII, inducit verbum Arati, dicens, sicut et quidam poetarum vestrorum dixerunt, genus Dei sumus.
Sed tamen sacra doctrina huiusmodi auctoritatibus utitur quasi extraneis argumentis, et probabilibus. Auctoritatibus autem canonicae Scripturae utitur proprie,

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Timothy Bellamah, O.P.

At work here and in the preceding excerpts is an unambiguously theological notion of ecclesial authority that emerged from a purely human, non-Christian concept. It is an idea incomparably broader
and richer than the notions Childs, Fowl, Lash, or most contemporary
Christians, Catholic or Protestant, seem to have in mind in their discussions of the matter. Explicitly connected to revelation, authority of this
kind is divine in origin. It is also communicable to and participatible
by those living in faith, the members of the Church. To be sure, neither
Thomas nor any of his contemporaries doubted the universal Church to
be its primary participant, whose hierarchical structure they took as given, and left unquestioned. They understood ecclesial auctoritas to mediate divine revelation, not to obscure it. Apart from the Cathars and a few
other marginal groups, few Christians at the time thought otherwise.
It hardly needs to be said that this has not been the case among
Christians for a long time. It has been the purpose of this brief historical
sketch neither to oppose the general Western tendency to “question authority,” nor to provide a concise definition of auctoritas. By these selections, however, we have endeavored to shed light on a concept crucial to
understanding what the Church says about her task of authentically interpreting the Word of God, confided to her own living teaching office,
“whose authority (auctoritas) is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ”
N&V
(Dei Verbum 10).

ex necessitate argumentando. Auctoritatibus autem aliorum doctorum Ecclesiae,
quasi arguendo ex propriis, sed probabiliter. Innititur enim fides nostra revelationi
apostolis et prophetis factae, qui canonicos libros scripserunt, non autem revelationi, si qua fuit aliis doctoribus facta. Unde dicit Augustinus, in epistola ad Hieronymum, solis eis Scripturarum libris qui canonici appellantur, didici hunc honorem
deferre, ut nullum auctorem eorum in scribendo errasse aliquid firmissime credam.
Alios autem ita lego, ut, quantalibet sanctitate doctrinaque praepolleant, non ideo
verum putem, quod ipsi ita senserunt vel scripserunt.” ST I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 87-123

87

The Quest for the Vera et Sincera de Jesu:
Dei Verbum §19 and the Historicity of the Gospels
Anthony Giambrone, O.P.
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN

Introduction

THE TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARYof the opening of Vatican
II saw René Latourelle produce a major conciliar Festschrift: Vatican
II: Assessment and Perspectives. For the first volume of this project,
José Caba contributed an essay treating the “Genesis and Fruits” of
Dei Verbum §19.1 In Caba’s view the council’s teaching on the Gospels
essentially offered “a new way of formulating the historicity problem,”
no longer moored to “the knowledge and truthfulness of those who
were eyewitnesses.” Instead, in the document’s “New Framework,” criteriology and redaction criticism point the way forward.
Twenty-five years later, we stand in a different historiographical place, from which both our assessments and perspectives are likely
changed. If there is little to dispute in Caba’s straightforward account of
the succession of drafts in the article’s genesis, one may be less satisfied
with his interpretation of its fruits. What promptly followed the council is not necessarily what the council envisioned. In any event, Gospel
scholarship today looks considerably different than it did just twen1

José Caba, “Historicity of the Gospels (Dei Verbum 19): Genesis and Fruits of the
Conciliar Text,” in Vatican II: Assessments and Perspectives, vol. 1, ed. René Latourelle (New York: Paulist, 1988), 299–320.

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Anthony Giambrone, O.P.

ty-five years ago; while resistance is growing to overstated notions of
the council’s newness.2 It is opportune, therefore, now a full half century
later, to evaluate again Dei Verbum’s important teaching on the Gospels’
historicity.
In this essay, I will offer a revised estimate and propose that the
doctrine of Dei Verbum §19 is a classic instance of conciliar ressourcement. Rather than elaborating a wholly “New Framework,” configured
by Formgeschichte (and its offspring, redaction criticism) and specially
calibrated to a critical quest for the historical Jesus, Vatican II recovers a
fresh view of the definitive paradigm of sacred Scripture. The Church’s
teaching on the Gospels is thus best understood as adumbrating a Lukan
Framework, and Dei Verbum §19 represents an exegesis of the preface
of Luke’s Gospel. It is no accident (though not noted by Caba) that the
council frames its doctrine in article 19 with two programmatic scriptural texts: Acts 1:1–2 and Luke 1:2–4. While this appeal to inspired
Scripture remains open (and even invites) professional historical inquiry, the asphaleia of the Gospels is part of the preached message itself.
The study will be structured around several interlocking themes.
First, I will contextualize the teaching of Dei Verbum §19 historically
and hermeneutically, supplying a broad background indicating the unlikelihood of any substantially “New Framework.” I will also provide a
description of two major responses to the issue of historicity. Finally, I
will consider some trends in Gospel scholarship, positioning them in
relation to the council doctrine.
Opiniones Novae or the Renouveau?
On June 26, 1961, while the preconciliar committees were already
busily meeting, Jean Steinmann’s La Vie de Jésus became the last title
ever placed on the Index.3 Although the Pontifical Biblical Commission
(PBC) was known as a vigilant watchdog and had aggressively censured
several books in the past, this solemn condemnation through the Holy
2

For a comprehensive statement of opposition to the entrenched perspective represented by the Bologna School of council scholarship and reception, see Agostino
Marchetto, Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II: Contrappunto per la sua storia (Vatican
City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005).
3
In generali consessu, AAS 53 (1961): 507–8. See Jean Steinmann, La Vie de Jésus (Paris:
Editions de Noël, 1959).

Dei Verbum §19 and the Historicity of the Gospels

89

Office was the only such action ever initiated by the PBC.4 The unexplained decree came just days after a monitum had been promulgated,
the circumstances of which help explain the severe decision.5
Steinmann was incidental to a larger controversy ignited the summer before, later nicknamed “The Battle of the Biblicum.” At its heart
lay a suggestive exchange: a trial run, in some regards, of those perspectives we now recognize as the two great competing conciliar hermeneutics: rupture and continuity.6 Louis Alonso Schökel, a young professor
4

In 1912, the PBC forbade several commentaries from being used in seminaries, including “several works by P. Lagrange.” At different points the PBC also aggressively
censured several other publications. See AAS 26 (1934): 130 and AAS 45 (1953): 432.
These condemnations were more restricted in scope, however, and were not executed through the Holy Office and its Sacred Congregation of the Index.
5
See AAS 53 (1961): 507. Contrast Steinmann’s unexplained condemnation with
Cardinal Merry del Val’s ample explanation of the condemnation of Vigouroux
and Brassac’s Manuel biblique (AAS 15 [1923]: 616–19) and the reasoning provided
for the PBC censure of Schmidtke’s Die Einwanderung Israels in Kanaan (AAS 26
[1934]: 130). A letter from Cardinal Ruffini, a member of the PBC, informed Ottaviani about the problematic nature of Steinmann’s book. See F. Michele Stabile, “Il cardinal Ruffini e il Vaticano II: Le lettere di un intransigente,” Cristianismo nella Storia
11 (1990): 115. Ruffini later published a headlining article in L’Osservatore Romano
(August 24, 1961) in which he found fault with Steinmann for omitting the infancy
narratives, reducing the public ministry to a minimum and treating the resurrection
lightly, declaring in sum: “A rationalist Protestant could not have been more rash or
radical.”
6
Benedict XVI’s famous December 22, 2005, address to the Roman Curia technically
speaks of “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” and “‘the hermeneutic of
reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church.” For an important
study of the issue, see Agostino Marchetto, Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II: Per
la sua corretta ermeneutica (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012). These
two hermeneutical perspectives had long been competing for control of Catholic
exegesis; as elsewhere, the Biblical Movement is here profoundly representative of
the ferment that gave rise to conciliar theology. See Karim Schelkens, “From Providentissimus Deus to Dei Verbum: The Catholic Biblical Movement and the Council Reconsidered,” in La Théologie catholique entre intransigeance et renouveau: La
réception des mouvements préconciliaires à Vatican II, ed. G. Routhier, P. J. Roy, and
K. Schelkens (Leuven: Leuven Universiteitsbibliotheek, 2011), 49–68. The undisguised value judgment implied in Schelkens’s dichotomy of “intransigence” and “renewal” (not equally kind descriptions) indicates the basic prejudice of his study. Still,
the continuous interaction of two differently oriented forces is well documented in
the history of the council—even if one has trouble seeing how Schelkens’s proposal
of a “hermeneutic of shifting balances” does more than rephrase and dialectically
attenuate the “paradigm shift” model he critiques. If Schelkens’s reading prefers simply to chart the ebb and flow of opposing parties (like shifting seats in Congress),

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Anthony Giambrone, O.P.

at the Biblicum, had written a progressive piece for a popular magazine
arguing that Pius XII had endorsed a broadminded shift in the direction
of biblical studies, a cambiamento nell’esegesi.7 Antonino Romeo, a wellplaced curial official and Scripture scholar at the Lateranum, let loose in
response an intemperate seventy-page rebuttal, insisting on the continuity of Pacelli’s program with the earlier culture of Catholic exegesis and
ironically accusing Alonso Schökel (and others at the PIB and elsewhere)
of the very opiniones novae and “new exegesis” (nova exegesis) Pope Pius
condemned directly in Humani Generis (§22–24).8 As the debate rapidly
escalated, drawing in additional voices, attention focused especially on
historicity, and soon the last spasm of anti-modernist panic was engulfing Rome. The pope himself expressed great impatience with this “nonsense,” and an intervention quickly became inevitable.9
In this connection, the terse monitum had been engineered around
the obstructions of those whom the architects called the “modernists”
(though John XXIII remained confident about the Biblicum).10 The
text itself, however, was open to diverse interpretations, with forward
looking young exegetes like Joseph Fitzmyer insisting that the warning
“should not be regarded as a condemnation of the so-called ‘new direction.’”11 The document did briefly commend the fervent study of sacred
theologically, the proper hermeneutic must be derived from Newman’s notion of development. Historians of the council would thus do well to attend again to the seven
notes of a “true development”: (1) preservation of type, (2) continuity of principles,
(3) power of assimilation, (4) logical sequence, (5) anticipation of its future, (6) conservation of action upon its past, and (7) chronic vigor.
7
Louis Alonso Schökel, “Dove va l’esegesi cattolica?” La Civiltà Cattolica 111, no.
2645 (1960): 449–60. The title ironically evokes the famous essay of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange on the nouvelle théologie, “La nouvelle théologie, où va-t-elle?” Angelicum 23 (1946): 126–45. Garrigou-Lagrange had warned that the new trend was a
repackaged revival of modernism.
8
Antonino Romeo, “L’Enciclica Divino afflante Spiritu e le opiniones novae,” Divinitas
4 (1960): 387–456.
9
See Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: Pope of the Century (New York: Continuum,
2000), 211.
10
See Karim Schelkens, Catholic Theology of Revelation on the Eve of Vatican II: A
Redaction History of the Schema De fontibus revelationis (1960–62) (Leiden: Brill,
2011), 157n2.
11
Joseph Fitzmyer, “A Recent Roman Scriptural Controversy,” Theological Studies 22
(1961): 443–44. See also the contrasting views on the monitum expressed by Peter
Duncker, “Biblical Criticism, Instructions of the Church and Excesses of Form Crit-

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91

Scripture (an obvious nod to scientific methods), but expressed concern
over certain circulating opinions that questioned the “genuine historical
and objective truth” (germanam veritatem historicam et obiectivam) not
only of the Old Testament—an issue, it noted, already decried in Humani Generis—but also of the New Testament, even doubting the words
and deeds (dicta et facta) of Jesus. It is hard to mistake the commission’s concern (shared with Romeo) that the solemn corrections Pius
offered in 1950 were failing to stem a mounting tide of biblical skepticism. If Steinmann’s book was made an example in this context, it neatly sidestepped the whole business with the Biblicum, Steinmann being
far away in Paris. The choice likewise—and more importantly—deftly
averted speculation over the use of historical-critical methods per se, for
the book deployed no scientific criticism. It postured, instead, as a kind
of updated Renan: a peculiarly French biographical romance, popular
yet pensive—and watery at best on basic articles of the faith.12
Of course, if the legacy of the “liberal lives of Jesus” thus lived on
in Steinmann’s work, the real beachhead of critical skepticism lay elsewhere—as it also had in the time of Renan’s popularized Vie de Jésus. The
more aggressive curial reaction accordingly targeted certain exegetical
technicians, and two established Biblicum professors (but not Alonso
Schökel) were soon deposed. These suspensions, leveled against Stanislaus Lyonnet and Maximilian Zerwick, were the climax of the brief
intrigue. No formal explanation was ever given—it was accomplished
with silent efficiency—but the suspicion was mercilessly clear. Lyonnet
had treaded into the sensitive waters of Adam and original sin; while
Zerwick misstepped on Gospel historicity.13
icism,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963): 22–23, and Francesco Spadafora, “Un
document notevole per l’esegesi cattolica,” Palestra del clero 40 (1961): 969–81.
12
Steinmann evokes Renan with the title and structure of the work and directly engages
him in the conclusion: “Renan n’a pas vu que cette mort [de Jésus] était un signe . . .
Cette vie est-elle absurdité ou mystère? Quel est le sens de la mort? Quel est l’ultime
destin de l’homme: Dieu ou le néant? Suivant leur réponse, les homes sur terre sont
à jamais divisés sous le signe de la croix.” The popular audience of the book, along
with this less than robust conclusion, likely contributed to the condemnation. The final section of Sancta Mater Ecclesia strongly insists upon the need for writers to avoid
“spreading makeshift solutions” that “upset the faith of many.”
13
Lucien Cerfaux (a member of the Theological Commission) noted in a letter to Cardinal Van Roey: “le P. Zerwick avait une phrase malheureuse: Il nostro scopo è di
investigare, condotti dal testo sacro stesso, fin dove giunga la libertà che la tradizione

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If the “modernists” were thus soundly chastened, once the conciliar winds began to blow, the imposing front of hierarchical resistance
collapsed in disarray, and any clear doctrinal lesson was soon subverted. Indeed, the confusing epilogue to this whole debacle was a sudden
volte-face that saw the new pontiff, Paul VI, on the counsel of Cardinal
Bea, reinstating both disciplined Jesuits in the spring of 1964.14
Although this reversal has been regarded as a full vindication, such
an interpretation cannot be sustained. The decision instead appears
to have been a change in ecclesiastical policy—the fall from favor of a
hawkish curial party—in no way implying a nihil obstat on the scholars’
deviant exegesis. Indeed, the issuance at the same time (April 1964) of
Sancta Mater Ecclesia, the landmark Instruction on Historical Truth of
the Gospels, a document approved by Paul VI but commissioned two
years earlier by Pope John, expressly bolstered the Church’s firm commitment to historicity—albeit with nuance and considerable good will
toward modern methods. This coordinated double maneuver, loosening the reins on free debate while rearticulating the Church’s perennial
teaching, is critical to appreciate, for the strategy of both Roncalli and
Montini, even as cardinals, was always “to speak loudly and carry a
small stick,” ever confident in the supremacy of dialogue. John XXIII
had, in line with this, never ordered the hit on Lyonnet and Zerwick
(which, in fact, he resented); while Paul VI’s doggedly traditional stance
on historicity was repeatedly proven both during and after the council.15
Regardless, the Church was not accustomed to this indulgent mode of
governance; and at every level the conflicting signals were too disorienting. It is small wonder that a culture of exegetical impunity came to
e gli Evangelisti si prendono con la realità storica dei fatti e dei dotti di Gesu.” See
Schelkens, Theology of Revelation, 130, cf. 115, 125. Zerwick evidently undermined the
historicity of Mt 16. See the gossipy account of a former Time magazine correspondent
at the council, Robert Blair Kaiser, Clerical Error: A True Story (New York: Continuum,
2002), 130.
14
Roderick MacKenzie, S.J., rector of the PIB, requested a reexamination of the case
during his audience with Paul VI in March 1964. The pope agreed and charged Cardinal Bea with the investigation. The personal displeasure of Paul VI with the Lateran was evident, as he scolded the institution for “vexatious polemics” on his first
visit there (October 31, 1961), shortly after removing the rector, Msgr. Piolanti. See
Brian Harrison, The Teaching of Pope Paul VI on Sacred Scripture (Rome: Pontificium Athenaeum Sanctae Crucis, 1997), 60–61.
15
Ibid.

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reign—so much that the disgraced Steinmann would soon be rehabilitated as Yves Congar’s symbol of the Renouveau.16
Such provocation should not be taken at face value, of course. The
Church had not so utterly abandoned the seriousness of her past commitments. Thus, if for many the instruction on historicity quickly came
to represent much more than a charitable change of tone, the document’s
positive teaching cannot be read in isolation from the monitum—itself a
call to attend again to Humani Generis. At root, the events of 1961 and
the redress of 1964 were two distinct magisterial efforts addressing the
same exegetical disruption. The pontificate of Paul VI signaled that a
long era of iron-fisted discipline was at an end—not that the advance of
modernist skepticism posed no further danger.
Historica Veritas
It was, fatefully, within this turbulent and uncertain air that the great
Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum was drafted. Among the many sensitive points debated during the work of composition—a laborious gestation that lasted the full duration of the council—the controversy just
recounted confirms the peculiarly high stakes attached to the question
of historicity. While the precursor text, De fontibus revelationis, was sufficiently unpopular that a complete redrafting was ultimately undertaken,17 chapter IV of that schema, De Novo Testamento, reveals the absolute preoccupation on the eve of the council with affirming the Gospels’
historical truth.18 Despite wide concern over the adversarial tone of the
draft (which cited and even sharpened the wording of the monitum), the
main points and structure, and in several places even the wording of this
chapter survived intact—a significant point, considering the wider fate
16

No sooner had Paul VI finally abolished the Index in 1966 than the catechetical conferences of Jean Steinmann, Une foi chretienne pour aujourd’hui (Paris: B. Grasset,
1967)—a dubious exercise in aggiornimento—were promptly posthumously published. Endorsed in a preface by Yves Congar, flush with his triumph at the council,
the work was (brazenly) celebrated as the exact “renouveau” required in the Church.
17
See the nuanced reappraisal of De fontibus in Schelkens, Theology of Revelation,
265–80.
18
For the text of Schema I, Chapter IV, see Francisco Gil Hellín, Concilii Vaticani II
Synopsis in Ordinem Redigens Schemata cum Relationibus necnon Patrum Orationes
atque Animadversiones Constitutio Dogmatica De Divina Revelatione Dei Verbum
(Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), 186–87.

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of the infamous schema. The decisive development in reformulating the
material in a more positive fashion was, of course, the well-timed appearance of Sancta Mater Ecclesia. Indeed, nowhere else in the long textual history of Dei Verbum is there such a major moment of magisterial
intervention. Whole sentences, in fact, are lifted from the Instruction,
and this document supplies the essential substance of Dei Verbum §19.
The PBC Instruction was, as just related, drafted as the Church’s cautious answer to a crisis of historical skepticism, brewing at least since Humani Generis in 1950. As an event of direct conciliar import, however, the
document also served another role. More than a few churchmen at the
council, bewildered by the rumored German monster, Formgeschichte,
required real guidance in addressing the questions on the floor.19 To this
end the PBC offered the council fathers a kind of “voter’s guide” on the latest trends in exegesis, refining a private manuscript prepared by Cardinal
Bea and already circulating for this purpose. While the magisterial text
can hardly be read as delivering marching orders from theological hardliners, the weighty criticisms leveled against Form Criticism made clear
the Church’s profound reservations.20 Still, a tone of ready engagement
is unmistakable. Overall, the PBC’s succinct critique incisively sifted out
the errant principles of Bultmannian exegesis (with a prescience quite remarkable in retrospect), yet it left a door open for a legitimate (if selective)
Catholic appropriation (sana elementa).
Unsurprisingly, the gesture of openness became the takeaway teaching of the document. Many specialists in biblical studies, whose theological culture was not yet so divorced from the heritage of dogmatic
theology, eagerly embraced the forward looking methodology, confi19

See the account offered in the foreword to Augustine Bea, The Study of the Synoptic
Gospels: New Approaches and Outlooks (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 9–12.
20
The six principles (as enumerated by Fitzmyer) are: (1) denial of a supernatural order, (2) denial of God’s intervention in the world in strict revelation, (3) denial of
the existence and possibility of miracles, (4) incompatibility of faith with historical
truth, (5) an almost a priori rejection of the historical nature and value of scriptural
texts, and (6) diminishment of apostolic authority as witnesses to Christ and exaggeration of the creative power of the community. Through such theses the Church
understood the Form Critics to be profoundly misled by the errors of rationalism
(praeiudicatis opinionibus rationalismi abducti). A famous article by Pierre Benoit,
“Refléxions sur la ‘formgeschichtliche Methode,” Revue Biblique (1946): 481–512,
which remains one of the best treatments of Form Criticism and well worth reading,
helped shaped the magisterial view—in both openness and critique.

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95

dent that the extremes of German Protestantism lacked viability in the
Catholic context.21 Thus in influential quarters all attention was turned
to the differentiation of Gospel strata, and the Instruction’s fundamental
concern to secure historicity was quickly obscured in its reception. The
move in this direction was immediate. Fitzmyer, for instance, an eager
Rome watcher in those days, in an early review of the document just
months before the promulgation of Dei Verbum (with an eye no doubt
to helping nudge the council fathers’ thinking), managed to spin the
text as strangely uninterested in historical truth—an idea one might be
forgiven for gathering from the official title, De historica evangeliorum
veritate. His insistence on the point is quite remarkable.
The most important word in the title is not the word historica—
which might have been one’s initial impression . . . in none of the
positive directives does the phrase historica veritas reappear. It is
evident, therefore, that the Biblical Commission is far more interested in sketching with broad lines, the character of the Gospel truth, than in just reasserting that the Gospels are historical.22
The Commission speaks [in §9] of “truth” only, and does not specify it as “historical truth.” One might wonder what it would mean
if the word “historical” were understood here, after such an admission of the redactional work of the evangelists. But if one were to
ask, “Well, then, if it is not a question of historical truth, of what
kind is it?” the answer would have to be, “of the Gospel truth.”23

21

Fitzmyer, “Recent Roman Scriptural Controversy,” 390, expresses the untroubled
conviction that the six errant philosophical and theological premises “are rejected
by Catholic exegetes.” Whether the same confidence is possible today, it is evident
that a notional rejection of the problematic principles is insufficient to recalibrate
a method that inherently presumes such things as “scientific naturalism.” On the
treatment of miracles in historical method, see Brad Gregory, “No Room for God?
History, Science, Metaphysics, and the Study of Religion,” History and Theory 47
(2008): 495–519.
22
Joseph Fitzmyer, “The Biblical Commission’s Instruction on the Historical Truth of
the Gospels,” Theological Studies (1964): 387.
23
Ibid., 395.

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Neither the Church in her official pronouncements on the nature of inspiration, nor the theologians in their speculative treatments of it, have taught that the necessary formal effect of inspiration is historicity. The consequence of inspiration is inerrancy,
i.e., immunity from formal error in what is affirmed. The opposite of inerrancy is not simply historicity, but truth. But there is
poetical truth as well as historical truth, rhetorical truth as well
as legal truth, mythical truth as well as the Gospel truth.24
And “Gospel truth,” Fitzmyer finally assures, “is not something which is
tied up with any fundamentalistic literalness.”25
Fitzmyer raises some genuine issues, and the animating fear of fundamentalist literalism—the guild’s familiar tic doloureaux—must be addressed. It is astonishing, nonetheless, to witness this total subversion of
the text’s express concern. The very notion of “historical truth” is summarily displaced by a tautology entirely of Fitzmyer’s making: “Gospel
truth”—a nebulous notion he finds for various reasons more commodious. Whatever valid concerns merit attention in articulating the precise
modality of Gospel inerrancy, when confronted with the massive solemnity of the opening sentence of Dei Verbum §19—unique of its kind in
the whole Dogmatic Constitution—an evasion of historica veritas cannot be maintained: “Holy Mother Church has held and still holds (tenuit
ac tenet) firmly and with absolute constancy (firmiter et constantissime)
that the four Gospels, whose historicity (historicitatem) she unhesitatingly affirms (incunctanter affirmat), faithfully hand on (fideliter tradere) those things that Jesus the Son of God, while he lived among men,
truly (reapse) did and taught for their eternal salvation, until the day on
which he was taken up (Acts 1:1–2).”26
24

Ibid., 401.
Ibid., 396.
26
The phrase quorum historicitatem incunctanter affirmat was added between the last
draft (III) and the final text (IV) with the following remark: “Necessario inducendum
est vocabulum historicum, quod a Magistro saepius adhibitum est, ut refrenetur audacia exegetica.” The proposal of 174 fathers was: “iuxta veritatem fidemque historicam tradere omnia facta et dicta quae in ipsis continentur.” The editorial note on this
proposal observes that “historia” is an equivocal term, ranging in meaning from rebus
supramundanis apprehended by faith, to Geschichte and Historie. Preference was thus
given to the sense “realitatem factorem seu eventum modo concreto affirmare,” and
25

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97

The council’s language here actually strengthens the earlier wording of De fontibus, preferring tenuit ac tenet for credidit ac credit. The
official relatio on this change makes clear the desire to propose a mode
of truth open to rational affirmation: fide et ratione, non tantum fide.27
If this transposes the speculative vision of Vatican I’s Dei Filius into a
distinctively historical and scriptural idiom and deftly decouples the
council’s doctrine from the fideism of a Bultmannian-Barthian dialectical dogmatics, it naturally also faces the ultimate question posed by
Fitzmyer: What precisely do I assent to when I affirm the historicity of
the Gospels?28
If “fundamentalistic literalness” poses a real problem, Form Criticism was not the Church’s introduction to literary genre, nor was the
Church as critically naïve as some would pretend. The Biblical Commission, in fact, had long before officially acknowledged the possibility of merely “apparent history” (species historiae) in Scripture. Indeed,
even in the worst days of the Modernist crisis, Rome allowed that in
well-demonstrated cases (non facile nec temere admittendo!) one might
hold that “the sacred author did not intend to recount true history properly so called (veram et proprie dictam historiam), but with the outward
appearance and form of history (sub specie et forma historiae), intended
to propose a parable or allegory or some other meaning from the properly literal or historical meaning of the words.”29 Texts like Jonah and Job
are obviously in view, but the measured principle has impressive scope.
All in all, when viewed against this magisterial precursor, the most pertinent doctrinal antecedent, the simplest and most ready interpretation
of Dei Verbum’s teaching (following Sancta Mater Ecclesia) is that the
Gospels are not to be reckoned as “specious” but vera historia. In other
words, the “properly literal or historical meaning of the words” is indeed

the less ambiguous language of historicitas was employed. See Relatio Ad num. 19 c in
Gil Hellín, Synopsis, 133.
27
Ibid., 132.
28
The Time correspondent reporting on this debate at the council put his finger on the
issue at the end of his article: “The problem: what precisely is meant by historicity?”
Time (November 5, 1965): 5.
29
ASS 38 (1905–6): 124–25.

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the meaning intended by the sacred author. This seems to capture the
intent of the council’s phrase, vera et sincera de Iesu.30
Fundamentum Intelligentiae Spiritalis
Exegetes will alternately trivialize or balk at the jejune affirmation that
the Gospels must be taken literally. The “literal or historical meaning” is
more profound and complex than reigning exegetical methods comprehend, however, and it invites more patient consideration.31 Indeed, once
one appreciates that the literal sense holds foundational significance for
any theology of revelation and grounds the possibility of all disciplined
theological argument, the importance of getting it right will be urgently
clear.32 While this applies to all the Scriptures, the status of the Gospels
must be singled out, even within the New Testament, “because they are
the principal testimony for the life and teaching of the Incarnate Word.”33
As a question of the first principles of theology and revelation, then,
it is a matter of peculiar interest in understanding the literal and historical level of the Gospels that the robust Protestant theology of revelation
at the time of the council was divided into two opposing camps, with the
schools of Bultmann and Cullmann fiercely split over the fundamental
relation of word and deed.34 From Cullmann’s salvation history perspec30

On the contested history of this formula, see Béda Rigaux’s commentary on Chapter
V of Dei Verbum in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 3, edited by
Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 258–60. Considered too
weak by many council fathers, Paul VI intervened and proposed vera seu historica
fide digna, which, despite the advocacy of Cardinal Bea, was considered open to
a new (Bultmannian) ambiguity and rejected. The Theological Commission then
clarified its intention with the original formula. It means to encompass and coordinate both the objective facts (vera) and the subjective activity/intentionality of the
Evangelists (sincera).
31
For a fuller treatment of magisterial perspectives on the literal sense, see Mark Reasoner’s helpful contribution in this volume.
32
“Nulla confusio sequitur in sacra Scriptura: cum omnes sensus fundentur super
unum, scilicet litteralem: ex quo solo potest trahi argumentum,” Summa theologiae
I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 1. See Augustine, Epist. 93.8.24.
33
“Neminem fugit inter omnes, etiam Novi Testamenti Scripturas, Evangelia merito
excellere, quippe quae praecipuum testimonium sint de Verbi Incarnati, Salvatoris
nostri, vita atque doctrina” (Dei Verbum §18).
34
For the significance of these debates on the council’s doctrine, see the commentary
of Joseph Ratzinger on chapters 1 and 2 of Dei Verbum in Vorgrimler, Commentary,
170–98.

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tive, which generally (but not in every way) had the greater affinity with
and influence on the council’s ultimate doctrine, the critical danger is
clear: “The Bultmannites neglect events.”35 The divine Word (dabar),
however, is indivisibly “speech” and “history.”36 In harmony with this,
the classic doctrine of Catholic hermeneutics sees words and deeds to
be interpretatively inseparable: littera gesta docet. In this paradigm, “history” is thus at once the prima significatio, the scriptural “letter” having its own grammatico-literary ratio,37 and the locus of the mystery
of our redemption: profundissima vallis historiae38—man’s deep valley
into which Christ has kenotically descended.39 The historical sense is
thus the rhetorical synkatabasis of the divine Word.40 In the splendid
formulation of Dei Verbum, the two dimensions of this living speech of
God are inextricably intertwined, mutually manifesting and confirming
35

See the essay “Foundations: The Theology of Salvation History and the Ecumenical Dialogue,” delivered during the Third Session of Vatican II, in Oscar Cullmann,
Vatican II: The New Direction (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 25. Cullmann’s
active participation in the ecumenical aspects of the council both presupposed a
certain theological propinquity with Catholic doctrine (“as soon as we began to use
salvation history in our discussions . . . we were speaking the same language”) and
made his greater influence on the council’s outcome inevitable.
36
Precisely because “the author of sacred scripture is God, in whose power it is to
signify not only by words (as man can also do), but also by the things themselves
(res ipsas)” (ST I, q. 1, a. 10), the coordinated disclosure of these two registers of
revealed encounter—saving deeds and scriptural text—refracts the unified action
of the one divine auctor. This entails a firm congruence between littera and gesta
and calls forth a single act of assent in faith.
37
Hugh: “Historia est rerum gestarum narratio, quae in prima significatio litterare
continetur” (PL 176, 185 A). Origen: “historia proprim rationem habet—tou echein
tên historian ton idion logon” (Sel. In Ez. c. xxviii; PG 821–22 C). Aquinas: “Cum in
omnibus scientiis voces significant, hoc habet proprium ista scientia, quod ipsae
res significatae per voces, etiam significant aliquid. Illa ergo prima significatio, qua
voces significant res, pertinent ad primum sensum, qui est sensus historicus vel litteralis” (ST I, q. 1, a. 10).
38
John Scotus, H. in Prol. Jo. (PL 123, 291 B). Theodramatically, one might speak here
with Balthasar of history as the space of the “Action.”
39
The admirabile condescensio of Dei Verbum §12–13 belongs here. On this theme, see
the excellent and suggestive study by John Betz, “Glory(ing) in the Humility of the
Word: The Kenotic Form of Revelation in J. G. Hamann,” Letter and Spirit 6 (2010):
141–80.
40
The rhetorical background of the Christological category of synkatabasis is not often
recognized; cf. Philodemus, Rhetoric 2.25. See K. Duchatelez, “La ‘condescendance’
divine et l’histoire du salut,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 95 (1973): 594–98.

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one another: gestis verbisque intrinsece inter se connexis.41 From such a
perspective, the Gospels’ bivalent “literal or historical meaning” is the
privileged fundamentum, the deepest stuff of divine revelation.42 Jesus is
the Gospel’s literal sense.
Plainly something of great moment is at stake here for the full doctrine of Dei Verbum. To this extent, Dei Verbum §19 is not a stray plank
of anti-Modernism in a sea of nouvelle théologie. Rather, operating within the relational model of revelation propounded by the council,43 the fathers were burdened to preserve the ephapax character of God’s climatic
action in Christ, while yet affirming a living colloquium inter Deum et
hominum (Dei Verbum §25). The Gospels exercise a unique mediation;
they somehow communicate Jesus of Nazareth.44 But as a medium of
encounter, scriptural metaxy is stretched toward the past. Hence the
happy recovery of the God who reveals from a shrunken focus on what
he reveals only bears the subjective stamp of Bultmann unless some objective, referential (here historical, Christological) meaning is upheld.45
41

On this important phrase, see Francis Martin, “Some Aspects of Biblical Studies
since Vatican II: The Contribution and Challenge of Dei Verbum,” in Sacred Scripture: Disclosure of the Word (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia, 2006), 227–48.
42
Everywhere in the tradition, “history” is recognized as the fundamentum: “Historiae veritas, fundamentum intelligentiae spiritalis” (Jerome, Ep. 129, no. 6); “Omnes
sensus fundentur super unum, scilicet litteralem” (ST I, q. 1, a. 10, ad. 1). See Henri
De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2000), 47–50.
43
On the advent of this model, see René Latourelle, Theology of Revelation (New York:
Alba House, 1987), 207–48.
44
The fullness of this mediation vitally depends on upholding the proper hermeneutic.
Albert Schweitzer memorably captured the experience of theological loss suffered by
those who resurrected the historical Jesus and “loosed the bands by which for centuries he had been riveted to the stony rocks of ecclesiastic doctrine.” They rejoiced
to see him “advancing, as it seemed, to meet them. But he did not stay; he passed
by our time and returned to his own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of
the last forty years was that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could
not keep him in our time, but had to let him go.” The Quest of the Historical Jesus
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 478.
45
A plea must be made for the balanced retention of some “propositional” aspect of revelation. For Bultmann, objective content is incompatible with the idea of genuine revelation: “It turns out in the end that Jesus as the Revealer of God reveals nothing but that he
is the Revealer” (emphasis original). Rudolph Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament
II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955), 66. See the insightful analysis of Michael
Waldstein, “The Foundations of Bultmann’s Work,” Communio 14 (1987): 115–45.

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A genuine grasp of the scriptural letter, therefore, cannot methodologically neglect the text’s “centrifugal” perspective, but must, as a matter
of theological principle, perceive some irremediable textual resonance
with the extratextual events of the Incarnation.46 Just as Christ the Word
made flesh is the vision of the Father (cf. John 14:9), so the enscriptured
Word presents a verbal image of the Image. The Gospels preserve an
adequatio ad rem: a proper analogy to Christ by the congruence, the
revelatory isomorphism of littera and gesta.
The Gospels’ profound identification with the mystery of the Incarnation means that Origen’s language of the literal as “body” must
not be laid aside.47 Indeed, it secures a double hermeneutical point, for
it invites the key Pauline distinction between soma and sarx. There is,
in other words, an inadequate sense of Scripture understood kata sarka. This “literalist” mishearing of the Word is always naïve, but simple
mindedness can be cloaked in the high sophistication of science—like
an endocrinologist digging for the soul in the pineal gland. To the pitied and feared fundamentalist must then be added the (more subtle)
“literalist” who wields his critical scalpel on the Gospel text as though
he were studying a cadaver. Both types are sarkic dullards. If the “flesh”
of Scripture thus supplies a public corpus that doctors of philological
science may inspect with simple-minded intelligence, the deepest fundamentum remains imperceptible apart from faith. For, in the end, it
is in the Gospels that the literal and spiritual senses meet.48 In this re46

On the “centrifugal” and “centripetal” dimensions of a text, see Northrup Frye, The
Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt, 1982), 61. “The primary or literal meaning of the Bible, then, is its centripetal or poetic meaning . . . this
primary meaning, which arises simply from the interconnection of the words, is the
metaphorical meaning. There are various secondary meanings, derived from the centrifugal perspective, that may take the form of concepts, predications, propositions, or
a sequence of historical or biographical events, and that are always subordinate to the
metaphorical meaning.” One need not doubt Frye’s intelligence (or rare insight into
allegorical meaning) to suspect that he has not succeeded as neatly as he imagines in
marginalizing the Bible’s historical claims. A basic problem is his decision to make the
entire Bible into poetry. This vast conflation ensures his failure to distinguish between
Old Testament and New Testament modes of kerygma (his term).
47
De Principiis IV, 2.4–5. See the collection of citations in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origen: Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press of America, 1984), 86–88, 100–107.
48
De Lubac propounded the patristic idea that the spiritual sense of the Old Testament
is the literal sense of the New. This notion has come under criticism from the per-

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Anthony Giambrone, O.P.

gard (and in distinction to other canonical corpora), the Gospel’s prima
significatio comprehends the whole incarnate Christ—body, soul, and
divinity—for here we understand “body” (soma) in its Hebrew sense
of living totality (basar). From this perspective, a composite body-soul
(letter-spirit) dynamic also structures the Gospels’ privileged first level
revelation. The work of the evangelists gives worded shape to the literal
body, while the res tantum of Christ infuses their words with life-giving
spirit. The Gospels are in this way a sacrament of the sacrament of God.49
“Big Picture” and Plenary Perspectives
If the Reformation deeply compromised the strength of a sacramental
vision, a univocal “plain sense” of Scripture was the hermeneutical fallout. The mystery of the body was reduced to the superficial species, while
the juncture of letter and spirit (hence the possibility of a grounded spiritual sense) was lost to view. In the increasingly secularized exegesis that
followed, the surface itself soon disintegrated—the inevitable fate of a
soulless body—so that naïveté today means thinking, “Jesus said and
did everything that the Gospels have him say and do.”50 The task of anchoring a revelation worthy of faith and recovering a viable literal sense
is thus the trick of somehow putting Humpty Dumpty together again—
finding some theological soul for the Gospels’ dissected body.
Form Criticism, let it be said, supplied the real impetus toward
the Gospels’ analytic breakdown.51 Already with Conzelmann, though,
the need to reassemble a coherent textual whole had become clear.52
Redaktionsgeschichte, however, and the narrative criticism that it has
spawned, struggle to treat literary unity in a nonfiction framework. To
spective of Jewish-Christian dialogue. See Donald McKim, ed., Dictionary of Major
Biblical Interpreters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007), 685.
49
See Denis Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2010), 219–21.
50
Dale Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 1.
51
This notion may be most evident in the least famous of the three cofounders of Form
Criticism. K. L. Schmidt, Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu (Berlin: Trowitzsch, 1919).
Schmidt argued that Mark is a collection of preexisting units held together imperfectly by a secondary structure.
52
See the introductory remarks of Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1961), 9–17.

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this extent, the history question has remained in the custody of Form
Criticism—bound, that is, to “the wrong tool.”53
It is tempting to make an end run around the issue. We might ask:
How does the judgment that the Gospels are vera historia apply to individual units of tradition? Might not the Church’s doctrine have only the
complete genre in view—concerned at root to fend off the extreme challenge of “mythicism”?54 Vera historia, after all, cannot be pushed too far.
If errors of fact (e.g., the Lukan census) are alleged, but elusively unverifiable,55 some “apparent history” is surely hosted in the Gospels. The unhistorical “letter” of the parables, for instance, is perfectly uncontroversial.56
Such an admission offers little traction, though, since the concern
53

See the landmark essay of Morna Hooker, “On Using the Wrong Tool,” Theology 75
(1972): 570–81. N. T. Wright correctly observes, “Form-criticism, despite often being treated simply as a tool for discovering about Jesus, is designed primarily to shed
light on the early church.” The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1992), 418.
54
Both the extremity and persistence of the position that the Gospels are absolute fiction can be seen in its opposition by as strong a skeptic as Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: HarperCollins,
2012). Conventionally, beginning with the work of D. F. Strauss, a more euhemeristic position is taken, and the mythic texture out of which the Jesus of the Gospels has
supposedly been woven is found in the Old Testament (OT). Michael Goulder’s high
estimate of the creative haggadic content of the Gospels (conceived of as midrash
on the Jewish lectionary) represents a contemporary variation on the theme. See,
e.g., Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974). Some (self-published)
authors search for Gospel motifs well beyond the OT, e.g., D. M. Murdock, Christ in
Egypt: The Jesus-Horus Connection (Seattle: Stellar House, 2008). The recent studies
linking the Gospels to Homer represent a less eccentric (but still unlikely) literary
thesis, e.g., Dennis MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). The likeness of the Gospels to Greco-Roman
romance has also been promoted. See G. W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to
Julian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). The Religionsgeschichtliche
School, of course, located the fictive setting in the Hellenistic cult. The PBC Instruction certainly leaves this view no space: “Nec propter cultum quo discipuli exinde
Iesum ut Dominum et Filium Dei venerabantur, hic in «mythicam» personam mutatus est Eiusque doctrina deformata.” Perhaps Fitzmyer has all this in view when he
poses “mythic truth” as the specific opposite of his “Gospel truth.”
55
The long-running dispute over Lk 2:1–4 typifies a common problem in assessing
much of biblical history: lack of independent evidence—either contradictory or
confirmatory. This, naturally, is not unique to events recorded in scripture. Reason
must here be content with converging probabilities.
56
“Sub sensu litterali includitur parabolicus seu metaphoricus,” Aquinas, Super Galatians, ch. 4, lectio 7.

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is obviously with the things predicated of Jesus (not the characters of
his preaching). In this regard, an important narrative claim clearly separates the Synoptic presentation of Jesus’s parables (ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς
πολλὰ ἐν παραβολαῖς) from the purely ahistorical peje Iesous found in
Thomas.57 Jesus is said to have really said things. Deeds always envelop
words in the Church’s Gospels. But this only makes a judgment on the
literary pattern of chriae (and other like forms) inescapable.
The interest to know whether such and such a deed really happened
(or whether Jesus really spoke such and such a thing) leads to a variety
of possibilities. The formidable approach to this question derived from
Form Criticism is to address it at the atomic level. Each concrete pericope comes under its own unique historical judgment. The patient labor
of John Meier must stand as the definitive monument to this method
(which Caba finds most consonant with Dei Verbum §19).58
Meier’s conceit of finding consensus in an “unpapal conclave” is
(for those uncharmed by postmodern agnosticism) a refreshing blast of
old-fashioned Enlightenment optimism—and, in truth, not so distant
from the council’s intention in choosing tenere rather than credere.59 Of
course, confidence in reason nowhere implies an equal trust in criteriology. Indeed, for many today such mechanistic ratiocination is the
dangerous shadow side of the “Enlightenment.”60 Moreover, when the
exegetical machine starts to spit out returns of non liquet and “not historical,” not everyone is always ready to swallow the tonic of Bernanos’s
Doctor Delbende: “Face up to it!” The objections here go deep, and it is
no longer enough to deflect the protest as “uncritical.”61
57

For a discussion of the present tense translation of peje Iesous (“Jesus says”), see
Uwe-Karsten Plisch, The Gospel of Thomas: Original Text with Commentary (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2008), 24–25. “Even in dialogues, the Gospel of
Thomas is not interested in the historical background of a reported issue; the focus
is exclusively on the Lord’s sayings.”
58
See John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Anchor Bible Reference Library, 4 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994, 2001, 2009).
59
Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 1, 1.
60
See the diversified challenge of Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, eds., Jesus and
the Demise of Authenticity (New York: T&T Clark, 2012). The provocative collection
of essays in this volume comes from another conference hosted (in part) by the University of Dayton in October 2012.
61
If strong nominalist strains of thought lurk here, “participatory exegesis” will have a
contribution to make. See Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A The-

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105

Plenty might be said about this manner of panning for historical
gold, but one result is of special interest. In spite of negative judgments
in individual cases, larger patterns of “historicity” have emerged. Meier,
for instance, can accept the global assertion of Jesus’s identity as a miracle worker—though five hundred pages of minute case studies leave
one less sure.62 If such dissonance undermines the atomistic effort, Dale
Allison’s decision to abandon the “criteria of authenticity” for big, broad
“gist” arguments has clear appeal.63 The result for Allison is a curious
construal of the literal sense as a kind of agnostic allegory of historical
abstractions. The accounts of the Temptation, for instance, present “a
narrative about events that probably never happened . . . [but] nonetheless rightly catches Jesus in several respects.”64
Doctrinally, the “big picture” position taken here might be put like
this. The Gospels reliably “hand on” (fideliter tradere) the whole living
mystery of the Christ event in the same way that Tradition communicates the full substance of the faith—but little “t” traditions, or Gospel
pericopes, can come or go. Somehow the discernment of what is majuscule is made, and this or that can be pared away, but the essential
integrity of revelation remains unimpaired.
Is one, then, merely accepting that the Gospels are reliable grosso
modo: affirming a creedal skeleton or historian’s précis (Testimonium
Flavianum)?65 This flexible commitment would offer insulation against
a whole series of tangled textual details. A few nonnegotiable facts can
ology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2008).
Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 2, 617–1138. For a critique of Meier’s global criterion, see
Eric Eve, “Meier, Miracle, and Multiple Attestation,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3 (2005): 23–45.
63
See Allison’s (typically) autobiographical essay, “It Don’t Come Easy: A History of
Disillusionment,” in Jesus and the Demise of Authenticity, 186–99. See also his fourth
and (he says he hopes) final book on Jesus, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination,
and History (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010): “We should trust first, if we are to trust
at all, what is most likely to be trustworthy. This requires that we begin, although we
need not end, by asking, ‘What are our general impressions?’” (16). The “fact-based”
approach of E. P. Sanders can also be mentioned here.
64
“The story . . . preserves a series of likely truths about Jesus—that he was a miracle
worker, that he refused to give self-authenticating signs, that he thought himself
victorious over demonic forces, that he could quote the Bible, and that he had great
faith in God.” Allison, “It Don’t Come Easy,” 191.
65
See, e.g., Gregory Tatum, “The Limits of Reliability,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 523–28.
62

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be historically affirmed, while the risk of rude fundamentalism is held
at bay. Pope Benedict himself (albeit as a private theologian) seems to
point in this minimalist direction, even while underscoring historicity
in the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth: “Many details may remain
open. Yet the ‘factum est’ of John’s Prologue (1:14) is a basic Christian
category, and it applies not only to the Incarnation: it must also be invoked for the Last Supper, the Cross, and the Resurrection.”66
Caution is necessary, though, on the “open details” Benedict has in
mind.67 His comment is made in preface to a discussion of the difficult
dating of the Lord’s Last Supper; and, as the PBC Instruction makes plain,
chronology does not compromise the truth at hand. It is hardly clear, in
fact—as more than a few troubled exegetes have complained—that Benedict concedes the evangelists’ fabrication of any concrete “deeds and
words” reported in the Gospels.68 Indeed, volume three on the Infancy
Narratives now offers the strongest conceivable demonstration of the
pope’s critically informed, yet calmly courageous “fundamentalism.”69
66

Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth. Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to
the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), 105.
67
See Benedict’s programmatic remarks on faith and historicity at the beginning of
Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York:
Doubleday, 2007), xv–xvi.
68
Maurice Casey, e.g., maintains that Benedict is trapped in circular reasoning, defending the historicity of Jn 19:35 on the presumption that John’s Gospel is “literally
true from beginning to end,” being eyewitness testimony. Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching (New York: Clark, 2010), 28–29.
69
The best expression of the pope’s overall position is articulated in connection with
Mt 1–2: “At the end of this lengthy chapter, the question arises: how are we to understand all this? Are we dealing with history that took place, or is it merely a theological meditation, presented under the guise of stories? In this regard, Jean Daniélou
rightly observes: ‘The adoration of the Magi, unlike the story of the annunciation
[to Mary], does not touch upon any essential aspect of our faith. No foundations
would be shaken if it were simply an invention of Matthew’s based on a theological
idea’ (Infancy Narratives, p. 95). Daniélou himself, though, comes to the conclusion
that we are dealing here with historical events, whose theological significance was
worked out by the Jewish Christian community and by Matthew. To put it simply,
I share this view. In any case, it should be noted that over the last fifty years there
has been an about-turn in thinking on this question of historicity, based not on new
historical knowledge, but rather on a changed attitude to sacred Scripture and to the
Christian message in general. While Gerhard Delling in the fourth volume of the
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (1942) was still convinced of the historicity of the Magi story on the basis of historical research (cf. p. 358, n. 11), since
that time, even exegetes as ecclesially minded as Ernst Nellessen and Rudolf Pesch

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Truly, had the religion reporter for Time any real nose for theological
scandal, the Holy Father’s recalcitrant belief in fairy tales like the magi
and the star would have certainly made the better headline—not a pseudo-story about the imprecision of the Julian calendar (“Pope Benedict
Disputes Date of Jesus’ Birth”).70
Benedict, then, conjures a different vision from the “big picture”
theory, a vision (unsurprisingly) of patristic pedigree. The dispensable
“details” touch the placement and expression, while the factum est and
the meaning are affirmed.71 In this line, one could speak of a plenary view of historicity, in which problems are admitted on the level of
textual arrangement, with full freedom allotted for whatever ingenious
solutions one might find. But no separation into piles of “authentic”
and “inauthentic” is involved. In distinction from Allison, then, this is
not a surrender of concrete deeds for dynamic abstractions (e.g., “apocalyptic Judaism”). Meier is right to care about more than vague global
assertions. But, dared by the legacy of D. F. Strauss to demonstrate,
point by point, that real events lie behind the Gospels, Benedict appears humbly content to dare right back the impossible task of proving

have rejected historicity, or at least they have let the question open. An interesting
comment, in the light of this situation, is the carefully argued position presented
by Klaus Berger . . . ‘Even when there is only a single attestation . . . one must suppose, until the contrary is proven, that the evangelists did not intend to deceive their
readers, but rather to inform them concerning historical events . . . to contest the
historicity of this account on mere suspicion exceeds every imaginable competence
of historians’ (Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, p. 20). With this view I can only
agree. The two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel devoted to the infancy narratives are
not a meditation presented under the guise of stories, but the converse: Matthew
is recounting real history, theologically thought through and interpreted, and thus
he helps us to understand the mystery of Jesus more deeply.” Jesus of Nazareth: The
Infancy Narratives (New York: Image, 2012), 118.
70
Sorcha Pollack, “Pope Benedict Disputes Date of Jesus’ Birth,” Time, November 22,
2012, http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/22/pope-benedict-disputes-jesus-date-ofbirth/.
71
This is the position of the PBC Instruction, which simply follows the patristic doctrine (citing Chrysostom, and Augustine) in allowing differences in placement and
wording. See Origen, Commentary on John, 10.2–4: The Evangelists “sometimes altered things which, from the eye of history, occurred otherwise . . . [they] speak of
something that happened in one place as if it happened in another, or of what happened at a certain time as if it happened at another time . . . [they introduced] into
what was spoken in a certain way some changes of their own.”

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a negative (non factum est)—reminding proud history of its limits.72 If
the pope rests here and stops short of offering an ambitious apologia,
perhaps the doctrine of vera historia means retying Schweitzer’s first of
the Gordian knots.73
In highlighting only the cardinal points of Christian confession,
then, Benedict chastens history.74 But this must be carefully understood.
He never suggests that faith has been penned up in some creedal Alamo,
ready to die in one last stand against the destructive reach of reason.
Quite the contrary! The core witness of the Gospels is in a real sense the
most verifiable material (if not thereby the most likely to sway all historians)—not only the matter dearest to faith.75 Even so, Benedict warns,
the probative power of human science must not be exaggerated: “We
may not expect . . . to find absolutely certain proof of every detail.”76 If
metaphysical knowledge of necessary truth is vexed by the wounds of
original sin, historical reason by its own contingent formal object deals
72

Benedict is at ease with the inconclusive nature of much historical controversy, but
he is not thereby afraid to make a final judgment. On the Lukan census, e.g., he says:
“The discussion could continue indefinitely . . . yet the essential content of Luke’s narrative remains historically credible all the same” (Ratzinger, Infancy Narratives, 63).
73
Albert Schweitzer related the history of Jesus research as the negotiation of three distinct scholarly dilemmas: supernaturalist or rationalist, Synoptic or Johannine, eschatological or noneschatological. While the latter two forks were resolved in favor
of Synoptic (via Markan priority) and konsequente Eschatologie, respectively, Strauss
exploded the first as a false dichotomy. Naturalist (rationalist) explanations of “miracles” were as dubious as supernatural claims; both falsely assumed the occurrence
of a real event. See Dennis Nineham’s foreword to the complete edition of Quest of
the Historical Jesus, xiii–xxxii.
74
See Ratzinger, Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, xv–xvi.
75
The Last Supper and Crucifixion are naturally less controversial as historical events
than is the Resurrection, which poses a unique set of problems. If Catholic thinkers
like Schillebeeckx and Gerald O’Collins (and John Meier) have ruled the Resurrection to be an eschatological event and consequently out of bounds in the study of
history, Benedict, at least, concludes otherwise (with nuance). “The Resurrection
does not simply stand outside or above history. As something that breaks out of
history and transcends it, the Resurrection nevertheless has its origin within history
and up to a certain point still belongs there. Perhaps we could put it this way: Jesus’
Resurrection points beyond history but has left a footprint within history” (Holy
Week, 275). For a powerful attempt at verifying this “footprint,” see N. T. Wright, The
Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); and Michael Licona,
The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL:
IVP Academic, 2010).
76
Ratzinger, Holy Week, 105.

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always and only in probabilities. Much of history simply lies forever beyond our science’s grasp.
The pope is not, then, promoting a theory of obiter dicta. It is, instead,
a matter of faith and reason mutually tempering one another. Historical
criticism, to begin, cannot insist on always playing judge, haughtily eschewing the servant’s role of illumining the background.77 In this sense,
the reach of faith is in no way limited in its positive assent to the modest “proofs” of science. The ample use of the non liquet card is an open
invitation to faith.78 At the same time, the serene confidence essential
to faith never tempts it to act as a superhuman surrogate for plodding,
mental labor, which retains its proper scope of judgment entirely unimpaired. Human ratio deepens (rather than “purifies”) faith’s delicate conviction, gives it new dimension, by drawing it ever more into the light
of understanding from the dark seat of memoria where God touches the
mind. Properly ordered theological faith, therefore, informed as it is by
the analogia fidei and composed by the hierarchy of truths, never swells
with ill-proportioned insight or dissipates itself through undue interest
in things not revelata a Deo. It understands that the Incarnation weighs
more than the visit of the magi. Yet, thus balanced in judgment, it also
knows that no “jot or tittle” is incidental. God’s revelation is the ultimate
measure of what man must believe. If mystical gifts would disclose the
sorts of details historians might long to know—say, that the flight into
Egypt “took place in February, six days after the purification”79—it is
enough to remark that one does not find here veritatem, quam Deus
nostrae salutis causa Litteris Sacris consignari voluit.

77

One might consider here the works of Martin Hengel, whose erudite and dignified
humanism represents a different model of history in New Testament (NT) scholarship than the narrow “authenticity” arbitrations of so many historical Jesus scholars:
an estimable model at once more and less subservient to the interests of faith.
78
The objection is inevitably raised that this is a feeble-minded “God of the gaps” posture; but the charge here is a rhetorical show of force. The identification of historiographical “gaps” generously recognizes the expanding conquests of historical science. The issue is more fundamental, addressing both the methodological atheism
presumed by modern historians and the inherent limits of the discipline. See the
suggestive (but not unproblematic) essay by Ross McCullough, “God and the Gaps,”
First Things 232 (April 2013): 19–20.
79
Mary of Agreda, Mystical City of God, bk 4, ch. 8.

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Memory, Faith, and Genre
If the guild can detect in Benedict anything other than a fundamentalist,
he will appear unsatisfying, inscrutable, or like the curious sighting of
some “pre-modern” animal presumed extinct.80 In any case, where the
issue has any interest, the respectable “big picture” view controls the day.
A trend to note in connection with this theory is the recent rise of interest in “memory.”81 Generally accurate in the main points, but fuzzy on
the details, memory has emerged in Gospel studies as a great theological
hope for many, an overdue correction of Form Criticism, and a way to
pull together the evangelists’ scrambled witness.
In view of this, it is of interest what attention Sancta Mater Ecclesia
gives to the notion. The key idea has unfortunately been distorted: “The
life and teaching of Jesus were not simply related so as to be remembered
(eo solo fine ut memoria tenerentur): they were ‘preached’ to provide the
basis of faith and morals for the Church.”82 As translated here (wrongly), the statement would warn against overly rigid models of mnemonic
transmission and put too disjunctive a stress on kerygmatic creativity.83
80

See, e.g., the critiques and complaints of Luke Timothy Johnson, Modern Theology
(2008): 318–20, and Richard Hays, First Things 175 (2007): 49–53. N. T. Wright allows that “many . . . will inevitably see [Benedict’s work] as a step backwards, to a
pre-modern, pre-critical reading.” Times Literary Supplement, December 14, 2011.
81
See Allison, Constructing Jesus, 1–30, 387–462. See also, e.g., James Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 881–94; Richard Bauckham, Jesus
and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 319–57; Anthony Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus: Memory,
Typology, and the Son of David (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2009); Chris Keith,
“Memory and Authenticity: Jesus Tradition and What Really Happened,” Zeitschrift
für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunder der älteren Kirche 102 (2011):
155–77; and especially the significant work of Robert McIver, Memory, Jesus, and
the Synoptic Gospels, Society of Biblical Literature Resources for Biblical Studies 59
(Atlanta: SBL, 2011).
82
This is the misleading translation found in Murphy’s compendium, The Church
and the Bible: Official Documents of the Catholic Church (New Delhi: St. Pauls/Alba
House, 2007). The document actually stresses that the purpose was not only for
the sole purpose of being remembered. “Cum ex eis quae novae inquisitiones contulerunt appareat doctrinam et vitam Iesu non simpliciter relatas fuisse, eo solo fine
ut memoria tenerentur, sed «praedicatas» fuisse ita ut Ecclesiae fundamentum fidei
et morum praeberent.”
83
The work of Birger Gerhardsson should be mentioned. See Memory and Manuscript:
Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); The Origins of the Gospel Traditions (Philadel-

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It is clear from the document, however, that “faith by no means obliterated the memory of the events which had taken place. On the contrary,
it reinforced these memories, because it rested on the things which Jesus
had taught and done.”84 If this is true, and if kerygma and recollection
are not operative in inverse proportion, the move to memory must be
welcomed as a real advance—or, rather, recovery. The great merit of this
paradigm is that it personalizes the process of transmission.85
If Fitzmyer hesitates about historicity with his murky proposal of
“Gospel truth,” like many he hesitates precisely at this point, hardening
the disjunction between memory and kerygma. As a hedge against the
difficulties of positive (asseverative) inerrancy, of course, this systematic
deference to the preaching of “faith and morals” cannot entail a limiting
of the formal object of inerrant revelation.86 If by “Gospel truth,” then,
Fitzmyer means that the four Gospels comprise a unique literary form,
possessing its own hermeneutical canons, the premise is in principle
perfectly sound. Attention to literary conventions has been the Church’s
preferred response in this sensitive apologetic area in every relevant
document since Providentissimus Deus.
The difficulty is in practice, not in theory.87 Bultmann had pushed
phia: Fortress, 1979); and The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001). See also McIver (Memory, 167, 187), who speaks of mnemotechniques and “near verbatim accuracy.” The PBC leaves the disciples’ memory very
much intact and even suggests a pedagogy reminiscent of Gerhardsson’s rabbinic
model (i.e., “firmly impressed . . . and easily remembered”): “Dominus, cum doctrinam ore exponebat, modos ratiocinandi et exponendi tunc temporis vulgatos sequebatur, ita ad mentem auditorum Se accommodans et efficiens ut ea quae doceret
firmiter menti imprimerentur et commode a discipulis memoria tenerentur.”
84
Dei Verbum §19 also endorsed such language, speaking plainly of Evangelists working ex sua propria memoria et recordatio.
85
Martin Hengel has vigorously critiqued the anonymous tradition model, an issue
singled out by the PBC, rightly insisting on “the personal link of the Jesus tradition
with particular tradents.” The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (London: SCM, 2000), 146.
86
On the systematic question, see Peter Paul Zarafa, “The Limits of Biblical Inerrancy,” Angelicum 39 (1962): 92–119. One may legitimately wonder whether Fitzmyer’s
reading simply anticipates the widely received distortion of Dei Verbum §11. On the
correct interpretation of this important text, see Marchetto, Contrappunto, 453–58
(chap. 30); and Brant Pitre, “The Mystery of God’s Word: Inspiration, Inerrancy, and
the Interpretation of Scripture,” Letter and Spirit 6 (2010): 47–66.
87
See Judith Diehl, “What Is a Gospel? Recent Studies in the Gospel Genre,” Currents
in Biblical Research 9 (2011): 171–99. Diehl distinguishes between an analogical and

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the claim that the Gospels were not biographies but sui generis faith productions.88 His folkloric contention, however, assumed an anachronistic
concept of biography (among other faulty assumptions); and since the
work of Richard Burridge on ancient bioi, Bultmann’s credibility on this
point has unraveled.89 A growing edge of Gospel research now sees the
Gospels as far less determined by the needs of local communities than
once assumed; while the evangelists’ interest in recounting real events
has become increasingly hard to deny.90 A range of mimetic modes is
indeed discernible in the Gospels, yet their literary originality is bound
to historical seriousness.91
The Lukan preface merits a central place in this discussion, for it has
become quite clear that his formal style and appeal to autopsy have their
cultural and literary context in Greco-Roman historiography.92 Though
derivational approach to the question of genre, allowing analogical affinities to the
canonical Gospels but upholding their derivational originality.
88
The original influence of this thesis owes much to K. L. Schmidt, “Die Stellung der
Evangelien in der allgemeinen Literaturgeschichte,” in Eucharisterion: Studien zur Religion und Literatur des Altes und Neues Testaments: Hermann Gunkel 60. Geburtstag,
Teil 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1923), 50–134.
89
Richard Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004). In the foreword to the second
edition, Graham Stanton remarks, “Over the last decade or so, very few books on
the Gospels have been discussed more widely or have influenced scholarly opinion
more strongly.”
90
See Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel
Audiences (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); and now also Edward Klink III, ed.,
The Audience of the Gospels: The Origin and Function of the Gospels in Earliest Christianity, Library of New Testament Studies 353 (London: T&T Clark, 2010). See also
Martin Hengel, “The Sources of Earliest Christianity,” in Acts and the History of Early
Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 3–34—an essay on some first principles
of NT historiography that should be mandatory reading.
91
See the innovative study of Justin Taylor exploring Auerbach’s claim that the Gospels
transgress the ancient “separation of styles.” The Treatment of Reality in the Gospels:
Five Studies, Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 78 (Paris: Gabalda, 2011).
92
For a summary of research, see Clarke Rothschild, Luke-Acts and the Rhetoric of
History, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 175 (Tübingen:
Mohr Sieback, 2004), 32–59. See also David Aune, “Luke 1:1–4: Historical or Scientific Prooimion?” in Paul, Luke, and the Greco-Roman World: Essays in Honour
of Alexander J. M. Wedderburn, ed. A Christopherson et al., Journal for the Study
of the New Testament Supplement Series 217 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2002),
142. Aune wishes to indicate that Luke’s preface likely resembles “the hundreds of
lost mediocre histories,” and that it is misleading to gauge it only against the stan-

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Luke alone of the Evangelists postures as an historian, it is enough that
he does.93 The formal congruence of the synoptic Gospels implies a kind
of transitive asphaleia. As a dutiful historian, Luke’s assurance assures
his readers of the material they might find in Matthew and Mark.94 Luke
himself plainly recognizes his special role among the “many” who have
undertaken the task of telling this story, and he sees his particular purpose in drawing up a “careful ordering” (ἀκριβῶς καθεξῆς γράψαι) of
the events.
The irony of this purpose is that, at ground level, Luke’s order is
considered primitive and unclear.95 While grand geographic and temporal patterns do give an intelligible, architectonic shape to the Lukan
message, the way smaller units are collated can seem almost haphazard.
Here Bultmann’s hand becomes much stronger. Plainly, the micro-units
of tradition were not hammered out in the same school as the learned
Lukan prologue.
The most helpful thing to be said here concerns the “Eucharistic
provenance” of the Gospels.96 Specifically, “The consistent portrayal of
Jesus as the one coming and being encountered [in Gospel pericopes]
originates in the way memories about him were recalled, told, and retold
dard of the best Hellenistic exemplars. That the preface may be a work of “mediocre”
quality, though, should not obscure its classification as haute litérature (at least in
pretension). For the classical mind, it was the theme that determined stylistic elevation, and of Luke’s theme there can be little doubt. The Evangelist consciously
presents his work as a thing serious and significant in the manner of a history, for
history alone could bear the magnitude of “the events fulfilled among us” (Lk 1:1).
On the Greco-Roman background, see Giuseppe Nenci, “Il motivo dell’autopsia
nella storagraphia greca,” Studi Classici e Orientali 3 (1955): 14–29; and especially
Guido Schepens, L’‘autopsie’ dans la méthod des historiens grec du Ve siècle avant J.-C.
(Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1980).
93
This is not to deny the important historical concerns (and methods) of the other
Evangelists. See, e.g., Richard Bauckham, “Historiographical Aspects of the Gospel
of John,” New Testament Studies 53 (2007): 17–36.
94
Commentators have at times detected a note of criticism in Luke’s mention of his
predecessors, and such judgments were a trope in Greco-Roman historiography. In
other authors’ work, however, the polemic is much more open and unmistakable,
e.g., Josephus, B.J. 1.1. See John Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 218–25.
95
Lukan order is commonly accepted as more nearly approximating the order of Q
than is Matthean order.
96
See Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation, 65–79; also Benoit, “Réflexions,” 487.

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in the presence of cultic (Eucharistic) congregations, gatherings held for
the purpose of reliving the past encounters.”97 Accordingly, though one
does not find in Luke (or any of the Gospels) a disciplined effort to grasp
the inner connections of discrete events, such chronological inattention
preserves the elemental structure of the Jesus tradition as sacramental
anamnesis.98 To this degree, the cultivated memory undergirding the
Gospels responds directly to the Lord’s command (hoc facite in meum
commemorationem). It is not free fabrication.99
If the cultic molding of the primitive tradition indeed preserved the
“hypomnemata of the apostles,”100 other portions of the Gospels do not
betray the same origin. The infancy narratives, in particular, stand apart.
While the expressions of Christology are pronounced in these cherished
episodes, actors other than the sacramental Lord (ho erchomenos) enjoy
prominence, and the stories are widely seen as mere “vehicles for the
evangelist’s theology.”101 Yet, notice has long been made that “Luke indicates from time to time that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is herself one of
his sources.”102 This “uncritical” position has, of course, (less) long been
ridiculed as a pious (Catholic) fantasy. The model of Mary’s deepening
memory (Lk 2:51) is viable, however—as credible, at least, as any “Baptist source”—and more than piety is at stake.103 Ultimately, a decision

97

Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation, 74 (cf. 72n21).
Discrete anecdotal ordering is characteristic of much ancient biography and represents the literary crystallization of the basic impact of the documented personality.
See Hengel, “Sources of Earliest Christianity,” 15–18.
99
For a wide-ranging rebuttal of the Form Critical canard that nameless Christian
prophets were a factory of dominical logia, see David Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003).
100
Justin, First Apology 66.3; also 33.5; cf. Dialogue with Trypho 100.4, 101.3, 102.5,
etc. See also Papias’s description of Mark’s Gospel (H.E. 3.39.15) and the language
employed by Clement of Alexandria (H.E. 2.15.1).
101
Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives
in Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 37.
102
Ratzinger, Infancy Narratives, 16.
103
See most recently Richard Dillon, who speaks of “members of the Baptist diaspora”
as the source of the Baptist nativity material, but never considers pre-Lukan sources
that might inform the Jesus strand. The Hymns of Saint Luke: Lyricism and Narrative
Strategy in Luke 1–2, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 50 (Washington,
DC: CBA, 2013), 5–14, 50.
98

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115

between the “big picture” and plenary views is closely bound to one’s
decision about personal Gospel sources.
The Third Gospel sets the parameters in which historica veritas must
be conceived, but it is the Fourth Gospel where the issue is decided. In
John, the unmistakable claim to eyewitness knowledge is melded with
the most robust expression of introspective memory: the Marian model
rigorously extended.104 Such a conjunction of witness and interpretation
has proven too hard to swallow. As its first step in the classic “Quest for
the Historical Jesus,” scholarship accordingly decided not to go down
the Johannine road.105 A new generation of scholars, however, has begun
to question this fundamental axiom.106
In any case, the council’s perspective is clear from the final sentence
of Dei Verbum §19. There a distinction is drawn between those Evangelists “who relied on their own memory and recollection” (making room
here beside John for the traditional identity of Matthew as an apostle)
and those who depended on “the eyewitnesses from the beginning”
(meaning Mark and Luke).107 Evangelists without some access to direct
witness are not envisioned.

104

See the remarks of Ratzinger (Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, 233–34):
“What John says in his Gospel about how remembering becomes understanding and
the path ‘into all truth’ comes very close to what Luke recounts about remembering
on the part of Jesus’ mother.”
105
The decisive impetus again came from D. F. Strauss, who managed to overmaster
the influence of Schleiermacher’s predilection for John. See Schweitzer, Quest of the
Historical Jesus, 80–83.
106
See, e.g., Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel: Issues and
Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001). A variety of factors have
turned scholars in this direction, not least of which is the growing fund of hardboiled, archaeological evidence. See James Charlesworth, “The Historical Jesus in
the Fourth Gospel: A Paradigm Shift?” Journal of the Study of the Historical Jesus 8
(2010): 3–46.
107
A distinction in status was implicit in this distinction of credentials: “Cur quatuor
evangelistae non per quator apostolos scribuntur, nisi per duos discipulos et duos
apostolos? Quia filii Jacob de duabus liberis et duabus ancillis nati sunt” (Ps. Jerome,
Expositio quattuor evangeliorum PL 30, 567–77). The particular popularity of the
Gospels of Matthew and John in the early Church no doubt owes much to their apostolic credentials. See Édouard Massaux, Influence de l’Évangile de Saint Matthieu
sur la littérature chrétienne avant saint Irénée (Louvain: Louvain, 1950).

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“Eyewitnesses from the Beginning”
The PBC Instruction posited three stages of Gospel tradition: the preaching of Jesus, the preaching of his apostles, and the literary activity of
the four evangelists. If the innovation of this arrangement was the careful (some would say “arbitrary”) distinction between periods two and
three,108 this schema is not, contrary to common opinion, ever attributed
to the insights of the Form Critical method. All three are found explicitly
in the Lukan framework: (1) all that Jesus did and taught (Acts 1:1); (2)
the things handed down (paradosis) by the autoptoi and ministers of the
word (Lk 1:2); and (3) the undertaking to draw up a diegesis (Lk 1:1, 3).
If all three tempora reappear (without special flagging) in Dei Verbum, in the full doctrine of the council Stage Two (paradosis) attains an
unmistakable prominence. This is a key point that Caba and others miss
at a great cost. The clear affirmation in §18 of the Gospel’s “apostolic
origin” (origine apostolica) is only part of the council’s interest in this
theme, which has its more important exposition in Chapter II on the
Transmission of Divine Revelation. Apostolic preaching thus represents
the crucial point of intersection linking the two poorly integrated blocks
of Dei Verbum §1–2 and §3–5.109 The affirmation itself, along with the
direct identification of the sacred authors as apostles and apostolici viri
(meaning Mark and Luke as the respective associates of the apostles Peter and Paul) represents, of course, an obvious element in the claim to
historical truth.110 It is no surprise, then, that the doctrinal precursors to
this article were originally forged during the heat of the (first) Modernist crisis, in the notorious PBC responsa.
Much might be said about this embarrassing magisterial corpus,
but only one point is necessary here. The Biblical Commission—followed implicitly by the council’s preparatory Theological Commission
108

See the analysis of Bernard Orchard, “Dei Verbum and the Synoptic Gospels,” This
Rock 7 (May 1996). The conflating of these stages took hold before 1964. See the revealing piece of David Michael Stanley, “New Understanding of the Gospels,” in The
Bible in Current Catholic Thought (New York: Herder and Herder, 1962), 169–83.
109
On this tension in the document, see Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation,
168–202.
110
The wording of Dei Verbum §18 resumes the precise formulation of the discarded
schema but significantly alters the final portion.

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and then the full body of council fathers—reckoned the writing of the
Gospels by “the authors whose names they bear,” as a revealed truth
to be firmly accepted de fide.111 If de facto the question of authorship
has long since fallen into the scientific jurisdiction of the Einleitungen,
in the mind of the PBC, “the universal and unwavering agreement,”
indeed “the continual, universal and solemn tradition of the Church”
authoritatively settles the point. It is noteworthy in judging the rare
force of this language that, by way of contrast, the PBC never made
such a confident, or rather “obliging, certain affirmation” (certo affirmare cogat) of the “clear judgment of tradition” (luculentum traditionis
suffragium) when addressing, for instance, the issue of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. (We must note here the ignorant but persistent
habit of lampooning the responsum genre as an instrument lacking all
nuance.) In 1962, in fact, the debate of the drafting committee made
explicit that Mosaic authorship had status as sententia communis, but
was not to be regarded (like Gospel authorship) as traditio.112 Accordingly and significantly, the PBC’s much more cautiously circumscribed
1906 pronouncements on the Pentateuch never surfaced in the preconciliar schema’s chapter De Vetere Testamento—quite in contrast to

111

De fontibus revelationis §19

Dei Verbum §18

Quattor Evangelia apostolicam originem
habere Ecclesia Dei semper et ubique
sine dubitatione credidit et credit,
constanterque tenuit ac tenet auctores
humanos habere illos quorum nomina
in Sacrorum Librorum canone gerunt:
Mattheaum nempe, Marcum, Lucam et
Ioannem, quem diligebat Iesus.

Quattuor Evangelia originem apostolicam habere Ecclesia semper et ubique
tenuit ac tenet. Quae enim Apostoli
ex mandato Christi praedicaverunt,
postea divino afflante Spiritu, in
scriptis, ipsi et apostolici viri nobis
tradiderunt, fidei fundamentum,
quadriforme nempe Evangelium,
secundum Matthaeum, Marcum,
Lucam et Ioannem.

Augustine Bea’s commentary on Dei Verbum provides privileged insight into the
council fathers’ thinking. He distinguishes between the “authenticity” of the Gospels
(“that is, that they were written by the authors whose names they bear”) and their
“apostolic origin,” and, without suggesting any doubt about the former (which is
clearly articulated as doctrine in De fontibus 19), allows that Dei Verbum deals only
with the “essential points”: apostolic origin and historical truth. The Word of God
and Mankind (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967), 240.
112
See Schelkens, Theology of Revelation, 152–53.

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the responsa on the Gospels.113 Moreover, the claim about the Gospels’
origin was never probatur ex traditione in the errant sense undermined
by the council, that is, by an incidental catena of proof texts or appeal
to some “secret” stream of knowledge. It is presented, rather, as a robust expression of the Church’s full living commitment, integrally and
implicitly transmitted by liturgy, councils, popes, canons, the fathers,
ecclesiastics, and so on. Vincent of Lérins and Congar might equally
agree. The Biblical Commission’s vigorous avowal of the Gospels’ origin, then, was not the mere bluster of reactionary intransigence, but
a forceful, self-conscious, and mature doctrinal proposition. So it was
both proffered and received.114 This, I think, helps us evaluate the variegated magisterial weight of the PBC responsa.115
The question then becomes what to make of this. Plainly, it is a
teaching the academy has not received. Indeed, after 1965, in the blink
of an eye, the Two Source Hypothesis—which has no place for Matthean eyewitness—came to prevail in Catholic scholarship.116 Regardless
113

A growing recognition of the limited relevance of the responsa began to emerge in
the years prior to the council. In 1955 a quiet policy announced by the secretary of
the PBC encouraged exegetes to proceed in aller Freiheit, treating earlier pronouncements as the quaint relics of a difficult crisis now passed. See Athanasius Miller, “Das
neue biblische Handbuch,” Benediktinische Monatschrift 31 (1955): 49–50. Although
this perspective was never openly authorized (preserving curial bella figura), the
Theological Commission, which drafted the preparatory chapter in 1962 (and certainly knew the mind of the Magisterium), studiously mined the PBC documents
in preparing chapter IV on the NT, yet conspicuously neglected the same corpus in
preparing chapter III on the OT. Such an embrace of the full discretionary liberty to
disregard the responsa makes the free endorsement in the case of the Gospels enormously suggestive. On the status of Miller’s “clarification,” see the personal account
of J. E. Steinmueller, who reports that Miller’s action was condemned by the voting
Cardinals of the PBC who sought to bring him before the Holy Office. Sword of the
Spirit (Waco, TX: Stella Maris, 1982), 7.
114
The language of universal Tradition in Dei Verbum §18 is emphatic and overt: semper et ubique tenuit ac tenet.
115
The responsa represent a provisional magisterial act of “pastoral prudence,” but they
are not set aside tout court. See then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s authoritative explanation of
The Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian: “Their core remains valid, but the individual
details influenced by the circumstances at the time may need further rectification.”
116
The movement in this direction began before the council, of course, and the last significant Catholic defense of Matthean apostolic authorship was Bishop Butler’s book
in 1951—now, interestingly, just reissued: The Originality of St. Matthew: A Critique
of the Two Document Hypothesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2011). Less
than five years after the council (1968), Frederick Gast’s article in the original Je-

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of whether this hasty development was precipitous or overdue, it simply borrowed the results of Protestant scholarship. No distinct Catholic
debate ever transpired. The remarkable legacy of figures like Lagrange
and Vaganay was casually laid aside like some obtuse Ptolemaic astronomy, an embarrassing and overburdened exegesis contorted by extraneous ecclesial commitments.117 The irony, of course, is that 1964 (the
year of the PBC Instruction) saw William Farmer, the great (Protestant)
champion of the Neo-Griesbach Hypothesis, first question Holtzmann’s
long-held dogma of Markan priority.118 If today the Q hypothesis is thus
facing a growing wave of scrutiny and skepticism, this has not been a
Catholic crusade.119
It is difficult to say what is emerging here. There are zealots on both
sides; yet even dogmatic adherents of Q are quietly softening their positions.120 Pierre Benoit predicted early on that Form Criticism would ultirome Biblical Commentary calmly pronounced Markan priority the uncontroversial
majority view. Lagrange had already described the Two Document Hypothesis as
généralement admise in 1903, but this estimate clearly indicates a continental—i.e.,
German Protestant—consensus. La méthode historique (Paris: Lecoffre, 1903, 249),
Streeter’s important monograph, would not convince the Anglophone world until
1924. On Catholic interest in Markan priority, see John Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 321–25.
117
For diagrams of the complex solutions proposed by Lagrange and Vaganay, see Lagrange, 45, 318.
118
See William Farmer, The Synoptic Problem, 2nd ed. (Dilsboro: Western North Carolina, 1974). Farmer suggests that the triumph of Holtzmann’s thesis of Markan priority had much to do with the Catholic-Protestant polemics of the Kulturkampf. See
Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q, 312–21.
119
See, e.g., Mark Goodacre, The Case against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the
Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2002); David Peabody, Lamar Colpe, and
Allan McNicol, eds., One Gospel from Two: Mark’s Use of Matthew and Luke (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2002); and James Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 147–60; and Dunn,
“Q1 as Oral Tradition,” in The Written Gospel, ed. Marcus Bockmuehl and Donald
Hagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 45–69.
120
Even Helmut Koester is ready to concede that “the name Matthew may have been
connected” with the Synoptic Sayings Source. Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Philadelphia: Trinity, 1990), 318. In this line Benedict Viviano
has now proposed regarding Q as the notebook (pinax) of the apostle Matthew—a
conservative theory startlingly close to Robert Gundry’s defense of the traditional
authorship of the First Gospel, a conservative tour de force that (predictably) fell
stillborn from the press. “Who Wrote Q? The Sayings Document (Q) as the Apostle
Matthew’s Private Notebook as a Bilingual Village Scribe (Mk 2:13–17; Mt 9:9–13),”
in Mark and Matthew II, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

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mately undo the Two Source Theory.121 The key challenge, in any event,
is articulating a firm doctrine of apostolic origin that manages to avoid
meddling too much in the mechanics of the Synoptic Problem—and, at
the same time, addressing the Synoptic Problem with honest attention to
the Gospels’ apostolic origin.122 Standing in the dock, of course, are many
highly attenuated interpretations of “apostolicity.” Sancta Mater Ecclesia
had warned of minimizing the munus of the apostles, and it is pure illusion to pretend this has not happened—at great cost. The stakes are high,
and it is no coincidence that Matthean scholarship specifically has gone
the way of the Fourth Gospel, with the tax collector dissolving into the
reconstructed fog of a community in contest with the synagogue.123
As an individual, Luke, of course, is easier than Matthew to spot.
Luke speaks directly in the first person. An older Fitzmyer, in his
two-volume commentary, thus mounts a substantial case that the author of the Third Gospel is indeed none other than “the traditional Luke,
a sometime companion of Paul.”124 Then, in the next breath, the exegete
volunteers that this “makes little difference to the interpretation of the
Lucan Gospel.” The simple question is: Why not? Why do an Introduction’s theses on audience have such profound interpretative value, while
the veri auctores themselves are of so little concern? It is true the evangelists hide themselves to a considerable degree—though this posture may
be deceptively unassuming.125 Their sheer proximity to “the things fulfilled among us” (Lk 1:1), however, demands more thoughtful attention.
271, ed. A. Runnesson and E.-M. Becker (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
Benoit, “Réflexions,” 483.
122
The PBC’s 1912 pronouncement on the Synoptic Problem (AAS 4 [1912]: 465) articulates the range of issues to be considered before exegetes “discuss freely” various
possible solutions.
123
The “Johannine Question” is, therefore, as critical here as the Synoptic Problem. See
Raymond Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates
of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York: Paulist, 1979); and especially Martin Hengel, Die johanneische Frage, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen
zum Neuen Testament 67 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993). See also Ratzinger, Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, 218–37.
124
Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-XII, Anchor Bible 28 (Garden City,
NJ: Doubleday, 1979), 35–52.
125
The demographics of the “audience” are not announced either, but that has not deterred ingenious exegetes. On “hidden” authors, see Armin Baum, “The Anonymity
of the New Testament History Books: A Stylistic Device in the Context of Greco-Ro121

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Richard Bauckham has amply shown how provocative serious consideration of the claim to eyewitness sources might be.126 If Bauckham’s
work has met a mixed reception, with Catholics not always eager to embrace his vision, I would argue that, though there are plenty of places for
legitimate disagreement, he represents quite well the occluded teaching
of Vatican II. Most importantly, perhaps, his attempt to find in testimony
the place where history and theology meet recognizes the space defined
by facticity (factum est) and meaning as the substantial locus of Gospel
asphaleia. Of course, he only pursues what the PBC claimed belonged
to be “the sound principles of the historical method.” It is incidental that
it conforms also to Catholic doctrine. It is no surprise for those guided
by Catholic sensibilities, though, when Bauckham both rehabilitates in
the testimony of Papias, a once-prized resource in Catholic exegesis, and
erects with his body of eyewitnesses what one scholar dubs “a Protestant form of apostolic succession”—a quasi magisterial agency faithfully
guarding and transmitting the deposit.127
The special interest this idea holds is in surmounting the paradigm
of the duplex fons and exposing the point where the divine impulse behind tradition and Scripture coheres. If this structure approximates the
basic Catholic view and ably cuts the legs from under rationalistic Formgeschichte, one could lament that it took fifty years and an Anglican to
materialize the Church’s vision. As with the ongoing liturgical reform,
man and Ancient Near Eastern Literature,” Novum Testamentum 50 (2008): 120–42.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitnesses Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006). Reaction to Bauckham’s controversial
thesis has been predictably lively and sharp. See, e.g., Peter Rodgers, “Jesus and the
Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitnesses Testimony,” Novum Testamentum 52
(2010): 88–100; Judith Redman, “How Accurate Are Eyewitnesses? Bauckham and
the Eyewitnesses in the Light of Psychological Research,” Journal of Biblical Literature 129 (2010): 177–97; Dean Philip Bechard, “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The
Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony,” Biblica 90 (2009): 126–29; Jens Schröder, “The
Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony? A Critical Examination of Bauckham’s Jesus and
the Eyewitnesses,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 31 (2008): 195–209;
Craig Evans, “The Implications of Eyewitness Tradition,” Journal for the Study of the
New Testament 31 (2008): 211–19. See especially the entire volume Journal for the
Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008), including Bauckham, “In Response to My Respondents: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses in Review,” 225–53. Also Bauckham, “Eyewitnesses and Critical History: A Response to Jens Schröder and Craig Evans,” Journal
for the Study of the New Testament 31 (2008): 221–35.
127
Tatum, “Limits of Reliability,” 524.
126

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however, or the still broadly untested norms of exegesis urged in Dei
Verbum §12, implementation of the council’s vision requires patience.
Conclusion
The doctrine of Dei Verbum §19 reaffirms traditional teaching.
(People at times forget that this is what ecumenical councils do.) This
implies substantial continuity with the magisterial pronouncements
of the PBC, a point that has not been acknowledged—understandably,
perhaps, given the uneven value of this highly contextualized material.
The council’s vision, nonetheless, offers more than repetition without
reform, for it also goes ad fontes, offering the Church the (re)sources of
divine revelation to renew itself root and stock. In this way, specifically
Lukan parameters are found for addressing the issue of historical truth.
The three tempora are an important component of this, but of greatest
significance is the matter of apostolic eyewitness. In this regard, it is
critical not to overstate the Church’s investment in Form Criticism (and
its methodological descendants), simply because this school helped the
Church recognize the special importance of the threefold layering of
tradition. The magisterium made a gesture of goodwill toward German
exegesis, but never irrevocably linked arms. In the postconciliar experiment, however, there has been little diversity in the matter of exegetical
method, and some less acceptable assumptions of the Form Critics have
become deeply entrenched. As part of this, the issue of apostolicity was
allowed to vanish from practical consideration: a circumstance that has
strongly promoted a soupy view of the Gospels’ historicity.
The present direction of Gospel scholarship suggests the wisdom of
more clearly disentangling the Church’s exegesis from the rationalistic
principles still inherent in redaction criticism and criteriology. Historica
veritas, in the end, cannot be so easily siphoned off as a scientifically
controllable problem. The temptation in this direction is multifaceted,
and it was a fateful rendering of the vulgate to intellectualize asphaleia
(not aleitheia!) as veritas. For Luke, though, this “reliability” is first of all
confirmatory and fiducial. Faith and reason must, then, collaborate here
more than they have done. The council fathers envisioned a both/and
approach to the problem (fide et ratione), despite the particular need to
accent reason (non tantum fide). This means recovering a nonrational-

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ist (pre-Enlightenment? postmodern?) historical sensibility, above all, I
suggest, by more closely studying and understanding the patristic tolerance (and limits) of Gospel disharmony: reverse engineering in some
way projects like Augustine’s De Consensu. Moderating the illusory
claims of positivistic history (wie es eigentlich gewesenist) is, of course,
indispensable too.
If the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” has advanced by always “taking one or other of two alternatives,”128 the Church sees this as a record
of dangerous neglect. To reverse the course is hard, surely, but on one
front there are promising signs. Perhaps the way forward will rejoin a
road not taken, for some in the academy are now turning again toward
John. This must challenge our whole manner of imagining history and
seeking the vera et sincera de Iesu.129
The teaching of Vatican II on the historical truth of the Gospels belongs to the significant portion of Dei Verbum that “still awaits completion.”130 Sancta Mater Ecclesia spoke truly: “There will never be an
end to [biblical] problems,” but “the Catholic exegete should never lose
heart.” With this in mind, we may express a glad hope that, even after fifty years, the council’s sacred work still requires periti. For, in the
abundance of the Holy Spirit’s gift to the Church, a special joy belongs
also to those who never knew the first thrill of aggiornamento. The call
to renewal also touches our hearts, a generation grateful to be the living
N&V
first fruits of the Second Vatican Council.

128

Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, xvii.
I would like to mention here the exegetical work of Marie-Joseph Lagrange, whose
prescience, piety, and erudition can still shine as a guiding star as we continue to navigate the long wake of the storm he courageously weathered. (Another anniversary
was quietly marked in 2012: the centenary of what Lagrange simply called L’ année
terrible.) It is unfortunate, perhaps, that Pope Benedict missed the chance to commend Lagrange’s example in his Jesus of Nazareth series; the evocation of figures like
Guardini and Daniel-Rops indicates that his ultimate inspiration lay outside professional exegesis. On the other hand, Ratzinger disavows any attempt to write a “Life of
Christ” and points us instead to Thomas’s Tertia Pars (Holy Week, xvi). In thus offering a kind of “theological treatise on the mysteries of the life of Christ,” the emeritus
pontiff approaches in some ways the rare vision of Lagrange, who had the profound
wisdom to understand why “the Gospels themselves are the only lives of Jesus that
can be written.” L’Évangile de Jesus Christ (Paris: Gabalda, 1928).
130
Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation, 168.
129

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 125-153

125

The Humanism of the Incarnation:
Catholic, Barthian, and Dutch Reformed1*
Tracey Rowland

John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family
Melbourne, Australia

THIS ARTICLE TAKES THE FORMof a reflection on the idea of
the “humanism of the Incarnation” in which the “participant” voices will
principally be those of Martin D’Arcy, Charles Journet, Karol Wojtyła,
Joseph Ratzinger, and Marc Ouellet representing the Catholic academy;
Karl Barth representing himself; and Abraham Kuyper representing the
Dutch Reformed tradition.
Martin D’Arcy (1888–1978) was a twentieth-century English Jesuit
renowned for converting a rather large number of Oxford undergraduates, including Evelyn Waugh. D’Arcy is said to have been the inspiration for the character of Fr. Rothschild in Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies.
Several chapters of his book The Sense of History: Secular and Sacred offer a mid-twentieth-century engagement with Karl Barth’s ideas on what
is now called “the theology of culture.” D’Arcy in turn was influenced by
an essay of Christopher Butler who was the Abbot of Downside Abbey.
Butler’s article “On the Value of History” was published in the Downside
Review in 1950, and Butler himself was following leads in the work of
the Belgian Jesuit Léopold Malevez (1900–1973) whose work is known
for its identification of a division between incarnational and eschatological approaches to history. For those who favor the eschatological
* This essay was delivered as the keynote address to the 2013 Wilken Colloquium at
Baylor University, sponsored by the Center for Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue.

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Tracey Rowland

approach, the emphasis is on the discontinuity between profane history
and the final reign of God after the renewal of the cosmos, while for
those who favor the incarnational approach, the general idea is that all
good human actions prepare for the coming age beyond the consummation of the world.1 The eschatological approach is usually identified
with an emphasis on the theology of the Cross, while the incarnational
approach is identified, obviously, with the theology of the Incarnation.
Malevez had been influenced by a fellow Belgian theologian, Gustave
Thils (1909–2000), who was a peritus at the Second Vatican Council and
a member of the Secretariat for Christian Unity. Thils is generally remembered for his doctrinal history of the ecumenical movement, published in 1955, and for his criticism of the theology of Jean Daniélou for
being too far down the eschatological end of the spectrum.2
The other Catholic voices to be mentioned are Charles Journet
(1891–1975), a Swiss Cardinal associated with the journal Nova et Vetera;
Jean Borella, a contemporary French theologian; Joseph Ratzinger, who
needs no introduction; and Marc Ouellet, the Canadian who was given
the shortest odds of any Cardinal entering the 2013 conclave by Paddy
Power’s Irish betting agency.
Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), representing the Dutch Reformed
tradition was the prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905,
the founder of a newspaper, a university, a political party, and a religious
denomination. His most famous academic works were his Lectures
on Calvinism delivered at Princeton Seminary in 1898. The Princeton
Seminary now hosts the Abraham Kuyper Centre for Public Theology
and sponsors the annual Kuyper Prize Lecture as well as publishes the
Kuyper Centre Review. My judgment of Kuyper is that he was a kind
of Calvinist Alasdair MacIntyre, that is to say, he was someone keenly
interested in the relationship between theological ideas and culture and
he was decidedly anti-liberal. Just as MacIntyre encourages the formation of small institutions governed by persons who all share the same
1

This is Abbott Butler’s summary of the distinction in “The Value of History,” Downside Review 68, no. 213 (1950): 290–305, at 290–91. For the original analysis by Malevez, see Léopold Malevez, “Deux théologies catholiques de l’histoire,” Bijdragen 10
(1949): 225–40.
2
Gustave Thils, Histoire Doctrinale du Mouvement Oecuménique (Louvain: E.
Warny, 1955).

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theological framework, Kuyper is remembered as a champion of pillarization, the sociological term given to the denominational segregation
of pre–World War II Dutch society.
A fellow Calvinist, though in a tradition all his own, Karl Barth
(1886–1968) was, to quote Pope Pius XII, “the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas.” Barth was invited to be an observer at
the Second Vatican Council and later published a work of reflections
on the documents of the Council entitled Ad Limina Apostolorum: A
Reappraisal of Vatican II. In 1966 when he met Pope Paul VI he asked
the pontiff what one might colloquially call the billion-dollar question:
what does aggiornamento mean, accommodation to what?3
Aggiornamento was the 1960s buzzword for theological renewal, also translated as updating and mutated as accommodating. It was
closely related to the postconciliar pastoral strategy known as “correlationism,” the idea that the faith needed to be correlated to the culture of
the times. As the French Dominican Marie-Dominique Chenu (1895–
1990) described the idea, one needed to look to the contemporary culture for pierres d’attente, or toothing stones, to which the faith could
attach itself. This pastoral strategy was strongly associated with the
postconciliar theology of the Flemish Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx
(1914–2009), and it had a major impact on the direction of Catholic
ecclesial life throughout the pontificate of Paul VI (1963–78). For many
clergy educated in Catholic seminaries in the 1960s the correlationist
project remains synonymous with the “spirit of the Council.”
When applied in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, correlationism came to
mean accommodating the faith to the culture of modernity. Today proponents of this project (found mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium),
argue that instead of correlating the faith to the culture of modernity, ecclesial leaders need to recontextualize the faith to the culture of postmodernity. This is because the culture of modernity and its “modern man”
are now regarded as the undesirable refuse of the eighteenth century.
The modern man has been variously described as a “one-dimensional man” by the Frankfurt School’s Herbert Marcuse; an animal producens et consumens by the Czech Jesuit Joseph Zverina S.J.; a “mass man”
who has “no desire for independence or originality,” the description of
3

Karl Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum (Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press, 1969), 20.

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Germany’s Romano Guardini; a “deprived and isolated emotivist,” the
assessment of Alasdair MacIntyre; a “micro-cosmic tragedy,” the term
used by the Slovakian Charter 77 anti-Communist activist Rudolf Battek; a person with a weak or fractured sense of self-identity who “doesn’t
know which team he is playing on,” the assessment of the Czech writer
and politician Vaclav Havel; a Hobbesian egoist, the label of the English
philosopher John Gray; and a new type of barbarian, the conclusion of
the Czech philosopher Erazim Kohak, to mention just a few of the descriptions.4 When one adds the Nietzschean definitions as someone with
a “small soul” and “herd-like morality” and communitarian criticisms of
the “rootless cosmopolitan”—a being without any historical memory,
and without loyalties to any traditions—one rapidly reaches the conclusion that the depiction of anyone as a “modern” and the endorsement
of the culture of modernity as the natural habitat of these neobarbaric microcosmic tragedies carries strong negative connotations. This is
not only so for Catholic scholars, but for Heideggerians like Havel and
members of the Frankfurt school like Marcuse. To use the language of
marketing managers, modernity is toxic.
Whether one is correlating or recontextualizing, either way, it is
something else that is positioning the faith, in effect, something else that
is positioning Christ.5 One might say that if ontotheology is bad (allowing philosophy to position revelation), then zeitgeist theology is even
worse. There is a huge difference between using contemporary cultural
trends as a standard for the analysis of revelation and using revelation as
4

Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964); Jozef Zverina as quoted by Rudolf Battek, “Spiritual values, independent initiatives and politics,” in The Power of the Powerless, ed. John Keane (London: Hutchinson, 1985),
97–99; Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World (London: Sheed & Ward,
1957); Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1981); Vaclav Havel, “Politics and Conscience,” Salisbury Review (January
1985); John Gray, Liberalism (London: Open University Press, 1986); Erazim Kohak,
The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
5
“I have argued in The Priority of Christ that Jesus and the doctrines and narratives
surrounding him must have epistemic primacy, that is, to say, they cannot be interpreted or positioned by anything outside of themselves.” Robert Barron, The Priority
of Christ: Toward a Post-Liberal Catholicism (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2007),
341.

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a lens through which to read and judge contemporary cultural trends.
Arguably, it is these alternative ways of engaging with the spirit of the
times that determine whether one is a liberal or nonliberal theologian.
All of the authors addressed in this essay share the quality of being
nonliberal theologians. They are also all strongly Christocentric. The
question to be posed is: what is their vision of a Christian humanism,
or, to use Ratzinger’s expression, the “humanism of the Incarnation”?
My macrolevel observation is that there seems to be broad agreement on two fundamental principles: first, that any humanism of the
Incarnation presupposes a theology of creation and a theology of the
Cross and is set within these two poles. The second principle is that, in
relation to the Incarnation itself, Christology becomes the all-important
point of reference. These two principles appear to apply across the various faith traditions. This means in turn that to do justice to this topic,
one needs to be across the Christology of the authors surveyed, and this
in turn means being across their Trinitarian theology and then applying both to their understanding of the relationship between Christ and
humanity and human culture. The topic is therefore sufficiently deep
to justify a doctoral-level analysis and thus what follows in this essay is
merely a typical first chapter of a doctorate literature review. It is nonetheless important because if there is to be an ecumenical united front
against the forces of atheism and its culture of death, then it helps to
understand not only what we are all against but also, positively, what we
all want to foster.
In an article on the interventions of Cardinal Josef Frings in the
debates of the Second Vatican Council, Joseph Ratzinger observed that
Frings was keen to emphasize one general principle:
For the Christian life in the world three revealed truths are always to be kept before us: creation, which teaches us to love the
things of the world as God’s work; the Incarnation, which spurs
us on to dedicate to God all the things of the world; the cross
and resurrection, which leads us in the imitation of Christ to
sacrifice and continence with regard to the things of the world.6
6

Joseph Ratzinger, “Frings’s Speeches during the Second Vatican Council: Apropos
of A. Muggeridge’s The Desolate City,” Communio: International Catholic Review, 15,

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An almost identical point was made in a summary of the position of
Dietrich Bonhoffer by Jens Zimmermann, who wrote:
In Jesus Christ we believe in the God who becomes human;
was crucified, and is risen. In the becoming human we recognise God’s love towards God’s creation, in the crucifixion God’s
judgement of all flesh, and in the resurrection God’s purpose for
a new world. Nothing could be more perverse than to tear these
three apart because the whole is contained in each of them.7
Consistent with Frings, Ratzinger, Bonhoffer, and Zimmermann, Abbot Christopher Butler made the point that Christian eschatology and
Christian incarnationalism are not mutually exclusive and that the division identified by Léopold Malevez between the two—that is, between
the incarnational and eschatological approach to history—should not
be a real division but rather two poles held in tension. Butler wrote:
Eschatology without Incarnation is not Christian at all, but Jewish. Incarnation without eschatology is—I know not what; Buddhism, perhaps, or Platonism. Born within the Jewish tradition
and of Jewish spiritual stock, Christianity has been eschatological from the beginning . . . But its novelty was not that it simply
lodged the idea of incarnation within an eschatological framework, but that it proclaimed a real, “mystical,” “sacramental”
anticipation of the Last Things as the unique gift that God was
bestowing on man in the Gospel—and of this real anticipation
the Incarnation is the epitome and the fountainhead . . . Incarnation, for us, is eschatological, and eschatology is incarnated.8
The confessional difficulty here of course is found in the phrase “sacramental anticipation of the Last Things.” Not all Christian faith traditions will agree that the humanism of the Incarnation is something
rooted in a sacramental ontology. This seems to be the neuralgic point
no. 1 (1988): 131–47.
Jens Zimmermann, Incarnational Humanism: A Philosophy of Culture for the Church
in the World (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2012), 273.
8
Butler, “Value of History,” 294.
7

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131

of dispute between the Catholic and Protestant visions, and this has
been the subject of some acute comments by Charles Journet. In his
work The Primacy of Peter, Journet distinguished between two different concepts of Christianity: one typical of Protestant theology and
one typical of Catholic theology. The first he described as the mnemic
concept, the second the ontological concept. The difference between
the two is presented as a difference over the way in which the presence
of Christ constitutes Christianity:
On the one hand there is the spirituality of the Incarnation, or
in a broader sense the spirituality of the transfiguration of matter by the spirit. This is the Catholic form of spirituality with
its doctrine of the Incarnation, the instrumental causality of
the sacraments, of the New Law, the visibility of the Church,
the resurrection of the flesh, the immediate creation of visible
things by God himself, etc. On the other hand, we have a sort of
spirituality of disincarnation, or in a broader sense a spirituality
of the separation of matter and spirit.
On a more metaphysical plane we may see the opposition as one
between a dogmatic view of the analogy of being, in accordance
with which the divine privileges, especially divine sanctity, can
be communicated analogically to creatures—as existence once
was—without affecting adversely the divine transcendence, but
rather manifesting it. On the other hand we have a dogmatic
view of the uniqueness of being, which can only safeguard the
divine transcendence by denying any possibility for the divine
privileges to be communicated, especially divine sanctity: either a) to the humanity of Christ because of the fear of Monophysitism, or b) to creatures because of the fear of idolatry.9
According to Journet, in the Protestant account, Christ is only
present in time by way of signs, tokens, and promises—which from a
Catholic point of view is a kind of nostalgic return to the Old Testa9

Charles Journet, The Primacy of Peter (Westminster MD: Newman Press: 1954),
36–37.

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ment—whereas, according to the Catholic account, Christ is really and
truly present in time under the guise of signs, tokens, and promises.
Journet suggests that Protestantism makes the error of considering the
two natures of Christ side by side such that the human nature of Christ
becomes “simply an occasion of our salvation, a mere phenomenal shell,
in which the invisible God made his appearance.”10
While Journet does not distinguish between different Protestant traditions but lumps them all together and comes rather close to describing
Protestant Christology as Nestorian, in another work, The Sense of the
Supernatural, Jean Borella specifically indicted the Lutheran tradition
on the charge of monothelitism in the sense that human nature becomes
a pure instrument of divine nature, without autonomy. Borella wrote:
Basically, and whatever may have been his [Luther’s] good intentions, [his] thesis rests on the radical incompatibility of nature and grace, or rather on the irreducible opposition and the
mutual exclusion of the natural and supernatural orders, which
grace comes to reconcile specifically, since this grace always
flows from the unique hypostasis of Christ in which divinity has
been united to humanity. Here, to the contrary, [that is, in the
Lutheran tradition] supernature can only work by destroying
nature . . . Into the heart of every Christian it introduces an insurmountable separation between what stems from the creature
and what stems from the redemptive act … What disappears
in this way is the “immanence of grace” of Christ the Redeemer in his creation; that is, the sacramental and ritual order, the
ecclesial order, the Mystical Body, all of this sacralising of the
earthly and the human cosmos which is the Incarnation prolonged, spread abroad and communicated, as the image of the
first fruits of the “new heaven and the new earth.”11
Although Borella was directing his comments to the Lutheran tradition,
they would seem to apply equally to the theological vision of Barth. For
Barth it is Christ, not the Church, who mediates the presence of God
10
11

Ibid., 33.
Jean Borella, The Sense of the Supernatural (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 154.

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to the world. As Rodney Howsare expresses the point, “missing [from
Barth] is the more Eastern understanding that God unites himself, in
the Incarnation, to all human nature, thereby transforming the capacities of that nature. This comes out most clearly in Barth’s understanding
of the Church, the liturgy and the sacraments.”12 By reducing everything
to God’s activity in Christ on behalf of the world, Barth does not give
the same attention and emphasis to the role of the Church in carrying
this love into the world as Catholic theologians typically do. Missing
from Barth’s picture is a notion of the Church as itself a sacrament.13
Barth is generally believed to have held a neo-Zwinglian position on
the sacraments, or at least, that is the strong impression he gives in his
Church Dogmatics IV/4. For Barth, both baptism and the Lord’s Supper
are human actions, not sacraments. Louis-Marie Chauvet argues that
Barth’s Christology already bears within itself its nonsacramental theology. Chauvet remarks that there are few theologies that speak so much
of events and history, and yet there are few theologies where so little
takes place on the properly historical plane.14
It was perhaps for these reasons that Hans Urs von Balthasar accused Barth of reducing the order of creation to the order of grace.15 In
Balthasar’s words:
If revelation is centered in Jesus Christ, there must be by definition a periphery to this center. Thus, as we say, the order of
the Incarnation presupposes the order of creation, which is not
identical with it. And, because the order of creation is oriented
to the order of the Incarnation, it is structured in view of the
Incarnation: it contains images, as it were, dispositions, which
in a true sense are the presuppositions for the Incarnation.16

12

Rodney A. Howsare, Hans Urs von Balthasar: The Ecumenical Implications of His
Theological Style (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2005), 97.
13
Ibid., 92.
14
Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of
Christian Existence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 540.
15
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992),
136.
16
Ibid., 163.

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In other words, the idea is that the grace available through Jesus Christ
does not stand in contradiction to, but in line with, the grace found in
nature by virtue of God’s act of creation. Michael Schmaus, a professor
of the theology faculty in Munich during Ratzinger’s student years, expressed the general Catholic idea like this:
Man exists, not in himself, but for God. By directing himself in
free decision and responsibility to God, he acts according to his
ontic constitution, he acts in the way appropriate to his essence
and thus comes to fulfil and perfect his being. Only when God
draws him into his own triune life does man find his own deepest being; his ontic determination is a copy of God’s tri-personal
life. Thus man comes to discover himself in the divine Thou
when God imparts himself to him supernaturally. This communication of God’s happens in and through Christ. The relationship to Christ is therefore contained in the relationship of the
creature to God . . . The whole of the rest of creation is meant to
exist for the sake of the Incarnation of Christ. Thus the whole
of creation comes to its essential fulfilment only through him.17
Ratzinger’s own most extensive and unbuttoned treatment of this topic
can be found in an article published in 1969 in Herbert Vorgrimler’s
Commentaries on the Documents of the Second Vatican Council. The article analyzed the treatment of human dignity in Gaudium et spes—the
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Ratzinger’s
assessment of this document was largely negative. He, along with fellow German Cardinal Walter Kasper, have both suggested that the first
section of the document was never properly integrated with the second.
The first section offers an account of the human person as made in God’s
image, but it is only when one gets to paragraph 22 that the picture is
complicated by the introduction of the Trinity. Ratzinger argued that the
first section fostered the fiction that it is possible to construct a rational
philosophical picture of man intelligible to all and on which all men of
goodwill can agree, the actual Christian doctrines being added to this as
a sort of crowning conclusion. This approach prompted the question of
17

Michael Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik II (Munich: Max Hueber, 1949), 70–72.

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“why exactly the reasonable and perfectly free human being described
in the first articles was suddenly burdened with the story of Christ.”18
Notwithstanding this criticism and Ratzinger’s description of the language used in the paragraph about human freedom as being downright
Pelagian, Ratzinger nonetheless strongly praised paragraph 22, which
was to become the most often quoted paragraph of all the documents of
the Second Vatican Council by John Paul II. He said that in paragraph
22 the idea of Christ’s assumption of human nature is touched upon in
its full ontological depth:
The human nature of all men is one; Christ’s taking to himself
the one human nature of man is an event which affects every
human being; consequently human nature in every human being is henceforward Christologically characterised.
Ratzinger went on to say that this outlook is important because it opens
a bridge between the theology of the Incarnation and that of the Cross:
A theology of the incarnation situated too much on the level
of essence, may be tempted to be satisfied with the ontological
phenomenon: God’s being and man’s have been conjoined . . .
But since it is made clear that man’s being is not that of a pure
essence, and that he only attains his reality by his activity, it is at
once evident that we cannot rest content with a purely essentialist outlook. Man’s being must therefore be examined precisely
in its activities.19
Here Ratzinger is opening up what in other places he has referred to as
the mediation of history in the realm of ontology. Both he and Karol
Wojtyła converge in their interest in the uniqueness of human persons
caused by their particular location within history. For this reason they
share a mutual interest in what is called relationality, or that dimension
of the human person who is determined by his or her relations with oth18
19

Ibid., 120.
Joseph Ratzinger, “The Dignity of the Human Person,” in Commentary on the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (London: Burns and
Oates, 1969), 160.

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er persons, including the Persons of the Holy Trinity. In another essay
on the notion of the human person published during the pontificate of
John Paul II, Ratzinger was critical of the Boethian definition of the person as the individual substance of a rational nature because it neglected
the whole dimension of relationality, which makes human persons not
merely members of the human race but unique individual members of
the human race.20 Both Wojtyła and Ratzinger were driven to develop
this dimension of Catholic anthropology as a response to issues thrown
up by existentialist philosophy. A theology that has nothing to say about
individuality is impotent against the power of nineteenth-century German Romanticism and its twentieth-century developments.
Ratzinger believes that the uniqueness of Christian culture is rooted
in the Incarnation and that all of its specific characteristics disintegrate
when this belief is eclipsed.21 The Incarnation means that the invisible
God enters into the visible world so that those who are bound to matter can know him. The International Theological Commission under
Ratzinger’s leadership expressed the position this way:
In the last times inaugurated at Pentecost, the risen Christ, Alpha and Omega, enters into the history of peoples: from that
moment, the sense of history and thus of culture is unsealed
and the Holy Spirit reveals it by actualizing and communicating
it to all. The Church is the sacrament of this revelation and its
communication. It recenters every culture into which Christ is
received, placing it in the axis of the world which is coming, and
restores the union broken by the Prince of this world. Culture
is thus eschatologically situated; it tends towards its completion
in Christ, but it cannot be saved except by associating itself with
the repudiation of evil.22
In this paragraph one finds all the key elements of a Catholic Incarnational humanism and its associate culture: the Incarnation restores
20

Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio: International Catholic Review 17, no. 3 (1990): 439–54.
21
Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 18–19.
22
International Theological Commission, “Faith and Inculturation,” Origins 18 (1989):
800–807.

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137

the union broken by Satan at the time of the Fall, it recenters culture
eschatologically—that is, with a view to the return of Christ in glory
and consummation of the world—but this does not happen automatically. There needs to be a repudiation of evil and thus the potentiality of
the Incarnation stands always under the shadow of the Cross. The Holy
Spirit and the Church are responsible for the communication of the possibilities thrown open by the Incarnation to the world.
For the development of a more detailed Catholic Christocentric
Trinitarian anthropology, one can have recourse to John Paul II”s encyclicals Redemptor Hominis (1979), Dives in Misericordia (1980), and
Dominum et Vivificantem (1986). Known as his Trinitarian triptych,
each of these encyclicals addressed the issue of the human person’s relationship with one of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.
Included in this Trinitarian anthropology is the notion that the Incarnation opened up the possibility of participation in the very life of
God. John Paul II stated this explicitly in Dives in Misericordia 7:4. Often
this idea is expressed by the idea of the nuptial mystery. Paragraph 27 of
Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis offers an
extensive presentation of the links between Eucharistic theology and the
nuptial mystery in the following terms:
The Eucharist, as the sacrament of charity, has a particular relationship with the love of man and woman united in marriage
. . . “the entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love
of Christ and the Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the
People of God, is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial
bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist” . . . By
the power of the sacrament, the marriage bond is intrinsically
linked to the eucharistic unity of Christ the Bridegroom and his
Bride, the Church (cf. Eph 5:31–32). The mutual consent that
husband and wife exchange in Christ, which establishes them as
a community of life and love, also has a eucharistic dimension.
Indeed, in the theology of Saint Paul, conjugal love is a sacramental sign of Christ’s love for his Church, a love culminating
in the Cross, the expression of his “marriage” with humanity
and at the same time the origin and heart of the Eucharist.

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These themes have been amplified in the theology of Cardinal Marc
Ouellet, who understands the sacrament of marriage, including the exchange of love between husband and wife, as the couple’s participation
in the exchange of “gifts” between the divine Persons:
God’s covenant with Israel and humanity is the story of a wedding. The symbol par excellence of the biblical revelation is
conjugal love. A couple stands at the beginning of salvation
history and another at its conclusion: Adam and Eve set the
history of humanity in motion, while the Lamb and his Bride,
who descends from God in heaven, concludes the adventure
of historical time. In the span of time between the initial couple and the eschatological couple, the Holy Spirit implores and
summons; he prays for the final fulfillment together with the
Bride whom he has called.23
Salvation history is [thus] a spousal drama of Trinitarian revelation . . . The Father sends his Son as the Bridegroom, accompanied by the Holy Spirit, who prepares the bride for the
encounter with the Bridegroom and the fulfilment of the eschatological wedding.24
Prepared by the Holy Spirit since the beginning of creation, the
messianic wedding is celebrated on the altar of the Cross. It is
precisely there that the nuptial chamber receives the sacrum
commercium et conubium.25
Ouellet concludes that the Paschal event contains at once a Trinitarian
and spousal meaning:
A Trinitarian meaning, since the resurrection seals in the economy the unity of love which was sealed by the Holy Spirit’s procession in the immanent Trinity: a spousal meaning, because
23

Marc Ouellet, Divine Likeness: Towards a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 80.
24
Ibid., 80–81.
25
Ibid., 85.

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this anointing confirmation seals the fecund gift of the risen
one as the eschatological Bridegroom who generates his bride.26
These notions of a spousal relation between Christ and the Church and
of divine filiation via sacramental participation in the life and love of the
Trinity are elements found in most Catholic accounts of the humanism
of the Incarnation but are usually missing from Protestant accounts, and
in particular are missing in Barth. In his book Karl Barth’s Theology of
Culture, Robert J. Palma speaks of Barth’s “parabolic relationship between the worldly and the heavenly, the human the divine, the transitory and the eternal.”27 Thus, we might say, in shorthand terms, there is
a tendency for Catholic theologians to describe the union between the
human person and the Persons of the Holy Trinity using the idioms of
nuptial mysticism, while there is a tendency for Protestants to shy away
from this and adopt a more modest notion of a parabolic relationship.
For Barth the eschatological Word to which Christianity looks forward
relativizes all historical possibilities and achievements. Though his later theology expressed the point more gently, Barth never retracted his
early claim that only a thoroughly eschatological Christianity bears any
relationship to Christ.28
The difference in the area of sacramental theology also means that
Protestants and Catholics tend to have a different attitude to matter
itself, including the human body. The Catholic cult of the saints and
practice of collecting and venerating the relics of the saints is the most
obvious example of this difference. Theologically, the issue is one of understanding precisely how it is that Christ unites himself to humanity.
That Christ was not some kind of ontological exception, but that his
Incarnation affected all postlapsarian human nature in some way, comes
across strongly in John Paul II’s encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem. At
paragraph 50 he wrote:

26

Ibid., 87.
Robert J. Palma, Karl Barth’s Theology of Culture (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 1983), 2.
28
Gary Dorrien, “The ‘Postmodern’ Barth? The Word of God as True Myth,” Christian
Century (April 2, 1997): 338–42.
27

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The Incarnation of God the Son signifies the taking up into the
unity with God not only of human nature, but in this human
nature, in a sense, of everything that is “flesh”: the whole of humanity, the entire visible and material world. The Incarnation
then, also has a cosmic significance, a cosmic dimension. The
“first-born of all creation,” becoming incarnate in the individual humanity of Christ, unites himself in some way with the
entire reality of man, which is “flesh”—and in this reality with
all “flesh,” with the whole of creation.
This Catholic take on the Incarnation would seem to affect not only issues like how we treat the dead bodies of the saints but also attitudes to
art and culture more generally. In a reflection on the earliest disputes
within the Church about art and beauty, Ratzinger observed that “iconoclasm rests on a one-sided apophatic theology, which recognizes only
the Wholly Other-ness of the God beyond all images and words, a theology that in the final analysis regards revelation as the inadequate human
reflection of what is eternally imperceptible.”29 He concluded that “what
seems like the highest humility toward God turns into pride, allowing
God no word and permitting him no real entry into history . . . matter
is absolutized and thought of as completely impervious to God, as mere
matter, and thus deprived of its dignity.”30
This notion of the receptivity of matter to some form of divinization
reaches its most dramatic expression in paragraph 11 of Pope Benedict’s
Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, wherein he stated that:
The substantial conversion of bread and wine into [Christ’s]
body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a
radical change, a sort of “nuclear fission,” which penetrates to
the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which
transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in
all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).

29
30

Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), 124.
Ibid.

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The theology of Teilhard de Chardin—in particular the idea that as we
move through history matter itself becomes more and more conformed
to Christ until we reach the Noosphere, as he called it—has never received magisterial endorsement, but the fact that a significant Catholic
theologian could speculate in this way is evidence of the depth of Catholic interest in the topic of what it means exactly for the world to be
transfigured to a point where God will be all in all.
In addition to the different stances toward sacramental theology
and the theological meaning of the first chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the
Corinthians, Ratzinger’s humanism of the Incarnation also differs from
Barth’s in that he believes that Mariology has something to contribute to
this topic. In this context he has written:
Mariology is an essential component of a hermeneutics of salvation history. Recognition of this fact brings out the true dimensions of Christology over against a falsely understood solus
Christus (Christ alone). Christology must speak of a Christ
who is both “head and body,” that is, who comprises the redeemed creation in its relative subsistence (Selbständigkeit). But
this move simultaneously enlarges our perspective beyond the
history of salvation, because it counters a false understanding
of God’s sole agency, highlighting the reality of the creature
that God calls and enables to respond to him freely. Mariology
demonstrates that the doctrine of grace does not revoke creation, but is the definitive Yes to creation. In this way, Mariology
guarantees the ontological independence (Eigenständigkeit) of
creation, undergirds faith in creation, and crowns the doctrine
of creation, rightly understood.31
The nexus between Christology and versions of Christian humanism
is acknowledged in almost all the authorities who write about this topic in the work of Karl Barth, and it is the central theme of Paul Louis
Metzger’s work The Word of Christ and the World of Culture: Sacred
and Secular through the Theology of Karl Barth. However, there appears
to be no consensus among Barth scholars about how to read Barth’s
31

Joseph Ratzinger, Mary: The Church at the Source (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 31.

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Christology. There has been a debate within the school about whether Barth was primarily an Alexandrian or an Antiochene. According
to George Hunsinger of Princeton Theological Seminary, who wrote
the chapter on Barth’s Christology for the Cambridge Companion to
Barth, Barth does have a Chalcedonian Christology, but he arrives at it
by moving back and forth dialectically between the Alexandrian and
Antiochene approaches.32 According to Charles T. Waldrop, however,
in Barth, “Christ’s human nature is so integrally taken up and assumed
into God’s being that its purely human existence is denied. In the final
analysis, the degree of independence which the human nature has is
extremely slight. It serves and attests God because God determines
it to be that which serves and attests him.”33 Whatever the differences between Hunsinger and Waldrop, Metzger strongly argues that for
Barth there is no capacity for the divine capacity inherent in the human constitution.34 Nor if we are good Barthians should we expect to
find vestiges of the Trinity within creation.35 Instead Barth invented
the formula vestigia creaturae in trinitate, which emphasizes that while
creatures are unable to reflect the Trinity, the Trinity has the power to
reveal itself in creatures.36 The central thesis of Metzger’s work is that
Barth is neither a sacramentalist nor a secularist, that he is neither a
Catholic nor a liberal.37 As he expresses the idea:
In Barth’s work the dedivinization of culture gives rise to the
humanization of culture. This reality of dedivinisation enables
culture to be the human, creaturely reality as it is intended by
32

George Hunsinger, “Karl Barth’s Christology: Its Basic Chacedonian Character,” in
Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 136–37.
33
Charles T. Waldrop, Karl Barth’s Christology: Its Basic Alexandrian Character (New
York: Mouton, 1984), 174.
34
Paul Louis Metzger, The Word of Christ and the World of Culture: Sacred and Secular
through the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 124n9.
35
Ibid., 200.
36
Thomas G. Dalzell, The Dramatic Encounter of Divine and Human Freedom in the
Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997), 91n2. Dalzell also cited
Philip Rosato, The Spirit as Lord: The Pneumatology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1981), 53–56, on this point.
37
Metzger, Word of Christ, 116.

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God to be. And although Barth guards against the secularization of human culture by emphasising the significance of the
Word for the whole of creaturely reality, not simply the sacred
sphere, he is still able to give space to culture to be truly secular
in light of the Word. Dedevinisation and desecularization spell
humanization, which in turn spells the celebration of authentic secularity . . . his dual emphasis on the de-devinization and
de-secularization of culture enables him to mediate between
Christ and culture in such a way that broader culture is given the space to be truly secular in distinct though inseparable
relation to the sacred, in and through the eternal Word who
became flesh.38
The problem for a Catholic reading this paragraph is that it sounds precisely like it leaves the order of creation unaffected by the Incarnation,
at least until the renewal of the cosmos at the end of time. For Catholics,
the idea is not merely that we are saved by Christ, but that one of the
fruits of redemption is the possibility of theosis or deification. The idea
of a de-divinised culture sounds to Catholic ears a little like a de-alcoholized cocktail—something potentially intoxicating that has had the
active ingredient removed.
Although Martin D’Arcy did not have the benefit of Metzger’s research,
he read Barth in a way that seems close to the judgment of Metzger—although he drew a different value judgment about it. D’Arcy wrote:
Barth’s meaning is that the Redemption has restored the world
and that there are reflections of this new glory to be found in
the works of man and of civilisation. But the restoration belongs
to another plane and will not be revealed until the last day. Till
then it is hidden in God with Jesus Christ. The best that can
be seen in the world is a reflection like the light reflected on a
pool or mountain-side. Culture, he says, has its own worth and
dignity, but it is “an exclusively earthly reflection of the Creation, which itself remains . . . lost and hidden from us.” There is
“no continuity between the analogies and the divine reality, no
38

Ibid., 81

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objective relation between what is signified and what really is;
no transition, therefore, definable in terms of any progress, can
be made between one and the other.” Such an inflexible verdict
rules out any hope of relating heaven and earth, grace and nature. History can never be more than a pastime. When the last
trumpet sounds, all the works of man will fade out; they have no
bearing on what then is to be revealed.39
Jessica de Cou reads Barth in this way when she says that far too much
has been made of the theological significance of Barth’s Mozart essays.
She argues that when Barth wrote about Mozart he was being playful
and ironic.40 He thoroughly enjoyed Mozart but thought that what human beings received from Mozart was something related to the good of
play. It was something absolutely human, not divine. Hence Barth’s playful comment that the angels play Bach for God but when they are home
having fun by themselves they play Mozart. Evidence for something like
Martin D’Arcy’s reading of Barth can be found in Barth’s Church Dogmatics, vols. 1 and 2 (§§13–24). In these paragraphs we find the great
Barthian indictment of Catholic theology on the grounds that it is obsessed with the word “and”:
In all its shoots the theology which says “and” derives from
one root. If you say “faith and works,” “nature and grace,” “reason and revelation,” at the appropriate place you logically and
necessarily have to say “Scripture and tradition.” The “and” by
which the authority of Holy Scripture is relativised in both
Roman Catholicism and Neo-Protestantism is only the expression, one expression, of the fact that already the majesty
of God has been relativised in His fellowship with man. And
in this primary relativising both are equally remote from the
Reformation decision.

39

Martin D’Arcy, The Sense of History: Secular and Sacred (London: Faber and Faber,
1959), 172–73.
40
Jessica de Cou, “Relocating Barth’s Theology of Culture: Beyond the ‘True Words’
Approach of Church Dogmatics IV/3,” International Journal of Systematic Theology
15, no. 2 (2012): 154–72.

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Contrary to Barth, D’Arcy argued that from the Catholic point of view
“nature and the supernatural action of God have been wedded together,
and to divorce them is, however salutary the purpose, a desecration. The
task of the Christian thinker is, therefore, to do justice to the marriage,
while accepting the very different roles and even temperaments of each
member.”41 Specifically, D’Arcy endorses the idea of Abbot Butler that
“the period between the two comings—the Incarnation and the Last
Day—has a special mark like that on the doorpost of the Israelites on the
night the Egyptians were smitten.” The change effected by the Incarnation is a “prevenient grace, which prepares nature and dresses it for the
time when all things shall be made new.” Moreover, “the harvest to be
reaped at the end of time is homogeneous with the historical seed, and
in its growth that seed exercises its mysterious, biological alchemy on
the inanimate matter wherein it has been placed.”42 According to Butler,
whom D’Arcy admired, for a Christian, the purpose of life should not be
to “pass through it, get it over, and arrive, without baggage but personally safe,” rather the Christian should arrive “at the final customs house”
“with all that he acquires along the road” and it is precisely what he has
to declare that will “determine forever his enjoyment of the fatherland.”43
In D’Arcy’s words, “toys in themselves are of no account, but to children
they are so dear that they take them to bed with them; and when we go
to sleep and awake to everlasting joy the toys of this life may well be part
of our transfigured humanity . . . What we do now prefigures what we
shall do with complete happiness, even as the doll cherished by the child
is the first love of the future mother.”44
Abbot Butler acknowledged that cultural achievements can be the
products of sinful desires or as he expressed the idea, “embellishments
not of the City of God but of Babylon.” Nonetheless, he argued that the
“potentialities which they thus not only actualise but deform are potentialities of ontological man and, as such, may participate in the ‘resurrection’ of grace. They and their products are therefore susceptible
of supernaturalisation and can be made to subserve the reign of God.”
41

D’Arcy, Sense of History, 173.
Ibid., 182–83.
43
Butler, “Value of History,” 299.
44
D’Arcy, Sense of History, 211.
42

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To emphasize the point he suggested that we “do not enjoy a few stray
‘advances’ upon our eventual inheritance. It is the whole of that future
inheritance that is mysteriously anticipated in grace.”45
With reference to the scriptural roots of these distinctions, D’Arcy
suggests that Catholics and Barthians have different interpretations of
St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians 1:20, the Father is through him [Christ]
to reconcile all things in himself, and St. Paul’s Letter to Romans 8:20,
the creature was made subject to vanity etc. D’Arcy also suggests that a
certain ambiguity in the use of the word “world” and in the description
of the city of man obscured the questions whether nature and the good
works of man were condemned to vanity or could be brought into relation with the supernatural order.
Not only are these differences significant at the level of what we
make of our cultural achievements, but much more fundamentally
they are also significant for what we make of the potentialities of a
Christian humanism. Several authors argue that it is Barth’s position
that one cannot deduce anthropology from Christology. This however
was precisely the central project of the pontificate of John Paul II, that
is, the development of a Christocentric Trinitarian theological anthropology. In contrast, Philip Rosato argued that in Barth anthropology
is totally conceived of as the work of the Holy Spirit: “pneumatology
replaces the concept of nature, reducing the human person to a passive
bystander.”46 Rosato went so far as to assert that Barth was first and
foremost a pneumatologist.47 George Hunsinger implicitly concurs
with Philip J. Rosato, S.J. Hunsinger writes:
The work of the Holy Spirit, as Barth saw it, is miraculous in operation. The Holy Spirit is seen as the sole effective agent (solus
actor efficiens) by which communion with God is made humanly possible. In their fallen condition (status corruptionis), human beings cannot recover a vital connection with God. Their
minds are darkened, their wills are enslaved, and the desires of
their hearts are debased. Through the proclamation of the gos45

Butler, “Value of History,” 298–99.
Rosato, Spirit as Lord, 131.
47
Ibid., 134.
46

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pel, however, the impossible is made possible, but only in the
form of an ongoing miracle. This miracle is the operation of the
Holy Spirit, not only to initiate conversion (operatio initialis),
but also to continue it throughout the believer’s life (operatio
perpetuo). The only condition (necessary and sufficient) for new
life in communion with God is the Spirit’s miraculous operation
in the human heart (operatio mirabilis). Faith in Christ, hope
for the world, and consequent works of love have no other basis
in nobis than this unceasing miracle of grace. Faith, hope and
love, in other words, do not depend on regenerated capacities,
infused virtues, acquired habits, or strengthened dispositions of
the soul. Those who are awakened to lifelong conversion by the
Spirit never cease to be sinners in themselves.48
Barth thereby objects to all theories that imply a “systematic co-ordination of nature and grace.”49 This rules out the Thomistic idea of a material cause cooperating with a human instrumental cause, and, as stated
earlier in this essay, it rules out a sacramental ontology.
In the final analysis, the distance between the Barthian and the
Catholic positions is quite wide because of the fundamental differences
in the areas of sacramental theology and ecclesiology and even perhaps
in Trinitarian theology, where there are different understandings of the
role of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation. Barth seems to give
the Holy Spirit rather a lot more work than is normally allotted by Catholic theologians. One can only amuse oneself with the thought of what
Barth would make of the nuptial mystery theology of Cardinals Marc
Ouellet and Angelo Scola.
Nonetheless, it is the case that the Catholic theology of the Incarnation has to be held together with a theology of the Cross at one side
and a theology of creation at the other and in this sense there is a strong
affinity with Barth about the importance of the theology of the Cross.
An example of what goes wrong when this end of the triptych is some48

George Hunsinger, “Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 183.
49
See for example, the treatment of these issues in Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol.
1 (New York: Scribner, 1955).

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how occluded may be found in some of the loopy appropriations of John
Paul II’s Wednesday audience addresses on human love. These are now
popularly marketed as his theology of the body. Some commentators
so emphasize the effects of the Incarnation on the redemption of human sexuality that the problem of concupiscence is completely muted.
I have been told, for example, that there is a colony of hippies living
somewhere in Montana and that during the summer months they have
given up wearing clothes on the grounds that they are implementing
John Paul II’s theology of the body principles. They have allegedly been
so redeemed that lust is no longer a problem. Barth and even Teilhard
de Chardin would find that problematic.
Moving now from Barth, to the Dutch Reformed tradition as expressed in the thought of Abraham Kuyper, we can begin with Kuyper’s
most famous line that “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of
our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does
not cry ‘Mine!’”50 This statement resonates well with Catholics. Catholics have never had a problem with the idea of Christ’s sovereignty and
even reserve a feast day to celebrate Christ’s kingship. In 1903 Pope Pius
X wrote a whole encyclical (E supremi) on the subject of “restoring all
things in Christ.” The issue between Catholics and Kuyperians is one of
how this sovereignty is exercised.
Kuyper believed that Catholics were right not to buy into the Lutheran “two kingdoms” concept, but he thought that the Catholic error
was one of believing that Christ’s sovereignty is exercised through the
Church. Instead he favored the idea that the world, so to speak, can be
carved up into different social spheres such as family life and professional life, and that in each of these spheres there are particular ways of
respecting the sovereignty of Christ, particular precepts to be followed,
and it is individual Christians who do the following, who either honor
the precepts or violate them. The basic idea of sphere sovereignty is that
each sphere has its own character and each is directly under the divine
rule. According to Richard Mouw, Kuyper reads Genesis 1:28—that is,
the be fruitful and multiply edict—as a call to cultural activity or a “cultural mandate.” Human beings are called to flourish in the kind of par50

Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader,
ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).

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ticipation in created life that God intends for us. The effect of the Fall is
that the modes of participation become either obedient participation or
disobedient participation.
Kuyper’s concept of sphere sovereignty is not synonymous with the
Catholic idea of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is a principle about decentralizing authority within spheres, it is not about the sovereignty of the spheres
themselves. Nonetheless, subsidiarity is perfectly consistent with how
Kuyper sees the work of individual Christians within the various spheres.
Where Catholics are keen to emphasize that governments have no right
to interfere with the authority of parents over the education of their
children, Kuyper would agree wholeheartedly but add that the Catholic
Church itself has from time to time in its history been guilty of similar
incursions into spheres beyond its competence. Anyone who has ever
worked for the Catholic Church would know that one of its problems is
that people in ecclesial positions have a tendency to exercise authority in
areas that are completely outside their competence. We need many more
“dykes and dams,” to use Mouw’s metaphor, to make sure that people
who have expertise in one field do not try to exercise it in another. There
are numerous examples, but the most common are canon lawyers who
try to handle public relations, and business managers who think they are
bishops. In the past there were bishops who tried to use their theological
authority to make judgments about scientific matters.
Kuyper died before the Second Vatican Council began, but it may
be argued that his idea of sphere sovereignty, or something like it, was
what the Council Fathers were driving at in paragraph 36 of Gaudium
et spes, which states:
If by the autonomy of earthly affairs we mean that created things
and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values which
must gradually be deciphered, put to use, and regulated by men,
then it is entirely right to demand that autonomy. Such is not
merely required by modern men, but harmonises also with the
will of the Creator. For by the very circumstances of their having been created, all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order.

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This paragraph, or at least the bit about all things being endowed with
their own “stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order” is a paraphrase of statements made by both Aquinas and Augustine. It is perfectly capable of a non-self-secularizing interpretation. However, the use of
the word “autonomy” has given rise to a variety of interpretations, most
broadly the idea that God and the supernatural realm is one thing and
the world and so called secular realm is another and that the latter exists
in a state of total independence from the former. In theological parlance,
a relationship of total independence is said to be an “extrinsic” relationship. There have been many popularist interpretations of this paragraph
that view the relationship as extrinsic.
Cardinal Angelo Scola has recently complained of precisely this
problem. He has lamented that there is a latent ambiguity around the
interpretation of the principle of the autonomy of earthly affairs mentioned in paragraph 36 of Gaudium et spes. With reference to some
of the interpretations of this paragraph, Scola suggested that it might
be “right to ask if the Catholic world, called to address the great contemporary anthropological and ethical challenges, has not been co-responsible, whether by naivety, delay or lack of attention, for the current
[secularist] state of things.”51 According to Scola, paragraph 36 is an
acknowledgment that there is a realm of life that is the responsibility
of the laity (cf. Apostolicam actuositatem 7). This seems to be close to
Kuyper’s position. The most significant distinction would be that the
Church reserves to herself the competence to make judgments about
matters of faith and morals that may have an impact in some particular
sphere. Here the ruling against the use of contraception would be the
most obvious example. The communio ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council represents a move away from a strictly juridical account of
the Church, to a view that imagines the Church as a symphonic interplay of different spiritual missions, only one of which is the Petrine, the
mission of ecclesial governance.
In the work of von Balthasar, which represents the most extensive
articulation of communio ecclesiology, the Petrine mission or the offices
of pope, bishop, and priest work in communion with other missions, in
51

Angelo Scola, “El Peligro de una Falsa ‘Autonomia,’” Humanitas: Revista de Antropologia y Cultura Cristianas 66 (2012): 296–301, esp. 299.

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particular, the Johannine mission, which stands for the contemplative
vocation; the Pauline mission, which is one of prophetic utterance and
evangelization; and the mission of St. James, which is one of defending the tradition and seeing that it is transmitted uncorrupted from one
generation to the next. Kuyper was writing before the Second Vatican
Council, and so the only Catholic Church he knew was one steeped in
the ecclesiology of the post-Tridentine theologians and thus he cannot
be criticized for not appreciating the complexity and nuances of the
communio ecclesiology. There seems to be a strong affinity between the
communio understanding of how laypeople mediate the grace of the
Incarnation to the world and Kuyper’s ideas about the activity of Christians in various social spheres. Thus Mouw makes the point that Kuyper
distinguishes between the Church and the Kingdom:
The Kingdom . . . encompasses the believing community in all
of its complex life of participation in a variety of spheres. Whenever followers of Christ are attempting to glorify God in one or
another sphere of cultural interaction, they are engaged in Kingdom activity: a Christian art guild fathered for obedience in the
sphere of the arts; a Christian farmer’s group gathered for obedience in the sphere of agriculture; a Christian college or university
gathered for obedience in the world of teaching and research.52
Nonetheless, Kuyper was an avowed Calvinist. In his Stone Lectures on
Calvinism he wrote:
Calvinism is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly
its own, and from this specific religious consciousness there was
developed first a peculiar theology, then a special church-order
and then a given form of political and social life, for the interpretation of the moral world-order, for the relation between
nature and grace, between Christianity and the world, between
church and state, and finally, for art and science.53
52

Richard J. Mouw, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 58.
53
Abraham Kuyper, The Stone Lectures on Calvinism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,
2007), 9.

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For Kuyper a hallmark of Calvinism is the immediate relationship
between God and man. Like Barth, there is no sacramental ontology.
Kuyper specifically rejected the idea of a church as a Heilsanstalt (institute of grace) and he thought that one advance of Calvinism was that it
is much more pluralistic about matters of ecclesial governance structures than the Catholic tradition. Whereas Catholics have a tendency
to look at the thousands of different Protestant church structures and
shake their heads with paternal tenderness, Kuyper regarded this plurality as something to be affirmed and celebrated.
If Kuyper is right about Calvinism being a peculiar life form, or a
culture in itself, then this raises the question of how it differs from Catholicism and its life form and culture. A paradox that first comes to
mind when considering this question is that whereas the Protestant emphasis is on faith alone and the Catholic tradition’s emphasis is on “faith
and works,” it is the Catholic tradition that ends up with a culture that
is much more contemplative, much less work oriented. Everyone agrees
that there is a Protestant work ethic, but notwithstanding the efforts of
George Weigel and the late Richard John Neuhaus and the whole First
Things journal, a Catholic work ethic is yet to socially arrive. Transposing this into Balthasar’s communio terminology, we can say that from
the Catholic point of view Calvinism represents a lopsided emphasis on
the Pauline mission. There is prophetic utterance and evangelization, but
there is only a very weak Petrine mission (no pope or bishops), there is
no Johannine mission at all—that is, monasteries and convents for contemplatives—and only a weak Jacobite mission that is exercised through
the leading scholars of the tradition. There is also no strong sense of
sacramentality, no nuclear fission, no relics of saints. Sociologists have
said that Calvinist cultures are bourgeois and that Catholic cultures are
erotic. Their point is that Calvinists tend to be practical and efficient
people, while there is an out-of-control erotic element in Catholicism.
This is what produces both the Catholic saints and the Catholic nutters.
It is perhaps the difference between a view of an incarnational humanism as merely parabolic contrasted with one that is nuptial.
Jeremy Begbie argues that Kuyper tended to ground culture in the
created order rather than in the order of redemption.54 In this sense he
54

Jeremy S. Begbie, “Creation, Christ and Culture in Dutch Neo-Calvinism,” in Christ

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153

is much like Barth and thus a classical Calvinist. Other authors such as
David van Drunen argue that, for Kuyper, Christ exercises sovereignty
over the world as redeemer rather than as Creator.55 But even if this is so,
then this means that the emphasis is tipped to the theology of the Cross,
not the theology of the Incarnation.
If we agree with Begbie, then we may say in summary that Kuyper
puts weight on creation (which is perhaps where his openness to natural law ideas come from, though that’s another essay); that Barth puts
weight on the eschaton (although the weight may have become lighter as he moved from the young Barth to the mature Barth); and that
Ratzinger and other Catholic theologians put weight on the Incarnation, though of course the Incarnation remains suspended between
the theology of creation and the theology of the Cross.56 Fundamentally, there are different interpretations of what St. Paul meant about
restoring all things in Christ so that he may be all in all, and different
interpretations of what St. Peter meant about growing in the grace and
knowledge of Christ.
Friedrich Nietzsche said that if Christians wanted him to believe
in their redeemer, then they would have to start looking a lot more
redeemed. If when people hear of Calvinism they think of the Simpsons character Ned Flanders, or if when they hear of Catholicism they
think of Fr. Ted from the Irish comedy series, then there is no wonder
that the world is full of Nietzscheans. The burden, from the Catholic
side, is to show that a life spent participating in sacraments makes a
N&V
significant difference to one’s humanity.

in Our Place: The Humanity of God in Christ for the Reconciliation of the World: Essays Presented to Professor James Torrance, ed. Daniel P. Thimell and Trevor A. Hart
(Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1991), 126.
55
David van Drunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development
of Reformed Social Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), esp. chap. 7.
56
Peter McGregor argues that what is sometimes called Ratzinger’s “preferential option for the Gospel of St. John” is because, at least in part, St. John emphasizes the
identity of Logos and Agape and thereby draws together the theology of the Incarnation with the theology of the Cross. See Peter McGregor, “The Spiritual Theology of
Joseph Ratzinger,” PhD manuscript, Australian Catholic University, 2013.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 155-180

155

Inspired Scripture
as a Sacramental Vehicle of Divine Presence
in the Gospel of John and Dei Verbum
William M. Wright IV
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA

COMMENTING ON ORIGEN’S THEOLOGYof biblical interpretation, Henri de Lubac states that, for the great Alexandrian exegete,
the spiritual understanding of Scripture “communicates the very reality of the One whose riches are unfathomable.”1 “It is,” de Lubac writes,
quoting from Origen’s Homily 6 on Isaiah, “a ‘visit from Jesus.’”2 These
remarks are indicative of an understanding of Scripture as a means by
which the reality, the res, of Jesus himself becomes present to the faithfilled reader. This doctrinal vision wherein Christ himself becomes present to properly disposed readers of Scripture involves an understanding
of Sacred Scripture as generically sacramental. Such an understanding
of Scripture has deep roots in the Christian tradition. Yves Congar describes the traditional understanding in this way: “The divine Scriptures
are regarded as a kind of sacrament: a grace-bearing sign that effectively realizes communion with God, and salvation, when it is used in the
right conditions. These conditions are obviously spiritual: humility, pu-

1

Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture according to Origen, trans. Anne Englund Nash and Juvenal Merriell (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2007 [1950]), 382.
2
Ibid., 382, quoting Origen, Homilies on Isaiah 6.3.

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rity of heart, a true desire to seek God and a strong love of the Gospel.”3
The Second Vatican Council incorporates this traditional belief into
its teaching about the nature of Sacred Scripture in Dei Verbum. The
most explicit place where Dei Verbum discusses Scripture in sacramental terms is §21, which begins, “The Church has always venerated the
divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord.”4 This comparison with the Eucharist informs the paragraph’s subsequent teaching about Scripture’s normative and spiritually nourishing role in the
Church’s life. Another, more subtle, instance appears in Dei Verbum §2,
which discusses the “deeds and words” (gestis verbisque) in the divine
economy of revelation. Within this economy, both biblical signs (verba)
and signified (res) are intrinsically related to each other (intrinsece inter
se connexis).
In this essay, I will argue that a sacramental understanding of Scripture as a vehicle of divine presence, present in the Church Fathers and
appropriated by Dei Verbum, can be found in Scripture itself, especially
(though not exclusively) in the Gospel according to John. Focusing on
the Resurrection narrative in John 20, I will argue that the Fourth Gospel understands itself as a vehicle of divine presence through which later
generations of believers can truly encounter the risen Jesus and grow in
their relationship with him in faith and love. Not only does the Fourth
Gospel provide biblical warrant for thinking of Scripture in sacramental
terms, but it also illumines the traditional teaching in Dei Verbum and
provides substance for further theological thinking about God’s Word
in the life of the Church.
The Fourth Gospel as a Vehicle of Divine Presence
Encountering the Risen Lord in John 20
Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel is a sequence of four scenes, which depicts
the movement of several disciples to faith in the reality of Jesus as the
3

Yves Congar, O.P., The Meaning of Tradition, trans. A. N. Woodrow (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2004 [1964]), 90–91. My thanks to Francis Martin for bringing this
text to my attention as well as for many conversations related to this topic.
4
All citations (English and Latin) of Church documents will be taken from the texts
archived at the website of the Holy See (www.vatican.va).

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risen Lord.5 It does so by first narrating the discovery of the empty
tomb (20:1–10) and then Resurrection appearances to Mary Magdalene
(20:11–18), to the disciples on Easter Sunday night without Thomas
(20:19–25), and a second appearance to the disciples, a week later, with
Thomas present (20:26–29). After this Resurrection appearance to the
disciples with Thomas, John provides valuable (and famous) commentary about his purposes in writing: “Now Jesus did many other signs in
the presence of his disciples, which have not been written in this book.
But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his
name” (20:30–31).6
The majority of Johannine scholars regard 20:30–31 as the original
ending to the Gospel narrative with chapter 21 subsequently added in
the Gospel’s composition history as an epilogue. However, this exegetical position deemphasizes the many connections that vv. 30–31 have
with the preceding narrative material in 20:1–29. Accordingly, as Paul
Minear and others have argued, these verses should be regarded primarily as the conclusion to the narrative sequence in John 20 and not to
the Gospel as a whole.7 One such connection between vv. 30–31 and the
preceding narrative sequence concerns the cause of faith in Jesus as the
risen Lord. The narrator claims in vv. 30–31 that the written Gospel has
a causal function vis-à-vis people’s faith in Jesus as the Son of God. If we
take vv. 30–31 as the conclusion to the narrative sequence in John 20,
then we can more readily view its claim in light of what the preceding
narrative presents as the only thing that brings about the disciples’ faith
in the Resurrection: a personal encounter with Jesus as the risen Lord.
In short, my exegetical argument is the following: the narrative
5

I follow the four-scene division of John 20 proposed by Ignace de la Potterie, S.J., The
Hour of Jesus: The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus According to John, trans. Dom G.
Murray, O.S.B. (Staten Island: Alba House, 1989), 159–90. Compare with the twoscene division of John 20 in Raymond E. Brown, S.S., The Gospel According to John,
2 vols., Anchor Bible 29–29A (New York: Doubleday, 1966–70), 2.965.
6
Unless otherwise noted, all translations of the biblical text are my own.
7
For argumentation on this point, see Paul S. Minear, “The Original Functions of
John 21,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983): 85–98; Edwyn Clement Hoskyns,
The Fourth Gospel, ed. Francis Noel Davey (London: Faber and Faber, 1947), 550;
Gail R. O’Day, The Gospel of John, The New Interpreter’s Bible 9 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 851–52, 854–55.

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sequence in John 20 presents a personal encounter with the risen Jesus as necessary for arriving at full, Resurrection faith in him as the
Lord. John himself claims in 20:30–31 that the Gospel has been written to bring about faith in Jesus as the Son of God in its audience. This
narrative logic indicates that the Gospel presents itself as mediating
for its audience a genuine encounter with Jesus as the risen Lord—an
encounter as genuine as that of those first disciples who saw the risen
Jesus in his glorified humanity.
We can appreciate John’s claim that faith in Jesus as the risen Lord
requires a personal encounter with him when we examine each of the
four scenes in John 20 and consider all those things that do not cause, or
are insufficient to cause, people to believe in the reality of the risen Jesus.8
The first of the four scenes in John 20 centers on the discovery of the
empty tomb (20:1–10). The scene opens with Mary Magdalene arriving
at Jesus’s tomb in the predawn darkness, which, in view of John’s use
of light and dark symbolism, is indicative of her being bereft of Jesus,
who is the Light of the World (8:12; 9:5). John reports that Mary “saw
the stone having been taken away from the tomb” (20:1). Mary sees the
opened tomb and presumably does so at a distance because there is no
indication of her looking into or entering the tomb (cf. 20:11–12). Simply seeing Jesus’s open tomb from the outside is insufficient to cause
faith in him, for, as the narrative itself indicates, the open tomb can be
variously interpreted. Hence Mary’s conclusion that Jesus’s tomb has
been the object of grave robbery: “They took the master out of the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him” (20:2).
Through Mary Magdalene, John provides his audience with an external view of the empty tomb from a distance. Then, through Peter and
the Beloved Disciple, he takes his audience right up to and inside Jesus’s tomb. After hearing Mary’s claim about grave robbery, Peter and
the Beloved Disciple run out toward Jesus’s tomb (20:3–4). The Beloved
Disciple arrives at the tomb first, but he remains outside at the tomb’s
entrance. From his position at the entrance, the Beloved Disciple bends
down to look inside, and he sees Jesus’s grave clothes lying within (20:5).
When Peter arrives, he actually goes into the tomb, and the Gospel’s
8

Many of these points are likewise discussed in Minear, “Original Functions of John
21,” 88–89.

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audience is given to see the empty tomb from the inside. As the Beloved
Disciple did from the entrance, Peter sees Jesus’s grave clothes. John
adds that Peter also saw the face covering, which had been on Jesus’s
corpse, now folded up and in a separate place (20:6–7).
Throughout this scene, John repeatedly uses verbs in the passive
voice for actions performed with respect to Jesus’s tomb: the stone
“having been taken away (ērmenon)” (20:2); the grave clothes “having been laid down (keimena)” (20:5); the face covering “folded up
(entetuligmenon)” (20:6). This use of the divine passive is a syntactical
indication that God has acted in connection with Jesus’s empty tomb.9
This general notion of divine activity probably underlies John’s claim
that the Beloved Disciple, upon entering the tomb, “saw and started to
believe (kai eiden kai episteusen)” (20:8).
Many commentators interpret this remark to indicate that the Beloved Disciple was the first to arrive at full faith in the Risen Jesus.10
These commentators take the Greek kai eiden kai episteusen to mean
simply “he saw and believed.” This interpretation is certainly in keeping with the privilege and priority accorded to the Beloved Disciple in
the Fourth Gospel. For instance, the Beloved Disciple rests upon Jesus’s
chest, or heart, (en tō kolpō) at the Last Supper (13:23), in a manner
analogous to the Prologue’s statement that the Son is “in the Father’s
heart (eis ton kolpon tou patrōs)” (1:18); the identity of Jesus’s betrayer is
revealed only to the Beloved Disciple (13:25–26); he is the disciple, who
witnesses the blood and water flowing from Jesus’s pierced side (19:34–
36); he outruns Peter and arrives first at Jesus’s tomb (20:4); in John 21,

9

Donatien Mollat, “La découverte du tombeau vide,” in Études johanniques (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1979), 518; referenced by Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., The Gospel of
John, Sacra Pagina 4 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 518–20.
10
E.g., C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978),
561, 564, 573; Richard Bauckham, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative,
History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2007), 86; Brown, Gospel According to John, 987, 1001; Hoskyns, Fourth Gospel,
540; Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, 2 vols. (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 2003), 2.1184; Moloney, Gospel of John, 520–21, 523; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, trans. K. Smyth et al., 3 vols. (New York:
Crossroad, 1968–82), 3.312.

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he is the first to realize that the risen Jesus speaks from the seashore to
the embarked disciples (21:7).
However, there are two factors, which I think work against this interpretation of the Beloved Disciple as the first person in the Gospel
to arrive at full Easter faith. First, when John uses the verb pisteuein
in the aorist, it is often an ingressive aorist with the sense of “began to
believe.”11 For example, Jesus’s disciples “began to believe in him (episteusan eis auton)” (2:11) after the miracle at the Wedding at Cana. But
as especially evidenced in the Farewell Discourses, Jesus’s disciples, although positively disposed to him, have little grasp of the significance
of Jesus’s words and deeds during his ministry (e.g., 13:16–14:9, 22–24;
16:16–33). Even more stark is John’s claim that a group of Jews “began
to believe in him (episteusan eis auton)” (8:30) during Jesus’s teaching
in Jerusalem at the Festival of Tabernacles. It is this same group of incipient believers that Jesus engages in an increasingly sharp debate in
which each says the other is associated with the demonic (8:44, 48) and
which culminates in the former’s attempt to kill Jesus (8:59). In these
cases, the kind of faith that is spoken of has some legitimacy, but it is
very imperfect. The second major factor is the narrator’s commentary
in 20:9, which interprets the activity of Peter and the Beloved Disciple
at the tomb: “they had not yet known the Scripture that it was necessary
for him to rise from the dead.” The evangelist explicitly claims that at
that time, when they saw the empty tomb and grave clothes, both Peter
and the Beloved Disciple did not have a grasp of the Scriptural (and thus
providential) necessity of Jesus’s Resurrection. It is because “they did yet
not know” (20:9) about the Scriptural necessity of the Resurrection that
these two disciples left the tomb and went back home (20:10). The Beloved Disciple may have been the first to arrive at some general notion
that God was involved in Jesus’s tomb being empty. But this incipient
belief should not be confused with a full, robust faith in the reality of
Jesus as the risen Lord. As Gail O’Day puts it, “What the beloved disciple

11

Jn 2:11, 22–23; 4:39, 41, 53; 7:31; 8:30; 10:42; 11:45. So too Schnackenburg, Gospel
According to St. John, 3.312; see F. Blass and A. Debrunner, A Greek Grammar of the
New Testament, ed. Robert W. Funk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961),
§331 (p. 171).

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believes . . . is the evidence of the empty tomb . . . [His] faith is as complete as faith in the evidence of the empty tomb can be.”12
In the first scene in John 20, therefore, the evangelist presents three
things, which, although related to Jesus’s Resurrection, do not of their
own accord cause faith in him as the risen Lord: the open and empty tomb
(whether seen from afar, up close, or inside); Jesus’s grave clothes; the face
covering, which had been on Jesus’s corpse, now lying separately.
The second of the four scenes, 20:11–18, centers on Mary Magdalene, who remains at the empty tomb after Peter and the Beloved Disciple have left. In this scene, John presents Mary’s movement from hopelessness and unbelief to full faith in Jesus as the risen Lord. The scene
opens with Mary “crying” (klaiousa; 20:11) outside the empty tomb, a
detail that recalls Jesus’s prediction at the Farewell Discourse that his
disciples will “cry” (klausete) when they no longer see him (16:20). Like
the Beloved Disciple, Mary looks inside the tomb from its threshold.
Unlike the Beloved Disciple and even more dramatically, Mary sees two
angels seated on the slab where Jesus’s corpse had been (20:13). Astonishingly, Mary is completely unmoved by this angelophany. When the
angels ask about her weeping, Mary gives basically the same response,
which she had previously given to Peter and the Beloved Disciple: “they
took my master away, and I do not know where they put him” (20:13;
cf. 20:2).13 Mary remains fixed in her belief that Jesus’s corpse has been
stolen, and not even the appearance of two angels in the empty tomb can
shake this belief.
After speaking to the angels, Mary turns around to see the risen
Jesus, whom she does not recognize, mistaking him for the gardener
(20:14–15). Jesus puts the same question to Mary as the angels did,
“Woman, why are you weeping?” and his address to her as “woman”
(gunai) is significant. The three other occasions in John where Jesus uses
12

O’Day, Gospel of John, 841. Similarly, Minear interprets the various things in Jn 20
that are insufficient to cause faith in the Risen Jesus (e.g., the empty tomb, the grave
clothes, the angels in the tomb) as the “many other signs [which Jesus did] in the
presence of his disciples” spoken of in 20:30. “Original Functions,” 88–89.
13
There is a shift in Mary’s use from the first-person plural pronouns in 20:2 (we
don’t know where they put him) to the first person in 20:13 (I don’t know where
they put him). This shift to the first person in 20:13 reinforces that 20:11–18 concerns Mary Magdalene’s personal relationship with Jesus. So noted in de la Potterie, Hour of Jesus, 171.

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“woman” in the vocative (2:4; 4:21; 19:26) all appear in situations wherein Jesus is establishing a new relationship between a specific female (e.g.,
his mother, the Samaritan woman) and another individual, either himself or the Beloved Disciple.14 Jesus adds, “Whom are you looking for?” a
question that both recalls his first words to his disciples in 1:38 and picks
up on Mary’s present search for Jesus. Mary responds by reiterating her
belief that Jesus’s corpse has been stolen and offers to take custody of it
(20:15). The key point here is that Mary’s attention remains fixed in the
past: she believes that Jesus is still dead and his corpse is missing.
It is only when Jesus calls her name “Mary” (20:16), as the Good
Shepherd calls his own sheep by name (10:3), that she becomes alerted
to his presence. But even this new awareness that Jesus is now alive, does
not constitute full faith in his Resurrection. Mary responds to Jesus by
calling him “Rabbouni” (20:16), a title that is appropriate to his earthly
ministry when he was her teacher and master (cf. 13:13–14), and the
text implies that Mary also embraces Jesus as such (cf. Mt 28:9). Mary
now believes that Jesus is alive, but she continues to relate to him as she
did previously, that is, as her teacher and master.
This way of relating to Jesus, however, is no longer possible after
the Resurrection. Hence Jesus tells Mary to stop touching him, and
he then provides the reason: “I have not yet ascended to the Father”
(20:17). Throughout the Gospel, Jesus teaches that he has been sent by
the Father and offers the gift of eternal life to those who believe in him
(3:15–16, 36; 6:40, 47). The Prologue articulates this anthropological
aspect to salvation in the language of family relations: he gave them
“the power to become children of God” (1:13). For John, eternal life
14

Jesus’s first address to his mother as “woman” (2:4) occurs within a narrative dynamic wherein, as Francis Martin puts it, “the relation between Jesus and his mother is
founded, not on the ties of human birth, but on the nature of Jesus’ mission as determined by the Father”; citation from Francis Martin, “Mary in Sacred Scripture: An
Ecumenical Reflection,” The Thomist 72 (2008): 538. For further argumentation, see
B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954),
36–37; Albert Vanhoye, “Interrogation johannique et exégèse de Cana (Jn 2, 4),”
Biblica 55 (1974): 163–67. In 4:21, Jesus moves the relationship between himself and
the Samaritan woman from within the horizon of extant Jewish-Samaritan relations
(4:7–10) to the community of the messianic age, which he establishes (4:21–26). In
19:26–27, Jesus reveals the bonds of spiritual maternity and childhood between his
mother and the Beloved Disciple by referring to the former as “mother” of the latter,
her “son.”

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consists in becoming a child of God. This is a participatory share in
Jesus’s own relationship to the Father as the Son. Through his death,
Resurrection, and entrance into the Father’s glory, Jesus establishes
this new relationship between the disciples and the Father. This point
is articulated in 20:17 through the use of family language in the words
of the risen Jesus to Mary Magdalene. For the first time in the Gospel,
Jesus refers to his disciples as his “brothers,” implying that Jesus and
his disciples now relate to the same Father as sons. This point is even
clearer in the message, which the risen Jesus entrusts to Mary to deliver to his brothers: “I am ascending to My Father and your Father, My
God and your God” (20:17).
The risen Jesus thus teaches that he opens up the divine communion to his disciples, who can now relate to the Father in a new way by
participating in Jesus’s own life and identity as the Son. As de la Potterie
observes, with the recognition of this new relationship with the Father
and the Son, Mary Magdalene makes the characteristic declaration of
having arrived at full faith in the reality of the risen Jesus: “I have seen
the Lord” (20:18).15 Mary no longer relates to Jesus simply as teacher or
master, but now as “Lord,” as sharing the identity of YHWH himself.16
Over the course of this second scene, we see Mary’s movement in
faith from being fixated on the past—either her belief that Jesus is dead
or her relating to him as she previously did—to a present encounter with
Him as the risen Lord. A knowledge and relationship with Jesus during
his mortal life is insufficient to cause faith in him as the Son of God. It
is only when Mary personally encounters the risen Jesus as the one who
has opened up the divine communion to believers, that she can confess
him as “the Lord.”
The last two scenes in the sequence of John 20 concern the appearances of the risen Jesus to his disciples on Easter Sunday evening without Thomas (20:19–25) and then to the disciples on the following Sunday evening with Thomas present (20:26–29). The numerous points of
contact between these two scenes (not least of which is the presence or
15
16

De la Potterie, Hour of Jesus, 162–65, 174–75.
I draw here on the divine identity Christology set forth in Richard Bauckham, Jesus
and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).

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absence of Thomas) suggest that John invites his audience to read these
scenes in light of each other.
Two points, which emerge from these scenes, are especially germane to this study. First, these two scenes reinforce the claim that only a
personal encounter with the risen Jesus brings about faith in him as the
Lord. Second, a personal encounter with Jesus as the risen Lord is not
limited to seeing him in his glorified humanity.
Several narrative indicators provide further support to the theological claim already articulated in the previous scene with Mary Magdalene—only a personal encounter with the risen Jesus causes faith in him
as Lord. These can be appreciated by comparing the states of the disciples before and after their encountering the risen Jesus. The third scene
opens with the narrator stating, “the doors were locked where the disciples were out of fear of ‘the Jews’” (20:19). John uses the same language
to open the fourth scene, but with a significant omission. The narrator
says, “the doors were locked” (20:26), but there is no mention of the disciples being afraid. The disciples’ encounter with the risen Jesus on Easter Sunday evening has caused a definite change in them: it has removed
their fear. This change in the disciples’ status comes to light in other
ways. When the risen Jesus appears to the disciples and shows them his
pierced hands and side, the narrator reports that the disciples “rejoiced
when they saw the Lord” (20:20). The mention of “rejoicing” (chairein)
recalls the words of Jesus in the Farewell Discourse: “Now you are full
of grief. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice (charēsetai)
and no one will take your joy away from you” (16:22). As Jesus predicted
in 16:20, the disciples’ “grief [has] become joy.” After their encounter
with the risen Jesus, the disciples declare their Resurrection faith to the
now-present Thomas with the same language that Mary Magdalene had
used in 20:18: “We have seen the Lord” (20:25)—with the verb hōran in
the perfect tense. In the fourth scene, when Thomas encounters the Risen Jesus, he confesses Him as “My Lord and my God” (20:28), perhaps
echoing the Scriptural name YHWH ‘elohim. Once again, this confession of Easter faith is articulated with the verb hōran in the perfect tense,
although in Thomas’s case appears in the words of Jesus to Thomas: “You
have believed because you have seen me (heōrakas).” In both cases, the
disciples’ personal encounter with the risen Jesus has led them to confess Jesus as the Lord, as kyrios.

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However, John is also quick to affirm that such a personal encounter
with Jesus as the risen Lord is not limited to a direct, tangible encounter
with his glorified humanity as in a Resurrection appearance. This point
especially comes to light in the fourth scene where the risen Jesus appears to Thomas, a scene that segues into the narrator’s remarks about
his purposes in writing the Gospel in 20:30–31.
When Thomas protests the disciples’ confession “We have seen the
Lord” (20:25), he sets up a direct, tangible encounter with the risen
Jesus a necessary condition for his belief. John underscores this point
through the extensive use of both somatic and sensory language in the
condition of Thomas’s protest: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his
hands and put my finger into the mark of the nails and my hand into his
side” (20:25). For Thomas, the necessity of a direct, tangible encounter
with the glorified humanity of the risen Jesus as a prerequisite for faith
is reinforced with the emphatic negative in the apodosis: ou mē pisteusō
“I will never believe” (20:25).17
When the risen Jesus appears to the disciples with Thomas present,
Jesus grants Thomas what he has requested: a direct, tangible encounter. Jesus’s invitation to Thomas repeats much of the same somatic and
sensory language from Thomas’s initial protest (20:25): “Bring your finger here and see my hands. Bring your hand and put it into my side.
Stop being an unbeliever, but (become) a believer.” However, there is
no indication (either stated or implied) that Thomas ever touches Jesus’s glorified body. The personal encounter with the risen Jesus and his
direct address to Thomas prove sufficient for Thomas to confess, “My
Lord and my God” (20:28). Thomas has come to believe in Jesus as the
risen Lord on account of his personal encounter with him, but a tangible experience of Jesus’s glorified humanity has also shown itself to be
unnecessary for this faith. Jesus makes this point clear in his concluding
beatitude: “Blessed are those who have not seen and believe” (20:29).
This beatitude opens up the narrative’s scope beyond itself and looks
toward future generations of believers who will believe in Jesus as the
risen Lord without literally seeing him in his glorified humanity. By pronouncing them to be “blessed,” the risen Jesus indicates that the faith of
17

Thomas’s protest in 20:25 is articulated as a future-more-vivid condition, which provides additional, syntactical emphasis.

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these future believers is no less genuine than that of those first disciples
who literally “have seen the Lord” (20:25). With the scope having been
so opened and the genuineness of future believers’ faith affirmed, the
narrative sequence comes to rest by specifying the means by which later
generations of believers will encounter the reality of the risen Jesus and
come to believe in him as the Lord: through “these things [that] have
been written” (20:31).
This notice in 20:31 has been prepared for by previous statements,
which look beyond the Gospel’s own narrative horizon to future generations of believers. During the Good Shepherd discourse, Jesus declares
that he has sheep, which are “not from this fold” (likely an allusion to
future, Gentile believers), and these sheep “will hear my voice” (10:16).
Similarly, in his prayer of intercession in John 17, Jesus prays for all his
disciples both present and future. Jesus specifically designates the latter as those “who will believe in me through their [i.e., his disciples’]
word” (17:20). When taken together with the preceding analysis of John
20, these statements suggest that the principal means by which future
generations of believers will encounter the reality of the risen Lord and
“hear his voice” is through the disciples’ word, or to use John’s preferred
term, their “testimony.” The Fourth Gospel itself claims to preserve the
testimony of the Beloved Disciple, whom it identifies as “the one who
testifies about these things and has written them” (21:24).
The disciples’ testimony, either in oral or written form, is, therefore,
a key component in the Fourth Gospel’s understanding of itself as a vehicle of the risen Jesus’s presence to later generations of believers. In the
next section, I will argue that the disciples’ testimony (which includes
the written Gospel) has this capacity to mediate Jesus’s presence to later
generations of believers in a genuine manner because of the action of
the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. In other words, divine inspiration gives
the written Gospel this unique capacity to mediate the reality of Jesus to
later generations of believers.
Inspired Testimony
Ignace de la Potterie rightly observes that the Johannine writings often

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use the language of testimony as a term for divine revelation.18 This applies to Jesus’s revelation of the Father and divine truth (3:32–33; 7:7;
8:14, 18; 18:37). Jesus “testifies to what he has seen and heard” (3:32)
for he, the only one who has “seen” the Father (1:18; 6:46), speaks “what
[he] has heard in the Father’s presence” (8:38). As the Father’s perfect
emissary, who is himself “the Truth” (14:6), Jesus alone is able to give
valid testimony about himself (8:13–14).19 More frequently, the Gospel
speaks of other persons giving testimony to Jesus, such as John the Baptist (1:7–8, 15, 19; 3:28; 5:36), Jesus’s works (5:36; 10:25), the Scriptures
(5:39), and through all of these is the testimony of the Father (5:32; cf.
8:18). All these witnesses testify, de la Potterie writes, “directly to the
secret of [Jesus’s] being, to the mystery of his person.”20
There are only three instances where the Gospel speaks of Jesus’s
disciples giving testimony about him.21 Two of the three pertain specifically to the testimony given by the Beloved Disciple. The first instance
is the Beloved Disciple’s eyewitness testimony about the flow of blood
and water from the side of Jesus’s corpse (19:35). The second occurs in
21:24, where the narrator states that the Beloved Disciple’s testimony
has been written in the Gospel. Between these two cases (19:35; 21:24),
the narrator describes the Beloved Disciple’s testimony as “true” three
times. At the crucifixion, the narrator says of the Beloved Disciple, “his
testimony is true (alēthinē), and he knows that he is speaking the truth
(alēthē)” (19:35). Likewise, at the very conclusion of the Gospel, the narrator says of the Beloved Disciple, “we know that his testimony is true
18

For a survey discussion, see Ignace de la Potterie, S.J., La Vérité dans saint Jean,
2 vols., Analecta Biblica 73–74 (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1999
[1975]), 1.80–88; George Johnston, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 135–37.
19
See Schnackenburg, Gospel According to St. John, 2.120–21, 192–93. On Jesus as the
Father’s emissary, see Peder Borgen, “God’s Agent in the Fourth Gospel,” in Religions
in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. Jacob Neusner
(Leiden: Brill, 1968), 137–48; reprinted in The Interpretation of John, 2nd ed., ed.
John Ashton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 83–95.
20
de la Potterie, La Vérité, 1.82.
21
A minor exception is the Samaritan woman “who testified” to her fellow townspeople about what Jesus told her (4:39). This case reinforces the basic point that “testimony” is effectively a synonym for “evangelization” in John (so de la Potterie, La
Vérité, 1.80), for on the basis of her testimony the Samaritans came to Jesus directly
and believed in him.

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(alēthēs)” (21:24). These statements in 19:35 and 21:24 combine three
elements: a disciple, giving testimony, which is the truth. This three-part
combination appears only one other time in the Gospel, and it is the
third instance where the disciples are said to give testimony: the Paraclete promise in 15:26–27.
Three things in this Paraclete text (15:26–27) stand out for present purposes. First, Jesus says that the Paraclete himself “will testify”
(15:26). Insight into where, how, and to whom the Paraclete testifies can
be obtained from the first Paraclete promise (14:16–17). When Jesus
first announces that the Paraclete will come to the disciples, he declares
that the Paraclete will dwell within his disciples: “he remains with you
and will be in you” (en hymin estai; 14:17). The activity of the Paraclete
is an interior activity, which he works only in Jesus’s disciples. The latter
point is underscored by the sharp contrast, which Jesus draws between
his disciples and the world. Jesus explicitly states, “the world cannot receive [the Paraclete] because it neither sees nor knows him” (14:16).22
Because the world does not “receive” (lambanein) Jesus (1:11; 5:43), it is
incapable of receiving the Paraclete, whom Jesus will send. As Lyonnet
writes, “Since the world has showed it was incapable of ‘perceiving’ the
Spirit at work during Jesus’ life, it is also unable to ‘know’ him.”23 What
fundamentally distinguishes the disciples from the world is their own
“receiving” of Jesus in faith and discipleship (1:12; 3:3; 17:8). The Spirit
has been present with Jesus throughout his ministry (1:32–34), and the
disciples, “despite their intellectual simplicity, had attached themselves
to Jesus, and believed and knew that he was the Holy One of God.”24 The
22

As de la Potterie observes, the Fourth Gospel often uses lambanein to designate the
human reception of heavenly realities. For instance, people can receive (or not receive) Jesus himself (1:11–12; 5:34, 43; 13:20), his words (12:48; 17:8), testimony
about Jesus (3:11; 3:32–33), the Holy Spirit (7:39; 14:17; 20:22), and heavenly gifts
(3:27; 16:24). Hour of Jesus, 117–20.
23
Stanislas Lyonnet, S.J., “The Paraclete,” in The Christian Lives by the Spirit, ed. Ignace
de la Potterie, S.J., and Stanislas Lyonnet, S.J., trans. John Morriss (Staten Island:
Alba House, 1971), 60.
24
Ibid.. This connection between the Paraclete’s indwelling and the disciples’ faith receives further support from other texts that speak of the Spirit as “living water,” which
“will become a spring of water in him” (4:14) and “will flow out from him” (7:37–38).
The narrator’s commentary in 7:39 similarly identifies faith as the prerequisite disposition for receiving the Spirit: “he said this about the Spirit, which those who believed
(hoi pisteusantes) in him were going to receive (lambanein)” (7:39).

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disciples’ relationship with Jesus opens them up to receive the Paraclete
and disposes them to his action upon their hearts. When Jesus says that
the Paraclete “will testify” (15:26), it is understood that the Paraclete
gives testimony only to the disciples and does so within them.
Second, 15:26 specifies Jesus as the content of the Paraclete’s testimony: “he will testify about me.” Significant in this regard is the title “the Spirit of Truth” by which Jesus refers to the Paraclete in 15:26.
This title, given to the Paraclete three times in the Farewell Discourses
(14:16; 15:26; 16:13), emphasizes the “christological dependence” of the
Paraclete, his essential relationship with Jesus and thus with the Father.25
The Gospel consistently identifies the divine revelation of Jesus as “the
Truth.”26 As the divine Word, who reveals the Father and himself as the
Son, Jesus is himself “the Truth” (14:6; 17:17), and he “has spoken the
truth, which [he] heard in the Father’s presence” (8:40; cf. 18:37). As
the Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete is the Spirit of Jesus, and his activity
within the disciples—he speaks and announces (16:13–14), teaches and
reminds (14:26), and testifies—pertains to Jesus’s divine revelation, that
is, the truth. The richest expression of this activity appears in the fourth
Paraclete promise: “the Spirit of Truth will lead you to all truth” (16:11).
De la Potterie thus describes this activity of the Spirit: the Paraclete “will
cause [the disciples] to understand the true significance and bearing of
the words of Jesus . . . his task will be to interpret, through the Church,
the revelation of Jesus, still not fully understood.”27 He later adds, “the
task of the Spirit will be to cause the message of Jesus to penetrate into
the hearts of the faithful, to give them the understanding of faith.”28
The testimony, which the Spirit of Truth gives about Jesus, is not a
generic expression of his pedagogy. Rather, it has a distinctly forensic
dimension, related to the context in which the third Paraclete saying
(15:26–27) occurs.29 This promise appears within a unit of discourse,
25

Johnston, Spirit-Paraclete, 37.
As de la Potterie summarizes, “the truth is the revelation which comes to us from
the Father and is passed on to us in the actual word of Jesus” in Ignace de la Potterie,
“The Truth in Saint John,” Rivista biblica italiana 11 (1963): 3–24; reprinted in Ashton, Interpretation of John, 71.
27
Ibid., 77.
28
Ibid., 78.
29
I follow, in this paragraph, de la Potterie, La Vérité, 1.391–96.
26

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where Jesus announces to his disciples that they will receive the same
hatred and persecution from the world as he did (15:18–16:4a). The occurrence of a prophetic saying about the Spirit assisting Jesus’s disciples
in a future time of persecution resembles similar units of discourse in
the Synoptics (Mt 10:16–25; Mk 13:9–13; Lk 12:2, 10–12). These Synoptic counterparts envision a forensic setting in which the Spirit serves
as a legal advocate (or Paraclete) for the disciples, providing them with
what to say or speaking on their behalf (Mt 10:19–20; Mk 13:11; Lk
12:11–12). Within the Johannine articulation, the Paraclete’s testimony
similarly provides consolation and assistance to the disciples in their
confrontation with the world. As Jesus indicates in the words that follow
the third Paraclete promise, the primary threat to the disciples will be
apostasy: “I have told you these things so that you may not fall away”
(16:1; cf. 6:61–66). This inner activity of the Paraclete, therefore, “is not
only a teaching . . . it is called ‘testimony’; it will consist in making the
disciples’ faith unshakable, which the opposition of the world could imperil.”30 The Paraclete will convince the disciples of the reality of Jesus
that they will be able to stand firm against the assaults of the world.
Third, 15:26–27 establishes a connection between the Paraclete’s inner testimony and the disciples’ own testimony: “he will testify about
me, and you also testify” (15:26–27). The inner testimony of Paraclete
about Jesus enables the disciples to give testimony about Jesus outwardly to the unbelieving world.31 As Augustine puts it, “he will bear witness
and you will also bear witness: he in your hearts, you in your voices;
he by inspiring, you by speaking out loud.”32 The disciples’ testimony
is thus part of their mission to the world. In his intercessory prayer to
the Father, Jesus thus prays for his disciples, “As you sent me into the
world, so I also send them into the world” (17:18). Later, when the risen
Jesus appears to the disciples on Easter Sunday evening, he commissions
them: “as the Father sent me, so I also send you” (20:21). The risen Jesus
then equips the disciples for their mission by breathing the Holy Spirit
into them (20:22). The Father sent Jesus into the world to reveal him
30

Ibid., 1.398.
So Brown, Gospel According to John, 2.700; de la Potterie, “Truth in Saint John,” 75;
Schnackenburg, Gospel According to St. John, 3.119.
32
Augustine, Tract. Ev. Jo. 93.1 (PL 35:1864).
31

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and do his work (4:34; 5:23; 8:29; 12:44–50; 18:37), and Jesus extends his
mission through his disciples. Jesus was sent to make the Father known
to the world for its salvation, and accordingly, the disciples’ mission and
testimony has an evangelizing and missionary character. Through their
word and example of visible unity (17:21, 23) and faithful, loving practice (13:35), the disciples give testimony to the truth of Jesus’s revelation
(17:23). The purpose of the disciples’ testimony is “so that the world may
believe that you sent me” (17:21) and by believing in Jesus, receive the
gift of participating in the divine communion of life between the Father
and Son (17:23).
The disciples give testimony about Jesus to the world because the
Paraclete has first given testimony about Jesus within the disciples. The
indwelling Paraclete guides the disciples into the spiritual depths of Jesus’s revelation, causing its truth to penetrate into their hearts. This inner activity of the Paraclete enables the disciples to give testimony to
the world about Jesus through evangelization and to stand firm in the
confrontation that it will necessarily provoke. Similarly, the narrator’s
claim that the Beloved Disciple’s “testimony is true” (21:24) connects his
testimony to the activity of the Spirit of Truth, who guides the disciples
“to all truth” (16:13). The Beloved Disciple’s testimony is “true” because
it flows from the testimony of the “Spirit of Truth” (15:26) within him
about Jesus who is himself “the Truth” (14:6). It is appropriate to say
that the Beloved Disciple’s testimony—and the written Gospel containing it—claims to be inspired by the Paraclete.33
Summary
We are now in position to draw together the various findings of the
exegetical part of this essay. The Resurrection narrative in John 20 indicates that the only thing sufficient to cause genuine faith in Jesus as
33

The Gospel also gives evidence of having been composed in alignment with the
activity of the Paraclete as described in its narrative. See William M. Wright IV,
“The Theology of Disclosure and Biblical Exegesis,” The Thomist 70 (2006): 405–11;
Marinus de Jonge, Jesus: Stranger from Heaven and Son of God—Jesus Christ and the
Christians in Johannine Perspective, trans. John E. Steely (Missoula, MT: Scholars
Press, 1977), 7–12.

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the risen Lord is a personal encounter with him. Such an encounter
with the risen Jesus is not limited to those who literally saw him in his
glorified humanity, but it can be had through the Gospel itself, which
contains the testimony of the Beloved Disciple. When considered in
light of the Paraclete promises in the Farewell Discourse, the Beloved
Disciple’s testimony comes to light as proceeding from the Spirit’s inner activity. The Paraclete comes to dwell within Jesus’s disciples after
his glorification and teaches them the spiritual depths of Jesus’s revelation. The Paraclete’s inner testimony enables the disciples to give
testimony about Jesus externally to the world and, by doing so, bring
people to believe in him.
If the inspired testimony of the disciples enables later generations
to believe in Jesus as Lord, and true faith in Jesus requires a genuine
encounter with him as the risen Lord, then the disciples’ inspired testimony, including its written form in the Gospel, mediates the reality of
the risen Jesus to later generations, who can personally encounter him
and thus believe in him. The Paraclete, who makes the risen Jesus present to the disciples (14:18, 23–26), has inspired the Beloved Disciple’s
testimony and so enabled his Gospel to serve as a vehicle by which later
generations can encounter the reality of the risen Jesus.
Scripture as a Vehicle of Divine Presence in Dei Verbum
The preceding analysis of John’s Gospel provides a helpful vantage point
for viewing two key passages in Dei Verbum (§21 and §2), which articulate a generically sacramental understanding of Scripture as a vehicle
of divine presence.
The sacramentality of Scripture appears most clearly in Dei Verbum
§21, which compares Scripture and the Eucharist.34 The paragraph begins, “The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she
venerates the body of the Lord.” The reason why Scripture and the Eucharist are similarly venerated is that Christ, whom the text calls “the bread
of life,” is received “from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s

34

On this traditional comparison between Scripture and Eucharist, see Tarcisio Stramare, O.S.J., “‘Mensae duae’ studio biblico-patristico su s. Scrittura ed Eucarestia,”
Seminarium 18 (1966): 1020–34.

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body.”35 The Church, especially in the liturgy, receives Christ himself (albeit in different forms) in both the Eucharist and in the Scripture.36 By
calling Christ “the bread of life,” the conciliar text openly alludes to the
Bread of Life discourse in John 6:31–58. In this discourse, Jesus draws
on biblical images that liken God’s Word (Torah) and Wisdom to food
in order to reveal himself as God’s Word and Wisdom in the flesh, which
he also gives “for the life of the world” on the cross and in the Eucharist
(6:51).37 As the divine Wisdom says in Sirach 24:19, “Come to me, you
who desire me, and eat your fill of my produce,” so does Jesus similarly
declare, “I am the Bread of Life. The one who comes to me will never be
hungry, and the one who believes in my will never ever thirst” (Jn 6:35).
Among the many teachings of this discourse, which are essential to a
sacramental understanding of Scripture, is that Christ is “the Bread of
Life” in his being the Word of God as well as in the gift of himself in the
Eucharist. Accordingly, Dei Verbum §21 teaches that Christ, the Word
of God and “the bread of life,” comes to the Church in the Scripture and
the Eucharist, and the Church “unceasingly receives and offers [him] to
the faithful.” Scripture is a means by which Christ comes to the Church.
Dei Verbum §21 places this mediating role of Scripture within a Trinitarian framework. The conciliar text speaks of all three Trinitarian persons in relation to the biblical books. For instance, the third sentence of
§21 speaks of the heavenly Father, who “in the sacred books . . . meets
His children with great love and speaks with them.” In the Scriptures, the
Church receives Christ, “the bread of life,” and as they are fixed in writing, the Scriptures “impart the word of God Himself without change.”
Moreover, the Scriptures “make the voice of the Holy Spirit resound in
35

Stanislaus Lyonnet observes that Dei Verbum §21 speaks of a single table, whereas
Sacrosanctum Concilium (§48, 51) speaks of separate tables of the “body” and the
“word.” “A Word on Chapters IV and VI of Dei verbum,” Vatican II: Assessment and
Perspectives: Twenty-Five Years After (1962–1987), vol. 1, ed. René Latourelle (New
York: Paulist, 1988), 178. See also Presbyterorum Ordinis §18; Perfectae Caritatis §6.
36
Lyonnet writes: “This [parallelism between Eucharist and Scripture] was certainly
not done, as certain Fathers feared, in order to reduce the eucharistic presence to
pure symbolism, nor with any intention of saying that the two presences are the
same (for it is an analogy), but more in order to emphasize the reality of Christ’s
presence in Scripture as inspired word.” “Chapters IV and VI of Dei Verbum,” 177.
37
E.g., Ps 119:103; Pr 9:1–5; Sir 15:1–3; 24:18–21. For discussion, see Brown, Gospel
According to John, 1.266–69, 272–74; Schnackenburg, Gospel According to St. John,
2.43–45.

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the words of the prophets and Apostles.” Significantly, the conciliar text
articulates all these actions performed by or pertaining to the Trinitarian
persons with verbs in the present tense: the Father “meets” (occurrit) and
“speaks with” (eis sermonem confert) his children; the Scriptures “impart”
(impertiant) the Word; they “make the voice of the Holy Spirit resound”
(vocem Spiritus Sancti personare faciant). The present tense verbs indicate
that this encounter between the Triune God and the faithful takes place
in the present activity of reading Scripture, “especially in the sacred liturgy.” Through the reading of Scripture, the faithful can experience the
Father’s affection, receive his instruction and Word, and hear the Spirit’s
voice speaking to them in their present moment.
Consistent with the preceding analysis of John’s Gospel, the conciliar text teaches that Scripture’s capacity to mediate a present encounter with the Triune God results from divine inspiration. The second sentence of §21 opens with an affirmation of Scripture and sacred
Tradition as constituting “the supreme rule of faith.” The reason for
this normativity lies in that the Scriptures “impart the Word of God
Himself . . . and make the voice of the Holy Spirit resound in the words
of the prophets and Apostles.” The conciliar text prefaces these claims
about the Word and the Spirit’s speaking with a descriptive clause
about the biblical books “as inspired by God (a Deo inspiratae) and
committed once and for all to writing.” Divine inspiration encompasses both the subjective inspiration of the human authors (which Dei
Verbum mentions most frequently) and the objective inspiration of
biblical books.38 So understood, the inspired Scripture does not only
communicate truths from the inspired authors of the past, but they
also mediate an encounter with God in the present, who speaks and
acts through the inspired texts. Such an understanding squares with a
traditional understanding of inspiration described by Henri de Lubac:
“It is not only the sacred writers who were inspired one fine day. The
sacred books themselves are and remain inspired . . . The Spirit immured himself in it, as it were. He lives in it. His breath has always

38

Dei Verbum mentions inspiration on thirteen occasions, seven times for the subjective inspiration of human authors (§7, 9, 11 (x3), 14, 18), four times for the objective
inspiration of biblical books (§8, 11b, 21, 24), and two times for God as the one who
inspires (§16, 20).

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animated it . . . It is full of the Spirit.”39 Or as Denis Farkasfalvy likewise
has written, “the chief effect of [such an understanding of inspiration
consists] in the presence of a spiritual fullness in the biblical text, a
capability to reveal not only truths but ultimately the One who said ‘I
am the Truth’.”40
Furthermore, Dei Verbum §21 teaches that this present encounter
with the Triune God mediated by Scripture communicates causal power. The text speaks of “the force and power in the word of God (verbo
Dei vis ac virtus inest),” a formulation that recalls both “the one table
. . . of God’s word and Christ’s body” and Scripture’s ability to “impart
the word of God Himself.” Consistent with its opening identification
of Christ as “the bread of life,” Dei Verbum §21 expresses the power of
God’s Word in language and imagery of food. The Word of God is “the
food of the soul” and from it “the preaching of the Church must be
nourished.” This spiritual nourishment gives “the strength of faith” and
is “the support and energy of the Church.” The power of God’s word
is life giving and life sustaining. It acts primarily on the faithful reader’s soul and through the soul to bodily activities (like preaching). The
faithful are loved, instructed, energized, and nourished by the Triune
God in the reading of Scripture because Scripture itself is a medium of
divine presence and thus divine power.
A key statement in Dei Verbum §2 sheds further light on Scripture’s
capacity to mediate God’s presence to its readers. The overarching concern of this article is divine revelation, which, as commentators have
argued, is described in historical and sacramental terms.41 The section
opens by speaking of revelation as God’s action “to reveal Himself and
to make known to us the hidden purpose (sacramentum) of His will” so
as to draw human beings to participate in the divine communion. The
third sentence in this article expounds on where and how “this economy
39

Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 3 vols., trans. Mark Sebanc and E. M. Macierowski (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998–2009 [1959–61]), 1.81–82.
40
Denis Farkasfalvy, O.Cist., “How to Renew the Theology of Biblical Inspiration?,”
Nova et Vetera (English) 4 (2006): 249.
41
René Latourelle, S.J., Theology of Revelation (Staten Island: Alba House, 1966), 460–
62; Joseph Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Chapter I,” in
Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 3, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, trans.
William Glen-Doepel et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969 [1967]), 171.

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of revelation” (Haec revelationis oeconomia) occurs: “This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having an inner unity: the deeds
wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the
teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim
the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them.”42
The conciliar text teaches that the economy of divine revelation occurs in both “deeds and words” (gestis verbisque). This distinction between words and deeds—or “works” (opera) and “realities” (res)—which
are both means of divine revelation, along with the language of signification (res verbis significatas), evoke the traditional doctrine of the senses
of Scripture. Thomas Aquinas thus defines the two basic biblical senses:
“that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first
sense, the historical or literal. That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual
sense, which is based on the literal and presupposes it.”43 It is therefore
appropriate to take this statement as bearing on Scripture both in its
language (verba) and that which the biblical language presents (doctrine
and res).
Dei Verbum §2 suggests two ways in which Scripture can be seen
as a quasi-sacramental vehicle of divine presence. The first pertains primarily to that which the biblical words present, that is, the biblical res.
Within the divine economy, one of the key functions performed by the
biblical text, its verba, is to “proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery
contained in them.” This claim that the deeds and realities in salvation
history bear within themselves the divine mystery is highly redolent of
Henri de Lubac’s exposition of the spiritual sense. For de Lubac, the spiritual sense, or mystery, does not lie primarily in the words of the text or
the human authors’ ideas, but in the realities that the words present: “to
discover this allegory [i.e., spiritual meaning], one will not find it properly speaking in the text, but in the realities of which the text speaks; not
42

The full Latin text reads: “Haec revelationis oeconomia fit gestis verbisque intrinsece inter se connexis, ita ut opera, in historia salutis a Deo patrata, doctrinam et
res verbis significatas manifestent ac corroborent, verba autem opera proclament et
mysterium in eis contentum elucident.”
43
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 10; cited from St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologica, 3 vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New
York: Benziger Brothers, 1947–48).

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in history as recitation, but in history as event.”44 He later adds, “the text
acts only as spokesman to lead to the historical realities; the latter are
themselves the figures, they themselves contain the mysteries that the
exercise of allegory is supposed to extract from them.”45
By speaking of “the mystery contained in [the deeds],” the conciliar
text points to a sacramental dimension of the biblical res, the realities
of salvation history proper. Commenting on Dei Verbum §2, Joseph
Ratzinger states that this article gives “a sacramental view [of revelation],
which sees law and grace, word and deed, message and sign, the person
and his utterance within the one comprehensive unity of the mystery.”46
Consistent with the theological vision inherent in the doctrine of the
spiritual sense of Scripture, the realities (e.g., persons, things, events,
states of affairs) presented by the biblical texts contain, veil, and reveal
the divine mystery.47 More specifically, this mystery is God’s plan of salvation in Christ in which all biblical realities in some respect participate. The account of the divine economy given in Dei Verbum §2 thus
involves a notion of “economic participation” of all biblical res in the
mystery of Christ.48
A second way in which Scripture can be seen as a sacramental vehicle of divine presence in light of Dei Verbum §2 concerns the intrinsic
relationship (intrinsece inter se connexis; translation mine) between the
deeds and words, the signified and sign, in salvation history. Both the
deeds and words in salvation history are revelatory and shed interpretive light upon each other. The words of the biblical text are revelatory
in that through them, God delivers divine teaching and interprets the
meaning of the realities in salvation history that the words present: “the
words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them.”
These mystery-bearing realities of salvation history also “manifest and
confirm” what the biblical words signify. René Latourelle argues that
44

De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2.86.
Ibid., 2.86.
46
Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,” 171.
47
See Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 154–60; William M. Wright IV, “The
Literal Sense of Scripture According to Henri de Lubac: Insights from Patristic Exegesis of the Transfiguration,” Modern Theology 28 (2012): 252–77.
48
Francis Martin, “Election, Covenant, and Law,” Nova et Vetera (English) 4 (2006): 865.
45

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William M. Wright IV

this revelatory reciprocity between words and deeds is explicitly sacramental: “The sacramental character of revelation appears in the interpenetration and mutual support that exists between word and work.
God performs the act of salvation and at the same time develops its
meaning; He intervenes in history and tells us of the import of His intervention; He acts and comments on His action.”49
As a fruit of divine inspiration, the Bible’s linguistic articulations,
its verba, possess a privileged congruence with the divine actions and
realities in salvation history, which they present and whose spiritual
meaning they correctly interpret.50 The biblical verba constitute that linguistic articulation and interpretation most befitting the disclosure of
these sacred realities, having as it does an inspired, “intrinsic” relation
with them. As Francis Martin has written of this passage in Dei Verbum
§2, “The word that gives language expression to the action ensures that
God’s act be rendered more intelligible and be continually present to
God’s people.”51 He continues, “the biblical expression in ‘words’ has a
unique capacity to transpose, express, and mediate the action, the res, or
the mysterion.”52 The mystery-bearing res in salvation history are made
present and their significance made known through the biblical verba
(to which they are intrinsically connected) to receptive, faith-filled readers of Scripture.
This same passage from Dei Verbum §2 is also cited by Pope Benedict
XVI in Verbum Domini §56, where he discusses Scripture in sacramental
terms. Benedict writes, “The proclamation of God’s word at the celebration entails an acknowledgement that Christ himself is present, that he
speaks to us, and that he wishes to be heard.”53 According to Benedict,
49

Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 462.
As Henri de Lubac puts it (referencing several authors), “It is the same Word of
God, who on the one hand, ‘realizes the plans of God in history’ and on the other,
‘translates in human words, on the lips of God’s messengers, to make the meaning
of this revelation through the realities understood.’” La Révélation divine in Cardinal
Henri de Lubac, Œuvres completes IV, ed. Éric de Moulins-Beaufort and Georges
Chantraine (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2006), 68–69.
51
Francis Martin, “Revelation and Its Transmission,” in Vatican II: Renewal within
Tradition, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), 57.
52
Ibid.
53
Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini §56.
50

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179

the liturgical proclamation of inspired Scripture is a kind of divine presence, analogous to Christ’s Eucharistic presence: “Christ, truly present
under the species of bread and wine, is analogously present in the word
proclaimed in the liturgy.”54 He continues, referencing Dei Verbum §2, “A
deeper understanding of the sacramentality of God’s word can thus lead
us to a more unified understanding of the mystery of revelation, which
takes place through ‘deeds and words intimately connected.’”55
Conclusion
The analysis of John 20 has provided a Scriptural basis for conceiving of the Gospel in broadly sacramental terms as a vehicle of divine
presence. John offers the written text of his Gospel as a linguistic means
by which the reality of the risen Jesus can be encountered by later generations of the faithful. The Gospel has this unique capacity because the
Beloved Disciple’s testimony, which it contains, results from the activity
of the Paraclete in the disciple. The inspired verba of the Gospel serve as
a means by which the res that is the risen Lord is made truly present to
its readers and whose spiritual significance, revealed to believers by the
Paraclete, is communicated.
In addition to and in concert with the Scriptural teaching, Dei Verbum and Verbum Domini have provided a magisterial basis for thinking about Scripture as a vehicle of divine presence and power, which
faithful readers can experience in their present. Both the biblical res,
which bear the divine mystery, and the verba, which present and interpret those res in a most privileged and inspired way, have sacramental
dimensions by which Jesus, the Word and Wisdom of God, feeds and
sustains his disciples.
Further theological thinking about the sacramentality of Scripture
requires consideration of how Scripture is both similar and dissimilar
to the Church’s seven sacraments. For instance, while Scripture does
constitute a vehicle of God’s presence and power, it cannot, in light
of the teachings of Trent, be considered as an eighth sacrament of the
Church.56 As many Catholic theologians who advocate an understand54

Ibid.
Ibid.
56
Cf. “Decree Concerning the Sacraments, Canon 1,” in The Canons and Decrees of the
55

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William M. Wright IV

ing of Scripture in quasi-sacramental terms have rightly noted, Scripture’s mode of making Christ present is not identical with his substantial
presence in the Eucharist.57 Instead, one might employ a broader notion
of sacramentality with respect to Scripture, such as that employed by
the Second Vatican Council when it applies the term “sacrament” to
the Church herself.58 In this way, a great deal of insight can be gained
into the Church’s traditional belief and acquire a renewed appreciation
for the life-giving and life-sustaining power of God’s Word given in the
Scripture. For it is through the reading and hearing of inspired Scripture, especially within the context of liturgy, that its receptive readers
can encounter the reality of the risen Lord and “by believing may have
N&V
life in his name” (John 20:31).

Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder, O.P. (Rockford: Tan Books, 1978 [1941]), 51.
E.g., Luis Alonso-Schökel, S.J., The Inspired Word: Scripture in the Light of Language
and Literature, trans. Francis Martin, O.C.S.O. (Montreal: Palm, 1965), 374; Hans
Urs von Balthasar. Explorations in Theology I: The Word Made Flesh, trans. A. V.
Littledale with Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989 [1960]), 17.
58
Lumen Gentium §1, 9.
57

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 181-218

181

Word and Event: A Reappraisal
Gregory Vall

Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

IN JANUARY 1982,six years before Cardinal Ratzinger delivered

his Erasmus Lecture, I took a seat in Francis Martin’s classroom for the
first time. Francis’s courses introduced me to a fascinating and inspiring
world of biblical scholarship, serious exegesis in a genuinely theological mode. The Old and New Testaments were shown to be mutually
illuminating. Origen and Aquinas were quoted alongside Gerhard von
Rad and Emile Boismard. And a painstaking analysis of the biblical text
beautifully disclosed the mystery of redemption in a way that directly
nourished my prayer life. Years before I became aware of a crisis in biblical interpretation, I was exposed to the remedy. The following essay is
dedicated to Francis Martin as a token of gratitude and affection.
For those who recognize much of real worth in modern biblical
scholarship but at the same time find deeply problematic presuppositions at work within it, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s Erasmus Lecture of
1988 has been a guiding light for the last quarter century. At the heart of
the Erasmus Lecture is the call for a new hermeneutical synthesis. The
future pontiff describes this as a project in two stages. First there must
be a self-critique of the historical-critical method and its philosophical
foundations, and then there is “the positive task” of joining the tools of
the historical-critical method to “a better philosophy,” one that “contains
fewer a prioris foreign to the [biblical] text” and “offers more resources

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Gregory Vall

for a real listening to the text.”1 Ratzinger, moreover, closely correlates
the “exegetical problem” to modernity’s broader “dispute over foundations.” The search for a new synthesis, as Ratzinger conceives it, must
take modernity and modern questions as its starting point but must
not confine itself to the philosophically “restricted horizon” of modern
thought. Patristic exegesis and medieval philosophy in particular will
play important roles in broadening our horizon beyond that of the positivistic worldview of modernity.2 That is why Ratzinger also envisions
the new synthesis as a sort of rapprochement between the patristic-medieval approach to Scripture and modern approaches.3
The last portion of the Erasmus Lecture is devoted to “Basic Elements of a New Synthesis.” Ratzinger offers nothing systematic or comprehensive here but attempts “merely to cut a few initial openings in the
thicket.”4 Among these basic elements he gives considerable attention
to the need for a fresh appraisal of “the relationship between event and
word.” Ratzinger maintains that “the mainstream of modern exegesis”
operates with a badly truncated notion of event, according to which
the event represents irrationality; it belongs to the domain of
pure facticity, which is composed of chance and necessity. For
this reason, fact as such cannot be the bearer of meaning. The
meaning lies only in the word.5
This “dualism between word and event” not only “banishes the event
into the realm of the word-less” and the meaningless, it “actually robs
the word itself of its capacity to mediate sense, because the word then
1

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations
and the Itinerary of Exegesis Today,” in Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger
and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, ed. José Granados, Carlos Granados,
and Luis Sanchez-Navarro, Ressourcement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 20.
2
Ibid., 19.
3
See Paul T. Stallsworth, “The Story of an Encounter,” in Biblical Interpretation in
Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, ed. Richard John Neuhaus
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 107–8. For a concrete example of how such
a rapprochement might work, see Gregory Vall, “Psalm 22: Vox Christi or Israelite
Temple Liturgy?” The Thomist 66 (2002): 175–200.
4
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 20.
5
Ibid., 23.

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183

stands in a world from which all sense has been stripped.” Ultimately
this dualism “cuts the biblical Word off from creation and undoes the
coherence of sense between the Old and New Testaments in favor of a
principle of discontinuity.”6
According to Ratzinger, this problem is at root philosophical, and
its solution must be both philosophical and theological. Modern exegesis regards events as bruta facta because it holds as an unquestioned
presupposition “the methodological principle used in natural science,
that everything that occurs can be explained causally, on the basis of
purely immanent functional connections.”7 Over against this view,
which reduces intelligibility to the realm of efficient causality, Ratzinger
recommends the teleological philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, according
to which all things in creation “follow a certain course, that is, a movement toward a goal.” Only teleology can safeguard the biblical notion of
the unity of creation and history under the aegis of a divine economy. In
Scripture “God’s action thus appears as the principle of the intelligibility
of history,” and all history, past, present, and future, finds its unity in the
person and event of Jesus Christ. In Christ, the Word Incarnate, we see
the most profound and perfect unity of word and event, and we come to
recognize that “the event itself can be a ‘word.’”8
Ratzinger’s observations on word and event are profound and of
great importance, but they need to be spelled out in a more systematic
and thorough manner. Anyone who has made a serious attempt to bring
modern biblical scholarship to the service of theological work carried
out under the authority of the rule of faith will already have some awareness of the problem to which Ratzinger refers here and will appreciate
what is at stake. For the sake of clarity, however, I begin with an example
of how the dualism of word and event manifests itself in modern biblical
scholarship. In the remainder of the essay I then attempt to sketch out,
rather more fully than the Erasmus Lecture does, Scripture’s own theological vision of the unity of word and event. I consider creation and

6

Ibid., 25.
Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), God’s Word: Scripture—Tradition—Office,
ed. Peter Hünermann and Thomas Söding, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 119.
8
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 24.
7

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Gregory Vall

the Imago Dei; language and truth; God’s word in human events; time,
narrative, and history; and the Christ event and the Gospels.
The Dualism of Word and Event: An Example
After a brief preface, Vatican II’s 1965 Dogmatic Constitution on Divine
Revelation, Dei Verbum, turns almost immediately to the unity of word
and event in the divine economy.
This economy of revelation is realized in deeds and words intrinsically interconnected (gestis verbisque intrinsece inter se
connexis), such that the works accomplished by God in the history of salvation manifest and corroborate the teaching and realities signified by the words, while, conversely, the words proclaim the deeds and illuminate the mystery contained in them.9
The complementarity between deeds and words of which this text
speaks is evident throughout Scripture. For example, the wonders by
which Yahweh wrought Israel’s deliverance from bondage in Egypt lead
directly to and are completed by the revelation of the law at Sinai. Again,
the great chastisement of the exile both fulfills and is explained by the
words of the prophets. Employing poetic parallelism, the psalmist confesses: “Yahweh is faithful in all his words, and loyal in all his deeds”
(Ps 145:13).10 Similarly, in the New Testament, Jesus’s public ministry
is comprised of mutually illuminating works of power and words of
instruction, and each of the evangelists draws attention to this fact in
his own way. Matthew, for example, dovetails narrative units with large
blocks of the Lord’s teaching in an architectonic fashion.11 John, for his
part, presents Jesus’s miracles as “signs”—that is, inherently significant
deeds—and typically couples a sign narrative with a discourse or dia9

Dei Verbum §2. “Haec revelationis oeconomia fit gestis verbisque intrinsece inter se
connexis, ita ut opera, in historia salutis a Deo patrata, doctrinam et res verbis significatas manifestent ac corroborent, verba autem opera proclament et mysterium in
eis contentum elucident.” (My translation.)
10
The translations of Scripture throughout this essay are my own.
11
See John P. Meier, Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. “Matthew, Gospel of,” 4:628–29; and
the chart in Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 172.

Word and Event: A Reappraisal

185

logue that draws out the given sign’s significance.12
In his 1967 commentary on Dei Verbum, Ratzinger suggests that in
drafting the passage quoted above the fathers of Vatican II “were merely concerned with overcoming neo-scholastic intellectualism, for which
revelation chiefly meant a store of mysterious supernatural teaching . . .
in order to express again the character of revelation as a totality, in which
word and event make up one whole.”13 Whether it was intentional or not,
however, the conciliar statement also guards against the opposite error,
namely, that which would privilege events over words in the economy of
redemption in order to play down the propositional content of revelation
and the intellectual dimension of the act of faith, perhaps also in order to
pit the intuitive, imagistic, and poetic elements in Hebraic thought against
Greek rationality to the detriment of the latter.
In February of 1964, while the antepenultimate draft (“Form E”) of
what was to be called Dei Verbum was being prepared in Rome for consideration at the third session of the Council later that year, the Scottish
biblical scholar James Barr was delivering his Currie Lectures at Austin
Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Texas. With characteristic “prosecutorial zeal,” Barr undertook to dismantle the allegedly biblical concept
of “revelation through God’s acts in history,” complaining that it had
gained a status of unquestioned normativity in the “biblical theology”
movement, which was then at the zenith of its popularity.14 Barr rightly points out that any attempt to locate revelation in God’s historical
12

As Robert Kysar notes, John combines narrative and discourse in a variety of ways,
and he sometimes allows a sign to stand on its own and speak for itself. Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. “John, The Gospel of,” 3:916. For an in-depth discussion of “the
concept of ‘sign’ in Johannine theology,” see Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to John, vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Chapters 1–4, trans. Kevin
Smyth (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 515–28.
13
Herbert Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 3 (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 172. (Original German edition published 1967.)
Ratzinger coauthored the commentary on Dei Verbum with Alois Grillmeier and
Béda Rigaux, but he is solely responsible for the passage in question.
14
James Barr, Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments (New
York: Harper & Row, 1966), esp. 65–102, “The Concepts of History and Revelation.”
Cf. David Penchansky, Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters, s.v. “Barr,
James,” 423–27 (Penchansky’s admiring reference to Barr’s “prosecutorial zeal” is on
p. 423). Barr had already presented a devastating critique of the exaggerated contrast
between “Hebrew thought” and “Greek thought” in his first major work, The Semantics of Biblical Language (London: SCM Press, 1983 [1961]).

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acts while dissociating it from verbal communication flies in the face
of the biblical evidence. Referencing the many Old Testament passages
in which Yahweh is said to have spoken to Moses and the prophets, as
well as the words by which Israelite tradition itself was transmitted, Barr
observes that “it is entirely as true to say that in the Old Testament revelation is by verbal communication as to say that it is by acts in history.”15
Thus on a certain level, the level of the content of Scripture itself, Barr
too seems to affirm the inseparability of word and event.
To this point we have dealt with the relationship between word and
event as these are found within Scripture. In specifying the locus and
content of revelation, the neo-scholastics, whom Ratzinger identifies
as the primary targets of Dei Verbum’s formulation about “deeds and
words intrinsically interconnected,” give the words of the prophets and
the teaching of Jesus and the apostles a certain priority over the events
of the historical economy as such.16 But this is, at least in principle, a
matter of privileging one part of the biblical record over another. Even if
neo-scholasticism expresses the content of revelation in the postbiblical
language of dogmatic propositions, these propositions are assumed to be
accurate “translations” of what Scripture itself teaches. Conversely, the
proponents of “biblical theology,” against whom Barr polemicizes, privilege the narrated events of redemptive history over biblical words of law,
prophecy, and instruction. In either case, then, the alleged dualism of
word and event is largely reducible to what we might call the intrabiblical
level. The discursive teaching of the prophets, the Lord, and the apostles
is given priority over Scripture’s narrative of events, or vice versa.
Indeed, whether this prioritization amounts to a real dualism, or
merely an exegetical and theological imbalance, depends to a significant degree on how a given version of neo-scholasticism or of biblical
theology views the nature of events in general and of the biblical events
in particular. Provided that the neo-scholastic theologian and the “biblical theologian” could agree that events are not merely “brute facts,”
and provided they could also come to a basic agreement about the sort
of reference Scripture makes to the events of redemptive history, they
15
16

Barr, Old and New, 77.
René Latourelle, Theology of Revelation: Including a Commentary on the Constitution
“Dei Verbum” of Vatican II (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1966), 210–12.

Word and Event: A Reappraisal

187

might be able to work toward a resolution of their differences by way of
careful exegesis of the biblical text.
But this strictly exegetical and intrabiblical level, however important it may be, is not where the major difficulty lies. All parties should
be able to agree that Scripture accords vital significance to words and
events alike, that it presents these as inextricably bound together within
the economy of revelation and redemption, and that any attempt to pit
one against the other must therefore be misguided. As long as we remain on the merely exegetical level, therefore, the council fathers and
James Barr both appear to be doing little more than stating the obvious.
The real difficulties emerge when we press the philosophical question
about the nature of words and events and their interrelation and the
theological question about the nature of revelation and redemption and
their interrelation.
Furthermore, we have yet to consider a second and potentially
much more problematic dimension of the whole matter, namely, the
relationship between Scripture itself as “word” (comprising both narrative and discourse) and redemptive history as “event” (an event that, of
course, involves many words). The strong tendency of modern biblical
scholarship, as we shall see presently, is to view the history of Israel,
the life of the historical Jesus, and the first two generations of Church
history as lying somewhere “behind” the texts of the Old and New Testaments, faintly discernible in the mists of the ancient world. While
this problematizing of the relationship between Scripture (word) and
history (event) was to some extent inevitable, given the archeological
discoveries and philological progress of recent centuries, one would not
be mistaken to detect the modern dichotomy between fact and value at
work here as well.
To gain a concrete sense of how these tendencies manifest themselves in the deliberations of modern biblical scholars, we may return to
the Currie Lectures. Here it is interesting to note that while Barr, ever
the master debunker, is able to identify a host of “contradictions and antinomies” involved in the way his contemporaries bandy about the idea
of “revelational history,” he offers precious little in the way of a positive
counterproposal.17 He chides the leaders of the biblical theology move17

Barr, Old and New, 66–67.

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Gregory Vall

ment for “treating so grossly uncertain a concept as Heilsgeschichte [salvation history] as if it was some kind of firm ground,” but the very real
theological insight that this term crystalizes seems to escape him almost
entirely.18 While not explicitly embracing the dichotomy between fact
and value, he opines that “the acts of God [recounted in the Old Testament] are not really and strictly ‘revelatory,’ except in the trivial sense
in which any act done, or any thing said, may be considered to ‘reveal’
something of the doer.”19
With unintended irony Barr here puts his finger on a phenomenon that many twentieth-century Catholic philosophers, from Blondel
to Wojtyla to Sokolowski, have considered anything but trivial: the
self-disclosure of the human person through action.20 It is even less
trivial to consider the possibility that the eternal and transcendent God
might indeed act within space and time in a manner that is analogous to
human action and that can thus be narrated as something like a matter
of historical record. The cumulative claim of Israel’s Scriptures—namely, that the only true God, creator of heaven and earth, not only can
act within human history but has in fact acted in very particular ways
on behalf of a particular people, thus revealing himself to be a personal God, a knowable Who rather than an unknowable What—is of the
greatest theological import. It is quite impossible to imagine Judaism
or Christianity apart from this claim. Barr’s attempt to relegate the notion of God’s self-revelatory action within history to the margins of the
biblical view of reality must in the last analysis be judged unconvincing.
Still, Barr’s broader project, to discredit the biblical theology movement, has been largely successful, at least among biblical scholars. The
“contradictions and antinomies” to which he draws attention appear insoluble indeed, particularly to those who, like Barr, rule out of court any
appeal to metaphysics or “mysticism” where the interpretation of the
18

Ibid., 86.
Ibid., 82 (punctuation added for clarity).
20
Maurice Blondel, Action (1893): Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice,
trans. Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004);
Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person: A Contribution to Phenomenological Anthropology,
Analecta Husserliana 10, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Boston: D. Reidel, 1979); Robert
Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
19

Word and Event: A Reappraisal

189

Bible is concerned. One problem, which is the direct result of what Hans
Frei famously tagged “the eclipse of biblical narrative,” seems especially
intractable. Modern biblical scholars have become acutely conscious of
two distinct and often quite divergent accounts of Israel’s history: the
Old Testament’s own account, and the account that has emerged from
historical-critical investigation.21 According to Barr, the proponents of
Heilsgeschichte disagree among themselves, if they do not simply equivocate, when it comes to specifying which of these two accounts gives us
access to God’s alleged self-revelation in history.22
Barr apparently views the very attempt to resolve this problem as
misguided. Responding to those who argue that the solution lies in approaching the whole question with an authentically “biblical view of
history,” that is, one obtained from Scripture itself, Barr notes that they
have reached no consensus regarding what this “biblical view of history”
in fact is. He is confident in any case that the Old Testament’s narrative
of events is quite incommensurable with what we moderns mean by
“history.” This does not trouble Barr, however, since he contends that
history is “not a biblical category” to begin with.23 The biblical theology
movement’s tragic flaw, in his estimation, has been to read the modern understanding and valuation of history back into the Bible. Barr is
much more sanguine when it comes to the capacity of archeology and
historical-critical research to give us a certain kind of reliable access to
the “real history” of the ancient Near East. But this sort of investigation
yields only “plain history,” which “cannot honestly be called ‘revelatory’ in any sense relatable to the actual intentions of the Old Testament
texts.” Further, Barr scoffs at those who, unable to bridge the gap between Scripture and “real history,” take it upon themselves to invest the
latter “with a kind of religious mysticism” and thus provide themselves
with “a kind of theology-substitute.”24
At this point in Barr’s discussion the dualism of word and event
has unmistakably reared its head—not at the exegetical or intrabiblical level, but precisely at the level of the relationship between biblical
21

Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974).
22
Barr, Old and New, 66–67.
23
Ibid., 69.
24
Ibid., 68.

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190

word and historical event. It is tolerably clear that Barr has no expectation of finding any profound theological significance, much less God’s
self-disclosure, in “real” or “plain” history. Aside from the “trivial” case
of persons revealing something of themselves in their deeds, the human
actions and other events of ancient Israel’s actual history appear to be
essentially mute.
It should perhaps come as no surprise that the chasm that opens
here between the Old Testament text and Israel’s “real” history is accompanied by other similar dichotomies and leads to a significantly diminished sense of the Bible’s divine origin and authority. “Scripture,”
Barr matter-of-factly informs us, “does not come into existence by direct
action of God, but by a human action which is a reflex of contact with
God.” The logical corollary to this position is that the human action that
produced the Bible “shares in the distortion and inadequacy which applies to other human acts, and especially to those human acts which
claim to relate themselves to the will of God.”25 Ever the uncompromising opponent of “fundamentalism,” Barr does not evince so much as a
hint of nostalgia for the traditional doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy, which in any case can only be sustained “by recourse to the sheer
supernaturalism of miraculous divine intervention.” As Barr views the
matter, one must choose between an utterly infallible Bible that is the
product of “sheer supernaturalism” and a radically human Bible that
“meets the needs of sinful men just because it is itself not free from its
sinful element.”26 The irony in all this is that, having excoriated the biblical theology movement for locating God’s self-revelation in the nonverbal realm, Barr now reduces Scripture to a merely human “reflex,”
a partly sinful subjective response to something he vaguely terms the
human authors’ “contact with God.”
Barr’s assault on “biblical theology,” in several major works throughout his career, has contributed not a little to the movement’s long, slow
decline. Writing a generation after the Currie Lectures, Thomas L.
Thompson treats the dichotomy between Old Testament narrative and
ancient Israel’s actual history as self-evident and Barr’s diagnosis of the
biblical theology movement as beyond dispute. According to Thomp25
26

Ibid., 163.
Ibid.

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191

son, the proponents of biblical theology have introduced “considerable
confusion” by using the word Heilsgeschichte to refer both to the biblical
narrative’s presentation of Israel’s past, which is no more and no less
than “a form of theologically motivated Tendenz,” and to Israel’s actual
history as (supposedly) revelatory and salvific. In Thompson’s opinion
the latter use has been “largely discredited,” for it locates revelation in
a realm that is “open in every way to historical-critical research,” and
such a realm almost by definition cannot be viewed as “an object of faith
alone.”27 History and faith must be kept neatly separate.
Still, Thomson holds that the Tendenz of Old Testament narrative
can be viewed positively as a locus of theology and faith—paradoxically,
it can even be called “salvation history”—provided we ascribe no significant historicity or historiographical intentionality to it.28 Elsewhere
Thompson explains that Israel’s faith “is not an historical faith.” It “has
its justification, not in the evidence of past events, for the traditions of
the past serve only as the occasion of the expression of faith, but in the
assertion of a future promise.”29
Salvation history is not an historical account of saving events
open to the study of the historian. Salvation history did not happen; it is a literary form which has its own historical context.30
Following the trajectory of Barr’s thought well beyond Barr’s own conclusions, Thompson affirms a “biblical faith” that is invulnerable to historical-critical investigation because it is not really concerned with past
events but only with present experience and future hope. It is Israel’s
“experience” that is (to some extent) “communicated” and Israel’s “faith”
that is “revealed” in the Old Testament, and this nonhistorical faith experience can become “our faith” too through an existential reading of
the Old Testament.31 The Christian is thus able to maintain a “theology
27

Thomas L. Thompson, Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. “Historiography (Israelite),”
3:209.
28
Ibid., 210.
29
Thomas L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the
Historical Abraham (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002), 329.
30
Ibid., 328.
31
Ibid., 330.

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of the word” and of “existential experience” while he or she is freed from
the burdensome and ultimately untenable notion that revelation and
salvation consist in a series of divine interventions in history culminating in Jesus’s Resurrection.32 Thompson’s radical transformation of biblical theology, building on Barr’s critique, thus furnishes a consummate
example of the dualism of word and event.
Creation and the Imago Dei
If the modern dualism of word and event “cuts the biblical Word off
from creation,”33 the place to begin our attempt to recover the true unity
of word and event is with the biblical doctrine of creation. Scripture’s
opening sentence shows us that the unity of word and event is rooted
in God’s primordial act of creation (Gn 1:1–3).34 The inspired narrative
displays a perfect correspondence between God’s creative word—yĕhî
ʾôr (“let there be light”)—and its immediate result—wayĕhî ʾôr (“and
there was light”). What God says happens, with no remainder and no
surprises. We do not read, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was
a chicken,” but “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” His
word of creation is perfectly efficacious.35 Moreover, God is neither
compelled to create nor hindered from creating. The world is not the
result of some combination of chance and necessity, nor is it the product
of a battle among the gods.
Genesis presents God’s act of creation as a speaking-into-being and
thus traces the unity of word and event back to a primordial act of divine performative speech. The phrase yĕhî ʾôr is a volitive speech act.
As such, it is an expression of both knowledge and will. As rational discourse, yĕhî ʾôr has intelligible content. And because the verbal form
yĕhî is grammatically a jussive, or third-person volitive, it is also a sort of
command.36 One speaks what one knows, and one commands what one
32

Ibid., 329.
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 25.
34
The first three verses of Genesis constitute a single sentence in Hebrew, though English
translations usually break it into two or three sentences for the sake of readability.
35
“The exact echoing of the command here emphasizes the total fulfillment of the divine word.” Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary 1 (Waco,
TX: Word Books, 1987), 18.
36
Biblical Hebrew employs three classes of volitive verb forms: the cohortative
33

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wills.37 Furthermore, when one wills what is good, the volitional word is
an expression of love. And the Priestly narrative of creation is emphatic
in saying that everything God created is “very good” (1:31).
Creation flows forth from an eternal act of knowledge and love, or
what Augustine calls God’s “eternal counsel and will.”38 If the intrinsic
unity of word and event that pervades the economy of revelation and
redemption is rooted in God’s act of creation, this act, the word of love
by which God speaks the world into being, is rooted in his inner life.
The oikonomia flows forth from the realm of theologia. The unity of
word and event, then, ultimately traces back to the eternal processions
of knowledge and love within the Holy Trinity. Perhaps we should not
too hastily dismiss the patristic tendency to find all three persons of
the Trinity in the opening lines of Genesis.39 In this context the Church
Fathers also like to quote Psalms 33:6: “By the word (dābār) of Yahweh the heavens were made, by the breath (rûaḥ) of his mouth all their

(first-person volitive), the imperative (second-person volitive), and the jussive
(third-person volitive). See Paul Joüon, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, trans. and
rev. T. Muraoka (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1993), 125 (§40b).
37
In commenting on “the idea of creation by the word” in Gn 1:3, Gerhard von Rad
places all the emphasis on God’s “personal will” at the expense of any notion of
the word as possessing intelligible content and as divine self-communication. He is
right to insist that the Priestly author affirms a “radical essential distinction between
Creator and creature” and that creation “cannot be even remotely considered an
emanation from God,” but he goes much too far in concluding that the created world
is therefore in no sense a “reflection of his being.” Genesis: A Commentary, 2nd ed.,
trans. John H. Marks (London: SCM Press, 1972), 51–52. In order to uphold a biblical view of reality, one must certainly distinguish between emanation and reflection
in this regard.
38
De civitate Dei 11:4: aeternum consilium voluntatemque. Translations of patristic
texts are my own unless otherwise indicated. Latin citations are from the Library of
Latin Texts accessed through the Brepols Publishers website (www.brepolis.net).
39
E.g., Ephrem of Syria, commenting on Gn 1:2, writes: “It was appropriate to reveal
here that the Spirit hovered in order for us to learn that the work of creation was held
in common by the Spirit with the Father and the Son. The Father spoke. The Son
created. And so it was also right that the Spirit offer its work, clearly shown through
its hovering, in order to demonstrate its unity with the other persons. Thus we learn
that all was brought to perfection and accomplished by the Trinity.” Andrew Louth,
ed., Genesis 1-11, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament 1
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 6.

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host.”40 Both texts present creation as a perfectly unified action of God,
his dābār, and his rûaḥ.41
The biblical doctrine of God’s creation by his word is developed in
the Old Testament wisdom literature. In Proverbs 3:19, for example, we
read: “By his wisdom (ḥokmâ) Yahweh founded the earth; he established
the heavens by his understanding.” The category of ḥokmâ further discloses the unity of knowledge and love in God’s act of creation. Human
“wisdom” includes both the theoretical and the practical among its essential aspects. It is the virtue by which one does the truth for the sake of
the good. To say, analogously, that God created the world by his wisdom
is to say that he has acted in intelligence and love. He orders everything
toward an end that is good. This is what sets the authentically biblical
notion of divine power apart from every defective notion of omnipotence. As Augustine puts it, “God is omnipotent, not by reckless power,
but by the strength of wisdom.”42
The world created by “the only wise God” (Rom 16:27) is itself intelligible and good, an expression of divine truth and love. Each creature, and
creation as a whole, is ordered toward an end that is good. The physical
universe is an event and a thing, but it is not irrational or mute. It is a word
of truth and love rather than a brute fact. But for creation to speak its word
of truth and love there needs to be a creature who possesses the capacity
to hear and understand this word, a creature who is able to “interpret” the
world. Man, created in the image of God, is endowed with precisely this
capacity, and the created universe is “a gift addressed to man.”43
According to the theological tradition that comes to us through Augustine and Aquinas, “all things which occur in time are certain similitudes of those things which have been from eternity.”44 In this sense, ev40

E.g. Ambrose, In Hexaemeron 1:8.
We need not suppose that the Hebrew authors possessed anything like an explicit
conceptual knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity, but only that, since the God
whom they knew by revelation was in fact the true God, who is and always was three
divine persons, it should not surprise us if the Old Testament contains here and
there intimations of God’s inner life, intimations that come into a new light when
read from the perspective of the fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ.
42
De Genesi ad litteram 9:17: “neque enim potentia temeraria, sed sapientiae virtute
omnipotens est.”
43
Catechism of the Catholic Church §299.
44
Summa theologiae III, q. 23, a. 2, ad 3.
41

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ery creature is made to the likeness of God. But man alone is made to the
image and likeness of God. This same theological tradition locates the
imago Dei in man’s rational soul with its faculties of intellect and will.
For present purposes it may be helpful to restate this interpretation of
Genesis 1:26–27 in terms of the analogia verbi. God, creation, and man
are all λογικός (“rational”), but each in its own way. God is supremely
and properly speaking λογικός. In eternally generating his Logos and
breathing forth his Spirit, he eternally knows and loves all things. Creatures too are, analogously speaking, λογικός—in a finite and somewhat
passive sense, as the products and expressions of God’s knowledge and
love. They are intelligible and good, knowable and lovable. As a creature,
man too is λογικός in this sense. At the same time, however, he possesses a participation in God’s rationality that is more active and more
perfect than that enjoyed by other creatures in the physical realm. He
is not only intelligible and good but intelligent and capable of choosing
and doing the good. He is not only knowable and lovable, but capable of
knowing and loving.
Early in the history of Christian theology there emerged a strong
and enduring tendency to identify the imago Dei in man with the faculty of reason (λόγος) and with the mind (νοῦς), but this did not always involve dissociating it completely from man’s bodily form. The
second-century Epistle to Diognetus, in presenting the biblical teaching
on the imago Dei, emphasizes man’s intellectual endowment but immediately complements this emphasis with the idea that man’s upright posture also distinguishes him from other bodily creatures and reflects his
special orientation to God and heaven (Diog. 10:2).
In his De hominis opificio Gregory of Nyssa develops the notion that
it is the whole human person in the unity of body and soul that is made
to the image of God, and not the mind alone. According to Gregory, we
see in man’s rational soul a kind of participation in God’s incorporeal
nature that we do not find in the body. Nevertheless, man is a single
“compound nature” (σύγκριμα) and must be viewed as such.45 The mind
“would have been incommunicable and isolated if its motion were not
45

De hominis opificio 16:9 (PG 44:181); trans. Henry Austin Wilson. Philip Schaff and
Henry Wace, eds., A Select Library of the Christian Church: Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, Second Series, vol. 5, Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc. (1893; Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 405.

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manifested by some contrivance,” and so the Creator prepared the human body as the appropriate “instrument” (ὄργανον) for the exercise
of reason. For example, the mouths of beasts are designed primarily for
feeding and so produce only inarticulate sounds such as a bleat or bark,
but the human mouth is configured to produce the much more varied
sounds that are necessary for intelligible speech.46 Similarly, the suppleness and dexterity of human hands make them apt for every art of human ingenuity and to do the bidding of reason.47 In a word, the Creator
endowed human nature with superior intelligence and a refined body
“fit for the exercise of royalty,” so that human beings might be the “living
image” of his kingship over all creatures.48
The retrieval of an authentically biblical anthropology and somatology is of the utmost importance for our fresh appraisal of the relationship between word and event. Genesis places before our eyes God’s creation of a world that is ordered toward human life and human action.
The body gives man a place within this world of space and time. Man
exercises his intelligence and realizes his freedom in and through the
body. Actions performed in the body, and thus in the world of time
and space, have real consequences. In fact, strictly speaking, they are
irreversible. If I become intoxicated, get behind the wheel of a car, and
kill someone, many lives, including my own, have been altered forever. I
cannot press CTRL + Z and reverse the course of events. Real life has no
“undo” function. This is true, of course, not only in the case of vicious or
irresponsible acts. It applies equally to acts of wisdom and virtue.
Because the physical universe has been created by a wise and loving God and thus bears the imprint of divine wisdom and love, there
is no such thing as a brute fact, an event utterly devoid of rationality.
Even events in which human beings are completely uninvolved, such as
a volcanic eruption on a distant planet, must have some inherent significance. But our special concern, and certainly that of the biblical authors,
is with events in which human beings are involved, events that engage
human intellect and freedom, events with ramifications for human beings. In such events, human souls, acting through bodies that have been
46

De hominis opificio 8:8–9:1 (PG 44:148–149); trans. 394–95.
De hominis opificio 8:2; 8:8 (PG 44:144, 148).
48
De hominis opificio 4:1 (PG 44:136); trans. 390–91.
47

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created for the exercise of reason and the disclosure of personhood,
leave as it were an indelible mark on the physical universe.
Though we cannot devote space to the topic here, it would be helpful in this regard to reflect on the myriad ways we take up the subhuman
world into the fabric of human life and culture, and in so doing humanize and spiritualize the world.49 In any case, this must not be viewed as
an imposition of the sheer will to dominate. Even where the impulse
to make the subhuman world serve anthropic ends is deeply tainted by
sin, there takes place some authentic disclosure of the truth of things
and a discovery of their true ends. Here, in the consideration of the relationship between spirit and matter, we approach the very heart of the
problem, and here our modern minds stand most in need of the healing
light of Scripture’s own sacramental view of reality.
Language and Truth
Our reappraisal of the relationship between word and event also requires careful and extensive consideration of language itself and its place
in human life. We tend to dive into questions about the nature of revelation and of Scripture under the assumption that we already pretty much
know what language is and how it functions. It is premature, however, to
attempt to describe the nature of divinely inspired words when we have
not yet devoted serious thought to the mystery of language as such. As
Cardinal Ratzinger notes in the Erasmus Lecture, the modern dualism
of word and event is the result not simply of a deficient understanding
of event but also of a truncated notion of word.50 Biblical scholars and
theologians tend to operate with an instrumentalist or merely functional view of language. Language for them is essentially a tool of the isolated, autonomous thinker who asserts his will over external reality and
then utilizes knowledge as a means of power over against his environment (including other autonomous individuals). This view of things can
never appreciate the true genius of language, which is fundamentally a
49

For some initial thoughts, see Gregory Vall, “‘Man is the Land’: The Sacramentality
of the Land of Israel,” in John Paul II and the Jewish People: A Jewish-Christian Dialogue, ed. David G. Dalin and Matthew Levering (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 131–67, esp. 140–41.
50
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 25.

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mystery of truth and love, not of “knowledge as power.”
As noted above, among material beings man is uniquely endowed to
“hear” the voice of creation and to “translate” it into rational discourse.
Creation’s relation to the divine Logos is reflected in its intelligibility and
goodness, while man’s unique relation to the same Logos is reflected in his
intelligence and will, including his linguistic endowment. Jacques Maritain refers to this complementarity as the “nuptial relationship between
mind and being.”51 Man’s vocation is to speak on behalf of the rest of creation, and in so doing to ascribe glory to the Creator. As Norris Clarke
puts it, the human person is called to listen to the voice of being “with
reverence” and to speak out “its meaning in a recreative human logos.”52
Human language is closely bound up with man’s bodily nature
and embeddedness in the physical universe. The brain and the organs
of speech and hearing are physical. Spoken communication depends
on sound waves moving through the air. Written communication depends on physical implements such as ink and paper, or computers.
Yet language mediates intellectual and spiritual realities. Human language is thus an externalization of interior life, while at the same time
it involves a spiritualization of material things. A book is at once a
materialized idea and a spiritualized tree, as it were. Speaking, listening, writing, and reading are activities proper to man as a unity of
physical body and spiritual soul. Human language can even be called
“sacramental,” in the sense that it gives invisible realities a presence in
the world of space and time.53
Language is a function of man’s freedom and of his vocation to
“subdue the earth” (Gn 1:28). According to the Genesis narrative, God
brought the animals to man “to see what he would name them,” and
“whatever the man called” each animal, “that was its name” (2:19). The
seeming quaintness of this story should not lead us to overlook its pro51

As quoted (without exact citation of the source) in W. Norris Clarke, The One and
the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press), 18.
52
Ibid., 29.
53
Pope John Paul II describes the human body as “a primordial sacrament . . . a sign that
efficaciously transmits in the visible world the invisible mystery hidden in God from
eternity.” Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael
Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 203 (emphasis removed).

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fundity. Assigning names to the beings that surround him gives man
real leverage to explore, organize, and master his environment. At the
same time, Genesis does not suggest that human acts of linguistic denomination and predication constitute an imposition upon external reality. At the narrative’s culmination, the man’s naming of “woman” is
presented rather as a response of wonderment upon his joyful discovery
of her true identity and relation to himself (2:23). Language can be a
way of receiving creation from the hand of God in gratitude and praise.
All man’s subsequent words, however, will be spoken under the shadow of temptation and sin. They will be liable to duplicity and to various
distortions of the truth of being. An adequate reappraisal of the relationship between word and event must therefore also consider the effect of
sin on language as well as the manner in which human speech, marred by
sin, is progressively purified and “redeemed” precisely by being taken up
into the economy of revelation. Beginning with Genesis, the Bible presents human language as deeply involved in the drama of man’s alienation
from God and in the divine pedagogy by which God reconciles human
beings to himself. This important topic has been given surprisingly little
attention in fundamental theology and biblical hermeneutics.
If we wish to appreciate how biblical words communicate the truth
of events (which really is the heart of the matter), we would do well to
attend to what Scripture itself teaches us about the act of narration. This
is a vast topic, and here we shall have to content ourselves with an observation or two. The truth of an event, the truth that really matters, runs
much deeper than the mere facts of a case, for what we take to be “fact”
is often only the most superficial dimension of an event or action. And
so to judge the truth or falsehood of a speech or narration on the basis of
how accurately it represents this superficial level of the event will yield a
deficient notion of truth and falsehood.
Let us take an example. Under interrogation by Yahweh, Adam says,
“The woman whom you gave to be with me gave me from the tree, and
I ate” (3:12). In terms of its accuracy of representation of the facts (of
the narrated story), this statement is absolutely inerrant. It is true that
God gave the woman to the man to be with him, and it is true that the
woman gave the fruit of the tree to the man. And yet, Adam’s speech act
is profoundly sinful. Rather than accept responsibility for his actions, he
manages to point blame at both God and his wife in the same breath. He

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speaks with ingratitude and attempts to deflect attention away from his
own culpability.54 A speech act may then accurately narrate the facts of
the case and still fail to lead us closer to the truth of the event. Conversely, a fictional narrative can communicate real truth, not only a general
moral truth, but even the truth of a specific event. For example, Nathan’s
parable enables David to face the sinfulness of his own actions on a specific occasion (2 Sm 12:1–15).
Language pertains to man’s personhood and his call to interpersonal communion. It enables a person to reach outside his own solitude,
to share something of his interiority with others, and to receive what
they choose to share of themselves in return. Language enables us to
make promises, ask favors, give commands, share knowledge, articulate
feelings, or construct an argument. It permits human beings to share a
common life and common projects. It makes possible both a personal
and a communal sense of past, present, and future—a shared history.
It enables “I” subjects to belong to “we” subjects and to participate in
various human institutions.
Language comes to each of us as the heritage of the human community and it keeps us connected to that community throughout our lives.
The individual realizes his or her freedom through language and action,
but only within the realm of community, tradition, custom, and law. Indeed, it is by virtue of its communal dimension that language serves man
in his ongoing discovery of the truth of things. Understanding comes
via conversation. Hans-Georg Gadamer describes how an authentic dialogue is more than the sum of its parts and can take on a life of its own,
leading its participants together toward a deeper understanding of the
topic under discussion. Thus “the sphere of the ‘We’”—where language
lives—mediates between the “I” subject and the objective reality that
would disclose its truth.55 As Augustine says, “Reasoning does not make
things but discovers them. Before they are discovered, therefore, they
abide in themselves; and when they are discovered, they renew us.”56

54

Von Rad, Genesis, 91.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Linge
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 65–66.
56
De Vera Religione xxxix, 73: “Non enim ratiocinatio talia facit, sed invenit. Ergo
antequam inveniantur, in se manent, et cum inveniuntur, nos innovant.”
55

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This principle applies not only to the reasoning of the individual but also
to that of a community of persons in dialogue.
Ultimately, language is able to mediate between man and the truth
of the created universe (including the reflexive truth of man himself)
because each of these realities—man, language, and the universe—participates in its own way in the divine Logos and thus in the mystery of
Trinitarian knowledge and love. This analogia verbi forms the basis for
the very possibility of divine revelation and thus of our capacity for saying anything true about God in human language.
God’s Word in Human Events
As we ponder the mystery of human language and action in general
terms, we must also begin to consider the specific ways God has revealed himself “in deeds and words intrinsically interconnected” within
the divine economy. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that during the
Old Testament period God spoke to Israel “in many partial and varied ways” (1:1). Broadly speaking, these are reducible to law, prophecy,
psalmody, and wisdom, but under each of these headings one might
identify numerous more specific modes by which God’s word came to
Israel. For present purposes it may prove helpful to focus our attention
on the way Israel sometimes discerned God’s will in the unfolding of
an event per se, without any of the usual intermediaries, and then gave
this revelatory event a new verbal mode of existence through narrative
artistry, so that a word-event became an event-word.
As an example of this let us briefly consider the betrothal of Rebekah in Genesis 24, aided by Meir Sternberg’s masterful analysis of this
Hebrew narrative.57 At the outset of the story Abraham commissions a
trusted servant to return to his homeland in northern Mesopotamia in
order to fetch a suitable bride for his son Isaac. He promises the servant
that Yahweh “will send his angel before” him (v 7), but as things turn
out no angel appears in the story. Nor does the servant have a revelatory
dream at a holy place en route. No prophet approaches him with an oracle. He meets no seer along the way. In order to discern God’s will in the

57

Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 131–52.

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affair, the servant is “thrown on his own devices” and “takes a twofold
initiative that weds good sense to piety.”58
In other words, he employs faith and reason together. Rather than
contrive a designedly arbitrary test of God’s will, such as Gideon does
with the fleece (Jgs 6:36–40), Abraham’s servant devises a rational test
for finding a friendly, strong, and hospitable woman. A maiden who
would grant his request for a drink of water and then go the extra mile
by drawing water for his ten thirsty camels would be just the sort of
woman he is looking for. Parking his camels near the well in the late afternoon, when he knows women will be coming forth to draw water, he
prays, “Yahweh, God of my master Abraham, make things come together before me today, and keep steadfast love with my master Abraham”
(Gn 24:12).59
At this point, the narrator duly notes that before the servant even
finishes this prayer, Rebekah makes her appearance at the well, suggesting that things are in fact already “coming together” (v 15). Rebekah’s
great physical beauty makes her an especially attractive candidate for
the test, which she passes with flying colors (vv 16–20). But for the servant the clincher comes when he learns that Rebekah is Isaac’s second
cousin. Surely, he reasons, it was Yahweh who “guided” him directly to
Abraham’s family (vv 24–27). This could be no mere coincidence. As
Sternberg puts it, Rebekah “is, literally, God’s answer (in the medium of
plot) to the servant’s prayer.”60 Her timely arrival is a word from Yahweh.
Now the servant’s job is to convince Rebekah’s family, specifically
her older brother Laban, that this is indeed a match made in heaven.
He makes his pitch by way of a lengthy renarration of the sequence of
events that led him to this juncture, in the course of which he takes quite
a few liberties with the details (vv 34–49). He tactfully omits anything
that may have given offense to the Mesopotamian family, rearranges the
order of events slightly, and even modifies Abraham’s instructions in
such a way as to give the impression that it was the patriarch’s intention

58

Ibid., 137.
The Hiphil of Q-R-H means “to cause to converge,” with connotations of divine
providence working through apparent coincidence (cf. Gn 27:20 and other forms of
the same root in Ru 2:3 and 2 Sm 1:6).
60
Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 137.
59

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all along for Isaac to marry a close relative. Sternberg illuminates the
way each of these changes serves a precise rhetorical end.61
His point, however, is emphatically not that the servant is a spin
doctor who sacrifices truth on the altar of persuasion. Rather, taking
into consideration the lower theological proficiency of his polytheistic
audience, the servant tempers his narrative to meet them at their level
of understanding and leads them to recognize that Yahweh, the god of
Abraham, has manifested his will for Isaac and Rebekah in a remarkable
confluence of events. As Sternberg phrases it, “the servant, like many
novelists after him, resorts to invention in order to give the truth a more
truthlike appearance,” for “the unvarnished truth would not [have carried] enough weight to induce [the family] to part with Rebekah.”62
The servant has employed mythos, or “emplotment,” which always
includes a fictive dimension, in order give the providential and revelatory event a new verbal mode of existence. The word-event has become
an event-word. When narrative artistry is used in this way by someone
whose mind has been illumined by the Spirit of Truth to judge concerning the action of God in history, narration is a prophetic act.
Of particular interest for present purposes is Laban’s response (v
50), which indicates that he has been led by the servant’s narrative to
draw precisely the correct conclusion about the event that has transpired. “The thing (dabar) has come forth from Yahweh,” he declares.
“We cannot speak to you bad or good. Behold, Rebekah is before you.
Take her and go, that she may become the wife of your master’s son,
just as Yahweh has spoken (dibber).” The Hebrew noun dabar means
“thing, event, or word.” The verb dibber, “to speak,” is its cognate. No
angel, prophet, seer, diviner, or dream interpreter appears anywhere in
the story, and yet, Yahweh has spoken! He has revealed his will in the
course of events. He has dibber-ed through a dabar. The event-dabar is
in itself already a word-dabar inasmuch as Yahweh has truly guided the
course of events, but it takes on a new verbal mode of existence when
the servant narrates it for Rebekah’s family and again, of course, when
the inspired author of Genesis 24 narrates it for us.

61
62

Ibid., 145–51.
Ibid., 149–50.

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Time, Narrative, and History
A serious reappraisal of word and event within the economy of redemption must also take stock of the biblical view of time and human temporality as well as the biblical narrative’s relation to history. In the present
context we can merely touch on these complex matters.
The Priestly Heptaemeron, or first creation account (Gn 1:1–2:3),
shows us that as soon as God speaks light into being and separates it
from darkness, “the march and rhythm of time” is set in motion.63 The
“days” of Genesis 1, each with its evening and morning, represent real
time, a temporality regulated by cosmic cycles and thus rooted in the
created order. This temporality is comprised of the days and months
and years with which Israelite readers were familiar and within which
they lived their lives. It is not, however, a mere succession of moments.
The unique character of the seventh day (2:2–3) gives creation’s divinely
instituted temporality a teleological dimension and indicates that it is
ordered to man’s vocation to work and rest in imitation of the Creator.
The seven-day sequence of Genesis 1:1–2:3 is the anchor for an
elaborate Priestly chronology that includes the genealogies of Genesis
5 and 11 and extends throughout the Pentateuch. This chronological
framework removes the primeval stories of fall, fratricide, and flood
from the mythical realm of a time before time and places every event,
from creation to the death of Moses and beyond, within a single historical sequence. This Priestly chronology does not, of course, supply
us with anything like accurate historical information regarding the age
of the cosmos, the lifespans of the patriarchs, or even the date of the
exodus. It accomplishes something much more important. It teaches us
that there is one seamless economy comprising creation and redemptive
history. Israelite readers of Genesis, living during the crisis of the exile
or the early postexilic period, would recognize that the events of their
own lives fall within a single divine master plan. The story that Genesis
narrates from its opening chapter is the story within which they live. In
a homily given many years ago, Ratzinger aptly sums up the teaching of

63

Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 112.

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the first creation narrative this way: “God created the universe in order
to enter into a history of love with humankind.”64
As noted in the previous section, the act of emplotment or narration—the act by which an event is given a new verbal mode of existence—necessarily contains a fictive dimension. At a minimum, the
author’s selection, arrangement, and choice of words embody an interpretive judgment. But this fictive dimension does not necessarily compromise the truth of a real event. Even if it involves a significant element
of literary license, the art of emplotment, with its fictive dimension, can
serve the truth of an historical event. In a moment of “invention,” the
author draws forth and displays the inherent λόγος dimension of the
event. As the term’s etymology suggests, to “invent” is simultaneously to
discover and to contrive.
What we have just said about the Priestly chronology, however, requires us to push the envelope a bit in this regard. Can a narrative that
is not historical in anything like the usual sense of the term give us authentic revelation concerning a fundamentally historical economy? The
short answer to this question is yes, at least when that narrative is part
of a larger historical tradition and a unified, incipiently canonical testimony to history.
The Old Testament contains a remarkable variety of narrative genres
and subgenres, each bearing its own sort of witness to historical events
and to the historical economy. The book of Jeremiah, for example, contains a great deal of reliable historical information about the final years
of the kingdom of Judah, information drawn from contemporary sources and verified in many cases by extrabiblical accounts. By contrast, the
book of Daniel, which was written centuries after the events it purports
to recount, intentionally flouts the historical record (beginning with its
opening verse) and weaves a variety of legends into a highly artificial
schema of political events.65 Still, it would be quite mistaken to conclude that the authors of Daniel are unconcerned with history. Properly
understood, this unusual book of Scripture bears a profound prophetic
64

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “In the Beginning . . .” : A Catholic Understanding of Creation and the Fall, trans. Boniface Ramsey, Ressourcement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 30.
65
See John J. Collins, Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. “Daniel, Book of,” 6:2:29–37.

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witness to the establishment of the kingdom of God within the real history of the ancient Near East.
The basic theological impulse behind the composition, compilation,
and canonical shaping of the Hebrew Scriptures is historiographical.
From the late preexilic period to the early postexilic period, the Holy
Spirit prompted Israelite authors and redactors to gather the traditions
of their people into a single coherent macronarrative. The result was the
so-called Primary Narrative, which stretches from Genesis to 2 Kings,
that is, from the creation of the world to Israel’s great political and spiritual crisis, the exile. The redactors of the Primary Narrative joined the
Priestly Tetrateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers) to the
Deuteronomistic History (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), with the
book of Deuteronomy as the keystone of the arch.66 Each of the remaining books in the biblical canon bears its witness to the divine economy
by an explicit or implicit orientation to this macronarrative. For example, First and Second Chronicles, together with the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah, constitute a kind of Secondary Narrative, a highly interpretive relecture of the Primary Narrative that carries the story forward
into the postexilic period.
Neither the Holy Spirit nor the human authors and redactors seem
to have been greatly troubled by the fact that the Primary Narrative is a
hybrid with respect to the historiographical character of its sources. In
composing their account of Israel’s political history of the monarchic
period, the inspired authors drew heavily upon the royal archives of Israel and Judah, but they also wove into their framework stories about
Elijah and Elisha that must have originated in the circle of those prophets’ disciples. For earlier periods, such as that of the judges, they had
recourse to at least some legendary material, as is patently the case in
the narratives about Samson, for example (Jgs 13–16). For still earlier
periods, such as that of the patriarchs, the sacred authors seem to have
worked with material that has a certain affinity to folklore or, in a few
instances, mythology.
Throughout the age of the monarchy, the exile, and the postexilic
66

In other words, the Primary Narrative comprises those books that in the Jewish
canon belong to the Torah and the Former Prophets. The Book of Ruth, which was
composed somewhat later, belongs to the Writings.

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period, Israel continued to look back to the exodus and wilderness wandering as their historical point of reference and theological touchstone.
Nothing that had happened in their history either prior to or subsequent to the Mosaic age made much sense if viewed apart from those
founding events. But the exile did make sense as chastisement for sins
against the Mosaic covenant, and the return from exile made sense as a
new exodus and the promise of a new covenant.
Remarkably, however, at least to our way of looking at things, the Israelites never seem to have asked themselves questions such as: “Did the
exodus really happen? How do we know whether or not it happened?
Which of the many versions of the exodus story preserved in our tradition is the most factual?” They did not view past events as irretrievably past and as leaving behind only traces in the archeological strata
and literary record. Nor did they suppose that the only valid access to
the past is by way of historical-critical research. The redemptive and
revelatory events of the past were present to them in and through sacred tradition, by which we mean the whole authentic life of the people
of Yahweh as it was handed down from generation to generation and
constantly enriched and deepened by new encounters with the word
of God. For faithful Israelites there was no need to question the reality
of the exodus. Their very existence and communal life as the people of
Yahweh was the vital unfolding and trajectory of the founding events.
No exodus, no Israel.
In exploring further the way the truth of Israel’s past was carried
over into their present and future by a living tradition, Gadamer’s notion of Wirkungsgeschichte, or “history of effects,” may prove helpful. As
Francis Watson points out, Wirkungsgeschichte is not merely a matter
of texts generating more texts. The “historic” event—that is, “the event
that marks an enduring turning point in a historical process”—“generates its own Wirkungsgeschichte out of which it is constantly interpreted
and reinterpreted.”67 Textual traditions and other elements of tradition
play their role within this larger historical process, which in the case of
biblical Israel is the very life of the people, lived in the presence of God.
67

Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1997), 51. On this point, see also Brice Wachterhauser, “Getting it Right:
Relativism, Realism, and Truth,” in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, ed.
Robert J. Dostal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65.

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As Andrew Hayes has expressed it, the Wirkungsgeschichte of an historic
event is “the temporally distended impression,” which that event leaves
on the flow of history.68
Maintaining a teleological view of salvation-historical events is crucial here. Israel’s many interpretations and reinterpretations of the exodus must not be viewed as so many layers of ideology superimposed
upon the brute facts. The exodus event is from the beginning dense with
inherent significance, but this significance only gradually unfolds and
discloses itself within the subsequent history of Israel. The exodus, like
every other event within Israel’s history, manifests its inner truth more
and more fully as that history approaches its telos, or goal. The Christ
event is as it were the final cause of the exodus, for “Christ is the end
(τέλος) of the law” (Rom 10:4).
The Christ Event and the Gospels
In the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth we see the most
perfect unity of word and event. Here the eternal Logos makes his definitive entrance into the realm of space and time, making the moment
of his entrance “the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4). It is important to note
that all the lower levels of the unity of word and event discussed above
are taken up into this fullest manifestation of unity. Through the incarnation the eternal Logos takes to himself a created humanity of physical
body and rational soul, made to the image of God, and makes it the
instrument and sacrament of his divine personhood. In the words of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church (§470), the Son of God “communicates
to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity.” The
eternal Word has spoken in human language and revealed the Father
in historical deeds. Though the incarnation is a truly marvelous condescension, it is nevertheless true that the λογικός humanity of Christ was
an apt instrument for the divine Logos to employ in this manner. (The
Logos could not have been hypostatically united to some lower, irrational nature.) Furthermore, the “many partial and varied ways” by which
God spoke to Israel in the Old Testament (Heb 1:1) have been taken up
into this definitive personal entrance of the Logos into creation and history and, having reached their telos, have been transformed.
68

Private communication to the author, 2004.

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Through the glorification of his humanity in the Resurrection, all
that Jesus Christ accomplished for our salvation in the days of his flesh
has been given a suprahistorical presence and, through the mission of the
Holy Spirit, has been made available to believers in all times and places
through the Church’s sacramental life and in a special way through the
Holy Gospels. We do not access the saving words and deeds of our Lord’s
life by stripping away the layers of interpretation in order to get down to
some supposed historical bedrock. Any attempt to do so gives a priori
assent to the dualism of word and event. Rather, we must allow the four
Gospels to lead us into the mystery of Christ on their own terms.
In recent years small but important steps have been taken, both by
theologians and by the magisterium of the Catholic Church, to retrieve
the biblical and patristic notion of the mysteria vitae Iesu.69 It is vital that
this work be carried forward, for in the last analysis only a robust and
well-articulated understanding of mysterium can strike at the heart of
the dualism of word and event. A mysterium is an event in which God
has acted manifestly in order to reveal himself and to redeem humanity.
It is a moment of divine disclosure, but it always retains an unfathomable plenitude. It is a moment of knowledge, but it is accessible only to
one who loves.
The term mysterium is best understood in correlation with the term
oikonomia, for a mystery is essentially an “economic” event. Because
each mystery participates in the economy, it must be viewed in light
of the economy as a whole, even as it also illuminates the economy as a
whole.70 The ultimate mystery is the “theological” mystery of God’s inner life and his eternal counsel and will, and the divine economy may be
defined as his master plan for “dispensing” a certain participation in this
mystery to us in time and space. It is, in the Pauline phrase, “the economy of the mystery hidden from eternity in God, who created all things”
(Eph 3:9). The centerpiece of this master plan, the definitive economic
69

See, e.g., CCC §512–667; John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae
(2002), nos. 18–25; Christoph Schütz, “The Mysteries of the Life of Jesus as a Prism
of Faith,” Communio 29 (2002): 28–38; and Martin Bieler, “The Mysteries of Jesus’
Public Life: Stages on the Way to the Cross,” Communio 29 (2002): 47–61.
70
The Lord’s baptism in the Jordan is a good example of this. See Gregory Vall, “Lucis
Mysterium: Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism,” Nova et Vetera 8 (2010):
143–60.

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mystery, is the person and event of Jesus Christ. He contains the whole
economy within himself, for he recapitulates creation, humanity, and
Israel, while he “precapitulates,” so to speak, the life of the Church and
the eschaton. The oikonomia is therefore “the economy of the fullness of
times, to sum up all things in Christ” (1:10).
“Gospel” is a literary genre developed to present the mystery of
Christ, and the mysteries of the life of Christ, precisely as economic realities. It is axiomatic in New Testament scholarship to note that the
evangelists relate the story of Jesus to the Old Testament story by way
of allusion and quotation while they simultaneously have the Church in
mind as they narrate the events of Christ’s life. But their real reasons for
doing this can only be grasped from within a theology of mystery and
economy. In each discrete mystery of the life of Jesus the whole person
and saving reality of Christ is truly present, and so the evangelists first
of all narrate the individual events of Christ’s life in light of the Christ
event as a whole. At the same time, because creation, man, and Israel are
summed up in the person of Christ, the evangelists present the Christ
event and the discrete moments within that event as the telos and fullness of the Old Testament economy. Finally, because the Church’s whole
life of grace and glory is already present in Jesus of Nazareth—he who
is our life (Col 3:4)—the evangelists narrate the past words and deeds of
Jesus in light of his glorious presence at the Father’s right hand and his
future coming.
As a convenient example of this manner of narrating, let us consider John 6:1–71. Structurally, this passage consists of four panels.
First, there is the miracle of the loaves and fishes, which John narrates
with considerable detail and characteristically presents as a “sign” performed for the benefit of “the people” (6:1–15). Second, there is the
much shorter narrative of Christ’s walking on the sea, which John presents as a private theophany to the disciples rather than a public sign
(6:16–21). In composing these first two panels, John seems to have relied heavily on a synoptic-like (perhaps presynoptic) source, since his
account agrees with Mark’s in many particulars but does not appear to
be directly dependent on the latter (cf. Mk 6:30–52).71 Third, there is a
71

See Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 663–64, 671–72.

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long dialogue between Jesus and “the people” (also called “the Jews,”
especially when they begin to demonstrate doubt and hostility), which
John presents as a synagogue instruction given at Capernaum (Jn 6:22–
59). Fourth, there is a shorter dialogue between Jesus and his own disciples concerning their response to his teaching (6:60–71). While these
last two panels do contain a few echoes of synoptic tradition, they appear more heavily dependent on distinctively Johannine tradition than
do the first two panels.
John has put all this together with consummate skill. On the one
hand, the chapter moves back and forth between Jesus’s interaction with
the people and his interaction with his disciples, while, on the other hand,
it moves from action to dialogue, in other words, from event to word.
vv 1–15		
vv 16–21
vv 22–59
vv 60–71

Jesus’s action on behalf of the people
Jesus’s action on behalf of the disciples
Jesus’s dialogue with the people
Jesus’s dialogue with the disciples

Because the first and third panels are by far the longest, and both dialogues serve to unfold the significance of the miracle of the loaves and
fishes, the chapter is reducible to a synoptic-like sign followed by a characteristically Johannine discourse, much as the previous chapter is (cf.
5:1–47). In fact, chapter 5 has prepared us for chapter 6 by thematizing
the importance of Jesus’s “works” and “words” (5:36, 47).
What, then, is the significance of the multiplication of loaves and
fishes? In the first place, the miraculous gift of superabundant food, specifically “bread,” signifies Jesus’s teaching itself. A close association between Jesus’s teaching ministry and the miracle of the loaves is already
hinted at in the Marcan account (Mk 6:34), and John develops this link
in dependence on the way bread sometimes symbolizes divine revelation in the Old Testament.72 On one level, then, John 6 is a teaching
about Jesus the teacher. The people call him “Rabbi” (v 25) and even acclaim him the long anticipated Moses-like “Prophet” (v 14), but neither
72

In the Old Testament, bread signifies divine revelation in three modalities: law (Dt
8:3; Neh 9:13–15), prophecy (Am 8:11–12; Is 55:1–3, 10–11), and wisdom (Prv 9:5;
Sir 15:3).

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of these titles rises to a true understanding of the qualitative difference
between the Mosaic law and Jesus’s doctrine.73 During the synagogue
discourse the Lord hints at the true nature of what is taking place in his
teaching ministry by quoting a line from the prophets—“And they will
all be taught by God” (v 45; cf. Is 54:13)—and later he tells his disciples,
“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (Jn 6:63). Finally, Simon Peter confesses that Jesus is “the Holy One of God,” who alone
offers “words of eternal life” (vv 68–69).
Of course, John has already informed his readers that Jesus not only
speaks the word of God but is himself the eternal Word made flesh (1:1–
2, 14). That is why Jesus is less concerned to refer the sign of the loaves
to his teaching as such than he is to identify himself as “the bread of God,
who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (6:33). The
sign of the loaves quite naturally reminds Jesus’s Jewish interlocutors
of the miracle of the manna in the wilderness, but when they mention
this Old Testament event in an effort to get another free meal from Jesus, they unwittingly provide him with an opportunity to compare and
contrast himself to the Mosaic law. John has them quote a line from
Scripture that actually combines elements of several Old Testament passages without reproducing any one of them verbatim: “Bread from heaven he gave them to eat” (v 31).74 At least some of these texts associate
the miracle of the manna with the law of Moses, which was “heavenly
bread,” that is, divine revelation, given to Israel in the wilderness. This
Old Testament symbolism is presupposed when Jesus responds to their
quotation by identifying himself as “the true bread from heaven,” that is,
the definitive self-revelation of God, far superior to the Mosaic law (v
32).75 Starting with this exchange, the bulk of the bread of life dialogue
develops the idea that the sign of the loaves points to the incarnation
of the Logos, with the Old Testament manna/law symbolism as back73

The Torah portrays Moses as enjoying “face to face” intimacy with Yahweh (Ex
33:11; Dt 34:10; cf. Nm 12:8) but also qualifies this claim by noting that, strictly
speaking, neither Moses nor any human being can see God’s face and live (Ex 33:20).
The bread of life discourse locates Jesus’s superiority to Moses and his uniqueness
as God’s definitive self-revelation precisely in the fact that he alone “has seen the
Father” (Jn 6:46; cf. 1:17–18).
74
Cf. Ex 16:4, 15; Ps 78:24, 105:40; Neh 9:15; Ws 16:20.
75
See Keener, Gospel of John, 679–81.

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ground (vv 31–51). Jesus himself is “the bread which has come down
from heaven” (v 41).
The manna/law connection is, however, only one element in a rich
texture of Old Testament echoes in John 6. The basic plot of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, as found in all four Gospels, recalls a similar miracle worked by the prophet Elisha (2 Kgs 4:42–44), and John
strengthens this reminiscence by specifying that the loaves multiplied
by Jesus were made of barley, as was also the case in the Elisha story (Jn
6:9, 13). John’s concise narrative of the walking on the sea, like its synoptic parallels, echoes theophanic imagery from the Old Testament (v
19; cf. Job 9:8; Ps 77:19), and Jesus’s exclamation to the disciples in the
boat—literally, “I am! Fear not!” (Jn 6:20)—recalls similar expressions of
divine reassurance in the oracles of Deutero-Isaiah (Is 41:10; 43:5, 10).
In the book of Sirach, Lady Sophia promises her devotees that the acquisition of wisdom engenders a desire for still more wisdom: “Those who
eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for
more” (Sir 24:21). In the bread of life dialogue, however, the Johannine
Jesus turns this statement on its head in order to indicate that he is the
definitive Wisdom, who gives perfect satisfaction: “The one who comes
to me will hunger no more, and the one who believes in me will never
again thirst” (Jn 6:35).
Though all the action in John 6 takes place in Galilee, the evangelist
makes a special point of noting that these things occurred when “Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near” (v 4).76 This statement hearkens
back to the cleansing of the Jerusalem temple, which according to John’s
chronology took place at a previous Passover at the beginning of Jesus’s
ministry (2:13), while it simultaneously anticipates the later Passover in
Jerusalem that is the setting of Jesus’s passion (11:55; 12:1; 13:1; 18:28,
39; 19:14). This two-way linkage contributes to the sense that the miracle of the loaves is a pivotal event in Jesus’s ministry—the fourth of seven
“signs”—while it relates the events and words of chapter 6 to John’s overarching presentation of Jesus as the “Lamb of God” (1:29, 36; 19:36). The
“flesh” that the Word takes to himself in the incarnation is the very flesh
that he gives as “bread for the life of the world” on the Cross (1:14; 6:51).
76

The availability of barley loaves and the abundance of green grass may also suggest
a setting in early spring (6:9–10; cf. Mk 6:39).

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As Christological sign, therefore, the miracle of the loaves simultaneously points back to the incarnation and ahead to the paschal mystery.
John, then, relates the sign of the loaves to the entire career of the Son
of Man, who “came down from heaven, not to do [his] own will but the
will of the one who sent [him]” (v 38), and who is “ascending to where
he was previously” in order to make available the “life-giving” Spirit (vv
62–63; cf. 7:39).
John 6 relates the sign of the loaves and fishes, not only to the story
of Israel and to the Christ event as a whole but also to the life of the
Church. “The twelve,” including four named members of the group, play
an unusually prominent role in this chapter, which can be read almost
as a kind of treatise on faith and discipleship. Jesus involves Philip and
Andrew in the miracle itself, not because he needs their help but in order to “test” them (vv 5–13). Then, in the synagogue discourse he explains at some length that only those who are drawn by the Father can
come to the Son, and only those who believe in the Son have eternal life
(vv 37–40, 44–47). When “many of his disciples” are scandalized by his
teaching and fall away, Jesus directly challenges the twelve concerning
their commitment to him (vv 60–67). Speaking on behalf of the group,
Peter makes his great confession of faith, but Jesus ominously points out
that even within his specially chosen group of twelve there is “a devil”
who will betray him (vv 68–71).
Moreover, by placing some emphasis on the Lord’s having “given
thanks” (εὐχαριστήσας), John drops an initial hint that the multiplication of loaves and fishes is a type of the Eucharist (vv 11, 23) and thus
prepares us for the explicit teaching on the Eucharist with which the
synagogue discourse culminates (vv 52–58). The connection between
miracle and sacrament lies not so much in the simple fact that both
involve bread as it does in the fact that the former signifies the revelation and “life” that come into the world in the person and event of Jesus
Christ, while the latter is the mode by which that life is available to the
Church in all places and times. The crucial link between the two is the
paschal mystery: Jesus gives his “flesh” as “bread for the life of the world”
upon the Cross, so that his disciples may receive this same flesh in the
Eucharist (vv 51–53).
In the last analysis, “life” is the unifying theme of John 6. In its
mundane dimension the meal of loaves and fishes is merely “the food

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that perishes,” but for those with faith it signifies “the food that remains
for eternal life” (v 27). In the Fourth Gospel “life” designates the true
and definitive revelation of the Father, which is uniquely present in and
through the person and event of the incarnate Son. Revelation is “life”
because it brings one into knowledge of “the only true God and Jesus
Christ, whom [he has] sent,” and this knowledge is the very essence of
eternal life (17:3). As Word made flesh, Jesus is “the bread of God which
comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (6:33). This life or
revelation is present in his teaching, which, because it consists in “words
of eternal life” (v 68), is qualitatively superior to the Mosaic law. The latter had its own sign in the gift of the manna, which the ancestors “ate in
the wilderness and yet died” (v 49). The life or revelation that is present
in Jesus’s words is present also in the deeds, or “signs,” by which he does
“the will” of the one who sent him (vv 38–40), above all in the great sign
of the Son of Man’s being “lifted up” on the Cross (3:14–15; 8:28; 12:32,
34). Finally, it is sacramentally available to those who “eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood” in the Eucharist (6:53).
The gift of life or revelation that is definitive within the historical
economy is by definition also eschatological, and so it should come as
no surprise that eschatology is woven throughout John 6. The particular
accent that John places on the superabundance of loaves and fishes may
harken back to those prophetic oracles that present the eschatological
blessing as a meal of great abundance (vv 11–13; cf. Is 25:6; 55:1–3).77
Jesus himself is this meal, “the bread of life” (6:35, 48). As is well known,
Johannine eschatology combines a realized dimension with a future dimension. The one who believes in Jesus already “has eternal life” (v 47),
and Jesus himself “will raise him up on the last day” (v 40). These two
complementary dimensions are frequently mentioned throughout the
main part of the synagogue discourse, which presents Jesus himself as
the bread of life and faith as the mode of access to that life (vv 32–51),
but the same two dimensions of eschatology are, if anything, even more
emphatically present in the Eucharistic portion of the discourse, and
in the very same terms (vv 53–58).78 “The one who chews my flesh and
77
78

Keener, Gospel of John, 668.
This suggests that faith in the historical Jesus and reception of the Eucharist are
two equally essential, fully integral, and entirely compatible aspects of the disciple’s

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drinks my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day”
(v 54). The Eucharist is, then, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet (v 58).
In sum, the narrative of John 6 presents the multiplication of the
loaves as a “sign” (vv 14, 26), a term that is for all intents and purposes
the Johannine equivalent of mysterium. John illuminates this event’s
place within a complex web of economically interrelated events and
in the process spreads before our eyes almost the whole economy of
redemption: from Mosaic law, to prophecy and wisdom, to Christ
event, to the life of the Church, to “the last day.” The foregoing analysis
is meant to provide an example of how the evangelists bring literary
artistry to the service of the mysteria vitae Iesu, viewed precisely as
“economic” realities.
According to Dei Verbum, “the Church unhesitatingly asserts” the
“historical character” (historicitatem) of the four Gospels. At the same
time, she recognizes quite clearly their literary character, noting that
the evangelists “select[ed] some things from the many which had been
handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reduc[ed] some of them
to a synthesis, explain[ed] some things in view of the situation of their
churches, and preserv[ed] the form of proclamation” (§19). A careful
comparison of the four Gospels leads to the unavoidable conclusion that
the evangelists exercised a considerable degree of literary license. For
example, they could insert a saying of Jesus into an entirely new context,
conflate two or more events into a single account, or even change one
demoniac into two demoniacs!79 To be sure, the evangelists “faithfully
hand on what Jesus Christ . . . really did and taught” (Dei Verbum §19),

adherence to Christ. The particularly solemn negative formulation of v 53—“Amen,
amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you have no life within you”—may well warn against treating the Eucharist as somehow secondary or unessential.
79
E.g., Matthew reworks the logion about sitting with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in
the kingdom of God and inserts it into his account of the healing of the centurion’s
servant in order to sharpen the contrast between gentile faith and Jewish unbelief
(Mt 8:11–12; cf. Lk 7:1–10, 13:28–29). John’s account of the anointing at Bethany
(Jn 12:1–8) combines elements from two rather different anointing stories from the
Synoptic tradition (cf. Mk 14:3–9; Lk 7:36–50). Matthew changes Mark’s one demoniac to two (Mt 8:28–34; cf. Mk 5:1–20), just as he also turns blind Bartimaeus into
two blind men (Mt 20:29–34; cf. Mk 10:46–52) and has Jesus enter Jerusalem on two
donkeys rather than one (Mt 21:1–11; cf. Mk 11:1–11)!

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217

but the Gospels are for all that very far from supplying us with raw video
of Jesus’s ministry.
It is quite understandable that faithful Christians would be put on
the defensive by the shenanigans of the Jesus Seminar, but any attempt
to “defend” the Gospels by means of the implausible harmonization of
surface details is entirely wrongheaded, for such a procedure buys into
the truncated notion of event that is the root of our problem.80 The evangelists employ literary artistry, with its fictive dimension, in order to
draw out and display something of the event’s economic significance.
In order to draw these reflections to a conclusion, I shall attempt
to sum up what is going on in John 6 in terms of the unity of word and
event. In the incarnation the eternal Logos entered the world of space
and time, the inherently λογικός world that he himself had created. In
order to act personally within this world, he assumed a λογικός humanity, which was created ad imaginem Dei, and he made it the apt instrument of his divine personhood. In this concrete humanity, Israelite
“flesh” drawn from a daughter of Israel, he entered the current of Israelite history and human history at a particular point in space and time.
That current carried within it all that made Israel Israel: the cultural
influences of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Canaan, and Greece; the virtues and
vices of patriarchs, prophets, and kings; exodus, statehood, and exile;
the exultant canticle of Hannah and the wordless martyrdom of Naboth;
“many partial and varied” words of Yahweh, intrinsically interconnected
with his marvelous deeds; a liturgical calendar replete with ancient rites
and inspired psalms; and so forth. He walked among a people who were
the product of this powerful current of history and culture, and he took
upon himself their sins. Meanwhile every authentic trajectory of prophecy and piety from Israel’s past found its telos in his ministry.
On the mountain in Galilee Jesus served this people a miraculously
abundant meal, and in the synagogue at Capernaum he taught them the
80

For a brief account of the work of the Jesus Seminar, see H. K. McArthur and R.
F. Berkey, “Jesus, Quest of the Historical,” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation,
2 vols., ed. John H. Hayes (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999), 1:583–84. For a
well-intentioned but wrongheaded attempt to defend the inerrancy of the Gospels
by means of an implausible harmonization of surface details, see Karl Keating, What
Catholics Really Believe—Setting the Record Straight: 52 Answers to Common Misconceptions about the Catholic Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 34–36.

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significance of the sign—words and deeds intrinsically interconnected.
In fact, the barley loaves signify his teaching itself, “words of everlasting
life” that are more truly manna from heaven than was the Mosaic law.
The loaves signify the Logos himself, come down from heaven in the
incarnation. They signify his flesh, which he gives as bread for the life
of the world—historically in his passion, sacramentally in the Eucharist,
eschatologically in the Resurrection on the last day.
Decades after the event, which by that time had already found its
way into three Gospels, John the evangelist, under the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, composed his own unique account, combining pre-Marcan, synoptic-like tradition with the unique perspective of the beloved
disciple. John’s concern was not to represent the event wie es eigentlich
geschehen war but to disclose and make available its vertical dimension
and its economic character, and to this end he exercised literary license.
But John’s narrative itself also has an economic character, for inspired
Scripture plays its own proper role within the economy of redemption.
In it the word-event of the multiplication of loaves and fishes is present
in a new modality. It has become an event-word. The Holy Gospels are
themselves living bread, the Church’s daily bread, because they put us in
touch with the person and event of Jesus Christ.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 219-240

219

Biblical Interpretation as a Prophetic Charism
in the Church
Mary Healy

Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, MI

“THE CRISIS OF FAITH IN CHRISTin modern times began with a
modified way of reading sacred Scripture—seemingly the sole scientific
way.”1 This statement, penned by Joseph Ratzinger two years before he
became pope, explains the decisive importance he attributed to a reform
of biblical interpretation within the task of renewing the Church at large.
A concern for the proper interpretation of Scripture had long been at the
heart of his theological work. When he was elected to the See of Peter in
2005, Ratzinger had already spent more than half a century as a theologian whose work was articulated in distinctively biblical terms and who
often reflected on questions of exegesis, faith and theology.2 His 1988
Erasmus Lecture on “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis” built on his earlier
work diagnosing the problems in modern critical exegesis and pointing
the way toward a more adequate hermeneutic.3 As prefect of the Con1

Benedict XVI, On the Way to Jesus Christ, trans. Michael Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 9.
2
For a good overview of Benedict’s biblical approach to theology, see Scott Hahn,
Covenant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2009).
3
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations
and Approaches of Exegesis Today,” in Richard J. Neuhaus, ed., Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on the Bible and the Church, Encounter
Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 1–23. A new translation of the German
original, which includes some sections missing from the earlier published edition,

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gregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he continued to follow closely
developments in biblical scholarship. As pope, he summoned the world
Synod of Bishops to address the theme “The Word of God in the Life and
Mission of the Church,” following it two years later with his post-synodal
apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini. He declared a year of St. Paul in
2008–9, urging all Catholics to familiarize themselves with the writings
of the apostle. Finally, one of his highest priorities as pope was to complete his three-volume work of biblical Christology, Jesus of Nazareth, a
book that applies the principles articulated in the 1988 address and other
works, modeling a biblical theology that integrates the tools of modern
scholarship with faith in Scripture as a living word from God.
At the heart of Ratzinger’s work on biblical interpretation is his critique of the modern bifurcation of exegesis and faith, and his call for
the recovery of a hermeneutic of faith that does justice to both the divine and human dimensions of Scripture. Such a hermeneutic, as Pope
Benedict pointed out in Verbum Domini, presupposes a reliance on the
Holy Spirit, for “without the efficacious working of the ‘Spirit of Truth’
(Jn 14:16), the words of the Lord cannot be understood.”4 He went on
to support this principle by quoting no less than five authorities from
Christian tradition: Irenaeus, Chrysostom, Jerome, Gregory the Great,
and Richard of St. Victor. The liturgy too witnesses to the necessity of
the Spirit for biblical interpretation, especially in the ancient prayers invoking the Spirit before the proclamation of the readings: “Send your
Paraclete Spirit into our hearts and make us understand the Scriptures
which he has inspired; and grant that I may interpret them worthily, so
that the faithful assembled here may profit thereby.”5
This article takes Ratzinger’s proposal for a hermeneutic of faith as a
starting point for exploring the thesis that biblical interpretation in the
Church is an inherently prophetic activity, that is, an activity that entails
a Spirit-conferred understanding of divine revelation. I will begin by
is given in José Granados et al., eds., Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger
and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, Ressourcement (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2008), 1–29. In this essay I use the earlier translation, the one actually
delivered by Cardinal Ratzinger in New York, except where noted.
4
Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini (2012), 16.
5
Ibid., quoting Sacramentarium Serapionis II (XX): Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum, ed. F. X. Funk, II (Paderborn, 1906), 161.

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offering a brief resume of Ratzinger’s diagnosis and his prescription for
placing biblical exegesis on a more sound footing. I will then consider
his proposal in light of what the New Testament itself teaches regarding
an adequate hermeneutic for the interpretation of Scripture. In the third
part I will turn to Kevin Vanhoozer’s theory of speech acts as a helpful
lens for reflecting on what it is we do when we interpret Scripture. As
we will see, Scripture presents itself as a divine act of communication,
the completion of which requires the illumination of the reader’s mind
by divine grace. In biblical terms, this grace is a participation in the
charism of prophecy. Finally I will conclude by suggesting some theological and pastoral implications of this prophetic understanding of the
work of biblical interpretation.
Ratzinger’s Diagnosis and Prescription
Ratzinger begins his critique by observing that modern biblical criticism
began with a euphoric confidence that, freed from the constraints of tradition and dogma, it could finally deliver a strictly objective knowledge
of Jesus, ancient Israel, and the early Church. In this new approach, underpinned by Enlightenment rationalism, faith was considered an impediment to an objective reading of the text, a bias that had to be methodologically excluded. “Faith itself is not a component of this method,
nor is God a factor to be dealt with in historical events.”6 If God is not
an actor on the stage of history, then the biblical text is a purely human
reality that has to be analyzed within a strictly human horizon. The exegetical task, then, came to be envisioned as that of dissecting texts in
order to excise their “mythological” elements—their claims regarding
divine intervention in human events—and explain these in terms of
purely worldly causality.
But this approach, Ratzinger maintains, did not deliver on its promises. Instead of producing scientifically assured and agreed-upon results,
it led to “the sprouting of ever more numerous hypotheses which finally turn into a jungle of contradictions.”7 Moreover, Scripture was now
viewed as a collection of disparate texts written by a variety of human
authors, which no longer had an overarching unity. It came to be re6
7

Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 2.
Ibid.

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garded as “a cacophony of voices and sources, patched poorly together,
and edited to further political and religious agendas.”8 Not surprisingly, in response to these developments, systematic theologians distanced
themselves from biblical scholarship and sought for “a theology which
was as independent as possible from exegesis.”9 For preachers and pastors, it became more difficult to explain in what sense Scripture has normative authority for Christian faith and life.
Ironically, Ratzinger argues, the zeal of the critical methods to expose the biases and ideologies of biblical authors has been accompanied
by a striking blindness to their own prejudices. Underlying these supposedly neutral methods are often unexamined and faulty philosophical premises. The laser beam of criticism thus needs to be focused on
the critical methods themselves—not to invalidate them but precisely
to free them from their own distortions and retrieve what is genuinely
valuable in them. Foremost among the presuppositions that need to be
reexamined is the notion that faith must be excluded for the sake of objectivity. In fact, as philosophical hermeneutics has long recognized, the
ideal of approaching a text with absolute objectivity is an illusion. Every
interpreter brings a perspective, a set of fundamental presuppositions
that guide interpretation. If one systematically excludes Judeo-Christian
faith—that faith within which the Scriptures were written—one substitutes not neutrality but rather an alien set of presuppositions. As Pope
Benedict states with limpid clarity in Verbum Domini, “The lack of a
hermeneutic of faith with regard to Scripture entails more than a simple
absence; in its place there inevitably enters another hermeneutic, a positivistic and secularized hermeneutic ultimately based on the conviction
that the Divine does not intervene in human history.”10 Thus the exclusion of faith is itself a bias that precludes understanding the biblical text
on its own terms.
Ratzinger’s proposal for a truly adequate hermeneutic, one that
moves beyond the limitations and distortions of historical criticism, is
a new synthesis of rigorous historical research with an openness to “the
8

Joseph Atkinson, “Scripture and the Exegete: Reflections on Ratzinger’s Erasmus
Lecture Twenty Years Later,” Incarnate Word 2 (2009): 609–41; here 614–15.
9
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 3.
10
Verbum Domini, 35b. Emphasis in the original.

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inner dynamism of the word.”11 The exegete must not “approach the text
with a ready-made philosophy” or “exclude a priori that (almighty) God
could speak in human words in the world.”12 Rather he must be “ready
to accept that the truly original may occur in history, something which
cannot be derived from precedents but which opens up out of itself.”13
Only such a hermeneutic of faith is adequate to the claim of biblical
religion that God has entered time and space. Historical events are not
mere ciphers for theological ideas; rather, they are themselves a “word”
from God, as the Hebrew word dabar with its dual meaning of “word”
and “event” suggests.14
From this principle Ratzinger derives two “rules” of biblical interpretation. First, “both word and event have to be considered equally
original.”15 That is, one cannot posit a dichotomy such that the meaning of Scripture lies solely in hypothetically reconstructed raw historical
events, stripped of the theological clothing given them by the biblical
authors—or conversely, that it lies solely in spiritual truths abstracted
from the narration of supposedly unhistorical events. Rather, God’s revelation takes place through words and deeds having an intrinsic unity.
As Dei Verbum expressed it, “The deeds wrought by God in the history
of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by
the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery
contained in them.”16
Second, exegesis must allow for the “organic continuity of meaning
which exists between the Old and New Testaments.”17 All Scripture is a
unity, the unifying principle of which is Christ, the Word made flesh,
and the historical subject to whom this word is addressed, the one people of God. “To read Scripture as a unity therefore means to read it from

11

Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 18.
Ibid., 19.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid., 20. Ratzinger expresses the point with equal clarity in his introduction to Jesus
of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian
Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008), xv.
15
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 20.
16
Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum (1965), 2.
17
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 20. Emphasis in the original.
12

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the Church as its existential locus and to regard the faith of the Church
as its true hermeneutical key.”18
On one point Ratzinger concedes perhaps too much to the modern
view of the exegete’s task. He states that “texts must first of all be traced
back to their historical origins and interpreted in their proper historical
context. But then, in a second exegetical operation, one must look at
them also in light of the total movement of history and in light of history’s central event, Jesus Christ.”19 This two-step procedure implies, if unintentionally, that faith becomes hermeneutically relevant only after the
crucial exegetical judgments have been made. That is, before one moves
to a theological interpretation, questions regarding the background and
meaning of the text are first asked and answered within a purely historical framework. But as Ratzinger himself already noted, in the interpretation of history there can be no “pure objectivity.”20 A purely secular
investigation of historical origins will lead to purely secular results. It is
as though a psychologist were to evaluate Jesus’s claims and actions from
a purely secular clinical perspective, which by definition considers human causality alone, and only afterward to consider the question of his
divinity. In this case one risks having already arrived at the conclusion of
some of Jesus’s contemporaries: “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do
we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come
down from heaven’?” (Jn 6:42); or even, “He is out of his mind” (Mk
3:21; cf. Jn 10:20). As Al Wolters has compellingly demonstrated, the
interpreter’s stance of faith, or lack thereof, inevitably influences every
step of exegesis, even such apparently neutral and technical operations
as textual criticism and lexicography.21 A hermeneutic of faith, then, is
one that rigorously investigates the historical origins of the text, but as
open from the beginning to the transcendent mystery contained in the
word. In Verbum Domini, written twenty-two years after the Erasmus
Lecture, the pope expressed this more nuanced view: “To distinguish
18

Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” in Opening Up the Scriptures, 6. This is
in one of the sections missing from the original English edition of his lecture.
19
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 20.
20
Ibid., 7.
21
Wolters, “Confessional Criticism and the Night Visions of Zechariah,” in Renewing
Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2000), 90–117.

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two levels of approach to the Bible does not in any way mean to separate
or oppose them, nor simply to juxtapose them. They exist only in reciprocity. Unfortunately, a sterile separation sometimes creates a barrier
between exegesis and theology, and this ‘occurs even at the highest academic levels.’”22
The Biblical Hermeneutic of the New Testament
Ratzinger’s thesis concerning the unity of word and deed, old covenant
and new, is of course rooted in Scripture itself. The effort to develop
an authentically Christian hermeneutic must therefore include a study
of what the New Testament teaches and models concerning biblical interpretation—part of theology’s perpetual task of ressourcement. What
implicit hermeneutical principles underlie the New Testament’s assertions regarding the interpretation of Scripture? How can they be properly transposed into today’s postmodern critical context and integrated
into an adequate hermeneutic?
A prominent theme in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospels, is precisely that of the misunderstanding of Scripture. In the Synoptics, Jesus repeatedly reproaches the scribes and Pharisees—the experts in biblical interpretation—with the rhetorical question, “Have you
not read . . . ?”
“Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and
those who were with him . . . ?” (Mt 12:3)
“Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning
made them male and female . . . ?” (Mt 19:4)
“Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and nurslings
you have brought perfect praise’?” (Mt 21:16)

22

Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini 35.

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“Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The very stone which
the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was
the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” (Mt 21:42)23
Of course the scribes and Pharisees have read and quite likely memorized all these texts, yet are apparently blind to their true meaning as
it comes to light through Jesus’s own words and deeds. Likewise, Jesus
sharply admonishes the Sadducees,
“Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mk 12:24)
Their rejection of the doctrine of the resurrection demonstrates their
failure to penetrate the meaning of God’s self-identification in Scripture
as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob: “he is not the God of the
dead, but of the living” (Mk 12:27).
In each of these instances, Jesus’s reprimand suggests that the problem is not merely methodological. It is not that they have failed to apply
the proper exegetical techniques to the biblical text, but that their hearts
are closed to a revelation of its true meaning. The very people entrusted
with authority to interpret Israel’s Scriptures have, despite their erudition, completely missed the true significance of the holy texts (cf. Acts
13:27). Jesus’s admonitions serve as a perennial warning to biblical exegetes. Having analyzed the text from every methodological angle, could
we merit the reproof, “Have you never read . . . ?” Pope Benedict alluded
to this danger in his opening address for the 2008 Synod:
St Augustine recalls the scribes and Pharisees who were consulted by Herod when the Magi arrived. Herod wants to know
where the Savior of the world would be born. They know it, they
give the correct answer: in Bethlehem. They are great specialists
who know everything. However they do not see reality, they do
not know the Savior. St Augustine says: they are signs on the
road for others, but they themselves do not move. This is a great
danger as well in our reading of Scripture: we stop at the human
23

Cf. Mt 9:13; 12:5, 7; 22:31; Mk 2:25; 12:10, 26; Lk 6:3.

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words . . . and we do not discover the present in the past, the
Holy Spirit who speaks to us today in the words from the past.24
A similar motif runs through the Gospel of John. Jesus admonishes the
Jewish authorities: “You search the scriptures, because you think that in
them you have eternal life; but it is they that bear witness to me . . . If you
believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you
do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (Jn 5:39,
46–47). He thereby indicts his opponents on their own grounds: They
appeal to the writings of Moses to justify their rejection of Jesus (cf. Jn
6:30–31; 9:29), failing to recognize that those very writings bear witness
to him (cf. Jn 7:42; 20:9).
But it is not only Jesus’s adversaries who are biblically inept. His
disciples too are continually confronted with their own inability to grasp
the meaning of the Scriptures. Jesus repeatedly affirms that his death
and Resurrection will take place in fulfillment of biblical prophecy (Mt
26:31, 54, 56; Mk 14:49). Yet each time he predicts his passion, his words
meet with incomprehension (Mk 8:31–32; 9:10, 32). Luke reports that
the disciples “did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from
them, that they should not perceive it” (Lk 9:45; cf. 18:34). Like the
scroll sealed with seven seals in the book of Revelation, the Scriptures
are locked, and no one possesses the hermeneutical key that opens up
their meaning.
The hermeneutical key is, of course, the passion and Resurrection of
the Lamb. The incomprehension of the disciples is a pre-Paschal failing
that the evangelists portray retrospectively in the light of Easter faith.
The Fourth Gospel often alludes to this post-Paschal enlightenment. In
the episode of the cleansing of the temple, the disciples are puzzled by
Jesus’s claim that he will raise up “this temple” in three days. But after
his Resurrection, they “remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken” (Jn 2:22).
The meaning of his entry into Jerusalem seated on a young donkey is
likewise opaque: “His disciples did not understand this at first; but when
Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that this had been written
of him and had been done to him” (Jn 12:16). Until they encounter the
24

Benedict XVI, opening address at the 2008 World Synod of Bishops.

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risen Lord, even the empty tomb and folded burial cloths are an enigma: Peter and John are perplexed because “as yet they did not know the
scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (Jn 20:9).
It is Luke who depicts in most detail the passage from ignorance
to enlightenment. In the story of the journey to Emmaus, the risen Jesus rebukes the two disconsolate disciples, “O foolish men, and slow of
heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary
that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then
“beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in
all the scriptures the things concerning himself ” (Lk 24:25–27). Whereas previously the Scriptures were an insoluble enigma, now they appear
as a luminous, unified whole bearing witness to a single plan of salvation
culminating in Christ’s Paschal mystery. The enlightenment of the two
is repeated for the eleven when the risen Lord “opened their minds to
understand the scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the
Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead’” (Lk 24:45–
46). Only such a divine work of interior illumination enables them to
grasp the inner unity of salvation history, centered on Christ.
Jesus’s Resurrection enables his followers to perceive that Scripture
has been fulfilled in him. However, it is only at Pentecost that the apostles themselves become competent and authoritative interpreters of the
Scriptures. Pentecost, as Luke portrays it, is the Spirit’s decisive empowerment of the Church to understand and proclaim the Word that God
has spoken in Christ. Immediately after the descent of the Spirit in Acts
2, Peter delivers his Pentecost speech, an authoritative interpretation of
both the Pentecost event itself and Jesus’s Paschal mystery. His entire
speech is an act of biblical interpretation, centered first on a passage
from the prophet Joel and then on Psalm 16. It is worth examining Peter’s speech in some detail to uncover his hermeneutic.
Peter begins by quoting Joel, making minor alterations to the text to
bring out his own particular emphases:
This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “And in the last
days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon
all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and
your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream
dreams; yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in

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those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”
(Acts 2:16–18)
Whereas Joel used the expression “afterwards” (Jl 2:28), Peter amends it
to “in the last days,” indicating that the outpouring of the Spirit signals
the arrival of the end times, God’s decisive intervention in history to
bring his plan to its culmination. What just occurred, Peter claims, is the
fulfillment of God’s promises to pour out his Spirit, no longer selectively
on a few individuals with special tasks such as kings, prophets, and liturgical artisans, but indiscriminately on all God’s people: men and women, young and old, slave and free. The gift of the Spirit is closely linked
with prophecy, the ability to speak God’s word under the inspiration of
the Spirit. The first effect of the universal outpouring of the Spirit is a
universal dissemination of the prophetic charism.
In the background of the Joel passage is an earlier Old Testament
episode, the appointment of seventy elders in Numbers 11. In that narrative, God “took some of the spirit that was upon [Moses]” and placed it
on the seventy who would share his burden of leadership. Numbers tells
us that immediate effect of this impartation was that the elders “prophesied, but they did so no more” (Nm 11:25), suggesting some kind of
charismatic phenomena that were clearly observable but short-lived.25
When two men who remained in the camp also exhibited the same prophetic behavior, Joshua objected to Moses that they had not been with
the registered group. The punch line of the story is Moses’s exclamation
in reply: “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people
were prophets, that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!” (Nm
11:29). Later in Israel’s history, the prophet Joel alludes to this implicit
prayer to affirm that in the messianic age God will indeed bestow on the
whole people his Spirit, with the consequent gift of prophecy. Peter in
turn quotes the Joel text in Acts 2 to declare that Moses’s yearning and
God’s promise through Joel have now been superabundantly fulfilled.
The eschatological gift of the Spirit, far from rendering prophecy obsolete, has made the Church a community of prophets. Peter further
highlights this point by appending to the quotation a phrase not pres25

For the association of prophecy with observable charismatic phenomena, see also 1
Sm 10:1–16; 19:20–24.

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ent in Joel, “and they shall prophesy” (2:18). Through the rest of the
Acts narrative, Luke depicts this declaration being fulfilled to the letter
as members of the Church, men and women alike, receive prophetic
words, visions and dreams, and perform prophetic signs and wonders
in Jesus’s name.26
After interpreting the Pentecost event as a fulfillment of passages in
Joel and Numbers, Peter proceeds to a biblical explanation of the mission of Jesus. That it is Peter who does so—Peter who had previously so
misconstrued biblical prophecy that he vigorously opposed Jesus’s intent
to go through with his passion (cf. Mt 16:22; Mk 8:32)—highlights the
hermeneutical change wrought by the Spirit. Peter is now able to explain
with boldness (parrēsia; cf. Acts 2:29) and conviction that the scandal of
a crucified Messiah is precisely the plan of God as foretold in the Scriptures. He does so by interpreting Psalm 16, a psalm of David, typologically in reference to Christ.
The psalmist, Peter observes, expresses confident trust that God will
save him from death: “For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor
let your Holy One see corruption” (Acts 2:27). But as Peter points out
to his listeners, the fact that David’s tomb “is with us to this day”—in
sharp contrast to Jesus’s empty tomb (Lk 24:1–8)—means that this prophetic hope could not have referred to David himself. Rather, the psalm
looks forward prophetically to Jesus the messianic descendant of David,
speaking of his Resurrection from the dead and exaltation at God’s right
hand. Peter concludes his speech by coming full circle, declaring that it
is Christ’s glorification that has made the eschatological gift of the Spirit
available to all: “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and
having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has
poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2:33). It is precisely the
gift of the Holy Spirit that has enabled Peter to understand the deeper
meaning of Psalm 16, hidden under the letter until Christ’s Resurrection
from the dead.
Peter’s speech, as Luke portrays it, is the inauguration of the church’s
mission to authoritatively interpret and proclaim the word of God. As
26

Cf. “wonders” and “signs” in Acts 2:19. These two terms are used in the Pentateuch
to describe the miraculous deeds of Moses (Dt 34:11) and were traditionally associated with the charism of prophecy.

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apostolic teaching, Peter’s speech, like the New Testament as a whole,
has an original and definitive quality that does not belong to subsequent
teaching. Because God has spoken his final word in Christ, no new revelation is to be expected after the apostolic age. But it does not follow
that the prophetic charism is no longer needed for the interpretation of
revelation. Indeed, such a claim would be contrary to the whole thrust
of Acts 2, which emphasizes that the prophetic gift of the Spirit—limited
and temporary in the seventy elders of Israel, universal and permanent
in the Christian community—alone gives access to the mystery of God’s
plan, foretold in Scripture and definitively fulfilled in Christ.
The letters of Paul assert in a different way but with equal insistence
the necessity of the Spirit for biblical interpretation. Two texts are particularly noteworthy in this regard. In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul alludes to a
text of Isaiah in describing the role of the Spirit, not only in regard to
biblical interpretation but in regard to any understanding of the mystery
of Christ. “None of the rulers of this age understood this [God’s hidden
wisdom]; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the
heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,’
God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Cor 2:8–10, paraphrasing
Is 64:4). The realities never before seen, heard or conceived refer not in
the first instance to future heavenly glory, but to the Paschal mystery
itself: the crucifixion of the Lord of glory (2:8). This mystery exceeds the
natural capacities of the human mind and is therefore accessible only
through the Spirit, “For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths
of God” (2:10; cf. Eph 3:18–19). The Spirit is the light that enables a
believer to comprehend the inmost divine mystery, the unfathomable
love revealed and given in the kenosis of God’s Son. Only by the Spirit
of God are we able to “understand the gifts freely given us by God” (1
Cor 2:12). Paul goes on to declare that not only the understanding but
also the transmission of divine revelation is a Spirit-inspired activity:
“we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by
the Spirit” (1 Cor 2:13).27
27

The same principle is expressed in 2 Peter, applied specifically to biblical interpretation: “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no
prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke
from God” (2 Pt 1:20–21).

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In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul takes up the problem of the failure of many
Jews to recognize any reference to Christ in the old covenant. Citing
the passage in Exodus where Moses’s face became radiant from being
in the presence of the Lord (Ex 34:27–35), Paul writes that the Israelites’
“minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant,
that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken
away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds;
but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed” (2 Cor 3:14–16).
With the image of a veil Paul suggests a spiritual blindness, resulting
from hardness of heart, that blocks access to the dazzling light of divine
revelation.28 The remedy for such blindness is to “turn to the Lord,” as
Moses removed his veil whenever he entered the presence of the Lord
(Ex 34:34). The notion of “turning” implies a conversion of heart. Paul
continues: “Now the Lord [i.e., the Lord to whom we turn] is the Spirit,
and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, gazing
with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into
the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2
Cor 3:17–18). Turning to the Lord is, in effect, to receive the Holy Spirit, who opens up the Scriptures that were previously veiled. The Spirit
does so, paradoxically, not by “unveiling” the Scriptures but by “unveiling” the face of the believer, bringing about an inner transformation
that allows one to gaze on the Lord’s glory. Thus there is an inseparable
connection between the Spirit’s work in the interpretation of Scripture
and in the personal transformation of the interpreter. As Henri de Lubac
put it, an adequate hermeneutic must “take into account the connection
between spiritual understanding and the personal conversion and life
of the Christian . . . the relationship between ‘New Testament’ and ‘New
Man,’ between newness of understanding and newness of spirit.”29
The New Testament’s insistence on the role of the Spirit in biblical interpretation became a recognized principle in Christian tradition.
This work of the Spirit was often described, either explicitly or implicitly, as a prophetic grace in continuity with the prophetic grace of bib28

The “hardened minds” of 2 Cor 3:14 is an allusion to the “hearts of stone” oracle
in Ez 26:26. See Thomas Stegman, Second Corinthians, Catholic Commentary on
Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 90.
29
De Lubac, Scripture in the Tradition, trans. Luke O’Neill (New York: Crossroad,
2000), 144.

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lical inspiration. Commenting on Ezekiel’s warning to false prophets,
“Woe to those foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have
seen nothing” (Ez 13:3), Origen writes, “Just as the person who received
the order to say these things needed the Holy Spirit, so the person who
wants to explain what is secretly signified therein needs the same Spirit.”30 He goes on to assert that what was true of the words of the Israelite
prophets is equally true of the words of Christ and the apostles. Gregory
the Great likewise comments, “Just as the Spirit of life touches the mind
of the prophet, he also touches the mind of the reader.”31
Thomas Aquinas explicitly described the interpretation of Scripture
as a grace belonging to the order of prophecy: “In the New Testament
those who explain the prophetic sayings are also called prophets, because Sacred Scripture is interpreted in the same Spirit in which it is
composed. And so we read in Sirach 24:33, ‘I will pour out teaching like
prophecy.’”32 Dei Verbum quotes Jerome in reaffirming this ancient principle, which had also been taken up by William of St. Thierry and many
others: “holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the
same Spirit by whom it was written.”33
Scripture as an Illocutionary Act
Even where biblical scholarship formally acknowledges the principle of
interpretation “in the Spirit,” it does not always succeed in carrying it
out in practice or in articulating a hermeneutic that adequately accounts
for it. Recent developments in the philosophy of language, however, can
30

Origen, Homilies on the Book of Ezekiel 2.2; translation adapted from Ignace de la
Potterie, “Interpretation of Holy Scripture in the Spirit in Which It Was Written,” in
Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, vol. 1, ed. René Latourelle (New York: Paulist, 1988), 220–66.
31
Gregory, Homilies on the Book of Ezekiel VII.11–12, quoted in Mariano Magrassi,
Praying the Bible: An Introduction to Lectio Divina, trans. Edward Hagman (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 28.
32
Aquinas, Commentary on Romans 12.8 (Marietti edition § 978), my translation. See
Francis Martin, Sacred Scripture: The Disclosure of the Word (Naples, FL: Sapientia,
2006), 7–8.
33
Dei Verbum 12, quoting Jerome, Commentary on Galatians 5.19–20. Cf. William of
St. Thierry, Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei I.10.31, quoted in Magrassi, Praying the
Bible, 29. For details on the patristic background of this principle, see de la Potterie,
“Interpretation of Holy Scripture.”

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help provide a theological grounding for this principle. In particular,
Kevin Vanhoozer’s theory of communicative action can help us appreciate the full implications of the Christian understanding of Scripture
as God’s word.34 Vanhoozer, a systematic theologian in the Reform tradition, has developed a hermeneutical proposal that draws from J. L.
Austin’s speech-act theory and applies it to biblical texts. As Vanhoozer
notes, speech act theory emphasizes that language does more than simply refer to states of affairs. All discourse is, in fact, intentional action;
that is, it is action that aims at accomplishing something.35 Every statement is in some sense a “mission statement,” in which a speaker intends
to communicate something to someone. Intentionality is an irreducible
aspect not only of speech but of human action in general. It is what
makes a human act one thing rather than another.36 A slap on the back,
for example, may be a greeting, a congratulatory gesture, an attempt to
save someone from choking, or an aggressive act, depending on the intent with which it was performed.37 It follows that understanding an action requires recognizing the agent’s intention. So too in speech acts, the
speaker’s intention is what constitutes the act as what it is.38 Vanhoozer
gives the example of a speaker who says, “Coffee would keep me awake.”
The language and syntax of this sentence are perfectly clear; there is
no problem decoding the meaning of the words. But what the sentence
communicates depends entirely on the speaker’s intention in the circumstances in which it is spoken. In one possible scenario, the speaker
who has been offered coffee is struggling to stay awake while studying
for an exam late at night. In this case, the meaning of “Coffee would
keep me awake” is “yes.” In another scenario, the speaker has finished
studying and would like to retire soon in order to be fresh for the exam

34

Here I am drawing from Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “From Speech Acts to Scripture Acts:
The Covenant of Discourse and the Discourse of Covenant,” in After Pentecost: Language and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al. (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2001), 1–49. This article is a resume of Vanhoozer’s full-scale work Is
There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary
Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998; rev. ed. 2009).
35
Vanhoozer, “From Speech Acts to Scripture Acts,” 11.
36
Ibid., 12.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid., 13.

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the following morning; in that case, the meaning is “no.”39
Just as the concept of intention enables us to view human actions as
more than mere bodily movements, so it enables us to view words and
texts as more than mere sound waves and marks on paper. Understanding a text requires consideration of the author’s intention, that factor that
accounts for the meaning of the communicative act. Conversely, where an
author’s intention is ignored, we lose the act itself. A communicative act
such as a wink, for example, is reduced to the blink, a meaningless bodily
action. The result is what speech-act theorists call a “thin description.” A
thin description is one that relies on lower-level concepts like “rapid contraction of the eyelid” rather than higher-level intentional categories like
“flirting.”40 Applied to biblical interpretation, a thin description is one
that may include philological, grammatical, textual, historical, sociocultural, and political explanations of the text, but fails to account fully for
the text as a communicative act. A description is sufficiently thick, on the
other hand, when it allows us to appreciate everything an author intends
to communicate. It is important to clarify a possible misunderstanding,
however. Intention is not to be identified with an author’s hidden psychological agenda; rather, it is what the author is actually doing in the text
itself. The search for authorial intention is not a futile exercise in amateur
psychology but precisely the means of allowing the author’s communicative act to be completed, resulting in understanding.
Vanhoozer, again relying on Austin, offers a further helpful distinction. Speech acts have three distinct dimensions. First, there is simply
the content of an utterance, the locution. The second and most important dimension is the speaker’s intention in speaking, the illocution.
Third is what we might call the byproduct of the speech act or the effect
it produces, the perlocution.41 Grasping the distinction between these
latter two is crucial to properly interpreting communicative acts. Vanhoozer offers the example of the utterance “Jesus is Lord.”42 There are
numerous ways to report on what a speaker did in uttering this statement. For example, one might say the speaker (1) emitted sound waves;
39

Ibid., 9.
Ibid., 13.
41
Ibid., 15.
42
This example and its categorization are adapted from that of Vanhoozer in ibid., 15.
40

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(2) spoke with a Boston accent; (3) said “Jesus is Lord.” All three of these
descriptions remain at the locutionary level; they fail to describe the
communicative intent of the speaker. Further, one might say the speaker
(4) confessed that Jesus is Lord; (5) told her neighbor that Jesus is Lord;
(6) explained how her cancer had suddenly gone into remission. These
descriptions, in contrast to the first three, are illocutionary and truly arrive at the communicative intent of the utterance. Finally, one might say
the speaker (7) made me feel unspiritual by comparison; (8) provoked
a Roman persecution; or (9) led to the conversion of her listener. These
last three describe the perlocution or byproducts of the communicative
act. A speech act may produce perlocutionary effects, but it does not
consist in such effects. Even if the speaker intends an effect such as the
conversion of his hearer, such an effect is still a perlocution. It is what
the speaker does by the speech not what he does in the speech.
How does this analysis of speech acts impinge on biblical interpretation? As Vanhoozer observes, to take the divine authorship of Scripture
seriously is to recognize the canon of Scripture as a single complex communicative act on the part of God.43 Interpretation is sufficiently thick
when it allows us to appreciate an author’s illocutions, that is, what the
author is doing in the text. But some of these illocutions only come to
light on the level of the literary whole—the whole book or, in this case,
the whole canon.
For example, on one level the detailed account of the construction
and furnishing of the wilderness tabernacle in Exodus 35–40 is meant to
describe for the reader the physical arrangements for Israel’s sacrificial
liturgy. But unless we read these chapters in light of the whole Pentateuch, and particularly the creation account in Genesis 1, we will fail to
recognize the full communicative intent of the author or final redactor:
namely, to portray the tabernacle as a microcosm of the created universe and a partial restoration of the original communion between God
and man in Eden that had been ruptured by sin.44 But this in turn is
43
44

Ibid., 3.
For recent studies of this symbolism, see G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s
Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical
Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), 29–80; Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 111–44; and
Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1987), 111–84.

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not a sufficiently thick description unless we also read the text in light
of the entire canon and arrive at the communicative intent of not only
the human author/redactor but also the divine author. In this case the
intention, as revealed in the New Testament and especially the letter to
the Hebrews, is to portray the earthly tabernacle as a “type” or figure
pointing to the true, heavenly sanctuary into which Christ entered as
high priest on our behalf (Heb 8:5; 9:11–14), and thus to reveal the entire sacrificial system of Israel as a foreshadowing of the infinitely more
efficacious sacrifice of Christ. This is a meaning that goes beyond the
intention of the human author(s) of Exodus, but it is not simply a perlocution, an effect the text produces on us when we read it as Christians.
Rather, it is a part of the overarching communicative intent—the illocution—of God himself as author.
Returning to the theme of the prophetic gift of the Spirit: what role
does the Spirit play in God’s communicative act? As Vanhoozer notes,
human authors do their best to ensure that readers correctly perceive
their illocutionary intentions, but they cannot guarantee it. Authors are
often misunderstood. But God “has no such limits: the Spirit is the ‘lord
of the hearing’ . . . the energy that enables the Word to complete its
mission.”45 Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “When the Spirit of truth
comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his
own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak . . . He will take what
is mine and declare it to you” (Jn 16:13). The Spirit completes the communicative act that is all divine revelation by enabling it to be received
and understood according to the intent of the Author. Moreover the
Spirit “renders the word effective by achieving its perlocutionary effects,”46 that is, its transformative effects in the life of believers. But he
does so precisely in and through Scripture’s illocutions, its revelation of
God and his plan. The Spirit speaks not an additional word but “what
belongs to Jesus.” Perlocutions proceed from locutions and illocutions,
not vice versa, as the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.47
This understanding of divine revelation as a communicative act,
rendered efficacious by the Spirit, also has a negative corollary. As Van45

Ibid., 38.
Ibid., 43.
47
Ibid.
46

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hoozer points out, the rules of human discourse presuppose a kind of
covenant—a bond between speaker and hearer such that we agree to
be truthful communicators on the one hand and active listeners on the
other.48 Interpreters violate this covenant whenever we ascribe intentions to authors where there is no evidence of that intention, or when
we purvey a reductionist interpretation—a thin description—that fails
to adequately attend to what an author was in fact doing. To do so is to
“bear false witness”—to do a kind of interpretive violence to the text. To
put it differently, the very existence of prophecy entails the possibility
of false prophecy, a distortion of the word of God that is a perennial
danger both in Israel and the Church. Defective biblical interpretation
is, in fact, a form of false prophecy that can be profoundly damaging to
the life of the Church.
It is significant that Ratzinger began his 1988 lecture with a humorous yet provocative anecdote, told by the Russian philosopher
Vladimir Solovyov, about the Antichrist as a biblical scholar, a famous
exegete who received his doctorate at Tübingen. Ratzinger thereby alluded to the spiritual struggle and the weighty spiritual consequences
involved in biblical interpretation.49 Interestingly, Pope Benedict returned to the image of the Antichrist twenty years later in his book
Jesus of Nazareth, where he bluntly stated, “The fact is that Scriptural exegesis can become a tool of the Anti-Christ.”50 He notes that the
Gospel accounts of Jesus’s temptations portray Satan as a theologian
and Bible expert who can quote Scripture accurately. Biblical erudition and mastery of exegetical technique are no guarantee of truth. As
the pope affirmed, to acknowledge this “is not a rejection of scholarly
biblical interpretation as such, but an eminently salutary and necessary warning against its possible aberrations.”51
Conclusion
Joseph Ratzinger’s critique of modern biblical interpretation is at the
same time a signpost for the way forward. The rediscovery of God’s
48

Ibid., 45.
I owe this observation to Atkinson, “Scripture and the Exegete,” 612.
50
Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 35.
51
Ibid.
49

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word as “a wellspring of constant renewal” in the life of the Church,52
which he so ardently promoted as theologian and pope, will come about
not by rejecting the methods and findings of modern scholarship but by
integrating them into a hermeneutic of faith. Only such a hermeneutic
allows Scripture to be read as it was written, as a living, divine act of
communication whose center and hermeneutical key is the mystery of
Christ. As the New Testament itself teaches, reading Scripture in this
way is possible only through the prophetic gift of the Holy Spirit, the
divine breath that animates the word and makes it ever “living and effective” (Heb 4:12). As St. Ambrose explains, Scripture is theopneustos
(2 Tim 3:16) not only because it is “inspired by God” but because it “respires God,” it breathes God.53 It is the Spirit who opens up the depths
hidden in the word. The work of biblical interpretation is, then, the exercise of a prophetic charism in the Church.
This understanding of the exegete’s task has two implications for
the life of the Church that, among the many that could be mentioned,
are worth highlighting. First, interpreting Scripture prophetically—in
conscious and prayerful dependence on the Spirit’s inspiration—will
restore a sense of the unity of the canon. As mentioned above, contemporary biblical scholarship tends to regard the books of the Bible as a
cacophony of diverse voices. Exegetes are generally content to let apparent discrepancies and even contradictions stand as simply indicating
different theologies among the various biblical authors, or even among
layers of redaction within a single work. This fragmented approach in
turn undermines people’s confidence that Scripture reliably communicates truth about God and his will for our lives. Instead, taking seriously the divine authorship entails recognizing all Scripture as a single
communicative act on God’s part, the unity of which is revealed by the
Spirit within the living tradition of the Church. A deeper reliance on
the Spirit’s prophetic guidance could lead to a renewed effort of scholars to show how the different perspectives among the biblical authors
are complementary rather than contradictory. It could also contribute
to the recovery of what tradition calls the “spiritual sense,” enabling us
52
53

Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini 1.
Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 3.112, quoted in Raniero Cantalamessa, The Mystery of
God’s Word, trans. Alan Neame (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994), 80.

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to recognize God’s gifts in the old covenant as wonderful in their own
right and yet also having a yet-more-marvelous hidden significance that
points to Christ.
Second, the state of biblical scholarship in the Church has a direct
bearing on the quality of preaching, another area of great concern for
both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis.54 It is observed with increasing
frequency that Catholic preaching today is too often stale, banal, and biblically impoverished. Such deficiencies are directly attributable, at least in
part, to a reductive understanding of the exegetical task. For at least two
generations Catholic ministers of the word have been trained in methods
of interpretation that fail to rely on the Spirit’s illumination and thus often fail to arrive at Scripture’s illocutionary intent. Biblical interpretation,
and thus preaching, must once again be recognized as a prophetic task
dependent on the anointing of the Spirit. Where preaching is prophetic,
there is divine power at work to awaken faith in the hearers, as Paul often
asserts,55 and to cause their hearts to burn within them, as happened to
the disciples on the road to Emmaus. If God’s people sometimes appear
spiritually moribund, those who interpret Scripture prophetically will
put skin and flesh on those dry bones and make them come alive with
N&V
the life-giving breath of Spirit (Ez 37:4–13).

54
55

See Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini 59–60; Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 135–59.
Cf. Rom 1:16; 10:17; 1 Cor 1:18; 2:4; Col 1:6; 1 Thes 1:5; 2:13.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 241-251

241

Tradition and the Individual Exegete
Jeremy Holmes

Wyoming Catholic College
Lander, WY

IN HIS FAMOUS ERASMUS LECTURE,Joseph Ratzinger oppos-

es an understanding of biblical studies that he attributes largely to the
influence of Immanuel Kant.1 This view sees tradition as antithetical to
reason, which must proceed on objective lines without the influence of
faith or any other personal commitment. Kant lays out his position with
unusual force in his essay “What Is Enlightenment?”: “Enlightenment is
man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the
inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.”2
The individual must think on his own, because tradition and the individual’s reason are absolutely opposed; any submission to tradition or
authority is contrary to reason and to the dignity of the human person.
But in the conclusion of his lecture, Ratzinger urges that reason and
faith are not contrary to one another:
the exegete must recognize that he does not stand on neutral
ground above or outside history and the Church. Such a sup1

See Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), God’s Word: Scripture—Tradition—Office, ed. Peter Hünermann and Thomas Söding, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2008), 112: “The real philosophical presupposition of the whole system seems to me to lie in the change in philosophy brought about by Kant.”
2
This famous essay is well worth reading to grasp how Kant’s “enlightenment” requires a kind of individualism. There are many translations on the Internet; the version I have cited is available at http://theliterarylink.com/kant.html.

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posed direct apprehension of the purely historical can only lead
to mistaken conclusions. . . . [Exegesis] must recognize . . . faith
as a hermeneutic key, as a locus of understanding that does not
do dogmatic violence to the Bible, but offers the only chance we
have of allowing it to be itself.3
At the same time, Ratzinger concedes the need for objectivity in exegesis. For example, because the Fathers and the medievals did not habitually refer texts to their historical setting, he argues, their interpretation
“easily fell into arbitrariness.”4 So on the one hand, the exegete must
avoid false claims to objectivity; on the other hand, he must not give way
to arbitrariness; between these extremes stands the individual exegete in
the stream of Tradition.
In what follows, I want to explore this problem of how the individual exegete relates to tradition in dialogue with Ratzinger’s writings.
There would not be enough space even to repeat all the marvelous
things Ratzinger says toward a solution of the difficulty, much less to
solve the problem definitively, so I will focus on offering two basic intuitions or mental orientations, one regarding Tradition and the other
regarding Scripture.
Tradition
The first basic mental orientation I would like to offer is what Ratzinger
argues in his essay, “The Anthropological Foundation of the Concept
of Tradition,” namely, that “tradition . . . is constitutive of a humanity
that is truly human, of the humanitas hominis.”5 That is to say, tradition
is not opposed to human dignity, but is called for by it. The reason man
is by nature tradition dependent is that “it is not good that man should
be alone” (Gn 2:18): God made the human race to live in families, and
families to live in societies. For man and woman to be together is good;
for parents and children to be together is good; for man to live in society
3

Ratzinger, God’s Word, 125–26.
Ibid., 121.
5
Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental
Theology, trans. Sr. Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987),
85–100, at 87.
4

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is good. Just as God created hunger and thirst so we would pursue the
goods of food and drink, so he has made man and woman each lacking,
and parents and children each needy in their own way, and the different
members of society dependent on one another, precisely to drive them
to pursue their good. And just as man’s bodily needs for food, clothing,
and shelter cannot be conveniently met without the good of life together, so man’s more important needs—the needs of the mind—cannot be
met without intellectual society. It is good for man as man to have tradition, that collective intellectual wealth of a society that holds it together
and gives it identity and continuity.
The faculty of speech encapsulates this close relation between reason and tradition. Human beings who never learn to speak are never
capable of reasoning, either; speech brings with it the inner life of the
mind. And yet speech is learned for the sake of communication and has
as its proper goal the creation of society. So the inner life of the individual emerges on the way, so to speak, to society; the two are inherently
related. Moreover, the language one learns is a patrimony of the ages,
shaped by great authors of ages past and by countless unknown men and
women who left their way of perceiving the world—their inner mental
life—embodied in the speech they passed on to their children.
The Kantian view sees reason and tradition as inherently opposed, so
that complete intellectual independence is man’s true good while dependence on tradition is a necessary evil forced on him by the brevity of life.
But the biblical view of man says just the opposite: to be in a tradition is
good for man, and to break with tradition is sometimes a necessary result
of evil. Of course, no society is perfect and many societies are evil—fathers are abusive, mothers manipulative, families dysfunctional—and as
society goes, so goes tradition. As Ratzinger puts it, “Tradition, which is
by nature the foundation of man’s humanness, is everywhere mingled
with those things that deprive him of his humanity.”6 Sometimes it is
even necessary to break family ties completely and abandon the old traditions; but the point is that to break with tradition, however necessary,
is not a good in itself but an unfortunate result of evil.
There is something to be said for Kant’s position: It would in fact
be better to know independently of tradition, inasmuch as God’s way
6

Ibid., 89.

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of knowing is better than man’s way of knowing. The problem with the
Enlightenment view is that it understands independent rationality as a
simple negation, namely rationality without tradition. To take a parallel
case, to be immobile rather than mobile is better, in the way that God is
immobile, but one must think of immobility positively, as a description
of pure act; simply to be immobile, as a pure negation—to be frozen—
would be an evil. It is better to be pure act than to be mobile, but it is
better to be mobile than to be simply immobile.
The force of this comparison lies in the fact that truth is a common
good. As such, the nature of truth is most clearly seen when it is possessed by many in common, that is, when a society forms around it.
When Kant declares that we must discover things by our own reason, he
means that we must grasp truth as an individual rather than as a member of a society: truth must be my private good. His traditionlessness
is a simple negation rather than a positive essence. While it is true that
to be God is better than to be man, and so to be the common good is
better than to participate in the common good, it is equally true that to
participate in the common good is better than not to participate in it. It
is better to be Truth than to participate in a tradition, but it is better to
participate in a tradition than to be a human intellectual island cut off
from the mainland. It is not good for man to be alone; it is not good for
man to think alone.7
This is the first basic mental orientation I would like to offer: Tradition is good for man as man. A corollary follows from it: Since every
society by nature has its tradition, by which it hands on its innermost
life to the next generation, and since grace does not destroy nature but
elevates it, the Church must also have a tradition. But she must have
a tradition commensurate with what she is: Since she is a supernatural society, the mystical body of Christ, she must have a supernatural
Tradition by which she hands on to the next generation the very mind
of Christ (1 Cor 2:16); since she is an eternal society, she must have an
incorruptible Tradition; since her members are bound to one another by
the Holy Spirit as though by a single soul, her Tradition must be guided
7

Even the angels, St. Thomas argues, are taught by and teach one another. To be
entirely self-sufficient in knowledge is proper to God alone, because he alone is
himself Truth.

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245

and developed by the Spirit. Here at last, in the Tradition founded by
Truth itself, mankind finds a tradition one need never abandon, a society one need never leave. Outgrowths may need trimming, and human
elements purged, but the necessity of a break with Tradition, inevitable
in merely human contexts, will never arise here.
Canon
The second basic intuition I would like to offer has to do with the canon of Scripture: Because tradition is natural to man, a literary canon is
also in a way natural to man. If every human society is held together
by a common intellectual patrimony, and if this tradition is naturally
expressed in language, it follows that when a society begins to write
down its language, then it creates a set of texts that embody and transmit the tradition; and this is what I mean by a canon. This second basic
intuition is borne out in the most ancient literate cultures, which used
a set of normative texts not as ends in themselves, as though the production of texts were good in itself, but as instruments for inscribing
their traditions word for word on the minds of the next generation.8
The Enlightenment view of humanity has obscured how natural
and inevitable such a canon is. Because this view urges each individual to cut himself off from tradition and to reason everything out for
himself, it disparages memorization as a slavish task. On this view,
true freedom lies not in memory but in imagination, in the ability
to create our own world free from every other man and even from
nature; since the text is another man’s creation, to memorize it is to
submit oneself to another man’s private good, which is servile.9 But
in antiquity, to memorize the text was to participate in the common
good, in the tradition, and so to become a full member of society. The
ancestors are, literally, our antecessores, the ones who have gone before
us, and by following them we enter into our inheritance and make it
our own with them.10
8

David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 8.
9
See the fascinating analysis by Mary J. Carruthers in The Book of Memory: A Study of
Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), esp.
1–13.
10
Cf. Carr, Writing on the Tablet, 11: “Indeed, that past is never ‘past’ in the way we

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In this traditional mindset, reading the text might be compared to
living in the old family mansion: It is not a museum, with everything
cordoned off, immovable and untouchable, but one’s own family house,
so one has to move in and live in it, which might require moving the
couch; on the other hand, it is a family possession, not simply one’s
private thing, so one would not bulldoze it and build a new structure.
Similarly, the ancient scribes felt free even to modify a text for new circumstances, but did not see themselves as fundamentally altering the
thing.11 When the scribe composed his own work and quoted the normative texts, he did so from memory and rather inexactly; this was not
at all from lack of respect for the text, but because the text had moved
beyond being an external object of thought to become an interior medium in which he thought, communicated, and expressed himself.12 But
even while he expressed his own thoughts through the medium of the
canon, he knew that his writing did not have its meaning alone, but only
in relation to the antecessores, the scribes and sages before him: Just as
their work was not theirs individually but common and therefore his, so
his work was not his individually but a common possession. T. S. Eliot
described the poet and his work within a literary tradition this way:
“What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a
continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”13
At this point it may be helpful to review what has been said. So far,
I have followed a single thread across two basic mental orientations: Because man as a rational creature shares in a common good, he is by nature social; as a result, human reason is by nature dependent on society’s
communal intellectual wealth, which is tradition. This was my first conclusion, and from it I drew the corollary that the Church, a supernatural
society, will necessarily have a supernatural Tradition. Because human
might conceive it but stands in the ancient world as a potentially realizable ‘present’
to which each generation seeks to return.”
11
See ibid., 41.
12
Ibid., 36: “He was not ‘exegeting’ or ‘citing’ older works in the way a later biblical interpreter might do. Rather the scribe was trained from the outset to think by means
of blocks of tradition and express himself through those tools.”
13
T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” The Egoist 6, no. 4 (September
1919): 54–55, at 55. The second part of the essay appeared in The Egoist 6, no. 5
(December 1919): 72–73.

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reason is by nature dependent on tradition, a literate society naturally
creates a canon, namely a set of writings that embody and transmit the
tradition; and because a canon is the means of passing on a society’s
innermost life, the life of the mind, it also serves as a medium for that
life as members of the society think via the canon, speak via the canon,
and interpret the world via the canon. This was my second conclusion.
A corollary also follows from this second conclusion: Just as the
Church needs a Tradition commensurate with what she is, so she needs
a Canon commensurate with herself and her Tradition. Scripture is the
supernatural Canon of the supernatural society, by which the mystical
body of Christ passes on her inner life to the next generation, and a medium in which she lives that inner life of thought and speech. Ratzinger
captures the point when he says that
Scripture is not a meteorite fallen from the sky, so that it would,
with the strict otherness of a stone that comes from the sky and
not from the earth, stand in contrast to all human words. Certainly, Scripture carries God’s thoughts within it: that makes it
unique and constitutes it an “authority.” Yet it is transmitted by a
human history. It carries within it the life and thought of a historical society that we call the “People of God,” because they are
brought together, and held together, by the coming of the divine
Word. There is a reciprocal relationship: This society is the essential condition for the origin and growth of the biblical Word; and,
conversely, this Word gives the society its identity and its continuity. Thus, the analysis of the structure of the biblical Word has
brought to light an interwoven relationship between Church and
Bible, between the People of God and the Word of God, which
we had actually always known, somehow, in a theoretical way but
had never before had so vividly set before us.14
It would be misleading to suggest that Scripture is the extent of the
Church’s literary canon. Just as she has both traditions with a small “t”
and Tradition with a big “T,” so she has both a literary canon with a small
14

Joseph Ratzinger, “What in Fact Is Theology?” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The
Church as Communion, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 33.

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“c” and a literary Canon with a big “C,” so to speak, and this distinction
between “big letter” and “small letter” is true of Tradition and Canon for
the same reason. The same dynamic that led to Tradition and to the embodiment of tradition in the Canon leads to new traditions and writings;
the newer, lesser traditions are inspired by and, so to speak, ensouled by
the Tradition itself, and in the same way the newer, lesser writings draw
life from Scripture, interpreting it and receiving their meaning from it
simultaneously. One thinks not only of the Church’s magisterium and
the writings of the Fathers and Doctors, but of Dante and Shakespeare
and the whole constellation of authors whose works have formed the
culture of the Church. Scripture, as the Canon at the heart of the canon,
not only has the power to inspire and sustain these new works but even
draws into its ambit the writings of Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, just as
the Catholic faith took over the insights of pagan antiquity. The process
of tradition, writing, and re-reading that gave birth to Scripture itself
continues with Scripture and Tradition as its life principle.
Exegesis
The basic intuitions I have shared concerning Tradition and Scripture
orient exegesis in a fundamental way. To begin with, it makes no sense
to set Scripture and Tradition in opposition, or Scripture and Church,
because Scripture contains Tradition in its very notion, and Tradition
is defined in terms of the Church. Moreover, it makes no sense to pit
faith against biblical exegesis, because Scripture’s very essence is to be an
instrument by which the Church passes on her inner life, which is a life
of faith, and so any reading of Scripture that does not build up this faith
is a bad one. Faith offers the only chance the exegete has of allowing
Scripture to be itself.15
To complete this thought, we have to see that, as Ratzinger says, “for
the New Testament faith means the same as the indwelling of Christ”
(Eph 3:17).16 As the mystical body of Christ, the Church’s inner life of
faith is nothing other than to have Christ dwelling in her, to be Christ’s
presence in the world. If Scripture is the mirror in which the Church
15
16

This point looks back again to Ratzinger, God’s Word, 125–26.
Ratzinger, “The Question of the Concept of Tradition: A Provisional Response,” in
God’s Word, 56–57.

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sees herself and learns to be herself, a guide rail for the process of handing on her inner life, then Scripture also must in some sense be Christ,
the very Word of God. It is a more remote sense, of course. Like every
book, Scripture sits lifeless on the printed page, an assembly of inkblots,
until the reader “reconstitutes” those blots into living words in a human heart. But there, in that hidden place where Scripture truly exists,
not as lifeless blots but as actual words, Christ is formed; this formation of Christ in the heart is Tradition; and this Tradition constitutes
the Church.
In this way we avoid a false objectivity, but how do we simultaneously steer away from the other extreme of arbitrariness? This is a difficult
question, because Scripture’s role as Canon leads not only to “exegesis,”
a reception from the text, but also to “eisegesis,” a reading into the text.
While the Fathers and medievals often scandalize modern readers by
their seemingly whimsical interpretation of even the smallest details of
the biblical text, we have to recall that the monk’s practice of “chewing”
the text by lectio divina, “ruminating” by meditation, and “digesting” it
by theologizing is the Christian’s divinely graced experience of what was
natural to ancient scribes. The modern reader, with his complete printed
Bible and a concordance or perhaps good Bible software, has Scripture
more than ever at his fingertips as a tool and an object of reflection, but
our medieval monk had Scripture itself for fingers, no longer merely
an object of thought but a medium for it. He thought his thoughts and
communicated his thoughts by way of Scripture.
So for example, when the celibate male monk desired to work out
and express his most personal interior experiences in writing, he often
chose to do so by commenting word by word on the Song of Songs—
and it is worth observing that, as subjective as these commentaries seem
to us today, the fact remains that a centuries-long tradition of celibate
male reflection resulted in an understanding of the spiritual life in terms
of passionate marital love!17 The medium became a message. Moreover,
grace perfects nature in this situation. As Augustine argues, since God
is the primary author of Scripture, and since he knew from all eternity
all the thoughts of all the readers of Scripture, any truth that Scripture
17

See Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), esp. 17–23.

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prompts a reader to see could arguably be what the primary author intended him to get from the text.18 A sign of this is the Church’s use of patristic interpretations, even the eisegetical ones about the Song of Songs,
in the liturgy, which is the privileged setting for hearing the word of
God: If the Church has read and proclaimed a particular biblical passage
in her liturgies as meaning a particular thing for over a thousand years,
then the people of God have heard God say this through that Scripture
consistently. Is this not an argument that God intended this text to be
understood this way? What in a merely human context with a merely
natural canon would be a creative departure from the original meaning
can become in Scripture a discovery of something actually intended by
the primary author. Eisegesis meets exegesis.
One can see therefore how difficult it is to separate authentic Catholic practices from arbitrary interpretation. However, even at its most
“eisegetical,” Catholic interpretation is not arbitrary. “Arbitrary” means
that one does whatever one pleases: “Arbitrary” interpretation means
that one says whatever one wants the text to mean, imposing one’s will
on the text, using its authoritative aura to the benefit of propaganda.
This would be an exaltation of the individual’s power over the text,
which is not at all the spirit of the Fathers. In fact, as Ratzinger notes,
such a spirit is actually characteristic of interpretations that abandon
tradition in the name of scientific objectivity: “the daring constructions
of many modern exegetes, right up to the materialistic interpretation of
the Bible, show that the Word, if left alone as a book, is a helpless prey to
manipulation through preexisting desires and opinions.”19
In contrast, the Fathers saw their work as entering into the great
edifice of the whole text of Scripture and all the interpretations that have
come before them, so that their interpretations were not their own only
but a common good. Above, I quoted T. S. Eliot as describing how the
poet gives over what is merely his individually in order to gain what is
even more his in the common good of a tradition: “What happens is
a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something
which is more valuable. The progress . . . is a continual self-sacrifice,
18

Augustine, Confessions, trans. Frank Sheed, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006),
book XII, chaps. 31–32, p. 285.
19
Ratzinger, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, 34.

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a continual extinction of personality.”20 This is more radically true of
a Christian, who has joined not just a society but the mystical body of
Christ. To quote Ratzinger:
It is a death event. In other words, it is an exchange of the old
subject for another. The “I” ceases to be an autonomous subject
standing in itself. It is snatched away from itself and fitted into a
new subject. The “I” is not simply submerged, but it must really
release its grip on itself in order then to receive itself anew in
and together with a greater “I.”21
Because this new subject is, as Ratzinger puts it, “the precondition and
foundation of all theology,”22 when the Fathers read their own thoughts
into the text of Scripture they read into it nothing other than Scripture,
having taken on the mind of Christ.23 Each of them could adapt for himself the words of St. Paul: I read, no longer I only, but Christ who reads
N&V
within me (cf. Gal 2:20).

20

Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” 55.
Joseph Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding
Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1993), 51.
22
Ibid., 50.
23
Michael Cahill, “Reader-Response Criticism and the Allegorizing Reader,” Theological Studies 57 (1996): 94.
21

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 253-272

253

Revelation and Understanding Scripture:
Reflections on the Teaching of Joseph Ratzinger,
Pope Benedict XVI*
Francis Martin

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

IN BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION IN CRISIS,Joseph Ratzinger
offers the following reflection on the relationship between the biblical text and revelation:
In today’s theological lingo, it is common to term the Bible “Revelation” without qualification. This usage would never have occurred to the ancients. Revelation is a dynamic event between
God and man, which again and again becomes reality only in their
encounter. The biblical Word attests to Revelation, but it does not
contain it in the sense of absorbing it and turning it into a sort of
thing that one could stick in one’s pocket. The Bible attests to Revelation, but the concept of Revelation is much broader.1
In making this statement, Joseph Ratzinger refers his readers to his habilitation thesis:

* I would like to thank Crystal Wirth, whose invaluable editing has improved this
1

contribution.
Joseph Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretations in Conflict: On the Foundations and the
Itinerary of Exegesis Today,” in Opening Up the Scriptures, ed. Jose Granados, Carlos
Granados, and Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 26.

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Francis Martin

where there is only the letter, there we find only the Old Testament and Judaism, regardless of whether we call this letter,
“New” or “Old” Testament. The mere letter is not “New” Testament; the New Testament is truly present precisely where
the letter has been surpassed by the Spirit . . . Here therefore,
“revelation” is synonymous with the spiritual understanding
of Scripture; it consists in the God-given act of understanding,
and not in the objective letter alone.2
This statement echoes a similar one made by St. Jerome: “Let us not think
that the Gospel lies in the words of the Scriptures: it is in their meaning;
not in the surface but in the marrow; not in the leaves of words, but in
the root of understanding.”3
Based on these and other statements to which I will refer later, I
first will reflect on Joseph Ratzinger’s teaching concerning the spiritual “understanding” that makes of the Scriptures a life-giving word. For
the purposes of corroboration, I will rely on the teaching of St. Thomas
Aquinas on Sacred Scripture, prophecy, and sacra doctrina. In particular, his distinction between intellectus and ratio accents the fact that understanding Scripture is principally concerned with an insight into the
realities revealed rather than the application of method to propositions.4
I then will turn to the phenomenological work of Robert Sokolowski,
which offers a fruitful way of overcoming the impasse in biblical interpretation created by nominalism and the Kantian predicament. The key
insight in this part of the study is that words are bearers of reality: They
are the reality in another form of existence. This position opens the door
to the ancient concept of the “spiritual sense” as an understanding not
of the deeper meaning of the words as such but of the realities they mediate. I will conclude by considering the power of the Scriptural Word,
2

Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1971, 1989), 63.
3
On Galatians 1,11, PL 26, 347A.
4
In the Middle Ages, “The content of Scripture was not conceived of as some abstract
theoretical system of truth, but as a spiritual reality reproduced in the minds and
souls of the faithful under the actual influence of the Holy Spirit.” Denis Farkasfalvy,
Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological Introduction to Sacred Scripture (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 140.

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particularly as it is proclaimed in the Liturgy. Here I will examine Pope
Benedict’s statement in Verbum Domini that Christ’s presence in the
proclaimed Word is analogous to his presence in the Eucharist (§56).
The Intellectus Spiritualis of Scripture
Joseph Ratzinger’s statement regarding the synonymity of revelation and
the spiritual understanding of Scripture is illumined by Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on the intellectus spiritualis. First, intellectus is a gift of the
Holy Spirit. Different than ratio, “its relation to the things made known
to us supernaturally is like that of the natural light of understanding
to the things we instinctively recognize (primordialiter cognoscimus)”
(Summa theologiae [ST] II-II, q. 8, a. 1, ad 2).5 The light of faith illumines
the principles of faith even as the light of reason illumines the principles
of reason. In both cases, the light makes the principles per se nota. This
idea is a commonplace in Aquinas. For instance, he defines an article of
faith as “a perception of divine truth that leads us to that truth itself ” (ST
II-II, q. 1, a. 6sc).6 The following text is particularly apposite:
It is clear, then, that faith comes from God in two ways: by way
of an interior light that leads to assent, and by way of the realities that are proposed from without and that had as their source
divine revelation. These are related to the knowledge of faith as
the things perceived by the senses are related to the knowledge
of principles, for both make our knowledge certain. So just as
the knowledge of principles is taken from the senses, and yet
the light by which principles are known is inborn, so “faith
5

Translation is that of T. C. O’Brien in Summa Theologiae, Blackfriars edition, vol. 32,
p. 7.
6
Perceptio divinae veritatis tendens in ipsam. Aquinas attributes the definition to St.
Isidore, but T. C. O’Brien Summa theolgiae, Blackfriars edition, vol. 31, p. 28) assures
us that it is not found in Isidore’s works. That Aquinas himself agrees with this definition is witnessed by the fact that he earlier used it without any attribution (Sent. III
d. 25, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 1, ad 4). For another description of an article of faith, see ST II-II,
q. 1, a. 6c: “the object of faith is something unseen about the divine. Consequently
there is a particular article of faith wherever there is something being unseen for
some distinct reason.” We may note that Aquinas gives as examples various mysteries of the life of Christ. For other examples of descriptions of an article, see Sent. III
d. 25, q. 1, a. 1, sol 1; in 1 Cor 15, lect.1 (Marietti §896).

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comes from hearing” (Rom 10:17), and nevertheless the habit
of faith is infused.7
The proximate criterion, therefore, of judging the authenticity of a doctrinal position or pastoral practice is whether it is virtually contained
in the articles of faith, which are drawn from Scripture and articulated
whenever there is a particular aspect of divine truth that is being revealed. In this sense, the birth, death, and Resurrection of Christ are
separate articles (ST II-II, q. 1, a. 6c).
There are two ways in which this quality of being contained in an
article of faith can be discerned. The first method of proceeding is to
compare what is held as tradition with the articles by a process that follows the laws of human thinking (studium). This process does not merely or even principally involve applying logic to propositions, but rather
involves perceiving how the two juxtaposed realities are connected to
each other: “God wills that something be because of something else, but
it is not for the sake of the second reality that he wills the first” (I, q. 19,
a. 5c).8 It is quite permissible to employ the results of sound philosophy
in this endeavor, not as a ruling principle, but as providing human insight that can be taken up into revelation: “Those who use the work of
the philosophers in sacred doctrine by bringing that work of the human
mind into the service of faith, do not mix water with wine, but rather
change water into wine.”9
The second method of discerning the authenticity of a teaching is to
rest in the reality mediated by the articles and see in them, by means of
7

St. Thomas Aquinas, “In Boet. De Trin.,” q. 3, a. 1, ad 4, in Faith, Reason and Theology: Questions I–IV of His Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, Medieval
Sources in Translation 32, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Medieval Studies, 1987), 69.
8
“Vult ergo [Deus] hoc esse propter hoc, sed non propter hoc vult hoc.” For a discussion of this text and its possible relation to the teaching of Vatican I on how
reason, enlightened by faith, can arrive at an understanding of divine mysteries, see
Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Le savoir theologique chez saint Thomas,” in Recherches thomasiennes, 37–38. “Yet it must always be remembered that the assent to these other
truths, the various material objects of faith, presupposes the formal object as providing the authenticating force for the assent.” Brian J. Shanley, “Sacra doctrina and
Disclosure,” The Thomist 61, no. 2 (1997): 163–88, at 174–75, with a citation from ST
II-II, q. 1, a. 1c.
9
St. Thomas Aquinas, “In Boet. de Trin,” q. 2, a. 3, ad 5 (Maurer 50).

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257

contemplative understanding, all that they contain. The penetration of
faith and the intellectus spiritualis provide insight into the realities that
are revealed. They enable these realities themselves to be the cause of
knowledge. Although the articles of faith are enunciated in words, it is
not the propositions themselves but the realities mediated by the propositions that, as an imprint of the divine knowledge, have the energy to
lead the mind to judge of those things that are presented to it (cf. ST I,
q. 1, a. 3, ad 2).
This divine action gives understanding of not just the letter of the
Scriptures but the realities behind them. The Greek Fathers spoke, in
this regard, of gnosis. St. Paul prayed that his faithful hearers be filled
with gnosis and professed to have received this gift himself. By gnosis,
he meant a rich and living knowledge of God’s plan, the “mystery” of
Christ that has been hidden for eternity in God (Eph 3:9).10 This form of
knowledge pertains more to what Aquinas calls intellectus than to what
he calls ratio: “That which is supreme in our knowledge is not reason,
but understanding, which is the source of reason” (Summa contra Gentiles 1, c. 57, 8).11 Insofar as theology involves an act of reason vivified
by faith understanding, we can extend Aquinas’s statement as follows:
intellectus est theologiae et principium et terminus.12
Such a faith vision is the basis for the position that Thomas expresses in various ways. For example, “The formal objective of faith is the
First Truth as this is made known (manifestatur) in Sacred Scripture
and in the teaching of the Church which proceeds from the First Truth.”
Later in the same question, he states: “Faith adheres to all the articles
of faith because of one reason (medium), namely, because of the First
Truth proposed to us in the Scriptures understood rightly according to
the teaching of the Church (secundum doctrinam Ecclesiae)” (ST II-II, q.
5, a. 3c and ad 2). To cite one last text: “The formal notion (ratio) in the
10

Tradition and Traditions: An Historical Essay and a Theological Essay, trans. Michael
Naseby and Thomas Rainborough (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 387–88.
11
Translation in Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, 197,
n. 60. As is well known, Pierre Rouselot developed this distinction in St. Thomas; see
John M. McDermott, Love and Understanding: The Relation of Will and Intellect in
Pierre Rousselot’s Christological Vision, Analecta Gregoriana 229 (Rome: Università
Gregoriana, 1983).
12
Cf. In III Sent. d. 35, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 2c: “Intellectus est rationis et principium et terminus.”

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object of faith is the first truth manifested through the teaching of the
Church” (De caritate, a. 13, ad 6).13
Sacra doctrina, as it exists in the Church, consists of two things: the
hearing and reading of the symbolic transmission of revelation; and the
infused habit of faith, which is “more capable of causing assent than any
demonstration.”14 In other words, doctrina involves not only the pure
light which is a share in God’s knowledge of himself, but also the human
activity or studium of assimilating and articulating the divine truths according to our mode of knowing. In this joint work of God and man, the
greatness and the fragility of sacra doctrina and its Scripture is revealed:
It is the word of God clothed in the flesh of human thought processes
and words. If we ask how the prophetic word from God, that word he
spoke once and for all in his Son at this, the end of the ages (cf. Heb
1:1–4), is to be preserved in the Church, the answer is twofold: First, it
is given a written and normative expression; second, the epiklèsis of the
Spirit allows this articulation to be impressed upon the minds and souls
of its hearers.
In light of these considerations, we now will return to other statements in which Joseph Ratzinger insists on the need for the gift of
intellectus. In his habilitation thesis, he wrote: “Revelatio refers not to
the letter of Scripture, but to the understanding of the letter; and this
understanding can be increased.”15 This “increase” takes place when,
through the gift of understanding, more of the reality is perceived and
appreciated in its relation to the rest of revealed reality. The need for
purity of heart in order to allow this increase is well expressed by the
Pontifical Biblical Commission:
Access to a proper understanding of biblical texts is granted
only to the person who has an experienced affinity (une affinité
13

Translation in Saint Thomas Aquinas, On Charity, trans. Lottie Kendzierski (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1960), 109. An aspect of faith not treated in
this study is that Christ himself is auctor doctrinae both as God, the First Truth, and
as man, the privileged manifestation of that truth. See Yves Congar, The Meaning of
Tradition, trans. A. N. Woodrow (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1964; reprint, San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 173–74.
14
St. Thomas Aquinas, In III Physicorum, cap. 3, lect. 5 (Leonine ed. 11, 113).
15
Ratzinger, Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, 68.

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vecue) with that of which the text is speaking . . . As the reader
matures in the life of the Spirit, so there grows also his or her
capacity to understand the realities of which the Bible speaks.16
The concluding lines of Ratzinger’s document on Biblical Interpretation
especially concern us in this article: “The dead ends of the critical method
have once again made it clear that understanding requires the understander—the key without which the text has nothing to say to the present.”17
Phenomenological Reflections on the Act of Understanding
The basic principle I wish to develop in this section was summarized
by Martin Luther: “He who does not understand the realities, cannot
draw the meaning out of the words.”18 St. Augustine expresses the same
thought: “It is in the event itself and not only in the text that we must
seek the mystery.”19 A strong philosophical foundation for articulating
“an understanding of understanding” is provided by Robert Sokolowski,
whose thought helps detach us from an excessive attention to words and
restores us to a consideration of the res or “the event itself.”20
The key insight of Sokolowski’s phenomenological approach as it is
applied to the reading of Scripture can be summed up in a few quotes
gathered from his writings. The first principle is: “when the words stand
out, we no longer intend [i.e., are conscious of] just what is before us. A
new kind of intending comes into play, one that makes these perceived
marks into words and at the same time makes us intend not just the
marks that are present, but the [thing], which is absent.”21 Words are a
16

Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (April
15, 1993) 76–77.
17
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretations in Conflict,” 29.
18
“Qui non intelligit res non potest sensum ex verbis elicere.” Tischreden, Weimarer
Ausgabe 5, 26, no. 5246.
19
“In ipso facto, non solum in dicto, mysterium requirere debemus.” On Psalm 68 (PL
36, 858).
20
In addition to several studies of my own in which I have applied Sokolowski’s approach, I am indebted to an article, as yet unpublished, by William M. Wright IV,
“The Light of the World and the Festival of Tabernacles (John 8:12): Insights from
Sokolowski’s Theology of Disclosure.” I wish to express my gratitude here to Professor Wright for his generosity.
21
Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Cambridge Univer-

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means by which things are presented to a subject as a dative of manifestation. Sokolowski applies this principle to biblical revelation as follows:
Once we recognize the fact that the written word is a prerequisite
for biblical revelation . . . we must be careful to avoid the danger
of making the text the primary focus, of making the text and not
the things it discloses the center of our attention. Words, whether
spoken or written, present things. We never have “just” words:
words are vehicles to articulate and disclose things . . .Writing
therefore intensifies the temptation to make the text stand on its
own and become an object in its own right . . . Indeed, “textualism” can be considered a deviation analogous to the rationalism,
historicism, and psychologism we discussed . . . In each case a
form of manifestation—a text, a thought, a situated appearance, a
perception—is taken to replace the thing manifested . . . the saving acts of God are disclosed in the Church through the reading
of the biblical text.22
These words are consistent with Joseph Ratzinger’s dictum: “‘revelation’
is synonymous with the spiritual understanding of Scripture; it consists
in the God-given act of understanding, and not in the objective letter
alone.”23 An increase of understanding, especially with respect to the
spiritual sense of the Old Testament, comes through a deeper appreciation not of the words as such but rather that “the one thing intended
by the human author had dimensions that had not yet come into view,
dimensions that could not appear until more had happened.”24
In earlier studies, I have spoken of the actions of God recorded in
the Old Testament as being an anticipatory or “economic” participation
in the mystery of Christ. The events, as well as the persons of Israel,
sity Press, 1999), 78. In keeping with this orientation, I add here a remark of Aquinas
concerning faith: “Such an act [of faith] does not have a proposition as its term, but a
reality, since just as with scientific knowledge, so also with faith, the only reason for
formulating a proposition is that we may have knowledge about the real” (ST II-II,
q. 1, a. 2, ad 2).
22
Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence: A Study in the Theology of Disclosure
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 143–44.
23
Ratzinger, Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, 63.
24
Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence, 149 (italics Sokolowski’s).

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share proleptically but metaphysically in the reality of Christ.25 The notion of “participation” eliminates a nominalistic understanding of the
biblical text and opens the way to a deeper understanding of the whole
mystery of the economy of salvation.26
The Eternal Existence of the Word as Premise
for the Intellectus Spiritualis27
Just as every person after death is marked by his or her life, so Jesus
Christ even now is marked by his earthly life. There are two differences
in the life and death of Jesus and these form, implicitly or explicitly, the
foundation for how the Gospels are written and read. The first difference arises from the fact that Jesus is risen from the dead. All that he
said and did has risen with him and continues to be part of his glorious
humanity: “And I saw in the midst of the throne and the four living beings, and in the midst of the elders, a lamb standing as having been slain
having seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God
sent into all the earth” (Rv 5:6). Jesus, the lamb who still bears the marks
of his slaughter, now is endowed with divine power and knowledge.
What tradition calls the “mysteries of the life of Christ” are, each in their
own way, a source of particular blessing and grace for those who touch
them.28 This theological view is present already in the Letter to the Hebrews: “We do not have a high priest unable to share by experience our
weaknesses, (but one) having been tested in all ways, because he is like
us, (however) without sin.” The verb “having been tested” is, in Greek, a
25

Francis Martin, Sacred Scripture: The Disclosure of the Word (Naples, FL: Sapientia
Press, 2006), 274.
26
An excellent study, awaiting publication, is one by Jeremy Holmes, who, surveying
several studies on the notion of participation, commends this line of thought as it
has been followed up by several others. See also Matthew Levering, Participatory
Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2008).
27
This section is made up of original material as well as some unpublished and published material. Much of the latter is found in Martin, Sacred Scripture, and is used
here with permission. For an excellent study of the traditional understanding of the
typological sense of the Old Testament, see Paolo Prosperi, “Novum in vetere latet. Vetus in novo patet: Toward a Renewal of Typological Exegesis,” Communio 37
(2010): 389–424.
28
The reader interested in following up on this theme might turn to A. Solignac,
“Mystère,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualitè X (Paris: Beauchesne, 1980), 1861–74.

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perfect passive participle whose meaning in context is expressed by Zerwick-Grosvenor as “having triumphantly passed the test Jesus is forever
tried and tested.”29 It is precisely because he is fixed in that act of love in
which he died and “is forever tried and tested” that we are exhorted: “Let
us, then, with confidence approach the throne of grace, that we might
receive mercy and grace at the proper time” (Heb 4:16).
The second difference lies in the fact that the Logos was present to
Israel even before the Incarnation. For instance, in a series of warnings
against imitating the infidelity of Israel, Paul writes, “All ate the same
spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank
from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ”
(1 Cor 10:3–4).30 In some mysterious manner, the rock that was the
source of water in the desert was Christ. In fact, it is possible to read
John 1:10–13 as referring to the presence of the Logos to Israel before
the Incarnation:
He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept
him. But to those who did accept him he gave power to become
children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were
born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a
man’s decision but of God. (NAB)31
Patristic texts commonly consider the theme of the Logos as mysteriously present before the Incarnation in the events by which God made
himself known and which are transmitted in the Scriptures. Some salient examples occur in the writings of Irenaeus and Origen:
The Son of God has been sown everywhere throughout the
Scriptures [of Moses]. Sometimes He speaks with Abraham,
sometimes with Noah, giving him the measurements of the ark;
29

Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1979), 662.
30
This summary of the manner in which God cared for Israel in the desert is close to
that of the themes in the liturgy of Sukkot as well as those in Nehemiah 9:20: “You
gave them your good spirit to instruct them, you did not withhold your manna from
their mouths, you gave them water for their thirst.”
31
See references in Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2003), 1, 401n360–62.

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He looks for Adam, brings judgment on the Sodomites. There
are times when He is actually seen, guiding Jacob on his way,
speaking with Moses from the bush. (Irenaeus, “Against the
Heresies,” IV, 10, 1)32
Thus the Word of God always showed to men, so to speak, the
outlines of the things he was to accomplish in the future, the
contours of the Father’s saving plan, thereby teaching us the
things of God. (Ibid., IV, 20, 11)
At the end of the ages the Word has indeed become human, Jesus Christ;
but before this visible coming in the flesh he was already, although not
yet human, the mediator of human beings (Origen, Fragment on the Letter to the Colossians [PG 14, 1297–98]). Now that I have shown how the
preexistence of the Word and the Resurrection of Christ are the foundation for the spiritual reading of Scripture, I will consider the spiritual
sense more in depth. Henri Crouzel suggests the complementary relation between spiritual exegesis and prophecy:
Spiritual exegesis is in a kind of way the reverse process of
prophecy: the latter looks to the future, but the former looks
back from the future to the past. Prophecy follows the course
of time forwards and in a historical or contemporary event sees
darkly the messianic or eschatological fact that is prefigured.
Spiritual exegesis follows the course of time backwards and,
starting from the Messiah already given to the People of God,
recognizes in the old Scriptures the preparations and seeds of
what is now accomplished. But this accomplishment is in part
prophetic in relation to what will take place in the end time.33
In Verbum Domini (§37), Pope Benedict quotes a definition of the spiritual sense given by the Pontifical Biblical Commission. This definition
32

Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed., The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus against the
Heresies (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 90.
33
Henri Crouzel, Origen: The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian, trans. A.
S. Worall (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 71.

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continues in the same vein as Crouzel but binds the spiritual sense more
intimately with the life of Christ and especially the Resurrection:
As a general rule we can define the spiritual sense, as understood by Christian faith, as the meaning expressed by the biblical texts when read under the influence of the Holy Spirit, in
the context of the paschal mystery of Christ and of the new life
which flows from it. This context truly exists. In it the New Testament recognizes the fulfillment of the Scriptures. It is therefore quite acceptable to reread the Scriptures in the light of this
new context, which is that of life in the Spirit.34
The paschal mystery, in which the Scriptures find their fulfillment, legitimizes and even calls for a spiritual reading of the whole of Scripture.
The light of the Resurrection illumines all that precedes and follows it.
The mention of the paschal mystery contains an allusion to the text
in Luke 24:44–46, which narrates Jesus’s post-Resurrection meeting
with the apostles:
He said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while
I was still with you, that everything written about me in the
law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.”
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And
he said to them, “Thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” (NAB)
On this text, Aquinas comments thus:
An intelligible light is sometimes divinely impressed on the
human mind to judge something seen by others as is said of
Joseph, and is obvious in the case of the Apostles for whom the
Lord “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Lk
24:45). (ST II-II, q. 173, a. 2c)
The “intelligible light” whereby we understand the spiritual sense of
34

Pontifical Biblical Commission, Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, II, B, 2.

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Scripture comes from the Risen Lord.
Tradition at times associates Christ even more intimately with the
words of the Scripture, particularly those of the Gospels. Beginning
with Origen, the Church Fathers refer to the Scriptures as the “body of
Christ.” De Lubac sums up the views of Origen, writing:
In the literal meaning of Scripture, the Logos is thus not, properly speaking, incarnated as he is in the humanity of Jesus, and
this is what allows us still to speak of comparison: he is, nevertheless, already truly incorporated there; he himself dwells
there, not just some idea of him, and this is what authorizes
us to speak already of his coming, of his hidden presence . . .
near to the saints of the Old Testament: “How could they have
announced the Word of God if the Word of God had not been
present to them?” (Origen, Homily on Jeremiah 9,1)35
This sacramental mode of speaking is not far from Pope Benedict’s analogy between the word of God and the Eucharist: “Christ, truly present
under the species of bread and wine, is analogously present in the word
proclaimed in the liturgy” (Verbum Domini §56).
The Power of the Word
Having established from phenomenology and Scripture that the “word”
is the reality itself in a different mode of existence, I wish to reflect briefly on the principle, often enunciated in both Scripture and Tradition,
that the word is power. Already in the Old Testament, this underlying
presupposition is given explicit expression in a great number of texts, of
which the following are samples:36

35

Henri De Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen, trans. Ann Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press), 389. The same notion
is developed by Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1, Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius,
1982), 32, 529, 541.
36
For a good treatment of this theme, one could consult “Word,” in Dictionary of Biblical
Theology, ed. Xavier Léon-Dufour (Gaithersburg, MD: Word Among Us Press, 1988).

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By the Lord’s word the heavens were made; by the breath of his
mouth all their host. (Ps 33:6; NAB)
Yet just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and
do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it
fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to
the one who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my
mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what pleases
me, achieving the end for which I sent it. (Is 55:10–11; NAB)
Not a single word of the blessing that the Lord had promised to
the house of Israel failed; it all came true. (Jos 21:45; NAB)
The following texts from the New Testament are a sampling of those that
link the word of God, the Gospel, with power:
You are already clean by the word I have spoken to you. (Jn 15:3)
For I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for
the salvation of everyone who believes: for Jew first, and then
Greek. (Rom 1:16–17; NAB)
The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
(1 Cor 1:18; NAB)
For you may have thousands of tutors (paidagogous) in Christ
but not many fathers; in Christ Jesus I begot you by the Gospel.
(1 Cor 4:15)

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And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that,
in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not
a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now
at work in you who believe. (1 Thes 2:13 NAB).
The understanding of the sacramental dimension of Scripture—that
is, its reality as more than a human word—is found in the ancient and
medieval commentators. I will cite a few examples from St. Thomas
Aquinas. Commenting on 2 Timothy 3:16, Aquinas asks why only the
Scriptures should be considered divinely inspired since, according to
Ambrose, “anything true, by no matter whom said, is from the Holy
Spirit.” His response is that God works in two ways, one that is immediate and that pertains to him alone, as is the case with miracles; the
other manner is mediate, that is, through the mediation of lesser causes,
as is the case with natural operations. He then concludes, “And thus in
man God instructs the intellect both immediately through the sacred
letters and mediately through other writings.”37 The auctoritas of sacra
scriptura is wholly singular: Scripture can cause knowledge immediately
and, possessed of a unique power, it can have a referential function that
brings us into contact with the divine realities themselves in a way that
exceeds other faith formulations.38
In a similar vein, St. Gregory the Great affirms: “Sacred Scripture, in
its very manner of speaking, is above all other sciences because in one
and the same word, while it narrates an event, it sets forth a mystery.”39
St. Thomas expounds upon this idea in his commentary on Hebrews
5:12–14, in which the Christians are told they need someone to teach
them again the “oracles” (logiòn/sermonum) of God, and that they need
milk, not solid food:

37

“Et sic in homine instruit intellectum et immediate per sacras litteras, et mediate per
alias scripturas.” In 2 Tim 3:16, lect. 3 (Marietti ed. §126).
38
In using the word “referential” in this context, I am alluding to a statement of the
Pontifical Biblical Commission in its Bible et Christologie (Paris: Cerf, 1984), 1.2.2.1:
“The “auxiliary” languages used in the course of the Church’s history do not have for
faith the same authority (auctoritas/valeur) as the “referential language used by the
sacred authors.”
39
“Sacra Scriptura omnes scientias ipso locutionis suae more transcendit, quia uno eodemque sermone dum narrat gestum, prodit mysterium.” Moralia 20,1 (PL 76,135).

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For sacra doctrina is food and drink because it nourishes (potat)
and satisfies the soul. The other sciences only enlighten the mind;
this one, however enlightens the soul . . . This is a characteristic of
the teaching of Sacred Scripture (doctrina sacrae Scripturae), that
in it not only speculative things are handed on, but also those that
are to be practiced through activity (approbanda per affectum).40
The Scriptures are unique in their completeness. They are food and
drink; they enlighten the mind and soul; and they govern both speculative and practical activity.
In his commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius’s treatise On the Divine
Names, Aquinas articulates how the authority and power of Scripture
arises ultimately from the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the Apostles
and Prophets:
Dionysius, in his teaching (doctrina) depends upon (innititur)
the authority of Sacred Scripture which has strength and power
(roborem habet et virtutem) because the Apostles and Prophets
were moved to speak by the Holy Spirit who was revealing to
them and speaking in them.41
In a commentary on Ephesians 6:13–17, Aquinas further elucidates how
the power of the preached word comes from the Holy Spirit:
Just as in bodily warfare this [attack on the enemy] is accomplished by a sword so also is this accomplished by the word of
God which is, spiritually, the sword of the Spirit which you must
take up. As it says in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing
through to the division between soul and spirit, joints and marrow; discerning the purposes and thoughts of the heart.” Thus
preaching is called the sword of the Spirit because it cannot
reach the human spirit unless it be wielded by the Holy Spirit:
“It will not be you speaking but the Spirit of your Father who
40
41

Aquinas, On Hebrews, c. 5, lect. 2.
Aquinas, In De divinis nominibus c. 1, lect. 1.

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is speaking in you” (Matt 10:20) . . . Thus, we have weapons for
fighting the demons themselves, namely, the sword of the Spirit
which is the word of God. Frequently in sermons, the word of
God, penetrating the hearts of sinners, drives out the tangled
mass of sins and demons.42
Continuing this same line of reasoning about the Holy Spirit and Scripture, Henri de Lubac writes:
Thus Scripture is not merely divinely guaranteed. It is divinely
true. The Spirit did not merely dictate it. The Spirit immured
himself in it, as it were. He lives in it. His breath has always
animated it. The Scripture is “fertilized by a miracle of the Holy
Spirit.” It is “full of the Spirit.”43
I now will consider a key action by which one becomes an “understander” of revelation, namely, the Eucharistic Liturgy, the original home of
lectio divina.
“The Liturgy: Privileged Setting for the Word of God”
Most will recognize this title as designating the first major section of
Part Two of Verbum Domini, namely, Verbum in Ecclesia. I now wish
to place in prominence the active role that the biblical word plays in its
own understanding. This notion is well articulated by Joseph Ratzinger
in his book, Revelation and Tradition: “it becomes clear that we must
go behind the positive sources, scripture and tradition, to their inner
source, revelation, the living word of God from which scripture and tradition spring and without which their significance for faith cannot be
understood.”44 In Verbum Domini, in the aforementioned section, Benedict builds upon this theme:

42

Aquinas, On Ephesians, c. 6, lect. 4.
Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, vol. 1, trans. Mark
Sebanc (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 82. The citations in the text are from
Anselm, De concord. 3,6 (PL 157,528B) and Origen, De Princ. 4,1,7, respectively.
44
Joseph Ratzinger, “Revelation and Tradition,” in Revelation and Tradition (Montreal:
Palm, 1966), 34.
43

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it must be said that Christ himself “is present in his word, since
it is he who speaks when Scripture is read in Church.”45 Indeed,
“the liturgical celebration becomes the continuing, complete
and effective presentation of God’s word. The word of God, constantly proclaimed in the liturgy, is always a living and effective
word through the power of the Holy Spirit. It expresses the Father’s love that never fails in its effectiveness towards us.”46 The
Church has always realized that in the liturgical action the word
of God is accompanied by the interior working of the Holy Spirit
who makes it effective in the hearts of the faithful. Thanks to
the Paraclete, “the word of God becomes the foundation of the
liturgical celebration, and the rule and support of all our life. The
working of the same Holy Spirit . . . brings home to each person
individually everything that in the proclamation of the word of
God is spoken for the good of the whole gathering” . . . A faithfilled understanding of Sacred Scripture must always refer back to
the liturgy in which the word of God is celebrated as a timely and
living word. (§52)47
In the liturgy, Christ is actually present in the proclaimed scriptures,
and the Holy Spirit makes this Word efficacious in the hearts of believers. The section of Verbum Domini dedicated to “The word of God and
the Eucharist” brings us to a central insight of Joseph Ratzinger, which is
intimately related to our previous discussion of the power of the Word.
He writes:
Unless we acknowledge the Lord’s real presence in the Eucharist, our understanding of Scripture remains imperfect. For this
reason “the Church has honoured the word of God and the Eucharistic mystery with the same reverence, although not with
the same worship, and has always and everywhere insisted upon
and sanctioned such honour.” (§55)

45

Sacrosanctum Concilium §7.
Ordo Lectionum Missae 4.
47
Ibid., 3.
46

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The power of the Word of God, then, is grounded in an analogy with
the Eucharist.
In the next section, Pope Benedict proceeds to analyze the sacramentality of the word. He refers to the following remark of Pope John
Paul II from Fides et Ratio:
To assist reason in its effort to understand the mystery there are
the signs which Revelation itself presents . . . In a sense, then, we
return to the sacramental character of Revelation and especially
to the sign of the Eucharist, in which the indissoluble unity between the signifier and signified makes it possible to grasp the
depths of the mystery. (§13)
The Pontiff returns to this earlier theme in order to understand the proclamation of the word in the light of sacramentality. Such an approach
integrates the aspects of the mystery of the Word/word and points the
way toward understanding:
The sacramentality of the word can thus be understood by analogy with the real presence of Christ under the appearances of
the consecrated bread and wine. By approaching the altar and
partaking in the Eucharistic banquet we truly share in the body
and blood of Christ. The proclamation of God’s word at the celebration entails an acknowledgment that Christ himself is present, that he speaks to us, and that he wishes to be heard. (§56)48
By making this analogy, Joseph Ratzinger points to the active part the
Word of God plays in its being understood. The realities borne to us
by the inspired Word cause their understanding. More than any other
word, the inspired Word plays a sacramental role in regard to the recipient, thus the analogy with the Eucharist and the precising of what
is meant by understanding this Word. I will now sum up what I have
attempted to elaborate and point to the work that still lies ahead in understanding the inspired Word.
48

This passage refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1373–74, on the real
presence of Christ in the Eucharist and Sacrosanctum Concilium §7, on the reality of
the Church as the Body of Christ.

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Conclusion
In this article, I first attempted to clarify, through the teaching of
Ratzinger and Thomas, that the transmission of revelation requires Sacred Scripture to be understood in its spiritual sense. The words reach
beyond themselves to the divine reality. Robert Sokolowski contributes
to this line of reasoning by teaching that words are bearers of reality,
that is, they are the reality in another form of existence. In this light,
I considered the presence of the Logos to Israel as an anticipated participation in the mystery of the Incarnation. Because the word is the
reality in another form of existence, the question finally shifted to a
consideration of the power of the reality. There is still much work to be
done here. The direction is partially set, I think, by the understanding
of what I considered last, namely, the analogous sacramental presence
of Christ in the word, especially at the Eucharistic liturgy. Herein lies
the urgency of restoring preaching as an essential part of the liturgy.
By means of Sacred Tradition, the word of God entrusted by Christ the
Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles is handed on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they
may preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more
widely known. Again, though the direction has been set, there is much
work to be done here as well. This is an invitation to much serious effort, while bearing in mind the Arab saying that we should save a little
N&V
work for our children.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 273-295

273

Violence Is Incompatible with the Nature of God:
Benedict, Aquinas, and Method C Exegesis
of the “Dark” Passages of the Bible
Matthew J. Ramage
Benedictine College
Atchison, KS

FOLLOWING THE LEADof then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1988 Erasmus lecture, this article offers principles needed to illumine some of the
Bible’s “dark” texts, particularly those in which God apparently contradicts his own nature by approving, rewarding, or even commanding violence. This problem is crucial as Christians who hold divergent opinions
vis-à-vis what the Bible intends to teach in matters of science and history typically agree in their expectation that the Bible gets it right when
it comes to matters directly concerning faith and morals. The texts in
question here, however, present believers with apparent errors precisely
in this domain.1
To this end, this article attempts to instantiate Benedict’s “Method
C” hermeneutical proposal in which he called upon exegetes to develop
a new, fuller hermeneutical method (Method C) that makes the truth
of Scripture more evident by synthesizing the best of patristic-medie-

1

There certainly exist other formidable problems concerning faith and morals in
Scripture. I have treated those dealing with apparent contradictions in the Bible’s
treatment of God’s nature and the afterlife in the volume Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2013). Much of the material condensed in this
essay can be found at various points within this larger text.

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val exegesis (Method A) and historical-critical exegesis (Method B).2 In
particular, I will tease out four points of contact between Aquinas and
Benedict implied by the latter’s suggestion that Thomas’s exegesis offers
a “counter-model” to deconstructive forms of modern exegesis: (1) the
importance of having an “open philosophy” concerning the interplay of
the divine and human in the world; (2) interpreting problematic texts
in light of the divine pedagogy intelligible in the whole of Scripture; (3)
ascertaining the essential message the sacred authors intend to convey
in passages that ostensibly seem to contradict God’s nature by directly
implicating him in evil; and (4) attending to the spiritual sense of such
passages to see their relevance for the lives of believers of all ages.3

2

“You can call the patristic-medieval exegetical approach Method A. The historical-critical approach, the modern approach . . . is Method B. What I am calling for
is not a return to Method A, but a development of a Method C, taking advantage of
the strengths of both Method A and Method B, but cognizant of the shortcomings
of both.” Benedict’s words are taken from a summary and transcript of the discussion following his 1988 Erasmus Lecture. See Paul T. Stallsworth, “The Story of an
Encounter,” in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and
Church, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 107–8.
Benedict’s lecture, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today” was originally printed in ibid., 1–23.
As Gregory Vall observes, “Strictly speaking, we are dealing not with two specific
‘methods’ but two general approaches. A series of basic principles unites the work of
exegetes as diverse as Origen and Chrysostom, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas
Aquinas, so that we may speak of a single dominant patristic-medieval approach to
exegesis, which Cardinal Ratzinger has labeled ‘Method A.’ When we turn to consider those biblical commentators whose work falls under the umbrella of ‘historical-critical’ exegesis, the diversity of specific methodologies is perhaps even greater.
But in this case, too, fundamental principles of exegesis shared by these scholars may
be identified, justifying the label ‘Method B.’” Gregory Vall, “Psalm 22: Vox Christi or
Israelite Temple Liturgy?” The Thomist 66 (2002): 175–200.
3
Note that I have opted for the convention of referring to the one man Ratzinger/Benedict as “Benedict” throughout this article even in writings antedating his pontificate. Likewise, note that I will be referring to the version of the Erasmus Lecture entitled “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and the Itinerary for
Exegesis Today,” in Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations
of Biblical Interpretation, ed. José Granados, Carlos Granados, and Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008). This version of Benedict’s text (there
are three different published editions of the lecture in the English language alone)
reveals more explicit connections with Aquinas than the original English version
published in the volume Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference
on Bible and Church.

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The Problem
First it is necessary to elucidate the particular problem this article will
address with the help of Benedict and Aquinas. “Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul . . . Not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature.” Benedict famously took this claim
as the starting point for his reflections at Regensburg in 2006. The words
he cited came from the mouth of a Byzantine Christian emperor challenging his Muslim interlocutor to justify Islam’s violent self-propagation, but Muslims do not stand alone in their need to render an account
for having spread religion by the sword. One month after Regensburg,
some one hundred influential Muslim leaders countered the pope with
an open letter that included this argument:
Moreover, it is noteworthy that Manuel II Paleologus says that
“violence” goes against God’s nature, since Christ himself used
violence against the money-changers in the temple, and said
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not
come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34–36). When
God drowned Pharaoh, was He going against His own Nature?4
At Regensburg the pontiff observed that Christianity made itself vulnerable to such criticisms when Duns Scotus broke from Augustine and
Aquinas by maintaining a position that “might even lead to the image of
a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness.”5
But did the danger of fashioning for ourselves a capricious God really arise with late medieval voluntarism? Are the Muslims not correct
in their assertion that the Bible itself often depicts a bloodthirsty God
who not only allows evil but even commands and rewards it?6 In a brief
4

See http://ww http://www.theislamicmonthly.com/open-letter-to-pope-benedict-xvi/
See http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html.
6
The gravity of this claim cannot be seen if we limit ourselves to addressing individual
“dark” texts as they come to our attention from time to time. It is fully recognizable
by following the inspiration of Newman in his Grammar of Assent and taking account of the “cumulation of probabilities” that points to a real problem in this area.
It is for this reason that scholars ultimately need to continue the present work by
dwelling at length on problems like the ones treated here.
5

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article such as this, I can only give a few indications to this effect, but the
evidence is overwhelming. Just seven chapters into the Bible, God “blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground” (Gn
7:23).7 In the next book, he seeks to kill the man whom he had called
to lead his people out of slavery to the Egyptians (Ex 4:24) and slays all
the first born in Egypt, including children (Ex 12:29). Later he proceeds
to slay 185,000 Assyrians in one night (2 Kgs 19:35). This same God
commands his people to act violently, to “utterly destroy” their enemies,
showing “no mercy” and saving alive “nothing that breathes” when conquering them (Dt 7:1–2; 20:16–17). And the word of God reports that
the people did just this: “[We] utterly destroyed every city, men, women,
and children; we left none remaining” (Dt 2:33–34; cf. 3:6; Jo 6:21).” In
fact, when King Saul does not “utterly destroy” the Amalekites, God dethrones him (1 Sm 15:8–9).
Perhaps the violence of some of these texts can be accounted for by
the fact that the “victims” in question were actually guilty and therefore
not victims at all. For example, even by today’s standards the people of
Israel may have been well within the bounds of law when employing
lethal means of self-defense against the Assyrians, assuming such violence was per se ordered to that end. As for those times when the Bible
indicates that God himself directly kills men, Aquinas argues that God
operates perfectly in accord with his nature by directly punishing sinners with death:
All men alike, both guilty and innocent, die the death of nature:
which death of nature is inflicted by the power of God on account of original sin, according to 1 Samuel 2:6: “The Lord killeth and maketh alive. Consequently, by the command of God,
death can be inflicted on any man, guilty or innocent, without
any injustice whatever.8
This logic would seem to exculpate God when he takes people’s lives for
various reasons and through various means, whether that be a flood, a
plague, or his people Israel. However, many moderns find it unthinkable
7
8

All biblical citations in this essay will be taken from the RSV.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (ST) I-II, q. 94, a. 5, ad 2.

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one could apply this principle so as to justify the slaughter of infant children on account of original sin and the collective sins of their people.
Nor can they tolerate the fact that God, by remaining silent, apparently approves of the Psalmist when he revels in the thought of bashing
Babylonian children against rocks (Ps 137:8–9; cf. Hos 13:16). It is likewise difficult to see how this accounts for times when God not only kills
apparently innocent people but kills them after having set them up to
fail, giving his people “statutes that were not good” and “defil[ing] them
through their very gifts in making them offer by fire all their first-born”
(Ez 20:23–26). He hardens hearts only in order to destroy the hardened
(Ex 4:21; cf. 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8; Jos 11:20; Rom 9:18; 11:7–8).
What is more, he goes so far as to send “evil” and “lying” spirits into individuals in order that they might fail (1 Sm 16:14; cf. 18:10; 19:9; 1 Kgs
22:19–22; cf. 2 Chr 18:21ff; Jgs 9:23). Perhaps a somewhat satisfactory
answer could be made to each of these texts on a case-by-case basis, but
to my mind the cumulative force of biblical evidence implicating God in
evil clearly demands a more profound explanation.9
Benedict and Aquinas’s “Open Philosophy”
In response to our problem, I would like to begin by recalling a relatively recent example demonstrating Benedict’s conviction concerning the
significance of Aquinas for implementing his exegetical proposal. After
explaining that his Jesus of Nazareth is not a “Life of Jesus” or a “Christology,” he explicitly states that Aquinas’s treatise on the life of Christ in
the Summa is “closer to my intention” and that with this work “my book

9

Given the presence of these texts, history’s long pedigree of polemics against the
authority of Scripture comes as no surprise. In the nineteenth century, Nietzsche famously reviled the Bible in his Genealogy of Morals, boasting that the priestly people
who authored Sacred Scripture were the most vengeful “haters” in history. Today’s
New Atheists carry on Nietzsche’s legacy: “we ought to be glad that none of the
religious myths has any truth to it, or in it. The Bible may, indeed does, contain a
warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price,
and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was
put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.” Christopher Hitchens, God Is
Not Great (New York: Twelve, 2007), 106. “One could go through the Old Testament
book by book, here pausing to notice a lapidary phrase . . .and there a fine verse, but
always encountering the same difficulties.” Ibid., 107.

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has many points of contact.”10 Though privy to modern scholarly tools
in a way Aquinas was not, Benedict identifies with the latter in his patient attentiveness to God’s word and his desire to put believers in touch
with the mystery of Jesus, his “figure and message.”11
In the section of his Erasmus Lecture entitled “Basic Elements of a
New Synthesis,” Benedict expounds at greater length on the importance
of Thomas’s thought for helping believers encounter Christ through his
word. In contrast with a Kantian “ready-made philosophy,” Aquinas’s
“open philosophy” is “capable of accepting the biblical phenomenon in
all its radicalism” by admitting that a real encounter of God and man
is witnessed in history—and made possible today—by the Scriptures.12
For Benedict, a “critique of the critique” requires a rejection of the false
presuppositions of those who would exclude a priori God’s ability to
speak through human words. Aquinas’s exegesis, deeply rooted in the
Catholic Tradition with its conviction that the boundary of time and
eternity is permeable, allows for the Bible to be what the Church has
always claimed it to be: the word of God in human words.
Divine Pedagogy
Following these remarks Benedict reveals a second point of contact with
Aquinas: the recognition of how essential it is to grasp the Christological teleology of salvation history. Thomas serves as a salutary counter-model in the field of exegesis today, for he presupposes the action of
divine providence guiding salvation history to its destination in Christ.
Christ is thus for Benedict “the unifying principle” of history “which
alone confers sense on it,” and God’s action gradually leading his people
toward Christ is “the principle of the intelligibility of history.”13
The centrality of this principle comes into full relief if one steps back
10

Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2, Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem
to the Resurrection, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011),
xvi.
11
Ibid.
12
Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 23.
13
Ibid., 24, no. 37. Benedict is citing here Maximino Arias Reyero, Thomas von
Aquin als Exeget: Die Prinzipien seiner Schriftdeutung und seine Lehre von den
Schriftsinnen (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1971), 106; cf. “Biblical Interpretation
in Conflict,” 23, no. 35.

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to observe how Benedict has articulated his Method C proposal over the
past two decades. His Verbum Domini is particularly significant because
it has a section entitled “The ‘Dark’ Passages of the Bible,” in which the
pontiff does this, though without precisely the same vocabulary. Benedict states that instances of violence and immorality in the Bible can be
adequately addressed only if Catholics take seriously the fact that “God’s
plan is manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite human resistance.” He explains that God patiently and gradually revealed himself in order to “guide and educate . . .
training his people in preparation for the Gospel.” Because “revelation is
suited to the cultural and moral level of distant times,” it narrates certain
things “without explicitly denouncing the immorality of such things,” a
fact that “can cause the modern reader to be taken aback.” What is needed for correct interpretation, therefore, is “a training that interprets the
texts in their historical-literary context [another way of saying Method
B] and within the Christian perspective [Method A] which has as its
ultimate hermeneutical key ‘the Gospel and the new commandment of
Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery.’”14
The above text echoes the words of Dei Verbum and the later Catechism of the Catholic Church, which eloquently states: “The divine plan
of revelation . . . involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates
himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the
supernatural revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission
of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.”15 This patristically based hermeneutic of divine pedagogy articulated by Benedict and the Catechism is
precisely the bridge that enables one to reconcile the unity of Scripture
traditionally emphasized by Christian exegetes with the development,
diversity, and apparent contradictions observed by modern scholars.
For the hermeneutic of divine pedagogy affirms that Scripture has a unity in light of the fact that it proceeds from God’s one wise educational
14

Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, §42 (emphasis Benedict’s); cf. nos. 11 and 20 for
Benedict’s use of the term “divine pedagogy.”
15
Catechism of the Catholic Church, §53. I have cited the Catechism here because of its
clarity and conciseness, but the Catechism itself is summarizing the Second Vatican
Council constitution Dei Verbum §15. For other magisterial statements of the divine
pedagogy, see Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge §15 and Lumen Gentium §9, which
explains Israel’s relationship with God in terms of gradual instruction.”

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plan for mankind and communicates God himself to man. At the same
time, this hermeneutic is comfortable with diversity and apparent contradictions in Scripture since it sees these within the greater context of
its progression toward Christ.16
To draw out the implications of this suggestion, I would like to sample some more texts that illustrate the importance Benedict places on
a hermeneutic that takes seriously the divine pedagogy. In his In the
Beginning, he describes the Bible as the story of a twofold struggle: God’s
struggle to “make himself understandable to them over the course of
time,” and the people of God’s struggle to “seize hold of God over the
course of time.” This familiarization between God and man was a journey of faith, and “only in the process of this journeying was the Bible’s
real way of declaring itself formed, step by step.” The message of the Bible becomes clearer as salvation history progresses and man acquires an
increasing ability to penetrate the divine mysteries. Ultimately, however,
the whole Old Testament is “an advance toward Christ,” and as such its
real meaning becomes clear only in light of him who is its end. Benedict
therefore argues that exegetes interpret individual texts correctly only
when they “see in the text where this way is tending and what its inner
direction is.”17
Benedict’s revealing interview God and the World is also illuminating, especially given our question concerning how the Christian Scriptures apparently implicate God in evil in a way that seems comparable with the Koran’s portrait of God. It is noteworthy that in this work
Benedict treats precisely on the issue of whether the Scriptures exhibit
development. Contrasting Islam’s belief that the Koran was dictated directly to Muhammad by God, he observes that the books of the Bible
16

“The Bible is the condensation of a process of revelation which is much greater and
inexhaustible . . . It is then part of a living organism which, through the vicissitudes
of history, nonetheless conserves its identity.” Benedict XVI, “Sources and Transmission of the Faith,” Communio 10 (1983): 28.
17
Benedict XVI, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation
and the Fall, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 10–11.
See also Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), where he explains that the process of the Bible’s
formation was “not linear . . . but when you watch it unfold in light of Jesus Christ,
you can see it moving in a single overall direction.” According to Benedict and his
“Christological hermeneutic,” Christ is “the key to the whole” of Scripture. Ibid., xix.

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“bear the impression of a history that [God] has been guiding,” since
they were composed and developed over a thousand years, mediated by
“quite different stages of history and of civilization.”18 As in the two texts
just discussed, so here he explains, “The Bible is not a textbook about
God and divine matters but contains images with perceptions and insights in the course of development, and through these images, slowly and
step by step, a historical reality is coming into existence.”19 If the Christian
cannot turn to a given page of the Bible for the fullness of revealed truth,
then where can he find it? “The level on which I perceive the Bible as
God’s Word is that of the unity of God’s history . . . In our Christian
reading of it, we are more than ever convinced, as we said, that the New
Testament offers us the key to understanding the Old.”20 The idea I wish
to convey by sampling these works of Benedict on the importance of a
divine pedagogy hermeneutic is summarized well in a fourth work, Introduction to Christianity, in which he states quite simply, “Anyone who
wishes to understand the biblical belief in God must follow its historical
development from its origins with the patriarchs of Israel right up to the
last books of the New Testament.”21
18

Benedict XVI, God and the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 151–52 (emphasis added).
19
“Let us compare Holy Scripture with the Koran, for example. Moslems believe that
the Koran was directly dictated by God. It is not mediated by any history; no human
intermediary was needed; it is a message direct from God. The Bible, on the other
hand, is quite different. It is mediated to us by a history, and even as a book it extends
over a period of more than a thousand years. The question of whether or not Moses
may have been a writer is one we can happily leave to one side. It is still true that
the biblical literature grew up over a thousand-year history and thus moves through
quite different stages of history and of civilization, which are all reflected in it. In
the first three chapters of Genesis, for instance, we meet with a quite different form
of culture from what came later, in the exilic literature, or in the wisdom literature,
and then finally in the literature of the New Testament. It becomes clear that God
did not just dictate these words but rather that they bear the impression of a history
that he has been guiding; they have come into being as a witness to that history.” Ibid.
(emphasis added).
20
Ibid., 153 (emphasis added). Benedict again goes on to speak of the “process of
collective development” and the “many stages of mediation” by which the biblical
books gradually were able to “bring the history of God’s people and of God’s guidance to verbal expression.”
21
Benedict XVI, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004),
116. It is illuminating to read the entire chapter from which this citation is taken, as in it Benedict traces the roots of Israel’s monotheism such as it developed

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I now would like to illustrate briefly how one may implement this
first principle concerning the necessity of a divine pedagogy hermeneutic for tackling “dark” texts. The step-by-step process by which God led
his people to the fullness of truth is evident in the well-known changes
made by the postexilic Chronicler to the Books of Samuel. In 2 Samuel
24:1, God incites David to sin by numbering the people, whereas in 1
Chronicles 21:1 the blame shifts away from God and on to Satan: “Satan
stood up against Israel, and incited David to number Israel.” A Method
B approach without the light of faith may view this solely as a piece of
political propaganda to make David look better.22 For a Method C approach, however, it is not propaganda but providence that is the main
force at work here. Following Benedict’s principle that Catholics need to
look at the Scriptures as a whole, the Method C exegete might even admit that the Chronicler himself was at least partly motivated by political
reasons here. Still, the fact that he attributed the instigation of an evil
deed to Satan—a figure whose name appears as a proper noun in this
text alone among all the books of the Old Testament—shows that he and
his audience were beginning to suspect that Yahweh was not the direct
cause of man’s evil actions. The picture painted in 1 Chronicles much
more resembles that which Christians typically have in mind when considering God’s role in evil. It is not God but Satan who “incites” humans
to evil and is, along with our own free will, the cause of evil actions.
If this explanation is correct, it helps demonstrate the presence of
a substantial unity in the Bible’s developing grasp of God’s relationship
with evil; for, earlier and later texts shared in common a clear understanding that Yahweh was in charge of the entire cosmic order. Earlier
authors were aware that Yahweh’s omnipotence meant that he was ultimately, in some mysterious way, the “cause” of man’s evil deeds. However, these authors explained reality in such a manner because they were
operating on the premise that God is the direct cause of both good and
evil. They were not fully privy to the distinction between God’s active
and permissive will that was made later in the tradition. This distinction
is at the heart of what is required to reconcile God’s omnipotence with
22

throughout the Old Testament period.
For a helpful discussion of this problem, see Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human
Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship (Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic, 2008).

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his omnibenevolence in texts that appear to have God causing evil.23
This is where Satan, later in the tradition, eventually comes into play. In
Chronicles as in the New Testament, God allows Satan to exercise his
free will in tempting humans, and he allows individuals to consent to or
reject Satan.
Asserting “the Essential Point”
A third point of contact between Aquinas and Benedict is not explicated
by the emeritus pontiff himself but is nonetheless observable in the way
he instantiates his own principles by attempting to determine the “essential point” asserted in concrete biblical texts. Benedict demonstrates
keen awareness that certain texts seem plainly to contradict what is stated in other texts:
It is because faith is not set before us as a complete and finished
system that the Bible contains contradictory texts, or at least
ones that stand in tension to each other.24
It follows straightaway that neither the criterion of inspiration nor
that of infallibility can be applied mechanically. It is quite impossible to pick out one single sentence and say, right, you find this
sentence in God’s great book, so it must simply be true in itself.25
23

Cf. ST I, q. 19, a. 9, ad 3; a. 12.
Benedict XVI, God and the World, 152; cf. “The problem of dating Jesus’s Last Supper arises from the contradiction on this point between the Synoptic Gospels, on the
one hand, and Saint John’s Gospel, on the other.” Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth:
Holy Week, 106.
25
Benedict XVI, God and the World, 153; cf. Benedict XVI, Address to Participants in
the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (May 2, 2011): “Lastly,
I would only like to mention the fact that in a good hermeneutic it is not possible
to apply mechanically the criterion of inspiration, or indeed of absolute truth by
extrapolating a single sentence or expression. The plan in which it is possible to
perceive Sacred Scripture as a Word of God is that of the unity of God, in a totality
in which the individual elements are illuminated reciprocally and are opened to understanding.” See also this thought-provoking text from James Tunstead Burtchaell,
Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspiration since 1810: A Review and Critique (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 299, 303–4: “Both by those who accept
these claims [of inerrancy and infallibility] and by those who reject them, they have
been imagined as some sort of flawless, eternal ownership of the truth, expressed in
formulas that might from time to time need a little translating, but never need re24

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The problem of admitting the presence of contradictory biblical texts,
of course, lies in squaring it with the doctrine of inerrancy such as it is
articulated in Dei Verbum: “everything asserted by the inspired authors
or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit.”26
As Germain Grisez has noted in a helpful essay, it is a great mistake
to read the above sentence as saying that everything in Scripture is asserted by the Holy Spirit: “Scripture contains not only many sentences
expressing no proposition, but many sentences that express propositions not asserted by their human authors.”27 In a helpful footnote in
which he offers illustrations from Aquinas to support his claim, Grisez
adds that the council fathers would have been well aware of the difference between a mere statement on the one hand and an assertion or
teaching on the other.28
Brian Harrison, O.S., in an essay that critiques a view similar to that
advanced by Grisez, offers a further helpful specification. According to
the Council relator of Dei Verbum 11, Harrison notes, the word teach
(docere) refers to those things that are truly affirmed (asseruntur) in

placing. In this sense, there has probably never been an inerrant declaration uttered
or book written, nor need we look forward to one. But if inerrancy involve wild,
and sometimes even frightening movement, if it mean being pulled to the right and
to the left, being tempted constantly to deviate, yet always managing somehow to
regain the road, then it begins to sound rather like what the Church has been about
. . . In sum, the Church does find inerrancy in the Bible, if we can agree to take that
term in its dynamic sense, and not a static one. Inerrancy must be the ability, not to
avoid all mistakes, but to cope with them, remedy them, survive them, and eventually even profit from them. In a distinct selection of faith-leavings from a distinct
epoch of faith-history, we have the archives of the process by which our ancestral
faith began from nothing, involved itself in countless frustrating errors, but made
its way, lurching and swerving, ‘reeling but erect,’ somehow though never losing the
way, to climax in Christ.”
26
Dei Verbum §11. The text continues: “it follows that the books of Scripture must be
acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God
wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”
27
Germain Grisez, “The Inspiration and Inerrancy of Scripture,” in For the Sake of Our
Salvation: The Truth and Humility of God’s Word (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road,
2010), 186.
28
Ibid., 186n15. Grisez states that “the distinction between what is asserted and what is
said without being asserted is one that Thomas uses regularly.” Examples he provides
from the ST include II-II, q. 110, a. 3, ad 1; I, q. 77, a. 5, ad 3; q. 100, a.2, ad 2.

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Scripture.29 Harrison cites an important text from Raúl Cardinal Silva
Herínquez to clarify:
the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is better expressed by the formal criterion of teaching, since it is according to that criterion
that no error can be found. For in another sense, that is, the
material sense, it is possible for expressions to be used by the
sacred writer which are erroneous in themselves, but which,
however, he does not wish to teach.30
As Harrison proceeds to observe, the relator informed the council fathers that Herínquez’s above proposal had been accepted “substantially”
by the doctrinal commission. Thus Harrison affirms Herínquez’s clarification as “a guide to what the Council means.”31
In contrast with Grisez, Harrison argues that the key distinction in
the cardinal’s text is not between “affirmations” and “teachings” on the

29

Acta synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II (Rome: Typis Polyglottis
Vaticanis, 1970–), vol. 4, pt. 5, 709; Brian Harrison, “Restricted Inerrancy and the
‘Hermeneutic of Discontinuity,’” in For the Sake of Our Salvation, 244. In another piece, Harrison pointedly criticizes certain “recent Catholic authors” who “have
tried to reconcile [the teaching of Dei Verbum 11] with the supposed occurrence of
errors in Scripture by charging that the errors they have in mind are never in fact
affirmed by either the divine or human authors.” Harrison describes such a maneuver as a “contorted hermeneutic” that “unreasonably attempts to determine what
is being affirmed in a given text in Scripture by appealing to content rather than
form—subject matter rather than syntax . . . but this procedure—trying to identify
an author’s assertions by looking at what he is talking instead of how he talks about
it—violates basic, common-sense principles of verbal communication. Brian Harrison, “Does Vatican Council II Allow for Errors in Sacred Scripture?” Divinitas 52,
no. 3 (2009): 279–304. The text cited here is from an updated version of the article
available at http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt145-6.html. This is a helpful critique, but it
does not negate the importance of distinguishing statements from assertions as Grisez does. This fundamental endeavor to distinguish nonaffirmed statements from
core assertions in the biblical text can be seen in the exegesis of Joseph Ratzinger
throughout his career. But unlike the unnamed authors whom Harrison critiques,
Ratzinger’s exegesis by no means neglects the syntax or how a biblical author wishes
to assert his point. On the contrary, his patient attentiveness to this reality is what
makes his hermeneutic so powerful.
30
Acta Vaticani II, vol. 3, pt. 3, 799.
31
Harrison, “Restricted Inerrancy,” 245.

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Matthew J. Ramage

one hand and “statements” on the other.32 Rather, for him the dichotomy
is to be found in contrasting what is formally taught from what is merely
“used” (adhiberi) by the sacred writers in view of making their assertions.
The category of what is merely used, Harrison concludes, may include expressions (locutiones) that are “materially” erroneous.33 It is worth noting
that here we have a Thomistically inspired distinction between material
and formal error leveraged in order to make sense of the Scriptures.
Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit make a similar distinction following
the contours of Aquinas’s discussion of prophecy in the Summa:
Truth is the adequatio rei et intellectus. It exists only in the judgment. And by “judgment” we obviously do not mean every proposition made up of subject, verb, and predicate, but the formal
act by which the intellect affirms its conformity (adequatio) to
the object of knowledge . . . An [inspired] author does not speak
of everything in an absolute way . . . He tells the truth or he is
mistaken only within the limits of the field of vision which he has
established for himself and in which he forms his judgment . . .
We must therefore respect the varying degrees of his assent, rather than take all his sentences as categorical affirmations.34
32

It is helpful to compare what Harrison writes in the above piece to another work in
which he provides a helpful clarification of his view: “some biblical affirmations—
above all, those that are per se less directly concerned with salvation—may be only
approximations, or it may be that they express certain truths only in simple, popular
language rather than in precise or technical terminology. For since the formal object
of Sacred Scripture is to teach us God’s plan of salvation for the human race, and not
profane history, natural science, or other forms of merely worldly knowledge for their
own sakes, one should not expect or demand, as a condition of the Bible’s freedom
from error, when it touches upon these subjects, the same standards of accuracy and
clarity in description and terminology as we would expect and demand in works
(especially modern academic works) whose formal object is these ‘secular’ branches
of knowledge . . . we should not set the bar unreasonably high in deciding what is to
count as truth, as opposed to error, when the sacred writers make statements about
secondary matters that are only indirectly linked to the Bible’s principal and overall
purpose.” “Does Vatican Council II Allow for Errors in Sacred Scripture?” http://
www.rtforum.org/lt/lt145-6.html
33
Harrison, “Restricted Inerrancy,” 245. On the distinction between the existence of
material error or imperfection in contrast with formal errors in Scripture, see Matthew Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, 131–46.
34
Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration (New York: Desclee, 1961),
134–35. Cf. ibid., 142: “[God] certainly cannot prevent [the sacred author] from using

Benedict, Aquinas, and Exegesis of “Dark” Passages

287

Abbot Denis Farkasfalvy speaks in similar terms:
Divine inspiration does not imply that each passage and sentence
of the biblical text must be found free of error from every conceivable point of view . . . But such a realization does not prove
that God’s word asserts error. Rather, it only means that God’s
message is expressed, at one or another point of salvation history, with the imperfections characteristic of human existence. 35
One might expand upon Farkasfalvy’s point by explaining that any apparent errors in Scripture are in reality material imperfections rather
than formal errors since the biblical text still conveys “the human author’s concretely defined purpose and its divine author’s salvific purpose,” in such a way that “every passage expresses the truth which it is
supposed to express according to God’s salvific will.” 36
Matthew Lamb, in his translation and notes on Aquinas’s Commentary on Ephesians, makes a similar point from an angle that also accounts for the divine pedagogy discussed above:
We tend to regard a truth as either clearly and explicitly revealed or not revealed at all. But for St. Thomas man’s knowledge of the faith grows; truths are revealed slowly over a period of time. The Bible communicates this organic development
in one way or another these erroneous views and, consequently, from letting them
show through in his text. For example, no one will deny that the biblical authors had
now outmoded cosmological ideas in which they believed, and that they employed
them in their writings because they were unable to think apart from contemporary
categories. But they do not claim to be teaching them for their own sakes; they speak of
them for a different purpose, e.g. to illustrate creation and divine providence.”
35
Denis Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological Introduction to Sacred Scripture (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 232.
Farkasfalvy’s explanation has many resonances with the following of C. S. Lewis.
Writing on the subject of the Psalms, C. S. Lewis observes: “The human qualities of
the raw materials show through. Naiveté, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not ‘the word of God’ in
the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries
the word of God; and we . . . receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its
overall message.” Reflections on the Psalms (London: Harvest Books, 1964), 111–12.
36
Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation, 232.

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Matthew J. Ramage

of salvation-history to men up to its definitive apex in the revelation of the Word Incarnate himself. The whole of the Bible
must be approached with faith; this does not mean that every
sentence is a definable dogma.37
As Lamb relates, it is not as if one can find a definable dogma in every sentence of Scripture; indeed, Scripture never claims this about itself. The reason for this is that the authors of Scripture understood and
taught revealed truth with varying degrees of clarity depending on their
place within the course of salvation history. To discern dogmatic content within Scripture thus requires careful attention to the intentions
of its authors and to the broader role of a particular text within the development of the canon as a whole. This also requires overcoming the
assumption that something is “revealed” only if it is perfectly reflective
of God’s own knowledge, or else it is not revealed at all.
For his part, Benedict assesses concrete problems in a way that is
compatible with and builds on the above understanding of inspiration
and revelation. Throughout his corpus the emeritus pontiff often seeks
to reconcile apparently erroneous biblical texts by inquiring into their
“substance” or “essential point,” that is to say by asking what message
the human and divine authors intend to teach or assert in a given text.
He extends this principle even to the New Testament and Jesus’s own
thought. For instance, in his treatment of the parable of Lazarus in Luke
16 he suggests that Jesus often employed images of the afterlife current
in his day without “formally incorporating them into his teaching about
the next life,” that is to say without intending to assert their conformity to reality. While Jesus did “unequivocally affirm the substance of the
images,” the images themselves do not constitute “the principal message
the Lord wants to convey in this parable.” Agreeing with Joachim Jeremias, the pope proposes that the “main point” of this parable concerns
the rich man’s request for a sign rather than the nature of the afterlife,
which may or may not be accurately conveyed through the imagery employed by Jesus.38 Benedict’s work here thus provides the exegete with
37
38

Ibid., 256n17. See also Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, 133–34.
Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 215–16; cf. God and the World, 45, where he describes
“what is actually meant” by Jesus’s promise that the man of faith can move mountains.

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an example of how he is to go about his work of reconciling apparently
contradictory texts with Catholic teaching on biblical inspiration and
inerrancy. He certainly does not go so far as to allow that Jesus himself
held imperfect ideas about the afterlife, but his exegesis at least implies
that an inspired author need not formally assert every last problematic
statement that issues from his pen.
God and the World contains a number of other examples of this
type of move that are germane to our present question concerning violence and the nature of God. For example, interviewer Peter Seewald
challenges him with the Levites’ slaughter of three thousand men at the
command of God uttered through Moses’s mouth: “So, basically, the
story of the Ten Commandments began with an enormous violation of
commandment number five: Thou shalt not kill. Moses really ought to
have known better.”39 Benedict’s first move in response is a characteristically honest acceptance of his interlocutor’s observation, namely that
this account “does sound terribly bloodthirsty.” His next is an instantiation of one of the principles he professed to hold in common with Aquinas, namely to observe that if the episode is to make sense, “we have to
look forward, toward Christ,” that is to see Scripture as a whole. Third,
rather than simply saying what the passage cannot mean, he offers a
suggestion for what God in his pedagogy intended it to mean: “What
happens expresses the truth that anyone who turns from God not only
departs from the Covenant but from the sphere of life; they ruin their
own life and, in doing so, enter into the realm of death.”40
Moreover, perhaps to the discomfort of the Christian, Benedict
notes that “whether there really were any stone tablets is another question.”41 Even if it were the case that one could disprove the existence of
these physical artifacts, it would not change “the essential point” of the
Sinai narrative, namely “that God, through the agency of his friend, really makes himself known in an authoritative way.” This is the substance
of the narrative, the author’s principle concern. For Benedict, there is
no need for the Christian to worry about whether the account perfectly
39

Benedict XVI, God and the World, 167.
Ibid., 168 (emphasis added).
41
Ibid., 166 (emphasis added). See also his attempt to ascertain the essential point in
the passages concerning creation in ibid., 75ff.
40

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Matthew J. Ramage

conforms to contemporary Western standards of historiography. Many
details Christians consider essential today are in truth accidental features of the text. They were a part of the author’s presentation but not
his principal concern, and in light of the above principles are not to
be deemed formal “errors.” Indeed, it is doubtful that the redactors and
compilers of the canon would have been unaware of the problems people raise today: they deliberately left ambiguities in Scripture perhaps
in part so that later generations could “struggle with God” as they had
done and perhaps build on the tradition they were blessed to receive
from their ancestors.42
One finds the same modus operandi in Benedict’s discussion of
whether the events that unfolded on Sinai were myth or history. Here
he concretely applies the principle he praised in Aquinas concerning his
“open philosophy” that is capable of accounting for a God who enters
history and speaks through human words. He does not deny that the
episode is imbued with a certain mythological flare (thunder, lightning,
clouds, trumpets, flames, quaking, God’s hand writing on stone, etc.),
but affirms that it “refers to a real event, a real entering into history by
God, to a real meeting between God and his people,” and through them
to a meeting with mankind. This, according to Benedict, is the “essence
of the event.”43
As a last example, it is instructive to observe how our author responds when faced with passages that describe God as jealous, wrathful,
and violent in his punishments:
42

While beyond the scope of this article, it is worth calling attention to the fact that
Benedict’s understanding of corporate biblical authorship is capable of accounting
for the phenomenon of redaction in light of the doctrine of biblical inspiration.
Throughout his corpus, Benedict is able to achieve this by considering biblical authorship not merely in the individual human authors and God as divine author, but
in light of “the collective subject” of Scripture, the People of God. For a discussion of
the “interlocking subjects” of Scripture, see his Jesus of Nazareth, xx–xxi. As Aaron
Pidel, S.J., rightly observes, Benedict “transfers the locus of intention and affirmation from the human authors of Scripture to Scripture itself.” “Joseph Ratzinger and
Biblical Inerrancy,” Nova et Vetera 12, no. 1 (2014): 314. He considers all individual
biblical texts in light of their place within the entire plan of salvation revealed in
Scripture and culminating in Christ. Thus for Benedict the canonical books are inerrant, “but only to the extent that they bear upon the intention of the whole—the
mystery of Christ.” Ibid., 330.
43
Benedict XVI, God and the World, 165 (emphasis added).

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291

The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a
way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins
to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is
good, is turning his life toward wrath . . . When God inflicts
punishment, this is not punishment in the sense that God has,
as it were, drawn up a system of fines and penalties and is wanting to pin one on you. “The punishment of God” is in fact an expression for having missed the right road and then experiencing the consequences that follow from taking the wrong track
and wandering away from the right way of living.44
Without employing the same vocabulary as he did above, Benedict
does not shy away from raising the tough question here: Is God actually
wrathful, as the text evidently states? This need not be admitted if one
understands that, while Old Testament authors may have held or stated that the “wrath” of the all-powerful God was the direct cause of all
evil, the main point they affirmed or taught when speaking this way was
that turning away from God’s love brings about disastrous consequences
for man. In other words, in the sacred author’s mind the mechanism by
which man gets punished for turning against God was subordinate to
his teaching about the reality of the punishment itself.45
One could apply this same line of reasoning to all of the problematic
texts mentioned at the beginning of the article, but here I will give only a
couple examples. With respect to times when God apparently sets people up to fail, I observed above that the later tradition associated such
causality not with God but Satan. If I may hazard my own application of
Benedict’s principle here, the “essential point” of such passages perhaps
lies in an assertion of God’s omnipotence and of man’s sinfulness in the
concrete cases in question. In other words, the text’s narration that God
was directly responsible for Pharaoh’s hard heart may be accidental to
the more central assertions that Pharaoh closed his heart and that the
whole affair falls within the scope of divine providence. When it comes
to examples of God commanding the death of seemingly innocent children, might the “essential point” of God’s command not have been to
44
45

Ibid., 104 (emphasis added).
Synave and Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration, 142.

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Matthew J. Ramage

kill the children but rather to defend the people against idolatrous aggressors who habitually made God’s people fall into the same idolatry?
The Spiritual Sense
This leads to a fourth and final connection between Benedict and Aquinas: their agreement concerning the need for a rich doctrine of the senses of Scripture. While I believe that the principles already articulated are
sufficient to account for certain troublesome biblical texts from an apologetics perspective, Benedict also identifies spiritual exegesis as an essential component of his program. Indeed, it is here that the word of God
achieves its end of taking flesh in our human lives and becoming truly a
“living” word. In Verbum Domini, Benedict draws on Aquinas, himself
citing Augustine, to emphasize the importance of the spiritual sense. In
reality “it is impossible for anyone to attain to knowledge of that truth
unless he first have infused faith in Christ” since “the letter, even that of
the Gospel, would kill, were there not the inward grace of healing faith.”46
In the Erasmus Lecture Benedict speaks to this at greater length:
To discover how each given historical word intrinsically transcends itself, and thus to recognize the intrinsic rightness of the
rereadings by which the Bible progressively interweaves event
and sense, is one of the tasks of objective interpretation. It is
a task for which suitable methods can and must be found. In
this sense, the exegetical maxim of Thomas Aquinas is much to
the point: “The task of the good interpreter is not to consider
words, but sense.”47
In contrast with those whose methodologies focus solely on the “words”
of Scripture, Benedict shares with Aquinas the conviction that the words
of Scripture were meant to be “reread” over time, to point beyond themselves to a reality revealed through them but that transcends them.48
46

Verbum Domini, §29; cf. ST I-II, q. 106, a. 2.
Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 26 (emphasis added), citing
Thomas Aquinas, In Matthaeum, XXVII, no. 2321, ed. R. Cai (Turin: Marietti, 1951),
358. Cf. Verbum Domini, §37. He cites Aquinas three times in this work.
48
For the reality of revelation being broader than the Bible, see Benedict XVI, “Biblical
Interpretation in Conflict,” 26, and Verbum Domini, §16.
47

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In this way, their rich teaching on the senses of Scripture, while giving
due attention to its words, also points beyond the words so as to show
that even Scripture’s “darkest” and most problematic passages may put
believers in touch with Christ. The text in its wholeness, Benedict says,
must become Rabbenu, “our teacher.”49 Method A exegesis indicates that
the texts of Scripture signify something in addition to their human authors’ original intended meaning: realities in the lives of believers of all
ages who meditate on these texts in order to gain the knowledge and
strength they need to live a life in Christ. As Benedict indicates, Christians may be privy to the fullness of revelation in a way our Old Testament forefathers were not, but the ancient truths taught therein “are
of course valid for the whole of history, for all places and times” and
“always need to be relearned.”50
The logic of the divine pedagogy is thus revealed when Christians
discover that their encounter with Christ through a spiritual reading of
Scripture’s “dark” passages is not merely one among many possible readings but rather the purpose for which the literal sense was composed in
the first place. The following is an apt summary of Benedict’s twofold approach to the divine pedagogy and his attitude toward how the believer
ought to approach Scripture’s “dark” passages:
If I only read the Bible in order to see what horrible bits I can find
in it, or to count up the bloodthirsty bits, then of course it won’t
heal me. For one thing, the Bible reflects a certain history, but it
is also a kind of path that leads us in a quite personal way and
sets us in the right light. If, therefore, I read the Bible in the spirit
49

Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 27. The Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue eloquently describes this dimension of the divine pedagogy:
“[The Church] takes her lead from divine pedagogy. This means learning from Jesus
himself, and observing the times and seasons as prompted by the Spirit. Jesus only
progressively revealed to his hearers the meaning of the Kingdom, God’s plan of salvation realized in his own mystery. Only gradually, and with infinite care, did he
unveil for them the implications of his message, his identity as the Son of God, the
scandal of the Cross. Even his closest disciples, as the Gospels testify, reached full
faith in their Master only through their Easter experience and the gift of the Spirit.
Those who wish to become disciples of Jesus today will pass through the same process of
discovery and commitment.” Dialogue and Proclamation, §69 (emphasis added).
50
Benedict XVI, God and the World, 154.

Matthew J. Ramage

294

in which it was written, from Christ . . . in faith, then indeed it
has the power to transform me. It leads me into the attitude of
Christ; it interprets my life to me and changes me personally.51
Method C exegesis therefore does not deny the importance of the literal sense, but in light of the divine pedagogy it shows how the literal
sense opens up into spiritual senses that touch the lives of believers
in every age. For example, what reflective Christian would not find
wisdom for life in Origen’s spiritual exegesis of Psalm 137, where he
exhorts Christians to “dash” our nascent sins before they spawn and
grow into unbreakable vices?52 Or, to take up an example already mentioned, who would not be inspired with holy fear when seriously pondering the punishments associated with God’s “wrath”? While it may
not be possible to find such a fitting spiritual interpretation of every
problematic biblical text, our emeritus pontiff believes that this is precisely the sort of exegesis that makes a difference in our lives and represents the Bible’s ultimate raison d’être.
Conclusion
This article has touched on four points of contact between Benedict and
Aquinas that offer fruitful avenues for reconciling Benedict’s conviction
that violence is incompatible with the nature of God with some of Scripture’s darkest texts. I first observed the necessity of an “open philosophy”
that welcomes the entry of the divine into man’s life. Then I illustrated
how such a position opens our eyes to see in the Scriptures the divine
pedagogy by which God worked to progressively lead his people to the
fullness of revelation in Christ. I then surveyed a number of occasions
in which we witness Benedict endeavoring to ascertain “the essential
point” of biblical texts that when taken at face value appear to contradict
God’s nature or otherwise contain errors. Finally, I indicated that, while
the aforementioned principles may provide a rational basis on which
to account for the problem at hand, the most important part of Scripture is that God teaches believers today through its darkest texts when
Christians read them according to their spiritual sense. In sum, I believe
51
52

Ibid., 155.
Origen, Against Celsus, 7.22.

Benedict, Aquinas, and Exegesis of “Dark” Passages

295

that these avenues, while obviously not exhaustive, go a long way both
toward reconciling problematic biblical texts and toward facilitating a
spiritual encounter between the faithful and Christ in the “dark” texts
N&V
of Scripture.

Nova et Vetera, E
 nglish Edition, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2015): 297-320

297

Book Reviews
Cosmology by Édouard Hugon, O.P., trans. Francisco J. Romero
Carrasquillo (Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, Germany: Editiones Scholasticæ,
2013), 376 pp.

ÉDOUARD HUGON, O.P.,taught at the Angelicum from 1909 to

1929, being a confrère of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Pope John
Paul II’s thesis advisor. Hugon produced, with Garrigou-Lagrange’s approbation, a six-volume scholastic manual entitled Cursus Philosophiæ
Thomisticæ,1 which Popes St. Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI all heartily recommended. Pope St. Pius X said it contains “the unadulterated
teaching of Saint Thomas.” (2). He praised the “wealth and coherence
of [Hugon’s] arguments and the clarity of [his] style, . . . particularly
for applying ancient scholastic principles to shed light on new advances in philosophy and to the judicious refutation of errors” (ibid.). Garrigou-Lagrange called Hugon the “theologus communis,” the “faithful
echo of the Common Doctor of the Church.”2
Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo of Opus Dei’s Universidad Panamericana in Guadalajara, Mexico, has translated, in collaboration with
the German publisher Editiones Scholasticæ, the Cosmology volume of
Hugon’s opus. Why translate the Cosmology volume first and not, say,
the Logic or Metaphysics volumes? Carrasquillo has two aims: (1) to
show that natural philosophy—not metaphysics, as Christian Wolff et
al. thought—must be taught before ethics, metaphysics, and theology,

1

Édouard Hugon, O.P., Cursus Philosophiæ Thomisticæ, 6 vols. (Paris: Sumptibus P.
Lethielleux, 1927), http://liberius.net/auteur.php?id_auth=25.
2
Thomas Poinçoc, O.P., “Presentazione,” in Fuori della Chiesa non c’è salvezza, ed.
Édouard Hugon, O.P., trans. Claudio Fauci (Chieti: Edizioni Amicizia Cristiana,
2007), http://www.edizioniamiciziacristiana.it/presfuoridellachiesa.htm.

298

Book Reviews

being their basis; and (2) to disprove those who think manuals neglected modern developments in the natural sciences.
The most important part of Cosmology is its prolegomena because
this is where Hugon shows the necessity of studying natural philosophy,
not just for further philosophical and theological studies, but also for
modern science:
In modern times, however, the natural sciences having been
wondrously developed, Philosophy was banished from Physics;
hence it happens that scientists, in exploring facts or at least
aiming at proximate causes, have neglected ultimate causes and
first principles. For this reason, a philosophical regard in the
study of nature is more than ever desired today. (34)
However, Hugon advocates a strict distinction between philosophy and
modern science, saying that “many topics that today are taught in the
physical sciences” are “outside of Philosophy.” Because of the importance of the prolegomena, Carrasquillo has added many of his own footnotes to help explain Hugon’s scholastic terminology for the beginning
student. Thus it becomes clear why St. Thomas said boys must learn, in
this order: logic, mathematics, the natural sciences, the moral sciences,
and, lastly, the sapiential and divine sciences (theology).3
Hugon splits up the bulk of Cosmology into three treatises, according to Aristotle’s four causes:
1. On the World with Respect to Its Efficient Cause
2. On the World with Respect to Its Material and Formal Causes
3. On the World Insofar as It is Ordered to an End
The first treatise covers such questions as monism, the contingency of
the world, pantheism, the author of the world, whether the world emanates from God, creation, and the eternity of the world. The third treatise covers such questions as nature, motion, art and violence, the laws
of nature, miracles, the end of nature, and evolution. In all the questions
Hugon treats, he employs clear, syllogistic proofs of every principle, the
objections to which he distinguishes, concedes, denies, contradistinguishes, etc., in solid scholastic form.
3

Sententia Ethic., lib. 6 l. 7 no. 17 [1211.]

Book Reviews

299

The second treatise is where scholastic natural philosophy meets
modern science. It is where Hugon shows his more-than-superficial familiarity with the philosophy of physics of Pierre Duhem,4 especially
where Hugon argues that modern science does not disprove hylemorphism, which avoids the pitfalls of both atomism and dynamism.
Hylemorphism is a “stable notion” the Council of Trent “consecrated”
in its teaching on justification.5 Hugon defends it against attacks from
some scientists:
X. - Difficulties Resolved; Whether there is a Contradiction Between the Scholastics and the Scientists. . . . 3rd Objection. Apart from the Scholastics who are
ignorant of natural things, no one else professes hylemorphism.
Therefore, it is prudent to mistrust this system. Reply. In this
question we must believe the philosophers more so than the
physicists and the chemists, as is evident from the previous reply [“the adversaries . . . think that the question of principles is
a physical and experimental one, whereas it is really a properly
philosophical one”]. Further, the greatest philosophers, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas, adhered to this system. Even
today many outside of the Scholastics support it. Barthélemy
Saint-Hilaire presents this testimony of the Aristotelian doctrine: “For me, I find it to be simple and true, and it does not
have the fault of being obscure; at most, I will grant that it has
a certain subtlety, without being in any way sophistical. Matter
and form are the logical and real elements of being.” (Préface de
la Physique, p. 28.) (173, 175-76)
One can only imagine what Hugon would have written had this book
been published after the rise of quantum mechanics. It would further
4

Roger Ariew, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online], s.v. “Pierre Duhem,”
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/duhem/. Hugon cites, e.g.,
Duhem’s Mixture and Chemical Combination: And Related Essays, trans. Paul Needham (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2002), and The Evolution of Mechanics, trans.
Michael Cole (Germantown, MD: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1980).
5
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “Les Notions Consacrées par les Conciles,”
Angelicum 24 (1947): 217–30, http://bit.ly/YPlBff.

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Book Reviews

confirm what Hugon cited of Duhem:
Meanwhile, let it be clear that scientists that are true to their
name do not contradict hylemorphism: “Current physics tends
to recover a certain form of peripateticism” [i.e., Aristotelianism] (P. Duhem, Le mixte,6 p. 200). (177)
Hugon shows that modern spectral analysis does not disprove hylemorphism:
Explanation of many things that are necessary for the complete
understanding hylemorphism . . . III. - On the Permanence
of Elements in the Mixture . . . 3rd Objection. From
spectral analysis it has been established that in the composite
there appear the colors of the simple elements. But this fact
shows that the powers of elements remain in act in the composite. Therefore. Reply. I distinguish the major. That the colors
of the elements appear in the composite while the composite
remains at rest in the compound state, I deny; that these colors
appear while the mixed body begins to be resolved through the
action of light or heat, I concede. I contradistinguish the minor:
that this fact shows that there are powers in act in the mixed
body, if this happens in the compound state itself, I concede; but
that this shows there are powers in act in the mixed body if this
happens only when the mixed body begins to be resolved and
destroyed, I deny. And I deny the conclusion. That only implies
that the powers persist in similar entities. (209-10, 214)
Following this (215-16), Hugon admiringly cites Duhem,7 proving again his
up-to-date knowledge of modern science. Praising Duhem, Hugon writes:
IV. - The Scholastic System is Substantially Retained
Today . . . It is also appropriate to write the following testimony
of the most learned P. Duhem: “Little by little, however, by the
6
7

Duhem, Mixture and Chemical Combination.
Duhem, Mixture and Chemical Combination, 115–16.

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very effect of this development, mechanical hypotheses came
up against obstacles on all sides which were more and more numerous and difficult to surmount. The atomic, Cartesian, and
Newtonian systems gradually lost favour with physicists and
made way for methods analogous to those advocated by Aristotle. Present-day physics is tending to return to a peripatetic
form” (P. Duhem, Le mixte,8 p. 200). (225, 227)
This edition of Hugon’s Cosmology is a scholastic, logically sound work
that will help philosophers and modern scientists better understand
the relationship between philosophy and modern science, especially modern physics. Hugon upholds the Second Vatican Council’s call
that “philosophical disciplines are to be taught in such a way that the
students are first of all led to acquire a solid and coherent knowledge
of man, the world, and of God, relying on a philosophical patrimony
which is perennially valid” and that “account should also be taken of
the more recent progress of the sciences.”9 Carrasquillo’s translation is
the best English-language manual in print enabling beginning and adN&V
vanced students alike to have “St. Thomas as a teacher.”10
Alan Aversa
Fisher More College
Fort Worth, Texas
Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment by Peter Karl
Koritansky (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2012), ix + 209 pp.

PETER KORITANSKY’S “CENTRAL GOAL”is “a presentation of

Aquinas’s theory of punishment as superior to that of utilitarianism and
modern retributivism” (8). He makes real progress toward this, and even
though Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment will appeal
most to those already sympathetic to the Thomistic tradition, it provides
8

Ibid., 119.
Optatam Totius §15.
10
1983 Code of Canon Law can. 252 §3.
9

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an excellent foundation for dialogue with rival theories of punishment.
According to utilitarianism, punishment is a purely instrumental
good justified by its promotion of the greatest good for the greatest number. It is therefore possible that an innocent person must be punished in
order to promote this greater good. For most of us, argues Koritansky,
the absence of a concept of desert renders this account of justice untenable. For this reason, “purely utilitarian theories of punishment are rare”
(33). Koritansky then considers the popular compromise theory of H.
L. A. Hart, who introduces the concept of desert as a limiting principle:
you cannot be punished for more than you deserve. Nevertheless, if in
fact you are punished, it can only be for utilitarian reasons, and therefore “desert” does not justify punishment, but instead prevents its unjust
distribution, thereby protecting the innocent as well as those who might
otherwise suffer more for their crimes than they deserve. But Koritansky argues that Hart cannot have it both ways; once we admit that desert
must play a role, we can no longer eliminate it from our account of the
justification of punishment more generally: “Hart’s position is that because retribution is not part of punishment’s general justifying aim, we
should only consider desert insofar as it protects criminals (or noncriminals) from the excessively harsh punishments that utility might require.
What Hart fails to consider is the inseparability between saying that
criminals should not receive more punishment than what they deserve
and saying that they deserve some amount of punishment” (37).
Those who reject the utilitarian justification of punishment typically accept some form of retributivism, a position Koritansky traces
to Kant, according to whom we can (and must) punish others only if
(and to the extent that) they deserve it. But we need an explanation of
the foundation and content of this desert (Kant offered little more than
the ius talionis), and the modern formulation Koritansky discusses is
the “unfair advantage” theory. According to this theory, society is, at
least in part, an agreement among citizens regarding the distribution of
benefits and burdens to its members. Criminals violate this agreement
by avoiding their fair share of the burdens and acquiring an unfair share
of the benefits. Punishment eliminates this imbalance introduced by the
criminal. Nevertheless, none of the proponents of this theory, argues
Koritansky, “are able to explain in any compelling way how criminal
actions constitute a ‘benefit’ to the criminal himself ” (64). Neither material nor psychological benefits will work; because the casual murderer

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gets little material or psychological benefit from his crime, he would be
punished less severely than the enthusiastic bank robber. “The pivotal
question seems, then, to be this: Can the mere performance of an action
prohibited by law, considered independently from that action’s material benefits or any pleasure derived from it, constitute a meaningful
benefit?” (66). John Finnis and others have suggested that the criminal
possesses greater freedom of choice, which is itself a great human good,
but this is a peculiar sort of freedom; all of us are free to commit murder,
so the murderer does not have that freedom in a way we do not. And if it
is the freedom enjoyed in the act of murder, it is much harder to see that
this “freedom” is any sort of extra benefit or advantage to the murderer.
This form of retributivism remains unable to explain the ground of our
insights regarding desert: precisely why does one person deserve to be
punished simply because he or she violated the law?
Koritansky now turns to Aquinas’s position, and argues that the primary theoretical foundation of the Thomistic theory of punishment is
the political common good. This common good, for which we have a
natural inclination, is itself an intrinsic part of our overall good (here
Koritansky’s defense of this disputed claim draws in part on Lawrence
Dewan’s work). This has significant consequences: “Only by living in political society is man capable of achieving his full natural potential. Thus
understood, politics is no mere instrumental good (as in the teachings of
Kant, Bentham, and the unfair advantage theory of punishment [whose
adherents include John Finnis]), but is part of the very fabric of the human person, and thus the individual’s participation in political society is
a great intrinsic good for the individual as well as for society” (101).
Given this context, punishment is a kind of evil or suffering that
must be contrary to the will of the one being punished and imposed
because of and in accordance with that person’s wrongdoing. The Thomistic account of punishment therefore has a retributive core dependent
on desert. Further, since the political common good is an intrinsic part
of human flourishing (rather than a merely instrumental good), a citizen who commits a crime harms his own good by harming the common
good. “To become a criminal who prefers his own immediate interests
to those of others is actually to frustrate one’s own happiness as a ‘naturally civic and social animal’” (149). Contrary to Finnis, therefore, “it is
quite wrong to suggest that, for Aquinas, actions that deliberately harm

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the common good constitute, in themselves, an advantage or a benefit to
the criminal. Criminals are, on the contrary, supremely disadvantaged
by their criminal actions which, precisely because they fly in the face
of one’s natural inclination to serve and promote the political common
good, make those who perform them into a worse person” (150). Punishment, consequently, does two things. It is first of all retributive in
that it “restores the equality of justice by inflicting a punitive evil upon a
criminal against his will” (164). And it is medicinal, for it is “designed to
restore criminals back to willfully law-abiding citizens . . . , protect society, and deter other potential criminals” (167). The criminal through
punishment realizes the equality of justice and is restored to his place
within the political order and its pursuit of the common good.
But it would be a mistake to conclude that Aquinas has a straightforwardly retributive account of punishment, as the central case of the
death penalty demonstrates. Koritansky shows that Aquinas does not
use the language of retribution in his defense of capital punishment, an
absence about which we can only “speculate” (164). Koritansky’s conclusion is that the retributive features of punishment are foundational (you can only punish the guilty), but the medicinal consequences of
punishment (in this case the protection of society) are more clearly apparent, and so in the temporal order retribution has a secondary place.
The striking result is that “Aquinas can only recommend a retributive
theory of punishment that considerably understates the necessity of retribution” (169).
This has implications for the recent debate over the Catholic
Church’s view of the death penalty. While some have argued that John
Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae conflicts with Aquinas’s justification of the
death penalty, Koritansky argues that according to a Thomistic account of punishment, “public officials do have the right to inflict death
but . . . such a right is better not exercised when retribution is the only
foreseeable good from such a penalty” (185). Because retribution requires knowledge of the internal dispositions of criminals, knowledge
that is for us never absolutely certain, in the extreme case of the death
penalty the guilt of the criminal is not itself enough to justify his execution. This interpretation of Aquinas is compatible with a straightforward reading of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as well as John
Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, and it allows for retribution to remain the

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justificatory core of punishment while nevertheless accepting that today the death penalty is almost never justifiable.
Other than a strange and frequent typographical error (random
words in almost all the quotations from the Summa Theologiae are italicized for no apparent reason), this is a clear and compelling study, and
Koritansky does an excellent job explaining why utilitarian and Kantian theories of punishment (including the unfair advantage theory) are
problematic. Let me conclude, however, with two different challenges
Koritansky’s account faces: first, many contemporary non-Thomistic accounts of punishment will remain untouched by Koritansky’s criticisms.
Utilitarians, for example, have long faced the objection that utilitarianism allows for the sacrifice of the innocent. Many responses have been
developed, including denying that practically speaking any such cases
will come about (R. M. Hare), admitting the objection and suggesting
that our moral intuitions should be revised (Peter Singer), and transforming utilitarianism into a rule-based moral theory (Brad Hooker).
Koritansky cannot of course be faulted for not following up on the many
branches of utilitarian and Kantian moral theory, but this is a reminder
that his readers will most likely be less diverse than he would like, a fact
expressed in another way in his final paragraph: “To accept Aquinas’s
theory of punishment without removing it from its proper philosophical context requires a reconsideration of moral and political theories,
such as natural law and the political dimension of human nature, that by
many have long since been considered discredited” (198). Koritansky’s
study is a necessary first step, but if the enemy is to be engaged the fight
will need to be brought to his own territory.
The second challenge arises in response to his arguments against
Finnis and the unfair advantage theory. Let us assume, as Koritansky argues, that the political common good is indeed an intrinsic good, and
therefore a criminal harms himself in harming the common good. Punishment is retributive (it reestablishes the “equality of justice”) and medicinal (it promotes the good of the criminal and of society more generally).
But whereas Finnis explains the “equality of justice” in terms of advantage, Koritansky leaves obscure the precise nature of this equality. Punishment is inflicted within the context of the political order and because
that order has been violated in some way. We punish, says Koritansky,
because we have a natural desire to protect that order, a desire that makes

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punishment part of natural law. But once we set aside the medicinal action of punishment, how can we explain the need for retribution? Saying
merely that we have a natural desire to protect the common good is not
enough, since “protection” refers to the medicinal aspect of punishment
and not its retributive aspect. Bentham’s criticism of retributivism is that
it is merely revenge, and if the Thomistic account is to avoid this charge it
must be clear precisely why retributive punishment is morally good and
even morally required aside from its medicinal properties. This is what
Finnis’s account accomplishes, though only at the cost of other problems.
Koritansky’s account needs to fill out the “equality of justice” such that
achieving that equality is an obvious good that would justify punishment
without appealing to its medicinal effects.
But these challenges are less criticisms of Koritansky than they
are indications of where we must go from here. It is a real virtue of
Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment that it makes these
problems evident and compelling, and future discussion of Aquinas
and punishment will need to take Koritansky’s work as an important
N&V
starting point.
Raymond Hain
Providence College
Providence, RI

A Defense of Dignity: Creating Life, Destroying Life, and
Protecting the Rights of Conscience by Christopher Kaczor (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), x + 220 pp.

IN A DEFENSE OF DIGNITY,Christopher Kaczor provides a good

introduction to several pressing issues in biomedical ethics, some of
which are alluded to in the subtitle: Creating Life, Destroying Life, and
Protecting the Rights of Conscience. The book is a collection of articles
previously published by Kaczor, now conveniently collected under the
rubric of human dignity, a principle that indeed has bearing upon any
issue in biomedical ethics. Kaczor begins with a brief discussion of dignity, which he then applies to the question of animal rights. For the remainder of the book he treats topics under the three headings of creating life, destroying life, and conscience. Creating life concerns “fertility
treatment,” that is, issues surrounding in vitro fertilization. Destroying

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307

life concerns abortion, euthanasia, and organ transplantation. Finally,
conscience concerns the right of a doctor to refuse to provide an abortion (or other procedures to which he has a moral objection).
Kaczor consistently provides readily accessible arguments in clear
concise prose. He tends to use the Napoleonic strategy of giving a little
grapeshot, that is, he fires at his opponents with argument piled upon
argument, with the surety that something will hit its mark. Some arguments prove stronger than others, but for any particular issue, Kaczor is
likely to have at least a number of conclusive points in his favor.
In his brief treatment of dignity Kaczor takes on Steven Pinker,
the Harvard psychology professor notorious for claiming that man is
now kinder and gentler, despite the Holocaust, the Russian genocide of
Ukrainians, the Chinese one child policy, and modern organized crime.
Pinker entered what might be called the “dignity wars” with the brazen
claim that dignity is stupid. He thinks that those who use dignity as
a principle in bioethics (especially Catholics) have overlooked obvious
features of dignity that undermine their case. Kaczor reveals that Pinker
is the one with myopic vision. Pinker’s attack against dignity can equally
be turned upon his own favored moral principle of autonomy. Furthermore, Pinker overlooks distinct uses of the word dignity, some of which
have little or no bearing upon questions of bioethics. Pinker props up
his case by focusing upon these irrelevant meanings, and ignoring the
morally significant meaning.
Kaczor argues that dignity is rooted in human nature, such that
each human being has dignity simply by being human, apart from any
accomplishments he might achieve. The most brilliant scientist is equal
in human dignity to the Down syndrome individual, or even to someone who is persistently unconscious. These latter individuals retain an
orientation toward freedom and reason, even if they are unable to exercise these capacities.
In chapter 2, Kaczor argues that human beings are distinctive in their
dignity. However clever other animals might prove to be, they are not
equal to human beings. He shows that Peter Singer, in arguing against
so-called “speciesism,” often relies upon bare assertion, beginning with
his definition of speciesism, which is— by stipulation—“prejudice” and
“bias”; Singer implies that because racism and sexism are wrong, so
“species” becomes wrong by adding the suffix “-ism”; he asserts, without

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justification, that religious arguments in defense of human dignity are
irrelevant; and he falsely attributes to Kant the view that human beings
have dignity only insofar as they are actually conscious.
In chapters 3, 4, and 5, under the rubric of “creating life,” Kaczor
addresses several issues surrounding IVF. He takes on Savulescu, who
argues in favor of “procreative beneficence,” which is nearly the contrary
of what it sounds: when using IVF, parents have an obligation—so says
Savulescu—to select the child who will be best off, which means, in the
concrete, that they should choose to have the more intelligent, healthier,
and stronger child (as well as, one suspects, the child most disposed to
accept the views of Savulescu), and to eliminate—or kill—those children less endowed. It does not bother Savulescu that the idea of killing
off the unfit and selecting the fit sounds more than vaguely familiar.
Kaczor shows that if Savulescu really believed that parents should
always seek a child who is expected to have the most advantageous life,
then he would oppose IVF, which leads to higher risks of birth defects;
he would also oppose having children outside of wedlock, which leads
to a host of complications for children. If Savulescu were really concerned about people being better off, he would devote his efforts toward
the relief of poverty, which has a much better chance of improving conditions than the exorbitantly expensive and ineffective IVF.
Chapter 5 presents one of the few issues over which this reviewer
must part ways with Kaczor. He defends so-called embryo adoption,
in which a woman has an embryo (conceived by IVF) implanted in her
womb, in the hope of bringing the child to term. The woman has not
herself conceived the child; that was done (unethically) by someone
else, and the child is a “spare,” left over after a couple has had all the children they want. Embryo adoption is an attempt to save the lives of these
children from the limbo of deep freeze. A noble goal, no doubt. The
question is whether implanting a child in one’s womb is a morally reprehensible act, despite the great good one hopes to achieve by it. Kaczor
adeptly addresses many of the objections raised against this adoptive
implantation, but I fear he may have begged the question by defining
“procreation” as simply creating new human life and not as “impregnating.” This is the very question that must be resolved.
Chapters 6, 7, and 8 concern various issues surrounding abortion.
Kaczor takes on the infamous violinist argument of Judith Jarvis Thom-

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son, in which pregnancy is compared to the state of being hooked up,
involuntarily, to a violinist, who needs your kidneys to stay alive for nine
months. In such a situation, argues Thompson, you surely have a right
to disconnect the violinist rather than undergo the inconvenience of being continually hooked up to him. In this argument, abortion is treated
not so much as killing the baby as it is disconnecting the baby, with the
consequence that he dies.
Kaczor picks apart the various attempts to justify this right to disconnect the baby. If this right is based upon bodily integrity (such that
one should never be forced to donate a kidney), then we must also consider the bodily integrity of the baby. Furthermore, the argument is
based upon an unrealistically dim view of what a mother must undergo
during pregnancy. Most essentially, the idea that an abortion involves
removing a baby with the side effect of death ignores the reality of what
happens in the act of abortion in the world today. Quite simply, the baby
is cut up or otherwise physically attacked; there are no shades of merely
permitting death.
Chapters 9 and 10 address euthanasia. Kaczor tackles Tristam
Engelhardt, the former Catholic become Antiochian Orthodox, who
maintains an extreme form of fideism. He upholds the correct conclusion concerning euthanasia—we are not allowed to put people to death
even if they wish it—but he denies that human reason alone can reach
this conclusion; we know it by faith alone. Kaczor shows that faith itself,
as revealed in the Scriptures, teaches that reason can attain moral truths.
Furthermore, theology does not answer all questions, leaving room for
philosophy in our moral understanding. Indeed, theology—including
the theology of Engelhardt—inevitably presupposes some philosophy.
Finally, an honest appraisal of philosophical arguments concerning euthanasia reveals that they can conclude to the moral truth that euthanasia is unacceptable.
Chapter 11 concerns the practice of organ donation after cardiac
death. In this case, cardiac death is contrasted to brain death. Because
of a shortage of organs, the transplant community has searched for new
sources, and they have turned to the practice of disconnecting an individual from life support, waiting for his heart to stop beating, waiting
another two minutes (or so), and then cutting him open to retrieve his
organs. Kaczor calls into question (correctly, it seems) the widespread

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acceptance of brain death as the true death of the individual. Medical
evidence indicates that an individual can maintain his integrity long
after his brain has died. Kaczor is also skeptical about donation after
cardiac death, as currently practiced. He thinks there might be some
room for it, however, if the practice is modified. It seems unlikely that
the individual is dead only two minutes after his heart stops beating;
something like twenty to thirty minutes seems more realistic. The trouble is that after such an extended time the organs are often unusable.
Consequently, Kaczor recommends injecting the individual with certain organ preserving drugs prior to his death (a recommendation that
raises ethical issues of its own). Then the organs might be still viable
after twenty minutes.
Chapters 12 and 13 focus upon conscientious objection, primarily
to the practice of abortion. There seems to be a concerted effort to force
doctors to perform abortions, or short of that, at least to refer patients to
doctors who will perform an abortion. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, for instance, maintains that patients have a
right to demand a treatment, so that doctors should be obliged to comply with this demand. Kaczor points out that patients do not have the
right to demand all and any treatments. The wishes of those with bodily
integrity identity disorder, for instance, who wish to have some healthy
limb removed, should not be complied with. Too often arguments
against conscientious objection presume the very conclusion they wish
to reach, namely, that abortion is a central part of what it means to be
a physician. Those physicians who conscientiously object are claiming
precisely the reverse: it is essential to a physician to refuse to perform
an abortion.
I have presented only a brief sample of the many topics that Kaczor
covers. He also addresses the following topics: the idea that everyone
should have equal access to fertility treatment; the thorny question of
treatments of ectopic pregnancy; the ethics of fetal surgery; and artificial nutrition for patients in so-called persistent vegetative state.
For a wide variety of topics in bioethics, then, Kaczor’s collection
(which would be very useful in a college bioethics course) provides a
good introduction, relying upon sound ethical principles, grounded in
human dignity. The book does not probe to the underlying source of
these principles (Kaczor has done that elsewhere), which would be out of

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place at an introductory level, but it does provide sound argumentation
in defense of the dignity of human individuals, which dignity is, sadly,
too often attacked in our world today. Kaczor has done a service for all of
us confronted with the perplexities of modern bioethics.
N&V
Steven J. Jensen
University of St. Thomas
Houston, Texas

Sacrifice as Gift: Eucharist, Grace, and Contemplative Prayer in
Maurice de la Taille by Michon M. Matthiesen (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2013), xiii + 320 pp.

UNTIL THE LATE 1960sor so, when they went to church on Sun-

days, Catholics offered the sacrifice of the Mass. Then, some time in
the 70s or 80s, when they went to church they “offered the sacrifice” of
the Mass. They stopped doing something real, and started doing something symbolic. They stopped doing something real by way of signifying the reality, and started enacting an elaborate metaphor. If Michon
Matthiesen has her way, we will drop the quotation marks, hear the
Eucharistic teaching of Paul VI and his successors with unarched eyebrows, speak concordantly with the fathers, and once again start doing
something on Sundays. We will offer the Sacrifice. That is, I think, the
most important consequence her recent monograph on the Eucharistic
theology of Maurice de la Taille could have.
Maurice de la Taille (1872–1933) entered the Jesuits in 1890. After
the First World War, he taught at the Gregorian University until 1930.
His great work, Mysterium Fidei, runs to 773 double columned imperial
octavo pages in its last edition (1934; 1st ed., 1921). Henri de Lubac describes it as “an essay in the liquidation of the over-complicated systems
worked out in modern times, indeed ever since the Council of Trent,
about the sacrifice of the Mass.” Understood in this way, its aim was
remarkably similar to Anscar Vonier’s A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist (1925) or Charles Journet’s La Messe: Présence du Sacrifice de
la Croix (1957), an English edition of which appeared in 2008. English
translations of the first two of the three “books” or parts of Mysterium
Fidei were published in 1940 and 1950, but it seems to have had little impact in the last fifty years in English language theology. Matthiesen aims

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to change that, to recover a way of speaking about the Eucharist that was
consigned after the council to the rubbish bin or at any rate abandoned.
She begins with de la Taille’s understanding of sacrifice in a Thomist framework, an understanding that integrates Scripture and the Fathers, as well as observations from modern sociology and the history
of religions. In this respect, it provides a sort of model of theological
method, where authorities are appreciated according to their relation,
proper or extraneous, to theology. Sacrifice is the premier exterior exercise of religion, visibly signifying both the worship exclusively due to
God (latreia) and propitiation for sin. The visible signification includes
both an offering of a gift and its immolation or destruction, though
these can be separated in time: the offering is either coincident with
immolation, or offers an already immolated or a to-be-immolated gift.
The gift is not a victim without immolation. Immolation connotes the
painful, mortifying aspect of sacrifice, and so its second motivation,
propitiation. Here, de la Taille is strong, for such self-denial is necessarily signified when worship is given by self-centered, sinful men. Such
creatures cannot justly worship God without acknowledging their culpable unworthiness even to address him. Together with worship, there
are also petitionary and thankful motivations for sacrifice, and these
come to further visible expression in the acceptance of the sacrifice by
and the return sharing of benefits from God. Sacrifice is not accomplished unless accepted, and it is not accepted unless the good God
both forgives and blesses. The blessing in its visibility consists most
typically in the communion banquet, and in this way, de la Taille acknowledges the “meal theory” of sacrifice.
All of this is a welcome reintroduction of the older discourse on
sacrifice known to Western theology, at least since the time of St. Augustine. The next two chapters take up the more controversial aspects of
de la Taille’s Eucharistic theology, as his analysis of sacrifice is deployed
for understanding the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Church.
First, there is his thesis that the Supper and Cross form one sacrificial
act, wherein the Supper enacts Christ’s offering of himself, and the
Cross compasses his willing immolation. The unity of the Supper and
the Cross is supported by patristic and liturgical witness, and de la Taille
does not think that Session 22 of Trent requires a numerical distinction
between the sacrifice of the Supper and the sacrifice of the Cross. He

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wants to include the oblation of the Supper in a single action of sacrifice
extending to the Cross, since the Supper is necessary to declare fully and
exactly the interior intention of the Lord’s submission to death. Further,
since priest and victim are the very same at the Supper and the Cross,
differing only in the actuality but not the promise of the immolation, the
question of multiplying sacrifices does not even arise.
The second thesis, that of the eternality of the Lord’s sacrifice, acts
similarly to explain how the Church’s sacrifice is empowered by the sacrifice of the Cross; it makes the sacrifice of the Mass strictly dependent
on the sacrifice of the Cross. The Father’s acceptance of the victim of
Calvary in the resurrection and ascension of the Lord means that he is
present eternally as victim in the heavenly sanctuary. This does not imply for de la Taille any new celestial action by the Head of the Body, but
it does make the victim of Calvary available to be offered in the many
Masses of his members.
The first and third parts of Matthiesen’s book work well together,
since, as she claims, de la Taille’s understanding of contemplative prayer
and baptism shows how he situates the Eucharist within Christian life
as a whole. Worthy offering of the sacrifice of the Mass depends on our
own willingness to die to self and live to God, and the spiritual good of
our reception of communion depends also on our interior attitudes, on
the devotion with which we welcome the benefits of the sacrifice. But
the same pattern of interior acts is also at work in Christian prayer and
contemplation. In passive contemplation, especially, there is a marked
ascetical parallel to the self-denial involved in the propitiatory aspect of
the Mass, and the union of the mystic with God replays in another key
sacramental union with God in communion. Prayer and the sacramental life do not only delimit parallel trajectories, but also (in a non-Euclidian geometry!) converge on each other. De la Taille also insists that
baptism includes a promise of our self-denial and education of desire
after the pattern of Christ, a promise that we cannot fulfil without living
from and toward the Eucharistic celebration.
I wish Matthiesen had confined herself to these two and truly complementary parts of de la Taille’s thought. In the second part of her book,
however, she undertakes to explain his theology of the Hypostatic Union,
of sanctifying grace, and of the beatific vision by way of expounding his
account of how uncreated Act gives itself to created reality (the humanity

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of Christ, the soul of the Christian, or the justified mind in heaven) in a
created actuation of the same. She claims that this contested metaphysical
speculation is in fact systematically connected with his theology of Eucharistic sacrifice and sacrament, but she does not show that it is. Moreover, it
leads her into territory in which she soon becomes lost.
She begins by explaining de la Taille’s remarks on the habitual grace
of Christ—the grace that the Eucharist gives us to share in—in Book
Three of Mysterium Fidei, and so is led to explicate his distinction between pure and mixed perfections. Pure perfections are things like being and intellection. Mixed perfections include some potency in their
definition, like rationality. They perforce have their highest instance
beneath God (infra Deum—not “in God,” as Matthiesen has it). Sanctifying grace, since it bespeaks inherence in a subject to which it is not
owed, and therefore a nature that is composed with potency, is a mixed
perfection. She finds a text in de la Taille at this point that proves, she
supposes, that he would have stood with Henri de Lubac on the relation of nature and grace. Here is her rendering: “Now [the pure natural
perfection] is so from the nobility of grace, by which such goodness is
brought in, so that every natural perfection whatsoever is always supernatural and gratuitous, marking therefore the unworthiness of the
subject.” The identification of the subject in brackets is Matthiesen’s. She
finds here “a robust statement against the notion of ‘pure nature’” (168).
The statement is robust, if contradictions can be so, but it is not de la
Taille’s. What she is translating is in italics in the following and fuller
citation from Mysterium Fidei.
Ne quis autem stomachetur, quod (1) intellectio naturalis potest
progredi in infinitum, gratia autem non ita; aut quod (2) in
perfectionibus mixtis recensetur gratia, cum inter puras [perfectiones] multae numerentur naturales. Hoc alterum enim ex
nobilitate est gratiae, qua tantum importatur bonum, ut omni
perfectioni cuilibet naturali semper sit supernaturale seu indebitum, connotans igitur subjecti indignitatem. Primum autem in
laudem gratiae pariter redundat (520b)

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Let no one be disturbed (1) that natural intellection can make
progress unlimitedly but that grace cannot do so; or (2) that
grace is counted among mixed perfections, although there are
many natural perfections that are counted among pure perfections. For this second thing is from the from the nobility of grace,
by which so great a good is introduced such that it is always supernatural or unowed relative to every natural perfection whatsoever, so connoting the unworthiness of the subject. But the first
thing likewise redounds to the praise of grace
Matthiesen wants de la Taille (who died in 1933, remember) to have the
cachet of belonging to the “new theologians,” who came to prominence
as such in the late 1940s. This leads her to make him say something that
neither he, nor de Lubac, nor any Catholic theologian whatsoever could
possibly have said in the first half of the last century.
Such a lapse raises questions. Matthiesen’s book began as a dissertation. Did the director of her dissertation and her readers at Boston
College see this translation? What of CUA Press, the editorial board,
and those engaged to review her manuscript? To be sure, an author takes
responsibility for his own work, but it looks like Matthiesen has been
very ill served by her mentors and publisher.
In the 1950s and 60s, Prudentius de Letter, S.J., explained and defended de la Taille’s theory of created actuation by uncreated Act. In
Matthiesen’s bibliography and text, he has unaccountably become “Prudence de Letter.” There are also many other errors and solecisms a copy
editor should have caught.
But let us end on a happier note, in gratitude that Matthiesen has
made audible once again an important voice in twentieth-century sacramental theology. Here is how she gives us to understand with de la Taille
how the great Sacrifice takes up our smaller sacrifices:
when the smallest acts and efforts to direct one’s life and love to
God are lifted up and exhibited to God in the ecclesial sacrifice,
when they are conjoined with devotio to the external ritual offering
of Christ’s sacrifice, then not only do they invest this ecclesial oblation with truth and sincerity, but they also are themselves transformed into “wine” and share in the liberating efficacy of the cross.

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This is the theology of sacrifice, realist, sober, both heavenly and down
to earth, that will serve us for the next, and every, century.
N&V
Guy Mansini, O.S.B.
Saint Meinrad Seminary
St. Meinrad, IN

Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, and the Fate
of the Christian by Matthew Levering (Waco, TX: Baylor University
Press, 2012), x + 228 pp.

WITH JESUS AND THE DEMISE OF DEATH, Matthew Lever-

ing offers another excellent and thought-provoking contribution. This
time, his topic is Christian eschatology. As outlined in the Introduction, Levering sets out to provide a contemporary statement of classic
Christian eschatology, “a theology of resurrection and eternal life” (1),
which simultaneously highlights its biblical foundations and (to a lesser
extent) defends the tradition’s subordinate use of Greek philosophical
concepts to explicate the substance of biblical teaching. Similar to his
other works, Levering makes his case dialogically by putting various
theological thinkers (past and present) into conversation with Thomas
Aquinas.
The book is divided into two major sections concerning respectively
“Jesus’ passage” from death to glorified life and “the Church’s passage”
(2). This structural division itself reflects a key concern of the book: the
passage of Jesus from death to glorified life with the Father is the cause
of the Church’s own passage into eternity.
The first section—“The Passage of Jesus Christ” (13)—comprises
three chapters. Chapter 1 takes up Jesus’s descent among the dead and
the so-called intermediate state between death and resurrection. Levering uses Aquinas’s account of Holy Saturday, wherein Jesus’s soul enters
the intermediate state and vindicates the deceased righteous of Israel by
his Passion, to strike a middle ground between N. T. Wright’s “otherworldly portrait of inactive sameness” (26) in the intermediate state and
“the fully historicized accounts of Christ’s damnation [i.e., Balthasar] or
Christ’s preaching in the intermediate state [i.e., Clement, Athanasius,
et al.]” (22).

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317

The eschatological nature of Jesus’s Resurrection is the subject of
chapter 2. Here Levering brings Aquinas into conversation with Jon
Levenson and N. T. Wright. He tracks out lines of convergence between
these three thinkers, who all treat the topic of resurrection (albeit in
different ways and contexts) under the heading of eschatology and in
connection with the ultimate vindication of the people of God.
Chapter 3 concerns Jesus’s “ascending in his glorified flesh to the
right hand of the Father” (43). This chapter treats a variety of issues related to Jesus’s being at the Father’s right hand, including the bodiliness
of the God of Israel (in light of the work of Mark Smith and Benjamin
Sommer), the exegetical use of philosophy to identify when Scripture
speaks metaphorically, and the theological significance of Jesus as being
“at the Father’s right hand.” Levering argues that this expression signifies
Jesus’s sharing fully in God’s power and glory in his glorified humanity
and his continuing action on behalf of his Church to bring her to eschatological fulfillment with him.
The major section of the book—“The Passage of Christ’s People”
(61)—comprises four chapters. In chapter 4, Levering discusses the eschatological nature of the Church’s life in the world on the basis of New
Testament testimony. Drawing largely (although not exclusively) on the
summary statements in Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35, Levering identifies
three markers of the Church as an eschatological community: devotion
to the apostolic teaching and fellowship (i.e., faith), the Eucharist, and
the sharing of possessions (i.e., charity and almsgiving). Levering then
explores the eschatological dimensions of these three markers in Aquinas’s theology. On the basis of this analysis, Levering concludes, “The
central eschatological reality is that we live already in union with Jesus
and we allow our passage to be configured to his” (83).
Before turning to the passage of the blessed into heavenly glory
(chapter 7), Levering takes up two attendant issues: whether and in what
sense Christians can “merit” eternal life (chapter 5) and the existence
of a human spiritual soul on both philosophical and biblical grounds
(chapter 6). With regard to merit, Levering summarizes the work of
Gary Anderson to show that merit is a thoroughly biblical category, and
he then develops Anderson’s work theologically with Aquinas. Following Aquinas, Levering argues that any consideration of Christians’ merit
must presuppose God’s prior, unmerited action to justify sinners and in-

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corporate them into Jesus’s own life and merits of his Passion. Regarding
merit, Levering concludes, “the action of the Holy Spirit in us enables
us to merit this reward [of eternal life] in justice, not because we have
become self-sufficient, but because God rewards his work in us” (94).
With regard to the topic of the human spiritual soul, Levering defends
the existence of the soul against Nancey Murphy’s denial by employing
the Thomistic account of the soul as the form of the body and (following W. Norris Clarke) “a formal cause” (101) for the brain’s neurological
activity. On biblical grounds, Levering responds to Joel Green’s denial
that the New Testament teaches the existence of a spiritual soul, which
survives bodily death. While New Testament authors do not provide a
well-developed account of a spiritual soul, Levering argues, many authors and texts (e.g., Mt 10:28; Lk 23:43; 2 Cor 5:1–8; Phil 1:21–24) do
“include certain anthropological assumptions and claims” (107) that
imply the existence of a human soul that passes through death into the
intermediate state. The implications of such New Testament texts invite
further theological and philosophical thinking on the topic, which is exactly what early and medieval Christians did by means of appropriating
Greek philosophical reasoning.
Chapter 7 takes up the general resurrection of the dead, the purification and renewal of creation, the beatific vision, and the state of glorified
humanity. Levering returns the tripartite typology of the Church as an
eschatological community (faith in the apostolic teaching, the Eucharist,
and almsgiving) to show how these markers reach fulfillment respectively in the beatific vision, the renewal of material creation into a cosmic
liturgy, and the state of glorified human nature as being for others and
shining “with glory in accordance with the person’s degree of self-giving
love” (123). The book ends with a brief conclusion about the importance
of Christian eschatology and hope for life in the present world.
Levering makes an illuminating and persuasive case for the biblical character and abiding value of traditional Christian eschatology. Although the body of the text is less than 130 pages, Jesus and the Demise
of Death interweaves biblical, theological, and philosophical elements
into an intricate, theologically sophisticated synthesis. In doing so, Levering once again showcases marvelously the enduring vitality and biblical shape of Thomas Aquinas’s theology. He creatively uses Aquinas,
showing how his thought can encompass, correct, and integrate many

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319

modern insights into a fruitful theological account. It is a showcase example of “Ressourcement Thomism.”
Two things, which are not included in this book, come to mind as
ways to enhance Levering’s accomplishment. First, Levering’s treatment
of Jesus’s Resurrection and Ascension delves a good bit into their biblical dimensions. But he does not consider the complex array of New
Testament evidence concerning Jesus’s exaltation to heaven. As Pierre
Benoit has shown, while the New Testament gives consistent witness
that the risen Jesus has been exalted to heaven, there are differences
(though not contradictions) over how that exaltation is parsed vis-à-vis
what is traditionally called the Ascension: the event narrated in Acts
1:6–12.1 The complexity of the situation is highlighted by considering
when different New Testament authors locate the risen Jesus’s entrance
into glory. For instance, the conclusion of the Gospel of Luke (similar
to the Gospel of John) locates Jesus’s entrance into heavenly glory as
following right upon his Resurrection on Easter Sunday (Lk 24:50–51;
cf. Jn 20:17). By contrast, in Acts 1, Luke narrates the Ascension of Jesus
as an event (1:6–12), which he locates forty days after Easter (1:3). Admittedly, Levering’s interests in Jesus’s sitting at the Father’s right hand
lie elsewhere than a parsing of New Testament evidence or “when” the
risen Jesus took his place at the Father’s right hand. Nevertheless, the
New Testament provides a complicated body of evidence for thinking
about this mystery, some further consideration of which could help fill
out the theological picture.11
A second area concerns the cumulative character of Levering’s
theological exposition. Structurally, the book holds together well, first
charting out Jesus’s passage into the Father’s glory and then that of the
Church by virtue of her sharing in Jesus’s own passage. The book comes
to its thematically appropriate conclusion with a discussion of the beatific vision and the heavenly glory of the blessed. But given Levering’s
dialogical approach and very unassuming prose, one can overlook (or
underappreciate) the intricacies of the account that he works out cumulatively over the course of the whole book. A concluding chapter that
1

Pierre Benoit, O.P., “The Ascension,” in Jesus and the Gospel, 2 vols., trans. Benet
Weatherhead (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973 [1961]), 1.209–253; reprinted
from Revue Biblique (1949): 161–203.

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brings together the different components of Levering’s account into a
single, synthetic statement would be a welcome addition in this regard.
These concerns notwithstanding, Levering has accomplished much
in making a strong case for traditional, biblically founded Christian
N&V
eschatology.
William M. Wright IV
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA