et Vetera Nova Summer 2015 • Volume 13, Number 3 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal S enior E ditor Georges Cardinal Cottier, O.P. C o -E ditors Reinhard Hütter, Duke University Divinity School Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Dominican House of Studies A ssociate E ditors Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College Gilles Emery, O.P., University of Fribourg Paul Gondreau, Providence College Scott W. Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville Thomas S. Hibbs, Baylor University Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas Bruce D. Marshall, Southern Methodist University Charles Morerod, O.P., Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg John O’Callaghan, University of Notre Dame Chad Pecknold, Catholic University of America Michael Sherwin, O.P., University of Fribourg B oard of A dvisors Anthony Akinwale, O.P., Dominican Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria Khaled Anatolios, University of Notre Dame Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, CA John Betz, University of Notre Dame Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., Angelicum Christopher O. Blum, Augustine Institute Stephen Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross Peter Casarella, University of Notre Dame Romanus Cessario, O.P., St. John’s Seminary Boyd Taylor Coolman, Boston College Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Douglas Farrow, McGill University Anthony Fisher, O.P., Archbishop of Sydney, Australia Timothy Gray, Augustine Institute Paul J. Griffiths, Duke University Divinity School Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa Paige Hochschild, Mount St. Mary’s University Andrew Hofer, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Matthew L. Lamb, Ave Maria University Joseph Lienhard, S.J., Fordham University Steven A. Long, Ave Maria University Guy Mansini, O.S.B., Saint Meinrad School of Theology Francesca Aran Murphy, University of Notre Dame Thomas Osborne, University of St. Thomas (Houston) Trent Pomplun, Loyola University Maryland Christopher J. Ruddy, Catholic University of America Richard Schenk, O.P., University of Eichstätt Michele Schumacher, University of Fribourg Janet Smith, Sacred Heart Major Seminary Christopher Thompson, St. Paul Seminary Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Dominican House of Studies William Wright, Duquesne University Instructions for Contributors 1. Address all contributions, books for review, and related correspondence to Matthew Levering, mjlevering@yahoo.com or Reinhard Hütter, rhuetter@div.duke.edu. 2. 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Nova et Vetera The English Edition of the International Theological Journal ISSN 1542-7315 Summer 2015 Vol. 13, No. 3 C ommentary Donum Veritatis: The Contribution of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Theological Enterprise. ....C ardinal G erhard L. M üller 637 A rticles A Theological Fittingness Argument for the Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens.......................... N icanor P ier G iorgio A ustriaco , O.P. 651 Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible................ J acob H owland 669 Christi Opera Proficiunt: Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration............................................ A aron P idel , S.J. 693 “Smaller But Purer”?: Joseph Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation... …………............ C hristopher R uddy 713 Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics and Its Revised Platonism.................................................... R udi A. te V elde 743 Communion for the Divorced and Remarried: Why Revisionists in Moral Theology Should Reject Kasper’s Proposal.......... M ats W ahlberg 765 Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops.... L awrence J. W elch 787 Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle: Philip the Chancellor, Natural Desire, and the Advent of potentia obedientiae....... J acob W. W ood 815 V atican II at 50 Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay........ E duardo E cheverria 837 The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes............... A ndrew M eszaros 875 Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II: Renarrating a Defense of the Reform................. F rancis M ichael W alsh 903 B ook R eviews Mind, Matter, and Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the Philosophy of Mind by James D. Madden………..... C hristopher O. B lum 939 Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis by Sarah Catherine Byers.................……A ndrew M. H armon 942 Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption by Gregory Vall.........................................D aniel K eating 946 Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning by Massimo Faggioli... A ndrew M eszaros 950 Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation by Jerry L. Walls........................................................ B rett S alkeld 961 The English edition of Nova et Vetera is published quarterly and provides an international forum for theological and philosophical studies from a Thomistic perspective. Founded in 1926 by future Cardinal Charles Journet in association with Jacques Maritain, Nova et Vetera is published in related, distinct French and English editions. The English edition of Nova et Vetera welcomes articles and book reviews in theology, philosophy, and biblical studies that address central contemporary debates and discussions. We seek to be “at the heart of the Church,” faithful to the Magisterium and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and devoted to the work of true dialogue, both ecumenically and across intellectual disciplines. Nova et Vetera (ISSN 1542-7315; ISBN 978-1-941447-36-9) is published quarterly by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. All materials published in Nova et Vetera are copyrighted by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. © Copyright 2015 by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Please send address change to Nova et Vetera, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. Application to mail at periodicals postage prices is pending at Englewood, CO, and additional mailing offices. This periodical is indexed in the ATLA Catholic Periodical and Literature Index® (CPLI®), a product of the American Theological Library Association, 300 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606, USA. Email: atla@atla.com, www.atla.com. Nova et Vetera Subscription Rates: • Individuals: one-year $40.00, two-year $75.00 International: one-year $60.00, two-year $115.00 • Students: one-year $30.00, two-year $50.00 International: one-year $40.00, two-year $70.00 • Colleges, Universities, Seminaries, and Institutions: one-year $110.00, two-year $205.00 International: one-year $130.00, two-year $245.00 To subscribe online, please visit http://store.nvjournal.net. For subscription inquiries, email us at novaetvetera@stpaulcenter.com or phone 740-264-9535. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 637–649 637 Donum Veritatis: The Contribution of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Theological Enterprise1 C ardinal G erhard L. M üller Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith A s the P refect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I have the honor of serving the Church in an important position that is perhaps equally misunderstood by clergy and laity alike. And media characterizations of my office are nearly universally negative, which seems to indicate that contemporary society cannot conceive of a role such as that occupied by the Congregation. And yet I wonder if the media’s negative presentation of the Congregation’s work might not be balanced by a second look at its role and function in our own day. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is a department of the Roman Curia which assists the Pope in his universal mission to the point that the documents issued by the Congregation expressly approved by the Pope participate in the ordinary magisterium of the successor of Saint Peter (cf. Donum Veritatis, §18). According to the 1990 Instruction Donum Veritatis, the Magisterium, which is the authoritative teaching ministry in the Church, “authentically teaches the doctrine of the Apostles.” This is an “ecclesial service” that includes “refuting objections to and distortions of the faith, [while] promoting, with the authority received from Jesus Christ, new and deeper comprehension, clarification, and application of revealed doctrine.”2 This worthy objective describes the particular focus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A version of this presentation was given as a lecture at The Catholic University of America on November 3, 2014. 2 Donum Veritatis, §21. 1 Gerhard L. Müller 638 We might want to look at this more closely in the light of recent statements by Pope Francis. The Holy Father has recently clarified, speaking of the missionary mandate of the Church in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: When we adopt a pastoral goal and a missionary style which would actually reach everyone without exception or exclusion, the message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary.3 In order to preserve this “pastoral goal and missionary style” it would be important to preserve “what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary” from distortions or dislocations. From time to time, it is necessary to discern whether a distortion is being taught instead of the truth, rendering what is most necessary less beautiful, less grand and ultimately less appealing. It is true, that objections have been raised to our process of examining those theological positions that would seem to require more thorough discernment before they can be accepted without qualification, or even accepted at all. But “the fact that these processes can be improved,” as Donum Veritatis notes, does not mean that their objective is less necessary or less of a genuine service.4 Our procedures are available at our website—yes, even the CDF has a website!—and if, after studying them, you have suggestions for improvement, the Prefect would be glad to receive them. Returning to the objective however, I would like to give this ecclesial service a second look. In 1990, Donum Veritatis spoke of the “respect for truth” out of which all theologians should do their work,5 and certainly we can all agree. But Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium uses an expression that is even more forceful and characteristically beautiful, and that is of the “reverence for truth” which every preacher of the Word should have. He says, The first step, after calling upon the Holy Spirit in prayer, is to give our entire attention to the biblical text, which needs to be the basis of our preaching. Whenever we stop and attempt to understand the message of a particular text, we are practicing “reverence Evangelii Gaudium, §35. Donum Veritatis, §37. 5 Ibid., §37. 3 4 Donum Veritatis: the Contribution of the CDF 639 for the truth.” This is the humility of heart which recognizes that the word is always beyond us, that “we are neither its masters or owners, but its guardians, heralds and servants. This attitude of humble and awe-filled veneration of the word is expressed by taking the time to study it with the greatest care and a holy fear lest we distort it.”6 Pope Francis takes this expression, “reverence for truth,” from Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi which stated, “Every evangelizer is expected to have a reverence for truth, especially since the truth that he studies and communicates is none other than revealed truth and hence, more than any other, a sharing in the first truth which is God Himself.”7 This, Blessed Paul VI goes on to say, is “a truth which liberates” (cf. Jn 8:32). It is “the truth about God, about man and his mysterious destiny, about the world; the difficult truth that we seek in the Word of God and of which we are neither the masters nor the owners, but the depositaries, the heralds and the servants.” Finally, Pope Paul VI says that reverence for the truth means that “The God of truth expects us to be the vigilant defenders and devoted preachers of truth.”8 Here, even at this starting point, we have a fundamental attitude which can be refreshing not only to all in the Church but to many outside of the Church in the cultures in which she exists. For example, one commonly hears, as educational objectives for students, the cultivation of “thinking critically” before accepting conclusions or opinions, which generally means the cultivation of “innovation” and “creativity” or challenging established textual notions or social patterns. These goals are certainly valuable, but a balancing goal that would give the benefit of the doubt to the received tradition is often lacking. Perhaps “reverence for truth” also legitimately includes the skill of learning how to receive traditional wisdom, so that the first reflex is not always “challenging” or “critiquing,” but “receiving,” “understanding” and “interpreting” so as to “conserve” and “hand on”—the very idea of “tradition.” Perhaps these are also worthy educational goals, especially at a Catholic school. Further, in many academic cultures, the dominance of post-modern meta-discourses regarding “truth” have essentially dismantled the notion of any kind of objective truth. They propose instead an irreducible variety of truths, in the plural, ideologies for the vested interests that created Evangelii Gaudium, §146. Evangelii Nuntiandi, §78. 8 Ibid. 6 7 640 Gerhard L. Müller them. It is certainly salutary to use the hermeneutic of suspicion with regard to the productions of any power structure. The idea that there does not exist anything meaningful called “truth” that can transcend cultural and ideological differences has come to be accepted wisdom. Perhaps academic culture in many universities has become so “suspicious” that a “hermeneutic of reverence,” and specifically “reverence for truth,” has become almost unintelligible. Intellectual habits cultivated in these environments almost instinctively resist a service that is borne out of “reverence for truth,” and be inclined towards suspicion of anything such a service might produce, pronounce, or undertake. But if we turn this the other way? It seems that the witness of the Church, of receiving truth as a gift and revelation that liberates, a truth of which “we are neither ... masters or owners, but ... guardians, heralds and servants,” and which requires and deserves an “attitude of humble and awe-filled veneration … expressed by taking the time to study it with the greatest care and a holy fear lest we distort it” offers a beneficial counter-witness. Suspicion, with no counterbalancing movement of “reverence,” must eventually exhaust itself in ever-widening circles of distrust. What are the bonds of human community that would remain? Pope Francis notes, in Evangelii Gaudium, that “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.”9 This nihilism is unavoidable if there is no truth. The Magisterium, out of reverence for the truth it serves, refutes “objections to and distortions of the faith, and [promotes], with the authority received from Jesus Christ, new and deeper comprehension, clarification, and application of revealed doctrine.”10 This offers a disciplined witness which can serve as an invitation to consider such a starting point more seriously in learned cultures where it has come to be routinely accepted that “truth” is an illusion of power. In such cultures, this would be an evangelizing moment. It follows the truth for which one would have “reverence” would be one demanding wholehearted commitment without reservation, in an act of trust, not suspicion. With regard to any specific spiritual movement, one must, of course, always “test the spirits,” but if suspicion is not to end in an ever greater spiral of critique and distrust, then there must be a core—what is most beautiful, most persuasive, most grand— to which one can give oneself. Pope Francis, a little further in Evangelii 9 10 Evangelii Gaudium, §53. Ibid. Donum Veritatis: the Contribution of the CDF 641 Gaudium, specifies what this is in mentioning a “basic core” of revealed truths that are “more important for giving direct expression to the heart of the Gospel.” He says, “In this basic core, what shines forth is the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead.”11 He also mentions the idea, from Vatican II, of a hierarchy of truths in which the “basic core” would be found. Later on he summarizes “the fundamental message” in a way suitable for evangelizing in simple conversation, as proclaiming “the personal love of God who became man, who gave himself up for us, who is living and who offers us his salvation and his friendship.”12 And later, “On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: ‘Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.’”13 Pope Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi, also reflects upon this core, emphasizing “the essential content, . . . which cannot be modified or ignored without seriously diluting the nature of evangelization itself.” He offers a summary: “To evangelize is first of all to bear witness … to God revealed by Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, to bear witness that in His Son God has loved the world—that in His Incarnate Word He has given being to all things . . . manifesting the fact that for man the Creator is not an anonymous and remote power. He is the Father, that we should be called children of God . . . (1 Jn 3:1; cf. Rom 8:14–17). And thus we are one another’s brothers and sisters in God.” Here, the basic Christian proclamation, the “essential content,” provides the basis for authentic human communion. The truth worthy of “reverence” is the truth beyond the boundaries of thoroughgoing suspicion. It is not simply an intellectual matter, but rather the basis for true human communion precisely is the opportunity it affords to offer oneself unreservedly to that truth in a trust that persists when suspicion has exhausted itself.14 Pope Paul VI builds on this foundation to talk about the love that every evangelist should have for those he or she is evangelizing. He talks about “signs” of this love. Among others, we find, “the concern to give the truth and to bring people into unity.” The person proclaiming the truth has as his or her object not simply something intellectual, but human communion. That means that the truth must be transmitted in a Ibid., §36. Ibid., §128. 13 Ibid., §164. 14 Evangelii Nuntiandi, §25-26. 11 12 642 Gerhard L. Müller way that offers the opportunity for people to give themselves unreservedly (cf. Evangelii Nuntiandi, §79). These sentiments are behind the statement in Donum Veritatis that says about the Magisterium: “It must protect God’s People from the danger of deviations and confusion, guaranteeing them the objective possibility of professing the authentic faith free from error, at all times and in diverse situations.” The point is not to give the faithful a kind of intellectual vaccine that preserves them from the questions, challenges and problems that come from everyday life in various times and diverse situations, but rather to enable them to continue to make the self-gift that professing the faith requires “as children of God who abandon themselves entirely into His arms and to the exigencies of love.” One cannot live in the freedom of truth unless one has given oneself to the truth, and this is the point of the “service of Christian truth” rendered by the Magisterium: “The service to Christian truth which the Magisterium renders is thus for the benefit of the whole People of God called to enter the liberty of the truth revealed by God in Christ.”15 If there is no truth that is beyond thoroughgoing suspicion, and no possibility for humans in this visible, temporal world to know of it, then there is no basis for human communion that transcends the merely pragmatic. If the Church is what Lumen Gentium says it is, namely, “like a sacrament, a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all human beings” (Lumen Gentium, 1; cited at Donum Veritatis, §40), then the unity of the Church cannot be a unity reducible to pragmatics, or to any human calculus, but rather to the love with which God so loved the world that He sent His Only Begotten Son. This requires a reverence for that central, core truth, including all of the ways in which that truth, over the centuries, has been the beneficiary of the work of “refutation of objections and distortions,” and “new and deeper comprehension, clarification, and application” (Donum Veritatis, §21). The “service of Christian truth” is ultimately a service of the continuing possibility of unreserved self-gift to that truth, and communion in that self-gift, which, as we have seen, is not a self-offering to an abstraction, but to the arms of the Father-Creator and the exigencies of His love, which is the basis for communion. We can also put it this way, using another expression from Lumen Gentium: If the Church as “People of God” is to be a light of the world because of its witness to the truth which sets us free (cf. Donum Veritatis, 15 Donum Veritatis, §14. Donum Veritatis: the Contribution of the CDF 643 §21; Jn 8:32 is cited at §1), then the authoritative discernment of what that truth is precisely, when such discernment is required, is also part of keeping that “light” shining for that very world which God so loved that He sent His Only Begotten Son (Jn 3:16). The freedom of the people of God is not a function of pragmatics or of the power to work one’s will, but rather the freedom of the self-gift by which Christ “purchased” this people “with His blood” (Lumen Gentium, 9). But who is Christ, exactly? Unless this “who” can be specified fully and without error as the centuries go by, we lose the significance of His “blood,” because we do not know whose it is, precisely. We will not have the confidence to preach and to believe that this blood is a gift beyond the reach of suspicion no matter how thoroughgoing. In a way, this blood is freedom, or the very condition of freedom in our world. If there is no service of Christian truth, then we can easily lose to distortion, or to lack of precise understanding, the sense of what this truth is, and therefore our own opportunity to offer an unreserved, generous and irreducibly trusting self-gift in return. With these thoughts in mind, we gain a new perspective: the Magisterium is not an extrinsic service, imposed from without and over and above the faith, but occurs within, and as a function of, the very structure of freedom that we have as our communion within this People of God. Here is the way Donum Veritatis put this idea: It follows that the sense and the weight of the Magisterium’s authority are only intelligible in relation to the truth of Christian doctrine and the preaching of the true Word. The function of the Magisterium is not, then, something extrinsic to Christian truth nor is it set above the faith. It arises directly from the economy of the faith itself … (§14). The visible society of the Church is the place where this gift is mediated to us as members, and through our communion in this gift, to the world, as “sacrament of communion.” If the world at large can legitimately expect us believers to provide a persuasive account of the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), and if that hope in fact brings salvation, then the more precise and accurate that account is, the more the Church can fulfill her saving mission to proclaim what is most grand, most beautiful and most persuasive to everyone, without exception or exclusion. There is a conviction and confidence proper to this mission, a conviction and confidence to which 644 Gerhard L. Müller Pope Francis has again and again exhorted us, “to all places, on all occasions, without hesitation, reluctance or fear” (Evangelii Gaudium, §23). The service of ecclesial truth that is the Magisterium is intrinsic to the demands of evangelization, for one could not be asked to risk one’s life unless the truth of that for which one is risking one’s life, the “standard of teaching” as Saint Paul puts it (Rom 6:17, cited at Donum Veritatis, §1), can be found and identified without error. Otherwise, we are left with a world devoid of anything ultimately worth sacrificing for. A final element of the service of truth offered by the Magisterium could be given a “second look” perhaps by first considering yet another passage from Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium, where he is speaking of the intrinsic “newness” of evangelization. The New Testament is always and essentially “new” because the Gospel message is always and everywhere intrinsically “new” and renewing. The passage I am thinking of occurs at number 11: Saint Irenaeus writes: “By his coming, Christ brought with him all newness.” With this newness he is always able to renew our lives and our communities, and even if the Christian message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness, it will never grow old. Jesus can also break through the dull categories with which we would enclose him and he constantly amazes us by his divine creativity. Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world. Every form of authentic evangelization is always “new.” Perhaps a passage such as this can seem to clash with the role of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which does at first glance seem much more invested in the “dull categories with which we would enclose” the Lord. Yet there is probably something we can learn here, if we look carefully enough. Surely it is the role of the evangelist to allow the original freshness of the Gospel to refresh our eloquence and our forms of expression so that the Word remains living and is not reduced to a museum exhibit or a dead artifact of history. In keeping with this spirit, Pope Francis last year exhorted the International Theological Commission that theologians, in particular, should be “pioneers,” even if, at the same time, they should be equally effective catechists Donum Veritatis: the Contribution of the CDF 645 when the opportunity arises (Address to the International Theological Commission, Dec. 6, 2013. The comment regarding catechists was only in the Holy Father’s oral presentation). Theology arising out of the spirit of evangelization and in the desire to pioneer new understandings is always going to be on the frontier, if it is really contributing what the Church expects. This kind of spirit is actually expressed in Donum Veritatis: “The theologian’s work … responds to a dynamism found in the faith itself,” and that dynamism comes from the “impulse of truth which seeks to be communicated.” Since the truth that faith teaches us is the love of God revealed uniquely and grandly in Christ, “theology also arises from love and love’s dynamism,” since “Love … is ever desirous of a better knowledge of the beloved” (Donum Veritatis, §7). The object of theology is not an artifact to be preserved in a museum, but rather the object is living, “the Truth which is the living God and His plan for salvation revealed in Jesus Christ” (Donum Veritatis, §8). Of course, the creative promotion and evocation of anything truly “living,” gives rise to the possibility of elements of discontinuity, inadvertently or sometimes even intentionally arising in the mix of new forms of expression. These may need sorting out. Still, if it is true of the creativity of evangelizers, it is especially true of theologians. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis exhorts theologians to remember that their mission finds its context precisely in the Church’s mission to evangelize: The Church, in her commitment to evangelization, appreciates and encourages the charism of theologians and their scholarly efforts to advance dialogue with the world of cultures and sciences. I call on theologians to carry out this service as part of the Church’s saving mission. In doing so, however, they must always remember that the Church and theology exist to evangelize, and not be content with a desk-bound theology (§133). Despite the fact that Pope Francis asks theologians not to be content with a desk-bound theology, he does understand the necessities of credible academic work. Where Donum Veritatis had noted that theology must be “attentive to the epistemological requirements of [the] discipline, to the demands of rigorous critical standards, and thus to a rational verification of each stage of … research” (Donum Veritatis, §9), Pope Francis in turn notes that, “Proclaiming the Gospel message to different cultures also involves proclaiming it to professional, scientific 646 Gerhard L. Müller and academic circles.” He adds that, “this means an encounter between faith, reason and the sciences,” and then, strikingly, “When certain categories of reason and the sciences are taken up into the proclamation of the message, these categories then become tools of evangelization; water is changed into wine” (Evangelii Gaudium, §132). Precisely because of the unique position of theology as an ecclesial discipline, finally and primarily accountable to the Church’s mission of evangelization, but also, because of the need to be recognizably and credibly versed in the academic standards of learned culture, theology has a truly pioneering character and it therefore operates with legitimate but unique risks. The work of theology is very difficult! As in anything pioneering, some pathways may turn out to be blind alleys. Or, to use the terms set out by Evangelii Gaudium, it may happen that the water of scientific or philosophical categories is not “changed into wine” but remains water. Someone has to point this out when it occurs. It can be hard to recognize, just as difficult as the theological enterprise itself, and so there must be some kind of service that would attempt to discern and distinguish successful attempts from failed or partially failed attempts. It seems fair, given the stakes of a living tradition that is not a museum piece, that the burden of proof be on the “new expression” or pioneering new development. The Magisterium has a conserving function, or, as Donum Veritatis puts it, “one of vigilance” (§20). It is intrinsic to its reverence for truth that it proceed with caution. Thus is set up the possibility of a dynamic of give and take, a kind of straining ahead with pioneering creativity and a kind of vigilance that ensures the pioneers are blazing a path that is not a dead end. Thus, “reverence” implies caution but it also implies a willingness to listen in a disciplined way and not to turn away opinions which may indeed at first sight seem to deviate from the standard of doctrine but which actually may represent a “new and deeper comprehension, clarification, [or] application of revealed doctrine” (Donum Veritatis, §21). If the theologian in question is truly operating within the “obedience of faith” that is proper to every believer (cf. Donum Veritatis, §29), and if the Magisterium is proceeding in the appropriate mode of conservation and vigilance but also in a way that is alert to genuine development, then there is the possibility of genuine development, which can occur in different ways. The theology which has been called into question can be modified based on the guidance of the Magisterium, but not rejected entirely. The theologian in this case “has the duty to remain open to a deeper examination of the question” even if it seems to him or her that Donum Veritatis: the Contribution of the CDF 647 the question as he or she has formulated it is correct (cf. Donum Veritatis, §31). It can also happen that such a theologian, continuing, “in an evangelical spirit and with a profound desire to resolve the difficulties,” that his or her objections could “contribute to real progress and provide a stimulus to the Magisterium to propose the teaching of the Church in greater depth and with a clearer presentation of the arguments” (Donum Veritatis, §30), at least in the case of non-irreformable magisterial teaching (cf. Donum Veritatis, §28). There is the possibility of genuine development of doctrine as a result of a careful and painstaking process, one which must never become a spectacle to be carried out largely in full view of the media, which is rarely capable of mastering and reproducing the theological nuance necessary to understand the problems, let alone resolve them. It is easy to underestimate this service of the Magisterium as a stimulus and agent of genuine doctrinal development. But if someone has truly not given up on truth as something which is not reducible to the investments of power structures but which transcends and is therefore able to critique them—then the value of this service can be seen. If, further, one is not resigned to differences in theological positions leading necessarily to fragmentation of the community into sects that are themselves subject to further fragmentation, then the value of this service is also fully evident. The benefit of discovering whether a creative new expression jeopardizes the communion of faith, or is a legitimate difference that does not jeopardize this communion, would seem evident too. In the former case, the principle of the unity of truth applies, and in the latter case, the principle of the unity of charity, a “two-fold rule” that should animate any discernment process initiated by the Magisterium (cf. Donum Veritatis, §26). The service of the Magisterium means we need not give up on either of these two kinds of unity, and it provides the community precisely with the conviction, as well, that we can find both. I have one final consideration pertaining to this “second look” at the work of the Magisterium, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in particular, and that is the role of the media in the formation of public opinion on various issues, including the views of Catholics. The influence of the media, both traditional media and the new social media, is pervasive, especially among young people who seem to be learning from it to think in ever smaller units of text and in ways that are more and more swayed not by critical thinking but by opinions attached to prestigious persons and institutions. Almost every parent, I imagine, has noticed this. 648 Gerhard L. Müller In Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis from time to time calls attention to negative effects of the media, on the public’s perception of the Church’s teaching (e.g. at §34, cf. also §70), and especially on the perception of the Church’s moral teaching: “We are living in an information-driven society which bombards us indiscriminately with data—all treated as being of equal importance—and which leads to remarkable superficiality in the area of moral discernment” thus leading to a “general sense of disorientation” among adolescents and a “moral relativism” in general (Evangelii Gaudium, §64). He also notes the negative effect that the secular media can have on pastoral workers: “At times our media culture and some intellectual circles convey a marked skepticism with regard to the Church’s message, along with a certain cynicism. As a consequence, many pastoral workers, although they pray, develop a sort of inferiority complex which leads them to relativize or conceal their Christian identity and convictions” (Evangelii Gaudium, §79). Surely it is easy, in such situations, to form large masses of Catholic opinion according to secular values, with little reference to, or understanding of, Church teaching. When the Magisterium offers a resistance to this mass mentality, it in fact performs a service to the truth because this mass mentality is inimical to human dignity and in the end can be a reflection, on the popular level, of the will to power that creates a world in which value and truth are distinguished simply by power, money and the prestige attached to persons or institutions. This can also make it harder to distinguish the authentic “sensus fidei” from opinions that, while widely held, are at best ambiguously related to Church teaching because the media is likewise at best ambiguously related to Church teaching and authority. This is something mentioned in Donum Veritatis (§35). It may seem ironic to think that the Magisterium has a role to play in the preservation of democracy from devolving into a reflex of thoughtlessness. The laziness of unreflectively accepting viewpoints is destructive of democracy, and, ultimately, is the rejection of human free will. I do not wish to dissipate or diffuse that sense of irony, but perhaps merely to sharpen it. Shouldn’t a democracy function on the basis of a reverence for truth, speaking now even apart from specifically religious convictions? Or is it really the case that there is no truth apart from public opinion and the various powers and vested interests that jockey for public opinion, with more or less success? Is it healthy for a democracy even to forget how to speak the language of “truth” in the sense of something objective and in a sense that does not reduce Donum Veritatis: the Contribution of the CDF 649 the word simply to scientific or political positivism? Pope Francis’s reflections, noted above, on the influence of the media in forming ethical opinions, opinions about values and virtues, are especially relevant here. If our democracies are reduced to a vocabulary of truth which is exclusively pragmatic and positivist, then the service of truth, provided by the Magisterium must be seen—however ironic it may appear—as a reminder that this unreflective positivism is not the only way of thinking. Unreflective positivism is underwritten by its own (unreflective) premise, expressed well in the nineteenth century by Nietzsche and in the twentieth century by Heidegger and others: values and morals are fully reducible to the expressions of the will to power, and therefore perfectly compatible with totalitarian regimes of the most horrific sort. Haven’t we seen enough of these in the twentieth century to learn N&V from the experience? I, for one, would hope we have. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 651–667 651 A Theological Fittingness Argument for the Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens1 N icanor P ier G iorgio A ustriaco , O.P. Providence College Providence, Rhode Island Introduction I n his book , Christianity in Evolution: An Exploration, Jesuit theolo- gian Jack Mahoney, S.J., responds to Pope John Paul II’s challenge for theologians to bring an evolutionary perspective into conversation with theology by proposing that the truths of evolutionary biology have made the Catholic Church’s traditional teachings on human origins obsolete: “I argue that with the acceptance of the evolutionary origin of humanity there is no longer a need or a place in Christian beliefs for the traditional doctrines of original sin, the Fall, and human concupiscence resulting from that sin.”2 Mahoney is not alone in holding this view. Fellow Catholic theologian, John Haught, has written, “Evolutionary science . . . has rendered the original cosmic perfection, one allegedly debauched by a temporally ‘original’ sin, obsolete and unbelievable.”3 Protestant author Karl Giberson, too, thinks that a Christian can only believe in evolution I am grateful to Basil Cole, O.P., John Baptist Ku, O.P., and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay, and to the participants at the BioLogos Workshop held at Gordon College from June 24–27, 2013, for stimulating discussion. My scholarship on the theological implications of evolution in light of the theological synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas is supported in part by an Evolution and Christian Faith (E&CF) grant from the BioLogos Foundation. 2 Jack Mahoney, Christianity in Evolution: An Exploration (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 71. 3 John Haught, God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008), 149. 1 652 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. if he or she is willing to jettison numerous traditional beliefs, which in Giberson’s view are “secondary” doctrines of the Christian creed: “Clearly, the historicity of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace are hard to reconcile with natural history. The geological and fossil records make this case compellingly.”4 For these Christian authors, evolution is truly, in the memorable words of Daniel Dennett, the universal acid that has eaten away and dissolved5, in this instance, the foundations of Christianity’s traditional account of human origins. In this essay, I respond to these authors by describing an alternative account that proposes that theological reflection on the fittingness of evolution, especially of human evolution, in light of Christian revelation and the theological synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas, actually points to the historicity of the fall and the reality of original sin. I posit that it would have been fitting for God to have given the original human beings, as creatures who are persons evolved from non-persons, preteradaptive versions of what the Christian tradition has called the preternatural gifts, to perfect the evolved adaptations they needed to attain their eternal destiny in the beatific vision of the Triune God. The obvious absence of any of these gifts today, made even more evident by recent discoveries in evolutionary psychology, points to the historicity of the fall and the reality of original sin. Theological Arguments from Fittingness According to St. Thomas Theological arguments from fittingness have been utilized by Christian theologians throughout the history of the Church to illustrate the coherence, the intelligibility, and the beauty of the Christian faith. St. Thomas Aquinas, too, used these arguments in his work. Often indicated with his use of the Latin words convenienter or conveniens, these fittingness arguments seek to reveal the meaning, beauty, and wisdom of God’s actions in the world. As Joseph Wawrykow observes, for St. Thomas, arguing from fittingness involves understanding why an end is attained better and more conveniently with the choice of a particular means rather than another.6 In this sense, and as St. Thomas himself explains, choosing Karl W. Giberson, How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution: Saving Darwin (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 11. 5 Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 63. 6 Joseph Wawrykow, The Westminister Handbook to Thomas Aquinas (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 58. In his magisterial examination of theological fittingness and beauty the Dominican scholar, Gilbert Narcisse, 4 The Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens 653 to ride a horse is more fitting than walking if one seeks to reach one’s destination on a journey.7 To illustrate his use of this form of argumentation, take St. Thomas’s reflections on the fittingness of the incarnation. In a relatively long article in his Summa Theologiae, he proposes ten reasons for why it was fitting that God had become a human being in order to save us.8 Among these ten reasons, St. Thomas suggests five that challenge human beings to pursue the good, and five that challenge human beings to withdraw from evil. In the first set of reasons, for example, St. Thomas explains that in choosing to become incarnate, God was better able to establish faith, strengthen hope, and arouse love in the Christian believer. Each reason is an attempt to reveal why God chose this particular means—the Incarnation—rather than another, to attain His end of human salvation. As this single example amply illustrates, for St. Thomas theological arguments for fittingness attempt to disclose the logic and the wisdom of God’s providence. Finally, it is important to acknowledge at the outset that theological arguments from fittingness are not demonstrative. In other words, they cannot prove that a certain conclusion necessarily has to be the way that it is. They cannot prove that the conclusion is true. It may be fitting for someone to ride a horse to reach his destination, but he may in fact have chosen to walk instead. As Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., points out, “that God created the world, that in the world he placed a creature made in his own image and that in order to restore that image in mankind, he took the way of incarnation–these facts can never be rationally demonstrated. They spring from love, and from love’s irrationality. The best that reason can do with this divine revelation is to contemplate and admire the harmony of the design so revealed.”9 Theological arguments O.P., describes fittingness arguments this way: “Theological fittingness displays the significance of the chosen means among the alternative possibilities, and the best reasons for which God in his wisdom effectively realized and revealed, freely and through his love, the mystery of salvation and the glorification of mankind.” See his Les Raisons de Dieu (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 1997), 572 [my translation from the French]. 7 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, III, q. 1, a. 2. English translations from the Summa are taken from the work of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province: Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger, 1947). 8 Ibid. For a clear exposition of this article, see Wawrykow, The Westminister Handbook to Thomas Aquinas, 58–60. 9 Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., Is Theology a Science?, trans. A.H.N. Green-Armytage (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1959), 78. 654 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. from fittingness do not prove doctrine. They attempt to reveal the inner coherence and the wisdom of the divine design, the theo-drama that has been revealed by a God who is true, good, and beautiful.10 The Fittingness of the Preteradaptive Gifts in Human Evolution Early in his discussion of the creation of the first human beings, St. Thomas begins by noting that God perfects His creatures according to His purposes: “As God is perfect in His works, He bestowed perfection on all of them according to their capacity: ‘God’s works are perfect’ (Deuteronomy 32:4).”11 Applying this principle to the creation of the Adam and Eve, and reflecting upon the passage in Genesis that reveals that before the fall, “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25, NRSV), St. Thomas explains that it was fitting for God to have given these original humans what the Christian tradition has called the four preternatural gifts of immortality, integrity, knowledge, and impassibility to remedy their natural weaknesses and to perfect them as spiritual-material composites.12 First, because human beings are composite creatures of both spirit— which is inherently incorruptible because spirit is radically simple—and matter—which is inherently corruptible because matter, understood here not as primary but as secondary matter, is composed of more basic parts—they are inherently corruptible and therefore mortal. Hence, for St. Thomas, it was fitting for God to have given Adam and Eve the gift of immortality to perfect this limitation in their nature so that both soul and body are incorruptible.13 In this way, the original human pair would For an insightful discussion on the link between theological fittingness arguments and truth, goodness, and beauty, see Michael M. Waddell, “Wisdom, Fittingness and the Relational Transcendentals,” in Miscellanea Mediaevalia 26: What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages?, ed. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998), 538–42. 11 ST I, q. 91, a. 1. 12 In the Catholic theological tradition, the first human beings are conceived as being endowed with natural, preternatural, and supernatural gifts. The natural gifts are those gifts that make human beings human, the preternatural gifts are those gifts that surpass human nature and perfect human beings against the natural weaknesses of human beings as spiritual-material composites, and the supernatural gifts—including sanctifying or justifying grace, the infused virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit—that elevate human beings so that they may share in the divine nature. 13 ST I, q. 97, a. 1: “For man’s body was indissoluble not by reason of any intrinsic vigor of immortality, but by reason of a supernatural force given by God to the 10 The Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens 655 have been immortal, which is fitting for creatures ordained to eternal friendship with the God who is Life Himself. Next, because human beings are composite creatures with spiritual and material appetites that are inherently ordered to different objects (inclinations the Western philosophical tradition has called the intellect, the will, and the sensitive appetites), they are prone to interior disarray. The sense powers, too, naturally tend towards objects that cause pleasure in the sense, even when, as often happens, delights of this sort are at odds with reason.14 Therefore, for St. Thomas, it was fitting for God to have given the original human pair the gift of integrity to order these appetites and powers and to perfect these first humans against this limitation in their natures.15 This gift orders persons so that their intellects are subject to God, their lower appetites and their senses are subject to their intellects, and their bodies are subject to their souls. In this way, the original human beings were more apt to act well in grace to attain their beatitude. Again, they would have been more perfect creatures, fittingly equipped to be the imago Dei. Third, because human beings are composite creatures created to know spiritual truths by analogy to truths about the material world, a world that they can know only through the bodily senses, they are inherently limited in their capacity to know. Therefore, for St. Thomas, it was fitting for God to have given the original human beings the gift of infused knowledge to perfect this limitation in their natures.16 This gift soul, whereby it was enabled to preserve the body from all corruption so as it remained itself subject to God.” 14 St. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium theologiae, §186. 15 ST I, q. 95, a. 1: “But the very rectitude of the primitive state, wherewith man was endowed by God, seems to require that, as others say, he was created in grace, according to Ecclesiastes 7:30, ‘God made man right.’ For this rectitude consisted in his reason being subject to God, the lower powers to reason, and the body to the soul: and the first subjection was the cause of both the second and the third; since while reason was subject to God, the lower powers remained subject to reason.” For discussion on the gift of integrity and the state of original justice, see the following articles: P. DeLetter, “If Adam Had Not Sinned…,” Irish Theological Quarterly 28 (1961): 115–125; C. Vollert, “The Two Senses of Original Justice in Medieval Theology,” Theological Studies 5 (1944): 3–23; and Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “Nature and Grace in Thomas Aquinas,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth Century Thomistic Thought, ed. SergeThomas Bonino, O.P. (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009), 155–188. 16 ST I, q. 94, a. 3: “So the first man was established by God in such a manner as to have knowledge of all those things for which man has a natural aptitude.… Moreover, in order to direct his own life and that of others, man needs to know 656 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. would have included all truths, both natural and supernatural, necessary for human beings to direct their lives and the lives of others. In this way, according to St. Thomas, the original human beings could have fulfilled their natures as creatures made to govern not only themselves but also other human persons and the animals that had been entrusted to them. Finally, because they had gifts of immortality, integrity, and knowledge, for St. Thomas, the original human beings were also impassible in that they were not able to experience bodily or spiritual suffering.17 In the end, according to St. Thomas, these four preternatural gifts were given to the original human beings because these gifts remedied their natural limitations and perfected them as spiritual-material composites. These gifts together along with the sanctifying grace that is their principle constituted the original human pair in the state of original justice. Fittingly, in St. Thomas’s view, because of His boundless generosity, God had intended to transmit these gifts to all of the descendants of the original human pair.18 Building upon this Thomistic theological account, I propose that it would have been fitting for God to have given the first human beings specific preternatural gifts as soon as they had evolved, to perfect them not only as spiritual-material composites, as St. Thomas had thought, but also as personal creatures who had evolved from non-personal primate ancestors. To grasp the logic of my argument, we need to begin by identifying the end for God’s creative act. Why did God specifically create human beings? 17 18 not only those things which can be naturally known, but also things surpassing natural knowledge; because the life of man is directed to a supernatural end: just as it is necessary for us to know the truths of faith in order to direct our own lives. Wherefore the first man was endowed with such a knowledge of these supernatural truths as was necessary for the direction of human life in that state. But those things which cannot be known by merely human effort, and which are not necessary for the direction of human life, were not known by the first man; such as the thoughts of men, future contingent events, and some individual facts, as for instance the number of pebbles in a stream; and the like.” ST I, q. 97, a. 2: “In the first sense, man was impassible, both in soul and body, as he was likewise immortal; for he could curb his passion, as he could avoid death, so long as he refrained from sin.” ST I, q. 100, a. 1: “Man naturally begets a specific likeness to himself.…Now original righteousness, in which the first man was created, was an accident pertaining to the nature of the species, not as caused by the principles of the species, but as a gift conferred by God on the entire human nature…wherefore it is transmitted from the parent to the offspring; and for this reason also, the children would have been assimilated to their parents as regards original righteousness.” The Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens 657 For the Catholic theological tradition, the answer to this question is clear: God chose to create human beings not only to reveal his glory, but also to invite them into his own beatitude. The opening statement of the Catechism proclaims: God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life . . . He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children, and thus heirs of his blessed life.19 Elsewhere, citing sources from both the Eastern and Western theological traditions, the Catechism will formulate this truth as follows: “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”20 More recently, during his General Audience on December 2, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI explained that the ultimate purpose of the divine plan involves the deification of all human persons: “God does not only say something, but communicates himself, draws us into his divine nature so that we may be integrated into it or divinized.”21 In describing this communion with God in Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope continues, “[I]t is the fulfillment of our deepest aspirations, of that longing for the infinite and for fullness, which dwells in the depths of the human being and opens him or her to a happiness 19 20 21 Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), §1. Ibid., §460. Citing St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3, 19, 1: PG 7/1, 939; St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, 54, 3: PG 25, 192B; and St. Thomas Aquinas, Opusculum, 57, 1–4. Benedict XVI, “General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI, 5 December 2012.” 658 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. that is not fleeting or limited but eternal.”22 For the Catholic theological traditions, both Western and Eastern, the creation and salvation of the human being is all about his deification.23 As we saw above, for St. Thomas, it was fitting for God to have given the first human beings the preternatural gifts to perfect their natural weaknesses as spiritual-material composites. In my view and for the same reason that God perfects His creatures, it would also have been fitting for God to give the original human beings what I am calling the preteradaptive gifts to remedy and perfect those evolved adaptations that in themselves would have hindered human persons from attaining their beatitude in God. Note that I am not necessarily proposing that the preteradaptive gifts are gifts distinct from and unrelated to the traditional preternatural gifts. One could argue for instance that each of the preteradaptive gifts is a subjective part of the preternatural gift of integrity, as the virtue of abstinence is a subjective part of the virtue of temperance.24 What I would like to stress instead is that the preteradaptive gifts are gifts given to remedy defects that arise, not from metaphysical imperfections in the matter-soul composite that are incompatible with the destiny of the human person—which is presupposed by St. Thomas in his account of the preternatural gifts—but from inherited evolutionary adaptations that are not fitting for a creature with that eternal destiny in Christ. Here, I describe three examples of preteradaptive gifts that remedy and perfect adaptive limitations in human nature. This list is not meant to be exhaustive. First, take the evolved limitation of our promiscuous human mate choice. Holy Scripture reveals that man and woman were created for one another: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner” (Gen 2:18, NRSV). Moreover, as the Catechism affirms, this pair bond uniquely reveals God’s love: “Since Ibid. For recent studies on deification as it is understood in both the East and the West, see the following: A.N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Daniel Keating, Deification and Grace (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007); Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2008); Norman Russell, Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2009); Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov, eds., Theosis Deification in Christian Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2006); and Vladimir Kharlamov, ed., Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011). 24 Cf. ST II-II, q. 48, a. 1: “The subjective parts of a virtue are its various species.” 22 23 The Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens 659 God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man.”25 It also signifies the fidelity between Christ and His Church: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church. (Eph 5:25–29, NRSV). Therefore, as the Lord Jesus Himself teaches, the human pair bond, in the original plan of the Creator, is meant to be a unbreakable and lifelong union: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh” (Matt 19:6, NRSV).26 Human beings were created and perfected to the image of God as creatures ordered to covenantal faithfulness. However, it is clear from the high rates of divorce and adultery that human beings struggle to remain faithful to their mates. Our preferred mating strategy is either lifelong or serial monogamy, coupled, however, with clandestine adultery.27 Evolutionary psychologists have proposed that this infidelity is an evolved adaptation that human beings inherited from their primate ancestors, because its contrary, life-long fidelity within exclusive pair bonds, is not evolutionarily adaptive. For males, extra-pair mating allows individuals to sire additional offspring, while for females, promiscuity increases the lifetime fitness of offspring produced in the extra-pair matings.28 This would explain why promiscuity has been observed in most species, including apparently monogamous ones.29 Strikingly, too, no extant primate species has a life-long monog CCC, §1604. Ibid., §1605. 27 Helen E. Fisher, “Serial monogamy and clandestine adultery: evolution and consequences of the dual human reproductive strategy,” in Applied Evolutionary Psychology, ed. S. Craig Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 93–112. 28 Gerlach et al., “Promiscuous mating produces offspring with higher lifetime fitness,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 279 (2012): 860–66. 29 For discussion, see the following articles: D. Lukas and T. Clutton-Brock, “Cooperative breeding and monogamy in mammalian societies,” Proceedings of 25 26 660 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. amous mating system. Chimps live in multi-male promiscuous groups, orangutans engage in single-male temporary liaisons, and gorillas have single-male polygynous harems.30 Hence, it is likely that the first human beings would have inherited adaptive instincts from their primate ancestors that would not have favored the formation of life-long exclusive pair bonds. I therefore propose that it would have been fitting for God to have given the original human beings a preteradaptive gift that would have remedied this weakness in their evolved natures so that they could have formed the Christ-like pair bonds that God had intended for them. As another example, take the evolved limitation of our biased human cognition. As the Catechism teaches, human beings were created to come to know truth, especially the truth who is God: “Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him.”31 In fact, according to the Catechism, it is precisely their ability to reason that makes human beings like God: “God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions…. Man is rational and therefore like God.”32 It should not be surprising, therefore, that St. Thomas makes a fittingness argument for the intellectual perfection of the first human couple: Such an opinion, however [that the first human beings could have been deceived] is not fitting as regards the integrity of the primitive state of life; because, as Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 10), in that state of life “sin was avoided without struggle, and while it remained so, no evil could exist.” Now it is clear that as truth is the good of the intellect, so falsehood is its evil, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 2). So that, as long as the state of innocence continued, it was impossible for the human intellect to assent to falsehood as if it were truth.33 the Royal Society B 279 (2012): 2151–56; A. Cohas and D. Allaine, “Social structure influences extra-pair paternity in socially monogamous mammals,” Biology Letters 5 (2009): 313–16; Griffith et al., “Extra pair paternity in birds: review of interspecific variation and adaptive function,” Molecular Ecology 11 (2002): 2195–2212. 30 Harcourt et al., “Testis weight, body weight, and breeding system in primates,” Nature 293 (1981): 55–7. 31 CCC, §30. 32 Ibid., §1730. 33 ST I, q. 94, a. 4. The Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens 661 Human beings were created and perfected to the image of God as rational creatures ordered to truth. However, it is clear from common experience that human beings often draw conclusions that are at odds with basic probability theory or simple logic. We have inherent cognitive biases, including false consensus, intergroup bias, confirmation bias, overconfidence bias, and the sinister attribution error, just to name a few, that lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, and illogical interpretation.34 Evolutionary psychologists have proposed that these cognitive “defects” are actually evolved adaptations that the first human beings inherited from their primate ancestors because the biases favored the generation and survival of offspring.35 For example, intergroup bias causes us to overestimate the ability, the value, and the judgment of members of our immediate group at the expense of individuals we do not know.36 Though it can skew reasoning, leading to false and irrational conclusions, this cognitive bias would also have been evolutionarily adaptive because it facilitates social cohesion and the formation of coalitional alliances.37 This is probably why intergroup bias has also been found in another primate species, the rhesus macaque.38 Hence, it is likely that the first human beings would have inherited adaptive instincts from their primate ancestors that would have made it difficult for them to make sound and valid arguments. I therefore propose that it would have been fitting for God to have given these original human persons a preteradaptive gift that would have remedied this weakness in their cognitive powers, allowing them to think clearly and truly, so that they could be the rational creatures that God intended them to be. Finally, take the evolved limitation of our human proclivity to aggression. On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus Christ gave J.I. Krueger and D.C. Funder, “Towards a balanced social psychology: Causes, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (2004): 313–27. 35 Haselton et al., “Adaptive Rationality: An Evolutionary Perspective on Cognitive Bias,” Social Cognition 27 (2009): 733–63. 36 For a review of the literature, see Hewstone et al., “Intergroup Bias,” Annual Review of Psychology 53 (2002): 575–604. 37 McDonald et al., “Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B: Biological Sciences 367 (2012): 670–79. 38 Mahajan et al., “The Evolution of Intergroup Bias: Perceptions and Attitudes in Rhesus Macaques,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100 (2011): 387–405. 34 662 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. His disciples a new commandment: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:12–13). This commandment to love has been the guiding principle of the Christian life, whereby the believer is called to love God above all things for God’s sake, and his neighbor as himself for the love of God.39 This love for one’s neighbor is to be selfless and hidden, directed towards the stranger and done for God alone. It is to mirror the love of Christ, who loved his own even unto death: “By loving one another, the disciples imitate the love of Jesus which they themselves receive. Whence Jesus says: ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.’”40 Finally, this love is a radical love wherein the Christian is called to love his enemies, to turn the other cheek, and to walk the extra mile. Human beings were created and perfected to the image of God as rational creatures ordered to love of God and love of neighbor. However, as the front pages of daily newspapers make clear, human beings struggle to like—let alone love—their neighbors. In fact, they are inclined to aggression and to violence against the other. Evolutionary psychologists have posited that this proclivity to violence in some of its forms is an evolutionary adaptation. They note its ancient roots, its prevalence among primitive human societies, and its existence among the other great apes as evidence for this claim.41 There is mounting evidence that an evolved psychology of violence can be linked to adaptations that maintain and defend an individual’s status within a social hierarchy, to adaptations that monitor resource availability and distribution, to adaptations that track the motivational state of individuals, and to adaptations that deter the targeted individual from repeating behaviors that are in conflict with the interests of the aggressor.42 Hence, it is likely that the CCC, §1822. CCC, §1823. 41 For reviews, see Aaron T. Goetz, “The evolutionary psychology of violence,” Psicothema 22 (2010): 15–21; P. Lindenfors and B.S. Tullberg, “Evolutionary aspects of aggression: The Importance of Sexual Selection,” Advances in Genetics 75 (2011): 7–22; and C. Boehm, “Ancestral hierarchy and conflict,” Science 336 (2012): 844–47. The paragraph that follows is heavily indebted to these reviews. 42 For representative studies, see the following articles: T.H. Clutton-Brock and G.A. Parker, “Punishment in animal societies,” Nature 373 (1995): 209–16; Goetz et al., “Punishment, proprietariness and paternity: Men’s violence against women from an evolutionary perspective,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 13 (2008): 481–89; Griskevicius et al., “Aggress to impress: Hostility as an evolved context-dependent strategy,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96 (2009): 39 40 The Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens 663 first human beings would have inherited adaptive instincts from their primate ancestors that would have made it difficult for them to fulfill the new commandment to love. Once again, therefore, I propose that it would have been fitting for God to have given these original human persons a preteradaptive gift that would have remedied this weakness in their evolved natures so that they could be the charitable creatures that he had intended them to be. To conclude, promiscuous human mate choice, biased human cognitive powers, and aggressive human inclinations are only three instances of the many instinctual adaptations that emerged after millennia of non-personal evolution, which are not ultimately perfective of persons. In my view, the preteradaptive gifts would have ordered these inherited evolutionary adaptations so that they would have been compatible with the human vocation as personal creatures made to the image and likeness of God. Moreover, as I have proposed elsewhere, one can make a cogent argument that it was fitting for God to have created the original human beings via evolution rather than via special creation because the former better reveals his glory than the latter.43 With this claim in mind, the preteradaptive gifts would also have been fitting because they would have reconciled the apparently conflicting consequences arising from God’s desire to create using instrumental non-personal creaturely causality to reveal His glory on the one hand, and His desire to create personal creatures destined to beatitude and divinization on the other. Given their fittingness, however, the absence of these gifts today demands an explanation for why they were lost in human history. The Reality of Original Sin and the Historicity of the Fall in Light of Evolution For St. Thomas, the historicity of the fall and the reality of original sin are not only revealed by Holy Scripture but also are seen in human death and in the wounds inflicted upon human nature: “Original justice was forfeited through the sin of our first parent; so that all the powers of the 980–94; M. Wilson and M. Daly, “Competitiveness, risk taking and violence: The young male syndrome,” Ethology and Sociobiology 6 (1985): 59–63; M. Wilson and M. Daly, “An evolutionary psychological perspective on male sexual proprietariness and violence against wives,” Violence and Victims 8 (1993): 271–94; and M. Wilson and M. Daly, “Life expectancy, economic inequality, homicide and reproductive timing in Chicago neighborhoods,” British Medical Journal 314 (1997): 1271–74. 43 For details, see my essay, “A Theological Fittingness Argument for the Evolution of Homo sapiens,” Theology and Science. 664 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. soul are left, as it were, destitute of their proper order, whereby they are naturally directed to virtue; which destitution is called a wounding of nature.”44 Death and these wounds—St. Thomas enumerates four wounds in his Summa theologiae, ignorance, malice, weakness, and concupiscence—result from the loss of the preternatural gifts that was occasioned by the sin of our original parents.45 They incline fallen human beings to vice and can only be remedied with the practice of the natural virtues and with the gift of the supernatural virtues and of grace. As St. Thomas will explain elsewhere in the Summa theologiae, the wounds prevent human beings in the state of corrupt nature from doing even the good that is connatural to them.46 In my view, and in contrast to the views of the Christian theologians described in the introductory paragraphs of this essay, an evolutionary perspective does not undermine this traditional account of human origins and original sin. In fact, I propose that reflecting upon both our evolutionary origins and our present psychological constitution in light of divine revelation reveals that the wounds of fallen human nature are still very real. One manifestation of them is revealed when a human being’s inherited evolutionary adaptations hinder him from attaining his beatitude in God by inclining him to vicious activities that diminish his happiness as a person destined for the beatific vision. These wounds ST I-II, q. 85, a. 3. Ibid.: “Again, there are four of the soul's powers that can be subject of virtue, as stated above (Question 61, Article 2), viz. the reason, where prudence resides, the will, where justice is, the irascible, the subject of fortitude, and the concupiscible, the subject of temperance. Therefore in so far as the reason is deprived of its order to the true, there is the wound of ignorance; in so far as the will is deprived of its order of good, there is the wound of malice; in so far as the irascible is deprived of its order to the arduous, there is the wound of weakness; and in so far as the concupiscible is deprived of its order to the delectable, moderated by reason, there is the wound of concupiscence.” 46 ST I-II, q. 109, a. 2: “But in the state of corrupt nature, man falls short of what he could do by his nature, so that he is unable to fulfill it by his own natural powers. Yet because human nature is not altogether corrupted by sin, so as to be shorn of every natural good, even in the state of corrupted nature it can, by virtue of its natural endowments, work some particular good, as to build dwellings, plant vineyards, and the like; yet it cannot do all the good natural to it, so as to fall short in nothing; just as a sick man can of himself make some movements, yet he cannot be perfectly moved with the movements of one in health, unless by the help of medicine he be cured.” For a recent discussion on the state of corrupt human nature according to Aquinas, see Reinhard Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 102–126. 44 45 The Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens 665 exist today because, somewhere in time, the original human beings lost the preteradaptive gifts that would have remedied the evolved defects they had inherited from their non-personal ancestors. Therefore, these wounds point to the historicity of a fall in the recent evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. Objections to Revisionist Accounts for the Origins of Homo sapiens As we have seen, there are Christian theologians who would like to jettison and revise Christianity’s traditional doctrines on the historicity of the fall and the reality of original sin because of evolutionary theory. They are convinced that this approach is the only way that we can maintain the intelligibility and coherence of Christian theology in light of contemporary science. They begin their reflections with the brute fact of evolution and move from there to a revisionist theological account that is at odds with the received tradition. Their assumption is that scientific knowledge is more certain than theological doctrine. This revisionist project is objectionable for at least three reasons. First, and most significantly, their theological proposals lead to contradictions within the Christian worldview. Take the denial of the doctrines of original sin and of original justice. This would necessarily entail the theological opinion that sin flows from human nature as God had intentionally created it: God made human beings naturally prone to sin. However, this would then require that one hold that God deliberately willed to create human beings in a defective and an imperfect state that predisposed them to failure as they tried to become the God-like persons He had willed them to become. But this malicious deity is not the God whom Jesus Christ revealed to be the God who is Love! Why would a good and gracious Father who would not give his sons and daughters a snake if they asked for a fish (Lk 11:11) handicap his children from the start so that they would struggle and suffer to attain the beatitude that he had intended to freely give them? Revisionist theologians who alter our understanding of human origins, whether they explicitly acknowledge it or not, are also altering our understanding of God. The revisionist narrative would also be problematic for churches and ecclesial communions that take the truth claims of doctrine seriously. In the Catholic Church, for instance, it is settled doctrine defined de fide that there was an original sin that led to the loss of original justice not 666 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. only in the original humans but also in their descendants.47 Revisionist accounts that radically reject the settled doctrine of original sin would undermine the epistemological foundations for every other doctrinal claim made by a theological tradition that has affirmed: The Roman Pontiff and the bishops are “authentic teachers… who preach the faith to the people entrusted to them, the faith to be believed and put into practice.” … The supreme degree of participation in the authority of Christ is ensured by the charism of infallibility. This infallibility extends as far as does the deposit of divine Revelation; it also extends to all those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, or observed.48 Revisionist theologians who alter our understanding of human origins—again, whether they explicitly acknowledge it or not—are also altering our self-understanding of how God guides and governs his holy people. Finally, the revisionist approach is particularly troubling because it is not warranted. As the theological narrative proposed in this essay demonstrates, one can bring an evolutionary perspective into conversation with theology without jettisoning essential dogmatic truths. To do this successfully, one must believe that what God has told us about himself and his work in the world is sure knowledge that is more certain that any scientific claim.49 Only after this affirmation of faith can one “If anyone asserts that Adam’s sin harmed only him and not his descendants and that the holiness and justice received from God that he lost only for him and not for us also…, let him be anathema.” Council of Trent, Decree on Original Sin, June 17, 1546. Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, Robert Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash, 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 1511. 48 CCC, §2034–2035. 49 Cf. ST I, q. 1, a. 5: “Since this [sacred] science is partly speculative and partly practical, it transcends all others speculative and practical. Now one speculative science is said to be nobler than another, either by reason of its greater certitude, or by reason of the higher worth of its subject-matter. In both these respects this science surpasses other speculative sciences; in point of greater certitude, because other sciences derive their certitude from the natural light of human reason, which can err; whereas this derives its certitude from the light of divine knowledge, which cannot be misled: in point of the higher worth of its subject-matter because this science treats chiefly of those things which by their sublimity tran47 The Historicity of the Fall of Homo Sapiens 667 move to incorporate the findings of science into a novel yet traditional theological synthesis that faithfully reflects upon our evolutionary past from the horizon of salvation history. A theological engagement with evolutionary theory is not faith seeking after science. Rather it should be about faith seeking understanding. Conclusion It has not escaped my attention that my theological fittingness argument for the historicity of the fall of Homo sapiens raises additional questions that need to be answered by theologians who are responding to Pope John Paul II’s challenge to bring evolutionary theory into conversation with the Christian faith. For instance, how are we to speak about an Adam and an Eve in the context of what we know about recent hominin evolution and the dispersion of Homo sapiens out of Africa? Or, how should the discovery of a Y-chromosome Adam and a mitochondrial Eve, the last common male and female ancestor for all living human beings respectively, alter, if it should, our theological understanding of the original human beings? And for the Catholic theological tradition, especially, how are we to grapple with the monogenism vs. polygenism debate that was addressed in the papal encyclical Humani generis? These are only three of many disputed questions in systematic theology that have been raised by evolutionary theory. For now, I can say that I think that reasonable and faith-filled answers can be proposed to these questions, but these will have to be the subject of another essay. N&V scend human reason; while other sciences consider only those things which are within reason's grasp.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 669–692 669 Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible* J acob H owland University of Tulsa Tulsa, Oklahoma A nyone who wishes to conduct a philosophical investi- gation of the Hebrew Bible must reckon with the fact that that it does not present itself as a work of philosophy. The Bible’s core—Genesis through Kings—is a narrative;1 its overarching form is not what the Greek philosophers call logos (rational argument), but muthos (story).2 But this is also true of Plato’s dialogues, which indisputably qualify as philosophical writings. In fact, the Bible and the Platonic dialogues are in significant respects literary cousins. Both respond to social crises by inaugurating distinct traditions of literary education.3 Both seek to promote I wish to acknowledge the generosity of James Murphy, who read and critiqued an earlier version of this article. The article was initially prepared as a lecture for a Shalem Center conference in 2011; I thank Yoram Hazony for inviting me to speak on Plato and the Bible. 1 This core constitutes what David Noel Freedman calls the “Primary History”; on the literary coherence and significance of the Primary History, see Freedman, The Unity of the Hebrew Bible (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 1–39. 2 In the broadest sense, muthos designates a narrative of events; my use of this term—and of “myth” and “story,” which I employ interchangeably in this essay—is thus consistent, for example, with Robert Alter’s assertion that the literary form of the “primeval history” of Genesis 1–11 is “historicized prose fiction” (The Art of Biblical Narrative [New York: Basic Books, 1981], 24, emphasis in original). 3 The circumstances of captivity in Babylon evidently caused the displaced Judeans to lose confidence in their ability to maintain their religious tradition in a purely oral form, and thus to begin to commit essential elements of the tradition to writing. See Eduard Nielsen, Oral Tradition: A Modern Problem in Old * 670 Jacob Howland wisdom, understood as knowledge of the whole that is also knowledge of how to live.4 Both present various (and sometimes incompatible) perspectives on the fundamental issues, thereby compelling readers to think through these issues for themselves.5 Both furthermore invite us to ponder the relationship between cosmology and anthropology. In the cosmological myths of Plato’s Timaeus and Statesman, as in the story of origins with which the Bible begins,6 a god produces the physical universe by introducing intelligible order into a pre-existing chaos.7 These texts disagree about the process by which this is accomplished.8 4 5 6 7 8 Testament Introduction (Chicago: Alec R. Allenson, 1954), 33. Freedman makes a convincing case that the Babylonian exile both frames the Primary History and constitutes the center around which “the entire Hebrew Bible revolves” (The Unity of the Hebrew Bible, 6; cf. 8–9). On Plato’s preservation and transformation of Socratic philosophizing in the face of the moral and political disintegration of Athens after the Peloponnesian War, see Jacob Howland, Plato and the Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 55–9. The subject matter of the Platonic dialogues and the Bible is, in a basic sense, everything: heaven and earth, gods and men, rulers and nations, what is always and what has come to be. In particular, Genesis—like the dialogues—promises to help the reader “catch a glimpse of possibly timeless and transcendent truth” about “what is first” (Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis [New York: Free Press, 2003], 10–11, 21). As Kass notes, the Bible’s “sparseness, lacunae, ambiguity, reticence, and lack of editorial judgment [about what it narrates] … both permit and require the engagement of the reader.” What is more, “our need to continue grappling with the abiding ambiguities of the text teaches us … the truth of our own ignorance and the impossibility of resting comfortably with what we think we have understood” (The Beginning of Wisdom, 18, 19). I include the Eden narrative that runs through Genesis 3 in what I am calling the biblical “story of origins.” Because this story is told in two different ways in Genesis 1 through 3, I will occasionally speak of the biblical origin “stories” or “myths.” See, inter alia, Richard Elliot Friedman, Commentary on the Torah (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 6 (on Genesis 1:2); William Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 40 with n. 8. It is, however, notoriously difficult to specify the exact nature of this disagreement. The fact that “the verb ‫ ָּב ָרא‬. . . in the Hebrew Bible denoted the exclusive prerogative of God the Creator” (Jaroslav Pelikan, What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem? Timaeus and Genesis in Counterpoint [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997], 48) suggests a distinction between divine creation and the human fabrication of an artifact that is blurred by the Septuagint’s translation of bara in Genesis 1 by poiein, “to make, produce.” In particular, while the work of Plato’s divine demiurge or “craftsman” is “confined to the uniting of its two elements, form and matter, but cannot extend to the bringing into being Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 671 Yet they concur that the natural or created order is ultimately insufficient for the maintenance of human life, to say nothing of human flourishing; human beings must learn not only how to protect themselves from the harshness of the natural world, but also—and most especially—how to combat social and psychological disorder. Can we acquire the knowledge that will allow us to live good and peaceful lives? This question stands at the heart of the origin myths of Plato and the Bible. To investigate the Bible philosophically is to recontextualize it within the framework of familiar philosophical concerns.9 In approaching the Bible’s story of origins from the standpoint of what might be called the cosmological anthropology of the Platonic dialogues, I do not propose to offer a comprehensive interpretation of Genesis 1 through 3, let alone of the Timaeus and the Statesman.10 Rather, I hope to show that the biblical story of origins both amplifies and extends Plato’s own reflections on the limits of philosophical politics. 9 10 of either element” (M. B. Foster, “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science,” Mind 43 [1934], 459), the creative activity of the God of Scripture is not so confined; thus, God calls light into being by fiat (Genesis 1:3). But Foster seems to go too far in maintaining that God creates with “no clear knowledge of what he is going to achieve before he has achieved it,” and is thus more of a fine artist than an artisan (462); the rabbis, at any rate, compare God to a master builder, and the Torah to a blueprint or measuring-rod (Genesis Rabbah 1.1, 8). Nor is the doctrine of creation ex nihilo clearly discernible in Genesis (Pelikan, pp 12, 48). Cf. Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation Out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994), which argues persuasively that “the origin of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo must be understood and explained as part of the controversy of early Christianity with philosophy” (xii). Although May notes that Rabban Gamaliel “implicitly asserts creatio ex nihilo” in Genesis Rabbah 1.9, he observes that “such sayings remain isolated … [and] a firm, unambiguously formulated doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not worked out in ancient Jewry” (23). This constitutes a variation on the theme of the ongoing theological “recontextualization” of the Hebrew Scriptures by Jews as well as Christians. Cf. R.W.L. Moberly, The Theology of the Book of Genesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 14–15. In some cases, recontextualization is explicitly theological and philosophical; thus, Emil Fackenheim’s The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust: A Re-reading (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990) follows the example of Hegel, who “enquired into what his Bible had said, then and there, only in conjunction with considering whether (and if so how) it continued to be a repository of truth, here and now” (2). As Moberly remarks, it is in any case “intrinsically doubtful that any one reading can do full justice to all the features of the text [of the Eden narrative]” (The Theology of the Book of Genesis, 75). 672 Jacob Howland First, I will provide an overview of the ground I intend to cover. The Timaeus and Statesman teach that what the philosophers call phusis, or nature, is the product of an art of world-making exercised by a god.11 Owing to its divine construction, the universe is a kosmos, a decorously ordered whole. Even so, the natural order is only partially consistent with human welfare. Both dialogues furthermore explain that the deficiency of nature with respect to human existence cannot be repaired by material arts alone. A philosophical politics is required in order to supplement or correct nature by means of law and custom (nomos), and, more broadly, by a whole formation of life that shapes the character of a people and gives them a sense of their place and purpose within the whole. According to the eponymous protagonist of the Timaeus, this philosophical politics is rooted in the contemplation of the cosmos. But Plato allows us to see that Timaeus’s teaching—which he presents in the form of a “likely” or “fitting” story (eikōs muthos: 29d)—rests on a confusion between the philosophical acquisition of knowledge and the poetic fabrication of politically useful opinion. This confusion is both deliberate and instructive: the art of politics includes the production of myths that aim not to communicate knowledge, but rather to unify a community and ground it in the world, and there are multiple indications that the cosmological myth of the Timaeus is practical and political in just this respect.12 11 12 The Bible tells a similar story. Because “creation is not through fiat alone, but also substantially through fashioning,” the “overall picture [in Genesis 1] is that of God as a craftsman”; God’s “repeated pronouncement” that what He has made is “good” should accordingly be understood as an expression of ‘the maker’s assessment of his handiwork” (Moberly, The Theology of the Book of Genesis, 43 with n. 4; cf. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, 39). Whereas the Greek concept of phusis properly designates “that which grows by itself” in contrast with “the artificial (tekhnē) and the conventional (nomos),” creation in the Bible “unites the “two principles [of] artifice and convention” because it is “production” that is also “the word of justice” (Rémi Brague, The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan [Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003], 14, 47). But the Greek philosophical distinction between the orders of nature on the one hand and art and convention on the other is blurred in the Timaeus and Statesman, in which the cosmos is revealed to be a production that partakes in goodness and beauty thanks to the demiurge who fashions it—a god who is, moreover, said to be the “father” or natural progenitor of the cosmos (Timaeus 28c, 29d–30b; Statesman 269d, 273b–c). To mention only three examples: (1) Timaeus’s myth supposedly reveals phusis, but Socrates calls it a nomos; because the latter word may mean “song” as well as “law” (29d), Socrates suggests that this myth is intended both to legislate a Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 673 Like the Timaeus, the great myth of the Statesman is a meditation on the human condition that takes the form of a story about the origins of the cosmos and of human life. The myth indicates that the wisdom that is the object of a philosophical politics is available only by means of inquiry through dialogue.13 Such essentially Socratic inquiry turns away from the contemplation of the cosmos and toward human beings, teasing out, through sustained and focused questioning, the relationship between law or custom and the nature and excellence of the soul.14 Yet the attempt to disentangle philosophy from poetry by inquiring into the distinction between nomos and phusis confronts serious practical limitations. It presupposes the conditions it is supposed to produce, in that philosophy as such cannot emerge prior to the establishment of some kind of political and psychological order through the imposition of binding laws. Socratic inquiry furthermore threatens to weaken the attachment to nomos that orders and unifies (however imperfectly) cities and souls alike, and thus to undermine the very goal at which it aims. Whereas the gods are said to be guided by wisdom in fashioning the cosmos and regulating its motions, these paradoxes imply that human intelligence—which always begins in the middle of things, and works back toward first principles—can never be genuinely architectonic in the sphere of ethics and politics. The philosophical implications of the Bible’s story of origins come sharply into focus against the backdrop of Plato’s Timaeus and States- 13 14 vocation for human beings and to attune them to it. (2) The word dēmiourgos that Timaeus uses to designate the supreme god who constructs the cosmos literally means “one who works for the people.” (3) Timaeus claims that the stars are the original home of human souls—not, however, by nature, but by “custom” and “habit” (sunnomou, sunēthē: 42b). Of course, Timaeus’s vision is cosmopolitan; his myth aims to make a home in the cosmos not for a particular community, but for human beings as such. It is the Athenian Critias who, taking over the “men born by his [Timaeus’s] speech,” will assume the task of “making them citizens of this city of ours” (27a–b). In beginning with the origins of human beings as such and then focusing on one particular human community, the plan of the Timaeus and Critias resembles that of Genesis, which in chapter 12 narrows its scope from universal history to the story of Abraham and his descendants. The philosophical difference between these texts is reflected in their literary form: the Statesman is a dialogue, while the Timaeus is (for the most part) a monologue. Cf. Socrates’ criticism of Anaxagoras at Plato, Phaedo 97b–99c with Cicero’s remark that Socrates “call[ed] philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men” (Tusculan Disputations 5.4.10–11). 674 Jacob Howland man. Most important, the Statesman’s myth of the reversed cosmos splits human existence into two cosmic phases in order to underscore its fragmentation and incompleteness. This myth teaches that the unity of knowledge and virtuous order that characterizes wisdom in the fullest sense is unavailable to human beings. The same internal conflict in human existence is visible in the double origin story of Genesis.15 The biblical story of origins further sharpens the Platonic critique of philosophical politics by paying special attention to the distortion of the human intellect that is coincident with sexual differentiation, and to the social or “mimetic” intensification of the aspiration to divinity that underlies this distortion. It thereby prepares the ground for its unique solution to the human predicament: embracing the covenant of God.16 Nevertheless, the Bible’s implicit case against the project of philosophical politics rests on what interpretation discloses to be a philosophical and psychological analysis of the problem of distinguishing between the image and the original of God. This fact is perhaps sufficient to demonstrate not only the validity, but also the necessity of a philosophical investigation of the Hebrew Scriptures.17 I will start by sketching the main lines of the critique of philosophical politics that emerges in the Timaeus and the Statesman. We will then be prepared to appreciate the way in which the Bible expands and deepens 15 16 17 “For the tradents of proverbial wisdom, the [image of the] tree signifies both wisdom and prosperity or shalom (Prov. 3:17b). It evokes hokmâ (Greek sophia) herself, who offers longevity in her right hand and riches and honor in her left (3:16).” In the Garden of Eden, however, the tree of life is distinguished from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad; “together, knowledge and life constitute the quintessence of wisdom” in the biblical tradition, but “life is wrenched from discerning knowledge” in the Eden narrative (Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos, 154, 155). In what follows, I will use the phrase “life and knowledge” to refer to the humanly elusive unity to which Brown calls our attention. This is, ipso facto, also the solution to the particular historical predicament of the Judean exiles in Babylonia. Cf. Philo’s Creation of the Cosmos, in which he characterizes the biblical story of origins as “an educative ‘prelude’ to the laws of Moses, intended to ‘mold beforehand the minds of those who were to use the laws’” (quoted in Pangle, Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003], 7). Kass justly observes that the Bible “takes a dim view of the sufficiency of human reason … [but] presents this critical view to human reason in a most intelligible and powerful way,” thereby “prepar[ing] the philosophic reader to take seriously … the arrival of God’s new way for humankind” (The Beginning of Wisdom, 11, 15, emphasis in original). One might add that, if the Bible’s case against the project of philosophical politics is persuasive, it is for the Socratic reason that it accords more with what we know about ourselves. Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 675 Plato’s reflections on the theoretical and practical limits of the philosophical pursuit of practical wisdom. I. Philosophy and Poetry in Plato’s Timaeus The “likely story” of the Timaeus teaches that a god made the cosmos as beautiful and good as the necessity inherent in its corporeal nature will allow (30a–b). Timaeus’s subject admittedly does not allow for precise speeches (29c–d), but why does he present this philosophical teaching in the literary form of myth? Two reasons come readily to mind. Because muthos or narrative goes beyond a mere recitation of events—because it seeks, rather, to clarify their inner coherence—it is the form of discourse best suited to articulating both the purposive structure of intelligent action and non-teleological relations of probability or necessity. But because the inner coherence of a myth or narrative about the mysterious beginnings of the universe can never be fully obvious, we readers are obliged to engage in interpretation, which attempts to put together the parts of a spoken or written discourse into a whole so as to grasp their internal unity. In this manner, the origin stories of Plato and the Bible reward intellectual persistence and creativity, thereby encouraging us to become active partners in our own education.18 At the midpoint of his myth of origins (48e), Timaeus begins anew.19 The myth’s doubleness underscores the problem of uniting, in speech as well as in deed, intellect and necessity—the two fundamental causes or beginnings of the world.20 Necessity, the “wandering cause,” initially presents itself to the demiurge as the chaos of “all that was visible” (30a, 48a).21 It is this primordial chaos, moving “unmusically and without order” (30a), that he shapes into a cosmos in accordance with intellect that looks to the good.22 Because what is visible is originally “without 18 19 20 21 22 Cf. Moberly’s description of the “Eden narrative” as a kind of “‘wisdom’ literature” that “provoke[es] hard reflection on the nature of life in the world with a view to moral and spiritual growth,” is “open to various interpretations,” and “resists simple closure” (The Theology of the Book of Genesis, 77, 87; cf. 64). Pelikan, What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?, 33. Having first told the story of the cosmos from the perspective of intellect, he proceeds to tell it from the perspective of necessity. See 47d–48e. Quotations from the Timaeus are drawn from Plato’s Timaeus, trans. Peter Kalkavage (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2001). Timaeus would thus concur with what Brague says of the God of the Bible: “it is not in the chaos preceding creation that he must be sought.… One must seek him in the order of the created world, in what is intelligible in that world” (The Wisdom of the World, 46). Yet because Timaeus’s account has to do with 676 Jacob Howland ratio and measure,” the demiurge first configures it by means of “forms and numbers” into the mathematically intelligible elements of fire, earth, air, and water (53a–b). Artfully compounding these elements, and uniting them with souls compounded from a mixture of the Same, the Other, and Being, he fashions the cosmos and the celestial bodies within it as living beings that revolve in orderly circuits (35a–40d). The structure and intelligibility of the heavenly spheres—whose orderly motions human beings are instructed to contemplate by means of “a kind of philosophy” and to apply to the “wander-stricken circuits” of their own intellects (47b–c)—are thus the product of a divine art or technē.23 The demiurge’s mastery of disorderly motion in fashioning the cosmos both makes possible, and serves as a paradigm for, the psychological and political self-mastery of human beings. Yet there remains in Timaeus’s myth a fundamental tension between human perfection and cosmic order. This is because the necessary motions of natural bodies conflict directly with the internal order of human souls. Plato introduces this conflict by prefacing Timaeus’s cosmology with a story about Solon, who learns from an Egyptian priest that much of the human race is periodically destroyed by floods, fires, and “thousands of other means.”24 According to Timaeus, the periodic floods that inundate the macrocosm are reproduced in microcosm when the human intellect is joined with the body and the non-rational parts of the soul. Tied to a “body subject 23 24 Becoming and not with Being, it can aspire only to “trust” (pistis) and not “truth” (alētheia: 29b–d); this necessary uncertainty seems to be reflected in the fact that the dialogue does not make the demiurge an object of worship (Pelikan, What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?, 28–9, 36–7). The demiurge’s exemplary mastery of disorderly motion is reflected in the mathematically intelligible and musical movement of the “planets” (planēta, from the verb planasthai, “to wander”) along the cosmic circle of the Other, the ecliptic. See 36c–d and 38c–40d with Kalkavage, Plato’s Timaeus, 65, n. 34 and Appendix B (150–54). While such episodes are rooted in the natural necessity that attaches to the motion of heavenly and sublunary bodies alike, the priest explains that the only traces of them in the consciousness of the Greeks—who, unlike the Egyptians, are subject to periodic flooding that wipes out all but the “illiterate and uneducated”—appear in the veiled form of myth (22b–23b). The priest refers specifically to the myth of Phaethon, who lost control of the chariot of the sun and thus burned the earth (22c–d). Astronautical engineers have recently argued that this myth was inspired by a real event—the massive asteroid, reported by a Sumerian astronomer in 3123 B.C.E., that passed “over Sodom and Gomorrah … [and] would have broiled those below at temperatures reaching seven hundred and fifty degrees” (Tad Friend, “Vermin of the Sky,” The New Yorker, February 28, 2011, 24). Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 677 to inflow and outflow” as though “bound within a prodigious river,” the “circuits of the immortal soul” are assailed by a flood of sensations, emotions, and desires and “washed over” by a “food-supplying wave” together with a “stream of increase and nutriment” (42a, 43a–b, 44b). Subject as it is to these multiple affections, which cause “the most widespread and greatest [internal] commotion,” the soul “becomes unintelligent” (44a–b). But as the demiurge explains to the yet-to-be embodied intellects of human beings, this situation gives rise to nothing less than the human vocation: 25 If they were to master these [sensations and forceful affections], they would live in justice, but if they were mastered by them, then in injustice. And he who has lived well throughout his appropriate time would make his way back to the dwelling of his lawful star. . . . But he who had failed to live well would, in his second birth, take on woman’s nature. If in that form he still did not refrain from evil, then in whatever mode he might make himself bad, he would always take on some such bestial nature in the similitude of that mode of life that was born in him. And he would keep changing and would not cease from his labors until he had reached the following point: not before he should draw along with the circuit of the Same and Similar that was in himself the vast mob of fire and water and air and earth that had later grown over it and, having mastered by reason that roaring and irrational mob, reach the form of his first and best condition. (42b–d) As this passage makes clear, the perfection of the cosmos depends on the inevitable imperfection of human beings. The only human beings fashioned by the gods are male; in order that the cosmos embrace within itself all of the various kinds of animals and thus “be sufficiently perfect,” it is therefore necessary that at least some of these human beings repeatedly fail to master the disorderly motions of their souls, and so become reincarnated as women, birds, four-footed land animals, snakes, and fish (41b–c, 90e–92c).26 25 26 The demiurge speaks after having temporarily implanted each soul in a separate star so as to display “the nature of the all” (41e). The fact that the number of souls is limited by the number of stars subtly suggests the superiority of the cosmos to human beings. See 41e–42a. Another striking feature of this passage is its use of political imagery in comparing rational self-mastery to the forceful subordination of an unruly multitude (cf. 70a–b). 678 Jacob Howland In general, Timaeus’s philosophical orientation is practical and productive. The philosophical contemplation of the inherent rationality and intelligibility of the cosmos is not good in and of itself; rather, it is useful, in that it discloses a mathematical and musical order to which we may attune, and after which we may model, the motions of our souls.27 Yet this very usefulness comes to light only within the horizon of Timaeus’s beautiful myth, as if to suggest that he is the true demiurge of the cosmos he describes—a cosmos that exists only in speech.28 The fundamentally poetic character of Timaeus’s “likely story” must also be taken into account in assessing his emphasis on force, manliness, and the spirited imposition of order in soul and city alike, an emphasis that springs from the tension between human life and the natural order that stands at the center of his philosophical anthropology.29 The myth is meant to assure us that the ordering activity of spirit or thumos is capable, both in principle and in practice, of following the commands of intellect.30 However, Timaeus’s assertion that the human intellect is impaired when it becomes embodied means that the spirited mastery of disorderly motion in the soul is in fact a precondition of adequate cognition.31 What is worse, a soul that necessarily “becomes unintelligent” through its connection with the body (44a–b) can never be sure that it is capable of forming adequate judgments about the world. With respect to Timaeus’s 27 28 29 30 31 This is a major theme of Kalkavage’s Introduction (Plato’s Timaeus, 1–44). Cf. Brague’s assertion that the Timaeus is a “thoroughly ironic” dialogue that “describes the cosmology required by a particular anthropology” (The Wisdom of the World, 32). Note also Critias’s reference, at 27a, to “the men born by his [Timaeus’s] speech,” and Timaeus’s mention, at Critias 106a, to the god “who has just now come into being in my words.” At 90e, Timaeus remarks that it is a combination of cowardice and injustice that leads one to be reincarnated as a woman. Cf. the political imagery of 44d, where he asserts that the head “despotically rules [despotoun] all the parts within us.” On the connection between the order of the political regime and the order of the soul, see 87a–b. Cf. 70a, where Timaeus compares the head to an acropolis or “citadel,” from which reason issues commands to thumos so as to “forcibly keep down the class of desires.” The priority in human existence of spirit and force to intellect and cognition is hinted at in the order of Timaeus’s exposition, which fails to follow the order of cosmogony: “as for the soul, although we are at present attempting to speak of her as though she came later [than the body], the god did not in fact contrive her younger … but we who somehow partake largely of the accidental and random do so also when we speak” (34b–c). For further discussion, see Jacob Howland, “Partisanship and the Work of Philosophy in Plato’s Timaeus,” Review of Politics 69.1 (2007): 1–27. Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 679 confidence in the power of the human intellect to order the soul and the city on the model of the cosmos, the wish seems to be father to the thought. In this crucial sense, philosophy in the Timaeus remains indistinguishable from poetry. II. Wisdom and Necessity in the Statesman’s Myth of the Reversed Cosmos In the Statesman’s great myth, the philosophical Stranger from Elea describes a perpetual oscillation between cosmic cycles that is punctuated by transitional periods of chaos.32 During the current cycle, in which the cosmos and all its parts move independently and must care for themselves, human existence is characterized by harsh necessity and increasing disorder. During the counter-cycle, in which the cosmos is rewound by a god, human beings are cared for by a divine shepherd and human life is maximally ordered and simple. In neither cycle are the conditions optimal for philosophical inquiry: in the counter-cycle, human beings have speech, but lack memory and the spur of necessity; in the current cycle, philosophical leisure conflicts, both formally and substantively, with the material and political work that secures the indispensible conditions of life. While the current cycle reflects the tension between intellect and necessity of which Timaeus speaks, the two cycles together underscore the incompatibility of life and knowledge in human existence to which the Bible also directs our attention. During the counter-cycle, a divine “helmsman” cares for the cosmos as a whole, while demigods “shepherd” human beings and all of the animals in “herds” divided by species (271d–e).33 The human condition in this cycle, characterized as it is by childlike dependence and tranquility, is in many respects like life in Eden prior to the creation of the woman (at Genesis 2:22). Human beings are naked, but do not reproduce sexually; they live outdoors, lush grasses suffice for their bedding, and their food is the fruit of trees. There are no wars, regimes, or families, and because each divine shepherd is “all-sufficing” for the 32 33 The myth of the reversed cosmos is thus a cosmology but not a creation story, because it posits the temporal infinity of the universe. Like Timaeus’s cosmology, it is presented as the inner, philosophical truth of the more familiar myths of the poetic tradition (cf. 268e–269b with Timaeus 22b–d). The same is true—at least to some extent—of Genesis’s story of origins, which involves “a demythologizing’ in relation to other ancient Near Eastern accounts” of creation (Moberly, The Theology of the Book of Genesis, 52). Kubernētēs, “helmsman,” is the root of the English words “governor” and “cybernetics.” 680 Jacob Howland herd under its care, no need compels human beings to develop the arts that support life in the current cycle (271d–272a).34 The residents of the counter-cycle are furthermore capable of associating through speech with one another and with the beasts (272 b–c). But having no awareness of death and being defective in memory, the human herd seems to lack both the desire and the capability to pursue wisdom.35 In any case, the Stranger makes it clear that philosophy would in neither cycle consist in silent theoretical contemplation. Rather, philosophy involves the essentially Socratic activity of “learning by inquiry from every nature whether each with its own kind of private capacity [is] aware of something different from all the rest for the gathering and collection of intelligence [phronēsis]” (272c). The word phronēsis ordinarily connotes a practical wisdom that manifests itself in a life well lived. In the counter-cycle, philosophy would be an end in itself; in the current cycle, when human beings are required “to manage their way of life, and their own care for themselves, just as the cosmos as a whole” (274d), philosophy is necessary for the achievement of intelligent self-government. The urgent need for philosophy in the current cycle arises from a significant difference between the human condition and that of the cosmos. During the counter-cycle, the “demiurge and father” of the cosmos instructs it in how to care for itself; during the current cycle, the cosmos is at first guided by the memory of this instruction, but is gradually destabilized by the disorder inherent in the nature of matter (273b).36 Like Timaeus, the Stranger maintains that human life properly “imitat[es] … and follow[s] along with the cosmos” (274d–e), but in fact, human life in the current cycle begins in “great and resourceless perplexities [aporiais]” (274c).37 What is worse, a cold 34 35 36 37 The animals are similarly peaceful: they do not feed on one another, and there is no savagery or harshness among them (271d–e). In the counter-cycle, time flows backward, so that individuals return to life from death, springing from the earth with no memory of those who came before, growing younger in soul as well as body, and ultimately disappearing altogether (270d–271a). The Stranger nevertheless asserts that, if the inhabitants of the counter-cycle use their leisure in order to philosophize, they are happier “by a thousandfold” than human beings in the current cycle; conversely, if they use it to eat, drink, and tell myths like the ones the poets tell today about the age of Cronos, “then this, too … is easily decided” (272c–e). The Stranger explains that “forgetfulness” increasingly arises in the cosmos, “perplexities” multiply, and when the cosmos is about to “sink into the sea, which is limitless, of dissimilarity,” the god “once more takes his seat at its rudder” and begins to rewind it (273c–e). In the Platonic dialogues, the word aporia regularly designates philosophical bewilderment. Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 681 logic—the outlines of which are visible in the Timaeus—militates against the successful acquisition of practical wisdom. The transition between cycles is punctuated by widespread chaos that destroys most human beings, and whereas the few survivors are “weak and unguarded,” the beasts whose natural harshness was suppressed in the counter-cycle now become “savage” (270c–d, 274b).38 Human beings are therefore compelled to organize themselves into communities that can ward off attack; the natural distinctions according to which the demigods were accustomed to pasture (nemein) the animals in the counter-cycle are now replaced by the division of human communities according to nomos.39 Under these conditions, the distinctive customs and practices of a community—maintained and transmitted from generation to generation not by rational argument, but by the forceful inducements of honor, shame, and punishment—are justified by, and derive ever-increasing authority from, the simple fact that the community endures.40 But the spirited inculcation of unanimity, without which a community would be unable to ward off external threats and would likely fall prey to civil strife, stands in tension with the rational activity of philosophical inquiry; because radical philosophical questioning threatens to undermine the indispensable authority of law and custom, Socratic inquiry must be sharply curtailed in the name of phronēsis itself. The Stranger therefore implicitly endorses the public prosecution of Socrates that is initiated concurrently, in dramatic time, with the conversation that unfolds in the Sophist and Statesman.41 38 39 40 41 These “beasts” certainly include human beings. The words nomos and nemein are etymologically related. Cain’s worry that, as a wanderer, he will be killed (presumably by murderous men like himself) also points in the direction of the need for human beings to band together for self-defense, except that God protects him by promising to avenge him if he is killed (Genesis 4:13–15). Cf. the following remark in Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (9.262): “Manifold experience teaches [the citizens of the polis] to which qualities above all they owe the fact that, despite all gods and men, they are still there, that they have always triumphed: these qualities they call virtues, these virtues alone they cultivate. They do this with hardness, indeed they want hardness; every aristocratic morality is intolerant—in the education of youth, in the arrangements for women, in their marriage customs, in the relations of old and young, in their penal laws . . . they consider intolerance itself a virtue, calling it ‘justice.’” I have slightly modified the translation of Walter Kaufmann, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Random House, 1966). See esp. Statesman 299b–d. For a discussion of this passage, see Jacob Howland, The Paradox of Political Philosophy: Socrates’ Philosophic Trial (Lanham, MD: 682 Jacob Howland III. Knowledge and Human Existence in Genesis 1–3 While the Timaeus explores the possibility of deriving a philosophical politics from cosmological inquiry, the Statesman uses cosmology primarily as a vehicle for illuminating the tension between the natural circumstances of human existence and the achievement of knowledge and virtuous order. In both dialogues, the demiurge’s care focuses on the cosmos, which is a living and divine being;42 in both, the demiurge is referred to as the “father” of the cosmos, but in neither is he said to be the father of human beings. In the Bible, however, the cosmos and the heavenly spheres within it are neither living nor divine; it is human beings who are the special object of God’s care, and who alone are said to be created in His image.43 Nor is the cosmos a fitting model for human behavior. Nevertheless, the Bible recapitulates some of the central intellectual and existential problems and terms of analysis of the Timaeus and the Statesman. We noted earlier that the task of interpretation consists in putting together the parts of a discourse into a whole. The first things we must put together in reading the Bible are the two distinct origin myths with which it begins, the story of seven days (Genesis 1:1–2:4) and the Eden narrative (2:5–3:24). We must put them together, because the text does not; the first myth is a sealed literary whole with no narrative connection to what follows. Why must the story of origins be told twice? The simplest answer is that the Bible wishes to call attention to the internal duality of human existence, a duality that is evident in the essential differences between the two myths. We are told in Genesis 1:27 that “God created the human [ha’adam] in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”; in other words, God initially creates one human body in which sexual differentiation is potential but not yet actual.44 Being nothing more or less than the image 42 43 44 Roman & Littlefield, 1998), 272–79. Socrates meets the preliminary indictment of Meletus on the day before the Sophist and Statesman (cf. Theaetetus 210d). The cosmos is “a happy god” (Timaeus 34b) and is “deathless and ageless” (Statesman 273e). As Brague notes, “the devaluing of celestial bodies [in the Bible] was intended to extirpate the worship of the stars” (The Wisdom of the World, 49). Cf. Pangle, Political Philosophy and The God of Abraham, 48–49 with Kass’s observation that “the cosmos [in the Bible] is neither divine nor a source of … moral-political teaching” (The Beginning of Wisdom, 57; on the “demotion of the sun,” which is created on day four although light is created on day one, see 40). In quoting the Bible, I draw from the translation of Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1996) as well Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 683 of God, the human would seem to be ontologically simple as well. In the second origin story, human being is ontologically and physiologically twofold; ha’adam is formed from the dust of the earth and the breath of God, and is later split into isha and ish, “woman” and “man” (2:7, 21–22). A similar distinction is evident with respect to speech and desire. In the second story, human speech arises in the context of the attempt to repair a deficiency, the absence of a fitting helper for the human; in the first, ha’adam does not speak, presumably because he feels no lack. The first story is complete in and of itself, because there is no internal dynamic to drive the narrative forward; in the second story, human desire results in divine curses and the expulsion from Eden. In sum, human existence in the first origin myth is characterized by internal simplicity and wholeness, silent fulfillment, and harmony with God and the created order; in the second, by internal complexity and fragmentation, articulate desire, and alienation from God and world alike. This is not all, for duality as such has an intellectual significance in the Bible’s double story of origins. Like Plato’s Eleatic Stranger, the Bible regards analytical discrimination and synthetic integration—the distinction of this from that, and the collection of multiple elements into a unified whole—as the most fundamental operations of intellect.45 In the Sophist and Statesman, the Stranger employs a way of inquiry known as diaeresis or “division,” which arrives at definitions through a ramifying process of bifurcation into kinds and sub-kinds.46 God’s creative and intellectually paradigmatic speech at the beginning of the Bible assumes a similar form. God introduces intelligible structure into a preexisting watery chaos by means of a series of distinctions that open up a physical and temporal space in which life becomes possible.47 The internal logic 45 46 47 as the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999). All chapter and verse citations refer to Genesis. According to the Stranger, analytical discrimination itself has two forms; at Sophist 226d, he divides the diacritical art into the separation of worse from better and of like from like. Diaeresis starts with a general category and ends with the specific thing sought. The resulting analyses take the form of logical trees, in which the right-hand branch of each division is itself further divided until the process is complete. The final diaeresis of the Sophist, for example, begins with art (technéē), which is then divided into acquisition and production, and concludes with the sophist (235c–236c, 265a–268d). It has been observed that the business of Israelite priests also essentially involves division and separation of clean and unclean (see Leviticus 10:10 and 11:46–47 with the remarks of Goldingay and Levenson quoted in Moberly, The Theology 684 Jacob Howland of creation may furthermore be represented as a sequence of six bifurcations, beginning with the separation of all creatures into those that lack place (i.e., light) and those that have place, and ending with man—the only being that is created in God’s image.48 One final bifurcation could be said to be left to the reader, who must think through a distinction that the first human beings fail to comprehend. This is the distinction between the image of God and the original of which it is an image. Maimonides grasps the essence of the first story of origins in observing that “it is on account of . . . intellectual apprehension that it is said of man: In the image of God created He him.”49 God’s intellect is genuinely productive in a way that man’s is not; in the act of divine creation, being follows speech, whereas for man, discriminating logos follows the structure of being.50 Nevertheless, human beings are—at their best—godlike in their capacity to comprehend the order that God has established. For God, the creative distinctions of Genesis 1 are followed by a contemplative synthesis: “God saw all the He had done, and, look, it was very good” (1:31). The human intellect, too, is capable of just such a contemplative appreciation of creation as an articulated whole, and it is precisely in this kind of purely theoretical activity that Maimonides locates the goodness of the human condition prior to the expulsion from Eden. “Through the intellect,” he writes, “one distinguishes between truth and 48 49 50 of the Book of Genesis, 43, n. 6 and 57). From the perspective of the present analysis, this priestly activity both presupposes and reiterates the primordial divisions of God in Genesis 1. Leo Strauss therefore remarks that the intelligible order of creation is “based on . . . what Plato called diairesis” (“On the Interpretation of Genesis,” in Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. Kenneth Hart Green [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997], 367). Strauss’s analysis is diagrammed in Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, 34; cf. Pangle, Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham, 50–51. Brown notes that creation in the story of seven days has two main phases. The first phase corresponds to the statement in Genesis 1:2 that the earth was “formless” (tohu) and the second corresponds to the statement that the earth was “empty” (vabohu); thus, the domains that are established in the first three days—domains that are themselves structured by a series of oppositions (day and night, the water above and the water below, earth and seas)—are in turn filled with living beings in the next three days (The Ethos of the Cosmos, 37–39). Cf. Moberly, The Theology of the Book of Genesis, 47. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, vol. 1, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 1.1 (22). In general, one might say that the human intellect is a mere image of God’s because it can reflect (and reflect on) ontological reality, but cannot call it into being. Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 685 falsehood, and this was found in [Adam] in its perfection and integrity.” His illustration of this distinction is apposite: one says that it is true that the heaven is spherical and false that the earth is flat.51 Maimonides is not alone in connecting the two origin myths of Genesis in a way that suggests the wholeness and perfection of the original human condition. An aggadic midrash interprets “male and female He created them” to mean that male and female were originally fused in a two-faced body of dual form, from which God later split off the female form (2:21–22).52 This midrash recalls the myth of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, in which Zeus cuts the original dual-formed human beings in half so as to make them too weak to try to supplant the gods.53 In the Bible, however, man’s rivalrous and transgressive aspiration to divinity arises only after man and woman are physically distinguished.54 But if the original condition of human beings was characterized by the peacefulness and tranquility of life in God’s garden and the goodness of theoretical cognition, why did this aspiration arise in the first place? What is it about the tree of knowledge of good and bad that would appeal to beings who already enjoy intellectual perfection along with all the blessings of an Edenic existence? It turns out that we are asking the wrong question, because the perfection of the theoretical intellect is radically inconsistent with the self-consciousness that is minimally required in order to deem oneself happy. Let 51 52 53 54 Guide of the Perplexed 1.2 (24–25). Bereshit Rabbah 8:1. Rashi follows this interpretation; see his remarks on 1:27 and 2:21. Symposium 190c–d. Like the man and the woman after they are split apart, the separated halves seek to “become one flesh” (2:24) and thereby, as Alter observes, to to recapture their “impossible primal unity” (The Art of Biblical Narrative, 31). Rashi nonetheless hints at the restriction of man’s spirited nature in his comment on the spelling of ‫ וכבשה‬at 1:28: “Furthermore, [the word is spelled this way] to teach you that the man, whose practice it is to conquer, is commanded regarding being fruitful and multiplying, but not the woman” (The Torah: With Rashi’s Commentary, trans. Rabbi Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg [New York: Mesorah Publications, 1995], 18). As Pangle observes, God’s later destruction of the tower of Babel, whereby He “primarily ensures not that humanity will be any purer, but that it will be decisively weakened,” does bear a close resemblance to the strategy of Zeus (Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham, 124). An echo of this strategy may also be heard in God’s decision perpetually to remind human beings of their sin by means of the pain of childbirth and the strenuousness of labor; cf. 3:16–18 with Symposium 190e–191a, where Apollo fashions the navel as a lasting memorial of Zeus’s punishment and of the dependent nature of human beings. 686 Jacob Howland us pick up the text just prior to God’s introduction of sexual differentiation. In naming the newly-created animals (2:20), ha’adam distinguishes and designates their various kinds or species. He thus demonstrates both the analytical and the synthetic powers of his theoretical intellect, and therewith his affinity to God.55 Yet his intellectual perfection seems to be accompanied by a lack of subjectivity and self-consciousness: he names every animal but himself, and we are never told what he is thinking or feeling.56 Everything changes when God forms the woman and presents her to her partner. In his excitement, the man resorts to poetry: And the human (ha’adam) said: This one at last, bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh, This one shall be called woman (isha) For from man (ish) was this one taken. (2:23) The first thing to notice about this passage is that it is actually the man (ha’ish) who speaks, not the primordial human (ha’adam); in blurring the distinction between these two, the text implicitly asks the reader to think about their difference. We may begin by observing that the man’s speech resembles, but does not reduplicate, the speech of the human when he names the animals. Like the names of the animals, ish and isha do not identify particular individuals; they designate two newly-created kinds, the male human being and the female human being.57 The words ish and isha furthermore resemble the kinds they name in being somewhat different, yet fundamentally alike. Up to this point, the theoretical intelligence of the ish seems to be on a par with that of ha’adam. Unlike the human, however, the man does name himself; the introduction of sexual differentiation seems to coincide with the birth of self-consciousness. But this excited and expressive self-consciousness falls short of self-knowledge. In 55 56 57 Cf. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, 74: the act of naming, reason’s “primordial activity,” involves a combination of “separating” and “combining.” The Koran indirectly recognizes the divine character of the intellectual activity of naming in attributing this activity to Allah (2.31). Thus it is God who determines that it is “not good” for ha’adam to be alone (2:18). The text goes on to state that “for the human no fitting helper was found” (2:20), but it fails to specify whose judgment this was. The man gives the woman a proper name, Chava, only after he learns that he must return to the dust from which he came (3:19–20). Mortality and individuality seem to go hand in hand. Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 687 particular, the man is mistaken about his priority to the woman: isha was not taken from ish, but from adam. Indeed, it is only through the separation of “woman” that “man” comes to be.58 This error is absolutely fundamental, because it effectively obscures our human origins. The man’s confusion is metaphysical and ontological; he mistakes a part for a whole, and what is posterior in the order of being for what is primary. He thereby evinces a desire to create, as God does, by calling things into being through speech alone. What is more, he absurdly presents himself as utterly independent; in forgetting ha’adam, he also forgets the God in whose image ha’adam was created. His declaration that “this one shall be called woman, for from man was this one taken” (2:23) is thus a comic echo of “male and female He created them” (1:27); in content as well as form, it is pure poetry. In sum, the creation of the woman marks a transition between two distinct phases of human existence which match up roughly, but not precisely, with the two stories of origins. The first phase, which extends into the Eden narrative, is characterized by intellectual perfection coupled with a lack of self-consciousness. The second phase is characterized by an intellectually deficient form of self-knowledge that reflects a misguided aspiration to divinity. One could state the difference between these phases in Greek philosophical terms: in the first phase, ha’adam exists as a genuine likeness (eikōn) of God, but does not know it; in the second, ha’ish exists as a mere imitation or apparition (phantasma) of God just to the extent that he wrongly identifies himself with Him.59 In both phases, as in the two cosmic cycles of the Statesman, the combination of life and knowledge that would constitute the happiest or most blessed existence is unavailable to human beings. The transition between these two phases is marked by the introduction of human sexual differentiation and the consequent birth of sexual desire. This is the Bible’s version of the Timaeus’s point that the intellect is disturbed when it is joined with the body; in Genesis, however, this disturbance arises not from corpore58 59 Sandor Goodhart, “The End of Sacrifice: Reading René Girard and the Hebrew Bible,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 14 (2007): 63–64. Cf. Emmanuel Levinas, “And God Created Woman,” in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 167–68 and Ronna Burger, “Male and Female Created He Them: Some Platonic Reflections on Genesis 1–3,” in Nature, Women, and the Art of Politics, ed. Eduardo Velasquez (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 1–18, esp. 6 with n. 24, 16. Cf. Sophist 236b, where a phantasma is said “not to be like [eikos] that which it claims to be like [eoikenai].” 688 Jacob Howland ality as such, but from sexuality. The understanding of the isha, like that of the ish, is less than perfect: in responding to the serpent’s opening question, she adds to God’s prohibition, and she seems to confuse the tree of knowledge of good and bad with the tree of life (3:1–3).60 It is to the woman that the serpent seems to promise the opportunity to become “like divine beings” by eating the forbidden fruit (3:5). But as Maimonides observes, everything turns on the ambiguity of the word elohim, which may mean “rulers” as well as “the deity” and “the angels.” In eating the forbidden fruit and being expelled from Eden, he explains, human beings assume the burden of self-rule and become absorbed “in judging things to be fine or bad.”61 Fine (or good) and bad are furthermore not objects of intellectual cognition, but “things generally accepted as known”—matters of nomos, as is suggested by the subsequent desire of the man and the woman to cover their natural nakedness.62 But why is this particular distinction lost on the first human beings? Why do they mistake rulers—mere images of God—for the genuine article? We have already begun to answer this question in observing the man’s intellectually confused aspiration to divinity. The knowledge of good and bad—which resembles the knowledge of true and false in that it is inherently dichotomous, and can be represented as a treelike series of branching distinctions—is particularly attractive from a human standpoint because it is productive in a way that at least superficially resembles the creative power of intellect through which God fashions the cosmos out of chaos. This point is implicit in a rabbinic midrash that has the serpent connecting the knowledge of good and bad with 60 61 62 See Rashi on 3:3 with Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, 84–85 and Goodhart, “The End of Sacrifice,” 66. Guide of the Perplexed 1.2 (23, 25). The punishment for disobeying God thus consists in trading a good thing for a bad one, as is clear from the immediate sequel: “Then he knew how great his loss was, what he had been deprived of, and upon what a state he had entered.” Because human beings are notably resistant to moral order—because, as God is forced to admit when he smells the odor of Noah’s burnt offering, “the devising of man’s mind are evil from his youth” (8:21)—the project of self-rule involves great toil and trouble. Cf. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, 94: “To sum it [the punishment] up in one word: civilization. The ‘punishment’ for trying to rise above childishness and animality is to be forced to live like a human being.” Guide of the Perplexed 1.2 (24). In the Greek tradition, clothing is regularly associated with nomos, and nakedness with phusis; see Herodotus, The History 1.8 with Plato, Republic 452a–e. Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 689 the power to “create other worlds.”63 In particular, the opportunity to produce laws and customs that reflect their own judgments of good and bad promises to allow human beings not only to issue commandments, after the fashion of God, but also to create an ordered social world of their own making. Another midrash, on the creation of ha’adam in the image of God, clarifies what is involved in attempting to imitate God in this manner. According to Rashi, “man was made with a stamp, like a coin which is made through a die.”64 The conventional character of coinage is reflected in the English term “numismatics,” which is built on the Greek word nomos. If human beings are “coined” in God’s image, their very being may be said to reflect, in an artful and conventional manner, that which is ontologically prior to all artifice and custom. What the first human beings seem to mistake for godhood is nomos as such—the power to coin or mint human beings through laws and customs.65 But considered in itself and apart from the knowledge of God, nomos has no discernible form; it thus falls short of being any determinate kind of power or capacity at all, much less a divine one. While the preceding reflections clarify both the attraction and the difficulty of human self-governance, the narrative suggests a simpler and more plausible explanation of the allure of the forbidden fruit. Let us therefore return one last time to the text. IV. A Brief Conclusion: Mimetic Desire and the Word of God The serpent initiates the first conversation recorded in the Bible. This fact seems significant, because it alerts us to the genesis of desire in a social context. In particular, the woman’s longing for the forbidden fruit is aroused by the serpent’s claim that “God knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will become like elohim who know good and bad” (3:5). Upon hearing these words, we are told, the woman “saw that the tree was good for eating,” and so forth. Yet it is only after she shares the fruit with the man that “the eyes of both of them were opened” (3:7), a phrase that suggests awakening from sleep. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates defines dreaming, “whether one is asleep or 63 64 65 Bereshit Rabbah 19:4. The Torah: With Rashi’s Commentary, 17 (on 1:27). In Aristophanes’ Clouds, the character of Socrates uses the same numismatic image to make a more radical suggestion about the nature and existence of the gods. When Strepsiades swears to pay Socrates for his lessons, Socrates replies: “What sorts of gods will you swear by? For first of all, the gods are not current coinage [nomisma] for us” (247–48). 690 Jacob Howland awake,” as “believing a likeness of something to be not a likeness, but rather the thing itself to which it is like” (476c). This precisely describes the woman’s confusion of rulers with gods. In mistaking what is human for what is divine, the woman falls into idolatry.66 Her idolatrous dream is induced by means of the triangular mechanism of mimetic desire—desire for an object that is mediated or modeled by the desire of another for that same object.67 In this case, the desirability of the forbidden fruit is mediated directly by the serpent and indirectly by the figure of God. But what does the serpent wish to accomplish? In a remarkable midrash, Rashi attributes to the serpent his own mimetically-induced dream; the serpent, he claims, aims to supplant the man in order to have sexual intercourse with the woman.68 According to Rashi, the serpent trusts God’s pronouncement that eating the forbidden fruit will cause death; he assumes that the woman will be cautious enough to test the fruit by first giving it to the man, who will expire after tasting it.69 But in the event, the serpent arouses in the woman a desire that is strong enough to make her forget God’s warning altogether.70 Rashi’s midrash is particularly illuminating because it closes the circle of mimetic influence, a circle that connects God’s creatures only insofar 66 67 68 69 70 Cf. Goodhart, “The End of Sacrifice,” 68. On the triangular structure of mimetic desire, and the rivalry this desire entails, see René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 1–52. Although the theme cannot be developed here, Plato is well aware of the problem of mimetic desire. In the Republic, Socrates presents the natural impulse to imitate others—and in particular, to “say the same things are noble and base as they do, practice what they practice, and be such as they are” (492c, emphasis added)—as a serious danger to the development of philosophical natures; cf. 492a–d with 514a–517a and n. 75. This midrash picks up on the wordplay of 2:25 and 3:1: “The two of them were naked [arumim], the human and his woman, and they were not ashamed. Now the serpent was most cunning [arum]…” In his comment on 3:1, Rashi explains that, because the man and the woman felt no shame, they engaged openly in sexual relations; the serpent, having seen them copulating, conceived the desire to possess the woman for himself. Augustine connects the two desires at play in this part of the Eden narrative in comparing the rebelliousness of the sexual organs against the rational will to the disobedience of man against God (City of God, 14.17–19). See Rashi on 3:15. About the man’s desire, on the other hand, the text tells us simply that the woman “also gave [the fruit] to her man, and he ate” (3:6); it would seem that he passively follows her example. Cosmos and Philosophy in Plato and the Bible 691 as it excludes God Himself: the serpent’s sexual desire is awakened and focused by the example of the man, while the man’s consumption of the fruit may be traced back, through the mediation of the woman, to the speech of the serpent.71 A verbal echo underscores this connection with “the most cunning [arum] of all the beasts of the field” (3:1): “the eyes of the two were opened, and they knew they were naked [eyrmim]” (3:7). Having stripped themselves of the sole commandment of God,72 they perceive that they are left with nothing but their native cleverness, which immediately manifests itself in makeshift modes of self-concealment—fig leaves and pretexts. The sequel reiterates this chain of influence and reenacts it in reverse. When interrogated by God, the man explains that “the woman whom you gave by me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (3:12), and the woman, apparently taking her cue from this excuse, asserts that “the serpent duped me, and I ate” (3:13). In these statements, ethical falsehood hides behind the mask of descriptive truth. How can human beings both know the good, and live by this knowledge? Outside of Eden, we may hope to answer this question only by “the sweat of [the] brow” (3:19)—that is, by intellectual and material labor. But unlike Plato’s demiurges, God does not leave us to our own devices.73 The imitative nature of human beings exponentially multiplies the confusion between the image and the original of God that coincides with the birth of human self-consciousness. Rashi’s intuition that mimetic influence is a closed circle furthermore implies that there can be no immanent or “hermeneutical” solution of the sort the Eleatic Stranger envisions—the “gathering and collection of phronēsis” by means of dialogue (Statesman 272c). Human existence must instead be radically broken open. This is precisely what God attempts to do in calling out “Where are you?” (3:9). It is significant that the most promising sort of response—hineni, “Here I am!”—first comes from a man whom God has 71 72 73 I speak here of mimetic “influence” because desire cannot be merely mimetic; like sexual desire, the aspiration to divinity could not be aroused if it were not already present in human beings. As we have just seen, it is present in the man from the moment the woman is created. See Rashi on 3:7 with Bereshit Rabbah 19:6. God’s fabrication of adequate clothing for the man and the woman (3:21) anticipates his promulgation of guiding laws. See n. 62. Burger argues that the “clothing” of the law of God both “replaces the lost state of innocence prior to the experience of shame and fear by covering over the nakedness that elicits that experience” and offers an indirect path to the wholeness or completeness of ha’adam (“Male and Female,” 12). 692 Jacob Howland assiduously separated from his community (22:1). Yet the Bible’s critique of the project of philosophical politics rests ultimately on the insight that it is not sufficient simply to take certain questions seriously. As the cosmological myths of the Timaeus and the Statesman make clear, Plato’s philosophers are themselves guided, both metaphysically and morally, by the question “Where are you?” But trying to answer a question is not the same as hearkening to, and entering into a relationship with, the N one &V who questions.74 This may be the most fundamental difference between Greek philosophy and the Hebrew Bible. 74 No personal relationship—covenantal or otherwise—is possible with the demiurge of the Timaeus, whose involvement with human beings ceases prior to the construction of their bodies (42d–e), or that of the Statesman, who releases the “rudder” of the cosmos at the beginning of the current cycle (270a, 273d–e). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 693–711 693 Christi Opera Proficiunt: Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration A aron P idel , S.J. University of Notre Dame South Bend, Indiana O n the eve of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Joseph Ratzinger was invited before an assembly of German-speaking bishops to appraise De fontibus revelationis, the draft schema on Divine Revelation.1 The Bonn professor, though not yet granted the status of official peritus,2 felt confident enough to argue that the schema’s treatment of biblical inspiration was inadequate in important respects. Its principal fault, in his estimation, was to have attempted to raise to the level of doctrine the so-called partim-partim theory of revelation, according to which revelation, conceived as a set of propositions, resides “partly” in Scripture and “partly” in Tradition. The partim-partim theory, Ratzinger argued, was not the only way of accomplishing the Council’s thematic aim, namely, to present ecclesial tradition as sine qua non for a genuine understanding of Scripture.3 1 2 3 For the text of this address in English translation, see Jared Wicks, S.J., “Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during Vatican Council II,” Gregorianum 89/2 (2008): 233–311, at 269–285. According to Ratzinger’s own recollection, Cardinal Frings managed to have him appointed peritus only “toward the end of the first session.” See Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva–Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 121. According to Ratzinger, the council was targeting the position of Tübingen Dogmatiker J. R. Geiselmann, who favored a totum–totum theory. Accordingly to Geiselmann, revelation, here also understood propositionally or “materially,” 694 Aaron Pidel, S.J. To the eyes of those with a more historical sensibility, moreover, Ratzinger argued that the partim-partim would always appear doubly deficient. First, there was little historical evidence showing that early, orthodox theologians ever invoked an esoteric “sayings source” in order to defend “extra-biblical” beliefs, such as the extraordinary privileges accorded to the Virgin Mary. Yet to speak of revelation’s distribution in quantitative terms, i.e., as contained partim in Scripture and partim in Tradition, was implicitly to conceive of tradition as just such a set of supplementary premises. Secondly, the partim-partim model departs significantly from the theologies of two of the West’s most revered doctors: Sts. Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas. After adducing a catena of texts wherein the two theologians flatly deny that non-biblical dicta can be ascribed to the deposit of faith, Ratzinger draws the obvious conclusion: “the proposed schema would . . . condemn . . . most of the Fathers and classical scholastic theologians, beginning with Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure.”4 The council should not, in other words, risk condemning the “largest and most venerable part of the Tradition” in the name of the “average-level theology of the Latin text-books.”5 His lecture thus reads almost like an amicus curiae brief for the Mendicant inspiration-theology of the High Middle Ages, and especially for that of Bonaventure, the subject of his Habilitation (1955). But Bonaventure’s model of inspiration furnished Ratzinger with more than just a weighty authority by which to unsettle the manualist consensus. The conclusions of his research provided him, as we will argue, with a positive orientation by which to develop his own theology of biblical inspiration. Indeed, Ratzinger’s understanding of revelation can be fruitfully understood as a synthesis of the Seraphic Doctor, on the one hand, and the insights of twentieth-century exegesis, personalism, and hermeneutics, on the other. Perhaps the most significant fruit of this synthesis is Ratzinger’s thematization of what he finds implicit in Bonaventure, namely, the communal aspect of the charism of inspiration. It is the relation between Ratzinger’s early Bonaventura-Forschungen and his later affirmation of a corporate dimension of biblical authorship that serves as the main focus of this investigation. However, given the 4 5 was distributed “totally” into Scripture and “totally” into tradition. Catholic theologians, operating according to this same propositional understanding, feared that the admission of Scripture’s material sufficiency would inevitably render tradition superfluous. See “Six Texts,” 273–274; Milestones, 124–126. Ibid., 277. Ibid., 277–278. Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 695 fact that so-called “social models” of inspiration continue to raise the specter of Modernism, we will also treat briefly the resources Ratzinger provides for allaying doctrinal concerns. Bonaventure Transposed What did Ratzinger the Habilitand appropriate from the Seraphic Doctor’s model of inspiration? Three principal features present themselves: inspiration is (1) mystical, (2) subject-inclusive, and (3) historically cumulative. In each case we will begin with what Ratzinger discovered in Bonaventure and then proceed to his creative appropriation thereof. Mystical “Mystical” serves to designate the model of divine-human interaction by which Ratzinger conceives the process of Scripture’s composition. Whereas the late nineteenth century tended to construe inspiration according to the Molinist pattern of “efficacious grace,” and the middle twentieth century, the years of Ratzinger’s theological formation, according to the Thomist category of instrumental causality,6 Ratzinger found in Bonaventure an alternative to these models. Bonaventure’s use of the terms “inspiration” and “revelation,” he discovered, did not correspond to the linguistic usage they had acquired by the mid-twentieth century, such that the former designated divine assistance in composing canonical books and the latter its objectified result. Far from opposing “inspiration” to “revelation,” Bonaventure used these terms interchangeably,7 referring through them to a fundamentally mystical vision, a “penetration through the peripheral-sensible to the spiritual and real.”8 Understood according to this mystical coloration, inspiration could designate more than simply God’s guidance in the process of biblical composition. In fact, inspiration’s function could vary somewhat from epoch to epoch. In the formative period of the canonical books, for example, the visions could serve as an impetus to writing. Here the terms inspiratio and revelatio indifferently designate what later theology would 6 7 8 James Burtchaell rates the Molinist-inspired res et sententia theory of the Jesuit Cardinal Franzelin as the dominant theory from 1870–1890 and the Thomist-inspired instrumental theory of the Dominican Pierre Benoit as the “classic” theory of the years following Divino afflante Spiritu (1943). See Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspiration since 1810: A Review and a Critique (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 244–245. The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1989), 54. Ibid., 66. 696 Aaron Pidel, S.J. call “inspiration.” At the same time, Bonaventure held that the “veil” or “swaddling clothes” of human language could not, of itself, communicate these mystical insights.9 Hence, a certain mystical elevation (revelatio or inspiratio) was necessary not only to compose but to understand Scripture properly, that is, to receive its properly theological meaning.10 Ratzinger thus concluded that Bonaventure departed from later usage of revelatio and inspiratio in two senses. He used them both synonymously and more broadly, so as to include them under them the twofold process of Scripture’s composition and its reception in faith. If his later writings are any indication, Ratzinger found himself in basic sympathy with Bonaventure’s mystical model. He gives little attention, for example, to the divisions of faculty psychology or the subtle distinctions within the sphere of grace so characteristic of nineteenthand twentieth-century debates on inspiration. Instead, he often traces the origins of biblical traditions back to seminal religious encounters, which he evokes in personalist categories of relationship and dialogue.11 Abraham is portrayed as a mystic of the highest order,12 for example, and the whole religious tradition of Israel, the womb in which the Old Testament gestated, as nothing other than a participation in the “broadening of the horizon which was granted to him.”13 Christ in turn takes up this Abrahamic tradition, receiving and “inspiring” it in virtue of the filial relationship that constitutes the core of his identity.14 Through his “most profound dialogue with God,” Jesus “knows Scripture more deeply than anyone else.”15 Again, Jesus has “spiritualized the letter” of 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Ibid., 66. Ibid., 63. For Ratzinger’s reflections on the interdependence of individual religious genius and communal religious traditions, see Introduction to Christianity, trans. J.R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990), 60. “Abraham heard God’s call, he enjoyed some kind of mystical experiences, a direct eruption of the divine, which pointed his way for him. This man must have had something of the seer about him, a sensitivity to being, which enlarged his perception beyond the bounds of what is accessible to our senses. This extension of the realm of perception, which men in all ages … have sought to acquire by artificial means, was obviously enjoyed by him, as by all religious geniuses, in a pure, effortless, and original manner.” See Faith and the Future (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1971), 33–34. See ibid., 34. For the motif of Christ as the renewing and universalizing interpreter of the tradition of Israel—including its Scriptures—see Behold the Pierced One: An Approach to Spiritual Christology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986), esp. 30–31. Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sr. Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 697 Scripture “in terms of his relationship with God.”16 The same holds for those who follow in Jesus’ wake, that is, for the hagiographers classically conceived. In his Commentary on Dei Verbum Ratzinger observes that the “resonance of the voice of the apostles and prophets throughout Scripture is important to it because the voice itself resounds with the Holy Spirit, because in them we encounter the dialogue of God with men.”17 In short, though perhaps not everyone familiar with God is inspired, everyone inspired is deeply familiar with God. Ratzinger thus agrees with the manualist consensus inasmuch as he describes inspiration as a charism attributable to special individuals. He diverges from the manualist consensus, however, inasmuch as he makes inspiration’s paradigmatic agents not literary authors but mystical tradents. By shifting inspiration’s center of gravity in this way, Ratzinger reveals—despite his preference for the language of personalist philosophy—an ongoing affinity for Bonaventure’s approach to inspiration. Subject-Inclusive From these considerations on the mystical character of inspiration, it follows that “Holy Scripture” (as opposed to Scripture qua written artifact) is for Bonaventure a complex whole comprising both subject and text. Since Scripture remains a dead letter until its meaning has been mystically perceived, it follows that the believing subject belongs to the very concept of inspired Scripture. Scripture in its naked verbalness serves only as the “instrument” or “material principle” of revelatio or inspiratio, whereas Holy Scripture comprises an ensemble of text-plus-believing-subjects. Revelation thus exists only in act. But how then, Ratzinger asks rhetorically, does such a model not “destroy the objectivity of revelation in favor of a subjective actualism?”18 The answer: for Bonaventure, mystical insight into Scripture admits of degrees, the lowest of which is simply the vision of Christian faith. Such faith, however, is not merely the private attitude of the individual believer, but the faith of 16 17 18 Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), 32. Ibid., 98. “Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. William Glen–Doepl, vol. III (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 262–272, at 263. In a mid–career essay, Ratzinger, referring explicitly to Bonaventure’s mystical understanding of the charism of biblical authorship, argues that, if hagiographers are indeed the model for all subsequent theologians, theology must be accompanied by contemplation and “spiritual praxis” (Principles of Catholic Theology, 322). Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, 66–67. 698 Aaron Pidel, S.J. the Church, itself already partially objectified in the interpretations of the Fathers and the articles of the Creed. Hence, the Word of God is structured somewhat like a set of Russian dolls: the text is enfolded by the reader, who is enfolded by the faith of the Church, which is enfolded by God. Ratzinger, for his part, remains committed to this model of understanding the “complex organism of the Word of God”19 from the time of his Habilitation onward. Recalling more than forty years later the theological basis of certain interventions at the Second Vatican Council, Ratzinger points to the text-plus-subjects structure of Revelation found in Bonaventure: Revelation is always greater than what can be contained in human words, greater even than the words of Scripture. As I have already said in connection with my work on Bonaventure, both in the Middle Ages and at Trent it would have been impossible to refer to Scripture simply as “revelation”, as is the normal linguistic usage today. Scripture is the essential witness of revelation, but revelation is something alive, something greater and more: proper to it is the fact that it arrives and is perceived—otherwise it could not become revelation . . . Revelation has instruments; but it is not separable from the living God, and it always requires a living person to whom it is communicated. Its goal is always to gather and to unite men, and this is why the Church is a necessary aspect of revelation . . . And what we call “tradition” is precisely that part of revelation that goes above and beyond Scripture and cannot be comprehended with a code of formulas.20 19 20 “Six Texts,” 277. Milestones, 127. He adds elsewhere: “I had ascertained that in Bonaventure (as well as in theologians of the thirteenth century) there was nothing corresponding to our concept of “revelation”, by which we are normally in the habit of referring to all the revealed contents of the faith: it has even become part of linguistic usage to refer to Sacred Scripture simply as “revelation”. Such an identification would have been unthinkable in the language of the High Middle Ages. Here, “revelation”, is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also part of the concept of “revelation”. Where there is no one to perceive “revelation”, no re–vel–ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 699 Equivalent descriptions of Revelation surface along the length of Ratzinger’s theological career.21 Perhaps his most mature formulation can be found in his “Introduction” to Jesus of Nazareth. There Ratzinger notes that the production of the books of Scripture involve not two but “three interacting subjects”22—God, the individual author, and the Church. The Church, moreover, by virtue of its trans-historical breadth, stands in a special way the “living subject of Scripture” wherein the “words of the Bible are always in the present.”23 Here we find the core of the young Ratzinger’s opposition to De fontibus. The draft schema, by failing to recognize the interpretive role 21 22 23 merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone”), because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of Tradition is already given” (ibid., 108–109). In earlier formulations, Ratzinger emphasizes almost exclusively the corporate subject of inspiration: “It is becoming increasingly clear that inspiration is not an individual charismatic process but, rather, an essentially ecclesial and historical process embedded in the whole process of tradition, genre history, and redaction…. The human subject of the Bible is the Church; she is at the same time the place of the transition from human spirit to Pneuma, to the Spirit of the common Body of Jesus Christ and, thus, generally the place in which inspiration is possible” (Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Living, unabridged edition, ed. Michael J. Miller, trans. Michael J. Miller and Matthew J. O’Connell [San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011], 22–23). Again: “It is only at this point that we can begin to understand the nature of inspiration; we can see where God mysteriously enters into what is human and purely human authorship is transcended…. Certainly Scripture carries God’s thoughts within it: that makes it unique and constitutes its ‘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 growth of the biblical Word; and, conversely, this Word gives the society its identity and its continuity” (“What in Fact is Theology,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: Church as Communion, ed. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzenz Pfnür, trans. Henry Taylor [San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005], 29–37, at 33). Italics original. More recently, Ratzinger has begun to present individual and corporate contributions more evenly: “At this point we get a glimmer, even on the historical level, of what inspiration means: The author does not speak as a private, self–contained subject. He speaks in a living community, that is to say, in a living historical movement not created by him, nor even by the collective, but which is led forward by a greater power that is at work” (Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker [San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007], xx). Italics mine. Ibid., xx. Ibid., xi. 700 Aaron Pidel, S.J. of Scripture’s living subject, and by electing to supplement Scripture with Tradition understood as a “code of formulas,” ran the risk of condemning Bonaventure and Thomas, both of whom often presented Scripture as Revelation’s sole material source. A noteworthy corollary of Ratzinger’s defense of the constitutive role of the receiving subject is his acceptance of an ongoing current of inspiration—at least in the stipulative, Bonaventurian sense of reception-inspiration. Historically Progressive Ratzinger’s qualified endorsement of ongoing inspiration, in fact, leads him to take a further step. He comes to affirm not only the Church’s indispensable role in the actualization of Scripture’s latent meaning, but history’s role in the progressive enrichment of this meaning. Here again the precedent is Bonaventure, who detected in the Bible complex periodizations of world history that Ratzinger dubs “schemata.” According to these schemata, each event of the Old Testament prophesied an analogous event in the age of the Church or, using Bonaventure’s own image, represented a “seed” that would flower in the course of history.24 By Bonaventure’s reckoning, some of these event-prophecies had already found fulfillment: Ezekiel corresponded to Charlemagne, for instance;25 and the schism of the Eastern and Western Churches recalled the division between the Northern and Southern tribes of Israel.26 Bonaventure became convinced, however, that some Old Testament episodes adumbrated events still to come: history was still awaiting a great Christian king corresponding to Josiah, for example, as well as a period of great tribulation corresponding to the Babylonian exile.27 By ascribing such a patterned intelligibility to history, Bonaventure implied that post-canonical historical events could cast a backward light on Scripture, progressively unveiling its meaning. According to Ratzinger, moreover, this open-ended hermeneutic reflected the Seraphic Doctor’s broader cosmology. Breaking with Aristotelian physics, which treated time as an accident of movement, and thus history as an unintelligible concatenation of particulars, Bonaven24 25 26 27 Collationes in Hexaemeron, XIII, 2; cited in Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, 7–8. Ibid., 30. With respect to Bonaventure’s specific predictions, Ratzinger relies heavily on Collationes in Hexaemeron XVI.29. “Offenbarung, Schrift, Überlieferung,” Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift 67 (1958): 13–27, at 18. Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, 30. Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 701 ture recasts temporality as a structural element of the cosmos and the measure of creation’s return to God.28 Christ gives the temporal process its orientation and inner logic,29 such that cosmos, history, and revelation—without ever progressing beyond Christ—can nevertheless be said to exhibit a forward movement.30 Ratzinger’s conclusion: Bonaventure, a doctor of the Church, both affirms a post-apostolic enhancement of revelation’s meaning and presents the experience of particular historical events as its indispensable precondition.31 While Ratzinger does not endorse Bonaventure’s strict isomorphism of historical eras in his constructive theology, he does nevertheless repeatedly affirm what he takes to be the essence of Bonaventure’s insight: Scripture accrues its full meaning only in the course of history.32 28 29 30 31 32 Ibid., 138–143. Ratzinger notes that Bonaventure lies between Aristotle and Augustine in terms of his understanding of time. With Aristotle, he makes time a function of the movement of the heavenly spheres rather a purely psychological distentio animi. However, with Augustine, Bonaventure makes time anthropocentric inasmuch as he envisions that the heavenly spheres will continue to move only until the full number of God’s elect have been gathered. See “Der Mensch und die Zeit im Denken des Heiligen Bonaventura,” in L’Homme et son destin d’après les penseurs du moyen âge (Louvain and Paris: Neuwelaerts, 1960), 473–483, at 481. “Indem Bonaventura in diesem Prozess aus dem Logos den in der Menschenwerdung geschehenen Prozess des Logos selbst in die Geschichte einzeichnet und den mit ihm anhebenden »regressus« der ganzen Menscheit zu ihrem Gott, indem er dies tut, ist im Grunde die Logisierung der Geschichte vollzogen” (Gesammelte Schriften: Offenbarungsverständnis und Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras, vol. 2, ed. Gerhard Müller [Freiburg: Herder, 2009], 245). Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, 117–118. Subsequent scholarship has tended to criticize Ratzinger’s Habilitation for exaggerating Bonaventure’s antiaristotelianism and implying Bonaventure’s direct dependence on Joachim of Fiore. Oktavian Schmucki, O.F.M.Cap, traces this reception history, but concludes that Ratzinger’s interpretation has been nuanced rather than overturned: “Soweit der Schreibende in den kontroversen Fragestellungen zu urteilen befugt ist, dürften die von J. Ratzinger vorgelegten Deutungen der bonaventurianischen Quellentexte unanfechtbar bleiben. In der Bewertung des realen Einflusses Joachims auf den Seraphischen Lehrer wird es immer von einander abweichende Nuancen geben. Die Tatsächlichkeit selber kann keinem Zweifel unterliegen” (“Joseph Ratzingers “Die Geschichtstheologie des hl. Bonaventura”: Nachwirken in der Forschung und der Folgezeit,” in Gegenwart der Offenbarung: Zu den Bonaventura Forschungen Ratzingers, Ratzinger Studien 2, ed. Marianne Schlosser and Franz-Xaver Heibl [Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2011], 344–359, at 359). It should be noted that Ratzinger, by stripping Bonaventure of the element of historical isomorphism, actually begins to approximate the Thomist position on 702 Aaron Pidel, S.J. In an essay dating to 1972, he continues to invoke Bonaventure as an authority for the possibility for the progress of revelation: “Bonaventure . . . coins a striking phrase: Christi opera non deficiunt, sed proficiunt . . . the seed of apostolicity waxes through the ages unto the fullness of Christ.”33 Returning more recently to the Bonaventurian image of the seed in his “Introduction” to Jesus of Nazareth, Ratzinger observes that older texts are incorporated into Scripture through a “process in which the word gradually unfolds its inner potentialities, already somehow present like seeds, but needing the challenge of new situations, new experiences and new sufferings in order to open up.”34 His mid-career work Eschatology, without using Bonaventure’s own language, nevertheless hearkens back to the language of his Habilitation on Bonaventure. It presents the biblical text as a “schema” that gains its full meaning from the “harvest of historical experience,” filling itself with the “reality of subsequent history.”35 This reference to the “reality” of subsequent history points to yet another transposition: Bonaventure’s cosmic vision finds its counterpart in Ratzinger’s mid-career enthusiasm for Teilhardian process-Christology, which conceives history, cosmos and humanity evolving together toward the “omega” of Christ.36 Ratzinger too can hold that Scripture 33 34 35 36 the influence of historical experience on dogmatic development. According to F. Marín Sola, O.P., Thomas’s sensitivity to the role of new cultural situations in explicating the deposit is obscured by the fact that he included them under the “minor premises of reason”: “Lo que hoy llamamos contacto de la revelación con las diversas filosofías y civilizaciones lo llamaban los escolásticos contacto de las mayores [premisas] de fe con las menores de razón”; La Evolución homogénea del dogma católico, 2nd ed., Sección II: Teología y Cánones 84, intro. Emilio Sauras, O.P. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1963), 352. Principles of Catholic Theology, 63–64. For the citation in Bonaventure, see Opusculum 12, “Epistola de Tribus Quaestionibus,” s. 13. Jesus of Nazareth, xix. Italics mine. Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein, translation ed. Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 43. For the unity of these elements: “We said just now that the cosmos was not just an outer framework of human history, not a static mould—a kind of container holding all kinds of living creatures which could just as well be poured into another container. This means, on the positive side, that the cosmos is movement; that it is not just another case of history existing in it, that cosmos itself is history…. Finally, there is only one single all–embracing world–history, which for all the ups and downs, all the forwards and backwards that it exhibits, nonetheless has a general direction and goes ‘forward’” (Introduction to Christianity, 245). For their consummation in Christ: “Faith in Christ will see the beginning of a movement in which dismembered humanity is gathered together more and Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 703 accrues “reality,” even without material addition to the canon, since the “reality” that Scripture intends, namely Christ, is gradually gathering all things into His body, the Church. In Ratzinger’s presentation of the inspiration as mystical, inclusive of a believing subject, and historically progressive, one detects the unmistakable influence of the Seraphic Doctor. Ratzinger does not fail to stamp these Bonaventurian principles with his distinctive style, however, when transposing them into a hermeneutic and personalist idiom and deploying them in contemporary theological conversation Objections Having shown that Ratzinger holds a “social” theory of inspiration heavily indebted to Bonaventure, we are now better situated to entertain objections. A somewhat recent article levels several charges against social theories of inspiration, of which the two most significant are the following: one, social theories inevitably open the door to a “continuous alteration in the deposit of faith;”37 two, social theories tend to render Scripture the Church’s servant, rather than vice-versa.38 Though the article details only the positions of John McKenzie and Karl Rahner, it has a broader aim. It suggests that any model ascribing the charism of inspiration to a community would be answerable to such charges. How would Ratzinger handle such objections? Integrity of the Deposit of Faith The concern that social theories of inspiration destabilize the deposit can perhaps be sharpened into the following question. How does Ratzinger square his particular model of stability and progress—namely, that revelation is fixed in its “material principle” (das Materialprinzip)39 by virtue of the closed biblical canon, yet open in its formal principle by virtue of the canon’s progressively unfolding meaning—with Lamentabili’s condemnation of the position that the “revelation that constitutes the object of Catholic faith was not completed with the Apostles”?40 Having 37 38 39 40 more into the being of one single Adam, one single body—the man to come. It will see in him the movement to that future of man in which he is completely “socialized”, incorporated into one single being” (ibid., 179). Robert Fastiggi, “Communal or Social Inspiration: A Catholic Critique,” Letter and Spirit 6 (2010): 247–263, at 262. Ibid., 259. “Offenbarung, Schrift, Überlieferung,” 27. The relevant condemned propositions: “Revelatio, objectum fidei Catholicae constituens, non fuit cum Apostolis completa” (Denz. 3421); “Dogmata, quae 704 Aaron Pidel, S.J. anticipated this objection already in 1966, Ratzinger responds along the following lines: The reality is that the individual condemnations within the decree Lamentabili, according to the analogy of similar episodes, cannot be rated too highly. The decree has its meaning as a whole in that it condemns a radical evolutionist and historicist orientation on which it bestows the catch-all name Modernism; this orientation expresses itself more or less in the individual propositions, none of which excludes, on the other hand, that the individual propositions, taken separately (für sich genommen), can also have a thoroughly sound sense (which Knox in his book on Christian enthusiasm has outstandingly demonstrated with respect to the parallel case of the condemnation of Quietism). In this respect, one can, in hindsight, ascribe to the Decree Lamentabili no proper statement on the question of the historicity of faith that surpasses the First Vatican Council. 41 By implication, there may still be a sound sense in which one may understand revelation to be “open” in the post-apostolic age. Moreover, Ratzinger can point to several features that distance his position from radical evolutionism. In its material aspect, of course, he does hold the canon to be fixed. And even when evoking Scripture’s formal aspect, Ratzinger recurs to the Bonaventurian trope of the plant-yielding seed—the paradigmatic image of controlled development. Just as acorns produce only oaks, biblical texts grow in meaning only 41 Ecclesia perhibet tamquam revelata, non sunt veritates e caelo delapsae, sed sunt interpretatio quaedam factorum religiosorum, quam humana mens laborioso conatu sibi comparavit” (Denz. 3422). Das Problem der Dogmengeschichte in der Sicht der Katholischen Theologie, Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordhein–Westfalen, no. 139, ed. Heinz Kühn and Leo Brandt [Köln Westdeutscher, 1966]: 10). A year earlier, Ratzinger cited approvingly Hans Urs von Balthasar’s observation that “the crucial theses of Baius, Jansen and Quesnel that the Church condemned can be found, almost word for word, in Augustine and to some extent in the Council of Orange (527 A.D.)” (“Das Problem der Mariologie,” Theologische Revue 61/2 [1965]: 73–82, at 82. English translation from The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992], 270). See also his similar “holistic” treatment of the dictum that there is no salvation outside the Church in Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1969), 347. Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 705 by “evolving in continuity with their original sense.”42 If asked what guarantees this continuity of biblical meaning, Ratzinger would doubtlessly appeal to the perduring identity of Scripture’s “living subject,” the People of God, as well as to the organs of this basic identity: apostolic succession, magisterium, the sensus fidei, etc. To this extent, Ratzinger can plausibly claim to respect the global orientation of Lamentabili. It must be admitted, however, that Ratzinger nowhere theoretically justifies how the meaning that comes to accrue to Scripture in the course may be said to be virtually precontained in the deposit. Those interested in such an account will be obliged to look elsewhere.43 Serving Character of the Teaching Office With respect to the second objection, we can ask whether Ratzinger’s model of inspiration does justice to the relationship between Scripture and magisterium formulated in Dei Verbum: the “teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it” (§10). In other words, does his model collapse Scripture into doctrine, biblical inspiration into magisterial infallibility? On a dyadic model of inspiration, the difference of rank tends to be explained as a difference of personal charism. Thomas himself had a great reverence for the apostles, ascribing to them a plenitude of charismatic gifts unequaled in the course of later history.44 Certain neo-Thomists, focusing more on hagiographers than apostles, invoked the category of instrumental causality. Accordingly, God, while granting Jesus of Nazareth, xviii. In this respect, one does well to consult the still unsurpassed meditations of F. Marín Sola, O.P. on “lo virtual revelado,” especially his positive evaluation of Newman’s more historically and psychologically framed theory of development. See La Evolución Homogénea del Dogma Católico, 351f. 44 See ST I-II, q. 106, a. 4, where Thomas observes that “we should not look forward to some future state in which the grace of the Holy Spirit will be received more perfectly than it has been up until now, especially (maxime) by the Apostles, who received the firstfruits of the Spirit, that is to say, received it prior in time and more abundantly (abundantius) too, as a gloss on this text puts it”; Summa Theologiae, vol. 30: The Gospel of Grace (ST 1a2ae. 106–114), trans. with intro., notes, appendices and glossary by Cornelius Ernst, O.P., 16–17. Italics original. See also Aquinas’ Commentary on the Psalms of David, where, expositing Ps 45[44]:17b, he observes: “The Gloss says that the first Christians received the Spirit more abundantly than we who have come later. Just as no other woman can be compared to the Blessed Virgin, so no other saint can be compared to the apostles”; Thomas Aquinas: The Gifts of the Spirit, ed. and intro. Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., trans. Matthew Rzeczkowski, O.P. (New York: New City Press, 1995), 132. 42 43 706 Aaron Pidel, S.J. the magisterium only the external and negative assistance of preservation from error, gives the hagiographers alone the internal and positive assistance to become His instrumental causes.45 Infallible magisterial statements thus contain reliable words about God, but only Scripture qualified as the word of God. Appeal either to Thomas’s teaching about plenitude of the apostolic charism or to the neo-Thomist category of instrumental causality could thus plausibly claim to explain the qualitative superiority of Scripture vis-à-vis dogma. Ratzinger’s mystical model, by contrast, might seem to admit only of differences of degree—a more or less intense spiritual sensitivity. How does Ratzinger explain the superiority of Scripture over doctrine or even private theology? It must be said, first of all, that Ratzinger does affirm the preeminence of Scripture. His explanations of this hierarchy, however, lead in several directions and vary in cogency. Sometimes he too implies a diminishment of charism, affirming—and here he explicitly acknowledges his debt to Bonaventure—that “what distinguishes Scripture from all later theology” is that the “writers of Holy Scripture . . . are ‘theologoi,’ those through whom God as subject, as the word that speaks itself, enters into history.”46 But is the uniqueness of the hagiographers due to a “tailing off” of mystical vision, at least of the intensity of vision that could produce canonical books? Though nothing in Ratzinger’s premises would exclude such a solution, he does not develop it. Whenever he does more than assert the difference, he appeals instead to functional and structural distinctions. Functionally, he ranks Scripture above dogma because he thinks there is a natural hierarchy in their respective tasks. Dogma interprets Scripture. Hence, “There is a necessary mutual relationship and a priority between Scripture and dogma. The interpreter ranks not higher but lower than what is interpreted.”47 The simplicity of this explanation is deceptive, however, since Ratzinger elsewhere admits that the interpretive function runs both ways. While it is true that Scripture’s narrative mode requires 45 46 47 Fastiggi reviews this classic distinction of the manualist tradition and faults Rahner and MacKenzie for blurring it (“Communal or Social Inspiration,” 260–261). Fr. Sebastian Tromp, S.J., maintained it in his influential manual up to the eve of the Vatican II. See De Sacrae Scripturae Inspiratione, 6th ed. (Rome: Gregorian, 1962), 111. Principles of Catholic Theology, 321. Dogma and Preaching, 51. In the same vein, he proposes that Scripture and the Fathers of the Church belong together as “word and answer:” “The two are not identical, are not of equal importance, do not possess the same normative power” (Principles of Catholic Theology, 147). Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 707 a dogmatic interpretation whereby the “polyvalent image-language of Scripture is translated into the univocity (Eindeutigkeit) of the concept,”48 it is also true that the “supra-historical constancy of images (at least of the great Ursymbole of humanity) is greater than that of concepts.”49 In fact, as the conceptual background implicit in any given dogma grows more archaic, “dogma as interpretation must be constantly read backwards with reference to what is interpreted and must be understood on that basis.”50 Scripture must eventually play some role in interpreting dogma. Ratzinger argues, in fact, that proceeding as if all clarity lay on the side of dogma and all obscurity on the side of Scripture would “ultimately destroy the serving character of the teaching office.”51 Scripture ranks highest both because (in the short run) dogma interprets it and because (in the long run) it interprets dogma. Hence, even though Ratzinger always subordinates the magisterium and its dogmas to Scripture, his rationales for doing so are not easily harmonized. Ratzinger’s structural account of magisterial subordination to Scripture gets higher marks for internal consistency than the functional account. Here he hints that the distinct functions of Scripture (the interpreted) and dogma (the interpreter) correspond roughly to the twofold structure of Revelation, which is simultaneously “once only” and “forever.”52 In other words, the material closure of the biblical canon finds its justification in the historical unrepeatability of the Incarnate Word, while the open-endedness of dogmatic interpretation corresponds to the limitless diffusion of His presence by the Spirit.53 Here, the gradation of Das Problem der Dogmengeschichte, 26. My translation. In later writing, however, Ratzinger tends to emphasize the clarification of dogma by Scripture less, observing simply that “apostolic authority … interprets the word which is handed down and gives it unequivocal clarity of meaning” (The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Today’s Debates, trans. Adrian Walker [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995], 60). 49 Das Problem der Dogmengeschichte, 27. 50 Ibid., 27. 51 “The Transmission of Divine Revelation,” Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. III, 181–198, at 187. He remarks similarly elsewhere that “magisterial pronouncements have their own historicity and their own need of interpretation (Auslegungsbedürftigkeit) in light of their historical totality as well as of their essential ordination to their sources” (“Das Problem der Mariologie,” Theologische Revue 61.2 [1965]: 73–82, at 82). My translation. 52 “The Question of the Concept of Tradition: A Provisional Response,” God’s Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office, ed. Peter Hünermann and Thomas Söding, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008), 41–89, at 65. 53 Ratzinger explains, “Incorporated into the Church’s authoritative office of 48 708 Aaron Pidel, S.J. authority does not reflect a gradation of mystical intensity so much as a differentiation in the historical moments that the mystic occupies. Those writings originating in the penumbra of Christ’s unrepeatable life and ministry enjoy a normative privilege: “By restricting the term apostle to the Twelve, [Luke] distinguishes what happened once only at the origin from what remains in perpetuity through succession. . . . The presbyter– bishops are successors but are not themselves apostles. The ‘once only’ as well as the ‘forever’ belong to the structure of revelation and of the Church.” 54 The structure of revelation thus mirrors the structure of the Church, which herself knows a distinction between the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Ages.55 In final analysis, then, Ratzinger clearly affirms the subordination of dogma (and thus of the teaching office) and offers several reasons for this 54 55 witness, which derives its rights and power from the presence of the Spirit, from Christ’s contemporaneity with all our days, in which he is ever the Christ today, the office of witness that belongs to the unique word of Scripture set down once and for all will have to be restored to rights and power; that office of witness of the Scriptural word derives its enduring validity from the uniqueness of the historical act of salvation of Jesus Christ, who once gave up his crucified body” (ibid., 67). In this context the operative contrast is between Scripture historically and theologically interpreted, not precisely between Scripture and dogma. The correspondence is close enough, however, to suggest a parallel. Called to Communion, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996), 123. Rahner likewise attempted to preserve the superiority of Scripture over dogma by coordinating the mind of the inspired hagiographers specifically with the mind of the Apostolic Church, to which he ascribed a greater transparency to God than the (merely infallible) post–Apostolic Church. This is a relevant point that Fastiggi omits to mention in his criticism of Rahner. See Rahner, Inspiration in the Bible, Quaestiones Disputatae 1, trans. Charles Henkey (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961), 47. Y. J.-M. Congar, O.P., criticized Rahner’s theory on slightly different grounds, namely, that its frequent attribution of biblical inspiration to an indistinct Urkirche fails to account for the early Church’s awareness “de ne pas posséder seulement des Écritures . . . par écrit de sa foi, mais de les avoir reçues d’hommes choisis par Dieu, spirituellement dotés par Dieu, ayant reçu mission et autorité de Dieu pour cela”; “Inspiration des Écritures canoniques et Apostolicité de l’Église,” Révue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 45 (1961): 32–42, at 41. Italics original. Ratzinger’s “structural” solution does not suppose, as Congar’s criticism of Rahner seems to, that the charismatic endowments of the Twelve were greater than those of all Christians who followed, but it does attach importance to what Congar sees as a dimension of the unrepeatable apostolic privilege: “le contact direct et personnel qu’ils ont eu avec le Verbe Incarné, la Parole faite chair, en leur Maître Jésus-Christ, qui n’est le nôtre que dans la mesure où, d’abord, il a été personnellement le leur” (ibid., 38). Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 709 subordination. His functional reflections, despite some internal inconsistency, suffice to explain why we need not maintain an open canon: if ongoing and authoritative interpretation is possible, then material addition to Scripture is unnecessary.56 His structural account is weightier still, explaining why we ought not maintain an open canon: the once-only aspect of the Incarnation naturally privileges those writings emanating from the authority of the apostolic eyewitnesses. Dogmatic writings serve and preserve this one, originary witness for all time. Concluding Observations Supposing that Ratzinger’s social model is free of latent heresies, one might still ask whether there are any particular features to recommend it. In the briefest of terms, let me suggest four advantages to Ratzinger’s “social” model of inspiration of particular contemporary interest. First of all, Ratzinger’s proposal seems to concur with an aspect of Scripture’s self-understanding attested in 2 Peter 1:20–21: “First of all you must know this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation (ἰδία ἐπίλυσις), because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” On the face of it, the assertion might seem to support a dyadic, mantic model of inspiration, inasmuch as it describes the Spirit impelling and moving prophetic individuals. As not a few exegetes have pointed out, however, the author of 2 Peter here invokes prophecy in the Spirit as the condition not only for authentic textual production but for authentic textual interpretation of both Old and New Testaments.57 The same author implies reception as at least an aspect of inspiratio when he identifies certain sayings in Paul’s letters as “hard to understand” (3:16), intervening on the basis of this obscurity. As 2 Peter’s rejection of “cleverly devised myths” (1:16) and its ubiquitous condemnation of false teaching imply, moreover, inspiration finds both its criterion of authenticity in apostolic tradition and its finality in the edification of the spiritual community.58 Only by such signs can prophecy be recognized 56 57 58 On this point, see also Nature and Mission of Theology, 90–91. As Jerome Neyrey, S.J., remarks, “The issue in 1:20–21 … is not the source of prophecy but its interpretation”; 2 Peter, Jude: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible 37C (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 182. In this connection, see Y. J.-M. Congar, O.P., who takes the passage in question to mean that “not only did the person who made the prophecy do so on behalf of God and not by personal choice (see v. 21), but also that the man who receives the prophecy should understand and explain it (ἐπιλύειν: cf. Mk 710 Aaron Pidel, S.J. as more than one’s “own interpretation” (ἰδία ἐπίλυσις). For Käsemann, the tying of the Spirit to the apostolic tradition showed that primitive Christianity had already ossified into “Frühkatholizismus.”59 But what the Protestant exegete laments as the beginning of the end, Ratzinger might claim as biblical warrant for appealing to a corporate layer of authorship in addition to individual-human and divine layers. For the author of 2 Peter seems fully aware that he writes as the organ not of an episodic inspiration, but of the Spirit that stably indwells the Church. In addition to its resonance with the biblical witness, Ratzinger’s neo-Bonaventurian model enjoys the advantage already highlighted in the discussion of the debates surrounding De fontibus, to wit: it also squares better with the data of post-biblical history. It eliminates the need to justify doctrinal developments through recourse to an esoteric “saying source” and is more easily harmonized with the patristic and medieval Christian affirmations of Scripture’s material sufficiency and formal insufficiency. Thirdly, this communal dimension allows Ratzinger to recast an important corollary of biblical inspiration: the multivalence of Scripture. Referring to the longstanding tradition of differentiating among the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses, he argues, “The four meanings of Scripture are not individual meanings arrayed side by side, but dimensions of the one word that reaches beyond the moment.”60 The word reaches beyond the moment because it matures within a community that both receives special divine guidance and survives all literary authors. By embedding individual authorial intention within a broader communal intentionality, Ratzinger’s “social” model provides a plausible explanation of the gradual and anonymous emergence of 59 60 4.34; Acts 19.39), within the Church’s communion and not in a purely personal manner”; Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and Theological Essay, trans. Michael Naseby and Thomas Rainborough (London: Burns & Oates, 1966), 255. Jerome Neyrey, S.J., though arguing from a more sociological angle, agrees that “one cultural factor in the giving and understanding of prophecy was the way in which it functions in the building up of the life of the group;” 2 Peter, Jude, 182. “Nun erhält auch V. 21 seine volle Schärfe. Die Schrift ist ganz und gar inspiriert. Geist kann aber nur vom Geist verstanden und ausgelegt werden. Der Interpret muß also den Geist haben, um die Schrift zu begreifen. … Im Frühkatholizismus ist der Geist an das Amt gebunden”; “Eine Apologie der urchristlichen Eschatologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 49.3 (1949): 272–296, at 292. Jesus of Nazareth, xx. Ratzinger’s Neo-Bonaventurian Model of Social Inspiration 711 “fuller” senses from the literal sense. These meanings need not have belonged to the intellectual horizon of the hagiographers or apostles considered individually.61 Finally, the communal reception of Scripture resonates—at least up to a point—with those currents in hermeneutical philosophy that seek to legitimate a textual “trajectory of meaning.” While these approaches, broadly speaking, present the act of interpretation as the reader’s appropriation of a phenomenal “world before the text,” they struggle to offer both objective controls on the reading of texts and an account of the text’s continuity of meaning. Since the significance of the “world before the text” remains largely independent of authorial aims and historical circumstance, all appropriations of the text seem to claim equal validity. The “career of meaning” thus becomes something like the aggregate impression that a classic text makes on its ongoing readership. Such a hermeneutic philosophy is clearly more vulnerable to the charge of “subjective actualism” anticipated by Ratzinger. Ratzinger, by contrast, gives a basis for the biblical career of meaning that is at once historically concrete and metaphysically “thick”: the historical pilgrimage of the People of God. The reader of Scripture may reasonably expect continuity-in-meaning because the community that accepts Scripture’s authority exhibits, thanks to her union with Christ, a continuity-in-being. This same community is uniquely authorized to regulate the interpretation of the biblical text, embracing only those meanings compatible with her founded identity. In fine, one may say that, while respecting the parameters of the Catholic doctrinal tradition, Ratzinger manages to bring together the metaphysical realism of medieval scholasticism with contemporary insights from the disciplines of exegesis, hermeneutics, and personalist philosophy. Careful examination of Ratzinger’s neo-Bonaventurian model of inspiration reveals on every page the watermark of his theological vision—creative fidelity. N&V 61 The admission of the apostles’ limited intellectual horizon is what perhaps distinguishes Ratzinger’s theology of inspiration most significantly from someone such as Marín Sola, who recognizes in the apostles “el privilegio especial de haber recibido por luz infusa un conocimiento explícito de la revelación divina mayor que el que los teólogos todos o la Iglesia entera tienen o tendrán hasta la consumación de los siglos”; La Evolución Homogénea del Dogma Católico, 158. Italics original. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 713–741 713 “Smaller But Purer”?: Joseph Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation C hristopher R uddy Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. O n C hristmas D ay , 1969 , Joseph Ratzinger delivered an address on West German radio, “What Will the Church Look Like in the Year 2000?” Towards the end of that broadcast, he ventured a prediction about the future of the Church: From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society [kleine Gemeinschaft], she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. . . . But when the trial of this sifting [Trennungen] is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified [verinnerlichten und vereinfachten] Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock [die kleine Gemeinschaft] of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.1 1 Joseph Ratzinger, “What Will the Future Church Look Like?,” in Faith and the 714 Christopher Ruddy This comment, and similar ones stretching throughout Ratzinger’s publications, have led some theologians and other commentators to conclude that he seeks a “smaller but purer” Church, a remnant comprised of committed believers and purged of—or at least untroubled by the loss of—those reckoned less devout or orthodox. Marked by a sharp sense of superiority and opposition to the world, such a Church would be sectarian in its introversion and defensiveness. Ratzinger’s various comments on the “little flock” or a smaller Church can be understood rightly, though, only in connection with his articulation of a key theme: Stellvertretung or vicarious representation (sometimes translated, less adequately, as “representation” or “substitution”).2 This theme, which structures his theological vision as a whole and his Christology and ecclesiology in particular, plays a marginal role in most analyses of his thought, not least in the Anglophone world.3 His vicarious-representative theology begins with the affirmation that “The healing of the whole takes place . . . in the dialectical antithesis of the few and the many, in which the few are the starting point from which God seeks to save the many.”4 Ratzinger further develops this theme through the lens of “pro-existence,” a “being-for” others that constitutes the essence of both Christ and his Church. The result, I argue, is an ecclesiological vision that, instead of generating sectarianism or a crypto-Donatism, accentuates service, humility, and openness. I will advance this argument in three steps. First, I present and analyze key texts wherein Ratzinger speaks of the “little flock” of the future, followed by a précis of criticisms of that vision. Second, I briefly summarize the fundamental points of Ratzinger’s vicarious-representative theology, with particular attention devoted to its ecclesiological dimensions. Finally, I evaluate Ratzinger’s “little flock,” vicarious-representative ecclesiology and its critics, with an eye to addressing contemporary ecclesial realities. I conclude that, if Ratzinger’s thought does not always attend sufficiently to the gifts of the non-Christian Other or to the changed situation of a “detraditionalized” and “pluralized” post-sec2 3 4 Future (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2009), 101–118, at 116, 118. “Vicarious representation” conveys more fully both the uniqueness of Jesus’s vicarious-substitutionary saving work and his solidarity with humanity in that work of salvation. See my article, “‘For the Many’: The Vicarious-Representative Heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology,” Theological Studies 75 (2014): 564–84. Joseph Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993), 75. Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 715 ular Europe,5 its vicarious-representative logic nonetheless excludes a “smaller but purer” ecclesiology and instead views the Church as a community whose identity is pro-existence for “the many.” Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” Ratzinger’s aforementioned comments on the “little flock” of the future were made in 1969, but he has expressed similar thoughts from the 1950s up through the present day. His thought, here as elsewhere, exhibits a deep, substantial continuity.6 I wish here to present some key texts on the “little flock” or “minority” Church, in order to give an overview of this dimension of his ecclesiology, and then will present some critiques of it. Perhaps his earliest elaboration of the “little flock” is in The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, published in 1960 but delivered first as an address to pastoral workers in April, 1958: The relationship between the “few” and the “many” reveals the true measure of the Church’s catholicity. In external numbers it will never be fully “catholic” (that is, all-embracing), but will always remain a small flock [kleine Herde]—smaller than even the statistics suggest, statistics which lie when they call many “brothers” who are in fact merely pseudadelphoi, Christians by name only. In her suffering and love, however, she will always stand for the “many”, for all. In her love and her suffering she surmounts all frontiers and is truly “catholic.”7 A second mention is in his essay, “Die neuen Heiden und die Kirche” (“The New Pagans and the Church”), first published at the end of 1958.8 5 6 7 8 See Lieven Boeve, “Religion after Detraditionalization: Christian Faith in a Post-Secular Europe,” Irish Theological Quarterly 70 (2005): 99–122. See, for example, Lieven Boeve and Gerard Mannion, eds., The Ratzinger Reader: Mapping a Theological Journey (London/New York: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2010), xiv–xv, xvii, 11–12; James Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas: Wise Cautions & Legitimate Hopes (New York/Mahwah, N.J: Paulist, 2009), 29; Michael Fahey, “Joseph Ratzinger as Ecclesiologist and Pastor,” in Neo-Conservatism: Social and Religious Phenomenon, Concilium 141 (January 1981): 76–83, at 76; Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “From Theologian to Pope” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 33 (Autumn 2005): 56–62, at 58; and Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (New York: Oxford, 2008), 11–13. Joseph Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, 84. This essay was first published in Hochland 51 (1958/59): 1–11. It was reprinted, with minor changes, in Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düssel- 716 Christopher Ruddy Addressing the growing European phenomenon of non-practicing Catholics in traditionally Catholic regions and the consequent emergence of a “new paganism” marked by a rationalistic ethic and a “subjective choosing” of Church teachings, Ratzinger says that, whereas the Middle Ages witnessed the Church’s move from a “little flock to a world Church” [von der kleinen Herde zur Weltkirche] the modern age will see a reverse move back towards a “pusillus grex.”9 This “few,” however, will remain inherently connected to the “many” through its divine election as an instrument of service and salvation for all. In 1963, Ratzinger wrote similarly in “Stellvertretung” (“Vicarious Representation”) of the little flock’s salvific service: “For the Church to be the means of salvation for all, it does not have to extend itself visibly to all, but has instead its essential role in following Christ, he who is uniquely ‘the one,’ and therein the church is the little flock [die Schar der ‘Wenigen’], through which God however intends to save ‘the many.’ The Church’s service is not carried out by all human beings, but is indeed carried out for all of them.”10 Likewise, in “Kein Heil außerhalb der Kirche?” (“No Salvation outside the Church?”), an article from 1965, he seconded Yves Congar’s comments in The Wide World, My Parish on the Bible’s “disdain” for quantitative-statistical views of communal life and mission,11 and stated: “The Church is not a circle of the saved existing for itself, surrounded by the condemned. It is rather, by its nature, there for others, it is a reality open to others. . . . As a sign of divine love, of this life for the other, by which history is saved and led to God, the Church must not be an esoteric circle, but is essentially an open space.”12 Ratzinger would return to this theme of the “little flock” and its variations over the next two decades—as, for example, in 1969’s “What Will the Future Church Look Like?” and in 1973’s Die Hoffnung des Senfkorns 9 10 11 12 dorf: Patmos, 1969), 325–338. I will quote from this latter volume. All translations in this article are mine, unless noted otherwise. Das neue Volk Gottes, 325–26, 332. Joseph Ratzinger, “Vicarious Representation,” trans. Jared Wicks, Letter & Spirit 7 (2011): 209–220, at 218. The original is “Stellvertretung,” in Handbuch theologischer Grundbegriffe, ed. Heinrich Fries, 2 vols. (München: Kösel, 1962–63), 2:566–575. See Yves Congar, “A Small Church in a Large World,” in The Wide World, My Parish: Salvation and Its Problems, trans. Donald Attwater (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961), 8–16, at 9, 11. Joseph Ratzinger, “Kein Heil außerhalb der Kirche?” in Das neue Volk Gottes, 339–61, at 360. Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 717 (The Hope of the Mustard Seed)—but it has acquired a new prominence in recent years. In particular, his interviews with journalists, both before and after his papal election, have continued to address the theme. In The Ratzinger Report, an interview with Vittorio Messori published in 1985, he said: After the phase of indiscriminate “openness” it is time that the Christian reacquire the consciousness of belonging to a minority and of often being in opposition to what is obvious, plausible [logico], and natural for that mentality which the New Testament calls—and certainly not in a positive sense—the “spirit of the world.”13 In 1996’s Salt of the Earth, his first extended interview with Peter Seewald, Ratzinger spoke more extensively than in The Ratzinger Report on the possibility of a “mustard seed” or “minority” Church: Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures [Vielleicht müssen wir von den volkskirchlichen Ideen Abschied nehmen]. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the Church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intensive struggle against evil and bring the good in to the world—that let God in.14 In 2000, Ratzinger gave a second interview to Peter Seewald, God and the World, in which he returned to the theme of a smaller Church: First of all: Is the Church really going to get smaller? When I said that, I was reproached from all sides for pessimism. And nowadays nothing seems less tolerated than what people call pessimism— and which is often in fact just realism. Meanwhile, most people admit that at the present stage of things in Europe the number of 13 14 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985), 36–37. Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium: An Interview with Peter Seewald, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997), :16. Also, Salt of the Earth, 264–65, 268–69. 718 Christopher Ruddy baptized Christians is simply dwindling. In a city like Magdeburg, only 8 percent of the people are still Christians—and, mark you, that’s all kinds of Christians put together. Such statistics show the existence of trends that are indisputable. In that sense, the extent to which church and society are seen as synonymous in some cultural areas, with us in Germany, for instance, will diminish. We simply have to face up to this.15 Ratzinger then complemented his demographic argument with an historical and ecclesiological one: The traditional Church can be very lovely, but this is not something strictly necessary. The Church of the first three centuries was a small Church and nevertheless was not a sectarian community. On the contrary, she was not partitioned off; rather, she saw herself as responsible for the poor, for the sick, for everyone. All those who sought a faith in the one God, who sought a promise, found their place in her. The synagogue, Judaism in the Roman Empire, had surrounded itself with this circle of God-fearers, who were affiliated with it and thereby achieved a great opening up. The catechumenate of the early Church was very similar. Here people who didn’t feel able to identify with Christianity completely could, as it were, attach themselves to the Church, so as to see whether they would take the step of joining her. This consciousness of not being a closed club, but of always being open to everyone and everything, is an inseparable part of the Church. And it is precisely with the shrinking of Christian congregations we are experiencing that we shall have to consider looking for openness along the lines of such types of affiliation, of being able to associate oneself. I have nothing against it, then, if people who all year long never visit a church go there at least on Christmas Night or New Year’s Eve or on special occasions, because this is another way of belonging to the blessing of the sacred, to the light. There have to be various forms of participation and association; the Church has to be inwardly open.16 15 16 Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: Believing and Living in Our Time: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2002), 441. Ratzinger, God and the World, 442. Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 719 Finally, Ratzinger has continued to reflect on these themes in recent years, writing, for instance, in 2004 of “creative minorities”17 capable of transforming culture and speaking in his 2010 interview, Light of the World, of the connection between the decline of “popular” Catholicism and the consequent need for a “Christianity of personal decision.”18 Lastly, during his September 2011 visit to Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, he said: Secularizing trends—whether by expropriation of Church goods, or elimination of privileges or the like—have always meant a profound liberation of the Church from forms of worldliness, for in the process she as it were sets aside her worldly wealth and once again completely embraces her worldly poverty. . . . History has shown that, when the Church becomes less worldly, her missionary witness shines more brightly. Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world. She can live more freely her vocation to the ministry of divine worship and service of neighbor.19 Four themes, at least, recur throughout Ratzinger’s comments: demography, the signs of the times, an emphasis on the qualitative over the quantitative dimensions of ecclesiality, and the intrinsic openness of the little flock. In the first place, Ratzinger sees the “little flock” partly as a function of the numerical decline of Christianity in Europe and North America; “small,” in this sense, is simply descriptive and an acknowledgement of demographic changes. Second, his comments on the “little flock” arise out of his reading of a twofold contemporary context: the erosion or decline of broadly Christian cultures in which Church and society overlapped significantly, and the rise of a “new paganism” lived not against, but within, the Church; this “intraecclesial paganism” has a 17 18 19 Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, trans. Michael F. Moore (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 120. Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, trans. Michael J. Miller and Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010), 162. Pope Benedict XVI, “Meeting with Catholics Active in Church and Society,” Origins 41 (October 13, 2011): 305–07, at 306. 720 Christopher Ruddy “Christian façade” that conceals an absence of the conversion that marks the birth of the Church itself and of every Christian.20 Third, echoing Congar and also drawing upon the history of the early Church and upon his experiences of the Catholic Church in Germany, Ratzinger holds that size or numbers by themselves are no guarantee of ecclesial vitality and openness. In his memoirs, for instance, he criticizes the German bishops’ decision in the 1930s to uphold the concordat with the Nazi government and to seek to preserve their parochial schools in the face of secularizing influences from without (the government) and within (e.g., the presence of older anti-clericalists and younger Nazis on the faculties of numerous schools): “[M]erely to guarantee institutions is useless if there are no people to support those institutions from inner conviction.”21 A “bigger” Church can be moribund and self-centered, while a smaller Church can be engaged and other-centered. Fourth, although Ratzinger emphasizes that Christianity will increasingly be a community of intentional conversion and of “personal decision” (as opposed to the customs and osmosis of a “thick” Christian culture) that generate creative minorities, such intensity of conviction seeks to avoid sectarianism through an equally intentional and inherent openness to give and to receive; the Church must never be a “closed club” or a “circle of the saved existing for itself, surrounded by the condemned.” Ratzinger’s ecclesiology manifests a clear concern for the salvation of all people and sees the Church—of whatever size, in whatever era—as a salvific servant to all peoples. In sum, the Christian community, however quantitatively small it may be, must always be qualitatively open, for its mission is the “expression of divine hospitality; it is the sending forth of messengers who carry throughout the world the invitation to the divine wedding feast.”22 Despite Ratzinger’s intentions, his comments on the “little flock” have raised considerable criticism. Demographically, they are unquestionable in regard to Western (or Northern) Christianity. Although contemporary Catholicism—and Christianity in general—have grown “Die neuen Heiden und die Kirche,” 325, 326. Ratzinger notes, in this same section of the article, “the convert, the Christian remains a sinner, and the gravest transgressions remain possible in the Christian community. In a centuries-long struggle against the ‘heretics’ (the Cathars! [literally, the Pure]) the Church made this insight prevail” (326). 21 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 15. 22 Joseph Ratzinger, “Kein Heil außerhalb der Kirche?” in Das neue Volk Gottes, 361. 20 Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 721 in the Southern Hemisphere, often explosively, in ways unforeseen even a few decades ago, European Catholicism continues to decline numerically, while the Church’s modest growth in the United States is driven largely by the effects of immigration. In this regard, Ratzinger is right when he argues in God and the World that his purported “pessimism” is simply realism. Theologically, Ratzinger’s stance has provoked greater contention. Some have taken his comments to mean that he has sought a “smaller but purer” Church, purified and even purged of lukewarm and dissenting Catholics. George Weigel has suggested that, for Ratzinger, “the Church of the immediate future would be smaller and purer, not quite a catacomb Church, but certainly not the dominant force in Western culture it once had been. Cardinal Ratzinger seemed to think that the West and its humanistic project had fallen into irreversible cultural decline. [John Paul II] believed that a revitalization of humanism was possible.”23 The journalist David Gibson is still more critical: “What all this [i.e., Benedict XVI’s pontificate as an extension of his previous commitments as professor and prefect] points to is the ‘smaller-butpurer’ Church that Joseph Ratzinger has predicted for years, but which is not necessarily about numbers or sanctity. . . . Catholicism may grow in some places and shrink in others, but it will everywhere be afflicted by a partisanship that is an inevitable result of a campaign of purification and an inversion of the traditionally expansive view of what it means to be Catholic.”24 These “popular” accounts are paralleled by ones within the academy. James Corkery notes that, “[In contrast to Pope John Paul II, Benedict] is more Church-focused—consistent, maybe, with his ‘mustard seed’ approach to the Church of the future: leaner, but purer? Such narrowing makes me nervous, contrasting, as it does, with a remark once attributed to Cardinal Martini: if the people ‘out there’ do not come to us, then we must go to them.”25 Roberto Tura suggests that Ratzinger’s own life-story incarnates this ecclesiological tendency: “[I]t is not coincidental that after three years of suffering in ecumenical Tübingen he preferred to retreat to the fortress of Bavarian Catholicism [Regensburg], with the 23 24 25 George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Cliff Street Books/Harper Collins, 1999), 444. David Gibson, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 16. Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas: Wise Cautions & Legitimate Hopes, 139–40. 722 Christopher Ruddy advantages and the limits of a perhaps overly regionalist and traditionalist experience.”26 Still more pointedly, Gerard Mannion has characterized Ratzinger’s ecclesiology as a form of “neo-exclusivism,” which “looks more inward (to the church community) than outward and inculcates a more separatist understanding of the relation between the church and the wider ‘world.’”27 Mannion comments elsewhere that “it is an understanding of the Church that appears to accentuate the distinctive nature of the Church vis-à-vis the world. Such an ecclesiology therefore fosters an exclusivistic mentality anew in the Church. In other words, the Church and world are separate entities and the Church must work hard to resist being ‘tainted’ by the ways of the world.”28 Such comments are representative of “a widespread accusation that the Pope has no affection for the big people’s Church—for the ‘masses’—but would rather plant himself among the little flock and content himself with it.”29 Despite their interpretive and tonal differences, Ratzinger’s critics are united in seeing this “smaller but purer” ecclesiology as a threat to the Church’s catholicity and even to its very identity and mission. Can this disagreement between Ratzinger and his critics be resolved? Does Ratzinger hold to a “smaller but purer” ecclesiology (and if so, what are the consequences)? If not, why not, and what instead does he believe about the Church? An answer to these questions, I argue, lays in Ratzinger’s use of vicarious representation—and its understanding of the relationship between the “few” and the “many”—as a structuring theme of his theology. Ratzinger on Vicarious Representation Ratzinger’s use of the concept of vicarious representation is broad and systematic, weaving together his thought on salvation history, Christology-soteriology, and ecclesiology.30 Its foundation is the soteriological conviction that “the few are the starting point from which God seeks 26 27 28 29 30 Roberto Tura, “La Teologia di J. Ratzinger: Saggio introduttivo,” Studia Patavina 21 (1974): 145–82, at 145. Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Time (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier/Liturgical Press, 2007), 15–16. Boeve and Mannion, The Ratzinger Reader, 87. Kurt Koch, Das Geheimnis des Senfkorns: Grundzüge des theologischen Denkens von Papst Benedikt XVI (Regensburg: Pustet, 2010), 9. This section draws upon my article, “‘For the Many’: The Vicarious-Representative Heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s Theology,” Theological Studies 75.3 (2014): 564–84. Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 723 to save the many.”31 Ratzinger contrasts an ancient, magical-objectified understanding of vicarious representation, in which transgressing believers sought to appease deities by offering a substitute image or representative to be destroyed by divine wrath, to a biblical understanding which reverses the process: a (divine) representative, standing in solidarity with sinners-transgressors, freely offers oneself in order to save humanity from destruction.32 Ratzinger sees this movement beginning with Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah’s suffering servant; culminating in Jesus Christ, the One who alone is truly righteous and who offers his life as a ransom for many; and continuing in Christ’s Church as the universal sacrament of salvation and as the light of the nations.33 Each step of salvation history is oriented to the salvation of “the many.” At the risk of oversimplification, his vicarious-representative theology may be summed up in five theses: 1. Vicarious representation stands—explicitly and implicitly—at the heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s theology, integrating salvation history, Christology, and ecclesiology. That theology cannot be understood adequately apart from it. 2. Salvation history, characterized by divine election-for-others and the exchange of destinies (i.e., damnation for salvation), has as its “fundamental law”34 vicarious representation. 3. Jesus Christ, as the One whose saving mission and very person is pro-existence for the Many, embodies, generates, and recapitulates vicarious representation. All of salvation history culminates in, and flows from, him. 4. The Church, participating in Christ’s own vicarious-representative life and ministry, exists for the salvific, sacramental service of the “many.” Its identity and mission coincide in this pro-existence. 5. The Church, precisely as a community that lives wholly from and for vicarious representation, must therefore reject sectarianism and self-referentiality in favor of openness, mission, and service. Most pertinent for the purposes of this article is the shape of Ratzinger’s vicarious-representative ecclesiology. Three dimensions are particularly relevant. First, the Church’s identity and mission coincide in Joseph Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993), 75. 32 Ratzinger, “Vicarious Representation,” 210. 33 Ibid., 210–19. 34 Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, 79. 31 724 Christopher Ruddy vicarious-representative pro-existence. Just as Jesus’s identity and mission are identical in his “pro-existence” for others,35 so too the Church— the totus Christus, together with its Head—has no essence other than “being-for” others; the Church may never be closed-off against others, without doing violence to itself.36 Second, Ratzinger highlights the paradox that the little flock is the universal sacrament of salvation. The “few” are the “archimedean point” by which the “many” are saved;37 the Church’s service, he writes, “is not carried out by all human beings, but is indeed carried out for all of them.”38 It serves the salvation of the “many” especially through its missionary activity, its agape towards all people, and, above all, its suffering by which it takes on the estrangement of the “many” and gives in return “full sonship and full brotherhood.”39 Third, Ratzinger sees the Church as a mustard seed. If the resurrection is the “smallest mustard seed of history,”40 the Church participates in that mustard seed through its patient respect for the “whiteness of origins,” a phrase Ratzinger borrows from Teilhard de Chardin: every beginning is imperceptible.41 God always begins by choosing a single person or a small group. The Church in its life and mission therefore must not impatiently seek to justify itself through visible success or great numbers, but trust in God’s providence. Taken together, these characteristics—pro-existence, the little flock as sacrament of salvation, and the mustard seed—point to the diaconal, patient, other-centered shape of Ratzinger’s vicariousrepresentative ecclesiology. Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part II: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), 134, 172, 174. 36 Joseph Ratzinger, “Kirche,” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, second edition, vol. 6, eds. Josef Höfer and Karl Rahner (Freiburg: Herder, 1957–65), 172–83, at 180. 37 Ratzinger, “Die neuen Heiden und die Kirche,” 334. 38 Ratzinger, “Vicarious Representation,” 218. 39 Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, 84. 40 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part II, 247. 41 Ratzinger, “The New Evangelization,” available in English (and other languages) at the website of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy: http://www.clerus. org/clerus/dati/2001-01/30-999999/10IN.html. A German version can be found also in Ratzinger, Gesammelte Schriften Band 8/2: Kirche—Zeichen unter den Völkern: Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene (Freiburg: Herder, 2010), 1231–42. 35 Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 725 Evaluation of Ratizinger’s Thought It remains now to evaluate Ratzinger’s “little flock,” vicarious-representative ecclesiology and its critics. Criticism of his ecclesial vision as “smaller but purer” tends to fall into two broad categories: one, sectarianism, in which the Church as a small, disciplined community attempts to remain pure by separating itself from a corrupt and dangerous world;42 and two, unilateralism, which posits the Church’s self-sufficiency and superiority and so consequently devalues dialogue and mutuality with the world, as well as with other churches and religions. In both instances, critics hold that Ratzinger’s thought fosters—intentionally or not—an inherently oppositional Church that is largely hostile to the world and accepting of, if not encouraging, a “fragmentation”43 in which less-committed believers leave. Sectarianism It is clear that Ratzinger’s writings contain numerous passages which contrast, and even oppose, the Church and the world. Alongside the passages mentioned in the first part of this article, one may look also at his thoughts as both a young professor-peritus and an older pope. For example, he wrote in June 1962, on behalf of Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, a draft of an Introductory Constitution for Vatican II, which begins: Our Lord Jesus Christ founded his Church so that it might be a “city set upon a mountain” (Mt 5:14), from which the true light of the divine word (cf. Jn 1:9) would enlighten people who walk in darkness in this world and in “the shadow of death” (Is 9:2; Lk 1:79). Mindful of this divine commission, this holy Synod, representing the holy people of God, comes together fully aware of the shadows of this age, in which the divine sunlight seems darkened and our Lord appears to be sleeping amid the storms and waves of today (cf. Mk 4:37ff.).44 42 43 44 See Ernst Troeltsch’s classic definitions of “church” and “sect.” “Church” is an “institution . . . able to receive the masses, and to adjust itself to the world,” while “sect” is a “voluntary society, composed of strict and definite Christian believers bound to each other by the fact that all have experienced the ‘new birth.’ These ‘believers’ live apart from the world, [and] are limited to small groups.” Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., trans. Olive Wyon (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 2:993. David Gibson, The Rule of Benedict, 365. In Jared Wicks, “Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during 726 Christopher Ruddy That sharp sense of contrast, expressed across decades of academic, episcopal, and curial labors, continued during his pontificate. In his installation homily, he used the imagery of the desert and of a “sea of death” to describe life in this world: “[S]o many people are living in the desert. . . . The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast,” and “We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light.”45 And, in Light of the World, he noted: [W]e need something like islands where faith in God and the interior simplicity of Christianity are alive and radiant; oases, Noah’s arks, to which man can always come back for refuge. . . . [T] he Church attempts to instill powers of resistance as well as to develop protective zones in which the beauty of the world, of the gift of being alive, also become visible in contrast to the rampant brokenness around us.46 In its references to a “city upon a mountain,” “oases,” and “protective zones,” Ratzinger’s ecclesiology does have similarities to what Gerard Mannion has called “neo-exclusivism”47 and what Avery Dulles called “neo-Augustinianism,” in which the Church is seen as “an island of grace in a world given over to sin.”48 More stridently, Eamon Duffy 45 46 47 48 Vatican Council II,” Gregorianum 89 (2008): 233-311, at 262. See his comments at his final papal general audience on February 27, 2013: “I have felt like Saint Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: the Lord has given us so many days of sun and of light winds, days when the catch was abundant; there were also moments when the waters were rough and the winds against us, as throughout the Church’s history, and the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But I have always known that the Lord is in that boat, and I have always known that the barque of the Church is not mine but his. Nor does the Lord let it sink.” (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2013/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20130227_en.html) Benedict XVI, “Installation Homily,” 2005. Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 176–77. Mannion, Ecclesiology and Postmodernity, 15–16. In his evaluation of the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops convoked in 1985 on the twentieth anniversary of the closing of Vatican II, Dulles described Ratzinger as a leader of the “neo-Augustinians.” This group “depict[s] the Church as an island of grace in a world given over to sin. . . . Striving for openness to the world, the Church in the postconciliar period allowed itself to be contaminated.” (“The Extraordinary Synod of 1985,” in The Reshaping of Catholicism: Current Challenges in the Theology of Church [San Francisco: Harper Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 727 has charged Ratzinger with a “lurid and simplistic world of easy dualisms,” in which the outside world is “the place of the demonic” and the Church stands by contrast as a “Last Redoubt . . . free from the flux and relativism of the world.” 49 Ratzinger is keenly aware of potential threats to the Church, and that concern can manifest itself in drawing sharp contrasts between Church and world and in acknowledging the possibility of conflict between the two. This approach, James Corkery argues, is grounded in, first, Ratzinger’s fundamental trust in the Church as “the place of truth,” and, second, Christian truth’s contrast to the “pseudo-wisdoms” of the world.50 Corkery exaggerates in characterizing Ratzinger as a “detective of sin” rather than a “detective of grace,” but he is correct in a significant sense in seeing Ratzinger’s theology as one “more attuned to the tensions between what is godly and what is worldly rather than to the harmonies between the two.” 51 Ratzinger’s emphasis on tension over harmony leads to a further critique, whose most prominent representatives are Joseph Komonchak and Lieven Boeve. Komonchak has argued that Ratzinger’s theology is fundamentally anti-correlational and effectively anti-modern. In tandem with David Tracy,52 he holds that post-conciliar Catholic theology has been marked by two major strands: the correlational path of Aquinas, which seeks dialogue with modern life and thought, and the anti-correlational Augustinian-Bonaventuran path, which pursues a ressourcement that is at least implicitly anti-modern.53 Komonchak contrasts 49 50 51 52 53 & Row, 1988], 184–206, at 191). Eamon Duffy, “Urbi, but not Orbi . . . the Cardinal, the Church, and the World,” New Blackfriars 66 (June 1985): 272–78, at 273, 275. Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas, 23. Ibid., 26. David Tracy, “The Uneasy Alliance Reconceived: Catholic Theological Method, Modernity, and Postmodernity,” Theological Studies 50 (1989): 548–70, at 552–56. Joseph A. Komonchak, “The Church in Crisis: Pope Benedict’s Theological Vision,” Commonweal 132 (June 3, 2005): 11–14, at 12–13. For greater elaboration, see his “Augustine, Aquinas, or the Gospel sine glossa? Divisions over Gaudium et spes,” in Unfinished Journey: The Church Forty Years after Vatican II, Essays for John Wilkins, ed. Austen Ivereigh (New York: Continuum, 2003), 102–18; and its longer version, “Le valutazioni sulla Gaudium et spes: Chenu, Dossetti, Ratzinger,” in Joseph Doré and Alberto Melloni, eds., Volti di fine concilio: Studi di storia e teologia sulla conclusione del Vaticano II (Bologna: Mulino, 2001), 115–53. Two earlier book chapters make a similar argument: “Vatican II and the Encounter between Catholicism and Liberalism,” in Catholicism and 728 Christopher Ruddy Marie-Dominique Chenu’s “pierres d’attente”—“toothing stones” which reach out for contact between Christianity and culture—and Ratzinger’s “dichotomies” between Christian and (secular) Western perspectives.54 Ratzinger’s dichotomous stance, in Komonchak’s view, both generates and flows from an overarching sense of a Church in crisis, in which the only faithful, effective response is one of opposition and evangelical proclamation; dialogue with the world and within the Church is dangerous, even impossible.55 Komonchak sees “remarkable parallels” between the late Bonaventure’s “anti-philosophical, anti-intellectual, and indiscriminate” “apocalyptic anti-Aristotelianism” and Ratzinger’s “basic attitude” of suspicion towards post-conciliar Catholicism’s significant changes.56 Boeve concurs with Komonchak’s judgment, but pushes further by criticizing Ratzinger’s reading of contemporary Europe as secular. Rejecting what he considers to be Ratzinger’s binary, reductive opposition between belief and unbelief,57 Boeve argues that Europe is not so much secular as post-secular. It is post-secular, because modernization has not eradicated religion (as some had predicted or hoped), but transformed it through a dual process of detraditionalization and pluralization, in which the European religious situation is understood best not as a continuum between “churched Christians” and “atheist humanists,” but as a “plural field of interacting religious positions.”58 Christianity, in Boeve’s view, has not been replaced by a secular, godless culture, but rather a “plurality of life views and religions” has stepped in to fill the space left behind by a detraditionalized Christianity’s “diminishing impact.”59 He judges that Ratzinger’s theology is effectively incapable of responding to this post-secular situation. It is, instead, anti-modern and 54 55 56 57 58 59 Liberalism: Contributions to Americna Public Philosophy, eds. R. Bruce Douglass and David Hollenbach (New York: Cambridge, 1994): 76–99; and “Das II. Vatikanum und die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Katholizismus und Liberalismus,” in Vatikanum II und Modernisierung: Historische, theologische, und soziologische Perspektiven, eds. Franz-Xavier Kaufmann and Arnold Zingerle (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1996), 147–69. Komonchak, “The Church in Crisis,” 12–13. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 13. Lieven Boeve, “Europe in Crisis: A Question of Belief or Unbelief? Perspectives from the Vatican,” Modern Theology 23 (April 2007): 205–27, at 217–18, 222. Boeve, “Religion after Detraditionalization: Christian Faith in a Post-Secular Europe,” 107. Ibid. Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 729 apocalyptic.60 Its neo-platonic, neo-Augustinian, dualistic, hierarchical, asymmetrical framework leads ineluctably to an inherently oppositional stance towards the world,61 because “anything that is different is considered by definition lesser, sinful and unredeemed.”62 In a cruel irony, Ratzinger’s theological-ecclesiological vision perpetuates the very oppositions it laments and seeks to overcome. Kevin Hughes has challenged the adequacy of the oppositional, anti-correlational Augustinian-Bonaventuran interpretation on which Komonchak’s and Boeve’s reading of Ratzinger rests. He argues that the now-commonplace contrastive reading of Bonaventure as a “conservative” and Aquinas as a “progressive”—“when faced with new ideas, Aquinas appears to open, engage, and synthesize, whereas Bonaventure appears to close, confront, and divide.”63—is untenable. Such a “dyadic oppositional”64 view misreads both thinkers and, more broadly, distorts our understanding of conciliar and post-conciliar Catholicism, especially its theology. Aquinas was not as “liberal” or correlational as is commonly thought (e.g., he used Aristotelian science as the “formal key rather than the cultural correlate”65 to his theology), nor was Bonaventure as “conservative” and closed (e.g., his confidence in the power of human reason to discern vestiges of the Trinity in creation,66 the non-conservative radicalism of his defense of mendicant life67). Hughes argues, therefore, for a more genuinely Catholic understanding of tradition, which rejects the binary “logic of contradictories” in favor of a more capacious and 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 Boeve, “Europe in Crisis: A Question of Belief or Unbelief? Perspectives from the Vatican,” 220; also, Boeve, “Retrieving Augustine Today: Between Neo-Augustinian Essentialism and Radical Hermeneutics?”, in Augustine and Postmodern Thought: A New Alliance Against Modernity?, eds. L. Boeve, M. Lamberigts, M. Wisse (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 1–17, at 5–6. Boeve, “Europe in Crisis: A Question of Belief or Unbelief? Perspectives from the Vatican,” 219; idem., “Retrieving Augustine Today: Between Neo-Augustinian Essentialism and Radical Hermeneutics?”, 6. Lieven Boeve, “Retrieving Augustine Today: Between Neo-Augustinian Essentialism and Radical Hermeneutics?”, 6. For a more comprehensive overview and evaluation of Ratzinger’s theology, see Boeve, “Kerk, theologie en heilswaarheid: De klare visie van Joseph Ratzinger,” Tijdschrift voor Theologie 33 (1993): 139–65, especially 160–63. Kevin L. Hughes, “Bonaventure Contra Mundum? The Catholic Theological Tradition Revisited,” Theological Studies 74 (June 2013): 372–98, at 378. Hughes, “Bonaventure Contra Mundum?”, 379. Ibid., 381. Ibid., 392–93. Ibid., 390. 730 Christopher Ruddy complementary “logic of communion.”68 Hughes’s position can be seen as turning on its head Komonchak’s and Boeve’s criticism of Ratzinger: they may be engaging in precisely the kind of oppositional thinking for which they criticize Ratzinger. They read Ratzinger through lenses that are distorted by one-sided readings of, first, Bonaventure (and Aquinas), and second, conciliar and post-conciliar Catholic theology. If Bonaventure is not as oppositional and Aquinas not as correlational as they are often depicted—and if, as Hughes argues, the use of such categories is itself a sign of a flawed theology of tradition beholden to a “fractured”69 method and a “damaged”70 practice—then Ratzinger’s Augustinian-Bonaventuran orientation cannot be used as prima facie proof of his oppositional, sectarian thought. If that orientation is not the sectarian culprit that Komonchak and Boeve, among others, hold it to be, then one may seek an alternative, non-sectarian explanation for Ratzinger’s comments about the “little flock.” His vicarious-representative theology offers one such explanation: the Church and the “non-Church”71 are dialectically related, of course, but are oriented towards each other and depend upon each other: [The Church] must always remember that she is only one of two sons, one brother beside another, and that her mission is not to condemn the wayward brother, but to save him. The Church, it is true, must unify herself to form a strong inner brotherhood in order to be truly one brother. But she does not seek to be one brother in order finally to shut herself off from the other; rather she seeks to be one brother because only in this way can she fulfill her task toward the other, living for whom is the deepest meaning of her existence, which itself is grounded wholly in the vicarious existence of Jesus Christ.72 As this passage indicates, Ratzinger argues that the most fundamental contrast in vicarious-representative theology—and in salvation history itself—is not between Jew and Gentile, or Church and world, but between Christ and humanity itself.73 This common submission to Ibid., 398. Ibid., 395. 70 Ibid., 397. 71 Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, 79. 72 Ibid., 80. 73 Ratzinger, “Vicarious Representation,” 215. 68 69 Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 731 Christ subverts a simple oppositional reading of Ratzinger’s thought on the Church-world relationship. In this sense, Ratzinger’s ecclesiological vision may not be Chenu’s, but it is not sectarian. It is a different kind of engagement, one attuned to tensions and even conflict, but also one whose deepest commitment is to openness, relation, pro-existence, and reconciliation. One may also challenge, in some of the critiques that Ratzinger’s littleflock ecclesiology promotes a “smaller but purer” vision,74 the implicit assumption that “little=closed” and “big=open.” The early Church, as Ratzinger noted in God and the World, was small but open to all in its works of charity, its catechumenate, and its welcome of the “God-fearers,” whereas one could argue that the post-Tridentine Church was big but closed in several important aspects. Paradoxically, one can have an open little flock and a big sect. Sectarianism is characterized not so much by its smallness as by its closedness, its lack of openness.75 If it is undeniable that Ratzinger has offered a sustained opposition to what he judges to be modernity’s flaws—an opposition which leads him at times to value insufficiently its achievements—it remains that the trajectory of his vicarious-representative theology leads away from sectarianism. Unilateralism The second main criticism of Ratzinger’s little-flock ecclesiology, which I term unilateralism, is a corollary of the first, sectarianism. If sectarianism raises the specter of a closed, oppositional ecclesial stance towards the world, unilateralism raises the specter of a monological, self-sufficient, superior Catholicism vis-à-vis other Christians, other religions, and the world as a whole. Where sectarianism tends towards separation from the world, unilateralism focuses largely on what the Church gives to the world and not what it receives from it. Dialogue and mutuality are casualties of this approach. Several theologians have criticized Ratzinger for such unilateralism. James Corkery holds that Ratzinger’s theological approach emphasizes that “grace flows from the Church to the world, but not really from 74 75 See, for example, Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas: Wise Cautions & Legitimate Hopes, 139–40. Also, Boeve and Mannion, The Ratzinger Reader: “Ratzinger has frequently spoken of the possible need for the Church to become smaller, but purer” (85); and “[Ratzinger’s] oft-stated belief that the Church needs to become smaller but purer” (154); no bibliographic citations are provided for these claims. Recall Augustine’s claim that the Donatists possessed everything but love, which opens one to the other. 732 Christopher Ruddy the world to the Church.”76 Gerard Mannion notes that some see Ratzinger’s early writings on the Church’s essential openness to others as “sitting uneasily with his later neo-exclusivist writings and also his oft-stated belief that the Church needs to become smaller but purer.”77 Joseph Komonchak has stated that Ratzinger believes that genuine dialogue with the world is impossible and that such dialogue undercuts the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel.78 And Lieven Boeve has categorized Ratzinger as fundamentally “anti-modern” in his taking “leave from dialogue with modernity, because of the threatening influence that it had on the integrity of the Christian faith.”79 Boeve further claims that Ratzinger sees revelation, faith, and the Church as entities that are essentially and in principle “distinct from the world.”80 Ratzinger undeniably attributes to the Church a certain preeminence or priority vis-à-vis the world. He tends to emphasize much more the Church’s contributions to the world than vice versa, and is more skeptical than some others about the actual fruits of the Church’s contemporary dialogue with the world. Komonchak has observed that, in his 2005 Christmas Address to the Roman Curia, wherein he set forth his preferred Vatican II “hermeneutic of reform” as opposed to a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” Pope Benedict mentioned Christianity’s productive patristic and medieval encounters with Hellenism and other philosophical streams, but said nothing about any such post-medieval, modern encounters.81 In that same address, though, Benedict gave a summary of his view of the relationship of the Church and the modern world, in which he emphasized that that relationship—in which both parties had often failed in the modern era82—demands both openness and discernment: 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 Corkery, Joseph Ratzinger’s Theological Ideas, 26. Boeve and Mannion, The Ratzinger Reader, 154. Komonchak, “A Church in Crisis,” 14. See, for example, Boeve, “Retrieving Augustine Today,” 5. For more on Boeve’s criticism of Ratzinger’s “anti-modernity,” see his “Kerk, theologie en heilswaarheid: De klare visie van Joseph Ratzinger,” 152–57 and 160–63; and his “Europe in Crisis: A Question of Belief or Unbelief,” 222–24. Boeve, “Retrieving Augustine Today”: 6. Joseph A. Komonchak, “Novelty in Continuity: Pope Benedict’s Interpretation of Vatican II,” America 200 (February 2, 2009): 10–16, at 13. See Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), 381–82, wherein he speaks of Gaudium et spes as a “counter-syllabus” to the “one-sided” oppositional stance adopted by Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors and by Pope Pius X. Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 733 Those who expected that with [Vatican II’s] fundamental “yes” to the modern era all tensions would be dispelled and that the “openness towards the world” accordingly achieved would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner tensions as well as the contradictions inherent in the modern epoch. . . . This dialogue must now be developed with great openmindedness but also with that clear discernment that the world rightly expects of us in this very moment.83 His address mentions, for example, how the American Revolution initiated a movement towards a constructive conception of governmental secularity that differed from the absolutist laïcité born of the French Revolution, and that Vatican II—after great difficulty—received and approved.84 Ratzinger’s position on the interplay of openness and discernment in dialogue—of “reading the signs of the times and interpreting them in the light of the Gospel”—commits the Church to engage in genuine dialogue with the world, even as it requires at times the Church to accept or to criticize various developments vis-à-vis the “light of the Gospel.” One may disagree with his judgment on particular concerns of that dialogical relationship, but one cannot dismiss his stance as unilateralist, unless one regards criticism of another’s position as a rejection of dialogue. One may ask, yet, about the possibility of a more subtle form of unilateralism in Ratzinger’s thought: a self-sufficient Church that is genuinely willing to serve and heal the world, and yet is unaware of—or unwilling to acknowledge—the ways that the world might serve and heal the Church. Paul Lakeland has explored this possibility in his reflection upon Congar’s image of the Church-world relationship as one of the Good Samaritan tending to the wounded person.85 In The Wide World, My Parish (which influenced Ratzinger’s own thought on vicarious representation and on a ‘minority’ Church in service of the majority), Congar envisioned the Church-world relationship not as parallel (“two crowned sovereigns looking sideways at one another as they sit enthroned on 83 84 85 Pope Benedict XVI, “Interpreting Vatican II,” Origins 35 (January 26, 2006): 534–39, at 538–39. See also his similar comments in Without Roots, 108–13. Paul Lakeland, “Who Is My Neighbor?”, in A Council That Will Never End: Lumen Gentium and the Church Today (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier-Liturgical Press, 2013), 118–33. 734 Christopher Ruddy the same dais”86) but as entwined (the Good Samaritan holding the wounded man). Lakeland appreciates Congar’s vision, but suggests that it is incomplete in its unilateralism. The Church can become self-referential and centripetal, he argues, seeking repentance before God but not before the world and mistakenly believing that it possesses within itself all the resources needed for such repentance; such a Church would be self-absorbed and self-congratulatory in its service of the wounded one while being oblivious to the ways in which it resembles the priest and the Levite who simply pass by. Lakeland proposes that the Church must acknowledge that it is also always the wounded one in need of the Good Samaritan that is the rest of the world. “In our embrace of the world,” he writes, “we are not healing the sinner so much as encountering the grace of God in unexpected places.”87 It is clear that Ratzinger pays more attention to the Church-as-GoodSamaritan than to the World-as-Good-Samaritan. The largest part of that option is his conviction that the Church, by virtue of its divine election and vicarious-representative, pro-existent mission, uniquely bears and makes present the Gospel in ways that no other community does.88 One cannot deny that unique, even “superior” role without undercutting foundational Christian beliefs about divine revelation, Christ, the Church, the sacraments, and mission. Lakeland’s argument tends at times to a flawed perspective in which humility and uniqueness compete in a zero-sum fashion, rather than complementing each other.89 Must the Church choose, for instance, between “healing the sinner” and “encountering the grace of God in unexpected places”? Moreover, Ratzinger’s sympathetic engagement with Marcello Pera,90 for instance, evinces a genuine openness to the secular world—as did his efforts as Pope to foster, through the Pontifical Council for Culture, the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” initiative, which brings together religious believers and secularists for open dialogue on cultural, philosophical, and religious 86 87 88 89 90 Congar, The Wide World, My Parish, 24. Lakeland, A Council That Will Never End, 131. See, for example, Unitatis redintegratio, §3: “For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained.” For a complementary perspective on a penitential ecclesiology, see William T. Cavanaugh, “The Sinfulness and Visibility of the Church: A Christological Exposition,” in Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 141–69. See Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera, Without Roots. Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 735 issues.91 It is a fair criticism that Ratzinger does not always sufficiently attend to the contributions that the “‘other’ brother” makes to the exchange relationships that recur throughout salvation history, but his own words on interreligious dialogue offer a glimpse of that mutual relationship: What we need . . . is respect for the beliefs of others and the readiness to look for the truth in what strikes us as strange or foreign; for such truth concerns us and can correct us and lead us farther along the path. What we need is the willingness to look behind the alien appearances and look for the deeper truth hidden there. Furthermore, I need to be willing to allow my narrow understanding of truth to be broken down. I shall learn my own truth better if I understand the other person and allow myself to be moved along the road to the God who is ever greater, certain that I never hold the whole truth about God in my own hands but am always a learner, on pilgrimage toward it, on a path that has no end.92 The criticism that Ratzinger’s little-flock vision is unilateralist and contributes to a “smaller but purer” ecclesiology may be rooted most deeply, however, in the difficulty that many have with the concept of election, which strikes some as elitist, intolerant, discriminatory, triumphalist, even violent.93 In our context, shaped by the Enlightenment’s distinctive moral and epistemic universalism, election can be seen only as irremediably opposed to tolerance and inclusion; election and universality seem to be inimical. 91 92 93 For background and an overview, see: http://www.cultura.va/content/cultura/ en/dipartimenti/ateismo-e-non-credenza.html Ratzinger, Many Religions—One Covenant: Israel, the Church, and the World, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999), 110. Gerhard Lohfink, Does God Need the Church?: Toward a Theology of the People of God, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier/Liturgical Press, 1999), 38. See also Benedict XVI’s lectio divina on 1 Peter 1:1–5, delivered to Roman seminarians on February 8, 2013, three days before he announced his intention to resign the papacy: “Perhaps today we are tempted to say: we do not want to rejoice at having been chosen, for this would be triumphalism. It would be triumphalism to think that God had chosen me because I was so important. This would really be erroneous triumphalism. However, being glad because God wanted me is not triumphalism. Rather, it is gratitude and I think we should re-learn this joy.” (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ speeches/2013/february/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20130208_seminario-romano-mag_en.html) 736 Christopher Ruddy A recent retrieval of the biblical theology of election has argued, though, that this legacy poses a false opposition between universalism and particularism. A proper understanding of election, Joel Kaminsky argues, discloses that a truly biblical universalism arises precisely out the particularity of election. Israel became more aware of its mission to the Gentiles, the more it became aware of its unique election.94 Kaminsky sees the story of Joseph as the exemplar of such election: the younger, rejected (and flawed) brother is elected by God to be the means of salvation for his older non-elected brothers; all are reconciled through the election and suffering service of one.95 Ratzinger himself has argued, from the nature of love itself, for precisely such an understanding of universality-through-particularity: In the first place it becomes clear that every love bears within itself a universal tendency. The world to which this beloved belongs seems different once I start to love. The lover would as it were like to embrace the whole world in and with his beloved. The encounter with the one person restores the whole to me afresh. Of course, love is a choice: it is directed not at millions but at precisely this person. But precisely in this choice, in this one person, reality as a whole appears in a new light to me. Pure universalism, general philanthropy . . . remains empty, while the quite definite and decisive choice that falls on this one person gives the world and other people back to me afresh and me to them. This observation is important because from this starting point we can also start to comprehend why God’s universalism (God wants everyone to be saved) makes use of the particularism of the history of salvation (from Abraham to the Church). Concern for the salvation of others should not lead to this particularism being as good as completely deleted: the history of salvation and the history of the world should not be declared to be simply identical because God’s concern must be directed at everyone. This kind 94 95 Joel S. Kaminsky, “Election Theology and the Problem of Universalism,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 33 (2011), 34–44, at 42. See Joel Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob: Reclaiming the Biblical Concept of Election (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 77–78: “The ability to sense one’s chosenness and also to see one’s character flaws is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the Israelite religious mind. It creates a sense of ultimate meaning for one’s nation, but it does so in ways that mitigate movement toward an unfettered imperialism and triumphalism. . . . [E]lection reaches its fruition in a humble, yet exalted, divine service that benefits the elect and the non-elect alike.” Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 737 of direct universalism would however destroy the true totality of God’s activity that reaches the whole precisely through selection and election.96 One therefore cannot do away with a biblical theology of election and the unique role of the “one” or the “few” without doing away with God’s own pattern of salvific action. A theology of election can be abused for unilateralist or triumphalist purposes, but, rightly understood, it serves to overcome the seeming opposition between the elect “few” and the non-elect “many.”97 Vicarious representation—what Congar called “pars pro toto” and a “minority in service of a majority”98—cannot be dismissed or even minimized without renouncing the scriptural narrative, salvation history, and the identity and the mission of both Christ and his Church. Salvation history, as Ratzinger has argued, is structured by a “whole system of vicarious relationships,”99 to which both scripture and tradition bear witness.100 Bernard Sesboüé has seconded Ratzinger’s 96 97 98 99 100 Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope, and Love, trans. Robert Nowell (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 91–92. See also Ratzinger, Many Religions—One Covenant: 27–28; and Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, trans. Philip J. Whitmore (New York: Image, 2012), 5, 64–65. For example, see Gerard Mannion’s conflation of “distinctive” and “exclusivistic”: “[Ratzinger’s] is an understanding of the Church that appears to accentuate the distinctive nature of the Church vis-à-vis the world. Such an ecclesiology therefore fosters an exclusivistic mentality anew in the Church” (Boeve and Mannion, The Ratzinger Reader, 87). Kaminsky draws a helpful distinction between the “elect;” the “non-elect,” who are “considered full participants in the divine economy”; and the “anti-elect,” “those few groups who are deemed to be enemies of God” (Kaminsky, “Election Theology and the Problem of Universalism,” 38–39). Contemporary thinkers—not least Christian ones, Kaminsky suggests—tend to collapse the latter two categories, with the consequence of diminishing or even dismissing the concept of election as a whole. In short, one can be “distinctive” and “inclusive” simultaneously. Yves Congar, “A Small Church in a Large World,” 12. Ratzinger cites this text in various articles. Congar borrows the phrase, “a minority in the service of a majority,” from J. Weill, Le Judaïsme (Paris, 1931), 16; the English translation omits this reference, which is present in the French original. Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, 79. Contemporary exegetes such as N.T. Wright and Gerhard Lohfink have emphasized the centrality of vicarious representation. See N.T. Wright’s multi-volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God, as well as two recent distillations of that material: Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2011), and How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels (New York: HarperOne, 2012). For Lohfink, in 738 Christopher Ruddy emphasis on the centrality of vicarious representation for ecclesiology, soteriology, and missiology. Instead of generating a “smaller but purer” ecclesiology, Ratzinger’s vicarious-representative thought, Sesboüé argues, leads to its exact opposite: the Church as a salvific sacrament of the unity of all humanity.101 The Church’s divine election is thus always ordered towards service of neighbor, especially of the “other brother.” Gift and task inhere in each other, as do gift and repentance. It is undeniable that to be Christian is precisely to be aware of having been given—through no merit of one’s own—a gift (of faith, life, wisdom, salvation) that others are intended to receive as well. An acknowledgment of the creaturely and sinful limits of Christians and their communities, as well as of the truth and holiness present in other religions and cultures, ought not to be used to undercut the unmerited gift and unique responsibility involved in being joined to Christ and his Church. It would be a false, dangerous understanding of dialogue and mutuality that required the surrender of the doctrine of election. An ample understanding of vicarious representation, however, allows one to hold together both mutuality and uniqueness.102 If one 101 102 addition to Does God Need the Church?, see Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier/ Liturgical Press, 2012), 254–68; and, No Irrelevant Jesus: On Jesus and the Church Today, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier/Liturgical Press, 2014), 86–104. One witness from tradition is the likely-second-century “Epistle to Diognetus,” which says of Jesus, “O the sweet exchange, O the incomprehensible work of God, O the unexpected blessings, that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous person, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners!” (Epistle to Diognetus, 9.5, in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd edition, ed. and trans. Michael W. Holmes [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007]: 711.) Bernard Sesboüé, Jésus-Christ L’Unique Médiateur: Essai sur la rédemption et le salut (Paris: Desclée, 1988), 357–77, esp. 376, where he cites approvingly Ratzinger’s conception of the Church as a little flock in the saving service of the many. See also his La théologie au XXe siècle et l’avenir de la foi: Entretiens avec Marc Leboucher (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer: 2007), 175, 332–33. Sesboüé sees Ratzinger’s thought on vicarious representation as dovetailing with Lumen gentium §1’s affirmation that “the Church, in Christ, is a sacrament—a sign and an instrument, that is, of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race.” This sacramentality, Sesboüé states, means that “the Church is not in the first place for itself: it is for all and at the service of all. It belongs to its very being to be missionary” (333). One of Ratzinger’s contributions to Gaudium et spes illustrates this point. The Pastoral Constitution weaves together dialogue-mutuality and uniqueness-priority, in the prominence it gives to dialogue (especially in its introduction and Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 739 may excuse a pun, vicarious representation is not the whole of Christian theology in general and ecclesiology in particular, but it is an essential part of any authentic Christian theology and ecclesiology. It is equally indispensable for a fuller understanding of Ratzinger’s little-flock ecclesiology. Conclusion The vicarious-representative form of Ratzinger’s thought, expressed over nearly sixty years, leads towards a vision of the Church that is mindful of its election by, and dependence upon, its Lord; that is other-oriented in its essential pro-existence; and that is catholic in its openness in love and suffering for and with the “other brother” with whom it is inextricably joined. Ratzinger’s ecclesial vision is thus not of a “smaller but purer” Church, but of a missionary little flock or mustard seed whose mission is to participate in the reconciliation of all in Christ, the One whose entire existence is “being-for” the Many. It remains, however, that Ratzinger’s ecclesial vision is at times insufficiently attentive to the gifts of the non-Christian Other and to the changed cultural situation of Christianity in the contemporary West, particularly in Europe. He has over several decades articulated a theology of relational personhood,103 but, by way of a conclusion, I 103 conclusion) and in its Christocentricity, whereby each section of the document’s first part culminates in a Christological affirmation. Thomas Gertler calls Gaudium et spes §10, which roots the Church’s dialogue with all of humanity in its faith in Christ, the document’s “Christological credo” (Jesus Christus—Die Antwort der Kirche auf die Frage nach dem Menschsein [Leipzig: St. Benno, 1986], 107–14). Ratzinger was closely involved in the drafting of that passage. In a draft text recently discovered by Jared Wicks, Ratzinger explicitly yokes Christian uniqueness and dialogical mutuality: “Thus the Church believes that the definitive answer to the pressing questions of the human race is found in Christ, true God and true man. Therefore she intends to respond to the questions of today in the light that God makes resplendent in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4:6). Still she can and must enter into sincere dialogue with all people, first, by bringing to the common questions that light which she believes she is given by faith in Christ, and, second, by seeking to understand her own faith deeply in the light of human truths. Thus the Church invites all people to hear the message that she brings forth from her faith and she wants to hear the questions and answers of all those with whom she forms one human race and one history” (Wicks, “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” 293). For example, Ratzinger, “On the Understanding of ‘Person’ in Theology,” in Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life, First Unabridged Edition, trans. Michael J. Miller and Matthew J. O’Connell (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), 181–96. 740 Christopher Ruddy would like to mention briefly two theologians who may help to further a generous understanding of mutuality in which identity and openness are reciprocally constitutive. The first is John Dadosky, who in several articles has proposed an ecclesiology of friendship.104 He holds that Vatican II inspired two principal ecclesiologies: communion and friendship. Friendship, in his view, offers the possibility of mutuality, of gift-giving and gift-receiving: good friends challenge each other, complement each other, and also give rise to something new and greater than themselves.105 Drawing upon Bernard Lonergan’s and Robert Doran’s work on mediation, Dadosky argues that communion ecclesiology reflects the Church’s self-mediating identity, while an ecclesiology of friendship expresses the Church’s mutually self-mediating identity in its relation to the Other. The former ecclesiology emphasizes the Church’s mediation of grace, revelation, and salvation to the Other, while the latter stresses that the Church is also “enriched by the Other.”106 The former tends to see difference as dialectical, while the latter tends towards difference as complementary. Both ecclesiologies are essential for an adequate account of ecclesial identity and mission. Dadosky concludes therefore that one must not choose one ecclesiology over the other, but rather see them as complementary expressions of the missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is precisely this Trinitarian dimension of mutuality that Piero Coda has developed in numerous works, most comprehensively in Il Logos e il nulla: Trinità, religioni, mistica.107 Coda’s theology grows out of the spirituality of the Focolare movement, whose late founder, Chiara Lubich, he served for many years as personal theologian. Focolare’s charism is unity—Catholic, ecumenical, interreligious, and human—fostered by the self-emptying love of Jesus forsaken on the Cross. As Jesus in his abandonment lost God for the sake of God, experiencing the full weight of human sinfulness and division so as to restore unity, so too is the Christian called to empty oneself so as to make oneself one with the other. At the core of the Focolare’s spirituality is a conviction that “The person next to me was created as a gift for me and 104 105 106 107 See “The Church and the Other: Mediation and Friendship in Post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Ecclesiology,” Pacifica 18 (October 2005): 302–22; and “Towards a Fundamental Theological Re-Interpretation of Vatican II,” Heythrop Journal 49 (2008): 742–63. Dadosky, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Re-Interpretation of Vatican II,” 748. Ibid., 745. Piero Coda, Il Logos e il nulla: Trinità, religioni, mistica, 2nd ed. (Rome: Città Nuova, 2004). Ratzinger on the “Little Flock” and Vicarious Representation 741 I was created as a gift for the person next to me.”108 Out of this spirituality, Coda has developed a sophisticated Trinitarian theology of mutuality, not least in relation to other religions. Seeing an inclusivist Christian theology of religions as insufficiently attentive to true religious otherness, he draws upon the “theological icon” of Ephesians 2:11–22 in order to propose a “recapitulative-relational” model, which affirms Christ’s unique, universal salvific mediation precisely in—and not merely alongside—the encounter with the religious other.109 Christ—supremely in his forsakenness on the Cross—is at once Logos and nothingness, a nothingness which is not a nihilistic void but a self-emptying love that alone makes possible the deepest relationship and communion. Coda thus posits that identity and openness-receptivity are mutually constitutive, both for the Church and for its relationship with other religions. “The form of Christological kenosis (cf. Phil. 2:7),” he writes, “must be able to be expressed in the structures and actions of the Church.”110 This Christic way of self-emptying and of littleness for the sake of mission stands at the heart of Ratzinger’s vicarious-representative thought, and it helps one to understand why he concludes the climactic chapter (“Jesus’ Resurrection from the Dead”) of his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy (and his theological corpus as a whole) with the following words: It is part of the mystery of God that he acts so gently, that he only gradually builds up his history within the great history of mankind; that he becomes man and so can be overlooked by his contemporaries and by the decisive forces within history; that he suffers and dies and that, having risen again, he chooses to come to mankind only through the faith of the disciples to whom he reveals himself; that he continues to knock gently at the doors of our hearts and slowly opens our eyes if we open our doors to him. And yet—is this not the truly divine way? Not to overwhelm with external power, but to give freedom, to offer and elicit love. And if we really think about it, is it not what seems so small that is truly great?111 N&V Chiara Lubich, Essential Writings: Spirituality, Dialogue, Culture (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2007), 87. Echoes of this spirituality of communion may be discerned in Pope John Paul II’s 2001 apostolic letter, Novo millennio ineunte, especially §43. 109 Coda, Il Logos e il nulla, 57–92. 110 Ibid., 50. 111 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part II, 276. 108 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 743–764 743 Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics and Its Revised Platonism R udi A. te V elde University of Tilburg Tilburg, The Netherlands Introduction I s A quinas an A ristotelian thinker ? To consider Aquinas as an Aristotelian does not, of course, do full justice to his greatness and originality in the field of philosophy, but that the basic orientation of his thought is to be characterized as “Aristotelian” seems to me beyond dispute.1 That is how he saw it himself, that is how his contemporaries saw it, and that was the judgment of the later Thomistic school, which invented the tradition of the philosophia aristotelico-thomistica.2 Indirectly the epithet “Aristotelian,” by suggesting some alternatives 1 2 Cf. the judgment of McInerny in his article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “As a philosopher, Thomas is emphatically Aristotelian.” Ralph McInerny and John O'Callaghan, “Saint Thomas Aquinas,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010), ed. Edward N. Zalta. By way of contrast one can mention Wayne Hankey who claims that Thomas Aquinas was less of an Aristotelian than is commonly supposed; in his many publications he draws attention to the influence of Neo-Platonism on Thomas’ thought. See his contribution to The Oxford Handbook to Aquinas, ed. by Brian Davis and Eleonore Stump (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) under the title “Aquinas, Plato, and Neo-Platonism.” For instance, Josephus Gredt, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, 2 vols. 6th ed (Freiburg: Herder, 1932). However, see Mark Jordan, who argues— rightly in my opinion—that Aquinas is not a philosopher whose position is an ‘Aristotelianism’ in a neo-Scholastic way, as some sort of doctrinal system. M.J. Jordan, The Alleged Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas, Toronto, 1992 (The Etienne Gilson Series, 15). 744 Rudi A. te Velde such as “Aquinas the Augustinian,”3 touches on the question of the many sources and influences which have shaped Aquinas’s thought, and how the diversity of influences has been received according to a new and unique patron or, as the principle says, “according to the manner of the receiver.” From the viewpoint of the receiver the question of the precise impact of Aristotle’s philosophy on Aquinas is complex and multilayered. The mode of reception entails the questions of identity— what was Aquinas’ view of Aristotelianism?—of valuation—how did he value Aristotle’s philosophy?—and of use—what kind of use did he make of Aristotle? With respect to this last point one should realize that during the thirteenth century Aristotle—the Philosophus—became the privileged representative of philosophical reason. The distribution and reception of Aristotle’s writings within the academic milieu of the medieval university had made an important contribution to the process of “scientification” of human knowledge. Thomas stood right in the center of this Aristotelian-inspired process of redefinition and transformation of knowledge as science, that is, as an organized body of knowledge derived from principles which are known self-evidently in the light of human natural reason. His specific “use” of Aristotle must be seen, as I will argue, in the light of his search for a “science of God,” a science of the first cause of everything, which does justice to the nature and principles of human (sense-bound) reason. In this article I will look at some aspects of Aquinas’s reception of Aristotle’s philosophy, especially the way he expands Aristotelian metaphysics by integrating ideas from Neoplatonic sources (Pseudo-Dionysius, Liber de causis) in this “science of the divine.” Aquinas’s version of the “science of the divine” is specifically structured according to the indirect way God is knowable to the human sense-bound intellect, thus in line with the distinctive Aristotelian approach to the question of the intelligibility of reality. At the same time, however, in developing the transcendent part of metaphysical science, Aquinas uses several Neoplatonic elements taken from Dionysius and the Liber and integrates them within the framework of metaphysics. So the questions I want to investigate are, firstly, how did Aquinas view the Aristotelian method in philosophy, and, secondly, how precisely did he succeed in transforming/reinterpreting the Platonism of Dionysius and the Liber so that their ideas about Being and the Good would fit into the Aristotelian framework of his science of the Transcendent. 3 Michael Dauphinais, Barry David, Matthew Levering (eds.), Aquinas the Augustinian, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington D.C., 2007. Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 745 I shall begin by discussing the thesis of the unicity of substantial form, which was commonly seen by contemporaries as typical of the Aristotelianism of Thomas. Here we have an important debate in which one’s basic philosophical view of reality is at stake, and which Thomas himself clarifies in terms of the fundamental opposition between Aristotle and Platonism. Then, after having explained Aristotle’s position with regard to the dependency of all knowledge on the senses, I turn my attention to the two central sources of Platonism in the thought of Aquinas, namely Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus and the Liber de causis. Here I will try to find out how Aquinas succeeds in integrating several Neoplatonic elements into his basically Aristotelian philosophical worldview. The Unicity of Substantial Form In the years after his death, one of the most controversial themes, which was considered to be characteristic of the Aristotelianism of Aquinas, was the doctrine of the unicity of substantial form.4 Adherents of the older Augustinian tradition regarded this doctrine as typical of the “innovations” Aquinas had brought about in theology. So when, in 1270, the Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, proscribed thirteen problematic theses, among which was the denial of the plurality of substantial forms, what was at stake in this condemnation was the systematic use of Aristotle that Aquinas had introduced into theological debate. In the view of conservative theologians the “new philosophy” of Aristotle posed a serious threat to the way certain truths of the Christian faith were traditionally formulated. For Thomas himself, however, it was quite clear that the “Aristotelian” defense of the unity of substantial form was not so much opposed to Christian faith itself but rather to certain Neoplatonic principles and presuppositions which underlay the “traditional” ideas of his opponents. For him, the controversy originated in a crucial difference at the level of philosophical principles, and it is here that the problem must be solved. One may find such a fundamental discussion of the philosophical principles underlying the question of the unicity of form in the third article of De spiritualibus creaturis. Here we see Thomas not only defending the Aristotelian view of substantial unity as grounded in the single substantial form of an individual thing, but he even points out that the 4 See Weisheipl: “In the fifty years following Thomas’s death, the crucial issue was not the real distinction between essence (quod est) and existence (esse), as might have been expected, but the unity of substantial form.” (Friar Thomas d’Aquino, 338). 746 Rudi A. te Velde traditional view held by his antagonists can in fact be traced back to the variety of Platonism found in the Fons vitae of Avicebron.5 He ultimately reduces the discussion to the contrast in philosophical method between Aristotle and Plato. In the text from De spiritualibus creaturis Thomas explains and defends Aristotle’s position with regard to the unity of the human individual, composed of body and spiritual soul. Aristotle himself often put forward his view about the substantial unity of the individual within the polemic context of his critique of Plato’s doctrine of ideas. The hypothesis of a plurality of ideas would lead, Aristotle argues in many places, to the loss of the intrinsic unity of sensible things. We will see now how Thomas describes and understands the Aristotelian approach in philosophy, and how he reconstructs the “Platonism” behind the doctrine of the plurality of forms. Thomas begins by introducing the two opinions regarding the question of how the human soul relates to the body and what the subject of the (spiritual) soul is. According to the first opinion—the one found among his opponents—one must assume a series of intermediate forms between the substrate of matter and the ultimate form which is the rational or spiritual soul. The presupposition is that the spiritual soul of man cannot be immediately responsible for the corporeal and sensitive properties of the composite human being, and that, consequently, one must assume another, lower, form which constitutes the body and all that pertains to the bodily and sensitive life of man. One must, therefore, accept a plurality of forms, lower and higher, as the many constitutive principles making up the ontological complexity of the human being. These forms correspond with the many predicates which can be said of this individual human being: this individual is a man, is an animal, is a living being, is a corporeal being, etc., culminating in the ultimate predicates of substance and being. Thus, each of the intelligible determinations, expressed by the essential predicates, stands for a proper and distinct form in this individual. Behind this view, one recognizes a dualistic conception of body and spirit, which some thought to be more consanguine to 5 See D.A. Callus, “The Origins of the Problem of the Unicity of Form,” The Thomist 24 (1961): 120–49; see also his The Condemnation of St. Thomas at Oxford, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackfriars, 1955). The classic study of the influence of Avicebron on many of the thirteenth century Augustinian theologians, including Bonaventure, remains the monograph of G. Thery, “L’Augustinisme medieval et le problem de l’unité de la forme substantielle,” in Acta hebdomadae augustinianae-thomisticae (Torino-Roma: Marietti, 1931), 140–200. Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 747 the Christian understanding of man’s spiritual soul. The other opinion, based on the principles of Aristotle’s philosophy, says that in one individual there can be only one substantial form, and that this single form, which is the human form (forma humana), is the reason why this individual is a man, an animal, a living being, and a corporeal being. It is the single substantial form which makes this individual a being as such—the first and most common determination—and a being of a particular kind—the ultimate species. According to this view, the plurality of predicates in the logical order does not correspond to a real plurality of forms; it is the one and single substantial form which grounds the unity of a thing’s substantial being, the concept (definition) of which includes a logical manifold of predicates. For Thomas, the difference between these two opinions has its origin in a fundamental difference in how philosophy itself must be conceived. What is at stake is the philosophical approach to the truth of reality and the corresponding concept of philosophical science: The diversity of these two opinions comes from the fact that when inquiring into the nature of things, some philosophers proceeded from the proposition of intelligible essences, and this was peculiar to the Platonists, and others from the starting point of sensible things, and this was peculiar to the philosophy of Aristotle, as Simplicius says in his Commentary on the Categories [Preface].6 In characterizing the fundamental difference in method between the Platonists and Aristotle, Thomas refers to the preface of Simplicius’s Commentary on the Categories. The Platonists are said to proceed ex 6 De spir. creat. a. 3: “Harum autem duarum opinionum diversitas ex hoc procedit, quod quidam ad inquirendam veritatem de natura rerum, processerunt ex rationibus intelligibilibus, et hoc fuit proprium Platonicorum; quidam vero ex rebus sensibilibus, et hoc fuit proprium philosophiae Aristotelis, ut dicit Simplicius in commento super praedicamenta.” Aquinas appears to be referring to Simplicius’ Commentary at vol. 1, prologus, 8, l.70—9, l.85 (Simplicius, Commentaire sur les Catégories d’Aristote, Traduction de Guillaume de Moerbeke, ed. A. Pattin, 2 vols: vol. 1, Louvain, Paris 1971, vol. 2, Leiden 1975 (Corpus commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum, 1 and 2). See Michael Chase, “the Medieval Posterity of Simplicius’ Commentary on the Categories: Thomas Aquinas and al-Fârâb,” in Lloyd A. Newton, ed., Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories (Leiden: Brill, 2008) (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, vol. 10), 9–29. Wayne Hankey, “Thomas’ Neoplatonic Histories: His Following of Simplicius,” Dionysius 20 (2002): 153–178. 748 Rudi A. te Velde rationibus intelligibilibus, by way of “abstract essences,” while Aristotle proceeds ex sensibilibus, in reference to reality as disclosed in sense experience. It is the characteristic method of the Platonists which Thomas subsequently explicates in detail in order to reconstruct the theoretical background of the thesis of the plurality of forms. First, we will follow him in his critical presentation of “Platonism,” and then we return to the Aristotelian approach “ex sensibilibus.” First of all, what is meant by “rationes intelligibiles”? The Platonists, Thomas explains, focus on the intelligible objects of thought which are ordered in such a way that the more universal (superior) can be understood without the less universal (inferior), for instance, “man” (species) can be understood without “this man” (individuum), and “animal” (genus) without “man” (species), and so on. The “rationes intelligibiles” are abstract essences which can be thought separately from sensible things and which are, consequently, posited to exist separately in themselves, since the Platonists do not distinguish between the abstract manner in which something is conceived and the manner in which it exists in reality. For Thomas, following Aristotle, the intelligible objects of species and genus only exist in thought; they express the way something is conceived by us. Aristotle argues for the need to differentiate between the order of being and the order of thought, contrary to the basic assumption of the Platonists, which is that all that the intellect considers abstractly exists abstractly in reality (quidquid est abstractum in intellectu, sit abstractum in re).7 This way of hypostasizing objects of thought leads to the view of a hierarchy of abstract objects, which are ordered in such a way that the inferior is always more particular than the superior, in the nature of which the inferior participates. At the top of the hierarchy stand the most universal notions, “being,” “one” and “good,” which are considered by the Platonists as the “highest power of things” (summum rerum virtutem). Aquinas continues by explaining the Platonic roots of the thesis of the plurality of forms; and then, in a second move, he argues that this view is impossible and contrary to the “true philosophical principles adopted 7 It is because of this difference between the order of thought and the order of being that Aristotle can distinguish between the science of the real (physics, metaphysics) and the science of the rational (logic). For him there is a certain legitimate use of logic within metaphysics, but only preliminary and with a heuristic purpose. See my “Metaphysics, Dialectics and the Modus Logicus According to Thomas Aquinas,” in Recherches de Théologie ancienne et medievale 63 (1996): 15–35. Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 749 by Aristotle.”8 Thus, the contemporary debate on unity versus the plurality of forms is set within the wider perspective of the fundamental contrast between Platonism and Aristotle’s philosophical approach. And what is, in Thomas’s view, at stake in this debate is ultimately the issue of the unity of being. No individual substance would be truly one if its form, which is the principle of its being and unity, were to be multiplied according to the many abstract rationes the intellect distinguishes in thinking that object.9 The kind of Platonism behind the scholastic doctrine of the plurality of forms is then identified as having its origin in the Fons vitae of Avicebron. Not Augustine himself but the Platonism of Avicebron is the source of the untenable thesis of the plurality of forms. In Thomas’s reconstruction Avicebron’s way of thought is characterized by an extreme realism. The ontological constitution of reality immediately reflects the logical order of the definition. In “defining” an object one begins by positing an indeterminate substrate—which is called “universal matter”—which receives, first of all, the form of substance. In other words, in our concept of reality something is first conceived to be a substance, by reason of the form of substance. An indeterminate something understood as substance is then distinguished in, on the one hand, corporeal substances—by reason of the “form of corporeity”—and in spiritual substances on the other hand. Through addition of subsequent and less universal forms the division will then finally result, like the tree of Porphyry, in the most particular species of reality.10 Behind the extreme realism of Avicebron Thomas recognizes a certain Platonic conception of the intelligible causes of reality. Accepting a transcendent hierarchy of causes, the Platonists hold that the more universal and formal a cause is, the more deeply underlying (substrata) its perfec8 9 10 De spir. creat. a. 3: “Sed haec positio, secundum vera philosophiae principia, quae consideravit Aristoteles, est impossibilis.” Ibid.: “. . . si multiplicarentur multae formae substantiales in uno individuo substantiae, individuum substantiae non esset unum simpliciter sed secundum quid, sicut homo albus.” Ibid.: “. . ; positio Avicebron in libro Fontis vitae; posuit enim materiam primam absque omni forma, quam vocavit materiam universalem, et dixit eam communem substantiis spiritualibus et corporalibus, cui dixit advenire formam universalem quae est forma substantiae. Materiam autem sic sub forma substantiae existentem in aliquo suo dixit recipere formam corporeitatis, alia parte eius, quae pertinet ad spirituales substantias, sine huiusmodi forma remanente; et sic deinceps posuit in materia formam sub forma secundum ordinem generum et specierum usque ad ultimam species specialissimam.” 750 Rudi A. te Velde tion in the constituted reality will be. For Aquinas, the whole notion of a transcendent hierarchy of formal causes is problematic, because the assumption of a plurality of causes, according to the many rationes intelligibiles, would necessarily lead to a plurality of forms in sensible reality as constituted by those causes. Below we will see that the principal modification of Platonism in Dionysius and in the Liber de causis concerns exactly this point of plurality within the transcendent realm of causes. The Ex Sensibilibus as Condition of the Movement towards Transcendence Let us now turn to the Aristotelian way of proceeding in philosophy, which was characterized by Simplicius as ex sensibilibus. In his inquiry into the truth of reality Aristotle proceeds from sensible things. It is not immediately clear how this “ex sensibilibus” must be taken. As contrasted with the “rationes intelligibiles” of the Platonists, it must concern the specific approach to the question of the intelligibility of reality.11 For Aristotle, the senses are the permanent condition of our access to the intelligibility of reality as expressed initially in the first principles of all knowledge. The human intellect is not able to grasp the truth of things immediately by means of intellectual vision, but arrives discursively at the knowledge of the truth of its object on the basis of the sensible (changeable, particular) appearance of that object. This is what seems to me essential to the Aristotelian approach in philosophy. Any unmediated access to the intelligible truth of things must be denied. But then the question will immediately arise of whether this position allows for metaphysical knowledge of super-sensible reality. If human knowledge depends on the senses in a more than accidental way, how then will knowledge of the divine and the transcendent be possible? Aquinas often asserts, as a fundamental principle, that human knowledge takes its beginning (principium) from the senses.12 Sense perception is the permanent condition of intellectual knowledge in the sense that our intellect cannot understand anything except by turning to what is given to the senses (phantasmata). The notion of conversio ad phantasmata—with its anthropological implication of the human soul as “form of the body”—is an essential part of Aristotle’s doctrine of knowledge.13 Contrary to Plato, Aristotle holds that intellectual cognition, although 11 12 13 Thomas uses the expression “ad inquirendam veritatem de natura rerum”; this seems to me a fitting formula for what classical philosophy was about. Cf. ST I, q. 12, a. 10: “Naturalis nostra cognitio a sensu principium sumit.” De anima, III, c. 7, 431a16; cf. Aquinas, ST I, q. 84, a. 7. Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 751 essentially different from sense cognition, is intrinsically bound up with the senses. We cannot have knowledge of what a thing is except on the basis of its sensible appearance. Our cognitive access to reality is, thus, mediated by the senses. This principle has important consequences for the question of how far scientific knowledge extends. Simplicius’s phrase of the “ex sensibilibus” may have reminded Aquinas of the famous text at the end of the Posterior Analytics. Here Aristotle argues that the first principles of all knowledge and sciences are accepted by way of “induction” (epagoge) from the senses.14 What is now the implication of this for the range of speculative or scientific knowledge? For Aquinas, the knowledge belonging to a science does not reach farther than the principles of that science allow. Now, given the fact that the first principles of all sciences are taken from the senses, one must conclude that the “consideration of the speculative sciences cannot extend farther than the knowledge of sensible reality can lead.”15 We see that, according to Aquinas, scientific knowledge is not restricted to sensible reality, but neither has it an independent access to supersensible reality. The first principles, which virtually contain all possible knowledge, are known immediately and spontaneously by the intellect (the faculty of nous in Aristotle; the habitus principiorum of Aquinas); they articulate, one can say, the a priori openness of the intellect to being in its universal extension. But the intellect exercises its a priori openness to being in relation to a given sensible object. The consequence is that the human intellect does not have immediate access to the intelligibility of things; concepts necessarily relate to reality as mediated by the senses. What does this imply for the possibility of metaphysical knowledge? According to the Aristotelian view, the science of sensible and changeable nature, physics, has priority with respect to the human mode of knowing. In the order of human knowledge metaphysics comes “after” (meta) the science of physics. The question is now how the human intellect is able to transcend the domain of physics. How does it go “from sensible things” to beyond sensible things? In his Metaphysics, Aristotle is investigating the basic structure of all that is (to on). In what is called ‘first philosophy’ he inquires into the 14 15 Analytica Posteriora II, c. 19. Cf. ST I-II, q. 3, a. 6: “Prima principia scientiarum speculativarum sunt per sensum accepta; ut patet per Philosophum in principio Metaphys. et in fine Poster.” ST I-II, q. 3, a. 6: “Unde tota consideratio scientiarum speculativarum non potest ultra extendi quam sensibilium cognitio ducere potest.” 752 Rudi A. te Velde nature of being and substance, and into the nature of the principles and causes of all being. Being in its primary sense is substance (ousia), and the substance we are familiar with is sensible substance. Thus, Aristotle starts his philosophical analysis of substance with “sensible substance,” composed of form and matter. It is only at the end of his investigations—in book—that the question is raised of whether another kind of substance exists “without matter.” Such a—divine—substance must be incorruptible and unchangeable, since it is pure form. According to Aristotle, the evidence we possess with regard to the existence of such non-sensible substances can only be derived from what is implicated in our knowledge of sensible substance. In other words, one must proceed ex sensibilibus to the knowledge of that which exists beyond sensible and changeable reality. And he does so by arguing that, ultimately, sensible substances cannot be understood as substance and as being unless they are reduced to a higher and non-sensible kind of being as their principle. This higher, non-material kind of being—Aquinas speaks about “God and the angels”—comes into the picture insofar as its existence is implicated by our knowledge of material beings. The dynamic structure of this way of arguing from sensible reality to the existence of a transcendent and divine principle can be recognized in the proofs for the existence of God at the beginning of the Summa theologiae. They should not be seen as empirical or a posteriori proofs. That would be a misunderstanding of the role the notion of being plays here. We apprehend reality as it falls under the senses first of all as “being.” By grasping an object as being, it is posited in itself as intelligible. Thus we affirm objects of sense experience to be “beings,” but the intelligibility implied by “being” cannot be accounted for in terms of these sensible and changeable objects alone. Their intelligibility as beings cannot be accounted for unless they are reduced to non-sensible objects as their causes. For instance, when we speak of things which are in motion—and such things do exist in fact, as it is evident from the senses—their beingin-motion cannot be explained as being (this is the formal perspective of metaphysics) unless it is reduced to a principle of motion which is not moved itself, an unmoved mover.16 The Aristotelian principle “ex sensibilibus” appears to be of fundamental importance for how Aquinas understands the transcending movement of metaphysics. He connects this principle with Aristotle’s view about the difference between “what is better known to us” and “what is 16 For a more extensive analysis of the Aristotelian proof “ex parte motu,” see my Aquinas on God (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 48. Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 753 better known in itself.” With regard to the knowledge of God, even if God is intelligible in the highest degree, the human mind is not able to grasp this intelligibility immediately in itself but must proceed indirectly from what is better known to us—that is, sensible reality—to what is better known in itself, the first principle from which all things derive their being and truth. The formal structure of the way we have to go in our knowledge of God is indicated in the following text: Our natural knowledge begins from sense. Hence our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our intellect cannot be led far enough by sense to see the essence of God. . . . But because sensible things are his effects and depend on him as their cause, they can lead us far enough to know whether God exists, and to know what must necessarily belong to him as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by him.17 Here we have Aquinas’s view on the dynamic ascent in our knowledge of the divine starting from sensible reality, ex sensibilibus, as opposed to the Platonic way of rationes intelligibiles. The Prooemium of the Commentary on De divinis nominibus In the previous section we saw that Aquinas, following Aristotle, rejects the Platonic doctrine of ideal forms, since the very plurality of separate forms would result in the absence of intrinsic unity in the particular sensible things of our experience. Rather than using Plato’s dialectical philosophy of intelligible forms (rationes intelligibiles) Aquinas opts for Aristotle’s first philosophy, which proceeds from sensible reality in its investigation of the transcendent causes of being. What this “Aristotelian way” means for our knowledge of God is clearly and frequently stated by Aquinas: “our knowledge [of the transcendent causes of being] can go as far as it can be led by sensible things.”18 Now, if Aquinas is in this sense a real “Aristotelian” in his philosophical approach, the question becomes urgent as to how he actually succeeds in reconciling his highly valued Platonic sources, such as Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus and the Liber de causis, with the principles of Aristotelian metaphysics. As a theologian, Aquinas is interested most of all in the 17 18 ST I, q. 12, a. 12. See Aquinas on God, 75. Ibid. 754 Rudi A. te Velde transcendent part of metaphysics—the doctrine of the First Cause and its causality with respect to all things; but it is precisely with respect to this aspect of metaphysics that Aristotle’s Metaphysics is not very informative! Aristotle himself does not offer a substantial account of the causality of the first principle. But Dionysius does, in line with Neoplatonic thought. The question arises, therefore, of how Aquinas succeeds in aligning Dionysius’s account with the basic principles of Aristotelian philosophy? In what sense can Dionysius be saved from the criticism of the Platonic doctrine of forms? In looking for an answer to these questions we will turn now to the introductory text of Thomas’s Commentary on De divinis nominibus. Dionysius—or rather the unknown Christian and Neoplatonic author of the late fifth century who hides behind the name and authority of Dionysius, the pupil of St. Paul himself—is held in high esteem by Aquinas.19 The De divinis nominibus is one of the main sources of his doctrine of God, and in particular of his view of how God can be named by names derived from the perfections which creatures participate from God as the transcendent source of all perfections. Dionysius is a Christian author, a Catholic theologian of great reputation, and as such is, for Aquinas, an authoritative source of what the faith teaches. In the Prooemium to his Commentary Aquinas sets out to introduce the writings of Dionysius to his readers and to clarify his philosophical allegiance. One of the difficulties one will experience in reading the books of Dionysius, Aquinas explains, is caused by the fact that he frequently uses a Platonic style and way of speaking which is no longer customary in our times (apud modernos).20 Dionysius’s philosophical language is Platonic in character. But that does not make him, apparently, a full-blood Platonic thinker who subscribes to the basic positions of Platonic philosophy. In a subtle manner, Aquinas argues that Dionysius distances himself from those aspects of Platonism: in particular the doctrine of the ideal forms, which are contrary to the Christian faith and to (rational) truth. The Platonism of Dionysius is, Aquinas wants to 19 20 Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1992). In De div.nom., Prooemium: “…quia plerumque utitur stilo et modo loquendi quo utebantur platonici, qui apud modernos est inconsuetus.” Cf. W.J. Hanky, “Dionysian Hierarchy in St. Thomas: Tradition and Transformation,” Denys l’Areopagite et sa postérité en Orient et en Occident, Actes du Colloque international Paris, 21–24 septembre 1994, ed. Ysabel de Andia (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes,1997) (Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité, 151), 405–438. Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 755 show, a revised Platonism, which does not fall under the critique of Aristotle; a revised Platonism which not only concords with the Christian faith but, moreover, is to be seen as an important contribution to that part of metaphysics which studies the divine cause of being. Aquinas explains that the hypostasizing of formal principles is characteristic of the Platonic way of thought. Platonists hold that the species of things exist in themselves and separately. Thus, they say, for instance, that this singular and sensible human being is not essentially a human being, but is said to be a man by participation in the “separated man.” Since the species of things can be thought separately from its individualizing and material conditions, they must also exist separately. The order of thought (the realm of the rationes intelligibiles) coincides immediately with the order of being. This hypostasizing way of abstraction is not only applied to the species of things, but also to the most common predicates such as “good,” “one,” and “being”—in other words, to the transcendental properties of being.21 We see now that with the help of this distinction between categorical forms (species, genus) and transcendental forms (being, good, one) Aquinas is able to grant a relative truth to the position of the Platonists: The Platonists not only considered abstraction of this kind regarding the ultimate species of natural things, but also concerning the most common features, which are ‘good’, ‘one’, and ‘being’. . . . This reasoning of the Platonists concords neither with faith nor with the truth in so far as it concerns the separateness of natural species, but regarding what they say concerning the first principle of things, their opinion is most true and consonant with the Christian faith.22 With respect to the species of natural things, Aquinas definitely rejects the possibility of a separate existence. He fully endorses the critique of 21 22 See for the doctrine of transcendentals, Jan Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1996) (Brill Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 52). In De div. nom., prooemium: “Nec solum huiusmodi abstractione Platonici considerabant circa ultimas species rerum naturalium, sed etiam circa maxime communia, quae sunt bonum, unum et ens. . . . Haec igitur Platonicorum ratio fidei non consonant nec veritati, quantum ad hoc quod continet de speciebus naturalibus separatis, sed quantum ad id quod dicebant de primo rerum principio, verissima est eorum opinio et fidei Christiana consona.” 756 Rudi A. te Velde Aristotle that the real separateness of the species and genera would mean the loss of the essential unity of sensible things. Socrates would not be essentially a human being if the species were distinct and separate from the concrete individual reality of Socrates. However, the case is different if we consider the most common predicates bonum, unum, and ens. Here, at the level of the transcendentia, the hypostasizing abstraction of Platonism does have an acceptable and legitimate sense.23 The Platonists posit something primary, which is the “essence of goodness,” the “essence of unity” and the “essence of being,” and this we call “God,” Aquinas says; all things are said to be good, or one, or “beings” by way of derivation from that primary principle.24 This is, in nuce, the Platonic doctrine of the first principle and its participative causality as present in the theology of Dionysius, and which is judged by Aquinas to be most true (verissima) and consonant with the Christian faith. The same hermeneutic strategy with respect to Platonism by making a distinction between categorical forms (universals) and transcendental forms (maxime communia) is followed in a text about the divine goodness in the Summa theologiae. Here Aquinas deals with a question, the Platonic background of which will be recognizable to the reader, which concerns the relationship between “good things” and “divine goodness”: “are all things good by the divine goodness?”25 The alternative would 23 24 25 In his Commentary on Boethius’ De trinitate (q. 5, a. 3), Thomas introduces the famous notion of ‘separatio,’ the particular kind of abstraction by which the objects of metaphysics are formally constituted. In contrast with the usual method of ‘abstraction,’ by which something is considered by the intellect without something else, though both are connected in reality, the act of ‘separatio’ posits a separation in reality itself. Through the act of separation certain intelligible aspects of things (such as ‘being’ and ‘substance’) are disclosed to the consideration of the intellect as purely intelligible in themselves, independent of matter, so that the existence of ‘beings’ and ‘substances’ without matter is revealed as possible. Aquinas then makes the observation that the Platonists fell into error because they failed to distinguish properly between ‘separatio’ and ‘abstractio’. The Platonists treat the results of ‘abstractio’—the abstraction of universals from particulars—as if they were really separate. From this it appears that the Platonic kind of abstraction (separatio) is regarded by Aquinas as valid with respect to the maxime communia, the objects of metaphysics. In De div. nom., Prooemium: “Ponebant, enim, unum primum quod est ipsa essentia bonitatis et unitatis et esse, quod dicimus Deum et quod omnia alia dicuntur bona vel una vel entia per derivationem ab illo primo.” ST I, q. 6, a. 4: “Utrum omnia sint bona bonitate divina”. The immediate background of this discussion is Boethius’s De hebdomadibus; see my book Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1995) (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 46), ch.1. Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 757 be that all things are good by an intrinsic form of goodness, not by an extrinsic goodness. In his conclusion, Aquinas wants to have it both ways; he argues that all things are good by the transcendent goodness of God as well as by an immanent form of goodness of their own. He wants to reconcile, thus, the aspect of transcendence and the aspect of immanence: the first associated with Plato, the latter with the position of Aristotle. The construction of the argument requires a precise and close reading. Aquinas starts by describing the essentials of Plato’s position, in particular his view with regard to the first principle, or the supreme good. Then he gives a critical assessment: Although this opinion appears to be unreasonable in affirming that there are separate forms of natural things subsisting of themselves—as Aristotle argues in many ways—still, it is absolutely true that there is something primary which is essentially being and essentially good, which we call God. . . . Aristotle agrees with this.26 Here we see Aquinas employing a hermeneutical strategy quite similar to the one he uses in the introduction to his Commentary on De divinis nominibus. With respect to the claim that the species of natural things exists separately in themselves, Platonism must be rejected. In this respect Aquinas fully accepts Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s doctrine of ideas. But another part of Platonism can be retained, namely what it says about the most universal forms (“being,” “one”) which admit of a separate or absolute existence, and as such to be identified with “God.” Thus in Aquinas’s view, Plato and Aristotle agree in their opinion that something primary exists which is essentially being and essentially good, and as such the cause of the being and goodness of all other things.27 Even for Aris26 27 ST I, q. 6, a. 4: “Et quamvis haec opinio irrationabilis videatur quantum ad hoc, quod ponebat species rerum naturalium separatas per se subsistentes, ut Aristoteles multipliciter probat; tamen hoc absolute verum est, quod aliquid est primum, quod per suam essentiam est ens et bonum, quod dicimus Deum, ut ex superioribus patet. Huic etiam sententiae concordat Aristoteles.” In this connection one can refer to the “fourth way” of Thomas; see ST I, q. 2, a. 3: “Est igitur aliquid quod est verissimum, et optimum, et nobilissimum, et per consequens maxime ens: nam quae sunt maxime vera, sunt maxime entia, ut dicitur II Metaph. (…) Ergo est aliquid quod omnibus entibus est causa esse, et bonitatis, et cuiuslibet perfectionis: et hoc dicimus Deum.” The fourth way is often characterized as “Platonic.” For Thomas, however, the argument is based 758 Rudi A. te Velde totle, something primary exists which is maxime ens and as such the cause of all subsequent beings.28 The alleged concordance between Plato and Aristotle with respect to the existence of a primary and absolute being is, for Aquinas, not so much a simple historical fact but rather a hermeneutical claim and construction. Aquinas wants to show that Plato, especially in the form of the Platonism he finds in Dionysius, has important things to contribute to the metaphysical doctrine of the first principle and its (participative) causality; and these valuable aspects of Platonism can be understood as an integral part of the essentially Aristotelian project of the metaphysical science of being and its transcendent causes. Now, what are the “Aristotelian” elements in this text? As said above, Thomas wants to reconcile the aspect of transcendence and the aspect of immanence. The transcendent goodness of God cannot be merely an “ideal form,” separated from the lower reality; it must exercise a real and efficient causality as a consequence of which good things receive in themselves an immanent form of goodness. Thus, the supreme Good of Plato must be thought as an Aristotelian agens, a real principle with an effective power. For Thomas, God can only be thought to be an efficient agent by reason of his “being.” The divine attribute of “being” is associated with God’s efficient causality just as the attribute of “good” expresses in God the aspect of final causality. The special emphasis on “being” is exactly what we see happening in our text. First, Thomas gives a rough sketch of Plato’s doctrine of ideas: “Just as [Plato] laid down separate Forms of man and horse which he called absolute man and absolute horse, so likewise he laid down separate Forms of being and of one, and these he called absolute being (ens per se) and absolute oneness (unum per se), and by participation in these, everything was called being or one.”29 Thomas does not mention that in Neoplatonism the Form of being is considered to be inferior to the highest principle of the One, and that even in Plato’s Republic the Good is said to be “beyond being.” For Thomas “being” and “one” belong together. The next step in our text is the identification of absolute being and absolute 28 29 on a much quoted passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, alpha minor (993b30). Cf. In LC, prop. 3 (ed. Saffrey, l.19): “Cui sententiae concordat quod Aristoteles dicit in II Metaphysicae quod id quod est primum et maxime ens est causa subsequentium.” ST, I, q. 6, a. 4: “Et sicut ponebat ideam hominis et equi separatam, quam vocabat per se hominem et per se equum, ita ponebat ideam entis et ideam unius separatam, quam dicebat per se ens et per se unum: et eius participatione unumquodque dicitur ens vel unum.” Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 759 one with the highest good. Then, Thomas says the following: “And because good is convertible with being, as is also one, he (Plato) called the absolute good God, from whom all things are called good by way of participation.”30 I take this to be the crucial step in Thomas’s argument. The good is convertible with being (ens et bonum convertuntur), so the “absolute good” (ipsum per se bonum) is not without being, it is identical with “absolute being,” and because of its identity with being, the absolute good may be called “God.” The assumption here is that the name “God” stands for a real principle. Thus, only as identical with “being” can the absolute good be understood to be God in the sense of a real and effective principle which gives “being” to creatures, and together with this “being,” an intrinsic form of goodness. For Thomas “being” and “good” are transcendentia, universal notions which extend to all things. As transcendentals they are in the first place communia, they are common to all things. As consequent upon a thing’s being, they must be attributed, even in the highest degree, to the first and universal principle of the being of all things. Thus, in this way, Thomas can say that all things, insofar as they are and are good, assimilate the first principle which has the fullness of being and goodness. Here Thomas employs a metaphysical scheme which he thinks to be genuinely Aristotelian, although modern scholars would consider the notion of “fullness of being” as stemming from the Platonic tradition. The Monotheism of the Liber de causis and the Doctrine of the Unicity of Form One of the most important and appreciated Neoplatonic sources of Thomas Aquinas’s thought is the Liber de causis.31 The identity of the author of Liber de causis remains an issue still debated by scholars. When the work began to be circulated at the Latin universities during the thirteenth century under the title Liber de Expositione Bonitatis Purae (Book of the Exposition of Pure Goodness), it was attributed to Aristotle himself and it was commonly understood to be the completion of Aristotle’s metaphysics.32 In the eyes of the medieval thinkers it filled Ibid.: “Et quia bonum convertitur cum ente, sicut et unum, ipsum per se bonum dicebat esse Deum, a quo omnia dicuntur bona per modum participationis.” 31 For his commentary on the Liber see: Sancti Thomae de Aquino Super librum de causis expositio, ed. H.D. Saffrey (Fribourg: Société philosophique, 1954). Translated into English by V. Guagliardo, C. Hess, and R. Taylor, St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on the Book of Causes (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996). 32 Cf. the remark of Saffrey in the introduction in his edition of Thomas’s 30 760 Rudi A. te Velde out Aristotle’s otherwise deficient account of the ultimate causes of the universe as presented in Metaphysics XII. Even Thomas considered Aristotle to be its author for a long time, at least until Proclus’s Elements of Theology became available to him in the translation of his fellow Dominican William of Moerbeke. Then he discovered, as he explains in the preface to his commentary, that the Liber de causis is the work of an unknown Arabic author who had excerpted it from Proclus’s Elements of Theology.33 Aquinas no longer thinks, thus, that the work is Aristotle’s own theology. Nevertheless it seems to me that he continues to regard the Liber de causis as a kind of supplement of the science of metaphysics as propounded by Aristotle in his Metaphysics. To say it more carefully: together with Dionysius, the Liber de causis was the main source from which Thomas borrowed the necessary elements for constructing a metaphysical account of the First Cause (God), free from the problematic aspects of Neoplatonism, in particular, its polytheistic implications, and compatible with the project of metaphysics as defined by Aristotle. As Hankey writes, “Thomas found that the doctrine of the De divinis nominibus was a monotheistically modified Platonism like that of the Liber de causis.”34 And that “monotheistically modified Platonism” was, I would suggest, perfectly acceptable in Aquinas’ eyes as the theological supplement of the Aristotelian science of metaphysics.35 It is not my intention to provide here a full discussion of the Liber de causis. I will focus on Aquinas’s exposition of the third proposition of the Liber. Here he first offers a presentation of the Neoplatonic hierarchy of divine Forms and then he goes on to explain that both Dionysius and the author of the Liber correct this position of pagan Platonism with respect to the plurality of divine Forms. 33 34 35 Commentary on the Liber de causis, p. xix: “One voit que dès cette époque, dans l’université, le Liber est rattaché à la Métaphysique d’Aristote.” Commentary on the Book of Causes, preface: “And in Greek we find a book handed down by the Platonist Proclus, which contains 211 propositions and is entitled The Elements of Theology. And in Arabic we find the present book which is called On causes among Latin readers, known to have been translated from Arabic and not known to be extant at all in Greek. Thus, it seems that one of the Arab philosophers excerpted it from this book by Proclus, especially since everything in it is contained much more fully and more diffusely in that of Proclus.” W. Hankey, “Aquinas and the Platonists,” in The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: A Doxographic Approach, ed. by Stephen Gersch and Maarten Hoenen, Walter de Gruyter (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 311. Cf. In LC, prop.13 (ed. Saffrey, 83, l.8): “quia vero secundum sententiam Aristotelis quae in hoc magis catholicae doctrinae concordat, non ponimus multas formas . . . sed unam solam quae est causa prima.” Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 761 In order to clarify the complex system of Proclean metaphysics Aquinas begins with the basic position of Platonism. Plato posited universal forms that were separate and per se subsistent. Because such universal forms exercise a certain causality over particular things that participate in them, he calls such forms “gods.” Furthermore, among these forms he assumed a certain order according to the principle that the more universal any form is, the more simple and prior a cause it is, for it is participated by later forms. In this order of ideal Forms the first is the separate One and Good itself, which he calls “the highest god” and the “first cause of all things.” In Proclus these divine Forms are called the “henads,” the order of intelligible forms prior to the lower hypostatical orders of intellects, souls and bodies. Now, Aquinas continues, Dionysius has corrected this position of the plurality of ideal Forms. There are not many forms so that one would be per se goodness, another per se being, another per se life, and so on with regard to the others. According to Dionysius, they are all one and identical with the first cause of all things.36 This Dionysian “modification” results in what is the very essence of Aquinas’s understanding of God: God is being itself, and the very essence of goodness, and thus whatever belongs to the perfection of goodness and being belongs essentially to him as a whole, so that he is the essence of life, wisdom, power, and the rest.37 God himself contains all the formal perfections in simple unity, so that he possesses the universality of causality with respect to the lower reality. The author of the Liber follows Dionysius in his monotheistic correction of pagan Platonism. He does not speak of a multitude of Gods 36 37 In his Commentary on Dionysius’ De divinis nominibus he describes in the same way how Dionysius distances himself from the polytheistic implications of Platonism; see especially the following passage: “The Platonists, whom Dionysius imitates much in this book, (…) posited separated realities ‘per se’. (…) Indeed, they laid down these separated principles as mutually distinct in respect to the First Principle which they called the ‘per se’ Good, and the ‘per se’ one. Dionysius agrees with them in one way, and disagrees in another. He agrees in that he too posits life existing separately ‘per se’, and likewise wisdom, and being, and other things of this kind. He dissents from them, however, in this: he does not say that these separated principles are diverse entities, but that they are in fact one principle, which is God” (In De divinis nominibus cap. 5, lect. 1, 634). In LC, prop. 3 (ed. Safffrey, 20, l.16): “cum Deus sit ipsum esse et ipsa essentia bonitatis, quidquid pertinent ad perfectionem bonitatis et esse, totum ei essentialiter convenit, ut scilicet ipse sit essentia vitae et sapientiae et virtutis et ceterorum.” 762 Rudi A. te Velde either, but rather establishes unity in God (unitatem in Deo constituit).38 So the Muslim author of the Liber agrees with the Christian theologian on the point of unity in the divine realm. There is but one creative principle, Being itself, which is the cause of the being of all things. Aristotle agrees with this opinion (Metaph. II. For this reference, see note 26). However, a difficulty remains in the text of the Liber. Its author uses a phrase which suggests a mediated process of creation: “the first cause created the being of the soul with the mediation of an intelligence” (causa prima creavit esse animae mediante intelligentia). It cannot be the case, Aquinas emphasizes, that the soul receives her essential being from the first cause, which is “Being itself,” while it subsequently receives life and intelligence from other principles, “the first Life” and “the first Intelligence.” Although this is an interpretative possibility of the text, Aquinas makes it clear that the position of a hierarchy of divine causes, each of which has its own formal effect in things, must be rejected because it is contrary to “the truth as well as to the opinion of Aristotle.”39 A plurality of divine causes with respect to the constitution of sensible reality would result in individual substances being no longer essentially one: “If the soul had being from one thing and an intellectual nature from something else, it would follow that it would not be absolutely one. Therefore, one has to say that the soul not only has essence but also has intellectuality from the first cause. This accords with the opinion of Dionysius.”40 We see that Aquinas draws Dionysius and the author of the Liber into an accord with each other and with Aristotle. Both Dionysius and the author of the Liber grant to the first cause, God, the universality of causality in the sense that God is not only responsible for the being all things have in common but also for the essential difference of each thing’s being. Only in this way, by means of an understanding of the first cause as containing in itself the fullness of perfection (life, intelligence, power, etc.), can the intrinsic unity of created things be accounted for. In devi38 39 40 In LC, prop. 3 (ed. Saffrey, 20, l.21): “Et hoc sequitur Auctor huius libri. Non enim invenitur inducere aliquam multitudinem deitatis, sed unitatem in Deo constituit.” In LC, prop. 3 (ed. Saffrey, 23, l.21): “Sed etiam haec positio, si non sane intelligatur, repugnat veritati et sententiae Aristotelis qui arguit in III Metaphysicae contra Platonicos ponentes huiusmodi ordinem causarum separatarum secundum ea quae de individuis praedicantur.” In LC, prop. 3 (ed. Saffrey, 24, l.1): “... si ab alio haberet [anima] esse et ab alio naturam intellectivam sequeretur quod non esset unum simpliciter; oportet ergo dicere quod, a prima causa a qua habet essentiam, habet etiam intellectualitatem. Et hoc concordat sententiae Dionysii….” Aquinas’s Aristotelian Science of Metaphysics 763 ating from pagan Platonism, the author of the Liber is found to be in agreement with Dionysius and with the position of Aristotle with respect to the unity in the realm of the divine: This accords with the opinion of Dionysius, which we quoted above: that good itself, being itself, life itself, and wisdom itself are not different but one and the same thing, which is God, from whom things derive their existence, their life and their understanding, as he shows in the same place. So, too, in Book XII of the Metaphysics, Aristotle attributes to God both understanding and living, saying that he is life and intelligence, so that he excludes the previously mentioned Platonic positions.41 Conclusion We started our inquiry into the “Aristotelianism” of Aquinas with the debate about the unicity of substantial form. What was philosophically at stake in this discussion is explained by Aquinas by reducing its underlying principles to the methods of Aristotle and Plato, respectively. It is characteristic of Aristotle’s method that he proceeds ex sensibilibus while Plato proceeds ex rationibus intelligibilibus. This approach led Plato to posit the separate existence of the species of things, which, according to Aristotle, results in the loss of the ontological integrity of sensible reality. The Platonic order of separate (abstract) principles cannot do justice to the unity of particular and composed substances. For Aquinas, as for Aristotle, the ontological integrity of sensible nature as such is at stake here. By rejecting the Platonic doctrine of separate forms Aristotle intends to reassert nature in its rightful position as something which can be the object of a distinct philosophical science: physics. Physics is the science of the categorical domain of nature, of particular realities such as ‘man’, ‘horse’, ‘tree’, which do not exist apart from their individual instances. Now, although physics may be the most familiar science to us, it is not the most fundamental one; insofar as its object—nature—participates in being, physics depends on a prior and more universal science of being, in which it is shown that the domain of nature is not all there is, but 41 In LC, prop. 3 (ed. Saffrey, 24, l.6): “Et hoc concordat sententiae Dionysii supra positae, scilicet quod non aliud sit ipsum bonum, ipsum esse, et ipsa vita et ipsa sapientia, sed unum et idem quod est Deus, a quo derivatur in res et quod sint et quod vivant et quod intelligent, ut ipse ibidem ostendit. Unde et Aristoteles, in XII Metaphysicae, signanter Deo attribuit et intelligere et vivere, dicens quod ipse est vita et intelligentia, ut excludat praedictas platonicas positiones.” 764 Rudi A. te Velde points beyond itself to a transcendent principle of the whole of nature. Understanding that, and how sensible nature refers to a super-sensible reality as its cause, requires a transcendental perspective of thought with regard to the maxime communia. Following what Aquinas regarded as a genuine Aristotelian way of reasoning (cf. book II of the Metaphysics) these common features of all things—in particular their being and goodness—must be reduced to one common cause which has the fullness of being: ipsum esse. This offers fruitful possibilities for a revised Platonism within the Aristotelian framework of the science of metaphysics. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 765–785 765 Communion for the Divorced and Remarried: Why Revisionists in Moral Theology Should Reject Kasper’s Proposal M ats W ahlberg Umeå University Umeå, Sweden Introduction C ardinal W alter K asper ’ s proposal for admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion has been in the limelight for some time now.1 It played a significant role in the process of preparation for the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops last year, and can be expected to figure in the discussions of the Fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops this year. The proposal is similar to earlier proposals presented by Kasper and others from the 1970s and onwards,2 but today a large number of bishops seem to be positive toward the general thrust of the argument. There 1 2 The proposal was outlined in Kasper’s address to the extraordinary Consistory of Cardinals on Feb 20, 2014. An English translation of the address is available in the small book The Gospel of the Family (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2014). For example, Karl Lehmann, “Indissolubility of Marriage and Pastoral Care of the Divorced Who Remarry,” Communio: International Catholic Review 1 (1974): 219–42; Walter Kasper, Theology of Christian Marriage (New York: Crossroad, 1981); Oskar Saier, Karl Lehmann, and Walter Kasper, “Pastoral Ministry: The Divorced and Remarried,” in Marriage: Readings in Moral Theology No. 15, ed. Charles E. Curran and Julie Hanlon Rubio (New York: Paulist Press, 2009), 380–96. For an overview of the history of the debate about Communion for the divorced and remarried, see Nicholas J. Healy, “The Merciful Gift of Indissolubility and the Question of Pastoral Care for Civilly Divorced and Remarried Catholics,” Communio: International Catholic Review 31 (2014): 306–330. 766 Mats Wahlberg are other, more radical views about how to deal with the situation of the divorced and civilly remarried in circulation,3 but the characteristic feature of Kasper’s proposal is that it insists on preserving the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage, while recommending a change in the pastoral praxis of the Church. Such a change is motivated, according to Kasper, by the Church’s duty to reflect Christ’s mercy.4 The mercy Kasper appeals to, however, is not supposed to be a “deceptive mercy” that—in the words of Pope Francis—“binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them”.5 Kasper emphasizes that “the mercy of God . . . is no cheap grace, which dispenses with conversion,” and he insists that repentance is a necessary condition for admission to the sacraments for divorced and remarried Catholics: “For the one who repents, forgiveness is possible. If forgiveness is possible for the murderer, then it is also possible for the adulterer.”6 Normally, conversion and repentance are inextricably linked with a firm intention to change one’s behavior—for the murderer, not to murder again, and for the adulterer not to continue with the adultery.7 If the Church were to give absolution to the murderer and the adulterer without requiring a change of behavior, we would clearly be talking about a form of “cheap grace.” When it comes to divorced and remarried persons, however, there is a special problem. Their situation may, arguably, make it extremely difficult or impossible to do what Catholic 3 4 5 6 7 For example, Theodore Mackin, “The International Theological Commission and Indissolubility,” in Divorce and Remarriage: Religious and Psychological Perspectives, ed. William R. Roberts (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1990); Edward Schillebeeckx, “Christian Marriage and the Reality of Complete Marital Breakdown,” in Catholic Divorce: The Deception of Annulments, ed. Pierre Hégy and Joseph Martos (New York: Continuum, 2000), 82–107; Michael G. Lawler, “Divorce and Remarriage in the Catholic Church: Ten Theses,” New Theology Review 12 (2013): 48–63. Walter Kasper, “The Message of Mercy: What Does Mercy Mean for the Life and Mission of the Church?,” America: The National Catholic Review 211 (2014). See also Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life (New York: Paulist Press, 2014). Pope Francis, “Speech at the Conclusion of the Synod,” Vatican Radio, Oct 18, 2014. Kasper, The Gospel of the Family, 32. The Council of Trent defines repentance or contrition as “sorrow of the soul and the detestation of the sin committed, together with the resolve not to sin any more. This disposition of contrition was necessary at all times for the attainment of the remission of sins” (Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed., ed. Peter Hünermann [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012], §1679). Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 767 doctrine seems to require of them—to end the second marriage relationship, or at least the sexual aspect of it—without causing harm to other people, for example the children of the second marriage. This means that some divorced and remarried persons face a dilemma. They are required to get out of an intimate relationship for moral reasons, but responsibilities contracted in the context of this relationship would make it morally problematic to withdraw from it. The centrality of dilemma-situations of this kind for Kasper’s proposal is clearly reflected in the conditions that he lists for admitting divorced and remarried persons to the sacraments: If a divorced and remarried person is truly sorry that he or she has failed in the first marriage, if the commitments from the first marriage are clarified and a return is definitively out of the question, if he or she cannot undo the commitments that were assumed in the second civil marriage without new guilt . . . do we then have to refuse or can we refuse him or her the sacrament of penance and communion, after a period of reorientation?8 If the italicized sentence—the one that points to the moral dilemma— were deleted, Kasper would be unable to defend his proposal against the accusation that it encourages a “cheap grace” that ignores the need for true repentance and conversion. With the sentence included, however, he can argue that the remarried person’s hands are tied, and that the irregular situation in which he or she lives is not an obstacle to obtaining absolution and Holy Communion. This kind of view was also embraced (but later abandoned) by Joseph Ratzinger, who claimed that “the granting of communion cannot here depend on an act that is either immoral or practically speaking impossible [namely, to end the civil marriage, or practice abstinence within it].”9 The fact that a moral dilemma is fundamental to Kasper’s case means that his proposal must be evaluated from a moral-theological perspective. 8 9 Kasper, The Gospel of the Family, 32 (my italics). Joseph Ratzinger, “Zur Frage nach der Unauflöslichkeit der Ehe: Bemerkungen zum dogmengeschichtlichen Befund und zu seiner gegenwärtigen Bedeutung,” in Ehe und Ehescheidung: Diskussion unter Christen, ed. Franz Heinrich und Volker Eid (München: Kösel Verlag, 1972), 35–56. Translation by Joseph Bolin, 2011, http://www.pathsoflove.com/texts/ratzinger-indissolubility-marriage/ (accessed Nov 18, 2014). Later, Ratzinger changed his position on the issue of Communion to divorced and remarried persons in response to Familiaris Consortio (see “Church, Pope and Gospel [Letter to the Editor],” The Tablet 26 (1991). 768 Mats Wahlberg This is what I intend to do in the present article. Moral evaluations of Kasper’s proposal and similar proposals are not lacking, of course, but most of the criticism that the proposals have received in this area is based on presuppositions that can be described as “traditionalist.”10 The critics presume—with reference to the Church’s tradition—that some acts are “intrinsically evil” in the sense that they are always gravely immoral, regardless of surrounding circumstances and further intentions on the part of the agent. The act of having sexual intercourse with someone who is not one’s legitimate spouse (such as a person whom one has civilly married after a previous divorce) is such an act. The existence of intrinsically evil acts, and the identification of extra-marital sex as such an act, have been clearly confirmed by the contemporary magisterium and must be considered authoritative teaching. However, many of those who defend Cardinal Kasper’s proposal disagree with the magisterium in this respect, which means that they embrace “revisionist” theories of various kinds in moral theology.11 It is therefore worthwhile to evaluate Kasper’s proposal by means of a method that does not take “traditionalist” presuppositions (such as the existence of intrinsically evil acts) for granted. Below I will suggest and apply a method of this kind. The method does not foreclose the possibility that the intentions behind and the circumstances surrounding the extra-marital sexual activity of divorced and remarried persons might affect the moral status of their behavior so that it no longer constitutes a moral obstacle to receiving the sacraments. In what follows, I will present the method and simultaneously specify what I mean by “traditionalism” and “revisionism” in moral theology.12 10 11 12 For example, Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and William E. May, “Indissolubility, Divorce and Holy Communion,” New Blackfriars 75 (1994): 321–330; Velasio De Paolis, “The Divorced and Civilly Remarried and the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance,” in Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church, ed. Robert Dodaro (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014), 181–209, especially 191–201. For “revisionism” in moral theology, see Servais Pinckaers, O.P., “Revisionist Understandings of Actions in the Wake of Vatican II,” in The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 236–72. A note of clarification: Kasper’s proposal addresses two kinds of “situations” that need to be dealt with. The first concerns those Catholics who are “subjectively convinced in conscience that their irreparably broken, previous marriage was never valid,” even though the juridical evidence for this may be lacking (Kasper, The Gospel of the Family, 28). The second situation concerns those cases in which the validity of the first marriage is not in question. Ladislas Orsy has coined the Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 769 The Method Everybody agrees that adultery is gravely immoral. Most moral theologians would also agree that if you have committed adultery, you should not receive Eucharistic Communion unless you have ended the adulterous relationship and resolved not to do it again. This I will, at least initially, take as common ground. So the moral-theological question that is actualized by Kasper’s proposal is not whether unrepentant adulterers can receive Communion in good conscience. The question, instead, is whether people who are divorced and remarried (and whose first marriage is valid and consummated) must always, and necessarily, be counted as adulterers. Only if this question receives a negative answer is it reasonable to consider Communion for divorced and remarried persons. Some proponents of “fundamental option”-theories might express disagreement here. It could be argued that the choice to commit adultery does not necessarily change one’s fundamental orientation towards God, and that unrepentant adulterers could therefore be admitted to Holy Communion. This argument might have a shred of plausibility if it is applied to single instances of adultery committed during shorter periods of time. However, it has no plausibility at all if applied to a person’s decision to commit adultery perpetually. If living in a civil marriage after a divorce is indeed adultery, and if a person who knows this nevertheless chooses to continue with the adultery for the rest of his/her life, then this long-term commitment can hardly fail to have an impact on the fundamental orientation of that person. So the crucial question, also for “fundamental-option” theorists, is whether living in a civil marriage after a divorce is adultery, or not. This is, in any case, how Kasper himself seems to pose the problem. With reference to a magisterial statement from 1994, according to which divorced and remarried persons can receive spiritual Communion, Kasper argues that this statement “raises questions”: “For the one who receives spiritual communion is one with Jesus Christ. How can he or she then be in contradiction to Christ’s commandment? Why, then, term “conflict situations” for the first category (where the internal and external forums are in conflict) and “hardship situations” for the second category (when the previous marriage is presumably valid) (Ladislas Orsy, “Intolerable Marriage Situations: Conflict between External and Internal Forum,” Jurist 30 [1970]: 10). My focus in this article is only on “hardship situations.” The question of which authority (individual conscience or ecclesiastical tribunal) is to decide when it is appropriate for a person to receive Communion is logically secondary to the question about under what conditions it is appropriate for a person to receive Communion. 770 Mats Wahlberg can’t he or she also receive sacramental communion?”13 So Kasper’s argument is not that those who contradict Christ’s commandment against adultery can receive Communion anyway. Instead, he questions whether Christ’s commandment against adultery is always applicable to the sexual behavior of divorced and remarried persons. For “traditionalists,” this issue is clear cut. The morality of a given act depends primarily on the “object” of that act, where “object” is understood to mean the act itself in the sense of “a freely chosen kind of behavior” or (in another formulation) “the proximate end of a deliberate decision.” Some objects are “intrinsically evil”: “There exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object.”14 Having sexual intercourse with a person who is not one’s spouse belongs in this category. This means that all instances of this kind of behavior are morally wrong, and should be classified either as “adultery” (if you are married) or as “fornication” (if you are unmarried). So divorced and remarried people live in a state of persistent adultery. For “revisionists,” the issue is less clear. According to Joseph Fuchs, “A moral judgement is legitimately found only under a simultaneous consideration of the three elements (actions, circumstance, purpose), premoral in themselves.”15 The three elements that Fuchs mentions are usually called the fontes moralitatis or “sources of morality,” and they are found in the writings of St Thomas Aquinas.16 The three “sources” are, first, the act itself (or “object”), second, the intention, purpose, or end of the act, and third, the circumstances surrounding the act. The idea that the morality of an act flow from these three sources has provided a common framework for much of the post-conciliar debate between “traditionalists” and “revisionists” in moral theology. The post-conciliar debate has to an important extent been about how the three sources are constituted and related to each other. While traditionalists claim that the “object” can be determined and morally Kasper, The Gospel of the Family, 30. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993), §78, 80. For the history of the debate, see Servais Pinckaers, “A Historical Perspective on Intrinsically Evil Acts,” in The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 185–235. 15 Joseph Fuchs, “The Absoluteness of Moral Terms,” in Readings in Moral Theology No. I: Moral Norms and Catholic Tradition, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard McCormick (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 121. 16 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18. 13 14 Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 771 evaluated in itself, independently of the agent’s intention and the particular circumstances surrounding the act, revisionists deny this and argue for a more holistic view that “expands the object” so that it includes intentions and particular circumstances, most importantly the foreseeable effects or consequences of the action. If a revisionist conception of the moral object is accepted, then the moral evaluation of the behavior of a divorced and remarried person might conceivably yield a different verdict than that which “traditionalists” typically reach. Since it might not be possible for a divorced and remarried person to get out of the second marriage without causing harm to the second spouse and their common children, it is possible to argue that the circumstances that such a person is in affect the moral status of her behavior, so that it does not count as adultery (that is, as gravely immoral). The crucial factor that determines the moral status of a certain behavior is, for many revisionists, whether the person who exhibits it has “proportionate reason” to act as she does. “Proportionalism,” in this sense, was the original form of revisionism after Vatican II, and it is still relevant in the contemporary debate. Dana Dillon has pointed out that both the traditionalist and the revisionist (or proportionalist) approaches are “rooted in arguments about the relationship between the object and the other fonts of morality, especially the end.”17 The availability of such a common framework for moral evaluation of acts—the framework of the three fontes moralitatis—should be seen as an important asset for Catholic moral theology. It might be true that, since the heyday of the so-called proportionalist debates, “the world of Catholic moral theology . . . has now sorted itself into two worlds, one that focuses on acts, and another that focuses on agents.”18 It is very questionable, however, if a polarization between actand agent-centered approaches to ethics is fruitful. As Dillon points out, what we do shapes who we are, and every act matters in this respect.19 A framework for act-analysis is clearly needed also in an agent-centered approach to ethics. The matrix of the three fontes moralitatis, moreover, can be adapted to accommodate concerns about the particularity and context of the agent, as the work of the proportionalists has shown. I therefore suggest that the question posed above—whether living in a second marriage after a divorce can be distinguished from adultery—can Dana L Dillon, “Expanding in a Different Direction: Reclaiming the Twofold Nature of the Moral Object,” The Heythrop Journal 53 (2012): 587. 18 Ibid., 585. 19 Ibid., 591. 17 772 Mats Wahlberg be fruitfully discussed in terms of the three sources of morality, provided that no specific construal of the relationship between the sources, or their respective relevance for moral evaluation, is taken for granted. I will now give a general description of the method whereby I will address this question. I ask the reader for some patience if the description is a bit abstract and not immediately transparent. The method will be much more easily understood when it is applied to some concrete materials in the next section. The method proceeds by way of a thought-experiment, and the first step is to construct a possible scenario (Scenario A) that everybody agrees would count as a clear case of adultery. The second step is to compare this scenario with another imagined scenario that describes the ideal-typical situation and behavior of a divorced and remarried person (Scenario B). The comparison between the two scenarios is to be made in terms of the three fontes moralitatis, which means that it should take into account the object, intention, and circumstances (including foreseeable consequences) of the behavior that is exhibited by the protagonists in scenarios A and B, respectively. The three sources of morality are supposed to exhaust the morally relevant features of any act. Traditionalists and revisionists, however, have different views about how to delimit the object of the act, as we have seen. Traditionalists want to construe it more narrowly than revisionists, who argue for an expansion of the object so that it includes much of what the traditionalists view as pertaining to the other two fonts. This debate between traditionalists and revisionists need not concern us here, however, because the method I am suggesting takes into account all three fonts of morality, and does not presume any particular understanding of how the moral object is to be conceived. This is how a comparison between scenarios A and B can help us determine whether Scenario B (the ideal-typical behavior of a divorced and remarried person) constitutes adultery or not. Scenario A (a clear case of adultery) can be imaginatively modified so that the protagonist’s actions (however described) and intentions, as well as the relevant circumstances in which they occur, match the protagonist’s actions, intentions, and circumstances in Scenario B. If this modification is done, so that the actions, intentions and circumstances of the two protagonists are the same in both scenarios, then everybody must agree—regardless of how one understands the moral object—that scenarios A and B are morally equivalent. So if A is a case of adultery, then so is B. The question, however, is if it is possible to modify Scenario A in Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 773 the way suggested without changing it so drastically that it would no longer (uncontroversially) count as a case of adultery. This remains to be seen. However, if Scenario A can be modified so as to match Scenario B with respect to all three fonts of morality, and if this modification can be done without causing us to reverse our initial verdict that Scenario A is a case of adultery, then anybody must admit that Scenario B is also a case of adultery. Since Scenario B is an ideal-typical description of the situation and behavior of a divorced and remarried person, it would then be difficult to claim that divorced and remarried persons do not, in the ideal-typical case, commit adultery. Of course, unless Scenario A is modified so as to become an exact copy of Scenario B, there must be some circumstances that differ between the two scenarios. Theoretically, it can always be argued that those circumstances are morally relevant, and that they constitute the difference between adultery and non-adultery. It remains to be seen, however, whether such an argument can be credibly pursued. It is clear that the method I have suggested does not take “traditionalist” assumptions about how to morally evaluate acts for granted. In fact, the method proceeds from “revisionist” assumptions. The method assumes that any difference between the two scenarios (A and B) could, in principle, constitute a reason to regard the scenarios as morally different—Scenario A as a case of adultery, and Scenario B as a case of non-adultery. Traditionalists would not accept this. They would say that a difference that merely concerns the intentions of the agent or (non-essential) circumstances of the situation could not justify the judgment that A constitutes adultery and B does not, if the moral object (narrowly conceived) is the same between the two scenarios. The reason why the method proceeds from revisionist premises is that, from a traditionalist perspective, the issue is already settled. It remains to be seen, however, whether the moral acceptability/tolerability of civil unions for divorced persons can be defended on the basis of revisionist assumptions. Comparing Scenarios A and B In scenario A, we imagine a man, John, who lives a double life. He is sacramentally and validly married to Jane, and they have one child. However, in another part of the city, John has also a second family consisting of Veronica and two children fathered by John. John manages to spend quite a lot of time with Veronica’s family on weekdays, when John’s wife Jane believes that John is out of town for work. John has 774 Mats Wahlberg dedicated the weekends to spending time with Jane and his official family. Jane does not know about John’s other family, even though she has been married to John for ten years, and even though John has had a relationship with Veronica for seven years. The reason why John is with his mistress Veronica is because he loves her, and because they have common children. If John would leave Veronica, not only would she suffer, but the children would also suffer because of the breakdown of their family. This scenario is, of course, completely realistic, and many real-world examples of a similar kind can be found. I presume that nobody would hesitate to classify John as an adulterer, and his behavior as adulterous. Scenario B represents a more common situation. Kurt is married to Agnes, their marriage is valid, but Kurt has divorced Agnes and civilly married Louise. He has one child with Agnes, and two with Louise. The reason why Kurt divorced Agnes was that their relationship was very disharmonious, and the reason why he now is with Louise is that he loves her, and because they have children together. If Kurt would leave Louise, not only would she suffer, but their common children would also suffer because of the breakdown of their family. Let us now compare these two scenarios with respect to the acts, intentions, and circumstances of their protagonists (John and Kurt). The kind of behavior that qualifies John as an adulterer is primarily (but not exclusively) the sexual behavior, including (but not limited to) acts of actual sexual intercourse with Veronica. A traditionalist would hold that the moral object of John’s sexual behavior is adequately captured by saying that John choses to have sexual intercourse with Veronica, who is not his wife. The fact that Veronica is not John’s wife is a circumstance that is constitutive of—an integral part of—the object of the act. For a traditionalist, John’s intention is of secondary importance. Since the object of John’s sexual behavior is intrinsically evil, it does not matter if John’s intentions are good. The object itself is sufficient for making the behavior immoral (adulterous). The same goes for the (non-essential) circumstances. A revisionist, on the other hand, might be inclined to include John’s intentions and all the morally relevant circumstances in the (expanded) object of John’s behavior, so that the object could perhaps be described in something like the following way: John chooses to have sexual intercourse with Veronica, who is not his wife, because he loves Veronica and wants to preserve his second family. Theoretically, it could be argued, from a revisionist point of view, Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 775 that the consequences that would follow if John were to terminate his sexual relationship with Veronica are very negative for the children, and that John therefore has “proportionate reason” to continue that relationship. I believe, however, that few, if any, revisionists would be willing to take this position. Richard McCormick clearly would not. With respect to the famous case of Mrs. Bergmeier—who was told that the only way for her to be released from unjust detention was to become pregnant— McCormick argues that it was wrong for her to sleep with her jailer.20 This shows that McCormick does not view his revisionist moral theory as condoning extra-marital sex for purely utilitarian reasons—not even in extreme circumstances. Even though there are moralists who disagree with McCormick on the Bergmeier case,21 this in itself does not mean that they would approve of John’s behavior. The suffering that would afflict John’s children in the case of a separation between him and Veronica would not be nearly as extreme as the suffering that afflicted Mrs. Bergmeier and her family as a consequence of her imprisonment. Since most revisionist moral theologians want to dissociate themselves from crude forms of utilitarianism, I will assume that nobody, or very few, would deny that John’s behavior is gravely immoral (that is, adulterous). If we turn to the case of the divorced and remarried Kurt, it is apparent that Kurt’s actions—as described above—and the intentions behind those actions, are exactly the same as John’s. Kurt as well as John has sexual intercourse with a woman who is not his (legitimate) wife, and Kurt as well as John does it because he loves his new partner and wants to preserve his second family. If the morality of a certain kind of behavior could be determined just by looking at the object of that behavior (narrowly understood), and on the intentions behind it, then we would have to say that Kurt is an adulterer as much as John. However, for revisionists, even the non-essential circumstances22 that surround an act can change the moral species of that act. A circumstance that is morally relevant in this case is the consequences that would probably follow if John and Kurt, respectively, were to terminate their sexual relation with their second partners (Veronica and Louise, respectively). It 20 21 22 Richard A. McCormick, “A Commentary on the Commentaries,” in Doing Evil to Achieve Good, ed. Richard McCormick and Paul Ramsey (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978). For example, Sanford S. Levy, “Richard McCormick and Proportionate Reason,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 13 (1985): 276. “Essential circumstances” are circumstances that are constitutive of the act itself, while non-essential circumstances are not. 776 Mats Wahlberg is clear, however, that in this respect, John’s and Kurt’s circumstances are strikingly similar. By terminating his adulterous relationship with Veronica, John would be responsible for splitting up a family with two children. By terminating his relationship with his second wife Louise, Kurt would be responsible for splitting up a family with two children. The fact that John, because of his double-life, must share his time between two families is irrelevant in this context. There are many fathers who, for work related reasons, spend half of their time or more away from home. These kinds of families are also true families, with a moral value as great as any. There is, however, a second circumstance that is morally relevant and might be appealed to in order to morally distinguish the case of Kurt from the case of John. This circumstance is the fact that John’s situation depends on deception. John’s wife Jane does not know about John’s second family, and John is certainly culpable not only for his sexual behavior, but also for hiding the truth from his wife. This deception would, furthermore, be impossible without a substantial amount of lying on John’s part. Kurt, on the other hand, does not need to lie, and his family situation does not depend on deception at all. Can this factor—the deception on John’s part—be the circumstance that makes John an adulterer, and which distinguishes him from Kurt? It cannot. In order to demonstrate this, I will modify the story about John. Suppose that Jane, after some years, exposes John’s double-life. She discovers the existence of Veronica and of John’s two illegitimate children. Jane, however, is a very magnanimous and liberal-minded person. So she accepts that John has another woman, and that he spends time with his other family during weekdays. Would this turn of events mean that John is no longer an adulterer? Not according to any reasonable understanding of Catholic marriage. The situation of John is now very much like bigamy, and unless bigamy and other forms of polygamy are to be accepted as compatible with a Catholic understanding of marriage, John’s behavior must still be described as adulterous, despite the fact that no deception whatsoever is involved. One circumstance that distinguishes the behavior of Kurt from the behavior of John is the fact that Kurt currently only sleeps with one woman, while John alternates between two. Is this the silver bullet we are looking for—a circumstance that is present only in John’s case, and that explains why John’s behavior is adulterous? Perhaps, but we can avoid this silver bullet by modifying, again, the story about John. Suppose that John’s wife Jane suffers an accident and Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 777 becomes paralyzed from the waist down. As a result, she becomes incapable of having a sex-life. Jane’s condition is permanent, and John and Jane decide never to have sex again. However, John continues—with Jane’s permission—to have regular sex with Veronica. Is John’s behavior, in this modified scenario, still adulterous? I cannot see how it could fail to be. But in this scenario, John does not alternate between having sex with two women. He only has sex with one—his mistress. If John is still an adulterer despite the fact that he does not alternate between two sex partners, then we have ruled out “alternating between two sex partners” as a circumstance that can explain why John is an adulterer even though Kurt is not. But maybe John’s adultery consists in the fact that he lives with two women alternately (which Kurt does not). This suggestion depends on an ambiguity in the meaning of “lives.” It is obviously morally unproblematic for a married man to alternate between living—in the literal sense—with his wife and with a woman who is not his wife. A married man might, for instance, live with his sister during the week for work-related reasons, or because he feels responsible for helping her raise her many children. Such a man is not an adulterer. And he does not become an adulterer even if he has a relationship to his sister that is characterized by interpersonal love, intimacy, and mutuality either. If there is a moral problem with “living” with two women alternately, as John does, it must be because his relationships with them have an erotic dimension. But suppose that John’s relationship to his wife, after her accident, is not only sexless but also erotically dead. No erotic feelings exist between the spouses, so John’s erotic life is restricted to his relationship with his mistress Veronica. Is John thereby, in his present state, not an adulterer, because only one of his relationships has an erotic dimension? This would be a false conclusion. Even a very bad marriage is still a marriage. Those who think otherwise, and who argue that valid and consummated marriages that “die” erotically or emotionally thereby cease to exist, are explicitly rejecting the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. In this essay, my business is not to discuss this position, which is clearly different from Kasper’s. Let us try another angle. Could the factor that morally distinguishes the situation of John from that of Kurt be the existence of a conflict of loyalties in John’s case? Kurt can be completely loyal to his second wife, because his relationship to his first wife has ended. But John has to split his loyalty between two women. It could be argued that this is what makes John an adulterer. 778 Mats Wahlberg This is a problematic suggestion, because people’s loyalties are often split. A man might feel a conflict of loyalty between his wife and his mother. It can be argued that this makes him a rather bad husband, but it certainly does not make him an adulterer. So the fact that John’s loyalty has to be divided between two women cannot explain why he—and not Kurt—is an adulterer. The same thing holds for a conflict of devotion. A man can be equally devoted to his wife and to his son, and this does not make him an adulterer. If the question is devotion that includes an erotic dimension, then it has already been answered above. Finally, could it be that John is an adulterer because he initiated his relationship with Veronica in a very dishonest way, while Kurt played with open cards from the start? It is certainly the case that John’s behavior in the past was more culpable than Kurt’s, because John initially kept his wife Jane in the dark about his other woman, Veronica. However, what matters here is not what happened in the past. Cardinal Kasper admits that people who have remarried after a divorce have done something very culpable, something that constitutes a violation of Christ’s commandment. However, this does not—according to Kasper—entail that people who have lived in a second, civil marriage for a long time are currently violating Christ’s commandment by staying with their second spouse and honoring the responsibilities they have contracted towards their second family. So the past behavior of Kurt and John is not relevant in the present context. It is not possible for defenders of Kasper’s proposal to appeal to the past behavior of John in order to explain why John is (currently) an adulterer, even though Kurt (currently) is not. Results In the preceding section I have suggested a number of features that are present in Scenario A but are missing in Scenario B, and that could potentially—given revisionist presumptions—explain why Scenario A is a case of adultery, while Scenario B is not. Some of these features have been rejected because it is too far-fetched to assume that they could, by themselves or in combination, be constitutive of adultery. For other features, it has been possible to modify Scenario A so that the features in question are no longer part of it. The modifications I have made, however, cannot reasonably be said to have changed the moral species of Scenario A. None of the modifications have altered the scenario so profoundly that it no longer counts as a case of adultery. I contend that Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 779 this is true both when one looks at the modified Scenario A with traditionalist and with revisionist eyes. Let me summarize the main points of the comparison above: John’s and Kurt’s behavior, narrowly described, is the same. Both are validly married, but they are both in sexual relationships with women who are not their (legitimate) wives. The reason why they behave this way—the main intentions behind their behavior—is that they love and want to express their love for their second partners, take responsibility for the family they have with them, and enjoy these loving relationships. So the (narrowly understood) “object” of John’s and Kurt’s behavior, and the main, important intentions behind it, are the same. Moreover, the consequences that would follow if John or Kurt were to end their relationships with their second partners are the same. Taking this course of action would hurt their partners and cause harm to the children. In this respect, John and Kurt are in exactly the same circumstances. They face the same moral dilemma if they want to regularize their situations. A difference between scenarios A and B, however, is that John’s relationship-situation (his having two partners) depends on deception. But this circumstance is accidental, and can be changed. In the modified Scenario A1, both John’s wife and his mistress are aware of the situation, and accept it. This modification, however, does not entail that John is no longer an adulterer. The circumstance that John alternates between having sex (or other erotic exchanges) with two different women, while Kurt only has it with one woman, is also accidental. In the modified Scenario A2, John no longer sleeps with (or have any erotic exchanges with) his wife, but only with his mistress. So John does not alternate between having sex with two women. This modification, however, does not mean that John is not an adulterer. The differentiating circumstance we are looking for cannot—as we saw—be that John’s situation involves a conflict of ultimate loyalties or devotion, while Kurt’s situation does not. Conflicts of loyalties or devotion are not, on any reasonable view, sufficient conditions for adultery. Finally, let us keep all the modifications I have done to Scenario A so far, and add a final modification: the circumstance that John has moved away from Jane. In Scenario A3, John lives with his mistress Veronica full time, and this is accepted by his wife Jane. John and Jane have very little contact with each other, and only in order to make arrangements for their common 780 Mats Wahlberg child.23 Is this scenario a case of adultery on John’s part? To claim that it is not entails that married people can live and sleep with whomever they want, on the condition that their spouses allow it, and on the condition that they do not simultaneously live and sleep with their spouses. But this is surely an absurd understanding of marriage, on all accounts. If it is this hard to find a differentiating circumstance that justifies the verdict that John is an adulterer but not Kurt, we must ask why many people would be inclined to deliver precisely this verdict. I believe that this is because many people would see the fact that Kurt and Agnes are divorced, while John and Jane are not, as the decisive difference. If one believes that a divorce dissolves the bond of marriage, then this is a very reasonable view. Kurt and Agnes are no longer married, while John and Jane are, and this is why John is an adulterer and Kurt is not. But if one—with Cardinal Kasper—does not admit that a divorce dissolves the bond of marriage, then one cannot appeal to the fact that Kurt is divorced in order to explain why he is not an adulterer. It would be irrational to hold both that the occurrence of a divorce leaves the bond of marriage intact and that the occurrence of a divorce can, by itself, constitute the difference between adultery and non-adultery. There is, of course, another difference between the two scenarios, and this is that Kurt and Louise are civilly married, while John and his second partner Veronica are not. But the contraction of a civil marriage that involves a previously married person is also, like divorce, a juridical act whose validity the Church does not accept. Since Kasper concurs with the Church in this respect, he cannot appeal to the fact that Kurt and Louise are civilly married in order to distinguish the situation of Kurt from the situation of John. An invalid marriage act cannot constitute the difference between adultery and non-adultery. But maybe this is a premature conclusion. It could be argued that the fact that someone has contracted a civil marriage shows that this person is committed for the long term to his partner, and that he is prepared to take responsibility for their common children. A relationship confirmed by a civil marriage could therefore be seen as having a higher moral value than a merely informal relationship of cohabitation. It could hence be argued that the (officially confirmed) relationship between Kurt and Louise is morally different from, and superior to, the (informal) relationship between John and Veronica. Even though the Catholic Church 23 In order to accommodate the conditions that Kasper lists in The Gospel of the Family, 32, let us also say that a return to Jane is “definitively out of the question” for John, because Jane is now involved with a new man. Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 781 does not recognize the civil marriage between Kurt and Louse as valid, the Church could nevertheless acknowledge that their contraction of such a marriage has moral significance as a sign of commitment. But this argument will not stand. The fact that Kurt and Louise are civilly married does not entail that Kurt is more committed to Louise than John is to Veronica, and the morally significant circumstance must surely be the actual level of commitment in the relationships rather than whether a specific sign of commitment (civil marriage) is present. It would be absurd if the Catholic Church would decide to measure the level of commitment in an irregular relationship only, or primarily, by reference to the occurrence of a certain juridical act which the Church herself strictly forbids and views as a violation of the bond of marriage. It would be absurd, in other words, if the Church required that a divorced person must perform a canonically illegal act as the only proper way to display commitment to his/her new partner. So if the Church is to determine the moral value of a certain irregular relationship on the basis of the level of commitment that exists between the parties, the Church must acknowledge the possibility that couples who are not civilly married, but who have stayed together for many years and have common children, can be equally or more committed to each other compared to couples that have contracted a civil marriage. This means that we can elaborate on Scenario A once more and stipulate that John is as committed to Veronica as Kurt is to Louise, despite the fact that John and Veronica are not civilly married. Is John still an adulterer, even though his level of long-term commitment equals that of Kurt? Of course he is. A married person’s strong commitment to his mistress does not make him less of an adulterer—if anything, it makes him more of an adulterer. But then it cannot be the case that Kurt’s long-term commitment to Louise prevents him from being classified as an adulterer. We have found that there are only two circumstances that distinguish the situation of Kurt (in Scenario B) from the situation of John (in Scenario A3): namely, the circumstances that Kurt has procured a divorce and contracted a new, civil marriage, while John has done neither of these things. To continue to claim, in this situation, that Kurt is not an adulterer even though John is, entails a denial of either the indissolubility or the exclusivity24 of the marriage relationship. Since the mere fact that a divorce has occurred and a new civil marriage has been 24 By the ”exclusivity” of the marriage relationship, I mean the monogamous nature of that relationship. 782 Mats Wahlberg contracted makes it possible for Kurt to have sex with a woman who is not his wife (without him being counted as an adulterer), it must either be the case that the divorce has dissolved his previous marriage (denial of indissolubility), or that his previous marriage is compatible with his having sex with a woman who is not his wife (denial of exclusivity).25 This conclusion, together with the fact that Kasper’s proposal commits him to claiming that Kurt is not an adulterer, undermines Kasper’s contention that his proposal is merely “pastoral” and does not put in question the Catholic doctrine of marriage. Conclusion This investigation has shown that the ideal-typical sexual behavior of divorced and remarried persons (illustrated by Kurt) must be counted as adulterous by revisionists in moral theology as well as by traditionalists—provided that they subscribe to the indissolubility and exclusivity of marriage. The fact that divorced and remarried persons may confront a moral dilemma if they want to regularize their situation cannot be adduced as a reason to deny that the second, civil union is adulterous. John, in Scenario A3, faces exactly the same kind of dilemma. If we are to say that the existence of this type of dilemma obliterates the morally problematic (adulterous) character of the second, civil union for divorced and remarried persons, then we must—on pain of logical inconsistency— also admit that the presence of the same dilemma obliterates the morally problematic (adulterous) character of John’s relationship to Veronica in Scenario A3. Admitting the latter would mean that a married man can, with his wife’s permission, live with his mistress if leaving her would cause harm to some people. Rather than accepting this consequence, we should acknowledge the tragic character of the dilemma that confronts some divorced and remarried Catholics who want Holy Communion. Like most moral dilemmas, this one has no good solution. The least bad solution may be for the civilly married spouses to stay together for the sake of the children but take on the great sacrifice of abstaining from sexual relations. This is the Church’s official recommendation.26 Naturally, I agree with Healy that ”Indissolubility . . . includes and requires exclusivity” (Healy, “The Merciful Gift of Indissolubility,” 323–24). It is only for reasons of clarity that I have distingusihed between indissolubility and exclusivity above. 26 It has been argued that the relevance of the “brother-sister solution” (sexual abstinence) depends on an outdated “contractual” understanding of marriage, according to which the marriage contract primarily establishes mutual rights to sexual union oriented to procreation. The Second Vatican Council allegedly 25 Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 783 There are three logically possible moves that the defenders of Kasper’s proposal can make in response to the argument of the present study. First, and most implausibly, they can argue that John, despite appearances, is not an adulterer in Scenario A3, and so Kurt need not be seen as an adulterer either. Second, they can bite the bullet and claim that unrepentant adulterers should be admitted to Communion. Third, they can challenge my conclusion that Scenario A3 and Scenario B are morally equivalent. I cannot see how the first move can be defended without radically changing the Catholic understanding of what kind of behavior is compatible with being married. Revisionists who chose this move would have great difficulties to explain what distinguishes their moral reasoning from the crudest forms of utilitarianism. The first move seems to commit one to the claim that John can stay with his mistress, and that this does not constitute adultery, provided that John’s taking this course replaced that understanding with a “personalist” or “covenantal” understanding—marriage as “a partnership of all of life” (totius vitae consortium). As Himes and Coriden argue: “In the conciliar treatment of marriage interpersonal love, mutuality, and intimacy are as much a part of the nature of marriage as sexual intercourse. So why can all the qualities of the marital relationship be exercised in the second relationship, save sexual intercourse, and the first marriage not be contradicted?” (Kenneth R. Himes and James A. Coriden, “The Indissolubility of Marriage: Reasons to Reconsider,” Theological Studies 65 [2004]: 482.) The answer should be very obvious. In order to spell it out, we may imagine a married woman who has a twin sister. For work-related reasons, the woman lives with her twin during the weeks, and spends time with her husband only on weekends. The two sisters love each other and have a very intimate relation on the spiritual, emotional, psychological, financial and intellectual levels. Even though the relationship between the sisters is characterized by “interpersonal love, mutuality, and intimacy” (maybe more so than most marriages), it is essentially different from a marriage, and few people would view it as in any sense adulterous or morally problematic. The reason for this is the absence of any sexual dimension. Add a sexual dimension, and everything changes—the relationship could now be described as adulterous. This shows that a “personalist” understanding of marriage cannot be totally divorced from a more traditional characterization of marriage in terms of sexual union and procreation, unless we want to classify deep personal relationships between (e.g.) twin sisters as instances of adultery. The magisterium has, in my view, succeeded fairly well in keeping a personalist accent and the traditional emphasis together. Gaudium et Spes, for example, does not only present marriage as an intimate union of persons. The constitution also states that “by their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown” (Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, §48). 784 Mats Wahlberg of action will lead to less suffering for all the parties involved compared to alternative courses of action. While the first move undermines the very idea of Catholic marriage, the second move entails that the sacrament of penance is superfluous. If a person who knowingly violates God’s commandment and intends to continue to do so for the rest of his life can still be one with the Lord by fruitfully receiving him in the Eucharist, why is it ever necessary to repent and confess ones sins? Grave sin, apparently, is no obstacle for the most intimate communion with God. The second move, however, has sometimes been defended by an argument of the following kind. Why should civil remarriage after a divorce be singled out as a sin that merits official exclusion from Communion, when other unrepented sins of an equally or more serious character usually do not result in exclusion, even though these sins may be widely known? There are many answers to this question, but in the present context we need only note one thing. The mentioned argument does nothing to establish that a divorced and remarried person who decides to receive Communion does not thereby do something that is seriously wrong or harmful for his/her soul. The argument only claims that the Church should not actively prevent such a person from receiving Communion. This means that the argument is irrelevant in the present context. What Kasper wants is not to make it formally possible for divorced and remarried persons to do what they should not do. What Kasper is looking for is an acknowledgment that some divorced and remarried persons can receive Communion fruitfully and in good conscience.27 27 However, arguments about the propriety of the Church’s disciplinary rules may have a certain relevance in another respect, namely in connection to the second part of Kasper’s proposal—the part that concerns “conflict situations” (see footnote 12 above). In cases where the validity of the first marriage of a divorced and remarried person is in question (even though juridical evidence for invalidity may be lacking), it could be argued that the individual’s conscience should be allowed to decide about participation in the Eucharist. Nothing said so far in this article contradicts this proposal. This could be seen as a weakness of my argument, because if the individual conscience-model is accepted without restrictions, it would be impossible for the Church to exclude any divorced and remarried person from receiving Communion. The Church simply would not know who has a reasonable doubt about the validity of their first marriage, and who has only a very spacious conscience. However, to give the individual’s conscience an unrestricted primacy in this area will undermine the legitimacy of any Eucharistic discipline. How can the Church exclude (e.g.) torturers from Communion (as William Cavanaugh recommends, see Torture and Eucharist: Communion for the Divorced and Remarried 785 The third possible move on part of the defenders of Kasper’s proposal—to question the moral equivalence between Scenarios A and B—seems to be the only way forward. In order to successfully pursue the third move, Kasper’s advocates need to be able to point out some morally significant feature that I have overlooked and that is present in Scenario A3 and absent in Scenario B, or vice versa, and they need to make credible that this feature constitutes the difference between adultery and non-adultery. I present this as a challenge to anyone who thinks N&V that Kasper’s proposal is a good idea. Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998]), if the judgment of individual conscience must always be respected? It is unclear, however, if an unrestricted primacy for the individual’s conscience is what Kasper is after. In his recent book, Kasper says that “because marriage as a sacrament has a public character, the decision about the validity of a marriage cannot simply be left to the subjective judgment of the parties concerned” (Kasper, The Gospel of the Family, 28). The 1993 pastoral letter that Kasper wrote together with Bishops Saier and Lehmann, however, is less clear. It states that the person who is to take a conscientious decision “will be in need of the clarifying assistance . . . of a church office holder; such assistance will sharpen the conscience and see to it that the basic order of the church is not violated.” On the other hand, this office holder (a priest) “will respect the judgment of the individual’s conscience.” Here it seems that the individual’s conscience is the final judge. The unclarity returns, however, when it is said that “this respect [for the individual’s conscience] has different degrees” (Saier, Lehmann, and Kasper, “Pastoral Ministry: The Divorced and Remarried”: 391–392). Because of its nebulous character, this part of the three bishops’ proposal could, if interpreted in a liberal way, be used as a Trojan horse to undermine the legitimacy of any kind of exclusion from Eucharistic Communion. The fact that it can be so used, however, should make us very suspicious about it. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 787–813 787 Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops L awrence J. W elch Kenrick-Glennon Seminary St. Louis, MO F rom the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has indi- cated his intention to promote greater episcopal collegiality and synodality in the Catholic Church. There is a clear ecumenical interest in the Holy Father’s intention. He observed, in his now famous interview1 with the Jesuit magazine America, that the Catholic Church can learn more about the meaning of collegiality and synodality from the Orthodox churches. The pope described synodality as the walking together of the people, the bishops and the pope. He observed that “synodality should be lived at various levels.”2 Pope Francis pointed out how important it is for ecumenical relations “to recognize what the Spirit has sown in the other as a gift for us.”3 He went on to remark that he was committed to continuing the discussion of the joint Catholic-Orthodox Commission about how to exercise the Petrine primacy. Clearly, the pope sees the challenge of promoting greater collegiality and synodality as connected with a new way or more collegial way of exercising the Petrine ministry. Pope Francis has signaled that the reform of the synod of bishops is one way that he intends to pursue the promotion of episcopal collegiality. The Holy Father has revised the methodology of the synod of bishops not only with the aim of greater efficiency but, as the secretary of the Synod Cardinal Lorenzo Baldeserri explained, “the idea is that 1 2 3 “A Big Heart Open to God,” America (September 30, 2013), 28. For the Italian original see “Intervista del Direttore a Papa Francesco,” La Civiltà Cattolica (19 Settembre 2013): 449–477. “A Big Heart Open to God,” 28; “Intervista del Direttore a Papa Francesco, 466. Ibid. 788 Lawrence J. Welch of transforming into a real and effective tool for communion, through which the collegiality hoped for by the Vatican Council II is expressed and achieved.”4 Numerous bishops and others have voiced concerns about the methodology of synod. It has been criticized as being less focused on discussion and more on the participants giving speeches prepared long in advance. Pope Benedict XVI responded to this criticism by tweaking the methodology to allow for a greater focus on the synod’s working document and for more time devoted to discussion. Still, the synod has been criticized as not allowing for substantial progress with regard to urgent issues facing the Church.5 Some argued that the purpose of the synod seemed inverted with the bishops looking to the pope for advice instead of bishops informing and advising the pope.6 Others complained that the bishops were presented with a pre-determined agenda leading to an already conceived outcome. Some theologians criticized the synod for functioning as merely an advisory body with no authority beyond what the Pope conceded to it. One historical theologian went so far as to say that the synod actually worked against collegiality because it was advisory.7 The pope’s initiative in revising the synod’s methodology so that it might function as a better instrument of collegiality has raised some expectations that he may make even more substantial changes to the institution of the synod. This movement toward reform of the synod has brought out into the open again previous discussions among theologians and canonists about the nature of the synod and how it should function. Should it function not merely as an institution that meets at regular intervals but as a permanent standing body assisting the pope Vatican.va, November 5, 2013 media briefing. For example Bishop Robert Lynch harshly criticized the synod as “a highly controlled exercise” and “something of an exercise in futility.” See his address to the Catholic Health Association General Assembly, “The Church We Love: Reimaged or Reimagined?” (June 22, 2014): 2. 6 See the discussion in Kevin E. McKenna, “Pope Benedict XVI and the Synod of Bishops,” December 10, 2007. 7 John O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belnap Press, 2008), 252–253. O’Malley believes that from the very moment of its creation the institution of the synod was doomed—at least in terms of episcopal collegiality. He thinks that Apostolica Sollicitudo, the motu proprio of Paul VI that created the synod, “was an expression of papal primacy, not of collegiality, a word never mentioned in the text.” According to O’Malley “with one stroke the text cut collegiality off from grounding in the institutional reality of the church.” 4 5 Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 789 in the universal governance of Church? Currently, under canon law the pope can grant the synod deliberative power making its decisions binding on the universal Church. Should the synod exercise deliberative powers frequently or even permanently so that it might be a clear sign of the episcopal college’s responsibility for governance of the universal Church? Without a deliberative synod is not the college of bishops deprived of an instrument to exercise its power and responsibility for the universal Church? Closely related to these questions is the issue of how to understand theologically what the synod is doing if it were to exercise deliberative power. I will examine two proposals about how members of the episcopal college might become instruments for the government of the universal Church. The first proposal from Archbishop John Quinn8 involves making the synod of bishops a deliberative body and the second, the Bologna proposal,9 calls for the creation of a small permanent body of bishops that would be an instrument for exercising the government of the whole Church. In describing these proposals I will determine on what basis the authors believe the bishops could act as this kind of instrument. Would it be action of the pope granting a synod or body of bishops the authority over the rest of the bishops and the universal Church? Would it be a matter of the pope sharing his authority over the episcopal college and the universal church? I will pay attention to the understanding of the episcopal college that is operative in each proposal that the authors states or implies. I will argue that the case of the pope granting the synod of bishops deliberative power would be a matter of the synod exercising delegated papal power and authority. A synod with deliberative power may be a more collegial way of exercising the Petrine ministry and is a partial realization of collegiality10 but it is not a full collegial act—a collegial act in the strict sense—of the whole college of bishops. If a deliberative synod amounts to an auxiliary exercise of the primacy the pope, then its ability to promote greater collegiality and synodality in the Church will be limited. The ecumenical reception maybe welcoming at first but with an understandable concern as to whether the Church will pursue collegiality in a way that is broader and less centralizing. The purpose of the article is not to question whether a reformed synod of bishops can be an important and necessary instrument of 8 9 10 Ever Ancient, Ever New (New York: Paulist Press, 2013). L’officina bolognese 1953–2003 (EDB, 2004). See Lumen Gentium, §23, for the notion of collegialis affectus. 790 Lawrence J. Welch communion and collegiality. Clearly, it can and should be as desired by the Second Vatican Council. Since theologians have raised the issue of the relationship between the synod and the supreme power in the Church, I believe it is necessary to examine this relationship in the light of what revelation discloses about the nature of apostolic college and what Vatican II teaches about it and collegiality. Before turning to these proposals, however, I want to briefly discuss the nature of the apostolic college as founded by Christ. I believe this overview will be helpful because the apostolic college as instituted by Christ is the reality that the college of bishops has to be measured against today and always. Second, I will review what Lumen Gentium teaches about episcopal collegiality and the supreme power in the Church because all of the proposals about the synod that will be examined discuss collegiality in relation to this power. After evaluating the proposals, I will suggest briefly two other ways that could contribute to greater exercise of collegiality and synodality. These suggestions are intended to be a response to the desire of Pope Francis to think more deeply about the possibilities for greater collegiality and synodality. In important and urgent matters that the Church faces there could be a more frequent exercise of collegiality by the universal ordinary and universal magisterium dispersed throughout the world (Lumen Gentium, §25). This would involve an exercise collegially of the supreme authority of the Church in a joint action on some matter of doctrine or something related to doctrine. Last, I will suggest that in the interest of promoting synodality that the Church should revive the practice of holding provincial councils. The Second Vatican Council’s Decree the Ministry of Bishops, Christus Dominus, §36, expressed the hope that the venerable tradition of councils and synods would flourish with renewed strength. Collegiality and the episcopal college according to Lumen Gentium and the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI LG 19: The Lord Jesus, after he poured forth prayers the Father, called to himself those whom he wished, and he appointed Twelve to be with him whom he would send out to preach the kingdom of God (see Mk 3, 13-19; Mt 10, 1-42). These apostles (see Lk 6, 13) he established as a college or a permanent group over which he placed Peter, chosen from among them (see Jn 21, 15-17).11 11 All quotations of English translations of the documents of Vatican II are from Norman Tanner, S.J., ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University, 1990). Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 791 LG 22: Just as, by the Lord’s decree, St. Peter and the other apostles constitute one apostolic college, so in a similar way the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, and the bishops successors, of the apostles are joined together. What is episcopal collegiality? Cardinal Avery Dulles gave a succinct definition: The doctrine of collegiality came to the fore at Vatican II, which taught that the entire body of bishops, together with the pope as their head, constitutes a collegium, that is to say, a stable group that perpetuates the corporate ministry of the apostles with and under Peter. As a group the pope and the bishops in communion with him succeed to the college of the apostles in teaching authority and in the pastoral government of the universal Church.12 Continuing this line of thought, we can go a step further and say that collegiality is an expression and manifestation of the communion of the Church. The one Church is a communion of individual particular churches. The one Church is fully present and operative in the individual particular churches provided that the churches do not live as if they were self-sufficient and in isolation from the others. The relationship is manifested in the unity of communion between bishops. 13 Just as a particular church does not fully exist on its own so a bishop does not exist on his own.14 That is to say, a bishop is not a bishop on his own but only in reference to the entire college of bishops—those who were bishops before and those who are bishops with him. It follows, too, for Lumen Gentium15 that a basic form of collegiality is when a bishop 12 13 14 15 “John Paul II and the Teaching Authority of the Church: Like a Sentinel,” (1997 Nash Lecture, Campion College, University of Regina), 3. Lumen Gentium, §23: “The individual bishops, however, are the visible principle and foundation of unity in their own particular churches, formed in the likeness of the universal church; in and from these particular churches there exists the one in unique Catholic Church. For this reason individual bishops represent their own church, while all of them together with the Pope represent the whole church in the bond of peace, love and unity.” On this point also see Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion,” 1992. Lumen Gentium, §23: “For the rest, it is a holy reality that by governing well their own churches as a portion of the universal church, they themselves make 792 Lawrence J. Welch governs his diocese well and in doing so makes an indispensable contribution to the well-being of the universal church. The episcopal college and collegiality in a basic sense refer to something universal, but something universal as it comes to us in divine revelation and in the history of salvation. To understand these realities correctly we must look to how they are connected to Jesus and his mission which he shares with the apostles. Lumen Gentium clearly supposes and affirms that they are so connected but it does not give a detailed explanation. For the purposes of this study, I can do no more than give a general overview pointing out some key points of importance. The audiences of Pope Benedict XVI in the spring of 2006 on the mystery of the relationship between Christ and the Church can be very helpful here. In his audiences Pope Benedict pointed out that we should understand the apostolic college in the context of Jesus’s mission and preaching of the kingdom of God. Situated in the context of the faith and hope of Israel, we can see that the mission of Jesus has a communitarian and universal finality. The kingdom encompasses the restoration of Israel as a corporate entity. This follows simply from the whole of the Old Testament idea of salvation, as having a corporate dimension: the “people” is the first and preeminent object of salvation. So, in the first instance, the proclamation is to Israel, the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” (Mt 10:6) for it is Israel, as a whole, that is to be saved. The preaching and mission of Jesus, thus, bears on Israel as a whole, thus on people as a “called,” “gathered,” or “to be gathered,” Jesus called Israel to conversion and labored to purify, gather and unite the People of God in the time of the kingdom of God that arrived in his coming.16 Although the beginning stage of this gathering was first to the house of Israel, the people of the promise (Mt 15:24) all the nations would be gathered through the first gathering of the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Jesus is the “eschatological shepherd” who gathers together the lost sheep (Lk 15:4-7 and Mt 18:12-14; Jn 10:11 and the figure of the Good Shepherd) and this gathering is a prophetic sign of the salvation of 16 an effective contribution to the whole mystical body, which is also a body of churches.” This, of course, does not mean that the individual’s freedom is ignored; but the exercise of the freedom of accepting the salvation of the kingdom is one and the same thing with the renewed entry (and for the nations eventual entry) into the solidarity of the people of God. Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 793 all the nations and the universalization of the covenant.17 Pope Benedict points out that Jesus fits a prophetic profile that can be seen in the book of the prophet Ezekiel. In the messianic expectation, God’s promises to Israel would be fulfilled at the time when God, though his chosen one, gathered together his people like a shepherd does his flock: “I will save my sheep so that they may no longer be despoiled.…I will appoint one shepherd over them to pasture them, my servant David. . . . And my servant David shall be prince in their midst” (Ezek 34:22-24). And thanks to this gathering the kingdom of God would be proclaimed to all the nations: “Then I will display my glory among the nations, and all the nations will see the judgment I executed, the hand I laid upon them” (Ezek 39:21). A clear sign of the intention of Jesus to gather together the eschatological people of God is his institution of the Twelve (Mk 3:1, 3–16; cf. Mt 10:1-4; Lk 6:12-16). Jesus establishes the Twelve so that they might be witnesses and coworkers with him of the coming of the kingdom of God. The Twelve apostles share in his mission. Their very number— twelve—is itself a prophetic and symbolic sign of this same mission. The Twelve undoubtedly refer to the twelve tribes of Israel and points to re-founding of the people of God. Citing the conclusion of the book of Ezekiel (37:15-19; 39:23-29; 40-48) as an example, Pope Benedict observed that after the demise of “the system of the 12 tribes” Israel hoped for and awaited their reconstitution as a sign that the eschatological time had arrived for Israel. With the appointment of the Twelve, Jesus signals that the definitive time has arrived. Pope Benedict observes: By their mere existence, the Twelve—called from different backgrounds—have become a summons to all Israel to conversion and to allow themselves to be reunited in a new covenant, full and perfect accomplishment of the old. By entrusting to them the task of celebrating his memorial in the Supper, before his passion, Jesus shows that he wanted to transfer to the entire community, in the person of its heads, the commandment of being a sign and instrument of the eschatological assembly begun by him.18 17 18 Audience of March 22, 2006. All quotations from Pope Benedict XVI’s Wednesday audiences are taken from the English translation available on the Vatican website. Audience of March 5, 2006. On May 3, 2006 the Pope explained that the number twelve also referred to universality of the ministry they received from the Lord: “Their number not only expresses continuity with the holy root, the 794 Lawrence J. Welch Jesus did not choose and send out the apostles independently of one another. He chose and sent them out as members of the Twelve. We see this awareness in all four Gospels with the expression “one of the Twelve” (Mt 26:14; Mk 14:10, 20, 43; Lk 22:3, 47; Jn 6:72; 20:24.) The individual apostle has an authority he derives from the Lord only because of the fact that Lord endowed the twelve—the college—with such authority.19 Before Jesus died on the cross, at the Last Supper, he prayed to the Father for the unity of the apostles, “so that they also may be in us that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21). After his Resurrection, the Lord handed over to the Apostles the same mission that he had received from the Father. The universal character of this mission is clarified and made most apparent after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Lord sends the apostles “into the whole world” (Mk 16:15) and to “all nations” (Mt 28:19; Lk 24:47) “and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Two things are important in the Lord’s sending of the Apostles. First of all, they are witnesses not to an idea but to the person of Christ who shares with them his universal mission. The Apostles are called to gather all the nations into the eschatological people of God, into the new covenant, the communion of love in the Lord Jesus—what came to be called the Church. The collective responsibility of the Apostles-in their continuation of the mission of Jesus-- is universal and for the whole people of God. What is clear is that the apostles did not possess some sort of authority and only afterwards came together as a college. An individual apostle has an authority he derives from the Lord only because of the fact that He endowed the college with such authority. Christ did not first grant individual powers to the apostles and then only later bring them together as a unity, as one. Rather, He created the apostles as one 19 Israel of the 12 tribes, but also the universal destiny of their ministry, which brings salvation to the ends of the earth. It is expressed by the symbolic value that numbers have in the Semitic world: 12 results from the multiplication of 3, a perfect number, times 4, a number that makes reference to the four cardinal points, therefore, the whole world.” In a book co-authored with then Father Ratzinger, Karl Rahner observed: “If each apostle were first of all an individually authorized representative of Christ, then no subordination of the individual apostles to Peter (or rather, no subordination of the apostles to a college with Peter as its head) would ever be possible. The individual apostle would then have immediately from Christ an authority of such a kind that he would not possess it qua member of the college. He could not be held accountable to Peter or to the college, but only to Christ, the direct source of his authority” (The Episcopacy and the Primacy, trans. Kenneth Baker, [Edinburgh-London: Nelson, 1962], 76). Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 795 body so that they could represent and be a sign and instrument of the eschatological assembly, the church. It is against this background that we must understand the episcopal college and collegiality. This is the reality that the episcopal college succeeds and perpetuates. Lumen Gentium teaches that the college of bishops as a whole succeeds the apostolic college.20 The college is one and indivisible in its very nature because it is the sign and instrument of the re-founded, eschatological people of God. The single college founded by Christ perpetuated by the college of bishops always refers to a universal whole. In his commentary on Lumen Gentium, Karl Rahner observed, rightly, about the college of bishops that the totality of the bishops and the power of this totality are not the subsequent sum of the individual bishops and their powers, but rather this comprehensive unity, being morally legitimate, sacramentally grounded (article 21), and thus produced by the Spirit, (objectively) preexists the individual bishops as such.21 Indeed, according to Lumen Gentium the college of bishops united to the pope has supreme and full power over the universal Church. It teaches that the supreme power is one, having two modes of action: the entire apostolic college with and under the pope and the pope acting “alone” as primatial head and pastor of the whole Church. To quote Lumen Gentium, §22, However, the college or body of bishops does not have authority unless this is understood in terms of union with the Roman pontiff, Peter’s successor, as its head, and the power of this primacy is maintained intact over all, whether they be shepherds or faithful. For the Roman pontiff has, by virtue of his office as vicar of Christ and Shepherd of the whole church, full, supreme and universal power over the church, a power he is always able to freely exercise. However, the order of bishops, which succeeds the college 20 21 Lumen Gentium, §22: “Just as, by the Lord’s decree, St. Peter and the other apostles constitute one apostolic college, so in a similar way the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, and the bishops successors, of the apostles are joined together.” Rahner, “Kommentar zu LG Artikel 18 bis 27,” 225, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche.E, vol. 1 (Freiburg im Breigau: Herder, 1966) as cited and translated by Maximillian Heim, Joseph Ratzinger, Life in the Church and Living Theology, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 127. 796 Lawrence J. Welch of apostles in teaching authority and pastoral government, and indeed with the apostolic body continued to exist without interruption, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal church, provided it remains united with its head, the Roman pontiff, and never without its head; and this power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman pontiff.22 Only the pope exercising his supreme authority as the visible head of the college and body of bishops, or the entire college itself with him can exercise supreme power and make decisions that are binding on individual bishops and the universal Church. The college of bishops can exercise the supreme authority of the Church in an ecumenical council or when the bishops dispersed throughout the world engage in a united action together with the pope. Again, Lumen Gentium, §22, The supreme power over the whole church which this college enjoys is solemnly exercised in an ecumenical Council. There is never an ecumenical Council which is not confirmed as such or at least accepted by such by the successor of Peter. It is the prerogative of the Roman pontiff to convoke these councils, to preside over them and to confirm them. This same collegiate power can be exercised by the bishops throughout the world in conjunction with the Pope, provided that the head of the college calls them to collegial action or at least approves of, or willingly accepts, the united action of the dispersed bishops in such a way that the result is a truly collegial act. 23 22 23 Emphasis mine. Emphasis mine. This teaching of Lumen Gentium—that the episcopal college enjoys the supreme power in the universal Church—is connected to its affirmation that the bishops by divine institution have succeeded the place of the twelve apostles (Lumen Gentium, §20). Like the Twelve, the bishops receive their powers from directly Christ and just as Peter, as head of the college receives his power from Christ. This stands in contrast to a “monarchial” opinion defended by some Fathers at the Council which envisioned the Church as a kind of pyramid where the pope occupied at position at the top as the sole subject of supreme power. It was thought that the pope, who was the subject of supreme power alone, could transmit this plenitude of power to the college of bishops if he wished. Presumably, he could transmit the power to a smaller group of bishops as well. Lumen Gentium as we have seen holds that both the pope and the college receive their powers directly from Christ and that both can exercise the supreme authority of the Church. Avery Dulles commenting on this very point wrote: “It stands to reason that if the college has supreme power, it could not receive it from another authority within the same society.” According to Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 797 Besides an ecumenical council, Lumen Gentium speaks about the possibility of the exercise of the supreme power by what is known as the “ordinary universal magisterium,” that is the united action of the pope and the bishops dispersed throughout the world. This is mentioned again in Lumen Gentium, §25 when it speaks of the possibility of the ordinary universal magisterium teaching a doctrine infallibly. Lumen Gentium clearly understands the exercise of the supreme power in the universal Church as something exercised by the whole college whether in an ecumenical council or outside of one by the ordinary universal magisterium. These two ways of acting in which the college of bishops can exercise the supreme power in the universal church is presented in Lumen Gentium as founded in the nature of the episcopal college itself. Therefore is not something that is capable of being changed. Proposal for a Deliberative Synod of Bishops as an Instrument for the Universal Governance of the Church. John R. Quinn, Archbishop emeritus of San Francisco, addresses the problem of “excessive centralization” in the Catholic Church, in his book Ever Ancient, Ever New.24 Quinn wants to use the example of the Eastern Churches and their structures of communion in synods and patriarchates as a way out of the problem. In a chapter entitled “Structures of Communion: Deliberative Synods,” he reviews the history of recommendations from bishops “to share with the pope in the governance of the universal church”25 before and during the Second Vatican 24 25 Dulles the monarchial position was conceived by Cardinal Cajetan and other theologians in the sixteenth century against conciliarism. Curial theologians later took it up in opposition to Gallicanism. Dulles identifies Cardinal Charles Journet and Marie-Rosaire Gagnebet, O.P. as defenders of this theory at Vatican II. See “Primacy and Collegiality,” in Pope John Paul II on The Body (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2007), 181–2. For another overview of the monarchial position see Luis Tagle, “Episcopal Collegiality and the Ecclesiological Project of Vatican II,” Landas 7 (1993): 149–60. Today, the monarchial position is defended by the leader of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Bernard Fellay. Fellay explicitly rejects the teaching of Lumen Gentium, §22 claiming that it contradicts Vatican I. He declares “Only the pope holds in a habitual and constant manner the supreme power, which he communicates only in special circumstances to councils, when so doing appears opportune to him.” See “We vigorously protest these canonizations” in Letter to Friends and Benefactors no. 82. John R. Quinn, Ever Ancient, Ever New (New York: Paulist Press, 2013). Ibid., 28. 798 Lawrence J. Welch Council. Quinn calls attention to specific proposals that came from the Melkite Patriarch Maximos Saigh IV and Dutch Cardinal Bernard Alfrink. Both wished to see a body of bishops that would not just be advisory but “that would truly share in the general government of the Church.”26 Quinn seems to consider the proposal of Patriarch Maximos to be particularly important. In a speech to the council Fathers, Maximos observed that because the Lord entrusted the church in a special way to Peter, the apostles and their successors, then it follows from this doctrinal truth that both the successor of Peter, the pope, and the college of bishops have a universal role in the governance of the church. On this basis, Maximos proposed that a synod should be created that would meet at regular intervals. This synod, composed of bishops from around the world would take part in the universal governance of the church the pope. Maximos argued that the pope should not be expected to govern the large, universal institutional church without assistance. Quinn argues that the idea of a council or synod of bishops that would share in the governance of the Church is not something completely new in the church’s history. He points out that before the sixteenth century and the Council of Trent, the cardinals in Rome met frequently with the pope and functioned as something like a permanent synod. This practice faded away after the Council of Trent because the cardinals who were diocesan bishops had to observe the law of residence in their home dioceses. Quinn also sees as important the Roman Synods which, in the first millennium, came to decisions regarding doctrine and disciplinary matters. Continuing into the second millennium Roman synods involved bishops from all over the church in the West. Quinn recalls how Pope Gregory VII saw the synods as important instruments of reform. He claims that bishops in these synods did not play a secondary role saddled with the job of simply ratifying the decisions of the pope. These Roman synods foreshadowed the medieval Western councils. Quinn is of the opinion that “the historical Roman synod could, therefore, be a model for a modern deliberative synod. Such a structure stands in continuity with long practice and history of the church.”27 The Roman Synods did not diminish the authority of the pope but expressed his authority 26 27 Ibid., 30. Quinn does not mention it but Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna also gave a speech that spoke in favor of a new organ that would represent faithfully the entire episcopal college. See Giacomo Cardinale Lercaro, Per la forza dello spirito. Discorsi conciliari del card. Giacomo Lercaro, edited by L’Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, Edizioni Dehoniane (Bologna, 1984), 196–205. Ibid., 33. Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 799 and intensified the Church’s unity and helped to bring about significant reforms. Quinn wishes to refute the idea that the cultivation of collegial structures would somehow diminish and limit papal primacy. Pope Paul VI’s establishment of the synod of bishops28responded to the desires of many bishops before and during the council. While the pope decreed that the Sovereign Pontiff can grant deliberative power to the synod, all the synods held since Vatican II have been only advisory. Quinn explains, “In fact, no Synod to date has been given deliberative power, and (as a consequence) the synods held since Vatican II have not been a sharing by bishops in the government of the universal Church but are rather a way for bishops to collaborate with the pope in his primatial function.”29At the Second Vatican Council, many bishops, conscious of their role as successors of the apostles looked for way that would enable them to participate with the pope in the governance of the universal Church. Quinn believes this desire might be finally realized and excessive decentralization might be lessened if the pope granted a deliberative power to a synod of bishops. He argues that “In this case, the bishops would not simply advise the pope about his primatial ministry. Rather, the bishops together with the pope would make decisions regarding matters for the universal Church.”30 For Quinn it would be most fitting for extraordinary synods to be given a deliberative role because their membership is made up of presidents of episcopal conferences from the Latin Church and the patriarchs and major archbishops of the Eastern Catholic churches. These are bishops who have pastoral care of a diocese and who, because of their election by their fellow bishops, have broader responsibilities in the life of their respective churches. Together with the pope, they are uniquely qualified to decide great issues of importance that affect the life of the whole church. Quinn claims that a deliberative synod would find its deepest doctrinal roots in the teaching of Lumen Gentium, §22 which teaches that the order of bishops succeeds the college of the apostles in teaching authority and pastoral government and also the subject of supreme full power over the universal church provided it remains united with its head the pope and never without him. The emeritus archbishop of San Francisco thinks that: Apostolica Sollicitudo (1965). Quinn, Ever Ancient, Ever New, 34. 30 Ibid. 28 29 Lawrence J. Welch 800 A deliberative synod of bishops presided over by the pope would be a sign of the responsibility of the Episcopal college for government of the whole Church. But a synod is not an ecumenical council and is not the subject of ‘supreme and full power over the universal church.’ What would be the grounds for this kind of synod having decision making authority in the Church? The only way this would be possible would be for the pope to grant to the synod deliberative power so as to share with him the authority for making decisions binding on the whole Church.31 Quinn thinks that a synod of Bishops is capable of receiving a deliberative power from the pope, exercising it with him, because only bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles. Clearly, he proposes that a deliberative synod should be understood as a true sharing by the bishops in the government of the universal church and not a matter merely collaborating with the pope in his primatial function. The latter, in Quinn’s eyes, would be what a synod of bishops would be doing without deliberative power. Evaluation There is no question that the pope can give the synod of bishops deliberative power. But what does it mean? How do we understand what is going on if the pope were to grant such power? What form of collegiality would it involve precisely? While Quinn admits that the synod is not the subject of supreme and full power over the universal church, nevertheless in his proposal the synod would in effect exercise it because the pope would give the synod decision making authority binding on the universal church. This conferral by the pope would be something other than enabling the synod to exercise delegated papal power. In the end, Quinn’s proposal assumes that the pope can, by judicial fiat, simply give to a subset of the college of bishops (the synod) power and decision making authority over the rest of the bishops and the universal church. Can the pope do this? There are good reasons to think that the pope cannot. These have to do with the fact that the apostolic college, which the episcopal college succeeds and perpetuates, comes to us from revelation as something indivisible. For a pope to grant a subset of the episcopal college power and authority over the whole college would violate this indivisibility. How could the episcopacy be one and undi- 31 Ibid., 35. Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 801 vided if, at certain times, some part of it could act and make decisions binding on the whole college of bishops and the universal church? A few bishops cannot be delegated to represent the whole college even by the pope. The pope can delegate them to represent himself, but not to represent the college. It is important to be clear about who can represent the whole college of bishops. The only structure within the Church that can represent the unity of the whole college and body of bishops is its visible principle and foundation of unity, its head, the pope.32 If the episcopacy is one and undivided, as Lumen Gentium, §22 teaches, then decision making authority that is binding on the whole church is exercised by the whole episcopal college with the pope and not by some part or organ of it. It is because the entire college and the pope succeeds the apostles and St. Peter that it is said to govern “the house of the living God.”33 The entire college, not some part of it, succeeds the college of apostles in teaching authority over the universal Church. The pope must still receive the college as Christ constituted it. The successor of Peter cannot change this structure. In other words, the pope does not have the power to grant a synod of bishops, or some other group, authority over the universal Church no matter how temporary or episodic without changing the nature of the college itself as founded by Christ34 As we have seen Lumen Gentium teaches that to make decisions binding on the universal Church is a matter of the entire episcopal college acting together with the pope exercising its supreme and full power over the universal Church or the pope acting alone as head of the college, exercising his supreme governance over the whole Church. An observation of Walter Kasper made about the office of bishop as divinely instituted is pertinent here. He pointed out that the office can be “neither dispensed with nor so limited in its functions either by the Petrine office or by bishops’ conferences or by post conciliar diocesan councils nor made 32 33 34 Lumen Gentium,§18, 23. Lumen Gentium, §18. Lumen Gentium, §23 comes to mind again here: “The individual bishops who have pastoral government over the portion of the people of God has been entrusted to their care, but not over other churches nor over the universal church. But as members of the Episcopal college and legitimate successors of the apostles, the individual bishops, to the institution command of Christ, are bound to be concerned about the whole church, and even though this solicitude is not exercised by any act of jurisdiction, nevertheless it makes a very great contribution to the well-being of the universal church.” It would seem that just as individual bishops do not exercise their solicitude for the universal church by an act of jurisdiction neither could a group of bishops. 802 Lawrence J. Welch dependent on them that de facto it can no longer fulfill the proper lawful and pastoral responsibility conferred upon it by Jesus Christ.”35 No bishop can delegate to some central organ his responsibility for his church or his responsibility to be solicitous for the universal church. To be sure, individual bishops are subject to the supreme and universal authority in the church, but to try to make them subject to anything less than that would be to usurp their power, authority and responsibility to govern their churches. But this would be the result if a group of bishops, something less than the whole episcopal college, were somehow given authority to make binding decisions for the whole Church. In this way, the synod could become, ironically, a new form of centralism. To think that the synod could be empowered to act as a central magisterial organ over the college of bishops, is to think of the college of bishops and collegiality in more of a political sense than a theological one. I certainly do not think Archbishop Quinn intends these outcomes in his proposal but it is hard to see how what he proposes avoids them in the end. None of the foregoing is to deny that the pope can give a synod deliberative power. But this power he can give is not a proper power but a delegated one. A deliberative synod would be a matter of the bishops assisting the pope in his primatial ministry. It would not be a matter of the synod of bishops somehow representing the episcopal college. Were the pope grant to deliberative power to a synod, Apostolica Sollicitudo36 and the Code of Canon Law (canon 343) make it clear that this deliberative power depends on the pope ratifying the decisions of the synod. Decisions made by a deliberative synod would be binding on the universal church because of the pope’s ratification of them. Such a synod would be in the words of a canonist “an auxiliary instrument of the primatial activity” of the pope.37 A deliberative synod would be certainly 35 36 37 Walter Kasper, “Zur Theologie und Praxis des bischöflichen Amtes,” in Bischofsbestellung: Mitwirkung der Orstkirche?, ed. B. Korner, 18–39 (Graz: Styria, 2000), 27f, as quoted and translated by Heim, Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology, 118. Apostolica Sollicitudo, §II, “The Synod of Bishops has, of its very nature, the function of providing information and offering advice. It can also enjoy the power of making decisions when such power is conferred upon it by the Roman Pontiff; in this case, it belongs to him to ratify the decisions of the Synod.” Gian Pero Milano, Exegetical commentary on the Code of Canon Law, v. II/I, eds. Ángel Marzoa, Jorge Miras, and Rafael Rodríguez-Ocaña (Chicago: Midwest Theological Forum, 2004), 627. Also, the canonist John Johnson argues that a synod exercising decision-making power would be “exercising delegated papal power”. See New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, ed. John Beal et al. Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 803 an instance of an intense, although partial, form of collegiality (collegialis affectus) where an important group of bishops acts together with the pope in such a way that is of benefit to the whole church with a wide range of consequences that might lead to vitally important things in the life of the church. Still, it would not be a matter of the pope making the synod an instrument for exercising the power of the college of bishops. If a deliberative synod is a matter of bishops exercising delegated papal power then it is less of a sign of the responsibility of the episcopal college for the governance of the whole Church than Archbishop Quinn imagines. A manifestation of the principle of episcopal collegiality involving the supreme power over the universal Church would involve an ecumenical council or a joint action of the members entire college dispersed throughout the world.38 Bologna Proposal for a New Collegial Body of Bishops as an Instrument for the Universal Governance of the Church Another proposal for greater collegial governance of the Church dates to 1978 but was only made public in 2004 in a book edited by Giuseppe Alberigo.39 The proposal was made in the form of a memo given to participants of the two papal conclaves in August 1978. The memo came from the “Documentation Center – Institute for Religious Sciences” founded in Bologna by Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti. It was written by unnamed members of the Institute. The Bologna memo proposes a new institution for putting into effect the shared responsibility the bishops have for the universal Church: the formation of a new collegial body under the presidency of the pope that 38 39 (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 457. Thus Lumen Gentium, §25: “Although individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, nevertheless, even though dispersed throughout the world, but maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, when in teaching authentically matters of faith concerning faith and morals they agree about the judgment as one that has to be definitively held, they infallibly proclaim the teaching of Christ. This takes place even more clearly when they are gathered together in an ecumenical Council and are the teachers and judges of faith and morals for the whole church their definitions must be adhered to with the obedience of faith.” L’officina bolognese 1953–2003. The book describes the forty-year work of the Documentation Center—Institute for Religious Sciences and includes documents written by Dossetti and other documents inspired by him. All quotes of this document in English are taken from the translation available on the blog of Sandro Magister. http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/21473?eng=y (accessed July 8, 2014). This is the only English translation I am aware of. 804 Lawrence J. Welch would be made up exclusively of members of the episcopal college. This body would be analogous to a permanent synod of the Eastern Church.40 It would be ideally composed of no more than 12 individual members allowing for stability and efficiency. It would meet at least biweekly to consider the problems and issues facing the universal Church and would make decisions with regard to them. The writers of the Bologna memo insist: It would need to be clear that this is not an instrument for coordinating the congregations of the Roman curia, but rather a new body situated at the highest leadership level of the Catholic Church, expressing and putting into effect the shared responsibility of the universal episcopal college with its head, the bishop of Rome. This would imply making the collegial manner of exercising supreme responsibility in the Church the ordinary one, and making the personal way an exception. The memo also says that decisions usually would be made unanimously but in cases of necessity by a majority always including the pope’s vote. This proposal conceives of this new body composed of a small, limited number of bishops exercising something that is the responsibility of the whole universal episcopal college with its head, namely, the governance of the universal Church. This body of bishops under the presidency of the pope would “preside over the common aspects of Church life” and “would consider on at least a biweekly basis the problems facing the Church as a whole, and would make the related decisions.” All of these activities would involve the new collegial body in the governance of the universal Church and therefore exercising, in effect, the supreme power over the universal Church. Overall, the Bolognese memo appears to envision this governance as regularly and usually exercised by what amounts to a subset of the episcopal college—a kind of episcopal senate—together with the pope. This proposal seems to think it best that it be a rare thing for the pope to exercise personally the supreme power of the Church. In other words, this proposal believes that a small group created from certain members the episcopal college can take up the shared responsibility and the authority of the whole college with the pope for the governance of the universal church. Such an arrangement, according to the proposal, would put into effect the 40 The important difference being, of course, that this new body would put into effect the “shared responsibility” of the episcopal college with its head. Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 805 doctrine of episcopal collegiality. Evaluation This arrangement suggested by the Bologna memo suffers from the problem of denying, at least on a practical level, the Church’s understanding and teaching about the indivisibility of the college of bishops and the supreme power of the Church. As we have seen, Christ instituted the apostolic college as one and indivisible so that it might continue his universal mission and be the sign and instrument of the whole eschatological assembly of the people of God, the church. If, as Lumen Gentium, §22 teaches, the college of bishops cum et sub Petro is the subject of supreme power over the universal Church because the bishops as a whole succeed the college of apostles and perpetuates its existence, then a few chosen members of the college cannot exercise the supreme power over the universal church without denying the wholeness and indivisibility of the college itself. Due to this nature of the college of bishops, there is nothing in Lumen Gentium that envisions the possibility of forming a central government of the Church by delegating to a chosen group of bishops the faculty of participating in the supreme power over the universal church. Unless, of course, the actions of this new “collegial” body of twelve bishops would be a matter of delegated papal power—something the Bologna memo clearly does not mean. Lumen Gentium is quite clear that only the pope or the entire college can exercise the kind of governance the Bologna proposal would have the group of twelve exercise. The Bologna memo is more far-reaching than proposals like those of Archbishop Quinn. It would limit, in effect, not only the personal exercise of supreme power by the pope but also its exercise by the whole college. This follows from the reality that the new body of twelve bishops would be usual and regular way of putting into effect the shared responsibility for the governance of the universal church and the usual way the doctrine of collegiality would be put into effect. Ecumenical Councils, presumably would continue to be rare and the exercise of the whole college outside of an ecumenical council while not denied presumably would be even rarer. The Bologna memo’s proposal for the usual and regular exercise of episcopal collegiality rests on different conception and understanding of the episcopal college than is found in Lumen Gentium. The Bologna memo seems more inspired by the logic of political theories of representative government insofar as it proposes that a small body of twelve bishops and the pope would put into effect 806 Lawrence J. Welch the shared responsibility of the episcopal college for the universal church. Toward Greater Collegiality: A Possibility from Lumen Gentium, §25 As we have seen, the Second Vatican Council teaches in Lumen Gentium, §25 that the supreme authority of the Church can be exercised outside of an ecumenical council by the ordinary universal magisterium, that is, the members of the episcopal college dispersed throughout the world in unity with the pope. The head of the college, the pope can either initiate such action or freely approve of a united, joint action of the bishops scattered throughout the world. Since the Second Vatican Council something like this possibility was exercised in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae. For example, the encyclical explicitly invokes the teaching authority of the ordinary universal magisterium with regard to the direct killing of the innocent, direct abortion, and euthanasia.41 The pope explicitly says that he is teaching in communion with the bishops of the Catholic Church and refers in a note to Lumen Gentium, §25 in each of the three doctrinal formulations.42 The pope’s language in each of the formulas makes it clear that he is confirming a teaching that he and the bishops want all Catholics to hold definitively. The technology of modern communications have made it even easier for the whole college to act outside of an ecumenical council and be involved in important decisions facing the Church. Today it is not hard to imagine that if there were some great matter facing the Church, most members of the episcopal college dispersed throughout the world could probably be contacted and brought together rather quickly in most cases. Of course joint action is not simply a matter of rapid communications but timely joint action would be difficult without it. The possibilities here would not have to be limited to doctrinal issues. While, as Lumen Gentium, §25 teaches, the ordinary universal magisterium can teach doctrines infallibly there is nothing in the texts of Vatican II that would limit the exercise of the supreme power to these matters. The joint action of the members of the episcopal college together with the pope could involve pastoral and other matters that have far-reaching consequences for the Church. Even when the pope initiated the joint action of the whole episcopal college this would be a centralizing action but interven41 42 See the discussion in Dulles, “John Paul II and the Teaching authority of the Church: Like a Sentinel,” 7–9. See Evangelium Vitae, §57, 62 and 65 with regard to the direct killing of the innocent, direct abortion, and euthanasia. Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 807 tions from the center would be more collegial. Of course, a matter for joint action might first originate with the bishops as well. None of this would deny the power and at times the necessity of interventions from the pope acting alone for the good of the Church. Decisions binding on the whole Church, however, would not always be a matter for the pope acting alone or through a deliberative synod or a case for an ecumenical council. A collegiate act of all the bishops dispersed throughout world and united with the pope would be a greater and more intense form of collegiality than a synod given deliberative power by the pope because it would be an act of the whole college of bishops together with its head, the pope. In other words, it is a form of collegiality in the strict sense or what is called effective collegiality. The synod of bishops is still an important and necessary instance of collegiality even if as I have argued it is “an auxiliary instrument of the primatial activity of the pope.” The synod could even be involved in the preparation for joint action. It could prove to be invaluable for referring a matter for deliberation by the members of the episcopal college scattered throughout the world and its head the pope. This could be an important function of the synod that would increase its collegial activity. It would be a matter of a distinguished group of bishops alerting the entire episcopal college and the pope about an important matter that they think calls for the joint action. A Step Toward Synodality: Provincial Councils An important layer of collegiality, although partial, that could go a long way towards realizing greater synodality is the provincial council. These gatherings are a form of collegiality because they involve bishops coming together, in virtue of the bonds of unity, charity, and peace, for the good of a group of particular churches. In this way they manifest and express what Lumen Gentium, §23 called collegialis affectus. This form or degree of collegiality, which does not involve acts that bind the universal church, is important and necessary. If the universal church is a communion of particular churches, as Lumen Gentium teaches, then meaning of collegiality is not reduced or exhausted to whenever the entire college of bishops acts for the whole church. A provincial council should be distinguished from a plenary council “which is held for all the particular churches belonging to the same conference of bishops.”43 A provincial council is more limited and is 43 C. 439. §1. 808 Lawrence J. Welch held “for all the various particular churches of the same ecclesiastical province.” An ecclesiastical province is a certain territory comprised of an archdiocese, headed by a metropolitan archbishop, and a group of neighboring dioceses and other particular churches.44 The Second Vatican Council in its Decree on Bishops, Christus Dominus, §36, expressed the “earnest desire . . . that the venerable institutions of synods and councils should flourish with renewed strength. . . .” The Decree understands synods and councils as expressions of communion. Their origin is presented as being located in the bonds of fraternal charity and apostolic zeal for the universal mission of the Church. Recalling the experience of the church from early centuries, the Decree observes that synods and councils came into being because bishops wanted to share “their abilities and their wills for the common good and for the welfare of the individual churches.” These councils and synods were a means for local churches to find a common way for the teaching of the truths of the faith and the ordering ecclesiastical discipline. Unfortunately this desire of the fathers at Vatican II for the flourishing of councils has not been realized. Provincial councils have been rare after Vatican II. Historically, these gatherings have made some significant contributions to the life of the church. We know that by the end of the second century bishops had adopted the practice of gathering in synods or councils to address problems that were faced in common by seeking a consensus about how to solve them. These matters could involve many things: pastoral matters, correction of abuses, settling of disputes, problems regarding Christian conduct and morality and sometimes, the choice of a new bishop for a church in the province. The importance of synods and provincial councils for the life of the church in the early centuries is evident in canons of the Council of Nicea. Nevertheless, in later centuries, for a number of reasons, provincial councils did not become a regular institution despite legislation mandating or encouraging their practice. Lateran IV (1215) decreed that provincial councils be held every year but this requirement was not long observed. The Council of Trent, in its Decree on Reform, lamented the lapse of provincial councils. Trent sought to revive the practice of regular, consistent meetings of provincial councils. The Council mandated that metropolitan archbishops should summon a council in their province at least every three years. As a result of this requirement there were 44 The 1983 Code of Canon Law in C. 368 defines particular churches as 1) dioceses; 2) territorial prelatures; 3) territorial abbacies; 4) apostolic vicariates; 5) apostolic prefectures; and 6) apostolic administrations “erected in a stable manner.” Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 809 numerous councils that met in European provinces at the end of the sixteenth century. The practice soon diminished but there were a series of provincial councils in the middle to late nineteenth century although not with the frequency called for by Trent. The triennial requirement was ended in the 1917 Code of Canon Law which prescribed that provincial councils were to be summoned and held in every province every twenty years. Even this requirement for less frequent meetings did not succeed in reviving a consistent practice of holding provincial councils. Historically, experience has shown that when provincial councils have met they met because of pressing doctrinal and pastoral matters that faced local churches rather than because of a legal requirement. Perhaps reflecting this reality, the 1983 Code of Canon Law does not legislate the frequency of provincial councils but opts in favor of the pastoral judgment of the diocesan bishops in the province. Now, provincial councils are to be “celebrated whenever it seems opportune in the majority of the diocesan bishops of the province.”45 The 1983 Code specifies that the metropolitan is responsible for convoking a provincial council with the consent of the majority of suffragan bishops. The metropolitan is to preside over it.46 The Code legislates who must and who can be called to a provincial council. There are some important changes from the 1917 Code which required some representative clergy to be invited but made no mention of lay persons.47 The list of those called in the 1983 Code is worth reviewing because of the opportunity afforded for a wide cross section of the Church that inevitably would include lay Christian faithful with a consultative vote. Diocesan bishops, coadjutor and auxiliary bishops and certain titular bishops must called and have the right of deliberative vote.48 The following members in the territory of a province must be called to provincial or particular councils but only with a consultant vote: vicars general and the episcopal vicars of all the particular churches in the territory of the province, the major superiors of religious institutes and societies of apostolic life for men and women, rectors of ecclesiastical and Catholic universities, the deans of faculties of theology and canon law which have office in the territory of the province, some of the rectors of major seminaries (elected by the rectors of the seminaries) which are located in the terri- 45 46 47 48 C. 441, §1. C. 442, §1. C. 282, §3. C. 443, §1–2. 810 Lawrence J. Welch tory of the province whose number is to be determined by the bishops.49 It should be noted that because deans of theology and canon law are among those who must be called with consultative vote that lay persons could be among them. Presbyters and other members of the Christian faithful—meaning lay persons and religious—can be (not must be) called to a particular or provincial council but only with a consultative vote.50 The Code stipulates that two members from the cathedral chapters and the presbyteral council and pastoral council of each particular church are to be invited with consultative vote.51 This would inevitably involve lay faithful who are members of diocesan pastoral councils. Finally, the canon also allows for others to be invited as guests if it is thought to be appropriate and expedient in the judgment of the bishops.52 This would seem to allow for guests from separated Churches and ecclesial communities. Provincial councils afford the opportunity to focus on pastoral activity and the needs of the Christian faithful in the development of the life of faith. These councils can have important legislative functions. As one commentator on canon law has noted, particular councils can issue leges, general decrees and general executory decrees, instructions, individual decrees and precepts. They can exhort, issue warnings, arrange common activities and provide in a variety of other nonbinding ways for the development of church life. They can also present the needs and opinions the Christian people the higher authorities in the church.53 The widespread participation envisioned by 1983 Code means that a particular council would be a sizable meeting. Persons who ordinarily do not participate in the gatherings of bishops would have a chance to be an important and meaningful presence. Their participation would allow bishops to have a breadth and depth of knowledge and advice from a cross-section of the church that might not ordinarily surface. There would be the possibility of collaboration of lay persons from a variety of 49 50 51 52 53 C. 443, §3. C. 443, §4. It is also specifies that their number should not exceed half of the number of those mentioned in the first three categories. C. 443, §5. C. 443, §6. James Provost, “Particular Councils,” in The New Code of Canon Law, ed. M.Theriault and J. Thorn (Ottawa: St. Paul University, 1986), 1:551. Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 811 different places and situations of life from within the church. A provincial council would be a chance for the voice and perspective of women, religious and lay, to surface in the life of the pastoral governance of the church in a way that is not happening at the present time. If synodality is the walking together of the people, the bishop and the pope, and if synodality should be lived at various levels in the Church then reviving provincial councils is not only desirable but necessary. Provincial councils would not be permanent standing bodies assisting the pope in the universal governance of the church. They would not be actions of the entire episcopal college. They would not be instruments of effective collegiality. They would be an instance of affective collegiality whereby a group of bishops would be working together for the common good of their particular churches in a province. They certainly would be an answer to the desire of the Second Vatican Council to see synods and councils flourish with renewed strength. Provincial councils could be an essential part of a movement toward greater synodality in the Church because they involve a broader and more representative participation of priests, religious, and lay people than is possible in other local gatherings such as episcopal conferences comprised exclusively of bishops. Provincial councils also have the potential for being important for collegiality in another respect. It is sometimes overlooked or underappreciated that Lumen Gentium54 understood bishops as sharing in the government of the universal church by leading and governing their particular churches in charity, unity and holiness. In this way, the bishop and his church contributes to the building up of the universal Church and puts his church’s living diversity at the service of the unity of the Church. This reality is crucial for collegiality.55 Without it, collegial governance will not really be possible and the kind of centralization where too many matters are drawn into the center will not be overcome. It stands to reason that if provincial councils can be of some help to bishops in the task of governing their particular churches well, then provincial councils can be important for this fundamental reality of collegiality. Lastly, these councils could prove to be important ecumenically by showing that the 54 55 Lumen Gentium, §23, See note 11. Negatively speaking, the failure of bishops to govern their churches works against collegiality. The lack of collegiality is not simply a matter of Roman centralism. The sexual abuse crisis is a dramatic example. The failure of some bishops to respond properly and compassionately to victims of sexual abuse and their failure to properly discipline the perpetrators of abuse did not just have devastating consequences for the bishops’ own particular churches, it obviously harmed the universal church as well. 812 Lawrence J. Welch Catholic Church is serious about pursuing the pastoral governance of the Church in a way that is less centralizing while remaining in communion with the center, the pope, the bishop of Rome. Summing up and Concluding This study began by drawing attention to the statements of Pope Francis that the Catholic Church can learn more about the meaning and practice of collegiality and synodality. It noted that the reform of the methodology of the synod of bishops is one way in which Pope Francis intends to pursue the promotion of episcopal collegiality. The efforts of the Pope have led to the expectations in the part of some for more substantial changes to the institution of the Synod. After giving an overview of the church’s teaching on the episcopal college and collegiality in Lumen Gentium and the papal magisterium of Pope Benedict XVI, I examined two proposals for reform that would make the Synod, or some smaller group of bishops, a deliberative institution with power to make decisions binding on the universal Church. There is no doubt a deliberative synod as envisioned by the Church’s legislation could be important and necessary instrument of communion and collegiality. I argued though that if the pope gave a synod deliberative power that this would be a matter of the bishops assisting the pope in his primatial ministry, a kind of a collegial extension of his the pope’s supreme authority over the universal Church. A deliberative synod would not and could be a matter of the pope giving to a subset of the college of bishops (the synod or some other group) power and decision-making authority over the rest of the bishops and the universal church. A few bishops cannot be appointed to represent the whole college even by the pope. This would violate the nature of the college’s indivisibility as founded by Christ. The nature of the episcopal college is one and indivisible because of the reality it succeeds and perpetuates namely the college of apostles founded by Christ as a sign and instrument of the re-founded, eschatological people of God. In this way, the indivisibility of the episcopal college like that of the apostles with Peter as their chief is bound up with Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, the indivisibility of the college is not simply a practical arrangement that the pope or the Church can sometimes suspend in favor of a representative form of government. Finally, I suggested two other ways that could contribute to greater exercise of collegiality and synodality. There could be joint action, outside of an ecumenical council, of the entire episcopal college with the pope involving important matters of doctrine or even some urgent Collegiality, Synodality, and the Synod of Bishops 813 pastoral matters related to doctrine. Such joint action would be an instance of the supreme power over the church exercised collegially. Last, I have argued that if synodality is to be promoted at various levels in the Church, as Pope Francis desires, then provincial councils, which would involve a wide participation from a cross section of the Church, could go a long way towards realizing the walking together of the people, the bishops, and the pope. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 815–836 815 Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle: Philip the Chancellor, Natural Desire, and the Advent of potentia obedientiae J acob W. W ood Franciscan University of Steubenville Steubenville, OH I n H enri de L ubac ’ s Surnaturel,1 he argues that the Neo-Scho- lastic theologians of his day mistakenly distinguished natural desires from supernatural ones, while Thomas Aquinas, together with the whole medieval tradition, distinguished natural desires from free ones.2 In defense of this claim, he cites Odon Lottin’s Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,3 the first volume of which had just appeared four years prior. Lottin, de Lubac observes, claims that the distinction between natural and free desire in medieval theology could be traced back to the distinction between two Greek terms, θέλησις and βούλησις, which Philip the Chancellor inherited from his reading of John Damascene.4 For de Lubac, the shift from distinguishing the natural will from the free will towards distinguishing the natural will from a “supernaturalized” will, augmented by grace, parallels the shift in post-Thomistic anthro1 2 3 4 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946). De Lubac, Surnaturel, 251–52. De Lubac was preceded in this argument by Jorge Laporta, “Les notions d’appétit naturel et de puissance obédientielle chez saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 5 (1928): 257–277. Laporta was in turn building on the work of Heinrich Kirfel, “Das natürliche Verlangen nach der Anschauung Gottes,” Divus Thomas (Vienna) 1 (1914): 33–57. Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, 6 vols. (Louvain: Abbaye du Mont César, 1942-60). Lottin, Psychologie et morale, vol. 1, 400-06, ctd. in de Lubac, Surnaturel, 251n3. 816 Jacob W. Wood pology from man considered as oriented by nature towards the vision of God, and man considered as oriented by nature towards a naturally attainable end, the call to the vision of God being “superadded” to man’s natural finality.5 Since de Lubac’s main concern is to establish a context for the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, and since the mere observation that there is a distinction between θέλησις and βούλησις in Philip the Chancellor was sufficient evidence of the use of that distinction in the early thirteenth century, de Lubac does not devote much space to a study of those terms and the distinction they denote in Philip the Chancellor. However, at a sufficient distance from the impact of de Lubac’s observation that such a distinction was theologically important in the period leading up to Aquinas, the question may rightly be asked concerning how and to what purpose the distinction was used in the theology of the early thirteenth century. The question deserves an independent consideration for two reasons. First, if we consider it instrumentally insofar as it aids us in establishing the proper context for the interpretation of Aquinas, this leads to the danger that we may anachronistically read the theology of the second half of the thirteenth century back into the first half of that century. Second, even if one were to base an interpretation of Aquinas upon a reading of early thirteenth century texts, then a detailed study of early thirteenth century texts would only contribute towards a more careful and precise reading of later authors. The purpose of this article is to study the theological implications of Philip the Chancellor’s reception of Damascene’s distinction between θέλησις and βούλησις. I will argue that Philip makes use of the distinction as part of a larger project of rethinking a late twelfth-century Augustinian perspective on nature in the light of Aristotle, and of crafting a theological language that can incorporate an Augustinian anthropology in the language of Aristotelian natural philosophy. In order to do so, Philip employs the concept of a “potency for obedience” (potentia obedientiae), which was deliberately used to describe Augustine’s understanding of what is natural (man’s receptivity to what God willed for humanity at Creation) in the language of Aristotelian natural philosophy. The article will proceed in two parts. First, I will explore the theology of nature and of natural desire in Peter Lombard. Second, I will approach the same topic in the Summa de bono of Philip the Chancellor, and show how his reception of Damascene’s distinction between θέλησις and βούλησις 5 De Lubac traces this shift in Surnaturel, 375–94. Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 817 enables him to rethink Peter’s anthropology.6 A. Peter Lombard’s Theology of Natural Desire According to Peter Lombard, any theological account of our natural desire has to come to terms with three questions. First, what does it means for a motion to be called “natural”? Second, what is the end of the will’s natural motion? Third, what is the relationship of the natural end of the will with that end which is posited for human nature by Christian Revelation? Peter answers the first question in Book 2 of the Book of Sentences, but leaves the second and the third until Book 4. In order to explain what it means for a motion to be natural, Peter educes the words of the Glossa ordinaria on Romans 7:15, where Paul notes the dichotomy between what he wills and what he does. The Glossator had observed that “man, having been subjected to sin, does what he does not want to do, because he naturally wants what is good, but this will always fails to achieve its effect unless [it is aided] by the 6 In what follows, I will not discuss the anonymous Summa Duacensis of MS. Douai 434, because the relationship of that Summa to Philip the Chancellor’s has yet to be established with certainty. In brief, there are three hypotheses as to the relation between the two works: 1) The Summa Duacensis was prior to the Summa de bono, because it was a draft, authored by Philip, of portions of the Summa de bono; 2) the Summa Duacensis was prior to the Summa de bono and was not authored by Philip, but Philip used it; 3) The Summa Duacensis was posterior to the Summa de bono, and was authored by G. de Soissons, the compilator of Douai 434. The first view is that of Victorin Doucet, “A travers le manuscrit 434 de Douai,” Antonianum 27 (1952): 531-80. The second is that of Palémon Glorieux, Introduction to La “Summa Duacensis” (Douai 434), ed. Palémon Glorieux (Paris: J. Vrin, 1955), 9-11. The third is that of Nicolai Wicki, Introduction, in Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono (Bern: Francke, 1985), 1:49-62. Richard Dales, speaking only of Glorieux’s and Doucet’s positions, summarizes the difficulty well: “The hard evidence is slight and the arguments on both sides tenuous, and in any case it was through Philip’s work that these views influenced generations of Latin thinkers.” Cf. Richard Dales, The Problem of the Rational Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 25. Dales’s comment should not be taken to mean that the Summa Duacensis is not deserving of scholarly attention; it is a valuable witness in itself to a number of points in early thirteenth century philosophy and theology. It is simply not possible at the present to establish to what extent it is related to the Summa de bono. For the purposes of this article, it is worth noting that the Summa Duacensis does use the term, potentia obedientie, in a manner similar to that of the Summa de bono, but discusses it at much greater length. Cf. Summa Duacensis, De opere miraculoso, cap. 1, q. 6, a. 4, sol. (Glorieux 120-21). The manner of its discussion of this term seems to favor Wicki’s view that the Summa Duacensis is posterior to the Summa de bono, but again, the evidence is too scant to make a reliable determination. 818 Jacob W. Wood grace of God.”7 Peter perceives in this comment a distinction between what is willed naturally (naturaliter) and what is willed freely (libenter).8 What is willed naturally is what Adam would have willed at Creation, because God made him morally upright. Subsequently, whatever sins we may happen to commit freely, a trace (scintilla) of that natural will remains in us after the fall.9 Grace, according to this view, frees us from freely choosing sin, and allows us to make free choices in accord with our natural will.10 If the role of grace is to heal fallen nature from the free choice of evil so that it may freely pursue the goal of its natural will, this raises a second question: whether the natural goal of the will is that end which is posited for human nature by Christian revelation. The importance of this question arises from the fact that, if Adam could choose freely in 7 8 9 10 Peter Lombard, II Sent., d. 39, cap. 3, no. 1. “Dicit enim quod ‘homo subiectus peccato facit quod non vult, quia naturaliter vult bonum, sed voluntas haec semper caret effectu, nisi gratia Dei’ adiuvet et liberet.” The critical edition of this text can be found in Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 2 vols. (Quaracchi: College of St. Bonaventure, 1971-81), 1:555. References in this work will be given by chapter and number, since this is often more precise than page number. The editors of the Quaracchi edition note that the most likely author of the Gloss is Anselm of Laon (1:555n2). Ibid., d. 39, cap. 3, no. 3. Although Peter acknowledges later in this chapter that there are others who deny this distinction (no. 4), it is clear from context that he himself prefers to draw it. Cf. Ibid., d. 35, cap. 2. Here Peter distinguishes, with respect to sinful acts, between acts considered insofar as they are acts (inquantum actus sunt), in which case he says that they are always good, and acts insofar as they are evil (inquantum mala sunt), in which case he says that they are sins. Ibid., d. 24, cap. 3, no. 1. The editors of the Quaracchi edition note the dependence of Peter on the school of Anselm of Laon (Quaracchi, 1:452, note to cap. 3). The text of the gloss reads, “Naturaliter quidem ratio vult bonum, sed voluntas haec semper caret effectu, nisi gratia Dei velle suum ad amandum bonum addiderit quod ad effectum potest perduci. Est enim velle naturae, velle gratiae, velle vitii. Velle naturae per se impotens est, nec palmam meretur, sed vincitur et trahitur a velle vitii, nisi velle gratiae subveniat, quod velle vitii fugat, et velle naturae liberat.” Cf. Biblia Sacra cum Glossa Ordinaria (Venice: Giunti, 1603), 96A. This is probably the original source of Peter’s text in the Book of Sentences, although its proximate source is almost certainly the Lombard’s own gloss on the Pauline Epistles, where this text is included verbatim (PL 191:1423A). Peter’s distinction of wills parallels that of the Glossa ordinaria precisely. On Peter’s use of the Glossa ordinaria, as well as his contributions to glossa on the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles, see Philip Rosemann, Peter Lombard (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 43-48; Lesley Smith, Glossa ordinaria: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Boston: Brill, 2009), 200–204. Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 819 accord with his natural will without the need for grace to heal him from sin, and if Adam’s natural will was ordered towards the beatific vision, then it would seem that Adam could choose the beatific vision without the help of grace. Peter, aware of the Pelagian danger in such a consequence, is keen to point out that in no sense does the human will suffice to achieve the final end posited for it by Christian Revelation without the help of grace.11 If it did, then grace (gratia) could nowise be called gratuitous (gratuita), because it would be due the merits of our previous actions.12 Nevertheless, there are some basic goods towards which our will might tend even without the aid of grace, such as cultivating a field and building a dwelling.13 Lest we read later distinctions into Peter’s text anachronistically, we should advert to two peculiarities of Peter’s description of the human will thus far. First, Peter does not predicate the word, “natural,” of those basic goods which are willed freely without the help of grace. Rather, he distinguishes first between what is willed naturally and what is willed freely; second, he distinguishes between what is willed freely with the help of grace and what is willed freely without the help of grace. Cultivating a field and building a house are not willed naturally for Peter; 11 12 13 Ibid., d. 26, cap. 4, no. 5. Ibid., d. 26, cap. 7, no. 1. Quoting Augustine’s Epistle 194.3.7, Peter’s text reads, “‘Illius enim gratiae percipiendae, quae voluntatem hominis sanat, ut sanata legem impleat, nulla merita praecedunt. Ipsa est enim qua iustificatur impius, id est fit iustus qui prius erat impius; meritis autem impii non gratia, sed poena debetur; nec ista esset gratia, si non daretur gratuita.’ Datur autem gratuita, quia nihil ante feceramus unde hoc mereremur.” The last sentence, which is not from Augustine but which appears in Peter’s commentary on Romans 3:22-26 (PL 191:1361C), reveals Peter’s dependence on his own previous work. Peter’s commentary, in turn, is also based on the Glossa ordinaria of the passage in question, which uses the text from Augustine in a slightly different form. “Sed voluntas nostra ostenditur infirma per legem ut sanet gratia voluntatem, et sanata voluntas impleat legem, non constituta sub lege, nec indigens lege huius gratiae percipiendae nulla praecedunt merita, quia meritis impii non gratia sed poena debetur, nec ista esset gratia, si non daretur gratuita.” Cf. Biblia Sacra cum Glossa ordinaria, 6:50. The discrepancy between the text of the Glossa ordinaria and Lombard’s first use of it, together with the manner in which he expands the quotation from Augustine from his commentary on Romans to his Book of Sentences, suggests that Peter probably knew and read the text from Augustine alongside the Glossa ordinaria, and that, while the Glossa ordinaria influenced his application of this text from Augustine to this question, Peter did not merely repeat what he had learned from the school of Laon here, as he sometimes does elsewhere. Ibid., d. 26, cap. 7, no. 2. 820 Jacob W. Wood they are willed freely without the help of grace. Neither is charity willed naturally; it is willed freely with the help of grace.14 On account of the fact that Peter primarily distinguishes between what is willed naturally and what is willed freely, when Peter discusses the will’s end in the context of drawing the aforementioned distinctions, he only discusses the end of what is willed freely, not the end of what is willed naturally. The goal of the will’s free action, Peter argues, is not the ultimate end of man. Free action concerns the means to our end, not the end itself.15 Speaking, then, of means towards our end, Peter describes a twofold proximate end of the will: good delight (delectatio bona) for those who choose good means to their end; evil delight (delectatio mala) for those who choose evil means to their end.16 Explaining what constitutes an object of good delight, Peter acknowledges that “good” can be said in several senses: “as useful, as it can be rewarded, as a sign of the good, as an appearance of good, as licit, and perhaps in other ways.”17 But for the purposes of selecting the means to our end, all that matters is the sense in which our actions can be said to be rewardable.18 Only those who freely will here and now to take good delight in actions which are rewardable with good, a choice that cannot be made without grace,19 will be rewarded with the ultimate end of man, the never-ending enjoyment (fruitio) of God.20 Having explained the proximate and remote ends of the free will, Cf. Ibid., d. 29, cap. 1, no. 2. Ibid., d. 26, cap. 11, no. 1. 16 Ibid., d. 38, cap. 4, no. 3. 17 Ibid., d. 41, cap. 2. “Bonum enim multipliciter accipitur, scilicet pro utili, pro remunerabili, pro signa boni, pro specie boni, pro licito, et aliis forte modis.” 18 Ibid., d. 41, cap. 1, no. 8. 19 Ibid., d. 41, cap. 1, no. 4. 20 Peter Lombard, I Sent., d. 1, cap. 2-3. 14 15 Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 821 Peter inquires into the relationship between an action freely chosen without the help of grace and an action freely chosen with the help of grace. Here some confusion might arise because Peter uses the adverb “naturally” equivocally. According to Peter, actions performed without the help of grace are done naturally (naturaliter), while actions above nature (praeter naturam),21 and performed by grace (per gratiam) are done marvelously (mirabiliter).22 The difference between the two concerns how each is caused in a creature. Relying on terminology taken from Augustine’s De genesi ad litteram, Peter observes that, although, “the causes of all things are in God . . . [,] the causes of some things are both in God and in creatures, while the causes of some things are only in God.”23 According to Augustine, as Peter interprets him, when God wants a creature to be the co-cause of something, God places a germinatory property (ratio seminalis) in the creature, which develops organically as a seed, and which allows the creature to perform an action of its own accord.24 When God wants to be the sole cause of something, he places a primordial cause (causa primordialis) in the creature, which is not a cause properly speaking; rather, it is something in the creature, by which the creature responds to what God chooses to do in it.25 21 22 23 24 25 For this and all Latin words that admit of a classical or a medieval spelling, I will follow the convention of the edition referenced for each author. Peter Lombard, II Sent., d. 18, cap. 6, no. 2. The distinction seems to be taken from the Glossa ordinaria on Genesis 2:20. Cf. Biblia Sacra cum Glossa ordinaria, 1:79B. “Omnia ergo quae ad gratiam significandam non naturali motu rerum, sed mirabiliter facta sunt, eorum absconditae causae in Deo fuerunt.” The Glossa is in turn quoting Augustine, De gen. ad lit. 9.18.34 (CSEL 28.1:293). “. . . omnia, etiam quae ad hanc gratiam [per quam salui fiunt peccatores] significandam non naturali motu rerum, sed mirabiliter facta sunt, eorum etiam causae in Deo absconditae fuerunt.” Ibid., d. 18, cap. 6, no. 1. “Omnium igitur rerum causae in Deo sunt . . . sed quarundam causae et in Deo sunt et in creaturis, quarundam vero causae in Deo tantum sunt.” As an antecedent to this passage, the Quaracchi editors point us towards Peter’s commentary on Ephesians 3:9 (PL 192:189D). “Sacramenti dico, absconditi a saeculis, non in saeculis, sed in Deo, qui omnia creavit. Habet enim Deus in seipso absconditas quorumdam factorum causas, quas rebus conditis non inservit, easque implet; non illo opere providentiae quo natura substituit ut sint, sed eo quo illas administrat ubi voluerit, quas ut voluit condidit, ibi est et gratia per quam salvi facti sunt peccatores. Non enim per naturam vitio depravatam, sed per Dei gratiam restauratur.” Ibid., d. 18, cap. 5, no. 3. Ibid., d. 18, cap. 5, no. 4; cap. 6, no. 2. The distinction between rationes seminales and rationes primordiales is taken from Augustine, De genesi ad litteram, lib. 5-6. While the latter term (rationes primordiales) appears to be unique to Augustine, 822 Jacob W. Wood Although, therefore, Peter distinguishes between natural and free will in Book 2, he does not discuss the end of natural will in that book; rather, he saves a more detailed discussion of the end of natural will for Book 4, Distinction 49, in his treatment of happiness (beatitudo) and man’s desire for it. In that distinction, Peter does not offer any of his own commentary on the subject; instead he quotes lengthy passages of Augustine, which describe the difficulties of understanding natural desire, without actually offering a solution to the question of the desire’s end. The problem, as Peter has Augustine describe it, is that while it is empirically true that all people desire happiness, it is also empirically true that not all people know that the path to happiness, as Christian revelation proposes, is virtue; nor do all people know that the goal of happiness, as Christian revelation proposes, is the vision of God; nor would all people, if they knew these things, desire to use virtue to enjoy the vision of God.26 Peter’s conclusion, again through the mouth of Augustine, is that all people know the basic contour of a happy life, “having all you want and not wanting anything wrongly,” but not all people realize that the only possible possession of this happiness is in God.27 In short, 26 27 the former term (rationes seminales) may have entered Latin theology through Jerome’s discussions of Origen. Cf. Jerome, Contra Iohannem 26, ed. Jean-Louis Feiertag, CCSL 79A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 43-44. Peter’s use of De genesi is not entirely direct, relying in part on the Glossa ordinaria on Gen. 2:5, which reads, “In prima mundi conditione cum Deus omnia simul creavit, non factus est, qui esset ratio creandi hominis non actio creati. Sed aliter haec in verbo Dei, ubi ista non facta sunt, sed aeterna. Aliter in elementis mundi, ubi omnia simul facta sunt futura. Aliter in rebus quae iam non simul, sed tempore suo quaeque creantur. Aliter in seminibus in quibus rursus primordiales causae repetuntur de rebus deductae, quae secundum causas quas primum condidit extiterant, velut herba ex terra, semen ex herba.” The text is taken from Biblia Sacra cum Glossa ordinaria, 1:62C. The passage here is an abbreviated and somewhat corrupted version of De genesi ad litteram 6.9.16-6.10.17. Peter Lombard, IV Sent., d. 49, cap. 1, nn. 4-5. Ibid., d. 49, cap. 1, no. 7. An antecedent to this passage can be found in Peter’s commentary on Romans 4:1-8 (PL 191:1369D-1370A). Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 823 as Peter goes on to describe in his own words, we have a natural desire for a happiness which is only found in God, though a given individual, who is unaware of God’s existence, might not experience this as a natural desire for God, and might freely seek happiness elsewhere.28 According to Peter, then, there are two principles in each of our actions. The first is a natural desire for a happiness that can only arise from having all that we want and not wanting anything wrongly. This desire is consistently present in us both before and after the fall, moving us to seek a means of attaining said happiness. If we choose means that are ordered towards the act in which that happiness is to be found (the vision of God), then we experience good delight, and may be rewarded with the goal of our natural desire. However, choosing good delight requires grace, whether in order to prepare us for happiness alone (such as Adam required), or whether to heal us from sin and prepare us for happiness (such fallen human nature requires). If we choose means that are not ordered towards the immediate vision of God, then we experience evil delight, and may not attain the goal of our natural desire. Finally, we may perform a limited set of good actions without grace, which do not concern our final end as such. These actions are not “natural” actions; they are actions willed freely without grace. Nevertheless, they can be said to have been done “naturally” in an equivocal sense, according to a germinatory property. B. Appropriating Aristotle: Philip the Chancellor Philip the Chancellor’s understanding of natural desire develops Peter’s understanding subtly but significantly. It is framed around the same three questions. First, what does it means for a motion to be called “natural”? Second, what is the end of the will’s natural motion? Third, what is the relationship of the natural end of the will with that end which is posited for human nature by Christian revelation? In discussing the meaning of “natural,” Philip relies both on Peter’s Book of Sentences as well as a Glossa on the Pauline Epistles, which Peter had completed prior to the Book of Sentences.29 Philip’s text makes it clear that he intends the reader to see his understanding of nature in continuity with that of Peter. However, the continuity is sometimes more apparent 28 29 Ibid., d. 50, cap. 2, no. 3. “. . . in hac vita nullus adeo malus est ut penitus secludatur a cogitatione Dei, qui nec perdit appetitum beatitudinis et quendam boni amorem, quem naturaliter habet rationalis creatura.” For the dating of Peter’s Glossa on the Pauline Epistles with respect to his Book of Sentences, see above, note 10. 824 Jacob W. Wood than real, for Philip’s primary point of reference is not, as it was for Peter, humanity as it was historically created by God—Philip’s idea of nature is less historical and more conceptual, even though his understanding of nature is still inexorably linked to historical and theological observations. Philip begins by grounding his reflections on nature in the text of Peter through a comparison of Peter’s Glossa on Romans 11:24 with the text of Book 2 of the Liber sententiarum. Peter’s text of Paul had read, “against your nature, you were grafted onto the good olive tree.”30 On this, Peter had commented in his Glossa: Since God is the one who creates and establishes all natures, he does nothing contrary to nature, since what he, from whom comes every mode, number and order of nature, does, is what belongs to nature or is natural for any sort of thing. Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to say that [God] does something contrary to nature when he acts contrary to that which we know in nature.... Yet he never acts contrary to that highest law of nature, which is far from the knowledge of we who are wicked and weak, because he does not act contrary to himself.31 We may note how Peter’s text weds two ideas: the first is the historical act of Creation, revealed in Genesis, whereby God creates and establishes natures; the second is the structure of a given nature on account of God’s choice to create it as such. There is a dependency of the second upon the first—God’s creative act fixes, in a historical moment, the bounds of a given nature. There is also a certain plasticity and contingency with respect to the word, “nature.” The ordinary course of events, according to which we understand and experience our human nature, occurs in our nature’s fallen state, not the state of its first creation. When God justifies a sinner, therefore, although God acts contrary to the ordinary course of events for a nature wounded and weakened by sin, God does act contrary to human nature according to its primary institution. 30 31 Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono, De bono gratie in angelis, q. 8 (468:173). “Contra naturam insertus es in bonam olivam.” Peter Lombard, Glossa in Rom. (PL 191:1488B). “Deus . . . creator et conditor omnium naturarum, nil contra naturam facit, quia id est naturae, vel naturale cuique rei quod facit, a quo est omnis modus, numerus, ordo naturae, sed tamen non incongrue dicitur aliquid facere contra naturam, quando facit contra id quod novimus in natura.... Contra vero illam summam naturae legem a notitia remotam, sive impiorum, sive infirmorum, tam Deus nullo modo facit, quam contra seipsum non facit.” Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 825 When Philip quotes this passage of Peter, he abstracts it from the historical context of creation and the fall, leaving out the part of Peter’s text which discusses God as the one who creates and establishes all natures, and thereby obscures the distinction between original and fallen nature. It is not that Philip does not think that God is the one who creates and establishes all natures—absit!—rather, the historical context of creation and fall is not as determinative of Philip’s approach to the structure of nature as such. A closer look at Philip’s discussion of nature reveals the shifting basis from which he considers it. Responding to the question of whether it is of the essence of a miracle that it be done contrary to nature, Philip observes: Nature is taken in many senses. For sometimes the natural course of events [for a given creature], as known to man, is called “nature,” as is said in the aforesaid authority [i.e. Peter’s Gloss] . . . Sometimes a certain possibility belonging to that creature, which God has given to it so that what he wills may be done from it, is called “nature,” and nature is defined in this way by the Gloss on the passage from Romans 11[:24] . . . which says, “what belongs to each thing’s nature is what God, from whom comes every mode, number, and order of nature, makes of it.” And in Book 2 of the Sentences, d. 18 [it likewise says]: “Moreover, [God] gave to natures that [what God wills] could be educed from them, not that they would have it by a natural motion . . .” Sometimes the highest law of nature is called “nature,” namely, God himself. [Thus] the Gloss on the [aforesaid] passage from Romans 11 [says] . . . “But he never acts contrary to that highest law of nature, which is far from the knowledge of we who are wicked and weak, because he does not act contrary to himself.” 32 32 Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono, ed. Nicolas Wicki (Berne: A. Francke, 1985), De bono gratie in angelis, q. 8, a. 1 (468:183). “. . . Natura accipitur multipliciter. Dicitur enim quandoque naturalis cursus hominibus notus, ut in predicta auctoritate dicitur. . . . Quandoque dicitur natura possibilitas quedam ipsius creature, quam dedit ei Deus, ut ex ea fiat quod ipse vult, et sic accipitur super illud ad Rom. XI . . . Glosa: ‘Id nature est cuique rei quod de ea facit Deus, a quo omnis modus, numerus et ordo nature.’ Et II Sententiarum XVIII: ‘Dedit autem naturis ut ex eis hoc fieri posset, non ut naturali motu haberent. . .’. Quandoque dicitur natura summa lex nature, ipse scilicet Deus, super illud ad Rom. XI . . . Glosa: ‘Contra illam summam nature legem a notitia remotam sive impiorum sive infirmorum tam Deus nullo modo facit quam contra se ipsum non facit.’” 826 Jacob W. Wood Philip goes on to argue that miracles are contrary to nature only in the first sense, not the other two.33 But since not everything that is done contrary to the ordinary course of nature is a miracle, Philip distinguishes further. Some things, which are done contrary to the ordinary course of nature, have an end result entirely in accord with it, such as the healing of the blind. These are miracles, but they are beyond nature (preter naturam) rather than contrary to nature (contra naturam), because there is nothing contrary to nature about a man who sees.34 Some things, which are done contrary to the ordinary course of nature, have an end result which is entirely above nature, such as the justification of sinners,35 or the assumption of a human nature by the Word.36 These things are not contrary to nature so much as they are above nature (supra naturam).37 Whereas the primary factor in determining the natural, for Peter, is how a motion relates to God’s institution of a nature at Creation, the primary factor in determining the natural, for Philip, is how a motion relates to the ordinary course of events. This has a significant influence on how Philip appropriates Peter’s understanding of the relationship between what is done freely with the help of grace and what is done freely without it. By decoupling reasoning about nature from an account of Creation, Philip is able to attempt a synthesis of Augustinian causes, as described by Peter, with Aristotelian causes, the knowledge of which had recently become available in the time between the completion of Peter’s Book of Sentences and the composition of the Summa de bono.38 There are two Aristotelian texts that seem to have influenced Philip in particular. The first is Physics 2.1.39 In that text, Aristotle gives two accounts of nature. The first is less a definition than an indication of how to begin thinking of nature: everything with a nature has an intrin33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Ibid. (468:195). Ibid. (471:273, 280). Ibid. (469:214). Ibid. (471:268). Ibid. (469:218, 471:268). In the recovery of Aristotle’s works in the Latin West, each book, and sometimes parts of each book, has its own respective history. That being the case, I will discuss the relevant history for each work when it is pertinent for understanding a given author. Cf. Nicola Wicki, Introduction to Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono, 46. Wicki comments that Philip knew Aristotle’s Physics in the translation of James of Venice, which was completed ca. 1170, and which included only books 1 and 2. Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 827 sic principle of motion and rest.40 The second relates nature to each of the four causes. Aristotle begins from material causality: “nature . . . is the immediate material substratum of things which have in themselves a principle of motion or change.”41 In terms of formal causality, “nature is . . . the shape or form (not separable except in statement) of things which have in themselves a source of motion.”42 In terms of efficient and final causality, nature is that from which and towards which generation and corruption tend.43 Of all the four causes, a thing’s formal cause is most properly called its “nature,” because form brings the potency of matter into act, and is that which governs the transmission of nature in generation.44 The second text of which Philip makes use is Metaphysics 9.8, in which Aristotle develops the account of nature given in Physics 2.1, by expounding upon the teleology of nature as a formal cause.45 Aristotle first associates nature with potency: every principle of movement or rest is a “potency,” and thus nature is a potency in a thing for movement with respect to itself.46 As with any potency, the actuality of nature is prior to its potentiality in three senses: meaning (λόγος), because potency is ordered to act;47 time (χρόνος) with respect to form but not with 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 Aristotle, Physics 2.1 (192b13-14). “Each of them [animals, plants, simple bodies] has within itself a principle of motion and stationariness.” This and all English translations of Aristotle will be taken from The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, 2001). Philip alludes to this passage and actually uses it as a definition of nature in Summa de bono, De bono gratie in angelis, q. 8, a. 5 (486:134). Ibid. (193a28-30). Ibid. (193b3-5). “. . . ἡ φύσις ἂν εἴη τῶν ἐχόντων ἐν αὑτοῖς κινήσεως ἀρχὴν ἡ μορφὴ καὶ τὸ εἶδος, οὐ χωριστὸν ὂν ἀλλ' ἢ κατὰ τὸν λόγον.” The Greek text of Aristotle’s Physics is taken from W.D. Ross, Aristotle's Physics, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936). Ibid (193b12-18). Ibid (193b6-7). Philip references a hodgepodge of translations of the Metaphysics, but it is likely that he at least consulted Aristotle’s Metaphysics in the translatio media, which included most of the Metaphysics, save for Book XI. Cf. Nicola Wicki, Introduction to Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono, 46, especially, n2. Aristotle, Metaphysics 9.8 (1049b5-8). “λέγω δὲ δυνάμεως... ὅλως πάσης ἀρχῆς κινητικῆς ἢ στατικῆς.” The Greek text of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is taken from W.D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953). Ibid. (1049b12-14). “τῷ λόγῳ μὲν οὖν ὅτι προτέρα, δῆλον (τῷ γὰρ ἐνδέχεσθαι ἐνεργῆσαι δυνατόν ἐστι τὸ πρώτως δυνατόν...).” (“Clearly it is prior in meaning; for that which is in the primary sense potential is potential because it is possible for it to become active . . .”). I have altered McKeon’s translation, since 828 Jacob W. Wood respect to number, because any existing potency or act always comes to be from something in act, even if the source of that act is another individual;48 and finally being (οὐσία), for the same reason that it is prior in time, and also because an existing potency, like all existing things, is ordered towards a principle, and act is its principle.49 By thus classing nature as a species of potency and defining every potency by the act towards which it is ordered, Aristotle suggests that every nature, as a potency, is ordered towards act as its teleological perfection. The encounter with Aristotle left Philip with a dilemma. From Peter’s reading of Augustine, Philip received an account of nature that was dependent on God’s will as the cause of nature; from Aristotle, he received an account of nature that was dependent on some act as nature’s end. In order to harmonize these two accounts of nature, Philip looked to the first of the three arguments from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where Aristotle had argued that act is prior in meaning (λόγος) to potency because potency is ordered to act. A subtle linguistic coincidence allowed him to bring Aristotle together with Peter. Λόγος was rendered by the Latin translator as ratio, the very same word that Peter had used to 48 49 his use of “formula” for λόγος is a bit awkward. Ibid. (1049b17-29) “τῷ δὲ χρόνῳ πρότερον ὧδε: τὸ τῷ εἴδει τὸ αὐτὸ ἐνεργοῦν πρότερον, ἀριθμῷ δ᾽ οὔ... ἀεὶ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος γίγνεται τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ ὂν ὑπὸ ἐνεργείᾳ ὄντος, οἷον ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ἀνθρώπου, μουσικὸς ὑπὸ μουσικοῦ, ἀεὶ κινοῦντός τινος πρώτου: τὸ δὲ κινοῦν ἐνεργείᾳ ἤδη ἔστιν. εἴρηται δὲ ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῆς οὐσίας λόγοις ὅτι πᾶν τὸ γιγνόμενον γίγνεται ἔκ τινος τι καὶ ὑπό τινος, καὶ τοῦτο τῷ εἴδει τὸ αὐτό.” (“In time it is prior in this sense: the actual which is identical in species though not in number with a potentially existing thing is prior to it… For from the potentially existing the actually existing is always produced by an actually existing thing, e.g. man from man, musician by musician; there is always a first mover, and the mover already exists actually. We have said in our account of substance that everything that is produced is something produced from something and by something, and that [it is] the same in species as it.”) Ibid. (1050a3-10). “Ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ οὐσίᾳ γε,… μὲν ὅτι τὰ τῇ γενέσει ὕστερα τῷ εἴδει καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ πρότερα… καὶ ὅτι ἅπαν ἐπ᾽ ἀρχὴν βαδίζει τὸ γιγνόμενον καὶ τέλος (ἀρχὴ γὰρ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα, τοῦ τέλους δὲ ἕνεκα ἡ γένεσις), τέλος δ᾽ ἡ ἐνέργεια, καὶ τούτου χάριν ἡ δύναμις λαμβάνεται.” (“But it is also prior in being . . . because the things that are posterior in becoming are prior in form and in being . . . and because everything that comes to be moves towards a principle, i.e. an end (for that for the sake of which a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the end), and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potency is acquired.”) I have changed McKeon’s rendering of οὐσία to “being” from “substantiality” for greater ease of comparison with the Latin use of Aristotle’s text. Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 829 describe the properties that God had placed within creatures at Creation. Philip availed himself of this coincidence to unite the two ideas by means of a single definition: “A potency ordered to an end is called a ratio; for an end orders every cause.”50 This definition gave Philip the necessary conceptual tools to describe Augustine’s rationes in terms of Aristotle’s potencies. As Philip attempts to harmonize Augustine and Aristotle, he makes more distinctions from Augustine’s text than did Peter. For Philip, there is a germinatory property (ratio seminalis) in every creature, which corresponds to a material cause, a natural property (ratio naturalis) which corresponds to a formal cause, a causal property (ratio causalis) which corresponds to an efficient cause, and all of these are ordered towards a final property (ratio finalis) as to a final cause. The germinatory and natural properties are intrinsic to a thing, the causal property is extrinsic.51 As for primordial properties, they are either in God as the causes of things, or are identical to the germinatory and natural properties of a creature.52 Philip’s association of Augustine’s primordial causes with Aristotle’s material and formal causes created a problem that had existed neither for Peter nor for Aristotle: how does one give a teleological account in terms of material and formal causes of that property of human nature in virtue of which God causes effects in it that human nature cannot cause of its own accord? The problem had not arisen for Aristotle, because Aristotle had only considered human nature in relation to the ends of acts which it could achieve of its own accord. The problem had not arisen for Augustine and Peter, because they had only considered human nature in relation to acts which it could either achieve of its own accord, or which could be caused in it by God’s grace. 50 51 52 Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono, a. 5 (481:9). “ratio dicitur potentia ordinata per finem; finis enim ordinat causas omnes.” The sentence is nowhere to be found in Aristotle. As an antecedent to this attempted harmonization, we may highlight Alexander of Hales, Glossa in libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (Quaracchi: College of St. Bonaventure, 1952), 2:162. “Quatuor sunt genera causarum, et ideo ratio dicitur quadrupliciter. Aliquando enim dicitur in comparatione ad causam finale, et sic accipitur ratio simpliciter; aliquando autem respicit causam formalem, et sic dicitur ratio naturalis; aliquando autem respicit causam materialem dispositam, et sic dicitur ratio seminalis; aliquando respicit causam efficientem, et sic dicitur ratio primordialis.” (emphasis added) Philip’s association of ratio and potency is anticipated here, but not in the complete sense in which Philip discusses it. Ibid. (481:13). Ibid. (482:18). 830 Jacob W. Wood Philip’s solution was to develop a new kind of potency. Taking as his point of departure the association in Metaphysics 9.8 between nature and potency, he states: A potency for obedience (potentia obedientie) towards every divine work was created from the beginning, whether nature mediates it as a principle, or whether the will of the Creator does it immediately. But while there is the same potency for obedience towards every work, there is not a potency in the same degree to one or another work. Rather, for some [works] it is called a potency in the second or third degree, while for miraculous works (opera miraculosa) it is only called a possibility. However, since that possibility arises from the creature’s obedience, [since] God can make of it what he wills, and since it is a passive possibility, it does not therefore follow that [the possibility] is a potency for an act.53 By his recourse to the term, “potency for obedience,” Philip intentionally recasts Peter’s Augustinian distinctions in Aristotelian language without changing their underlying meaning. A potency for obedience sounds Aristotelian, but insofar as an Aristotelian potency is immediately ordered to an act, a potency for obedience in the utmost degree is not a potency properly speaking, because it is not ordered immediately to any particular act. That is why Philip calls it only a “possibility.”54 As with Philip’s account of nature, his account of natural desire is also eclectic, drawing on Peter, but in this case relying mostly on Aristotle and John Damascene. With Peter, Philip distinguishes in general Ibid. (483:69). “. . . potentia obedientie a principio creata est ad omnia opera divina, sive mediante natura principio, sive voluntate creatoris immediate. Et est eadem potentia obedientie ad omnia opera, sed non est potentia in eodem gradu ad hec opera et ad alia; sed ad alia dicitur potentia in secundo gradu vel tertio, ad opera vero miraculosa possibilitas tantum. Sed non ideo sequitur quod potentia sit ad actum, quia illa possibilitas est secundum obedientiam creature, de qua potest Deus facere quod vult, et est possibilitas passiva.” 54 In fact, keenly aware of this difference between Aristotelian potency and what he is proposing, Philip goes on to call the Aristotelian potency, “active potency” (potentia activa), and the Augustinian possibility, “receptive potency” (potentia susceptiva). Cf. Ibid. (484:90). “Est enim potentia activa, et est potentia susceptiva . . . et potentia activa est tam nature superioris quam inferioris, susceptiva autem tantum nature inferioris. Et verum est quod quicquid est Deo possibile secundum potentiam activam, est nature possibile, non simpliciter, sed secundum potentiam susceptivam, et hec est dicta possibilitas, sed non secundum activam . . .” 53 Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 831 between a natural desire by which we desire what is good in general, and a free desire for any particular good.55 Philip also identifies that natural desire with a spark (scintilla),56 which was part of Adam’s upright nature at Creation,57 and cannot be extinguished completely, even by sin.58 However, Philip’s thought adds to these distinctions taken from Peter several subsequent distinctions drawn from Aristotle and Damascene. In chapter 36 of De fide orthodoxa,59 Damascene distinguishes two aspects of the will: natural willing (θέλησις, transliterated by the medieval translators as thelisis), which concerns in general everything that pertains to a creature’s natural existence,60 and deliberative willing (βούλησις, 55 56 57 58 59 60 Ibid., De bono nature intellectualis creature coniuncte corporali, q. 2, a. 3, n. b (199:105). Ibid., q. 2, a. 3, n. a (192:3). Ibid., q. 2, a. 3, n. b (197:65). Ibid., q. 2, a. 4, n. d (204:50). Damascene explains his philosophical psychology in cap. 36, and applies it to the two wills of Christ in cap. 56. The translation of De fide orthodoxa which Peter used for the Book of Sentences, from the twelfth century Venetian theologian, Cerbanus, starts at cap. 45 and only continues until cap. 52. A later edition, by Burgundio of Pisa, would include the complete text. Circumstances appear to have been such that Peter may have only had a brief time to copy out texts he considered to be most important from a complete edition, and he evidently judged Damascene’s philosophical psychology not to be among the most important passages. Philip, however, shows a thorough acquaintance with the complete translation, and is able to incorporate Damascene’s moral psychology more thoroughly into his reflections on the natural desire for God. For this hypothesis, see Rosemann, Peter Lombard, 38; Colish, Peter Lombard (New York: Brill, 1994), 1:22. Both translations are available in a modern critical edition in John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa: Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1955). On the versions of De fide orthodoxa, see Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, “Translations and Translators,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert Benson and Giles Constable (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 430n36. On Cerbanus’s life and work, see Walter Berschin, Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages: From Jerome to Nicholas of Cusa (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 218. John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, trans. Burgundio, cap. 36, n. 8 (Buytaert 135-36). “Oportet scire quoniam animae inserta est naturaliter virtus, ‘appetitiva eius quod secundum naturam est, et omnium quae substantialiter naturae adsunt contentiva,’ quae vocatur voluntas. Nam ‘substantia quidem esse et vivere et moveri secundum intellectum et sensum appetit, propriam concupiscens naturalem et plenam essentiam’. ‘Ideoque’ et sic determinant hanc naturalem voluntatem: ‘thelima (id est voluntas) est appetitus rationalis et vitalis, ex solis dependens naturalibus’. ‘Quare thelisis (id est voluntas) quidem est ipse’ naturalis et 'vitalis et rationali appetitus' omnium naturae constitutivorum, ‘simplex 832 Jacob W. Wood transliterated by the translators as bulisis), which concerns some “particular thing.”61 θέλησις is in us prior to any actual determined intention, whereas βούλησις is the beginning of any action and concerns the end in view.62 As compared with Peter’s Augustinian psychology, we may note one significant similarity and one significant difference in Damascene’s distinction of wills. The similarity concerns θέλησις, which, like Augustine’s natural willing, is not the subject of free will; it is rather the “simple power of willing,”63 which seeks the satisfaction of human nature in general.64 The difference concerns the nature of βούλησις, which, unlike Augustine’s freely willed actions, concerns not just the means to a determined end, but the very end itself. When Philip approaches Damascene’s moral psychology, he attempts to harmonize it with Augustine and Peter. In order to do this, he adopts Damascene’s distinction between θέλησις and βούλησις, but maps onto it Augustine’s distinction between natural and free will. This posed no 61 62 63 64 virtus’. Qui aliorum enim appetitus, non existens rationalis, non dicitur thelisis (id est voluntas).” The passages in single quotes are taken by Damascene from Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum I ad Marinum (PG 91:12C-13A). For an account of Maxmimus’s understanding of the will, see Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (New York: Routledge, 1996), 58–61. Ibid., cap. 36, n. 9 (Buytaert 136). “‘Bulisis (id est voluntas) autem est qualitativa naturalis thelisis’ (id est voluntas, scilicet naturalis et rationalis appetitus ‘alicuius rei’. Nam iniacet quidem hominis animae virtus rationaliter appetendi. Cum igitur naturaliter motus fuerit ipse rationalis appetitus ad aliquam rem, dicitur bulisis (id est voluntas). Bulisis (id est voluntas) enim est appetitus et desiderium cuiusdam rei rationalis.’” The quoted passages are taken by Damascene from Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum I ad Marinum (PG 91:13B). Ibid., cap. 36, n. 11 (Buytaert 137). “‘Est autem bulisis (id est voluntas) finis,’ non ‘eorum quae sunt ad finem.’ ‘Igitur finis quidem est voluntabile,’ ut regem esse, ‘ut sanum esse; ad finem autem est quod consiliabile est, scilicet modus per quem debemus sani esse,’ vel regnare ; deinde, post bulisim (id est voluntatem), inquisitio et scrutatio; et post haec, si ex hiis quae in nobis sunt est, fit consilium, scilicet consiliatio. ‘Consilium autem est appetitus inquisitivus, de hiis quae in nobis sunt rebus fiens.’ Consiliatur autem, si debet pertractare rem vel non. Deinde, iudicat quod melius, et dicitur iudicium; deinde, disponit et amat quod ex consilio iudicatum est, et vocatur sententia. Si enim iudicet et non dispositus fuerit ad quod iudicatum est, scilicet non diligat id, non dicitur sententia. Deinde, post dispositionem, fit electio; electio autem est duobus praeiacentibus eligere, et optare hoc prae altero. Deinde, impetum facit ad operationem, et dicitur impetus. Deinde, utitur et dicitur usus. Deinde, cessat ab appetitu post usum.” The quoted passages are taken by Damascene from Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum I ad Marinum (PG 91:13–16). Ibid., cap. 36, n. 15 (Buytaert 140–41). Ibid., cap. 36, n. 8 (Buytaert 135–36). Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 833 particular difficulty as concerns θέλησις.65 However, it posed a set of difficult questions concerning βούλησις. First, since Damscene explicitly states that βούλησις concerns the end primarily, not the means to the end, while Augustine states precisely the opposite about what is willed freely, Philip was left to resolve the discrepancy between the two authorities.66 Second, since Peter had followed Augustine, it was sufficient for Peter to define beatitudo as “having all you want, and not wanting anything wrongly,” because the first part of his description of happiness pertained to man’s fixed end, and the second to the freely chosen means towards that end. Since, however, Philip follows Damascene, he had to make room in Augustine’s description of happiness for an explanation of why any person would want to choose human nature’s ultimate end for himself. In short, Philip had to distinguish between the object of human happiness, the subjective dispositions which cause a person to desire that object freely, and the person’s choice of means towards that object, whereas Peter only distinguished between the object and the means of obtaining it. The necessity of distinguishing the object of happiness from the subjective dispositions which lead a person to choose it freely was made all the more important in light of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In Philip’s day, only the first three books of the Nicomachean Ethics were available to Latin readers,67 and in Book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines happiness as “an activity of the soul according to perfect 65 66 67 Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono, De bono nature intellectualis creature coniuncte corporali, q. 2, a. 1 (160:29). “Dividit autem [bulisim] contra voluntatem naturalem, que thelisis dicta est.” Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono, De bono nature intellectualis creature, q. 8, a. 3 (73:32). “Est enim voluntas secundum duos modos. Primo modo dicitur voluntas finis quod est summum bonum, et sic ponitur voluntas cum tria anime assignantur secundum conversionem eius ad essentiam divinam per illa tria intelligentia, memoria et voluntas que sunt trinitas creata. Secundo modo dicitur eorum que sunt ad finem que ex iudicio et deliberatione procedunt, ut II Damasceni XXII, et huiusmodi dicitur liberum arbitrium facultas sive ipsa voluntas facilis. Primam vocat Iohannes Damascenus thelisim, secundam que est liberum arbitrium bulisim. Prima est in bonum tantum, secunda est declinans in bonum vel in malum.” István Bejczy, “Introduction,” in Virtue Ethics in the Middle Ages: Commentaries on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, 1200-1500 (Boston: Brill, 2008), 3. The translation of books 2-3 was known as the “ethica vetus,” while the translation of book 1 was known as the “ethica nova.” Both are presumed to have been made by Burgundio of Pisa, the same translator who completed John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa. 834 Jacob W. Wood virtue.”68 Philip, aware of this text, sought a way of distinguishing the good, as the end of human nature, from virtue, which leads us to choose the good as our particular end. He does this by leaving aside Augustine’s definition of happiness and preferring one taken Boethius: “happiness . . . is ‘a state made perfect by the amalgamation of everything that is good.’”69 Philip, like Boethius, identifies the amalgamation of everything that is good with God as an object, and so is able to distinguish virtue from it as the subjective disposition which disposes a subject for the enjoyment of God.70 C. Conclusion Philip the Chancellor made two contributions to mid thirteenth-century reflection on natural desire. The first concerned what it means to be natural. By redefining the “natural” as that which happens according to the ordinary course of events, Philip developed an account of nature which was more directly receptive to philosophical analysis through detachment from any explicit reference to the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and glorification. This had the benefit of bringing Christian reflection on nature into more explicit dialogue with non-Christian reflection on it, and of allowing for a rich flowering of philosophical analysis of human nature in the decades to follow. The second concerned Peter Lombard’s category of free desire without the aid of grace. Through an appropriation of John Damascene’s moral psychology, Philip extended free desire to include the end of 68 69 70 Nicomachean Ethics, 1.13 (1102a5). “ἐστὶν ἡ εὐδαιμονία τῶν τιμίων καὶ τελείων.” The Greek text of the Nicomachean Ethics is taken from I. Bywater, Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894). Burgundio’s translation reads, “est felicitas anime actus quis secundum virtutem perfectam.” The critical edition of Burgundio’s translation is available in Ethica Nicomachea. Translatio Antiquissima libr. II-III sive 'Ethica Vetus', Translationis Antiquioris quae supersunt sive 'Ethica Nova', 'Hoferiana', 'Borghesiana', Translatio Roberti Grosseteste Lincolniensis sive 'Liber Ethicorum' (Recensio Pura et Recensio Recognita), ed. R.A. Gauthier, 5 vols., Aristoteles Latinus 26 (Leiden: Brill, 1972-1974). This text is available as Aristoteles Latinus 26.2:91. Ibid., De bono gratie in homine, De gratia gratum faciente, De virtute in communi, q.1 (527:37). The definition is taken from Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, lib. 3, pros. 2. “Liquet igitur esse beatitudinem statum bonorum omnium congregatione perfectum.” The critical edition of this text is available in Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae; Opuscula theologica, ed. Claudio Moreschini (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2000), 60. Ibid. (528:83). Philip expresses a similar idea to that of Boethius in De consolatione philosophiae, lib. 3, pros. 10. Recasting Augustine to Look like Aristotle 835 human nature, not just the means of achieving that end. The legacy of this contribution was more ambiguous, however, in light of two questions that Philip left unanswered. First, what is the ultimate end of man’s free desire without the aid of grace? Peter had not asked this question, because he did not think that man’s ultimate end was the subject of free desire without the aid of grace—he spoke only of proximate and immediate ends for such a desire, like those associated with the sustenance of human life. Even though his thought allowed for it, Philip did not resolve this question, as his speculation on man’s freely chosen end focused on the end of man’s free desire with the aid of grace.71 Nevertheless, standing in the background to subsequent reflection on the ultimate end of what is willed freely without the help of grace was Peter Lombard’s comment that whatever is so desired can be said to be desired “naturally,” even if in an equivocal sense. This leads to a second question: what is the relationship between the ultimate end of man’s natural desire (as contrasted with free desire), and the ultimate end of man’s free desire without the aid of grace (as contrasted with the ultimate end of man’s free desire with the aid of grace)? Is the end of both “natural” desires the same, or is there a different end for each? If they are the same, then an infelicitous consequence could arise for theological anthropology: how can man be said to desire the vision of God freely without the aid of grace?72 If they are differ71 72 In order to highlight Philip’s contribution in bringing Christian theology into a more explicit dialogue with Aristotelian categories of will and desire, we may profitably compare him to William of Auxerre, for whom our free desire for the knowledge of the first truth can only be identified with faith. Cf. William of Auxerre, Summa aurea, lib. III, tract. 10, cap. 4, q. 3 (Quaracchi, 3.1:152). “. . . Amor est in qualibet virtute, ut post dicetur, et amor cognitionis prime veritatis fidei est; amor autem summi boni, in quantum bonum, caritas. Nec dicimus quod delectatio que est secundum tactum spiritualem sit caritas, sed est finis motus caritatis. Eodem modo delectatio que est in gustu vel odoratu spirituali non est caritas, sed finis motus caritatis; eodem modo intelligendum est de visu spirituali. Dicimus ergo quod desiderium cognoscendi Deum est intellectus fidei; sed desiderium delectandi in Deo vel per modum visus vel odoratus vel gustus vel tactus caritatis est.” William does possess a doctrine of natural love of God, but he suspects it as being potentially too closely related to the natural love of creatures. Cf. Summa aurea, lib. 2, tact. 2, cap. 5. It was not until the sixteenth century that this view became widespread. Its most well known form is found in Francisco Suárez, De fine hominis, dis16, §2, n. 7, in Opera Omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1856), 4:155. Suárez argues that man has an innate desire for the vision of God (meaning by “innate” something analogous to what Peter Lombard meant by “natural”), but that man can form an elicited but conditional desire for the same end (meaning by “elicited” something 836 Jacob W. Wood ent, then de Lubac may have done himself a disservice by unknowingly drawing a false dichotomy. For although de Lubac appealed to Philip the Chancellor’s appropriation of Damascene’s distinction between θέλησις and βούλησις as evidence that, in the early thirteenth century, natural desires were always distinguished from free desires rather than from supernatural desires, that very appropriation planted the seed for a contrast between the ultimate end of our free desire with the aid of grace and our free desire without the aid of grace. If Philip did not call this a distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” desire, Peter had at least already called the former, “natural.” In short, while Philip certainly emphasizes the distinction between natural desire and free desire, his appropriation of Damascene’s distinction between θέλησις and βούλησις, seen in the light of Peter’s equivocal use of the word, “natural,” prepared the very distinction that de Lubac sought to criticize by referencing Philip in the first place. Finally, de Lubac did not reference Philip the Chancellor for Philip’s own sake; he sought in Philip grounds for a better reading of Thomas Aquinas, which would contrast all instances of “natural desire” with free desire rather than supernatural desire. But if both distinctions can be found in the early thirteenth century, at least in a germinatory form, then it stands to reason that theologians examining the doctrine of natural desire in the thirteenth century will be unable to content themselves with a simple choice between one distinction or the other. Indeed, subsequent scholarship has before it the task of exploring and attempting to map out the complex ways in which both distinctions were received by theoloN&V gians in the subsequent decades of the thirteenth century.73 73 analogous to what Peter Lombard and Philip the Chancellor mean by “free”). Cf. Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas Aquinas and his Interpreters (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010), 221–35. While Feingold rightly notes that Suárez’s synthesis became common among Dominican and Jesuit Thomists, he omits that members of the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine (OESA) at this time also routinely held the view that the vision of God is the end of natural and free desire, without resorting to a doctrine of conditional elicited desire. I hope in the future to contribute a detailed account of the various positions of members of that order. In the mean time, I refer the reader to my The Natural Desire for God: Henri de Lubac and European Thomists of the Early Twentieth Century (PhD Diss., Catholic University of America, 2014), 119–36, 172–81. As a preliminary contribution to that futher study, I refer the reader to my “Kataphasis and Apophasis in Thirteenth Century Theology: The Anthropological Context of the Triplex Via in the Summa fratris Alexandri and Albert the Great,” Heythrop Journal (forthcoming). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 837–873 837 Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay E duardo E cheverria Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, MI I n his new book , The Second Vatican Council on Other Reli- gions,1 the Australian theologian Gerald O’Collins, S.J., addresses the questions regarding the universal scope of God’s plan of salvation mediated through the person of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, the salvific state of non-Christians and the irreligious, and, correspondingly, the significance of other religions in the history of redemption. He addressed these questions in an earlier book, Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples,2 but the crucial difference in this new book—the earlier one focused on the major biblical testimony—is that he now turns to justify theologically his position in the pertinent documents of Vatican II (Constitutions: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum; Gaudium et Spes; Decree: Ad Gentes; and Declaration: Nostra Aetate) and the papal magisterium of John Paul II (Redemptor Hominis, Dominum et Vivificantem, Redemptoris Missio).3 O’Collins’s position is well 1 2 3 Gerald O’Collins, S.J., The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). For an overview of this book, see Gerald O’Collins, “The Second Vatican Council on other living faiths,” Pacifica, Australasian Theological Studies, 26.2 (June 2013): 155–170. Ibid., Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). For a Review Symposium of this book consisting of Peter C. Phan, Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Catherine Cornille, and Paul J. Griffiths, with a Response by O’Collins’s, see Horizons 36.1 (Spring 2009): 121–142. Also, Jacques Dupuis, S.J., Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), is a significant theological source for O’Collins’ position, but I shall refrain from discussing Dupuis’ work in this limited article review. O’Collins acted as advocate for Dupuis during the inves- 838 Eduardo Echeverria summarized by him in the following set of questions and answers: How can Christians profess and proclaim faith in Jesus Christ as the one redeemer of all humankind, and at the same time recognize the Spirit at work in the world’s religions and cultures—as was done by John Paul II?. . . As revealer and redeemer, Jesus is unique and universal, but in practice the visible paths to salvation have remained many. What might the various religious traditions mean in the divine plan to save the whole of humanity? . . . (a) Can the adherents of the other religions be saved? (b) If one answers yes, do the elements of truth and grace found in these religions mean that their adherents can be saved, not despite, but through these elements? (c) If one again answers yes, do these religions enjoy a positive meaning in God’s one plan of salvation for all human beings—or in the language of the Letter to the Ephesians—in the one “recapitulation” of all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10)?4 O’Collins’s affirmative response to these questions makes clear that his theology of religious pluralism is an inclusivist one, in sum, “inclusive pluralism” à la Jacques Dupuis.5 This position attempts to balance various things: one, God’s salvation for all people is based upon the person and work of Jesus Christ; two, the saving significance of his person and work is in some sense also available through his Spirit to non-Christians, and even the irreligious, just as they are, so there is no need for them to be explicitly converted to Christ; and three, Christ’s saving significance is 4 5 tigation of Dupuis’ works by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This investigation involved conversations with the CDF that began in the spring of 1998 and ended with a “notification” published by the CDF on the Vatican website in January 2001. For O’Collins’s account of the person and work of Jacques Dupuis, see “Jacques Dupuis, His Person and Work,” in In Many and Diverse Ways: In Honor of Jacques Dupuis, ed. Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 18–29. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 182–183. Ibid., 185–188. Dupuis responds as follows to the question what is meant by inclusive pluralism. “It is intended, as I have explained repeatedly, to combine two fundamental affirmations which, though apparently contradictory, must be seen as complementary (cf. Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, 95): ‘the universal constitutive character of the Christ event in the order of salvation and the saving significance of the religious traditions in a plurality of principle of the religious traditions within the one manifold plan of God for humankind’” (“‘Christianity and the Religions’ Revisited,” in Louvain Studies 28 [2003]: 363–383, and at 369–370). Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 839 universal, constitutive, and decisive in God’s one divine plan of salvation for humanity, but other religions can be accepted positively as part of this saving plan.6 In other words, a Moslem qua Moslem can be saved; a Buddhist qua Buddhist can be saved; a Hindu qua Hindu can be saved; a Jew qua Jew can be saved; and so forth. To be accurate, O’Collins is not a religious pluralist simplicter. He will claim that Christ is the decisive cause of the salvation of all men and so if they are saved they are saved in some sense because of Christ. Furthermore, he does not allege that the other religions “are equally effective at putting people in contact with God” or acknowledge “them to be complete and clear ways, equivalent to what God offers through Jesus Christ and the community called into being by the Holy Spirit.”7 Still, O’Collins holds that these other religions “provide ways to know God and be saved,” even though “the community founded by Christ offers decisively fuller knowledge of God and richer means for salvation.”8 For my purpose in this article review, the most significant claim made by O’Collins that I shall examine is that “inclusive pluralism” may be justified by the teachings of Vatican II and John Paul II. Of course, O’Collins understands that neither of these sources expressly claims that the other religions as such have saving significance as ways of revelation and salvation. Still, O’Collins insists that since these other religions are based in some sense on the person and work of Christ, they must be seen then as mediators that participate in the universal presence of Christ, who is the one, universal mediator, and his Holy Spirit.9 Thus, according to O’Collins, the trajectory of thought expressed in these documents and in the writings of this pope move in the direction of “inclusive pluralism.” I will refute this claim. This article is therefore structured as follows. First, I tease out O’Collins’ hermeneutic concern about doctrinal development from several remarks he makes about Vatican Council teaching about other religions. In this connection, I provide an internal criticism of his interpretation of certain council documents and encyclicals. Second, O’Collins’s positive estimation of the salvific state of non-Christians is dependent on his doctrine of revelation. His thesis is 6 7 8 9 Ibid., 185–194. Ibid., 163. Ibid., 164. Does this mean that O’Collins thinks the theist who has not embraced Christ and the Church and the non-theist who has not embraced God is, objectively speaking, in a gravely deficient situation with respect to their salvation? I return to this question in the last section of this article. Ibid., 179. 840 Eduardo Echeverria that salvation is given with the reception of revelation. His account of revelation is, arguably, inconsistent with the Catholic tradition’s teaching on revelation, and hence deserves criticism. Also deserving of criticism, in this connection, is the absence of a theology of sin in O’Collins’s theology of other religions, and hence a consideration of inadequate responses to God’s revelation as due to, and therefore instances of, human sinfulness. In the third place, I challenge O’Collins’s apparent assumption that Christians and non-Christians have a universally shared reference to the same God, and hence a common agreement, not just in word but in concept, when they say they believe in God. I will conclude, in the fourth place, with the implication of his view for the necessity of the Church’s missionary mandate. O’Collins asks, “How then should we conceive the relationship of the Church to ‘religious others’ and her role in their path to salvation?”10 Doctrinal Development and Levels of Authoritative Doctrinal Teaching Doctrinal development and magisterial authority play a normative role in Catholic theology, and hence surely in new areas of exploration such as a Catholic theology of religions. The teaching office (“magisterium”) of the Church is entrusted with the responsibility authoritatively to transmit the deposit of faith. The magisterium has exercised its teaching authority whereby different levels of authority and their corresponding degrees of assent are expressed in theological notes or qualifications of Christian doctrine. Pared down for my purpose here, three theological notes11 are especially important when considering the question of the development of doctrine.12 Briefly, level one is about doctrines of the faith—i.e., de fide—that “the Church proposes as divinely and formally revealed and, as such, as irreformable.” They are primary objects of infallibility. The necessity of the Church as a means of salvation is a prime example of such a doctrine. Level two doctrines of faith and morals are also infallibly taught as logically and historically connected with revelation. “They are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of 10 11 12 Ibid., 164. For a clarifying treatment of these theological notes, see “Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei,” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 29, 1998. I am following Gavin D’Costa’s brief summary in chapter 1 of his book, Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 14–15, 30–36. Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 841 faith.” These doctrines are secondary objects of infallibility. Level three teachings pertain to doctrines authoritatively but non-definitively taught by the magisterium. In sum, as Gavin D’Costa rightly states, “When a Council teaches anything at levels 1-3, it would be very difficult to say that this teaching can be contradicted or is in error; although there is room for discussing the precise object of the teaching.”13 I shall return below to consider whether O’Collins contradicts Vatican II’s teaching that “the Church is necessary for salvation” in his reflections on the relation between the Kingdom of God and the Church and, additionally, the salvific state of non-Christians. For now, I turn to discuss briefly O’Collins’s hermeneutical concern in interpreting Vatican II. The issue of doctrinal development appears clearly in the following remarks of O’Collins. He writes: “Interpreting, receiving, and implementing the teaching of Vatican II continues, and some of that work goes beyond what the bishops explicitly intended to convey through the sixteen texts they approved.”14 O’Collins affirms here the necessity of attending to the literal sense of these texts, namely, the sense intended by the body of authors and expressed in language. He adds, “But we should also allow for a plus value that goes beyond original meanings but without opposing them. In new and often greatly changed contexts, conciliar texts can communicate to their later readers more than their original authors ever consciously knew or meant.”15 Clearly, O’Collins holds the texts of Vatican II on other religions to possess authority for his own reflections, but does his theology of other religions contradict or reject authoritative doctrinal teachings. O’Collins gives a criterion of testing authentic development, namely, reflections may go beyond the original sense of the Vatican II texts, “but without opposing them.”16 Although he doesn’t say, I think we can surmise that opposing the texts of Vatican II on its authoritative teachings regarding the other religions would at least involve contradicting or rejecting them. O’Collins says very little about doctrinal development beyond this point.17 In my judgment, applying this criterion for authentic development means that the affirmations of faith have a determin13 14 15 16 17 D’Costa, Vatican II, 15. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, vii. Ibid., vii. Ibid. A recent article of O’Collins, “Does Vatican II Represent Continuity or Discontinuity?” (Theological Studies 73 [2012]: 768–794), does not add anything to the question of authentic and inauthentic doctrinal development. 842 Eduardo Echeverria able content of truth so that the truth itself never changes even if the various linguistic and conceptual ways change in which that truth is expressed. Thus, the same divine truths could be expressed in different ways, but not in ways that are opposed to each other, that is, in fundamentally contradictory ways. The distinction, therefore, between form and content, context and content, in short, unchanging truth and its formulations is precisely what St. John XXIII is getting at in the following famous statement at the opening of Vatican II: “The deposit or the truths of faith, contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing, while the mode in which they are enunciated, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment [‘eodem sensu eademque sententia’], is another.”18 In short, doctrinal development must be commensurate with the truth of revelation, with the fundamental creedal and doctrinal affirmations of faith—that is, levels 1-3. In conclusion of this section and in preparation for the next, I identify five important doctrinal teachings regarding non-Christian religions in Vatican II documents. Gavin D’Costa helpfully summarizes these teachings: First, the necessity of the Church for salvation is a de fide teaching and contextualized at the Council by the recognition that there are many outside the Church who have not heard the gospel through no fault of their own. This contextualization, called “invincible ignorance,” helped Catholic theology move into a new and interesting space. It can view non-Christians in terms of the positive teachings and practices they advance, rather than in terms of the rejection of the true faith. Second, the Council teaches that mission should be undertaken towards all peoples, religious or secular, except other Christians. The Council established a doctrinal heart to missiology which is based on the intra-trinitarian missions within God. There are no exceptions to the universal mandate of mission. . . . Third, Aquinas’s key concept of ordinantur . . . was used to designate all non-Christians. This usage sees in the positive elements within the religions an orientation (ordinantur) towards the Gospel. All the non-Christian religions, in varying ways, belong to the “People of God” in potentiality. This potentiality is actualized on earth through supernatural faith in Christ and by baptism. . . . Fourth, [the Council uses] the traditional category of praeparatio 18 Ioannes XXIII, “Allocutio habita d. 11 oct. 1962, in initio Concilii,” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 54 (1962), §796, and for this quote, §792. Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 843 evangelica. It indicates that the best elements in the religion serve as a preparation for the gospel. . . . Fifth, sin and Satan have a strong grip over people who have not accepted Christ manifested in the objective reality of the non-Christian religions and cultures. Objectively, as a whole, they are in error, despite the many truths to be found in them. The only response to sin is to preach Christ, who redeems the sins of the world. This teaching does not take back what has been said about the positive elements that act as a preparation for Christ, but contextualizes these elements within the dramatic framework of the history of salvation.19 These five teachings—that is, one, the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation and the corresponding notion of invincible ignorance; two, the universal necessity of the Church’s missionary mandate; three, the category of ordinantur to describe the other religions’ relation to the Church; four, that these other religions can be praeparatio evangelica to the Catholic faith; and five, sin and Satan—will guide my discussion of O’Collins’s attempt to ground his theology of religions in Vatican II and the papal magisterium of John Paul II. Interpreting Vatican II and John Paul II O’Collins’s reflections on other religions emphasize “considerable discontinuity,” “dramatic change,” indeed, a “massive shift in the official doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church,” even while affirming continuity and tradition—e.g., faith in the Trinity and baptism.20 The crux of his claim is found is his interpretation of the clear change in stance the Church has taken in regard to the Council of Florence’s teaching in its 1442 Decree for the Copts: “[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes, and preaches that ‘none of those who are outside the Church, not only pagans’, but also Jews, heretics, or schismatics can become sharers of eternal life, but they will go into the eternal fire ‘that was prepared for the devil and his angels’ [Mt 25:41] unless, before the end of their life, they are joined to her.”21 Vatican II, argues O’Collins, teaches that the possibility of salvation may be found outside the visible 19 20 21 D’Costa, Vatican II, 4, 59–61. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 202–204. Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, and Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash for the English edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), §1351. 844 Eduardo Echeverria boundaries of the Church. This possibility of salvation pertains to Jews and Muslims. This raises the question whether O’Collins means to say that there is a doctrinal discontinuity regarding authoritative doctrinal teachings. In my judgment, his theology of other religions does oppose authoritative doctrinal teaching, in particular, the teaching regarding the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation. According to Lumen Gentium, §1, the Church is not only a sign but also an instrument of salvation. This teaching is reiterated in Dominus Iesus §18. Most recently, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith states, “it must be firmly believed that the Church is a sign and instrument of salvation for all people.”22 A major contributing factor to O’Collins’s opposition to this teaching is his failure to recognize the general significance of invincible ignorance23 in Lumen Gentium, §16. Rather than seeing that invincible ignorance is repeated twice in that passage because it applies to both theists and non-theists, that is, Jews and Moslems as well as religious seekers in general, O’Collins puts the invincibly ignorant person in a separate category of its own, distinguishing this category from Jews, Moslems, other believers in God, and even the irreligious. In Lumen Gentium, §16, theists—Jews and Moslems—are referred to as those “who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church,” and non-theists are “those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God.” In sum, invincible ignorance pertains therefore to those who have a lack in their theism, namely, being without Christ and the Church, and those who have a greater lack in their non-theism, namely, those without God. O’Collins misses out on this important application of invincible ignorance under certain conditions because he assumes that the knowledge Jews and Moslems have as mere theists, and others 22 23 CDF’s Notification on Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, §6. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, invincible ignorance is not sinful. “It is evident that whoever neglects to have or do what he ought to have or do, commits a sin of omission. Wherefore through negligence, ignorance of what one is bound to know, is a sin; whereas it is imputed as a sin to man, if he fails to know what he is unable to know. Consequently ignorance of such like things is called ‘invincible’, because it cannot be overcome by study. For this reason such like ignorance, not being voluntary, since it is not in our power to be rid of it, is not a sin: wherefore it is evident that no invincible ignorance is a sin. On the other hand, vincible ignorance is a sin, if it be about matters one is bound to know; but not, if it be about things one is not bound to know” (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 76, a. 2). Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 845 as religious seekers, is such that it is not only in some sense revelatory of God but also possesses “saving efficacy.”24 I will return to O’Collins’s view of revelation and salvation below. For now, I want to emphasize the point that invincible ignorance qualifies, but doesn’t undermine, in practice the de fide doctrinal teaching of the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation. Although I cannot fully argue the point here, it is crucial to see that whenever the Council texts speak about the possibility of salvation for non-Christians it always assumes the conditions of invincible ignorance.25 O’Collins misses out on this point in his reading of Lumen Gentium, §16, but also in Ad Gentes, §7. In fact, in the latter passage an explicit coupling is made between the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation and the invincibly ignorant, a point that O’Collins overlooks and which leads him to misinterpret Hebrews 11:6 by losing sight of the fact that the Church interprets this passage with respect to those who are inculpably ignorant.26 In the words of Ad Gentes, §7: “Therefore , though God in ways known to Himself can lead those inculpably ignorant of the gospel to that faith without which it is impossible to please Him (Heb 11:6), [because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him] yet a necessity lies upon the Church (cf. 1 Cor 9:16), and at the same time a sacred duty, to preach the gospel. Hence missionary activity today as always retains its power and necessity.” This coupling not only occurs in the Council texts but also in the papal teaching of St. John Paul II. Although the notion of invincible ignorance does not appear in John Paul’s 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio, he does emphasize the necessity of the Church’s missionary mandate with conversion to the Gospel as its main aim. He also emphasizes the necessity of faith and baptism, echoing Lumen Gentium, §14, and hence of the necessary role of the 24 25 26 O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 73–75. Invincible ignorance is not the cause of saving grace; only Jesus Christ is the full and sufficient cause of our salvation. Lumen Gentium 16 speaks twice of those who through no fault of their own (“the invincibly ignorant”) do not know the Gospel of Christ, describing certain criteria to determine whether such persons are not culpably ignorant, criteria such as “sincerely seeking God,” and being “moved by grace,” which presupposes that they have positively responded to God’s offer of grace. It is important to understand that “a condition that must be fulfilled to avoid culpability, is in no sense a cause of salvation” (Francis Sullivan, Salvation Outside of the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002], 77). O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 119. 846 Eduardo Echeverria Church as a means of salvation. Except for stating that the possibility of salvation in Christ is offered to all, not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church, he says nothing else about the conditions under which it is possible for them to be saved. The notion of invincible ignorance, however, does figure prominently in a series of his nine general audience talks.27 He says, “Doubtless we must believe in the existence of hidden ways in God’s plan of salvation for those who, through no fault of their own, cannot enter the Church. Nevertheless, one cannot, in the name of these ways, slow down or abandon missionary activity.”28 Here, too, invincible ignorance does not undermine the de fide teaching regarding the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation, but it only qualifies its application in practice. As D’Costa puts it, “Holding the coupling tensions together is necessary for retaining the integrity of the two truths concerned.”29 O’Collins uncouples the two from each other and hence is unable to sustain the integrity of this de fide teaching. Vatican II is, then, not doctrinally discontinuous with the hard core doctrinal teaching of the Council of Florence cited above; indeed, it reiterated that teaching in Lumen Gentium, §14. D’Costa makes the right distinction here between the hard core doctrine and its application that is lost in O’Collins’s view. D’Costa states, “Florence assumed that ‘Jews’ wilfully rejected the gospel, as most Christians assumed at the time. Florence was applying the right dogma in the wrong way. They were wrong in a prudential judgment. Only those who know in their hearts and minds that the Church is necessary for salvation are lost if they reject Christ’s Church. This has the disturbing consequence that Catholic theologians are the most likely group to be ‘lost’. Doctrinal development within very different historical contexts better explains what was going on than doctrinal discontinuity.”30 There is another factor that contributes to O’Collins’s undermining of the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation. I have in mind his interpretation of the relationship between the Church and the Kingdom of God in Lumen Gentium and Redemptoris Missio. Briefly, he is right that these texts distinguish, but do not separate, the Church 27 28 29 30 John Paul II, “To the Ends of the Earth,” Missionary Catechesis of Pope John Paul II, General Audience Talks, April 5–June 21, 1995. Ibid., May 10, 1995. D’Costa, Vatican II, 62. Gavin D’Costa, Review of G. O’Collins, S.J., The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions, forthcoming, received by email May 22, 2014. Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 847 and the Kingdom of God, that the Kingdom of God is as broad as the whole creation, involving the “manifestation and the realization of God’s plan of salvation in all its fullness,” as John Paul puts it.31 In all its fullness, arguably, refers to the restoration or renewal of creation in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. As the Pontifical Council for Culture also states in its document “Toward a Pastoral Approach to Culture,” “[This] approach gives rise to a Christian cultural project which gives Christ, the Redeemer of man, center of the universe and of history (cf. Redemptor hominis, §1) the scope of completely renewing the lives of men ‘by opening the vast fields of culture to His saving power’.”32 O’Collins emphasizes, in this connection, that the “Church serves the Kingdom and not vice versa” (emphasis added).33 He makes the same point later in the chapter devoted to Jacques Dupuis’s contribution to the theology of religions. He asks, “What then is the necessity of the Church for the salvation of all human beings?”34 His response, “one should follow Dupuis (and before him John Paul II in Redemptoris Missio) in recognizing that the reign of God is the decisive point of reference. The Church exists for the kingdom and at its service, and not vice versa.”35 Whether O’Collins is right about Dupuis is not my concern in this article. But he is wrong about John Paul II. Although it is true that John Paul affirms the point that the Church serves the Kingdom of God, he doesn’t draw the conclusion that is implied by O’Collins, namely, that the Kingdom of God does not serve the Church. Indeed, John Paul II issues a word of caution here because views like O’Collins that emphasize the primacy of the kingdom may end up, according to John Paul “either leaving very little room for the Church or undervaluing the Church in reaction to a presumed ‘ecclesiocentrism’ of the past, and because they consider the Church herself only a sign, for that matter a sign not without ambiguity.”36 Thus, according to John Paul, the redemptive purpose of the Kingdom of God, as far as humanity is concerned, is the Church. Briefly, says John Paul, “Christ endowed the Church, his body, with the fullness of the benefits and means of salvation.”37 This fullness of the Church “confers upon her a specific and necessary role,” as well as 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, Encyclical Letter, 1990, §15. §6; the quote within the quote is from John Paul II, Homily of the enthronement Mass, 22 October 1978, L'Osservatore Romano. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 71. Ibid., 195. Ibid. Redemptoris Missio, §17. Ibid., §18. 848 Eduardo Echeverria a “special connection with the Kingdom of God and Christ, which she ‘has the mission of announcing and inaugurating among all people’.”38 Therefore, humanity has no other goal than to belong to this Church, the Body of Christ, in which all is fulfilled (see Eph 1:22-23). Thus, it is true that the Kingdom of God is broader than the Church and the Church is in service to God. But the Church’s “specific and necessary role,” adds John Paul, her “special connection with the Kingdom of God and of Christ” is “seen especially in her preaching, which is call to conversion.”39 Furthermore, John Paul continues, “It is true that the inchoate reality of the kingdom of can also be found beyond the confines of the Church among peoples everywhere, to the extent that they live ‘gospel values’ and are open to the working of the Spirit who breathes when and where he wills (cf. Jn 3:8).”40 However, John Paul emphasizes that the universal significance of the Church as the seed, sign, and instrument of salvation must be brought out as clearly as possible. His reason for this emphasis is that the “temporal dimension of the kingdom remains incomplete unless it is related to the kingdom of Christ present in the Church [emphasis added] and straining towards eschatological fullness.”41 Therefore, pace O’Collins, not only does the Church serve the Kingdom, but the Kingdom serves the Church in so far as humanity has no other goal than this Church, the Body of Christ, in which all is fulfilled. Furthermore, O’Collins makes much of Aquinas’s reflections on the universal headship of Christ, that is, his role as head of the human race, in order to claim that Christ has saving significance “not [only] as the head of the Church but as the head of all human beings.”42 He makes clear that this universal headship chiefly means that the other religions are oriented or ordered in varying degrees to Christ’s Church and hence, while not yet actually belonging to it, “belong to it at least ‘potentially’.”43 Still, he separates the universal headship of Christ over all humanity from the Church and then claims that “principally it is not the Church but the ‘power of Christ’ [as head of all humanity] that will bring them salvation and the means for salvation.”44 This claim undermines 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Ibid. Ibid., §20. Ibid. Ibid. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 30, 73, 157. Ibid. Ibid., 31. Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 849 the de fide doctrine regarding the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation. Besides, for all of O’Collins’ appeal to John Paul II, the latter holds in Dominum et Vivificantem that the Church is the new reborn humanity in Christ. He writes, “Christ is in his humanity endowed with personhood by the Word in the hypostatic union. And at the same time, with the mystery of the Incarnation there opens in a new way the source of this divine life in the history of mankind: [emphasis added] the Holy Spirit. The Word, ‘the first born of all creation’, became ‘the first-born among many brethren’ [Rom 8:29].”45 Significantly, he adds, “And thus he also becomes the head of the Body which is the Church, which will be born on the Cross and revealed on the day of Pentecost—and in the Church, he becomes the head of humanity: [emphasis added] of the people of every nation, every race, every country and culture, every language and continent, all called to salvation.”46 Since the Church is the new reborn humanity in Christ, the Kingdom of God serves the Church by virtue of humanity having no other goal than indwelling in this Church, the Body of Christ, in which all is fulfilled with Christ as its head. Doctrine of Divine Revelation There are several features in O’Collins’s doctrine of revelation that standout as particularly relevant to his theology of religions. First, the reception of revelation is as such salvific for the recipient. “Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) witnesses repeatedly to the way God’s activity in being revealed to human beings remains inextricably intertwined with the divine activity in saving or redeeming them. As this document puts it, the history (or ‘economy’) of revelation is the history of salvation, and vice versa. Over and over again Dei Verbum moves between revelation and salvation as inseparable and almost equivalent realities.”47 Summarily stated, “We may not raise the question of salvation without raising that of revelation, and vice versa.”48 45 46 47 48 John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, Encyclical Letter, May 30, 1986, §52. Ibid. Earlier in this encyclical he writes, “Humanity, subjected to sin in the descendants of the first Adam, in Jesus Christ [the new Adam] became perfectly subjected to God and united to him, and at the same time full of compassion towards men. Thus there is a new humanity, which in Jesus Christ through the suffering of the Cross has returned [humanity] to the love which was betrayed by Adam through sin. This new humanity is discovered precisely in the divine source of the original outpouring of gifts: in the Spirit, who ‘searches . . . the depths of God’ [1 Cor 2:10] and is himself love and gift” (§40). O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 75n23. Ibid., 81. See also 99, 100, 113. See also, Gerald O’Collins, S.J., “Vatican II’s 850 Eduardo Echeverria Second, there is a correlation between revelation and the human response of faith that “can take place among those who follow ‘other religions’.”49 In short, “God’s self-revelation reaches all people and human beings, no matter who they are and where they are, can and should respond with faith.”50 Since the reception of revelation is itself salvific, the recipient must have responded in faith: “Apropos of Islam, Lumen Gentium confidently stated that, together with Christians, Muslims ‘acknowledge the Creator’ and ‘adore the one, merciful God’, who will come in judgment at the last day (LG 16). How can this be the case, unless God has been revealed to them and they have responded in faith?”51 Third, the distinction between “a supernatural revelation granted by God and a merely natural knowledge resulting from a human search [through the channel of human reason] is totally unacceptable” because it fails “to recognize everything as supernatural or coming through the gracious initiative of God. . . . Hence all divine self-revelation, wherever and whenever it occurs, must accordingly be deemed supernatural in its purpose and nature. In the world in which we live, all events of God’s self-disclosure are supernatural or aimed to gift human beings with unmerited grace here and with glory hereafter.”52 O’Collins claims, “All [humans] receive something of the divine self-revelation. . . . The light of God’s revelation, in some true sense, reaches everyone.”53 Although O’Collins’s thesis is true, he misunderstands the nature of that revelation and its corresponding responses. O’Collins does not attend to the important distinction between God’s general revelation, or creation revelation,54 and his special revelation. Regarding the former, God reveals himself to all men at all times and all places in and through the works of creation, and hence this “revelation is not limited to certain people, places, or times, but is truly Constitution on Divine revelation Dei Verbum,” in The Pastoral Review, March/ April 2013. 49 Ibid., 119. 50 Ibid., 118. 51 Ibid., 160. 52 Ibid., xi. 53 Ibid., 161. 54 For an exceptional theological treatment of the theme of creation revelation, see Francis Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” in Wisdom and Holiness, Science and Scholarship, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), 205–247. Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 851 general.”55 In this connection, we should note what St. Paul writes in Romans 1 and 2, and St. Luke in Acts 17, namely, that God makes himself known to all men through his attributes, such as his power and majesty and his will, by means of the things that he has made as well as through conscience (“the law written on the heart”). In short, general revelation is God’s revelation of himself in and through the works of creation. Regarding special revelation, God reveals himself in the history of redemption, a salvation history that is accomplished through indissolubly connected words and deeds, a verbal and historical revelation, culminating in the person and work of Christ who is both the mediator and fullness of revelation. Both revelations are supernatural in origin and both ultimately are addressed to all men, constituting objective revelations. As De Ridder and Van Woudenberg state, “They are dissimilar in that the former is ubiquitous—it comes to us through conditions that are present at all times and places—whereas the latter is spatiotemporally limited—it comes to us through historical events at special times and places and then through the testimony of others about these events.”56 They are also dissimilar in that the former is, on the one hand, an imperfect, incomplete revelation, and hence by its very nature is not salvific; special revelation is, on the other hand, salvific in nature because in that revelation the fullness of God is revealed. O’Collins rejects this distinction between general and special revelation, because he claims that it suggests that general revelation is, as I noted above, a “merely natural knowledge of God resulting from a human search,” or knowledge acquired merely through “the channel of human reason,” rather than a supernatural self-revelation of God. But he is mistaken to think that natural theology is the same as general revelation. O’Collins confuses general revelation and natural theology. In all fairness to O’Collins, his confusion is a consequence of an unquestioning acceptance of the dominant interpretation of Vatican I. We can understand why Vatican I’s main concern at the start of Chapter 2 of the Constitutio dogmatica de fide catholica is, in opposition to fideism and rationalism, to affirm man’s natural ability to grasp this revelation, that is, 55 56 Jeroen de Ridder and René van Woudenberg, “Referring to, Believing in, and Worshipping the Same God: A Reformed View,” Faith and Philosophy 31.1 (2014): 46–67, and at 47. Although these authors refer to their view as Reformed, since they are not expressly dealing with the question of the fate of the unevangelized or invincibly ignorant, what they argue is, in my judgment, a Catholic view as well. De Ridder and Van Woudenberg, “Referring to, Believing in, and Worshipping the Same God: A Reformed View,” 50. 852 Eduardo Echeverria as Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it, “the subjective, creaturely presupposition for perceiving it.”57 Given this concern, it is understandable why, as Balthasar also remarks, “this [creation] revelation is not at all named or described as such.”58 Still, he adds, “The passage from Paul (Rom 1:20) cited by the Council frequently speaks in this context—from which it cannot be disengaged—of an act of revelation. . . . Certainly it was not part of the intention of the Council to thematize this side of the problem. But the Acta [et decreta sacrorum Conciliorumrecentiorum] speak nonetheless of an act of revelation by God. Catholic dogmatics recognizes this. . . . Thus we may say that the ‘inferential’ ascent of thought to the Creator is always borne by the Creator’s prior decision to reveal himself in this nature itself.”59 Balthasar is not alone in his view that Vatican I presupposes God’s self-revelation in creation as the basis for the natural knowledge of God. More recently, Wolfhart Pannenberg has written in agreement with this point and in disagreement with Karl Barth who criticized “the council statement for suggesting that the knowledge of God is a possibility at our disposal, for [Barth] found here a violation of his basic principle that God can be known only by God.” Pannenberg writes: “Unlike Paul, the council did not in fact expressly present the knowledge of God from the works of creation as a result of divine self-declaration. On the other hand it was obviously not the intention of the council to rule out this basis of the knowledge or to introduce division into the concept of God [as Creator and Redeemer] as Barth believed. . . . Insofar as it is a matter of stating the fact of a knowledge of God from the works of creation by the light of human reason, we cannot contradict the council statement from the NT so long as it is presupposed that this fact has its basis in God himself, who made himself known to us in his deity from creation.”60 Pace O’Collins, then, God’s general revelation of himself in and through the works of creation is an act of God by which he communicates himself to all men at all times and all place, and hence this act of revelation by God is the condition for the possibility of the natural knowledge of God. The theistic knowledge of God affirmed in the other religions by Lumen Gentium is made possible by general revelation. 57 58 59 60 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992 [1951]), 309–310. Ibid. Ibid. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, Band I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 86, and 75–76. (ET: Systematic Theology, Vol. I, 75). Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 853 But it doesn’t follow from this act of general revelation that the latter is itself salvific by virtue of its acceptance. This, too, is the view of Jean Danielou in his work, God and the Ways of Knowing, which O’Collins unfairly criticizes for “ruling out revelation occurring anywhere but in biblical history.”61 O’Collins adds, “The religions express the human desire to God, but only that human desire. They do not mediate any revelation.”62 But this judgment is mistaken. Danielou distinguishes between natural revelation, creational revelation, “cosmic revelation,” as he typically calls it, from not only natural theology but also faith’s knowledge of God disclosed by special revelation.63 Natural reason can acquire knowledge of some of the contents of God’s general revelation. Furthermore, throughout his book O’Collins cites Nostra Aetate, §2 that speaks of those things in other religions that are “true and holy” and reflecting a “ray of that Truth, which enlightens all human beings.” O’Collins comments, “Even if the text included no explicit [biblical] reference, it obviously echoed the language of the Johannine prologue about the Word being ‘the light of human beings’ (John 1:4), ‘the true light that enlightens everyone’ (John 1:9).”64 Because of the source of truth being Christ centered, O’Collins thinks that this implies the rejection of the natural/supernatural scheme of things. But Avery Cardinal Dulles disagrees. The reference to ray of divine truth “could mean [special] revelation, but since Christ as the eternal Logos is the source of truth, both natural and revelation, the reference could be simply to philosophical truth obtainable by the right use of reason.”65 In Fides et Ratio, §34, St. John Paul II agrees with Dulles’ point. He explains: This truth, which God reveals to us in Jesus Christ, is not opposed to the truths which philosophy perceives. On the contrary, the two modes of knowledge lead to truth in all its fullness. The unity of truth is a fundamental premise of human reasoning, as the principle of non-contradiction makes clear. Revelation renders this unity certain, showing that the God of creation is also the God of 61 62 63 64 65 O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 58. Ibid. Jean Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing, trans. Walter Roberts (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), chapter 1 (general revelation), chapter 2 (natural theology), and chapter 3 (faith’s knowledge of God disclosed in revelation), 13–138. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 15, 79. Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “World Religions and the New Millennium,” in In Many and Diverse Ways, 3–12. 854 Eduardo Echeverria salvation history. It is the one and the same God who establishes and guarantees the intelligibility and reasonableness of the natural order of things upon which scientists confidently depend, and who reveals himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This unity of truth, natural and revealed, is embodied in a living and personal way in Christ, as the Apostle reminds us: “Truth is in Jesus” (cf. Eph 4:21; Col 1:15-20). He is the eternal Word in whom all things were created, and he is the incarnate Word who in his entire person reveals the Father (cf. Jn 1:14, 18). What human reason seeks “without knowing it” (cf. Acts 17:23) can be found only through Christ: what is revealed in him is “the full truth” (cf. Jn 1:14-16) of everything which was created in him and through him and which therefore in him finds its fulfilment (cf. Col 1:17). Moreover, O’Collins is, in general, mistaken to think that Vatican II leaves behind Vatican I’s distinction between a natural/supernatural scheme of things and the corresponding twofold order of knowledge, of faith and reason, distinct in the objects and means of acquiring that knowledge. This distinction is reaffirmed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§31-35) and again in John Paul II’s 1998 Encyclical Fides et Ratio (§8-9). In particular, Dei Verbum, §6 expressly affirms Vatican I’s teaching regarding the natural knowledge of God. The difference between these two Councils on the statement regarding the natural knowledge of God is that Dei Verbum sets general revelation and the capacity of natural reason to acquire some knowledge of God in the framework of salvation history. This difference makes clear that natural theology is necessarily a posteriori, rather than a priori, a “second moment” within the dynamic of fides quarens intellectum. In this context, Dei Verbum, §6 underscores—the teaching of Augustine, Aquinas, and Vatican I—the epistemic availability of the natural knowledge of God in and through the testimony of biblical special revelation. The import of this epistemic availability is that this testimony is a sure and more direct source of knowledge than general revelation via natural theological reasoning. The noetic influences of sin suppress and impede the functioning of natural reason capacity to acquire knowledge of God through general revelation. Therefore, as Dei Verbum, §6 puts it, “It is to be ascribed to this divine revelation that such truths among things divine that of themselves are not beyond human reason can, even in the present condition of mankind, be known by everyone with facility, with firm certitude, and with no admixture of error.” If we consider the human response to God’s general or cosmic reve- Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 855 lation, that is, the personal appropriation of the objective realities that bear witness to God’s existence and attributes, O’Collins assumes that the response of theists, such as is found in Lumen Gentium, §16, to God’s general revelation is not only adequate but even salvific. God’s general revelation is, indeed, disclosed to all men at all times and places because God has not left himself without witness in and through the created world (Acts 14:17), and hence it is in this sense that “revelation is a universal reality.”66 And so while theistic religions enjoy some knowledge of God derived from general revelation, derived from elements of goodness, truth and beauty found in these cultures and religions, it follows neither that this knowledge is adequate or salvific. For example, Islam’s true beliefs in the “one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind” (Lumen Gentium, §16), does not suddenly turn it into a salvific religion. In fact, Lumen Gentium, §16 states that the Church looks upon “whatever good or truth is found among them . . . as a preparation for the gospel.” O’Collins repeatedly says that “revelation and salvation are inseparable and almost equivalent realities.”67 This statement is unclear. I think he means that the purpose of revelation is salvific. If so, I think we must say that this salvific purpose is not always realized. Revelation necessarily includes both an objective dimen­sion and a subjective dimension. Regarding the former, it refers to God’s self-revelation in action and word, culminating in the formation of an objective deposit of faith as integral to the history of redemption. Regarding the latter, it refers to the act of God’s self-presence, indeed the act of God’s revealing himself in a living subject, by the power of the Holy Spirit, enabling man to respond in faith to the reality of revelation. It isn’t that O’Collins ignores the distinction itself between these two dimensions and the corresponding idea that an individual must respond in faith to God’s self-revelation in order to receive salvation.68 Rather, it is that the distinction itself plays almost no role at all in his theology of religions regarding the salvific state of non-Christians. This is because he presupposes salvation optimism in the response rate, as it were, of non-Christians to God’s self-revelation. This claim inexplicably overlooks the testimony of the biblical revelation that tells us of inadequate responses—resistance—to revelation and that such response is due to human sinfulness. Yes, as Lumen Gentium, §16 says, it is the case that grace plays a role 66 67 68 O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 59. Ibid., 75n23. O’Collins, “Vatican II’s Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum.” 856 Eduardo Echeverria in aiding human responses both to God’s general revelation and the totality of his special revelation,69 that this grace is a prevenient grace, which is a divine initiative that precedes, prepares, enables, and assists the individual’s response to God’s revelation,70 preparing him for the fullness of truth of the gospel of Christ. But Lumen Gentium, §16 also speaks of the widely realized possibility of inadequately responding to God’s general revelation. In other words, the salvific purpose of divine revelation is not always realized. O’Collins inexplicably ignores the passage that refers to that very point—“rather often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become caught up in futile reasoning and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator (cf. Romans 1:21-25).”71 Lumen Gentium justifies this widely realized 69 70 71 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §158. Council of Trent, Sixth Session, Decree on Justification, Chapters V and VI; see also, Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2001. For a critical analysis of the implications for evangelization of the widespread failure to acknowledge the central importance of the last three sentences of Lumen Gentium §16, see Ralph Martin, Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II actually Teaches and its Implications for Evangelization (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012). O’Collins has recently given an entirely unfair review of Martin’s book (Pacifica 27.1 [2014]: 111–113). He claims that “Martin ignores much important teaching in other Vatican II documents, reduces the import of Lumen Gentium 16 to its last three sentences, and misinterprets them as supporting his view that most of those who do not hear the gospel cannot be saved” (112). O’Collins’s summary is a distortion of what Martin actually does in the first hundred pages of his book. Here is how Martin summarizes his approach. “First, LG 16 will be situated within the overall context of Vatican II, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, and the ‘triptych’ of LG 14, 15, and 16, with some attention to 13 and 17 as well. The history of the development of the final conciliar text and the most significant commentaries, early and recent, on LG will be consulted with a view to articulating what the consensus of the most important commentators is regarding the text in question. Second, the doctrinal background needed to understand correctly what the Council is teaching will be examined, particularly that doctrinal development that is referenced in the important footnotes of LG 16. Third, the scriptural foundation claimed for the teaching of LG 16 in its explicit citations of Romans 1 and Mark 16, and its implicit citation of Romans 2, will be examined in the light of contemporary Scripture scholarship” (xii–xiii). Martin’s book was recently described by two well-known Catholic missiologists of the Catholic Theological Union, Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D and Roger P. Schroeder, S.V.D., as “one of the most significant books on mission to appear in 2012” (“Evangelization and the Tenor of Vatican II: A Review Essay,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 37.2 [2013]: 94–95). They add, “Ralph Martin’s book is a powerful one, and a timely reminder in many ways of human sinfulness and the healing power of the Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 857 possibility by referring us to St. Paul in Romans 1:21-22 to provide biblical warrant for that inadequate response that the biblical text takes to be a consequence of man’s sinful resistance to God’s general revelation. Because O’Collins overlooks the widely realized possibility of resistance and deception, in short, as O’Costa puts it, “the damage of sin and the activity of Satan,” he fails to see the “natural bridge [that] is now built between Lumen Gentium 16 and 17, the latter which teaches the necessity of mission.”72 And a necessity of the Church’s missionary mandate that is later developed in the Council document Ad Gentes. Appealing to the work of the Holy Spirit outside the visible boundaries of the Church, as O’Collins does, will not help his position. The Holy Spirit is the source of all that is revealed by God as the true, good, and beautiful outside the visible boundaries of the Church in various religions around the world. But again, O’Collins assumes that the response to that general revelation yields not only knowledge but salvation. He claims that with this understanding of the Spirit’s work he is standing in the trajectory of John Paul’s thought as expressed in Dominum et Vivificantem. And yet, inexplicably, O’Collins ignores John Paul’s emphasis that the “marvelous ‘condescension’ of the Spirit meets with resistance and opposition in our human reality.”73 The pope adds, “Unfortunately, the resistance to the Holy Spirit which Saint Paul emphasizes in the interior and subjective dimension as tension, struggle and rebellion taking place in the human heart finds in every period of history and especially in the modern era its external dimension, which takes concrete form as the content of culture and civilization, as a philosophical system, an ideology, a program for action and for the shaping of human behavior.”74 No wonder Ad Gentes §9 takes the Church’s missionary activity to involve a “purg[ing] of evil associations [of] every element of truth and grace which is found among peoples.” No wonder that Lumen Gentium, §16-17 speak of “deceptions by the Evil One” at work in a man’s resistance to God’s prevenient grace as well as that the gospel “snatches them [non-Christians] from the 72 73 74 Gospel. It is clearly, passionately, and honestly written. It is a book that deserves to be read by missiologists and mission practitioners” (95). It was also positively reviewed by Gavin D’Costa, “Who gets in, and who is kept out,” Review of Stephen Bullivant, The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology, and Ralph Martin, Will Many be Saved,? in The Tablet, February 2, 2013, 20. D’Costa, Vatican II, 109. I will return to this very point in the last section of this article when I consider the question, “What becomes of the universal necessity of the Church’s missionary activity in O’Collins’s theology of religions?” John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, 55, 56, and 47. Ibid. 858 Eduardo Echeverria slavery of error and of idols” and the “confusion of the devil.” Indeed, Ad Gentium, §9 speaks of the fragments of truth and grace to be found among the nations that the gospel “frees from all taint of evil and restores [the truth] to Christ its maker, who overthrows the devil’s domain and wards off the manifold malice of vice.”75 My criticism of O’Collins at this point is not that he fails to take note of these passages.76 He does, but only in passing and without playing any role at all in his account of the human response to God’s revelation.77 75 76 77 Dialogue and Proclamation, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, May 19, 1991, states in this connection: “To say that the other religious traditions include elements of grace does not imply that everything in them is the result of grace. For sin has been at work in the world, and so religious traditions, notwithstanding their positive values, reflect the limitations of the human spirit, sometimes inclined to choose evil” (§31). O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 80. Ibid. This approach also informs O’Collins’s approach to the Sacred Scriptures resulting in his treatment of just the “positive” passages in them and not the “negative” ones critical of non-biblical religions. I agree with Paul J. Griffiths judgment of O’Collins’s earlier book Salvation for All that the latter “jettisons some essential elements of the scriptural witness” because his biblical hermeneutic “shows a deep desire to avoid looking at and commenting upon the fact that some among the prophets and founders [of other religions] may have been agents of absence, advocates of lack, entrepreneurs of evil” (“Review Symposium,” 135–136). This judgment applies to this new work. We find in O’Collins’s work an echo of Jacques Dupuis’ work, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. Dupuis acknowledges “the Old Testament’s unambiguous condemnation of idolatrous practices among the nations and the inanity, or even the inexistence, of the false gods they venerate . . . as . . . an unequivocal basis for a negative theological evaluation of the traditions concerned. . . . In the new situation, however, which today’s search for mutual comprehension and openness to dialogue have created, it seems fair for a theological account of the Bible’s evaluation of the religions of the nations to allow such positive elements to stand out as are liable to provide in a new context a valid foundation for a more generous theological evaluation of the other religious traditions of the world. An attempt is made here to bring forward some of the biblical data capable of providing a valid basis for such a positive evaluation” (30). Joseph Ratzinger argues that there is a “sharp criticism of false gods . . . in evidence and that is alive in the tradition of the [Old Testament] prophets from the very beginning,” and hence “a decided rejection” (Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, translated by Henry Taylor [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003], 20–21). In his 1968 Introduction to Christianity (139), he argues that there is a parallel “between the philosophers’ criticism of the myths in Greece and the prophets’ criticism of the gods in Israel.” In short, “the prophetic and Wisdom literature cultivated [the] demythologization of the divine powers in favor of the one and only God” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990; 2nd ed., 2004). Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 859 So, O’Collins is right that there is no salvation without the knowledge of divine revelation, but the converse does not follow, as he insists through his book, namely, no revelation without salvation.78 It doesn’t follow because revelation does not always realize its salvific purpose in a man’s response. Gaudium et Spes, §22 speaks of the possibility of salvation regarding the fate of the unevangelized, that is, “for all men of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way.” The footnote at the end of this sentence refers us back to Lumen Gentium, §16: to the non-theists that are “those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, but who strive to live a good life, thanks to His grace.” It is, then, in the context of the invincibly ignorant that we must understand the rest of Gaudium et Spes, §22: “For since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God alone, in the paschal mystery.” Thus, the Council holds that “God calls men to be participants in his grace; by what means and with what effect is not here stated.”79 So the calling that this passage refers to is about the offer of grace, not its efficacy and finality. O’Collins pays absolutely no attention to that difference. Suppose that O’Collins is right that “[a]long with love [involved in the church’s praying for others], its Eucharistic setting forms a second, characteristic feature of the Church’s prayer for ‘the others’ [for the whole human race] and its power to communicate ‘truth and grace’.”80 Again, these features of the Church’s life as instruments of grace are not automatically salvific; that grace must be received in faith. So it’s about the offer of grace, not its efficacy and finality. But the import of this difference for the question regarding the fate of the unevangelized cannot be ignored. Again, passages like Gaudium et Spes, §22 refer to the invincibly ignorant and they speak of a possibility, not the probability or certainty of the actual salvation of the unevangelized. Early in his book O’Collins explicitly states that “Lumen Gentium raised and left open the question” of the fate of the unevangelized.81 In fact, he says that “the Council does not expressly speak [of other religions as] ‘ways of revelation and salvation’.”82 But later on in the book 78 79 80 81 82 Ibid., 81. Mikka Ruokanen, The Catholic Doctrine of Non-Christian Religions According to the Second Vatican Council (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), 85. Ibid., 165. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 163. In an interview that Zenit News did with Ilaria Morali, professor 860 Eduardo Echeverria he says that Lumen Gentium “presented positively the eternal prospects of those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ.”83 Finally, even later in the book he writes, “according to what we have gleaned [emphasis added] from the Vatican II documents, official Catholic teaching acknowledges [emphasis added] the living, personal relationship between these ‘others’ and God, mediated by the One who is the Truth of God in person.”84 Respectfully, this is verbal sleight of hand. This alleged “acknowledgement” or “positive presentation” is O’Collins’ conclusion not the teaching of the Church at Vatican II. Despite his protest to the contrary,85 he was right the first time that the question of the fate of the unevangelized is left open because Vatican II documents refer to the offer of grace to the unevangelized, the invincibly ignorant who have failed to respond to the gospel, but not this offer’s saving efficacy and finality.86 We don’t have the full picture yet. Dei Verbum teaches that the economy of special revelation, which is realized in words and deeds, culminates in Jesus Christ, who is both the mediator and fullness of revelation. 83 84 85 86 of theology at the Gregorian University, Rome, she responds to the question whether Vatican II referred to other religions as “ways of salvation” by saying, “In regard to a judgment on the role of religions the Council spoke of ‘evangelical preparations’ in relation to ‘something good and authentic’ that can be found in persons and at times in religious initiatives. In no page is explicit mention made of religions as ways of salvation” (“Misunderstandings about Interreligious Dialogue (Part 1),” January 14, 2005. See her essay, “Salvation, Religions, and Dialogue in the Roman Magisterium,” in Catholic Engagement with World Religions: A Comprehensive Study, ed. K.J. Beker & Ilaria Morality, et al. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010). Ibid., 130. Ibid., 163. Ibid., 74. I fully agree with Gavin D’Costa, who in his recent review of O’Collins’ book wrote: “O’Collins surely moves too quickly from what were ‘silences’ in the Council on certain questions, to alleged necessary ‘implications’, to saying the Council taught ‘X’. Take for example his claim that LG 16 taught that ‘Islam is in some sense a way of revelation and salvation for Muslims.’ (83). The three key periti involved (Congar in general, Anawati and Caspar in particular on the single sentence on Islam), did not intend this or understand it to mean this. Likewise, the debates in the aula by the Fathers and the three redacted drafts of LG 16 in response to the debates show no intention to even imply this. And the relatio to the final version of LG 16 says the text is not speaking about Islam, but Muslim people. The Council made monumental steps forwards in recognizing truth and holiness amongst Muslims. It is not clear it implied or went so far as O’Collins suggests” (forthcoming review, Gavin D’Costa, email May 22, 2014). Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 861 In this light, we must say that the “Christian faith is the appropriate response to both God’s general revelation and the totality of [his] special revelation.”87 The Christian faith, therefore, reveals the one true God, and hence worshipping anything other than this God is idolatry. If this is true, and given the references in Lumen Gentium, §16 and Ad Gentes, §9 to, in sum, sin and Satan, we can understand why Vatican II does not speak of other religions as ways of salvation and as hence as part of God’s plan of salvation. God’s grace may reach individuals despite but not through their religion—a point that O’Collins consistently denies. Thus, pace O’Collins, the possibility of the salvation of the invincibly ignorant is related to this individual and his knowledge,88 the seeds of the Word containing elements of the true and the good, but not as related in and through the following of his religion.89 87 88 89 De Ridder and Van Woudenberg, “Referring to, Believing in, and Worshipping the Same God: A Reformed View,” 50. Dialogue and Proclamation distinguishes between the individual and his religious tradition: “The fruits of the Spirit of God in the personal life of individuals, whether Christian or otherwise, are easily discernible (cf. Gal 5:22–23). To identify in other religious traditions elements of grace capable of sustaining the positive response of their members to God's invitation is much more difficult. It requires a discernment for which criteria have to be established” (§30). O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 162. O’Collins uses the Areopagus Address of St. Paul recorded in Acts 17:22–31 to showcase his claim “that God is no ‘stranger’.” He explains, “As Luke portrays matters, Paul does not aim at introducing into the cultural and religious context of Athens a ‘foreign’ or alien deity.” But O’Collins’ claim seems way off the exegetical mark. The immediate reaction of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers to Paul’s message (verse 17) did not suggest that it resonated with their own experience. Indeed, they spoke of him as “babbler,” one setting forth strange or foreign gods (verse 18), to be speaking new teaching (verse 19). “And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” Furthermore, their interest in Paul’s message was in something new. “For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing” (verses 19–21). O’Collins continues to explain St. Paul’s address, “Even if hitherto not explicitly [emphasis added] known, ‘the God Unknown’ has already been present among the Athenians. Paul gives a face and a name to the divine Anonymous One: it is the man Jesus who God has raised from the dead and authorized to be the judge of everyone at the end of world history” (12). When Paul says that he is going to proclaim to them “the One whom [they] worship without knowing” (verse 23), is he speaking of the object of worship as being as such unknown, or is he characterizing the worshippers themselves as without knowledge, that is, ignorant? Regardless, I am having trouble seeing 862 Eduardo Echeverria The Same God? O’Collins assumes that the theistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—worship the same God. “Obviously,” according to him, “the adherents of [Judaism and Islam] these religions do not know and profess the full range of revealed truths that Christians do. In the case of Islam, Muslims share some of these revealed truths, accepting, for instance, the divine judgment to come.”90 He adds, “Apropos of Islam, Lumen Gentium, confidently stated that, together with Christians, Muslims ‘acknowledge the Creator’ and ‘adore the one, merciful God’, who will come in judgment at the last day (LG, 16).”91 Nostra Aetate, §3 fills out this description by stating, “They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men.” By virtue of these truths, O’Collins insists that adherents of Islam have a saving knowledge of God. Muslims believe and worship the one God, the Creator, the Judge, and Merciful being. And thus they can be saved through their religion not despite it, according to O’Collins. No salvation without the knowledge of revelation.92 But O’Collins’s claim raises the important question whether Christianity and Islam refer to the same God they worship and, if so, how.93 Consider the doctrine of God’s unicity that both Christians and Muslims share. Is mere agreement that there is only one God sufficient for describing his identity? Even if they do refer to the same God in worship, that doesn’t mean that they share the same beliefs about this one God. Their rejection of the Trinity counts as a fundamentally mistaken belief, according to Christians, about God’s basic nature. Does this fundamental mistake undermine reference to God because the Muslim’s 90 91 92 93 how O’Collins can claim (9) that Paul is making explicit something they already know implicitly given their ignorance in either sense. Ibid., 163. Ibid., 160. Ibid., 81. I am following here Alyssa Pitstick, “Do Jews, Christians, and Muslims Worship the Same God? Or When Witnesses Conflict: One God of Abraham but Three Abrahamic Religions?” Public Lecture, Socratic Club, Gonzaga University, Friday, February 15, 2013. Page references in the footnotes are to the unpublished copy of the lecture I received from the author. Also very helpful to me for addressing this question is De Ridder and Van Woudenberg, “Referring to, Believing in, and Worshipping the Same God: A Reformed View,” 54–67. I am grateful to Gavin D’Costa for a stimulating exchange on the question addressed in the text, and for referring me to Peter Geach, “On Worshipping the Right God,” in God and the Soul (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 100–116. Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 863 Unitarian doctrine of God reflects “a sufficiently erroneous thought of a God [that] will simply fail to relate to the true and living God at all [?]”94 It is not possible in this article to give this question the attention it deserves. Suffice it to note that both Jesuit priest and Islamologist Samir Khalil Samir95 and St. John Paul II96 have responded, in a qualified sense, positively to the question whether Christians and Muslims worship, and hence refer to, the same God. Both Christians and Muslims share agreement on a subset of essential characterizations of God’s basic nature, such as monotheism,97 affirming God as the Creator, and the theology of creation entailed by that description. Still, they don’t ignore the fundamentally mistaken beliefs of Muslims regarding the Trinity, the deity of Christ, his atoning work, and so forth. Fr. Samir, for one, underscores this difference: “It is true [that] Muslims worship [the] one and merciful God. However, this sentence suggests that the two conceptions of God are equal. Yet in Christianity God is the Trinity in its essence, plurality united by love.”98 It is easy to see why some have argued that Christians and Muslims cannot believe in and worship the same God ultimately when the uniquely identifying description of God’s basic nature leaves out his Trinitarian nature or the deity of Christ. Someone may object that what the Qur’an views as Jesus cannot be shown to be a rejection of a proper doctrine of the Incarnation, for it shows no proper knowledge of that doctrine.99 Although I cannot fully argue the point here, Islam is a Unitarian religion regarding its doctrine of God, and hence the Qur’an doesn’t merely reject misconceptions and hence heterodox Christians’ doctrines of the Trinity, but the doctrine of the Trinity itself because it 94 95 96 97 98 99 Geach, “On Worshipping the Right God,” 111. Samir Khali Samir, S.J., 111 Questions on Islam and the West: A Series of Interviews conducted by Giorgio Paolucci and Cammile Eid, ed., rev., and trans. Wafik Masry, S.J., co-translator, Claudia Castellani (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 202. Idem, “Pope Francis and his invitation to dialogue with Islam,” 12/19/2013, AsiaNews.it. Online: https://www.asianews.it/view4print. php?1=en&art=29858. John Paul II, “General Audience of Wednesday, May 5, 1999, § 2–3. Idem, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Knopf, 1994), 92–93. Pope Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, Encyclical Letter, August 6, 1964, “Then we have those worshipers who adhere to other monotheistic systems of religion, especially the Moslem religion. We do well to admire these people for all that is good and true in their worship of God” (§107). Samir Khali Samir, S.J., “Pope Francis and his invitation to dialogue with Islam.” Gavin D’Costa, e-mail message to author. 864 Eduardo Echeverria denies the divinity of Jesus Christ.100 Alyssa Pitstick summarizes the kind of argument supporting the claim that Christians and Muslims cannot believe in and worship the same God. She writes, “When I as a Christian call God ‘the Creator’, I do not thereby exclude His other name of ‘Trinity’; on the contrary, I assume it, for I could equally well call God, ‘the Creator Trinity.’ In other words, though I may consider God now under one aspect and then another, I am always considering God Himself, and so my concept is always of God Himself, that is, of the One who is both Creator and Trinity.” One might add here that the concept of the Trinity includes the divinity of Christ. Pitstick continues: “Similarly, the Muslim in referring to the ‘Creator’ does not exclude that the Creator is the one whose prophet is Mohammed; on the contrary, he means that very one. So not all the names Muslims and Christians use to identify or point to God coincide, taken singly or compositely.”101 I don’t think I can follow Pitstick all the way here in her conclusion. For one thing, it denies the very point made by Lumen Gentium, §16, namely, that Christians and Muslims “adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.” For another, taken singly, that is, as isolated concepts, the term unicity when predicated formally of the subject God is such that it affirms monotheism and logically excludes polytheism. So Christians and Muslims are referring to the same thing when they say God is one. Similarly, taken singly the term creator when predicated formally of the subject God logically excludes a state of affairs where pantheism102 or naturalism are true. Here, too, Christians 100 101 102 Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 14, 124, 127–148. Despite my objection, Volf does give an excellent defense of the dogma of the Trinity against Moslem objections, 136–139. Pitstick, “Do Jews, Christians, and Muslims Worship the Same God?,” 6–7. Still, given that Islam is a Unitarian religion it may not so easily escape falling into pantheism. Fr. Roch Kereszty helped me to see this point. Briefly, Islam understands the unity of God in such terms that it excludes any plurality of persons in God. In Christianity, God is the Trinity in its essence, plurality united by love. For Islam its Unitarianism may result in the slide to pantheism: if God’s supreme perfection consists in love, then, without a creation His supreme perfection would not be realized. That is, He would not be loving unless He creates those whom He intends to love. Thus, love would be something that God does, not that which He is, describing God’s activity but not His essence. “Consequently,”as Fr. Kereszty rightly notes, “God would not be perfect without a creation.” This would mean that “creation cannot logically be perceived as a gratuitous, free act of God, but as necessitated by God’s divine perfection. If, then, God is not perfect without creation, creation becomes a necessary Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 865 and Muslims are referring to the same God when they speak of God as the Creator. These formal predicates about God are such that they are necessary even if insufficient for describing the identity of God.103 So Christians and Muslims have partially overlapping beliefs about God’s basic nature as one and as creator. With this conclusion we can honor the intent of Lumen Gentium, §16 and Nostra Aetate, §2 which speak of Christians and Muslims adoring the same God.104 But we don’t have the full picture yet. That Christians and Muslims refer to the same God in their respective worship—given the shared beliefs they have about God’s basic nature—doesn’t mean to deny that there are fundamentally different and hence incompatible beliefs about God between them. For example, as Ridder and Van Woudenberg rightly note, “no characterization of God that leaves out, say, the doctrine of the trinity or the unique role of Christ will be acceptable to orthodox Christians. At the same time, that very characterization will be unacceptable to both adherents of Judaism and Muslims.”105 Returning to Pitstick’s argument, if we take composite names, however, Pitstick is 103 104 105 complement to God, which logically leads to a pantheistic system” (Roch A. Kereszty, O.Cist., Christianity among other Religions [Staten Island: Alba House, 2006], 123–124). The Catechism of the Catholic Church says what is essential about the Trinity after affirming that the Trinity is One: “The divine persons are really distinct from one another. ‘God is one but not solitary. . . . The divine Unity is Triune” (no. 254). That dogma affirms that “God is one but not solitary,” for he himself exists in the communion of three divine persons eternally united in being, relationship, and love. No adequate relationship can exist in one unipersonal being, and the triune relationship is constitutive for God Himself. “The Father gives, the Son obediently receives, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from both of them,” as Timothy George puts it (Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad? [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002], 82). John Paul II agrees, “We Christians joyfully recognize the religious values we have in common with Islam. Today I would like to repeat what I said to young Muslims some years ago in Casablanca: “We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, [and] the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection” (Insegnamenti, VIII/2, [1985], p. 497). The patrimony of revealed texts in the Bible speaks unanimously of the oneness of God. Jesus himself reaffirms it, making Israel's profession his own: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Mk 12:29; cf. Dt 6:4–5). This oneness is also affirmed in the words of praise that spring from the heart of the Apostle Paul: “To the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen” (1 Tm 1:17)” (General Audience, May 5, 1999, §2). “Referring to, Believing in, and Worshipping the Same God: A Reformed View,” 65–66. 866 Eduardo Echeverria certainly correct that there cannot be conceptual agreement about God between Christians and Muslims. Different names mutually exclude each other, and hence they cannot actually refer to the same thing because there is conceptual disagreement. That is precisely Pitstick’s conclusion: “Christians deny that God’s definitive prophet was Mohammed and Muslims deny Allah is Trinitarian, so both by positive expression and [logical] exclusion, there cannot be conceptual agreement.”106 This follows from the understanding that words are signs of our concepts of things. Thus, “mutually exclusive identities cannot belong to one thing. So different concepts point to things different in reality.”107 Significantly, the disagreement here between Christians and Muslims is not merely about the formal attributes of God, such as the Creator is the one who sent the prophet Mohammed; rather it is about the material subject. “Christians cannot agree that God sent Mohammed, since Mohammed’s doctrine denies the Trinitarian nature of God and the divinity of Jesus.”108 And so, Christians and Muslims “are not talking about the same thing, the same subject, the same being.”109 Pitstick thinks that the fundamentally mistaken belief of Muslims about God undermines reference. But is that so in a complete sense? At one level there is partial overlap in the description of God’s nature by Muslims and Christians. But if we ask the question, “Is the Father of Jesus the God of Mohammed?” then the answer must be negative at another level. Christians and Muslims do not agree on the ultimate object of belief. 106 107 108 109 Pitstick, “Do Jews, Christians, and Muslims Worship the Same God?,” 6–7, 9. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Pitstick rightly argues that this conclusion doesn’t hold for Judaism. “Since Christianity understands Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of God’s revelation to the Jews and their ancestors, from the Christian perspective Jews and Christians believe in the identical God. Judaism as such does not deny that Jesus is the Son of God, as Islam does. That is, the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of the Law and the Prophets, does not positively deny that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah— and I am taking it that modern Judaism sees itself as standing in continuity with the faith that runs from Abraham through the Prophets.” She adds: “Although contemporary Jews may deny that the Trinitarian God revealed in Jesus is the God of Abraham, I think this denial is illogical from both a religious and a philosophical standpoint: from a religious one, because there is no doctrine in pre-Christian Judaism that says God is not trinitatrian—there is only the positive belief that God is one. From a philosophical standpoint, it is illogical, because one can show with human reason that it is not impossible for the one God to be Trinitarian. In other words, Jews are not compelled either by faith or by their reason to conclude that the Trinity is not the God of Abraham” (10). Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 867 But does that mean that Muslims do not take hold of the true God at all? In other words, given the mutually exclusive identities of God regarding the ultimate object of belief, does the incompatibility in question reflect not only different concepts but also point to different things in reality? I don’t think so. I’m siding here with St. John Paul II. He clearly argues for similarity and difference here, that is, for a yes/but, and this must be held in tension. Regarding the similarity, he says: We know that in the light of the full Revelation in Christ, this mysterious oneness [of the Trinity] cannot be reduced to a numerical unity. The Christian mystery leads us to contemplate in God’s substantial unity the persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: each possesses the divine substance whole and indivisible, but each is distinct from the other by virtue of their reciprocal relations. Their relations in no way compromise the oneness of God, as the Fourth Lateran Council explains (1215): “Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature. . . . It does not generate, is not begotten and does not proceed” (DS 804). The Christian doctrine on the Trinity, confirmed by the Councils, explicitly rejects any form of “tritheism” or “polytheism.” In this sense, i.e., with reference to the one divine substance, there is significant correspondence between Christianity and Islam. And as to the difference, he crucially adds: However, this correspondence must not let us forget the difference between the two religions. We know that the unity of God is expressed in the mystery of the three divine Persons. Indeed, since he is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8), God has always been a Father who gives his whole self in begetting the Son, and both are united in a communion of love which is the Holy Spirit. This distinction and compenetration (perichoresis) of the three divine Persons is not something added to their unity but is its most profound and characteristic expression. On the other hand, we should not forget that the Trinitarian monotheism distinctive of Christianity is a mystery inaccessible to human reason, which is nevertheless called to accept the revelation of God’s inmost nature (cf. CCC, n. 237).110 110 John Paul II, General Audience, Wednesday, May 5, 1999, §2–3. Given this passage, Miroslav Volf cannot say without significant qualification that “John Paul II unambiguously affirms that Muslims and Christians worship the same 868 Eduardo Echeverria Let me conclude this section by reiterating that even if Muslims refer to the same God, that doesn’t make Islam a salvific religion. Furthermore, interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims must recognize that incompatibility at the level of the ultimate object of belief.111 This conclusion dovetails with the proposal of Dialogue and Proclamation and its call for interreligious apologetics:112 “An open and positive approach to other religious traditions cannot overlook the contradictions which may exist between them and Christian revelation. It must, where necessary, recognize that there is incompatibility between some fundamental elements of the Christian religion and some aspects of such traditions.”113 In this context, I see the relevance of O’Collins’s claim, “When Christians enquire about the truth claims of other faiths, they will need to assess the truth claims of their own faith.”114 O’Collins recognizes this aspect of inter-religious dialogue in passing, encouraging Christians and the adherents of other religions to engage in mutual questioning and challenges115 so that they both can “deepen their religious commitment,” 111 112 113 114 115 God” (Allah: A Christian Response, 80). St. John Paul II sharply states that the Qur’ān has a reductionist revelation of God: “Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Quran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about Himself. First in the Old Testament through the prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son. In Islam all the richness of God’s self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside.” He adds, “Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Quran, 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 not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity” (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 92–93; italics added). On the legitimacy and, indeed, necessity of interreligious apologetics, see Paul J. Griffiths, An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994); idem, “Why We Need Interreligious Polemics,” First Things, June 1994. Dialogue and Proclamation, §31. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 198. Dialogue and Proclamation, “This means that, while entering with an open mind into dialogue with the followers of other religious traditions, Christians may have also to challenge them in a peaceful spirit with regard to the content of their belief. But Christians too must allow themselves to be questioned. Notwithstanding the fullness of God's revelation in Jesus Christ, the way Chris- Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 869 “respond with increasing sincerity to God’s personal call,” and undergo “a deeper conversion towards God.”116 But Dialogue and Proclamation distinguishes this sense of conversion to which O’Collins is referring here, namely, “a general movement towards God” from the more particular sense of conversion where we are engaged in a “dialogue of salvation” that refers “to a change of religious adherence, and particularly to embracing the Christian faith.”117 O’Collins refers to the former but not the latter. I am not surprised. He gives lip service to the important claim that “‘dialogue does not replace proclamation’, and proclamation remains driven by ‘a deep love for the Lord Jesus’ and the desire to share him with others’.”118 But what is proclaimed is unclear. The clearest content of proclamation is stated by him earlier in the book: “The world-wide community of the Church offers its most precious gift to the entire world: faith in Jesus Christ as our light and our life, now and forever.”119 In contrast, Dialogue and Proclamation is much clearer and richer in content: Proclamation is the communication of the Gospel message, the mystery of salvation realized by God for all in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit. It is an invitation to a commitment of faith in Jesus Christ and to entry through baptism into the community of believers which is the Church. This proclamation can be solemn and public, as for instance on the day of Pentecost (cf. Ac 2:5-41), or a simple private conversation (cf. Ac 8:30-38). It leads naturally to catechesis which aims at deepening this faith. Proclamation is the foundation, center, and summit of evangelization (cf. Evangelli Nuntiandi 27).120 O’Collins makes no reference to evangelizing others by inviting them, as the above passage states, “to a commitment of faith in Jesus Christ and to entry through baptism into the community of believers which is the Church.” In fact, O’Collins adds to his minimalist sense of proclamation the point that the “norm for dialogue and proclamation always remains Jesus Christ and never the Church” (emphasis added).121 116 117 118 119 120 121 tians sometimes understand their religion and practice it may be in need of purification” (§32). Dialogue and Proclamation, §40. Cf. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 200. Dialogue and Proclamation, §11. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 200. Ibid., 166. Dialogue and Proclamation, §10. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 201. 870 Eduardo Echeverria But it is hard to make sense of this separation between Jesus and the Church in light of Catholic teaching regarding the de fide doctrine of necessity of the Church as a means of salvation. Consider Lumen Gentium, §14: “Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and tradition, it [this sacred Synod] teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile is necessary for salvation. For Christ, made present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5) and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church.” Indeed, it is hard to make sense of separating Jesus and the Church given O’Collins’s own claim that “the community founded by Christ offers decisively fuller knowledge of God and richer means for salvation.”122 Again, most important, it is hard to make sense of this separation given the missiological context of Lumen Gentium, §16-17 and Ad Gentes, §1-9 that “assumes this [context] and reaffirms that the Church must conduct mission to all religions mentioned in Lumen Gentium, 16.”123 The Church is not only a sign but an instrument of salvation, as Lumen Gentium, §1 teaches. Indeed, following Lumen Gentium, §14, Ad Gentes, §7 teaches that “all must be converted to Him as He is made known by the Church’s preaching. All must be incorporated into Him by baptism, and into the Church which is His body. For Christ Himself ‘in explicit terms . . . affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5) and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church.’” This, too, is the teaching of John Paul II: “The proclamation of the Word of God has Christian conversion as its aim: a complete and sincere adherence to Christ and his Gospel through faith. Conversion is a gift of God, a work of the Blessed Trinity. It is the Spirit who opens people’s hearts so that they can believe in Christ and ‘confess him’’ (cf. 1 Cor 12:3); of those who draw near to him through faith Jesus says: ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’ (Jn 6:44).”124 Indeed, John Paul II’s teaching is rooted in Jesus’s commands: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19) . And “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all 122 123 124 Ibid., 164. D’Costa, Vatican II, 82. D’Costa repeats this crucial point, “It is important . . . to note that Lumen Gentium 16–17 was composed with mission in mind and that Ad Gentes was a further commentary on Lumen Gentium” (82). Redemptoris Missio, §46–47. Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 871 creation” (Mk 16:15). And in this respect, pace O’Collins, the Church is at the center of God’s plan of salvation, according to John Paul. As John Paul II states, “In Baptism, in fact, we are born anew to the life of God’s children, united to Jesus Christ and anointed in the Holy Spirit. Baptism is not simply a seal of conversion, and a kind of external sign indicating conversion and attesting to it. Rather, it is the sacrament which signifies and effects rebirth from the Spirit, establishes real and unbreakable bonds with the Blessed Trinity, and makes us members of the Body of Christ, which is the Church.”125 I want to wrap up my article review of O’Collins’s book with the question regarding the universal necessity of the Church’s missionary activity The Universal Necessity of the Church’s Missionary Activity In his review of O’Collins’s book, we can well understand why James Heft poses the right question about O’Collins’s theology of religions: “Once it is assumed that other believers can be saved through their own religions, how robust can the Christian’s proclamation of the ‘decisive’ revelation of God in Christ be?”126 O’Collins would probably respond to this question by assuring us that his position is not alleging that all religions “are equally effective [emphasis added] at putting people in contact with God, or acknowledging them to be complete and clear ways, equivalent [emphasis added] to what God offers through Jesus Christ and the community called into being by the Holy Spirit.”127 Does this mean that O’Collins agrees with Pope Paul VI, St. John Paul II, and Dominus Iesus regarding the impact of this difference that he is points out here? In Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), Paul VI finds the motivation for evangelization “in the fact that the religion of Jesus, which [the Church] proclaims through evangelization, objectively places man in relation with the plan of God, with his living presence and with his [saving] action; she thus causes an encounter with the mystery of divine paternity that bends over towards humanity.”128 The pope adds, “Our religion effectively establishes with God an authentic and living relationship which the other religions do not succeed in doing, even though they have as it were, their arms stretched out towards heaven. This is why the Church keeps her missionary spirit alive, and even wishes to 125 126 127 128 Ibid. James Heft, S.M., Review of The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions, in Theological Studies 75.1 (2014): 194–195, and at 195. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 163. Evangelii Nuntiandi, §53. 872 Eduardo Echeverria intensify it in the moment of history in which we are living.”129 John Paul II emphasizes this very point of his predecessor in more exact terms describing the objective situation of those who do not know Christ: “Whoever does not know Christ, even through no fault of his own, is in a state of darkness and spiritual hunger, often with negative repercussions at the cultural and moral level. The Church’s missionary work can provide him with the resources for the full development of Christ’s saving grace, by offering full and conscious adherence to the message of faith and active participation in Church life through the sacraments.”130 Dominus Iesus also addresses this matter: “If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.”131 There is no evidence in this book that O’Collins thinks the theist who has not embraced Christ and the Church and the non-theist who has not embraced God is, objectively speaking, in a gravely deficient situation with respect to their salvation, as suggested above by the two popes and the CDF document. Indeed, quite the opposite for O’Collins. All men are saved in Christ whether or not they respond to the Gospel: “Through the Spirit all people, no matter [emphasis added] whether they follow some faith or no faith, can be joined, albeit mysteriously, to the crucified and risen Jesus.”132 He adds, “Neither Lumen Gentium nor any other Vatican II document alleges that people must be aware of Christ’s revealing and saving activity for it to have its appropriate [salvific] effect.”133 In fact, O’Collins assures us that “surely their knowing, in one way or another, the divine mystery happens in and through following their religion.”134 Thus, the Church is not necessary as a means of salvation to evangelize and to call all non-Christians to conversion. Let me conclude by saying that in order to address the question of the fate of the unevangelized, the following points must be kept in mind. Gavin D’Costa describes them admirably well: 129 130 131 132 133 134 Ibid. John Paul II, “Christ, Way of Salvation for All,” General Audience, May 31, 1995, in “To the Ends of the Earth,” Missionary Catechesis of Pope John Paul II, §31–32. Dominus Iesus, §22. O’Collins, The Second Vatican Council, 159. Ibid. Ibid., 162. Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay 873 (a) The Council texts always assume that the world religions operate under the condition of invincible ignorance when speaking of them positively as in Lumen Gentium 16; (b) the doctrine of invincible ignorance is always found as a qualifying clause to NCMS [i.e., the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation]; (c) invincible ignorance relates to justice: it is not the cause of saving grace; (d) those in invincible grace who die outside of the visible community of the Church might be saved: how they are saved and how many are saved is not addressed by the Council.135 Invincible ignorance qualifies and contextualizes the de fide teaching of the necessity of the Church for salvation. The notion of invincible ignorance helps to block drawing the implication from the Church’s necessity that all non-Christians are damned. Rather than following the path of O’Collins that oppose this de fide teaching—an opposition that violates his own test for authentic doctrinal development—“the organic development of doctrine is necessary to grasp the truth of the doctrine.”136 Perhaps the most unfortunate thing in this book is that there is nothing in it that invites “the Church to renew her missionary commitment,” as St. John Paul II describes the purpose of his encyclical Redemptoris Missio. The pope explains: “The present document has as its goal an interior renewal of faith and Christian life. For missionary activity renews the Church, revitalizes faith and Christian identity, and offers fresh enthusiasm and new incentive. Faith is strengthened when it is given to others! It is in commitment to the Church’s universal mission that the new evangelization of Christian peoples will find inspiration and support.”137 We urgently need more studies that will address the question of the fate of the unevangelized in concert with the teachings of Vatican II and its implications for evangelization and the permanent validity and necessity N&V of the Church’s missionary mandate.138 135 136 137 138 D’Costa, Vatican II, 80. Ibid. Redemptoris Missio, §2. An excellent beginning here is Ralph Martin, Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II actually Teaches and its Implications for Evangelization. Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims gives an exceptionally clarifying and deep study of the theological framework informing Vatican II’s teaching on other religions. I have learned much from both these books. I am grateful to Fr. Thomas G. Guarino for his comments on an earlier draft of this review article. I am particularly grateful to Gavin D’Costa for his comments. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 875–901 875 The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes A ndrew M eszaros Catholic University of Louvain (KU Leuven) Leuven, Belgium T he S econd V atican C ouncil has been credited with a host of achievements or “renewals.” Among them are renewed understandings of Revelation, liturgy, the episcopacy, and—not least—the Church’s missionary activity. Perhaps the most immediate and conspicuous manifestation of the Church’s renewed understanding of the Church’s missionary activity since Vatican II was the transformation of De propaganda Fide, whose new appellation, Congregatio pro Gentium Evangelizatione, reflects a more collegial manner of missionary exercise. Less conspicuous, but no less appreciated is the theological foundation of the Church’s missionary activity that is expressed in the first chapter of Ad Gentes, entitled, “Doctrinal Principles,” according to which the unitary mission of the Church is rooted in the divine missions of the Son and Spirit, hence, making the Church by her very nature, missionary. As Ad Gentes teaches, The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father. This decree, however, flows from the “fount-like love” or charity of God the Father who, being the ‘principle without principle’ from whom the Son is begotten and Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son, freely creating us on account of His surpassing and merciful kindness and graciously calling us moreover to share with Him His life and His cry, has generously poured out, and does not cease to pour out still, His divine goodness. Thus He who created all things may at last be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), bringing about at one and the same time His own glory and our 876 Andrew Meszaros happiness. But it pleased God to call men to share His life, not just singly, apart from any mutual bond, but rather to mold them into a people in which His sons, once scattered abroad might be gathered together (cf. John 11:52).1 For the contemporary theologian, the doctrinal principles expressed in Ad Gentes, §2 (i.e., that the Church’s mission is rooted in the missions of the Spirit and Son, and that the end of this mission is God’s glory and our happiness) are generally taken for granted. The same, however, could not be said for those of the Conciliar period, during which time the relationship between the Church’s mission and the Holy Trinity was by no means self-evident. Yves Congar relates to us in his Council diary, for example, that according to the Dutch canonist and Jesuit Ludowijk Buijk of the Gregorian, “the missions do not have any connection with the Trinitarian Processions”!2 Such an attitude was representative of the limitations in the Church’s missiological reflection. As the French theologian, A.M. Henry, O.P., noted, “The missionary manuals did not link ‘mission’ to that of the Father who sends the Son, and of the Son who sends the Spirit. Nor did the theology of the divine missions treat ‘missionary activity’. They were two distinct worlds. The Council brought them together and the first chapters of Ad Gentes present this liaison.”3 While this liaison has been commented upon extensively and appreciated as far as theological achievements can be, the Thomistic tradition’s contribution to the achievement is oftentimes only cursorily acknowledged, if acknowledged at all.4 This contribution lies not only 1 2 3 4 Ad Gentes, §2 (1965). Yves Congar, Mon Journal du Concile, 2 Volumes (Paris: Cerf, 2002), II, 354 (30 March, 1965). An English translation of Congar’s Council diary has now been published as My Journal of the Council (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012). The reference, unless otherwise noted, will be to the original French edition. A.M. Henry, O.P., “Mission—C. Le Grand Tournant de Vatican II,” Catholicisme hier, aujourd’hui, demain IX (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1982), col. 321. For example, I seek to supplement what is an excellent study of the Conciliar text by Peter Hünermann, “Theologischer Kommentar zum Dekret über die Missionstätigkeit der Kirche, Ad gentes,” in Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil, 4 (Freiburg: Herder, 2005), 219–336. Relevant but brief and unexplored references to Aquinas are made on 255–257, 263. There is a short start in James Anderson’s A Vatican II Pneumatology of the Paschal Mystery: The Historical-Doctrinal Genesis of Ad Gentes I, 2-5 (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1988), 278ff. Bonaventure Koppenburg, The Ecclesiology of Vatican II (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974) makes no mention of Aquinas in his commentary on “The Church ‘from the Trinity’” The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 877 on the level of content, but also on the level of theological method, as another diary passage of Congar hints: Congar, after having witnessed his draft (of what would become the first Chapter of Ad Gentes) survive the attacks leveled against it in the De Missionibus Commission, wrote in his diary that “the movement of the Council will have consisted in passing from the purely juridical to a supernatural ontology.”5 Congar’s observation can be considered a short, dense, if even hyperbolic, summation of the achievement of the theological method that was employed in so many of the council texts drafted by Congar: namely, a method whereby all realities under examination are considered according to their relationship to the mystery of God, sub ratione Dei.6 In this article, I hope to demonstrate the accuracy of this observation, with particular reference to the case of Ad Gentes and the role which St. Thomas Aquinas’s theology played in this accomplishment. It should be stated from the outset, however, that I do not mean to suggest that recourse to Aquinas is necessary and sufficient to overcome the “juridicism” (as Congar puts 5 6 or its fourth chapter, “The Mission of the Church.” The same goes for the commentary on Ad Gentes in Adrian Hastings, A Concise Guide to the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, vol. 1 (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1968) and Suso Brechter, “Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity,” in Commentary on the Documents of the Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (NY: Crossroads, 1989), 112–124. Cardinal George offers profound reflections on the Trinitarian foundations for mission in his commentary on Ad Gentes, but again, there is no mention of Aquinas. See Francis Cardinal George, “The Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, Ad gentes,” in Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition, eds. Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 290–292. This note is an observation, not a criticism. Congar, Mon Journal du Concile, II, 30. The exaggeration stemming from Congar’s use of the word “purely” is exemplary of the struggle undergone by Congar at the Council, as it is relayed through the medium of a diary entry. A cursory glance at his ecclesiology shows the importance with which Congar holds the institutional (structural), and hence, juridical dimension of the Church. Cf. Congar, Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat, 2nd ed., Unam Sanctam 23 (Paris: Cerf, 1954), 46–79, 229–233. Congar is not opposed to the necessary juridical relationships that constitute the Church, and he is well aware that an ‘ontology of grace’ was never absent in ecclesiological reflections prior to Vatican II. His hyperbolic journal entry, however, is a rhetorical response to certain members of the De Missionibus commission: namely some Canon lawyers who approached everything with a juridical lens. Congar continues in the diary, saying of Saverio Paventi, professor of Canon Law of the Missions at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, “for him the ‘real’ (his expression) begins with the juridical definition. Otherwise it is about spirituality or poetry” (354). Summa Theologiae I, q. 1, a. 7. 878 Andrew Meszaros it) that pervaded many theological sub-disciplines such as ecclesiology and missiology, nor that other influences such as the Church Fathers did not play significant roles in the Conciliar accomplishment.7 It is only to say that, as a matter of historical fact, in the twentieth-century theological development of mission, and at the Council itself, the work of St. Thomas, his theological method, and his disciples—particularly Yves Congar and Charles Journet—were key to the theological achievement of chapter 1 in Ad Gentes. For reasons known only to the redactors and commission members, the meager number of references to Aquinas is disproportional to the role his thought played in Ad Gentes’s theological foundation for mission. Generally speaking, the dearth of footnotes to Aquinas (relative to Church Fathers) reflects the contention in which an official (and undue, so it was thought) exultation of the Angelic Doctor was held.8 In this article, I suggest that an understanding of St. Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on the “divine missions” is necessary for a theologically adequate understanding of the Conciliar text, most notably Ch.1, No. 2, despite the fact that this paragraph lacks any explicit reference to Aquinas.9 The fact that Congar’s references to Aquinas were dropped from the promulgated version, coupled with the trajectory of twentieth-century ecclesiology and missiology, together constitute enough historical evidence that would legitimize using St. Thomas and his interpreters as a reading key. In short, I argue that the Thomistic tradition is not only theologically illuminating, but also historically necessary for a more thorough understanding of Ad Gentes, §2. To this end, I will proceed in three steps: first I will briefly discuss the conciliar context in which Congar offered his first draft for what would become the first chapter of Ad Gentes. Second, I will offer an historical overview of the theological developments—both ecclesiological and 7 8 9 The first paragraph cited, for example, departs from traditional Thomist teaching in its use of the Eastern Patristic formula, “through the Son,” and in its appropriation of charity to the Father, characteristic of St. Bonaventure, not St. Thomas. See, Yves Congar, “Principes doctrinaux (nos. 2 à 9),” in L’Activité missionnaire de l’Église, Décret “Ad Gentes,” ed. J. Schutte, Unam Sanctam 67 (Paris: Cerf, 1967), 160. Joseph Komonchak, “Thomism and the Second Vatican Council,” in Continuity and Plurality in Catholic Theology: Essays in Honor of Gerald A. McCool, S.J., ed. Anthony J. Cernera (Fairfield, CT: Sacred Heart University Press, 1998), 53–73, 59 and 69. Aquinas is cited twice in Ad Gentes, but never in the context of the Trinitarian processions and the divine missions. The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 879 missiological—that set the stage for the Conciliar achievment. Finally, I will present a short theological reflection on Ad Gentes in light St. Thomas’s thought on the divine missions. The Need for a New Chapter 1 in Ad Gentes At the beginning of the Council in 1962, the Franciscan missiologist Ronan Hoffman observed, Operatio sequitur esse. Logically, one ought to have a clear conception of the esse and finis of an operation, in order to carry it out most correctly and perfectly. Yet, the historical fact is that we have engaged in missionary activity without inquiring into its precise nature and specific purpose.10 While Hoffman is clearly exaggerating in his claim about there not having been any inquiry into the nature and purpose of mission, the general gist of his statement is corroborated by the very different approaches to mission that manifested themselves at the Council. Many on the De Missionibus Commission had a highly juridical and territorial understanding of mission, and aimed at a reform of the canonical norms of the missions under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. A theological foundation for mission, or “the proposal that the missions be understood in the context of the Church’s single and general mission” was not on their immediate horizon.11 Without jettisoning territorial elements, the theological foundation would ultimately assume a more personal—rather than geographical—framework for mission, thereby rendering the Decree relevant to all Christians today, not only to those involved in missionary activity in the technical sense of the word.12 Among the last of the documents, Ad Gentes would be formally 10 11 12 Ronan Hoffman, “The Development of Mission Theology in the Twentieth Century,” Theological Studies 23 (1962): 419–441, 421–422. The History of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo, ET ed. Joseph Komonchak, 5 Volumes (Leuven: Peeters, 1995–2006), I, 1940. Congar would include in this group the following Conciliar actors: Gregory Agagianian (Prefect of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide); André Seumois, O.M.I. (Belgian Council peritus); Ludowijk Buijk, S.J. (Canon Lawyer at the Gregorian); Saverio Paventi (Secretary of the commission for the missions and peritus from diocese of Benevento, Italy). In other words, Ad Gentes is the foundational document not only for, say, the work of missionary institutes, but also for the New Evangelization. 880 Andrew Meszaros promulgated by the Council with 2,394 “placet” votes, the largest amount of yes votes ever cast at the second Vatican Council.13 Despite the ultimate unanimity behind it, Ad Gentes had perhaps the most trouble getting off the ground. The Council Fathers desired both a full-fledged treatment of the missions and an articulated theological foundation for the Church’s missionary activity; but both of these were still wanting by the end of November 1964.14 At this point, the third conciliar session had closed and there was not even a draft yet of what would become Ad Gentes. At the beginning of the last inter-session, with time running, the Commission for the Missions was forced to revamp itself by coopting new periti. Not without some drama, Congar was finally accepted as one of them.15 If we return, however, to the third session, we see in the Assembly Interventions and written Animadverions substantial expressions of what the Fathers had in mind when it came to a theological foundation for mission. Here I will mention just two. The first is from an oral intervention by Rev. Xavier Geeraerts, Belgian missionary, titular bishop of Lagania, living in Antwerp, on behalf of seventy-five missionary bishops. He said, A theology concerning mission is lacking in the present schema... the union of the mission of the Church with the missions of the Word and of the Holy Spirit remain rather implicit [in De Ecclesia]... although really it is the first foundation of the essentially missionary nature of the Church itself: I say the most deep foundation because according to St. Thomas Aquinas, the temporal missions of the divine Persons have their origin in the eternal procession of these divine Persons.16 Since Vatican II was the largest council in terms of its participants, this means that, by implication, Ad Gentes received the largest amount of ‘placet’ votes of any Ecumenical Council. 14 The History of Vatican II, II, 455–460. For a history of the schema, see Alberigo’s History of Vatican II and James B. Anderson, A Vatican II Pneumatology; Donal Lamont, O. Carm, “Ad Gentes: A Missionary Bishop Remembers,” in Vatican II: By Those Who Were There, ed. Alberic Stacpoole (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986), 274–282. 15 Congar relates the episode in his diary: “Aggianian did not refuse but said that the new experts did not displace the old. ‘Why change?’ he said. ‘Why bring in others? Why Father Congar?’ Because one of the complaints about the De Missionibus is that it doesn’t have a theological basis. And Fr. Congar has been on the theological Commission, on the Commission for the De Ecclesia, and is trusted by Cardinal Ottaviani and by the Pope. In short, I have been accepted.” The other periti were Frs. Ratzinger, Neuner, Grasso, and X. Seumois (Anderson, A Vatican II Pneumatology, 86). 16 Acta Synodalia III, VI, 431–432, translation is Anderson’s in A Vatican II Pneu13 The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 881 Here is a demand that the schema articulate the rootedness of the Church in the divine missions in a way more explicit than in Lumen Gentium §2–4.17 Moreover, Aquinas is used to legitimize the request. The second comment comes from a written animadversion by Archbishop Jean Baptiste Zoa of Cameroon, who would also serve on the sub-commission with Congar that would edit Congar’s own draft of what would become the first Chapter of Ad Gentes. Zoa wrote: It is necessary to indicate clearly that missionary activity draws its first origin out of the mission of the Word and the Holy Spirit: this mission is continued in the Church and through the Church. . . . Mission is the unique movement which has its origin from the Trinity and return to it (the Trinity) after it has passed through the world and history.18 Here we also have a request for connecting the Church with the divine missions, but this time, appended to it is the connection that these missions have with the exitus-reditus scheme. This exitus-reditus scheme would appear in Congar’s original draft of chapter 1.19 In this draft, Congar wrote, “And thus the whole design of God is completed in some re-circulation by which creatures, which proceed from the goodness of God, return to it, in such a way that He who is the Creator of all things at last may become ‘all in all’” (Ref. to 1 Cor 15:28). It is at this point that Congar gives eight different references to Aquinas, which, together, refer the reader to the substance of what is presented in what would become Ad Gentes, §2.20 Although Congar’s actual text was not drastically altered in the 17 18 19 20 matology, 69. (My emphasis.) For the congruence between the ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium and that of Journet, see Doyle, “Journet, Congar, and the Roots of Communion Ecclesiology,” 468–469. Journet was on the preparatory Theological Commission that drafted the first De Ecclesia of the Council. Acta Synodalia III, VI, 651, translation is Anderson’s in A Vatican II Pneumatology, 89. (My emphasis.) The original draft of Congar’s was in a file, “De Missionibus Papers,” in the Saulchoir. It has been published in Anderson, A Vatican II Pneumatology, 216–233. This was, according to his diary, completed on the morning of 29 December 1964. See Mon Journal II, 295 (29 December 1964). Congar’s references to Aquinas are: Summa Contra Gentiles, IV, 72; De Potentia, q. 3, a. 16; q. 9, a. 9; ST I, q. 43, a. 7; q. 62, a. 2 ad 3; I Sent. Proem d. 14, q. 2, a. 2; Comp. Theol., I, c. 147. 882 Andrew Meszaros promulgated version,21 all of his references to Aquinas in this paragraph were taken out.22 Hence, the substance of his text remains without the more proximate theological auctoritas underpinning it. It would seem, then, that the claim made by Congar after the Council can be substantiated: namely, that despite the fact that there was a greater willingness at the Council to cite the Fathers, ancient councils, and recent popes, “it could be shown that St. Thomas, the Doctor communis, furnished the writers of the dogmatic texts of Vatican II with the bases and the structure of their thought.”23 Of the references that Congar gives, in my judgment the most crucial are those to (i) the Summa Theologiae (I, q. 43), (ii) Book I of the Commentary on the Sentences (the preamble and d. 14), and (iii) the Compendium Theologiae (c. 147). These loci, respectively, treat (i) the relationship between the eternal processions and the divine missions, both visible and invisible; (iii) the restoration of God’s works—or the creatures’ return to God—through the processions of the Son and Spirit; and (iii) the divine activity that moves the universe to its divine end. It is not my purpose here to discuss each of these passages, but rather, with an eye towards their emergence in Congar’s draft, to highlight the 21 22 23 The text was not changed substantially (in terms of content). The most conspicuous change came with the deletion of the bit on “re-circulation,” or the explicit reference to exitus-reditus. Because Congar’s draft is not identical, but prior to, the Textus prior—the draft which was distributed to the Council Fathers for the first time—there are no official animadversions or modi that would indicate why the references to Aquinas were taken out. Archival work would have to be done, researching the minutes of the meetings to see whether they were a topic of discussion. The deletion, however, may have been the simple result of an oral exchange between Congar and those on his own sub-commission for the first chapter (i.e. Mgrs. Lecuona, Riobé and Frs. Neuner and Grasso). The text was discussed by the entire commission on 12 January, 1965, and examined and corrected by the sub-commision 13–14 January. (See Congar, Mon Journal II, 298–301 [12–14 January, 1965].) The changes also could have occurred subsequently, unbeknownst to Congar, and brought to his attention only on 1 February (Mon Journal II, 309–310 [1 February 1965].) As for the reasoning behind it, one can only hypothesize: at a time when the status of Aquinas was a contentious issue, the general tendency was, when possible, to use the Church Fathers before moving to the Scholastics. For the arguments surrounding Aquinas at the Council, particularly among those working on Optatum totius, see Joseph Komonchak, “Thomism and the Second Vatican Council.” For a comparison of the drafts, one can consult Chapter VI, “The Redactional Evolution of Ad Gentes I, 2–5,” in Anderson, A Vatican II Pneumatology, 215–242. Congar, Situation et taches présentes de la théologie (Paris: Cerft, 1967), 53. The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 883 doctrinal principles of Ad Gentes, which, implicitly at least (and explicitly in Congar’s draft), appeal to these texts. These doctrinal principles, I will show, had been fleshed out in the decades leading up to the Council. In the following section then, I will present some of the theological developments in ecclesiology and missiology that not only prepared the way for Congar’s contribution to Ad Gentes, but also engendered the expectation among the Council Fathers that nothing less than a properly theo-logical foundation be given for the Church’s missionary activity. Twentieth-Century Theological Developments This section will trace how theologians developed two crucial doctrinal principles that can be found in Ad Gentes, both of which are ultimately based on the fundamental Thomistic doctrine that the temporal processions or divine missions are the means by which God creates and restores creation to himself. The first principle is ecclesiological: the Church is missionary by her very nature; the second is missiological: missionary work is motivated by charity because its foundation is a Church that is animated by the Holy Spirit sent to inhabit Church. The Church is Missionary That the Church is missionary by her very nature is an ecclesioloical thesis that stems from viewing the Church as a mystery and can be found in the works, most relevantly for us, of Humbert Clérissac, Yves Congar, and Charles Journet. According to Georges Cottier, Journet’s vocation as an ecclesiologist was inspired by, among others, Humbert Clérissac.24 Clérissac’s Le mystère de l’Église (1918) is referred to by both Congar and Journet and in it, we find a theological reflection on the Church as a mystery—a mystery understood not simply as something incomprehensible, but as a divine reality—like so many other mysteries of the faith.25 In that 24 25 See John Saward, “L’Église a ravi son coeur: Charles Journet and the Theologians of Ressourcement on the Personality of the Church,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twenieth-Century Catholic Theology, eds. Gabriel Flynn and Paul Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 130. Saward refers to Georges M.–M. Cottier, “L’oeuvre de Charles Journet (1891–1975),” Nova et vetera 50 (1975): 242–258, 251. See Humbert Clérissac, O.P., Le Mystère de l’Église (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1921), 11. This is the second edition. The first was published in 1918. Clérissac’s work, on the Church as a “Church of Tradition” is lauded by Congar in Tradition and Traditions (London: Burns and Oates,1966), 373. Already in 1937, Congar demonstrates his awareness of Clérissac’s chapter on “La Mission et l’Esprit” in 884 Andrew Meszaros work, we find Clérissac writing: “The Incarnation is a mission of the Son of God in the world, and this mission continues and diffuses itself throughout the multiplicity of ecclesiastical ministers for all times.”26 He continues to say, however, that there exist also “extra-hierachical” missions.27 And these missions he extends to all Christians, in whatever state. The upshot, for Clérissac, is that, “She [the Church] is one vast and perpetual mission.”28 In Clérissac’s work, then, we find articulated great principles about the Church and mission without extended theological analysis about the relationship between the divine missions and the Church’s mission. But a real link—albeit undeveloped—exists already in Clérissac between the missionary nature of the Church and the Son’s mission from the Father. In the work of Congar, we find reflections on the Church as the continuation of the divine missions and, hence, as the vehicle of return to God. In his Chrétiens désunis of 1937, Congar begins his “Ecclesia de Trinitate” by stating: “The unity of the Church is a communication and extension of God’s unity itself. The life which is eternally within the Father, after being communicated in God himself in order to constitute there the divine communion [société divine], that of the Three Persons of the holy Trinity, is, by grace, communicated to spiritual creatures, first to angels, then to us.”29 Later, in explaining that what makes the Church one is the common object (God) of the theological virtues with which her members are endowed, Congar refers to the Trinitarian processions and the divine missions whose principle they (the processions) are: It is truly the life that God lives, within the Trinitarian communion [société trinitaire], which pours itself into humanity and, by that, extends to us the blessed trinitarian communion. It is this that Thomas Aquinas expresses with great strength and beauty when he makes the Trinitarian “processions” the principle of the “divine missions,” that is to say, the gift and the presence of God, specifically to grace. . . . Faith and charity, emanations of sanctifying grace . . . are the effects appropriable (respectively) to the double 26 27 28 29 Le Mystère de l’Église, arguing that the Church’s mission does not stifle the workings of the Spirit. See Yves Congar, Chrétiens Désunis: Principes d’un ‘œcuménisme’ catholique, Unam Sanctam 1 (Paris: Cerf, 1937), 98n. Clérissac, O.P., Le Mystère de l’Église, 163–164. Ibid., 166. Ibid., 165. [Elle est une vaste et perpétuelle mission.] Congar, Chrétiens désunis, 59. The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 885 “procession” of knowledge and love of which the Father is the principle. The Church is like an extension or a manifestation of the Trinity, the mystery of God in humanity.30 Here Congar expresses a theology of the Church in the sense that a relationship of extension and indwelling (efficient and formal causes) is established between God and the Church by recourse to St. Thomas’s teaching on the divine missions. Congar refers in his footnote here to 1 Sent. d. 14 and to ST I, q. 43, as well as to the last work by his confrere and mentor at the Saulchoir, Ambrose Gardeil, on the divine missions.31 The latter text, published five years earlier, highlighted the “oeuvre caractéristique” of the personal missions of the Son and Spirit, which is “le retour à Dieu.”32 In sum, Gardeil’s reflections on the divine missions reminds us of the missions’ final end: namely, to transform and elevate creatures in order to facilitate their journey to a life with God. Two years later, in a 1939 conference paper later to be published in The Thomist, Congar reflects ecclesiologically on the reditus that is effected by the divine missions. He writes that for St. Thomas, “the Church is the whole economy of the return towards God, motus rationalis creaturae in Deum,” and identifies the Church with the “reditus creaturae rationalis in Deum.”33 The Trinitarian character of this return, furthermore, is included in Congar’s synthesis of Thomistic principled-inspired 30 31 32 33 Ibid., 67–68: [Ainsi, dans la foi, dans la charité et dans la grâce sanctifiante qui est leur principe, c’est vraiment la vie DE DIEU qui nous est communiqué. C’est vraiment la vie dont vit Dieu, au sein de la société trinitaire, qui s’épanche dans l’humanité et, par là, étend jusqu’à nous la bienheureuse société trinitaire. C’est ce qu’exprime avec une grande force et une grande beauté saint Thomas d’Aquin lorsqu’il fait, des ‘processions’ trinitaires le principe des ‘missions divines’, c’est-à-dire du don et de la presence de Dieu propres à la grâce. . . . La foi et la charite, émanations de la grâce sanctifiante, par lesquelles nous avons comme objets de vie les objets de vie de Dieu lui-même, c’est-à-dire ceux de la vie trinitaire, sont des effets appropriables respectivement à la double ‘procession’ de connaissance et d’amour dont le Pere est le principe. L’Église est comme une extension ou une manifestation de la Trinité, le mystère de Dieu dans l’humanité.] Ambroise Gardeil, “L’expérience mystique pure dans le cadre des ‘Missions divines’,” Supplément à la ‘Vie Spirituelle’ (Juillet-Août 1932), 138–142. Again, the relevant texts by Aquinas are mentioned : namely, ST I, q. 43 and I Sent. d. 14–18. Gardeil, “L’expérience mystique pure,” 140. Yves Congar, “The Idea of the Church in St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 1 (1939): 331–359, 339–340. 886 Andrew Meszaros ecclesiology: 34 For on the one hand, “Of this motus and return the Holy Ghost is the power and agent,” and on the other, “this return can only be accomplished actually in Christo, qui, secundum quod homo, via est nobis tendendi in Deum.”35 One can note here, too, that Congar refers no less than four times to c.147 of Aquinas’s Compendium, especially as it concerns what is appropriated to the Spirit in the divine economy. Subsequently, the thesis that the Church is missionary because she prolongs the missions of the Son and Spirit, appears consistently in the works of Congar. It appears, for example, repeatedly throughout the 1950s.36 By 1962, Congar will, in Tradition and Traditions, mention the divine missions discussed in question 43 of the Summa and writes about them, that, “The Church, the People of God in the world, has its source in these ‘comings’ or ‘missions’ and appears as wholly dependent on the divine actions.” This comment by Congar, it should be said, is accompanied by numerous references to Charles Journet’s ecclesiological masterpiece.37 A few decades later, Congar would give Journet credit for 34 35 36 37 It is “inspired” by St. Thomas insofar as, while much of Aquinas’s writings contain explicit teachings about what the Church is, much of what Congar writes is only implied in, and coheres with, the theology of St. Thomas. Congar refers to the “‘treatise on the Church’ of St. Thomas, or rather the treatise which could be written with the guidance of his principles.” (See, “The Idea of the Church,” 115–116.) While Congar’s article is more constructive, Jean Bainvel’s approach is more textual, and hence, not as synthetic. Cf. J.-V. Bainvel, “L’idée de l’Église au moyen age. L’enseignement théologique: Saint Thomas,” La Science catholique (1899): 975–988. Congar, “The Idea of the Church in St. Thomas Aquinas,” 339–340. See Congar, The Mystery of the Church (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1960), 147–186, ET of “Le Saint-Esprit et le Corps apostolique, réalisateurs de l'œuvre du Christ,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 36 (1952): 613–625 and 37 (1953): 24–48; Lay People in the Church (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1967), 349–355, ET of Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat (orig. 1953). For a survey on this in Congar, see Jean Rigal, “Trois approaches de l’ecclésiologie de communion: Congar, Zizioulas, Moltmann,” Nouvelle revue théologique 120 (1998): 605–619, esp. 606–610. Congar, Tradition and Traditions, ET, (London: Burns and Oates, 1966), 262. References to Journet’s L’Eglise: 462–471, 481, 486–91, 500–508. On 240, Congar writes, “God’s plan, therefore, is one of mission and tradition. Both elements are determined by an identical content, which is preserved despite the constant replacing of one person by another. Mission is the entrusting of a task to another by one who has a responsibility to see that the task is completed. By tradition we mean the successive communication of one and the same object to others, a single possessor being the first term in the series.” See also Congar’s comment on Journet in The Mystery of the Temple (London: Burns & Oates, 1962), 286. The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 887 developing a “remarkable ‘theo-logy’ of the Church.”38 While the relationship between the Church and the divine missions was already surfacing in the Catholic theological consciousness, the integration of missiology and ecclesiology can be credited to the work of Charles Journet. The second volume of Journet’s L’Église du verbe incarné was published in 1951. By 1954, we have André Rétif saying, “It is no longer possible to engage in a theology of mission without having read Journet.”39 And it is Eduard Loffeld’s assessment in 1956 that Journet’s L’Eglise du Verbe incarné is the first [work] “to incorporate most fully and most extensively the treatment of speculative missiology.”40 Another figure indebted to the work of Journet is the Italian, Danilo Catarzi, S.X.—later to be ordained bishop of Uvira, Congo, and hence, a participant at the Council. In his 1958 two-volume work on missiology, he discusses the missions of the Word and the Spirit, and only then discusses the mission of the Church. In his work, no other figure is cited more than Aquinas.41 More specifically, Catarzi is heavily indebted to question 43 of the prima pars of the Summa, which treats of the divine missions.42 It is with Journet’s speculative gloss on Aquinas that Catarzi is able to show how mission and the Church are coextensive.43 In his earlier writing, Journet has recourse to Clérissac on the latter’s insistence that the comings of the Spirit in the Church never contradict the juridical authority of the Church that the same Spirit assists.44 Journet points out, however, that Clérissac is one typical theologian who all too often limits the divine missions to miraculous helps or simple providence. Journet, on the other hand, goes deeper. In addition to extraordinary helps in the Church’s life, the Holy Spirit, for Journet, is the personal 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Congar, I Believe in Holy Spirit (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2000), II, 13n.15. André Rétif, “Trinité et missions,” Eglise vivante VI (1954):179–189, 179. Edouard Loffeld, Le problème cardinal de la missiologie et des missions catholiques (Rhenen: Spiritus, 1956), 31. [cet ouvrage de theologie generale est le premier a incorporer plus pleinement et plus largement le traité de missiologie speculative.] Hoffman, “The Development of Mission Theology,” 433. See Danilo Catarzi, Teologia delle missioni estere: Aspetti specifici and Lineamenti di Dommatica Missionaria: Parte Generale (Parma: Istituto Saveriano Missioni Estere, 1958). Catarzi references q. 43 in Lineamenti on 1, 4–5, 33, 35, 57, 61, 75, 79, 81, 148, 155, 177, 185. Catarzi, Lineamenti, 113–121. He appeals to Journet, among other places, quoting him at length at 58. Journet, “Le Saint-Esprit, principe de l’Église,” Supplément à la ‘Vie Spirituelle’, Juillet-Août (1934): 1–27, 7–9. Cf. Clérissac, Le Mystère de l’Église, 169 and his third chapter, “La personnalité de l’Église,” 55–73. 888 Andrew Meszaros subject of the Church—not hypostatically, but efficiently45—to whom all the Church’s activities of sanctification are appropriated. The Holy Spirit forms and establishes the Church at Pentacost, governs all her parts, unites her members in theological charity, ensures her infallible doctrine, guides in her future and homogeneous explication of it, enlightens the faithful in the power of the sacraments, and continues, upon the faithful’s reception of the sacraments, to “knock on the doors” of souls, to purify, illuminate, and fortify them.46 The Spirit is united efficiently to the Church, as the Word is united to the person of Christ hypostatically, the Church’s head. So both the Word and the Son are sent by the Father into the world: one to unite God to human nature, the other to unite the Church.47 In these reflections of Journet, he explicitly admits his reliance on Aquinas’s treatment of the divine missions: “Achevons ces réflexions sur l’Esprit, personnalité de l’Église, par une considération inspirée de l’enseignement de saint Thomas d’Aquin sur les ‘missions’ des divines Personnes.”48 Journet develops this theme in more systematic form in the second volume of his L’Église du verbe incarné. There, Journet discusses the efficient cause of the Church (properly, the Holy Trinity, and by appropriation, the Holy Spirit) only after having discussed at length a theology of the divine missions.49 According to Journet, the Church is completely established after the visible mission of the Son to unite substantially with human nature (pertaining to the Church’s head) and the four visible missions of the Holy Spirit to the Church’s body.50 The invisible missions of the Word and Spirit, following upon the visible, prolong the effects of the visible ones: they effect grace and fill the soul with light (appropriated to the Word) and love (appropriated to the Spirit). Hence, the relationship between the divine missions and the Church does not stop at the level of efficiency, but extends also to the formal level. That is, the missions do not only bring about the Church and keep 45 46 47 48 49 50 Journet, “Le Saint-Esprit, principe de l’Église,” 18. Ibid., 17–21. Ibid., 25–27. Ibid., 26. Charles Journet, L’Eglise du verbe incarné II: Sa structure interne et son unité catholique (Paris: Desclée, 1951), 454–472. The visible mission of the Son is the hypostatic union with human nature in Christ (the Incarnation). The visible missions of the Holy Spirit are four: 1.) The Lord’s Baptism (a dove); 2) The Lord’s Transfiguration (a bright cloud); 3) Christ’s transmission of the power to forgive sins (breath); 4) Pentecost (tongues of fire). The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 889 it in existence, but the missions facilitate a divine inhabitation that makes the Church what it is: namely, a new Creation, the Body of Christ.51 The Church is by her very nature missionary. As we shall see, this will be crucial for how Journet understands the missionary impulse. After having established the efficient cause of the Church as the divine missions of the Word and Spirit, and the Holy Spirit and charity as the uncreated and created souls of the Church, respectively, Journet is set to present a rather short but thorough missiology according to which the missionary impulse stems from the two great visible missions: the Incarnation terminating in Christ, the head, and Pentacost, terminating in the Church, which is the body.52 The existence of the Church (constituted and sustained by these missions), in turn, has for her end communion with God. Hence, we have Journet writing, “Grâce aux missions invisibles des divines personnes, la création, sortie de Dieu, fait constamment retour à Dieu. Une circulation s’établit.”53 (In maintaining this, Journet has recourse to the same text [I Sent., dist. 14, a. 2] that Congar would in his first draft for Ad Gentes. Journet believes that missionary activity can only be isolated in thought, and is only materially (not formally) distinguished from the Church’s other activities.54 Essentially rooted in the Church’s catholicity, then, the intrinsic causes (material and formal) of missionary activity are the same as those of the Church herself. In other words, the efficient causes of the missions is the Holy Spirit, Christ and the apostolic charity of Pentacost; the final cause of the missions is to implant an indigenous hierarchy (proximate final cause) so as to open up to souls a free and stable way towards encountering the redemption of Christ (remote final cause). In terms of its intrinsic causes, missionary activity is essentially the expansionary movement of the Church (formal cause) by entering into places where the Church is still in potency (the material cause).55 It should be noted that Journet’s four causes subtly but unmistakably appear in Ad Gentes, §5’s definition of mission, albeit in more pastoral language.56 51 52 53 54 55 56 See Journet, L’Eglise du verbe incarné II, 511–530, esp. 522 ff. Ibid., 1224. Ibid., 471, 1208–1209. Ibid., 1207, 1224, 1251. Ibid., 1250–1251. Congar does not mention Journet by name; he simply draws our attention to the existence of the definition of mission in Ad Gentes, §5 in terms of the four causes. See his document “Le Nouveau schéma ‘De Activitate Missionali Ecclesiae’,” Études et documents (1 June 1965): (unpaginated, but it is the third page in the document). N.B., Études et documents were a series of unpublished 890 Andrew Meszaros Divine Charity Impels Missionary Work Shortly after the council, a Saulchoir student, confrere, and friend of Congar’s, Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, following Congar, observed that “In treatises on ecclesiology and in articles and popular works on the Church during the 19th and 20th centuries, the idea of mission was practically absent.”57 Previously, mission was understood as a one function of the Church (among others) based on Christ’s injunction to “Go, teach the nations,” which, in turn was understood as a practical mandate for the sake of the salvation of the non-evangelized. A conception of mission quite unlike this one, however, would be vindicated at the council. For example, Congar’s operating assumption already in the 1950s is the same: the necessity and motive for the Church’s mission is not that, without it, souls are lost.58 (This is, of course, not the same as denying that missionary activity is instrumental in bringing individuals to salvation.) To understand the alternative vision of what mission is, recourse should be had to la question du jour among missiologists in the beginning and middle of the twentieth-century: namely, what is the primary motive of missionary activity? Is it charity, or some other virtue, such as obedience or “religion” (religio)? One of the most influential missiologists of the twentieth century held that the primary motive for missionary activity was religion. The Belgian 57 58 documents written by theologians for the French episcopate during the Council to explain the redaction process of the council documents and to highlight the theological issues at stake. Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, “Mission as an Ecclesiological Theme,” Concilium 13 (1966): 81–130, 81. Le Guillou is referring to Congar’s L’Ecclesiologie au XIXe siècle, Unam Sanctam 34 (Paris: Cerf, 1960), 77–114. Congar, The Wide World My Parish: Salvation and its Problems (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961), 130–135. This is the ET of Vaste Monde, ma Paroisse (1959). Here, Congar’s two reasons for missionary activity are (1) the glory of God and the salvation of men and (2) waging war against the Devil. In his reflections, Congar is trying to argue for mission’s necessity despite our knowlege of the possibility of the non-Christian’s salvation. See also Congar, “Non-Christian Religions and Christianity,” Evangelization, Dialogue and Development. Selected Papers of the International Theological Conference. Nagpur (India) 1971, ed. Mariasurai Dhavamony, Documenta Missionalia 5 (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 1972), 134, and Congar, “Les religions non bibliques sont-elles des médiations de salut?,” Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Theological Studies, Tantur-Jerusalem Yearbook (1972-1973), 295 : [Finalement, comme l’a dit le décret Ad Gentes, la raison décisive de la mission n’est pas de procurer le salut des individus, car ils peuvent l’obtenir sans elle.] The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 891 Jesuit, Fr. Pierre Charles, founder of the Louvain school of missiology,59 is perhaps most well-known for his position, articulated in his Dossiers de l’action missionaire, that the goal of mission is not so much the conversio animarum but rather the plantatio ecclesiae. Charles roots missionary activity in Christ’s command to “Go, teach the nations, baptizing them. . . .” (Mt 28:19) and “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature!” (Mk 16:15). As a result, “nous avons l’obligation d’accomplir ses [Christ’s, whose power comes from the Father] ordres,” albeit with “un élan d’enthousiasme incontestable.”60 Charles, in his desire to promote the uniqueness of mission, argues against the Münster school’s conception of mission’s raison d’etre, namely, saving souls. There are souls everywhere to be saved, and one need not go to the ends of the earth to help them, so the argument goes. The primary and unique object of missionary activity is, rather, to implant the Church. But in order to make this move, however, Charles feels obligated to attack the notion that charity is the primary or foundational motive of missionary activity. This obligation, as Charles sees it, follows from the fact that he associates in missionary activity charity (as its motive) with “saving souls” (as its object). One who is motivated by charity (for God and neighbor) seeks to help the soul in distress, but for Charles, this is not the goal of mission. It is to implant the Church, and as such, charity cannot be its primary motive. Rather, missionary activity is an “act of religion” on behalf of the Church: Therefore, missionary activity is not primarily or uniquely an act of obedience to a precept of Christ, nor is it, further, an act of charity towards the neighbor in distress; it is all these things because it is above all and essentially an act of religion.61 Writing contemporaneously with Charles (although with Charles’s For a brief summary of missiological developments and the relation between the Louvain and Münster schools of missiology, see Hoffman, “The Development of Mission Theology,” 419–441. 60 Pierre Charles, Les Dossiers de l’action missionnaire: Manuel de missiologie (Louvain: Editions de L’Aucam, 1938), 21. All the emphases are Charles’s. They are bold in his text. 61 Ibid., 24: “Dès lors, l’activité missionnaire n’est pas d’abord ou uniquement un acte d’obéissance au précept du Christ; ni davantage un acte de charité envers le prochain en détresse; elle est tout cela, parce qu’elle est avant tout et essentiellement un acte de religion à exercer par l’Eglise et pour l’Eglise.” 59 892 Andrew Meszaros Dossiers in hand)62 the Missionary Oblate Alberto Perbal, O.M.I., like Clérissac, roots missionary activity in Christ’s having been sent by the Father, and his having sent the apostles.63 Missionary activity is not simply following a divine mandate, but building up the Kingdom of God by establishing and expanding His Church, which continues the mission of Christ.64 He also explicitly has recourse to Clérissac’s Le Mystère de l’Église when he attaches a “personnalité” to the Church, consisting of human souls participating by grace in the divine nature.65 It is puzzling, however, to notice that despite his ecclesiology according to which theologal charity is the animating principle of the Church, Perbal argues later in the same work, following Charles, against the thesis that charity is the primary motive for missionary activity, and he spends more effort debunking the thesis, drawing more categorically than Charles, a dichotomy between “religion” and “charity.” For Perbal, religion, or the virtue of respect and submission to God— not charity—is the formal motive for the expansion of the Church and establishing the Kingdom of God.66 As Pierre Jean de Menasce, O.P. observes, for Perbal, the Church is above all a society of worship or cult, and hence, its establishment and expansion remains on the moral, not the theologal, level.67 This can be partially explained by the way in which Perbal interprets the mission of Christ. Here, Perbal briefly notes Question 43 of the prima pars in order to distinguish between an eternal procession and a temporal mission, but his subsequent reflection utilizes, to my mind, an overly one-sided—that is, exclusive—use of the master-servant category of hierarchy to shed light on the Church’s mission.68 If the Church’s mission continues that of Christ’s, and Christ’s 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 Perbal’s book was published in 1937, while the publication date on Charles’s Dossies is 1938. Despite the dates given, Perbal is referring to them throughout his 1937 work. Albert Perbal, Premières leçons de théologie missionnaire, Bibliothèque de l’union missionnaire du clergé de France (Paris: L.-E. Dillen, 1937), 10, 13–14. Hoffman, “The Development of Mission Theology,” 429. Again, following the Christological vein, the former Dean of Missiology at the Gregorian, Jesuit José Zameza, rooted missionary activity in the totus Christus or the Word incarnate united together with the Church, his mystical body. Perbal, Premières leçons de théologie missionnaire, 15. To substantiate this, Perbal has recourse to the second objection in ST II-II, q. 101, a. 4. See Perbal, 74–75, where he argues that the Church is a society of religion before charity. Pierre Jean de Menasce, “Missiologie,” in Divus Thomas (Freiburg) 20 (1942): 199–202, 202. Specifically, he refers to ST I, q. 43, a. 2, ad 3. See Perbal, Premières leçons de The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 893 mission is understood as a servant sent by his master, then it is not so difficult to see how religion, and not charity, is embraced to explain the missionary motive. Following Charles, Henri de Lubac conceives of the foundation for missions in essentially the same way, basing it on the mandate of Christ, 69 but with some alterations. 70 De Lubac asks, “So, what is the theological foundation of the missionary work of the Church? Or, more simply: Why the missions?” The first reason that he gives is that “The Church’s missions fulfill one of Christ’s orders.”71 Despite his seconding of the mandate as the foundation for the Church’s missionary activity, de Lubac seems to depart from Charles in his reflections on charity as the motive for missionary work, likening missionary zeal to “the fire of divine charity” that desires “to spread everywhere.”72 In the eyes of Journet, this focus on charity is a rectification of Charles’s and Perbal’s predilection for obedience and religion, rather than charity as the primary motive for mission.73 Journet, however, would remain dissatisfied with de Lubac’s work because the latter nevertheless entertains the possibility of assigning missionary activity to the virtue of religion rather than charity. This, for Journet, is enough to convict de Lubac’s theology of mission as being “equivoque et decevante.”74 For Journet, the virtue to which missionary activity is assigned must be unambiguously charity.75 In his repudiation of Charles, Perbal, and to some extent, of de Lubac, Journet makes his 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 théologie missionnaire, 9: “En tant qu’envoyé, il procède de son maitre...ceci est encore plus vrai dans l’ordre divin, on le comprend sans peine. La mission du Verbe est la source et produit le type de toutes les missions qui suivront dans l’ordre du salut des âmes...c’est que l’union hiérarchique sera leur caractère essentiel et premier. La première démarche d’un ambassadeur…” In other words, Perbal is using the ‘master-servant (envoy)’ conception of mission to the exclusion of the other examples given by St. Thomas, such as a tree sending forth fruit. (See ST I, q. 43, a. 1, resp.) See Mt 28:19 ff. and Mk 16:15ff. Henri de Lubac, “The Theological Foundation of the Missions,” in Theology in History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 367–427. Ibid., 368–369. Such priority to the mandate is confirmed in a summation of De Lubac’s: “Why the missions?...Because it is the will of Christ” (381). Ibid., 386. Although de Lubac engaged with the thesis of Charles sometime in the early 1940s, perhaps around the time Menasce published his own work, de Lubac’s essay was only published afterwards, in 1946. Journet, L’Église du verbe incarné, II, 1227. Ibid., 1233: “Ce n’est pas la vertue de religion, c’est notre charité elle-même, qui . . . doit être sacramentelle et orientée . . .” 894 Andrew Meszaros own the objections raised by Pierre Jean de Menasce.76 For Journet, the role of charity as the formal motive for missionary activity is based on the auto-diffusive character of the charity that is God and is manifested to us in his sending his Son and Spirit for the forgiveness of our sins. Missionary work is essentially a continuation of this diffusion of charity.77 Menasce argues for the insufficiency of the “religion first” thesis, and insists that the Church has for its foundation charity, not religion, and hence, reaches the theologal level, thereby including but also surpassing the moral level. This is so because the Church is founded on the missions of Christ and the Apostles, and this mission, in turn, is for the sake of our reditus back to God. It is for the sake of “supernatural friendship [with God] to which we are elevated by grace.”78 Menasce agrees with Charles main thesis that missionary work is properly speaking the plantation or establishment of the Church. He echoes Perbal in stating that the Church is sent as Christ is sent. And she sends her missionaries as Christ sent his Apostles for the sake of congregating humanity into one body united by supernatural charity, but he situates this end in the catholicity of the Church, or the “law of expansion of Christian charity.”79 According to Menasce, “There is for all Christians enriched by grace a more or less explicit ordination to the missionary intention of the Church, which has the same extension as the salvific will of Christ.”80 The upshot is that not only the French priest in China, but also the cloistered monk in France is missionary because the latter prays for the expanded catholicity of the Church. While Menasce admits with Charles and Perbal that the specific work of the missions is to plant the Church (something which the monk, the parish priest, or the Christian layman might not be doing immediately), there is no reason, argues Menasce, to attribute to this specific work a formally distinct motive (such as religion) from another motive that governs the activity of the entire Church: namely, charity.81 Menasce concludes, “In the last analysis, the mystery of the Church, of her catholicity, as of her unity, appears as a mystery of love and fecundity, as the reflection in time and 76 77 78 79 80 81 Menasce (1902–1973) was born in Egypt and converted to Catholicism in 1926. He entered the Domincan order in 1930, contributed to oriental studies, and taught history of religions and missiology in Fribourg, Switzerland. Journet, L’Eglise du verbe incarné, II, 1226. P.-J. Menasce, “Catholicité de l’Église et ordre de la Charité,” Annuaire missionaire catholique de Suisse 6 (1939), 15. Ibid., 14–15. Ibid., 13. Menasce, “Missiologie,” in Divus Thomas (Freiburg) 20 (1942): 199–202, 201. The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 895 in space of Trinitarian mystery itself.”82 Homage and submission remain requisite because we are creatures, but the primacy of the theologal over the moral due to the new law of charity and our ultimate supernatural end is, for Menasce, clear. We can see how it is, then, that a certain ecclesiology and missiology hang together. A certain missiology whose preoccupation is to safeguard the specificity of the missions in the juridical sense of the word (as opposed to the broader use of the word that could apply to the parish priest, for example) relies on an ecclesiology whose reflections on the Church’s Trinitarian foundations are not fully unpacked. The response of a theologian such as Journet to this view of things manifests the outcome of deeper ecclesiological principles in action: namely, a theology of the Church according to which her very existence is established and continually sustained by the divine missions, whose raison d’etre are facilitating the reditus of creation. And as humanity’s return to God is envisioned in terms of friendship, theologal charity becomes the great uniter, and has its origins in the mission of the uncreated Spirit. When the Church’s ultimate source is the temporal missions whose fittingness is derived from the eternal Trinitarian processions, the theological move towards grounding missionary activity in the divine missions is executed with ease. Alternatively, where mission is one function of the Church among many based first and foremost on Christ’s mandate, and where the Church’s task is primarily faciliting our submission, cult, and sacrifice, the logic of making the connection between the divine missions and missionary activity is not as evident. Though not air-tightly, the components of each theological vision by and large hang together. A Thomistic reading of Ad Gentes, Ch. 1 An awareness of the Thomistic underpinnings to the first chapter of Ad Gentes has the virtue, I suggest, of uncovering the depth and riches of an intensely Scriptural document by providing some context and precision. In his commentary on the doctrinal principles of Ad Gentes (which is, in essence, a commentary on his own text), Congar explains that mission has a double meaning; in his explanation, Congar echoes the respondeo of question 43, a. 1 of the Summa. Mission, according to Congar, following St. Thomas, has a double aspect. It can refer to a dependence of origin, on the one hand, and a new presence according to the term to which one is sent, on the other.83 82 83 Menasce, “Catholicité de l’Église et ordre de la Charité,” 14. Congar, “Principes doctrinaux,” 186. Cf. ST I, q. 43, a. 1, resp. 896 Andrew Meszaros Let us first consider the second aspect. Mission can be a new presence of him who is sent, according to Aquinas, “either because in no way was he present before in the place whereto he is sent, or because he begins to be there in some way in which he was not there hitherto” (my emphasis). It is in the second sense that Aquinas interprets Christ’s mission, as Christ was always in the world (according to John 1:1), but taking on human nature, he became present in a new way. This insight of Aquinas’s sheds light on the Church’s mission as it is rooted in the divine missions, for Ad Gentes explains that the Church’s mission is an epiphany that “brings about the presence of Christ. . . . But whatever truth and grace are to be found among the nations, as a sort of secret presence of God, He frees from all taint of evil and restores to Christ its maker.”84 In the nineteenth century, even Henry Cardinal Manning pointed out that “the operations of the Holy Ghost have always pervaded the whole race of men from the beginning, and they are now in full activity even among those who are without the Church.”85 Hence, the Church’s mission, following the divine missions as Aquinas understands them, is not so much about making God present where he has hitherto been absent, but rather facilitating a full life in communion with God or, in the words of St. Thomas, “a new way of existing in another,”86 a way that has yet to be experienced in those who have no relationship with Christ. Aquinas’s teaching that mission can be understood as a “new way of existing” is a valuable help in retaining the urgency of mission without denying the presence of God extra Ecclesiam. This “new way of existing” is expressed in Ad Gentes, §5, where we find the formulation: “that thus there may lie open before them a firm and free road to full participation in the mystery of Christ.” (We may point out here that this last quotation in Ad Gentes is almost a direct quotation from Journet’s work.)87 The object of the Church’s missionary activity, then, is to increase the presence of God or—more accurately— to deepen the presence of God among people. This deepening, in turn, is commensurate with God’s own mission that culminates in an increased 84 85 86 87 Ad Gentes, §9. (My emphasis.) Henry E. Manning, The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost (London: Burns & Oates, 1875), viii. ST I, q. 43, a. 1, resp. Journet, L’Eglise du verbe incarné, II, 1251: “ouvrir aux âmes une voie libre et stable vers les profondeurs de la redemption du Christ.” Cf. Ad Gentes, §5: “ut eis via libera ac firma patefiat ad plene participandum mysterium Christi.” Congar acknowledges the influence of Journet in his commentary, “Principes doctrinaux,” 197. The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 897 presence. To clarify, Aquinas, as Congar teaches us in The Mystery of the Temple, distinguishes between three presences, each being more intimate than the preceding one: the first is God’s immanent creative activity in (the existence of) his creatures; the second is the presence of God in creatures by grace, in which case creatures are turned towards God “so efficaciously that we can touch and possess him in knowledge and love.”88 Again, we find here the invisible missions (to which are appropriated knowledge and love) to be described in terms of an increased presence. The third level is the hypostatic presence of God in Christ, whose effects the invisible missions prolong. The entire history of the missionary Church, then, is one in which God is increasingly dwelling in his temple. Congar writes, Behind the external history of the Church . . . another history is in the making, a specifically supernatural and sacred history which can only be written in heaven, the history of the invisible Missions through which God makes his Presence ever deeper in the members of the Body of Christ and builds this Body to be his everlasting spiritual temple.89 The missionary activity of the Church, then, which is the extension of the divine Missions, is ultimately facilitating, cooperating with, or participating in, God’s sanctifying presence to his creatures. Turning now to the first aspect of mission, namely, dependence of origin, Aquinas writes, Anyone being sent implies a certain kind of procession of the one sent from the sender: either according to command, as the master sends the servant; or according to counsel, as an adviser may be said to send the king to battle; or according to origin, as a tree sends forth its flowers.90 Considering these three kinds of mission (by authority, by counsel, or by origin), the question naturally arises: what kind of mission is ours here and now? In the reply to the first objection in the article, Aquinas writes, 88 89 90 Y. Congar, The Mystery of the Temple, 239. In this discussion (238–239), Congar cites I Sent., d. 37, q. 1, a. 2; Commentary on Collossians, c. 2, lect. 2; ST III, q. 43, a.1 and ST I, q. 43, a. 1. See also The Mystery of the Temple, 281. Congar, The Mystery of the Temple, 298. ST I, q. 43, a. 1, resp. 898 Andrew Meszaros Mission implies inferiority in the one sent, when it means procession from the sender as principle, by command or counsel; forasmuch as the one commanding is the greater, and the counselor is the wiser. In God, however, it means only procession of origin, which is according to equality, as explained above. As we are creatures, and not God, and because of the explicit mandate given by Christ, it would seem prima facie, that our mission is of the first type, by command. Many of the great missiologists discussed in this essay were of the opinion that obedience to the mandate, although not adequately or fully accounting for the missionary impulse, is nevertheless sufficient to efficaciously engage in it.91 On one level, this is the case, and Ad Gentes affirms it with its repetition of Christ’s injunctions.92 But I would suggest that on another level, Ad Gentes affirms the thesis that we too are sent with a mission, not of command, but of origin. For, according to Ad Gentes, §2, the Church has her origin [origo] from the missions of the Son and Spirit. Though we, as creatures, are inferior to God, it is through God’s gift of charity that we are able to love with a love that is God’s, and it is for this reason that Aquinas believes friendship to be possible between God and humans.93 “No longer do I call you servants. . . . I have called you friends” (Jn 15:15). It is, then, through supernatural charity that we humans can have a share in the life that is God’s. So when we read in Ad Gentes, §5 that it is not only in virtue of the express command that we spread the faith but “also in virtue of that life which flows from Christ into His members,” we can see in this the “supernatural ontology,” to use Congar’s expression, that supplements the divine command in grounding the Church’s mission.94 Hence, of the kinds of missions that Aquinas distinguishes in question 43, it would seem that our mission proceeds not only out of command, but out of origin, and hence, missionary work whose active principle is supernatural charity is truly theologal;95 the people who exercise it are 91 92 93 94 95 Perbal, Premières leçons de théologie missionnaire, 68–70. Ad Gentes cites both mandates: Mt 28:19 and Mk 16:15. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1; B. See also David Burrell, “Friendship with God in al-Ghazali and Aquinas,” in Friendship in the Classical World, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 43–56. See also David Schwarz, Aquinas on Friendship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Cf. Congar, “Principes doctrinaux,” 196. “Theologal” or theologale in French, is an adjective which modifies that which pertains to the divinized life, or the life of faith, hope, and charity. See Romanus The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 899 truly transformed in their very being—and are not simply obeying a command.96 The importance of this theological grounding is, as Congar, states, that the activity of mission, “is founded on a more general reason, whose interest lies in the surpassing of a purely positive mandate, and achieving, rather, a supernatural ontology.”97 The primary motive for missionary activity stems from what the Church is and who Christians are, not an injunction.98 Although the two cannot be separated, if one reads the document with the eyes of St. Thomas, we can say that the missionary injunction follows from the ontology of the Christian life, not visa versa. We do not mission simply because God commands us, but rather God commands us because we are graced accordingly with charity. To use an image inspired by Perbal, Christ has not only commanded the clock to go, he has also wound it up.99 Herein lies the difference between, for example, a servile obedience and a filial obedience. While the former is characteristic of a deontological ethics, the latter congrues with the primacy of the virtues as transformative habitus.100 The achievement of Ad Gentes, then, situating missionary work as it does in terms more of charity than obedience to a precept, can be likened to the renewal of moral theology in the twentieth century and the overcoming of casuistry. It is charity that obliges, not the command. To use the images of Aquinas, then, the Church’s missionary activity is not only like a servant proceeding from his master, but also, and perhaps more so, like a flower proceeding from its tree. Conclusion I began this essay by mentioning Congar’s claim that the Council, in essence, was a movement away from juridicism towards a supernatural Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 1. 96 Cf. Congar, “Principes doctrinaux,” 198. Another way of framing the issue is whether or not some thing belongs to another morally or ontologically. The same transition was made on the matter of poverty and how it pertains to the priesthood, for example. See Congar, Mon Journal, II, 189. 97 Congar, “Principes doctrinaux,” 187. 98 Cf. Ad Gentes, §7: “The members of the Church are impelled to carry on such missionary activity by reason of the love with which they love God.” 99 Perbal, Premières leçons de théologie missionnaire, 69. 100 See Craig Steven Titus, “Servais Pinckaers and the Renewal of Catholic Moral Theology,” Journal of Moral Theology 1 (2012): 43–68, 63. 900 Andrew Meszaros ontology. By juridicism, Congar means a method of analysis that, in its explanation of some reality, tends to work exclusively with categories of power, order, and jurisdiction, and hence, impoverishes what would otherwise be a very rich subject of investigation.101 A juridical approach can be applied (exclusively) to just about any reality, including, as we have seen, to the Church’s missions. It was the great achievement of Ad Gentes that it, without rejecting the necessary juridical dimensions of mission,102 instead approached the question of mission in terms of its origin, its nature, and its end, or what Congar calls, its supernatural ontology. Elsewhere, Congar describes this same movement away from juridicism towards a supernatural ontology as Vatican II having done “nothing more than undertake a deepening of ecclesiology based on a ‘trinitarian theo-logy’.”103 Congar likes to italicize the theo104 in ‘theology’, most likely, because of his insistence that theology is discourse, properly speaking, about God.105 It is the mystery of God, the Trinity, that must be the overarching category to which everything under theological consideration must be traced back. Fergus Kerr has demonstrated how, in Congar’s theological method—analyzing as he does everything sub ratione dei106—Congar, throughout his career, aligned himself squarely within this Thomist tradition. I have shown in this article, not only that mission is a reality that can be analyzed theologically, sub ratione dei, but also that it was in fact analyzed 101 102 103 104 105 106 Cf. Avery Dulles, “A Half Century of Ecclesiology,” Theological Studies 50 (1959): 419–442, 420. To be sure, the juridical nature of certain relationships between territories and their ordinaries, and Propaganda were not completely abrogated. Note should be taken of the “–ism” in Congar’s dismissals of various categories. What is overcome is juridicism, not juridical relationships as such. From Congar, Le Concil de Vatican II. Son Eglise peuple de Dieu et corps du Christ, 82, quoted in the introduction of the ET, My Journal of the Council, xxviii. He does it in I Believe in the Holy Spirit, II, 13, when describing Lumen Gentium and Journet’s theological work. He italicizes it in Yves Congar, “Regard chrétien sur l’échec,” in Les homes devant l’échec, ed. Jean Lacroix (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 115–125, 122. Cf. Congar, “Principes doctrinaux,” Unam Sanctam 67 (1967), 185: “Elle est théologique par son contenu, au sens le plus fort d’un discours sur Dieu.” See Fergus Kerr, “Yves Congar and Thomism,” in Yves Congar: Theologian of the Church, ed. Gabriel Flynn (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 67–97. Congar criticizes certain figures (such as certain members of the Tübingen School) for departing from the Thomistic sub ratione dei in his article “théologie,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 15 (1942), 341–502, later to be translated and published as A History of Theology (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968). The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes 901 in such a way, both before and during the Council. To this it might be objected that Ad Gentes, §2 is simply a reiteration of the missionary foundation of the Church already articulated in Lumen Gentium, §2–4 and 16–17. But this only shifts the question one step back and does not take into account the concrete evidence: namely, that pre-conciliar theology was already linking the Church to the Trinity and missionary work to the divine missions; that the conciliar interventions demanded a more detailed treatment of missions and invoked the Doctor communis; and that Congar’s own draft was heavily noted with texts of St. Thomas. As a result, reading Ad Gentes with Aquinas—especially with question 43 of the Summa—in mind, is not only a fruitful exercise in sapiential theology, but it also gives us a more contextual, and therefore, historically accurate view of what the theological framework was of both the redactors and the Council Fathers. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 903–937 903 Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II: Renarrating a Defense of the Reform F rancis M ichael W alsh Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores Catholic Theological Institute for Oceania Yoña, Guam R ecently M assimo F aggioli has sketched the history of the reception of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the first constitution of the Second Vatican Council approved by the overwhelmingly favorable vote of 2147 to 4.1 This reception, as Faggioli correctly notes, has been marked by growing hesitations and doubts about the wisdom of the reforms that the council initiated. In fact, it has taken on the appearance of an intractable dispute, one in which none of the parties to the dispute is able to convince the others of the correctness of their position. Setting out to defend the reform in the face of calls for a “reform of the reform,” a call that has assumed in some quarters the appearance of a “new liturgical movement,” Faggioli argues that Sacrosanctum Concilium and its accompanying reforms provide the essential hermeneutic key to understand correctly the broader meaning of Vatican II, and that any call for the reform of the reform is simply a stealth way of undermining the council itself.2 To assess the correctness of this view, I purpose to compare the arguments 1 2 Massimo Faggioli, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (New York: Paulist Press, 2012); “Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Meaning of Vatican II,” Theological Studies 71 (2010): 437–52 (hereafter “The Meaning of Vatican II”); “Vatican II: The History and the Narratives,” Theological Studies 73 (2012): 749–67 (hereafter “The History and the Narratives”). The vote tally is from Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1990), 37. Faggioli, “The Meaning of Vatican II,” 451–2. 904 Francis Michael Walsh used by Faggioli with the arguments used by one of the reform’s most articulate critics, James Hitchcock, in his book, Recovery of the Sacred: Reforming the Reformed Liturgy.3 This essay will first briefly examine the dynamics of an intractable dispute as analyzed by Alasdair MacIntyre, and how each of our two authors understands the reform that he is defending or proposing. This section will conclude with the identification of three issues that appear to me to be the core of the disagreements between the defenders of the reform and those calling for a further reform. Secondly, I shall examine the first of these issues: the problem of how to understand history. Thirdly, I shall examine the second issue: the problem of how to understand theology. Fourthly, I shall consider the last issue: the problem of how to understand theological anthropology. Fifthly, I shall briefly consider the history that needs to be overcome if consensus is to be reached. Sixthly, I shall attempt to lay the foundation for renarrating a defense of the reforms of Sacrosanctum Concilium. Seventhly, I shall focus on those elements of the constitution which contain possible resources for the reconciliation of both sides. Finally, I shall draw some modest conclusions. In the interests of full disclosure, however, I want to preface this essay by saying that I think the calls for a fundamental reform of the liturgical reforms of Vatican II are misguided. In my view, the case for their fundamental reshaping has not been persuasively made. At the same time, however, I have serious reservations with the approach that Faggioli has adopted in their defense for reasons that I hope to make clear. I. The Intractable Disputes about Sacrosanctum Concilium According to MacIntyre, rational disputes occur when there is a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes the proper way to think rationally. Disputes become intractable when those who hold to incompatible views that employ different concepts of rationality believe that they have answered successfully all the objections coming from the other side and consequently find no grounds for believing that the other side has been able to contradict successfully the positions that their side has defended. And since there do not exist neutral standards to judge objectively which side has the better arguments, they have no other standards but their own to judge who has triumphed over the other competing view.4 In stating the problem in these terms I have already indicated two of 3 4 James Hitchcock, Recovery of the Sacred: Reforming the Reformed Liturgy, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995) (hereafter Recovery of the Sacred). Lawrence Cunningham, ed., Intractable Disputes about the Natural Law: Alasdair MacIntyre and Critics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2009), 32–52. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 905 my own premises: that there is more than one way to think, and that neutral, independent standards by which to judge the adequacy or superiority of one way of thinking over another do not exist. I shall assume for the purposes of this essay that both of these premises are correct. The very fact that intractable disputes occur seems to require the plurality of rationality and that the standards of rationality are internal to the mode of rationality employed by either side. In situations such as these, MacIntyre holds that the only hope for making such disputes tractable is to focus on the premises of each position to show how one or the other side is incoherent according to its own standards of rationality that each side employs to defend its positions.5 The conditions that result in intractable disputes seem to be fulfilled with regard to Sacrosanctum Concilium. Both sides are confident that they have not only the better of the argument but that they have defended their positions without falling into incoherency. For example, Faggioli holds that, since Sacrosanctum Concilium was the first of the conciliar documents, it was also the theological starting point for Vatican II, “the first and most undisputed common ground of the council fathers.”6 From it derived all the other documents produced by the council. As a consequence it is the hermeneutical key to understand all the other conciliar documents, together with their accompanying reforms. The change that it provoked in the liturgy, frozen for centuries, “sponsored a new awareness within the Roman Catholic Church that things change.”7 The council made change not only imaginable but also acceptable.8 In its underlying ecclesiology, says Faggioli, the constitution opened the door to further reforms of Church structures. Conceding that the details of the reform are not above criticism, Faggioli has no argument with those who simply seek a recovery of an esthetics of the rites under the title of a “reform of the liturgical reform.”9 He sees, however, a danger that such a call will ignore “the basic fact that the liturgical debate at Vatican II was the first and most radical effort of modern Catholicism to cope with the dawn of the ‘secular age’ and the ‘expanding universe of unbelief.’”10 Indeed, the real aim of such calls on the part of those who were on the 5 6 7 8 9 10 Cunningham, Intractable Disputes, 52. Faggioli, “The Meaning of Vatican II,” 445. Ibid., 452. Ibid. Ibid., 439–40, citing John Baldovin, Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), 1. Ibid. 440, citing Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 352–418. 906 Francis Michael Walsh losing end of the debates at the council, he claims, is to gain a belated victory by frustrating the council’s attempt to introduce a more progressive ecclesiology. In describing the “political” implications of a conciliar historiography controlled by the institutional center of power, Faggioli refers us to John W. O’Malley’s account of what happened at Vatican II.11 According to O’Malley, post-conciliar events have served to obscure the conciliar recovery of the periphery, energized by the teaching of collegiality, and to substitute for it the pre-conciliar dominance of the center. According to this view, as articulated by Faggioli, the conservative minority, having lost the initial battle on collegiality at the council, is now trying to stifle the implementation of the council and thus reverse its losses by indirectly attacking the perceived faulty implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, so as to discredit the broader agenda of reform.12 The attempts by liberal reformers, he says, to encourage further structural changes in the Church during the 1970s and 1980s by emphasizing collegiality has provoked by way of conservative reaction an increasingly technical-liturgical reading of Sacrosanctum Concilium that restricts the reforms to rubrical changes as a way of muting its broader implications.13 Thus, in his view, those who agitate for the reform of the reform are really concealing the desire to subvert the council itself. Instead, the focus of our present discussion should be, according to Faggioli, the theological and ecclesiological implications of the constitution so as to clarify what is at stake in defending the reform. James Hitchcock has a very different view of what is at stake in the debate over Sacrosanctum Concilium. His call for a reform of the reform does not focus on the theological reasoning of the constitution or on any broader program of reform that the council might have had in mind. Instead, he wants restored the sense of the sacred that would ensure a restoration of the coherence and stability of the liturgy that Vatican II sought to reform without at the same time reclaiming its time-acquired rigidity. He complains that the implementation of the reform overstepped itself to the point of destabilizing Catholic life in general. Instead of making the Roman rite more approachable, the reform effected a desacralization of the liturgy, a loss of the sense of the sacred, which for him is the core issue. Hoping to reach our secularized contemporaries 11 12 13 Faggioli, “The History and the Narratives,” 750, note 7; see John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2008), 311 (hereafter What Happened). Faggioli, “The Meaning of Vatican II,” 443, 451. Ibid., 444. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 907 who no longer considered liturgy relevant to life, the reformers deprived the historical symbols of the liturgy of their capacity to convey a sense of the sacred.14 According to Hitchcock’s account, the initial success of the liturgical movement led quickly to the discovery of a pre-existing crisis of faith. No longer having the old liturgy as the focus for their discontent, “liturgical innovators” quickly discovered that they no longer shared the core beliefs which underlay the traditional liturgy. 15 In surveying the literature of the immediate post-conciliar period, Hitchcock finds it curious that a frequent term of dismissal applied to the revised liturgy by self-proclaimed liturgists was “meaningless,” a term which, he maintains, had rarely been used “even in the days of the Latin Mass.”16 Hitchcock credits Harvey Cox with introducing secularist thinking into the popular culture at the time the reforms were being introduced.17 According to Hitchcock, Cox advocated a form of desacralization that told believers that religious practices were secondary to secular practice.18 Accepting Cox’s diagnosis of the contemporary culture, liturgists and theologians, says Hitchcock, drew the conclusion that “liturgy could obviously have little meaning unless drastically revised.”19 Hitchcock also blames the way the bureaucracy of the Church implemented the initial reforms by focusing on the rubrical changes without giving a clear rationale for the changes. Were the changes, he asks, aimed at accomplishing a recovery of the past (some form of ressourcement), or were they simply attempts to come to terms with modern culture (some form of aggiornamento)?20 This question never received a clear answer. If the reform was aimed at a recovery of the past, he says, it resulted in the unnecessary and disastrous destruction of the Church’s liturgical heritage.21 If, however, the desire was to make the liturgy relevant to modern culture, an equal or worse disaster was at hand: the discovery by the reformers that the liturgy, in its traditional form, was irreformable and had to be replaced with something else.22 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Hitchcock, Recovery of the Sacred, 168. Ibid., 71. Ibid., 92. Ibid., 29. James Hitchcock, What is Secular Humanism? (Harrison, NY: RC Books, 1982) 63. Hitchcock, Recovery of the Sacred, 23. Ibid., 145. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 28. Francis Michael Walsh 908 Hitchcock sees any liturgical reform that disregards what history has made of the liturgy and that attempts to recover the original based on a return to the sources as doomed to be irrelevant both to those who are naturally religious and those who are already secularized.23 For Hitchcock, liturgical symbols and rituals carry within themselves the capacity to engender a sense of community among those who value them. Once, however, the historical symbols were altered by ill-advised attempts at renewal, their ability to foster community was likewise altered. Instead of delivering a greater sense of community as promised, the new liturgy only further weakened whatever sense of community had already existed.24 In his judgment, the old liturgy succeeded because the knowledge and familiarity of the traditional rites formed an “objective” community even among worshippers who possessed little personal knowledge of one another.25 Hitchcock deftly points out that those who had advocated lay participation engineered the reform of the liturgy without consulting the laity as to their wishes. Instead, he says, “lay resistance to change was dealt with by a combination of condescending persuasion and authoritarian commands.”26 In the face of this resistance, the “innovators” (as Hitchcock condescendingly calls them) increasingly believed that what was radically wrong with the Catholic Church was “the people themselves and their benighted attitudes.”27 And what were these attitudes? Hitchcock points to the phenomenon of folk religion in Catholicism as the most easily identifiable culprit.28 The consequent misguided attempt of the reform to eliminate from the liturgy all elements that had their origin in natural religion, says Hitchcock, led to its being secularized.29 These puritanical attitudes towards natural religiosity, he claims, were at variance with the Church’s historical attitude of acceptance. “Historically Catholicism has accommodated itself more to the magical, primitively pagan tendencies of human culture than to puritanism, sensing that puritanism is often a prelude to secularization.”30 Hitchcock is of two minds regarding the introduction of the vernacular. On the whole, he judges it positively because it allowed for a degree of participation that the Latin did not. But, due to his concern for the 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Ibid., 75. Ibid., 103–4. Ibid., 105. Ibid., 111. Ibid., 114. Ibid., 128. Ibid., 129. Ibid., 128. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 909 experience of sacrality, he thinks that something was lost. “The old ritual,” he says, “conveyed the sense that much more was happening than met the eye; the new asks to be accepted purely in its own terms.”31 “Liturgy,” he says, “should assume that the worshiper is Homo religiosus.”32 By not taking into account the clear distinction that natural religiosity makes between sacred and profane (or the secular), the reforms, which were based on another world view (one in which the dichotomy between sacred and profane did not exist), swept away many traditional subordinate rituals that functioned in the past to protect the sacrality of the Eucharist from contact with the profane of daily life. “Traditional solemn Masses affected worshipers with a sense of awe, of personal insignificance before the Almighty, and even routinely celebrated ‘low’ Masses took place in an atmosphere of hushed reverence, of timidity about entering the holy place.”33 In summary, it appears to me that there are three interrelated issues that constitute the core of the disagreements between Faggioli and Hitchcock and the other advocates of a reform of the reform. The first is the problem of how to understand history. Is there one history with competing narratives? Or are there simply competing narratives? The second is how to understand theology. This is the problem of doctrinal development or the problem of continuity versus discontinuity in the teachings of the Church as they appear at Vatican II. The third is the problem of how to understand theological anthropology. This is the problem of secularization and desacralization. Any hope of making progress in opening both sides to reconsider their positions, which by now have become intractable, seems to depend on the ability to identify points of incoherency. II. A Critical View of the Problem of How to Understand History MacIntyre insists that there is only one way to dialogue with conflicting points of view that have become intractable—by narrating historically how the argument has fared up to this point.34 This narrative of history encompasses the telling of what had to be denied and why it had to be denied before any contrary proposition could be asserted as true. Only in this way does the plurality of rationality have a chance to appear along 31 32 33 34 Ibid., 146. Ibid., 170–1. Ibid., 11. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 8–10 (hereafter Whose Justice). 910 Francis Michael Walsh with the opportunity to compare the advantages that any given mode of rationality has over the others. The first step in initiating this dialogue requires a change in our way of thinking about history and rational inquiry. The telling of history has to be understood as having a history of its own, a step not easily taken. Western culture has been deeply affected, says MacIntyre, by the Enlightenment notion of rational inquiry as singular, impartial, and universal.35 Enlightenment thinkers understood rationality as lacking any intrinsic history of its own and therefore capable of transcending history and securing for itself the impartiality that would make philosophy (and theology) a discipline distinct from history. This view appears to underlie Faggioli’s account of the conflicting views of the meaning of Vatican II. For him, there is, on the one hand, the one account of history (derived from the scientific study of the sources and gradually being clarified and perfected by the work of historians), and, on the other hand, the various narratives produced by competing ideological interests, which he identifies as the ultratraditionalist, the ultraliberal, and the neo-conservative narratives.36 “What we have seen emerge in the last few decades,” he writes, “is a new prominence for narratives about Vatican II and the shape of contemporary Catholicism that take no account of the historical research on the council produced during this same period. We are left with narratives innocent of historical studies and even inimical to them.”37 The assumption here is that the historical researcher has transcended the historical limitations of all the narrators who surround him and is able to judge which of them are harmless and which are inimical to true history. His narrative, instead of being just one more narrative 35 36 37 MacIntyre, Whose Justice?, 6: “It was a central aspiration of the Enlightenment, an aspiration the formulation of which was itself a great achievement, to provide for debate in the public realm standards and methods of rational justification by which alternative courses of action in every sphere of life could be adjudged just or unjust, rational or irrational, enlightened or unenlightened. So, it was hoped, reason would displace authority and tradition. Rational justification was to appeal to principles undeniable by any rational person and therefore independent of all those social and cultural particularities which the Enlightenment thinkers took to be the mere accidental clothing of reason in particular times and places. And that rational justification could be nothing other than what the thinkers of the Enlightenment had said that it was came to be accepted, at least by the vast majority of educated people, in post-Enlightenment cultural and social orders.” Faggioli, “The History and the Narratives,” 763. Ibid., 751–2. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 911 amid a plethora of others, stands apart as normative for all the others.38 If MacIntyre is correct in rejecting the possibility of such impartiality, as I believe he is, then there is no division between history and the narratives. There is rather a fourth and hidden narrative that Faggioli uses to structure his defense of the reforms, one that we might call the “liberal” narrative, one that is hiding in his account in plain sight under the tag of history. According to this narrative, the council was a struggle between two forces: a conservative group (made up of the Curia and the Ultramontanes), which turned out to be a minority, and a progressive group (made up of the Cisalpines) but which in the end turned out to be the majority.39 This struggle continued after the council, and still controls the debate over the fate of the liturgical reforms. According to Faggioli, not all of those who have participated in the debate over the reforms grasped what is at stake. Some seem to think that “liturgical reform is just one issue among many.”40 Faggioli’s thesis, on the contrary, is that the liturgical constitution is the source of all the reforms of the council, and that therefore the liturgical constitution is (to borrow a phrase) the “articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae.” Those who call the liturgical constitution into question are really calling the entire council into question. As 38 39 40 Ibid., 764. “Already in 1997 members of the entourage of the Roman Curia, feeling more secure in the decline of John Paul II’s pontificate, began expressing more vocally their prior criticism of the volumes of History of Vatican II edited by Giuseppe Alberigo, because History of Vatican II challenged the favored narrative. This initially quiet reaction against the international, multiauthored, and respected historiographical work on Vatican II (polemically labeled ‘the Bologna School’) became gradually more visible over time and especially after 2005, but it never acquired a real scholarly standing as an alternative to the international research on Vatican II.” A competing narrative of the same events sees the council as deeply divided over the nature of the renewal it envisioned. At the opening of the first session, the “progressives” defeated the “conservatives,” when a majority of the council fathers rejected all of the schemas that the preparatory commissions, representing principally the Roman Curia, had initially proposed. Then a curious thing happened. The “progressives” found that they did not have a common program to present in place of what had been rejected. Two opposing parties appeared both during the remaining sessions and more dramatically after the council ended. Each represents competing views of the nature of the challenges facing the Church. Each has their prescription for the renewal that was the theme of the council. One of the two has been called the party of “aggiornamento,” and the other the party of “ressourcement.” Each has claimed to be the true heir of the council. See John M. McDermott, “Did That Really Happen at Vatican II?” Nova et Vetera (English Edition) 8 (2010): 425–66. Faggioli, “The Meaning of Vatican II,” 437. Francis Michael Walsh 912 he puts it: “any attempt to relativize the liturgical debate at the council, the liturgical constitution, and the liturgical reform originating from the constitution entails diminishing the significance of Vatican II and its role in the life of the Catholic Church.”41 If this latter statement is to be taken at its face value, then Faggioli is in the ironic position of accepting the underlying premise of the most extreme followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. They do not “relativize” the relations between the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium and the council that promulgated it on the one hand, nor the revisions of the liturgical books of the Roman rite and the post-conciliar commission that revised them on the other hand, nor the implementation of both on the level of the parish. They reject the council in its entirety as a resurgence of Modernism and wish no part in any reform, however reformed. By their schism, in the most intractable dispute of all, the Lefebvrists have signaled dramatically that they are not interested in reforming the reform because they want no part of any reform. If there is to be any dialogue over the reform, it could only happen with those who have enough loyalty to the Church to form the loyal opposition to the promulgated reforms. But for dialogue to happen there must be room enough to for a narrative of the council that distinguishes (i.e., “relativizes”) the relationship between the council, the post-conciliar commission, and the implementation on the local level. To critique one of the latter two does not logically imply a rejection of the first. After all, only those who accepted the constitution and the authority of the council that wrote it would ever think of calling for a reform of the reform. But for Faggioli to grant the legitimacy of “relativizing”Vatican II and its reforms presents him with a problem. His central thesis— that an attack on the reform is an attack on the council itself—will be undermined. In which case, the need to defend the thesis will usurp the priority of the need to defend the reform. His prioritizing of the thesis over the defense of the particulars of the reform seems to be proven by his willingness to grant that there is a basis to the “serious critique of the reform—both in its formulation in the Liturgy Constitution and in the subsequent reformed liturgical books and their implementation.”42 In making such a sweeping accommodation to the critics of the reform, Faggioli declines the opportunity to counter the critique of the reform offered by Hitchcock. In which case, Faggioli’s defense of the reform is really a defense of change, not primarily in the liturgy but whatever other (ecclesiological) changes he sees as being prompted by that initial 41 42 Ibid. Ibid., 440. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 913 change. The need to defend the possibility of such broader changes has in fact usurped the priority of defending the liturgical reform itself. The consequence is that Faggioli’s defense of the liturgical reforms of Vatican II—precisely as reforms of the liturgy and not simply as a prelude to broader ecclesiological changes—has become incoherent as a defense of the reform. III. A Critical View of the Problem of How to Understand Theology The way one theologizes is determined by the way in which one understands how history and the truth in general (including the truth about what happened at Vatican II) become available to us. If history is understood as singular (i.e., as not having a history), theology will be seen in much the same way. There will be only one way to think theologically, and that way will be to think non-historically. But if history is to be told from a specific point of view, theology also will have to be understood historically, that is, as having multiple narratives and thus a history. In intractable disputes, it is important to understand theology as historically conditioned for two reasons. Firstly, theology must be narrated historically (i.e., as having a history) if the issues that have become intractable are to have a chance to be advanced. Due to the rise of historical consciousness, the issue of development of doctrine became a burning issue for the theology of the nineteenth century. The crisis for theology then was to explain how the notion of the historical development of dogma could be reconciled with the abiding truth of the Church’s dogmatic tradition. Describing this dilemma Neil Ormerod writes: Whereas the Scholasticism of the day was metaphysically strong, it had remained immune to the issues raised by an emerging historical consciousness. Its ahistorical conceptionalism left it unable to deal with history in any serious sense, a problem that would reach crisis proportions in the era of Modernism at the turn of the century, another 50 years after Newman’s groundbreaking work.43 Ormerod correctly notes that John Henry Newman’s explanation of 43 Neil Ormerod, “Vatican II—Continuity or Discontinuity? Towards an Ontology of Meaning,” Theological Studies 71 (2010): 609–36 at 615. Also see David L. Schindler, “The Catholic Academy and the Order of Intelligence: The Dying of the Light?” Communio 26 (1999): 722–45 at 733, note 10. 914 Francis Michael Walsh dogmatic development44 had gained acceptance by the eve of the council, even as it “was fiercely resisted in some circles, in particular among senior curial officials who remained largely untouched by the impact of historical consciousness.”45 Development, however, was often conceived as linear, going in one direction, progressing in a continuous, coherent line. This understanding of doctrinal development encountered a difficulty when the fathers of Vatican II took up, among others, the question of religious liberty. As O’Malley explains, the position that the council was asked to sanction in the draft on religious freedom seemed to negate positions that the Church had held for centuries. “The problem [John Courtney] Murray ran into in the council was that the doctrine of Church-state relationships that he and his colleagues advocated seemed to critics not a further step along the path but an abandonment of the traditional path for a different (and, indeed, forbidden) path.”46 How was this to be explained? Both O’Malley’s account of the “Roman” theology’s resistance to the notion of doctrine development47 and Ormerod’s account of the non-historical character of nineteenth-century Catholic theology are united by the fact that the counter-narratives that they promote do not 44 45 46 47 See Ian Ker, “Newman, the Council, and Vatican II,” Communio 28 (2001): 708–728 at 716. Kerr notes how Newman famously considered the definition of papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council to have been one-sided and ill-advised. “Considering that Newman had consoled himself with the thought that there were advantages in popes doing what Councils had normally done in the past, and considering that after Vatican I it was widely believed that there would be no need of future Councils, this letter [which Newman wrote shortly after the close of Vatican I] is a remarkable prophecy of Vatican II. And, of course what Newman says about the way in which the Church moves ‘alternately in contrary directions’ has application not only to Vatican II, which was hardly a linear process of movement from Vatican I, whatever the extreme Ultramontanes of the time may have assumed or hoped about the eventual reinforcing and strengthening of the definition. It may also apply to Vatican II and subsequent developments. Post-Vatican II progressives may find that their scenario for the future is as unrealistic as any Ultramontane hopes that may have been entertained for the development of the definition of papal infallibility.” See John Henry Newman, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, eds., Charles Stephen Dessian et al., (London: Nelson, 1961–72; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 310. Ormerod, 615. See Martin Brüske, “Is Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine a Theory of the Development of Dogma? Suggestions for an Alternative Interpretation,” Communio 28 (2001): 695–707. O’Malley, What Happened, 40. Ibid., 39. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 915 acknowledge their own non-historical character.48 By framing apart from the historical context the admitted short-comings of the neo-scholastic establishment who were unable to come to terms with historicity, O’Malley and Ormerod demonstrate that their own understanding of history presumes the Enlightenment view of history as universal, impartial, and singular. The standards by which they judge the rationality of the neo-scholastic “Roman” theology’s rejection of the applicability of historicity to theology are not the standards of neo-scholastic Roman theology. They are the standards of their own theology. In so doing they unwittingly set up the conditions of possibility for an intractable dispute. They may think that they have vindicated their position, but they do not realize that their Roman and neo-scholastic opponents remain unconvinced since they too are judging by the standards internal to their own mode of rationality. Neither side is able to enter into the thought world of the other side. The result is an intractable dispute. Secondly, theology must be narrated historically due to the type of science that theology is. According to MacIntyre, there are two types of sciences. The first is a science in the state of having already been perfected, one in which all the problems have already been encountered and solved. In such a science, one reasons from the already established first principles of that science to conclusions. The argumentation is deductive, starting with first principles and arriving at its conclusions.49 No development occurs because none is needed; the science is already perfected. This is not the reasoning embedded in the scholastic method, but it is the reasoning typical of the post-Tridentine manualist theology that had absorbed the rationality of the Enlightenment.50 The second type of science is one that has not yet been perfected. In this type, not all the problems have been solved or even necessarily identified. In this type of science, one reasons to first principles, rather than from first principles. Here the reasoning is necessarily inductive and 48 49 50 Excellent examples of historically conscious narrations of theologically contested issues can be found in Gerard Kelly, “The Roman Catholic Doctrine of Papal Infallibility: A Response to Mark Powell,” Theological Studies 74 (2013): 129–37, and John T. Ford, “Infallibility–Terminology, Textual Analysis, and Theological Interpretation: A Response to Mark Powell,” Theological Studies 74 (2013): 119–28. Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 88 (hereafter Three Rival Versions). See Rudolf Voderholzer, “Dogma and History: Henry de Lubac and the Retrieval of Historicity,” Communio 28 (2001): 648–68. 916 Francis Michael Walsh the argumentation is dialectical.51 The arguments used by those sciences that are not yet perfected are exploratory. This mode of rationality moves from particular facts to general conclusions, but conclusions that remain open to revision in the light of further developments. Not all frameworks of thought are equally capable of advancing the search for the truth (including the truth of what really happened at Vatican II). At some point the inherent weakness of one will manifest itself.52 The appearance of discontinuity in the dogmatic tradition of the Church points to the possibility of incoherency in the theological narrative. The notion of discontinuity first requires for its intelligibility the notion of continuity; otherwise there would be no way to identify something as discontinuous with what went before it. If there were no expectation for continuity in the Church’s dogmatic tradition, nothing, no matter how discontinuous, would appear disruptive. The very fact that discontinuity is identifiable as a theological crisis is a witness to the needed singularity in the magisterial tradition. Faggioli attempts to resolve the appearance of discontinuity by distinguishing traditio from historia, and, in the process, attributes multiple narratives to traditio rather than (as MacIntyre does) to historia.53 According to Faggioli, there are various narratives of traditio, anyone of them capable of being the “established” one at any given time while the others are consigned to be part of the Church’s “repressed memory,” kept alive by historians waiting for the moment of a possible restoration to favor. Thus Faggioli sees “conciliarism” as such a “repressed memory” of a still live option waiting for its moment of vindication rather than as a former theological opinion that has been definitively rejected by the magisterium.54 Is traditio the same as theology for Faggioli, or is it different from theology? If he understands traditio as theology, then he has made theology plural. And if history is singular while theology is plural, then theology must be thought of as distinct from history if history is to remain thought of as singular. In which case, theology will have to be understood non-historically. Moreover, if traditio is the same as theology, what norm could be used to judge the various theologies? Moreover, who could critique the many theologies? Would this not have to be one of the functions of the center? Without the authority to critique theology, there 51 52 53 54 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 88. For an explanation of a classic example of this phenomenon in the crisis of Modernism, see Ormerod, 623–4. Faggioli, “The History and the Narratives,” 763. Ibid., 763. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 917 would be no way for the center to remain the center and not simply slide into being just another member of the periphery. In the end, without the center there would be no periphery because everybody would end up being their own center. At least that seems to be the experience of a Baptist ecclesiology. The need to account for the discontinuity in the teaching of Vatican II with earlier magisterial teachings puts the assertion of continuity in Catholic dogmatic teaching into crisis as long as the history of that teaching is conceived along the lines of the Enlightenment’s understanding of history. While it is true that the Church has a traditio that is singular and that transcends history by being universally valid and thus binding for the work of future theologians, she does not have a singular narrative of theology. Traditio is not the same as theology. Rather the dogmatic statements of the various councils that are passed on by the magisterium are the dots that have to be connected by theology. The fact that this connecting of the dots is done differently by different theologians is what gives rise to the various schools of theology. By seeking to preserve the Enlightenment’s view that history is singular, Faggioli, if he identifies traditio with theology, renders his account of theology both singular and non-historical, and, in the process, manufactures an unnecessary crux theologorum. The Enlightenment’s non-historical view of history (and hence of theology) is itself responsible for the appearance of discontinuity versus continuity as a theological problem. Change the view of historia to one that is multiple and the problem of having to explain discontinuity in theological thought disappears. The unfortunate result of narrating the history of Vatican II as singular, as Faggioli does, is that there is no way to respond to those who offer a different “narrative” of the council and demand a reform of the reform except by arbitrarily dismissing them, as Faggioli does, as being ideologues.55 Since an ideology is a thought system which allows all its assertions to be questioned and examined with the sole exception of the premise upon which the entire system is built, the absence of any reference in his text to the missing liberal narrative suggests the presence of ideological thinking. The unwitting, yet predictable, result of this way of thinking is regrettably an intractable dispute. To assert the radical historicity of theology, however, is not to embrace, 55 Ibid., 766–7. “But it is clear now, at 50 years from the opening of Vatican II, that those not interested in recovering the past—as well as tradition in its entirety— are actually the ideologues of the ‘narratives’ on Vatican II, and certainly not Church historians.” 918 Francis Michael Walsh as MacIntyre insists, a theological relativism that would deny the possibility for any claims to timeless truth. “It is rather that such claims are being made for doctrines whose formulation is itself time-bound and that the concept of timelessness is itself a concept with a history, one which in certain types of context is not at all the same concept that it is in others.”56 Faggioli’s assertion that Sacrosanctum Concilium is the key to understanding Vatican II implies that one document can function as the fountainhead of all other conciliar reforms or themes. The ecclesiology found in the constitution on the liturgy, he maintains, has shaped all the other conciliar documents. He thus advocates shifting the debate about the reform from one that is focused on the “historical memory” of the post-conciliar period as contained in the various narratives of the council to a debate that would be focused on the theological implications of Sacrosanctum Concilium.57 This implies, however, that the elaboration of theological implications is something distinct from the “historical memory” of the various narratives. To speak in this way implies that it is possible to make such a distinction between history and theology. Denying this possibility, MacIntyre argues (as I have already noted) that such a view is a (discredited) leftover of the Enlightenment. Finally, to consider Sacrosanctum Concilium as the hermeneutical key to understand the entire council is to assume that the council had the possibility of grasping the nature of the needed reforms and to explicate it in such a way that all other documents were derived from this theological synthesis. But this view would attribute to the council a view of theology that can belong only to God. What the council had at its disposal were various historically conditioned theological narratives, none of which had yet reached the divine grasp of things, but each of which had its unique limitations. History has not ended; we are still in via. No single hermeneutical key of Vatican II is possible. For these reasons, I maintain that Faggioli’s defense of the reform—a goal for which I have every sympathy—needs to be rethought, or better yet, re-narrated. IV. A Critical View of the Problem of Theological Anthropology Theological anthropology is the study of the foundational relationship that human beings have with their creator. There are two issues that appear under this heading: secularization and desacralization. Secular56 57 MacIntyre, Whose Justice, 9. Faggioli, “The Meaning of Vatican II,” 445. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 919 ization is the cultural phenomenon that results in a culture that does not find any evidence of God in the world and views the reports of his presence as a threat to human advancement for one or another reason. These conclusions stem from the fact that “being” has been predicated univocally before any other metaphysical consideration so that “being” is predicated in the same way of God and of the world. Thus, when “being” is predicated univocally, the categories of creator and creature do not have a chance to appear. All beings have the same kind of “being.” Man is no longer viewed as dependent on a creator. He has acquired autonomy from God. When “is” can be applied with equal ease (univocally as opposed to analogously) to God and to the world around us, it no longer appears any more irrational to ask if God exists than it would be considered irrational to ask if the Easter Bunny exists. The existence of the world no longer appears to demand the existence of God for its explanation since the “being” of the universe is understood as no longer implying the dependence that the analogous notion of “being” would imply. This denial of God’s existence then shapes the way in which the question of human suffering is posed and answered. If all that exists is this world, then the reasons for human suffering are to be sought in the external world. Suffering according to the Marxist analysis is the result of social injustice. The solution proposed is to change the social structures of the world in a struggle for social justice. When, on the other hand, the biblical analysis that human unhappiness is the consequence of the original sin that does not allow us to love the enemy finds no listeners within the Church, the process of desacralization has taken place among believers. Desacralization (in this framework) is the internalization of the secular worldview by those who belong to the Church in which they seek to harmonize faith and reason by striving to harmonize faith and the expressions of faith (e.g., the liturgy) with secular culture. A reference to secularization only appears once in Faggioli’s accounts, in a reference to the subtexts of the liturgical debates that were, he says, the council’s “most radical effort” to address “the expanding universe of unbelief.”58 I believe that Faggioli is correct when he says that the council is addressing the pressing cultural problem of secularization, but how the liturgical reforms are meant to do that is not explained. However, the companion issue of desacralization, the issue that is so dominant in Hitchcock’s critique 58 Ibid., 440. 920 Francis Michael Walsh of the reform, never appears in Faggioli’s account. The absence of any consideration of desacralization in his account appears to be—to borrow an image from Sherlock Holmes—a case of the hound that failed to bark. Since a dog only barks at strangers, it appears that Faggioli’s account of secularization as a loss of faith outside the Church does not imply the problem of the loss of faith internal to the Church. Hitchcock’s hound, however, knows no silence when it comes to desacralization. The charge that Hitchcock makes, however, that the reforms of Vatican II led to a desacralization of the liturgy requires a closer scrutiny. As early as 1942, twenty years before the Second Vatican Council first met, Henri de Lubac had used the term desacralization to describe what he called the loss of the sense of the sacred.59 For de Lubac, desacralization was a negative phenomenon brought about in the popular culture as a consequence of a perceived clash between faith and the empirical sciences. He attributed this loss to a failure to educate properly the laity, itself a result of an inadequate theological response to the earlier crises of nominalism and the Protestant Reformation.60 In 1949, Yves Congar published his seminal work Sacerdoce et laicat in which he undertook to distinguish the fundamental difference between natural religion and biblical faith.61 In natural religion there is a distinction drawn between the sacred and the profane, a distinction which does not exist in biblical faith.62 According to Richard Beauchesne, Congar Henri de Lubac, “Internal Causes of the Weakening and Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 18 (2011), 37–50. Originally published in Bulletin des aumôniers catholiques. Chantiers de la jeunesse, 31 (august 1942). See Résistance chrétienne a l’antisémitisme, 116 [English translation: Christian Resistance to Anti-Semitism (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990) 110ff]. 60 See Francis Michael Walsh, “The Villain Who Confused Moral Theology” Heythrop Journal 51 (2010): 268–87, at 272–7. 61 Yves Congar, Sacerdoce et laiat (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1949); English translation: A Gospel Priesthood (trans. P.J. Hepburne-Scott) (New York: Herder & Herder, 1967), 87. “It is useless, then, to look in the Gospel or the apostolic scriptures for any trace of all that ‘religious’ material described, for example in M. Éliade’s admirable manual, and of which some traces may still be found in the Old Testament. The worship of the New Testament is a worship ‘in spirit and in truth’: veri adoratores. It consists of the offering of men themselves. The priests who celebrate it are neither pagan magicians nor even levites of the law of Moses.” 62 See Yves Congar, Sacerdoce et laiat, 106, as cited by Richard Beauchesne, “Worship as Life, Priesthood and Sacrifice in Yves Congar,” Église et Théologie 21 (1990): 79–100 at 86; see Congar, A Gospel Priesthood, 89 n. 35: “But from a biblical point of view the comparative position inherent in this [Éliade’s] type of study is deceptive and seems to me to be most inadequate.” 59 Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 921 sees natural religious cult as “an activity that goes up from us to God, [whereas] faith is the relationship that comes down from God to us.”63 The task of natural religion is to supply a way to sacralize what is profane so that it becomes acceptable to God. In this description of the function of natural religion, Congar is borrowing from the earlier work of Mircea Eliade.64 For Eliade, the naturally religious person, whom Eliade terms homo religiosus, makes a clear distinction between the sacred and the profane both with regard to space and to time: “For religious man, this spatial nonhomogeneity finds expression in the experience of an opposition between place or space that is sacred—the only real and real-ly existing space—and all other space, the formless expanse surrounding it.”65 The same is true of time. “Hence,” says Eliade, “religious man lives in two kinds of time, of which the more important, sacred time, appears under the paradoxical aspect of a circular time, reversible and recoverable, a sort of eternal mythical present that is periodically reintegrated by means of rites.”66 According to the naturally religious mentality, says Eliade, the entire cosmos is capable of being what he calls a hierophany, a manifestation of the sacred, a point at which humanity is able to have contact with God. “The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but the sacred, the ganz andere.”67 When the sacred and the profane are experienced as two separate spheres of life, religious rites and magic are resorted to in order to accomplish the sacralization of the profane so as to gain access to God so that the worshipper can become acceptable to him. In this context, the term “desacralization” would imply a process that gives rise to a world view that does not distinguish between sacred and profane. Such a view is that which is found in the Bible. Thus, Congar, with his biblical world view, sees no distinction between sacred and profane. “When the sacred and profane are experienced as one,” says Beauchesne, “the profane itself is experienced as already sacred. It has already been made acceptable by God, and therefore, acceptable to God.”68 Since in the biblical view God takes the initiative in searching 63 64 65 66 67 68 Beauchesne, 86, note 23. Mircea Eliade, Traité d’Histoire des Religions (Paris: Payot, 1949); English translation: Patterns in Comparative Religion (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1996). Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: the Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt, 1987), 20. Ibid., 70. Ibid., 12. Beauchesne, 88. 922 Francis Michael Walsh for humanity, there is no need for the profane to be sacralized in order to reach God since the initiative always comes from God down to us. The biblical tradition thus radically redefines the meaning of homo religiosus even as it affirms the validity of the category against the image of the fool who lives as if he were not to die or that God did not exist.69 Homo religiosus (in this context) had been desacralized, but not secularized. That latter step was given an intellectual expression in 1965 in Cox’s book, The Secular City, that Hitchcock describes as one of the most influential books of the decade.70 His description of Cox’s thesis is, however, somewhat one-sided. For Cox, secularization is a positive phenomenon since it refers to an historical process which began with the desacralization of the political state and the emergence of a distinction between the state and society.71 According to Cox, No one rules by divine right in secular society. In pre-secular society, everyone does. Just as nature is perceived by tribal man both as a part of his family and as the locus of religious energy, so the political power structure is accepted as an extension of familial authority and as the unequivocal will of the gods. The identification of the political with the religious order, whether in a primitive tribe where the chief is also both political ruler and pontifex maximus, betrays the same sacral legitimation of political power.72 This identification was first broken in the biblical account of the Exodus. Instead of being justified by religion, political power and leadership was now “based on power gained by the capacity to accomplish specific social objectives.”73 Cox carefully distinguishes between political secularization, marked by separation of Church and state, from cultural secularization.74 The former, says Cox, is a liberating development that delivers society and culture “from tutelage to religious control and closed metaphysical world views.”75 The latter (cultural secularization or secularism) is a closed system that is an ideology that, according to Cox, functions in some ways like a natural religion. He writes: 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 See Lk 12:20. Hitchcock, Recovery of the Sacred, 23. Harvey Cox, The Secular City (New York: MacMillan, 1990), 22. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 22–3. Ibid., 17–8. Ibid., 21. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 923 While secularization finds its roots in the biblical faith itself and is to some extent an authentic outcome of the impact of biblical faith on Western history, this is not the case with secularism. Like any other ism, it menaces the openness and freedom secularization has produced; it must therefore be watched carefully to prevent its becoming the ideology of a new establishment. It must be especially checked where it pretends not to be a world view but nonetheless seeks to impose its ideology through the organs of the state.76 A salutary warning! Hitchcock’s desire, however, to accommodate the reform of the liturgy to the various manifestations of folk religion (natural religiosity) will ultimately make it impossible to heal the dichotomy between religion and life.The naturally religious person has a magical approach to life in which God exists in order to take away the cross and to fix life’s problems. What he shares in common with the hard-nosed rationalist is a lack of a sense of the providential care by God for his life and a dependency instead on his own wits to fix his own problems. Both lack the mature faith that alone can enable them to enter into the cross daily after the manner of Jesus who trusted his Father to turn the cross to his good. Christianity is not about running from the cross, and no reform of the reform is possible that does not take cognizance of the fact that the liturgy’s fundamental purpose is to accommodate us to the pattern of Christ’s death so that we might share in his resurrection. Catholicism is not structured to be a home for natural religiosity. The power that engenders community is the announcement of the kerygma (the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ), not the traditional symbols of the liturgy however faithfully preserved. Hitchcock’s diagnosis that the Church’s liturgical malaise has been caused by a desacralization of the liturgy only leads down a blind alley if the solution is a return to a liturgy more receptive of natural religiosity. V. The History to Be Overcome before Arriving at Consensus about Liturgical Reform To understand why the liturgy needed to be reformed in the first place requires of us an understanding of the history of the deformation of the 76 Ibid., 21. David L. Schindler argues a similar point in “The Repressive Logic of Liberal Rights: Religious Freedom, Contraceptives, and the ‘Phony’ Argument of the New York Times,” Communio 38 (2011): 523–47. 924 Francis Michael Walsh liturgy. Neither the Church nor its liturgy exists in a vacuum. Both are subjected to the vagaries of history that have resulted in the need for reform. Liturgical reform is only one aspect of deeper problems that have plagued the evangelization up to the present day and cannot be understood separated from them. These problems have interacted with each other compounding the complexity of conducting any reform. Only the briefest of overviews is possible here. The exclusion of the Christian communities from the synagogue forced them to become a synagogue unto themselves, leading to the joining of the synagogue service of the Word to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. This move is at the heart of the controversy of how the Roman liturgy should be celebrated (versus populum, as in the synagogue, or versus aspidem, as in the Temple). The stunning news that Gentiles had received the good news and had been baptized led to the presence in the Church of a growing majority whose cultural background lay outside the experience of the Jewish liturgical celebration of the Exodus and Passover. This growing cultural alienation from Judaism was exponentially increased when, within the space of one lifetime beginning with the proclamation of toleration by the Emperor Constantine, the dominance of that form of Christianity professed by the bishops of Rome and Alexandria had advanced to the point of being imposed as the official religion of the empire by decree of the Emperors Gratian and Theodosius the Great in February 380.77 Eusebius of Caesarea had already given voice to a political theology that oriented the Church to look to the state to achieve its mission to evangelize, unwittingly giving rise to the advent of Christendom.78 Francis Martin says that “[t]here was thus created, to use Peter Berger’s expression, a ‘plausibility structure,’ a socially constructed world that gave meaning, as both objective expression and subjective appreciation, to individual and social existence.”79 The Church in this arrangement became a department of the state and the clergy its civil servants. “Obviously,” as Martin is quick to point out, “it requires much less individual effort and decision to live within a prefabricated social 77 78 79 Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History VII, 4 in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1957), ser. 2, vol. 2, 378. Eusebius of Caesarea, The Life of Constantine in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1961), ser. 2, vol. 1, 481–559. Francis Martin, The Feminist Question (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 44. See Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1969); also, written with Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1967). Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 925 world than it does to commit to an alternative view. Thus, as Christianity became a socially established plausibility structure, it could be a cultural inheritance rather than a life-changing discovery.”80 As the state increasingly assumed the care of the Church, the surviving manifestations of paganism were progressively repressed. By 388, the Emperor Theodosius, in his role of bishop of the bishops, sent a prefect to Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt to destroy pagan temples including the famed Serapeum in Alexandria and to break up pagan religious association, violations of the human rights that Vatican II’s declaration on religious liberty would later condemn.81 These harsh measures had their intended effect. The pagan cults, at least in their outward expression, were abolished. As an added insurance measure Sunday observance was enforced by law and civil disabilities were legislated against pagans, Jews, and heretics. 82 These measures, however well-intended, were not exempt from the law of unintended consequences. The liturgy suffered multiple wounds; no longer being perceived as the act of a voluntarily gathered assembly, it became a state function imposed from without. Within short order the Church was overwhelmed by the influx of people who were coming directly from a pagan environment into the liturgical assembly.83 Their presence had a powerful impact on the shape of the liturgy, an impact augmented by the public character it achieved in virtue of the presence of the Roman-Byzantine court. Theodore Klauser notes that the similarities between the ceremonial etiquette of the court and the rules for pontifical masses of the seventh century are such that no other conclusion can be reached except that the latter derives from the former.84 More importantly, the mass “conversions” undermined the traditional catechumenal process by which newcomers were traditionally initiated to adult faith in which one abandons oneself to the will of God, trusting in his providential care. Marcel Metzger notes that in those situations where the “conversion” of the peoples to Christianity originated in a 80 81 82 83 84 Ibid., 45. Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, V, 16, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1957), ser. 2, vol. 2, 126. Adrian Fortescue, “Theodosius I,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), 578. See Albert Mirgeler, Mutations of Western Christianity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968); Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt, 1994). Theodor Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy, trans. John Halliburton (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 33. 926 Francis Michael Walsh political act decided by their leaders, baptism and “all liturgical institutions were pressed into service as means for the unification of the Carolingian Empire.”85 The Church saw herself forced by events or the desire to assist in unifying the empire to baptize en masse naturally religious people whose natural orientation was to relate to God as an instrument to secure their lives. Their entrance into the Church in such great numbers led to a profound transformation of the liturgical assembly from a community with close bonds into a crowd with no such bonds. The need to adapt the liturgy to the greater numbers meant that the small communities, where everyone knew one another, had to give way to the more impersonal crowd. This fact alone meant that the network of friendships, which are critical in the religious and moral formational process, was lost. The horizontal aspect of liturgy disappeared and with it the personal sense of belonging; only the vertical aspect remained. In time liturgy came to be thought of as embracing only the vertical. The absence of the horizontal was no longer noticed. This infiltration of natural religiosity into the liturgy damaged the Church at the very core of her life. Natural religiosity changed the way in which the faithful perceived and experienced liturgy. The awareness of being an assembly disappeared because the liturgy was celebrated in largely anonymous crowds in a language that was no longer understood by the vast majority of the people. The result was that the liturgy was deprived of its ability to form the participants in adult faith. As a consequence the Church was left leaning on the culture to pass faith to the next generation. Those who were entering the Church directly from paganism and bringing with them their natural religiosity only had the general religious culture around them to guide their formation. Since the culture still was naturally religious, Christianity soon became invested with the forms of folk religion. It was perceived as simply another way to gain divine help in the never-ending struggle to secure one’s life. In addition, Metzger finds the roots of the institutional separation between clerics and laypeople not in antiquity, but in the Western Franco-Carolingian Church: “The Byzantine Church does not know it under the same form.”86 It is not an accident, therefore, that the problem of the use of vernacular languages would be a typically Occidental rather than an Oriental one. However, in modern times the liturgies of the Oriental Churches, which have not had the experience of a renewal of the liturgy, 85 86 Marcel Metzger, History of the Liturgy:The Major Stages, trans. Madeline Beumont (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 116. Ibid., 115. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 927 have tended to ossify due to their inability to resolve issues of Church authority. Is there a better candidate for a needed aggiornamento than the Julian calendar? The decline of the ability of the state to perform its civil functions and the willingness of the Church to step into the void led to the disappearance of a clear demarcation between Church and state. This blurring of the boundaries led in turn to civil authorities assuming control of episcopal appointments by means of lay investiture. The ensuring struggle to reestablish the independence of the Church under Gregory VII in the eleventh century eventually was settled by ceding to the Church the control of the clergy and to the state the control of the laity.87 Thus the Church ended up dichotomized with the Church’s mission to evangelize now seen as the task of the clergy, while the only responsibility of the laity, who constituted the state, was to pray, pay, and obey. The Gregorian solution to the question of how the Church ought to relate to the state resulted in an increasingly passive laity with a liturgy increasingly clericalized and marginalized in the life of the people.88 This struggle to free the Church from the control of lay lords led to the papal claims of supremacy of the spiritual authority over the temporal, setting up the struggles of popes and emperors during the Middle Ages.89 This stress on papal authority not only centralized the direction of further developments in the liturgy, but also unwittingly contributed to the disruption of full communion between Rome and the Eastern Churches.90 Since the health of the liturgy is linked to the health of theology, and since theology is dependent on faith for its vitality, and faith is dependent on the liturgy for its vitality, the crisis in which the Church found itself by the end of the fifteenth century can be traced to the loss of the liturgy as its source of nourishment. The rejection of the Thomistic synthesis by those who sought to reestablish the dominance of Augustinian theology led to the appearance of nominalism.91 The shift from 87 88 89 90 91 See Yves Congar, “The Sacralization of Western Society in the Middle Ages,” Concilium 47 (Sacralization and Secularization) (New York: Paulist Press, 1969), 55–72. Martin, 52–4. Aidan Nichols, Rome and the Eastern Churches (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 233. Aidan Nichols, “A Catholic View of Orthodoxy,” at http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/anichols/orthodox.html (accessed March 20, 2013); Klauser, 94–5. James K. A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 96–103; MacIntyre, Three Rival 928 Francis Michael Walsh an analogous notion of being to a univocal notion as the starting point for metaphysical thinking set in motion the intellectual revolution that was—over time—to allow for the appearance of secularism in Western culture. If there is only one act of being, then everything that is exists in the same way. The material universe around us exists in the same way as God exists. Each has its own independent act of being.The world became unhinged from its dependence on God in such a way that the existence of the universe does not of itself settle the question of God’s existence. The stage was set where questioning the existence of God no longer was incomprehensible.92 The seeds of disbelief were sown in the process, leading de Lubac to see in these events the origins of the estrangement of faith and culture which he was later to call desacralization. The methodology of leaning on the culture to pass faith had worked as long as the culture supported faith. But it left the Church vulnerable and unprepared to face the time when the culture would no longer be so hospitable. In meeting the short-terms needs of one crisis, it sowed the seeds of another long-term crisis, the crisis of secularization that we are now facing.93 The Great Western Schism was to prove to be another root for the crisis of the liturgy by leaving in its wake an ecclesiology of conciliarism, the theological attempt to rationalize the methods used to solve the schism.94 This theory was quickly incorporated into French law in the form of the Pragmatic Sanctions of Bourges that ultimately became the political basis for Gallicanism and its German twin, Febronianism.95 Eventually, these attempts to assert the periphery at the expense of the center provided the 92 93 94 95 Versions, 155–56. Walsh, 272–7. See Martin, 54–62. Nicholas Lossky, “Conciliarity-Primacy in a Russian Orthodox Perspective,” in Petrine Ministry and the Unity of the Church, ed. James Puglisi (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 127–136 at 134. Lossky is at pains to distinguish the Orthodox notion of communion expressed in synodical action from the Western notion of conciliarism. He writes: “It should clearly appear from all that has been said that conciliarity should be understood in terms of communion at all levels: among the members of the body of Christ, among the local Churches in the person of their bishops who voice the faith of the Church; in other words, it is profoundly eucharistic. It is not to be understood in terms of the ‘conciliarism’ of the Great Schism of the West which raised a question that has no place in true conciliarity: ‘Is the pope above the council or is the council above the pope?’ ‘Conciliarism’ also tended to introduce a certain form of ‘democracy’ in conciliar decisions.” Klemens Löffler, “Pragmatic Sanction,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII (New York: Robert Appleton, 1911), 333. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 929 motivation not only for the suppression of the Jesuits but also became the cradle for early expressions of the liturgical movement, but one that was influenced by one of the moderate forms of the Enlightenment. The rise of the empirical sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries provided the occasion for the predictable crisis of faith.Without the foundation of a mature faith, the leaders of the Enlightenment saw themselves faced with having to choose between faith and reason. Faith, which by then had been reduced to the status of opinion, appeared to them as irrational in the light of the new knowledge, whereas reason appeared as the only source of knowledge. Aidan Nichols considers this movement of reform to be a precursor of the Second Vatican Council by trying “to move in two directions simultaneously: toward Christian antiquity (ressourcement) and toward satisfying modern needs (aggiornamento).”96 Nichols notes that various measures advocated by reformers of this period had striking similarities to those of the post-conciliar period even as the reasons for them differed. The liturgists of the Aufklärung, so [Waldemar] Trapp thinks, engaged in a process of ressourcement to the early Church only when it suited them: only when, that is, patristic practice happened to coincide with what enlightened people would desiderate anyway, with, above all, the removal of obstacles to the plain religion of Enlightenment man. They sometimes wanted the right thing, but they did so generally for the wrong reason. Thus, for instance, their demand for the active participation of the laity had more to do with democratization than with a mystical view of the Eucharistic feast—and indeed they avoided the language both of sacrifice and of priesthood whenever possible. Their plea for the vernacular was intimately linked to nascent nationalism.97 A nascent conciliarism, lurking in the bosom of the Enlightenment proposals for liturgical reform, Nichols argues, had to be overcome before the fruit of reform could appear.These and many more conflicting narratives of what needed to be reformed in the liturgy and why it needed to be reformed underscore why the historical tangle of issues, each 96 97 Aidan Nichols, Looking at the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 34, citing Waldemar Trapp, Vorgeschichte und Ursprung der liturgischen Bewegung vorwiegend in Hinsicht auf das deutsche Sprachgebiet (Regensburg: Pustet, 1940; Münster: Antiquariat Stenderhoff, 1979). Nichols, Looking at the Liturgy, 27. 930 Francis Michael Walsh impacting the liturgy in its own way, had to be addressed before serious liturgical reform could be undertaken. VI. Laying a Foundation for Renarrating the Defense of the Reforms Theologians have not been slow to grasp the applicability to theological discussion of Thomas Kuhn’s work on how the natural sciences advance.98 Kuhn coined the term “paradigm” to describe two linked phenomena: “On the one hand, it stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community. On the other, it devotes one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle-solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.”99 But paradigms, in addition to advancing sciences, can also stand in the way of advancement. Sometimes, because a given fact does not fit into a pre-conceived theory, its significance can be initially discounted. In addition, because the world in which we live is governed by different paradigms at any given moment, not all of our contemporaries should be expected to grasp the nature of the clues. Some will be better at that than others. One such clue, I suggest, is the fact that the figure of Jesus Christ does not figure any more prominently in the narrative for the reform of the reform than it does in the defense of the reform. In the late 1960s, Francisco Agüello, one of the initiators of the Neo-Catechumenal Way, strongly influenced by Congar’s distinction between faith and natural religion, proposed a paradigm shift to explain why the figure of Jesus is missing. He borrowed Cox’s description of the two secularized mentalities that have come to dominate modern culture. The one is the pragmatic mentality that rejects any ideology; and looks simply to science and its progress to solve human problems.100 The other is the Marxist view that attributes the world’s problems to unjust social structures, and that consequently pins its hopes for a solution on social revolution. Then he took de Lubac’s notion of desacralization and used it to describe the 98 99 100 See Charles Morerod, Ecumenism and Philosophy: Philosophical Questions for a Renewal of Dialogue (Ann Arbor, MI: Sapientia Press, 2006) at 14–19; John W. O’Malley, “The Hermeneutics of Reform”: A Historical Analysis,” Theological Studies 73 (2012): 517–46 at 524 and 542. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 174, as cited by Morerod, 16. Cox, 54. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 931 internalization of secularization within the Church. Confronted with secularization in Western culture, says Argüello, zealous priests and religious in the mid-twentieth century proposed to reach out to catechize those who had become secularized and had abandoned the faith of the Church.101 Clearly with the experience of the French worker priests in mind, Argüello argued that many of those who originally set out to evangelize the alienated masses had, due to their own immature faith, been instead evangelized by the very ones they had set out to evangelize. The would-be evangelizers have accepted the view that the suffering of the masses was due to the lack of proper food, shelter, jobs, etc., and that revolution was the only way to overthrow unjust structures which were oppressing them. 102 According to this analysis, desacralization is a response to secularization made by the would-be evangelizers who, mistakenly embracing the presuppositions and methods of the secularized, became convinced that the only worthwhile thing to do in order to evangelize would-be to pour their religiosity into changing the oppressive social structures. “And each group,” says Argüello, “understands this in its own way because there are extremist groups and others less extreme. But all of them gather around action and substitute social action for the risen Jesus Christ - the only one who unites and calls the Church together, who makes all of us Servants of Yahweh, the Just One. In these groups Christianity is only a varnish.”103 In this type of environment, liturgy appears progressively irrelevant to citizenship in the real world and is quickly abandoned. “The liturgy vanishes since it’s a waste of time. There’s no singing, because we are not in a time of feast, we are mourning for the injustice suffered by the oppressed brothers and sisters.”104 This notion of desacralization differs from that of Hitchcock, however, because it does not understand desacralization as being in the liturgy as a result of the reform. Rather, desacralization, in this view, occurs in those with an immature faith who have encountered secularization apart from the reform. Likewise, the origins of the community which supplies the horizontal element of liturgy are conceived differently. Argüello sees Christian 101 102 103 104 Ibid., 79. See John Mannion, “The Making of a Dissident,” Commonweal (January 19, 1973), 346, as cited by Hitchcock, 38. Francisco Argüello and Carmen Hernandez, Neocatechumenal Way Catechetical Directory for Teams of Catechists, vol. 1: Phase of Conversion or Initial Catechesis (Pasadena, CA: Hope, 2012), 41. Ibid., 42. 932 Francis Michael Walsh community with “bonds of iron” arising from an encounter with the risen Lord in his Paschal Mystery rather than from the common experience of historical symbols and rites as does Hitchcock.105 For Argüello, once the risen Lord has been experienced, changes in the rubrics of the liturgy cannot mute the power of the liturgy to speak to those who have encountered him. For the liberals, however, the realization of the need to address or even to acknowledge the phenomenon of desacralization, however it may be understood, simply does not appear in their defense of the reform. With their outward focus toward the world in need of liberation, neither do they have any traceable awareness of the need to identify any other basis for the liturgical community. In a later work, however, Hitchcock finds himself in strikingly substantial agreement with Argüello’s diagnosis of the present state of affairs. “Liberal Christianity,” Hitchcock writes, “now inexorably gives rise to attitudes which are basically secularist in nature. Some Christians devote most of their energies not to converting nonbelievers but to attacking alleged deformities within the Churches themselves. Often these ‘deformities’ are the heart of the Christian message.”106 Although he does not use the word desacralization to describe internalization of secularization within the Church, Hitchcock agrees that it has found a foothold in the Church: “What is objectionable about so many contemporary Christians is not their political involvement but their virtual deification of politics and their apparent failure to bring a truly Christian perspective to bear on political questions. Rather than being missionaries from the churches to the world, they are the reverse.”107 This internalization has taken place for the most part unnoticed. “This is important that orthodox Christians also notice that secularism invaded the Churches for what were essentially good motives. In almost every case, the root of religious secularization can be found in an idea which is authentically Christian—compassion for the oppressed, respect for human reason, acknowledgement of one’s own failings. Good but naïve Christians are sometimes confused by appeals to their better natures in ways which distort genuine Christianity subtly but seductively.”108 105 106 107 108 See Hitchcock, Recovery of the Sacred, 105. James Hitchcock, What is Secular Humanism? (Harrison, NY: RC Books, 1983), 134. Ibid., 132. Ibid. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 933 VII. The Untapped Resources of Sacrosanctum Concilium The council set the framework of liturgical reform within the broader mission of the Church to evangelize. It underscored the necessity for faith and conversion if the contemplated reforms were to bear fruit. In Sacrosanctum Concilium, the fathers of the council wrote: Before men can come to the liturgy, they must be called to faith and to conversion: “How then are they to call upon him in whom they have not yet believed? But how are they to believe him whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear if no one preaches? And how are men to preach unless they be sent?” Therefore the Church announces the good tidings of salvation to those who do not believe, so that all men may know the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, and may be converted from their ways, doing penance.109 To believers also the Church must ever preach faith and penance, she must prepare them for the sacraments, teach them to observe all that Christ has commanded,110 and invite them to all the works of charity, piety, and the apostolate. For all these works make it clear that Christ’s faithful, though not of this world, are to be the light of the world and to glorify the Father before men.111 In addition, the council set the stage for the restoration of the ancient process of adult initiation to faith. “The catechumenate for adults, comprising several distinct steps, is to be restored and brought into use at the discretion of the local ordinary,” directed the council fathers, adding that “the time of the catechumenate, which is intended as a period of suitable instruction, may be sanctified by sacred rites to be celebrated at successive intervals of time.”112 One of the voices raised in support of this proposal was that of the archbishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyła. In the debate he insists that Christian initiation is not restricted to the act of sacramental baptism, but includes the entire process of the catechumenate that is geared to giving the formation necessary to live the Christian life in its fullness. The restoration of the catechumenate was of “the greatest importance above all in our age, when even people already baptized are not sufficiently initiated into the full truth of Christian life.”113 See Jn 17:3; Lk 24:27; Acts 2:28. See Mt 28:20. 111 Sacrosanctum Concilium, §9. 112 Ibid., §64. 113 Karol Wojtyła, Acta Synodalia 1/2, 315. 109 110 934 Francis Michael Walsh The commentators on these passages have invariably assumed that those who needed to be evangelized were those who lacked baptism, not those who lacked faith. It was also assumed that those who were already baptized had the mature faith needed for living the Christian life and fruitfully participating in the Eucharist. For example, Pamela E. J. Jackson, in a commentary favorable to the constitution, notes that “Sacrosanctum Concilium, §9, explains that the Church must preach the gospel of salvation to unbelievers, so that they can believe and repent in order to enter into the liturgy. The Church also prepares believers for the sacraments and teaches them how to live as faithful disciples of Christ.”114 Believers are assumed to be in need only of instruction in the sacraments and mystagogia. In her generally balanced defense of the reform, Rita Ferrone makes scant reference to the catechumenate, observing simply that “[i]n many parts of the world the adult catechumenate is still rarely seen or used incompletely.”115 To what extent the fathers of the council shared the view of the commentators regarding the pastoral possibilities of the catechumenate as an answer to the problem of desacralization is an open question. They may very well have; nonetheless, the proposal to restore the catechumenate for adults contains within itself the possibility of realizing it in a post-baptismal setting. This possibility was recognized as early as May 1974 by Paul VI.116 Giuseppe Gennarini has pointed out the rapid development in this intuition: “In the space of a few years, there has been a progression from Chapter IV of the RCIA, which merely suggested the possible use of some parts of the catechumenate for adults already baptized but not sufficiently catechized, to a formulation which establishes the necessity of a post-baptismal catechumenate for all the baptized.”117 114 115 116 117 Pamela E. J. Jackson, “Theology of the Liturgy,” in Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering, eds., Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 101–28 at 103–4. Rita Ferrone, Liturgy (New York: Paulist Press, 2007), 99. Paul VI, Address to Neocatechumenal Communities, 8 May 1974, Notitiae, 95–96, (July–August 1974), 228–30. See Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1990), 594, note 26. Giuseppe Gennarini, “The Rediscovery of the Catechumenate and the Approval of the Neocatechumenal Way,” in Neocatechumenal Way: Statute (Pasadena, CA: Hope Publishing, 2003), 102–110 at 106. See John Paul II, “Visit to the Parish of Canadian Martyrs,” L’Osservatore Romano, 3–4 November 1980; “Meeting with the Neocatechumenal Communities in the parish of Santa Maria Goretti,” L’Osservatore Romano, 1–2 January 1988; see Chapter III of the Lineamenta for XIII Assembly of Synod of Bishops, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20110202_lineamenta-xiii-assembly_en.htm- Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 935 Writing twenty years after the promulgation of the Constitution, Joseph Cardinal Cordeiro of Karachi, Pakistan, noted that the sense of community initiated by the reforms “is in most cases still inchoative and hesitant at the big parish level—but it has blossomed impressively in many parishes and diocese throughout the world, in small communities at prayer, and in particular in movements like the Focolari, the Neo-Catechumenate and the Charismatic communities.”118 Nevertheless, Cordeiro concluded, “[i]n spite of all its achievements in the past twenty years, and all the resounding successes the Sacrosanctum Concilium has gained, humbly I feel that the dichotomy in our lives still remains: there still remains much of that separation between liturgy and life.”119 If Cordeiro was right, which I believe he is, in pointing to the failure of the reforms to heal the gap between liturgy and life, it is only because a change in rubrics by itself cannot heal the dichotomy between life and faith. Something more is needed. VIII. Conclusions Liturgy is so linked with the historical situation through which the Church has had to pass that no reform of the liturgy that is true to the Church’s inner constitution as the light of the nations will be possible if it outpaces the rectification of many historical missteps. Perhaps it is more correct to say that, rather than Sacrosanctum Concilium being the key to understanding the other documents, many of the other conciliar documents that attempted to address some of the historically problematic issues provide the keys for understanding Sacrosanctum Concilium. Just to mention a few, Dei Verbum was needed to recover a notion of revelation that had been destabilized by nominalism. Unitatis Redintegratio was needed to renarrate the Reformation and to free the Church from the necessity of a defensive posture which caused the liturgy to be frozen in time. Ad Gentes Divinitus was needed to restore the laity to its proper role in the evangelization (including the liturgy). And there are some keys that are still missing. The theological explanation of how the Church and state are to relate never appeared at the council, nor did the account of 118 119 l#CHAPTER_III (accessed April 11, 2013); Ralph Martin, “The Post-Christian Sacramental Crisis: The Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera (English Edition): 11 (2013) 57–76. Joseph Cardinal Cordeiro, “The Liturgy Constitution: Sacrosanctum Concilium,” in Vatican II Revisited by Those Who Were There, ed. Alberic Stacpoole (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, 1986), 187–94, at 190. Ibid., 194. 936 Francis Michael Walsh a Judaism internal to Christianity, an account that would cast much new light on the inner meaning of Catholic liturgy. What often unites those who want the reforms to stand as they are and those who want a reform of the reform is the assumption that the liturgy itself is the issue that divides them. The need to evangelize and to recuperate the liturgical assembly as a community which celebrates the liturgy and which initiates to faith does not seem to have been given prominence by either side. Even in the constitution, although the fathers of the council were clear about the need to encourage the active participation of the people in the liturgy, the need to recover the believing liturgical assembly is missing. There is an assumption that those who have assembled for the liturgy already have been initiated to faith. Those who already believe in the good news are assumed to have that mature faith without which the sacraments remain fruitless. Rita Ferrone has done us a service by pointing to an analysis by John Paul II that contains an intuition of what more is needed.120 She writes: “The future prospect for liturgical renewal he described were these: liturgy in service to the new evangelization, recovery of the art of mystagogic catechesis, appreciation for silence, developing a ‘taste for prayer’ through broader use of the Liturgy of the Hours, and the exercise of pastoral guidance and in following the norms of the Church faithfully and creatively.”121 Where Hitchcock sees the problem with the reforms of the liturgy as one of the desacralization of the liturgy due to a misguided attempt to reach the secularized, Argüello sees the problem as one of the desacralization of the Catholic faithful due to lack of a serious formation in faith in the face of the challenges of our contemporary culture. For Faggioli, the issue of desacralization simply does not appear, not surprisingly given the narrative that shapes his approach. Where Hitchcock sees the pre-conciliar liturgy as capable of holding together the Church without the need for the horizontal in the liturgy, John Paul II has insisted on the need to counter the anonymity that characterized the pre-conciliar liturgy. In his remarks to the Canadian bishops he pointed to the need for the experience of community on a human scale: “The anonymity of the city cannot be allowed to enter our Eucharistic communities. New ways and structures must be found to build bridges between people, so that there really is that experience of mutual acceptance and closeness which Christian fellowship requires. It may be that we need to celebrate the 120 121 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter on the 25th Anniversary of the Promulgation of the Conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium on the Sacred Liturgy, 25. Ferrone, Liturgy, 87. Intractable Disputes about the Liturgical Reforms of Vatican II 937 Eucharist, and have the catechesis accompanying it, in smaller Christian communities within the parish structure.”122 Sacrosanctum Concilium has already provided the Church with the ideal structure for initiating the faithful into the adult faith needed to foster and sustain the experience of community of which the pope speaks. But the caveat that should accompany this suggestion is that adult faith is not to be equated with sacramentalization. Just because someone has been initiated into the sacraments does not guarantee that he or she has matured in faith to the point of being able to overcome the dichotomy between liturgical practice on Sunday with the values that it presupposes and the ability to take up one’s cross daily, bearing one another’s burdens. The faith that evangelizes is the faith that produces forgiveness without effort. If the liturgy is to fulfill its promise, attention must first be directed to restructuring pastoral practice so that a catechumenal formation is available to all, whether received before baptism as in the case of those who are baptized as adults, or after baptism for those who were baptized as infants. Utilizing the tool of this type of catechumenate, the parish has the possibility to develop, as John Paul II suggested it should, into a community of communities that are capable of living in such a counter-cultural way that it raises a huge question mark in the minds of non-believers: what do they know that we do not? How can they be happy with such a cross in their lives? The Shabbat was made for Man; not Man for the Shabbat. Liturgy is in the function of faith, not the other way around. To be concerned that the liturgical reforms of Vatican II be reformed so that the beauty of the liturgy may more clearly shine forth is commendable. But only when the fostering of a faith that draws others to see the beauty and desirability of following Jesus Christ becomes central to the discussion of the reform of N&V the liturgy is the horse before the cart. 122 John Paul II, “Address to the 2nd Group of Canadian Bishops on their Ad Limina Visit,” May 4, 1999, in L’Osservatore Romano Weekly English Edition, N. 1912, May 1999, 5; See Louis J. Cameli, “Do You Need to Be Smart to Be a Priest Today? Meeting the Intellectual Imperative,” Seminary Journal 12.3 (2006): 43–50 at 47. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2015): 939–966 939 Book Reviews Mind, Matter, and Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the Philosophy of Mind by James D. Madden (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), xiii + 307 pp. I f boldness is the quality that ought to characterize Catholic philos- ophizing after Fides et Ratio, then this work deserves hearty applause and a wide audience. For in Mind, Matter, and Nature, Professor James Madden has attempted not one but two great labors: critically to survey “the basic lay of the land in contemporary philosophy of mind” and earnestly to propose “a version of Aristotelian hylomorphism.” Either subject would suffice for a book; the two are here joined in a most spirited effort that embraces “the whole breadth of reason” (Benedict XVI, Regensburg Address). Mind, Matter, and Nature is an argument back to the principles, the principles in this case being matter, privation, and form, and the particular forms that are the soul of the living thing and the rational soul of man. Madden begins where he expects to find his audience: awash on the sea of contemporary philosophical and scientific opinion and worrying that some form of naturalism might be true. After a helpful preface, he takes the reader on a journey through the landscape of the philosophy of mind in six clear and well-organized chapters. The work’s final two chapters contain his explication and defense of Aristotelian principles, with the work as a whole coming to a close with a series of responses to foreseeable objections and also “some tentative conclusions.” That the contemporary struggle for the mastery between naturalists and dualists may have reached an impasse on the terrain of analytical philosophy was suggested by John Haldane over a decade ago (see “The Breakdown of Contemporary Philosophy of Mind,” in Haldane, ed., Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic Tradition and Analytical Traditions [University of Notre Dame Press, 2002], pages 54-75). The first six 940 Book Reviews chapters of Madden’s book are an able unfolding of that predicament and lead up to a similar judgment: “given the way the debate about the mindbody problem is typically framed, it is unlikely that we can ever avoid the dead ends we have encountered” (219). Proponents of even sophisticated versions of naturalism cannot account for the facts that we know, that we make inferences, and that we direct our actions in light of our knowledge and reasoning. Dualists, on the other hand, regularly tie themselves up in knots when confronted with the data of neuroscience and, moreover, can find it difficult to distinguish between the souls of animals and of human beings. As for the third-way naturalists and emergentists—with John Searle and Thomas Nagel being his prime exemplars—their dialectical contortions display equal amounts of inventiveness and sheer willfulness. As Madden drily observes, when such eminently thoughtful philosophers back themselves into indefensible corners because of their determination to avoid an appeal praeter naturam, one is led to conclude that “broader philosophical commitments seem to play a role” (202). What is needed, Madden argues in his final chapters, is a return to an earlier starting point: the consideration of change. That things move is an indubitable facet of our experience of the world. Like Aristotle, Madden would have us begin our inquiry with that truth. He ably works through the Aristotelian analysis of change, the problem of Parmenides, the doctrine of prime matter, and, in several deft pages, the virtual presence of the elements in the bodies of living beings. Although he pens the proviso that he “make[s] no pretense to offering a compelling defense of this philosophy of nature” (221), it is indeed a presentation of the common doctrine that is both clear and intelligible. When he comes to the subject of the soul, he rightly warns his reader that “there is nothing ‘spooky’ going on here; the soul just is whatever accounts for something’s being an actual organism” (253-54). And that sentence is a faithful representative of the plain, straightforward speech that characterizes the book. From the soul, Madden rises to a consideration of mind, choosing the argument from the universality of our thoughts as his preferred demonstration of the immateriality of the intellect. Along the way, and throughout the volume, he writes sensibly and capably about sensation. A book that so generously tries to bring together the tools and the conversational preoccupations of analytical philosophers with the ways and means of Thomists does run the risk of pleasing no one. Madden has, perhaps, made his challenge even more difficult by attempting to make his reasoning available to the general reader. Not only was Mind, Matter, and Nature plainly intended to be intelligible to the advanced undergrad- Book Reviews 941 uate—and Madden is to be warmly commended for his success in that regard—it is also in places explicitly addressed to just such a reader. The “tentative conclusions” as well as the preface do so, as in this statement of his aspiration: “I have fallen far short of giving compelling support” to Aristotelianism as such; “all I can do here is to offer hylomorphism as a proposal bolstered by its strengths in the philosophy of mind . . . hopefully I have made this proposal a live option even to those of you who have pre-philosophical intuitions that point in other directions” (285). How can such candor be anything other than a refreshing invitation to further dialogue? The book is, as he declares in the subtitle to his preface, “another opinionated introduction to the philosophy of mind” (ix). This genial tone indeed characterizes the dialectical sparring of the volume’s innards: Madden is even patient with those who make arguments based on thought-experiments about zombies. An introduction aimed at youthful readers ought to take particular care to be pedagogically astute. With what is most essential in that regard—clarity of speech—Madden is exceptional. There are complicated arguments, to be sure, but Madden does not hide behind jargon. Where he could perhaps have attained some additional precision or helpfully expanded the account would have been at the level of method. Consider this passage from near the end of the volume: “My hope . . . is that you can see on the basis of this discussion that the Aristotelian-hylomorphic view is coherent and does solve important philosophical problems, even if I have fallen short of making a demonstrative case for it” (245). It is the last phrase that raises an eyebrow, for to what prior principle would we appeal in an attempt to demonstrate that form and matter are the principles of natural things? And, in general, in Mind, Matter, and Nature there is a curious theme of philosophical convictions reposing upon the will.Thus Madden at times speaks of belief rather than knowledge (e.g., the mind is the “vehicle of beliefs,” 49; dualism is “hard to believe,” 86; that trees should have “nothing in common” is “hard to believe,” 208; non-emergent dualism is “believable” and thus a “live option,” 217-18), and in such a way as to suggest that he considers the concept of belief to be prior in our understanding to that of knowledge. Yet it must also be said that in other parts of his argument he displays a more direct, no-nonsense style of affirmation, as in his reply to Daniel Dennett on the subject of sensations, when he observes that “having a confused experience is nevertheless having an experience” (146). Perhaps the wavering on this point—if it is wavering, and not merely a question of philosophical style—is one of the prices of doing business with contemporary philosophers of mind. 942 Book Reviews Madden so ably charts a path through that vanity fair that it seems more than forgivable that he should have occasionally felt the need to pay them in their own coin. Christopher O. Blum Augustine Institute Denver, CO N&V Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis by Sarah Catherine Byers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 262 pp. C ontributions from John Rist and James Wetzel (among others) in the 1990s reopened the question of Augustine’s indebtedness to and baptism of philosophical sources, particularly with respect to elements of his moral psychology. Augustine, once thought merely to have pilfered Plotinus’s legacy, was reconsidered and reconstructed as agreeing with certain aspects of Stoicism. Byers’s recent work continues this general trajectory of scholarship by arguing for a coherent “Stoic-Platonic synthesis” in Augustine’s moral thought, simultaneously buttressed and amended by his Christian anxieties. Byers frames her careful analysis with a dramatic caveat: Augustine’s recollection of his agony in the Milanese garden (Confessions 8). There, Byers finds remnants of Augustine’s Stoic ethical vocabulary: he recalls his old loves whispering to him, impelling him to throw off continence and put on licentiousness. Byers picks up on Augustine’s metaphors of sight and interior language and traces them into the deepest recesses of Stoic psychology. Talk of internal exhortation betrays Augustine’s considerations of, as Byers puts it, “how motivation motivates” (23). Suggestion and temptation language link up with talk of hormetic impression, standard in Stoic ethical theory, sustaining and widening the scope of Augustine’s reflection on sin. Byers insists that Augustine “knew a doxography of Stoic action theory” which served to supplement a general approximation of a Platonic hierarchy of goodness (39ff.). The key to this synthesis comes in Byers’s discussion of how precisely this Stoic-Platonic wedding occurs. One could take the Platonic notion of loves, she admits, and Stoic thought on horm or impulse, and show their mutual exclusivity. But in Augustine, Byers insists, Stoic-inflected vocabulary pertains primarily to action, while its Platonist counterpart, to things or perceived states of affairs (49). The former is the how of action, the latter, the why. Book Reviews 943 This fusion allows personal attachment and emotions to affect moral judgment. Delight, in other words, emerges in Augustine’s thought as a distinctly teleological phenomenon. Byers’s work branches out from the representative passage in Confessions 8 to reveal how Augustine’s other writings, particularly his sermons, exploit Stoic terms. Perception, mental language, and phantasia feature prominently in Augustine’s homilies, as worry over how well one sees, motivates oneself to action, and responds to the contingencies of the world are of utmost importance. For instance, the Stoic notion of “hormetic impression” as the cause of moral action can be seen just under the surface of Augustine’s talk of love’s motivation in deeds virtuous or base. Byers’s search beneath Augustine’s non-technical language should not surprise, since most of the faithful under his care were untrained in the intricacies of classical moral grammars. Instead, Augustine reverts to the moral struggle depicted in the scriptures to wean even the most astute “off the snobbery that can accompany specialized vocabulary” (88). Hence, the sermons, for Byers, disclose the ways in which Augustine the pastor can be seen wrestling with the convergence of the biblical text and his philosophical and theological lineage. To read Augustine as offering a sealed and succinct conception of the “faculty of the will,” Byers maintains, is simply to read medieval categories back into his writings (90). Instead, we should conceive of Augustine as always in careful conversation with his sources, a conversation replete with considerations of how emotions instigate behaviors of pursuit and avoidance. Byers’s expertise is invaluable at this point. She offers a sophisticated reworking of the Stoic doctrine of “sayables” (lekta), connecting it to both the pre-passions and the emotions. In attempting to go beyond the Stoic model, Augustine allows for a wider range of emotions in response to both temporal and moral goods (72). The wise person can experience any emotion, provided it is caused by a true judgment. And while Augustine by and large thinks of pre-passions as a way station on the road to vice, he nuances the Stoic position by insisting that pre-passions can also be beneficial and life giving (proeupatheia). Byers’s recognition of Augustine’s subtle position betrays his occasionally overlooked Hellenistic philosophical heritage and shows him capable of moving beyond Stoic psychological categories (131–5). That preliminary passions result from a past wound caused by doubt, Byers insists, places Augustine in Philo’s debt (139). The solution to the process of doubt to pre-passion to assent is a series of therapies, a self-reflexive process of pre-rehearsals, remembering past wrongs, and medi- 944 Book Reviews tating on the law as a source of life (151–171). For instance, meditating on the potential for divine (and possibly human) justice can both trim anger’s shoot and begin to kill its roots. Key to this moral progress is the honing of one’s attention on moral virtues rather than temporal goods, of how delight outshines use (152). For all his attempts to move away from Stoic ideals, Augustine’s “affinities with Stoic austerity remain strong” (160). These affinities are prevalent in his understandings of grace and freedom throughout his corpus. Augustine is vexed, Byers argues, as to how behavior and emotional patterns are shaped by habits, and what it means that habit determines perception. As those east of Eden, the possibility of seeing clearly and accurately is generally a futile fight in Augustine’s mind. Indeed, the habit of original sin bears down so significantly that one cannot simply be rehabituated to excellence. Conversion must occur. Byers argues that over the course of his life Augustine changes his description of how this conversion happens, what effects it leaves, and the difference it makes in choosing the good. The emergence of the question resides in whether God causes action indirectly or directly. In the early stages of his priesthood and bishopric, Byers argues that Augustine’s view is primarily the former: that is, God’s grace is mediated to us by examples of moral goodness and excellence. Later, embroiled in the Pelagian controversy, the tone is that of the latter: God works within us, driving, rather than persuading, our pursuit of the good. In both cases, God offers a motivating impression; the quandary is in what way that impression comes (185). Byers shows that this give-and-take between directly and indirectly caused impression returns in the early-modern “De Auxiliis” controversy of Bañez and Molina, between Dominicans and Jesuits (190–206). Their disagreements over the connection of freedom, grace, and the necessary minimum for virtuous consent should be read, she contends, as a contestation over legitimate interpretations of Augustine. Yet neither has the corner on his doctrine of grace, because of the doctrine’s metamorphosis over the course of Augustine’s career. Neither fully represents him: Molina’s insistence that freedom is always the ability to do otherwise shirks the eudaemonism so important to Augustine (195), and Bañez’s account lacks specificity, grace being given without the individual in mind. In the end, neither adopts Augustine’s emphasis on grace as medicinal for the sake of healing one’s moral vision (196). The difficulty of locating the “true Augustine” complicates speaking of a straightforward “doctrine of grace.” In early texts, God acts from outside the individual, in an indirect causal relationship with the person. Book Reviews 945 However, this “dialogue model” of justification, where the agent is in constant interaction with God’s gracious remedy, is made more complex by Augustine’s post-418 writings. There, Byers claims, only God makes a cooperative relationship between God and us possible by providing the sustaining energy and power for the actual pursuit and performance of virtue. On this reading, even morally indifferent or evil actions require divine agency. Still, Augustine came to recognize the challenge present when two hear the same word in a sermon, say, and have different reactions. This then leads him to hold ideas of both exterior and interior causality. And still later, this interior causality is depicted as “driving” the moral vision, and grace becomes necessary for virtuous action. As Byers puts it, for the late Augustine, “faith is made in us” (211). This journey shows Augustine doubling back on himself by (twice) asking similar questions of grace’s relationship to free choice. To round out a fine monograph, the two appendices include an adapted version of Chadwick’s translation of Confessions 8.11.26–7 and an extended reflection on Augustine’s use of voluntas and its connection to a Stoic understanding of horm (impulse). Placing Augustine in conversation with Stoic action theory (especially Cicero) serves to clarify his language of “free will.” Voluntas in short is depicted as “a rational being’s impulse toward action,” something distinctly “in our power” (226). Byers shows how and for what ends Augustine adopted this technical vocabulary from the books of the Stoics (Cicero’s De fato and Seneca, in particular) and his Latin Christian progenitors (230–1). While Byers’s work will serve specialists in Augustine studies and those interested in early Christian moral thought quite well, two points are worth noting. First, Byers frets over reading medieval categories back into Augustine, but she is nevertheless guilty of this very thing in her discussion of Bañez and Molina’s early-modern controversy on free choice. Talking of how “infused virtue can be a habit” (187), for instance, appears to be a distinctive medievalism and not something native to Augustine. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, this reader wonders if a “theory” of moral motivation can be (or should be) extracted out of Augustine’s writings. To be sure, Augustine was notably self-reflective in his judicious use of philosophical sources, but disservice might well be done if his thought is crystallized in “theory” form. In her discussion of the “De Auxiliis” controversy, Byers contends that to say that either party had the “true Augustine” nailed down is mistaken, and that it is mistaken because Augustine had no “monolithic account” of grace and its effects upon human agency (212).While helpful 946 Book Reviews in analyzing the bounds of Augustine’s heritage, this piercing insight fails to see what is right in front of its face. Namely, that if a “true Augustine” cannot be determined by this or that theory of grace, what sense does it make to speak of a discrete “theory of moral motivation” or “theory of affectivity”? In other words, the thorniness Byers identifies between the “true Augustine” and his early-modern interpreters is present even in Augustine himself. If that is so, then we must begin to ask at what point certain “developments” or “shifts-in-thought” frustrate the language of a coherent “theory.” At day’s end, neither of these quibbles is meant to question Byers’s precision in dealing with ancient sources. Her care is remarkable given the technical challenge presented. Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine is meticulously cited and argued. Byers’s analysis lays bare her technical facility with very difficult, often-confusing texts. By arguing for Augustine’s consonance with ancient philosophical and rhetorical traditions, she brings those same traditions into conversation with one another. A great deal of work is done in her footnotes, aligning and critiquing dominant strands of secondary literature, while placing her arguments within this interpretive skein. The work is occasionally slow-going and challenging, asking the reader to balance several working “theories” in her mind concurrently. Perception does seem at times, as mentioned above, to be over-burdened by the desire to put theories to paper, hitching Augustine up to almost-procedural methodologies one wonders if he would have accepted. However, working through this complex monograph is worth the effort. Byers reconfigures Augustine in ways that broaden the base of an important trajectory undertaken some twenty years back. Only such care and rigor give such a debated figure as Augustine his due, and for that we are in debt to Byers. Andrew M. Harmon Marquette University Milwaukee, WI N&V Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption by Gregory Vall (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), xii + 401 pp. I gnatius of A ntioch has suffered consistent buffetings at the hands of scholars over the past century. His theology of grace has been found wanting, his ecclesiology judged too authoritarian, and his longing for martyrdom considered as bordering on the psychopathic. In Learning Book Reviews 947 Christ, Gregory Vall sets out to give a different reading of Ignatius. Adopting a rigorous historical-critical reading of the seven genuine letters of Ignatius, he describes his project as seeing what he “can get from the letters by giving Ignatius the benefit of the doubt, morally and intellectually,” employing “not a hermeneutic of suspicion, but one of understanding and empathy” (11). He hopes to rehabilitate Ignatius’s reputation as theologian and exegete and to demonstrate that the authentic letters of Ignatius “contain a sophisticated, cohesive, and substantially complete theology” (372). Learning Christ, however, is much more than a close, sympathetic study of Ignatius’s theology. It is also an expansive exploration of the economy of redemption in light of the wider Christian tradition. Vall confidently reads Ignatius in the light of the whole tradition, in terms of the analogia fidei, and seeks to place Ignatius within this wider context. In his own words, he has written “a work of historical theology, rather than merely a historical work about theology” (5, emphasis his). The reader is treated, not just to a thoroughgoing discussion of Ignatius’s theology, but to a deep exploration of the mystery of Christ through the lens of Ignatian thought. For Ignatius, Christ is both our only true teacher and at the same time the truth we are to learn. “Learning Christ,” then, is an apt summary of Ignatian theology and at the same time “the sum and substance of Christianity” (14). Vall elects to study the Ignatian writings, not according to the individual letters in sequence but by theological theme. Ignatius’s fondness for fixed pairs of terms (e.g. faith and love, flesh and spirit, word and silence, Christ and the Church) function as chapter headings and define the main topics areas. Throughout the study, Vall carries on a lively debate with other scholars over central questions of Ignatian theology, making the volume a valuable reservoir for the history of Ignatian scholarship across a broad spectrum of questions. Given the wide-ranging dogmatic scope of Learning Christ, a neat summary becomes nearly impossible. Each topic area has its own questions that are pursued in considerable detail. The conclusions reached by Vall across these topic areas are then linked together to show the coherence and excellence of Ignatian thought.The study begins with a consideration of Ignatius’s handling of Scripture. Rejecting the low opinion of Ignatius’s exegetical abilities held by some,Vall concludes that Ignatius has a sophisticated approach both to the Old Testament (the “archives”) and to the emerging texts of the New Testament canon he was familiar with (Matthew, the tradition of John, and several of Paul’s letters). For Ignatius, 948 Book Reviews Christ himself is God’s definitive self-revelation; the Scriptures as the word of God bear witness to and participate in the mystery of Christ. Among the contested topics in Ignatian thought explored by Vall, his findings in three areas will be noted here: in Christology, in the relation of Christianity to Judaism, and in ecclesiology. No one who reads Ignatius’s seven letters can fail to recognize his highly Christocentric approach. What Vall provides is a penetrating reading of this Christocentricity by displaying the three stages of the Word in Ignatius’s thought (pre-Incarnate, Incarnate, and Resurrected), and by showing that for Ignatius the Word Incarnate is the definitive self-revelation of the Father. Vall considers Ignatius’s clear statement of this “a significant moment in the history of theology” (108) and fully consistent with later Trinitarian and Christological clarification. Further, Vall deflects the charge of Gnosticism levelled against Ignatius, a charge grounded in his claim that the Word has “come forth from silence.” Judging this expression to refer to the Incarnation,Vall proposes that the language of “silence” refers to “the eternal mystery of God’s life and being” (266), to “the unfathomable mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the Father who eternally brings forth his Word in the union of the Spirit” (283). In Vall’s hands, the figure of Christ emerges with clarity and power as the fulcrum of Ignatian theology, as the source and center of unity by which the world is brought back to God. In a chapter entitled “Judaism and Christianity,” Vall wades into the vexed question of how Ignatius and other early church writers viewed the relationship between Israel and the Church. He helpfully and persuasively places Ignatius on a spectrum of early Christian views by considering his approach to “Judaism” in comparison with The Epistle to Diognetus, The Epistle of Barnabas, Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, and Irenaeus’s Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. The burden of Vall’s argument is that Ignatius is unfairly pigeonholed as “supersessionist” without a careful assessment of his nuanced thought regarding Israel and the Church. Vall acknowledges that Ignatius clearly rejects ongoing Jewish practice within the Church and concedes that his views involve “the rejection of non-Christian Judaism too” (208). But he demonstrates that Ignatius has genuine respect for the Law and the prophets and for the place of Israel in preparing the way for the coming of Christ.Vall takes Ignatius to task primarily for failing to do full justice to the Old Testament in its own context, by reading it simply as a preparation for Christ (247). While Vall treats Ignatius’s relationship to Israel and Judaism with sympathy and clarity, it is less clear that his treatment succeeds in modify- Book Reviews 949 ing the charge of supersessionism against Ignatius (and against the majority of the early Church teachers).Vall seems to be working with the view that supersessionism involves a devaluing of Israel and the Law before and up to the coming of Christ, such that if Ignatius is recognized as showing appreciation for the Law and the continuity between the Old and New Covenants, somehow supersessionism is blunted and modified. He rightly recognizes that for Diognetus and Barnabas, there really is no question of “supersessionism” because in these writings there is a tacit denial of God’s blessing on Israel in the first place (229). It is only when Israel is truly seen as the chosen vessel of God’s plan of redemption that that place is capable of being “superseded.” But the core of supersessionism is the question of the ongoing role of Israel after the coming of Christ and the birth of the Church. To be precise, supersessionism concerns two issues: first, whether any ongoing Jewish identity and practice is fitting to life in the Church; and second, whether Israel kata sarka (according to the flesh) has any positive ongoing role and significance in the history of salvation. Quite clearly, Ignatius judges negatively on both counts. Israel had its role in preparing for Christ, but now that Christ has come there is no real role for Israel as such—this role has simply been taken over by the Church. Nor is there any room for ongoing Jewish identity or practice within the Church—this is tantamount to denying the nova that Christ has ushered in. In fact, by coining the word “Christianity” and pitting it against “Judaism” (211), Ignatius signals that the parting of the ways is already deeply established and sets the terms for the ages-long contest between Church and synagogue. It is noteworthy that in recent times the Catholic Church has been re-thinking and re-expressing both these aspects of traditional supersessionism: Israel is now granted an explicitly ongoing theological role as God’s covenant people and some measure of Jewish identity and practice is carefully being allowed expression within the Church, opening a breach in the wall that insisted “Judaism” and “Christianity” were simply incompatible and opposing ways of life. The longest chapter of Learning Christ is given over to a multi-faceted study of Ignatius’s ecclesiology, arguably the subject for which Ignatius has been both most praised and criticized. In sum, Vall is ready to grant the modifier “catholic” to Ignatius’s ecclesiology, but he argues that this “catholic” approach is entirely consistent with the New Testament, not a deviation from it (313). But Vall rises above the typical polarizing readings by showing how Ignatius includes and integrates the various dimensions of the Church: “Ignatius’s ecclesiology amounts to a vision of ecclesial unity, between past and present, visible and invisible, hierarchy and laity, 950 Book Reviews universal and local, those who have attained God and those who are still living in hope” (315). Further,Vall draws out the pneumatological aspect of the Church and wonderfully succeeds in untangling Ignatius’s perplexing typologies of how bishops, presbyters, and deacons are related to God and Christ. We tend to read these typologies in a flat, linear manner, and so conclude that Ignatius was simply confused; Vall offers a new way of reading what he calls an “elaborately conceived series of analogies” (342) that reveal in fact a sophisticated Christology applied to the life of the Church. One of the major contributions of this study is the elaboration of what Vall calls “an ecclesiology of continuity” in Ignatius of Antioch. Reaching the end of this lengthy study, the reader is obliged to grant that Gregory Vall has successfully accomplished his goal: Learning Christ is both a significant and valuable addition to Ignatian scholarship, opening up delightfully new ways of seeing old issues, and at the same time a profound exploration of the mystery of Christ. Daniel Keating Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, MI N&V Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning by Massimo Faggioli (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012), 199 pp. F or the educated and interested layperson, an accessible yet scholarly survey of the debate over the proper implementation of the Second Vatican Council would be most welcome. Massimo Faggioli has attempted this, but while his work, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning, does indeed offer an accessible account of the historic council, the delivery of the book’s theological content sometimes suffers from a lapse in scholarship. Faggioli’s plan for the book is, no doubt, well-conceived because it addresses the important issues necessary to get a grasp of the post-conciliar theological divisions, debates, and polemics. The first chapter (of six) surveys the history of the debate over Vatican II. The second discusses various strains of anti-conciliar movements that questioned the legitimacy of Vatican II, while the third chapter elaborates on the reception of the Council “beyond Rome,” both geographically and ecumenically. The fourth chapter seeks to analyze the post-conciliar Catholic theological divide between “Neo-Thomists” and “Neo-Augustinians,” and the fifth chapter then treats a few concrete theological cases in ecclesiology and liturgy in which a “clash of narratives” has a distinct impact. The last Book Reviews 951 chapter, finally, considers some of the various approaches to reading and interpreting the Council and its texts. There is no question that the book has merit: indeed, the entirety of Chapter 3, for example, with its survey of the ecumenical impact of Vatican II in the eyes of the observers and of the worldwide reception of the Council, especially in Africa and Asia, is laudable for bringing readers’ attention to neglected perspectives. Faggioli’s sources and bibliography are diverse and impressive. And while the narrative he tells must be probed, he does raise important questions about recent theological determinations such as the status of episcopal conferences and the ever-perplexing subsistit in of Lumen Gentium, §8. (I will address these and other issues in the course of this review.) Despite this solid plan to touch all the relevant bases, and despite the book’s intentions to overcome “clashing interpretations” and to move beyond the struggles between “spirit” and “letter,” between “discontinuity” and “continuity,” Faggioli’s assumptions, historical analysis, and proposal for the way forward are all one-sidedly “progressive” (to use the political terms that Faggioli himself uses). The picture Faggioli sketches of the post-Conciliar Church is a familiar one: the ecclesial reforms envisioned by the spirit of the Second Vatican Council have been increasingly stifled.The theological-political rift begins, according to Faggioli’s history, in the late 1960s, which materializes in the Concilium and Communio journal split in 1972. Then the Council is “celebrated and enforced” from 1980 to 1990, historicized from 1990 to 2000, and is now undergoing a renewed fight, especially since Benedict XVI’s pontificate. Faggioli seems to find Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum (105) and his lifting of the excommunications of the Lefebvrist bishops (142–143), as evidence of a general pessimism towards the post-conciliar period that was expressed in his Ratzinger Report, and which ultimately prevailed over John Paul II’s “fundamentally positive view of the council” (106; cf. 141–142). Benedict’s 2005 defense of the hermeneutic of “reform” (109–110) has re-catalyzed the debate between the parties of rupture, on the one hand, and continuity (or “revisionism” [108] and those who give the Council a “reductionist interpretation” [151]) on the other. According to Faggioli, the party of continuity “does not accept the idea of any historical discontinuity occurring between” the Constantine era, the Tridentine era, and the twentieth century (135). While briefly acknowledging the existence of a “para-council,” the focus of Faggioli’s criticism is on “the self-deluding illusion of the possibility of a perfect linearity between pre-Vatican II theology, the texts of the preparatory phase of 952 Book Reviews Vatican II, and the final texts” (136). (It should be noted that, in alleging this, Faggioli offers here no concrete example of an author who alleges this.) In short, for Faggioli, if one wants to take Vatican II seriously, one must acknowledge that it, like previous councils, was discontinuous with its past (137). The narrative ends with Benedict’s pontificate, as Francis had not yet been elected. It is not this narrative that I wish to question. That has already been done (cf. Neuhaus, First Things, Oct. 2008). It is the lack of theological foundation and nuance in Faggioli’s book, coupled with his consistent neglect of the concerns and arguments of his theological opponents, that deserves to be highlighted, if only to challenge the assessment of the highly influential and respected John O’Malley, S.J., and Mark Massa, S.J., who endorse the book on its back cover and believe that the book is “carefully researched,” “subtle,” “indispensable,” and “required reading” for anyone interested in Vatican II in relation to the Church today. At a time when polarization in the Church is so palpable, Faggioli’s book could have risen above the two sides and attempted a rapprochement by treating important issues and concerns in a methodical and theologically considered way; instead, Faggioli rarely engages with theological arguments and takes for granted the truth of his own position. This review will illustrate, then, a dual shortcoming on the part of Faggioli: first, he fails to take his opponents seriously; and second, he fails to exhibit the theological acuity necessary to grasp the theological stakes of the issues he treats. The impact that these two shortcomings have on his analysis is exacerbated by what I consider to be a faulty diagnosis of the ideological divide. Given this approach, Faggioli not only fails to transcend post-conciliar divisions, but inadvertently reinforces them. Before we address the theological issues that Faggioli treats, let us first consider how he conceives of post-conciliar ideological divisions. His historical assessment of these divisions helps illuminate his narrative that the legacy of Vatican II is threatened by revisionists obsessed with “continuity,” and who fear change. Faggioli’s misdiagnosis of the ideological divide is perhaps most striking in Chapter 2 and can be attributed to a general inability to sympathize with his opponents. Here, Faggioli focuses on traditionalist opposition to, and rejection of, Vatican II, which culminates in schism (24–35). For Faggioli, the counterpart to the Lefebvrists are not liberal or progressive Catholics, such as extreme liberationist and/or feminist theologians. They, explains Faggioli later in the book, never contested the Council or questioned its legitimacy (57). The Lefebvrist counterpart Book Reviews 953 is, rather, the “Christians for socialism,” and the gauchisme catholique (35–36), a movement that faded in the 1970s from history and also from the rest of Faggioli’s book. Hence, the only “real challenge to the legitimacy of the council” that still exists today are the traditionalists (20). Insensitive to his opponents’ concerns, Faggioli does not grasp that, while many progressive theologians may claim to accept wholeheartedly the legitimacy of Vatican II, many of them use the Conciliar texts in a strikingly selective manner, thereby ignoring swaths of the entire Catholic doctrinal tradition that preceded the Council and that are affirmed time and again in the conciliar texts. The substantial and popular theological backlash against Dominus Iesus (2000) is just one example. Instead, what the reader is left with is an ideological division between, on the one side, those critical of the Council (Lefebvrists and “ultra-traditionalists” and “revisionists” and “pro-minority interpreters” whom Faggioli closely associates together [108]), and everyone else, on the other. Faggioli shifts the ideological goalposts also when he positions Hans Küng in the mainstream. According to Faggioli, those historians and theologians who spoke at Notre Dame’s conference, “Preparing for Vatican III,” in 1977, including H. Küng, J.B. Metz, and E. Schillebeeckx represented “the mainstream of Vatican II Catholicism.” Faggioli continues: “The Swiss theologian Hans Küng did not seem as disappointed with the accomplishments of the reception of Vatican II in the first decade after 1965 as he later became” (23). One wonders what caused Küng’s future discontent. If Faggioli’s narrative is correct—that subsequent pontificates, starting with Paul VI’s, increasingly impeded the Conciliar reform—then one can only assume that Küng’s tempered and “mainstream” opinions in the 1960s and ’70s remained constant; Küng was always “mainstream,” and became disappointed and, hence, perceived as extreme only when the Church began pivoting to the right. The problem with this explanation is that, from the point of view of Faggioli’s own yard-stick for gauging the “mind” of Vatican II, namely Yves Congar, Küng was already a radical early on. Congar, for Faggioli, is “one of the most important, if not the most important theologian of the council” (78). Congar “presents well the attitude of the theologians of Vatican II together with the bishops, and he is probably the most important theologian to look at the theological background and drafting of the council documents” (22). With this assessment, I couldn’t agree more. I think Faggioli and I would agree that, in this respect, it is Congar who represents the “mainstream” of Vatican II Catholicism. The problem is that Faggioli fails to realize the 954 Book Reviews theological, but also the temperamental, distance between someone like Congar and Küng. Theologically, one need only be aware of their debate over the doctrine of papal infallibility in the 1970s. On the personal level, consider these words of Congar’s during the Council from his Diary about Conciliar tactics in 1963: “Küng charges at things, he goes straight ahead like an arrow . . . Küng demands insistently, like a revolutionary.” A bit further down: “Küng is to some extent an impatient man. He has to be. It is a dangerous position. He worries me a bit . . .” (370). And later in 1965 in the context of discussions about the journal Concilium: “Küng is always very radical. He says some true things, but in which the critical research into what is true is not sufficiently tempered by concern for concrete situations” (861). If Congar is indeed representative of Conciliar thought (which I think he is), then the assertion that those at the 1977 conference, including Küng, were “mainstream” seems untenable. Faggioli’s misunderstanding of theological camps is punctuated by his comparison between “Neo-Thomists” and “Neo-Augustinians” in Chapter 4. There Faggioli asserts that David Tracy’s distinction between the “Analogical Imagination” and the “Dialectical Imagination” “paraphrases” the theological tension between the “progressive” Neo-Thomists (e.g., Congar, Chenu, Schillebeeckx) and Neo-Augustinians (i.e., Von Balthasar, de Lubac, Ratzinger). The Neo-Thomists, for Faggioli, are “analogical,” which means they are associated with the Catholic emphasis on “metaphor, sacrament, and image,” while the Neo-Augustinians are “dialectical,” with their “emphasis on the Protestant idea of God’s inaccessibility” (89). Such an application of this stark juxtaposition is historically and theologically problematic; it implies that any understanding of how God is accessible to creatures in a way that would be acceptable from a Catholic point of view is somehow lost on people like Ratzinger and de Lubac. Faggioli applies this same Neo-Thomist/Augustinian divide to the bifurcation of Concilium into Communio, according to which the Neo-Thomists at Concilium espoused a “more comprehensive updating,” whereas the Neo-Augustinians at Communio were focused on ressourcement (51–53). Such a simplistic application of an already questionable juxtaposition not only fails the test of the multiple counter-examples that could be marshaled forward (e.g., was Congar a stranger to ressourcement? And was de Lubac, who warned against “archaism,” uninterested in aggiornamento?), but also misses the precise dynamic that historically existed between the two movements: ressourcement was never pursued for its own sake, but was always at the service of aggiornamento. One step toward healing post-conciliar divisions would be to avoid Book Reviews 955 pitting these two theological postures—ressourcement and aggiornamento— against each other. While Faggioli puts his finger on something valid, namely, the difference in theological temperament (manifested in, say, the general optimism or pessimism that a theologian felt vis-à-vis the world and human “progress”), it is clear that Faggioli takes the Neo-Thomist/ Augustinian juxtaposition too far. Although they help explain much of what Faggioli alleges in his book, such reflections on labels and ideological spectrums within Catholic theology are, ultimately, not only uninteresting, but quibbles next to the way in which Faggioli assesses certain theological debates in ecclesiology, liturgy, and moral theology. Issues in many of these areas have been intensely debated with a view towards a true and authentic reception of the theology of Vatican II, and yet, Faggioli’s treatment of them does not do justice to the time and energy theologians have dedicated to them— on both sides of the debate. Let us take them in the order in which they appear in the book. Consider, for example, Faggioli’s take on the status of episcopal conferences in Chapter 1 (14–15). Having written before the election of Pope Francis, Faggioli can feel vindicated that revisiting this question is now on the agenda (see Evangelii Gaudium, §32). Nevertheless, his treatment of the issue sees no rationale behind the status quo except for the political desire of centralizing power: “From the standpoint of the post-Vatican II governance of the Catholic Church,” writes Faggioli, John Paul II’s Apostolos suos “reinforced one of the basic assumptions of the International Theological Commission chaired by Cardinal Ratzinger.” What is this assumption of the ITC that John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation reinforces? According to Faggioli, it is “the need to scale back some aspects of the post-Vatican II decentralization and empowerment of national bishops’ conferences.” This is, to put it mildly, a rather theologically uncharitable motivation to attribute to an opponent. Pace Faggioli, others might say that the assumption that Apostolos suos was reinforcing was the supposition that bishops can exercise their authority either individually or by virtue of their collegial status in union with the pope, and hence, cannot properly exercise it any other (i.e., intermediate) way. What is potentially at stake is the way in which we conceive of episcopal jurisdiction and whence episcopal power is exercised. Agree or disagree with the theological rationale, not addressing it makes the whole presentation of episcopal conferences a caricature. Francis Sullivan, S.J., who is no traditionalist and who ultimately questions the reasoning behind Apostolos suos, at least engages with the arguments and provides ample nuance (see Sullivan, 956 Book Reviews “The Teaching Authority of Episcopal Conferences,” Theological Studies [2002]: 474–492). In Chapter 3, the question of inculturation emerges. In his noble endeavor to highlight the impact that Vatican II had in Africa, Asia, and Australasia, Faggioli writes the following sentence: Thanks to the theology of Vatican II on the local Church and on non-Christian religions, a theology of adaptation and inculturation took the place of the traditional theology of salus animarum (the “salvation of the souls”) and the purely missionary theology of plantatio ecclesiae (the “expansion of the Church” and its structures) (59). It is one thing, if what Faggioli means is simply that reflection on salus animarum and plantatio ecclesiae no longer happens to be in vogue in post-conciliar Catholic theology; it is quite another to attribute this to the “theology of Vatican II.” Presumably, Vatican II’s teaching on the local Church is found chiefly in Lumen Gentium, and its teaching on non-Christian religions in Nostra Aetate. How the contents of these two documents replace salus animarum and plantatio ecclesiae is unexplained. What is more, however, anyone at all conversant in Catholic missiology would know that these two categories—salus animarum and plantatio ecclesiae—represented two opposing poles in what became the most theologically substantive missiological debate in the twentieth century—the former position made famous by the “Münster School” and the latter by the “Louvain School.”The former argued that the ultimate end of mission is the conversion and salvation of souls for which reason one establishes the Church, while the Louvain school argued that the proper end of mission was establishing the Church, for the souls of the un-evangelized could ultimately be saved with or without an established mission (and, in the long run, a local Church) in the area. Both theological tendencies were present at Vatican II, and, in typical conciliar fashion, instead of deciding between the two, the Council included both tendencies in its Decree on Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes. (For planting the Church, see Ad Gentes, §6, 10, 15, 18, 19. For the relationship of missionary work to conversion and salvation of souls, see Ad Gentes, §3, 5, 6, 39, 40, and §7, 10, and 12.) The notion that Vatican II somehow replaced these two theological categories is theologically erroneous, and cannot be passed over as mere oversight on some theological minutiae. Salvation and its means are at the core of theology. Book Reviews 957 Another ecclesiological issue appears in Chapter 5, when Faggioli’s simplistically presents the debate surrounding the “subsistit in” passage from Lumen Gentium, §8 (100–102). For Faggioli, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is obstinate in the face of historical and theological refutations that are beyond reproach. Yet, most tellingly, Faggioli never mentions—let alone engages with—the opposing views, either in his text or in his notes: for example, no mention is made of Welch and Mansini’s article in New Blackfriars (2009), or Christopher Malloy in The Thomist (2008). Among the many ultimate conclusions at stake here is whether the Church of Christ is fully realized in history (or simply an eschatological reality); and whether a Church (in the theological sense of the word, that is, with valid orders, succession, and Eucharist) can exist concretely and independently of the Petrine ministry. Faggioli registers none of these issues and makes no attempt to do so. What is even more puzzling in Faggioli’s method, however, is that without distinction, he blocks together all the interventions of the CDF (from 1992 to 2007) on the subject.Yet those, such as Francis Sullivan, who would be sympathetic to Faggioli’s position, base their arguments precisely on the differences between the CDF’s interventions in, say, Dominus Iesus (2000), on the one hand, and “Responses to some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church” (2007) and its “Commentary,” on the other. Again, Sullivan, who is no friend of the continuity line, sees Dominus Iesus—unlike other CDF interventions—as faithfully interpreting Lumen Gentium, §8 in a way that satisfied concerns both to maintain that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church and to affirm the existence of particular and true Churches (and not just elements of the church) outside the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church (e.g., the Orthodox churches) (see Sullivan’s articles in Theological Studies, 2006, 2008, and 2010). Ironically, Faggioli not only ignores the arguments of his opponents, but also fails to do justice to his own ally (i.e., Sullivan) when the former lumps all the CDF interventions together. (It is Faggioli’s opponents who seek to harmonize them.) The upshot of all this is that for Faggioli, the case is settled. Such a position—especially in the way that it is advanced in this book—does little to advance a constructive and informed exchange. In the same fifth chapter, the same lack of sympathy for his opponents is manifest in Faggioli’s treatment of liturgical matters. Many who advocate a “reform of the reform,” says Faggioli, exhibit “haste and aggressiveness—rather than intellectual command” (102–103). In contrast, those 958 Book Reviews who “defend the liturgy as reformed by the Council” are “advocates of Vatican II,” (103); as if the Novus Ordo, which was promulgated four years after the Council concluded, is uniquely the result of the conciliar reform, and those who do not “defend” it cannot be “advocates” of the Council.Thusly does Faggioli fail to adequately distinguish between Vatican II’s Liturgical Constitution and the actual liturgical reform carried out by the Consilium that Paul VI had organized to implement it (as well as the concrete pastoral implementation of the Novus Ordo in subsequent decades whose abuses and experimentation are not taken up by Faggioli). Had he distinguished between these stages adequately, the “reform of the reform” movement would not need to be held responsible for the “tragic destiny” of Sacrosanctum Concilium (cf. 102–105). Faggioli’s concern is, no doubt, to safeguard the achievements and intended reforms of the Council, whether it is the use of the vernacular, a liberalization of liturgical orientation, etc. The consequence of Faggioli’s conflation, however, is the following position: because the current Roman Missal is the only authentic implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, any attempt at a “reform of the reform” is inherently anti-conciliar. Again, such a position does little to bridge the divide. Similarly, in discussing the new English translation of the Roman Missal, Faggioli gives only a negative assessment: it is a “dead stop to the composition of new texts for the English liturgy that might have been inspiring examples of inculturation” (105). That the previous English translation was at the very least idiosyncratic (and many would say, deficient) relative to other vernacular translations—such as the German, French, and Spanish—is apparently of no account for Faggioli. That a translation, for all its shortcomings and occasional stiltedness, gives voice to a Latin text that had been previously truncated in places, offers no perspective for Faggioli. With the “liturgical wars” already so replete with polemic, this opportunity could have been used to respond thoughtfully to those who welcome the new translation. Instead, Faggioli isolates them as a group that frustrates inculturation. Finally, in the last chapter, Faggioli’s assessment of the theological implications of Humanae Vitae is delusive. In the beginning of the book, Faggioli claims that “Humanae Vitae . . . greatly impacted the Church, took its toll on the reception of Vatican II, and produced the first ‘revisions’ of the council’s interpretations” (10). In the last chapter Faggioli writes this striking sentence: Book Reviews 959 The history of the debate about Humanae Vitae explains why that landmark papal teaching of 1968 inaugurated the disillusionment of the post-Vatican II era, and symbolized the beginning of a fracture between the magisterium and a theology that had left metaphysics as its center of orientation and increasingly become a theology of “salvation history”, where human history also becomes a real source for theological work (133). Faggioli then continues to assert that making history a locus theologicus “is by far the most important factor in the parting ways of Catholic theology after Vatican II” (134), and then links the “discontinuity” party with this turn to history. According to Faggioli, then, when one ventures to take salvation history seriously (at the expense of metaphysics, it seems), it is inevitable that the Church’s teaching against artificial contraception is problematic, not least because it somehow impedes Vatican II reception. Apparently, the proliferation of contraception in the last seventy years and its current ubiquity are part of a “human history” that deserves theological consideration by virtue of its being— in addition to the covenants of the Old Testament and the Incarnation—a part of “salvation history.” But surely not all happenings of human history can be included in “salvation history” in such a way that merits a theological affirmation. To enumerate examples here would be superfluous. “Signs of the times,” says Vatican II, must be “scrutinized in light of the Gospel” (Gaudium et Spes, §4). And so a naked appeal to the events of human history—even if that history is a part of salvation history—is insufficient grounds to criticize Humanae Vitae. While major dissent from Humanae Vitae poses a real crisis for the Church, as Faggioli correctly diagnoses, his analysis betrays an uncritical appropriation of “salvation history,” a seminal category for systematic-theological reflection on the divine economy. At the end of the book, Faggioli espouses a “non-originalist” reception of Vatican II (137). For someone who so thoroughly supports the historical research into the genesis of Vatican II, its debates, drafts, and final texts, it seems slightly odd to espouse an interpretive theory that does not give primary importance to the plain meaning of the words and their author’s intentions, something (among many other things) which historians of the Council seek to uncover. Paradoxically, it seems that post-conciliar magisterial clarifications on subsistit in are criticized precisely on the supposition that an “originalist” interpretation of the Lumen Gentium should be normative. Faggioli presumably bases this 960 Book Reviews need for a “non-originalist” interpretation on what he calls the “gaps” that exist between the council fathers’ pre-conciliar intentions, the final drafts, and the post-conciliar “unintended consequences,” or between the “expectations,” on the one side, and the “results,” on the other (136–139). It should be noted, however, that an “originalist” approach—whether the correct one or not is here irrelevant—also assumes the existence of these gaps. The only reason one would have to dedicate effort to retrieving, for example, the intentions behind certain conciliar formulae is precisely because the life of the Church has kept moving since the Council. It seems ironic that such strong support for investigating the history of the texts is coupled with a hermeneutic that relativizes the normativity of those same texts. To my mind, it would seem that an effort—however difficult—at “originalism” would take more seriously, and do greater justice to, the “event” that was the Second Vatican Council and its teaching. It must be said that Faggioli’s book has failed to overcome the clashing interpretations of the Council. Faggioli’s agenda is mediated not by polemic, but by a presentation that ignores the concerns of his opponents. Faggioli, furthermore, struggles to reveal the nuance of the theological positions at stake in discussing them and does not provide adequate evidence for the generalized claims that he makes. Faggioli no doubt has contributed much to the historiography of Vatican II and its reception. He is right to insist that the Council be faithfully implemented and that to do so, the Conciliar achievement relative to what immediately preceded it must be acknowledged. Indeed, ecumenical councils are called in order to address something(s), and it would strain the imagination to think that a pope would call an ecumenical council when there were no challenges that needed to be met, nothing to reform, nothing to renew, nothing to recover. And the suggestion that conciliar intentions, drafts, and final texts all look the same is, we can agree, spurious. The key problem, I suggest, is that in the “battle” Faggioli analyzes, very little place is given to those participants who, like him, seek to be ever-loyal to the Council and affirm that something did indeed happen at Vatican II, but who nevertheless disagree with Faggioli’s theological and historical assessments. Andrew Meszaros Catholic University of Louvain (KU Leuven) Leuven, Belgium N&V Book Reviews 961 Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation by Jerry L. Walls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), xiv + 211 pp. T here are more and more signs indicating that an ecumenical doctrine of purgatory is an idea whose time has come. Perhaps none of these signs is more promising than the publication of Jerry Walls’s Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation. In it, Walls has given us an irenic and thorough investigation and recommendation of the doctrine of purgatory from an explicitly Protestant point of view. According to Walls, every coherent theological system must deal with the problems that purgatory was developed to deal with, especially the fact the Christians are routinely seen to pass from this life far from fit for the morally perfect heaven affirmed by Christian faith. Throughout his seven chapters (a nod to Dante, nota bene), he is always careful to analyze the various aspects of purgatory within the broader context of basic Christian affirmations about eschatology, soteriology, and the doctrine of God. Because of purgatory’s interconnectedness with other doctrines of the faith, the reader will not be surprised to learn that Walls himself is a Methodist. That a robust Protestant doctrine of purgatory should emerge from within the Wesleyan tradition, with its traditional focus on sanctification and holiness, is quite understandable. Nevertheless, Walls does not write this book as a Methodist (he never mentions the fact), but as a Protestant, and it is his conviction that a doctrine of purgatory, properly understood, can become a theological resource for all Protestants. All the same, he is aware that certain Protestant positions, such as a strict Calvinist doctrine of election or a penal substitutionary view of the atonement, fit less smoothly with a doctrine of purgatory than his own views (or those of C. S. Lewis, for instance) on such questions. This book represents the third in a trilogy for Walls, who has also written books on heaven and hell. As such, he is well positioned for this investigation of purgatory. And Walls wisely begins this book with heaven. Any clear thinking about purgatory must start with heaven and work backwards, so to speak. If heaven is the place of the morally perfect, how, exactly, are we made morally perfect? Purgatory is an attempt to answer just this question, but with the awareness that such perfection is not always achieved in this life. (As an aside, it is an odd lacuna in the book that Walls never explicitly addresses the question of whether purgatory is necessary for all the saved or if some are indeed perfected this side of death, or perhaps, as has been understood of the martyrs, in death itself.) Walls begins with a modest history of purgatory. It is modest in the sense that Walls readily acknowledges that history is always written from 962 Book Reviews a given perspective and that his own account is no exception. A history of a theologically contentious doctrine like purgatory is bound to raise questions of interpretation and source selection. Walls is, nevertheless, evenhanded and thorough. He looks at the key passages in Scripture, the theological development of the idea in the patristic period, its systematization in the medieval period, and its rejection and reaffirmation in the sixteenth century. But he is not merely concerned with theology. Walls also considers social factors and the arts. Purgatory’s “success” as a doctrine, along with some of the misunderstandings surrounding it, was abetted by a lively pious literature stretching as far back as St. Perpetua (through figures like St. Gregory and the Venerable Bede) and reaching its apex in the masterwork of Dante. In the next chapter, Walls looks at Protestant interaction with the doctrine in more detail. There are two key reasons for the Protestant rejection of purgatory, he notes: its lack of explicit support in Scripture, and the fear that it detracts from the saving efficacy of Christ’s cross. It is important to remember, of course, that these concerns emerged during a time when the doctrine was deeply entangled with the indulgence trade and often articulated in ways that could seriously misconstrue the doctrine’s genuine content. As Walls notes, in his Ninety-five Theses, Luther does not object to the doctrine itself, but rather to distortions and abuses of it. Though Luther would later, along with the rest of the Reformers, reject the doctrine outright, there has existed a thread throughout Protestant history that suggests perhaps the baby had gone out with the bathwater. Indeed, in Walls’s various engagements with Protestant authors throughout the book, one notes an interesting dynamic: while many Protestant thinkers throughout history have concluded that something at least like purgatory is theologically desirable, even necessary, such conclusions tend to be accompanied by pro forma assurances that what is being proposed is certainly not “the Romish doctrine.” What this Romish doctrine actually is is left unspecified, and though what is articulated often appears quite amendable to a Catholic understanding, there appears to be an identity issue that prevents separated Christians from being able to admit agreement, even when it is there. One of the great breakthroughs of Walls’s book is that, in proposing a doctrine of purgatory to Protestants, he genuinely engages the Catholic view in a way that is neither dismissive, nor uncritical, but ecumenical in the best sense of the word. Walls’s concern for the truth is never clouded by issues of ecclesial identity. Book Reviews 963 In this light, I suggest that chapter 3 might be the most important in the book. In it, Walls carefully assesses different models of purgatory that have emerged in the doctrine’s history. He highlights what he calls “satisfaction” and “sanctification” models, and notes the existence of a kind of “satisfaction/sanctification” hybrid. Satisfaction models tend to use metaphors of debt and punishment to explain the logic and the suffering of purgatory, while sanctification models prefer the metaphors of cleansing and healing. More important, in my mind, than the preferred metaphors is whether the sufferings of purgatory have an extrinsic or intrinsic relationship to the condition of the sinner undergoing the suffering. Walls rejects any model of purgatory that makes the suffering of the sinner into an arbitrary punishment. Such models do, in fact, obscure the sufficiency of Christ’s cross and Protestants are right to reject them. Sanctification models, however, simply acknowledge that the process of overcoming sin and its effects in our lives can be slow and painful. Walls argues that “Protestants can affirm sanctification models without in any way contradicting their theology, and may find that it makes better sense of how the remains of sin are purged than the typical Protestant account that it happens instantly and immediately at or after death” (90). Some Catholics might press Walls, however, that his rejection of the hybrid satisfaction/ sanctification model, the view he ascribes to Aquinas, among others, is perhaps premature. It seems to follow from his distaste for metaphors of debt and punishment. Now, one can certainly grant that a one-sided application of such metaphors can be distorting, and that the metaphors may indeed be tarnished by an association with descriptions of purgatory that make its suffering into arbitrary punishments which ignore the cross. Nevertheless, metaphors are only that. If, as in the case of Aquinas, such metaphors are used in a way that does not make the suffering of purgatory extrinsic, they may need to be balanced, but it is not clear to me that they need to be rejected. Chapter 4 begins with an exploration of different models of personal identity. Walls’s goal is to demonstrate that a doctrine of purgatory is compatible with any number of theories of the relationship between body and soul or the intermediate state between death and resurrection that Christians have posited over the years. The real crux of the chapter, however, is when Walls reverses course and argues that, more than being simply compatible with how Christians have tended to view certain obscure eschatological questions, purgatory actually increases the intelligibility of how Christians view the afterlife. Of particular importance is the notion that it is difficult to maintain a theory of personal identity 964 Book Reviews in which a person is morally perfected without reference to his own freedom and, furthermore, that any kind of perfecting that does not simply override human freedom is necessarily temporal in nature (i.e., it is a process). Walls follows Ratzinger in asserting that the transformation of purgatory “cannot be quantified in earthly time measurements,” but he does not reflect further on how the “time” of purgatory is related to earthly time or to God’s eternity. Walls’ fifth chapter puts forth an argument that may, at first blush, make Catholics nervous. Walls notes that Protestants have often mistaken the Catholic doctrine of purgatory as a kind of second chance for salvation after death, but that this is not, in fact, Catholic teaching. Walls, however, wants to argue for a modification of the traditional teaching that would allow purgatory to function this way, and he offers some pointed counterfactuals that make this modification appealing. Which of us would want to affirm that the God revealed in Jesus Christ damns people who have never had a full exercise of freedom in their earthly life and consequently had no real opportunity to hear and accept the gospel? But I found that Walls’s moving counterfactuals were based on a notion that Walls himself does not actually hold: viz., if I may put it this way, that the default setting for human beings is damnation. If, on the other hand, one believes, as Walls states in a footnote, that “those in hell separate and distinguish themselves by definitively and decisively rejecting the love of God and his offer of salvation,” (#14, 195) then we need not imagine purgatory as giving a second chance to those whose freedom was so compromised in this life as to make their acceptance of the gospel impossible. If, in other words, the work of Christ has changed the default setting so that damnation is what requires a conscious and deliberate act, we may well imagine purgatory as a second chance for many people to be healed of the wounds of this life that impaired their freedom, without seeing it as a second chance for salvation per se. In any case, Protestants in general are not agreed about where to set what I have called the default switch. It may be that calling purgatory a second chance is one way for those with the default switch on damnation to solve the theological problems, highlighted by Walls’s counterfactuals, that do not emerge for those with the switch flipped the other way. Catholics, on the other hand, can use the unease that Walls’s counterfactuals induce to think about just how their own tradition understands the assent to grace that salvation requires in instances of radically compromised freedom. My own view is that Walls actually provides a more coherent treatment of this delicate issue in his next chapter on C. S. Lewis. This penul- Book Reviews 965 timate chapter functions as a kind of capstone for the whole book and is executed with aplomb. In it Walls takes up the views of Lewis on purgatory with an eye to articulating an ecumenical version of the doctrine amenable to Catholics and Protestants alike. Walls notes Lewis’s stature in evangelical Protestantism and the fact that Lewis provides a kind of cover for any evangelical thinker who wants to explore the idea of purgatory. One of the best things Walls does in the chapter is to thoroughly discredit those who have argued that purgatory was rather peripheral for Lewis and, in fact, out of step with his larger theological project (163). Through a careful look at the structure, and particularly the soteriology, of Lewis’s classic Mere Christianity, Walls demonstrates how carefully integrated Lewis’s thought on purgatory is with his larger corpus. Lewis’s more explicit teaching on purgatory, found in Letters to Malcolm, is easily seen to be in conformity with his picture of the gospel in general. Finally, in his investigation of Lewis’s theological fantasy The Great Divorce, Walls provides a more satisfying resolution to the question of purgatory as a second chance than he had in the previous chapter: there is no way out of damnation because the truly damned do not desire salvation. Anyone who is saved after death was never really damned in the first place. God’s love and offer of forgiveness remain, but it is possible to set oneself against that love so that it is experienced as eternal torment. This book fills an essential niche in both contemporary Protestant eschatology and in ecumenical theology. A study of this depth and seriousness, but also openness, of a Catholic doctrine by a Protestant scholar is sure to have ecumenical ramifications. It will allow separated Christians to revisit this contentious doctrine with new eyes, even as it raises eyebrows from the skeptical and voices from those who have no interest in reaching agreement in the first place. I have made note of several small issues I have with the text, but they are points for continued conversation more than condemnations. I want to note, now, one further lacuna in the text. Walls is aware throughout the text of the relationship between purgatory and prayer for the dead in Catholic thought and practice. He even acknowledges its prominence in the development of the doctrine. He does not, however, anywhere engage the question of its propriety. Should Protestants pray for the dead? What should they think of their Catholic brethren who do? Walls notes Lewis’s view that “the action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me” (155). Does Walls’s endorsement of purgatory, then, include an endorsement of prayer for the dead? And, if so, how might that look 966 Book Reviews in a Protestant context? Walls has made an important, nay, essential, contribution to the ecumenical conversation, but there is more to say. With such a dialogue partner, there is reason for hope. Brett Salkeld Archdiocese of Regina Regina, Saskatchewan N&V A direct response to Pope Francis’ call for “a profound theology of the woman.” The Authority of Women in the Catholic Church explores the role of women in the covenant of salvation. Dr. Monica Migliorino Miller defines authentic feminine authority with the support of Scripture, the writings of the Church Fathers, contemporary theological insights, and historical witnesses to the role of women in the Catholic Church. “ “ “ “Wonderfully creative, deeply theological.” —Janet Smith “One of the most disastrously misunderstood concepts in our culture” —Peter Kreeft “A completely liberating study of the authority of woman!” — Johnnette Benkovic Order today at EmmausRoad.org Catholic Biblical Theology for the New Millennium Letter & Spirit seeks to foster deeper understanding of Sacred Scripture. Proclaimed in the Liturgy, God’s Word continues to come to us as saving action, as the promise of a new creation and the fulfillment of that promise. When we read the Bible in this way, from the heart of the Church, we find no tension between letter and spirit— between literary and historical study of Scripture and faithful contemplation of its religious and spiritual meaning. Read it at StPaulCenter.com/Journal