et Vetera Nova Summer 2016 • Volume 14, Number 3 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal Senior Editor Georges Cardinal Cottier, O.P.† Co-Editors Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Associate Editors 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 Reinhard Hütter, Duke University Divinity School 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 C. Pecknold, Catholic University of America Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., University of Fribourg Board of Advisors 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., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas 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 Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., Blackfriars, University of Oxford Timothy Gray, Augustine Institute Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., Pontifical John Paul II Institute (Washington, DC) Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa Paige Hochschild, Mount St. Mary’s University Andrew Hofer, O.P., Dominican House of Studies 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) Michał Paluch, O.P., Dominican House of Studies 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. 2. Contributions should be prepared to accord as closely as possible with the typographical conventions of Nova et Vetera. The University of Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) is our authority on matters of style. 3. Nova et Vetera practices blind review. Submissions are evaluated anonymously by members of the editorial board and other scholars with appropriate expertise. Name, affiliation, and contact information should be included on a separate page apart from the submission. 4. Galley-proofs of articles are sent to contributors to be read and corrected and should be returned to the Editors within ten days of receipt. Corrections should be confined to typographical and factual errors. 5. Submission of a manuscript entails the author’s agreement (in the event his or her contribution is accepted for publication) to assign the copyright to Nova et Vetera. Nova et Vetera The English Edition of the International Theological Journal ISSN 1542-7315 Summer 2016 Vol. 14, No. 3 Commentary Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis, and Pope Francis: Lenten Reflection for St. John Seminary Faculty.. . . . Cardinal Séan O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap. Reflections of a Green Thomist on Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Cuddeback Laudato Si’ and the Rise of Green Thomism. . . Christopher J. Thompson An Introductory Survey of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 2014 Document: The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Reasoner 727 735 745 757 Articles “Let Us Flee to the Fatherland”: Plotinus in Ambrose’s Theology of Ascent. . . . . . . . . . . . . Gerald Boersma Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate. . . Joshua R. Brotherton The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination”.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters “He descended into hell”: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Catholic Doctrine. . . . . . . Brian Doyle, O.P. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform: Towards a Rapprochement of the Magisterium and Modern Biblical Criticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew J. Ramage Divine Causality and Created Freedom: A Thomistic Personalist View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark K. Spencer Trinitarian Principles of Biblical Inspiration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. 771 783 821 845 879 919 965 Book Symposium on Cyril O’Regan’s T he A natomy of M isremembering Why Hegel? A Reading of Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering, Volume 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rodney Howsare 983 Hegel and Christian Theology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Guy Mansini, O.S.B. 993 Death in Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr. 1003 Response to Readers of The Anatomy of Misremembering, Volume 1 (Hegel). . . . . . . Cyril O’Regan 1015 Book Reviews Jesus: Essays in Christology by Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel Keating 1027 Scholarly Community at the Early University of Paris: Theologians, Education and Society, 1215–1248 by Spencer E. Young .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew R. McWhorter 1031 The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology by Stephen Bullivant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew J. Ramage 1034 Living the Good Life: A Beginner’s Thomistic Ethics by Steven J. Jensen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Rziha 1040 Lying and Christian Ethics by Christopher O. Tollefsen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Skalko 1045 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 978-1-941447-87-1) is published quarterly by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. Nova et Vetera is distributed to institutional subscribers for the St. Paul Center by the Catholic University of America Press. All materials published in Nova et Vetera are copyrighted by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. © Copyright 2016 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. Periodical Postage Paid at Steubenville, OH. 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://www.nvjournal.net. For subscription inquiries, email us at novaetvetera@stpaulcenter.com or phone 740-264-9535. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 727–734727 Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis, and Pope Francis: Lenten Reflection for St. John Seminary Faculty Cardinal Seán O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap. Boston, Massachusetts Miguel de Unamuno wrote a biography of Don Quixote, the protagonist of Cervantes’s masterpiece, which is probably the most influential novel ever written, (before The Da Vinci Code of Dan Brown, of course). Unamuno begins his biography of Don Quixote with an ingenious comparison of Don Quixote and St. Ignatius of Loyola, drawing from Cervantes’s description of the Man of La Mancha and Rivadeneira’s biography of the founder of the Jesuits. Unamuno describes how Ignatius set out for Montserrat to deposit his arms at the feet of the Virgin. On the road to Montserrat, he encountered a Moor who denied the virginity of the Blessed Mother. Ignatius tried to convince him, without success, and the Moor rode away very conceited and arrogant. The young Ignatius had second thoughts and wondered if he should have punished the man. He wanted to let God decide, so he dropped the reins of his steed to see if the animal would pursue the recalcitrant Moor or continue on the road to the sanctuary of Montserrat. The beast trotted off to Montserrat and the Jesuit Order was founded. By the way, Unamuno credited that donkey with the founding of the Society of Jesus. The early biographers recount how St. Ignatius was wounded in the battle of Pamplona and how he spent much of his convalescence reading. Because there were no books of chivalry like Quixote and Ignatius loved to read, they gave the patient Ludwig of Saxony’s Life of Christ and a florilegium of the lives of the Saints. After devouring the books, Ignatius’s comment was: “I want to be a saint like St. Francis.” 728 Cardinal Seán O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap. Well, we have a Pope who has embraced the vocation of being a follower of “Ignatius who wants to be a saint like St. Francis.” Our Pope is thoroughly Jesuit, thoroughly Ignatian, right down to the fascination with St. Francis. In his interview for Civiltá Cattolica, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., asked Pope Francis why he became a Jesuit. The Pope said that three things about the Jesuits that attracted him were: the missionary spirit, community, and discipline. He especially admired the way Jesuits manage their time. It is quite obvious that Pope Francis exhibits these characteristics in spades. He is truly living his Jesuit vocation with an intense missionary zeal, a love for community, for mission, and for the disciplined life that does not waste anything, especially not time. I love the image of Pope Francis running around the Vatican turning off the lights. It reminds me of my dad. Shortly before his ordination, the thirty-two-year-old Bergoglio wrote a short credo. He has kept that piece of paper as a reminder of his core convictions. It is a clear indication of the habit of self-reflection so deeply ingrained by his Jesuit formation. He speaks of his own history and says that, on a spring day of September (in the Southern Hemisphere!), “The loving face of God crossed my path and invited me to follow Him.” The Holy Father is always harkening back to the day of his own spiritual awakening and conversion on the Feast of St. Matthew that found him breaking away from his friends to go to church to receive the Sacrament of Confession. It was there that he first felt called. Later, he shared that his favorite painting in Rome is Caravaggio’s Calling of Matthew, where Jesus is pointing at the tax collector. Bergoglio said that, when he looks at that painting, he feels that Jesus is pointing at him. It is not surprising that Fr. Bergoglio, when appointed bishop, chose the phrase miserando atque eligendo (“having mercy and calling me”) from the homily of the Venerable Bede on the Feast of St. Matthew, the publican converted and called to be an apostle. The experience as a seventeen-year-old was, in his words, “the astonishment of an encounter . . . of encountering someone who was waiting for you. . . . God is the one who seeks us first.” The Holy Father views morality in the context of an encounter with Christ that is “triggered by mercy,” “the privileged locus of the encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on our sins, and thus a new morality—a correspondence to mercy is born.” He views this morality as a “revolution”; it is “not a titanic effort of the will,” but simply a Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis, and Pope Francis 729 response to a surprising, unforeseeable, and “unjust mercy.” Morality is not a “never falling down,” but “an always getting up again.” Pope Francis embraces the introspection that is so central to Jesuit spirituality. The practice of the examen, mental prayer and reflection, a review of how one is living one’s vocation, was Ignatius’s plan to keep the Jesuits recollected in God—focused, despite their activist lifestyles. As novice master, Fr. Bergoglio insisted on fidelity to the practice of examen, realizing that Ignatius’s strict program of formation was to prepare men for years of self-discipline once all the props of the formation program were taken away. In keeping with his own Jesuit formation, Pope Francis is a man of discernment, and at times, that discernment frees him from the confinement of doing something in a certain way because it was always thus. There are many indications that Pope Francis is very comfortable in his own skin and does not feel constrained by practices of pontificates of the past. But to me, one of the most striking examples of this clarity of vision and confidence was the decision to celebrate his first Holy Thursday Mass as pope at the Casal del Marmo Detention Center, washing the feet of a group of prisoners. On Holy Thursday, Jesus washed the feet of the Twelve. They were shocked and unhinged by the experience. St. Peter rebelled at the thought and capitulated only when Jesus insisted. For most of us, it has become a rather stylized liturgical gesture that is but a weak reflection of what the original foot washing entailed. The newly elected Pope Francis replicated the surprise and the shock of the Apostles even as he dismayed those who preferred the stylized liturgy in a Basilica. This was not an innovation for Pope Francis, for as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he had been doing this each Holy Week. While many were surprised that the Holy Father did not opt to celebrate the Holy Thursday Mass as other popes had done, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the Holy Father was jostling our imagination because we have grown so complacent that we can no longer see beyond the familiar custom to glimpse the challenging truth. With a simple gesture, the Pope was challenging core assumptions about power, authority, and leadership. As he told the prisoners, this is a symbol; it is a sign. “Washing your feet means I am at your service,” he said. In his address to the Brazilian bishops at the 2013 celebration of 730 Cardinal Seán O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap. World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Pope Francis said: “Unless we train ministers capable of warming people’s hearts, of walking with them in the night, of dialoguing with their hopes and disappointments, of mending their brokenness, what joy can we have for our present and future journey?” Fr. Jorge Bergoglio’s former novices recount how he always insisted that the seminarians should go on the weekends to the poorest neighborhoods to give catechism classes to the children. He used to tell them that if someone could make the catechism simple enough for children to understand, that was a wise person. When the seminarians returned from the poor neighborhoods, he would always check to see if they had dusty shoes. If a seminarian did not have dusty shoes, that man had some explaining to do. This same desire to teach the young Jesuits to stay engaged with the people, to be close to the little people, is what Jesus did when he was training the apostles. Jesus took them to the temple to observe the widow putting her last penny into the collection. The Lord did not refund her money, applaud her, or give her a compliment. She was unaware that she was being observed as Jesus used her as part of his lesson plan to his seminarian apostles. He helped them to see the poor widow through his eyes. Jesus wanted his priests to see the faith and the devotion of the anawim, the poor who are rich in faith. We have much to learn from the poor. Pope Francis, in his Evangelii Gaudium (2013), reminds us that God’s heart has a special place for the poor, so much so that he himself “became poor.” The entire history of our redemption is marked by the presence of the poor. In his inaugural address at the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus used the prophecy of Isaiah to describe his own messianic mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” Jesus assured those burdened by sorrow and crushed by poverty that God has a special place for them in his heart: “Blessed are the poor, yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Pope Francis is most eloquent in his advocacy on behalf of the poor and our obligation to help them by programs of promotion and assistance, as well as by working to resolve the structural causes of poverty. However, one of Pope Francis’ most impassioned pleas on behalf of the poor concerns their pastoral care. In Evangelii Gaudium, the Holy Father writes: “I want to say with regret that the worst discrimination which the poor suffer is the lack of spiritual care. The Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis, and Pope Francis 731 great majority of the poor have a special openness to the faith; they need God and we must not fail to offer them His friendship, His blessing, His Word, the celebration of the sacraments and a journey of growth and maturity in the faith. Our preferential option for the poor must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential religious care.” Reading that passage from Evangelii Gaudium reminds me of something that happened to me years ago when I was working at the Centro Católico. There had been a terrible earthquake in Guatemala and thousands of people perished. A former priest who was working at a secular relief organization came to seek my help in contacting some remote indigenous people in Guatemala. His agency wanted to fund a project for the poorest people. I arranged for a friend to take this individual to a remote mountain village, where he made known his agency’s offer to this people. He told them to choose any one project—a school, a clinic, a well. The elders of the tribe asked for time to discuss the proposal with the members of the tribe. After their deliberations the chief returned and said to the former priest: “Sir, what we need more than anything else is new doors for our Church.” Needless to say, my friend was shocked and embarrassed. I am not sure how he negotiated that with his agency. I think he paid for the doors himself and funded some other program. The interesting thing is that the Indians, despite all their physical needs, felt that their relationship with God was their most pressing need. Pope Francis would have understood that immediately. The young Jorge Bergoglio joined the Jesuits in part out of a desire to be a missionary and go to Japan. It is hard to read Pope Francis’s challenge to go to the peripheries without recalling the letter of Francis Xavier to St. Ignatius that appears in the breviary for the feast of the great Jesuit missionary. Francis Xavier’s letter contains this passionate plea to his fellow priests: Many, many people are not becoming Christians for one reason only: There is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going around to the Universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: “What a tragedy: How many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!” I wish they 732 Cardinal Seán O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap. would work as hard at this as they do at their books and so settle their account with God for the learning and talents entrusted to them. I can imagine Pope Francis writing that. Pope Francis never got to be a missionary to Japan, but he never ceased to admire those Jesuit missionaries and others who formed the faith of the laity so well that those Christian communities in Japan survived without priests for over 250 years. In 1865, two years after Mathew Perry opened Japan to foreigners, Fr. Bernard Petitjean of the Missions Etrangères de Paris opened a Church for foreign nationals but was immediately visited by throngs of underground Catholics who had practiced their faith clandestinely. The French priest found them all baptized, catechized, and legitimately married in the Church, and all of their dead had received a Christian burial. As Pope Francis observes, “faith was kept intact by the gifts of grace that gladdened the lives of the laity, who only received baptism but then continued to live their apostolic mission.” Pope Francis, like Pope Benedict, has said that Catholicism is not a “catalogue of prohibitions.” He urges us to be positive, to emphasize the things that unite us, not the negative, the things that divide us. “You must prioritize the connection between people, the path we walk together. After that, addressing the differences becomes easier.” In Evangelii Gaudium, the Holy Father shares with us that every form of catechesis should attend to the “way of beauty,” the via pulchritudinis, showing that to follow Christ is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendor and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties (§167). He writes further: As for the moral component of catechesis, which promotes growth in fidelity to the Gospel way of life, it is helpful to stress again and again the attractiveness and the ideal of a life of wisdom, self-fulfillment and enrichment. In the light of that positive message, our rejection of the evils which endanger that life can be better understood. Rather than experts in dire predictions, dour judges bent on rooting out every threat and deviation, we should appear as joyful messengers of challenging proposals, guardians of the goodness and beauty which shine forth in a life of fidelity to the Gospel. (§168) Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis, and Pope Francis 733 A fascinating study funded by the Lilly Endowment resulted in the acronym MTD, “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” The authors of the study, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton, invented this term to describe the common religious beliefs among Americans. It is a religion that is about being nice, feeling good, and having God as some sort of a fire extinguisher—in case of emergency, break the glass and say a prayer. What is missing is the kerygma, the love of God that sent Christ into the world to die on the Cross, rise again, and accompany us until the end of time. Besides MTD, we find a compelling critique of American religion by Ross Douthat. In his provocative book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, he berates the popularity of so many brands of bad religion, from the prosperity gospel to the portrayal of God as a life coach, aberrations of religion that have bred self-righteousness, greed, and self-absorption. Pope Francis is not a proponent of MTD or the Bad Religion that has become so fashionable in our day. His Evangelii Gaudium begins, “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and minds of all who encounter Jesus.” The Pope is a true companion of Jesus, a Jesuit who puts Christ at the center of his life. At the center of the Church’s mission is the announcement of the kerygma. The kerygma is Trinitarian. The fire of the Spirit leads us to believe in Jesus Christ, who by his death and Resurrection reveals and communicates to us the Father’s infinite mercy. Pope Francis writes in Evangelii Gaudium, “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” (§164). The Document of Aparecida, much influenced by then Cardinal Bergoglio, talks about the need to form missionary disciples. The kerygma is central in this process: “the kerygma is not simply a stage, but the leitmotiv of a process that culminates in the maturity of the disciple of Jesus Christ. Without the kerygma, the other aspects of the process are condemned to sterility with hearts not truly converted to the Lord. Hence, the Church should have the kerygma present in all its actions.” In the midst of a culture that glorifies individualism and the imperial autonomous self, the Pope and Aparecida speak to us about communion: 734 Cardinal Seán O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap. There can be no Christian life except in community, in families, parishes, communities of consecrated life, base communities, other small communities and movements. Like the early Christians who met in community, the disciples take part in the life of the Church, and in the encounter with brothers and sisters, living the life of Christ in solidarity, in fraternal life. The Holy Father speaks so often about the culture of encounter and the art of accompaniment in mentoring people in the faith. His message is very different from the new-age individualism of “I’m very spiritual but not very religious” attitude that thrives in today’s climate. In a world that is so often polarized and divided, Pope Francis’s message has brought hope into people’s lives and enticed many to look at the Church again. The field hospital imagery is more compelling than that of the museum or the concert hall. Most Catholics have felt energized by the focus on God’s love and mercy and on the clarion call to embody the ideals of the Church’s social Gospel in our relations with others, especially the most vulnerable and forgotten. The Holy Father has made us more aware of Lazarus, covered with sores, who is on our doorstep suffering alone while we are absorbed in our pursuit of entertainment and creature comforts in a globalization of indifference. Evangelii Gaudium reminds us: “Sometimes we lose our enthusiasm for mission because we forget that the Gospel responds to our deepest needs, since we were created for what the Gospel offers us: friendship with Jesus and love of our brothers and sisters” (§265) Pope Francis fittingly celebrated his inaugural Mass on the feast of St. Joseph. He has St. Joseph’s symbol on his coat of arms and, like Pope John, added Joseph to the canon of the Mass. In the homily at that inaugural Mass, Pope Francis urged us to take care of each other, to show a little tenerezza, tenderness, and to protect God’s gifts. One of God’s greatest gifts to the Church is this Jesuit Pope who is like St. Ignatius who wanted to be like St. Francis of Assisi. Pope Francis is helping the whole world to rediscover the “Joy of the N&V Gospel.” And all this Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 735–744735 Reflections of a Green Thomist on Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ John Cuddeback Christendom College Front Royal, Virginia My intention here is to reflect on a few themes in Pope Francis’s 2015 Laudato Si’ that strike me as foundationally important for our age. I am a self-proclaimed “Green Thomist.” What I mean by this is that I am a disciple of Thomas Aquinas and I have a particular interest in applying sound philosophical and theological principles to pressing issues of the environment, or more precisely of human stewardship of creation. I also have a conviction, rooted in what I take to be fundamental principles of Aquinas’s moral theory, that man’s relationship with the natural world around him (we could call it our common home) bears more serious moral reflection than it commonly receives from Catholic thinkers. I will not address how this encyclical should be understood in light of the tradition of social teaching of the Catholic Church. I will refrain from addressing controversial aspects of the encyclical such as the fittingness of the Pope’s invoking particular scientific positions on global warming and other environmental issues or the fittingness of various specific suggestions at the political or macro-economic level. As a disciple of St. Thomas, I approach the encyclical with, among others, especially two convictions that I take as given. First, the natural world is a primordial avenue of God’s communication to man, conveying fundamental truths of who God is, who we are, and how we should live. And second, the human relation to the world that can be captured by the term “steward” is not only a significant aspect 736 John Cuddeback of the human vocation, but also an archetype of that vocation.1 In short, standing in right relation to the natural world 2 is in no sense a peripheral moral issue. In this article I have chosen to highlight a few points from the encyclical that strike me as insights worthy of special notice. I will divide these into two parts: first, speculative truths about God, creation, and human vocation, and second, practical points that indicate a need to change our lives. Under the former, I include God as father and owner, man as instrument, and economics as intrinsically moral, and under the latter, our personal responsibility in relation to the environment and meaning and implications of the “technocratic paradigm.” Speculative Truths about God, Creation, and Human Vocation Chapter 2, “The Gospel of Creation,” gives the key theoretical underpinning of the encyclical, and in its second section, titled “The Wisdom of the Biblical Accounts,” Francis gives what I take to be the lynch pin of his overall approach. The final paragraph reads: A spirituality which forgets God as all-powerful and Creator is not acceptable. That is how we end up worshipping earthly powers, or ourselves usurping the place of God, even to the point of claiming unlimited right to trample his creation underfoot. The best way to restore men and women to their rightful place, putting an end to their claim to absolute dominion over the earth, is to speak once more of the figure of a Father who creates and who alone owns the world. Otherwise, By “steward” I mean a person who voluntarily, indeed lovingly, lives out and carries out an ordering that he has received from another who can be called “the master.” 2 Regarding terminology, in §76, Francis notes: “In the Judeao-Christian tradition, the word ‘creation’ has a broader meaning than ‘nature,’ for it has to do with God’s loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance. Nature is usually seen as a system which can be studied, understood and controlled, whereas creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand of the Father of all, and as a reality illuminated by the love which calls us together into universal communion.” In the present article, nevertheless, I use the terms “natural world” and “creation” interchangeably. The notion of nature in Aquinas, while not being equivalent to the notion of creation, is in no way contrary to it, not having the Cartesian connotations the term has come to have in modern usage. 1 Reflections on Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ 737 human beings will always try to impose their own laws and interests on reality. (§75) A few pages later in this chapter we find: The created things of this world are not free of ownership: “For they are yours, O Lord, who love the living” (Wis 11:26). This is the basis of our conviction that, as part of the universe, called into being by one Father, all of us are linked by unseen bonds and together form a kind of universal family. (§89) In both of these texts, Francis emphasizes God as father and as owner. The personal being who is creator of the world at once has absolute authority (and sovereignty or lordship) and also exercises it for our good as loving father. The notion of “owner” points to the unique, primordial prerogative of the creator, while the notion of “father” especially conveys that the creator rules out of love, for the good of the governed.3 I find it significant that, while Francis did not lead with these notions in opening the encyclical, he here unequivocally puts them forward as essential to his project of calling mankind back to its proper relation to the created world. The proper relation to the created world is rooted in the recognition that there is a naturallygiven plan that governs all creation and that likewise demands to govern our actions. A section of the third chapter is titled “The Crisis and Effects of Modern Anthropocentrism.” Here (§115), Francis quotes St. John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus (1991; hereafter, CA) to the effect of connecting two things: respect for God’s plan for the natural world and respect for God’s plan for human nature.4 He references it again two paragraphs later: Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our Aquinas writes on fatherhood: “The father who begets rules over his sons because of love”; see Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics 1.10, trans. R. Regan (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007), 70. 4 CA, §38: “Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original purpose for which it was given, but, man too is God’s gift to man. He must therefore respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed.” 3 738 John Cuddeback life begin to crumble, for “instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature” [CA, §37]. (§117) Francis seems especially intent on emphasizing that, in our relationship with the natural world around us, as in the moral life in general, man has received from God the gift of an order that should govern all our actions. In this last quotation of John Paul II, we see man as a “cooperator” with God. The understanding of God as father and owner naturally fits with the evocative notion of man as God’s instrument. In the prologue of Laudato Si’, Francis calls upon all to see themselves “as instruments of God for the care of creation” (§14). In the first chapter, he returns to this notion in the context of pointing to how we have mistreated our common home: “Yet we are called to be instruments of God our Father, so that our planet might be what he desired when he created it” (§53). Francis again invokes the notion of “instrument” in chapter 3 when speaking of the value of human labor: Developing the created world in a prudent way is the best way of caring for it, as this means that we ourselves become the instrument used by God to bring out the potential which he himself inscribed in things. (§124) The notion of instrument shows up often in the works of Aquinas. The signal feature of an instrument is that the effect of its causality is first intended by some other, principal cause. In other words, the instrument works for an end because another cause intends that end. To refer, then, to men as “instruments of God in the care of creation” is a clear way for Francis to signal again that the human vocation is an exercise in acting out a given teleology. I want to add that, even if Francis does not make this next point explicitly, it seems that he implies it. Essential to understanding man as the instrument of God is the notion that, in our being his instrument, we become what God calls us to be as agents made in his image and likeness. And in this way, in turn, we see the natural world as itself God’s instrument for our perfection. That is, in our very taking care of creation, we are perfected according to God’s design. Reflections on Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ 739 My third point under the heading of speculative truths, one intimately connected to the first two points, concerns the nature of economic activity. For Francis, stewardship of the natural world is not an external concern imposed as a kind of limiting factor on the realm of economic activity. Rather, economic activity is the natural context for being God’s instrument in caring for the world. And it is precisely for this reason that economic activity must be understood as formed and normed from the inside by the teleological ordering of the creator, God. Economic activity properly understood is the production of wealth to fulfill human needs, first of all in and through actions that express a grateful, receptive, and stewarding stance toward the natural world.5 Perhaps nothing makes this clearer than the notion of the universal destination of material goods. Francis gives special emphasis to this principle, quoting John Paul II, who calls it “the first principle of the whole ethical and social order.”6 Francis proceeds to unpack this point: The Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property. Saint John Paul II forcefully reaffirmed this teaching, stating that “God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favouring anyone” [CA, §31]. These are strong words. He noted that “a type of development which did not respect and promote human rights—personal and social, economic and political, including the rights of nations and peoples—would not really be worthy of man”[Solicitudo Rei Socialis, §33]. He clearly explained that “the Church does indeed defend the legitimate right to private property, but she also teaches no less clearly that there is always a social mortgage on all private property, in order that goods may serve the general purpose that God gave them.” (§93) Aquinas, following Aristotle, emphasizes a natural teleological ordering in man’s acquisition of food, perhaps the most basic of economic activities: “But nature neither leaves anything incomplete nor does anything in vain. Therefore, it is clear that nature made animals and plants for the sustenance of human beings. But when a person acquires what nature made for the person, the acquisition is natural. Therefore, the acquisition by which one acquires such things as belong to the necessities of life is natural” (Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics 1.6.8, p. 47). 6 §93, quoting Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (1981), §19. 5 740 John Cuddeback Here we see the root connection between economic activity and stewardship of the natural world. The very basis of material goods being my own is that I am called to use them for the common good. In other words, my use of the goods of the earth is an intrinsically moral affair in which I am called to work for the fulfillment of human needs. Clearly, using creation in such a way as to render it most able to serve my needs and those of others, today and in future generations, is the heart of the economic project.7 True economics,8 then, is intrinsically environmental- and stewardship-minded. And likewise, true environmentalism has its natural locus in economic activity. Changing Our Lives This second section of my reflections will focus briefly on a couple of ways in which Laudato Si’ offers very practical direction for our lives. I begin with what I take to be the most foundational and convicting point, and perhaps the most often missed. I need to see myself as failing to stand in right relation to creation and how, to this extent, I have a part in the community’s failure to steward creation.9 We would all do well to take the following statements from the encyclical as applying, at least to some extent, to ourselves: This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. (§2) We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters. (§2) Pope Benedict asked us to recognize that the natural environment has been gravely damaged by our irresponsible behavior. (§6) 7 8 9 Sometimes conceptions of a “free” market, in practice if not in theory, seem to include in the notion of “freedom” a denial of the intrinsic moral ordination of economic activity. It seems to me that Francis rightly holds that our failure to stand in right relation to the created world is, at its root, connected to our failure to understand the true nature of economics: “We fail to see the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth” (§109; emphasis added). Regardless of the causal connection between human actions and global warming, the more fundamental and indisputable point is that our (voluntary) failures have had significant adverse effects on creation. Reflections on Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ 741 A minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized. (§50) People may well have growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. (§55) In these reflections, I have refrained from joining the debate on the fittingness (including the timing) of an encyclical on the “environment.” Nonetheless, I will state my conviction that such discussions should not avert our attention from the God-given opportunity this encyclical occasions for self-examination of our relation to creation. As Francis has asserted, “living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience” (§217). Francis’s notion of the “technocratic paradigm,” the focus of his third chapter, provides a particularly powerful avenue for self-examination. Central to his articulation of the nature of this paradigm is his assertion of the power of technological devices to influence the character of human life: We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities. . . . Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build. (§107) The technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic. (§108) Francis uses the thought of Romano Guardini to flesh-out what he means by the internal logic of the technological paradigm: Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology “know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race,” that “in the most 742 John Cuddeback radical sense of the term power is its motive—a lordship over all.” (§108) Earlier he notes, “This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object” (§106). Francis’s reasoning here invites us to see something to which strong cultural forces tend to blind us: our use of technology has deeper implications than we have realized. The words quoted above from §107 are dramatic. Decisions that seem purely instrumental—such as what technologies we will use in our homes or in our work—in reality affect the kind of life we will live and the kind of society we will have. Despite the force of these words, many of us in advanced countries have found ourselves responding to this assertion with a shrug. This point is difficult to grasp and to articulate. It is perhaps even more difficult to apply in our daily lives. But such difficulties do not excuse us from attempting to do so. It seems that Francis’s key move is to connect the use of technology and an assertion of power. The point is not that every use of technology is simply an assertion of power. But technology as such is about power. Thus, when not intentionally integrated into the right order of human ends, the use of technology will tend, according to its own internal logic, toward domination of something. When Francis refers to the technological paradigm as problematic, he is not asserting that technology is intrinsically disordered. What is disordered is when the internal logic of technology becomes the logic that governs the use of technology. Put otherwise, when the use of technology is not governed by a clear conception and intention of the true human good, then that use will tend toward disorder. It will tend toward the sheer exercise of power in whatever domain it is utilized. The “technological paradigm,” then, is Francis’s name for the problem that, having lost sight of the true human good offered to us as a gift from a loving Father, modern man has sought to take rather than to receive, to assert power rather than to receive and steward a gift.10 Our obsession with technology is the incarnation of this anti-stewardship. This point really hits the mark in an encyclical concerning the right relation of man to the created world, and it connects back to the speculative truths we have considered in the first part of this arti10 See §203: “We have too many means and only a few insubstantial ends.” Reflections on Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ 743 cle. Our bodily needs are a gift, and material creation is a gift.11 Our very calling to be stewards of a teleological, moral order is a gift. The technological paradigm cuts at the very root of our ability to become ourselves—to become fully human. For, contrary to the attitude of grateful reception of these gifts, it cultivates an attitude of power and domination.12 It promotes man as the measure of all things. As regards how to apply this point to our lives, Francis is well aware that individuals and communities will each have to discern the path of renewal. We all “have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology” (§112), but we are going to have to take specific steps to do so.13 Some people, he relates, have made strides in liberating themselves from the technocratic paradigm, opting “for a non-consumerist model of life, recreation, and community” (§12). In choosing what steps to take, we should remember that the heart of Francis’s concern about the technocratic paradigm is its power to “shape” and “condition” human life, especially by mis-shaping our internal dispositions. Perhaps the most important notion of the encyclical is that of ecological conversion, a conversion closely linked with the deepest Christian meaning of conversion. Francis introduces the notion of ecological conversion by quoting Benedict Pope XVI: “The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.” For this reason, the ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion. It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus 11 12 13 See §155: “The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation.” Francis distinguishes domination from proper dominion: “Instead, our ‘dominion’ over the universe should be understood more properly in the sense of responsible stewardship” (§116). A steward is always one who first of all receives, and his dominion is exercised in looking to the common good. One who seeks power for its own sake pretends not to receive, and he asserts a self-centered domination. See §111: “There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational program, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm.” 744 John Cuddeback become inconsistent. So what they all need is an “ecological conversion,” whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. (§217) Francis astutely points to two kinds of Christians who might be resistant to the call to rectify their relationship to the natural world. He invites them to an ecological conversion, a setting aright of their relationship with the created world. He invites them to see this conversion as a facet of the human person’s right relationship with N&V Jesus Christ. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 745–756745 Laudato Si’ and the Rise of Green Thomism Christopher J. Thompson Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity St. Paul, Minnesota I L audato S i ’ (2015) is an extraordinary encyclical.1 Through it, the Holy Father teaches, in a manner not previously specified, a central thesis of the Christian faith: because everything is created by our loving Father, we inhabit an earth that we share with his creatures. Thus, the gift of this beautiful earth is not to be ignored or regretted; this world is, rather, the central setting in which the Christian life is to be attentively lived and joyfully pursued. The putative subject matter of Laudato Si’ is the ecological concerns that have emerged at the conclusion of the twentieth century as a result of the practical abuses consonant with industrialization and modern development. But Lauadato Si’ is much more than a meditation taking aim at environmental practices and policies. It is a magisterial call to recover creation itself and, in recovering creation, to discover the moral fabric that binds us to ourselves, each other, each creature, and the Creator. Indeed, there is scarcely an aspect of contemporary life that is not addressed in some fashion in the encyclical. Its breadth, however, does not suggest anything trivial. Instead, it affirms the foundational character of the discussion the Holy Father seeks to undertake. 1 Portions of this essay are taken from my “The Treasure of Laudato Si’,” Principles: A Publication of Christendom College 1, no. 3 (2015): 1–7. Hereafter, section (§) numbers given in parentheses with no further identification are from this encyclical and, when the encyclical must be differentiated from other sources in the same citation, the abbreviation “LS” will be used. 746 Christopher J. Thompson Taken as a set of practical observations in isolation from the broader theological implications, Laudato Si’ does not constitute an extraordinary moment. It merely re-iterates some of the conclusions and findings of both the scientific and ethical communities. And yet, when read against the broader claims of theological reasoning, Laudato Si’ marks the occasion of historic doctrinal development. Simply stated, the Pope’s call for a comprehensive “integral ecology” is essentially a call to confirm a comprehensive vision of the cosmos and our vocation within it. It is a mandate for the natural law tradition in the twenty-first century and beyond—not the rarified, conceptualist accounts one sometimes encounters in the scholarship of the post-modern milieu,2 but the fully enfleshed, perennial articulation that sees the spontaneous inclinatio of human aspirations within the movement of a universal trahi ad deo expressed in the drama of every creature’s living, where God is both inspiration and end of the entire cosmos. In other words, Laudato Si’ is the manifesto for “Green Thomism.”3 The Holy Father’s repeated claims that “everything is connected” and that no creature is, therefore, superfluous are not mere sentimental, nostalgic, or poetic fancy; his intention is to declare a fundamental doctrinal claim: “Nature is nothing other than a certain kind of art, namely God’s art, impressed upon things, whereby those things are moved to a determinate end” (§80).4 For, God is the Creator of all things, and thus, “each creature has its own purpose” (§84). Moreover, “the entire material universe speaks of God’s love; . . . the universe as a whole, in all its manifold relationships, shows forth the inexhaustible riches of God” (§86). Laudato Si’ consistently affirms a theology of “nature” as a divinely arranged, ordered complex of organic wholes, each with its own note of intelligence, together forming a symphony of meaning in 2 3 4 For an excellent account of various approaches to the meaning and significance of “nature” in natural law ethics, see Matthew Levering, Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Teleological Approach (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). For an account of the importance of Thomism for developing an integral ecology, see the collection of essays derived from a 2009 symposium entitled “Renewing the Face of the Earth: The Church and the Order of Creation,” hosted by The Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity, published in Nova et Vetera 10, no. 1 (2012): 61–278. Citing St. Thomas Aquinas, In octo libros physicorum Aristotelis expositio, bk. 2, lec. 14. Laudato Si’ and the Rise of Green Thomism 747 motion—a theology that has been honed over the centuries through the Church’s repeated engagement with its central questions. Whether in its encounter with the Manichaeism of the fourth century, the Albigensians of the thirteenth, or the reductive materialists of the twenty-first, the Church’s consistent witness has been on behalf of the order, beauty, and goodness of creation.5 Francis’s encyclopedic appeal to witnesses from the ancient tradition (as well as more recent bishops’ statements from around the globe) demonstrates that Laudato Si’ is the magisterial expression of that core conviction in the twenty-first century. Its central significance lies in the clear affirmation that the native habitat of the human person as a spiritual creature is precisely this material cosmos of organic beings. The human person, whose dignity lies within a spiritual destiny, is nevertheless a creature of this ordered earth—a living, organic being among other organic beings whose immortal soul by nature transcends the cosmos and yet, by grace, permeates it with eternal significance. Laudato Si’ poses a fundamental question to every citizen of the globe: how do you and I, as human beings, as sons and daughters of the Father, flourish within this divinely ordered cosmos? As such, one can read the document as an extended meditation upon and application of the natural law, for natural law is nothing other than those principles of moral discernment that emerge from the affirmation that we are embodied rational creatures participating in a divinely ordered reality, otherwise known as the “eternal law.”6 Francis’s overall aim is to make relevant to twenty-first century audiences the moral imperatives that follow upon the natural inclinations that all of us pursue as embodied creatures drawn to flourishing by the call of a loving Father. That the phrase “natural law” itself is absent from the document is not determinative, for the nomenclature surrounding natural law ethics in the modern academy has increasingly been cast as an ethic set within a cosmos devoid of a natural teleology. Francis himself alludes to the shifting valuation of “nature” in contemporary culture (§86). In academic circles specifically, the characterization of our participation in the ordered cosmos has been critiqued as: concep5 6 For a survey of Western theological engagement with such related issues, see Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Time to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST) I-II, q. 91, a. 2. 748 Christopher J. Thompson tualist, idealist, epistemic, or logicist.7 By recovering natural law in substance without calling for it explicitly by name, the Holy Father assiduously avoids the predicted paroxysms the language evokes in the contemporary landscape of pundits. Why barter your influence for a phrase when you can wield it on other, less volatile, terms? Nonetheless, natural law provides the theological warrant for Laudato Si’ because, as the International Theological Commission already stated in 2009, “there cannot be an adequate response to the complex questions of ecology except within the framework of a deeper understanding of the natural law, which places value on the connection between the human person, society, culture, and the equilibrium of the bio-physical sphere in which the human person is incarnate.”8 Or as the Dominican scholar Mislaw Krapiec, O.P., tells us, the “affirmation or a transgression of the Eternal Divine Law does not take place in an abstraction nor directly in relation to God Himself. Rather, it takes place through the composition of things . . . with which we either do or do not reckon in our conduct.”9 In other words, to live out the principles of the natural law requires more than meeting some epistemic condition of internal coherence within one’s own self-directing principles. Rather, precisely because of the kind of creatures we are (as embodied, organic beings inhabiting a cosmos) our enactment of the natural law is inescapably yoked to our prior relationship with the given order of creatures. Francis weaves this moral and organic character of the natural law into a singular insight of a participated ethics. He says: Neglecting to monitor the harm done to nature and the environmental impact of our decisions is only the most striking sign of a disregard for the message contained in the structures of nature itself. When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality 7 8 9 See, for example, Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010). See also, William C. French, “Natural Law and Ecological Responsibility: Drawing upon the Thomistic Tradition,” University of St. Thomas Law Journal 5, no. 1 (2008): 39. International Theological Commission, In Search of a Universal Ethic: A New Look at the Natural Law (2009; hereafter, ITC), §82. Mieczyław A. Krąpiec, O.P., I—Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology, trans. Marie Lescoe, Andrew Woznicki, Theresa Sandok, et al. (New Britain, CT: Mariel Publications, 1983), 229–30 (emphasis added). Laudato Si’ and the Rise of Green Thomism 749 the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities—to offer just a few examples—it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected. Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble. (§117) Our rational participation in the eternal law unfolds in a distinctively human manner—namely, as an embodied rational creature of the earth. And thus our participation, our inclinations, are inescapably woven within the fabric of relations that makes our living human. The natural law, at its core, asks the question of how I as an organic, albeit rational, being flourish within this theonomic cosmos. Laudato Si’ permanently disowns Cartesian nostalgia and delivers the final eulogy on such modern predilections. “An inadequate presentation of Christian anthropology,” it says, “gave rise to a wrong understanding of the relationship between human beings and the world” (§116). Francis demands, instead, that we extend the analysis of human flourishing to include the participation of other embodied creatures within the divinely arranged cosmos. “Often, what was handed on,” he says, “was a Promethean vision of mastery over the world, which gave the impression that the protection of nature was something that only the faint-hearted cared about. Instead, our ‘dominion’ over the universe should be understood more properly in the sense of responsible stewardship” (ibid.). The genus animalia cannot be eclipsed by an overly zealous focus upon the rationis—lest the specific difference overwhelm the species; lest the cogito engulf the habito. What is integral ecology? It is the intentional practice of those principles of human flourishing that emerge from our reasonable pursuit of a hierarchy of goods to which we are spontaneously inclined, a pursuit that we enact alongside every other creature of the universe, a pursuit that is ordered toward goods that are perfective of our status as creatures within a common home. This universal attraction to the love of God, Francis affirms, “is the basis of our conviction that, as part of the universe, called into being by one Father, all of us are linked by unseen bonds and together form a kind of universal family, a sublime communion which fills us with a sacred, affectionate and humble respect” (§89). Christopher J. Thompson 750 II Francis does more than simply restore the natural law; the single greatest achievement of the document lies in his effort to develop it both extensively and intensively. Extensively, he expands the circle of ethical demands to include those creatures of our natural environment that share in the universal call to wholeness. In much the same way as Aldo Leopold attempted nearly fifty years ago in his Sand County Almanac, Francis demands that we now include the biotic community in our vision of bioethical considerations. Intensively, Francis focuses our moral evaluation on the embodied character of our own unique natural human flourishing. Habituated as we are to speaking of our human dignity in terms of our immortal soul, we can sometimes forget the “bottom half ” of the equation: that the human soul belongs to a human body; that there is therefore no “I” that is not “me;”10 that I am someone who is inescapably somewhere. There is always a “place” in the landscape of faith, a location, an environment in which ensouled soil, or soiled soul, seeks perfection. Whether we till the soil directly or live off the labor of those who do, each one of us reveals the dust from whence we came. To till it and to keep it is thus part of our pledge to God and each other. In sum, “there can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology” (§118). One might add to these remarks, “and vice-versa.” For, the very conditions that constitute an adequate anthropology precisely include a consideration of the ecological conditions in which the “anthropos” flourishes. It is not irrelevant to my argument that the International Theological Commission, precisely in its efforts to provide a robust account of the importance of natural law ethics, captures the essential thrust of Laudato Si’ when it states: An integral ecology must promote what is specifically human, all the while valuing the world of nature in its physical and biological integrity. In fact, even if man, as a moral being who searches for the ultimate truth and the ultimate good, transcends his own immediate environment, he does so by accepting the special mission of keeping watch over the natural world, living in harmony with it, and defending vital values without which neither human life nor the biosphere of this planet can be maintained (cf. Gen 2:15). This integral ecology summons every human being and every community to a new 10 ST I, q. 75, a. 4. Laudato Si’ and the Rise of Green Thomism 751 responsibility. It is inseparable from a global political orientation respectful of the requirements of the natural law.11 What for centuries was devolving as merely an option for Christian living (and in many instances ignored entirely) has now been declared an essential facet of the Christian way. Creatures matter because their Creator matters. By retrieving natura from the brink of ethical oblivion, “integral ecology” has officially been declared a fitting species of moral theology. No longer the muse of transcendental whimsy, “something only the faint-hearted cared about,” or the blunt instrument of bourgeois bureaucrats, ecology—the scientia of our common home—has been redeemed and declared “integral” by the gospel of creation. Some may think it sufficient simply to affirm the union of the body-soul composite as the shibboleth of Thomistic anthropology. It is not. For, while it may be true that the human soul is apt for the body, it is essential to affirm that the composite is apt for the universe, that phantasmagoria of intelligible objects, any one of which is the proper object of human intellection. The body is for the sake of the soul; this is true enough. But its powers are made fecund not on account of the body alone, but on account of the presence of a sensible object. Brains may flourish in a vat; Thomists cannot.12 Their native habitat is the glorious cosmos of intelligible objects whose esse is freely given by God in all manner of flora and fauna. Notwithstanding the dignity of the human being as the imago dei, the human person nonetheless occupies the lowest order of intellectual creatures, since the human being is utterly dependent upon organic substances in order to engage in any intellectual acts. Thomas’s portrait of the person is premised upon the notion that human knowing is dependent upon things, things already thick with meaning, immersed in light, and pregnant with intelligence. Moreover, the disruption of original sin does not penetrate to the orders of lower creation. The natures of animals, Thomas says explicitly, were not changed by man’s sin (ST I, q. 96, a.1). Their habits of 11 12 ITC, §82. Note the use of “integral ecology.” See Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 4: “Descartes was asking for absolute certainty from a brain-in-a-vat, a certainty that was not needed when the brain (or the mind) was firmly attached to its body and the body thoroughly involved in its normal ecology.” 752 Christopher J. Thompson being are precisely now what they would have been prior to the fall; for it is only the intellectual creatures (the angels and humans) who are directly caught up in the drama of sin. It is not unfair to suggest here that Thomas’s entire treatment of the praeternatural gifts is due, in part, to his indefatigable defense of the gift that is lower creation. In contrast to our checkered history, each creature of lower creation, Thomas says, bears the vestigia dei, indeed the vestigia Trinitate (ST I, q. 45, a. 7; LS, §237), and, taken as a whole, the lower creation manifests the divine goodness more perfectly (ST I, q. 47, a. 1; LS, §86). Creatures can lead us to contemplate God (ST I, q. 65, a. 1, ad 3), and precisely by their exercise of hope, they give witness to the Divine Intellect at work (ST I-II, q. 40, a. 3). Such themes run throughout both St. Thomas and Laudato Si’. This thesis that the integrity of lower creation remains intact throughout the drama of our salvation history is one of the most important aspects of our Catholic theological tradition. It nonetheless is becoming increasingly beclouded in Catholic intellectual circles. It is an historic achievement of Laudato Si’ that Francis has brought us back from the brink. III The stakes could not be higher. In this age of technocratic eros, the new evangelization of culture will come to nothing if it does not include the unequivocal affirmation of the splendor of creation upon which authentic Christian culture depends. For Christianity is not a philosophy, a set of abstractions nurtured in the labyrinthine ways of one’s own mind. It is not the insights of an ego marooned on an island of preoccupation. Nor, finally, is it a mere political agenda woven in the fabric of a people united to a cause. Christianity is, rather, the extraordinary invitation of friendship from one embodied person to another, a friendship between the Logos of the world, enfleshed in Jesus Christ, and every human person enfleshed in the likes of you and me. Christ, the Logos made flesh, is the one through whom all things are made. Visible in the person of Jesus Christ, one and the same Logos remains the invisible source of all creation. No Catholic can be indifferent to our created universe because we are not indifferent to the Word of whom it speaks (§83). Announcing this “gospel of creation,” the Church is that Lumen Gentium, a light to peoples who are currently enamored of the environmental movement. At its best, the movement is a revolt of Laudato Si’ and the Rise of Green Thomism 753 conscience among those generations of post-modernity who have sensed that something is deeply flawed in our stance before the natural order, that our habit of treating creatures as a raw datum of purposeless stuff is not consonant with reality. Green Thomists seek to accompany the culture at a moment of self-transcendence, much the same way as Francis invites the world, through Laudato Si’, into a deeper encounter with Christ. But our age is also one of contradiction: while we may be attuned to the beauty of creation, we remain deaf to its demands, at one moment celebrating its order and at another declaring its irrelevance. Laudato Si’ is the anthem of the new evangelization and the culture of life to which it gives birth. The heart of liberty, Francis asserts, lies not in proclaiming one’s autonomy from the natural bonds of being, but rather in offering one’s freedom as a gift to the Father, the Creator of all life—my life, your life, their lives. If we could but for a moment have the courage to break the spell of our pathological ingratitude for the setting in which we live and move and have our being, we might glimpse the joy that lies waiting for us and summon a vision of authentic liberty that is more than mere license. Laudato Si’ is the antidote to the ennui of the age, a balm in this era of ontic resentment. It would be a colossal misunderstanding, however, to hear in my remarks an indictment only of the “left’s” inability to appreciate the meaning of creation and its implications for the moral life. That the liberal agenda of the sexual revolutionaries consists in a total resentment of nature seems clear enough. What has been far less clear, and thus the reason for Laudato Si’, is how that same light of creation itself has become increasingly beclouded in virtually every sector of modern life. We have become a somnambulant Church; Francis is telling us to wake up. Take, for example, just one of the central achievements of civilization: agriculture. For centuries, we understood its tasks as a kind of ars cooperativa, a cooperative art, because its achievements are yoked to the intelligible forces at work in creation itself. Agriculture is a unique human enterprise, for it is through this labor, perhaps more than any other, that one learns of the grammar of the Creator. As the substantial union of soil and soul, each human person is inescapably bound to the land from which we emerge and upon which we depend. But what seems self-evident to most of us after a moment of reflection nonetheless seems to have eluded the attention of Catholic higher education. What else but the siren effects of the 754 Christopher J. Thompson technocratic paradigm can account for the fact that, of the 244 Catholic institutions of higher learning in the United States, not a single one offers a program of study in agriculture? It would take us too far afield to investigate what may account for the collective amnesia,13 but the fact that our food is prepared in collaboration with the creatures of the earth appears not to have registered among the Catholic intelligentsia. Laudato Si’ declares that this cultured disinterest is now culpable ignorance. But it is not just agriculture that is called out for renewal. Rediscovering the gift of creation may allow the Church’s anthropology to take root once again in its native soil—namely, cosmology—and help us overcome the temptations to shackle the human person within the confines of a subjectivity or to disperse the person into a cloud of undifferentiated social awareness. The development of an “integral ecology” will not be achieved simply by repeating the formulas about the “dignity of the human person” or the “social nature of the Church.” For, no human being contemplates the good in a vacuum. Rather, the native habitat of the human person as an embodied, social creature is this blessed material cosmos of created natures. Laudato Si’ draws from the aquifer of a realist metaphysics and natural philosophy of being that provides, among other things, a vision of an ordered universe utterly dependent upon a provident God whose causality extends to the operations of individuals—their coherence as well as their purpose. Some may accuse me of special pleading by appealing to ossified formulas from by-gone days in order to address more contemporary concerns. But I do question why we persistently speak of “climate change” and “the environment” but seldom about “climates changing” and “environments.” The consistent use of the singular, collective noun betrays the fact that what is at stake is not a mere practical inquiry, the solutions of which are as varied as their circumstances, but a speculative one. This is not a debate about the care of nature; this is a debate about the nature of nature, about whether it is a gift to be revered or a problem to be overcome, and about whether we are at ease in our role as stewards or determined to become the masters of the universe. 13 See my “In the Temple of Creation: American Agriculture Fifty Years after Mater et Magistra” (http://dottrinasocialedellachiesa.net/wp-content/ uploads/2011/05/Thompson.pdf). Laudato Si’ and the Rise of Green Thomism 755 In contrast to the posture of humility Francis calls for is the “technocratic paradigm” of the one who exalts the concept of the subject and, “using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object” (§106). One recalls the image of the Kantian man as Iris Murdoch once described him: “He is the offspring of the age of science, confidently rational and yet increasingly aware of his alienation from the material universe which his discoveries reveal.” She poignantly concludes: “In fact Kant’s man had already received a glorious incarnation nearly a century earlier in the work of Milton: his proper name is Lucifer.”14 Defenders of the status quo—and they are legion—rebuke the Holy Father for his Luddite proclivities. It is fair to recognize that debates about technology are necessary when honest. But Francis is simply asserting that “technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups” (§107). It was not too long ago that “virtual reality” was a contradiction in terms, the “web” was nature’s way of ensnaring the unaware, and a “cell” was a small room apt for quiet contemplation. Francis’s recovery of the “joyful mystery of creation” may also supply the much-needed catalyst for the further development of the theology of the body to blossom into a full-fledged theology of embodiment. We need a theology of the body from the skin outward, an account of an enfleshed, organic creature among organic creatures, a theological anthropology in which the body is not only the medium by which the person expresses a gift of self but also the welcoming threshold through which one receives the originative gift of being in all its splendor. Aligned with the trajectory of Humanae Vitae, Pope Francis’s defense of omnis vita is a brilliant instance of doctrinal development. It means that a new kind of ecological casuistry in which the creature is granted standing will be necessary in order to guide consciences in matters of the prudential use of things. Will proportionalist moral reasoning, once jettisoned to the margins of responsible moral analysis, be perhaps poised to make a comeback under a different guise? As criteria for assessing intrinsically evil acts concerning human life and related matters, the method was declared out of 14 Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledege & Kegan Paul, 1970), 80. 756 Christopher J. Thompson bounds in Veritatis Splendor. As a method for assessing the prudential use of creatures and created goods, it is likely to experience a renewal. Practicing integral ecology will demand a habit of mind that takes into consideration that, to determine whether an action pertaining to lower creation is permissible, “we must look not to the action alone, but to the action in its total context,” a context that now includes the impact of one’s decisions for the environment.15 As a general rule, any use or modification of a creature must be undertaken only in deliberate deference to the order and wisdom of creation, of which it is a part, with care and prudent circumspection, when proportionate goods are clearly identified and reasonably expected and all other reasonable alternatives have been considered, including the modification of one’s lifestyle. Laudato Si’ is an extraordinary achievement and has the capacity to inspire in the twenty-first century what the mendicants inspired in the twelfth. That I appeal to St. Thomas and not so much to St. Francis as the hermeneutic of continuity in this essay is not intended in any exclusive sense. It is merely to affirm what has transpired through the ages: the poet of Laudato Si’ inspires us to action and the poet of Pange Lingua illumines the way. Whatever the legacy invoked, one N&V can count on Green Thomists to sing as they go. Philip Keane, S.S., Sexual Morality: A Catholic Perspective (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), 46. 15 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 757–770757 An Introductory Survey of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 2014 Document: The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture Mark Reasoner Marian University Indianapolis, Indiana The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture: The Word That Comes from God and Speaks of God for the Salvation of the World presents itself as a follow-up to Benedict XVI’s call in Verbum Domini, §19, for more study regarding the inspiration and truth of Scripture. The Commission makes it clear that their document is not an official declaration of the Church’s magisterium on Scripture, nor does it intend to set forth a complete doctrine regarding inspiration and the truth of Scripture. Paragraph 3 describes how the document delivers on its title: it will consider God’s Word both in regard to its origin from God and in regard to what it says about God. In this same paragraph it describes the Bible’s “primary and central theme: God himself and salvation” (xx).1 The document comes in three parts: part 1 concerns the “inspiration of Sacred Scripture,” including its origin from God; part 2 In this article, paragraph numbers are identified either with the word “paragraph” or the symbol §. Numbers in parentheses unaccompanied by those markers represent page numbers in the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture:The Word That Comes from God and Speaks of God for the Salvation of the World, trans.Thomas Esposito, O.Cist., and Stephen Gregg, O.Cist. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014). Paragraph numbers and page numbers may also appear within the same parentheses or in notes, in that order and separated by a semicolon. 1 758 Mark Reasoner concerns “the message about God and his project of salvation”; and part 3 concerns “some challenges that arise from the Bible itself, because of certain aspects that appear to contradict its quality of being the Word of God” (§4; xxi). These challenges include historical discrepancies and a significant amount of violence in Scripture’s contents. Within paragraph 6, at the beginning of section 1.2 of the “Introduction,” we read that the books of the Bible are inspired, and Dei Verbum is cited to support this: We have seen that God is the only author of revelation and that the books of Sacred Scripture, which serve for the transmission of divine revelation, are inspired by him. God is the “author” of these books (DV, n. 16), but through beings whom He has chosen. This seems to represent a suggestion for development in the Church’s understanding of Scripture, at least from what Newman thought the state of affairs was in 1870. While the First Vatican Council convened, Newman wrote that the doctrine of scriptural inspiration “was very high” but not defined. From Irenaeus through to the Council of Trent, the Church taught that God was the author of the covenants, which came to mean both Old and New Testaments. As Newman writes: It has never been defined that the books are inspired. The Council of Trent says, that—the Apostles, from whom comes both written and unwritten tradition, were inspired—but is silent about the books which contain the written tradition. They are the composition of inspired men; but inspired men in no sense wrote the speeches of Pilate and of the Pharisees, or “Crucify Him” except as narrators; and we may conceive and (as I believe) hold (unless this Council determines otherwise) that Moses did not write a word of the Pentateuch, but merely put it together, and his inspiration was that which guided him in his selection, and the effect of it is that the book has the seal of veracity put upon it, a warrant of its being true, and that this is the outcome of the word “inspiration.”2 John Henry Newman, Letter of April 27, 1870 to Richard Holt Hutton, in The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. 25, The Vatican Council, January 1870 to December 1871, ed. Charles Stephen Dessain and Thomas Gornall, 2 A Survey of The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture 759 Dei Verbum, §16, however, simply says that God is the “inspirer and author of both Testaments,” and it is not fully clear whether this means that the covenants are inspired, as Newman understood Trent’s formulation, or, as this document—The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture—seems to accept, that Old and New Testament as books are inspired. Paragraph 6, in section 1.2, while admitting that only two New Testament texts explicitly address inspiration (2 Tim 3:16 and 2 Pet 1:20–21), asserts that, since the collection gives plenty of evidence of its authors’ relationships with God and how the writings come from God, “We intend to present a kind of phenomenology of the ‘God-human author’ relationship” (3). This constitutes part one of the document, which goes on to sample various books of the Old Testament, describing what can be learned from the biblical text regarding the human authors’ relationships with God, in order to provide a description of the divine provenance of the text. In paragraph 10, within section 1.4 of the outline, the commission writes: “The respective biblical writing comes from God through its author’s living faith in God and through the relationship of this author with a specific form (or with different forms) of divine revelation. It is not rare that a biblical text bases itself on an earlier inspired text and participates in this way in the same divine provenance” (7). This last sentence is significant because it admits to intertextuality within the Scriptures and directly implies that understanding the intertextuality helps us to understand the Scriptures better.3 Here the commission has summarized a point it developed more fully in its 1993 The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church.4 S.J. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon: 1973), 112 (emphasis original). See also item 1.1 in the “General Conclusion” of this same document, where the phrase “literary history of these books born from the assimilation and innovative restating of ancient materials” is also well tuned to intertextuality within the Bible’s books (§141; 160). There are many and various branches of intertextuality in Scripture. Those interested in intertextuality in the Old and New Testaments related to the canonical book of Isaiah might consult Benjamin D. Sommer’s A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998) and J. Ross Wagner’s Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul “in Concert” in the Letter to the Romans, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 101 (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 4 See Section III.A.1, “Rereadings” (or in French, “Relectures”). The English translation of this section is accessible in The Scripture Documents: An Anthology of Official Catholic Teachings, ed. Dean P. Béchard, S.J. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 285. 3 760 Mark Reasoner Paragraph 13 (under 2.2.1a in the outline) deals with how the prophets give evidence of their divine origin. For the prophets, the formulae they use to introduce or conclude prophetic oracles (“Thus says the Lord”) shows that the text is claiming to be ultimately from God (11). In paragraph 14 (under 2.2.1b of the outline), the document considers the accounts of how the prophets were commissioned to speak for God. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos are named in this section. These call narratives are taken as further evidence of how we can see the divine provenance of these texts (12). Paragraph 15 deals with “the historical books,” Joshua–2 Kings. This section describes how God tells Joshua or the judges what to do. It also includes narratives in which God announces what will happen and then makes certain events happen (12–13). Paragraph 16 describes Chronicles as containing many “discourses of the Lord” that announce events that later do occur. Chronicles also “appears to suggest” that it comes from God because, in places like 2 Chronicles 36:12, 15–16,and 21–22, it documents its use of books of the prophets (14). Paragraph 16 summarizes the document’s phenomenological look at the prophets and historical books by saying that these books “specify that the word of the Lord has an infallible efficacy and calls to conversion” (14). Paragraph 17 begins the phenomenological look at the Psalms and claims that they give evidence for three kinds of relationships: 1) God participates in the believer’s life; 2) God is present in the sanctuary; 3) God is the source of wisdom. A programmatic statement is then offered: “These three types of relationship with God are lived on the basis of the Sinai covenant, which includes the promise of God’s active presence in the daily life of the people and in the temple” (15). Psalms 17 and 50 are taken as evidence of God’s presence in the sanctuary. The sanctuary liturgy evokes the theophany at Sinai, according to the document’s reading of Psalm 50 (§18; 16–17). This is consistent with the repeated mention of the Sinai covenant elsewhere in this document’s treatment of the Old Testament. Section 3.5 within Part One covers Paul’s letters. The document’s approach is to consider the Pauline corpus under the following headings: “Paul’s Witness to the Divine Origin of the Scriptures” (§39; 38); “Paul Attests the Divine Origin of His Gospel” (§40; 39–40); “Paul’s Apostolic Ministry and Its Divine Origin” (§41; 40-41); “Paul Attests the Divine Origin of His Letters (§42; 41).” In 191 words, this section states that, on the basis of (a) the letter greetings A Survey of The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture 761 (where Paul identifies himself as a divinely chosen apostle), (b) his directions at the end of one letter that his letters be exchanged and read (Col 4:16), (c) the way that he seems in 1 Corinthians 7:17b and 14:37 to present his disciplinary rulings as coming from the Lord, and (d) sections where he interprets or clarifies his gospel (Rom 1–11 and Gal 1–4 are the cited texts), Paul’s arguments “present themselves somehow as a new and authoritative interpretation of the Gospel itself.” This short section does admit that, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul distinguishes between what are his ideas and what are commands of the Lord, a significant piece of evidence for the variety of ways that inspiration works within Scripture (§42; 41). Section 3.6, on Hebrews, includes a useful explanation of the eschatology of the letter, showing how it differs from Old Testament texts in viewing its temporal position after the coming of Christ (3.6.1; §§43–44; 41–46). The section on Hebrews may be summarized with its concluding sentence, which highlights the parts of Hebrews that form the foundation for the document’s explanation of it: “Having outlined in synthesis the whole history of revelation (Heb 1:1–2), the author shows (Heb 2:1–4) that he, and consequently his work, is linked to the Son and to God through the ministry of those witnesses who had heard the Lord” (§44; 46). The section on Revelation (3.7.5 in the document’s outline; §45–49; 46–51) closes with the following two paragraphs that occur after the document has described how Revelation views itself as a sacred text that cannot be changed by addition or subtraction and how Revelation contains an inner power of prophecy: This complex set of characteristics, to be kept together always, allows us to see how the author of the book of Revelation senses and understands the elements of what we call today inspiration: there is an enduring intervention on the part of God the Father; there is an enduring intervention of Jesus Christ, particularly rich and well-structured; there is an intervention, also an enduring one, of the Spirit; there is an intervention of the angel interpreter; there is also, in the text’s contact with humanity, a specific intervention on John’s part. In the end, this text, the Word of God which has come into contact with humanity, will not only succeed in making its illuminating content known but also know how to radiate it in life. It will be inspired and inspiring. 762 Mark Reasoner It is striking that this last book of the New Testament, which has the greatest number of references to the Old Testament and can be seen as its synthesis, attests its provenance from God and its inspired character in a most precise and well-structured way. And a new dimension springs from this contact with Christ: the Old Testament also becomes inspired and inspiring when read in Christological terms. (§49; 50–51) Part One closes with a section entitled “The Reception of the Biblical Books and the Formation of the Canon” (4.5). This section contains five parts: the pre-exilic period, the post-exilic period, the Maccabean period, the Old Testament canon in patristic sources, and the formation of New Testament canon. These sections contain short surveys of the formation of Old Testament and New Testament canons, referring to evidence for the process from biblical books and summarizing key steps in the formation of these canons (§§60–61; 63–68). Part Two is called “The Testimony of the Biblical Writings to Their Truth.” Its first section seeks to illustrate Dei Verbum, §3, on how the Old Testament prepares for the Gospel. Section 1.1 in the outline for Part Two opens with a discussion of the concept “truth” as explained in relation to Scripture in Dei Verbum, §11. Special attention is given to the phrase “the truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation” (veritatem quam Deus nostrae salutis causa Litteris Sacris consignari voluit). The new document explains that “saving truth” (veritas salutaris) was omitted and this longer phrase put in its place in order to express that more is true in the Bible than simply what relates to faith and morality. Dei Verbum’s references to Augustine and Aquinas are repeated here to underscore the foundation for this idea of truth that is focused on leading the readers to salvation (§63; 69–71).5 Paragraph 64 goes on to exegete the notion of “truth” as found in Dei Verbum in the context of other Second Vatican Council documents. It notes that “truth,” in the Council’s documents, is understood in the same “Trinitarian, Christological, and ecclesial setting” as that found in Scripture.6 This paragraph explains these perspectives 5 6 Citing Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 2.9.20; Epistle 82.3; Thomas Aquinas, De veritate q.12, a.2. §64; 72. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, §§2, 7, 8, 19, and 24; Gaudium et Spes, §3; Dignitatis Humanae, §11. A Survey of The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture 763 with the following definition: “the Son in person reveals the Father, and his revelation is communicated and confirmed by the Holy Spirit and handed on in the Church” (§64; 72). The document then goes on to explore the truth that is found in select bodies of literature within the Scriptures. I will note where these occur in this section and either summarize or offer representative quotations from these varied, Scriptural corpora. Section 2.1 in the outline of this section (or §67 of the whole document) deals with the creation accounts in Genesis 1–2. The first creation account is said to narrate “not how the world came into being but why and for what purpose it is as it is” (§67; 74; emphasis original). After a description of the second creation account, the document summarizes the point of both accounts: “the created world is a gift of God, and the divine plan has the good of humanity as its goal (Gen 2:18), as is clear . . . from the frequent recourse to the adjective ‘good’” (§67; 75). Section 2.2 in the outline of this section deals with the Decalogue as found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.7 These paragraphs in the document emphasize how the Decalogues in Exodus and Deuteronomy get developed in the laws that follow and what the Decalogues teach in regard to the vision of God that they provide: “The Decalogues manifest the way in which God the Creator reveals Himself also as a Savior in history and invites every member of the community to enter, in turn, into this logic of salvation by putting into effect a demanding community ethic” (69). Section 2.3 in the outline of this section (§70; 77–78) deals with the historical books, a designation of books within the Old Testament that is given to us from the Septuagint. According to this section of the document, “the theological program of biblical historiography . . . seeks to show that God is faithful in his relationship with humanity” (§70; 78). Section 2.4 of this section deals with the prophets. The section includes an exploration of “The Faithful God” (section 2.4.1; §71; 79); “The Just God (2.4.2; §72; 79–80); and “The Merciful God” (2.4.3; §73; 80–82). Section 2.5, on the Psalms, begins with this summary assertion: “The prayers of the Psalms presuppose and make clear this essential truth about God and salvation: God is not an absolute impersonal 7 §§68–69; 75–77. There is no mention of the so-called “J Decalogue” (Exod 34:11–26). 764 Mark Reasoner principle but a Person who hears and responds” (§74; 82). The first part of this section focuses on Psalm 46 to illustrate the theme of “The Omnipotent God” (2.5.1; §74; 82–83). Then the section focuses on Psalm 51 to illustrate the theme of “The God of Justice” (2.5.2; §§75–76; 83–86). Section 2.6 of this section considers the Song of Songs: “The Song poetically celebrates human love, real love, in its physical and, at the same time, spiritual dimensions. But it does so in a form that is open to a more mysterious and theological dimension” (§77; 86–87). In section 2.7, the document considers the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Wisdom and Sirach are described as communicating the truth of “The Philanthropy of God” (2.7.1; §§79–80; 88–90). Then Job and Ecclesiastes are considered as exempla of “The Inscrutability of God” (2.7.2; §§81–82; 90–92). Section 3.1 introduces the Gospels as the culmination of divine revelation within Scripture. The Synoptic Gospels are first considered under the headings “The Truth about God” (3.2.1; §85; 94–96) and “The Truth about Human Salvation” (3.2.2; §86; 96–98). The Gospel of John is described as communicating truth under three headings: “The Son’s Relationship with the Father” (3.3.1; §88; 98–100); “The Relationship of the Son and Savior with Humankind” (3.3.2; §89; 100–103); and “Human Access to Salvation” (3.3.3; §90; 103–104). Next, the Pauline letters are presented as communicating truth under four headings: “Paul Knows Revelation from His Own Call and from the Church’s Tradition” (3.4.1; §92; 105–06); “God Reveals Himself in the Crucified and Risen Christ” (3.4.2; §93; 106–07); “Salvation Is Received and Lived within the Church, the Body of Christ” (3.4.3; §94; 107–08); and “The Fullness of Salvation Consists in the Resurrection of Christ” (3.4.4; §95; 108–09). The commission’s members introduce the book of Revelation with the phrase “A Revealed, Unique, and Evocative Truth” (3.5.1; §96; 109–10). The next section on the final book of the New Testament is called “Global Truth: The Kingdom of God as Realized by a Creative and Salvific Design” (3.5.2; §97; 111–13). After this, we encounter a section, “In-Depth Study of the ‘Veracity’ That Leads to the Entire Truth,” that explores how Revelation includes ten instances of the word “true,” considered under headings related to the Father, Christ, and the inspired words of the text (3.5.3; §98–100; 113–17). In the conclusion to Part Two, we read that “the reader of Sacred Scripture cannot but be impressed by the manner in which texts so different in their literary form and historical roots have been united A Survey of The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture 765 in a single canon and manifest a concord of truth which finds its full expression in the person of Christ” (§101; 117). The conclusion here goes on to cite Dei Verbum, §12, and Verbum Domini, §§40-41, to emphasize that every text of Scripture must be read in light of the whole canon (§103; 119–21). Part Three is entitled “The Interpretation of the Word of God and Its Challenges.” This may prove to be the most stimulating reading for many exegetes, for here we find the commission dealing with texts that are difficult to interpret. The introduction to this section highlights John Chrysostom’s “condescension of eternal Wisdom” that was used as a resource in Dei Verbum, §13, and the recognition of the significance of literary genres that was emphasized in Pope Pius XII’s Divino afflante Spiritu, §20 (§104; 123–24). The specific cases begin with “Historical Problems,” section 2 of Part Three. First considered is the Abraham material in Genesis (section 2.1 in outline, §§106–107; 125–27). The commission is careful to avoid undue claims for the historical value of the material, concluding with an emphasis that it must be read in light of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10:11—“These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come” (§107; 127). The second problem to be considered is the crossing of the Red Sea as narrated in Exodus 14. The commission members here seem to be very sensitive to the post-exilic compilation of the Pentateuch and the significance of these texts for those shaken by the Babylonian exile. Here is a representative statement: “The biblical text, therefore, combines in inseparable fashion, an ancient account, transmitted from generation to generation, with an actualization called for later” (section 2.2; §108; 128; emphasis original). Section 2.3 focuses on the books of Tobit and Jonah. Tobit is identified as a “popular religious fable with a didactive and edifying purpose, which, by its nature, places it in the sphere of the wisdom tradition” (section 2.3.1; §109; 129). With regard to Jonah, the text’s “details” and “structural elements” lead the commission “to interpret the text as an imaginary composition with deep theological content” (section 2.3.2; §110; 130). Section 2.4 concerns the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke. While the differences between the two are not minimized, the commission writes that these Gospels’ differences “reveal a reciprocal independence on the part of the two evangelists; this makes their agreements all the more significant” (section 2.4.1; §111; 132). 766 Mark Reasoner After an examination of the discontinuities and continuities between the narratives (sections 2.4.1–2; §§111–14; 131–34), the concluding statement comes in a section called “The Message” (section 2.4.3; §§113–14). The ending of this section provides a useful representation of the general approach here: In light of the differences and agreements which we find in the infancy narratives of the two evangelists, it must be said that salvific revelation consists in all that is said about the person of Jesus and about his relationship with the history of Israel and the world as an introduction to and an illustration of his saving work recounted in the rest of the gospel. The differences, which can be harmonized in part, refer to secondary aspects common to the two evangelists that relate to the central figure of Jesus, the Son of God and Savior of humanity. (§114; 134) In regard to the Gospel of Matthew, the new document deals with it in a tone that is different from that found in the commission’s ruling published in 1911, “On the Authorship, Date of Composition, and Historicity of the Gospel of Matthew,”8 while consistent with and developing the implications of the commission’s statements in its 1964 statement on the historical truth of the gospels, Sancta Mater Ecclesia, §§8–9.9 Section 2.5 considers the Bible’s accounts of the miraculous. First, such events in the Old Testament are considered. In the end: 8 9 Responsa de auctore, de tempore compositionis, et de historica veritate Evangelii secundum Matthaeum (June 19, 1911), in Acta Apostolicae Sedis (hereafter, AAS) 3 (1911): 294–96; Béchard (Scripture Documents, 197–99) presents the commission’s response in English translation and notes that the response can also be found in Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, 37th ed. (Freiburg/ Basel/Rome/Vienna: Herder, 1991), 3561–67 (hereafter DS), and in Enchiridion Biblicum: Documenti della Chiesa sulla Sacra Scrittura, ed. Alfio Filippi and Erminio Lora, 2nd ed. (Bologna: Dehoniane, 1993), 383–89 (hereafter EB). See especially the commission’s response to question 7 on “the historical authenticity” of the first two chapters of Matthew and later sections unique to Matthew that witness to Christ’s divinity, Peter’s primacy, and the great commission. Instructio de historica Evangeliorum veritate (April 21, 1964), AAS 56 (1964): 712–18; DS, 4402–07; EB, 644–59. The official English translation of this document is reproduced in Béchard, Scripture Documents, 227–35. A Survey of The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture 767 It does not seem possible to ascertain with certainty what actually happened. Through these traditions, people remember, express themselves, and recognize that God acts in history and that he guided and saved his people with power and fidelity. (section 2.5.1; §116; 136) Then the miracles of Jesus are considered. There is an emphasis in this section on how both the miracles in the Synoptics and the signs in the Gospel of John point beyond themselves to key truths about Jesus and the kingdom he announces (section 2.5.2; §117; 136–38). The Resurrection of Jesus is the culmination of the miraculous in the Gospels, confirming the closest possible relationship between Jesus and God the Father, which signals the victory over death that those who follow Jesus will experience (§118; 138). The next unit in the historical problems section deals with the narratives of the Easter events (section 2.6). The commission treats these according to three narrative panels: “The Earthquake” (2.6.1; §120; 139–40); “The Behavior of the Women” who witnessed the Resurrection (2.6.2; §121; 140); and “The Source of the Easter Message” (angels to women in the Synoptics; Jesus to Mary Magdalene in John; 2.6.3; §122; 141). In a concluding unit on the theological worth of the Gospels, the commission writes that “while the theological affirmations about Jesus have a direct and normative import, the purely historical elements have a subordinate function” (2.6.4; §123; 142). The commission’s direct attention toward historical problems and the range of problems it considers are impressive. The next category of difficulties to be addressed is “Violence in the Bible” (section 3.1; §§125–31; 143–50). Of particular note here is the attention paid to commands for the annihilation of peoples, or holy war. With admission that they are following the Church fathers, the commission writes that: The narration of the conquest epic should be seen as a sort of parable presenting characters of symbolic value; the law of extermination, for its part, requires a nonliteral interpretation, as in the case of the command of the Lord to cut off one’s hand or pluck out one’s eye, if they are a cause of scandal. (§127; 146) And at the end of the same section, the commission reiterates that the story of the conquest: 768 Mark Reasoner must . . . be integrated with other biblical passages which announce the compassion and forgiveness of God as the scope and goal of every historical action of the Lord of all the earth, as well as the model for just actions on the part of human beings. (§127; 147) The topic of violence in the Bible ends with section 3.1.3, which considers “Prayer Requests for Vengeance.” The imprecatory psalms need to be understood in light of their literary genre and should not be literally imitated as models for prayer (§128). Other useful perspectives on such prayer requests include an identification of who is doing the praying, the actual object of such imprecatory prayers, and the enemies of the one who is praying (§§129–31). The final category of difficult texts is “The Social Status of Women.” Under the first subcategory of this section, “The Submission of Wives to Their Husbands,” the first-century Mediterranean social context is brought into full view. The conclusion of this subcategory begins with a candid admission: We can still regret that Paul in these letters did not clearly assert equality of social status for believing spouses, but his way of proceeding was perhaps the only one possible at that time; otherwise, Christianity could have been accused of undermining the social order. On the other hand, though, the exhortation to husbands has not lost any of its actuality and its truth. (3.2.1; §132; 152) The second subcategory, “The Silence of Women in Ecclesial Gatherings,” considers 1 Corinthians 14:33–35. In light of the context of 1 Corinthians 11:5 and 14:31, it is evident that women were given opportunities to prophesy in the community. The prohibition in 1 Corinthians 14:33–35 is thus read as a command for wives to show respect to their husbands in the Church’s assembly (3.2.2; §133, 152). The third subcategory, “The Role of Women in the Assembly,” handles 1 Timothy 2:11–15. Here the document notes that the prohibition on women’s ecclesial roles addresses only teaching and administrative offices. In regard to the especially problematic way that 1 Timothy justifies its position from Genesis 3, the document recognizes that there are Jewish precedents for this sort of argument in Sirach 25:24 and in the Life of Adam and Eve, as well as in the Apocalypse of Moses. The argument is therefore regarded as completely A Survey of The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture 769 conditioned by Jewish views of men and women and reading strategies used to support such views (3.2.3; §134; 153–54). In general, this section offers socially contextualized readings of these passages. In the commission’s synthesis that begins the conclusion of Part Three of the document, we read: The course followed in this document shows how a search for the meaning of the texts that goes beyond the preoccupation of determining merely the facts that actually happened leads to a more profound and precise understanding of their sense. (§136; 155) This is balanced by a following caution not to regard everything in the Bible as invented, but rather to pay attention to the actions and discourse that the Scripture records from past generations (§136; 156). In the same section, the developmental and composite nature of revelation within Scripture is helpfully linked to the reading strategies recommended by the commission as well. After observing how Scripture contains both “the history of God’s revelation” and “the history of revealed moral behavior,” the commission writes: As the revelation of God, so also the revelation of just human conduct reaches its fullness in Jesus. Just as we cannot find in every single biblical passage the full revelation of God, so too, we cannot find the perfect revelation of morality. Single passages of Scripture, therefore, must not be isolated or absolutized but must be understood and evaluated in their relationship with the fullness of revelation in the person and work of Jesus and in the framework of a canonical reading of Sacred Scripture. A profound understanding of these texts in themselves is very helpful; in this way the history of revelation itself is manifested. (§136; 156) To conclude the General Conclusion’s section, “Truth in Historical Form,” the document’s framers write: The duty of the interpreter is to avoid a fundamentalist reading of Scripture so as to situate the various formulations of the sacred text in their historical context, according to the literary genres then in vogue. It is by embracing this characteristic of divine revelation that we are actually led to the mystery of 770 Mark Reasoner Christ, the full and definitive manifestation of the truth of God in human history. (3.2; §146; 164–65) The document surprised me by opening up a new topic within its General Conclusion, “The Literary Traditions of Other Religions.” Here, the commission considers how Scripture relates to other religions’ scriptures. Balaam the non-Jewish prophet (Num 22–24) and Paul’s quotation of a pagan poet in Acts 17:28 are cited as examples of Scriptures’ cognizance of other traditions’ canons (§148; 165–66). Finally, in a way that reminds me of what Origen writes about the difficult or primitive passages in Scripture, 10 the document’s authors show how they perceive this document as going beyond Dei Verbum in addressing the difficult texts of Scripture, for they assert that: It is not enough to assert in a general way that “incomplete and temporary” things are found in the Old Testament (DV, n. 15), or to recall that the writers of the New Testament too were influenced by the mentality of their age; if we can restate the principle of incarnation, applying it analogously to the commitment to writing of divine revelation, it is also necessary to indicate how, in this very human weakness, the glory of the divine Word nonetheless shines forth. (§149; 167) For its focus on what Scripture tells us about God and the salvation that God effects in Christ for humanity, its forthright articulation of the difficulties in the interpretation of Scripture, and the scope of problems surveyed, this document represents discourse on Scripture that is at once breathtaking and very welcome. This will be helpful to all who labor—no matter for how long or short a time—in the N&V vineyard of Sacred Scripture. 10 Origen applies Paul’s phrase “We hold this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor 4:7) to those sections of Scripture that seem poorly written or primitive (Philokalia 1.7). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 771–781771 “Let Us Flee to the Fatherland”: Plotinus in Ambrose’s Theology of Ascent Gerald Boersma St. Bonaventure University St. Bonaventure, New York “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” is Tertullian’s well-known invective against philosophy.1 Nevertheless, for most of the Christian tradition, Tertullian’s antithetical rhetoric has functioned as an invitation to consider the import of philosophy in theological discourse. However, an ancient philosopher might be surprised by the distinction. “Is not philosophy inherently theological?” he might ask. For him, to philosophize is to initiate a process of purgation, ascent, and ultimately, union with the One. Ancient philosophy is, in Pierre Hadot’s famous formula, “a way of life.”2 Philosophy begins with metanoia, a conversion through which one is turned round to the light. The erotic pull of the Beautiful, then, draws the soul to itself. This ascent necessitates katharsis, a purification or “spiritual exercise,” so that the soul can strip off her material attachments and become fit to know—in a participatory and intimate sense—the Beautiful itself. The goal of the philosophical life is contemplative union with the One. Thus, in the Greco-Roman world, a spiritual, soteriological, and even an eschatological valence 1 2 De praescriptione haereticorum 7.9 (CCSL, 1:193): “Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?” This question was also the title of the Dominican Colloquium on Philosophy and Theology held at U. C. Berkeley on July 16–20, 2014, where I presented an earlier draft of this essay. See Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1995). 772 Gerald Boersma animates the philosophical quest.3 Our contemporary departmental bifurcation between philosophy and theology would, I think, leave our ancient philosopher slightly perplexed. This backdrop to philosophy in the ancient world is significant when we consider Tertullian’s question of “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” in the context of patristic theology, where philosophy already had an inherently spiritual overlay. How are Platonic philosophies of ascent adapted by the Church fathers? This article examines one instance of this engagement in a catechetical oration that Ambrose of Milan preached in (perhaps) 387 to his catechumens (possibly including Augustine) preparing to receive baptism.4 I will argue that Ambrose adopts, but also transposes, Plotinus’s philosophy of ascent to construct a distinctly Christian theology.5 In his homily entitled De Isaac Ambrose enjoins a philosophical life on his catechumens. His call to purgation, ascent, and union with Christ is suffused with Platonic images such as the allegory of the cave in the Republic, the metaphor of the soul as a charioteer from the Phaedrus, and the ladder of loves in the Symposium. It is also clear 3 4 5 This sentiment is wonderfully expressed in John Kenney’s Contemplation and Classical Christianity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014). The first chapter (“Contemplation and Pagan Monotheism”) describes the spiritual ambit of Plotinus’s philosophy of ascent. The Greek philosophical context of Ambrose’s preaching is well articulated in Marcia Colish’s Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) and Warren Smith’s Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue: The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics (New York/Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010). For the context and debate concerning the date of the composition of De Isaac, see Allan Fitzgerald, “Isaac at the Well: De Isaac et anima,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 48 (2002): 79–99, and G. Visonà, “Lo status quaestionis della ricerca ambrosiana,” in Nec Timeo Mori, ed. Luigi F. Pizzolato and Marco Rizzi (Milan, IT: Vita e Pensiero, 1998) 67n136; see also M. Zelzer, “Zur Chronologie der Werke des Ambrosius,” in Nec Timeo Mori, 92. It is unclear whether Ambrose preached De Isaac in 387, or even whether it was ever actually preached in its written form. Ambrose’s appropriation and valuation of Plotinus is complex and is representative of the bishop’s more general engagement with classical philosophy. Surveys of the breadth of scholarly opinion on the question of how to situate Ambrose vis-à-vis his philosophical sources (principally Neoplatonic, Stoic, and Aristotelian) include Marcia Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, vol. 2, Stoicism in Christian Latin Thought through the Sixth Century, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 35 (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 50, and Ivor Davidson, “Ambrose’s de officiis and the Intellectual Climate of the Late Fourth Century,” Vigiliae Christianae 49 (1995): 314–15. “Let Us Flee to the Fatherland” 773 that Ambrose has modeled his sermon on Plotinus’s exposition of the soul’s ascent to the Beautiful. There is much in this homily that we could consider under the rubric of Jerusalem engaging Athens.6 I will limit myself in this analysis to the very last two paragraphs of De Isaac (8.78–79), which Ambrose modeled after Plotinus’s treatise On Beauty (Ennead 1.6).7 I will consider how Ambrose builds on the philosophy of ascent operative in Plotinus’s treatise, but I will also note instances where Ambrose subtly corrects this Neoplatonic philosophy of ascent.8 I will explore three major elements in Ambrose’s theology 6 7 8 Colish contends that, when we consider the scope of Ambrose’s corpus as a whole, what emerges is a portrait of an Ambrose “who is trying neither to prove the inferiority of philosophy to the Gospel nor to synthesize it systematically with the Gospel. . . . [who does not] reveal the slightest need to agonize or to fulminate over the relation between Athens and Jerusalem” (The Stoic Tradition, 50). I am in agreement with Angela Christman’s assessment: “Ambrose reinterprets his classical sources through the Biblical text. . . .That is, the ideas which Ambrose borrows from Plato are, in the end, thoroughly transformed by and absorbed into a Christian reading of the Bible”; see “Ambrose of Milan on Ezekiel 1 and the Virtuous Soul’s Ascent to God,” in L’esegesi dei Padri Latini dalle origini a Gregorio Magno, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 68 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2000), 555. I have used the translation of De Isaac done by Michael P. McHugh in vol. 65 of the Fathers of the Church series (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1972) and the Latin version found in CSEL 32. I have used the translation of Plotinus’s treatise On Beauty (Ennead 1.6) by A. H. Armstrong in vol. 440 of the Loeb series. The two most trenchant voices in the discussion of how Ambrose draws from Plotinus have been Pierre Courcelle and Goulven Madec. Courcelle suggests that Ambrose envisions a complementary and symbiotic relation between Neoplatonic philosophy and the Christian faith (so complimentary that their difference becomes imperceptible at times). His many articles on this question are structured to highlight (in comparative columns) the many adaptations that Ambrose makes of Plotinus. See his “Nouveaux aspects du Platonisme chez saint Ambroise,” Revue des études latines 34 (1956): 220–39; “L’humanisme chrétien de saint Ambroise,” Orpheus 9 (1962): 21–34 and 122–140; “Anti-Christian Arguments and Christian Platonism: from Arnobius to Ambrose,” in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. A. Momigliano (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1963), 151–92; “Deux grands courants de de pensée dans la littérature latine tardive: Stoicisme et Neoplatonisme,” Revue des études latines 42 (1964): 122–40; and Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin (Paris: Boccard, 1968), 93–138. Madec contends that Ambrose is ambivalent in his use of philosophy and that he feels comfortable deploying all different philosophical schools as long as they articulate the truths that Scripture already speaks much more clearly. Madec is attentive to Ambrose’s frequent invectives against philosophy and suggests that it is more accurate to understand Ambrose as borrowing literary 774 Gerald Boersma of ascent that are explicitly adopted from Ennead 1.6 and then given Christian transposition by Ambrose.9 First, Ambrose and Plotinus share a participatory metaphysic that frames their theologies of ascent. That is to say, both understand ascent within an ontology of radical dependence on God. Second, the manner of ascent entails purification to develop the ability to see. Finally, the response to the vision of the One is for Ambrose, as for Plotinus, a two-step movement of an impassioned desire for union with the ultimate Good accompanied by a rejection of all other goods. Bernard McGinn describes De Isaac as “arguably the first great masterpiece of Western mysticism.”10 Mystical theology necessitates a participatory metaphysic that underwrites the genuine possibility of ascent. This participatory metaphysic expresses itself in the language of dependence. For Plotinus, the soul sees “[t]hat alone, simple, single and pure, from which all depends (ἐξήρτηται) and to which all look and are and live and think: for it is the cause of life and mind and being.”11 Ambrose follows Plotinus closely: “[The soul] sees the good on which all things depend (ex quo pendent omnia), but which itself depends on none. There she lives and receives her understanding. For that supreme good is the fountain of life.”12 In both cases the soul 9 10 11 12 flourishes from philosophical literature, rather than as adopting its substance; see Saint Ambroise et la philosophie (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1974). My present study comparing the last two paragraphs of De Isaac (8.78–79) in light of Plotinus’s treatise On Beauty (Ennead 1.6) is aided especially by Courcelle’s “Plotin et saint Ambroise,” Revue de Philologie 76 (1950): 29–56, and Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin (Paris: Boccard, 1968), 107–11, and by Pierre Hadot, “Platon et Plotin dans trois sermons de saint Ambroise,” Revue des études latines 34 (1956): 202–20. I use the word “transposition” to describe Ambrose’s use of Plotinus. Similarly, Davidson has advocated for a “transformation theory” to account for how Ambrose draws on his philosophical background. Davidson situates Ambrose in the broader ambit of classically-educated late-fourth-century Latin theologians: “They aspire to reinvest the familiar classical genres with a new profundity, and thus to supersede them in their former state. Such deliberate transformation is not the work of unimaginative imitators or unscrupulous plagiarists with limited mental powers, but the vision of educated leaders who naturally turn to classical texts but now find that such texts greatly require an infusion of revealed truth” (“Ambrose’s De officiis,” 323). Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism (London: SCM, 1992), 203. Ennead 1.6.7.10–12: “ἀφ´ οὗ πάντα ἐξήρτηται καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸ βλέπει καὶ ἔστι καὶ ζῇ καὶ νοεῖ· ζωῆς γὰρ αἴτιος αὶ νοῦ καὶ τοῦ εἶναι.” De Isaac 8.78: “ut uideat illud bonum, ex quo pendent omnia, ipsum autem ex nullo. eo igitur uiuit atque intellectum accipit. uitae enim fons est summum illud bonum.” “Let Us Flee to the Fatherland” 775 “sees” (βλέπει/uideat) truly stable Being and realizes its own instability. The key word animating both phrases is “depend” (ἐξήρτηται/ pendent). For Ambrose all things are, literally, “hanging” (pendent) from the Good.13 Ambrose follows Plotinus in maintaining that the triad of finite being, life, and mind are derivative from and dependent on the One. Participatory metaphysics rejects a real relation on the part of God to the creature; he does not participate, but is participated in. Plotinus writes that the One “provides for all and remains by itself and gives to all but receives nothing into itself.”14 Similarly, Ambrose writes, “This it is that supplies to all things their being; itself remaining in itself, it gives to others but receives nothing into itself from others.”15 The phrasing of this quotation is remarkably similar: The One gives to all (sumministrat uniuersis substantiam/χορηγεῖ μὲν ἅπασιν) while remaining bound within his own being (ipsum autem manens in semet/ ἐφ´ ἑαυτοῦ δὲ μένον δίδωσι). The One gives but does not receive (suscipit/δέχεταί). The manner of ascent is the second element I want to consider. One ought not to be deluded by the images and shadows that comprise finite existence, asserts Plotinus. Instead, we ought to ascend to that reality which they image: Let us fly to our dear country. What then is our way of escape, and how are we to find it? . . . Our country from which we came is there, our Father is there. How shall we travel to it, where is our way of escape? We cannot get there on foot; for our feet only carry us everywhere in this world, from one country to another. You must not get ready a carriage, either, or a boat. Let all these things go, and do not look. Shut your eyes, and change to and wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use.16 13 14 15 16 See De Isaac 7.60: “bonum autem nullius eget, sibi abundat, mensuram et perfectionem, finem quoque tribuit omnibus, in quo uniuersa constant et de quo omnia pendent.” Ennead 1.6.7.26–27: “ὃ χορηγεῖ μὲν ἅπασιν, ἐφ´ ἑαυτοῦ δὲ μένον δίδωσι καὶ οὐ δέχεταί τι εἰς αὐτό.” De Isaac 8.78: “hoc est quod sumministrat uniuersis substantiam, ipsum autem manens in semet ipso dat aliis, nihil autem in se ex aliis suscipit.” Ennead 1.6.8.16–28: “Φεύγωμεν δὴ φίλην ἐς πατρίδα, ἀληθέστερον ἄν τις παρακελεύοιτο. Τίς οὖν ἡ φυγὴ καὶ πῶς; . . . Πατρὶς δὴ ἡμῖν, ὅθεν παρήλθομεν, καὶ πατὴρ ἐκεῖ. Τίς οὖν ὁ στόλος καὶ ἡ φυγή; Οὐ ποσὶ δεῖ διανύσαι· πανταχοῦ γὰρ φέρουσι πόδες ἐπὶ γῆν ἄλλην ἀπ´ ἄλλης· οὐδέ 776 Gerald Boersma There are two elements in this paragraph that Ambrose engages and transposes. First, the ascent, for Plotinus, is not a journey to a far-off land for which one would need to fashion a means of transportation. Rather, the ascent is a return home (πατρὶς), we have a familial bond (πατὴρ) with that higher realm, we have a right of return and a natural desire to return, and it is a matter of claiming our divine birthright. Second, the ascent is achieved by turning within. Introspection is the via of ascent. Andrew Louth writes, “For Plotinus, the higher is not the more remote; the higher is the more inward: one climbs up by climbing in, as it were. . . . As the soul ascends to the One, it enters more deeply into itself: to find the One is to find itself.”17 All have this ability because of our true nature. But alienation from our true selves entails that many obsess about externals (feet, carriage, and boat) rather than perfect internal seeing. What does Ambrose do with this text from Ennead 1.6? In the following quotation we see that, rhetorically, Ambrose’s theology of ascent is in many ways nearly indistinguishable from that of Plotinus: Let us flee therefore to our real, true fatherland. There is our fatherland and there is our Father, by whom we have been created, where there is the city of Jerusalem, which is the mother of all men. But what is this flight? Not at all a flight with the feet, which belong to the body; for wherever they run, they run upon the earth and pass from one soil to another. Let us not flee either on ships or chariots or horses, which are impeded and fall, but let us flee with the spirit and the eyes and feet that are within.18 The parallels are, at first glance, obvious. Like that of Plotinus, Ambrose’s injunction is to flee to the fatherland because it is there that our Father is found. Likewise, for Ambrose, the flight occurs within. It does not 17 18 σε δεῖ ἵππων ὄχημα ἤ τι θαλάττιον παρασκευάσαι, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα πάντα ἀφεῖναι δεῖ καὶ μὴ βλέπειν, ἀλλ´ οἷον μύσαντα ὄψιν ἄλλην ἀλλάξασθαι καὶ ἀνεγεῖραι, ἣν ἔχει μὲν πᾶς, χρῶνται δὲ ὀλίγοι.” Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 39. De Isaac 8.78–79: “fugiamus ergo in patriam uerissimam. illic patria nobis et illic pater, a quo creati sumus, ubi est Hierusalem ciuitas, quae est mater omnium. sed quae est fuga? non utique pedum, qui sunt corporis; isti enim quocumque currunt in terra currunt et de solo ad solum transeunt. nec nauibus fugiamus aut curribus aut equis, qui obligantur et cadunt, sed fugiamus animo et oculis aut pedibus interioribus.” “Let Us Flee to the Fatherland” 777 require the external trappings of travel—feet, chariots, or ships. The opening hortatory enjoinder, however, should give us pause. From the outset, Ambrose invites a contrast: this fatherland is the most true fatherland (patriam uerissimam). We certainly have a desire to return to this land (patriam) because we have a familial (pater) and originating relation to it. However, while Plotinus can properly speak of a “right of return” to the realm from which we have fallen, Ambrose does not suggest a return to whence we came. The emphasis for Ambrose is that we have been created by the Father (a quo creati sumus). As such, the ascent to the Fatherland is not a return to our own land, but a journey to a realm in which we have never been before. Our created condition entails that, if the ascent is to be successful, it will have to be received as gift rather than claimed as divine birthright. Further, in Ambrose’s hands, Plotinus’s patria becomes a ciuitas, with all the accompanying ecclesial and eschatological resonances that this implies. We are invited to identify this patria with that of the Apostle Paul: “But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother” (Gal 4:26). Ambrose alters the second element in Plotinus’s mode of ascent— the injunction to turn within. Plotinus’s urging brims with confidence. True beauty is already within. It needs only to be revealed. Through purification, one can find the beauty one seeks within. One arrives at the Fatherland by cultivating an “inner sight.”19 With ample preparation, the soul must become accustomed (ἐθιστέον) to gaze at the beauty within. Plotinus urges, “Go back into yourself and look.”20 Perhaps what you see there is not yet beautiful? In that case, work away at it and make your inner self beautiful. Like a statue that needs work, maintains Plotinus, you ought to cut and remove the ugly while polishing and smoothing the beautiful: “[N]ever stop working your statue till the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, till you see self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat.”21 With all the accretions, external loves, and desires stripped away, you will become at last “wholly yourself.”22 For Plotinus, to turn within entails that what 19 20 21 22 Ennead 1.6.9.1. Ennead 1.6.9.7–8. Ennead 1.6.9. Ibid. Margaret Miles is attentive to the subtleties and ambiguities in Plotinus’s injunction to “turn within” and rejects facile caricatures of his “dualism”; see Plotinus on Body and Beauty (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1999). See also Stephen R. Clark, “Plotinus: Body and Soul,” The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd Gerson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 275–91. 778 Gerald Boersma one sees is identical with the one seeing. The subject-object distinction disappears: “For one must come to the sight with a seeing power made akin and like to what is seen. No eye ever saw the sun without becoming sun-like, nor can a soul see beauty without becoming beautiful. You must become first all godlike and all beautiful if you intend to see God and beauty.”23 Ambrose mitigates Plotinus’s emphasis on the turn within. He writes, “This is the eye that looks upon the true and great beauty. Only the strong and healthy eye can see the sun; only the good soul can see the good. Therefore let him become good who wishes to see the Lord.”24 Note that Ambrose retains a clear distinction between the Good and the soul that sees the Good. Here we witness the most significant departure that Ambrose makes from Ennead 1.6: the soul does not have a mystical and unitive experience with its true self, but instead sees God. While Ambrose appropriates the Platonic adage that like is seen by like, God and the soul do not become coterminous; Ambrose does not eviscerate the Creator-creature distinction. In Ambrose, something of Plotinus’s profound interiority is still evident. It is not a journey of ships, or chariots, or horses. These are sure not to succeed in the journey. Rather, “let us flee with the spirit and the eyes and feet that are within” ( fugiamus animo et oculis aut pedibus interioribus). Also for Ambrose, it is the “inner eye” that needs to be cleansed to see and to ascend.25 There is an echo of the necessary purification of sight: “Let us accustom our eyes to see what is bright and clear.”26 However, Plotinus’s recurring call to unveil the latent beauty within is absent in Ambrose. The “turn within” becomes, in De Isaac, self-examination rather than contemplative union of sight and the one seeing. One turns within to examine one’s conscience to see if continence, moderation, and the other virtues inhabit the soul.27 For Ambrose, purifying the internal vision allows one to see outside and above oneself; the “turn within” is precursory to the 23 24 25 26 27 Ennead 1.6.9.29–33. De Isaac 8.79. Ibid.: “illum oculum mundet.” Ibid.: “adsuescamus oculos nostros uidere quae dilucida et clara sunt.” Ibid.: “Let us accustom our eyes to see what is bright and clear, to look upon the face of continence and of moderation, and upon all the virtues, in which there is nothing scabrous, nothing obscure or involved. And let each one look upon himself and his own conscience; let him cleanse that inner eye, so that it may contain no dirt.” “Let Us Flee to the Fatherland” 779 “turn above.” So, for Ambrose, the Psalmist best expresses the love and longing of the soul to be joined with the Good: “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and see the delight of the Lord and contemplate his temple” (Ps 26 [27]: 4).28 The ascent is to One outside and above oneself. Peter had this vision when he saw Christ’s glory, and he recognized it, saying, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”29 Ambrose uses the Psalmist’s desire and Peter’s experience to nuance Plotinus’s emphasis on the turn within. Ultimately, the vision of Beauty is not a turn within, but a turn above. The final element to analyze in Ambrose’s theology of ascent is his discussion of the soul’s response to catching sight of the true and eternal good upon which all depend. Here, too, De Isaac adapts and transposes Ennead 1.6. For both Plotinus and Ambrose, the response is two-fold. The soul both experiences an erotic longing for the Good it sees and, on this account, comes to despise all temporal goods. First, for Plotinus, the experience of eternal Beauty is a mystical experience. In a justly famous passage of the Enneads, Plotinus describes the soul that has ascended to the Good and has seen ultimate Beauty: If anyone sees it, what passion [ἔρωτας] will he feel, what longing [πόθους] in his desire to be united [συγκερασθῆναι] with it, what a shock of delight! The man who has not seen it may desire it as good, but he who has seen it glories in its beauty and is full of wonder and delight, enduring a shock which causes no hurt, loving with true passion and piercing longing; he laughs at all other loves and despises what he thought beautiful before; it is like the experience of those who have met appearances of gods or spirits and do not any more appreciate as they did the beauty of other bodies.30 The word “passion” (ἔρωτας) is used multiple times in Ennead 1.6. It is an intellectual ascent—an ascent of the mind—but it is described as a movement of the heart; it is an erotic pull to be intimate with the Good seen.31 Plotinus maintains that the One is desired as Good, but 28 29 30 31 De Isaac 8.78. Ibid. Ennead 1.6.7.13–21. Lloyd Gerson captures the mystical character of Plotinus’s ascent as follows: “The ascent does not end with acceptance of conclusions of arguments about the existence of Intellect or the One. The ascent, if it is to be successful, must 780 Gerald Boersma experienced as Beauty.32 Considered under the auspices of the Good, a distinction necessarily remains between the desiring subject and the object desired. The desire for the Good is a rational pursuit that always preserves what Lloyd Gerson has described as a “residual duality” between subject and object.33 However, when the One is considered as Beauty, this chasm is bridged. This is what Plotinus means when he speaks about “union” (συγκερασθῆναι) with Beauty. Second, the rejection of all other beauties accompanies this longing desire for union with Beauty, but perhaps “rejection” is too strong a word. All other beauties are now evaluated in light of ultimate Beauty and are, on this account, “despised” (καταφρονεῖν). Finite achievements are scorned in light of the ultimate vision of Beauty: “The man who attains this is blessed in seeing that ‘blessed sight,’ and he who fails to attain it has failed utterly.”34 This beatific vision is completely asymmetric with all other goals. Power, honor, and riches are of a different order: “For this [blessed sight] he should give up the attainment of kingship and of rule over all earth and sea and sky, if only by leaving and overlooking them he can turn to That and see.”35 Ambrose envisions a similar two-step response of the soul: first passionate love for the ultimate Good and then a disregard for all other goods. Ambrose writes, “Love and longing for it are enkindled in us, and it is our desire to approach and be joined to it, for it is desirable to him who does not see it and is present to him who sees it, and therefore he disregards all other things and takes pleasure and delight in this one only.”36 In this quotation, Ambrose follows Plotinus in describing the passionate feelings evoked when the soul sees the Good on which all depends: the soul experiences (1) love (ἔρωτας/caritas) and (2) passion (πόθους/desiderium) to be (3) united (συγκερασθῆναι/misceri) with the Good. While Ambrose does not follow Plotinus in making the conceptual distinction between the 32 33 34 35 36 consist in the construction of an ideal self in the incarnate individual. . . . So the ascent must include what can only be called a conversion experience”; see Plotinus (London: Routledge, 1998), 175. Gerson writes, “[B]eauty is that aspect of intelligible reality that produces delight in the contemplator when contemplation is occurring” (Plotinus, 183). Ibid., 189. Ennead 1.6.7.33–34. Ennead 1.6.7.37–40. De Isaac 8.78: “cuius nobis accenditur caritas et desiderium, cui adpropinquare et misceri uoluptas est, quod ei qui non uidet desiderio est et qui uidet inest, ideo que alia uniuersa despicit, hoc mulcetur et delectatur.” “Let Us Flee to the Fatherland” 781 ultimate Good and ultimate Beauty, he does, like Plotinus, distinguish between those who have not seen (non uidet) the Good, but only desire it (desiderio), and those who do see it and glory in it. Finally, as for Plotinus, so for Ambrose, the soul that has ascended to this vision disregards or despises (despicit) all other temporal goods on account of this greatest Good. Here Ambrose deploys the same examples as Plotinus: “Kingdoms are not comparable, nor riches nor honors nor glory nor powers.”37 This close comparative analysis of the theologies of ascent in the last two paragraphs of De Isaac and Plotinus’s treatise On Beauty (Ennead 1.6) provides one example of an answer to the question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Given the already spiritual and theological character of philosophy in Neoplatonic thought, Ambrose finds a natural ally in Plotinus’s injunction to ascend. Nevertheless, his distinct Christian commitments prevail. Angela Christman puts it well: “Ambrose weaves the phrases [of classical literature] into a tightly woven tapestry of scriptural quotations and images, the effect of which is that the meaning of the phrases derives no longer from their original classical contexts but from the scriptural texts Ambrose interprets when he uses these phrases.”38 Ambrose shows little reticence in not only borrowing, but then also absorbing and transformN&V ing Plotinus to construct a Christian theology of ascent. 37 38 Ibid. Christman, “Ambrose of Milan on Ezekiel 1,” 555–56. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 783–820783 Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate Joshua R. Brotherton Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, Maryland The Landscape of the Debate as it Relates to the New Proposal The dominant position among Thomists on the issue of predestination and grace1 in the (largely Dominican) commentator tradition seems to have been fundamentally Bañezian until the twentieth century, when the tide began to turn with Francisco Marin-Sola.2 1 2 The topic of grace is, of course, vast and multi-faceted; similarly, the topic of predestination stretches out into the complex realm of divine foreknowledge. The range of questions presentable here involves enormous theological resourcefulness, as well as philosophical acumen. Therefore, I am choosing to zero in on the most relevant aspect of the de auxiliis controversy—namely the question of the manner in which God permits evil—and approach the debate primarily from a metaphysical perspective (although informed by revelation). The far-reaching implications of the growing consensus regarding the solution to this aspect of the controversy are yet to be explored in much detail. For example, it seems a consensus on this question would constitute at least a significant portion of the foundation necessary for any substantial union with the more Augustinian-inclined Protestant denominations on the question of the precise manner in which grace is transformative of human nature. My goal here is simply to signal the impending emergence of a consensus (within Catholic Thomistic circles) on the controversy. See Francisco Marín-Sola, “El sistema tomista sobre la moción divina,” Ciencia Tomista 32 (1925): 5–52; Marín-Sola, “Respuesta a algunas objeciones acerca del sistema tomista sobre la moción divina,” Ciencia Tomista 33 (1926): 5–74; and Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones acerca del sistema tomista sobre la moción divina,” Ciencia Tomista 33 (1926): 321–97. See also Michael Torre’s Do Not Resist the Spirit’s Call: Francisco Marín-Sola on Sufficient Grace (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013) and God’s Permission of Sin: 784 Joshua R. Brotherton Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, called by some “the sacred monster of Thomism,”3 is the foremost representative in the last century of this approach to the question. According to him, the universal causality of God is of such a nature that his eternal wisdom and love decides without any reason outside his own sovereign will to provide only some men (“the elect”) with the efficacious graces necessary for meriting salvation.4 In Garrigou-Lagrange’s conception of grace as either “efficacious” or “sufficient,” sufficient graces are those that are intrinsically efficacious (as all grace must be, contrary to Molinism) but predetermined not to come to fruition, not to be extrinsically efficacious (or actually effective). One way in which he distinguishes the Thomist position from the Augustinian is to base the refusal of efficacious grace on God’s part not upon the deficiency proper to fallen human nature,5 but upon a prior resistance to the intrinsic efficacy of the sufficient grace offered to all,6 a resistance that is infallibly ensured to take place by a physical premotion determined by an antecedent divine decree to permit sin (hence the concept of “infallible permissive decrees,” shortened occasionally to “infallible permissions”).7 The purpose for 3 4 5 6 7 Negative or Conditioned Decree? A Defense Of The Doctrine Of Francisco MarínSola, O.P. Based On The Principles Of Thomas Aquinas (Fribourg, CH: Academic, 2009). This title is taken from Richard Peddicord, Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2004). For Garrigou-Lagrange’s doctrine of predestination and grace, see his Predestination: The Meaning of Predestination in Scripture and the Church (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1998); God: His Existence and His Nature, vol.2 (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Company, 1955), nos. 64–65, Appendix 4, and the Epilogue; The One God: A Commentary on the First Part of St.Thomas’Theological Summa (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Company, 1954), chs. 19 and 22–23; and Grace: Commentary on the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q. 109-14 (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Company, 1952). See, for example, The One God, 709. See, for example, Predestination, 207ff. There is inherent in this type of position a tendency toward the Protestant (and Jansenist) conception of human nature as essentially corrupt. Accordingly, sins are infallibly permitted wherever God does not provide an infallibly efficacious influx of grace or a physical premotion to perform the good; hence, human nature is viewed as inevitably tending toward sin (absent infallibly efficacious grace) by virtue of its radical ontological dependence on God (or “defectability”). Francisco Marín-Sola argues at length for the Thomist (indeed, Catholic) conception of human nature as wounded, not corrupted, and therefore capable of performing good acts that are easy but incapable of performing good acts that are difficult and of persevering in the good indef- Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 785 infallibly permitting such deficient creatures to bring about their own moral self-destruction, inevitable wherever efficacious grace is absent, is to manifest the glory proper to divine justice—that is, if the damnation of some were not ensured, only his mercy would be manifest, which would not indicate the full measure of his glory.8 In the earlyto mid-twentieth century, diverse Thomists proposed from slightly different angles essentially the same revision of the Thomist position in opposition to the doctrine of infallible permissive decrees.9 Although Garrigou-Lagrange did attempt to dulcify the Bañezian discourse on negative reprobation,10 in the course of argumentation with Francisco 8 9 10 initely. See especially his “Nuevas observaciones acerca del sistema tomista sobre la moción divina,” 324–29, 353–57, 366–67, and 380–83. See Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, pt. 1, chs. 3 and 5; pt. 2, sect. 1, ch. 2; pt. 2, Synthesis; and pt. 3, ch. 1. For Jacques Maritain’s most developed formulation of the position, see his Dieu et la permission du mal (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1963)—published in English as God and the Permission of Evil (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1966)— which is in some ways anticipated by his lecture St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil (Milwaukee, WI: The Aquinas Lectures, 1942), published originally in English but made available in French translation as chapter 7 of De Bergson a Thomas d’Aquin (New York: Edition de la Maison Francaise, 1944) and as chapter 4 of Court traite de l’existence et de l’existant (Paris: Paul Hartmann, 1947), the latter published in English as Existence and the Existent (New York: Pantheon Books, 1948). Published in the same year and arguing for the same fundamental position is Guilielmo G. Most, Novum tentamen ad solutionem de Gratia et Praedestinatione (Rome: Editones Paulinae, 1963; English Title: Grace, Predestination, and the Salvific Will of God; herafter, GPSWG). Most notes the essential agreement between himself and Maritain in GPSWG, 485, mentioning also Philippe de la Trinite (484, cf. 391–92), Dom Mark Pontifex (484, cf. 392), and Charles Journet (485, cf. 392). He also mentions Francisco Muniz (384ff. and 451) in conjunction with Francisco Marín-Sola, but he never mentions Bernard Lonergan. Charles Journet adopts Maritain’s formulation, but from a more theological perspective, in The Meaning of Grace (New York: P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1960). Regarding Journet’s correspondence with Maritain and Marín-Sola, see Michael Torre, “Francisco Marín-Sola, OP, and the Origin of Jacque Maritain’s Doctrine on God’s Permission of Evil,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 55–94. Bernard Lonergan independently develops a very similar but unique formulation in his dissertation on gratia operans, which was originally published in the form of four 1941 articles in Theological Studies, then as Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. J. Patout Burns (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), and finally as vol. 1 of Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas: Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe, S.J., and Robert M. Doran, S.J. (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2000). See, for example, his Predestination, 333–34. Thomas Joseph White cites The 786 Joshua R. Brotherton Marin-Sola, O.P., he would not concede to the latter (as Jean-Hervé Nicolas did to Maritain after many decades of debate).11 Garrigou-Lagrange’s close personal friend, the great philosopher Jacques Maritain, had been working on the question (of the divine permission of evil and its metaphysical interplay with human freedom) since the 1920s, as his correspondence with Charles Journet on the work of Marin-Sola reveals.12 While the core of the new 11 12 One God (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Publishing Company, 1943), 554–56 and 683–88, and Predestination, 175–77, as “self-consciously indebted to Rene Billuart . . . in contrast to the perspectives of commentators such as Bañez and John of St. Thomas”; see “Von Balthasar and Journet on the Universal Possibility of Salvation and the Twofold Will of God,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 663n71. Maritain says: “Father Garrigou-Lagrange caused the traditional doctrine to progress considerably. . . . The disciples of the great commentators, Father Garrigou-Lagrange for instance, endeavored to improve the theory of their masters on the permission of evil”; see God and the Permission of Evil, 19 (original French edition, 25). For an attack on Garrigou-Lagrange’s effort here, see the recent Bañezian account of John Salza in The Mystery of Predestination According to Scripture, the Church, and St. Thomas Aquinas (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2010), 86–87. It is well-known that Bañez held a restrictive view of election, indebted to the late Augustine, which the Church rejected in the course of the Jansenist controversy. See Garrigou-Lagrange’s response to Marín-Sola’s Ciencia Tomista articles in his own article “La grace infailliblement efficace et les actes salutaires faciles,” Revue Thomiste 31 (1926): 160–73, and his pamphlet circulated at the Angelicum entitled Principia Thomismi Cum Novissimo Congruismo Comparata: Thomismi Renovatio an Eversio? (Rome: L’Angelicum, 1926). For J. H. Nicolas’s retraction in the face of Maritain’s argumentation, see the former’s “La volunté salvifique de Dieu contrariée par le péché,” Revue Thomiste 92 (1992): 177–96. Thomas M. Osborne, Jr., neglects to mention such retraction when he curtly dismisses “the objection that the Thomist position [he means Bañezian] entails that God is responsible for evil actions” as “overwhelmingly refuted by J. H. Nicolas, ‘La permission du peche,’ Revue Thomiste 60 (1960)…”; see “Thomist Premotion and Contemporary Philosophy of Religion,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 607–31, at 614n17. Nicolas very clearly yields to Maritain’s critique on this point, even if he expresses reservations in other regards. Osbourne also appears completely ignorant of Lonergan’s dissertation, as he endeavors to critique (however briefly and inadequately) the points there argued with respect to premotion, mentioning only David Burrell and Brian Shanley as culprits (see 619 and 623ff.). For information on the debate between Garrigou-Lagrange and Marín-Sola and regarding the influence of the latter upon Maritain via correspondence with Charles Journet, see Torre, “Francisco Marín-Sola.” Torre also suggests that, despite some differences, Lonergan came down on the side of MarínSola because he was under the influence of his dissertation director (Charles Boyer), who had written an article defending many of Marín-Sola’s points in Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 787 proposal may be traced to Marin-Sola (as Michael Torre has effectively displayed13), I will be concerned primarily with presenting the version of it in Maritain’s treatment together with William Most’s more comprehensive (albeit imperfect) analysis of the issue.14 Without entering into the minor discrepancies between these diverse accounts, I will depend upon the particularly complementary expressions of the solution to the de auxiliis controversy found in Maritain and Most (presupposing here the essential identity of their proposals) in portraying the coherence of the central proposal, a hypo-Augustinian Thomistic15 understanding of predestination (purged of the notion of the necessity for infallible permissive decrees),16 against the recent push-back expressed by contemporary defenders of the Bañezian position.17 Therefore, I will utilize the arguments presented 13 14 15 16 17 the dispute (see Torre, Do Not Resist, 237–38). While it is true that Lonergan and Marín-Sola are in essential agreement on divine permission of evil (i.e., divine innocence), the former’s work on gratia operans is largely concerned with refuting the thesis of praemotio physica, which Marín-Sola takes for granted in his preoccupation with gratia sufficiens; the two are different but complementary paths of exonerating God of responsibility for moral evil or defending the divine innocence (to use Maritain’s emphatic terms). See especially his dissertation, God’s Permission of Sin. Most distinguishes his treatment more from Marín-Sola’s position than from Maritain’s, particularly on the points of whether there is divine foreknowledge of demerits prior to his predestinating will and of interpreting Thomas on the grace of final perseverance (see GPSWG, 385–91 and 451–52). With regard to Maritain, he notes the “considerable difference . . . [on] the point of entry for evil,” but he also concedes that “the broad lines of his solution are identical to ours” (485), which he does not accord Marín-Sola. I will not enter into these difficulties. I could have just as easily focused upon Marín-Sola’s treatment in the Ciencia Tomista articles, but Torre has done a superb job of that already. The slight differences between all the players in this consensus will not be explored, but it is evident to the scholar that Most’s treatment, while unique in its comprehensive approach and peculiar interpretation, is not up to par when it comes to textual analysis (i.e., proof-texts abound and the historical reasoning is imprecise). The ‘hypo-’ here is meant to indicate a distinction from what is sometimes called the ‘hyper-Augustinianism’ of Calvinists, Jansenists, and the like, which designates a rigid predestinarian approach to the relationship between grace and freedom. It will become clearer in the course of this essay what precisely this contrast I wish to emphasize entails. The debate concerning Thomas’s definitive opinion on the question will be left aside. Steven A. Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 557–606, originally, “Providence, liberté, et loi naturelle,” Revue Thomiste 102 (2002): 355–406; Salza, The Mystery of Predestination; Osborne, 788 Joshua R. Brotherton by both Most and Maritain against the Bañezian position to defend what they hold in common against the criticisms offered by Steven A. Long.18 But first it is necessary to summarize the primary theses of Most and Maritain in confrontation with Garrigou-Lagrange and “neo-Bañezianism,” respectively.19 Between Most and Maritain 18 19 “Thomist Premotion and Contemporary Philosophy of Religion.” Gilles Emery, without taking an explicit stand in favor of the Bañezian position, concludes his essay “The Question of Evil and the Mystery of God in Charles Journet,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 529–56, with doubts similar to Long’s, which Maritain himself had previously entertained (under the influence of Garrigou-Lagrange). For a brief rebuttal of their arguments against Maritain, see T. J. White, “Von Balthasar and Journet,” 662–63 (especially note 70). In Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths (New York: Oxford University, 2011), Matthew Levering cites the following explicit supporters of Maritain’s thesis (at 155n96): Charles Journet, The Meaning of Evil, trans. Michael Barry (New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1963); Jean-Pierre Arfeuil, “Le Dessein sauveur de Dieu: La doctrine de la predestination selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 74 (1974): 591–641; Michał Paluch, La Profondeur de l’amour divin: La predestination dans l’oeuvre de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: J. Vrin, 2004), 33–36 and 314–17; Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Préface” to Paluch, La Profondeur; John Saward, “The Grace of Christ in His Principal Members: St. Thomas Aquinas on the Pastoral Epistles,” in Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to His Biblical Commentaries, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005), 197–221 (see 200–209). He also cites (at 156n101 and 178n2, respectively) implicit support of Maritain’s position in W. Matthews Grant, “Aquinas on How God Causes the Act of Sin without Causing Sin Itself,” Thomist 73 (2009): 455–96, and David Bentley Hart, “Providence and Causality: On Divine Innocence,” in The Providence of God: Deus Habet Consilium, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler (London:T & T Clark, 2009). Levering himself criticizes Maritain’s thesis as an attempt to understand what cannot be understood, opting instead to defend the apophatic tension, as exhibited in Catherine of Sienna and Francis de Sales, between two apparently irreconcilable affirmations of faith (namely, that God loves each free creature infinitely and that He permits free creatures to reject him definitively). Perhaps it is not incongruent with this double affirmation to opt for one speculative understanding of how it may be coherent over another. I begin with Most’s treatment and proceed next to Maritain’s both because the first deals more extensively with the problems of the Bañezian position (as seen in Garrigou-Lagrange) and because it is the more neglected of the two, despite the fact that his very thorough proposal appeared in the same year as Maritain’s most developed (but still concise) work on the matter. Nevertheless, Maritain’s “Aquinas Lecture,” St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil, is a profound interpretation of Thomas’s texts on the divine permission of evil that may be said to form the basis of what I am calling the “new proposal” or the “revised position” adopted by many in opposition to the most common position of Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 789 it will become clear that at the crux of a proper understanding of the interaction between infinite and finite freedom is the reality, as it were, of diverse species of nonbeing.20 Hence, I will be focusing on the question primarily from the metaphysical perspective, which strikes at the heart of the debate, since each position is an abstract conceptualization of the data of revelation and none can claim authoritative status. Most Confronts Garrigou-Lagrange on Infallible Permissive Decrees Taking from divine revelation the model of God as loving father, Most thoroughly argues that the “traditional” (i.e., Bañezian) Thomist position is fundamentally opposed to the universal salvific will of God.21 Garrigou-Lagrange defends the position of the great commentators on the metaphysical grounds that it is impossible for God to foreknow anything (contingent) prior to his final predestinating will (or “consequent will”).22 According to this popular Dominican view, God has an antecedent will that does not discriminate between men and a conse- 20 21 22 the Thomistic commentator tradition (i.e., negative reprobation understood in terms of infallible permissive decrees). Simply put, since being admits of species even though being is not a genus (i.e., the species are related analogically), there must also be diverse species of nonbeing or diverse ways in which being is absent (e.g., privation is distinct from negation, evil is distinct from imperfection). See Most, GPSWG, chs. 3 and 17. There may be a difference between the typical position of many commentators in the neo-scholastic period, or what I refer to as the Bañezian (Thomist) position, and the actual position of Domingo Bañez—there are diverse plausible interpretations of his writings that seem to have been exegeted only recently. For example, Robert J. Matava presents three possible interpretations of Bañez’s theory of physical premotion, utilizing texts of various periods (particularly those lesser known, published posthumously). Still, he argues in favor of one of those options; see Matava, Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Bañez and the Controversy ‘De Auxiliis’ (Boston: Brill), 55–70. He also ends up opposing Bañez’s understanding of the divine permission of evil (see 98–99), which goes hand-inhand with the view that every created act must be (ontologically) preceded by a particular divine predetermination, even though he wants to blaze an altogether different trail from that of Marín-Sola and Maritain (see 37–39). At the same time, on at least one occasion (46n80), Matava seems to entertain a slightly different interpretation of Bañez that, if true, would exempt him from Marín-Sola’s critique concerning the woundedness of fallen human nature, who nevertheless directs his comments toward the modern Bañezians, not Bañez himself. See, for example, Predestination, 341–45. 790 Joshua R. Brotherton quent will that both infallibly permits the fall of man and randomly chooses a few who will be rescued from the inevitable destiny of the massa damnata.23 The consequent will, therefore, is not consequent to any foreknowledge, but to creation and the natural defectability of man’s creaturely being.24 The divine intellect can foreknow the good and evil acts of each man only in or by the consequent will—that is, once he has willed to cause only these men to perform these meritorious acts. In response to such a claim, Most argues effectively that it need not be impossible for God to foreknow evil acts prior to his consequent will, addressing on metaphysical grounds every related objection proposed by Garrigou-Lagrange.25 Most explains that, in fact, it is fitting that God’s foreknowledge of evil acts be the reason that distinguishes his antecedent will (that all men do only what is good) from his consequent will,26 wherein is contained, in some manner, everything that actually occurs.27 According to this position, instead of randomly abandoning some men to their own devices, which will inevitably lead them to an evil destiny (since God alone is the source of good), God chooses to predestine those to beatitude whom he 23 24 25 26 27 See, for example, ibid., 80–84. This language of selecting a few out of a condemned mass derives from Augustine’s massa damnata interpretation of Rom 9, which may be the origin of the Bañezian understanding of negative reprobation. Although Most argues that such a view was adopted because of the predominance of this interpretation, Garrigou–Lagrange clearly thinks that original sin is not the reason for the defectibility that causes resistance to sufficient grace and the consequent deprival of its efficacy. Rather, he says, the divine abstinence from predestining acceptance of grace is the indispensable condition that infallibly permits actual defection from the good (see The One God, 709). Garrigou-Lagrange also believes this to be the teaching of St. Thomas. Most argues convincingly that Thomas usually adopts Augustine’s “massa damnata” theory and that this is the reason for his occasional teaching that sins occur infallibly by divine permission (see GPSWG, 305–07). I will not enter into questions concerning Thomas’s texts. This points both to the problem in Garrigou-Lagrange of not sufficiently acknowledging the goodness of nature and to the point of difference in Garrigou-Lagrange with other Thomists—namely, the question of whether it is the consequent will per se or sin itself that is the primary reason for the inefficacy of the divine antecedent desire for universal salvation. For his replies to the previous line of argumentation, see Most, GPSWG, 609–12. See ibid., 5ff. “So it is true that the will of God always accomplishes what it wills. But it does not will everything without any condition: the consequent will takes into consideration the condition of the creature . . . that is, after the absence of resistance” (ibid., 202). Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 791 does not foreknow to be consistently willing evil for themselves. This implies that man does not inevitably commit every moral evil for which he does not have the “efficacious grace” to avoid, but that he can either propose resistance to grace or be metaphysically inactive by his own power with respect to any particular good.28 Hence, after creating men and before predestining each to his own good acts, God foresees the particular evil acts desired by each man and, at least ordinarily, causes each man to perform freely the 28 See ibid., ch. 7. Most seems to use the term “efficacious grace” with reservations, but given such a framework, he defends the intrinsic efficacy of grace (see ibid., 469). Assumption of the framework according to which sufficient and efficacious grace are distinguished as mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories of grace in the context of its relationship to freedom does not render it an adequate framework. A given linguistic-conceptual framework, even if inadequate to a particular conceptual task, need not be first replaced for the logical problems it may induce to be resolved—the mind can so stretch the terms involved that the limits need not always impede resolution. Nevertheless, the division of grace into “sufficient” and “efficacious” is deceiving. Most is not the only one, however, who does not unreservedly subscribe to the hard division of grace into “efficacious” and “sufficient,” as if sufficient grace is any less intrinsically efficacious and as if each grace must of necessity be predetermined by God to be either extrinsically inefficacious or efficacious. White says: “As Bernard Lonergan has shown in his doctoral thesis, the notion of grace as ‘sufficient’ and ‘efficient’ in Aquinas pertains not to two distinct kinds of grace, but to the same grace considered as sufficient for salvation and effective when it is not refused. See Lonergan, Gratia Operans, 333, 441. However, the notion of a distinct form of grace that can be refused versus a grace that is irresistible was developed in the post-Tridentine period by Thomists to oppose Jansenism and Protestantism on the one hand, and Molinism on the other” (“Von Balthasar and Journet,” 661n68). The former distinction presupposes grace in principle can be resisted, whereas the latter distinction implies that it either cannot be resisted or it need not be resisted in order to fail. Lonergan’s dissertation is also in part concerned with establishing a distinction between Thomas’s Aristotelian understanding of praemotio physica and the Bañezian understanding of this notion in Thomas. Levering, however, points to Matava’s PhD dissertation (University of St. Andrews, 2010), “Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Bañez and the Controversy De Auxiliis,” which argues that Lonergan’s proposal is deterministic (see Levering, Predestination, 157n106). In any case, on the topic of operative grace, Reinhard Hütter is correct when he says this work is “still to be the benchmark analysis of Aquinas’ profound treatment of this utterly complex topic”; see his “Desiderium Naturale Visionis Dei—Est autem duplex hominis beatitude sive felicitas: Some Observations about Lawrence Feingold’s and John Milbank’s Recent Interventions in the Debate over the Natural Desire to See God,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 81–131, at 103n42. 792 Joshua R. Brotherton good acts the man has not already willed to resist (albeit not yet by a positive decision against it).29 Since God is the cause of everything that exists, even our free good acts are effects of God’s predestinating will and performed freely precisely in virtue of this will, and yet the reason God does not predestine some to accept his (efficacious) grace may be that they have already chosen to resist it.30 This does not mean that God gives efficacious grace to those who do good, but that he gives it to those who do not, so to speak, go on a “pre-emptive strike” in favor of evil.31 In other words, man is free because God simply causes his acts to be done with that created freedom that cannot lie outside the power of his providence. Nevertheless, since we know by revelation that God sincerely wills the salvation of every person (e.g., 1 Tim 2:4), it is fitting that the resistance proposed by each man be taken into consideration prior to his infallible causation of what actually occurs.32 This is the only Thomistic alternative to the doctrine of infallible permission.33 What follows in this section is a virtual back-and-forth between Most and Garrigou-Lagrange on whether 29 30 31 32 33 “For if a man can lack even one evil disposition without grace, then he is negatively disposed in regard to at least one grace that can come” (Most, GPSWG, 493). “It must be stated that God moves everything according to its manner. So divine motion is imparted to some things with necessity; however, it is imparted to the rational nature with liberty because the rational power is related to opposites. God so moves the human mind to the good, however, that a man can resist this motion. And so, that a man should prepare himself for grace is from God . . . but that he should lack grace does not have its cause from God but from the man, according to Hosea 13:9, ‘Your ruin is from yourself, Israel; your help is only from me.’” (Aquinas, Quodlibetale I, q. 4, a. 2, ad 2; quoted in Most, GPSWG, 330; italics are mine). For a detailed account of how this follows from what was said above, one would have to consult the whole of Most, GPSWG. See, for example, ibid., 166 and 202. Although Most (like Maritain) argues that infallible permissive decrees would make God the indirect cause of evil, an evident metaphysical impossibility, he also speaks of an “extraordinary providence” in which God provides the grace of positive non-resistance infrustrably (see ibid., 472–73). According to Most’s schema, positive non-resistance is ordinarily willed in a frustrable manner, and therefore it is usually unbefitting of God to grant an infallibly efficacious (or infrustrable) grace. Thus, Most says: “God can, when He so wills, move the hearts of men infrustrably, so as to forestall or even cancel out resistance. But to do this belongs to extraordinary providence” (ibid., 453). He thus distinguishes between primary and secondary freedom: the former corresponds to the freedom exercised under “ordinary” providence, the latter under “extraordinary” (see ibid., 158–60). Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 793 infallible permissive decrees (and negative reprobation conceived accordingly) are metaphysically necessary or, rather, implicate God as the indirect cause of evil. According to Most, the doctrine of infallible permissive decrees ends up making the divine will an indirect cause of evil acts,34 even if such an implication is explicitly denied, as it is by Garrigou-Lagrange. The latter, nevertheless, justifies the theory of infallible permission in the following manner: “God is not bound, indeed, to conduct effectively all angels and men to the glory of heaven and to prevent a creature, of itself defectible, from sometimes failing. He can permit this evil of which he is by no means the cause, and he permits it in view of a greater good, as being a manifestation of his infinite justice.”35 Most argues that this kind of approach coheres well with 34 35 See ibid., 431ff. It will be seen that Maritain holds the same. Predestination, 177. The question of whether willing that some inevitably condemn themselves for eternity truly manifests divine glory to a greater extent than would allowing for the possibility of universal salvation (even if conditionally willed) is another detail of the discussion treated at length by Most (see GPSWG, ch. 3), who, in my opinion, shows the former option to be opposed by the First Vatican Council (see ibid., 46ff.). Nevertheless, Garrigou-Lagrange asserts (on the basis of ST I, q. 23, a. 5, ad 3): “We must say . . . that the motive for negative reprobation is that God willed to manifest his goodness not only by means of his mercy, but also by means of his justice, and that it belongs to Providence to permit certain defectible beings to fail and certain evils to happen, without which there would be no good things of a higher order” (Predestination, 206–07). Marín-Sola rebuts the argument for infallible permissive decrees from the perfection of creation in the following ingenious manner: “Asi, por ejemplo, algunos novicios tomistas, al leer las frases de Santo Tomas en que dice claramente que el unico motive de la reprobacion negative es el mayor bien del universo, se figuran ya que la reprobación negativa no puede suponer la presciencia de los pecados actuales, cual si el ‘ser unicamente por el mayor bien del universo’ y el ‘suponer la presciencia de los pecadoes actuales’ fuesen cosas incompatibles, cuando, al contrario, son cosas que pueden estar unidas” (“Nuevas observaciones,” 370n1; emphasis original); English translation: “So, for example, some beginning Thomists, reading the phrases of St. Thomas in which he says clearly that the only motive of negative reprobation is the greater good of the universe, already figure that negative reprobation cannot suppose knowledge of actual sins, as if ‘to be only for the greater good of the universe’ and ‘to suppose knowledge of actual sins’ were incompatible things, when, on the contrary, they are things that can be united” (my own translation). “Negative reprobation” is a notion acceptable only if it does not entail infallible permissive decrees (for example, if it is posterior to prevision of demerit), as should become clear through the course of this essay. 794 Joshua R. Brotherton the massa damnata theory of St. Augustine as an exegete.36 Arguing against the position later espoused by Most, that predestination is consequent to foreknowledge of demerits, the true harshness of the Bañezian solution is put in near full relief in the following words of Garrigou-Lagrange: The motive for negative reprobation, taken absolutely or in a general way, is not the foreseen evil of the reprobates; for this negative reprobation is nothing else but the divine permission of these demerits, and therefore it logically precedes rather than follows the foreseeing of them. Without this divine permission, these demerits would not happen in time, and from all eternity, they would remain unforeseen. . . . If we ask why God chose this person and not that other, there is . . . no reason for this but simply the divine will which is thus the motive both for individual predestination and the negative reprobation of this particular rather than that other.37 Most outlines very well the maneuvers made by the traditional Thomists to justify such a position with respect to the efficacy of grace: 36 37 See GPSWG, 278–302 for an exposition of two distinct theories in tension with each other throughout Augustine’s writings, the aforementioned theory being indebted to a particular reading of Rom 5–9 that claims very few adherents today. I have been investigating (for another publication) contemporary interpretation of Augustine’s exegesis of Romans and Most’s construal of his theory of predestination. Predestination, 206–07. Most thinks the precedence of negative reprobation over foreknowledge of demerits provides the prior rationale for the rest of the Bañezian schema: “All this is easy to understand when we recall that the Thomists insistently teach negative reprobation before foreseen demerits.They thereby implicitly teach that in no way can a man control whether or not he gets the application or efficacious grace. . . . In other words, negative reprobation cannot be put into effect if man can control when and whether he gets efficacious grace. We can easily see now why Thomists insist that man is totally incapable of ‘distinguishing himself ’—in regard to doing evil or not doing evil” (GPSWG, 435–36; italics original). Michał Paluch argues that Thomas, in fact, in his Commentary on the Sentences, held something similar to Most’s position that reprobation is post praevisa demerita but ante praevisa merita, whereas in the Summa Theologiae, his position seems to be that reprobation is simultaneous to foreknowledge of demerits, which is distinct from the understanding of Garrigou-Lagrange and [early] J.-H. Nicolas that it is ante praevisa demerita et merita); see Paluch, La Profondeur de l’amour divin, 200–11, cited in Levering, Predestination, 81n67. Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 795 [I]n one place [followers of Garrigou-Lagrange] will say that God gives sufficient grace to all men. Then, if someone wishes to infer from this statement that it depends on each man whether or not he is reprobated, they add that sufficient grace does not suffice for salvation. Then, if someone objects that God will not refuse the means needed for salvation, they add that no one is deprived of efficacious grace except for having resisted a sufficient grace. But if someone from this wishes to deduce that God does not desert anyone before prevision of demerits, they add that man always resists unless God, by efficacious grace, impedes resistance. Further, they sometimes say that efficacious grace is given to those who have sufficient grace and pray. But if someone then infers that man can determine by this means whether he will or will not get efficacious grace, they point out that no one can pray so as to get efficacious grace unless he first has an efficacious grace to pray.38 Despite Garrigou-Lagrange’s evident attempt to temper the Bañezian position, the metaphysical confusion at the heart of the problem is also manifest in the following defense against the charge that a God who infallibly permits evil acts prior to foreknowledge of demerits would be an indirect cause of evil (and therefore unjust for punishing it): [N]obody is deprived of an efficacious grace that is necessary for salvation except through his own fault, for God never commands what is impossible. . . . But this defect, because of which God refuses efficacious grace, would not happen without God’s permission, which is not its cause but its indispensable condition. We must therefore distinguish between God’s mere permission of sin, which is evidently prior to the sin permitted, and His refusal of efficacious grace because of his sin. This refusal is a punishment that presupposes the defect, whereas the defect presupposes the divine permission. God’s permission of sin, which is good in view of the end (for a greater good), implies certainly the non-continuance of the created will in the performance of good at that particular time. This non-continuance, not being something real, is not a good. But neither is it an evil, for it is not the privation of a good that is due to one. 38 GPSWG, 195–96. 796 Joshua R. Brotherton It is merely the negation of a good that is not due to one. . . . He is not bound to maintain in the performance of good this will which by its nature is defectible. . . . God’s withdrawal of efficacious grace is a punishment, and it is a punishment that presupposes at least a first defection.39 It is unclear how such divine permission of evil acts can be called simply an “indispensable condition” and not an indirect cause if it is itself sufficient to guarantee the performance of such evil. And it is not clear how there would not be something lacking in the justice of a God who would punish men for, in effect, doing what was metaphysically impossible for them not to do (consequent to such divine infallible permission). Finally, it is unclear how God’s will to permit this man and not that one to commit this evil act and not that evil act would not be completely arbitrary if it is said to precede all possible foreknowledge. If there is no foreknowledge of demerit prior to his final predestinating will, then there can be no reason for the latter besides divine whim. Even the translator (Bede Rose) of the English version of Garrigou-Lagrange’s The One God is troubled enough by his positive formulation of the absolute gratuity of predestination to glory in the divine consequent will that he feels compelled to restate it negatively: he incorrectly asserts of this position that it does not “mean that God predestined certain persons to glory by a purely arbitrary act of His will.”40 Most explains how the application of the Bañezian theory of physical pre-motion to all acts indiscriminately makes God the indirect cause of evil:41 But in the system of the older Thomists . . . God is also the first cause of the evil specification or determination, since, before any decision on the part of the man, God alone initiates the process as a result of which this man, e.g., Mark, is moved from a state of indetermination as to the sin, into a process as a result 39 40 41 Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 208–09. Oddly enough, he says something else in this passage (i.e., in the second portion excised for clarity’s sake) that could be construed in support of Most’s idea of “negative non-resistance”: “The non-continuance of our will in the performance of good is not an evil, either of sin or of punishment. It is a non-good” (209). The One God, 540n170. Most does, nevertheless, admit physical pre-motion in some sense (see GPSWG, 470–72). Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 797 of which, by metaphysical necessity, in the full and adequate sense, the man cannot do other than commit that sin which God has determined, at the time determined by God, in the manner determined by God, and in the circumstances determined by God.42 In other words, the Bañezian Thomist holds that God, from all eternity, overrides his own “initial” desire (i.e., the “divine antecedent will”) for all men to perform only good acts in order to choose which particular acts each man will perform, good and evil. Since, for the Bañezian, God can foreknow the evil acts of men only by knowing which good acts he does not cause them to perform, God ensures that evil act X is performed by choosing not to cause the opposite good act to be performed by the man in question. Assuming that the species of an evil act is entitative and therefore caused by God, the traditional Thomist concludes that every evil act performed by a creature is inevitably the “free” result of God’s eternal decision not to cause the opposite good act to be performed instead. Thus, the crux of the issue, from a metaphysical perspective (the primary perspective engaged by Garrigou-Lagrange), is whether evil specification originates (a) indirectly, yet necessarily, from divine causality of the particular species of a human act or (b) from man as deficient cause, indirectly determining the particular species of the human act caused by God. Opting for the latter (i.e., not attributing evil acts even indirectly to God’s predestinating will), Most propounds the corollary thesis that reprobation must be consequent to foreknowledge of demerits, even if predestination precedes foreknowledge of merits.43 Turning to the metaphysical reasoning at the core of the Bañezian thesis, Most makes inroads toward one of the ways in which he effectively destroys it as a viable option: As to the reason why a man always resists unless he has efficacious grace, these Thomists sometimes explain by saying that man’s fall comes from human defectibility. . . . The most basic reason because of which these Thomists say that it is metaphysically inconceivable for a man not to resist is a metaphysical reason. For they hold, as Garrigou-Lagrange says, that: “not to resist grace is already some good” (De gratia, p.190). Therefore, 42 43 Ibid., 432 (his italics). See, for example, ibid., 498ff. 798 Joshua R. Brotherton since in their system, non-resistance is a positive good, it is necessary to say that man, by sufficient grace, has the ability of non-resisting but he does not have the application of the ability of non-resisting. . . . The older Thomists have not found the distinction on the two kinds of non-resistance that we explained above, an essential distinction. If there were only one kind of non-resistance, the kind they speak of, they would be right in saving [sic] it is beyond man’s unaided power.44 The first way in which he responds to this Bañezian metaphysic is to draw a distinction between negative and positive non-resistance according to the following explanation: It is possible to speak of omission of resistance to grace in two senses: Non-resistance can mean: 1) A positive decision, a complete act, in which we formally decide not to resist or not to sin. . . . It is obvious that such a decision is a salutary act, a positive good. Hence, it is not in man’s unaided power. . . . 2) The mere absence of an evil decision, in which the will does not move itself at all, in the first part of the process . . . grace initiates the process by presenting a good to our mind, which God wishes to perform, and by moving our will to take pleasure in that good. . . . The two effects can continue without any positive decision on our part. If we merely do nothing, they continue, for they are produced by grace and the grace does not withdraw unless we resist.45 Failing to distinguish between negative and positive non-resistance (to particular good acts willed by the divine antecedent will—i.e., in a conditional manner) inevitably leads to conceiving God as the ultimate source of the evil specification of free acts. If man cannot but resist every good influx from God unless God infallibly causes him to accept it, then every evil act is performed precisely because the created agent does not receive (from God) actualization of the potency to perform the opposite good act and is pre-moved therefore (by divine permissive decree) toward the particular evil performed, as his nature always inclines him to opt for evil over good, according to this hypothesis.46 44 45 46 Ibid., 433–34 (his italics). Ibid., 139–40 (his italics). Although he is referring in particular to the dynamic of grace and its free reception, there is no reason why the distinction itself could not apply equally to the divine causality of all free good acts. In terms of grace, for the Bañezian it is “absolutely” possible for sufficient Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 799 The second way in which Most responds to the insistence of the traditional Thomists that infallible permissive decrees are metaphysically necessary is to point to the Church’s own assertion of the power of human freedom for the omission of evil (i.e., negative nonresistance).47 In other words, he contests the opinion that men left to their own devises must will every evil act, since man, as the Second Council of Orange and the Council of Trent suppose,48 has it within his power not only to do evil but also to do nothing. Certainly, it is true that, although man by nature has the power for good action, he cannot actualize such potency without receiving actualization from God. But this does not mean that, whenever someone performs an evil act, it is because God did not give him the actualization of the potency for doing the opposite good. Instead, it could mean that God did not effectively actualize such potency precisely because human deficiency had already resisted such actualization. Simply stated: Man by himself, without grace, cannot do any positive salutary good. . . . Yet man can, by his own power, decide when and whether he will do evil. For, he can fail by his own power. And he can resist grace. . . . Man can also omit resistance to grace. . . . It is not we who make the beginning [of good work]: grace does that alone, and we do nothing. But in making the positive consent, as Trent teaches, we truly, actively cooperate.49 Hence, as there is no necessity for man always to will such resistance, the potency for good is actualized precisely where such resistance is absent. In other words, whenever a man does not choose to do a particular evil act, God ordinarily infuses the opposite good action into the empty space, as it were, where the man has yet to do anything. In sum, Most sees created being as the ultimate deficient source of the specification of every evil act, and he maintains the power of human freedom not to be automatically inclined toward every evil 47 48 49 grace to come to fruition in (extrinsically) efficacious grace, but such an “application” is not proximately possible if God has chosen not to provide it (and he has already predetermined from eternity which graces are to be merely intrinsically efficacious). Most argues against this in GPSWG, on 431ff. This kind of reasoning will be confronted throughout this essay, particularly in defense of Maritain against Long’s arguments. See ibid., ch. 7. See ibid., 150–55. Ibid., 452. 800 Joshua R. Brotherton act. Bañezian Thomists must oppose the distinction between positive and negative non-resistance, as they assert that the only alternative to the deterministic thesis of Molina is that all foreknowledge is posterior to predestination.50 Most’s presentation is ultimately a confrontation with the argument that, if man could be metaphysically indifferent to resistance, uncertainty would be introduced into the divine intellect and God would be “determined” by finite agents.51 For the Bañezian Thomist, the difficulty explaining divine foreknowledge apart from predestination reinforces (and perhaps even gives rise to) the claim that man must resist every good act by nature (since he cannot actualize the potential for such acts), in which case God must choose which evil acts each man is to perform.52 In other words, man cannot even negatively determine the specification of an act before God predestines the entitative part of the act. On the contrary, according to Most’s thesis, man (in the logical order) negatively specifies which act he wants to perform and God (usually) makes this logical moment into a metaphysical entity.53 Of course, it must be true that what ultimately happens belongs to his final predestinating will. But before finally and infallibly willing the good acts that will be performed by men, he considers the evil proposed by each. His final predestinating or infallible will is consequent precisely to divine consideration of the particular resistances offered by men. Hence, the distinction between positive and negative non-resistance illuminates the possibility that 50 51 52 53 See, for example, Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 148–50 and 251. Since the present article does not concern the complex problem of divine foreknowledge, it will suffice to quote one relevant passage from the fourth part of Most’s work, which is dedicated to this topic. He answers GarrigouLagrange’s famous dilemma, “God determining or determined,” which is found throughout the latter’s works (e.g., see the last sentence of his Predestination), in the following manner: “[W]ithout the use of causality as a means of knowing, God is not passive because his divine intellect is transcendent and because, by the will of God, all things are conditioned through negatives (the evil specification in resistance, and non-resistance). . . . He is not determined by creatures, nor is He passive. But neither does God determine the negative conditions: He permits them to be determined by creatures. Hence, the dilemma rests on a question that is not well put, and on an incomplete disjunction: Neither does God determine the creature, nor does the creature determine God. Rather God permits the creature to make a negative determination, but God Himself produces the truth and determines Himself to move or not to move the creature to positive determination, according to the resistance or non-resistance of the creature” (GPSWG, 609–10). See, for example, Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 248ff and 278ff. See, in addition to texts already cited in this regard, GPSWG, 600ff. Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 801 divine foreknowledge of evil can precede his consequent/efficacious will, even though his foreknowledge of good acts can only follow upon it. Essential Convergence of Most and Maritain (on Nonbeing) Most responds thoroughly to the Bañezian charge that, if divine foreknowledge of evil were to precede predestination, God would be passive to man’s choice of resistance.54 He points out that, when resistance is absent in man, there is no divine causality required because there is no human action to be caused—there is simply the absence of action. Therefore, “He is passive neither under the evil specification which is a mere privation and falling away, nor in the exercise of the act which He himself produces.”55 A passage from Thomas that Most frequently invokes in support of the position that there is no contradiction in admitting man’s power to omit resistance and attributing the positive choice of non-resistance to divine causality is the following:56 Since . . . a man cannot be directed to his ultimate end except by the help of divine grace . . . it could seem to someone that a man should not be blamed if he lacks the aforementioned . . . since he is not able to merit the help of divine grace . . . for no one is charged with that which depends on another. . . . To solve this problem we must consider that although a man, by the movement of his free will, can neither merit nor obtain divine grace, yet he can impede himself from receiving it. . . . And since this is in the power of free will to impede or not to impede the reception of divine grace, not undeservingly is he charged with a fault who sets up an impediment to grace. For God, so far as He is concerned, is ready to give grace to all . . . but they only 54 55 56 See GPSWG, 205–07, 487, and 492–93. Ibid., 206. However, some cite Thomas’s De Malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 2, to argue that the species of an evil act must be a positive entity if it is “a Deo causatur.” I do not think Most would disagree that the species of an evil act qua species is entitative, but what he means by “evil specification” here is the deficiency itself proper to the species of an evil act. Hence, when Thomas says, “deformitas peccati non consequitur speciem actus secundum quod est in genere naturae; sic autem a Deo causatur” (“the deformity of sin does not accompany the species of an act according to what is its nature in general; such, moreover, is caused by God”; my own translation from the Latin found at www.corpusthomisticum. org), the antecedent of “sic” (“such”) is not “deformitas” (“deformity”), but “speciem” (“species”). See, for example, GPSWG, 156, 197, and 309. 802 Joshua R. Brotherton are deprived of grace who set up an impediment to grace in themselves.57 If man were to have the power of positive consent independent of God, then God would be made passive to such an act. But the power of omitting resistance, insofar as it is a non-act, belongs to finite freedom as such. As Most says: These Thomists . . . say that the transcendence of the divine intellect cannot be invoked in solving the question of foreknowledge, since before God can know or foreknow anything, that thing must exist. . . . This argument does not hold. For the critical and decisive factors in human freedom are found in non-beings, that is, in non-resistance and in the evil specification in resistance. But, for non-beings, divine causality is not required . . . divine causality is also needed to begin a motion in them. . . . But once God has provided this much, the non-being factors can occur without the need of additional divine causality.58 57 58 Summa contra gentiles (hereafter, SCG) III, ch. 159 (Most, GPSWG, 197; the italics are Most’s). The Latin is as follows: “Cum in finem ultimum aliquis dirigi non possit nisi auxilio divinae gratiae . . . potest alicui videri quod non sit homini imputandum si praedictis careat . . . cum auxilium divinae gratiae mereri non posit . . . nulli enim imputatur quod ab alio dependet . . . Ad huius dubitationis solutionem considerandum est quod, licet aliquis per motum liberi arbitrii divinam gratiam nec promereri nec advocari possit, potest tamen seipsum impedire ne eam recipiat . . . Et cum hoc sit in potestate liberi arbitrii, impedire divinae gratiae receptionem vel non impedire, non immerito in culpam imputatur ei qui impedimentum praestat gratiae receptioni. Deus enim, quantum in se est, paratus est omnibus gratiam dare . . . ed illi soli gratia privantur qui in seipsis gratiae impedimentum praestant” (found at www. corpusthomisticum.org). GPSWG, 498–99 (his italics). Most approaches the transcendence of the divine intellect as no less mysterious than the transcendence of the divine will, to which the Bañezian Thomists frequently appeal in explaining how predestination does not contradict human freedom (see GPSWG, 497–500). Most also says: “Negative determinations, since they are non-beings, do not have truth in them, nor do they convey truth to the intellect—not even to the human intellect, much less to the divine intellect. Because they do not have truth in themselves nor convey truth into the divine intellect, nor make the truth of negative propositions, it remains true that no truth is prior to the knowledge of God, just as it is also true that no thing or being is prior to the knowledge of God. Non-beings are no things” (604); see also 612. In a similar vein, Lonergan points to ST I, q. 17, a. 1, and makes the following precise comments: “The Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 803 Since created being has it within its power to “author” nonbeings, divine foreknowledge does not completely and utterly depend upon divine causality, as the former includes nonbeings and the latter only beings.59 Maritain answers the same problem with the more explicitly Thomistic metaphysical distinction between negatio and privatio.60 Just as Most distinguishes between two “logical moments” in the case of good action (namely, the absence of resistance and the good act divinely caused), Maritain describes two “instants of nature” that are not necessarily temporally distinct.61 The first is the non-consideration of the moral rule, which is a mera negatio, and the second is the defectus that is the cause of the evil act itself, the moral privatio.62 But the two instants of Maritain do not correspond directly with the two logical moments of Most. Maritain’s “non-consideration of the rule” is the nonbeing that causes the privation that is the evil act, whereas for Most negative non-resistance is the nonbeing that precedes positive non-resistance as an indispensable condition for good action to be effectively caused in the creature. Nevertheless, both say that the good acts willed by God for free creatures to perform actually occur when there is no obstacle posed by the creature (i.e., resistance or nihilation) and that, when there is no such obstacle, the influx of good from God is inevitably and freely performed (i.e., the good act is infallibly or infrustrably predestined).63 Similar to Most, the point of departure for Maritain is to refute the Bañezian Thomist theory of infallible permissive decrees.64 Although 59 60 61 62 63 64 positive truth that the sun shines is something that is positively and conforms to the divine design. The negative truth that the sun does not shine on us is something that is not positively and yet conforms to the divine design. But the objective falsity of malum culpae is something that is not positively and further does not conform to the ordinatio divini intellectus. It is obviously impossible for Bañez to speak of anything as withdrawing itself from the ordination of the divine intellect. St. Thomas not only speaks of it but cites scripture as his ground for doing so [namely, John 3]” (Grace and Freedom, 330n34). See GPSWG, 600ff. See the following section for the relevant citations of Thomas. For similarities to Most in Maritain on the topic of negative non-resistance, see Existence and the Existent, 94 and 99n9–101n10 (original French edition, 155, 160–161n1, and 163–164n1). See God and the Permission of Evil, 21 (French, 27). See, for example, Existence and the Existent, 94 (French, 155). See God and the Permission of Evil, 13 (French, 20). 804 Joshua R. Brotherton Maritain refers in a friendly manner to Garrigou-Lagrange,65 treading lightly upon his traditional stance,66 he makes “neo-Bañezianism” his explicit target, which for him is primarily represented by Fr. Jean-Hervé Nicolas.67 Maritain explains how the traditional school manages to forget the necessary dissymmetry between what he calls the “line of good” and the “line of evil.”68 The principles of the good in relation to the first cause are that God is the universal cause and that his knowledge is the cause of things; the principles of evil in relation to the first cause are that the creature, rather than God, is the cause of evil and that God knows evil without in any way causing it. While Molina “disregarded the principle of the dissymmetry 65 66 67 68 See ibid., 19 (French, 25). The following text of Garrigou-Lagrange is evidence of Maritain’s contention that he worked to make the traditional Thomist position less harsh (even if he did not change it essentially): “It is not necessary that the first human defection precede the divine refusal of efficacious grace by priority of time; a priority of nature suffices. In this, we have an application of the principle of mutual relation between causes, which is verified in all cases where there is the intervention of the four causes; for, causes mutually interact, though in a different order. St. Thomas invokes this general principle to prove that in the justification of the sinner, which takes place in an indivisible instant, the remission of sin follows the infusion of grace in the formal and efficient order, whereas liberation from sin precedes the reception of sanctifying grace in the order of material causality. . . . Now if justification is thus explained by the mutual relation between causes, then it must be the same for the loss of grace, which is the reverse process; for the rule is the same for contraries. As John of St. Thomas shows, the moment man sins mortally and loses habitual grace, his deficiency, in the order of material causality, precedes the refusal of God’s actual efficacious grace and is the reason for this. From another point of view, however, even the first deficiency presupposes God’s permission of sin, and it would not result without such. However, in opposition to justification, sin as such is the work of the deficient creature and not of God. Therefore it is true to say that purely and simply . . . sin precedes God’s refusal of efficacious grace. In other words, ‘God forsakes not those who have been justified, unless He be first forsaken by them.’ (Denz., no. 804)” (Predestination, 333–34). Nicolas offered criticisms of Maritain’s thoughts concerning God’s permission of evil, arguing in favor of the position of Dominic Bañez’s interpretation of Thomas; see his four-part “La Permission du Péché,” Revue Thomiste LX (1960). Thomas Joseph White (“Von Balthasar and Journet,” 663n70) and Gilles Emery (“The Question of Evil,” 551–52) note that Nicolas eventually concedes to Maritain’s position in “La volunté salvifique de Dieu contrariée par le péché,” Revue Thomiste 92 (1992): 177–96. Steven Long later takes up arguments similar to Nicolas’s against Maritain. See God and the Permission of Evil, 14ff. (French, 21ff.). These expressions are borrowed from Marín-Sola (see especially “Nuevas observaciones,” 357). Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 805 between the line of good and the line of evil . . . to put the good act as well as the evil act under the dependence of a first initiative of the creature,”69 Bañez, John of St. Thomas, the Carmelites of Salamanca, and other “rigid Thomists” attempted to explain everything from the perspective of being alone. “God thus seemed . . . the initiator of the evil which He punished. . . . [T]hese Thomists taught [the unthinkable thing] that one calls ‘negative reprobation,’ which precedes any demerit.” 70 The fault of such “hard Thomists” does not lie in lack of logical rigor, but in forgetting this dissymmetry and ignoring the perspective of nonbeing. In this way, Maritain also thinks that the Bañezians end up attributing evil, albeit indirectly, to God as universal cause via “antecedent permissive decrees.” 71 Maritain’s Alternative to Bañez on Divine Permission of Evil Contrary to the Bañezian claim that every finite will inevitably tends to a moral privation if God does not predestine the opposite, Maritain finds in St. Thomas the theory that the cause of moral evil in man is a failure that is not yet culpable,72 a voluntary non-consideration of the rule, but a “mera negatio.” In other words, for Thomas, the evil of an action is caused by the nonbeing of the free non-action of not considering the rule, whereas for the Bañezian, this non-consideration of the rule is already a privation, that is, a moral evil, which therefore cannot be the cause of moral evil in the free creature.73 Maritain utilizes a twentieth-century scholastic manual to develop a Thomistic “real distinction”: This real distinction between cause and effect is even found in the case of immanent activity, where an agent “moves itself ”—it is under relations really distinct (and not distinct merely by a distinction of reason) that there is then causation and effect produced. “Causa distinguitur ab effectu suo realiter: nam quod ab alio realiter dependet, realiter ab eo distinguitur” ( J. Gredt, Elem. 69 70 71 72 73 God and the Permission of Evil, 15 (French, 22). Ibid., 14 (his italics) (French, 21). See ibid., 17–18 (French, 24). Hence, a father who withdraws his hand from a child who is incapable of writing straight lines without his assistance is the indirect cause of the scribble that is directly caused by the child alone; see ibid., 28–29 (French, 34). He cites In I sent. d. 40, q .4, a. 2; ST I-II, q. 79, a. 1; and ST I-II, q. 112, a. 3, ad 2; see God and the Permission of Evil, 6 (French, 13–14). See ibid., 21–22 (French, 27–28). 806 Joshua R. Brotherton Phil. Arist.-Thom., t. II, p.147). How does neo-Bañezianism come to forget such an evident axiom? “…There is not a real distinction, ” we are told, “but a distinction of reason between the defectus voluntatis which is the cause of the sin, and the defectus actionis which is the sin itself.” 74 Hence, the defectus actionis is itself (deficiently) caused only by the defectus voluntatis, while whatever being belongs to the evil act must be totally caused by God and subordinately by the free creature. What the “rigid Thomists” cannot see is that there is no contradiction involved in affirming, at the same time, (1) that God is the supreme ratio for the being that belongs to every act (good and evil) insofar as it is free and good, and (2) that the privatio proper to each evil act is first caused by the free creature and therefore only permitted by God. In other words, the nonbeing of an evil act is logically antecedent to the being of the evil act, and therefore the latter is willed in view of the former.75 Therefore, Maritain’s fundamental thesis is that God cannot be the original planner of any evil act because the free creature alone must be the first cause of his own evil acts. Even if God is not considered an indirect cause of moral evil, he must be conceived by the rigid Thomists as the “architect” of evil because his intellect ultimately determines which evil acts are to take place according to his plan for all things.76 Maritain’s alternative is to approach the question of the 74 75 76 Ibid., 24n12 (French, 30n1; emphasis is Maritain’s). Along the lines of both Maritain and Most, Lonergan says: “Third, the unintelligible can be related to the unintelligible: there is a certain explanation of sin in terms of other prior sin, but the reason for this is not any intelligibility in sin; it is simply due to the fact that sin is also evil, a privation of the good; one privation leads to another, not because a privation does anything but because a deficient cause produces a deficient effect. . . . [Reprobation] is not a cause because sin has no cause, but is unintelligible, inexplicable, and not to be related explanatorily to the intelligible [footnote: see ST I, q. 17, a. 1; q. 103, a. 8, ad 1]. But if it is antecedent [because it is a divine act] yet not a cause, and if there are three categories [of intelligibility] and not two, then how can it be infallible? The answer to that lies in the theory of divine transcendence: God’s knowledge is infallible” (Grace and Freedom, 332–33; emphasis added). See also Grace and Freedom 340–42 for arguments corroborating Maritain’s concerning the causa defectus as ratio culpae (against Deus causa peccati). “So, supposing (without conceding) that God is not, under the relation of efficiency, in withdrawing his hand the indirect cause of the failure which succeeds the antecedent permissive decree, the fact remains that on the side of the plan conceived by God, it is God who in his thought, his creative design, his eternal purposes, has first had the idea, the idée-matrix, the idea infallibly Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 807 origin of evil action from the perspective of the line of nonbeing, which is nevertheless an “existential reality.” Hence, he states the following: [T]he first cause or the inventor of moral evil in the existential reality of the world is the liberty of the creature—I mean, this liberty in the line of non-being. All of this implies that at the very first origin of the evil act—and, above all, of the evil election . . .—there is not only the fallibility of the creature, but an actual failure of the creature, a created initiative which—since it is not caused by God—can only be an initiative of non-being, of deficiency in being, of lack, what I have called a nihilation.77 The line of evil is the line of nonbeing because an evil act is an act “wounded by nothingness” and its metaphysical root must be a certain “withdrawal from being,” a free non-action, a “mere nothingness of consideration.” 78 Hence, even though an evil act is a being insofar as it is an act, the evil of the act is “the nothingness of a form of being requisite to a given being.” 79 Therefore, one must reason about the line of evil in a different way than one does with respect to the line of good because the terms of one’s thinking must relate directly to nihil rather than to esse.80 Since the lack of considering the rule, which is not a privation, is the origin of the privation that 77 78 79 80 followed by effect, of the culpable failure in question. In permitting it in advance as integral part of the plan of which He alone is the author, without consideration of the nihilations of which the creature is the first cause . . . God first has the initiative, not causal but permissive, in virtue of which all the faults. . . . In the theory of the antecedent permissive decrees, God, under the relation of efficiency, is not the cause, not even (that which I do not at all concede) the indirect cause, of moral evil. But He is the one primarily responsible for its presence here on earth. It is He who has invented it in the drama or novel of which He is the author. He refuses efficacious grace to a creature because it has already failed culpably, but this culpable failure itself occurred only in virtue of the permissive decree which preceded it. God manages to be in nowise the cause of evil, while seeing to it that evil occurs infallibly”; see God and the Permission of Evil, 30–31 (French, 35–36). Ibid., 33 (French, 37–38; his italics). See Maritain, St.Thomas and the Problem of Evil, for Thomas’s teaching on these points. Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 89 (French, 147). Here it is clear that the nonbeing of a nihilation is never characterized as absolute, but rather understood in a relative sense, which will be pertinent in the next section. See ibid., 89 (French, 148). 808 Joshua R. Brotherton constitutes the evil act, one must then ask for the origin of the negatio. But St. Thomas is content with stopping at the freedom of the will as the limit beyond which one cannot trace the origin of the evil act any further, as such sufficiently accounts for the non-action of the will with respect to the rule.81 Thus, Maritain explains: The first cause (which is not an acting or efficient cause, but is dis-acting and de-efficient), the first cause of the non-consideration of the rule, and consequently of the evil of the free act that will come forth from it, is purely and simply the liberty of the created existent [see Thomas’s ST I-II, q. 79, a. 2, ad 2 and ST I-II, q. 112, a. 3, ad 2]. The latter possesses the free initiative of an absence (or “nothingness”) of consideration, of a vacuum introduced into the warp and woof of being, of a nihil; and this time this free initiative is a first initiative because it does not consist in acting freely or allowing being to pass, but in freely not-acting and not-willing, in freely frustrating the passage of being.82 Hence, recognizing the dissymmetry between the line of good as being and the line of evil as nonbeing alone allows one to “break the iron-collar of antinomies” produced by the principles that all good comes ultimately from God and the evil in any act must come from the creature alone. It is evident then that, for Maritain (as for Most), the role of nonbeing in the origin of evil is crucial, and yet it is inevitably not entirely clear to finite intellects how such nonbeing can be properly understood. The defectus that is the origin of the evil act has been identified as a mera negatio,83 but it is also called a “free failure” that is constituted by not considering the moral rule and is said to “cause” in some way the subsequent privatio. The defectus that causes a moral evil is “the non-consideration of the rule—which is not, note well, an act 81 82 83 See Thomas’s De malo, q. 1, a. 3, cited in Existence and the Existent, 91 (French, 151). Ibid., 91–92 (French, 150–52). A mere negation is “a mere withdrawal from being, a mere lack of a being or of a good which is not due: a mere absence which I introduce voluntarily into being”; see God and the Permission of Evil, 35 (French, 39; his italics). He cites in the footnote to this text the following passages from St. Thomas: De malo, q. 1, a. 3, corp. and ad 13; ST I, q. 49, a. 1, ad 3; ST I-II, q. 75, a. 1, ad 3; and SCG III, ch. 10. Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 809 of non-consideration, but a non-act of consideration.”84 Nevertheless, “this non-consideration of the rule is something real, since it is the cause of the sin; and it is something free. . . . Being the cause of the evil, it precedes the evil, at least by a priority of nature.”85 Once the free creature brings this absence (which is nevertheless “real”) into act, it becomes a privation in the moral order, an action that deviates from a good that is due, and it is from this that Maritain derives his two “instants of nature.” How can an absence be called a “real cause” of a fault freely chosen? It must be merely a logical entity that is ontologically nothing and can therefore constitute the ultimate reason for the existence of an ontological privation. Thus, it is one form of relative nonbeing yielding another form of relative nonbeing, which is called “real” or “existential” in the sense that it is experienced as if it were a form of being. Hence, Maritain says, “Now we know that our human intellect can conceive non-being, and therefore evil, only ad instar entis, after the fashion of being, and consequently by speaking of it as of some thing, as of a kind of so-called quality.”86 Confronting the Opposition With this kind of reasoning in mind, together with the approach Most adopted toward Garrigou-Lagrange’s objections, the recent objections presented by Steven A. Long against Maritain’s thesis are easily answered. The problem with Long’s critique is immediately evident in the thesis statement of his article and consequently persists throughout. He says, “I will argue that the metaphysical and theocentric conception of natural law . . . is impossible if human volitional activity is outside of the divine causality.”87 His explicit target is Maritain’s doctrine on the 84 85 86 87 God and the Permission of Evil, 35 (French, 39; his italics). Ibid., 35 (French, 40; his italics). Ibid., 36 (French, 40). He continues: “If in spite of this, through or beyond the auxiliary being of reason which we have thus constructed, we have seized non-being in its existential reality in the bosom of being rendered ‘lacking’ or ‘deprived’ by it—well then, in order to treat of evil in its existential reality itself, by disengaging it as much as possible from the being of reason which reifies it, we shall find it absolutely necessary to employ a language which does violence to our natural manner of thinking and does violence to words. We shall have to say that when the creature takes the free initiative not to consider the rule—mera negation, non-act, mere lack—it dis-acts, it nihilises or nihilates; and that moral evil, the evil of free action, is likewise, as such, a nihilation, which this time is a privation, privation of a due good” (36–37) (French, 40–41). Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 558. Joshua R. Brotherton 810 divine permission of evil, and it is a good thing, then, that the latter is clearly exempt from the foundation of Long’s argument: Maritain’s “nihilation” (as Most’s “negative non-resistance”) is expressly not an activity, but a non-activity, and of course evil is outside divine causality (except for whoever may confess God as indirect cause of evil). Evidently the latter assertion is precisely what Long wishes to contest, but without much force of argument. His primary approach is arguable exegesis of texts from St. Thomas, which I will pass over out of deference for the substance of the matter. His second line of argument, appearing also in St. Thomas, has to do with the overall good of creation requiring the certain damnation of some.88 The old argument goes as follows: (1) God’s glory is more manifest if both his mercy and his vindictive justice are made eternally manifest; (2) without infallible permissive decrees, there is no guarantee that his vindictive justice will be manifest; and therefore, (3) infallible permissions are necessary to ensure that his glory is in fact manifest to the fullest degree. Defending vindictive justice as a good quality of God that should be manifest in a really distinct manner from his mercy is one task, but the chief flaw in this argument is the failure to acknowledge that the reason God creates is not simply to communicate his goodness in whatever way imaginable (as if he were to “show off ”), but to manifest it precisely by imparting it in the most fitting manner. Put another way, an act of communicating goodness that ensures the exclusion of some from truly enjoying it certainly would not be the most befitting of an infinitely good and glorious God. It belongs to the very essence of Christian revelation that the intimate identity of God’s own inner life be precisely caritas. Thus, the only reason for the divine decision to create is to share his glorious being (i.e., goodness, truth, and beauty) ad extra. Bonum est diffusivum sui! If he were in fact the ultimate reason for each evil act and thus in some sense the architect of every such act, would he not, in such instances, be opposing the diffusion of goodness, whatever the end in view? It does not make sense to say that God wills to manifest his justice by infallibly permitting the ultimate moral destruction of some men whom he chose to create for the purpose of communicating his own goodness. Hence, a God who wills to allow his creatures to tend inevitably toward self-destruction would be incompatible with the idea of God as Creator in the Christian tradition. 88 See ibid., 573–76. Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 811 Long, rather, opts for a Creator who prefers a good story in which some are infallibly permitted condemnation, and he recruits a particular metaphysics in defense of it, rather than yielding to the mysteriousness of how the divine will and intellect relate, particularly with respect to the existence of moral evil.89 Speaking of Maritain’s thought (in a way that I think coheres well with Most’s formulation),90 Long states: He wishes to assert that both the one who actually negates and the one who does not actually negate are equally permitted by God to negate (not to consider the rule of reason), and evidently he means this in the composite sense. . . . But for classical Thomism, such a one cannot, at the very instant of being freely moved to consider the rule, not freely consider the rule. In other words, all conditions being given, even the one who does not negate but considers the rule of reason is, on Maritain’s account, able to negate at the very instant when he does not negate, and this person receives no more aid toward this effect of non-negation than the one who does negate. This is to say that God gives a motion that has no actual natural effect save insofar as the creature does not negate. This seems to one formed in classical Thomism to imply something absurd, namely that not to negate (the same non-negation upon which efficacious aid is predicated in this theory) calls for no more divine help than to negate.91 As Long hints, upholding the potential of finite freedom to negate even as it does not actually negate is no more contradictory than the Bañezian belief that, even in the case of a free creature that does not receive the “application” or actualization necessary for meritorious work (that is, when only “sufficient” grace is bestowed, not “efficacious” grace), absolutely speaking, the creature maintains the power to perform the act. But according to Maritain (and Most), God always conditionally 89 90 91 See ibid., 577. Long mentions Most’s proposal as essentially in agreement with Maritain’s and confesses ignorance concerning its details (see ibid., 578n24). He also briefly notes the convergence of their proposals concerning the nothingness of non-nihilation in Maritain’s St.Thomas and the Problem of Evil, 29, and Existence and the Existent, 100n10 (French, 163n1); see Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 586, including n37. Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 581. 812 Joshua R. Brotherton (i.e., “frustrably”) moves man to consideration of the rule of reason, but negation may be initiated autonomously by the creature precisely because the movement is fallible (or frustrable). It is not exactly true to say that the person who does not negate receives no more divine aid than the person who does negate—it need only be denied that God “distinguishes” the two prior to any consideration/foreknowledge of the nonbeing present in either. In other words, the person who does not negate does so by divine predestination, but it is not the case that the one who does negate in fact negates simply or precisely because God decided beforehand not to predestine him to non-negation. Rather, without such permission, he would not have been able to negate, and yet such permission did not necessitate the negation. In this sense, one might say that the actual permission followed the negation, but that the negation was possible because every free good act is predestined precisely on the condition that it is not negated. “Divine motion or grace merely sufficient or breakable fructifies of itself into unbreakable divine motion or into grace efficacious by itself.”92 Presupposing the logic of infallible permissive decrees and apparently reducing the notion of “conditional decrees” to that of “indifferent premotion,”93 Long comes back again and again to the following disjunction: negatio is either something positive or something negative. If it is the former, then it must be caused by God; if it is the latter, then it must exist wherever God does not supply the contrary.94 The reason he is faced with such a “dichotomy of being and lack of being” is that he does not discern the existence of species of nonbeing.95 “The negation of ‘shatterable’ divine motion by the creature is (and must be if this negation is to occur) permitted by God”96 —yes, but not infallibly. “[T]he divine permission of evil must precede its realization, and this permission must certainly consist in not causing the contrary of that which is permitted”97—or 92 93 94 95 96 97 Maritain, St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil, 33. Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 563. See ibid., 582ff. For a detailed taxonomy of nonbeings, see Jesús Villagrasa Lasaga, Realismo Metafísico e irrealidad. Estudio sobre la obra ‘Teoría del objeto puro’ de Antonio Millán-Puelles (Madrid, ES: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2008). See Joshua Brotherton, “Phenomenology and Metaphysics in Realismo Metafisico e Irrealidad by Jesús Villagrasa,” Información Filosófica 5, no. 11 (November 2008): 219–37, for an English summary and analysis of this work. Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 582. Ibid. Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 813 in not causing it infrustrably. “Negation must consist of act or lack of act—it cannot inhabit an ontological limbo peopled with beings of reason.”98 The premise ought to be granted but qualified: there are species of act and, consequently, also of non-act! Combining Most and Maritain, one can recognize that the following two non-acts are distinct, one preceding the good act and the other the evil act: (1) negative non-resistance and (2) the negatio of not considering the rule of reason. Hence, positive non-resistance is an act frustrably willed by God, and the privatio of willing to contradict the rule of reason is fallibly permitted. Here is the formulation of divine permission, obtained exegetically from a few texts of St. Thomas,99 that is at the heart of his defense of the Bañezian position: “[N]egation is either permitted by God in the non-conserving of the creature from the lack of being in which this negation consists, or else (if negation were thought to be positive) . . . it is caused by God in the creating of that being in which it consists.”100 In other words, because all good acts flow directly from divine causality, the only thing God has to do for evil to occur is withdraw that causality of good, and thus the withdrawal of such influx is itself the sufficient condition for an act to be evil. But consider this possibility instead: divine withdrawal of good is a necessary condition for an act to be evil, but evil is actually effected where there is also an initiative of evil from the creature, while divine causation of good is a sufficient condition for every good act, taking place only where the divine intellect does not “foreknow” negatio on the part of the free creature. In fact, God both permits negation (fallibly) and provides the being of non-negation on the condition that it is not negated/ resisted. Long objects that non-negation must be an act originating only in divine causality, but we have seen that it is a non-act logically antecedent to the divinely caused act of non-negation (positive non-resistance),101 conditionally or “frustrably” willed (in the words 98 99 100 101 Ibid., 583. See ST I-II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2; ST I-II, q. 79, a. 4, ad 1; and ST I, q. 23, a. 5, ad 3. Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 583. In illustration of the sense of “logical antecedence” here, consider the fact that, even though the existence of a created world that is finite in duration does not imply a prior void, and even though time in fact began with the universe (as it is an aspect of the created world), there is still some sense in which there was nothing “before” there was something created, even in the case of an eternal creation. The only difference in the case of divine foreknowledge and 814 Joshua R. Brotherton of Maritain) and consequent to divine foreknowledge of demerits (in the words of Most). In response to Long’s second objection, that non-consideration of the rule of reason would inevitably follow where God does not efficaciously will its consideration,102 again I say that the fact that he does not cause consideration infallibly does not necessitate the “effect” of non-consideration, precisely because the working hypothesis (of those who reject infallible permissions) is that he can cause consideration (and every free good act) in a conditional manner. The burden of proof lies on the side of those who deny his power to will the good on the condition of the absence of obstacles proposed by free creatures. Long reserves for a footnote the metaphysical argument on which he must rely to reject the insistence of Maritain and Most that non-resistance can be a non-act and thus a nonbeing: [T]hat one not negate means an absence of a pure non-being, which in context means the positive act of consideration of the rule and hence God’s actual causing of this consideration. Hence it seems to me Maritain correctly saw that non-negation had to be given formal priority over actual consideration of the rule if his account were to be upheld. . . . Yet this seems to be . . . a pure fallacy. . . . [William Most writes], ‘causality is not required for non-beings, among which is the absence of resistance.’ Since the absence of resistance is consistent with there being no subject and indeed no universe at all, this is true; but if we speak of the absence of a particular negation in an existing being, then we are necessarily speaking about something positive (if there is not pure non-being with respect to something, then in that same respect there must be being), and this must come from God.103 It is strange that Long himself, rather than Most and Maritain, seems to be guilty of the very thing he attributes to them here: texts have already been quoted in which he speaks in the general terms of good act versus negation rather than specifying that every evil act in partic- 102 103 predestination is that we are considering this logical entity that is an ontological non-entity to be in some way determinative of the ontological entity consequently caused by God, but only because God so chooses to base his predestination upon such foreknowledge of nonentities. See ibid., 585. Ibid., 586–87n37. Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 815 ular is infallibly permitted (according to the Bañezian thesis). I think all Thomists agree that God wills antecedent to all foreknowledge every particular good act and everything that is good or ontologically positive in all acts—in other words, the divine antecedent will is the ultimate origin of whatever is entitative in evil acts (i.e., every act insofar as it is free, an act, and existent). Only the new proposal insists that man of himself does not necessarily always will evil.104 With this in mind, it becomes clear that the central problem with the Bañezian mindset is to conceive, without reason, the being of an evil act to be determinative of its quality as an evil act. In other words, the real question is whether the “evil specification” of an act is entitative or nonentitative. The Bañezian says the species of an act determines whether it is this or that particular evil act, whereas the new proposals want to affirm that the species of an act, while determinative of whether it is this or that particular act (prescinding from its moral quality), is not necessarily determinative of whether or not the act is evil, as the evil in the act cannot simply result from what is good (or entitative) in the act. Addressing Long’s last statements directly, I say that the absence of resistance to a particular good act predestined by the divine antecedent will does not at all mean the absence of a subject or a universe—“the absence of a particular negation” (i.e., negative non-resistance) is not necessarily “something positive” when that designated as a “negation” is not total nonbeing, but a particular nonbeing that brings about the evil of a free act. The nonbeing that is the absence of resistance to a particular good act (or a particular grace) is distinct from the nonbeing that is the absence of consideration of the rule of reason precisely because the first is a negation with respect to the being of an evil act (insofar as it is a being) while the second is a negation with respect to the being peculiarly present in every good act (that is, the psychological “mechanics” involved). Long again makes the odd argument that God cannot will that a free good act be performed on the condition that the creature does not obstruct such an influx because that would imply the non-existence of the universe: It is absolutely essential to note that we may not say in the strict sense that God conditions the gift of efficacious help upon 104 “For if a man can lack even one evil disposition without grace, then he is negatively disposed in regard to at least one grace that can come” (Most, GPSWG, 493). 816 Joshua R. Brotherton “non-negation” alone, simpliciter, because the mere absence of negation as such does not imply the existence of anything. . . . God cannot condition the bestowal of efficacious help upon non-being, and thus the absence of negation here must be the presence of something else, caused by God. Thus it is not merely by an absence of negation that the rule of reason is actually considered by some creature, but by the positive substance of an act of consideration that owes its being to God.105 First, nobody is arguing that God conditions efficacious help upon non-negation simpliciter. It is not simply absence that is indicated as the condition, but the absence of a particular act of nihilation (that is, of resistance to a particular good act). Second, to say God cannot do something should, at least, follow a more adequate understanding of the concepts involved—there is no reason why God cannot condition his efficacious help upon the relative nonbeing that is the absence of a particular act of nihilation/resistance. Therefore, the conclusion does not follow; in fact, the conclusion is based upon a set of assumed premises. He claims the “revisionist account” fails because, “whether the creature negates or nihilates or shatters the divine motion . . . this very negation itself presupposes that God has not efficaciously moved the creature to consider the rule. One cannot consider the rule of reason without being efficaciously moved to do so by God, and only if one is not efficaciously moved by God to consider the rule of reason does negation occur.”106 It is true that nihilation would not be possible if God’s motion were infallibly efficacious, but whether such motion must be unshatterable is precisely the question. There is no necessity for man not to consider the rule if he is not infallibly caused to consider it. Hence, the problem is rather presupposing “total depravity”107 or the inability of man without infallibly efficacious grace not to nihilate sufficient or resistible grace. To presuppose that man must always nihilate or not consider the rule in the absence of infallible causation is to assert precisely that all efficacious grace is irresistible—that is, that there are no resistible graces that are not in fact resisted. Perhaps such rapprochements with Calvinism and Jansenism are explained by the Augustinian preoccupation with the overall good 105 106 107 Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 587 (his italics). Ibid. I do not know what other label could be applied to the following assertion: “one is always negating consideration of the rule unless God [infallibly] causes the contrary” (ibid., 589). Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 817 of creation most appropriately manifesting the glory of God only if the ultimate effects of his mercy and justice are eternally distinct (i.e., in the salvation of some and the reprobation of others). So much is sacrificed for such an abstract ideal! Certainly there are other ways of allowing God’s glory to shine forth to its fullest in all creation. Concerning the contemporary revision of Thomistic predestination, Long says: [I]n the newer account, the good for the sake of which evil is permitted is not the infinitely transcendent God and the manifestation of his justice and his mercy. Rather, on the new account, the good for the sake of which evil is permitted is an accident extrinsically pertinent to our acts, which in no way defines the essential character of our acts as does true freedom, and which accident is merely the ab extra effect of a self-limiting ordinance of God.108 While there is work to be done in the realm of mystical theology regarding the implications of the new proposal for the spiritual life,109 it suffices to say here that, in reframing the divine means of manifesting his own glory in a way more befitting of God (and creation), the new proposal need not view every evil as an accident (as if unforeseen by God). It does, however, take more seriously the role of human freedom in the execution of moral evil, as well as the innocence of God in the course of human events.110 Thomas Joseph White objects to 108 109 110 Ibid., 591. It would be interesting to see to what extent the mystical theology of Garrigou-Lagrange in his Providence: God’s Loving Care for Men and the Need for Confidence in Almighty God and especially in his three-volume Three Ages of the Interior Life, Christian Perfection and Contemplation necessarily depends upon the strict Augustinian-Thomistic view of grace and freedom that he utilizes in foundational fashion throughout those works. The formulation of William Most seems better fit for understanding the way in which moral evil must be incorporated into divine providence than is that of Maritain. Most’s speculations on providence may provide a way to address Levering’s concerns with Maritain’s nihilation doctrine. Levering says: “Regarding Maritain’s metaphysical solution, nihilating consists in a non-advertence to the rule of reason. Does not this lack of advertence, from which follows the freely willed defect, require God’s permission? If so, is God as ‘first cause’ entirely out of the picture, as Maritain supposes? As Steven Long puts it, ‘One grants that the creature is defectible, but any actual defection presupposes the divine permission, since nothing pertinent to being in any way can occur unless it is at least permitted by God’” (Predestination, 176). Maritain might 818 Joshua R. Brotherton Long’s Bañezian approach on the basis that the metaphysical arguments recruited for it fail to distinguish sufficiently between the different kinds of evil:111 Long’s interpretation runs the risk of identifying moral evil with natural evil. . . . This lack, which inhabits sinful action, is the inevitable result of a tendency of the will toward privation, due to the natural “entropy” of created being which tends toward nothingness. . . . Because of this tendency, sin occurs necessarily in the wake of God’s inactivity (that is, his permissive will to not aid the creature who will otherwise sin), rather than by a moral deformation resulting from the creature’s refusal of the inspired movements of natural and supernatural goodness. In this case, the human act of sin is interpreted primarily as an act lacking the necessary stimulus from God such that sin would be avoidable. Both Maritain and Lonergan have argued cogently that this position seems to make God more a cause of moral deficiency than the creature itself, since God chooses to 111 respond by saying that non-acts need not be specifically permitted; in fact, he states that “shatterable motions” themselves include an “undifferentiated and conditional permission of evil” and that where the free creature takes the first initiative to nihilate there is sin “determinately permitted” by a permissive decree that is “consequent to the non-consideration of the rule”; see God and the Permission of Evil, 63 (original French edition, 64). But Most would add that every resistance offered by each free creature is first known as such and then either permitted or overridden (and thus actually non-existent), even if the latter option is rarely chosen. The universality of divine providence is better respected if we do not simply say God’s desires are either resisted (nihilated) or not, but also affirm that they are efficacious according to God’s “taking into consideration” the resistance posed to his (antecedent) will, which is “conditional” according to our manner of understanding its efficacy (see especially GPSWG, pt. 4). See especially Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 563: “[J]ust as the creature will fall into non-existence apart from divine conservation in being, so it will fail of good apart from divine conservation in the good. . . . ‘To sin is nothing else than to fall from the good which belongs to any being according to its nature…’ [ST I-II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2].” The alternative view is that God always supplies the good and man does not of necessity resist it, since he is of himself also capable of nonbeing that is not morally deficient (i.e., negative non-resistance or non-nihilation). Against Long’s interpretation, White invokes Thomas’s SCG III, chs. 159–61, in support of the position that grace is usually resistible and that man is capable of impeding grace (see “Von Balthasar and Journet,” 661–62n68 and 664n72). Toward a Consensus in the De Auxiliis Debate 819 withhold resources from certain creatures such [sic] they must necessarily choose evil. . . . One may consider sin as a negation of being and goodness that comes from the creature alone as a “first cause” without this implying any ontological autonomy on the part of the creature. The reason for this is that sinful acts involve a form of negation that is parasitical upon created being. . . . For Aquinas, as I have noted above, this can occur even while the creature remains ontically dependent upon God for its being-in-action.112 Long, however, is not the most radical contemporary proponent of the Bañezian thesis.113 He accepts the modifications offered by Garrigou-Lagrange: “Of course, divine aid is only withheld because of prior resistance; but this prior resistance itself traces to defect and negation, and these must be permitted if they are to be (no other answer is consistent with the omnipotence of God).”114 Conclusion It ought to be clear by now that, if one approaches created instrumentality as a participation in divine causation and yet formally distinct from it—that is, if one views the deficiency of human action as a dispositive “addition” to divine agency, itself entirely innocent—then the negative particularity of moral evils can be traced entirely to the instrument as origin without any causal relation to the transcendent source of such agency. While the nonbeing thus “contributed” by the free creature is logically prior to the entitative species of predestined acts, the being of the acts that are actually produced eminently contains such negative determination insofar as the latter has reality only in terms of the former. God is the ultimate reason why some men choose to do the good he wills for them, but he is not the ultimate reason why others choose to resist his antecedent will. Since man can do nothing without God, he cannot actualize his own potency for performing good acts without efficacious help. However, such does not imply that, any time 112 113 114 White, “Von Balthasar and Journet,” 662–63n70 (his italics). He immediately adds: “A helpful theological reflection that criticizes the Bañezian position adopted by Long and entertained by Emery can be found in the essay of JeanHervé Nicolas, ‘La volunté salvifique de Dieu contrariée par le péché,’ Revue Thomiste 92 (1992): 177–96” (663n70). See Salza, The Mystery of Predestination, for a more radical expression of the Bañezian position than that of Garrigou-Lagrange and Long. Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” 599n46. 820 Joshua R. Brotherton man chooses not to cooperate with grace, it is ultimately because God arbitrarily chooses not to provide the application of efficacious grace that he initially desires to impart. The major purpose of this article has been, with the help of William Most, to rebut the attempt of Steven Long to refute the proposed revision of Thomistic predestination represented chiefly by Jacques Maritain (who is indebted to Francisco Marin-Sola). Nevertheless, there ought to be a greater appreciation for the efforts of Garrigou-Lagrange to temper the “traditional” Thomistic position in the de auxiliis controversy.115 If only Maritain could have more directly mediated the dispute on grace between Garrigou-Lagrange and Marin-Sola (not to mention other topics!), the divide among Thomists on the issue of predestination and grace with respect to human freedom might not have persisted with such vehemence. Certainly, a hypo-Augustinian Thomism is necessary to provide an eventual resolution to the de auxiliis debate. Most aptly displays in detail how negative reprobation (conceived in terms of infallible permission)116 contradicts the universal salvific will of God and intimates an alternative metaphysical framework (guided by revelation). Maritain explains in more philosophical terms why neo-Bañezianism is inadequate and lays out, with precision, a superior Thomistic metaphysic. Therefore, in response to critiques primarily of the latter, I have utilized both (but primarily the former) in order to help demonstrate that infallible permissive decrees (and negative reprobation so conceived) are by no means a metaphysical necessity, a thesis around N&V which the Bañezian approach most evidently turns. 115 116 Most fails to note the effort of Garrigou-Largange to distance himself in part from a pure Bañezianism (see GPSWG, 339–40). It ought to be clear that both Most and Maritain believe it possible for God to infallibly cause a free good act. But while Maritain squarely opposes infallible permissive decrees altogether, Most focuses his criticism on the point at which infallible permissive decrees would serve as means of ensuring the damnation of free creatures (i.e., a particular Bañezian understanding of negative reprobation). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 821–843821 The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” Stephen Clark Chelsea, Michigan Mark Whitters Eastern Michigan University Ypsilanti, Michigan For the last fifty years or more, it has been the predom- inant view among scholars that Ephesians 5:21 teaches “mutual subordination” or “mutual submission” or “mutual subjection.”1 This expression is understood to be a reference to that verse (~Upotasso,menoi avllh,loij evn fo,bw| Cristou/; NRSV: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ”), as well as a summary of its content, and is often linked with the claim that the verse applies to and interprets the following passage on the husband-wife relationship. More recently, however, divergent voices have arisen, and their challenge to the predominant view that Ephesians 5:21 teaches mutual subordination seems to be gaining a hearing.2 1 2 This is the view upheld by the standard commentaries across the theological spectrum. E. Best, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians, International Critical Commentary (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 523, and A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary 42 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 365–67, provide good examples from different theological perspectives. Throughout this essay other examples of the predominant view are cited—see especially note 5. See P. T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 398–405; W. A. Grudem, “The Myth of Mutual Submission as an Interpretation of Ephesians 5:21,” in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, ed. W. A. Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 228–29; T. G. Gombis, “A Radically New Humanity: The Function of the Haustafel in Ephesians,” Journal of Evangelical Theological Studies 48 (2005): 317–30, especially 323–24; Wayne Walden, “Ephesians in Translation,” Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 12 (2007): 10–13; and J. Cottrell, Headship, Submission and the Bible (Joplin, MO: College Press, 2008), 57–65. More than 30 years ago, Stephen B. Clark made the point inchoately in Man and Woman in Christ (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant, 1980), 73–87. 822 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters The challenge, if accepted, leaves unanswered the question of where the idea of mutual subordination comes from. This essay proposes an origin: Ultimately, it came from Origen’s interpretation of Ephesians 5:21. In this, as in other matters of scriptural interpretation, the third-century Alexandrian scholar seems to have been the innovator.3 This understanding carries with it significant implications for how the passage has been interpreted and adapted throughout history. The Problem with “Mutual Subordination” in Ephesians 5:21 The challenge that the predominant view of Ephesians 5:21 faces can be summarized by two objections. First, the verb “subject yourselves” (u`potasso,menoi), the key semantic indicator in the text, probably does not mean something “mutual” in a symmetrical sense, something the same for both sides of the relationship. Some of the important observations are as follows: • The Greek verb in the verse does not mean something symmetrical. Rather, it expresses an ordered, and therefore asymmetrical, relationship. It means to arrange under or to place under, and if one thing is ordered under another, it cannot be ordered over it at the same time (mutually ordered). If a crag is over a boulder, the boulder cannot also be over the crag. • Attempts to find instances of a symmetrical meaning for “subordination” (u`potagh,) or “subordinate” (u`potasso,menoi) in Greek literature contemporary to or earlier than the passage have failed. There are no unambiguous examples.4 • In many contexts (army, government, employment, etc.), the verb “subordinate” indicates being under authority. The example of 1 Clement 37 (cited below), close in time to the letter to the Ephesians, is strikingly clear. • There is no other verse in the Bible where mutual subordination, either in the marriage relationship or in any other relationship, is It is likely that he was the first to write a full commentary on Ephesians and the first patristic writer who made a practice of writing commentaries on the books of Scripture; see R. E. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3 and 7. 4 This is said on the basis of the surveys given in A Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G. W. Lampe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 1461–62, and by G. Delling, “u`pota,ssw, ktl.,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 39–47. 3 The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 823 unequivocally taught. Ephesians 5:21 would be the unique example if it did indeed teach mutual subordination. Beyond these observations, the contention of the present article is that there is no documented instance of a mutual subordination understanding of the text for about 175 years afterwards. The silence of the subsequent record also calls into question the predominant view that the author intended a mutual subordination understanding. The second major objection to the predominant reading is that the context of the passage, most notably the following Haustafel (household code) in Ephesians 5:22–6:9, indicates that 5:21 has to be understood as asymmetrical, as in fact the summary of a set of ordered relationships. Some of the important observations are as follows: • 5:21 is probably a hinge or transitional verse and therefore serves as a heading for what follows. In other words, it completes the sentence (a series of exhortations) that begins with 5:15 and introduces the Haustafel, which further specifies the subordination (order) in the community. Since 5:22 is an ellipse that draws its verb from verse 21, the following Haustafel must be illustrative of the statement in 5:21. • The exhortation to the husband and wife, which follows 5:21 and is introduced by it, is asymmetrical. They are not exhorted to relate to one another the same way. The same is even truer of the ChristChurch relationship, the model presented for the husband-wife relationship. • The parallel exhortations to parents and children and masters and slaves, which also are introduced by Ephesians 5:21, are likewise asymmetrical. Each side of the relationship is encouraged to something different. • All three pairs of the exhortations that follow 5:21 most naturally read as exhortations to someone under authority (the wife, the children, the servants) to respond in a submissive or obedient way, and exhortations to someone in authority (the husband, father or master) are to exercise authority in a good way. • Many of the best contemporary scholars who advocate the mutual subordination interpretation are reduced to holding that the verse is in contradiction to its context in the list that follows.5 5 There are many examples of exegetes who interpret Eph 5:21 as referring to mutual subordination and then find it inconsistent with the following exhortation. J. P. Sampley accepts “a lack of complete harmony” between 5:21 and 824 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters • The phrase “out of reverence (fear) for Christ” does not support the view of mutual subordination. It does not militate against the position, but neither does it provide support for it. Given such a long list of reasons, why would the mutual subordination interpretation be so common? The answer seems clearly to be the phrase (in Greek, one word) “to one another” (avllh,loij). That could indicate something symmetrical. If two people are exhorted to love one another, for instance, both are exhorted to do the same thing in relation to the other. Here, however, is the critical reason why the mutual subordination interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 faces mounting doubts. It is increasingly observed that although “to one another” can refer to a symmetrical relationship (e.g., a husband and wife marry one another or two ships are next to one another), it very often refers to an asymmetrical relationship, and at times to an ordered relationship. In fact, it has often been translated not as “to one another” (perhaps indicating a symmetrical relationship that every individual in the group is in), but “one to another” or occasionally “one to some other,” referring to (or at least being open to referring to) an ordered relationship. There are many examples of “to one another” not referring to a symmetrical relationship. For instance, Luke 12:1 says, “Meanwhile, when the crowd gathered by the thousands, so that they trampled on one another, he began to speak first to his disciples.” This does not mean, even in English, that all of them took turns trampling each other; it means that some trampled upon some others. the Haustafel injunctions to husbands and fathers and ends up with the solution that, because of 5:21, the author of Ephesians “does not entirely agree” with “the posture of ” the Haustafel form that he himself has reproduced and would seem, from his words, to be advocating; see “And the Two Shall Become One Flesh”: A Study of Traditions in Ephesians 5:21–33 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 117. M. Barth says, “The mutual subordination proclaimed by Paul seems to contradict the subsequent and detailed exhortation,” and then goes on to describe this as a contradiction “not only of the context, but also of sound logic and moral order”; see Ephesians 4–6, Anchor Bible 34A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 609–10. G. Dawes holds that “what is truly puzzling is the relationship of v 21 with the verses which follow. . . . There is a certain Widerspruch between the language of mutual subordination in v 21 and that of female subordination in vv. 22–24”; see The Body in Question: Metaphor and Meaning in the Interpretation of Ephesians 5:21–33 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 214–15. Best says, “None of the other NT parallels have such a verse and its content and form are at variance with the content and form of the HT [Haustafel]” (Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians, 523). The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 825 Similarly, speaking of someone who needs healing and so first confesses their sins to the church elders, James 5:16 says, “Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.” It is unlikely that he means that the sick should confess their sins to the elders and then have the elders confess their sins to the sick in turn and then have the elders pray over the sick for healing and then have the sick pray over the healthy elders for healing. The prayer and the confession are not mutual, and just previously 5:14 specifies that the prayer is to be done by the elders because they are the elders of the church. The interaction between the elders and the sick in James exemplifies an ordered relationship. If there is no other passage in Scripture that teaches a mutual subordination in marriage or family life, and if the verb does not usually (or probably ever) in linguistic usage contemporary to the passage refer to something that can be mutual (symmetrical), and if the most immediate context of the Ephesians 5:21 is about the dynamics of asymmetrical relationships, then interpreting the verse as referring to something mutual (symmetrical) should be seen as unlikely unless the word avllh,loij provides no other option. That, however, is clearly not the case. It is often used for asymmetrical relationships and sometimes for ordered relationships of the kind described in the aforementioned Haustafel. Thus, the case against understanding Ephesians 5:21 as enjoining mutual subordination is strong. 1 Clement and the Early Christian Approach Here it is helpful to look at the fullest example we have before Origen of a presentation of the order of the Christian community, including the order in the husband-wife relationship. It indicates that good social order was important to early Christians, including an order in domestic relationships, and that the ordering of the community is described in terms of “subordination.” The pattern described does not present the relationship of subordination in terms of something mutual (symmetrical), and it does indicate that the husband-wife relationship involved some exercise of authority. The example is to be found in a letter close in time to the latest books in the canon of the New Testament, Clement of Rome’s Letter to the Corinthians (1 Clem.), whose subject is subordination, the subordination of the community to its rightful elders. It provides us with a fuller and more varied example of the usage of the word-group than any New Testament writing. Because of its probable dating to the end of the first century and because it draws on Pauline writings, it is a helpful source 826 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters for understanding the usage of the word in Ephesians 5:21 and how the earliest generations of Christians would have read it. The exhortation at the end reveals the purpose for the letter (words from the Greek word-group containing “be subordinate” are italicized): You, therefore, who laid the foundation of the revolt, must submit to (u`pota,ghte) the presbyters and accept discipline leading to repentance, bending the knees of your heart. Learn how to subordinate yourselves (u`pota,ssesqai) laying aside the arrogant and proud stubbornness of your tongue. For it is better for you to be found small but included in the flock of Christ than to have a pre-eminent reputation and yet be excluded from his hope. (1 Clem. 57)6 The issue, then, is the subordination of the community to its duly appointed presbyters, and the occasion is a “revolt” because of which the lawful presbyters were rejected or replaced. While Clement profiles subordination to the presbyters or elders, he is more fundamentally attentive to the good order of the whole church that was threatened by disorder at the highest level. At risk, among other things, were domestic relationships. His opening comments illustrate this concern when, after deploring the revolt, he praises the former condition of the Corinthian church: For you did everything without partiality, and you lived in accordance with the laws of God, submitting yourselves (u`potasso,menoi) to your leaders and giving to the older men [or perhaps “elders” in the sense of “the governing authorities”] among you the honor due them.You instructed the young to think temperate and proper thoughts; you charged the women to perform all their duties with a blameless, reverent, and pure conscience, cherishing their own husbands, as is right; and you taught them to abide by the rule of obedience (u`potagh/j), and to manage the affairs of their household with dignity and all discretion. (1 Clem. 1) 6 English translation from Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, ed. M. W. Holmes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007). The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 827 The subordination or submission to the presbyters was, in other words, part of a broader pattern of order in the community, which included the subordination in the family. In section 37, Clement applies u`pota,ssw outside the context of personal relationships among the Christian people: Let us, therefore, serve as soldiers, brothers, with all earnestness under his faultless orders. Let us consider the soldiers who serve under our commanders, how precisely, how readily, how obediently (u`potetagme,nwj) they execute orders. Not all are prefects or tribunes or centurions or captains of fifty and so forth, but each in his own rank executes the orders given by the emperor and the commanders. The great cannot exist without the small, nor the small without the great. There is a certain blending in everything, and therein lies the advantage. Let us take our body as an example. The head without the feet is nothing; likewise, the feet without the head are nothing. Even the smallest parts of our body are necessary and useful to the whole body, yet all the members work together and unite in subjection (u`potagh/|)7 that the whole body may be saved. Clement employs two illustrations. The first is the Roman army, in which the soldiers execute orders in a subordinate or submissive way. Further, it is not just the soldiers that obey in a submissive way, but also the officers who obey those over them, because all of them are in the one ordered relationship that constitutes the disciplined army. The second illustration is the parts of the body. Here Clement stresses the contribution each part makes, but his more fundamental point is that an overall order allows each part to make a contribution to a united effort. Included in the example is the idea that the head, part of the ordered relationships, directs the various parts of the body, since the head is being implicitly compared to the king (emperor) and the governor. 7 Holmes translates this as “mutual subjection,” probably intending a reference to Eph 5:21. The actual phrase is more literally “needs agreement in one subjection” (u`potagh|/ mia|/ crh/tai). The passage goes on in the beginning of section 38 to encourage “each one to be subject to his neighbor.” In the context of what precedes in section 37 and what follows in section 38, the semantics of this text suggest a possibility that it is an exhortation to “subordinate yourselves to one another” and would then be an interpretation of Eph 5:21 as encouraging ordered relationships throughout the body. 828 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters In Clement’s thinking, the root consideration behind his exhortation to subordination is the value of good order, rather than the value of personal obedience. He does not seem to base his exhortation on, say, the importance of honoring parents and others over us, as later catechisms in various Christian traditions do, or on the value of obedience for spiritual growth, as the fathers of the ascetic movement often do. Rather, he is using the idea of an order that allows different individuals to function in a unified way. Clement is not, however, speaking about an impersonal order, like that of modern drivers who submit to traffic laws and traffic lights even in the absence of police officers directing traffic. He is thinking of an ordered set of personal relationships in which individuals are subordinate to other individuals who are responsible to exercise authority and so make use of the relational order to promote a united effort to reach the corporate good. In this conception, Clement’s thinking is close to what one finds elsewhere in the New Testament and in later Greco-Roman writings. In many of the passages in which the word-group is used, the focus seems to be on the order of the relationships, either in the Christian community or out of it. In fact, a commonly upheld ideal for the Christian communities or churches is to be well ordered, as one can see in the commendation given to the Colossian community: “For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ” (Col 2:5). The juxtaposition of faith and good order seems foreign to most modern sensibilities, but is not foreign to the concerns of early Christian teachers.8 Clement, then, is clearly not thinking in terms of mutual subordination. If he were, he would not be concerned that there were two sets of presbyters, only that they were not subordinating themselves to each other in a good way. He is presupposing that there is an order to 8 The Letter to the Colossians abounds with exhortations to adopt what a Hellenistic audience would have understood as civic virtues that promoted social harmony. Verbs such as brabeu,w (“serve as umpire”) and sumbiba,zw (“knit together”) and the noun su,ndesmoj (“[social] bond”) are sown throughout the midsection of the composition (Col 2:2 and 19 and 3:3–7, especially 3:14–15). Other like-minded contemporaries voicing their support for ordered society (sumfwni,a/harmonia) are Josephus (Contra Apion 2.145–72, especially 171–72) and Ignatius of Antioch (Ign. Eph. 4.1–2 and 5.1).The same can be found in writers that are neither Christian nor Jewish, such as Cicero (De republica 2.67–70). The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 829 the set of relationships, with each knowing his or her role or function and with authorities able to sort out disagreements about direction and to lead in certain activities. Just as it is impossible to be spatially under something and over it at the same time, it is inconceivable for the soldier to be under the captain and over the captain at the same time. In other words, 1 Clement is using the Greek word in its natural (asymmetrical) sense, the sense that prevailed in the Greek of Clement’s time. And it assumes, like many Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian writings, that order and subordination are the keys to unity or effective corporate existence.9 The value of 1 Clement is that it provides a developed picture of what subordination might mean to an early patristic writer, a contemporary of the New Testament writers. This excerpt indicates that subordination or subjection or submission was not seen as mutual (symmetrical). Rather, subordinating oneself means entering into an ordered relationship involving authority. Later in the patristic period, however, the view of a mutual subordination appears. Influential Mutual Subordination Presentations in the Patristic Era We have two authoritative independent presentations of mutual subordination in patristic commentaries on the letter of Ephesians that show how the mutual subordination interpretation was applied. One is found in Jerome, probably the most influential exegete in the Latin Church, and the other in John Chrysostom, probably the most influential exegete in the Greek Church. They present the same understanding of the subordination encouraged in “be subject [subordinate, submissive] to one another in the fear of Christ”—namely, mutual service. Two people are subordinate to one another if they serve one another and the relationship is symmetrical. Being subject to one another as mutual service is clearly stated in Jerome’s commentary on Ephesians: Eph. 5:21 “Subjected to one another in the fear of Christ.” Let the bishops hear these words, let the presbyters hear them, let every order of teachers hear them, that they be subjected to those who 9 The emphasis on good order continued throughout the patristic period. For a presentation of it in John Chrysostom, see D. C. Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church: The Full Views of St. John Chrysostom (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1996), 115–37. 830 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters are subjected to themselves and imitate the apostle who says, “For although I was free from all I made myself a servant to all that I might gain all” (1 Cor. 9:19), and in another passage, “Serve one another through love” (Gal. 5:13). This is why he himself also served all the churches of the Gentiles with the same love. Our Savior also took the form of a servant that he might serve his disciples and wash their feet (Phil. 2:7; John 13:5). This is the difference between the rulers of the Gentiles and of Christians. The former dominate their subjects but we serve, and “we are greater in this service if we shall be least of all” (Matt. 20:25–7). But the words “in the fear of Christ” are also to be understood so that the subjection itself does not occur for the sake of human glory but because of the fear of Christ, since we fear to offend him.10 In John Chrysostom’s Homily XIX on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians, we find a somewhat different presentation of mutual subordination as mutual service. Unlike Jerome’s presentation, it does not contain exegetical reflections, but rather simply reads as a homiletic application:11 “Subjecting yourselves one to another,” he says, “in the fear of Christ.” For if you submit yourself for a ruler’s sake, or for money’s sake, or from respectfulness, much more from the fear of Christ. Let there be an interchange of service and submission. For then will there be no such thing as slavish service. Let not one sit down in the rank of a freeman, and the other in the rank of a slave; rather it were better that both masters and slaves be servants to one another;—far better to be a slave in this way than free in any other; as will be evident from hence. . . . No, more, if you have a mind to examine the matter nicely, there is indeed on the part of masters a return of service. For what if pride suffer not that return of service to appear? Yet if the slave on the one hand render his bodily service, and you maintain that body, and supply it with food and clothing and shoes, this is an exchange of service: because unless you render your 10 11 Jerome, Commentary on the Epistle of the Ephesians 3.5.21 (PL, 26:654); English translation found in Heine, Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 231–32. See J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 91–94, for a discussion of the writing of the homilies on Ephesians, which he describes as “generally careless in composition,” probably unrevised stenographer’s notes. The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 831 service as well, neither will he render his, but will be free, and no law will compel him to do it if he is not supported. If this then is the case with servants, where is the absurdity, if it should also become the case with free men? . . . But he does not choose to submit himself to you? However, submit yourself; do not simply yield, but submit yourself. Entertain this feeling towards all, as if all were your masters. . . . This is “subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ,” in order that we may subdue all the passions, be servants of God, and preserve the love we owe to one another.12 The master in such an understanding does not receive commands from his slave, but rather the master should let the good of the slave determine his own behavior. He should be subordinate to the slave’s interests. Actually, he should, in the example given by Chrysostom, be subordinate to the slave’s just claim, something modern people might miss because the idea of obligations due to slaves is foreign to popular modern understandings of slavery, a historically variegated institution. The slave cannot demand these things of him as the wife can claim her conjugal rights (1 Cor 7:4)—although he can run away and not be forced to return—but the master should provide for the slave and, fulfilling this duty, expresses mutual subordination. Jerome adds another interpretation of the phrase “be subject to one another” in discussing the exegesis of “another teacher”13 who accepts mutual subordination but does not explain it in terms of mutual service: But another will interpret “subjected to one another in the fear of Christ” in such a way that he says this general notion is divided 12 13 John Chrysostom, Homily XIII on Ephesians (PG, 62:4–176); English translation adapted from A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 1st series, 14 vols., ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994 [reprint]; hereafter, NPNF1), 13:142. Jerome informs us that in his Ephesians commentary he drew primarily from Origen’s commentary and secondarily from Apollinaris and Didymus (Heine, Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 78). The leading conjecture for the unnamed source here seems to be the younger Apollinaris of Laodicea. See A. Souter, Earliest Latin Commentaries of the Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927), 109–10. This would be confirmed by the observation that Jerome is free to speak about Didymus by name but not Apollinaris, probably because Apollinaris was controversial at the time Jerome wrote the commentary. Also see J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome (London: Duckworth, 1975), 59–60 and 145–49. 832 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters and distributed in the words which follow: “Let wives be subject to their husbands” and “Children, obey your parents” and “Servants, obey your masters in the flesh with fear and trembling” (Eph. 5:22; 6:1, 5), so that not only a wife subject to her husband, and children to their masters, but also husbands are to be subject to their wives according to the duty which is commanded, and fathers to children so that they not provoke them to wrath, and masters to servants that they may abstain from threats and offer them the necessary things of life which they possess (Eph. 5:25; 6:4, 9). They should be subject to one another and do this from “the fear of Christ” so that as he was subject to his servants, so also these who appear to be greater may be subject to those lesser than themselves by rendering the duties which are commanded.14 Both Chrysostom and Jerome, as well as the other teacher Jerome cites, therefore, understand that mutual subordination is the orientation of Ephesians 5:21. For those in authority, it is acting for the good of the subordinates —and the subordinates likewise acting for the good of those in authority over them. However, fulfilling one’s duties to the other side of the relationship is the most important way of acting for their good, and so what each does is in fact different because their duties are clearly understood to be different. What masters do for servants or slaves is not the same as what the servants do for masters, although both are subordinating themselves to the other by fulfilling their duty to that other. The reciprocity involved in mutual service, then, does not automatically take away the authority involved in a relationship of subordination. Rather it is reciprocity of service within the framework or structure of that relationship. All are seeking to serve the others or act for the good of the others when fulfilling their differing roles. The reciprocity concerns the aim or orientation with which the service or function is carried out, not the authoritative order observed when so doing or the actual duties themselves, which are complementary and not symmetrically reciprocal. Jerome and Chrysostom therefore give us two influential patristic presentations of Ephesians 5:21 that teach mutual subordination as mutual service. This does not, however, mean that mutual subordination or mutual service was the universal or even reigning patristic interpretation of the passage. While we have these examples of patristic 14 Jerome, Ephesians (on Eph 5:21–22; see Heine, Origen and Jerome, 232). The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 833 teachers who held to the view that Ephesians 5:21 was speaking of mutual subordination, we also have examples of those who do not take that approach. For instance, Ambrosiaster rephrased subiecti invicem (“be subject to one another”) as alter alteri se subiciens (“each one submitting himself to some other”).15 Theodoret of Cyrrhus saw Ephesians 5:21 as advocating “a general requirement of subordination,” which then is followed by a specification of “what is appropriate in each case.”16 He interpreted it as a heading for what followed and asymmetrical (ordering) in meaning. The mutual subordination as mutual service view was only one acceptable understanding of the passage. The Source of the Innovative Interpretation This discussion raises the question of where the interpretation of “subject yourselves to one another” as mutual service came from. The fact that Origen influenced Jerome gives us a lead. The earliest presentation of this understanding in patristic literature can be found in the fragment of Origen’s commentary on Ephesians that treats Ephesians 5:21. The two compositions (Origen’s and Jerome’s) are now available for comparison in Ronald E. Heine’s work The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. Heine judges that Jerome’s commentary “closely follows Origen’s in all of its major lines of thought.”17 The full extant section of Origen’s interpretation or application of Ephesians 5:21 is as follows in the Heine translation: Eph. 5:21 Being subject, he says, to one another in the fear of Christ. This completely destroys all desire to rule and be first. The following command has been given to all, “For although I am free from all I have made myself a servant to all that I might gain all” (1 Cor. 9:19). The command which says, “Be servants to one another” (Gal. 5:13), also prescribes this. Wherefore, the apostles “were servants to the churches . . . because of love” (Gal. 5:13), ministering and being servants for the salvation of humanity. Even the Savior assumed “the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:7) for no other reason than to be a servant to the disciples. Conse15 16 17 Ambrosiaster, Ad Efesios on Eph 5:21 (CSEL 81, pt. 3:117). Theodoret of Cyrrhus on Eph 5:21, in Commentary on the Letters of St. Paul, vol. 2, trans. R. C. Hill, New Testament 8 (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001), 52. Heine, Origen and Jerome, 6 (comparison of these two particular compositions on 231–32). This compilation is not Origen’s full commentary, no longer extant, but only selections found in patristic catenae. 834 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters quently, he once “put water in a basin” to wash “the feet of the disciples” (John 13:5). Furthermore, one who has understood the statement, “He who wishes to be great among you shall be the servant of all” (Matt. 20:26–27), “will be subject” to serve those whom it is necessary to serve. It is possible, however, that although one who serves performs the appropriate services for those he serves he may seem not to be subject, when those being served, in addition to being ignorant of what is fitting, command those who wish to serve them to do things for them which are inappropriate. But even then he who acts for his advantage and serves is also subject to the need of the person whom he serves because of the serene “fear” which produces happiness in accordance with the word of God. For I think this is revealed by the phrase, “in the fear of Christ.”18 Origen thus teaches that servanthood is the highest ideal for leaders. The needs of others guide their service, although their leadership may not always be well received. There is no example of the mutual service or mutual subordination understanding of Ephesians 5:21 in the patristic corpus earlier than Origen. We have several examples of references to Ephesians 5:21 in early patristic literature, according to Biblia Patristica and the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.19 The first in time is in Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Magnesians 13.2: Be subject to the bishop and to one another (u`pota,ghte tw|/ evpisko,pw| kai. avllh,loij), as Jesus Christ in the flesh was to the Father, and as the apostles were to Christ and to the Father, that there might be unity, both physical and spiritual.20 18 19 20 There is one other citation of Eph 5:21 in Origen’s extant works, in the Commentary on the Song of Songs 2.7, in Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1946–), 26. But it is simply quoted as the opening verse of Eph 5:21–27, and he continues on to establish that the Church is the bride of Christ and Christians are members of his body without indicating how he understands “being subject to one another.” Biblia Patristica: Index des citations et allusions bibliques dans la littérature patristique, 7 vols. (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1986), 1:497 and 2:521. The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae search apparatus is available at https://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/index.prev.php; the abridged text collection is available for search for free, but access to the unabridged is available only by subscription. English translation found in Holmes, Apostolic Fathers. Whether we can say, with the Biblia Patristica, that this is a reference to Eph 5:21 because of the use The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 835 Ignatius is not thinking in terms of mutual service, but rather of harmony in the body, and is clearly not encouraging reciprocal obedience: Christ was not expected to obey his apostles in addition to their obeying him. Rather, there was an order of subordination, from the Father to Christ to the bishop, and then to the presbyters and to the deacons (cf. Ign. Magn. 13.1). Clement of Alexandria, who preceded Origen as a Christian teacher at Alexandria,21 refers to Ephesians 5:21 in his Stromata: . . . [B]ecause he who directs is the head. And if “the Lord is the head of the man” and if “the man is the head of the woman,” the man has authority over the woman in so far as “he is the image and glory of God.” That is why in the letter to the Ephesians it is written, “Submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of God, wives should be submitted to their husbands as to the Lord, because the man is the head of the wife.”22 Clement is straightforwardly using Ephesians 5:21, along with the following Haustafel, to support the subordination of wives to their husbands and shows no trace of a mutual subordination understanding. There is one other quotation of the verse given by Biblia Patristica, that of Polycarp of Smyrna in his Letter to the Philippians 10.2.23 The 21 22 23 of “to one another” is not perfectly obvious, although this passage is at least a good example of how “to one another” was used in an ordered sense. For views on the relationship between Clement and Origen, see H. Crouzel, Origen (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 7–8; J. A. McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Origen (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 6 and 81; and M. J. Edwards, Origen against Plato (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 18–19. For the earlier consensus, based on Eusebius (Historia ecclesiastica 5.11 and 6.13), see J. Quasten, Patrology , vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers after Irenaeus (Utrecht/Antwerp: Spectrum, 1953), 4–5 and 37–38. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 4.8, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, 10 vols., ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004 [repr.]; hereafter, ANF), 2:420. The quotation (Polycarp, To the Philippians 10.1–3, in ANF, 1:35) is not from the incomplete Greek text of the letter, but is in the Latin version: 1 Stand fast, therefore, in these things and follow the example of the Lord, firm and immovable in faith, loving the brotherhood, cherishing one another, united in the truth, giving way to one another in the gentleness of the Lord, despising no one. 2 When you are able to do good, do not put it off, because “charity delivers from death.” All of you be subject to one another [omnes vobis invicem subiecti estote], and maintain an irreproachable standard of conduct among the Gentiles, so 836 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters passage does not provide much indication of how Polycarp understood Ephesians 5:21, but there is no reference to mutual subordination as mutual service. The sample (even with the possible addition of 1 Clem. 37 as discussed above in note 7) is small, but, if the list is exhaustive, or at the very least representative, it establishes that there is no extant instance of the mutual service interpretation before Origen. Moreover, 1 Clement, along with similar texts in other apostolic fathers, provides us with an example of Christian teaching on order in the community. Mutual subordination is absent in such texts, and so we have further corroboration that the first example of the mutual service interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 is probably that of Origen. The Reason for the Mutual Service Interpretation Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom agree that Ephesians 5:21 speaks about mutual service, and their writings are early indications of the mutual service interpretation of the passage. None of them, however, reveals any trace of innovation or controversy in their interpretation. Rather they simply seem to be making an exegetical clarification of the verse based on other scriptural teaching, the teaching that mutual service should characterize Christian relationships, especially in Church leadership. Origen, the one with the best claim to inaugurating this interpretation, does not seem to be asserting that he has found the correct interpretation of the passage, that the interpretation of the passage has been disputed and he is now about to resolve the disputation, or that he is deliberately introducing an innovation. Rather, his commentary indicates that he is mainly interested in giving a reasonable interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 and at the same time stressing that Christian authority is an authority of service.24 He could be expected to say something that you may be praised for your good deeds and the Lord may not be blasphemed because of you. 3 But woe to him through whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed. Therefore, teach to all the self-control by which you yourselves live. 24 We do not have many treatments of Origen’s approach to concrete practical matters of Christian living by contemporary scholars of Origen, and none on Eph 5:21. This may be due, in this case, to the fact that the text we are examining is only found in catenae and not in Origen’s extant works. It is likely also due to the fact that modern commentators show their highest interest in Origen’s “allegorical” or “spiritual” approach to exegesis or his doctrine of scripture or doctrine in general, but not to his moral teaching. P. W. Martens’s The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 837 about Ephesians 5:21 when he reached it, and since he probably wrote the first commentary on Ephesians,25 he may have not known of any previous discussions of its meaning (nor do we). The reason “mutual subordination” turns out to have the significance it does in many current discussions is that it is often (but not always) understood to be a teaching that eliminates the authority of the husband over the wife. If they are reciprocally subordinate, the wife does not have to be subordinate to her husband in any way that he is not also subordinate to her. 26 Neither Jerome nor Chrysostom nor Origen make that inference or even raise that as a concern. Chrysostom, for instance, is perfectly clear that he in no way thinks that the mutual service expected of husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and servants means that either the order of the relationships or, consequently, the one-way subordination in them are cancelled because Ephesians 5:21 means a reciprocal subordination. In his commentary on 5:23–24, for example, he says: He had already laid down beforehand for man and wife the ground and provision of their love, assigning to each their proper place, to the one that of authority and forethought, to the other that of submission. As then “the Church,” that is, both husbands and wives, “is subject unto Christ, so also you wives submit yourselves to your husbands, as unto God.”27 In his comments on 5:22–32, Chrysostom shows a primary interest in exhorting the husband to love the wife, not in getting the wife to 25 26 27 survey in Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–4, of the “four foci” of Origen scholarship and his review of current scholarship (pages 6–11) indicate that Origen’s approach to concrete practical matters of Christian living is not central to modern scholarship on his work. See note 3. There are many modern presentations that use such a line of argumentation. See, for example, C. Keener in Paul, Women & Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1990). For an extreme example of the approach, one which applies Eph 5:21 to all Christian authority relationships, see G. Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1985). A more recent example can be found in A. G. Padgett, who gives the interpretation that Christ serves the Church, but omits a consideration of whether the Church ever obeys Christ because of his intrinsic authority; see As Christ Submits to the Church: A Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011). John Chrysostom, Homily XIII on Ephesians (PG, 62:4–176); English translation adapted from NPNF1, 13:144. 838 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters submit to the husband. Moreover, he can speak of a mutual subordination in referring to the master-servant relationship. Nonetheless, he does not think that the mutual service or love in the husband-wife relationship actually abolishes the need for the wife to be submissive to her husband or the servant to be obedient to his master.28 Nor does Jerome, although exhorting the bishops and clergy to serve those for whom they are responsible, propose to abolish all subordination to the clergy. Moreover, he does not think that wives should be exempt from submission to their husbands.29 The same is true for Origen, who believes the husband should “regulate the matters of marriage in accordance with reason” and so imitate Christ, the bridegroom of the Church.30 Strikingly, neither Jerome, nor Chrysostom, nor Origen actually applies the passage (Eph 5:21) specifically to the husband-wife relationship, but rather generally to ruler-subject relationships. If we are comparing the patristic and contemporary views of mutual subordination, this is very significant, since the only application given in most contemporary discussions of mutual subordination is to the husbandwife relationship. Jerome and Origen apply the passage to clergy-lay relationships, and Chrysostom applies it to master-servant relationships. Only the “other teacher” Jerome cites applies it to the husband-wife relationship, but merely as one item in the Haustafel. None of them, then, show signs of considering mutual subordination to be central for understanding the structure of the husband-wife relationship. There is a further, broader contextual consideration that can be briefly mentioned: nowhere in the literature of the early Church, whether New Testament or later, is the husband ever instructed to be subordinate to his wife. Given how revolutionary such an exhortation would have sounded in the culture of the times—as many who uphold the view of mutual subordination acknowledge—that instruction should have been repeated often and with emphasis, if indeed it was intended. Yet nowhere is that done. Nor is it done for parents to chil28 29 30 For further references to Chrysostom’s teaching that the husband is the head of the family and in authority over the wife, see Ford, Women and Men, especially 138–68, and W. A. Grudem, “The Meaning of Kephalé (‘Head’): An Evaluation of New Evidence, Real and Alleged,” in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, 146–57. Jerome, Ephesians 3.5.22, 23 (PL, 26:530–31); English translation from Heine, Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 233. See also G. Sfameni Gasparro, C. Maguzzu and C. Aloe Spada, The Human Couple in the Fathers, Pauline Patristic 1 (New York: Alba House and Pauline Books and Media, 1999), 243–44. Heine, Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 233. The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 839 dren or masters to slaves. In fact, no prominent Christian writer before the nineteenth century suggested that there was any understanding of Ephesians 5:22–32 or any similar New Testament passage other than that wives should be subordinate to their husbands and husbands should exercise some form of authority over their wives in a good Christian way.31 Origen, then, seems to present us with an innovation, although probably unintentionally. That innovation can be described against the background of the teaching that preceded him as a new explanation of the phrase “to one another” in a symmetrical or mutual sense in Ephesians 5:21. It is not, however, the introduction of a deliberate innovation in the understanding of how Christians were to relate to one another, much less how husband-wife relationships or other Christian relationships were to be conducted. To conclude this essay on the patristic origin of mutual subordination, we should return to the beginning and ask how Origen’s innovation responds to the two objections raised to this interpretation. How did Origen get around the fact that u`potasso,menoi semantically does not allow mutuality? And how did he miss the arrangement of asymmetrical relationships in Ephesians 5:22–6:9 that seemingly illustrate the meaning of u`potasso,menoi? The latter question is certainly the hardest one to answer, and all we can do is make a guess. The reason that Origen saw no reason to deal with the relationship of Ephesians 5:21 to its context is possibly that he took it as an independent exhortation, not simply as the heading for the Haustafel,32 an approach some exegetes even today adopt. In addition, Origen possibly saw Ephesians 5:21 as an exhortation to all the members of the Christian community about subordination to the leaders (the bishop, presbyters, and deacons), since that is what he 31 32 For surveys, see Clark, Man and Woman in Christ, 281–99, and Daniel Doriani, “The Historical Novelty of Egalitarian Interpretations of Ephesians 5:21–22,” in Grudem, Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, 203–20. In the earliest Greek manuscripts (including those witnessed in Origen and Jerome) there is no verb in the Haustafel, so u`potasso,menoi must serve to complete the sense of the passage. Later readings often add the imperative form (Chrysostom) or participle form (Jerome) of u`pota,ssw. Consequently, every English translation of Eph 5:22 supplies a verb to span the gap. For a critical assessment of readings, see B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Stuttgart: United Bible Society, 1975), 608–09, and P. W. Comfort, New Testament Text and Translation Commentary (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2008), 597. Of the critical editions of the Greek New Testament, only the Textus Receptus follows the later readings. 840 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters focused on and what the parallel texts that teach authority as service focused on. He possibly then thought the text moved on to a further set of exhortations for the members of each Christian household to be subordinate to the leader(s) of the household. The Haustafel, in other words, was not the specification of the exhortation to mutual subordination in Ephesians 5:21, but an additional example of subordination within the Christian community, or even a related but new topic. The teaching on mutual service was primarily directed to the leaders of the community in their exercise of authority.33 Jerome, because of his familiarity with “another teacher,” was aware of an alternative, one favored by many scholars today. In this view, the mutual subordination of Ephesians 5:21 is a heading for the Haustafel, and each of the relationships in the subheadings of the Haustafel is an example of mutual subordination. Jerome seems to have thought that the other teacher’s approach was an equally acceptable opinion (not being bound to the conviction that there can be only one acceptable exegesis of a passage34), but not his favored one. Nonetheless, none of the patristic authors who interpreted Ephesians 5:21 as enjoining mutual subordination in the sense of mutual service thought it reversed the normal asymmetrical sense of subordination (or obedience) in the following Haustafel. The common approach seems to have been to comment on Ephesians 5:21 and the Haustafel separately without asking how they related to one another. Such an approach was the usual one until the nineteenth century.35 33 34 35 J. A. Mohler, S.J., presents a variety of texts showing Origen’s concern that the bishop and the presbyters should be servants of the Church, not misusing their powers; see The Origin and Evolution of the Priesthood (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1970), 64–65. The set of references indicates that his focus on the clergy as servants in his discussion of Eph 5:21 reflects a broader concern in his writings. Origen himself had struggles with his own bishop in Alexandria, and that may have affected his commentary on Ephesians. The same was true of Jerome concerning the clergy of Rome when he left there. Augustine presents the principle behind this in De civitate Dei 15.26: “Now anyone may object to this interpretation and give another which harmonizes with the Rule of Faith. . . . Although different interpretations are given, yet they must all agree with the one harmonious catholic faith”; see The Basic Writings of St. Augustine, ed. Whitney J. Oates, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1948), 2.313. Doriani gives the following explanation: In the past, exegetes and theologians were content to make two statements and let them stand side by side without lengthy explanation. We may plausibly surmise that they had the liberty to do so because they hardly had to defend the notion that God created an ordered society The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 841 The former question, the first objection raised at the essay’s beginning (the semantic domain of u`potasso,menoi), is more serious because, even if Ephesians 5:21 is not to be understood as a heading for what follows, the idea of mutual subordination or mutual subjection is incompatible with the normal meaning of the Greek word u`potasso,menoi. The answer is that Origen seems to have interpreted “subject yourselves to one another” as having an extended sense. Jerome and Chrysostom did likewise. An extended sense often comes into play when the exegete finds a literal contradiction in a text. Rather than reject the text as self-contradictory, it is good procedure to ask if the text might have an extended sense. If the exegete understands it in an extended sense, one feature or note of its normal semantic meaning is disregarded and the word or phrase is extended to a broader variety of instances than its original meaning would have allowed. In this case, the personal subordination normally understood in the Greek word would have been disregarded and the term would have been extended to apply to any situation where individuals are obliged to provide service to another human being, “subordination” here being understood in a broad sense. The extended meaning, then, would not restrict their subordination to those in authority over them but would qualify the manner in which it would be exercised. For Origen, this was easy to do because he understood that the Greek word for service (doulei,a) was also asymmetrical and ordering. Many readers are used to the idea of mutual service, no doubt because of the influence of the scriptural passages Origen cited, and it does not occur to them that the phrase understood in its literal sense may be intrinsically self-contradictory. where husbands had authority over their wives roughly as magistrates led the state, ministers of the Gospel led the Church, and parents led their children. (“Historical Novelty,” 210) As he observes, the relationship of the content of Eph 5:21 and that of the Haustafel was not discussed in patristic commentaries, and not at all until the nineteenth century. Aquinas’s and Calvin’s commentaries on Ephesians provide easily accessible examples of the traditional approach in later periods. For a fuller presentation of “an ordered society” in Christian tradition until the nineteenth century, see Doriani’s “History of the Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2,” in Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9–15, ed. A. J. Köstenberger, Thomas R. Schreiner, and H. S. Baldwin (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995), 213–67. 842 Stephen Clark and Mark Whitters For the Greek-speakers of the ancient world, however, service (doulei,a) was what slaves gave to their masters. They served their masters; their masters did not serve them. Exercising authority as a service is no less difficult a concept than mutual subordination. Mutual service was an extended sense of this concept in line with a number of scriptural texts that Origen cited. One phrase was a close parallel to Ephesians 5:21: “through love be servants [slaves] of one another” (Gal 5:13). If this is the case, then Origen probably used the text as the way of emphasizing a point he wanted to make—namely, that service is the guiding principle of the exercise of authority by Christian leaders. In addition, by making such an interpretation, he harmonized this text with a set of other (likewise paradoxical) New Testament texts about how authority was to be exercised as a service and not as domination. Since, “to one another” can have a symmetrical (reciprocal) meaning and does in some of the texts on service, the harmonization came easily. In the patristic understanding as we find it in Origen and those who came after him, avllh,loij taken in conjunction with u`potasso,menoi qualifies the exercise of authority by teaching the overall manner in which it should be exercised. Christian authority is to be exercised as service, that is, with the good of the subordinate as the goal or at least included in the goal. The order of the relationship is not to be abolished such that the slaves get to command the master in his role as master (Chrysostom) or that the laity get to tell the clergy how to exercise their office (Jerome and Origen). Rather, masters and clergy in their distinctive roles are to follow the example of Jesus, the Lord of all, who served his subjects (the Church) by laying down his life for them on the cross rather than by laying down his lordship and letting them command him. The mutual service interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 found a wide following in subsequent Christian teaching. It has the backing of authorities in Christian antiquity, especially Jerome and Chrysostom. Despite the neglect of Origen after the condemnation by Justinian (and possibly the Fifth Ecumenical Council) of some opinions attributed to him,36 Origen’s exegesis in this and many other matters had already taken hold among eminent Church teachers and was influential through the subsequent centuries. Therefore, the mutual service 36 For the question of Origen’s condemnation and its influence, see McGuckin, Origen, 25–26; Edwards, Origen against Plato, 2–5; and Martens, Origen and Scripture, 20. The Patristic Origin of “Mutual Subordination” 843 interpretation has a claim as a traditional interpretation or a reasonable extended sense, even though it most likely does not have a claim to be the understanding in the mind of the original scriptural author. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 845–878845 “He descended into hell”: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Catholic Doctrine Brian Doyle, O.P. University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland In contemporary society, few words are as provocative as the word “hell.” There are some who regard the possibility of eternal punishment as being simply incompatible with a merciful and compassionate God. Others view it cynically as a myth or theological construct invented by the Church that historically succeeded in terrifying supposedly naive and superstitious people into obedience to its teachings, but which nowadays has little credibility or relevance. Despite these prevailing attitudes, however, the existence of hell still remains an article of the Christian faith in the twenty-first century.1 Indeed, Christ’s descent into it is referred to on several occasions in the New Testament2 and is mentioned explicitly in the Apostle’s Creed. Although the exact meaning of this admittedly enigmatic event has not been without controversy in the past,3 the Catholic The word “hell” refers both to the abode of all the dead before Christ’s resurrection (this abode of the dead is also often called “Hades” or “Sheol”) and to the abode of the damned only after the resurrection—i.e., hell understood as a place of eternal punishment. 2 For example, Matt 12:29, 39–40; 1 Pet 3:18–20; 4:6, Acts 2:24, 31; and Eph 4:7–10. 3 During the Protestant Reformation, for example, there was considerable debate between various Protestant denominations on whether the Descent event should be understood metaphorically or literally. See David V. N. Bagchi, “Luther versus Luther? The Problem of Christ’s Descent into Hell in the Long Sixteenth Century,” Perichoresis: The Theological Journal of Emanuel University of Oradea 6, no. 2 (2008):175–200. 1 846 Brian Doyle, O.P. Church’s teaching on the subject has been unambiguous. It understands the event literally and has always taught that, after his death on the Cross, Christ descended triumphantly and in glory to Hades to holy souls who awaited him there in faith.4 While this teaching had generally been accepted as normative by Catholics until the middle of the twentieth century, it has since been called into question by certain Catholic theologians, most notably by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who has offered his own interpretation of the event. Although formulated more than forty years ago, Balthasar’s unique interpretation has, of late, experienced a resurgence of interest among contemporary theologians because of recent publications that have criticized severely the theological orthodoxy of Balthasar’s thesis.5 The ensuing spirited debate has seen both opponents and advocates of Balthasar offer starkly contrasting views on whether or not Balthasar’s interpretation constitutes a legitimate development of the traditional Catholic doctrine.6 Conscious of this lack of agreement, the present study shall attempt to contribute to this debate and, if possible, try to bring further clarity to it. This shall be undertaken by an assessment of some of the various arguments for and against the orthodoxy of Balthasar’s doctrine in light of Catholic Church teaching on relevant theological issues. These will include the Church’s understanding of the possibility of meritorious suffering after death, the condition of hell (also known as Hades or Sheol), man’s particular judgment at the moment 4 5 6 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1997; hereafter CCC), §§632–35 and 164, and Catechism of the Council of Trent (also known as the Roman Catechism), trans. John A McHugh and Charles J. Callan (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1923), art. 5; Latin text: Catechismus Romanus (Naples, FL: Ex typographia Vincentii Flauto, 1795) pt. 4, ch. 6, art. 6. The most extensive criticism of Balthasar’s Descent theology appears in Alyssa Lyra Pitstick’s recent work, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). See the debate between Pitstick and Edward T. Oakes in First Things: “Responses to ‘Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy,’” First Things (March 2007): 12–14; “More on Balthasar Hell, and Heresy,” First Things (January 2007): 16–18; “Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy: An Exchange,” First Things (December 2006): 25–29. See also David Lauber, “Review Article: Response to Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of the Descent into Hell,” Scottish Journal of Theology 62 (2009): 195–201, and Edward T. Oakes, S.J., “Descensus and Development: A Response to Recent Rejoinders,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 13, no. 1 (2011): 3–24. The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 847 of death, and the possibility of solidarity with the damned and its consequences for human freedom, among other topics. We shall first consider arguments against Balthasar’s doctrine before turning our attention to those who favor it. While this analysis is unlikely to resolve the current debate, it is envisaged that it will offer a useful theological judgment on whether Balthasar’s theology represents a valid reinterpretation of the traditional understanding of the Descent event or a doctrinally unacceptable departure from it. Balthasar’s Descent doctrine and the traditional Catholic doctrine Although most readers will be aware of the content of Balthasar’s Descent doctrine, it is helpful, for clarity’s sake, to begin our discussion with a brief outline of its essential elements and to summarize how it differs from the traditional Catholic teaching. The traditional Catholic doctrine teaches that Christ descended gloriously and in power, not to suffer, but to free the “just” from their captivity and to impart to them the fruit of his Passion, which comprises the beatific vision. By means of his descent, Christ destroys “him who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14). Hades, or hell, is identified as consisting of the three basic divisions: the abode of the “just” or “righteous” (the “bosom of Abraham”), purgatory, and the hell of the damned.7 Who exactly constitute the “just” and the extent of those liberated are not specified. In contrast, Balthasar sees the Descent as a continuation and intensification of Christ’s Passion. In Sheol (Hades in Greek), Christ suffers passively (as a corpse) the punishment of the “second death” (the punishment of the damned) to expiate the penalty due to all of mankind’s sins.8 Christ thus takes the sinner’s place (by substitution) and enters into solidarity with him. For Balthasar, hell/ Sheol represents an undifferentiated abode of dead who have not, as yet, been judged definitively (Balthasar believes that the hell of the damned and purgatory do not exist before Christ’s descent, but are thereby constituted). Consequently, upon Christ’s descent, salvation is offered to all in Sheol (whether all accept it is not specified) and his liberation of captives includes both righteous and unrighteous alike. 7 8 Roman Catechism, pt. 4, ch. 6, art. 5. For a detailed account of Balthasar’s Descent theology, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan Nichols (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 148–81. 848 Brian Doyle, O.P. We shall now examine the coherence of these essential elements of Balthasar’s doctrine by comparison with established Catholic theology. Arguments against Balthasar’s Doctrine The Possibility of Meritorious Suffering after Death A central tenet of Balthasar’s Descent doctrine concerns the idea that it is possible for Christ to merit grace for others by his suffering after death. This suffering is an absolutely necessary part of Christ’s work of redemption that allows him to be in solidarity with all of the dead and thus win for them the grace of salvation. The Church, in contrast, teaches that it is not possible to receive grace or to merit it for others after death.9 Aquinas expresses this teaching in the following terms: “Now the soul united to a mortal body is in the state of meriting, while the soul separated from the body is in the state of receiving good or evil for its merits; so that after death it is either in the state of receiving its final reward, or in the state of being hindered from receiving it.”10 Aquinas’s conviction that the opportunity to merit ceases with death leads him to argue that, while it was fitting for Christ to descend into hell to free others from suffering, it is impossible that he should have suffered there: And regarding the soul, the consequence of sin in human beings after death is that they descend into hell, regarding both the place and the punishment. And as Christ’s body was interred in the earth regarding place but not regarding the concomitant defect of dissolution, so also his soul descended 9 10 See CCC, §1021. Concerning merit, The Catholic Encyclopaedia states: “The agent who merits must fulfil two conditions: he must be in the state of pilgrimage (status viae) and in the state of grace (status gratiae). By the state of pilgrimage is to be understood our earthly life; death as a natural (although not an essentially necessary) limit, closes the time of meriting. The time of sowing is confined to this life; the reaping is reserved for the next, when no man will be able to sow either wheat or cockle. Comparing the earthly life with day and the time after death with night, Christ says: ‘The night cometh, when no man can work [operari]’ (John 9:4; cf. Ecclesiastes 11:3; Sirach 14:17)” (available at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10202b.htm). Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia (hereafter, ST) Supplement, q. 69, a. 7, corp. All citations and quotations from ST are taken from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Allen: Christian Classics, 1981). The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 849 into hell regarding the place, but not to suffer punishment there (non autem ut ibi penam subiret). Rather, he descended into hell to free from punishment others who were kept there because of the sin of our first parent for which Christ had already made full satisfaction by suffering death. And so nothing after death remained for him to suffer, and he descended into the place of hell without any suffering of punishment (absque omni pene passione) in order to show himself the liberator of the living and the dead (uiuorum et mortuorum liberator).11 There are several interesting points to note in the foregoing passage. Firstly, unlike Balthasar, who believes that Christ had to suffer everything that sinful man was destined to suffer in the absence of redemption—the punishment of the damned, or the “second death’” (Rev 20:14)12—Aquinas holds that it was unnecessary for Christ to suffer in hell because he had already made full satisfaction for mankind’s sins by his death on the Cross (elsewhere, in his Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas excludes the possibility of Christ’s satisfactory punishment after death, claiming that this belongs to those in a state of merit—in statu merendi—which is not possible for the dead, but pertains only to the living13). Secondly, Aquinas interprets Acts 2:27 (“For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let thy Holy One see corruption”) to mean that, just as Christ’s body did not experience corruption in the grave, neither did his soul experience punishment in Hades. This view contrasts notably with Balthasar’s interpretation, which takes the same verse to mean simply that God the Father did not leave Christ in Hades but raised him up on the third day after he had suffered.14 Given these two very different interpretations, is it possible to ascertain which one is more credible? The principles underlying Catholic anthropology appear to suggest the answer. The Encyclical Veritatis Splendor, for example, firmly rejects any moral theory that undermines the importance of bodily actions in the life of human beings or makes them superfluous. 11 12 13 14 Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, trans. Richard J. Regan (Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), I, chs. 235 and 194; Latin text: Compendium theologiae, Leonine edition. vol. 42 (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1979). Mysterium Paschale, 168. In III sent. d. 22, q. 2, a. 1, qla 1, corp. Mysterium Paschale, 153. 850 Brian Doyle, O.P. Describing such a theory as contradicting “the Church’s teachings on the unity of the human person, whose rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body,”15 it goes on to state: The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole—corpore et anima unus . . .—as a person. These definitions not only point out that the body, which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory. They also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties. The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts. . . . A doctrine which dissociates the moral act from the bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and Tradition. . . . Body and soul are inseparable: in the person, in the willing agent and in the deliberate act, they stand or fall together.16 In agreement with the principles set forth in the above text, Aquinas’s Descent theology understands the human person as a unity of body and soul. Consequently, Aquinas believes that Christ, like all men, is judged by God at the moment of death because moral acts (e.g., meritorious suffering) are no longer possible without a body. According to Aquinas, this judgment vindicates Christ’s holiness, which is demonstrated by his incorrupt body in the grave.17 However, since God’s judgment involves a verdict on the whole person in the full integrity of their human nature (as a unity of body and soul),18 Aquinas reasons that the fate of Christ’s body must reflect the fate of his soul. He naturally concludes that, if Christ’s body did not experience the effects of sin but remained incorrupt in the grave, then his soul also did not suffer the effects of sin in the form of punishment after death. 15 16 17 18 Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993), §48. Ibid., §§48–49. Indeed, in imitation of Christ, the bodies of many well-known saints have been miraculously preserved by God in an incorrupt state as a testimony to their holiness, e.g. St. Bernadette of Lourdes and St. John Vianney. For example, the Blessed Virgin is assumed soul and body into heaven at the end of her earthly sojourn because her body shares in the “fullness of grace” that characterises her soul, and it is hence preserved from the effects of sin, from corruption or dissolution. The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 851 In contrast, Balthasar teaches that Christ’s greatest act of redemption is performed in Sheol in the absence of his body, which means that Christ merits the salvation of all of mankind as a disembodied soul.19 The obvious problem with this claim is that the above text of Veritatis Splendor insists that any doctrine that “dissociates the moral act from the bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and Tradition.” But the act of meriting constitutes a moral act. Therefore, Church teaching clearly excludes the possibility that Christ merited grace without his body after death. Furthermore, even if we assume that Balthasar’s Descent doctrine is correct and that Christ had to suffer all that sinful man was destined to suffer in his stead, then Christ’s body should have experienced physical dissolution in the grave (just like sinful man’s) while his soul underwent the punishment of the damned in Hades. We know from Scripture, however, that Christ’s flesh did not see corruption while in the grave (Acts 2:31). This means that Balthasar’s theology necessitates that Christ’s soul and his body must have suffered different fates from each other after death, meaning that his soul suffered the effects of sin (in the form of the second death) while his body did not (it remained incorrupt). This possibility again clearly contradicts the foregoing text of Veritatis Splendor that states that “body and soul are inseparable . . . in the person . . . they stand or fall together.” On account of these inconsistencies in Balthasar’s thesis, we must conclude that Balthasar is most likely mistaken about Christ’s experience in Sheol and that he did not, in fact, suffer any punishment upon his descent there. Interestingly, this is precisely what the Roman Catechism teaches: All others descended, either to endure the most acute torments, or, if exempt from other pain, to be deprived of the vision of God, and to be tortured by the delay of the glory and happiness for which they yearned; Christ the Lord descended, on 19 There seems to be a theological contradiction inherent in the notion that Christ suffered the “second death” in Sheol that has not, to the best of my knowledge, been hitherto noted—namely, that the “second death” spoken of in Rev 20:14 is the punishment reserved for the wicked after the final judgment and involves torment of both body and soul in the lake of fire. Now, Christ does not have a body when he descends to Sheol. How can he be then said to suffer the same punishment as those who experience the “second death,” as Balthasar claims? 852 Brian Doyle, O.P. the contrary, not to suffer, but to liberate the holy and the just from their painful captivity, and to impart to them the fruit of his Passion. His supreme dignity and power, therefore, suffered no diminution by his descent into hell.20 The Roman Catechism, which represents the Church’s traditional and most comprehensive teaching on Christ’s descent, in contrast to Balthasar’s claims, clearly rules out the possibility that Christ suffered in Hades. Balthasar’s understanding of Sheol A second fundamental aspect of Balthasar’s descensus theology is the notion that Christ experienced solidarity with the dead. This conviction is intrinsically linked to Balthasar’s concept of Sheol and the condition of being dead. His view of the nature of Sheol is nuanced and seems to offer two distinct possibilities. On the one hand, Balthasar claims that Sheol represents an undifferentiated state for all the dead. Yet, on the other, he speculates that it may be divided into an upper and lower infernum that are separated by a chaos magnum (great chasm). Citing various passages of Scripture, Balthasar initially makes the case for an undifferentiated Sheol. He argues that the Old Testament depicts Sheol simply as the abode of the unredeemed who are deprived of the vision of God (poena damni) and where there is “no more praise of God (Ps 6:6; 30:10; 115:17; Sir 17:27; Isa 38:18).”21 It is a place where there is darkness, no joy, no knowledge of things on the earth, and no activity: “Deprived of all strength and vitality (Isa 14:10), the dead are called the refa’im, the powerless ones. They are as if they were not (Ps 39:14; Sir 17:28). They dwell in the country of forgetfulness (Ps 88:13).”22 Based on this imagery, Balthasar argues that Sheol should not be understood as a place incorporating a “difference of destiny which distinguishes men by way of reward and penalty after death.”23 Admitting that such representations do occur in passages of the New Testament (in the parable of Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31 and in the address to the good thief in Luke 23:43), he suggests that the terms “Gehenna” and “Paradise” should be Roman Catechism, pt. 4, ch. 6, art. 5. Mysterium Paschale, 161. 22 Ibid., 161–62. 23 Ibid., 161. Balthasar regards the idea of punishment and reward in the afterlife as characteristic of later Judaism, which was influenced by both Persia and Hellenism. 20 21 The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 853 considered, rather, as being englobed and determined by the concept of Sheol itself.24 Balthasar acknowledges that co-operation with the grace of Christ was possible before the Incarnation and, consequently, that it was possible for the dead to be “just” and to await redemption. Nonetheless, he insists that all those who have died before Christ (“pre-Christian humanity”) fall under the same sentence due to original sin, which consists of the poena damni, or the deprivation of the vision of God. In fact, Balthasar states that this dialectic (that the “just” experienced the poena damni) “loses its bite if one naively ascribes to the pious men of the Old Testament the ‘light of hope,’” which he believes implies a “participation in the divine life” that “contradicts the poena damni and . . . the classical Old Testament texts on the concept of Sheol as well.”25 Aquinas’s opinion that Christ had friends not only on earth but also in Hades26 is described by Balthasar as a “naive, non-dialectical conception,” which he rejects for the following reason: But Hades, seen christologically, takes on thereby a certain character of conditionality: the man who is already reconciled with God, who has faith, hope and charity, cannot, to be sure, theologically speaking, be reconciled except through Christ, and so, to possess this grace, he cannot really be waiting for Christ, since he already has something of the Christ-life in himself.27 In the above text, Balthasar reasons that, if we accept that the “just” in Hades possessed the theological virtues, then “we are forced into the paradoxical and self-annulling concept of a ‘provisional poena damni,’”28 which he considers to be inconsistent with the Old Testament depiction of Sheol. Yet, he also suggests that, even if we do accept that these souls “did not experience the entire, truly merited poena damni” because they possessed the virtues of faith, hope and 24 25 26 27 28 Ibid., 161. Ibid., 165–66. Thomas Aquinas, The Sermon-Conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed, trans. and ed. and introduced by Nicholas Ayo (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988); Latin text: Opuscula theologica, vol. 2: De re spirituali (Turin/Rome: Marietti, 1954), 79. Mysterium Paschale, 160. Ibid., 166. Brian Doyle, O.P. 854 charity, then this can be due only to the fact that Christ has experienced the poena damni on their behalf. 29 It seems, then, that Balthasar imagines two possibilities for the condition of Sheol. In the first scenario, all of the dead, the “just” and “unjust” alike, share the one condition in Sheol, both suffering the full poena damni. In the second, the “just” do not suffer the entire poena damni like the “unjust,” which gives rise to two levels in Sheol. Based on this reasoning, Balthasar regards Augustine’s definition of Hades as being “theologically strong” and describes it as follows: Augustine’s distinguishes between a lower infernum (where the “rich man” lives) and a higher (where Lazarus dwells, in the bosom of Abraham). The two are separated by a chaos magnum, yet both belong equally to Hades. That Christ descended even to the lower infernum, in order to “deliver from their sufferings the tortured souls, that is, sinners” (salvos facere a doloribus) Augustine regards as certain (non dubito). The grace of Christ redeemed all those who tarried there.30 Balthasar reminds us that what Augustine intends here is “delivery from Sheol (Hades) and not from the Hell of the New Testament.”31 Balthasar also believes that the concept of Hades should be understood as being more “spiritual than local” and favors the interpretation of the chaos magnum as something signifying a difference between the inner spiritual states of the “evil rich man” and Lazarus, rather than a localized division. This interpretation, Balthasar suggests “opens up the way to a psychic solidarity between the dead Christ and those who dwell in the Hades of the spirit.”32 In contrast, Balthasar rejects medieval theology, which divides Hades into four distinct levels (the Limbo of the Patriarchs, Purgatory, the Limbo of unbaptized infants, and the hell of the damned), arguing that we know nothing about the Limbo of unbaptized infants and that “before Christ (and here the term ‘before’ must be understood not in a chronological sense but in an ontological) there can be neither Hell nor Purgatory.”33 This medieval scholastic schema Ibid., 167. Ibid., 162. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 163. 33 Ibid., 177. 29 30 The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 855 that identifies part of Hades with the hell of the damned (Gehenna) and thus limits the salvific scope of Christ’s descent is considered by Balthasar to be “poor theology” based on “a particular doctrine of predestination.”34 In brief, then, while Balthasar seems to favor the idea of an undifferentiated Sheol that incorporates just and unjust alike (all of whom experience the poena damni but who have not, as yet, been judged definitively), he accepts that Hades might be speculatively divided into an upper and lower region with the “inter-relationship of the two remaining obscure.”35 There are certain problems associated with both of these depictions of Sheol. The first scenario (that of an undifferentiated Sheol) assumes that all in Sheol essentially share the same condition, that both the good and the evil suffer the same fate before Christ’s descent. This view is not supported by an impartial reading of the whole of Scripture, as Alyssa Pitstick has convincingly argued.36 Furthermore, it is contradicted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (hereafter, CCC), which, relying upon the words of Christ, teaches: Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell”—Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek— because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. . . . Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom.” . . . “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell [Roman Catechism 1, 6, 3].” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.37 Clearly then, the fate of the righteous and the wicked in Sheol is not the same, and so Sheol cannot be “undifferentiated” as Balthasar claims. He is also incorrect to speculate that none of the dead possessed the theological virtues. The CCC plainly indicates that 34 35 36 37 Ibid., 176. Ibid., 177. Pitstick, Light in Darkness, 318–22. CCC, §633 (emphasis added). Brian Doyle, O.P. 856 there were “holy souls” who awaited their savior. But it is impossible to be “holy” without the virtues of faith, hope and charity. This leads us to the plausibility of Balthasar’s second option, which admits of some kind of division in Hades with the “inter-relationship of the two remaining obscure.” Although this division is presented in the Gospel of Luke (16:19–31) as a great chasm (chaos magnum) that cannot be crossed, Balthasar argues that it should be understood as signifying a difference in the inner spiritual state of the rich man and Lazarus, rather than a localized division. This interpretation, according to Balthasar, would allow Christ to be in solidarity with all those in Hades, regardless of their inner spiritual state. The problem with this scenario (which is scripturally and doctrinally more sound than that of an undifferentiated Sheol) is that it seems to necessitate some kind of personal judgment at the moment of death, which is just what Balthasar’s doctrine seeks to deny. This is evident from the fact that Abraham explains to the rich man why he is now suffering torment in Hades and why Lazarus is being comforted. Both individuals are being enlightened as to the nature of their sins and the ensuing justice. Both are receiving the fruits of the deeds of their earthly lives according to divine judgment. If this were not the case, the rich man would not be in dialogue with Abraham and having his sins explained to him. He would simply be in a place where there is no activity, no joy, and “no knowledge of what happens on earth,” which is how Balthasar portrays an undifferentiated Sheol.38 A differentiated Sheol, however, by its very nature, implies some kind of personal judgment, which poses serious problems for the plausibility of Balthasar’s Descent theology, as we shall presently discuss. Particular judgment at the moment of death Inherent in Balthasar’s Descent doctrine is the hope that all men may be saved. However, this hope relies upon the assumption that, when Christ descended to Hades, there were none there who were already eternally damned. To admit that there were some who were already damned before Christ’s descent would naturally frustrate this hope. As we have seen, Balthasar therefore rejects any theology that identifies part of Hades with hell properly so-called (the hell of the damned), even though he is fully aware that this is precisely what many of the Fathers of the Church and great medieval theologians 38 Mysterium Paschale, 161. The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 857 taught.39 Balthasar objects to the assumption that there were some in Sheol who were beyond salvation (damned) and calls it “poor theology.” The CCC, however, (which Pope John Paul II describes as “a sure norm for teaching the faith”),40 does not support Balthasar’s opinion. It states: Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ [2 Tim 1:9–10]. The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith. The parable of the poor man Lazarus and the words of Christ on the cross to the good thief, as well as other New Testament texts speak of a final destiny of the soul—a destiny which can be different for some and for others.41 Against Balthasar’s thesis, the CCC (which was drafted after Balthasar’s death) certainly seems to affirm the theology of the “great Scholastics,” which taught that a person’s final destiny is definitively decided at death and can be different depending on the individual in question, thereby implying a variety of destinations in Hades. In response to this claim, advocates of Balthasar might argue that this personal or particular judgment at the moment of death applies to mankind only after Christ’s descent and resurrection (when hell and purgatory had been constituted by Christ) but that there was no such judgment beforehand. This hypothesis, however, is clearly contradicted by the CCC’s reference to Lazarus and the rich man, whose final destinies are seen to be different. When Christ tells this parable and describes their 39 40 41 Balthasar states: “As Trinitarian event, the going to the dead is necessarily also an event of salvation. It is poor theology to limit this salvific happening in an a priori manner by affirming—in the context of a particular doctrine of predestination and the presumed identification of Hades (Gehenna) with Hell—that Christ was unable to bring any salvation to ‘Hell properly so called,’ infernus damnatorum. Following many of the Fathers, the great Scholastics set up just such a prioristic barriers” (Mysterium Paschale, 176). Pope John Paul II, Fidei Depositum, IV (available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_ apc_19921011_fidei -depositum_en.html). CCC, §1021. Bracketed text appears as footnote in original. 858 Brian Doyle, O.P. respective destinations, he is obviously talking about the abode of the dead (Sheol) which existed before his own descent there. This is plainly seen by his reference to Abraham’s bosom (Abraham’s bosom ceased to exist after Christ’s descent). The CCC clearly implies that these destinies are final (Lazarus is saved, the rich man is not) and, in so doing, explains the true nature of the great chasm that cannot be crossed. Other references in the CCC confirm that the moment of death is the time when each individual receives from God his particular and definitive judgment that determines his destiny for eternity. For example, §1022 states that “each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven . . . through a purification . . . or immediately . . . or immediate and everlasting damnation.”42 Elsewhere, we read that “by rejecting grace in this life, one already judges oneself, receives according to one’s works, and can even condemn oneself for all eternity by rejecting the Spirit of love.”43 Concerning whether there were damned individuals in Sheol before Christ’s descent, the CCC states that “Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.”44 Proponents of Balthasar could argue that this statement does not technically contradict his doctrine because he holds that the hell of damnation did not exist at the time of Christ’s descent, and therefore no one was delivered from it, strictly speaking. However, the statement only makes sense in the context of an already existing hell of damnation. It would be absolutely superfluous, and even confusing, for the CCC to explain that Jesus did not descend to a place that did not exist. The only plausible interpretation of CCC §633 is that there were some who were damned in hell at the time of Christ’s descent and that he did not save them.45 The question then arises, of course, of how the dead were judged by a “particular judgment that refers [their] life to Christ,”46 given 42 43 44 45 46 CCC, §1022. Ibid., §679. Ibid., §633. This interpretation is clearly supported by the Roman Catechism, which describes the three abodes of hell as “hell, strictly so-called,” “purgatory,” and “the bosom of Abraham” (pt. 4, ch. 6, art. 5). CCC, §633. The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 859 that Christ did not yet exist. In fact, this is exactly the objection that Balthasar raises when contesting the idea of a pre-Christian hell and a pre-Christian purgatory such as conceived by many Patristic and Medieval theologians. Balthasar argues that “this whole construction must be laid to one side, since before Christ (and here the term ‘before’ must be understood not in a chronological sense but in an ontological), there can be neither Hell nor Purgatory.”47 What Balthasar effectively assumes is that those who lived before Christ were not offered the grace of salvation while they lived and, therefore, cannot be judged definitively at the moment of death. Rather, this grace was offered to them after death when Christ descended into Sheol. Therefore, he believes that Christ must have offered salvation to all those in Sheol. Here again, it is necessary to challenge Balthasar’s assumption. The doctrine of God’s universal will of salvation and the doctrine of grace itself allow for those who existed before Christ (the Old Testament calls certain individuals “friends of God”) to be granted grace in view of Christ’s redemption that was to take place. In fact, Aquinas, by making a distinction between “implicit” and “explicit” faith, claims that the grace of salvation must have been offered to everyone prior to the coming of Christ to fulfill the demands of divine justice. Referring to the Gentiles he remarks: It was enough for them to have implicit faith in the Redeemer (habere fidem de Redemptore implicite), either as part of their belief in the faith of the law and the prophets, or as part of their belief in divine providence itself. Nevertheless, it is likely that the mystery of our redemption was revealed to many Gentiles before Christ’s coming, as is clear from the Sibylline prophecies.48 47 48 Mysterium Paschale, 177. Thomas Aquinas, Truth (hereafter, De veritate), trans. James V. McGlynn, S.J. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), q. 14, a. 11, ad 5; Latin text: Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, Leonine ed., vol. 22/2 (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1975). For a detailed discussion of St. Thomas’s understanding of how those of non-Christian religions can be said to possess implicit faith in Christ, see Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, “Foi implicite et religions non chrétiennes,” Revue Thomiste 106 (2006): 315–34. For an analysis of certain Church Fathers’ understanding of the divinely inspired nature of the Sibylline writings, see Damian Macura, “Le prophétisme païen: existe-t-il et comment?” licentiate in theology thesis, University of Fribourg ( 2011), 21–32. 860 Brian Doyle, O.P. Whether righteous pagans were in purgatory or in Abraham’s bosom when Christ descended into hell is never discussed explicitly by Aquinas. What is clear is that Aquinas proposes a much more general criterion for salvation than many previous Western theologians (for example, St. Gregory and St. Augustine) who held that only those who had explicit faith in Christ and looked forward to his coming were saved. Aquinas, on the other hand, maintains that, to be saved, one “is bound explicitly to believe that God exists and exercises providence over human affairs” (with reference to Heb. 11:6).49 He clarifies the implications of this requirement by taking the example of a savage raised in the wild: Granted that everyone is bound to believe something explicitly, no untenable conclusion follows even if someone is brought up in the forest or among wild beasts. For it pertains to divine providence to furnish everyone with what is necessary for salvation, provided that on his part there is no hindrance. Thus, if someone so brought up followed the direction of natural reason in seeking good and avoiding evil, we must most certainly hold that God would either reveal to him through internal inspiration what is necessary to be believed (ea quae sunt necessaria ad credendum), or would send some preacher of the faith to him as he sent Peter to Cornelius (Acts 10:20).50 Aquinas, though always insisting on the necessity of faith, claims that, if we follow our natural reason and do our best to lead good lives, God’s providence will provide whatever is necessary for salvation. Thomas Joseph White, a Dominican friar, notes that this solution is “universalist through and through” and avoids the weaknesses of Balthasar’s theory, which includes “the notion that . . . persons prior to Christ were not offered the grace of salvation (and therefore could seemingly only be offered it in the hell of the damned)” and “the idea that this historical offer of grace could not be refused definitively.”51 Contrary to what Balthasar maintains, therefore, we must conclude that it was possible for those who lived before Christ to be De veritate, q. 14, a. 11, corp. Ibid., q. 14, a. 11, ad 1 (translation slightly modified). 51 Thomas J. White, “On the Universal Possibility of Salvation,” Pro Ecclesia 17, no. 3 (2008): 269–80, at 278. 49 50 The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 861 offered grace through faith in the Mediator (that is to say, in virtue of Christ’s Incarnation and death), and that it was possible for them to freely and culpably reject this grace. Consequently, it was possible for them to be judged definitively at the moment of death by a particular judgment that referred their life to Christ (even if Christ had not yet come) and to be condemned eternally to hell. The nature of such a judgment is clearly explained in Matthew 25:31–46. In this parable we see that explicit knowledge of the person of Christ during one’s life is not required to be saved, but that one is judged according to the love with which one has treated others. The fact that those in the parable do not understand the relationship between Christ and their neighbor does not change the nature of their actions, diminish their culpability, or excuse them from being judged.52 If sanctifying grace was available to those who lived before Christ, then judgment was its logical consequence. The CCC confirms that this judgment takes place at the moment of death and is definitive in nature. Balthasar’s notion of Christ’s solidarity with the damned The final aspect of Balthasar’s Descent theology that we shall consider is his belief that it was possible for Christ to be in some way in solidarity with the damned in Sheol. This represents a cornerstone of Balthasar’s doctrine upon which his hope for universal salvation depends. Balthasar’s understanding of how Christ enters into solidarity with the damned is perhaps best illustrated by the following passage: But there is, on Holy Saturday, the descent of the dead Jesus into hell: that is (speaking very simplistically), his solidarity in nontime with those who have been lost to God. For these people, their choice is definitive, the choice whereby they have chosen their “I” instead of God’s selfless love. Into this definitiveness (of death) the Son descends; but he is no longer acting in any way but from the Cross is instead robbing every power and initiative by being the Purely Available One, the Obedient One. . . . He is dead with the dead (but out of a final love). But this is precisely how he disturbs the absolute loneliness that the sinner strives for: the sinner who wants to be “damned” by 52 Matthew 25:44–45: “Then it will be their turn to ask, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or lacking clothes, sick or in prison, and did not come to your help?’ Then he will answer, ‘In truth I tell you, in so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.’” 862 Brian Doyle, O.P. God now rediscovers God in the absolute impotence of love. For now God has placed himself in solidarity with those who have damned themselves, entering into nontime in a way we could never anticipate.53 There are several theological difficulties with the above text that illustrate Balthasar’s understanding of Christ’s solidarity with the “damned.” The first of these relates to the possibility of conversion after death and the possibility of damnation. From what we have said above, it is evident that the Church teaches that all human beings are judged at the moment of death (whether they lived before or after Christ). This judgment excludes the possibility of conversion after death because it is definitive in nature. In contrast, Balthasar’s notion of solidarity with the “damned,” as outlined in the above text, allows for such a possibility. It is clear that, although the “damned” consider themselves to be damned because, in their own estimation, they have definitively rejected God, according to Balthasar, they are not actually damned because they can still be converted in Sheol after death (in “nontime”) on account of Christ’s vicarious suffering. Even if we do accept this theologically problematic possibility that God gives sinners in Sheol a chance to convert, we are then still left with the question of how and when they are judged definitively and whether or not it is possible for them to be damned. According to Balthasar, when Christ descends to hell, he suffers the punishment of the damned (the “second death”) and thereby wins the grace of conversion for all sinners, even those who are seemingly damned. This gift of grace allows sinners who are in Sheol to see themselves as God sees them (they have full knowledge of their sins) and makes them perfectly free to reject or accept God’s love (although he doesn’t discuss it explicitly, Balthasar presumably believes that those who live after Christ’s resurrection are given full knowledge of their sins at the moment of death and are then free to accept or reject God’s mercy). One would expect that, if the sinner rejects God’s mercy at this point, then eternal damnation would result. At first glance, Balthasar’s theology appears to agree with this assumption for he admits that damnation occurs if, having received this gift of grace, the sinner continues to “resist the triune work of atonement with full conscious53 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “On Vicarious Representation,” in Explorations in Theology, vol. 4, Spirit and Institution, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995): 415–22, at 422. The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 863 ness and realization.”54 However, Pitstick has provided a comprehensive, convincing argument as to why Balthasar’s theology does not, in fact, allow for eternal damnation but inevitably implies universal salvation.55 The details of this argument will not be reiterated here, but it is basically dependent upon Balthasar’s conviction that, because Christ has suffered the “second death” in man’s place, he has already “assumed man’s eschatological ‘no.’”56 This effectively means that man’s definitive “no” has already been atoned for and is, consequently, a sin that is always pardonable. In other words, according to Balthasar, man can make a fully conscious decision after death (hence the term “eschatological”) to reject God’s love with full knowledge of his own culpability and of God’s redemption and still not necessarily be eternally damned. To be eternally damned, according to Balthasar, the sinner must persist57 in this attitude of resistance to God, which Balthasar believes is possible, at least in principle, because he recognizes that “Scripture prohibits us from saying that this deliberate No is impossible.”58 Pitstick has persuasively argued, however, that this persistence in sin does not appear to be possible in light of Balthasar’s other remarks that “God’s love is stronger than any resistance to accepting it” and that “we cannot predict which will go on longer: God’s ‘yes’ or men’s ‘no.’”59 She correctly observes that “the metaphor of time ‘loads the question’: it invites an expectation that God’s yes will last ‘longer’ than man’s no, because unlike man, God is both eternal and omnipotent.”60 She concludes that, although Balthasar himself does not explicitly state that all men will ultimately be saved, his Descent theology implies it. Furthermore, Balthasar’s suggestion that there is no sin of man that cannot be pardoned is contrary to Catholic theology, which clearly 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 4, The Action (hereafter, Theo-Drama IV), trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 350. Pitstick, Light in Darkness, 264–72. Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, 172 (emphasis added). Balthasar states that “if created freedom chooses itself as the absolute good, it involves itself in a contradiction that will devour it. . . . This contradiction if persisted in, is hell”; see Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 5, The Last Act (hereafter, Theo-Drama V), trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 341. Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV, 350. Balthasar, “The Descent into Hell,” Chicago Studies 23 (1984): 223–36, at 234. Pitstick, Light in Darkness, 272. 864 Brian Doyle, O.P. recognizes the possibility of the unforgivable sin of final impenitence at the moment of death.61 Concerning the finality of one’s decision at death, Aquinas states: “for, so long as men live here below, they can be converted to faith and charity, because in this life men are not confirmed either in good or in evil, as they are after quitting this life.”62 This is to say that, at death, man makes a definitive decision either to accept God’s particular judgment of his life and to repent of his sins or to obstinately persist in them through final impenitence. This decision is, by nature, final. There is no question of change in eternity, contrary to what Balthasar proposes.63 The decision that man makes when he is judged by God at the end of his life represents an act of the will that is taken with “full knowledge and complete consent”64 and is, therefore, immovable and irrevocable.65 Once again we see the inconsistency of Balthasar’s theology with Catholic doctrine. While he tries to maintain that damnation is a possibility for sinners who refuse God’s grace, he undermines this possibility by removing the very means by which this damnation occurs—namely, committing an unforgivable sin (a sin against the 61 62 63 64 65 “‘Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin [Mk. 3:29].’ There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. . . . Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss” (CCC, §1864, bracketed text is footnote in original). ST III, q. 52, a. 6, ad 3; Latin text: Thomas de Aquino, Summa Theologiae, Tomus 4: Tertia Pars, ed. Cura et studio Instituti Medievalium Ottaviensis, revised ed. (Ottawa, ON: Collège Dominicain d’Ottawa, 1953). Balthasar’s phrasing is: “We cannot predict which will go on longer: God’s ‘yes’ or men’s ‘no’” (“Descent into Hell,” 234), treats eternity as an infinite duration of time rather than its traditional conception as an unchanging state which is “the simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life.” See also ST I, q. 10, a. 1. CCC, §1859. ST, supplement, q. 98, a. 1, sc: “An obstinate will can never be inclined except to evil. Now men who are damned will be obstinate even as the demons. Further, as the will of the damned is in relation to evil, so is the will of the blessed in regard to good. But the blessed never have an evil will. Neither therefore have the damned any good will.” ST I, q. 64, a. 2, corp., states: “We must seek for the cause of this obstinacy, not in the gravity of the sin, but in the condition of their nature or state. For as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. II, 4), ‘death is to men, what the fall is to the angels.’ Now it is clear that all the mortal sins of men, grave or less grave, are pardonable before death; whereas after death they are without remission and endure forever.” The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 865 Holy Spirit). By insisting that Christ has atoned for all of man’s sins (hence an unforgivable sin is no longer possible) and by positing continual persistence in sin as the only means of damnation, Balthasar proposes a theology of damnation that clearly departs from traditional Catholic teaching. The fact that Balthasar’s notion of solidarity with the damned seems to preclude a definitive “no” on man’s part and, consequently, his definitive damnation also calls into question the genuineness of human freedom.66 Balthasar responds to this potential problem by stating that “man’s verdict on himself in his relation to God cannot be the last act of the Judgment. . . . While infinite freedom will respect the decisions of finite freedom, it will not allow itself to be compelled, or restricted in its own freedom, by the latter.”67 Elsewhere, Balthasar states that “the necessity whereby God has to reject the man who rejects his love appears to signal a defeat for God.”68 This is, however, clearly an unsatisfactory construal of human freedom. By opposing human freedom and divine freedom in such a way, Balthasar effectively limits human freedom in its relation to God and implicitly suggests that, were man to choose damnation, God’s will would be somehow frustrated, presumably given God’s desire that all men be saved (1 Tim 2:4). The teaching of the CCC, in contrast, recognizes that man does have the final say in whether he is damned or not, precisely because God’s liberality allows man the freedom to accept or reject his love: God, while desiring “all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), nevertheless has created the human person to be free and responsible; and he respects our decisions. Therefore, it is the human person who freely excludes himself from communion with God if at the moment of death he persists in mortal sin and refuses the merciful love of God. 69 66 67 68 69 Pitstick argues that, according to Balthasar’s theology, definitive rejection of God by man after death seems impossible because the opportunity for conversion is always available to him (Light in Darkness, 268–69). Balthasar, Theo-Drama V, 295. Ibid., V:193. Pope Benedict XVI, Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005), §213 (available also at http://www. vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html). 866 Brian Doyle, O.P. God’s will is not frustrated by man’s misuse of freedom, even though he may be gravely saddened by it. On the contrary, man’s freedom is a gift that divine freedom affords him in accordance with divine love. Moreover, the above text outlining the CCC’s understanding of human freedom seems to exclude the very possibility of solidarity with the “damned,” for it clearly teaches that God does not remain in solidarity with an individual who does not desire this communion. Aquinas’s theology, upon which Church teaching on the Descent is founded, also appears to rule out such solidarity. Speaking of the possibility of deliverance from damnation, he states that “punishment cannot be taken away so long as one remains culpable. But the damned are obstinate in malice, like the demons. It is impossible, therefore, that they can be delivered from their sin, not because of any insufficiency on the part of the liberator [Christ] but because of their personal disposition.” 70 Even if Christ were to suffer the “second death” for sinners, Aquinas’s theology makes it abundantly clear that such suffering would be pointless because it is not possible for the damned to be united to Christ in any way that could prove salutary for them.71 For Aquinas, “light” and “darkness,” or love and hatred, are by nature incompatible. The solidarity of Christ with the damned of which Balthasar speaks is impossible for Thomas, not due to a lack of mercy or compassion on God’s part, but because of the radicalness of the divine gift of human freedom that allows man to choose his final destiny even if this choice should entail eternal separation from God. In light of such obvious inconsistencies between Balthasar’s Descent thesis and traditional Catholic teaching, it seems like an appropriate point in our analysis to consider the various arguments in favor of Balthasar’s interpretation to determine if such differences can 70 71 Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi episcopi Parisiensis (hereafter, Sentences.), vol. 3, ed. M. F. Moos (Paris: Lethielleux, 1933), III, dist. 22, q. 2, a. 2, quaestiuncula 2, corp.: “[. . .] poena non potest tolli manente culpa. Illi autem qui sunt damnati in inferno, sunt obstinati in malitia, sicut daemones; et ideo de poena illi liberari non potuerunt. Et hoc non fuit ex insufficientia liberantis, sed ex indispositione ipsorum.” “Christ’s Passion works its effect in them to whom it is applied, through faith and charity and the sacraments of faith. And, consequently, the lost in hell cannot avail themselves of its effects, since they are not united to Christ in the aforesaid manner” (ST III, q. 49, a. 3). See also ST III, q. 52, a. 2, sc: “Now there is no ‘fellowship of light with darkness, according to 2 Corinthians 6:14. Therefore Christ, who is ‘the light,’ did not descend into the hell of the lost.” The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 867 be reasonably accounted for. Arguments in Favor of Balthasar’s Doctrine There are many theologians who view Balthasar’s theology favorably, but few who have attempted to defend his Descent doctrine specifically. Most who have defended it have done so in response to Pitstick’s criticism in her doctoral thesis, Light in Darkness. The principal advocate of Balthasar’s doctrine, in this respect, is the late Edward T. Oakes, S.J., who makes his most comprehensive case for Balthasar in an article entitled: “Descensus and Development: A Response to Recent Rejoinders.”72 Here, Oakes argues for the orthodoxy of Balthasar’s doctrine as a legitimate development of traditional doctrine on the basis of several observations. Firstly, Oakes maintains, Balthasar’s thesis is consistent with what certain passages of Scripture tell us about the Descent into hell, atonement and representation, and Christ’s power to judge. For example, Oakes claims that passages such as 1 Peter 3:18–19 and 4:5–6 understand the Descent “as in some sense a saving descent.” 73 He cites Galatians 3:13 and 2 Corinthians 5:21 as evidence that “Christ effects salvation by assuming the punishment that was due to us (Gal 3:13) and by taking our place as the true sinner in the eyes of God (2 Cor 5:21).” 74 He claims that 1 John 2:1–3 implies that there is no sin of humanity that is left un-atoned for, while he takes Revelation 1:18 to mean that, should anyone end up in hell after Christ’s descent there, “it would only be because of Christ’s personal judgment.”75 The theological significance of each of the above scriptural references gives credibility to Balthasar’s doctrine, according to Oakes. Secondly, Oakes argues that many of the Church Fathers understood Christ’s descent as entailing much more than the release of merely the “just” in “Abraham’s bosom.” Oakes makes clear, for example, that St. Augustine believed that Christ descended to hell to release those who experienced its “sorrows” and that it is unsure whether he saved all he found there or only who those who were 72 73 74 75 See Oakes, S.J, “Descensus and Development. Oakes has also written on the subject in “The Internal Logic of Holy Saturday in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9, no. 2 (2007): 184–99, and most recently in “Pope Benedict XVI on Christ’s Descent into Hell,” Nova et Vetera 11, no. 1 (2013): 231–52. Oakes, “Descensus and Development,” 9. Ibid. Ibid. 868 Brian Doyle, O.P. worthy.76 Oakes holds that other prominent figures such as Cyril of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa also understood the soteriological range of the Descent in a much broader sense than freeing only those confined in the Limbo of the Fathers.77 Oakes admits, however, that this does not necessarily mean that they considered Christ’s descent to be expiatory. Thirdly, Oakes states that, after the Middle Ages, there were many mystics who began to tell of their own spiritual experiences of hell, such as St. John of the Cross, Blessed Angela of Foligno, St. Rose of Lima and, in more recent times, St. Therese of Lisieux. All of these, he argues, bear further testimony to the possibility that Christ suffered the pains of hell. Finally, Oakes makes an appeal to the work of some contemporary theologians that he believes vindicates Balthasar’s Descent theology. The most notable of these figures is Joseph Ratzinger, whose career, according to Oakes, “shows a remarkable consistency when he comes to discuss the connection between Christ’s vicarious, atoning suffering and his descent into hell.” 78 Primarily on the basis of Ratzinger’s texts on Christ’s suffering, Oakes concludes that Balthasar’s Descent theory represents a valid development of Catholic tradition.79 Another theologian who contests the objectivity of Pitstick’s critique of Balthasar’s theology is David Lauber, a member of the Evangelical Covenant Church.80 While acknowledging the value of Pitstick’s work, he accuses her of disallowing “any charitable reading and critical appropriation of Balthasar’s creative and, at times, sublime theology.”81 Unlike Pitstick, Lauber sees the substitutionary aspect of Balthasar’s doctrine as being thoroughly scriptural and as taking seriously “the extent to which God is for us and the length to which God has gone to save sinners and to reconcile his enemies to himself.”82 Lauber advocates a suffering Descent and defends Balthasar’s contention that Christ must experience not only death on the cross but also 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 Ibid., 10, citing a letter from Augustine found in Saint Augustine: Letters, vol. 3. (Letters 131–64), trans. Sr. Wilfrid Parsons (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1953), 386. Ibid. Ibid., 12. A detailed discussion of the similarities between Balthasar’s and Ratzinger’s Descent theology may be found in Oakes, “Pope Benedict XVI on Christ’s Descent into Hell.” David Lauber, “Response to Alyssa Lyra Pitstick.” Ibid., 195. Ibid., 196. The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 869 the “second death” in hell. Lauber believes that “Jesus could taste the full reality of death only if he experienced death in God-abandonment, displayed both in the cry of dereliction on Good Friday and in being ‘apart from God’ in the descent into hell of Holy Saturday.”83 He also maintains that, for Christ’s death to be properly substitutionary, Christ must experience, in solidarity with sinners, their lostness and their God-forsakenness in the underworld.84 In summary, the arguments of those who defend Balthasar have not, to date, focused on the specific content of his Descent doctrine, but have tended instead to make a general case for its orthodoxy based on certain claims. These are: (1) that the doctrine has its basis in Scripture; (2) that it is consistent with the mystical experiences and writings of saints and of theologians on the subject of the Descent; (3) that it best describes the substitutionary nature of Christ’s sacrifice in the absence of which Christ’s redemption would be somehow deficient; and (4) that it most aptly accounts for the Descent as a saving event of universal significance. We shall now examine the validity of each of these assertions. A Doctrine Based on Scripture Some of the passages of Scripture which are principally cited in support of Balthasar’s Descent doctrine are 1 Peter 3:18–19 and 4:5–6, Galatians 3:13, and 2 Corinthians 5:21, as we have already noted.Yet, these passages can be interpreted in many different ways and need not necessarily be understood as affirming Balthasar’s doctrine. For example, 2 Corinthians 5:21 (“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”) does not necessarily mean that Jesus was mysteriously conformed to sin in Sheol, as Balthasar and his advocates maintain. It could equally well refer to Christ’s experience of mankind’s sins during his Passion, as described, for example, by Cardinal Newman.85 Furthermore, if some 83 84 85 Ibid., 197–98. Ibid. Cardinal John Henry Newman describes Christ’s agony in the garden as follows: “O tormented heart, it was love, and sorrow, and fear, which broke Thee. It was the sight of human sin, it was the sense of it, the feeling of it laid on Thee; it was zeal for the glory of God, horror at seeing sin so near Thee, a sickening, stifling feeling at its pollution, the deep shame and disgust and abhorrence and revolt which it inspired, keen pity for the souls whom it has drawn headlong into hell—all these feelings together Thou didst allow to rush upon Thee.Thou didst submit Thyself to their powers, and they were Thy death. That strong heart, that all-noble, all-generous, all-tender, all-pure heart 870 Brian Doyle, O.P. Scriptural passages seem to support Balthasar’s doctrine, there are also many passages that seem to contradict its fundamental tenets. These are generally not mentioned by Balthasar or his advocates, or if they are, they are given an interpretation that is often counter-intuitive. For example, Christ’s own words on the Cross, “Consummatum est”—“It is consummated” ( John 19:30)—seem to strongly suggest that his work is definitively finished, that the mystical marriage between Christ and his Church has been consummated and mankind has thus been reconciled to God. Balthasar maintains, however, that the work of redemption is only “fundamentally finished” on the Cross and that Christ’s “preaching” in the realm of the dead “should be conceived as the efficacious outworking in the world beyond of what was accomplished in the temporality of history.”86 This may seem a plausible claim if Christ’s preaching consists of the bestowal of the fruits of the redemption on those who have already died, as the traditional Descent doctrine teaches, but it is very difficult to see how Christ’s work can be “fundamentally finished” if he has still to suffer the “second death” in hell, a suffering that far exceeds in intensity his torment on the Cross. Similarly, we might ask how we can reconcile Christ’s words on the Cross to the thief—“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43)—and to his Father—“Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit” (Luke 23:46) with Balthasar’s doctrine. Surely the most obvious meaning of these words is that Christ knows he is about to die and enter into the presence of his Father (“paradise”) and is reassuring the thief that he will accompany him.87 They certainly do not suggest that Christ is about to experience the depths of “God-forsakenness” in hell immediately after his death. Given the fact that quotations that purportedly support Balthasar’s doctrine can and have been interpreted in many ways other than those offered by advocates of Balthasar’s doctrine and that there are 86 87 was slain by sin.” John Henry Newman: Meditations and Devotions, ed. Ian Ker (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd., 2010), 27. Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, 151. The validity of this interpretation is affirmed by Pope John Paul II who states: “If death implies the separation of the soul from the body, it follows that in Christ’s case also there was, on the one hand, the body in the state of a corpse, and on the other, the heavenly glorification of his soul from the very moment of his death.” Pope John Paul II, “He Descended into Hell,” General Audience of January 11, 1989, in L’Osservatore Romano, January 16, 1989, 7 (emphasis added). The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 871 many examples of scriptural quotations that do not support Balthasar’s interpretation of the Descent,88 it seems reasonable to conclude that Balthasar’s doctrine does not have any particular claim to being a faithful expression of biblical accounts of the Descent event. A Doctrine Consistent with Tradition A second argument that defenders of Balthasar’s doctrine put forward is that it represents a legitimate development of an existing tradition. This tradition concerns itself with the subject of Christ’s infernal sufferings and consists of descriptions of the mystical experiences of certain saints and the writings of various theologians, as mentioned above. The problem, however, with this type of general appeal to a tradition that deals broadly with the same subject as Balthasar’s Descent doctrine (Christ suffering the pains of hell for our salvation) is that it fails to address the question of when Christ suffered these torments. From the Gospels we know without doubt that Christ suffered “God-forsakenness” on the Cross and spiritual desolation in the Garden of Gethsemane.89 We know from the personal testimony of certain saints that many of them have also experienced the feeling of abandonment by God. In fact, this experience has been described in detail by St. John of the Cross, who famously called it “the dark night of the soul.” While it seems reasonable, then, to interpret the sufferings of these saints as a participation in the sufferings of Christ, they do not necessarily imply that Christ suffered in Sheol. Indeed, these sufferings could quite equally, and maybe even more plausibly, be viewed as a mystical sharing in Christ’s Passion. The same is true of the writings of theologians on the subject. While many have speculated on the nature of Christ’s suffering in terms of the pains of hell (e.g., Calvin and Barth), very few have maintained explicitly that Christ suffered on Holy Saturday. Even Joseph Ratzinger (a contemporary and theological ally of von Balthasar), whose reflections on Christ’s suffering in the context of his Passion and Descent into hell can be interpreted as implicitly offering support to Balthasar’s theology, has never stated explicitly that Christ suffered the “second death” in Sheol on Holy Saturday. Even if Ratzinger unequivocally stated this in his writings, it does 88 89 Pitstick gives a comprehensive list of such quotations from both the Old and New Testaments (Light in Darkness, 56–59). On the Cross, Christ says, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” (Matt 27:46), and in the Garden of Gethsemane he says, “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death” (Matt 26:38). 872 Brian Doyle, O.P. not represent Church teaching, but only the speculations of an intellectually exceptional theologian. While advocates of Balthasar point to a particular intellectual and mystical tradition within the Church in support of his Descent doctrine, then, one can equally argue that this tradition does no more than affirm what the Gospels already tell us about Christ’s suffering during his Passion. The Necessity of Christ’s Suffering in Hell A further claim that those who attempt to defend Balthasar’s theology make is that an expiatory Holy Saturday was necessary in order for Christ to be fully in solidarity with sinners and for the redemption to be properly substitutionary. This aspect of Balthasar’s thesis undoubtedly lends a certain attractiveness to it that the traditional doctrine appears to lack (a God who, out of love, goes to the very depths of hell for the salvation of sinners admittedly seems more merciful than a God who does not). It also seems to provide more hope for universal salvation than the traditional doctrine because it appears to offer a chance for conversion after death. Against these arguments for Balthasar’s doctrine, we must first respond that Christ loves sinners infinitely, so there can be no question of him not doing all that was necessary to save them. If Christ did not suffer the pains of hell, as the traditional doctrine supposes, it is because he was constrained by love to allow man to freely choose his own destiny, even if this could mean damnation. God unconditionally respects human freedom. This is why the substitutionary aspect of Christ’s death is in no way lacking. The “second death” results from man’s final refusal of God. There can be no solidarity with man after this refusal without disrespecting his freedom, as we have previously argued. In addition, Balthasar’s doctrine seems to suggest that Christ’s love can be measured by how much he suffered. If Christ’s love “reaches all the way into hell,” then it supposedly reveals a more compassionate and merciful God than traditionally imagined.90 Again, we must 90 Commenting on Balthasar’s Descent doctrine, David Schindler remarks that “Balthasar’s theology of Christ’s descent presupposes an understanding of creaturely being in terms of a love centered in Christ as the revelation of the Trinitarian God. And it is in that context that he portrays Christ’s redeeming love as a suffering solidarity with sinners that reaches all the way into hell”; see “Modernity and the Nature of Distinction—Balthasar’s Ontology of Generosity,” in How Balthasar Changed My Mind: Fifteen Scholars Reflect on the Meaning of Balthasar for Their Own Work, ed. Rodney A. Howsare and Larry S. Chapp (New York: Crossroad, 2008), 224–58, at 255. The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 873 remind ourselves that Christ’s love for man is infinite and that love can never be expressed adequately in terms of suffering. Suffering alone is not meritorious and does not save. It must be united to love to be redemptive, “for satisfaction would not be efficacious unless it proceeded from charity (nisi ex caritate procederet).”91 Satisfaction is a mode of expression of that love and not an accurate measure of it. Taken “materially” (so to speak), Christ’s physical and spiritual sufferings on earth were obviously not infinite, yet they were greater than the suffering of any other individual who has ever existed92 and are perfectly sufficient to atone for all the punishments that man’s sins have merited.93 Nor was it necessary to descend into Sheol to suffer all the sins of mankind, as Balthasar implies.94 The Church believes that Christ had foreknowledge of all the sins of humanity during his Passion (a fact that Balthasar denies)95 and that this “bearing of our sins” (1 Pet 2:24) constituted his greatest suffering that made his soul sorrowful unto death.96 Suffering the “second death” was unnecessary because it could bear no fruit for the damned who had deliberately chosen to be beyond redemption. For those who are in danger of being damned, Christ’s suffering on earth, united to his love, has merited superabundant grace for their salvation. They remain free, however, to accept or to reject this grace. The Descent as a saving event of universal significance Finally, advocates of Balthasar often accuse the traditional doctrine of being overly restrictive concerning who was released from Sheol (only 91 92 93 94 95 96 ST III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 1. See ST III, q. 46, a. 6, corp. See ST III, q. 49, a. 3, corp. See also ST III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 3: “The dignity of Christ’s flesh is not to be estimated solely from the nature of flesh, but also from the Person assuming it, namely, inasmuch as it was God’s flesh, the result of which was that it was of infinite worth [dignitatem infinitam].” “The condition of timelessness undergone by the Son on the Cross . . . must have sufficient ‘space’ for the (infernal) experience of sinners abandoned by God, in two aspects: the intensity of the Son’s forsakenness on the Cross and its worldwide extension” (Balthasar, Theo-Drama V, 308). Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 7, The New Covenant, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 143. See Pitstick, Light in Darkness, 158–66, for detailed discussion. Pope Pius XI, Miserentissimus Redemptor (1928), §13: “because of our sins . . . which were as yet in the future, but were foreseen, the soul of Christ became sorrowful unto death” (available at http://www.vatican.va/ holy_father/ pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_08051928_miserentissimus-redemptor_en.html). 874 Brian Doyle, O.P. holy souls who awaited their savior) and, consequently, of being limited in its salvific value.97 In response to this charge, however, we need only invoke Aquinas’s “universalist” concept of “implicit faith,” which, as White reminds us, offers good reason to believe that all who lived before Christ (pagans and Jews) were offered the grace of salvation and so all could potentially belong to the number of the just in Abraham’s bosom.98 We cannot of course determine the proportion of those who lived before Christ that accepted this grace, but we can certainly hope that it consisted of a very large number of persons (in consonance with the pro multis of the liturgy). While many of these individuals may have had to spend time in purgatory, there is also reason to hope that most of these “who were such as those who are now in purgatory”99 would have been sufficiently purified to be granted liberation from all punishment upon Christ’s descent. It is plausible, I believe, to suggest that even the souls who were not sufficiently purified could have had their punishment remitted by an act of Christ’s mercy.100 The liberation of souls from purgatory upon Christ’s descent would provide an alternative and perhaps more satisfactory explanation to Augustine’s and Aquinas’s query regarding how to interpret the words of St. Peter in Acts 2:24101 and, in so doing, respond adequately to advocates of Balthasar who claim that Augustine’s reference to the release of captives “entangled” 97 98 99 100 101 Oakes, “Descensus and Development,” 10. White, “On the Universal Possibility of Salvation,” 278. This is the proper expression used by Aquinas in ST III, q. 52, a. 8, corp.: “illi qui fuerunt tales quales nunc sunt qui in Purgatorio detinentur.” Although Aquinas thinks that the souls in Sheol were not, by necessity, liberated from purgatory by Christ’s descent (ST III, q. 52, a. 8, ad 2), he admits that some may have been depending on their personal disposition (ST III, q. 52, a. 8, ad 1). Theologically, there are no obstacles for being released from purgatory other than divine justice.Yet, Christ can be merciful to whomsoever he wills, as his promise to the good thief (Luke 23:42–43) and the parable of the worker’s wages (Matt 20:1–16) prove. In addition, there are saints, for example, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, whose writings (based on her mystical experiences of Christ’s descent into hell) suggest that Christ did indeed liberate many souls from purgatory; see “A Detached Account of the Descent into Hell,” ch. 59 in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1904), 305–10. Furthermore, in his commentary on ST III, q. 52, a. 8 (Leonine edition, Opera omnia, 11:502), Cajetan states that “it can be rationally said that Christ, by descending into hell . . . freed many who were in purgatory, and who would not have been freed so quickly, by a special grace.” See ST III, q. 52, a. 2, ad 2. The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 875 in the “sorrows” of hell somehow supports Balthasar’s thesis.102 Even if there were certain people who were not liberated from such punishment, we can still conjecture that Christ’s descent into Hades involved the liberation of a vast number of souls and was utterly universal in its significance. Unlike Balthasar’s doctrine, however, this thesis is completely orthodox and does not contradict the teaching of the CCC. It also respects human liberty and admits the possibility of damnation for those who lived before Christ while still allowing us to hope that all may have been saved. Conclusion The current investigation set out to determine the theological orthodoxy of Balthasar’s Descent doctrine by examining the compatibility of its essential elements with established Catholic teaching on particular subjects of relevance. The first of these concerned Balthasar’s belief that Christ’s soul suffered after death and thereby merited salvation for all of humanity. Against this claim, it was shown that the Church plainly teaches that man exists as a unity of body and soul and that the chance to receive grace or to merit it for others ceases with death. The whole man (body and soul) receives his divine judgment at the moment of death. This expressly rules out the possibility of performing meritorious acts without a human body after death, as a disembodied soul in Sheol. Furthermore, the Roman Catechism explicitly states that, in contrast to the rest of humanity, Christ did not suffer in Sheol because he was without sin, but descended there in glory to liberate others from their suffering. This view is also confirmed by a recent papal homily that states that Christ’s entered into the full glorification of his soul from the moment of his death, thus contradicting Balthasar’s belief that Christ suffered the “second death” in Sheol. The second aspect of Balthasar’s Descent theology that we examined was his understanding of Sheol as an undifferentiated abode that allowed Christ to be in solidarity with the dead, all of whom could potentially still be saved. Our present analysis has shown, however, that such a concept of Sheol is not justified, firstly, because it is not supported by an impartial reading of all of Scripture (Balthasar’s methodology relies upon an overly selective reading of Scripture that ignores potentially contradictory material) and, secondly, because it 102 See Oakes, “Pope Benedict XVI,” 236. 876 Brian Doyle, O.P. is directly contradicted by Church teaching. The Roman Catechism, for example, teaches that the afterlife is differentiated and consists of the three abodes of “Abraham’s bosom,” purgatory, and the hell of the damned. In addition, the CCC clearly states that every person (whether they lived before or after Christ) receives his particular judgment that determines definitively his eternal destination at the moment of his death. This rules out the possibility that those in Sheol were awaiting judgment by Christ. It also assures us that the destinies of the good and the wicked after death are not the same. Lastly, the same CCC strongly indicates that hell properly so-called existed before Christ’s descent by explaining that Christ did not descend there to deliver the damned or to destroy the hell of damnation. The final element of Balthasar’s thesis that was scrutinized was his conviction that, by suffering the “second death” in Sheol, it was possible for Christ to be in solidarity with all of the dead and thereby atone for all of mankind’s sins, making it possible to save even the seemingly damned. Here again, our analysis has demonstrated that Balthasar’s concept of solidarity with the damned is not consonant with orthodoxy and is directly contradicted by Church teaching. The CCC teaches that now is the time of grace (not the next life) and that each person is judged at the moment of death according to the deeds of his life. Conversion after death is thereby ruled out. This is confirmed by the Compendium of the Catholic Church, which states that those who, by their own free choice, die in a state of mortal sin are eternally damned. The CCC also clearly recognizes the possibility of deliberately rejecting God’s mercy and thus committing the unforgivable sin of final impenitence, which it describes as a sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. In contrast, Balthasar’s theology seems to deny the possibility of committing an unforgivable sin. This is why he concludes that continual persistence in sin after death is necessary for damnation, thus adopting a theological position that departs radically from traditional Catholic teaching. In fact, by requiring the sinner to continually reject God in the next life rather than make a once-off, final decision, Balthasar effectively limits man’s ability to definitively reject God, thus compromising man’s freedom. The CCC, in contrast, respects the radical nature of human freedom and allows man to make a definitive and irrevocable decision at the moment of death. In Balthasar’s theology, the apparent refusal on Christ’s part to take man’s “no” seriously means he can be in solidarity even with those The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 877 who reject him, hoping for their conversion at some unspecified time in the future. According to the CCC, however, this type of solidarity is impossible if a person freely excludes himself from communion with God during this life and at the moment of death. This does not result from any lack of love on God’s part but from the disposition of the damned person who deliberately refuses God’s mercy. The claims of those who support Balthasar’s doctrine and view it as a legitimate development of tradition were also addressed to determine if the obvious contradictions between Balthasar’s doctrine and traditional Church teaching could be accounted for. On the whole, it was found that, while these arguments initially seemed to be persuasive, they proved to be far too general to properly address the particular doctrinal inconsistencies in Balthasar’s theology. Even as general arguments, their validity was still deemed to be questionable. For example the first of these arguments, which claimed that Balthasar’s Descent theology was firmly based on Scripture, was undermined by showing that, while a selective reading of Scripture did indeed appear to show agreement between Balthasar’s doctrine and particular Scriptural passages, alternative interpretations of these passages that did not support his doctrine were equally valid. Furthermore, an impartial, comprehensive reading of all of Scripture was shown to reveal many passages that seemed to directly contradict Balthasar’s doctrine and for which Balthasar and his advocates can find no satisfactory interpretation. It was reasonably concluded that Balthasar’s doctrine cannot be said to be an especially faithful expression of biblical theology, as some had maintained. The second argument, that Balthasar’s doctrine is supported by the mystical experiences of saints and the writings of theologians on the subject of the Descent, was also called into question by pointing out that the writings and mystical experiences of saints and theologians offer no explicit evidence that Christ suffered after death and can equally, and perhaps even more plausibly, be interpreted as a participation in Christ’s suffering during his Passion. The third argument, that Christ’s suffering in hell is necessary to fully describe the pro nobis or substitutionary character of the redemption was contested, primarily because it compromises human freedom by seeming to preclude a definitive rejection of God on man’s part. It was also pointed out that Christ’s incorrupt body in the grave bears witness to the fact that Christ did not experience everything that sinful man was destined to suffer. Because God judges the whole 878 Brian Doyle, O.P. person as a unity of body and soul, it was suggested that it would be incongruous for the soul to suffer the effects of sin (i.e., punishment in Sheol) while the body did not. Lastly, in response to those who have claimed that Balthasar’s Descent doctrine describes an event of universal salvific significance and thus reveals a more compassionate God than that of the traditional doctrine, it was argued that the traditional doctrine is equally universal in its significance but reveals a God who, out of love for man, allows him to choose his destiny, however radical that choice may be. In summary, the aim of the present work was to attempt to clarify whether or not Balthasar’s Descent doctrine represented a legitimate development of the existing Catholic tradition. Having compared it to relevant sources of Catholic Church teaching, it was concluded that Balthasar’s theology of the Descent contradicts some fundamental aspects of the Catholic faith. It is therefore the present author’s theological judgment that, although Balthasar’s speculative account of Holy Saturday may represent an original thought-provoking work of an undeniably great theologian, it is unlikely ever to be accorded the official doctrinal status that perhaps Balthasar himself would have N&V desired. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 879–917879 Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform: Towards a Rapprochement of the Magisterium and Modern Biblical Criticism Matthew J. Ramage Benedictine College Atchison, Kansas Introduction Even a cursory overview of Pope Benedict XVI’s exeget- ical approach reveals dramatic contrasts with magisterial teaching of previous epochs. With appropriate reservations and criticisms, Benedict strongly advocates the use of modern scholarly methods to help Christians better discern the face of Christ revealed in Scripture. In adopting many of these modern findings, however, it almost seems as if Benedict has forgotten or neglected principles enforced by the magisterium no less than a century earlier. Though one may argue that the Church’s stance on modern biblical scholarship only indirectly bears upon faith and morals, the issue remains timely today insofar as a divide persists in the Church concerning the extent to which it is appropriate to incorporate the tools and findings of modern exegesis in Catholic theology. Aside from Benedict’s own comments on his project, it is difficult still today to find an adequate account of how exegesis under his pontificate is reconcilable with many of the venerable traditions that preceded it and, in particular, with a magisterial approach that generally viewed modern scholarship with skepticism.1 1 At the opposite extremes of this divide we find those to whom Benedict refers as “progressivists” and “traditionalists,” who disagree with today’s magisterium but agree with each other in viewing Catholic doctrine in the post-Vatican II Church as a rupture from what preceded it. 880 Matthew J. Ramage Benedict dedicated a significant portion of his scholarly life precisely in the endeavor to combat the false dichotomy between the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church and to develop a balanced hermeneutic that takes seriously the presence of both continuity and discontinuity in Catholic doctrine throughout the ages.2 The aim of the present work is to face head-on patent discrepancies in the Church’s approach to the Bible over the past century and, so doing, to offer the principles needed for a robust apologia of Catholicism in its relationship with modern biblical scholarship.3 The principles needed for this account are found in Benedict’s “hermeneutic of reform” and its key endeavor to discern the permanent theological core of Catholic magisterial teachings that have withstood the vicissitudes of history and the challenges of the modern scholarly world. Leo XIII and Pius X: Rejection of Higher Criticism To get a sense of the magisterium’s past attitude concerning the extent to which one can appropriate modern biblical scholarship, it is fitting to begin by examining the writings of two Pontiffs who wrote at the height of the modernist controversy, Pope Leo XIII and Pope St. Pius X. In his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Leo criticized the rise of modern biblical scholarship in no uncertain terms: “There has arisen, to the great detriment of religion, an inept method, dignified by the name of the ‘higher criticism,’ which pretends to judge of the origin, integrity and authority of each Book from internal indications alone.”4 Leo’s words are harsh but reasonable enough, for in the discipline of history, it is proper to be cautious of adjudicating issues concerning texts without any reference to the witness of how they have been 2 3 4 Of course, Benedict’s career also includes writings antedating his pontificate. This article at times refers to the one man Ratzinger/Benedict by his surname and at other times by his papal name in the effort to distinguish writings composed during his pontificate from those preceding it. For the sake of streamlining the various expressions Benedict employs to speak of the same reality, this essay refers to what is known as the “historical method,” the “historical-critical method,” “higher criticism,” or “critical exegesis” under the umbrella term “modern biblical scholarship.” This term indicates the modern scholarly approach to the Bible in general as distinct from the patristic-medieval approach, and it includes such methods as text, form, and redaction criticism. For a more in-depth discussion of what Benedict means by this, as well as what he considers to be its strengths and weaknesses, see Matthew J. Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 53–91. Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus (1893), §17. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 881 received and interpreted. Leo, however, goes farther than this: “It is clear, on the other hand, that in historical questions, such as the origin and the handing down of writings, the witness of history is of primary importance, and that historical investigation should be made with the utmost care; and that in this matter internal evidence is seldom of great value, except as confirmation.”5 Why is internal evidence prized so little by Leo? With the rise of rationalism in his day, there was a legitimate fear of a slippery slope, the fear that accepting the methods and conclusions of modern criticism would lead to a loss of the sense of the Bible’s sacredness and, ultimately, to the loss of the Christian faith itself: To look upon it in any other light will be to open the door to many evil consequences. It will make the enemies of religion much more bold and confident in attacking and mangling the Sacred Books; and this vaunted “higher criticism” will resolve itself into the reflection of the bias and the prejudice of the critics. It will not throw on the Scripture the light which is sought, or prove of any advantage to doctrine; it will only give rise to disagreement and dissension, those sure notes of error, which the critics in question so plentifully exhibit in their own persons; and seeing that most of them are tainted with false philosophy and rationalism, it must lead to the elimination from the sacred writings of all prophecy and miracle, and of everything else that is outside the natural order.6 In the discussion of Benedict XVI’s approach to higher criticism later in this paper, it will become clear that Benedict’s observations a century later have confirmed Leo’s suspicions. Observing the exegetical landscape in our day, Benedict is keenly aware of how right Leo was in predicting the rise of “disagreement and dissension” and of the fact that biblical scholarship often represents nothing but “the reflection of the bias and the prejudice of the critics.” However, it will also become evident that Benedict pointedly contrasts with Leo concerning the question of whether higher criticism can be successfully incorporated into Catholic practice or whether it will lead to the demise of the faith. Touching more specifically on the central issues this paper will treat is a 1907 motu proprio of Pius X. Prefacing his letter with a commendation of his predecessor Leo’s encyclical, Pius lauds Leo for 5 6 Ibid. Ibid. (emphasis added). 882 Matthew J. Ramage having “defended the divine character of [the sacred] books not only against the errors and calumnities of the rationalists but also against the false teachings of what is known as ‘higher criticism’—something which the Pontiff most wisely exposed as nothing but the commentaries of rationalism derived from a misuse of philology and related disciplines.” 7 Immediately after this, Pius turns his attention to reinforcing the efforts of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC) to stem the malignant tide of modern biblical scholarship: We are pleased to note that the Pontifical Biblical Commission, after mature examination and the most diligent consultations, has issued a number of decisions that have proved very useful for the promotion and guidance of sound biblical scholarship in accordance with the established norms. But we have also observed that, although these decisions were approved by the Pontiff, there are some who have refused to accept them with the proper obedience, because they are both unduly prone to opinions and methods tainted by pernicious novelties and excessively devoted to a false notion of freedom—in fact, an immoderate license—which in sacred studies proves to be a most insidious and powerful source of the worst evils against the purity of the faith. For this reason, we find it necessary to declare and prescribe, as we do now declare and expressly prescribe, that all are bound in conscience to submit to the decisions of the Biblical Commission, which have been given in the past and shall be given in the future, in the same way as to the Decrees pertaining to doctrine, issued by the Sacred Congregations and approved by the Sovereign Pontiff.8 This passage merits a number of observations, but prior to further discussion, it is important to know which decisions of the PBC are 7 8 Pope St. Pius X, Praestantia Sacrae Scripturae (1907). Ibid. In commenting on this document, I have reproduced the translation found in Dean Béchard, The Scripture Documents (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 320–21. The Latin text of the second paragraph reads: “Quapropter declarandum illud praecipiendumque videmus, quemadmodumdeclaramus in praesens expresseque praecipimus, universos omnes conscientiae obstringi officio sententiis Pontificalis Consilii de Re Biblica, sive quae adhuc sunt emissae, sive quae posthac edentur, perinde ac Decretis Sacrarum Congregationum, pertinentibus ad doctrinam probatisque a Pontifice, se subiiciendi.” Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 883 in question here. Between the years 1905 and 1933, the commission issued a series of sixteen responsa concerning deleterious views of Scripture reflected in the biblical scholarship emerging in that period. The decrees dealt with a variety of texts and centered on issues concerning the historical origin and interpretation of biblical books.9 With regard to the overarching question of whether Catholics could embrace the conclusions of modern biblical scholarship in these matters, the response given by the PBC was, on the whole, “Negative.” In this document Pius X manifests his will to “now declare and expressly prescribe” (declaramus in praesens expresseque praecipimus) that the PBC’s findings are to be considered authoritative and binding on Catholic scholars, some of whom had hitherto lacked due obedience in their regard due to an attachment that confuses authentic freedom with “immoderate license” (licentia intemperans). Pius’s declaration was controversial even in its own day. In light of this article’s broader argument, it is significant to observe that, in addition to the official version of the above text published in Acta Sanctae Sedis on November 18, 1907, a variant unofficial draft was mistakenly printed shortly thereafter in Civiltà Cattolica, the Vatican’s own newspaper. This version of the text reads: We declare and prescribe that all are bound in conscience to submit to the decisions of the Biblical Commission that pertain to doctrine, which have been given in the past and shall be given in the future, in the same way as to the Decrees issued by the Sacred Congregations and approved by the Sovereign Pontiff.10 9 10 The topics of the documents were as follows: implied quotations in Scripture (1905); historical narratives (1905); the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (1906); the authorship and historicity of the Gospel of John (1907); the character and authorship of the Book of Isaiah (1908); the historicity of the first three chapters of Genesis (1909); the authorship and date of the Psalms (1910); the authorship, date, and historicity of Matthew (1911); the authorship, date, and historicity of Mark and Luke (1912); the Synoptic question (1912); the authorship and date of Acts (1913); the authorship, integrity, and date of the Pauline Pastoral Epistles (1913); the authorship and manner of composition of Hebrews (1914); the Parousia in the letters of Paul (1915); certain added verses in the Vulgate (1921); and the false interpretation of Psalm 16:10–11 and Matt 15 [16]:26 / Luke 9:25 (1933). The present article will not examine all of these but rather discuss a handful of representative positions with which Benedict XVI’s exegetical principles and practice stand in clear tension. Civiltà Cattolica, November 27, 1907, 513–18. The Latin text of this alternate version includes a small but important variation on the official text: “Quapropter declarandum illud praecipiendumque videmus, quemadmodum- 884 Matthew J. Ramage Although this text was replaced with the official one in the next printing of the paper, it reveals that Pius was aware of the need to phrase this document precisely and that said phrasing would have significant ramifications. Whereas the official version gives all PBC decrees the same authority as those concerning doctrine issued from other curial offices, this unofficial text appeared to limit the authority of the PBC by considering authoritative only its decisions pertaining to doctrine. On this point, however, the alternate text more closely resembles two later—also unofficial—statements issued by key curial figures. Discussing this case in the appendix of The Scripture Documents, Dean Béchard relates that two “semi-official clarifications” of Pius’s document were issued in conjunction with the final preparation of a newly revised edition of the Enchiridion Biblicum (1954). The statements appeared in separate journals in the form of review articles from no less important men than Athanasius Miller, O.S.B., and Arduin Kleinhaus, O.F.M., secretary and sub-secretary of the PBC, respectively. Miller’s text makes it quite clear that, contrary to the ostensible teaching of Pius X, the methods of modern biblical scholarship are appropriate so long as their conclusions do not contradict the Church’s teaching on faith and morals: However, as long as those decrees propose views that are neither immediately or mediately connected with the truths of faith and morals, it goes without saying that the interpreter of Sacred Scripture may pursue his scientific research with complete freedom and may utilize the results of these investigations, provided always that he respects the teaching authority of the Church.11 11 declaramus in praesens expresseque praecipimus, universos omnes conscientiae obstringi officio sententiis Pontificalis Consilii de Re Biblica, ad doctrinam pertinentibus, sive quae adhuc sunt emissae, sive quae posthac edentur, perinde ac Decretis Sacrarum Congregationum a Pontifice probatis, se subiiciendi.” This version limits the authority of PBC “sentences” to those pertaining to doctrine, whereas the official text indicates that all PBC decisions are to be followed in the same way one would heed decrees of other curial congregations pertaining to doctrinal matters. “Das neue biblische Handbuch,” Benediktinische Monatschrift 31 (1955): 49–50. The translation reproduced here is in Béchard, The Scripture Documents, 327. See also Kleinhaus, “De nova Enchiridii Biblici editione,” Antonianum 30 (1955): 63–65. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 885 Béchard comments that, since the responsa dealt almost entirely with historical and literary issues rather than matters of faith and morals, it was clear that “biblical scholars are not bound by these earlier teachings, which addressed the particular needs of a historical situation happily no longer existent.”12 Further, he observes that the magisterium of the time had ample opportunity to censure these men for their words and that its silence concerning the two explanatory statements implies consent to their orthodoxy. Finally, Béchard adds to this the fact that “many highly respected Catholic exegetes, whose teaching and published research represent the practical outcome of this semi-official clarification, have since been appointed, in recent years, to serve as consultors or members of the PBC.”13 As if it were not enough to see this discrepancy between prior official papal teaching and the later semi-official statements of high-ranking PBC officials, in the twenty-first century, an equally eminent president of the PBC would continue this trend— only this figure, whose writings would likely have been censured less than a century earlier, went on to become pope.14 Benedict XVI: A Divergent Appraisal of Modern Biblical Scholarship This section will consider texts from Benedict XVI that convey in no uncertain terms the contrast he perceives between his own appraisal of modern biblical scholarship and that of his predecessors discussed above. Although many of the statements immediately below were either made in his capacity as a theologian or a curial official, rather than as pope, the problem raised is that writings from the highest of Catholic officials today often appear to conflict directly with the binding pronouncements of the PBC in a time when it served as an official organ of the magisterium.15 In this regard it will also be helpful 12 13 14 15 Béchard, The Scripture Documents, 327–28. Ibid., 328–29. Of course, it is important to bear in mind the respective weight due to Benedict’s various writings, which depends partly on whether he is speaking in his capacity as a private theologian or, rather, as pope or as prefect of the CDF. Benedict famously wrote in the foreword to his first volume on the person of Jesus: “It goes without saying that this book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium, but is solely an expression of my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord.’ Everyone is free, then, to contradict me. I would only ask my readers for their initial goodwill without which there can be no understanding”; see Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xxiii–xxiv. The discrepancy would not be nearly as significant if it were between a reign- 886 Matthew J. Ramage further below to see how Benedict maintained the same stance when he had occasion to write as a biblical theologian even after assuming the Chair of Peter. There is no better place to begin a discussion of Benedict’s biblical approach in relation to the PBC than to examine an address he gave as the commission’s president on the occasion of its one-hundredth anniversary. At the very outset of his talk, Cardinal Ratzinger gives us an indication of why he has devoted so much of his career to the delicate issue concerning the relationship of the magisterium and exegesis, sharing that it was “one of the problems of my own autobiography.”16 He recounts the troubled story of one of his former professors, Friedrich Wilhelm Maier, whose flowering academic career had been dealt a sharp blow by the magisterium in its 1912 Consistorial Decree De quibusdam commentariis non admittendis. The document forbade Maier from teaching New Testament and required that the commentary into which Maier had been pouring all his energy had to be “altogether expunged from the education of the clergy.” In his work Maier had defended the controversial Two-Source Theory, which—as Ratzinger reminds his audience—is today “almost universally accepted” as an account of the Synoptic problem.17 Although the censured theologian was eventually permitted to resume his teaching, Ratzinger relates that “the wound that Maier had received in 1912 had never fully healed.”18 Indeed, Maier had told his student that he would probably not live to witness the full dawning of “the real freedom of exegesis of which he dreamed,” and so he yearned, “like Moses on Mount Nebo in Deuteronomy 34, to gaze upon the Promised Land of an exegesis liberated from every shackle 16 17 18 ing pope and the PBC today. The commission was restructured by Paul VI in 1971 so that it no longer acts as an official organ of the magisterium, but rather an advisory forum in which the magisterium and expert exegetes are to work together in the quest to illumine matters concerning Sacred Scripture. Joseph Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” in Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, ed. José Granados, Carlos Granados, and Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 126. See also similar comments in Ratzinger’s Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 52–53. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 127. As commonly articulated, the two-source hypothesis proposes that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke depended on common source material in Mark and an unidentified source dubbed “Q” (the first letter of the German word for “source”). Ratzinger also mentions the figure of Maier in Milestones, 50–53. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 127. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 887 of magisterial surveillance.”19 Ratzinger spends the next part of his article in the effort “to climb Mt. Nebo with him, as it were, and to survey the country that we have traversed in the last fifty years,” tracing out various milestones from the time of Pius XII forward as the magisterium’s relationship with modern exegesis approached its “Promised Land.”20 He reflects on Maier’s situation with great sympathy, acknowledging, “It is perfectly understandable that, in the days when the decisions of the then Pontifical Biblical Commission prevented them from a clean application of the historicalcritical method, Catholic theologians should cast envious glances at their Protestant colleagues.”21 As he would later state in one of his final public addresses as pope, Catholic exegetes in Maier’s day “felt themselves somewhat—shall we say—in a position of inferiority with regard to the Protestants, who were making the great discoveries, whereas Catholics felt somewhat ‘handicapped’ by the need to submit to the magisterium.”22 It is revelatory of just how much this point influenced his life that the Pontiff returned to the same theme in one of his last public statements. The extent to which Ratzinger was troubled by the early decisions of the PBC can be seen in multiple places throughout his corpus. Writing as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), his introduction to Donum veritatis (Instruction Concerning Ibid., 127–28. Ibid., 128:“The 1960s represent—to remain with our metaphor—the entrance into the Promised Land of exegetical freedom.” Other pivotal moments in this process described by Ratzinger include the publication of Divino afflante Spiritu (1943), the PBC’s Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Gospels (1964), the Second Vatican Council’s Dei Verbum (1965), the restructuring of the PBC by Paul VI’s Sedula Cura in 1971, the 1971 appointment of Rudolf Schnackenburg (one of Friedrich Maier’s prominent students) to the International Theological Commission, and the PBC’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1994). 21 Ibid., 131. 22 Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Parish Priests and Clergy of Rome, February 14, 2013. Reflecting on his time at the Second Vatican Council, he wrote: “Even more hotly debated was the problem of Revelation. At stake here was the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, and it was the exegetes above all who were anxious for greater freedom; they felt themselves somewhat–shall we say–in a position of inferiority with regard to the Protestants, who were making the great discoveries, whereas Catholics felt somewhat ‘handicapped’ by the need to submit to the magisterium. So a very concrete struggle was in play here: what sort of freedom do exegetes have? How does one properly read Scripture? What is the meaning of Tradition?” 19 20 888 Matthew J. Ramage the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian) speaks of “the anti-modernistic decisions at the beginning of this century, especially the decisions of the Biblical Commission of that time.”23 His commentary on the Second Vatican Council puts the matter more bluntly, describing these as symptomatic of an “anti-Modernistic neurosis which had again and again crippled the Church since the turn of the century.”24 As a result of this approach, he laments, the research of many scholars (like Maier above) was halted in its tracks and “much real wheat was lost along with the chaff.”25 He indicates that this same 23 24 25 Joseph Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian,’” in The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding Its Role in Light of the Present Controversy, trans. Adrian Walker (San Franciso: Ignatius Press, 1995), 106. Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 1966), 11 (emphasis added); cf. ibid., 23. Shortly later in the text, Ratzinger sheds further revelatory reflections concerning his time at Vatican II: “The real question behind the discussion could be put this way: Was the intellectual position of ‘anti-Modernism’—the old policy of exclusiveness, condemnation and defense leading to an almost neurotic denial of all that was new—to be continued? Or would the Church, after it had taken all the necessary precautions to protect the faith, turn over a new leaf and move on into a new and positive encounter with its own origins, with its brothers, and with the world of today?” (ibid., 44). For a lucid presentation of how Catholic scholarship “sank into a biblical winter” in this period, in the context of a sketch of the milestones in Ratzinger’s writing on the nature of biblical scholarship, see Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., “Pope Benedict XVI: Theologian of the Bible,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review 110, no. 10 (2010): 66–78 (available also at http:// www.hprweb.com/2011/09/pope-benedict-xvi-theologian-of-the-bible/). For another sharp criticism of this anti-modernistic attitude that prevailed in the Church for more than a century, see Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 258–66. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 21. Here, in stark contrast to the list of “milestones” discussed above, Ratzinger provides a brief but incisive history of the Church’s “anti-modernistic” attitude. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, he observes, “undoubtedly went about this with excessively one-sided zeal. This development reaches its zenith in the various measures of Pius X against Modernism (the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi [1907], and, finally, the ‘oath against Modernism’ [1910]. . . . This historical perspective helps explain, then, that secret fear and mistrust of any theological expression of modern historical and philosophical thought. This same anxiety persisted until its last reverberation in the encyclical Humani Generis of Pius XII.” See also Ratzinger’s commentary in which he states that tension between the magisterium and modern exegesis “reached a new climax with the banning of professors at the Biblical Institute from teaching and with the exceptionally Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 889 attitude was present even in the initial schema on divine revelation at Vatican II: “This document pursued once more the line of thought of Pius IX and Pius X. The schemata of the theological commission . . . breathed this same spirit. The same cramped thinking, once so necessary as a line of defense, impregnated the text and informed it with a theology of negations and prohibitions.”26 Finally, in his PBC address discussed above, Ratzinger gets more specific as he defends faith’s role in exegesis while simultaneously admitting: It remains correct that by making the judgments that we have mentioned, the magisterium overextended the range of what faith can guarantee with certainty and that, as a result, the magisterium’s credibility was injured and the freedom needed for exegetical research and interrogation was unduly narrowed.27 It is striking to witness in this passage the humility and boldness of a Church official who recognizes that a frank appraisal of the limits of the magisterium is a necessary step towards arriving at a deeper understanding of its nature and relationship to exegesis. The matter would be different if this had been written by an openly dissenting scholar, but the fact is that it comes from the mouth of a man of the Church whose very vocation was devoted to defending the faith. This, then, begs the question: How does Ratzinger account for the discrepancy between his view of modern biblical scholarship and that of the magisterium before him? Before answering this question, the following section will 26 27 sharp polemic of Mgr. Romeo against modern Catholic exegesis”; quoted in Herbert Vorgrimler, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 3:157–58. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 42–43. Ratzinger here further recalls that “the problem of the historical dimension in theology which underlay the problems of revealed truth, scripture, and tradition” had “set off a most violent controversy” among the Vatican II fathers debating these schemata. Elsewhere, he describes the initial schema as composed in a “purely defensive spirit,” with “the narrowest interpretation of inerrancy” and “a conception of the historicity of the Gospels that suggested that there were no problems” (Vorgrimler, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, 3:159). If this original version had passed, “[t]he burden that this would have meant for the future course of Catholic theology was not easy to estimate: it would probably have been still more serious than the difficulties that resulted from the one-sided condemnations of modernism” (ibid., 159–60). Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 133. 890 Matthew J. Ramage illustrate Ratzinger’s convictions with concrete examples of how he adopts some of the very conclusions of modern scholarship that were forbidden by the PBC just decades earlier. Discontinuity between PBC Teaching & Ratzinger’s Exegetical Practices It is not only Ratzinger’s statements about modern exegesis and the teaching of the past magisterium that appear to stand in open contradiction to prior Church teaching; on a number of points Ratzinger’s exegetical practice itself also plainly contradicts the views mandated to be held by Catholics according to the PBC’s early decrees. For the sake of brevity, I will illustrate the problem with just a few (among many possible) examples covering a range of biblical books. Note that neither my nor Benedict’s point is to argue for a particular exegetical conclusion such as Markan priority or multiple authorship of Isaiah. Rather, here the concern is to address the larger question of what views a Catholic biblical scholar may hold and how to offer a robust apologia for the Church’s change in stance regarding the same. On the whole, the PBC decrees in question are carefully crafted so as to make their position known while avoiding categorical claims that could readily be falsified by later scholarly findings. For example, the 1908 decree On the Character and Authorship of the Book of Isaiah responds “Negative” to its third question: Whether it may be admitted that . . . the second part of the Book of Isaiah (chs. 40–66), in which the prophet addresses and consoles not the Jews contemporary with himself but, as one living among them, those mourning in the Babylonian exile, cannot have for its author Isaiah himself long dead, but must be attributed to some unknown prophet living among the exiles.28 In various places Ratzinger demonstrates a conviction that the Book of Isaiah is not the work of one author, but rather two or three, as he follows the standard scholarly convention of calling the author of Isaiah 40–66 “Deutero-Isaiah.”29 But does this amount to saying that 28 29 Pontifical Biblical Commission (hereafter, PBC), On the Character and Authorship of the Book of Isaiah (1908). For this and all citations from PBC decrees, I have used the translation found in Béchard, The Scripture Documents. For just a couple of examples, see Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 129–30; and Eschatology (Washington, Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 891 the later chapters of Isaiah “cannot have for its author Isaiah himself ” and that the work “must” be attributed to someone else? The same applies in the case of the fourth and fifth questions of this PBC decree. Ratzinger seems to hold that there are multiple authors, but he would not likely say that “the philological argument . . . is to be considered weighty enough to compel a serious and critical scholar . . . to acknowledge for this book a plurality of authors.”30 Neither does he argue that “there are solid arguments, even when taken cumulatively, to prove that the Book of Isaiah must be attributed not to Isaiah alone but to two or even more authors”31 Ratzinger is a more careful thinker than that. Nevertheless, despite the fact that he does not technically contradict this PBC decree, it is clear that the two at least stand in deep tension. The decree On the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch provides more opportunity for reflection on this tension. Its first question reads: Whether the arguments amassed by critics to impugn the Mosaic authenticity of the sacred books designated by the name Pentateuch are of sufficient weight . . . to justify the statement that these books do not have Moses as their author but were compiled from sources for the most part posterior to the time of Moses.32 The answer to this question is, unsurprisingly, “Negative.” Notice that the document does not expressly require one to maintain that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch. In fact, the second question in this document allows for the possibility that Moses entrusted his inspired work to another who, omitting nothing from what he received, composed it in a way faithful to Moses’s own thought. The third question affirms that the authenticity of the Pentateuch would not be impugned if Moses had recourse to prior sources for its composition, while the fourth question allows for the possibility that certain alterations to the text were introduced over the centuries. At the same time, the fourth question permits this under the assumption that one grants “substantial Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch.” Rather than directly tackling the question of Mosaic authorship, Benedict’s exegesis reflects the belief that more is going on in the 30 31 32 DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 86. PBC, On the Character and Authorship of the Book of Isaiah. Ibid. (emphasis added). PBC, On the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch (1906). 892 Matthew J. Ramage redaction of the Pentateuch than mere additions to a text substantially produced at the time of Moses. This is especially evident in his treatment of the creation accounts in the set of homilies published under the title In the Beginning.33 It also comes across in the various questions he addresses concerning creation in the interview book God and the World. In an interesting response contrasting the Bible and Koran, he writes: [The Bible] is mediated to us by a history, and even as a book it extends over a period of more than a thousand years. The question of whether or not Moses may have been a writer is one we can happily leave to one side. It is still true that the biblical literature grew up over a thousand year history and thus moves through quite different stages of history and of civilization, which are all reflected in it. . . . It becomes clear that God did not just dictate these words but rather that they bear the impression of a history that he has been guiding; they have come into being as a witness to that history.34 As is typical in his more informal works, such as interviews or pastorallyoriented documents aimed for a more popular audience, Ratzinger is careful not to take sides on the issue of who wrote the Pentateuch. What is noteworthy is that he says, “[t]he question of whether or not Moses may have been a writer is one we can happily leave to one side.” For the PBC, this was certainly not a question that could remain unanswered. Ratzinger thus entertains a position that is contrary to that of the PBC, yet this still does not amount to a direct contradiction. After all, the PBC decree simply required one to hold that the arguments of modern scholarship are not of sufficient weight “to impugn the Mosaic authenticity of the sacred books.” It is not forbidden for Catholics today to hold substantial Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, so the language of the PBC decree checks out even though one can discern that Ratzinger’s exegesis conflicts with what can be inferred from it. A clearer example of contradiction concerns a text not typically mentioned in a discussion of problematic PBC statements, a 1933 decree On the False Interpretation of Two Texts. The first question of the 33 34 Joseph Ratzinger, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995). Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 151–52. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 893 text asks: “Whether it is permissible for a Catholic . . . [to] interpret the words of Psalm 15 [16]:10–11 . . . as if the sacred author was not speaking of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ” and gives the answer “Negative.”35 As part of its argument, the document references the authoritative interpretation of “the two chief apostles” in Acts 2:24–33 and 13:35–37. The text reads: For David says concerning [Christ] . . . “For thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let thy Holy One see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou wilt make me full of gladness with thy presence” [Ps 16:27–28]. Brethren, I may say to you confidently of the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.36 Modern exegetes would question the New Testament’s interpretation here on at least two points. The first concerns whether it is correct to assume that David composed this psalm, but that is not the issue here. More importantly, did the psalmist himself actually foresee the resurrection of Christ, as Acts maintains and the PBC mandated that Catholics hold? Benedict treats briefly of this question: In the Hebrew version [“You do not give me up to Sheol, or let your godly one see the Pit . . .”] the psalmist speaks in the certainty that God will protect him, even in the threatening situation in which he evidently finds himself, that God will shield him from death and that he may dwell securely: he will not see the grave. The version Peter quotes [“For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption . . .”] is different: here the psalmist is confident that he will not remain in the underworld, that he will not see corruption.37 35 36 37 PBC, On the False Interpretation of Two Texts (1933). Acts 2:25, 27, and 30–32. Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 255. 894 Matthew J. Ramage As Benedict observes, the version of the Old Testament typically used by the early Church was the LXX. In that version, the verbs “You will not abandon” and “Nor will you allow” of Psalm 16:10 occur in the future tense, describing a restoration from physical death after David’s natural death occurs: “Here the psalmist is confident that he will not remain in the underworld, that he will not see corruption.”38 In the original Hebrew of Psalm 16, on the other hand, the sacred author has rescue from physical death in his sights. His use of the present tense— “You do not give me up”—reflects the hope that God would shield him from dying in the first place. Herein lies the ostensible contradiction between Benedict’s exegesis of the psalm and that required by the PBC. The PBC requires one to affirm that the sacred (human) author was speaking of the resurrection of Christ, whereas in the earliest version of the text the sacred author does not seem to have resurrection on his radar at all, let alone the resurrection of Jesus.39 Another instance of tension between the requirements of the PBC and the New Testament exegesis of Benedict concerns the authorship of the Gospel of John. In a 1907 decree On the Authorship and Historicity of the Fourth Gospel, the commission’s first question considers “[w]hether . . . it is proved by such solid historical argument that the Apostle John and no other must be acknowledged as the author of the Fourth Gospel, and that the reasons brought forward by the critics against it in no wise weaken this tradition.”40 Although the PBC answers with an “Affirmative,” Benedict’s exegesis challenges this conclusion in an important way. According to Benedict: The evidence suggests that in Ephesus there was something like a Johannine school, which traced its origin to Jesus’ favorite disciple himself, but in which a certain “Presbyter John” presided as the ultimate authority. The “presbyter” John appears as the sender of the Second and Third Letters of John . . . He is evidently not the same as the Apostle, which means that here in the canonical text we encounter expressly the mysterious figure of the presbyter. . . . At any rate, there seems 38 39 40 Ibid. For a discussion of how the spiritual sense plays a role in the interpretation of Ps 16, see the treatment I draw from in Dark Passages of the Bible, 269–73. Benedict adds a further potential wrinkle to the PBC argument in demonstrating an openness to the possibility that the speech of Acts 2 might not be that of Peter himself in the first place; see Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 256. PBC, On the Authorship and Historicity of the Fourth Gospel (1907). Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 895 to be grounds for ascribing to “Presbyter John” an essential role in the definitive shaping of the Gospel.41 Benedict’s conclusion stands in stark contrast to that of the PBC. However, it should be noted that he adds something that, while not completely eliminating the discrepancy, shows that he intends to say something similar to what the PBC said but in a more nuanced way. For Benedict, the contents of the Gospel “go back to an eyewitness, and even the actual redaction of the text was substantially the work of one of his closest followers.”42 As we will gather from the principles elucidated below, Benedict would likely say that his essential point was the same as that of the PBC—namely, to uphold the authoritative portrait of Jesus painted in the Gospel of John—even if certain assertions of the PBC would later stand in need of correction. Perhaps the most obvious contradiction between Benedict’s exegesis and the mandates of the PBC concerns the authorship, date, and mutual dependence of the Synoptic Gospels or, as it is sometimes called, the Synoptic problem. Here I will offer illustrations from three different PBC documents that speak to the same broader point and then discuss them in light of Benedict’s thought. The first is the 1911 decree On the Authorship, Date of Composition, and Historicity of the Gospel of Matthew.43 Its first question affirms that “it may and must be affirmed with certainty that Matthew, an apostle of Christ, is truly the author of the Gospel published under his name.” Its fourth question is similar to the first: Whether we may accept as probable the opinion of certain modern writers who assert that Matthew, strictly speaking, did not compose the Gospel as it has come down to us, but only composed a collection of the sayings and discourses of Christ, which a later anonymous author, whom they call the redactor of the Gospel, used as sources. Answering “Negative,” the PBC asserts as not “probable” the proposition that the Gospel of Matthew had its origin as a collection of Christ’s sayings and discourses that were crafted into a literary whole 41 42 43 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, 226. Ibid., 227. PBC, On the Authorship, Date of Composition, and Historicity of the Gospel of Matthew (1911). 896 Matthew J. Ramage by an author who lived later than the Apostle Matthew. The sixth question goes further in responding “Negative to both parts” to the following suggestion: Whether . . . it may also be affirmed that the narratives of the deeds and words of Christ found in the Gospel have undergone certain alterations and adaptations under the influence both of Old Testament prophecies and of the more developed perspective of the Church, and that, in consequence, this Gospel narrative is not in conformity with historical truth. This statement (“Negative” response to the question) affirms that the Gospels must be acknowledged as representing the “historical truth” of Christ’s life. It further insinuates that it would not be in conformity with said truth if the words and deeds of Christ’s life had undergone certain alterations by the authors who wove them into their respective narratives. The next source relevant to the Synoptic problem is the 1912 decree On the Authorship, Time of Composition, and Historicity of the Gospels of Mark and Luke.44 As in the case of Matthew above, this document’s first question affirms that “the clear witness of the tradition . . . compels us to affirm with certainty that Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, and Luke the physician, the assistant and companion of Paul, were truly the authors of the Gospels respectively attributed to them.” The fourth question requires Catholics to hold that the final verses of Mark are inspired and canonical. It additionally states that “the reasons by which some critics attempt to prove that the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 16:9–20) were not written by Mark himself ” fail to demonstrate that Mark was not the author of said verses. The fifth question, concerning the chronological ordering of the Gospels, states that it is not permitted “to abandon the claim . . . that, after Matthew, who first of all wrote his Gospel in his own native dialect, Mark wrote second and Luke third.” Finally, the 1912 decree On the Synoptic Question or the Mutual Relations Among the First Three Gospels speaks to the same overarching problem and appears in stark contrast to the thought of Benedict XVI.45 Its second question generates a pair of “Negative” responses: 44 45 PBC, On the Authorship, Time of Composition, and Historicity of the Gospels of Mark and Luke (1912). PBC, On the Synoptic Question or the Mutual Relations Among the First Three Gospels (1912). Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 897 Whether we can consider what has been set forth above as observed by those who, without the support of any testimony of tradition or of any historical argument, easily embrace the hypothesis commonly known as the Two-Source Theory, which seeks to explain the composition of the Greek Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke mainly by their common dependence on the Gospel of Mark and a so-called collection of the sayings of the Lord; and, whether, in consequence, we can freely advocate this theory. Thus it is not possible for a Catholic to either “easily embrace” or “freely advocate” the Two-Source Theory, which considers the Gospels of Matthew and Luke to be the fruit of a synthesis between preexistent material from Mark and a separate collection of Jesus’s sayings.46 Several works of Ratzinger exhibit fundamental disagreements with the aforementioned PBC conclusions. For example, in two works Ratzinger speaks of the Two-Source Theory as being “almost universally accepted” as an account of the Synoptic problem.47 In other works, he illustrates this conviction, as when he assumes that Mark’s eschatology is oldest and that “the gospel of Matthew, composed contemporaneously with Luke’s (or perhaps even later) contains an undiminished imminent eschatology which may even be described as heightened in comparison with Mark.”48 A speech by Cardinal Ratzinger presents us with a case in which he traces the titles of Jesus from the earlier title “Christ” (seen in the confession of Mark 8:29) to “Christ, Son of the living God” (the parallel confession in Matthew 16:16) to “Logos” ( John 1).49 However, in God and the World, he elaborates upon the Synoptic problem more broadly and in a way that speaks to all of the above PBC decrees: With regard to the individual Gospels, today we assume that not Matthew but Mark is the oldest of the Gospels. Matthew 46 47 48 49 This collection of “sayings” are commonly referred to as “Q” as an abbreviated form of the German word quelle (“source”). Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 127; cf. Ratzinger, Milestones, 50–51. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 37. Joseph Ratzinger, “Christ, Faith, and the Challenge of Cultures,” speech given in Hong Kong to the presidents of the Asian bishops’ conferences and the chairmen of their doctrinal commissions during a March 2–5, 1993 meeting (available at https://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/RATZHONG.HTM). 898 Matthew J. Ramage and Luke have, so to speak, taken Mark as their basic framework and have enriched it with other traditional materials that were available to them. The Gospel of John, now, had a separate origin and development and is homogeneous. It is important that the first three Gospels were not just written by one writer in each case but were based on the transmission of material by the whole believing Church—a process, that is to say, in which material slowly crystallized in particular traditions that were finally brought together to form the text of the Gospels. In a certain sense, then, the question about particular people is secondary. . . . What is fundamental is that oral transmission came at the beginning, as is so characteristic in the Orient. That guarantees the close connection with the historical origin.50 While well aware of the venerable tradition that considers Matthew the first of the Gospels, Ratzinger clearly accepts—with appropriate nuances and modifications—the standard suggestions of modern scholarship regarding the origin and relationship of the Synoptic Gospels.51 His findings thus directly contradict those of the earlier PBC to the effect that Matthew was the first of the Gospels and that he did not borrow from preexistent source material. Turning on its head the somewhat simplistic question of who wrote which gospel and when, he focuses on the ecclesial nature of the Bible and wants to show that 50 51 Ratzinger, God and the World, 229. Elsewhere, Ratzinger makes a similar point with a thought-provoking contrast with Protestantism and an allusion to Orthodoxy: “[A]n exclusive insistence on the sola scriptura of classical Protestantism could not possibly survive, and today it is in crisis more than ever precisely as a result of that ‘scientific’ exegesis which arose in, and was pioneered by, the Reformed theology. This demonstrates how much the Gospels are a product of the early Church, indeed, how the whole of Scripture is nothing other than tradition. So much so that a number of Lutheran scholars seem to converge with the view of the Eastern Orthodox: not sola scriptura but sola traditio”; see Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 160. Ratzinger summarizes: “Earlier the Gospel of Matthew was held to be the oldest of the Gospels. A note by a second-century writer, Papias, says that Matthew first of all wrote this Gospel in Hebrew, and then it was translated into Greek. . . . Luke and Mark were also acceptable, but Matthew was held to be the oldest and the one that offered most, the one most immediately directed to the Church as far as her liturgy and her faith were concerned” (God and the World, 228). Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 899 “the first three Gospels were not just written by one writer in each case but were based on the transmission of material by the whole believing Church.” Earlier source material “slowly crystallized in particular traditions that were finally brought together to form the text of the Gospels.” In this way, “the question about particular people is secondary,” since the Gospels did not simply originate with individual authors but rather in the heart of “the whole believing Church.”52 In the same discussion Ratzinger adds further points that conflict with the PBC’s declarations requiring Catholics to hold that the Apostles themselves wrote the Gospels that were named after them: According to the results of research, the texts of the three Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke—are intertwined with one another in some kind of close relationship and are interdependent. The question of how Matthew came to be written has been completely reopened. Nowadays the greater number of scholars are of the opinion that one cannot ascribe this Gospel to the apostle Matthew, that, on the contrary, it originated rather later and was written down toward the end of the first century in a Syrian Christian congregation. The origin and growth of the Gospels as a group now appears to us to be a very complex process. At the beginning there were probably collections of the sayings of Jesus, which were at first memorized and handed on orally but quite soon were also written down in a set form . . . In the beginning, then, there was oral tradition.53 Notice that Ratzinger does not go so far as to forbid a Catholic to uphold the venerable tradition that the Apostle Matthew himself wrote the text attached to his name or that his was the first of the four Gospels. Rather, he is content to summarize the available scholarly evidence, the ancient tradition, and his own scholarly opinion. All the same, it is clear that, contrary to the PBC, Ratzinger is fine with attributing the Gospels to authors other than the evangelists themselves and that he is comfortable accepting an ordering among the four that differs from the reckoning of the Church’s more ancient tradition. He is even open to the presence of significant redactions to the biblical 52 53 For more of Ratzinger’s thoughts on the origin of the canon in the heart of the Church, see Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, 62–68. Ratzinger, God and the World, 229–30. 900 Matthew J. Ramage text from the second century, as when he overtly contradicts the PBC in stating, “In the second century, a concluding summary was added, bringing together the most important Resurrection traditions and the mission of the disciples to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world (Mark 16:9–20).”54 At the same time, Ratzinger is careful to maintain that the various evangelists and redactors, while re-forming the same basic material in view of their respective theological insights and purposes, “transmit the very same thing with slight variations.”55 To anticipate language that will become critically important further below, “Even if the details of many traditions have been expanded in later periods, we can trust the Gospels for the essentials and can find in them the real figure of Jesus. It is much more real than the apparently reliable historical reconstructions.”56 The Gospels thus present us with a faithful portrait of the real historical Jesus. The evangelists, Ratzinger writes, “were practicing painstaking fidelity, but it was a fidelity that played a role in the formation process in the context of lived participation, though without influencing the essentials.”57 Continuity and Discontinuity: Benedict’s Hermeneutic of Reform Up to this point I have been tracing the discrepancies between Benedict-Ratzinger’s views and the views of the magisterium of yesteryear vis-à-vis modern biblical criticism. However, the purpose of emphasizing this discontinuity becomes clear only when we examine how Benedict puts his critical observations’ conclusions to work, developing a hermeneutic capable of addressing many of the greatest challenges to the magisterium’s authority today. As we will see below, whether true reform will come about in the Church is bound up with our ability to understand and deal with two seemingly incompatible realities in the history of Catholic doctrine and practice. In an important speech to the Roman curia in the first year of his pontificate, Benedict put the matter plainly concerning the proper implementation of Vatican II: “It is precisely in this combination of 54 55 56 57 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 262. Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 174. Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 44. Ratzinger, God and the World, 204 (emphasis added). Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 174 (emphasis added). Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 901 continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists.”58 To understand what Benedict has in mind here, it is important to note that he is not merely proposing a “hermeneutic of continuity” as some have thought, but rather what he calls a “hermeneutic of reform.” This term is fitting because Benedict’s approach does not pretend that Catholicism has emerged utterly unchanged through the centuries, and so it is willing to come to terms with the elements of discontinuity we have witnessed in this paper. At the same time, this hermeneutic maintains that, over the course of history, “the one subject-Church . . . is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same.”59 In one brief statement, Benedict thus distances himself both from radical traditionalism, which refuses to accept the newness of the post-conciliar Church, and from radical progressivism, which fails to realize that the Church today is the same Church that existed before Vatican II. He put this pointedly in an interview: It is impossible [for a Catholic] to take a position for or against Trent or Vatican I. Whoever accepts Vatican II, as it has clearly expressed and understood itself, at the same time accepts the whole binding tradition of the Catholic Church, particularly also the two previous councils. And that also applies to the so-called “progressivism,” at least in its extreme forms. . . . It is likewise impossible to decide in favor of Trent and Vatican I, but against Vatican II. Whoever denies Vatican II denies the authority that upholds the other two councils and thereby detaches them from their foundation. And this applies to the so-called “traditionalism,” also in its extreme forms. . . . Every partisan choice destroys the whole (the very history of the Church) which can exist only as an indivisible unity.60 58 59 60 Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Address to the Roman Curia, Dec. 22, 2005 (available at https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/ december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia.html). For this principle and its application to the thorny issue of religious freedom, see Martin Rhonheimer, “Benedict XVI’s ‘Hermeneutic of Reform’ and Religious Freedom,’” Nova et Vetera 9 (2011): 1029–54. Benedict XVI, Christmas Address, 2005. Ratzinger and Messori, The Ratzinger Report, 28–29. For further comments in this regard, see Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Benedict XVI: Interpreter of Vatican II,” in Church and Society: The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures, 1988–2007 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 468–84. 902 Matthew J. Ramage At the end of the day, both radical camps described above operate by what he has labeled a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” an approach that keeps them from accepting the magisterium as the authoritative guardian of Christian orthodoxy still today. Regrettably, many Catholics today know only this popularized misinterpretation of Catholic history. According to Benedict, this is due in part to the fact that the hermeneutic of rupture “has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media.”61 As an indication of how firmly he believed this, Benedict dedicated some of his final thoughts as pontiff to the variant interpretations of Vatican II, observing that “there was the Council of the Fathers—the real Council—but there was also the Council of the media,” which also turned out to be the “accessible . . . dominant . . . more effective one.”62 In various works, he goes so far as to apply some of the same critical labels to this mentality as he did to the anti-modernist statements of the early twentieth century. Noting that even many Council fathers entertained a problematic hermeneutic of the Council, he described the ambience of the time as pervaded by an 61 62 Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Address, 2005. On the two interpretations of Vatican II, see also Ratzinger’s Salt of the Earth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 75. Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Parish Priests and Clergy of Rome, Feb. 14, 2013 (available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/ speeches/2013/february/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20130214_clero-roma. html). The Pope further lamented, “We know that this Council of the media was accessible to everyone. Therefore, this was the dominant one, the more effective one, and it created so many disasters, so many problems, so much suffering: seminaries closed, convents closed, banal liturgy.” At the same time, Benedict exuded in this speech a firm hope that the media’s portrayal of Vatican II as a rupture will not be the final word and that the Church has great reason to rejoice in finally seeing the council bear the fruit it was designed to yield. As for the damage that occurred to the Church after Vatican II, Benedict had earlier stated, “I am convinced that the damage that we have incurred in these twenty years is due, not to the ‘true’ Council, but to the unleashing within the Church of latent polemical and centrifugal forces; and outside the Church it is due to the confrontation with a cultural revolution in the West” (The Ratzinger Report, 30). Ratzinger observed that, historically, any ecumenical council is typically followed by this sort of tumult, for which reason John Henry Newman spoke of the danger involved with convoking councils (ibid., 39–40). This is a theme Ratzinger takes up elsewhere, as when he states, “And it cannot be denied that, from close by, nearly all councils have seemed to destroy equilibrium, to create crisis”; see Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 369. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 903 “almost naïve progressivist utopianism” and a “euphoria of reform” that “can only be called neurotic.”63 In a Wednesday catechesis on St. Bonaventure, he added: Indeed, we know that after the Second Vatican Council some were convinced that everything was new, that there was a different Church, that the pre-Conciliar Church was finished and that we had another, totally “other” Church—an anarchic utopianism! And thanks be to God the wise helmsmen of the Barque of St Peter, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II, on the one hand defended the newness of the Council, and on the other, defended the oneness and continuity of the Church, which is always a Church of sinners and always a place of grace.64 Benedict notes that St. Bonaventure, serving as Minister General of the Franciscan order in his day, faced a problem similar to that faced by the Church in the modern period. For the sake of unity in his order, Bonaventure made it a pastoral priority to combat the widespread “anarchic utopianism” that caused many to dissociate the search for authentic spirituality from the hierarchical structure of the Church. As indicated above, this is precisely the type of attitude we often witness today: a disregard for the hierarchical Church that takes its cue from the supposition that Vatican II was completely new and that it fundamentally changed the nature of the rigid, pre-conciliar, hierarchical, institutional church. That said, in these passages, Benedict does indeed acknowledge a real “newness” and “discontinuity” in Vatican II. Indeed, in one place, he even speaks of the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, in conjunction with Dignitatis Humanae on religious liberty and Nostra Aetate on non-Christians, as a “countersyllabus” to that of Pius IX.65 But if this speaks to the discontinuity side of Benedict’s hermeneutic, it remains to be seen just how the aspect of continuity has its due place. 63 64 65 Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 227 and 373. Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience of March 10, 2010 (emphasis added) (available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100310.html). Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 381-82. 904 Matthew J. Ramage Discernment of the Essential: Key to Benedict’s Hermeneutic of Reform One of the central keys to Benedict’s theology as a whole, and to his hermeneutic of reform in particular, lies in the endeavor to discern what he variously calls “the kernel,” “the essential,” or “the permanent” aspect of Catholic doctrine that has remained unchanged through the centuries even amidst the vicissitudes of discontinuity and development described above.66 The existence of this element is the linchpin that allows Benedict to grant the presence of both continuity and discontinuity in the Church throughout the ages. In what follows, I will be teasing out what he means by this concept and how he applies it to the problem of the Church’s teaching concerning modern biblical scholarship. Benedict’s 2005 address to the Roman curia contains some evocative language that reveals the basis and aims of his thought concerning our subject. It is significant that Benedict incorporates the language of John Henry Newman when he affirms that a sound hermeneutic must admit the presence of discontinuity but also firmly insist on the existence of a “permanent aspect” in the Church’s teaching in such a way that, at Vatican II, “the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned.”67 Benedict’s choice of the expression “continuity of principles” reflects verbatim Newman’s second “note” for distinguishing a genuine doctrinal development from a “corruption” in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.68 The Pontiff ’s 66 67 68 It is noteworthy that Benedict frequently employs these terms and other variations upon them when seeking to discern the principal affirmation of a problematic biblical text. Although an examination of his application of this particular principle to the many individual biblical texts he treats is beyond the scope of this article, it is instructive to observe the affinity between his method of dealing with problematic texts in the Bible and in the magisterium, respectively. For just a few among dozens of examples, see God and the World, 45, 75ff, 104, and 165–68, and Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 215–16. For an application of this method to some of the “darkest” passages in the Bible, see Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, chs. 5 and 6. Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Address, 2005. John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 178–85. Regarding the language of permanence used by Benedict, see ibid., 178, where Newman states, “Doctrines grow and are enlarged; principles are permanent.” Among the other works of Newman that explore this theme, I would highlight his sermon “The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine” (1843) and his Letter to the Reverend Pusey (1865) (available at http://www.newmanreader. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 905 references to the essential or core dimension of Catholic teaching likewise reflects Newman’s conviction that Catholic doctrine “has been in substance one and the same from the beginning.”69 These similarities, which are just a couple among many, are probably no coincidence, given that Benedict not only beatified Newman but also praised his theology elsewhere on various occasions. Reflecting on the “fruitful possibilities” for development of Newman’s teaching on doctrinal development, he shares, “With this he had placed the key in our hand to build historical thought into theology, or much more, he taught us to think historically in theology and so to recognize the identity of faith in all developments.”70 Throughout Benedict’s corpus, one can witness his endeavor to apply Newman’s thought in a way that builds up the Church and lets the central truths of the faith shine forth. This comes across most explicitly when he is being interviewed about his personal vocation as a theologian. When asked whether there have in fact been “two Ratzingers” in his lifetime—one a progressive teenager and the other a resigned conservative ecclesial official—he responds: 69 70 org/works/anglicans/volume2/pusey/section3.html). See also the discussion of the parallels between Benedict and Newman in Gerard O’Collins, S.J., “Does Vatican II Represent Continuity or Discontinuity?” Theological Studies 73 (2012): 793. Newman, “Letter to the Reverend Pusey” (1865). The text of this quote is valuable to share at greater length: “Even deeper for me was the contribution which Heinrich Fries published in connection with the Jubilee of Chalcedon. Here I found access to Newman’s teaching on the development of doctrine, which I regard along with his doctrine on conscience as his decisive contribution to the renewal of theology. With this he had placed the key in our hand to build historical thought into theology, or much more, he taught us to think historically in theology and so to recognize the identity of faith in all developments. Here I have to refrain from deepening these ideas further. It seems to me that Newman’s starting point, also in modern theology, has not yet been fully evaluated. Fruitful possibilities awaiting development are still hidden in it. At this point I would only like to refer again to the biographical background of this concept. It is known how Newman’s insight into the ideas of development influenced his way to Catholicism. But it is not just a matter of an unfolding of ideas. In the concept of development, Newman’s own life plays a role. That seems to become visible to me in his well-known words: ‘to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often’”; Joseph Ratzinger, Presentation on the Occasion of the First Centenary of the Death of Cardinal John Henry Newman, April 28, 1990 (available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/ documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19900428_ratzinger-newman_en.html). 906 Matthew J. Ramage I think I have already made the essential point, namely that the basic decision of my life is continuous. . . . I want to be true to what I have recognized as essential and also to remain open to seeing what should change. . . . I don’t deny that there has been development and change in my life, but I hold firmly that it is a development and change within a fundamental identity. . . . Here I agree with Cardinal Newman, who says that to live is to change and that the one who was capable of changing has lived much.71 These comments are notable for a number of reasons. First, here again Ratzinger identifies with Newman in suggesting that the fullness of life in the Church—and in one’s personal life as well—always entails a certain amount of change. Second, the terminology “essential point,” “continuous,” and “development and change within a fundamental identity” is typical of Newman and works throughout the rest of Ratzinger’s corpus. Third, when traditionally-minded Catholics are faced with Ratzinger’s thought concerning the appropriateness of modern biblical scholarship, they sometimes point to the fact that many of his more controversial statements came from the time when he was a young progressive and writing as an individual rather than with the authority of the magisterium. While it should certainly be granted that many of the relevant texts in this paper are not stamped with the seal of magisterial authority, in this revealing application of hermeneutical principles to his own life, Ratzinger has made it clear that his thought remained fundamentally one and the same throughout his career as a theologian and churchman. Elsewhere in this same interview, Ratzinger sheds further light on the aim of his theology and the development of his thought: Although the constellations in which I have found myself—and naturally also the periods of life and their different influences— have led to changes and development in the accents of my thought, my basic impulse, precisely during the Council, was always to free up the authentic kernel of the faith from encrustations 71 Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 115–16 (emphasis added). In a different interview, Ratzinger was asked concerning his involvement in founding the international periodical Concilium: “What significance does this have for the man who was to become prefect of the former Holy Office? Was it a false step? A youthful transgression?” His reply was to the point: “It is not I who have changed, but others” (The Ratzinger Report, 18). Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 907 and to give this kernel strength and dynamism. This impulse is the constant of my life. . . . Naturally the office gives an accentuation that isn’t present as such when you are a professor. But nonetheless what’s important to me is that I have never deviated from this constant, which from my childhood has molded my life, and that I have remained true to it as the basic direction of my life.72 The “encrustations” Ratzinger has in mind here are of various types, but as we can gather from his comments in earlier portions of this article, they certainly would include some of the writings of Leo XIII, Pius X, and the PBC on the subject of modern biblical scholarship. It is critical that Catholics not fall prey to “forced interpretations” for the apparent contradiction in Church teaching on this or any other point. Ratzinger states consolingly: Doubt need not be immediately associated with a fall from faith. I can sincerely take up the questions that press upon me while holding fast to God, holding to the essential core of faith. On the one hand, I can try to find solutions for the seeming contradictions. On the other hand, I can also be confident that, though I can’t find them all, there are solutions even when I can’t find them. There are things that remain unsolved for the moment that should not be explained by forced interpretations.73 72 73 Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 79 (emphasis added). In this same text, Ratzinger opens up about “the cost” of having to take on his ecclesiastical role and abandon full-time scholarly inquiry: “For me the cost [of becoming Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] was that I couldn’t do full time what I hand envisaged for myself, namely really contributing my thinking and speaking to the great intellectual conversation of our time, by developing an opus of my own. I had to descend to the little and various things pertaining to factual conflicts and events. I had to leave aside a great part of what would interest me and simply serve and to accept that as my task. And I had to free myself from the idea that I absolutely have to write or read this or that, I had to acknowledge that my task is here” (ibid., 116–17). Though not stated explicitly here, it goes without saying that part of the “accentuation” involved in taking on an ecclesiastical office is that one has to be more careful in issuing theological opinions, since they all will be construed—rightly or wrongly—as bearing authoritative weight. In this light, it is remarkable to see just how much Ratzinger/Benedict pushed the envelope of theological development during his tenure in office. Ibid., 31 (emphasis added). 908 Matthew J. Ramage Fortunately for the Church, Ratzinger was not content with a forced interpretation that would offer a facile solution to the problem of how to deal with modern exegesis in the Church. “Holding to the essential core of faith,” he puts his hermeneutical principles to work in the effort to offer a balanced account of continuity and discontinuity in the matter at hand. Application of Benedict’s Method to the PBC Decrees Having elucidated the two elements of Benedict’s hermeneutic of reform and the key operation that consists in seeking out the enduring essence of Catholic teachings, at last we are in a position to apply these principles to the problem of the magisterium in relation to modern biblical scholarship. To this end, two texts are of particular relevance. The first is the text Ratzinger presented to the press upon the publication of the instruction Donum veritatis. His comments on the document tie together the principles introduced above and add a note of solemnity, issued as they were by the cardinal-prefect of the CDF: The text also presents the various forms of binding authority which correspond to the grades of the magisterium. It states— perhaps for the first time with such candor—that there are magisterial decisions which cannot be the final word on a given matter as such but, despite the permanent value of their principles, are chiefly also a signal for pastoral prudence, a sort of provisional policy. Their kernel remains valid, but the particulars determined by circumstances can stand in need of correction.74 74 Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian,’” 106 (emphasis added). Among the texts Ratzinger has in mind here is the following portion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Donum veritatis (1990) that discusses interventions of the magisterium in the prudential order: “It could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.” The importance of this statement lies in the fact that it indicates certain aspects of magisterial utterances contain “deficiencies” that are not intended to be the comprehensive final word in response to their respective questions. In order to pursue his discipline well, the theologian must be competent in history in order to ascertain correctly the context in which dogmatic formulas arise and to be mindful of “the filtering which occurs with the passage of time.” While the document is careful to ensure that this statement not be construed as “a relativization of the tenets of the faith,” it proceeds to add these poignant words: “The theologian knows that some Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 909 This citation adds a pair of nuances germane to our endeavor. First, Ratzinger confirms that some magisterial decisions are not intended to be definitive, but rather “provisional” determinations of pastoral prudence. Second, in keeping with the terminology we have already examined, he indicates that such statements have a kernel that remains valid throughout history, while certain “particulars” or accidental features “can stand in need of correction” by later formulations.75 Ratzinger offers two examples to illustrate the aforementioned point. “In this connection,” he writes, “one will probably call to mind the pontifical statements of the last century regarding freedom of religion and the anti-Modernist decisions of the then Biblical Commission.” 76 The second of these examples is the very issue at the heart of this article. Having already established immediately prior to this the principle that magisterial statements have both a permanent core and particulars that may stand in need of correction over time, he now adds that, “as warning calls against rash and superficial accommodations, they remain perfectly legitimate,” for “the anti-Modernist decisions of the Church performed the great service of saving her from foundering in the bourgeois-liberal world.”77 Thus, from our 75 76 77 judgments of the magisterium could be justified at the time in which they were made, because while the pronouncements contained true assertions and others which were not sure, both types were inextricably connected. Only time has permitted discernment and, after deeper study, the attainment of true doctrinal progress” (Donum veritatis, §24). Already in his pontificate, Francis has reiterated this distinction in so many words: “Exegetes and theologians help the church to mature in her own judgment. Even the other sciences and their development help the church in its growth in understanding. There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but now they have lost value or meaning. The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong”; see Pope Francis and Antonio Spadaro, S.J., “A Big Heart Open to God,” America, September 30, 2013 (available at http://americamagazine.org/pope-interview). Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian,’” 106. Ibid. Among the things the PBC intended to save us from was what Ratzinger calls a “ready-made philosophy” that uses historical criticism to draw false and destructive conclusions from the premise that God cannot intervene in history and reveal himself to man. Ratzinger tells us that such a being “is not the God of the Bible”; see Joseph Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and the Itinerary for Exegesis Today,” in Opening Up the Scriptures, 1–29, at 23. In another work, he adds that modern scholarship sometimes reveals more about the presuppositions of the scholar than about the person 910 Matthew J. Ramage privileged vantage point a century later, we can see that the principal goal or core of the PBC decrees did not consist in their assertions concerning such things as when and by whom particular biblical books were composed. Rather, the substance of what the magisterium intended to convey at the time, and which remains true today, is the need to safeguard the authority of the Scriptures, the historicity of Jesus, and the Church’s divine foundation in the wake of deconstructive intellectual currents that would undermine the faith. Be that as it may, immediately following these words concerning the important pastoral role played by the PBC’s early decrees, Ratzinger soberly acknowledges, “Nevertheless, with respect to particular aspects of their content, they were superseded after having fulfilled their pastoral function in the situation of the time.”78 Benedict employs similar language in his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman curia, underscoring the need to distinguish “permanent” from “contingent” dimensions of magisterial teaching: In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church’s decisions on contingent matters—for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible—should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within. On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well- 78 of Jesus: “I must admit the more I hear about these efforts of source research, the less confidence I feel in the plethora of hypotheses it has thrown up. . . . I think all these attempts are reconstructions in which we can always see the face of the architect. . . . All these constructions have been undertaken with one guiding idea: There can be no such thing as God made man” (Ratzinger, God and the World, 203). See also The Ratzinger Report, 143–44, in which we are exhorted to beware of an uncritical acceptance of a weltanschauung that tries “to find a message that represents what we already know, or at any rate what the listener wants to hear.” For this reason, a “criticism of the criticism” or a “self-critique of historical exegesis” is needed in order to evaluate the claims and limits of modern scholarship in a way “that both carries on and modifies Kant’s critiques of reason” (Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 8). Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian,’” 106. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 911 grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change.79 Here the pontiff situates decisions regarding “a free interpretation of the Bible” within the realm of “decisions on contingent matters” that are “subject to change.” As seen in the document above, so here he maintains that decrees like those of the PBC have a “permanent aspect” 79 Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Address, 2005 (emphasis added). For an informative discussion of the historical condition that affects magisterial decisions, see the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1973 declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae. At the beginning of a pivotal section entitled “The Notion of the Church’s Infallibility Not To Be Falsified,” it indicates that we should seek to “define exactly the intention of teaching proper to the various formulas.” However, difficulties arise in this domain for two reasons: first from the fact that God’s mysteries so transcend the human intellect that they remain “wrapped in darkness” in this life, and second from “the historical condition that affects the expression of revelation.” Spelling out what is meant by this “historical condition,” the CDF argues that “the meaning of the pronouncements of faith depends partly upon the expressive power of the language used at a certain point in time and in particular circumstances. Moreover, it sometimes happens that some dogmatic truth is first expressed incompletely (but not falsely), and at a later date, when considered in a broader context of faith or human knowledge, it receives a fuller and more perfect expression.” When one attends to these contexts, we see that the Church “usually has the intention of solving certain questions or removing certain errors” and that “all these things have to be taken into account in order that these pronouncements may be properly interpreted.” Ever affirming that the truths of the faith are not dependent upon “the changeable conceptions of a given epoch,” the document acknowledges that “it can sometimes happen that these truths may be enunciated by the Sacred Magisterium in terms that bear traces of such conceptions.” In light of the foregoing points, the document concludes that, while the Church’s ancient dogmatic formulas “maintain . . . completely the same meaning” and “remain forever suitable” when interpreted correctly, “it does not however follow that every one of these formulas has always been or will always be so to the same extent” (Mysterium Ecclesiae, 5). On the continuity of meaning in dogmatic formulas over the centuries, see the First Vatican Council constitution Dei Filius, ch. 4: “Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding” (available at https://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/V1.HTM#4). See also the discussion of this formula in Charles Journet, What Is Dogma? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 20 and 98. For the rejection of any form of “evolutionism” in the Church, see also Pope Pius X’s Lamentabili sane (1907), as well as his Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), §§26–28, and “Oath Against Modernism” (1910) 912 Matthew J. Ramage that remains valid even if the “practical forms” of decisions are “not so permanent” due to the changing landscape of the Church’s situation in history. To many Catholics, the use of such language in relation to magisterial statements may understandably come across as jarring. However, if we understand the expression properly within the context of principles addressed in this article, it is right at the heart of Ratzinger’s brilliant solution to the thorny problem of the magisterium in relationship to modern biblical scholarship—a solution that he arrives at only by facing difficulties head-on. How are we to explain Benedict’s pointed language and the aboutface in the Church’s attitude toward the modern historical-critical method today? Why did the PBC issue these decrees that, to many people today, seem so plainly incorrect? Ratzinger offers a vivid comparison to illustrate: The process of intellectual struggle over these issues had become a necessary task and can in a certain sense be compared with the similar process triggered by the Galileo affair. Until Galileo, it had seemed that the geocentric world picture was inextricably bound up with the revealed message of the Bible, and that champions of the heliocentric world picture were destroying the core of Revelation. It became necessary fully to reconceive the relationship between the outward form of presentation and the real message of the whole, and it required a gradual process before the criteria could be elaborated. . . . Something analogous can be said with respect to history. At first it seemed as if the ascription of the Pentateuch to Moses or of the Gospels to the four individuals whom tradition names as their authors were indispensable conditions of the trustworthiness of Scripture and, therefore, of the faith founded upon it. Here, too, it was necessary for the territories to be re-surveyed, as it were; the basic relationship between faith and history needed to be re-thought. This sort of clarification could not be achieved overnight.80 80 Ratzinger, “Exegesis and Magisterium of the Church,” 134. Pope Benedict XVI reflected on this dimension of the Galileo affair in a poignant speech about Vatican II near the end of his pontificate: “And we knew that the relationship between the Church and the modern period, right from the outset, had been slightly fraught, beginning with the Church’s error in the case of Galileo Galilei; we were looking to correct this mistaken start and to rediscover the union between the Church and the best forces of the world, so as to open up humanity’s future, to open up true progress” (Address to the Parish Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 913 In this passage Ratzinger provides insight into the reason certain features of the PBC decrees in question stood “in need of correction.” Those who crafted the statements had assumed that the trustworthiness of Scripture—and thereby the faith itself—would be undermined if the Church entertained findings of modern scholarship that contradicted ancient traditions concerning such matters as the authorship and dating of biblical books.81 Conclusion While it is understandable to fear a certain “slippery slope” once one becomes acquainted with the undeniable presence of discontinuity in certain areas of Catholic teaching, thankfully the Church offers guidance for how to navigate through these difficulties. Indeed it is critical—and relieving—to realize that the Church recognizes various levels of magisterial teaching that command correspondingly different types of assent. Among the various doctrines of the Church, the CDF indicates that many require “irrevocable assent” because, of their own nature, they are “irreformable.”82 These teachings form the substance of the Catholic faith that cannot change. Writing as head of the PBC, 81 82 Priests and Clergy of Rome, Feb. 14, 2013). To offer just one illustration, many would understandably fear dating the Gospel of Matthew later than Mark because this opens the door to the claim that the papal institution narrative in Matt 16 was tradition invented by the early Church rather than spoken by Jesus. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei” (1998), §§5 and 8. The CDF teaches that a Catholic may never withhold assent to a divine revealed truth, such as the articles of the Creed, Marian dogmas, the inerrancy of Scripture, and papal infallibility. Likewise, a Catholic may never refuse to accept “those teachings belonging to the dogmatic or moral area, which are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if they have not been proposed by the magisterium of the Church as formally revealed.” Among many doctrines that fall within the scope of this statement, the CDF reminds us of the illicitness of euthanasia, the legitimacy of saint canonizations, and the reservation of priestly ordination only to men, to name only a few examples. For a delineation of these levels along with examples of doctrines that have an “irrevocable character,” see ibid., §11. That said, the CDF has not intended by this to provide a complete list of truths that Catholics are bound to hold as irreformable. Indeed, it even elucidates a third category of teachings “which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic magisterium.” Even if these are not proclaimed “by a definitive act,” the document indicates that they nevertheless require “religious submission of will and intellect” on the part of the faithful (ibid., §10). 914 Matthew J. Ramage Ratzinger offered some examples of teachings that, in contrast with the PBC decrees examined in this article, could never be altered as the result of modern biblical scholarship: the birth of Jesus by the Virgin Mary, the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus, and Jesus’s bodily resurrection from the dead. Concerning this last point, he tells us that Jesus’s bodily resurrection “is the meaning of the empty tomb,” as if to preempt any objectors who would claim that the essence of the empty tomb lay in a spiritual experience of the Apostles and not a direct encounter with the Son of God in his glorified flesh. In short, Ratzinger emphasizes that the Christian faith is bound up with certain accidental features, but it requires us to profess “that Jesus—in all that is essential—was effectively who the Gospels reveal him to be.”83 In this way, despite his frank criticisms of certain aspects of past magisterial pronouncements, Ratzinger’s hermeneutical approach is worlds apart from an attitude that would conclude from such observations that the magisterium has erred in an essential matter and thereby abdicated its authority to teach Christians today. For, while he does not shy away from facing the most alarming challenges to the magisterium’s teaching authority, he writes, “But we also refuse simply to condemn what went before, but see it as a necessary part of the process of knowing.”84 We must therefore regard as illegitimate the moves of those who, believing themselves to be ahead of the curve in matters of doctrinal development, dissent from today’s magisterium on the hypothetical grounds that its teaching might change some day and that, at any rate, their views do not deny anything “irreformable.”85 Indeed, given what was said above, features some consider essential to the faith in theory could be shown to be accidental, but the CDF rightly reminds us that individual Catholics are in no position to play the role of magisterium in these matters. What are we to do in the meantime? Benedict offers this wise counsel in the context of an interview: Of course we always need to ask what are the things that may once have been considered essential to Christianity but in real83 84 85 Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 134 (emphasis added). Ibid., 136. In this regard, it is important to recall that the CDF commentary is not exhaustive. Even if it does not explicitly identify certain erroneous teachings or practices, the magisterium’s mind on these matters has often been made manifest in myriad other ways that call for the “religious submission” of the Catholic’s will and intellect. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 915 ity were only expressions of a certain period. What, then, is really essential? This means that we must constantly return to the gospel and the teachings of the faith in order to see: First, what is an essential component? Second, what legitimately changes with the changing times? And third, what is not an essential component? In the end, then, the decisive point is always to achieve the proper discernment.86 Once again, for Benedict, the key to properly assessing the presence of discontinuity in Catholic teaching over the centuries lies in a hermeneutic of reform and the crucial endeavor to distinguish what is essential in the faith from what “were only expressions of a certain period” or what “legitimately changes with the changing times.” One final text from an interview sheds unique light on the person of Ratzinger-Benedict as he turns the thorny problems addressed by the PBC on their head. Rather than letting the myriad challenges of modern biblical scholarship trouble one’s faith, he invites the believer to see the complicated process of the Bible’s composition as the work of divine providence: He must learn that the complicated history of the genesis of biblical texts does not affect the faith as such. What shines through this history is something different and greater. Through this complicated historical genesis, which, by the way, is always hypothetical, one can see, on the contrary, how statements and realities, which are not simply invented by man, impress themselves upon his consciousness. I believe that precisely when one comes to know the human factors of biblical history, one also sees all the more clearly that it is not just a case of human factors, but that another is speaking here.87 For Ratzinger, the fruit of modern biblical scholarship presents a picture of the Bible’s origin that gives even more glory to the divine providence at work in the early Church than it would if we could 86 87 Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 141. In another interview, Ratzinger addressed the problem of ecumenism in like terms: “We can only humbly seek to essentialize our faith, that is, to recognize what are really the essential elements in it—the things we have not made but have received from the Lord—and in this attitude of turning to the Lord and to the center, to open ourselves in this essentializing so that he may lead us onward, he alone” (Ratzinger, God and the World, 453; emphasis added). Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 32 (emphasis added). 916 Matthew J. Ramage rest consoled in knowing that Matthew was the first of the Gospels, that the Beloved Disciple wrote John, or that the Pentateuch could be substantially attributed to Moses. At the same time, throughout his career Ratzinger has shown that he no more believes in the validity of all modern biblical scholarship than he believes that the past decrees of the PBC provide an accurate analysis of the Bible’s origins.88 Rather, Ratzinger’s biblical project aims to offer a balanced synthesis of the best of ancient and modern thought, taking into account the strengths and shortcomings of each. He therefore takes seriously the greatest fruits and challenges of modern scholarship in a way that enables us to see more clearly the person of Jesus Christ. This is put best by Benedict himself on the subject of his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy: What you might call the high point of my book was the demonstration that the Jesus in whom we believe is really also the historical Jesus and that his figure, as portrayed in the Gospels, is much more realistic and credible than the numerous alternative portraits of Jesus that are paraded before us in constant succession. . . . The important point is this: The only real, historical personage is the Christ in whom the Gospels believe, and not the figure who has been reconstituted from numerous exegetical studies.89 This text from Benedict also reflects the ultimate goal of the present article: to build up the Church with a response to a modern problem that would challenge her faith in Christ. Benedict’s biblical exegesis 88 89 See especially his famous call for a “criticism of the criticism” in “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict.” For more recent expositions of Benedict’s thought concerning the possibilities and limits of modern biblical scholarship, see the foreword to Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration and Light of the World, 167–73. One example of Benedict’s balanced approach can be seen in how he responds to an interviewer whose question seemed to exhibit a very negative view of modern biblical criticism as such. Benedict grants his point regarding the limits of said scholarship, but he adds, “I would put things more cautiously and say that research on points of detail remains important and useful, even though the excess of hypotheses eventually leads to absurdity. It is clear that the Gospels also reflect the concrete situation of the transmitters of the tradition and that they are clothed directly in the flesh in faith” (ibid., 173). For an in-depth treatment of Ratzinger’s project of exegetical synthesis, see Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, chapter 2. Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 173. Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Reform 917 aims to ensure that we have access to the essence of Jesus’s life and message. His principles for tackling the problem of the magisterium in relation to that very exegesis ensure that today’s faithful have access to the same magisterial tradition that has guided the Church throughout N&V the ages. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 919–963919 Divine Causality and Created Freedom: A Thomistic Personalist View Mark K. Spencer University of St. Thomas Saint Paul, Minnesota Thomas Aquinas argues that God causes all beings other than himself and moves all of them to all their acts, including causing us and moving us to our free acts.1 This claim is connected to the set of issues surrounding the relation between created freedom and divine providence, predestination, and grace. A strong defender of the freedom of created persons, such as a Thomistic personalist, might reject this aspect of Aquinas’s account and contend that to be free is to be “lord of one’s acts” (dominus sui actus).2 By this, the personalist would understand that the created free person is the ultimate determinant3 of whether he or she acts (I refer to this, following the Thomistic tradition, as the “exercise” of the act) and of what he or she does in those acts (the “content” or “specification” of the act). Throughout this article, I shall refer to the last sentence as the “personalist thesis” 1 2 3 Aquinas, Expositio libri Peryermeneias (hereafter, In Ph) I, lec. 14; Quaestiones disputatae de malo (hereafter, DM), q. 3, aa. 1–2; q. 6, a. un.; Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei (hereafter, DP), q. 3, aa. 5 and 7; Summa contra gentiles (hereafter, SCG) III, chs. 65 and 67; Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2; q. 104, a. 1; q. 105, aa. 4–5; I-II, q. 9, a. 6; q. 79, a. 1. Citations from Aquinas are from www. corpusthomisticum.org; all translations are mine. Aquinas, In I sent. (Scriptum super sententiis) d. 17, q. 2, a. 3; In II sent. d. 7, q. 1, a. 2; In III sent. d. 18, q. 1, a. 2; Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (hereafter, DV), q. 5, a. 10; SCG II, ch. 23; III, chs. 111–13 and 155; ST I-II, q. 6, a. 2, ad 2; II-II, q. 64, a. 5, ad 3, and q. 122, a. 1. One being, a, determines itself or another, b, to some act, c, if and only if it is ultimately up to a whether b does c and what the content of c is, regardless of conditions external or internal to a. 920 Mark K. Spencer and to any theory that holds this thesis as “personalist.”4 A Thomistic personalist would want to endorse as much Thomistic metaphysics as is consistent with this claim, and I shall refer to any theory based on such a desire as “Thomistic.” I here present a way of reconciling the personalist thesis with some central features of Thomistic metaphysics. Before presenting my view, I present a reading of Aquinas and of six interpretations of his thought on these issues. My view synthesizes features of these views and responds to problems in each. After presenting my reading of Aquinas and his interpreters, I outline and provide evidence for my Thomistic personalist view. Finally, I respond to two objections. I discuss only the natural side of this issue, not issues of the supernatural, predestination, or grace. Aquinas’s Position In this section, I present my reading of Aquinas’s views on God’s knowledge and will of creatures and on how these relate to the created will. I draw on the Thomistic tradition to interpret Aquinas when that tradition makes what I take to be the best sense of his texts. I do not argue that this reading is the right interpretation of Aquinas, but rather that it grounds the six interpretive views, which are the background to my view. On Aquinas’s view, God understands all creatures practically, as an artist understands his artwork through his plan of that work and through knowing himself as cause of that work without being causally affected by it.5 By one act, which is really identical to himself, God directly understands himself and his ideas primarily and creatures 4 5 See these Thomistic personalists: W. Norris Clarke, Person and Being (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1993), 31–32 and 72–73; John Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press), 91–95 and 168; Kenneth Schmitz, “The Solidarity of Personalism and the Metaphysics of the Existential Act,” in The Texture of Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 143–45; Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, trans. Kurt Reinhardt (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2002), 372 and 400–01; and Karol Wojtyła and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Acting Person (Dordrecth/Boston: Reidel, 1979), 100–01 and 115. See also non-Thomists who argue for a similar view in which freedom is given to us by God so that we are “other” than God: Georges Florovsky, “Creation and Creaturehood,” in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. 3, Creation and Redemption (Belmont: Norland, 1976), 46, and Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 158. In I sent. d. 38, q. 1, a. 1; ST I, q. 14, a. 8. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 921 secondarily.6 God understands creatures through himself—that is, he is the “what” the later tradition called his “formal concepts,” that in himself by virtue of which he understands creatures. Our formal concepts are the intelligible species that we abstract from things, but God’s formal concepts are identical to himself. In us, understanding presupposes a causal process of reception of species, but God understands all beings through his essence without any causal process.7 God’s knowledge and will are the cause of creatures; they are really identical to God, though conceptually distinct from one another.8 (The statements made so far about God’s identity with his acts or his formal concepts might raise questions as to whether God would have been really and intrinsically different than he is had he willed to create other—or no—creatures. The Thomistic tradition is split on this question, though all agree that God cannot change what he wills and knows, given that he wills and knows something. I shall review some of the main positions on this question in the next section.) God’s acts of knowledge and will are both causally and explanatorily prior to creatures, but neither is causally prior to the other. But God wills things for reasons—that is, he wills one creature to be on account of another, following a reasonable order for one end, divine goodness.9 God’s knowledge of creatures is not explained by his will in the sense that his knowledge is reduced from potency to act by his will. Rather, God knows creatures because their formal concepts are in him by his nature and because these concepts, together with his will, are the cause or explanation of things.10 His knowledge of creatures is explained by his will in the sense that he would not know the creatures that exist had he not willed them to be.11 If he causes 6 7 8 9 10 11 In I sent. d. 38, q. 1, a. 3; DV, q. 2, a. 3, ad 3–4; SCG I, chs. 65–67; ST I, q. 14, aa. 6–7 and 14; q. 15, a. 1. DV, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2, 6, and 10; a. 4, ad 2; a. 12, ad 11; Sentencia libri de anima (hereafter, In DA) III, lec. 9; ST I, q. 14, aa. 5, 13, and 16, ad 2. Cf. Francisco Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (hereafter, DMet), d. 2, s. 1, n. 1 (www salvadorcastellote.com); Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Expositio super sancti Thomae Aquinatis (Rome: Leonine ed., 1888; hereafter, In ST) I, q. 85, a. 2, nos. 3 and 5 (vol. 5, p. 335). We rightly understand God analogically through concepts drawn from creatures, though we do not understand directly the mode of existence that these contents have in God, where they are all identical to God. SCG I, chs. 86–87; ST I, q. 19, a. 5, ad 1. SCG I, chs. 47–50; ST I, q. 14, aa. 2 (especially ad 3), 5, and 6. Cf. Francis Sylvester of Ferrara, Commentary on Summa contra gentiles (Rome: Leonine ed., 1918–1926; hereafter In SCG) I, ch. 77, nos. 9 and 11 (vol. 13, pp. 94–95). 922 Mark K. Spencer something, then he must be essentially present to it, since effects are immediately dependent on their causes.12 But he need not be essentially or causally present to a creature to understand it13 because understanding is an intentional, not a causal, relation. God also knows creatures speculatively and by “vision.” When an intelligent being has the formal concept of some being and is in the actual presence of that being, the intelligent being elicits an intentional act, the “knowledge of vision,” whereby it knows the being as it actually exists.14 This idea is somewhat unclear in Aquinas, but Thomists in the Dominican tradition make good sense of it. They refer to the knowledge of vision as “intuitive cognition.” John of St. Thomas explains this concept: to be in the actual or “physical” presence of a thing, which is a necessary condition for intuitively cognizing it, is to be in the same “now” as that thing.15 By virtue of willing to create each particular creature, God is eternally physically present to each creature and each time—that is, all creatures and times are really contained in his eternal “now,” though not all creatures and times are present in the same temporal “now.” Because of all this, God “sees” (or “intuitively cognizes”) all creatures as they are in their actual existence, not just as they are in his ideas. Intuitive cognition reaches out, as it were, and touches its objects intentionally: the intuitive gaze is “terminated” at the real things present to it. God is not thereby causally determined by creatures, since he intuits them by means of his formal concepts, to which he is identical, and by means of his one act of knowledge by which he eternally knows himself. However, he is, as some Thomists say, “objectively,” “terminatively, or “materially” determined by them— that is, in order to know them as actually existing objects, they must actually exist, and, when they exist, they immediately become an 12 13 14 15 ST I, q. 8, a. 1, ad 3. Ibid., ad 2. ST I, q. 14, a. 16; q. 85, a. 2. Cf. In I sent. d. 39, q. 1, aa. 2–3; In III sent. d. 14, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 2; DV, q. 9, a. 2, ad 2; q. 3, a. 3, ad 8; ST I, q. 14, a. 3, ad 2; DV, q. 1, a. 2; John of St. Thomas, Cursus philosophicus thomisticus (Paris: Vives, 1883; hereafter, CP), Logica, pt. 2, q. 23, a. 1 (vol. 1, pp. 631–636) and a. 2 (1:642); Cursus theologicus (Cologne: Wilhelm Metternich, 1711; hereafter, In ST) I, q. 14, d. 18, a. 1 (vol. 1, p. 397); q. 14, d. 19, a. 4 (1:431); Jean-Baptiste Gonet, Clypaeus theologiae thomisticae (Antwerp, BE: Fratrum de tournes, 1783), t. 3, d. 4, a. 7, s. 1, no. 211 (p. 235); a. 8, s. 2, no. 273 (p. 244); Ferrara, In I SCG, vol. 13, ch. 66, no. 15 (p. 189); Salmanticenses, Cursus theologicus (Paris:Victor Palme, 1877; hereafter, In ST) I, De scientia Dei, t. 3, d. 6, dub. 2, no. 20 (vol. 1, p. 465); t. 3, d. 7, dub. 3, s. 3, n. 39 (1:483). Divine Causality and Created Freedom 923 object “terminating” his act of knowing.16 This is not causal determination and so does not violate divine impassibility, nor does it imply that God has real relations to creatures, since it is a purely intentional relation. God’s knowledge would involve a real relation to creatures only if he were causally determined by them or was of the same order of being as them or if they added a perfection to him.17 Some Thomists defend the claim that God intuitively cognizes creatures by arguing that it would be a defect in God if he did not know creatures in this way, since he would lack a perfection that some creatures have and he would not know creatures in themselves.18 Furthermore, since his intuitive cognition reaches objects themselves, God knows creaturely defects, including sins, not through his essence or causality, as he does their good features, but in the creatures themselves as he sees them intuitively.19 16 17 18 19 DV, q. 2, a. 12; SCG I, ch. 66; ST I, q. 14, aa. 9 and 13. Cf. Cajetan, In I ST, q. 14, a. 13, n. 14 (vol. 4, p. 189); Ferrara, In I SCG, ch. 49, no. 3.3 (vol. 13, p. 143); ch. 66, nos. 7–8 (13:187); ch. 67, n. 18 (13:197); John of St. Thomas, In I ST, q. 10, d. 9, a. 3 (p. 168); q. 14, d. 17, a. 2 (pp. 392–95). God’s act of knowing creatures is the same act as the act by which he knows himself. This one act is specified by its primary object and, then, can also take on further secondary objects. These do not add anything real to God but just add to him a relation of reason; cf. John of St. Thomas, CP, Logica, pt. 2, q. 23, a. 1 (vol. 1, pp. 635–36), and Suárez, DMet, d. 30, s. 14, nos. 21, 26, and 29. Jacques Maritain says that creatures are “constituted known” or “caused known” by God’s presence to them; see Existence and the Existent, trans. Lewis Galantiere and Gerald Phelan (New York: Pantheon, 1948), 86–87, 105–06, and 112; and God and the Permission of Evil (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1966), 71–72. This notion could be understood in a couple of ways. First, the notion of constituting something as known not by self-modification but by making it an intentional object is suggestive of the phenomenological notion of constitution whereby a thing becomes an intentional object and is contained within a certain sort of intentional act but does not thereby modify the intentional agent as such; to be conscious of an object involves constituting it as an intentional object. God, on this view, constitutes creatures as intentional objects without being modified himself. Second, it is also suggestive of the scholastic notion of “vital act,” in which a living being elicits an act, such as a cognitive act intending an object, rather than being given the act by an object; cf. John of St. Thomas, CP, Phil. Nat., pt. 3, q. 5, a. 2 (vol. 3, p. 303). God’s act intending creatures would be an elicited vital act, not an act determined by another. This is similar to Stump’s notion of divine self-determination, considered below. Cf. DP, q. 7, a. 10; ST I, q. 13, a. 7. Cf. Gonet, Clypaeus, t. 3, d. 4, a. 7, s. 1, nos. 211 and 235; a. 8, s. 2, nos. 244 and 273; Domingo Bañez, Scholastica commentaria in primam partem (hereafter, In I ST) (Salamanaca, ES: Apud S. Stephanum, O.P., 1585), q. 14, a. 13 (p. 515B). In I sent. d. 36, q. 1, a. 2; ST I, q. 14, a. 10, ad 2. Cf. Bañez, In I ST, q. 14, a. 10 924 Mark K. Spencer God is also the transcendent and universal cause of created being, and of creatures being necessary, contingent, or free. The effects to which he moves these kinds of beings are, correspondingly, necessary, contingent, or free.20 God’s causality does not conflict with creaturely contingency. It does not follow, Aquinas says, from the necessity of the conditionals (where x is some creature, “if God wills x, then x,” and “if God knows x, then x”) that their consequents are necessary; they are necessary if and only if the secondary cause of x causes x necessarily. God is capable of willing contingent effects also because no creature has a necessary connection to the divine will; only God’s own goodness is willed necessarily by him, since it alone is the proper and adequate object of his will. All other things are willed as extrinsic means to that object, and as they are not necessary for the attainment of that object, they are not willed necessarily by God considered in themselves. Rather, they are only willed necessarily by God in the sense of necessity of supposition—that is, if we suppose that he has eternally determined to will them, then necessarily they are willed by him, and if he eternally knows them, then necessarily they are as he knows them to be. But this necessity in God willing and knowing creatures does not make creatures necessitated in a problematic sense, since God wills and knows all things from eternity in their actuality and presence—that is, he knows and wills them exactly as they are in the moment that they are. He can do this because he is the source of all being in all of its modes; God’s transcendent and eternal mode of causality, prior to all creaturely being, allows him to cause all kinds of creaturely being, and even necessitate them in the sense that he immutably wills all that he wills, without jeopardizing their contingency or freedom.21 In order to understand how God wills creatures, we must understand Aquinas’s distinction between causing creatures and moving 20 21 (p. 507E–508B); John of St. Thomas, In I ST, q. 14, d. 18, a. 4 (p. 410); Salmanticenses, In I ST, De scientia Dei, t. 3, d. 6, dub. 2, s. 3, no. 17 (vol. 1, p. 464). Most Thomists make sense of all this by saying that God really has an act of intuitive cognition in himself whereby he really knows all creatures but that any relationality to creatures involved in this act is a relation of reason, not a real relation. In PH I, lec. 14; DP, q. 6, a. 1; SCG III, ch. 70; ST I, q. 19, a. 8; q. 44, a. 1. Cf. ST I, q. 22, a. 2, and Super epistolam beati Pauli ad Romanos lectura (hereafter, In Rom), ch. 9, lec. 2. DM, q. 16, a. 7, ad 15; DV, q. 2, a. 12, ad 4 and ad 7; q. 23, a. 4; ST I, q. 14, a. 13; q. 19, a. 3; q. 22, a. 4. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 925 them, which is founded on the distinction between the real principles of essence and the act of existence in the fundamental structure of created, finite being.22 The essence of a being is what the being is, all of its positive features insofar as it is able to exist. The act of existence of a being is the actuality of the whole being. Temporally, the act of existence and the essence of a being arise simultaneously. Act of existence is naturally prior to essence in that it is more fundamental to a being, since it actualizes the essence. But potentiality is prior to actuality in that every created actuality must be received and limited by a potentiality; potentiality explains why actuality is limited in the way that it is. There is a logical order in which the essence of some being is first caused and then that essence receives and limits an act of existence, and so an actually existing being comes to be.23 Both substances and accidents have essences and acts of existence, though substances have them in themselves, while accidents have them insofar as they are apt to actualize substances.24 We can now consider God’s causing of creatures. God efficiently causes all beings by conferring acts of existence directly and immediately on them. Since acts of existence actualize essences, God causes the essence of each individual being to be, and so he causes beings both as beings and as the kinds of beings that they are. In nearly all cases, God also specifies the essence of the being as well when he efficiently causes the being. God exemplarily causes creatures in that they have their essence and act of existence by participation 22 23 24 Aquinas, Expositio libri Boetii de hebdomadibus (hereafter, In de heb), lec. 1; In I sent. d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1; De ente et essentia (hereafter, DEE), ch. 4; DP, q. 1, a. 1; q. 7, a. 2; DV, q. 1, a. 1; SCG II, ch. 52; ST I, q. 3, a. 4. Cf. In de heb, lec. 2; In II sent. d. 1, q. 1, a. 4; DP, q. 7, a. 2, ad 9; SCG I, ch. 42; SCG II, ch. 52; ST I, q. 3, a. 4; q. 75, a. 5, ad 1; q. 104, a. 1, ad 1; Aquinas, In IV met., lec. 2, no. 558; Super librum de causis exposition (hereafter, In LDC) lec. 1; Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura, ch. 1, lec. 5, no. 134. See also Brian Shanley, “Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (hereafter, ACPQ) 72 (1998): 105–06. For important critiques of this view, see Suarez, DMet, d. 31, s. 6, no. 12, and William DeCarlo, The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence in Existential Metaphysics (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966). In I sent. d. 17, q. un., a.1, ad 2; d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1; In IV sent. d. 12, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 3, ad 5; DEE, ch. 6; DP, q. 3, a. 11; q. 7, a. 4; SCG I, chs. 22 and 25; SCG IV, ch. 14; ST I, q. 45, a. 4; q. 90, a. 2. See Barry Brown, Accidental Being (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985), 62–65, 99–100, and 148, and John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000) 259–65. This interpretation of Aquinas is, as Wippel notes, controversial. 926 Mark K. Spencer in him. He finally causes creatures in that they are directed toward him to display his goodness.25 Substances are the primary, direct objects of God’s causality. Principles of substances and accidents are “co-created” by God, caused by God not primarily or directly, but as actualities or other principles of substances.26 Creatures cause beings secondarily by causing essences that receive acts of existence.27 In addition to causing beings, God also moves substances to perform acts. Moving presupposes an existing substance in potency to accidental act and reduces that substance to act. Nothing can be moved from potentiality to actuality except by something already in actuality.28 To understand this, we must consider the distinction between per se and per accidens causes. Per se causes are directed by their nature to an effect. For example, fire is a per se cause of heat in a pot of water. In a chain of per se causes, the first cause is the primary cause of all effects in the chain. Per accidens causes are not directed by their nature to an effect. For example, a father qua father is a per accidens cause of heat in a pot of water, since it is not in the nature of fatherhood to cause heat. Chance events—when multiple causes bring about an event to which no cause was per se ordered—and moral evil, which is a privation of the order of a free act to its due good, have only per accidens causes, since no cause is per se ordered to these effects.29 The actuality that first moves a substance to act cannot be the substance’s essential or existential actuality, since the new act in a new perfection over and above these. Rather, God, who is Pure Act and the Unmoved Mover, acts in every agent by moving it to its act. God is the primary per se mover of all created powers by which substances are the secondary per se movers of their acts.30 Through this per se motion, God directs all things to their ends and sustains them in acting well.31 Aquinas applies this analysis of God’s causing and moving to the created will. God causes my free acts as accidental beings by bestowing on them an act of existence. He also moves my will from potency 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 In I sent. d. 38, q. 1, a. 3; ST I, q. 4, a. 2; q. 44, aa. 1, 3, and 4; q. 47, a. 1. In XII met. lec. 1; ST I, q. 45, a. 4; q. 104, a. 4, ad 3. See also Brown, Accidental Being, 39–40. Cf. ST I, q. 2, a. 3; q. 44, a. 1; q. 45, a. 5; q. 103, a. 6; q. 104, aa. 1–2. DP, q. 3, a. 7. Aquinas, De principiis naturae, nos. 12 and 39; SCG III, ch. 74; ST I, q. 49, a. 1; q. 103, a. 7. Cf. In LDC, lecs. 2–3. Cf. SCG III, ch. 17; ST I, q. 22, aa. 2–3; q. 103, aa. 2–4; and ST I-II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 927 to act as its final cause, the universal Good, and as its efficient cause, moving my will toward this final cause.32 This does not impede my freedom, but rather gives me my freedom: divine motion is necessary for my will to move itself.33 My will is free insofar as it is not necessitated by its nature or by any secondary cause to any particular good, but rather is open to the universal Good and can move itself to any particular good.34 Aquinas elaborates a series of steps whereby a created person moves him or herself to some action. The full details of his account are beyond the scope of this paper,35 but an understanding of some of these steps is important for understanding Aquinas, his interpreters, and my own view. On Aquinas’s view, we are first moved to a simple volition of our last end, happiness. Unless our will were first efficiently reduced to act by something outside itself, we could never begin to will. In order for our will not to be coerced violently, it must be moved internally, in accord with its free nature, and this can only be done by the cause of the will, God. So God must move us first to the simple willing of our last end and so render us capable of moving our own wills.36 Our wills are first moved to our last end considered absolutely in an act of simple volition. Aquinas sometimes calls this act the “natural act of the will,” and it includes a willing to be, to live, and to be happy.37 All other objects that we will are willed under the formality of willing this last end, and so all other acts of our wills include a tendency toward this last end. For this reason, some of Aquinas’s commentators call this tendency, as it is included in any other act of the will, the “natural being” (esse naturale) of those acts.38 Once we have a simple volition for the last end or an intention or volition for 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 ST I, q. 105, a. 4; ST I-II, q. 9, a. 6. Cf. SCG III, ch. 92; DP, q. 3, a. 7, ad 7. For a consideration of how this claim might conflict with calling Aquinas a “libertarian” and for a survey of those in the contemporary literature who call Aquinas a libertarian (e.g., Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump), see Brian Shanley, “Beyond Libertarianism and Compatibilism,” in Freedom and the Human Person, ed. Richard Velkley (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007). DP, q. 3, a. 7; DV, q. 22, a. 5; SCG III, ch. 67; ST I, q. 83, a. 1; q. 105, a. 5; ST I-II, q. 10, a. 2; q. 110, a. 2. A helpful summary is given in Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 289–90. ST I-II, q. 9, aa. 4 and 6; q. 15, a. 3. ST I-II, q. 12, a. 1, ad 4; a. 2; q. 15, a. 3; DM, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2. See note 40. 928 Mark K. Spencer some other end previously chosen as a suitable means to our last end, we move ourselves to take counsel or deliberate rationally as to how to achieve that end. We ought, at that point, to perform a volitional act of using the moral law in our rational counsel. We then consent with our wills to some means to our end discovered through deliberation. Next, we choose one of the means to that end to which we have already consented, bringing together the act of consent to some means and the act of intention to achieve some end. Reason then commands our powers to act in the chosen way, and we will to use our bodily powers to execute the means chosen so that the end can be achieved and enjoyed.39 In all of this, I determine my volitional acts of choice and external acts according to their “moral being” (esse morale), while God causes their “natural being” (esse naturale). An act’s moral being is the act insofar as it has been formed and directed by an object conceived by reason (in morally evil acts, it includes a privation of conformity to right reason). The object of an act is the act’s content, including its inherent teleological orientation and the intention of the free agent. One natural kind of act can vary in its kind of moral being; for example, two acts of sexual intercourse identical in natural being can differ in their kinds of moral being in that one is fornication and the other marital intercourse.40 God does not determine what I will in such a way that he absolutely necessitates what I will, though this does not exclude the possibilities 39 40 ST I-II, q. 13, aa. 1–3; q. 14, aa. 1–2; q. 15, aa. 1–3; q. 16, a. 4; q. 17, aa. 1–3; DM, q. 1, a. 3. Aquinas uses esse morale in this sense in DM, q. 2, a. 6, ad 3, and in In II sent. d. 18, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2, in both of which texts he contrasts an act according to its moral being (actus secundum esse morale) and an act according to its nature or natural species (actus secundum suam natruam, actus secundum quod est in specie naturali); Aquinas uses the phrase esse naturale at numerous points in his corpus, though never in direct contrast to esse morale. That terminological juxtaposition is made by Capreolus, Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis (Turin, IT: Cattier, 1900; hereafter, In Sent) II, d. 37, q. 1, a. 3, s. 1, ad 1 Aureoli (vol. 4, pp. 428–30) and ad 1 aliorum (4:432–33). On the same conceptual distinction, see: DM, q. 2, a. 2, ad 13; a. 3, ad 1–2; a. 6 (especially ad 3); ST I-II, q. 18, a. 5; SCG III, ch. 94; John of St. Thomas, In I-II ST (Lugundi: Borde, Arnaud, Borde, & Barbier, 1663), d. 9, a. 2, nos. 17–18 and 91; Cajetan, In I-II ST, vol. 7, q. 79, a. 2, nos. 4–5, ad 1–2 and ad 78; Salmanticenses, In I ST, De voluntate Dei, d. 10, dub. 7, s. 1, nos. 125–26 (vol. 2, pp. 198–99). See also Steven Long, The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 7–18. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 929 of him determining them in a non-necessitating way, necessitating them by necessity of supposition or by conditional necessity.41 He irresistibly brings about the universal end of all things, though I can frustrate the realization of some particular goods to which he moves me.42 Though he always moves me toward the universal good, if I fail to dispose my will properly to receive his motion, I imperfectly receive this divine motion and my act will be imperfect, though this imperfection is from me, not him.43 God can move me directly to particular goods; he does this in the order of grace, and Aquinas does not exclude the possibility of this occurring in the natural order.44 God guides all these beings and acts through his providence, the “type” of the order of the universe—that is, his idea of every creature as directed to its end. A “type” is an idea in God’s mind considered as an object of his knowledge, rather than considered as an “exemplar,” an idea considered as a principle of making something.45 God is like a king who directs all that happens in his kingdom, but he realizes his providence through secondary causes, which are, in a sense, instruments.46 While God’s will is one, it can be considered to have various expressions: everything that occurs is either a good or a natural evil willed by his “operative will” or a moral evil “permitted” by him.47 A question answered by the six views considered in the next section, as well as by my own view, is how his providence and will can be realized in creatures, especially free creatures, such that they are still free. Six Interpretations of Aquinas Aquinas’s claims have given rise to at least six broad schools of interpretation. I survey these briefly here, considering each insofar as it is relevant to my project. I do not consider which, if any, best captures Aquinas’s view. 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 DP, q. 3, a. 7, ad 13; DV, q. 5, a. 5, ad 1; ST I, q. 23, a. 1, ad 1. DV, q. 6, a. 3. ST I-II, q. 79, a. 2. ST I-II, q. 9, a. 6, ad 3. ST I, q. 22, a. 1. Cf. ST I, q. 15, a. 3. DP, q. 3, a. 7; DV, q. 24, a. 1, ad 5; DM, q. 3, a. 1; In XII met. lec. 12; SCG III, ch. 70; ST I, q. 22, a. 3; q. 23, ad 1; q. 23, a. 5; q. 105, a. 5; ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1; q. 13, a. 1; q. 75, a. 2, ad 1; q. 79, a. 1. Cf. ST I, q. 22, a. 3, ad 1. See André de Muralt, L’enjeu de la Philosophie Médiévale (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 322–23. ST I, q. 19, a. 12. 930 Mark K. Spencer View (1): Physical Premotion and Divine Decree of Each Creaturely Act Many Dominican and Carmelite Thomists held the interpretation of Aquinas that has come to be called Bañezianism. On this view, God moves me to each of my acts of will through a “physical” premotion—a real, efficient motion—and not just through a “moral” motion produced by an object presented to the will as a final cause. This physical premotion is an accidental quality received by my will by which God sufficiently determines that I move myself to the act that he has decreed that I perform. If God directly moved me to my act, then the act would not be free, since it would not be self-moved. But since God predetermines my act by a premotion naturally, but not temporally, prior to my act, the act proceeds from a free, non-necessitated, self-moved will. My act is not necessitated because it proceeds from a power that is not determined by its own nature or by any creature to a particular good but is indifferently related to all particular goods. God first premoves my will toward the universal Good and so makes it actually free, able to will any particular good. Second, he premoves it toward a particular good. The nature of my will is such that, regardless of which particular good I am premoved to will, I still could have willed otherwise.48 According to this view, God cannot be determined by creatures and must determine everything about creatures; he also must do this to be the moral governor of created persons.49 God’s 48 49 Bañez, In I ST, q. 105, a. 4 (p. 515); Bañez, Comentarios inéditos a la prima secundae de Santo Tomás, ed.Vincente Beltrán de heredia, vol. 2 (Matriti, ES: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1944; hereafter, In I-II ST), q. 79, nos. 20–25 and 48; q. 109, a. 1, no. 2; John of St.Thomas, CP, Phil. Nat., 1, q. 25, a. 2 (vol. 2, pp. 418 and 425); In I-II ST, d. 5, a. 4, nos. 15 and 30 (pp. 245 and 249); Salmanticenses, In I ST, De voluntate dei, d. 10, dub. 4, s. 1 (vol. 2, pp. 175–76). See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, trans. Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1946), 256–65, 293–94, and 319–23; Joseph Gredt, Elementa philosophiae, vol. 2 (Fribourg, CH: Herder, 1961), 282–83; Steven Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 559–66; Thomas Osborne, “Thomist Premotion and Contemporary Philosophy of Religion,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 608 and 611–12. Cf. Capreolus, In I Sent, d. 40, q. 1, a. 3, sC. 2, ad 1 and 2 Aureoli (vol. 2, p. 495). Long holds this to be a personalist view (“Providence,” 604). For the ascription of the premotion to the category of quality, see the texts from John of St. Thomas (CP, 2:425) and Gredt, as well as the first text cited here from Bañez, which calls the premotion a virtus, a kind of quality. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and Nature (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1955), 546–47; Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 308–09; Long, Divine Causality and Created Freedom 931 predetermination of our acts is compatible with our freedom because he is a transcendent cause.50 God knows all creatures and all their privations intuitively through his “decrees” to cause or permit them, which decrees are the ideas he has willed to instantiate in creatures, through which his providence is realized infallibly in creatures. Since one cannot intuit what does not exist, God cannot intuit creatures until he has decreed them. Many of his decrees are conditional, of the form “If I will x, then x.” While these conditionals are necessary, their antecedents and consequents are not, and God freely affirms only some antecedents.51 Furthermore, God decrees to permit me to commit some sins. In those cases, he withholds the premotion I would need to consider the moral law and then causally decrees to premove me to the positive features of a sinful act, and so I commit the sin that God has decreed by permission that I will perform. He first knows my sin through his permissive decree and then knows the existing act through decreeing to effect it; he is the cause of all the positive entity of my act, while I, through my free will, am alone the cause of my falling away from right acting, since I alone, and not God, fall away. God does not counsel us to sin, nor does he formally determine our sinful acts such that they are sinful, but he does move us to all that is positive entitatively in them. The claim that his causal decree to effect my act is consequent upon his permissive decree to allow the sin is meant to safeguard his providential rule, created freedom, creaturely causal and moral responsibility for sin, and his lack of causal or moral responsibility for sin. The decree whereby God permissively predetermines me to the positive entity of my act of sin is needed, on this view, so that God may infallibly know my sin without his knowledge being received from something extrinsic to him.52 50 51 52 “Providence,” 599–604. Salmanticenses, In I-II ST, De voluntate Dei, d. 6, dub. un., 97; d. 10, dub. 4, s. 2 (vol. 2, p. 177); Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 252. Such talk of God and propositions is meant analogically; God’s knowledge is really non-propositional, being identical to himself. Bañez, In I ST, q. 14, a. 13 (pp. 512–36); Bañez, In I-II ST, q. 79, dub. 1, no. 22 (pp. 211–12); dub. 2, no. 45–48 (pp. 224–30); no. 53 (pp. 232–33); no. 61 (p. 237); John of St. Thomas, CP, Logica, pt. 2, q. 23, a. 1 (vol. 1, p. 635); In I ST, q. 14, d. 19, a. 1, 420; Salmanticenses, In I-II ST, De scientia Dei, t. 3, d. 7, dub. 3, s. 2, n. 32 (vol. 1, p. 480); t. 3, d. 9, dub. 5, s. 2, n. 63 (1:594); De voluntate Dei, d. 10, dub. 7, ss. 1 and 3 (2:198 and 203); Gonet, Clypeus, d. 4, a. 6, s. 3 (vol. 1, p. 232); Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 267–68 and 272–73; Jean-Hervé Nicolas, “La permission du péché,” Revue Thomiste 60 (1960): 516; Gilles 932 Mark K. Spencer The proponents of (1) hold that God’s acts of knowing and willing creatures are identical to the one necessary pure act that he is. On (1), God knows and wills all creatures by the one act by which he knows and wills himself and this one act is terminated in a nonnecessary fashion by creatures as the secondary, non-specifying objects of that act. His knowing and willing of particular creatures does not bring about any change in him, only in creatures. His acts whereby he knows creatures are really and entitatively in him, but had God willed other creatures than he did or no creatures at all, God would not be entitatively different than he is, though it would be right for us to describe his knowing and willing differently than we do now. The only difference between that reality and the actual reality would have been a difference in relations of reason between God and the creatures that he knows and wills whereby his act is terminated by creatures.53 View (2): Universal Causality Without Physical Premotion or Decree Another family of views seeks to emphasize the transcendence of God’s causality more than (1). (2) is a more disparate set of views than (1), but those who hold versions of (2), including Bernard Lonergan and Brian Shanley, emphasize that God, as primary cause, causes in a sui generis manner transcendent to all modes of created causality without predetermining premotions. This view emphasizes the total and immediate dependence of all created beings, including our free acts, on their Creator in a way that tries to grant more to created freedom than (1). God causes my free acts directly and entirely in a way that is not entirely understandable to us, so that his providence is realized.54 As 53 54 Emery, “God and Evil in Charles Journet,” Nova et Vetera 3 (2006): 534–35; Osborne, “Premotion,” 613–22. John Capreolus, In I Sent, d. 45, q. 1, sC. 2, ad 1 and 4 Aureoli (vol. 2, pp. 587–89); Bañez, In I ST, q. 19, a. 2–3, 10, 604, 607–08, and 644–46; John of St. Thomas, CP, Logica, q. 23, a. 1 (vol. 1, 635–36); In I ST, q. 19, d. 5, aa. 4–5 (pp. 117–29); Salmanticenses, In I ST, De voluntate Dei, d. 7, dub. 7, ss. 4–5 (vol. 2, pp. 119–23). The same criticisms can be raised against this view as can be raised against the view of (2), and they are summarized in note 59, below. Those who hold this view confess that it is a great mystery how God could will different things without change in himself, but that we must be content with this mystery. Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 79, 106, and 382; Brian Shanley, “Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas,” ACPQ 72 (1998): 99–122. Thomas Cajetan expresses similar thoughts to the contem- Divine Causality and Created Freedom 933 André de Muralt explains it, God’s causality is identical to his effects in the mode in which they exist, whether free, contingent, or necessary.55 God causes the entirety of my acts, including the positive (rather than privative, in the sense of sinful) content of my choices without predetermining them. God permits sin without determining creatures to sin by choice or permissive decree because he relates to the world in three ways: choosing to cause the beings that exist, choosing to not cause some beings, and neither choosing to cause nor choosing not to cause sins, but rather permitting them by an absence of choice.56 Contrary to (1), proponents of (2) argue that a predetermining premotion would violate my freedom. Instead, God directly causes my free act as free, and this does not violate its freedom. Likewise, if God caused or knew through intermediary instruments like predetermining premotions or decrees, then he would be reduced to being a cause in the same sense as creaturely causes and he would be just one more stage in the process of creaturely causality, rather than the transcendent source of all creaturely causality. Rather, God causes genuine causes other than himself while also being the immediate source of their causality and their acts of causing. God knows creatures through his essence, through his knowledge of his own causality, and through his eternal presence to all things and times; he is not temporally prior to, simultaneously with, or posterior to those events. There cannot be any “competition” between God and his 55 56 porary proponents of (2) concerning God’s transcendent mode of causality, but he understands how God’s acts add to God in the manner of (3), and he understands how God moves the will in the manner of (6); see In I ST, vol. 4, q. 22, a. 4, n. 8–9, 270. De Muralt, L’enjeu, 317, citing John of St. Thomas, CP, Nat. Phil., pt. 1, q. 25, a. 1 (vol. 2, pp. 414–17). Lonergan, Grace, 105, 111–16, 304–12, and 329–33, citing ST I, q. 17, a. 1; q. 19, a. 9. Cf. Matthew Levering, Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 78–79. Another version of (2) is held by W. Matthews Grant in “Can a Libertarian Hold that Our Free Acts are Caused by God?” Faith and Philosophy 27 (2010): 22–44, and “Aquinas on How God Causes the Act of Sin without Causing Sin Itself,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 455–96, and a similar view is held by Robert Koons in “Dual Agency: A Thomistic Account of Providence and Human Freedom,” Philosophia Christi 4 (2002): 397–410. On this version of (2), God’s causing is identical to his effects plus their relation of dependence to him, such that God’s causing of my free acts is not causally, naturally, or explanatorily prior to my free acts. Thus, a “libertarian” view of created will is compatible with God being a cause of my whole act. According to private correspondence with Grant, his view is meant to be understood as largely in accord with Lonergan and Shanley. 934 Mark K. Spencer causality and creatures and their causality; the latter depend on and are explained by the former in all that they are and do.57 Things other than God are applied to their acts by God as his instruments, as things that are both moved by him and moving others or themselves. God, as prime mover, applies all things to their actions through intellectually planning and volitionally willing the whole set of motions in the created order, which is his providential order. This view does not reject the notion of premotion as such, just the predetermining physical premotion posited by (1). Rather, on view (2), a premotion is an application of a mover to something moved through a movement in one of them. God and creatures are essentially ordered causes of single created effects, where God is the primary and creating cause and creatures are the secondary and instrumental causes. God applies creatures to their acts entirely in accord with the mode of their nature and so infallibly produces his intended effects. Since these principles apply to the whole order of secondary causes, they apply to created free secondary causes.58 A key feature of this view is its position on the question of what God’s knowing or willing a creature adds to God. On this view, God is immutable; he would be no different had he not created or had he created differently than he did. Every change that he brings about is in a creature, not in himself. His knowledge and will of creatures add to him only a relation of reason or a predication by extrinsic 57 58 Cajetan, In I ST, q. 22, a. 3, n. 3 (p. 268); Grant, “Aquinas,” 494–95; Lonergan, Grace, 100–08, 323–26, and 370–71; Herbert McCabe, God Matters (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987), 14, cited in Shanley, “Divine Causation,” 122 (but see also 109–11 and 120–21); Shanley, “Eternal Knowledge of the Temporal in Aquinas,” 205-221. See also Levering, Predestination, 78. Lonergan, Grace, 277–81, 285–89, 303–13, and 334–39; Shanley, “Divine Causation,” 109. Shanley warns that we must keep in mind what he, following Robert Sokolowski, calls the “Christian distinction”: that God is radically transcendent to the world such that he and the world are not parts of a larger whole, and that there can, for this reason, be no competition between him and creaturely causality, but rather God is the source of all creaturely causality (“Divine Causation,” 103). For these reasons we must remember that all “models” of the relation between divine and creaturely causality, such as the primary-secondary causality model or the artist-instrument model, are just models and do not capture the radical difference and unique relation between the divine and creaturely orders. One could object that, on this model of God’s transcendence, God’s personal relations to the world are lost; God must be understood on both the Christian view and on a proper metaphysical view, one might contend, as both the transcendent source of all causality and as a particular, personal agent relating in particular ways to different creatures. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 935 denomination. If some creature actually exists, then God is rightly said to know it and will it, but this does not add anything real to God, for nothing can be added to God, since he is the fullness of all being. God explains the created world, but he and his “relations” to the world do not need to be explained.59 View (3): Divine Responsiveness to Free Creatures Another interpretation attributes less to divine causality, and perhaps more to human freedom, than (1), while trying to explain more about how God interacts with creatures than (2). Eleonore Stump, in a view that has antecedents in the work of Francis Sylvester of Ferrara, argues that my will is the efficient cause of its acts without any predetermining premotion to a particular good, though my power of will is efficiently caused by God. God can prompt us to particular good actions, but not so that this prompting is sufficient for the occurrence of the action. God not only determines some creatures but also determines himself to respond to some creaturely acts without being determined by creatures. For example, he causes certain effects because we pray for them. This claim is also made by Hans Urs Von Balthasar, who argues that God, who knows all possible beings, knows in himself the types of all the ways that he could respond to any creaturely act and both knows and responds to creaturely acts in accord with these types, and so realizes his providence. Our cooperation with or resistance to God’s prompting is not determined by him. Rather, we choose either to resist God’s promptings or to allow the good that God wills to have its 59 Lonergan, Grace, 105–06 and 328–33; Grant, “Libertarianism,” 26–33. Late medieval and early modern scholastic versions of this view of how God’s acts add to God are summarized in Suárez, DMet, d. 29, s. 9, nos. 4–6, and Salmanticenses, In I ST, De voluntate Dei, d. 7, dub. 5 (vol. 2, p. 111). Shanley emphasizes that Aquinas does not make claims about the mechanics of the divine motion (“Divine Causation,” 109), contrary to (1) and (5). This part of (2) seems to be in tension with the view of providence put forward by (2), for it now seems that God’s providence over this world consists of just relations of reason between God and this world without anything being in God that would not have been there had he not chosen to have providence over this world. One might object that such a God is less than personal and lacks the perfections of immanent acts of knowing and willing, contrary to Aquinas’s view that every perfection found in creatures is found in God in a more excellent way. Lonergan argues that we explain the world through God’s intellect but we do not and need not explain God’s intellect. However, I contend that we can and should try to give an analysis of God’s action above and beyond that provided by (2). 936 Mark K. Spencer effect in us.60 More than (2), (3) emphasizes God’s responsiveness to and interpersonal relations with free creatures as a particular, personal agent. This view is supported by a plausible reading of some of Aquinas’s texts. Aquinas raises an objection to his view of grace that, if all acts of the will are moved by God, then it would be unjust to reward or punish the creature, since creaturely actions would be primarily God’s. Aquinas responds that to impede or not to impede God’s grace is within human power, though we cannot receive grace without his initiative.61 Likewise, Aquinas claims that, while God has established the order of things such that he only gives certain gifts to those who pray, it is up to us to persevere in prayer and so merit those things.62 If Aquinas held that we could persevere in prayer only if God premoved us to do so, as on view (1), or caused those acts, including their contents, as on view(2), or if he held that we could only resist or not resist by a prior decree from God, as on (1), then these texts would lose their coherence: the objection that rewards and punishments are unjust would return, and the value of persevering in prayer would be an illusion. Contrary to (1) and (2), on view (3), God knows creatures not by his efficient causality, but by his exemplary causality. God, by virtue of having the ideas of all things, “sees” all things. Stump thinks that such a view of God’s knowledge of creatures is mysterious, and it seems to threaten divine impassibility. Still, on her view, it must be endorsed to save created freedom.63 While this brings (3) closer to personalism, it opens the view to criticism from (1) and (2): God’s ideas are not exemplars of creatures until God chooses to make those creatures, so either God’s knowledge depends on his efficient causality or his knowledge is determined by creatures.64 60 61 62 63 64 Stump, Aquinas, 118–22; Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 2, Dramatis Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990), 278. Ferrara holds that divine providence deals with all things according to their mode but the mode by which created freedom brings about its effects is to be open to many objects proposed by the intellect but not to be determined to them (In III SCG, ch. 73). This text is also compatible with (2); cf. Ferrara, In I SCG, ch. 50, no. 3 (vol. 13, p. 146), and ch. 68, no. 3 (13:199). SCG III, ch. 159. ST II-II, q. 83, a. 2. Stump, Aquinas, 182–87; Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity and God’s Knowledge: A Reply to Shanley,” ACPQ 72 (1998): 439–45. See J. L. A. West, “Simplicity, Divine Causality, and Human Freedom: A Critique of Eleonore Stump’s Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 435–37. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 937 Many proponents of (3) affirm that, since all perfections found in creatures are found in God in a more excellent way, and since immanent acts of knowing and willing particular creatures are perfections found in creatures, these must be found in God as well. God eternally but freely has certain intrinsic perfections that he would not have had he chosen to create other creatures or not to create at all; they are necessary in him by necessity of supposing that he has willed this creature, but they are not necessarily in him absolutely. These perfections are identical to him and exist in him in the manner of his simple actuality. God has no necessary relations to creatures, but he takes on these perfections freely; they exist in him eternally by necessity of supposition, not by absolute necessity. To say that God knows or wills some real, contingent creature is to ascribe an intrinsic perfection to him, not just to ascribe to him a relation of reason to that creature, as on (2). This is not to say that God has real relations to creatures or that he is causally determined or perfected by creatures, but to say that God is able to take on free perfections and to say, as Aquinas does, that God is both an agent and actions.65 View (4): Physical Premotion with Possibility of Resistance Another view, popular among some Thomists of the twentieth century, holds with (1) that I act only if God premoves me to some particular good. But I can resist or “shatter” God’s premotion by preferring a lower good to a higher good, in which case I fail to achieve the good effect to which he moves me and I sin. If I do not resist, the premo65 Stump, Aquinas, 130. In the Thomistic tradition, this view is found most developed in Cajetan, In I ST, q. 19, aa. 2–3 (vol. 4, pp. 233–37), but versions of it are also found in Ferrara, In I SCG, ch. 75 (vol. 13: p. 216); ch. 81 (13:225–27); ch. 82 (13:229–30); ch. 83–84 (13:232). Cf. Aquinas, ST I, q. 19, a. 3, ad 5; q. 25, a. 1, ad 3; and In II sent. d. 34, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4. One could object that this would seem to make God both necessary and capable of being different than he is, an apparent contradiction (see Suárez, DMet, d. 29, s. 9, nos. 5–28). In ST I, q. 28, a. 3, ad 1, Aquinas provides, following Aristotle, a version of laws of identity that may overcome this objection. On this text, the law of transitivity of identity only holds if the things being identified are both really and logically identical. Since on Cajetan’s view, God and his free acts of will are really but not logically identical, it can be held without contradiction on an extension of this version of the law of transitivity of identity that the former is necessary but the latter is free. Furthermore, one could argue with Stump that, while we can understand God through concepts of necessary being and of free acting, neither captures what God is fully in himself and so no contradiction can be derived. 938 Mark K. Spencer tion comes to fruition and I achieve the good effect. The premotion is sufficient to produce the good, provided I do not resist, and so all the good in my actions comes from God’s premotion. God’s intention in introducing a premotion is to give me a tendency towards a particular good, not to produce it irresistibly. Contrary to (1), God’s decree permitting the creature to sin is explanatorily subsequent to the creature’s resistance to divine premotion; (4) holds that on (1) God would be responsible for sin. On (4), God cannot determine us to sin, even permissively. But God still has providential rule over all things, since he non-determinatively allows sin only for the sake of greater goods.66 On (4), God knows sinful acts not by a permissive decree but by intuition, through being present to all beings through his eternity. As Francisco Marin-Sola argues, eternity contains time not causally, but as a container contains its contents. By his eternity, God is present to all things, even if he does not cause them, and this does not entail that he is determined by creatures. (4) resolves Stump’s problem of divine vision: God is present even to things that he does not efficiently cause and, so, intuitively knows them, but this presupposes that he does efficiently cause other things on which the things that he does not cause depend. God is still the first cause of all things on this view.67 This opens the possibility, contrary to (1) and (2), of some positive aspects of our acts being caused by us, not by God. M. John Farrelly argues that, when a good act occurs, I complete God’s premotion by 66 67 See Francisco Marin-Sola, Concordia tomista, 839–40, cited in Michael Torre, God’s Permission of Sin: Negative or Conditioned Decree? (Fribourg, CH: Academic Press, 2009), 110–13 and 319; Torre, “Francisco Marin-Sola, OP, and the Origin of Jacques Maritain’s Doctrine on God’s Permission of Evil,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 55–94; Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 87–89 and 92–105; Maritain, God and the Permission of Evil, trans. Joseph Evans (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1966), 38–43, 56–57, 61–62; Maritain, St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette, 1942), 33–34 and 37–38; M. John Farrelly, Predestination, Grace, and Free Will (Westminster: Newman, 1964), 224; William Most, Grace, Predestination, and the Salvific Will of God, ch. 18, www. catholicculture.org. See also Emery, “God and Evil,” 536–41, and Thomas Joseph White, “Von Balthasar and Journet on the Universal Possibility of Salvation and the Twofold Will of God,” Nova et Vetera 3 (2006): 650–54 and 661–64, both citing numerous works of Charles Journet. Francisco Marin-Sola, “A Reply to Some Objections concerning the Thomist System regarding the Divine Motion,” in Michael Torre, Do Not Resist the Spirit’s Call (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 90–94; Torre, Permission, 312–23 and 465–67; Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 86–87, 105–106, and 112; God and the Permission of Evil, 71-72; Most, Grace, ch. 23. See also Osborne, “Premotion,” 622. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 939 not resisting it, which is a positive aspect of the act, and God knows my non-resistance by his presence to it.68 Those who hold (4) tend to agree with the view of (1) as to the way in which God’s acts add to him. This view has been criticized by proponents of (1) and (2). I consider two objections to (4) here that raise difficulties that my view must avoid. Some response to these objections is possible on the basis of the resources provided by (4) itself, but I think this response is inadequate. My own view, however, is meant to resolve these difficulties. First, (4) seems not to preserve divine impassibility, since it seems to make God’s permissive acts of will dependent on creaturely acts.69 A response must insist on the claim that intuitive knowledge is an intentional, not a causal, act (and perhaps merely adds a relation of reason to God). This act attains its object, the real being it knows, without causally affecting it or being causally affected by it. Furthermore, the permissive decree of God subsequent to the resistance of the creature does not imply that God was affected by the creature’s sin, nor that there was a covert permissive decree prior to the sin, but merely that God allows free creatures to resist his premotions at any time. As we saw Balthasar emphasize in considering view (3), God already knows, prior to any actual sin, how he would draw good out of any possible sin, and his allowance of sin is always for the sake of these conditionally predetermined goods.70 Second, it has been argued that non-resistance, since it seems to be something positive, requires God’s premotion if he is the source of all positive features of acts. Resistance must be either a positive act, in which case it would be premoved by God, or a privation, in which case it could only occur as a result of God omitting to move the creature to a positive act.71 Responses have tended to focus on showing how resistance can occur without God’s determination and have conceded that all positive features of acts are due to God’s premotion. Some have argued that God premoves us to our act simultaneously with our resistance to the moral law; since resistance is a privation, 68 69 70 71 Farrelly, Predestination, 252–54. Emery, “God and Evil,” 551–52. See the texts of Charles Journet quoted by Emery in “God and Evil.” Ibid., 551–54; Grant, “Aquinas,” 478–80; Long, “Providence,” 582–99; Levering, Predestination, 160–62; Nicholas, “Permission.” For a critique of (1) and (4), see Nicolas, “La volonté salvifique de Dieu contrariée par la péché,” Revue Thomiste 92 (1992): 177–96. 940 Mark K. Spencer it does not requires a per se cause. God gives me less premotion if he sees my failure, and so my failure is a sort of “material cause” to God’s “formal” premotion.72 But this does not show how I can exercise this causality apart from his prior decrees. View (5): Concurrent Partial Causality and Middle Knowledge Many contemporary philosophers, as well as many post-Tridentine Jesuits, have held the Molinist or Congruist views, of which there are many forms and which followed Aquinas on many, but not all, points. On these views, God causes me to act in such a way that I can choose a number of different acts or not act at all. In this, (5) is closer to a personalist view than the foregoing views. In moving me, God offers me his concurrence, his causality necessary for any act to occur. Whenever I act, I and God are each partial, individually necessary and jointly sufficient causes of the act.73 God has bound himself to concur with creatures according to their natures. If I will well, I will on the basis of God’s efficient but non-determining motion towards good, his offered concurrence, as well as external moral aids, such as good circumstances, that he gives. If I will badly, it is due to my own defects. To be free is to be able to act or not act, or to do one thing or another, even after God has premoved me.74 God knows what I do by knowing conditionally and prior to his act of creation, by his “middle knowledge” of “conditionals of freedom,” what I would choose were I to be in some situation. He knows what I would do because he thoroughly knows everything about the character of the created wills that he creates, and he chooses which situations I will be in and, through decreeing these antecedents to conditionals of freedom, knows which conditionals are fulfilled and is present to my acts, and so intuitively knows them. These condi- 72 73 74 Mark Pontifex, Freedom and Providence (New York: Hawthorn, 1960), 74–80. See also Thomas Crean, “God and the Origin of Moral Evil” (unpublished), and Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 327. This is contrary to Aquinas, who holds that I and God are total, not partial, causes of free acts. Luis de Molina, Liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione, et reprobatione concordia (Antwerp: Antuerpiae Ex officina typographica Ioachimi Trognaesii, 1595), d. 2, 7–8; d. 26, 109–10; Suárez, DMet, d. 24, s. 1, nos. 6–19; s. 2, nos. 7–15; s. 4, nos. 3–8, 15, and 21; Suarez, De concursu, motione, et auxilio Dei, in Opera omnia, vol. 11(Paris: Vives, 1858), I, ch. 8, nos. 8–9 (p. 38); I, ch. 10, nos. 1–2 (p. 42); II, ch. 7, nos. 12 (pp. 143–44); III, ch. 8, nos. 2 (p. 183). Divine Causality and Created Freedom 941 tionals do not necessitate me to act in some way. Through his use of conditionals, God both providentially rules all things and allows created persons to act freely without moving them to particular acts.75 On the question of how God’s acts intending creatures add to God, those who hold (5) are largely in agreement with the view of (1). Yet Suárez contends that, while God could have willed differently than he did without any intrinsic change to him, we must also affirm that God intends his creatures in his acts of willing and knowing in a way that is so eminent that we cannot fully understand it. We describe it as a relation of reason because that is the only category that we have for such a case. But God actually intends really existing creatures in a way higher than any relation of reason. In this, Suárez combines aspects of (1) and (3).76 View (6): Premotion to Universal, not Particular Goods Some, such as Etienne Gilson and Stephen Wang, have argued that God premoves me only toward the universal good, not toward particular goods, and this view has antecedents in Cajetan. This is the most personalist of the six schools of interpretations, and my own view will develop it. As on (5), the initial movement toward the universal good is indifferent to particular goods, and it allows me to move myself to specify the particular goods that I will. As Cajetan puts it, God moves me to my acts by being the universal goal of my acts and by giving me the power of the will. God is the cause of my acts, including my sins, insofar as they have natural esse, but not insofar as they have moral esse. On this view, similar to (2), God still causes all my acts according to their existence and knows my acts through his willing, thereby realizing his providence.77 Aquinas holds that God applies the will to its act 75 76 77 Molina, Concordia, dd. 48 (pp. 202–03) and 49 (pp. 206–08); Suárez, DMet, d. 22, s. 4, nos. 38–39; Suárez, De scientia Dei futurorum contingentium, in Opera omnia vol. 11, II, ch. 7, nos. 15–16 (pp. 369–70), and ch. 8, nos. 5–6 (pp. 372–73). See also Alfred Freddoso’s “God’s General Concurrence with Secondary Causes,” ACPQ 68 (1994): 131–56, and “Suarez on God’s Causal Involvement in Sinful Acts,” in The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Elmar Kremer and Michael Latzer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 10–34. For contemporary versions of Molinism, see the essays in Molinism: The Contemporary Debate, ed. Ken Perszyk (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012). Suárez, DM, d. 30, s. 9, nos. 35–44; s. 14, nos. 21, 26, and 29. This view is open to the same objections as were raised above to (1) and (2). Cajetan, In I ST, q. 105, a. 5, no. 2 (vol. 5, p. 475); In I-II ST, q. 9, a. 6 (vol. 6, p. 82); Etienne Gilson, Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 246; 942 Mark K. Spencer through an intentio, like an artist applies his instrument, and that by a single disposition, the human person is directed to all things.78 On (6), these texts are read as meaning that the person, by a single premotion, is directed toward the universal Good and that this disposition is the intentio whereby the will is applied to its act by God. But, on that basis, the human will can freely move itself to any particular good. God moves my will “according to its condition . . . as having itself indeterminately to many things.”79 This phrase can be read along the lines of (1), but here it is interpreted as referring to God as the transcendent source of my willing who opens me to be able, as Wang says, to “have the possibility of creating a future that has not been predetermined.”80 A problem with (6) is how to hold that I determine my choices but also that God causes them according to their existence without specifying them and knows them without being determined in his knowledge by them. This problem will be resolved by my view. The Structure of Created Freedom According to Thomistic Personalism I now turn to my own view. In this section, I outline my view not as a seventh interpretation of Aquinas, but as a model on which one can hold the personalist thesis in a Thomistic context. In the next section, I argue for its plausibility. On my view, God causes all free creaturely actions by bestowing acts of existence upon them, but he does not determine all of them according to specification or exercise. He “permits” not only the sinful privation in morally evil acts, but also the contents of the free acts of consent, choice, and use and of some acts of intention performed by created persons, inasmuch as these have to do with particular goods. Permission is an act whereby God, knowing what the creature wills, actualizes that act of will by bestowing an act of existence upon it but does not determine its specification or exercise. This permission is directed toward the essences of our acts, which are positive principles of the being of the acts but not complete beings in themselves without acts of existence. While I agree with (2) that God 78 79 80 Stephen Wang, Aquinas and Sartre (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 235–36; Humbertus Degl’Innocenti, “De actione Dei in causas secundas liberas iuxta S. Thomam,” Aquinas 4 (1961): 28–56. SCG III, ch. 92; DP, q. 3, a. 7, ad 7. DM, q. 6, a. un. Wang, Aquinas and Sartre, 236. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 943 is the total cause of all creaturely beings and mover of all creaturely acts, more can be said than (2) says as to how God causes and moves essences.81 For many acts of the will, it is up to free creatures whether they exercise their will and how their will is specified; the essence of creaturely free acts proceeds just from the free creature. All motion depends on prior actuality, and so all motions, including the motion of the created will, must be initiated by God. The will, uniquely among created appetites, is oriented to and sufficiently moved by the universal Good alone. No particular good moves it of necessity, but it can direct itself toward any particular goods, each of which participates in the universal Good. God causes my power of will, which is one of my proper accidents, by causing my substance, from which my powers immediately arise, and by bestowing an act of existence upon it. But it is insufficient for my acting that God cause and conserve my will; he must also actualize this power. He does so, on my view, in accord with (1), by efficiently premoving it to a “primary act” of the will, a simple volition whereby it not only potentially but also actually intends the universal Good. This movement is given to the created will irresistibly.82 As on (5) and (6) but unlike on (1), having given this primary act, there is no need for God then to move my will toward particular goods. God’s premotion to a primary act opens up the possibility of my willing any particular goods. The primary act of the will contains a “super-abundance” of actuality, for by it I really will all Good. On the basis of this actuality, I am capable of reducing myself to a “secondary act” of consent, choice, or use in relation to particular goods (or intention of a particular end other than my last end). In any 81 82 I focus on (2) here because the proponent of (2) might object that there is no motivation to reject (2) in favor of my view. I contend that this view, at least on Lonergan’s and Shanley’s version, is open to the charge of theological determinism: if God applies my will to its acts such that I cannot choose otherwise than as he applies my will, then I contend that I am not genuinely free on such a view. I affirm with (2) that God and his premotions are the basis of my existing and free acting and that God and I are not in “competition.” But we must be more precise about the relation of God and creatures, and (2) does not accomplish this precision in a way in accord with created freedom. With regard to Grant’s version of (2), my view elaborates what it leaves general, how God is the cause of my free acts without determining whether and what I will. “Primary act” does not mean a “first act,” a habit from which proceeds particular acts of the will, but an act on the basis of which further acts can be performed. 944 Mark K. Spencer of these secondary acts, God does not need to move me to its exercise or specification insofar as it is a consent to, choice of, or act of use in relation to some particular means to my last end. But he does move me to its specification and exercise insofar as any secondary act of the will necessarily includes the primary act of the will. Any act of willing a particular good is an act of will only by participation in and inclusion of the act of intending one’s last end, the universal Good. This is because every particular good is a means to the latter and because the natural act of the will, the volition towards the universal Good and one’s last end, is included formally in every other act of the will. The actuality of acts of willing particular goods is drawn from the actuality of the act of willing the universal Good and is less actual than the latter, since the actuality of willing some means includes and is drawn from the actuality of willing an end.83 Given the primary act of the will, I have sufficient actuality to reduce myself to an act with less actuality.84 One reason why (1) held that God must move me to each particular act of the will was that (1) held that each act was a new actuality (over the actualities already had by the person), and so I could not move myself to an act unless that actuality were given to me. But, even though I, not God, determine my secondary acts with respect to exercise and specification, all the actuality of that act comes from God through the primary act that, as a simple volition, precedes all secondary act and, as an intention, is included in each secondary act.85 83 84 85 Cf. John of St. Thomas, In I-II ST, d. 5, a. 2, nos. 20–22 (p. 236), and a. 3 (p. 239). Similar claims could be made regarding the created intellect. God gives the intellect a primary act of cognizing universal Being. On the basis of the actuality given in that primary act, the intellect can be reduced to secondary act by its own agent intellect, to knowing any particular being. Powers that involve transcendental openness to being or goodness, once actually open to universal being or goodness, can reduce themselves to act without further premotion from God, though the actuality is ultimately from God. See ST I, q. 79, a. 4, ad 5; q. 105, a. 3; DV, q. 1, a. 2. There are two variations of my view on which God would not even need to bestow an act of existence upon my secondary acts of will, but rather, the creature alone would be the cause of the whole act. First, some hold that accidents do not have their own act of existence but are just formal actualities of substances, participating in the substance’s act of existence. On that variation, the creature would be the cause of the whole free secondary act without any direct causality from God (cf. In XII Met lec. 1; DV, q. 27, a. 1, ad 8; Brown, Accidental Being, 40; Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 264). In the other variation, one could hold that the secondary act of the will is not a separate act from Divine Causality and Created Freedom 945 Furthermore, since the will can move any power of the person to act by an act of use, which is a secondary act of the will on my view, I can reduce other powers, such as the locomotive powers, to act. Both secondary acts of the will and exterior acts of the person are under a created person’s control with respect to exercise and specification. The evil of sinful acts is still a privation of the order that the act should have toward the moral law on this view. Unlike on (4), God does not normally premove me to particular goods, nor does every positive feature of my acts come directly from God, so problems with the notion of “shattering” premotions are avoided. God is the total cause of my free acts and of their natural being by bestowing acts of existence on them and by giving me the essential actuality in the original act of simple volition towards the universal Good, on the basis of which I can reduce my will to secondary act. God causes in me an act that has a certain essence, since my act depends on God for its existence, but God does not completely specify that essence. Rather, I am the total cause of my acts and of their natural being by efficiently causing them insofar as they are consents to, choices of, or acts of use in relation to particular goods. This is my entitative “part” of the secondary acts of my will, while God’s “part” is the act of existence and the primary act that is included in the secondary act. While, in an act of choice, the intention of the last end and the choice of means are really just one act, the two are in some sense separable insofar as we can have the former without the latter.86 For this reason, God can be the cause the former while I cause the latter, though the two concur to make just one act, where the former is formal to the latter.87 I alone cause my secondary acts’ moral being, whether good or evil, insofar as I determine the proximate object of my act of will. But if I perform a morally good act, the goodness of the act is from God through the primary act of the will. If I perform a morally evil act, the evil is not from God. In both cases, every positive essential 86 87 the primary act, but a “mode” or “intensity” of that act, restricting the former to the act of willing a particular good (cf. Aquinas, In II sent. d. 26, q. 1, a. 2; Quaestio disputata de virtutibus in communi, a. 11; ST I q. 4, a. 3; II-II, q. 24, aa. 4–5; see Brown, Accidental Being, 168–70, 177–80, and 184–85). ST I-II, q. 12, a. 4, resp. and ad 3. My view draws the ideas of different “parts” of free acts being ascribed to creatures and to God from (5), though my view is actually closer to (1) or (2) in this regard than (5) because, in causing these entitative parts of essence and act of existence, both God and creatures do in fact cause the whole act. Cf. ST I-II, q. 13, a. 1. 946 Mark K. Spencer actuality of my act is received from God in the primary act of the will and the essence of my secondary act is a participation in God. Insofar as actuality must be received by potentiality, and so in that sense potentiality is prior to actuality, the essence of my act and the self-motion of my will are prior to God’s bestowal of the act of existence. But God’s bestowal of the act of existence still explains and causes my act in a more prior sense, since actuality is absolutely prior to potentiality. The essence-existence distinction allows us to say how God has transcendent causality, as insisted on by (2). God’s transcendent, sui generis causality appears in that he is the cause of all beings of any kind by bestowing acts of existence on them, and in that this lets beings be in such a way that it does not specify their essence. On this view, God intuitively understands creatures through his formal concepts of creatures and insofar as he is present by his eternity and efficient causality to all beings. As (4) argued, just by virtue of existing, beings “terminate” or “objectively determine” God’s vision without this entailing that God determines their essences or that they causally determine him. As on (3), God’s understanding of creatures is explained by his formal concepts, but also—as on (4)—by his decision to cause beings as existing. By being present to all beings, God understands them in every respect, including those respects he does not directly cause, not through prior conditional knowledge, contrary to (5), but directly and intuitively. His knowledge is simultaneous with the existence of the creature, which he bestows. As we have seen, understanding is an intentional, not a causal, relation. Contrary to (1), God’s knowledge is not in every case causally or explanatorily prior to creatures, so he does not know all creatures through a decree that is causally or explanatorily prior to created beings. Nor is God’s knowledge ever causally posterior to any creature. God simultaneously wills and knows all creatures, but his willing and knowing are terminated in different ways by different kinds of creatures. God still providentially orders all creatures on this view. He eternally knows the type of the order of creatures as it actually is. He causes and moves temporally later creatures in response to earlier ones, and earlier ones to prepare for later ones. He retains his transcendent priority over creatures with respect to being eternal and the efficient cause of all creatures according to their existence, the exemplary cause of all creatures—including of those he does not specify—according to their essence and their final cause. My view Divine Causality and Created Freedom 947 also allows for God moving the will morally by inspiring my reason to consider particular goods and presenting these goods as possible objects of consent or choice to my will and for God infusing habits and gifts into the will. It allows for God giving additional irresistible “primary” acts of the will in addition to the simple volition and intention towards universal Good; God could move my will irresistibly to desire other particular ends on the basis of which I could freely deliberate about means to those ends and consent to and choose or reject some of those means. In each of these ways, God providentially orders free creatures. Still, my view rejects the notion that God has providentially planned out all events, or even all good events, “prior” to creation, if by this it is meant that God efficaciously and sufficiently determines by prior decree the essences of all creatures, including of all free acts. More will be said on my view of God’s providence in the final section of the paper. Some aspects of this view, especially the notion of God’s intuitive cognition and the revisions to the notion of providence, are perhaps prima facie implausible, especially to other Thomists. Still, on any version of Thomism (or on any plausible theism in general), claims are made about God that are prima facie implausible, mysterious, or difficult for creatures to understand, so the presence of such difficulties is not unique to my view. Despite conceptual difficulties, the view outlined here maintains the personalist thesis within a Thomistic metaphysics. The Plausibility of My View of Created Freedom Having seen the basic structure of my view, I here provide some reasons to adopt it, although nothing I say here should be taken to be a full-scale defense, since that is beyond the scope of this article. Regarding the interpretive views, I contend that (1), some versions of (2), (4), and (5) do not allow for genuine creaturely freedom, while my view does.Yet other versions of (2) are too general in their account of God’s causality and can plausibly be taken as not allowing for genuine creaturely freedom, while my view is more explanatory.88 (3) and (6) leave problems unresolved that my view resolves. Some reasons for these claims have already been given, and further reasons will be presented in this section. I agree with (1), (2), (4), and (5) both that necessity of consequence does not entail necessity of consequent and that there is a sense in which it is true that I am free even when determined in 88 On versions of (2) in relation to my view, see note 81, above. 948 Mark K. Spencer my acts by God, even though all things are necessitated by necessity of supposition. In this section, I first distinguish two senses of being able to will otherwise than one wills. I argue that I am free in the sense of my view if and only if I am able to will otherwise than I will in the second of these senses; if I am so able, then there is good reason to adopt my view over the other views.89 I use the term “will” here to cover generically all the various acts of will. Freedom requires having genuine possibilities available to one’s will, and is dependent upon being able to will otherwise than one in fact wills, at least in one’s acts of choice, consent, and use. I conclude this section by offering some evidence that created persons are able to will otherwise than they will in the second sense. In its first sense, “is able to will otherwise than one wills” is rightly said of a created person if and only if that person is not determined to exercise his or her will by his or her nature or by a creature other than the person and his or her act of will is not specified by his or her nature or by a creature other than the person.90 In this sense, one is able to will otherwise than one wills even if one’s act is determined by God with regard to exercise or specification, if God’s willing is sufficient for the occurrence of the act, or if the act’s content is entailed by the antecedent of a conditional divine decree or of a conditional of freedom. The power of the will is “sufficient” by nature to move itself to act, since its nature is to be a power that moves itself to act, but not “efficacious” to move itself to any act without being moved by God.91 The power is, really, incapable on its own of moving itself to act. If we were free only in this sense, then God would determine 89 90 91 A personalist might object that genuine freedom is much more than being able to will otherwise than one wills. More deeply, a personalist might contend, freedom is the quality of the will by which it is creative, self-determining, self-donative, and self-revealing in the service of the Good. See, e.g., Schmitz, “The Solidarity of Personalism,” 142. I do not deny this; indeed, creativity and self-donation are presented below as evidence for the truth of my view of created freedom. But being able to will otherwise than one wills is presented here as a necessary and sufficient condition for being free, rather than as the innermost essence of freedom. (2) would add a further necessary condition for a person being able to do otherwise: that the person is not determined to some act by conditions naturally or temporally prior to the act. On the language of “sufficiency” and “efficacy,” see Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 330–35. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 949 or specify all our acts. This is not enough for genuine freedom: non-determination and non-specification are also required, and these are provided in the second sense of the phrase. On my view, primary acts of the will are free in this first sense of the phrase. In its second sense, “is able to will otherwise than one wills” is rightly said of a created person if and only if that person alone can, even given all other causes or conditions, move him or herself to some exercise of act of will and specify the content of that act. In this sense, one could not be said to be able to will otherwise than one wills if one’s act’s exercise or content is determined by God, whether by his prior or simultaneous willing or by his permission, where either is sufficient for determining the act. Nor could one be said to be able to will otherwise than one wills if a description of one’s act is entailed by the antecedent of a conditional divine decree or of a conditional of freedom. In such cases, the person alone does not determine the content of his or her act. If I am free in this sense, then there is nothing definite that I would do were I placed in some situation and my act cannot result from a prior or simultaneous specifying divine motion and still be free. But in this sense, a description of my act could be entailed by a proposition that states that God or someone else knows my act. This is compatible with my being able to will otherwise in this sense because this entailment does not indicate that my act results from God’s knowledge, whereas in the case of divine decrees or conditionals of freedom, the obtaining of something other than my willing suffices to bring about my act. The problem is not the entailment relation, but the way in which the act comes about.92 On my view, secondary acts of will are free in this second sense of the phrase. In this second sense of the phrase, statements or divine decrees of the form “If God moves or premoves free agent A to secondary act C, then A freely does secondary act C” are always false—contrary to (1) and to some versions of (2) and (4). As we have seen, some versions of (2) contend that, since God is a transcendent cause, he can cause any creature of any sort, even free acts, without competition with that creature with respect to freedom. But I contend that this is so only in the sense that God causes a free act qua being (and qua including a primary act of the will), not in the sense of God causing a 92 Cf. William Lane Craig, God’s Knowledge of Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 125. Craig only criticizes (1) and (2), not (5), which he endorses. 950 Mark K. Spencer free act qua having the content of a secondary act of the will. If God causes the latter, then the creature is not free in the second sense of the phrase. In order for God to be able to cause free creatures, to be the transcendent cause of all creaturely beings, and not compromise genuinely creaturely freedom, it is plausible to hold that he relates to the essence and existence of free creaturely acts in the fine-grained way outlined by my view. Likewise, in this second sense of the phrase, any conditional of the form “If agent A is in situation S, then agent A freely does act C” is false. Since, on view (5), conditionals of this form must be true and knowable prior to the creation of a world for God’s middle knowledge to work, and since, also on (5), being put in situation S ensures that agent A does C, this second sense of the phrase is incompatible with (5). In this (second) sense of the phrase, no situation is a sufficient condition for willing some secondary act.93 This second sense of the phrase is compatible with being strongly influenced by one’s moral and cognitive states, by one’s situation, and by other persons including God. In this second sense of the phrase, the created will— by its nature—is, using the terminology of (1), “sufficient” but not “efficacious” to move itself to act. The primary act of the will renders my will both “sufficient” and “efficacious” to move itself to secondary act. The opening of the will to the transcendental Good given in the primary act of the will opens a “space” for acting on my own.94 I now give three personalistic reasons for holding that we have this second sense of freedom.95 These reasons do not rigorously demonstrate the claim that we have freedom in this sense, but they do motivate the claim by giving experiential or phenomenological evidence for it. Of course, one who denies that we are free in that sense can explain this evidence in other ways, but I contend that this evidence is most plausibly explained by positing that we are free in the second sense of the phrase. First, if I can make a genuine gift of myself to others, then it is most plausible to hold that I am able, in the second sense, to will otherwise than I will.96 My abilities to love, to make moral commitments, and 93 94 95 96 Cf. Levering, Predestination, 116. Cf. Balthasar, Dramatis Personae, 273; Suárez, DMet, d. 22, s. 2, nos. 35–37; s. 4, nos. 10 and 13. For a denial that we have freedom in this sense, see Long, “Providence,” 591 and 601–03. The notion of self-gift is a major theme in the personalists, especially in Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II). For an expression of his view, see Man and Woman Divine Causality and Created Freedom 951 to enter into communions with others, including into covenants and relations with God—in short, my abilities to perform those acts that most lead to personal flourishing—are evidence that it is plausible to hold that I am able to make a genuine gift of myself. If person A makes a gift of himself to person B because B has sufficiently determined that A will do so, then person A has not really made a gift of himself to B, for the making of the gift was not determined by A. For A to make a gift of himself to B requires that A is also genuinely able to not make that gift, regardless of what B does—that is, to make a gift of myself, I must be free in the second sense. The possibility of giving of myself as a gift and the existence of my acts of self-gifts are given to me by God, but it is up to me whether I exercise that possibility. Second, the experience of freedom is closely related to the experience of creativity: to be a created person is to be, in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, a “sub-creator,” one capable of taking the given material of the world and recombining its parts in new ways. This “sub-creativity” certainly presupposes prior gifts of God, such as the gift of oneself, of God’s prior providential ordering of the world, of one’s transcendental orientation to the Good, of the materials on which one exercises one’s creativity, and of natural inspiration. But, just as with other experiences of freedom, one experiences that creativity as exercisable on one’s own initiative.97 If we did not have such creativity under our own control, but the content of all our creative acts and artworks was given by God, then the experience of creativity would be misleading: our apparent creativity and the artworks and artifacts whose essences we seem to create would in fact be God’s works, not ours. The experience of creativity is better explained by an account on which we are first given the power and 97 He Created Them (Boston: Pauline, 2006), 185–88, 197, and 200–02. Cf. Clarke, Person, 73–80; Crosby, Selfhood, 118–19; Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, trans, John Fitzgerald (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 39; Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 401; David L. Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 118–19; and Kenneth Schmitz, “Created Receptivity and the Philosophy of the Concrete,” in The Texture of Being, 127 and 131. J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” in The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays (New York: Harper Collins, 1997). Cf. Marion Montgomery, Making: The Proper Habit of Our Being (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000), 119; and Schindler, Heart of the World, 117–18; Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 372. 952 Mark K. Spencer actuality necessary to think and act and then, in the space opened by that actuality, are capable of exercising that power, rather than by an account on which we are given the whole contents of our creative acts. Furthermore, creativity reveals a possible gap between divine and human causality in its dependence on our ability to constitute beings of reason. The intellect can join together formal concepts such that, though them, the person experiences as an objective concept something that does not exist, at least in the manner that the intellect considers it. This is a thoroughly human cognitive act that God cannot do because it requires the ability to join and divide concepts: God cannot, Aquinas says, even know the enunciations of our mind as enunciated by us.98 The ability to form beings of reason underlies both human creativity and our ability to sin, which involves considering an apparent good as if it were a real good. 99 For both good and evil, human creativity seems to involve specifying acts to some extent apart from the causality of others, including that of God. Third, if God determined the content of every free action, then he either would be causally responsible for sin or would be unjust in punishing sin, or could not know sins—all of which are consequences any Thomist would want to avoid. Suppose that God specifies the content of sins through a permissive act, decree, or omission that is necessary and sufficient for the sin occurring. This does not entail that God caused the sin, for in this case, all God has done is omit giving the aid necessary and sufficient for the creature not to sin. One is only causally or morally responsible for the effects of one’s omissions if one could have, but ought to have not, omitted these actions. Many might think there is nothing God ought to do with respect to creatures, such that God cannot be causally or morally responsible for creaturely sins, even though they are specified by his omissions. However, God not only specifies the sin by omission, but also subsequently punishes sin. But it seems plausible, on a straightforward understanding of justice as giving to each his or her due, that if agent A specifies that agent B performs evil action C such that agent B cannot do otherwise than C in the second sense of “is able to will otherwise than one wills,” then A cannot justly punish B for 98 99 Cf. In I sent. d. 38, q. 1, a. 3; ST I, q. 14, a. 14; DP, q. 1, a. 6; John of St. Thomas, CP, Logica, pt. 2, q. 2, a. 5, concl. 1 (vol. 1, pp. 237–38). Suárez, DM, d. 23, s. 6, n. 19; s. 8, nos. 7–10; John of St. Thomas, CP, Logica, pt. 2, q. 2, a. 1 (vol. 1, p. 217) and a. 4, ad 1 (1:295); In I-II ST, d. 8, a. 1, no. 46 (p. 321). Divine Causality and Created Freedom 953 C. Even if all agent A did was omit giving B the help that B needed to avoid doing C, this is still the case if agent A’s omission of help is sufficient for B doing C. Otherwise, it would be just to punish a person for something that they genuinely could not not do, and this is contrary to the very notion of justice. So God cannot both determine creatures to sin, even if only by omission or predetermining permission, and also punish them—unless he does not know what he is doing when he so omits, which is contrary to his omniscience. The same argument can be run, mutatis mutandis, for good acts and rewards, rather than evil acts and punishments.100 A way to avoid these problems is to adopt the view that the creature specifies the content of his or her good and evil acts and that God knows these acts by intuitive cognition. Objections and Replies Now that we have seen a few reasons to adopt the personalist view, I shall further defend my view and flesh out its details by responding to two objections. Objection 1 Some might object that, if God does not directly move me to my acts, then my acts fall outside the scope of his providence and government and are not subject to his law, for only those things that fall within the power of some mover are governed by that mover. On this objection, my view leads to a replacement of the view that the person is “theonomous,” ruled by God, with the possibly implicitly atheistic view that the person is “autonomous,” ruled only by him or herself. Similarly, it might be objected that, on my view, God’s providence must, in a sense, “wait” for my action; unlike on other views, especially (1), (2), and (5), it is not clear how, on my view, God’s providence is realized. God here seems to become one more cause like creaturely causes, rather than being a cause in an analogous, transcendent sense. If this is the case, my view would collapse into a sort of “open theism” (or “free will theism”) in which God does not know the future until it occurs and so is a being within time, capable of change through learning about creatures’ new actions as time progresses, and so without providential sovereignty 100 Aquinas holds that God governs us both by interior motion and by giving precepts and prohibitions, as well as promising rewards and punishments to induce us to right action (ST I, q. 103, a. 5, ad 2). My view maintains both, so long as the former is understood in the sense of the primary act of the will. 954 Mark K. Spencer over all things. One might think this is especially the case since I deny the possibility of a “middle knowledge” whereby God could have providential control over all things without directly determining free creaturely acts.101 Reply to Objection 1 None of this follows from the claim that God does not directly move me to the exercise or specification of my free secondary acts. On my view, God is the ultimate source of the motion whereby I move myself to act and he is the cause of my substance and free will and the one who orients it towards its end, which is him. My free acts can take place only subsequent to God giving me motion and the moral law, and they only conduce to my fulfillment by conforming to that law, 101 Long, “Providence,” 599–605; Long, Natura Pura (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 37–39. For a good explanation of open or free will theism, see William Hasker, “Providence and Evil: Three Theories,” Religious Studies 28 (1992): 91–105. Similarly, one might object that my view violates the Thomistic principle of predilection: that creatures have the degree of goodness that they have due to God’s degree of love for them; cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 265, drawing on ST I q. 20, a. 3; I-II, q. 9, a. 6; q. 10, a. 4; and In Rom, ch. 9, lec. 2. On this objection, if God does not directly move me to my act, then my goodness, including my acts of faith and charity, will be my own doing, not a result of God’s love for me; the greatest acts in all creation, salvific acts, will be mine, not God’s. One might then think that my view entails Pelagianism; cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 298–99. But this is not so: on my view, all goodness and possibility of good action are first given by God in the primary act of the will, as a result of his love. The possibility of willing the supernatural Good must likewise be given in a new primary act of the will as a result of his love, an actual grace, and my secondary act of the will can only either take that possibility and, on its strength, consent to it or, on my own strength, reject it. Furthermore, each of my secondary acts as existing is given by God. Cf. ST I-II, q. 9, a. 6. Long objects that, if God did not move me to each of my acts, then I would create my acts ex nihilo, which is impossible (“Providence,” 562). But the consequent of his first premise does not follow from the antecedent. On my view, God does not move me to each of my acts, but is their cause. I do not cause my acts ex nihilo, but rather I draw them from the already existing potency of my will in virtue of the “primary act” by which my will is already in act, which is given to me by God. Furthermore, although there is a logical moment in the order of causing when I determine myself to act entirely on my own, every act of the will also relies, in a non-determining way, on prior orientations of the will. The will never acts without being attracted by some good. Furthermore, my fallen or graced state and my habits orient me towards different goods. I only move myself to act presupposing all of this, and so I never create my act ex nihilo. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 955 which God has given me in the orientation of my powers and nature. While there is a sense in which I am “autonomous,” since I and I alone determine my secondary acts, this is only on the basis of a more fundamental “theonomy”: God governs my secondary acts through giving me my primary act and the moral law, by directing the conditions and effects of my acts, and by directing me and my acts toward my end. My freedom is a participation in God’s freedom, not entirely my own, though it is only freedom if I can exercise and specify it. On (1) and some versions of (2), it is unclear why laws are needed at all: on those views, God gives laws but whether I fulfill the law is not ultimately up to me, but rather requires God to give me the acts whereby I consider and fulfill the law. The law seems superfluous on those views, needed only so that God acts in me in accord with the nature he has given me and so, perhaps, is relieved of responsibility for my evil acts. Genuine freedom requires that I be able to consider the law that has been given to me and then either follow it or not on my own self-determination. In response to the claim that, on my view, God’s providence must “wait” for creaturely actions, it must be insisted that God, because of his eternity, wills and knows all creatures at all times simultaneously with respect to the “now” of eternity. Aquinas argues that it is better to call God’s knowledge providentia, seeing all things as present to him in one intuitive glance, rather than praevidentia, seeing things in advance.102 Aquinas’s point is that nothing is future with respect to God, but the point can be expanded: everything that is is simultaneous with and contained by God in his eternal now.103 God causes, intuitively cognizes, responds to, and orders all things and acts at all times “all at once,” without any temporal or explanatory “wait” or passivity on his part. All this ensures his transcendence and that he is not a cause in the same sense as creatures. There is an order among creatures brought about by God, though some elements of this order, such as the essences of free secondary acts (inasmuch as they intend particular goods), are brought about by creatures, and others are brought about by God as a response to or a preparation for those acts. On my view, we should not think of providence as a plan, as it were, mapped out in advance and subsequently implemented. Rather, providence is God’s type of the order of creatures toward their end, as they actually are, considered in itself. This 102 103 In I sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5; DV, a. 2, a. 12. Cf. Pontifex, Freedom and Providence, 68–69. Cf. ST I, q. 14, a. 7, ad 6. 956 Mark K. Spencer idea includes the ideas of all the ways in which God could respond to any creaturely act—as Balthasar emphasized in (3)—and of God’s own actual responses to actual creaturely acts; it is better said to be “simultaneous” with the created order. The following model is one way in which this notion of providence could be developed, though it is beyond the scope of this article to flesh out this development completely. God’s knowing and willing and his realization of providence could be thought of less on the model of practical knowledge and more on a model of knowledge based around love. Lovers, including God, are both appetitively and cognitively ecstatically in, and intimately present to, their beloved.104 When a person loves another, the former intimately knows the latter, wills him or her all goods relevant to him or her and allows him or her to make a free response to that love while desiring that the beloved make this response and knowing what response the beloved makes. Acts of creaturely knowing and willing, along with being present to creatures, are united in such “acts of love.” On the model of such acts, God’s knowing existing creatures and willing their existence should not be separated conceptually, but rather should be considered as one “act of love.” Such an act would not causally determine all aspects of its objects, nor would it involve being causally affected by its objects at all, but would rather cause some features of its objects and just intentionally consider other features. On such a model, God would be intimately involved in and responsive to the world as it actually is, though still without being really related to it, and he still would be eternally and immutably identical to his act. His acts of love would furthermore involve directing all things to their ends in accord with their natures and bestowing acts of existence on all things. His providence would be the idea or type of things as they actually happen. While this is perhaps less formally appealing than other models, I think it makes up for this in its ability to avoid problems in those others.105 104 105 ST I, q. 20, a. 2, ad 1; I-II, q. 28, aa. 2–3. Cf. ST I-II, q. 28, aa. 2–3; q. 20, a. 2, ad 1. For models of knowing and loving in the philosophical literature along these lines, see: knowledge by connaturality as described by Aquinas in ST II-II, q. 45, a. 2; Eleonore Stump’s notion of “Franciscan knowledge” in her Wandering In Darkness (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010), 40–62; the direct, “rustic,” “aesthetic” knowledge of things by direct involvement outlined by John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock in Truth in Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2001), 12–16 (though I do not endorse their claim that Aquinas has this view of God’s knowledge); the Divine Causality and Created Freedom 957 That this model does not entail “open theism” or any view appreciably similar to it, but instead preserves divine eternity, omniscience, and immutability, can be seen by considering my view in the light of the two main views discussed above regarding what God’s acts intending creatures add to God.106 For my view to entail open theism, it would have to entail the denial of the claims that God is eternal, omniscient, and immutable. But my view preserves all these divine attributes, regardless of which view one adopts regarding what God’s acts add to him. Furthermore, for my view to avoid open theism, it need only avoid it on one of these views, since I take no position on which of these views is correct, and I think my view is compatible with either. If the reader thinks that one of these views of God’s acts is incompatible with my view, then the reader should reject that view of God’s acts. On a first view, held in slightly different versions by (1), (2), (4), and (5), God’s acts regarding actual creatures only add to him a changeable relation of reason or extrinsic denomination, though the acts are entitatively identical to God; had God done otherwise than he did, he would be no different intrinsically than he is. Those who hold this view emphasize that it is a great mystery how God could have done otherwise and can know creatures as they are without any intrinsic difference to himself, but that some mystery must be accepted in discussing a simple, transcendent God. On these views, God’s providence does not involve any intrinsic difference to God from what his providence would be like had he created a different world; the only metaphysical difference is a difference in relations of reason between God and creatures. But God still has providence for the world, for, by his independence from and transcendence over the world, he can intend and guide things in the world without any alteration to himself. 106 model of divine presence and self-gift to creatures outlined by John Milbank in “Christianity and Platonism in East and West,” in Divine Essence and Divine Energies, ed. C. Athanosopolous and C. Schneider (Cambridge, UK: James Clarke, 2013), 169, 177, 184, and 199–200; and Gabriel Marcel’s view of love as involving one person interiorily transforming another, as a causally unanalyzable mystery, and as having a certain sort of necessity without being unfree or a matter of chance, in his “On the Ontological Mystery,” in The Philosophy of Existentialism (New York: Citadel, 1984), 20–22. That my view preserves divine eternity and immutablity shows that my view does not include or entail the “simple foreknowledge” view, on which God is omniscient but cannot use his knowledge of future events until they have occurred. 958 Mark K. Spencer On this first view, God’s act of love toward these particular creatures is entitatively identical to the one immutable God and the only thing added to God is a relation of reason to these creatures. God causes and explains all creatures, on this view, but in different ways for different creatures. Given that God has willed this particular world, God eternally and necessarily has all the relations of reason that he has to the creatures of this world by necessity of supposition. No change in creatures, whether brought about by God directly or not, would involve a change in God or an event of learning in God. Rather, a creature is known by God even if he does not cause it, if and only if it exists, God intrinsically has its formal concept, and God is eternally present to it. A creature is willed by God if and only if it receives an act of existence from God and God is identical to an act of will. God providentially orders all things if and only if God has the type of the order of this world eternally in his mind and all actual creatures are dependent on God for their being and for their ordering towards their ends, and he has all the sorts of influence over creatures elaborated above. This providence does not involve God determining or causing the essences of the free secondary acts of created persons. Given what I have said here, there is no reason to think that God would need to cause those essences to retain providence over all things or to avoid open theism. God is an act of love, and that act is secondarily terminated by creatures through relations of reason in a variety of ways (since God is its primary object), including ways where God merely knows but does not directly will some features of some creaturely acts, but rather allows a free response. None of this entails that God is not eternal, is not omniscient, is mutable, or lacks providence over all things. On the contrary, this view depends on God being eternal and immutable and entails that God is omniscient and has providence over all things in all the ways described above. This model of God’s acts as acts of love, on this first view of how his acts add to him, does not entail open theism.107 On a second view, held by (3) and by some who hold (6), God’s acts regarding creatures are free intrinsic perfections of God. They do 107 Some who hold this view hold that one kind of relation of reason is an intentional relation or relations of consciousness such that God can intend creatures, and so be genuinely conscious of them, without any intrinsic change to himself. See, e.g., Norris Clarke, “A New Look at the Immutability of God,” in Explorations in Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press1995),194–46. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 959 not add to him just relations of reason, though when God takes on these free perfections, he also takes on relations of reason to creatures. Free perfections exist in him only by necessity of supposition, not by absolute necessity, and so, despite their identity with God, they could be otherwise than they are. On this second view, God can freely but eternally and immutably take on the acts of love that he does by necessity of supposition. As Eleonore Stump argues, God can eternally determine himself to respond to particular creatures without being determined by creatures or determining them. This occurs, on this view, by eternally being in the right intentional (rather than real) relations of presence and intuitive cognition to all creatures and freely determining himself to take on an act of love toward each creature. God’s providence, on this view, consists of all the acts of love that he has eternally and freely determined himself to have toward particular creatures, along with their creaturely effects. Just as on the first view of God’s acts, so on this view too God’s providence does not require him to have specifying or determinative control over creatures’ secondary acts. None of this entails the denial of divine eternity, omniscience, immutability, or providence over all things.108 So, on neither this view nor the previous view of God’s acts does my view entail open theism or any theory similar to it.109 108 109 I deny that my view involves or entails God having real relations to or real dependence on creatures in any way. But even if my view did involve or entail either of these, that would not entail a denial of these divine attributes or an affirmation of open theism. Rather, God could freely, eternally, and immutably (by necessity of supposition, not absolute necessity) take on these relations, and these relations could be part of God’s providential rule over creatures. On both views of God’s acts, God has the fullness of being, perfection, and goodness apart from his acts that regard creatures. So even if God were really related to creatures through knowing, willing, or loving them, he would still have all the divine attributes denied by open theism and would not learn about the future as it unfolds, due to his eternity. If my view were to entail open theism, then so would any view on which God does not predetermine or specify my sinful acts, such as some versions of (2), as well as (3) through (6). If this is right, then one must choose between open theism and a view on which God determines or specifies sin and, therefore, according to the argument given above, either causes it, is unjustified in punishing it, or is ignorant of it. However, I contend that neither my view nor these other views entail open theism, and so this unhappy choice is avoided. 960 Mark K. Spencer Objection 2 One might object that, if God did not premove free creatures to their acts, then the order of the universe would be due to chance. But this is impossible, so God must per se move creatures to all their acts so that the order of the universe will infallibly emerge.110 Reply to Objection 2 My reply to objection 1 might be an adequate response to this objection as well. Even though God does not premove free creatures to their free acts, he still orders all things toward the Good and thereby causes the order of the universe. But a further, more explanatory response can be given, though one that requires some revision of the Thomistic view of causality and providence. However, this revision should not be thought of as an integral part of my Thomistic personalist view; one could accept everything said so far in this article while rejecting this revision. This revisionary response to the objection is that neither per se nor per accidens causality adequately describes the case of created freedom. Some modern philosophers, including some personalists, have recognized that many communions and relationships among persons emerge neither as the result of direct planning—that is, through per se causality—nor per accidens through the chance confluence of per se free causes. Rather, they arise, as it were, organically, through the contributions of many free actions, resulting in a set of relationships that is not directly planned by any of the members in the sense of a top-down guidance to a predetermined end but that is not a matter of chance.111 To bring about a communion, the participants in the communion must make a gift of themselves to the others, making themselves available to those others for the sake of a further order. An example of this can be seen in the case of a serious conversation, which displays a marvelous order, which is not directly per 110 111 Cf. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Providence, trans. Dom Bede Rose (St Louis: Herder), 21–22. Crosby, Selfhood, 120–23; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. John Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 375–77, 386, and 401–05; F. A. Hayek, “The Results of Human Action but Not of Human Design,” in Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 96–105; Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7th ed. (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1985), 30–39; Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. Manfred Frings and Roger Funk (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 533–51; Wojtyła, Acting Person, 261–71, 279–87, and 294–95. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 961 se willed by any of the parties to the conversation, but which arises as a result of their free cooperation and dialogue. Likewise, a covenantal agreement among free parties is a result of free cooperation of several wills coming together in harmony neither through chance nor through a single party’s plan. The order of these communions arises through what we might call “per communionem causality.” This is like per se causality in that those who bring about a community will that such a community come about, but it is unlike per se causality in that no party can directly will the exact shape of the community. It is like per accidens causality in that it acts through the confluence of many per se causes, but it is unlike per accidens causality in that the confluence is something willed by all of the per se causes. It is also unlike per accidens causality in that, in the latter, the confluence of causes can be directed per se by a higher cause, as when God directs chance events to the perfection of the universe. Per communion causality, by contrast, can only occur through the free self-gift of the participants, which requires that each is able to will otherwise than he or she wills, in the second sense discussed in the previous section (“The Plausibility of My View of Created Freedom”). Finally, per communionem causality is not mere concurrence of two partial causes, as when two people together row a boat, since in concurrence, each per se wills the effect and its content.112 The relation between divine and created freedoms is best understood according to this sort of causality. God causes the power and primary act of the human will, but the effect of this is to open a transcendental space for created freedom to act per se. There is a break in the transitivity of the chain of per se causality here: God is not the direct per se cause of the content of the free act. Rather, in opening the space for created freedom, God sets up the conditions for per communionem causality: the created person can then either cooperate or refuse to cooperate with the goodness that God has bestowed on that free will in the primary act. But God binds himself covanentally, as it were, to actualize (and so cause per se) whatever free act the essence of which is caused per se by the created person; each free act is produced through per communionem causality.113 Together, in each 112 113 Cf. Molina, Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, d. 26. See also Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 245 and 281. This “binding” could be understood according to either of the two views of what God’s acts that intend creatures add to God. On the first view, God eternally and absolutely necessarily has what we might call an act of free 962 Mark K. Spencer free act and in further covenantal orders, God and free creatures bring about a communion among themselves. God still ultimately directs the universe and each creature’s life to its Good, and so has per se providential rule over the universe and over each individual creature. He is the primary cause of all things according to their existence, and creatures are his instrumental causes insofar as they always contribute to his goals. But if God did not create free agents capable of acting on their own and making a gift of themselves, then the good of communions would be lacking to the universe.114 Of course, even if no creature cooperates with God, God can and will bring about the order and good of the universe. But, if my view is correct, he has set up the metaphysical conditions for the order of the universe coming about not just through his per se causality, but also through cooperation with free created causes.115 My attitude toward divine providence must be one of active acceptance, action, and participation in governing the world: if created persons are genuinely free, then they are partly responsible for the order of the universe. All of this should be understood in light of the arguments against the claim that my view entails open theism, which was presented in the reply to the first objection. I have outlined here a way in which one can hold both the personalist thesis and most of Thomistic metaphysics. This was possible in large part because of the Thomistic essence-existence distinction. In holding this synthesis, it is also possible to accept parts of the six historical interpretations of Aquinas. I do not claim to have completely defended this synthesis, but I have provided a number of pieces of evidence for it. My view can rightly be called Thomistic (broadly speaking), I think, despite its departure from Aquinas’s views on causality and providence, inasmuch as my view relies upon the Thomistic metaphysics of essence and existence, the Thomistic 114 115 commitment toward himself primarily, which can also, by God’s free decision, be terminated by free creatures, though this just adds to God a relation of reason. On the second view, God’s act of self-binding toward free creatures is a free perfection intrinsically found in God, which is necessary by supposition. Likewise, everything else said here about God’s relations to free creatures can be understood according to either view of God’s acts. See ST I, q. 20, a. 2, ad 3. See Norris Clarke, “System: A New Category of Being?” in The Creative Retrieval of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 39–47. This notion of per communionem causality is meant to be similar to the notion of synergy found in some of the Greek Fathers. Divine Causality and Created Freedom 963 account of the structure of human acts, and the Thomistic view of the divine attributes and situates itself in relation to the various Thomistic traditions of interpretation. My view can rightly be called personalistic inasmuch as it preserves the fundamental personalist thesis about created freedom. It is my hope that the view outlined in this article will spur further reflection on the nature of created freedom and on theological topics like the nature of grace and predestination in a N&V Thomistic personalist context.116 116 I am grateful to the following people for conversations that aided me in the writing of the article or for comments on earlier drafts: Robert Barry, Chris Brown, Donald Bungum, John Boyle, W. Matthews Grant, Francis Feingold, Larry Feingold, Marsha Feingold, Gloria Frost, Joe Gryniewicz, Stephen Hipp, Mike Hollerich, John Joy, John Kronen, Steven Long, Colleen McCluskey, Pater Rupert Meyer, O.P., Turner Nevitt, Tim Pawl, Mike Rota, J. J. Sanford, Mike Sauter, Eleonore Stump, Christian Washburn, and an anonymous referee. Portions of an earlier draft were presented at a session of the Thomas Aquinas Society at the 2014 Kalamazoo Medieval Congress, and I am also grateful to the attendees for their helpful questions and comments. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 965–982965 Trinitarian Principles of Biblical Inspiration Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. St. Michael’s Abbey Silverado, California The nature of biblical inspiration has been the subject of many learned books and papers. Yet, a subject is understood most profoundly when it is understood in light of its first principles and causes. Since the mystery of the Trinity, as the central mystery of the Christian faith, is the “source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them,”1 this article intends to consider the nature of biblical inspiration in relation to the principal mystery of the Christian Faith, the doctrine of the Trinity. To this end, I will (1) set down some of the basic truths about the doctrine of the Trinity concerning the processions of the divine persons and then (2) their corresponding missions. One of the principal truths about the missions of the divine persons is that, when a divine person is sent, this mission is for the sake of revealing the person from whom he is sent. Since the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, I will argue that the inspiration of the Bible is appropriated to the Holy Spirit as an essential sign 2 of a mission of the Holy Spirit. This will involve (3) a consideration of the doctrine of appropriation in relation to the doctrine of the divine missions. Finally, (4) I shall argue from this mission of the Holy Spirit to certain properties of biblical inspiration, such as the truth of the whole of Scripture and the revelation of Jesus 1 2 Catechism of the Catholic Church (hereafter, CCC), §234. I use the expression “essential sign” in order to communicate the essential connection between the mission of the Holy Spirit and the way in which the inspiration of Scripture signifies this mission. This will become clearer in what follows. 966 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. Christ throughout the whole of Scripture, as a consequence of the different modes of personal action involved in biblical inspiration. The Trinitarian Processions The Catholic Faith teaches that in the one God there exist three really distinct divine persons. Each of these persons is fully divine and identical with the divine essence but really distinct from the others on account of their real relations of origin.3 Everything in them is one when there is no opposition of relationship.4 This distinction of origin in God can be accounted for as follows. In God, there exist both understanding and will. It is a revealed truth that, in the divine act of understanding, there is a first person (one who conceives in the act of understanding) from whom another distinct person proceeds (one who is conceived in the act of understanding). Because the term of an intellectual procession is called a “word,” the one proceeding is appropriately called the Word.5 Since this intelligible procession is by way of likeness (since a concept is a likeness of the thing understood by it), the one proceeding is also called the Son, while the one from whom he proceeds is called the Father. And since following upon every intellectual act there is an act of the will, there is also a procession by way of love in God following upon the procession by way of understanding.6 Hence, a third divine person, really distinct in origin from the Father and the Son, is also found in God. This third person is said to be “spirated,”7 and is appropriately called the Holy Spirit, and also “Love,” on account of the mode of his procession. Because the Father and Son are not opposed to one another insofar as they are spirators, and since whatever is not relatively opposed in God is one, they are one principle of the Holy Spirit.8 In the Latin tradition, this truth is 3 4 5 6 7 8 CCC, §254. Council of Florence (1442); see Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum (hereafter, DS), 36th ed. (Rome: Herder, 1976), no. 1330. John 1:1 (unless otherwise noted, all English translation of Scripture is taken from the Revised Standard Version). This should not be taken to mean that we can demonstrate the two-fold procession in God and, hence, the Trinity of persons without recourse to revelation. But rather, this explanation should be taken as an account that renders more intelligible the revealed fact of the two-fold procession in God. This is the name found in Scripture and tradition used to express the kind of procession that happens by way of love, owing to a certain likeness to the outward effect of breathing forth or sighing that takes place in one who experiences intense love for another. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q. 36, a. 4: “pater et filius in omnibus unum sunt, in quibus non distinguit inter eos relationis oppositio. Trinitarian Principles Of Biblical Inspiration 967 expressed by the formula of the Creed that states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son” (Filioque). Hence, in God, we find two processions: a procession of the Word, or the Son, from the Father, and a procession of the Spirit, or Love, from the Father and the Son, as from a single principle. The Missions of the Persons Of the three persons of the Trinity, two, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are sent into creation. The Father is not sent because he does not proceed from another person. This sending of a divine person in such a way that he begins to exist in a new way in creation is called a mission (from the Latin word missio, meaning “sending”).9 The missions of the divine persons into creation find their archetype in the Trinitarian processions. That is, the missions are carried out in creation in such a way as to manifest the relationships existing within God before creation. This is not merely true of the divine missions, but even of God’s creative act in general. St. Thomas Aquinas laid down this fundamental theological principle beginning with his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: “The eternal processions of the persons are the cause and reason of the whole production of creatures.”10 This principle was reiterated many times by Aquinas throughout his works and is found even more formally as 9 10 Unde, cum in hoc quod est esse principium spiritus sancti, non opponantur relative, sequitur quod pater et filius sunt unum principium spiritus sancti.” (“The Father and the Son are one in all things in which the opposition of relation does not distinguish between them. Hence, since in this thing, namely, being the principle of the Holy Spirit, they are not opposed relatively, it follows that the Father and the Son are one principle of the Holy Spirit”; unless otherwise noted, Latin quotations from Aquinas are taken from www. corpusthomisticum.org and English translations are my own.) ST I, q. 43, a. 1: “Missio igitur divinae personae convenire potest, secundum quod importat ex una parte processionem originis a mittente; et secundum quod importat ex alia parte novum modum existendi in aliquo. Sicut filius dicitur esse missus a patre in mundum, secundum quod incoepit esse in mundo visibiliter per carnem assumptam, et tamen ante in mundo erat.” (“A mission can befit a divine person according as it implies, from one part, a procession of origin from the one sending; and according as it implies, from the other part, a new manner of existing in something. Just as the Son is said to be sent from the Father into the world according as he begins to be in the world visibly through the flesh he assumed, and nevertheless, he was in the world before.”) In I Sent. d. 14, q. 1, a. 1: “Processiones personarum aeternae sunt causa et ratio totius productionis creaturarum.” This principle is not unique to St. Thomas, but is found also, for example, in St. Albert (ibid., d.20, a.3). 968 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. applied to the missions of the divine persons: “Therefore, if ‘sending’ is designated as a principle of a person who is sent, thus, not just any person sends, but only that one to whom it belongs to be a principle of that person. And so the Son is sent only by the Father, while the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son.”11 Consequently, the ultimate purpose of a mission is to reveal the one by whom a divine person is sent. The Scriptures bear clear witness to the fact that the purpose of the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit is to reveal or manifest the persons who send them. Concerning the Son’s mission to reveal the Father, the Gospel of John states: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”12 Later on in the same Gospel it is written: Jesus said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”13 Again, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says: “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”14 Once more, Jesus says “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world.”15 Concerning the mission of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of John states: “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”16 Later on, St. John speaks in even clearer terms: “But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds 11 12 13 14 15 16 ST I, q. 43, a. 8: “Si igitur mittens designetur ut principium personae quae mittitur, sic non quaelibet persona mittit, sed solum illa cui convenit esse principium illius personae. Et sic filius mittitur tantum a patre, spiritus sanctus autem a patre et filio.” John 1:18. John 14:6–9. Luke 10:22. See also John 15:15 and 17:26. John 17:6. John 14:26. Trinitarian Principles Of Biblical Inspiration 969 from the Father, he will bear witness to me.”17 Again, later on in the same Gospel, it states: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”18 The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums all these texts up by simply stating: “The eternal origin of the Holy Spirit is revealed in his mission in time.”19 This origin of the Holy Spirit is, of course, the Father and the Son. This understanding of the divine missions was well known by the early fathers of the Church. St. Irenaeus wrote: “Without the Spirit, it is not possible to see the Word of God, and without the Son, one is not able to approach the Father; for the knowledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of the Son of God is through the Holy Spirit.”20 St. Basil the Great also confirms this view of the divine missions in his work on the Holy Spirit: As the Father is seen in the Son, so the Son is seen in the Spirit. . . . As we speak of worship in the Son because the Son is the image of the Father, so we speak of worship in the Spirit because the Spirit is the manifestation of the divinity of the Lord. Through the light of the Spirit we behold the Son, the splendor of God’s glory; and through the Son, the very stamp of the Father, we are led to him who is the source.21 Aquinas expresses this doctrine concisely where he teaches that, “since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, as proceeding from the Son, who is the Truth of the Father, he inspires truth in those to whom he is sent, just as also the Son in being sent from the Father, makes the Father known.”22 Fr. Gilles Emery sums up the doctrine of the revealing missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit in this way: 17 18 19 20 21 22 John 15:26. John 16:13–15. CCC, §244. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching 7, trans. John Behr (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 44. On the Holy Spirit, ch.26, no. 64 (PG, 32:186). Super ad I Cor 2, lec. 2 (1 Cor 2:10; Marietti no.100). 970 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. First, the mission of the Son reveals the Father, as the mission of the Holy Spirit manifests the Son (and in the Son, the Father himself ): “Everything that is from another manifests that from which it is. Thus, the Son manifests the Father because he is from the Father. And so because the Holy Spirit is from the Son, it is proper to the Spirit to glorify the Son.”23 This is, for St. Thomas, a central feature of the divine missions: the person who eternally proceeds from another, manifests that other.24 It is important to notice here that the mission of the Holy Spirit is to reveal the person of the Word as such, not merely the divine nature of the Word (since this nature is common to all the persons). Therefore, since the person of the Word has both a human and divine nature, it follows that the mission of the Holy Spirit is not only to reveal the Word, but to reveal the Word precisely as incarnate: “Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”25 In the Gospel of John, we see the Spirit making known the incarnate Son of God in a visible mission to John the Baptist: “I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”26 St. Thomas notes that it is fitting that a visible mission of the Spirit manifest the visible mission of the Son: “The Son of God made visible through flesh was to be manifested through the Holy Spirit in the visible form of a dove.”27 He expands upon this insight in treating the visible mission of the Holy Spirit in the Summa Theologiae: “But to the fathers of the Old Testament, it was not fitting that there be a visible mission of the Holy Spirit, since the visible mission of the Son ought to have been accomplished prior to that of the Holy Spirit, since the Holy Spirit manifests the Son, just as the Son manifests the Father.”28 The fact that the mission of the Holy Spirit is ordered to manifesting the incarnate Son will have significant consequences on the doctrine of biblical inspiration. 23 24 25 26 27 28 Super Ioan 16, lec. 4 (John 16:14; Marietti no. 2107). “Theologia and Dispensatio: The Centrality of the Divine Missions in St. Thomas’s Trinitarian Theology,” The Thomist 74, no. 4 (2010): 539. 1 John 4:2. John 1:33–34. Super Ioan 1, lec. 14 (John 1:32; Marietti no.270). ST I, q. 43, a. 7, ad 6. Trinitarian Principles Of Biblical Inspiration 971 The Trinitarian Missions and the Doctrine of Appropriation When giving an account of God’s action in the world, early theologians and fathers of the Church often attributed characteristics that in fact belong to the divinity as such (and hence, to all three persons equally) to one or another divine person on account of a certain likeness or fittingness. Thus, for example, the attribute of being Creator, though belonging to all three persons, was in a special way attributed to the Father, and similarly, wisdom was attributed in a special way to the Son and goodness to the Holy Spirit. For the Father is the principle of the other persons, so that being the first origin of creatures has a special affinity to the Father; and the Son proceeds from the Father by way of intelligible emanation, so that being wisdom has a special affinity to the Son; and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of love, whose object is the good, so that goodness has a special affinity to the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, all three persons of the Trinity are Creator, Wisdom, and Goodness. This practice is called “appropriation” (as if to indicate that what is common is somehow “made proper”), and many examples of appropriation can be found among the writings of orthodox theologians. St. Thomas defines appropriation as “the manifestation of the persons through essential attributes.”29 The reason for this practice of appropriation is that the essential attributes are better known to us than the personal properties and, hence, can lead the mind more effectively to those properties: “The essential attributes are more manifest to us according to reason, than the things proper to the persons, since from creatures (from which we take our knowledge) we are able to arrive with certitude to the knowledge of the essential attributes, but not to the knowledge of the personal properties.”30 While there is a significant likeness between mission and appropriation, it is important to see that the mission of a divine person is not merely a specific case of appropriation. The Son and the Holy Spirit are not said to be sent because they come to be in a new way that bears a special likeness to their personal properties. For example, when the gift of wisdom is conferred or increased in a soul, this is not called a mission of the Son merely because Wisdom is appropriated to the Son. Rather, sending implies not just coming in a certain way, 29 30 ST I, q. 39, a. 7, corp.: “manifestatio personarum per essentialia attributa, appropriatio nominatur.” Ibid.: “Essentialia vero attributa sunt nobis magis manifesta secundum rationem, quam propria personarum, quia ex creaturis, ex quibus cognitionem accipimus, possumus per certitudinem devenire in cognitionem essentialium attributorum; non autem in cognitionem personalium proprietatum.” 972 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. but also being from another: “To send a divine person to someone by invisible grace signifies a new mode of indwelling of the person, and his origin from another.”31 Since every act of the Trinity ad extra (that is, any act of God having an effect terminating in creatures) is always an act of the whole Trinity and not solely of one of the persons, it follows that, each time a person is sent, all three persons of the Trinity come.32 Nevertheless, not all three persons are said to be sent. The coming is common to all three persons, but mission is proper to a person. Therefore, although any act of the Trinity ad extra is always an act of the whole Trinity, the missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are fulfilled in different manners so that their respective missions are not redundant, but complementary. Thus, for example, the mission of the Holy Spirit, while accomplished together with the Father and the Son, will be accomplished in a different way by the Holy Spirit than by the other divine persons. St. Thomas points this out in an interesting text concerning the Paraclete. First he lays out an objection: Because this name “Paraclete” implies an action of the Holy Spirit, therefore, in saying “another Paraclete” he seems to designate otherness of nature: for otherness in operation designates otherness in nature. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is another nature from the Son.33 Since nature is the source of operation, it follows that a different kind of operation is the result of a different nature. St. Thomas responds: It ought to be said that the Holy Spirit is both consoler and advocate, as is likewise the Son. That the Son is an advocate is said in 1 John 2:1: “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ.” That he is a consoler is said in Isa 61:1, “The 31 32 33 ST I, q. 43, a. 5, corp.: “Mitti autem personam divinam ad aliquem per invisibilem gratiam, significat novum modum inhabitandi illius personae, et originem eius ab alia.” See also: ST I, q. 43, a. 1, corp.: “Missio igitur divinae personae convenire potest, secundum quod importat ex una parte processionem originis a mittente; et secundum quod importat ex alia parte novum modum existendi in aliquot.” (“A mission can befit a divine person according as it implies, from one part, a procession of origin from the one sending; and according as it implies, from the other part, a new manner of existing in something.”) See John 14:23. Super Ioan 14, lec. 4 (John 14:16; Marietti no.1912). Trinitarian Principles Of Biblical Inspiration 973 Spirit of the Lord has sent me so that I might give consolation to those weeping in Sion.” Nevertheless, the Son is a consoler and advocate for a different reason than the Holy Spirit, if we accept this by way of appropriation of the persons. For Christ is said to be an advocate inasmuch as, according as he is man, he intercedes for us to the Father; while the Holy Spirit inasmuch as he makes us to ask. Again, the Holy Spirit is called a consoler inasmuch as he is formally Love; but the Son inasmuch as he is the Word. And this in two ways: both through teaching, and inasmuch as the Son himself gives the Holy Spirit, and ignites love in our hearts. In this way, therefore, the term “other” does not designate otherness of nature in the Son and the Holy Spirit, but designates another mode by which each is consoler and advocate.34 This difference in mode of the divine missions shows that the mission of each person is not a mission simply of the divine essence without any indication of the distinction of persons.35 Rather, the personal properties of each person remain intact through their different modes of acting in a mission. The Son acts in the mode of one who is from the Father, and the Holy Spirit acts in the mode of one who is from the Father and the Son. Emery relates the missions of the divine persons with their processions: Ibid. “Quia hoc quod dicitur Paraclitus, importat actionem spiritus sancti: ergo in hoc quod dixit alium Paraclitum, videtur designare alietatem naturae: nam alietas operationis designat alietatem naturae: est ergo spiritus sanctus alterius naturae a filio. Responsio. Dicendum quod spiritus sanctus est consolator et advocatus, et filius similiter. Quod enim filius sit advocatus, dicitur I Io. II, 1: advocatum habemus apud patrem Iesum Christum. Quod consolator, Is. LXI, 1: spiritus domini (...) misit me ut ponerem consolationem lugentibus Sion. Tamen alia et alia ratione est consolator et advocatus, filius et spiritus sanctus, si accipiamus per appropriationem personarum: nam Christus dicitur advocatus inquantum secundum quod homo interpellat pro nobis ad patrem; spiritus autem sanctus inquantum nos postulare facit. Item spiritus sanctus dicitur consolator inquantum est amor formaliter; filius vero inquantum est verbum. Et hoc dupliciter: quia per doctrinam, et inquantum ipse filius dat spiritum sanctum, et incendit amorem in cordibus nostris. Sic ergo ly alium non designat alietatem naturae in filio et spiritu sancto; sed designat alium modum, quo uterque est consolator et advocatus.” 35 Indeed, it would seem to be improper or metaphorical speech to speak of the “sending” of an essence or a nature. One who is sent is one who acts, not just a principle by which one acts, as the name “essence,” or “nature,” would signify in its proper sense. 34 974 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. In his mission, the divine person is manifested; the Son and the Holy Spirit are made known by the gifts that represent them and that are appropriated to them. And when the person is thus manifested, the person is given in his personal relation. The Son is made known in his relation to the Father . . . and similarly, the Holy Spirit is made known in his relation to the Father and to the Son: he is received as the Spirit of the Father and the Son. He concludes further on: The recognition of the proper mode of acting of each divine person gives more value to the doctrine of appropriation, because appropriation of essential features rests precisely on the relative property that characterizes the distinct mode of existence and act of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. By accounting for the personal dimension of the divine action, the proper mode of acting of the persons grounds the Trinitarian structure of the economy.36 Thus, while the appropriation of essential attributes is not to be confused with the personal missions, still the personal missions serve as a basis for justifying the use of appropriation. Biblical Inspiration The utterances of the prophets in the Scripture are repeatedly referred to as the “word of the Lord” or the “word of God,” and the inspiration of the whole Bible is attributed in Scripture to God: “All scripture is inspired by God.”37 But in many places, the person of the Holy Spirit is identified as the agent of inspiration: “No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”38 Certainly, we can find many reasons why the inspiration of Scripture would be appropriated to the Holy Spirit. First of all, there is a special likeness to the property of the Holy Spirit in the activity of inspiration. The very word “inspiration” denotes a kind of breathing, 36 37 38 Gilles Emery, “The Personal Mode of Trinitarian Action in Saint Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 69, no.1 (2005): 77. 2 Tim 3:16. 2 Pet 1:20–21. Cf., among others, Matt 22:43–44, Mark 12:36, and Acts 1:16. Trinitarian Principles Of Biblical Inspiration 975 which is a manner of proceeding appropriate to the Holy Spirit.39 Moreover, it is appropriate to love that it prompts one to action. And so, since the gift of inspiration is not merely a gift of understanding, but also a gift prompting the receiver to speak or write, as if unable to contain himself,40 this gift is rightly appropriated to the Holy Spirit. Finally, it is appropriate to a spirit to animate and give life, and the gift of inspiration is a vivification in the knowledge of divine things. Here, therefore, we have an instance of appropriation. As we noted above, appropriation is the attribution of some activity or quality that, although it is common to all three persons of the Trinity, is attributed to one of the persons preeminently on account of a certain likeness or fittingness. While the inspiration of Scripture is an act of the whole Trinity, it is appropriated in a special way to the Holy Spirit. Yet, it is important to ask how this appropriation of inspiration to the Holy Spirit is more profoundly rooted in a mission of the Holy Spirit. Recall that the mission, or sending, of a divine person implies not just coming in a certain way, but also being from another. Recall also that the ultimate purpose of a mission is to reveal the one by whom a divine person is sent. When these aspects of mission are kept in mind, one can see more profoundly how biblical inspiration is rooted in a mission of the Holy Spirit. First of all, it is proper to the Holy Spirit to reveal the Truth who is the Word by making divine truth known, as St. Thomas says: “He inspires truth in those to whom he is sent.”41 Thus, the act of making divine truth known can be appropriated to the Holy Spirit precisely because it reflects the personal mode of action of the Holy Spirit: acting in such a way as to be from the Son, who is divine Truth, for the purpose of revealing the Son. There is even a more specific way the inspiration of the Scriptures can be attributed to the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit inspires the authors of Scripture not only to know divine truth, but also to commit it to writing so that it becomes outwardly manifest. This bears a likeness to the work of the Spirit by which the person of the Word becomes outwardly manifest in the Incarnation. This analogy governing the 39 40 41 See In I Sent. d. 10, q. 1, a. 4, corp. We see something of this in the instance of the prophet Jeremiah, when he says: “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jer 20:9). The gift of inspiration goads its recipient to make God known and loved, even when this is against his initial inclinations. Super I Cor 2, lec. 2 (1 Cor 2:10; Marietti no.100). 976 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. Scriptures was well known to the fathers of the Church and has been recently reasserted in Dei Verbum: “The words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men.”42 Note that neither the act of inspiration nor the corresponding outward manifestation of this act through preaching or writing is itself identical with the mission of the Holy Spirit. Rather, they are its proper effects, and serve to signify the mission that underlies the prophetic action of the Spirit. The inspiration of Scripture is a special case of the gift of prophecy, which is a charismatic grace for the upbuilding of the Church (gratia gratis data), as opposed to sanctifying grace (gratia gratum faciens). Yet, in special cases, this charismatic grace always comes together with sanctifying grace, as St. Thomas himself argues: The working of miracles shows forth sanctifying grace just as does the gift of prophecy, and other charismatic gifts. Hence, in 1 Corinthians 12, charismatic gifts are named “manifestations of the Spirit.” Therefore, the Holy Spirit is said to be given to the Apostles for the sake of working miracles since sanctifying grace is given to them with a manifesting sign.43 The charism of inspiration, being a proper effect of the mission of the Holy Spirit, can therefore be understood as proper to the Holy Spirit.44 This is more than mere appropriation on account of fittingness: it is an instance of appropriation essentially linked to the mission of the Holy 42 43 44 Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, §13 (Cf. CCC, §101). ST I, q. 43, a. 3, ad 4. “Operatio miraculorum est manifestativa gratiae gratum facientis, sicut et donum prophetiae, et quaelibet gratia gratis data. Unde I Cor. XII, gratia gratis data nominatur manifestatio spiritus. Sic igitur apostolis dicitur datus spiritus sanctus ad operationem miraculorum, quia data est eis gratia gratum faciens cum signo manifestante.” It is reasonable to hold that all the authors of Sacred Scripture received the gift of prophecy in this highest form of inspiration in the same way as the Apostles. Regardless of whether one holds that the charism of inspiration always came with sanctifying grace in the sacred human author, still one must hold that the inspiration itself is intended to be a sign of the grace of Christ, so that a mission of the Holy Spirit is always implied in inspiration. Hence, likewise, the visible missions of the Holy Spirit that were signs of the Spirit’s presence (such as the dove, the cloud or the tongues of fire) were not indications of grace in these creatures, but rather they pointed to the presence of grace in another (see ST I, q. 43, a. 7, ad 6). Trinitarian Principles Of Biblical Inspiration 977 Spirit as sign to thing signified. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, St. Thomas observes: According to Augustine, there is a twofold voice of the Holy Spirit: One by which he speaks interiorly in the heart of man: and this voice only the saints and faithful hear. . . . There is another by which the Holy Spirit speaks in the Scriptures, or through preachers . . . and this voice even those without faith and sinners hear.45 St. Augustine and St. Thomas see an essential connection between the inner voice of the Holy Spirit and the outward voice of the Holy Spirit, with the outward voice ultimately being founded upon the inner voice, even if not all who hear the outward voice hear the inner voice. In another place, Aquinas teaches that this mode of acting by the Holy Spirit is proper to the Holy Spirit: He will speak whatever he will hear, since not only will he teach eternal things, but future ones as well. And therefore there follows: and those things which are to come, he will announce to you. . . . This is proper to the Holy Spirit, as it says in the prophet Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy.” Moreover, the Apostles had the spirit of prophecy.46 The theologian Martin Sabathé observes: “Basing himself on the Prophet Joel, Thomas goes so far as to say that the Spirit has as ‘a property’ to render one able to prophesy.”47 One reason why inspiration is 45 46 47 Super Ioan 3, lec. 2 (John 3:8; Marietti no.453): “Secundum Augustinum, quod spiritus sancti est duplex vox. Una, qua loquitur intus in corde hominis; et hanc audiunt solum fideles et sancti: de qua dicitur in Ps. 84:9: audiam quid loquatur in me dominus deus. Alia est, qua spiritus sanctus loquitur in Scripturis, vel per praedicatores, secundum quod dicitur Matth. X, 20: non enim vos estis qui loquimini, sed spiritus sanctus qui loquitur in vobis. Et hanc audiunt etiam infideles et peccatores.” In Ioan. 16, lec. 3 (John 16:14; Marietti no.2104): “Loquetur ergo quaecumque audiet, quia non solum docebit aeterna, sed futura; et ideo subdit: et quae ventura sunt annuntiabit vobis, quod est proprium divinitatis; Sap. VIII, 8: ‘Signa et monstra scit antequam fiant;’ Is. XLI, 23: ‘Quae ventura sunt annuntiate nobis; et sciemus quia dii estis vos.’ Hoc enim est proprium spiritus sancti; Joel II, 28: ‘Effundam de spiritu meo super omnem carnem, et prophetabunt filii vestri et filiae vestrae.’ Apostoli autem habuerunt spiritum prophetiae.” Martin Sabathé, La Trinité Redemtricé Dans Le Commentaire de L’Évangile de 978 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. proper to the Holy Spirit is that it is proper to the Holy Spirit to be from the Son and to reveal the Son. The fact that the inspiration of the Scriptures is experienced as a coming of the Holy Spirit “from another” is implied in the words of Christ: “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things.”48 St. Thomas teaches more explicitly: “The word of God leads to Christ: for Christ himself is the natural Word of God. Moreover, every word inspired by God is a certain participated likeness of him. Therefore, since participated likeness leads into its principle, it is manifest that every word inspired by God leads to Christ.”49 And so it is essential to biblical inspiration that it be an outward manifestation of the mission of the Holy Spirit. Properties of Biblical Inspiration As a consequence of the essential connection of biblical inspiration with the mission of the Holy Spirit, certain properties of biblical inspiration follow. First of all, since the purpose of the mission of a divine person is to reveal the one from whom he proceeds, and since biblical inspiration is a proper sign of the mission of the Holy Spirit, it follows that biblical inspiration is ordained to revealing the persons from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds, the Father and the Son. More specifically, biblical inspiration is ordained to revealing the Father through the Son. The revelation of the Father and the Son is not incidental to biblical inspiration, but constitutes the ultimate, formal reason for all inspiration.50 The post-synodal exhortation Verbum Domini expresses this Trinitarian economy of revelation in the following passage: 48 49 50 Saint Jean par Thomas D’Aquin (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2011), 414: “Appuyé sur le prophète Joël, Thomas va jusqu’à dire que l’Esprit a pour ‘propre’ de rendre capable de prophétiser” (English translation is my own).The belief that it is somehow proper or appropriate to the Holy Spirit to inspire prophecy is, of course, not novel with St. Thomas. It is reflected in the ancient formulation of the creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit . . . who has spoken through the prophets.” John 14:26 (emphasis added). Super Ioan. 5, lec. 6 (John 5:38; Marietti no.820). “Verbum enim Dei ducit ad Christum: nam ipse Christus est naturale Dei verbum. Omne autem verbum a Deo inspiratum, est quaedam participata similitudo illius. Cum ergo omnis similitudo participata ducat in suum principium, manifestum est quod omne verbum inspiratum a Deo ducit ad Christum.” This is not to say that no statement in Scripture has any other purpose than to reveal the Father or the Son. Rather it means that, whatever else is revealed in Scripture, it is ultimately ordered to the revelation of the Father through revelation of the Son. Trinitarian Principles Of Biblical Inspiration 979 In the Son, “Logos made flesh” (cf. Jn 1:14), who came to accomplish the will of the one who sent him (cf. Jn 4:34), God, the source of revelation, reveals himself as Father and brings to completion the divine pedagogy which had previously been carried out through the words of the prophets and the wondrous deeds accomplished in creation and in the history of his people and all mankind. The revelation of God the Father culminates in the Son’s gift of the Paraclete (cf. Jn 14:16), the Spirit of the Father and the Son, who guides us “into all the truth” ( Jn 16:13).51 And since it is the person of the Son that is revealed through inspiration (not just the divine nature), and since that person assumed a human nature at the Incarnation, it follows that the Scriptures are for the sake of revealing the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ.52 This agrees with the Scriptures themselves (“to him all the prophets bear witness”53) and with the constant teaching of the Church (“All Sacred Scripture is but one book, and the one book is Christ, because all divine Scripture speaks of Christ and is fulfilled in Christ”54). Therefore, an interpretative approach to Sacred Scripture that precludes reference to Christ is not only bound to be fruitless; it is necessarily a distortion of the true meaning and purpose of the text. Following this logic even further, we can see why Dei Verbum teaches that there is an analogy between the incarnate Word and the word of God expressed in Scripture. The text is worth citing again: “The words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men.”55 When the Word was made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, it was the Holy Spirit who was the agent revealing the Word in the flesh he assumed at the Incarnation: “The Holy Spirit 51 52 53 54 55 Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini (2010), §20. Cf. 1 John 1:1–3: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” Acts 10:43. Hugh of St. Victor, De arca Noe 2.8: (PL, 176:642). Cf. CCC, §134. Dei Verbum, §13. Cf. CCC, no.101. 980 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”56 The role of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation was the supreme manifestation of his mission, since it revealed the Word in the most perfect manner. So too, when the mission of the Holy Spirit is manifested in the inspiration of Scripture, the Word is once again made human in the heart of the Church.57 Therefore, every word of Scripture is fully human and fully divine: And so the words of Scripture, while having a single act of existence, can be said to be fully human and fully divine only when the divine intention and the human intention are directed to the same object. Nevertheless, the divine intention does this in a divine way, while the human intention does this in a human way which is completely subordinated to the divine intention. Because of these different modes of intending, the words of Scripture remain both fully divine and fully human.58 Another property of inspired Scripture is that it must express and reveal what is true: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak.”59 The Spirit is the “Spirit of Truth,” meaning the Truth who is the second person of the blessed Trinity. Any kind of false assertion60 in Scripture would serve to reveal neither 56 57 58 59 60 Luke 1:35. See CCC, n.113: “According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture.” Sebastian Walshe, “A Thomistic Defense of the Traditional Understanding of the Presence of Christ in the Old Testament,” The Aquinas Review 14 (2007): 207. In this way, there is verified in the Scriptures what St. Thomas says is true about the sacraments: “The sacraments have a certain conformity to the [Word incarnate] in that the word is joined to a sensible sign, just as in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Word of God is united to sensible flesh” (ST III, q. 60, a. 6). John 16:13. I use the expression “false assertions” here instead of “errors” to avoid ambiguity. For example, grammatical errors (departures from the conventional mode of signifying in a given language) do not necessarily involve false assertions and would therefore not be excluded from Scripture on this account. This is also the manner in which Dei Verbum §11 wished to express the truth of Scripture to make clear the Church’s position that the Scriptures are without error, Trinitarian Principles Of Biblical Inspiration 981 the Son nor the Father through the Son, but rather would lead back to the father of lies. Hence, it would be contrary to the mission of the Holy Spirit if the Scriptures he inspired signified a false assertion.61 This gives a Trinitarian basis for the teaching of Dei Verbum: Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers should be regarded as asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that we must acknowledge the Books of Scripture as teaching firmly, faithfully and without error the truth that God wished to be recorded in the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.62 Yet, not just any truth is revealed in sacred Scripture, but the truth that breathes forth love: “The Son is not sent according to just any perfection of the understanding, but according to the kind of instruction of the understanding by which it bursts forth in the affection of love.”63 Thus, St. Augustine says in On Christian Doctrine: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.”64 This helps to explain the rationale for the final clause of the above-cited text of Dei Verbum: “for the sake of our salvation.” 61 62 63 64 namely by identifying the assertions of the sacred writers with the assertions of the Holy Spirit. It is beyond the scope of this article to enter in a detailed manner into the recent debates about the inerrancy of Scripture. The thrust of this article is to lay out the Trinitarian principles that may be applied to the various discussions. However, for some recent scholarship on this topic the reader may wish to consult: Scott Hahn, “For the Sake of Our Salvation: the Truth and Humility of God’s Word,” Letter & Spirit 6 (2010): 21–45, and Michael Waldstein, “Analogia Verbi: The Truth of Scripture in Rudolph Bultmann and Raymond Brown,” Letter & Spirit 6 (2010): 93–140. Also important for consideration of this topic is the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s (PBC) 2014 document The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture, especially §§63–64. Another excellent contribution to the inerrancy discussion is David Bolin, “The Inerrancy of Scripture,” licentiate thesis, International Theological Institute, 2002. Dei Verbum, §11. ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2: “Non igitur secundum quamlibet perfectionem intellectus mittitur filius, sed secundum talem instructionem intellectus, qua prorumpat in affectum amoris.” St. Augustine, De doctrina christiana 1.36, trans. J. F. Shaw, The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, 1st ser., vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1993), 533. 982 Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. In other words, since every truth asserted by the Holy Spirit begets love, so also the Sacred Scriptures inspired by the Holy Spirit are to be understood in a way that begets love and, in this way, become profitable for salvation. This is not to teach a form of restricted inerrancy or even to say that truths such as historical or philosophical truths are not asserted in sacred Scripture. But if such truths are found asserted in Scripture, it is only insofar as they are apt to promote charity. Hence, such truths are to be understood and interpreted in such a way that they promote charity.65 Conclusion Our conclusion is not novel to the Christian tradition. I have shown that, as a consequence of inspiration, the whole of Scripture is ordained to the revelation of the incarnate Word and that the whole of Scripture must be true. From the beginning, the Church has revered the Sacred Scripture as true in all its parts and as ordained to the revelation of Jesus Christ. Yet, if I have argued well, these perennial truths of the Faith can now be seen as properties flowing from the mission of the Holy Spirit. This sheds a new light upon these properties of inspired Scripture, since they are seen in relation to their most universal cause, the Trinitarian processions. Thus, for example, we see more distinctly why the truths revealed in Scripture must be interpreted in such a way as to build up charity, since this is a reflection of the Word spirating Love. Scripture itself reflects the inner life of God and is, by that very fact, more able to lead those who meditate upon it back to that inner life of the Trinity that is the beatitude of every rational creature. N&V 65 An interesting example of this might be found in the opening chapters of Genesis. Attempts to interpret those chapters as merely scientific assertions about the origin of the universe tend to lead to inconsistent readings of the text itself. For instance, interpreting the seven days as seven revolutions of the sun around the earth does not attend to the fact that the sun is said to be created on the fourth day. Or even interpreting the seven days as seven periods of time in historical order seems problematic, since the plants (which naturally need sunlight) are also created before the sun. On the other hand, an interpretation that focuses upon truths apt to promote charity, such as the purpose for which God made each kind of thing (water and earth for plants, plants and heavenly bodies for animals, and everything else for the sake of man) makes sense of the text as it is written. This interpretive approach that focuses upon truths that promote the right order of charity assists the exegete and prevents him from imposing modern modes of expression upon the sacred authors. This may be what was intended in the PBC’s The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture when it states that “not everything in the Bible is expressed in accordance with the demands of the contemporary sciences” (§63). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 983–992983 Why Hegel? A Reading of Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering, Volume 1 Rodney Howsare DeSales University Center Valley, Pennsylvania Part One: Hegel as Ally In the concluding “Afterword/Foreword” section of the first volume (Hegel) of The Anatomy of Misremembering, while cataloguing the many reasons why one might write a book on Balthasar’s engagement with Hegel, O’Regan states that the main one is that it “serves the crucial role in identifying Balthasarian discourse, as this discourse interlocks with and justifies particular Christian practices and forms of life” (p. 519). In other words, when we look closely at the many ways in which Balthasar’s thought engages Hegel’s, we get a better sense of the precise nature of that thought, and this suggests that Balthasar’s unique theological voice and his justification of “particular Christian practices and forms of life” are to be found precisely in his wrestling with Hegel. At the outset of this article, then, I would like to cast my vote in favor of O’Regan’s notion that Hegel plays a more central role (even if, in the end, a largely negative one) in Balthasar’s thought than is often recognized, and I would also like to gather my comments around two particularly important themes from The Anatomy of Misremembering that bear this out. First, I would like to echo what it is, in general, that Balthasar finds worthwhile in Hegel’s thought as a way of highlighting Balthasar’s unique place in modern and postmodern theology. Second, I would like to specify this by looking at what Balthasar finds helpful and unhelpful in Hegel’s treatment of the God-world relationship, a relationship that is inseparable, in 984 Rodney Howsare both thinkers, from Trinitarian thought.1 This second task will also involve a brief look at Balthasar’s use of Bulgakov (and, behind him, of Maximus and Przywara). In his article “‘Wie kommt der Mensch in die Theologie?’: Heidegger, Hegel, and the Stakes of Onto-Theo-Logy,” D. C. Schindler makes the following point about Heidegger’s (and postmodern theology’s in general) reaction to Hegel’s epistemic hubris: But it is precisely here that we see the potential dangers of the sort of Destruktion of Western thought that comes to expression in the critique of metaphysics as ontotheology, and indeed of any primarily polemical or skeptical stance with respect to the tradition. If one’s first impulse toward a thinker is negative, one tends to oppose oneself dialectically to that thinker, which means that one thereby methodologically eliminates from one’s own position the essential dimension that belongs to the other’s. Rather than dismiss Hegel as the representative of onto-theo-logy and therefore of metaphysics, it is good to give him a fair hearing, in order to understand his reason for insisting on the intelligibility of revelation and on philosophy’s native desire for God.2 While acknowledging the irredeemable dangers of Hegel’s attempt to subsume God under the concept, Schinder goes on to quote Hegel accordingly: Because knowledge of God does not fall within the comprehension of reason, there coheres with this standpoint the view that consciousness of God is rather sought only in the form of feeling. . . . What is rooted only in my feeling is only for me; what is in my feeling is what is mine, but it is not what is his [God’s?], is not independent in and for itself.3 1 2 3 I think it does not misrepresent O’Regan’s book to say that the two central issues between Balthasar and Hegel concern, first, the relationship between God and the world-process and, second, the question of apocalyptic. D. C. Schindler, “‘Wie kommt der Mensch in die Theologie?’: Heidegger, Hegel, and the Stakes of Onto-Theo-Logy,” Communio: International Catholic Review 32 (Winter 2005): 646. Ibid., 649, citing, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 1, Introduction and the Concept of Religion, ed. Peter Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 136–37. Why Hegel? 985 What happens, in such an approach, according to Hegel, is that: Religion . . . shrivels up into simple feeling, into a contentless elevation of spirit into the eternal, etc., of which, however, it knows nothing and has nothing to say, since any cognizing would be a dragging down of the eternal into [reason’s] sphere of finite connections.4 In short, Hegel seems here to have anticipated Nietzsche’s notion that, for all intents and purposes, in modernity, God is as good as dead, and this death must be understood in terms of God’s exclusion from the realm of reason, and thereby from the things of this world of what Hegel calls “finite connections.” In his summary of the things that Balthasar holds in common with Hegel, O’Regan echoes Schindler by stating that “there are few modern religious thinkers who have so resolutely held to the commitment that religious discourse aims at an absolute truth.” He also notes that Balthasar recognizes in Hegel “a thinker who is convinced that truth has a practical dimension, that truth consists at least in part in ‘making true’” (519). If there is anything that I learned from O’Regan’s book—and, in fact, I learned enormously from it—it is that, for all of his eventual criticism of Hegel’s system, perhaps the chief reason for Balthasar’s serious engagement had to do with Hegel’s critique of the Enlightenment amnesia regarding the rational claims of religious discourse. We could go farther and say that Hegel’s insistence on saying something about the whole reminds Balthasar of the what he calls the “youthful confidence” of the Church Fathers and sets both Hegel and the Fathers against the false humility of the Enlightenment, on the one hand (false because exiling God—and the transcendentals—to the realm of the unknown gave modern science absolute dominion over the temporal sphere, both in terms of science and politics), but also, on the other hand, against the sectarian and dualistic mentality of Neoscholasticism. Alas, of course, Hegel’s ability to say something about the whole or to say something universally true came at the price of the singularity of Christ and his Church, and O’Regan does a masterful job of detailing how and why Balthasar thinks that this is a price too great to pay. 4 Ibid., (citing Lectures, 103). 986 Rodney Howsare In the early part of the book, O’Regan makes the interesting point that Balthasar’s genealogy of modernity is more rhetorical than theoretical and that this allows him to be ambiguous regarding Hegel’s genealogical predecessors. Variously, therefore, Balthasar will accuse Hegelian thought of being Neo-Platonist (especially in its Proclean form), apocalyptic (especially in its Joachimist form), and Gnostic (especially in its Valentinian form). O’Regan strengthens and clarifies Balthasar’s charge, first by placing it on more theoretical ground and, second, by therefore suggesting that it is the Valentinian charge that does (and should) take pride of place. This can be done if we see Gnosticism as being regulative in Hegel’s thought in a grammatical rather than an invariantly narrative way. In the end, O’Regan concludes, Balthasar sees Hegel’s greatest threat to lie in the doppelgänger that he places in classical Christianity’s stead. This Valentinian style doppelgänger does not simply replace the Neo-Platonic or apocalyptic charge, but rather gives them a secondary and tertiary place. Part Two: Hegel as Enemy: The God-World Relationship With regard to the question of the God-world relationship and the intimately related question of the relationship between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, each of these three discourses has a deleterious effect on Hegel’s system.They lead to (among other things): 1) a deterministic approach to creation, and therefore to redemption, that compromises the freedom and even the loving nature of God; 2) a relativization of the role of Christ in history, seeing him as simply a sign of God’s universal union (with confusion) with the world, which will be carried out in post-Christic and post-ecclesial ways by the Spirit; 3) a reconfiguration of the biblical narrative such that it is subsumed under a more all-encompassing view of the whole that is arrived at prior to and apart from God’s normative self-revelation in Scripture, Tradition, and the teaching office of the Church; and 4) a deterministic and evolutionary approach to history that not only thoroughly immanentizes the eschaton, but also gets rid of all traces of biblical and traditional apocalyptic. If all of this is true, then it makes Balthasar’s flirtation with Hegel seem particularly problematic. Or, given the enormity and depth of Hegel’s disfigurement—of his misremembering—why risk the engagement? In answering this, we will have to recall what was said earlier: it seemed to Balthasar that both modernity and its alleged opposite, Neoscholastic anti-modernism, were in agreement that the doctrine of the Trinity had little (Neoscholasticism) or nothing Why Hegel? 987 (Modernism) to do with what Hegel called above “the finite sphere of connections.” This had to do with the strange blend of fideism and rationalism in Enlightenment thought—recall that Kant says both that we can’t know God through reason and, then, that we ought to deal with religion in the bounds of reason alone—and, in Balthasar’s view, with the strangely similar juxtaposition of faith and reason, theology and philosophy, and nature and grace in Neoscholastic thought. Balthasar’s appreciation for Hegel, then, can be seen in the latter’s unwillingness to keep the doctrine of the Trinity isolated in the subjective or private realm, on the one hand, or on the side of the strictly theological on the other. But this leads Balthasar to a rather paradoxical relationship both with the thought of Hegel and with the theological tradition in general. On the one hand, as I said above, Balthasar enlists Hegel and the Fathers against the dualism of the moderns and Neoscholastics. On the other hand, as we shall see, Balthasar’s engagement with Hegel leads him to a view of the analogy of being that calls into question, at times, even the Neo-Platonic approach of the Fathers. This leads to the rather startling insight, which I gleaned while reading this book, that it is precisely Balthasar’s willingness to seriously engage Hegel that makes him less Hegelian in some ways—pardon the anachronism—than the Fathers, Scholastics, and Neoscholastics. In the short work entitled Love Alone is Credible, Balthasar says the following: The transition that fulfilled the philosophical universe in the Christian-theological one, granted to reason, enlightened and strengthened by grace, the highest possible vision of unity. Because of this unity, the question whether revelation introduced a special principle of unity was all but left behind.5 We should also recall that, in his early essay “Patristics, Scholastics, and Ourselves,” Balthasar concludes that the greatest danger even to Scholasticism and Thomas Aquinas was not the influence of Aristotle, but the residual effects of Platonism and the exitus-reditus schema. Consider the following, rather astonishing claim of Balthasar in this regard: 5 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, trans. D. C. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 18. 988 Rodney Howsare However strange it may sound, the actual dangers of Scholasticism do not come from Aristotlianism . . . but from the residue of Platonism that had still not yet been overcome. That is why, to name the most important and controversial point, the material separation of nature and supernature . . . was never fully realized, even in Thomas. For Thomas still knew nothing of a natural final goal of man that pertains to the nature of the creature as such. . . . So he had to come to the conception of a “natural longing” of the creature for the supernatural vision of God. But this then entails, of course, the danger of interpreting the potential oboedientialis as a potential naturalis, which corresponds to the patristic danger of looking at the pneuma as an essential component of man.6 If we combine these two insights—first, that the Fathers were so inclined to accept the vision of unity provided by a perhaps overly hasty synthesis of Platonism and Christianity that they did not look for a distinctively Christian principle of unity (which, for Balthasar, is going to be interpersonal love), and second, that even the Scholastics, with the help of Aristotle, did not fully overcome the tendency simply to syncretize the Christian doctrine of creation, fall, and redemption with the exitus-reditus schema of the Greeks—and we then think of all of this in the light of Balthasar’s engagement with Hegel, we can begin to get a glimpse of the former’s unique understanding of the relationship between God and the world. And this is just another way of agreeing with O’Regan’s contention that a close analysis of the Balthasar-Hegel relationship is indispensable to a proper understanding of Balthasar himself. Here is how O’Regan addresses the issue of Neo-Platonism just outlined: In the context of Hegel’s work one discovers the libido dominandi at the heart of a Neoplatonism of a philosophy of spirit, and finds the noetic ambition at the core of the urge for reality conceived as a totality. For the ambition to penetrate reality thoroughly compromises the analogia entis and collapses the 6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Fathers, the Scholastics, and Ourselves” (trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J.), Communio: International Catholic Review 24.2 (Summer 1997): 384. I realize that, especially in the light of recent scholarship, this is a controversial claim. My point here is not to defend it, but simply to point out its implications for Balthasar’s own understanding of the relationship between God and the world. Why Hegel? 989 creator-created distinction. Even when the conceptual apparatus of negative theology is in full display . . . the tendency of both of these lines is towards the abolition of all mystery, whose excess dictates its transcendence of the metaphysical horizon. (77–8) He continues: Balthasar’s point is that if Christian Neoplatonists such as Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus, and Bonaventure are to be judged as theologically sound, then two conditions must be satisfied. First, however obvious the presence of Proclus, both from an architectonic and symbolic point of view, the mode of Neoplatonism in all the above figures is in principle more nearly Plotinian than Proclean, since these discourses do not as a matter of fact validate the emanationist dynamic that leads to a collapse of the divine into the world, and the elevation of world into the divine. Second, in the final analysis any tendency towards identity in these Christian Neoplatonic discourses is resisted by recalling the biblical view of divine freedom and goodness that grounds the analogy between God and the world. (81) Later in the book, we find this same balancing act—between, on the one hand, a proper respect for the full scope of reason and nature (everything that can be captured in the Greek understanding of eros) and, on the other, a proper respect for the freedom and transcendence of God—in Balthasar’s engagement with the Christian East. In a fascinating section on Balthasar and Bulgakov, O’Regan shows us that the Russian thinker provided a model for Balthasar of how to have a thoroughly Trinitarian metaphysic without, for all of that, having to accept Hegel’s failure to distinguish the divine acts of begetting and making. And, as is intimated at several points throughout O’Regan’s book, it is Przywara’s retrieval of the classical doctrine of analogy, itself worked out in a sustained engagement with Hegel, that prevents Balthasar’s use of Bulgakov from proceeding in an overly Hegelian or sophiological direction. We should take a closer look at this. In the beginning of his section on virtual fathers, O’Regan notes the reserve that Balthasar shows towards Bulgakov in his book on Maximus the Confessor. He states: 990 Rodney Howsare Sophiology is, for Balthasar, a neuralgic point in his Maximus book. . . . It threatens to disturb the ontological difference between the creator and creature, the unsurpassability of Christ, and the very notion of the triune God by insinuating a fourth hypostases. (303) As Balthasar puts his concerns: A certain ineradicable mistrust for an autonomous, objective nature, which exists prior to all participation in grace and which is not only spiritual but corporeal—a mistrust for a fundamental analogy between God and the creature—has always characterized Eastern thought and has led it to feel primordially related to all forms of self-transcendence, absorption, release of the finite into the finite.7 And yet Maximus, he tells us, “made it his project, not only to escape from these Eastern patterns through turning toward the personal thinking of the West, but also to illumine Eastern thought as a whole, in a redemptive way, with a personal Christology.”8 Nevertheless, O’Regan points out, by the time of the trilogy, Bulgakov will be read as an ally, with Maximus, of those who would think “radically of the communication of properties” (307). In particular, Bulgakov will be enlisted for two crucial contributions to Balthasar’s thought: first for the “meta-symbols” of ur-kenosis, supertime, and super-space, and second for his notion that on Holy Saturday Christ is dead among the dead and triumphant only in defeat. For our present purposes, I am more interested in the first of these things, and in ur-kenosis in particular. The criticism made above of the Patristic and Scholastic tendency to find the union between nature and grace, the world and God, reason and revelation, and so on, in a sometimes overly hasty synthesis of Christianity and Platonism, rather than wondering if Christianity does not provide its own criterion, could sound like something that a Luther and a Barth would say. But then why is there all of this trucking with Hegel and a quasi-Hegelian (according to some) thinker such as Bulgakov? Of the many things that I learned while reading O’Regan’s book, one of them is how better to answer that question. On the one 7 8 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 190. Ibid. Why Hegel? 991 hand, yes, Balthasar wants to draw a sharper line. But he does this, O’Regan shows us, without going the route of dialectical opposition. Rather, Balthasar shows that the tradition has the resources to address all of the proper concerns of Hegel without going down his, finally, Gnostic path. Such an approach is bound to be paradoxical, and this is the “on the other hand”: it turns out that the god of the Greek philosophers (and perhaps in some way, therefore, the most high god of the Gnostics) is at once too removed and too close at the same time—too removed because too rarified and impersonal and too close because everything that exists does so only as a necessary emanation of God’s being. Hegel tries to remedy the “too remote” part, but he can do so only by eliminating the god-ness of God and the worldliness of the world. What Balthasar has learned in his engagement with Hegel, then, is that it is not enough simply to mimic Greek theology in our natural theology while adding God’s nature as love to the second, theological story of our building. In the light of the Trinity and Christology, we have to think the relationship between God and the world from the ground up. One way of saying this is to say that, while Hegel resolves the problem of an extrinsic God by dragging him down to the level of the world, Balthasar resolves the problem by situating the difference between God and the world within the positive difference of the Trinitarian persons and by understanding the difference-inunity of the world and God in the light of the difference-in-unity of the natures in Christ. This allows Balthasar to speak of a real relation between God and the world without going down the Hegelian/ Valentinian path, and Bulgakov’s ur-kenosis is critical in all of this. As O’Regan puts it: One implication to which Balthasar draws attention as having particular pertinence to the issue of divine passibility is that suffering in Christ is not without remainder a function of Christ’s human nature. Or more technically speaking, Christ’s suffering is enhypostatic. (306) But notice how speaking this way cuts both ways, both against Hegelian and traditionalist conclusions—against Hegel because the sacrifice or emptying that goes on in the Trinity stems from the fullness of love, and not from any sort of lack or potentiality. Nevertheless, and this time against a hyper-traditionalism, “recognition of the enhypostatic character of suffering would put a block on complacent assertions of 992 Rodney Howsare divine impassibility, which sometimes function within a metaphysical economy in which impassibility is simply the binary opposite of passibility, the content of which is provided by the observation of the world of change” (307). To this point, it may seem as if I am placing Balthasar somewhere between traditional and Hegelian thought, and this could mislead on two levels: first, it could give the impression that critics of Balthasar who call him quasi-Hegelian are correct; and second, it could give the impression that O’Regan’s book is primarily about showing us the ways in which Balthasar’s thought is Hegelian. In fact, however, it is the case, first, that Balthasar’s theology is much more interested in providing an alternative to Hegel than in baptizing him, and second, O’Regan’s book is much more about Balthasar’s differences with Hegel than their similarities. Part of the misleading nature of what I have written above can be attributed to the fact that I have chosen to focus on a particular question: the relationship between God and the world, and therefore the question of God’s impassibility. On the other major issue in the book, that of apocalyptic, Balthasar’s differences with Hegel are more obvious. But even regarding the God-world relationship, I would want to concur with O’Regan that the differences far outweigh the similarities, and I will close with a final note about this assertion. I would like to suggest—and I think this is also the view of the The Anatomy of Misremembering—that Balthasar’s engagement with Hegel did not simply make him want to do greater justice to the question of God’s relationship with the world and its suffering (and therefore to appropriate Bulgakov’s notion of ur-kenosis); it also alerted Balthasar to the dangers inherent in trying to work out the God-world relationship in the context of a philosophical system that has not yet been properly disciplined by the content of revelation, and therefore by the doctrine of creation, and therefore by the analogia entis. In short, Balthasar’s attempt to do greater justice to the proper autonomy of the created order stems precisely from his desire to correct Hegel. And on this particular issue, I would like to suggest that it is Maximus, even more than Irenaeus, who provides Balthasar with a non-dualistic model of maintaining the proper distinctions between nature and grace, God and the world, and the two natures in Christ. Indeed, I will close by suggesting that it is Maximus and Przywara, both of whom play formidable roles in O’Regan’s book, that allow Balthasar to rethink God’s immutability in Bulgakovian ways without having N&V to subscribe to the doppelgänger that is the Hegelian god. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 993–1001993 Hegel and Christian Theology Guy Mansini, O.S.B. Saint Meinrad School of Theology St. Meinrad, Indiana Several years ago , Mark Jordan pointed out what a great mistake it is to think that contemporary theologians are to do what patristic and medieval theologians did by bending regnant philosophical discourse to dogmatic expression and systematic understanding of the mysteries of faith.1 As Augustine employed Plato, and Thomas Aquinas Aristotle, so the sapient theologian should take up Kant, as Georg Hermes did, or Schelling, as Johann Sebastian Drey did, and fashion a contemporary theological expression and understanding suited for the culture formed, or at least expressed, in part by these same philosophers.2 Jordan argued that this is a great mistake. Plato and Aristotle, innocent of the Gospel as they were, took up no position relative to its truth, for or against. Their metaphysical projects were underdetermined by the questions that Trinity, creation, Incarnation, and the end of man in the resurrection and beatifying vision pose. They remained plastic to the form of the gospel, which left its imprint across the board on the intussuscepted thought of Plato and Plotinus, of Aristotle and the Stoa. Post-Christian, modern philosophers, however, define themselves over against the Gospel, over against the doctrines of the Church. Their definition, what is essential to them, consists in their 1 2 Mark Jordan, “The Terms of the Debate over ‘Christian Philosophy,’” Communio 12 (1985): 293–311. See Gerald McCool, S.J., Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1977). 994 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. anti-Christian character. If we adjust Enlightenment reason in such a way as to admit the truth of the Gospel, a truth beyond what reason can anticipate or demonstrate or judge but can only receive, if we adjust Enlightenment strictures on the power of God and the closure of the world so that miracles are possible, if we adjust Enlightenment standards of evidence so that miracles can reasonably be recognized, or if we adjust Enlightenment morality so that the love of friendship is not reduced to a higher concupiscence, then what is left? A sort of positivism that cannot even recognize itself as such and thinks it is the default position of unprejudiced reason. Nothing theologically useful is left. But this leaves out the post-Enlightenment Idealists, who mourned the passing of God even as the Romantics did that of the gods, and who regretted the wounds inflicted on European culture by those who ignored the wounds of Christ. Was there not a better way than the alternatives between the Reformation or Baroque versions of Christianity, on the one hand, and religion within reason’s limits, on the other? If, contrary to Kant, what we think is the real, and if how we think it, even in thinking its contraries, is to think how it is in itself, and if, contrary to Aristotle, potency is prior to act, then we can have a god who makes himself three in making the world, comes to consciousness in the logos of man, and pours out his spirit in the German state. Further, what the art of Europe expressed plastically and musically and dramatically, what the peasant celebrated in church and chapel, is stated in its complete and epic truth in the university tradition of that same German state, of which Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, by his own estimation, is the crown and completion. Should so heterodox a Hegel be invited to the conversation of Christian theology? 3 But he has already been invited. Part 3 of the first volume of Cyril O’Regan’s Anatomy details Hans Urs von Balthasar’s assessment of Jürgen Moltmann’s heavily Hegelianized Christology and Trinitarian theology.4 And Moltmann is not alone. In addition, Balthasar’s own list includes K. Barth, E. Jüngel, W. Pannenberg, K. Rahner, H. Küng, C. Bruaire, A. Chapelle, E. Brito, A. Léonard, and 3 4 Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994). Cyril O’Regan, The Anatomy of Misremembering: von Balthasar’s Response to Philosophical Modernity, vol. 1, Hegel (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroad, 2014). In the present article, numbers in parentheses without label or identification are page numbers in this work. Hegel and Christian Theology 995 G. Fessard—these are “unthinkable apart from Hegel.”5 O’Regan delimits the task thus: Balthasar’s engagement of modern philosophy must, on the one hand, recollect the Christian theological tradition more comprehensively and persuasively than Hegel’s remembrance of it and, on the other, show his deformation of it. For the first, Balthasar must be a more encyclopedic reader than Hegel. For the second, if the deformations and deflections of Hegel’s divine narrative fail to measure up to his own standards of discourse, where drama is privileged above epic, then Balthasar’s response to the Hegelian form of philosophical modernity must be reckoned successful. Just because Hegel’s appropriation of Christian discourse is superficially much more complete and evident than that of Enlightenment rationalism, cleaning him up for theological use takes lots of scrubbing and lots of bleach. This is the issue of Part 2 of volume 1 of the Anatomy, “Gloriously Awry: Hegel’s Epic Deviation.” The exposition of how Balthasar disinfects Hegel’s Christology in chapter 3 weighs up the pluses and minuses. Balthasar thinks Hegel is to be praised (1) for understanding Christ as the fullness of revelation, where Incarnation completes creation, (2) for recognizing the cross as the pivot of divine initiative, (3) for seeing the career of Jesus against the background of his relation to the Father, and (4) for seeing Christ in relation to both the Church and the eschaton (186). But none of these issues as developed by Hegel can be given a clean bill of theological health. As to the first, if Christ completes creation, the two are nevertheless not to be conflated as they are in Hegel (186–87). Second, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday largely disappear in Hegel’s exclusive focus on Good Friday, and his notion of sin is heterodox (188–90). As to the third, Hegel proposes an autonomous, rather than obedient, Christ and wanders into monophysitism (193–94). This will produce an essentialist understanding of kenosis in Hegel, rather than one that depends on the distinction between the form of God and the form of man (194). Finally, the Spirit displaces Christ for Hegel (195), and Hegel appropriates the theology of history of Joachim of Fiore (197). In matters Trinitarian, Hegel is reproved for modalism (206), and there is to be no recognized divine process whose issue, through the economy, is the coming into being of divine personality and consciousness itself (cf. 231). Though God acts in any theo-drama, 5 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 3, The Spirit of Truth, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 40. 996 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. the history of salvation must be distinguished from the history of God (211). Further, Balthasar defends the tradition of excluding suffering from God against the Hegel-inspired Moltmann (222). And, contrary to Hegel, change and potentiality are to be altogether denied of God (225). Nonetheless, O’Regan writes, “influentially, and intentionally, the Hegelian tradition . . . disturbs the classical tradition’s picture of an uninvolved and essentially impassible divine” (221). This influence extends to Balthasar, who can applaud Hegel’s reproof of what O’Regan styles the theological tradition’s “rote repetition of divine immutability and impassibility,” which fails to engage the God disclosed in Scripture (229; see also 262). Schelling is similarly praised for opening out Christianity “beyond petrified orthodoxy” in finding a way to speak of “dynamism” in God “without reducing God to time” (236). So, while Balthasar expressly denies change and potentiality in God, he recognizes a divine responsiveness to the world, a divine vulnerability to the world, and an enrichment of God through the cooperation of the created dramatis personae who share the stage with him in the drama of salvation (225). If suffering cannot be univocally attributed to God, O’Regan reports, Balthasar still recognizes a divine suffering in a different way than in creatures: there is vulnerability “to outside influence,” but not in the same way as creatures are vulnerable to influence from outside themselves (225). Given such conditions on the attribution of impassibility to God, O’Regan concludes that “impassibility” functions as a sort of “marker” of the incapacity of our language or as a “required protocol of Christian speech about God” (225). We have to observe the formalities of Christian tradition, we have to say God is impassible—but then, we cannot say what we mean, we do not mean absolutely what we say, and we have to accommodate our initial saying to the richness of biblical language of God and the Cross. Thus, Hegel was not “totally wrong in suggesting a more dynamic view of God nor in his critique of the metaphysical tradition” (226). If we attribute suffering to God, then, unlike Hegel, we will recognize that this is analogous (226). And “strictly speaking,” we shall admit that “we are no longer dealing even with analogy but with symbol” (227). Second-order symbols will be invoked such as “super-kenosis,” “super-time,” and “super-space” with which to speak of God (228). Such terms “suggest something like an explanatory function, while denying it” (228) and such meta-symbolic names are also “unnames” (228). Both Hegel and Christian Theology 997 suffering and immutability, then, will be “symbols” relative to God (229), where we let “the linear nature of human logic” be challenged (229) and acknowledge that the Christian meaning of such symbols “cannot be tied exclusively to Greek metaphysics and its regime of binary oppositions of an ontological sort” (229). If O’Regan is accurately reporting Balthasar here (and he is), then, is Balthasar keeping our heads above water or drowning us? Or to switch metaphors, such a strategy seems to move the ball down the field but really does not. All the forward passes from literally meant names to symbol are cognitively incomplete. We are still back at our own ten-yard line. A kenosis or emptying of God prior to the kenosis of the Incarnation has been mentioned. Here we touch not just “the centre of Balthasar’s theology,” as Graham Ward says, but what for Balthasar is “the condition for the possibility of theo-logic itself and its very form.”6 This description or inflection of love, “kenosis,” presides over Balthasar’s theology from Trinity to creation, from covenant to Incarnation, and to Church and Mariology and the form of Christian life. Now, there are “Hegelian anticipations” of the foundational Trinitarian “ur-kenosis,” and O’Regan thinks it unlikely Balthasar is not aware of them (229). In The Phenomenology of Mind, for instance, the Word is the self-emptying of essential Being,7 and at the imaginative level, “the Divine Being is reconciled with its existence through an event—the event of God’s emptying Himself of His Divine Being through His factual Incarnation and His Death.”8 The emptying or kenosis of the Son in Philippians 2:7, we recall, was understood by the Fathers to be the very same thing as taking the form of humanity, the assumption of his humanity from Mary.9 Human nature is not as full as divine nature. So, for a divine agent to take it up as the instrument of his agency means a relative emptying. Being found in human form, he could then humble himself, according to the next verse, becoming obedient unto death. The humility and obedience of Christ are evidently exercised through his humanity, and there is no mention of them prior to the assumption of 6 7 8 9 Graham Ward, “Kenosis: Death, Discourse and Resurrection,” in Balthasar at the End of Modernity (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 40. G.W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 767. Ibid., 780. See Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, ed. Mark J. Edwards, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament 8 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), commentary on Phil 2:7a. 998 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. the form of humanity. Their instantiation in Christ presupposes the assumed created and human will of Christ, and they enact properly human virtues of an upright religious stance before God.10 For Balthasar, however and as mentioned, the kenosis of the Incarnation presupposes an eternal kenosis, something included in the procession of the Son from the Father, something included in the Father’s begetting his Son. [T]he Father’s being passes over, without remainder, to the begotten Son; and it would be a mistake to suggest that he, the Father, becomes or develops as a result of this self-giving [Hegel’s mistake]. . . . This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “superdeath” that is a component of all love.11 So, the kenosis of the Incarnation is founded as a more radical, Trinitarian kenosis, and in fact a double kenosis, that by which the Father surrenders himself to the Son and that by which the Son responds in self-surrender to the Father, which response itself is mediated by the self-giving of the Spirit. As the kenosis of the Incarnation ends in death, so the Trinitarian ones are a kind of “super-death.” As the kenosis of the Incarnation enables a human obedience, so the eternal kenosis of the Son, responding to the Father, founds an eternal obedience. Balthasar quotes Adrienne von Speyr: “The Son prefers nothing to doing the Father’s will, for even in being begotten he carries it out.”12 Such an account of the Incarnation, a truly Trinitarian account and no simple minded transposition of Hegel, however, should be rejected. We might want to admire the systematic breadth Balthasar achieves under the category of kenosis. On the other hand, it takes a word used to speak originally and distinctly of the Incarnation and wastes its capacity so as to mark that event by finding intra-Trinitarian and ecclesial analogues for it. Not that that is its only theological use in 10 11 12 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, qq. 104 (on obedience) and 161 (on humility). Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 5, The Last Act (hereafter, Theo-Drama V), trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 84. Ibid., 87; see also 123. Hegel and Christian Theology 999 the New Testament. St. Paul warns the Colossians against “philosophy and empty [kenos] deceit” (Col 2:8), and to the Corinthians, he declares that he does not preach the Gospel with “eloquent wisdom” (1 Cor 1:17), the wisdom Greeks seek (1:22), “lest the cross of Christ be emptied [kenôthê] of its power” (1:17).13 The expanded use of the term by Balthasar, however, lessens its force to indicate the novelty of the Incarnation and the majesty of the Cross by finding some archetype for it in eternity. The peculiar splendor of the Incarnation, its being the new and unprecedented and unpredicted thing that it is, is lost to view. Of course, there are conditions within the Trinity for the kenosis of the Incarnation. But it does not necessarily light them up by using the same name for them. More importantly, the Trinitarian kenosis of Balthasar destroys the Trinitarian theology of the Church. For Balthasar, the Trinitarian relations his understanding of kenosis founds in turn serves to enable a divine obedience of Son to the Father, as just mentioned, as well as a “Trinitarian conversation” that is the model of prayer,14 Trinitarian prototypes of faith and love,15 and intra-Trinitarian “sacrifice.”16 Properly and necessarily created realities—the virtue of faith, conversation, and sacrifice—are moved into God.17 Moreover, moved into the Trinity, these realities imply three subjectivities, three wills, just as, when used in their ordinary sense to speak of us in relation to God, they suppose a created will distinct from the divine will. This is especially clear where a pre-Incarnation obedience is imputed to the Son, where he is imaged as endowed by the Father with a freedom that outstrips the Father’s own freedom (98, quoting von Speyr).18 Balthasar gives verbal assent to the unity, the uniqueness, of 13 14 15 16 17 18 Eph 5:6, which speaks of “empty words,” seems to be a warning against lewd and lascivious talk. That leaves Luke 1:53, where the rich are “sent empty away.” Balthasar, Theo-Drama V, 96. Ibid., 97. Ibid., 251. Bruce Marshall, “The Unity of the Triune God: Reviving an Ancient Question,” The Thomist 74 (2010): 25, observes that “the urge to suppose that everything which belongs to the persons of the Trinity in the economy goes all the way down in their immanent divine life, which just seems to go with thinking about the Trinity in these terms [where immanent and economic Trinity are identified], regularly threatens to make the unity of God unintelligible.” See G. Mansini, “Obedience Religious, Christological, and Trinitarian,” Nova et Vetera 12 (2014): 395–413. 1000 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. the divine will, as he must.19 But the language initiated by bumping kenosis up into the Trinity denies that unity.20 The unity of the divine will across the Persons, its uniqueness, was a conquest of fourth-century Trinitarian theology. It is the product of the work of Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary, Ambrose, and Augustine.21 It is taught by the Church: Pope Damasus, First Lateran Council, Pope Agatho, Sixteenth Council of Toledo, Leo IX, and the Second Council of Lyons (the Profession of Faith of Michael Paleologus). Moreover, the path from affirming two natures to affirming two wills in Christ was marked out in the monothelite controversy in the seventh century, and one can take it in the other direction: if there are three wills in the Trinity, then there are three natures. They are not necessarily generically distinct, but there will be three individuals who do not possess numerically one nature; there will be three individuals instantiating one nature three times, as three human persons do one specifically same human nature such that, with three wills, they can decide to listen, to trust, to obey one another, and so on. The modern history of kenosis Christology, on the other hand, begins with Luther, with the Lutheran understanding that the communication of idioms means that the human nature of Christ shares the properties of the divine nature. From this impossibility, through the contortions of the controversy between Giessen and Tübingen, we arrive at another, that of Gottfried Thomasius (d.1875), for whom the Incarnation involves the self-limitation of the divine nature. Before Thomasius, there was Hegel and his own employment of “kenosis.”22 In the more sophisticated textbooks of old-fashioned seminary theology, Kant and Hegel and theologians too much beholden to them made many an appearance, but they were introduced under 19 20 21 22 Balthasar, Theo-Drama V, 95 and 485. Balthasar quotes von Speyr in Theo-Drama V, 89: “They [the divine persons] love each other so strongly that their wills always coincide, not in the sense of meeting somewhere in the middle and uniting, but within an eternal, absolute unity in which each one forgoes what is his and each is in agreement with the other from eternity, not within a rigid, dead identity but within that eternal life of love from which everything that bears the name of grace flows.” See Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004), chs. 14 (for Gregory of Nyssa) and 15 (for Hilary, Ambrose, and Augustine). See the brief history in Ward, “Kenosis,” 25–40. Karl Barth’s notes in Church Dogmatics, vol. 4.1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, no. 59 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1963), 180–83, are invaluable. Hegel and Christian Theology 1001 the category of “adversaries” to this, that, or the other theological thesis. It may be that Balthasar and O’Regan are right to think that Hegel can be dealt with only by drawing him up into some higher synthesis in which, as O’Regan explains, his own descriptions of Christian realities are measured and trimmed by the great chorus of Christian theological voices ancient, medieval, and modern and in which his own language can be rescued from obscuring the glory of God shining in the face of Christ and made to declare that same glory even despite itself. And it may be that they are right to think that such culturally and philosophically synthetic theological stories are the demand of the age because they are the demand of the Spirit. But it might also be argued that that concedes too much to Hegel himself and that some traditions of theological discourse— the modern kenotic one in particular—are misbegotten and badly formed and should be allowed to wither, to die, and to remain buried in unconsecrated ground—“adversaries.” That supposes quite another N&V theology of history. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 1003–10141003 Death in Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr. Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering is a book about death, mourning, lamentation, and the grounds for hope. It is a book about dissembling, deflecting, and lying—indeed, about the father of lies. It is a book about paternity tests, true and false positives included. It is a book about Hans Urs von Balthasar as genealogist of modern discourse,1 specifically Hegelian discourse, in its many-faceted ways of claiming Christian paternity while cunningly altering each aspect of Christian narrative grammar so that the resources traditionally granted Christians for dealing with the maw of death and history, for their mourning to find consolation, for lamentation to stand as prophetic protest, and for a hope that energizes in the face of injustice are undermined at every stage. It is a book about gratitude and its grounds, about prayer and its many forms beyond the Enlightenment pastiche of prayer as petition only. It is about Balthasar’s 1 O’Regan makes the point that, while “genealogist” characterizes a deep and broad aspect of Balthasar’s work, Balthasar does not see this as his primary theological task, which belongs instead to the “celebration of the Trinitarian God who has saved us through his overwhelming love made present in Christ, a celebration that has practical as well as contemplative dimensions, and expresses itself in a variety of forms of life all of which are in the last instance modes of worship, even those that involve care of bodies and souls of Christians and non-Christians”; see The Anatomy of Misremembering, vol. 1, Hegel (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroad, 2014), 94. Please note that all numbers given in parentheses without label or identification are page numbers in this work by O’Regan. 1004 Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr. genius in helping us to see not only what has been misremembered, but precisely the mechanisms by which such false recall transforms genuine memory and undermines Christian truth, practice, and forms of life. While not as commercially edifying as themes of love and grace, death will nevertheless be the focus of this article. The focus on a particular theme gains justification in part from the enormous richness of O’Regan’s text. To attempt exhaustive encapsulation is to flirt with the absurd. The choice to focus on mortality is, I hope, justified by its presence from the very beginning of Anatomy, through O’Regan’s discussion of Hegel’s reduction of Christian motifs, practices, and forms of life to a ghostly half-life and thus ghastly presence, through a more specific detailing of this reduction in particular Christian doctrines and practices, and in the different thinkers who have resisted and perpetuated this misremembering. On Anatomy’s account, Balthasar sees and resists the massive form of Hegelian misremembering that forms the context for a theodicy that would justify the forgetfulness of the dead as they are incorporated into a system of divine self-development and self-regard.2 The present article will investigate this theme as it plays out in O’Regan’s text under three rubrics: (a) Hegel’s eclipse of Christian narrative grammar; (b) Cross as the death of difference; and (c) Misremembering as legitimation of forgetting. Ghostly Death, Ghastly Presence: Hegel’s Eclipse of Christian Narrative Grammar O’Regan observes Balthasar’s agreement with Hegel that there is a fundamental forgetfulness at play in modernity with respect to Christian meaning and truth (12–14), not the least of which is a general disregard for the Trinity (24).3 Indeed, this forgetfulness is the reason for 2 3 Walter Lowe’s Theology and Difference: The Wound of Reason (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) gives a helpful diagnosis of this type of theodicy that allows and then squelches difference and rationally legitimates suffering and evil in a comprehensive explanatory system. O’Regan addresses Kant’s and Schleiermacher’s antipathy to Trinitarian discourse in both Anatomy (248–50) and The Heterodox Hegel (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 365–66. In Anatomy, he observes that Gnostic return occurs only or mainly in Trinitarian-rich discourses, and he thinks Kant and Schleiermacher thus help raise the question of whether such a deeply Trinitarian theology as Balthasar’s threatens Gnostic return and thus should be foresworn. He then distinguishes between Balthasar’s Christologically regulated Trinitarian thought and Hegel’s unregulated Trinitarian Death in Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering 1005 Balthasar’s primary acts of memory—both hagiographical and theological more broadly—that seek to exhibit in a compelling manner the diverse riches of Christian tradition. Here and in his Heterodox Hegel, O’Regan has recourse to Milan Kundera’s joining of forgetting to the “unbearable lightness of Being.” For Kundera, forgetting is superior to a kind of false and self-aggrandizing recall enacted, for instance, by totalitarian regimes. In this sense,“unbearability” can function ironically for Kundera.4 For Balthasar, it does not. Modern forgetfulness issues in a legitimation of etiolated forms of existence marked by calculative rationality, hedonism, and heroic—not saintly—virtue (12–13).5 In this context, Balthasar’s monographs on Elizabeth of the Trinity, Thérèse of Lisieux, Bernanos, and Péguy (among many others) serve to remind Christians of other and richer possibilities for a life. Hegel too proposes his rendition of Christianity as a mnemonic response to Enlightenment amnesia, but also as a philosophical-conceptual legitimation of Christian symbol and content. What Hegel purports to offer is nothing less than life to the dead body of Christian doctrine, its practices and forms of life killed on the altar of deracinated reason. The burden of Anatomy is to show that and how Balthasar reads Hegel’s promise to yield only a simulacra, a false but attractive alternative that keeps all the names the same, but alters identity at every turn (24). As O’Regan puts it: Hegel is such a magician that he is able to make what is Christianly dead in his thought appear to be the most alive: he re-presents a living reality and by so doing offers ghosts. Hegel is in effect the arch-necromancer. Maybe more. (253) O’Regan observes four ways (monistic conflation, divine erotics, necessitarianism, and total kenosis) that Balthasar thinks Hegel transforms Christian narrative from a dramatic interaction of divine and human freedom into an epic whose end is already known and prosecuted so that drama has found its resolution. Textually, O’Regan is reading the 4 5 thought. It is the latter that threatens (and, in fact, instantiates) Gnostic return. It is also the case that, for O’Regan, avoiding Gnostic return does not mean avoiding Marcionism, which may well find a home in Kant and Schleiermacher and is perhaps more likely apart from Trinitarian reflection. In Heterodox Hegel, O’Regan uses Kundera’s trope to speak of God’s inability to bear the lightness of abstract being prior to its foray into finitude and history (186–87). See also 530n16, 531n17, and 631n41. 1006 Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr. first volume of Theo-Drama against Hegelian aesthetics and fundamental theology and reading the remainder of Theo-Drama as a massive form of resistance to the entire Hegelian system, to specific Hegelian figurations of theological anthropology, Christology, Trinity, ecclesiology, and eschatology, all of which get run through the epical ringer. In other words, Hegel kills what he purports to invigorate by interpreting Christian narrative grammar as offering a monistic conflation of God and world that replaces the dialogical relation essential to Jewish and Christian monotheism with dialectic6 (154–56); a divine erotics that propels God’s movement towards self-realization and fatally compromises the agapeic love that springs from fullness and non-ironically, but also non-univocally, gives itself for us7 (157–62), with the resolution of divine acts of freedom and non-instrumental self-giving or grace into a system of logically necessary developments with a pre-determined and immanent telos (162–64), and with a rendition of kenosis or divine self-emptying understood as essential, iterative, and ultimately without remainder, without resurrection of the particular person, Jesus, and without ascension (165–68). Kenosis joins with Hegel’s divine erotics, on this reading, to suggest a divine that does not move from fullness to loving self-gift, but rather from emptiness to self-enrichment or fullness (plerosis).8 Agape is outmaneuvered by eros.9 6 7 8 9 See Balthasar’s interesting discussion on “dia-lectic” in an apocalyptic key in Theo-logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 2, The Truth of God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), 317–19. While Balthasar is clearly aiming his attack at Hegel here, it is not unreasonable to think that this is also a riposte to Barth’s claim that the analogia entis is the Anti-Christ. Balthasar would then be turning the tables and arguing that dia-lectic—that is, contra-diction of the speech of the Word that must also be contradiction of the Truth, and thus a lie—is the true Anti-Christ. Since Balthasar links the early Barth with idealist dialectic, there is some evidence for this reading. O’Regan interestingly comments on the collapse of the history of salvation and the history of God: “Considered thus, human begins are instruments in the self-referential narrative of the divine in which the divine becomes the same through the hiatus of difference” (Anatomy, 211). Anatomy, 167—68 and 231. O’Regan details this nicely; see especially Anatomy, 159–61: “For Balthasar, the erotic view has to be opposed by the properly Christian view of the divine as pure love and gift” (159); “Against Hegel it is necessary to insist on agape over eros” (160). Eros, however, should not be expunged from the divine in a form of reaction formation, only strictly regulated by agape and a rendition of Trinitarian Being that lacks nothing and loves freely out of superabundance (160–61). Death in Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering 1007 Some explanation here may be helpful. The term eros is used by O’Regan and Balthasar in its classical Platonic rendition (from the Symposium) as a love that desires from need, want, or lack (penia). However, the question might reasonably be asked as to how self-emptying, or kenosis, is possible from a position of lack rather than fullness: What stands to get “emptied”? The answer to this question is complex, to say the least. In Anatomy, O’Regan shows that, for Balthasar, Hegelian kenosis is a kind of procedural term that ultimately designates God’s cooptation of nature and human being for divine self-realization (168 and 231). As such, kenosis is “iterative” in that many human cultural forms instantiate elements of this logic, or even immanent law, of divine self-development. Read this way, Hegel’s God “is a trickster who feigns giving” (168). The metamorphosis of kenosis from a fullness that gives itself away to a trope for divine self-actualization from want to fulfillment indicates how eros and kenosis can operate together even though they would seem to be etymologically opposed. More interesting still is Hegel’s movement of kenosis and eros into the immanent divine milieu, where energy and telos send the abstract divine ad extra toward the development of personality through nature and history (231). For, on Hegel’s account and that of Jacob Boehme before him, apart from this movement, the divine is “thin” or “lacks seriousness.”10 On O’Regan’s reading, “Balthasar’s entire reflection on the immanent Trinity is set squarely against this non-hypostatic view, its view of personality as result rather than origin, as well as the understanding of kenosis as an operation arising from poverty rather than wealth” (231). One of Anatomy’s many virtues is its careful attention to the ways in which Balthasar appropriates terms from Hegel but then recalls them back 10 It is more than worthwhile to visit O’Regan’s discussion of this movement from kenosis to plerosis in Heterodox Hegel (see 181–85, 190, 200 and 234, but esp. 185–87; see also 185–86 for his discussion of pleroma and plerosis and how Hegel claims “configurational perfection” for the immanent divine, but in such a way that this perfection is relativized and requires narrative fulfillment; see also 187 for the connection to Boehme’s use of “thin” (dun) and for the divine seeking or hungering for ontological substance or fulfillment). Hegel’s own commentary concerning the need that the divine become “serious” and thus gain ontological density can be found in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Lectures of 1827, ed. Peter C. Hodgson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 433–35; cf. Anatomy, 356, where O’Regan quotes Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, no. 19, for the issue of divine “seriousness [der Ernst].” 1008 Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr. toward genuine Christian memory. Outside of this careful attention, conflation of Balthasar with Hegel becomes a real danger and, on O’Regan’s account, one that has not been entirely resisted.11 The end result of Hegel’s epical transformation of Christian memory is that divine transcendence becomes an immanence that constitutes the spiritual community through a process of divine self-development and, finally, self-knowledge. Or, in O’Regan’s more felicitous phrase, Hegel’s system “beggars transcendence.” We can see this partially, at least, if we focus on the “death of difference” in the Hegelian system and, in particular, the central Christian symbol of the Cross. The Cross and the Death of Difference O’Regan reads Balthasar as offering a kind of post-modern recall of Christian particularity against the amnesia instantiated and prescribed by the Enlightenment. If post-modernity supplies plenty of relativistic and nihilistic perils and frequently eschews the semantic for the semiotic, O’Regan’s judgment here appears to be that post-modernity offers possibilities to Christian theology precisely in its opposition to modern univocity and a universality that threatens sameness. Conversely, the former’s concern for plurality and difference and ambivalent openness to literary, mythological, aesthetic, and religious discourses as sites of ontological disclosure provide reasons to think that opportunities may lie amongst perils. In a modern context of reduction to the same, the Catholic appreciation for different forms of life that signal different aspects of the divine economy, including the eschatological, will be ruled out of court in toto or allowed to remain only under the rubrics of the “freakish” or “fanatical.” In this case, post-modern engagement may prove salutary. Balthasar appears to O’Regan as a savvy critic, fooled neither by Enlightenment “religion” and univocity nor by Hegel’s claims to include difference (171 and 237–38). Hegel provides not the opening to a post-modern philosophical theology, but rather the very closing off of the possibility (22), insofar as all “unreconciled” elements in his system are taken up and surpassed on the way to an immanent historical end. Both Judaism and Catholicism, for instance, function in Hegel’s system as markers of the “not yet” of reconciliation between divine and human self-consciousness that must be—and on 11 See O’Regan’s comments on “radical orthodoxy” in this regard (Anatomy, 168). Death in Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering 1009 his account have been—overcome (214 and 578n54).12 Jürgen Moltmann, named a Hegelian “son” in Anatomy (335), self-consciously continues Hegel’s progressivist Joachimite rendition of history and accidentally repeats his necessitarianism. As in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Moltmann’s theology ends up consigning Judaism to an irretrievable, because theologically surpassed, epoch.13 Balthasar sees, then, that much gets consigned to the grave in a Hegelian progressivist system on behalf of a third Age of Spirit that, while effectively severed from both Jewish covenant regulation and what O’Regan labels “Christological regulation,” offers little more than the formal recommendation of freedom as autonomy (249). Here again, though, the Hegelian ghosts are present. For O’Regan, Moltmann, like Hegel, brings forward Jewish thinkers not so much as themselves, and certainly not as community-located thinkers committed to Jewish practice, but as thinkers who lend support to his mostly undifferentiated rejection of the Christian tradition’s insistence on divine impassibility and transcendence (222–23, 272, and 359–60).14 On this point, however, O’Regan rightly believes that Balthasar demurs from total criticism (226) and, in one of the most fascinating engagements in Anatomy, gives a highly nuanced discussion of Balthasar’s discussion of impassibility. The Hegelian and Moltmannian challenge to traditional impassibility teaching essentially amounts to the difficulty of applying Platonic or Aristotelian metaphysics to the living, involved, and crucified God of the Bible (222–23).15 In Heterodox Hegel, O’Regan shows the ways in which 12 13 14 15 “Much in the same way as Judaism, the Catholic church is diagnosed as an anachronism. Within history, it has no historical effect; it is impotent to create and justify secular institutions, which is the real business of the church as this has been revealed in principle in the Reformation and in fact in the elaboration of institutions that generate autonomy and knowledge” (Anatomy, 214; cf. 215 and 578n54). See Heterodox Hegel, 244–46, on this series of sublations, including Lutheran Protestantism. This occurs in several ways, according to O’Regan. Prophetic obedience is replaced by an axiological preference for autonomy, which then threatens any coherence to Christian doxology (343). On Hegel and Judaism, see O’Regan’s essay “Hegel’s Retrieval of Philo: Constitution of a Christian Heretic,” The Studia Philonica Annual: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism 20 (2008): 101–27. For Balthasar’s figuration of Moltmann as an “epical” thinker and as a reluctant Hegelian, see Anatomy, 333–66 (at 333, he refers to Moltmann as “a Hegelian theologian with a Christian bad conscience”). O’Regan would agree with 1010 Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr. Hegel takes up a critique of Kantian categories, gives them organic unity, ontological density, and teleological vector, and interprets divine Being as moving from Aristotelian potency (dynamis) to actuality (energeia).16 In other words, Hegel applies the development that Aristotle would envision for the natural world to the divine realm. Thinkers as different as Karl Rahner and Thomas Weinandy worry that Balthasar’s discussion of impassibility may permit something like this mutability and passibility incursion into Catholic theology such that the divine turns mythological. Interestingly, O’Regan suggests that the Hegel-Moltmann side (systematically) and the Thomists17 (episodically) slip into a univocal conceptual form of discourse where passibility and impassibility play out a “zero-sum game” (225). Recognizing that Hegel “answers a need” (293), he reads Balthasar as opting for a third way that sees impassibility as a key marker of non-contrastive divine difference (225), but also as specified only in and through Scripture’s “ferociously loving and vehemently engaged God” (229). The suggestion here is that “impassibility” serves, like other Balthasarian meta-terms such as super-kenosis, super-time, and super-space, to allow Christological and Trinitarian direction to make attempts at addressing the God-world relation while eluding a contest between terms nearly unavoidable in the realm of concepts and categories (228). He is eloquent on the difference that, in contrast to Hegel, supports apophaticism’s place within revealed religion: The appeal to, and use of, meta-symbols and/or conceptual ciphers represent nothing more nor less than relatively adequate attempts to name the triune life of the divine that is not other than the economy which it grounds. The cure for explanatory hubris, however, inheres in their very use. For such meta-symbols unname in the very act of naming, but importantly unname directionally rather than into the agnostic void. (228) Terms such as impassibility or immutabilty, then, cannot function without remainder as conceptual opposites of passibility and mutability, 16 17 Balthasar that Moltmann’s criticism of the tradition as “metaphysical” is too univocal and lacking in argumentation from texts and redolent of Heidegger’s similarly univocal reading of pre-Socratic paradise and post-Platonic devolution into metaphysics. See Heterodox Hegel, 95–96. O’Regan calls attention to neo-Scholastic metaphysical reaction formation that begins to discuss divine attributes in abstraction from divine acts and from a disinterested point of view (Anatomy, 158 and 179; cf. 223). Death in Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering 1011 lest they suggest a God less capable of love or less dynamic than his creatures, neither of which finds biblical support. Here, on O’Regan’s reading, Balthasar gestures to the inability of conceptual and categorical terms—or, as he puts it, “linear logic” (229)—to capture the evergreater life of the triune God revealed in the form of Christ. Balthasar, then, strives to maintain difference beyond equivocity and univocity (and at times beyond analogy, where a term can be thought to overarch both Creator and creature), to symbol (227). It is univocal predication and assumption that Balthasar finds in so much modern thought and in Hegel, where the Cross fails to indicate the exorbitance of divine love, but rather initiates a new phase of divine becoming and self-knowledge that ends divine difference from the community. In other words, what the Cross kills, in Balthasar’s reading of Hegel, is difference itself as axiomatic for divine-human relation. Both resurrection and ascension disconnect from the person of Jesus and allegorically interpret the community as constituted by Spirit, that is, full self-consciousness of their own truth of rational freedom and autonomy. Catholicism, linked too thoroughly with the sensuously objectified and sacramental-ecclesiastical Age of the Son, is judged retrograde here. Reconciliation grasped as self-appropriation occurs more nearly in and through a pietistic emphasis in which subjective faith receives priority over external objects or events. Of course both Catholic and Lutheran orthodoxies will find themselves sublated in the Hegelian system, and Lutheran faith finds itself made to serve the needs of modern social and political culture (213–14).18 The problem for Christian practice with such a progressivist view of revelation becomes evident when O’Regan discusses Balthasar’s resistance to what happens to Eucharist in Hegel’s system. If Hegel conceives the movement from Son to Spirit as a definitive departure from the former for the latter, then Eucharist as anamnesis becomes anachronistic, especially as it is the remembrance of Christ’s self-offering for us. Yet, the problem runs deeper. Given that the Spirit-permeated community is coincident with the resurrection-made-immanent, O’Regan observes that the referent for anamnesis gets “displaced to the users of the signs” (215). Remembrance is the recollection (Errinerung) of the history of Spirit—that is, of the Hegelian system itself—not of God’s gracious self-gift in the Son. This is going forward from Son to Spirit. But a similarly irretrievable movement from Father to Son removes any possibility of Christ’s dynamic self-offering to the Father. Father and Son are 18 On these successive sublations, see Heterodox Hegel, 244–49, esp. 244–45. 1012 Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr. past, or, as O’Regan puts it, the Father is “essentially deleted” (217). The telos of a Eucharistic existence cannot be an ec-stasis motivated and moved by the dynamic self-offering of divine love, and it is not the invitation to communion with an Other. Rather, on Balthasar’s reading, Eucharist (for Hegel) signifies the coming into existence of a non-contemplative, self-regarding community liberated by self-knowledge. As Irenaeus saw in the second century, so Balthasar sees in the twentieth that Gnosticism and the knowledge that saves “flatten” the transcendent divine. The loss or misremembering of divine difference, then, along a purely horizontal access of progressive divine self-actualization, offers a radically different direction for Christian existence, a direction that moves intrepidly away from Eucharistic gratitude. Moreover, the consequent self-regarding community is every bit as much the state as the Church (213). In this context, O’Regan seems to indicate, Eucharistic practice and contemplation become prophetic acts against contemporary self-centeredness and nationalism, against the reduction of difference to sameness, and against idolatry. Hegelian Theodicy and Death of the Person Anatomy is populated with traditional patterns of belief, practice, and forms of life reduced to ghosts, pale reflections of their former selves. Balthasar, he argues, shows this and shows how Hegel enacts this necromancy. Equally interesting is O’Regan’s reminder that, for a post-modern such as Francois Lyotard, it is not metanarrative alone that sanctions violence, but the self-legitimating and thus closed character of metanarratives.19 On Balthasar’s reading, Hegel’s metanarrative offers a massive theodicy based on the drive for and realization of divine self-consciousness, that is, full and transparent knowledge or self-presence. History’s “slaughter-bench” receives justification through its “hallowing” by divine self-development as it realizes itself in the Spiritual community (Gemeinde). We might say that modern instrumental reasoning here reaches its zenith: Suffering occurs in order to ensure the advent of modern society (244).20 Rather than create a chasm of discontinuity between the modern and the pre-modern, 19 20 See Cyril O’Regan, Gnostic Return in Modernity (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), 236. “Within the Hegelian ordinance the suffering of individuals and groups counts only to the extent to which it contributes to the pedagogy of history whereby human beings in the modern period come to maximal realization of freedom and self-awareness” (Anatomy, 244; cf. 246). Death in Cyril O’Regan’s The Anatomy of Misremembering 1013 Hegel subsumes all pre-modernity into a teleological narrative that finds its resolution in his own age. Eschatology, obviously, is of the fully realized type here and allows no space for the prophetic “not yet!” For Balthasar, this massive substitution of knowledge for love offers only a death-dealing blow to the center of Christian truth. Perhaps more importantly, O’Regan points out that, given the loss of divine-world difference and the legitimization of all history that now is the sacrifice for God’s own self-realization, Christian prayers of lamentation and cries of protest are squeezed out. For, who is there to receive the lamentation or register the protest? While divine involvement, and certainly an emphasis on God’s love focused on the Cross, are crucial elements of Christian witness, it is also the case (in Balthasar’s view) that, should all of that be interpreted along a teleological passibility vector, then the exorbitant love of God for the little ones transmogrifies into a justification of their forgottenness. O’Regan is eloquent here: “The secret of Hegelian recollection, or the secret of the secret, is that not only does it remember what it remembers badly, but the mass of the dead are forgotten and the forgetfulness is justified” (245).21 In one of the most telling lines of O’Regan’s text, he notes that, whereas “eternity” functions for Hegel to abolish the injustice of history, it serves for Balthasar not to abolish that injustice but to limit it and give it to the God who is Absolute Future (144, 236).22 21 22 See also Anatomy, 170, 284 and 396–97 on the secret being available only to a spiritual elite or “cognoscenti”; Staudenmaier is named a crucial “father” for Balthasar in this critique (ibid., 284–85). Cf. Heterodox Hegel, 248, where O’Regan de-couples Hegel from Lutheran orthodoxy, arguing that Hegel upsets Luther’s egalitarian “priesthood of all believers” by introducing an “asymmetry” within the worshipping community, “granting a qualitatively superior place to those who have mystical vision in the proper sense, i.e., those who have elevated themselves beyond representation into the pure realm of concept.” It is part of O’Regan’s project to de-couple Hegel from the mainline theological tradition and to couple him to heterodox forms of mysticism such as that found in Valentinian Gnosticism and Jacob Boehme. This project runs contrary to post-modern authors such as Derrida, Lyotard, and Mark Taylor, who tend to conflate the Hegelian rendition of Christianity with the biblical narrative itself and/or traditional renditions of it and, thus, condemn both as self-legitimating and, thus, violent metanarratives. See, for instance, Anatomy, 252, on Derrida and the Trinity in this respect. O’Regan also shows how Balthasar can uncouple Luther from Hegel and from Moltmann (Anatomy, 349–51), finding the completion of his sub contrario doctrine in Hamann instead (ibid., 351). Here, O’Regan cites Schelling and Bulgakov as Balthasarian forerunners who 1014 Anthony C. Sciglitano, Jr. Conclusion Themes of identity and difference can sound rather abstract. And certainly adding Hegel’s name to the discussion does nothing to allay fears. Yet, the elimination of transcendent difference for immanent identity can indeed be a pressing issue. O’Regan has shown, in his brilliant work on Balthasar’s resistance to Hegelian identity torque, that a move to radical immanence transforms more than marginal Christian beliefs and practices. Instead, it transforms the very praise for which Augustine thought we were intended, eliminates all grounds for lament, and squelches prophetic recourse. More concretely, I suggested that Anatomy addresses death from the very beginning. O’Regan begins Anatomy with a requiem poem for his brother; his acknowledgements add a beautiful memoriam to John Jones, friend and late editor at Crossroad Publishing. On O’Regan’s reading, Balthasar’s reflections on Holy Saturday reveal Jesus not only as Lord, but also as “fellow” to the dead (247). The dead are not forgotten, and forgetting is not justified on the basis of a massive theodicy. The theological enterprise, on this account, would seem to have everything to do with a litany of remembrance that allows the voices of the past to be heard and even encountered in Christ, whose unbounded circuit of agapeic love encompasses the communion of the living and the dead. And so, a requiem and a memorial refuse, from the outset, the elimination of lament, mourning, praise, gratitude, and celebration on behalf of those who have shared our space and time; they refuse the instrumental and the self-regarding and reveal that it is perhaps the poet who can memorialize against forgetting and against those systems—philosophical and otherwise— N&V that would justify it. use and develop this notion of “absolute future,” which Bulgakov expands on as “super-time.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 1015–10251015 Response to Readers of The Anatomy of Misremembering, Volume 1 (Hegel) Cyril O’Regan University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana My main responsibility is to reply to three skilled readers of my The Anatomy of Misremembering: von Balthasar’s Response to Philosophical Modernity, volume 1 (Hegel; hereafter in this article, simply Anatomy 1), two of them aficionados of Balthasar, one a philosopher and theologian broadly in the Thomist tradition, and I definitely plan to execute my charge and spend almost all the space allotted to me responding to commentators who have rendered my text with tact, who have asked questions of its rendering of Balthasar, and in one case of Balthasar’s rendering of the tradition, and in general of his theological adequacy. But before I do, I would like to thank the editors of Nova et Vetera, Matthew Levering and Thomas Joseph White, O.P., for staging this symposium on my work. It is an act of consummate generosity and grace. But I suppose even grace has its reasons, and one of these reasons, I suspect, is to start a conversation between those of more nearly Balthasarian and Thomist persuasions. I am not assuming that the aim is that of reconciliation, for one cannot assume that, as Catholicism goes forward, it will do so under the mantle of one kind of theology. What might be useful is a suspension of uninformed hostilities and an appreciation for the gifts of a form of theology other than one’s own, even if one is convinced of the superior value of the form that one prefers to inhabit and explicate. In addition to the above, I suppose it would help the reader of the symposium if I gave some indication of where Anatomy and its quickly following sibling, Anatomy 2 (which focuses on Balthasar’s critique of Heidegger) came from. I should begin by confessing that 1016 Cyril O’Regan neither volume was intended. I had written about a half-dozen articles on Balthasar’s treatment of major figures or movements in the theological tradition and had planned to use them in a much more comprehensive volume on Balthasar’s theory of the tradition as illustrated in his practice of retrieval. Having read a considerable portion of his work and the triptych in its entirety, I began clearly to see two things: first, that the extent of the retrieval was in proportion to his anxiety about modern amnesia regarding Christianity; and second, that whoever is going to do theology in the modern period also has to take account of forms of thought that were concerned to overcome the amnesia of modernity and that, while looking much more friendly to Christianity, distorted it and ultimately constituted themselves as rival systems. Hegel and Heidegger loomed extraordinarily large, although it was difficult to separate Heidegger and Nietzsche. I resolved to write a chapter on this phenomenon of what I called “misremembering” in a book largely devoted to Balthasar’s memorial of the Christian tradition of thought, practice, and form of life. This prospective chapter, however, underwent a kind of mitosis: first two chapters, then four, then a small book, then from small to medium to large, to finally two gargantuan books, only the first of which is published, although the second is in the final stages of rewriting. My judgment regarding the book is that it is both entirely accidental and entirely necessary. It is entirely accidental because it was a creation that was not planned. I had an intuition that proved insistent and that demanded explication. But it is also, I believe, entirely necessary in much the way that a poem seems to develop in the only way it could. It is hard to know what is chicken and what is egg, whether all the labor extended over the two volumes, which together will be about thirteen hundred pages, convinced me that a genealogy of misremembering is a major (perhaps the major) component of Balthasar’s genealogy of modernity, as well as the complement to his great orchestration of retrieval of the Christian tradition, or whether the labor was made light because of this conviction. As might be expected, I find myself much more inclined to the second option. Response to Anthony Sciglitano In a beautifully constructed interpretation, in addition to attempting to broadly explain Anatomy 1, Anthony Sciglitano selects and highlights from the work, and in the process of doing so evinces all the generosity and judiciousness of his own reading of Balthasar. Joining beginning and end, he suggests that a good synoptic way of reading the work is Response to Readers of The Anatomy of Misremembering 1017 to think of it as a reflection on the impossibility and possibility of the memory of the dead in Hegel and Balthasar. In which case, as it turns out, Hegel provides the capstone to the view of the impossibility of memory characteristic of the modern, and Balthasar, his interlocutor-antagonist, provides a plenary example and defense of its possibility. If this should prove instructive to the reader of Anatomy 1, it also proves illuminating for the writer. Sciglitano captures brilliantly what I would call the pathos of the text. Along this line of interpretation, we can key not only on forgetting and remembering, but also on the mechanisms in and through which Hegel forgets Christ and the individual person as the irreplaceable particular, his interpretation of the Eucharist as being defined by our memory of Christ, not God’s memory of us in the Cross, death and Resurrection of Christ, his identification of the Holy Spirit with our memory, and the eclipse of the Father to whom Christ and we ourselves pray. Sciglitano, however, does more than capture the pathos of Anatomy 1, he also grasps both its raison d’être and basic dynamics. In terms of raison d’être, he understands that the fundamental claim of the text, given in its very title, which underscores “misremembering,” is that the twentieth century’s most copious Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, is also a genealogist. This is not such a self-evident thesis that its acceptance can be taken for granted. Moreover, it is especially gratifying to see that this Balthasar scholar of the first rank assents to the thesis that the particular genius of Balthasar resides in his diagnosing and resisting not merely the Enlightenment’s displacement of Christianity in and through its promotion and practice of forgetting, but also the discourses that follow upon the Enlightenment and attempt to overcome both historical forms of Christianity and the modern forgetting of Christianity by offering a new optics regarding Christianity, thereby enacting a form of misremembering and thus replacing it. Sciglitano, who is familiar with the thought of Charles Taylor, is convinced that it is this second layer of the complex ideology of modernity that is the more dangerous, since its hostility to Christianity is essentially hidden. He shows no reserve in thinking that throughout Balthasar’s work as a whole, and especially throughout the great trilogy, at both overt and covert levels, far from repeating Hegel, Balthasar has Hegel in his crosshairs: Hegel, who appears to be the post-Enlightenment rememberer of Christian discourses, practices, and forms of life, is the greatest distorter of Christianity in the modern age. Sciglitano is a wonderfully careful reader. He understands well the confessed limits of the “genealogical” ascrip- 1018 Cyril O’Regan tion to Balthasar: to think of Balthasar as a genealogist is to deny neither that he is a great retrievalist of the length and breadth of the Catholic tradition nor that the putting into play of the riches of the pre-modern Christian tradition in terms of (1) its reading of Scripture, (2) its unification of theology, spirituality, and contemplation and action, (3) the practice of prayer and Eucharist, and (4) forms of life both religious and lay given over to finding a unique vocation is not ultimately far more important than uncovering the equivocalness of Hegel. When it comes to what I have referred to as the dynamics of the text, it would be difficult to come across a better reader. Sciglitano rightly judges that the heart of the confrontation between Balthasar and Hegel is conducted in part 2 of Anatomy 1 and that, textually speaking, Balthasar’s five-volume Theo-Drama is decisive. He recognizes that Christology and Trinity provide two of the essential battlegrounds between these two figures, and ultimately between faithful and unfaithful forms of Christian thinking. On Balthasar’s account, Hegel’s theology is both monophysite and relentlessly functional and his Trinitarian theology is undergirded by a developmental ontology that collapses the immanent Trinity into the economic. Sciglitano speaks eloquently to Balthasar’s diagnosis of the “effective history” (Wirkungsgeschichte) of both fundamental distortions in twentieth-century theology. He is just as eloquent and precise about Anatomy 1’s detailing of the formal elements of Hegel’s misremembering of Christianity according to Balthasar: the monistic nature of Hegel’s logic that unsettles the creator-created distinction, Hegel’s necessitarianism that removes the gratuitousness of creation, redemption and sanctification, the peculiar nature of his interpretation of divine love not as an absolute plenitude but as lack seeking fulfillment, and an anomalous view of kenosis that thinks of divine self-emptying as a form of self-filling. Sciglitano then fully grasps the central substantive features of the confrontation between Balthasar and Hegel, fully grasps the motivation of the text, and catches the pathos of the text. It is a pleasure to be so well understood. Response to Rodney Howsare Rodney Howsare’s reflection on Anatomy 1 overlaps with that of Sciglitano, although having a number of different emphases. It is, for example, a relief to find that Howsare, the author of a first-rate book on Balthasar’s relation to Protestantism, is more or less convinced that Balthasar’s engagement with Hegel is more extensive in the Response to Readers of The Anatomy of Misremembering 1019 former’s work and more deep than might first appear and also that this engagement is largely critical in that Balthasar fundamentally contests Hegel’s view of the God-world relation and the Christological and Trinitarian frames that supports it. Howsare spends considerably more time than Sciglitano in bringing out how and why Hegel is not simply suffered by Balthasar, but approved for having taken steps beyond the Enlightenment and Kantian understandings of Christianity. He rightly numbers (1) Hegel’s analysis of the Enlightenment and amnesia and (2) the tendency in the modern world for rationalism to generate its fideistic double as two aspects of Hegel found attractive by Balthasar. In addition, Hegel’s commitment to truth and, in turn, truth’s connection to wholeness (as well as Hegel’s refurbishing of the doctrine of the Trinity) also recommend him to the Swiss theologian. Howsare both underscores and develops a point I made in part 1 of Anatomy 1 that Balthasar’s attraction to Hegelianism—restricted though it may turn out to be—is the converse of serious reservations concerning Neo-Scholastic theology, whose elevation of philosophy over theology is indicative of a disrespect for the order of revelation. In terms of uncovering Balthasar’s basic motivations, this seems to be right. Of course, this is not necessarily to say that Balthasar’s judgment here is considered, balanced, charitable, or justified. Perhaps it is the peremptory nature of Balthasar’s judgment here that has encouraged the suspicion that he might be judged to be closer than he avows to the Idealists whom he critiques from the Apokalypse der deutschen Seele (1937–1939) on. No less than Sciglitano, Howsare thinks that Balthasar is a concertedly anti-Hegelian thinker. Howsare understands well that Hegel and his epigones fundamentally distort the God-world relation by abolishing its gratuity, meld God and world in the Incarnation, historicize the eschaton, and overall, deconstruct meaningful distinction between the triune God and his economy of grace. Howsare is a lucid and pleasing writer, and here he communicates with a facility that one can only envy. When it comes to precursors of Balthasar in the refutation of Hegel, similarly to Sciglitano, he focuses on Bulgakov. This hardly betrays the text. Bulgakov is an item of reflection in two of the four parts of the book (parts 3 and 4), clearly suggesting my interest in opening up the conversation of dependence, a conversation that has recently been carried forward in Jennifer Martin’s wonderful new book on Balthasar and Russian religious philosophy. Both Howsare and Sciglitano are patient with me when it comes to my discussion of the relation, and neither challenge my interpretation 1020 Cyril O’Regan of Bulgakov as an anti-Idealist thinker. It makes sense that, when it came to precursors, the attention would go the colorful Bulgakov’s way rather than to the more wooden Franz Anton Staudenmaier (1800–1856), the Tübingen theologian whose sprawling oeuvre constitutes the most concerted theological refutation of Hegel in the nineteenth century. I confess, however, that I have affection for the unfortunate Staudenmaier. My teacher at Yale, Hans Frei, often said that it is the responsibility of a theologian—even when not doing historical work—to discover or rediscover one or two major past theological figures who seemed to have entered a kind of undeserved oblivion. I consider my rediscovery of Franz Anton Staudenmaier as proof that I was listening and understood that such rediscovery is an essential—even if ancillary—part of the theological vocation. Perhaps even more, however, one does not have to argue—in the way one does for Bulgakov—that Staudenmaier is constitutively anti-Hegelian. After a relatively brief romance with German Idealism in general and Hegel in particular, which lasted roughly between 1828 and 1835, Staudenmaier reoriented his career in a direction that was vituperatively anti-Hegelian and which concluded in the articulation of a dogmatics based significantly—although not entirely—on the theology of Aquinas. Throughout his reflection, Howsare is far more laudatory than one has a right to expect. Nonetheless, there are two interesting— if highly understated—criticisms that have to do with Balthasar’s precursors when it comes to Hegel. Howsare wonders whether Maximus might not have just as easily been appealed to as Irenaeus as a template of a Christian response to a discourse that bears a resemblance to that of Hegel. I find this a telling query, especially in light of some of the French commentary that suggests that Balthasar’s work on Maximus in the 1940s has as one of its main intentions the defeating of the German Idealism that was targeted even earlier in Apokalypse der deutschen Seele. In addition, I should confess that, for quite some time I debated including Maximus, even if I never entertained the idea of substituting him for Irenaeus. When I made my decision to exclude him, the principle of parsimony was obviously at work: why have two ancient exemplars if one will do. Even more, however, while Maximus could serve as a template for the kind of Cross-oriented Christology that Balthasar could bring to bear as a redress of Hegel’s, it was not evident how much more critical work Maximus could do when the distortion of Christianity under consideration is truly comprehensive and extends to the entire Christian narrative, Response to Readers of The Anatomy of Misremembering 1021 and thus to every theological topic. Thus, the advantage goes to Irenaeus, since this is precisely the kind of comprehensive distortion that is diagnosed and rebutted in Against Heresies. The second of the two criticisms that Howsare makes is equally intriguing. When it comes to proximate Balthasar precursors for constitutive anti-Hegelianism, why not adduce Balthasar’s mentor, Erich Przywara? Howsare does not force the point, but he could have, given that, in Analogia Entis (1932), the case for analogy as an irreducible Catholic Denkform is accompanied by concerted criticism of Hegel’s erasure of real transcendence. Again, in writing the book, I thought of Przywara as a candidate for inclusion, only to finally reject him. The basic reason was that, although Przywara’s rejection of Hegel is pointed in Analogia Entis, the critique is elliptical and, in the end, quite general and formal. While Balthasar was, undoubtedly, convinced that Przywara was right in his criticism of Hegel, he also realized that Przywara did not pursue Hegel theologically across his reading of the Christian narrative and the various doctrines associated with its nodes—Trinity, creation, fall, redemption, Christian Church, and eschaton. This is what Balthasar begins to pursue in Apokalypse five years after the publication of Analogia Entis. Still, I have a palliative up my sleeve. In volume 2 of Anatomy, which concerns the relation of Balthasar to Heidegger, Przywara functions as the proximate precursor of Balthasar’s critical engagement with Heidegger. Why the distinction, given that Przywara’s negative remarks against Heidegger in Analogia Entis are no less formal and synoptic than the negative remarks against Hegel? The reasons are many, and since volume 2 is not yet at the publisher, it seems best to provide a partial rather than full explanation. I think it can be said that Balthasar believes that the ratio of positive-negatives when it comes to Christianity is somewhat better in the case of Heidegger than in that of Hegel. The Heideggerian advantage, however, is in significant part due to the fact that Heidegger’s discourse is less densely Christian than Hegel’s and less engaged in replacing or rewriting Christian doctrines. In that case, the kinds of general foreclosures of Christian speech and action to which Przywara draws attention in Analogia Entis stand out all the more. Response to Guy Mansini, O.S.B. Although Guy Mansini would not style himself as a scholar of Balthasar, he has commented on him in the past. Although he has been critical of some major aspects of Balthasar’s Trinitarian thought, he has been as 1022 Cyril O’Regan intelligent as he has been fair. Similarly here. Mansini seems to support an analysis of modernity as a complex affair in which Christianity is dismissed, allowed back in but only under the auspices of something like a salto mortale, and then refigured in Idealism. Although he grants Balthasar his genealogical interests and gives a good account of the features that Balthasar finds attractive and repelling in Hegel and his epigones, Mansini sees his task mainly as testing Balthasar’s thought for theological adequacy. He is perfectly in his rights to judge that Balthasar fails, and while it takes a little time to bring in the verdict, it is eventually brought in largely on the grounds that: (a) Balthasar cedes to Hegel in judging that immutability and impassibility require any modification of the way they have been handled in the classical metaphysical tradition; (b) Balthasar’s thinking of ur-kenosis as the ground of kenosis in Christ is both philosophically and theologically irresponsible; and (c) Balthasar’s discussion of activity and reception among the persons at the level of the immanent Trinity is problematic. I will attend to these three features of Mansini’s argument momentarily, but before I do I would like to mention the interesting flattening afoot in Mansini’s account of the debits and credits in Balthasar’s complex negotiation with Hegel laid out in Anatomy 1. Mansini acknowledges that Balthasar argues that Hegel is Christianly unacceptable because of the conflation of God and world, the erasure of the particularity of Christ, the excision of Resurrection, the Joachimite displacement of Christ by the Spirit in the economy, and finally modalism at the Trinitarian level. But Balthasar’s relation to these faults seems to be on the same level as the affirmations of Christ in Hegelian thought, particularly the Cross being at the center of Christianity. Mansini is right to underscore that the conversation between Balthasar and Hegel cannot get off the ground unless there are some theologically attractive features in Hegelian thought. Still, recall that both Sciglitano and Howsare underscored, in different ways, the huge asymmetry between the credits and debits. Compared with the credits accorded Hegel’s discourse and the related practices, the debits are enormous—indeed, they are sufficient to make Hegel the greatest distorter or “misrememberer” of Christianity. In his first objection, Mansini’s argument is not that Balthasar expressly advocates the passable God of Hegel or Moltmann. Rather, he argues that Balthasar fails to make a plausible defense of a tertium quid between strict impassability and passability positions. In fact, for Mansini, any reservations regarding divine immutability and impassibility as classically conceived suggest that Balthasar is moving inex- Response to Readers of The Anatomy of Misremembering 1023 orably towards the passability position and that he is fatally caught in the gravitational pull of Hegel. Personally, I am not sure this follows. One would have thought that Balthasar’s insistence on the absolute priority of act over potency in the triune God would have counted decisively against this charge, since it is the priority of potential over act and that of result over origin in Hegel’s thought that is the basic engine for the introduction of mutability and possibility into God. Mansini shows no sympathy for Balthasar’s view that revelation provides motive and warrant for thinking of divine impassibility more richly and beyond the binary construction of the ascription of passability to the worldly domain and impassibility to the divine. Mansini simply cuts off at the pass, for example, Maximus’ two-will Christology serving as a traditional warrant for Balthasar’s view and extends no sympathy to the former’s interest in preserving the humanity of Christ while strongly insisting on the communication of idioms. By implication at least, Mansini suggests that a figure whom Howsare thinks functions entirely in an anti-Hegelian fashion in fact functions to facilitate the entry of Hegelianism into would-be Catholic theology. Mansini’s second objection concerns Balthasar’s account of intra-Trinitarian kenosis. This feature of Balthasar’s thought does not come in for criticism by either Sciglitano or Howsare, although to be fair, neither exactly ratify it either. Mansini’s objection cuts in a number of different directions at once. On the one hand, the positing of an ur-kenosis is speculative and transgresses the limits of knowledge. I suppose this might be called the epistemic irresponsibility charge. There can be no doubt that Balthasar is vulnerable to this objection and that his reliance on Bulgakov with respect to this notion might be more a hindrance than a help, even if Bulgakov could be reliably constructed as anti-Hegelian. Although Mansini would likely not enjoy the suggested company, his objection resembles Rahner’s dismissal of Balthasar’s articulations in the immanent Trinity of the conditions of possibility of divine expression in creation and redemption as “gnostic.” Mansini’s objection to its deployment in Balthasar’s work, however, is not epistemological without remainder. He also has reservations of a more substantive theological kind. He thinks that positing intra-Trinitarian kenosis devalues the kenosis of Philippians 2:7, which locates kenosis definitively in the Christological sphere. While I see the point of the objection, I can definitely say that this is far from Balthasar’s intent, which is rather to put an exclamation 1024 Cyril O’Regan point to kenosis in the Christological sphere by drawing attention to its intra-Trinitarian ground. I am also inclined to think that Mansini goes a bit too far when he associates Balthasar’s use of kenosis with the German kenoticist, Thomasius. On the Christological plane, Balthasar commits himself without reservation to Chalcedon and inveighs against a Hegelian kenosis that is one of substance rather than form. In Theo-Drama, Thomasius and other nineteenth-century kenoticists are understood to be examples of this very unhappy rendition of Philippians that Balthasar rejects. Mansini also has serious reservations about Balthasar’s reflection on the activity and receptivity of the persons at the intra-Trinitarian level. Apart from the highly speculative nature of such reflection, Mansini worries that this leads to a prioritization of persons over divine essence and, thus, encourages tri-theism. I suppose the worry is the worry of an Augustinian or Thomist regarding a Trinitarian conspectus that draws on the Greek East. I think the worry can be honored without necessarily dismissing the personal emphasis. It is not as if no problems arise when we insist on the community of essence and will in and with the persons; there exists the obverse danger of modalism. In volume 3 of Theo-Logic, Balthasar makes the suggestion that Catholic theology might necessarily have to deal with the tensions between what are, historically speaking, different emphases between East and West, since it was not clear to him that any Trinitarian theology hither-to-fore had done equal justice to both. I suspect that no more than Balthasar’s loitering with Bulgakov, Maximus, and the Greek fathers would this irresolution be found acceptable by Mansini. The Catholicity of the Church and the Great Conversation I can lodge no personal objection to Mansini. He is fair to my rendering of Balthasar in Anatomy 1 and presumes it to be accurate—which is granting a great deal. It is to the Balthasar whom I render that he objects and whom he finds wanting. Albeit against a backdrop of considerable appreciation, in the elaboration of this theology (and especially the Trinity), the Swiss theologian demonstrates a penchant for being epistemologically reckless and substantively risky. I see the force of all of Mansini’s well-lodged objections, and especially of the epistemological one. Moreover, one has to concede that Balthasar’s own rejection of Neo-Scholasticism was not exactly fair, so he and, perhaps, nouvelle théologie as a whole were less than generous to Manual Response to Readers of The Anatomy of Misremembering 1025 Theology and perhaps too dismissive also of the value of reason and argument in theology. While such a concession is unlikely to satisfy someone who is persuaded of the absolute validity of propositional forms of theology, could one not claim that neither propositional nor retrievalist/genealogical forms of theology fully suffice as Catholicism negotiates the truth of the tradition and the contemporary world? Granting a greater appreciation of the logical rigor of Scholastic theology, could it not be admitted that Balthasar performs a necessary theological task? The symposium performed here, even with (or especially with) its moments of criticism, seems to me to be a real symbol of the necessary catholicity of the Church, especially at a time when the Church is remanded to become a kind of ethics or politics whose traditions are being continually attenuated and massaged into something more agreeable to the modern person. What has been performed here is just the opposite of a “night battle” in which thinkers faithful to the Church reify and exaggerate differences. The banner under which the Church proceeds is Christ. I suppose this renders an apocalyptic diagnosis of history, which I owe in significant part to the Balthasar of Theo-Drama. Still, I can promote this in good conscience. We can and should read ourselves as Church into the book of Revelation, which N&V Balthasar once again has made a gift to the Church. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016): 1027–10481027 Book Reviews Jesus: Essays in Christology by Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap. (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2014), ix + 425 pp. Christology remains a highly contested subject in contemporary theology. From his initial work published in 1985, Does God Change? The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation, Thomas Weinandy has dedicated his entire career to explaining, defending, and preaching the mystery of the Word made flesh. It is eminently fitting, then, that an entire volume be dedicated to collecting and ordering Weinandy’s wide-ranging essays on Christology. Spanning a range of twenty-four years (1990–2013), the thirty-one essays in this volume are organized into four broad categories: (1) Christology and the Bible; (2) historical and systematic Christology; (3) Christology and contemporary issues; and (4) Christology and the Christian life. This organization reflects something of Weinandy’s own “Christological method”: beginning with the Scripture, he seeks a deep understanding of what the Fathers and early ecumenical councils have taught so that he can engage contemporary theological issues and offer a sound and tested Christology for living the Christian life. The first two categories of essays are analytical and constructive. Here Weinandy “the teacher” takes us on a tour through the Christian tradition: Ignatius of Antioch, Athanasius, Cyril, the Council of Chalcedon, Thomas Aquinas, and others. But these are not just historical studies documenting what others have said; they are always in search of a constructive and synthetic account of Christ. The next set of essays are critical and polemical. Here Weinandy “the polemicist” engages and critiques various Christological proposals of contemporary theologians (e.g., Roger Haight, Terrance Tilley, John Macquarrie, and others). This critical engagement never descends to quibbling about small matters. Weinandy is concerned about the 1028 Book Reviews great questions and takes issue only with proposals that appear to call into doubt essential elements of the Church’s teaching about Christ. The final set of essays is pastoral, ordered toward living the mystery of Christ. Here Weinandy “the pastor,” in a simpler idiom applies the truth about Christ to how we are called to live our lives. The sheer panorama of topics treated is remarkable—from dense philosophical theology to a whimsical exploration of Christological echoes in Huckleberry Finn. All this shows how deeply Weinandy has explored the mystery of Christ and how deeply this mystery has shaped his own thinking. Are there certain themes in Christology to which Weinandy consistently returns? Is there a core to his Christology from which the rest emerges and develops? One way to sum up his Christological project is to say that Weinandy is dependent on (and committed to) the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria, the Council of Chalcedon, and Thomas Aquinas. In this sense, his Christology is energized by a ressourcement of these (and other) traditional sources. At the same time, he restlessly pursues a deeper penetration into the mystery of Christ and is quite ready to disagree with a traditional position that he deems is not dogmatically defined. In this sense, his Christology is creative and innovative. The core of Weinandy’s thought—and the signature mark of his writing—is what he calls the three fundamental truths of the Incarnation that must be simultaneously upheld: (1) It is truly the divine Son of God who is man (full divinity); (2) it is truly man that the divine Son of God is (full humanity); and (3) the Son of God truly is man (real existence in history as an authentic human being) (see 97, 122, 147, and 302). For Weinandy, the traditional use of the “communication of idioms” is nothing other than an attempt to uphold these three incarnational truths (71). Though he regrets that Cyril’s terminology was at times ambiguous, Weinandy recognizes in Cyril’s teaching what he calls a “personal/existential” model of the Incarnation: “One and the same person of the [divine] Son comes to exist as man. It is not a compositional union of natures similar to the soul/body, but rather the person of the Son taking on a new mode or manner of existence” (84). Weinandy argues that it is just these three truths received within a personal/existential model of the Incarnation that Chalcedon upheld and that Aquinas so excellently expounded. If we had nothing other than Weinandy’s clear exposition of the tradition’s teaching about the Incarnation, we would be in his debt. But there is a searching, restless quality to his theology that is always seeking to explore more fully the mystery of Christ. Throughout his Book Reviews 1029 writings, he puts forward various proposals that either develop or modify what the tradition has said about Christ. One hallmark of Weinandy’s Christology is his insistence that we not sell short the full humanity of Christ. Therefore, he takes with great seriousness the statement in Romans that Christ assumed “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3). The divine Son did not take up a humanity that was sealed off from the consequences of our fallen state, but one that fully embraces all that we are, excepting sin: “Only if the Son of God, having become man of the sinful race of Adam, actually experiences the full effects of sin—temptation, suffering, death—and breaches sin’s very domicile—hell—can he overthrow it and lift us up into the new abode of heavenly life” (9). What this means for Weinandy is that the divine Son, Jesus, who now exists fully as a man, does everything in his historical life as man, in the humanity that he has assumed: “Within his incarnate state, the Son of God is always the principal actor, but the manner in which he acts is always as man, for that is the manner in which he now exists” (192). This claim—that the Son always acts as man—is not simply easy to square with the assertion found repeatedly in Cyril of Alexandria that the incarnate Son also acts as God when he exercises his divine power (e.g., calming the wind and the waves). Weinandy’s answer would be that, even when Jesus acts by the divine power that he possesses as God, he always does so as the man that he is and, so, in a human manner. Perhaps the most controversial consequence of this principle— that the divine Son always acts in a human manner—is Weinandy’s contention that Jesus did not possess the beatific vision as such before his glorification in the Resurrection. In a back-and-forth debate with Fr. Thomas Joseph White (two articles from that debate are included in this volume), Weinandy states his difficulty with the view that Jesus possessed the beatific vision from the moment of his conception: “Such a claim appears to me to be contrary to Jesus’s human life as viator” (279–280). In point of fact, he considers the question to be poorly framed and would rather ask, “Did the Son of God as man, within his human consciousness and intellect, possess a vision of the Father such that he (the divine Son) was humanly aware of himself as Son and so knew himself to be the Son, consequently perceiving all that the Father willed for him during his earthly life?” (281). Pushing the question one stage further, Weinandy proposes that there is a human “I” of the person of the divine Son: “Within the Incarnation, there is a human ‘I’ of a divine ‘who.’ The identity of that human ‘I’ is that of the divine Son, but that divine identity is 1030 Book Reviews only consciously conceived and articulated from within the parameters of that human ‘I’” (285). This constitutes a further development of the traditional teaching that there is no distinct human person in Christ. Weinandy agrees—the “person” who is Christ is the divine Son of God. But he wants to say in addition that this divine person, because he now fully exists as man, also possesses a human “I” that is now the center of his activity as the incarnate Son of God. Based on the same principle of giving full weight to the real and true humanity assumed by Christ, Weinandy recommends reversing the terms of Mary’s experience of giving birth to Christ as both virgin and mother. Operating within (and accepting) the dogmatic tradition that Mary did not lose her physical virginity in the act of giving birth to Christ, Weinandy proposes that, rather than claiming Mary gave birth without pain in a miraculous way, it would be better to say that she, in imitation of her Son, undid the curse of Eve “by giving birth in pain, in so doing contributing to humankind’s re-creation in union with her” (186). For Weinandy, the reality of her ongoing virginity should not be the cause of nullifying the full reality of her motherhood: “What was miraculous was not the manner in which Mary gave birth, but the manner in which her virginity was preserved while giving birth naturally. In the act of giving birth, Mary was by nature a mother while miraculously remaining a virgin. In the act of giving birth, she was not naturally a virgin while miraculously becoming a mother” (188). In these “Essays in Christology,” Thomas Weinandy displays just what Christian theology ought to be. Receiving divine revelation in Scripture, in prayer, and humility and through the Church’s dogmatic tradition, he restlessly seeks to clarify and deepen our grasp of the mystery of Christ. Other thoughtful writers anchored in the same tradition will differ with Weinandy and arrive at different conclusions on certain questions. But by probing the mystery of Christ and not settling for easy answers, Weinandy exemplifies the practice of “faith seeking understanding” and shows himself to be a N&V theologian in the spirit of St. Augustine. Daniel Keating Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, Michigan Book Reviews 1031 Scholarly Community at the Early University of Paris: Theologians, Education and Society, 1215–1248 by Spencer E. Young (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), ix + 260 pp. Spencer Young’s work Scholarly Community at the Early University of Paris: Theologians, Education and Society, 1215–1248 is a historical study of the “Parens scientiarum generation” of theologians on the faculty of the University of Paris during the period of the initial development of the institution. The group is so named in light of Pope Gregory IX’s bull of 1231 that promulgated statutes for the university contributing to its stability and corporate identity. The theologians highlighted in Young’s study include secular masters (such as Philip the Chancellor and William of Auxerre), as well as mendicants, both Dominicans (for example, Hugh of St. Cher and Roland of Cremona) and Franciscans (Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, and Odo Rigaud). The chronological boundaries of Young’s work enable it to serve as the definitive sequel to Stephen Ferruolo’s The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and Their Critics, 1100–1215 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985) and the English counterpart of Nathalie Gorochov’s Naissance de l’université: Les écoles de Paris d’Innocent III à Thomas d’Aquin (v.1200–v.1245) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012). While Ferruolo’s work closes with a discussion of Robert Courson’s promulgation of the university’s first statutes in 1215, Young’s study proceeds forward from this point and investigates the life and challenges facing theological scholars at the nascent institution. And while Gorochov’s work focuses on key individuals, Young’s concern is with the overall community of theologians at the university during this time period. In the course of his examination, Young gives attention to a number of thinkers who have received less scholarly attention in the past. The study contains a valuable appendix that provides a chronological register of the theological masters teaching at Paris during the time period under consideration. In this register, a brief biography of each master is given. Yet, the main purpose of the study is to be found in the community of theologians as a whole, rather than in select masters. Young states, “the principal objective of this study is to uncover how these various individuals related to one another within this community at a time when the very nature of its institutional organization was taking shape” (13). Young’s study is divided into five chapters. The first three chapters proceed with increasing specificity. In the first chapter, Young examines the late twelfth-century and early thirteenth-century context of 1032 Book Reviews the Parisian schools and masters, as well as the initial emergence of the faculty of theologians at the university. Here, Young provides an overview of key events that occurred at the institution during the chronological period under consideration. Such include the arrival of mendicant orders at the university, the Great Dispersion of 1229– 1231, the development of the university’s first theological curriculum, and the condemnation of the Talmud at Paris in 1248. In the second chapter, Young considers individual scholars on the Parisian faculty in relation to four areas of concern: (i) authority and influence within the community of scholars, (ii) the commitment of individual theologians to the mission of the university (especially in connection with the Great Dispersion), (iii) individual degrees of realization of the theologian’s tasks of lectio, disputatio, and predicatio, and (iv) attitudes toward Aristotle’s natural philosophy. This fourfold analysis enables Young to discern certain tendencies among faculty members that are reflected in Pope Gregory IX’s bull Parens scientiarum. In the third chapter, Young focuses specifically upon William of Auxerre and his influence within the theological faculty (examining in detail selections from Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 14726, fols. 194–222). The content in these folios confirms, according to Young, that theologians at Paris were aware of and influenced by one another’s work (in this case, Stephen Berout and Peter of Bar were aware of selections from William’s Summa aurea). The final chapters of Young’s work then return to a more general perspective upon two scholarly conversations occurring 1215–1248 (one conversation concerned almsgiving, and the other focused on the seven deadly sins). These conversations, according to Young, also highlight the initial reception of Aristotle among the Parisian theologians when such texts were controversial and held under interdict. Young’s fourth chapter focuses on almsgiving, a topic that he claims is “situated at the nexus of theoretical and practical theology, offering a host of insights into the potential social consequences of ideas developed within the schools” (17). The fifth and final chapter then considers the seven deadly sins, or capital vices. Of particular interest for contemporary theologians is Young’s treatment of the challenges the Parisian masters encountered when initially developing the theological curriculum of the university. Such challenges included the assimilation of Aristotelian philosophy, the standardization of Lombard’s Libri sententiarum as a theological textbook, and the introduction of the quodlibetal disputation as a form of scholarly interaction (46). On these topics, Young provides a helpful synopsis of contemporary research and effectively intro- Book Reviews 1033 duces his reader to a variety of ongoing scholarly discussions found in secondary literature. Regarding the reception of Aristotle, Young observes that, while members of the arts faculty were proscribed from consideration of the libri naturales, such did not apply to Aristotle’s texts in logic or ethics and some theologians did not interpret the ban as applicable to the theological faculty (48–49). Young categorizes the theologians of the Parens scientiarum generation into three groups regarding their attitude toward Aristotle’s libri naturales: some opposed Aristotle’s philosophy entirely ( John of St. Giles and Guiard of Laon), others endorsed a moderate and reflective appropriation in light of revealed truth (William of Auvergne and Hugh of St. Cher), and members of a third group (William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, and possibly Philip the Chancellor) campaigned for institutional acceptance of the Stagirite’s works (95–99). Young maintains that William of Auxerre may have been instrumental in mollifying Gregory’s concerns with Aristotle’s libri naturales. He argues that the Pontiff shifted from a stance of total prohibition (evinced by a letter from 1228) to the request three years later (in Parens scientiarum)for a critical purification of these works (49–52). Young also gives focused attention to the use of Aristotle’s ethics in theological works on the vices during this era (190–200). Speaking generally, Young’s work is of great benefit for scholars who research the time period under consideration, as well as for scholars of later Parisian theologians such as Albert, Aquinas, and Bonaventure, since the study explores the proximate communal context in which these thinkers were formed. One may, however, question whether each chapter included in the work contributes to the overall purpose of the volume. Despite the fact that all of the chapters treat topics that fall within the stated chronological boundaries and the fact that the introduction of the volume aims to interrelate all of the content, the unity of the work is slightly strained. The first two chapters of the work best serve Young’s stated purpose, whereas the next three chapters (while of high scholarly caliber and containing very useful analyses) could each function as a discrete and isolated investigation. This point aside, Young’s study is a significant resource comparable to works produced by veteran scholars researching the same general time period (for example, R. W. Southern, Marcia L. N&V Colish, and William J. Courtenay). Matthew R. McWhorter Divine Mercy University Arlington, Virginia 1034 Book Reviews The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology by Stephen Bullivant (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), xi + 215 pp. Stephen Bullivant’s monograph offers a welcome contribution to an area in the theology of the Second Vatican Council that continues to require clarification fifty years after the Council. The aim of this work is to elucidate “how, within the parameters of Catholic theology, it is possible for an atheist to be saved” (2). While not intended as an apologetic response to the New Atheism, Bullivant is correct in observing that his work will challenge one item in the New Atheist arsenal, namely the assumption that individuals who happen to lack certain “religious information” are thereby automatically assumed to be damned (12).The primary focus of this study consists in elucidating two poignant sentences of Lumen Gentium (LG) §16: Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Faithful to the Catholic magisterial tradition, Bullivant makes his first principles clear from the outset: in accounting for how atheists might be saved, one must affirm that the Church is necessary for salvation, that Christ is the unique mediator between God and man, that faith and baptism are necessary, and that a person cognizant of this necessity who refuses to enter or persevere in the Church cannot be saved (9). It is likewise the author’s Catholic faith that leads him to suggest early on that the putative salvation of atheists would involve a period in Purgatory (10). Chapter 1 consists in the prolegomenal quest to understand what atheism is before proceeding to theologize about it. Bullivant departs from the “common-speech McGrathian” understanding of an atheist as one who makes a principled and informed decision to reject belief in God (15). In this monograph, “atheist” simply denotes a person Book Reviews 1035 who is without belief in God or gods.1 Thus the term embraces both “positive” (believing-not) and “negative” (not-believing) atheists, the former representing those who deny that God exists while the latter includes agnostics as well as logical positivists who deny any meaning to the word “God” (16). This classification is warranted given that LG §16 refers not to those who expressly disbelieve in God, but rather more generally to those who have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God (17). An awkward wrinkle Bullivant pauses to consider concerns the question of atheism in relation to non-theistic religious traditions such as Theravada Buddhism, Jainism, and Confucianism. Members of these traditions are atheists in the sense adopted by the author. However, with respect to salvation, he argues that their situation is “arguably very different” from that of the non-religious atheists upon which the book focuses (28). Bullivant is consistent here in categorizing certain religious adherents as atheists while at the same time duly emphasizing that they may be in contact with a reality that the non-religious atheist is not. This aligns well with magisterial teaching concerning the avenues by which members of non-Christian religious traditions receive grace.2 Chapter 2 focuses on Vatican II’s treatment of atheism and its preconciliar antecedents. Over the course of the chapter, the author interacts with the work of theological giants Blondel, de Lubac, Maritain, Schillebeeckx, Daniélou, and Congar. Of particular importance for Bullivant’s project is the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus, which has undergone “genuine development” through a positive reformulation wherein we now understand the statement not to intend simply that those outside the visible Church are damned, but rather that it is by the Church alone that one is saved (50). Drawing 1 2 The author also takes up the question of the “practical atheist” and correctly concludes that, in the sense commonly accorded the term today, such a person is not an atheist at all, but rather a defective form of believer (21). Atheism is near-universally understood as a person’s position relating to God’s existence, rather than to whether one is living in accord with the belief in God he professes (24). Thus, in Dialogue and Proclamation (1991), the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue states, with references to the Second Vatican Council’s Ad Gentes: “Concretely, it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their conscience that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge him as their savior” (§29). 1036 Book Reviews on Ratzinger, the author concludes that the primary question for theology now concerns not whether the atheists can be saved, but how the certainty of this possibility is to be maintained alongside the absolute requirement of the Church and her faith (51). In addition to considering LG §16 at this point, Bullivant rightly draws his readers’ attention to Gaudium et Spes (GS) §§19–22. In contrast with the tendency of preconciliar theology, Vatican II gives a sympathetic overview of the varieties and causes of modern atheism, with GS §19, going so far as to note that “believers can have no small part” in its rise. Meanwhile, GS §22 arguably contains the most developed conciliar teaching on grace in relation to non-believers, teaching that the Son of God “has united Himself in some fashion with every man” by virtue of his Incarnation. In this same paragraph, the document affirms that Christ died for all men and that “grace works in an unseen way” in the hearts of all who are of good will. The Holy Spirit “offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery,” even as the manner in which this occurs is known only to God. Chapter 3 is dedicated to critiquing Karl Rahner’s theology in relation to the salvation of atheists. The author does not take this enterprise lightly, noting that to cast doubt on Rahner’s approach is to thereby cast doubt on the dominant account of the salvation of atheists within Catholic theology (3). Bullivant’s critique in this chapter focuses on one key aspect of Rahner’s theory: the question of how a saved atheist is to fulfill the criterion of possessing faith (79). Based on the premises that membership in the Church is necessary for salvation and that God wills the salvation of all people (cf. 1 Tim 2:4), Rahner concluded that, somehow, all men must be capable of belonging to the Church even if they have not come to an explicit acceptance of Christ. Bullivant, on the other hand, questions whether salvation requires membership in the Church or simply mediation by the Church, as in the interpretations advanced by Ratzinger, Congar, and de Lubac (78). The author detects three major problems in Rahner’s concept of implicit faith. First, he questions the cogency of an appeal to anonymous, non-propositional, pre-linguistic faith. Citing John Searle, he contends that Rahner’s foundation is dubious in light of the fact that “the notion of the unconscious is one of the most confused and ill-thought-out concepts of modern intellectual life” (99). Second, Bullivant believes that the concept of implicit faith “poses intractable philosophical and theological difficulties” (101), largely due to his having extended the concept of implicit faith “a very long Book Reviews 1037 way from the traditional understanding” (104). In contrast with the Thomistic tradition in which a member of the Christian community who is unable to articulate fully all its teachings may be described as possessing implicit faith, for Rahner, the act of faith itself is thought to be implicit within a person’s thoughts and actions. Thus, Rahner’s articulation of implicit faith is “at the very most” analogical to the Thomistic one (104). A third problem Bullivant identifies in Rahner is the dubiety of his primacy of empirical evidence, in other words the general implausibility of imputing faith to virtuous unbelievers. Although Bullivant takes for granted the possibility of such faith, he believes that such cases are exceptional and likely quite rare (109–10). The author bolsters his last criticism with a thought-provoking analogy based on the observation that a geocentrist might rightly believe that it is daytime in Britain when it is nighttime in Australia. Though his geocentric reasons for believing this are false, there is no need to impute to him any implicit belief in heliocentrism in order to explain his correct belief in the relative day and night times on opposite sides of the world. In like manner, Bullivant argues, one need not impute any kind of faith to Rahner’s alleged “anonymous Christian” in order to admit that such a person possesses exemplary virtue. Concisely summarizing, he states: “Even though there is, in fact, a God, and even if morality and meaningfulness are, at bottom, illogical without one, the fact remains that [this] kind of life . . . is perfectly possible without supposing it to demonstrate any ‘existentially actualized theism’” (109). In chapter 4, Bullivant shifts his attention from critique to proposal, outlining a new framework for interpreting LG §16 through a renewed understanding of invincible ignorance. Throughout the chapter, the author applies his considerations to “Jane,” a non-theistic Buddhist. Adopting the “D’Costan paradigm,” the author identifies Christ’s descent into the abode of the dead on Holy Saturday as the key event that makes possible a resolution to the question of how an atheist may be saved. He rejects Clement of Rome’s suggestion that the dead to whom Christ preached underwent a postmortem conversion (120). Following the interpretation of Bellarmine, he argues that the text describing Christ’s descent in 1 Peter 3 has in its sights specifically those people “in the days of Noah” who drowned in the Flood despite the fact that they had repented (1 Pet 3:20). These were the “spirits in prison” to whom Christ preached (1 Pet 3:18–19). Thus, Christ descended to the netherworld to recue those who were to be saved, not those who were damned. Nevertheless, these individuals who repented still had to wait in Sheol or the limbus partum for the 1038 Book Reviews coming of Christ wherein the process begun in their response while drowning in the Flood would be brought to completion. From this perspective, Christ’s preaching to the spirits in prison is understood as the announcement that what the deceased had secretly desired while on earth—their redemption—is now here in Christ. In this way, the explicit “epistemological relationship to Christ” required for salvation is rectified for an atheist in the event of Christ’s descent (122). If Bullivant is correct, then there are epistemologically and ontologically millions of unevangelized in the same state as those were in the limbus partum before Christ’s descent. For the pre-Incarnation just, Christ’s coming was necessary both to open heaven (objective aspect) and to bring these just into an epistemological relationship with himself (subjective aspect), whereas an atheist saved today may subjectively exist in the state of those who entered the limbo of the just even though, objectively speaking, the gates of heaven have been opened by Christ (123). At this point Bullivant turns directly to LG §16 for evidence in support of his position. In speaking of those who have “not yet accepted” (nondum acceperunt) the Gospel, the Council implies that everyone who is to be saved must at some point explicitly accept the Gospel. Given the possibility of a saved atheist, it follows that “[s]ome manner of post-mortem solution thus seems to be required by LG 16” (126). This inference is the linchpin of Bullivant’s argument, and his responses to possible objections are well-reasoned. However, even after reading his presentation, one may still wonder whether the author is reading too much into the Council’s intention with its use of nondum rather than the simpler non. For this interpretation to be conclusive, evidence from interventions by the Council Fathers on this point would need to be adduced. A final intriguing feature of this chapter is its recourse to “sociology of knowledge” in accounting for the widespread phenomenon of atheism in our day. An evangelist’s mere assertion of Christ’s existence is clearly not sufficient to oblige consent on the part of an atheist. What is more, in a pluralistic society that makes all truth claims relative, it may be that many people are never confronted with a plausible presentation of the Gospel. In this connection, Bullivant goes so far as to say that one could even be brought up nominally as a Christian without ever truly hearing the Gospel (145). Adapting a metaphor from Richard Dawkins, he observes that people may be inoculated against the “virus” of Christianity by being subjected to Book Reviews 1039 small doses of “dead” Christianity in their youth (145n21). In other words, the misconduct of Christians may so defame Christianity as to cause invincible ignorance in would-be believers. Given this scenario, the author believes that we have a strong theoretical foundation for a “presumption of innocence” or “salvation optimism” (73 and 146). All the same, Bullivant hastens to add an important qualification from GS §19—namely, that that those who willfully drive God from their heart and refuse to follow their conscience are “not devoid of fault” (139).3 In chapter 5, the author rounds out his solution to the problemata of previous chapters by means of a specific interpretation of Matthew 25:31–46. In brief, Bullivant proposes that atheists can be saved in accordance with what they have done to Christ’s “least ones.” Thus, the title of the chapter: extra minimos nulla salus (“apart from the least ones, no salvation”). Whereas the dominant strand of Patristic exegesis saw these minimi as Christ’s disciples, Bullivant advocates an “unrestricted” understanding of this class of individuals (153). Conceding that this reading does not represent “the overwhelming witness of the tradition” and that it might not capture the evangelist’s intention, the author argues that it does resolve two problems in D’Costa’s account: the impossibility of postmortem conversion and the atheist’s lack of opportunities for encountering grace. In a move all-too rarely made in contemporary theology, Bullivant offers hagiographical evidence to corroborate his claim. After a delightful analysis of how his paradigm is reflected in the lives of St. Benedict and St. Martin de Tours (155–56), the author dwells at greater length on the theology of Blessed Mother Teresa, who taught that Christ is present “in his distressing disguise” in the poor themselves (162). If this presence is as the saints describe it, then moral atheists not only act under the influence of grace but also have an objective encounter with Christ himself when performing corporal works of mercy for his “least ones” (165–67). Echoing D’Costa, Bullivant thus argues that the atheist already in this life 3 In his conclusion, the author likewise makes it clear that he is not proposing universal salvation, although he does follow Balthasar in stating that it is possible to hope that all might be saved. For an insightful critique of Balthasar’s position, see Ralph Martin, Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 129–90. In this work, Martin also poses a thoughtful challenge to Bullivant’s assumption that Vatican II’s theology reflects “salvation optimism” or entails a “presumption of innocence” (ibid., 55). 1040 Book Reviews has an “ontological relationship” with Christ, whereas the requisite “epistemological relationship” with him will only be rectified postmortem (173). None of this, he argues, requires that we attribute to the atheist implicit or anonymous faith; rather, in this case it is Christ who is anonymous. Briefly stated: “Anonymous Christs do not entail anonymous Christians” (172). In conclusion, Bullivant’s postmortem resolution in light of Matthew 25 is plausible and well-argued. For this reader, a significant remaining objection concerns how he seems to imply the presence of charity in an atheist while denying that this virtue is accompanied by at least implicit faith. It is difficult to see how the salvific grace an atheist receives in his encounter with Christ’s “least ones” is not accompanied by some noetic content. Perhaps it is worth exploring a possible reconciliation to this problem in the encyclical Lumen Fidei. Insisting that “love requires truth,” co-authors Benedict XVI and Francis invoke the biblical and Patristic tradition in teaching that love itself is “a kind of knowledge possessed of its own logic.”4 Regardless of whether this last suggestion proves fruitful or whether one is convinced of Bullivant’s claim that the standard Catholic understanding of how atheists might be saved is untenable, his book deserves a careful reading. The work succeeds in its quest for “creative fidelity” and, accordingly, merits both admiration and emulation. N&V Matthew J. Ramage Benedictine College Atchison, Kansas Living the Good Life: A Beginner’s Thomistic Ethics by Steven J. Jensen (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), ix + 205 pp. In L iving the G ood L ife , Steven Jensen attempts to elucidate Thomas Aquinas’s basic moral philosophy and, along the way, refute several prominent objections (both scholarly and popular) to this philosophy. Inasmuch as this book is an introductory text, Jensen succeeds in summarizing a number of the foundational principles underlying Thomas’s ethics while at the same time showing the reader that Thomas’s understanding of ethics is true and of perennial value. Jensen begins by noting that the modern world is in need of moral wisdom and that the ethical system of Saint Thomas of Aquinas is a 4 Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei (2013), §28. Book Reviews 1041 good starting point because it presents many relevant ethical truths with very few errors (3). Jensen intends this book to be an introduction to the thought of Thomas and not a detailed account of his ethical system. Nonetheless, he asserts that the little that is presented will show how Thomas’s ethical thought is “intricately ordered and systematic” in nature (6). In chapter 2, Jensen introduces the primary theme of the book by asking whether the just man or the unjust man is happier (8–9). He notes that all people do seek to be happy but most people do not see the connection between ethics and happiness. He then explains that ethics is the science of determining which actions are fulfilling (lead to true happiness) and which actions are not (11). To look at which actions are truly fulfilling, we must look at the authentically human capacities of reason, emotions, and will (13–14). This interior teleological approach to ethics will undergird the rest of the book as Jensen examines the traditional Thomistic powers of the soul (the intellect, will, and emotions) and shows how virtues perfect these powers to perform authentically human actions that result in happiness. The third chapter addresses the relation between reason and the emotions. He notes that many people believe that if something feels good, then it must be good. In other words, if they want something, then it must have value (19). However, Thomas says the opposite: if something is good, then we should want it (20). Jensen notes that people often want things that are bad for them and that humans should order their emotions so that true values shape their desires (21). Human reason perceives the true good and evil in the world and should direct the emotions to those things that are truly good (22 and 27–30). Jensen concludes that, to live a life of fulfillment, reason must direct the emotions so that they are truly humanized. In other words, the emotions should be true human desires and not just animal impulses (30–31). The fourth chapter seeks to explain the necessity of moral knowledge to live a happy life. It further refutes the view that to do right actions humans need only to do what they believe is right (in other words, follow their conscience). By means of a discussion involving a number of different distinctions between the voluntariness and involuntariness of actions, Jensen concludes that humans must follow their conscience, but they must first inform it (45). He explains that the happy life requires that we seek the truth about what is good and evil (46). 1042 Book Reviews In chapter 5, Jensen seeks to refute the view of deterministic behaviorism (that there are no free choices) and to explore the nature of human freedom. He goes on to give a few arguments showing that humans are capable of determining their own course of actions and are thus free (49–52). Up to this point, he has examined the emotions and reason, and he now introduces the will in order to explain the notion of freedom. The will is a spiritual capacity that is like the emotions in that it is a loving or desiring power, but unlike the emotions, the will is the appetite of reason. The emotions can be led by anything known or sensed, but the will requires reason for it to be stirred into action (56). The love within the will is deeper than the love found in the emotions, and to be fulfilled, humans must seek to satisfy the desires of the will—for, in the will, more lasting satisfaction can be found (53–55). Hence, humans can freely choose certain actions because the reason can determine that certain things are good and the will can choose them. In opposition to Kantianism, the sixth chapter notes that Aquinas believes that the truly fulfilled person not only does the right action but emotionally desires the right action as well. Emotions can be controlled to a certain extent by reason directing them, and if they cannot be directed by reason, then the will should overcome contrary ones (67–68). When reason repetitively redirects the emotions, or the will repetitively overcomes contrary emotions, good habits are formed that dispose the emotions to act in a certain way (69). Thus, although emotions will not always desire the true good in the present, they can often be redirected, and in the long run they can be more completely transformed through habits allowing humans to not only do good actions but also desire good actions (73–74). The seventh chapter shows that virtues within the emotions are essential for the life of happiness. Using a number of virtues as examples (e.g., moderation, courage, generosity, patience, and humility), Jensen shows that virtue exists in the emotions when the emotions desire the proper amount and type of good, not too much (excess) and not too little (defect). Because the emotions can influence the judgment of reason, judgment often depends on a person’s disposition. Hence, virtues in the emotions are necessary for the intellect to judge properly (91). Thus, happiness requires that the emotions are transformed with virtues so that they participate in reason. Happiness is not found in what people can imagine will make them happy (following uncontrolled emotions) but in truly human activities (93–94). Book Reviews 1043 In chapters 8 and 9, Jensen explains the virtue of justice and the vice of injustice. Justice perfects the will to treat others equally, unlike utilitarianism, where others can be mere instruments (102). Jensen then speaks of different types of equality by explaining commutative, distributive, and political justice (102–07). Whereas acts are just when others are treated equally, acts are unjust when people are not treated with the proper type of equality (114). He states that acts such as robbery, destroying another’s reputation, and harming the lives of others are unjust actions (115 and 119–120). In opposition to these unjust actions, justice safeguards the fact that the human good is found in union with others (108). He further notes that the just action takes into consideration that all humans are an essential part of an ordered common good (107 and 116). Based on this understanding of the role of humans within the common good, Jensen notes that suicide and euthanasia are not allowed but that capital punishment and war can be licit in some situations (117–118). Justice as perfecting the will directly affects actions leading to happiness. Injustice cannot cause true happiness, but it can cloud our understanding of it. In chapter 10, Jensen talks about how the good or evil of a particular action can be identified. He asserts that, in order for an action to be good, one must consider the action itself, the circumstances, and the motive (130). Some actions by themselves are always good or evil apart from the circumstances (130). However, either the circumstances or a bad motive can make a good action or an indifferent action into an evil action (131). To be good, the action itself, the circumstances, and the motive must be good, but to be evil only one of these has to be bad (132). Having looked at the virtues in the emotions and the virtues in the will, Jensen now focuses on the virtues in the intellect in chapter 11. He talks about virtues both in the speculative intellect (understanding, science, and wisdom) and in the practical intellect (art and prudence) (139–43). He notes that the intellectual virtues (with the exception of prudence, which will be treated in the next chapter) give the capacity to act well but do not actually move one to act well (141 and 144). Hence, someone can have these intellectual virtues and not be a good person and vice versa (146). Nonetheless, because these virtues give the capacity to act well, the good person will desire these intellectual virtues as appropriate (148). In chapter 12, Jensen treats prudence. He notes that prudence bridges the boundary between mental judgment and the affective desire found in the will and emotions (151). To be prudent, one must 1044 Book Reviews both have right desires and be good at taking counsel, judging, and especially commanding the proper action (151–53). Furthermore, since prudence applies moral principles to a particular situation, the prudent person must also know moral principles (155–56). Finally, he notes that prudence directs the moral virtues by determining the proper object and amount of desire (160). Having introduced the fact that we need moral principles to be prudent, Jensen goes on in chapter 13 to tell how humans come to knowledge of these principles. He notes that this knowledge generally first comes from parents or other mentors, but as people grow intellectually, they are eventually able to understand the principles themselves (167). To understand these principles themselves, they seek to determine what is the “human good, which [they] grasp by realizing [their] human capacities or inclinations” (180). When humans realize that they are more than just animals and should act rationally, they realize that their good “involves understanding the truth and sharing the good with others” (180). From this knowledge, certain natural desires of the will arise, and ultimately humans realize that they should pursue these goods desired by the will (180). Finally, further reflection helps humans discover other moral principles to guide their lives (180). These moral principles are called natural laws. Jensen notes that, since humans can discover these truths by looking at human nature itself, morality is not some external burden arbitrarily legislated from another, but “it springs from our very nature” as a guide to human happiness and fulfillment (181). During the last chapter, Jensen presents the conclusion toward which the entire book has been building: the study of ethics is the study of actions that lead to true happiness. However, some people misunderstand the nature of true happiness and think that happiness can be found in attaining whatever they desire (186–89). Jensen reminds the reader that, over and over throughout the book, he has demonstrated that true happiness comes only from fulfilling truly human capacities of reason and will (184). Ultimately, happiness is found in God, who fulfills one’s truly human capacities (194 and 199). The will seeks the infinite, and only God satisfies this desire (199). Jensen concludes that the life of virtue is the happy life (196). The primary message of this book—that ethics is the study of guidelines, actions, and habits that lead to true human happiness—is a very important message in the current milieu. Furthermore, the supporting arguments throughout the book are very helpful. As with any text that covers so many different points in an introductory Book Reviews 1045 manner, some points are better explained than others. I thought Jensen did a particularly good job explaining the role of the emotions in keeping people from recognizing true happiness and explaining how virtue does make people happy. On the other hand, I found the chapters on freedom and justice to be less helpful. Also, because Jensen will often introduce Thomas’s view by treating particular objections, readers who are already convinced of the truth of Thomas’s ethics will sometimes find it burdensome to get to the main point of the chapters. On the other hand, other readers will probably find this pedagogical style particularly appealing. On the overall, Jensen has done a fine job of writing a book that is sophisticated enough to capture the nuances and teleological structure of Thomas’s ethics yet clear enough that nearly any educated person would benefit from N&V reading it. John Rziha Benedictine College Atchison, Kansas Lying and Christian Ethics by Christopher O. Tollefsen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), xii + 209 pp. Christopher Tollefsen’s new book , Lying and Christian Ethics, is a significant contribution not only to the literature on lying in general, but also more specifically to the Thomistic-Augustinian perspective about the morality of lying. Tollefsen’s main thesis is a defense of the absolute view that lying is always wrong. In light of the unpopularity of his view, even in Catholic circles, and widespread criticism from other scholars, Tollefsen is to be commended for standing behind his arguments and charitably addressing opposing concerns. This book is the culmination of an intense debate that raged a few years ago in the journals Public Discourse and First Things on this very issue: Is lying always wrong? Tollefsen’s book is his magisterial answer to that query: One ought never to lie. For these aforementioned reasons, Tollefsen’s book belongs high on the list of books about lying, even though his core argument seems lacking. Tollefsen’s assessment of arguments against the absolute view can be divided in general into two types: 1) those who outright reject the absolute view and 2) those who do not outright reject it but wish to modify the definition of lying so as to allow for you to do what you normally could not do under the traditional absolute view. Regard- 1046 Book Reviews ing the first, Tollefsen gives an insightful analysis into the Christian case against the absolute view. John Cassian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Reinhold Niebuhr are the key Christian proponents of the view that lying can and needs to be done in certain difficult situations. Yet, what perhaps has gone unnoticed by many, including myself, is that these Christians who defended lying still admitted that lying is an evil action. In difficult circumstances, one may be permitted to lie and one even should lie, yet lying still remains as evil as ever before. “In the tradition of which Cassian is an important representative . . . there are genuine cases of necessity in which one must act in a way that is imperfect, guilty, sinful—yet nevertheless to repeat, one must act in this way” (62). Bonhoeffer also holds that, though one may lie, one still “bear[s] guilt for charity’s sake” (70). Niebuhr holds a similar view that, in some situations, evil must be done. Tollefsen’s analysis here serves as a poignant reminder to any Christian who wishes to defend lying: many Christians who denied the absolute view admitted that a lie was still a lie and that one incurred guilt in telling it. The second view, those who wish to hold to the absolute view but yet redefine lying, Tollefsen adeptly addresses in Chapter 1. One way around the traditional absolute view is that, for example, since the Nazis have no “right to know” whether you are hiding Jews, you may tell them “I am not hiding Jews” without lying. For a lie is only a lie to one who has the right to know. Tollefsen points out various problems with this view: “A stranger has no right against you for the truth about what you had for breakfast. . . . But it seems manifestly a lie to assert that you had something other than what you did in fact have” (29). The “right to know” view is also against the magisterium. Catholic tradition has held for over a thousand years that lying (as understood without the “right to know” qualifier) is always wrong. Further, the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, as the editio typica, has no such “right to know” qualifier. Lying is always wrong, full stop. This editio typica requires pious assent. Various other excellent arguments are leveled against the “right to know” view. His criticisms are quite compelling; if you wish to continue to hold to the “right to know” redefinition do not read this book. Chapters 7 and 8 are particularly helpful in assessing more practical objections to the absolute view: for example, if you cannot lie, then what exactly can you tell the Nazis at the door? Does the absolute view entail that one must tell the Nazis that one is in fact hiding Jews? Not at all, says Tollefsen. One may never lie, but this does not mean one is bound to do nothing. One may keep silent. One may Book Reviews 1047 evade by creating a distraction such as asking, “Why do you think I’d be so stupid to do such a thing?” One may equivocate saying “These are all my children.” Tollefsen rightly insists that not all deception is a lie. “Our mistake is not in thinking it was permissible to use codes in World War II, or to make it seem as if the Normandy invasion was to take place elsewhere, but to think that these were instances of lying” (187). Tollefsen is right here. What makes a lie a lie is that one is asserting something as if it were true when in fact one believes it is not. One is not making any such assertion in using codes, nor asserting that one is going to invade by merely putting more tents on a particular border. The details are too much to go into here, but Tollefsen is absolutely right that not every instance of deception is a lie. Though Aquinas himself condemns certain forms of non-linguistic deception as lies in the Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST) II-II, question 111, this does not mean that all forms of non-linguistic deception are lies. Many things in war are not lies, but merely deceptive tactics. Despite such praise, there are some areas of the book with which I take issue. His main argument against lying is that it violates the basic goods of personal integrity and sociality. Tollefsen comes from the “New Natural Law” persuasion and, so, rejects the classical natural law tradition (and so, in effect, parts of Aquinas’s thought). Basic goods are “basic underived aspects of human well-being and fulfillment, such as life and health, knowledge, friendship and so on” (109). Tollefsen is certainly right that life, health, and so on are all goods and are aspects of human well-being and fulfillment. But to say that these goods are underivable or simply grasped through insight is questionable. Health is good for man, but it is not through a simple act of insight that one grasps this fact. One can reasonably wonder why health is good for man. One may reason to this fact through reflection upon human nature and man’s telos. Something that is ordered toward its telos is good (cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1097b–1098a). Health is very important for ordering man to his telos. So, health is a good. Further, Aquinas himself does not hold to the underivability of basic goods, but rather says they are derivable from our inclinations (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2). Though Tollefsen would likely reject these arguments here, it is important for the reader to keep in mind that basic goods are not a universal position among Catholic philosophers and are in fact the subject of considerable debate. Tollefsen is also not entirely clear as to what exactly he takes Aquinas’s argument against lying to be. At times he is very careful 1048 Book Reviews not to put the language of basic goods into Aquinas’s mouth, but at other times, he seems to think that Aquinas’s argument against lying depends upon a notion of basic goods: “False assertion . . . really does damage [the liar’s] integrity [which is a basic good] in a way that, I shall argue in Chapter 5, is always a deliberate sundering of that integrity and thus is always wrong. And this thought appears to be present in Aquinas’s treatment as well” (54); and “[Aquinas’s] argument is not based on any idea of the thwarting or perverting of the natural function of something, whether speech or tongue. It is grounded in human good” (56). Tollefsen is right that Aquinas’s argument is grounded in the human good, but he goes too far in holding that the human good is a basic good and that Aquinas’s argument against lying is that it violates a basic good. On the contrary, Aquinas’s argument against lying is thoroughly teleological: “For since words are naturally signs of understanding, it is unnatural and undue that one signify by word that which is not in the mind.”1 Aquinas’s argument here is not about teleology of bodily organs or that it is always wrong to violate some teleology. It is about the natural teleology of assertions. Any action not ordered to its natural end is a disordered action. In asserting what one does not believe (which is by definition a lie), one is engaging in an action (of asserting) for an unnatural end (telling an untruth). Aquinas’s argument against lying does not depend upon some notion of basic goods, but is intimately bound up with teleology. Tollefsen seems to miss the point of the Thomistic argument and, instead of exegeting Aquinas, appears to be doing an eisegesis. In the final analysis, this book still deserves high praise. Tollefsen has charitably examined the major opposing arguments in enough (but not overwhelming) detail to give the reader a sufficient grasp of them. He has skillfully shown how the opposing arguments fail. He has presented many examples of what one can do instead of lying to the Nazis. He has explained why many non-linguistic deceptions are in fact not lies. This is an excellent book in spite of my disagreements. I highly recommend it—and that is not a lie. N&V John Skalko The University of St. Thomas Houston, Texas 1 ST II-II, q. 110, a. 3: “cum enim voces sint signa naturaliter intellectuum, innaturale est et indebitum quod aliquis voce significet id quod non habet in mente” (the Latin of this text is given from the Leonine edition and the English translation is my own). Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations Vol. 21: Thomas Aquinas, De unione Verbi incarnati. Translation, Introduction, and Notes by Roger W. Nutt. Latin Text by Walter Senner, O.P., Barbara Bartocci, and Klaus Obenauer. With a Foreword by John F. Boyle. xi-157 pp. ISBN 978-90-429-3197-8 $58 In this volume, Roger Nutt offers an English translation of Thomas Aquinas’s controversial disputed question De unione Verbi incarnati, together with the standard Latin text prepared by Barbara Bartocci, Klaus Obenauer, and Walter Senner, O.P. This disputed question is a remarkable portal into the Angelic Doctor’s theology of the hypostatic union, which is recognized as an area in which Aquinas forged some of his most original and penetrating articulations of the Christian faith. The attribution of an esse secundarium to Christ, in the fourth article of the De unione, has been the object of intense debate, for it seems to contradict the account of the Summa. Professor Nutt’s introduction carefully unfolds the historical background, technical concepts, sources, and speculative claims needed for understanding the breadth of the biblical and metaphysical contemplation represented in this work; it also includes a detailed exploration of the debate over the fourth article. For further information and to order: www.dallasmedievaltexts.org SpeculumMedievalTexts_Ad_Constantin_FY16_v2.indd 1 5/11/16 3:10 PM