et
Vetera

Nova

Fall 2016 • Volume 14, Number 4

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

Fall 2016

Vol. 14, No. 4

In Memoriam of Cardinal Cottier. . . . . . Most Rev. Charles Morerod, O.P. 1049
Commentary
Prayer and the Fundamental Structure
of the Faith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . †Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P. 1051
A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of
Theology in the New Evangelization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Khaled Anatolios 1067
Liturgy and Vocation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Heintz 1083
The Seminary and Western Culture: Relationships that
Promote Recovery and Holiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Keating 1099
Articles
Aquinas on the Spirit’s Gift of Understanding and
Dionysius’s Mystical Theology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P. 1113
Freedom and Heteronomy: Maximus the Confessor
and the Question of Moral Creativity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adam G. Cooper 1133
Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy: Revisiting a
Continuator of Thomas Aquinas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Domenic D’Ettore 1153
Creation ad imaginem Dei: The Obediential Potency
of the Human Person to Grace and Glory.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven A. Long 1175
Alimentum Pacis: The Eucharist and Peace in
St. Thomas Aquinas.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Meinert 1193
God, the University, and Human Flourishing. . . . . . . Kevin O’Reilly, O.P. 1213
Brain Death and Organ Removal: Revisiting a
High-Stakes Question. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bernard N. Schumacher 1239
Review Essays
Christology in Context: Review Essay of
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The Incarnate Lord:
A Thomistic Study in Christology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Guy Mansini, O.S.B. 1271
Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization: Hahn and
Wiker’s Unmasking of Historical Criticism’s Political Agenda
by Laying Bare its Philosophical Roots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeffrey L. Morrow 1293
Book Reviews
The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch
by Stephen L. Brock.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christopher O. Blum 1341

Healing for Freedom: A Christian Perspective on Personhood
and Psychotherapy
by †Benedict M. Ashley, O.P... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ryan Connors 1345
The Gospel of the Family: Going Beyond Cardinal Kasper’s
Proposal in the Debate on Marriage, Civil Re-Marriage, and
Communion in the Church
by Juan José Pérez-Soba and Stephan Kampowski. . . . . . . Marek J. Duran 1349
Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology
by Paige E. Hochschild. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jared Ortiz 1353
Nature and Grace: A New Approach to Thomistic Ressourcement
by Andrew Dean Swafford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew J. Ramage 1357
Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity
by John Behr.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . W. Brian Shelton 1364
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 978-1-945125-05-8) 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
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St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
© Copyright 2016 by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. All rights reserved.
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Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1049–1050

In Memoriam of Cardinal Cottier
Most Rev. Charles Morerod, O.P.
Bishop of Lausanne, Genève et Fribourg

On March 31, 2016 , Cardinal Georges Cottier (whom every-

one continued to call “Father Cottier”), the director of Nova et Vetera
since the death of Cardinal Journet in 1975, died unexpectedly from
a pulmonary embolism less than a month before his ninety-fourth
birthday. For his friends, he was an always available source of light,
absolutely sharp until his dying day, so that one never truly imagined
that he could pass away. The readers of Nova et Vetera are in profound
mourning, illumined by hope. This mourning touches not only our
readers but also the innumerable and widely varied persons who have
always been able to benefit from his listening and from his wisdom.
In Nova et Vetera’s April–June 1975 issue, Father Cottier said with
regard to Cardinal Journet: “Until the last moment . . . he worked
for Nova et Vetera.” What Father Cottier said about the founder and
first director (1926–1975) of our journal is true also of its second
director (1975–2016). Both of them showed, in this beautiful work,
their passion for truth and their love of human beings, in whom it is
necessary to stir up a thirst for truth that is desire for God. Both of
them enjoyed the grace of retaining their whole power of mind—
their great mind—until their final day, and this grace of theirs was
given also for us: we give thanks to the Lord!
In the brief announcement of the death of Cardinal Journet, Father
Cottier also said:
Moreover, Cardinal Journet never retired from Nova et Vetera.
. . . A forthcoming issue of Nova et Vetera will try to give an
idea of the richness and fecundity of an oeuvre that is considerable both in quantity and in quality. If our sorrow is great,

1050

Most Rev. Charles Morerod, O.P.

we remain at peace, because of the light that our beloved father
and teacher has left us. And without doubt it is not rash to think
that from his “eternal Country,” to which he so greatly aspired,
he continues to assist us.
I am certain that I am not alone in thinking that this text applies
henceforth also to its author (even to a practical point: the next issue
of the Swiss edition of Nova et Vetera will be devoted to him). As I have
said and will say again, I wish for the beatification of our two successive
directors.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1051–1065

Prayer and the Fundamental Structure of the Faith
†Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.*

In the years that bring us to the second millennium,
the Church is called to the great task of the new evangelization. The
impulse of the Holy Spirit leads it by a road plagued with challenges:
the Gospel must be announced not just to those who ignore it but
also to those who try to forget it or have already done so. It has to be
proclaimed without ceasing to bring us to deepen our commitment to
Christ. For the new evangelization, the evangelizers themselves have to
be evangelized. The encounter with Christ and full adherence to His
Person are based on faith, initium salutis. If faith is a gift from God, it is
important to prepare for it and resolve the doubts that are an obstacle
to receiving it, and once adhering to this faith, we must not cease, with
the help of God, to believe in it.
So, in our preparation for the tasks that are offered to us, the living
examples of a lived faith and holiness are an essential aid. And one
such example is a saint of our day, St. Josemaría Escrivá. Reflecting
on certain aspects of his spirituality, we will try to draw some applicable conclusions to the apostolate of faith in the context of the new
evangelization.
Steps: to be resigned to the will of God; to conform to the will
of God; to want the will of God; to love the will of God.1

*		Trans. John Martin Ruiz, O.P., from “La oración y la estructura fundamental
de la fe,” in Santidad y Mundo: Actas del Simposio Teológico de estudio en torno a
las enseñanzas del beato Josemaría Escrivá, Roma, 12–14 de octubre de 1993, ed.
Manuel Belda (Pamplona, ES: EUNSA, 1996), 91–108.
1
		Josemaría Escrivá, The Way (New York: Scepter, 2002), no.774.

1052

†Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.

And before:
Resignation? . . . Conformity? Love the will of God! 2
Meditating on faith in the spirituality of St. Escrivá, we can start
with this thought that, with few lapidary formulas, describes the
path of holiness lived by the saint himself and taught to his sons and
daughters. Indeed, his own life is an example of a constant availability
to the will of God, sought with all his soul.
When this will takes the form of the Cross and draws from him
wailings that might seem reproaches to God, immediately, with a sort
of spontaneous reflex, he responds with total acceptance so that the
deep peace that dwells in him is never destroyed.
According to the spiritual tradition rooted in the heart of the
Gospel and illustrated particularly by the Way of Perfection of Teresa
of Avila, the love of the Father finds its concrete and everyday realization in the search of God’s will, the object of the third petition of
the Our Father: thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And, indeed, the will of God is communicated to us through the
moral conscience enlightened by faith and the promptings of the
Holy Spirit. The judgments of conscience later remit the specific
actions that we must carry through or, otherwise, avoid. However,
if you attach to the word “action” such a broad meaning that it also
includes internal attitudes, conscience asks us often for a reaction, an
acceptance of the events that make up the fabric of our existence and
that we have chosen or, on the contrary, we would have preferred to
reject. To each individual are presented events or outside demands
that repel or cost him much. This set of circumstances that do not
depend on us and are integrated into our lives should be forewarned
with the eyes of faith.
Which leads us to a triple certainty: God’s Providence is omnipotent, embraces all things; all things work for good for those who
love God (see Rom 8:28); and the Father’s will is a will that loves us.
“For this is the will of God, your sanctification” (see 1 Thess 4:3).
Sanctification, in turn, passes by way of participation in the Cross of
Jesus.
Union with God is a filial relationship in the Only Son; and
Christian prayer, which expresses this relationship with the Father,
has as its source the depths of the same Holy Spirit, according to the
		Ibid., no. 757.

2

Prayer and the Fundamental Structure of the Faith

1053

puzzling words of Paul to the Romans and Galatians: “For those who
are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. In fact, you did
not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received
a spirit of adoption, through which we cry: ‘Abba, Father!’ For the
Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
And if children then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ;
if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him”
(see Rom 8:14–17; cf. Rom 8:26–30; see Gal 4:4–7). The thought
that we have transcribed obtains its entire dimension in light of this
great Pauline text.
The mystery of filial adoption by grace, which shapes our identity
as baptized, is at the core of the spirituality of Josemaría Escrivá. Such
filiation, which above all has an ontological meaning, must become
transformed into life, must be lived through the exercise of the Christian virtues, among which stand out the theological virtues. And it
comes to be fully life when there is a perfect union of one’s will with
the will of the Father. The union, the fusion of the will, defines love
and, in our case, the supernatural love of charity. But this same love
presupposes that each direct his life in the light of faith.
There are times when life brings setbacks, illnesses, disappointments, sufferings, trials, or also demands of sacrifices that seem to
be beyond our strength. How to recognize in all this the sign of the
goodness of our Father in heaven?
It can then be understood why loving God’s will is an expression
of holiness but also how, to reach such identification, you have to go
a long way.
To resign oneself to the will of God: more than once this expression has
been used to indicate acceptance of the divine will. But resignation
is only a first step, a procedure still very imperfect. It means that one
has conquered a first movement of rebellion; but the one who resigns
himself adopts an external attitude as regards the will of God. His
will does not surrender to God; rather he suffers, he gives way as does
the weak relative to the strong. His attitude is more servile than filial.
If it depended on him, things would have been arranged differently.
However, he has conquered rebellion in himself. And this can be a
first step forward.
To conform oneself to the divine will: This is a new development.
There is submission to the will of God because the soul adopts a
religious attitude, informed by the virtue of religion about God. His
Lordship is recognized; one stands as the servant in relation to the
Master. This compliance may already be a great and noble attitude.

1054

†Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.

But the human will and the divine will still do not come together
perfectly. The human will does not entirely allow itself to be caught;
there is still a remnant of exteriority. The divine will presents itself in
the form of fate, of necessity; it is not yet the Father’s will.
We could bring up the great school of the Stoics; and there has
even been talk of a Christian stoicism. However, one has taken a step
further, because the attitude is essentially religious.
To want the will of God: this step is superior in perfection, as it
implies, on the part of the human will, an active, positive moment
of going out to meet God’s will. However, it is possible that, as did
the previous one, this attitude derives from the virtue of religion,
configuring itself as the ending of this natural virtue. The virtue of
religion is the most perfect of the moral virtues, but it is not a theological virtue.
To love the will of God. Certainly, to love is to want. But not just
any desire for the will of God is set to love in the sense used here,
which is the supernatural love of charity. To love the will of God is
typical of he who lives the grace of divine filiation and moves with
his whole being, with the burning flame of his love, to meet what
God wants, for such a will is the will of the Father and, thus, is a
supremely lovable will. In such love of the Father’s will is fully carried
out to term the sequela Christi, conformity with the offering of Jesus
in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Yet, not as I will, but as you will”
(Matt 26:39). Such love, as shown by Jesus’s offering, can be heroic;
it can even lead to immolation and the sacrifice of the self.
Therefore, if the love of God’s will represents the expression of
theological charity, it is clear that the life of charity presupposes and
simultaneously activates the life of faith. It leads, then, to faith working
through love (Gal 5:6). How to know, if not, that the Providence of
God, the One who is our Father, embraces all of history, whether
the history of mankind or that of single individuals? He is attentive
to any of our actions, to everything that happens, to every one of
our encounters. He is present in the everyday things, in the most
common, that make the place of our sanctification and the encounter
with Christ. Josemaría Escrivá used to say to his sons and daughters,
“Ordinary life is the true place of your Christian life.”3
As a result, in the education for holiness we will have to insist on
what refers to the faith and strength of that faith. We will also insist
on what pertains to its operational strength. I have selected some
3

Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations with Josemaría Escrivá (New York: Scepter,
2008), no.113 (translation revised).

Prayer and the Fundamental Structure of the Faith

1055

significant texts. “Some call imprudence and rashness what is in fact
faith and trust in God.”4 Confidence in God belongs to faith and
hope. It is, at its root, the attitude of faith in the loving Providence
of the Father and his saving action. Such confidence in the presence
and action of the Father is at the basis of apostolic action. “A keen and
living faith. A faith like Peter’s. When you have it—our Lord has said
so—you will move mountains, humanly insuperable obstacles that
rise up against your apostolic undertakings.”5
Throughout all his life, Josemaría Escrivá gave witness to a love
of this kind for the will of God. I remember a few episodes concerning this. At the beginning of the Work in Madrid, he had found a
precious help in Mr. José María Somoano, who died after a sudden
illness on July 17, 1932. The blow was very hard to Escrivá: “Lord,
why have you taken him? Why deprive yourself of a faithful servant,
who could have been so effective in service to your Work? But you
know more and do what is best for him and for us.”6 He strongly felt
the blow he suffered, but his reaction of faith arose immediately.
In the spring of 1941, his mother, from whom he had asked so
much associating her with the apostolate of the Work, fell ill. He had
promised to preach a course of exercises to the clergy of Lérida, in
Catalonia. Having heard the doctor’s optimistic diagnosis, he leaves
Madrid, entrusting his mother to the Lord. Two days later, during
the exercises, they inform him that his mother is dead. Lacerated by
pain, he cannot but complain to God in a filial way; but his complaint
immediately follows the acceptance of God’s will: “Lord, you do this
to me? While I was taking care of your priests, you do this to me?”
But a little later he adds, “Let it be done, let it be fulfilled, let it be
praised and eternally exalted the most just and most lovable Will of
God above all things.—Amen.—Amen.”
Upon arrival in Madrid, he goes to the chapel where the body
rests. Just as when he received the news, he bursts into tears. When he
rises again, he asks for a stole and recites the Te Deum. However, he
cannot contain a lament: “My God, my God, what have you done?
You have taken everything from me: everything you take from me.
I thought that these my daughters really needed my mother, and you
leave me with nothing . . . without anything!” But then you hear
4
5
6

Josemaría Escrivá, Furrow (New York: Scepter, 1992), no. 43.
The Way, no. 489.
Registro Histórico del Fundador (RHF), 20165 (pp. 1635–36). This is the catalogued collection of material pertaining to the work of Josemaría Escrivá that
is held in the archives of the Opus Dei prelature in Rome.

1056

†Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.

this prayer: “Lord, I am happy because I know you love her and that
you had a detail of trust with me. . . . It has to be ensured that all
my children are with their parents when they die, but sometimes it
will not be possible. And you, Lord, have disposed that, in this, I had
gone first.” 7
I now evoke his reaction to the death of three of his sons in a road
accident in 1960. The anguished question directed to God “why?”
is also followed by an act of abandonment to Divine Providence.8
And the same attitude is found again and again throughout a lifetime
in which trials were not lacking, particularly when serious threats
hovered over the Work.9
If we treat of this, it is because there is a reason: St. Escrivá lived
deeply the mystery of the Cross, leading him to write, “The wholehearted acceptance rendered to the Will of God necessarily brings
joy and peace: happiness in the Cross. Then one sees that Christ’s
yoke is gentle and that his burden is not heavy.”10 It is necessary to
know how to recognize the Cross of Christ in trials. To encounter
the Cross “is to find happiness, joy . . . it is to identify oneself with
Christ, and therefore, to be a child of God.” He adds: “The foundation of the spiritual life of the member of Opus Dei is the sense of his
divine filiation.”11
St. Escrivá asks his sons and daughters to be apostles in everyday
ordinary life, in which the Work completed with all its demands,
with honesty, constitute the place of sanctification. Then the aspects
of the life of faith particularly exalted can be understood: a “more
humble, lively, and operative faith,”12 because faith shows itself in
humility,13 a “sacrificed”14 faith, proper of someone who is struggling
to be a saint.15
The faith of the apostle must banish doubt, and when the assault
of temptation arrives, the one who wishes the salvation of souls must
shout, following in the footsteps of the father of the sick child of
whom the Gospel speaks: “Lord, help my unbelief.”16
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

RHF, 4417.
Cf. F. Gondrand, Al paso de Dios, 3rd ed. (Madrid. ES: Rialp, 1985), 224.
Cf. ibid., 206ff.
The Way, no.758 (translation revised).
RHF, 20119 (p. 13).
Cf. Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge (New York: Scepter, 2002), no. 257.
Cf. ibid., no. 324.
Cf. ibid., no. 155 (translation revised).
Cf. Furrow, no. 111.
Cf. The Forge, no. 257.

Prayer and the Fundamental Structure of the Faith

1057

In the writings of this blessed, we often find a term: the word
supernatural. Faith gives us a “supernatural vision of events.”17 Speaking of his Work, Monsignor Escrivá repeated to his children that they
are not here to realize a “human endeavor but a great supernatural
work, which began fulfilling in it, to the letter, all that is needed so
that it can be called, without boasting, God’s Work.”18
The Founder makes clear here what the principle, the soul of his
Work is: it is a supernatural work. By saying what that Work is, he
simultaneously establishes a very high standard. If fidelity to this
standard were to falter, the Work would cease to exist.
Indeed, the vocation is aimed primarily at the laity. They are the
ones called to tend, with the help of grace, to the sanctification and
apostolate in ordinary life, in which work, carried out with competence and professionalism, plays a key role.
It is inevitable now to raise a vital question. What relationship
exists between this vocation and the temporal commitment that,
as the Second Vatican Council will recall strongly, is part of the
vocation of the laity? We know that, despite the specific guidelines
emanating from the Council, there are many uncertainties in this
respect: it tilts between the confusion of the fields and radical separation, positions both disastrous.
The guidelines of Josemaría Escrivá on this point have clarity all
the more remarkable because they came to his mind in a particularly
restless period, in which the passions of party affiliation seem to
prevail over everything. Young people gather around him—we are
in Madrid, at the beginning of 1936—they are impressed by the fact
that he is never mixed in political discussions. He simply reminds
them of the doctrine of the Church and the obligation of every
Christian to assume their proper responsibilities in society. Above all,
he never ceases to repeat the new commandment of fraternal love.19
Later, in 1939, addressing a group of students, he will put them
on guard against a too human conception of acting, even if it obeys
noble patriotic motives: “But do not forget that there is a higher
reality: the Kingdom of Christ, which has no end. And for Christ to
reign in the world, it first has to reign in your heart. Does he truly
reign? Is your heart for Jesus Christ?”20
Monsignor Escrivá would never tire of asserting the autonomy
17
18
19
20

Ibid., no. 657 (translation revised).
RHF, 21500, no.1.
Cf. ibid. (pp. 108–09).
Ibid., (p. 144).

1058

†Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.

of the laity in the temporal sphere21: “I love liberty because without
liberty we could not serve God; we would be wretched. We have
to teach Catholics to live, not to be called Catholics, but to be citizens who assume personal responsibility for their personal and free
actions.” He would go so far as to say, with a formula that requires
a correct understanding because it contains something of a paradox:
“the sons of God in the Opus Dei live despite being Catholics.”22
For this reason, such freedom is again found on the plane of
elections and political commitments. What attitude will have to be
adopted by the members of Opus Dei in the public life of their country? “The one they please! freely. I do not care about the position of
each, I defend their freedom. Otherwise, I could not defend mine.
And I’m from a land where we do not tolerate imposition.”23 Leaving aside the humor of the last words, the position of the founder of
Opus Dei responds to two essential reasons. The first lies precisely
in the proper supernatural character of the vocation to the Work,
which must be protected from any inclination toward a purpose
other than the Kingdom of God. With this, St. Josemaría does not
intend to deny the necessary evangelical inspiration of the temporal
commitment. However, he underlines that it is up to each individual
to personally discover and make effective the concrete realization of
that impulse.
The second motive is the supernatural horizon where his Work is
situated: “Do not forget that the world is our thing, that the world is
our home, that the world is a work of God and that we are to love it
as we ought to love those who are in the world. It is our job to consecrate the world to God, through this dedication to the service of the
Lord, each in the exercise of their ordinary work, to be a testimony
to Jesus Christ and also to serve the Church, the Roman Pontiff, and
all souls. Therefore, we must understand the world, we must raise it,
we must divinize it, we must purify it, and we must redeem it with
Christ, because you are co-redeemers with Him.”24
Still let us cite these clear statements of 1967: “The purpose at
which Opus Dei aims is to encourage the pursuit of holiness and
the exercise of the apostolate by Christians living in the midst of the
world, whatever their status or condition. . . . . Christ is present in
21
22
23
24

Cf. Ibid. (pp. 162–234).
RHF, 20565 (pp. 36–39).
Ibid. (p. 40).
Ibid. (p. 45).

Prayer and the Fundamental Structure of the Faith

1059

any honest human task. . . . Opus Dei has as its unique and exclusive mission to spread this message. . . . And to those who grasp this
ideal of holiness, the Work offers the spiritual means and doctrinal,
ascetical and apostolic formation needed to do it in their own lives.”25
For this reason, the members of the Work “do not act as a group, but
individually, with personal freedom and responsibility.”26
Monsignor Escrivá stands against any pretension of “using the
laity for ends which exceed the proper limits of the hierarchical
ministry.”27 He warns against a certain way of defining the vocation
of lay Catholics; it is not that these penetrate in social settings! “The
members of the Work have no need to penetrate the temporal sector
for the simple fact that they are ordinary citizens, equal to others,
and therefore they were already there.”28 Which, taken together, is
to draw a vocation of the laity, specifically a supernatural vocation to
sanctification and the apostolate.
***
The sense of freedom by which the person responds to the love of
God and the supernatural nature of the vocation guide the concept of
the spiritual life itself of Josemaría Escrivá. The insistence on ordinary
life should not be understood as an invitation to uniformity. The truth
is just the opposite. His experience as spiritual director has taught him
that God’s ways fit each person uniquely. In a homily on the life of
prayer (April 4, 1955), we read: “There are countless ways of praying, I
say again. God’s children do not need a method, graphed and artificial,
to go to their Father. Love is inventive, industrious; if we love, we will
discover personal, intimate paths that lead us to this ongoing dialogue
with the Lord.”29
And shortly before, in a beautiful passage about mental prayer, we
find: “Let there not be missing in our day a few moments especially
dedicated to attend to God, raising our thoughts toward Him, words
have no need to come to our lips, because they sing in the heart. . . .
Each of you, if he wants, can find his own channel for this conversation with God. I don’t like to talk about methods or formulas,
25
26
27
28
29

Conversations, no. 255 (translation revised).
Ibid.
Ibid., no. 12.
Ibid., no. 66.
Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God (New York: Scepter, 1997), no. 255 (translation revised).

1060

†Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.

because I’ve never been a friend of constricting anyone: I have tried
to encourage everyone to get closer to the Lord, while respecting
each soul as it is, with its own characteristics. Ask Him to work his
designs in our life: not only in the head, but in the heart and in all
our external activity.”30
In this way, Monsignor Escrivá offers his sons and daughters a
path of spiritual freedom, which is not the same as a path devoid of
demands: “You are contemplative souls in the midst of the world,” he
says, and uses this beautiful formula: the “heroism without noise of
your ordinary life.”31 The vocation of the laity in the world requires
this contemplative attitude, without which it would lose its proper
supernatural character, making it impossible to transform the world:
“If not, they will not transform anything, but they will be transformed; rather than Christianizing the world, the Christians will
become worldly.”32
The difficulties that come from ordinary life are not to be invoked
against this doctrine. On the contrary, the common life is perfectly
suited to look in it for the means of the life of prayer. “The street”—
he writes in a letter of 1959—“does not prevent our contemplative
dialogue; the bustle of the world is, for us, a place of prayer.”33
The sense of divine filiation carries with it the sense of God’s presence. Never will St. Escrivá cease to insist on this truth of faith and its
spiritual fruitfulness: “It is necessary to be convinced that God is near
us continually. . . . And he is here like a loving Father. He loves each
of us more than all the mothers in the world can love their children,
helping us, inspiring us, blessing . . . and forgiving. . . . It is vital to
be imbued, to be saturated with the knowledge that the Lord, who is
near us and in heaven, is Father and very much our Father.”34
It is not difficult to see to what extent this is consistent with
the teaching of Vatican II about the vocation, the holiness, of the
baptized and in particular the vocation of the laity.

Ibid., no. 249 (translation revised).
RHF, 29850 (p. 3).
32
Postulación de la Causa de Beatificación y Canonización del Siervo de Dios
Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Sacerdote, Fundator del Opus Dei, Artículos del
Postulador, Rome 1979, nos. 212–13.
33
Josemaría Escrivá, Carta, (January 9, 1959).
34
		The Way, no. 267. Cf. also Furrow, no. 658 (translation revised).
30
31

Prayer and the Fundamental Structure of the Faith

1061

***
Following what has been presented until now, I would like to propose
some reflections on the demands of the life of faith in the context of
the new evangelization.
Faith encounters in its path demands and obstacles that depend on
its own nature and that recur in each new generation. But there are
also unique challenges of each particular era. The latter will attract
our attention in the first place.
After the symbolic event of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,
one often speaks of the end of the age of ideologies. The formula is
only partially accurate. In fact, it ignores the traces that the Marxist
ideology has left in spirits, as well as the wounds whose severity will
be appearing successively. But above all it tries to indicate the global
checkmate to a system considered from the cultural point of view.
And, indeed, the Marxist ideology, taken here as a finished model,
but not unique, of ideology, translates the will of the instigators of
society and of the State to give to its own project and its justification
the value of an absolute that would be imposed on all members of
society. For this reason, the totalitarian power cannot be conceived
without including its ideological dimension. Their representatives
considered themselves, according to the famous formula of Stalin, as
engineers of souls. Having put their hands in teaching and in the mass
media, with an impressive propaganda apparatus, with the support
of terror and intimidation, they expressed the need to convince at
all costs, and regardless of the means used. The totalitarian power,
whose ideology was auto-qualified as scientific, had to be the proprietor of beliefs, and the people subjected to such power would have to
share such convictions unanimously. The consensus thus obtained, in
large part fictitious and feigned, replaced the truth. Ideologies are lies
and illusions that impose themselves or are imposed on the community, so that the ideological era meant the triumph of pseudo-truth
because the lie is a false claim that at all costs is intended to pass as
real. It is much more than a simple mistake. And hence the decline
or collapse of ideologies, whose deception suddenly becomes clear,
brings with it a crisis of the meaning of truth. If what we had been
taught as true was false and deceitful, where do we find truth? Are we
facing an illusion? In such context, the temptation of nihilism is very
strong. Because ideologies have perverted the very notion of truth,
the current crisis of culture is essentially a crisis of truth.

1062

†Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.

For these reasons, and with the prospect of the new evangelization,
the apostles have to be witnesses of the truth: testimonies, first, of the
virtue of faith. It is worth recalling here the words of Jesus: “You will
know the truth and the truth shall set you free” ( John 8:32). And
since the crisis of truth also reaches the field of culture, the witness
of the truth, who has an intellectual vocation, must be present in the
domains of philosophy and metaphysics.
Ideology mimics the truth. Therefore, its fall can help weaken
and obscure the meaning of truth. Other sectors of our culture can
cooperate to this same end.
If the modern era has been able to develop the very idea of ideology, it is due undoubtedly to the fact that the political power had the
means to put pressure on spirits much more effectively than in the
past. But it stems also, and more radically, from the fact that a latent
crisis concerning the idea of certainty already existed for some time.
The notion of certainty is distinct from that of truth: someone
possesses certainty of a truth. Certainty indicates the quality of
possession, the assimilation of truth by a subject. A certain truth is a
truth that no argument could pull out of the spirit. Thus, certainty
means the property of truth by which this can be imposed in an
indisputable way to the spirit. While the truth expresses the relationship of conformity of the judgment with the known reality, certainty
is the effect of the truth, the nature of its location in the subject that
knows: there are certain truths and probable truths.
The truth is imposed with certainty when the spirit discovers its
evidence, immediate or mediate. Then the object is made present to
the spirit.
Now, in modern culture, there has been a shift of emphasis, whose
importance should not be underestimated: opposing the very nature
of things, certainty has taken the lead on the evidence of truth. First
of all we have sought certainty.
From this have been derived two consequences. The first is a characteristic form of rationalism. The how of knowledge has been sought
before anything else; the perfect possession of the object has become a
criterion of truth, excluding in this way, from the field of knowledge,
all imperfect knowledge of the truth. And this is why human reason
has been closed in itself.
The second consequence can be found in the opposite direction.
The urgent quest for certainty that puts at the forefront the subjective
aspect of knowledge has opened the way to the psychological substi-

Prayer and the Fundamental Structure of the Faith

1063

tutes of certainty. Devoid of any connection with the truth, certainty
has become a reassuring subjective attitude. And through this door
have entered the ideologies. Without any wondering about its foundations, what is certain has been pursued just because it is comforting.
The issue is of concern to the witness of truth in a direct way.
Indeed, theological faith carries with it a relationship between
evidence and certainty that has no equivalent in the order of human
affairs. Usually, the degree of certainty depends on the degree of
evidence. In theological faith coexist the absence of evidence and the
perfect firmness of certainty, and this because the act of faith is based
on a motive stronger than the natural evidence of reason—namely,
the authority of God that reveals and its supreme veracity. So there
is, without a doubt, evidence as a basis of faith, but evidence that is
given us through a mediator: “No one has ever seen God. The only
Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him” ( John 1:18).
The witness of truth must be fully aware of the specificity of theological faith. St. Escrivá teaches: “Faith is a supernatural virtue which
disposes our intelligence to give assent to the revealed truths, to say
yes to Christ, who has given us a full understanding of the saving plan
of the Blessed Trinity.”35 These lines illuminate the behavior that is
expected of us.
***
The realm of ideologies has been that of “certainties” that already no
longer had truth as a cause. That is why they have been interpreted as
answers, in the individual and social sphere, to the need for security.
“Certainties” would be in this sense lies, thanks to which we would
defend ourselves from the tragic aspect of our existence, subject to the
inexorable law of time and expiration. This resource having failed, man
should learn to live without certainty; skepticism and relativism would,
thus, be the foundations of a new wisdom.
On behalf of such an attitude, of resigned despair, believers will
be accused of being either fanatics or anachronistic beings who strive
to hold on to the old certainties. This new cultural context calls for
a remarkable testimony of faith and of its novelty. It is necessary to
make clear that the certainties of the believer come from divine truth,
the source of meaning, peace, and joy. Such testimony will dissipate
prejudices and obstacles if its expression is authentically evangelical.
35

Friends of God, no. 191 (from homily given on October 12, 1947; translation
revised).

1064

†Cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.

In effect, the witness to the truth has to face a double hurdle: that
of the soothing certainty that no longer is referred to truth, and the
corresponding rejection of certainties as illusions that man has to
learn to do without.
***
Crisis of truth, temptation to skepticism. A third challenge appears
in the path of the new evangelization: that of syncretism. What has
been said so far does not yet cover all the trends that appeal to our
world. Along with the inclination that leads to nihilism, there is
also need to confront a diffused and wild religiosity and the largely
new problems posed by the encounter between Christianity and
non-Christian religions. Vatican Council II, through Nostra Aetate,
has opened the doors to an interreligious dialogue that does not
turn out to be exclusive of the missions. But a strong temptation
arises when one is open with sympathy to the positive elements of
other religions, to lose sight of the specificity of Christianity and the
universality of salvation that it obtains for us: “Nor is there any other
name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be
saved” (Acts 4:12).
The temptation of syncretism consists in considering that the various religious experiences are in essence identical, historical religions
being but mere contingent manifestations. Christianity appears then
as one religion among others. Such temptation seduces many spirits,
and even if it is in an attenuated form, it exerts its influence also in
some theologians.
Faced with this challenge, which is a great provocation for the
coming century, it is essential and vital that the witness of truth be
convinced of the transcendence of the Christian faith, of its uniqueness. Its specificity depends on the personal relationship established
with the person of Jesus Christ, Son of God made man. We now
recall the insistence of Monsignor Escrivá on the supernatural aspect,
as well as his insistence on the life of union of the believer with Jesus.
Let us also remember his sense of the Eucharist and, through homilies that he has left us, his constant and very specific invitation to the
sequela Christi. The daily meditation on the Gospel and the participation in the liturgy of the Church leads the disciple to that familiarity
with Jesus, who is at the center of our faith. The witness of truth is
thus impelled to deepen the awareness of his identity as son of God in
the only-begotten Son. It would also be appropriate to recall the deep
Marian devotion of St. Escrivá, as well as his love for the Church.

Prayer and the Fundamental Structure of the Faith

1065

We are thus faced with a rich treasury that the architects of the
new evangelization are invited to use to be up to the tasks that await
N&V
them.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1067–1081

A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method
of Theology in the New Evangelization1
Khaled Anatolios
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN

The very notion of a new evangelization immediately

provokes a sense of excitement and ready assent in the hearts and
minds of many sincere Christians. But in reflecting on the intellectual
task of the new evangelization, it seems appropriate to probe more
analytically into the attractiveness of this notion. While the rationale
for evangelization should not at any time require justification, the fact
that, at this moment in the history of the Church and the world, we are
impelled to qualify that evangelization as needing to be new requires
closer scrutiny. Why is it that we now feel the need to speak of a new
evangelization?
Notwithstanding all the cogent and compelling explanations that
refer to the need for Christians to respond to the steadily increasing
hegemony of a secularist worldview, I would like to suggest that there
is an even deeper reason why many Christians respond to the call for
a new evangelization with great enthusiasm and joy. I believe that the
deepest ground for this joy is that the Gospel itself is essentially and
incorruptibly new and that whenever we are moved to authentically
welcome its message, we are impelled first and foremost to proclaim
its undiminishable newness.
This clarification allows us to properly identify the contrast of old
and new implicit in the notion of a “new evangelization,” especially

1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Unite States Council of
Catholic Bishops conference on “The Intellectual Tasks of the New Evangelization: Catechesis and Theology,” in September 2013.

1068

Khaled Anatolios

insofar as it considers itself as responding to modern secularism. In
the very last analysis, this contrast cannot be between an old proclamation of the Gospel and a new one. Rather, what is ultimately at
stake is the proclamation of the ineradicable newness of the Gospel
over against the oldness of what the fourth evangelist calls “the
world,” which is not the created world as such, but precisely the
posture of self-sufficiency that characterizes all kinds of secularism,
both modern and ancient. We desire and need a new evangelization, first and foremost, because we need and desire a new world, a
new heaven, and a new earth, and we know that the content of this
newness is present only in Christ. As Irenaeus put it, “He brought all
newness in bringing himself.”2
In light of these considerations, it seems to me that the theological
foundation of the new evangelization must begin by properly locating
the designation of newness within the scriptural contrast between the
essential “oldness” of the world, to the precise extent that it resists the
newness of Christ, and the unsurpassable newness of Christ himself
that redeems and restores this old world. In the Old Testament,
we see the foundation of this contrast in the psalmist’s opposition
between the radical corruptibility of the material creation and the
undiminishable vitality of Israel’s God:
Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you endure;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You change them like clothing, and they pass away;
but you are the same, and your years have no end.3
Human beings, despite their divine likeness, are also perishable and,
again, the psalmist contrasts the corruptibility of the human condition
with the immutable and undiminishable vitality of God’s love:
As for mortals, their days are like grass;
They flourish like a flower of the field;
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone. . . .
2

3

Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 4.34.1, in Contre les Hérésies: Livre IV. ed. and
trans. A. Rousseau, B. Hemmerdinger, L.Doutreleau, and C. Mercier. Sources
Chrétiennes 100 (Paris: Cerf, 1965), 846 (my own English transltion from the
Latin).
Ps 102:25–27. All biblical quotations are taken from the NRSV translation.

A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of Theology 1069

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to
everlasting.4
In Second Isaiah (Isa. 40–54), we find intimations that the abyss
between human corruptibility and the unflagging newness of divine
life will one day be bridged over. In the midst of Israel’s exile, the
prophet announces in the name of Israel’s God:
Do not remember the former things [τὰ πρῶτα],
Or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
Now, it springs forth, do you not perceive it?5
But it is not until the New Testament that it becomes fully manifest
that the new thing that God has done is nothing less than to utterly
merge the essential newness of his indestructible divinity with our
perishable humanity in the God-Man, Jesus Christ. In an allusion to
the prophecy from Isaiah, the book of Revelation concludes the New
Testament with a vision of the universal sovereignty of God’s newness:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven
and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down
out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell
with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be
with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will
be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the former things [τὰ πρῶτα] have passed away.” And the
one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all
things new.”6
If we turn from a consideration of the scriptural witness to a
discernment of the signs of our own times, we find that there is a
surprising expanse of common ground between the worldview of the
Gospel and that of postmodern secular culture. Even if modern secuPs 103:15–17.
Isa 43:18–19.
6
Rev 21:1–5.
4
5

1070

Khaled Anatolios

larism does not acknowledge the redemptive newness that Christ has
brought, it recognizes at least the oldness and tiredness of a Christ-less
world. Quite independently of the judgment of the Gospel, secularism itself declares the human condition to be not young and vigorous,
but rather old and fatigued. As Charles Taylor has amply and voluminously shown, disenchantment, pervasive malaise, and a sense of
decay has pervaded the rise of modernity since the Enlightenment.7
Our advanced technological expertise, which has undeniably resulted
in the production of many new things, nevertheless has not only not
renewed the earth itself but has enabled us to measure its rapid demise
with ever-increasing alarm, much of it caused by our irresponsible
use of that same technology.
But the oldness of humanity goes beyond a misuse and depletion of
natural resources. One of its distinctly modern expressions is a sense of
disgust at the whole sad story of human history, with its dispiritingly
pervasive cruelty and injustice punctuated by episodes of boundless
savagery. This sentiment was famously expressed by James Joyce’s
modern-day Ulysses, Stephen Daedelus, who complained, “History
is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”8 In a similar vein,
the English novelist D. H. Lawrence spoke of the collective broken
heart of modern humanity, saying that we “have become repulsive to
one another. . . . [We] smell in each other’s nostrils.”9 It is to this sense
of deep malaise and incapacity for genuine vital hope that the new
evangelization must speak, and I am convinced that the spontaneous
excitement generated by the very notion of a new evangelization is
due to the fact that it offers the prospect of a deliverance from the
despair of living in a materially and spiritually depleted and senile
world that seems to lack any credible resources for renewing itself.
If it is true that the foregoing is at least a partial account of the
present meeting-point between the world’s need and the Gospel’s
promise, we can now ask what should be our conception of the
nature and proper method of a theology that would be of service to
the aspiration for a new evangelization. We can begin our response
to this question by defining theology, from the perspective of the
new evangelization, precisely as ordered discourse on the newness of
7

8
9

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2007).
James Joyce, Ulysses (New York: Random House, 1961), 34.
D. H. Lawrence, “Introduction to Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg,” in D.H.
Lawrence: Introductions and Reviews (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 121.

A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of Theology 1071

Christ and of the renewal of all things in Christ. Similarly, catechesis
can be conceived as the initial communication of this message of
how, in Christ, the old has passed away and a new heaven and new
earth are now taking shape in our midst. From this point of view,
the fundamental criterion that distinguishes authentic and correct
theology from distortions and aberrations can be characterized as the
preservation of the essential and objective newness of Christ.
This clarification preempts any inclination to overlook the riches
of the Church’s tradition in the name of a misconceived desire for
superficial newness and enables us to recognize that the high points of
this tradition are in fact precisely those that witness most authentically
to the newness of the Gospel and partake of its perennial vigor and
imperishability. Throughout the tradition, we find classic instances
of theologies whose conformity to the newness of the Gospel is
evidenced by the fact that they remain fresh and vital despite the
passage of time; they do not seem to grow old. In our efforts to
construct a theological discourse for our own time that is an authentic
witness to the essential newness of the Gospel and thus serviceable
for the Church’s new evangelization, we can benefit greatly from
learning from these classic theologies. We turn to them not with the
assurance that they are infallible in every detail but simply with the
recognition that they have proven to be built on the solid rock of the
new terrain of the authentic Gospel.
Certainly, the theological reflections of the Church fathers would
be widely acknowledged as exhibiting this vital character of evangelical newness, and I do not think it is merely coincidental that the
present call for a new evangelization coincides with a renewed interest in the theology of the Church fathers. But what is the best use
that the new evangelization can make of patristic theology? I do not
think it would be sufficient merely to repeat patristic formulations of
the Christian mysteries, though these are certainly luminous sources
for meditation. Rather, what is most necessary and foundational for
the project of a new evangelization is to retrieve the patristic method
of theological reflection, which was so successful in unpacking key
elements of the newness of the Gospel.
It is true that patristic theology is not entirely homogeneous, and
it would be valid to speak of patristic methods of theology rather
than of a single method. But we can also recognize a certain unity
of approach within variations of individual styles among the great
patristic theologians. Perhaps the most methodologically self-aware
account of patristic theology is Origen’s Preface to his On First

1072

Khaled Anatolios

Principles, written in the third century. It bears the unmistakably
distinctive character of the great Alexandrian theologian, but its
exposition of the fundamental structure of theological method would
be substantively shared by all the great fathers of the Church. In
Origen’s prescription for authentic Christian theology, we can locate
three key features that, in my judgment, should also be integral to a
modern theology and catechesis that aspire to be of service to the new
evangelization: a commitment to the absolute primacy of Christ, a
proper conception of the normativity and generativity of tradition as
animated by a dialectic of receptivity and activity, and an openness
to the comprehensive range of the truth of the Gospel.
The Primacy of Christ
The first sentence of the preface to Origen’s On First Principles lays
down the foundation for theological enquiry as follows: “All who
believe and are convinced that grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,
and who know Christ to be the truth (in accordance with his own
saying, ‘I am the truth’) derive the knowledge which calls people to
lead a good and blessed life from no other source but the very words
of Christ.”10 There is much to unpack in that one sentence that is
relevant to both catechesis and theology in the service of the new
evangelization. First, Origen is telling us that the properly Christian
experience of encountering Christ is precisely to encounter Christ as
Absolute Truth. It would follow, then, that the task of catechesis must
be to present Christ as this absolute norm, Christ as the Truth not just
in some theoretical sense but quite practically and existentially, as the
exclusively sovereign source of the way to “a good and blessed life.”
The task of theology, then, is simply to apply this absolute and unique
normativity of Christ to the whole extent of our knowledge of reality,
whether theoretical or practical.
Anyone who has even dabbled in Origen’s writings will immediately recognize that Origen does not mean that Christian theology
should make no use whatsoever of any knowledge that is not derived
explicitly from positive revelation. Rather, he is really making the
very same point that the contemporary Roman Catholic theologian
Bruce Marshall makes when he speaks of the “epistemic primacy” of
the Church’s identification of Jesus Christ as Lord. Speaking in the
idiom of analytic philosophy, Marshall explains that the epistemic
10

Origen, On First Principles, pref. 1, trans. G. W. Butterworth (Gloucester, MA:
Peter Smith, 1973), 1. Hereafter, I will refer to this work as simply “Principles.”

A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of Theology 1073

primacy of Christ means that “when it comes to the epistemic relation between beliefs—when it comes to deciding what is true—the
identification of Jesus which relies on the church’s canonical narrative must have primacy. . . . If identifying descriptions of Jesus in
the church’s canonical narrative are held true, then the sentences by
which we identify and describe other things must, if we are to hold
them true, at least be compatible with (that is, not contradict) the
sentences by which we identify and describe Jesus.”11
For his part, Origen is presuming the Aristotelian definition of a
science (ἐπιστήμη) as based on first principles that cannot themselves
be interrogated, lest there be an infinite regress of interrogation rather
than an ordered construction of a positive body of knowledge.12
Christian theology must seek its very first principle in the encounter
with Jesus Christ as the Truth in person and as the criterion by which
all claims to truth are to be tested. This does not mean that Christian
theology can be content to be irrational and obliviously unperturbed
by the demands and agitations of human reason. It is the Church’s
proclamation of Christ itself that asserts that the proper functioning
of human reason is a certain participation in Christ, who is Truth
and Wisdom. But the striving of reason must always be guided and
normed by the Church’s identification of Christ as the Truth. Only
in this way will the essential newness of the Gospel be preserved.
The Role of Tradition
After identifying the starting point of theology as an encounter with
Christ as Truth, Origen goes on to explain that the words and teachings of Christ are comprised not only of the utterances of Jesus in
his humanity but in fact of the entire Christian Scriptures—the Old
Testament that proclaims Christ in the mode of prophecy and the
New Testament in which Christ speaks both in his own person and in
the apostolic witness. Yet Origen, who is arguably one of the greatest
biblical exegetes of the Christian tradition, immediately recognizes that
the mere recourse to Scripture does not of itself guarantee a continuity with the Truth of Jesus Christ. And that is because this Egyptian
theologian of the third century was no less aware than the contempo11

12

B. Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 116.
See Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 2.19.99b17–100b17. See also Brian Daley’s
“Origen’s De Principiis and Scriptural Interpretation,” in Nova et Vetera: Patristic
Studies in Honor of Thomas Patrick Halton, ed. John F. Petruccione (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 3–21.

1074

Khaled Anatolios

rary philosopher Paul Ricoeur of what the latter calls “the conflict of
interpretation.”13 Origen notes: “Many of those, however, who profess
to believe in Christ, hold conflicting opinions not only on small and
trivial questions, but also on some that are great and important.”14 For
Origen, this inherent possibility and, indeed, perennial actuality of a
conflict of scriptural interpretation necessitates recourse to a standard
of judgment that will again prevent an endless regression of interrogation and unmediated disagreement. Origen refers to this standard of
judgment as “a definite line and unmistakable rule [regula/κανών].”15
This canonical principle is supplied by the living witness of the tradition of the Church, which Origen presents not as an alternative or
rival source of revelation, but rather as enabling and safeguarding the
authentic contents of the scriptural witness to Christ as the Truth. For
Origen, to reject the continuity of tradition and Scripture is to be in
danger of straying from Christ as the source and content of Truth and
reverting to ambiguous and unreliable extra-Christian accounts of
truth:
For just as there are many among Greeks and barbarians alike
who promise us the truth, and yet we gave up seeking for it
from all who claimed it . . . after we had come to believe that
Christ was the Son of God and had become convinced that
we must learn the truth from him; in the same way when we
find many who think they hold the doctrine of Christ, some
of them differing in their beliefs from the Christians of earlier
times, and yet the teaching of the church, handed down in
unbroken succession from the apostles, is still preserved and
continues to exist in the churches up to the present day, we
maintain that that only is to be believed as the truth which
in no way conflicts with the tradition of the church and the
apostles.16
We see from the last sentence that Origen has moved in the space
of just a few paragraphs from affirming the identity of Christ and
13

14
15
16

For Ricoeur’s exposition of this notion, see, for example, his essay, “Existence
and Hermeneutics,” in The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 3–24.
Principles, pref. 2 (p. 1).
Ibid.
Ibid. (p. 2).

A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of Theology 1075

the Truth to asserting that the determination of the contents of this
truth must be in conformity with the tradition of the Church. It is
clear that, for Origen, there is no tension at all between these two
statements. The truth of Christ, which must be appropriated as a
personal experience on the part of each believer, is mediated through
both Scripture and tradition. But it would be both anachronistic
and an actual distortion of Origen’s conception to see tradition as
merely a record of propositional pronouncements that pass judgment
on disputed questions. For Origen, tradition is many-layered and
contains different gradations of explicitness and normativity. It is a
generative and not merely a conserving principle, and therefore the
activity of theological investigation and enquiry is integral to the
living flow of tradition:
The holy apostles, when preaching the faith of Christ, took
certain doctrines, those namely which they believed to be
necessary ones, and delivered them in the plainest terms to
all believers, even to such as appeared to be somewhat dull in
the investigation of divine knowledge. The grounds of their
statements they left to be investigated by such as should merit
the higher gifts of the Spirit and in particular by such as should
afterwards receive through the Holy Spirit himself the graces of
language, wisdom and knowledge. There were other doctrines,
however, about which the apostles simply said that things
were so, keeping silence as to the how or why; their intention
undoubtedly being to supply the more diligent of those who
came after them, such as should prove to be lovers of wisdom,
with an exercise on which to display the fruit of their ability.
The people I refer to are those who train themselves to become
worthy and capable of receiving wisdom.17
Part of the background of this passage is Origen’s struggles with
the phenomenon of Gnosticism. The Gnostics divided the human
race into three categories: the materialists; the psychics, or soul-like;
and the pneumatics. They thought of themselves as the last category:
they were the spiritual people in whom indwelt a spark of the pleroma
and who had access to a secret knowledge that would lead them back
to their spiritual homeland. For these Gnostics, ordinary Christians

17

Ibid., pref. 3 (p. 2).

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Khaled Anatolios

were the middle group, the “psychics,” who were misled by the plain
meaning of the Scriptures and by the doctrines and sacraments of the
visible Church.
It was Irenaeus who waged a massive battle against the Gnostics in the second century, insisting that the contents of the Gospel
were given freely and openly to the whole human race. It is ironic
that modern readers sometimes discern a Gnostic flavor in a passage
like the one just quoted above when Origen was certainly adopting
an Irenaean (anti-Gnostic) approach. As we can see clearly in this
passage, for Origen, however high and deep may be the reach of any
individual’s contemplation of the mysteries of Christian revelation,
the foundation of this contemplation must be the basic doctrines that
are “delivered in the plainest terms to all believers.” For our own
purposes, we can say that the content of the Church’s catechesis must
be the foundation and norm for all theological contemplation. To
suggest otherwise, that the content of catechesis is in any way separable from that of sophisticated investigation and enquiry, is to revert
to a Gnostic schema that separates a class of “fleshly” people from the
self-proclaimed pneumatics.18
Nevertheless, for Origen, the articulation of these basic doctrines
does not put a stop to thought and enquiry but is indeed a creative
and fruitful provocation to further questioning, investigation, and
contemplation. Of course, such questioning does not put the basic
doctrines themselves into question, which would be a betrayal of the
epistemic primacy of Christ, but rather probes into the inexhaustible luminosity of what is revealed. For Origen, what we would call
theology is exactly this activity, which is both a human labor and a
gift of the Spirit. The fruit of this graced activity is wisdom, which
is a participation in the Word and Wisdom that is Christ himself.
Origen does contend that there are particular individuals who are
especially endowed with such wisdom but, apart from his affirmation
18

This point has been made by Joseph Ratzinger in response to the claim that
“the pastoral office . . . preaches for the faithful but does not teach for the
theologians,” to which he answers, “but such a divorce of preaching and
teaching is most profoundly opposed to the essence of the biblical message.
It merely rehashes that division between psychics and gnostics, whereby the
so-called gnosis of antiquity had already tried to secure for itself a free zone,
which in reality placed it outside the Church and her faith”; see Ratzinger,
“The Spiritual Basis and Ecclesial Identity of Theology,” in The Nature and
Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Theology in Today’s Debates, trans. Adrian
Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 62.

A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of Theology 1077

here that this is a wisdom whose foundational principles are universally shared by all Christians, he makes it clear elsewhere that those
gifted with this wisdom are called to share its fruits liberally with
those who cannot procure these fruits by their own labors.19
At the heart of Origen’s view of tradition is a certain dialectic
between receptivity and activity in which the former always has the
initiative. It seems to me that this dialectic determines the proper
mutual ordering of catechesis and theology. The reason that receptivity is the primary movement is simply that the truth of Christ,
the Truth that is Christ, is not constructed by human activity but
simply received. Both Scripture and tradition are primarily vehicles
for receiving the Truth of Jesus Christ, and the task of catechesis is to
introduce others into this stream of receptivity.
At the same time, this receptivity itself calls forth an active dynamism that seeks to travel ever farther and deeper into the fullness
of the life in Christ. We are disposed perhaps to be bemused by
Origen’s explanation that the apostles kept silent about the rationale
of certain doctrines in order to provide diligent lovers of wisdom
“with an exercise on which to display the fruit of their ability.” Yet,
a more general familiarity with Origen’s work would lead us to see
that he conceives of such exercise as an exertion that is the same as
the impulse of desire for the divine Beloved.20 Tradition, for Origen,
is not just a repository of information or legal judgments, but rather a
storehouse of provocations for the play of a searching desire.
The tradition of the Church presents to us the truth of Christ
both as a gift freely given and gratefully received and as an inexhaustible field for an active, loving contemplation. In their authentic
forms, both catechesis and theological investigation participate in
this dialectic of receptivity and activity within the flow of tradition.
Catechesis must always motivate its audience towards an ever deeper
contemplation of the Christian mysteries, while theology is bound to
anchor its investigations in catechesis and to present itself as a seeking
within the unfathomable depths of the faith that has been already
found and received in the universal teaching of the Church. Preserving the newness of Christ in the consciousness of the Church requires
the careful maintenance of this dialectic of receptivity and contemplative activity. It requires, in the first place, a dogmatic fixity that
distinguishes authentic features of Christ’s presence from spurious
19
20

See, for example, his Commentary on John 1.43.
See Commentary on John 1.23.

1078

Khaled Anatolios

ones. But the fixing of these parameters does not put an end to our
seeking and searching and questing, but rather stimulates them all the
more, illuminating the horizon of Christ’s presence as containing all
the newness of the new heaven and new earth. A new evangelization
must therefore look to the Church’s tradition as both defining the
contents of the newness of Christ and as inviting us to an ever-new
seeking for the fullness of that newness.
The Comprehensive Range of the Gospel
Consistently with his own prescription for the proper conduct of
theology, Origen goes on in his preface to On First Principles to outline
the primary doctrines of apostolic teaching. In the first place, these
doctrines confess the Church’s Trinitarian faith: in the one God who
is the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”; in Jesus Christ, begotten
of the Father before all creation, who emptied himself and became
human, suffered, died, and rose from the dead; in the Holy Spirit
“united in honor and dignity with the Father and the Son.”21 Then,
Origen outlines the Church’s basic doctrines on the destiny of the
human person, on the existence of angelic and demonic beings, on
the creation of this world from nothing, and that the Scriptures have
both a literal meaning and a hidden spiritual meaning. Finally, Origen
concludes his methodological preface by placing the theological task
within a hermeneutical circle or a dialectical movement that goes back
and forth between the parts and the whole of Christian revelation. The
theologian’s work is to connect individual doctrines so as to discern
the whole vision adumbrated by Christian revelation and then to apply
this vision of the whole in order to understand further the individual
doctrines. It is again worthwhile to quote his own words:
Everyone therefore who is desirous of constructing out of the
foregoing a connected body of doctrine must use points like
these as elementary and foundation principles, in accordance
with the commandment which says, “Enlighten yourselves
with the light of knowledge.” Thus by clear and cogent arguments he will discover the truth about each particular point,
and so will produce, as we have said, a single body of doctrine,
with the aid of such illustrations and declarations as he shall
find in the holy scriptures and of such conclusions as he shall

21

Principles, pref. 4 (p. 2–4).

A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of Theology 1079

ascertain to follow logically from them when rightly understood.22
Origen’s conception of the unity of theology offers an important
corrective to a modern tendency toward fragmentation and division, a tendency that is inimical to an authentic proclamation of the
Gospel, whether in the mode of catechesis or theological investigation. On this point also, Origen’s position is anticipated and illumined by Irenaeus’s struggles with the Gnostics. In this struggle, one
sees a titanic clash between two antithetical world-views, one that
privileges otherness, division, and separation as the ultimate hermeneutical key to the meaning of reality and one that privileges unity
and harmony. The Gnostic world-view explained reality in terms
of a series of irreconcilable antitheses: the divine pleroma and this
world that was created by a delinquent lower god; spirit and matter;
different human natures; the visible Church with its Scriptures and
sacraments and the esoteric Gnostic gospel; and the fleshly Jesus and
the Christ from the divine sphere. In contrast to this fundamentally
oppositional world-view, Irenaeus’s theological vision insists on the
unity and harmony of God and the world, of matter and spirit, of the
visible Church and its mystical reality, of the plain sense of Scripture
and its spiritual meaning, and of the vicissitudes of human history and
the recapitulation of this history in Christ.
Our postmodern temperament is more spontaneously inclined to
the Gnostic world-view than to the Irenaean: we privilege otherness
and diversity and are suspicious of unity and meta-narratives. Ultimately, the Christian view of reality is one that discerns a Christological unity that both preserves and harmonizes distinctions, such as we
find in the great theological vision of Maximos the Confessor in the
seventh century.23 But such a vision is based in the first place on the
hearing and proclaiming of the Gospel as providing a comprehensive
and unified view of reality. The Gospel does not tell us just a bunch
of things about God and the world; it proclaims the reconciliation
and recapitulation and renewal of all things in Christ. The manifold
phenomena of reality are thus gathered up in the single mystery of
Jesus Christ, who brings to actualization the unity of all creation with
the holy Trinity. Such a vision does much more than merely affirm
the internal logical coherence of the Gospel as a system of teaching;
22
23

Principles, pref. 10; Butterworth, 6.
For one of his classic treatments of this theme, see his Ambiguum 7.

1080

Khaled Anatolios

it also affirms the value and meaning of this world and its history as
enfolded by the proclamation of the Gospel.
The new evangelization would be very well served by taking
account of Origen’s conception of the task of theological reflection
as ordered toward a unified and comprehensive view of reality. A
program of new evangelization can legitimately address many distinct
issues that happen to be controverted in our time: human sexuality,
social justice, the evolution of creation, and so on. But it cannot
be merely reactive in addressing these issues in a piecemeal fashion
because the power of the Gospel is seriously undermined when we
see it merely as a set of responses to a long list of human quandaries and dilemmas. Rather, the power of the Gospel resides in the
first place, as we have been saying, in its announcement of a new
heaven and a new earth whose common and unified content is the
newness of Christ himself. The new evangelization must be oriented
ultimately to this comprehensive Christological vision that Origen
insisted was the necessary goal of all theological reflection.
Conclusion
I suggested at the outset of this paper that what ultimately motivates
the current aspiration for a new evangelization is something that goes
deeper than the recognition that Christians must redouble their efforts
to proclaim the message of the Gospel in the midst of a secularism that
increasingly encroaches upon the world-view of even self-proclaimed
Christians. I believe that this deeper motivation is the inspired realization that the essential newness of the Gospel needs to be proclaimed
urgently as an antidote to a pervasive, albeit often unconscious, sense
that just as the earth we live on seems long past its prime, so humanity
itself seems increasingly incapable of aspiring to a future that transcends
the nightmare of history and actualizes its noblest aspirations. This
situation makes it imperative that Christians authentically proclaim
the fullness of newness that Christ has brought into the world. The
Christian tradition offers invaluable resources for this proclamation.
Taking Origen’s methodological preface to his On First Principles as
paradigmatic of the patristic approach to theology, I have proposed
three features of this approach that seem to me to be indispensable
to our contemporary efforts to proclaim anew the newness of Christ.
First, we must steadfastly claim the epistemic primacy of Christ as the
fundamental critical principle of Christian discourse. Second, we need
to look to the tradition of the Church both for canonical safeguards

A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of Theology 1081

for this Christological critical principle and for inspired provocations
toward the ever-deeper questing for the fullness of the new life in
Christ. Finally, our proclamation of the Gospel must endeavor to enfold
every aspect of human reality within its horizon, which is always nothing less than the horizon of a new heaven and a new earth that extends
even into the heart of the ever-new and incorruptible life of the Father,
N&V
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1083–1098

Liturgy and Vocation
Michael Heintz
Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary
Emmitsburg, MD

Perhaps one way of defining “liturgy” is to understand

it as a restored participation in the original created order. That is, by
the grace of Christ, the New Adam, humanity can reclaim its Adamic
vocation as priest. By the grace of baptism, Christ extends his own
priesthood, sharing it with all who are born again by water and the
Spirit. The baptized thus share in the unique Priesthood of Christ,
which restores—and elevates—the original priesthood shared by Adam
and Eve.
God, as Irenaeus was to argue strenuously against Gnostic theorizing about cosmic origins, creates everything ex nihilo, out of his own
goodness, and not from any need or compulsion; creation is not the
result of the malevolence of a lesser deity or cosmic mismanagement
on the part of an inept inferior power. The distinction central to
Gnosticism—matter versus spirit—is trumped in Christian theology
by a more fundamental one unavailable to the Gnostics: between
created reality, comprising both matter and spirit, and the one, good
God, himself distinct from but not disinterested in his creation.
Creation, fashioned by the very Logos of God, “through whom all
things were made” ( John 1:3, RSV), has a meaningful purpose and
end. The entire created order is meant to reflect, by its very status as
created, the goodness of the good God and thereby offer him glory.
It is the very vocation of creation to glorify God. In this sense, the
created cosmos is also a sacrament; that is, it is patent of the glory of
the Creator and indeed points to him. Rational creation—encompassing both humans and the angelic orders—is to perceive God’s
glory reflected in, by, and through all created things and freely to

1084

Michael Heintz

order its own act of grateful praise to God. It is precisely in this way
that rational creatures glorify their Creator, seeing the goodness and
beauty of God’s handiwork (including their own literally marvelous existence) and glorifying God. As the French Oratorian Louis
Bouyer put it most elegantly, the very heartbeat of the cosmic order is
heard as the graced reciprocity of divine agape and humanity’s free—
and genuinely free precisely because graced—eucharistia:
Across this continuous chain of creation, in which the triune
fellowship of the divine Persons has, as it were, extended and
propagated itself, moves the ebb and flow of creative Agape
and of created eucharistia. Descending further and further
toward the final limits of the abyss of nothingness, the creative
love of God reveals its full power in the response it evokes,
in the joy of gratitude in which, from the very dawn of their
existence creatures freely return to the One who has given
them all . . . like an infinitely generous heart, beating with an
unceasing diastole and systole, first diffusing the divine glory
in paternal love, then continually gathering it up again to its
immutable source in filial love.1
This created response, which Bouyer calls “created eucharistia,” is itself,
of course, graced—the synergy of divine and human freedoms is made
possible (one might even say forged) by the fire of the Spirit—for
as the Apostle would chide the cliquish Corinthians, “what do you
possess that you have not received?” (1 Cor 4:7). Of course, our own
erratic life of prayer and the muddles of a fallen existence betray the
fact that this heartbeat may not echo as clearly in our quotidian experience as Bouyer describes. But what he is describing is, of course,
the original order intended by God that, despite being skewed by sin,
is to be restored finally in Christ, who alone has revealed agape in its
fullness. Sin—our own unreflective self-referentiality that distorts our
perception of ourselves, of others, of the world, and that leads us to see
God as perhaps simply not quite to be trusted, as a wily and invisible
competitor for the glory we seek for ourselves—has occluded our
perception of the cosmos and wreaked havoc on our imagination. The
primal, sacramental nature of all that is created by God is lost on the
fallen imagination, which sees things as just that—things, and no longer
as signs.
1

The Meaning of the Monastic Life, trans. K. Pond (New York: P. J. Kenedy and
Sons, 1955), 29 (translation revised slightly).

Liturgy and Vocation

1085

Augustine, in his De doctrina christiana, argued that signs are of
course also things, but in the sacramental economy it is equally
important to remember that res are very much also signa. And when
things no longer point to or speak of their Creator, they quickly
become opaque obstacles, then substitutes, and finally idols. Ironically, the fallen imagination falters not in seeking too much from life,
of aiming too high, but in settling for far too little, of aiming too
low, of being willing and desirous of being satisfied with any of the
various things that are meant to lead us through themselves to their
Creator, and as a consequence, it both misapprehends and misuses
them, simultaneously losing sight of their Creator and ours and of our
true vocation and end.
In short, our imagination itself needs conversion. The language
enshrined at the Council of Trent—that the divine image in humanity has certainly been disfigured but not destroyed, that our wills
are weakened and our intellect darkened by sin—is, of course, quite
helpful in diagnosing our own inabilities and instabilities in the orders
of thought and action. But perhaps another way of talking about the
effect of the Fall is to say that our very imagination has been warped
by sin and that it too needs grace and healing. Blessed John Henry
Newman wrote of the importance of the “sacramental principle” in
his own grasp of the faith: the visible world is charged with significance, manifesting unseen realities available to the eyes of faith.2 Yet,
as he observed in one of his University sermons, “the influence of the
world, viewed as the enemy of our souls, consists in its hold upon our
imagination”3 ; he refers of course to the “world” in the Johannine
sense, much as Paul uses the term “flesh,” to express the corrosive and
distorting effects of self-love and the desire for domination that reign
in this age.4 But with the coming of Christ in the flesh, this cosmos
has begun to regain its sacramental power—this was precisely what
2

3

4

See Apologia Pro Vita Sua, ed. D. DeLaura (New York: Norton, 1968), e.g., 34.
See also John R. Connolly, “Newman’s Vision of Holiness in this World,” in
Newman and Life in the Spirit: Theological Reflections on Spirituality for Today, ed.
J. R. Connolly and B.W. Hughes (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2014), 145–65,
esp. 155–57.
“Human Responsibility, as Independent of Circumstances,” in Sermons, Chiefly
on the Theory of Religious Belief, Preached before the University of Oxford (London:
Francis and John Rivington, 1844), 139 (this sermon was preached November
4, 1832).
See the superb treatment of these themes in Louis Bouyer, “The Two Economies of Divine Government: Satan and Christ,” in God and His Creation, ed.
A. M. Henry (Chicago: Fides, 1955), esp. 469–75.

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Michael Heintz

was at stake in the iconoclast debates of the eighth and ninth centuries—and glimpses of the age to come, the victory of agape and glory
of Christ’s Kingdom, can be discerned even here and even now. Fr.
Robert Imbelli’s recent book Rekindling the Christic Imagination is to
be highly recommended in this regard: it is an extended meditation
that makes splendid use of art, literature, and music as occasions and
vehicles of theological reflection, pointing us ultimately to the “Love
that moves the sun and the other stars.”5 Central to the thought
of G. K. Chesterton, particularly in Orthodoxy and in The Everlasting Man, was to call for a re-enchantment of the imagination. Our
imaginations, wounded by sin, have been further hampered by what
Joseph Ratzinger would call the reduction or constriction of logos
to the narrow confines of the empirical sciences, whose canons and
modalities exercise an often unimaginative but growing hegemony
over the academy.6 Grace brings not only enlightenment to the intellect and strengthening to the will but also re-enchantment to the
imagination. Inasmuch as Truth nourishes the intellect and Good
powers the will, so it is that Beauty can ravish the imagination.
While modern science may classify humans as homo sapiens—
beings of the genus homo literally specified by the capacity for rational
thought, and whereas Karl Marx was to reduce humans to homo faber,
those whose life, value, and meaning were to be identified with their
capacity to produce or construct,7 the Orthodox émigré liturgiologist
Fr. Alexander Schmemann has contended that the noblest definition
of humanity is as homo adorans: rational beings, the full actualization
of whose potentialities is to be found in the praise and worship of
Almighty God.8 As created by God, we are made to worship; it is
built into the very fabric of our nature: not only are we equipped for
it, but it is the deepest and fullest expression of our humanity, of creatureliness at its best. It is not simply that humans have a capacity for
worship—even anthropologists and sociologists might acknowledge
or even highlight that phenomenon—but that worship of God is the
5

6

7

8

Rekindling the Christic Imagination:Theological Meditations for the New Evangelization (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014).
See his Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), 74–79, and
the study of logos in his thought by Christopher S. Collins in The Word Made
Love: The Dialogical Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical
Press, 2013).
Ratzinger’s analysis is typically shrewd (see, for example, Introduction to Christianity, 72–73).
For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s, 1973), 118.

Liturgy and Vocation

1087

fulfillment of our humanity; we are most truly and fully who we are
when we are adoring God. In the language of St. Thomas, it is the
point of contact where divine and human beatitudo can be genuinely
shared: our prayer, our worship, enabling a created and graced participation in God’s own beatitude. Now, in a fallen eon, this is played
out in curious, if ultimately unsurprising, ways. To put it bluntly, if
we are not striving to worship God, since we worship by default, as
it were, then any number of things take the place of the one, true
God in the pantheon of our psyche: our career, our convenience, our
relationships, our comfort, our pleasure, our security, all of them of
course tied to our selves by the first-person pronoun. The self-assertion and self-promotion enacted by our first parents in the garden is
re-enacted, recapitulated, in our own grasping and clingy affections
and aspirations. The idols we construct or erect for ourselves actually
disable genuine beatitude, and so are continually knocked down and
replaced in a futile striving for the very thing closer to us than we
are to ourselves and yet hidden to us, occluded by our own swollen
self-love.
If the Scriptures begin by revealing the Adamic priesthood and
the sacramentality of the cosmos, they conclude by showing us just
what our true telos will be, accomplished proleptically, in Christ.
While for many readers the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse, has
functioned as something of a Michelin Guide to the end of the world,
so much so that, in contemporary parlance, to speak of “apocalypse”
is to speak of chaos, disaster, and destruction, the fact of the matter
is that the “revelation” being made in the letters addressed to the
seven churches is not principally the coming “events” rocking the
first century Roman world (or, for that matter, our own), but rather
what is unseen and unknown to the oppressing pagan powers and
cosmic principalities yet available to the baptized: the victory of the
Lamb. The book is less about plagues, trumpets, vials, seals, and woes
and much more about witness and worship: martyria, latreia, and the
privileged nature of that witness as worship.
Arguably, the most fruitful reading of Revelation is to see at the
center of the work what is revealed to John the visionary in chapters
4 and 5. The veil is lifted, and the eternal worship of God and the
Lamb is, for a moment, made visible to the persecuted churches of
Asia Minor (and subsequent generations of listeners and readers).
What is being revealed is that, in the face of the horrors of persecution and the seeming ascendancy of evil, the victory is already won:
it is accomplished and effected by a love that is willing to suffer, by

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the Lamb who is also the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and communicated, made both real and available, in the Church’s liturgy. In fact,
the center panel of the Ghent altarpiece, which depicts the heavenly
worship of the Lamb that is described in Revelation and in which our
earthly liturgy participates, captures with splendor what the Second
Vatican Council affirmed as the Church’s fullest identity, being gathered around the altar, praising and adoring God in Christ. One of the
most beautiful manifestations of this mystery each year is the Chrism
Mass during Holy Week, which really is a snapshot of the Church
most fully in act, one might say: as James Joyce had described the
Church Catholic, “here comes everybody,”9 which is only a modern
Hibernian rendition of St. Ephrem’s maternal image of the “big
church with the big lap”10 —lay, religious, priests, deacons, the elect of
the catechumenate, and the entire local Church together celebrating
the Lamb’s Supper under the presidency of the Bishop.
The telos of redeemed creation is thus revealed and glimpsed even
now, a telos made possible by a divine economy whose power is agape
and whose wisdom is subversive to all that fallen minds can conceive
or construct. Further, those who follow the Lamb, who still bears his
wounds, not only witness this love made visible; what is more, they
are made capable of sharing it, participating in it, and uniting themselves to it. Their love, their sacrifice, can participate in and be made
one with his unique and all-sufficient sacrifice, and—in and through
the liturgy—it already is. The key to their (and our) experiences, the
key to the meaning of all things, is precisely the One who is worthy
to break open the seals and unravel the scroll. If we seek meaning,
we need look no further than to the Logos (meaning)-made-flesh, who
is simultaneously the fullest revelation of agape, of what this meaning
looks like concretely: crucified love.
Within what biblical scholars refer to as Jesus’s “high priestly
prayer,” part and parcel of John’s account of the Last Supper, he prays
for his disciples and those—like us—who will believe because of
them. The mission of the Son in the temporal order is to give glory
to the Father, a glory shared fully and eternally with his Son and
now refracted in the created order by the Incarnation, a glory now
illumined by the Cross and Resurrection. Our vocation, the vocation
9
10

From Finnegan’s Wake (1939).
Hymns against Heresies, 2.16–17, quoted in Simon Tugwell, “Revelation and
Human Experience,” New Blackfriars 60 (1979):500–15, at 509 (it is worth
noting that its original context for St. Ephrem was anti-Marcionite).

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of those called to be sons and daughters in the Son, is to participate
by grace in that mission. This, in theological terms, is what the fifth
chapter of Lumen Gentium meant when it spoke of the “universal call
to holiness.” It means nothing more—but also nothing less—than a
created participation in the Eternal Son, a genuinely filial (and not
merely metaphorical) relation to the Father through the Son, in the
Holy Spirit: this is what divinizes our humanity; this is what St.
Thomas meant by beatitudo, not as a passive state, but as an active
participation in the triune life of God. This is what the liturgy and
the entire sacramental economy communicates in and through the
Church: it reveals to us and makes possible our share in this eternal
relation to God the Father, a deeply personal and abiding communio.
The Son’s mission is to glorify the Father and to implicate his
followers, literally to enfold them, to clothe them, in this glorification and in his own priesthood (hence the baptismal garment11). In
turn, the Father glorifies the Son, and those who live in him. Christ,
the new Adam, restores and elevates that original vocation of the old
Adam in and through his own created human nature.
How is it, precisely, that the Son “glorifies” the Father? In Johannine language, the “hour” of Jesus and his “glory,” anticipated
throughout his ministry by the seven signs chosen and highlighted
by the Evangelist, coincide on the cross. The supreme sacrifice—one
to which all the sacrifices of the Old Law pointed and that they
anticipated and from which they take their true meaning (much of
the second-century bishop Melito’s hymn on the Pasch sees all the
rituals of the old as somehow participating in the one perfect Pasch
of Christ12 )—the perfect and complete act of worship is discovered
in Christ’s self-gift to the Father on our behalf. Christ is, at this
moment, as the fifth Paschal Preface says, “the priest, the altar, and
the lamb of sacrifice.” Crucified, paschal love, self-donation, the Son’s
agape, is the essence of this glorification. For Christians, the Cross is
always, as Bouyer would say, illumined by the resurrection, but the
11

12

Being clothed in the baptismal garment (in which Christ’s priesthood is quite
literally “implied”) also communicates his very life. See the dated but still valuable study by J. Quasten, “The Garment of Immortality: A Study of the Accipe
vestem candidam,” in Miscellanea Liturgica in onore di Sua Eminenza il Cardinale
Giacomo Lercaro (Rome: Desclée, 1966–67), 1:391–401, although he perhaps
gives too much attention to pagan precedents and inadequate weight to the
Pauline theology of Rom 13:14 and Gal 3:27.
See G. S. Hall, Melito of Sardis: On Pascha and Fragments (Oxford: Clarendon,
2012).

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only way to that life is through that self-gift; there is nothing whatsoever magical about it.13 Just as the Son, by such love, glorifies the
Father, so the Father glorifies the Son, whose risen life witnesses that
glory and communicates this risen life to his disciples.
To speak of vocation as participation in the Son’s glorification of
the Father means that the essence of our vocation must be self-gift, a
crucified, paschal love like Christ’s. In the tenth book of his massive
City of God, Augustine engages in a lengthy reflection of the nature
of sacrifice, culminating in a discussion of the sacrifice of Christians.
He makes very clear that God does not need any of the things offered
to him in sacrifice: “Far from needing cattle or any other earthly or
corruptible thing, we must believe that God does not need even the
righteousness of men and women; for it is men and women, not God,
who benefit from the worship rightly offered to God. No one says
he does any service to a spring by drinking from it or to a light by
looking at it.”14
Still, what is it that these external sacrifices are meant to represent
or engender? Simply put, it is charity, the twin-love of God and of
neighbor with reference to God that forms the heart of Augustine’s
view of the Christian life:
We can see now that these sacrifices are to be understood as
symbolizing the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor. . . .
Thus, true sacrifice is offered in every act which is intended
to unite us to God in a holy bond: this means that every act
directed toward our final good that makes true happiness
possible for us. . . . True sacrifices are acts of mercy, whether
toward ourselves or our neighbors, when they are referred to
13

14

“So we see how this life can and must become a preparation for eternity: first
of all by becoming an anticipation of it, through the effective presence here
on earth of the charity which will blossom into life eternal. It is admittedly a
paradoxical kind of anticipation: in eternity, life with God, life in God’s love,
will be nothing but life, and superabundant life; here and now it implies the
Cross, and can only be achieved through the Cross. For the Christian, however,
the Cross is already illuminated by the resurrection. Even the Cross itself is
glorious when seen from inside, as the earthly fulfillment of what Christ
brought to it, the love of God. The Christian’s cross, like Christ’s, is a victory,
still hidden, but already visible to the eyes of faith”; see Bouyer, Christian Initiation (London: Burns and Oates, 1960), 116.
City of God 10.5, trans. H. Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1972), 377 (revised
slightly).

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1091

God, and these acts of mercy are intended to liberate us from
our misery and bring us true happiness. This being said, it
follows that the entire Redeemed Community, that is, the
congregation and fellowship of the saints, is offered to God
as a universal sacrifice, through the Great Priest who offered
Himself in His suffering for us—in order to make us the Body
of so great a Head—in the form of a servant (Phil 2:7). For it
was this “form” that He offered, and it was in this “form” that
He was offered, because it was precisely in this form that He
was the Mediator. In this “form” He is both priest and sacrifice. Thus the Apostle Paul exhorts us to offer our bodies as a
living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom 12:3) as the
spiritual homage that we owe Him. . . . For we ourselves are
that whole sacrifice.15
What God desires, or requires, is that we make a gift of ourselves in
and through the Body of his Son, which is the Church. As Augustine
concludes: “This is the sacrifice of Christians who, though many, make
up one Body in Christ. This is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, a sacrament well-known
to believers, where it is shown to the Church that she herself is offered
in the very offering she makes to God.”16
This is an expression of the admirabile commercium—the marvelous
exchange—first spoken of in the Epistle to Diognetus17 in the second
century and later enshrined in the liturgical texts of the Christmas
Octave, an expression not only of the mystery of the Incarnation but
also of how that mystery is celebrated and experienced by Christians
in the sacrament of the altar. What God offers us is nothing less than
himself. What he asks of us is nothing less than ourselves. In this
exchange he communicates to us his own divine life, and he who was
rich but became poor for our sake freely imparts to us poor creatures
his own richness.
In a recent article, Fr. Michael Lang has argued that one must
read this particular text from Augustine carefully in its context as
apologetic over and against pagan sacrificial systems, as Augustine
was often cited by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reform15
16

17

Ibid., 10.5–6 (pp. 379–80; revised slightly).
Ibid., 10.6 (p. 380; revised slightly), cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
at § 1372.
Epistle to Diognetus 9; the otherwise unknown author wrote ca. AD 180.

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Michael Heintz

ers as witness to the effect that external rites are unnecessary and
that the internal, personal dimensions of this self-gift are what truly
matter. While Fr. Lang’s analysis is clear, perceptive, and helpful, I
would further posit that those who are tempted to juxtapose external ritual and internal disposition vis-à-vis the Eucharist are apt to
miss their vital connection. It is precisely the Eucharist that forms
in us the capacity for self-gift, for paschal love. If the external rites
remain simply symbolic acts, tokens of a love accomplished long ago,
a passion play meant to stir our hearts to a similar love, then, to paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, “to hell with them.”18 But if they are in
fact efficacious signs, signs that truly accomplish what they signify,
then it is the sacrament of the altar that both enables and forms in
us this capacity for paschal love. It is actually his love with which
we love because we eat it, we drink it, and we assimilate it: his love
becomes our love. Our ineffectual love is taken up into his own,
efficacious love, and, to use Augustine’s language, we ourselves are
offered in the very offering we make to God. Our self-gift is united
with his self-gift, our feeble and often feckless sacrifices to his one,
all-sufficient and perfect sacrifice, and our participation at the altar
capacitates us to love as he loves, to die as he died so as to live through
him and with him and in him (is this not—rather than maudlin
displays of sentimentality and quasi-canonizations—fundamentally
the theology of the Order of Christian Funerals?).
The Eucharist is, then, the culmen at fons, the source and summit,
because our love finds both its origin and its telos in Christ, dead and
risen. The mission of the Church is not simply to proclaim the good
news, to bring information hitherto unavailable to more and more
people. It is rather to communicate his very life to the world. Ours
is a Church of Word and Sacrament, the latter simply the enacting or
embodiment of the former. What is communicated in the sacraments
is the Word: the Word-made-flesh.
I have referred repeatedly to the language of vocation throughout
this essay, and I have done so in a way that makes clear the multivalent
quality of the term. If, in fact, one were to ask a gathering of Catholics what their vocation is, I suspect the great majority would immediately refer to their state of life: married, single, vowed religious, or
18

Her precise words, in reference to discussion of the Real Presence, were, “Well,
if it’s a symbol, to hell with it”; found in a letter to Betty Hester written on
December 16, 1955; see The Habit of Being, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York:
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1988), 125.

Liturgy and Vocation

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ordained. A few theological sophisticates might offer a correction to
that and indicate that their fundamental vocation is holiness of life.
But I would like to suggest we consider vocation in concentric circles,
the most fundamental of which is not our particular state of life, nor
even our baptismal vocation to holiness of life, but our very existence
itself: our life is itself a vocation. None of us exists by our own will or
choice, and each life is a precious calling-into-being by the Supernal
Love that crafted all things into existence out of nothing.
In one sense, it is quite obvious, and yet it is imperative that we
start here: with the utter gratuity of our being, a wonder and marvel
captured and pondered by the Psalmist in the Psalm 139. It is the
fundamental Christian distinction,19 between God and all else that
is, everything else that is created and thus dependent for its existence
on his gracious will alone, the distinction that undercuts all Gnostic, Manichaean, and Albigensian dualisms of matter and spirit and
that should underline and reinforce the utter gratuity of all vocation: at every level, in every concentric circle, we start with a gift,
not something that is “just there,” that can explain itself, much less
justify itself. The revised translation of the Roman Missal makes clear
that what we offer God is nothing but what we have first received:
“Blessed are you Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness
we have received the bread we offer you, fruit of the earth and work
of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.” These words,
frequently prayed sotto voce or covered by music, capture crisply the
essence of the admirabile commercium: we present what we can muster,
itself merely what we have first received. In exchange, God’s Spirit
transforms that humble, simple gift, much as it transformed that lowly
maiden’s fiat, and offers us to us the fullness of his own divine life,
the Word-made-flesh anew under the appearances of the very bread
and wine we have offered.
The essence of the vocation to holiness is, as I have suggested, to
participate in the eternal Son’s temporal mission, the glorification
the Father. As Irenaeus had taught, this glorification is found in the
full actualization of our created humanity: gloria Dei vivens homo. But
he also goes on to specify more clearly what that means: the life of
the human is the vision of God. There is no autonomous creaturely
19

See Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), who argues not only that this is the
Christian distinction, but also that this distinction affects every aspect of Christian doctrine and practice in a very particular way.

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Michael Heintz

or human flourishing apart from the very vision of God. And, for
Irenaeus, there is no knowledge of the Father apart from the Son:
what is visible or seen of the Father is the Son.20 In short, there is no
holiness that is not Christocentric, and our glorification of the Father
happens precisely through the Son, in our becoming, by the action of
the Spirit, sons- and daughters-in-the-Son and offering ourselves to
the Father with his Eternal Son. Our becoming disciples and bearing
fruit glorifies the Father, and this happens only to the degree that we
unite ourselves to the Son in his self-gift, his paschal love, a self-gift
that, now that the Son has ascended and is seated at the Father’s right
hand, is indeed eternal.21
This is what it means, following the Letter to the Hebrews, to say
that Jesus has an eternal priesthood: in the risen and glorified Jesus,
now ascended to the Father, our Adamic humanity has achieved its
true end, and the priestly vocation intended by God in his creative
design is now fulfilled in Jesus, while not yet in us.
Further, the eternal self-giving of the incarnate Son to the Father,
in which the baptized are called to an ever-deeper participation, is not
static, but dynamic. As the biblical theologian François-Xavier Durrwell wrote during the great biblical ressourcement of the mid-twentieth
century, with a kind of oxymoronic panache, Christ is “fixed forever
in his redemptive act.” He goes on:
Christ will never leave behind the immolation and that
new life; his existence is fixed forever at the moment of the
Redemption. The five wounds he showed his disciples are not
merely the receipt for our ransom inscribed upon his body, but
the wounds of a death from which he will never recover. . . .
The life of glory is a perpetuation of his death; the fire of the
Spirit which consumes him keeps him as an eternal holocaust.
The Lamb of God stands in glory and is surrounded by hymns
20

21

For example, Adversus haereses 4.6.3: “Et propter hoc Filius revelat agnitionem
Patris per suam manifestationem. Agnitio enim Patris est Filii manifestation
[Thus, the Son reveals knowledge of the Father in manifesting himself. For
knowledge of the Father is the manifestation of the Son]”; in Adversus Haereses, Fontes Christiani 8/4 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1997). See also the
incisive study of M. C. Steenberg, On God and Man: Theology as Anthropology
from Irenaeus to Athanasius (London: T&T Clark, 2009).
See Douglas Farrow, Ascension Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2011), who
argues that the Ascension is integral to a full appreciation of the Paschal
Mystery.

Liturgy and Vocation

1095

of triumph, but he is still slain. . . . That ever actual glorifying
action coincides with Christ’s death, and thus keeps the Savior
forever at the moment of his death to the world, at the high
point of giving himself to the Father. . . . The Church, identified with Christ finds this salvation of the Resurrection because
she is incorporated into the Savior, not in this or that moment
of his life—Bethlehem, Nazareth, the roads of Palestine—not
yet in a heavenly existence subsequent to the act of redemption,
but in the act of Redemption itself. She is the Body of Christ in
one precise, and henceforth, eternal, moment, in the moment
when the redemption takes place, in the moment of his death
on the cross, when Christ was glorified by the Father.22
As an eternal self-gift, this act of the Son is fixed but not frozen;
it is dynamic but unrepeatable. At our baptism, when we are plunged
into the dying and rising of Jesus, we are capacitated for this paschal
love. And this paschal love, this self-gift, which is both engendered
by and participates in Christ’s agape while refracted differently in
the various states of life that adorn and enrich his earthly Body, the
Church, is nonetheless one and the same for married, vowed religious, single, and ordained. In the economy of grace, no gift, grace,
or vocation is given that is not given precisely for others. As Paul told
the Corinthians, “If we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement”
(2 Cor 1:6). That is, there is no gift given by God simply or merely
for the recipient. In fact, the moment one mistakes the gift for a
possession, when one clings to what is meant as gift as if it were solely
for oneself, one simply recapitulates the sin of Adam and Eve. No,
in the economy of grace, every gift is bestowed never solely or even
primarily for the recipient, but upon the recipient precisely for others.
Our sanctification will be accomplished in our “paying forward” the
gift, not in preening ourselves over it like a coveted award or spiritual
honorarium. And what is true of any particular grace or divine gift
is equally true of vocation. No one is called to marriage for herself
or himself; they are called for the sanctification of their spouse and
children; no man is called to diaconal or priestly ministry for himself,
but for the good of the Body, the Church; no contemplative religious
is called simply so that he or she can stockpile merit or catalogue their
experiences as they trundle along the unitive way (recall that both

22

In the Redeeming Christ (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 2013), 5–8.

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Michael Heintz

Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux wrote only under obedience,
for their superiors discerned that their experiences were not granted
to them principally for themselves, but for others).
We can ponder, in the concrete terms of our own life, for example, what this might look like. Those called to marriage are called
to sanctify their spouse; those to priesthood, to sanctify their spouse,
the Church—and, it is important to note, not a “reified” Church or
an abstract husband or wife, but the actual people to whom one is
espoused, in all their quirky individuality and fragile human particularity; so that, whether it is in marrying Walburga or Clovis or being
assigned to St. Swithun’s-by-the-Swamp, there is where holiness is to
be found. The degree to which we edify, literally “build up,” others
into the Body of Christ, the more we assist them in their own bearing fruit and becoming better disciples, the more indeed we participate in the Son’s glorification of the Father, and the holier we, too,
become. But this is almost, as the saints would have us know, as an
afterthought.
Our baptismal vocation—the second concentric circle to which I
have referred—is holiness of life. Its essence is self-gift, a participation
in Christ’s self-gift, which is why the Eucharist and participation in
the sacrament of the altar is considered the fullness of Christian initiation. The Eucharist forms in us this charity, this agape or paschal love,
and enables us, by participation, to make a genuine gift of ourselves.
This self-gift is, however, necessarily cruciform because, in a fallen
cosmos, every self-gift, even graced, must labor against sin’s bloated
and ingrown torpor. Christ crucified reveals what real love looks like
in a sinful cosmos. For, when pure love, divine love, agape, enters a
world turned in on itself, a world whose operating system is self-love
(precisely what St. Paul means by “flesh” and Saint John by “the
world”), closed off by fear from any other possibility, such pure love
is neither fully received nor fully reciprocated. In such a fallen and
rebellious cosmos, that pure love, divine love, encountering indifference, denial, and rejection, is not welcomed with humility and
delight but is refracted in suffering. Such pure love can be expressed
fully in a sinful and contorted world only as sacrifice. For rational
creatures whose will is wounded—that is, for us—real love, self-gift,
agape, will always involve some kind of dying; it will necessitate
sacrifice.
Further, there is no Christian state of life—married, vowed,
ordained, or single—that does not require self-gift or that is not
animated by paschal love. It will of course look somewhat differ-

Liturgy and Vocation

1097

ent—a married couple with children in the suburbs; a Carthusian
solitary in Vermont; a parish priest in Boise; a single person living
and working in Chicago—each is called to holiness in a way particular to the demands of their circumstances and the promises and
commitments each has made. But the love in which each participates
is none other than Christ’s love poured into our hearts by the Holy
Spirit. And as different as these individuals or any individuals may
be from one another, that love as such is the vinculum, the bond that
binds the Church together, that links them and relates them one
to another even if they have never met, or even if they live in two
different millennia.
I conclude these reflections with a brief meditation on one of the
most ancient vocation stories in Christian history. It happened on a
beach shortly after the Lord had risen. It is found in the tail end of the
Fourth Gospel. And it is precisely about the vocation to love:
When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with
fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the
fish you just caught.” So Simon Peter went over and dragged
the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even
though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to
them, “Come, have breakfast.” And none of the disciples dared
to ask him, “Who are you?” because they realized it was the
Lord. Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them,
and in like manner the fish. This was now the third time Jesus
was revealed to his disciples after being raised from the dead.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He
said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said
to him, “Feed my lambs.” He then said to him a second time,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes,
Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my
sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John,
do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him
a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord,
you know everything; you know that I love you.” [ Jesus] said
to him, “Feed my sheep. Amen, amen, I say to you, when you
were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you
wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your
hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where

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you do not want to go.” He said this signifying by what kind
of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he
said to him, “Follow me.” ( John 21:9–19)
The seemingly insignificant detail—a charcoal fire (anthrakian)—
sets the scene, and the tone. Peter, if you recall, had just recently,
after three direct inquiries, vehemently denied knowing Jesus, and
he did so while warming himself in the company of others, at a charcoal fire (anthrakian, John 18:18). Jesus’s dialogue with Peter here is
taking place on two different planes. They are, as it were, speaking
in two different registers, and actually about two different loves. It is
easy to forget that while, lexically, agape may have been available in
the ancient vocabulary, at least in its form and content, Jesus brings
something utterly new to its meaning. Jesus asks of Peter’s love using
the verbal cognate of agape. Peter replies using a different term but
one with a noble pedigree, philein, a verb ironically that Aristotle
had once associated with loyalty. Jesus repeats his question, and Peter
musters his reply, again using the verb philein. The third time, in a
move that recapitulates in microcosm the humble accommodation
of the Incarnation, Jesus adopts Peter’s term, philein, as if to say, “I
will meet you where you are to be found, but do not expect to stay
there,” as Jesus goes on to indicate how Peter would himself one day
participate in the mystery of his own crucified, agapic love. In the
end, God will accept whatever it is we can muster. And he will give
N&V
us what we cannot.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1099–1111

The Seminary and Western Culture: Relationships
that Promote Recovery and Holiness
James Keating
Institute for Priestly Formation
Creighton University
Omaha, NE

“The fault line of our culture . . . is that we have
been willing to sacrifice objective truth in order to save subjective
freedom, understood particularly as freedom of choice by an autonomous self. . . . This fault line will eventually erode our civilization
from within, just as the willingness on the part of Marxist societies to
sacrifice personal freedom for social justice (. . . brutal equality) eroded
those societies.”1
This quote from Cardinal Francis George, echoing ideas of St. John
Paul II, highlights the corrosive effect the autonomous self can have
upon culture when such autonomy is that culture’s supreme principle. In contradistinction, he raises the example of Marxism, as well.
These remarks from Cardinal George were written in 2008; and by
our current time, not only had the North American population been
long tutored in autonomy by the popular culture, but also its government
and professions had begun tutoring the populace in Marxist principles as
well. For example, the United States Government promulgated the
Affordable Care Act, undermining religious freedom as it sought to impose
a universal duty for employers to provide abortifacients, as well as other
contraceptives, in their health care benefits. A weakening of religious
freedom was also recognized within the culture as government leaders
1

Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I., The Difference God Makes (New York: Crossroad, 2009), 68.

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James Keating

narrowed their articulation of such from the “right to religious freedom” to the “right to worship.”2 Similarly, the triumph of gay marriage
in the US Courts created a cultural condition wherein individuals find
it more burdensome to refuse to cooperate with same sex weddings,
leaving private businesses exposed to punishment for not assisting
homosexuals with the supplies or services they need to legally wed
and celebrate such a wedding.3 In Canada, further individual freedoms
were sacrificed for “justice” when the Ontario College of Physicians
and Surgeons declared that physicians had to refer women to doctors
who would perform abortions if, in conscience, the referring physician
could not himself or herself perform such a procedure. It was declared
by the College that referring clients to such abortion providers was
not cooperation with evil, since no woman should ever be refused an
abortion and be given no alternative for her “care.”4
In the area of the triumph of the autonomous self, it has become
a sign of “intolerance” to make moral judgments about the sexual
behaviors of others. When the archbishop of San Francisco attempted
to update his teachers’ moral clauses as contingent upon further
employment, 80 percent of the teachers employed by the archdiocesan school system revolted. Apparently, even if one is employed by
the Church, subjective freedom trumps truth.5
2

3

4

5

“Religious Liberty vs. Erotic Liberty—Religious Liberty Is Losing,” January
12, 2015, on Albert Mohler’s official website (copr. 2002–2016), last accessed
August 8, 2016, http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/01/12/religious-liberty-vs-erotic-liberty-religious-liberty-is-losing/. See also Paul Moses, “Freedom of Worship vs. Freedom of Religion,” Commonweal, February 22, 2012,
last accessed August 6, 2016, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/
freedom-worship-vs-freedom-religion.
Alyssa Newcomb, “Washington Florist Sued for Refusing To Provide Flowers
for Same Sex Wedding,” ABC News, April 10, 2013, last accessed August 6,
2016http://abcnews.go.com/Business/washington-florist-sued-refusing-provide-flowers-sex-wedding/story?id=18922065.
Michael Swan, “Ontario Doctors Must Refer for Abortions, Says College of
Physicians,” The Catholic Register, March 5, 2015, last accessed August 6, 2016,
http://www.catholicregister.org/item/19833-ontario-doctors-must-referfor-abortions-says-college-of-physicians.
Kevin Fagan, “S. F. City Attorney Argues Against Archbishop’s Morality
Clauses,” SF Gate, March 6, 2015, last accessed August 6, 2016, http://
www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-city-attorney-argues-against-archbishop-s-6119697.php. “Hundreds of San Francisco Catholic School Teachers Urge Archbishop To Remove Morality Clauses,” Huffington Post,
March 4, 2015, last accessed August 6, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.
com/2015/03/04/san-francisco-catholic-teachers-morality_n_6799864.html.

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This strangely divided culture where the autonomous self reigns
alongside governmental and institutional attacks on the individual
conscience in the name of “justice” calls for a profound deliberation
on the part of seminary formation staff. What kind of formation is
needed today so that these future priests may preach the Gospel to
such a culture and, at the same time, “recover” from such a culture
themselves? Such recovery may be necessary due to a man’s exposure
to either the ideology of subjective freedom over truth or an understanding that “justice” warrants the undermining of freedom of conscience (or
to both). Beyond these two distortions of public life, recovery may
also be needed because of the personal “wounds” present in seminarians as they disentangle themselves from popular culture to enter
formation: gaming addictions, addictions to pornography, effects of
parental divorce upon maturation, drug or alcohol use, a history of
unchaste behaviors, resistance to authority, and so on. Men interested
in entering the seminary should, of course, not be admitted if addictions are present or serious emotional wounds remain from aspects
of their upbringing. However, even those not-so-burdened may
carry the marks of a culture that gives a man little or no guidance
on personal freedom or how to appropriate a way of life marked by
spiritual discipline.
This article will first look at the Catholic understanding of culture
and its importance for forming character and then notice what unique
features of seminary formation offer ways to both engage culture and
be healed of its deleterious effects.
How Does the Church Understand Culture?
Culture arises from man’s self-understanding regarding the use of
reason and freedom. In this way, culture is basic: it is present and is
established wherever man endeavors to express what he has judged to
be the meaning of existence.6 Due to freedom and sin, this judgment
is not infallible and cultures can be corrupt or anemic in expressing
values that carry truth and beauty to the persons being formed within
them. Therefore, culture contains and conveys the values of any current
epoch. Culture necessarily carries with it morals and religious meaning and patterns of whom or what is to be worshipped. The Book of
Wisdom gives a primordial view of culture when it says, “And in your
6

For more on the meaning of culture, see Robert Barron, “To Evangelize the
Culture,” Chicago Studies, last accessed August 6, 2016, http://chicagostudies.
org/Barron_Evangelization_Article.

1102

James Keating

wisdom [You] have established humankind . . . to govern the world
in holiness and righteousness, and to render judgment in integrity
of heart” (Wis 9:2–3). Such was noted by the Pontifical Council for
Culture:
[Culture] is the whole of human activity, human intelligence
and emotions, the human quest for meaning, human customs
and ethics. In a pastoral approach to culture, what is at stake
is for human beings to be restored in fullness to having been
created in “the image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:26), tearing
them away from the anthropocentric temptation of considering themselves independent from the Creator. . . . Man always
exists in a particular culture, but it must also be admitted that
man is not exhaustively defined by that same culture. Human
nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition of
ensuring that man does not become prisoner of any of his
cultures, but asserts his personal dignity by living in accordance
with the profound truth of his being.7
In the educational and political culture, many subscribe to
postmodernism, where language has little or no meaning and so
Catholicism’s approach to objective truth and even the existence of
a “human nature” is irrelevant and passé. From a faith perspective,
Western culture can become wearying to live in because it carries in
its institutions and governments a “radical emancipation of man from
God” and, therefore, from a clarity regarding truth. In the end, the
truth is relativized, as in the case of postmodernism, or narrowed,
as in the case of scientism. Could it be possible that one reason
seminary enrollment has increased in the twenty-first century is the
spiritual fatigue carried in Western men as they labor to breathe in
the culture’s thin air of unmoored reason passing for philosophical
inquiry? While cultures corrupt, they are never intrinsically evil,
since the Church and others who perceive that truth is accessible to
human reason hold such absolute denigration at bay.8
While cultures are subject to change and decay, the primacy of
Christ is an unquenchable source of life (cf. Col 1:8–12; Eph
7

8

Pontifical Council for Culture, Towards a Pastoral Approach to Culture (1999), §2,
quoting Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993), §53.
See Thomas Woods, Jr., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 2005), 9–10.

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1103

1:8). As bearers of the absolute novelty of Christ to the heart
of different cultures, Gospel missionaries incessantly exceed the
limits of each individual culture, without allowing themselves
to be ensnared by the earthly visions of a better world. Since
the kingdom of Christ is not of this world (cf. John 18:36), the
Church does not take away anything from the temporal welfare
of any people. Rather, she fosters and takes to herself, insofar
as they are good, the abilities, the resources and customs of
peoples. In so taking them to herself, she purifies, strengthens,
and elevates them.9
The Church (and therefore its future priests) loves the culture it
is living within.10 Despite a culture’s challenges, one cannot simply
critique culture; one also has to behold the beauty of what humans
create and sustain within any given historical epoch. “A culture
is transformed only by those who love it, just as individuals are
converted only by evangelizers who love them. . . . The best way to
evangelize is through witness and the practice of holiness. . . . The
saints will always ratify what is best about a culture, and they will
always properly critique what is demonic about it.”11 Holiness, the
search to remain in unceasing union with the Trinity and bear the
fruit of such union to the culture, provides the best platform from
9
10

11

Pontifical Council for Culture, Towards a Pastoral Approach, §4.
Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis (1965), §19: “Since human
culture and also sacred science has progressed in our times, priests are urged
to suitably and without interruption perfect their knowledge of divine things
and human affairs and so prepare themselves to enter more opportunely into
conversation with their contemporaries.”
Cardinal George, The Difference God Makes, 58. Pope John Paul II highlights
the ambivalent nature of our current age regarding moral values in culture
in Pastores Dabo Vobis (1992), §§8–9. He also mentions there the progress that
some cultures can embody as they move beyond certain ideologies and how
new generations affirm what is good and noble about the human vocation:
“First of all, mention should be made of the decrease of certain phenomena
which had caused many problems in the recent past, such as radical rebellion,
libertarian tendencies, utopian claims, indiscriminate forms of socialization
and violence. It must be recognized, moreover, that today’ s young people, with
the vigor and vitality typical of their age, are also bearers of ideals which are
coming to the fore in history: the thirst for freedom; the recognition of the
inestimable value of the person; the need for authenticity and sincerity; a new
conception and style of reciprocity in the rapport between men and women; a
convinced and earnest seeking after a more just, sympathetic and united world;
openness and dialogue with all; and the commitment to peace” (§9).

1104

James Keating

which to both affirm and critique the culture. The way of holiness is
the way of priestly formation. And yet, holiness is cautiously held as
an “ideal” on some seminary faculties who see such as “premature”
for seminarians or simply a poetic way of encouraging what is real but
not yet relevant. However, if seminary formators would invite men
to relentlessly relate all that they need to the One who desires to give
them all that is needed, then the very ground for holiness is fixed.
This reality of a providential God is itself mediated by the spiritual vulnerability possessed by formators in their duty to facilitate
human and spiritual maturation in seminarians. This vulnerability can
be secured by way of the laudable commitment of rectors to encourage universal spiritual direction for their faculty and formation staff.
Similarly, maturation in seminarians can be achieved only through
their hospitality to the truth as it is mediated by the relationships that
are the seminary (God, staff, teachers, peers). The seminarian, like the
culture, needs to be receptive to the truths God wishes to impart
about himself and about those aspects of each man that need both
purification and affirmation.
The Formation of Holy Priests as a Response to Culture:
Recovery by Way of Relationships of Love and Truth
One of the consistent themes in priestly formation is the goal of
forming integrated men. To be integrated is to have suffered in one’s
own body the coming together of theological truth, prayerful availability to God in all things, moral maturation, and pastoral charity. This
integration occurs through the suffering that happens in a man over
time as his ego makes room for theological truth and the needs of the
poor, prayer as his very breath, and moral and emotional conversion as
his ready disposition. Most basically, seminarian formation facilitates a
capacity to undergo repentance over any refusal to love and to welcome
healing around any incapacity to receive love. The relationships within
the seminary are a progressive conspiracy by God and staff to bring
the seminarian deeper into reality and disabuse him of any habit of
hiding in culturally acceptable fantasies. These fantasies could be nesting in disproportionate use of technological devices, escapist behavior
in entertainment or food or sex; they could be neurotically sought
after in a the search for influence, power, “success,” or an independent
spirit. As the Program of Priestly Formation indicates, a seminarian leaves
fantasy, enters reality, and is sustained in it only if he suffers the coming

The Seminary and Western Culture

1105

of Christ and endeavors to remain in him (John 15:4).12 To remain in him
is to exist in reality. To remain in him and, therefore, exist in reality is to
be a man who is spiritually formed.13 Such a formation is a suffering
of detachment from both the imaginary visions within the mind and
heart and the objective fantasies that are communicated to a man by
culture. The man who “remains” in Christ is free. Only those who
commune with the source are free (John 15:5). Such communion
allows a man to see that any one culture does not exhaust the meaning
of one’s own being.
If successful seminary formation is a progressive “breathing
together” in the Spirit (con-spiracy) by those who want to be brought
deeper into reality, then what moves a man to such depths? Primarily,
it is the capacity of a seminarian to entrust himself to the Spirit in and
through the relationship he forges with his formators. If a man wants
to recover from the culture that has wounded him, then he needs
to be able to stand the pain of self-examination. Such pain is borne
well only because the seminarian “remains” in Christ and decides to
entrust the truth about himself to the formation staff—even if this
means that no vocation to priesthood is discerned. The seminary,
viewed as a set of relationships, aids seminarians in recovering from
the culture by having them seek freedom from all that binds them to
ideology,14 or in the realm of spiritual progress, all that binds them
to lies about themselves or their relationship with God. One enters
the relationships that are a seminary, of course, to seek priesthood,
but a man cannot assume that, once he is “set free” ( John 11:44), an

12

13

14

United States Council of Catholic Bishops, Program of Priestly Formation, 5th
ed. (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2006), §115:“Since spiritual formation is the
core that unifies the life of a priest, it stands at the heart of seminary life and
is the center around which all other aspects are integrated.” See also §108.
John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, §45: “Spiritual formation . . . should be
conducted in such a way that the students may learn to live in intimate and
unceasing union with God the Father through his Son Jesus Christ, in the
Holy Spirit. Those who are to take on the likeness of Christ the priest by
sacred ordination should form the habit of drawing close to him as friends
in every detail of their lives. They should live his paschal mystery in such a
way that they will know how to initiate into it the people committed to their
charge.”
See Vatican II, Presbyterorum Ordinis, §8: “In building the Christian community,
priests are never to put themselves at the service of some human faction of
ideology, but, as heralds of the Gospel and shepherds of the Church, they are
to spend themselves for the spiritual growth of the Body of Christ.”

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James Keating

ordination date will be given.15 A man enters seminary to hear the
voice of Christ call. But he cannot listen if he is bound to lies about
his identity or enmeshed in habits that prevent him from receiving
the consolation of Christ’s own voice, a voice carrying truth in love.
If the seminarian becomes free enough to hear Christ call and
then becomes a priest, he will then, as a sacrament, descend upon the
culture to affect it by way of his freedom, a freedom that is a binding
to Christ. In this man’s very communion with Christ is the source of
his public witness. Without seminary facilitating this realignment of
what binds a man, the priest would simply be a citizen of his time,
possessing no more fecund imagination than one found within the
limits of politics, economics, entertainment, and higher education
(and the insipid values found therein). Instead, through faith and
faith’s profound unity with the eternal wisdom given by God to the
Church, the priest, if he remains disciplined, can breathe air that
freshens culture. This air is circulated by God by way of the altar and
then is circulated in culture through witness. The priest is an intellectual, but not in the sense of being defined by the theories learned
in a university. He is an intellectual who measures all thought against
the Incarnate Word, the Logos, and Reason-Itself-Become-Flesh.
This kind of thinking is, in its essence, the result of prayer, not calculation. As Pope Benedict XVI noted, “the faithful expect only one
thing from priests: that they be specialists in promoting the encounter
between man and God. The priest is not asked to be an expert in
economics, construction or politics. He is expected to be an expert
in the spiritual life.”16 From this expertise, the priest shares the mind
of Christ with the culture by way of this study and his own affective
and spiritual maturation.17 Being a man of prayer, however, does not
guarantee either intellectual acumen or facility with the knowledge
15

16

17

There are men in the seminary who resist formation out of fear of the pain
of conversion, a small fraction simply trying to “play the game” and “get
through,” and then another portion of the population who are sincere but
slower in welcoming the truth about themselves unto needed conversion
through intimacy with the Trinity. What possibly new and creative ideas can
seminaries develop to minister to these men who truly want to mature but,
through no ill will on their part, cannot cooperate just now?
Benedict XVI, “Meeting with Clergy,” Warsaw Cathedral, 25 May 2006, last
accessed August 8, 2016, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/
speeches/2006/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060525_poland-clergy.
html.
See James Keating, “Theology as Thinking in Prayer,” Chicago Studies 53.1
(2014): 70–83.

The Seminary and Western Culture

1107

and experience necessary to guide people in the spiritual life. This
comes about only through the integrated formation previously noted.
To be integrated is to have suffered in one’s own body the coming
together of theological truth, prayerful availability to God in all
things, moral maturation, and pastoral charity.
Such integration is a remedy for any of the dark influences or
partial truths conveyed from the culture to a man. In this integration, a man suffers the reorientation of habits, the purification of
desires, and the healing of any intellectual bias or partisan ideology
as he bathes in the singular resources that make up the reality and
relationships of the seminary: spiritual direction, human formation,
intellectual formation, pastoral competency, liturgies, private prayer,
spiritual reading, exposure to the lives of the saints, fraternal or peer
correction, the example of mature priest role models, self-discipline
and virtue, development in prudence, temperance, chastity, immersion in Scripture, and, finally, guidance from one’s bishop.
Such a structure of relationships mediating truth and inviting
conversion is, of its very nature, a sign that the seminarian is loved by
both God and the Church. Such a structure bears on it the capacity
to convey truth to the man as a remedy to any lies or bias he carries
within his heart. Such love and truth must be actively received by the
man himself, since it is acknowledged that the structure and content
of seminary alone are not sufficient to heal someone. A man cannot
become holy if he passively exists within the set of relationships that
is seminary. It is Christ himself whom the relationships are communicating when both the formators and seminarians make themselves
available to truth and love. It is Christ who converts and heals the
seminarians and replaces their bias or ideology with a new mind, one
beyond the limits of culture (1 Cor 2:16; Isa 43:19; Rev 21:5). When
the seminary exists in a circulation of grace and vulnerability to
one another in truth, then the seminarians cannot remain dull from
unthinking participation in culture but, instead, come alive by way of
“unveiled faces” gazing on the beauty of the Lord (2 Cor 3:12–18). It
is God who humanizes the culture through the vulnerability of those
who allow themselves to be affected by him. It is the priest whose
work is to impart a life that is more than human: “We become fully
human when we become more than human, when we let God bring
us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being.”18

18

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (2013), §8.

1108

James Keating

The Formation of Holy Priests as Missionaries to Culture:
Eternal Wisdom in a Time of Autonomy and
Imposed “Values“19
In the face of all the different and, at times, contrasting cultures
present in the various parts of the world, inculturation seeks
to obey Christ’s command to preach the Gospel to all nations,
even unto the ends of the earth. Such obedience does not signify
either syncretism or a simple adaptation of the announcement
of the Gospel, but rather the fact that the Gospel penetrates the
very life of cultures, becomes incarnate in them, overcoming
those cultural elements that are incompatible with . . . Christian living, and raising their values to the mystery of salvation
which comes from Christ.20
In their own way, priests carry a true missionary spirit, and they open
people to a larger vision of reality in an era that diminishes the world
of wonder and establishes meaning only in a narrow band of “more
of the same.” This lack of wonder leads to a bored and boring culture,
even though its activities are frenetic.21 It is bored and boring because
much of its activities flow more from the individual ego and less from
the love relationship with God. The Gospel, received as flowing from
the sacramental ministry of the clergy,22 ends this imprisonment and
opens people to a wider field of living: participation in the mysteries
of Christ. The priest, in other words, opens and guards the doorway
to divine love. It is this divine love that establishes culture upon a firm
foundation whereupon reason can be ordered toward truth and action
ordered toward goodness and holiness. By presiding at the origin of
all human flourishing, the adoration of God in the celebration of the
Paschal Mystery, the priest dedicates his life to seeing that love, his own
19

20
21

22

See USCCB, Program of Priestly Formation, §110: “Seminarians are to have a
spiritual formation grounded in Trinitarian communion that leads them to
solidarity with others, especially those most in need, a commitment to justice
and peace, a reciprocal exchange of spiritual and material gifts, and an authentic missionary spirit expressed in a willingness to serve where needed.”
John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, §55.
See Jean-Charles Nault, O.S.B., The Noonday Devil (San Francisco: Ignatius
2015), 120.
See Aidan Nichols, O.P., Yves Congar (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1989), 83:
“[The hierarchy] must teach, yet the laity must ‘receive’ their teaching—not
in the sense of conferring on it a . . . validity by their assent, but of rendering
it fruitful in the Christian life of the entire body.”

The Seminary and Western Culture

1109

and his people’s, does not run cold (Matt 24:12). Such adoration transforms persons and deepens their participation in reality. Thus culture is
re-aligned by these fruits of adoration and wonder.23
The ascendancy of subjectivity and freedom, so characteristic
of our modern age, is plunging us constantly into a climate of
anthropocentrism which is aided and abetted by a mediating
culture which closes the individual in on himself and keeps
him from achieving a liberating communion. . . . There is
perhaps nothing more urgent today than a new evangelization
of contemplation, if we wish a return of the sacred to produce
salutary results in our contemporary culture. . . . A new
inculturation of the Gospel can only arise from the intimate
encounter of man in the flesh with the Word of Love which
calls him and ravishes him, rooting him in Jesus Christ.24
This is the highly specific work of the priest—first to suffer an
encounter with the Word of Love in his own flesh, which is seminary formation at its best, and then to facilitate this same path for his
parishioners. In so doing, the priest identifies himself as one who is
not ashamed of the Gospel, not reticent to breathe the supernatural,
and, thus, eager to lead others into a communion with Christ by a
disciplined contemplation of the beauty of his actions. This beholding of the actions of the Christ, which began for the Church with
the Incarnation and continues now in its sacramental life and in the
lives of the saints, allows persons to be affected by the truth carried
in such actions. Being so affected, the person is established as such
a one in culture and becomes, at first, a curiosity, maybe a threat,
but optimally, an occasion of grace. The priest spends his entire life
dedicated to mediating spiritual sustenance to lay people so they can
have the courage to give such witness.
By way of his own formation, a priest can guide others through the
way of no longer accepting a culturally imposed identity as exhaustive
of one’s dignity and meaning. As the priest has first suffered a recovery from culture, he may be able to reach his parishioners and awaken
within them a new Christic imagination. This Christic imagination
replaces the anemic cultural tutoring that furnishes a mind with only
23
24

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986), 104–05.
Marc Ouellet, “Hans Urs von Balthasar: Witness to the Integration of Faith
and Culture,” Communio 18.1 (Spring 1991): 124–25.

1110

James Keating

a political, economic, and entertainment imagination. The Christic
imagination is new and rightly theological, born of the contemplation of Christ’s own actions that gracefully come to inhere in the
mind and move the will to a dedicated mission to culture: witnessing
to the baptized life. Such a mind is now substantial as a result of the
grace of contemplating Christ and suffering his coming by way of the
sacramental life and moral conversion.
Discerning Cultural Recovery
The effects of being disproportionately formed by “this passing age”
(Rom. 12:1–2) upon a seminarian’s thinking and character have to be
eased in seminary if that seminarian is to be one who is directed by
the Spirit from within. In seminary, a man is intentionally placed within
a set of relationships that conspire to mediate an encounter between
Christ and that seminarian. For various reasons—some intentional,
others not—some seminaries may order their relationships primarily
in accord with the customs of academia. This type of reductionism is
fought against right at the heart of the Church, in both Pastores Dabo
Vobis and the Program for Priestly Formation, which both advocate that a
man be immersed into a communion of relationships, relationships that
mediate an encounter with Christ. Seminary is a conspiracy of relationships that relentlessly encourage a man not to settle for an ideological
view of his own formation. Seminary is not simply school, not simply
counsel, not simply charitable work, not simply prayer; seminary is the
orchestrated facilitation of an encounter with the living, loving Word
mediated through the four areas of formation, and all ordered toward a
man’s participation in the one priesthood of Christ. One area of formation alone does not take the ascendancy, as all are to be vulnerable to
the heart of priestly formation: unceasing communion with the Word.
With such integration the seminarian is fully oxygenated—as the Spirit
circulates freely through spiritual direction, pastoral work, academics,
and human formation. One might argue that the most vital role of the
rector is to see that a man is being formed by an encounter with Christ
and not simply served by specialists in any one area (academic, spiritual,
human maturation, pastoral training) of competency.
A personal way seminarians can show they love the culture they
live in and wish to further evangelize it is to render their hearts
completely available to formation. In this way, the culture is gifted
with one more man mature in both spirit and affect. In facilitating
a seminarian’s integration of affective and spiritual maturation with

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1111

pastoral and academic competency, the seminary sends a man of
wholeness and peace into the culture. In so doing, the seminary gifts
the culture with a man who can be sought after as a spiritual and
moral leader, one who has suffered peace and healing in his “bones”
and wishes to share this way of life with those who are still embedded
within any of the negative values of popular culture.
When seminarians (as well as formators) agree to suffer the integrative and creative tension of all four areas of seminary life, seminary
becomes an antidote to cultural ideology. This tension, never to be
relaxed, but only suffered, is the genius of Catholic seminary formation as it seeks to purify any cultural pollution irritating seminarians
and replace such with the breathable “spirit” (Hebrew ruah) who
N&V
carries only life ( John 10:10; 6:63).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1113–1131

Aquinas on the Spirit’s Gift of Understanding and
Dionysius’s Mystical Theology1
Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Rome, Italy

The last few decades have seen a renewed interest in
Dionysius the Areopagite as mystical theologian and in Thomas Aquinas as spiritual master. Ressourcement figures such as Hans Urs von
Balthasar resurrected Dionysius the mystical author, while Servais
Pinckaers, Jean-Pierre Torrell, and others have deepened our vision
of Aquinas’s teaching on the spiritual life.2 Curiously, the few studies
that have compared Dionysius and Aquinas have been done by metaphysicians interested in divine naming.3 The favorite Dionysian theme
1

2

3

Part of the present article includes modified excerpts from my recent study
The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2015). A previous version of this paper was delivered at the “Dominicans and
the Renewal of Thomism” conference organized by the Thomistic Institute in
Washington, D.C., on July 1–5, 2013.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 2,
Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Style (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984),
144–210; Servais Pinckaers, La vie selon l’Esprit: Essai de théologie spirituelle selon
saint Paul et saint Thomas d’Aquin, Amateca 17.2 (Luxembourg: Éditions SaintPaul, 1996); Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master,
trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2003); Torrell, Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Bernhard
Blankenhorn (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011).
Thierry-Dominique Humbrecht, Théologie négative et noms divins chez saint
Thomas d’Aquin, Bibliothèque Thomiste 57 (Paris: Vrin, 2005); Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).

1114

Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

of union with God in the dark cloud of Mt. Sinai has received little
attention from Aquinas scholars.Yet, the dark cloud has a clear place in
Thomas’s theology of union with God. That theology rests on multiple
pillars, including the doctrines of the invisible missions of the Son and
the Spirit, the virtue of charity, and the Spirit’s seven gifts. Aquinas links
the Areopagite’s Moses on Mt. Sinai with the Spirit’s gift of understanding and, likewise, the mystical experience of the Areopagite’s
teacher Hierotheus with the gift of wisdom. Yet, no one has studied
in an extensive way how Thomas’s teaching on these two gifts of the
Spirit relates to the Areopagite’s classic work, The Mystical Theology.
I wish to consider Aquinas’s doctrine of the gift of understanding
in relation to the Areopagite’s Moses in darkness. I will argue that
Thomas’s theology of the gift of understanding includes a significant
threefold transformation of the Dionysian doctrine of mystical union:
first, Aquinas emphasizes the positive knowledge of God accessible
to us (kataphatism); second, he reinserts concept-bound and imagebound thought within the height of cognitive union; and third, he
shows how this summit of union can be attained by the saint who
has not learned the technicalities of divine naming. However, I will
argue that, despite these doctrinal modifications, Aquinas still owes
much to the Areopagite for his own vision of hidden union with
God.
This study proceeds in three steps. First, I will summarize the
Areopagite’s teaching on Moses being joined to God in darkness.
Here, I follow the work of patrologists such as Ysabel de Andia, René
Roques, and Paul Rorem.4 Second, I shall mention some key aspects
of Thomas’s theology of the Spirit’s seven gifts in general. Third,
I will analyze Aquinas’s teaching on the gift of understanding in
relation to the Dionysian Moses. I shall conclude by proposing some
consequences of this teaching for Dominican spirituality.
Pseudo-Dionysius on Moses in Darkness
Dionysius employs the figure of Moses in the dark cloud on Mt.
Sinai to symbolize union with God or the summit of the spiritual life.
The Mystical Theology begins with a prayer: “O Trinity, beyond being,
4

Ysabel de Andia, Henosis: L’union à Dieu chez Denys l’Aréopagite, Philosophia
Antiqua 71 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996); René Roques, “Denys l’Aréopagite,” in
Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. 3, ed. Charles Baumgartner (Paris: Letouzey et
Ané, 1957), columns 244–86; Paul P. Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary
on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1115

beyond divinity, beyond goodness, and guide of Christians in divine
wisdom, direct us to the mystical summits [logion] more than unknown
and beyond light. There the simple, absolved and unchanged mysteries of theology lie hidden in the darkness beyond light of the hidden
mystical silence.”5
Dionysius introduces his discussion of the disposition needed to
receive the Trinity’s uplifting power. God’s gifts elevate the mind to
contact with the divine reality that the sacred oracles reveal. In the
Dionysian corpus, the mystical summits or oracles usually refer to the
revelation transmitted in Sacred Scripture. The oracles can also refer
to the words of the liturgy.6 Dionysius the hierarch guides the disciple
to the right interpretation of Scripture’s divine names and the correct
understanding of liturgical symbols. He leads the disciple to a climax
where all interpretation runs into a wall and the mind falls silent in
the presence of God.
Dionysius then presents Moses ascending Mt. Sinai with the elders
or priests. The context is liturgical, for the patriarch resembles a
Syrian-rite bishop celebrating the Eucharist.7 In the Book of Exodus,
chapter 24, the patriarch and priests go up to “God’s place.” Dionysius explains this metaphor: “The most divine and highest of what is
seen and intelligible are hypothetical logoi of what is subordinate to
that beyond-having all. Through these is shown forth the presence
of that which walks upon the intelligible summits of its most holy
places. And then Moses abandons those who see and what is seen
and enters into the really mystical darkness of unknowing.” 8 God’s
5

6

7
8

Dionysius Areopagita, De mystica theologia 1.1 (PG, 3:997A–B); see The Divine
Names and Mystical Theology, trans. John D. Jones, Medieval Philosophical Texts
in Translation 21 (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980), 211.
All English translations of Dionysius are taken from Jones’s translation in this
edition. For the critical editions, see Dionysius Areopagita, Corpus Dionysiacum
I: De divinis nominibus, ed. Beate Regina Suchla, Patristische Texte und Studien
33 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), and Corpus Dionysiacum II: De coelesti
hierarchia, De ecclesiastica hierarchia, De mystica theologia, Epistulae, ed. Günther
Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter, Patristische Texte und Studien 36 (Berlin:Walter
de Gruyter, 1991). The best complete and literal translation of the Dionysian
corpus, although based on the pre-critical edition, remains The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, trans. John D. Parker (London: James Parker, 1897).
Dionysius Areopagita, De divinis nominibus 1.1 (PG, 3:587–88A); de Andia,
Henosis, 1–3 and 240.
Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 102 and 190–92.
Dionysius Areopagita, De mystica theologia 1.3 (PG, 3:1000D–01A; Jones ed.,
214).

1116

Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

place stands for the summit of positive human knowledge about God.
Such knowledge derives from God’s operative presence in the world,
also called the operative powers. These powers are the object of the
affirmative divine names. Because the transcendent God is beyond
every human concept and discourse, God’s place does not represent
the highest form of knowledge.9
The Old Testament patriarch then continues his ascent of the
holy mountain, going beyond God’s place or beyond the realm of
God’s powers, and penetrates darkness: “And then Moses abandons
those who see and what is seen and enters into the really mystical darkness of unknowing; in this he shuts out every knowing
apprehension and comes to be in the wholly imperceptible and
invisible, being entirely of that beyond all—of nothing, neither
himself nor another, united most excellently by the completely
unknowing inactivity of every knowledge, and knowing beyond
intellect by knowing nothing.”10 Darkness signifies the silent state
of the contemplative’s intellect. Earlier in the text, Dionysius
explains that the God hidden in darkness is beyond all affirmations
and negations.11 The positive divine names refer to God’s action
in creation, while the negations recall that God remains above his
operations. The negative divine names are also employed below the
stage of total noetic silence. The proper use of both affirmative and
negative divine names is an essential precondition to attain union.
Both types of naming fall short of union. For, any act of naming
remains bound to a discursive mode of understanding, while union
is beyond all mental discourse. Moses ascends by negations so as to
transcend them.12
The patriarch leaves behind God’s metaphorical place and goes out
of himself in order to attain union. The contemplative’s mind lets go
of its own act of understanding, for this act cannot attain the divine
mystery sought.13 In darkness, Moses knows God by unknowing.
Darkness is also a paradoxical expression for God’s transcendence, so

9
10
11
12
13

De Andia, Henosis, 345–47 and 358–59.
Dionysius Areopagita, De mystica theologia 1.3 (PG, 3:1001A; Jones ed., 214).
Ibid. (PG, 3:1000C).
De Andia, Henosis, 392–93.
Dionysius Areopagita, De mystica theologia 1.1 (PG, 3:1000A); René Roques,
“Contemplation, extase et ténèbre chez le Pseudo-Denys,” in Dictionnaire de
Spiritualité, vol. 2.2, ed. Charles Baumgartner (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1949),
cols. 1899–1900.

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1117

that darkness refers to a positive reality.14 God’s light is called darkness because his limitless essence exceeds our grasp. Moses knows
“nothing” insofar as unknowing surpasses all previous insights about
God’s operations. Hence, this is a knowing “beyond mind.” Here,
God directly teaches the mystic about divine incomprehensibility.
This highest knowledge is not the result of a human noetic act, but
of spiritual light flooding the mind.15
Union occurs in silence, for its “object” is the ineffable God.
Dionysius describes union with God as a kind of cognition. As a good
Platonist, he was convinced that knowledge is always participatory.16
The mystic moves beyond his or her own thoughts and words about
God so as to be joined to the unutterable divine Word. The highest
gifted knowledge causes union. Mystical contemplation is passive, not
because the contemplative practices a passive method of meditation,
but because the grandeur of the gift can only be received in a passive
way. Active human knowledge remains stuck within human limitations. Thus, mystical union is a sheer gift that cannot be taught.17 God
alone fully empties the mind by filling it with his light.
Let us note the anthropological foundation of the Areopagite’s
mystical doctrine. Partly inspired by Proclus, he proposes what
we might call an “exterior anthropology.” For Dionysius, the soul
begins its ascent not by going to the God hidden within or to the
memory of forms, but by grasping the meaning of the biblical
divine names and liturgical symbols.18 Material mediations such as
icons and biblical metaphors pertain to the beginning of contemplative ascent and serve the need of the soul’s “impassioned” or lower
part that naturally strives for symbols. Having satisfied the soul’s
lower part, contemplative ascent continues in the soul’s higher
or “passionless” part. Here, unified thoughts are the proper aim.
Cognition mediated by the senses eventually becomes an obstacle

14

15

16
17
18

Dionysius Areopagita, Epistula 5 (PG, 3:1073A); Dionysius, De mystica theologia
1.1 (PG, 3:997B).
De Andia, Henosis, 351 and 431; Henri-Charles Puech, “La ténèbre mystique
chez le Pseudo-Denys et dans la tradition patristique,” Études Carmélitaines 23
(1938): 39–41.
De Andia, Henosis, 401, 417–18.
Ibid., 431.
Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, 2:160–61 and 180; Paul P. Rorem, Biblical and
Liturgical Symbols within the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis, Studies and Texts 71
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984), 56.

1118

Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

to union.19 Consequently, contemplative ascent passes through a
highly structured series of symbols and names that reveal their
luminous content to those who are properly disposed to receive
them.20
Aquinas on the Seven Gifts in General
Thomas learned the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology from his teacher
Albert the Great around the year 1250. Both Dominican friars displayed
a fascination with Dionysius. Albert commented on the entire Dionysian corpus, while Thomas kept his notes of Albert’s lectures for the rest
of his life. Aquinas also composed a commentary on the Divine Names,
yet he never commented on the Mystical Theology. Still, I will argue that
Thomas’s late theology of the Spirit’s gift of understanding proposes a
very original appropriation of Dionysian mysticism. But first, I need
to review Aquinas’s mature approach to the metaphysics of the Spirit’s
seven gifts.21
First, the seven gifts are seven distinct habitus that dispose various faculties of the soul to receive the Spirit’s motion for the sake
of assisting one of the virtues. These seven habitus or gifts may be
described as an essential property or component of sanctifying grace.
Hence, these gifts constitute an enduring metaphysical modification
of the believer’s faculties.22 Second, the Spirit’s action in the gifts is
gratuitous. This action does not occur according to our decision.23
The Spirit blows where he wills. Here, the classic metaphor of the
sailing ship remains instructive: the sails are like the seven gifts,
while the Spirit’s action is like the wind.24 Third, like the virtues, the
19

20

21

22

23
24

Dionysius Areopagita, De divinis nominibus 4.11; Dionysius, Epistula 9.1; René
Roques, L’univers dionysien: Structure hiérarchique du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys,
Théologie 29 (Paris: Aubier, 1954), 202 and 235.
Dionysius Areopagita, De divinis nominibus 3.3; Roques, L’univers dionysien, 119,
203, and 209.
Recent scholarship has shown a considerable evolution in Aquinas’s doctrine
of the seven gifts in general. See, for example, Cruz González Ayesta, El don
de sabiduría según Santo Tomás: Divinización, filiación y connaturalizad, Teológica
92 (Navarra: EUNSA, 1998); Ulrich Horst, Die Gaben des Heiligen Geistes nach
Thomas von Aquin, Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Institutes 46 (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag, 2001), 41–69.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST) I-II, q. 68, aa. 1, 3, and
5 (Ottawa: Commissio Piana, 1953; all citations from the ST are from this
edition, and all English translation is my own).
Aquinas implies this at ST I-II, q. 68, a. 3, corp.; a. 4, corp.
John of Saint Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, In Iam–IIae: De donis Spiritus Sancti,

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1119

gifts as habitus can increase or decrease in intensity.25 That is, we can
progress or decline in docility to the Spirit. Fourth, Aquinas refers
to the gifts’ operations as acts of the virtues and the gifts.26 As Pinckaers has noted, Thomas implies that the Spirit’s motion in the gifts
strengthens the virtues.27 Thus, greater docility to the Spirit leads to
growth in the virtues, which enables a new spontaneity. Progress in
the spiritual life involves the double spiral of an increasing docility
to God and a greater capacity to act virtuously. This helps to explain
why Aquinas’s discussion of the seven gifts does not mention passive
spiritual states.28 The operation of any one of the seven gifts does not
occur at a spiritual level beyond the virtues, nor does this operation
substitute for the activity of the virtues. Finally, Thomas follows
Augustine as he links each gift of the Spirit with a particular beatitude. The beatitudes are the Spirit’s gifts in act. The beatitude of the
pure of heart corresponds to the gift of understanding.
Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding
Now that we have an overview of the seven gifts and the Spirit’s
movement through them, we can consider the gift of understanding in
particular. I will first signal some major themes in Aquinas’s teaching on
this gift and then proceed to a textual analysis of article 7 of question
8 in the secunda secundae of the Summa theologiae.
First, Aquinas distinguishes the gift of understanding from other
gifts of the Spirit by an appeal to the distinction between the intellect’s first and second act (i.e., apprehension and judgment). The gifts
of knowledge (scientia) and wisdom (sapientia) involve a cognitive
judgment, while the gift of understanding involves apprehension.29
This division has perplexed Thomas’s commentators because apprehension is not a complete noetic act, for we do not attain truth without judgment. However, we can solve this problem if we consider
that the gift of understanding sharpens apprehension, which in turn
assists the virtue of faith in its act of judgment. Admittedly, this solution is not explicit in Aquinas, but it may be the only solution that
does not contradict the text of Aquinas.

25
26
27
28
29

Collectio Lavallensis (Québec: Armand Mathieu and Hervé Gagné, 1958),
no. 174.
ST I-II, q. 68, a. 3.
ST I-II, q. 69, aa. 1–2; II-II, q. 19, a. 12, ad 1.
Servais Pinckaers, Plaidoyer pour la Vertu (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2007), 321.
ST I-II, q. 68, aa. 1, 3, and 8.
ST II-II, q. 8, a. 6.

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Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

Second, the gift of understanding’s operation is not about reasoning
from premises to conclusions. Rather, this gift’s operation is characterized by the mind’s completion or repose. It grants a better grasp of
“the first principles of gratuitous cognition.”30 These first principles
are essentially the articles of faith, by which Aquinas means the heart
of Scripture’s teaching. That is why question 8 of the secunda secundae
often links the gift of understanding to a deeper cognitive penetration
of the articles of faith.31 The Creed summarizes the articles of faith.
Third, we cannot yet directly grasp the greatest mysteries of
faith such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, for this would require
the face-to-face vision of God. Thus, Aquinas assigns to the gift of
understanding a negative or “remotive” function: this gift enables
us to see more clearly what the mysteries of faith are not.32 In other
words, this gift’s actualization removes errors and foreign accretions
from our manner of conceiving the mystery of God and his central
saving acts. We are dealing with a kind of negative apprehension, a
rather paradoxical notion.
We are now ready to consider our key Summa text (II-II, q. 8, a.
7). Here, Thomas explains the beatitude of the pure of heart and the
knowledge of “what God is not.” Aquinas fleshes out the details of
the gift of understanding’s negative or remotive function thus:
Two things are contained in the sixth beatitude, as in the other
beatitudes: one by mode of merit, namely, purity of heart;
another by mode of reward, namely, the vision of God, as
was said above. And each pertains to the gift of understanding
in some way. For purity is twofold. One is a preamble and a
disposition for the vision of God, which is the affect’s purification from disordered affections; and this purity of heart occurs
through the virtues and gifts that pertain to the appetitive
power. But the other purity of heart is as perfective in view
of the divine vision; and this is the purity of mind purified
of phantasms and errors, namely, that the things which are
proposed about God not be taken by the mode of corporeal
phantasms, nor according to heretical perversities. And the gift
of understanding brings about this purity.33
30
31
32
33

ST II-II, q. 8, a. 6, ad 2.
ST II-II, q. 8, aa. 2–3.
ST II-II, q. 8, a. 2, corp.
ST II-II, q. 8, a. 7, corp.: “in sexta beatitudine, sicut et in aliis, duo continentur:
unum per modum meriti, scilicet munditia cordis; aliud per modum praemii,

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1121

Thomas divides the sixth beatitude into two parts: “Blessed are the
pure of heart” signifies a purification of affect and intellect, while the
phrase “they shall see God” designates this gift’s reward (I will explain
the term “affect” shortly).The first part of the beatitude signals a disposition for a reward, and the second part signals the reward itself. In
this life, the saints already begin to receive a reward, for they see God
indirectly.This vision is nothing other than knowing “what he is not,” a
phrase that evokes the Areopagite’s Moses in the dark cloud. The saints
in glory see God directly or face-to-face. The saints on earth enjoy an
imperfect reward, while the saints in heaven have a perfect one. Those
who have not yet attained heroic virtue must still pass through the
Spirit’s purifying action.
I now come back to the first part of the beatitude. Thomas treats
purity of heart as the doorway to the vision of “what God is not.”
Aquinas proposes a two-fold purity. The first kind of purity comes
through the gifts that pertain to the appetitive powers—namely, the
will (or “rational appetite”) and the passions. He summarizes these
faculties or powers by the term “affect.” For example, the Spirit’s gift
of piety helps to reorder the will’s inclination by intensifying our
filial affection for God as Father. The actualized gift of understanding
presupposes that some spiritual progress has occurred in the will and
the passions with the help of the Spirit’s other gifts. The re-ordering
of appetites (that is, various “affects”) constitutes a first, essential step
toward the vision of “what God is not.”
A second kind of purity of heart perfectly prepares for the indirect
vision of God, and this involves the removal of phantasms and errors.
Here, Aquinas refers to the Spirit’s motion in the gift of understanding that is available to all believers in grace.34 Thomas applies
the Avicennian notion of disposing and perfecting causality to the
purification of the appetites and that of the intellect. The distinction
between disposing and perfecting causes is primarily metaphysical,
not temporal.

34

scilicet visio Dei, ut supra dictum est. Et utrumque pertinet aliquo modo
ad donum intellectus. Est enim duplex munditia. Una quidem praeambula
et dispositiva ad Dei visionem, quae est depuratio affectus ab inordinatis
affectionibus; et haec quidem munditia cordis fit per virtutes et dona quae
pertinent ad vim appetitivam. Alia vero munditia cordis est quae est quasi
completiva respectu visionis divinae; et hoc quidem est munditia mentis depuratae a phantasmatibus et erroribus, ut scilicet ea quae de Deo proponuntur
non accipiantur per modum corporalium phantasmatum, nec secundum haereticas perversitates. Et hanc munditiam facit donum intellectus.”
See ST II-II, q. 8, a. 4.

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Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

The conviction that contemplative ascent requires progress in the
moral virtues is omnipresent in ancient philosophy, patristic theology, and medieval thought. Certainly, Dionysian union presumes
such moral progress. Aquinas links this progress with the first type of
purification of the heart: the will and the passions are the proper seat
of the cardinal virtues. Now, Thomas’s Sentences Commentary explicitly links the beatitude of the pure of heart with the Mystical Theology’s
exhortation to Timothy to be purified of “errors and phantasms and
spiritual forms” so as to ascend to union with God.35 Such language
overlaps with our Summa text on purity of heart. More specifically,
it overlaps with the second kind of purity. So Dionysius is a source
for Thomas’s explanation of perfected purity of heart. The actualized
gift of understanding brings about this purity. But how Dionysian is
Aquinas’s Areopagite?
At the beginning of the Mystical Theology, Dionysius presumes
that Timothy’s “impassioned” part of the soul has been satisfied in
its inclination to sensible images by contemplating God in material
creation and liturgical symbols. The Areopagite also holds that the
“passionless” part of the soul (the noūs) seeks knowledge beyond
sensible images. For Dionysius, the mind can operate without images
or phantasms.36 The contemplation of sensible or image-bound
objects such as icons or biblical metaphors ultimately constitutes an
obstacle to mystical union. Such aids for contemplation are necessary
stepping-stones to union, but as one progresses, these must be left
behind. Likewise, Moses must wholly transcend the contemplation of
God’s names. He should surpass all thoughts and finite noetic objects
that mediate knowledge of God.
Thomas limits the Dionysian claim that one must let go of all
sensible images in the ascent to knowing “what God is not.” Instead,
he calls for the avoidance of theological error in the way that we
understand God. It is striking that Thomas shows little concern for
the contemplative’s mode of consciousness.
The doctrinal intention behind Aquinas’s modification to Dionysius emerges more clearly by a consideration of the human subject
being discussed in question 8, article 7. Dionysius addresses himself
to a contemplative advanced in learning: the Mystical Theology follows
the Divine Names, being composed precisely for those who have
grasped the teaching of the Divine Names. It is also presumes that
35
36

In III sent. d. 34, q. 1, a. 4, corp.
Roques, L’univers dionysien, 235.

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1123

the same reader no longer needs images to contemplate God. The
beginning of the Mystical Theology instructs Timothy on the proper
reaction to the coming of God’s light (“abandon all sensation and
all intellectual activities”). Aquinas’s exposition on purity of heart,
however, refers to the Spirit’s work available to all who are in grace.
Avoiding heretical error with the Spirit’s help precisely describes the
gift of understanding’s operation that is available to all in grace, not
just to clerics or monks.
The new human subject of purification calls for a new reading of
Timothy’s noetic object. First, Thomas’s discussion of the pure of
heart sidesteps the Areopagite’s counsel to let go of finite intelligible
objects. Dionysius wants to transcend intelligible objects, for these
represent God’s powers active in the cosmos. The divine names
refer to God’s powers. But Thomas insists that these names refer to
God’s very own substance or essence.37 Dionysius seeks union beyond
naming, unlike Aquinas.
Second, for Thomas, the pure of heart avoid erroneous interpretations of the mysteries of faith contained in Scripture. Thomas
posits a refined contemplation of Scripture whose object is broader
than in Dionysius. Aquinas’s contemplative ponders not just God’s
biblical names but all of Scripture, especially the central mysteries of
faith. The pure of heart behold and correctly understand God’s many
saving acts, and not just his most perfect names. Suddenly, history and
the creaturely, temporal realities through which God saves us take on
a whole new importance.
Third, in Thomas, the removal of error leaves standing biblical
affirmations. That is, remotions improve our grasp of the intelligible
content that Scripture transmits by its description of God and his
operation. For Aquinas, remotion only makes sense if it qualifies
some type of affirmation.38 Remotion does not negate the saving
37
38

ST I, q. 13, a. 2.
Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, q. 7, a. 5, corp: “intellectus
negationis semper fundatur in aliqua affirmatione: quod ex hoc patet quia
omnis negativa per affirmativam probatur; unde nisi intellectus humanus
aliquid de Deo affirmative cognosceret, nihil de Deo posset negare. Non
autem cognosceret, si nihil quod de Deo dicit, de eo verificaretur affirmative. Et ideo, secundum sententiam Dionysii, dicendum est, quod huiusmodi
nomina significant divinam substantiam, quamvis deficienter et imperfecte:
quod sic patet. Cum omne agens agat in quantum actu est, et per consequens
agat aliqualiter simile” (“An understanding of negation is always founded in
some affirmation, which is thus clear, in that every negative is proven through
an affirmative. Hence, unless the human intellect were to know something

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Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

mystery or divine name being contemplated. Rather, it corrects our
misconceptions thereof. In this sense, ascent to God by the gift of
understanding does not end the mind’s gaze upon God’s positive
attributes or other mysteries of faith. Timothy’s and Moses’s silent
mind almost drops out. Contemplation’s object and its mode of operation go hand in hand. One needs an active mind in order to ponder
biblical affirmations about God and his saving deeds.
Fourth, as already suggested, the function of phantasms changes.
By the gift of understanding, the Spirit acts so that “the things
proposed about God not be taken by the mode of corporeal phantasms, nor according to heretical perversities.” Thomas shifts the
focus from the direct object of the mind’s gaze and its mode of
operating to the intended noetic content or doctrine about God. By
the beatitude of the pure of heart, the Spirit removes corporeal or
finite modes of being from our way of understanding God’s nature
and action. Thomas’s shift away from an image-free mode of noetic
operation recalls that he cannot follow the Dionysian doctrine that
noūs operates without images, a doctrine presumed in the Areopagite’s advice to Timothy. Aquinas refuses to make an exception to
the Aristotelian principle that the pilgrim’s complete act of knowing
must return to phantasms.39 Even the Spirit’s direct action in the
seven gifts does not overcome the natural mode of knowing proper
to an embodied rational being with one substantial form. The mind’s
operative capacity rooted in a single substantial form is proportioned
to sensible things.40 The Spirit’s special motion in the seven gifts
does not overturn nature’s capacities, but rather stretches them. That

39
40

affirmatively about God, it could not negate anything of him. But it would
not know if anything which it says of God could be affirmatively verified of
him. Therefore, according to the teaching of Dionysius, it must be said that
such [affirmative] names signify the divine substance, although deficiently
and imperfectly, which is thus clear. Since every agent acts inasmuch as it is
in act, and consequently acts something similar [to itself] ”); in Quaestiones
disputatae, vol. 2, ed. P. Bazzi, M. Calcaterra, T. S. Centi, E. Odetto, and P. M.
Pession (Rome/Turin: Marietti, 1965); English translation is my own. See also
Gregory P. Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God: Thomas Aquinas on the
Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 2004), 67 and 303.
See ST I, q. 84, a. 7; q. 86, a. 1; II-II, q. 15, a. 3; q. 180, a. 5, ad 2.
Richard Schenk taught me years ago that the doctrine of the unicity of
substantial form is crucial for Aquinas’s entire theological project. See also
Gilles Emery, “The Unity of Man, Body and Soul, in St. Thomas Aquinas” in
Trinity, Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays, trans. Therese Scarpelli
(Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), 209–35.

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1125

is precisely what we would expect from Aquinas, given his way of
relating grace and nature.41
Article 7 of question 8 continues with a discussion of the reward
given to the saints through the gift of understanding. Thomas thus
proceeds from the first part of the beatitude to the second, from
purity of heart to the vision of God, from the removal of errors and
phantasms to the obscure height of contemplation. He now explains
the gift of understanding’s perfect act here below. The text parallels
Moses’s ascent of Mt. Sinai in the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology.
Aquinas’s Sentences Commentary makes this parallel with Dionysius
explicit, while it remains implicit in the Summa. The last part of the
corpus in our main article reads thus:
The vision of God is twofold. One is perfect, through which
God’s essence is seen. The other is imperfect, through which,
although we do not see what God is, we still see what he is not;
and in this life the more perfectly we know God, the more we
understand him to exceed whatever is comprehended by the
intellect. And each vision of God pertains to the gift of understanding, for the first [vision pertains] to the consummated
gift of understanding, as it will be in heaven; but the second
[vision pertains] to the imperfect gift of understanding, as it is
possessed on the way [by the pilgrim].42
This passage closely resembles the Sentences Commentary text on the
same beatitude, which mentions the Mystical Theology.43 The Sentences
41

42

43

We cannot say with certitude whether or not Aquinas clearly perceived the
distinct stages of contemplative ascent as conceived by Dionysius. Given the
medieval scholastic way of treating authorities, disagreements often remain
under the surface. Still, I strongly suspect that Thomas had a fairly complete
grasp of the Areopagite’s own doctrinal intention. Also, I maintain that Thomas’s extensive modification of Dionysian mystical doctrine (whether conscious
or not) bears much fruit, as will become evident below.
ST II-II, q. 8, a. 7, corp: “duplex est Dei visio. Una quidem perfecta, per quam
videtur Dei essentia. Alia vero imperfecta, per quam, etsi non videamus de
Deo quid est, videmus tamen quid non est; et tanto in hac vita Deum perfectius cognoscimus quanto magis intelligimus eum excedere quidquid intellectu
comprehenditur. Et utraque Dei visio pertinet ad donum intellectus, prima
quidem ad donum intellectus consummatum, secundum quod erit in patria;
secunda vero ad donum intellectus inchoatum, secundum quod habetur in
via.”
In III sent. d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, qla. 2, corp.

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Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

Commentary states that Moses knows God as separated from all and
above all. Our Summa text mentions knowing “what God is not” and
that God exceeds our comprehension.
The present passage quietly appropriates at least three key elements
of the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology. First, our text presents maximum apophatic cognition as a gift, a key Dionysian doctrine. For the
Areopagite and for Aquinas, God directly acts in the mystic’s intellect
in a new way. Indeed, the Summa doctrine of the Spirit’s seven gifts
emphasizes in a special way our dependence on God’s immediate
motion to attain perfect knowledge of God. The Spirit’s efficient
causality directly causes the act of negation or remotion, as he infuses
remotions into the saint’s mind. These remotions are not infused
intelligible species, but infused acts of negation that sharpen our grasp
of what is known via revelation. Thomas’s doctrine of infused negations is almost certainly original. We find it neither in Albert nor in
other thirteenth-century commentators of Dionysius.
Second, the context of our passage shows that Aquinas remains
focused on the gift of understanding as a means to penetrate more
fully the articles of faith. Therefore, knowing “what God is not” with
the Spirit’s aid surpasses the metaphysician’s knowledge that God’s
quiddity exceeds all that we understand of him. Like Dionysius,
Thomas posits a properly gifted or supernatural form of knowledge,
even as he uses highly philosophical terms and concepts. For Aquinas, Jesus’ baptism, passion, and resurrection, Pentecost, and other
revelatory events provide the most excellent divine effects whereby
our graced minds attain indirect glimpses of Christ’s divinity and the
Trinity.44 Our illumined grasp of these effects must itself be purified
of misleading notions. Thus, knowing “what God is not” can involve
more than acknowledging that God exceeds whatever we know of
him or that he is incomprehensible. Indeed, the metaphysician can
already know this without faith. Yet, knowing God’s quid non est
perfectly in this life means knowing all of his attributes attained by
reason and grace. Revelation unveils the Trinity and other perfections
that, in turn, enable us to know God as greater even than our mode
of understanding these perfections. Hence, we come to know ever
more fully the God-creation difference. By the Spirit’s work, the
saint knows the divine mystery correctly, even though he or she may
not be able to explain it as well as the theologian.
44

ST I, q. 12, a. 13. See the luminous comments on this theme by Charles Journet, Connaissance et Inconnaissance de Dieu (Paris: Egloff, 1943), 93.

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1127

Third, because the reward of each beatitude belongs to holy men
and women, Thomas follows Dionysius as he assigns to a spiritual
elite the divinely given cognition of “what God is not.”45 Yet, within
this doctrinal similitude, a key difference emerges. For Aquinas,
the Spirit infuses a knowledge of God’s excellence in all who have
progressed well in grace. The Areopagite’s mystic must learn how
to affirm and negate all divine names before penetrating darkness.
Thomas sees the need for purification from erroneous notions about
God before coming to know “what he is not,” but he does not maintain the need to attain an explicit understanding of all divine names
before reaching the mystical summit. For Dionysius, the highest
union seems to belong mostly (or perhaps exclusively) to bishops
and monks, a stance that Thomas does not take up. Clearly, Aquinas
considers the contemplative and religious life better dispositions for
union than lay life, but he does not place perfection in the Spirit’s
gifts beyond the reach of the laity. They too can arrive at the top of
Mt. Sinai, the place that symbolizes knowing “what God is not.”
The Spirit’s motion in the gift of understanding is not directly linked
to theological study, although study constitutes a precious aid along
the way. Aquinas thus arrives at a major accomplishment—namely, a
doctrine of mystical ascent by knowledge that is available to all.46
As noted previously, Thomas insists on the intellect’s need to return
to phantasms. This stance is linked with his refusal of the Areopagite’s
meta-conceptual contemplation. That is, even though the height of
graced knowledge in this life is not limited to the intelligible content
communicated by concepts, Thomas is convinced that our cognitive
acts always employ concepts in some way. This distinction is crucial:
the concepts we use in contemplative ascent are not adequate, yet
their function is essential. That is why Aquinas does not call for
an active suppression of concept-bound noetic activity in mystical
ascent. Nor does he present the Spirit’s action in the gift of understanding as a graced silencing of concept-bound knowing.47 Indeed,
45
46

47

See ST II-II, q. 8, a. 7, ad 3, which seems to refer to I-II, q. 69, a. 2.
On this point, one might compare Aquinas to Meister Eckhart, whose vernacular preaching proposed a path toward perfect mystical knowledge for the
laity and the unlearned, a knowledge not simply caused by charity (though
inseparable from it).
I thus argue against the interpretation of Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to
Unite or the Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (London: Geoffrey
Bles, 1959), 688–93, and Charles Journet, Connaissance et Inconnaissance de
Dieu, 116–18 and 138. For a critique of Maritain on this point, see Charles

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Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

such total noetic silence is incompatible with Thomas’s doctrine of
the imago Dei, where the perfect knowledge of God involves the
production of an interior word.48 This “word of the heart” necessarily
includes concepts and concept-bound truth judgments.
But why does Thomas quietly insist that the summit of contemplation must include image-bound and concept-bound ways of knowing? The ultimate answer to that question comes in his essentially
kataphatic theology, which is wholly centered on God’s revelation.
Thomas holds fast to the Aristotelian principle that every negation
presupposes an affirmation. As we saw above, without affirmations,
remotions are meaningless. In mystical ascent, the affirmative names
of God are qualified, not cleared away. Such a doctrine Dionysius
cannot accept. Now, in the context of Aquinas’s theology of the gift
of understanding, the affirmations especially concern the articles
of faith revealed in Christ. The gift of understanding perfects the
virtue of faith. This gift sharpens faith’s grasp of God’s revelation, of
God’s self-manifestation that truly gives us a glimpse of the divine
face. A refined knowledge of God’s historical revelation in Christ
presupposes cognitive acts that employ phantasms and concepts, since
public revelation occurs in the sensible world, especially in the life of
Jesus. The Areopagite’s Moses moves beyond history and into a new
knowledge that is no longer derived from God’s visible coming in the
flesh, even though Dionysian interior illumination never contradicts
God’s public revelation.
For Aquinas, Scripture and the Creed are like the enfleshed voice of God
without which the mystic cannot hear anything at the summit of knowledge.
For Thomas, the highest knowledge about God integrates acquired
and infused cognition. At the summit of Mt. Sinai, the contemplative
ponders the affirmations about God and his saving deeds as transmitted in Scripture and the Creed, yet God’s interior light enables an
ever-sharper penetration of those revealed mysteries. Aquinas brings
the entire economy of salvation into the contemplation that occurs in
the dark cloud! To my knowledge, no interpreter of Dionysius before
Thomas had ever done that.49

48
49

Morerod, “La mystique dans l’épistémologie de Jacques Maritain,” Nova et
Vetera (French) 83 (2008): 121–50. I agree with Ambroise Gardeil, who posits
concept-bound cognition for the gift of understanding; see his La Structure de
l’Âme et l’Expérience Mystique, vol. 2 (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1927), 161–64.
ST I, q. 93, a. 7.
The function of the articles of faith in the theology of the gift of understanding shows that Aquinas’s modification of Dionysian mystical ascent involves

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1129

Aquinas’s Moses in darkness thus ponders the heart of Scripture
and the Creed with the full engagement of his intellect and imagination. Such contemplation provides the perfect prelude for Moses’s
descent to the people of Israel at the bottom of Mt. Sinai, where the
patriarch transmits God’s law. In other words, Aquinas’s Moses looks
very much like the friar preacher who contemplates and then passes
on to others the fruits of his contemplation. Because Aquinas’s mysticism grants an essential role to Scripture and the Creed at the height
of contemplation, he can offer a mysticism for the preacher.
None of this is to say that charity is secondary in Thomas’s mysticism.50 We have only pondered one pillar of Aquinas’s mystical
theology. Indeed, Thomas holds that the height of union with God
also requires acts of charity, yet charity needs to be guided by the
intellect. The gift of understanding constitutes a most excellent and
necessary help in the ascent of love. Perfect union includes graced acts
of knowledge and charity.
Practical Consequences for Dominican Spirituality
A synthetic and historical analysis of Thomas’s theology of the Spirit’s
gift of understanding sheds light on what Aquinas can contribute to
Dominican spirituality. Here, I would like to accentuate some elements
that are already present in the Dominican spiritual tradition.
First, unlike Dionysius, Thomas seems remarkably unconcerned
with the contemplative’s mode of consciousness. Aquinas spends little
time on the technicalities of pondering God through images or on
how to avoid a great multiplicity of thoughts. He remains remarkably
silent about the Areopagite’s highly structured way of ascent through
distinct stages of contemplation, from images to words to the wordless gaze.
Second, the doctrine of the gift of understanding seems tailormade for a spirituality centered on lectio divina. Here, I take the term
lectio divina to refer both to a prayerful study of God and his saving
deeds and to a meditation on Scripture. Thomas reminds us that
silent, wordless prayer need not constitute the height of contempla-

50

far more than the substitution of Aristotelian anthropology for Dionysian
anthropology. Rather, the transformation is caused by philosophical and theological doctrines, including a vision of the purpose of the Incarnation and of
God’s Word. Aquinas’s mystical theology is firmly rooted in Christology and
a theology of revelation.
Charity’s essential place in a doctrine of union emerges in many parts of his
corpus, including ST II-II, qq. 23, 27, and 45.

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Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.

tion. Of course, sometimes charity burns more fervently in silence,
yet with an anthropology centered on the unicity of substantial
form, we should have no inferiority complex when, during a time of
lectio divina, we find ourselves constantly coming back to the words
and images of Scripture in order to focus our minds. The pilgrim’s
mode of knowing always remains bound to concepts and images, for
it remains bound to mediations. The mediations are good; they are
for us!
Third, Thomas’s doctrine of the gift of understanding helps us to
grasp how preaching (especially liturgical preaching) can be a form of
mystagogia. For Aquinas, mystical ascent comes through progress both
in love and in knowledge: the two advance together. While spiritual
progress also requires continual purification of the passions, such
growth ultimately remains a disposition for greater charity and saving
knowledge. The mind’s ascent into the dark cloud comes through an
ever-sharper grasp of the central mysteries of faith. If preaching is to
assist the lay faithful in their spiritual progress, then preaching cannot
have moral instruction or moral exhortation as its sole focal point.
Rather, preaching must also be focused on the great mysteries that are
summarized in the Creed. Preachers assist the Holy Spirit’s interior
work of noetic purification that comes in the gift of understanding by
correctly expounding on the doctrines of the Trinity, Creation, the
Incarnation, and the Paschal Mystery. As preachers unfold Scripture’s
and Tradition’s positive teachings about the triune God and his saving
work, they make accessible the biblical affirmations concerning God
and his saving design. The Spirit then infuses negations so as to
wipe away believers’ misconceptions of the saving mysteries being
proclaimed. The Spirit crushes the intellectual idols that linger in the
minds of the faithful. Yet, these infused negations need affirmations
in order to function. Consequently, the more preachers expound on
the central mysteries of faith, the more they offer platforms from
which the Spirit-guided believer can ascend to noetic union with
God, and hence to loving union as well.
In other words, preachers function somewhat like hierarchs. They
first contemplate the great mysteries revealed to Israel and in Christ
and seek the guidance of the Spirit who smashes their own conceptual idols. They then pass on the fruits of contemplation by explaining the way in which Scripture and Tradition affirm who God is
and what he has done to save us. Such learning and docility to the
Spirit’s motion already purify these affirmations from various errors.

Aquinas on the Gift of Understanding and Dionysius’s Mystical Theology 1131

Yet, preachers cannot crush every conceptual idol in the minds of
their hearers, since the latter’s backgrounds and experiences are often
different from those of the preacher. Only the Spirit can complete
the work of removing from believers’ minds diverse misconceptions
about God’s public revelation. Then they too can enter the dark
cloud, even if they have not studied the doctrine of analogy. And
like contemplative preachers, they need not simply remain on Mt.
Sinai and ponder the ineffable God. Since the Spirit still engages their
minds and imaginations in the dark cloud as they ponder the divine
mystery, the highest contemplative knowledge about God is not just a
secret for the mystic alone, but also an infused word or a wise insight
that can be shared. For, any believer who advances in holiness can
imitate Moses and descend the holy mountain so as to pass on the
message of the saving mysteries. They can transmit these mysteries
more effectively through the help of the highest mystical encounter,
for union with God usually brings a knowledge that can be partly
put into words. Thus, mystagogical preaching forms contemplatives
who evangelize.
I suspect that most Dominicans (and others) already live this
Thomistic spirituality. Aquinas’s theology of the gift of understanding helps to articulate with greater insight and clarity that which the
N&V
Dominican heritage proposes.51

51

I am grateful for the helpful comments of an anonymous reviewer, which
allowed me to improve this essay.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1133–1151

Freedom and Heteronomy:
Maximus the Confessor and the Question of
Moral Creativity
Adam G. Cooper
John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family
Melbourne, Australia

Of the many circles within which Maximus the Confessor
is invoked as an authority, one that merits particular attention in recent
studies lies in the field of moral theology. While criticisms emerging
from the disciplines of historical and systematic theology have sometimes held up Maximus’s staunch defence of the doctrine of two
wills in Christ as an embarrassing but typically Byzantine example of
theological hair-splitting, not a few scholars have lauded the way the
Confessor’s expositions on the topic, particularly in his reflections on
Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, may contribute towards a
clearer understanding of the nature of human volition and its moral
actualization. One example of this positive appropriation may be seen
in an article by New Zealand theologian Ivor Davidson subtitled “The
Ontological Dynamics of Incarnational Intention.”1 Davidson takes
issue with criticisms that allege that, by ascribing two wills to Christ,
Maximus and the traditional proponents of dyothelete Christology end
up with an implausible account of Jesus’s conscious subjectivity. Besides
asking too much of a Christological method whose interests and anxieties were more metaphysical and theological than they were physiological or psychological, the error in such allegations, argues Davidson, lies
1

Ivor J. Davidson, “‘Not My Will But Yours Be Done’: The Ontological
Dynamics of Incarnational Intention,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7.2 (2005): 178–204.

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Adam G. Cooper

in regarding our own fallen experience of volition as humanly normal
and, therefore, as the adequate criterion of what Christ’s experience
of volition ought to be like. Drawing on Maximus’s evolving concept
of “gnomic” will (γνώμη) and the rationale behind his eventual denial
of its presence in Christ, Davidson exposes the superficial and illusory
character of freedom as it is commonly conceived in many contemporary moral theories. If Maximus’s idea of freedom includes “the kind
of self-determination appropriate to our real status as God’s creatures,”
then, according to Davidson, “the diverse factors that complicate and
impede such authentic direction—the kinds of factors, we might say,
that have been highlighted in later modernity’s demise of confidence
in the stability of a choosing self—are testimony to the reality that
humans are not in practice half so free as might be supposed.”2
Another example of Maximus’s dyothelete Christology being
enlisted in the service of moral theology is found in a still more
recent (2007) essay by American Ian A. McFarland entitled “Willing
is Not Choosing: Some Anthropological Implications of Dyothelite
Christology.”3 McFarland similarly argues that Maximus’s assignment
of will to the category of nature rather than to hypostasis “challenges
the idea that willing is the source or ground of individual identity
(hypostasis).” And, he continues, “if identity is not reducible to the
will, then the will’s lack of freedom with respect to sin either now
or in glory may not constitute the kind of threat to human integrity
that modern Westerners are inclined to fear.”4 The mode of willing
that characterizes the gnomic will, as McFarland interprets Maximus,
is incapable of securing human fulfilment on its own because it is
“in itself empty, directionless and (therefore) mutable.”5 True human
freedom is realised not in an unlimited range of possible choices, nor
even in the ability to make such choices, but in “a direct and undeviating orientation to God.”6
A third example of this recent appropriation of Maximus’s dyothelete Christology in the field of moral theology appears in the “action
theory” of Italian theologian Livio Melina.7 According to Melina,
2
3

4
5
6
7

Davidson, “Not My Will But Yours Be Done,” 194.
Ian A. McFarland, “Willing Is Not Choosing: Some Anthropological Implications of Dyothelite Christology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9.1
(2007): 3–23.
McFarland, “Willing Is Not Choosing,” 4.
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 17.
Livio Melina, The Epiphany of Love: Toward a Theological Understanding of Christian Action (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 90–91.

Freedom and Heteronomy

1135

behind Thomas Aquinas’s recognition that Christ’s humanity was
not simply the passive instrument utilized by the divine Logos, but
was rather the principle of actions that were fully human, free, and
salvifically meritorious, lies the wealth of the Eastern Fathers’ Christological reflections, and not least the distinction made by Maximus
between thelêsis, understood as the natural capacity to will, and boulêsis, understood as the subjective actuation of that capacity in this or
that particular way.8 For Melina, this means that, “even if the will’s
natural dimension is the indispensable foundation of the freedom of
action, it is not yet enough to explain it: spiritual nature founds but
does not determine freedom. Action that is truly free not only implies
the determination of the spiritual faculties [such as reason or will] . . .
but also involves the personal subject taking a stance.”9 This notion
of “taking a stance” in Melina’s action theory cannot be thought of
outside an interpersonal relational structure. A human being “takes
a stance” not simply with respect to certain things, but above all
with respect to certain persons. According to Melina, human action
always bears this interpersonal character: “the human act demands
to be a personal act.”10 The descriptor “human” here refers to its
being purposeful and voluntary action, that is, its emerging from
the common human faculties of reason and will. The descriptor
“personal” refers to the specific mode in which such purposeful and
voluntary action takes place, a mode whose character always includes
“an interpersonal dimension” and whose defining and ultimate goal
is a communio personarum, a communion of persons.11 This is what
Melina means when he asserts that “only with the appearance of
the beloved” is the human act “complete in its final [i.e., personal]
determination.”12
On the face of things, the invocation of Maximus as a supporting authority seems to be more justifiable in the first two examples
with Davidson and McFarland but less so in the third example with
Melina. Unlike Davidson and McFarland, Melina does not engage
in a direct exegesis of Maximian texts but, rather, relies on several
8

9
10
11
12

On Aquinas’s appropriation of the patristic legacy on this topic, see Paul
Gondreau, “St. Thomas Aquinas, the Communication of Idioms, and the
Suffering of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane,” in Divine Impassibility and
the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 214–45.
Melina, Epiphany of Love, 91.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

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Adam G. Cooper

secondary studies, freely synthesising their results with his Thomistic and Blondelian-inspired version of Christian personalism.13
Moreover, rigorous historical research has made us more wary about
readings of Maximus and other ancient thinkers who, utilizing such
terms as “nature” or “person” or “intellect”’ or “will,” unwittingly
import into the language of the Fathers a conceptual content derived
from much later developments in theological history and indicative of interests sometimes far removed from the Fathers’ actual
thought.14
But having said that, my sense is that Melina’s appropriation of
Maximus’s insights on the nature of human volition and freedom has
more going for it than may seem to be the case at first. For Melina,
human freedom consists in “the power to introduce novelty into
the cyclical time of history, breaking the pre-established schemes of
physical laws and natural inclinations.”15 His instinct in interpreting Maximus is to avoid any reduction of morality and freedom to
the practical calculation of moral values from cognitively accessible
universal principles and, instead, to presuppose that the specifically
Christological aspect in the Confessor’s analysis of human action
says something crucial about the realization of all human freedom:
it “only occurs in reference to the will of a person: the beloved,
the Father.”16 In other words, human action is free not just when it
conforms to the general logos of human nature, but when it arises in
the mode of radical love for another person, a mode whose concrete
embodiment, being personal and unique and exposed to all the variables of interpersonal freedom, will always be creative and new.
13

14

15
16

In this context, Melina cites the work of R. -A. Gauthier, “Saint Maxime le
Confesseur et la psychologie de l-acte humain,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne
et Médiévale 21 (1954): 51–100. Elsewhere, Melina has also collaborated with
Rome-based Maximian scholar P. -G. Renczes, publishing the latter’s essay “La
gloria del Padre e pianezza dell’umano: L’apporto di Massimo il Confessore a
una precisazione dell’antropologia teologica dei Padre,” in Il bene e la persona
nell’ agire, ed. L. Melina and J. -J. Pérez-Soba (Rome: Lateran University Press,
2002), 147–57.
See the recent summary of this issue by Alexis Torrance in “Personhood and
Patristics in Orthodox Theology: Reassessing the Debate,” Heythrop Journal 52
(2011): 700–07. On this question, it may be apt to mention Vladimir Lossky’s
remark that “the quest for a Christian personalist anthropology in the Fathers
is certainly worthwhile,” even if it must be “pursued with care” (reported in
ibid., 705).
Melina, Epiphany of Love, 4.
Ibid., 91.

Freedom and Heteronomy

1137

What I want to do in the present article, therefore, is to revisit
Maximus’s theological exegesis of the scriptural accounts of Christ’s
prayer in Gethsemane with a view to judging whether the creative
appropriation of his anthropology along the lines outlined by Melina
is justified. I shall begin by turning to a number of familiar and
well-studied passages to see whether they might yield any fresh
insights when approached with three particular questions in mind.
The first concerns the extent to which Maximus maintains the
integrity of Christ’s singular subjectivity, representing all of Jesus’s
speaking, acting, and suffering in such a way that we encounter in
them one and the same personal “I.” The second question concerns
the creative and novel character of Christ’s speaking, acting, and
suffering, the extent to which we encounter in them a completely
new actuality that reveals what it means to be God, and what it
means to be human in a surprising and hitherto unexpected way.
The third concerns the integration of instinct and intention, the
extent to which Christ’s conscious acts of will incorporate, and do
not oppose, even the most instinctive human impulses and natural
inclinations. With the discussion generated by these three questions,
I shall proceed to offer an assessment of the possible merits in Melina’s
line of interpretation.
Singularity of Subject
We begin by asking to what extent Maximus maintains the integrity
of one and the same personal “I” of which is properly predicated all
of Jesus’s speaking, acting, and suffering, particularly those manifested
in his Gethsemane prayer. Exegesis of this narrative event appears in
a number of places in Maximus’s writings, but most of the focus in
secondary studies centres on its appearance in three Opuscula (3, 6,
and 7) and the famous Disputation with Pyrrhus, texts that date from
a brief period in the Confessor’s African sojourn between AD 642
and 645, subsequent to the publication of the Imperial Ekthesis (638)
and prior to the Imperial Typos (647/8).17 Maximus’s chief concern in
17

Traditional ascriptions of authorship and dating for the Disputation with Pyrrhus
have recently been questioned by Ryan W. Strickler, “A Dispute in Dispute:
Forgery, Heresy, and Sainthood in Seventh-Century Byzantium,” (master’s
thesis, University of Kentucky, 2013). Elements in Strickler’s case may deserve
attention in the broader field of Maximian historiography but are not really
relevant to the concerns of the present article. For the scholarly consensus on
context and dating, see Polycarp Sherwood, O.S.B., “An Annotated Date-List
of the Works of Maximus the Confessor,” Studia Anselmiana 30 (1952): viii–64;

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Adam G. Cooper

these texts is not to answer the kinds of questions we moderns might
typically raise of this narrative event, but to respond to the assertion
made by the Ekthesis that any attribution of two activities to Christ
would imply two wills and that to attribute two wills to Christ would
be to envision a virtual two-personed Christ in which the divine and
human elements were at best juxtaposed. The wording of the Ekthesis
indicates an implicit intention to exclude any interpretation of the
Gethsemane event that would find in it an internal struggle in Christ
between “God the Word,” who “wished to fulfill the salutary suffering,”
on the one hand, and on the other, “his humanity,” which “resisted his
will and was opposed to it.”18 In putting it this way, the Ekthesis brought
to the surface a hermeneutical question of abiding importance for both
Christology and theological anthropology: how are we to reconcile
what appear to be two conflicting desires in Jesus? “Father, if it be
possible, let this cup pass from me.” Here, the object of desire is avoidance of impending suffering and death. “Yet not my will, but yours be
done.” Here, the object of desire is the accomplishment of the Father’s
will, which in this case seems to necessitate existential crisis.19 The
idea that Jesus experienced an internal affective conflict seems to be at
odds with an understanding of virtue as an excellence arising from the
harmonious, rational integration of our various inclinations and desires.
Any such conflict would seem to be more a symptom of the kind of
volitional uncertainty and unruly appetitive disintegration that characterize humanity’s fallen and wounded state and that Maximus sums
up in the word gnomê. As is well known, Maximus, while insisting on
a duality of wills in Christ, rejected any notion of a natural opposition
between them.There is nothing inherent in human nature that opposes
its Creator. But that left him with the challenge of making sense of

18

19

Guido Bausenhart, In allem uns gleich ausser der Sünde : Studien zum Beitrag
Maximos’ Des Bekenners zur altkirchlichen Christologie : mit einer Kommentierten
ubersetzung der “Disputatio Cum Pyrrho” (Mainz: Matthias-GrünewaldVerlag,
1992); Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil, eds., Maximus the Confessor and His
Companions: Documents from Exile (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2002), 14–18; and Pauline Allen, ed., Sophronius of Jerusalem and Seventh Century
Heresy:The Synodical Letter and Other Documents (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Ekthesis. This is my own translation of the Greek text found in Sophronius of
Jerusalem and Seventh-Century Heresy: The Synodical Letter and Other Documents ,
ed. Pauline Allen (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 214.
The Gospel of Luke repeatedly expresses this sense of “divine necessity”
behind Jesus’s mission with the impersonal verb δεῖ; see Joseph A. Fitzmyer,
The Gospel according to Luke I–IX (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 179–80.

Freedom and Heteronomy

1139

what has been called the “graphic realism of Jesus’ initial resistance and
his coming to a final resolve in the Gethsemane prayer.”20
Studies of Maximus’s attempts in these texts to interpret Jesus’s
Gethsemane prayer have clarified the prominence he gives to the
active role of Christ’s humanity in the resolution of this resistance.
Ever since Marcel Doucet’s criticism of von Balthasar’s over-dramatization of the duality between the Logos and his assumed humanity, interpreters have rightly located the drama of resolution and
obedience within Christ’s human volitional complex.21 In his studious
monograph on the topic, Demetrios Bathrellos fairly sums up scholarly consensus by asserting that, in Opusculum 6 especially, Maximus
offers “a piece of meticulous and insightful exegesis” in which he
points out “in an unambiguous way that it is the Logos as man who
addresses the Father in Gethsemane.”22
But is this an adequate explanation? True enough, Maximus does
use the “as man” formula once, right near the end of Opusculum 6:
“Having become like us for our sake, he who is God by nature said
to God the Father in a fittingly human manner, ‘Let not my will but
yours prevail,’ since, possessing the fullness of the Father’s will, he
also has a human will as man [ὡς ἄνθρωπος].”23 But it seems to me
that we do not have here a simple ascription of Jesus’s prayer to the
Logos “as man.”
At stake here is not just a moot point in Maximian interpretation,
but a much wider issue in Christology. While a survey of texts from
the history of patristic Christology attests to the ubiquity of the
formulations “as God” or “as man” used to qualify Christ’s various
activities for the sake of a certain dogmatic precision, this way of
speaking arguably falls short of accounting for the full depth and
drama of Christ’s passion, whether in Gethsemane or elsewhere.
It was against such a mathematical dividing up of Christ’s various
20

21

22

23

Paul M. Blowers, “The Passion of Jesus Christ in Maximus the Confessor: A
Reconsideration,” Studia Patristica 34 (2001): 361–77, at 367.
See Marcel Doucet, “La Volonté Humaine du Christ, Spécialment en son
Agonie: Maxime le Confessuer, Interpréte de l’Écriture,” Science et Esprit 37.2
(1985): 123–59, esp. 135–36.
Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the
Christology of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2004), 147.
Opusculum 6 (PG, 91:68C; all translations from this text are my own). Notice
here how Maximus embellishes the words of Jesus with the verb ἰσχυσάτω
(“prevail”), which does not appear in the Synoptics.

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Adam G. Cooper

actions into those that he performed “as God” and those that he
performed “as man” that Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius, endorsed by
the Council of Ephesus (431), required that all of Christ’s actions and
passions be attributed to the one subject, “the one enfleshed hypostasis of the Logos.”24
Elsewhere, in commenting on the Gethsemane event in Opusculum
7, Maximus does indeed use the “as God” and “as man” formulations
a number of times. But it is not clear to me that he means them to be
regarded as virtual subjects of predication, nor even as simple qualifiers. His intention can be better understood, I think, by turning
to study their appearance in Ambiguum 5, a text dating from before
the full-blown outbreak of the Monothelete controversy. It is here,
while defending the coherence and applicability of the Christology of
Dionysius the Areopagite, that Maximus proposes what I regard as his
profoundest insights into the mystery of Christ’s person and action.
The central thesis of Ambiguum 5 is that, while Christ is essentially
divine and essentially human, the circumstances of the hypostatic
union have impacted his existence and activity in such a way that his
divine nature can no longer be accounted for in purely divine terms,
nor his human nature in purely human terms: “He exists neither
as a mere human being, nor as bare God.”25 Thus, when Maximus
uses the “as God” and “as man” formulas, they must be interpreted
with this thesis in clear view. So when he says, “As God, he [Christ]
was the moving principle of his own humanity, while as man, he
was revelatory principle of his own divinity,”26 the point he wants
to make is that one and the same subject, the incarnate Logos, is
involved in each and every one of his actions both “as God” and “as
man” simultaneously. The characteristic properties of both natures
are manifest at the existential level in one way or another in each
particular, concrete act of the one person. Maximus’s preferred way
of expressing this exchange of properties in Christ is to say that he did
human things in a divine way and divine things in a human way.27
24

25

26
27

Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (London:
Sheed and Ward, 1990), 56.
Ambiguum 5, lines 33–43. English translation from this work is my own and
done from the critical edition of the Greek text in Maximi Confessoris Ambigua ad Thomam una cum Epistula Secunda ad Eundem, ed. Bart Janssens, Corpus
Christianorum Series Graeca (hereafter, CCSG) 48 (Turnhout, BE: Brepols,
2002), 20–21.
Ambiguum 5.192–93 (CCSG, 48:28).
See further Adam G. Cooper, The Body in Saint Maximus the Confessor: Holy
Flesh, Wholly Deified (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), 127–56.

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1141

Something similar, I believe, is going on in the formulations of
Opuscula 6 and 7. In these, Maximus is at pains to bring out the dual
or theandric character of all of Christ’s actions, even those that seem
most markedly human. In Opusculum 7, for example, while discerning in the two parts of the Gethsemane prayer a reference to two
distinct wills, he nevertheless builds into his “as man” and “as God”
formulations this cross-over reciprocal qualification: “For it appears
that the same as man, who is also God by nature, wills in accordance
with the economy that the cup pass, and in this he typifies what is
human. . . . And again it appears that as God, being also a human
being in essence, he wills to fulfill the economy of the Father and
work the salvation of all.”28 He continues again: “It is made clear then
that as man, being God by nature and acting humanly, he willingly
accepts the experience of sufferings for our sake. And it is again made
clear that as God, being by nature a human being and acting divinely,
he naturally exhibits the signs of his divinity.”29
It is from both these sufferings and these signs, Maximus
concludes, that “the same one is recognised as being at the same time
[ὁμοῦ] both God and man.”30 The Confessor’s emphasis here and
throughout the treatise seems to be on avoiding reducing this or that
action of Christ to one enacted by him either “as God” or “as man”
and on, instead, predicating actions to Christ both “as God” and “as
man.” He champions this double predication over against the pious
but misguided Monothelete tendency to credit certain actions to
Christ only “as God.” “For if,” Maximus argues, “it is only as God
that he willed these things [hunger, thirst, weariness, and so on],
and not the same as man, then either the body has become divine by
nature, or the Logos has changed his nature and become flesh by loss
of his own divinity.”31
The same train of thought seems to be operative in Opusculum 6.
There Maximus considers three ways of reading the first part of the
Gethsemane prayer, the petition, “Let this cup pass from me.” The
first is to understand it as a prayer arising “from the man who is like
us” (ἀπο τοῦ ἀνθρώπου . . . τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς), a characterization Maximus explains in terms of a will that “often resists and contends with
God.”32 But such an interpretation would not fit the second half of the
28
29
30
31
32

Opusculum 7 (PG, 91:84C).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. (PG, 91:77B).
Ibid. 6 (PG, 91:65BC).

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Adam G. Cooper

prayer, in which the same subject does not oppose but acquiesces to
God’s will. A second possible interpretation is to attribute the petition
to “the eternal divinity of the Only-Begotten Son,” but this would
either introduce a division of will between the Father and the Son
or ascribe the wish to avoid the cup also to the Father, which would
negate the intelligibility of the prayer altogether. The third way of
understanding the petition, a way that Maximus commends, is as
belonging to “the man we know as Savior” (τοῦ κατὰ τὸν Σωτῆρα
νοουμένου ἀνθρώπου). Quite possibly it is this phrase, with its
mention of anthropos, that would lead interpreters to say that Maximus
here ascribes the prayer to Christ “as man.” But the crucial “Savior”
part of this phrase for Maximus necessarily includes what is proper
to Christ’s divinity, for as he says a little further on, it is God’s very
nature to will our salvation.33 To ascribe the petition to “the man
who is Savior” is in effect to ascribe it to the man who is God, which
is altogether different from ascribing it to Christ simply “as man.”34
The Creative Newness of Christ’s Action
The second question I want to explore concerns the creative and novel
character of Christ’s actions, the extent to which we encounter in them
a completely new actuality that reveals what it means to be human in
33

34

Τοῦτο γαρ αὐτῷ φύσει καθέστηκε θελητόν. “This object of will” (Τοῦτο
θελητόν) is a reference back to the immediately previous clause, to “our salvation”; see ibid. (PG, 91:68B).
Thomas Weinandy has argued that all of Christ’s actions and passions should
be predicated of him “as man” and none of them “as God”: “If the Son of God
is man and has identified himself as man, then, it seems to me, that he exists,
as incarnate, totally within the parameters or boundaries of all that is human.
Thus the Son of God not only has a human body, soul, intellect, will, and
emotions, etc., but equally he also has an integral human ‘I,’ a psychological
centre within which all of these are expressed and experienced. The human
‘I’ of Jesus is the human psychological self-consciousness of the divine Son.
He thought, spoke, and acted as well as underwent all his experiences from
within the limits of his human ‘I.’ When Jesus said ‘I,’ it was truly the Son of
God saying ‘I’ in a fully authentic human manner”; see Thomas G. Weinandy,
Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 2000), 209–10. But if this is so,
then in what sense can we say that Jesus is divine? Only nominally? If really
and ontologically, this seems to challenge the exclusive integrity of the human
“I.” In short, Jesus must be able to say both “I am a man” and “I am God”;
both the divine and the human must coincide in his “I.” Put another way, the
divine “I” is concealed (and thereby revealed) in the human “I.” If it is asked
what it is in the first part of the Gethsemane prayer that manifests his divinity,
one need only be reminded of the fact that this is a prayer addressed to God
as “Father,” a form of invocation proper to the divine Son.

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1143

an entirely fresh and hitherto unexpected way. For this, we may refer
first of all to a typically Maximian theme brought out so well by Paul
Blowers in his essay on the Confessor’s “passiology.”35 Blowers suggests
that a richer and psychologically more compelling exposition of the
Gethsemane prayer can be found in the two other Opuscula (3 and 7)
and the Disputation with Pyrrhus, especially when they are illuminated
by passages in the earlier Ambigua ad Ioannem and the Quaestiones ad
Thalassium. Above all, Blowers’s reconsideration highlights the expression often employed by Maximus that speaks of the way Christ makes
“use” (χρῆσις) of typically human passions such as the fear of death,
indeed even death itself, so as to transform them into redemptive and
life-giving instruments.
To speak of Christ “using” his fear of death for salvific purposes
should not be thought of in the sense of Christ opting on some occasions to “use” his human attributes and opting on other occasions to
use his divine attributes, thereby effecting a kind of break between
the person who does the “using” and his two instrumental natures.36
Rather, it seems more akin to the way, for example, a person might
harness the initial motions of anger that sometimes arise in him,
allowing them to propel him towards acts of justice or courage
instead of allowing them the kind of undisciplined free reign that
would more likely end up in acts of injustice or self-pity.37 Moral
failure or success arises not at the level of the initial affective motion,
but in its respective appropriation, deployment, or “use” in this or
that purposeful action. Similarly, there is in principle a blameless,
even a positively “good” impulse embedded in our natural aversion
to pain and death; indeed, its absence would normally indicate some
sort of psycho-physical abnormality. Moral evaluation applies not to
its presence as such, but to how it is used.
Another context in Maximus’s writings in which the novelty
and freedom of Christ’s action comes to light is again in the fifth
Ambiguum ad Thomam. In discussing the meaning of the disputed
35
36

37

Blowers, “The Passion of Jesus Christ in Maximus the Confessor.”
Davidson criticizes this conception in Hans Schwartz (“Not My Will but
Yours Be Done,” 198).
Maximus envisions the positive use of impulses such as anger and desire in
Orationis dominicae expositio, lines 520–60 (CCSG, 23:113) and, of course, in the
famous passage of Quaestiones ad Thalassium 1, lines 5–40 (CCSG, 7:47–49),
where desire, pleasure, fear, and grief are transformed into virtuous dispositions
in those “who take captive every thought in obedience to Christ” (2 Cor
10:5).

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Dionysian phrase “a certain new theandric activity,” Maximus argues
that Christ fully manifested what we recognise as our common
human nature, but he did so “by way of new modalities that are not
ours.”38 On this basis, Maximus can say that “there is nothing human
[in Christ] that, on account of its supernatural modality, was not also
divine.”39 By renewing human nature, by pioneering it afresh and
making of it a gift available to all, Christ shows how human action
in its free and fulfilled state properly introduces into history an utterly
singular and unexpected quality that transcends all “normal” and
predictable schemes of natural causation.
With respect to the Gethsemane prayer, then, this means that
Christ really did feel the properly human aversion to death, for there
would be something wrong with a being that did not at some level
resist its own destruction. Yet, he experienced this aversion not in a
way that might drive him to seek refuge in selfish or escapist behavior, but in a uniquely transcendent way—that is, in God’s way—and
therefore in a way that serves for human salvation. Through this
unique mode of appropriation by Christ, the natural human fear
of death, which so often takes the concrete form of a crippling
power or overwhelmingly impulsive drive, was thereby granted a
new, supernatural quality as “a precious resource of salvation and
deification.”40 In this way, summarizes Blowers, Maximus envisions
Christ in the garden as “pioneering” for all human beings “a new
and edifying mode” of the common human aversion to death, one
that does not curtail or frustrate human aspirations but enables their
ultimate fulfilment.41
Integration of Instinct and Intention
The third question that calls for our attention concerns the integration
of instinct and intention, the extent to which Christ’s conscious acts of
will incorporate, rather than oppose, even the most instinctive human
impulses and inclinations. In two statements in Opusculum 7, Maximus
affirms that Christ’s natural human will “was not opposed to God,”42

38
39
40
41

42

Ambiguum 5.184 (CCSG, 48:28).
Ibid., 5.173–74 (CCSG, 48:27–28).
Blowers, “The Passion of Jesus Christ in Maximus the Confessor,” 369.
Paul M. Blowers and Robert L. Wilken, St Maximus the Confessor: On the
Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2003), 112n7.
Opusculum 7 (PG, 91:81D).

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1145

but then in referring to the movement from the stance of aversion
expressed in the first part of the prayer to the stance of agreement
expressed in the second part of the prayer, says, with reference to that
aversion, that he “turns against it” (ὥρμα κατ’ αὐτοῦ).43
A solution to this problem has been helped greatly by the recognition that the terms used for “will” in many passages do not denote
the rational appetite exclusively, but sometimes include reference to
the lower appetitive and instinctive impulses. For example, in Opusculum 3, Maximus defines thelêma as a natural desire for being, which
he explains is not a conscious psychological longing, but a kind of
constitutive, organizing energy within a being that orients it toward
its own actuation and fulfilment.44 Again in Opusculum 1, Maximus defines “natural will” (physikon thelêma) as a power that “holds
together in being” the various properties of a nature.45 As Bathrellos summarises the wider textual evidence, “the will is a unity of
instinctive and rational elements.”46 This assertion is set over against
the thesis of both von Balthasar and Marcel Doucet, who hold that
Christ’s repulsion in the face of death was “not simply a blind, vital
drive to stay alive, but intelligent willing.”47
Of course, Doucet was himself critical of von Balthasar on this
issue. Already back in 1985, Doucet rejected von Balthasar’s dramatic
rendition of the duality of wills in Christ in terms of a symmetrical,
face-to-face struggle and its resolution in advance, as it were, by the
overarching will exercised by the Logos in becoming human to begin
with. Von Balthasar’s approach is well illustrated by his translation
of the phrase ὥρμα κατ’ αὐτοῦ with “he does violence to his own
will” (Er «stürmt gegen seinen eigenen Willen an»).48 Such an approach,
Doucet argued, leaves no room for the possibility of speaking of a real
submission and obedience on the part of Christ’s human will. There
can be no radical contrariety in Christ. If there is an internal tension,
it is played out not between the Logos and his humanity, but within
43
44
45
46
47

48

Ibid., (PG, 91:81B).
Ibid., 3 (PG, 91:45C).
Ibid., 1 (PG, 91:12C–13A).
Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 145n273.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe according to Maximus the
Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003), 264. Cf. Doucet,
“La Volonté humaine du Christ,” 135 (quoted by Bathrellos, The Byzantine
Christ, 145n273).
Von Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie: Das Weltbild Maximus’ des Bekenners (Trier:
Johannes Verlag, 1988), 266 (Cosmic Liturgy, 268).

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Adam G. Cooper

the dynamisms of Christ’s human will itself, between the natural
“velleity,” the instinctive tendency to conserve one’s own being,
and the concrete act of will that brings such velleity into submissive
obedience to God.49 The “fighting against” that Maximus speaks of,
says Doucet, takes place “in his humanity, or more precisely, in his
human will.”50
Yet, to my mind, the two claims need not be so keenly opposed.
It is not legitimate, at least not without imposing a neo-Kantian
interpretation on Maximus, to dismiss the non-rational or instinctive
element of will as irrelevant to Christ’s self-determination, as Bathrellos seems to do.51 Here von Balthasar’s proposed solution to the
problem of opposition seems to me to make certain sense not only of
Maximus’s thought but also of the exigencies of the human reality.
In an intellectual being, argues von Balthasar, natural desire is always,
“at its root, an intellectual desire.”52 The implications are twofold.
First, spirit or intelligence not only is operative in a human being at
the level of conscious acts of choice but penetrates all the way down
to qualify in some way even the deepest instinctive drives. Second,
concrete determinations of will always arise out of the intelligent
but as yet unfulfilled complex of affects and desires that mark our
psychophysical constitution. Of course, precisely therein lie both our
unity and our vulnerability. In Christ, however, this same complex of
natural drives, says Maximus, “does not precede and lead the will, as
happens with us,”53 but is itself the result of a higher act of will, the
will of the Logos who, in becoming incarnate, gives his humanity
existence and, within the limits of a purposeful salvific project, freely
makes his own the full range of its natural motions. In this way, says
von Balthasar, Christ’s natural fear of death “was itself supported
by his underlying hypostatic freedom, which supported his whole
nature. His hypostatic identity, therefore, bears and results in the
natural opposition of the two natures, and in its supreme personal
disponibility [to the Father’s will] it dissolves the opposition between
them to the same degree that it brings them into being.”54
In embracing and making his own the nature he assumed, the
49
50
51
52
53

54

Doucet, ‘La Volonté humaine du Christ’, 136.
Ibid.
See Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 123.
Von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 264.
Οὐ γὰρ προηγεῖται ἐν τῷ Κυρίῳ καθάπερ ἐν ἡμῖν, τῆς θελήσεως τὰ φυσικά;
see Disputatio cum Pyrrho (PG, 91:297D).
Von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 266.

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1147

Logos personally willed and affirmed all its finite proclivities and
vulnerabilities, including those that “naturally” move it in a certain
healthy and blameless direction, but which in the circumstances
of the saving economy would require modal re-configuration. In
essence, these inclinations are human. In their modal actualisation
and determination by Christ, they are rendered divine.55 Maximus
can thus speak of Christ, in the very moment in which the instinctive human aversion to death arises in him and comes to expression
in prayer, “turning against” the inclination manifest in this aversion.
The intensity implied by this verb “turning against” is softened if
we compare it to parallel expressions in the immediate context that
speak of “setting aside” (ἀθέτησις), “surrendering” (ὑποκλίνω), or
“constraining” (συνελαῦνω) this inclination in order to bring it into
union with the saving plan of the Father.56
For von Balthasar, all of this can only make sense inasmuch as
this natural inclination is “from the start, already in submission.”57
In submission to what? Only to the will of the Logos? This is how
von Balthasar has it. Must we not also add: “and also to the will of
his human nature”? But this would be to fall into the trap again of
ascribing actions or events to this or that nature in a way Maximus
never quite permits. While he affirms the presence of a human will,
its decisive determination, its concrete actualization, is never an act of
a nature, nor even of a mere man, but always that of a singular subject
who is the humanized God.58 As Maximus asserts in Opusculum 3, it is
the overarching salvific skopos of the Incarnation that functions as the
decisive personal orientation within which Christ’s shrinking from
death is integrated. Since the Son of God became a human being
not primarily to suffer but to save, his natural aversion to suffering
does not stand intrinsically opposed to the saving divine will, nor is
it simply reigned in by a higher act of bare human volition, but arises
as a normal motion of natural inclination that, in Maximus’s words,
is “shaped by and brought into concordance with the interweaving of
the natural logos with the mode of the economy.”59

55
56
57
58

59

Opusculum 7 (PG, 91:81D).
Ibid. (PG, 91:80D–81A).
Von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 269.
See Opusculum 4 (PG, 91:60A): ὡς ἄνθρωπος οὐ ψιλός, ἀλλ᾿ ἐνανθρωπήσας
Θεός.
Opusculum 3 (PG, 91:48C).

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Concluding Application
What I have been doing in the discussion up until this point is trying
to visit a number of well worked-over Maximian problems in order to
generate some thoughts that will better allow us to judge the validity
of one particular appropriation of Maximus’s dyothelete Christology
in the field of moral theology. It is my sense that all three areas of
discussion open up insights that lend themselves to an interpretation
of morality and human action along the lines indicated by Melina. My
purpose in this concluding section is to recall briefly two aspects of
Melina’s thought outlined in the introduction and see how they may
dovetail with what we have gleaned from Maximus.The first was Melina’s notion that human freedom consists in “the power to introduce
novelty into the cyclical time of history, breaking the pre-established
schemes of physical laws and natural inclinations.”60 The second aspect
was Melina’s sense that the specifically Christological aspect in the
Confessor’s analysis of human action says something crucial about the
realization of all human freedom: that it “only occurs in reference to
the will of a person: the beloved, the Father.”61
It seems to me that the first of these two points fits well with
what we have said about the Maximian notion of Christ as pioneer
of a new and saving modality of human action. Christ performs
human activities “in a way beyond the human.”62 He thereby inaugurates a new level of human freedom, actualizing everything that
is proper to human nature, but “by way of new modalities that are
not ours.”63 This is not to envisage freedom as totally autonomous
and self-designing. Christ’s freedom simultaneously transcends and
affirms the limitations of our common human nature and bodily
structure. There is much in the normal course of human experience
that unfolds unavoidably as a matter of natural necessity. In Christ,
however, these dynamisms provide the crucial ground and trajectory
for creative and renovative action.
Herein lies an obvious difference between Christ’s affectivity and
our own fallen proclivities. A stable disposition to perform good
acts relies upon the impetus provided by the affections and desires.
In the unvirtuous person, however, such affections and desires lack
the appropriate order and temper, and thus, instead of impelling him
60
61
62
63

Melina, Epiphany of Love, 4.
Ibid., 91.
Ambiguum 5.73 (CCSG, 48:23).
Ibid., 5.184 (CCSG, 48:28).

Freedom and Heteronomy

1149

toward the good, they tend to dissipate his energies and impede the
singleness of heart, the clarity of purpose, and the connatural instinct
for good called for by the moral situation. When faced with impending pain or evil, our natural fears and desires often tend to exercise
a compelling and sometimes turbulent influence on our intentional
choices. In Christ, by contrast, all these affections and desires are
actively harnessed and spontaneously integrated into the free and
creative actualization of a purposeful salvific project. As Maximus
puts it:
By freedom of will [ἐξουσίᾳ γνώμης], he turned the passions of
nature into active deeds, though not as consequences of natural
necessity, as they are in our case. Moreover, possessing what
belongs to us, he passed through the passibility of our nature
and, by his freedom, proved that there was moving in him that
which in our case tends to bring about a seditious turbulence of
will. That which with us is naturally present as a mover of will
[γνώμης κινητικὸν: something that puts gnome into motion]
is rendered by Christ’s freedom something movable by will
[γνώμῃ κινητὸν].64
In Maximus’s mind, this lack of necessity in Jesus is a consequence of
his virgin birth, by which his human nature comes into being not by
a law of natural necessity but by the free and supernatural act of the
Word.65
The validity of the second point becomes clearer when we
supplement our findings with an observation whose importance is
only hinted at by Maximus but that seems to me to be of peculiar
relevance to the integration of Christ’s natural human desires and
their actualization within an interpersonal, filial modality. It has
to do with the role of prayer as the concrete means by which this
integration and actualization take place. On several occasions in the
passages under discussion, Maximus alludes to Jesus’s act of prayer in
Gethsemane as the means by which he manifests his humanity in all
its weakness and constrains it to union with the Father’s will.66 But
64

65
66

Ibid., 5.163–67 (CCSG, 48:27). In this earlier work, Maximus clearly still
attributes gnome (deliberation) to Christ. Yet, the point made here remains
essentially applicable even when one denies gnome to Christ.
See also Ambigua ad Iohannem 41 (PG, 91:1309A).
See, e.g., Opusculum 7 (PG, 91:80CD—81A) and Opusculum 6 (PG, 91:68C).

1150

Adam G. Cooper

what Maximus does not seem to reflect on—at least in the Opuscula—is the filial mode in which this prayer is expressed as a personal
address to God as “Father.”67 The concrete content and intention of
the prayer corresponds exactly both to Christ’s filial identity and to
the motion of his normal human desires. Thus, Christ in Gethsemane
is what a human being looks like when all his natural capacities and
propensities are actuated in a divine way, or more specifically, in the
way proper to the relation that pertains between the Son and the
Father.68 Those capacities and propensities that might, in other cases,
lead to actions that undermine this relation are, in Jesus, drawn into
the ambit of filial communion with the Father and effectively made
to actualize his universal saving purpose in history precisely through
the medium of intimate (though agonizing) prayer.
In a similar way, Melina proposes that human action is essentially—that is, according to its Christocentric telos—filial and
interpersonal. The knowledge that guides particular moral actions
is discovered not in an objective cognitive recognition of a universal norm and subsequent conformity to it, but rather relies on a
“creative moral insight” born from within the subjective and particular conditions of a concrete “I-Thou” relationship.69 To say that
human moral action is filial is to say that it has its origin and end
in the reciprocal love of God the Father and his Son in the freedom
of the Spirit. The proper horizon against which human action must
be compared or measured is not human nature, in the first instance,
nor even the divine will, but filial communion with the Father.
Only by insertion into this filial relation does human action come
to full flower.
67

68

69

However, in his Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, Maximus takes up a prominent patristic topos in highlighting the fact that only the Son properly calls
God “Father,” so that it is only by grace of adoption that human beings, for
whom God is properly called “creator,” can also call him “Father”; see Orationis dominicae expositio 258–69 (CCSG, 23:71).
“Jesus exhibits the nature and character of God in the only way in which they
can be absolutely and perfectly exhibited in the context of human behaviour,
namely in such a relationship as properly belongs to man over against God,
the relationship of glad and willing filial obedience”; see C. F. D. Moule,
“The Manhood of Jesus in the New Testament,” in Christ, Faith and History:
Cambridge Studies in Christology, ed. S. W. Sykes and J. P. Clayton (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 95–110, at 101.
On this notion of “creative moral insight,” see Stephen A. Dinan, “The Particularity of Moral Knowledge,” The Thomist 50 (1986): 66–84 (referred to by
Melina, Epiphany of Love, 59).

Freedom and Heteronomy

1151

Whether or not these reflections satisfy a strict exegesis of Maximus’s writings, they encourage us to penetrate the letter of his texts in
order to get nearer the mystery they surely try to express. Maximus’s
account of Gethsemane teaches us that human beings actualize their
freedom not in the mode of decisions whose rightness is deduced
in advance through a detached and rational grasp of the truth in all
its blazing objectivity, but in actu, in the mode of an interpersonal
communion within which desire, born of love, is wholly captivated
by the Father’s redemptive purpose for broken humanity. This in
turn leads us to think again about the meaning of Christ’s obedience, which the Confessor, in connection with the Christ hymn of
Philippians 2:5–11, links especially to the Gethsemane event.70 It
consists not simply in external conformity to a heteronomous divine
command, nor in a heavy-handed and forceful coercion of unwilling
impulses in a direction that they are bound to resist, but in an active
interpersonal union of two desires, two freedoms. In short, Christ’s
obedience in the garden is essentially an embodied form of love, the
love between the Son and the Father. This obedience opens the way
for our historically acquired alterity to God to be healed of its divisive
and alienating quality and, through its inclusion in the loving and
fruitful alterity of the divine persons, to attain the communion with
God that, from the beginning, has defined the human vocation. N&V

70

Opusculum 6 (PG, 91:68C).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1153–1174

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy: Revisiting a
Continuator of Thomas Aquinas
Domenic D’Ettore
Marian University
Indianapolis, IN

Introduction
Thomas Sutton (1250–1315) has been called the “Prince of the primitive Thomists.”1 A contemporary of John Duns Scotus at Oxford in
the first decade of the fourteenth century, Sutton was among the first
participants in Thomist-Scotist dialogue, as he and Scotus responded
to each other’s oral and written teachings.2 Twentieth-century scholarship on Sutton’s doctrine of analogous naming was initiated in 1959
by Joseph Przezdziecki,3 whose article served as a point of reference
for Bernard Montagnes’s 1963 study of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of
analogy and for the 1990s and 2000s articles by E. J. Ashworth and
Mark Henninger. Each of these works draws principally or exclusively
		A. Kremple, La Doctrine de la Relation chez Saint Thomas: Exposé historique et
systématique (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1952), 29. For information
about Sutton’s place in early Thomism, see Frederick Roensch, Early Thomistic
School (Dubuque, IA: The Priory Press, 1964), 44–51 and 73–78. Roensch
says that Sutton “represents a high point in the progress of Thomism and
occupies a position of superiority in matters of doctrinal analysis among his
fellow Dominicans” (ibid., 51). On his life and works, see also Gyula Klima,
“Thomas of Sutton,” in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, ed. Jorge
J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2003), 664–65.
2
		Joseph J. Przezdziecki briefly treats the evidence that Sutton and Scotus knew
of and responded to each other’s work in “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique of
the Doctrine of Univocity,” in An Etienne Gilson Tribute, ed. Charles O’Neil
(Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1959), 190–92. He draws the
conclusion that Sutton’s “masterly intervention” did much to check the spread
of Scotism at Oxford (ibid., 208).
3
		Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique,” 189–208.
1

1154

Domenic D’Ettore

from Thomas Sutton’s Quaestiones ordinariae 32 and 33.4 Przezdziecki,
Ashworth, and most of all Henninger provide excellent summaries of
significant portions of Quaestiones ordinariae 32 and 33. In the first part
of this paper, I relate salient portions of Sutton’s doctrine and an interpretation controversy between Ashworth and Henninger. In the second
part, I draw attention to an untreated but important aspect of Sutton’s
doctrine of analogy: how demonstration proceeds through analogous
terms. I use Sutton’s arguments in this context to support Henninger’s
interpretation against Ashworth’s and then to go beyond Henninger
by proposing a resolution to the apparent contradiction in Sutton’s
position that Ashworth’s interpretation attempts to address. I draw the
further but related conclusion that Montagnes was closer to the mark
than Ashworth credits him when Montagnes describes Sutton as a
precusor to Cajetan in his use of analogy of proportionality.5
Thomas Sutton on Analogy, Its Modes, and Its Application
Across the Categories and to God and Creatures
Joseph J. Przezdziecki—Introducing Thomas Sutton and His
doctrine of Analogy
Przezdziecki summarizes the main arguments that Sutton presented in
the objections section of Quaestiones ordinariae 32 for the univocal pred4

5

An alternate title for this work is Questiones disputatae 35. Roensch puts its
composition at 1295 (Roensch, Early Thomistic School, 50). Mark G. Henninger
follows Schneider, editor of the 1977 edition of Sutton’s Ordinary Questions,
and dates them between 1305 and 1310; see Henninger, “Thomas Sutton on
Univocation, Equivocation, and Analogy,” The Thomist 70 (2006): 540. Given
the extent to which Sutton is responding to Henry of Harclay’s own Quaestiones ordinariae, which were written between 1300 and 1312, I find the later
dating more probable, see Henninger, “Henry of Harclay,” in A Companion to
Philosophy in the Middle Ages, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing, 2003), 305. All translations are my own.
All of my citations of Sutton’s Quaestiones ordinariae are taken from the
edition published in Zur Diskussion uber das Problem der Univozitat in Umkreis
des Johannes Duns Skotus, ed. Michael Schmaus (Munich: Bayerische Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 1957) (hereafter, Schmaus). There is a difference in question numbering between Schmaus’s edition and Przezdziecki’s. What is Question 32a in Schmaus is Question 33 in Przezdziecki. Consequently, question
33 for Schmaus is question 34 for Przezdziecki, and so forth.
See Bernard Montagnes, La doctrine de l’analogie de l’être d’après Saint Thomas
d’Aquin (Louven, BE: Publications Universitaires, 1963), republished as The
Doctrine of the Analogy of Being according to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski (Milwaukee, MI: Marquette University Press, 2004), 119 and 142–43.

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1155

ication of a conceptus communis of “being” and other names across the
categories and of God and creatures.6 Rather than addressing Sutton’s
responses to particular objections, Przezdziecki turns his attention to
Sutton’s respondeo, which begins with Sutton’s account of why some
were led to believe, mistakenly, that there is a common signification
of “being” across the categories and of God and things. According
to Sutton, this view arises from the similarity “being” bears toward a
genus, and it is dispelled by showing how “being” lacks the commonality that characterizes a genus term. Sutton employs the standard
argument that “being” is not a genus found in chapter 25 of part I of
Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles, among other places. The concept of
a genus cannot be included in the concept of its difference. But the
concept of “being” is included in every concept. Hence the concept of
“being” cannot be divided by a difference as any generic concept can.7
Furthermore, “being” cannot be a species, difference, property, or accident because it is more general than any species and it is predicated in
quid.8 Since “being” is not predicated in the manner of a genus, species,
difference, property, or accident across the categories or of God and
things, “being” is not signified univocally of these and it has no conceptus
communis.9
The name “being” is not said purely equivocally in these cases,
however, but analogously. Sutton writes that “being” is predicated
primarily of substance, and of accidents only by their relation to
6

7

8

9

Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique,” 192–98. Sutton provides numerous objections. In the numbering provided by Schmaus there are thirty-three
objections in Quaestiones ordinariae 32 (see Schmaus, 24–32). There is some
difficulty in numbering them, since Sutton interjects replies to objections and
then rebuttals to those replies within the objections.
Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique,” 199–201; Sutton, Quaestiones
ordinariae 32 (Schmaus, 33–34). The concept of a genus cannot be included
in the concept of a difference because, then, the whole species would be
expressed in the difference. “Being,” however, is included in every concept,
since what lacks being is nothing. For a brief statement of this argument see
Thomas Aquinas, In V metaphysicorum, lec. 9 (Marietti no. 889; Marietti edition,
238b).
Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique,” 201; Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae
32 (Schmaus, 34).
See also the summary of this argument presented in Henninger, “Thomas
Sutton on Univocation, Equivocation, and Analogy,” 544–46. Here, I follow
the example of Henninger and merely mention that Sutton’s arguments
against univocity in Quaestiones ordinariae 32 assume a point Scotus denies—
namely, that a term is univocal if and only if it is predicated according to one
of Porphyry’s five predicables.

1156

Domenic D’Ettore

substance.10 Regarding “being” said of God and creatures, he adds
that, since God is being essentially and others are being by participation, there is an even greater distance between creaturely being and
divine being than there is between accidental being and substantial
being. Since there is not univocity in the case of “being” said of
substance and accident, even less could there be univocity in the case
of God and creatures.11
The salient point so far is that, according to Sutton, there can be
no univocal signification where there is no common concept. There
is no common concept where a name is said by diverse significations,
as occurs in the cases of “being” and other names said across the
categories and of God and creatures.12 Where there is a single ratio or
concept, there is univocity. “Being” is analogous to the ten categories, and so there are ten concepts of “being,” one for each category.13
10

11

12

13

Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique,” 202; Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae
32 (Schmaus, 34–36).
Ibid., 203–04; Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 32: “Ulterius sciendum est, quod
ens dicitur analogice de deo et de quocumque alio. Deus enim dicitur ens
essentialiter, quia est suum esse subsistens habens omnem perfectionem
essendi. Sed omne aliud dicitur ens per participationem, quia nullum aliud
est suum esse nec habet omnem perfectionem essendi, sed participat ipsum
esse et partialiter habet aliquam essendi perfectionem secundum gradum
determinatum ad genus et ad species et multo longius distat esse cuiuslibet
creaturae ab esse divino, quam esse accidentis cuiuscumque ab esse substantiae,
propter quod multo minus potest ens dici de deo et creatura univoce quam
de substantia et accidenti. Respectu enim dei alia sunt magis non entia quam
entia [Further, it must be said that ‘being’ is said analogously about God and
about every other thing. For God is called ‘being’ essentially, because He is
His esse subsistently having all the perfection of being. But every other thing
is called ‘being’ by participation, because no other is its esse nor has all the
perfection of being, but participates its esse and has some perfection of being
partially, according to a determinate grade to a genus and to a species. And
because the esse of any creature is a much longer distance from the divine esse
than the esse of any accident from the esse of a substance, being is much less
able to be said univocally about God and creature than about substance and
accident]” (Schmaus, 38).
For more from Sutton on this point, see Quaestiones ordinariae 32, ad 12
(Schmaus, 40), and 32a, ad 3 (Schmaus, 58). See also, Thomas Sutton, Quodlibet
2, q. 3 ad 4, in Quodlibeta, ed. Michael Schmaus (Munich: Bayerische Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 1969), 183–84.
See especially the respondeo to question 32: “Dicendum est igitur, quod ens,
prout dicitur de rebus decem praedicamentorum, habet decem significationes,
secundum quas dicitur de eis analogice [It must be said therefore that being,
insofar as it is said about the ten categories, has ten significations according to
which it is said about them analogously]” (Schmaus, 36).

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1157

Any concept of categorical being refers either to a determinate category or indeterminately to this or that category. God and creatures
are even more diverse than substance and accident. So, just as there
is no common concept of “being” said of the diverse categories of
being, there is no common concept of “being” or any other name
said of God and creatures.14
Przezdziecki’s summary resumes at the respondeo of Quaestiones
ordinariae 33 (question number 34 in Przezdziecki’s numbering),
where Sutton offers his explanation of the four kinds of equivocation by design as derived from Boethius. These are: (1) similitudo, (2)
proportio, (3) ab uno (from one), and (4) ad unum (to one). For similitudo
or imitation, Sutton gives Aristotle’s example from Categories 1.1a,
that of “animal” said of a man and a picture of a man. Sutton explains
proportio with the standard examples from Aristotle’s Metaphysics 5 of
analogous principles including “unity as the principle of number,” “a
point as the principle of a line,” “the spring of a river,” and “the heart
of a body.”15 He adds that proportio is the proper sense of analogy and
that analoga is the same as proportio. (Following Przezdziecki’s example, I will use the expression “analogy of proportionality” to refer to
this second mode of analogy henceforth.) For the third mode, ab uno,
Sutton offers the example of the name “medical” said of a book and
a tool. Here the name “medical” descends from medicine to things
related to the art of medicine. The fourth mode, ad unum, occurs
when diverse things receive a name by their reference to one. Here
he gives the standard examples of the ways the name “healthy” is used
in reference to the health of an animal, and he adds that the name
“being” is said of substance and accidents in this mode.16
14
15
16

See note 11.
Aristotle, Metaphysics 5.1.1012b34–1013a17.
Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique,” 204–05; Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 32a: “Quae autem sunt aequivoca a proposito, dividuntur quadrupliciter.
Quaedam enim sunt aequivoca a proposito secundum similitudinem, quaedam
secundum proportionem, quaedam ab uno, quaedam ad unum. Aequivoca
a consilio secundum similitudinem dicuntur ut homo et quod pingitur ad
similitudinem hominis, quorumque utrum dicitur animal. . . . Secundo modo
aequivoca a consilio vel a proposito, scilicet secundum proportionem, dicuntur, ut cum principium dicitur de unitate, quae est principium numeri, et de
puncto, qui est principium lineae, et de fonte, qui est principium fluvii, et
de corde, quod est principium in animali, et istud exemplum aequivocorum
posuit Aristoteles in V Metaphysicae et bene dicuntur aequivoca secundum
proportionem et propriissime, quia proportionaliter dicuntur de diversis. . . .
Tertio modo aequivoca a proposito dicuntur aequivoca ab uno, quia scili-

1158

Domenic D’Ettore

Przezdziecki observes that, at this point in the text, Sutton has
yet to claim that one or some one of these kinds of equivocals by
design or analogy is suitable for names said commonly of God and
creatures. Indeed, Sutton allows that names can be predicated of God
and creatures by each kind of analogy, but it is the second kind of
analogy, proportionality, which is both furthest from pure equivocity and characteristic of divine names.17 As treatment of this point is
much more extensive in Henninger’s piece, I close my summary of
Przezdziecki’s article here.
Absent from Przezdziecki’s account is any discussion of the difference between Sutton’s treatment of the kind of analogy suited to
names said across the categories and names said of God and creatures. Likewise absent from Przezdziecki’s article are any questions
of Sutton’s relative fidelity to Aquinas or any of the other questions
posed by subsequent scholars concerning whether the analogy of
proportionality (i.e., Sutton’s proportio) applies to “being” said of God
and creatures as it does for other pure perfections such as “wise,”
“just,” and so on.
Mark G. Henninger, S.J.—Thomas Sutton’s Modes of Analogy Revisited
Henninger’s article stands out for its detailed attention to the different
modes of analogy presented by Sutton and its comparison of them to
the positions expressed by Aquinas at different periods of his writing.18

17
18

cet descendunt ab uno aliquo ad multa, de quibus dicitur aliquod nomen
aequivoce, ut a medicina dicitur medicinalis liber, in quo scribitur de scientia
medicinae. . . . Quarto modo dicuntur aequivoca a consilio ad unum, quando
scilicet diversa referuntur ad unum et ex hoc dicitur de illis nomen idem, sicut
sanum. Nam cibus dicitur sanus et farinatum sanum et exercitium sanum et
urina sana, quia referuntur ad unum finem, scilicet ad sanitatem animalis, et
hoc modo ens est aequivocum ad substantiam et ad alia praedicamenta, quia
ens dicitur de quantitate et qualitate et ceteris praedicamentis accidentium,
prout habent habitudinem ad unum, scilicet ad substantiam, quae est primum
ens, non tamen tamquam ad unum finem, sed tamquam ad unum subiectum” (Schmaus, 71–72). For a similar account in Thomas Aquinas’s writings,
see Sent.eth. 1, lec. 7, in the Leonine edition vol. 47/1 (1969), 26–27, lines
168–213.
Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique,” 205–07.
Pages 542–60 of Henninger, “Thomas Sutton on Univocation, Equivocation,
and Analogy,” summarize some objections and replies from Quaestiones ordinariae 32, as well as the argument in the respondeo. For the limited purposes of
this article, I prefer the summary of Przezdziecki, but I find no disagreement
between the Henninger and Przezdziecki in their interpretations of Sutton’s
arguments.

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1159

Henninger himself professes the developmental thesis defended by B.
Montagnes and J. Wippel, which Henninger summarizes as follows:
“We know that the complexities of analogy and its use in a number of
contexts stimulated Aquinas to rethink and deepen his theory during
his career. While discussing the problem of the divine names, Aquinas
in his early works used a form of the analogy of attribution, while in
De Veritate (1256–59) he argues for another type of analogy, that of
proportionality. Finally in his later works, such as De potentia and the
Summa Theologiae, he quietly abandons the views of De Veritate and
returns in the main to his earlier opinion.”19
Translated into the terms used by Sutton and so far in this article,
the developmental thesis holds that the earliest writings of Aquinas
use analogy ad unum (the fourth mode of analogy) to explain the
divine names. His De veritate experiments with what Sutton called
proportio and is commonly called analogy of proportionality (the
second mode of analogy). Aquinas’s later works abandon that experiment, returning to analogy ad unum to explain the divine names.20
Henninger investigates Sutton’s reasons for continuing Thomas
Aquinas’s De veritate experiment.21
Sutton discusses the diverse modes of analogy in Quaestiones ordinariae 33, where the question is: “whether names, which are said
about God and creatures, are said univocally about God and crea-

19

20

21

Henninger, “Thomas Sutton on Univocation, Equivocation, and Analogy,”
538.
On the developmental thesis, see G. P. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on
Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago: Loyola University
Press, 1960), 94: “The absence of any subsequent text which teaches proper
proportionality between God and creatures constitutes strong evidence that
St. Thomas quietly abandoned this doctrine after 1256”; and John F. Wippel,
The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated
Being, Monographs for the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy 1 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 555.
This thesis is challenged in Joshua Hochschild, “Proportionality and Divine
Naming: Did St. Thomas Change His Mind about Analogy?” The Thomist 77
(2013): 531–58.
Henninger draws the conclusion that Sutton is “an able ‘continuator’ of Aquinas” on analogy, while arguing that Sutton’s reasons for championing the analogy of proportionality for names said of God and creatures are not those given
by Aquinas in De veritate and that he does not have the same interest in the
true form of analogy and intrinsic denomination as is expressed by Thomas di
Vio Cajetan (“Thomas Sutton on Univocation, Equivocation, and Analogy,”
574).

1160

Domenic D’Ettore

tures.”22 Sutton opens by presenting the alternative that such names
are said either univocally or in some way equivocally23 and proceeds
to argue that there is at least one kind of equivocation that is close
enough to univocity to account both for how names are said of God
and creatures and for why many mistake such names for univocal
names. Following Henninger’s example, I will now consider Sutton’s
reasons for rejecting all but the second of the four modes of analogy
for the divine names.
Sutton tells his reader that the “common position” about the
divine names is that they are said by order or respect to one (ad unum)
in the way that “healthy” is said of diverse things by relation to one.24
Names are said of both God and other things because all created
things have order to God as to their cause. Hence, God is the one
something in relation to which others receive a common name. As
Henninger observes, the common opinion seems to be endorsed at
times by Aquinas (especially in the De potentia, Summa contra gentiles,
and Summa theologiae passages on names said of God and creatures).25
Against the common position about how names are said of “God
and other things,” Sutton points his reader’s attention to the consideration of the “signification of names, according to which analogy is
principally attended.”26 Although God’s justice or wisdom is causative
of a man’s justice or wisdom, a man is not called “just” or “wise”
because he has order to the justice of God or the wisdom of God.27
22

23
24
25

26

27

Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33: “utrum nomina, quae dicuntur de deo et
creaturis, dicantur univoce de deo et creaturis” (Schmaus, 63).
Ibid. (Schmaus, 71).
Ibid. (Schmaus, 76–77).
Aquinas says that names are not said of God and creatures in the way that “ens”
is said of quantity and quality (called the analogy of “many to one” in the
Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae, and “two to a third” in the
De potentia), but rather, in the way that “ens” is said of substance and accident
(i.e., by the analogy of “one to another”); see Summa contra gentiles (hereafter,
SCG) I, ch. 34, in Leonine edition vol. 13 (1918),103b ; De potentia VII, a.7,
corp., in Quaestiones disputatae, 2 vols. (Turin/ Rome: Marietti, 1965), 2:204b,
and Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q.13, a. 5, corp., in Leonine edition vol.
4 (1888).
Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33: “ad significationem nominum, secundum
quam principaliter attenditur analogia” (Schmaus, 77).
Ibid.: “Non enim ideo dicitur homo iustus vel sapiens, quia habet ordinem
ad iustitiam dei vel sapientiam dei sicut ens dicitur de quantitate propter hoc,
quia est entis, quod est substantia [For therefore a human is not called just
or wise because he has order to the justice of God or the wisdom of God as
being is said about quantity due to the fact that it belongs to a being which is
a substance]” (Schmaus, 77).

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1161

Furthermore, although the names in question are all first imposed
on creatures and later attributed to God, they are not said about God
to signify His relation to other things.28 According to Sutton, these
considerations exclude both analogy ab uno and analogy ad unum as
candidates for use in the analogous signification of names to God and
creatures.29 Henninger notes the central importance Sutton gives to
signification in determining the mode of analogy suitable to a given
instance and sees this as a difference between Sutton and Aquinas.30
The relations of causality and dependence make no difference by
themselves for what kind of analogy is in use. What matters, according to Sutton, is the primary versus the secondary significations of
the term. Since God is not called wise to signify a relation to creatures,
nor vice versa, the name “wise” is not said of God and creatures by
analogy ad unum (or ab uno).
After rejecting the ad unum and ab uno modes of analogy for
expressing the signification of names said of God and creatures,
Sutton proceeds to do the same for similitude, the analogy of imitation
(which Henninger calls “resemblance”). All things have some analogous resemblance to God, but the resemblance is not what is signified
28

29

30

Sutton does not deny that, even in analogy of proportionality, one analogate
receives the name by priority and others by posteriority. Indeed, he writes
specifically in Quaestiones ordinariae 33: “Secundum enim quod res sunt nobis
magis notae, secundum hoc prius nominantur. Magnitudo autem est nobis
magis nota quam alia et ideo prima pars magnitudinis dicitur principium per
prius et in aliis dicitur per posterius [For insofar as things are more known
to us, they are first named. Now magnitude is more known than others and
therefore the first part of magnitude is called ‘principle’ first and it is said
per posterius in others]” (Schmaus, 75). Proportionality differs from the other
modes insofar as the posterior analogate receives the name absolutely and
not only through a relation to the prior analogate. I see no conflict between
Sutton’s position on proportionality and the interpretation of Aquinas’s position found in Hochschild, “Proportionality and Divine Naming,” 547–50.
Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33: “. . . prius imposita fuerunt rebus aliis, deinde
fuerunt attributa deo, non tamen sic, quod dicerentur de deo ad significandum habitudinem eius ad res alias et ideo videtur, quod proprie loquendo
non dicuntur ista nomina analogice illo modo scilicet ad unum nec etiam
illo modo, quo aliqua dicuntur analoga ab uno [they were first imposed on
other things, then they were attributed to God, nevertheless not such that they
were said about God for signifying His relaton to other things and therefore
it seems that, properly speaking, those names are not said analogously in that
way, namely ad unum nor even in that way in which some are called analogs
ab uno]” (Schmaus, 77).
Henninger, “Thomas Sutton on Univocation, Equivocation, and Analogy,”
564–65.

1162

Domenic D’Ettore

by the common name. There is a resemblance of human wisdom to
divine wisdom and human goodness to the goodness of God, but it
is not because of this resemblance that a man is called good or wise.31
There appear to be two problems with this kind of analogy. First, it
would require knowing God prior to knowing creatures. Since we
do not know God prior to knowing creatures, it would be false to
say that perfections first known and named of God are afterwards
said of creatures when they are found to imitate God. The man must
be known and known to be an animal before what imitates him (for
example, a picture or reflection) can be recognized as imitating him
and called an “animal” by imitation of the man. Secondly, the picture
of a man no more has the perfection of being an animal than medicine has the perfection of being healthy. So naming due to similitudo
as such does not involve naming essentially, in contrast to the divine
names.32
What’s left and the option Sutton embraces is the second mode
of analogy, which he calls alternately proportio and analogy properly
speaking.33 Sutton is quite liberal with his examples of names said
31

32

33

Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33: “Nec etiam dicuntur ista nomina ilIo modo,
quo aliquo dicuntur analoga secundum similitudinem, sicut animal est
analogum ad hominem et ad illud, quod pingitur ad similitudinem hominis.
Quamvis enim omnes res habeant aliquam similitudinem ad deum, ut sapientia hominis ad sapientiam dei et bonitas hominis ad bonitatem dei, non tamen
propter hoc dicitur homo bonus vel sapiens, quia habet similitudinem bonitatis
dei et sapientiae dei [Nor even are those name said in that way in which some
are called analogates according to likeness, as animal is analogous to a human
and to that which is painted to the likeness of a human. For although all things
have some likeness to God, such as the wisdom of a human to the wisdom
of God and the goodness of a human to the goodness of God, nevertheless, a
man is not called good or wise because of the fact that he has the likeness of
God’s goodness or God’s wisdom.]” (Schmaus, 77). See Henninger, “Thomas
Sutton on Univocation, Equivocation, and Analogy,” 566.
This seems to be Aquinas’s reasoning against using the model of how “animal”
is said of a man and a picture of a man for names said of God and creatures in
De veritate, q. 2, a. 11, ad 8, in Leonine edition vol. 22, 1/2 (1970), 80b, lines
271–80.
E. J. Ashworth mentions this passage to show that thirteenth-century authors
were familiar with the fact that the medieval Latin usage of the word “analogy” did not correspond with the Greek use of the same term, and she cites
similar observations from James of Viterbo (a contemporary of Sutton’s) and
Gerard of Harderwyck in the fifteenth century; see Ashworth, “Suarez on
the Analogy of Being: Some Historical Background,” Vivarium 33.1 (1995):
55–56.

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1163

analogously of God and creatures in this way.34 I mention here a few.
A man who knows the highest causes is called “wise.” God knows
the highest causes perfectly and therefore ought to be called “wise.”
A man who has knowledge of things through their proper cause is
called “knowing.” God knows the order of all causes and effects in
the most perfect way and so ought to be called “knowing.” A man
is called “just” if he gives to each one what is his own. God most of
all gives to each his own, since God wills all the things required for
the things that He wills. Sutton concludes that all other names that
abstractly signify a perfection are said of God and creatures analogously in this way, and these analogous names are furthest from pure
equivocation and closest to univocation.35
Henninger clarifies the distinction between Sutton’s understanding of analogy in the context of the categories and his understanding
of analogy in the context of the divine names. In the categorical
context, Sutton follows the “common opinion.” The name “being”
is said by analogy ad unum of substance and accidents in the same way
that the name “healthy” is said of an animal and medicine or urine.
The divine names are said by analogy of proportionality. In both
34

35

Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33: “Relinquitur igitur, quod nomina dicta de
deo et de rebus aliis dicantur quarto modo, scilicet secundum proportionem,
prout hoc nomen principium dicitur de unitate et de puncto et de fonte, ut
dictum est, et hoc facile est manifestare de singulis nominibus. Sicut enim
homo cognoscit altissimas causas et ideo dicitur sapiens, ita deus cognoscit
altissimas causas perfecte et ideo merito debet dici sapiens. . . . Similiter sicut
homo habet cognitionem rerum per propriam causam et ideo sciens dicitur,
ita deus omnium causarum et effectuum ordinem cognoscit modo perfectissimo et ita propter talem proportionem debet dici sciens. . . . Similiter etiam
sicut homo habet cognitionem principiorum absque discursu, ita et deus
omnia cognoscit absque discursu et ideo sicut homo dicitur intelligens, ita
etiam deus. . . . Adhuc sicut homo dicitur iustus, qui tribuit unicuique, quod
suum est, hoc autem maxime deo convenit, quia ex hoc, quod vult aliquid, vult
ei omnia, quae ad ipsum requiruntur. Illa enim sunt quasi debita ei, ut habeat.
Sic secundum proportionem talem deus dicitur iustus” (Schmaus, 77–78).
Sutton’s examples of proportional naming in Quaestiones ordinariae 33 closely
follow SCG IV, ch.12, in Leonine edition vol. 15 (1930), 47a–b.
Each of the proportions that Sutton gives refers to a kind of activity. This
point is addressed independently of Sutton in Norris Clarke, “Analogy and
the Meaningfulness of Language about God,” in Explorations in Metaphysics:
Being—God—Person (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1994),
131, and J. F. Ross, Portraying Analogy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), 164.
Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33 (Schmaus, 78–79).

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Domenic D’Ettore

contexts, however, Sutton follows the same rule for determining the
kind of analogy used, which is the order of the signification of the
names. If the name is imposed on one to signify its relation to one,
then it is said by analogy ad unum. Since such a relation is not signified
in the context of the divine names, a different kind of analogy must
be at work there. Analogy of proportionality alone properly captures
the proportionally similar significations of names such as “wise” and
“just” said of creatures and of God.
The final portion of Henninger’s paper briefly addresses concerns
raised by Ashworth in her 1994 article on Sutton. Since Ashworth
published further on the topic in 2008. I conclude my first part of this
paper with a consideration of her two pieces together.
E. J. Ashworth—Sutton Revisited, Revised, and Questioned
E. J. Ashworth first discussed Sutton’s Quaestiones ordinariae 32–33
in detail in her 1994 article “Analogy and Equivocation in Thomas
Sutton, O.P.,”36 and she returned to the same topic with some revision
in her Les Theories Analogie over a decade later in 2008.37 Her work
stands out from Przezdziecki’s and Henninger’s primarily through her
argument that “being” said of God and creatures is an exception to
Sutton’s rule that names are said by analogy of proportionality between
God and creatures. She also argues that Sutton’s understanding of analogy of proportionality differs from Cajetan’s in a way that undermines
Montagnes’s claim that Sutton was a precusor to Cajetan.38
Towards the conclusion of her 1994 article, Ashworth seems to
have caught Sutton in a contradiction. As we have seen, Sutton
employs analogy ad unum for “being” said across the categories and
analogy of proportionality for the divine names. When explaining
why some mistakenly thought that the divine names are said univocally of God and creatures, Sutton asserts that analogy of proportionality is, as Ashworth puts it, “furthest from pure equivocals and the

36

37
38

E. J. Ashworth, “Analogy and equivocation in Thomas Sutton, O. P.,” in Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XII–XIV
Century), Acts of the XIth Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics, San Marino,
24–28 May, 1994, ed. Marmo Costantino, Semiotic and Cognitive Studies 4
(Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 1997): 289–303.
E. J. Ashworth, Les théories de l’analogie du XIIe au XVIe siècle (Paris:Vrin, 2008).
Henninger echoes the distinctions Ashworth makes between Sutton and
Cajetan without further elaboration (“Thomas Sutton on Univocation,
Equivocation, and Analogy,” 574).

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1165

nearest to univocals.”39 So it seems as though Sutton is committed
to holding that the analogy between God and creatures, an analogy
of proportionality, is closer to univocity than the analogy across the
categories, an analogy ad unum. In Quaestiones ordinariae 32, however,
he had apparently claimed the opposite. I quote the text Ashworth
refers to directly: “For just as every name said about God and about
creatures is said of them analogously, so too the ratio of each such
name belongs to God and to others analogously and the ratio of such a
name cannot be partly diverse and partly the same, but the whole ratio
is analogous, although in creatures the ratio of the name sometimes
is partly the same and partly diverse, for example, the ratio of ‘man’
belonging to a true (man) and to a picture (of a man).”40
In addition to this text, one can recall the passage mentioned above
in which Sutton says that there is a greater distance between the being
of God and the being of creatures than there is between the being of
substance and the being of accidents. According to Ashworth, Sutton
is asserting that the name “being” is more equivocal when said of
God and creatures than when it is said of substance and accidents. If
Sutton is not contradicting himself, “it seems to follow,” Ashworth
remarks, “that the divine names are very different from ens which is
more equivocal when said of God and creatures than it is when said
of substance and accident.”41
Ashworth develops this point in her later treatment of Sutton in
Les Theories Analogie, where she proposes that Sutton distinguishes
three different cases of analogy. First, there is analogy of attribution
to one for “being” said of substance and accident. Second, there is
another analogy of attribution for “being” said of God and creatures,
but this time an analogy of attribution that is further from univocity
than in the first case for the reasons stated above. Third, the other
Divine Names are said by analogy of proportionality.42
39

40

41

42

Ashworth, “Analogy and Equivocation,” 297. Ashworth is referring to Sutton,
Quaestiones ordinariae 33 (Schmaus, 78–79).
Thomas Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 32: “Sicut enim omne nomen dictum
de deo et de creaturis dicitur de eis analogice, ita ratio cuiuslibet talis nominis
convenit deo et aliis analogice et non potest ratio talis nominis esse partim
diversa et partim eadem, sed tota ratio est analoga, quamvis in creaturis ratio
nominis quandoque sit partim eadem et partim diversa ut ratio hominis veri
et picti” (Schmaus, 40); see Ashworth, “Analogy and Equivocation,” 296.
Ashworth, “Analogy and Equivocation,” 297. See also her brief treatment of
Sutton on this point in “Suarez on the Analogy of Being,” 57.
See Ashworth, Les théories de l’analogie du XIIe au XVIe siècle, 52–53: “He makes
a distinction between three cases. The first case is that of the word ‘being’ said

1166

Domenic D’Ettore

Henninger disputes Ashworth’s reading of Sutton, noting the
intention expressed by the titles of the articles and Sutton’s express
statement that analogy of proportionality applies to “all those names
which absolutely signify perfection,” which presumably includes
“being.”43 Furthermore, Henninger observes that, although Sutton
does not give an example of how “being” is said analogously of God
and creatures, “we can easily construct a sentence that illustrates the
analogy of proportion for being on the model of Sutton’s sentences
for the other divine names: ‘As a caused substance, not being in
another, is being per se formally, so God, neither being in another nor
being caused by another, is being per se formally and causally.’”44 It is
certainly striking that Sutton neither gives his own statement of how

43

44

about substance and accident. In this context, the word is an equivocal by
design and an example of the analogy of attribution. The second case is that
of the word ‘being’ said about God and creatures. In this context, the word
is much further from univocity than the same word said about substance and
accidents. God exists by His essence, whereas creatures exist by participation.
Consequently, there is nothing that can be common to the two. There is no
ratio that is partly the same and partly different, but there is one ratio that is
entirely analogous. These remarks suggest the presence of a return to the
analogy of imitation. However, the word ‘being’ said about God and creature
is always an example of the analogy of attribution. The third case is that of
the divine names such as wise, just, and good. Sutton holds that these names
are analogous, but, differently from words such as ‘being’ and ‘healthy,’ their
significations do not contain a relation. One does not say that a human is just
because his justice is connected to the justice of God, whether by causality
or by resemblance. The only type of analogy that is appropriate in this case is
the analogy of proportionality. When we are saying that a human is wise, this
is because he knows the highest causes, and when we say that God is wise,
this is because He knows the highest causes perfectly. In other words, we
make a comparison between the relation existing between the knowledge of
a human and the objects of his knowledge and the relation of God and the
objects of His proper knowledge, and we employ the same word ‘wise’ about
the two relations. The word found by analogy is a fifith term, as in the Posterior
Analytics. Sutton adds that we have a tendency to believe that the words ‘wise,’
‘just,’ and ‘good’ are univocal because, unlike the word ‘being,’ they are very far
from equivocals and very near to univocals.They resemble the word ‘principle’
(principium), which also is very far from equivocal and very near to univocal”
(My translation from the French.)”
See Henninger, “Thomas Sutton on Univocation, Equivocation, and Analogy,”
570. See also Alessandro D. Conti, “La composizione metafisica dell’ente finito
corporeo nell’ontologia di Tommaso Sutton,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione
filosofica medievale 2 (1991): 326.
Henninger, “Thomas Sutton on Univocation, Equivocation, and Analogy,”
571.

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1167

“being” is said by proportionality of God and creatures in the way he
does for the names “wise,” “just,” and “liberal” nor expressly states
that the name “being” is an exception to the rule of proportionality
among divine names.
Now although Henninger rejects Ashworth’s solution, he admits
the “tension” in the text she observed, and offers no resolution to save
the consistency of Sutton’s position.45 In the final portion of this paper
I will explore an additional problem with Ashworth’s solution to the
apparent conflict in Sutton’s text, emerging from his treatment of the
fallacy of equivocation, and then propose a solution to the difficulty
she observed.
Analogy of Proportionality and the Fallacy of Equivocation
There are two passages in his Quaestiones ordinariae 33 in which Thomas
Sutton presents Scotist objections to the use of analogous terms in
demonstrative reasoning. The first passage argues that analogous terms
cannot avoid the fallacy of equivocation any more than purely equivocal terms. The objector gives a standard example of the fallacy of
equivocation: “Every dog is a land animal; a star is a dog; therefore, a
star is a land animal.” The objector asserts that the same fallacy occurs
in a syllogism employing a name analogously, offering the example of
“everything healthy is an animal; medicine is healthy; therefore, medicine is an animal.”The conclusion follows that nothing could be proven
or known about God through creatures if we posit that those names
are predicated analogously, any more than if they are said equivocally.46
In answer to this objection, Sutton grants that use of analogous
terms can result in sophistical reasoning, but he adds that one can use
terms analogously in a demonstrative argument when the analogous
45
46

Ibid., 573.
Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33, arg. 5: “Praeterea sicut aequivocatio pura
impedit illationem, ita et analogia. Sicut enim haec est fallacia aequivocationis:
Omnes latrabile est canis, sidus caeleste est canis, ergo sidus caeleste est latrabile, ita et haec est fallacia per vim analogiae: omne sanum est animal, medicina
est sana, ergo medicina est animal. Ergo si ponamus illa nomina praedicari de
deo et creaturis analogice, nihil potest probari nec cognosci de deo per creaturas, sicut nec potest, si dicantur pure aequivoce. Relinquitur ergo, quod pure
univoce dicantur de deo et creaturis” (Schmaus, 65). This is the same example
that appears in Peter of Spain, Tractatus Sextus, in Summulae Logicales cum Veroriis
Parisiensis Clarissima Expositione (Hildesheim / New York: Georg Olms Verlag,
1981; repr. of 1572 Venice edition), 181. See also the treatment of the fallacy of
equivocation by Aquinas in De fallaciis, ch. 6, no. 650, in Opuscula Philosophica
(Marietti edition, 1954), 228b.

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Domenic D’Ettore

terms are “analogous by proportio.” He repeats the familiar example
from Metaphysics 5: as the heart relates to the whole animal, so the
spring relates to the whole river. The heart is the principle of the
animal, and likewise, the spring is the principle of the river; the
heart and the spring are principles analogously. Sutton then adds the
following example of a Natural Theology demonstration:
Thus, God is whatever is absolutely better that He be than He
not be. But it is altogether better in creatures to be wise than
not wise, free than not free, living than not living, just than
not just, and so on about other things which carry perfection
absolutely without defect. Therefore, God is living, wise, free,
just and so forth. For those names signify perfection absolutely,
as far as that which is principal in their ratio, although they
carry some imperfection as regards what is less principal, and,
therefore, they are said of God by removing that which is of
imperfection.47
In other passages, Sutton explains that what is imperfect about
these perfections is that they are qualities or habitus in creatures. And
as qualities or habitus, they express a certain imperfection that must
be removed when the names are said of God.48 Sutton leaves it to
his reader to infer that the ratio of a name carrying imperfection is
analogous by proportionality to the ratio of the same name with the
imperfection removed, and that such analogously similar rationes are
used without equivocation in a demonstration.
47

48

Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33, ad 5: “Ad quintum dicendum, quod in
analogis, sicut convenit arguere sophistice, ita convenit in eis arguere bene
et demonstrative, praecipue in analogis secundum proportionem sic: Sicut
se habet cor ad totum animal, ita se habet fons ad totum flumen. Sed cor est
principium animalis, ergo fons est principium fluminis. Et similiter convenit
ex perfectionibus creaturarum necessario probare perfectiones dei, quamvis
analogice conveniant deo et creaturis. Sic deus est quidquid absolute melius est
ipsum quam non ipsum. Sed melius est omnino in creaturis sapiens quam non
sapiens, patens quam non patens, vivens quam non vivens, iustum quam non
iustum et sic de aliis, quae important perfectionem absolute absque defectu.
Ergo deus est vivens, sapiens, patens, iustus et sic de aliis. Ista enim nomina
significant perfectionem absolute, quantum ad illud, quod est principale in
eorum ratione, quamvis aliquam imperfectionem important, quantum ad id,
quod est minus principale et ideo removendo illud, quod est imperfectionis,
dicuntur de deo” (Schmaus, 81–82).
Ibid., 32a, ad 3 (Schmaus, 58).

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

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The other demonstration-based objection takes up the argument
from motion. It would be sophistical to argue that God is the “first
mover” unless “mover” is said according to the same ratio of both
God and other movers.49 Sutton responds that the name “mover” is
said about God analogously by analogy of proportionality and that,
where names are said in this way, demonstration proceeds just as it
does when the names are said univocally because analogy of this kind
is so close to univocity.50
Notice that Sutton does not deny that there are four terms in a
Natural Theology demonstration. Indeed, his doctrine that no name
signifies God and creatures through the same concept requires that
any Natural Theology demonstration employ four terms. Consider
his own example mentioned above.
Major Premise: It is absolutely better to be wise.
Minor Premise: God is whatever it is absolutely better that God be.
Conclusion: God is wise.
The name “wise” in the major premise cannot signify the wisdom
proper to God because the perfection of wisdom in creatures carries
49

50

Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33, arg. 25 (Schmaus, 70). While the objectors
are unnamed, one can see a resemblance to an objection found in John Duns
Scotus, Ordinatio I, dist. 3, pt. 1, q. 1–2, nos. 38–40 (in Opera Omina, Vatican
edition, 3:25–27). Unless the terms carry the same meaning when said of God
and creatures, calling God a mover or wise is like calling God a stone (or calling a star a land animal). For a brief summary of all five arguments Scotus gives
for univocity, see Luis Alberto De Boni, “Duns Scotus and the Univocity of
the Concept of Being,” in New Essays on Metaphysics as Scientia Transcendens,
ed. Roberto Hofmeister Pich, Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 43 (LouvenLa-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Mediévales, 2007),
102–12. For a fuller description of all five arguments presented within the
context of Scotus’s overall cognitional theory, see Mary Beth Ingham and
Mechthild Dreyer, Philosophical Vision of John Duns Scotus: An Introduction
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 38–47.
Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae 33, ad 25: “hoc nomen motor . . . dicitur de deo
et aliis analogice secundum proportionem . . . et in talibus valet probatio ex
creaturis ad deum in omnibus, quae nullam imperfectionem important principaliter . . . quia talis analogia propinqua est univocationi, propter quod tenet
probatio, sicut in univocis [the name ‘mover’. . . is said about God and other
things analogously according to proportion. . . . and in such cases the proof
from creatures to God is effective in all things that principally carry no imperfection . . . because such analogy is near to univocation, on account which the
proof holds just as in univocals]” (Schmaus, 87).

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Domenic D’Ettore

the imperfection of being a quality (and non-qualitative wisdom
cannot belong to a creature, or that creature would be subsistent
wisdom—presumably, Sutton assumes with the Aristotelians that
Natural Theology does not discover the wisdom of God through prior
knowledge of subsistent wisdom). The name “wise” in the conclusion
cannot signify through the same concept as it does when it signifies
creaturely wisdom, since then it would falsely attribute imperfection
to God. The name “wise” cannot signify through the same concept
in both the major premise and the conclusion, since then it would
signify univocally. So the name “wisdom” in the major premise signifies
through the ratio proper to creatures and in the conclusion through the
ratio proper to God. The syllogism has four terms: absolutely better to
be, God, the quality of wisdom, and subsistent wisdom.51
Now Sutton says that such a syllogism is not an instance of the
fallacy of equivocation because the two rationes of the name “wise”
are analogously similar by a proportionality that is close enough to
univocity to mediate demonstration. The ratio “the quality of knowing the highest causes” is analogously similar to the ratio “subsistently
knowing the highest causes perfectly,” and this similarity is enough
for demonstration.
It is here that I see in Sutton’s doctrine the precusor to Cajetan’s
that Montagnes took it to be. In the De nominum analogia chapter
addressing the same Scotist objections, Cajetan explains that the
fallacy of equivocation is avoided when terms are said by analogy of
proportionality because “whatever belongs to one, also belongs to the
other proportionally; and whatever is denied about one also is denied
of the other proportionally: because whatever belongs to a similar,
in that similar thing, also belongs to that other thing to which it
is similar.”52 His point is that proportional likeness of signification
51

52

That the syllogism has four terms, not three, is clear if we replace the term
“wise” in the minor and in the conclusion with the concepts signified by the
word “wise” in those propositions. Said of creatures, the concept of the term
“wise” signifies the quality of knowing the highest causes. Said of God, the
concept of “wise” signifies subsistent knowledge of the highest causes. The
syllogism would then appear as follows: “It is absolutely better in creatures to
possess the quality of knowing the highest causes. God is whatever it is absolutely
better to be. Therefore, God is subsistent knowledge of the highest causes.”
Thomas di Vio Cajetan, De nominum analogia 10.106: “eo quod quidquid:
convenit ulli, convenit et alteri proportionaliter; et quidquid negatur de una,
et de altera negatur proportionaliter: quia quidquid convenit simili, in eo quod
simile, convenit etiam illi, cui est simile, proportionalitate semper servata”; see
Scripta Philosophica, ed. P. N. Zammit (Rome: Angelicum, 1934), 80–81.

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1171

in the rationes of the names is sufficient for an inference to be made
from what properly receives one ratio to what properly receives the
other proportionally similar ratio. In the case of the demonstration
that God is wise, it is legitimate to infer from the qualitative wisdom
of creatures to the proportionally similar subsistent wisdom of God.
Or to put the point negatively, it would be false to deny that there
is in God something that answers proportionally to the wisdom
found in creatures.53 Cajetan makes explicit what Sutton’s treatment
had left implicit. Two things cannot be both similar and dissimilar
at the same time and in the same respect. This holds not only for
univocal commonalities but also for the proportional similarity that
both Cajetan and Sutton propose to recognize in the diverse ratio53

This point would be easier to make and understand if the authors provided
a set of non-theological examples of demonstrations with analogous terms
to explain how their principles work in the more-known-to-us cases. Sutton
provides one example in Quaestiones ordinariae 33, ad 5: “Sicut se habet cor
ad totum animal, ita se habet fons ad totum flumen. Sed cor est principium
animalis, ergo fons est principium fluminis [As the heart relates to the whole
animal, so the spring relates to the whole river. But the heart is the principle
of the animal; therefore, the spring is the principle of the river]” (Schmaus, 81).
For the purposes of this article, consider the position of someone familiar with
how the terms “motion” and “activity” apply to physical objects and who has
just learned that stock prices are not physical objects but social constructs with
no concrete physical manifestation. Now, this person hears someone say that
“the stock price is moving.” From her prior experience, she knows that “what
is moving is active.” She could bring these two propositions together into the
syllogism “what is moving is active; the stock price is moving; therefore, the
stock price is active.” The sense of terms “moving” and “active” in her major
premise, drawn from experience of physical objects, is clearly not identical
to the sense of these terms in the minor premise and in the conclusion.
However, it does not follow that her syllogism commits the fallacy of equivocation unless she supposes that the terms must be used in exactly the same
sense. She can recognize that the terms in the major apply in some similar
yet different sense to the stock price and reasonably conclude that something
similar but different is happening to the stock prices as happens to rocks and
animals in motion. Since we do in fact learn to use the terms “moving” and
“active” about stock prices in ways proportionally analogous to the way we
first learned to use the terms about physical objects, we can recognize that
forming such as syllogism could in fact be someone’s entry into discovering
the analogous sense of a term or set of terms. I see Aquinas as employing the
term “motion” in reasoning similar to my example here in his In I libros posteriorum analyticorum, lec. 41 (Marietti edition, 300a), where he reasons from the
conditions for the unity of a physical motion to the conditions for the unity
of a demonstrative science. Suggestions of better and easier examples would
be much appreciated.

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Domenic D’Ettore

nes through which names are said of God and creatures. Since it is
true that similar things agree in that in which they are similar, and
since these analogates are proportionally similar, I would say that
Sutton’s account of proportio analogy, in which the analogous term is
predicated according to different but proportionally similar rationes,
gives at least a strong preliminary answer to the Scotist objection to
demonstration through analogous terms.54
I also propose that Sutton’s treatment of demonstration through
analogous terms provides additional reasons for rejecting Ashworth’s
interpretation of his doctrine of “being” said of God and creatures. If
“being” is not said of God and creatures by analogy of proportionality, then being could not be demonstrated to belong to God any more
than wisdom could be. And Sutton clearly holds that God’s being is
demonstrable. Ashworth’s solution to the apparent contradiction adds
to the problems within the text rather than solving them.
That said, if Ashworth’s solution fails to save him, Sutton may still
be trapped in his apparent contradiction. Recall that the trouble lies
in Sutton’s claim that the ratio of the name “being” when said of God
and creatures is not partly the same and partly different, but entirely
analogous. This seems to suggest that “being” is more equivocally
said of God and creatures than it is when it is said across the categories, which would conflict with Sutton’s later statements about divine
names belonging to the kind of analogy that most closely approaches
univocity. I think the problem dissolves on further consideration of
what Sutton means when he says that the ratio of the name is entirely
analogous when said of God and creatures.
We have a clue as to what Sutton means by “entirely analogous”
in the contrast case provided in the text. The ratio of “man” said of
a true man and a picture is partly the same and partly different. The
example here is an analogy of imitation. Now, where is the sameness
and where is the difference here? Recall that, for Sutton, analogy
is a matter of the order of signification of a name. What is partly
the same in the signification of the two things receiving the name
“man” is the proper ratio of the true man, which is signified essentially in the one case and is signified relationally in the other. The
same partially similar, partially diverse significations can be found in
the case of “being” said of substance and the other categories. The
54

I do not suppose that it would satisfy the Scotist on the Scotist’s own terms.
I think, instead, that it provides a rational defense within Thomism to the
external criticism from the Scotist.

Thomas Sutton’s Doctrine of Analogy

1173

ratio of “being” proper to substance is signified diversely in each case:
essentially of substance, and by relation to substantial being of the
other categories.55
Turning then to God and creatures, we can notice how the manner
of signifying the analogates changes. Neither the ratio of “wise” proper
to God nor the ratio of “wise” proper to creatures is signified relationally when the name “wise” is predicated of the other. The same
holds for the name “being.” The essential signification of “being” to
created substances and the essential signification of “being” to God
are analogous. Their significations are not partly the same and partly
different, as in the other modes of analogy, where the signification
of one appears as part of the signification of the other. The similarity
between the significations is the proportionality between the rationes
taken as distinct wholes.56 The significations are entirely analogous.
Just as the entire ratio of the name “wise” predicated of creatures is
analogous to the entire ratio of the same name predicated of God, the
entire ratio of the name “being” predicated of created substances is
analogous to the ratio of the name “being” predicated of God.
Conclusion
Thomas Sutton neither contradicts himself, makes an exception for the
name “being” said of God and creatures, nor renders himself unable to
engage in demonstration from creatures to God. When he denies in
Quaestiones ordinariae 32 that the ratio of the name “being” is partly the
same and partly different when it is predicated of God and creatures,
he is not asserting that its signification there is further from univocity
than its signification across the categories. Rather, he is anticipating
the distinction he will make in Quaestiones ordinariae 33 between the
different modes of analogy and their suitability for the divine names. In
55

56

This is not inconsistent with Aristotle’s Metaphysics 5, in which he includes
all the categories within the division of being per se. Granted that “being”
according to its absolute consideration belongs per se to all the categories,
even so, since substance is found in the definition of each of the accidents, it is
contained in the signification of the name “being” when “being” is predicated
of accidents. See Aquinas, In V metaphysicorum, lec. 9 (especially Marietti no.
885; Marietti edition, 237a–238a), and In 7 Metaphysicorum, lec. 1 (Marietti
nos.1258–1259, Marietti edition, 317b).
To borrow a phrase I have heard used many times by J. F. X. Knasas, “the
sameness is in the difference.” The reason why one entire ratio is analogous
by proportionality to another entire ratio is that what makes them the same is
inseparable from what makes them different.

1174

Domenic D’Ettore

interpreting Sutton in this way, I am making connections that he does
not explicitly make himself. This does not distinguish my approach
from Ashworth’s, but it does better save the overall coherence of
Sutton’s position.
Thomas Sutton’s doctrine of analogy is partly the same and partly
different from the doctrine professed by Thomas Cajetan nearly 200
years later in the De nomina analogia. Ashworth is right to note that
Sutton applies the analogy of proportionality only to names said of
God and creatures and sees analogy ad unum as suitable for “being”
across the categories. In this respect, Sutton clearly gives the analogy of proportionality less work in metaphysics than Cajetan does.57
However, Sutton’s use of the analogy of proportionality to answer
Scotist objections to demonstration through analogous terms shows
that he anticipates Cajetan more than Ashworth grants. It is not
merely that analogy of proportionality captures the signification of
the names in ways that other forms of analogy cannot that suits it to
the divine names. Proportionality’s distinct manner of signification
also makes demonstration possible where other modes of analogy
would lapse into the fallacy of equivocation. Cajetan’s explanation
in De nominum analogia 10 is more thorough than Sutton’s replies to
objections in Quaestiones ordinariae 33, but the “prince of primitive
Thomists” and the great scholastic commentator employ the same
mode of analogy, pointing to the same properties that belong to that
mode to answer the same objections. The thought of one anticipates the thought of the other, and both provide strong reasons for a
Thomist Natural Theology to employ analogy of proportionality for
N&V
names said of God and creatures.

57

On analogy of proportionality’s role in metaphysics and its direct application
across the categories, see especially Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogiae, chs. 3–5.
On Cajetan’s overall position, see Joshua Hochschild, The Semantics of Analogy:
Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press,
2010).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1175–1192

Creation ad imaginem Dei: The Obediential Potency
of the Human Person to Grace and Glory
Steven A. Long
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

Introduction

This essay attempts to show that three things often

thought to be opposed—the dynamism, relationality, and teleology of
the image of God in man toward grace and glory; a strict distinction
between nature and grace; and the doctrine that man has an obediential potency to friendship with God and supernatural beatitude—are
not only not opposed but are actually necessarily related elements of a
coherent and true theological synthesis.
To do this requires, first, a few words about the immateriality of
the rational soul. Second, I will consider St. Thomas’s teaching that
the imago dei in man principally consists in the intellectual nature,
describing and responding to criticism of this view as insufficiently
relational and separated from grace. Third, I will argue that what
constitutes the obediential potency for grace and glory in man is in
fact what principally constitutes the imago dei—namely, the intellectual nature itself. Here too, I will offer brief responses to criticisms
reducing obediential potency merely to miraculous transformation
or asserting that intrinsically supernatural beatitude is already the
natural end, that man has a strongly unconditional natural desire for
supernatural beatitude and, so, there is no need for an obediential
potency for grace and glory. Finally, I will conclude by observing
that St. Thomas’s theological synthesis of nature and grace provides
the strongest possible foundation for the relational dynamism of the
imago dei in man and that this synthesis establishes simultaneously the
initial dignity of man as capable of natural and supernatural good and

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Steven A. Long

the greater perfection of acquired dignity that consists in achieving
such good.
This is a quick march through a vast territory, rather than a
complete account of any one point, and so it is more like a cavalry
ride around the field of battle than like a complete campaign. But I
hope my remarks may at least indicate the elements that enter into
Thomas’s account and how they are generally interrelated.
The Positive Immateriality of the Rational Soul
It has always been true that materialism as such constitutes one of the
errors simply incompatible with Roman Catholic faith. It is defined
Catholic teaching that the soul is spiritual and immortal and that God
is pure spirit.
Likewise, it is progressively clearer throughout the modern epoch
that the metaphysical reliance on material evolution as sufficient
to explain the differentiated forms of being—and in particular to
explain the cognitive and volitional aspects of human life—is incoherent. The argument against any type of thoroughgoing materialism
certainly has a foundation in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, but it
traces back to classical Greek philosophy and has been articulated in
varied forms by modern authors such as C. S. Lewis (e.g., in Miracles)
or contemporaries such as Thomas Nagel (in Mind and Cosmos: Why
the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly
False).
Were intellectual objectivity to be considered merely a material
accident of evolution, we could have no sufficient warrant for holding
the adequation of mind and reality that is required even for the truth
of evolutionary theory. This is manifest in many ways. First, for example, is the commonplace argument that intellectual activity proceeds
through universal concepts and applies to being as such universally,
such that a wholly physicalist account must, by its very nature, somehow square the circle and reduce universality to physical particularity.
What is at stake here is not only the universal mode of conceptual
knowledge—already something irreducible to physical particularity
and, so, irreducible to neurophysiology—but also, and even more critically, the adequation or conformability of mind to being.
As St. Thomas puts it, “as sound is the first audible, being is the
first intelligible.”1 Thus, any denial that being is universally intelligi		
Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q. 5, a. 2, resp. Unless otherwise noted, all
English translation from the works of Aquinas is my own work done from the
Navarre edition of the Latin, from which all Latin quotes are also taken.

1

The Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory1177

ble leaves precisely nothing intelligible, since there is nothing outside
of being. The very principle of non-contradiction in its chief and
metaphysical formulation—that being is not nonbeing—is, according
to St. Thomas, the basis for the logical principle of non-contradiction
that one does not speak meaningfully in simultaneously affirming
and denying the same of the same (Summa theologiae I-II, q. 94, a.
2). In referring to the logical principle of non-contradiction, he adds
“quod fundatur supra rationem entis et non entis” (“which is based
on the nature of being and non-being”). This is a universal principle
pertaining to being as such, and if it were not, then fundamentally
there could be no such thing as objectivity because the mind would
have no root capacity to conform to what is the case. But the capacity to conform to any physical structure or state of affairs is not itself
merely a physical structure or state of affairs. The capacity universally
to conform to what is the case cannot be reduced to a particular or set
of particulars in space and time. As Thomas argues, the perfection of
intellectual knowledge exists in inverse ratio to materiality.2
Without the immaterial capacity of human intention to extend
		As Thomas puts it in ST I, q. 84, a. 2, resp.: “Relinquitur ergo quod oportet materialia cognita in cognoscente existere non materialiter, sed magis
immaterialiter. Et huius ratio est, quia actus cognitionis se extendit ad ea
quae sunt extra cognoscentem, cognoscimus enim etiam ea quae extra nos
sunt. Per materiam autem determinatur forma rei ad aliquid unum. Unde
manifestum est quod ratio cognitionis ex opposito se habet ad rationem
materialitatis. Et ideo quae non recipiunt formas nisi materialiter, nullo modo
sunt cognoscitiva, sicut plantae; ut dicitur in II libro de anima. Quanto autem
aliquid immaterialius habet formam rei cognitae, tanto perfectius cognoscit.
Unde et intellectus, qui abstrahit speciem non solum a materia, sed etiam a
materialibus conditionibus individuantibus, perfectius cognoscit quam sensus,
qui accipit formam rei cognitae sine materia quidem, sed cum materialibus
conditionibus”; “It follows, therefore, that material things known must exist in
the knower, not materially, but rather immaterially. And the reason of this is
because the act of knowledge extends to things which are outside the knower:
for we know even things that are external to us. Now by matter the form of
a thing is determined to some one thing. Thus it is clear that knowledge is
in inverse ratio of materiality (that the ratio of knowledge of itself is opposed
to the ratio of materiality). And consequently things that are not receptive of
forms save materially, have no power of knowledge whatever—such as plants,
as the Philosopher says (De anima 2.12). But the more immaterially a thing
has the form of the thing known, the more perfect is its knowledge. Therefore
the intellect which abstracts the species not only from matter, but also from
the individuating conditions of matter, has more perfect knowledge than the
senses, which receive the form of the thing known, without matter indeed, but
with material conditions.”

2

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Steven A. Long

universally to being, to conform to whatever is the case, particular
physical states and conditions are mute. Even if the neural activity
of the human brain were known by God himself to constitute in
itself a perfect map of the universe, this would not constitute human
knowledge, since we would never have direct contact with the
thing known, only with our own brain states, which accordingly
could never adequately be judged as to their capacity to conform
to anything beyond—or even including—themselves. Only if man
possesses the immaterial capacity intentionally to be what he is not—
to conform understanding and judgment directly to real nature—is
the problem escaped.
The situation with materialism is as if one were locked from birth
in a room whose floor was a topographic map of the state where one
lived, but one had no contact of any kind with the outside world:
one would be in no position to confirm that the floor really were a
topographic map or to know its accuracy if it were thought to be one.
We are in no position to say that brain states are simply equivalent to
knowledge of reality unless we are capable of comparing brain states
with reality, which would permit us to judge of the relation between
our understanding and the real evidence. This requires a universal
capacity transcending brain states and any particular physical nature.
In the absence of such a capacity, it is impossible to know adequately
even that there is such a thing as a state of the brain or that brain states
are adequate to model themselves.
The extensive project to reduce intellectual and volitional power
and act to neurophysiology is often spoken of as a vast and gradual
effort whose outcome in vindicating the fundamentally physical
nature of intellectual knowledge as a foregone conclusion. But this
appears similar to the likewise vast and gradual project of reducing
human moral experience to astrological influence because both projects offer us mere correlations in the place of explanations. But were
brain states simply identical with the reality of intellectual knowledge,
no labor of correlation would be necessary. Things are really identical
only when everything true of one is true of the other. But the property of a universal concept is not identical with a physical particular,
and more importantly, the power of the mind to conform to universal
being, a power that must be universal on pain of implying the impossibility of objectivity, cannot be identical with any neural function.
Thoroughgoing materialism or physicalism cannot give a sense to its
correlations that is so much as intelligible on its own premises, let

The Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory1179

alone adequate to the requirements of theoretical explanation. The
immateriality of intellect and will, whose formal objects are universal
truth and universal good, is the chief indication of the spirituality of
the rational soul.
Imago Dei and Obediential Potency
I have spent so much time on relatively introductory aspects of philosophic anthropology because, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, the
imago dei in man consists principally in the intellectual nature. It is not
accidental that those who deny what is essential to the imago dei are
poorly situated to appreciate Christian revelation.
Imago Dei and Relationality
Thomas writes (ST I, q. 93, a. 8, resp.): “Thus the image of God is
found in the soul according as the soul turns to God, or possesses a
nature that enables it to turn to God.” He refers to “that in which the
image chiefly consists, that is, the intellectual nature [my emphasis]” (ibid.,
a. 3, resp.) and teaches that: “So we find in man a likeness to God by
way of an ‘image’ in his mind; but in the other parts of his being by way
of a ‘trace’” (ibid., a. 6, resp.). As he puts it more fully:
While in all creatures there is some kind of likeness to God,
only in the rational creature is found a likeness of God in the
mode of an “image” as is explained above; whereas in other
creatures we find a likeness in the mode of a “trace.” But that
whereby the rational creature excels other creatures is the intellect or mind. Thus it remains that neither in the rational creature is the image of God to be found except in the mind. But
in the other parts the rational creature may possess, we find the
likeness of a “trace,” as in other creatures to which, according
to such parts, the rational creature can in this way be likened.3

		
ST I, q. 93, a. 6, resp.: “Respondeo dicendum quod, cum in omnibus creaturis
sit aliqualis Dei similitudo, in sola creatura rationali invenitur similitudo Dei
per modum imaginis, ut supra dictum est, in aliis autem creaturis per modum
vestigii. Id autem in quo creatura rationalis excedit alias creaturas, est intellectus sive mens. Unde relinquitur quod nec in ipsa rationali creatura invenitur Dei imago, nisi secundum mentem. In aliis vero partibus, si quas habet
rationalis creatura, invenitur similitudo vestigii; sicut et in ceteris rebus quibus
secundum partes huiusmodi assimilatur.”

3

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Steven A. Long

The imago in man is not perfect—for the perfect image is found
only in the Divine Word—but rather it is analogical.4 As Thomas
says, it is like the image of the king stamped in the alien medium of
a coin.5 For Aquinas, the image of God in man principally consists
in the intellectual nature. Although the imago of conformity involves
the intellect as turning to God and conforming to him, prior to this
and foundationally, there is what has come to be called an imago of
representation (possessed by saint and sinner alike) that is the foundation in human nature rendering such spiritual conformity to be
possible—the essentially spiritual nature of the soul: “that in which
the image chiefly consists.”
This, however, is only equivocally the direction in which much
recent thought about the imago has developed. Precisely because of
its relational dynamism and teleological ordering to grace and glory,
there has been a tendency to consider the image of God in the human
person to be first and fundamentally relational, precisely for fear that
rooting it in human nature, substance, and being will ineluctably
distort and render impossible the genuine further ordering in grace.
Such a view of the imago dei as foundationally constituted by the
intellectual nature—understood in terms of the philosophic analysis
of being and substance—has come to be thought of as a distortion of
the nature of the person. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in particular
has encouraged more focus on the human person as inherently and
constitutively relational, in accordance with the understanding of the
purely relational character of the divine persons in the Trinity. This
view suggests that philosophic conceptions of the person—insofar as
they are not rooted in the Trinitarian mystery—are distortive.
Then-Cardinal Ratzinger, in his famous essay “Concerning the
Notion of Person in Theology,”6 describes the concept of person as “a
product of Christian theology” deriving from two questions: “What
is God?” and “Who is Christ?” In this famed essay, he describes the
early struggle to avoid depicting Christ as suffering defect inasmuch
as he lacked human personhood while possessing human nature and
being a divine person. He identifies the great Christological heresies
all as modes of implying that Christ must have lacked something
essentially human. He then writes:
		
ST I, q. 93, a. 1, ad 3.
		
ST I, q. 93, a. 1, ad 2; a. 6, ad 1.
6
		Joseph Ratzinger, “Zum Personenverständnis in der Theologie,” in Dogma und
Verkündigung (Munich: Erich Wewel Verlag, 1973); trans. as “Concerning the
Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17.3 (Fall, 1990): 439–54.
4
5

The Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory1181

I believe that if one follows this struggle in which human reality had to be brought in, as it were, and affirmed for Jesus, one
sees what tremendous effort and intellectual transformation
lay behind the working out of this concept of person, which
was quite foreign in its inner disposition to the Greek and the
Latin mind. It is not conceived in substantialist, but as we shall
soon see, in existential terms. In this light, Boethius’s concept
of person, which prevailed in Western philosophy, must be
criticized as entirely insufficient. Remaining on the level of the
Greek mind, Boethius defined “person” as naturae rationalis individua substantia, as the individual substance of a rational nature.
One sees that the concept of person stands entirely on the level
of substance. This cannot clarify anything about the Trinity or
about Christology; it is an affirmation that remains on the level
of the Greek mind which thinks in substantialist terms.7
The editors of Communio, glossing the decided emphasis of
then-Cardinal Ratzinger on transferring the relational language of
the Trinity to the human person, added to the start of his essay the
small descriptive line, “Relativity toward the other constitutes the
human person. The human person is the event or being of relativity.”8
Years ago, I had a very interesting exchanges with Dr. Kenneth
Schmitz,9 who, perhaps inspired by this tendency of thought articulated by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, undertook to propose an account
of the human person framed in language that he admitted St. Thomas
reserved exclusively to the divine persons, the language of “subsis		Ibid., 448.
		Ibid., 439.
9
		
Cf. my “Reply” in The Thomist 61.3 (July 1997), which is my response to
7
8

Kenneth Schmitz’s “Created Receptivity,” which in turn had responded
to my “Personal Receptivity and Act: A Thomistic Critique,” from January
of 1997, which had criticized his “The First Principle of Personal Becoming,” The Review of Metaphysics 47.4 (June, 1994), and also referred to earlier
discussion amongst Fr. Norris Clarke, S.J., Dr. David Schindler, and myself
in Communio. One sees this anthropological thesis (that the human person
ought be deemed a “subsistent relation”) in Schmitz’s The Texture of Being:
Essays in First Philosophy, ed. Paul O’Herron (Washington DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2007), in the section titled “The Person as
Subsistent Relation” (123–26, within chapter 7, “Created Receptivity and
the Philosophy of the Concrete”), in which he admits, “I recognize that
this term is privileged by St. Thomas for the divine persons of the Trinity”
(ibid., 123n59).

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tent relation.” This notion of person as a purely relational reality is
not unconnected with the related but distinct view that nature as
such is so thoroughly related to grace as to be a mere limit concept
or dialectical notion providing no normative content for theology
distinguishable from grace. Thus, the idea of a natural preamble to
faith—the praeambula fidei—is often transformed to a knowledge that
is intrinsically postfactum (“after the fact”) of revelation and grace.
We move from the natural order as bearing the impress of the divine
wisdom in the eternal law—primordial revelation—to a view of
nature as if it were something purely conceptual, designating a possible “space” to be filled with grace but lacking normative content,
what elsewhere I have called elsewhere a “vacuole for grace.”10
Of course, one sees this emptying of the ens creatum in the work of
Karl Rahner and—at least in his book The Theology of Karl Barth—
in Hans Urs Von Bathasar, who expressly indicates his approval of
Rahner’s idea of nature as merely a residual or limit concept.11 The
proposition that nature is not a residual or limit concept, not merely
a placeholder for grace, lacking all ontological density, but rather
a momentous reality, and moreover a reality manifesting primordial revelation and the eternal law—a theonomic or divinely ordered
reality—is a philosophic and theological affirmation strongly in
tension with this “relationalist” tendency of thought. Either nature,
substance, and being are presupposed by grace and revelation or they
are not, and either they are to some degree intelligible (even after
the Fall) in terms of their proportionate ends in precision from revelation, or they are not. This is not to say that revelation cannot cast
light upon nature, but only that nature is intelligible. When Gaudeum
		A “vacuole,” by the way, is not merely a biological term: it is an English term
taken in from the French and means a “small vacuum,” although this usage is
no longer included in our dictionaries, which are losing thousands of words
as our culture reduces its cognitive repertoire and minimalizes its sense of
“literacy” (a fit subject for another day).
11
		See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes,
S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 299: “Here a few critical comments
on Rahner’s position come to mind. Of course, the concept of pure nature as a
‘residual concept’ is both possible and even unavoidable in theology if we want
to maintain a real correlative counterpoint to grace and the order of grace.
We ourselves have attempted the same thing earlier by fashioning a ‘formal
concept of nature’ in the same sense by a kind of subtraction process.” But the
idea that nature is an invisible unknown reachable only by “subtracting” grace
or through treating nature as a “residual concept” does not rise to the level of
the observation that human nature is not sanctifying grace.
10

The Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory1183

et Spes famously describes Christ as revealing man to himself, this is
clearly not meant to suggest that, prior to revelation, men confused
themselves with porcupines. Rather, Christ the Incarnate Word
reveals to man the profundity of which human nature is capable in
relation to God, a profundity in divine friendship of which we would
be unaware lacking revelation.
Doubtless the philosophic account of the human person is incomplete, precisely insofar as it abstracts from the supernatural destiny
of man. Yet, for Thomas, the understanding of man’s supernatural
destiny presupposes, incorporates, and preserves the truth of the
created natural order with its proportionate and proximate ends as
distinct from the ultimate and supernatural end.12 With the overwhelming preponderance of Fathers and Doctors, St. Thomas holds
that man is created in grace from the beginning. Yet, he also holds
that this creation in grace presupposes the ontological subjectivity of
the ens creatum as specified by proportionate ends, so that within this
initial moment of creation, there is, in one specific respect, a priority
of created nature.
In any case, the idea that the imago dei is constituted in man by his
relation to God appears to be demonstrably false. It suggests something that is true—namely, that the imago dei is relational and dyanamic and that it is providentially ordered to blossom in grace and in
glory. But however important relationality is to our understanding
of spirit, there is something else that is most evidently prior to relationality—namely, being and substance. Real relation presupposes the
realities related. If there is no creature, then there is no real relation
of the creature to God. Nonexistent, nonsubstantial creatures do not
and cannot have real relations of any kind, much less a real relation
to God. If they are to have such real relation to God, they must first
be: they must exist and be subjects of being possessed of a certain
ontological density. It follows that, whatever relationality the imago
dei in man has, this relationality is founded upon being and substance
and thus can be no substitute for them.
God has no real relation to the creature, inasmuch as God is
infinitely perfect and stands in no relation of dependence upon his
creation: he is not essentially changed through creation. St. Thomas
writes that, considered as active, creation designates only the divine
nature in itself with a conceptual relation to the creature; but consid		See, e.g., ST I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1. There is a very long list of references one might
site.

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ered as passive, the relation of createdness is a quasi-accident in the
creature, founded upon the being of the creature as received from
God. 13
Manifestly, something cannot be really in a creature if the creature
really does not exist. To have being from another is necessarily to
have being. It follows that, since nonexistent beings do not have real
relations, it is impossible for the creature to be constituted by its relation to God. Being, substance, and nature are not constituted by their
relation to God; they are constituted—caused—by God. Without a
real created subject of being, there is simply nothing to be related.
The being, substantiality, and nature of the creature is thus absolutely
presupposed by the creature’s relation to God.
Accordingly, we see that mere Greek substantialism has rather
more to offer than might at first have met the eye. It is precisely the
understanding of being, substance, and nature that is the foundation
for the doctrine of the imago dei and that renders possible its relational,
dynamic, and teleological character. The spiritual nature of the soul,
understood as constituting a certain deficient but real analogical
image of God in man, is ordered in grace to become the imago Christi,
and finally the imago gloriae, the image of God in the glory of the
beatific vision. But does not the natural foundational character of the
imago dei seal it off from its dynamism and teleology in grace toward
		In II sent. d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, ad 4: “Si autem sumatur passive, sic est quoddam accidens in creatura, et sic significat quamdam rem, non quae sit in praedicamento
passionis, proprie loquendo, sed quae est in genere relationis, et est quaedam
habitudo habentis esse ab alio consequens operationem divinam: et sic non est
inconveniens quod sit in ipso creato quod educitur per creationem, sicut in
subjecto; sicut filiatio in Petro, inquantum recipit naturam humanam a patre
suo, non est prior ipso Petro; sed sequitur actionem et motum, quae sunt
priora. Habitudo autem creationis non sequitur motum, sed actionem divinam
tantum, quae est prior quam creatura”; “If, however, it is taken passively, then
it is a certain accident in the creature and it signifies a certain reality which is
not in the category of being passive properly speaking, but is in the category
of relation. Creation is a certain relation of having being from another following upon the divine operation. It is, thus, not inappropriate that it be in the
created thing, which is brought into being through creation, as in a subject. In
the same way, sonship is in Peter insofar as he receives human nature from his
father, but [sonship] is not prior to Peter himself, but rather follows upon the
action and motion which are prior.The relation of creation, however, does not
follow upon motion, but only upon the divine action, which is prior to the
creature”; English translation from Aquinas on Creation, trans. Stephen Baldner
and William Carroll (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, 1997),
77.

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The Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory1185

the supernatural end of the beatific vision? The answer is no, because
this foundational sense of the imago dei is the obediential potency of
the human creature for grace and glory.
Imago Dei and Obediential Potency
The doctrine that man has an obediential potency for grace and glory
has been severely criticized, and of course complete response to such
criticism would require wider scope than this present consideration
affords. One may, however, point out the character of the doctrine, its
importance within theology, and the evidence that seems to confuse
certain principal criticisms.
First, there is the nature of obediential potency. In ad 13 of article 10 of De virtutibus in communi, St. Thomas addresses an objection
to the effect that acts are of the same genus as their potencies but
that creatures, by definition, lack potency for divine acts. However,
inasmuch as creatures have different passive potencies in relation to
different active agencies, a purely passive obediential potency for acts
achievable only with divine aid is intelligible. As St. Thomas writes,
“accordingly we say that the whole creation is in a certain potency of
obedience, according as the whole creation obeys God to be able to
receive in itself whatever God wills.”14
St. Thomas argues that water and earth have diverse passive
potencies in respect of the diverse active agencies of fire, the heavenly bodies, and God.15 These diverse passive potencies vis-à-vis
different active agencies are partially rooted in the natures involved.
It is important to note that Thomas argues that obediential potency
applies to infused virtue:
For just as something is able to be done by water or earth by
the power of the heavenly bodies, which cannot be done by the
power of fire; something can be done by the active supernatural power that cannot be done by the active natural power;
and in this sense we say that in the whole of creation is a kind
of obediential power, insofar as every creature obeys God in
receiving whatever God wills. Thus from them something is
		 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus, q. 1, a. 10, ad 13: “et secundum hoc dicimus quod in tota creatura est quaedam obedientialis potentia,
prout tota crea tura ob edit Deo ad sus cipiend um in s e quidquid Deus volu
erit.”
15
		See ibid.
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able to be done by the supernatural active power that cannot
be done by some active natural power. And according to this,
we say, that in every creature there is some potency of obedience, such that every creature obeys God in receiving in itself
whatever God wills. Thus then in the soul something is in
potency, which is produced and reduced to act by a connatural
agent, and in this way the acquired virtues are in potency. In
another way something is in potency in the soul that is not
produced through being brought forth in act unless through
divine power; and in this way are there potencies for infused
virtues in the soul.16
Contrary to Etienne Gilson (in his later work17) and historically
many others (e.g., the Franciscan school), obediential potency is
not merely the susceptibility of the creature to miraculous transformation—not merely the capacity of water, under divine agency,
to become wine—although this is the lowest type of obediential
potency. Were the lowest type of obediential potency the only type,
obediential potency could not pertain to the relation of nature to
grace. However, specific obediential potency is different from mere
susceptibility to miraculous transformation because it refers to a
specific range of actuation that the active agency of God can bring
forth from a nature. One sees this specific obediential potency in
Summa theologiae III (q. 1, a. 3, ad 3), where Thomas expressly answers
an objection regarding the capacity of human nature for the “greatest
grace” of union: “It should be said that a double capacity may be
		Ibid.: “Sicut enim ex aqua vel terra potest aliquid fieri virtute corporis caelestis, quod non potest fieri virtute ignis; ita ex eis potest aliquid fieri virtute
supernaturalis agentis quod non potest fieri virtute alicuius naturalis agentis;
et secundum hoc dicimus, quod in tota creatura est quaedam obedientialis
potentia, prout tota creatura obedit Deo ad suscipiendum in se quidquid Deus
voluerit. Sic igitur et in anima est aliquid in potentia, quod natum est reduci
in actum ab agente connaturali; et hoc modo sunt in potentia in ipsa virtutes
acquisitae. Alio modo aliquid est in potentia in anima quod non est natum
educi in actum nisi per virtutem divinam; et sic sunt in potentia in anima
virtutes infusae.”
17
		Cf. Letters of Etienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 81:
“Strictly speaking, it is applicable only to miracles, where nothing in matter
either prepares for, expects, or makes the phenomenon possible; in general
(your excellent quotes on p. 244), all nature is in a state of potentiality to
whatever it may please God to do with it, provided that this is not, in itself,
contradictory or impossible.”
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The Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory1187

found in human nature. One according to the order of the power
of nature which is always fulfilled, because He gives to each being
according to its natural capacity; another indeed according to the
order of divine power, which every creature obeys implicitly. And to
this pertains this capacity.”18
The capacity he speaks of is the capacity of human nature for the
grace of union with the divine Person of the Word. If even the hypostatic union is to be understood in terms of obediential potency and
as not implying the miraculous transformation of human nature into
a different principle, then clearly there is a strong case for the proportionate application of obediential potency with respect to all lesser
instances of grace. Although the lower instances of mere miraculous
transformation are “common,” the more profound way that a nature
can implicitly obey divine power is clearly in regard to that which
God alone can bring forth in and from the nature without changing it. Both the passages indicated above exhibit and share this ratio.
God’s power extends to all things, but what he can do with any
nature is not merely “change” it substantially and miraculously,
but bring forth some other act—to which it has no simply natural
potency—from and through it without miraculously transforming its
nature. The nature is in both the loftier and the inferior instances of
obediential potency—both the case of miraculous substantial transformation and of interior elevation to a nobler act without substantial transformation—passive with respect to what is brought about,
obeying the divine power. However, in the second case, we see that
that to which the subject stands in a relation of obediential potency
is brought about in and through it without altering its nature—as, for
example, with respect to the infused virtues—and is most pertinent
to the higher life of grace. Thus, the vastness of the divine power in
relation to diverse natures specifies different ways it may operate on
and in creatures.
Furthermore, the aforementioned mode of created obedience to
divine power seems a deeper and more proper sense of “obedience.”
To obey merely in the sense of being transformed, so that the original
subject of obedience no longer exists, is clearly an inferior form of
		ST III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod duplex capacitas attendi
potest in humana natura. Una quidem secundum ordinem potentiae naturalis.
Quae a Deo semper impletur, qui dat unicuique rei secundum suam capacitatem naturalem. Alia vero secundum ordinem divinae potentiae, cui omnis
creatura obedit ad nutum. Et ad hoc pertinet ista capacitas.”

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obedience. “Obedience” is a term that a voluntarist might reduce to
divine force majeure, but there are many reasons why one might think
Thomas would be reluctant to do this even though this is a common
mode in which sensible creatures may be said to obey the divine
power. In fact, while the lower form of obediential potency—susceptibility to miraculous transformation—is seen throughout the visible
lower creation, in the invisible higher creation, the manner in which
the creature stands in a potency of obedience to the active agency of
God concerns the capacity for grace, infused virtue, and glory. Thus,
while the sensible examples of the lower stratum of “obediential
potency” proliferate, it bears recollecting that, for Thomas, there are
more species of angels than of physical things19 and that the sense of
“obedience,” for Thomas, is interior motion conforming to intellective command (command is an act of the intellect and not of the
will). Thus, obedience properly speaking is not a voluntarist posit,
and so it would be strange were “obediential potency” to be reducible to the lowest instance of obedience wherein things are miraculously transformed to other things (a use of “obedience” seemingly
by extrinsic attribution) rather than interiorly elevated through their
passive potency to activation by a nobler principle.
God can raise up sons of Abraham from the very stones, but were
he to do so, they would no longer be stones, but human beings. By
contrast, owing to the possession of essentially spiritual powers of
intellect and will—by reason of the possession of human nature—the
human person is able to be elevated in grace to friendship with God.
Man does not cease to be human—as the stone would cease to be a
stone—by being elevated to the divine friendship. The stone as such
cannot be elevated by grace to be a friend of God—even though,
in some analogical sense, all creatures desire and love God in their
natural motion—because the stone lacks a rational soul. To become a
friend of God, it must cease being a stone. Human persons do not lose
their humanity by being elevated in grace to the divine friendship.
This potency to be elevated by and in grace is not a natural potency
because there is no proportionate active power of nature enabling the
creature to be so elevated. Thomas is very clear that even angelic will
cannot be inclined toward the supernatural apart from supernatural
aid. To speak of a natural desire implies some proportionate active
power in man because natural desire is for the proportionate natural
good, a principle taught universally by St. Thomas (this is something
		See ST I., q. 50, a. 3, resp.

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The Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory1189

denied by Henri de Lubac, but without adequate consideration of
the texts). There are many instances, but one notes, for example,
Thomas’s words in question 4 (“on hope”) of Quaestiones disputatae
de virtutibus: “It should be said that the proportionate good moves
the appetite; for those things are not naturally desired that are not
proportionate. But that eternal beatitude is a good proportionate
to us, this is from the grace of God; and thus hope, which tends
to this good as proportionate to man to possess, is a gift divinely
infused.”20 In Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (q. 14, a. 10, corp.),
Thomas contrasts the supernatural finis ultimus with natural good,
writing of the supernatural good: ‘‘The other is the good which is
out of all proportion with man’s nature because his natural powers are
not enough to attain to it either in thought or desire.’’ One cannot,
apart from grace, according to Thomas, even desire God as supernatural beatitude, because no finite nature is proportioned to this good,
		Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus, q. 4 [De spe], prooem., a. 1, ad 8: “Ad
octavum dicendum, quod bonum proportionatum movet appetitum; non
enim naturaliter appetuntur ea quae non sunt proportionata. Quod autem
beatitudo aeterna sit bonum proportionatum nobis, hoc est ex gratia Dei;
et ideo spes, quae tendit in hoc bonum sicut proportionatum homini ad
habendum, est donum divinitus infusum.” Cf. ST I, q. 62, a. 2, resp.: “Sicut
enim superius dictum est, naturalis motus voluntatis est principium omnium
eorum quae volumus. Naturalis autem inclinatio voluntatis est ad id quod est
conveniens secundum naturam. Et ideo, si aliquid sit supra naturam, voluntas
in id ferri non potest, nisi ab aliquo alio supernaturali principio adiuta”; “For
as was said above, the natural motion of the will is the principle of all that we
will. But the natural inclination of the will is to that which is fitting according
to nature. And thus, if there be something above nature, the will is not able
to be inclined toward it unless by the aid of some other supernatural principle.” It is very clear here that the natural motion of the will is the principle
of all that is willed, and that it cannot be inclined to anything higher without
divine aid. Desire is “inclination” and “motion”—not accomplishment, but
inclination. This is one reason (there are many) why, on Thomas’s teaching,
the natural desire for God is not identical with the desire for supernatural beatitude, although the natural desire for God is such that it is more than fulfilled
in supernatural beatitude. Note ST I-II, q. 62, a. 2, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod ad Deum naturaliter ratio et voluntas ordinatur prout est naturae
principium et finis, secundum tamen proportionem naturae. Sed ad ipsum
secundum quod est obiectum beatitudinis supernaturalis, ratio et voluntas
secundum suam naturam non ordinantur sufficienter”; “To the third it should
be said that reason and will are ordered to God naturally as principle and end
of nature, but according to the proportion of nature. But to the object of
supernatural beatitude reason and will are not sufficiently ordered according
to nature.”

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and all natural desire as such is specified by created realities.21 The
natural desire for God reaches the one and only God materially, but
formally it does not know what it is seeking, reaching him only under
a disproportionate and deficient incognito. It reaches God as Cause of
these effects, yet it is not even an accident in God to be the cause of
these effects, inasmuch as creation does not change God, God is not
dependent upon creation, and God infinitely transcends creation.
Some have argued that the voluntas ut natura, the will as a nature, has
the inner life of God for its object. But St. Thomas unmistakably
teaches that no finite nature or power is naturally proportioned to
God in himself—God is not universal good in the sense in which this
is the formal object of the will because perfection can be added to
the good in general, whereas to God’s substantial and actual universal
perfection, no essential addition is possible.
It is man’s rational soul that renders him capable of elevation in
grace. It is the rational soul, with its powers of intellect and will specified by universal true and good, that render the human person able
to be elevated to the beatific vision. Here too, one must be careful. It
is common to speak in a somewhat misleading way: man is ordered
to universal true and good; but God is subsistent universal true and
good; so therefore, it is thought that man is simply naturally ordered
to God. But man is not naturally ordered to the beatific vision, but
solely through the supernatural principle of grace. Man is naturally
such that he can be elevated by God to the divine friendship and
finally to the beatific vision.
The natural universality of intellect and will are, in a sense, horizontal. The intellect extends to universal being, not all at once, but
serially, sequentially, and distributively: it knows in a universal way
(through universal concepts) and extends to universal being. But this
is for the human person to be able to know created goods without any
material limitation on the side of knowledge as such (that is, it may be
that some evidence is not available to us, but the intellect will extend
		Of course, this is also clear from Thomas’s comments in De malo q. 5 a. 3 resp.,
where he argues regarding the limbo puerorum: “Pertinet autem ad naturalem
cognitio- nem quod anima sciat se propter beatitudinem creatam, et quod
beatitudo consistit in adeptione perfecti boni; sed quod illud bonum perfectum, ad quod homo factus est, sit illa gloria quam sancti possident, est supra
cognitionem naturalem”; “Now it pertains to natural knowledge that the soul
knows it was created for happiness and that happiness consists in the attainment of the perfect good. But that that perfect good for which man was made
is that glory which the saints possess is beyond natural knowledge.”

21

The Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory1191

to any evidence that is available and we can inquire even when
evidence is scant). The picture is the same with the human will,
which can incline toward various goods without being commanded
by any because it moves to the good under the form of reason, which
is universal, as the will is appetitus sequens formam intellectam.22 As finite
good is not universal, no finite good can simply of itself compel the
will, and so the will is objectively free in choice.
However, all this is vastly different from the idea of a unique
knowledge and love of the infinite God. This is literally that knowledge and love about which Thomas frequently quoted the treasured
lines from 1 Corinthians 2:9 (Douay Rheims): “Eye hath not seen,
neither has ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man,
what God has prepared for those who love Him.” Even to desire this
supernatural beatitude in union with the triune God requires the aid
of grace.
As Thomas points out, the beatific vision exceeds every purely
natural capacity, whether of man or angel (Summa contra gentiles III,
ch. 52), exceeding all natural capacity to know. Since the desire for
God is specified by natural knowledge of God in finite created effects
(for the will is nothing other than inclinatio sequens formam intellectam
[“inclination following the form understood”]; see Quodlibet 6, q. 2,
a. 2), it follows that natural desire for God does not truly know what
it desires, whereas graced desire—which truly is on the way toward
knowing what it desires—is rooted in the reality of God himself.23
		Quodlibet 6, q. 2, a. 1: “motus voluntatis est inclinatio sequens formam intellectam.” Likewise Summa contra gentiles, III, ch. 26: “motus voluntatis est inclinatio
sequens formam intellectam.” See also ST I-II, q. 8, a. 1, where he clearly
argues that “ad hoc igitur quod voluntas in aliquid tendat, non requiritur quod
sit bonum in rei veritate, sed quod apprehendatur in rationi boni”; “Thus that
the will tend to something does not require that it be good in the reality of
the thing, but that it may be apprehended as good.” Note that, for the will to
tend toward anything as good, it must do so by virtue of an apprehension of
the mind.
23
		One notes the words of Jacques Maritain: “But this desire to know the First
Cause through its essence is a desire which does not know what it asks, like
the sons of Zebedee when they asked to sit on the right and on the left of the
Son of Man. ‘Ye know not what ye ask,’ Jesus replied to them. For to know the
First Cause in its essence, or without the intermediary of any other thing, is to
know the First Cause otherwise than as First Cause; it is to know it by ceasing
to attain it by the very means by which we attain it, by ceasing to exercise the
very act which bears us up to it”; in Approaches to God, trans. Peter O’Reilly
(New York: Harper, 1954), 109–10. See also: “It is necessary that there be in
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Man’s obediential potency for grace, when actuated by grace,
reveals the profundity of his own nature as capax dei, capable of
divine friendship. The similitude of the stained-glass window illumined by the sun’s rays well bespeaks the character of the doctrine
of obediential potency applied to the relation of nature and grace.
The stained-glass window, were it cognizant, could not “know what
it was missing” were it never to irradiate its bright colors under the
influence of the sun. It would be a window, still, and neither fail to be
part of the whole structure of which it would form an integral part,
nor lack its own participation in the good of the whole as a specific
perfection. Yet, its nature stands properly revealed only under the
extrinsic causality of the sun’s illumination: seeing it so illumined,
we know what stained glass truly is for. Just so does Christ reveal the
profundity of man as capable of divine friendship with himself.
Conclusion
The Incarnate Word reveals man to himself. Far from rendering revelation and grace and the dynamism of the image of God in man to
grace and glory impossible, it is the dignity of created human nature
that it may be elevated in grace. This initial dignity, rooted in the spirituality of the human soul, is further ordered to the even more crucial
acquired dignity of conformity with the divinely ordained order and
with God himself, and it is adequately understood only in relation
to the common good, both naturally and supernaturally. This second
dignity is greater and even more crucial than the first, for we may have
the first dignity in this life—that of the imago of representation—and
nonetheless live discordant lives. And we may have this first dignity
in the next life and burn with preternatural fire in alienation from,
and eternal loss of, God. The initial dignity of man (the representative
imago) is ordered to, and specified by, an order of progressively more
transcendent or common goods in nature and in grace and is ordered
to become for us the imago gloriae, the image of glory, in the celestial
city of beatific vision. In this sense, we may say that only the classical
account of the imago dei provided in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas
adequately founds and defends the relational dynamism of the imago
N&V
dei to grace and glory.

man an ‘obediential potency’ which, answering to the divine omnipotence,
renders him apt to receive a life which surpasses infinitely the capacities of his
nature” (ibid., 112).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1193–1212

Alimentum Pacis: The Eucharist and Peace in
St. Thomas Aquinas
John Meinert
Our Lady of the Lake College
Baton Rouge, LA

Thomas Aquinas’s theology of peace rarely
receives the attention it deserves in current scholarship.1 This might
give someone following the secondary literature the impression that
Aquinas either is unconcerned with peace or has nothing noteworthy
to say. However, this would be far from the truth. Aquinas was quite
concerned with peace. For example, commenting on the Psalm 33,
he states that, if your neighbor is fighting against you, “then it belongs
to you to seek peace,” and if your neighbor is seeking peace with
you, then “you should pursue it too.”2 In another place, he calls peace
“intensely enjoyable.”3 He even calls peace the last of all goods and the

		For two notable exceptions to this trend, see Heather McAdam Erb, “Interior
Peace: Inchoatio vitae aeternae,” in Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor
of Lawrence Dewan, O.P., ed. Lawrence Dewan and Peter A. Kwasniewski
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 260–81, and
Matthew Tapie, “For He is our Peace: Thomas Aquinas on Christ as Cause of
Peace in the City of Saints,” The Journal of Moral Theology 5.1 (2016): 111–28.
2
Super Psalmos 33 (Parma edition, 1863), no. 13: “Secundo quantum ad proximum dicit, inquire pacem et cetera. Sed contingit aliquando, quod habes proximum qui impugnat te, et tunc tuum est inquirere pacem; et ideo dicit, inquire
pacem . . . Quandoque vero contingit, quod habes aliquem qui inquirat a te
pacem, et tuum est tunc sequi eam.” Unless otherwise noted, all translations of
Latin are my own.
3
Ibid., 36, no. 8: “Haec enim pax est valde delectabilis.”
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John Meinert

general end (finis) of the mind.4 Indeed, according to Aquinas, all desire
peace. Every single person, by desiring anything, de facto desires peace.5
These examples alone show both that Aquinas is concerned with peace
and that the secondary literature has failed to explore some noteworthy
claims by Aquinas.
The purpose of this article is not an exhaustive treatment of
peace in St. Thomas. Its purpose is much more circumscribed: to
explore and expose the connections between supernatural peace and
the Eucharist in the thought of Aquinas and thereby fill a lacuna in
English Thomistic literature.6 Put simply, the thesis of this paper is
that, since the Eucharist is our re-presentation of and participation
in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and the very sustenance of
charity, it is both the cause of and the nourishment for true peace
(the right order found preeminently in Christ himself ). In short,
according to Aquinas, the Eucharist efficiently and exemplarily causes
peace because it efficiently and exemplarily causes charity, the direct
efficient cause of peace.7 Such a conception between peace and the
Eucharist deserves renewed attention not only because the connection between peace and the Eucharist is traditional in Christianity
(indeed, one of the traditional names for the Eucharist is “peace”),
4

5

6

7

Super II Cor 1, lec. 1.1 (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1953), no. 8: “Ultimum autem
omnium bonorum est pax, quia pax est generalis finis mentis. Nam qualitercumque pax accipiatur, habet rationem finis; et in gloria aeterna et in regimine et in conversatione, finis est pax. [However, the last of all goods is peace
because peace is the general end of the mind. For however peace is defined, it
has the concept of an end. In eternal glory, government, and in one’s manner
of life, the end is peace.]”
Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST) II-II, q. 29, a. 2, corp. (unless otherwise noted,
all citations are from the Leonine edition); In de divinis nominibus (Turin, IT:
Marietti, 1950), ch. 11, lec. 2.
In arguing my thesis, I will draw on Spanish, Latin, and French texts from the
mid-twentieth century that explore the connection between the Eucharist
and peace in Aquinas. See the pieces by Santiago Ramirez (“La Eucaristia y
la Paz Individual en la Teologia de Santo Tomas de Aquino”), Adolphus Hoffman (“Eucharistia ut Sacramentum Pacis secundum S. Thomam”), Godefridus
Geenen (“L’adage Eucharistia est sacramentum ecclesiasticae unionis dans les
oeuvres et la doctrine de S. Thomas d’Aquin”), and Ephrem Longpré (“L’Eucharistie est le sacrement de la paix mystique”) in La Eucaristía y la Paz. XXXV
Congreso eucarístico internacional 1952: Sesiones de estudio, vol. 1 (Barcelona:
Planas, 1953), 171–83 (Ramirez), 163–67 (Hoffman), 275–81 (Geenan), and
158–62 (Longpré). See also Gilles Emery, “Le fruit ecclésial de l’Eucharistie
chez saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Nova et Vetera (Swiss) 72 (1997): 25–40.
The structure of my argument is taken from Ramirez.

The Eucharist and Peace in St. Thomas Aquinas

1195

but also because it both brings another interlocutor to current debates
over the nature and cause of peace and sheds a different light over the
whole Thomistic moral synthesis, a synthesis seeking peace.8
The Ratio of Peace
In beginning to explore the connections between peace and the
Eucharist, it is necessary first to specify what Aquinas means by peace.
Scanning the Thomistic corpus, one finds many different definitions:
the removal of impediments to attaining the good, rest of the will in
the fullness of good and immunity from all evil, putting things in right
order, harmony with ourselves and others, the quiet of the mind in the
end, ordered harmony, security against the loss of goods, tranquility of
mind, tranquility arising from order, and the cessation of all desire.9 Yet,
8

9

The Eucharist goes beyond what most secular sources think of as peace (lack
of conflict) in that it causes both (1) a deeper external peace between humans
by uniting them (concord) around the true separate common good of the
universe (God) and (2) the full notion of peace (internal order) by strengthening charity in its participants.
De veritate, q. 22, a. 12, corp. [on the removal of impediments to attaining
the good] (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1953); Super Rom 1, lec. 4 (Turin, IT: Marietti
edition, 1953), no. 70: “Tunc enim erit perfecta pax, quando voluntas requiescet in plenitudine omnis boni, consequens immunitatem ab omni malo [For
then there will be perfect peace, when the will rests in the fullness of all good
and as a result is free from every evil]”; ST II-II q. 45, a. 6, corp. [on putting
things in right order]; Super II Thess 3, lec. 2 (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1963), no. 89:
“Pax enim consistit in duobus, ut scilicet homo concordet ad seipsum, et ad
alios [For peace consists in two things, man’s harmony with himself and with
others]”; Super Gal 1, lec. 1 (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1953), no. 11: “pax, quae est
quietatio mentis in fine [Peace, which is the quieting of the mind in the end]”;
Super II Tim 2, lec. 4 (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1953), no. 80: “Pax autem importat
ordinatam concordiam [However, peace conveys well-ordered agreement]”;
Super Rom 2, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 204): “Non enim potest esse pax hominis
perfecta quamdiu aliquis timet se amissurum bona quae habet, sed tunc aliquis
habet veram pacem cordis, quando habet omnia quae concupiscit et ea perdere
non timet [For there cannot be perfect peace as long as man fears losing some
good which he has, but only can someone have true peace of the heart when
he has all that he desires and does not fear losing anything]”; Super Gal 6, lec.
5 (Marietti no. 376): “Pax, inquam, qua quietentur et perficiantur in bono.
Pax enim est tranquillitas mentis [Peace, is said to be that by which humans
are quieted and perfected in the good. For peace is tranquility of the mind]”;
Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1952), no. 1962: “Sciendum est, quod
pax nihil aliud est quam tranquillitas ordinis: tunc enim aliqua dicuntur pacem
habere quando eorum ordo inturbatus manet” [It should be known that peace
is nothing other than tranquility of order. Those are said to have peace whose

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Aquinas’s most common definition by far is borrowed from Augustine:
“tranquility of order.”10 It is likewise under this definition that all the
others can be subsumed.11
While tranquility and order constitute peace together, the causally prior of these two elements is order. Tranquility is dependent
on order, but not vice versa. What Aquinas means by “order” is a
kind of relation and unity of parts based on a reference to a common
good that organizes and unites them as principle of that order.12 Put
simply, there can be no peace without some kind of proper order, the
proper relation of humans to each other, to God, and within themselves.13 The second central concept is tranquility or rest (quietudine).
This denotes not only the lack of conflict caused by proper order
(within oneself, between people, and with God) but also the rest
of all psychological faculties in the good. In short, there can be no
peace if the heart remains restless. In fact, the two aspects of peace,
tranquility and order, are so interdependent that Aquinas often gives
only one element of the standard Augustinian definition. One cannot
have proper order without it producing tranquility, and tranquility is
only truly and lastingly found in proper order.
On the basis of this ratio, ordered tranquility, one can see why
Aquinas identifies two interdependent spheres of peace: interior and
exterior. Exterior peace, or “concord,” is the ordered willing of one
object together with others. It implies a mutual concurrence in a
good and, thereby, a lack of conflict between parties inasmuch as
that good unites them; both parties will a good together, and it, in
turn, serves as the principle of their relation, the source of their unity.
Without unity, there can be no peace, and without a good around
which two concur, there can be no unity.

10

11

12
13

order remains undisturbed]; Super I Thess 1, lec. 1(Turin, IT: Marietti, 1953), no.
6: “Et pax quae est finis, quia tunc est pax, quando appetitus totaliter pacatur
[And peace is the end because peace occurs when the appetites are totally
subdued].”
ST II-II q. 29, a. 1, corp.: “pax est tranquillitas ordinis.” For Aquinas’s dependence on Augustine in this regard, see Erb, 266.
Order includes harmony within oneself, with others, and with God, thereby
precluding conflict and providing security in the good. Tranquility is the lack
of conflict resulting from this order and includes the rest of all faculties in the
good.
ST I, q. 42, a. 3.
Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti no. 1962): “In homine autem est triplex ordo:
scilicet hominis ad seipsum, hominis ad Deum, et hominis ad proximum: et sic
est triplex pax in homine. [In man, however, there is a triple order: to himself,
to God, and to neighbor. Thus, there is a triple peace in man.]”

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Yet for Aquinas, “ordered tranquility” goes beyond mere concord.14
It includes order within the individual as well: “man’s heart does not
have peace, even if he has what he wants, since there still remains
something for him to want which cannot be had at the same time.”15
To have interior peace, three things must obtain: one must have the
highest good one desires, the highest good one desires must be able
to bring complete rest, and all one’s faculties must be ordered toward
it.16 In other words, one’s hierarchical relation of goods must be able
both to bring rest and to preclude conflict between desires. This is
possible only by becoming part of a larger order, by directing all
desires to a single good that gives rise to the order.17 Only in this way
can interior conflict be precluded. Hence, peace denotes the appetituum unius appetentis unionem,18 even the natural ones.19
The Analogicity of Peace
Given the pliability of the ratio of peace,20 one can see that peace must
be an analogous concept for Aquinas.21 The analogicity of the concept
of peace, which mimics the analogicity of the term “happiness,”22
allows Aquinas to distinguish five types of peace: perfect supernatural,
imperfect supernatural, natural, worldly/temporal, and false.

14

15
16
17

18
19
20
21

22

Full peace includes concord and goes beyond it. For full peace, one must
have concord, since tranquility or rest includes a negative notion of being
without hindrance, of attaining the good easily and quickly. Attainment can
be hindered by external elements, and so the full notion of peace must also
have concord, a mutual seeking of the good. But such disturbance, for Aquinas,
seems to only apply to the lower appetites, and thus interior peace should not
be thought absolutely to require concord. Indeed, he claims that the highest
part of the mind could rest in the good in this life and remain undisturbed.
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 1, corp.
Ibid.
In de divinis nominibus, ch. 11, lec. 1: “Dicuntur autem aliqui homines habere
pacem, quando voluntates eorum concordant in uno: sic enim unus alteri non
adversatur. [However, men are said to have peace with another when their
wills are in harmony about one thing. Thus, one is not against another.]”
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 1, corp.
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 2, ad 1.
For the historical influences on Aquinas’s conception, see Erb.
For Aquinas’s thought on analogy, see John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought
of Thomas Aquinas (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2000), 75–85.
Super Rom 1, lec. 4 (Marietti no. 70): “Aliud autem, scilicet pax, est ultimum
quod in beatitudine perficitur [Peace, however, is the last gift of God because
it is perfected in beatitude]”; Super II Cor 1, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 8).

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The full meaning of peace, like that of virtue,23 obtains only
supernaturally. Aquinas claims that a proper relationship with God
is necessary for true peace because, interiorly, only God serves as
the sufficient good for calming and ordering all desires: “For peace
consists in two things, such that a man be in harmony with himself
and with others. Neither can be had sufficiently without God. For
without God a man does not have harmony within himself, much less
with others, because a man’s affections are in harmony with themselves when what is desired for one suffices for all. Nothing but God
can do this. . . . For anything else other than God is not sufficient [to
quiet] for all [desires], but God is sufficient.”24
Likewise, externally, since humans are united by a common good,
the most common good, God, will bring the most unity: “Men
are not united amongst themselves unless it is by something held in
common, and this is especially God.”25 On the basis of this, Aquinas
claims that “from that profound [source] in which peace exists [God],
it flows first and most perfectly into the beatified, in whom there is
no disturbance of guilt or of punishment. Consequently, peace flows
into saintly men, the holier he is the less he suffers disturbance of
the mind. . . . Now because our hearts are not able to be without
disturbances unless with God, it is necessary that [peace] comes from
him.”26
Indeed, Aquinas claims that God is peace, the God of peace, and
“the giver of peace.”27 “This peace consists in the love by which God
23
24

25

26

27

Brian Shanley, “Aquinas on Pagan Virtue,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 553–77.
Super II Thess 3, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 89): “Pax enim consistit in duobus, ut scilicet homo concordet ad seipsum, et ad alios. Et neutrum potest habieri sufficienter nisi in Deo: quia sibi non concordat sufficienter nisi in Deo et minus
aliis quia tunc affectus hominis concordat in seipso quando quod appetitur
secundum unum, sufficit quantum ad omnes, quod nihil potest esse praeter
Deum. . . . Quaecumque enim alia, praeter Deum, non sufficiunt ad omnes,
sed Deus sufficit.”
Super II Thess 3, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 89): “Item homines non uniuntur inter se,
nisi in eo quod est commune inter eos, et hoc est maxime Deus.”
Super Phil 4, lec. 1 (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1953), no. 159: “Ab isto profundo in
quo est pax, derivatur primo et perfectius in beatos, in quibus nulla est perturbatio, et nec culpae, nec poenae, et consequenter derivatur ad sanctos viros.
Et quanto est magis sanctus, tanto minus patitur perturbationem mentis. . . .
Quia vero cor nostrum ab omni perturbatione non potest esse alienum nisi
per Deum, oportet quod per ipsum fiat.”
In de divinis nominibus, ch. 11, lec. 1; lec. 2: “Dicit ergo primo quod hoc primo
dicendum est quod Deus, ipsam pacem per se, consideratam in abstracto . . .
non est enim aliqua pax creata per se subsistens [God is himself peace per se

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loves us.”28 Peace is obtained by submitting to and obeying God.29
Yet, God cannot have this integrating function, the highest good
sought,30 which wards off all conflict, without habitual grace (and
especially the virtue of charity caused by habitual grace).31 As Aquinas says, “without sanctifying grace one cannot have true peace, but
only apparent [peace].”32 In this sense, peace is appropriated to the
Holy Spirit, “since he is love, which is the cause of peace.”33
True peace (supernatural peace), the pax ecclesiae,34 can be divided
in turn into imperfect and perfect. Perfect peace, the full proper
order of things (including with God, with one another, and within
oneself ), the complete cessation of desire and freedom from all evils,
can be had only in the beatific vision. Yet, an imperfect participation
in this type of peace can be had in this life.35 It is imperfect in full
concord (external peace), since even though all love God as the highest good, those in the Church have differing opinions about God in
small matters, in aliquibus parvis.36 The peace of the Church on earth
is imperfect in interior peace, since “even if the soul’s principal movement rests in God, still there remain certain obstacles, both within
and without, that disturb this peace.”37 Neither of these negate the
true peace of the earthly Church, which belongs to the appetites and
not the mind, but neither will be present in heaven. These imperfections are simply another way of saying that the peace that believers

28

29

30

31
32

33

34
35
36
37

and taken in the abstract . . . for created peace is not something which subsists
per se]”; Super I Cor 14, lec. 6 (Marietti no. 877); Super Rom 15, lec. 3 (Marietti
no. 1191): “dator pacis.”
ST I-II, q. 113, a. 2, corp.: “Quae quidem pax consistit in dilectione qua Deus
nos diligit.”
Super Rom 5, lec. 1, (Marietti no. 382): “Let us have peace with God, that is by
submitting ourselves and obeying him.”
In de divinis nominibus, ch. 11, lec. 1: “Et quia divina pax causat unitatem
in rebus, ideo concludit quod omnia suo modo desiderant divinam pacem,
inquantum etiam est omnium unitiva.”
Super Col 3, lec. 3 (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1953), no. 163.
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 3, ad 1: “Et propter hoc sine gratia gratum faciente non potest
esse vera pax, sed solum apparens.”
Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti no. 1961): “Spiritui vero sancto, cum sit amor,
qui est causa pacis, pax appropriatur.” See also Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (Marietti no.
618).
Super I Cor 12, lec. 3 (Marietti no. 750).
Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti no. 1962).
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 3, ad 2.
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 2, ad 4: “Quia etsi principalis animae motus quiescat in Deo,
sunt tamen aliqua repugnantia et intus et extra quae perturbant hanc pacem.”

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have on this side of heaven is imperfect in activity, although it is
continuous (a foretaste) with heavenly peace.38
Another type of peace in Aquinas is natural peace. Certainly,
Aquinas does not use this term (as far as I am aware), but he does
imply its existence. For natural peace to obtain, the common good
sought must be authentically good, not merely apparently so.39
Any true good sought (without the aid of grace) that brings people
together, that causes unity, can cause a type of concord, a degree of
external peace and internal rest.40 Natural peace and its accompanying partial quieting of the appetites can be had by any and all; it does
not require grace.41 This includes, but is not limited to, what Aquinas
calls “the peace and quiet of enjoying temporal things.”42 The peace
and quiet caused by temporal things, inasmuch as it falls under natural peace, requires a virtuous natural use of those things.
Another type of peace is what Aquinas calls “worldly peace,”
pax mundi, or “temporal peace,” pax temporalis.43 In one sense of this
term, Aquinas simply means peace (natural or supernatural) had in
this world.44 This use of the term is not a separate type of peace, but
reduces to either imperfect supernatural peace or imperfect natural
peace. A second sense of worldly peace must be distinguished from
all those types outlined above because Aquinas claims that both the
good and evil share this peace.45 Imperfect natural peace and imperfect supernatural peace require virtue; they cannot be had by those
who are vicious inasmuch as they are vicious. Worldly peace (in the
38

39
40

41

42

43

44
45

ST I-II, q. 3, a. 1, corp. This seems to be the necessary interpretation of Super
Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti no. 1964), where Aquinas claims that the peace Christ
gives is perfect.
De malo q. 11, a. 1 (Marietti edition, 1953); ST I-II, q. 18, a. 5.
Another way of stating this is to say that both the natural law and the civil law
produce a type of natural peace. See Erb, 265–66.
This could still obtain even in the most pessimistic interpretation of Aquinas
on the power of fallen humans without grace. All must at least admit the
following possibilities: not only “building houses and planting vinyards” but
also “friendship” and “conservation of citizenship.” See ST I-II, q. 109, aa. 2
and 5, and ST II-II, q. 23, a. 7.
Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti no. 1964): “Nam pax mundi ordinatur ad quietam et pacificam fruitionem temporalium.”
The differences between these two terms should not be exaggerated. Aquinas
seems to use both freely to describe any peace had in this world. See Super
Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti nos. 1963–64).
Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti no. 1963).
Super I Tim 2, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 59).

The Eucharist and Peace in St. Thomas Aquinas

1201

second sense) can be enjoyed by those who are vicious. Hence, it
seems that another sense of peace must be distinguished.
As Aquinas uses the term pax mundi (in the second sense), it seems
to refer primarily to the lack of conflict inter patrias et intra patriam.46 It
is this sense of worldly peace that is distinguished from the peace of
Christ in three ways and could even help people to sin.47 This sense of
peace requires no real concord, or only the thinnest shred of concord,
and no real virtue on the part of the subject. As such, worldly peace
in the second sense is also counterfeit peace, pax simulata;48 it gives no
true rest. Nevertheless, Aquinas holds that this type of peace exists
to allow the good of contemplation and the possibility of evangelization.49 In other words, it is still distinct from the final sense of peace.
The final sense of peace is a concord found because of a merely
apparent good.50 This type of peace is separate from natural peace,
since natural peace involves a real common good. It is distinguished
from the pax mundi in the second sense because the peace of this
46

47
48
49

50

Gregory Reichberg, “Aquinas’s Moral Typology of Peace and War,” Review of
Metaphysics 64.1: 467–87, at 472–79. It is certainly also true that intra patriam
(and maybe also inter patrias) peace falls under natural peace, since there is a
true political common good sought by all. For more on the primacy of the
common good, see (among many others) Stephen Brock, “The Primacy of
the Common Good and the Foundations of Natural Law in St. Thomas,” in
Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life: Essays
in Honor of Romanus Cessario, O.P., ed. R. Hütter and M. Levering (Washington
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010): 234–55.
Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti no. 1964); Super I Tim 2, lec. 1 (Marietti, no. 59).
Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti no. 1964).
Super Psalmos 14 (Parma no. 8): “ Vacate et videte. Hic finis est pacis. Finis pacis
temporalis, secundum philosophum, est contemplatio veritatis. Unde pax est
utilis finis vitae activae, et pax ordinatur ad contemplationem. Et secundum
Augustinum, Christus procuravit pacem Romani imperii, ut apostoli discurrerent per totum mundum. Et ideo dicit ex quo est tanta pax, vacate et videte.
Unde patet quod Deus dat pacem ut non vacent malis operibus, sed contemplationi veritatis. [Empty yourself and see. Here the end is peace. According
to the philosopher, the end of temporal peace is the contemplation of truth.
Hence, peace is the practical end of the active life, and peace is ordained to
contemplation. And according to Augustine, Christ procured the peace of the
Roman empire so that the apostles could travel through the whole world.
And for this reason he says empty yourself and see, namely by which is such
a peace. Whence, it is clear that God gives peace not that we may be idle in
evil acts, but that we may contemplate the truth.]” Aquinas seems to suggest
a more independent end for temporal peace in Super Ioan 14, lec. 7 (Marietti
no. 1964).
Hoffman, “Eucharistia ut Sacramentum Pacis,” 163.

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world is not necessarily sinful and can be used for good. This final
sense of (false) peace is necessarily sinful; it is the semblance of peace
caused by unity in malice.51 Order based on a merely apparent good
might seem to be peace; there is a kind of concord and a kind of
internal order. Yet, given Aquinas’s metaphysics, the concord and rest
found in something evil cannot be true peace, for peace is a function
of unity and unity can only be found in the good. Evil is parasitic on
the good and thus parasitic on unity and peace. In addition, evil can
never quiet the appetite. Hence, Aquinas says that “peace consists in
the rest and union of one’s appetites, and just as one can desire the
good simply speaking or a merely apparent good, so too peace is able
to be either true or apparent. Indeed, peace is not able to be without
the true good since every evil, though it seems good from some angle
and so quiets the appetite in part, has so many defects that the appetite
remains restless and disturbed.”52
Charity and Peace
The second step in the argument and the vital middle term is the virtue
of charity. Peace is the proper effect of charity. This takes very little
establishing in Aquinas: “From charity immediately follows peace.”53
Aquinas even dedicates an article directly to the topic of “whether
peace is the proper effect of charity” and answers “yes.”54
Supernatural peace is the proper effect of charity because charity is
the direct efficient cause of the twofold union of peace: “The union
of men in one object and the union of all appetites in one object.”55
In short, charity effects the union of appetites within a human and
between humans. It is because of this that charity is said to be the
bond of the whole spiritual edifice.56
Charity and its principal act, to love,57 are the efficient causes of
the true concord between humans. Charity unites humans in true
51
52

53
54
55
56
57

Super Rom 12, lec. 3 (Marietti no. 1010).
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 3, corp.: “quia pax consistit in quietatione et unione appetitus; sicut autem appetitus potest esse vel boni simpliciter vel boni apparentis,
ita etiam et pax potest esse et vera et apparens, vera quidem pax non potest
esse nisi circa appetitum veri boni; quia omne malum, etsi secundum aliquid
appareat bonum, unde ex aliqua parte appetitum quietet, habet tamen multos
defectus, ex quibus appetitus remanet inquietus et perturbatus.”
Super Col 3, lec. 3 (Marietti no. 164): “Ex caritate mox oritur pax.”
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 3, corp.
Ibid.
ST II-II, q. 4, a. 7, a. 4.
ST II-II, q. 27, a. 2, corp.

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friendship, since it provides a bond based on love of God in which
one wills the other’s good as one’s own. Truly, this is concord. It
makes believers love their neighbor as themselves and “makes us want
to do his will even as our own.”58 On this basis a true community of
friendship, a true concord, is formed.
Charity is also the efficient cause of the true ordering of one’s
own desires. It brings them into an ordered unity by serving as the
form of the other virtues; it makes goodness itself (God) the object
of action.59 Put simply, charity transforms all other good habits and
desires by referring them to its end (thereby also playing a formal
role). All the other virtues and goods thus find relation to each
other by their relation to God under the guidance of charity, and
this precludes conflict. In addition, only charity loves God directly
and only God sufficiently quiets all desire. True rest, the cessation
of all desire, can come only when there is no good beyond the one
possessed. In Aquinas’s metaphysics, no other object could serve this
function of both ordering and quieting.
Given that charity effects the twofold formality of peace, peace
is called one of the acts of charity.60 In saying this, Aquinas does
not mean that peace is one act among others such that sometimes
charity enacts peace and at other times it is beneficent or fraternally
correcting. As Cajetan notes, Aquinas’s language should not be taken
literally. Peace is the result of charity and charity’s primary act, to
love.61 As such, peace is a type of formality that qualifies all truly
58

59
60

61

ST II-II, q. 29, a. 3, corp.: “Aliam vero, prout diligimus proximum sicut nosipsos, ex quo contingit quod homo vult implere voluntatem proximi sicut et sui
ipsius.”
ST II-II, q. 25, a. 1, corp.
ST II-II, q. 29, a. 4, corp.: “Cum igitur pax causetur ex caritate secundum
ipsam rationem dilectionis Dei et proximi, ut ostensum est, non est alia virtus
cuius pax sit proprius actus nisi caritas, sicut et de gaudio dictum est. [Therefore, since peace is caused by charity, which is itself the very definition of love
of God and neighbor (as was said above), peace is most properly the act of
charity and not of another virtue, just as was said about joy.]”
ST II-II, q. 28, prol.: “Deinde considerandum est de effectibus consequentibus
actum caritatis principalem, qui est dilectio. Et primo, de effectibus interioribus; secundo, de exterioribus. Circa primum tria consideranda sunt, primo, de
gaudio; secundo, de pace; tertio, de misericordia. [Next we will consider the
effects following from the principal act of charity, which is love. First we will
consider the interior effects and second the exterior. As for interior effects we
will consider first joy, second peace, and third mercy.]” See Reichberg, “Aquinas’s Moral Typology,” 473.

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loving actions and not simply one set of them.62 Wherever there is
charity, there are acts of love, and wherever there are acts of love,
there is peace.
On the other hand, charity is not the only virtue relevant for the
seeking of true peace, even if it is the direct cause. The virtue of
justice is quite important as well, not as directly effecting peace but
as a dispositive cause, as warding off the disturbances of peace. Justice
does not bring about peace directly, but it helps prepare for it and
preserve it. As Aquinas says, “peace is especially disturbed when one
man does not give to the other that which is owed to him.”63 This is
even true for the peace of the Church.64
Wisdom is another virtue important for peace. According to Aquinas, it belongs to charity and the appetites “to have peace” (habere
pacem) but to wisdom “to make peace” ( facere pacem).65 Wisdom
makes peace by putting things in proper order.66 In this way wisdom
should not be thought of as extrinsic to peace in the way that justice
is. Wisdom is seated in the intellect and judges connaturally what
belongs to proper order.67 Without wisdom, peace would not only be
disturbed, but would never exist at all.
The Eucharist and Charity
The next step in the argument is to connect charity, the proper cause
of true peace, to the Eucharist.68 Such a connection is easily established
62

63

64
65
66
67
68

See Cajetan’s commentary on Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 29, a. 4, in
Opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P.M. edita [Leonine edition], vol. 4
(Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propaganda Fidei, 1888), 239: “For
it seems that peace signifies formally the consequent perfection of the act of
charity by which God and neighbor are loved. Because of this perfection it
is not an absolutely distinct thing from the act of charity, but is either the
act itself (that is the union of appetites in one thing), or the relative quality
following from it.”
Super Rom 14, lec. 2, (Marietti no. 1128): “Per hoc enim pax maxime perturbatur, quod unus homo non exhibet alteri quod ei debet.”
Super II Cor 12, lec. 3 (Marietti no. 750).
ST II-II, q. 45, a. 6, ad 1.
ST II-II, q. 45, a. 6, corp.
ST II-II, q. 45, a. 2, corp.
The citations in this footnote are taken from Emery, “The Ecclesial Fruit of
the Eucharist in St. Thomas Aquinas,” 161n29. The English translation can
be found in two places: in his Trinity, Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays (Naples, FL: Ave Maria Press, 2007): 155–72, and in Nova et Vetera
(English) 2 (2004): 43–60. ST III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 3; q. 74, a. 4, obj. 3; q. 78, a. 3,
obj. 6 and ad 6; q. 79, a. 4, ad 3; q. 80, a. 5, ad 2; cf. q. 78, a. 3, ad 6 (“Hoc autem

The Eucharist and Peace in St. Thomas Aquinas

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in Aquinas: the Eucharist is nothing other than a re-presentation of the
sacrifice of Christ. Now, the sacrifice of Christ is the instrumental efficient cause of charity. Hence, the Eucharist is also.The Eucharist effects
charity by incorporating believers into Christ and likening them to
Christ in its two-fold causality as sacrament and sacrifice:69 “It has the
nature of a sacrifice inasmuch as it is offered up; and it has the nature
of a sacrament inasmuch as it is received.”70 As sacrifice, the Eucharist
causes charity by reconciling humans with God and by exemplarity.
As sacrament, the Eucharist causes peace by uniting the recipient with
Christ, from whom charity flows.71
By re-presenting the Passion, the Eucharist effects charity in a
twofold manner. First, it is the very power by which the sacramental
aspect (the reception) obtains its effect. The Passion is re-presented,
and thus, the effects of the Passion obtain: Christ’s sacrifice is the
efficient cause of our salvation,72 merits the salvation of all, is the
proper cause of the forgiveness of sins, delivers believers from Satan’s
power and reconciles with God, and gets rid of the debt of punishment. Hence, the Eucharist effects the same things (as one can see
by the overlay of questions 48–49 and 79 of the tertia pars of the
Summa theologiae). These effects include both charity itself and what
is necessary to preserve it. Second, the Eucharist as sacrifice causes
charity by re-presenting the efficient cause of our salvation. It is in

69

70

71
72

est sacramentum caritatis quasi figurativum et effectivum [However, this (the
Eucharist) is the sacrament of charity as though both signifying and effecting
it.]”); q. 79, a. 1, ad 1; q. 81, a. 1, ad 3; q. 79, a. 1; q. 81, a. 1, ad 3.
ST III, q. 49, aa. 2–3. I divide the effects of the Eucharist this way following
Ramirez (“La Eucaristia y la Paz Individual,” 179–80).
ST III, q. 79, a. 5, corp.: “In order to do this, it is fitting to treat the Eucharist
under its double aspect, sacrament and sacrifice. Again, as stated earlier, these
should not be thought of as separate lines of causality producing diverse effects,
but rather different ways to conceive that which the Eucharist contains versus
what it signifies, in what the Eucharistic power terminates directly vs. what is
there concomitantly. These diverse lines of causality should not be thought of
as disparate; all are simply aspects of the one sacrament. Indeed, the sacramental
power is not diverse from the passion, i.e. the sacrificial aspect.” As Aquinas
notes, “this sacrament may be considered that from which it has its effect,
namely Christ there presenting his passion there represented, and that through
which it works its effect, namely the receiving of the sacrament and the sacramental elements” (ibid., a. 2, corp.). Both of these translations are taken from
the Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New
York: Benziger Brothers, 1947).
In de divinis nominibus, ch. 11, lec. 3.
ST III, q. 48, a. 6.

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the re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Cross that we see the exemplar of supernatural Charity: Christ’s love poured out in sacrifice.73
This serves the dual function of both exciting the virtue of charity by
showing what great love God has for humans and informing believers
of what exactly the proper content of supernatural charity is.74
By containing Christ, the sacramental reception of the Eucharist
effects charity in a threefold manner such that “perfected in union
with the suffering Christ . . . the Eucharist is called the sacrament
of charity, which is the bond of perfection.” 75 First, the believer
is conformed to Christ’s charity: “Just as by coming visibly into
the world he brought the life of grace into it . . . so by coming to
men sacramentally he causes the life of grace.” 76 By the sacramental
reception of Christ himself, “grace is increased and the spiritual life
perfected and made whole by union with God.” 77 The increase of
grace breaks forth in the soul as charity. Yet, this is not only conformity in a generic sense: the reception of grace in the Eucharist is the
very reception of Christ’s grace and, thus, of his charity.78 In receiv		ST III, q. 48, a. 6, ad 4; q. 46, a. 3, corp.
		ST III, q. 46, a. 3, corp.; Super Ioan 6, lec. 6 (Marietti no. 963); Bruce Marshall,
“The Whole Mystery of Our Salvation: Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist as Sacrifice,” in Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Theology, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Chicago:
Hillenbrand Books, 2009), 63–64: “The Eucharist has the very same effects as
the Passion itself.”
75
		ST III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 3: “Sed Eucharistia est sacramentum passionis Christi
prout homo perficitur in unione ad Christum passum. . . . ita Eucharistia dicitur sacramentum caritatis, quae est vinculum perfectionis.”
76
		ST III, q. 79, a. 1, corp.: “Qui sicut, in mundum visibiliter veniens, contulit
mundo vitam gratiae, secundum illud Ioan. I, gratia et veritas per Iesum Christum facta est; ita, in hominem sacramentaliter veniens, vitam gratiae operatur,
secundum illud Ioan. VI, qui manducat me, vivit propter me.”
77
		ST III, q. 79, a. 1: “Per hoc autem sacramentum augetur gratia, et perficitur
spiritualis vita, ad hoc quod homo in seipso perfectus existat per coniunctionem ad Deum.”
78
		ST III, q. 8, a. 1, ad 1: Super Ioan 1, lec. 10 (Marietti no. 202): “Nota, quod
haec propositio ‘de’ aliquando quidem denotat efficientiam, seu originalem
causam, sicut cum dicitur, radius est vel procedit de sole; et hoc modo denotat
in Christo efficientiam gratiae, seu auctoritatem, quia plenitudo gratiae, quae
est in Christo, est causa omnium gratiarum quae sunt in omnibus intellectualibus creaturis. . . . quae scilicet de me procedunt, adimplemini, participatione
sufficientis plenitudinis. [Note that the preposition ‘from’ signifies the efficient
or origin cause, just as it is said that a ray of light proceeds from the sun. Being
thus it signifies that in Christ is the origin or author of grace because the
fullness of grace, which is in him, is the cause of all graces which are in every
intellectual creature.]”
73
74

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ing the Eucharist, believers can begin to love as Christ loves.
Second, under the manner of its giving food, the Eucharist in its
sacramental aspect is also the proper cause of charity. The Eucharist sustains, augments, restores, and delights. It sustains charity by
sustaining the supernatural life of the believer, removing the impediments to the activity of charity (venial sin), and protecting the life of
charity by protecting against future sins. It augments the life of charity just as the assimilation of food augments the body as it is growing. It restores the fervor of charity by removing the impediments to
charity’s activity and thus renews it. Finally, it moves the believer to
acts of charity—that is, love of God and neighbor. In short, “This
[sacrament] does for the life of the spirit [and thus for charity] all that
material food and drink does for the life of the body.”79
Finally, the species under which Christ is given signifies, but does
not contain, the ultimate effect of the sacrament, ecclesial unity.
Indeed, ecclesial unity is the direct effect of the sacrament, the res
sacramenti, yet it is brought about by charity, which Aquinas also calls
the res of the sacrament.80
For these reasons, Aquinas claims that “the Eucharist is said to be
the sacrament of Christ’s charity expressed, and ours made,”81 and
“the proper effect of this sacrament is the transformation into Christ
through love.”82 The Eucharist both symbolizes our charity and
brings it about (in both habit and act) and is thus called the sacramentum caritatis.83
The Eucharist and Peace
The final step of this argument is connecting the Eucharist to peace.
The Eucharist is the instrumental efficient and exemplar cause of charity, and charity is the efficient cause of supernatural peace.84 Hence,
the Eucharist is the proper cause of supernatural peace. It causes the

		ST III, q. 79, a. 1, corp.: “Et ideo omnem effectum quem cibus et potus materialis facit quantum ad vitam corporalem, quod scilicet sustenat, auget, reparat,
et delectat, hoc totum facit hoc sacramentum quantum ad vitam spiritualem.”
80
		For the best treatment of the Eucharist in relation to ecclesial unity, see Emery,
“Le fruit ecclesial.”
81
		In IV sent. d. 8, q. 2, a. 2, qc. 3, ad 5: “Eucharistia dicitur sacramentum caritatis
Christi expressivum, et nostrae factivum.”
82
		Ibid.
83
		ST III, q. 78, a. 3, ad 6; ST III, q. 79, a. 4, corp.
84
		Hoffman, “Eucharistia ut Sacramentum Pacis,” 164: “Eucharistia est causa efficiens illius duplicis unionis.”
79

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twofold notion central to peace, unity with God and neighbor.85 Such
is Aquinas’s conception.
As sacrifice, the Eucharist causes peace by re-presenting the very
cause of peace, Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. This re-presentation
causes peace by both efficient causality and exemplarity. The Eucharist as sacrifice causes peace by efficient causality, since the very
purpose of Christ’s Incarnation was the restoration of peace. Christ is
he who “came to restore all things to a state of peace and calm.”86 He
did so by his death: “The passion itself was the maker of peace.”87 It
is this very Passion that is numerically identical with the sacrifice of
the Eucharist, identical quoad substantium and different quoad modum.
Put differently, the very cause of peace is represented in the Eucharist,
for Christ is present as priest, victim, and peace offering.88
Likewise, in the Passion re-presented, we see the ultimate example
of love, the maker of peace: “If you seek an example of love: ‘No one
has greater love than this . . . [to lay down his life for his friends].’
This is Christ on the cross.”89 As an exemplar of love, the sacrifice of
the Cross is also an exemplar of peace, not in its full form without
disturbances, but as it exists in this world and in its proper cause.
In this way, as re-presenting the very cause of peace, the Eucharist
effects unity both interior and exterior: “To cure [the disturbances
of peace] Jesus offers them the peace of reconciliation with God . . .
which he accomplished by his suffering.”90
As sacrament, the Eucharist also causes both exterior and interior
peace. The Eucharist causes concord by ordering the diverse appetites
of people to desire and seek one good: worship and love of God.
The relevance for external peace and the Eucharist can be seen most
clearly by separating the threefold signification of the sacrament: sign,
sign and reality, and reality.
According to the “sign alone,” one sees that the Eucharist signifies
its ultimate effect of ecclesial unity: “Our Lord has proffered his body
		Ibid.
		ST III, q. 44, a. 4, ad 3.
87
		Super Matt 16, lec. 3, (Marietti edition, 1951), no. 1398: “Sed ipsa passio pacifica fuit.”
88
		ST III, q. 22, a. 2, corp.
89
		Collationes Super Credo in Deum, trans. and ed. Nicholas Ayo with introduction
(Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1988), 72 (this translation is from
the Leonine edition: “Si enim exemplum queris caritatis, ‘maiorem caritatem
nemo habet’ etc.: hoc Christus in cruce”).
90
		Super Ioan 20, lec. 4 (Marietti no. 2532).
85
86

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and his blood in those things which, from a multitude, are reduced
to unity, since the bread is one single reality made of many grains;
while the wine is one single drink made of many grapes.”91 From
a multitude, the Eucharist brings forth a single reality.92 Under the
second aspect of the Eucharist, the “sign and reality” (res et sacramentum), one also finds the production of concord. The Eucharist makes
the Church, since “by this sacrament the members of the Church
are united to their head.”93 It is by Eucharistic realism that one has
ecclesial peace. In the third level of the sacrament, the “reality” (res
tantum), one finds the reality of ecclesial peace and unity in full relief.
Since one enters into true communion with Christ, believers are
“mutually united by [him].”94 The ultimate effect of the Eucharist
is the mutual union of the members of Christ with one another. In
short, the Eucharist is called the sacrament of unity and of peace.95
The Eucharist brings about a union of wills around the highest good,
the very notion of true concord.96
Although it should not be thought of as a different effect from the
communal (since both are caused and lived by charity), the Eucharist as sacrament also causes interior peace by communicating to the
recipient a participation in the very peace of Christ and ultimately
of God himself.97 According to Aquinas, not only was Christ’s time
the time of greatest peace, did he come to restore peace, and is peace
found in his coming, but Christ is also the way of peace and a share
		ST III, q. 79, a. 1.
		ST III, q. 73, a. 3, corp.
93
		In IV sent. d. 8, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 1, sc 1.
94
		ST III q. 73, a. 4, corp.
95
		Garrigou-Lagrange concurs and claims that, according to Aquinas, the Eucharist causes peace by uniting all Christians in the profession of one faith. In
other words, the Eucharist is like supernatural wisdom and teaches the proper
ordo of life, an order necessary for true peace. Likewise, it unites the hearts of
all the faithful by strengthening charity, which is the very bond of the Church.
Furthermore, all the members of the Christian family are united in the Eucharist in common worship. The diverse classes are united as well as the diverse
peoples. All this can only be accomplished by causing charity; see Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, De Eucharistia: Accedunt de Pænitentia Quaestiones Dogmaticæ: Commentarius in Summam Theologicam S. Thomæ (Turin, IT: R. Berruti,
1943).
96
		The citations in this footnote are taken from Emery, “The Ecclesial Fruit of
the Eucharist,” 161n27. ST III q. 67, a. 2; q. 73, a. 2, s.c.; q. 73, a. 4; q. 80, a. 5,
ad 2; q. 82, a. 2, arg. 3 and ad 3; q. 83, a. 4, corp. and ad 3.
97
		In de divinis nominibus, ch. 11, lec. 1.
91
92

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of the very peace of Christ is communicated to believers in the
Eucharist:98 “Christ is called the God of peace because he is the giver
of peace and one who loves. . . . He is also the author of peace. . . .
He also dwells in peace.”99 In short, God pours peace into the world
through Jesus Christ.100
Put simply, Eucharistic reception communicates the peace of
Christ by uniting the believer to Christ. Union with Christ in the
Eucharist not only brings humans together externally but also properly orders the subjective desires and faculties toward God the Trinity, the one supreme good. Now, as we saw earlier, union with God is
the sine qua non of true interior peace. Hence, the Eucharist is the true
cause of peace. Put another way, the Eucharist augments and moves
toward peace because of what it contains.101
Eucharist not only causes peace directly by uniting humans to God
and ordering their faculties and desires ad unum. It also wards off the
impediments to peace, obstacles both within and without that disturb
proper order and rest.102 The Eucharist forgives venial sin, which
diminishes the fervor of charity and thus peace. It preserves from
future sins, sins that would disorder the soul and diminish peace. It
even indirectly counters the fomes of sin, the very inclination to sin,
which is a cause of conflict. Likewise, it forgives punishment, which
is contrary to the will achieving the good and, thus, contrary to
peace. Finally, the Eucharist wards off the outward assaults of demons
who hinder proper love of God and neighbor, the very foundations
of peace. By strengthening charity, the love of God and neighbor and
source of unity, the Eucharist both causes peace directly and wards
off all the agents of conflict.103 Put differently, the Eucharist sustains
and restores peace.104
		Super Psalmos 13 (Parma no. 5). For more on the ontological exemplarity of
Christ see Thomas Ryan, Thomas Aquinas as Reader of the Psalms (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 81–105.
99
		Super II Cor 13, lec. 3 (Marietti no. 540): “sed ideo Christus dicitur Deus pacis,
quia est dator pacis et amator. . . . Ipse etiam est auctor pacis. . . . Ipse in pace
habitat.”
100
		In de divinis nominibus, ch. 11, lec. 3.
101
		ST III, q. 79, a. 4; Hoffman, “Eucharistia ut Sacramentum Pacis,” 164.
102
		Hoffman, “Eucharistia ut Sacramentum Pacis,” 166.
103
		At least inasmuch as these are contained in the Church and in the mind.
See Super Phil 4, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 159); Emery, “The Ecclesial Fruit of the
Eucharist,” 162–63; and ST II-II, q. 29, a. 3, ad 2.
104
		Hoffman, “Eucharistia ut Sacramentum Pacis,” 164.
98

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Certainly, the peace attained by the Eucharist, both internal and
external, is imperfect in this life; the perfect peace of Christ is only
in the life to come. But here also one can see the deep resonances
between the Eucharist and peace. Indeed, it is no coincidence that
both show the tension of realized eschatology. The peace believers
have now is the in-breaking of perfect peace and a participation in
the very peace of Christ. As Aquinas says, “everlasting peace, spiritual
peace, begins here and is completed there.”105
The Eucharist likewise causes the other virtues necessary for
peace. This obtains not only efficiently by its augmenting of habitual
grace, which breaks forth in the soul as the infused virtues, but also
by exemplarity. For example, the liturgy teaches wisdom. Inasmuch
as the Gospel is proclaimed at the liturgy, it informs the believer of
true order, for “truly, the purpose of the Gospel is peace in Christ.”106
Aquinas claims that “the advantage [his] teaching gives is peace.”107
The Eucharist also concerns justice but goes beyond it by charity. It
teaches the participant not only to give the other his due but also to
desire the other’s due as if it were one’s own.
Given these resonances between the Eucharist and peace, it does
not seem to be a stretch to say that the very purpose of the Eucharist is peace. This was shown above but could also be argued in
multiple ways. For example, the purpose of Christ’s coming was to
bring peace, which was accomplished by the sacrifice of the Cross.
Now, that same sacrifice is numerically identical with the Eucharist,
and hence, the Eucharist too has the same purpose: to bring peace.
Another way of arguing this would be to follow Aquinas’s claim that
the purpose of this sacrament is its use by the faithful, their sanctification.108 Now, sanctification is simply another word in Aquinas for
living proper order, since the saint is “one who has peace amid this
life, even in spite of troubles.”109 Hence, the purpose of the Eucharist
is to bring peace between all without distinction and to give the heart
rest without end. Moreover, since all the other sacraments are ordered
to the Eucharist as an end, all the sacraments are ordered toward
peace.110 Hence, I do not think it is a stretch, even though Aquinas
		Super II Thess 3, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 89).
		Ibid.
107
		Super Ioan 16, lec. 8 (Marietti no. 2174): “utilitas doctrinae est pax.”
108
		ST III, q. 60, a. 5; q. 63, a. 6.
109
		Super Ioan 16, lec. 8 (Marietti no. 2174).
110
		ST III, q. 65, a. 3, corp.; In IV sent. d. 8, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 4: The Eucharist
105
106

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John Meinert

never calls the Eucharist the sacrament of peace, to say it is implicit in
N&V
his thought. The Eucharist is truly the food of peace.111

“has all grace and all the effects of the others sacraments singularly.”
		One might also say that the Eucharist is relevant for natural and worldly peace
in the following way. One who desires an effect desires its necessary cause.
Now, since Christ is the sole cause of perfect peace, and since all desire peace
by desiring anything whatsoever, all implicitly desire Christ in the Eucharist
by desiring anything whatsoever. Of course, this would be an elicited desire.

111

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1213–1238

God, the University, and Human Flourishing
Kevin O’Reilly, O.P.
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Rome, Italy

The most widespread conception of the nature and

function of the university today is that it is a place where research and
teaching takes places in order to advance the economic and political
well-being of the society it exists to serve.1 Economic and political interests that come to bear on universities lead to a favoring of
research-led universities in which researchers focus their energies on
narrow areas of specialization. Success, as measured in economic terms,
		Thus, Michael Oakeshott writes: “Somehow or other the idea of a university in recent years has got mixed up with notions such a ‘higher education,’
‘advanced training,’ refresher courses for adults,’—things admirable in themselves, but really very little to do with a university. And it is time something
was done to unravel the confusion. For these ideas belong to a world of power
and utility, of exploitation, of social and individual egoism, and of activity
whose meaning lies outside itself in some trivial result of achievement—and
this is not the world to which a university belongs. It is a very powerful world;
it is wealthy, interfering, well-meaning. But it is not remarkably self-critical;
it is apt to mistake itself for the whole world, and with amiable carelessness it
assumes that whatever does not contribute to its own purposes is somehow
errant. A university needs beware of the patronage of this world, or it will find
that it has sold its birthright for a mess of pottage; it will find that instead of
studying and teaching the languages and literatures of the world it has become
a school for training interpreters, that instead of pursuing science it is engaged
in training electrical engineers or industrial chemists, that instead of studying
history it is studying and teaching history for some ulterior purpose, that
instead of educating men and women it is training them exactly to fill some
niche in society”; seeThe Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven, CT / London: Yale University Press,
1989), 103.

1

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Kevin O’Reilly, O.P.

depends on such specialization.2 Economic and political influence seeps
its way down to undergraduate education as well. Alasdair MacIntyre
explains: “Undergraduate education has by now become largely a
prologue to specialization and professionalization, and prestige in
providing undergraduate education for the most part attaches to those
institutions that prepare their students most effectively for admission
to prestigious graduate programs. So the curriculum has increasingly
become one composed of an assorted ragbag of disciplines and subdisciplines, each pursued and taught in relative independence of all the
others, and achievement within each consists in the formation of the
mind of a dedicated specialist.”3
Catholic universities do not, by and large, furnish an exception
to the rule. They “often mimic the structures and goals of the most
prestigious secular universities and do so with little sense of something having gone seriously amiss.”4
To many people, it will not at all be clear that anything has gone
amiss with third-level education. The more prestigious a research
university becomes, the more funding it draws down. In effect, it
becomes a good business corporation. Successful students can also
entertain good career prospects. This is surely a win-win situation,
is it not? Those who have received nothing more than this kind of
education will no doubt answer in the affirmative precisely because
they lack the range of vision afforded by a liberal arts education.
MacIntyre contends that they are, in fact, blind to the disasters that
this kind of education has wreaked on the world: “A surprising
number of the major disorders of the latter part of the twentieth
		Indeed, in contemporary society, the university itself constitutes an important
economic entity. As Ronald Barnett writes, “In any estimation . . . higher
education is big business”; see The Idea of Higher Education (Bristol, PA: Society
for Research into Higher Education / Open University Press, 1990), 3.
3
		Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic
Philosophical Tradition (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 173–74. See
also Gerard Loughlin, “Theology in the University,” in John Henry Newman, ed.
Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2009), 230: “Today’s university no longer offers a unified education, for there
is little consensus as to what this might entail, little sense of a shared culture
for which it might fit people. Today universities offer vocational courses, but
little or no sense of vocation, of being called to a way of life, let alone a way of
life for others, and through others for God. Today universities seek merely to
meet the tastes of their customers and the whims of their paymasters. Today
the university lies in ruins.”
4
		MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 179.
2

God, the University, and Human Flourishing

1215

century and of the first decade of the twenty first century have been
brought about by some of the most distinguished graduates of some of
the most distinguished universities in the world and this as the result
of an inadequate general education, at both graduate and especially
undergraduate levels, that has made it possible for those graduates
to act decisively and deliberately without knowing what they were
doing.”5 Examples he adduces include the Vietnam War, United
States policy towards Iran for more than half a century, and the present economic crisis. While MacIntyre does not argue exhaustively for
this claim, he does offer a short illustration of it by way of reference
to the genesis of the recent economic crisis.6
While I agree with MacIntyre’s claim, I cannot attempt a substantiation of it in this article. What I write does, however, presuppose
the idea that the results of modern specialized education are not as
happy as we would wish. I will argue that this situation is due to
the fact that university curricula are not structured so as to reflect
the nature of the universe. Many will no doubt find this claim to be
very strange. Nevertheless, I contend that successful human agency
depends on action respecting the natures of things. Attaching a pair
of wings will not enable me to fly, but getting on an airplane will
because those who designed and built it have respected the laws of
aerodynamics. A university curriculum that prepares students to deal
with the nature of reality as it is will more likely produce well-functioning citizens and a more harmonious world than a curriculum that
is dictated simply by economic interest.
In this regard, I contend, we have much to learn from St. Thomas
Aquinas and John Henry Cardinal Newman. While I do not wish to
claim here that Newman simply represents a working-out of Thomas’s thought, he, like Thomas, is an Aristotelian and his thought can
be related to Thomas’s in important respects.7 With respect to the
subject at hand, Newman’s educational theory can be construed as a
phenomenological expression of the metaphysical foundations offered
by Thomas. To state this perceived relation is not of course to argue
that Newman consciously elaborates his ideas concerning university
		Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Very Idea of a University: Aristotle, Newman and
Us,” New Blackfriars 91 (2010): 17.
6
		See ibid., 17–18.
7
		Thus, Newman tells us, “While we are men, we cannot help to a great extent,
being Aristotelians,” and indeed, “in many subject-matters, to think correctly
is to think like Aristotle”; see John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a
University (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1925), 109–10.
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education with Thomas’s metaphysical construal of reality in mind.
The influence of Aristotle on both of them and a shared thirst for
truth nevertheless effect a certain convergence between a view of
university education derived from Thomas’s thought and the detailed
reflections concerning the same topic penned by Newman. In addition to the relationship that I posit between Thomas and Newman
as between metaphysical foundation and phenomenological expression, it will also become evident that Thomas’s philosophy of mind
and understanding of prudence support MacIntyre’s contention that
a university curriculum constructed in line with Newman’s vision
would yield benefits for society that are currently not generally available.
In what follows I will first of all follow Aquinas in asking about the
origin and end of the universe, and of human existence in particular,
for these questions confront the most basic structure of reality. In the
first section, I will therefore consider his second proof for the existence of God and the notion that God is the ultimate end of human
striving. Central to these considerations is the notion of the impossibility of infinite regress in causes that are essentially ordered to
each other. The implications of these inquiries for the general design
of university curricula will then be considered by drawing out the
educational implications of various aspects of Thomas’s thought and
by the light of Newman’s reflections.8 In particular, it will be argued
		Thomas, of course, did not apply the principles of his thought to the issue of
the kind of curriculum best suited to a Catholic university. One can, however,
point to the founding and governing document of Thomas Aquinas College,
A Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic Liberal Education, for an example of what
a curriculum constructed according to Thomistic educational principles might
look like (last accessed August 3, 2016, http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/sites/
default/files/a-proposal-forthe-fulfillment-of-catholic-education.pdf). See
especially ch. X, “The Curriculum” (49–56), whose introductory comments
state that “the curriculum of this college introduces the student to a comprehensive study of theology, philosophy, mathematics, language and experimental science through reading and closely discussing the greatest scholarly works
in these fields” (49). The affinity of this Thomistically constructed curriculum
with Newman’s educational philosophy is striking and, I contend, bears out
one of the arguments of this article; namely, that Newman’s educational theory,
in effect, furnishes a phenomenological expression of the metaphysical foundations offered by Thomas. For another example of a curriculum constructed
along the lines envisaged in this article, see the curriculum of Wyoming Catholic College (last accessed August 3, 2016, http://www.wyomingcatholiccollege.com/academics/curriculum/index.aspx).
The weakness of A Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic Liberal Education

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that an educational curriculum that reflects the structure of reality
will establish those conditions that promote the moral well-being
of the student and, by extension, society in general. On its own,
however, such a curriculum is unlikely to be sufficient. Also required
is an attendant ethos that facilitates student appropriation of the
demands of the curriculum, enables them to give practical expression
to them in their decision-making, and habituates them in doing so.
Given the common religious orientation of both Thomas and
Newman, it seems reasonable to apply the general philosophical arguments of this article to the specific context of Catholic universities.
The fact that Newman has already done so provides an illustrious,
widely-accepted precedent. At any rate, a philosophy of education
that had no real application to a specific educational context would
not be of any great value to anyone.
God as the Origin and End of All that Exists
Thomas begins the Second Way (Summa theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3) with an
observation of empirical fact: “In the world of sense we find an order
of efficient causes.”9 This incontrovertible fact is, however, not self-explanatory; it stands in need of explanation in terms of something else.
Otherwise, something could be its own cause and, therefore, would
precede itself, a state of affairs that is obviously impossible. Christopher
Martin explains the next step of the argument as follows: “Anything
which is a system of parts related by efficient causality, in which parts
are effects, is itself an effect—something which cannot be the efficient
cause of itself, and which requires an explanation in terms of a relation
(as distinct from the college for which it seeks to offer philosophical underpinnings!) is the absence of any consideration of the role that the ethos of an
institute plays in the education its students. The present article aims to offer a
corrective in this regard.
9
		The following discussion is based on Kevin E. O’Reilly, “Efficient and Final
Causality and the Human Desire for Beatitude in the Summa Theologiae of
Thomas Aquinas,” The Modern Schoolman 82 (2004): 33–58, at 34–36. The
scope of the present article does not allow an extended critical account of
Aquinas’s “second way.” For a more critical and speculative engagement with
the “five ways” see, e.g., C. J. F Martin, Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997); Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969); Joseph Owens, St.Thomas Aquinas
on the Existence of God: Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., ed. John R.
Catan (New York: SUNY, 1980), 52–131; Thomas A. F. Kelly, Language, World
and God: An Essay in Ontology (Dublin: Columba Press, 1996), 177–82; and
Edward Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2010),
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to something else.”10 Of course, the series or system of causes referred to
is the universe. As a series of effects itself, considered as a single whole, it
constitutes an effect. It cannot therefore constitute its own cause; rather,
it must be explained in relation to something apart from itself.
One cannot, however, posit an infinite series of causes and effects.
Such an infinity is an impossibility. Thomas argues that the series of
causes must cease at some stage. Since what is prior in such a series is
the cause of what follows, if it is eliminated nothing can follow. Since
an infinite regress in the series of causes would mean the elimination
of the first cause, neither intermediate efficient causes nor ultimate
effect would be possible, all of which is plainly false according to
Aquinas.11 Positing an infinite regress in the series of causes cannot
explain the fact that there are causes and effects in the world. Thomas
therefore concludes that there must be a first efficient cause, to which
everyone gives the name God.12
There are, of course, objections to Thomas’s rejection of the possibility of an infinite regress.13 Such criticisms seem to be grounded in
a failure to distinguish between per se causes and per accidens causes,
as indeed Thomas himself does elsewhere when he writes that it
is impossible to proceed to infinity per se in efficient causes. Thus,
“there cannot be an infinite number of causes that are per se required
for a certain effect; for instance, that a stone by moved by a stick,
the stick by the hand, and so on to infinity.”14 However, Thomas
continues: “It is not impossible to proceed to infinity accidentally as
regards efficient causes. . . . Thus it is accidental to this particular
man as generator to be generated by another man; for he generates
as a man, and not as the son of another man. For all men generating
hold one grade in efficient causes—viz., the grade of a particular
generator. Hence it is not impossible for a man to be generated by
man to infinity.”15
Thomas does not therefore reject the possibility of an infinite
		Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations, 152. Martin critiques the objection that
there could be parts of the world outside the system of efficient causality.
11
		 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q. 2, a. 2. Unless otherwise
noted, all quotations from ST are from Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the
English Dominican Province, 5 vols. (Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981).
12
		Ibid.
13
		See, for example, Martin Henry, On Not Understanding God (Dublin: Columba
Press, 1997), 126.
14
		ST I, q. 46, a. 2, ad 7.
15
		Ibid.
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regress in the case of per accidens causes such as a’s being begotten by b,
b’s being begotten by c, and so forth. To proceed to infinity however
in the case of a per se causal series must be ruled out as impossible.
We should note once again, as Patterson Brown observes, that “it is
the composite causal series, and not the individual constituent causes,
which Aquinas is contrasting as either per se or per accidens in the above
quotation.”16
It is imperative to understand that it is on account of being hierarchically ordered that a series of causes does not allow an infinite
regress. As already noted, an infinite regress is possible in the case of
per accidens causes. Thus, for example, one man can beget another,
who in turn begets a third, and so on, ad infinitum. However, the
question concerning what makes a man to be a man and, as such,
capable of begetting another man cannot be answered by appeal to
per accidens causes that are on the same level as he is. We are therefore
compelled to attribute to a superior being the cause of man’s existence precisely as a man capable of begetting another man. The causal
explanation of this being requires, in turn, the existence of a being
superior to it. Since an infinite regress in per se causes is impossible,
there must be a first term, a term that, as Gilson remarks, “will, in
fact, virtually contain the causality of the whole series and also of
each term composing it.”17
The notion of the impossibility of an infinite regress of causes
crops up again in the course of Thomas’s treatise on beatitude (ST
I-II, qq. 1–5), where the principal focus is on final causality:18 “If, in
a number of causes ordained to one another, the first be removed, the
others must, of necessity, be removed also.”19 Since the final cause or
end constitutes the first of all causes, if it were removed, the exercise of efficient causality would be annulled. As Thomas delineates
the point: “If the agent were not determinate to some particular
effect, it would not do one thing rather than another: consequently
in order that it produce a determinate effect, it must, of necessity, be
		Patterson Brown, “Infinite Causal Regression,” in Anthony Kenny, ed., Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Anthony Kenny (London: Macmillan,
1969), 217.
17
		Étienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Edward Bullough
(Cambridge, UK: W. Heffer and Sons, 1924), 63.
18
		The following discussion is based on Kevin E. O’Reilly, “Efficient and Final
Causality and the Human Desire for Beatitude in the Summa Theologiae of
Thomas Aquinas,” The Modern Schoolman.
19
		ST I-II, q. 1, a. 2.
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determined to some certain one, which has the nature of an end.”20
In contrast to other beings that achieve their ends on the basis of an
innate natural appetite, human beings determine their own ends by
virtue of the will/rational appetite.
Thomas’s consideration of whether human life is ordered towards
an ultimate goal (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 4) occasions further reflections on
causality. Once again, he rules out the possibility of an infinite regress
in a system of efficient causes, since “then there would be no first
mover, without which neither can the others move, since they move
only through being moved by the first mover.”21 He applies this logic
to the case of final causality in relation to the intention of the agent:
if what originally moves desire were taken away, desire itself would
not be moved. As Thomas explains: “The principle in the intention is
the last end; while the principle in execution is the first of the things
which are ordained to the end.”22 As in the case of efficient causes,
infinite regress is impossible in the case of final causes. Indeed, in the
absence of an ultimate end, deliberation would never cease and no
action would ever be accomplished.23 Such a state of affairs clearly
does not obtain.
While Thomas invokes notions of causality many more times
throughout his treatise on beatitude, it would be redundant for the
sake of the present argument to outline these occurrences. In brief,
we can say that Thomas appeals to the notion of the impossibility
of infinite regress with regard to both efficient and final causality in
order to establish the existence of God both as the efficient cause of
all that exists and the final cause of all that exists. As such, God is
the ultimate object of both intellect and will. Thomas’s proofs for the
existence of God and his reflections on God as the final end of human
striving, moreover, support the contention that the human intellect
and will possess a potentially infinite capacity despite the contingency
of our finite and created condition: “The object of the will, i.e. of
man’s appetite, is the universal good; just as the object of the intellect
is the universal true.”24 God has inscribed within the human soul a
		Ibid.
		ST I-II, q. 1, a. 4.
22
		Ibid.
23
		Thomas is here concerned with things that possess an essential order of dependence. In this case of accidental causes, an infinity of proximate ends and of
steps leading to a particular end would be possible. See also ST I, q. 46, a. 2,
ad 7.
24
		ST I-II, q. 2, a. 8.
20
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1221

structure according to which it is intrinsically ordered to the pursuit
of Truth and Goodness. Our existential situation in the created ontological space between God as First Efficient Cause and God as Final
Cause furnishes the context in which the life of mind unfolds. With
these considerations in place we now turn to a consideration of the
educational implications of God as both First Efficient Cause and
Final End of the universe.
If one understands the task of education to be at least in part to
acquaint students with the truth of things and to facilitate and direct
them in their desire for human fulfillment, then the existential fact
of humans being situated between God as First Efficient Cause of
all that exists and God as the Final End of all that exists provides
the overarching context within which education must unfold. Any
approach to education that ignores or attempts to jettison the reality
of this existential situation distorts the nature of education and, in so
doing, undermines the efforts of students in their search for authentic
happiness in this life.
The investigation of the universe in its manifold aspects constitutes
an examination of the effects of the First Cause. All these effects
tell us something about their Creator. Newman understands the
relationship of the universe to God as its creative cause in a similar
way. Thus, as he puts it, while God’s being is infinitely separate from
the universe, he has nevertheless “so implicated Himself with it, and
taken it into His very bosom, by His presence in it, His providence
over it, His impressions upon it, and His influences through it, that
we cannot truly or fully contemplate it without in some main aspects
contemplating Him.”25
The next section delineates Newman’s thought concerning the
implications of this metaphysical position for the construction of the
university curriculum. In brief, the curriculum ought to enlarge
the intellectual horizons of students so that they can appreciate the
interrelatedness of the manifold aspects of the universe in the light of
their creative cause—God. Failure in this regard by cultivating early
specialization by students will likely prevent the mind from attaining
its specific perfection and entail undesirable consequences for society
at large, as we have already suggested. Appeal to Thomas’s distinction
between the speculative and practical intellect provides a theoretical
grounding for this contention.

		Newman, The Idea of a University, 51.

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God and the Construction of the University Curriculum
As proceeding from the Creator as their unique ultimate cause, all parts
of the universe are interrelated. Newman expresses this idea when he
concludes that all knowledge forms a whole, since “the universe in
its length and breadth is so intimately knit together, that we cannot
separate off portion from portion, and operation from operation,
except by a mental abstraction.”26 With regard to the various sciences,
Newman argues that they furnish “a logical record of this or that
aspect of the whole subject-matter of knowledge.”27 He continues:
“As they all belong to one and the same circle of objects, they are one
and all connected together; as they are but aspects of things, they are
severally incomplete in their relation to the things themselves, though
complete in their own idea and for their own respective purposes; on
both accounts they at once need and subserve each other.”28 MacIntyre
makes the same point: “It is only through the relationships of the
different parts of and aspects of the universe to God that its unity and
intelligibility can adequately be grasped.”29
The unity and intelligibility of the universe with the interrelatedness of its parts has profound significance for educational philosophy, a
significance that Newman astutely observes and expounds on at great
length. In brief, as Avery Dulles states the point, Newman “argues
primarily from the nature of the university as a seat of universal
learning and from the interconnectedness of all truth.”30 Displaying
a breathtaking breadth of knowledge of many disciplines as well as
depth of reflection thereupon, Newman adumbrates the ways in
which disciplines “complete, correct, balance each other.”31 Thus,
he argues, “the conclusions of Anatomy, Chemistry, Dynamics, and
other sciences, are revised and completed by each other.” He contin		Ibid., 50.
		Ibid., 51.
28
		Ibid.
29
		MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 175.
30
		Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Newman (London and New York: Continuum,
2002), 138.
31
		Newman, The Idea of a University, 99. The section from which this quotation
is taken, Discourse III.3, contains various other examples. Thus, for instance,
Newman argues: “Did we proceed upon the abstract theory of forces, we
should assign a much more ample range to a projectile than in fact the resistance of the air allows it to accomplish. Let, however, that resistance be made
the subject of scientific analysis, and then we shall have a new science, assisting,
and to a certain point completing, for the benefit of questions of fact, the
science of projection” (ibid., 49).
26
27

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1223

ues in the same place: “Those several conclusions do not represent
whole and substantive things, but views, true, so far as they go; and in
order to ascertain how far they do go, that is, how far they correspond
to the object to which they belong, we must compare them with the
views taken out of that object by other sciences.”32 In “The Idea of a
University,” Michael Oakeshott expresses this point in the following
words: “The pursuit of learning . . . is a conversation. And the peculiar virtue of a university (as a place of many studies) is to exhibit it
in this character, each study appearing as a voice whose tone is neither
tyrannous nor plangent, but humble and conversable.”33
Logical consistency demands that one not limit the university
curriculum of studies in the manner that is all too common nowadays
in excluding religion. Newman appeals to our appreciation of the fact
that knowledge assumes various forms. Different forms of knowledge
are distinguished from each other on the basis of their appeal to
sensory evidence, intuition, testimony, abstract reasoning, and so on.
If, therefore, we were to limit our idea of university knowledge to
that furnished by the evidence of our senses, for example, then ethics
would have to be jettisoned; if intuition were our sole benchmark
for authentic knowledge, then there would be no place for history;
if testimony were the exclusive requirement for true knowledge,
then metaphysics would not be entertained; and if abstract reasoning
were the only measure of knowledge properly speaking, then physics
would have to be omitted. No serious educationalist would entertain any of these possibilities, and so they should be deterred by the
force of Newman’s argumentation from displacing religion from the
university curriculum. This argumentation is couched in the form of
a rhetorical question: “Is not the being of a God reported to us by
testimony, handed down by history, inferred by an inductive process,
brought home to us by metaphysical necessity, urged on us by the
suggestions of our conscience?”34 Further on, he appeals to the idea
that we have already outlined, namely that positing the existence of
God has ramifications for the way in which the curriculum is constituted: “Admit a God, and you introduce among the subjects of your
knowledge, a fact encompassing, closing in upon, absorbing, every
other fact conceivable. How can we investigate any part of any order
of Knowledge, and stop short of that which enters into every order?
		Ibid., 49.
		The Voice of Liberal Learning, 98.
34
		Newman, The Idea of a University, 25.
32
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Kevin O’Reilly, O.P.

All true principles run over with it, all phenomena converge to it; it
is truly the First and the Last.”35
Instantiated in a Catholic university context, religion naturally
takes on the form of Catholic theology. If one accepts the Catholic
faith as true, Newman’s logic demands that one subscribe to Catholic
theology as an integral part of the university curriculum. A Catholic
university “cannot teach Universal Knowledge if it does not teach
Catholic theology.”36 It must be emphasized that this point, while
it bears upon the teaching of revealed religion, is nonetheless philosophical in its import. The Catholic faith to which the university
subscribes provides, as it were, the matter that is informed by the
idea that religion should be accorded recognition in the university
curriculum.
Omission of any one subject in one’s educational trajectory is
bound to affect the completeness of our knowledge in a way that is
proportionate to the subject’s importance. In this view, a specialized
range of studies does not result in an ability to survey reality with a
sense of balance and make connections between its constituent parts.
The breadth of vision that is the hallmark of an enlarged mind is
lacking: “That only is true enlargement of mind which is the power
of viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the universal system, of understanding their
respective values, and determining their mutual dependence.”37 The
pursuit of intellectual excellence so that the mind will advance ever
more and more to a vision of the height, depth, and breadth of the
universe in the vastness of its expanse is what constitutes the essence
of a liberal education. In contrast, as MacIntyre puts it, “to develop
highly specialized knowledge only in one particular sphere, to focus
one’s mind on only one subject-matter, may certainly be valuable, but
it will not enable the mind to achieve its specific perfection and is apt
to prevent the mind from doing so.”38 Indeed, when one discipline
asserts its authority in an absolute way, it becomes an error.39 In this
		Ibid., 26.
		Ibid., 214.
37
		Ibid., 136–37.
38
		MacIntyre, “The Very Idea of a University,” 10.
39
		See Newman, The Idea of a University, 74: “No science whatever, however
comprehensive it may be, but will fall largely into error, if it be constituted the
sole exponent of all things in heaven and earth, and that, for the simple reason
that it is encroaching on territory not its own, and undertaking problems
which it has no instruments to solve.” Angelo Bottone writes that, “According
to Newman, all our knowledge must fit into a framework of connections and
35
36

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1225

situation the mind is prevented from attaining its specific perfection.
Exclusive attention to one discipline will not only hinder the
mind from attaining its specific perfection; it will, according to
MacIntyre, also bring about undesirable results in society. In other
words, speculative engagement with ideas does have its effects in the
practical domain. Speculative engagement that does not reflect the
true constitution of things will produce disastrous consequences. If
MacIntyre is correct—and I suspect he is—we encounter here some
kind of evidential support for Aquinas’s assertion that the practical
intellect is an extension of the speculative intellect.40 By the same
token, Aquinas’s doctrine provides a theoretical underpinning for
MacIntyre’s position.
According to Thomas, the practical reason presupposes the theoretical and is rooted in it. In effect, practical reason translates what
is perceived by speculative reason into action. Obviously, therefore,
this reality furnishes the measure of human action: since reality is
the measure of reason in its speculative mode of activity and practical
reason is grounded in and is an extension of speculative reason, it
follows that reality is also the measure of practical reason and action.
Practical reason is the measure of right action precisely because it has
received this measure from objective reality by way of the speculative intellect, of which it (practical reason) is an extension. However,
insofar as the speculative intellect is rendered deficient on account of
too narrow and specialized a training, so too will practical reason be
undermined in its efforts to effect actions that conduce to the true
flourishing both of individuals and of society—on the presupposition
that acting in accord with human nature and with the structure of
reality in general conduces best to the attainment of human happiness, both of this life and of the next.41
It seems clear that human perception of reality is action guiding.
An announcement that a bomb will definitely explode in ten minutes
in the building that I and many others currently occupy, even withrelations by and through which they gain sense”; see The Philosophical Habit of
Mind: Rhetoric and Person in John Henry Newman’s Dublin Writings (Bucharest,
RO: Zeta Books), 28–29.
40
		ST I, q. 79, a. 11, sc.
41
		This presupposition finds expression in the following words of Goethe: “In
our doing and acting everything depends on this, that we comprehend objects
clearly and treat them according to their nature”; quoted in Josef Pieper, Living
the Truth, trans. Lothar Krauth and Stella Lange (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989),
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out any request for people to evacuate the building, would doubtless
lead to a complete exodus. The nature of the reality of an imminent
bomb explosion translates into the action of leaving the building in
pursuit of safety. Indeed, the constitution of reality as we perceive
it informs our every action. However, the notion of “perception” is
crucial, for this can be affected for good or bad in many instances by
any number of factors. In this context, we are concerned with the
way in which education can enhance or undermine it. In this regard,
it seems clear that a purely specialized educational trajectory serves to
distort one’s view of the overall shape of reality. Practical reasoning
based on this kind of education, since it will fail to meet the criteria
for success demanded by reality itself, will run the risk of failure, if
not disaster, for the individual and/or society at large.
Appeal to God’s efficient causality thus affords the rationale for
an educational curriculum that is not overly specialized at too early
a stage in the intellectual development of students. Human practical
reasoning processes, however, are not mechanical: particular inputs
do not necessarily result in predetermined outputs. Practical reasoning is, in fact, rendered highly complex and influenced for good or for
bad by appetite, as we will see. Since the human appetite ultimately
desires final beatitude with God as its Final End, a consideration of
the educational implications of God as the Final End of human striving is in order. We now turn our attention, therefore, to Thomas’s
consideration of the virtue of prudence, a consideration that necessarily makes reference to the notion of “right appetite.”42
Since prudence enables one to order appropriately the various
goods of human existence in the light of the final end of beatitude,
the cultivation of conditions that conduce to its proper development
in the lives of students is of paramount importance in an educational
curriculum that seeks to prepare them for life. This point, as was
noted at the outset, all too often goes unappreciated in contemporary
educational establishments and therefore merits an extended treatment in order to establish it firmly. A treatment of prudence, which
is an intellectual virtue, also involves an account of its relationship to
the other moral virtues. The implications of Thomas’s understanding
of the relationship between prudence and the moral virtues for the
educational enterprise are clear: any educational endeavor has moral
implications on account of the intellectual nature of prudence and its
unifying function with respect to the intellectual and moral virtues.
		ST II-II, q. 47, a. 4.

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The Cultivation of Prudence
In talking about that perception of reality that guides one’s conduct, we
are clearly in the realm of Thomas’s understanding of prudentia. In this
regard, appetite is crucial—or rather “right appetite”—for as Thomas
argues, “it belongs to prudence . . . to apply right reason to action, and
this is not done without a right appetite.”43 An analogy between speculative and practical reason is illuminating once we understand that the
ends to which we are disposed furnish the principles from which practical reason takes its point of departure in its deliberations. Just as we
are rightly disposed to the principles of speculative truth (such as the
principle of contradiction) by the natural light of the active intellect,
so too we are rightly disposed to the principles of the reason of things
to be done by the rectitude of the will.44 In other words, the principles
of the reason of things to be done are determined by the constitution
of a person’s will. For, a person’s affective responses either facilitate or
impede his prudential reasoning, determining to what degree the latter
is in conformity with truth. This dynamic obtains regardless of which
species of prudence is in question: what is directed to one’s own good
(prudence simply so called), what is directed to the common good of
the home (domestic prudence), or what is directed to the common
good of the state or kingdom (political prudence).45
It is true that, while the other intellectual virtues can be possessed
without moral virtue, prudence (the right reason about things to
be done) “requires man to have moral virtue.”46 If this were all,
however, we would have to agree with the idea that even the best
liberal arts education cannot avoid producing intellectually brilliant
and socially refined “gentlemen” who are nonetheless scoundrels.
There is, however, significantly more to Aquinas’s conception of the
relationship obtaining between prudence and the other moral virtues,
for moral virtue has the character of virtue insofar as it partakes of
reason. In other words, “moral virtue has the aspect of virtue, in so
far as it partakes of intellectual virtue,”47—that is to say, insofar as
		Ibid.
		ST I-II, q. 56, a. 3.
45
		ST II-II, q. 47, a. 11.Thomas’s assertion that there are three species of prudence
points to his understanding that our knowledge of human nature and of what
contributes to its flourishing is acquired on both an individual plane and a
communal plane, a point to which contemporary educational practice might
do well to pay attention.
46
		ST I-II, q. 58, a. 5.
47
		ST II-II, q. 47, a. 5, ad 1.
43
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Kevin O’Reilly, O.P.

it partakes of prudence. Thomas compares prudence to a genus that
is operative in every species that falls under it.48 The relationship
between prudence and the other moral virtues is one of dynamic
reciprocity. As Josef Pieper puts it, “prudence, upon which all virtue
depends, is in its turn dependent at its very fundaments on the totality
of the other virtues, and above all the virtue of justice.”49
While the relationship of dynamic reciprocity between prudence
and the moral virtues complicates matters immensely, it nonetheless
remains clear that education conceived along Thomistic lines cannot
be devoid of moral implications on account of the intellectual nature
of prudence and its role in unifying the intellectual and moral virtues.
As Reinhard Hütter explains, “since prudence is an intellectual
virtue, its formation and refinement fall under the competency of
a liberal arts education along Thomistic lines,”50 and this formation
and refinement will in turn spread their influence among the moral
virtues, “even as the sun has an influence over all bodies.”51
Education need not limit itself—indeed, it ought not to limit
itself—to cultivating the intellectual virtues while completely ignoring the moral virtues. Attention to the moral virtues, if it is to have
any existential import, cannot of course be constrained to explanations in lectures and books. It is indeed unlikely that such an approach
would yield much, if any, success on its own. There is, however, the
question of the ethos of a university and the manner in which this
ethos is cultivated and brought to realization in the student body.
The ethos of any human institution will reflect its apprehension of
the meaning and value of human existence. In the case of a university, this ethos will have some degree of influence on students that is
in some way related to their free choice to submit themselves to its
formative influences.
One fundamental formative influence is the way in which
the curriculum is constructed. Thus, for example, the message
proclaimed by a dedicated business college whose sole focus consists
in turning out graduates who earn huge sums of money is likely to
forge different qualities in many of its students than a liberal arts
college whose aim is to form individuals who can savor the value of
		ST II-II, q. 47, a. 5, ad 2.
		Joseph Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1966), 15.
50
		Reinhard Hütter, “God, the University, and the Missing Link—Wisdom:
Reflections on Two Untimely Books,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 271.
51
		ST II-II, q. 47, a. 5, ad 2.
48
49

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1229

all things because they have the breadth and depth of vision afforded
precisely by this kind of education. In a specifically Catholic context,
a code of moral conduct that is in accord with Catholic moral teaching serves to facilitate the practical expression of what is learned in
the lecture hall and hopefully to habituate students to the living out
of this teaching in their lives, lives that will ultimately make some
impact on the wider society, however small that impact might be.
Other elements that contribute to a distinctively Catholic ethos
include the cultivation both of a sense of the importance of personal
prayer and of a vibrant sacramental life. Again, these elements assist
in imparting an experience and vision of the world that is at least
implicitly communicated through the curriculum.
To return to a fundamental thrust of our argument, however, the
ability to appreciate and savor the true value of things is closely bound
up not only with recognizing their interrelatedness on account of
being effects of God as First Efficient Cause of all that exists but also
with acknowledging their ordering towards God as the Final End of
all that exists. For moral beings possessed of free will, the unity and
intelligibility of the universe resides not only in the creative efficient
causality of God but also in his final causation. In a Christian context,
the manner in which we move toward God as our Final Cause
receives a particular character in view of the teaching and example
of Jesus Christ and the transmission of this teaching in the Church’s
Tradition.
As we return to the source whence we have come, the possession
of free will means that we have the possibility of choosing among
competing proximate goods or ends as we pursue the unfolding of
our particular conceptions of what constitutes the good life. A tragic
aspect of human experience is, however, the real possibility of being
mistaken about what conduces to one’s objective flourishing or,
indeed, of not being mistaken but nonetheless opting for some course
of action that, on account of its disordered nature, deflects one’s
trajectory towards God.52 As Thomas maintains, there are some finite
goods that contain within them the capacity to deflect our attention
from our Final End. Let us not be mistaken: wealth, power, fame,
and so on are not bad things. They are goods. Wealth, in particular,
		This kind of action, in Thomas’s scheme of things, is nevertheless chosen
under the rubric of the good. In other words, while the agent recognizes its
objectively disordered nature, there is something in it that he finds attractive,
something that will, in some respect, fulfill him. Anything we choose, we
choose under the aspect of the good.

52

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when pursued appropriately, furnishes us with the one condition for
the attainment of the relative happiness of this life and of the good
of ultimate happiness to which all true goods in this life are ordered.
To pursue any finite good as an end in itself, however, deflects one
from the path that leads to the ultimate realization of one’s being in
eternal beatitude.
Such a pursuit also undermines the operation of true and perfect
prudence that requires right appetite concerning the true end of
human action.53 Thomas, in discussing whether prudence can be in
sinners, distinguishes three kinds of prudence: false prudence, true
prudence, and prudence that is true and perfect. The rationale for this
division is based on the fact that the operation of prudence takes its
starting point from the ends pursued by the moral agent. A prudent
man is one who disposes well of those things that need to be done in
order to attain a good end. False prudence entails disposing of such
things in view of an evil end, an end that “is good, not in truth but in
appearance.”54 True prudence is indeed concerned with an end good
in itself, yet it is imperfect from a twofold source: “First, because the
good which it takes for an end, is not the common end of all human
life but of some particular affair; thus when a man devises fitting
ways of conducting business or of sailing a ship, he is called a prudent
business-man, or a prudent sailor. Secondly, because he fails in the
chief act of prudence . . . [which is] to make an effective command.”55
True and perfect prudence, in contrast to the foregoing, “takes counsel, judges and commands aright in respect of the good end of man’s
whole life.”56 It is only in the light of the ultimate end of human
life that other more proximate ends can be ordered and appropriate
means proportioned to those ends pursued—which ultimate end
Thomas, like Newman, views in the light of Christian revelation.
An educational curriculum that purports to prepare students for
life cannot be true to its aim unless it is constructed in such a way as
to reflect the structure of the universe in terms of its ultimate origin
		By “the true end of human action” I mean the end whose attainment conduces
to objective human flourishing/happiness. As such, this end is ordered towards
ultimate happiness or beatitude—that is to say, the vision of God in eternity.
54
		ST II-II, q. 47, a. 13. Thus, continues Thomas, “a man is called a good robber,
and in this way we may speak of a prudent robber, by way of similarity, because
he devises fitting ways of committing robbery” (ibid.).
55
		Ibid. (punctuation amended). On command as the chief act of prudence, see
ST II-II, q. 47, a. 8.
56
		ST II-II, q. 47, a. 13.
53

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and end. In the case of a Catholic university, this aim receives further
specification in the light of Christian revelation in keeping with the
notion that grace perfects nature. Thus, Newman’s claims for the role
of theology in the university certainly stand vindicated when viewed
in a Thomistic light.57 If the educational curriculum is to be faithful
to the structure of reality, it must grant to theology an overarching
ordering role. As MacIntyre puts it in a discussion about Newman,
“if the curriculum is to have the unity that it needs to have, if it is to
disclose the unity of the order of things, then the discipline of theology is indispensable.” He continues: “For it is theology that provides
the curriculum with its unity and we will not understand the bearing
of the other disciplines on each other adequately, if we do not understand theology’s bearing on them and theirs on theology.”58
The next section of my present discussion turns to an examination
of ethical considerations by Newman—a treatment analogous to the
one we have just set forth—in order to show forth what ultimately
results in a vision of university education that converges with a
Thomistic account of the same. Contrary to a misunderstanding of
Newman as envisaging education to be concerned merely with the
formation of intellectual virtue and not moral virtue, he does in fact
recognize the intimate connection between intellectual and moral
formation and appreciates how the perfection or otherwise of the
intellectual virtues has a bearing on the moral tenor of society in
general. He is also aware of the distortions that inevitably attend a
purely secular ethics and, therefore, of the need for faith—and hence
for ecclesial jurisdiction over a Catholic university. This contention
seems to be in line with the insights afforded by hermeneutical
philosophy concerning the various factors that condition human
knowledge, with the important caveat that Newman would regard
faith as a criterion—indeed, the criterion—that secures the moorings
of epistemic objectivity.59
		Again, it must be emphasized that the vindication offered here is philosophical in nature, even though it bears on the place of theology in the university
curriculum.
58
		MacIntyre, “The Very Idea of a University,” 12.
59
		For an engagement of Thomas’s thought with contemporary hermeneutical
philosophy, see Kevin E. O’Reilly, “Transcending Gadamer: Towards a Participatory Hermeneutics,” The Review of Metaphysics 65 (September 2011–June
2012), 841–60. For a specifically theological treatment of Thomas’s thought
with contemporary hermeneutical thought, see O’Reilly, The Hermeneutics
of Knowing and Willing in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Leuven, BE: Peeters,
57

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The Practical Link between Knowledge and
Religious Morality
A superficial and incomplete reading of Newman’s The Idea of a University can easily make the mistake of discerning a subtle, but nonetheless
very important, point of difference between educational philosophy
as conceived by Newman, on the one hand, and a Thomistically
conceived educational philosophy, on the other hand. Central to this
erroneous interpretation is the following passage in which Newman
writes, “Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not
conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of
view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives
no command over the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying
principles. Liberal education makes not the Christian, nor the Catholic,
but the gentleman. . . . Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply the
cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or
less than intellectual excellence.”60 If this is read in isolation from the
broader context of Newman’s educational thought, it might seem that,
for Newman, a university education concentrates on the formation of
those intellectual virtues that perfect the intellect in its consideration
of truth but can lay no claim to the cultivation of virtue.
Newman goes on in “Discourse VIII” of the work, however,
to argue that the intellectual culture in society exerts an influence
upon our moral nature and “all upon the type of Christianity.”61
He lists a number of virtues that are the fruit of an intellectual
culture—“veracity, probity, equity, fairness, gentleness, benevolence,
and amiableness”62—albeit allowing that this culture requires “a soil
naturally adapted to virtue”63 for these character traits to develop. In
a striking turn of phrase, Newman writes: “It is enough to refer you,
Gentlemen, to the various Biographies and Remains of contemporaries and others, which from time to time issue from the press, to see
how striking is the action of our intellectual upon our moral nature,
where the moral material is rich, and the intellectual cast is perfect.”64
Newman also recognizes that the cultivation of the intellect affects
2013). For a treatment of the hermeneutical dynamics of Newman’s religious
thought, see Thomas K. Carr, Newman and Carr: Towards a Hermeneutics of Religious Knowledge (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996).
60
		Newman, The Idea of a University, 91–92.
61
		Ibid., 189.
62
		Ibid.
63
		Ibid., 190.
64
		Ibid.

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1233

not only the individual but society as well.65 In this regard, it is to be
noted, as Angelo Bottone remarks, that “the intellectual recreations
that are present in modern cities may lead to an advancement of the
social ethical tone.”66
At the same time, however, Newman proves to be acutely aware
of the distortions that inevitably attend an approach to ethics that
prescinds from religion. The intellectualism that underpins it may
well begin by repelling sensuality, but in fact “ends by excusing it.”67
Reason in fact needs faith if the morality that it inspires is not to go
astray. As Newman puts it: “Under the shadow indeed of the Church,
and in its due development, Philosophy does service to the cause of
morality.”68 In contrast, when reason asserts its independence of faith,
any system of ethics that it formulates and the moral education that it
imparts “does but abet evils to which at first it seemed instinctively
opposed.”69
Thus, while a university is, in essence, a place in which universal
knowledge is imparted, so that its object is necessarily intellectual
and not moral, it nevertheless cannot fulfil this end properly without the Church’s assistance. As Bottone explicates, while Newman
“has stated his belief in the theoretical autonomy of knowledge from
religious morality, he maintains that a practical link exists between
the two.” 70 We have, in fact, two modes of access to the moral law
that has its source in God. The first is by way of conscience that is
inscribed within our nature, enabling us to discriminate right from
wrong. The second is afforded to us by way of divine revelation
that enlightens, strengthens, and refines. Thus, Newman contends:
“Nature warrants without anticipating the Supernatural, and the
Supernatural completes without superseding Nature.” 71 As Bottone
		See ibid., 189: “Cheap literature, libraries of useful and entertaining knowledge, scientific lectureships, museums, zoological collections, buildings and
gardens to please the eye and to give repose to the feelings, external objects of
whatever kind, which may take the mind off itself, and expand and elevate it in
liberal contemplations, these are the human means, wisely suggested, and good
as far as they go, for at least parrying the assaults of moral evil, and keeping at
bay the enemies, not only of the individual soul, but of society at large.”
66
		Bottone, The Philosophical Habit of Mind, 192.
67
		Newman, The Idea of a University, 202.
68
		Ibid.
69
		Ibid.
70
		Bottone, The Philosophical Habit of Mind, 193.
71
		John Henry Newman, Rise and Progress of Universities, vol. 3 of Historical
Sketches (London / New York: Longman, Green and Co., 1909), 79; also avail65

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comments concerning these two modes of access to the moral law:
“They are interactive, recognising and bearing witness to each
other.” 72
Hence Newman’s conviction that the Church necessarily ought to
have an active jurisdiction over the university—otherwise there is the
danger that has all too often been realized in practice since Newman’s
time that the university becomes “the representative of the intellect,
as the Church is the representative of the religious principle.” 73 In
other words, a divorce between faith and reason ensues—to the detriment of both. As a result of this divorce, not only is natural reason and
its expression in moral conduct adversely affected, but so also is the
understanding of the faith. In brief, a university that operates on the
basis of a divorce between faith and reason has a tendency “to view
Revealed Religion from an aspect of its own,—to fuse and recast it,
to tune it, as it were, to a different key, and to reset its harmonies,—to
circumscribe it by a circle which unwarrantably amputates here, and
unduly develops there.” 74 In this regard it is not sufficient even that
“the whole of Catholic theology” should be taught in a university
“unless the Church breathes her own pure and unearthly spirit into
it, and fashions and moulds its organization, and watches over its
teaching, and knits together its pupils, and superintends its action.”75
The contention that the Church should exercise jurisdiction over
a Catholic university may be regarded, as Ian Ker points out, “as
hardly more than a specific application of the general principle that
a university is inevitably limited and defined by its concept of what
constitutes knowledge and truth.” 76 Consequently, Newman’s insistence on ecclesial control ought not to be construed as being in any
way sinister. He certainly does not envisage the university as being a
mere instrument of the Church.77 His insistence on ecclesial authorable at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/historical/volume3/universities/chapter7.html (last accessed August 3, 2016).
72
		Bottone, The Philosophical Habit of Mind, 194.
73
		Newman, The Idea of a University, 215.
74
		Ibid., 217.
75
		Ibid., 216.
76
		Ian Ker, John Henry Newman (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988),
389.
77
		See Newman, The Idea of a University, ix: “The view taken of a University in
these Discourses is the following:That it is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies that its object is, on the one hand, intellectual, not moral;
and, on the other, that it is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather

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ity simply serves to remind us that “a university must teach all the
knowledge it professes to teach—in accordance with its idea of what
constitutes knowledge—unequivocally and without compromise.”78
Thus, while Newman’s position might seem at first sight to be simply
theological, further reflection reveals its theological elements to be
perfections of a basic philosophical stance with regard to knowledge and truth. It is arguably an instance of grace perfecting nature.
Nature—in this case, university education—still remains, however;
it is in no way annulled.
Newman, in his University Sketches, indicates how he construes the
practical structures of a university that would function according to
his ideals. There it is clear that the university constituted according
to his vision is structured in a collegiate manner. The various colleges
within the framework of the university concern themselves with “the
than the advancement. If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery,
I do not see why a University should have students; if religious training, I do
not see how it can be the seat of literature and science. Such is a University
in its essence, and independently of its relation to the Church. But, practically
speaking, it cannot fulfil its object duly, such as I have described it, without the
Church’s assistance; or, to use the theological term, the Church is necessary for
its integrity. Not that its main characters are changed by this incorporation:
it still has the office of intellectual education; but the Church steadies it in
the performance of that office.” See also Dulles, Newman, 141: “For Newman
the university is not a mere instrument of the Church. It requires a measure
of autonomy because it has its own proper end, distinct from that of the
Church. Its specific aim is not the salvation of souls but higher education.”
Further on, Dulles comments that the university “exercises sovereignty over
the various disciplines, maps out their respective territories, and adjudicates
disputes among them. But the sovereignty of the university, in Newman’s view
is limited. Insofar as grace and revelation are superior to nature and reason, the
Church, which is sovereign in speaking about these higher realms, has a certain
authority over the Catholic university. The infallible pronouncements of the
Church must be accepted without question” (ibid.).
78
		Ker, John Henry Newman, 389. Elsewhere, Ker writes that Newman likens the
Church and the university “to political organisms, where the many individuals
are brought into unity, not uniformity, and where the conflict of the various
parts ensures and enhances their own vitality. Both paradoxically bring peace
and harmony out of the very rivalry which they encourage, by fostering
‘Private Judgment’ in the one case, and the different branches of knowledge
in the other. Both preserve and promote freedom of thought not in spite of
but by virtue of the authority which each exercises in defence of the whole
circle of truth against individual aberrations and excesses”; see his “Editor’s
Introduction,” in John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, ed. Ian Ker
(Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1976), lxxv.

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formation of character, intellectual and moral”79 among other things.
Newman does not conceive a university without colleges or colleges
standing alone as sufficient for the educational task as he understands
it. Either the university or the college on its own would be “insufficient in itself for the pursuit, extension, and inculcation of knowledge.”80 The ideal would seem to be “a University, seated and living
in Colleges, as possessing excellences of opposite kinds.”81 In My
Campaign in Ireland, moreover, Newman indicates his appreciation of
the role that an ethos of faith and devotion plays in the educational
endeavor. Thus, he emphasizes the role of the university church and
university preacher: “I cannot well exaggerate the influence, which
		John Henry Newman, University Sketches, ed. Michael Tierney (London /
Newcastle-on-Tyne, UK: Walter Scott Publishing, 1903), 222. In this regard,
Melanie M. Morey and John M. Piderit, S.J., point out that “The self-perpetuating and formative collegiate culture Newman describes has its modern
parallels in residence halls in Catholic colleges and universities”; see Catholic
Higher Education: A Culture in Crisis (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2006), 143. Morey and Piderit then proceed to echo concerns surrounding
the health of these halls: “Senior administrators would acknowledge . . . that
in many instances, modern residence hall living is a far cry from the positive
reinforcement Newman describes. What appears to prevail in many residence
halls is a shadow culture that is antithetical to Catholic teachings” (ibid.).
Morey and Piderit consider two manifestations of this shadow culture:
substance abuse (ibid., 145–46) and sexual intimacy (ibid., 146–48). As distinctive features of the wider culture in the contemporary Western world, neither
would have posed the same difficulties for a Catholic university intent on
maintaining its distinctive ethos in the time of Newman as they do for Catholic universities in our own time. Morey and Piderit conclude the section on
substance abuse with the a Newmanian injunction: “The rules of a Catholic
university should reflect the moral teachings of the Church, and the formation
programs should invite students to understand the wisdom of these teachings”
(ibid., 146). In concluding their discussion of sexual intimacy, they write:
“Clearly, a Catholic university should act against . . . abuses, both to educate
students about the teachings of the Church concerning intimacy and to
uphold those teachings. . . .The Catholic university educates the whole person,
and an important part of that educational mission involves helping students
understand and appreciate relational justice, what constitutes appropriate limits
and boundaries in relationships, the true meaning of relational intimacy and
friendship, and the importance of lifelong commitment as the context for
loving sexual expressions between man and women. When students disregard
these norms, university authorities should act to support the Catholic culture”
(ibid., 148).
80
		Ibid., 221.
81
		Ibid.
79

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1237

a series of able preachers, distinguished by their station and their
zeal, will exert upon the young men entering into life, externs and
interns, and the students of various professions, who will constitute
the mass of University residents.”82 He continues by stating that this
institution “will force the University upon public notice, and raise it
in public estimation by the presence of the most sacred of all schools,
the school of faith and devotion.”83 As David Fleischacker comments:
“[B]ecause of the close unity of culture and the university, university
church and preacher are a profound center in which spiritual realities
are illuminated in the context of faith and reason, and then brought
forth into the horizon of a culture.”84
Conclusion
If the argument I have put forward is correct, a Thomistic construal
of the university educational enterprise will naturally flower in the
manner envisaged by Newman, and his vision of university education
presupposes a metaphysical vision that is essentially Thomistic. The
Thomistic and Newmanian elements of the educational enterprise
are related as foundation and phenomenon respectively. There can,
however, be absolutely no guarantee that any curriculum that is predicated on a Thomistic understanding of prudence and construed along
the lines proposed by Newman will produce virtuous citizens who will
seek the good both of their society and of the whole world in the light
of humankind’s ultimate destiny. It has certainly not been my intention
to make such an untenable claim here. Recognition of the connection
between the intellectual and moral virtues by way of prudence does,
however, entail the necessity of putting into place in the curriculum
components that will, if appropriated, conduce to the fulfillment of
those conditions that are necessary for the true flourishing of students
and, by extension, of society at large, as well as cultivating an ethos
hospitable to the realization of these conditions in the lives of students.
Most fundamental among all these conditions is the recognition
of God as the First Efficient Cause of all that exists and God as the
Final End to which all being tends. These conditions may well not
be actualized in actual practice, but they will always remain at least
		John Henry Cardinal Newman, My Campaign in Ireland, part I: Catholic University Reports and Other Papers (Aberdeen, UK: A. King and Co., 1896), 24.
83
		Ibid.
84
		David Fleischacker, “The Place of Modern Scientific Research in the University According to John Henry Newman,” Logos 15 (2012): 110.
82

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in potency to actualization. While these conditions may well not be
actualized in practice, the cultivation of an appropriate ethos in the
manner envisaged by Newman can be rightly considered an important—indeed, indispensable—facilitating factor. The absence of those
curricular components that promote the conditions that are indispensable for that attainment of true human happiness simply means
that they can never be translated into action and that the enterprises
of individual lives, as well as that of the common good, will inevitably go astray, and perhaps badly so. The absence of an appropriate
ethos inevitably vitiates the realization of the fruits that a well-structured curriculum is designed to cultivate.
When both the suitable curricular conditions and appropriate
ethos are in place, the seeds of hope for the future are sown, seeds
that will likely bear some kind of fruit. Indeed, given the powerful
influence that the university exerts on the shaping of society at large,
a curriculum constructed according to the vision of reality espoused
in this article (a vision that is shared in common by Aquinas and
Newman, albeit articulated by them in quite different ways) and an
ethos proportioned to the demands of the curricular structure and
content (as implicitly contained in the principles of Thomas’s thought
and as delineated by Newman) can only serve to safeguard and to
N&V
promote the moral fabric of society.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1239–1269

Brain Death and Organ Removal: Revisiting a
High-Stakes Question1
Bernard N. Schumacher
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

The irreversible cessation of all brain activity as a
criterion for death, including that of the brain stem, was suggested in
1968 by the now famous report of an ad hoc committee at Harvard
Medical School. For several years now, this criterion has once again
been the object of rather well-publicized critical reflection, chiefly in
the Anglo-Saxon world and, more recently, in the German-speaking
world. The German philosopher Ralf Stoecker has even gone so
far as to assert, during his March 21, 2012, speech to the German
Ethical Council (Deutscher Ethikrat): “To my knowledge there is no
convincing argument for the validity of the concept of brain death,
today even less than in 1997,”2 the year in which Germany authorized
the removal of organs from a human being whose death had been
certified according to this cerebral criterion. In opposition to those
who say that medical science has succeeded in proving the appropriateness of the brain-death criterion, he concluded that “recourse to
the concept of brain death today, moreover, is no longer sufficient to
determine whether or not it is permissible to remove organs.”3 He
		My special thanks to my wife Michele M. Schumacher for her very insightful
comments and to Michael J. Miller for his translation.
2
		Ralf Stoecker, “Der Hirntod aus ethischer Sicht,” last accessed, August 2,
2016, http://www.ethikrat.org/dateien/pdf/fb-21-03-2012-stoecker-referat.
pdf: “Es gibt meines Wissens kein überzeugendes Argument für die Gültigkeit
der Hirntod-Konzeption, heute noch weniger als 1997.”
3
		Ibid.: “Der Rückgriff auf die Hirntod-Konzeption heute ohnehin nicht mehr
1

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Bernard N. Schumacher

therefore considers the debate about brain death “useless.”4
His position is not an isolated case. It is along the same lines as the
stance taken by a number of Anglo-Saxon physicians, legal scholars, and philosophers who have expressed serious doubts as to the
legitimacy of the brain-death criterion. “No plausible and coherent
account has been advanced to explain why brain-dead patients are
dead,”5 the American bioethicist Franklin G. Miller had explained
three years earlier, following his colleague Robert D. Truog, who
thinks that “the concept of brain death is seriously problematic.”6
The American philosopher Don Marquis ratchets up the rhetoric:
“The orthodox legal definition of death is indefensible.” 7 Brain death
is likewise described by the American bioethicist Robert M. Veatch
as being “old-fashioned” and “less and less plausible,”8 all the more
so because, as the American physician Ari Joffe notes, “When one
examines the rationale for BD being death itself, it is surprisingly
hard to justify.”9
This school of thought denounces the fact that the brain-death
criterion was implemented in order to correspond to actual praxis. It
is said to be, in the final analysis, a “legal fiction”10 or “convenient”11
ausreicht, um die Zulässigkeit von Organentnahmen zu klären.”
		Ralf Stoecker, “Der Tod als Voraussetzung der Organspende?” Zeitschrift für
medizinische Ethik 58.2 (2012): 99–116, at 113: “fruchtlosen.”
5
		Franklin G. Miller, “Death and Organ Donation: Back to the Future,” Journal
of Medical Ethics 35.10 (2009): 616–20, at 619.
6
		Robert D. Truog, “Brain Death–Too Flawed to Endure, Too Ingrained to
Abandon,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 35.2 (2007): 273–81, at 280.
7
		Don Marquis, “Abortion and the Beginning and End of Human Life,” Journal
of Law, Medicine & Ethics (Spring 2006): 16–25, at 21.
8
		Robert M. Veatch, Transplantation Ethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press, 2000), 139.
9
		Ari Joffe, “Are Recent Defenses of the Brain Death Concept Adequate?”
Bioethics 24.2 (2010): 47–53, at 47.
10
		See Seema K. Shah and Franklin G. Miller, “Can we handle the Truth?”
American Journal of Law and Medicine 36.4 (2010): 540–85, at 542: “Instead, the
determination of death has been modified to fit our current practices, thereby
creating legal fictions. . . . invoking legal fictions about donors being dead
[whole brain dead] when, in fact, they are alive or not known to be dead.”
See also Stuart J. Youngner and Robert M. Arnold , “Philosophical Debates
About the Definition of Death: Who Cares?” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
26.5 (2001): 527–37, at 535: “We no longer need the fiction of brain death to
facilitate termination of treatment.”
11
		Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 35.
4

Brain Death and Organ Removal

1241

along the lines of what the German philosopher Dieter Birnbacher
very recently described as a psychological “strategy of suppression”12
or, as the German legal scholar Wolfgang Höfling put it, an “illusory
self-deception.”13 The American physician Robert Taylor points out
the fact that we know perfectly well that persons who are declared
brain dead are actually alive but that we want to consider them dead.
The criterion of brain death, these thinkers say, is ultimately a societal
construct and not a truth based on reason and science.14
These authors wish to break the taboo that surrounds any questioning of the brain-death criterion. The refusal to take into consideration even the hypothetical possibility of an error in this regard was
illustrated by recent medical-ethical guidelines issued by the Swiss
Academy of Medical Sciences (Académie suisse des Sciences médicales,
or ASSM) with regard to the “Diagnosis of death in the context of
organ transplantation.”15
Why this silence and refusal even to reargue the legitimacy of
the brain-death criterion? If we were to find that it was wrong (i.e.
		Dieter Birnbacher, “Das Hirntodkriterium in der Krise—welche Todesdefinition ist angemessen?” in Welchen Tod stirbt der Mensch? Philosophische Kontroversen zur Definition und Bedeutung des Todes, ed. Andrea Esser, Daniel Kersting,
and Christoph G. W. Schäfer (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2012), 19–40, at
36: “eine Verdrängungsstrategie.”
13
		Wolfgang Höfling, “Tot oder lebendig—tertium non datur. Eine Verfassungsrechtliche Kritik der Hirntotkonzeption,” Zeitschrift für medizinische Ethik 58.2
(2012): 163–72, at 169: “illusionäre Selbsttäuschung.”
14
		Robert M. Taylor, “Reexamining the Definition and Criterion of Death,”
Seminars in Neurology 17 (1997): 265–70, at 269: “The whole-brain criteria of
death is also a social construct, distinct from biological death, created to serve
a utilitarian social purpose.” See Marquis, “Abortion and the Beginning and
End of Human Life,” 23 : “Consider now a brain dead patient in whom, with
ventilator support, respiratory and circulatory functions continue. Because she
is still a (minimally) integrated biological organism, she is still alive. Because
to remove her vital organs for transplantation is to kill her, bioethicists have
endorsed bad arguments for the view that such individuals are dead, in order
to justify transplantation.” See also Alan D. Shewmon, “Brain Death: Can It Be
Resuscitated?” Hastings Center Report, 39.2 (2009), 18–24, at 19.
15
		Académie Suisse des Sciences médicales, Diagnostic de la mort dans le contexte
de la transplantation d’organes: Directives medico-éthiques (Muttenz, CH: Schwabe,
July 2011). These guidelines were approved by the Senate of the ASSM on
May 24, 2011. Although the bibliography mentions the famous report by
the President’s Council on Bioethics in the United States—Controversies in
the Determination of Death: A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics (Washington, DC, December 2008)—which enters into the debate, the
substance of this report is not analyzed at all.
12

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Bernard N. Schumacher

illegitimate), people often say, it would have disastrous implications
for the removal and transplantation of vital organs at a time when
we see an ever-increasing shortage of donors. On the other hand,
the continuation of this practice would be tantamount to approval
of putting living persons to death and, in the final analysis, of using
them only as means to an end for the benefit of other persons—or to
quote the very telling image of the German philosopher Hans Jonas,
approval of engaging in the “vivisection”16 of a person under the best
possible conditions so as to procure his organs and tissues.
Indeed, the removal of vital organs presupposes, as a general rule,
the death of the person; it is based on the Dead Donor Rule. As the
ASSM explains, “when organs are removed, what is being manipulated is the corpse of a deceased person,”17 not a living human
organism.
This principle is based on the moral principle that requires us to
treat every human being in terms of Kant’s second categorical imperative, as an end in himself and never merely as a means.18 No price
can be set on a human being. He transcends any attempt to exploit
him, as is reaffirmed throughout Human Dignity and Bioethics, the
recent report issued by the Bioethics Council at the request of the
President of the United States. Hence he should not be killed in order
to guarantee the wellbeing of other persons.
The recent report by the US President’s Council on Bioethics on
the topic of death, published in December 2008, takes up the current
controversy surrounding the brain-death criterion. Here is what it
says: “If indeed it is the case that there is no solid scientific or philosophical rationale for the current ‘whole brain standard’ then the
only ethical course is to stop procuring organs from heart-beating
		Hans Jonas, “Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human
Subjects,” in Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man (New
York: Atropos Press, 2010), 107–33, at 131.
17
		Diagnostic de la mort, 19: “lors du prélèvement d’organes, c’est le corps d’un
défunt qui est manipulé.”
18
		See Emmanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton
(New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 96: “Act in such a way that you always
treat humanity whether in your onw person or in the person of any other,
never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end”; the German
original can be found in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten in Gesammelte
Schriften, Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 23 volumes
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902), 4:387–463, at 429: “ Handle so, daß du die
Menschheit, sowohl in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden andern,
jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloß als Mittel brauchest. ”
16

Brain Death and Organ Removal

1243

individuals.”19 Is this argument justified? Should we not reframe the
debate so as to situate it exclusively on the ethical level by abolishing
the requirement of the Dead Donor Rule, as Stoecker and Birnbacher
suggest, following Anglo-Saxon thinkers of the utilitarian school?
Or, on the contrary, should we not admit that the question of the
ethical legitimacy of removing vital organs is based, after all, on a
philosophical anthropology, ultimately on a definition of human
death, which would be accompanied by scientific/medical thinking
to determine the criterion that would enable us to be certain about
the moment when death occurs?
In order to determine more clearly what is currently at stake in
the brain-death criterion associated with the removal of vital organs,
I will present, in an initial section, very succinctly, the challenges
to this criterion formulated particularly by those who defend the
criterion of brain stem death and of neocortical death. (A third position, which I will not discuss here but which could be described as
post-modern and relativistic, consists of letting each individual and
each community freely choose the criterion of death that suits him
or it best.) Then I will continue with what these positions imply
with respect to the removal of vital organs. In my second section, I
will develop a fourth position that is based mainly on the empirical
study of cases of persons who are considered dead according to the
brain-death criterion but who apparently continue to live; that is,
they independently manifest an integral organic unity. I will discuss
the validity of this new criterion of death based on the permanent
cessation of circulatory and respiratory systems. Finally, citing the
principle of precaution, whereby in a doubtful case one should decide
in favor of the likelihood of the presence of a human life, I will study
several consequences resulting from the removal and transplantation
of organs. I will present first the arguments for shifting the debate
from the anthropological and medical level to the ethical level exclusively, which involves abolishing the requirement of the Dead Donor
Rule, thus making possible the removing of vital organs. However,
this transfer to the ethical level paradoxically necessitates recourse to
a certain anthropology. Distancing myself from such a position, I will
suggest shifting the debate to the level of a discussion of therapeutic
obstinacy (obstination déraisonnable), which accompanies the removal
of organs in the particular situation of controlled cardiac arrest of
persons who are considered brain dead.
		Controversies in the Determination of Death, 12.

19

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Bernard N. Schumacher

Criteria for Death Based on the Death of the Brain Stem
and Neocortical Death
The brain-death criterion is based on the fact that the different parts
of the brain (the brain stem, the neocortex, and the cerebellum)
have stopped functioning irreversibly. Very swiftly, two camps formed
that tried to call this criterion into question on the basis of a dualist
anthropology. Their advocates presuppose a radical distinction between
the human organism, on the one hand, and the human person, on the
other.
Those in the first camp say that death is above all a biological
phenomenon corresponding to the irreversible cessation of the interactive functioning of the organism understood as a unity.20 Death
occurs, therefore, when the brain stem definitively ceases to function
by itself (brain stem death). This death occurs on the biological level
only, not at all on the level of the spiritual faculties of the human
being.
Those in the second camp define death as the irreversible loss of
what is essential not to the organism but to the person. They make
a fundamental distinction between “human being” and “person.”
As the American philosopher John Lizza puts it, “the criteria for the
death of a person or human being will therefore be determined by
the loss of whatever properties are deemed essential to the nature of
persons or human beings.”21 This presupposes that a person is not
defined by his corporeality but exclusively by the exercise of certain
personal faculties, such as self-consciousness and reason, freedom and
responsibility, and the ability to project oneself as a subject into the
future and to express one’s interests consciously. A person is then
considered as deceased when he no longer exercises these personal
faculties and this state is irreversible—in other words, when his
neocortex is destroyed—even if his physical organism continues to
live.
The American philosopher Jeff McMahan nicely summarizes this
point of view. According to him, “it is entirely natural to say that a
person dies when he ceases to exist [i.e., to have self- consciousness],
		See, for example, Charles M. Culver and Bernard Gert, Philosophy in Medicine
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1982); Fred Feldman, Confrontations
with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 1992); and David Lamb, Death, Brain Death and
Ethics (London: Croom Helm, 1985).
21
		John Lizza, Persons, Humanity, and the Definition of Death (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2006), 32.
20

Brain Death and Organ Removal

1245

even if his organism remains alive.”22 Such an organism would be, to
use an expression of the American bioethicist Tristram Engelhardt, a
“biologically living corpse.”23
What consequences can be drawn from this criterion of death
based on a dualist anthropology that refers, in the final analysis, to a
Lockean definition of the human person? 24 It would be permissible
to remove organs from human organisms that were not or were no
longer persons, for they would be considered dead on the personal
level. This would mean not only anencephalic infants but also, Engelhardt emphasizes, “infants, the retarded, adults, and the senile,”25
as well as a human being in an irreversible “vegetative” state. In
fact, because such human beings do not—or no longer—exercise
the so-called personal faculties, they are considered as being merely
human organisms and not—or no longer—as persons. Furthermore,
the Dead Donor Rule would be respected, since we would no longer
be dealing with a living person. The reason underlying the introduction of this criterion of the death follows from utilitarian pragmatism (among other things), for we are talking here about a direct,
economic method: “The simplest way of achieving the desirable end
of allowing organs to be taken from these infants,”26 the Australian
philosopher Peter Singer emphasizes. Such statements go against
common sense and are profoundly counterintuitive. Setting up a
priori the veracity of a dualist anthropology that reduces the person
to the actual exercise of a certain number of personal faculties, they
introduce a fundamental inequality—which could even be called a
		Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2002), 425. He also writes that, “If one ceases to be a person in this sense [i.e.
ceases to exercise self-awareness and reason], he or she ceases to exist” (ibid.,
45).
23
		H. Tristram Engelhardt, The Foundations of Bioethics (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 1996), 248.
24
		The Lockean person is defined by the exercise of self-consciousness, without regard for any substance, whether corporal or spiritual, see John Locke,
“Identity and Diversity, ” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. II,
ch. 27 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979), 328–48. For a critique
of this dualist anthropological position that is explicitly based on John Locke’s
definition of the person, see Bernard N. Schumacher, “La Personne comme
conscience de soi performante au cœur du débat bioéthique: Analyse critique
de la position de John Locke,” Laval théologique et philosophique 64.3 (2008):
709–43.
25
		Engelhardt, Foundations of Bioethics, 250.
26
		Singer, Rethinking Life and Death, 47.
22

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Bernard N. Schumacher

new racism—within the human family and end up justifying the
exploitation of the human being by his peers in the name of a new
criterion: the non-exercise of those faculties.
Death as Permanent Cessation of
Circulatory-Respiratory Function
Another frontal attack against the brain-death criterion follows when
one takes into account a number of cases examined empirically by the
American physician Alan Shewmon. He noticed that some persons—
fifteen years ago he had counted 175 of them—who were considered
dead according to the brain-death criterion would continue to live. As
of the time of the publication of his research, the duration of their lives
after diagnosis ranged from one week to more than fifteen years. He
observed that these persons continued to activate some bodily functions that he deemed to be of the integrating sort for the benefit of
the organism’s unity, thanks of course to the assistance of an artificial
ventilator, but also of a feeding tube and nursing care. Among these
functions are, in particular: (1) respiration (described by the American
physician not as the circulation of air in and out of the lungs, which
is the role assigned by the brain stem to the diaphragm, but as the
metabolic exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, which proves to
be more crucial to ensuring integrative unity), (2) nutrition (described
by Shewmon not as something dependent on the mouth and pharynx
as coordinated by the brain, but as the reduction of food into elementary forms that are burned to produce energy or assimilated into the
structure of the body), (3) the heartbeat, (4) the circulation of blood,
(5) digestion, (6) the maintenance of body temperature, (7) the ability
to heal a wound, (8) defense against infections and foreign bodies, but
also (9) the intrauterine life of a fetus and his or her birth. Moreover,
healthcare professionals in intensive care units find that a large number
of these persons who are brain dead sometimes require much less technological assistance, or even less care, than many sick or dying patients
present in those same units. Furthermore, some persons who had been
considered brain dead have left the hospital to go back home, where
they receive from then on the care that they need.27
		See Alan Shewmon, “‘Brainstem Death’, ‘Brain Death’ and Death: A Critical
Re-Evaluation of the Purported Equivalence,” Issues in Law and Medicine 14.2
(1998), 125–45, at 138–39, and his “Brain Death: Can It Be Resuscitated?”
19. Concerning the intrauterine life of a fetus and its birth, see Patrick Yeung,
Christopher McManus, and Jean-Gilles Tchabo, “Extended Somatic Support
for a Pregnant Women with Brain Death from Metastatic Malignant Mela-

27

Brain Death and Organ Removal

1247

Shewmon states that a human being is defined from an anthropological perspective as a holistic, integrative unity within which the
nervous, hormonal, and immune systems do not have the brain as
their center. Hence, in order to function, not all the organs depend
on the brain, although certainly it does foster the optimal exercise
of the various integrative organic systems. The American physician
explains that “far from constituting a ‘central integrator,’ without
which the body reduces to a mere bag of organs, the brain serves
as modulator, fine-tuner, optimizer, enhancer, and protector of an
implicitly already existing intrinsically mediated somatic unity. Integrative unity is not a top-down imposition from a ‘central integrator’ on
an otherwise unintegrated collection of organs. . . . Rather, it is a
non-localized, holistic property founded on the mutual interaction among
all the parts of the body.”28 A patient who is dead according to the
brain-death criterion but whose organism nevertheless exhibits the
activity of a certain number of bodily functions is not properly speaking considered dead, but rather as very sick or possibly as dying.29
Taking into consideration these empirical cases and interpreting
these bodily functions as integrative are defended by two groups
that cite several definitions of the human persons. Asserting that
every human being is fundamentally a human person, the first group
declares that a person is not dead until the moment when “the circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems (the three most important
vital systems of the body) have been destroyed.”30 It is interesting to
note that the second group is made up of a number of advocates of the
noma: A Case Report,” Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine 21.7
(2008), 509–11, and David J. Powner and Ira M. Bernstein, “Extended Somatic
Support for Pregnant Women after Brain Death,” Critical Care Medicine 31.4
(2003), 1241–49.
28
		Shewmon, “‘Brainstem Death’, ‘Brain Death’ and Death,” 140.
29
		See Alan Shewmon, “The Brain and Somatic Integration: Insights into the
Standard Biological Rationale for Equating ‘Brain Death’ with Death,” Journal
of Medicine and Philosophy 26.5 (2001): 457–78, at 464–72.
30
		Michael Potts, Paul A. Byrne, and Richard G. Nilges, ”Introduction,” in Beyond
Brain Death: The Case against Brain Based Criteria for Human Death (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Press, 2000), 1–20, at 2–3. See also Michael Potts, “A
Requiem for Whole Brain Death: A Response to D. Alan Shewmon’s ‘The
Brain and Somatic Integration,’” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 26.5 (2001),
479–91; Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, “In Defense of the Loss of Bodily
Integrity as a Criterion for Death: A Response to the Radical Capacity Argument,” The Thomist 73.4 (2009), 647–59; and Finis Vitæ: Is ‘‘Brain Death‘’ True
Death? ed. Roberto de Mattei and Paul A. Byrne (Oregon, OH: Life Guardian
Foundation, 2009).

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Bernard N. Schumacher

neocortical death criterion. The latter insist, however, on qualifying
their position under the pretext of their anthropological dualism,
saying that this alternate criterion of death applies only to the death
of the human being, as characterized by his organism, and not at all
to the death of the person. McMahan, for example, says that “brain
death is neither necessary nor sufficient for the cessation of integrated
functioning in the organism as a whole.”31
Besides the arguments citing Shewmon’s cases, one can moreover emphasize that the brain-death criterion implies that human
life exists only when the brain is functioning. From this premise it
follows that the human embryo would not be considered as a living
individual until four to eight weeks after conception, but rather at
most as an assemblage of various isolated organs.32 It is commonly
admitted, however, in the case of the embryo, that we have before
us a particular living human being characterized (1) by an integrative
function that is not regulated by the brain and (2) by the inability to
breathe, as McMahan33, Marquis34, Shewmon35 and even the embryologist Günter Rager agree in saying. The last-mentioned author
explains that “the embryo directs its own vital functions autonomously from the zygote stage. It shows that it is a unified system capable of self-organization.”36 The embryo is more than a simple mass of
cells because, from the moment of fertilization, it displays continuous
development without quantum leaps. It “possesses the active potential
of its further development. It will pursue that development by itself,
		McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 429; see also 434. See also David DeGrazia,
Human Identity and Bioethics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 149.
32
		This is the argument proposed by Hans-Martin Sass in “The Moral Significance of Brain-Life Criteria,” in The Beginning of Human Life, ed. Fritz K.
Beller and Robert F. Weir (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994),
57–70, at 63. See also Baruch Brody, Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: A
Philosophical View (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976), 112.
33
		See McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 437, and his “An Alternative to Brain
Death,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 34.1 (2006), 44–48, at 46.
34
		See Marquis, “Abortion and the Beginning and End of Human Life,” 19–20.
35
		See the position taken by Shewmon with respect to the Presidential Report
Controversies in the Determination of Death in “Brain Death: Can It Be Resuscitated?” 20.
36
		Günter Rager, “Données biologiques et réflexions sur la personne,” in L’humain et la personne, ed. François-Xavier Putallaz and Bernard N. Schumacher
(Paris: Cerf, 2008), 97–114, at 100: “L’embryon dirige ses propres fonctions
vitales, dès le stade du zygote, de façon autonome. Il montre qu’il est un
système unifié capable d’auto-organisation.”
31

Brain Death and Organ Removal

1249

without depending on someone else for it.”37 As for the German
philosopher Birnbacher, he explains that:
If one defines—with Michael Quante—the essential characteristic of life, understood biologically, as self-organization with
the help of external resources, then the processes of self-organization that occur in the embryo and the fetus with the help
of the mother’s uterus are not substantially different from the
processes of self-organization that occur in the body of a braindead person with the help of a mechanical ventilator. It would
be contradictory to allow the organic life of the embryo and
the fetus to be considered “genuine” life, but not the life of the
brain-dead individual being artificially ventilated. Self-organization means that the parts of the organism work together in
a coordinated way. This condition is likewise fulfilled in both
cases. The process of self-organization in both cases depends on
external resources for its maintenance.38
A third argument in favor of the thesis that a brain-dead human
being is alive makes reference to the nervous system. As long as the
nervous system is present in the tissues throughout the human organism, the latter can be considered living. Now, there is no nervous
system in the embryo. One could nevertheless say that it is living
		Ibid., 103: “. . .possède la potentialité active de son développement ultérieur. Il
la poursuivra par lui-même, sans dépendre pour cela d’un autre.”
38
		 Birnbacher,“Das Hirntodkriterium in der Krise,” 29–30:“Bestimmt man—mit
Michael Quante—die wesentliche Eigenschaft des biologisch verstandenen
Lebens als die Selbstorganisation unter Zuhilfenahme äußerer Ressourcen,
unterscheiden sich die Prozesse der Selbstorganisation, die in Embryo und
Fötus unter Zuhilfenahme des mütterlichen Uterus ablaufen, nicht wesentlich
von den im Körper eines Hirntoten ablaufenden Prozessen der Selbstorganisation unter Zuhilfenahme eines Beatmungsgeräts. Es wäre widersprüchlich, das
organismische Leben des Embryos und des Fötus als ‘echtes’ Leben gelten zu
lassen, nicht aber das Leben des Hirntoten unter künstlicher Beatmung. Selbstorganisation bedeutet, dass die Teile des Organismus koordiniert zusammenwirken. Diese Bedingung ist in beiden Fällen gleichermaßen erfüllt. In beiden
Fällen hängt der Prozess der Selbstorganisation zu seiner Aufrechterhaltung
von äußeren Ressourcen ab.” See also Birnbacher, “ Der Hirntod—der Tod? ”
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 60.3 (2012): 422–23, at 422, and “Der Hirntod—eine pragmatische Verteidigung,” Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik 16 (2007):
459–77, at 467–68. See also Michael Quante, Personales Leben und menschlicher
Tod: Personale Identität als Prinzip der biomedizinischen Ethik (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2002), 69–70 and 152–53.
37

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Bernard N. Schumacher

inasmuch as it has the capacity in its ontological structure, in its very
nature, to generate such a system.
The presentation of Shewmon’s cases and their interpretation has
had a profound impact, not only on some proponents of the neocortical thesis but also, and more particularly, on the recent report of the
US President’s Council on Bioethics, Controversies in the Determination
of Death. The members of this council acknowledge unequivocally
that patients who have been diagnosed as having irreversibly lost all
brain function but have a certain somatic integrity call into question
the statement that their organism is nothing but a disordered collection of organs. Indeed, this report leaves no doubt about it: “If being
alive as a biological organism requires being a whole that is more than
the mere sum of its parts, then it would be difficult to deny that the
body of a patient with total brain failure can still be alive, at least in
some cases.”39
The contributors to the presidential report, however, did not
intend to adopt the position developed by Shewmon. Having opted
instead for a shift in emphasis in the criterion for death, they suggest
considering a person dead by referring no longer to the notion of
integration and to the erroneous supposition that the brain integrates
vital functions, but rather to the essential work of the living individual. Hence, death occurs when the body in its organic unity irreversibly ceases to perform its function or its duty—“the fundamental vital
work of a living organism”40 —in other words, when it is no longer
capable of being open to the world and of acting to obtain what it
		See President’s Council on Bioethics in the United States, Controversies in
the Determination of Death, 57. The report also clarifies (44–45) that “Patients
diagnosed with total brain failure may retain certain limited brain functions
(such as the secretion of ADH to regulate urine output), and they certainly
retain enough somatic integrity to challenge claims that the body immediately
becomes ‘a disorganized collection of organs’ once the brainstem is disabled. In
addition, advances in intensive care techniques, displayed in cases of prolonged
somatic ‘survival’ after ‘whole brain death,’ challenge claims that the body
cannot continue in its artificially supported state beyond a short window of
time.”
40
		Ibid., 60: “With that account, death remains a condition of the organism as a
whole and does not, therefore, merely signal the irreversible loss of so-called
higher mental functions. But reliance on the concept of ‘integration’ is abandoned and with it the false assumption that the brain is the ‘integrator’ of
vital functions. Determining whether an organism remains a whole depends
on recognizing the persistence or cessation of the fundamental vital work of a
living organism—the work of self-preservation, achieved through the organism’s need-driven commerce with the surrounding world.”
39

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1251

needs.41 The intention of most contributors was to say that the cases
of brain-dead persons described by Shewmon fit this new definition
[of when death occurs]. Thus they could be considered dead and their
organs could be removed for the purpose of transplantation.
One could make a counterargument, however, by saying that
these persons still interact with the external world by dint of their
ability to maintain the functions of blood circulation and digestion,
and also that of growth. Although they surely have lost the exercise
of self-consciousness and interaction with others at the moral and
intellectual level, they have nonetheless not lost their faculties that are
essential in staying alive, which necessarily involves interacting with
their environment.
One can likewise ask whether the intention that prevailed in shifting the criterion for death is not to be sought primarily in the pressure that is being exerted for the purpose of facilitating the removal of
organs, because of a strong demand. Such an option would be counterintuitive because it seems to confirm the development of an ethic
that is subject to the interests of those who are well. Our reflection
on human death, but also on the criterion that allows us to determine
the moment at which death occurs, ought to be entirely independent
of the question of removing organs.
The main question raised by the cases to which Shewmon refers
is whether the presence of certain “subsystems of integration” really
signifies the presence of integrated and interdependent organic life
that is capable of coordinating vital functions. To answer it, we would
have to define much more precisely the meanings of “organism,”
“integrated vital function,” and “holistic”— terms that are the object
of a conceptual reflection resulting from a philosophy of biology
supported by a scientific approach. We would also have to clarify
what we mean by respiration and nutrition and whether these functions are exercised under the control of the organism (understood as
an integrative unity) or independently of any such control. Moreover,
another question left hanging in the air is whether we can speak about
a living organism when it is kept alive artificially thanks to the technology of an artificial ventilator. This refers back to the distinction
between “artificial life” and “natural life.” Pieces of artificial equip		Ibid., 61: “1. Openness to the world, that is, receptivity to stimuli and signals
from the surrounding environment. 2. The ability to act upon the world to
obtain selectively what it needs. 3. The basic felt need that drives the organism
to act as it must, to obtain what it needs and what its openness reveals to be
available.”

41

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ment that allow the organism to continue to live, such as a cardiac
stimulator, are not, strictly speaking, essential parts of the organism.
Although they help regulate vital functions to some extent, they do
not initiate their activity.
This main question raised by the cases presented by the American physician is at the heart of the renewed interest that created the
current debate. In the final analysis, this debate poses the question of
whether artificial ventilation can be considered as a regulator of vital
functions such that the organism is what actually controls them or,
on the contrary, is the mechanical regulator that activates those same
vital functions? In the latter case, the vital functions would be understood as a reaction, rather than as an action in which the principle
of their activity is intrinsic to them. Indeed, we can think about the
presence of a living organism as long as it possesses the potential to
activate such vital functions by itself. If this is not the case, it would
be better to speak about an “integrated machine,”42 which although
it can function as though we were dealing with a living organism,
could be considered as living only by analogy and metaphorically.
It is ultimately a matter of determining whether the cases presented
by Shewmon correspond to what can be described as organisms that
instigate their integrative vital functions and interaction with the
external world by themselves or, on the contrary, whether these
functions and this interaction can be activated only by means of some
mechanical assistance, in other words a cause outside the organism.43
Finally, one may wonder whether we should not define human death
independently of technological advances such as the ventilator or the
cardiac stimulator, but also artificial nutrition and hydration.
Given that the question has not been broached definitively and
that the study of the cases presented by Shewmon leaves room for a
doubt that can be described as reasonable, we have a right to wonder
		This is the term employed by Georges Cottier (“machine intégrée”) in his
“Questions for Neurologists and Others about Brain Death as the Criterion
for Death,” in The Signs of Death: The Proceedings of the Working Group 11-12
September 2001, ed. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Scripta Varia 110 (Vatican City:
Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 2007), XXXVII.
43
		See Quante, Personales Leben und menschlicher Tod, 156. See also Jason T. Eberl,
“Ontological Status of Whole-Brain-Dead Individuals,” in The Ethics of Organ
Transplantation, ed. Steven J. Jensen (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 2011), 43–71, at 58. Eberl defends the view that the persons
described by Shewmon are dead because they lack the active capacity to exercise the vital functions of circulation and respiration.
42

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whether it is not necessary to cite the principle of precaution, which
is summed up in the adage “when in doubt, leave it out.” That is
to say, in cases of doubt, the rule governing our action, as Jonas
suggested together with the chairman of the committee that prepared
the December 2008 report by the Presidential Council (ethicist
Edmund Pellegrino), ought to be to lean prudently toward the side
of life or, to be more precise, toward the likelihood of the presence
of a human life.44
Some are against introducing this principle of precaution, citing
Aristotle’s argument that one cannot have absolute certainty in ethical matters.45 Such a stance, however, leads to a shift in the debate.
Indeed, the object of this discussion is not situated primarily on an
ethical level, but rather on an anthropological and medical level,
which then certainly has ethical consequences. Furthermore it is not
necessary to require absolute certainty, because it is enough for there
to be a reasonable probability that the human person is not dead at
the time when he is considered brain dead. Hence we could declare
that we are in the presence of a living organism.
Practical Consequences Concerning the
Procurement of Organs
The implementation of the principle of precaution would imply that
it would be problematic in present circumstances to continue the
		See Hans Jonas, “Against the Stream: Comments on the Definition and
Redefinition of Death,” in Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man (New York: Atropos Press, 2010), 134–42, at 140: “We do not
know with certainty the borderline between life and death, and a definition
cannot substitute for knowledge. Moreover, we have sufficient grounds for
suspecting that the artificially supported condition of the comatose patient
may still be one of life, however reduced—i.e., for doubting that, even with
the brain function gone, he is completely dead. In this state of marginal ignorance and doubt the only course to take is to lean over backward toward the
side of possible life.” This passage corresponds to “Gehirntod und menschliche Organbank: Zur pragmatischen Umdefinierung des Todes,” in Technik,
Medizin und Ethik: zur Praxis des Prinzips Verantwortung (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1987), 219–41, at 233. We find a similar position expressed by the
chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, Edmund D. Pellegrino, in
his “Personal Statement,” which is appended to Controversies in the Determination of Death, 107–21, esp. 117 and 119.
45
		See John Haas, “Absolute versus Prudential Certitude in Criteria for Determining Death,” Ethics and Medics 33.7 (July 2008): 2, and Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics 1.3.1094b24, trans. David Ross (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
1986), 3.
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practice of procuring organs from human beings who are brain-dead
but nevertheless continue to live with the help of a ventilator. To do
this would be to violate the fundamental Dead Donor Rule. A drastic
reduction in the number of organs procured would follow, whereas
the present supply is already generally insufficient to respond to the
demand.46
In order to overcome this difficult situation, some propose abandoning anthropological and medical considerations and situating the
debate solely on the ethical level, a shift that goes hand in hand with
the abolition of the principle enshrined in the Dead Donor Rule.
Truog summarizes their reasoning as follows: “The process of organ
procurement would have to be legitimated as a form of justified killing, rather than just as the dissection of a corpse.”47 After presenting
and critiquing the arguments in favor of abolishing the Dead Donor
Rule, I will show that the patients mentioned by Shewmon are in
a situation that could be said to result from therapeutic obstinacy.
While citing the principle of precaution, as well as the Dead Donor
Rule, I will argue that we should consider a person deceased when
we observe brain death accompanied by cardiac death.
Abolition of the Dead Donor Rule
Since the debate is being shifted in this way, the central issue is no
longer to say what human death is while citing an anthropological
definition and thus determining, on the basis of a medical criterion, at
what moment a human being is dead. The issue is rather, as the American philosopher James Rachels puts it, to determine “at what point is
it morally all right to declare [the person] dead?” or “at what point is it
morally all right to remove his organs?”48 With regard to the physician’s
		See, for example, James L. Bernat, “The Whole-Brain Concept of Death
Remains Optimum Public Policy,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34 (2006):
35–43.
47
		Robert D. Truog, “Is it Time to Abandon Brain Death?” Hastings Center
Report 27.1 (January–February 1997): 29–37, at 34. See also Seema K. Shah,
Robert D. Truog , and Franklin G. Miller, “Death and legal fictions,” Journal of
Medical Ethics 37.12 (2011): 719–22; Franklin G. Miller and Robert D. Truog,
“Rethinking the Ethics of Vital Organ Donation,” Hastings Center Report 28.6
(2008): 38–46; and Norman Fost, “The Unimportance of Death,” in The Definition of Death: Contemporary Controversies, ed. Stuart J. Youngner, Robert M.
Arnold, and Renie Schapiro (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1999), 161–78.
48
		James Rachels, The End of Life, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986),
42.
46

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hesitation in deciding the “right” moment to unplug the ventilator,
another American philosopher, Jonathan Glover, proposes shifting the
question to the ethical level alone while disregarding the impossibility of determining with absolute certainty the time of death. Then it
would instead be a matter of asking “whether or not we attach any
value to the preservation of someone irreversibly comatose”49 (or, we
might add, to the preservation of the persons described by Shewmon).
This is the question that Stoecker posed to the German Ethical
Council. In doing so, he merely endorsed the position of a number
of Anglo-Saxon thinkers, such as Robert Veatch50 or Peter Singer, to
whom the definition of death is not a scientific but an ethical matter.
The Australian philosopher explains that the definition of brain
death is “a convenient fiction that turns an evidently living being
into one that legally is not alive. Instead of accepting such fictions,
we should recognize that the fact that a being is human, and alive,
does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being’s life.”51
Stoecker’s argument, the intention of which is to shift the debate to
the ethical level alone, is based nevertheless on a certain anthropological approach. According to him, the brain-dead human being
is considered dead from personal perspective—that is, in terms of
the definition of the human person—but living from the biological
perspective. The individual is situated in the gray area between death
and life, a “twilight zone” that is “neither here nor there”:52 “What
one quickly and effortlessly observes is the fact that these patients are
still like the living in one respect—in their outward appearance and
in many bodily functions—and in another respect are already like
the dead—in their definitive helplessness and the hopelessness of their
situation. . . . These [brain-dead] patients are in personal terms like
the dead, and in other respects like the living.”53
		Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (New York: Penguin, 1982),
45. He continues: “Do we value ‘life’ even if unconscious, or do we value life
only as a vehicle for consciousness?”
50
		See Robert M. Veatch, Death, Dying and the Biological Revolution: Our Last
Quest for Responsibility (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1976–1977; rev.
ed. 1989).
51
		Singer, Rethinking Life and Death, 105. See also Birnbacher, “Das Hirntodkriterium in der Krise,” 36.
52
		Ralf Stoecker, “Das Transplantations-Trilemma als philosophische Aufgabe,”
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 60.3 (2012): 426–27, at 427: “Hirntote Patienten befinden sich in einem Vagheits-Bereich; halb sind sie noch am Leben
und halb schon tot.”
53
		Stoecker, “Der Hirntod aus ethischer Sicht”: “Was man schnell und mühelos
49

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The argument that Stoecker proposes in favor of procuring organs
from a brain-dead human being consists of stating first—while paradoxically using an anthropological criterion—that, even though he
is alive on the biological level, he is dead on the personal level. In
other words, he is no longer alive at the level of what the German
philosopher describes as being “the normative meaning of life.”54
From this it follows, therefore, that one could not harm him in the
least by removing his organs. Moreover, the recipient of the organs
would benefit from them more than he does: “It is no longer possible
to cause them pain or joy. . . . And because it is no longer possible
to do them harm, or to deprive them of any future, and because
on the other hand the organ recipients profit considerably from the
transplantation, one may remove organs from them, and do so, even
though it leads to the termination of their condition between life and
death and makes dead people out of the brain-dead.”55
This argument is based on an unproved a priori assumption: If a
feststellt ist, dass diese Patienten in der einen Hinsicht noch wie Lebende
sind–in ihrem äußeren Anschein und vielen körperlichen Funktionen–und
in der anderen Hinsicht schon wie Tote–in ihrer definitiven Ohnmacht und
der Aussichtslosigkeit ihrer Situation. […] Diese Patienten [hirntote] sind in
personaler Hinsicht wie Tote sind, in den anderen Hinsichten wie Lebende.“
See also Stoecker, “Der Tod als Voraussetzung der Organspende?” 106, 111,
and 112. We find a similar argument penned by Ruth Denkhaus and Peter
Dabrock in “Grauzone zwischen Leben und Tod: Ein Plädoyer für mehr
Ehrlichkeit in der Debatte um das Hirntod-Kriterium,” Zeitschrift für medizinische Ethik 58.2 (2012): 135–48, at 142. Shah, Truog, and Miller defend a
similar point of view: “People who are ‘brain dead’ maintain a host of life
functions that a corpse cannot. This condition of profound brain damage is
like death because both states are marked by the permanent loss of consciousness and the ability to interact with others. Given that most people would see
no point in maintaining life support for patients in this condition, they are ‘as
good as dead,’ making it reasonable to treat them as if they were dead so that
their organs can be used to save the lives of others. It therefore makes sense
to treat a diagnosis of ‘whole brain death’ the same as death for the purpose
of determining when organ donation is legally permissible” (“Death and legal
fictions,” 720–21).
54
		Stoecker, “Der Tod als Voraussetzung der Organspende?” 111: “die normative
Bedeutung des Lebens.”
55
		Stoecker, “Der Hirntod aus ethischer Sicht“: “Man kann ihnen nicht mehr
wehtun oder ihnen Freude bereiten. . . . Und weil man ihnen kein Leid
mehr antun, sie keiner Zukunft berauben kann und weil auf der anderen
Seite die Organempfänger erheblich von der Transplantation profitieren,
darf man ihnen Organe entnehmen, und das, obwohl es dazu führt, dass sie
ihren Zustand zwischen Leben und Tod beenden und aus den hirntoten tote
Menschen werden.”

Brain Death and Organ Removal

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particular human being has no conscious interest that is deliberately
expressed (and therefore empirically observable) in staying alive, no
harm would be done to him by killing him, since none of his interests
would be violated. In other words, in the name of an ethic of interests, we can move beyond the Dead Donor Rule.
We find a similar proposal penned by Birnbacher, who discusses
the case of the brain-dead person while continuing to consider him
alive: “In contrast to the case of a typical victim of killing, organ
donation here entails no loss of subjectively experienced time of
life for the organ donor. Since all brain functions are irreversibly
lost with brain death, all functions of consciousness are lost too. A
temporal difference between the occurrence of brain death and the
occurrence of biological death does not mean that this difference can
be experienced somehow. This objective difference has no subjective
counterpart. Whether or not one equates brain death with death—
consciousness is irreversibly gone with brain death.”56
Birnbacher’s argument is based on the a priori assumption that,
from the ethical perspective, only the exercise of a conscious mental
life has any value. A human existence irreversibly deprived of it would
have no value: “Not the preservation of the life of the organism, but
rather the preservation of the life of consciousness is undoubtedly a
good in practically any ethical system.”57 Although acknowledging
that the human beings described by Shewmon are alive, the German
philosopher declares himself to be in favor of keeping the brain		Birnbacher, “Das Hirntodkriterium in der Krise,” 37: “Anders als bei
einem paradigmatischen Tötungsopfer bedeutet die Organspende für den
Organspender keinen Verlust an subjektiv erlebbarer Lebenszeit. Da mit
dem Hirntod alle Hirnfunktionen irreversibel erloschen sind, sind auch
alle Bewusstseinsfunktionen irreversibel erloschen. Eine zeitliche Differenz
zwischen dem Eintritt des Hirntods und dem Eintritt des biologischen Tods
bedeutet nicht, dass diese Differenz irgendwie erlebt werden kann. Diese
objektive Differenz hat kein subjektives Gegenstück. Ob man den Hirntod
mit dem Tod gleichsetzt oder nicht–das Bewusstsein ist mit dem Hirntod irreversibel verlorengegangen.” Richard Zaner uses similar arguments in his plea
for the procurement of organs from anencephalic infants, while clearly insisting on the presence of interests that must be exercised: “Finally, where there
are no neurological supports for personal, conscious life, there is no reason to
suppose that an individual has interests of its own, in the strict sense in which
the person does”; see his “Anencephalics as Organ Donors,” The Journal of
Medicine and Philosophy 14.1 (1989): 61–78, at 67–68.
57
		Birnbacher, “Der Hirntod—eine pragmatische Verteidigung,” 474: “Nicht die
Erhaltung des organismischen Lebens, sondern die Erhaltung des Bewusstseinslebens ist ein von so gut wie keinem ethischen System bezweifeltes Gut.”
56

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death criterion for an ethical reason, because it attributes maximum
certitude to the irreversible character of the loss of the exercise of a
conscious mental life. What we do to a living human organism that
is considered brain dead has no importance, given that we cannot
deprive it of a conscious life. “The brain-death criterion,” Birnbacher
explains, “is not an adequate criterion for death, but rather a criterion
for mental death, which is not simply speaking identical to death yet is
primarily relevant from ethical perspectives.”58
In order to be able to say that a subject has been wronged, the two
German philosophers and those who propose abolishing the Dead
Donor Rule highlight a central requirement, namely the presence
of conscious mental life, accompanied by the exercise of interests;
this implies, logically, that it would be permissible to procure organs
not only from a brain-dead human being but also from any human
being in a similar situation. Think, for example, of those who are
in a so-called “vegetative”59 state or of an anencephalic infant—a
recommendation made, incidentally, by Robert D. Truog,60 Don
Marquis,61 Norman Fost,62 and Jeff McMahan. The last-mentioned
explains that “because an anencephalic infant has neither the capacity nor the potential for consciousness, it is not a bearer of interests.
Nothing can matter, or be good or bad, for its sake. Nor can it have
rights or be an appropriate object of respect. If, therefore, the view
for which I have argued is correct, it is difficult to see what objection
		Ibid., 475: “Das Hirntodkriterium ist kein adäquates Kriterium für den Tod,
sondern ein Kriterium für den unter ethischen Gesischtspunkten primär relevanten, aber mit dem Tod simpliciter nicht zusammenfallenden mentalen Tod.”
See also Birnbacher, “Der Hirntod–der Tod? ” 423. He explains however that
this certitude about the loss of conscious life is not attained in the case of a
human being in a so-called vegetative state or in the case of an anencephalic
infant. It follows, in his opinion, that one could not, from an ethical perspective, procure their organs.
59
		See Ronald E. Cranford and David R. Smith, “Consciousness: The Most Critical Moral (Constitutional) Standard for Human Personhood,” American Journal of Law and Medicine, 13.2–3 (1987), 233–48, at 246–47. See also Marquis,
“Abortion and the Beginning and End of Human Life,” 23, and Fost, “The
Unimportance of Death,” 172.
60
		See Truog, “Is it Time to Abandon Brain Death?” 34: “Individuals who could
not be harmed by the procedure would include those who are permanently
and irreversibly unconscious (patients in a persistent vegetative state or
newborns with anencephaly) and those who are imminently and irreversibly
dying.”
61
		See Marquis, “Abortion and the Beginning and End of Human Life,” 23–24.
62
		See Fost, “The Unimportance of Death,” 172.
58

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there could be to taking the organs from a living anencephalic infant
for transplantation—apart, of course, from objections based on the
interests and rights of the parents.”63
If we wanted to argue consistently from these premises, which for
these two German philosophers, among others, are based on the lack
of an interest and of a future that would make sense for the subjectivity of the individual, one could likewise mention the possibility of
removing organs, as Fost64 recommends, from persons who are in the
terminal phase of their life or suffering from a fatal illness, or even,
as Veatch65 speculates, from persons who wish to commit suicide
or from others who have been sentenced to the death penalty. The
procurement of organs in these cases, however, would be possible
only if the donor freely gave his so-called “informed” consent. As
for Miller and Truog, they propose replacing the requirement of the
Dead Donor Rule with the more central requirement of consent.66
Finally, one might ask whether it would be possible also to procure
organs from human beings who cannot or can no longer consent to
it, delegating the consent then to a relative or friend who is capable
of making the decision. This would be the case with very young
children, newborns, or persons with a severe and irreversible mental
handicap or in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease.67
		McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 451. See also Robert C. Cefalo and H. Tristram Engelhardt, “The Use of Fetal and Anencephalic Tissue for Transplantation,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 14.1 (1989), 25–43.
64
		See Fost, “The Unimportance of Death,” 174.
65
		See Robert M.Veatch, “Abandon the Dead Donor Rule or Change the Definition of Death? ” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.3 (2004), 261–76, at
269.
66
		Miller and Truog, “Rethinking the Ethics of Vital Organ Donation,” 44. They
also defend the ethical possibility, in some circumstances, of procuring organs
from persons who are in good health, provided that they give their consent.
See also Franklin G. Miller, Robert D. Truog, and Dan W. Brock, “The Dead
Donor Rule: Can It Withstand Critical Scrutiny?” Journal of Medicine and
Philosophy 35.3 (2010), 299–312, at 308. Their argument is based on the
assumption that what the subjective will desires can be authorized, provided
that it does not involve a third party.
67
		Robert M. Veatch mentions cases that follow from the first principle of
consent—it would make permissible the procurement of organs not only
from brain-dead or irreversibly unconscious persons by killing them, but also
from infants and those with profound mental handicaps—but he explains that
the implementation of this principle would be very complicated at the legal
and societal level; see “Transplanting Hearts after Death Measured by Cardiac
Criteria: The Challenge to the Dead Donor Rule,” Journal of Medicine and
Philosophy 35.3 (2010): 313–29, at 327.
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Critique of the Call for the Abolition of the Dead Donor Rule
Stoecker’s position, like that of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, relies
chiefly on an a priori assumption that can be challenged seriously: in
order for harm to be done to someone, it is also necessary for him to
be able to experience it and capable of expressing an interest.68 Now,
in order to be sure of the presence of an interest and of possible harm,
they presuppose that the following statement is true: What one cannot
observe empirically does not exist. Such a postulate implies, in fact, a
reductively behaviorist perspective. Indeed, if a human being does not
consciously express a particular interest that is empirically observable,
that does not necessarily imply that he does not have such an interest.
Two arguments illustrate this. On the one hand, although we do not
presently have the technological means allowing us to register the presence of a mental life and, therefore, of subjective interests in persons
who are in a particular situation such as one in a so-called “vegetative”
state, this does not imply de facto that such a mental life quite simply
does not exist. Rapid technological advances may allow us to detect,
in the more or less near future, the presence of this mental life suited
to expressing interests. On this topic we might mention, by way of
example, this recent fact: it was possible to enter into communication
with a person—thirty-nine-year-old Scott Rowley—who has been in
a so-called profound “vegetative” state since an automobile accident
that occurred twelve years ago, and for his part, he expressed interests.69
In the second, more fundamentally argument, one can assert the
presence of interests that are constituent of a human being independently of their concrete exercise. Consider the hypothetical case
of a person in a so-called vegetative state who was filmed while
relieving himself. The film was later shown. The average person’s
sense of common decency would be offended by that because such
an act would profoundly harm the interest of that human being if he
was considered as an end in himself. Such an interest is constitutive
		It is very interesting to note that this a priori assumption is also at the basis
of the thesis recently developed by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva
in favor of euthanasia for newborns, or what they call “post-natal abortion.”
Their argument also implies the possibility of removing and transplanting
the vital organs of these newborns, provided their parents give their consent;
see “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” Journal of Medical Ethics
online, February 23, 2012 (doi:10.1136/medethics-2011-100411).
69
		Determining whether or not Scott Rowley really is in a so-called vegetative
state is of secondary importance here.
68

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of a human being, even if he were not conscious of it; it is present
even in the case where the human being is in a state that makes
him unable, or else never has been able, to exercise such an interest
consciously. The harm that is done him is not based on a conflict
with his subjective interest, but rather on a constitutive interest of his
as a human being, based on his ontological dignity. Such an interest
exists independently of any act of consciousness by the subject or of its
empirically observable concrete expression. The question of whether
or not the human being subjectively feels the harm that is done him
in procuring his organs is not the factor that determines the ethical
value of that act. The central question, rather, is whether harm is
done him if someone procures his organs. This leads ultimately to the
question of whether the death of a human being is an evil in itself.70
Moreover, as I already said, the abolition of the Dead Donor Rule
based on the theory of subjective interests and the legitimacy of
organ transplantation applies not only to the human beings described
by Shewmon or to those who are brain-dead, but rather it de facto
implies the lawfulness of killing any human being who is in a similar situation, anyone who does not exercise personal interests and
self-consciousness. Proponents of abolishing the Dead Donor Rule
agree with the defenders of neocortical death here. The effect of this
would be to introduce subtly a sort of justification of slavery within
the human species based on the principle of utility: in the final analysis some human beings—such as newborn infants, severely mentally
handicapped persons, or senile ones—would be reduced to supplying
a bank of living organs destined for other human beings.
Stoecker’s proposal, therefore, is to introduce a third category: a
fluctuating or intermediate state between death and life. This obliges
him to make a distinction between two categories: biological human
life strictly speaking and so-called “personal” human life. Describing
different types of human existence—biological, biographical, interactive, and phenomenal—he asserts that a human life has a normative
value insofar as all these elements are present and actualized. If one
of them were to be missing, he explains (without however providing
explicit arguments), the normative value of the life would vanish.
From then on, one could remove the individual’s organs: “Only if
he has already lost his life in this sense, we might say, can his organs
		See Bernard N. Schumacher, Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 182–212.

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be removed. . . . The fundamental ethical assumption about life and
death therefore applies only in instances where all the signs of life are
present.” 71
The introduction of this “neither-here-nor-there” state presupposes a dualist anthropology, one that is explicitly defended, moreover, by proponents of brain stem death and neocortical death.
Contrary to the latter, who try to justify this dualist anthropology by
citing mainly John Locke as the source of the positions from which
they deduce these ethical consequences, Stoecker relies on a theory
of moral values. He assigns normative value only to the second type
of human existence, so-called “personal” life, which includes the
presence of organic life, unlike the first type of human existence,
which is situated solely at the level of the organism and is devoid of
the constituent elements of so-called “personal” life.
The distinction advanced by Stoecker, which we find also in Birnbacher’s writings, actually results from a very debatable ethical choice
and by no means from an anthropological reflection accompanied by
a biological and medical approach. This approach does not warrant
the presence of an intermediate state, since the death of a human
being is defined as the radical denial of the various faculties or capacities that constitute organic life. As the German philosopher Andrea
Esser neatly explains, “the biological understanding of the terms ‘life’
and ‘death’ allows for no intermediate state, no fluctuating state and no
gray area.” 72
The proposal of Stoecker and Birnbacher to abandon the field of
medical science and that of philosophical anthropology so as to situate reflection about death exclusively on an ethical plane while specifically no longer requiring compliance with the Dead Donor Rule in
order to procure vital organs raises another fundamental problem:
one might say that this is an epistemological error. Indeed, if a human
being were to consider one day, from the subjective viewpoint, that
he no longer had a future in which to accomplish his goals, his inter		Stoecker, “Der Tod als Voraussetzung der Organspende?” 111–12: “Nur wenn
er das Leben in diesem Sinn schon verloren hat, will man sagen, darf man ihm
die Organe entnehmen. . . . Die ethische Grundannahme über Leben und Tod
gilt deshalb nur dort, wo alle Merkmale des Lebens erfüllt sind.”
72
		Andrea M. Esser, “Menschen sterben als Personen,” in Andrea Esser, Daniel
Kersting, and Christoph G. W. Schäfer, Welchen Tod stirbt der Mensch? (Frankfurt
am Main: Campus, 2012), 221–42, at 234: “Das biologische Verständnis der
Begriffe ‘Leben’ und ‘Tod‘’ lässt kein Zwischenzustand zu, keinen Schwebezustand und keine Grauzone.”
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ests, the continuation of his existence would be deprived of meaning.
Such a situation—just like the ones described by Shewmon—does
not imply however in any case that such a human being is de facto
dead. Indeed, the definition of human death, which results from
a philosophical anthropological reflection—just like the criterion
allowing the determination of the death of a human being, which
for its part results from a scientific medical reflection—implies no
ethical value judgment. In fact, neither the definition of death nor
its criterion can determine what sort of existence—with or without
self-consciousness—is or is not worth the trouble of living. These
are two radically different sorts of discourse. The quality of life, to
which Stoecker and Birnbacher implicitly refer, which is based on a
utilitarian, consequentialist ethics, cannot be a pertinent criterion for
analysis in an investigation into the nature of death any more than
it allows us to determine whether life is still present in a particular
individual, or in other words, whether he is dead. Similarly, we have
here also two distinct sorts of discourse when we speak about human
life in general and about the quality of a human life and of its value.
In short, the question of whether a human being is dead can be
debated and one can answer it without asking whether his life seems
desirable to him from a subjective viewpoint. Such an anthropological thanatological reflection is in no way related—Stoecker’s
dogmatic statements notwithstanding—to “desperate attempts” to
find out whether a person in a particular situation is deceased. Even
though it is a difficult endeavor, it is better to continue, in the name
of the principle of precaution, to conduct research at the scientific
level to try to identify with as much certainty as possible the criterion that allows us to declare that death has occurred. Furthermore,
this research is based on a philosophical anthropological foundation,
which in any case is not a “useless” and “superfluous” 73 speculative
endeavor. Quite the contrary, ethical reflection is, in the final analysis, conducted within the framework of a philosophical anthropology
with human nature as its object, and more particularly human death.
Therapeutic Obstinacy
Some have claimed—wrongly, in my view—that the only possible way
to continue procuring organs from brain-dead persons is to shift the
		Stoecker, “Der Tod als Voraussetzung der Organspende?” 115: “Die verzweifelten Versuche,” “überflüssig”; and 113: “von der fruchtlosen Hirntod-Debatte” [that is based on an anthropological approach].

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debate to the ethical level. This shift not only causes several problems
in argumentation but also has consequences that defy common sense.
Is it therefore necessary to stop removing organs from brain-dead
persons, given that they are alive? I do not think that it is right to raise
the specter of an organ shortage. Indeed, we could consider that the
life of these living persons, who are dead at the cerebral level, would
have ended if no one had decided to intervene. They would be, from
a certain perspective, “dying” persons who were being kept alive with
the help of artificial assistance, regardless of whether these life-sustaining procedures are conducted inside or outside the person’s organism.
One may ask whether we are not looking at a situation that could
be described as therapeutic obstinacy or disproportionate treatment.
Indeed, the means employed would be both extraordinary and disproportionate. It is reasonable to postulate that a patient who is alive but
brain-dead could have decided, while still capable of it, based on a
so-called “informed” prudential judgment, that if he were ever in such
a situation, the methods involved in his care and treatment would be
disproportionate in relation to the therapeutic benefit that they would
bring him personally. He could decide to be placed on a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) in the event that he is diagnosed with total brain failure.
If he were to consider rationally that this care brought him no significant benefit, he could legitimately decide to discontinue the treatment,
and even (in the case under discussion) to unplug the ventilator, so as
to die a natural death. The patient, indeed, has a fundamental right to
refuse any medical treatment that is perceived as disproportionate, the
right not to be the prisoner or slave of medical techniques that only
postpone death.This right to die, to use an expression of Jonas,74 which
is expressed by the voluntary cessation of treatments, thus allowing
the human being to die, is to be distinguished from the act of putting
oneself to death (euthanasia or assisted suicide). This right comes into
play when the person realizes that the care being lavished on him is
not aimed at his cure and brings about no improvement, not even the
slightest, of his state of health. Remission is no longer possible; his
situation is, from the human perspective, desperate, devoid of hope. His
state can fairly be likened to the state of a prisoner who is condemned
to death with no chance of pardon.75
		See Hans Jonas, “The Right to Die,” Hastings Center Report 8.4 (1978): 31–36.
		See Bernard N. Schumacher, “L’espérance au cœur de la vie humaine. Enjeux
autour du malade d’Alzheimer,” in Alzheimer: une personne quoi qu’il arrive, ed.
Thierry Collaud, Véronique Gay-Crosier, and Magdalena Burlacu (Fribourg:
Academic Press, 2013), 45–66.

74
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The fundamental right to refuse to continue treatment requires,
however, consent on the part of the patient. This consent is different
from what Trugo and Miller, or Birnbacher, think it is in the context
under discussion. According to them, it would make no difference
whether death occurred as the result of shutting off the ventilator or
procuring organs from human organisms that are considered alive
because the ultimate criterion lies exclusively in the consent of the
patient or of his proxy, regardless of the requirement of the Dead
Donor Rule: “With such a consent, there is no harm or wrong done
in retrieving vital organs before death.” 76 The harm or the wrong
done to someone depends ultimately no longer on the act committed—insofar as it concerns only this specific person—but solely on
whether or not his consent is respected.77
This right to die within the context of therapeutic obstinacy can
be chosen by the patient at the time, or else anticipating a situation,
for example the one described by Shewmon. If however it should
happen that the patient not only is no longer capable of making such
a judgment but also never made it in advance, everything would
depend on the prudential judgment (combined with common sense)
of his family, of his friends, or of his personal caregiver. However, if
the patient and his family, his friends, and his personal caregiver were
to consider the means being employed proportional and ordinary, the
care would have to be continued.
This position is worthwhile, provided that we specify what we
mean by ordinary and extraordinary measures in difficult cases.
There are situations in which the line between them is not clear.
There is no pat solution. Indeed, as Aristotle nicely puts it, particular
		Robert D. Truog and Franklin G. Miller, “The Dead Donor Rule and Organ
Transplantation,” New England Journal of Medicine 359.7 (2008): 674–75: at 675.
See also Miller and Truog, “Rethinking the Ethics of Vital Organ Donation,”
44: “The key protection is consent, along with the requirement for a valid
decision to withdraw life support: organs should not be extracted without the
valid consent of either the donor or an appropriate surrogate decision-maker.”
See also Birnbacher, “Das Hirntodkriterium in der Krise.”
77
		We find a similar position in the thesis defended by the French philosopher
Ruwen Ogien, who speaks about victimless moral crimes and recommends
avoiding the use of the word “immoral” “to evaluate anything in our lifestyles, our thoughts, our actions, that concerns only ourselves and what we
do between consenting persons”; see L’Éthique aujourd’hui: Maximalistes et
minimalistes (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 23: “immoral” . . . “pour évaluer tout ce
qui, dans nos façons de vivre, nos pensées, nos actions, ne concerne que nousmêmes, ce que nous faisons entre personnes consentantes .”
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cases “do not fall under any art [technique] or precept [traditional
prescription]. . . . The agents themselves must in each case consider
what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation.” 78 The decision to be made depends on prudential practical wisdom, acquired by experience, that connects general
rules to singular situations. In every case, one ought to respect the
so-called informed consent of the patient who in conscience refuses
to prolong particular treatments that he deems extraordinary, that do
not contribute to a therapeutic result that is significantly beneficial
to him. This choice, however, must not be influenced in any way by
any pressure whatsoever with a view to procuring organs, not even
in the name of the principle of solidarity and compassion. This comes
down to separating the two aspects clearly: the decision to stop the
treatment that maintains the vital functions must be made before
any reflection as to the possibility of donating organs. Moreover, it is
necessary that the situation in which the living person described by
Shewmon finds himself be irreversible—in other words, that is not
possible for his brain to perform again a minimum of its functions
independently of artificial assistance.
The possibility of considering the lawfulness of unplugging a
ventilator that is sustaining a living person who is brain-dead by
citing therapeutic obstinacy does not resolve, however, the question
about organ transplantation. One proposal would be to procure a
patient’s organs—in the specific case of persons who are alive but
brain-dead—after the determination of cardiac death—that is,
“cardiac arrest”—since the circulatory and respiratory functions have
ceased. Two categories of persons are commonly distinguished: first,
those who have suffered a sudden heart attack, a situation described
as “uncontrolled cardiac arrest,” and second, those who have decided
to stop their treatment and whose death by cardiac arrest is then
expected after a more or less brief interval, a situation described
as “controlled cardiac arrest.” The procurement of organs from a
person whose heart has stopped and who has previously given his
consent is carried out after the determination of the irreversibility of
the cardiac arrest. The waiting period before procurement currently
varies (commonly between two minutes, according to the Pittsburg
protocol, and ten minutes, according to the Maastricht protocol).
The short delay allowed by the protocols raises a series of ethical
		Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2.2.1104a7–10 (p. 30).

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questions, however.79 First of all, the two-minute interval does not
allow a certification with absolute certitude of irreversibility; in other
words, it does not guard against the Lazarus effect, the “resurrection” of the person whose heart spontaneously begins to beat again.80
Proponents of this interval say that the medical personnel respect
the patient’s decision that no one should intervene for the purpose
of reversing the state in which he finds himself—in other words, of
reviving him. Nevertheless, in the case where the patient could have
revived by himself and yet his organs had been procured, we would
have to declare that he had been put to death in order to procure his
vital organs for the benefit of another person. To date, Joanne Lynn
and Ronald Cranford81 point out, we have no empirical studies proving with absolute certainty how long after the cessation of circulation
a spontaneous recovery of that circulation could occur. However, one
could follow Shewmon in proposing, so as to have a maximum assurance not going against the Dead Donor Rule, an interval anywhere
from twenty to thirty minutes before any authorization to procure
organs, to which one would previously have administered a medication so as to preserve them better. This time lapse does not seem to
pose a problem of deterioration in the quality of the organs, whether
we are speaking about the liver, kidneys, lungs, or even the heart.82
The claim that such an intervention would amount to killing
a person, given that these organs are still alive, can be refuted on
account of the fact that the personal organism is already deceased at
the moment of procurement. Indeed, as the American philosopher
Christopher Kaczor83 explains, we are no longer dealing with an
		See Truog and Miller, “The Dead Donor Rule and Organ Transplantation,”
and James M. Dubois, “Non-Heart-Beating Organ Donation: A Defense of
the Required Determination of Death,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 27.2
(1999): 126–36.
80
		Although a small study suggests that two minutes of absent circulation is sufficient to certify death, see Michel A. DeVita et al., “Observations of Withdrawal
of Life-sustaining Treatment from Patients who Became Non-heart-beating
Organ Donors,” Critical Care Medicine 28.6 (2000): 1709–12.
81
		See Joanne Lynn and Ronald Cranford, “The Persisting Perplexities in the
Determination of Death,” in The Definition of Death: Contemporary Controversies,
ed. Stuart Youngner, Robert M. Arnold, and Renie Schapiro (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 101–14 and 108–09.
82
		See Christopher Kaczor, “Organ Donation following Cardia Death: Conflicts
of Interest, Ante Mortem Interventions, and Determinations of Death,” in The
Ethics of Organ Transplantation, 95–113, at 112–13.
83
		See ibid., 113.
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organism that is an integrally functioning whole, but rather with the
functioning of various organs that are not integrated into a unified
whole. We find such a proposal, presented in very general terms, in
the writings of Jonas: “The artificial ventilation is stopped first and
then time is allowed in order to determine the definitive absence of
all signs of life, and only then does the removal of organs begin. Since
the delay is short, this would still result in usable material, but the
conditions would no longer be optimal, and the yield would probably
be smaller as a result.”84 This proposal, if implemented, would make it
possible to reconcile respect for the patient’s will and the requirement
of the Dead Donor Rule.
Conclusion
The recent debate calling into question the criterion of brain death
does not lead automatically to the prohibition of organ procurement,
nor does it justify any organ procurement whatsoever, provided that
the requirement of the Dead Donor Rule is abolished. The proposal
of advocates of neocortical death, which consists of shifting the debate
to the ethical level exclusively and basing decisions on a consequentialist utilitarian approach, citing the serious shortage of vital organs
available, subtly introduces a hierarchy among human beings—in other
words a frontal attack on the fundamental equality of all human beings.
Such a shift would imply the exploitation of some human beings and
would lead to regarding others, and more particularly those who are
extremely frail and dependent, as “the freshest material for organ transplantation,”85 while justifying this on the basis of the theory of the gift
or even setting up a moral imperative in the name of a compassion that
would oblige someone to give parts of his body to a third person who
would be more capable of making good use of them—in other words,
an ethics that viewed organs in terms of profitability.
For my part I would say that there is no pragmatic difference with
regard to organ procurement if we consider Shewmon’s research.
		Hans Jonas, “Gehirntod und menschliche Organbank,” 239: “[D]aß man
zunächst die künstliche Atmung einstellt, dann die Zeit läßt, um die endgültige Abwesenheit aller Lebenszeichen festzustellen, und danach erst mit der
Organentfernung beginnt. Das würde, da die Verzögerung kurz ist, immer
noch brauchbares Material erbringen, aber die Bedingungen wären nicht
mehr die optimalen, die Ausbeute daher wohl geringer.”
85
		Hans Jonas, “Techniken des Todesaufschubs und das Recht zu sterben,” in
Technik, Medizin und Ethik: zur Praxis des Prinzips Verantwortung (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 242–68, at 260: “frischsten Materials für Organverpflanzung.”
84

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Indeed, in the great majority of human organisms that are suffering
from irreversible brain damage that leads to brain death, we observe
significant damage to the cardiovascular system also, which is then
incapable of functioning autonomously and without assistance. In
more particular cases, those of the persons described by Shewmon,
we could say that they are in a situation resulting from therapeutic
obstinacy, and thus we could propose the cessation of treatment that
would lead to their death, provided that the person in question (or
at least his family, his friends, or his caregiver) had given consent
in advance. Nevertheless, in this hypothetical situation, in order to
be sure that one does not kill a person for the purpose of procuring
his organs, we could envisage the requirement of a twofold diagnosis: determination of brain death accompanied by determination of
cardiac arrest.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1271–1291

Christology in Context: Review Essay of Thomas
Joseph White, O.P., The Incarnate Lord*
Guy Mansini, O.S.B.
Saint Meinrad School of Theology
St. Meinrad, IN

Catholic Christology in the Twentieth Century

From the restoration of scholasticism in the nineteenth

century to the 1960s, Catholic Christology was a happy house unto
itself. The person, natures, faculties, grace, knowledge, and work of
Christ were expounded from Scripture, illuminated by the Fathers,
and understood with St. Thomas (or maybe Scotus). There were happy
in-house and never-to-be-concluded conversations: why the complete
and perfect humanity of Jesus does not make a created person, whether
we ought we to impute one or two acts of existence to the hypostasis
sunthetos of Christ, whether the impeccability of Christ is intrinsic
or extrinsic, and so on. There was an important recovery of patristic
and medieval soteriology, a soteriology antecedent to the pressures
exerted on the theology of the atonement by late medieval and then
subsequent Lutheran and Calvinist pictures of a Christ who bears the
punishment his Father metes out to him in our place. But the conversation was not without innovation inspired by modern philosophy
and psychology. There were questions on the relation of the human
consciousness of Christ to his person, about the psychological unity
of Christ, and concerning whether one or two psychological egos
are to be recognized in him. Notwithstanding such engagements
with modernity, it was more important to know something about
*

The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2015).

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Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque than about Albert Schweitzer because
it was more important to justify devotion to the sacred humanity of
Jesus than to consider the quest for that humanity historically known.
Modernism (and magisterial suppression of Modernism) significantly
retarded the critical reception of historical critical New Testament
studies. As to engagements with non-Catholic Christians, it was more
important to know something about the great monophysite patriarch
Severus of Antioch than about the genus maiestaticum, but the first only
for historical reasons, not because one was going to talk to present day
Armenians, while the second could be safely ignored altogether, since
one was concerned with neither historical nor contemporary Lutheran
understandings of the communication of idioms.
The restoration reached a sort of climax in which old things
were both developed and newly perfected, such as at the Gregorian University in Bernard Lonergan’s De Verbo Incarnato (1964),
surefooted methodologically, stunning in its conceptual clarity and
rigor, orderly in its marshalling of Scriptural and patristic proof,
and brilliant in its systematic understanding of the hypostatic union,
the consciousness and knowledge of Christ, and the work of Christ
according to the “Law of the Cross.”
The destruction of this house was the work especially of Karl
Rahner, S.J., and Hans Urs von Balthasar, beginning in the fifties
and continuing for twenty years after the Second Vatican Council,
as volume after volume of the Theological Investigations appeared in
German (1954–1984), crowned with Foundations of Christian Faith
(German, 1976) and matched by volume after volume of The Glory
of the Lord (German, 1961–1969) and the Theo-Drama (German,
1973–1983). The dismantling was not direct, but the joint message
was that it was no longer important to maintain the house. Of course,
they had many helpers in what was commonly understood at the
time to be a necessary work of theological liberation and maturation: despite their own metaphysical commitments and attention
to dogma, Rahner and Balthasar were a sort of bridge to a more
complete liberation from scholasticism (which meant at least some
attachment to classical ontology) so as to enter into Enlightenment
maturity (an historicism that told us why a dogmatic formula that
formerly was useful was meaningless today).
Rahner re-conceived Christology as the uttermost limit of a
transcendentally constructed theological anthropology, a framework
hospitable to almost whatever the New Testament scholars told us
about Jesus of Nazareth. Balthasar, on the other hand, was a much

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1273

more serious reader of the New Testament than Rahner. And he did
not subject dogma to the acid of Enlightenment historicism, as even
the later Rahner was wont to do. But in the vast project he embarked
on of subsuming the whole of Western philosophy and theology into
the form of Christ, he gave an architectonic place to the way in which
Karl Barth related the economy of salvation to the Trinitarian processions. And not withstanding his diligent attention to Scripture and
dogma, the effect was largely to remove any metaphysical constraint
on what we say, not only about the relation of Father to incarnate
Son, but also about Father and Son within the Trinity. Balthasar thus
ensured a break in the continuity of Christological discourse within
the Catholic Church perhaps more radical than did Rahner.
The spirit of things after the Second Vatican Council, moreover,
abetted the dismantling of scholasticism already long desired by the
figures surrounding what Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange called “la
nouvelle théologie.” The coin was Pietro Parente’s, but Garrigou-Lagrange gave it polemical punch: he did not have to wait for Fergus
Kerr to observe that Henri de Lubac seemingly planned his books “in
order to destroy neoscholastic theology.” Notwithstanding its traditional endorsement of St. Thomas for theological education in Optatam Totius (1965), therefore, wherever the Council was understood to
be a product of “the new theology,” it was just as widely understood
as permission to wave a final good-bye to the thirteenth century and
its Leonine reviviscence.
Since the Council, and apart from many questionably orthodox
(and therefore ecclesially useless) offerings that rewrite John 1:14 to
tell us the flesh became Word, there have been some workman-like
Christologies from Catholics that dutifully recapitulate the New
Testament, some with more and some with less attention to critical
studies, that report the councils and fathers, that may have a chapter
on the middles ages, but also that concede the description of Christ’s
knowledge to exegetes and proceed to some round-up of soteriology
that does not do much more than speak of Christ’s solidarity with
sinners and of the Cross as especially the manifestation of God’s love
for us (which it surely is), but often with no authorial enthusiasm for
the classic doctrinal elaborations of the atonement such as are to be
found in St. Anselm and St. Thomas. More excellent are the worthy
essays in Christology from Roch Kereszty, O.Cist., James T. O’Connor, and Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. They recognize that revelation is not a report of our experience, they accept the normative rule
of dogma, and they are serious about soteriology. But they no longer

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Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

aspire to produce “théologie comme science,” as Marie-Dominique
Chenu styled it in his historical appreciation of the thirteenth century,
and to which Lonergan really did aspire even in the twentieth.
The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology
After the destruction by Rahner and Balthasar and the earthquake of
the Council and its reception, it seems there can be no such thing as a
Christology in continuity with the pre-conciliar pattern. “There is no
going back,” and so on and so forth. And anyway, for what reason would
we want such a thing? But, surely, an obvious reason is plain enough
at a moment’s consideration. It should be urged that there can be no
real breaks, no real and unbridgeable gaps, that divide the discourse of
the Church about Christ into incommensurable quantities. What one
age makes of Christ cannot be severed from what another age says of
him—this, in fact, Balthasar himself saw very clearly. How otherwise
could it be true that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever
(Heb 13:8), if the Church hears one thing in one age and another in a
second? It cannot be the case, therefore, that the Thomist tradition of
theology either is consigned to the past or must be thought at best to
run on a parallel track with what such men as Rahner and Balthasar
put in motion. Such a scenario has quite unacceptable ecclesial and
even metaphysical implications.
A second reason is equally weighty. We might want a conversation
between the old and the new just because the pre-conciliar Christology in fact contains better resources with which to meet the concerns
that moved such figures as Rahner and Balthasar in the first place. It
may then turn out that the Christology of St. Thomas has the wherewithal to solve some of the puzzles in which contemporary Christology, Protestant and Catholic, lands us, such as the idea of a savior
who does not know he is saving us, or of a human savior of a human
nature for which, alas, we no longer know how to recognize in what
its salvation might consist, or of a divine obedience that threatens to
split the Trinity into three gods, or of an infinitely good God who is
nonetheless interiorly conditioned by a history of evil.
Of course, to knit up the raveled sleeve of Christological discourse
thus and make of St. Thomas a contemporary interlocutor would
take considerable skill and erudition. It is not just the old St. Thomas
that has to be re-introduced, and in the detail it takes to have him
say something up and down the line of Christological discussions.
In addition, Rahner and Balthasar (as well as Schillebeeckx, Chenu,
Pannenberg, Jüngel, and Moltmann, all these important and some-

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1275

times quite original and distinctive figures) must be brought forward,
not in the broad strokes such as this review can hardly manage, but
in detail. And the greater frame within which the modern discussion
takes place, determined by modern historical studies and Enlightenment criticism (especially Kantian) of prior philosophical tradition,
would also have to be in play, explicitly or in the background. It
would take a lot, in other words, not only to prosecute Leo XIII’s
program today—vetera novis augere et perficere—but to execute the
program we also need—nova veteribus corrigere et complere.
Thomas Joseph White addresses himself to both programs in The
Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology. It may seem the second
is more prominent, but in fact the old is appreciated and better understood in comparison, and sometimes in sharp contrast with, the new.
On the other hand, his labor is more evident in showing us that St.
Thomas offers a better way to think about the issues of contemporary Christology. This way has not only to correct error but also to
show us how to meet the widespread contemporary demand to see
in the obedience of Christ and the very manner of his saving death
and resurrection, such as the New Testament describes them, the
adequate manifestation of Trinitarian reality. This way has also to
show how to welcome historical studies within a theological science
already possessed of its own method. The first claim of White’s
book is that the correction of error and the fulfillment of systematic demand about obedience and Trinity cannot be accomplished
without welcoming a metaphysical ontology into the service of the
gospel. The second, related claim is that Christology, while it must be
historically informed, has first of all to be framed by revelation and
the reception of revelation by faith. Historical studies are the fuel but
not the engine of Christology.
New Testament Ontology and the Modern
Parameters of Christology
This book is not a proposal or a mere essay, but a fully developed and,
in its own order, complete argument. White therefore lays his guns
very carefully, or, to change the metaphor, pours his footings broad and
deep and accomplishes two important things, one in his Introduction,
the other in his Prolegomena, before ever he constructs his argument
in detail.
The introduction of the book demonstrates the necessity of
an explicitly ontologically informed Christology from the New
Testament, hence its title “The Biblical Ontology of Christ.” The

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Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

demonstration is informed by the work of C. F. D. Moule, Richard
Bauckham, Simon Gathercole, James Dunn, Larry Hurtado, and
others. He adduces four pieces of evidence. First, the New Testament
asserts that a pre-existent Son of God, his Word and Image, became
man. Therefore, the New Testament itself invites us to contemplate
the unity and distinction of Father and Son in one God. Second, the
man Jesus is asserted to be the Lord, ruler, and judge of the world,
things proper to divinity. Third, not only are divine things such as the
creation of the world predicated of the man Jesus, but human things
such as suffering and death are predicated of the Son of God. These
second and third things together adumbrate the insight captured in
St. Cyril’s talk of a “hypostatic union,” which conceptualizes the
ontological basis according to which divine things predicated of the
man Jesus and human things predicated of the Logos, the Son of
God, are literally and not metaphorically said. Such New Testament
doctrines pass well beyond the limits of a “functional Christology”
and require us to think out the reality and being of Jesus of Nazareth
both in relation to the transcendent God of creation and in relation
to us men made in his image. Though the predications are literal,
they require for their coherence a metaphysical reach that can keep
straight the analogical character of language that speaks of both God
and his creatures. Fourth and last, the man Jesus is presented to us
as the exemplar of humanity, as that man in whom can be found no
more perfect or excellent instance of humanity. This, too, requires a
metaphysical exercise, a metaphysical appreciation of a nature, human
nature, that is not conceived in a nominalist way, but such that the
real discernment of human capacities and powers is one thing with
the conception of their fulfillment and end. The introduction assures
us that, when we take up St. Thomas’s metaphysically sophisticated
Christology, we shall not be leaving behind the mystery vouchsafed
us in the New Testament, but going deeper into it and in a way that
it invites of itself.
The introduction establishes the necessity of a metaphysically
informed Christology. The Prolegomena ask whether that is possible
today, given the parameters of modern Christology. They are two.
First, there is the contemporary prominence, even preeminence—a
methodologically authoritative preeminence—of New Testament
and early Christian historical studies. Second, there is the anti-metaphysical challenge of Emmanuel Kant. According to the first, Christology’s point of departure is not the New Testament understood as
itself a word of revelation, but the critical reconstruction thereof and

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1277

the historically determined shape of early Christian thought. According to the second, if the proto-Catholicism of the New Testament
demands a metaphysically informed contemplation of the Christ,
the demand cannot be met. There is, then, all the more reason to
shift to historical grounds pioneered in the German Enlightenment.
Thus White’s prolegomena asks “Is a Modern Thomistic Christology
Possible?” The Prolegomena situates the prospects for a renewed
Thomist Christology between two responses to the twin challenges
posed by historical studies and by Kant, those of Friedrich Schleiermacher and of Karl Barth. It closes by outlining how a Thomistic
Christology can engage these responses.
Schleiermacher stands at the head of a host of modern theologians
who let modern, reductive historical studies trump dogma. The
consequence of this decision is likewise paradigmatic: Schleiermacher
concludes that the divine and saving word Jesus speaks to us arises
from a consciousness of God than which no greater can be conceived
or desired. While some who follow Schleiermacher in granting
history hegemonic theological rights try, by hook or by crook, to
make the Church’s Christological dogma somehow conform to the
results of historical critical studies, Schleiermacher does not, and
in this he is more evidently conformable to the Kantian parameter
of modern theology. If ecclesial Christological doctrine demands a
hospitality to a metaphysical point of view even to be understood, a
properly modern theology cannot itself then be hospitable to dogma.
Schleiermacher proves himself to be a more consequent thinker
than Barth, who provides the second paradigmatic response to the
twin modern challenges. Unlike Schleiermacher, Barth denies the
rights of historical critical studies within theology: dogma trumps
history, the Bible itself has no interest in historical certitude, and
Christians are moreover forbidden by their adherence to faith alone
to be interested in such questions. But like Schleiermacher, he takes
Kant to show the impossibility of natural theology. He understands
the Kantian limits on reason to be the limits of fallen man to speak of
God: there is no indestructible capacity belonging to man to speak
truly of God. But he welcomes a sort of revealed metaphysics, some of
the articulations of which he finds in Friedrich Hegel, with which to
do justice to the demands of both Bible and Church dogma. While
Catholics have thought that the ancient metaphysical patterns linking the world of our experience to a first principle could be pressed
into the task of articulating and understanding dogma, Barth walks
a seemingly simpler, but in the end more difficult, path. It seems

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simpler in that the revealed word of God must bring with it its own
metaphysical resources, worked out in the post-Kantian but still
Christianly inspired discourse of German idealism. But it is a position of which it is difficult to iron out all the wrinkles, the chief one
of which is discerning what Christ has to say to us and what Christ
does for us that is not already implied in the very fact of our having
proceeded from a God who realizes himself in and through us.
The disparate paths of Schleiermacher and Barth unite in finding
no way to speak of Christ except in univocal terms: Schleiermacher’s
Christ differs from us only by degree, not in the constitution of his
being; and Barth’s Christ shows in his humanity an obedience that is
verified also in the Trinity. Both end up making the consciousness of
Christ foundational for understanding his being among us. The similarities of Schleiermacher and Barth to one another are much greater
than their dissimilarity to Aquinas.
How is a Thomist word to be inserted into this framework? As to
the relation of historical studies to theology, White connects us with
his Dominican predecessors, Ambroise Gardeil and R. Garrigou-Lagrange, on the object of Christology formally and materially considered. Formally, it is what God reveals about Christ by the words and
deeds recounted in the economy of salvation and stored up in the
Bible. But materially considered, Christ can be approached by history,
too. Therefore, while theology judges the offerings of historical studies relevant to the contemplation of Christ, just as St. Thomas teaches
in the first question of the Summa (a word for Schleiermacher ) it also
needs to make use of them (a word for Barth). Why must it use them?
It must do so for two reasons, one apologetic and one systematic.
White illustrates the latter with N. T. Wright’s discussion of sacrifice
and the intention of Jesus facing his death. This is not a historical
word it is prudent to ignore. It helps us execute the Christological
task. As to the former (the apologetic), it is not the case that theology
should be unconcerned with linking the word of revelation with the
antecedent concerns and questions of reason still un-illuminated by
faith. In giving an account of our hope, as the New Testament urges
us to be prepared to do (1 Pet 3:15), we have also to be prepared to
say why it is reasonable to believe that God has spoken and reasonable
to believe we have a trustworthy account of the culmination of that
word in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is a mistake to
conceive of the word of God as a sort of nuclear explosion that levels
everything at ground zero and blows away every human structure.
There is a receptivity to the word, natural before supernatural, that

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has also to be respected and which the word of God does in fact
respect. This issue is taken up in a different way in the body of the
book when White examines Barth’s refusal of the analogy of being.
There remains the second, metaphysical challenge of modernity.
White has already treated this issue at length in Wisdom in the Face of
Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology, which undertakes to
install St. Thomas’s natural theology and deployment of analogy in
the twenty-first century. There, he first answers charges originating
with the views of Kant and Heidegger that Thomist metaphysics is
onto-theological, then adjusts some of the infelicities of previous
presentations of the analogy of being to be found in Catholic thinkers
such as Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Rahner, and finally
outlines a reconstructed Thomist metaphysics and natural theology
in the last ninety pages. The prolegomena of The Incarnate Lord, for
its part, offers a brief but illuminating word a Thomist might speak
to the metaphysical issues raised by both Schleiermacher and Barth,
a word that, modo scholastico, distinguishes between primary and
secondary acts. The metaphysical invitation of the New Testament
will have us understand the union of humanity and divinity in Christ
according to first, substantial act, the divine act of existence according
to which the Word subsists in a human nature. The union cannot be
accomplished on the level of operation, of consciousness and knowledge and will. Such a union would not save the communication of
idioms. On the other hand, the consciousness and will of Christ can
and do express the filial character of the one person who now subsists
in human nature. It is rather we who are united to God at the level
of operation, and in this light, the vision of God Christ enjoys in
his humanity ensures that he is exemplary for us not only now in
our consciousness of and obedience to God, but also in anticipating
the end held out to all who are saved in Christ, a vision in which
human nature reaches a fulfillment beyond and divinely perfective
of it according to its radical possibility as made in the image of God.
The introduction tells us the New Testament requires a metaphysically astute Christology; the prolegomena shows how such a
thing, in its Thomist variety, would relate to modern Christology.
The demonstration that a metaphysically informed and historically
wise Christology can meet the issues that Rahner and Balthasar and
company tried to meet better than they did is the burden of the ten
chapters that follow.

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Three Contributions of The Incarnate Lord
Each chapter in this volume can be read on its own, and many certainly
have been, since they have already appeared in journals. The volume
does more than put previously published material between two covers,
however. For one thing, three chapters previously unpublished have
been added so as to fill out a complete Christological itinerary from
Incarnation to Cross and exaltation. In addition, there is a cumulative
force to the succession of topics, both because of their relation to the
two overarching issues of Christology in the contemporary age (that of
the integration of modern historical studies into Christology and that
of ontology after Kant treated in the prolegomena) and because they
follow the order of topics in St. Thomas’s Christology in the Summa:
from the one person of the hypostatic union, to the integrity of the
assumed human nature, to the graced powers of Christ, and last, to the
actions and events of the Paschal Mystery—passion and death, descent
into hell, and resurrection. The presentation’s cumulative force comes
in part, in other words, from the fact that it follows the method of a
mature science (the via docendi), which moves from the priora quoad se
to the priora quoad nos.That is,White’s discussion moves from the divine
and human principles that constitute the incarnate Word in his being
to their operation in the work of our salvation. Because of its engagement with many of the greatest modern theologians (Rahner, Wolfhart
Pannenberg, Balthasar, Jürgen Moltmann, et al.), because of the care
with which it has been framed between the concerns of Barth and
Schleiermacher in the prologue, because of the richness of the appeal
to St. Thomas in every chapter, the work as a whole is like listening
to a great symphony, or like taking the back off of a Swiss watch and
observing a complex, highly ordered movement and its regulation.
There is a sort of aesthetic pleasure in appreciating the whole work.
Three of the more important things White accomplishes are detailed
in what follows.
Close Encounters with Karl Barth
There is a close engagement with Barth throughout the book: first,
there is Barth on analogy in consideration of the natures of Christ (ch.
3); next, a vindication of the necessity of natural theology (ch. 4); and
third, a consideration of the divine obedience of the Son within the
Trinity (ch. 6). With regard to the topics of analogy and natural theology, this is a closer and more sustained engagement by a mature Catholic theologian than anything of which I know since Henri Bouillard,
S.J. But Barth also figures in the chapter on abandonment (ch. 7, with

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1281

Balthasar and Moltmann); he is in the immediate background of the
kenoticists treated apropos of the death of Christ (ch. 8, with Pannenberg, Eberhard Jüngel, Balthasar); and he figures in the chapter on the
descent into hell (ch. 9, with Balthasar). That is to say, Barth figures in
over half the book.
Evidently, the topics of analogy and natural theology remain the
foundational issues they have always been recognized to be. For
Christology, how can one rightly assert the two natures of Christ of
the Chalcedonian confession without the analogy of being? White
formulates the Barthian objections to Thomist analogy with the
help of Jüngel, which charge that it includes God within common
categories of cause and being that do not escape the confines of creatureliness and treats him onto-theologically. White wonders politely
about the ignorance of Thomist texts such accusations betray, but
he patiently cites the relevant texts of Aquinas that deny that God
is included in the subject matter of any human science, metaphysics
included, that exclude him from the notion of ens commune, and that
insist on the non-reciprocal relation between creature and creator
according to which, while it is true to say that creatures are like God,
it is by no means true to say that God is like anything.
The demonstration of the necessity of natural theology for sacred
doctrine is elegant. Must there not be some analogical understanding for us even to hear that the Word became flesh? It cannot be a
Word like our words! White’s position amounts to insisting that the
gratuity of God’s bestowal of a revealed knowledge requires a natural
knowledge from which it is distinct. But, if the revelation of such
things as the Trinity and the Incarnation is to be really heard by us in
faith and therefore integrated into our up and running consciousness
of what we already know about ourselves and our neighbors and the
world, then such integration requires that we recognize it as the revelation it is. It remains in itself a gift of God and must be appreciated
as such to be integrated into our knowing selves. This is to say that,
in relating revelation to what we already know, we have to be able to
contrast it to the non-revealed, natural knowledge we already possess.
So, as White illustrates, if we assent to the truth that the Word that
was with God in the beginning is God and became flesh, then, if we
are to think this through as much as we can and as it deserves, we
must be able to marvel at the sameness and greater difference there is
between the divine Word and a human word.
Or again, we have to think about what it means and what it could
not mean to say that a divine person “becomes” something. This

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means, centrally, that we have to think it through in such a way
that we do not make the ascription of the work of creation ( John
1:3) impossible. We would do that, for instance, by supposing that
“becoming” here means change, by way of either diminishment or
augmentation. For, if that is how the Word “becomes” flesh ( John
1:14), then the Word is being thought of as just one more thing
within the world, and that is not coherent with thinking the Word as
creating the world, which is to say being unconditionally responsible
for the totality of its being.
To think rightly of the divinity of the Word, therefore, “we must
have an intrinsic natural capacity to recognize such revelation as
something exceeding the scope of our ordinary natural powers of
reflection and knowledge” (227). But if we can say how the knowledge of revelation is to be related to our natural human knowledge
such that we can say we have really received the revealed word, then
we are ineluctably engaged in the task of thinking about divinity
just on its own, and thinking about it just on our own—that is, by
force of our own native, natural powers. We are therefore engaged
in a “natural theology,” which turns out to be a sort of subroutine
required by faith itself within the all-inclusive theological program.
This is of ecumenical moment: Thomists do not claim to be dragging
something into theology from outside that we on our own think
theologically useful; we are doing what revelation itself requires in
order to complete its self-unfolding in sacra doctrina. We could put it
like this: since God reveals himself, after all, we can appreciate this
self-revelation as the revelation it really is only against a logically
prior knowledge of him from the “outside,” as it were. Only with
such a knowledge will the revealed knowledge of God be intelligible to, and so assimilable by us as what it is. And this logically prior
knowledge is “natural theology.” Without such knowledge, the terms
of revelation will either be indistinguishable from the terms in which
we know the world or be some alien body whose equivocal claims
cannot be related to what we are and what we desire. For White, the
vindication of natural theology is just the flip side of the defense of
the analogy of being.
One of the most immediate consequences of the difference
between St. Thomas and Barth on analogy shows up in the chapter
on the obedience of Christ, where the question of the manifestation
of the Trinity is addressed: does the economy constitute the Trinity,
or is the Trinity constituted in view of the economy? These ways
of construing things are invited precisely by seeing in the human

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1283

obedience of Christ a direct reflection of an identical and specifically
divine obedience within the Trinity. Such a view collapses the difference between God and the world that analogy keeps open. Barth is
right, of course, to see that the human obedience of Christ manifests
the Trinity—but not in the direct way he wants. Rather, White
reaches, with St. Thomas, for the distinction worked out most clearly
by Maximus the Confessor and taken up by John Damascene, the
distinction between logos and tropos, between the nature of something
and its way of being, here, specifically, the distinction between the
nature common to the Trinity and the tropos tes hyparcheos of the Son,
his filial manner of receiving, but not in an act of obedience, all that
he is from the Father. Without this precision, Father and Son have
distinct wills, commanding and obeying, that tip the doctrine of the
Trinity into tritheism.
It is not only a divine obedience that Barth and his followers want
to verify in God, but also other elements that classical Christology
thought proper to the economy. Chapter 8 examines how the kenoticist Christologies of Pannenberg, Jüngel, and Balthasar understand
the death of the Lord. With no other access to God, and no access to
him by which to measure how we receive the revelation of Christ,
such Christologies end up imputing not only a filial obedience but
finitude and suffering to the divinity as well. Christ does not, therefore, conquer death by his divine authority and power in submitting
to it, but rather only by exhibiting solidarity with us in our suffering,
even to abandonment by God and the experience of hell, introducing
suffering into divinity itself. White questions how such a dark God
can really save or offer any comfort to us his worshippers. He brings
to bear the categories of merit and efficiency in showing the power
of the Cross for Aquinas and moreover explains how the theandric
acts of Christ are permanently available to us in their saving efficacy.
The Unity of Christ’s Agency as God and Man
Christ acts to save us in charity, knowing what he does for our sake,
and knowing that it accomplishes our salvation by the power of God.
Without this known unity of his action on Christ’s part, without
knowing as man what he is doing both humanly and as the Son of
God, Jesus’s activity can be an occasion of divine beneficence but not
its real instrument, an instrument befitting the knowing and self-conscious character of the humanity assumed by the Word to accomplish
salvation. For Aquinas, it is just in this way that a divine person, the
only Son, works through the human actions and passions displayed

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especially on the Cross to effect our salvation. It is one of White’s signal
achievements to show the necessity of this unity, a necessity that the
Gospels take every pain to point out to us (e.g., Mark 15:39—“Truly,
this man was the Son of God”) but that much of modern Christology
has denied or made obscure.
The urgency of this task is evident if we think of Christian
worship. In the third verse (originally the eighth of Paul Gerhardt’s
text) of Hans Leo Hassler’s “Passion Chorale,” the Christian thanks
Jesus for dying on his behalf and for his compassion for him, a sinner:
“What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend, for
this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?” On Good Friday, the
Christian addresses the dying Jesus with these words in the very
moment of his death. The prayer is not directed to the risen and
exalted Christ, but rather places the Christian at the foot of the cross.
The Christian thanks Christ as if thanking a friend—that is, as someone who does what he does knowingly and willingly for those whom
he loves, among whom are certainly included those at Good Friday
services. What must be true of Christ’s agency if this act of Christian
prayer and devotion is itself to be genuine and not some make believe,
to address the dying Christ with words truly descriptive of what he
is doing? For Aquinas, Christ does what he does on the Cross with
the intense love of supernatural charity, charity that he identifies as
the supreme instance of friendship. Only Christ’s graced action, the
charity with which he obediently responds to his Father, the charity
with which he dies for sinners, a graced love just in that way exemplary for all Christians (Rom 5), will fill the bill.
In the second verse, the Christian has already acknowledged that
Christ dies on account of his (the Christian’s) sin. “What thou, my
Lord, has suffered was all for sinners’ gain; mine, mine was the
transgression, but thine the deadly pain.” The admirabile commercium
is here confessed, and it is an exchange Christ knows full well. That
is, Christ’s suffering is informed by the knowledge that what he does
works for the sinner’s salvation. This is why he undertakes it; this is
why he is the “dearest friend” in the third verse. The Christian therefore speaks to Christ as to one who knows what effect his suffering
and death will have. What must be true of Christ’s knowledge if the
Christian speaks to Him truly?
What must be true is that Christ knows who he is in doing what
he does. And for this knowing, he has to behold his Father humanly
and know immediately and with certainty who he himself is. Without this, as White demonstrates in chapter 5, we are left with a sort

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1285

of gnoseological parallelism: Christ as God would know what is
happening, but Christ as man could at best believe he was fulfilling
God’s will, a God whom he likewise believed was his Father. To the
contrary, we thank Jesus as knowing certainly what he was doing,
and therefore doing it with all the greater charity. An infused or
prophetic knowledge cannot supply what is needed here. Our debt
of thanksgiving is not owed to another wayfarer, one who cannot act
beyond the limits of a wayfarer’s confidence and trust in God, but
to the God who died for us, of whose death as God therefore he had
humanly to be conscious and conscious of what it was effecting. If
there is a disconnect between the divine person acting humanly and
the human perfection in the lines of knowing and willing, then we
cannot really pick up the words to Hassler’s chorale as our own.
The traditional Catholic doctrine on Christ’s human knowledge
of God is required to make the Christian’s prayer a true prayer. This
doctrine of the immediacy of Christ’s vision of God also makes his
own prayer true, even the standard of all prayer to God. It certainly
does not mean that his own prayer and obedience are less real, some
fiction played out for our sake, but rather the contrary: he can deliver
himself in prayer to the Father more completely, more profoundly
than any prophet or apostle precisely because of the vision—knowledge enables and illumines action, and greater light does not mean
lesser devotion or a feebler motion of the heart. Rather, in his prayer
and obedience, Jesus shows us a sonship in human form than which
no greater can be imagined, for his human prayer and obedience now
betray the tropos of his divine person more perfectly just because of
the perfection of his human knowledge.
The immediate vision of God that White defends does not obviate
the infused and acquired knowledge of Christ Aquinas also maintains. On the contrary, the infused knowledge of Christ enables him
to translate what he knows in immediacy and with certainty within
the already revealed categories of salvation established in the Old
Testament. His acquired knowledge enables him to complete that
hermeneutical act for the very people with whom he lives and who
are to be witnesses to his deeds and rememberers of his word.
White returns to this theme in chapter 8, already touched on. In
Pannenberg’s kenoticist understanding of the Cross, Christ delivers
himself to death freely, and because of God’s fidelity, his death is salvific. White readily acknowledges the many merits of Pannenberg’s
recapitulation of the New Testament data. Still, it is incomplete. The
death of Christ itself is no longer a divine act—a humanly conscious

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act of someone who knows he is divine and knows that his actions
will save for all time. It may be that, for Pannenberg, as for Barth,
Christ’s obedience reveals his divine sonship to us. But what we
cannot say is that Jesus knowingly lays down his life as the God-man
(370). The divine will that this act will save remains extrinsic to the
human act of Jesus, and we end up in a sort of soteriological Nestorianism: the two tracks of the divine intention of the Son of God
and of the human intention of Jesus never meet undividedly and
inseparably in one act. Rather, White argues, “Christ can choose to
redeem the world freely in love only because he knows of the value
of his sacrifice, and its meaning. His act of free self-offering requires
that he know that he has been sent by the Father for our salvation,
but it also requires that he know who he himself is who is making the
offering” (356). The Thomism we thought we knew shows an unexpected contemporaneity and power when White closely contrasts it
with modern greats.
The contemporary gnosiological and soteriological Nestorianisms
delimited in chapters 5 and 8 are echoes of the more original Nestorian temptation. For there is also the first verse of Hassler’s Chorale
to be made good, where Christ is addressed: “O sacred Head, now
wounded, with grief and shame weighed down, now scornfully
surrounded with thorns, thine only crown.” If the head really is
“sacred,” and if also the grief and anguish are wounds of a similarly
sacred sensibility and will, what must be true of the ontology of
Christ? As we know, what must not be true is Nestorianism. This,
too, has been an issue in contemporary Christology, and White deals
with it in his first chapter.
Karl Rahner, White explains, wanted a Christology that returned
us to a serious consideration of the human freedom and agency of
Christ. Rahner thinks this is prevented, however, by the view that
the humanity of Christ is the instrument of the Word, for this obscures
the humanity of Jesus in its freedom and autonomy. Moreover, it is
precisely the human agency and historical consciousness of Christ
that should disclose his divine identity. Rahner thinks to meet both
issues by a “Christology of consciousness” in which the created grace
with which Christ’s humanity is endowed and which flowers in the
immediate vision of God becomes the grace of union itself: Christ’s
human act of surrender to God in the fullness of his awareness of God
is, for Rahner, the very act of God being among us, and in this way
the divinity of Christ is revealed. While acknowledging Rahner’s
intention to say nothing to impugn the Church’s Christological

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1287

dogma, White situates Rahner’s response to the invitation of a greater
historical attention to the human career of Jesus against other attempts
antecedent and subsequent to Rahner, medieval and contemporary,
to found the union of divinity and humanity in Christ in the order of
grace and the graced second acts (operations) of the man Jesus—that
is, in the broadly Nestorian way of speaking of Christ.
But the head of Christ is not sacred unless the grace of union
is the uncreated person of the Son subsisting in his human nature.
Thence it follows, as White observes, that the humanity of Jesus is
indeed the instrument of the Word: a way of exercising agency is, as
it were, a sort of organon of the agent. But it does not follow that this
instrument is therefore changed and loses its native freedom, and nor
does it follow that he can no longer be understood to reveal (but not
constitute) himself and his divinity in the categories of first-century
Palestinian Judaism.
Theological Anthropology
A third contribution is White’s consideration of the relation of Christology to theological (and therefore also philosophical) anthropology.
In the first place, and logically prior to insisting on the analogical
understanding of the two natures of Christ, he argues for the necessity
of a philosophically available concept of nature by which we can appreciate what Christ does and does not bring to us. This was the topic of
chapter 2. But White returns to philosophical anthropology at the end
of his volume (chapters 9 and 10, on Christ’s descent into hell and his
resurrection from the dead).
There have been two desires, launching two theoretical projects,
that have challenged the way in which classical Christology illustrated and governed basic tenets of the Church’s theological anthropology, which may be summarized as follows. Christ’s death is the
separation of his soul from his body—for Thomists, of his unique
substantial form from his body. His soul continues to exist, since it
is strictly immaterial and subsistent, between his death and his resurrection. Like all human beings, Christ has completed the trajectory
of his human life; he has run the course and finished the race: after
death, there are no mission-defining decisions left for him to take,
nor could his soul naturally compass such decisions in its disembodied
state. His descent to the abode of the dead is not the completion of
his mission as deed, but consists simply in the announcement of his
victory to those in hell, purgatory, and the place of the just. Christ’s
resurrection, on the other hand, means that his humanity is made

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whole: body and soul, both of which remained hypostatically united
to the Word, are rejoined, and rejoined in the state of glory. Only
so is Christ’s victory realized in himself, and only so is our own
final hope manifested to us in convincing form. His completed and
glorified humanity is no longer an instrument of meriting grace or of
vanquishing the devil, but it nonetheless continues as the instrument
of the application of already merited grace to all who seek him with
a sincere heart. He intercedes for us according to the merit already
won on the Cross.
Two modern desires, however, subject this view, both as to Christ
and to our own imitation of his pattern (a death which imitates his as
completing our destiny, an interim state like his between death and
resurrection, but in which no reversals or conversions or apostasy is
possible, and resurrection) to serious strain. A first desire is to maintain the possibility of God’s offer of saving grace through Christ to
sinners after death. This requires man’s freedom to be conceived in
such a way that it does not complete itself in this life and that it can
complete itself, as perhaps finding an even better space of responding to God, in a disembodied existence where freedom is still to be
exercised. Of course, one can postulate whatever is needed for such a
state of affairs to be realized. If one’s view of man’s nature precludes
a determining exercise of freedom after death, then one can suppose
that the possibility is supplied by some preternatural gift giving
the wherewithal to continue the journey of freedom. Or one can
suppose that death always delivers us to the Christ who has (logically)
preceded all men in the exercise of human freedom, such that death
always consigns us to him, either in his glory or in a sort of atemporally available experience of the distance sin establishes between
God and men. There, finding Christ with him in his alienation from
God, the sinner finds also a sort of last offer of grace in solidarity that
cannot be refused.
White enables us to see the difficulties with such a view. Thinking
about man’s condition after death is always difficult, but this view
seems more ad hoc than most, and with little connection to a tradition
earlier than Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. What exactly is the nature
of man? And is embodiment a necessary factor of human perfection such that we make or break ourselves now, in time, and thence
forever? Such anthropological constructions fashioned to make
freedom still determinative after death do little to make us take this
life seriously. Second and more importantly, White alerts us to the
high price we pay in forfeiting any consummation of meaning and

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1289

moral direction to human freedom in this life, for he reminds us of
the kinship of this forfeiture with Duns Scotus’s view of the relation
of human to divine freedom, where it is not man’s rejection of grace
but God’s decision to stop offering grace that determines our destiny.
A second modern desire is to re-conceive the event of death in
such a way that the interim state of dis-embodied souls, the idea of
which is distrusted paradoxically at one and the same time as both
mythological and yet philosophically indebted to Greek philosophy,
is completely avoided. Thus there is postulated the idea of an instant
and not-to-be-delayed “resurrection in death,” which Rahner and
Balthasar have both welcomed. This view obviates the problem of
a disembodied human freedom, but it, too, has hidden costs. First,
once again, it is a whistle while passing the graveyard: we avoid the
fearsomeness of death and the very idea of an existence that is only
ghostly and incomplete—which is to say, this view de-potentiates
the existential seriousness with which we should face death. Second,
it has its own philosophical background, to be found in Kant’s view
of the distinction of the empirical from the transcendental subject.
What is really and only decisively important is what happens beyond
the veil of sensibility and the categories of understanding in the
noumenal realm where we see realities face to face. But again, this
amounts to devaluing this life as the final place of mission, decision,
destiny. Third, what happens to Christ’s resurrection on this view?
Does he rise twice, empirically and noumenally? We should rather
think that his resurrection as reported in the Gospels confirms this
life as the venue in which human reality is completed and perfected.
His resurrection, re-uniting body and soul, illustrates rather the truth
of the theological anthropology to be found in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church.
Christology Is Not History
The volume’s conclusion,“Why Christology Is Not Primarily a Historical Science,” reprises the argument for an ontologically informed
Christology by showing the inability of a wholly hermeneutically
governed Christology, such as that of Eduard Schillebeeckx, to resist the
depredations of modern Nietzscheans like Jacques Derrida and Michel
Foucault. Schillebeeckx finished his career as a sort of pure instance
of what White thinks is wrong with Christology today: disavowal of
classical metaphysics and entrance into Enlightenment historicism.
But without express metaphysical sophistication, Schillebeeckx has no
defense against the charge that he, too, is engaged in only a superficial

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Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

semiotic exercise, and perhaps some form of the will to power. White
confronts these postmodern views with the arguments of Alasdair
MacIntyre (Three Rival Versions) and Aristotle (Metaphysics IV). Under
the title “Inevitable Scholasticism,” he again reasserts the relevance of
metaphysics to Christology, showing how the narratives that are the
object of Schillebeeckx’s hermeneutically minded Christology presuppose the time-transcending scope of the human mind.
The more ambitious object of this conclusion of the book’s argument, however, is to the effect that the Christology White envisages deserves to be called “science” according to the very notion
Aristotle gives this term at the beginning of Western high culture.
This is a common aim of the Thomistic Ressourcement Series to
which White’s volume belongs. Would not that reestablish a sort of
diachronic healing of memory? What Chenu gave us as a historical,
time-bound and culture-bound artifact, White gives us a perennially
and time-transcending possibility. What are the chances here? How
can Christology, whose subject is an individual and particular man,
be the subject of a science that deals with the universal and gives
explanations of human hopes that are truly causal? The chances
are the chances of faith. White takes up this medieval objection in
the form it took in the eighteenth century, the “ugly, broad ditch”
between the contingent facts of history and the necessary truths of
reason that Gotthold Lessing could not leap. But according as Christ
is man and God, and according as there is a revealed science of God,
Christology is also certainly a science, one whose object includes
the universal agent of redemption and the universal cause of our
salvation, and one that the mysteries of the Incarnation, atonement,
and resurrection give us to contemplate. Because Christ is also the
exemplary cause of our salvation in his glorified humanity beholding
God, Christology is also practical and, like theology generally, is the
wisdom that unites both speculative and practical truth—both the
way and the truth leading to life. In this light, White reminds us of
Christology’s capacity to provide a framework in which every truth,
not just philosophic but also scientific and historical, can find a home
and recognize its relation to every other truth. Christology therefore
embraces the natural lights of all the modern studies concerned with
development across time—cosmology, New Testament historical
studies, and a teleologically conceived ethics—and thus vindicates, as
to the last mentioned discipline, the claim that theology is not only
science, but wisdom.

Review Essay of Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord 1291

This evocation of the universitas artium et scientiarum in the last pages
of The Incarnate Lord recalls the institutional, economic, political will
it would take in the contemporary world to make White’s contribution a seed of a more abundant harvest, yielding thirty or sixty or a
hundred fold. Catholic University Press, with its Thomistic Ressourcement Series, is a hopeful sign.
Where to end? The clarity of White’s exposition and argument
over very detailed and difficult ground is wholly admirable. Also, the
courtesy with which he engages all his interlocutors and discusses all
positions is a model for how theological disputation should be carried
out.
What, after all, is theology for? This is a book of high ambition
and deep seriousness. White is not interested in being original or in
winning points; he is interested in displaying the ever-contemporary
wisdom of St. Thomas. He is interested in helping us all behold the
Christ more truly and with greater love, and he is interested, insofar
as a theologian can think himself to be, in winning souls. The IncarN&V
nate Lord is an apostolic work.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1293–1340

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization:
Hahn and Wiker’s Unmasking of Historical Criticism’s Political Agenda by Laying Bare its
Philosophical Roots
Jeffrey L. Morrow
Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology
Seton Hall University
South Orange, NJ

“The dismemberment of the Bible has led to a new variety
of allegorism: One no longer reads the text but the supposed
experience of supposed communities. The result is often highly
fanciful allegorical interpretation.”
—Joseph Ratzinger,
The Nature and and Mission of Theology1

Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker’s Politicizing the

Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture
1300–1700 is the single most important work to date in the history
of modern biblical scholarship. As their subtitle, “Secularization of
Scripture,” indicates, these authors particularly have in mind the ways
in which the interpretation and the study of Scripture have been
secularized over the course of centuries. Far too rarely in brief surveys
of biblical scholarship has the role of politics and philosophy been
addressed, let alone addressed adequately. In this more than 600–page
book, Hahn and Wiker demonstrate how various political concerns and
		Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to
Understanding Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy, trans. Adrian Walker
(San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), 65.

1

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

undergirding philosophies shaped and guided the long process that led
to the historical critical method of biblical interpretation. They situate
this process within the broader historical, political, philosophical, and
theological contexts in which historical criticism was formed. Moreover, they also situate the contributions of the major figures involved
in this process within the context of their biographies, which proves
so necessary for understanding this history. Hahn and Wiker consider
an expansive and often neglected period within the history of modern
biblical criticism.2
Although the authors do not divide the book into sections, I would
divide it roughly into two parts (excluding the introductory first
chapter and the concluding thirteenth chapter): the first part (chs.
2–7), lays the groundwork for the advent of historical criticism. The
second part (chs. 8–12), shows key examples of the development of
historical criticism as it evolved throughout the seventeenth century,
laying the essential groundwork for the Enlightenment biblical criticism of the eighteenth century and what would follow that in the
nineteenth century. First, Hahn and Wiker show how Marsilius of
Padua’s and William of Ockham’s arguments justify the subordination of church to state, due to Marsilius’s Averroist philosophical
underpinnings and Ockham’s nominalism. Following these two, such
Averroist and nominalist philosophies would continue to undergird
much of the future of historical critical exegesis.
After this, Hahn and Wiker show how Wycliffe’s attack upon
nominalism inadvertently supported the same sort of exegesis and
subordination of church to state as had Marsilius and Ockham.
Thus, for theological reasons (and philosophical reasons directly
		Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker, Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical
Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300–1700 (New York: Crossroad,
2013); all parenthetical citations of page numbers without identification of
source in the main text of the present article refer to this volume). For brief
article-length overviews likewise emphasizing the political history moving
from the medieval period into the nineteenth century, overlapping with some
of the figures they study (Marsilius, Ockham, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza,
and Simon), see Jeffrey L. Morrow, “Cut Off from Its Wellspring: The Politics
Behind the Divorce of Scripture from Catholic Moral Theology,” Heythrop
Journal 56 (2015): 547–58; Morrow, “Secularization, Objectivity, and Enlightenment Scholarship:The Theological and Political Origins of Modern Biblical
Studies,” Logos 18 (2015): 14–32; Morrow, “The Modernist Crisis and the
Shifting of Catholic Views on Biblical Inspiration,” Letter & Spirit 6 (2010):
265–80, especially 267–73; and Morrow, “The Politics of Biblical Interpretation: A ‘Criticism of Criticism,’” New Blackfriars 91 (2010): 528–45, especially
530–43.

2

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1295

opposed to Ockham), Wycliffe brought to English and, through his
followers, to German soil the subordination of the church to the
state for which Marsilius and Ockham had argued. Thus, the ground
was set for the German and English Reformations that would soon
follow. Next, Hahn and Wiker turn to Machiavelli, showing how
he created a hermeneutic of suspicion in which, much like Averroës,
he saw religion as a veil for more crafty political machinations of
hypocritical rulers.
From Machiavelli, Hahn and Wiker turn to Luther and the
Protestant Reformation, where they indicate that Luther and his
co-Reformers were inspired in part by the widespread corruption
among clerical leaders within the Catholic hierarchy. Luther was
a nominalist and self-identified follower of Ockham. Luther built
on the groundwork laid by Marsilius and Wycliffe and inadvertently aided in the transformation of the public, civic realm into a
secular realm in which state controlled church. After Luther, Hahn
and Wiker examine the English Reformation of King Henry VIII,
showing how his reforming policy built on all the influential figures
previously discussed: Marsilius (directly through Henry’s advisors);
Ockham (implied, through the German Protestant influence);3
Wycliffe (through the influence of the English Lollardy that had so
shaped English nationalist aspirations and prepared the groundwork
in Germany for the Reformation); Machiavelli (directly, through
Henry’s advisors); and Luther (through the Protestant reforming
agenda in England). They next turn to Descartes, expositing his
role in effecting a great cosmological shift in which nature becomes
mathematized and geometry emerges as the primary form of rationality, setting the stage for a secular cosmos devoid of God and the
supernatural and, thus, preparing the ground for a fully secular biblical hermeneutic.
		Hahn and Wiker scarcely make mention of the influence of Ockham in the
chapter on Henry VIII, but in light of their chapter on Luther (and Ockham’s
clear and unambiguous influence on Luther), as well as Luther’s influence on
Henry’s regime (and on the influence of Tyndale, which they mention), and
in light of how influential Ockham (having taught at Oxford) was on English
soil, they should probably have explored this indirect influence. The most they
write is that “Tyndale repeated the complaints of Ockham and Luther about
the use of allegory in scriptural exegesis” (Politicizing the Bible, 228), and buried
in a footnote, “appeal to councils over the pope was found both in Ockham
and in Marsilius” (ibid., 240n71). See also their comment that “Tyndale would
seem to affirm an almost Pelagian understanding of the ability to fulfill the
law (which looks quite similar to the quasi-Pelagian notion among nominalists
that so enraged Luther)” (ibid., 230).

3

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

Hahn and Wiker’s chapter on Thomas Hobbes begins what I
suggest is the second part of their book. Hobbes’s contribution
matters inasmuch as he provides a secularized exegesis that makes
sense for an atomist-mechanist worldview. He was clearly influenced
by Descartes and Machiavelli, and his exegesis supports the kind of
state Henry VIII created. Moreover, his political exegesis helps lead
to the next figure in Hahn and Wiker’s history, namely Spinoza.
Hahn and Wiker not only trace the many influences on Spinoza’s
thought (including Averroës, Machiavelli, Descartes, and Hobbes)
but also situate him within his early radical Enlightenment context,
showing how his work played an important role in the later Enlightenment. Spinoza tried to construct a scientific biblical exegesis that,
like Hobbes’s hermeneutic and Descartes’s philosophy, attempted to
bring peace to a Europe torn asunder by a violence they all identified
as fundamentally religious in motivation.
Hahn and Wiker move from Spinoza to a seventeenth-century
critic of Spinoza, Fr. Richard Simon, who took Spinoza’s method
as a starting point in order to critique Spinoza, challenge Protestant notions of sola Scriptura, and buttress Catholic tradition. Ironically, Simon in fact extended Spinoza’s hermeneutic and ensured its
survival among biblical scholars in the future. After Simon, Hahn and
Wiker examine the work of John Locke, illustrating how he built
upon the methods of exegesis of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Simon, in
order to support the politics in which he very actively played a part.
After Locke, they finish their history with a look at the work of John
Toland and the beginning of English Deist biblical exegesis, showing
not only how Toland built upon the work of those that came before
(e.g., Machiavelli, Spinoza, and Simon) but also how his conclusions
demonstrate that the most radical effects of historical criticism in the
nineteenth century were already in place, intrinsic in the methods
themselves, at the end of the seventeenth century. Finally, Hahn and
Wiker conclude by identifying some of the ways the history they
have recounted plays out in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
primarily through the receptions of Spinoza and Simon, but also of
Toland and, at least to some extent, Machiavelli.
Their overarching argument “is that the development of the
historical-critical method in biblical studies is only fully intelligible as part of the more comprehensive project of secularization that
occurred in the West over the last seven hundred years, and that the
politicizing of the Bible was, in one way or another, essential to this

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1297

project” (8).4 In roughly the first half of their volume, Hahn and
Wiker show how the stage is set for the drama of historical criticism’s
evolution. In the second half, they illustrate how specific exegetes
operated within the intellectual and political world created by the
figures discussed in the first half.
Hahn and Wiker write with a clarity often missing in scholarly
works, and this is doubly impressive because of the complexity of the
issues discussed. By necessity, their large tome spans a host of seemingly unrelated topics, each thread of which ultimately fits together
into the tapestry they are weaving: medieval theological debates
about poverty and evangelical perfection; papal and clerical reform
and corruption; the investiture controversy; the Latin Averroist
reception of Aristotle; Machiavelli’s new politics of princely rule;
the renaissance retrieval of classical literature; the selling of indulgences; attempts by state rulers to curb the flow of money leaving
their realms; the dissolution of monasteries; the justification debate;
theological controversies over the sacraments; the so-called “wars of
religion” of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Europe; Cartesian
geometry; the creation of epistemology; the early modern revival of
ancient Epicurean mechanistic atomism; Dutch Jewish heterodox
intellectuals; the reception of Descartes in the Dutch Republic; the
English civil wars; among many other topics. The narrative Hahn
and Wiker create makes this book not only informative, insightful,
and persuasive, but also a real pleasure to read.
The scholar looking for a reference work spanning the history
of biblical interpretation from biblical times through the twentieth
century should turn to Henning Graf Reventlow’s four-volume work
Epochen der Bibelauslegung.5 The scholar seeking a reference work that
		They explain that, “By politicization, we mean the intentional exegetical reinterpretation of Scripture so as to make it serve a merely political, this worldly (hence
secular) goal” (Politicizing the Bible, 9).
5
		Henning Graf Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung, vol. 1, Von Alten Testament bis Origenes (Munich: Beck, 1990); Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung,
vol. 2,Von der Spätantike bis zum ausgehenden Mittelalter (Munich: Beck, 1994);
Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung, vol. 3, Renaissance, Reformation, Humanismus (Munich: Beck, 1997); Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung, vol. 4, Von
der Aufklärung bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 2001). Each of these
volumes exist in English translation: Reventlow, History of Biblical Interpretation,
vol. 1, From the Old Testament to Origen, trans. Leo G. Perdue (Atlanta, GA:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2009); Reventlow, History of Biblical Interpretation,
vol. 2, From Late Antiquity to the End of the Middle Ages, trans. James O. Duke
(Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009); Reventlow, History of Biblical
Interpretation, vol. 3, Renaissance, Reformation, Humanism, trans. James O. Duke
4

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

focuses on the history of Old Testament interpretation from biblical times through the twentieth century, for the most exhaustive
treatment to date, ought to find Magne Sæbø’s edited multi-volume
Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation.6 The
scholar who wants more than a reference book, however, will profit
greatly from Hahn and Wiker’s volume. In what follows below, I will
comment in greater detail as I provide a more thorough overview of
each chapter.
The Pathos of Historical Criticism: Politically Interested
Biblical Interpretation
Chapter 1, “Getting to the Roots of the Historical-Critical Method”
(1–16), serves as an introduction to the entire work. Hahn and Wiker
begin by calling into question the objective neutrality of the historical-critical method, asserting that it has never been disinterested and
neutral and that it has not always been articulated as such. From this
preliminary discussion, they proceed to discuss the values and merits,
as well as limitations, of a number of significant works that detail the
history of modern biblical criticism.7 They use this helpful survey of
(Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010); and Reventlow, History of
Biblical Interpretation, vol. 4, From the Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century, trans.
Leo G. Perdue (Atlanta. GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010).
6
		Magne Sæbø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation,
vol. 1, From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300), pt. 1, Antiquity
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996): Sæbø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old
Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to the
Middle Ages (Until 1300), pt. 2, The Middle Ages (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2000); Sæbø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old Testament:The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008); Sæbø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History
of Its Interpretation, vol. 3, From Modernism to Post-Modernism (The Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries), pt. 1, The Nineteenth Century—A Century of Modernism and
Historicism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013); Sæbø, ed., Hebrew
Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 3, From Modernism to
Post-Modernism (The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries), pt. 2, The Twentieth
Century (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014).
7
		For a comparable survey of primarily fourteen significant works (including six
of the volumes surveyed by Hahn and Wiker) in the history of historical-criticism, see Jeffrey L. Morrow, “The Enlightenment University and the Creation
of the Academic Bible: Michael Legaspi’s The Death of Scripture and the Rise
of Biblical Studies,” Nova et Vetera (English) 11 (2013): 899–909 (particularly
899–900n6, 900n7, 900–01n9, 903n13, 904–05n18, 906–07n22, and 908n23)
for a more thorough list of sources spanning the years 1933–2013 within the
history of biblical scholarship.

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1299

nine of the most significant works in the field to help situate their
present project, which they distinguish from everything that has come
before.8
After this roughly five-page survey (2–7), they underscore one
of the distinctive marks of their work, namely, that their study ends
in the seventeenth century, where most other such studies begin.
Although it is commonplace in textbook accounts of historical
criticism to see the method as a product of the nineteenth century,
scholars increasingly identify its roots in the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Politicizing the Bible, Hahn and Wiker suggest
deeper roots, extending the historical-critical genealogical tree into
the fourteenth century, at the end of the medieval period. As they
explain, “The late-eighteenth-century Enlightenment is not the
beginning of the conflict, but the culmination of several centuries of
a slowly building new . . . secular worldview” (7).9
Hahn and Wiker emphasize how the roots of historical criticism
and modern politics are linked, for example, in figures such as Marsilius of Padua, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke. In addition,
they underscore how the secular political agenda works through
the historical-critical method through the nineteenth century and
beyond, using the example of Ernst Troeltsch’s programmatic discussion of such a method in which the supernatural is systematically
excluded (10–11).10 They make explicit an implied point that, “In
		The nine main books Hahn and Wiker discuss in this portion are: Werner
Kümmel, The New Testament:The History of the Investigation of Its Problems, trans.
S. McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1972);
William Baird, History of New Testament Research, vol. 1, From Deism to Tübingen
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992); Rudolph Smend, From Astruc to Zimmerli:
Old Testament Scholarship in Three Centuries, trans. M. Kohl (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2007); Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise
of the Modern World, trans. J. Bowden (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1985); Reventlow, History of Biblical Interpretation, 4 vols.; John Sandys-Wunsch, What Have
They Done to the Bible? A History of Modern Biblical Interpretation (Collegeville,
MN: Liturgical Press, 2005); Sæbø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, vol. 2;
Pierre Gibert, L’invention critique de la Bible: XVe–XVIIIe (Paris: Gallimard,
2010); and Roy Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture:
Baruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002).
9
		They include here a parenthetical explanation bringing attention to the role
of the comma in this sentence: “it’s not a new secular as opposed to the old
secular.”
10
		They refer to Ernst Troeltsch, “On Historical and Dogmatic Method in
Theology,” in Religion in History, trans. J. Adams and W. Bense (Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress, 1991), 11–32.
8

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

doing so, it removes Christianity as a political force, making of it
at best a bearer of nondogmatic moral teachings that undergird the
political order” (11). What is significant here is that the guiding
presuppositions of this method predetermine how modern biblical
interpreters use history. Hahn and Wiker make clear that what is
unique to modern historical biblical criticism is not the various
scholarly tools of textual criticism, philology, archaeology, and so
on that it employs. Rather, “This union of tools with secularizing
presuppositions constitutes what is almost invariably meant by the
historical-critical method” (12). They conclude this first chapter with
a four-page summary of the rest of the book (12–16).
The Poverty Dispute and the Subordination of the Church
to the State: The Contributions of the Latin Averroist Marsilius of Padua (ca. 1275–1342) and the Nominalist William of
Ockham (1288–1347)
Hahn and Wiker’s second chapter, “The First Cracks of Secularism:
Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham” (17–59), lays the groundwork for what will come later, both in the volume and in the history
of modern biblical criticism. They begin their chapter with a brief
yet necessary history of the Avignon Papacy (18–22), which is an
essential part of the historical and political background to Marsilius’s
and Ockham’s discussions of Scripture. The main context here is the
Franciscan poverty debate—the debate over ownership and use among
clergy, like the Franciscans, who took a vow of poverty but needed to
use books and, thus, libraries, etc., for various aspects of their religious
life, including study for preaching (21–22).
Pope John XXII entered the theological fray by denying the
distinction between use and ownership. Under his predecessors
Gregory IX, Nicholas III, and Clement V, such a distinction was
permitted, and under Nicholas, the idea was that the papacy owned
the material possessions that Franciscans merely used. The conflict
raged within the Franciscans between the Conventuals and the Spirituals. The Conventuals prudentially attempted to apply Franciscan
norms to their current obligations, whereas the Spirituals were bent
on reforming their order in the face of what they took to be abuses
of de facto wealth and luxury among their brother Franciscans who
had taken vows of poverty. John XXII demurred against the idea that
the papacy owned these possessions, declaring that the Franciscans
owned what they used. Moreover, upset with what he took to be the

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1301

Spirituals’ abuses against their vows of obedience he called them to
obey (21–22).
At the same time, John XXII was at odds with Ludwig of Bavaria.
Different factions supported different candidates for rule over the
Germanic regions. Some factions believed that Ludwig was the rightful German emperor, whereas others understood Frederick I to be
the lawful German emperor and lent their support to him. In light
of this irreconcilable dispute, John XXII requested that both Ludwig
and Frederick abdicate rule, and he, John XXII, as pope, would
take over temporal rule over the Germanic realms in the meantime.
When John XXII reopened the poverty debate that his predecessor
Nicholas had closed, Ludwig quickly condemned John as a heretic,
using the Franciscan conflict with the pope as a political means of
attacking the papacy.11 Another aspect to this conflict, not lost on
Hahn or Wiker, is the actual wealth and luxury of the papal court in
Avignon, which likely accentuated the sting of the Spiritual Franciscan critique. Although the Conventuals in general, and Michael of
Cesena in particular, the Franciscan’s Minister General, would have
likely applauded Pope John’s call to obedience for the Spirituals, they
were outraged by his reopening what they thought had been a closed
debate, resolved in their favor under John’s predecessor (18–22).
Marsilius of Padua (23–39) and William of Ockham (39–57)
found themselves right in the middle of these controversies, as they
both came to reside under Ludwig’s protection from John XXII.
It was with Marsilius that medieval Muslim Averroist philosophy
became important and eventually exerted a significant influence
on later biblical criticism. The Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd or
Averroës was an important and influential commentator on the work
of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Averroës noticed, as had others,
that the teachings of the Qur’an were not always consistent with
Aristotle’s thought. Thus, Averroës reasoned that truth is known
differently depending on the different abilities of the one knowing
the truth. Philosophers stand at the pinnacle of his hierarchy. What
this Averroist notion entailed was the “superiority of the truths of
natural reason to those of revelation” (23), and this led to what has
		For further background to this debate over Franciscan poverty in the context
of debates about papal authority and infallibility, see James Heft, John XXII
and Papal Teaching Authority (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1986), and Brian
Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1972), neither
of which Hahn and Wiker use.

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

been called the “double truth” approach of the “Latin Averroist”
tradition. This Latin Averroism found an important home at the
University of Padua, from whence it spread throughout Europe.
Marsilius imbibed this philosophy while studying there, and later as
rector at the University of Paris, which was another major Averroist
center in the west (23–25).
Hahn and Wiker examine Marsilius’s incredibly influential political treatise Defensor Pacis, an anti-papal work completed in 1324.
They point out that Marsilius’s treatise was “revolutionary, a landmark philosophical document in the secularization of the West”
(25). The politics of Marsilius’s work were grounded in reason apart
from faith. His primary concern was to secure civil peace, which
indeed became the main goal, the highest good, for Marsilius. Hahn
and Wiker explain that, “Although Marsilius is evidently concerned
with undermining papal authority in the political realm, his ultimate
concern is the radical reordering of secular and sacred authority, so
that the priesthood is firmly subordinated to political power” (26).
Marsilius was relying on Aristotle to make this claim, but Aristotle as
filtered through Averroës, and what is more, a very “truncated view”
of Aristotle’s thicker description of politics (28). Marsilius’s use of
the Bible in Defensor Pacis “serves the secularizing aim of Marsilius’s
politics” (29). That is, Marsilius used Scripture whenever he was able
to twist its interpretation to serve merely secular ends. In the end,
the secular state Marsilius envisioned was to be in control of biblical
interpretation (24–34).
Moreover, for Marsilius, the state should have control of church
offices so that the state can control ecclesiastical decisions (33–34).
He additionally asserted a sort of early conception of sola Scriptura
where the Bible supplanted church authority and tradition, but it
was a Bible authoritatively interpreted, not by the individual, but the
state ruler and state-appointed exegetes (32–34). In his view, the Old
Testament no longer plays a role for Christians, nor should recourse
be made to a spiritual sense of Scripture, only to a literal sense.
These latter rejections are based on Marsilius’s understanding of how
pro-papal exegetes used the Old Testament and allegorical interpretation to support the authority of the papacy (34–36). Marsilius never
intended for the Defensor Pacis to remain a merely theoretical work,
but rather it contained a practical means of subordinating the papacy
to the state. Thus, Marsilius jumped on the contemporary Franciscan
anti-John XXII bandwagon and, “Arguing on behalf of the absolute
poverty of Christ and the Apostles through appeal to the New Testa-

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ment, Marsilius sought to strip the papacy of temporal power so that
a secular ruler could establish a purely secular rule” (37).
William of Ockham would eventually join Marsilius, both literally
under Ludwig’s protection, and ideologically, but with a different and
more spiritual purpose. Ockham got into trouble with John XXII
and fled Avignon, along with Michael of Cesena, to the protection
of Ludwig, from where he attacked the papacy of John XXII and
succeeding popes. Hahn and Wiker importantly observe, “Unlike
Marsilius, Ockham does not subordinate the ecclesiastical powers
to the political powers; rather, he attempts to reinstate, against
later papal pretensions, the generally accepted medieval view that
the sacred and the secular are two distinct powers” (40). Because
Ockham saw an extraordinary need for church reform, he argued for
the ability and necessity of secular rulers ruling over sinful prelates.
Tied to this concept was Ockham’s emphasis on the role of biblical
periti (experts) or specialists who should be in charge of biblical interpretation. This would play itself out later in the history of biblical
criticism, especially in and after the Enlightenment. For Ockham,
the specialist or expert is over a council, over the pope, and even over
Catholic tradition, when it comes to biblical interpretation (44–47).
Hahn and Wiker examine Ockham’s The Work of Ninety Days, A
Dialogue, and Breviloquium.
From here, they begin their discussion of Ockham’s nominalism
(47–56), which will be important for later discussions, particularly
in the Reformation. To their credit, Hahn and Wiker engage in the
ongoing scholarly debate about whether or not Ockham was a true
nominalist. They show, however, that the traditional use of nominalism to deny the existence of universals fits Ockham fairly well
(47–56, 47–48n119, 49–50n123, and 53n130). In contrast with the
Latin Averroists, Ockham describes God’s will operating in a way
that appears arbitrary; there are no means of limiting God’s will
and thus violating God’s absolute sovereignty (50–53). Through this
discussion, Hahn and Wiker show how Ockham began to mathematize rationality, paving the way for later philosophers like Descartes
who “would substitute mathematical forms as the new universals”
(52): the vacuum created by Ockham and his nominalist philosophy
would eventually be filled by mathematics, materialism, and so on
(53). Like Marsilius, Ockham would place emphasis on the literal
sense, but their literal sense differed from more traditional notions (as,
e.g., found in St. Thomas Aquinas): for Marsilius and Ockham, the
literal sense was a reading of Scripture wherein the words of Scripture

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

signified particular realities, as the authors intended, in the way any
other human work signified realities.12 Hahn and Wiker conclude
this chapter by noting the rapidity with which Ockham’s thought
would spread from the University of Paris throughout Europe.
Disendowing the Church: John Wycliffe’s (ca. 1330–1384)
Inadvertent Secularization of Exegesis
Chapter 3, “John Wycliffe” (61–115), is another foundational chapter
laying the groundwork for later Reformation exegesis. Hahn and Wiker
show how Wycliffe’s metaphysical realism grounded his entire theo-political and exegetical project. Wycliffe was upset about the popularity of
nominalist philosophy, but also with ecclesiastical corruption. Although
Wycliffe never learned Greek or Hebrew, he thought such study was
methodologically extremely important for proper biblical interpretation. In a very Marsilian and Ockhamite fashion, he passionately argued
that the state had an obligation to control the civil realm and should
thus take control of the Church’s temporal goods. As Hahn and Wiker
explain, for Wycliffe, “reform of the sacred could only be achieved if
the Church’s riches and temporal power were taken away by the civil
secular sword” (66). It should not come as a surprise that his “works
received a ready hearing among those in the royal court, for the king
had every desire to control and divert payments flowing from England
toward Avignon” (ibid.).13
		Importantly, Hahn and Wiker contrast this with the example of Aquinas, for
whom the doctrine of analogy emphasized the relationship between created
realities in light of the Creator. They write, “Both human beings and God
can signify according to the historical or literal sense, but only God, properly speaking, can signify in the spiritual sense for only He can create real
things that signify other things. . . . God wrote allegories into creation itself ”
(Politicizing the Bible, 55). On St. Thomas Aquinas’s biblical interpretation, and
especially his understanding of the literal sense, see, e.g.: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q. 1, a. 10; Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, q.
4. a. 1; Aquinas, In Psalmos Davidis expositio, prooem.; John F. Boyle, “Authorial
Intention and the Divisio Textus,” in Reading John with St.Thomas Aquinas:Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew
Levering (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 3–8;
and Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa personne et son
oeuvre, 2nd ed. (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, 2002), 41–45 and
84–85.
13
		Although, Hahn and Wiker note that, “The English king did not want papal
subsidies and tithes to cease, since in practice they were collected by royal officials who skimmed off half to three-quarters for the royal treasury” (Politicizing
the Bible, 66n17).
12

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Hahn and Wiker consider a number of Wycliffe’s works, particularly De Dominio Divino, De Civili Dominio, and De Officio Regis,
wherein Wycliffe argues for the Church’s disendowment by the
state. For Wycliffe, God granted dominion “on condition that the
one exercising dominion is righteous” (ibid.). As with Luther’s later
teaching on two kingdoms, Wycliffe made a distinction between two
types of dominion, “civil” and “evangelical.” Based on his discussion
in these works, he argued forcefully that, “the king can and should
take away possessions of ecclesiastics if they are misusing them, or
if the possessions themselves are inordinate, on the grounds that the
unrighteous have no right of dominion—and further because disendowing the clergy returns them to their proper condition of Christlike poverty” (67).
They turn next to a very important discussion of the development
of a sort of English messianic nationalism that provides an essential
context for understanding Wycliffe and, of course, what would later
come in the English Reformation (68–71 and 74–75). Wycliffe must
be situated within this broader context of rising English nationalism
that moves the earlier Marsilian focus from imperial political power
to Wycliffe’s concern for English national rule.
When it comes to Wycliffe’s biblical exegesis, Hahn and Wiker
examine his De veritate sacrae scripturae. For Wycliffe, Jesus is the
true Word of God, and the scriptural texts are not, but merely are
informed by Christ the Word (75–81). Wycliffe made it abundantly
clear that he saw his metaphysical realism, his philosophy, as a necessary prerequisite for proper exegesis (81–86). It is from his philosophical position, informed by his socio-political context, that Wycliffe
buttresses his arguments for the state’s forceful disendowment of the
Church with passages from Scripture (86–88). Within this context,
Wycliffe savagely critiqued religious orders, and particularly monasteries, that tied up so much land and represented, for Wycliffe, the
Church’s corruption (89–91). “Court theologians,” such as Wycliffe
were necessary, so he argued, to aid the state in its job of putting
Church authorities in their proper place. Hahn and Wiker describe
Wycliffe’s position thus: “The unsheathed sword of the temporal
power is not merely for punishing thieves, murderers, etc., but also
(among other things) to keep the clergy from grasping at the temporal sword or inordinate temporal holdings” (93).
Hahn and Wiker conclude their chapter by clearing up some
confusions concerning the so-called Wycliffite Bible and by showing
how his views spread and thus paved the way for the Reformation

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and what would come in later biblical scholarship (95–115). Contrary
to the popular opinion that the Wycliffite Bible was revolutionary as
an attempt to bring the Bible into the vernacular, Hahn and Wiker
show how the translation of Scripture into the vernacular (of which
the Wycliffite Bible was not the first) was not so revolutionary,
but was rather part of a much broader transformation of England’s
culture involving the transition from French to English more broadly.
Wycliffe almost certainly did not, in fact, translate the Wycliffite
Bible; it was completed by scholars sharing Wycliffe’s views (95–102).
In the end, Wycliffe’s ideas survived, particularly in Bohemia among
those Bohemians who came to England during the Bohemian Queen
Ann’s marriage to England’s King Richard II (105 and 107). In Bohemia, Wycliffite theology and exegesis exerted a tremendous influence
on John Hus and his Hussite followers (107–10). Both movements,
the English Lollards (followers of Wycliffe) and Bohemian Hussites,
sparked violent revolution and were thus put down as threats to their
respective states. Nominalists, whose philosophy was directly opposed
to that espoused by Wycliffe and Hus, were instrumental in attacking Hussites. Hahn and Wiker conclude their chapter by making the
important observation that, “although Wycliffe was a declared enemy
of Ockham, insofar as he set forth an almost Marsilian argument he
had the unintended effect (as did Ockham) of reinforcing the secularizing, politicizing thrust of Marsilius’s thought” (113).
The Prince as Religious Dissembler: Niccolò Machiavelli
(1469–1527) and First Signs of a Hermeneutic of Suspicion
Chapter 4 is entitled simply “Machiavelli” (117–46). Hahn and Wiker
acknowledge that a chapter on Machiavelli appears, at first blush, to be
entirely out of place in a volume devoted to the history of historical
biblical criticism (117). Indeed, they note that, of the volumes they
survey at the outset of their tome, there is only one text where Machiavelli is discussed, and that only in “a single paragraph” (13).14 Machia		That paragraph can be found in Trond Berg Eriksen, “Some Sociopolitical
and Cultural Aspects of the Renaissance,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament II,
ed. Sæbø, 102. Hahn and Wiker are being generous (albeit accurate) in stating
that Machiavelli is herein discussed in “but a single paragraph.” In fact, that
paragraph mentions only the following about Machiavelli: “Only with Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) and Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) do we
encounter a more modern form of historiography that concerns itself with
how causes work together to produce historical events. . . . In Machiavelli the
study of history was motivated by an interest in the natural regularities that

14

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1307

velli’s social and historical context in Florence of the latter half of the
fifteenth century is essential to understanding his oeuvre and, thus,
his contribution to the later development of historical criticism. The
universally recognized instances of the corruption of the papacy and
of some members of the clergy constitute the necessary background
to this social and historical context.15 Hahn and Wiker confess that,
“in view of the notorious doings of the papacy and Church hierarchy
during this period, religious hypocrisy had gone from being a scandal
to an art. The damage done to the faith of the Church by the popes
during Machiavelli’s lifetime is incalculable” (118), and they include
a quotation that describes the papacy during this time as “a folly of
perversity” (119).16
They lucidly show how Machiavelli universalized the hypocritical
lives of his contemporary Renaissance popes to all religious leaders and how he read such religious hypocrisy back into the lives of
biblical figures like Moses (122–23 and 131–46). That is, Machiavelli
“assumes that all religion of any type is a façade for power” (122).
Unlike what was to come later with figures like Spinoza, Machiavelli
did not think such hypocrisy was always bad. In fact, he encouraged it. Machiavelli presents the reader with Pope Alexander VI as a
paradigmatic prince (121–22). It was after being tortured during his
imprisonment that Machiavelli would pen his The Prince (124–25).
Significantly, he already had a wealth of personal political experience: he served as a secretary in Florence; as a formal representative
of Florence, he had numerous dealings with Cesare Borgia, Alexander VI’s “ambitious and ruthless son” (124); he sought to create an
effective army for Florence; he travelled to the German Holy Roman
Emperor Maximilian I on behalf of Florence (124–25); and, perhaps
most importantly, as a Florentine diplomat, he got to travel with Pope
Julius II in battle.
steer social and political processes. If factual accounts did not accord with a
basic standard of accuracy, then one could not learn anything from history.
Writers did not use history to exemplify wisdom they already possessed, but
to find still hidden causal connections.”
15
		On this, see, not only Hahn and Wiker’s discussion (Politicizing the Bible,
118–23), but also Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes, 3d
ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 177–215; J. N. D. Kelly,
The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986),
250–58; and more recently, Mike Aquilina, Good Pope, Bad Pope (Cincinnati,
OH: Servant Books, 2013), 100–10.
16
		The quotation is from Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 52.

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

Hahn and Wiker provide a very helpful analysis of The Prince
(127–37) and Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (137–42) as they relate
to the future of biblical studies. In The Prince, Machiavelli seeks
to effect a transformation of politics from its ancient otherworldly
orientation (as in Plato’s Republic) to a wholly this-worldly focus in
which the “goal is the preservation of power” (128). In Hahn and
Wiker’s words, “Machiavelli’s Prince is . . . the manual by which one
unlearns Plato’s Republic” (130), but they proceed to show how it is
much broader than that. Machiavelli seeks to secularize all politics
for the very Marsilian goal of terrestrial peace. In order to do this,
Machiavelli effects “a fundamental shift in the treatment of Scripture” (131). Biblical Moses is placed in the context of pagan political
leaders, effectively secularizing his role within Scripture. Moses is no
longer a leader called by God to mediate God’s covenant with the
Israelites, but is transformed in Machiavelli’s exegesis into “a merely
political leader” (131). Hahn and Wiker note that, because he was
so inspired by Plutarch, Machiavelli was convinced that the biblical
account needed a “corrective.” For Machiavelli, as Hahn and Wiker
explain, the biblical account of Moses, in stark contrast to Plutarch’s
histories, “does not appear to be the result of a careful sifting of
multiple views of the same events, but presents itself simply as reporting what happened to Moses and the Israelites in their escape from
Egypt and long trek to the Promised Land. Thus, the way is opened
for exegetes to treat the Bible according to the mode of Plutarch. The
sacred history must submit to a purification by reason, set critically
against other historical sources. But in so doing, one can no longer
treat it as sacred” (134–35).
With his Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli consciously tries to create
a modern critical history, where his “great labor is the recovery of
history (or better, the pagan wisdom about history) shorn of the
Christian overlay and interpretation” (138). Within this account, he
shifts the question from religious veracity to its political utility (140).
In Averroist fashion, Machiavelli sees religion as politically useful
to keep order and control of a population, even though it is false.
Whereas Averroës had a hierarchy of knowers (with philosophers at
the top of the pyramid), Machiavelli focused on the political use of
religion by princely rulers who use religious concepts to keep people
in check. Thus, Hahn and Wiker consider Machiavelli to be “one of
the earliest, and certainly the most influential, sources of the hermeneutics of suspicion” (144). They explain the way this will play out
over time:

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1309

The biblical text contains a largely hidden message that only
the wise can see. . . . But once we are enlightened then we
too can interpret the text correctly. . . . To reason about Moses
with Machiavelli means to offer an account of what really
happened, appearances or reports in the text to the contrary. . . .
The pattern set is one in which the philosophy, no matter how
far removed it is from the assumptions of the biblical text,
becomes the secret knowledge that allows the exegete to wield
the exegetical threshing tool. . . . The task of the enlightened
exegete, then, is to ferret out all the “real” passages—the ones
that fit the philosophy—and reinterpret the rest, giving some
other explanation for their appearance in the text. (145)
Two Kingdoms Emerge: Martin Luther (1483–1546) & the
New Exegesis of the Protestant Reformation
Hahn and Wiker’s fifth chapter is “Luther and the Reformation”
(147–219), and at over seventy pages, it is their largest chapter and
could very well serve as a slender book on its own addressing the social,
political, and historical context wherein the exegesis of the Protestant
Reformation aided the movement toward modern historical biblical
criticism. In this densely packed chapter, they deal with far more than
simply Luther, including important discussions of the more radical
Reformation represented by those like the Zwickau prophets (189–95,
200, and 209–12), Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (189, 192–96, and
199–200), and Thomas Müntzer (190, 203, and 206–16).
Hahn and Wiker begin this chapter by situating Luther in his
broader nominalist context (147–50). They quote Luther’s confession
of Ockham as both “the greatest dialectician” and his own “master,”
among whose followers Luther numbers himself and whose teachings
he claims to “have absorbed completely” (148). Such nominalism
aided in Luther’s severing of faith and reason, which would lead to
modern biblical scholars de-Hellenizing Scripture. Hahn and Wiker
point out that, “ironically, in setting reason free in its own domain,
nominalism contributed to its secularization, therefore duplicating
the quasi-Averroist framework found in Marsilius of Padua” (149).
They then discuss Luther’s life and early lectures on Aristotle, the
Psalms, Romans, and Galatians (150–54).
They next proceed to provide a very important historical discussion of the Reformation’s political context (154–57) that provides the
essential lens for understanding the rest of the chapter, the Reformation, and all of the various political contexts of the theological and

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

exegetical moves they see Luther and others making (154–219).17 At
the outset, they approvingly quote the Reformation historians R.
W. Scribner and C. Scott Dixon that, “from the very beginning, the
question of religious reform was so inextricably linked to political
issues that it could never give rise to an unpolitical Reformation”
(154–55).18 The primary political context was an extension of the
conflict between throne and altar already depicted in their chapter
on Marsilius and Ockham. The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian
I had machinations of ruling the region that would become Italy,
including the Papal States, but was also in conflict with the German
electors, including Frederick III, Elector of Saxony and shortly
protector of Luther. Frederick was also frustrated by the papal taxes
and other financial revenue that was redirected to Rome and was
likewise in conflict with his local bishops, most of whom were from
the German nobility (155–57).
Hahn and Wiker situate Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and call to
reform within the history of the call to reform already recounted,
beginning with the poverty debate (158). They show how well the
Theses fit within the guideposts of Catholic orthodoxy and assert
that, “if Martin Luther’s criticisms of the Church had remained as
they appeared in his ninety-five theses . . . there would likely have
been no Protestant Reformation (or at least not one associated with
Luther)” (158).19 The complicating economic and political factor was
		One of the few studies dealing with early modern contributions to historical
biblical criticism that understands the role of politics and the Reformation
is Travis L. Frampton, Spinoza and the Rise of Historical Criticism of the Bible
(London: T&T Clark, 2006), especially 23–42, which Hahn and Wiker cite
throughout (Politicizing the Bible, 217n323, 340n7, 342n11, 345n29, 348n42,
350n51, and 574).
18
		The quotation is from R. W. Scribner and C. Scott Dixon, The German Reformation, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 35. And further, in the
attendant footnote wherein they provide this quotation’s citation(Politicizing
the Bible, 155n39), they include another significant quotation from Reformation historian Martin Brecht: “From the very beginning in Wittenberg the
monk Martin Luther was in a powerful political arena, even though at first he
knew nothing about it. That he himself become a factor in this arena had religious and theological reasons. From the very moment when Luther appeared,
speaking and acting independently, his involvement in a concrete political and
social context also became inevitable”; in Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483–1521, trans. J. Schaaf (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1985), 113.
19
		They are able to say that because, as they point out, “Luther’s concern was
originally with the abuse of indulgences” (Politicizing the Bible, 159), not with
the doing away with indulgences or other Catholic teachings (ibid., 159,
17

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1311

that moneys for indulgences bled out of German regions and flowed
to the papacy. Thus, Luther’s challenges to reform on the matter of
indulgences fit conveniently into German national aspirations and
into anger against Rome that had been fomenting for quite some
time. Hahn and Wiker observe that, “unlike France and England,
Germany had so far been unable to establish a kind of national church
in which the monetary benefits remained largely within the realm”
(160).20 They elaborate near the end of their chapter: “Without the
desire for a national church, without national resentment between
Italy and Germany, without German envy of the ‘national’ church
of the French and the justified feeling that many Catholics were
self-interested Romanists, without the protection of Romantic-messianic nationalists like [Ulrich von] Hutten, without the shield of the
German princes, it is difficult to see how Lutheranism could have
taken hold” (218).
especially n55; here they quote several places within the Ninety-Five Theses
where Luther writes favorably about indulgences—e.g., “Let him be anathema and accursed who denies the apostolic character of the indulgences,”
found in thesis 71). On this, see also Gary A. Anderson, “Redeem Your Sins
by the Giving of Alms: Sin, Debt, and the ‘Treasury of Merit’ in Early Jewish
and Christian Tradition,” Letter & Spirit 3 (2007): 66–69n71. Regarding the
Ninety-Five Theses, Anderson comments, “What emerges from this discussion
is the significance of traditional acts of charity as opposed to the act of buying
indulgences to assist in the refurbishing of St. Peter’s. Luther’s critique is not
Church-dividing; he is at this point of his career a reformer within the bounds
of Catholic thought” (ibid., 69n71). See also Anderson, Charity:The Place of the
Poor in the Biblical Tradition (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2013), 185.
20
		See also William T. Cavanaugh, “‘A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the
House’: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State,” Modern Theology
11 (1995): 397–420, especially 400–03. Cavanaugh writes, “There is a direct
relationship between the success of efforts to restrict supra-national Church
authority and the failure of the Reformation within those realms. In other
words, wherever concordats between the Papal See and temporal rulers had
already limited the jurisdiction of the Church within national boundaries,
there the princes saw no need to throw off the yoke of Catholicism, precisely
because Catholicism had already been reduced, to a greater extent, to a suasive
body under the heel of the secular power” (ibid., 400–01). See also Cavanaugh,
The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), especially ch. 3, “The Creation
Myth of the Wars of Religion,” 123–80, where he revisits the thesis of his
1995 “Fire Strong Enough,” expanding it significantly (see particularly 166–70
regarding the discussion here). Although Hahn and Wiker do not cite these
two works by Cavanaugh in this immediate context, they do cite both elsewhere throughout their volume (Politicizing the Bible, 12n45, 260n9, 338n226,
and 570).

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

It was with Luther’s turn to Scripture as sole authority (the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura) that the search for a method to replace
Catholic Tradition became earnest (161–62). It was in the wake of
theological divisions, each faction defending itself through Scripture,
that Luther handed over the body to the state. Luther turned to the
state, much like Wycliffe before him, to control the public secular
realm (168). But it was with Luther’s understanding of the “priesthood of all believers” and grounding in no authority aside from
Scripture that the peasants who rebelled saw Luther as their inspiration (169). Hahn and Wiker explain the upshot of Luther’s arguments, hinting at their trajectory: “Luther wanted to keep the papacy
from claiming sole power to determine the meaning of Scripture as
justification for its worldly use of power. But in conferring the power
to interpret Scripture on all the laity, he inadvertently gave to secular
sovereigns the kind of power over Scripture advocated by Marsilius
and German nationalist humanists like Hutten, and also empowered
multiple theological revolutions from below without a traditio to
constrain them” (170).
Hahn and Wiker likewise show how the declaration sola fide (justification by faith alone) became Luther’s hermeneutical key for unlocking Scripture’s meaning and, thus, how his idea of “promise” replaced
the traditional role of typology (172–83). Upset with justifications of
papal authority from spiritual exegesis, against which Ockham had
earlier written as well, Luther severed Scripture’s intimate bond with
the liturgy and erected sharp dichotomies between the “letter” and
the “spirit,” the “law” and the “gospel,” and, importantly, the “Old”
and “New” Testaments (174–77).21 Although Luther explicitly placed
an exegetical emphasis on the literal sense, Hahn and Wiker caution,
“it is misleading . . . to assume that the importance of Luther as an
exegete is his focus on the literal account of Scripture; rather, his
importance consists in substituting the dialectical mode of exegesis
for the traditional fourfold meaning of Scripture” (177).
Luther began to support state involvement in enforcing his version
of orthodoxy. He found this necessary in the wake of the multiple
radically diverse interpretations and positions that were emerging,
at least ostensibly inspired by him (192–97). He began to realize, in
		Hahn and Wiker point out that, “in this dialectical hermeneutic, the Old
Testament serves a largely negative function as law, rather than serving as the
priestly, sacrificial foundation to be fulfilled in the New Testament” (Politicizing
the Bible, 175). This will play out in significant ways in later historical criticism
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

21

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

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Hahn and Wiker’s words, that “the Bible in the hands of the masses
is a dangerous thing” (194). Luther thus began to affirm a form of
Erastianism wherein the state controlled the church, at least in the
appointment of ecclesiastical officials (196). This is the origin of
Luther’s doctrine on “two kingdoms,” church and state (201–06).
Luther separated the realm of the secular from the realm of the sacred,
as had Marsilius and Ockham before him, and thereby “contributed
to the creation of an entirely secular political order” (203). Hahn and
Wiker explain the upshot of Luther’s notion of two kingdoms: “Since
Luther viewed political power as an ordained external force to keep
sinners under control (rather than, as with Aristotle and St. Thomas
[Aquinas], a positive order that helps perfect natural potentialities),
his tendency (with Thomas Hobbes after him) was to view political
order, no matter how harsh, as vindicated solely because any political
order was better than the complete anarchy (the chaos of Satan) that
would inevitably break loose without it” (204).
Given this, it should come as no surprise that many German
princes welcomed Luther’s teachings. After all, in the wake of the
Peasant’s Revolt (which claimed to be inspired by Luther), Luther
advised the civil rulers to demolish rebels without clemency. Specifically, he urged everyone to “smash, strangle, and stab, secretly or
openly,” the peasants involved in the rebellion, “as a matter of Christian duty” (210).22 Again, as Hahn and Wiker make clear, “Luther’s
doctrines did provide a way for German princes to break from Rome,
and remain entirely in charge of the religion within their own peaceful realm, equally protected from the dangers of the likes of Karlstadt,
Müntzers, and the Zwickau prophets” (210). To their credit, Hahn
and Wiker concede that these princes may have had sincere doctrinal motives, but we cannot certainly know this, since such interior
motives are private. Hahn and Wiker quote (213) from Scribner and
Dixon on Luther’s reception and the sociology of the Reformation in
Germany, a quote that includes an interesting political insight:
After a brief period of mass enthusiasm, it [support for the
Reformation] retreated to being a minority phenomenon. At
a crude estimate, during the first generation of the Reformation, up to mid-century, and perhaps even during the second,
probably no more than 10 per cent of the German population
		Hahn and Wiker take the first Luther quotation from Richard Marius, Martin
Luther: The Christian between God and Death (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press,
1999), 431. The second quotation is their own phrasing.

22

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

ever showed an active and lasting enthusiasm for reformed
ideas. Where massive numbers were “won” after 1526, to what
became the new church, it occurred involuntarily, through a
prince deciding that his territory should adopt the new faith.
When we speak of the extensive hold “Protestantism” had on
Germany by the second half of the sixteenth century . . . this
was because there were large numbers of “involuntary Protestants” created by the princes’ confessional choices.23
Luther also adopted a notion that would develop over time within
later biblical criticism, the idea of a “canon within the canon.” He
explicitly exalted the Gospel of John, St. Paul’s epistles (particularly Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians), and 1 Peter, above all
other portions of Scripture (197–201). After the Reformation, later
within the history of modern historical biblical criticism, exegetes
would move from Luther’s sifting through the canon to distinguish
authentic books from less authentic (or even inauthentic) books, to
sifting through individual biblical books themselves for the authentic
“kernels.” Although Hahn and Wiker make no mention of Peter
Abelard here, Luther’s task was doubtless already made possible by
earlier works like Abelard’s Sic et non relating to the authenticity
of sayings from Scripture and the Church fathers.24 They conclude,
however, that, “despite Luther’s intentions, playing the authority of
the princes against the papacy meant inadvertently giving the authority over interpretation to the secular powers” (217). This would prove
to have a rather ironic result, as Hahn and Wiker point out: “Interpretive differences created a kind of industry of textual scholarship,
producing more and more questions that only scholars had any hope
of resolving. This had the interesting but entirely unintended effect of
removing biblical interpretation from the hands of the common man
to whom it had just been given, and handing it to academic experts,
thereby creating an exegetical elite that duplicated the function of
the Catholic traditio in defining interpretation authoritatively” (218).
		Scribner and Dixon, German Reformation, 34. Something similar can be said
for the English Reformation, which Hahn and Wiker discuss in the following
chapter. See, e.g., Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars:Traditional Religion in
England 1400–1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).
24
		For a critical edition, see Peter Abelard, Sic et Non: A Critical Edition, ed.
Blanche B. Boyer and Richard McKeon (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1976). See also the comments in Régine Pernoud, Héloïse et Abélard
(Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1970).
23

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1315

Disemboweling the Church: Henry VIII (1491–1547) and the
Politicization of Exegesis in the English Reformation
Chapter 6, “England and Henry VIII” (221–55), is an insightful look
into the English Reformation, especially its intellectual roots and the
ways in which this prepared the seedbed for what would germinate
with historical criticism. It is often forgotten that historical criticism
was born in the world of English Deism prior to entering the German
academy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From the English
Reformation (inspired in part by the German Reformation and the
earlier Wycliffite trends of the Lollards in late medieval England)
emerged the Deist biblical criticism that would later transplant itself
into the academic culture of Germany in the Enlightenment and
nineteenth century. As Hahn and Wiker maintain, “England becomes
the filter through which earlier developments are handed on to the
Enlightenment” (221–22).
In this chapter, they succeed at situating King Henry VIII within
his immediate context, especially the issue of the king’s “Great
Matter,” his desire to marry Anne Boleyn (223–26, 230–36, and
245–51). Importantly, they point out that “the infamous divorce
from Henry’s first wife was not the cause but the occasion for the
creation of the official Church of England” (223). The king’s “Great
Matter” has several ironies, not least of which is that Henry VIII
had previously argued against divorce. The Christian ban on divorce
was one of the chief marks, according to Henry, that set Christian
marriage apart from non-Christian marriage (224). Henry entered
into this early debate on account of Luther. Luther and other Protestant Reformers (including Philip Melanchthon and Martin Bucer)
had been considering divorce and even polygamy (or at least bigamy)
as permissible under certain circumstances (180–83). The infamous
case the authors discussed earlier in their chapter on Luther involved
Philip of Hesse’s desire to marry a second wife. The Reformers were
able to make arguments in favor of divorce and bigamy precisely by
de-sacramentalizing marriage. Henry VIII wrote a robust defense
of marriage as a sacrament (224–25). Henry of course had numerous mistresses, and his “Great Matter” became so great when Anne
Boleyn refused to be his mistress, settling for nothing less than the
crown as his bride (225).
In this chapter, Hahn and Wiker include a significant discussion
of the early English translation of the Bible and the work of William
Tyndale and how this fit within the context of the English Reforma-

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

tion (225–31). Influenced by Luther and Melanchthon, with whom
he spent time in Wittenberg, Tyndale propagated Protestantism from
abroad. His English translation of Scripture became hugely influential but was suspect within Catholic circles because of the theological
bent of his translation. As “Defender of the [Catholic] Faith,” Henry
VIII opposed Tyndale’s translation. Because of the influence of Anne
Boleyn, upon whom Henry had already cast his eyes, however,
Henry VIII read (at least portions of ) Tyndale’s 1528 The Obedience of
a Christian Man, which argued that a Christian had an obligation, laid
upon them by none other than God, to obey his temporal sovereign,
even over and against the papacy (226–28). Unsurprisingly, King
Henry was most pleased with this treatise.
A significant turning point in this history was when King Henry
became convinced that he had biblical backing for annulling his
marriage to Queen Catherine and taking Anne Boleyn as wife,
namely Leviticus 18:16’s prohibition of taking a brother’s wife (since
Catherine had been the wife of his late brother), with the added
punishment that the couple in such a sinful state shall remain childless (Lev 20:21). Thus, Henry blamed his lack of a male heir through
Catherine as due to God’s punishment for his having taken his brother’s wife, even though his brother was dead.25 This “Great Matter”
unleashed a torrent of exegesis, both in England and on the continent, over what course Henry could and should take (231–36). Due
to Anne’s becoming pregnant with Henry’s child, the king married
her out of the public’s eye, and later, through the aid of Thomas
Cranmer, then Henry’s appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the
English state annulled Henry’s marriage to Catherine (235–36).
Hahn and Wiker point out the dramatic shift that took place with
this action: “The state (rather than papal) annulment of Henry’s
marriage marks the turning point at which the Church in England
becomes the Church of England” (236).
It is at this point that Hahn and Wiker examine the evidence that
suggests the strong influence of both Machiavelli and Marsilius on
Henry’s English Reformation (236–45 and 251–55). They underscore how some of the apologists of the Henrician reform policies
utilized Machiavelli’s and Marsilius’s works, such as Richard Mori		Hahn and Wiker note that, “in his exegesis, Henry apparently did not consider
as an important counterargument Deuteronomy 25:5–10, where it is taken
as mandatory that if a brother dies, a remaining brother ‘shall take her [the
widow] as his wife’” (Politicizing the Bible, 231).

25

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1317

son, who “would freely use Machiavelli in helping to form and justify
Henry’s policies,” and Thomas Starkey, who “would use Marsilius’s
Defensor Pacis as the political template for Henrician reform” (237).
Furthermore, many of these future apologists congregated around
Reginald Pole in Averroist Padua, where they were immersed in such
political philosophical discussions (237–38). Thomas Cromwell, one
of the key members of Henry’s inner circle, was likely influenced by
Machiavelli as well.26 Marsilius’s “influence was even more direct
and pervasive” (240). Cromwell himself was responsible for getting
Marsilius’s Defensor Pacis published in English (241). The Marsilian
program of subordinating church to state found complete expression
in Henry’s state church.
Thus we see how Marsilius’s, Machiavelli’s, and Wycliffe’s
combined influences set the stage in England for Henry’s reform,
which would in turn lay the seedbed for Hobbes and the future Deist
exegesis that would follow in the wake of Locke and Toland. Hahn
and Wiker conclude with the observation that “we have then, in
Henry, both in theory and fact, a Marsilian ruler, not an emperor but
a national king, a man in both person and policy that brought the
pages of the Defensor Pacis to life in England. . . . Henry provided an
example of Machiavellianism as vivid as Pope Alexander VI” (254).
Cosmopolis and the Twilight of the Scriptural World: René
Descartes (1596–1650) and the Mathematization of Nature
Chapter 7, “Descartes and the Secular Cosmos” (257–84), like the previous chapter, is more significant for laying the intellectual groundwork
for the hermeneutics and exegesis that would develop in its wake than
for Descartes’s particular use of Scripture, especially since, as Hahn and
Wiker note, Descartes laid the Bible aside in his philosophical program.
They point to the “great cosmological shift that occurs in the seventeenth century” (257) and place Descartes firmly within this context.
In addition to the “modern cosmological shift” that Descartes helped
to effect, this “father of modern philosophy” is also significant for them
because he is a key figure in the new “focus on method” that will
produce a “‘mania’ for method” (258). The upshot, in light of preceding
		Hahn and Wiker recognize that, although it is plausible, and perhaps likely, that
Cromwell was exposed to Machiavelli directly (through reading), the Machiavellian Morison became a close collaborator with Cromwell, serving as his
secretary, and also, like Cromwell, of Henry’s Privy Chamber (Politicizing the
Bible, 237–40).

26

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

chapters, is that “the new, secular political focus set forth by Marsilius
and Machiavelli in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries would finally
have received a cosmological foundation in the seventeenth century. . . .
Their politicizing of Scripture could now receive support from a new
science of nature” (258).
Hahn and Wiker set forth Descartes’s biography over several initial
pages of their chapter (259–63), and one of its most significant factors,
of which they take due note, is the immediate context of the “wars
of religion.” When they turn to examine his Discourse on Method
(263–80), they demonstrate how such strife, so often attributed to
violent and intolerant religious factions, is the ultimate context for his
method. In order to lay the proper groundwork for what is to come,
especially with Hobbes and Spinoza, Hahn and Wiker are compelled
to delve a little into Descartes’s philosophy. They show how his
account of nature is “entirely mechanistic” (264).
Hahn and Wiker note that there is no evidence of any sort of
direct Averroist or Marsilian influence on Descartes, but they include
a very useful discussion of what they term “illuminating similarities”
between Descartes and both Averroës and Marsilius (265–66). They
then proceed to examine Descartes’s method in order to highlight
the ways in which it shaped modernity and thus effected the new
cosmological understanding of the world in which seventeenth-century (and beyond) historical criticism would develop and operate. As
they point out, Descartes’s method in his Discourse is nothing other
than a strategy for achieving his goal of setting “both philosophy
and humanity on a firm foundation” (266–67) unspoiled by violent
conflicts like that through which he lived. Hahn and Wiker identify
three key ways in which he effects modernity: “the mathematization,
the mechanization, and the mastery of nature” (267). They argue that
he effects this by creating a completely new approach to understanding the nature of mathematics:
Descartes presents a way to unite algebra and geometry so
that…geometric shapes and relationships can be translated into
algebraic formulae, and then an even larger, more comprehensive class of algebraic formulae can be translated back into a
symbolic geometry capable of representing all relationships of
magnitudes…as ratios and proportions of lines, thereby creating
a mathesis universalis….Descartes’s brilliance consists in imposing
the theoretical conception upon nature….Descartes self-consciously

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1319

fashioned a mathematical ontology, stripping everything from
nature but homogenous extension, so that there could be a
simple identity between his mathesis universalis and nature….
Descartes’s revolution consisted in the substitution of mathematical forms for Aristotelian forms as the universals governing
particulars….forms were not done away with; there was merely
a substitution of mathematical forms for common-sense forms.
(267–68) 27
In Descartes’s mechanistic universe, the miraculous began to
seem impossible (274). So, even though Descartes did not apply his
methodic doubt, his Cartesian skepticism, to the Bible, he cleared
the way so that others could do this, and, as we will perceive especially in Spinoza, those who followed Descartes did do this. Hahn
and Wiker unmask his methodic doubt, moreover, as a key to his
strategy. He situates his methodic doubt in such a way that it appears
naturally to follow his version of philosophy. In fact, however, his
philosophy, his notion of mathematics, determines the necessity of
methodic doubt (274–75). As they make clear, “the posture of doubt
is inseparable from the method because it serves to remove the obstacles to Descartes’s unique union of mathematization, mechanization,
and mastery” (275). This played out in nefarious ways in modern
biblical criticism. Hahn and Wiker bring attention to the regrettable
but undeniable fact that “the habitual posture of doubt ingrained by
following Descartes’s method will become the unquestioned beginning point of many of the most prominent scriptural scholars toward
the biblical texts” (275).28

		They further explain how Ockham prepared the way for Descartes here: “In
championing nominalism, Ockham removed the reality of universals that
inhered in similar-looking substances, so that nouns like sheep, cow, dog, pig,
and so on do not have real referents in nature. There is no common form or
species that all sheep as sheep share. . . . Ockham thereby created an intellectual
vacuum, removing species-name universals but not supplying anything in their
place” (Politicizing the Bible, 268).
28
		They immediately add here, “But the skeptical stance toward the Bible is one
side of a two-sided coin, the other being mathematically defined rationality,
a mechanical view of nature, and the new goal of the technical mastery of
nature that provides a secular substitute for the kingdom of God.”
27

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

Scripture’s Secular Exile: Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
and His Leviathan
Chapter 8 is on Thomas Hobbes (285–338).29 At the outset of this
chapter, Hahn and Wiker underscore how Hobbes represents a synthesis of what they have been discussing thus far in their volume. Hobbes
“unified the purely secular aim of Marsilian and Machiavellian political
thought with a secular cosmology needed to support it, and did so
through an explicitly nominalist (mathematical-mechanistic) philosophy that focuses on the complete mastery of nature, especially human
nature—all of which he put forth in the context of the particularities
of the English political scene” (285). As with Descartes, the context for
Hobbes was one of strife, both that of the bloody Thirty Years’ War,
the last and bloodiest of the so-called European “wars of religion,” and
that of the English Civil Wars, and thus his goal, as with Marsilius and
Descartes before him, was terrestrial peace (285–86, 292, and 300).
Hahn and Wiker include an important section dealing with the
Epicurean background to Hobbes’s thought (296–99). Although
this background is often overlooked in the literature, they are not
completely alone in their assessment here. Notably, Arrigo Pacchi and
Patricia Springborg’s work on the Epicurean background to Hobbes
helpfully brought attention to some of these points. Hahn and Wiker
do not cite Springborg or Pacchi, but had they, it would only have
strengthened their analysis.30 As Hahn and Wiker point out, Hobbes
was an intimate friend of the famous early modern Epicurean Fr.
Pierre Gassendi (296 and 298). Hobbes thus became an important
player in the revival of the “ancient materialist atomism” of earlier
		On Hobbes’s contribution to modern historical criticism, in addition to the
sources Hahn and Wiker utilize, see also Jeffrey L. Morrow, “Leviathan and the
Swallowing of Scripture: The Politics behind Thomas Hobbes’s Early Modern
Biblical Criticism,” Christianity & Literature 61 (2011): 33–54, and relevant
sources in the bibliography; Morrow, “The Bible in Captivity: Hobbes,
Spinoza and the Politics of Defining Religion,” Pro Ecclesia 19 (2010): 285–99,
especially 293–96, and sources in the footnotes therein; and Jean Bernier, La
critique du Pentateuque de Hobbes à Calmet (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010),
especially 27–32, 46–48, 118–20, 126–33, and 144–49.
30
		E.g., Patricia Springborg, “Hobbes and Epicurean Religion,” in Der Garten und
die Moderne: Epikureische Moral und Politik vom Humanismus bis zur Aufklärung,
ed. G. Paganini and E. Tortarolo (Stuttgart: Rommann-holzboog Verlag, 2004),
161–214; Sprinborg, “Hobbes’s Theory of Civil Religion,” in Pluralismo e
Religione Civile, ed. G. Paganini and E. Tortarolo (Milan, IT: Bruno Mondatori,
2003), 61–98; and Arrigo Pacchi, “Hobbes e l’epicureismo,” Rivista critica di
storia dell filosofia 33 (1975): 54–71.
29

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1321

figures like Epicurus and Lucretius, for whom terrestrial existence
was our only form of life; there is no afterlife on this assumption
(297).
Hahn and Wiker proceed to examine Hobbes’s famous theo-political work Leviathan in great detail (299–336). They show how
it was structured on Marsilias’s Averroist pattern, as Marsilius had
constructed Defensor Pacis—and for a shared goal, earthly peace via a
common means, obedience to the temporal ruler—universal emperor
for Marsilius, local state sovereign for Hobbes (299–300). The work
is divided roughly into two major parts, the first of which “is devoted
to a thoroughgoing reductionist account of political life based upon
Hobbes’s entirely self-contained mechanistic-materialist physics”
(299), and the second of which is a biblical exegetical project used to
bolster the conclusions set forth in the first part.
Hobbes’s Epicureanism and nominalism reduced all of reality
to atomic motion and left little room, if any, to spirits, and even if
there was room left for spirits, said spirits are material (300–305 and
324–33). For Hobbes, “true science must be a nominalism modeled
on Euclidean geometry” (304). As with Machiavelli before him,
however, Hobbes understood the necessity of religion in order to
maintain political power, thus he did not eliminate religion, but
rather only the fear of consequences beyond physical life and death
(such fear in which religion is rooted for Hobbes), beyond what a
state sovereign can grant, and thus granting the sovereign full control
over religion within the realm (306–309).
In the second half of Leviathan, we find Hobbes’s exegetical project
wherein he interprets the Bible to support his politics and philosophy
and, thus, to place all temporal and spiritual power in the hands of
the civil sovereign, declawing the Church of any real authority apart
from the state (312–36). One key move Hobbes makes is placing all
virtual interpretive and exegetical authority explicitly in the hands of
the sovereign (315–17 and 319–22). This is significant, as Hahn and
Wiker explain, when we turn, for example, to Hobbes’s questioning
of the Mosaic authorship of the majority of the Pentateuch. For, as
they rightly emphasize, “Hobbes’s real goal was not to undermine
completely the authority of Scripture and traditional authorship, but
to shift the question of authority from the text and authorship to the
authority of interpretation (and hence to the authority of the interpreter, the political sovereign)” (322).
One key to understanding Hobbes’s project, a key that is
completely absent from Hobbes scholarship but that Hahn and

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

Wiker have correctly identified, is the way in which Hobbes presents “the inversion of typology” (334–35). Hahn and Wiker explain
that, “The flow of typology, properly understood, is forward in the
Divine economy, toward the culmination in Christ. . . . Hobbes’s
typology inverted the order, flowing not toward culmination and
spiritual transformation, but backward, toward the reduction to some
earthly, original meaning” (334). In this inverted typological exegesis, Hobbes hones Machiavelli’s method of selectively using pagan
sources to understand Scripture and reduces biblical rituals and traditions to “pagan contamination” (335). His exegetical method would
be further honed and built upon by others to come.
Constructing a Scientific Exegesis as Modernity’s Battle Axe:
Spinoza (1632–1677) within His Enlightenment Circle
Their ninth chapter, “Spinoza and the Beginning of the Radical
Enlightenment” (339–93), is a particularly important contribution, not
only because of Spinoza’s central role in laying out a precise historical
and philological biblical method, the outline of which would become
foundational to historical criticism, but also because Hahn and Wiker
emphasize how significant the intellectual context of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic was for Spinoza.31 Too many scholars
relegate Spinoza to an early inconsequential position within the radical
Enlightenment. Happily, following Jonathan Israel, Hahn and Wiker
recognize the full importance of Spinoza for the future Enlightenment
and modernity.32
Hahn and Wiker begin with a brief overview of Spinoza’s biography (341–42). A few points are still open matters of debate within
Spinoza scholarship, the most significant of which surrounds the
reasons for Spinoza’s excommunication. Richard Popkin’s 2004
comments on this matter remain valid today, over a decade later:
		On Spinoza’s contribution to modern historical criticism, in addition to the
sources Hahn and Wiker utilizes, see also Jeffrey L. Morrow, “Spinoza’s Use
of the Psalms in the Context of His Political Project,” Interdisciplinary Journal
of Research on Religion 11 (2015): 1–18; Morrow, “Historical Criticism as
Secular Allegorism: The Case of Spinoza,” Letter & Spirit 8 (2013): 189–221,
and sources in the footnotes therein; Morrow, “The Early Modern Political
Context to Spinoza’s Bible Criticism,” Revista de Filosofía 66 (2010): 7–24; and
Morrow, “Bible in Captivity,” 285–99, especially 296–99.
32
		They rely especially on Israel’s Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity,
and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press, 2006) and his Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001).
31

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“To this day we are not sure why he was excommunicated and what
this actually entailed at the time.”33 To their credit, in contrast to
so many Spinoza scholars who seem certain of the particular heresy
for which Spinoza was excommunicated from the Sephardic Dutch
Jewish community (denial of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch,
denial of Scripture’s divine inspiration, atheism, panetheism, denial of
the immortality of the soul, etc.), Hahn and Wiker simply state that
it was general (as the statement of excommunication itself was vague
on this point). They nevertheless follow the majority of Spinoza
scholars and affirm that “it appears certain that Baruch began to have
doubts about his Judaism rather early and that he embraced the radical philosophy that would lead to his expulsion from the synagogue
even while his father was still alive, but out of deference to him,
kept it to himself ” (342). This is not patently clear by the evidence,
even though it may be correct. Regretfully, Hahn and Wiker do not
take into account the work of Odette Vlessing, who has made a very
strong case that Spinoza’s excommunication could be explained quite
apart from philosophical or theological positions.34 This is a minor
quibble point and does not detract from their overall work.
They then devote several pages to the various likely influences on
Spinoza (342–60), beginning by showing Spinoza’s indebtedness to
Descartes (342–44), Machiavelli (342–43), Maimonides, Averroës,
and other Arabic authors (343).35 Spinoza’s Latin teacher, Franciscus
		Richard H. Popkin, Spinoza (Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2004), 27. Popkin’s
chapter devoted to Spinoza’s excommunication (27–38) is very good for
getting a handle on the various scholarly positions.
34
		E.g., Odette Vlessing, “The Excommunication of Baruch Spinoza: A Conflict
Between Jewish and Dutch Law,” Studia Spinozana 13 (1997): 15–47;Vlessing,
“The Jewish Community in Transition: From Acceptance to Emancipation,”
Studia Rosenthaliana 30 (1996): 195–211; and Vlessing, “New Light on the
Earliest History of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jews,” in Dutch Jewish History,
vol. 3, ed. J. Michman (Assen, NL: Van Gorcum, 1993), 43–75. See also the
comments in Yosef Kaplan, “The Social Functions of the Herem in the Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century,” in
Dutch Jewish History, vol. 1 ed. J. Michman and T. Levie (Jerusalem: Tel-Aviv
University, 1984), 111–55. This is the position I take in “Early Modern Political Context,” 12–15 and 14–15n17, and is also the position of Travis Frampton
(who follows Vlessing) in his Spinoza and the Rise of Historical Criticism, whose
work Hahn and Wiker utilize.
35
		Much more work still needs to be done on the Arabic (and particularly
Muslim) philosophical influences on Spinoza. Hahn and Wiker cite the foundational study on this by Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (New York:
Meridian Books, 1934), as well as two other works (one from Shlomo Pines
33

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

van den Enden, may have been the figure who introduced the works
of both Descartes and Machiavelli to Spinoza, although Spinoza may
have encountered Descartes even earlier. The first book he published
was on Descartes’s philosophy (342–43). Hahn and Wiker turn next
to three other radical thinkers who were contemporaries that may
have influenced Spinoza: Uriel da Costa (344–45); Juan de Prado
(345); and Isaac La Peyrère (345–49).36
Da Costa was in the same Jewish community as Spinoza in
Amsterdam. After his very public humiliation, he committed suicide.
De Prado was also in Spinoza’s Jewish community, was one of Spinoza’s acquaintances, and was investigated by the leaders of that Jewish
community the very same year that Spinoza was excommunicated,
although de Prado repented shortly (within a matter of days) after
Spinoza’s excommunication. Hahn and Wiker spend more time on
La Peyrère than on these other two figures, even though La Peyrère
was from France, because Spinoza owned La Peyrère’s infamous
Prae-Adamitae, wherein La Peyrère put forward several exegetical
and hermeneutical arguments (including the denial of the Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch) that would sound very much like
what Spinoza attempted in his Tractatus Theologico-politicus. Moreover,
in 1968 and one from Warren Harvey in 1981), but an engagement with
more recent literature on this would only have strengthened their claims: e.g.,
Carlos Fraenkel, “Reconsidering the Case of Elijah Delmedigo’s Averroism
and its Impact on Spinoza,” in Renaissance Averroism and its Aftermath: Arabic
Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, ed. A. Akasoy and G. Guiglioni (Dordrecht,
NL: Springer, 2012), 213–36; Fraenkel, “Spinoza on Philosophy and Religion:
The Averroistic Sources,” in The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Innovation,
ed. C. Fraenkel, D. Perinetti, and J. Smith (Dordrecht, NL: Springer, 2010),
58–81; Youcef Djedi, “Spinoza et l’islam: un état des lieux,” Philosophiques 37
(2010): 275–98; and Rafael Ramón Guerrero, “Filósofos hispano-musulmanes
y Spinoza: Avempace y Abentofail,” in Spinoza y España: Actas del Congreso
Internacional sobre «Relaciones entre Spinoza y España» (Almagro, 5–7 Noviembre
1992), ed. A. Domínguez (Almagro, ES: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 1994), 125–32.
36
		On La Peyrère’s contribution to modern historical criticism, in addition to the
sources Hahn and Wiker utilize, see Andreas Nikolaus Pietsch, Isaac La Peyrère:
Bibelkritik, Philosemitismus und Patronage in der Gelehrtenrepublik des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012); Jeffrey L. Morrow, “French Apocalyptic
Messianism: Isaac La Peyrère and Political Biblical Criticism in the Seventeenth Century,” Toronto Journal of Theology 27 (2011): 203–13; and Morrow,
“Pre-Adamites, Politics and Criticism: Isaac La Peyrère’s Contribution to
Modern Biblical Studies,” Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of
Biblical Studies 4 (2011): 1–23, and sources in the footnotes therein.

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1325

Hahn and Wiker agree with Popkin on the likelihood of Spinoza and
La Peyrère meeting together in Amsterdam.37
Hahn and Wiker also discuss Spinoza within the context of the
Dutch Collegiant radicals, in whose circle Spinoza emerged as the
intellectual ringleader of sorts (350–56). They especially focus on
Spinoza’s friends Adriaan Koerbagh (350–53) and Lodewijk Meyer
(353–56). The most important point of this brief subsection is that it
demonstrates how Spinoza’s work belongs to a much broader intellectual current, inspired in part by Cartesian philosophy, within the
Dutch republic. Regarding Meyer’s work in relation to Spinoza’s,
Hahn and Wiker observe that “Meyer’s Philosophia [S. Scripturae Interpres] and Spinoza’s Tractatus often traveled together in one book, a
marriage that made perfect sense. Meyer provided the framework as
a prolegomenon, and Spinoza. . . . spelled out the full consequences,
consequences all the more radical precisely because of Spinoza’s radicalizing of Descartes” (355). I think this is basically correct, but Hahn
and Wiker do not sufficiently take into account the ways in which
Spinoza disagreed with Meyer’s work. James Samuel Preus, some of
whose other works Hahn and Wiker use in this volume, has made a
strong case that Meyer is one of the intended targets of Spinoza’s Tractatus, particularly where Spinoza opposes the exegesis of the medieval Jewish sage, Maimonides.38 Although Spinoza certainly applies
his own radicalized brand of Cartesian skepticism to Scripture, the
primary corrosive acid he employs, in sharp contrast to Meyer, is
history. For this, Spinoza is more directly indebted to Francis Bacon
than to Descartes.39
		See Richard H. Popkin, “Spinoza and La Peyrère,” in Spinoza: New Perspectives,
ed. R. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978),
177–95.
38
		See J. Samuel Preus, Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), especially 34–202, and Preus, “A
Hidden Opponent in Spinoza’s Tractatus,” Harvard Theological Review 88 (1995):
361–88, neither of which do Hahn and Wiker utilize in their text.
39
		Although Hahn and Wiker do discuss the influence Francis Bacon exerted on
figures throughout their volume (including Descartes and Hobbes, the latter
of whom served as Bacon’s secretary), they do not discuss Bacon’s important
background for understanding Spinoza at all in their otherwise very fine chapter treating Spinoza. Unfortunately, there is very little treatment in the scholarly literature of Bacon’s role in Spinoza’s method, despite the fact that Spinoza
read Bacon and included in his overall method a historical method that clearly
attempted to bring Bacon’s history of nature to bear on a history of Scripture
(even to the point of using linguistic parallels to Bacon’s work). Much more
37

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

Hahn and Wiker situate Spinoza’s pantheism, his collapsing of
God with nature, within the context of his philosophy grounded in
Euclidean geometry (357–60). Moreover, as did Averroës, Spinoza
maintained a hierarchy of knowers and of knowledge. He divided
knowledge into three types or levels. First, there was experiential
knowledge, which he labeled “opinion” or “imagination.” The
second level of knowledge is “reason,” which is mathematical,
patterned on geometry. Finally, Spinoza labeled the third type of
knowledge “intuition,” which is the highest form of knowledge.
Much like Averroës, Spinoza thought that most people were only able
to attain the first level of knowledge, “opinion” or “imagination”
(360–62). This is important to keep in mind when we turn to Spinoza’s biblical hermeneutic in his Tractatus, as Hahn and Wiker explain:
“By identifying God with nature and assuming that the order of
nature was identical to the clearest, most certain science of mathematics, Spinoza completely and purposely eliminated supernatural
revelation as a possibility. God’s essence is entirely revealed in nature;
He is nature; therefore the highest science, the one that truly grasps
God’s essence, is mathematical-mechanical natural science” (362).
As with Hobbes and Descartes before him (and, we might add,
Meyer too), the “wars of religion,” and particularly the Thirty Years’
War, provide the main backdrop for his work. Spinoza desired to
create a scientific biblical hermeneutic in his Tractatus that would
serve the earthly political goal of securing peace between warring
religious-political factions (362–64). As Hahn and Wiker spell out,
“the historical-critical method as originally designed by Spinoza is
neither neutral nor scientific, but is rather the form of biblical studies
scholarship needs to be devoted to this neglected influence. For the role of
Bacon on Spinoza, see, e.g., Morrow, “Historical Criticism,” 202–03; Juan
Francisco Manrique Charry, “La herencia de Bacon en la doctrina spinocista
del lenguaje,” Universitas Philosophica 54 (2010): 121–30; Preus, Spinoza, 7n19,
24n73, 26n80, 38, 158n9, 159, 159n12, 161–68, 163n20–21, 181, and 195;
Alan Gabbey, “Spinoza’s Natural Science and Methodology,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Spinoza, ed. D. Garrett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), 170–72; Edwin Curley, “Kissinger, Spinoza, and Genghis Khan,”
in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, 341n35 (Hahn and Wiker do utilize
the version of Curley’s article from the 2001 reprinted edition of the companion in their chapter on Spinoza, at Politicizing the Bible, 342n13, 343n14, and
381n202); Alan Donagan, “Spinoza’s Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion
to Spinoza, 343; Donagan, Spinoza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1989), 16–17; and Sylvain Zac, Spinoza et l’interprétation de l’Écriture (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), 29–37.

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1327

that purposely transforms the Bible to act as a political support to
keep order in a secular state” (364).
When Hahn and Wiker turn to their analysis of Spinoza’s Tractatus
(362–88), they clarify an important hermeneutical key for correctly
reading Spinoza here, a key that is so often overlooked by Spinoza
scholars. That key is Spinoza’s Ethics, which he began writing prior
to his Tractatus. In fact, he interrupted working on his Ethics, which
was never published within his lifetime but only posthumously, in
order to pen his infamous Tractatus, which, as the provocative title
of Steven Nadler’s recent work on it indicates, Spinoza’s contemporaries considered to be “a book forged in hell.”40 Hahn and Wiker
emphasize how Spinoza’s philosophy as expressed in his then unpublished Ethics makes explicit what was only implied and ambiguous in
his Tractatus (364–66). Once it becomes clear, as in the Ethics, that
God is nature, then it becomes clear that miracles are impossible
(364–65).41 Importantly, Hahn and Wiker explain how, for Spinoza,
“since miracles are impossible, therefore the scientific exegete must look
for another explanation of their common occurrence in Scripture”
(365). This is precisely what Machiavelli did before Spinoza, as Hahn
and Wiker explain in their treatment of Machiavelli earlier in their
volume (e.g., 139–40 and 144–45). In light of this clear connection,
in light of the fact that, as Graham Hammill notes, Spinoza was “one
of Machiavelli’s most perceptive readers,” and in light of the fact
that Hahn and Wiker shortly make a connection between Spinoza
and Machiavelli regarding religion and the hermeneutic of suspicion
(367), it is surprising that they do not make the parallel explicit
between the two thinkers.42
Spinoza constructs his method in order to make “the highest revelation of Scripture moral,” and he then defines “morality in purely
secular terms,” thus rendering “revelation superfluous, at least for the
‘enlightened’” (369). Within this overall project, one of the key shifts
Spinoza effects, which will continue in later historical-critical exegesis that follows in his trail, is to move from any notion of “truth”
		Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth
of the Secular Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
41
		Hahn and Wiker point out that, “To those who have not read Spinoza’s Ethics
(the very situation of the first readers of the Tractatus), the actual and only
possible foundation of the assertion that miracles are impossible—that God is
nature—was obviously not apparent” (Politicizing the Bible, 365).
42
		Graham Hammill, The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination
from Machiavelli to Milton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 22.
40

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

within the text to a focus on “meaning” (373–75). Spinoza then
brings up “a seemingly endless list of historical questions that must
be answered before the exegete can discover the meaning of the text”
(375). He thus hopes to stop theology from entering into the political
realm, by rendering such theology virtually impossible, or at most
private. Hahn and Wiker summarize the import of Spinoza’s project:
Democracy eliminates persecution by eliminating the distinction between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, wisdom and foolishness. Those who are highest on the Averroistic hierarchy,
the philosophers, are protected from those who are lowest,
the vulgar, by the public pretence that both philosophy and
theology have been democratized. Yet, ironically, Spinoza
takes away with one hand what he offers with the other, by
making the analysis of Scripture possible only to the highly
educated, the elite exegetes who are well versed in the original
languages, history, literary forms, etc. To keep the elite from
turning against the philosophers, Spinoza fashions an exegetical
method that produces the conclusions that reduce Scripture to
a merely moral prop for civil order, one that allows the greatest
freedom for philosophy. In fact, since Spinoza’s philosophy ultimately defines the method, then the applied method serves to
reaffirm Spinoza’s philosophy even without the exegete’s own
knowledge or consent. (387–88)
Critical History and the Dissolving of Scripture: Richard
Simon (1638–1712) and Historical Criticism as an Apologia
for Tradition?
Hahn and Wiker tellingly entitle their tenth chapter “The Ambiguous
Richard Simon” (395–423) precisely because Simon’s motives and
his work appear so ambiguous.43 On the one hand, he appeared to be
		On Simon’s contribution to modern historical criticism, in addition to the
sources Hahn and Wiker utilize, see Jeffrey L. Morrow, “Faith, Reason, and
History in Early Modern Catholic Biblical Interpretation: Fr. Richard Simon
and St. Thomas More,” New Blackfriars 96 (2015): 658–73; Dominique Barthélemy, Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old
Testament Text Project: English Translation of the Introductions to Volumes 1, 2, and
3 Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012),
especially 58–81; Bernier, La critique du Pentateuque, especially 33–41, 44–47,
49–69, 71–114, 117–26, 162–67, 186–208, 210–12, 214–16, 222–24, 277–79,
and 281–84; Sascha Müller, Richard Simon (1638–1712): Exeget, Theologe,
Philosoph und Historiker (Bamberg: Echter, 2006); Müller, Kritik und Theologie:

43

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1329

defending Catholic tradition against the more skeptical Spinoza and
others, but on the other, he clearly took their work further, which had
a long-lasting and corrosive effect both on biblical interpretation and
on the tradition he was so adamantly trying to defend. Simon clearly
built on Spinoza’s exegetical project, as Hahn and Wiker are well aware
(395–99, 406–07, 411–12, and 421–23).44 The irony is that Simon’s
Histoire critique du Vieux Testament was an attempt, at least ostensibly, to
combat Spinoza’s exegetical method (396).
Simon hoped to defend Catholic tradition and, at the same time,
demolish the Protestant assumption of sola Scriptura (396–400). In
order to do so, however, Simon took Spinoza’s arguments even
further, multiplying problems with the biblical text (396–400 and
404–23). In many places, Simon followed the lead of La Peyrère,
who, as Hahn and Wiker note, was a close friend of Simon’s ever
since La Peyrère joined the Oratorians, for whom Fr. Richard Simon
was a priest (397). Hahn and Wiker emphasize the novelty (within
the Catholic tradition) of Simon’s approach:
As it developed, the Catholic position in regard to Scripture’s
seeming imperfections was that what seemed disunited and
imperfect, proved upon humble, faithful, and prayerful reading—guided by the Holy Spirit and Tradition—to be whole
and harmonious, containing hidden perfections under seeming
imperfections. Various ways arose to explain apparent imperfections: exegetes had recourse to a complex account of divine
accommodations, to literal and spiritual senses, and even to the
notion of purposely-placed divine stumbling blocks in the text
to trip up the prideful and draw the humble to closer examination. Against this, Simon accepted the surface incongruities at
Christliche Glaubens und Schrifthermeneutik nach Richard Simon (St. Ottilien:
EOS, 2004); Guy G. Stroumsa, “Richard Simon: From Philology to Comparatism,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 3 (2001): 89–107; William McKane, Selected
Christian Hebraists (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
111–50; and Paul Hazard, La Crise de la Conscience Européenne, 1680–1715
(Paris: Boivin et Cie, 1935), 125–36.
44
		See also the comments in secondary literature that Hahn and Wiker do not
include: Barthélemy, Studies in the Text, 60–62; F. Saverio Mirri, Richard Simon
e il Metodo Storico-critico di B. Spinoza: Storia di un Libro e di una Polemica sulla
Sfondo delle Lotte Politico-religiose della Francia di Luigi XIV (Florence, IT: Felice
Le Monnier, 1972), 29–84; and Paul Auvray, “Richard Simon et Spinoza,” in
Religion, Érudition et Critique à la Fin du XVIIe Siècle et au Début du XVIIIe,
ed. B. de Gaiffier et al. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1968), 201–14.

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

face value—even rejoiced in them—so that the need for traditio
became absolute. (398)
One problem, as they emphasize, is that Simon’s use of tradition
appeared arbitrary (399, 405, 410–12, 416–18, and 422).
Hahn and Wiker include a very enlightening discussion of Simon’s
reception (400–04) in England (among John Locke et al.) and in
Germany (among Leibniz, Johann David Michaelis, Johann Salamo
Semler, et al.). I think this subsection would fit better at the end of
the chapter rather than where they have it positioned, but its inclusion
is important because they show in it how influential Simon’s historical-critical work became in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment,
which ensured its survival into the nineteenth century and beyond.
Hahn and Wiker follow their subsections on Simon’s later
reception with a helpful examination of Simon’s Histoire Critique
du Vieux Testament (404–12) and of his Histoire Critique du texte du
Nouveau Testament (412–22). In these works, and very much in line
with Spinoza, “Simon shifted the focus of biblical studies from the
substance of the text to the history of the text” (404). One significant move Simon makes, which will develop more completely in the
later history of historical-criticism (and particularly form criticism),
is to posit “a layered editorial history” for Scripture (405–06). Thus
emerges the necessity of a skilled scholarly exegete in order to make
sense of the tattered threads of Scripture. Indeed, Simon seems to
imply that “only a scholar could plumb the depths of the text” (413).
War, Espionage & Epistemology: John Locke (1632–1704) and
the Politicization of the Bible
Chapter 11, “The English Civil Wars, Moderate Radicals, and John
Locke” (425–86), is the most dramatic and engaging chapter in the
entire volume. Locke’s context is the English Civil Wars. Thus, Hahn
and Wiker clarify many of the important historical, cultural, and religious factors necessary to understand this English context to Locke’s
work. Parliament’s rebellion against the king, as they point out, “was
neither simply an economic rebellion, nor a political rebellion, nor a
religious rebellion, for all three were inextricably bound together, as
inseparable in the minds and hearts of all parties as it was in their lives”
(427). Locke’s family was found on the side represented by Parliament,
which was basically “the new propertied class” (426–27). He was about
ten years old when this First Civil War erupted (426–27). The Second
Civil War found Locke at Westminster School, age fifteen (427–28).

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

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Locke was studying at Oxford during the tumultuous transition from
the Third Civil War and the chaos that ensued after Oliver Cromwell’s
military rule (428).
This context of violent strife and the “nearly anarchic radicalism”
that was rampant throughout England profoundly shaped Locke, who
proved himself “deeply influenced” by Hobbes’s Leviathan (426–33).
Locke also was influenced by Robert Boyle (a prominent member of
the Royal Society) who was another mechanist like Hobbes, popularizing Epicurean atomism in England (433–38). Locke’s political
machinations forced him into exile as he was trailed by royal spies
on the continent (440–41). Initially, he served as secretary for the
Elector of Brandenburg on a diplomatic mission to the European
continent (438), and he later became intimately acquainted with
Anthony Ashley Cooper, who became the Earl of Shaftesbury. Locke
even served as his personal physician (438). As a Whig, Locke was
constantly involved in political plots and intrigue, including a plan
for violent rebellion. Hahn and Wiker follow the work of Richard
Ashcraft in identifying Locke as personally involved in the Rye
House Plot, a plan to kidnap and then murder King Charles II (whom
Locke earlier supported) and the king’s brother (440–41).45
In self-imposed exile, Locke remained in the Dutch Republic,
within six years of Spinoza’s death (441–45). In the Dutch Republic,
Locke was exposed to radical intellectual traditions, including Jean
Le Clerc, the critic of Richard Simon who would become a good
friend of Locke’s (441–44, 454, and 476–77). Locke likewise assiduously studied Spinoza and Richard Simon (444, 446, 454, and 476).
It was also at this time that he created a private intellectual meeting
group that involved figures in Benjamin Furly’s circle of intellectuals,
a circle that “was even more . . . [radical] than the circle that had
gathered around Spinoza” (444).
It is in this radical intellectual context that Hahn and Wiker examine several of Locke’s works that are important for understanding
his biblical hermeneutic: Epistola de Tolerantia (445–49); An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (449–55); First Treatise of Government
(455–61); Second Treatise of Government (461–65); The Reasonableness
of Christianity (467–75); and A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of
St. Paul (476–83).46 They point out that the first of these documents,
		Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics & Locke’s Two Treatises of Government
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
46
		Locke’s Paraphrase covers Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, and Ephesians.
45

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

the Epistola is “not an abstract treatise, but a plea for toleration to an
as-yet-unstable government in England” (445). Writing further they
contend that the Epistola duplicates the sort of “political Averroism”
of Marsilius’s Defensor Pacis through Locke’s particular call for toleration (445). As with Spinoza before him, for Locke, a core morality
becomes Scripture’s central message for Locke, a morality that has
been obscured by so much attention to doctrine (446). As Hahn and
Wiker explain, for Locke, “rather than Scripture taking believers into
the heart of profound mystery, where the actual events of sacred history
reveal, as types, eternal and supernatural truths, the Bible became a
kind of morality manual that, at its best, illustrated merely rational
moral truths” (447). Locke’s vision of toleration required a secular
governing authority and the complete privatization of religion (448).
When Hahn and Wiker turn to Locke’s Essay, they emphasize the
place into which this work fits within Locke’s overarching political
plan: “the Epistola, the Essay, and the Two Treatises as well, are all part
of Locke’s unified project. The goal of the Essay . . . was (at least in
significant part) to maximize the realm of reason and minimize the
realm of faith” (450).47 Locke is privatizing faith while uniting Cartesian rationalism with the empiricism of science.48 In the Essay, Locke
devotes significant time to discussing the nature of reason. What he
seeks to do is limit reason’s abilities and then expand the power and
capability of this new anemic reason. For Locke, reason has to do
with “our clear and distinct ideas,” and thus it is capable of judging
revelation. If something cannot be clearly “sensed,” if it “is beyond
sense,” then it is nothing but utter “nonsense” (451). Hahn and Wiker
claim that, with Locke, “the principle of sola scriptura was therefore
transformed into the principle sola ratio” (452). It is in his discussion
of judging the authenticity of manuscripts (and his discussion here
makes it clear he has the Bible in mind), that Locke is most indebted
to Simon’s prior work with its multiple editorial layers (454–55).
Hahn and Wiker point out:
. . . a direct connection between Locke’s epistemology and his
Averroistic plan for political tolerance. Reducing the status of
		They clarify, “ [the goal was] not [to] undermine [faith], but [to] minimize,
since as Locke has already made clear, political order demands religious beliefs,
albeit tamed and firmly circumscribed” (Politicizing the Bible, 450).
48
		In the authors’ words, “Locke tried to effect a union of the rationalism of
Descartes and the empiricism of Boyle, based on the atomist materialism of
both (as shared by Galileo, Hobbes, and Newton as well)” (ibid.).
47

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revelation to the lowest kind of probability could become a
scholarly project (much akin to Spinoza’s strategy of placing
endless obstacles before the exegete), one that used the scholarship of those like Richard Simon to undermine the credibility
of the text, thereby affirming the need for political tolerance.
Yet, at the same time, these exegetical endeavors could provide
at least a thin theism, largely constrained to affirming morality,
so as not to remove the necessary help that religion gave to
maintaining order in society. (455)
In Locke’s First Treatise, we find the radical “assertion of natural
individualism” that “displaced familial authority” and thus became
“the governing metaphor of modernity” (460). Hahn and Wiker
underscore how “this displacement signaled the historical shift that
Locke himself was trying to effect, from political rule by family
(monarch, nobility, father), to political rule by property; more particularly, from the kind of rule that defined pre-Civil War England, to
the rule by the propertied class in Parliament that came (after a significant struggle) to define post-Civil War England” (460). His Second
Treatise finished the job of the first, rooting all rights in what he took
to be the fundamental right, namely private property (462). Hahn
and Wiker suggest that Locke’s argument might be viewed “justly” as
“a concise scriptural vindication of Bacon’s project to conquer nature
for the sake of this-worldly comfort, and a crib of Boyle’s aims for the
Royal Society” (463).
Before turning to his works primarily on the Bible, Hahn and
Wiker recount Locke’s role in the so-called “Glorious Revolution”
(465–67). After the Rye House Plot failed, the English crown, on
many occasions, attempted to capture Locke and bring him back
to England for trial and punishment (465). Meanwhile, Locke was
busy plotting a coup that would bring down King James II and place
William of Orange in his stead (466). After the success, the “Glorious
Revolution,” Locke was able to return to England a hero (466–67).
Locke’s scriptural work was intended to minimize faith commitments to the barest minimum possible in order to further his political
goals. Indeed, his Reasonableness of Christianity basically boils down
to an apologetic for the notion that the only really important thing
for which Scripture demands the adherence of faith is that Jesus was
in fact the Messiah (468). With such a doctrinal reduction, there
would no longer be any reason for violent religious controversies.
The important thing for Locke was “civic morality” (471). Hahn

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

and Wiker sum up his entire interpretive goal: “Jesus was reduced to
being the Messiah so He could be a lawmaker-king, a miracle worker
who confirmed the authority of morality for those incapable of philosophical demonstration. . . . His [Locke’s] main interest seems to be
the utility of the Bible for keeping political order” (472).
When Hahn and Wiker examine Locke’s work on the Pauline
epistles, they show how he focuses at the outset on demonstrating
how incredibly “obscure” Paul appears to be at first glance. Locke
provided a solution to penetrating Paul’s apparent obscurity: he
urged the readers to discard commentaries and just read the epistles
themselves. He moreover cautioned against any attempt at a unified,
we might say canonical, biblical interpretation. Rather, each text
must be taken on its own, apart from the others (478–79). In his
own commentary, which would prove incredibly influential, Locke
prepared “the way for the later exegetical emphasis . . . on understanding the New Testament primarily as a witness to an early split
between Judaizing and non-Judaizing factions” (480). His Pauline
commentary was influential and paved the way for future Pauline
scholarship. The great eighteenth-century German biblical scholar
Johann David Michaelis penned the preface for the German edition
of Locke’s Paraphrase (477).
Exegesis as an Attack on Priestcraft: John Toland (1670–1722)
and the Future of Historical Criticism
Chapter 12, “Revolution, Radicals, Republicans, and John Toland”
(487–541), shows conclusively how so many of the skeptical conclusions of late-eighteenth- and nineteenth- century historical critics
were already firmly in place in the seventeenth century in the work
of John Toland. Moreover, Hahn and Wiker maintain that “the radical conclusions of the historical-critical method were built into the
method itself ” (487). In this final major chapter, they examine a
number of Toland’s works, including: Letters to Serena (488–89); Pantheisticon (489–91); Clidophorus, or Of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy
(491–95); The Life of John Milton (501–02); Christianity not Mysterious
(528–34); and Nazarenus (535–38).When they examine his 1704 Letters
to Serena, they point out how Toland establishes a “method of equivocation” in his notion of “two doctrines,” the idea that the enlightened
philosopher must hide some things from the more ignorant masses,
which hearkens back to (possibly Locke), Spinoza, Hobbes, Descartes,
Machiavelli, Marsilius, and, we might add, the Latin Averroist tradition
more broadly (488–89). Toland continued his “method of equivoca-

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tion” in his 1720 Pantheisticon, which attempted to explain Toland’s
pantheism. In it, he clearly called for the enlightened philosopher to
separate from the masses (489). Such an enlightened philosopher could
“talk” with the people in the crowds but must “think” only with other
enlightened philosophers (490).
Toland’s 1720 Clidophorus continued his hermeneutical discussion
of the role of his “double philosophy,” this time because of the threat
of potential persecution (492). Toland was a careful reader of Machiavelli, and here Toland lashes out against priestcraft and religious
hypocrisy, which Machiavelli had so praised as the dissembling necessary for a good ruler. For Toland, “priests prey upon the ignorance of
the vulgar, spinning the people’s superstition into gold to put in their
own pockets, and concealing their ruses by declaring them ‘Mysteries’” (493). Toland apparently hoped to construct a “civil theology”
based on the “rewriting of the myths” and reducing supernatural to
the natural (494–95).
As did Locke, Toland spent time among “the most radical of
intellectual circles” in the Dutch Republic (498). And as did Locke,
Toland inserted himself into the active politics of his day. In particular, he became an apologist for the Hanoverian succession (503–505).
As Hahn and Wiker highlight, Toland “desired to affect the political
order” and also had, at the same time, become financially desperate
(504). In this context, he “took it upon himself personally to educate
the House of Hanover in his most radical ideas, as a kind of Platonic
philosopher educating a future king or queen in the new civil theology . . . and . . . [he] began his intimate (if short-lived) relationship
with Sophia [of Hanover] and her daughter, Sophie, the queen
of Prussia” (504). Although he failed, Toland had “conceived the
Hanoverian succession as the political means by which a new civic
religion could be instantiated in England, one rerooted in pantheism
but wearing the public face of a radically reformed Christianity”
(522).
Hahn and Wiker include a significant discussion of the clandestine
skeptical literature then circulating in the Dutch Republic in radical
intellectual circles; Toland was intricately involved as an important
carrier of such clandestine literature (505–22). He mastered the art of
“reconstructing an existing text to make it a bearer of revolutionary
ideas” (508), including, for instance, an English translation of Giordano Bruno’s pantheistic Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (514–17). Bruno’s
text “condemns all revealed religions in the name of reason, but does
so under the guise of condemning pagan religion” (515).

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

As did Spinoza and Machiavelli before him, Toland put forward
natural explanations to explain away any apparent miracle in Scripture. Any explanation would do, so long as it was natural and not
mysterious or supernatural (526). For Toland, reason alone was
sufficient to understand Scripture, which must be studied as any
other book. Moreover, since there was no supernatural, no miracles,
nothing mysterious, there was no need for priesthood or priestly
mediation. His assumptions here would govern the rest of modern
historical criticism, with its transformation of the Bible into a book
like any other, its refusal to allow for the supernatural, seeking out a
natural (any natural) explanation in its place, and its view of priesthood as a devolution or corruption of what came before (532–33).
Toland, as did later historical critical exegetes, would “reformulate
history in terms of degeneration from rational religion to priestly
superstition” (533). Hahn and Wiker argue that “Toland was himself
not merely another moderate English divine continually blurring
Christianity’s sharp doctrinal edges with Latitudinarianism until it
shaded into the gentleman’s religion of deism—but rather part of a
larger, radical international intellectual movement that had rejected
Christianity” (505).
Back to the Future: Historical Criticism from 1700–1900
and Beyond
The book’s conclusion (543–66) clarifies a few points already brought
up in the volume, but it also charts new territory as it hints at the ways
in which the historical-critical method developed in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries grounded on the foundation discussed in
the previous 540 or so pages. Hahn and Wiker do not shy away from
linking the secularization of Scripture study from the “hypocrisy” and
“corruption” on the part of “the Church” (543). They summarize the
chapter contents rapidly (543–46). Then, they hint at ways in which
the history they told plays out in the later centuries (547–66), starting
with Gotthold Lessing (547), whose famous Wolfenbüttel Fragments,
written by Hermann Samuel Reimarus (547–48), are popularly associated with the advent of historical Jesus research. Most scholars remain
unaware of the influence the figures they already covered exerted
on Reimarus, even though there is almost unanimous acknowledgement of Reimarus’s foundational role as a historical critic. Reimarus’s
doctoral dissertation was actually on Machiavelli, and it was on the basis
of this dissertation that he became a professor philosophy. Moreover,
he was a close reader of Toland, setting “down his true thoughts only

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1337

in private,” as Toland had recommended (547). He further supported
the Locke-influenced Christian Wolff. What Lessing published of
Reimarus, however, were his more radical private views.
Hahn and Wiker proceed to show how Reimarus was not alone
in his radical views by walking through the influence exerted by
Spinoza’s thought in Germany from the end of the seventeenth
century and well into the eighteenth century (548–52 and 555–62).
This was not only through more obscure (to historians of biblical
scholarship) figures like Johann Georg Wachter (548–49), Matthew
Knutzen (549), and Friedrich Wilhelm Stosch (549–50), but also
through more significant figures within the standard histories of
biblical scholarship like Johann Lorenz Schmidt (550–552) and
Johann Salomo Semler (555–59), and thus Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (559–62). Schmidt, responsible for the Werthheim Bible, was
the first to publish a German translation of Spinoza’s Ethics. Hahn
and Wiker mention the almost completely ignored fact that Lessing,
responsible for publishing Reimarus’s private comments on the New
Testament and, thus, birthing the modern critical historical Jesus
studies, completely assimilated Spinoza via Schmidt’s German text
of Spinoza’s Ethics. As they explain: “Lessing took the Averroistic
vertical hierarchy stretching from the vulgar to the philosophic,
which Spinoza took to be ineradicable, and set it horizontally, so
that the hierarchy was stretched through history, the vulgar gradually becoming enlightened as they moved from needing wondrous
events and imaginative metaphors (i.e., biblical stories) in order to
grasp philosophical truths indirectly, to the more advanced stage of
embracing truths of reason directly” (552). Historical Jesus scholarship
was to take another bound, again grounded in Reimarus, the Machiavelli specialist, through the work of David Friedrich Strauss (553–55).
Hahn and Wiker then turn to Semler. Semler was a devotee of
Richard Simon, whose work he brought into German translation,
which the authors mention in their chapter on Simon (404), but
which they regretfully neglect to mention when they actually spend
time discussing Semler’s importance in their concluding chapter.
Semler also published an edition of Meyer’s Philosophia in Latin (404
and 555), but Hahn and Wiker again neglect to mention here (555)
the very relevant fact that they mentioned earlier (both 355–56 and
404) in their chapters on Spinoza and Simon, namely, that bound
together with Meyer’s work, Semler placed Spinoza’s Tractatus in
Latin. This is important, as the authors earlier noted, because it
emphasizes the way in which Semler (and the others who juxtaposed

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

these two texts in the same published bound volume) intended to
see Meyer’s work as a prolegomenon to Spinoza’s (355). Hahn and
Wiker also fail to mention here two significant facts they brought up
in passing earlier, where they were less relevant (356), namely that
Semler was incredibly influential on Lessing, and even more so on his
student Johann Jakob Griesbach, who would set the Synoptic problem
and the historical study of the Gospels on a whole new track with his
version of the two-source hypothesis.
Hahn and Wiker do mention here, however, one other significant
influence Semler exerted that would have as great an effect on the
historical-critical study of the Old Testament as Griesbach would
have on that of the New Testament: Semler’s disciple (and student
of Johann David Michaelis), Johann Gottfried Eichhorn. Eichhorn
would set the early stage of the historical-critical study of the Pentateuch on a path that would lead ultimately to Julius Wellhausen’s
formulation of the Documentary Hypothesis of Pentateuchal origins.
Eichhorn was able to do this in part by his study of the Greek and
Roman classics under Christian Gottlob Heyne.
The other major “breakthrough” Eichhorn had, although Hahn
and Wiker fail to mention it, is Eichhorn’s introduction to the work
of Jean Astruc via Eichhorn’s teacher Michaelis. Astruc attempted to
defend the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch against the skeptics
of the previous century (La Peyrère, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Simon).
Astruc did this by positing hypothetical sources, based on stylistic
differences, behind Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, which he
maintained Moses used in composing those texts. Michaelis, who
also adhered to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, feared that
Astruc had gone too far in dividing up sources based on such criteria.
It was through Michaelis’s critique of Astruc that Eichhorn was able
to redeploy Astruc to create further distance between the text of the
Pentateuch, in its earliest stages, and Moses.
Hahn and Wiker do mention other influences on Eichhorn, showing how close he was to Spinoza and Toland. They spell out how,
for him, “prophecy becomes the vehicle for replacing revelation with
entirely secular philosophy” (560). Eichhorn would have a considerable effect on shaping the future of the University of Göttingen,
where he himself studied and where Wellhausen would later study
and teach (561).
Hahn and Wiker conclude this chapter, bringing their volume to a
close, with an all-too-brief discussion of the role of the socio-political
climate of Germany in the latter half of the nineteenth century (562–

Averroism, Nominalism, and Mechanization

1339

65), situating the biblical work of Wellhausen (561–63) and Wilhelm
M. L. de Wette (562–64) within this context. Wellhausen, a staunch
Bismarck supporter, completed an exegetical project that fit well
within the political climate of the time. Hahn and Wiker comment:
A common feature running from Marsilius through Hobbes,
Spinoza, and Toland was the denigration of the priesthood
because the primacy of the priesthood implied a primacy of
the sacred over the secular, the priest over the king. Whatever
Wellhausen’s intentions, dividing the Old Testament up into
four sources, JEDP, and casting the Priestly as a later, artificial constriction and deformation of an earlier, better form
of worship, accomplished the very result, exegetically, aimed
at by the most adamantly secular thinkers we have covered.
In so doing, it would appear that Wellhausen functioned like
Ockham and Luther, unintentionally aiding a purely secular
reconstruction of religion. (562)
Hahn and Wiker proceed to show how de Wette (an incredibly
influential source for Wellhausen) had made similar moves much
earlier in his work on the Old Testament, also pushing the institution
of the Old Testament priesthood late, after the Babylonian exile. This
section would probably be better placed prior to their discussion of
Wellhausen. They include some reflections on the political function
of Markan priority. These trends in biblical criticism in Germany at
the end of the nineteenth century provide “exegetical support for
a repudiation of Catholicism and an affirmation of Protestantism,”
especially when it is understood how often the Old Testament priesthood was a stand-in for contemporary Catholicism (564).
Concluding Reflections
Politicizing the Bible stands in a class all of its own. To date there exist
no volumes quite like this one. No one else has yet produced a book
that accomplishes all of the following: traces the history of modern
biblical scholarship prior to the eighteenth century (let alone into
the fourteenth); examines the philosophical roots (Epicurean-atomist,
Averroist, nominalist, Machiavellian, Baconian-scientific, Cartesian,
Spinozan-pantheistic, etc.) of modern historical-criticism; traces the
medieval influences in the context of the Franciscan poverty disputes;
walks through the history of pre-Reformation and Reformation
England to show how the seedbed was sown for later Deistic exegesis

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Jeffrey L. Morrow

that would transplant to Germany; shows the role of the Protestant
Reformation (beyond simply the new focus on sola Scriptura) on
modern biblical hermeneutics; shows how each figure built upon the
edifice constructed by earlier figures discussed; explain the role of the
great cosmological shift in the seventeenth century (involving figures
like Galileo, Descartes, and Newton) in creating a new context for
biblical interpretation that would allow for historical-criticism; and, in
addition to all of this, all the while tracing the political history in order
to show how politics shaped the entire project so that the emerging
secular study of the Bible was so often forged and used as an offensive
weapon by various states in their battles with the Church over the
bodies and souls within their realms. Some prior books have accomplished some of these tasks, but apart from Politicizing the Bible, none
of them have accomplished all of them in a single volume. This is the
first broad survey of the history of modern biblical scholarship that
devotes entire chapters to figures such as Marsilius of Padua, William
of Ockham, Machiavelli, Henry VIII, Descartes, and John Locke; most
historians of biblical scholarship give these figures only a few passing
comments, if they are mentioned at all.
Hahn and Wiker have written a scholarly masterpiece that belongs
on the bookshelves of any scholar interested in the Bible, the history
of biblical interpretation, the history of modern biblical scholarship,
historical-critical exegesis, theological biblical interpretation, the
Enlightenment, the roots of Enlightenment philosophy, the intellectual roots of modernity, the German and English Reformations and
their roots, historical church and state relations, or are interested in
any of the figures Hahn and Wiker discuss in their massive tome.
My only hope is that Hahn and Wiker write a sequel, at least from
1700–1900, if not through the twentieth century.49
N&V

		I owe thanks to Brant Pitre and Michael Barber for thinking through with me
some of the issues raised here, and to Maria Morrow for critiquing a draft of
this review essay. Portions of this review were already published (and are here
reused with permission) in my much briefer review essay of Hahn and Wiker’s
book in Journal of Theological Interpretation 8.1 (2014): 145–55.

49

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2016): 1341–1366

Book Reviews
The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch by Stephen
L. Brock (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), xix + 195 pp.

“Right now,” Father Stephen Brock observes, “there does seem

to be some confusion about nature” (34). At that point in his new
book, Fr. Brock is engaged in the task of making intelligible Aristotle’s
understanding of nature as a principle and cause that makes certain
things move, and he has just finished explaining that Aristotle took
the existence of nature, or of things that act from such a cause, to be
evident. It must be admitted, however, that “we can get confused even
about such obvious truths” (ibid.). This kind of confusion is vexing
not merely because we are happier when our thoughts are clearer and
more in harmony with our experience of the world, but also because
our confusion about matters that should be plain has a way of hindering us from receiving the saving truth of the Gospel in its integrity.
If philosophy is, in fact, a “way to come to know fundamental truths
about human life” (Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §5), then its ability
to keep us from confusion about matters as foundational as what is and
what is not natural is indeed precious.We ought, then, to prize philosophy “as one of the noblest of human tasks” (ibid., §3), and thus warmly
welcome Fr. Brock’s invitation to consider it afresh through the eyes of
one of its most appealing masters, St. Thomas Aquinas.
The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch offers readers a
tour of the Angelic Doctor’s thinking about nature and the created
order that culminates in what Fr. Brock refers to as “reason’s glimpse
of God” (109). In less than two hundred crisp and clear pages, he has
achieved a work that his colleagues will envy, for it is at once both a
satisfying presentation of Aquinas’s thought and a personal engagement with him as a philosophical companion. This “sketch” is an
introduction and a survey that is also, and eminently, a work of original reflection. At each step of the way, the reader is offered a look at

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Book Reviews

Aquinas’s thought that is both from the point of view of metaphysical
wisdom (and sometimes explicitly theological wisdom) and firmly
rooted in common experience and ordinary language.
After an introduction entitled Manuductio that sets forth the work’s
essential theme, Fr. Brock dedicates the first of his six chapters to an
overview of Aquinas’s life and major works. The middle four chapters
of the book are a march through the main topics of theoretical philosophy, beginning with nature and its principles, turning to the soul as
a particular kind of nature, then examining the science of being and
truth, and finally ascending to the consideration of “invisibles”—the
human soul as subsistent form, the angels, and God. Only in the
final chapter does Fr. Brock address Aquinas’s practical philosophy,
and then decidedly from a metaphysical point of view, attending in
particular to the role played by speculative philosophy in the defense
and elucidation of the principles of ethics and politics. Aquinas’s
considerable labor in the art of logic receives only a brief direct
treatment in the chapter on metaphysics, but this is no omission. The
art of arts is never far from view at any point in the book. To those
readers who are broadly familiar with the literature on Aquinas as a
philosopher, Fr. Brock’s decision to privilege a treatment of the theoretical over the practical will not surprise. For while it would be too
much to say that there are works aplenty to serve as introductions to
Thomas’s ethical thought, it seems fair to say that Fr. Brock has done
a great service to the present generation of students by making the
effort to introduce the features of Thomas’s thought that are less well
known and, almost certainly, more foreign to most of us.
The distinctive excellence of the book is captured in the introductory account of the nature and importance of manuductio, the “leading by the hand” of student by teacher that assists the one learning
to pass from the knowledge of things more familiar to him, but in
themselves less intelligible, to the knowledge of things further from
the senses—even invisible—but more intelligible in themselves. This
doctrine about the teacher’s task, grounded in the account of the
natural way that human beings come to know, familiar from Aristotle’s Physics 1.1, shapes Fr. Brock’s book in three important ways.
First, and most evidently, it provides the order for the book’s central,
speculative chapters, which begin with a truth that is evident to the
senses—namely, that things move, and progress in step-wise fashion
to the truth that God is his own existence. Second, within those
chapters, this doctrine guides Fr. Brock’s work as an expositor of

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1343

Aquinas’s thought, as again and again he labors to make the particulars of that doctrine intelligible in light of what he takes to be the
experiences that we all share, and even what he thinks our common
intellectual custom likely to be. Third, this account of “leading by
the hand” sheds light on what he takes the task of philosophy to be
within the context of a Christian intellectual life that is ordered to
the understanding of Divine Revelation. By the work’s end, philosophy—at least in the hands of Aquinas—has emerged as a most worthy
and useful handmaiden to Sacred Theology.
It will be worth savoring an instance or two of Fr. Brock’s art of
teaching. An especially helpful one, to my mind, is his deft teaching-by-example of the difficult truth that the form of the thing
known is present in the knower without its matter. Here he is exploring the general truth through an instance of sensation: “With your
blue eyes you are seeing the black and white page. Nothing in you
thereby is, or is even in the process of becoming, black and white.
The blue in your eyes is only the blue of your eyes. But the forms of
black and white in them are also the page’s forms. They are the page’s
inasmuch as by them, the page itself is being seen” (65–66).
Another characteristic bit of his teaching comes early in the book,
when he is speaking about Aquinas’s tendency to be in dialogue with
earlier thinkers. There he makes this distinction between the authority of a teacher and that of a commander: “Following a commander
or lawgiver consists mainly in obeying, executing orders. This may
sometimes require a clarification of the order’s meaning, or even of
its purpose; but the point is to obey. Of course following a teacher
also involves performing assigned tasks. But the point is to learn.
And learning is very much a matter of asking questions. A good
commander will allow some questions, but a good teacher welcomes,
even provokes them” (4). In each case, as in many other similar
discussions throughout the book, Fr. Brock effectively ties an important distinction or realization back to an everyday experience. As a
result, one can say with confidence that, although the book certainly
has its difficult passages due to the nature of its subject matter, on the
whole it is remarkably approachable.
It may, however, be worth saying something about what the book
is not so as the better to locate its particular excellence. At the beginning of his fourth chapter, which is dedicated to Aquinas’s metaphysics, Fr. Brock quotes a well-known passage from the Commentary on
the Nicomachean Ethics on the order of learning, a passage that begins

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Book Reviews

with the teaching that “boys should first be instructed in logical
matters” (Brock, 83; Sent. eth. 6, lec. 7, no. 1211). He then offers a
comment that helps to frame the whole of his book: “even though
Thomas puts it [logic] first, I am only bringing it up now, because
this book is not a course in Thomistic philosophy, but only a sketch
of it, and because some of the (few) things that I want to say about his
views on logic are easier to explain in light of things seen in the previous two chapters” (83–84). There is considerably more than meets
the eye here. For, while there is, on the one hand, a plain admission
that the book is not meant as a substitute for a course or curriculum
in philosophy, there is, on the other, a gesture towards its essential
characteristic: it is not at all an encyclopedic collection of Thomistic
conclusions arrayed subject-by-subject for ease of reference. Quite
the contrary, it is a deeply personal engagement with Aquinas as a
philosopher that begins with our general experience of the world of
moving things and proceeds to progressively more noble topics. And
on every page, the concerns of the metaphysician are evident.
Taken as a whole, Fr. Stephen Brock’s Philosophy of Saint Thomas
Aquinas: A Sketch is an imposing achievement. He has been perseveringly in dialogue not only with Aquinas but also with all of his major
interpreters from the past half century, as the footnotes and admirable bibliography amply demonstrate. It is the kind of book that one
wants to put in the hands of seminarians, undergraduates nearing the
end of their studies, and graduate students beginning theirs, not only
because it conveys much truth but also because it provides an attractive model for how philosophizing ought to be done. The volume is
especially strong in its treatment of nature, the principles of nature,
and the soul as a kind of nature. In each case, the exposition begins
with an explicit concern for our dominant intellectual custom, which
is a materialism dominated by the imagination. Fr. Brock insists that
his readers come to terms with the strangeness of Aquinas’s conception of nature, take note of what he means by form, and consider
how attention to form—especially substantial form—opens up a vista
upon the world that is different from the one gained from our physics, chemistry, and biology textbooks. His discussions of why animals
are not best understood as machines, why the unity of living things
needs to be contended with, and why sensing and knowing constitute new modes of being in the world are concise and compelling.
Given all of the confusion about nature that surrounds us today, both
outside and within the Church, this patient and accurate exposition
of Aquinas’s view is timely indeed. And what makes it invaluable is

Book Reviews

1345

that Fr. Brock is not content merely to describe Aquinas’s thinking;
N&V
he also subtly but unmistakably argues for its truth.
Christopher O. Blum
Augustine Institute
Denver, Colorado

Healing for Freedom: A Christian Perspective on Personhood
and Psychotherapy by †Benedict M. Ashley, O.P. (Arlington, VA: The
Institute for the Psychological Sciences Press, 2013), 352 pp.

At the funeral Mass for Hans Urs von Balthasar, then-Car-

dinal Joseph Ratzinger famously referred to the Swiss theologian
named cardinal as the most cultured man of his time. A quarter of a
century later, in surveying the work of Benedict Ashley, one wonders
whether this Dominican priest might have been the most cultured
man of our age. With his posthumously published Healing for Freedom:
A Christian Perspective on Personhood and Psychotherapy, Ashley offers
another parallel with the Swiss savant. Namely, Ashely provides a
summary of his life’s work. While lacking the straightforwardness of
Balthasar’s title—A Resume of My Thought—Ashley offers a no less
comprehensive account of the central themes of his intellectual work.
This accomplishment spanned three quarters of a century.
In Healing for Freedom, Ashley meticulously lays down the foundation for a proper understanding of the human person. This understanding of the human person—body and soul—offers the only
adequate foundation for both a sound psychology and practice of
psychotherapy.
As Romanus Cessario, O.P., has remarked: “There are no skyhooks
for Father Ashley.” That is, Ashley eschews the transcendent philosophical program. He avoids leaps, jumps, and grand inferences. Like
a skilled stone mason, Ashley instead constructs piece by piece a
methodically argued description of the human person and his place
in the created world. No part of natural science—be it a description
of the function of the occipital and frontal lobes of the cerebrum or
an analysis of the human lymphatic system—falls outside the scope of
his study. Ashley delivers a comprehensive description of the human
person from a physical, psychological, and spiritual perspective.
The subtitle—A Christian Perspective on Personhood and Psychotherapy—requires proper interpretation. Admittedly, only the final of
the nine chapters explicitly takes up the question of psychotherapy.

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Book Reviews

However, Ashley points out that a proper exercise of psychoanalysis
requires a sound understanding of the human person. As Veritatis
Splendor reminds us, the truth about the good of the human person
offers the only path to our understanding authentic human flourishing.
Healing for Freedom unfolds in nine chapters. The first sets out three
possible philosophical approaches to the human person: (1) dualist—
such as found, to varying degrees, in Plato, Descartes, and Kant; (2)
reductionist—found throughout the philosophical tradition in figures
such as Zeno, Hobbes, Freud and, generally, behaviorists and determinists; and (3) the instrumentalist approach as found, most notably,
in Aristotle and Aquinas.
Dualists hold that the human being is composed of two natures,
material and spiritual. Innumerable difficulties arise when these
authors try to explain how a composite produces a single human
being. Reductionists—influenced greatly in the modern period by
the work of Charles Darwin—argue that human activity can be
explained simply with reference to material causes. Instrumentalists,
for their part, affirm the human being is a body-soul composite,
though a unified substance in which the body is the material cause
and the soul is the unifying formal cause.
In the second chapter, Ashley pursues the human being as a bodysoul composite. He discusses the range of scientific disciplines from
those that concern man in his material nature to those that address
man as a spiritual being. Ashley explains that many of the present
confusions in psychology result from a misunderstanding of its place
among the scientific disciplines. A key distinction for Ashley discerns
comparative psychology from personal psychology. Comparative
psychology ranks as the highest discipline of natural science; it
studies—even with the help of advanced technology—man in his
animal nature. By contrast, personal psychology studies aspects of
human behavior as a properly human phenomenon. Because personal
psychology touches the immaterial in man, Ashely asserts that this
discipline requires a “properly metaphysical analysis.”
In chapters 3 and 4, Ashley describes what it means for the human
being to be embodied. He provides a full description of the various
bodily systems: circulatory, respiratory, lymphatic, digestive, endocrine, reproductive, skeletal, muscular, and integumentary. He does
not take sides on the variety of evolutionary theories—for example,
neo-Darwinian or the theory of punctuated equilibrium advanced
by Stephen Jay Gould. In any case, Ashley holds that evolutionary
theory explains only the material reality of man. No evolutionary

Book Reviews

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theory can address how Ashley describes the human being as a bodysoul composite.
Chapter 5 offers a comprehensive refutation of the position that no
essential difference can be found between human and animal intelligence. Man stands at the juncture of the material and spiritual orders.
As a living being, the human person requires proper knowledge of
his psychology. Such a psychology must embrace the true nature of
man as a per se unum, a substance of body and soul (see Catechism of
the Catholic Church, §365). Ashley explains: “The human person thus
exists on the borderline between the physical and spiritual parts of the
universe, and so it must be studied first by comparative psychology
(which is part of natural science) and second by personal psychology
(which works by analogy from the results of comparative psychology)” (216).
Ashley remains most well known in many quarters for his work in
moral theology. In chapters 6 and 7, he summarizes his basic approach
to moral matters: virtue-based moral reasoning, freedom viewed as
a freedom for excellence, and a willingness to refuse accommodation to contemporary decadences. What is most consoling, Ashley
provides a model for the healthy human person. Sound psychology
depends upon such a model. Still, he explains: “Amazingly enough,
one can read innumerable works on psychology and psychotherapy
without ever running across any such model” (217).
While agnosticism, or sometimes even outright hostility toward
religion, may be commonplace among those working in the field
of psychology, Ashley holds that religious faith affords a benefit to
psychological health. He counsels psychotherapists to leave questions
of ethics or spiritual direction to those expert in those fields. He
rather encourages therapists to aid patients by assisting them to adopt a
healthy and realistic outlook about themselves and their surroundings.
In the final chapter, Ashley explains that the purpose of psychotherapy is “to heal the animal aspect of human psychology . . . so that
it can normally serve the whole human person” (317). He insists on
the need for all persons to adopt a worldview and value system that
will strengthen their human psychological makeup. The elaboration
of worldviews and value systems, however, properly belong to metaphysics and theology. The first principles of being and acting cannot
be fabricated even by the best practitioners of psychotherapy.
Neurosis remains one obstacle to a healthy psychological makeup.
Ashley distinguishes neurosis from vice. He explains that “neurosis
is a distorted habit of behavior at a psychological level below that of

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Book Reviews

intelligence and freedom, which, however, limits and distorts intelligence and free behavior” (330–01). For this reason, sound psychotherapy—grounded in the truth about human freedom—offers the
best possibility of healing neurosis.
To return to the theme of Ashley’s intellectual output, each of the
nine chapters summarizes some aspect of Ashley’s impressive literary
corpus. Chapter 1, on the different models of the human person,
recapitulates his significant but insufficiently known work Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian (1985). The second chapter’s
defense of some of Aristotle’s claims in natural science recalls Ashley’s
dissertation, “Aristotle’s Sluggish Earth” (1958). Both of these initial
chapters address the division of the sciences—including comparative and personal psychology—which finds detailed explanation in
Ashley’s important text on the foundation of metaphysics, The Way
toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics (2009). One also recalls his unrelenting defense of the River
Forest position on the foundation of natural science as the basis for
metaphysics.
Chapters 3–5, which treat issues of natural science, draw to mind
Ashley’s Choosing a Worldview and Value System: An Ecumenical Apologetics (2000) and his How Science Enriches Theology (2012). Chapter 6,
on morality, corresponds to his insightful Living the Truth in Love: A
Biblical Introduction to Moral Theology (1996). This chapter also offers a
brief synopsis of biomedical and sexual ethics, and the several editions
of Health Care Ethics, authored with Kevin D. O’Rourke, supply a
fuller treatment.
Ashley addresses issues surrounding gender roles and the diverse
psychological makeup of men and women in his Justice in the Church:
Gender and Participation (1996). His insights in this book inform chapter 7, on human communities, specifically in the discussion of gender.
Chapter 8 analyzes the human person from the spiritual perspective.
One thinks of Ashley’s works Spiritual Direction in the Dominican
Tradition (1995), Thomas Aquinas: The Gifts of the Spirit (1996), and his
short account of Dominican history in The Dominicans (1991).
Throughout the book under review, Ashley offers strong criticism
of authors with whom he has sparred throughout his intellectual
career. He challenges the work of Germain Grisez, who eschews both
the hierarchy of the goods in human life and the ultimate end of man
in contemplation (222), Charles Curran, who gainsays the immorality of inherently non-procreative sexual acts (251), and Henri de

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Lubac, who, in Ashley’s view, fails adequately to distinguish between
the natural and supernatural orders (287).
Some insights in Healing for Freedom provide vintage Ashley. For
example, as an outstanding Thomist, Ashley rightly states Aquinas’s
original contribution to theories of knowledge: “In Aquinas’s own
case it is often claimed that his original intuition, evident in his
first philosophical work De Ente et Essentia, is the ‘real distinction of
essence and existence.’ In my opinion, more fundamental still was his
profound recognition that all our natural human knowledge rests on
the senses, a point in Aristotle not clearly seen by earlier readings of
the Stagirite, even by St. Albertus” (199).
Father Ashley worked on Healing for Freedom at the end of his
long life (1915–2013). While he supplies references to contemporary
psychological literature, students will also benefit from the bibliographical references found in his other works. All in all, one receives
the impression of a master who has sought—and found—the truth in
every corner of human learning.
For those seeking a grounding in a philosophy of the human
person that addresses issues of psychology and psychological counseling, Healing for Freedom will serve as a welcome resource. Christians
hold on good authority that the truth sets free ( John 8:32). Healing for
Freedom takes it cue from this biblical passage. Father Ashley teaches
us that authentic freedom arises only when one embraces the full
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truth about the human person.
Ryan Connors
St. John’s Seminary
Brighton, Massachusetts

The Gospel of the Family: Going Beyond Cardinal Kasper’s
Proposal in the Debate on Marriage, Civil Re-Marriage, and
Communion in the Church by Juan José Pérez-Soba and Stephan
Kampowski, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014),
255 pp.

Since the announcement by Pope Francis in 2013 of
the Synod on the Family, the Church has found herself in the midst
of a heated debate regarding a whole spectrum of issues pertaining
to marriage and family. At the center of this debate stands Cardinal
Walter Kasper’s speech entitled “The Gospel of the Family,” delivered
on February 20, 2014. The speech was addressed to the Pope and some

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150 cardinals gathered at the extraordinary consistory. Kasper’s speech
advocating change in the Church’s practice regarding divorced and
remarried Catholics caused an avalanche of responses centering on the
Christian tradition of monogamous and indissoluble marriage, as well
as on the nature of mercy, compassion, tolerance, personal identity, the
common good, the purpose of theology, and so on.
Juan José Pérez-Soba and Stephan Kampowski, professors of pastoral theology and of philosophical anthropology (respectively) at the
John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Rome, join the
discussion in this book. Their key question is not whether divorced
and remarried Catholics should be allowed to receive sacramental
communion, but rather the question of human happiness. If, as they
emphasize, “the goal of the sinodal work is to proclaim the Gospel
of the Family in its total beauty” (33–34), one needs to ask a question: How can people find happiness and fulfillment in their lives?
According to Pérez-Soba and Kampowski, monogamous marriage
between a man and a woman answers the human quest for happiness
and unlocks the mystery of divine mercy. The book, well researched
and written in a forceful tone, examines the above-mentioned question in five chapters.
The first chapter, written by Kampowski, analyzes the cultural
setting in which the Gospel of the Family is proclaimed. Kampowski
approaches the topic from the perspective of heuristic of fear as
spelled out by Hans Jonas in his book The Imperative of Responsibility.
The fear that Jonas speaks about is not a fear of something but rather
a fear for something, for a great value that is in danger of being extinguished. For Kampowski, the value that is threatened by Kasper’s
intervention is the exclusivity and durability of marriage. He locates
Kasper’s efforts within the movement of the sexual revolution. The
sexual revolution has emphasized that “the core of happiness in life is
sexual happiness” and that a “lasting relationship is a health hazard”
(27). Consequently, a society that follows this philosophy promotes
a radical anthropological revolution that attempts to cancel out the
truth of creation that human beings are born male and female and
that “celebrates the condom as the redemption of human sexuality”
(41). Yet, in such a sex-saturated culture, the Church is still seen as
a moral authority and an interlocutor in moral debates. The Church
must then recover the sense of beauty and preciousness of the Gospel
message by emphasizing how the deepest aspirations of the human
heart for love and affirmation are fulfilled. According to Kampowski,
the Church is in danger of committing “assisted religious suicide” by

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giving up morally demanding aspects of her message, namely, that
“sex is an expression of love,” that “true love wants to say forever,”
and that love “requires constant labor.” Exclusivity, durability, and
abstinence are not the means of stifling love and happiness, but rather
the necessary means of the redemption of eros and of human beings.
The second chapter picks up where the first one left off. In it,
Pérez-Soba studies the redemption of human love by presenting it
within the context of God’s covenantal relationship in which truth
and mercy meet. According to Pérez-Soba, Kasper’s understanding
of mercy as tolerance and leniency flattens out the concept of mercy.
Mercy must be presented within the context of the covenant. Within
this context, mercy “springs from love for the person in order to cure
him from the sickness of infidelity that afflicts him and prevents him
from living in the relationship with God” (82). The root of mercy,
then, is not tolerance, but rather God’s passionate desire to overcome
human misery, primarily sin and death, through a new gift that unites
the sinner with God. Thus, indissolubility, Pérez-Soba emphasizes, is
not in the first place a juridical requirement, as Cardinal Kasper views
it, but rather it is a direct expression of God’s merciful love. In other
words, “indissolubility does not result from a divine mandate that is
added to marriage, but rather it is a quality of the personal union”
(85) that is, according to Pérez-Soba, at stake. In the case of failed
marriage, what needs repentance is not the failure itself “but the fact
of having broken the sign of the covenant and of fidelity to Christ”
( John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, §84). The change in practice advocated by Cardinal Kasper is not a simple juridical accommodation.
Rather, the change of practice undermines the entire edifice of the
Catholic doctrine based on God’s self-manifestation and his desire to
lead his people to a more abundant life.
Having elaborated upon the sacramental bond of marriage, PérezSoba moves on in the next chapter (ch. 3) to examine the patristic
data used by Cardinal Kasper to advocate his theology of tolerance
and leniency. In examining the experience of the primitive Church,
Pérez-Soba emphasizes, one needs to bear in mind six things: (1) the
Christian believers of the first centuries found themselves in a society
with a high divorce rate; (2) many converts came from very diverse
situations of life; (3) the previous tradition was lacking; (4) there was
no difference between religious and civil marriage; (5) the sacramental aspect of marriage was not developed; and finally, (6) the Church
needed to withstand the civil power that desired to impose its views
on the her. Bearing in mind these six factors, Pérez-Soba studies

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the following texts: “Cannon 8 of the Council of Nicea,” Origen’s
“Comment about the Matthean Exception,” St. Basil’s “Canon,” and
some passing comments made by St. Gregory of Nazianzus and by
St. Augustine.
According to Pérez-Soba, Kasper’s presentation of the above-mentioned texts is one-sided and erroneous. It is based on questionable
and partisan scholarship that manipulates and fabricates the data.
So, Pérez-Soba concludes that the primitive Church, rather than
promoting any sort of tolerance, forcefully witnessed “indissolubility,
in opposition to the social custom of that era” in “a realization of the
prophetic value of Christian marriage” (123).
Chapter 4 considers the construction of the moral subject by
means of action. In this chapter, Kampowski presents marriage as
a remedy to the illness of “chronological atomism” so prevalent in
contemporary liquid society (see the work of Zygmunt Bauman).
Chronological atomism gives many people an impression of being
the simple administrators rather than the artists of their lives. Yet, to
“be an artist . . . one needs a project. To have a project, one needs
a goal” (141). Quoting Maurice Blondel, Kampowski writes about
that goal: “We do not go forward, we do not learn, we do not enrich
ourselves except by closing off for ourselves all roads but one and by
impoverishing ourselves of all that we might have known or gained
otherwise. . . . I must commit myself under the pain of losing everything” (Blondel, Action, 4). Kampowski’s argument here resembles
that made by Charles Larmore in his book entitled The Practices of
the Self. For Larmore, authenticity means committing oneself and
taking a stand. In other words, in order to be authentic, one needs
a commitment. Marriage plays a preeminent role in making love a
journey—a journey from affective union to real union. The journey
of love heals as well as generates action, and consequently structures
a Christian subject.
The final chapter, written by Pérez-Soba, crowns the argument by
proposing an adequate pastoral care of marriage and family, which
he calls “the pastoral approach of accompaniment” (164). In spelling
out his pastoral proposal Pérez-Soba draws heavily on the view of
marriage preparation found in Pope John Paul II’s 1981 Familiaris
Consortio. A person prepares for marriage from birth. The Church,
as the evangelizing community, “must teach every person to love”
by “profoundly changing the structures, especially in regards to the
catechesis of children, pastoral care in schools, and youth ministry”
(202). According to Pérez-Soba, Kasper’s approach, rather than

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analyzing the roots of the problem, tries to resolve the pastoral questions solely through a change of norm. This, according to PérezSoba, is an error. This approach breathes legalism. Paradoxically,
Kasper, who accuses the Church of legalism, falls himself victim to it
by presenting law as coming from authority (bonum quia iussum) rather
than from the truth about the good of things (iussum quia bonum).
The book finishes with an appendix that, in a certain sense,
summarizes the book’s argument by providing answers to the thirty
key questions that the authors have formulated for the members of
the Synod on the Family.
This short summary does not do full justice to this well-researched and profound meditation on a host of issues. Pérez-Soba
and Kampowski present their material in a very coherent way, sifting
the wheat from the weeds of Kasper’s argument. Their criticism of
Kasper’s approach, though sometimes overly sarcastic, is a passionate
call to the Church not to throw the baby out with the bath water.
The call to marriage and family, though difficult, is a call that guarantees human flourishing and fulfillment. Family based on the indissoluble bond of a man and a woman is indeed a pearl of great price,
N&V
and one cannot sell it cheaply.
Marek J. Duran
Mundelein Seminary
Mundelein, Illinois

Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology by Paige E.
Hochschild (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 272 pp.

In Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology, Paige Hochschild
seeks to recover “the neglected significance of memory as the foundation for Augustine’s theological anthropology” (4). Indeed, it comes as
a surprise to most of us in the field that Hochschild’s work, a revision
of her 2005 dissertation, is the first book-length study of Augustine’s
understanding of memory. As such, it is a useful resource for thinking
about the main texts and the philosophical background related to this
relatively under-studied topic.
Hochschild’s main purpose in studying memory in Augustine
is twofold: to contribute to the ongoing discussion of Augustine’s
theory of knowledge and, more importantly, to demonstrate that, for
Augustine, memory is at the heart of what it means to be a human
being made in the image of God. Memory, Hochschild argues,
“unites the embodied and intellectual aspects of human existence,

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and demands that the effects of grace pervade the whole person, both
through the right ordering in relation to creation, and, prior to this,
through a rightly ordered grounding in the divine” (167).
The book is divided into three major parts: part I deals with Greek
philosophical antecedents; part II deals with Augustine’s early works;
and part III treats Augustine’s mature work on memory (in particular,
Confessions 10–13 and De Trinitate 12–14). Hochschild’s approach in
these three parts is both historical and exegetical. She wants to root
Augustine’s understanding of memory in a “history of ideas,” primarily from the Greek philosophical tradition, but she also wants to give
an account of Augustine’s own development on this question. Rather
than abstracting the main ideas of Augustine and the Greeks, Hochschild analyzes particular texts within the context they in which were
written. She moves through the major passages from major works on
memory and exegetes them with nuance.
In the first part of her study, Hochschild focuses on the “Platonist”
influences on Augustine—Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus in particular.
While Augustine certainly had other philosophical influences (the
Stoics or Cicero in his mediation of the Greek tradition, for example) it is these three, Hochschild argues, who lay the groundwork,
who set the questions, and who offer the range of possible answers.
Hochschild does not argue for strict parallels between any of these
philosophers and Augustine, but rather for resonances. This allows
her to situate Augustine within the “history of ideas,” arguing that,
while Augustine is certainly most influenced by Plotinus (to whom
he had the most access), many of his conclusions are closer to Plato
and Aristotle.
Part II treats Augustine’s early philosophical works from the
time of his conversion up to his ordination in 391: the Cassiciacum
dialogues, the treatises on the soul, and De magistro and De musica. In
these, the topic of memory emerges gradually, first in relation to the
nature of wisdom and then in thinking through how sense perception is related to wisdom. But it is in these dialogues that Augustine
begins to realize the centrality of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, as
well as “the incarnational rationale for an anthropology founded on
memory” (110). These insights point ahead to Augustine’s mature
discussion in the Confessions.
In Part III, Hochschild discusses memory in the Confessions, what
she considers the heart of her study, as well as in De Trinitate. Book
10 of the Confessions famously deals with memory, and most scholars
isolate this text from its context. Hochschild situates it in the overall

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work and ably shows how it is foundational for understanding the last
three books, a perennial headache for Augustine scholars. Augustine’s
discussion of memory in book 10 raises questions of how the temporal, embodied soul can have union with the eternal. This propels the
argument into books 11–13: book 11 takes up the question of the
relation between the temporal and eternal through the discussion of
the Incarnation and the analogy of the inspired word of Scripture,
and books 12 and 13 complete the trajectory by bringing to the fore
the necessity of the Church as the locus of the reconciliation of the
tensions between body and soul and between the temporal and the
eternal. Indeed, for memory to function as the unifying factor of
body and soul, and of both with creation and God, it needs “the
memory of the Church” (153). De Trinitate has a goal similar to that
of the Confessions: “a harmony and unification of the temporal and
eternal in Christ, for the sake of spiritual peace” (189). What De Trinitate adds is a much more developed understanding of the Trinitarian
image of God in man and faith in the incarnate mediator as the means
of union with the Trinity.
There is much to recommend in this book. The approach to
Augustine’s philosophical background in part I is helpful for bringing out resonances that are often overlooked, such as Augustine’s
continuity with Aristotle. Moreover, one appreciates any scholar who
pushes back against the commonplaces that the Greeks were simple
dualists and that Augustine follows them in this. Yet another benefit
of the volume is it gathers most of the important passages on memory
and analyzes them in one place, although the reader less familiar
with Augustine’s works will want to have the original texts at hand,
since much of Hochschild’s analysis presupposes intimate familiarity with the movements of the texts. Lastly, her contextual and
exegetical approach to Augustine’s works enables her to avoid many
of the pitfalls common to the discussion of memory, particular the
frequent treatment of book 10 of the Confessions as an isolated philosophical treatise. Hochschild helpfully shows how book 10 logically
flows into (indeed, requires) books 11–13 and shows how memory is
ordered toward, and so must be understood within, the context of the
Church’s memory. Throughout her discussion of Augustine’s works,
Hochschild continually emphasizes how creation and the Incarnation
are fundamental principles for all of Augustine’s thinking, especially
on the question of anthropology. This, too, is a welcome change
from other treatments of Augustine’s “philosophical” ideas that so
often distort his thought by separating it from its properly theological

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context. All of this (and more) makes this volume a beneficial addition to the discussion of memory in Augustine.
By way of critique, let me highlight two lacunae in her treatment.
First is the oversight of Epistles 3–14, especially 7, in which Augustine discusses his understanding of the Platonist philosophers with
Nebridius, including an important discussion of memory. These
are essential texts in the history of Augustine’s developing thought
on memory and the philosophical issues surrounding it. Moreover,
they may very well modify some of Hochschild’s arguments on how
Augustine interpreted Platonic recollection.
Another oversight in Hochschild’s discussion of memory that which
would have bolstered her argument is book 9 of the Confessions. This
book, too, could be called a treatise on memory. Augustine remembers all of his dead loved ones: Verecundus, Nebridius, Adeodatus,
and most importantly, Monica. Indeed, book 9 ends with Augustine
remembering Monica’s plea that she be remembered at God’s altar
(9.13.36). By analyzing this book, Hochschild could have further
developed what I think was her most interesting point—and the point
that most discussions of Augustine on memory completely miss: for
Augustine, it is the Church’s memory that shapes memory and it does
this by reminding human beings of God’s mindfulness of them. We
are reminded of this when we celebrate the Eucharist, the memorial
of Christ’s suffering and death. We are inscribed in God’s memory;
he remembers us, even when we forget him; and we become aware of
this in the Church, particularly in the memorial sacrifice celebrated
at the altar. Perhaps this is why book 10—the traditional locus for
thinking about Augustine on memory—ends with Augustine the
bishop, in a sense, standing before the altar dispensing the Eucharist
to the “the brethren” (10.4.5–6) who are admitted to this part of the
work: “I think about the price of my redemption and I eat it and I
drink it and I dispense it to others” (10.43.70).1
Addressing these lacunae would have strengthened her
work considerably. Still, Hochschild has done a service by bringing
together and carefully walking us through most of the major texts of
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Augustine on memory.
Jared Ortiz
Hope College
Holland, Michigan
1

My own translation from the Latin in Augustine: Confessions, ed. James O’Donnell, 3 vols. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1992); available also online at www.stoa.
org.

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Nature and Grace: A New Approach to Thomistic Ressourcement by Andrew Dean Swafford (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014), xi +
220 pp.

As the opening pages of this title appropriately recall, the

topic of nature and grace touches virtually every theological and
human question. Well aware of the implications of a doctrine so foundational to the Christian faith, Andrew Swafford’s recent volume offers
a careful summary of the debate and a welcome contribution to its
resolution through the theology of Matthias J. Scheeben.
In his opening chapter, Swafford reviews the key schools at play
in the nature-grace debate. Intrinsicism holds that man’s fulfillment
lies only in and through Christ, with the result that a purely natural
beatitude is impossible (6). The most notable figure of this tradition,
Henri de Lubac, argued that man has a natural desire for the beatific
vision and that any other final end would result only in man’s permanent frustration and suffering (14).
Extrinsicism, meanwhile, counters with the observation that
important questions concerning God’s justice and the gratuity of
grace emerge if the beatific vision is taken to be man’s only possible
end. Significantly, Pope Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani Generis
appeared to target de Lubac specifically in echoing the very lines of
the extrinsicist tradition: “Others [de Lubac?] destroy the gratuity of
the supernatural order, since God, they say, cannot create intellectual
beings without ordering and calling them to the Beatific Vision.”1
On the other hand, Swafford recalls that, by the very next decade, the
Second Vatican Council would weigh in on this issue “undoubtedly
in favor of de Lubac” (15) by teaching that man has a single final end:
“All are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine.”2
Extrinsicism’s solution to the nature-grace relationship proceeds
by insisting that man has two final ends—natural and supernatural—
the latter accessible only by grace. God’s justice implies the debitum
naturae, that he provide whatever is necessary for a creature to reach
its natural end (10). Strictly speaking, God is not so much indebted
to the creature as he is to himself and to the manifestation of his
own divine wisdom in the natural order (10–11). Of course, the very
creation of a thing is gratuitous, and in this way, one may speak of
supernatural grace as “doubly” gratuitous because it elevates man
over and above his specific nature (11).
1
2

Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis (1950), §26.
Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (1965), §22.

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For the extrinsicist tradition, man’s capacity for the beatific vision
cannot be described as a natural inclination, since its actualization
would be due to the creature according to divine justice without
the further elevation of grace. For this reason, the extrinsicist tradition employs the concept of “obediential potency” to account for
the relationship between human nature and the beatific vision (15).
Obediential potency itself has two distinct acceptations. “Generic”
obediential potency can be seen in the case of a miracle and necessitates no real relation between the specific nature of the creature and
its transformation. Contrary to this, “specific” obediential potency
is rooted in the very nature of the creature in question: such an
elevation is perfective of that particular nature, albeit in a way that
transcends its natural powers (15–16).
Chapter 2 offers an overview of de Lubac’s nature-grace theology
in its historical and theological context. Reviewing the principal
features of the intrinsicist tradition discussed in the introduction,
Swafford recalls that de Lubac’s aim was to re-articulate a Christian humanism for post-war Europe (25). In de Lubac’s mind, the
unconscionable events of this period showcase the disastrous fruits of
atheistic humanism and the inability of the pure-nature tradition to
respond adequately in this secularist milieu. He further argues that
the pure-nature tradition actually abetted the rise of modern secularism, on account of its excessive emphasis upon the independent
integrity of the natural order (37).
Swafford exhibits great balance in his assessment of the various
nature-grace schools in relation to St. Thomas. The Angelic Doctor
“was certainly no exponent of the pure-nature tradition” (37), yet
on the other hand, “there is abundant support in Aquinas for the
intelligible distinction between man’s proportionate natural end and
his disproportionate supernatural end” (40). As the author rightly
observes, the exegetical question concerning Aquinas’s position “is
largely insoluble, since it all depends on which texts are interpretively privileged over others. One set of texts lends support to the
legitimacy of the pure-nature tradition, while others clearly favor de
Lubac” (37). Leaving aside the exegetical question, Swafford proceeds
to outline the rudiments of the pure-nature tradition in Tommaso
de Vio (Cajetan), Francisco Suárez, and the controversy surrounding
Michael Baius that “perhaps more than all else . . . spurred the rapid
rise and enduring hegemony of the pure-nature tradition” (41). On
de Lubac’s account, the pure-nature tradition may have offered a

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solution to the problems posed by Baius, but in so doing it played
right into the hands of modern secularism (49).
Concluding this chapter, Swafford notes that it is difficult to pin
down de Lubac’s position, since he wishes to affirm the principal
theses of all sides of the nature-grace debate. In concert with the
pure-nature tradition, de Lubac ardently defends the real distinction
between nature and grace, yet he simultaneously denies foundational elements of the extrinsicist school that would seem necessary
in order to ensure this distinction. De Lubac justifies his playing on
both sides of the field through recourse to paradox, which Swafford
describes as the centerpiece of his overall position, the legitimacy of
his theology of nature and grace standing or falling on its legitimacy
(65). Swafford, for his part, incisively weighs in on the matter: “For
this reason, we must ask whether this category of paradox is sufficient to hold together all the elements of his thought—or whether
it is merely a case of special pleading, a sort of intellectual panacea,
against which no serious objection can ever really be brought” (65).
After a brief chapter (ch. 3) revisiting the foundational principles
of the nature-grace debate, Swafford dedicates chapter 4 to reviewing
Lawrence Feingold’s defense of the pure-nature tradition. In popular
piety, one may say that “all is grace,” but Feingold asks whether this
is not tantamount to affirming that “all is nature?” In other words, if
the meaning of grace is extended to include all of creation, then the
uniqueness of what is meant by “grace” loses its specificity (87). In an
insightful citation from Edward Oakes—an author in whose thought
this volume is deeply rooted—Swafford observes that the breakdown
of the nature-grace distinction has led many to relativize the uniqueness of Christ by supposing that all religions give equal access to the
transcendent (87–88).
At this point, Swafford revisits in more detail several issues
addressed in the volume’s opening chapter. In distinguishing
“generic” from “specific” obediential potency, Feingold offers the
story of Balaam’s talking donkey (Num 22:21–39) as an example of
the former. While this miracle does not violate the law of non-contradiction strictly speaking, “specific” obediential potency obeys the
law of non-contradiction in a much more narrowly defined sense
insofar as, here, the elevation of the creature does not result in a
change in its fundamental nature (91). Feingold therefore alleges
correctly that “de Lubac’s neglect of this nuance shows his criticisms
here to be largely unfounded, as they pertain only to generic obedi-

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ential potency” (92). In the same vein, Feingold likewise shows that
de Lubac is incorrect to allege that the notion of the debitum naturae
undermines the gratuity of creation (100). The pure-nature tradition
does not maintain that God is dependent on the creature, but rather
indebted only to himself and to the order that he has freely willed to
establish (101).
In a particularly poignant criticism of de Lubac, Feingold shows
that he has drawn the guiding principle for his position not from
Aquinas, but rather from Ockham, who shares his rejection of the
debitum naturae. Presuming that God “can do with the creature
whatever pleases Him” and that “God is not a debtor to anyone, but
whatever He does to us is done from mere grace,” Ockham’s nominalism rejected nature’s objective intelligibility. As Pope Benedict
XVI similarly observed of Scotus’s philosophy in his Regensburg
Address, nominalism’s rejection of metaphysical realism goes hand in
hand with voluntarism’s capricious God who is not bound by truth
or goodness (103). Drawing on the thought of Servais Pinckaers,
Swafford demonstrates that the debitum naturae precludes voluntarism—“not because God is dependent upon the creature or upon
the categories of natural reason—but because He is the source of
these very categories themselves” (105). For the pure-nature tradition, the debt of nature manifests and recognizes God’s freedom
rather than restricting it.
In the final section of his chapter on Feingold, Swafford
rehearses the latter’s arguments in favor not only of the conceptual possibility of pure nature but also of the actual possibility of a
purely natural end in this economy. St. Thomas considered limbo
to be established Church teaching, and it is on this basis that Feingold proposes that purely natural happiness may be found within
the present economy. For his part, Swafford believes that, “had it
not been for the customary acceptance of the doctrine of limbo,
[St. Thomas] would not have come so close to affirming the
possibility of man’s purely natural end in the present economy”
(115). Aquinas was well aware that pure nature has never actually
existed due to the fact that the first man was constituted in a state
of grace (115). Breaking with Feingold on this particular point,
Swafford asserts that “the speculative question regarding man’s
purely natural end . . . is probably not best adjudicated by recourse
to the final state of limbo, since such a premise is less universally

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viable in the present context than it used to be in a previous era
of the Church” (40; cf. 114). 3
Chapter 5 turns to Steven A. Long, whom the author describes as
“much closer to the spirit of St. Thomas than is his fellow pure-nature advocate Lawrence Feingold” (40). Whereas the latter employs
limbo as a premise in his argument defending the possibility of man’s
purely natural end, Long is “much more sensitive to the fact that the
concrete ordination of the present economy necessarily modifies the
hypothetical possibilities of pure nature” (40). A purely natural end
in this economy is precluded for two reasons. First, man is subject
to the providential ordering of the eternal law, and in this economy,
God has ordered human nature to the beatific vision. Second, the
condition of sin is such that man needs healing grace even for the
attainment of the natural good (115–16).
According to Long, the root problem afflicting de Lubac’s naturegrace theology is the loss of the “theonomic” conception of the natural order (119). From a theonomic perspective, the natural order is
hardly one of secular autonomy. Rather, the natural order is itself an
expression of and always dependent upon the divine wisdom (120).
That said, if one removes the full theonomic conception of the natural order and then attempts to utilize the pure-nature system of theology, then one will indeed end up reinforcing secularism, as per de
Lubac’s charge (121). Long traces the origins of this deviant form the
pure-nature tradition to Luis de Molina and the post-Enlightenment
inheritance of the natural order as a causally closed system (121).
The third and final section of Swafford’s volume (chs. 6 and 7)
contains his proposal for reconciling the extrinsicist and intrinsicist
traditions. After an always helpful review of his foregoing argument,
the author introduces the figure of Matthias J. Scheeben, whose
uniqueness as a thinker he pauses to consider at some length. Particularly interesting, even if it is not essential to the book’s argument,
is Swafford’s depiction of Scheeben as being at home not only with
St. Thomas but also with the Greek Fathers, Jesuit theology, and the
3

While agreeing wholeheartedly with the author on this point, one may
wonder here whether the rejection of limbo as a viable solution could be
better documented. For example, Swafford’s point is treated at some length
in the International Theological Commission’s 2007 On the Hope of Salvation
for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized, a work he does not mention in this
volume. Another important and fascinating work from the Catholic tradition,
Dante’s Divine Comedy would also be worth a brief mention here for its position vis-à-vis the suffering of souls in limbo.

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theology of Blessed John Duns Scotus, with whom he agrees in identifying the basis of the Incarnation in man’s deification rather than in
sin (145–46). As Swafford writes, the distinction between nature and
grace “is absolutely essential, in Scheeben’s mind, for the purpose of
preserving the supernatural character of the Christian faith—a point
which of course brings him squarely into accord with Feingold,
Long, and the pure-nature tradition” (149–50). Like these thinkers,
Scheeben describes man’s capacity for the beatific vision in terms of a
specific obediential potency (156). Similarly for Scheeben, the “natural” desire for the beatific vision must be viewed as a mere “wish”
(velleitas), the non-fulfillment of which does not entail suffering, since
its object lies beyond the powers of one’s own agency (158–59).
While allowing that certain texts would support the view that
Scheeben accepted the possibility of a purely natural end in this economy, Swafford argues that seeing the natural end as a hypothetical
rather than concrete possibility “better align[s] with the internal logic
of Scheeben’s thought” (163). While he seems in certain passages to
align with Feingold in being “at ease with the notion of limbo as a
final state” (166), in other places he denies the possibility of man’s
realization of a purely natural end in the present economy for reasons
“more or less the same as Long’s given previously” (167). Swafford
summarizes: “The divine ordination of the eternal law in this economy makes all the difference, since the failure to actualize God’s
concrete ordination necessarily results in some kind of frustration and
suffering” (169). Like de Lubac, then, Scheeben rejects the possibility
of a purely natural end being realized in the present economy, yet,
with the pure-nature tradition, he affirms its hypothetical coherence
(ibid.). It is for this reason that Swafford believes Scheeben’s theology
“is singularly poised to reconcile intrinsicism and extrinsicism” (194).
A highlight of chapter 6 consists in its survey of Scheeben’s evocative theology of divine sonship. “For Scheeben,” Swafford writes,
“this order of supernatural grace has such an ontological density that
he goes on to speak of a certain ‘equality’ between man and God”
(175).4 What de Lubac sought to secure by way of his teaching on
man’s natural desire, Scheeben achieves by means of the Incarnation:
“For Scheeben . . . the Incarnation brings about a permanent relation between the Eternal Son and all of humanity, and this relation
4

For an outstanding more extensive presentation of Scheeben’s theology of
divinization, see R. Jared Staudt, “Substantial Union with God in Matthias
Scheeben,” Nova et Vetera (English) 11.2 (2013): 515–36.

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pertains to the entire human race” (186). This union exists even
prior to baptism, which itself “perfects, seals, organizes, completes,
and consummates this union; but its foundation had been laid previously” (190). With powerful spousal imagery, Scheeben maintains
that “no less than a nuptial union has taken place in the Incarnation
between the Logos and the entire human race” (188). This way of
speaking aligns beautifully with the Second Vatican Council when it
states, “For by His Incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in
some fashion with every man.”5 In this light, Swafford is spot on in
connecting Scheeben with the intrinsicist insight that reality is, at its
core, unabashedly Christocentric (194).
In concluding, a final pair of noteworthy observations emerge
from a reading of Swafford’s outstanding text. First, it has been
remarked elsewhere that Swafford’s book should have stuck more
closely to Scripture and Scripture’s categories for adjudicating the
nature-grace debate.6 I believe that this is a rather simplistic objection, since Scripture itself no more resolves the precise relationship of
nature and grace than it does the relationship of Christ’s two natures.
That said, it would be outstanding if the author were to pursue additional work grounding the debate more thoroughly in the study of
Scripture, “the soul of sacred theology.” 7 Second, the author intends
his work to be a synthesis of the intrinsicist and extrinsicist traditions,
yet its sympathies lie much more with the latter on the whole. While
I tend to agree with Swafford’s argument and conclusion, more work
remains in order to account for the great extent to which de Lubac’s
theology has been incorporated into the postconciliar magisterium.
The author certainly acknowledges that much of de Lubac’s theology
was adopted by the Second Vatican Council and that his teaching was
echoed many times over by Pope John Paul (61). The next challenge
is to articulate how Swafford’s account is compatible with what he
acknowledges to be a broader shift in the Church from the extrinsicism of pure-nature theology to the more intrinsicist alignment of
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de Lubac (27).
Matthew J. Ramage
Benedictine College
Atchison, Kansas
5
6

7

Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, §22.
Peter Leithart, “Nature and Grace,” First Things (blog), July 18, 2014, last
accessed August 6, 2016, http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2014/07/
nature-and-grace
Vatican II, Dei Verbum (1965), §24.

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Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity by John Behr (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), xii + 236 pp.

Few historical figures are as relevant as Irenaeus of Lyons

for the developmental identity of the early Church. The late-second-century bishop stands at the pivotal juncture of ecclesiastical
authority in the West, at the intersection of orthodoxy and heresy, and
at the center of the melee of theological factions. Although much of
his biographical information eludes historians, his singular location in
Church history is viewed as a pinnacle among obscure ecclesiastical
leaders and at the epicenter of controversial forces that shaped Christian orthodoxy. Since he stands out in singular fashion, he has become
an emblem with many faces: the marginalization of diversity, the target
of gnostic advocates, and the champion of the apostolic tradition.
Father John Behr falls in the last of these camps of historical interpretation, and his subtitle captures the milieu of religious self-discovery in
which this Church father participates.
Behr serves as Dean and Professor of Patristics at St Vladimir’s
Seminary, where he is well known in patristic circles for his work
on Irenaeus. He composed the “Formation of Christian Theology”
series, in which he expounded Irenaeus’s ascetic and anthropological
values. He provided a new translation of Irenaeus’s On the Apostolic
Preaching and regularly appears on projects related to second-century
Christianity. In this new work, he provides a comprehensive treatment of the work and person of Irenaeus.
Throughout the book, Behr presents his subject as both an ancient
and a contemporary figure, a truly catholic writer: “The context for
the study of Irenaeus undertaken here has not only been the second
century, but also our own times. . . . He is the most important theologian in the articulation of Christian orthodoxy to his time, and,
arguably, thereafter” (206). In three large chapters, the work thoroughly condenses Irenaeus’s historical and theological contribution. It
clearly and fairly lays out the situation of contemporary critical scholarship that prioritizes inclusivity in the tension with a catholic “Great
Church” that prioritized exclusivity. The work faithfully “negotiates
the complex relations between history and interpretation, faith and
reason, and ancient texts as historical documents and as Scripture”
(12). Throughout, Behr unmistakably acknowledges a non-catholic
sector in the hybridity of early Christianity, first typified in Marcion,
that functions to define a writer like Irenaeus as a genuine emblem
of catholicity.

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In the first chapter, Irenaeus is considered for his roots in Asia
Minor in the shadow of Polycarp and for his attention to the division
in the West that sought leadership from Rome. Recently described
as a “scion of the East” by J. A. Cerrato, Irenaeus is a crucial link
in the early influence of the apostolic tradition between two halves
of the Roman Empire, East and West. “If Rome, during the second
century, was the crucible in which ‘orthodoxy’ was forged, it was
Irenaeus, on the basis of the witness of the martyrs in his community
and the tradition going back through Polycarp to John, who oversaw this process” (71). Behr posits Irenaeus as a figure who united a
divided ecclesiology by advocating for both Quartodecimians who
practiced a different dating for Easter and Montantists who promoted
apocalyptic signs of the immediate return of Christ. While Irenaeus
promoted them as members of the Church, he demoted gnostic
leaders in his work Against Heresies through enunciating orthodoxy against them. The dual inclusion/exclusion approach is clearly
centered on orthodoxy for Behr, who writes, “Irenaeus argues that
his [gnostic] opponents, with their faulty exegesis and their mythmaking, have substituted another hypothesis and so created their own
fabrication” (119).
Behr positively compiles the pieces of Irenaeus’s elusive biography
to construct a solid summary of his life, informed by the Moscow
manuscript of Martyrdom of Polycarp, which places Irenaeus in Rome.
He judiciously provides a chronology of the books of Against Heresies and the letters that is rarely seen. Perhaps surprising to some, he
proposes that The Demonstration of the Apostolic Tradition is a later addition than Irenaeus “to reuse [Against Heresies] in the polemic against
heresy” (68).
Chapter 2 examines the significant contribution of Irenaeus’s
extant writings. The literary and rhetorical structures of Against
Heresies receive much attention, beginning with the use of the term
“refutation” or “exposure” as a technique to overturn the case of
the heretics who deserve marginalization (75). Behr proclaims one
sentence in Against Heresies to summarize Irenaeus’s task (5.36.3),
a Trinitarian demonstration of the will of the Father to restore the
human race through his Son as intended at the beginning of Scripture
(77). The Church father’s efforts to establish a framework for articulating orthodoxy are not presented as simplistic or one-sided, recognizing for Irenaeus, “The Scripture is not read merely historically but
as a thesaurus, a treasury of words and images that fit together as a
mosaic depicting Christ” (10).

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Book Reviews

A significant contribution of Behr is the use of the primary sources
to show an Irenaean intent to demonstrate orthodoxy as an epistemological hallmark for theological discernment. Rather than viewing heretics as victims of orthodox domination, Behr emphasizes a
willful separation by heretics that allowed catholic churches to define
boundaries with unity, peace, and toleration: “This was not a fellowship that tolerated anything and everything. . . . [Heretics’] self-chosen departure provided occasions for identifying the points at issue”
(207). The rejection of this group was not only an issue of the deposit
of faith, but of a community of interpretation. At the same time, Behr
recognizes that catholic and gnostic thought develop simultaneously
(47), both reacting to and conditioning each other. One would be
remiss today either to ignore gnostic Christianity or to triumph “lost
Christianities” as innocent nonconformists.
The third and final chapter assesses Irenaeus’s theological vision.
An apostolic understanding of Scripture, an application of the economy of God, the Christological activities in the Church, and the
creation of humankind in the imago Dei all find predictable attention
in Behr’s analysis. Providing a chapter entitled “The Glory of God,”
he shows his own admiration for Irenaeus, letting the vein of the
Church father’s theology flow on its own complex terms. One God,
one Christ, and the human being are three themes in Irenaeus’s own
exposition that course through this summary chapter on Irenaean
theology. Sometimes overlooked in Irenaeus, the Holy Spirit is the
agent who brings the original created order to redemption through
the work of Christ, fulfilling a redeemed model of creation and
anthropology. Just as Behr made the historical Irenaeus a contemporary figure, he could have related more Irenaean theology to the
contemporary faith, as he does sometimes: “The life we now live in
the body shows that the same body is indeed capable of receiving the
eternal life of God himself ” (153).
Like all Oxford series books, this work functions as a technical
theological explication more than a worthy textbook below the graduate level. The most current scholarly summary of Irenaeus is found
here, recognizing the most important contributors to the subject,
while the bibliography is the best resource for Irenaean scholarship.
Behr’s Christocentric presentation of Irenaeus’s theology is a model
for all patristic scholars to remember that these ancient figures were
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driven by faith more than by political or ecclesiastical gain.
W. Brian Shelton
Toccoa Falls College
Toccoa, Georgia