et Vetera Nova Winter 2017 • Volume 15, Number 1 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal 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., Instytut Thomistyczny (Warsaw, Poland) 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 Winter 2017 Vol. 15, No. 1 Commentary Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 9, 2016. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Romanus Cessario, O.P. 1 9 Articles Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Barry Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires. . . . . . . . . . Stephen J. Heaney To Be Good Is to Do the Truth: Being, Truth, the Good, and the Primordial Conscience in a Thomist Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reinhard Hütter Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., Philosopher and Theologian. . . . Matthew L. Lamb Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity: A Patristic Theologian’s Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Lee The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christopher J. Malloy Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. The Bavarian’s Surprise: Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council.. . . . . . . . Matthew S. C. Olver Dei Verbum and the Twentieth-Century Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Reasoner 13 37 53 75 89 113 161 185 219 Review Symposium D’Costa’s Hermeneutics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eduardo Echeverria Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II, and Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabriel Said Reynolds A Gordian Knot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Schenk, O.P. Response to My Respondents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gavin D’Costa 255 291 301 309 Book Reviews Medieval Christianity: A New History by Kevin Madigan.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Jacob Cuff Revelation as Testimony: A Philosophical-Theological Study by Mats Wahlberg... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Levering 331 334 The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: A Counterpoint for the History of the Council by Agostino Marchetto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Morgan Origin of the Human Species by Dennis Bonnette. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Earl Muller, S.J. 342 345 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 978-1-945125-29-4) is published quarterly by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. Nova et Vetera is distributed to institutional subscribers for the St. Paul Center by the Catholic University of America Press. Institutional subscriptions, notifications of change of address, and inquiries concerning subscriptions, back issues, and missing copies should be sent to: JHUP Journals Division, PO Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966. All materials published in Nova et Vetera are copyrighted by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. © Copyright 2016 by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Please send address change to Nova et Vetera, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. Periodical Postage Paid at Steubenville, OH. This periodical is indexed in the ATLA Catholic Periodical and Literature Index® (CPLI®), a product of the American Theological Library Association, 300 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606, USA. Email: atla@atla.com, www.atla.com. Nova et Vetera Subscription Rates: • Individuals: one-year $40.00, two-year $75.00 International: one-year $60.00, two-year $115.00 • Students: one-year $30.00, two-year $50.00 International: one-year $40.00, two-year $70.00 • Colleges, Universities, Seminaries, and Institutions: one-year $110.00, one-year print + electronic subscription $150.00 International: one-year $135.00 To subscribe online, please visit http://www.nvjournal.net. For subscription inquiries, email us at novaetvetera@stpaulcenter.com or phone 740-264-9535. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 1–7 Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia Archbishop Charles Chaput Archdiocese of Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA The Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia completes the reflection on the family conducted by the Synods of 2014 and 2015, a reflection that engaged the entire world. In issuing Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis once again calls the Church to renew and intensify the Christian missionary proclamation of God’s mercy while presenting more persuasively the Church’s teaching about the nature of the family and the sacrament of Matrimony. In all of this, the Holy Father, in union with the whole Church, hopes to strengthen existing families and to reach out to those whose marriages have failed, including those alienated from the life of the Church. Amoris Laetitia therefore calls for a sensitive accompaniment of those with an imperfect grasp of Christian teaching on marriage and family life who may not be living in accord with Catholic belief and yet desire to be more fully integrated into Church life, including the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist. The Holy Father’s statements build on the classic Catholic understanding, key to moral theology, of the relationship between objective truth about right and wrong—for example, the truth about marriage revealed by Jesus himself—and how the individual person grasps and applies that truth to particular situations in his or her judgment of conscience. Catholic teaching makes clear that the subjective conscience of the individual can never be set against the objective moral truth, as if conscience and truth were two competing principles for moral decision-making. 2 Archbishop Charles Chaput As St. John Paul II wrote, such a view would “pose a challenge to the very identity of the moral conscience in relation to human freedom and God’s law. . . . Conscience is not an independent and exclusive capacity to decide what is good and what is evil” (Veritatis Splendor, §§56 and 60). Rather, “conscience is the application of the law to a particular case” (ibid., §59). Conscience stands under the objective moral law and should be formed by it, so that “the truth about moral good, as that truth is declared in the law of reason, is practically and concretely recognized by the judgment of conscience” (ibid., §61). But since well-meaning people can err in matters of conscience, especially in a culture that is already deeply confused about complex matters of marriage and sexuality, a person may not be fully culpable for acting against the truth. Church ministers, moved by mercy, should adopt a sensitive pastoral approach in all such situations—an approach both patient and faithfully confident in the saving truth of the Gospel and the transforming power of God’s grace, trusting in the words of Jesus Christ, who promises that “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” ( John 8:32). Pastors should strive to avoid both a subjectivism that ignores the truth and a rigorism that lacks mercy. As Amoris Laetitia notes, bishops must arrange for the accompaniment of estranged and hurting persons with guidelines that faithfully reflect Catholic belief (§300). What follows is a template for such guidelines. It is meant for priests, deacons, seminarians, and lay persons who work in the fields of marriage, sacramental ministry, and pastoral care regarding matters of human sexuality. For Catholic Married Couples Christian marriage, by its nature, is permanent, monogamous and open to life. The sexual expression of love within a truly Christian marriage is blessed by God—a powerful bond of beauty and joy between man and woman. Jesus himself raised marriage to new dignity. Every marriage of two baptized persons has access, through the sacrament of Matrimony, to grace and life in Christ, especially through the shared privilege of bringing new life into the world and raising children in the knowledge of God. Marriage and child-rearing are sources of great joy. They have moments (like the birth of a child) when the presence of God is palpable. But an intimately shared life can also cause stress and suffering. Marital fidelity is an ongoing encounter with reality. Thus, it Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia 3 involves real sacrifices and the discipline of subordinating one’s own needs to the needs of others. Pastors should stress the importance of common prayer and reading Scripture in the home, the grace of frequent Penance and Communion, and the need for building mutual support with committed Catholic friends and family. Every family is a “domestic church,” but no Christian family can survive indefinitely without encouragement from other believing families. The Christian community must especially find ways to engage and help families who are burdened by illness, financial setbacks, and marital frictions. For Catholics and Christians Who Are Separated or Divorced and Not Remarried Pastors often encounter persons whose marriages face grave hardships, sometimes for reasons that seem undeserved, and sometimes through the fault of one or both married parties. The state of being separated or divorced, and thus finding oneself alone, can involve great pain. It can mean separation from one’s children, a life without conjugal intimacy, and for some, the prospect of never having children. Pastors should offer these persons friendship, understanding, introductions to reliable lay mentors, and practical help so that they can sustain their fidelity even under pressure. Likewise, parishes should be keenly concerned for the spiritual good of those who find themselves separated or divorced for a long time. Some persons, aware that a valid marriage bond is indissoluble, consciously refrain from a new union and devote themselves to carrying out their family and Christian duties. They face no obstacle to receiving Communion and other sacraments. Indeed, they should receive the sacraments regularly, and they deserve the warm support of the Christian community, since they show extraordinary fidelity to Jesus Christ. God is faithful to them even when their spouses are not, a truth that fellow Catholics should reinforce. In some cases, one can reasonably ask whether an original marriage bond was valid, and thus whether grounds may exist for a decree of nullity (an “annulment”). In our age, such grounds are not uncommon, but this inquiry should always be guided by the truth of the situation: Did a valid marriage exist? Decrees of nullity are not an automatic remedy or an entitlement. Such matters require Church ministers to be both compassionate and alert to the truth, and they should investigate these matters in a timely way, respecting the rights of all parties and ensuring that all have access to the annulment procedures. 4 Archbishop Charles Chaput For Catholics and Christians Who Are Divorced and Civilly Remarried Amoris Laetitia has a special concern for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. In some cases, a valid first marriage bond may never have existed, and a canonical investigation of the first marriage may be appropriate. In other cases, the first marriage bond of one or both of the civilly remarried persons may be valid, which would impede any attempt at a second marriage. Children may further complicate the circumstances. The divorced and remarried should be welcomed by the Catholic community. Pastors should ensure that they do not consider themselves as “outside” the Church. On the contrary, as baptized persons, they can (and should) share in her life. They are invited to attend Mass, to pray, and to take part in the activities of the parish. Their children—whether from an original marriage or from their current relationship—are integral to the life of the Catholic community, and they should be brought up in the faith. Couples should sense from their pastors and from the whole community the love they deserve as persons made in the image of God and as fellow Christians. At the same time, as Amoris Laetitia notes, priests should “accompany [the divorced and remarried] in helping them to understand their situation according to the teaching of the Church and the guidelines of the bishop. Useful in this process is an examination of conscience through moments of reflection and penance. The divorced and remarried should ask themselves: how they have acted toward their children when the conjugal union entered into crisis; if they made attempts at reconciliation; what has become of the abandoned party; what consequences does the new relationship have on the rest of the family and the community of the faithful; and what example is being set for young people who are preparing for marriage” (§300). Amoris Laetitia continues: “What we are speaking of is a process of accompaniment and discernment which ‘guides the faithful to an awareness of their situation before God. . . . This discernment can never prescind from the Gospel demands of truth and charity as proposed by the Church’” (ibid.). In light of this, priests must help the divorced and civilly remarried to form their consciences according to the truth. This is a true work of mercy, and it should be undertaken with patience, compassion, and a genuine desire for the good of all concerned, sensitive to the wounds of each person and gently leading each toward the Lord. Its Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia 5 purpose is not condemnation, but the opposite: a full reconciliation of the person with God and neighbor and restoration to the fullness of visible communion with Jesus Christ and the Church. Can such individuals receive the sacraments? Baptized members of the Church are always, in principle, invited to the sacraments. The confessional’s doors are always open to the contrite heart.1 What of Communion? Every Catholic, not only the divorced and civilly remarried, must sacramentally confess all serious sins of which he or she is aware, with a firm purpose to change, before receiving the Eucharist. In some cases, the subjective responsibility of the person for a past action may be diminished. But the person must still repent and renounce the sin with a firm purpose of amendment. In practice, pastors must convey Catholic teaching faithfully and in a heartfelt way to all persons—including the divorced and remarried, both in the confessional and publicly—and work with people patiently as they struggle to live the teachings of Christ. As concerns divorced and civilly remarried couples, Church teaching requires them to refrain from sexual intimacy. This applies even if they must (for the care of their children) live under one roof. The couple should approach the sacrament of Penance regularly and seek recourse to God’s mercy if they fail in chastity. Pastors should be aware that, if they give Communion to divorced and remarried persons trying to live chastely, they should seek to do so in a manner that will avoid giving scandal or implying that Church teaching can be set aside. Divorce and civil remarriage may not be given an unintended endorsement, and thus, divorced and remarried persons should not hold positions of responsibility in a parish (e.g., on a parish council), nor should they carry out liturgical functions (e.g., lector or extraordinary minister of Holy Communion). This is a hard teaching for many, but anything less misleads people about the nature of the Eucharist and the Church. The grace of Jesus Christ is more than a pious cliché; it is a real and powerful seed of change in the believing heart. The lives of many saints bear witness that grace can take great sinners and, by its power of interior renewal, remake them in holiness of life. Pastors and all who work in the service of the Church should tirelessly promote hope in this saving mystery. Where there is a canonical censure, very rarely the case in these situations, a priest-confessor can either lift the censure or help arrange for its lifting. 1 6 Archbishop Charles Chaput For Couples Who Cohabitate and Are Unmarried Cohabitation of unmarried couples is now common, often fueled by convenience, fear of a final commitment, or a desire to “try out” relationships. Many children are born to these irregular unions. Cohabiting and contracepting couples often enter RCIA or seek to return to the Catholic faith, only dimly aware of the problems created by their situation. Working with such couples, pastors should consider two issues. First, does the couple have children together? A natural obligation in justice exists for parents to care for their children. And children have a natural right to be raised by both parents. Pastors should try, to the degree possible and when a permanent commitment of marriage is viable, to strengthen existing relationships where a couple already has children together. Second, does the couple have the maturity to turn their relationship into a permanently committed marriage? Often cohabiting couples refrain from making final commitments because one or both persons is seriously lacking in maturity or has other significant obstacles to entering a valid union. Here, prudence plays a vital role. Where one or another person is not capable of, or is not willing to commit to, a marriage, the pastor should urge them to separate. Where the couple is disposed to marriage, they should be encouraged to practice chastity until they are sacramentally married. They will find this challenging, but again, with the help of grace, mastering the self is possible—and this fasting from physical intimacy is a strong element of spiritual preparation for an enduring life together. (Of course, persons should also be guided to an awareness of their situation before God, so that they can make a good confession before their wedding, and so begin their married life with joy in the Lord.) Absent children, such couples should ready themselves for marriage by a time of domestic separation. Where a cohabiting couple already has children, the good of the young may require the couple to remain living together, but in chastity. For Persons Who Experience Same-Sex Attraction The pastoral care of persons with same-sex attraction should be guided by the same love and respect the Church seeks to offer all people. Ministers of the Church should emphasize to such persons that they are loved by God, that Jesus desires them to receive an inheritance as adopted sons and daughters of the Father, and that, as with every Christian, this is made possible through the gift of grace. Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia 7 Those who work in pastoral ministry often encounter persons with diverse forms of same-sex attraction. Many such persons have found it possible to live out a vocation to Christian marriage with children, notwithstanding experiencing some degree of same-sex attraction. Others have found it difficult to do so. Because Christian marriage with children is a great good, those who find themselves unable to embrace this good may suffer from a sense of loss or loneliness. And, as with those who are attracted to the opposite sex, some can find chastity very difficult. Pastoral care of such persons must never lose sight of their individual calling to holiness and union with Jesus Christ and the fact that the power of God’s grace can make this a real possibility for their lives. Catholic belief, rooted in Scripture, reserves all expressions of sexual intimacy to a man and a woman covenanted to each other in a valid marriage. We hold this teaching to be true and unchangeable, tied as it is to our nature and purpose as children of a loving God who desires our happiness. Those with predominant same-sex attractions are therefore called to struggle to live chastely for the kingdom of God. In this endeavor they have need of support, friendship and understanding if they fail. They should be counseled, like everyone else, to have frequent recourse to the sacrament of Penance, where they should be treated with gentleness and compassion. In fact, more than a few such persons, with the help of grace and the sacraments, do live exemplary and even heroic Christian lives. When two persons of the same sex present themselves openly in a parish as a same-sex couple (including those who may have entered into a same-sex union under civil law), pastors must judge prudently how best to address the situation, both for the sake of the authentic spiritual good of the persons involved and for the common good of the believing community. The Church welcomes all men and women who honestly seek to encounter the Lord, whatever their circumstances. But two persons in an active, public same-sex relationship, no matter how sincere, offer a serious counter-witness to Catholic belief that can only produce moral confusion in the community. Such a relationship cannot be accepted into the life of the parish without undermining the faith of the community, most notably the children. Finally, those living openly same-sex lifestyles should not hold positions of responsibility in a parish, nor should they carry out any liturgical function. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 9–11 Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 9, 2016 Romanus Cessario, O.P. Saint John’s Seminary Boston, MA The miraculous catch of fish (John 21:1-14) marks the third of the Resurrection appearances. Throughout the forty days of Easter, we join the Apostles, the Blessed Mother, and the other chosen witnesses whose faith is confirmed, whose hope is strengthened, and, above all, whose love now finds its form in God. We also share their astonishment at seeing the Risen Christ. Forty days of Lent prepared us to focus on spiritual things. Forty days of Easter instills in us, as today’s Collect says, a “renewed joyfulness of spirit.” The Gregorian chants used at Easter communicate this joyfulness with subdued, not excited, tones. The ancient practice signals something of what Easter joy produces in the Christian soul: recollection, not exuberance. Spiritual joy comes from pondering the mysteries of faith, not enthusing about them. Why does the exultant Church, awash in Easter joy, maintain recollection? The answer lies in the words that the Risen Christ addresses to Peter. Once breakfast by the Sea of Tiberius is over, Peter receives the charge that inaugurates pastoral care in the Church: “Feed my lambs”; “Tend my sheep”; “Feed my sheep.” Then, immediately, Peter learns of his own death by crucifixion. In other words, Peter learns that the Resurrection, in one sense, marks only a beginning. He glimpses the “much more” ( John 16:12) of which Jesus spoke at the Last Supper, much more to ponder before the Resurrection of the dead when Christ’s rising will attain its incorruptible manifestation. Priests and seminarians must take to heart this pondering, this beholding in faith. They, as it were, must take charge of the “much 10 Romanus Cessario, O.P. more” that comes from the “Spirit of truth” ( John 26:13). Why? Everything depends on their ministry. Our Lord’s putting in juxtaposition pastoral charity and martyrdom teaches the sacred pastors of the Church (and those who aspire to become one) what to expect. Note well that Jesus never tells his apostles that everyone will love them. On the contrary, the apostles rejoice when they are found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name. What name is this? It is the Holy Name of Jesus. *** Last week, the Holy Father gave the Church Amoris Laetitia: The Joy of Love. While the exhortation addresses spouses and families, it also instructs priests, the Church’s shepherds, about what to expect. “Feed my lambs” now exhibits new dimensions. “Tend my sheep” requires more of us. “Feed my sheep” translates into accompaniment. Whom must they accompany? They must accompany spouses, members of families, young people, the weak, the sinful, the confused, in a word, everybody.Yes, we live in an Enlightenment world: “Here comes everybody,” to cite James Joyce.1 What must priests do for “Everybody”? They must feed and tend them, lead them to the Risen Christ, to the Name of Jesus, and to the Church and her Sacraments. After Amoris Laetitia, this obligation weighs more heavily on the shoulders of priests than it did before. Why? The Pope’s exhortation gives priests specific instructions about how to care for the lambs and the sheep. Amoris Laetitia does not shy away from treating particulars. The more it escapes generalization, this more pastoral instruction descends into the particulars of life. So we need help from holy women and men to penetrate the Pope’s words. Only saints can instruct about how properly to handle particulars. Three saints of Carmel show the way. First, John of the Cross († 1591), the mystical author and ascetic, reminds priests of all kinds that bourgeois self-satisfaction wars against a heightened union with God. The least acquaintance with the Doctor of Carmel reveals that he eschewed ecclesiastical bureaucracy. In fact, “they” put him in jail. The Catholic parish is not a well-run supermarket, and the priest is not a manager. No secular models exist for feeding Christ’s sheep. The only qualification that enables a man to tend Christ’s sheep is love. John of the Cross rhapsodizes over this divine love come down to man: “O living flame of love / that tenderly wounds my soul / 1 “HCE” is a character in James Joyce’s 1939 poem, “Finnegans Wake.” Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 9, 2016 11 in its deepest center!”2 He means that “form” of love that only the theological virtue of charity brings to the soul. Then comes the “Little Flower,” Thérèse of Lisieux († 1897). Her “Little Way” gives priests confidence in the power of the Holy Name. One does not need to be a big soul in order to accomplish great tasks. As Thérèse’s efficacy for the missions shows, the priest who stays united with Christ—who practices, if you will, his in persona Christi—can overcome the greatest barriers. Little evidence suggests that priests will continue to enjoy large-scale institutions to support their accompaniment. The priests of the new evangelization need to become familiar with “Littleness,” and Thérèse can help. She likes priests. Concretely, this means that priests must give good example of Christian hoping. No obstacle, of whatever kind, can block the power of Christ’s Resurrection. Once the Holy Women saw the “stone removed from the tomb” ( John 20:1), all sinful obstruction to God’s reign had disappeared. Finally, Elizabeth of the Trinity († 1906), the French cloistered nun of Carmel, teaches the most important lesson. Priests cannot rest with the banal, the platitutdinous, the vacuous. If the Catholic priest is to fulfill the charge that Pope Francis gives him, he must first learn those mysteries of Christ that he will teach others. Knowledge can come through contemplation, as it did for the poet-nun, Elizabeth of the Trinity, who received knowledge as a gift. Knowledge also comes from study. The Church requires that seminarians and priests study to learn the mysteries of faith; if God grants them a higher form of knowledge, then ad maiorem Dei gloriam. The Pope is not instructing priests to become trained marriage counselors. He charges us to explain to troubled people the power of Christ’s Resurrection. He wants us to comfort people not with excuses for their sins, but with knowledge of the truth. In one of her retreat notes, Elizabeth of the Trinity comments on the title of Our Lady that adorns our Marian altar: “‘Virgo Fidelis,’ that is Faithful Virgin, ‘who kept all these things in her heart.’ She remained so little, so recollected in God’s presence . . . that she drew down upon herself the delight of the Holy Trinity.”3 There is no better model for the priest who wants to implement Amoris Laetitia, the joy of love, than this advice from a cloistered Carmelite N&V nun whom Pope Francis canonized October 16, 2016. “The Living Flame of Love,” First Stanza. “Heaven in Faith,” Tenth Day (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1984), 110. 2 3 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 13–35 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology Richard Barry Providence College Providence, RI Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting; and he shall place lots upon the two goats, one marked for the Lord and the other marked for Azazel [the “scapegoat”]. Aaron shall bring forward the goat designated by lot for the Lord, which he is to offer as a sin offering; while the goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be left standing alive before the Lord, to make expiation with it and to send it off to the wilderness for Azazel. —Leviticus 16: 7–10 (New Jewish Publication Society Tanakh) The question is: Was he the one, great and final scapegoat for mankind? Did mankind load him with all its guilt, and did he, the Lamb of God, carry this guilt away? —Hans Urs von Balthasar Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology Hans Urs von Balthasar’s soteriology , including especially his theology of Christ’s descent to hell, is one of the most biblical theologies of the cross to be written in the last century. Balthasar retrieves themes from ancient Jewish and Christian theological traditions that are essential to an adequate understanding of Jesus’s saving work, even though these themes have been underappreciated (at least, in Catholic theology). While his approach is sometimes eccentric, no doctrine of atonement can wholly neglect the profound truths re-dis- 14 Richard Barry covered and re-articulated in Balthasar’s great trilogy precisely because these teachings are so deeply woven into biblical revelation. Because Balthasar’s theology of the Cross is often identified as one of the most problematic aspects of his theological legacy, my assertions may themselves seem eccentric. I hope to support them by first enumerating the metaphors and images that Balthasar uses for sin and then appealing to the recent studies of Gary A. Anderson and Jacob Milgrom to outline the necessary role of the “two goats” in priestly atonement theology, after which I will finally show how Balthasar retrieves the essential work of the “goat for Azazel” for modern Catholic theology. Unspeakable Sin Sin creates special problems for language. Of course, a great army of theologians is in place—now and always—ready to emphasize the challenge of “God-talk” and the related importance of an apophatic approach to theology. Even as academics spin their words into tome after tome, an infinite God is never caught in linguistic webs; this point is always worth repeating. But David Bentley Hart reminds us of another essential truth: “God’s speech in creation does not, then, invite a speculative nisus toward silence—the silence of pure knowledge or of absolute saying—but doxology, an overabundance of words, hymnody, prayer.”1 The same God who spoke our world into being invites us to join the angelic choir, even becoming the incarnate Word for us. In this sense, nothing is more natural than to speak joyfully of God. Creation has a doxological origin and destiny. But sin is a special problem for language. Every word that tries to understand the meaning of “sin itself ” is a word in mourning because all such words speak to a loss, to what might have been. None of them come close to the thing itself because—from the traditional metaphysical perspective—sin has no substance of its own. It is being inclined toward nothingness, and “nothing” is the truly unthinkable thought. Yet the psalmist says “my sin is ever before me” (Psalm 51:3): sin is our constant companion, and we have a pressing need to talk about it. Especially in this unhappy situation, we lean on metaphors.2 Thus, in Sin: A History, Gary Anderson begins by pointing out how David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 298. 2 While there are those today who argue that all truth claims are, at some level, metaphorical, assessment of the meaning or accuracy of this claim is not essential here. 1 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 15 unavoidable metaphors are in the quest to portray sin and how the metaphors we choose affect the way we conceive of corresponding positive ideas, such as forgiveness. As examples, he points out that “stained hands are cleansed, burdens are lifted, and debts are either paid off or remitted.”3 By way of metaphor, words and images are given on loan to abstract and impossible subjects like “sin” so that we might discuss what is literally unspeakable. Anderson’s study, therefore, tracks the metaphors used for sin in the Bible and in the early Church, ultimately showing that, within the scriptural canon itself, there was a transition from emphasis on the metaphor of sin as a burden to sin as a debt and that this transition had a corresponding effect on the way human salvation was conceptualized. Modern writers are no less reliant on metaphors when talking about sin. It is also still true that, when we do not pay attention to which images are being used, we can fail to notice how these metaphors shape understanding. No modern Catholic theologian has had more to say about soteriology—and especially the theology of Christ’s passion—than Hans Urs von Balthasar. While many books and articles have appeared describing, defending, or disapproving of Balthasar’s doctrine of Christ’s Cross and descent to hell, commentators do not typically focus on his understanding of sin. From Anderson’s perspective, if one wants to understand why Balthasar depicts the solution to sin the way he does, one must first survey his hamartiology: “To understand what sin is, one must begin with the terminology deployed by a particular writer.”4 As we follow these instructions, it immediately becomes clear that Balthasar uses a rich array of images when talking about sin. Reflection on these images will make it easier for us to understand the decisions Balthasar makes in other areas of his theology. Balthasar mixes and matches his metaphors for sin freely, without drawing attention to the fact that he is doing so. Nevertheless, it is possible to observe certain tendencies. Therefore, the metaphors considered in this essay will be divided into two broad categories. First, there are metaphors that correspond especially to particular sections of Balthasar’s great trilogy on beauty, goodness, and truth or specific volumes within the trilogy: in developing a theological aesthetics, Balthasar will speak of sin as ugliness; in the book focus Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 4. 4 Ibid., 5. 3 16 Richard Barry ing on the Old Covenant, sin is infidelity; in the volumes grouped under the heading Theo-Drama, Balthasar describes sin as a misuse of freedom; when he turns to his Theo-Logic, sin is presented as “the lie.”5 Second, there are other metaphors that are so common that they cannot be associated with any particular volume or group of volumes. For example, sin is chaos. It is also (false) distance. And most importantly of all, sin is a burden. Each metaphor will be described in turn. Glory of the Lord: Sin as Ugliness Compared with the other metaphors to be considered below, Balthasar speaks less frequently of sin as ugliness. Nevertheless, in the context of theological aesthetics, the metaphor stands out, and it therefore merits attention. In the first volume of The Glory of the Lord, Balthasar shows how the (kenotic, crucified) form of Jesus Christ reconfigures our understanding of beauty such that the image of the Cross becomes the paradigmatic expression of God’s glory. Therefore, he speaks of “the inclusion in Christian beauty of even the Cross and everything else which a worldly aesthetics. . .discards as no longer bearable” and then adds that this “inclusiveness. . .embraces the most abysmal ugliness of sin and hell by virtue of the condescension of divine love, which has brought even sin and hell into that divine art for which there is no human analogue.” 6 Here we can perceive the first stirring of a theme that will reoccur frequently. Jesus does not save us from our ugly, lying, twisted freedom by merely reasserting (Platonic) beauty, goodness, and truth, but by suffering creaturely brokenness as fully as possible so as to reverse it from the inside out.7 By any human criteria, the brokenness Once again, because Balthasar feels free to mix and match his metaphors, there are many examples within the volumes of the Theo-Drama in which he speaks of sin as a “lie,” to give just one example. It is notable that different metaphors take prominence in different volumes, but this observation is not a hard and fast rule. 6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1, Seeing the Form (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 124. For further reflection on the divine aesthetic, worldly aesthetics, and “the element of the ugly, of the tragically fragmented, of the demonic,” see ibid., 460. 7 See Balthasar’s treatment of St. Augustine’s theological aesthetics for additional examples of this complex approach to beauty and ugliness. For example, he quotes Augustine’s commentary on 1 John: “By taking flesh, he took to himself, as it were, your ugliness, to make himself like you and suited to you, and to spur you to love inner beauty”; in Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 2, Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 136. 5 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 17 of the cross is scandalously ugly, but it is also the very icon of God’s most glorious love. It is such love that is the true measure of divine beauty, and everything which revolts against such love should be identified as the spiritual “ugliness” of sin. Glory of the Lord, The Old Covenant: Sin as Infidelity In Balthasar’s covenantal theology, which is developed in the sixth volume of The Glory of the Lord, he simultaneously emphasizes both the “one-sidedness” of the grace of the God who chooses Israel in love and the trusting “mutuality” that is established between God and the chosen people.8 Balthasar emphasizes the “inner richness, light, and warmth”9 of this relationship and the idea that the covenant is intended as an intimate dialogue.10 It is precisely out of the intimacy of this love that the “uniqueness of Israel’s concept of evil” emerges.11 Balthasar says that sin “appears essentially and formally as infidelity, whatever the precise contents of the trespass may be,”12 and he therefore draws upon nuptial imagery to describe the nature of sin in the context of the ancient covenant. He clarifies that, for Israel, sin cannot be “rooted” in God, who has revealed himself as all-holy. Nor could the early Jewish theologians ground sin in a “demonic sphere” because Satan is a late addition to Jewish theology. Consequently, “Israel is alone with its God and has sufficiency of all things in its God; evil arises precisely at the point where this God seems insufficient to Israel, which therefore turns away from him to look for other gods. Evil is this very act of turning away.”13 For Balthasar, this approach to sin is wholly theological. While he acknowledges that metaphysical investigation does have a place—later biblical writers take advantage of Greek ideas such as “μὴ ὄν [nonbeing] and στἑρησις [depravation]”—“it does not reach the distinctive essence of theological guilt, which consists in the incomprehensible refusal of an answer of love to the incomprehensible offer of eternal love.”14 The covenant is “made with a view to mutual fidelity,”15 and therefore Israel’s explicit infidelity stands in sharp relief. Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 6, Theology: The Old Covenant (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 155. 9 Ibid., 162. 10 Ibid., 207. 11 Ibid., 215. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 215–16. 14 Ibid., 216. 15 Ibid., 222. 8 18 Richard Barry Theo-Drama: Sin and Freedom In Balthasar’s mind, theo-aesthetics and theo-drama are inseparably related. It is the divine action at the center of the theo-drama—the total self-giving of the Son in an expression of infinite obedience in love—which is the true form of divine love. Those who have the “eyes of faith,” who by the grace of the Holy Spirit are drawn toward the beauty of Christ, are themselves called forward in freedom: they are inspired by God’s beauty to take up their personal role in the theodrama. But even though the relationship between theological aesthetics and theo-drama must be recognized, it is also true that the focus shifts as we move from one to the other. Now, in the context of a theological dramatics, the key concept is “freedom”—the infinite freedom of God and the analogous finite freedom of human beings.With this shift, there is a corresponding shift in the terminology used for sin. The language used in these volumes to describe sin relies heavily on inter-personal metaphors of invitation and refusal and political metaphors of rebellion and usurpation. In the big picture, Balthasar is very attentive to human teleology: finite freedom was made to participate (freely!) in infinite freedom; human beings were made for communion with God, who is goodness itself. It is only in the context of such participation that we can play our proper role in the divine drama. God has made us for such freedom and invites our participation, and yet what we see throughout the scriptures, and even now in the daily news, is refusal, lack of acknowledgement, separation, and attempted autonomy. Balthasar calls it the “pathos of the world stage.”16 He says: “[human finite freedom] can only be itself by being oriented beyond itself, to the absolute good. . . . If created freedom chooses itself as the absolute good, it involves itself in a contradiction that will devour it: the formal object that informs [created freedom]—which is in fact absolute, self-positing freedom— is in constant contradiction with finite freedom’s pretentious claim to be infinite.”17 Therefore, sin is choosing the self as the absolute good, which is portrayed with metaphors that imply a violent political coup. Human beings were given the power of finite freedom, an analogous form of autonomy, so that we might freely take up the “vocation to trinitarian love,”18 so that we might return God’s gift of love in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 4, The Action (hereafter, TD4) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 160. 17 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 5, The Last Act (hereafter, TD5) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 301. 18 Ibid., 302. 16 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 19 thanksgiving. Instead, we have imagined our autonomy and power as an end in itself, and Balthasar interprets this as an usurpation of power: “In seeking to arrogate this power to itself, finite freedom does two things: it separates power from self-giving goodness, and it sets itself up against the absolute good—thereby incurring the judgment of the latter.”19 Similarly, Balthasar also sees finite freedom’s rebellion as a refusal to acknowledge God. He says, “The creature can refuse to acknowledge that it owes its freedom to the Creator. . . . Man’s refusal reveals that abyss in the creature whereby it contradicts its own character as analogy and image.”20 Once more, he expresses the same idea in slightly different terms: the human desire “to be autonomous without acknowledging its origin”21 is conceived as our No to God. But even as Balthasar articulates the problem of sin in terms of false autonomy and an overall orientation expressed in the word No, he also frames his soteriology in corresponding language: we must locate this No “within the Son’s all-embracing Yes to the Father, in the Spirit.”22 Jesus’s proper exercise of freedom, this divine autonomy that freely gives itself away, is (again) seen in Christ’s Cross and descent to hell. Vividly, Balthasar says that “the creature’s No is merely a twisted knot within the Son’s pouring-forth; it is left behind by the current of love.”23 TD4, 165. Ibid., 329. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 330. Before moving on from this section about sin as a misuse of finite freedom, it is appropriate to mention the section entitled “The Analogy of Sin” in TD4. Here Balthasar points out that the word ‘sin’ is used analogously when speaking of Gentiles, Jews and Christians. For the Gentiles, who have not been blessed with the Law, sin is understood in the terms we have been exploring in this section: failure to acknowledge God, the source and telos of our finite freedom (ibid., 168). Again, Balthasar affirms that, although pagans have sinned, they “have not infringed a positive law issued by God, like that given to Adam in paradise and to the people of Israel ever since Moses. For that reason, the sins of the pagans are not to be weighed in the same way as those of Adam and the Jews” (ibid., 172). Turning to the sin of Israel, we can no longer look to the “purely anthropological, horizontal plane” because of the covenant to which Israel has been elected. For this reason, Balthasar says, “in the whole of history, Israel is the place where the nature and the burden of sin is most directly manifested” (ibid., 173; emphasis in original). Here, in addition to the theme of sin being a failure of finite freedom, Balthasar adds one we considered earlier: covenantal infidelity. Finally, Balthasar addresses the problem of 19 20 20 Richard Barry Theo-Logic: Sin as The Lie As noted before, the transition to the three volumes focusing on truth does not represent a sudden change in subject. Ben Quash says, “There cannot be reflection on the truth of the Christian revelation until one is a player in its midst—living it out and partaking of it in committed action[drama], and this is something that happens only when revelation elicits the necessary [aesthetic] desire to partake.” 24 Reflection on God’s truth, therefore, properly takes place only in the context of theo-dramatics and theo-aesthetics. Nevertheless, the volumes on theo-logic do represent a shift that corresponds to a change in the primary metaphor for sin. Sin is now seen as “the lie”: “being the Word pure and simple, [Christ] is also the truth pure and simple, the contradiction of him is also the untruth, the lie pure and simple . . . in John’s language, sin is defined as hatred of the truth that is Christ.”25 To put the case another way, he writes: “In the face of the Logos, in whom all sense and reason dwell, lying hatred can only be a ground-less abyss devoid of sense.”26 What is the relationship between Jesus Christ—the Logos made flesh—and “the lie”? Can there be any relationship at all? Following the pattern established in previous sections, Balthasar insists that Christ must, in some sense, experience the contradiction of untruth. But he first stipulates that “the negativity of hatred and lying cannot be integrated in any way into the truth as one of its transitional ‘moments.’ The only attitude the truth can adopt toward it is unqualified rejection, that is, judgment.”27 In saying this, Balthasar is separating himself from any Hegelian scheme in which sin is imagined sin in the New Testament, which he says is difficult to discuss: “Here sin is portrayed, on the one hand, as a final intensification of the Old Testament No to God’s Word (now made flesh). On the other hand, the New Testament takes as its vantage point the post-Easter vanquishing of sin and the reconciliation of the world to God” (ibid., 177). In each case, there is an analogous experience of sin, because God discloses himself to all, but it is an analogy, and not identity because of the dissimilarity between disclosures in ‘nature,’ in the Old Covenant, and in the New Covenant. 24 Ben Quash, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s ‘Theatre of the World’: The Aesthetic of a Dramatics,” in Theological Aesthetics after von Balthasar, ed. Oleg V. Bychkov and Jim Fodor (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 21. 25 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic, vol. 2, Truth of God (hereafter, TL2) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 317. As mentioned above, Balthasar mixes his metaphors freely. Even though the metaphor of ‘the lie’ comes to the fore in the final three volumes of his trilogy, Balthasar had introduced the concept much earlier. As an example, see TD4, 164, 329. 26 TL2, 318. 27 Ibid., 322. Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 21 as one (necessary) pole within a dialectic: sin is not a contradictory stage through which God must pass for the sake of greater self-actualization. And yet, Balthasar says, “abstractly speaking, real (not Hegelian) negativity, contradiction of God, must be experienced within the truth understood as the exposition of God in the flesh.”28 Balthasar’s explanation of the “experience” of the lie within the truth corresponds to his understanding of the cruciform No and Yes, ugliness and beauty. He writes, “In the Cross the contradiction of sin, its lie, and its un-logic are taken into the logic of the love of the Trinity. Not, however, in order to find a place there, but in all truth to be ‘damned in the flesh [of the Son]’ (Rom 8:3).”29 Without unpacking this further, it is sufficient to conclude that, as Balthasar meditates on Christ as Beauty, then Goodness, and then Truth, the metaphors he uses for sin undergo a corresponding shift, and the different metaphors draw our attention to different aspects of Christ’s great confrontation with sin. Additional Metaphors: (False) Distance, God-lessness, Chaos Before moving on to the most important and most controversial metaphor that Balthasar uses throughout his corpus (sin as burden, load, thing), three additional images should be mentioned. First is the idea of sin as distance. According to Balthasar, distance is not foreign to God’s own being. He speaks of an “absolute, infinite distance” between the Father and the Son—within, of course, the perfect, eternal union of the Holy Spirit. After stipulating a primordial Trinitarian distance, however, Balthasar also identifies a false distance: “This divine act that brings forth the Son, that is, the second way of participating in (and of being) the identical Godhead, involves the positing of an absolute, infinite ‘distance’ that can contain and embrace all the other distances that are possible within the world of finitude, including the distance of sin.”30 Second, along similar lines, Balthasar also refers to an inter-Trinitarian God-lessness, whereby “inherent in the Father’s love is an absolute renunciation: he will not be God for himself alone.”31 In this kenotic move of self-renunciation, the Father hands himself over to the Son, and this “handing over” of divinity (the Father lets the Son “be”) is eternal. Trinitarian God-lessness is different from, though not entirely unrelated to, the godlessness of human sin: (divine) God-lessness “must Ibid., 324. Ibid., 326. 30 TD4, 323. 31 Ibid., 324. 28 29 22 Richard Barry not be confused with the godlessness that is found within the world, although it undergirds it, renders it possible and goes beyond it.”32 Finally, third, in a number of places, Balthasar draws a parallel between the chaos from which the world was created and sin as chaos: “God once fashioned the world from chaos, but man, through sin, imported a second chaos into it.”33 This amorphous chaos of sin is one way that Balthasar depicts sin as it exists separated from human beings, and this idea of disembodied sin leads directly into the final, but most important, metaphor employed by Balthasar. Sin as Burden, Load, Thing Balthasar often speaks of sin as a “reality” that has a weight or density or thingness. It is a burden that has crushed human beings, but it can also be transferred or “loaded” onto the “sin-bearer.” The imagery is highly physical, highly substantial. For example, “the one who abandoned himself can be utterly and completely determined by the will of the Father, who loads on him the burden of the reality that is ‘the sin of the world.’” 34 This is anything but an isolated statement; it is repeated over and over again. Balthasar says, “the Father—cooperante Spiritu Sancto— loads the Son with the sins of the world,”35 and adds that “Jesus takes upon himself the entire sin of the world.”36 Thus, the Father loads what the Son freely and kenotically accepts. Ibid. Ibid., 316. 34 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 7, Theology: The New Covenant (hereafter, GL7) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 208. 35 TD4, 335. Balthasar says this after he had already affirmed that it is human beings who load sins upon the willing Son: 32 33 If, once the Incarnation has taken place, we ask who burdens the Son, the “Lamb of God,” the “Lamb as though it had been slain,” with the unimaginable load of the world’s No to divine love, the answer—a preliminary answer, but nonetheless real—must be: men themselves in their darkness. . . . But it is equally clear that nothing would be achieved by men unloading their sin if the one onto whom they load it were incapable of receiving it in its totality, as what it is: it presupposes he is both willing and able to bear sin (ibid., 334). Therefore, it is true to say that the Father loads the sins of the world onto the Son, and it is also true to say that we also load our sins onto the Son, and at the same time the Son actively opens himself to the burden. 36 TD4, 180. Or again, “The surrendered Son, in bearing sin, that is, what is simply alien to God, appears to have lost the Father” (ibid., 320). Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 23 When confronted with statements like these, theologians who rightly accept the Augustinian doctrine that evil or sin is a privation of the good immediately challenge Balthasar on his apparent belief that sin is somehow a substantial reality, capable of being transferred from one person to another.37 Given his overarching commitment to the great tradition, it may seem surprising that Balthasar refuses to retreat from the claim that sin has some kind of being. He nevertheless argues, “Because of the energy that man has invested in it, sin is a reality, it is not ‘nothing.’”38 Later, in the second volume of the Theo-Drama, he elaborates: “The question concerning the essence of sin cannot be positively answered, for sin is the lie and, hence, neither truth nor being, and yet men have lent it something of their personal being in order to make it possible. Herein lies the self-contradiction When it comes to sustained criticism of Balthasar’s theology, Alyssa Lyra Pitstick is without equal, and she is, unsurprisingly, very critical of Balthasar’s interpretation of sin. Reviewing his work, she says, “The ‘God-lessness’ of the divine love ‘undergirds’ sin, ‘embrace[s]’ it, ‘renders it possible and goes beyond it.’ The greatest suffering and forsakenness (and so all lesser sufferings) are also embraced by the Trinitarian ‘distance’ and have their archetype in God. Note that both sin and suffering are conceived here as positive realities”; see Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs Von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent Into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 121–22. A few pages later, she says, “although Balthasar denies that the Trinitarian ‘super-kenosis’ is the archetype of sin, it is difficult to see how his assertion (and it is only that) can be consistent with other essential aspects of his own theology, such as his positions that sin is not nothing, but a reality, and that God is the source of all being. . . . If the Trinity is not sin’s archetype, what is?” (ibid., 128). Here, Pitstick does not give Balthasar the best possible reading. Balthasar does not say that “sin and suffering are positive realities.” Yes, the (warped, unnatural) distance that human beings put between themselves and God is dependent— in a sense—on inter-Trinitarian distance. But this is true because it is only within a universe in which there is “space” for the other to be other that the advent of self-centered-otherness becomes conceivable. If God were a perfect monad, there would be no space for genuine otherness (every distance would be collapsed), and there would be no space for finite freedom (every freedom would be overwhelmed), and thus there would be no sin; and there would be love. The false distance of sin is in no way a positive reality, though it is a possible reality only because of distance within the Trinity. Significantly, Pitstick also endorses Alberto Espezel’s findings when he “straightforwardly rejects the concept of sin-in-itself on the grounds that it lacks sufficient foundation in Scripture and Tradition. . . . It is noteworthy of Espezel’s treatment that the majority of his concerns about Balthasar’s theology of Holy Saturday relate to Scriptural exegesis” (ibid., 395n154). In this section I will especially call into question these conclusions. 38 TD5, 314. 37 24 Richard Barry that makes sin at once abstract and concrete, so that it can be experienced only ‘unrealistically,’ only ‘negatively.”’39 In this second quote, Balthasar makes it clear that sin does not have being in the same way that creatures have being. Nonetheless, both quotes indicate that sin is not mere privation of the good; it obtains some form of existence of its own, though (apparently) parasitically, feeding on our “energy” and “personal being.”40 If Balthasar was willing to reexamine aspects of privation theory, it was only because he was convinced that there was biblical warrant for such a move, and he puts special emphasis on two scriptural passages. The first biblical motif, which we will explore in much greater detail in the third section of this paper, is the idea of the scapegoat, first mentioned in Leviticus 16:7–10. He says: “Here the God-man drama reaches its acme: perverse finite freedom casts all its guilt onto God, making him the sole accused, the scapegoat, while God allows himself to be thoroughly affected by this, not only in the humanity of Christ but also in Christ’s trinitarian mission.”41 Immediately after Balthasar says this, he again refers to Jesus as the “sin bearing Son.” It is this enactment of the scapegoat ritual, whereby the sins of Israel are loaded onto the goat who must bear them away, that Balthasar calls the acme of the theo-drama. With the Levitical Day of Atonement ritual, sin is depicted as a burden that is transferred from one party TL2, 350. Balthasar’s vague comments about the “not ‘nothing’” “reality” of sin call for further research, and it seems to me that, at the metaphysical level, “privation theory” remains theologically necessary. As Balthasar acknowledged above, from the perspective of Christian revelation, evil itself cannot be a participation in the Trinity, and it cannot be a product of some independent demonic god. Still, Balthasar points in directions that deserve our consideration. God invites humanity to join in his creative activity, and it seems that we can use this power in two especially fearsome ways: to cooperate in creating life (procreation) or to violently create corpses (by taking life). Through sin, in ways big or small, we create a corpse of our own still living body—to say nothing of the violence we perform against others. Or at least, we create lifeless amputations. These severed faculties—intended to be alive with virtue—are now the “not nothing” remnants of what might have been. Again, these faculties were meant to glide with us, helping us to joyfully live more and more freely in love, but now we carry them with us always as dead weight, and over time we are crushed under these sins more and more. As Balthasar says, we have “lent” our personal being to this hideous thing that is wholly our own, not of God, but nevertheless real. Again, this idea merits further consideration in dialogue with the metaphysical insights of privation theory. 41 TD4, 335. 39 40 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 25 to another, and this lends scriptural support to Balthasar’s central metaphor for sin.42 While the image of the scapegoat may be implicit in Balthasar’s many references to sin as a burden, 2 Corinthians 5:21 (“For our sake he made him to be sin (ἁμαρτίαν)43 who knew no sin”) is probably the most quoted verse in Balthasar’s soteriological texts.44 From Balthasar’s perspective, this verse shows the extent to which Christ was burdened with sins: he became identified with sin itself, though without ever committing sin. This further reinforces, for him, the idea that sin is a “something” that can be transferred from one person to another. Balthasar’s description of sin as a burden loaded onto the Son is even more nuanced than has been indicated thus far. On the Cross, Christ experiences the reality of sin in solidarity with human beings, but in his descent into hell, he experiences sin “as such,” independent of individual human persons. Therefore, in the first moment, on the Cross, “God is solidary with us not only in what is symptomatic of sin, the punishment for sin, but also in co-experiencing sin, in the peirasmos [trial] of the very essence of that negation—though without ‘committing’ (Hebrews 4:15) sin himself.”45 Balthasar is adamant: “It is essential to maintain, however, that the Crucified does not bear the burden as something external: he in no way distances himself from those who by rights should have to bear it. (Indeed, he is in them In TD4, Balthasar traces the history of Christian soteriology. In his telling, “Rupert [of Deutz (1075–1129)] was the first to apply to Christ the image of the scapegoat, an image that was to have such a long history” (ibid., 292). (This is inaccurate; for example, we will later quote Tertullian saying that Jesus is our scapegoat. There are a number of other patristic examples of this.) Balthasar then traces the idea through Denys the Carthusian, John Calvin, and Theodore Beza, and also explores the modern adaptation of René Girard and Raymund Schwager. 43 Balthasar is aware of the fact that this word in Greek can be—and, in the history of Christian biblical interpretation, very often has been—translated “sin offering.” He says that 2 Cor 5:21 “can also be translated, seen from the standpoint of Jesus Christ: ‘God . . . has made him a (voluntary) sin-offering’; but considered from the standpoint of the Father, the other translation, ‘has made him to be sin,’ is nevertheless correct” (GL7, 208). For additional interpretations, see TD4, 296. 44 Followed, perhaps, by Galatians 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” 45 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter (hereafter, MP) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 137. 42 26 Richard Barry eucharistically!).”46 It seems that Balthasar interprets Christ’s Cross as a solidarity and a communion with sinners in which he suffers God’s wrath in union with us. However, shifting attention to Holy Saturday, Balthasar pivots from the language of solidarity to the language of substitution. He asks: “what good [would] this solidarity do us if it did not have the potential of being intensified into a true substitution?” 47 This intensification is the descent into hell. Quoting Adrienne von Speyr, Balthasar says, “In this view . . . , hell would be what is finally condemned by God; what is left in it is sin, which has been separated from the sinner by the work of the Cross. . . . Sins ‘are remitted, separated from us, taken away from us. They are banished to the place where everything God does not want and condemns is hell. That is their place.’”48 On the Cross, Jesus is united to all human beings and, as a corollary, to their sin. Through his solidarity with us, it becomes possible for our sin to be separated from us and for Jesus—the sin-bearer—to bear the sins away into hell. In Mysterium Paschale, this is what Balthasar says Christ (passively) experienced on Holy Saturday: “the second death which, itself, is one with sheer sin as such, no longer sin as attaching to a particular human being, sin incarnate in living existences, but abstracted from that individuation, contemplated in its bare reality as such (for sin is a reality!).”49 In the seventh volume of The Glory of the Lord, he says that, in the visio (secundae) mortis in Hell, Christ sees “the whole fruit of the redeeming Cross; . . .That is to say, sin in its ‘pure state’ separated from man, ‘sin in itself ’ in the whole formless, chaotic momentum of its reality, was seen by Jesus.”50 For Jesus, the initial fruit of the Cross is sin-in-itself, removed from sinners, to be taken away, as TD4, 338. He writes again, “The Son bears sinners within himself, together with the hopeless impenetrability of their sin, which prevents the divine light of love from registering in them” (ibid., 349). 47 Hans von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr, To the Heart of the Mystery of Redemption (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 29. 48 TD5, 314. 49 MP, 173. 50 GL7, 233. Similarly, and adding even more metaphors to the list, he writes, “The object of the visio mortis can only be the pure substantiality of ‘Hell’ which is ‘sin in itself.’ Plato and Plotinus created for this the expression borboros (mud, ordure) which the Church Fathers (and notably the Cappadocians) gratefully took up. Likewise the image of chaos is a natural one here. In another image still, Eriugena says that, in our redemption, ‘all the leprosy of human nature what thrown to the Devil’” (MP, 173). 46 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 27 far from the Father as east is from west. In a footnote in the second volume of the Theo-Logic, Balthasar laments that Mysterium Paschale was written quickly and that students should now refer to von Speyr’s thought directly. However, the only retraction Balthasar makes (though he does not use that word), is when he says, “The term ‘solidarity with the dead’ was a compromise that no longer appears in what follows.”51 Of all the controversial things Balthasar said in Mysterium Paschale, this is the one phrase he made a point to correct. Why? Perhaps because of what we have just explained: Balthasar wants to limit solidarity with sinners to the Cross; the descent into hell is about bearing away the disconnected “sin itself ” to the place God, in his grace, had prepared: Hell.52 This change in terminology late in Balthasar’s life, mentioned only in a footnote, may seem irrelevant; it is not. To understand why Balthasar feels compelled to clarify his use of terms, it is helpful to review ancient Jewish atonement theology. Balthasar and the Two Goats of Leviticus 16 This study began by following Gary Anderson’s insight that, to understand a theologian’s soteriology, it is essential to pay attention to the metaphors used for sin. I also mentioned that, in his book Sin: A History, Anderson tracks the main metaphors for sin within the Bible itself, showing that there was a transition from the metaphor of sin as TL2, 345n75. Thomas Aquinas made an argument that is not well received by modern Christians. Asking whether the “blessed in heaven will see the sufferings of the damned,” he answers: “Nothing should be denied the blessed that belongs to the perfection of their beatitude. Now everything is known the more for being compared with its contrary, because when contraries are placed beside one another they become more conspicuous. Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned,” in Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, supplementum tertiæ partis, q. 94, a. 1, corp., in Summa theologia, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols. (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1948). When von Speyr suggests that the “substance” of hell is the “sin of the world,” disconnected from human beings on the Cross and born away by the Son to this place that has been prepared by the loving Father, perhaps in this context Aquinas’s comment can be retrieved. Saints can certainly look at that hell and rejoice, because “sin itself ” has been so thoroughly removed. This paper has not reflected on von Speyr’s concept of “effigies,” though a more complete reflection on the metaphors Balthasar uses for sin would certainly include this idea; cf. TL2, 356–57. 51 52 28 Richard Barry a burden to the metaphor of sin as a debt. This shift was due in part to the growing influence of Aramaic in the Second Temple Persian period. The earlier Hebrew idiom “to bear [the weight] of sin” gave way over time to the parallel Aramaic idiom, which is literally “to assume a debt.”53 This change in metaphors would have a profound effect on rabbinic and early Christian understanding of sin and forgiveness, leading ultimately to the classic Western soteriology of Anselm (which, Anderson argues, when contextualized within the latter perspective of sin as debt, makes perfect biblical sense). Within Anderson’s book itself, and in most of the commentary on his book since it was published seven years ago,54 the focus has been on the theological implications of this late-biblical idea that sin is a debt, and this research has been illuminating. Much less effort has been put, however, into unpacking the contemporary consequences of the earlier Hebrew idea that there is a thingness to sin, “as if a weight was created ex nihilo and placed on [the sinner’s] shoulders.”55 Perhaps this is because Anderson shows a linear historical progression in the images used for sin: the metaphor of sin as a burden is more or less isolated to an earlier period, while the metaphor of debt increasingly replaces it in the Second Temple and post-biblical period.56 This history, however, does not detract from the permanent theological significance of the earlier mode of conceptualizing sin. After all, the earlier imagery remains canonical, and what’s more, it is essential for understanding ancient Jewish priestly and Temple theology. Therefore, our focus must now turn to the images used in some of the earliest biblical texts. Anderson says, “What is most striking is the frequency of the idiom ‘to bear [the weight of ] sin’ within the Hebrew Bible; it predominates over its nearest competitor by more than six to one. For Hebrew speakers in the First Temple period, therefore, the most common means of talking about human sin was Anderson, Sin, 27–28. This includes the symposium published in Nova et Vetera (English) 9.1 (2011). 55 Anderson, Sin, 26. Similarly, he writes, “Crucial to this discussion is the notion that sin in biblical thought possesses a certain ‘thingness.’ Sin is not just a guilty conscience; it presumes, rather, that some-‘thing’ is manufactured on the spit and imposed on the sinner” (ibid., x). Echoing the earlier discussion, perhaps it is better to say with Balthasar that sin borrows its being from our personal being. It is hard to conceive how human beings could generate the reality of sin from nothing. 56 Ibid., 7. 53 54 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 29 to compare it to weight.”57 Most people, Anderson says, are surprised when they learn that this idiom is so common. This is because the Hebrew phrase “to carry away (the weight of ) sin” (nāśā’ ‘ăvōn) is almost never translated literally; instead, translators render it simply “to forgive a sin.” The “thing” quality implicit in the Hebrew words themselves is lost. As we have seen, the metaphor used to describe the problem of sin generally corresponds with the solution. To illustrate how the thingness of sin was solved in ancient Jewish thinking, Anderson turns to the cultic rituals that are at the heart of priestly theology: those performed on the Day of Atonement, which are described in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus. In the words of David P. Wright, Leviticus 16 features “two main expiatory or purgative rites: the purification of the sanctuary and some of its sanctums with blood from priestly and communal ḥaṭṭā’t (purgation) sacrifices (vv 3–19), and the dispatch of the scapegoat, which bears the people’s sins (vv 20–22).”58 We will be considering each of these rites in turn. First are the offerings. While a large number of sacrificial rituals occurred daily at the Temple, Yom Kippur was the only day each year on which the High Priest ventured behind the curtain, into the Holy of Holies, to purify the Temple from the inside out with the blood of a bull and a goat. Why was this purification necessary in the Jewish religious imagination? What did these rituals accomplish? We should begin with the groundbreaking insights found in Jacob Milgrom’s work on Leviticus. For Milgrom, the ḥaṭṭā’t sacrifice in the Temple is not really a “sin offering,” as it is commonly translated, but rather a “purification offering.” He claims that this offering does not purge the personal sins or impurities of the offerer, but instead, the blood is a “ritual detergent” that cleanses the sanctuary itself.59 Milgrom echoes what we have learned from Anderson when he says that, for Israel and surrounding cultures, impurity “was a physical substance, an aerial miasma that possessed magnetic attraction to Ibid., 17. David P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 101 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987), 131. 59 Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 306. For concerns over Milgrom’s translation from the perspective of rhetorical studies, see James W. Watts, Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus: From Sacrifice to Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 79 ff. 57 58 30 Richard Barry the realm of the sacred.”60 Baruch J. Schwartz adds, “It should come as no surprise that throughout the biblical literature, transgressions, once committed, are often objectified. They are depicted not as past events or actions but rather as odious, foul objects that come into present existence.”61 As Milgrom and Schwartz point out, these physical corruptions not only burden the sinners themselves, but they also pollute the sanctuary. In fact, the more severe the impurity or the offense, the deeper it penetrates into the sacred space. The most grievous acts—like “wanton, unrepentant sin”62—infiltrate the Holy of Holies itself, thus endangering God’s presence among his people because the buildup of pollution makes the Temple an unsuitable house for an all holy God. Yom Kippur is the annual ritual by which the physical corruption created by sin is removed from the Temple. Leviticus 16 therefore describes the various offerings made on Yom Kippur, including a ram as a burnt offering, and two sin offerings (or, for Milgrom, purification offerings): a bull offered for the high priest and his house and a goat offered for the people. As for the goat, a well-known feature of the liturgical rubrics is that two identical goats63 are presented at the Temple and lots are cast to determine which goat will be offered as a sacrifice “for the Lord,” and which will be sent off “for Azazel.”64 In the course of the rituals, the blood of the bull Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 257. Baruch J. Schwartz, “The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature,” in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honour of Jacob Milgrom, ed. David Pearson Wright, David Noel Freedman, and Avi Hurvitz (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 7. 62 Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 257. 63 The specification that the goats should be identical is stated explicitly in the Mishnah Yoma, which was recorded well after the fall of the Temple. It says that the two goats are to be “equivalent in appearance, height, and value”; see Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 274. This view is already attested in the earliest Christian authors, however, including Barnabas, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian; see Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity: The Day of Atonement from Second Temple Judaism to the Fifth Century (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 29n53. 64 The meaning of the word “Azazel” has been debated for centuries. See Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1020–21, for an overview of the different options. He concludes “that Azazel is the name of a demon who has been eviscerated of his erstwhile demonic powers by the Priestly legislators” (ibid., 1021). In what follows, I prefer to identify this goat as the “goat for Azazel” or the “sin-bearing goat,” rather than using the common English translation “scapegoat,” partly because the latter has now become so inseparably linked with 60 61 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 31 and then the sacrificial goat are used to purify the space, starting with the most holy center and moving out. Thus, Aaron first brings the blood behind the curtain, into the Holy of Holies, and sprinkles it before the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, then he brings it into the outer shrine and sprinkles it on the curtain, and finally it is manipulated on the horns of the burnt offering altar. Thus, the blood purifies the temple, progressively releasing and removing sin from each precinct. After the priest has collected the sins, the second ritual movement begins. Schwartz explains: Only after having purged the adytum, shrine, and altar of the impurities and sins may the priest place the latter on the head of the scapegoat, a transference accomplished by the verbal process of articulating them aloud (v. 21). The inference is clear: the sins can be transferred to the scapegoat at this point and not before, because only now has the priest acquired them himself. They have been accumulating in the adytum and the shrine, and he has just released them: now he transfers them to the head of the goat in order to dispose of them for good.65 From this perspective, it is clear that the two (identical) goats—one a sin offering, the other for sending away—work harmoniously to remove every impurity and bear away every sin from the sanctuary. Thus, in the words of Leviticus, the goat for Azazel “shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness” (Lev 16:21–22). Milgrom shows that there are analogous rituals in the neighboring cultures of the ancient Near East, and he explains that these rituals were intended to banish evil either “to its place of origin (e.g., netherworld, wilderness) or to some place in which its malefic powers could either work in the interests of the sender (e.g., enemy territory) or do no harm at all (e.g., mountains, wilderness).”66 the thought of René Girard. Girard’s thought is obviously not unrelated to the themes discussed in Leviticus 16, but it is necessary to first let the priestly writers define their terms in their own ways without the intrusion of more recent appropriations of these concepts. 65 Schwartz, “The Bearing of Sin,” 17. 66 Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1042. 32 Richard Barry It is important to emphasize that the scapegoat is not a sacrificial offering. As it says in Leviticus, hands are laid on the scapegoat and, through this physical connection and the confession of guilt, sins are transferred from the high priest to the goat. Milgrom points out that “an animal laden with impurities would not be acceptable as an offering either to God or to a demon.”67 Therefore, even though the two goats described in Leviticus 16 are presented together, they play very different roles in the Yom Kippur rites. The first goat must be kept pure as a holy offering to God, while the second is loaded with sin. Of the second, Milgrom says, “Instead of being an offering or a substitute, the goat is simply the vehicle to dispatch Israel’s impurities and sins to the wilderness/netherworld.”68 Or again, in Anderson’s words, “once the sins of Israel have been borne away into the wilderness, they leave the domain of the habitable and enter a land that was thought to be God-forsaken.”69 With this perspective in mind, we can now return to the beleaguered theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. We have seen that there are two distinct moments in Balthasar’s understanding of Christ’s relation to sin: one of solidarity and one of substitution (Christ does something that we cannot do).70 As Balthasar describes it, when Jesus is on the cross, he is united in solidarity (Eucharistically) with all sinners—we are joined with him. Then, through Christ’s death, sin is removed from us and he bears away the sin-in-itself, the dead weight of disembodied human sin. In his descent, in other words, Christ brings sin into a true wilderness, an infinite distance from Ibid., 1021. Ibid. 69 Anderson, Sin, 23. 70 This interpretation of two moments is based on a reading of Balthasar himself, although it seems clearly supported in the writings of von Speyr, quoted by Aidan Nichols: “The Son took sin upon him in two senses. On Good Friday, up to the moment of his death, he carried it as the personal sin of each individual human being, bearing it atoningly in his divine-human Person, by an action that was, to the highest degree that he could make it, for the sake of sinners, the action of a subject. At that moment, every sin appeared in its connection with the sinner who had committed it, and bore his or her features. By contrast, on Holy Saturday, in his vision of the sin of the world from the standpoint of Sheol, sin loosed itself from the subject of the sinner, to the point that it became merely what is monstrous, amorphous, that which constitutes the fearfulness of Sheol, and calls forth the horror in the one who sees it”; see Nichols, “Adrienne von Speyr and the Mystery of the Atonement,” New Blackfriars 73, no. 865 (November 1, 1992): 551. 67 68 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 33 the Father (though, Balthasar claims, without sacrificing perfect unity-in-loving-obedience). In a radio sermon given on Good Friday, Balthasar asks, “Was [ Jesus Christ] the one, great and final scapegoat for mankind? Did mankind load him with all its guilt, and did he, the Lamb of God, carry this guilt away?” 71 The soteriology that he presents throughout his career makes it clear that Balthasar’s answer to this question is, emphatically, Yes. As Jesus offers himself on the cross, he mystically allows all the sinners around the world to “lay hands” on him, to transfer their sins to the sin-bearing-goat chosen by God.72 However, this is not where the ritual ends—after having received this great burden, the goat for Azazel must bear the sins into the wilderness,73 beyond the sight of God, ultimately, into Hell. According to Anderson, “it is not enough for Israel to fast and repent; the physical material of the sin that had rested on the shoulder of every Israelite must be carted away into oblivion.” 74 For Balthasar, this is what Jesus does for Israel, and for all humankind. By understanding the work of Christ as the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement ritual, and especially by developing his theology of Holy Saturday in light of this connection, Balthasar’s soteriology proves itself to be thoroughly biblical. After all of this has been said, two final points ought to be made. First, Balthasar’s soteriology covers a huge amount of ground, and theologians for centuries to come will be learning from it, evaluating it, challenging it, and developing it. However, a strong argument can be made that it is incomplete, based once again on Leviticus 16. After all, on the Day of Atonement, two goats are brought before the Lord, and one of them is presented as a holy offering in the Temple. This sacrificial goat, I argue, (re)establishes the unity between God and humanity: in the self-giving of this “goat”—which re-presents the primordial sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah—the Edenic harmony between God and creation is once more realized. Hans Urs von Balthasar, You Crown the Year With Your Goodness: Sermons Throughout the Liturgical Year (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 82. 72 Commenting on Lev 16:8, Milgrom says, “The purpose of the lots is clearly to leave the selection of the animals to YHWH.” Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics (Minneapolis, MN: Augsberg Fortress, 2004), 168. For Balthasar, it is the Father who loads the sins on Jesus, even as sinners also load the sins on him; the two are not mutually exclusive. 73 Which was, Anderson points out, “an area that was thought to be beyond the reach of God” (Anderson, Sin, 6). 74 Ibid. 71 34 Richard Barry Remember that this goat is destined for the Holy of Holies, the very heart of God’s dwelling in Israel, but it is not always prominent in Balthasar’s account of the Cross. Steffen Lösel says, “In fact, for Balthasar the notion of sacrifice plays a minor role as a soteriological category.” 75 After reviewing Balthasar’s incessant, almost oppressive, emphasis on separation, distance, and abandonment between Father and Son, Matthew Levering asks, “Does his theology fragment, by overstepping the limits of human language, the unity of God?”76 This is a real concern. On page after page, Balthasar’s crucified Christ is the goat led out into the wilderness, away from the Temple, into the place of exile and lamentation. The emphasis on this goat is so unrelenting that the other goat sometimes seems forgotten, and thus, as Levering suggests, there are real concerns over the status of divine unity. In response to Balthasar, we should insist that the spotless goat offered in the temple be given an equal place in Christian soteriology. Happily, the theology of the goat for the Lord has been articulated repeatedly in the Catholic tradition by advocates of satisfaction theory, especially in the writings of Anselm and Thomas Aquinas. More recently, David Bentley Hart offers a beautiful interpretation of Israel’s sacrifice and the Cross of Christ, and his soteriology can offset the gaps in Balthasar (and vice-versa).77 By bringing these theological voices together, perhaps the way Christ fulfills the works of both “goats” will be more fully appreciated. Finally, the greater part of this paper has, appropriately, emphasized Balthasar’s primary image: sin as burden. However, one must not forget that this is only one of many metaphors Balthasar uses. Sin is ugliness. Sin is infidelity. Sin is refusal of the invitation. Sin is the lie. Sin is a false distance. Sin is chaos. Even if some theologians insist that the metaphor of sin as burden does not have a future in Christian theology, Balthasar paints with many colors. Some of the other meta Steffen Lösel, “A Plain Account of Christian Salvation? Balthasar on Sacrifice, Solidarity, and Substitution,” Pro Ecclesia 13.2 (Spring 2004): 164. He later adds, “Nowhere does Balthasar develop his concept of sacrifice from the various Hebrew sacrifices in the context of the temple cult or even the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement (cf. Lev 17). Rather, his notion of sacrifice builds on an existential interpretation of the term. For Balthasar, sacrifice is but an aspect of every loving relationship. Love, and certainly divine love, expresses itself as ‘self-sacrificial’ self-giving for the Other” (ibid., 165n126). 76 Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), 132. 77 Hart, The Beauty Of The Infinite, 350–60. 75 Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar’s Biblical Soteriology 35 phors are perhaps more amenable to the (indispensable) metaphysical discovery that sin is a privation of the good. By drawing on his alternative metaphors, there are theological riches in Balthasar available to all who are eager to reflect on Christian soteriology, even among those for whom his theology of Holy Saturday is found to be a step too far.78 And yet, before dismissing Balthasar’s controversial theory, theologians should still meditate on the two goats of Yom Kippur and consider whether the highest holy day on the Jewish calendar remains relevant to contemporary theological reflection on atonement. If Yom Kippur maintains its permanent relevance—and I believe that it must—then perhaps Balthasar can help restore the centrality of the Azazel goat for a Christian soteriology that is in deep dialogue with N&V the Jewish theological tradition. One example of this selective approach is Michele M. Schumacher, “The Concept of Representation in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Theological Studies 60.1 (1999): 53–71. While she is critical of the idea that the Son bears the sins of the world, she finds great value in Balthasar’s reflections on the relationship between “created freedom” and “trinitarian freedom.” 78 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 37–52 Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires Stephen J. Heaney University of St. Thomas Minneapolis, MN There is a common misunderstanding of the classical natural law tradition concerning the nature of—and the naturalness of—sexual desire and sexual acts, and specifically of same-sex desires and acts. It is an argument that has its most interesting (for me, anyhow) manifestations in the writings of those within the Catholic tradition, or who at least have a Catholic background. The argument runs something like this: The basis for natural law proscriptions of same-sex acts is grounded in the fundamental natural inclinations or drives of human beings. Thomas Aquinas, to use a well-respected version of the natural law argument, says that we have fundamental inclinations to sexual intercourse and care of offspring. This would seem to indicate that sexual intercourse here is taken by Aquinas to mean an act between a man and a woman, since that is how you would make offspring to care for. However, what is different about those who consider themselves to have a same-sex orientation is that they experience a different desire than many people, a deep desire as unsought and uncontrolled as the desire in heterosexuals, but for sexual union with a member of the same sex rather than the opposite sex. By this argument, the natural law is essentially different for those with same-sex attraction. The reasoning expressed above relies on some basic misunderstandings of the nature of the fundamental natural inclinations: first, about the relationship between these inclinations and conscious desires, and second, about the relationship between inclinations and our nature as human beings. It is an easy mistake to make, especially given how we use language today. 38 Stephen J. Heaney One reason it is easy to fall into this mistake is a common contemporary notion of the self. Charles Taylor, in an analysis used brilliantly by Philip Turner to dissect the contemporary sexual understanding, notes three things about the contemporary “self ”: 1) it is defined by its inward depths that distinguish it from other selves; 2) a meaningful existence for this self is not heroism or sainthood, but everyday life; and 3) the point of everyday life is the satisfaction that comes from exploring one’s inner depths. These principles are accompanied by three moral ideas: a) benevolence, b) equal justice, and c) elimination of suffering.1 To the degree that a person assumes that “sexuality” and “sexual desire” are not merely important aspects of one’s depths, but indeed definitional of one’s very self as a person, “it is immediately appealing to say that sexual relations ought to be pried loose from anything like an ‘order’ that prescribes for them goods that are not matters of choice or that denies some people access to these relations ab initio.”2 The denial of the right to explore one’s sexual depths in whatever way one chooses is seen to be a denial of all three of the moral principles invoked by the contemporary position. This is not a surprising conclusion to come to in the contemporary way of thinking. Turner references The History of Sexuality, in which Michel Foucault claims that the term “sexuality” today works now for many people as the word soul once did: as the nexus uniting the various aspects of one’s being, giving one an identity.3 Nicholas Bamforth and David A. J. Richards, in the flyleaf to their book Patriarchal Religion, Sexuality, and Gender, quote none other than H. L. A. Hart: “But interference with individual liberty may be thought an evil requiring justification for simpler, utilitarian reasons; for it is itself the infliction of a special form of suffering—often very acute—on those whose desires are frustrated by the fear of punishment. . . . The suppression of sexual impulses generally is. . . . something which affects the development or balance of the individual’s emotional life, happiness, and personality.”4 Philip Turner, “Undertakings and Promises: An Anatomy of Sexual Ethics,” First Things, April 1991, 8–9. Cf. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 2 Ibid., 9. 3 Ibid. 4 H. L. A. Hart, Law, Liberty, and Morality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963), 22, cited in Nicholas Bamforth and David A. J. Richards, Patri1 Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires 39 One difficulty that arises from this contemporary notion of the self is relatively easy for Turner, and his readers, to spot: The problem with their view is that it fails to recognize that a sexual self, liberated from any notion of undertakings that have a moral claim upon it prior to any of its particular intentions and choices, has no satisfactory way to make moral judgments about what it intends and what it chooses. It can only follow the prompting of its own depths, and so must appear like a dog chasing its own tail. . . . [This] can only mean that the most insistent prompting of the self always is taken as definitive of the self ’s true nature and good. The self ’s depths are used to judge the self ’s depths. . . . One’s desires and intentions, by virtue of the strength of their presentation, are both “natural” and “good.”5 Imagine reading the natural law tradition against such a backdrop, with no reference to any objective reality outside the desires of the one desiring. It is easy to slip to the conclusion that the self is nothing more than this bundle of desires whose body exists, at best, to serve those desires. What, however, if one were to reject such a take on the kind of thing a human self is, properly speaking—indeed, if one were to take seriously a Catholic/Thomistic view of the human person as created by God with a soul that is the form of the body? Would this be enough to move us clear of the difficulties caused by this notion of self? Perhaps it would—if the Thomistic tradition is properly understood. The problem is that one can find reasons within the Thomistic rendering that can cause a similar confusion. I Gareth Moore, O.P., offers a reading of Aquinas’s account in chapter 7 of his book A Question of Truth: Christianity and Homosexuality.6 There are many aspects of his reading of St. Thomas that go astray, but we will look here only at his understanding of the notion of fundamental archal Religion, Sexuality, and Gender (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), vi. 5 Turner, “Undertakings and Promises,” 10. 6 Gareth Moore, O.P., A Question of Truth: Christianity and Homosexuality (New York: Continuum, 2003). Stephen J. Heaney 40 natural inclinations. Here are two quotes illustrating his position. He first writes: “As well as being thinking creatures, we have other aspects to our nature. In particular, we have natural inclinations. We naturally want certain things, so we naturally see those things as good. (Let us call such things natural human goods.) We also naturally want to avoid certain things, so we naturally see those things as bad. It is these inclinations that, for Aquinas, give content to the natural law.”7 Shortly thereafter, he continues: The continued existence of the species is, according to Aquinas, a natural good of the species, for he believes, as we have seen, that all things naturally seek to conserve themselves. But this belief is not true; things in general do not seek to conserve themselves. Animals, including human beings, very often do, but not always. Inanimate things do not seek to conserve themselves at all, for the reason that they do not seek anything. The fact that human beings on the whole seek to preserve themselves was meant to be equivalent to their naturally seeing their own survival as good, since for human beings to desire something is to see it as good. But things which are not animals do not desire anything, and things which are not rational animals do not see anything as good.8 In a footnote to this latter passage, Moore comments on the ambiguity of the terms “inclination” and “tendency,” admitting that Aquinas could mean by these terms merely that both animate and inanimate things actually move in certain ways, rather than that they desire to act in those ways. His example is the difference between a person who tends or is inclined to smoke after a meal and a person who tends to cough while smoking: one activity is willed; the other is not. We may share the latter kind of tending with inanimate creatures, but not the former. Since it is the former alone that can be a matter of moral concern, Moore sticks with it as his interpretation of “inclination” or “tendency” as desire. There is another difficulty that arises from Moore’s interpretation: what if I am a person who does not “naturally desire” what other people “naturally desire”? Let us look at another interpreter of the natural law tradition who tackles that very question. Ibid., 181. Ibid., 185. 7 8 Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires 41 II In chapter 1 of his book Virtually Normal,9 journalist Andrew Sullivan attempts to grapple with the language Catholicism uses to explain herself concerning human sexuality, and particularly with shifts of emphasis that Sullivan believes have left the Church in contradiction with herself. He makes this attempt on the way, he hopes, to what eventually will be a proper understanding of human sexuality and, in particular, of the morality of homosexual acts; he recognizes the contribution of Thomas Aquinas (and his predecessor, Aristotle) to that understanding, and so wrestles with the notion of “nature.” Like Moore, Sullivan goes astray in many places. He begins his argument by noting that “Aquinas took the notion of an individual nature and universalized it.”10 Borrowing from Aristotle’s notion of nature as normative, Aquinas theorized that all human beings have a single fundamental nature and natural end. The natural end of the genital act is the potential to create new life. Because it can happen, it should always happen, and this is what sex is for. If so, homosexual acts are not merely against one’s own nature and law, but against the order of the universe.11 The problem, of course, is that not all human beings are naturally heterosexual. Simple observation reveals that, throughout history, there has been a steady occurrence of homosexuality. If only a fraction of the human race is unavoidably—naturally— homosexual, then there is a flaw in Aquinas’s logic. The Church has been caught up in an attempt to show that something naturally occurring is at the same time unnatural (i.e., against the end of God’s creation).12 These two arguments, Moore’s and Sullivan’s, though not identical, are alike in that they see the possibility that, in the deepest core of who we are as human beings, there may be a fundamental difference, a difference in ends and desires, that places a subset of human beings apart from the majority—and perhaps not even the majority, if there are enough people out there who have simply been repressing what they really most desire in order to fit into a social narrative.13 To Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). 10 Ibid., 32. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 33. 13 Cf. Daryl J. Bem, “The Exotic-Becomes-Erotic Theory of Sexual Orientation,” chapter 10 in Same Sex: Debating the Ethics, Science and Culture of 9 42 Stephen J. Heaney address these two separate but related issues, we must first discuss the relationship between desires and fundamental natural inclinations, and then the relationship between these fundamental inclinations and our nature. Ad 1 When we say, in common parlance, that we are inclined to a certain act or behavior or decision, we typically mean that we have a more or less well-understood desire for that act or behavior or decision. In other words, my desire is something of which I may be fully cognizant and for which I understand the reasons, but it may be that I am only dimly aware until the moment comes that I desire such an act or behavior or decision. When asked why I desired and chose as I did, the best I may be able to say about it is: “Oh, I don’t know; I just felt like it.”14 So, for example, when I say that, given the thirty-one options at the ice cream counter, I am inclined to go with the Mango-Melba Surprise, this means that my strongest desire, unless the options change or I can be persuaded otherwise, is to order the Mango-Melba Surprise. Here, the terms “inclination” and “desire” mean essentially the same thing. Thus, when we look back at medieval physics and find the claim that a rock has a natural inclination to fall downward, while fire has a natural inclination to rise, it is quite easy for us to interpret this claim as some silly notion that rocks and fire have desires, which would Homosexuality, ed. John Corvino (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), a shortened version of which appears as “Exotic Becomes Erotic: A Developmental Theory of Sexual Orientation,” Psychological Review 103(1996): 320–35. In an argument about the origins of sexual orientation that might otherwise be compatible with Aquinas, Bem repeatedly insists that the fact that the majority of people have a heterosexual orientation is the result of “a gender-polarizing culture.” One takes from this assertion that, without this cultural pressure, we might very well see a much larger homosexual—and perhaps otherwise sexually diverse—population. 14 For an interesting discussion of the experience of desire, see Alexander R. Pruss, One Body, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), ch. 3 (“Desire”). Whether we in fact agree or disagree on some important points remains a bit unclear, as Pruss does not employ the notion of fundamental inclination/drive. Is his notion of a “subconscious desire,” or the pursuit of a value over years that was not felt but acted as an organizing principle, “something in me that explains the multifarious pursuits, and . . . seems to have played the same explanatory role that a desire would have” (49), actually a Thomistic fundamental drive? It is not so properly speaking. However, “love” and “union” as described in his ch. 2 seem to have a role somewhat like fundamental drives as a basic force behind human action. Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires 43 seem to indicate that rocks and fire have some sort of awareness of their surroundings. Someone who wishes to defend the medievals as not simply silly might say something like “It’s a very primitive form of desire” or “It’s not desire like we have, but is metaphorically or even analogously like our desires.” They would not be without authority: Aquinas himself seems to say this. For instance, at Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 26.8, Aquinas talks about everything having desire, with each kind of desire being distinguishable according to the kind of knowledge necessary for its activation. The term orexis can be translated in a number of different ways: desire, appetite, appetency, tendency, inclination. Still, it is fairly easy to identify three types of orexis: natural, which requires no knowledge within the being for its activation; sensitive, which requires sense knowledge within the being for its activation; and intellectual, which requires intellectual knowledge within the being for its activation. When we look at his discussions in the Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST), however, especially concerning the fundamental inclinations in ST I-II , q. 94, a. 2, as opposed to the notion of desire expressed in his discussion of sensitive and intellectual appetite at ST I, qq. 80–83, we can see that the more typical way that Aquinas uses the word “desire” is one that more readily matches a contemporary notion. It will be particularly useful for this discussion to make a distinction between “inclinations” and “desire.” Desires are always for something identifiable by the one desiring, a desire for X. A desire for X cannot happen unless I have knowledge of X. It may be sense knowledge, or it may be intellectual knowledge, but there has to be knowledge. Thus, I cannot simply want: I want X, and I want X insofar as I know X.15 I will be satisfied (or at least I believe I will be satisfied) when I See Diana Fritz Cates, Aquinas on the Emotions: A Religious-Ethical Inquiry (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009). 130: “[A] sensory-appetitive motion cannot be ‘in act’ if it does not have an object, which is supplied by an act of sensory apprehension. . . . It bears emphasizing that a motion of the sensory appetite—and thus an emotion—is irreducibly intentional.” She continues at 158n7 (in the same chapter): “Indeed, Aquinas holds that every appetitive act or motion is in a sense intentional, such that even the appetite of the stone for the surface of the earth exhibits intentionality. The object of the earth (construed as suitable for the stone) is present, not in the mind of the stone (for the stone does not have a mind), but in the mind of God, which determines the stone to have the nature it has (Truth 22.1). This is a way of saying that everything that is, is characterized by appetite; appetite as such is always directed toward an object; and there is a principle of order 15 44 Stephen J. Heaney attain X. Animals have desires because they have sense knowledge. Plants and rocks, on the other hand, have no form of knowledge at all, and so it is incorrect to attribute desire to them. Moore is correct about this. It is perfectly reasonable, however, to talk about the drive in a plant, for instance, to preserve its own existence. It would be incorrect, according to the more careful usage just outlined, to call it a desire in the plant, but clearly it is driven toward an overall goal of staying alive and toward a number of intermediate goals that are means to this end. In fact, Aquinas states that every substance has the drive to self-preservation,16 and we see it manifested in all the mechanisms by which substances hold themselves together unless a stronger force breaks them apart. Unlike desires, these fundamental drives well up in us, even without our having any knowledge at all, and they have goals, even if we have no idea what they are. Let us stay with this drive for self-preservation, to keep oneself in existence whole and intact. How is it manifested in animals—and, in particular, in the human animal? The infant has certain self-preservative reflexes (e.g., to suck) even without knowing what it is doing (or even that it is doing it). The point of the reflex to suck is to take in food, the point of which is self-preservation. The baby does not know this; it simply is driven to these acts. Without such reflex actions, it would never survive long enough to develop a desire. Eventually, however, it will learn that the sucking brings satisfaction; then it will figure out that a certain satisfaction derives from the food; and then it will find out that there are certain foods that taste better than others. At each stage of knowledge, there is a new kind of desire (the satisfying feeling; the food; the candy). But the origin of the possibility of the desires is the fundamental drive. It is perfectly reasonable, once I come to know it, that I will not only be driven to self-preservation, but desire it, but in the beginning, I cannot desire it because I do not know it. It is also possible that, as my desires develop, I will come to desire things that, all things considered, do not really help to bring about the overall goal of self-preservation and may even work against it. I might want to eat paste, or paint chips, or lots and lots of sugar, but refuse to eat vegetables. There is nothing wrong with the fundamenthat accounts for how all object-oriented appetites come together to compose a functioning whole.” We will take up this principle of ordering in our next section. 16 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, corp. Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires 45 tal drive to self-preservation, the goal of which is that my life goes on. However, there can be a problem in the desires, which may be at cross-purposes with the fundamental drive from which they originate. How does this happen? It depends. Sugar tastes good, and it is easy to get. I may associate a certain food with other pleasures, or with pain. I may have been given certain foods and denied others. Worse things may just be there, while other, better things are not. It may simply be that my taste buds and some foods just do not get along; some tastes are simply overwhelming. Some reasons are physical, some are psychological, and some are a matter of what I know versus what I do not know. No matter what, we form habits of eating and habits of enjoyment. Our tastes do not come fully formed at birth; they have to be developed, and they are capable of change. One thing we do know is this: the point of eating is to take in nourishment, and the points of nourishment are: a) self-preservation and b) continued growth. Secondarily, and going along with this, it is an experience that can be more or less pleasant, depending on what I eat and the circumstances under which I eat. Furthermore, since we are social creatures, we find that the consumption of food can serve all kinds of functions when enjoyed in the company of others. At the very least, however, we know that its purpose is nourishment. This is what makes sense out of the organs we have and most of the things we do with food. It is for this reason that we can say that eating in ways that go against this drive as found in these bodies—eating for the taste, and then vomiting, for example—are unreasonable, a violation of our very nature. Now human beings also have a fundamental drive to sexual union—and, interestingly, to take care of their offspring that come as the natural result of such a union between a man and a woman. The drive only makes sense, given the bodies we have, as a drive that has a proper goal in the conception of new human beings. We have these drives before we know what is going on in us. Once puberty hits, however, things change. We start having a longing for something, and we do not know what it is at first. Even if two people were left alone on an island, they may well discover for themselves what the urge is for. At first, though, we do not have a desire, but a drive. The desires come later, when we can begin to understand—or misunderstand—the drive and its end, and who and what we should desire such that we can properly accomplish the end of the drive. What is different about the sexual drive from, say, the drive to survive, is that it does not start right away at birth. The urge kicks 46 Stephen J. Heaney in later, when there has been time to develop; if things go well, we develop maturity and skills. Certainly what has developed by this time are habits—habits of acting toward and thinking about people and relationships. Once the drive hits, we are already in a matrix of relationships and have an understanding of the world that shapes how it is that we desire in relation to this drive. It will affect who, what, and how we desire. So the sexual drive and sexual desires are rather like the drive to live and the desire to eat food in that my desires and tastes need to be formed. Sex, however, is unlike food in that my actual desires are already being shaped even before I experience the fundamental sexual drive. The drive does not start out on fresh ground, but on ground already developed by years of living—and the formation does not end there. The teen years are extremely volatile years in the formation of relationships. We are formed not only by our parents, but also our siblings, our friends, and the culture at large, and we are subject to the vagaries of our bodies, especially hormones. This is where the problem in sexual desire lies: a few people are well formed and the rest are not, such that some desire rightly and others not. I can tell you now that, somewhere along the line, I was not entirely well formed (and I cannot find a way to blame any other person, if a person must be blamed, except myself ), and thus I ended up desiring badly for a number of years. Fortunately, there was also that part of me that, on the intellectual level, desired rightly, and that made it possible for me eventually to begin to get it right in most respects. It took years, however, to overcome some very bad habits of thought and action formed through the influence of hormones and acquaintances and my own choices. Some of those habits rise up to surprise me at certain moments, even now in my late fifties, mostly under conditions similar to the original circumstances in which they were developed to begin with—when I am tired, or angry, or bored, or nervous, or alone, or otherwise feeling vulnerable. What is the overall point of our lives? To know and to love—ultimately to know and love God, and in this world to do that through knowing and loving those around us, to offer a gift of self to others and receive their gift. All sorts of things in our lives offer us the opportunity to know and love. The sexual drive is one particular, and particularly powerful, invitation to self-gift.17 We can make This is the whole thrust of Karol Wojyla’s Love and Responsibility in particular and of Roman Catholic teaching on sexual ethics in general. I recommend giving this book a read, if you have not already, especially in the newer translation by Grzegorz Ignatik (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2013). 17 Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires 47 some sense out of sex without self-gift, but it would not be fully human. The drive to give ourselves to others in self-gift (true love, going out of oneself ) must take up and subsume the sexual drive and particular sexual desires (the love of affection and of bringing this other to myself ) in order to fit them into the whole picture. We live in a culture that is having some difficulty distinguishing sex from love, and frequently of even recognizing the possibility, let alone the reality, of love as self-gift. We live in a culture that reduces love to desire, and frequently only to sexual desire. We live in a culture where people say, with increasing frequency, “If you do not affirm my sexual desires, then you do not affirm me as a loving being, and consequently you do not affirm me as a person.”18 Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Ad 2 The answer to Sullivan’s argument will take us a bit deeper. Recall that his argument is basically that there are two conflicting pieces of information: the “natural” end of the sexual act to create new life, and the fairly steady proportion of the population who are unavoidably (thus, “naturally”) not drawn to these sexual acts. There must be a flaw in Aquinas’s (and the Church’s) logic, and something has to give. This notion can be refuted on one level by reference to the argument just given in response to Moore. We have an explanation of the development of same-sex attraction—grounded in our fundamental natural inclinations, yet distorted in its ultimate manifestation—that, if correct, demonstrates that same-sex attraction is not inherently unavoidable (even if, at the moment, we do not know very well how to avoid it). Furthermore, it is certainly not natural: not natural in the more proper sense that it is part of the nature of this particular kind of creature, nor even “natural” in the sense that it is part of the inborn dispositions of this particular person. However, one could very well respond that, while the foregoing explanation is possible, a seemingly equally possible explanation is that some human beings have a different fundamental natural drive in relation to sexuality. This would explain the facts while undermining the claim of the “unnaturalness” of same-sex attraction and acts. Our task here is to show that this latter “equally possible” explanation is not, in fact, possible at all. This, I believe, is the problem with marriage in our culture. It is not that we do not take vows. It is that we think the vows should be about what gives us pleasure, and if it fails to give us what we want, we bail out. 18 48 Stephen J. Heaney How are we to properly understand the relationship between our fundamental drives and inclinations, our bodies, and our sense- and intellectual-level desires? Aquinas is a good Aristotelian, and so we can easily look back to Aristotle’s Physics (2.7–9), Parts of Animals (2.1) and De anima (2.1; 2.4) for the beginning of an explanation. Aristotle says the form of any thing acts not only as the formal cause but also as the efficient and final causes. This is most apparent in the form of a living thing—a soul. The form is, of course, the formal cause; that is, it makes the thing to be the kind of thing that it is, bringing a material being into existence as a body of a particular kind with a set of potentialities that differs from the set of potentialities of other things. The form is also the efficient cause. That is, when particular ends are presented to it, the form supplies the ability, the power, to perform its operations. What, however, are the operations about? What is their end? This, too, is the form. The ultimate end of its actions is the achievement of its potentials, the actualization of its fullness of being, the completeness of its form as this kind of thing. So, one way of looking at this relationship is to say that a thing has the body it has, the operations it has, and the ends it has because of its form. This, though, is an incomplete picture. Let us think from the perspective of the one who comes up with the idea for the thing—the architect, the engineer, the craftsman. Here, it is more useful to turn to Aquinas, who speaks in Summa contra gentiles about the mastery of God over creation: we call God “Lord” because we are masters of the things subject to our will.19 The things subject to our will over which we are masters, in this situation, are those things for which we are responsible because we came up with the idea of them and made them according to a plan. Anyone is the master of a thing if he a) comes up with an end for that thing and b) designs it with the inherent principles that enable it to reach the end. The inventor asks, “What is the end I have in mind to attain?” For, the kind of thing one makes depends on the end one has in mind. Having established this, the inventor asks, “What sort of operations will my invention have to perform to reach that end?” Once the kind of operations begin to come into focus, the inventor can then ask, “What kind of thing, with what kind of body, must I make to perform these operations, so that it can reach the end I have in mind?” In other words, the form the invention assumes is for the sake of the operations, which are for the sake of the end. SCG III, ch. 1.1. 19 Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires 49 So it is with God. We cannot explain ourselves. We did not bring ourselves into being. We did not design ourselves. Nothing in the universe can explain itself or its nature. God creates things with ends in mind, and designs them so they can attain those ends. How do we know what those ends are? They are manifested in the creature’s fundamental drives and inclinations, which indicate what is naturally good for the creature. So, God has ends—goods—in mind for each creature. Those ends are the point of the form the creature has (in living things, the soul), what the activities of the soul are moving toward and in which that creature reaches its fulfillment. The most fundamental thing about any soul, which is the act of the thing, is its set of fundamental drives and inclinations toward its basic ends. To be a creature of a certain species simply is to have a set of fundamental inclinations shared with other members of the species. When we say, “It is because we have this kind of soul that we have the bodies we do,” we are only getting to the first level of explanation of the relation between body and soul. Why would this kind of soul form this kind of body? The answer is: “So that the soul can perform its functions.” What are those functions? Why is the soul the first principle of these functions rather than other functions? Because we have these inclinations. And why do we have those inclinations? Because they drive us toward the ends ordained by God for us. It is because we have these ends that we have inclinations toward these ends, and it is because of these inclinations that we have the bodies we do. It is these inclinations, in these bodies, that give rise to the very possibility of desire. If one were to grant that human beings do not all have the same fundamental natural inclination to sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex, we run into real problems. We would have people with human male bodies and people with human female bodies, most of whom have a fundamental drive to sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex; some males, however, would have a fundamental drive to a somewhat similar act with members of the same sex, while some human females would have a fundamental drive to acts that bear no similarity to sexual intercourse at all. By having a distinct and different set of fundamental inclinations, it would be reasonable to say some people are members of a different species than the majority of human beings. In fact, it would be reasonable to say that same-sex-attracted males are members of a different species from same-sex-attracted females. 50 Stephen J. Heaney Such a claim would be difficult to justify. Two situations put the lie to it: bisexuality and the simple fact that at least some people—even if it is a very small number—do, in fact, change their orientation. Yet, even if human beings had no experience of these two phenomena, the very idea that there are two or more species with the exact same kind of body leaves us with some important puzzles. Those with a fundamental inclination to genital pleasure with a member of the same sex but no inclination to intercourse with members of the opposite sex are designed as organisms that, by their very nature, are driven to acts incapable of reproducing, but using bodily organs that, to all appearances, are designed for reproduction. So the soul informing the body of such a person has a reproductive power, yet is incapable of inclinations to that end. It then forms a body that is proper to the function of sexual intercourse but has no tendency to performing this particular function. One could perhaps escape this puzzle by assuming that the goal of our sexual inclinations is not intercourse, but pleasure or some other feeling, like closeness. Yet this, too, leaves us in the same conundrum. Now we would be able to explain the drive but not the bodies that have been formed by the soul. If we are to find an explanation of our sexual drives, our sexual bodies, and our sexual acts, it must include all these aspects. If we are to find the purpose of X, we must ask two questions: whether X actually brings about the purpose Y, and whether Y explains the existence of X.20 Our sexual drives move us to acts that, when performed in the kinds of bodies we have, bring about closeness and pleasure. However, these things can be obtained in many other ways, and probably more efficiently, than through all the clumsy fumbling of our sexual acts. Why do we have these bodies, with organs that, when brought together can, and in fact often do, result in offspring? If the goal is pleasure or even feelings of closeness, then these sexual bodies, and the fundamental sexual drives in most people, make no sense at all. No, these bodies with these organs and these drives are designed for sexual intercourse and the conception of children. The soul forms a body with its various operations and inclinations to reach a certain set of ends. These ends explain the inclinations, the inclinations explain the operations, and the operations explain the kind of body and its organs. J. Budziszewski, On the Meaning of Sex (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2012), 25. 20 Fundamental Inclinations and Sexual Desires 51 Conclusion As noted from the start, this essay responds to a very specific kind of argument, an argument that attempts to make use of the idea of fundamental natural inclinations as the basis of the natural law, and thus of Church teaching, to show that the natural law and Church teaching should be making room for the possibility that same-sex desires and acts are in keeping with our fundamental drives and inclinations.To the notion that our fundamental natural inclinations are simply our deepest desires, I have attempted to show that this claim confuses fundamental drives with desires based on knowledge. Rather, fundamental drives anchor the possibility of such desires. To the claim that human beings can have different fundamental natural inclinations, I have attempted to demonstrate that this reading of the notion of fundamental natural drives is, in fact, impossible. There are, of course, implications for either position. The point of arguing for the idea that there are fundamental drives to same-sex acts is to argue that, for some people at least, such acts would have to be morally permissible, or even morally imperative. If the argument I have presented is accurate, then it becomes impossible to accept this moral conclusion. Any creature’s fundamental natural drives indicate what is fundamentally good for that creature.21 A non-rational creature will, without hesitation, move toward these goods, and away from their opposites. A rational creature, being free, does not choose these ends automatically. However, having arrived at the indemonstrably true conclusion that good is to be sought and its opposite avoided, and realizing further that certain things are good based upon his grasp of human fundamental inclinations, he realizes that these things are to be sought and their opposites avoided if he is to achieve his ultimate end.22 In regard to sexuality, the only description of the fundamental sexual drive in human beings that makes sense of the bodies we have and the acts most human beings pursue in this regard is that the drive grounding all of our sexual responses is toward sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. Despite the fundamental natural drive, a particular person develops dispositions and habits that run counter to this drive. This can develop due to any number of factors. Furthermore, it would seem to be the case that those who argue for same-sex attraction as a fundamental natural drive would also ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2, corp. ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, corp. 21 22 52 Stephen J. Heaney be likely to believe that this attraction in anyone is a fixed phenomenon that cannot be altered. This proposition is also doomed if my argument is correct. The state of same-sex attraction is a situation of brokenness, and any brokenness can, in principle, be repaired, even if we do not currently know how to fix it. Even death, which is out of the hands of human repair once it occurs, is reparable by the Creator. How much more can we expect that same-sex desire, which by this account certainly appears to be a psychological condition, should be fixable if we can determine its cause and the proper N&V approach to it. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 53–73 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth: Being, Truth, the Good, and the Primordial Conscience in a Thomist Perspective1 Reinhard Hütter Duke University Divinity School Durham, NC Catholic University of America Washington, DC For Richard Schenk, O.P., on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday The Dominant Self-Image of Late Modern Humanity: The Sovereign Subject In the early decades of the twenty-first century, an obser- vant spectator might perceive the striking ambiguity that haunts the self-image of late modern humanity in the Western Hemisphere. The rapidly accelerating progress of the scientific penetration of the natural world and the ensuing technological domination of the whole planet seem to have advanced humanity into a quasi-divine position, into a collective Demiurge. Sovereignty, once upon a time an exclusive attri An earlier version of the essay was delivered at New York University, New York City, April 18, 2015, as part of the Thomistic Circles symposium “Aquinas on Metaphysics and the Good.”The final version of the essay has benefited from the support of the John Templeton Foundation grant “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.” I am indebted to the constructive suggestions and critical comments of all the participants of this research project, most especially to Michael Gorman and Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. I dedicate this essay to Fr. Richard Schenk, O.P., on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. He is one of the most generous, learned, and sophisticated Catholic theologians and scholars of medieval theology I have had the privilege to know and befriend. 1 54 Reinhard Hütter bute of divinity, seems now to fall to humanity collectively, and to each individual human subject in rather far-reaching specific ways. In the affluent parts of the Western Hemisphere, subjective sovereignty is exercised by way of the unfettered rule of one’s will over (ideally) everything exterior to one’s will, from myriads of consumer goods to varyingly branded identities and, last but not least, ideological and religious affiliations. The precious and tenaciously defended privilege of subjective sovereignty is, of course, choice. The scope of choice is seen as directly proportional to the degree of subjective sovereignty—an increase in the former indicates an increase in the latter. However, the interpretation of reality that the natural sciences communicate to the public presents a jarringly different picture—a picture that puts into question the very possibility of subjective sovereignty. The human mind is understood as an epiphenomenon of the brain’s neurological processes, and human choices are predicted with statistical precision and unmasked as ultimately driven by nothing other than the interests of the “selfish gene.” According to the naturalist savants of the most advanced life-sciences, humans are nothing but highly sophisticated primates that will eventually be transparent without remainder to the scientific gaze and, therefore, open to comprehensive governance by way of the most advanced psychological and technological means of manipulation. Thus, the modern subject vacillates between two competing self-images. On the one side, we find the gnostic angelism of the putatively disembodied sovereign self that may submit to its will an absolutely malleable and fluid exteriority. And on the other side, we find the materialist animalism of a super-primate that is the accidental product of the intricate interplay between random genetic mutation and specific ecological niche preferment. The extremes touch each other insofar as trans-humanism (an outgrowth of the fantasies of the sovereign self ) and post-humanism (the reductive understanding of the human being as super-primate) coincide in their de facto erasure of the embodied rational being, the animal rationale. As always, so also in our contemporary context, deeply shaped by the utopian pretenses of trans-humanism and post-humanism, sovereignty has two aspects: the sovereign agent and the objects upon which sovereignty is exercised. The interminable struggle in late-modern technologically advanced, economically consumer-capitalist, and politically putatively liberal societies of the Western To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 55 Hemisphere is to avoid at all costs being subjected to—and thereby objectified by—the sovereignty of others and simultaneously to maximize one’s possibilities of exercising subjective sovereignty. In our robustly secular and deeply skeptical Western societies, subjective sovereignty is the one transcendence the modern subject remains certain of, since it is self-produced. This particular form of transcendence is a decidedly immanent transcendence, for its outer horizon is death. Death defies all strategies of maintaining or increasing subjective sovereignty—albeit with one significant exception: the unique strategy of folding death into the last act of one’s own subjective sovereignty by sovereignly determining the terminus of oneself and the subsequent annihilation of one’s body. It is this deeply ironic, yet equally deeply consistent, consequence that betrays the profound pretention and falsehood of the self-image of subjective sovereignty. The Metaphysics of Being and Its Three Fundamental Premises Regarding Being, Truth, and the Good2 What might be the cure from this pervasive but profoundly false self-image? I would submit, in all due modesty, that the only lasting cure will be nothing short of recovering and reconsidering an alternative that is truly radical in that it attends to the roots from which the false self-image of subjective sovereignty arises. This radical alternative is nothing else but divine sovereignty. But note well that divine sovereignty does not denote the contradictory to subjective sovereignty, meaning the competitive sovereignty of the “Other” (as most moderns would misunderstand divine sovereignty), an alternative sovereignty that would annihilate or at least curtail subjective sovereignty, a threatening sovereignty that, in the service of protecting subjective sovereignty, must be placated, ignored, or simply declared non-existent. Such a cure would quite obviously not get to the root of the problem at all. It would only intensify the stratagems of sovereign subjectivity. Rather, getting to the root of the problem means nothing less than to undertake the labor of recovering and reconsidering the primordial reality of the transcendent Good and its non-competitive sovereignty. This recovery and reconsideration would afford once again direct access to an objective moral reality in the light of which we can begin The whole essay, especially the following section, is deeply indebted to Josef Pieper’s interpretation of Aquinas in his Reality and the Good, which (in the English translation) forms the second part of the book Living the Truth, trans. Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989). 2 56 Reinhard Hütter to understand the deeply problematic nature of the anthropocentric turn. This program of recovery forms an important part of the Thomist engagement of modernity. At the heart of this program stands the comprehensive retrieval of the metaphysics of being, which, in its full depth, is necessarily a metaphysics of creation. It rests on the fundamental Thomistic principle that “creare est dare esse,” that to create is to give existence. This principle marks the crucial onto-theological difference between the transcendent creative source of all existence, the subsistent act of being, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the participated act of being, the “dare esse,” the term of which is the “datum,” the gift of the contingent existence of discrete beings. Nothing less than such a recovery will reach deep enough to eradicate the bitter roots which feed the self-images of gnostic angelism and materialist animalism. This Thomist metaphysics of being entails three fundamental premises, premises I cannot develop (let alone defend) in this essay, but only name and in the following suppose as true, because I intend to focus on one, albeit crucial consequence of these premises—the primordial conscience. It is the reality of the primordial conscience that allows us best to confront the problem of subjective sovereignty and, in principle already, to overcome it. But first, the three fundamental premises entailed in the metaphysics of creation must be examined. The first is the ontological premise: “Deus omnium entium est mensura”—God is the measure of all things. Through the creative knowledge of God, all real things are what they are. Differently put, all created things have their pre-form, their model, in the intellect of God; the divine knowledge is their exterior formal cause. Aquinas puts it thus: “Natural things from which our intellect gets its scientific knowledge measure our intellect. Yet these things are themselves measured by the divine intellect, in which are all created things—just as all works of art find their origin in the intellect of the artist. The divine intellect, therefore, measures and is not measured; a natural thing both measures and is measured; but our intellect is measured and measures only artifacts, not natural things.”3 De veritate, q. 1, a. 2, resp., in Aquinas, Truth, vol. 1: Questions I–IX, trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 11. For an astute and lucid treatment of this important topic, see Gregory T. Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008). 3 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 57 In the last sentence, Aquinas refers to the realm of technē or ars, the vast realm of human creative ingenuity. But the intellect’s ability to give the measure depends on the antecedent reception of the measure by the intellect. Aquinas states, “The human intellect is measured by things, so that a human concept is not true by reason of itself, but by reason of its being consonant with things, since an opinion is true or false according as it answers to the reality.”4 Thus, the second premise, the epistemological premise, follows directly from the ontological premise: Pace Kantian critical idealism and Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, human cognition attains the truth of real things. In the order of being, the measure that the extant thing receives by way of the original gift of being is its essence, its substantial form. In the order of knowledge, the measure that the intellect receives from the extant thing by way of the senses is the intentional form. The measure that constitutes the thing, its substantial form, and the measure that the object communicates to the intellect, its intentional form, are identical in essence but subsist in different modes of being, esse reale and esse intentionale. From the epistemological premise follows the third premise, which pertains to the order of action. Here is one of Aquinas’s many formulations of this principle: “The will does not have the character of a first rule; it is rather a rule which has a rule, for it is directed by reason and the intellect.”5 The intellect’s relation to reality antecedes the will’s relation to it. As the rational appetite, the will’s execution of specific acts depends on the prior deliveries of the intellect. The intellect’s proper object is being and the intellect’s proper end is truth. Affirming the primacy of the intellect over the will, Aquinas states that “the good, as truth, is related more primarily to knowledge than it is related, as good, to the will.”6 The human good is therefore not Summa theologiae (herafter, ST) I-II, q. 93, a. 1, ad 3. All English citations from ST are taken from the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948; repr. Christian Classics, 1981), and alterations are indicated by brackets. Consider the superior luminosity of Aquinas’s Latin rendition: “Intellectus . . . humanus est mensuratus a rebus, ut scilicet conceptus hominis non sit verus propter seipsum, sed dicitur verus ex hoc quod consonant rebus, ex hoc enim quod res est vel non est, opinio vera vel falsa est [Aristotle, Categories 5.22]” (available at http://www.corpusthomisticum. org/sth2093.html). 5 De veritate, q. 23, a. 6, in Thomas Aquinas, Truth, vol. 3, Questions I–IX, trans. Robert W. Schmidt, S.J. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 119. 6 ST I-II, q. 19, a. 3, ad 1; see also De veritate, q. 21, a. 3. 4 58 Reinhard Hütter what the will sovereignly determines it to be. Rather, the human good is that which is first and foremost in accord with reality. But what is “reality”? “Reality” is one of those concepts that belong to the very bedrock of Aquinas’s metaphysics. According to Josef Pieper’s lucid characterization in Reality and the Good, for Aquinas, “reality” means primarily two things expressed by the two Latin words realis and actualis: one derived from the Latin res, thing, and the other from actus, action. Res signifies everything “that is ‘presented’ to our sense perception or our intellectual cognition, all that has being independently of our thinking.” 7 Actualitas, on the other hand, signifies the opposite to whatever is merely potential. “Reality in this sense means the realized potentiality.”8 And thus, to be good means not only to be directed toward realization, or actualization, but rather also to be “realized” and hence fully in accord with reality. Aquinas states, “Each thing is perfect in so far as it is actual [i.e., realized], since potentiality without act [i.e., without realization] is imperfect.”9 Of course, absolute actualitas, the Ens Actualissimum, is the sovereign good, God. Nota bene that the divine absolute actualitas does not entail that, in God, all potentialities are actualized. Rather, it denotes that, without anything having been actualized, God is simply pure act in infinite plenitude. The Eternal and the Natural Law According to the ontological constitution of participated being, each being is directed first and foremost to its own perfection, to the full actualization of its nature. Simultaneously, by the self-same actualization of its nature, every being is directed to the twofold good of the universe: the order among the parts and the ordering of the whole universe to God.10 Aquinas holds it to be a sovereign manifestation of the sovereign good, God, that, in all eternity, by an act of the divine will informed by divine wisdom, God intends the end of a perfect universe. No single being, however, is able perfectly to manifest this surpassing Pieper, Living the Truth, 111. Ibid. 9 ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2. “Realized” and “without realization” are my own alterations, rather than those of the translators. 10 See esp. Summa contra gentiles I, ch. 29, and III, chs. 23–32. On this topic, now available in English, see the important essay by Charles de Koninck, “The Primacy of the Common Good against the Personalists,” in The Writings of Charles de Koninck, vol. 2, ed. and trans. Ralph McInerny (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 63–108. 7 8 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 59 goodness. Therefore, God created an abundance of diverse beings with a plethora of different perfections. The universe as a whole thereby more perfectly manifests and participates in God’s goodness. However, beings are more like God when they act and cause being. For this very reason, Aquinas argues, God created all things in a state of potency to their particular type of action. When each being performs its particular type of action, it contributes to the perfection of the universe. And because God creates and guides creatures to their proper perfection in light of the same end (the perfection of the whole), each being acts in accord with its particular mode of participation in the act of being that is its primary perfection, the substantial form. Through these acts, which are its secondary perfections, each being reaches its specific end. These secondary perfections are the way each being participates in the eternal law, the ratio by way of which God governs the universe.11 God’s ratio, the eternal law, has imprinted upon all beings natural inclinations to their proper natural ends. Precisely by following their natural inclinations, all beings pursue their own perfection and contribute to the perfection of the whole universe. Rational beings participate in this ratio in a unique way, a way proper to their rational nature. In analogy to the eternal law, Aquinas calls this natural cognitive participation of rational beings in the eternal law “natural law.”12 In virtue of the natural law, rational creatures are “partakers of a share of providence, by being both provident for [themselves] and for others.”13 This participation occurs by way of the natural inclination of practical reason to the proper act and end of the rational being: “On the part of practical reason, [the human being] has a natural participation of the eternal law, according to certain general principles.”14 Aquinas calls this natural participation of the eternal law by the human being synderesis, which denotes the primordial conscience. But what is synderesis? Aquinas distinguishes two aspects of the For a lucid discussion of this complex topic, from which I learned a lot, see John Rziha, Perfecting Human Actions: St.Thomas Aquinas on Human Participation in Eternal Law (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009). 12 ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2. Aquinas understands the natural law fundamentally as the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law, which “is nothing else than the type of Divine Wisdom, as directing all actions and movements” (ST I-II, q. 93, a. 1, resp.). For an instructive treatment of this crucial aspect of Aquinas’s sapiential moral theology, see Rziha, Perfecting Human Actions, 199–230. 13 ST I-II, q. 92, a. 2, resp. 14 ST I-II, q. 91, a. 3, ad 1. 11 60 Reinhard Hütter human intellect: speculative reason and practical reason. The end of each is truth: for speculative reason, truth in the order of being, and for practical reason, truth in the order of agency. Speculative reason and practical reason are able to pursue and achieve their end, truth, only in virtue of certain fundamental principles that reside in the intellect as innate habits or dispositions. The innate habit of speculative reason contains the first principles of abstract reason, and the innate habit of practical reason contains the first principles of action. The principle of non-contradiction is based upon the concept of being, which is the proper object of the speculative reason; the first principle and the first precept of synderesis are based upon the concept of the good, which is the proper object of practical reason. Synderesis—the Primordial Conscience Synderesis, the primordial conscience, is a natural, innate habitus of the human mind. In virtue of this unique habitus, human beings are enabled, and indeed ordered, “to have a primary infallible judgment about the good as the end and the meaning of human action.”15 This destination toward such a primary and infallible judgment is possible because this innate natural habitus contains the first principle and the first precept of practical reason. Its first principle is “good is that which all things seek after,” and its first precept is “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.”16 As the foremost Thomist moral theologian, Servais Pinckaers, rightly stresses, it is important to realize that the first precept “does not primarily signify an obligation to do the good. Rather, it expresses the attraction of the good. . . . It is this urgency of the truth within the good, within the very attraction of the good, that is at the heart of the intimate awareness of duty and obligation.”17 The first precept expresses the inherent attraction of the good as understood good. The natural habitus of first principle and first precept enables the rational creature not only to move to some perceived good but also to realize the ratio finis, the character of good. Because good Pieper, Living the Truth, 153. ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, resp. Aquinas explains: “Good is the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action: since every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good. Consequently, the first principle in practical reason is founded on the notion of good, i.e., that good is that which all things seek after. Hence this is the first precept of law, that good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided” (ibid.). 17 Servais Pinckaers, O.P., Morality:The Catholic View, trans. Michael Sherwin, O.P. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 100. 15 16 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 61 is the perfection that all beings desire and to which all beings move as their final end,18 the primordial conscience, synderesis, enables the human qua rational being to realize the teleology of the good by participating, by way of the natural law, in the eternal law. Genuine human freedom arises precisely from the rational being’s proper rational participation in the eternal law and is perfected when the rational being acts fully in accord with the eternal law.19 Incidentally, on the supposition of the fundamental teleological ordering of the universe, the so-called naturalistic fallacy (the illicit transition from “is” to “ought,” from the order of being to the moral order, a putative fallacy invented by David Hume and named by G. E. Moore) is a moot concern.20 For, belonging all the way down to the extant teleologically ordered universe, human beings—as all other beings—are teleologically constituted by way of their natural inclinations.21 As a tendency to its proper end or good, the “ought” is embedded in the “is” of every being, and especially in those beings that realize their perfection through the exercise of practical reason. The primordial conscience, synderesis, is not only a formal but also a teleological principle interior to practical reason itself. There is one further implication given with the interior teleological constitution of practical reason. Because synderesis, the primordial ST I, q. 5, aa. 1 and 4. Rziha, Perfecting Human Actions, 265: “For Thomas, freedom does not come from a blind movement of the will or sense appetites but comes from the will and sense appetites being determined by human reason to intend and choose acts in accord with the ultimate end of humanity. . . . Hence, freedom is bound up in rationality, which derives its light and intellectual forms from the eternal law. . . . Authentic human freedom is first and foremost caused by the eternal law and only caused by the human through the soul’s participation in the eternal law.” 20 One can, of course, argue that synderesis does not exist. But the burden of the proof rests with the one who advances such an argument, for the overwhelming empirical evidence in human history speaks for the existence of synderesis. For a modern discussion of the problem raised by Hume expressly in his anonymously published 1739/40 Treatise of Human Nature, Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects (III, I, 1), coined as “naturalistic fallacy” by G. E. Moore in his 1903 Principia Ethica (ch. 2), see The Is-Ought Question, ed. William Donald Hudson (London: Macmillan, 1969), and for a substantive treatment of this problematic and an in-depth analysis of Aquinas’s philosophical justification for the transition from “is” to “ought,” see Piotr Lichacz, “Did St. Thomas Aquinas Justify the Transition from ‘Is’ to ‘Ought’?” (STD diss., University of Fribourg, 2008). 21 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, resp. 18 19 62 Reinhard Hütter conscience, is a habitual light, it prevents the dictates of conscience from ever becoming heteronomous. For, the dictates of conscience are nothing but the concretization, by way of judgment, of those principles and precepts that are constitutive of the teleological ordering of practical reason itself. For this very reason, an objective teleological ethics grounded in the primordial conscience and in the natural inclinations remains untouched by the false binary of heteronomy and autonomy, the direct result of the anthropocentric turn that haunts most modern moral philosophy.22 Turning away from the primordial conscience and, with it, from the teleological order of reality and embracing instead the negative freedom of sovereign self-determination, the anthropocentric turn and the consequent ascendency of the subjective sovereignty give rise to a pervasive counterfeit of conscience, the presumptuous “authenticity” of self-will. This counterfeit is condemned to a never-ending vigilance against the constant threat of a hostile “takeover” by other sovereign self-wills, be they human “others” or a supposed divine “Other” misconceived in the false self-image of subjective sovereignty. The Primordial Conscience and Its Act, Con-scientia We must now turn to the act of the primordial conscience. Aquinas calls this act con-scientia, “knowing together.” Recall that Aquinas defines synderesis as “a natural habitus of first principles of action, which are the universal principles of the natural law.”23 Synderesis names practical reason as “perfected by a completely determined habitus.”24 The natural determination of practical reason consists in “a primordial perception of the good proper to [the human being].”25 The intellect, in its theoretical and practical aspects, intuits self-evident principles that are antecedent to rational deliberation but consequent to learning the terms of these principles through basic sense experience. Aquinas explains this matter succinctly in the context of discussing the question of whether any habitus is natural, meaning innate: “The understand See J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 23 De veritate, q. 16, a. 1, resp., in, Thomas Aquinas, Truth, vol. 2, Questions X–XX, trans. James V. McGlynn, S.J. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 304 (Truth II). See also his In II Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 3, and ST I, q. 79, a. 12. 24 De veritate, q. 16, a. 2, ad 5 (Truth, 2:310). 25 Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 384. 22 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 63 ing of first principles is called a natural habit. For it is owing to the very nature of the intellectual soul that [a human being], having once grasped what is a whole and what is a part, would at once perceive that every whole is larger than its part: and in like manner with regard to other such principles. Yet what is a whole, and what is a part—this he cannot know except through the intelligible species which he has received from phantasms: and for this reason, the Philosopher at the end of the Posterior Analytics shows that knowledge of principles comes to us from the senses.”26 But what does all of this mean on the operational level? 27 Con-scientia signifies the actualization of the natural habitus of the first principles of moral truth in two respects.28 There first occurs a concrete judgment of practical reason, which is then followed by a command of reason that applies this knowledge to action.29 The judgment of con-scientia normally occurs prospectively, antecedent to the execution of a specific exterior act. But it also may occur retrospectively, consequent to the execution or the omission of some specific exterior act. Conscience and the Virtue of Prudence In order to gain a deeper understanding of the objective nature of primordial conscience and its actualization in con-scientia, we must appreciate how con-scientia relates to the principal cardinal virtue, prudence, which Aquinas defines as “right practical reason.” “Prudence imprints the inward seal of goodness upon all free activity of the human being.”30 Hence, “what is prudent and what is good are substantially one and the same; they differ only in their place in the logical succession of realization. For what is good must first have been prudent.”31 What difference does the virtue of prudence make if, indeed, as Aquinas claims, “synderesis moves prudence [the knowledge of truth in the ST I-II, q. 51, a. 1, resp. The Greek term for this actualization is συνείδησις, and its Latin literal translation is con-scientia. By the time the Apostle Paul wrote his letters, both terms were common in popular everyday usage of Greek and Latin. Paul uses συνείδησις frequently: Rom 2:15; 1 Cor 8:7, 10, 12; 10:28–29; 2 Cor 1:12–13; 1 Tim 1:19; Titus 1:15. 28 ST I, q. 79, a. 13, resp. See also De veritate, q. 17, a. 1, and In II sent. d. 24, q. 2, a. 4. 29 ST I-II, q.19, a. 5, resp. 30 Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence—Justice—Fortitude—Temperance (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 7f. 31 Ibid., 7. 26 27 64 Reinhard Hütter practical order], just as the understanding of principles moves science [the knowledge of truth in the theoretical order]”?32 To be sure, the virtue of prudence does make a crucial difference. For this particular virtue concretizes the third premise from above, the premise that pertains to the order of action. Recall Aquinas’s formulation of this premise: “The will does not have the character of a first rule; it is rather a rule which has a rule, for it is directed by reason and the intellect.”33 Consistent with this rule, Aquinas conceives of prudence as having a cognitive as well as a commanding quality.34 Willing and acting depend upon prudence in precisely this: the concrete moral action of the will receives its measure from the command (iudicium) of prudence.35 Aquinas puts this matter quite explicitly in article 13 of his treatise On the Virtues in General: “Reason . . . relates to the things that it puts into effect as being their standard and measure. . . . By contrast, it relates to the things about which it reflects, as something that is measured and regulated relates to its standard and measure. For the good of our intelligence is what is true, and our intelligence attains that precisely by corresponding to the thing that it understands.”36 Note well that, in this function of giving the measure of the concrete moral action to the will by way of command, prudence, as the perfective excellence of practical reason, is precisely an extension of speculative reason. Unlike the divine intellect, the human intellect must receive the measure before it can give the measure. Josef Pieper puts the matter as clearly as one could wish: Knowledge of being is “lengthened” and transformed into decision and command. The imperative is founded upon the indicative, the latter makes the former possible. Essentially prior to the decision and command is the purely perceptive statement. The “image” of the real precedes and underlies the “plan” of all realization. . . . Decision and command, in which the practical reason is realized, signify, then, a knowledge which turns towards the will. But knowledge is an essential ST II-II, q. 47, a. 6, ad 3. De veritate, q. 23, a. 6 (Truth, 3:119). 34 ST II-II, q. 48, art. unicus. 35 ST I-II, q. 64, a. 3. 36 Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on the Virtues, ed. E. M. Atkins and Thomas Williams, trans. E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 98. 32 33 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 65 identity of the mind with the objective reality. The relation between these two facts reveals the measure and the manner in which the practical reason proper, which on its part determines the free act, is essentially bound up with the objective reality which is perceived in our knowledge of being.37 Aquinas’s account of practical reason comes thus to stand in the sharpest possible contrast to all modern accounts of practical reason, accounts that, in the wake of the anthropocentric turn, move the human into a quasi-divine position: “practical” reason becomes now essentially creative, indeed, constructive—that is, in short, sovereign. The utterly realist nature of the virtue of prudence firmly established, the question remains as to how the act of con-scientia is to be understood in relationship to prudence. Among the three acts of the virtue of prudence—to take counsel (consiliari), to judge (iudicare), and to command (praecipere)—con-scientia comprises the second act when this judgment is right and certain, when it is indeed properly formed by the virtue of prudence.38 But note well that con-scientia, in and of itself, is not efficacious in choosing and doing the good. Consider the morally weak person. Following Aristotle, Aquinas calls such a person incontinent. The incontinent person “knows what he ought to do, his conscience is all right, but his knowledge of the good is not complemented by an effective appetitive disposition to good as good. That is why in the crunch, in choosing . . . he goes wrong.”39 While judgments of con-scientia are absolutely indispensable for moral goodness, simple con-scientia lacks the power of execution.40 What remains indispensable for efficaciously choosing and doing the good is that the Pieper, Living the Truth, 144. ST II-II, q. 47, a. 8. 39 Ralph McInerny, “Prudence and Conscience,” The Thomist 38 (1974): 291–305, at 303. 40 Command (imperium) is an act of the intellect moved by the will (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1). When imperium is an act integral to the virtue of prudence (instead of being the result of precipitation or thoughtlessness), Aquinas calls it praecipium, command as informed by right judgment. Indeed, he regards the act of command (praecipere) as the principal act of prudence. Practical reason is directed to action. Therefore, after counsel or deliberation and judgment, the third act of prudence is “to command [praecipere] which act consists in applying to action the things counseled and judged. And since this act approaches nearer to the end of practical reason, it follows that it is the chief act of the practical reason, and consequently of prudence” (ST II-II, q. 47, a. 8, resp.). 37 38 66 Reinhard Hütter two other acts of the virtue of prudence (counsel41 and command) act in concert with the remaining cardinal virtues (justice, fortitude, and temperance). At its very best (that is, when it is right and certain), the antecedent judgment of con-scientia is an integral component of the virtue of prudence. Once the habitus of prudence has been diminished or completely lost due to contrary acts of imprudence42 and the act of counsel prevented by precipitation43 or by thoughtlessness44, the flight from the synderistic indicator of moral truth prepares the indulgence in the counterfeit of conscience, the presumptuous “authenticity” of selfwill. Regarding its own decisions as intrinsically infallible expressions of a sovereign self-determination, the counterfeit foregoes counsel. The decisions the counterfeit posits create the semblance of a true, and therefore good, conscience precisely because the counterfeit’s decisions are held as infallible. By feigning authenticity, the sovereign self-determination produces a counterfeit that blocks access to the synderistic root of right judgment. The Erroneous Conscience But how does this phenomenon, the counterfeit of conscience producing a simulacrum of the true and, therefore, good conscience, relate to the phenomenon of the erroneous conscience? Could the counterfeit In ST II-II, q. 53, a. 3, resp., Aquinas lays out the contours of the ideal act of taking counsel, which comprises five steps: “Memory [memoria] of the past, intelligence [intelligentia] of the present, shrewdness [solertia] in considering the future outcome, reasoning [ratiocinatio] which compares one thing with another, docility [docilitas] in accepting the opinions of others. He that takes counsel descends by these steps in due order.” That these five steps are not solitary events in the agent’s soul but, on the contrary, reflect primarily distinct aspects of the dynamic of social interaction of deliberation becomes clear when one considers Aquinas’s important statement in ST I-II, q. 14, a. 3, resp: “Counsel properly implies a conference held between several; the very word (consilium) denotes this, for it means a sitting together (considium), from the fact that many sit together in order to confer with one another.” I am indebted to Raymond F. Hain IV for having learned to think about counsel as a primarily social activity; see the section “Is Consilium a Social Activity?” in his instructive dissertation, “Practical Virtues: Instrumental Practical Reason and the Virtues” (PhD Diss., University of Notre Dame, 2009), 177–82, and more recently his important essay “Consilium and the Foundations of Ethics,” The Thomist 79 (2015): 43–74. 42 ST II-II, q. 53. 43 Ibid., a. 3. 44 Ibid., q. 53, a. 4. 41 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 67 of conscience not be understood as an instantiation of the erroneous conscience? That this is not the case will become plain when we understand the characteristics of an erroneous conscience. The judgment of con-scientia, the application of the universal principles of synderesis to a particular case, is not infallible. When properly informed by prudence—that is, when conformed to right intention according to the principles and precepts of synderesis and when subjectively certain—the judgment of con-scientia is practically true and right. But the agent might suffer from ignorance and might therefore be objectively burdened by an erroneous conscience. Hence, the characteristic deficiency of an erroneous conscience is ignorance. Such ignorance can be voluntary or involuntary, vincible or invincible.45 Since the dictate of conscience binds and must be obeyed, a dictate issuing from an objectively erroneous conscience must nevertheless be subjectively obeyed. Aquinas rightly insists upon this point. But does such an insistence not open the door to the authenticity of selfwill, the counterfeit of conscience? Consider how Aquinas distinguishes between the objective and the subjective perspective: Conscience is said to bind in so far as one sins if he does not follow his conscience, but not in the sense that he acts correctly if he does follow it. . . . Conscience is not said to bind in the sense that what one does according to such a conscience will be good, but in the sense that in not following it he will sin. . . . A correct conscience and a false conscience bind in different ways. The correct conscience binds absolutely and for an intrinsic reason; the false binds in a qualified way and for an extrinsic reason.46 Aquinas holds that the correct conscience binds absolutely and for an intrinsic reason because a judgment of con-scientia that is practically true is necessarily also right. The erroneous conscience does indeed bind, not because it is correct, but because the judgment of con-scientia is all a person can go by—at the moment. Nevertheless, the erroneous conscience can be identified eventually as such because it depends upon the logical priority of the correct conscience, which applies the principles of ST I-II, q. 76. De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, resp. (Truth 2:331–32). See also ST I-II, q. 19, a. 5, resp. 45 46 68 Reinhard Hütter synderesis rightly. From the agent’s perspective, the way to find out whether one has acted from an erroneous conscience or not occurs in light of instruction, counsel, or self-examination by way of a consequent judgment of con-scientia, either in the form of a moral self-critique that elicits regret and remorse (in the case of a formerly erroneous conscience) or in the form of a simple retrospective affirmation that one’s true, and therefore good, conscience has indeed also been right. Precisely because of the innate habitus of synderesis, the principle, and therefore the concrete possibility, of self-correction always obtains. For this reason, it is the case that, while the erroneous conscience indeed binds, it does not automatically excuse. Aquinas explains: “If . . . reason or conscience should err voluntarily, either directly or because of negligence, being in error about something one is held to know, then such error does not prevent the will which is in accord with erring reason or conscience from being evil.”47 He then adds, “Similarly, supposing error of reason or conscience which proceeds from a non-excusing ignorance, evil in the will necessarily follows. However, such a [person is not perplexed], because he can correct his error, since his ignorance is both vincible and voluntary.”48 Culpable erroneous conscience is caused either by negligence,49 which makes it indirectly voluntary, or by willful ignorance,50 which makes it directly voluntary. In his Commentary on the Sentences, the young Aquinas offers a pithy summary of this complex matter: to follow one’s erring conscience means to be unable to avoid sinning (peccatum non evaditur), but to act against one’s conscience means to directly incur sin (peccatum incurritur).51 To turn intentionally against the judgment of conscience is always culpable because it means that one cuts oneself off from the very possibility of following moral truth. To follow one’s erring conscience means to do what seems subjectively right but what is objectively wrong. The Erroneous Conscience and the Counterfeit of Conscience We have reached the point where we can name the difference between the erroneous conscience and the counterfeit of conscience. First, ST I-II, q. 19, a. 6, resp. ST I-II, q. 19, a. 6, ad 3. 49 See ST II-II, q. 54 (lack of due solicitude). 50 See ST I-II, q. 76. 51 In II sent. d. 39, q. 3, a. 3. See also his later Quodlibet III, q. 12, a. 2, ad 2. 47 48 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 69 from the objective perspective afforded by the Thomist metaphysics of the good and its entailed moral science, the reality of an erroneous conscience presupposes an objective moral order and reliable knowledge of it. For a consistent moral subjectivism and the concomitant rule of self-will, on the contrary, an erroneous conscience is an utterly meaningless notion. By positing its own dictates of self-will, the subjectivist counterfeit of conscience is, by definition, infallible. Because it is the law of its own dictates, there is nothing in light of which the counterfeit of conscience can possibly err.52 In the wake of the anthropocentric turn, “sincerity,” “authenticity,” and “being at peace with oneself ” become the new criteria of a radically subjectivist conception of moral judgment in service of the sovereign subject. These new criteria are intended to mute the voice of the primordial conscience and, thereby, to unhinge the “rule of ethical truth.”53 Second, from the agent’s perspective, the very possibility of an erroneous conscience entails an antecedent and a consequent personal duty. The antecedent duty is to avoid ignorance and imprudence. Formulated positively, the antecedent duty is always to seek counsel, to have one’s conscience formed by those one regards as wiser and better informed than oneself, and first and foremost, to avail oneself of the instruction by and guidance of those whose specific vocation is to instruct conscience by teaching the secondary precepts of the natural law. The consequent duty is to avoid negligence and indifference by way of a regular examination of conscience, a sincere review of past judgments, and repentance of acts done due to an erroneous conscience. Third, in light of Aquinas’s doctrine of conscience, the counterfeit of conscience is objectively a result of willful ignorance, or at least of negligence and thoughtlessness. In the worst case, the counterfeit is an intentional, self-conscious flight from conscience: by positing decisions of the self-will, a person acts in direct opposition to the judgments of a correct conscience. Does this mean that the counterfeit of conscience is able to extinguish synderesis? Aquinas addresses this question explicitly. He denies that synderesis can be extinguished in its root through a loss of the Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s subjective idealism offers probably the most consistent, but also most problematic, account of the inherently infallible conscience. 53 John Henry Cardinal Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1888; repr. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1969), 175–378, 246. 52 70 Reinhard Hütter innate habitus, “for this light belongs to the nature of the soul, since by reason of this the soul is intellectual.”54 But regarding the actualization of the habitus, synderesis can indeed be deflected toward the contrary of synderesis whenever “the force of concupiscence, or of another passion, so absorbs reason that in choice the universal judgment of synderesis is not applied to the particular act.”55 It is here that Aquinas points to what we might call the dark secret of the counterfeit of conscience. What looks to the person fleeing primordial conscience like the sovereignly posited decisions of self-determination are indeed the products of a profound self-deception. The flight from primordial conscience actually makes the moral agent subject to the power of the sensual passions and the variegated desires of the will to which they give rise. However, because the primordial conscience cannot be destroyed, but only fled from or suppressed, the counterfeit of conscience must be willfully maintained, directly or— more frequently—indirectly. For, all the decisions the counterfeit sovereignly posits remain exposed to the “habitual light” that the first principle and the first precept of synderesis shed on the agent’s reason. The counterfeit is therefore inherently unable to gain the peace that is characteristic of a conscience that is both subjectively true, and therefore good, and objectively correct.56 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth—From Metaphysics to Mystagogy Where have we arrived? At Aquinas’s sobering suggestion that to be good is to do the truth. For, good is that which is in accord with reality—a reality whose measure is the First Truth who is the Sovereign Good. Every human being qua rational being has received a natural, innate habitus that reflects the measure that the rational being received in its rational nature: while the sphere of theoretical thinking is governed by the fundamental principle of non-contradiction, the sphere of practical thinking is governed by synderesis, the first principle of the natural law. In Aquinas’s words: “The original direction of all our actions toward the end is necessarily brought about by the natural De veritate, q. 16, a. 3, resp. (Truth 2:312). Ibid. 56 But even for a conscience truly so called, such a peace remains a fragile reality unless it is one of the fruits of the Spirit (ST I-II, q. 70) arising from the gifts of wisdom and counsel (ST II-II, qq. 45 and 52). 54 55 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 71 law.”57 The whole moral motivation of rational beings depends upon the voice of primordial conscience, the natural habitual awareness of the precepts of the natural law. From a Thomist perspective, the typically modern crisis of moral motivation—Why should I pursue the good? Why should I be moral in the first place?—is a direct consequence of the anthropocentric turn and the subsequent flight from the encompassing teleology of which the primordial conscience is an integral part. This flight produces the counterfeit of conscience, the authenticity of self-will that interminably vacillates between three versions of self-justification: moral nihilism (“There is neither good nor evil”; “Good and evil are strictly subjective success terms”), moral skepticism (“Human beings are inherently incapable of discerning reliably moral good and evil”), and moral sovereignty (“I am the creator and arbiter of my own moral code”). These accretions of the anthropocentric turn commit those who come under their spell to constant performative self-contradictions in everyday life because persons who hold these views nevertheless continue to act toward ends that are first perceived as goods. And it is precisely this that makes these actions intelligible in the first place. However, intelligible actions are, as G. E. M. Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre have shown, the basic units of human moral agency.58 And these units have an irreducible teleological structure, a structure that, as Aquinas has argued, necessitates a single final end. Hence, modern agents, beholden by the false self-image of subjective sovereignty, de facto display the first principle of practical reason, follow the first precept of the natural law, and (for the most part) acknowledge an at least tacit knowledge of some of the secondary precepts of the natural law. As MacIntyre has pointedly stated in his still eminently relevant study from 1990, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, “the Thomist discerns in the continuous reappropriation of [the deracinated and fragmented moral rules of European modernity], and in the recurring resistance to discarding them, evidence of the work of synderesis, of that fundamental grasp of the primary precepts of the natural law, to which cultural degeneration can partially or temporarily blind us ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 2. G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963); Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Intelligibility of Action,” in Rationality, Relativism, and Human Sciences, ed. J. Margolis, M. Krausz, and R. M. Burian (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1986), 63–80. 57 58 72 Reinhard Hütter but which can never be obliterated.”59 In the following conclusion, MacIntyre makes the implicit organizing principle of my reflections explicit: “So the Thomist claims to be able to render intelligible the history of both modern morality and modern moral philosophy in a way that is not available to those who themselves inhabit the conceptual frameworks peculiar to modernity. They cannot hope to understand themselves in the only terms which they and their institutions allow themselves for understanding. And their own theories, the theories of those imprisoned within modernity, can thus provide only ideological rationalizations, the rationalizations of modern deontology, modern consequentialism, and modern contractarianism.”60 Modern deontology, consequentialism, and contractarianism are moral theories that emerge in the wake of the anthropocentric turn. As the history of modernity has demonstrated, these moral theories turned out to be utterly unfit to contain the power of subjective sovereignty that the anthropocentric turn unleashed. Aquinas’s teleological metaphysics of the good, with its special emphasis on synderesis, natural law, and the virtue of prudence, advances a compelling account of why this is the case and, thereby, offers a powerful analytic device that allows us accurately to gauge the profoundly problematic implications of the anthropocentric turn for moral theory and especially for the moral life. Aquinas’s realist metaphysics opens up the ontological and epistemological horizon in which the philosophical errancy of the anthropocentric turn comes into full light—as well as in the reality of actual self-transcendence. Aquinas’s metaphysics of being and the good culminates in the moral constitution of the human person, that is, in the primordial conscience as the condition for the possibility of actual self-transcendence. Because of the primordial conscience, the human person as moral agent can do the truth, meaning the person has a truth-capacity in the practical order. And because a good conscience (resulting from doing the truth in the practical order) is the source of the well-being of the human person as moral agent, actual self-transcendence is the condition for the possibility of genuine well-being. But, as we have seen, actual self-transcendence presupposes a “frame of genuine transcendence.” Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 194. 60 Ibid. 59 To Be Good Is to Do the Truth 73 What Aquinas’s metaphysics of being and the good cannot do, and of course was never meant to do, is to turn us back efficaciously from the perennial existential crisis, a crisis that the anthropocentric turn has only intensified. Even when we do not flee the voice of primordial conscience but are attentive to it, there remains a pressing question: How can one be good and, therefore, do the truth without first encountering the truth in such a direct and personal way that we not only find ourselves claimed by the truth but fall in love with its surpassing goodness such that we become effectively good? Aquinas, of course, holds to the faith characteristic of an orthodox Christian, which is the faith of the Church, that the Sovereign Good has become incarnate. Yet, with this claim, Aquinas beckons us to ascend from metaphysics to mystagogy, from the philosophy of the sovereign good to the elevated science he called sacra doctrina, sacred teaching. This sacred teaching rests on one breathtakingly simple and breathtakingly outlandish axiom: the First Truth and the Sovereign Good are at hand in the utter humility and vulnerability of the human nature that the incarnate Logos assumed from among a people God created for that purpose. Here is the ultimate stumbling block for the sovereign subject, its pride and despair, and simultaneously the concrete hope to enter a new life in which death has been definitively overcome precisely by the incarnate Sovereign Good. In this new life, the pursuit of subjective sovereignty can be relinquished because the cage of immanent transcendence has been opened from the outside by the Sovereign Good. In the personal encounter with the one who says, “I am the truth,” the one who gives his life for his enemies and calls us to become his friends, it becomes obvious: Primordial conscience tells us, “To be good is to do the truth.” This is the fundamental principle that subsists as habitual light in the practical reason and enjoins the first precept of the natural law. But in order to become good in the first place—that is good simpliciter, not merely secundum quid—so that we can effectively do the truth, we must be united by way of the infused theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity with the one who is the truth simpliciter. For the incarnate Sovereign Good N&V also said, “Without me you can do nothing.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 75–88 Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., Philosopher and Theologian Matthew L. Lamb Ave Maria University Naples, FL During the night of March 14–15, 2011, Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., passed through the portals of death to meet the Lord Jesus, whom he had followed so faithfully as a Jesuit scholar. He ranks high among the insightful and productive philosophers and theologians renewing Catholic intellectual life and culture in our times. Most of his many books and even more articles and essays have appeared in German or Italian. They explore the intellectual and scholarly coherence and brilliance of Catholic philosophical and theological traditions, as well as the intellectual indigence and mediocrity of those dissenting from the teachings of the Catholic Magisterium.1 Only a very few of his essays have been translated into English. In this retrospective, I shall first sketch the orientation of Sala’s exposition of Fr. Bernard Lonergan’s explanatory articulation of human experiencing, understanding, knowing, and willing—what Lonergan calls the third stage of meaning: interiority. Secondly, I shall outline how important this interior orientation is for doing genuine Catholic theology up to the level of our times. See the bibliographies in Giovanni Sala, S.J., Kant, Lonergan und der christliche Glaube, ed. Ulrich Lehner and Ronald Tacelli (Nordhausen: Bautz, 2005), and Sala, Kontroverse Theologie (Bonn: Nova & Vetera, 2005), each of which has a tribute to the work of Fr. Sala by a cardinal of the Church. Unless otherwise stated or implied by English titles, all English translation of Sala is my own work. 1 76 Matthew L. Lamb The Orientation of Lonergan’s Cognitional Theoretical Achievement Sala’s last book has two parts,2 the first of which gives a detailed examination of the operations of human knowing and the second of which orders the major achievements of human knowledge in the fields of common sense, natural sciences, human sciences, metaphysics, and natural theology. Part I of the book has ten chapters and ten excursi. The latter are important in showing the ways in which Lonergan’s appropriation of the related and recurrent operations of intelligence shows the relevance of Aquinas’s analysis of intellectual operations. Sala understood that the only way to overcome the conceptualism and nominalism of modern cultures was to articulate the related and recurrent experiences of the human mind. Such experiences are both universally present in all human beings and uniquely present in all individual persons. Thus, he begins the book with chapters on the needed heightening of awareness (ch. 1) in order to attend to both the human innate desire to know and the two types of related questions, those pertaining to understanding (what is it?) and those pertaining to judgment (is it so?). The questions for judgment are all of the type that can be answered by “yes,” “no,” or “maybe,” and all other questions cannot be so answered and are questions for understanding. The dynamic relation between these two different types of questioning are seen in the fact that we do not want only to think about something; we want to know what really exists—we desire to know being (ch. 2). This knowing is a formally dynamic structure in that human beings spontaneously raise these two fundamental types of questions given their intelligence and reason (ch. 3). After going on to show that overlooking this formally dynamic structure results in an “intuitionism” of empiricist or conceptualist varieties (ch. 4), Sala then details the conscious acts and objects constituting how and what we experience (ch. 5). These experiences provide the data on which the two sets of intelligent acts or operations seek: first, to understand and— if we gain some insight—conceptualize (ch. 6), and then second, to judge whether the concepts are verified in the data and, thus, are true knowledge of the objects (ch. 7). After each of these chapters there are excursi in which Sala Sala, Die Struktur der menschlichen Erkenntnis: Eine Erkenntnislehre (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009). 2 Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., Philosopher and Theologian 77 provides evidence for Lonergan’s recovery and transposition of what was classically called by Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas (among many others) the “theoretical way of living.” In doing this, Sala concentrates on Lonergan’s explanatory retrieval of Aquinas’s teaching on knowing and being, as well as how this retrieval shows the nominalist and conceptualist roots of modern and contemporary pendulum swings between empiricism and idealism, between libertarianism and authoritarianism, between nihilistic relativism and a-rational voluntarism. A fundamental challenge within post-Enlightenment cultures and philosophies consists in overcoming the conceptualism that obfuscates the natural orientation of all human knowing toward being, toward what actually exists. Sala was a recognized expert on the work of Immanuel Kant. When his provincial told him he was to join the faculty at the Jesuit Philosophate in Munich, he saw it as an opportunity to do what he could to show how Kant had failed to grasp the full range of human knowing and willing.3 Sala meets this challenge by calling for his readers to direct their attention to their acts of questioning and desiring to understand and know things. Drawing on Lonergan, Sala invites his readers to an intellectualist exploration of what we too often take for granted: daily conscious living and questioning. This exploration is guided by the question (for understanding) of what knowing is, addressing the origins of knowledge in the question of “what do we do when we know?” Concepts and definitions do not float out from some unknowable black box; their origins are acts of understanding and judging. Knowledge is not a matter of simply memorizing concepts and definitions; it is knowing what, in fact, is true. We do not want to just have ideas; we want to know whether they express what things are in fact, in reality. “What do we do when we know?” is a cognitional theoretical question. Only when we answer it truly can we go on to the more modern epistemological question of “why is doing that knowing?” This, Sala points out, is the contemporary Cartesian question: Descartes asked whether or not we know reality. He asked the an sit question before he had adequately answered the quid sit question, what knowing is and what we do when we know. The result was his universal doubt as the fundamentum Sala, Lonergan and Kant: Five Essays on Human Knowledge, trans. Joseph Spoerl (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). 3 78 Matthew L. Lamb inconcussum of all thinking.4 Sala indicates that no one can, in fact, performatively carry through a universal doubt, and he shows that the failure to ask the cognitional theoretical question of what we do when we know has its roots in nominalism. In order to understand the need in Catholic theology to overcome the rupture occasioned by nominalism, Sala turns to Lonergan’s analysis of revelation, doctrinal development, and the stages of meaning. These might be outlined as: Scriptural — Doctrinal — Theoretical — Interiority-Conversion ↑ as True as Intelligible as Transformative Word of God Nominalist Rupture The first development led to the differentiation or development of doctrine and creed from Sacred Scripture. If the Bible as the Word of God is true, then questions arose that could not be answered simply by quoting the Bible. The great Trinitarian and Christological councils, beginning with Nicea (AD 325) realized that, in order to assure that the Word of God in Scripture is true and that what Jesus Christ reveals of himself, the Father, and the Holy Spirit is true, one had to invoke terms other than only biblical ones. Non-biblical terms such as “consubstantial,” “relations,” “persons,” “properties,” and “processions” were employed to assure the truth of revealed Trinitarian and Christological texts in the Gospels. Wisdom is given in revelation and evokes the development of an acquired wisdom. Gifted wisdom is faith in the revealed Word of God attuning the believing and worshiping Church to the realities of the Holy Trinitarian and Christological Mysteries. This leads in turn to the acquisition of a reasoned, metaphysical wisdom aimed at defending and understanding revelation.5 The Greek and Latin Patristic and Monastic authors in the first millennium of Catholicism found a stable home or institution in the thousands of monasteries, convents, and cathedral schools where generations of men and women kept alive the sacred word of Scripture, the writings of the Fathers of the Church, and the classic literature of East and West. Teaching, learning, and the intellectual life Ibid., 22–23, 67–70. Sala, Kontroverse Theologie, 23–65; 237. 4 5 Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., Philosopher and Theologian 79 were practiced within the orientations toward wisdom and holiness on the part of the monks, nuns, clerics and lay students. The Greek and Latin Fathers were able to incorporate the best of their philosophical sources into a Christian Hellenism that preserved both reason and the Christian faith.6 As this doctrinal and creedal development continued, there were questions that arose about the inner intelligibility of the many doctrines and creeds. These questions led to the second development, which differentiated theoretical summae from collections of doctrines and creeds. Doctrinal developments address the truth question and, so, assert that whoever does not accept the truth is heretical. For, the profession of faith in the creeds is dealing not only with propositions but also with the sacred realities revealed by the creator and redeemer of the universe. Unlike doctrine, the quest for the intelligibility of the doctrines deals with the first act of the mind, asking what the true doctrines mean. So, theoretical developments give rise to various schools of thought. The truth of Catholic doctrines is accepted, but there are different ways in the different schools for seeking some understanding of the true doctrines and mysteries of the faith. An essential question was the extent to which this differentiation of theoretical theology would succeed in being faithful to both the Scriptural and doctrinal, on the one hand, and to the exigencies of intelligence and system, on the other hand. Theology is both wisdom, which requires holiness and goodness, and a science, which is a scholarly discipline requiring intelligence and theory. The second millennium witnessed the emergence of the universities dedicated to sciences and scholarship. As with all things Catholic, the new did not dispense with the old. We still have the intellectual tradition carried on in monasteries, seminaries, and convents. Thanks to the new directions in Catholic Europe, universities now span the globe. New forms of religious life emerged to integrate the new with the old. Mendicant Dominicans and Franciscans, and later the Jesuits and other religious and lay Ibid., 40–59. See also Pope Benedict XVI, Regensburg Lecture: “A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, … [so that] Not to act “with logos” is contrary to God’s nature” (https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/ hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html). 6 80 Matthew L. Lamb organizations in the Church, took up the challenges of keeping the burgeoning sciences, humanities, and arts from being cut off from the quest for wisdom and holiness.7 The synthesis of wisdom and science in Thomas Aquinas required intellectual, moral, and theological virtues that were not adequately practiced and deepened in subsequent theologians. They did not grasp the theoretical as a way of living, a contemplative way of living requiring an intellectual conversion whereby one can understand that the intelligible causes the sensible. Several key oversights followed from this failure on the part of Scotus and were deepened by Ockham and his successors.8 Reason was left with only sensations versus concepts and it was claimed that men know only “concepts,” not real beings. A massive eclipse of judgment as knowing reality spread. Universals became only flatus vocis, empty words used to arbitrarily label fragmented individual entities or, in Leibniz’s terms, monads. Despite efforts to counteract it by realists, nominalism spread, replacing wisdom with increasingly fragmented attention to particulars in isolation from their natures and from their ends within the universe of being. Metaphysics was increasingly truncated and distorted by a conceptualism that failed to attend to (1) the objective abstraction whereby objects define sensation and intellectual light and (2) the acts of judging as affirming or denying the composition of subject and predicate and, so, affirming or denying being as esse. Nominalism exalted the will over reason, breaking any living continuity with the great philosophical and theological traditions of the past. Doctrinal and theoretical traditions were devalued as purely “textual” and “verbal” matters imposed by arbitrary papal or conciliar authorities, just as Reformers claimed. With the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the Modern period, a new development was increasingly needed. This third development was occasioned by disputes and On the cathedral schools and the emergence of universities in Europe, see C. S. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools & Social Ideals in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); Hastings Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1942); Olaf Petersen, The First Universities (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 8 See Sala, Die Struktur der menschlichen Erkenntnis, 85–206, and Benedict XVI, Regensburg Lecture. See also James V. Schall, The Regensburg Lecture (St. Augustine Press, 2007), 63–68, and Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 61–121. 7 Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., Philosopher and Theologian 81 questions that tended to fragment and remove Scripture, doctrines, creeds, and summae from their sapiential context. The previous two developments—doctrinal and theoretical—were called into doubt and ignored by many scholars in the name of a greater attention to empirical data, and this religiously exalted Sola Scriptura against doctrinal and theoretical developments.9 A Truncated Kantian Turn to the Subject Devastates Catholic Theology Fr. Giovanni Sala’s profound scholarship on Kant enabled him to see how impoverished and distorted was the much-vaunted Kantian “turn to the subject.” His very extensive scholarly publications on Kant and Lonergan have established that Lonergan adopted Aquinas’s cognitional theory in order to provide a thorough criticism of Kantian philosophy.10 Thus, it is not surprising that Fr. R. J. Henle, S.J., would reject the notion that Lonergan was a transcendental Thomist in his American Thomistic Revival.11 To group Lonergan with the transcendental Thomists influenced by Maréchal overlooks the fact that his studies concentrated on Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas—not the work of Maréchal. Lonergan recalled that, when he came to hear of Maréchal’s approach, he did not really study it so much as recognized Maréchal’s treatment of judgment as confirming what he was more familiar with—namely, Augustine’s key notion of veritas and Aquinas’s notion of esse.12 See Brad S. Gregory’s important work in The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 10 Sala, Das Apriori in der menschlichen Erkenntnis: Eine Studie über Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft und Lonergans Insight (Meisenheim: Anton Hain, 1971); Sala, Lonergan and Kant; Sala, Kontroverse Theologie; Sala, “What Use is Kant for Theology?” in Wisdom and Holiness, Science and Scholarship, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), 293-314. 11 R. J. Henle’s study of transcendental Thomism says Lonergan is not one; see The American Thomistic Revival (St. Louis, MO: St. Louis University Press, 1999), 348 ff. Lonergan himself never, as far as I know, referred to himself as a transcendental Thomist. His use of “transcendental” is not in the Kantian meaning of the term, but rather the Thomist sense. I have also indicated the inadequacy of Fr. Gerald McCool’s claim that Lonergan is a transcendental Thomist; see my “Divine Transcendence and Eternity,” in Continuity and Plurality in Catholic Theology: Essays in Honor of Gerald A. McCool, S.J., ed. Anthony J. Cernera (Fairfield, CT: Sacred Heart University Press, 1998), 75–106. 12 Bernard Lonergan, A Second Collection (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1974), 265: “I was sent to Rome for theology, and there I was subject to two import9 82 Matthew L. Lamb Sala indicates that, in two of his essays in the 1970s, Lonergan articulated a dependence of his method on Aquinas. In “Aquinas Today: Tradition and Innovation” (1975) and “Horizons and Transpositions” (1979), Lonergan writes of the “emergence of method” in the thirteenth century schoolmen: the technique of the quaestio “resulted in a method, for it attracted a group of specialists following a common procedure in a determinate field of investigation.”13 He defines his own transposition of Aquinas’s method of the question as “transcendental” in the Scholastic sense, where the transcendental is distinguished from the categorical as something not bound to one of Aristotle’s predicaments. Lonergan’s notion is a critical response to Kant by way of indicating that it is not some list of categories (cause, substance, etc.) that is prior to and imposed on the data of the senses. Rather, it is the given nature of human intelligence itself, with the two sets of its operations as analyzed by Aquinas and specified by the quid sit and an sit questions, leading the mind to both the intelligibility and the truth of the real.14 Unfortunately, the subtleness of the method of the quaestio in the work of Aquinas gave way to the conceptualist deductivism in nominalism and voluntarism that increasingly absorbed metaphysics ant influences. One was from an Athenian, Stefanos Stefanu, who had entered the Jesuit Sicilian province and had been sent to Louvain to study philosophy at a time when Maréchal taught psychology to the Jesuit students and the other professors at the scholasticate taught Maréchal. Stefanu and I used to prepare our exams together. Our aim was clarity and rigor—an aim all the more easily obtained, the less the theses really meant. It was through Stefanu by some process of osmosis, rather than through struggling with the five great Cahiers, that I learnt to speak of human knowledge as not intuitive but discursive with the decisive component in judgment. This view was confirmed by my familiarity with Augustine’s key notion, veritas, and the whole was rounded out by Bernard Leeming’s course on the Incarnate Word, which convinced me that there could not be a hypostatic union without a real distinction between essence and existence. This, of course, was all the more acceptable, since Aquinas’ esse corresponded to Augustine’s veritas and both harmonized with Maréchal’s view of judgment.” 13 Sala, Kant, Lonergan und der christliche Glaube, 491–562; Lonergan, “Horizons and Transpositions,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 17, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980, ed. Robert Croken and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 421. This can also be found in his A Third Collection, ed. Frederich Crowe (New York: Paulist Press), 35–54. 14 Sala, Das Apriori in der menschlichen Erkenntnis. See also his Kant, Lonergan und der christliche Glaube, 103–30, on intentionality in Aquinas and Lonergan contra Kantian intuition. Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., Philosopher and Theologian 83 into a conceptualist logicism. Lost was the full interiority of Aquinas’s cognitional theory as recovered and honed by Lonergan. Sala’s profound and detailed 474-page Kant und die Frage nach Gott exegetes all the relevant texts of Kant, while also disputing their validity “from a Thomistic standpoint.”15 These criticisms are expanded in a number of articles Sala published over the years, some of which are gathered in his Kant, Lonergan und der christliche Glaube and his Kontroverse Theologie. Human reason can, as Aquinas and Lonergan demonstrate and Sala elaborates, know that God exists. Natural theology is valid only in a Thomistic context of clearly differentiating experience, insight, and judgment.16 This clearly establishes that the light of Christian faith heals and elevates the natural light of human reason, not blinding or negating reason. As Sala writes: Allow me to recall a personal experience during the academic year 1959–1960, when I was attending his lectures on “De Verbo Incarnato.” From the very introduction to the first thesis about the New Testament teaching on Jesus of Nazareth as true man and true God, the first philosophical theorem to which Lonergan appealed was on the “vis iudicii existentialis quo per verum iudicium cognoscitur existens.” It is not enough— Lonergan said—to acknowledge that God reveals himself; we must also acknowledge that he reveals himself by teaching the truth. If we do not acknowledge the mediating role of the truth of judgment, then we do not establish, but rather we would eliminate the Catholic position, since this teaches us that the object of faith is the truth revealed by God and defined by the Church. . . . Here Lonergan sees the root of the realism implied in the preaching of the Church.17 Sala, Kant und die Frage nach Gott (New York: de Gruyter, 1990), vii: “Außer der genannten immanenten Exegese des Textes und möglichst deutlich von ihr getrennt habe ich versucht, eine argumentative Stellungnahme zu den jeweiligen Beweisen und Widerlegung Kants auszuarbeiten, und zwar von einem thomistischen Standpunkt aus” [“Besides the so-called immanent exegesis of the texts of Kant, I have sought clearly to develop criticisms of Kant based on verified evidence. Indeed, I do this from a Thomist standpoint”; my own translation]. 16 Sala, Kontroverse Theologie, 23–39. 17 Ibid. 49. One should read the whole essay in which this appears, “The Encyclical Letter ‘Fides et Ratio’: A Service to Truth” (Kontroverse Theologie, 40–59). 15 84 Matthew L. Lamb This metaphysical realism is fundamental to the preaching and teaching of the Catholic faith. This led Sala to criticize the writings of Hans Küng for their continual severing of the New Testament from the doctrinal teachings of the Church. Sala first criticized Küng’s failure to understand the Church’s teaching on infallibility.18 Later, when Küng published Christ sein, Sala published a book length set of criticisms, indicating the ways in which Küng was proposing a secularized Gnosticism that was contrary to the doctrinal and theoretical traditions so important when defending revealed truth and the realism of Jesus Christ as true man and true God.19 Sala anticipated a later controversy Küng has had with the Magisterium of the Church.20 The essays assembled by the editorial work of Ulrich Lehner and Fr. Ronald Tacelli illustrate Sala’s concern to show the importance of a range of issues that exemplify the importance of recovering the scriptural, doctrinal, and theoretical depths of interiority for the truth of Catholic teaching and practice. Sala discusses pastoral and ecumenical controversies, as well as those centering on the importance of the ordinary Magisterium for Catholic theologians and the profession of Catholic faith,21 referencing Lonergan’s insistence upon the foundational importance of the exercise of the intellectual excellences or virtues for anyone seeking to know the truth, as well as the importance of exercising the moral virtues to live a good life. Analogously, to open one’s mind and heart to the revelation of the Triune God in Jesus Christ, a genuinely Catholic theologian must tend toward sanctity. As Sala writes: Now when the Christian existence of the subject, the theologian, is undermined by inauthenticity, an adequate understanding of Revelation cannot be expected—indeed, not Sala, Infallibile? Una risposta. A proposito di una tesi di Hans Küng (Rome: Edizione Paoline, 1971). Sala responded to Küng’s comments on his own earlier criticisms in “L’Infallibile? di Hans Küng, Risultati e Rilievi di un Dibattito in Corso,” La Scuola Cattolica: Supplemento bibliographico 100 (1972): 83–125. 19 Sala, Essere Cristiani e essere nella Chiesa, Teologia 10 (Alba, IT: Edizione Paoline, 1975). 20 Sala, “La documentazione sulla controversia tra il magisterio e Hans Küng,” La Rivista del Clero Italiano 59 (1978): 606–20, and “Hans Küng: Il problema di Dio nella cultura moderna,” La Rivista del Clero Italiano 60 (1979): 75–87. 21 See the many insightful essays in Sala, Kontroverse Theologie, 71–286. 18 Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., Philosopher and Theologian 85 even the indirect and analogous understanding of theology. A regress in Christian living, in prayer, charity, self-denial and obedience, inevitably works as a negative factor with regard to the supernatural truth communicated by God to His Church. . . . Revealed truth is an essential part of the Christian life. Reflection on this truth can, therefore, be done only by one who lives it, just as communication of that truth can be done only through a living testimony. Now there is no Christian life except in communion with the Church, the adequate subject of our faith. It is only within a communion with the Church and in a constant endeavor towards personal sanctification that a proper relationship is possible between the theologian and the living Magisterium.22 Regression in living doctrinal truth in charity, Sala saw, had moral theological consequences as well. Without the full range of interiority thematized from Aquinas to Lonergan, modern appeals to freedom and conscience severed will from reason and its judgments of what is truly good. Sala engaged in a whole range of moral theological controversies that had their roots, as he saw clearly, in the subjectivism of truncated interiority. Secularized societies would appeal to “decisions of conscience” that would allow politicians and legislators to pass unjust laws “legitimating” birth control, abortion, divorce, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and the like. In Germany, these issues were usually labelled as Gewissens-entscheidungen (“decisions of conscience”) that were increasingly protected by laws. Sala published a number of articles calling attention to these issues and supporting magisterial teaching such as Casti Connubii, Humanae Vitae, Veritatis Splendor, and Evangelium Vitae.23 In a masterfully concise and clear book, Gewissensentscheidung: Philosopisch-theologische Analyse von Gewissen and sittlichem Wissen,24 Sala began by showing just what one experiences in decisions of conscience. He takes the reader through the conscious intentional acts of human experiencing, understanding, knowing, and deciding Ibid., 258. Ibid., 287–376. Sala also published a thorough commentary on Kant’s Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004). Regarding “decisions of conscience,” Sala shows that any genuine decision of conscience is normed by the truths of the natural law (reason) and the revealed truths of faith. 24 Innsbruck, AT: Tyrolia Verlag, 1993. 22 23 86 Matthew L. Lamb subjects. Citing Aquinas and Lonergan, he takes the reader through the related and recurrent acts, showing how deliberating and deciding are within an intentional attunement to the orders in which something is truly good. This attunement requires learning the historical source of moral knowledge and understanding how conscience is either guided by right reason or becomes erroneous. To those who object to an objective moral order, Sala poses this question: “What is, then, moral if not the demand of our intentionality to do the good? And what is the good, if not that which is appropriate to humans as human? And how can one ascertain what is humanly appropriate, if not through a reflection as objective as possible on humans, on the ‘nature of the reality’ that human beings are?”25 Given the widespread tendencies to rationalize disordered choices and how those disorders are woven into public opinion and unjust laws, ascertaining what is objectively appropriate to the human good challenges even the best minds. The best Greek and Latin philosophers were puzzled by the fact that so few men lived by what is highest in them: reason. Sala sees this problem of evil, following Aquinas, as a question of intellectus quaerens fidem.26 It is reasonable to assent to the truth of revelation in moral matters. Humanism transcends its own limitations by its own intrinsic demand for a solution God has given only in Jesus Christ. The historical context of moral learning is found in the quest for justice fulfilled by the revelation entrusted by Christ to the Church and her Magisterium. Sala refers to Lonergan’s observation of man’s “proud content to be just a man” and the tragedy that “to be just a man is what man cannot be” without the revealed solution to the recalcitrant problem of evil.27 Sala concludes the book with the recent teachings of the ordinary Magisterium on marriage and human sexuality. He shows how they preserve and elevate the truth and beauty of human love and friendship, transforming these into a holy and fruitful sacrament. Thus, decisions of conscience properly flourish in an enlightened obedience to the teachings and sacraments of Holy Mother Church.28 Ibid., 70. Sala, Kant, Lonergan und der christliche Glaube, 523–62. 27 Sala, Gewissensentscheidung, 74–75, referring to a statement by Lonergan in Insight: a Study of Human Understanding that can be found in The Collected Works, vol. 3, Insight (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 749–50. 28 Sala, Gewissensentscheidung, 82–127. 25 26 Fr. Giovanni Sala, S.J., Philosopher and Theologian 87 Conclusion This very brief sketch of Fr. Giovanni Sala’s writings illustrates the importance of his scholarship for the renewal of Catholic intellectual and religious life. The emphasis he gives to the related and recurrent acts of human natural and graced interiority demonstrates that, in order to grasp the truths of Holy Scripture, of Church doctrines, and of theological theoretical achievements, one has to live the natural and sacred realities they communicate. Given the rupture caused by the spread of nominalism, intellectual, moral, and Christian conversions had to be made foundationally explicit. Only on those foundations could the biblical, doctrinal, and theoretical achievements be genuinely integrated within Catholic theology, thereby overcoming the distortions arising from truncated subjectivism and voluntarism. What is at stake in Giovanni Sala’s work, as in the work of Thomas Aquinas or Bernard Lonergan, is realizing that they are all engaging us in a vital conversation about the most important realities in our own lives and the lives of all other human beings.The writings are invitations for us to experience the natural and sacred realities that embrace each moment of our own lives and the lives of the whole human race into which we were born and that call us into incredibly intimate friendship with God. The works of Fr. Sala, as those of his conversation partners, bring together a metaphysics concerned with the proper understanding of the natural and a Catholic theology concerned with the interiority of the mutual self-mediation of Divine and human persons knowing and loving each other. As Lonergan has written: Once this is grasped, it follows that the divine persons, the blessed in heaven, and the justified here on earth are mutually present in each other as the known is present in the knower and as the beloved in present in the lover. Attention is to be given to this knowing and loving both with respect to its ultimate goal which is that good that is the good through its essence and with respect to its proximate goal which is a common good of order, the kingdom of God, the Body of Christ, the Church. Moreover, the consequent mutual indwelling differs in accord with the nature and state of each individual: for the divine persons are mutually present in each other on the basis of consubstantiality; the justified are present in God and in each other on the basis of intentional act of existence and on the basis of the kind of identification proper to love; we are in the 88 Matthew L. Lamb Word as known to him and beloved by him both on the basis of his divine nature and on the basis of his human nature; the Word is in us in our knowledge and love for him as a sensible man as we are reaching toward a knowledge and love of God who dwells in inaccessible light (1 Tim. 6:16). And because the prior knowledge and love is easier for us in that it includes our sensitive memory of the past and our imagination of the future, we are led by it to that higher knowledge and love in which we now no longer know Christ in the flesh but our own inner word proper to the divine Word is spoken intelligibly in us on the basis of an emanation of truth and our own love proper to the divine Love is spirated on the basis of an emanation of sanctity. For the divine persons are sent on the basis of their eternal processions so that they may meet us and dwell in us on the basis of similar processions that are produced in us through grace. But those who proceed from and are sent by the Father do not come without the Father to whom all glory belongs through the Son and the Spirit.29 It is only in this transposition within the supernatural context of the missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit that today’s most pressing N&V theological and moral problems will be resolved. Bernard Lonergan, De Deo Trino, vol. 2 (Rome: Gregorian University, 1964), 255–56 (my translation). This appears also in The Collected Works, vol. 12, The Triune God: Systematics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 311–13. 29 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 89–111 Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity: A Patristic Theologian’s Perspective James Lee Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX Introduction1 In a series of radio addresses delivered over the course of winter 1969–1970, Joseph Ratzinger sketched out a picture of the “crisis of the present,” a crisis in which “faith is being shaken to its foundation,” and the future is being set in motion “along roads that lead we know not where.”2 According to Ratzinger, the crisis of the present day is, in essence, a long-deferred resumption of modernism.3 Modernism laid the foundation for a particular kind of relativism that remains the chief threat to humanity, for rather than preserving human freedom, relativism actually effectively eliminates it. Left unchecked, relativism will lead to the destruction of the ethical foundations of the past and to the dehumanization of society. Some thirty-five years later, Cardinal Ratzinger reiterated his stance on the dangers of relativism in a homily delivered pro eligendo romano pontifice (“for the election of the Roman Pontiff ”) on April I would like to thank my colleagues for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper, particularly John C. Cavadini, Brian E. Daley, SJ, and Abbot Austin Murphy, OSB. Any errors that might remain are my own. 2 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Faith and the Future (San Francisco: Ignatius Press), 11. The original German edition appeared as Glaube und Zukunft (München: Kösel, 1970). 3 See Aidan Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI (New York: Burns & Oates, 2007), 141; cf. Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, 104 (Glaube und Zukunft, 92). 1 90 James Lee 18, 2005: “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism, which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”4 Far from waning, the threat of relativism has grown stronger since Ratzinger’s warning decades ago. In his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI, now Pope Emeritus, continued to draw attention to relativism and its role in the ongoing crisis facing the Church in the modern world.5 What is the origin of this crisis? What remedy might a patristic theologian such as Benedict have to offer? The present study traces Benedict’s genealogy of modernity and his diagnosis of the root cause of the relativism that undermines the foundations of society. It also considers how Benedict draws on patristic theologians, such as Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185–254) and Augustine of Hippo (ca. 354–430), in order to provide a response to the challenges of the Church in the present time. For Benedict, these Church fathers offer lasting insights that are not relegated to the past, but can be applied today.6 A retrieval of patristic thinking does not mean merely winding back the clock. Rather, it is an engagement For the text, see The Essential Pope Benedict XVI: His Central Writings and Speeches, ed. John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne (New York: Harper San Francisco, 2007), 22. Nine years earlier, as prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, addressing the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops Conferences of Latin America in Guadalajara Mexico, Ratzinger singled out relativism as the central problem for the faith in the present time; see Thomas P. Rausch, Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to his Theological Vision (New York: Paulist Press, 2009), 25–26. See also Edward T. Oakes, S.J., “Resolving the Relativity Paradox: Pope Benedict XVI and the Challenge of Christological Relativism,” in Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI, ed. John C. Cavadini (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 87–113. 5 Harding Meyer, “Pope Benedict XVI as Theologian, Philosopher of Religion, and Ecumenist,” in The Pontificate of Benedict XVI: Its Premises and Promises, ed. William G. Rusch (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 37–38. 6 Ratzinger recognizes the significance of the particular historical contexts in which theological work takes place, yet such contexts need not limit the theological insights yielded to the past. He most often addresses such hermeneutical considerations in terms of biblical studies, but such considerations apply to patristic theology, which offers insights that are compatible with modern methodologies. An example of this is Dei Verbum, which provides “a synthesis between the lasting insights of patristic theology and the new methodological understanding of the moderns,” as stated in the preface to the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994), cited in Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 58. 4 Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 91 with the richness of patristic thought that has force in new historical contexts. Thus, we find in the early Christian theologians a renewable resource and a light in the present darkness that leads along a road whose end we can, and indeed must, know. Modernism Using Europe as a case study,7 Benedict offers a diagnosis for the developing dictatorship of relativism. He identifies two particular periods that resemble ours: 1) modernism, beginning roughly in the early- to mid-nineteenth century, and 2) the age spanning the Enlightenment and the Great Revolution of the West, often referred to in German cultural history as the Rococo.8 Both possess a systematic preference for a certain kind of rationality over against tradition. Modernism “bears the greatest resemblance to the present situation in the Church,” and in fact, the contemporary crisis is a continuation of the modernism that “never really came to a head” but was “interrupted” by the changes at the beginning of the twentieth century and the First World War.9 Three key principles characterize modernism: 1) belief in progress, 2) the absolutization of the scientific-technical civilization, and 3) the promise of a new humanity of the messianic kingdom.10 At Joseph Ratzinger, A Turning Point The Church in the Modern World-Assessment and Forecast, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994). Cf. Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, trans. Michael Miller et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 202–22. 8 Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 140–41. The Rococo period spanned from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries and was characterized by a curious mélange of positive and negative beginnings; see Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, 104–05. 9 Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, 104. According to Rowland, Ratzinger does not see modernity as an entirely new culture, completely severed from Christian roots. Rather, it is entangled with the Christian heritage and proceeds according to what Rowland calls a “double helix” genealogy, with reference to two sets of three intellectual moments in which the Hellenic component of culture was severed from the Christian: (1) the mutation of the doctrine of creation, which can be traced to Giordano Bruno (1545–1600), Galileo (1564–1642), and Martin Luther (1483–1546); (2) the subversion of the Greek strand, which began with Luther, and continued in the de-Hellenization of the nineteenth century with Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), and (3) the anti-European attitude that surfaced in the aftermath of two world wars, in which the synthesis of Greek and Christian thought was seen as no longer having relevance to contemporary non-Christian European cultures (Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith, 106–11). 10 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 124. 7 92 James Lee first glance, these may seem fairly innocuous. However, these three principles, which modernism synthesizes, are the foundation for a relativism that threatens to dehumanize society. How? In a series of lectures and essays collected under the title A Turning Point for Europe?, Benedict identifies the underlying philosophy of the principles of modernism.11 At the root is a particularly pernicious kind of materialism, one that does not simply deny spirit, but rather subjugates spirit to matter in principle and origin.12 Spirit is reduced to a product of irrational forces: the Logos, or “reason,” of creation is replaced by irrationality. “Self-consciousness,” a term used to denote human rationality, is the consequence of the movement of random particles. Along with this primacy of matter over spirit, science becomes an all-embracing worldview with strict rules based on verifiable certainty. The result is scientific positivism, with its correlate in the humanities in the form of sociology. The beginnings of this “human science” can be traced to Auguste Comte (1798–1857) and “the physics of man,” in which humanity becomes the object of social science, such that any knowledge of man arises from a study of the rules that govern society.13 The “person” now denotes an individual who is merely a mechanism of socialization.14 Religion can be reduced to sociology, psychology, or anthropology.15 This follows Ibid., 83. Ibid., 83, 104–06. See also Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, esp. 148, 175; Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 181. 13 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 86; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 197; Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, 13–34. Comte would be followed by Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) in the development of the sociology of religion and the establishment of sociology as a fixed discipline in the modern academy; see Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995). For more on Comte, Durkheim, and other important figures in the development of sociology and religious studies, see J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), esp. 107–30, and 157–77. 14 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 87. 15 The work of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), German philosopher and sociologist, remains particularly influential in the reduction of religion to anthropology and other social sciences. As Preus notes, “Comte’s vast scenario for the new worship thus unfolds reminiscent of Feuerbach’s thesis that theology is finally revealed to have been anthropology from its very beginning” (Explaining Religion, 125). For Benedict’s discussion of theology, see Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 148–59; and The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Theology in Today’s Debates, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995). 11 12 Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 93 from and includes the determinism of the antecedent materialism in which spirit is a “by-product” of matter.16 This is what Benedict labels the “new metaphysics” of modernity.17 The net effect of such metaphysics is the delegation of religion and morality entirely to the subjective, private sphere.18 Ethics is replaced by “utility,”19 and moral relativism reigns supreme. The goal of progress proceeds without any ethical limitations. God and humanity are made subject to the aim of technological progress. In such a scheme, progress is conceived against man, for even man must be sacrificed in the name of a scientific-technical civilization.20 Furthermore, this civilization is predicated upon a mechanistic interpretation of human history.21 Under the “physics of man,” there are necessary laws and exact predictions.22 Human freedom is excluded, for modernism as such cannot deal with the genuine freedom of moral agents, but can only see humanity as a set of probabilities subject to social, political, and economic factors. Using the predictions afforded by the science of humanity, one can remodel history in a mechanical way. That is, if one knows and can manipulate the laws governing irrational forces, one can control even rational, or “self-conscious,” subjects. Human history is governed by the remodeling and enlarging of structures.23 The Marxist system translated these fundamental presuppositions into a political myth of almost irresistible power, following the logical application of the “new metaphysics.”24 Like positivism, Marxism denies the primacy of Logos, such that reason or rationality is perceived as generated “dialectically” by matter, a kind of satellite of the post-Hegelian philosophy of history.25 The “truth” of ethics Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 87. Ibid. 18 Ibid., 32. 19 Ibid., 49–52, 55. 20 Ibid., 89. 21 Ibid., 88. 22 Ibid., 87. 23 Ibid., 84. 24 Ibid., 88; cf. Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 214. 25 This metaphysic leads to the mechanistic interpretation of history (Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 88). Cf. Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 151–52: “As a form of materialism, [Marxism] necessarily rejects the primacy of the Logos; in the beginning was not reason, but rather the unreasonable; reason, being a product of the development of the irrational, is itself ultimately something irrational. This means that things, being unreasonable, have no truth; instead, truth is something that only man can determine; it is something man-made, 16 17 94 James Lee is simply a human postulation.26 The search for truth is replaced by the measurement of utility, the highest good sought by a society that becomes inherently vulnerable to a totalitarian regime.27 True human freedom is eliminated, and along with it the ability to recognize acts of love that are predicated upon genuine freedom. The project of dehumanization progresses indefinitely. As evident in Europe and elsewhere in the last few centuries, totalitarian states rise, yet they are bound to fall. In the end, Marxism failed precisely because of its exclusion of freedom and justice, a tyranny that could not last.28 However, this was not without great cost. Totalitarianism is a constant threat to a society that synthesizes the principles of modernism. This is the imminent danger of relativism—humanity becomes prey to domination. Benedict also identifies further drastic social consequences of relativism: Religious foundations of the past are abandoned, leading to the deterioration of culture; drugs and terrorism become commonplace in humanity’s search for the transcendent;29 and the end result is a society that is and that means in reality that there is no truth. There are only human constructs, and this necessarily implies the partisan character of reason.” 26 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 88. 27 Concurrent with relativism is the destruction of conscience, which precedes totalitarianism: “The destruction of the conscience is the real prerequisite for totalitarian followers and totalitarian rule. Where conscience prevails, there is a limit to the dominion of human command and human choice. . . . Only the unconditional character of conscience is diametrically opposed to tyranny; only the recognition that conscience is sacrosanct protects man from man’s inhumanity and from himself; only its rule guarantees freedom” (Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 160). 28 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 7–9: “Now, at the end of the century, we have experienced the internal disintegration of Marxist ideology together with the structure of power it had created . . . through the internal collapse of a system and its intellectual foundations, that is, through the powers of the spirit and not through military or political force. Herein lie both the hope and the special responsibility of this event.” 29 Ibid., 20: “Drugs are the result of despair in a world experienced as a dungeon of facts, in which man cannot hold out for long. . . . The ‘great journey’ that men attempt in drugs is the perversion of mysticism, the perversion of the human need for infinity, the rejection of the impossibility of transcending immanence, and the attempt to extend the limits of one’s own existence into the infinite. The patient and humble adventure of asceticism which, in small steps of ascent, comes closer to the descending God, is replaced by magical power, the magical key of drugs—the ethical and religious path is replaced by technology. Drugs are the pseudo-mysticism of a world that does not believe yet cannot get rid of the soul’s yearning for paradise.” Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 95 dissatisfied, bored, and aimless.30 In effect, religion is perceived as a narcotic, and it is assigned to the domain of the irrational.31 Witchcraft and magic grow in popularity, and new mythologies are formed, as seen in the “new age” movement. The parallels to ancient Gnosticism, in which mythology is linked to an all-embracing interpretation of reality and knowledge becomes redemption, are striking.32 Science and technology, which Benedict affirms are able to contribute greatly to “making the world more human,” can also destroy mankind and the world.33 They are worshipped, along with other ambiguous powers in history, in the “new paganism” of the enlightened West.34 And with the primacy given to the irrational, a suspicion of reason emerges, leading to a skepticism that become nihilism, and ultimately despair.35 This kind of society easily acquiesces to a political power whose aim is complete control of the masses through manipulation of structures, coupled with the promise of a “perfect humanity.”36 Today we find ourselves suffering the effects of a hopeless positivism.37 The tyranny of moral relativism yields the constant peril of political domination. Although totalitarianism need not take the form of Marxist government, it operates on the premise that human moral effort can be bypassed in favor of mechanisms. As Benedict notes, democracy is not immune to such forms of domination.38 The menace to democracy lies in an unwillingness to accept the Ibid., 15–40. On this “new religiosity,” see ibid., 100. 32 Ibid., 101. 33 Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007), §25. 34 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 159: “Thus worship is directed, not to the only good one, from whom in any case nothing is to be feared, but to the many ambiguous powers who concretely beset our life and with whom one must come to terms. I would call this chronic defection from the one God to the many ambiguous powers in the history of religions paganism in the qualitative sense of the word. In this sense, we are threatened today by a new paganism in the enlightened Western world, but also for this reason in all other cultures too.” Furthermore, Benedict asserts, “it is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love” (Spe Salvi, §26). 35 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 93–94, 107–08; cf. 15–40. 36 Ibid., 85: “The presumption that claims one can construct the perfect man and the perfect society with structural formulas is the real core of modern materialism, and this core has been shown to be an error.” 37 Ibid., 102: “Relativism unites easily with positivism; it is indeed positivism’s own philosophical basis.” 38 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 193. 30 31 96 James Lee intrinsic imperfection of human society in the attempt to establish a perfect world free of transcendent truth.39 With religion banished to the private sphere, relativism reigns under the guise of “tolerance,”40 and the superior force of the ideology of technological progress will destroy the ethical traditions on which the great societies of the past were founded and sustained. Despite its fatal flaws, Benedict does not discredit modernism entirely. Its failure lies not in the preference for reason, but rather in its degeneration of reason. “In the critique of modernism, one must not reproach its confidence in reason, but only the narrowing of its concept of reason.”41 Benedict argues that faith in reason or Logos is the condition for the possibility of the activity and validity of human rationality.42 To subjugate Logos to the irrational is to undermine reason and its significance altogether. As we have seen, at the center of the destruction and the dehumanization of society is a particular kind of relativism predicated upon a materialism that eliminates genuine human freedom. According to Benedict, freedom without any ties is not freedom at all,43 but Ibid.; cf. Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 187–88. Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 127: “The realm of religion becomes the genuine place where tolerance reigns: religion’s sacred principle must above all be that it does not step out of this tolerated area of what is merely private and does not lay claim to any rights in public life. But all this means that Europe will export technical skills without ethos, and ultimately against ethos.” Cf. Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 207–25. 41 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 104. 42 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 149: “As a general rule, whenever the Big Bang is seen as the primordial beginning of the universe, the measure and foundation of reality is no longer reason but the irrational; then reason, too, is only a by-product of the irrational that has come about through ‘chance and necessity,’ indeed, by mistake, and to that extent is itself ultimately something irrational. Then there is no way of explaining, either, why one should see in it a permanent standard, a final court of appeal; since reason itself is unreasonable, the irrational in all its forms can lay claim to the same rights alongside reason and with it.” Ratzinger argues that faith is reasonable: “Faith is not the resignation of reason in view of the limits of our knowledge; it is not a retreat into the irrational in view of the dangers of a merely instrumental reason. Faith is not the expression of weariness and flight but is courage to exist and an awakening to the greatness and breadth of what is real. Faith is an act of affirmation; it is based on the power of a new Yes, which becomes possible for man when he is touched by God. It seems to me important, precisely amid the rising resentment against technical rationality, to emphasize clearly the essential reasonableness of faith” (Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 104). 43 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 88–89. 39 40 Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 97 rather slavery—in this instance, slavery to a materialistic worldview that falls into the trap of the promise of unlimited progress in which man is a cog in the survival of the fittest progression.44 True freedom demands an ordered existence that necessitates a right order of law. Such law must be based upon transcendent truth. This is the truth that comes from God alone, a truth that transcends human postulation, as in the biblical example of the law given at Mount Sinai.45 The people of Israel become free only by becoming a legal community that appeals to supernatural truth. The lack of freedom is the condition of being without law, whereas true freedom is given through the law revealed by God, placing man in right relationship to himself, creation, and the creator.46 The remedy for relativism is not freedom from the law, but freedom through the law grounded in transcendent truth.47 Truth is the source of justice,48 for it arises from a law that is received, rather Ibid. Ratzinger, A Turning Point, esp. 53–54, 73; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 175, 186, 240. 46 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 73. 47 Ibid., 109–10: “Modern rationalism, on the basis of its methodological self-limitation, declares the irrational to be the origin of the rational. This means that it must declare the basis of freedom to be that which is not free, that is, that freedom, like reason, is a by-product of the self-construction of the world. Against this, faith, which knows the Logos as the beginning, has the primacy of freedom as its starting point. Only the link to the Logos guarantees freedom as the structural principle of what really exists. . . . The philosophy of freedom that comes from faith . . . has no simple formula for the world. Or, to put it more exactly, its formula for the world is the freedom of God’s love, which calls us in Jesus Christ and ever anew shows the path for man’s freedom.” 48 Benedict turns to the biblical notion of justice, or mishpat, as found in the prophets, especially Isaiah, and the Exodus narrative. In Isaiah 42, the task of the servant of the Lord, a mysterious messianic figure, is to give justice to the world.The Servant stands in parallel to Moses, the Mediator who hands on the Law at Mt. Sinai. Only through this handing on of the Law does the Exodus take on meaning and stability. Liberation comes from the gift of the Law bestowed by God and through the mediation of reason that makes itself accessible to God. Yet freedom never attains complete perfection within history, since man in his historical existence always retains the freedom to refuse the mediation of reason (hence it is impossible to achieve utopia). Jesus is the Suffering Servant who suffers for justice, and in whom the Law and Prophets form a new unity. The Servant does what Moses did, giving the mishpat that comes from God and bringing about the reconciliation of freedoms. Justice is now no longer Torah, but precisely mishpat; it is an open form of law that 44 45 98 James Lee than conceived arbitrarily.49 Furthermore, freedom and justice are necessary in order to establish a society of love and true charity. Love defines humanity,50 and love alone is able and willing to suffer for truth rather than to discard it in favor of opinion.51 A dehumanized society is one that seeks to eliminate human freedom, and hence the capacity to love, for the sake of mechanized structures.52 Further, such a society places popular favor at the service of the ego over and above transcendent truth, the truth that is the condition for the possibility of freedom, justice, and charity. must attain the synthesis of universality and particularity, remaining open to the future while adhering to the immovable criterion of truth. Reason and will must attempt to make concrete and put into practice the criterion of God’s mishpat, thus forming the social responsibility of the Christian. This is not the “Kingdom” itself, but rather directs all toward the Kingdom through justice and love. The mishpat of God is the locus of Catholic social doctrine (Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 41–77). For more on Benedict’s discussion of utopia, see: Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 223–38; Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988); Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 184–86. 49 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 48; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 154–55. 50 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 111: “It is not the denial of the person but rather the person’s highest act, namely love, that creates that unity for which we yearn from the depths of our existence, as creatures of the triune God.” Cf. ibid., 57: “The Church’s fidelity to her true nature is shown in her ability to support human beings in the vocation to love, to bring the vocation of love to maturity and to give it concrete form in the life of the community. Through the power of love, the Church must serve the poor, the sick, the lost, the oppressed. She must go into prison, into the suffering of mind and body, as far as the dark way of death. In areas torn by the strife the human race has always experienced and will always experience, the Church must give men the strength to survive and, with the power of forgiveness, awaken the capacity to make a new start.” 51 Spe Salvi, §39: “Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity.” 52 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 176–77: “The capacity to love, that is, the capacity to wait in patience for what is not under one’s own control and to let oneself receive this as a gift, is suffocated by the speedy fulfillments in which I am dependent on no one but in which I am never obliged to emerge from my own self and thus never find the path to my own self. This destruction of the capacity to love gives birth to lethal boredom. It is the poisoning of man. If he were to have his way, man would be destroyed, and the world with him. In this drama, we should not hesitate to oppose the omnipotence of the quantitative and to take up our position on the side of love. This is the decision that the present hour demands of us.” Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 99 The Church in the Modern World What is the role of the Church in the healing of a world suffering from the effects of relativism? To begin with, the Church holds to the conviction that the world is rational, not as a causal by-product of irrationality, but rather as created by the divine Logos.53 Reason flows from Logos, which is the foundation of its being. It is this Logos that gives meaning to all things as the principle and cause of creation.54 The Logos invests human reason with meaning. Further, truth as apprehended by reason is given and revealed by God. The Church receives and accepts this truth, affirming that man is not its constructor, but its receiver.55 The Church is ordered to the service of truth. Thus, one of the principal tasks of the Church in the modern world is to expand and broaden the concept of reason in accordance with divine truth.56 Moreover, the Church is concerned with moral education.57 She purifies the conscience of society in order to prevent its twisting into a “super-ego.”58 As such, she is a resource for the state, although she is neither reducible to it nor subservient to it. Religion must not Ibid., 104–11; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 149–59, 175. Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 109–10; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 148. 55 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 28–40 and (on justice and education) 54–56; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 155; Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 183. 56 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 204; Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 104. Elsewhere Benedict identifies three primary characteristics of the Church, drawing upon the dictum of the fifteenth-century Dominican John Stoykovic of Ragusa, a Western envoy to the Byzantine East: 1) confession of faith, 2) communion in the sacraments, and 3) obedience to the apostolic work which correspond, respectively, to 1) kerygma, 2) leitourgia, and 3) diakonia (Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 98–99). For more on Benedict’s ecclesiology, see Ratzinger, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996); Ratzinger, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, ed. Stephan Otto Horn et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005); and Maximilian Heinrich Heim, Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology, trans. Michael Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007). 57 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 54–56; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 193; Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 188–89. 58 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 55; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 160, 204. For more on Benedict and conscience, see the helpful overview by D. Vincent Twomey, Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007). 53 54 100 James Lee become politics, nor politics religion.59 The Church remains herself and is defined by her worship of God.60 It is in fidelity to this worship that she is able to encourage governors and the governed to ask right questions about the regulation of society. Patristic Retrieval In his critique of modernity, Benedict draws heavily on patristic sources, such as Augustine and Origen, whose insights remain strikingly relevant. In De civitate Dei, Augustine argues against the literati, groups of the learned who had been displaced from Rome after the sack by Alaric and the Goths in 410. Against the literati, Augustine asserts that a return to the pagan practices and sacrificial cult of the Romans would not lead to the reestablishment of the Empire.61 Benedict sees Augustine’s polemic primarily as an attack on political religion, which holds the state’s good higher than truth.62 In seeking the good of the Empire above the transcendent truth of God, justice is lost and the state is reduced to a mere “band of robbers.”63 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 56–60, esp. 57–59: “What the Church has to remember is that, though the sources of law have been entrusted to her safekeeping, she does not have any specific answers to concrete political questions. She must not make herself out to be the sole possessor of political reason. She points out the paths for reason to follow, and yet reason’s own responsibilities remain. . . . All this comes together in the Church’s most interior and yet also most human task: the task of making, not just talking about, peace, in deeds of love. No social service of the state can replace Christian love in both its spontaneous and organized forms. In fact, social service totally disintegrates when it loses the inspiration of the love that comes from faith. . . . Consequently, the Church does less, not more, for peace if she abandons her own sphere of faith, education, witness, counsel, prayer, and serving love and changes into an organization for direct political action. In so doing, she blocks access to the wellsprings from which the powers of peace and reconciliation continually flow. Only when she respects her limits is she limitless, and only then can her ministry of love and witness become a call to all men.” Cf. Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 155–59; Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 105. 60 Drawing largely upon Augustine; see Ratzinger Die Einheit der Nationem: eine Vision der Kirchenväter (Salzburg: Pustet, 1971), Ratzinger, Das neue Volk Gottes (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1969), and Ratzinger’s dissertation on Augustine’s ecclesiology, published as Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1992); Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 94–105. 61 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 134–39; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 165–66, 200–08; Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 30–33, 94–105. 62 Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 105. 63 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 47, 128; see Augustine, De civitate Dei 4.4. 59 Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 101 Furthermore, Augustine dismantles the “myth of progress” of the Empire through the demythologization of the Roman Empire and its imperial power.64 No state is absolute, no political structure eternal.65 History is not the product of irrational forces under the command of the Empire. Rather, history finds its source in God’s providence.66 God alone is eternal, and the Church must remain steadfast in her worship of the one true God.67 She is a sign of the kingdom to come and a witness to the world, embodied in the martyrs who offer their lives for the glory of God and not the state.68 Thus we see in See books 4–5 of De civitate Dei, in which Augustine’s aim is to de-mystify the Roman Empire and to demonstrate that the Empire ascended to power not because of the pagan gods, but according to divine providence; see esp. 4.1–4, 33, and 5.1, 9–14, 21–23; cf. John Cavadini, “Ideology and Solidarity in Augustine’s City of God,” in Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, ed. James Wetzel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 93–110. 65 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 146: “The Christian faith destroyed the myth of the divine state, the myth of the earthly paradise or utopian state and of a society without rule.” 66 Augustine, De civitate Dei 4.1–4, 33; 5.1, 9–14, 21–23. Christopher Collins notes that Ratzinger’s view of history is influenced not only by Augustine, but also by Bonaventure: “I would argue that it is important in this regard to recall Ratzinger’s appropriation of Bonaventure’s theology of history. It seems that his understanding of the pneumatological aspect of the church provides a way of accounting for the fact that the church by its very nature is always unfolding in history. The one Logos that begets many semina in salvation history is a reality that accounts for both continuity and change in the life of the church”; in Christopher Collins, The Word Made Love: The Dialogical Theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), 98. 67 Augustine, De civitate Dei 5.19: “dum illud constet inter omnes ueraciter pios, neminem sine uera pietate, id est ueri dei uero cultu”; Latin text from Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (hereafter, CCL) (Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 1953–), 47:155; English: “Let it be agreed among all who are truly godly that no one can possibly have true virtue without true godliness—that is, without true worship of the true God”; in The City of God, trans. William Babcock, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. Boniface Ramsey, vol. 1/6 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012), 172. Cf. Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 30–33. 68 Augustine, De civitate Dei 5.18: “nullo modo superbient sancti martyres, tamquam dignum aliquid pro illius patriae participatione fecerint, ubi aeterna est et uera felicitas, si usque ad sui sanguinis effusionem non solum suos fratres, pro quibus fundebatur, uerum et ipsos inimicos, a quibus fundebatur, sicut eis praeceptum est, diligentes caritatis fide et fidei caritate certarunt?” (CCL, 47:152); English: “The holy martyrs will by no means turn proud, as though they had done something worthy of winning participation in that homeland where there is true and eternal happiness, if they did battle, even to the point 64 102 James Lee Augustine the rejection of the myth of absolute progress found in modernism, as well as the traction needed to reconceive the meaning and course of history as a function of divine providence rather than blind forces. For Origen of Alexandria, the Church is the new patrimony, the fatherland for Christians who are never at home in this world.69 In De principiis, Origen shows how the process of eschatological fulfillment has begun, yet is not complete, and the Church experiences a tension between present and future.70 The consummation of the world is a gradual process that happens through improvement, correction, and advancement in degrees by different individuals and by the Church as a whole.71 The kingdom of God is achieved in varying degrees now in individuals, but will only be fulfilled at the end of human history.72 of shedding their blood, in the faith of love and the love of faith—loving not only their brothers for whom their blood was shed, but also, as commanded, the very enemies by whom it was shed” (Babcock, The City of God, 169). Cf. De civitate Dei 5.19: “et ideo uirtutes habenti magna uirtus est contemnere gloriam, quia contemptus eius in conspectu dei est, iudicio autem non aperitur humano. . . . ideo que instat ardenter, ut potius ille laudetur, a quo habet homo quidquid in eo iure laudatur” (CCL, 47:155); English: “To one who possesses the virtues, then, it is a great virtue to despise glory, for his contempt for glory is seen by God, even if it is not apparent to human judgment. . . . Therefore he eagerly entreats them to give their praise not to him but rather to the one from whom we receive whatever in us is truly worthy of praise” (Babcock, The City of God, 171–72). 69 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 251. 70 See Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 49. 71 Origen, De principiis 3.6.6: “In hunc ergo statum omnem hanc nostram substantiam corporalem putandum est perducendam, tunc cum omnia restituentur, ut unum sint, et cum deus fuerit omnia in omnibus. Quod tamen non ad subitum fieri sed paulatim et per partes intellegendum est, infinitis et immensis labentibus saeculis, cum sensim et per singulos emendatio fuerit et correctio prosecuta”; in Sources chrétiennes (Paris: Cerf, 1978–1984), 268:246; English: “Into this condition, therefore, we must suppose that the entire substance of this body of ours will develop at the time when all things are restored and become one and when ‘God shall be all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28). We must not think, however, that it will happen all of a sudden, but gradually and by degrees, during the lapse of infinite and immeasurable ages, seeing that the improvement and correction will be realized slowly and separately in each individual person”; English translation from On First Principles, trans. G. W. Butterworth, repr. ed. with forward by John Cavadini (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2013), 328. 72 Ibid.; cf. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 50. Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 103 According to Benedict, both Origen and Augustine understand the world as provisional.73 The Church is a foreigner in a land of exile, a pilgrim people traveling to her heavenly homeland. However, the Church does not exist in isolation or separation from earthly reality. She is not an isolated ghetto of believers. Rather, she serves as an instrument of God. Moreover, this emphasis on the eschatological does not undermine the significance of history, but rather raises its value, for the world must be penetrated by God’s Word and transformed by union with the source of truth.74 The Logos is the principle of truth by which all things were created, and the Logos is the true light that shines in the darkness of error and ignorance, enabling all people to see the way to return to God.75 For both Origen and Augustine, the worship of the Church is key. In Origen’s apologetic work against Celsus, a cultured despiser of Christianity, the worship of Christians distinguishes Christianity from any form of superstition or false doctrine.76 Likewise, according to Augustine, true worship is the defining feature of Christianity. In De civitate Dei, he develops a rich theology of worship in which Christians offer the daily sacrifice of the Eucharist, which is the perfect sacrifice of Christ made present on the altar, and are thereby transformed and conformed to the son of God as a living sacrifice.77 Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 201; Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 105. 74 Nichols, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, 106. On the nature of Ratzinger’s theology of history, Collins rightly observes, “while it has as its source the eternal Logos that is beyond history, [it] is only really communicated in history. It is precisely the primacy of the Logos, in fact, that makes it possible to develop a theology of the church that is utterly reliant on history” (The Word Made Love, 101). 75 Origen, Contra Celsum, 6.67–68. 76 Ibid., esp. 6.1–24, 8.1–14. 77 Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.6. Augustine cites Rom 12:1–2, in which Paul exhorts Christians to be offered as a “living sacrifice,” by the mercy of God, and not to be “conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewal of your mind” (RSV-CE). Christians are thus conformed to Christ, who is the mercy of God made flesh, such that they become living “vessels of mercy” (vasa misericordiae; cf. De civitate Dei 21.24, in CCL, 48:790), transformed and configured to Christ the head. As the body of Christ, Christians are offered on the altar; cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.6: “hoc est sacrificium christianorum: multi unum corpus in christo. quod etiam sacramento altaris fidelibus noto frequentat ecclesia, ubi ei demonstratur, quod in ea re, quam offert, ipsa offeratur” (CCL, 47:279); English: “This is the sacrifice of Christians: although many, one body in Christ. And this is the sacrifice that the Church continually 73 104 James Lee The Church is defined by Christ’s self-gift on the Cross, and her members are configured to him as a sacrifice in the celebration of the sacraments.78 The Church undergoes transformation as a sign of the final transformation to come, when God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).79 Benedict follows Augustine and Origen in his emphasis on worship and eschatology.80 Further, Benedict affirms the kerygmatic mission of the Church in the proclamation of the transcendent truth celebrates in the sacrament of the altar (which is well known to the faithful), where it is made plain to her that, in the offering she makes, she herself is offered” (Babcock, The City of God, 312). 78 Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.20: “unde uerus ille mediator, in quantum formam serui accipiens mediator effectus est dei et hominum, homo christus iesus, cum in forma dei sacrificium cum patre sumat, cum quo et unus deus est, tamen in forma serui sacrificium maluit esse quam sumere, ne uel hac occasione quisquam existimaret cuilibet sacrificandum esse creaturae. per hoc et sacerdos est, ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio. cuius rei sacramentum cotidianum esse uoluit ecclesiae sacrificium, quae cum ipsius capitis corpus sit, se ipsam per ipsum discit offerre. huius ueri sacrificii multiplicia uaria que signa erant sacrificia prisca sanctorum, cum hoc unum per multa figuraretur, tamquam uerbis multis res una diceretur, ut sine fastidio multum commendaretur. huic summo uero que sacrificio cuncta sacrificia falsa cesserunt” (CCL, 47:294); English: “In the form of God, then, the true mediator—since, by taking the form of a servant, he became the mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ—receives sacrifice together with the Father, with whom he is one God. In the form of a servant, however, he chose to be a sacrifice rather than to receive sacrifice, and he did so in order to keep anyone from thinking that sacrifice should be offered, even in this case, to any creature at all. At the same time, he is also the priest, himself making the offering as well as himself being the offering. And he wanted the sacrifice offered by the Church to be a daily sacrament of his sacrifice, in which the Church, since it is the body of which he is the head, learns to offer its very self through him. The sacrifices of the saints of old were the manifold and varied signs of this true sacrifice, for this one sacrifice was prefigured by many, just as one thing may be expressed by a variety of words, in order to recommend it highly but not monotonously. To this supreme and true sacrifice all false sacrifices have now given way” (Babcock, The City of God, 328). 79 De civitate Dei 22.30. On Ratzinger’s appropriation of Augustine’s eschatology, see Patrick J. Fletcher, Resurrection Realism: Ratzinger the Augustinian (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014); cf. Cyril O’Regan, “Benedict the Augustinian,” in Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI, 21–60. 80 O’Regan, “Benedict the Augustinian,” 46–50; Geoffrey Wainwright, “A Remedy for Relativism: The Cosmic, Historical, and Eschatological Dimensions of the Liturgy according to the Theologian Joseph Ratzinger,” Nova et Vetera (English) 5.2 (2007): 403–30; Emery de Gaál, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 177. Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 105 of God.81 This truth alone serves as the foundation for justice and freedom. The promotion of justice through purified discourse in the search for the common good is a profound concern for the Church and will demand sacrifice, although as Benedict makes clear it is clear that “a just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church.”82 The Church must be willing to suffer for the sake of truth, for this is a witness of love. Ultimately, love in truth (caritas in veritate) is the remedy for a dehumanized society.83 Like truth, love is first and foremost a gift.84 Modern man is bent on rejecting this gift in the name of progress. The mechanization of history eliminates human freedom and effectively destroys the capacity to love.85 The encyclicals of Benedict’s papacy are directed at establishing the proper conditions for a just society so as to foster acts of charity. Benedict emphasizes the capacity to suffer out of love, for this is what constitutes humanity fundamentally. As he declares in Spe Salvi, “to suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves—these are fundamental elements of humanity, and Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 62–77; Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 200; de Gaál, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI, 217–30. 82 Deus Caritas Est (2005), §28: “The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.” Cf. Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 57–59. 83 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 57. This emphasis upon love as the primary vocation of the Church is perhaps the reason for Benedict’s reversing of the sequence of Paul’s dictum veritas in caritate (Eph 4:15) for the title of his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. Benedict is concerned that charity has been “misconstrued and emptied of meaning” (Caritas in Veritate, §2). “Love—caritas—is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth” (ibid., §1). Only in transcendent truth does charity “shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. . . . Truth, in fact, is lógos which creates diá-logos, and hence communication and communion” (ibid., §3–4). 84 Ratzinger, A Turning Point, 176–77. 85 Ibid. 81 106 James Lee to abandon them would destroy man himself.”86 Man is not alone in his suffering, for God became man in the person of Jesus Christ in order to suffer with him “in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood. . . . Hence, in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us. . . . Con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God’s compassionate love—and so the star of hope rises.”87 Like Augustine, Benedict appeals to the martyrs, “who have given themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity.”88 Beneath this appeal is a deep theology of redemptive suffering in which acts of sacrifice and true love are never lost, but are taken up in the suffering of Christ, the Redeemer.89 Christ offers the perfect Spe Salvi, §39. See also §38: “The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘com-passion’ is a cruel and inhuman society. . . . Furthermore, the capacity to accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth and justice is an essential criterion of humanity, because if my own well-being and safety are ultimately more important than truth and justice, then the power of the stronger prevails, then violence and untruth reign supreme. Truth and justice must stand above my comfort and physical well-being, or else my life itself becomes a lie. In the end, even the ‘yes’ to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my ‘I,’ in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure selfishness and thereby ceases to be love.” 87 Ibid., §39. 88 Ibid. 89 See Spe Salvi, §35–40; see also Eschatology, in which Benedict develops a theology of redemptive suffering based on Christ’s descent to Sheol on Good Friday. Suffering the dark night of the soul in faith is a participation in Jesus’ descent to the dead. “Hell” takes on a completely new meaning and form, such that, for the saints, “‘Hell’ is not so much a threat to be hurled at other people but a challenge . . . to suffer in the dark night of faith, to experience communion with Christ in solidarity with his descent into the Night. One draws near to the Lord’s radiance by sharing his darkness. One serves the salvation of the world by leaving one’s own salvation behind for the sake of others. In such piety, nothing of the dreadful reality of Hell is denied. Hell is so real that it reaches right into the existence of the saints. Hope can take it on, only if one shares in the suffering of Hell’s night by the side of the One who came 86 Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 107 act of sacrifice and praise to the Father on the Cross,90 to which all sufferings may be joined for the benefit of souls.91 In this way, salvation is always communal, never simply individual.92 Faith must not focus solely on the salvation of the individual believer’s soul, so as to become another object of utility for the ego. This is a form of spiritual pride. Redemptive suffering offered out of love of God and neighbor leads one outside of oneself and guards against a kind of complacency that leads to destruction. What might this complacency look like? Here Augustine again proves insightful. In De civitate Dei, the bishop of Hippo takes on the best, not merely the worst, representatives of the Roman Empire, as evident in books 5 and 8. These books are often perceived as Augustine’s tacit appreciation of the virtues (or excellences) of the ideal citizens and philosto transform our night by his suffering. . . . The idea of mercy . . . must not become a theory. Rather, it is the prayer of suffering, hopeful faith” (Ratzinger, Eschatology, 217–18). By offering their suffering in union with Christ, the saints serve “the salvation of the world.” Their suffering is efficacious for the salvation of souls. The saints endure “Hell” in this life that others may enjoy Heaven (cf. Spe Salvi, §45). This is how the saints will judge with Christ; it is a judgment of love through intercession, since judgment involves the whole Christ (totus Christus)—that is, Christ the Head and the members of his body, the Church: “The fact that the saints will judge means that encounter with Christ is encounter with his whole body. I come face to face with my own guilt vis-à-vis the suffering members of that body as well as with the forgiving love which the body derives from Christ its Head. . . . [I]ntercession is the one truly fundamental element in their ‘judging.’ Through their exercising of such judgment they belong, as people who both pray and save, to the doctrine of Purgatory and to the Christian practice which goes with it. As Charles Péguy so beautifully put it, ‘J’espère en toi pour moi.’: ‘I hope in you for me’” (Ratzinger, Eschatology, 232). 90 Following Augustine; cf. De civitate Dei 10.6, 10.20, 10.22. 91 Spe Salvi, §39–40. 92 Ibid., §§13–28, 42–44; see also Ratzinger, Eschatology, 237–38: “Heaven will only be complete when all the members of the Lord’s body are gathered in. . . . The perfecting of the Lord’s body in the pleroma of the ‘whole Christ’ brings heaven to its true cosmic completion. Let us say it once more before we end: the individual’s salvation is whole and entire only when the salvation of the cosmos and all the elect has come to full fruition. For the redeemed are not simply adjacent to each other in heaven. Rather, in their being together as the one Christ, they are heaven. In that moment, the whole creation will become song. It will be a single act in which, forgetful of self, the individual will break through the limits of being into the whole, and the whole take up its dwelling in the individual. It will be joy in which all questioning is resolved and satisfied.” 108 James Lee ophers of the Empire.93 Indeed, he seems to concede the excellence of those such as Cato, who sought something truly praiseworthy— namely justice—while doing so out of the lust for praise and glory.94 Augustine goes on to extol the excellences of heroes such as Torquatus, Regulus, Valerius, and Cincinnatus, who provide models of honor, courage, justice, and poverty.95 Yet these men ultimately fall short due to the lust for glory.96 They serve not so much as models of emulation, but as warning signs. Augustine is warning Christians against the kind of Roman triumphalism that leads to destruction.97 These heroes are living examples of the pathology of pride. They have performed deeds of excellence, yet out of the insatiable desire for glory and praise. Christians, on the other hand, must seek the glory of God as living witnesses of God’s mercy, doing all things out of love for God and for the building up of the Church rather than for Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei 5.12; the Latin virtus may be translated as “excellence,” which denotes a kind of power. 94 Ibid., 5.12–14. 95 Ibid., 5.18. 96 Ibid., 5.13, 5.17–20. 97 Ibid., 5.18–19: “quo modo se audebit extollere de uoluntaria paupertate christianus, ut in huius uitae peregrinatione expeditior ambulet uiam, quae perducit ad patriam, ubi uerae diuitiae deus ipse est, cum audiat uel legat ualerium, qui in suo defunctus est consulatu, usque adeo fuisse pauperem, ut nummis a populo conlatis eius sepultura curaretur? audiat uel legat quintium cincinnatum, cum quattuor iugera possideret et ea suis manibus coleret, ab aratro esse adductum, ut dictator fieret . . . nonne omnes christiani, qui excellentiore proposito diuitias suas communes faciunt . . . intellegunt se nulla ob hoc uentilari oportere iactantia, id faciendo pro obtinenda societate angelorum, cum paene tale aliquid illi fecerint pro conseruanda gloria romanorum?” (CCL, 47:153–55); English: “How will a Christian dare to take pride in choosing voluntary poverty in order to walk less encumbered, during the pilgrimage of this life, on the path that leads to the homeland where God himself is the true wealth? How will he dare to do this, that is, when he hears or reads that Lucius Valerius, who died while holding the office of consul, was so poor that his burial had to be paid for by public subscription? Or when he hears or reads that Quintius Cincinnatus, when he owned less than two acres of land and was tilling them with his own hands, was taken from the plow to be made dictator? . . . There are Christians who put their riches into a common holding with a more noble purpose. . . . But do they not all understand that they have no reason to swell with pride on this account? They do this, after all, to obtain a place in the company of the angels, while those Romans did something very similar for no greater reason than to preserve the glory of Rome” (Babcock, The City of God, 170). 93 Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 109 the building up of one’s ego.98 Benedict follows Augustine in the warning to guard against pride. In the pathology of pride, truth is subordinated to opinion. This yields a kind of complacency in the form of an inability to engage in self-criticism.99 One becomes the slave of opinion and can no longer see in the proper perspective. This amounts to a denial of the need for the transcendent truth that comes from God alone, generating the myth of self-sufficiency that Augustine so adamantly seeks to unveil. Complacency has its effects on both the individual and institutional levels of society: the individual is a slave to the demands of the imperial machine; the institution becomes defined by the secular powers that assign its value according to its utility; and society becomes susceptible to manipulation by a “band of robbers.” This complacency, in Augustine’s estimation, is the reason for the fall of the Roman Empire. For Benedict, the modern world faces the same inclination towards complacency, and a society ruled by relativism is subject to domination by totalitarian regimes. In today’s world, as in Augustine’s time, the sources of social downfall are found in the lust for praise, whereas the sources of social renewal are found in humility and in the recognition of the transcendent truth of God. This applies not only for the common citizen but also for those in positions of political power.100 Ibid., 5.19: “quantumlibet autem laudetur atque praedicetur uirtus, quae sine uera pietate seruit hominum gloriae, nequaquam sanctorum exiguis initiis comparanda est, quorum spes posita est in gratia et misericordia ueri dei” (CCL, 47:156); English: “And so, no matter how much we may praise and proclaim the virtue which, lacking true godliness, serves the end of human glory, it is in no way to be compared with even the tiniest first steps of the saints, who have put their hope in the grace and mercy of the true God” (Babcock, The City of God, 173). 99 On self-criticism and the role of Christianity in politics, see Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics, 200. 100 Augustine, De civitate Dei 5.24: “sed felices eos dicimus, si iuste imperant, si inter linguas sublimiter honorantium et obsequia nimis humiliter salutantium non extolluntur, et se homines esse meminerunt; si suam potestatem ad dei cultum maxime dilatandum maiestati eius famulam faciunt; si deum timent diligunt colunt” (CCL, 47:160); English: “Rather, we call Christian emperors happy if they rule justly; if they do not swell with pride among the voices of those who honor them too highly and the obsequiousness of those who acclaim them too humbly, but remember that they are only human beings; if they make their power the servant of God’s majesty, using it to spread the worship of God as much as possible; if they fear, love and worship God” (Babcock, The City of God, 178). 98 110 James Lee Conclusion In the end, Benedict’s critique of modernity stands as a warning, not merely for secular society, but also for the Church. It is a clarion call against the complacency that arises in the search for the satisfaction of the ego above the search for truth and the common good. In whatever historical circumstances, the Church would do well to heed the warning of Benedict, echoing patristic figures such as Augustine and Origen, against the lust for praise and the exaltation of opinion over truth. A society that is based upon relativism independent of the transcendent truth of God will inevitably dehumanize itself. Further, in the modern world, the desire for prestige over truth and the reluctance to suffer for the sake of deeply held religious convictions are signs of the disintegration of society. When a society refuses to uphold justice for all of its members, particularly its weakest, it becomes grist for the mill of the new Empire, and subservient to the next band of robbers. Its identity will be defined by the state, and it will be sacrificed in the name of empty progress. The Church, however, must be defined by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, which stands as a sign of contradiction to world. Christ’s sacrifice, offered in perfect freedom and humble love, must penetrate and transform each and every aspect of the Church. According to Benedict, in today’s world, the Church must be herself. By offering true worship, she participates in the sacrifice of Christ, and her members are transformed and configured according to the mercy and compassion of the Logos made flesh. By receiving and proclaiming divine truth, the Church broadens and expands rational discourse. She forms the hearts and minds of the populace, purifies its conscience, and guides significant decisions that have moral purchase in both civic and private life. Finally, it is only through authentic humility, as revealed in and administered by the God-man, that renewal may begin for a society in crisis. This is the way to the heavenly homeland, the way of the humble Mediator. Christ is the light that shines in the midst of the present darkness, and as God and man, Christ provides true hope for a dehumanized society to recover its humanity. For, as Benedict proclaims: “Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God—God who has loved us and who continues to love us ‘to the end,’ until all N&V ‘is accomplished’ ( John 13:1, 19:30).”101 Spe Salvi, §27. 101 Pope Benedict XVI and Modernity 111 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 113–159 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? Christopher J. Malloy University of Dallas Dallas, TX The following thesis typifies a recent current of thought in Trinitarian theology: “The living God can . . . be thought of only as Father and Son, while a non-trinitarian, purely monotheistic God would in fact have to be declared dead.” Such an opinion, it would seem, would have struck twentieth-century Jewish thinker Martin Buber as false. After all, the central message of the Shema is “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut 6:4, RSV). Buber did not read this prayer as Trinitarian, but he did have “monotheistic” faith in the living God. Were he alive, Buber might register surprise that the author of the thesis is a major proponent of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, Walter Cardinal Kasper. Further, Kasper argues to the thesis by way of a reformulation of Buber’s own claim: “An I without a Thou is unthinkable.”1 Did Buber simply fail to grasp the universality of his own insight and so apply it to the God beyond the firmament? Or did Kasper overreach? Kasper presents an iteration of what I call the “I-Thou” argument for the Trinity. The argument is almost always attended by the so-called “Social Analogy,” according to which God is contemplated through the iconic similitude of a community of human persons, Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 188, 243. When necessary, I will offer my own translation from the German edition, Der Gott Jesu Christi (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1982). The entire first citation above is, in the German, italicized. 1 114 Christopher J. Malloy an analogy disfavored by the influential Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J.2 The “I-Thou” argument and the Social Analogy are, however, favored by a wide range of recent and contemporary theologians. For example, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, otherwise appreciative of Rahner, embraces the analogy and even utilizes it to defend the proposition that, if God exists, an economy of salvation (without hierarchical structures) will exist.3 Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann argues that the divine unity is not that of a numerically identical substance, but rather, that of the developing relational “at-oneness” of divine persons.4 Romanian Orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae meditates profoundly on subjects and their adequate objects, contending that God cannot exist except in intersubjectivity.5 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger writes, “At bottom [only] belief in the Trinity, which recognizes the plural in the unity of God, is [the final] elimination of dualism as a means of explaining plurality alongside unity; only through this belief is the positive validation of plurality given a definitive base.”6 The present article seeks to elaborate and then to evaluate the basic structure of the “I-Thou” argument and, to some extent, the Social Analogy. How well does the “I-Thou” argument serve theological science with respect to the Church’s sober confidence about natural reason’s capacities, with respect to the loftiness of faith’s object, and with respect to theology’s remote task of interreligious dialogue? Two critical teachings will serve as norms of the inquiry: (1) natural reason retains the capacity to discover the truth of God’s existence and certain of his attributes, and (2) that the truth of the Holy Trinity is a strict mystery. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1999), 42–45. 3 Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991); see especially chs. 8 and 9. 4 See, e.g., Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), esp. ch. 5. 5 Dumitru Staniloae, “The Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love,” in The Experience of God, trans. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994), 245–80. 6 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 128; for the German, see Einführung in das Christentum: Vorlesungen über das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis Mit (Munich: Kösel, 2007), 166. 2 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 115 Elaboration of the Norms for the Inquiry The First Vatican Council solemnly defines that human reason can discover the truth of God through creatures. No doubt, due to original sin and actual sins, human reason is darkened from that splendor in which it was constituted by God’s grace. Notwithstanding, natural reason is a real and discerning light, not a dominating volition to power that by nature fabricates and conceals. The dogma would be beside the point if it regarded human reason only as such and not in its present condition. Moreover, the papal tradition before and after the Council affirms both that natural reason in its present state can come to know God and that such knowledge can be demonstrative.7 It can also consist in the informal inference that a farmer makes in wonder at creation; hence, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps 14:1; 53:1). The concrete possibility of knowing God’s existence with certainty helps account for Scripture’s teaching that idolaters and atheists, even those who never encounter God’s special covenants, are without excuse (Wis 13; Rom 1). It is not the burden of this theological article to produce such reasoned grounds for the faith, but rather to judge the “I-Thou” argument by the norm that it is possible to demonstrate God’s existence by natural reason. On the other hand, the truth that God is triune is a strict mystery, as theological argument and authority attest. Aquinas’s theological argument is compelling: God’s existence cannot be self-evident to natural reason, since his essence cannot be grasped except by the aid of the lumen gloriae; hence, natural reason can rise to the knowledge of God only by way of argument, through its natural knowledge of See, e.g., Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, §5, and Humanum Genus, §17; Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem, §16; Pius XII, Humani Generis, §29; and John Paul II, Fides et ratio, §67. The Magisterium prior to the First Vatican Council moved in this direction. See the theses that Bautain was commanded to affirm and that were used by the Congregation of the Index; see Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, Latin-English (herafter, DH), ed. Peter Hünermann, 43rd ed., English edition ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), nos. 2751, 2755. The Congregation of Bishops and Regulars also required Bautain to affirm reason’s capacity to demonstrate God’s existence (DH, no. 2765).The Congregation of the Index later required Bonnetty to affirm reason’s capacity to prove God’s existence with certainty, and Pius IX confirmed this teaching (DH, no. 2812). Pope Pius IX presents it as reason’s present task to demonstrate and defend the existence and attributes of God so as to prepare men for faith (DH, nos. 2853) and teaches that Scripture affirms the achievement of such knowledge (DH, no. 2855). 7 116 Christopher J. Malloy creatures. Such an argument consists in the inference that there must exist a cause of such-and-such description to account for the world we experience. Hence, the inference to God’s existence and attributes yields knowledge that there exists a sufficient productive cause of the finite perfections we discern. Now, this causality pertains to the divine power, and the divine power is identical to the divine essence, shared commonly by the three persons. Hence, natural reason cannot conclude to the personal distinctions in God.8 Theological authorities confirm the truth of Aquinas’s conclusion. Vatican I’s Dei Filius condemns the notion that it is possible to demonstrate strict mysteries from reason. While the Council conspicuously does not identify such mysteries, one is hard pressed to contradict the following statement: “Surely from the sense of the Church, if there is any mystery, the Trinity is the greatest of all.”9 Moreover, the consensus of theologians since the Council is that the Holy Trinity is one such mystery. Importantly, Kasper and Ratzinger, the contemporaries on whom this article concentrates, explicitly join this consensus. More importantly, revelation itself presents the Holy Trinity as a mystery beyond natural reason’s scope (Matt 11:27; 16:17; John 1:18). Finally, the Magisterium teaches that the Trinity is such a mystery. The Holy Office under Leo XIII condemned the Rosminian claim that, after the revelation of the Trinity, natural reason can demonstrate its truth.10 Theologians describe claims such as Rosmini’s—which suggest that revelation can inaugurate a change that allows natural reason to demonstrate a mystery—as semi-rationalism. If semi-rationalism is condemned, then a fortiori, so is rationalism.11 In Studiorum Ducem, Pope Pius XI praises Thomas for his rational arguments for God’s existence. He also praises him for his sound and precise distinction of faith and reason—of nature and grace—noting that such distinctions are crucial to responsible apologetics. He then refers to some “august mysteries,” first of all “the intimate life of God,”12 undoubtedly referring to the eternal generation and spiration. Pope Pius XII lists a number of revealed data that are Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q. 32, a. 1. Joseph M. Dalmau, On the One and Triune God, trans. Kenneth Baker, vol. 2A, Sacrae Theologiae Summa (Ramsey, NJ: Keep the Faith, 2014), 310. 10 DH, no. 3225. Before this time, Pope Pius VI described the Trinity as a “most august mystery” (DH, no. 2696). 11 The Magisterium during the reign of Pius IX is replete with condemnations of semi-rationalism. 12 Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem (1923), §19. 8 9 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 117 demonstrable from reason, including “the existence of God, personal and one.”13 The formulation precisely avoids inclusion of the mystery of the Trinity yet includes the truths of God being personal and one. The Second Vatican Council, in §22 of Gaudium et Spes, describes Christ as revealing “the mystery of the Father.” In his Mysterium Fidei, Pope Paul VI describes the Holy Trinity as a mystery.14 More explicitly, Pope John Paul II teaches in Fides et Ratio, “It should nonetheless be kept in mind that Revelation remains charged with mystery. It is true that Jesus, with his entire life, revealed the countenance of the Father, for he came to teach the secret things of God.”15 He goes on to distinguish what Christ reveals from any product or completion of reason. In Dives in Misericordia, John Paul II differentiates the mystery of the Father revealed by Christ from what is knowable about God through creatures, and after citing Romans 1 to defend the latter knowledge, he continues: “This indirect and imperfect knowledge, achieved by the intellect seeking God by means of creatures through the visible world, falls short of ‘vision of the Father.’ ‘No one has ever seen God,’ writes St. John, in order to stress the truth that ‘the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.’ This ‘making known’ reveals God in the most profound mystery of His being, one and three, surrounded by inapproachable light.”16 In sum, revelation, the Magisterium, the consensus of recent theologians, and theological argument attest that the Trinity counts among the strict mysteries. That the truth of the Trinity cannot be demonstrated by natural reason is therefore theologically certain, perhaps even proximate to faith.17 This knowledge of which a Catholic theologian is possessed serves to protect the integrity both of theology and of natural reason, for the theologian knows that any purported demonstration of the Trinity from natural reason must be flawed and that inquiry might establish how. Pius XII, Humani Generis (1950), §29, available at http://w2.vatican.va/ content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html. 14 DH, no. 4522. 15 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998), §13, available at http://w2.vatican.va/ content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_ fides-et-ratio.html, accessed March 31, 2015. 16 John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia (1980), §2, available at http://w2.vatican. va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_ dives-in-misericordia.html. 17 See Dalmau, One and Triune God, 310. 13 118 Christopher J. Malloy Exposition of the “I-Thou” Argument The first aim of the “I-Thou” argument is to establish that there is a plurality of persons in God. The second aim is to show that there must be more than two persons. A third aim, sometimes undertaken, is to contend for the impossibility of a fourth person. Although the second and third aims are of considerable interest in themselves, the crucial theological moves are made in execution of the first. For this reason, I concentrate on an examination of that first aim, though I shall briefly unpack arguments in service of the second and third. The various iterations all contend that there are some perfections that a person can have only in relation to a distinct person. Let us call any member of this set “Perfection X.” The rough form of the argument geared to the primary aim is as follows: i: Perfection X cannot be realized in Q unless Q is in relation to a person distinct from Q. ii: Perfection X is realized in God. iii: Therefore, God is in relation to person distinct from God. iv: Now, no non-divine (i.e., finite) person is either necessary or sufficient for the realization of X in God (who is absolutely infinite). v: Therefore, the person with whom God is in relation must be divine (i.e., infinite). vi: It is premised that God is (divine) person. vii: Therefore, God is (divine) person in relation to divine person. The following perfections are found in the aforesaid set: God is a “person”; God is an “I”; God is “absolute good”; God is “absolute being”; God is “charity”; and so on. Let me briefly adumbrate the argument with the term “person” as the perfection. “God cannot be ‘person’ unless he is in relation to person distinct from himself. But God is divine ‘person.’ Now, no non-divine person is necessary or sufficient for God to be person. Therefore, it must be divine person with whom God is in relation. Therefore, God is divine person in relation to divine person.” The discovery further yields awareness that “God” in the initial proposition stands for one divine person in relation to The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 119 another divine person. The argument runs similarly with the perfection “love”: “God cannot be ‘love’ unless he is in relation to divine person distinct from himself.” It is already premised that the subject is also a person.The argument from “God is an ‘I’” is similarly structured.Those involving “absolute being” and “absolute good” require more steps but ultimately follow similar lines of reasoning. A question immediately to be raised concerns human access to knowledge of these perfections: can one know of them only through revelation? Are they strictly mysterious? Many would argue that the perfection “charity” is strictly mysterious, but I will leave this perfection aside until I come to the famous argument of Richard of St. Victor. A reasonable case can be made that the perfection “good” is not strictly mysterious. Consider only Plotinus and Plato. The concept “person” has a genetic origin in intellectual insights forged in Christian theological controversy. Nevertheless, a number of those who stress this origin as a peerless and necessary condition for the discovery of the concept admit that, the concept having been unearthed by theological labor, it is now open to natural reason’s contemplation. If the concept is thus open, as the regular public, legal, and philosophical uses thereof attest, it is not a strict mystery. Fathoming its depths as one does those of “good” is beyond natural reason, but genuine access to its formality is not. The perfection “I” goes hand in hand with that of person. The perfection “being” is, needless to say, knowable by natural reason. The availability of many of these perfections to the searching gaze of reason factors into my assessment. The key premises in the “I-Thou” argument are (i) and (iv) above. Defenses thereof vary according to the perfection at hand. I shall treat the argument from the perfection that God is a person, an “I.” As we have seen, the founding premise is, in its epistemic formulation, “An I without a Thou is unthinkable.”18 Put metaphysically, the premise runs: “Nothing can be a person except it be in relation to another person, a ‘thou.’” Kasper defends the universal claim by appeal to recent philosophy: “Personalism, as represented by M. Buber, F. Ebner, F. Rosenzweig and others, has made it entirely clear that person exists only in relation; that in the concrete personality exists only as interpersonality, subjectivity only as intersubjectivity.”19 Human experience, he says, corroborates this: “Even though Kasper, God, 243; see also ibid., 267. Ibid., 289. 18 19 120 Christopher J. Malloy the person is a unity that cannot be communicated to a higher unity, its existence is nonetheless possible only in co-existence with other persons. The human person is possible only in the plural; it can exist only in reciprocal acknowledgement, and it finds its fulfillment only in the communion of love. Persons thus exist only in mutual giving and receiving.”20 Kasper considers that this experience and the philosophical labor concomitant with it now constitute a present “worldview” or pre-apprehension within which anyone will conceive the perfection “person.” Ratzinger agrees concerning the existence of such a worldview, forthrightly describing it as revolutionary and submitting that it roots are found in Christian theology of God.21 This worldview is now available to human reason. It consists in a new way of viewing being and sets tasks for philosophy.22 In light of this worldview, Kasper reasons, God cannot be thought as person except in relation to another person: “Within the horizon of this modern understanding of person, an isolated, [impersonal] God is inconceivable. Thus it is precisely the modern concept of person that offers a point of contact for the doctrine of the Trinity.”23 The reader will note the appearance, in epistemic form, of proposition (iii) above, which is the conclusion to the first half of that argument. The conclusion is: The personal God must be in relation to a person. Of what nature is this person with whom God is in relation? Could a non-divine person meet the exigence that divine person be in relation to another person? Kasper responds with variations on premise (iv) above: no non-divine (finite) person is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for God to be a person. First, to posit a non-divine person as God’s necessary counterpart would contradict the revealed doctrine of free creation, according to which all that is non-divine is contingent: “If man were God’s sole vis-à-vis, then man would be a necessary partner of God. Man would then no longer be the one who is loved with an abyssal free and gracious love, and God’s love for man would no longer be God’s gracious act but rather [God’s Ibid., 306. Ratzinger, Introduction, 121–27. 22 Ibid., 130–32. 23 Kasper, God, 289. O’Connell’s translation incorrectly uses “unipersonal,” whereas the German has “unpersönlicher” (Gott, 353). While “unipersonal” is incorrect as a translation here, it is an accurate translation in God, 299, for what Kasper rejects, meaning any consistency in a conception of God as “unipersonal” (translating “einpersönlichen” on Gott, 364). 20 21 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 121 own need and his own perfection].”24 Since belief in free creation is shared by Christians, Jews, and Muslims, the contradictory of the premise is heresy to each of these. Some would even hold this belief to be deducible by natural reason.25 Second, that for which a finite (non-divine) person is necessary cannot itself be absolutely infinite (divine) because the absolute infinite (act unlimited by potency) cannot need the finite (act limited by potency). Third, nothing finite can even suffice for the realization of an infinite perfection, since the absolute infinite cannot be perfected. So, if one posited that a finite person could suffice for God’s realization of being a person, then, one would imply that God is a finite person. Kasper shares this line of thought, although he sometimes argues to the conclusion from a different starting point. He sometimes argues for premise (iv) by way of a reductio ad absurdum regarding an anthropological point of departure. Supposing anthropology as a starting point, he contends that, were we to conceive God simply as the necessary counterpart for man, we would finitize God. Consequently, we would conceive God as one more being in the realm of beings (within ens commune, as the scholastics would put it). The territory that each occupied would be univocally common; God and creatures would be in competition with one another. The being, action, and glory of God would be in inverse proportion to the being, action, and glory of man: If we imagine God as the other-worldly counterpart of man, then despite all the personal categories we use we will ultimately think of him in objectivist terms as a being who is superior to other beings. When this happens, God is being conceived as [a finite reality that] comes in conflict with finite reality and the modern understanding of it. Then we must either conceive God at the expense of man and the world, or conceive the world at the expense of God, thus limiting God in deistic fashion and finally eliminating him entirely with the atheists.26 Kasper here lucidly shows the absurdity of an anthropological “onto-theology” that considers God only in function of securing man’s place. His argument can be converted in the way anticipated above: Kasper, God, 243 (Gott, 297: “sondern Gottes eigenes Bedürfnis, seine eigene Vollendung”). 25 ST I, q. 44, a. 1. 26 Kasper, God, p. 295 (Gott, 359: “endliche Größe”). 24 122 Christopher J. Malloy finite man could not suffice, much less be necessary, for God’s perfection unless his being were univocally common with God’s, in which case God would be finite. Richard of St. Victor utilizes the perfection of “charity” in another line of argumentation for premises (i) and (iv).27 He unfolds the first variation of his argument for these premises in chapter 2 of book 3 of his marvelous De Trinitate. (Subsequent variations, though at first apparently repetitive, in fact develop this theme in new ways. The intricacy of his argumentation, reminiscent of the notes of friendship remarked by Aristotle and Cicero, cannot be given due treatment here.) In God exists the entire plenitude of goodness. Where there is the plenitude of goodness, there must be supreme charity. But what is charity? Here, we encounter Richard’s defense of premise (i), a definitional insight: charity is love of another (person).28 Although some loves are not love of another (person), charity is, by definition, love of another (person), since “no one is properly said to have charity on the basis of his own private love of himself.”29 Therefore, we must hold I take the English translation from Richard of St. Victor, Book Three of the Trinity, in The Twelve Patriarchs, The Mystical Ark, Book Three of the Trinity, trans. Gover A. Zinn (New York: Paulist Press, 1979). The critical Latin text is De Trinitate, ed. Jean Ribaillier (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1958; hereafter, “Ribaillier”). A French-Latin edition is available as La Trinité, ed. Gaston Salet, Sources Chrétiennes 63 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1959; hereafter, La Trinité). When necessary, I will offer my own translation in lieu of the above English translation. For the latest English translation, see Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity: English Translation and Commentary, trans. Ruben Angelici (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011). 28 Although I would add a key qualification, what Dennis Ngien says about Richard’s prior premise, that nothing is better than charity, applies here: “[Richard] sees no need of providing proof of this proposition, but merely asks that we accept it as an ontological given, rooted in human experience. . . . The reflection of the absolute good in human experience is not to be grasped by deductive proofs, but by internal analysis of self-consciousness”; see Ngien, “Richard of St. Victor’s Condilectus: The Spirit as Co-beloved,” European Journal of Theology 12 (2003): 80. The qualification is that the necessity of the truths Richard ponders cannot be gathered from self-consciousness, but only from profound supernatural revelation of the Trinity. Nico den Bok’s analyses are more accurate and penetrating than Ngien’s. See den Bok, Communicating the Most High: A Systematic Study of Person and Trinity in the Theology of Richard of St. Victor (†1173), Bibliotheca Victorina 7 (Paris: Brepols, 1996). 29 Richard, Book Three, ch. 2: “Nullus autem pro privato et proprio sui ipsius amore dicitur proprie caritatem habere” (p. 374; Ribaillier, 136, ln. 8f; La Trinité, p. 168). Sources of this definition are Gregory the Great, XL homilae in evangelia 1.17 (PL, 76:1139A) and St. Augustine, De Trinitate 8.12 (alt. number27 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 123 premise (iii), that God is in relation to another person. Richard is now in position to argue for premise (iv), that no non-divine person can suffice as this “other” with whom God is in charitative relation. The reason is that the one who is supreme goodness must love in a supreme and orderly way. Yet, if the object of God’s charity were not divine, God could not love in a supreme and orderly way. Either the charity would be supreme and not ordered (because, to follow out Richard’s hint, God would will a finite person to be infinite), or the charity would be ordered but not supreme (because God would not will an infinite good to his beloved). Kasper’s and Richard’s arguments are aimed to establish the conclusion (v) that the person with whom God must be in relation is infinite and divine. Since it is premised that “God” is person, the final conclusion is that God is divine person in relation to divine person. On the basis of this approach, Richard cogently presents another argument that there are more than two persons in God. Without a third divine person, the first two divine persons would exchange love only with each other. They would not enjoy the experience of sharing the exchange itself, of having a co-beloved with whom to open their friendship itself. Now, the friendship itself of two who are generous brings great joy, for each loves the other and each delights in this blessed reciprocity. Still, those who are generous wish to share everything, and therefore, they wish to share also this boon of friendship. However, if the two were not willing to share their very friendship, they would lack true generosity and could not have supreme charity. Therefore, since they are supremely good, they are willing to share their friendship. Since they are divine, they are able to share it. Their willing sharing of friendship constitutes supreme generosity, supreme magnanimity, and supreme joy. Since divine power is not less than divine desire, there is a third person in God with whom the two share their love. The natural question at this point is: “Why not four, or five persons? Why stop at three?” Richard has already laid the grounds to answer this question on the basis of his Social Analogy. Nevertheless, he does not utilize book 3’s argument for three persons to answer the question. Rather, he argues for only three (a) from the character ing 8.8)(Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 50:287, lns. 19–27; hereafter, CCL) and In Ion 14.9. However, Ribaillier points out in his notes that Augustine states the opposite at De Trinitate 9.2 (alt. numbering also 9.2), lns. 1–7. Den Bok offers a good treatment of the historical development of this claim at Communicating, 285–96. 124 Christopher J. Malloy of the processions30 and (b) from the (resultant) differences of properties assignable to the love that each person is.31 While the latter argument resonates with the Social Analogy, book 3’s argument for a condilectus contains the resources to conclude to only three persons. The argument for a third person rests on the need precisely for an adequate “co-beloved” of the first two. To be adequate, such a sharer must be capable of fully sharing in divine friendship. Clearly, only a divine person is capable of this. Therefore, the adequate co-beloved is divine. Observe that, for Richard, the required ratio is a divine or infinite co-beloved. Now, if it were possible or necessary for a fourth person to contribute towards the fulfillment of this ratio, the third person would have failed to be the infinite co-beloved, since nothing finite can suffice, much less be necessary, for the fulfillment of unrestricted act.32 Likewise, if the third person did not satisfy the ratio exhaustively, then no number of finite persons could do so. Why not? Firstly, an actual numerical infinity of persons seems impossible. In De Trinitate 5.11–15, Richard argues from various angles that there can be only three persons: One who proceeds from another but from whom no one proceeds, one who proceeds from another and has one proceeding from him, and one who proceeds from none. 31 According to the latter argument, supreme love, though identical with the divine substance and with each person, is distinguishable by three properties: purely gratuitous, purely indebted, and both gratuitous and indebted. The Father’s love is solely gratuitous in that, while he takes his divinity from no one, he lovingly produces; the Spirit’s love is solely indebted in that, while no divine person proceeds from him, he lovingly takes divinity from Father and Son; the Son’s is both indebted, since he lovingly takes his divinity from the Father, and gratuitous, since he lovingly produces the Spirit (see Richard, De Trinitate 5.16–21). 32 Den Bok correctly grasps that the ratio at stake in securing a third person is one and the same with that for securing a fourth or fifth person, but he fails to see that this identity of ratio does entail completion at three and only three divine persons: “It would be the same reason (wanting a ‘condilectus’) requiring the third and all subsequent persons, and the restriction of the number of persons to three is not required by this reason; on the contrary, why would love not be more complete and the persons sharing love be more communicative, if there could be a fourth, fifth, etc.?” (den Bok, Communicating, 319). To the contrary, only finite love would be more perfect were there more than three (finite) persons. Just as den Bok (rightly) suggests that Richard’s argument for two persons rests not only on the essence of love but also on the requirement of order (ibid., 309–311), so, I suggest, Richard’s argument can be developed so as to secure three and only three divine persons by the consideration that the love under consideration is infinite. Such development presupposes the soundness of the prior argument, however. 30 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 125 Secondly, and more importantly, not even an infinite set of finite persons could fulfill the ratio. Every finite person is a limitation of act by potency, but no accumulation of limited actualities constitutes Pure Act.33 Evaluation The above is but a sketch of the structure of the “I-Thou” argument. There are many riches hidden in the argument and in its attendant Social Analogy; I shall indicate some along the way. My object, however, is to evaluate the strategic role and configuration of the argument for theological science. I will expound certain defects of various iterations of the “I-Thou” argument in a progressive and dialectical manner, anticipating and responding to objections in the process. Danger of Rationalism First, some iterations of the “I-Thou” argument rhetorically appear to be attempts at rational demonstration because the first premise is presented as knowable by reason. The initial premise (i) reads: “Perfection X cannot be realized in Q unless Q is in relation to person distinct from Q.” If the first premise is universally true and knowable as such by natural reason, the conclusion is rationally demonstrated. If not, then it is not so demonstrated. Among the more pronounced examples of an adoption of premise (i) as rationally knowable is Richard’s great work. Early in his masterpiece, he announces his aim “to adduce not merely probable but even necessary reasons for that which we believe.”34 It appears that neces Within the context of his own argument, Staniloae marvelously defends completion at three persons. The Holy Spirit instantiates, vis-à-vis the other two persons, the horizon of being for them. If that horizon is infinite person, the love of the two can maintain itself as personal; if not, then it cannot. Were there room for more than a third, the horizon could not be infinite person (see Staniloae, “Holy Trinity,” 270). 34 “Erit itaque intentionis nostre in hoc opere ad ea que credimus, in quantum Dominus dederit, non modo probabiles, verum etiam necessarias rationes adducere et fidei nostre documenta veritatis enodatione et explanatione condire” (Richard, De Trinitate, 1.4, in Ribaillier, 89, lns. 4–7; La Trinitaté, 70). Gaston Salet, the editor of the volume in Sources Chrétiennes, notes that this phraseology is rooted in Anselm (La Trinitaté, 70n2). Salet unfortunately attempts to see Thomas agreeing that “necessary reasons” can be urged for the truth of the Trinity, offering as evidence a citation of De veritate, q. 14, a. 9, ad 1. In this reply, Thomas is indicating that the truth of the Trinity has its necessary reasons but that these are unavailable to pilgrim man. 33 126 Christopher J. Malloy sary reasons are a goal also of book 3, the crucial book arguing for God’s triune character. Richard’s motive is, of course, supernatural love. Yet, even his prayerful beginning expresses his quest “to show these things clearly from reason.”35 It is widely known that recent Richardian scholarship contends that the phrase “necessary reasons” does not imply rational demonstration. Dennis Ngien writes, “the phrase ‘necessary reasons’ does not carry the modern sense, a hard-line rationalistic attempt to prove the existence of mysteries, totally independently of faith. Instead the ‘necessary reasons’ are the resultant fruit of human understanding transformed by contemplation, or more precisely by love.”36 In short, Ngien holds that the argument is from faith and for faith. In his editorial and introductory remarks in the Latin-French edition of Richard’s The Trinity, Gaston Salet presents a defense of Richard with nuance. First, he concedes that Richard may give the impression of arguing that a uni-personal God is an absurdity. However, Salet remarks, Richard has only believing readers in mind.37 Second, Salet indicates that Richard is following Anselm and contends that Anselm did not consider his own arguments for the Trinity and the Incarnation to be necessary conclusions from reason. Salet points to a disclaimer in Monologion 1.1 to the effect that, if an argument from reason proves R to be the case but no greater authority asserts R, then Anselm will regard R not as absolutely (non omnino) necessary but as able to be regarded as necessary by him for the time being.38 This is a peculiar locution. Salet suggests that Anselm hereby differentiates his argument from an apodictic syllogism. Jean Ribaillier, editor of the critical text, offers various suggestions. First, he suggests that the “necessary reasons” constitute a negative rather than positive proof: “‘Necessary reasons’ obviously do Richard, De Trinitate 3.1 (Book Three, 373; “ex ratione convincere” in Ribaillier, 135, lns.17–18; La Trinité, 164). 36 Ngien, “Condilectus,” 78f. 37 See La Trinité, 39–42. 38 St. Anselm, Monologion 1.1: “In quo tamen, si quid dixero quod maior non monstret auctoritas: sic volo accipi ut, quamvis ex rationibus quae mihi videbuntur, quasi necessarium concludatur, non ob hoc tamen omnino necessarium, sed tantum sic interim videri posse dicatur [If, however, I say something that a greater authority does not teach, I wish it to be accepted as follows. Although the conclusion seems to me to follow from the reasons as though of necessity, it is, however, not said to be entirely necessary for this reason. Meanwhile, it can be regarded as necessary]”; in S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann, 1968), vol. 1, p. 14, lns. 1–4 (translation my own). 35 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 127 not mean that the mysteries of faith are accessible to man but rather that man is capable of judging that there is no contradiction between the requirements of reason and the data of revelation.” Second, he suggests that Richard’s demonstrations are arguments of fittingness, carrying not demonstrative rigor but moral and psychological force.39 Third, he adds that Richard’s mode of reasoning is concrete and inductive, involving an appeal to (contemplative) experience, not to a rationalistic a priori.40 Fourth, he remarks that Richard’s notion of knowledge is indebted to the Platonic tradition of illumination: for Richard, both the authority of Scripture and the achievements of reason are, in the end, gifts from the Father of Lights.41 On the other hand, Ribaillier thinks that, in De Trinitate, Richard does not avail himself of his own distinction, articulated in the work Benjamin Major, between truths within the reach of reason and truths beyond the reach of reason.42 Ribaillier also concedes that Richard approaches Abelard’s position that natural reason can demonstrate God’s Trinitarian character. Still, he notes that Richard was less adventurous than others at this time, including Abelard and Achard of St. Victor. These and other interpretations of Richard can be countered as follows. First, whether Richard has a believer in mind is significant but not dispositive. Granting that a Christian is in better circumstances from which to grasp the argument, it either is or is not an attempted demonstration from natural reason; it either is or is not an exercise in natural theology. Many proponents of natural theology, for instance, acknowledge that their discipline is constructed with the judicative and sapiential guidance of the light of faith. Notwithstanding, the means of demonstration in natural theology must be knowable by natural reason. Second, Anselm, expressly constructs his arguments with respect to the objections of and resources available to unbelievers. Thus, there is already a tradition before Richard of attempting to demonstrate revealed truths from reason. Importantly, as Salet admits, Anselm wants to offer something more than a probable account.43 Now, non-sophistical arguments are either probable or demonstrative. Hence, if an argument is not merely probable, it must be demonstrative. Could it then be that, in this remark, Anselm commits to hold Ribaillier, 21. Ibid., 20–22. 41 Ibid., 26–27. 42 Ibid., 15f. 43 La Trinité, 466. 39 40 128 Christopher J. Malloy the conclusion only with the certainty that the argument warrants insofar as there is lacking any higher attestation? If so, the conclusion could truly, although not in every way (non omnino), be known to be necessary. Such, at any rate, appears to be the meaning of a similar turn of phrase in chapter 2 of book 1 of Anselm’s Cur deus homo?: “If I shall have said anything which higher authority does not corroborate, though I appear to demonstrate it by argument, yet it is not to be received with any [other certainty], than as so appearing to me for the time, until God in some way make a clearer revelation to me.”44 Note also that the pronouncement of an authority regarding the truth of the conclusion of a non-demonstrative argument does not render the argument demonstrative. Hence, if Salet is correct, Anselm hereby abandons all hope at rational demonstration, which seems quite unlikely. After all, Anselm concludes book 1 with the remark that, if T is shown true by necessary reasons, then T must not be doubted, even if it is not yet grasped how T is true.45 In short, there can be demonstration quia that is not propter quid. Now, one does not grasp in every way the truth of anything unless one grasps its reason for being. What, then, of Richard? Following the standard logical divisions of the time, he divides arguments into sophistical, necessary, and probable, the last group including both rhetorical and dialectical arguments.46 Since he seeks “not merely probable” arguments, and surely not sophistical arguments, how can he not seek necessary, that is demonstrative, arguments? Third, Richard precisely measures his arguments in De Trinitate. In book 1 of De Trinitate, for instance, Richard repeatedly argues that it is necessary that there be a being that is “of itself ” (a semetipso), adducing as evidence that we experience beings that are not of themselves.47 In this context, he differentiates his certitude regarding this conclusion from that regarding the Trinitarian question. Richard pronounces at this stage that it is “probable” that the being that is “of St. Anselm: Basic Writings, trans. S.N. Deane, 2nd ed. (La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1962), 195. The Latin reads: “Videlicet ut, si quid dixero quod major non confirmet auctoritas—quamvis illud ratione probare videar—, non alia certitudine accipiatur, nisi quia interim ita mihi videtur, donec deus mihi melius aliquo modo revelet,” St. Anselm, Cur deus homo, 1.2, Opera, vol. 2, p. 50, lns. 7–10. 45 “Quod enim necessaria ratione veraciter esse colligitur, id in nullam deduci debet dubitationem, etiam si ratio quomodo sit non percipitur,” Cur deus homo 1.25, Opera, vol. 2, p. 96, lns. 2–3. 46 See den Bok, Communicating, 184fn132. 47 See Richard, De Trinitate 1.4–11. 44 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 129 itself ” is eternally productive or has an eternal product, remarking that he will return to the topic later in the work.48 In book 4, he concedes that the reader might consider only “probable” a certain argument concerned with the differentiation of divine persons by way of origin.49 Similarly, in chapter 1 of book 4, he confesses defense of the non-contradictory character of God’s unity and triunity to be difficult to fathom. Hence, he is fully capable of rendering the (currently) desirable nuance regarding his arguments in book 3. Fourth, that Richard sees all thinking as a gift from God accounts considerably for his procedure but does not determine the issue. Both nature and grace are gifts from the Father of Lights, albeit not in the same way. One might contend that the distinction between nature and grace had not adequately been worked out at that point. True, Philip the Chancellor (†1236) helped theology more adequately distinguish nature and grace. For this very reason, theology after this insight ought to reflect more thoroughly on its method, identifying what it knows by faith and what it knows by reason. Further, notwithstanding Philip’s significant advance, theologians had long differentiated indemonstrable mysteries from demonstrable religious truths.50 Fifth, Richard speaks of “experience” with regard not only to mystical realities such as the friendship of God but also with regard to ordinary objects.51 Hence, “experience” does not necessarily mean only graced experience. In fact, it is experience of the existing world of non-necessary things that grounds Richard’s deduction of the existence of a necessary thing.52 Nico den Bok has amply confuted the reduction of book 3 to arguments from experience.53 Sixth, and most importantly, in book 3, Richard describes his core conclusions—that there is more than one person and that there are more than two persons—as one would describe a demonstration from reason. Some evidence in the form of citations is in order. “See how easily reason clearly shows that in true Divinity plurality of persons cannot be lacking.”54 Again, “What the fullness of goodness clearly See ibid. 1.9. See ibid. 5.2 (Ribaillier, 197, lns. 29–31). 50 See, e.g., John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, 1.1. 51 See Richard, De Trinitate 1.7. 52 See, e.g., ibid. 1.10. 53 Den Bok, Communicating, 189f. 54 Richard, De Trinitate 3.2 (Book Three, 375; “quam de facili ratio convincit” in Ribaillier, 137, ln. 31; La Trinité, 170). 48 49 130 Christopher J. Malloy shows and proves concerning the plurality of persons, the fullness of happiness demonstrates by a similar reason.”55 Again, “From this, therefore, we gather and grasp by indubitable reasoning that fullness of happiness excludes every defect of charity, whose perfection demands a Trinity of persons.”56 He concludes: “Behold now we have proved by open and manifest reasoning how true that is which we are commanded to believe, namely, that we venerate ‘one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity.’”57 Conversely, Richard considers those who reject the reasoning in book 3 to be foolish and mad. “Behold, concerning the plurality of divine persons, we have presented our teaching with such transparent reasoning that whoever wishes to oppose such a clear confirmation would seem to suffer from the disease of folly.” In the same chapter, those who fail to follow the individual steps are blamed for “madness,” for being “weak in mind” and “devoid of reason.”58 Toward the end of book 3, Richard repeats the claim: “Behold in the affirmation of the Trinity, so great, so firm a witness to truth occurs everywhere that a person for whom so much assurance is insufficient seems to be mad.”59 Now, one can charge with folly or madness only a person who rejects something self-evident to all, easily inferable by all, or demonstrated with plain and easily understood reasoning.60 In sum, Richard both states that his arguments are plain and obvious and implies that the truth of the conclusion is either self-evident, easily inferable, or demonstrated plainly and simply. Richard, De Trinitate 3.3 (Book Three, 375; “quod . . . plenitudo bonitatis convincit et probat, plenitudo felicitatis simili ratione approbat” in Ribaillier, 137, lns, 4–5; La Trinité, 170). 56 Richard, De Trinitate 3.12 (Book Three, 386; “colligitur et indubitata ratione deprehenditur” in Ribaillier, 148, ln. 24; La Trinité, 196). 57 Richard, De Trinitate 3.25 (Book Three, 397; “Ecce jam manifesta et multiplici ratione probavimus quam verum sit quod credere jubemur,” in Ribaillier, 159, lns. 31–33; La Trinité, 222). 58 Richard, De Trinitate 3.5 (Book Three, 378; “tam aperta docuimus ratione, ut insaniae morbo videatur laborare”; “quis enim, nisi insanie morbo,” “nisi mentis inops,” and “nisi rationis expers” in Ribaillier, 140, lns. 4–10; La Trinité, 176). 59 Richard, De Trinitate 3.20 (Book Three, 393; “tam rata veritatis atestatio undique occurrit, ut mente captus videatur cui tanta certificatio satisfacere non possit” in Ribaillier, 155, lns. 17–19; La Trinité, 212). 60 One might object that Newman found human practice to justify assent without demonstration. On the contrary, Newman contended that certain rationally discernible signs can, in their convergence, constitute what is tantamount to a demonstration. 55 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 131 In the face of this evidence, I concur with den Bok, who writes, “Richard is not satisfied with making some points in trinitarian theology acceptable, he intends to prove the most important statements of the Quicumque. He is convinced that the rationality implicated in some important things we believe to be true about God is a strict rationality.”61 Den Bok recognizes that Richard does not use the phrase “necessary reason” to describe any particular argument in book 3. Still, he writes: “Since (a) Richard is convinced that eternal things have necessary reasons and the divine persons are eternal, and (b) he does not indicate a shift in the status of argumentation between De Trinitate II and III, whereas he usually does indicate such a shift, I conclude that Richard considers his arguments in De Trinitate III to have the highest epistemological status: For him they are ‘necessary reasons.’”62 With regard to the existence and attributes of God in books 2 and 3 of De Trinitate, Richard offers necessary arguments. Whereas he does not hesitate to measure his Trinitarian claims in books 1, 4, and 5, he does not do so in book 3, but instead clearly implies that the arguments are necessary and from reason. Richard’s claim, then, materially conflicts with the theological and papal consensus regarding the concrete application of Vatican I. Still, nineteenth- and twentieth-century magisterial clarity does not imply a posthumous, formal condemnation of Richard. There is no need to defend Richard by reinterpreting his own self-understanding. Matthias Scheeben’s is perhaps the soundest hermeneutic, which simply acknowledges in Richard a deep immersion in the triune Love, an immersion that rendered such close contactus with the divine as to impede advertence to the particular spring whence he drew such knowledge. Such inadvertence led to an unwitting conflation of faith and reason. Thus, with Scheeben, we can praise Richard for this higher than scientific sapientia, because contactus is the one thing that matters (terminus quo). Nevertheless, in contemporary catechetical instruction, in dialogue with non-Christians, and in theological science itself, one desires rigorously precise statements issued with responsible and accurate methodological awareness. Mystics are people of prayer; their words ought to be taken as invitations to feast on divine truth, not as sanction for theological error. One goes through the words of mystics to the truth. Richard’s is a deep medi Den Bok, Communicating, 186f. Ibid., 190f. 61 62 132 Christopher J. Malloy tation, the fruit of prayer and intellectual labor. With the benefit of a clearer distinction between the lights of faith and natural reason, theological science is also called to a higher rigor and the believer to deeper gratitude and intellectual modesty. The Church’s condemnation of rationalism entails that reason cannot construct a sound argument for the truth of a strict mystery. What, then, is faulty about the purported demonstration? At least this much is: Pilgrims cannot by the light of reason assert with certitude the universality of the first premise (i). Insight into human love can exhibit that true love cannot exist in a man who does not love another, but the light of reason cannot discern herein that even God requires another person in order to be Love Itself. Similarly, insight into finite person may yield the judgment that a finite person cannot achieve second act (personal maturity) unless encountered by another person (ultimately, divine person), but the light of reason cannot discern herein that God requires another person in order to exist as person. Therefore, Christian apologetics of the Trinity ought to avoid all appearance of a deductive syllogism concerning God based on a premise whose universality cannot be asserted by natural reason. Of course, Ribaillier, Salet, and Ngien may well object that Richard’s initial premise (i) rests on a definition of love disclosed only through faith: Charity and the truth that God is charity are revealed realities. Thus, the argument is entirely theological, not philosophical. In reply, this suggestion does not do justice to Richard’s stated intent, repeated remarks, and proclaimed achievement. Further, it does not seem that a Christian could deduce, even from charity as a revealed truth, the doctrine of the Trinity. A full treatment of this doubt would, however, take another essay. Rather, it seems that the truth of the Trinity and the revelation of charity mutually illuminate each other as though by the analogy of faith (Dei Verbum, §12) but do not ground theological deductions of either from the other. Danger of Semi-Rationalism Another objection is more to the point and leads to a second or revised criticism. It suggests that appreciation of the universality of the initial premise (i) is remotely grounded in the impact of revelation on intellectual history. Without such revelation, natural reason would never have discovered or appreciated this premise. However, revelation has made possible such discovery and appreciation. Kasper commits to this proposition at times, for he contends that Christianity inaugurated an intellectual movement that finally achieved a The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 133 pre-apprehension of being according to which it is no longer possible for contemporary man to think “person” without thinking of that person as being in relation to another person. Ratzinger suggests something similar with regard to contemporary approaches to being in physics and philosophy, although he hints at the need for caution.63 There are two Christian origins of the concept “person,” Trinitarian and Christological. The breakthrough achieved by Christian theology was, he holds, the insight that person is not substantial, but rather relational. Ratzinger finds this insight to be in harmony with the contemporary scientific appreciation that light exhibits characteristics of both wave and particle. Thus, contemporary thought holds being to be equi-primordially substance and relation. Ratzinger is suggesting that the faith has occasioned new insights, disclosing an ontology according to which God can no longer be conceived except as interpersonal. Indeed, the faith has overturned prior rational conviction. For his part, Richard notes that, in order to understand, one must first believe.64 He remotely affirms here the necessity of faith. Significantly, though, he does not consider the faith to undermine prior rational conviction. This objection, while not rationalist, is semi-rationalist, for it implies that a strict mystery unavailable to reason’s search before revelation can, after the event of revelation, be demonstrated or known by natural reason. For semi-rationalism, the Trinity is not absolutely, but only relatively, a mystery vis-à-vis natural reason. Kasper performatively exhibits a semi-rationalist conception, for he repeatedly presents his final claim—propositions (v) and (vii)—as a conclusion the contradictory of which cannot be affirmed except at the cost of a false or even absurd conception of God. That he attributes this impossibility (of contemporary man affirming the contradictory of his conclusion) to the effects of revelation in intellectual history implies semi-rationalism. Without repeating statements to this effect by Kasper reported above, I wish to cite a number of others in order to exhibit that this is not a passing unfortunate locution, but a refrain: “In the realm of matter such a suggestion may well be physically, and in any case philosophically, highly contestable. But it remains an exciting simile for the actualitas divina, for the absolute ‘being-act’ of God, and for the idea that the densest being—God—can subsist only in a multitude of relations, which are not substances but simply ‘waves’, and therein form a perfect unity and also the fullness of being” (Ratzinger, Introduction, 124). 64 See Richard, De Trinitate 1.3. 63 134 Christopher J. Malloy “If God is not to be understood as a solitary narcissistic being who (to put it paradoxically) would be highly imperfect by reason of his very perfection and would inevitably suffer from his own completeness, then God can only be conceived as co-existent. On the other hand, if God is to remain God and not become dependent on the world or man, then he must be co-existent within himself.”65 Again, he has written earlier: Love cannot be thought of except as personal and inter-personal. The person, therefore, cannot exist except in self-communication to others and in acknowledgement by others. For this reason, once God is thought of from the start as personal, the oneness and unicity of God cannot possibly be conceived as [solitude]. Here we have the deepest reason why the theistic notion of a unipersonal God cannot be maintained. Such a view will be compelled to look for a counterpart for God, find it in the world and man, and, by setting up a necessary relation between God and the world, be unable any longer to preserve the transcendence of God and his freedom in love.66 Again, “God can only be conceived as co-existent,”67 and again, “[the Church] even maintains that the doctrine of the Trinity is the only possible and consistent form of monotheism and the only tenable answer to modern atheism.”68 We may bypass here the odd ascription of this thesis to “the Church,” which apparently has spoken through the mouth of Karl Barth.69 Then there are Kasper’s rhetorical questions: “Without such a multiplicity in unity [i.e., Trinity] would God not be an utterly isolated being which would need the world for a counterpart Kasper, God, 306 (emphasis mine). Ibid., 299. Here, “unipersonal” is correct (“einpersönlichen Gott” in Gott, 364). Earlier in this citation, I have emended the English edition’s “a solitary God” to “solitude”; the German is simply “Einsamkeit.” 67 Kasper, God, 306. 68 Ibid., 295. 69 Karl Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God, trans. G. W. Bromiley, vol. 1, pt 1, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 351f. Barth himself, however, is considerably more subtle than Kasper and, at the same time, both less Trinitarian and less supportive of the role of reason in the current enterprise than are either Kasper or the Catholic faith. 65 66 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 135 and thereby lose its divine status?”70 He likewise asks, “is the radically conceived unity of God thinkable at all without at the same time thinking of a differentiation within God himself that does not cancel out the unity and simplicity of God, but on the contrary is required to make these meaningful?”71 Such presentations conflict with Kasper’s explicit avowals, in themselves salutary, that he is not attempting a demonstration from reason, but rather exploring faith theologically. Ratzinger, though more cautious in his formulations, proposes something similar: “The confession of faith in God as a person necessarily includes the acknowledgement of God as relatedness, as communicability, as fruitfulness. The unrelated, unrelatable, absolutely one could not be person [“könnte Person nicht sein”]. There is no such thing as person in the categorical singular. . . . In other words, if the absolute is person it is not an absolute singular. To this extent the overstepping of the singular is [necessarily included] in the concept of person.” 72 To this, Ratzinger adds the qualifier, “of course, we shall have to say at the same time that the acknowledgement that God is a person in the guise of a triple personality explodes the naïve, anthropomorphic concept of person.” To this qualification, it must be replied that the analogical differentiation either vitiates or does not vitiate the inference. Kasper’s (and to some extent Ratzinger’s) claim is that, within the horizon of contemporary thought, any conception of God other than as a plurality of persons (more precisely, as triune) is false or unthinkable. Now, there are four possible ways of construing this claim, some of which are compatible: (1) The claim “God is personal but not triune” (a non-precisive affirmation coupled with a precisive negation) is false. (2) The claim “God is personal but not triune” (a non-precisive affirmation coupled with a precisive negation) is unthinkable. (3) The claim “God is personal” said of the one God (in a non-precisive manner) is false. (4) The claim “God is personal” said of the one God (in a non-precisive manner) is unthinkable. Kasper, God, 241. Ibid. 72 Ratzinger, Introduction, 129 (“Insofern ist die Überschreitung der Einzahl im Personbegriff notwendig eingeschlossen” in Einführung, 167). 70 71 136 Christopher J. Malloy In this section, my second criticism (the danger of semi-rationalism), I shall treat statements (1) and (2), leaving the next two statements for my third criticism. A precisive proposition involves a judgment regarding a concept taken precisely. So, a precisive negation involves a negation of a precise concept: “that is not a labrador.” A non-precisive proposition involves a judgment regarding a concept taken more broadly or vaguely. So, a non-precisive affirmation involves an affirmation of a concept taken broadly or vaguely: “that is a dog” or “that is something.” Crucial to note, a non-precisive affirmation entails neither a precisive affirmation nor a precisive negation: the statement “that is a dog” implies neither that it is a labrador nor that it is not a labrador. An example of a non-precisive affirmation coupled with a precisive negation is the following: “that is a dog, but not a labrador.” The possible meanings of Kasper’s claim can now be analyzed. Christian faith knows that a precisive negation of the Trinity is false, as statement (1) asserts. Nevertheless, the falsity of such a conception is disclosed only to faith, not to natural reason, not even to a reason whose intellectual history is impacted by revelation. Reason’s light so fails with regard to the question concerning God’s triunity that it can responsibly neither affirm nor deny it. If reason attempts to argue for a precisive negation of the Trinity, its argument must somehow be faulty. I turn now to statement (2): the claim “God is personal but not triune” is unthinkable. Why should it be unthinkable? It is, of course, impossible for a Christian to hold that “God is not triune,” for a Christian is one who confesses the truth of the Trinity. But why should it be unthinkable for natural reason, even in the contemporary context, to affirm a non-Trinitarian God (non-precisive affirmation coupled with a precisive negation)? Why should God as not triune be something impossible to conceive? There are three ways in which something can be “unthinkable”: it can lack actual intrinsic intelligibility (e.g., prime matter); it can surpass the grasp of finite mind (e.g., the divine); or it can be absurd (e.g., a squared circle). If Kasper intends statement (2), in what way does he propose that a non-Trinitarian God is “unthinkable”? God does not lack intrinsic intelligibility, so a non-Trinitarian God cannot be unthinkable in the first way. Further, all Christians acknowledge that God is most unfathomable in his Trinitarian character. Therefore, if a non-Trinitarian God were unthinkable because transcendent, all the more would a Trinitarian God be unthinkable. Therefore, if he endorses statement (2), Kasper The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 137 can mean only this: the claim “God is personal but not triune” is absurd. But why should it be absurd? Only faith, which is always free, discloses the truth of the mysteries we believe. Therefore, natural reason is free to assert the contradictory of what faith alone discloses, but it is not free to assert an absurdity. In short, if there are no rational grounds for stating that a conception of God as not triune is false, much less are there any for stating that such a conception is absurd.73 Arguments for such grounds fall prey to either semi-rationalism or rationalism. Errors in Scientific Theology Impinging on Interreligious Dialogue My third criticism is that statement (3) is false. Statement (3) reads: the claim “God is personal” said of the one God (in a non-precisive manner) is false. To the contrary, the claim “God is personal” is a non-precisive affirmation. The perfection “being personal” is comprised of the following: intellectual character and hypostatic character. “Hypostatic character” is comprised of the following: (a) existence not in another but in itself; (b) existence not as a part but as what is perfect/whole; and (c) distinction from all other hypostases. Natural reason can recognize that, in all being, hypostasis is most perfect and that, of all hypostases, those that are intellectual are most perfect. So, natural reason, which can know that God is perfection without limitation, can affirm that God is personal.74 It can also affirm that God is one. Neither of these affirmations contradicts Christian faith. What, however, of the complex affirmation “God is one person”? Is this akin to the affirmation “God is one being”? The latter affirmation regards an essential attribute, so the conjunction “one being” presents no contradiction to the faith. On the other hand, “God is one person” seems explicitly to contradict the faith. Is this the same proposition that natural reason affirms, together with ancient Jewish faith and Islamic belief, but that Christian faith denies?75 If so, faith The believer has only remote grounds, since the “signs of credibility” that accompany the Christian message as a whole testify to its divine origin but do not disclose to reason the truth of any strict mystery itself. 74 The argument, though architectonically in service of faith, is affirmable by natural reason. The argument in the responsio of ST I, q. 29, a. 3, makes no appeal to revelation. In this connection, see also Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, bk. XII, lec. 8, pars. 2539–44. 75 Ratzinger rejects Thomas’s assertion that the proposition “God is one person” is conceivable from a rational viewpoint if one abstracts from the precision of Christian faith. Ratzinger contends that the early Church considered such a 73 138 Christopher J. Malloy and reason would be in contradiction, the Old Covenant would contradict the New, the dogma of Vatican I would crumble to the ground, and interreligious dialogue would lose an essential foundation. Clearly, a distinction must be drawn. Perhaps natural reason can simply make two affirmations—“God is personal” and “God is one”—without having competence as to how to unite them. Pius XII’s formulation may be open to such a reading. On the other hand, even on this reading, the question remains as to in what manner “God is personal” is affirmed. Would not an affirmation of “personal” as an essential predicate contradict the faith? The question concerning the affirmation “God is personal” may, therefore, be tantamount to the question concerning the affirmation “God is one person.” Since the latter affirmation appears all the more in contradiction to the faith, it may be best to tackle the former first—the solution to the difficulty presented by the latter can be contemplated in light of the solution to the difficulty of the former. Catholic theology, at this juncture, is pressured by its own norms to seek a resolution to the tension. Now, what forces the distinction between an essential and a personal predicate is Christian faith. Hence, short of that faith, reason cannot draw this distinction. Natural reason, therefore, cannot affirm anything of God as precisively essential or precisively personal. Natural reason has competence only for non-precisive affirmations. Of course, natural reason cannot discover the personal distinctions. So, everything that natural reason affirms of God must regard the perfection of the divine essence shared commonly. It seems, then, that the perfections natural reason discovers must be essential, though non-precisively so. Hence, when natural reason contemplates God as personal, it contemplates his intellectual excellence and his distinct and perfect subsistence. Natural reason wittingly distinguishes this subsistence from all other subsistences. Hence, natural reason, together with ancient Jewish faith and Islamic belief, judges God to be, to be intellectual, and to be distinct from all finite hypostases. These judgments are all true. Natural reason does not recognize the Christian precision that divine hypostasis is also distinct from divine hypostasis.76 However, Christians almost always speak chiefly in a precisive mode. Hence, they predicate “hypostasis” and “person” of thesis heretical. See ST III, q. 3, a. 3, ad 1, and Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” trans. Michael Waldstein, Communio 17 (1990): 439–54, at 454n12. 76 This is how I read Thomas’s De potentia, q. 8, a. 4. The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 139 God not vaguely (non-precisively) and quasi-essentially, but strictly properly of each person. If, with an eye to the Christian precision, one were to negate the precisive judgment that divine hypostasis is distinct from divine hypostasis, one would err. Yet, natural reason can speak only non-precisively. All are aware that ho theos almost invariably stands for the Father in the New Testament. Some might wish to argue on this basis that what natural reason knows is God the Father, but this too would seem to be an error. The Church dogmatically taught at Florence that all things are one except insofar as the relations distinguish.77 Now, the Father is constituted as distinct by that paternity that is in relative opposition to filiation, neither of which natural reason can know. Even if one wishes to contend with the Florentine axiom, knowledge of the Father as Father implies knowledge of the generative act. So, natural reason knows God as existing and intellectual, distinct from all limited essences, but not as hypostasis distinct from divine hypostasis. Here, theology helps natural reason appreciate its limits. The cloud of unknowing that overshadows reason’s competence includes its incapacity to pronounce precisively on the divine attributes. At the same time, appreciation of this limitation defends reason’s genuine and ongoing competence concerning things divine. Especially in interreligious dialogue, should not the Christian also be able to affirm, non-precisively, that God is personal? Else, would not the Christian pit reason against faith and the Old Covenant against the New? To be sure, in truth, the removal of what distinguishes one divine hypostasis from another necessarily entails the removal of the initial hypostasis because they are relatively opposed. Still, one can consider the divine nature as subsisting intellectually, distinct from finite hypostases, without considering the distinctions between the divine hypostases.78 The ontological basis for the legitimacy of such a consideration is treated below.79 Council of Florence, Bull of Union with the Copts (1442): “These three persons are one God not three Gods, because there is one substance of the three, one essence, one nature, one Godhead, one immensity, one eternity, and everything is one where the difference of a relation does not prevent this”; in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 570f. 78 One can still conceive the divine nature remaining apart when one abstracts from the hypostases. Thomas offers various explanations of how this may be accomplished but is at least of the opinion that it can be done (see ST I, q. 40, a. 3, and Compendium theologiae I, chap. 62). 79 See Danger of Circular Logic and Ideology below. 77 140 Christopher J. Malloy Whereas natural reason and ancient Jewish believers affirm that God is one and personal non-precisively, how should Christians in interreligious dialogue interpret statements of contemporary Jewish and Muslim thinkers to the effect that “God is one person”? Explicitly, this is a precisive negation of the Trinity, and the adequate Christian response to it demands nothing short of evangelization, a task of paramount importance. For all that, a truth can be disengaged from the falsity of the Jewish and Islamic judgment. To accomplish this disengagement, the statement “God is one person” must be treated not qua explicit and precisive rejection of Christian revelation, but qua a non-precisive affirmation of divine personality and unity. In short, the Christian must attempt to unearth the prior Jewish and Islamic claims, which he himself also accepts, from the explicit heresy. Again, the predicated perfection would be comprised of the elements of intellectual nature, hypostatic perfection, and divine unity, abstracting from the distinctions between divine hypostases. Such a non-precisive affirmation would entail neither a precisive affirmation nor a precisive negation of God as “only one person” stated personally. Or perhaps the statement should be divided into two: “God is one” and “God is person.” Such statements could form a basis of interreligious dialogue, since they would entail neither a precisive affirmation nor a precisive negation of God as triune.80 At any rate, a Christian has no business burdening the non-Christian with the quip “either God is a narcissist or God is the Trinity.” This is sound neither apologetically nor theologically. Statement (4) reads: The claim “God is personal” said of the one God (in a non-precisive manner) is unthinkable. This statement manifestly contradicts the testimony of the Western intellectual tradition and the divine character of the revelation of the Old Covenant. Therefore, statement (4) is also false. Statements (3) and (4) are not only false; they also do injury to natural theology and obstruct the foundation of interreligious dialogue with fellow monotheists. Inadequate Understanding of Analogy A fourth objection to my line of critique can be registered. Kasper, Ratzinger, and others recognize that human frailty cannot fathom how these truths obtain in God. Read in light of the via negativa, the I suggest that Aquinas’s subtle discussion in ST III, q. 3, a. 3, offers grounds for this way of reading Jewish and Islamic statements concerning God. 80 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 141 “I-Thou” approach makes only analogical predication of concepts81 and, thus, cannot be considered rationalist or semi-rationalist. So, this objection involves an imprecise grasp of the nature of analogy and, thus, cannot alleviate the difficulty. Analogy and the transcendence of God do not make demonstration impossible; otherwise, contrary to the declaration of Vatican I, there could be no argument for the existence of God. Not proper, but improper, analogy (i.e., metaphor) vitiates demonstration. Metaphor, though rhetorically indispensible, is not methodologically ingredient to scientific discourse because it is not proximately disposed for precise and determinate judgment; its employment of the term does not involve the entire meaning of the term. “God is a lion” and “God is good” are very different kinds of statement. The meaning of “lion” cannot be applied to God, whereas the meaning of “good” can. (The proper analogy of which I am treating is that of so-called intrinsic attribution.) The reason is that the res significata of the first imports defect whereas that of the latter does not.82 Now, Kasper does not operatively employ a distinction between proper and improper analogy. He simply acknowledges that the unity and distinction of persons is only analogically common to God and man and, hence, that these must be “greater” in God than they are in man. This is an appeal to Lateran IV: “Between the creator and the creature one cannot note a similarity without also noting a greater difference between them.”83 This teaching does not settle the distinction between metaphor and analogy, since both metaphors and proper analogies involve a “greater” difference and since one cannot responsibly use it to condemn Scotus’s doctrine of univocity. Now, Kasper’s and Ratzinger’s conviction concerning the universal reach of the initial premise (i) bespeaks an attempt to employ proper analogy. Since proper analogy does not vitiate demonstration, the objection does not solve the problem. On the other hand, if the claim were softened, it could accomplish an important goal for Kasper and Ratzinger. Softened, the claim could suggest that reason presents us with perplexities or difficulties (which would not, for all that, be absurdities), such as the unity of See Kasper, God, 289f, 299, 308f. See also Ratzinger, Introduction, 128f. Similarly, Salet highlights Richard’s appreciation of the fragility of human language and the ineffability of God (see La Trinité, 40f). 82 See Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles I, ch. 30. 83 “Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda” (DH, no. 806). 81 142 Christopher J. Malloy divine attributes, the puzzles arising from contemporary physics, the freedom and necessity of love, the one and the many in being, and so on. In considering these difficulties, reason would be, albeit unknowingly, searching for that which can ground a satisfactory reconciliation of these tensions. However, this search would be blind to that to which it ascends. Only a Christian, by the light of faith, could reflectively discern that this search is vestigially suggestive of the Trinity. This unknowing search would be met, illuminated, and fructified, by the kiss of divine revelation.84 Such a softened view would resemble a disciplined presentation of the harmony of faith and reason found in Bonaventure. For Bonaventure, reason bids one conceive of God in the loftiest and most pious manner. Revelation declares the minor premise: to be able and willing to beget is better than not to be able and willing to beget. Theology draws the conclusion: the one who would think of God in the loftiest way holds that he is able and willing to beget.85 Danger of Circular Logic and Ideology Fifth, it can be asked whether the worldview (or worldviews) according to which God can be conceived only as triune is indebted to circular reasoning and whether it is false. The following would constitute circular reasoning: one affirms the worldview as true because, if true, it implies the truth of some dogma; subsequently, one adduces the truth of the dogma as warrant for holding the worldview. Moses Maimonides accused Christians (and Muslims) of such apologetic strategies: In order to prove the dogmas which they thus desired to establish, they were compelled to resort to certain hypotheses. . . . The earlier Theologians, both of the Greek Christians and of the Mohammedans, when they laid down their propositions, did not investigate the real properties of things; first of all they considered what must be the properties of the things which should yield proof for or against a certain creed; and when this was found they asserted that the thing must be endowed with For a marvelous example of just this approach, see the work of the much-maligned Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange in God: His Existence and His Nature: A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, trans. Dom Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1934), 2:131–43. 85 See St. Bonaventure, Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, q. 1, a. 2. See also his In I Sent., dist. 3, p. 1, q. 4. 84 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 143 those properties; then they employed the same assertion as a proof for the identical arguments which had led to the assertion, and by which they either supported or refuted a certain opinion.86 With respect to the “I-Thou” argument, is the initial premise (i) embraced as true because of its inferential power to yield the conclusion (vii) and the conclusion presented as evidence for the truth of the premise? It would be circular reasoning if a theologian were to affirm contemporary hypotheses regarding the constitution of material being—for instance, that it is equi-primordially relation and substance—because their “truth” yields analogies suitable for the Trinity and then verify their truth by the supposition that a Trinitarian Creator would leave his Trinitarian mark. Of course, it may be objected that the circularity is a matter of insight into the correlation between creaturely and divine being or that the verification of the premise resembles accepted practices of verification in science, for instance, the reasonable affirmation of the consequent. A scientist, for instance, proposes some hypothesis to account for the data. He tests the hypothesis by its power to predict yet more data. The logic of verification works as follows: if the hypothesis is true, the data will be A, B, C; now, the data are A, B, C; thus, the hypothesis is true. The argument suffers the fallacy of affirming the consequent, but all recognize that the argument is reasonable provided it not be construed as demonstrative. So, does the insight or worldview constitute an accurate reading of being, or rather a misreading? If the latter, a viciously argued acceptance of these hypotheses would be, however unwittingly, ideological. I suggest that the early Ratzinger’s hypothesis that all substance is equally primordially relation is false. A fortiori, the hypothesis that substance is simply relation is false. With regard to finite being, relation cannot obtain unless things related obtain. In short, relation depends on act, on substance-in-existence. Thus, if there are no relata, there are no relations.87 What would a creature as “pure relation” be? Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, pt. 1, ch. 71, trans. M. Friedländer, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover, 1956), 109. 87 Steven A. Long briefly, but incisively, remarked recently on this issue in his Analogia Entis: On the Analogy of Being, Metaphysics, and the Act of Faith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 9–10. Maritain astutely saw that, as the pseudo-philosophical interpretation of Newtonian mechanics was deterministic, so the “new physics” will, in addition to correcting that pseudo-philosophy, occasion its own pseudo-philosophical interpretation; see 86 144 Christopher J. Malloy Sheer dependence on God? But what is thus dependent? What differentiates a man from a squirrel? Since a man can love or not love God, what is a man (first act) such that he has the potency for fruition in God (second act)? Ratzinger acknowledges Aquinas’s notion of divine person to be an advance beyond the tradition. More precisely, it should be added, it was an advance beyond Augustine. In fact, Augustine took the term as absolute and could not conceive of a relation as subsisting. By contrast, Aquinas made bold to acknowledge that faith compels us to hold that in the divine relation subsists.88 His argument is that, since person is what is distinct in any (rational) nature, and since, in God, only the relations distinguish, person in God must be subsistent relation. After obliquely praising Aquinas for contributing to the Christian breakthrough, Ratzinger laments that he did not apply the definition of person achieved with respect to the divine persons to human persons as well: “The contribution of Christian faith to the whole of human thought is not realized; it remains at first detached from it as a theological exception, although it is precisely the meaning of this new element to call into question the whole of human thought and to set it on a new course.”89 Ratzinger implies that a reconstituted metaphysics of being must no longer be worked out in terms of Aristotelian logic, substance metaphysics, and so forth. Instead, it must be worked out in terms of a dialectical tension of “complementarities.”90 Contrary to Ratzinger’s reading, the Angelic Doctor does not merely neglect to apply the definition “subsistent relation” to creatures; with good reason, he rejects such application. “Subsistent relation” is a definition of person proper to the divine and, thus, not analogically applicable to any hypostasis of diverse substance. Only the vague definition of person as rational hypostasis analogously applies to both divine and human persons. Why can no creature be defined as “subsistent relation”? This question misplaces the burden. The burden that faith places on the intellect is to affirm that it is possible that a relation can subsist—in the divine. Natural reason’s Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 203f. 88 In his essay “Notion of Person,” Ratzinger fails to note (a) that Augustine resisted the notion of person as relation and (b) that Aquinas took courage to go beyond Augustine’s notion of person as merely absolute. For Augustine, see De Trinitate 7.11 (alt. numbering 7.6); in CCL, 50:261(ln. 27)—262(ln. 33). 89 See Ratzinger, “Notion of Person,” 449. 90 Ratzinger, Introduction, 124. The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 145 initial estimate is grounded in its connatural affirmation that relation is ontologically and logically posterior to hypostasis, the fundamental seat of existence. This posteriority remains even for the relation of “createdness.” Natural reason first affirms the being of a finite primary substance. It subsequently argues and concludes to the existence of Being Itself Subsisting. Finally, natural reason grasps the former’s relation to Being Itself Subsisting. Here, relation is logically posterior. Further, natural reason understands that, ontologically, the relation of dependence is in the orders of efficiency and formality, which relation obtains because the essence is actualized by a finite act of existence.91 Hence, “createdness” obtains in the creature because the creature obtains.92 What, then, mandates, and what permits, one to think divine hypostasis as subsisting relation? The faith mandates it. The purity of the notional acts, generation and spiration, permits it. Any purported objection can in principle be shown to lack the force of necessity. Nor could any but the divine nature have operations with such purity. In generating, the Father communicates his very substance so that it (the same in number) exists as received in a begotten manner. In spirating, the Father and Son communicate their very substance so that it (the same in number) exists as received in a manner of procession. In the divine life, the receiving principle is not other than what is received. By contrast, material finite being involves individuality distinct from essence and both spiritual and material finite being involve essence distinct from act of existence. Thus, reception in the divine life diverges from all modes of createdness. Further, only in the triune life is the very substance of the principle itself communicated to the recipient, so that it is not possible to distinguish one divine hypostasis from another on any basis except relation. In sum, in all beings except the One that transcends the categories entirely, the genus “relation” stands outside For the purposes of this essay, this pronouncedly Aristotelian conception is presumed. It is not non-Platonic, but it is a reading of Platonic “participation” as a true meta-narrative description of the situation that can be explanatorily mapped only through (Aristotelian) causal analysis. The task of contending against an anti-Aristotelian reading of participation would require a further essay. In these remarks, I am indebted to the insights of Steven A. Long’s address to the Academy of Catholic Theologians on May 2015, entitled “Pruning the Vine of La Nouvelle Théologie in the Garden of Thomism: Regarding the Thomistic Corrective to ‘La Nouvelle Théologie.’” 92 See Aquinas, In II Sent. d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, ad 4. 91 146 Christopher J. Malloy the genus “substance.”93 Therefore nothing but divine person can be “subsistent relation.” Moreover, Thomas does not construe even his own definition of divine person in the way Ratzinger reads the tradition that reaches its clarity in Thomas. A critic of substance metaphysics, the early Ratzinger suggests that the deity subsists precisely on account of the relations: “In its nature, the person exists only as relation. . . . The persons in God . . . are nothing but the act of relativity toward each other.”94 The divine act of being “can subsist only in a multitude of relations, which are not substances but simply [nichts als] ‘waves,’ and therein form [bilden] a perfect unity and also the fullness of being.”95 Ratzinger misconceives the matter. Aquinas reasons that the divine persons subsist not insofar as they are relations, but insofar as they are the divine essence. Here, Thomas is at one with Augustine.96 The persons are distinct insofar as they are relations: “Although the divine relations constitute the hypostases and thus make them subsistent, they do this inasmuch as they are the divine essence: because a relation as such neither has nor can give subsistence, for this belongs to a substance alone. On the other hand the relations as such distinguish.”97 Thomas is, of course, differentiating the terms “relation” and “essence” with respect not to the reality for which they suppose (the “thing” to which they refer), but to the aspect under which they target that for which they suppose.98 Thus, each person is the divine essence, and each person is a relation. Each person is a subsisting relation. Paradoxically, the danger of this false worldview may be linked to Kasper’s and (the early) Ratzinger’s low estimation of natural reason’s scope and certainty. Kasper does affirm that natural theology has a place, but his labor in this field is radically construed through an already Trinitarian lens. As such, it no longer can be an effort of (right) natural reason thinking the real. Further, neither Ratzinger Aquinas, De potentia Dei, q. 9, a. 4, ad 11. Although he does not expressly attribute the thesis to Aquinas, Ratzinger suggests that this is the authentic Christian understanding (“Notion of Person,” 444). 95 Ratzinger, Introduction, 125 (Einführung, 162). 96 See Augustine, De Trinitate 7.9–10 (alt. numbering 7.4–5); in CCL, 50:259(ln.136)–261(ln. 26). 97 Aquinas, De potentia Dei, q. 8, a. 3, ad 7; in On the Power of God, trans. English Dominican Fathers, (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1932–1934). 98 For more on that distinction, see ST, q. 13, a. 4. 93 94 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 147 nor Kasper seem to consider arguments for God’s existence worthwhile. Kasper contends that a natural theology that is not Trinitarian is ultimately counterproductive. He contends that atheism was a reaction to the “heresy of theism,”99 the view that there is a “unipersonal God who stands over against man as the perfect Thou or over man as imperial ruler and judge.”100 He alleges that Enlightenment deism’s denial of the Trinity, of special divine providence, and of a personal God resembles post-Tridentine Catholicism’s forgetfulness of the Trinity. Post-deistic atheism simply argued for man’s rights in the face of the appearance—given by the Christianity of the time—of divine hegemony, in the face of a God within being who competes with the human race. Thus, contends Kasper, additional apologetics for the “One God” would simply reinforce this view of a God within being competing for divine rights; such apologetics are, therefore, of no avail. The only way out is explicitly Trinitarian thinking. The early Ratzinger goes further, implying that natural reason cannot achieve knowledge of God: “Even the reality ‘God’ can [come into consideration (in den Blick kommen) only for him] who enters into the experiment with God—the experiment that we call faith.”101 He proposes that Christian faith “explicitly negates the divine monarchy in the sense of antiquity”;102 “The concept of mere substance (=what stands in itself!) is shattered.”103 Arguably, we here encounter a subversion of natural reason by faith and even a contradiction of Vatican I.104 Sometimes associated with the aforementioned worldview is a deprecatory judgment concerning all self-love. Dennis Ngien voices this judgment: “Self-love is a defect, which cannot be attributed to God.”105 From affirmation of personal distinction to denial of essential perfection! The ultimate trajectory in this line of thought, which cannot be pursued here, is Kasper, God, 295. Ibid., 294. 101 Ratzinger, Introduction, 125 (Einführung, 163). This statement is in tension with the First Vatican Council’s declaration Dei Filius (DH, no. 3026). 102 Ratzinger, “Notion of Person,” 453. 103 Ratzinger, Introduction, 137. 104 One appreciates Ratzinger’s criticism of radical individualism. The solution is to avoid proposing a metaphysics that blurs first and second act, a confusion that seems to found Ratzinger’s proposals: man “is a fellow being and only subsists in the collective entanglements that follow from the principle of corporality” (Ratzinger, Introduction, 186). 105 Ngien, “Condilectus,” 82. By contrast, see the sensible judgment of den Bok, Communicating, 310–12. 99 100 148 Christopher J. Malloy the embrace of love without wisdom. In what follows, Ngien states the truth that he rejects concerning Richard: “The unquestioned premise of [Richard’s] argument [for premise (iv)] is that God’s love must not be an ‘unordered’ love.”106 Danger of Finitization of Divine Persons Sixth, the “I-Thou” argument unwittingly implies and/or presupposes the finitude of divine person. The implication rests on the grounds for the induction of the initial premise (i): “Perfection X cannot be realized in Q unless Q is in relation to a person distinct from Q.” Proponents of the “I-Thou” argument point to the experience that no human person can exist without another. What grounds the induction?107 The recognition of imperfection or need in any human person does so. For instance, a finite person awakens to his powers of personal acting only by being actually known and loved by another person—for instance, the baby smiles in response to the mother’s smile.108 This is a marvelous image, but, Ratzinger astutely observes, if the initial premise (i) is read as implying the sufficiency of another human person, an infinite regress would result. Hence, it must be that every human person requires another person in order to act personally. Since every human person requires another person to account for his personal being, no human person can suffice as a Final Account for the existence of all human persons (in second act). Ultimately, man’s need for another person Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S.Watson (Philadelphia, PA:Westminster Press, 1953), 654, cited by Ngien, “Condilectus,” 89. Even Pope Benedict XVI does not sufficiently see the problem in this worldview. Addressing Nygren’s claim, he writes in Deus Caritas Est (2005), §7: “Were this antithesis to be taken to extremes, the essence of Christianity would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence, and would become a world apart, admirable perhaps, but decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life” (emphasis mine; available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html). There is nothing at all admirable about such a view; Benedict’s diagnosis and prescription could be significantly deepened. 107 Although Kasper on the one hand denies that he is employing an induction from philosophy, he points to contemporary personalism as the site of this insight. 108 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil, John Saward, and Rowan Williams, vol. 5, The Glory of The Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 615–18. 106 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 149 argues for the existence of infinite person.109 In this sense, Ratzinger may actually affirm an achievement of natural theology. Theological modesty should cause us to stop with this ultimate inference: If there is an actually acting finite person, there must be an infinite person. At this point, the “I-Thou” ontology has spent its strength. Its capital was the imperfect reality of finite person. To attempt to bring the premise to bear also on the divine and conclude that any divine person needs another divine person presupposes imperfection in the divine person. Either one would presuppose this or one would imply this by the act of bringing divine person under the scope of premise (i), the inductive origins of which lie in imperfection.110 However, no set of imperfect persons can yield the God who, for the classical Jew, as well as the Muslim and the classical philosopher, is the Account that needs no further account because he is Act absolutely without potency. Thus, the imperfection of divine person presupposed in or implied by the argument undercuts its stated aim. Ratzinger’s and Kasper’s explicit endorsement of divine perfection notwithstanding, their adoption of premise (i) already risks the finitization of divine person. Moreover, I would argue that Kasper again presupposes the imperfection of divine person in his defense of premise (iv). Premise (iv) runs thus: “No non-divine (i.e., finite) person is either necessary or Digging more deeply, Ratzinger argues that the human person is not made in God’s image primordially by way of horizontal relationships with other human persons. A man’s horizontal relationships are a consequence of his being made in the image of God as an individual person. The human person is primordially in the image of God by a vertical relationship with God through the covenantal life of faith, hope, and charity. This vertical relationship is the condition for the possibility of being in good relation with any human “thou.” So, Ratzinger argues, a creature can rightly constitute a “thou” for another— and perceive the other as “thou”—only if affirmed by a divine Thou; see Joseph Ratzinger, “Dignity of the Human Person,” in Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, trans. W. J. O’Hara, vol. 5, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 121–23. Ratzinger’s comments can be complemented by a Thomistic/ Augustinian insistence that one cannot spiritually relate to another, whether to a human or a divine person, except through spiritual faculties. So, presupposed even to one’s relating to God is the spiritual capacity for society, comprised in part by the powers of intellect and will. Second act requires first act. This parallel can serve as yet another reply to the unfounded anti-Aristotelianism in Ratzinger’s Introduction. 110 See ST I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 2. 109 150 Christopher J. Malloy sufficient for the realization of X in God (who is absolutely infinite).” Recall Kasper’s contention that, if man were God’s adequate dialogue partner, “God’s love for man would no longer be God’s gracious act but rather [God’s own need and his own perfection].”111 Here, Kasper finds the implication problematic because it would be man that completes God. He does not express that the problem would be that God needs completion; indeed, presupposed is that a divine person needs completion on the order of perfection. If so, the first divine person is not Infinite Act. On the contrary, the Son receives the infinitely perfect godhead from the Father, in whom are, simply and undividedly, all the attributes of Infinite Act. Better, the Son is that infinite godhead perfectly received. To uphold this point serves the honor of Almighty God and avoids the needless alienation of religious and philosophical monotheists. Of course, insofar as one proceeds to deny of God those experienced imperfections that support the induction of the chief premise (i) with respect to finite beings, as Kasper salutarily does, one distances God from the reach of the initial premise (i). Whereas a finite person requires another person on account of its finitude, what can be said of the divine? Heed the greater dissimilitude between God and creature on this point and the proper analogical connection regarding that premise is sundered and the inference to premise (iii) obstructed. The familiar light of the opening premise no longer illuminates the dark brilliance beyond the firmament. Even as an Analogy of Faith, It is Improper, Not Proper Seventh, suppose one nonetheless insists that something in the initial premise (i) pertains also to God. On what grounds can one so insist? On grounds other than those on account of which one grasps the truth of the premise with respect to finite persons. With regard to finite persons, the grounds are need and imperfection. With regard to God, one can, for instance, appeal to the divine bounty or exuberance or fecundity.112 So conceived, the Trinitarian plurality is grounded not in need but in excess, and this abundance is affirmed by faith, not by reason’s fathoming, which by its own lights can only stammer towards the affirmation of a personal First Cause. Of course, Kasper at times makes precisely these distinctions.113 Observe that, thus remodeled, the claim Kasper, God, 243 (emphasis mine; “sondern Gottes eigenes Bedürfnis, seine eigene Vollendung” in Gott, 297). 112 Ibid., p. 307. 113 Ibid., p. 306. 111 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 151 now appeals to Trinitarian faith. Such an appeal should therefore call for caution in communication with a non-Christian dialogue partner. Nor should a Christian be given false impressions here.What Christians take to be faith’s affirmation of abundant divine life might be received as reason’s blasphemous assertion that a less than infinitely perfect divine one needs a consort.114 I am reminded of an astute remark by a Muslim woman in my class. After we had studied Richard’s argument for some time, she remarked, “Richard presupposes a divine person who is finite.” Of course, such a presupposition contradicts Christian faith! On the other hand, if we consider the perfection of man in second act—man fully alive—we observe relationships as the very fabric of fruition: loving, serving, embracing, contemplating, and so on. The object is always, ultimately, another person. These activities are not oriented toward the good of the self in a utilitarian way. Hence, they share to some extent in the character of the good, which is self-diffusive. Once come to perfection, a thing tends toward the diffusion of itself, toward a giving of self. If this pattern can be seen in the created order, it forms the basis for a Christian to perceive some resemblance between creaturely self-giving and divine self-giving. Still, significant qualifications must be registered with respect to the resemblance. The specified relationality is man’s perfection in second act, but the definition of human person regards the perfection of man in first act. Of course, first act is ordered to second act: man in union with God. So, a definition through final causality would include relationality. Nevertheless, although not reductively utilitarian, this relationality is shot through with need and, thus, testifies to man’s finitude in several ways. First, the distinction itself between first and second act finds no place in God, and so, one cannot conclude that, since man requires relational fruition in second act, so does God. Second, the relational fruition of creatures once again attests to finitude. Your existing in my mind intentionally attests to my not being or having your substance within me “ontologically.” My good expands by knowing you. Also, in our vital interpersonal communion, we achieve a good greater than the sum of the parts, even the sum of parts in second act. As a result, in none of the relationally flourishing universe do we find any sufficient testimony that Unoriginate Pure Act must beget Begotten Pure Act (and thus be not simply unoriginate but also, and precisely, unbegotten). Pure Act suffers no division of first and second act; Pure Act is utterly free of See the Qur’an, 3:64. 114 152 Christopher J. Malloy all need; and no Hypostasis of Pure Act is transcended by a greater communion. The analogical resemblance between the relationality of human personhood in second act and that of divine personhood is discernible only through the eyes of faith. Further, this resemblance is fraught with a fragility that renders it an improper, rather than a proper, analogy. Implicit Tritheism Eighth, the foregoing weaknesses converge with those rooted in the attendant Social Analogy to occasion the danger of an unwitting tritheism.115 “Unwitting” cannot be stressed too much, as should go without saying in a fraternal, albeit serious, theological engagement. Kasper, Ratzinger, and Richard, of course, all confess the unity of God. Richard even unpacks the consequences of this unity in Augustinian fashion: there are three who are good, but there is only one goodness. Notwithstanding, the danger remains as the following factors converge. (1) As briefly indicated above, contemporary proponents of the “I-Thou” argument exhibit a general distaste for the once standard prolegomenon to theology, natural theology, which typically concludes to the divine monarchy and monotheism, contemplating inferentially the divine attributes. This distaste is contemporary, not classical. Richard, for instance, treats the divine substance and properties in his first two books. Achard of St. Victor proceeds in the same manner.116 John of Damascus, in the macroscopic structure of the relevant sections of his great On the Orthodox Faith, first treats arguments for God’s existence and unicity (with discernibly Aristotelian influences) and subsequently engages the revelation of the eternal generation. Further, on the microscopic level this text repeatedly undulates from consideration of the one essence to consideration of the three hypostases. Gregory of Nazianzus endeavors in his Second Theological Oration to establish the existence of God through an examination of the world of experience available to reason. Then, precisely in service of the ineffability and incomprehensibility of the divine nature, he establishes certain attributes of God by the process This criticism can be maintained with at least as much force as the converse criticism is maintained against the so-called “Psychological Analogy,” a treatment of which requires a separate article. The converse criticism is that the “Psychological Analogy” gives us only a mono-personal understanding of God. This charge is completely false, as I hope, in the footsteps of Bernard Lonergan, to demonstrate in a subsequent essay. 116 See the editorial comments in Ribaillier, 27–28. 115 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 153 of elimination through the via negativa. The endeavor concretely requires ordered passions (apatheia), prayer, devotion, and desire. It is, nonetheless, objectively geared to natural reason. The same structure can be discerned in the Address on Religious Instruction by Gregory of Nyssa and in the Mystagogical Catechesis by Cyril of Jerusalem.117 (2) The “I-Thou” arguments treated above are equipped to expound the teaching that God is triune, but they are not as readily equipped to treat how multiplicity emerges from the harbor of unity—the Trinitarian processions from an underived Father. Such proposals as that of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Social Analogy might be exceptions, in that these identify the radical self-giving of the Father as cause of the Trinity.118 Of course, this deficit does not prevent proponents from wielding two approaches in their labor. First, it does suggest that, in itself, the “I-Thou” argument and Social Analogies generally, with some exceptions, cannot bear the work of shoring up both divine unity and divine plurality adequately. Perhaps this is because the power of metaphor is limited and its issue, piecemeal. An intelligible account of divine unity and of the production of multiplicity, if given, seems to be only juxtaposed to, not organically united with, the “I-Thou” argument and the Social Analogy.119 By contrast, I would maintain, the “Psychological Analogy” can intelligibly account for unity, multiplicity, and the reason for Therefore, as many have already noted, Rahner’s thesis, which he attributes to Théodore de Regnon—that only with Thomas do we get a De Deo Uno presented materially as defensible by reason before we get De Deo Trino—is false. Furthermore, the common reading of de Régnon is mistaken; see, for example, Kristin Hennessy, “An Answer to de Régnon’s Accusers: Why We Should Not Speak of ‘His’ Paradigm,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007): 179–197). Den Bok contends that Richard does not distinguish the two treatises (Communicating, 189), but den Bok is here simply contending that Richard does not differentiate the treatises according to what reason can demonstrate and what only faith can demonstrate. In a way, one could suggest that Richard aims to extend reason’s reach into the treatise De Deo Trino. 118 Ngien argues that Richard’s meditations on three modes of love are a further development of his prior arguments (see “Condilectus,” 86). Den Bok more convincingly maintains that Richard’s argument for the processions is independent of his argument concerning love (see Communicating, 315). Den Bok also contends that Richard’s argument for the identity of divine substance is independent of that concerning love (see ibid., 320). 119 A Bonaventurean iteration might constitute an exception to this rule. Nonetheless, that iteration begins not with the usual narrative of “need” but rather with “abundance.” Thus, it is set on a different footing and clearly ensconced, at least in its best instantiation, in a strictly theological framework. 117 154 Christopher J. Malloy multiplicity. The entire enterprise of the “Psychological Analogy” is explanatory, albeit hypothetical and not demonstrative. It aims to account for given facts, not to establish them, yet its account secures both the unity and the distinctions. (3) The neglect of natural theology is frequently left without remedy in Trinitarian theology proper because, as Bruce Marshall has recently lamented, few contemporary Christians even take up the task of articulating, much less defending, divine unity.120 When the divine substance is abandoned in favor of relations and when essential perfections are neglected or denied, the problem is exacerbated. (4) The unwittingly presupposed imperfection of divine persons— the grounds for the induction of the initial premise (i) that ever haunt the “I-Thou” argument—unites with these first three deficits. The result is unwitting tritheism. Of course, Walter Kasper and Joseph Ratzinger are explicit monotheists. Nevertheless, they tend to conceive the divine unity as the communion of persons, as the bond of persons in love. Ratzinger writes: “To him who believes in God as tri-une, the highest unity is not the unity of inflexible monotony. The model of unity or oneness towards which one should strive is consequently not the indivisibility of the atom, the smallest unity, too small to be divided up; the authentic acme of unity is the unity created by love [welche die Liebe schafft]. The multi-unity which grows in love [Vieleinheit, die in der Liebe wächst] is a more radical, truer unity than the unity of the ‘atom.’”121 Similarly, Kasper writes: “What kind of unity is meant? Evidently not a rigid, monolithic, uniformist and tyrannical unity, which excludes, absorbs or suppresses every kind of otherness [ jegliches Anderssein]. A unity of that kind would be an impoverishment. God’s unity is fullness and even overflowing fullness of selfless giving and bestowing, of loving self-outpouring; it is a unity that does not exclude but includes; it is a living, loving being with and for one another. This trinitarian understanding of unity as communion has implications for the political sphere.”122 In these statements, the divine unity is portrayed as a result of the relationality of the persons; more, the unity is achieved by perichoretic activity. The dogmatic teaching of the Church, however, is that the unity is constituted by the identity of substance. As Kasper elsewhere See Bruce Marshall, “The Unity of the Triune God,” The Thomist 74 (2010): 1–32, at 7f. 121 Ratzinger, Introduction, 128 (Einführung, 166). 122 Kasper, God, 307 (Gott, 373). 120 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 155 rightly acknowledges, unity is not achieved as a result of perichoresis. Rather, the divine unity is precisely the simplicity and unicity of the divine essence. To use the Greek aphorism, the essence unites and the relations multiply. That is to say, the divine unity is what it is, even were there, per impossibile, no relational distinctions. A crucial qualification must be added, one that grounds a certain truth in the insights in these citations: since God is triune, his essence is more perfect than it would be if, per impossibile, God were not triune. As Bonaventure marvelously puts it: revelation teaches that “to be able to beget” is a pure perfection. Still, it is revelation that teaches this, and, arguably, the power of generating is common, although enjoyed by each in his proper subsistence. The Social Analogy presented by Karl Rahner’s sympathetic antagonist, Hans Urs von Balthasar, may be an exception to the general rule that the Social Analogy does not itself account for the emergence of plurality from unity. On the other hand, and thankfully, Balthasar does not, to my knowledge, suggest that he is arguing rationally towards the triunity of God. Salutarily, he suggests that a balanced theological approach should utilize both the Social and the Psychological Analogies, which, he says, converge in eternity.123 Unfortunately, however, Balthasar’s analogy, as do many a Social Analogy, falls prey to its own unwitting tritheism. He proposes that “each Person surprises and surpasses the Others by coming up with a ‘divine ever-greater,’ a divine ‘heightening’ and ‘exuberance.’ The unanimity of the decision expresses the unity of a [living] love.”124 The Father lets the eternal Son “go free”; the eternal persons “pray” to one another; and the eternal Son “obeys” the Father. In Balthasar’s defense, some of his followers have taken up the thesis that Trinitarian ontology alone allows an intellectual escape from the otherwise rigorous Platonic thesis that participated being must involve a “fall” insofar as it is other than unparticipated being.125 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 2, Truth of God, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press), 37–43. 124 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 5, The Last Act, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 89. 125 See, e.g., D. C. Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004). See also Schindler, “What’s the Difference? On the Metaphysics of Participation in Plato, Plotinus, and Aquinas” Nova et Vetera (English) 5 (2007): 583–617, and my response: “Participation and Theology: A Response to Schindler’s ‘What’s the Difference?’” Nova et Vetera (English) 5 (2007): 619–46. 123 156 Christopher J. Malloy These assertions are either metaphorical, in which case the standard interpretation of Balthasar by his disciples ought to be abandoned, or they are properly analogical. If they are properly analogical, they imply a multiplicity of intellects and wills, since one and the same intellect cannot know and not know the same thing in the same way and since one and the same will cannot will and not will the same thing in the same respect. But diversity of intellects implies (at least numerical) diversity of substance. Hence, Balthasar implies numerically three substances. Further, since what is divine is omniscient, none of the three persons Balthasar presents, each of whom is surprised by the others and, hence, in some way ignorant, can be infinite and divine.126 Therefore, read as intending a proper analogy, Balthasar implies tritheistic atheism. A Muslim or Jew, a philosophical monotheist, and a Christian theologian should all reject a divine unity conceived as less than substantial, as achieved through the relationality of subsistences in communion. Indeed, in such a conception, the subsistences stand within a common horizon—the unattainable reach of ens commune, qua possible—and are oriented towards their coming actuality! This is not the triune God at all but a community of, albeit powerful, persons working out their relationships in love within the horizon of ens commune and confronting a future of drama without end.127 What, then, is the point? And who shall their Shepherd be? This is the last thing that the aforementioned theologians intend. I am reminded of Rahner’s concern about possible misunderstandings of the term “person” in the contemporary context: “The danger . . . of believing that there exist in God three distinct consciousnesses, spiritual vitalities, centers of activity, and so on.”128 Clearly, these implicitly tritheistic tendencies pose grave difficulties for interreli Balthasar, Last Act, 79f. “The drama of the Trinity lasts forever”; in Hans Urs von Balthasar, TheoDrama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 4, The Action, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 327. If Balthasar, Kasper, and Ratzinger unwittingly gut the substantial unity of God, others more openly reject the numerical identity of substance. See, for instance, Moltmann, Trinity, 148–50; Joseph A. Bracken, The Triune Symbol: Persons, Process and Community, Studies in Religion 1(Lanham, MD: The College Theology Society, 1985); and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 319–27. For a good, if rough-hewn, inquiry concerning this ubiquitous problem in Trinitarian theology, see den Bok, Communicating, ch. 1. 128 Rahner, The Trinity, 43. 126 127 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 157 gious dialogue. Importantly, I would note (pace Ratzinger) that the primary Muslim objection to Christian faith concerns, not difficulties regarding the historical Jesus, but the perception that Christians fail consistently to uphold the unity of God.129 Inadequate Employment of Essence-Person Distinction Ninth, at the source of much of the difficulty is a failure to employ adequately the distinction between essence and person. The “I-Thou” argument narrates an increase in divine perfection obtained by the multiplicity of persons. The weakness in this approach resembles that of a noble Patristic apologetic against both Arianism and Islam: God cannot be without his Wisdom; therefore, the Son, who is Wisdom Hypostatically, “is God.”130 While this apologetic may be appealing to believers, and while it is the fruit of deep meditation, it is nonetheless, as articulated, unfortunate. Augustine demonstrates in De Trinitate 7 that wisdom is an essential perfection common to all three persons. After all, what lacks wisdom cannot produce wisdom. The Father must therefore essentially be wise if he is to beget subsistent wisdom. So, when Scripture attributes wisdom to the Son, it does not exclude wisdom from the Father, but predicates it of the Son by way of “appropriation.” That is to say, although it is an essential predicate, wisdom has special affinity with the Son because of the unique manner of the Son’s being the Godhead. The Son is the radiance of infinite intellectual light from infinite intellectual light. Now, just as I conceive in my mind the expression of what I know, and as it were “speak wisdom” within my heart, so does the Father speak his wisdom by begetting the Son. Therefore, as my “word” exhibits any wisdom I may have, so the Father’s Word exhibits his infinite wisdom. Had insights such as Augustine’s been appreciated, perhaps the See the document published by Muslim intellectuals entitled “A Common Word between Us and You” (2007), esp. the Qur’anic references to the unity of God in no. 3. See also Sandra Toenies Keating, “‘Say not Three’: Some Early Christian Responses to Muslim Questions about the Trinity,” The Thomist 74 (2010): 85–104. Contrast this to Ratzinger, Introduction, 141. 130 John Damascene digs deeply from the Patristic wells in his apologetic for the Trinity against Islamic objections. As Toenies Keating suggests, “he answers that to strip God of life and word is to make the divine being more akin to a stone, and this is much worse than to say God is like human beings in trying to explain the relationship between God’s life, word, and being. John’s obvious point here is that if God is who Christians believe he is, one, living, and communicating to creation, then the Spirit and the Word must be God” (Toenies Keating, “Muslim Questions,” 92). 129 158 Christopher J. Malloy late Patristic response to Islam might have been less unsuccessful.131 The Damascene’s words can be preached to a Christian who knows that the Son is not the only divine person enjoying “wisdom,” but to address these words to a non-Christian can give the impression that the divine perfections are isolated one from another and parceled out to the distinct persons. However, if power is not wise, it is weak. And if wisdom is not love, it is foolish. Therefore, the appearance of segregation of the perfections leads to the appearance of their imperfection. Consequently, unless one subdues one’s rhetoric, even the Christian may take the words in this way and be led into error, thinking of God as a set of imperfect substances in a vital communion that supposedly overcomes the imperfection. The way toward a correction is the tried distinction between person and essence: claims about perfection pertain to essence; claims about what is distinct pertain to the persons. Reason at its height, exercised rightly, can arrive at knowledge of a supreme First Cause and even Ipsum esse subsistens as personal. Faith discloses not the imperfection of the First Cause, but an explosive communication of the one divine perfection from underived divine person unto the eternal subsistence of (therefore derived) divine persons. Conclusion I have contended that, in its various iterations, the “I-Thou” argument for the truth of the Trinity is flawed for several reasons. The argument smacks of an attempted demonstration, whether (materially) rationalist or semi-rationalist. It presupposes imperfection in the deity. It occasions miscommunication with non-believers and confusion in a believer’s mind. It implies that natural reason must inherently be in error with regard to any conception of God other than that of him as triune. It seems indebted to viciously circular logic and is committed to a view of reality that is, quite probably, false and ideological. It implies tritheism. It fails adequately to employ the distinction between nature and person. And it has serious defects for theological science in both its intramural and extramural tasks. These defects notwithstanding, the insights connected with “I-Thou” arguments have great potential and have produced much Toenies Keating defends the Patristic responses while noting that they had little utility in persuading Muslims. My contention is that the Patristic rhetoric—were God not a Trinity, he would not be wise, etc.—is not only a needless scandal for Muslims who uphold divine unity (tawhîd) but also contrary to Christian theological science. 131 The “I-Thou” Argument for the Trinity: Wherefore Art Thou? 159 fruit. Responsibly reconfigured, they and the Social Analogy can provide genuine illumination for believers, both scientifically and morally. Their typical power is already felt in the moral sphere by those who convert mixed blessings to sound advice: persons achieve maturity when loving other persons; love’s proper object is another person; a rational subject maintains its true subjectivity only in dialogue with another subject; true friends share their very friendship with others; living material beings, when mature, beget offspring; marital love is a sexual friendship ordered to and crowned in fecundity; and so on. There is no question that many a Christian benefits from such implications of these arguments and the Social Analogy. Further, as Matthias Scheeben noted, apropos of Richard’s meditations, these arguments and the Social Analogy become, in a way, explorations of self-evident truth to Christians steeped in contemplation of the Trinity as they “come down” and perceive refracted images thereof throughout creation.132 For them, the Social Analogy illuminates all existence with its radiance. The Christian knows that, in fact, “every person is in relation to another person.” Yet, if we examine the principles of this knowledge, we see that the Christian knows this by faith as it illuminates reason. Reason discovers that there are many human persons, each in need of another person and ultimately in need of divine person. Faith teaches that God is three persons. Thus, the Christian can hold the thesis “there is no person that is not in relation to another person” by way of an enumerative induction. He does not actually hold the thesis as a self-evident truth—not until the Vision. Nor does he hold that divine person is in relation to another divine person as a deduction from an insight into being achieved through metaphysical reflection.133 Rather, God’s relational character as superabundant vitality is a primary datum of faith that ought never dislodge natural reason’s awe that Pure Act is. This datum is a Christian’s greatest joy, bedewing all experience of both need and excess with the oil of gladness that falls down upon the beard, uniting brothers. This truth makes us wonder at the refracted beauty of Your Divine Life, O Lord, in your N&V wounded people.134 See Matthias Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, part I. I was pleased to note that Gaston Salet affirms this as well (see La Trinité, 43). 134 I would like to thank Steven Long, Br. Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B., and anonymous reviewers for their considered advice regarding this essay. 132 133 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 161–184 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC The imago D ei serves as an ordering principle of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST), especially with respect to anthropology and the theology of redemption.1 For the most part scholarship has tended to focus on the Trinitarian image, and understandably so.2 According to St. Thomas man is made in the image not only of the Son, but also of the Trinity. Nevertheless, in focusing on the Trinitarian imago, scholars have overlooked some important aspects of Thomas’s reading of Colossians for his theology of the image.3 See, for example, Brian J. Shanley, “Aquinas’s Exemplar Ethics,” The Thomist 72 (2008): 345–69, at 347: “My purpose is to try to paint a broad connective canvas showing how the doctrine of imago Dei means that human action, including human freedom, can only be understood in light of the exemplar of the Trinity. The Secunda Pars makes sense only in the light of the Prima Pars and as pointing to the Tertia Pars.” 2 See Jean-Pierre Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 83–90; D. Juvenal Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity: A Study in the Development of Aquinas’Teaching, Studies and Texts 96 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990); Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas,trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 209–17; Michael A. Dauphinais, “Loving the Lord your God: The Imago Dei in Saint Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 241–67; Shanley, “Aquinas’s Exemplar Ethics.” 3 The index of Merriell’s study lists Col 1:15 and Col 3:10 one time each and offers no extended discussion of Thomas’s treatment of either text. The passages from the Summa contra gentiles considered below do not even appear 1 162 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. Colossians offers the main source for his understanding of “Image” as a proper name of the person of the Son.4 Moreover, it provides an important basis for his distinction between the different ways Christ and man are said to be the “image of God.” This essay will consider the role that Colossians 1:15 plays in Thomas’s understanding of the imago, both with respect to Christ as the perfect image and with respect to man as made “to the image of God.” Thomas’s interpretation of the name “Image” vis-à-vis the Word illuminates the connection between these two dimensions of the imago and offers a fruitful model for the integration of theology and exegesis. The theme of the imago Dei crops up repeatedly throughout Aquinas’s corpus, from his early career to his later writings, and across various genres: the Sentences Commentary, the biblical commentaries, ST, and the Summa contra gentiles (hereafter, SCG), among other texts. This essay focuses on two facets of Thomas’s doctrine: the character of Christ as “the image of the invisible God,” particularly as it relates to Christ’s status as the Word of God and as it is presented in ST, the Colossians Commentary, and the SCG; and the relation between Christ as the perfect image and man made “to the image of God” (ad imaginem Dei), as presented in question 93 of the Prima Pars of ST.5 in the index. Only one citation of Col 1:15 appears in Franz Dander, “Gottes Bild und Gleichnis in der Schöpfung nach der Lehre des hl. Thomas von Aquin,” in Der Mensch als Bild Gottes, ed. Leo Scheffczyk, Wege der Forschung 124 (Damstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), 206–59, originally printed in Zeitschrift für Katholische Theolgie 53 (1929): 203–46. Moreover, the citation is embedded in a quotation from Thomas’s Commentary on First Corinthians. Dander devotes no space to the role of Colossians in Thomas’s understanding of the imago. Henri-Dominique Gardeil’s brief discussion of the image of God in St. Thomas contains not a single reference to Colossians; see Gardeil, “L’image de Dieu,” in Somme theologique: Les origenes de l’homme; 1a questions 90–102 (Paris: Desclée, 1963), 380–421, with treatment of Thomas on 398–418. Aimé Solignac does likewise in “Image et ressemblance,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualite, vol. 7 (Paris : Beauchesne, 1971), col. 1446–51. 4 Throughout I will capitalize “Image” when it refers to the name of the Son, but leave it lower case when referring to the simple idea of an image. 5 Latin texts of the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra gentiles are taken from the Leonine edition; the Latin text of the Commentary on Colossians is taken from the Marietti edition. Unless otherwise stated, all English translations in this article are my own work. Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 163 Summa theologiae I, Question 35: Christ, the Image of the Invisible God We begin with ST I, question 35, which addresses whether the title “Image” is a proper name for one of the persons of the Trinity. The first article asks the broader question “Whether image in God is said personally?” St.Thomas makes two distinctions to clarify what is meant by “image.” First, he discusses the notion of similitude, which belongs to the definition of “image.” Similarity in and of itself is not sufficient to make something an image: “Nevertheless not just any similitude suffices for the notion (ratio) of an image, but a similitude that is in the species of the thing, or at least in some sign of the species.”6 Aquinas gives the example of color: a thing cannot be called an image of another thing if the two share the same color and nothing else. As an accidental quality, color does not indicate the form or the species of a thing. An image must imitate that of which it is an image in the “sign of the species.” In material things, this sign is primarily found in the figure (figura). So, for example, a statue may be called an image of a man, whereas a paint swatch of flesh-tone color may not. For a thing to be an image, derivation must be added to similarity in form. Thomas uses an example taken from St. Augustine: “One egg is not the image of another, because it is not derived from it.” 7 So, even though one egg more closely resembles another than a painting, only the painting of an egg may be called an image because the painting is derived from the egg. On this basis, Aquinas offers the following definition of “image”: “Therefore for something to be truly an image, it is required that it proceed from something similar to it in species, or at least in the sign of the species.”8 From this definition (as Summa theologiae I, q. 35, a. 1: “Non tamen quaecumque similitudo sufficit ad rationem imagines; sed similitudo quae est in specie rei, vel saltem in aliquo signo speciei.” On Thomas’s use of the term “species” in his discussion of the inner life of the Trinity, see the discussion in Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity, 177–80. 7 ST I, q. 35, a. 1: “Unum ovum non est imago alterius, quia non est de illo expressum,” a citation from Augustine, Octoginta trium quaestiones, q. 74. 8 ST I, q. 35, a. 1: “Ad hoc ergo quod vere aliquid sit imago, requiritur quod ex alio procedat simile ei in specie, vel saltem in signo speciei.” J. B. Lightfoot offers a similar discussion, including the example of two eggs, though he does not refer to Augustine; see Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 3d ed. (London: MacMillan, 1879), 145. For the notion of the imitation of an archetype, Lightfoot points to Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 30 (though he does not indicate the precise location, the phrase he cites appears in section 20) and John Damascene, De imaginibus oratio 1.9. 6 164 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. well as his earlier discussion of the Trinitarian processions), he draws the conclusion that “Image” must be a personal name in God: “Now those things that introduce procession or origin in divine things are personal. Hence this name ‘Image’ is a personal name.”9 The second article of question 35 asks whether the name “Image” belongs to the Son. Aquinas answers in the affirmative, pointing out that Scripture applies the name to the Son alone. The only text that explicitly refers to the Son as “Image” is Colossians 1:15, but Thomas appeals also to Hebrews 1:3, a verse he frequently combines with Colossians in his discussion of Christ as Image and as Word. The reasons for this are not hard to see. The Hebrews text refers to Christ as “the figure of his substance [ figura substantiae eius].” As we have seen, the notion of figure plays an important part in St. Thomas’s discussion of image. Add to this the fact that Aquinas, like most medievals, considered Hebrews to be a Pauline writing, and it is only natural that he would interpret the two texts together. Thomas appeals to the connection between Image, Word, and Son toward the end of article 2 to explain why the Holy Spirit is not properly called “Image.”10 The title is bound up with the procession of the Son from the Father as the Word: “Because the Son proceeds as Word, on account of which reason it is a similitude in species to that from which it proceeds.”11 In order for a word to be effective, it must be like that which it is meant to convey. By contrast, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as love. In general it is not essential that love be like that from which it proceeds, although Thomas suggests that in the case of the Holy Spirit, who is the divine love, there may be a likeness to that from which the Spirit proceeds.12 In the reply to objection 3 St. Thomas takes some initial steps toward explaining the different ways in which Christ and man are called “image of God.” The objection had argued that, because St. ST I, q. 35 a. 1: “Ea vero quae processionem sive originem important in divinis, sunt personalia. Unde hoc nomen Imago est nomen personale.” 10 In ST I, q. 34, prol. Aquinas identifies “Son,” “Word,” and “Image” as three names proper to the second Person of the Trinity. Questions 34 and 35 discuss the latter two titles, as the first is derived from the person of the Father, which he had already discussed. 11 ST I, q. 35, a. 2: “Quia filius procedit ut verbum, de cuius ratione est similitudo speciei ad id a quo procedit.” 12 Ibid.: “Non autem de ratione amoris; quamvis hoc conveniat amori qui est Spiritus Sanctus, inquantum est amor divinus.” Thomas’s guarded language is puzzling, but it most likely stems from his desire to safeguard “Image” as a name proper to the Son. 9 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 165 Paul refers to man as the “image of God” (1 Cor 11:7), the title is not proper to the Son. Thomas replies by noting two different ways a thing can be an image, drawing on some of the distinctions made in the preceding article. There he had noted that an image requires a share either in the species of the thing being imitated or in a sign of the species being imitated. That which shares in the species of the thing is by definition of the same nature, as a prince is of the same nature as his father, the king, and proceeds from him. That which shares in the sign of the species, on the other hand, does not share the same nature.13 So, a coin may bear the image of the king, but it is not of the same nature as the king. As the Image of God, the Son has the same nature as God the Father; man, by contrast, does not share God’s nature, and so, in relation to God, he is more like the image on a coin than like a prince. It is because of this defect in man’s imaging of God, Aquinas argues, that, in addition to being called the image of God in 1 Corinthians 11, man is also said to be “to the image” (ad imaginem), as expressing a “movement of tending toward perfection (motus quidam tendentis in perfectionem).”14 The Colossians Commentary: An Invisible Image A similar discussion of the nature of an image appears in St. Thomas’s Colossians Commentary.15 Given the nature of a commentary, Thomas focuses more explicitly on the text of the Colossians hymn, discussing some features not found in ST as well as giving a fuller discussion of certain themes briefly touched on there. In particular, the commentary teases out the relation between God’s invisible nature and the Son’s status as the Image of God, as well as expanding on the notion of a word as a mental image. Since the patristic era, commentators have debated whether Christ is a visible image or an invisible image. Taking the latter position, Thomas begins his discussion of Colossians 1:15 by explaining in what sense God is invisible: “God is called invisible because he exceeds the capacity of vision of any created intellect.”16 Aquinas explains this On Thomas’s use of the term “species” in his discussion of the inner life of the Trinity, see again Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity, 177–80. 14 ST I, q. 35, a. 2. 15 On the relation between Thomas’s understanding of the Image as it relates to earlier Patristic and Medieval commentators, see José Ramón Villar, “Cristo, imagen de Dios invisible (Col 1,15a). Tradición exegética y comentario de santo Tomás de Aquino,” Scripta Theologica 42 (2010): 665–90. 16 Super Epistolam B. Pauli ad Colossenses 1, lec. 4: “Deus dicitur invisibilis, quia excedit capacitatem visionis cuiuscumque intellectus creati.” 13 166 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. incapacity for seeing God by appealing to Scripture and to philosophy. Both Job and 1 Timothy attest to the human inability to see God.17 Pseudo-Dionysius explains the reason for this with respect to participation in existence: “All knowledge terminates at an existing thing, that is at some nature participating in being [esse]. But God is being itself [ipsum esse], not participating, but rather participated; therefore he is unknown.”18 The invisible nature of God informs Thomas’s understanding of Christ as the Image of God, because, for him, Christ, as Image, is also invisible.19 The reasons for this become clearer when we consider his discussion of the nature of an image. Thomas’s discussion of the image in the Colossians Commentary includes the same three points as ST I, question 35. The three main features of an image are likeness, derivation from another thing, and derivation with respect to species or a sign of the species, and he again uses Augustine’s example of two eggs.20 Since neither egg derives from the other, neither of the two may be called an “image” of the other, no matter how similar they may be. It is essential to an image, then, that it imitates, and particularly with respect to something pertaining to the species. For more New Testament texts referring to the invisibility of God, see Eduard Lohse, A Commentary on the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, trans. William R. Poehlmann and Robert J. Karris, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 47n102. Lohse also describes some of the Greek and later Hellenistic uses of the idea of the “image of God.” Cf. James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 87. 18 Super Col 1, lec. 4: “Omnis cognitio terminatur ad existens, id est, ad aliquam naturam participantem esse. Deus autem est ipsum esse, non participans, sed participatum, ergo est incognitus.” 19 Some modern scholars dismiss this question as foreign to the text’s intention; see Jerry L. Sumney, Colossians: A Commentary, New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 63–64, and Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 48n110. But if, as many have suggested, the figure of Wisdom lies in the background of Col 1:15, one can legitimately deduce the invisibility of the image, even if that is not the primary point of the phrase “image of the invisible God.” See the assessment of Eduard Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians: A Commentary, trans. Andrew Chester (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1982), 64–66. Sumney notes that Wisdom is described as an “image” in Wis 7, but nevertheless argues that not too much should be read into the phrase “image of the unseen [Sumney’s translation] God.” 20 Emery notes Thomas’s dependence on Augustine on this and other matters (Trinitarian Theology, 209–11). 17 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 167 The likeness of the Father and the Son explains the fittingness of the name “Image” for the Son. This likeness of the Son to the Father is not accidental, like the similarity between two eggs, but rather something derived from the Father. Moreover, the likeness pertains to species. Thomas describes this likeness in terms of the connection between word and image: “Moreover this similitude is according to species, because in divine things the Son is represented in some way, albeit deficiently, through our mental word. Now a word is in our mind when we form actually the form of a thing of which we have knowledge, and this we signify by an external word. And this word thus conceived is a certain similitude of the thing which we have in our mind, and similar according to species.”21 The mental word imitates and is derived from the object with respect to species by way of abstraction. In a similar way, the Son, as the Word of God, imitates the Father in species, and thus he is called the Image of God.22 This understanding of Christ as Image in relation to Christ as Word explains why Thomas speaks of Christ as an invisible image, a point he uses to address the Arian position. The Arians took Colossians 1:15 to mean that Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God. While such an interpretation is true enough of Christ’s humanity, the Arians took the further step of positing an ontological difference between the Father and the Son. Aquinas ascribes this error to a narrow understanding of the concept of image: “Judging of the Image of God according to the images which they made of their ancestors, in order that they might see in these [images] their loved ones taken away from them, as we also make images of the saints, in order that those whom we see not in substance, we might see in the image.”23 Based on this analogy, the Arians asserted that the Father alone is invisible and that the Son is visible. Super Col 1, lec. 4: “Item haec similitudo est secundum speciem, quia filius in divinis repraesentatur aliquo modo, sed deficienter per verbum mentis nostrae.Verbum autem mentis nostrae est, quando formamus actu formam rei cuius notitiam habemus, et hoc significamus verbo exteriori. Et hoc verbum sic conceptum est quaedam rei similitudo quam in mente tenemus, et simile secundum speciem.” 22 See Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 211–12; Villar, “Cristo, imagen de Dios invisible,” 684–86. 23 Super Col 1, lec. 4: “Iudicantes de Dei imagine secundum imagines quae fiebant ab antiquis, ut viderent in eis charos suos subtractos sibi, sicut et nos facimus imagines sanctorum, ut quos non videmus in substantia, videamus in imagine.” 21 168 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. Such a distinction implies a difference in nature, as well. To refute his suggestion St. Thomas appeals again to the text from Hebrews: “Who is the splendor of [his] glory, and the figure of his substance [ figura substantiae eius].”24 On the basis of this, text Thomas concludes, “And so he is not only the Image of the invisible God, but even he himself is invisible as the Father [is].”25 This paragraph is crucial for understanding Thomas’s explanation of Christ as the Image of God. Whereas we typically think of an image as something visible, visibility does not enter into his definition at all. The three main features of an image (likeness, procession, and derivation in species) can all exist in an invisible being. Summa contra gentiles IV: Image, Word, Equality Thomas discusses the notion of the Image as Word, as well as the equality of the Son with the Father, at greater length in book IV of SCG, where the Letter to the Colossians plays an important role.26 Like the Colossians Commentary, chapter 7 of SCG IV addresses the Arian position. It should come as no surprise that Aquinas draws extensively on Colossians in this section, as this letter was one of the most disputed texts in the Arian controversy. Thomas spends considerable time contrasting the Son’s divine status with the angels, drawing on various texts from Colossians. Having argued at some length that the angels are called “sons of God” in a way qualitatively different than the way in which Christ is called “Son,” he turns to the divine essence, understood primarily with respect to the divine intellect. In chapter 7, Thomas quotes Colossians 2:9 (“In him dwells all the plenitude of divinity”) in order to contrast Christ’s divine nature with angelic participation in some of the perfections of God. The angels receive a part of God’s goodness, but Christ has this goodness in full. Moreover, Aquinas argues, this participated goodness extends to the intellect. Even though the angelic intellect is superior to that of man, it is nevertheless inferior to that of Christ, in whom “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”27 For Thomas, Colossians points in various ways to Christ’s perfection and equality Heb 1:3 as cited in Super Col 1, lec. 4. Super Col 1, lec. 4: “Et sic est imago non solum Dei invisibilis, sed etiam ipse est invisibilis sicut pater.” 26 For background see Gilles Emery, “The Treatise of St. Thomas on the Trinity in the Summa contra Gentiles,” in Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia, 2003), 71–120, esp. 89–93 on Thomas’s use of Scripture. 27 Col 2:3, cited in SCG IV, ch. 7. 24 25 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 169 with God, and he brings these verses to bear on the question of Christ as the Image of God. Thomas continues to contrast the likeness of angels to God with the likeness of the Son to the Father, quoting two of the Psalms to show that the angels are inferior to God: “‘Who,’ it says, ‘is like God among the sons of God?’ And in another place, ‘God, who will be like you?’”28 Though the angels resemble God in some respects, none of them is a perfect likeness (perfecta similitudine) of God. By contrast, Christ is the perfect likeness of the Father, as is made clear in the Gospel of John: “As the Father has life in himself, so he gave also to the Son to have life in himself.”29 By virtue of this life, the Son is equal to the Father.30 In the next several paragraphs, Aquinas draws on Colossians 1:15–17 to explicate the nature of the Son’s likeness to the Father. He begins with the nature of revelation: “No created substance represents God in his substance; for whatever appears out of the perfection of any creature is less than that which is God.”31 In order for something to be a perfect image of God, then, it must be of the same substance as God, for “through no creature is it possible to know of God what he is.”32 But Colossians refers to Christ as the “image of the invisible God,” a phrase Thomas takes to mean that Christ represents the Father. If this is the case, the Son must be a perfect image, in contrast to man, whom Paul also calls the “image of God” (1 Cor 11:7). Because of the difference in substance between God and man, man is only a “deficient image” (imago deficiens). The Son, however, shares the substance of God, a point Thomas bases again on Hebrews 1:3: “Who is the splendor of [God’s] glory, and the figure of his substance.”33 It is only because Christ has the same substance as the Father that he can be the perfect image. SCG IV, ch. 7: “Quis, inquit, similis Deo in filiis Dei? Et alibi: Deus, quis similis erit tibi?” 29 John 5:16 (quoted in SCG IV, ch. 7). 30 Lohse interprets “image” as pointing to Christ’s distinction from creation: “As the ‘image’ of the invisible God, he does not belong to what was created, but stands with the creator who, in Christ, is acting upon the world and with the world.” 31 SCG IV, ch. 7: “Nulla substantia creata repraesentat Deum quantum ad eius substantiam; quisquid enim ex perfectione cuiuscumque creaturae apparet, minus est quam quod Deus est.” 32 Ibid.: “Per nullam creaturam sciri potest de Deo quid est.” 33 Heb 1:3, quoted in SCG IV, ch. 7. 28 170 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. Moderns might balk at the way Thomas interprets Colossians in light of Hebrews, but several points are worth keeping in mind. First, as already noted, like most medieval theologians, he attributed Hebrews to the apostle Paul, and so he saw no problem with interpreting the two texts in light of each other, particularly given the common imagery. Second, Aquinas’s combination of these texts relies, ultimately, not on common human authorship, but rather on the divine authorship of the Scriptures. Based on this authorship, he takes the texts to be describing the same reality, and for this reason, he sees no problem in combining texts from Colossians, Hebrews, John, and the Psalms to make his argument. Moreover, the texts all draw upon themes relating to wisdom. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for addressing modern concerns, in the paragraphs that follow, he makes his case largely on the basis of Colossians itself. Aquinas proceeds by reading Colossians in light of the nature of causality in creation: “Nothing that is in some genus is the universal cause of those things which are in that genus, thus the universal cause of men is not some man, for nothing is its own cause.”34 But according to various texts of Scripture, the Son is the cause of creation. Among these texts is Colossians 1:16, which says “In him all things were created in heaven and on earth.”35 If Christ is the cause of all things, then he cannot belong to the same genus as all things, and therefore, he is not created. In the next paragraph, Thomas extends the argument to those invisible realities that also belong to the genus of created things. According to Colossians, Christ is the cause of these as well: “But the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is the cause of angels, bringing them into being; for the apostle says, ‘whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created through him and in him.’”36 Thus, since Christ is the source of both visible and invisible things, the heavenly and the earthly, he is not a creature.37 As an SCG IV, ch. 7: “Nihil quod est in aliquo genere, est universalis causa eorum quae sunt in genere illo, sicut universalis causa hominum non est aliquis homo, nihil enim est sui ipsius causa.” 35 Col 1:16, quoted in SCG IV, ch. 7. 36 SCG IV, ch. 7: “Sed Dei filius Iesus Christus est causa Angelorum, eos in esse producens: dicit enim Apostolus: sive throni, sive dominationes, sive principatus, sive potestates, omnia per ipsum et in ipso creata sunt.” 37 Cf. Schweizer, Colossians, 66: “The fact that Christ participates in the act of creation serves to distinguish him from a created being, and it is for this very reason that, as the ‘image of the invisible God,’ he is God’s revelation.” 34 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 171 uncreated Person and the source of all things, Christ perfectly images the Father in a way that neither angels nor men can, insofar as they do not have the power to create. Aquinas proceeds to argue from another philosophical principle: “the proper action of anything follows from its very nature.”38 Just as genuinely human actions are performed only by humans, so also divine actions are performed only by God. Thomas then points to three acts proper to God: creation, sustaining creation in being, and wiping away sins. Colossians ascribes at least two of these to Christ. We have already seen that Colossians 1:16 asserts that all things, both visible and invisible, were created through the Son. In addition, the following verse affirms that “all things exist in him [omnia in ipso constant].”39 With respect to wiping away sins, Thomas again points to Hebrews: “He upholds all things by the word of his power, making purification of sins.”40 Thus, all three activities of God are ascribed to Christ in Scripture. In order to address a possible Arian objection, that Scripture portrays Christ simply as an instrument, Thomas appeals to John 5:19, in which Christ says, “Whatsoever the Father does these things the Son also does similarly.”41 Thus, for Thomas, the Son is equal in divinity to the Father, and it is because of this equality that he is the perfect image of the invisible God. In chapter 11 of SCG IV, Aquinas draws out the connection between Christ as Image and Christ as Word, a connection only hinted at in chapter 7. The key to this link is the nature of an interior word. For Thomas, an interior word is “a certain account and similitude of a thing understood.”42 As we have seen, similitude does not suffice to make something an image. Thomas thus describes two different relations between things bearing a likeness of one another. In the thing that is the principle from which a likeness is derived in another, the first thing is an exemplar. That which is derived from the principle, by contrast, is an image. For Thomas, the Word assumes both of these roles in different ways.43 The Word is God’s act of understanding. As such, the Word func SCG IV, ch. 7: “Propria actio cuiuslibet rei sequatur naturam ipsius.” Col 1:17, quoted in SCG IV, ch. 7. 40 Heb 1:3 quoted in SCG IV, ch. 7. It is a bit puzzling that Aquinas cites Hebrews rather than Col 2:13–14. Presumably he does so because of the importance of the Hebrews text in his understanding of Christ as the Image. 41 Cited in SCG IV, ch. 7. 42 SCG IV, ch. 11: “Quaedam ratio et similitudo rei intellectae.” 43 Ibid. 38 39 172 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. tions as exemplar to all of creation: “His understanding is the principle of things understood by him, since they are caused through his intellect and will.”44 On the other hand, the Word is related to the Father as to a principle: “But [the act of understanding] is compared to that intelligible thing which he himself is as to a principle, the emanation from which is the Word conceived.”45 This twofold relation to things created and to God the Father accounts for the title “Image”: “It is therefore necessary that the Word of God be compared to other things understood by God as an exemplar; and to God himself, whose Word he is, as his Image. This is why it is said of the Word of God that he is ‘the Image of the invisible God.’”46 With this understanding of the Image in terms of the Word, Aquinas clarifies the distinction between the Son as the perfect image and other images. If the Son were an image in some way related to the senses, he would be only an imperfect image, since the senses attend only to accidents. By contrast, the intellect penetrates to the interior dimension of a thing. Because the Son is the Image of God with regard to understanding, he is a perfect image, an image of the Father’s very essence: “Since therefore the Word of God is the Image of God, as has been shown, it is necessary that he be the Image of God as to his essence.”47 Thomas ties this point to Scripture, once again drawing on the language of Hebrews 1:3, “the figure of the substance of God.” In the next paragraph Thomas brings the titles Image and Word together with the third proper name of the second Person of the Trinity, “Son.” As he has made distinctions between two kinds of similitude (exemplar and image), he makes a further distinction between two kinds of image: an image that is not of the same nature as that whose image it is and an image that shares the same nature.48 Thomas points again to the example of the son of a king, who both images the king and shares the king’s nature. Aquinas has already established that the Word is of the same nature as the Father, and so Ibid.: “Eius intelligere principium est rerum intellectarum ab ipso, cum ab eo causentur per intellectum et voluntatem.” 45 Ibid.: “Sed ad intelligibile quod est ipse, comparatur ut ad principium; est enim hoc intelligibile idem cum intellectu intelligente, cuius quaedam emanatio est Verbum conceptum.” 46 Ibid.: “Oportet igitur quod Verbum Dei comparetur ad res alias intellectas a Deo sicut exemplar; et ad ipsum Deum, cuius est Verbum, sicut eius imago. Hinc est quod de verbo Dei dicitur . . . quod est imago invisibilis Dei.” 47 Ibid.: “Cum ergo Verbum Dei sit imago Dei, ut ostensum est, necesse est quod sit imago Dei quantum ad eius essentiam.” 48 Ibid. Cf. the discussion of ST I, q. 35, above. 44 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 173 he draws the logical conclusion: “Therefore it follows that the Word of God is not only the Image, but also the Son.”49 Aquinas returns briefly to the relationship between Image and Word in chapter 42, a passage that serves as a fitting transition to the anthropological consequences of his understanding of Christ as Image and Word.50 In this chapter, Thomas comments on the suitability of the Word becoming incarnate. Since, according to Thomas, the salvation of men consists in the perfection of the human intellect, it is only fitting that the Word should be the one to take on human nature.51 The Word shares a certain “affinity” (affinitas) with human beings insofar as the specific difference of the human race is reason.52 Summa theologiae I, Question 93: Man in the Image of God Given this affinity between the Word and man, it is not surprising that the imago Dei plays a central role in Thomas’s anthropology. The prologue to question 93 of ST I describes man’s end in these terms: “Next it is to be considered concerning the end or the term of man’s production, insofar as he is said to be made to the image and likeness of God.”53 Two points will be the focus of our consideration of this question: the distinction between the perfect image and the imperfect image and his understanding of the image of God in terms of reason. This latter point rests in part on another key text from Colossians. In the sed contra of article 6, Thomas appeals to Colossians: “But at Colossians 3, he says, ‘putting on the new man, who is being renewed in the knowledge of God, according to the image of him who created him,’ where the renewal, which is according to the garment of the new man, he attributes to the image of God.”54 SCG IV, ch. 11: “Relinquitur igitur quod Verbum Dei non solum sit imago, sed etiam Filius.” 50 See Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 216. 51 SCG IV, ch. 42. 52 Ibid. 53 ST I, q. 93, prologue: “Deinde considerandum est de fine sive termino productionis hominis, prout dicitur factus ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei.” Torrell suggests that “the theme of the image of God organically links the First and Second Parts [of the Summa]” (Spiritual Master, 82). Dander notes that the phrase ad imaginem excludes an emanationist interpretation (“emanatistische Deutung”) of Thomas’s teaching on the imago (Dander, “Gottes Bild und Gleichnis,” 208–09). 54 ST I, q. 93, a. 6, sc: “Sed ad Col. III dicit: Induentes novum hominem, qui renovatur in agnitionem Dei, secundum imaginem eius qui creavit eum: ubi renovationem quae est secundum novi hominis indumentum, attribuit imagini Dei.” 49 174 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. In article 1, Thomas again touches briefly on the definition of “image,” pointing once more to Augustine’s example of two eggs to underscore that similarity does not suffice to make something an image.55 He then makes a further distinction with respect to the question of equality. Drawing on Augustine again, he notes that equality does not belong to the definition (ratio) of “image.”56 To take but one example, the image of a person reflected in a mirror is not equal to the person whose image it is. Equality is, however, an essential part of a perfect image, and herein lies the distinction between man, who is made “to the image of God” (ad imaginem Dei), and Christ, who simply is “the Image of the invisible God.” In the reply to the second objection, Thomas elaborates on this distinction. Because Christ is the perfect image of God, “he is called ‘Image,’ and never ‘to the image.’”57 The reason Christ is the perfect image of the Father is that he has the same nature. Thus, using a by now familiar example, Christ is the Image of God in a way analogous to the son of a king. By contrast, man, because he does not have the same nature as God, is more akin to the image of a king on a coin. For this reason, man is said to be both “image” and “to the image.” The logical question, which takes up most of the remainder of question 93, is in what sense man is “to the image of God.” Not surprisingly, for Aquinas, man is understood to be “to the image of God” based on the power of reason. Thus, in article 2, he argues that, since rationality distinguishes man from the other creatures (and, it would seem, angels), among physical creatures, only man is made to the image of God.58 Aquinas returns again to an element of his basic definition of an image: not every likeness is an ST I, q. 93, a. 1. Merriell notes the priority of exemplar causality when it comes to images (To the Image, 174). For another helpful exposition of this question, see Jaroslav Pelikan, “Imago Dei: An Explication of Summa theologiae, Part 1, Question 93,” in Calgary Aquinas Studies, ed. Anthony Parel (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), 27–48. Toward the end of this essay, Pelikan briefly notes the significance of Col 1:15 for Thomas’s distinction between the perfect and the imperfect image. 56 ST I, q. 93, a. 1. 57 ST I, q. 93, a. 1, ad 2: “Ideo dicitur Imago, et nunquam ad imaginem.” Merriell argues that Thomas sees this likeness of man to God as present from the moment of creation (To the Image, 176). 58 Again, Merriell emphasizes that man’s being made in the image of God is a present reality, not just something toward which he is oriented, though it is that as well (To the Image, 180). Of course, angelic rationality is analogous to human rationality and not discursive. 55 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 175 image. Thus, while animals bear some resemblance to God insofar as all creation in some way bears a vestige (vestigium) of God, they cannot be called images: “For if the similitude is according to genus alone, or according to some common accident, something is not on this account said to be to the image of another.”59 Toward the end of the corpus of article 2, Aquinas describes three different ways creatures are like God: because of existence (all creatures), because of life (only animate creatures), and because of understanding (only human beings and angels). Because this last faculty is closest to God, “intellectual creatures alone, properly speaking, are to the image of God.”60 In article 6, Thomas again takes up the question of whether the image pertains to the mind only. Here we see once again the significance of Colossians for his understanding of the image. As already noted, in the sed contra, Aquinas appeals to a text from Colossians describing the renewal of the mind.61 Thomas thus argues that the image of God is found in the rational creature only in the mind. In order to make his case, he further explicates the different kinds of likeness. All creatures resemble God “through the mode of a vestige” (per modum vestigii). Even the rational creature, at least with respect to his corporeal existence, also bears a vestige of God. A vestige differs from an image in that the latter resembles its source in likeness of species, whereas the former “represents through the mode of effect, which so represents its cause that it nevertheless does not attain to likeness of species.”62 Aquinas clarifies this distinction by giving three examples of a “vestige”: the footprints of an animal, the ashes of a fire, and the remnants of a land destroyed by an army. None of these bear a likeness according to species, but they all give evidence of the source that caused them. ST I, q. 93, a. 2: “Si enim similitudo sit secundum genus tantum, vel secundum aliquod accidens commune, non propter hoc dicetur aliquid esse ad imaginem alterius.” 60 Ibid.: “Solae intellectuales creaturae, proprie loquendo, sunt ad imaginem Dei.” As Merriell puts it, “Thomas locates the ground of the image of God in man in the formal cause of man, his soul, inasmuch as by his soul man participates the divine quality of intellectuality, which in a way specifies the essence of God” (To the Image, 181). 61 Thomas also cites a related text from Ephesians in the same passage. Merriell notes that Thomas draws on these texts because of their prominence in book 14 of Augustine’s De Trinitate (To the Image, 204). 62 ST I, q. 93, a. 6: “Vestigium autem repraesentat per modum effectus qui sic repraesentat suam causam, quod tamen ad speciei similitudinem non pertingit.” 59 176 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. On the basis of this distinction, Thomas argues that only rational creatures are made in the image of God: “For as it pertains to the likeness of the divine nature, rational creatures seem in some way to attain to the representation of species, insofar as they imitate God not only in this, that he exists and he lives, but also in this, that he understands.”63 Animate creatures have a vestige of the divine intellect to varying degrees, but because they do not have the power of reason, they cannot be said to be made in the image of God. Aquinas and Modern Exegesis: Confluences Having sketched some of the key features of Thomas’s theology of the imago Dei both with respect to Christ and with respect to human beings, we turn now to consider how this theology compares with modern readings of Colossians. It goes without saying that Aquinas came to the text of Colossians and the question of the image of God with different presuppositions than modern exegetes. Questions of authorship play little role in his discussions of the text, even in the Colossians Commentary, and the typical questions of historical context that still drive much exegetical work were not even on the radar for him, in part because many of the texts available to modern scholars were not available in his day. Given these differences, it is all the more remarkable how many convergences one can detect between Aquinas’s interpretation of Colossian 1:15 and those of modern scholarship. To take one example, Thomas’s reading of the image language in light of the Son’s status as the Word finds resonance with wisdom readings of Colossians 1:15. Many see the traditions reflected in the Wisdom of Solomon and the writings of Philo of Alexandria as an important background for understanding this verse. Wisdom 7:26 speaks of personified Wisdom as “the image [εἰκών] of God’s goodness.” Moreover, the broader context of the passage speaks of Wisdom as the one through whom God created the world (see Wis 7:17–24).64 In a later chapter, the text also seems to identify Word Ibid.: “Nam quantum ad similitudinem divinae naturae pertinet, creaturae rationales videntur quodammodo ad repraesentationem speciei pertingere, inquantum imitantur Deum non solum in hoc quod est et vivit, sed etiam in hoc quod intelligit.” 64 See Sumney, Colossians, 65: “These poetic statements about Christ and his role in creation echo what other writers say about God’s hypostatic Wisdom. Among Jewish authors, Wisdom is a manifestation of God and a means through which God created the world (Prov 8:22; Wis 7:17–24; 9:9; Philo, Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin 4.97; De cherubim 125), and even God’s 63 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 177 and Wisdom: “God of our fathers and Lord of mercy, who made all things by your word [ἐν λόγῳ σου] and by your wisdom [τῇ σοφίᾳ] prepared man that he might govern all the things created by you” (Wis 9:1–2). Surprisingly, Aquinas does not cite any of these texts, but he does appeal to similar ones. For example, in chapter 7 of SCG IV, he quotes the words of personified wisdom in Proverbs 8: “I was with him forming all things.” Thus, though he does not draw the link between Word and Wisdom based on the Wisdom of Solomon, he does see the connection. His reliance on Proverbs 8 can be explained by its prominence in the Arian debates.65 Modern commentators also see connections between the image language of Colossians, the prologue of John, and Hebrews. Douglas Moo, for example, points to some of the very same texts to which Aquinas appeals in explaining the image in a broader biblical context: “In this respect, Colossians 1:15 is similar to John’s depiction of the ‘Word’ in 1:1–18—the Word was ‘with God’ and ‘was God’ (v. 1) and thus has ‘made him known’ (v. 18)—and to Hebrews 1:3—‘the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.’ The opening line of our hymn may, then, identify Christ as that original image in accordance with which human beings were created.”66 The difference between Aquinas’s use of these texts and that of many modern scholars is the rationale behind it. Whereas modern scholars typically cite these texts as an important part of the historical context of Colossians, Thomas sees the texts as pointing to a common reality beyond the texts and to which each of the texts points. Perhaps the most intriguing convergence between Aquinas and modern scholarship is the recent proposal of George van Kooten, who argues that Paul’s understanding of the imago makes sense in ‘firstborn’ (Philo, De confusione linguarum 62). In many ways, the poetic material in Colossians has Christ fulfilling the functions others had Wisdom perform.” Douglas Moo also notes connections between word and wisdom, as well as between these two and image, in the works of Philo of Alexandria, a point to which we will return. See Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MN: Eerdmans, 2008), 118. See also David Pao, Colossians and Philemon, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 94–95; Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 47–48; Dunn, Colossians and Philemon, 88–89. 65 See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100—600) (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1971), 191–97. 66 Moo, Colossians and Philemon, 118. 178 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. light of some of the parallels with Philo of Alexandria.67 Van Kooten highlights three elements of Philo’s account of man’s creation in the image of God: its emphasis on the intellect, its connection with the Logos, and the distinction between the Logos as the true image and man, who is made “after the image.” For Philo, man is made in the image of God on the basis of reason. So, in the De opificio mundi he writes: But what is the relationship [with their first father]? Every human being with respect to his intellect is closely associated with the divine word [λόγῳ θείῳ], having come into being as an impress or a fragment or a reflection of that blessed nature; but according to the constitution of the body he [is closely associated] with the whole world; for he is composed of the same things, of earth, and water, and air, and fire, each of the elements bringing in its appropriate part for the completion of the most sufficient materials, which it was necessary for the creator [δημιουργόν] to take in order to fashion this visible image. (De opificio mundi 146) 68 Thus, for Philo, it is only with respect to the mind that man is made in the image of God because it is the intellect that sets man apart from the rest of the corporeal world. This emphasis on the intellect stems from Philo’s understanding of the one true image, the Logos. In Quaestiones in Genesim, the Alexandrian writes of the contrast between the Logos and human beings: “Most excellently and veraciously this oracle [Gen 9:6] was given by God. For nothing mortal can be made in the likeness of the most high One and Father of the universe but (only) in that of the second God, who is His Logos. For it was right that the rational (part) of the human soul should be formed as an impression by the divine Logos, since the pre-Logos God is superior to every rational nature” (Quaestiones in Genesim 2.62).69 For Philo, human beings are made For further analysis of the following texts from Philo, see George van Kooten, Paul’s Anthropology in Context: The Image of God, Assimilation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, WUNT 232 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 50–53. 68 Translation adapted from F. H. Colson and G. H. Whittaker, Philo, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library 226 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1929), 115–17. 69 Translation taken from Ralph Marcus, Philo, supplement 1, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1953), 150–51. 67 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 179 not directly in the image of God the Father, but rather in the image of the Logos, the “second God,” and this is fitting because it is in the intellect that the image is found. Finally, Philo elsewhere makes explicit the distinction that remains implicit in Quaestiones in Genesim. In Quis rerum divinarum heres sit, he delineates the relationship between man, who is made after the image of God, and the Logos, the image of God: “Now Moses calls the one who is above us the image of God, but the one among us the impress of the image, for he says, ‘God made man,’ not the image of God, but ‘according to the image [κατ’ εἰκόνα].’ So that the mind in each of us, which indeed is the man in a true and full sense, is a third model [τύπον] [coming] from the Creator [τοῦ πεποιηκότος]. But the intermediate one is a pattern of the one and a copy of the other” (Quis rerum divinarum heres sit 231, emphasis added).70 The one true image, then, is the Logos; human beings are made “after the image”—that is, the Logos. Moreover, the image has a dual relation to God and to human beings: he is a pattern (one could say exemplar) for human beings, but a copy of God. Van Kooten suggests that this twofold Philonic understanding of the image illuminates Paul’s account of the image. His description is worth quoting in full: Although in 1 Cor 11.7 Paul indeed identifies man with the image of God (man is the image of God), in all other occurrences of the “image of God” in the Pauline writings, properly speaking, the image of God is Christ (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). Man is only said to bear, not to be this image (1 Cor 15:49). He is not so much transformed into the image of God (although this translation is grammatically possible), but rather in accordance with the image of God (2 Cor 3:18). He becomes of the same form as the image of God (Rom 8:39). He is indeed renewed κατ’ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν, according to the image of his Creator (Col 3:10). This is in tune with what we have seen in Philo who, time and again, emphasizes that man is not created as the image of God, but after the image of God.71 The similarities with Aquinas’s account of the imago are striking: the acknowledgement of the need for nuance in understanding Paul’s Translation adapted from F. H. Colson and G. H. Whittaker, Philo, vol. 4, Loeb Classical Library 261 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1932), 399. 71 Van Kooten, Paul’s Anthropology in Context, 216–17 (emphasis original). 70 180 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. doctrine and the contrast between Christ, who is the image, and man, who is made “in accordance with the image.” Aquinas’s interpretation, though coming at the question from a very different angle, presents a remarkably similar picture of the theology of the imago. Of course, Thomas would differ from Philo in that he would never refer to Christ as a “second God.” But it is important to emphasize that his position is based not solely, or even primarily, on philosophical principles, but on Scripture itself.72 Aquinas, the Imago, and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture Colossians plays an important role in Aquinas’s multifaceted theology of the imago Dei. Though presented in a largely Aristotelian idiom, Thomas’s account is rooted in the texts of Scripture, as he seeks to make sense of the various ways the New Testament applies the language of the imago to Christ and to human beings. As we have seen, his approach entails a combination of close attention to the text of Colossians itself and a nuanced and responsible inner-biblical exegesis. Thomas explicates the nature of Christ’s status as the Image through a close reading of Colossians, affirming Christ’s divinity on the basis of his role in creation. At the same time, he also fills out this picture by appealing to related texts from Hebrews and the Gospel of John, as well as the wisdom literature and the Psalms. In partic See especially the discussion of SCG IV, ch. 7, above. Noting some of the parallels between Philo and Paul, Joachim Gnilka offers an assessment similar to that of Aquinas: “Als Bild Gottes bleibt Christus nicht hinter dem Abgebildeten zurück wie die platonische Eikon, wird er nicht zum minderen Ersatz Gottes, mit dem wir uns begnügen müßten, wird er auch nicht zum Urbild für die geschaffene oder zu schaffende Welt wie der philonische Logos, sondern steht er ganz auf seiten Gottes. Zöge man die an sich richtige Konsequenz und sagte, man kann jetzt nicht mehr von Gott reden, ohne von Christus reden zu müssen, wäre es doch zutreffender, es umgekehrt und positiv zu formulieren: Wer von Christus spricht, spricht von Gott [As the image of God, Christ does not remain behind the one imaged like a platonic eikon; he does not become a lesser, ersatz god, with whom we must content ourselves; he also does not become a prototype for the created world or the world to be created like the philonic Logos, but rather he stands completely on the side of God. If one were to draw the implication, correct in itself, and say that one can now no longer speak about God without necessarily speaking about Christ, it would be more appropriate to formulate it conversely and positively: Whoever speaks about Christ speaks about God]”; see Gnilka, Der Kolosserbrief , Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 10 (Freiburg: Herder, 1980), 61. 72 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 181 ular, his appeal to the theology of the Word serves as a key to the connection between the different applications of the name “image” to Christ and to man. Despite his lack of access to the discoveries of modern biblical scholarship, his account of the imago measures up favorably vis-à-vis more recent accounts. This is not to suggest that modern scholarship has not offered us new insights into the biblical texts. It is, however, to suggest that we should not be so quick to dismiss pre-modern readers like Aquinas who, despite working with translations and different preconceptions, arrived at genuine insights into the biblical text. Given the similarities we have noted between Thomas and modern readings of Colossians, a logical question arises: does Aquinas offer anything distinctive that might further the project of integrating exegesis and theology? I suggest three areas in which we have something to learn from Thomas’s treatment of the imago: the relationship between theological interests and the close reading of texts; the responsible combination of biblical texts based on the theological res to which they point; and the interconnectedness of Christology, anthropology, and soteriology. I will treat each of these briefly by way of conclusion. It is sometimes suggested that approaching the biblical texts with a theological agenda can skew our reading of Scripture. At least with respect to Thomas’s understanding of the imago, we have seen quite the opposite. To be sure, Aquinas appeals to a wide variety of texts, and by no means does he limit himself to Paul. Nevertheless, as we saw in our discussion of chapter 7 of SCG IV, the Arian question pushed him to look at the text of Colossians more closely. In fact, Aquinas in some ways draws closer connections between Colossians 1:15 and other parts of the letter than some modern commentators. Aquinas’s theological questions actually generate insight into the text. The reason for this is not hard to find: Aquinas’s reading is true to the aims of the text in a way that much modern scholarship is not.73 The not uncommon practice of reading against the grain of a text with a hermeneutic of suspicion works against the task of offering a sympathetic reading. But a sympathetic reading—which need not be the same as affirming everything that a text says—is precisely what is needed to arrive at genuine understanding. Thomas’s sympathy with the sacred writer leads him to penetrate more deeply into the text. On this point, see Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, §29. 73 182 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. As already noted, Aquinas does not limit himself to Paul, not even to the broader Pauline canon of the Middle Ages, which included Hebrews. In several cases, he appeals to the same texts that many modern scholars point to in describing the historical context for the image of God language in Colossians. His reason for appealing to these texts, however, differs from common modern approaches. Though not explicitly stated in the passages we have considered, Thomas’s approach assumes that Scripture truly reveals God. Thus, he does not appeal to Scripture simply along the lines of literary and historical criticism. Rather, the biblical texts point beyond themselves to the God who reveals himself through them. Aquinas thus reminds us that, if our approach to Scripture is to be truly theological, we cannot settle for a description of what the text says. We must take it seriously as revelatory of who God is. Finally, Aquinas’s theology of the imago brings out the close connection between Christology, anthropology, and soteriology, both in general and in the text of Colossians in particular. We have seen that Thomas relies on both Colossians 1:15 and 3:10 in his explication of the imago, especially as regards the role of the intellect. The intellect is the primary faculty whereby man is made in the image of God, but it was damaged in the Fall. Thus, redemption necessarily entails a noetic healing brought about by Christ, the Image and Word of God. Though Thomas leans primarily on the two verses just noted, a soteriology of noetic healing pervades Colossians, with its emphasis on knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and the mind.74 This emphasis on knowledge and wisdom appears almost from the very beginning of the letter, in Colossians 1:9–10, which contains no fewer than four references to knowledge, wisdom, and understanding: “Therefore we, too, from the day we heard, have not stopped praying on your behalf and asking that you be filled with the knowledge of his will [τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν τοῦ θελήματος αὐτοῦ] in all wisdom and spiritual understanding [ἐν πάσῃ σοφίᾳ καὶ συνέσει πνευματικῇ], to walk worthily of the Lord in every desire to please, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God [τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ θεοῦ].” 75 Paul’s desire for the Colossians is knowledge of God’s will, wisdom, and understanding, and ultimately knowledge of God himself. This knowledge, moreover, is bound up with good works, and Paul’s prayer for this knowledge leads into the See Col 1:9–10, 21, 28; 2:2–3; 3:2; 3:10. All translations of Colossians in this section are my own. 74 75 Aquinas’s Christology of the Imago 183 famous Colossians hymn from which the notion of Christ as “the image of the invisible God” is taken. It can hardly be a coincidence, then, that the hymn is framed on the other side by a reference to the Colossians’s former ways: “And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind in evil works [ἐχθροὺς τῇ διανοίᾳ ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις τοῖς πονεροῖς], now he has reconciled by the body of his flesh through his death to present you holy and without blemish and beyond reproach before him” (Col 1:21–22). The transformation brought about by the Cross of the “image of the invisible God” is made manifest in the minds of the Colossians and in the good works that flow from this renewal of their minds.76 Wisdom reappears toward the end of Colossians 1 as a necessary element of the full transformation of those redeemed by Christ, part of what makes believers “perfect” or “complete” (τέλειον). As Christ, through his death, “presents [the Colossians] holy and without blemish” (Col 1:22), Paul, too, presents them as mature in Christ by instructing them in wisdom: “We announce [Christ], warning every human being and teaching every human being in all wisdom [ἐν πάσῃ σοφίᾳ], so that we might present every human being mature in Christ” (Col 1:28). Once again we see that the redemption wrought by the cross achieves its end in the perfection of human beings in wisdom. This emphasis on wisdom, knowledge, and understanding continues into Colossians 2, as Paul explicitly describes the mystery of God in Christ in these terms. Referring to the struggles he undergoes for the sake of his congregations, Paul indicates the purpose of these struggles: “so that their hearts might be encouraged, united in love and in all the riches of the fullness of understanding [πᾶν πλοῦτος τῆς πληροφορίας τῆς συνέσεως], unto knowledge [ἐπίγνωσιν] of the mystery of God, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge [πάντες οἱ θησαυροὶ τῆς σοφίας καὶ γνώσεως]” (Col 2:2–3). As the “image of the invisible God,” Christ is the source of the wisdom necessary to renew the minds of believers and equip them to understand the mystery of God. This knowledge of God is meant to be not only a speculative knowledge, but also one that reshapes the Colossians’s behavior, as we see in the hortatory section of the letter. Paul urges his audience, Though it is beyond the scope of this essay, the question of how exactly Christ’s bodily death on the Cross relates to this transformation of the mind for the author of Colossians would be well worth exploring. 76 184 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. “Set your minds [φρονεῖτε] on the things above, not on the things upon earth.” The exhortation culminates with the explicit combination of knowledge language and image language: “Do not lie to one another, putting off the old human being with his deeds and putting on the new human being, the one being renewed in knowledge [εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν] according to the image [κατ’ εἰκόνα] of the one who created him” (Col 3:9–10). Given that the letter earlier describes Christ as the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge [πάντες οἱ θησαυροὶ τῆς σοφίας καὶ γνώσεως]” (Col 2:3), the “image” according to which the Colossians are being renewed and through whom they were created can be none other than Christ himself. All of this fits with Aquinas’s understanding of the imago as the rational Word derived from the Father, the Word through whom Christians are renewed and conformed to that image. Aquinas’s theology of the imago thus has the potential to illuminate one of the main biblical texts from which it is drawn, providing a more integrated reading of the letter as a whole. Image and knowledge go hand in hand, and the connection between the two sheds considerable light on the nature of the redemption described in Colossians. Far from distorting the message of the letter, Thomas’s theology demonstrates the fruitfulness of a careful interplay between philosophical reasoning, the Church’s tradition, and the close reading N&V of Scripture. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 185–218 The Bavarian’s Surprise: Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council Matthew S. C. Olver Nashotah House Theological Seminary Nashotah, WI “I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy. . . . When the community of faith, the world-wide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. . . . This is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council.”1 —Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger2 Introduction No one familiar will the history of liturgy after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the raging debates about the implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (herafter, SC),3 will find this quote surprising. While it is Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs, 1927–1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 148–49. 2 I will refer to him as Joseph Ratzinger throughout the essay when referring to his work before becoming Pope and will use the appropriate papal nomenclature when speaking of him as the Bishop of Rome. 3 When the Latin text of a Vatican II document is quoted, the text will be taken from the Latin version available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/index.htm. All Scripture quotations are taken from 1 186 Matthew S. C. Olver largely assumed that the theological work of the Pope Emeritus will harmonize with Vatican II, his critique of SC and the implementation of its call for reforms in the liturgy is seen as the one glaring exception. Cardinal Ratzinger has long been a symbolic figure for those who seek a “reform of the reform,” a tension that is often caricatured with the battle line drawn between the council itself and the “spirit of the council.”4 This “spirit” is pejoratively depicted as an attempt to jettison central aspects of the Church’s life but do so from underneath the invisibility cloak of the authority of an ecumenical council. Ratzinger is convinced of a danger for the Church in what Eamon Duffy characterizes as “a rootless aggiornamento, reform understood as the adoption merely of modern intellectual and cultural fads and fashions.”5 When it comes to the liturgy (by which he means most centrally the Mass), Ratzinger’s principal concern is summed up well in John Baldovin’s striking metaphor: he “perceives the liberal or progressive attitude toward liturgy as an unwarranted accommodation to the spirit of the age—going in their door and failing to come out our own.”6 In short, the story of Ratzinger and the liturgy is often portrayed as something of a tragedy: the young progressive betrays his original commitments; he then retrenches and slowly foments a growing distrust for the new liturgy because of his a-historical nostalgia for the piety of his German childhood.7 But does this tell us the actual story? I wish to suggest that a focus on the ecclesiological aspects of Ratzinger’s liturgical writing, particularly the presentation of “the people of God gathered as the liturgical assembly” in The Spirit of the Liturgy, reveals a ressourcement that The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version, Containing the Second Edition of the New Testament and an Expanded Edition of the Apocrypha, ed. Bruce Manning Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 4 Since a great deal of what will be discussed centers on the differences between the liturgy and the liturgical spirit before and after Vatican II, all references to “the Council” refer to the Second Vatican Council unless otherwise noted. 5 Eamon Duffy, “Pope Benedict XVI and the Liturgy,” Inside the Vatican, November 2006, 35. 6 John F. Baldovin, Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), 67. 7 Pierre-Marie Gy makes this precise charge: “I am aware that I am a few years older than Doctor, now Cardinal, Ratzinger, that, in our twilight years, we are in danger of retracing the intellectual path we traveled at the outset of our maturity? Some great theologians of Vatican II have not escaped this danger”; see “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy: Is It Faithful to the Council or in Reaction to It?” Antiphon 11.1 (2007): 90–96, at 95–96. Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 187 is in deep accord with the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.8 In fact, despite the critiques of those like the eminent liturgical scholar Pierre-Marie Gy,9 Ratzinger’s liturgical theology in general and his discussion of the liturgical assembly in The Spirit of the Liturgy in particular exhibit a real and substantive coherence with SC. Further, I suggest that Ratzinger’s concerns regarding the liturgy are best characterized as ecclesiological. As such, this essay will be structured so as to give particular attention to the place of the gathered Church as the assembly in the Eucharistic liturgy. The argument will proceed by proposing a series of theses on controversial matters that move from macro concerns, such as liturgy’s relationship to the human person, down to particulars, such as what constitutes active participation of the assembly. Each thesis begins with a quotation from Ratzinger and concludes with one from SC in order to disclose further the harmony between them. Yves Congar will be a critical conversation partner throughout by way of his influential essay “The Ecclesia or Christian Community as a Whole Celebrates the Liturgy,” which he published in 1967 “to provide expert commentary on the text of Sacrosanctum concilium.”10 But in order to best set the stage for my theses, I will begin with a brief overview of some of Ratzinger’s concerns regarding post-conciliar liturgy and a look at the substance of the critique by Pierre-Marie Gy. While the concerns with Ratzinger’s work often critique his hesitancy about much of the implementation of SC, Gy’s critiques are much more serious, for he charges that Ratzinger’s liturgical theology actually conflicts with that of the council. Ratzinger on the Liturgy and Pierre-Marie Gy’s Critique Background Ratzinger is often portrayed as someone who betrayed the spirit of reform that once burned hot. Recall that, before and during the Council, Ratzinger was counted “on the side of the Council’s progressive Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000). See Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy.” 10 Yves Congar, O.P., At the Heart of Christian Worship: Liturgical Essays of Yves Congar, trans. and ed. Paul J. Philibert (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), 15–67. The comment about the purpose of the essay comes from the translator’s introduction; see ibid., 15. The essay was first published in Vatican II: La Liturgie après Vatican II-Unam Sanctum 66 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1967), 241–82. 8 9 188 Matthew S. C. Olver wing.”11 In the insider’s view of the Council that he published in 1966, only a year after the its close, he writes glowingly of the its decision to begin with the liturgy, the place where he says that the Church “fulfills its innermost mission, the adoration of the Triune God . . . and the proper point of departure for all renewal.”12 In fact, these memoirs anticipate the major theme of the Constitution: the “fully conscious and active participation” of the whole Church (SC, §14). He begins his 1966 council chronicle noting both the “exhilaration at the opening of the Council in Rome” and “an undeniable uneasiness, whose obvious symptom was annoyance with the endlessly long ceremonies.” He goes on: “The opening liturgy did not really involve all who were present, and it had little inner coherence. Did it make sense for 2,500 bishops, not to mention the other faithful there, to be relegated to the role of mere spectators at a ceremony in which only the celebrants and the Sistine Choir had a voice. Was not the fact that the active participation of those present was not required symptomatic of a wrong that needed remedied?”13 Immediately, two major themes of SC (see §14) come to the fore as Ratzinger continues: (1) “the dialogical nature of the whole liturgical celebration and its essence as the common service of the People of God had to be once more fully emphasized”;14 and (2) “a special objective of liturgical reform . . . was a more active participation of the laity.”15 But all this is said to have changed for Ratzinger just Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., “Introduction,” in Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 2009), 3. 12 Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 31. 13 Ibid., 20–21. Congar and Edward Schillebeeckx, S.J., among others, expressed similar critiques and in often blistering language. See Yves Congar, O.P., My Journal of the Council, trans. Sr. Mary John Ronayne, O.P., and Mary Cecily Boulding, O.P. (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 2012), 85–89; 465–66. Here are a few trenchant excerpts from Congar’s journals on the opening liturgy: “The liturgical movement has not yet reached the Roman Curia. This immense assembly says nothing, sings nothing. It is said that the Jews are the people of hearing, the Greeks of sight.There is nothing here except for the eye and the musical ear: no liturgy of the Word. No spiritual word. . . . After the epistle, I left the tribune. In any case, I could not take it anymore. The whole Church was there, embodied in its pastors [the bishops]. But I regret that a style of celebration was employed that was so alien to the reality of things. What could it have been if those 2,500 voices had together sung at least the Credo, if not all the chants of the Mass, instead of that elegant crooning by paid professionals?” (ibid., 87). 14 Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 32–33. 15 Ibid., 33–34. 11 Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 189 two years after the publication of his conciliar memoir/commentary, when the student riots in the spring of 1968 shook him dramatically. From that point forward, there is little debate that there is a growing distance from theologians such as Karl Rahner. Ratzinger eventually joined Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar in supporting the journal Communio, in some contradistinction to its rival Concilium, on whose pages could be found the writings of luminaries such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, John Baptist Metz, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillibeeckx, and others.16 There can be a strident tone to some of Ratzinger’s writing on the liturgy, even at times in his only book-length treatment of the topic, The Spirit of the Liturgy.17 This is because they were usually occasioned by his concerns over the implementation of SC, both in the composition of the new rites and in the latitude with which they are sometimes celebrated.18 While this “theology of the liturgical assembly” is a liturgical theme, Spirit of the Liturgy is no less concerned with ecclesiology, which may be Ratzinger’s most lasting theological contribution.19 We should not forget that one of the achievements of Ratzinger, Milestones; Baldovin, Reforming the Liturgy; John L. Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith (New York: Continuum, 2000). 17 In addition to this work, see his others writings on the liturgy: Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986); Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today (New York: Crossroad Pub, 1996); Ratzinger, “Romano Guardini’s Basic Theological Approach and Its Significance” in Fundamental Speeches from Five Decades (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 231–58; Ratzinger, “The Theology of the Liturgy” and “Assessment and Future Prospects,” in Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger: Proceedings of the July 2001 Fontgombault Liturgical Conference, ed. Fontgombault Liturgical Conference and Alcuin Reid (Farnborough, Hampshire, UK: St. Michael’s Abbey Press, 2003), 18–31 and 145–58; Pope Benedict XVI, The Sacrament of Charity [Sacramentum Caritatis]: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Publication / USCCB Publishing, no. 7-002 (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2007). These and others have recently been published in one volume: Joseph Ratzinger-Collected Works: Theology of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014). 18 Even his most recent public lecture directly addressed these themes within the context of music within the liturgy: “Pope Benedict’s Words After Receiving Honorary Doctorate in Castel Gandolfo,” 07–06–2015, Zenit.org, (available at http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-benedict-s-words-after-receiving-honorary-doctorate-in-castel-gandolfo?utm_campaign=dailyhtml&utm_ medium=email&utm_source=dispatch). 19 The fusion of these two themes is present from the beginning of his theological work, as his doctoral dissertation (“The People and House of God in Augustine’s Doctrine of the Church”) demonstrates; his dissertation was 16 190 Matthew S. C. Olver Vatican II most regularly trumpeted is the emergence of Eucharistic and communion ecclesiologies as a balance to a more juridically conceived approach that was marked by “a rigid distinction between clergy and laity.”20 The theme of ecclesiology is reflected in SC through its significant attention to the ecclesia,21 or “People of God” (to which I will refer throughout as the “assembly” for the sake of brevity) and their “active participation” in the liturgy.22 The very basic acknowledgement published as Joseph Ratzinger, Volk Und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von Der Kirche, Münchener Theologische Studien 7 (München: K. Zink, 1954). 20 So suggests Richard R. Gaillardetz in Teaching with Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium in the Church, Theology and Life Series 41 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 4. See 3–30 for Gaillardetz’s ecclesiological reading of Vatican II. For a different perspective, see Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 161–91. 21 Ratzinger introduces the term ecclesia (spelled ekklesia in The Spirit of the Liturgy) when he begins his discussion of church buildings (The Spirit of the Liturgy, 63). The general use of the Greek term was for “a regularly summoned legislative body,” though its secondary meaning is “people with shared belief, community, congregation”; see A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. and rev. Frederick W. Danker, 3rd ed. (BDAG) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 303. Ratzinger highlights Cyril of Jerusalem’s note that the convocatio (which he says corresponded to synagoge-ekklesia and defines as “the assembly of the people called together and made his own by God”) appears for the first time in the Pentateuch, where it is connected with Aaron and oriented toward worship (he seems to be referring to the end of Exod 4 and Num 20:6–10). The principle theological claims are: a) God convokes or gathers scattered people into a group; b) the assembly’s primary purpose is to worship; and c) the use of the term in the New Testament is meant to recall its archetype on Sinai, where they “come together to hear God’s Word and to seal everything with sacrifice” (Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 63). 22 The watchword of the post-Conciliar liturgical movement—“active participation”—appears eleven times in SC—§§14 (twice), 19, 27, 30, 41, 50, 113, 114, 121, 124—and is certainly one of its sub-themes. This emphasis is not new to SC but is seen much earlier, for instance in Pope Pius X’s motu proprio titled Tra le Sollecitudini (Instruction on Sacred Music) (November 22, 1903): “We deem it necessary to provide before anything else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in which the faithful assemble for no other object than that of acquiring this spirit from its foremost and indispensable font, which is the active participation in the most holy mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church” (Introduction; emphasis added; available in Spanish at http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-x_motu-proprio_19031122_sollecitudini_sp.html; English translation available at http:// www.adoremus.org/MotuProprio.html). Pius XI echoed these sentiments in his Papal Bull Divini Cultus (On Divine Worship) (December 20, 1928) Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 191 that the plural “you” to whom the texts of the New Testament are addressed is the “we” of the liturgical texts encapsulates the nature of this divinely created ecclesia.23 The great liturgist Josef Jungman wrote that, in order to answer the question of what the liturgy is, one first needs to answer the question “What do you mean by ecclesia—church?” Jungman’s response to the latter question provides a helpful insight into Ratzinger’s approach: “The ecclesia is the spiritual assembly of brothers and sisters (gathered in faith), brought about by an act of the Lord and by his presence in their midst.”24 Ratzinger’s concern is with the practical ways in which the emphasis on the People of God 25 in the documents of Vatican II and (available in English at http://www.adoremus.org/DiviniCultus.html). This trajectory in papal teaching before the Council culminates in Pius XII’s encyclical Mediator Dei (1947), especially §§78, 192, and 199. Massimo Faggiolo argues strongly for the centrality of ecclesiology to understanding SC and then, through this reading of it, to understand the ecclesiology of Vatican II; see Massimo Faggioli, True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012): 15: “Sacrosanctum concilium constitutes one of the pillars of the ecclesiology of Vatican II.” In particular he highlights the famous line in SC, §5: “For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the ‘the wondrous sacrament of the whole Church.’” This theme of the “church as sacrament,” he argues, is the basis for the opening of Lumen Gentium: “Since the Church, in Christ, is in the nature of a sacrament—a sign an instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men” (§1); see Faggioli, True Reform, esp. 65–71. 23 Gordon Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), 21. Lathrop makes it clear that he shares this approach with Ratzinger (cf. The Spirit of the Liturgy, 171–77). The first chapter of Ratzinger’s Dogma and Preaching (“Church as the Place of Preaching”) offers a helpful source for an even richer liturgical perspective on the ecclesia; see Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life, unabridged ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 15–25. 24 Josef Jungman, “Was ist Liturgie?” Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche 55 (1931): 83–102 (cited in Congar, At the Heart of Christian Worship, 43). 25 This phrase, populus Dei appears only once in SC, in §29: “Servers, lectors commentators, and members of the choir also exercise a genuine liturgical function. They ought, therefore, to discharge their office with the sincere piety and decorum demanded by so exalted a ministry and rightly expected of them by God’s people [Etiam ministrantes, lectores, commentatores et ii qui ad scholam cantorum pertinent, vero ministerio liturgico funguntur. Propterea munus suum tali sincera pietate et ordine exerceant, quae tantum ministerium decent quaeque populus Dei ab eis iure exigit; the mention of piety is drawn from Pius XI’s Divini cultus].” Referring to the Church as ecclesia and People of God, Congar suggests that, had SC been composed after Lumen Gentium, “it might have accentuated even more the points on which we can observe an 192 Matthew S. C. Olver the call for the “full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgical celebrations” (SC, §14) by all the faithful has found practical expression in much of the Church. §48 of the Constitution is often read as a summary of the program for the reform of the liturgy: The Church, therefore, earnestly desires that Christ’s faithful, when present at this mystery of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent spectators; on the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and prayers, they should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration. They should be instructed by God’s Word and be nourished at the table of the Lord’s Body; they should give thanks to God; by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him [“immaculatam hostiam non tantum per sacerdotis manus, sed etiam una cum ipso offerentes”], they should learn also to offer themselves. One way to summarize the heart of Ratzinger’s critique of a great deal of Catholic liturgy after the Council is to say that the “essence of the liturgy” has been lost by a growing inattention to what is absolutely central to the liturgy—namely, that it is “God [who must remain] at the center of the liturgical celebration.”26 For Ratzinger, all proper liturgical theology and practice must flow from a proper answer to the question “What is the central actio of the Mass?”27 His answer is that God’s action is the “real action,” although the whole church both “part-icipate[s]” in it and has a real part.28 And from this fundamental assumption flows all his theological considerations of the Eucharistic rite and the assembly’s active participation. Gy’s Critiques The 2007 review essay by eminent liturgical scholar Pierre-Marie Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy: Is it Faithful to the Council or in Reaction to It?”29 is representative of the deep concern advance over the encyclical Mediator Dei, from which it takes its fundamental teaching” (ibid., 49). 26 Baldovin, Reforming the Liturgy, 67. 27 See Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 171, and Feast of Faith, 33. 28 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 171–73. 29 Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,”originally appeared in French in La Maison-Dieu 230.2 (2002): 113–20. He lists more criticisms than I will address in the body of this essay. Here are two additional specific Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 193 elicited in some quarters by Ratzinger’s book, and Gy offers a number of serious critiques. The heart of his concern—and this is a serious charge—is “whether the Cardinal is in harmony with the Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy.”30 He claims that, outside of “active participation,” Ratzinger fails to lift up other “important aspects” of SC (although Gy does not himself name these other themes). Strangely, in the same paragraph, Gy argues that Ratzinger “shows no concern for how active participation deepens the piety of the faithful, nor for spiritual values such as that of the role (expressly mentioned in the council documents) of the faithful in the eucharistic sacrifice, or of communion under both species.”31 This odd contradiction in his critique is all the more perplexing in light of a large section near the end of The Spirit of the Liturgy entitled “Active Participation” (pp. 171–77), a fact that Ratzinger points out in his reply to Gy’s critical essay.32 Part of Ratzinger’s concern about active participation can be found in his long engagement on the orientation of the priest at the altar vis-à-vis the assembly (a matter I will address in the final theses). Gy is also concerned that Ratzinger neglects the way the Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, speaks of the Eucharist. In other words, he wonders whether Ratzinger’s teaching on the liturgy has been placed in its proper ecclesiological context. This too is somewhat curious, since Ratzinger declares in the preface of The Spirit of the Liturgy that Vatican II “definitively” showed forth the true form of criticisms he names, listed in the order in which they appear in his essay and followed by Ratzinger’s specific responses in “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council: Response to Father Gy,” trans. J. Stephen Maddux, Antiphon 11.1 (2007): 98–102: (a) the charge of an insufficient attention to precise contours of “papal authority in liturgical matters” (ibid., 92), to which charge Ratzinger made a specific response (Ratzinger, “Response,” 99); b) the charge of inattention to “the way Paul VI constantly followed the work of the Consilium” as witnessed in Msgr. A. Bugnini’s history, The Reform of the Liturgy, 1948–1975 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), in response to which charge Ratzinger highlights that “the pope withdrew his confidence in Bugnini in the end and remove[d] him from the work on the liturgy” and emphasizes Bugnini’s own assessment that the Missal of Paul VI probably had a shelf life of only twenty or thirty years and thus the importance of the “need to reflect on the means for correcting the deficiencies in the reform, deficiencies that are more obvious today” (Ratzinger, “Response,” 99). 30 Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 94. 31 Ibid., 90. 32 Ratzinger, “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,” 98. In fact, as Ratzinger notes, “the entire second chapter of the fourth part of my book is dedicated to ‘active participation’ as an essential component of a proper celebration of the liturgy” (ibid.). 194 Matthew S. C. Olver the liturgy. Instead of a foray into “scholarly discussion and research,” Ratzinger explains that his book is rather “an aid to the understanding of the faith and to the right way to give the faith its central form of expression in the liturgy.”33 While it clearly presumes the teaching of Vatican II, Ratzinger is clear that he did not intend the book as a study of either SC or the Council’s other documents.. Since Ratzinger’s focus in The Spirit of the Liturgy is on neither the textual history of liturgy nor the particulars of its celebration, but rather the liturgy’s “spirit,” a subsequent charge by Gy must be considered quite carefully: “Does not an attempt [by Ratzinger] to separate anew spirituality and celebration amount to a reluctance to enter spiritually into the liturgy of Vatican II?”34 This concern is prompted by Ratzinger’s claim in the book’s final chapter, on active participation, where he notes that the book “is not intended to give instructions for liturgical practice,” but rather to provide “insights into the spirit of the liturgy.”35 The context of the quotation makes it quite clear that Ratzinger is simply noting that his book is not a priestly directive regarding ceremonial. Rather, it is a consideration of the spiritual nature of the liturgy and of how Christians might allow themselves most fruitfully to have a spiritual orientation that corresponds to and is shaped by a true participation in the liturgy.36 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 8. Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 94. In Ratzinger’s response to Gy, he acknowledges that “the question of orientation [of the priest in the liturgy] and that of active participation” have caused the most significant responses to his book (“‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,” 101). 35 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 207. 36 In the English translation of Gy’s article in Antiphon, his quotation from the French edition of Ratzinger’s book (L’Esprit de la liturgie) is rendered somewhat differently: “the subject of this book is not the celebration of its liturgy but its spirit” (“Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 93), a sentence that is somewhat ambiguous. The English translation from which I quoted (from the Ignatius Press edition of The Spirit of the Liturgy) makes Ratzinger’s distinction much clearer: the distinction is not between the enacting of the liturgy and the spirit of the liturgy, but rather between liturgical instructions about precisely how to enact the liturgy (i.e., ceremonial details) and the spiritual posture necessary for the proper enactment of and participation in the liturgy. This is clear within the context of the quotation: the book subsection from which the quotation comes concerns the use of both the human voice and silence in the liturgy. The full quotation makes it clear that this part of the chapter is not about the various types of voice (i.e., full voice for certain parts of the liturgy, the low voice for the priest’s private prayers, and so forth). Rather, Ratzinger writes, “it is clear that in the liturgy of the Logos, of the 33 34 Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 195 Gy, however, seems to interpret Ratzinger’s claim quite differently. He suggests that Ratzinger is advocating for a sharp chasm between the spiritual life and the celebration of the liturgy. As Ratzinger himself explicitly argues, and as I will show later, his purpose is just the opposite. The task is to set out the nature or spirit of the liturgy in order to facilitate both greater active participation by the faithful (the subject of the book’s lengthy final chapter) and a life that corresponds to this participation. Ratzinger’s book consciously recalls the work of a nearly identical title in 1918 by Romano Guardini,37 but Fr. Gy strongly suggests that Ratzinger’s approach may actually be in tension with both Guardini’s and (rather ironically) that of St. Pius X.38 Both advocated (in Gy’s words) a “spirituality integrated with liturgical life.”39 He goes on to suggest that one of the differences between them and Ratzinger is that the latter’s work demonstrates “an attempt to separate anew spirituality and celebration.” Specifically, Gy argues that Ratzinger’s approach to spirituality/piety is that “of his Christian childhood and of his priestly ordination,” which includes “an attachment to the priestly prayers said in a low voice” and a mass with a silent canon. If this is so, it is in tension with that of both “the liturgical rules currently in place” and “the liturgical values affirmed by the Council.”40 By this, Gy means to remind his readers that Ratzinger’s ideas Eternal Word, the word and thus the human voice have an essential role to play. In this little book, which is not intended to give liturgical instructions for liturgical practice but only insights into the spirit of the liturgy, we do not need to discuss the detailed forms in which the human voice is deployed in the liturgy” (ibid., 207).The way Gy uses the quotation in his argument indicates that he thinks Ratzinger is making a much bigger distinction than it is clear Ratzinger intends to make. 37 Ratzinger notes this in the introduction of The Spirit of the Liturgy, 8. 38 Presumably, Gy is thinking in particular of the 1903 motu proprio by St. Pope Pius titled Tra le Sollecitudine and his 1910 decree Quam Singulari. 39 Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 94. 40 Ibid., 94–95. Gy cites Ratzinger’s memoirs as evidence of his attachment to a piety in tension with Vatican II; see Ratzinger, Milestones, 67. Gy also mentions Ratzinger’s “attachment to the priestly prayers said in a low voice, that the faithful of his country began to follow in a missal around the beginning of the twentieth century,” to which Gy adds somewhat sarcastically, “if they did not recite the rosary during the Mass” (Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 94); see Ratzinger’s discussion in Milestones, 19–20, where he describes the use of a German people’s missal that included all of the private priestly prayers and encouraged the faithful to pray those prayers silently along with the priest. The characterization by Gy that Ratzinger is “unaware of the distinction between the private prayers of the priest and the prayers said by 196 Matthew S. C. Olver about a silent canon are in conflict with the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which is clear that the Eucharistic prayer is to be said in an audible voice.41 Regarding the sotto voce canon, it seems that Gy has misunderstood the nature of Ratzinger’s comments, which are not given as a directive to priests about how to say the canon when using the current missal. Rather, he is offering an argument that in theory a silent canon is not antithetical to the nature of the Eucharistic Prayer,42 and this is the reason for his historical argument about how early this practice developed and his insistence, in his response to Gy, that he “hold[s] to it [the liturgical norms of the General Instruction] with an inner conviction.”43 Thus, in short, it is extremely unlikely that Ratzinger would publish a book while he was Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that publically encourages priests to contradict the stated norms of the Pauline missal. Conclusion Together, these constitute the heart of Gy’s critiques. For many of them, I have provided something of a response and/or rebuttal, using Ratzinger’s own words as much as possible. Whether or not a partichim as celebrant” seems strange indeed, as Ratzinger does not say this in either Milestones or The Spirit of the Liturgy. 41 These two items are clear in both the 1970 and 2002 editions of the Instructions; and when they are considered together, they appear to preclude the possibility of both the canon said inaudibly and the playing of any music during the canon: a) “Among the parts assigned to the priest, the eucharistic prayer has precedence; it is the high point of the celebration” [Inter ea quae sacerdoti tribuuntur, primum locum obtinet prex eucharistica, quae culmen est totius celebrationis] (§10 in 1970; §30 in 2002); and b) “The presidential prayers should be spoken in a loud and clear voice so that everyone present can hear and pay attention. While the priest is speaking, there should be no other prayer or song, and the organ and other musical instruments should be silent [Nature partium “praesidentialium” exigit ut clara et elata voce proferantur et ab omnibus cum attention auscultentur. Proinde dum sacerdos eas profert aliae orations vel cantus non habeantur, atque organum vel alia instrumenta musica sileant]” (§12 in 1970; §32 in 2002). The English translation is from: The General Instruction and the New Order of Mass, ed. International Committee on English in the Liturgy (Hales Corners, WI: Priests of the Sacred Heart, 1969); General Instruction of the Roman Missal, ed. International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Liturgy Documentary Series 2 (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2003). 42 See Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy. My thanks to Fr. Andrew Menke and Dom Alcuin Reid for their insightful comments by way of private correspondence regarding Ratzinger’s intention in this passage. 43 Ratzinger, “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,” 98, 99. Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 197 ular critique hits the mark, the whole thrust of Gy’s charge against Ratzinger is substantial indeed. Does Ratzinger reject the substance of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy? I argue that Ratzinger’s approach, while engendered by practical concerns that are reflected in language that is sometimes sharp, nevertheless reflects deeply both the spirituality, theology, and intention of Sacrosanctum Concilium and the approach of Congar: liturgical services are “not private functions” but, by their nature, celebrated by God’s “holy people” (SC, §26).44 To Live Humanity’s End Thesis 1: The telos of the individuals who make up the assembly can be attained only as the assembly in the liturgy. “It is the very life of man, man himself as living righteously, that is the true worship of God; but life only becomes real life when it receives its form from looking towards God.” —Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 17. Ratzinger begins his study of worship by looking at Israel’s exodus, which he suggests had two discrete goals. The first and obvious one is the Promised Land. But the second is found in the request Moses makes of Pharaoh: “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness” (Exod 7:16), a request repeated four more times in the course of the plagues (Exod 8:1; 9:1; 9:13; 10:3). The exodus is not first about the acquisition of the land qua land. Rather, “the land is given to the people to be a place for the worship of the true God” and a restoration of their real identity. Congar describes God’s activity in liturgical acts of the assembly “as an attempt to re-form within us our likeness to God . . . as reassembling man, and reuniting the scattered fragments of Adam.”45 True freedom, the freedom to live a truly human life, is ultimately the freedom to worship. Worship is a necessary aspect of what it means to be fully human. First, there is its anticipatory and eschatological character, which seeks by means of this connection and conformity to God a more perfect form of existence and, “in so doing, gives our present life its proper measure.”46 Second, worship is constitutive of For Congar, see At the Heart of Christian Worship, 15–67. “The Council as an Assembly,” in Yves Congar and Martin Redfern, Yves M.-J. Congar, O.P., Theologians Today: A Series Selected and Edited by Martin Redfern (London, New York: Sheed & Ward, 1972), 112. 46 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 18. 44 45 198 Matthew S. C. Olver the full extent of human existence.47 He cites Irenaeus in Adversus haeresus and then expands upon it: “The glory of God is the living man, but the life of man is the vision of God.”48 He interprets this to mean that the telos for the human person is to become “glory for God,” which occurs when a person “puts God, so to speak into the light (and that is what worship is), when he lives by looking toward God.”49 In short, liturgy and ethics bear a profound relationship to each other, each springing from and directed in a certain way toward the other. Worship—a completely God-ward life—is humanity’s telos and perfect freedom. The liturgy is the mechanism through which the assembly, when actively participating, actually becomes the action of God (see SC, §7). This approach is critical to recognize in light of Gy’s charge that Ratzinger separates spirituality and the celebration of the liturgy. The theme of this thesis demonstrates precisely the opposite concern, that a proper engagement in the liturgy allows for the requisite spiritual orientation of the entire life of a Christian. Ratzinger presents this reality by way of the well-known Neoplatonic scheme of exitus-reditus that later was taken up and transformed by the Christian tradition.50 The goal of worship—and, one could say, the telos of Scripture and ethics—is the very same goal as creation: “divinization.”51 For Ratzinger, even the notion of sacrifice is understood in terms of the scheme of exitus-reditus movement. Viewed Eucharistically, humanity is unable to make a reditus even in response to the kenotic exitus of God the Son. Rather, only by following along in the path of the Son’s reditus is humanity able to make its reditus: complete surrender by means of love. The exitus, which Ratzinger identifies as “the Creator’s free act of creation,” is one of utter freedom and is ordered from the Ibid., 21. Adversus Haereses 4.20.7, cited in Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 18. 49 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 20. 50 Ibid., 29–32. He also refers to this in “The Theology of the Liturgy,” in Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, 26. Divinization (or, one might say, deification) is recognized as a major theme in Thomas Aquinas, despite the fact that this is often glibly considered a doctrine only in the East. For example, see A. N.Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2015); Daniel A. Keating, “Justification, Sanctification, and Divinization in Thomas Aquinas,” in Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction (London / New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2004), 139–58. 51 See Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 28–33. 47 48 Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 199 beginning to creation’s reditus, the fullness of union with the Creator, which the Scriptures describe as the fullness when God is “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).52 The assembly as assembly is given the means by which they are able to begin to realize the fullness of their humanity and final telos in the liturgy: “In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims.” —SC, §8. A Living Sacrifice It is precisely when we read the New Testament in terms of cultic theology that we see how much it is bound up, in its deepest implication, with the Old. The New Testament corresponds to the inner drama of the Old. It is the inner mediation of two elements that at first are in conflict with one another and find their unity in the form of Jesus Christ, in his Cross and Resurrection. What at first seems to be a break, turns out, on closer inspection, to be a real fulfillment, in which all the paths formerly followed converge.53 The fundamental truth about the nature of worship both for Israel and for the Christian assembly is this: “The only real gift man should give to God is himself.”54 The Church must understand how sacrifice actually functioned in Israel’s worship precisely in order to see the underpinnings of the presentation of Jesus in the New Testament, for he is the “inner logic” of the Old Testament and, thus, affects a real unity within all of Scripture. This notion of the self-offering of the assembly as a fundamental form of sacrifice is already present in Israel’s temple worship, Ratzinger argues, a notion that slowly deepens after the exile. This approach is seen elsewhere, in sources as diverse as Augustine and in much of the significant scholarship regarding Christian sacrifice in light of Judaism.55 Self-offering implies, as Congar explains, that See Baldovin, Reforming the Liturgy, 68. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 37. 54 Ibid., 35. 55 See Augustine’s remarkable insight in City of God: “If in times gone by our ancestors offered other sacrifices to God, in the shape of animal victims (sacrifices which the People of God now read about, but do not perform) we are to 52 53 200 Matthew S. C. Olver “the offerings made in temple worship were not the action of a single individual but the action of a people considered in their totality.”56 Congar clarifies what remains opaque in Ratzinger: the inner or spiritual sacrifice is essentially individual in nature and is a principle place where the individual exercises his or her priestly ministry. But it is in the communal celebration that this priesthood is exercised corporately and that its true corporeality is seen.57 Thus, the worship enjoined upon the assembly is spiritual worship, which is by nature and at the same time also bodily.58 This worship understand that the significance of those was precisely the same as that of those now performed amongst us—the intention of which is that we may cleave to God and seek the good of our neighbor for the same end”; see Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, Penguin Classics (London / New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 377. For current discussions on the nature of sacrifice as it concerns Judaism, Christian worship, and the Eucharist, see: Robert J. Daly, Sacrifice Unveiled: The True Meaning of Christian Sacrifice (London / New York: T&T Clark, 2009); Andrew McGowan, “Eucharist and Sacrifice: Cultic Tradition and Transformation in Early Christian Ritual Meals,” in Mahl Und Religiöse Identität Im Frühen Christentum [Meals and Religious Identity in Early Christianity], Texte Und Arbeiten Zum Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 56, ed. Matthias Klinghardt and Hal Taussig (Tübingen: Francke, 2012), 191–206; Rowan Williams, Eucharistic Sacrifice: The Roots of a Metaphor, Grove Liturgical Study 31 (Bramcote, Notts, UK: Grove Books, 1982); Edward J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998), 241–383; Matthew Levering, Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist, Illuminations, Theory and Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 29–34; Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Some very creative insights can also be found in Sacrifice and Modern Thought, ed. Julia Meszaros and Johannes Zachhuber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), which explores sacrifice in art, film, and literature, in addition to theology. 56 Congar, At the Heart of Christian Worship, 17. 57 Cf. Congar, At the Heart of Christian Worship, 18. 58 The use of the term “spiritual” can be very misleading. The claims of Robert J. Daly and others about the “spiritualization of sacrifice” in Judaism and into Christianity have been widely accepted; see: Robert J. Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background before Origen, Studies in Christian Antiquity 18 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1978); Daly, The Origins of the Christian Doctrine of Sacrifice (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978); Daly, Sacrifice Unveiled; Frances M. Young, The Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers from the New Testament to John Chrysostom, Patristic Monograph Series 5 (Cambridge/Winchendon, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1979); Everett Ferguson, “Spiritual Sacrifice in Early Christianity and Its Environment,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, ed. Hildegard Temporini and Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 201 is described by Jesus as “in spirit and in truth” ( John 4:24), and Romans describes it as the presentation of the assembly’s spiritual Wolfgang Haase, vol. II.20.i (Berlin / New York: de Gruyter, 1972), 1151–89. This general argument plays a significant role in Louie-Marie Chauvet’s argument about the nature of sacrifice; see Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 228–319. For an example of an appreciate response, see John H. McKenna, “Eucharist and Sacrifice: An Overview,” Worship 76.5 (September 2002): 387. But rightly, it has not been uncontested; for example, see Harold W. Attridge, “Christian Sacrifice (Book review),” Journal of Biblical Literature 100.1 (March 1981): 145–47. The Jewish scholar Jonathan Klawans offers one such alternative argument: “When we look a little deeper into Paul’s description of sacrificial worship, we find that Paul affirms many of the fundamental theological tenants upon which ancient Jewish sacrificial worship is based. . . . All too often, Paul’s discussions of Jewish sacrificial worship are understood as examples of the so-called spiritualization of sacrifice. . . . As I have been arguing all along, it is high time to abandon the term ‘spiritual sacrifice’ altogether. . . [and instead] speak more neutrally of metaphorical uses of sacrifice language—a phenomena that we can see in Paul, Philo, the rabbis, and even the Last Supper traditions. . . . Sacrificial metaphors operate on the assumption of the efficacy and meaning of sacrificial rituals, and hope to appropriate some of that meaning and apply it to something else” (Klawans, Sacrifice, and the Temple, 220). Andrew McGowan provides a focused critique of the “spiritualization thesis” from both a classical and Christian perspective. He suggests that what is sometimes called “spiritualization” is better described as “the application of sacrificial understandings and interpretations to a wider range of practices than was previously seen as cultic,” which he argues differs from the tendency toward the interiorization of sacrifice that can be seen in someone like Philo: “Practices such as prayer and communal meals were already closely-related to sacrificial rituals, and in these cases to recast the relationships as organic rather than as merely adjacent is a subtle but important one”; see Andrew B. McGowan, “Eucharist and Sacrifice—Cultic Tradition and Transformation in Early Christian Ritual Meals,” in Mahl und religiöse Identität im frühen Christentum [Meals and Religious Identity in Early Christianity], ed. Matthias Klinghardt and Hal Taussig, Texte Und Arbeiten Zum Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 56 (Tübingen: Francke, 2012), 14–15. McGowan’s argument indicates that the debate about the use of “spiritualization” is not simply a semantic disagreement but is instead about the failure to understand how sacrifice was understood in the first few centuries in the ancient Near East. For more on how the relationship between food and sacrifice pervaded ancient near eastern culture, see G. Dorival, “L’originalite de la Bible grecque des Septante en matière de sacrifice,” in La cuisine et l’autel : les sacrifices en questions dans les sociétés de la méditerranée ancienne, ed. Stella Georgoudi, Renée Koch Piettre, and Francis Schmidt (Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2005), 309–15. See also Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 4–6; Derek Collins, “Nature, Cause, and Agency in Greek Magic,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 133.1 (2003): 17–49. 202 Matthew S. C. Olver worship, their “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). This discloses the true understanding of the Eucharist: it is not fundamentally a “liturgical phenomenon” or “an ‘assembly’, nor a recapitulation of Jesus’ act of institution at the Last Supper, as a ‘meal.’” Rather, the Eucharist speaks but one Paschal Word: “the universal form of worship that took place in the Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection of Christ.”59 The basis of Christian worship and sacrifice expressed in the Eucharist is not solely the Last Supper (and certainly not a reenactment of it), nor merely a “fraternal meal,” but worship of and in union with Jesus within the fullness of the Paschal Mystery.60 Thesis 2: Because the complete self-offering of the Logos in the Paschal Mystery turns sacrifice inside out, Christian sacrifice consists in the self-offering of the assembly that is actively joined to the sacrifice of Christ. “This action of God, which takes place through human speech, is the real ‘action’ for which all of creation is in expectation. . . the real ‘action’ in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate in the action of God himself.” —Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 172, 173. The assembly has nothing to offer God. Thus, God must always initiate and provide what is necessary for the sacrifice.61 The Akedah of Isaac (Gen 22:1–19; literally the “binding” in v. 19) is paradigmatic in Ratzinger’s view for all sacrifice, a perspective that is echoed by many scholars in their estimation of this event as “the great ‘founding’ sacrifice of the Old Testament.”62 “God gives the lamb, which Abraham then Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 50. See “The Theology of the Liturgy,” in Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, 19–27. Here he also engages with some of the criticisms like those of the Society of St. Pius X, who claim that the focus on the Paschal Mystery “instead of the redeeming sacrifice of expiation of Christ” is precisely “the proof of the rupture with the classical doctrine of the Church” by Vatican II (ibid., 24). He responds that the Paschal Mystery sums up all of the realities from Holy Thursday through the Cross and into the Lord’s Resurrection and views them “synthetically as single, united even, as ‘the work of Christ’” (ibid.). It is the very same “mystery of Christ” that is at the heart of the Pauline gospel. 61 See Chauvet’s description of what he calls “symbolic exchange,” which offers a fuller picture of this action (Symbol, 266–316). 62 Daly, The Origins of the Christian Doctrine of Sacrifice, 47. 59 60 Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 203 offers back to him,” which Ratzinger notes is recalled in the language of the Roman Canon in the Unde et memores (the anamnesis/oblation paragraph that follows the institution narrative): offerimus praeclarae majestati tuae de tuis donis ac datis [“we offer unto your glorious majesty from your own gifts given to us”].63 The third petition for acceptance in the Roman Canon (the Supra quae) is based on God’s previous acceptance of, among other sacrifices, that of “our Patriarch Abraham,” which parallels the offering of the sacramental body and blood in the Unde et memores on the institution narrative that directly precedes it.64 The inner logic of the Eucharistic sacrifice stands in the same trajectory of the sacrifices of old. Everything the assembled Church offers—the bread, “fruit of the earth and work of human hands”; the sacramental body and blood of Christ; the assembly’s union with one another in the Spirit as the Body of Christ—is seen as an utterly gratuitous gift that is received only when it is re-gifted. This is no mechanistic view of sacrifice in which the creature performs a certain act in an attempt to obligate the deity. Rather, sacrificial worship “was always accompanied by a vivid sense of its insufficiency,” Ratzinger argues, something that becomes more and more clear in the Old Testament with its growing emphasis on the spiritual foundation of all sacrifice.65 The sacrifice of the People of God always speaks of “a way of being.” This is precisely what Augustine means, Ratzinger says, when he speaks of the civitas Dei—by which he means “love-transformed mankind, the divinization of creation and the surrender of all things to God”—as the “true sacrifice.”66 Cf. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 38. See Dominic E. Serra’s argument concerning the way the relative clauses of each paragraph of the canon appeal to what precedes it in the prayer in “The Roman Canon: The Theological Significance of Its Structure and Syntax,” Ecclesia Orans 20.1 (January 2003): 99–128. For his discussion of the Unde et memores, see ibid.,117–19. 65 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 39. The insufficiency, one should be careful to note, is not with the Old Covenant, but with animal sacrifices. 66 Ibid., 28. He does not cite Augustine directly, but it is clear that he is referring to the remarkable synthesis of Jewish sacrifice, the trajectory of Jewish sacrifice toward spiritual sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ as altar, priest, and victim, the sacrifice of Christians in their living, and the union of Christians with Christ’s sacrifice in the Eucharist in De civitate Dei 10.5–6 and 10.20. He engages this theme in Augustine in Ratzinger, “The Theology of the Liturgy,” in Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, 26–29. 63 64 204 Matthew S. C. Olver “The Church, therefore, earnestly desires that Christ’s faithful … should take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration. They should be instructed by God’s word and be nourished at the table of the Lord’s body; they should give thanks to God; by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves; through Christ the Mediator, they should be drawn day by day into ever more perfect union with God and with each other, so that finally God may be all in all.” —SC, §48. Thesis 3: The assembly is sacred because it is the Christus totus, the body of Christ at worship.67 “To celebrate the Eucharist means to enter into the openness of a glorification of God that embraces heaven and earth, an openness effected by the Cross and Resurrection. Christian liturgy is never just an event organized by a particular group or a set of people or even by a particular local Church. Mankind’s movement toward Christ meets Christ’s movement toward men. He wants to unite mankind and bring about the one Church, the one divine assembly, of all men. Everything, then, comes together: the horizontal and the vertical, the uniqueness of God and the unity of mankind, the communion of all who worship in spirit and in truth.” —Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 49. The Christus totus is what the assembly as Church offers in its Eucharist: the complete union of the Church’s sacrifice of itself with that of the Son’s self-sacrifice, offered and received sacramentally in bread and wine. The concept of the Christus totus is given a marvelous definition when Congar describes it as “the profound unity between the physical body of the Lord, crucified and risen, his sacramental body offered in the Eucharist, and his ecclesial body which offers itself up.”68 By defin Congar’s historical survey of this is masterful: At the Heart of Christian Worship, 15–30. 68 At the Heart of Christian Worship, 18. Henri de Lubac’s classic work provides a much richer picture of the Christus totus through his historical look at the three “bodies” of Christ (historical, ecclesial, and sacramental) and the way in which the language for them changed in significant ways; see Henri de Lubac, 67 Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 205 ing the sacrifice in this way, he shows how it differs from the sacrifices of the first covenant. In Christian worship, the gift from God is not “this land, flowing with milk and honey” (Deut 2:9), but the gift of life in creation by which we experience the most gratuitous gift of all: God, the incarnate Logos. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross “has become [divine] gift, for the Body given in love and the Blood given in love have entered, through the Resurrection, into the eternity of love.”69 The return gift of the assembly is not simply “the first of the fruit of the ground, which thou, O Lord, hast given me” (Deut 26:10). Rather, the return gift that is offered in a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to the Father is twofold: both (a) the bread and wine (“fruit of the earth/vine and work of human hands” 70 ) that the Spirit makes the Son’s sacramental body and blood and (b) the ecclesia, which by “water and the Spirit” ( John 3:5) is made the ecclesial/mystical “Body of Christ” (1 Cor 10:16; 12:27). In Christian sacrifice, there is a divine-human cooperation of a completely unique order that is premised exclusively on the fact that “God himself has become man, become body, and here, again and again, he comes through his body to us who live in the body.” 71 The “once-for-all” divine-human act of Jesus makes possible innumerable and even simultaneous Masses precisely because the Source is inexhaustible.72 As Congar explains Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages: Historical Survey, Faith in Reason (London: SCM, 2006). 69 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 55. 70 From the offertory prayer in the current Roman Missal; see The Roman Missal: Chapel Edition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 529. 71 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 173. He also writes “Sacrifice consists . . . in a process of transformation, in the conformity of man to God, in His theiosis [sic], as the Father would say. It consists, to express it in modern phraseology, in the abolition of difference-in the union between God and man, between God and creation: ‘God all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28)” (Ratzinger, “The Theology of the Liturgy,” in Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, 25). 72 Appealing to Maximus the Confessor, Ratzinger explains that “the obedience of Jesus’ human will is inserted into the everlasting Yes of the Son to the Father.” That obedience in a historical moment, explains St. Bernard of Clairvaux, “bears within itself the semper (‘always’) such that ‘today’ embraces the whole time of the Church,” and thus, “in the Eucharist we are caught up and made contemporary with the Paschal Mystery of Christ” (Ratzinger, Spirit, 56–57). See also John Chrysostom, Homily on Hebrews 17.3 (on Heb 9:24–26): “There is one sacrifice and one high priest who offered the sacrifice that cleanses us. Today we offer that which was once offered, a sacrifice 206 Matthew S. C. Olver this mystery, “the church, which is his Body, is as such the very place where he continues his life and manifests it here below.”73 This vision of Christian worship is remarkable in its scope because it brings about a sacramental unity between the assembly and Jesus Christ in every aspect of his priestly offering. Augustine gathers these up in book 10 of De civitate Dei, something to which Ratzinger alludes and that Congar explicitly highlights:74 as Jesus is the temple, “we are his temple, collectively and as individuals” (De civitate Dei 10.3); Jesus makes us his body, “condescends to dwell in the union of all and in each person” (ibid.); in offering ourselves with Christ’s offering, “our heart is his altar” (ibid.); the offering we make is the same as that of Jesus: “we vow to him and offer to him the gifts he has given us, the gift of ourselves,” which “are fulfilled [in] those two commands on which ‘all the Law and the prophets depend’ (ibid.) and expressed in “a heart that is broken and humbled” (ibid., 10.5). All this is summed up at the conclusion of 10.6: “This is the sacrifice of Christians: although many, one body in Christ. And this is the sacrifice that the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar (which is well known to the faithful), where it is made plain to her that, in the offering she makes, she herself is offered.” 75 The unity between the assembly and Christ is so profound that we can go as far to say that the ecclesial Body of Christ, insofar as it is joined to its Head, is both priest and victim:76 that is inexhaustible. This is done as a remembrance [anamnesis] of that which was done then, for he said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ We do not offer another sacrifice as the priest offered of old, but we always offer the same sacrifice. Or rather we re-present the sacrifice”; English translation found in Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 35. 73 Congar, At the Heart of Christian Worship, 18. 74 See Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 58–59, 86–88. See also ibid., 21. 75 Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.6.3, in The City of God: Books 1–10, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. William Babcock (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012), 310. Augustine continues this reading in 10.19–20. For a recent study of Augustine and sacrifice in book 10, see Uwe Michael Lang, “Augustine’s Conception of Sacrifice in City of God, Book X, and the Eucharistic Sacrifice,” Antiphon 19.1 (2015): 29–51. 76 Cf. Congar, At the Heart of Christian Worship, 21. Later, Congar notes the way that, in Augustine, the images of the Church as Body of Christ and as Spouse of Christ “blend together,” such as when Augustine speaks of the “sponsus et sponsa, una caro,” the “husband and his spouse becoming one flesh” (ibid., 32). The singularity of Christ’s Body and Spouse helpfully illustrates how any separation of priest from ecclesia introduces serious problems. Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 207 “Offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also together with him, they should learn also to offer themselves. Through Christ, the Mediator, they should be drawn day by day into ever more perfect union with God and each other, so that finally God may be all in all.” —SC, §48. Active Participation77 A vision of the liturgy that speaks of the union of the Church in the action of Christ, and specifically the union of a particular assembly at a definite point in history, leads to an obvious question: Precisely how do Christians enact this participation? Participatio actuosa (“active participation”) was, as already noted, the phrase used in SC to express how the assembly joins in the opus Dei.78 Like Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear that it is the members of the Church joined as one who are the ministers of the liturgy.79 “But,” Ratzinger asks, “what does this active participation come down to?”80 Since liturgy is the action of the Church, “participation” speaks to the peculiar character of this particular act, “a principal action in which everyone has a ‘part.’” The central question, Ratzinger argues, is not about what constitutes participation, but rather a prior question, that of the central actio in which “all the members of the community are supposed to participate.”81 The discussion thus far has provided a rich description of this actio, but he has a more technical For a much less nuanced reading of the history of the assembly’s participation, see Keith F. Pecklers, S.J., “The Liturgical Assembly at the Threshold of the Millennium: A North American Perspective,” in Liturgy for the New Millennium: A Commentary on the Revised Sacramentary: Essays in Honor of Anscar J. Chupungco, ed. Mark R. Francis and Keith F. Pecklers (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000). 78 See the list of references in SC found in note 22, above. See also Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 171. His discussion of the term “liturgy” also refers to Catechism of the Catholic Church (hereafter, CCC), §1069; see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000). CCC explains “a ‘public work’ or a ‘service in the name of/on behalf of the people’” in §1069. See also Baldovin, Reforming the Liturgy, 69. 79 See CCC §§1069, 1071, 1136, 1140, 1141. This claim is premised in and grounded on a detailed discussion of how the liturgy is first the work of the Holy Trinity (“The Liturgy—Work of the Holy Trinity” is the title of article 1 in part II, section 1, ch. 1 of CCC [preceding §1077 and running from §1077 to §1109]). 80 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 171. 81 Ibid. 77 208 Matthew S. C. Olver answer in mind with regard to the structure of the Eucharistic liturgy itself. The central actio is the Eucharistic Prayer/Canon of the Mass, but this must be considered within the context of the term used by the Fathers to describe the entire Eucharistic celebration: oratio. The term does not mean simply prayer, but something broader: “solemn public speech.”82 Thus, instead of the slaughter of animals, Christian worship consists in “the Word, summing up our existence . . . addressed to God and identified with the Word, the Word of God, who draws us into true worship.”83 For the assembly’s actio to be truly authentic, it cannot originate with them. Thus the Logos, in all its rich Christian resonances, stands at the heart of the Canon and at the heart of the oratio, for, in the end, it is the Word who prays and the Word who is offered. Thesis 4: The sacred character of the assembly is most visible when its active participation is premised on the absolute priority of the divine actio. “But there is only one action, which is at the same time his and ours—ours because we have become “one body and one spirit” with him. The uniqueness of the Eucharistic liturgy lies precisely in the fact that God himself is acting and that we are drawn into that action of God. Everything else is, therefore, secondary.” —Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 174.84 The fact that worship is a response to God’s initiating gift made possible through our cooperation with (i.e., acting “by” and “in”) God is expressed in the numerous petitions for acceptance in the Roman Canon (along with the other Eucharistic Prayers of the current missal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 172. The first definition of oratio in Lewis and Short is “a speaking, speech, discourse, language,” and the second definition notes that this is in particular often “formal speech.” In the first definition, the following from Cicero is cited: “non est autem inverbo modus hic, sed in oration, id est, in continuatione ver borum” (Cic. 3.42.167); in A Latin Dictionary Founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary: Revised, Enlarged and in Great Part Rewritten by Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955). 83 Ibid., 172. 84 He writes elsewhere (ibid., 88–89) that “there is a person-to-person exchange, a coming of the one into the other.The living Lord gives himself to me, enters into me, and invites me to surrender myself to him, so that the Apostle’s words come true: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20).” 82 Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 209 and in almost all historic anaphoras).85 Ratzinger’s explanation of the petitions gets to the heart of this study. The request is not that the sacrifice of Jesus would be acceptable: “the Sacrifice of the Logos is accepted already and forever.” Rather, our petition is that Christ’s sacrifice might “become our sacrifice, that we ourselves, as we said, may be transformed into the Logos (logisiert), conformed to the Logos, and so be made the true Body of Christ. That is the issue, and that is what we have to pray for.”86 The only thing for which we can really petition is the actio of God. This entire prayer for acceptance through the reception itself Ibid., 172. There are three petitions for acceptance in the Roman Canon (Prayer I): in the Te igitur, the Hanc igitur, and the Supra quae (The Roman Missal: Chapel Edition, 635, 638, 641); in Eucharistic Prayer II, it is somewhat muted (“humbly we pray that, partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we may be gathered into one by the holy spirit”; ibid., 648); the prayer for acceptance is much clearer in Eucharistic Prayers III and IV (“look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and, recognizing the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your son and filled with his holy spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ. May he make of us an eternal offering to you”; in Eucharistic Prayer III in ibid., 653; and “look, O Lord, upon the sacrifice which you yourself have provided for your Church, and grant in your loving kindness to all who partake of this one Bread and one Chalice that, gathered into one body by the holy spirit, they may truly be a living sacrifice in Christ to the praise of your glory”; in Eucharistic Prayer IV in ibid., 660). 86 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 173. Ratzinger is quite conscious in his use of the phrase “true Body of Christ” to refer to the Church. Earlier in The Spirit of the Liturgy, he spends three pages discussing de Lubac’s influential historical study Corpus Mysticum, whose important insights, Ratzinger claims, have “often been misunderstood” (ibid., 86); see de Lubac’s summary of his argument in Corpus Mysticum, 248–62.The relevant insight in this context is de Lubac’s description of the process whereby the referents for corpus mysticum (the sacramental Body) and corpus verum (the ecclesial Body of Christ) were switched in order to emphasize that Christ’s presence in the Sacrament is not in figure or only in memorial, but truly. Ratzinger acknowledges that, as a result of this shift, the central truth that “the goal of the Eucharist is our own transformation” (The Spirit of the Liturgy, 86) and “something of the eschatological dynamism and corporate character (the sense of the ‘we’) of Eucharistic faith was lost or diminished” and Christians “were not so clearly aware of it as before” (ibid., 87). But he says that in spite of those losses, which “in our time we must try to make up for them,” nonetheless, “there were gains overall” (ibid., 88; emphasis added). Why? Because “the gift of the Eucharist” can “bring us together, so that we become his ‘true Body’” only because of a more foundational truth: it is in the Eucharist that “the Lord gives us his true Body. Only the true Body in the Sacrament can build up the true Body of the new City of God.” 85 210 Matthew S. C. Olver constitutes the very heart of the oratio of Christian worship, in Ratzinger’s estimation. And just as importantly, “in this prayerful approach to participation, there is no difference between priests and laity.” This is not in conflict with differences that correspond to “the different functions proper to each,” with bishop/priests, deacons, and the laity each having “distinct hierarchical roles.”87 The reason there is no conflict is that the real actio here is divine, something “which the Lord himself and only he can do. . . . In the words of St. Paul, it is a question of being ‘united to the Lord’ and thus becoming ‘one spirit with him’ (1 Cor 6:17).” The Eucharist is the same oratio of Jesus that he offered “in the days of his flesh . . . with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death” (Heb 5:7) and continues into the present, “since he always lives to make intercession” (Heb 7:25). The oratio of the assembly is the “sacrifice in the Word,” the source and summit of which is the Eucharist.88 The identity of the priest as simultaneously in persona Christi capitis ecclesiae and in persona corporis in the Eucharistic offering is itself a symbol of an ecclesiology that sees the Church in liturgical assembly as “organic unity or priestly Body of Christ, our high priest, ‘corpus Christi sacerdotis.’”89 In spite of Ratzinger’s defense of some of what was gained in medieval Eucharistic theology, he never once speaks of the priest’s power to consecrate (something Congar notes was a significant preoccupation of that period).90 Instead, references to potestas in Ratzinger all concern the person of Christ. What the priest receives in the sacrament of orders is a gift whose potestas is never his own possession: “all he is ever able and allowed to be is a ‘steward of the mysteries of God’ (cf. 1 Cor 4:1).”91 Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis (2007), §52. As Augustine explains with great precision in De civitate Dei 10, one must take great care so as to refuse “to isolate ministry [of the priest] from the community of believers”; cf. Congar, At the Heart of Christian Worship, 20–21, which lists a whole series of citations from Augustine that speak to how the gift of the keys for the forgiveness of sins is given to the ecclesia (20n19) and how the sacrificium christianorum—the sacrifice of Christians—is what later theologians will call the Christus totus (21nn20–22). Congar also notes Bede’s similar emphasis on the keys on page 24. 88 See Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 46. 89 This is Congar’s summary of Isidore of Seville’s ecclesiology in At the Heart of Christian Worship, 23. 90 Ibid., 31. He cites the discussions of power given to the priest in Albert the Great and Thomas as representative examples, and later details this history on pages 40–48. 91 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 204. Speaking of the power of Christ, he 87 Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 211 “Christ is always present in his Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the Sacrifice of the mass not only in the person of his ministry, ‘the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross,’92 but especially in the eucharistic species.” —SC, §7. Thesis 5:The external actions of the assembly’s participation are authentic when they express a union of the whole person. “To express one of its main ideas for shaping of the liturgy, the Second Vatican Council gave us the phrase participatio actuosa, the “active participation” of everyone in the opus Dei, in what happens in the worship of God. It was quite right to do so.” —Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 171. A priest must be trained in order to preside in such a way that fully expresses the divine actio of the Eucharist. The assembly must also be trained, and this is expressed not only through its internal disposition but also by “a close union of the whole being, of thought and action,” a reality that must be expressed corporately and corporally.93 Different actions attend in greater and lesser ways to the actio of the mass. Therefore, emphasis must be placed on the outer actions in a proper relationship to the inner disposition of the person so that there is a real union between the two. Ratzinger’s polemical tone returns when he discusses some of the external actions—reading, singing, the bringing up of the gifts—that he sees as subservient to actions more intrinsic to the Eucharistic action if they are considered to result necessarily in active participation.94 His concern is about where active participation writes elsewhere: “We make the sign of the cross on ourselves and thus enter the power of the blessing of Jesus Christ” (ibid., 184). 92 The quotation is from the Council of Trent, Session 22: Doctrine of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, ch. 2. 93 Ratzinger, “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,” 98. He responds elsewhere to the claim that the shift to Christian sacrifice was a move from the physical to the spiritual: “That charge might have applied to the pre-Christian idea of a logos-liturgy, but it cannot be true of the liturgy of the Word incarnate, who offers himself to us in his Body and Blood, and thus in a corporal way. It is, of course, the new corporeality of the risen Lord, but it remains true corporeality, and it is this that we are given in the material signs of bread and wine” (The Spirit of the Liturgy, 175). 94 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 174. 212 Matthew S. C. Olver is properly located.95 When any of these external actions begin to be viewed as an essential action in and of themselves, the “theo-drama” has been radically misunderstood, real symbol has been eviscerated, and the liturgy lapses into “parody.”96 One of the corporal actions that he thinks is critical is the visual enactment of the proper orientation of the Eucharistic actio: the priest and people “looking together toward the Lord and going out to meet him.”97 This matter of the orientation of the priest at the altar during the Eucharistic prayer is one on which Gy spends some considerable time in his critique. Their disagreement is certainly in part about the interpretation of historical data and the scholarship surrounding it. Gy suggests that Ratzinger’s “chapter on celebration ad orientum [part II, chapter 3, “The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer;” 74–84] . . . is unsatisfactory both historically and with regard to the issue of active participation” and proceeds to present a summary of some of the important scholarship on the matter, particularly “the fundamental work of the Bonn liturgist Otto Nußbaum.”98 Ratzinger responds rather tersely—“Of course I know of Nußbaum’s book”—and then points to the summary article by Albert Gerhards99 that “presents all the material on both the historical question and the current debate.” In Ratzinger’s reading, Gerhards both “shows As Ratzinger notes in his response to Father Gy’s criticisms, he dedicates the length final chapter (“The Body and the Liturgy”) of The Spirit of the Liturgy (171–224) to central issue of “active participation;” see Ratzinger, “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,” 98. 96 Ratzinger, “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,” 175. Without mentioning him by name, Ratzinger is recalling Hans Urs von Balthasar’s significant five-volume work, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988). See Congar’s discussion of the Offertory in At the Heart of Christian Worship, 22–23. He concurs with Ratzinger’s basic point but describes these actions when coming from a proper orientation: while the bringing forward of the gifts “was not sufficient to make the assembly of the faithful celebrants of the Mass . . . nonetheless the gesture of offering is true worship in the ritual context of the consecration and communion, and it has its place in the celebration and in the active role that the faithful take in it” (ibid., 23). 97 Ratzinger, “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,”174. 98 Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 92. The work he refers to is Otto Nußbaum, Der Standort des Liturgen am christlichen Altar vor dem Jahre 1000: Eine archa ologische und liturgiegeschichtliche Untersuchung (Bonn: Hanstein, 1965). 99 “Versus orientem—versus populum: Zum gegenwärtigen Diskussionsstand einer alten Streitfrage,” Theologische Revue 98 (2002): 15–22. 95 Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 213 clearly the universal value of prayer versus orientum” and highlights the corrections that Nußbaum himself offered later to his 1968 work.100 Ratzinger appears most concerned that his view has been wrongly interpreted as a categorical rejection of versus populum celebrations or an insistence “that all altars must once again be reversed and that the priest’s place be changed as a consequence.”101 What is critical in Ratzinger’s view is that the priest and people are all directed towards the “liturgical east,” that is the direction of “the Christ who was crucified and who returns today,” regardless of the orientation of the priest and altar. In fact, he suggests that versus populum celebrations can (but need not) communicate that the action itself is a “closed circle, if there is only a dialogue between priest and people.” Such an approach, he writes, “constitutes a false clericalism” because the priest functions entirely in persona Christi, and not at all in persona ecclesia. Or even worse, the dialogue in such situations is only between members of the Body, such that the Head is excluded.102 While he may overstate his case somewhat, it is not difficult for a confusion to be introduced when the priest faces the people at the moment when the most solemn petitions are being addressed to the Father in the Canon. Another practice that introduces confusion about the nature of the central actio of the Mass is when the priest repeatedly looks up from the missal at the assembly throughout the Eucharistic Prayer, seemingly indicating that he is speaking to them. The physical orientation in the liturgy—priest and people facing one another when in dialogue, and alternatively facing the same direction when addressing God—contains a deep logic and should not be dismissed as mere infatuation with antiquarianism. But regardless of the placement of the altar, what Ratzinger considers essential is the corporal expression of the inner orientation that at the same time guards against the assembly “celebrating only itself.”103 Ratzinger, “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,” 100. Ibid., 100–01. 102 Ratzinger, “The Theology of the Liturgy,” in Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, 152. 103 Ratzinger, Milestones, 149. See also Ratzinger, “‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ or Fidelity to the Council,” 98. Gy expresses his disagreement with Ratzinger’s historical judgment about the orientation of liturgical celebrations but never engages with Ratzinger’s claim about the necessity of an “inner orientation” and his proposal of using a cross on the altar at versus populum liturgies (see Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 92–94). Jean-Jacques von 100 101 214 Matthew S. C. Olver There are external actions that attend in a unique way to the heart of the actio itself whereby the body is trained “for the resurrection.”104 Broadly speaking, a conscious, firm, and prayerful adherence to the twofold love of God and neighbor is the “demand made on the body in all its involvement in the circumstances of everyday life,” for “what begins in the liturgy is meant to unfold beyond it.”105 But in the liturgy specifically, primary among the external actions that corresponds to the heart of Christian sacrifice is the sign of the cross, for “it is a way of confessing Christ crucified with one’s very body.”106 The act of kneeling, he argues, is not first something adopted from a particular pagan culture, but is truly “an expression of Christian culture,” received in the Scriptures.107 The most important scriptural-theological basis for this basic posture is the Christ hymn in Philippians 2:6–11 (“that at the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow”), for in this act, the Church joins in the cosmic liturgy by which the reditus is possible.108 This is not to exclude the other basic postures of worship, such as standing, which is an expression of victory, of prayer, of readiness, and of reverence (i.e., for the proclamation of the Gospel).109 Sitting is meant to facilitate recollection: “our bodies should be relaxed, so that our hearing and understanding are unimpeded.”110 Allmen quite helpfully clarifies the tension of this dilemma when he writes that it is never by looking at itself in worship, even “in the sense that it might be the time and place at which the Church might discover as in a purifying mirror its own image cleansed of every spot and wrinkle”; rather, “what makes the Church first glimpse, and then see clearly, its true face is meeting with Christ. . . . It is on Christ’s face that the Church learns who it is”; see JeanJacques von Allmen, “Theological Frame of a Liturgical Renewal,” Church Quarterly 2.1 (July 1, 1969): 8–23, quoted in Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life: A Systematic Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 122. 104 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 176. This reflects the summary of participation given in SC, §30. His discussion (ibid., 177–224) is much more detailed than this brief summary can express. 105 Ibid., 174. Recall the earlier comment about the interrelationship between liturgy and ethics. 106 Ibid., 177. 107 Ibid., 185. 108 Ibid., 192–93. 109 Ibid., 194–95. 110 Ibid., 196. He comments here that the introduction of dancing into the liturgy is quite out of bounds, at least any form of dancing that leads to applause: “Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achieve- Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 215 The verbal response of the people is also essential, for “the responsive acclamation confirms the arrival of the Word and makes the process of revelation, of God’s giving of himself in the Word, at last complete.”111 The restoration of the responses being said by the congregation, no longer leaving it to a representative altar server, corresponds, he writes, “to the true structure of the liturgy.” For, in these responses, the purpose of God “to create a Body for himself, to find a Bride” is freely accepted by the members of the assembly who are made into this Body and Bride.112 Finally, silence is also proper to Christian liturgy, for this too is an appropriate response to the Mystery of God.113 Silence and speech do stand in tension with one another, but in a harmonious and essential unity. Silence is not “a pause in the action of the liturgy,” but “an integral part of the liturgical event.” Congar cites Florus of Lyons, who speaks of the fittingness of the silence that follows the Preface and Sanctus, for there, “the church with the priest and the priest with the church, filled with spiritual yearning . . . enter the heavenly, eternal sanctuary of God.”114 Most particularly, Ratzinger encourages this silence both during the Preparation of the Gifts (if we view the Preparation “as an essentially interview process” whereby the priestly assembly is preparing to offer themselves as a sacrifice in union with Christ) and after the reception of Communion.115 ment, it is a sure sign that the essence of the liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment” (ibid., 198).This should be distinguished from the kind of rhythmical movement in ordered processions that he notes is found in places like Ethiopia and Zaire. These movements are of a different sort altogether, for not only are they “in keeping with the dignity of the occasion,” but they provide “an inner discipline and order for the various stages of the liturgy, bestowing on them beauty and, above all, making them worthy of God” (ibid., 199). 111 Ibid., 208. 112 Ibid. 113 See SC, §30. 114 Cited in Congar, At the Heart of Christian Worship, 25. 115 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 208–10. He discourages the pause after the homily, both because it often is experienced as rather contrived and because “the homily often leaves questions and contradictions in people’s minds rather than an invitation to meet the Lord” (ibid., 210). He also encourage silence at the elevation, emphasizing the institution narrative as consecratory, as do the rubrics of older missal’s Roman Canon, which speak of the “words of consecration.” The rubrics in the current missal are a bit less specific, but they do say, after the dominical words over the bread, “he shows the consecrated host to the people, places it again on the paten, and genuflects in adoration” (The 216 Matthew S. C. Olver Ratzinger’s discussion of “active participation” confounds Gy’s claim that the former shows no concern for the role of the faithful in the Eucharistic sacrifice or for the kind of participation described by SC, §48.116 The central act of the whole people, Ratzinger explains, is the Eucharistic prayer by which the Church participation in “the real ‘action’ of the liturgy,” which is “the action of God’s himself. This is what is new and distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential.” In a move that is meant to correct a lopsided emphasis on Eucharistic sacrifice in certain Catholic theologians, he explains that the one sacrifice of Christ “is accepted already and forever.” But “we”—the whole church, priest and congregation—“must still pray for it to become our sacrifice, that we ourselves, as we said, may be transformed into the Logos (logisiert), conformed to the Logos, and so be made the true Body of Christ.”117 Not only is the content of SC, §48, expressed here with great fervor; Ratzinger also shows here how the union of the action of the assembly, priest, and the Lord is given a unique expression when there is a common ritual orientation in the union of the physicality and interiority. “Self-celebration” is not a possibility for Ratzinger because (as Gy reads him118 ) the people join the priest in offering the sacrifice. Rather, this possibility remains because certain enactments of the liturgy obscure the fact that it is both God who is the primary actor and God to whom the sacrifice is offered.119 Roman Missal: Chapel Edition, 639). Ratzinger acknowledges the argument that the entire prayer is consecratory, and not just the dominical words (or, even, the canon up to that point), but he argues that this point in the canon is the pinnacle of “the moment of God’s great actio in the world for us. . . . For a moment the world is silent, everything is silent, and in that silence we touch the eternal—for one beat of the heart we step out of time into God’s beingwith-us” (ibid., 212). He also notes that the manner in which the priest prays his silent prayers is very critical; for if they are said with “real recollection and devotion,” the rest of the faithful are drawn to the Lord (ibid., 213–14). 116 Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 90. 117 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 172–73. 118 Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 91. 119 Without giving any footnotes, Gy’s claim that, “as a rule, [Ratzinger] pleads in favor of private Mass” is very difficult to understand and even more difficult to square with what was outlined from Ratzinger’s discussion of active participation. In fact, in the introduction to the book, Ratzinger likens the liturgy to a fresco that, until Vatican II, had been “largely concealed beneath instructions for and forms of private prayer”—i.e., the private prayers of the priest (Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 8). Such a statement as this clearly assumes that the normative expression of the Eucharistic liturgy is a public, Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy as the Spirit of the Council 217 “The aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of His Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord’s supper.” —SC, §10. “In liturgical celebrations each person, minister or layman, who has an office to perform, should do all of, but only, those parts which pertain to his office by the nature of the rite and the principles of liturgy.” —SC, §28. “To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.” —SC, §30. Conclusion The theological character of the assembly in The Spirit of the Liturgy is remarkably rich. In fact, Ratzinger’s presentation of the theological character of the assembly builds upon and deepens the vision sketched out in SC and is in deep harmony with the presentation of the intentions and theological underpinnings of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy given by Congar. More specifically, The Spirit of the Liturgy presents a theological foundation through which the external actions of the assembly can be properly understood and integrated with a corresponding interior disposition. It is quite difficult, in fact, to see where Ratzinger is “a little frightened” of either the lex orandi or the Tradition, as Gy charges in his review.120 Ratzinger’s book is one example of what the Constitution called essential,121 the kind of catechesis necessary for the “full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgical celebrations” (SC, §14). The not a private, celebration. Gy, “Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy,” 95. 121 SC, §11, states that it is the duty of the pastors to make sure the faithful are “fully aware of what they are doing.” More specifically, §48 says that such is through a “good understanding of the rites and prayers” and the assembly is able to “take part in the sacred action conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration.” 120 218 Matthew S. C. Olver majority of this work’s weight rests on the shoulders of pastors and catechists. One thing that remains unspoken in Ratzinger’s work is a belief that the degree of energy that went into the actual reform of the liturgy should have been equally directed toward the kind of catechetical formation that would present the basics of the Church’s Eucharistic theology as it relates to the liturgy, and specifically the assembly’s role as a priestly people who, joined with the ordained ministers, together offer the Christus totus in the Eucharistic liturgy. While Congar’s presentation is more historically focused and full (though often too technical for the average congregation), Ratzinger’s presentation is genuinely pastoral in its presentation of a nuanced picture of what full, conscious, and active participation entails. A primary concern for Ratzinger is that the external actions of the assembly never be separated from that spirit of conversion and love that unites the assembly’s life in the liturgy to its life in the world. True “reception” of the Eucharistic gift sees no such distinction. Ratzinger’s work may best be characterized as an attempt to restore the kind of “dynamism and corporate character (the sense of the ‘we’) of eucharistic faith” that he acknowledges “was lost or diminished” in the Middle Ages.122 And as in much of his work, the call is to begin that restoration in contemplation of the face of Jesus, “an encounter N&V in faith with the new reality of the risen Christ.”123 Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 87. Ibid., 133. 122 123 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 219–254 Dei Verbum and the Twentieth-Century Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense Mark Reasoner Marian University Indianapolis, IN The received narrative for Catholic Scripture exegesis since Pope Leo XIII has focused on the permission and encouragement directed toward Catholic exegetes to use modern methods of Scripture study.The narrative begins with the 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus, in which Leo XIII called for Catholic exegetes to learn the languages in which Scripture was originally written and apply scientific methods of biblical studies to the text of Scripture in order to identify the modernists’ errors and show the truth of Scripture. The suspense in this narrative’s plot first comes with Pope Pius X, whose 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis is viewed as an attempt to halt or dampen the Catholic use of modern methods of Scripture study because of his suspicions about those methods. Fifty years after Providentissimus Deus and thirty-six years after Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Pope Piux XII issued his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, which renewed the Church’s call for Scripture scholars to use scientific methods for their exegesis. In the decades that have followed, the Church’s exegetes have tested and functionally appropriated modern, scientific methods, such as the historical-critical method, form criticism, redaction criticism, source criticism, and feminist criticism when studying Scripture and passed on the fruits of their studies to the Church. While there has been a renewal of patristic studies in some quarters and a growing respect for patristic readings of Scripture, the dominant threads in this narrative remain the use, perceived benefits, and ongoing negotiation necessary to bring modern, scientific methods to the Church’s 220 Mark Reasoner engagement with her Scriptures.1 This narrative is one that can still be told, since it is a useful description of the surface phenomena in Catholic scholars’ exegesis of Scripture in the twentieth century. But this narrative is not connected—in neither its beginning nor its ending—to any longer or broader narrative of Scripture exegesis. In this article, I ask fellow students of Scripture and the history of its exegesis to consider an alternative narrative, a narrative that traces developments in the last 120 years of Catholic Scripture study in light of the ongoing narrative regarding the literal sense in the Christian interpretation of Scripture. This longer narrative begins at least with Origen’s reflections on the literal and spiritual senses of Scripture.2 A segment of the broader narrative that will serve as a useful comparison, for our purposes, is the renewed emphasis on the literal sense that arose with Andrew of St. Victor (ca. 1110–1175), who was influenced by Jewish interpretation to follow the literal sense, an interpretive disposition continued by Nicholas of Lyra (1270–1349).3 Nicholas of Lyra’s preoccupation with the literal sense of Scripture is well known. Its influence on Scripture reading in the West is caricatured in the following couplet: “Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset” (“If Lyra had not played the lyre, Luther would not have danced”). The point of this couplet is that the distinctive reading of Scripture promulgated by Luther, which eschewed the figurative exegesis open to multiple senses of Scripture found in the Church fathers, would not have gained a critical mass of exegetes in the sixteenth and following centuries if it had not been for the popularity of Lyra’s Postillae. Beryl Smalley’s rejection of this couplet seems based on emphases on the literal sense that antedated Nicholas, not on the connection between exegetes’ emphasis on the literal sense and Luther’s eventual quest for a singular sense of Scripture.4 And See, e.g., Robert Bruce Robinson, Roman Catholic Exegesis Since Divino Afflante Spiritu: Hermeneutical Implications, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 111 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), and the preface of Greco-Roman Culture and the New Testament: Studies Commemorating the Centennial of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, ed. David E. Aune and Frederick E. Brenk, Novum Testamentum Supplement 143 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), ix–xii. 2 See, e.g., in De principiis 4.2.2. Origen traces the cause of heretical beliefs to reading Scripture according to “the bare letter” and not to its spiritual sense. 3 Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 120–95. 4 Ibid., xvi-xvii: “This diction absurde, as a French scholar called it as long ago as 1893, has been finally disproved. Or else we must put the beginning of the 1 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 221 to support Smalley’s hesitation with the couplet, Franciscan focus on the literal sense in the thirteenth century, based on the works of the Hebraist scholar Robert Grosseteste and Franciscans Adam Marsh, William de la Mare, Roger Bacon, and Gerard de Huy, can be well documented.5 So I must admit that more people than Nicholas of Lyra caused the groundswell of medieval interest in the literal sense. One also needs to be aware that Nicholas of Lyra’s literal sense is not always what we might expect the literal sense to be. For example, in his Postilla on the Song of Songs, he writes that the literal sense is “not that which is signified by the word, but that which is signified by the things signified by the words. . . . So then, in this book, it seems that the groom should be understood as God. The bride, then, is the Church, embracing the circumstances of both Testaments.”6 Another Franciscan contemporary of Nicholas wrote a commentary on the Song that finds its literal sense in a history of the Jewish people from the Exodus until the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans.7 Perhaps a motive for what appears to be the derivative or secondary dimension of these literal senses is that the thirteenth-century exegetes could not admit that the relationship between lover and beloved in the Song was its literal sense. Nicholas of Lyra explains: Some have said that the groom is literally Solomon, and the bride is the daughter of Pharaoh whom he desired for his wife. But this does not seem to be the correct explanation, because, though such a love between a groom and a bride would be proper, since it is within the bonds of matrimony (as I explained more fully in connection with 3 Kings 3), nevertheless it would be fleshly and often such a love has a certain dishonorable and improper quality about it. Because of that, the description of such a love does not seem to belong in the canonical books of Reformation in the school of St.Victor and the circle of scholars surrounding St. Thomas of Canterbury.” 5 Deanna Copeland Klepper, “Nicholas of Lyra and Franciscan Interest in Hebrew Scholarship,” in Nicholas of Lyra:The Senses of Scripture, ed. Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 292–99. 6 Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla on the Song of Songs 1, in The Postilla of Nicholas of Lyra on the Song of Songs, trans. and ed. James George Kiecker (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998), 31, 33. 7 Klepper briefly describes this anonymous Franciscan commentary, dated either to the middle or end of the thirteenth century, in “Nicholas of Lyra and Franciscan Interest,” 299–300. 222 Mark Reasoner Sacred Scripture, especially since these books were dictated by the Holy Spirit. Besides this, Solomon loved his wife and she loved him, and he learned the delights of this love by experience, not by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, this book, which has always been included among the canonical books by the Hebrews and the Latin [translators]—as is clear from Jerome’s defense in his Prologue—does not seem to be about such a human love.8 The medieval emphasis on the literal sense is not the only cause of the narrowing focus on a purportedly single, literal sense of Scripture that arose among learned and well-meaning Protestant exegetes in the sixteenth century. This narrowing focus was influenced by other factors as well, such as the rise of nominalism. Another significant factor was the changing view of history, from one that views the Trinity as deeply involved in the unfolding of human experience, to a linear-historical model in which human experience is viewed as completely separate from the life of the Trinity. For the purposes of this article, I accept that two things combined to direct exegetes’ sights toward only a single, literal sense on the stage of human experience, not toward the biblical authors’ and Church fathers’ worlds in which the Trinitarian God is intimately participating in history: the focus on the literal sense that began in the school of St. Victor and spread through the Western Church by Franciscan exegesis (especially by the repeated printings of Nicholas of Lyra’s best-selling Postillae) and the change in the understanding of history from a Trinitarian, participatory model to a linear-historical model.9 The drama in this article’s narrative therefore revolves around the possibility that the explicit calls for attention to the literal sense in the encyclicals Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu, in combination with advances in knowledge and the attractions of scientific methods of studying Scripture, as a siren call to the literal sense, might have finally pulled Catholic exegetes into the fold of Scripture exegesis that sees only one meaning in the text of Scripture, a meaning based Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla on the Song of Songs 1 (Kiecker, 29, 31). My debt to Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), in the last two sentences is great. For an introduction to the shift in historical understanding that affected exegesis, see ibid., 3–7. I shall return to Levering when covering Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini (2010). 8 9 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 223 on a literal interpretation of what the human authors of Scripture wrote. The drama’s suspense is also intensified by the ways in which changes in biblical research in the twentieth century recast the boundaries of the literal sense. This drama’s suspense begins to reach resolution by the balanced approach to the literal sense that is evident in Dei Verbum. Dei Verbum comes closest to working with easily forgotten ideas regarding the literal sense inherited from Church tradition: the possibility that a text has more than one literal sense and the advantages of reading both literal and figurative senses in the text. The ripple effects of Dei Verbum in the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s documents of 1993 and 2001, and in the in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini, are also useful to examine in order to understand the lasting influence of Dei Verbum. One could object that I am comparing apples with oranges, since the documents and exegetical works my article examines are not on the same level of canonical authority. I accept this as a legitimate limitation of the article, but reading these different genres of Church writings is necessary in order to track the diachronic trends in exegetical orientation. I shall identify the differing contexts in which these documents emerged when I examine their respective accounts of the literal sense. To track exegetical trends involves not merely summarizing Church documents; it also requires some consideration of how exegesis has actually been carried out. A complete chronicle of trends in exegesis is beyond the scope of this essay, but I hope to highlight some points in which Church teaching and Catholic exegesis indicate varying regard for the literal sense in order that I might show how the trajectory of Catholic exegesis that begins with Providentissimus Deus has come, with the help of Dei Verbum, to a more favorable position than has the trajectory that begins with Andrew in the school of St. Victor, continues through Nicholas of Lyra, and bears the fruit of exclusive preoccupation with a single literal sense in Protestant exegesis. We may first of all offer a working definition of the literal sense as “the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation.”10 We will have Catechism of the Catholic Church, §116, as found in The Scripture Documents: An Anthology of Official Catholic Teachings, ed. Dean P. Béchard (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 2002), 239. In the remainder of this article, “Béchard” indicates this volume. Please note: For papal documents, the section numbering 10 224 Mark Reasoner occasion to see that Divino Afflante Spiritu extends the literal sense to the mind of the text’s human author, but in the past centuries’ debates over the interpretation of Scripture, identification of the human author’s intentions had not been a necessary part of the definition of Scripture’s literal sense. Also, a qualification is here in order. Despite some differences in understanding the literal sense, all agree that reading the Bible for its literal sense is different from reading the text literally or being a literalist in reading the Bible. This qualification is clearly seen in the 1993 document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church issued by the Pontifical Biblical Commission. In its description of a “fundamentalist” approach to Scripture, this document says, “But by ‘literal interpretation’ it understands a naïvely literalist interpretation, one, that is to say, which excludes every effort at understanding the Bible that takes account of its historical origins and development. It is opposed, therefore, to the use of the historical-critical method, as indeed to the use of any other scientific method for the interpretation of Scripture.”11 Before we begin to survey Providentissimus Deus and later Catholic documents that weighed in on the literal sense, perhaps an analogous survey from Judaism’s engagement with the literal sense would be helpful. The present article begins to chart for a little over one century some key points in Catholic teaching and practice of the literal sense in exegesis in a way somewhat analogous to what David Halivni does for almost two millennia of rabbinic commentators. I shall summarize Halivni’s findings so that one can see how the literal sense can be regarded and valued differently at different time periods. From the most recently composed biblical books through to the end of the second century or end of the Tannaitic period, Halivni sees the rabbis as “reading in.” In this period, the literal or plain sense was displaced by a figurative or alternate reading. The second stage, which begins with the Amoraic period (beginning of the third century) found in Béchard often differs from that in the original texts. When citing Béchard in such cases, I give the original text’s section numbering before the parenthetical citation of Béchard’s page numbers, but I then also give the section numbering found in his volume, placed after the page numbers. If no additional section numbers appear in this manner, there is obviously no such discrepancy between Béchard and original texts (e.g., the present note’s citation of the Catechism). 11 Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, I.F (Béchard, 273). Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 225 and continues to the end of the age of the Stammaim (beginning of sixth century), was the “period of textual implication” in which the variety of options were retained regarding the meaning of the text. The literal meaning was retained, rather than displaced, while other meanings were added to the possibilities for what the text could mean. The third stage, beginning with the time after the Talmud was composed and extending to the eighteenth century, though with special force and precision in the tenth through thriteenth centuries, was what Halivni calls “the period of the awareness of the value of peshat.” In this period, with such interpreters as Rashi, there was a strong preference for the literal sense over any other sense of the text. The fourth period, beginning with the eighteenth–century Gaon of Vilna and extending into the twentieth century, Halivni’s own time, is “the period of the uncompromisability of peshat.” In this period, peshat is all that matters, so that, even if one reads the text in a figurative or non-literal way, one must anchor such a reading in the literal sense—one must prove that the literal sense signals that a figurative reading is to be preferred.12 In general, one can say that Halivni’s survey of the literal sense in Jewish exegesis shows how there has been a movement toward prioritizing the literal sense. This exclusive emphasis on the literal sense is not the ending point for our survey of Catholic exegesis spanning the twentieth century. But Halivni has ably shown how exegetes’ quests for the literal sense and appeal to its value can vary over time. We will see in what follows that, though the twentieth century began with the hopeful regard for the literal sense as the answer to the attacks on Scripture, we have now come, due especially to Dei Verbum and the work of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, to a more chastened and balanced appreciation for the literal sense as useful but not sufficient for the interpretation of Scripture. And we will also see that the definition of the literal sense changed within the twentieth century. In exegesis of the Old Testament, the literal sense changed from Andrew of St. Victor’s historically oriented reading to Nicholas of Lyra’s literal sense that included Christologically oriented readings. While both these exegetes’ literal readings were indebted to Jewish exegesis, Andrew of St. Victor found Christ in the spiritual sense of the Old Testament text while Nicholas of Lyra’s desire to prove Jesus as messiah motivated him to find Christ in David Weiss Halivni, Peshat and Derash: Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 33–35. 12 226 Mark Reasoner the literal sense.13 While not writing of the literal sense as explicitly as patristic or medieval exegetes, twentieth-century Bible scholars exegeted with an appeal to the literal sense, since they, like Nicholas of Lyra centuries before, used all the scientific methods at their disposal to ascertain the plain meaning of the text, a meaning they thought could be proven and universally accepted. Providentissimus Deus On November 18, 1893, Pope Leo XIII issued Providentissimus Deus. The encouragement to seek the literal sense that Leo provided in this encyclical does seem to be a genuine innovation or novelty in its day. It is not anticipated in the First Vatican Council’s constitution Dei Filius, which simply says, “In matters of faith and morals pertaining to the building up of Christian doctrine, what must be held as the true sense of Sacred Scripture is that which Holy Mother the Church has held and now holds, to whom it belongs to judge the true sense and interpretation of Sacred Scripture; and that it is illicit for anyone to interpret Sacred Scripture contrary to this sense or, likewise, contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”14 Leo encouraged people to seek the literal sense because he sensed the danger that higher criticism posed to the Church’s reading of Scripture. If higher criticism, which purported to deliver the literal sense in sharper focus, was a threat to the link between the literal sense of the text and the world behind the text, Providentissiumus Deus sought to encourage the Church’s scholars to out-hustle critical scholars at their own game. We turn first to §14 of Providentissimus Deus: The first and dearest object of the Catholic commentator should be to interpret those passages that have received an authentic interpretation either from the sacred writers themselves, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (as in many places of the New Testament), or from the Church, under the assistance of the same Holy Spirit, “whether by her solemn judgment or her ordinary and universal magisterium”15 —to interpret these passages in that identical sense, and to prove, Frans van Liere, “The Literal Sense of the Books of Samuel and Kings: from Andrew of St. Victor to Nicholas of Lyra,” in Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, ed. Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 79–81. 14 First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, ch. 2 (“On Revelation”) (Béchard, 17). 15 Ibid., ch. 3 (“On Faith”; not available in Béchard). 13 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 227 by all the resources of science, that sound hermeneutical laws admit of no other interpretation. In the other passages, the analogy of faith should be followed, and Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, should be held as the supreme law, for seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter. Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.16 There may well be cases, of course, where the counsel to support the one legitimate interpretation could motivate readers toward figurative or non-literal interpretations, since Leo insists that one’s interpretation cannot contradict other parts of the Bible and that it cannot contradict the Magisterium. Let us next consider the following section of Providentissimus Deus, which says that the expositor of Scripture must not: consider that it is forbidden, when just cause exists, to push inquiry and exposition beyond what the Fathers have done; provided he carefully observes the rule so wisely laid down by St. Augustine—not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires—a rule to which it is the more necessary to adhere strictly in these times, when the thirst for novelty and unrestrained freedom of thought makes the danger of error most real and proximate.17 Neither should those passages be neglected that the Fathers have understood in an allegorical or figurative sense, more especially when such interpretation is justified by the literal, and it rests on the authority of many. For this method of interpretation has been received by the Church from the Apostles and has been approved by her own practice, as the holy liturgy attests, although it is true that the holy Fathers did not thereby pretend directly to demonstrate Pope Leo XII, Providentissimus Deus, §14 (Béchard, 48, §28). Augustine, On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 8.7; see Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (hereafter, CSEL), 28/1:241–42. 16 17 228 Mark Reasoner dogmas of faith but used it as a means of promoting virtue and piety, such as, by their own experience, they knew to be most valuable.18 This paragraph is useful to consider because it shows that Leo agrees with Augustine that interpretation should begin with the literal sense and that a certain hermeneutical inertia should be assigned to the literal sense such that the reader of Scripture should move beyond it only when necessity requires it. Also the paragraph serves as a useful reminder that the literal sense can “justify” or anchor figurative readings. This could simply mean that when the literal sense is untenable, this sense justifies the reader’s appeal to a figurative sense of the text. For example, when Scripture identifies Nebuchadnezzar as king of the Assyrians who reigned in Nineveh shortly after the people of Judah returned from their exile, the literal sense seems to be signaling that the narrative is meant as an instructive novella rather than historical reportage (Jdt 1:1; 4:3). The inference that Leo is seeking to motivate the Church’s exegetes to pursue the literal sense more directly is confirmed by his favorable reference in the paragraph just quoted to Augustine’s dictum that one should begin with and try to stay with the literal sense.19 We may note here that Jewish interpretation of Scripture has a close analogue to Augustine’s statement. Saadia ben-Joseph taught that one should translate according to peshat except in those cases: when experience, empirical evidence, or reason points against the plain sense; when two verses cannot both be read according to plain sense; when the plain sense of the text goes against rabbinic tradition; or when anthropomorphisms are used to describe God.20 Leo desires for Scripture readers to interpret the text according to the authentic interpretation provided in Scripture or in a way consistent with how the Holy Spirit inspired the text, and thus, Providentissimus Deus enjoins Scripture scholars to “prove, by all the resources of science, that sound hermeneutical laws admit of no other interpretation.”21 This is a very defensive posture that is responding to the Protestant tendency to flatten Scripture to one sense. Under the threat of losing Scripture’s connection to the world behind the Providentissimus Deus, §15 (Béchard, 49, §31). Augustine, Literal Interpretation of Genesis 8.7 (CSEL, 28/1:241–42). 20 Michael Signer, “How the Bible Has Been Interpreted in Jewish Tradition,” New Interpreter’s Bible, vol.1 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1994), 72. 21 Providentissimus Deus, §14 (Béchard, 48, §28). 18 19 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 229 text (the historical basis or kernel of what is narrated in the text), Leo comes close to adopting his opponents’ strategy by saying that the Church can prove what is the one interpretation, the only possible interpretation, of Scripture. Of the four senses of Scripture, the literal sense is the one that, on initial consideration, seems most easily derived from shared preconceptions or expectations regarding how a text’s meaning can be proven. Because Leo envisions “all the resources of science” to show that hermeneutical principles will allow no other interpretation, it is possible in this regard that Leo considers a quest for the literal sense to be a dependable and useful approach to confirming authentic interpretations of Scripture that are given in the New Testament or by the Church. “All the resources of science” seem to indicate that Providentissimus Deus has an open, positive appraisal of the historical-critical method, provided that the method is used in responsible ways to prove the truth of Scripture. Thus, for Providentissimus Deus, the literal sense can be expressed in terms consistent with modern science, although the Church’s Scripture scholars must defend the Bible from the higher critics who would label the purportedly historical sections in the Bible as fiction. Here is what §§19–20 says: The unshrinking defense of the Holy Scripture, however, does not require that we should equally uphold all the opinions that each of the Fathers or the more recent interpreters have put forth in explaining it. For it may be that, in commenting on passages where physical matters occur, they may have sometimes expressed the ideas of their own times, and thus make statements that in these days have been abandoned as incorrect. . . . The Catholic interpreter, although he should show that those facts of natural science that investigators affirm to be now quite certain are not contrary to the Scripture rightly explained, must nevertheless always bear in mind that much which has been held and proved as certain has afterwards been called in question and rejected. . . . The principles here laid down will apply to cognate sciences and especially to History. It is a lamentable fact that there are many who with great labor carry out and publish investigations on the monuments of antiquity, the manners and institutions of nations and other illustrative subjects, and whose chief purpose in all this is too often to find mistakes in the sacred writings and so to shake and weaken their authority. Some of these writers display not 230 Mark Reasoner only extreme hostility, but the greatest unfairness; in their eyes a profane book or ancient document is accepted without hesitation, while the Scripture, if they only find in it a suspicion of error, is set down with the slightest possible discussion as quite untrustworthy.22 So, Providentissimus Deus is quite open to the historical-critical method, provided that scholars use it responsibly, and not in order to excoriate Scripture. The encyclical also encourages the study of ancillary disciplines that contribute to the understanding of the literal sense for a strongly apologetically motivated focus.23 According to Leo, if the original languages and archaeology were studied enough, then the Church’s Scripture scholars would be able to defend Scripture against the higher critics. M.-J. Lagrange (1855–1938) argued in 1895, on the basis of the encyclical, that Catholic scholars need to study the original text of Scripture with all the tools of ancillary disciplines in order to understand the style of the author. He argued that this is legitimate and sought to quell others’ fears that exegesis of this sort would lead to mistakes made by Protestant scholars.24 Because he advocated for philological and historical work in commentaries it is clear that he considered the encyclical to be moving exegetes to examine the literal sense of the text carefully. The move toward the literal sense near the beginning of the twentieth century was not motivated by the same concerns as the move toward the literal sense among the Victorine and Franciscan exegetes of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, for the move prompted by Leo and enthusiastically pursued by Lagrange was significantly stimulated by the development of historical and higher critical methods of study. In this respect, while I continue to argue here that the dominant narrative for twentieth-century exegesis should be the waxing and waning of the literal sense, I readily concede that the attraction toward and subsequent negotiations with critical methods of Scripture study contributed to the rising and falling of interest in the literal sense among Catholic exegetes within the longer narrative advocated here. Ibid., §§19–20 (Béchard, 54–55, §40). Ibid., §22 (Béchard, 56–57, §§42–43). 24 M.-J. Lagrange, O.P., “À propos de l’encyclique Providentissimus Deus,” Revue biblique 4 (1895): 60–61. 22 23 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 231 Thus, for instance, in Lagrange’s Mark commentary, we see references to the material evidence that archaeology recovers. Where Mark describes the death of John the Baptist, Lagrange notes the precise place designated as John the Baptist’s grave in Samaria and states that some remnants of a church that the Crusaders built there can still be seen.25 When describing Jesus in Gethsemane, he notes that a fourth-century church was built on the site and discovered and restored by the Franciscans.26 More significant than the archaeological references, however, is Lagrange’s willingness to read the Gospel of Mark as a literary creation that at times uses sources differently than the other Gospels do. For example, when commenting on Jesus’s parables in chapter 4, Lagrange readily says that Mark has juxtaposed two parables that were taught at different times, noting how the parables do not easily cohere.27 Likewise, when he comments on the anointing of Jesus at Bethany narrated in Mark 14:3–9, he seems perfectly comfortable in suggesting that this event did not take place on the Wednesday of the week of Jesus’s Passion, as Mark seems to indicate, but rather on the preceding Sabbath, since John 12:1 dates the anointing more precisely. He explains by saying that Mark did not want any breaks in his narrative of Jesus’s journey from Jericho to Jerusalem and so narrated this anointing as happening later.28 Lagrange is known for pursuing the critical questions while always being willing to let the Magisterium have the final say. We can see this clearly in his exegesis of the longer ending in Mark. He writes that it is definitely part of the canon and divinely inspired, since it was known by most of the early fathers and was probably included in what the Council of Trent considered to be Scripture.29 William F. Albright (1891–1971), a younger, Protestant contemporary of Lagrange, also responded to the threats of higher criticism in a way that was analogous to Providentissimus Deus, though not motivated by it. Providentissimus Deus called scholars to work in the world behind the text and in the world of the text. Both the archaeologist Albright and the implied scholars envisioned by Providentissimus Deus were working to bridge a dreaded gap between the world behind the M.-J. Lagrange, O.P., Évangile selon Saint Marc, 4th ed. (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1935), 59 (on Mark 6:29). 26 Ibid., 148 (on Mark 14:32–42). 27 Ibid., 37 (on Mark 4:21–25). 28 Ibid., 141 (on Mark 14:3–9). 29 Ibid., 169 (on Mark 16:9–11). 25 232 Mark Reasoner text and the world of the text. For Albright, this sometimes meant that, if the evidence or the names available in epigraphic finds of the Ancient Near East did not match the world of the text, the evidence would be reconfigured or new locations would be offered for biblical sites in order, by almost any means necessary, to find a connection between the world behind the text, which he so confidently thought he could recover, and the world of the text.30 Providentissimus Deus assumes that the literal sense when properly ascertained will answer the critique of higher criticism on the truth of Scripture and that the literal sense will check allegorical or other figurative excesses. The encyclical seems to assume that the way to find the literal sense is to use the scientific methods of secular biblical studies. Also, it assumes that the literal sense of the text is a constant. For a definition of “reading the literal sense” it seems that Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus would offer: “interpretations of a text that privilege the historical aspects of the text—in the case of narrative, that means the family of interpretations that seek the closest possible correlation between the world of the text and the world behind the text.” Leo seems eager to fight modernity with its own weapons and perhaps willing to fight higher criticism’s attacks on certain texts within Scripture by assuming its Protestant-inspired principle that the text has only one meaning. For him, the domain of the literal sense is to prove that the world behind the text, when properly investigated, will show that the narratives of Scripture describe events that really happened. In the years following the promulgation of Providentissimus Deus, other steps were taken to ensure that the Catholic Church would continue to be deeply engaged in Scripture study against the threats of modernism. Nine years later, Leo’s apostolic letter Vigilantiae Studiique launched the Pontifical Biblical Commission. He envisioned that its members would “devote themselves with the greatest effort to the study of philology and kindred sciences and keep themselves abreast of the progress in these fields.” The same paragraph goes on to specify that the members of the commission were to concentrate on gaining “knowledge of the ancient Oriental languages, and above all William F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible, Richards Lectures in the University of Virginia (New York: F. H. Revell, 1933); Albright, Archaeology Confronts Biblical Criticism (New York: Phi Beta Kappa, 1938); Albright, Archaeology, Historical Analogy and Early Biblical Texts (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966). 30 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 233 on the art of deciphering the ancient texts.”31 In keeping with what we saw in Providentissimus Deus, this apostolic letter issued almost a decade later continues to call the Church’s scholars to beat the higher critics at their own game: “Catholic exegetes, with our full approval, should cultivate the science of criticism, since it is very useful for a thorough understanding of the meaning of the sacred writers.” He goes on in the same paragraph to allow them to consult non-Catholic authors, while cautioning those on the commission not to come to “an independence of judgment, to which the system of what is known as ‘higher criticism’ can so often lead.”32 All these provisions or guidelines for the commission indicate that the literal sense of Scripture is still highly valued. If Catholic exegetes could show that the literal sense was not what the higher critics outside the Church said it was, then Scripture and the Church’s reading of Scripture would be vindicated. Pascendi Dominici Gregis Active use of modern methods of research in order to prove the Bible’s truth in a way that seems focused on the literal sense timed out in 1907 with Pope Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Here, Pius states that the work of the historical critics leads to a “dismembering” of Scripture’s books that finds them to have developed or grown as various compositions that were melded together over time (§106). The tone of the encyclical, sent out less than fourteen years after Providentissimus Deus, is much more negative toward the modern methods of biblical study. This is seen especially where Pius writes sarcastically that the doctors of the Church were at a disadvantage in their study of the Scriptures: “Unfortunately, these great Doctors did not enjoy the same aids to study that are possessed by the Modernists for their guide and rule: a philosophy borrowed from the negation of God, and a criterion that consists only of themselves.”33 We can see that, in less than fourteen years, the historical critical method is viewed as an inherently deficient approach with a vacuous core of human pretense. But Pascendi Dominici Gregis is not simply a case in which the brakeman is trying to stop the train that is moving into modernity. In the light of the millennia-long negotiations between literal and spiritual senses, this letter of Pius X seems like a caution against using the wrong methods to ascertain the Vigilantiae Studiique, §3 (Béchard, 63, §5). Ibid., §4 (Béchard, 64, §7). 33 Pascendi Dominici Gregis, §34 (Béchard, 74, §110). 31 32 234 Mark Reasoner literal sense. We shall see near the end of this article that it is not that far removed from a post-Vatican II document on the use of Scripture. Divino Afflante Spiritu Thirty-six years after Pius X promulgated Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Pius XII issued Divino Afflante Spiritu in the fiftieth anniversary year of Providentissimus Deus, on the feast day of St. Jerome, September 30, 1943. Divino Afflante Spiritu directly encourages exegetes to seek the literal sense: Being thoroughly prepared by the knowledge of the ancient languages and by the aids afforded by the art of criticism, let the Catholic exegete undertake the task, of all those imposed on him the greatest, that namely of discovering and expounding the genuine meaning of the sacred Books. In the performance of this task let the interpreters bear in mind that their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words that is called ‘literal.’ Aided by the context and by comparison with similar passages, let them therefore by means of their knowledge of languages search out with all diligence the literal meaning of the words. All these helps indeed are wont to be pressed into service in the explanation also of profane writers so that the mind of the author may be made abundantly clear.34 The encyclical goes on to recommend that exegetes keep in mind the analogy of faith and how the text can be expounded for growth in faith and morals, but the emphasis on the literal sense is confirmed by its caution in the next section (§27): “Let Catholic exegetes then disclose and expound this spiritual significance, intended and ordained by God, with that care which the dignity of the Divine Word demands. However, let them scrupulously refrain from proposing as the genuine meaning of Sacred Scripture other figurative senses.” Divino Afflante Spiritu advocates the literal sense of the text for a different reason than Providentissimus Deus did half a century earlier. Pius XII was responding to a booklet that had circulated around 1940 that linked higher criticism with the literal sense and advocated the abandonment of the literal sense for a spiritual reading of the text. The forty-eight-page booklet, entitled “A most grave danger for the Church and for souls: The critical-scientific system of studying and Divino Afflante Spiritu, §23 (Béchard, 125, §15). 34 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 235 interpreting Holy Scripture, its evil misconceptions and aberrations,” was written by Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo, who recanted of this writing near the end of the year 1940. It is directly addressed in a letter that the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued on August 20, 1941.35 The booklet is also directly referenced by Pope John Paul II in his description of the context of Divino Afflante Spiritu.36 But beyond simply responding to the immediate challenge from Fr. Ruotolo, Divino Afflante Spiritu also helped to disseminate Lagrange’s approach to the Bible. Robert Robinson notes the way in which the encyclical incorporates Lagrange’s acceptance of the human element in Scripture. Providentissimus Deus begins with God giving humanity Scripture as a “gift and safeguard,” while Divino Afflante Spiritu begins with a description of how the human authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, composed the books of Scripture. The human element can also be seen in Divino Afflante Spiritu, §34, where, according to Robinson, we see the literal sense of Scripture defined so as to signify the intention of the human authors. While for Aquinas the plain sense of the text includes the divine author’s intention, for Lagrange and then according to Divino Afflante Spiritu, one must determine the human author’s intention by the tools of scientific criticism (Divino Afflante Spiritu, §35) and then arrive at the literal meaning of the text.37 Unlike Aquinas’s allowance for more than one literal sense of Scripture, the twentieth-century shift to viewing the literal sense as the intention of the human author constricted the literal sense to a singular meaning. The shift may have been partially caused by a force that later in the twentieth century led some exegetes to ignore any testimony to divine activity within Scripture or to move mountains in order to supplant such testimony with human, earth-bound explanations.38 This letter is dated August 20, 1941 and is published in Béchard, 212–20. “Address on the Interpretation of the Bible in the Church,” §3 and §5 (Béchard, 171 and 173, respectively). 37 Robinson, Roman Catholic Exegesis, 23–24. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q.1, a.10: “Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says (Confess. xii), if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses”; see Aquinas, Summa Theoligica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947) (Dominican Fathers translation of I, q.1, a.10 available also at http://dhspriory.org/ thomas/summa/FP/FP001.html#FPQ1A10THEP1). 38 See the criticism of this tendency by Ratzinger in “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis 35 36 236 Mark Reasoner For Divino Afflante Spiritu, the working definition of the literal sense seems to be what the words of the text are saying, in light of their frameworks accessible by “history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences,” as well as the genre-specific characteristics of the text (20).39 The domain of the literal sense is no longer simply the relationship between the text and the world behind the text. It is now extended to concern the relationship between the text and the world in front of the text. According to this document, the literal sense should be employed to rein in outlandish and uncontrolled figurative excess. For example, priests are enjoined to teach while “avoiding with the greatest care those purely arbitrary and far-fetched adaptations, which are not a use but rather an abuse of the Divine Word.” Soon thereafter, probably as a way for preparing priests for this care in their preaching, seminary professors are instructed to focus on the literal and theological senses of the text with “definiteness . . . skill . . . ardor” so as to effect in students what was experienced by the disciples on the road to Emmaus, whose hearts burned when Jesus opened the Scriptures to them.40 Here, a long term perspective on the literal sense helps us realize that Divino Afflante Spiritu is not simply a victory for modern methods of Scripture study, which regained ground lost in the pontificate of Pius X. In the millennia-long process of reading Scripture, Divino Afflante Spiritu as a response to Fr. Ruotolo’s booklet represents a return to past regard for the literal sense as a guard against uncontrolled figurative readings.41 At the same time, it represents an attempt at expanding the literal sense to reach the intentions of the human author. This attempt is at least partially due to the perceived effectiveness of new methods of study that Lagrange and others had been employing in the five decades since Leo promulgated Providentissimus Deus. We must note here that departures from the literal sense of Scripture were not excluded by Divino Afflante Spiritu. In this time period, Today,” in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 17–18. 39 Divino Afflante Spiritu, §35 (Béchard, 128, §20). 40 Ibid., §§50 (on priests) and 53–54 (on seminary instructors) (Béchard, 133 and 134, §§26 and 27). 41 For example Origen, in interpreting the vision of the eagles in Ezekiel 17:1–7, first gives the literal meaning—the first eagle is Nebuchadnezzar and the second is Pharaoh (Homilae in Ezechielem 11.2.5–11.5.1)—before applying the vision to the threats of the devil against the Church (ibid. 11.5.2–3). Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 237 Henri de Lubac (1896–1991), Yves Congar (1904–1995), and Jean Daniélou (1905-1974) were strenuously working to recover figural readings of Scripture.42 In his book Essai sur le mystère de l’histoire (1953), Daniélou writes of an inward meaning to what the Scriptures describe: “The Scriptures tell us of a mystery, a hidden content of the historical process. The prophets learnt it from the Spirit who is at once the maker and interpreter of history. It is the mystery of the works of God, creation, judgment, and redemption: these are the reality, the inwardness of temporal events, concealed behind the outward seeming. Here, then, is the source of all Christian theology of history.” He is calling exegetes back to a construct of history that is bound up within God’s Trinitarian life and relations with creation.43 On the Protestant side, some of Karl Barth’s exegetical moves were definitely figural, such as his emphasis in his second Romans commentary that “Israel” in Romans 9-11 means the Church and his fiat that, although Paul describes Christ as the second Adam in Romans 5, Christ is really the first Adam.44 In 1963, as Vatican II was beginning, Old Testament scholar Roland Murphy, O.Carm., observed that Divino Afflante Spiritu influenced Catholic exegetes in Europe more immediately than it did those in the United States. Regarding the slow, American response to the encyclical, Murphy writes, “The real problem was that its significance was not at first grasped by an older generation of biblical Henri de Lubac, S.J., Exégèse medieval: les quatre sens de l’Écriture (Paris: Aubier, 1959–1964); English translation in Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, 4 vols., trans. Mark Sebanc and E. M. Macierowski (Grand Rapids, MI / Edinburgh: Eerdmans/T. & T.Clark, 1998–2000); De Lubac Histoire et esprit: l’intelligence de l’écriture après Origène (Paris: Aubier, 1950); English translation in History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen, trans. Anne Englund Nash and Juvenal Merriell (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007);Yves M.-J. Congar, O.P., A History of Theology, trans. Hunter Guthrie (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968); Jean Daniélou, S.J., Bible et liturgie: la théologie biblique des sacraments et des fêtes d’après les Pères de l’Eglise (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1951); English translation in The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956). 43 Jean Daniélou, S.J., Essai sur le mystère de l’histoire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1953), quoted from Daniélou, The Lord of History: Reflections on the Inner Meaning of History, trans. Nigel Abercrombie (London: Longmans, 1958), 166. On the underlying view of history presupposed here, see Levering, Participatory Exegesis, 143. 44 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1933; repr. 1980), 332–42; Karl Barth, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5 (New York: Collier, 1956), 74–75. 42 238 Mark Reasoner teachers. These men had been trained in the dominant conservative, scholastic tradition; their failure to perceive its implications was quite understandable. The present writer has experienced a similar cleavage himself, as far as training in exegesis is concerned. His post-graduate studies (1945–47) were in the groove of the pre-1943 period. As the war ended and normal scholarly activity and intercourse resumed, the new direction was immediately apparent—and with it, a new sensitivity to literary and historical perspective.”45 In his evaluation first of Divino Afflante Spiritu, and then also of Providentissimus Deus, John Paul II notes how Pius’ encyclical “was careful to avoid any hint of a dichotomy between ‘scientific exegesis’ for use in apologetics and ‘spiritual interpretation meant for internal use’; rather it affirmed both the ‘theological significance of the literal sense, methodically defined’ and the fact that ‘determining the spiritual sense . . . belongs itself to the realm of exegetical science.’ In this way, both documents rejected ‘a split between the human and the divine, between scientific research and respect for the faith, between the literal sense and the spiritual sense.’”46 John Paul II thus observes that the distinct emphases Divino Afflante Spiritu gives to the “theological significance of the literal sense” and the “spiritual sense” serve to counterweigh this document’s new limitation of the literal sense to the human author’s intention. As Vatican II convened, Roland Murphy seemed to anticipate an increasing loosening of restraint and increasing openness to modern methods of biblical studies. He writes, “We may see in the Divino Afflante Spiritu an anticipation of the aggiornamento called for by Pope John XXIII in the Second Vatican Council. And there is another echo of the encyclical in the expressive words of Pope John at the end of the first part of the Council, in which he spoke of the sancta libertas, the holy liberty, enjoyed by the fathers in expressing their differences of opinion.” He goes on to quote from Divino Afflante Spiritu on the nature of this liberty: “This true liberty of the children of God, which adheres faithfully to the teaching of the Church and accepts and uses gratefully the contributions of profane science, this liberty, upheld and sustained in every way by the confidence of all, Roland Murphy, O.Carm., “Divino Afflante Spiritu—Twenty Years Later,” Chicago Studies 2 (1963): 23. 46 The quotations are found in Verbum Domini, §33, and come from John Paul II, “Address for the Celebration of the Centenary of the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu” (1993), §5. 45 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 239 is the condition and source of all lasting fruit and of all solid progress in Catholic doctrine.”47 Dei Verbum But it is not clear that Murphy’s hopes for Vatican II were realized. For its dogmatic constitution on revelation, Dei Verbum, reins in the endorsements of the literal sense in Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu, which could have prompted some exegetes to proceed as if a single, literal sense was their goal in exegesis. The suspense in the plot of the discourse examined in this paper is that, from 1893, Catholic exegetes were focusing on the literal sense more than they had in the preceding century. This trend in focus could have become analogous to the way in which medieval exegetes also moved toward the literal sense, in the progression that can be traced from Andrew of St.Victor through Nicholas of Lyra, which contributed to the exclusive quest for a singular, literal sense of Scripture among some Protestant exegetes. It must be admitted that twentieth-century Catholic exegetes who were writing under the inspiration of Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu were not focusing exclusively on the literal sense. Still, given the explicit promptings toward the literal sense in these two encyclicals, and in light of Roland Murphy’s matter-of-fact observation twenty years after Divino Afflante Spiritu that the literal sense amounted to the human author’s intention, it is clear that Catholic exegesis had definitely moved toward the literal sense by the middle of the twentieth century.48 Near the beginning of its section on the inspiration of Scripture, Dei Verbum seems to emphasize the literal sense: Truth is differently presented and expressed in various types of historical writings, in prophetic or poetic texts, or in other modes of speech. Furthermore, the interpreter must search for what meaning the sacred writer, in his own historical situation and in accordance with the condition of his time and culture, intended to express and did in fact express with the help of literary forms that were in use during that time. Thus, to understand correctly what the sacred author wanted to assert, Murphy, “Divino Afflante Spiritu—Twenty Years Later,” 28; encyclical quotation from Divino Afflante Spiritu, §48 (Béchard, 132, §25). 48 Divino Afflante Spiritu, §§ 26, 35–36; Murphy, “Divino Afflante Spiritu—Twenty Years Later,” 20. 47 240 Mark Reasoner one must pay suitable attention both to the customary and characteristic modes of perception, speech, and narrative that prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the customs that people of that time generally followed in their dealings with one another.49 So far, this paragraph seems to accept and repeat the calls of Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu to pursue the literal sense with special attention to the cultural, historical, and genre-specific features of the text. We also see that Dei Verbum seems to accept the equation that Divino Afflante Spiritu makes between the intention of the human author and literal sense. We read what amounts to a prescription for exegetes to seek the literal sense by ascertaining “what the sacred writer, in his own historical situation and in accordance with the condition of his time and culture, intended to express . . .” and in the next sentence, “. . . what the sacred author wanted to assert.” But the next paragraph balances emphasis on the literal sense with various forms of non-literal interpretation that flourished when exegetes more readily spoke of the text’s divine author:50 But, since Sacred Scripture must also be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written, in order to determine correctly the meaning of the sacred texts, no less serious attention must be devoted to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture, taking into account the entire living tradition of the Church and the analogy of faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a more profound understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, in order that their, as it were, preparatory research may help the Church to form a firmer judgment. For all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divinely conferred commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the Word of God. This paragraph is useful because it recalls exegetes to the traditional and ecclesiastical frameworks in which the Church reads Scripture, reminding them that the Church trumps the ascendant sciences that This is the penultimate paragraph of Dei Verbum, §12 (Béchard, 25). This is the final paragraph of Dei Verbum, §12 (Béchard, 25). 49 50 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 241 were presented in Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu as so helpful in finding the literal sense. Here we see a more balanced and even chastened view of the literal sense. The optimism of Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu that a more thorough knowledge of the languages, archaeology, and other sciences would certainly lead to an understanding of the literal sense that vindicated the traditionally held truthfulness of Scripture and would guard the text from the dangers of unchecked historical criticism and unregulated figurative readings is now replaced by a regard for the Church’s judgment, which traditionally includes plenty of figurative readings of Scripture. Dei Verbum’s promotion of the study of Scripture calls for balanced uses of literal and figurative readings based on the “literary forms” of the text and on considerations arising from the unity of Scripture and the Church’s traditions. In this regard, the domain of the literal sense in Dei Verbum is the world of the text itself. It is first of all concerned with the res or Sache of the text itself. What is this text saying? A secondary domain of the literal sense would be the world in front of the text, since the document does seem to be concerned with the relevance of Scripture. In general, however, the domain of the literal sense in Dei Verbum is smaller than it was in Providentissimus Deus. The properly pursued literal sense is not invoked as the defender against higher criticism and the bridge between the world of the text and the world behind the text, as it was in Providentissimus Deus. Nor is it championed as the dependable, reliable check against excessive applications of the text in the world in front of the text, as it is in Divino Afflante Spiritu. With its emphasis on reading with methods appropriate to each literary genre found within the canon of Scripture and restrained appreciation for the literal sense, Dei Verbum seems most able to handle the elusiveness and multivalence of the literal sense when compared with the preceding documents and the exegetical approaches that they spawned. Though not considering Dei Verbum directly, Jon Levenson’s approach to the “plain” or literal sense seems à propos here: “The ‘plain sense’ is, of course, anything but plain in the sense of self-evident. On the contrary, exegetes have argued over it with reference to almost every verse from the time they began questing after it about a thousand years ago and into our days. Still, it does have a certain interreligious character to it, and scholars do not depend on the divergent theological structures of Judaism and Christianity to identify it. In this, it differs to a very large degree from the 242 Mark Reasoner ‘midrashic’ senses on which both Judaism and Christianity are, each in its own way, based.”51 One might object to my inclusion of Dei Verbum within the long dialectic on the literal sense. After all, Joseph Ratzinger considers one of the three formative forces in Dei Verbum to be the Church’s unresolved response to scientific methods of biblical criticism, as if Dei Verbum fits better in the narrative of the Church’s negotiations with modern methods of biblical criticism.52 But careful reading of Dei Verbum and Ratzinger’s account of its origin and background reveals that this objection is not completely to the point. Yes, more is going on in Dei Verbum than the questions of the definition and priority of the literal sense of Scripture, and the objection is useful in calling attention to this. For Dei Verbum concerns how Scripture and tradition relate,53 and this is a larger, more all-encompassing concern than the contours and relative value of the literal sense. But the literal sense questions remain in play in order that the meaning and contribution of Scripture can be clarified. As to this objection’s alternative model, that Dei Verbum arose out of unresolved questions regarding what to do with scientific criticism, Ratzinger himself notes that Church councils are not the Church’s instruments for deciding on academic questions.54 He thus implies that the revisers of Dei Verbum chose not to weigh in on the methods of study so pointedly referenced in Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu. We may summarize by saying that: in Providentissimus Deus, the literal sense is advocated in order to protect the text from being marginalized by scholars’ reconstructions of the world behind the text; in Divino Afflante Spiritu, the literal sense is advocated to protect the text from the spiritualizing exegesis in a world in front of the text; and in Dei Verbum, there are no direct references to the literal sense. The last is wisely modest in calling attention to the literary forms in the context of their composition, as well as the unity of all of Scripture and the Church’s role as final arbiter of Scripture’s meaning. No mention is made of new research or new methods as necessary for increasing our understanding of Scripture. In that Jon D. Levenson, “Can Roman Catholicism Validate Jewish Biblical Interpretation?” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 1 (2005–2006): 173n6. 52 Joseph Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Origin and Background,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 3, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (London/New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 157–58. 53 Ibid., 161, 190–196. 54 Ibid., 160. 51 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 243 sense, Dei Verbum is conspicuous in what it does not say. Yes, Church councils do not weigh in on academic questions, as noted above. But perhaps Ratzinger’s definite sense of the limits of modern criticisms was already operative while he worked as peritus for those drafting Dei Verbum. In any event, the relative silence of Dei Verbum on modern methods of study opens a window for exegetes once again to locate their task on the horizon of the literal and figurative senses. But an openness to the literal sense, with special attention to the literary genre of each biblical text, prevailed in the years after the promulgation of Dei Verbum. Despite the balanced approach that Dei Verbum takes between literal and figurative readings of Scripture, it is rather Divino Afflante Spiritu that seems to have continued to keep Catholic scholars occupied with reading Scripture for its literal sense defined in reference to the genre of the text. Thus we read in Roland Murphy’s commentary on the Song of Songs: “Among Roman Catholic scholars, particularly, the traditional lines of interpretation predominated well into the present century, buttressed by sophisticated arguments regarding the Song’s ‘parabolic’ character, ‘prophetic’ spirit, and ‘anthological’ style. But it seems clear that the tide has also turned in Catholic exegesis toward a fuller appreciation of the Song’s literal sense.”55 And the literal sense that Murphy finds in the Song is different from the literal sense that Nicholas of Lyra found (presented near the beginning of this essay) and his argument for why the Song could not refer in its literal sense to Solomon’s love for his bride. The following comment by Murphy helps to complete our comparison of possible literal senses for the Song: “What distinguishes the Song most sharply from other works of biblical literature is not the fact that it takes human sexuality seriously but rather the exuberant, thoroughly erotic, and nonjudgmental manner in which it depicts the love between a man and woman.”56 Thus we see that, through the centuries, because of how the world in front of the text conditions the reader, vastly different constructions of the literal sense are possible. Roland Murphy, O. Carm., The Song of Songs: A Commentary on the Book of Canticles or The Song of Songs, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990), 41, citing André-Marie Dubarle, “L’amour humain dans le Cantique des cantiques,” Revue biblique 61 (1954):67–86; Oswald Loretz, “Zum Problem des Eros im Hohenlied,” Biblische Zeitschrift 8 (1964): 191–216; Leo Krinetzki, “‘Retractationes’ zu früheren Arbeiten über das Hohe Lied,” Biblica 52 (1971): 176–89. 56 Murphy, Song of Songs, 97. 55 244 Mark Reasoner The question of the literal sense of the gospels is connected to questions of historicity in ways not operative for those exegeting the Song of Songs. Because the gospels represent a different genre of literature than the Song of Songs, Fitzmyer seems to have taken the encouragement of Divino Afflante Spiritu in a way that looks superficially different from Murphy on the Song of Songs but, in principle, is quite similar. Fitzmyer takes reading according to the genre of the passage to heart, for he seems to indicate that the genre of gospel leads one away from an historical reading. In a long, parenthetical aside that admits what he perceived to be weaknesses in historicity in Luke’s account, Fitzmyer writes: For the sake of Roman Catholic readers, I should like to add a further remark, for it is often asked how one can square such a skeptical attitude about the historical value of the Lucan writings with teachings about biblical inspiration. To answer this question in detail is out of place here; but this much at least should be said. None of the ecclesiastical dogmatic documents which treat of biblical inspiration or the discussions of theologians who have sought to explicate this teaching have ever maintained that a necessary formal effect of inspiration is historicity. Biblical inspiration does not make history out of what was not such or intended to be such. The guarantee that is implied in biblical inspiration concerns truth, but the truth that is involved is often not literal but analogous and differs with the literary form being used: poetic truth, rhetorical truth, parabolic truth, epistolary truth, even “gospel truth”—apart from historical truth itself. Nor is every affirmation in the past tense, even in a narrative, necessarily meant to be “historical.” The extent to which it is metaphorical or symbolic would still have to be assessed [and excluded] before one comes down on the side of historical truth. If it is historical, there will be ways of assessing it apart from inspiration.57 Fitzmyer’s qualification, still influenced by Divino Afflante Spiritu, might represent a minority position on the literal sense, heard before in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., The Gospel According to Luke I-IX, Anchor Bible 28 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), 17–18. This paragraph is parenthetical and the remainder of it includes a reference to the document “On the Historical Truth of the Gospels” published by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1964. 57 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 245 Origen’s exegesis of the gospels but only infrequently registered in the Church’s gospel exegesis. And to complete our examples, one may note that in Raymond Brown’s “The Literal Sense of Scripture” section within the “Hermeneutics” article that he wrote with Sandra Schneiders, Brown defines the literal sense as it is used by his contemporaries, still under the spell of Divino Afflante Spiritu: “The sense which the human author directly intended and which the written words conveyed.”58 Changes in the definition and significance of the literal sense, made possible by the balanced and disciplined language of Dei Verbum, become most evident in the post-synodal exhortation of Benedict XVI, to which we next turn. Verbum Domini Even in the agenda published before the Apostolic Synod on the Word of God, a possible shift in the appreciation of the literal sense can be discerned. Consider the following lines from the preface of its Instrumentum Laboris (2008): “Reading the Scriptures from a christological and pneumatological perspective leads from the letter to the spirit and from the words to the Word of God. Indeed, the words often conceal their true meaning, especially when considered from the literary and cultural point of view of the inspired authors and their way of understanding the world and its laws. Doing so leads to rediscovering the unity [of] the Word of God in the many words of Scripture. After this necessary and ardent process, the Word of God shines with a surprising splendour, more than making up for the labour expended.”59 This synod was convened by Benedict on October 5–26, 2008, but it would be two more years until the Church received its formal exhortation. In the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini, which was issued on September 30, 2010, on the memorial of St. Jerome, the literal sense is again placed in balanced perspective, but there is a tone of warning regarding the limits of the literal sense. Benedict Raymond E. Brown, S.S., and Sandra M. Schneiders, I.H.M., “Hermeneutics,” no. 9, in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., and Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 1148. Since Schneiders wrote nos. 55–70 of the “Hermeneutics” article, Brown is responsible for all of the material within “The Literal Sense of Scripture” section (“Hermeneutics,” nos. 9–29). 59 http://www.vatican.va/roman_cur ia/synod/documents/rc_synod_ doc_20080511_instrlabor-xii-assembly_en.html (word in brackets is my suggested addition). 58 246 Mark Reasoner registers the synod’s concern that too exclusive a focus on the literal sense will lead to a loss of coherence in reading the text. Though §32 acknowledges the emphasis on the literal sense in Providentissimus Deus, Leo’s former optimism for the proper use of the literal sense is not found in Verbum Domini. Verbum Domini seems intent on clarifying Dei Verbum. And this is to be expected, for council documents are not always transparent in themselves. As John Henry Newman wrote just three weeks after the second vote on papal infallibility during Vatican I, “We must recollect, there has seldom been a council without great confusion after it—so it was even with the first—so it was with the third, fourth and fifth—and [the] sixth which condemned Pope Honorius.”60 If Cardinal Newman could comment on Vatican II, he would surely tell us to keep discerning the meaning and enduring significance of this council. In Verbum Domini, Benedict summarized Dei Verbum’s vision for exegesis by identifying “three fundamental criteria for an appreciation of the divine dimension of the Bible: 1) the text must be interpreted with attention to the unity of the whole of Scripture; nowadays this is called canonical exegesis; 2) account is to be taken of the living Tradition of the whole Church; and, finally, 3) respect must be shown for the analogy of faith. ‘Only where both methodological levels, the historical-critical and the theological, are respected, can one speak of a theological exegesis, an exegesis worthy of this book.’”61 Criteria two and three seek to resituate the interpretation of Scripture within tradition and the analogy of faith. The downsizing of the literal sense’s significance in the whole activity of reading Scripture that is evident in Verbum Domini seems due in no small part to the document’s prior respect for the tradition—including patristic interpretations—and the analogy of faith. This seems analogous to what David Halivni observes in regard to Jewish interpreters’ regard for peshat, the literal sense, as secondary to the interpretation of traditional halakha, ethical rulings often made by employing derash (the John Henry Newman, The Letters and Diaries, vol. 25, The Vatican Council: January 1870 – December 1871, ed. Charles Stephen Dessain and Thomas Gornall, S.J. (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 175 (letter to O’Neill Daunt of August 7, 1870). 61 Verbum Domini, §34 (italics original); the quotation at the end of the material is from Benedict XVI, “Intervention at the Fourteenth General Congregation of the Synod” (October 14, 2008), in Insegnamenti 4.2 (2008), 493. 60 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 247 more figurative exegesis that seeks to make application of the text for observant Jews). Here is Halivni: As we have continually stressed, our modern exegetical preference for peshat need not impinge upon the realm of practical halakha. A religious Jew may critically study the text of the Bible even with its occasionally disfigured peshat, yet his halakhic allegiance must be to rabbinic derash. In cases of his recognition of the radical discrepancy between peshat and derash, he must employ the theory of chate’u Yisrael—contingent upon a process of halakhic instability during the First Temple period followed by Ezra’s remedial and restorative halakhic efforts—and rest assured that the canonization of rabbinic midrash has guaranteed the authenticity and veracity of halakha. For the religious Jew, the observance of mitzvot stimulates and promotes a closeness with God that is intimate and immediate. Therefore, this assurance that his halakhic behavior accords with, and is sanctioned by, the divine will is indispensable. Even the doctrinal certainty that the text of the Torah is pristine can be dispensed with, indeed, must be, if such assurance can be earned.62 This sort of prioritization of an interpretive method that goes beyond the literal sense in a religious body that values a traditional set of readings and adaptation of its scriptures seems analogous to this final stage of my narrative of twentieth-century Catholic exegetes’ engagement with the literal sense. Attracted to the literal sense by the results promised by Protestant-driven criticism and research, Catholic exegetes turned in the first half of the twentieth century to the literal sense to answer higher criticism, as Providentissimus Deus prompted, or simply to recover the human authors’ intentions in all their culturally embedded fullness as a guard against undisciplined application of the text, as Divino Afflante Spiritu encouraged. But the foundational commitment to tradition, reaffirmed both in Dei Verbum, §10 and in Verbum Domini, §§17–18 eventually balanced the temporary, twentieth-century Catholic fixation on the literal sense with more figural interpretations offered by Church fathers and with interpretations conducive to aligning discrete passages of Scripture with the analogy of faith. Halivni, Peshat and Derash, 154. 62 248 Mark Reasoner From the identification of the three criteria that are necessary for an exegesis that respects the text, Verbum Domini goes on to acknowledge the value of the literal sense and the emphasis placed on it in Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu (§§32–33), but it then highlights the need for theological exegesis to balance exegetes’ now scientifically-advanced investigations into the literal sense: “While today’s academic exegesis, including that of Catholic scholars, is highly competent in the field of historical-critical methodology and its latest developments, it must be said that comparable attention needs to be paid to the theological dimension of the biblical texts, so that they can be more deeply understood in accordance with the three elements indicated by the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum.”63 Verbum Domini thus reins in any unqualified appeals to the literal sense, especially as sought by those who view the literal sense as simply a quest for the sense in which history is reconstructed only in the linear-historical sense that slowly came to dominate exegesis from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.64 After quoting St. Thomas Aquinas on the grounding of all senses of Scripture on the literal sense, Verbum Domini immediately goes on to explain: “It is necessary, however, to remember that in patristic and medieval times every form of exegesis, including the literal form, was carried out on the basis of faith, without there necessarily being any distinction between the literal sense and the spiritual sense.”65 We can see that Verbum Domini values the literal sense when it is sought within the Christian cosmos.66 The paragraph ends by a favorable quotation of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, which endorses a christological reading of Scripture that many who have paid their dues in the worlds of ancient Near Eastern backgrounds and historical criticism would not consider to be the literal sense: “The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s definition of the spiritual sense, as understood by Christian faith, remains fully valid: it is ‘the meaning expressed by the biblical texts when read, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, in the context of the paschal mystery of Christ and of the new life which flows from it. This context truly exists. In it the New Testament recognizes the fulfillment of the Verbum Domini, §34. See the chapter entitled “From Aquinas to Raymond Brown” in Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis, 36–62. 65 Verbum Domini, §37. The reference to St. Thomas Aquinas is ST I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 1. 66 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 57–61. 63 64 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 249 Scriptures. It is therefore quite acceptable to re-read the Scriptures in the light of this new context, which is that of life in the Spirit.’”67 Unlike Divino Afflante Spiritu, Verbum Domini is more concerned to guard against an emphasis on the literal sense as understood only within the secular universe than to caution about an emphasis on the spiritual sense, as §38 of Verbum Domini shows. The Christian cosmos, with its orientation points of kairotic time, clearly allows for a different literal sense than that engendered by those operating only within the undifferentiated time of the secular universe.68 The concern in Verbum Domini is coherence, as Benedict goes on to say in the same section regarding the progression from the letter to the Spirit: “The criteria set forth in Number 12 of the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum thus become clearer: this progression cannot take place with regard to an individual literary fragment unless it is seen in relation to the whole of Scripture. Indeed, the goal to which we are necessarily progressing is the one Word.” The unity of Scripture is in full view in §39 of Verbum Domini, where the Bible’s composite nature of texts composed over a very long time period means that “its individual books are not easily seen to possess an interior unity; instead, we see clear inconsistencies between them.” The paragraph goes on to say that Christ is the one who gives unity to the Scriptures. Benedict is concerned with coherence not only in one’s reading of Scripture, but also in the hermeneutics one employs to get there. As we might expect from the rest of Verbum Domini, he selects a statement from John Paul II on interpreting both Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu as rejecting “a split between the human and the divine, between scientific research and respect for the faith, between the literal sense and the spiritual sense.”69 The call to go beyond the literal sense in Verbum Domini is also seen later in §38, where Augustine’s experience under Ambrose’s typological exegesis is cited as exemplary: “For Saint Augustine, transcending the literal sense made the letter itself credible, and enabled him to find at least the answer to his deep inner restlessness and his thirst for truth.” This is a noteworthy way to frame Augustine’s experience. Usually Augustine is cited in discussions on the Verbum Domini, §37, quoting Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, II.A. 2. 68 See Tayor, Secular Age, 54 (concerning “kairotic” moments). 69 Verbum Domini, §33, quoting John Paul II, “Address for the Celebration of the Centenary of the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu,” §5. 67 250 Mark Reasoner literal sense to provide support for prioritizing it in exegesis, as is done in Providentissimus Deus, §31, but here Augustine’s experience is offered as a strong testimony for a figurative sense that actually validates the Old Testament text, whose literal sense Augustine and others had found problematic.70 A conspicuous omission in Verbum Domini is any reference to the intention of the human author. The human author’s intention had come to be closely linked to the literal sense in Divino Afflante Spiritu and in Brown’s “Literal Sense” section within the “Hermeneutics” article in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (cited above), but now that emphasis—which began with Lagrange, received official support from Pius XII, and continued even after Dei Verbum in exegetes such as Murphy, Fitzmyer, and Brown—has waned due to patristic and literary considerations. For Benedict, the patristic respect for the literal sense, which sees it as more than simply the intention of the human author, is to inform our understanding and appeals to the literal sense today. Thus, for the apostolic synod on Scripture, or at least for Verbum Domini, a working definition for the literal sense might be reading with the tools of higher criticism in order to learn as much as possible about what each distinct unit of text is communicating as a preliminary task to reading Scripture within its canonical and ecclesiastical contexts. For Benedict XVI, the domain of the literal sense is no longer a defense against higher criticism. Higher criticism has, one could say, infected the literal sense and given its devotees a myopia that does not provide coherence. The domain of the literal sense is now simply a necessary but limited starting point for an exegesis that must transcend it. The supposed neutrality of an academic quest to understand Scripture, presumably to offer a singular literal sense of its meaning, is rejected in Verbum Domini, since the whole purpose of Scripture is to help its readers and hearers encounter the word of God.71 We can observe Benedict beginning with and transcending the literal sense when he exegetes the prayer of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. He writes of Jesus’s call to watchfulness: “While it refers specifically to Gethsemane, it also points ahead to the later history of Christianity. Across the centuries, it is the drowsiness of the disciples that opens up possibilities for the power of the Evil Augustine, Confessions 5.14.24, 6.4.6. Verbum Domini, §47. 70 71 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 251 One.” 72 When he comes to the posture of Jesus’s prayer, Benedict seems disinterested in deciding between the literal sense of Matthew and Mark, in which Jesus falls prostrate in prayer, and Luke, in which Jesus kneels. In the former case, he notes that it is the posture that signifies absolute submission and describes the occasions when this posture is used in the Western Church. Then, in regard to Luke’s account of Jesus kneeling, he notes cases where others kneel in the New Testament and quotes Alois Stöger’s statement that Jesus is an exemplary martyr.73 I have already noted how Verbum Domini does not define the literal sense as the human author’s intention. Catholic exegetes influenced by late-twentieth-century literary theory also no longer limit the literal sense to the human author’s intention. As Luke Timothy Johnson writes, “By the very nature of composition, narratives possess meaning beyond the ‘original intention’ of their authors, and open themselves to the interpretation of readers beyond the ones originally envisaged by the authors.” 74 Johnson thus questions the previous two generations’ focus on the intentions of Scripture’s human authors— which, in twentieth-century hermeneutical discourse, filled the role that the literal sense occupied in the discourse of previous centuries. It is beyond the scope of this essay to prove inductively that more scholars exegete in light of figurative senses now than they did fifty years ago. But as an example of the openness to figurative senses that literary sensitivity engenders, note this sentence from the penultimate paragraph of an article that uses lexicography and social-historical criticism to situate the description of the young man who ran away naked when someone grabbed his cloak in Mark 14:51–52: “The shedding of the cloak in the situation of violence of Jesus’s arrest is quite understandable on a sociohistorical level, without resorting to symbolic interpretations. Yet this is not a dichotomous situation: the cloak can still be read as having symbolic or representative meaning in terms of the literary artistry of the Gospel writer. Mark 14:51–52 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week, trans. Philip J.Whitmore (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), 152–53. 73 Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, 153–54. The reference to Alois Stöger is to his Gospel According to St. Luke, vol. 2 (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969), 199. 74 Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, S.J., The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 250. 72 252 Mark Reasoner remains highly significant in discussions of discipleship in Mark.”75 As Catholic exegetes drop the human author’s intention from their understanding of the literal sense, aided by the balanced and disciplined diction of Dei Verbum, the literal sense returns more closely to Aquinas’s definition: the plain sense of the words themselves. And scholars are more ready to balance a literal sense reading with figurative senses than when they were mostly influenced by Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu. But still it does not seem that exegetes work with the consciousness that there can be more than one literal sense, as both Nicholas of Lyra and Thomas Aquinas affirmed.76 That consciousness may return as the millennia-long conversation over the literal sense continues, now that we are past the drama of the twentieth century. Once the consciousness that a text might have more than one literal sense grows stronger, it will result in a more ready transition between literal and figurative senses, since the major impediment for exegetes’ use of figurative senses is an a priori, working conviction that a text only has one meaning, which is by definition for them a singular, literal sense. Catholic exegetes continue to use historical criticism and other critical methods that the science of biblical studies offers.77 But they are not focusing on these methods exclusively, and when they use them, they do not employ them with the optimism of Fr. Lagrange. In the end, they actively—even if not consciously—participate in the millennia-long narrative of the complementary relationships between literal and figurative senses, a narrative that continues to hold underrated potential for understanding ecclesiastical and academic exegesis in sixteenth through twenty-first centuries. This narrative is a better narrative for understanding Scripture exegesis in the twentieth century than simply tracking the negotiations with methods of higher criticism for 120 years, since the narrative of the literal and figurative senses offers more productive contact with exegetes of earlier centuries and provides more potential for understanding how Erin Vearncombe, “Cloaks, Conflict, and Mark 14:51–52,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 75 (October 2013): 703. 76 A notable exception is Jason Byassee, Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms with Augustine (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). 77 On the rise of biblical studies as a science whose practitioners work differently from the manner in which the Church’s Scripture scholars did formerly, see Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 75 Dei Verbum and the Drama of Scripture’s Literal Sense 253 twentieth-century exegetes’ encounters with higher critical methods have reached resolution. Catholic exegetes’ preoccupation with the literal sense in the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, fueled as it was by historical and other higher critical methods, continued to influence Catholic exegetes even after Dei Verbum began to pull them away from an exclusive focus on the literal sense and back to a balanced focus on both the literal and the figurative. Since Benedict issued Verbum Domini, these exegetes, also disillusioned with exegesis that is limited to historical criticism and drawn by extensions of the text’s meaning beyond the author’s intention, have begun to balance their quest for the literal sense with an appreciation for its figurative senses. It is also possible, though it cannot be conclusively argued, that the separation Leo tried to hold between secular modernity’s higher criticism and the pursuit of the literal sense is a line that Benedict is not as committed to maintain. By the time we come to the Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI writings on Scripture, historical-critical methods and the literal sense to which they lead are not viewed as positively as they are viewed in Providentissimus Deus. Conclusion When we compare Pope Leo XIII’s optimistic call for seeking the literal sense with all the tools of scientific exegesis in Providentissimus Deus against the cautions about the limitations of the literal sense in Pope Benedict XVI’s Verbum Domini, it becomes clear that the Church has not always agreed on the place of the literal sense in exegesis. The reason for the difference in regard for the literal sense in these two documents is the drama that ensued in the period between them. We may note the following developments (or acts in the drama) from Leo XIII until Benedict XVI. The literal sense was emphasized when undue emphasis was placed on the world behind the text, as the attacks from higher criticism were understood to have done at the end of the nineteenth century. Similarly, the literal sense was emphasized when undue or first order emphasis was placed on the world in front of the text, as was done by the booklet to which Divino Afflante Spiritu responded. Finally, a balance between the literal and spiritual senses of the text is seen in Dei Verbum and Verbum Domini. The latter, most recent document almost marginalizes the literal sense, treating it only as a starting point for a reading of Scripture that must inevitably take the rule of faith and a salvation-historical perspective into mind. 254 Mark Reasoner We can summarize these developments by saying that, in the documents Dei Verbum and Verbum Domini, the domain of the literal sense is shrinking. With these developments of the literal sense in mind, we may note the following two lessons regarding it, which others have already learned but which were perhaps ignored in the century or so surveyed here: 1) the literal sense is not transparently obvious to all readers, and it is possible to speak of more than one literal sense; and 2) the literal senses of the text form a necessary starting point but should not be regarded as the final goal of exegesis, since the final goal might be a sense that transcends the literal by providing a reading that integrates a given text more suitably into the framework of Scripture. Several forces converged to renew Catholic exegetes’ drive to find the literal sense, last evident in Franciscan exegesis of the middle ages, from the time of Leo XIII through the tenure of Benedict XVI. Yet, in the Church documents and papal writings of the twentieth century, appeals to the literal sense of the Scriptures seem based on differing definitions of it and advocated for different goals. The dramatic suspense of the extent to which the drive toward the literal sense would lead begins to be resolved with the promulgation of Dei Verbum, which captures the significance, starting point, and limits of the literal sense in a way that is more balanced than earlier hermeneutical guidelines and exegetical practices during the twentieth century. This document, along with literarily-sensitive exegetes’ turn away from the human author’s intention as the goal in exegesis and the work of Benedict XVI in Verbum Domini, have begun to check the twentieth century’s siren call toward a single literal sense in Scripture and bring exegetes back to a balanced quest for its literal and figuraN&V tive senses. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 255–290 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics Eduardo Echeverria Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, MI My contribution to this symposium on Gavin D’Costa’s recent Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews & Muslims (hereafter, VII)1 will focus on the hermeneutics of the Second Vatican Council that he develops in the first chapter (VII, 10–58) in his critical discussion of general types of interpreters of the Second Vatican Council.2 It is fitting to focus on this aspect of his book, since he is concerned throughout the remaining chapters to discuss the development of the Church’s teaching at Vatican II on its stance toward Judaism and Islam. The first type of interpreter—of which Giuseppe Alberigo and John O’Malley, S.J., are representative—emphasizes a historical approach to the documents of Vatican II, underscoring discontinuity in doctrinal teachings, historicizing their truth-status, and hence opening them to reversal. The second type of interpreter (e.g., Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre) emphasizes a theological approach to the documents, underscoring doctrinal continuity, and hence rejects any form of discontinuity either as purely pastoral in character and reversible or, if doctrinal, as heretical and grounds for rejecting the Council. The third type of interpreter (e.g., Pope John XXIII, Yves Congar, O.P., and Pope Benedict XVI) synthesizes historical and theological interpretations of the Council’s texts. This last is D’Costa’s hermeneutics, in which there is a legitimate place for doctrinal development within continuity, development that expands our understandings of doctrinal truths, as well as a place for legitimate diversity/discontinuity in theological expressions within a Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. I have written on the hermeneutics of Vatican II in my book Pope Francis:The Legacy of Vatican II (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio, 2015), 1–36. 1 2 256 Eduardo Echeverria fundamental unity of truth, diversity that addresses the novelty of new questions that arise in specific situations. D’Costa’s distinction between the second and third types of interpreters provides a critical and, hence, more exact way to approach the question of continuity/discontinuity, doctrinal development, novelty, and reform than does the approach of Massimo Faggioli, who seems to group advocates of continuity in D’Costa’s second type.3 Furthermore, Faggioli seems sympathetic to the interpreters of the first type of hermeneutics without attending to any of its problems. Be that as it may, integral to D’Costa’s hermeneutics is the import of different “theological notes,” meaning authoritative levels of magisterial teaching. These varying “notes” not only affect the status of the teaching but also limit the scope for legitimate development and, consequently, discontinuity. There is a fourth type of interpreter that regards the texts of the Council as having arrived too late and, hence, as largely irrelevant to the issues raised by liberationist, feminist, and post-modernist theological interpretations. D’Costa does not engage the fourth type, and hence neither shall I.4 Before going on to discuss his hermeneutics of Vatican II, it is important to describe briefly the theological notes—“what doctrines are binding, on what grounds, and in what measure”5 —by explaining briefly both these notes and the corresponding authority of doctrinal statements. Given the limitations of this article, I can best begin here by citing Karl Rahner’s statement regarding the Council’s assumptions about levels of authoritative teaching. These assumptions, I contend, are necessary for a clear and fruitful discussion of doctrinal development. The Council assumes: [1] the distinctions to be made between the wielders of the teaching authority in the Church (individual bishops, the collective episcopate, the pope, a general council); [2] the distinctions to be made between the doctrine taught (revealed truths, truths not revealed but necessarily linked with reve Massimo Faggioli, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012), 133–38. 4 Nicholas Lash raises the question of whether the Council came too late. He answers, “No, it came just in time. But it came too late for renewal to be achieved without considerable confusion, misunderstanding and distress”; see “Vatican II: Of Happy Memory—and Hope?” in Theology for Pilgrims (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2008), 227–39, at 233. 5 Avery Cardinal Dulles, Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), 84. 3 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 257 lation as its presupposition or its consequence, etc.); [3] the distinctions to be made between the types of authority claimed by the teacher and his intention of binding his hearers; [4] the distinctions to be made between the “theological qualifications” of the truths proposed (dogma, common teaching, irreformable truths, reformable truths which still demand a conditional assent, etc.); [5] the distinctions to be made in the assent of the hearer (from the absolute assent of faith to a genuine but not necessarily irreformable inner assent and on to mere “obedient silence”).6 For my purpose here, I will pare down and summarize the different levels of magisterial authority to be attributed to dogmas and doctrines as follows (VII, 14–15, adapted): 1. De fide: dogmas of the faith. These are divinely revealed truths contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, either (a) formally defined by a pope or Council or (b) taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. They constitute basic beliefs that must be held by Catholics, and they are called the primary objects of infallibility. 2. Fides ecclesiastica: doctrines that are infallibly taught as inseparably connected with revelation, called secondary objects of infallibility. These truths are necessarily connected with revelation by virtue of either an historical relationship or a logical connection expressing a stage in the development of the understanding of revelation. These truths are (a) formally defined by a pope or council or (b) taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church as a sententia definitive tenenda. This is why these are called the “faith of the Church.” 3. Sententia fidei proxima: doctrine authoritatively but non-infallibly taught by the Magisterium. This is for a doctrine that is not formally promulgated but is regarded as teaching a truth of revelation. It is proximate to the faith. Karl Rahner, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Chapter III, Articles 18–27,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. Lalit Adophus et al., 5 vols. (London / New York: Burns & Oates / Herder & Herder, 1967–1969), 1:208–16, at 209, quoted in D’Costa, VII, 13–14. 6 258 Eduardo Echeverria 4. Sententia ad fidem pertinens / theologice certa: theological conclusions logically deduced from a proposition of faith and taught by the Magisterium that have a high degree of certainty. 5. Sententia probabilis: probable opinion, although in theological discussion there are many other levels operating: well founded, pious, and tolerated opinions (with the least authority).7 In the remainder of this article, then, I will begin by filling out the picture of D’Costa’s criticisms of interpretational type 1 (historical), say something briefly about type 2 (theological), and then turn to his defense of type 3 (synthesis) as the most adequate hermeneutics for Vatican II. Type 1 Representative interpreters of type 1 are Giuseppe Alberigo (1926– 2007) and John O’Malley. Alberigo was the director of the Institute for Study of Religion in Bologna, Italy, and the guiding scholar behind the five-volume History of Vatican II. This so-called “Bologna School” emphasizes a historical study of the texts of Vatican II that attends to the historical causes and effects of the Council in order to get at its theological and pastoral intentions. This historical study “surpassed all previous historiographical studies and remains an invaluable resource and a landmark of collective scholarship. It opens up many new research trajectories. It represents a distinctive methodology” (VII, 20–21). Of hermeneutical importance, according to D’Costa’s understanding of type 1, are the themes of “event” and “spirit.” The former refers to “extra-Conciliar textual factors that are more important for understanding the Council text, sometimes more reflective of the concerns [aggiornamento and pastoral considerations] of the text, than the final text itself.” Such factors include “unpublished sources (letters, diaries, archival files, memoirs, interviews, private papers, and tape recordings) and many published sources.” The “spirit”—meaning thereby the deep Similarly, see Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Dogma, no. 8 (“Theological Grades of Certainty”), trans. Patrick Lynch, ed. James Canon Bastible (Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1974), 9–10; and Dulles, Magisterium, 83–84. Helpful here is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s document “Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei” (available at http:// www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFADTU.HTM). See also Harold E. Ernst, “The Theological Notes and the Interpretation of Doctrine,” Theological Studies 63 (2002): 813–25. 7 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 259 motivating forces of the council, its ground motive, that steered and shaped the council—“was associated with the reforming energy and dynamism present at the Council; what was later called the ‘event,’ a historicization of the ‘spirit,’ which is always greater than the text that only partially represents it” (VII, 19). D’Costa’s concluding point states his main objection to Alberigo’s project: “it threatens to undermine the authority of the Council documents themselves” (VII, 22). This conclusion follows from Alberigo’s claim that “‘we came to see that the events of the Council could not be reduced to the body, wide though it was, of its decisions: the collegiality of the Council had much greater depth and coherence than the expression of it in Lumen Gentium,’”8 or as he says elsewhere, that “the most striking innovation of Vatican II lies not in any of its formulations but rather in the very fact that it was convoked and held. From this point of view the Council was a point of no return; the conciliar age has begun again and has found a very important place in the consciousness of the Church.”9 This claim deserves more attention than D’Costa gives it in order to bring into clearer focus the hermeneutical themes of “event” and “spirit” and why they run the risk of undermining the normativity of the Council’s final texts. The central thesis of the Bologna School is that the Council’s texts—all sixteen documents produced and promulgated—are not its primary elements. Alberigo says that a reductive vision of the Council fastens on “the letter alone and [is] unable to penetrate to the deeper motivation and universal, historical significance of the Council.”10 Primacy should be ascribed to the event itself, that is, the event of an emerging “conciliar consciousness.”11 According to Alberigo, “the Council as such, as an event of communion, of encounter and exchange, is the fundamental message that constitutes the context and kernel of its reception.”12 This is the “event” character of the Giuseppe Alberigo, “Vatican II and its History,” Concilium 2005/4 (Vatican II: A Forgotten Future, ed. Alberto Melloni and Christoph Theobald): 9–21, at 16. 9 Giuseppe Alberigo, “Transition to a New Age,” History of Vatican II, vol. 5 (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 573–653, at 643. 10 Giuseppe Alberigo, “The Christian Situation after Vatican II,” in The Reception of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo et al., trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1987), 1–26, at 19. 11 I take this phrase, “conciliar consciousness,” from the title of ch. 2 (“Toward a Conciliar Consciousness”) of Giuseppe Alberigo, A Brief History of Vatican II, trans. Matthew Sherry (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 21–42. 12 Alberigo, “The Christian Situation after Vatican II,” 6. 8 260 Eduardo Echeverria Council denoting a “rupture,” a “break,” a marked “discontinuity” with the pre-Vatican II Catholic tradition. If I understand Alberigo correctly, then, this conciliar experience has to be extended to the Church as a whole because the Council—conciliar consciousness— should be taken to be the model of the Christian life as such.13 That is the deeper dynamism and liberating power of the Council, its “spirit,” according to Alberigo. In the words of another theologian sympathetic to Alberigo’s view, Giuseppe Ruggieri: “The Council transmitted itself. In this sense, the new ‘doctrine of the church’ is not the fruit of Lumen Gentium and of the other ecclesiological fragments present in the various conciliar documents, but of the conciliar celebration as such. . . . The problem of the reception of Vatican II is primarily that of the collegiality of the whole church.”14 Yes, Alberigo adds, the Council’s documents on revelation, the mystery of the Church, the acceptance of Catholic ecumenism, and so forth, moved beyond approaches of the last few centuries and returned to the earliest and most authentic tradition. In Alberigo’s understanding of the Council’s novelty one can hear echoes of the position to which the then Joseph Ratzinger raised objections more than thirty years earlier when he said that “councils are a necessity, but they always point to an extraordinary situation in the Church and are not to be regarded as a model for her life in general or even as the ideal content of her existence”; see Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, trans. Sister Mary Francis McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 374. Does Alberigo propose to turn the Church’s whole life into a series of discussions about the content of Christianity and of ways of realizing it? Would that not make the content of Christianity open-ended such that the constant discussion of Christian themes comes to be considered the content of Christianity itself? Is this the view that precipitated the unraveling in the coherence of Church life, worship, and thinking, that is, in the words of Carl Braaten, “a free fall into doctrinal normlessness and liturgical adventurism”? See Braaten, Mother Church: Ecclesiology and Ecumenism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 92. Evidently, Alberigo hopes that the conciliar consciousness that emerged at the Council, quite deliberately but inchoately, should extend to the whole Church. Although I cannot argue the point here, I think Ratzinger was correct when he said at the time that in this approach lies the failure to recognize the true meaning of Christianity: “The real content of Christianity is not the discussion of its Christian content and of ways of realizing it: the content of Christianity is the community of Word, sacrament and love of neighbor to which justice and truth bear a fundamental relationship” (Principles of Catholic Theology, 374). 14 As cited by Sandro Magister, “Confirmed: The Council was a ‘Historic Transition’: The School of Bologna Annexes the Pope” (available at http://chiesa. espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/181668?eng=y). 13 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 261 Still, the deeper dynamism (“spirit”) at work in Vatican II is the “event” of conciliar consciousness, says Alberigo. In the context of that conciliar consciousness, the Church has a responsibility of being faithful to the substance of faith and effectively communicating it to contemporaries. In other words, there must be “a greater assimilation of essential Christian teaching and a formulation of this teaching more in keeping with pastoral needs.”15 “But the most important novelty of Vatican II is not to be found in these various positions but rather in the very fact that it [the council] was convoked and held.”16 This “conciliar event” is a key moment in the Church’s own life, indeed it is of epochal importance. In contrast to the claim that Vatican II marked a systematic “rupture” event, D’Costa would agree with the late Francis Cardinal George, who wrote: “Of course the Council was an event; it was the major religious event of the twentieth century and was enlivened by many spirits. The challenge is to fit these into an organic development, a relationship with revelation, and with the tradition that connected us to it, and with the practice that bears witness to faith in what God has revealed.”17 This conclusion brings us back to Alberigo’s unclear claim that the true Council is found in its “spirit” rather than being reducible to the “letter” of its texts. In Alberigo’s own words, “to equate Vatican II with the corpus of its texts not only impoverishes the hermeneutics of those texts themselves but is also fatal to the image of the Council.”18 Although Alberigo is right that the deep motivating forces of the Council, its ground motives, and the “spirit” that steered and shaped the council, cannot be reduced to the letter of the texts, his statement is nonetheless unclear because it is primarily “the reading of the letter of the documents [that] will enable us to discover their true Alberigo, A Brief History of Vatican II, 122. Alberigo, “The Christian Situation after Vatican II,” 24. 17 Francis Cardinal George, OMI, “Integrating the Second Vatican Council,” in A Godly Humanism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 145–64, at 147. 18 History of Vatican II, The Formation of the Council’s Identity, First Period and Intersession, October 1962–September 1963, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak (Maryknoll, NY/ Leuven: Orbis/Peeters, 1997), 583. Alberigo contests the implication drawn by some—e.g., Ratzinger and D’Costa—that his repeated claims that Vatican II cannot be equated with the body of texts “reduce or lessen the importance of the Council’s documents” (“Transition to a New Age,” 643). 15 16 262 Eduardo Echeverria spirit.”19 Alberigo would probably reply to this point that, as D’Costa says, “the texts reflect compromise; and the idea of the ‘spirit’ or ‘event’ helps to understand the texts.” D’Costa agrees, but he rejects as problematic Alberigo’s attendant claim 20 that “the collegiality of the Council does not find correlative ‘depth and coherence’ in the published text. . . . It threatens to undermine the authority of the Council documents themselves” (VII, 22). Still, according to Alberigo, the conciliar experience at Vatican II, however imperfectly and inchoately, was about the universal participation of the whole Church. In the postconciliar period, he claims, the aim has been to extend this conciliar experience to the whole Church, stimulating it to search out things “new and old,” engaging in the constant discussion of Christian themes. In this period after Vatican II, the “creative reception” of the Council, he writes further, “must distinguish between its transient and its substantive aspects.” He continues: “The Council is not looked upon there as a fixed historical datum and a set of norms that are to be taken over passively in the various parts of the Church.”21 Rather, this extension is essentially about the reception of the spirit of conciliar consciousness as something transcending the letter and particular contents of the documents. Turning now to John O’Malley’s hermeneutics will fill out the picture of type 1. He emphasizes not only historical study of Vatican II’s causes and effects but also the literary genre of the final texts, and D’Costa supports these aspects of his hermeneutics as invaluable (VII, 24). In particular, O’Malley argues that the Council’s “literary genre was unprecedented.” That is, adds D’Costa, “its trope was ars laudandi or panegyric, painting ideal portraits to excite emulation or admiration. So far, this is helpful and illuminating” (VII, 27). Still, there are presuppositions of that hermeneutic that are deeply problematic, such as his emphasis on historical discontinuity, meaning thereby the sense of the “new,” throughout history. After all, to do justice to the Council’s radical notion of reform—which, according to O’Malley, was proposed quite deliberately, albeit inchoately—we need a philosophy of history that will support the claim that the conciliar “event” was about something radically new. In other words, we need a philosophy Joseph Ratzinger and Vittiorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 40. 20 Alberigo, “Vatican II and its History,” 16. 21 Alberigo, “The Christian Situation after Vatican II,” 20. 19 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 263 of history, urges O’Malley, that is based on one fundamental presupposition: “history is a human phenomenon.” He draws several implications from this presupposition. (1) The past is radically contingent and particular: “Each word, document, event is historically and culturally conditioned, radically individualized, and understandable as history only insofar as it is unique and the result of man’s more or less free action and decision.” (2) The past is desacralized; there is no overarching divine plan: “Events are seen as the result of human and contingent causes, not as the result of divine interventions. If you will, the past is ‘deprovidentialized,’ as every effort is made to explain it as the result of human and earthly factors.” (3) Persons, events, and documents are deprived of “all absolute character. We relativize them.” (4) “What this means is that we are freed from the past. We are free to appropriate what we find helpful and to reject what we find harmful. We realize, perhaps to our dismay, that we cannot simply repeat the answers of the past, for the whole situation is different. The question is different. We are different.”22 In O’Malley’s view, we must embrace all these implications if we are to do justice to the radical notion of reform to which Vatican II, however imperfectly and inchoately, was pointing, as he sees it. “We must create the future. . . . Imagination and creativity must enter every reform. . . . The outcome of creativity . . . is something new.”23 Vatican II was trying to create something new—says O’Malley. Whatever truth there is to O’Malley’s claims, says D’Costa, his historical hermeneutic misses out on telling us “why continuity is so important when it comes to magisterially proclaimed authoritative doctrine” (VII, 24), such as we find in levels 1–3 of the above theological notes. Elsewhere D’Costa says, “O’Malley never distinguishes between levels of authority in discussing the Council’s revolutionary [O’Malley’s word] teachings” (VII, 25). In this connection, D’Costa adds, “Further, as a historian O’Malley criticizes essentialist understandings of doctrine, in contrast to historicist models. . . . He never distinguishes between levels of authority in discussing the Council’s revolutionary teachings. But he continuously uses tropes of ‘discontinuity’ and ‘revolution’ to describe the new teachings” (VII, 24–25). John W. O’Malley, S.J., “Reform, Historical Consciousness, and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento,” in Tradition and Transition: Historical Perspectives on Vatican II (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazer, 1989), 74–76. 23 O’Malley, “Reform, Historical Consciousness, and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento,” 76. 22 264 Eduardo Echeverria For example, O’Malley’s historicist interpretation of the Council shows itself particularly in his understanding of ressourcement, which he incorrectly contrasts with the Newmanian notion of development: “[Newmanian] development, writes O’Malley, was understood to be ‘cumulative process in which the tradition became ever richer— or, from another angle, ever heavier, with ever more to bear and explain’” (VII, 27). O’Malley even acknowledges that this notion of development informs Dei Verbum, §8, which teaches that “the Tradition that comes to us from the apostles makes progress in the Church, with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on.” Regardless, O’Malley claims that a “more radical view” (D’Costa’s words) is “implied in ressourcement” (VII, 27). O’Malley writes: “If development takes the present as its starting point and looks to the future for even greater fulfilment, ressourcement is skeptical of the present because of what it has discovered in the past. It entails a return to the sources with a view not to confirming the present but to make changes in it to conform it to a more authentic or appropriate past, to what advocates of ressourcement considered a more profound tradition” (VII, 27–28). D’Costa finds O’Malley’s interpretation of ressourcement problematic with respect to authoritative doctrines of levels 1–3. Even with respect to the reformable elements of level 3, authoritative but non-infallible teaching, says D’Costa, “O’Malley should be more explicit and nuanced” (VII, 28).24 For example, Vatican II embraces ecumenism in Unitatiis Redintegratio—thus revising reformable elements in Pope Pius XI’s 1928 Mortalium Animos—but it still affirms the first principle of Catholic ecclesiology that the Catholic Church is the most fully and rightly ordered expression of the Church that Christ founded. Indeed, says then Joseph Ratzinger, the movement towards ecumenism (“the genuinely ecclesiological breakthrough of the Council”) is an important illustration of the hermeneutic of continuity in reform: the Council found a way within “the logic of Catholicism for the ecclesial character of non-Catholic communities . . . without detriment to Catholic identity.”25 Constitutive of Catholic ecclesial identity is that the Church is not merely “one part of a divided whole.” The Church rejects the so-called I find the same lack of clarity and nuance regarding level 3 teaching—authoritative but not infallible—to be also present in Thomas P. Rausch, “Does Doctrine Change?” America, November 30, 2015 (available at http://americamagazine.org/print/220424). 25 Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 232. 24 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 265 “branch theory of Christianity,” also referred to as “ecclesiological relativism,” which is the view that the Church “subsists” intangibly under a variety of human constructions. Rather, as Ratzinger puts it, “the Catholic Church, even while allowing the usage [of the plural ‘Churches’], must nevertheless insist on giving herself the singular designation ‘the Church’ in a uniquely meaningful way.”26 In short, “the identification of the Catholic Church with the Church of Jesus Christ is valid.”27 Another example of ressourcement, given now by Pope Benedict XVI, happens with respect to the question of religious freedom affirmed in another document, the Council’s Dignitatis Humanae.28 D’Costa summarizes the Pope’s argument: He argues that if religious freedom is to underwrite relativism it would be unacceptable. However, if religious freedom is seen as a principle that derives from human coexistence and the fact that truth cannot be externally imposed, then the Council “recovered” the deepest patrimony of the Church” in Dignitatis Humanae. This . . . is clearly an underwriting of ressourcement [in Congar’s sense]. Otherwise . . . Dignitatis Humanae was being plain disingenuous when it insisted in the opening paragraph: “it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and women and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” That statement was inserted to underline that doctrine was not being overturned or rejected. (VII, 47) Here again, the strategy of ressourcement distinguishes between irreformable and reformable elements. Another example of this strategy is error still has no rights, but the people who hold erroneous beliefs have the right freely to hold them within the terms of a free and open society without the implication that their beliefs are true or even that it is reasonable to hold their beliefs. Accordingly, Vatican II distinguishes Joseph Ratzinger, “Catholicism after the Council,” The Furrow 18 (1967): 3–23, at 21. 27 Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, Trans. by Henry Traub, S.J., Gerard C. Thormann, and Werner Barzel (New York: Paulist Press, 1966), 71. 28 Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia Offering Them His Christmas Greetings, Thursday, December 22, 2005: (available at http:// www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia_en.html). 26 266 Eduardo Echeverria between relating to people and evaluating their beliefs: “But it is necessary to distinguish between error, which always merits repudiation, and the person in error, who never loses the dignity of being a person even when he is flawed by false or inadequate religious notions.”29 In the light of these examples, D’Costa is right that ressourcement does not imply “discontinuity in the sense of contradiction or rejection of previous doctrinal truths. . . . There is, however, serious development and an element of novelty” (VII, 48). Now, with respect to teaching at levels 1–2, which is authoritative and infallible, adds D’Costa, “ressourcement as a concept was not applied to authoritative doctrines in the manner that O’Malley implies” (VII, 28). It was not applied in this way because the ressourcement movement of the nouvelle théologie affirmed “an important distinction between the deposit of faith given in the dogmatic teachings of the Church and the concrete expressions of these during different periods of time. The concrete expressions, not the dogmatic teachings, are subject to reform” (VII, 30).30 One of the major proponents of ressourcement, Yves Congar, put the point this way: “Because no exterior form or formula produced at any given moment is an adequate expression of Catholic truth, it will always be possible, in the name of communion [of faith] itself, to seek to go beyond the expression held at a given moment. When it is a matter of properly dogmatic formulas, this evolution can only mean development by way of clarification.”31 This is because “what is true remains true, despite the flow of time.”32 In Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, §28 (available at http://www. vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_ cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html). 30 In his book The Second Vatican Council, An Unwritten Story, trans. Patrick T. Brannan, S.J., et al. (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto, 2012), Roberto de Mattei is mistaken for lumping together modernism and the nouvelle théologie. The nouvels théologiens are not historicists about dogma (xviii). I defend the thesis that nouvels théologiens are not proponents of a “new modernism” in my book Berkouwer and Catholicism (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 60–108. 31 Yves Congar, O.P., True and False Reform in the Church, trans. and with an Introduction by Paul Philibert (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 232. 32 Congar, True and False Reform, 294. This, too, is the view of Walter Kasper: “As such [dogmatic statements of levels 1–2] decisions are true, they are also irreformable, for what is true today will also be true tomorrow and cannot be wrong tomorrow. Thus, the dogma testifies within history the truth, which transcends all historical conditioning, of the truth that appeared eschatologically definitely in Jesus Christ and of God’s unconditional love. Such a decision puts an end to all dialectics [taking back any determinate assertion that has just been made with its opposite]. Therefore, it is not legitimized through 29 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 267 other words, adds Congar, “returning to tradition means absolute respect for ecclesial expressions that are permanent and always viable, and a critical and intelligent respect for transitional forms, in a spirit of loyal respect and affection for all the forms.” He continues, “here again we are dealing with the idea of ressourcement that we met before when treating the two levels of fidelity . . . [a] twofold distinction between [truth’s] essence and the form in which it is realized and expressed. . . . That is why, at least in the case of Christianity, it is true to say that, although it is judged by the ‘truth’ of the fullness to which it aspires, yet that fullness is already there in its principle.”33 On this point, namely, the distinction between the truth of dogma and its many expressions or formulations, D’Costa cautions against construing the truth of dogma as “a kind of neo-Platonism: a ‘pure’ idea of dogma that is then implemented in varying circumstances,” because such a view runs the “danger of identifying propositions with the fullness of truth and essentializing and eternalizing them” (VII, 31, 35). D’Costa also correctly warns against a “hermeneutic of relativism” wherein “nothing is determinate because history is indeterminate” (VII, 35). I will return to these claims in the concluding section of this article. For now, I want simply to note D’Costa’s concluding claim about ressourcement: “For Congar and Pope John there is no fundamental discontinuity of dogma or doctrines in ressourcement. There should be reform of the Church at the level of its linguistic interpretation and implementation of its deposit. This is ressourcement, at least in the sources where these ideas were developed, rather than in O’Malley’s rendition of the sources” (VII, 31). Support for D’Costa’s claim is found in Congar, who explains the distinction between the truth of dogma and its expressions: Thus the concrete forms in which Christianity realizes itself are themselves judged by this “truth,” which is found at the beginning and which, by means of the “truth,” is found fully at the end. This explains why the return to the sources (ressourcement) is the fundamental energy and the supreme guide of Chrissubsequent reception in the Church. Still, such decisions are interpreted in a subsequent process of reception and are integrated into the whole of the faith and life of the Church”; see The Catholic Church, Nature, Reality and Mission, trans. Thomas Hoebel, ed. R. David Nelson (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 264. 33 Congar, True and False Reform, 295 and 365, respectively. 268 Eduardo Echeverria tian development as well as of the continuing amplification of already achieved forms that things require in order to realize their truth. This is the perspective in which it seems to me that Catholic fidelity can be thought on two levels and so in two ways. Fidelity to Christian reality can be a fidelity to the present state of things, to forms presently expressing this reality, that is a fidelity to what is at present achieved. It can also be a fidelity to its future development or a fidelity to its principle.34 It is precisely this distinction between unchanging truth and its changeable formulations or expressions, which O’Malley calls “substantialism” or “essentialism” and that is fundamental to what I shall call the Lérinian legacy of Vatican II, that is rejected by O’Malley and others.35 This distinction is concisely expressed in John XXIII’s distinction between “substance and expression.”36 The Lérinian legacy is, arguably, based on the distinction between truth and its historically conditioned formulations, between form and content, between truth content and context—in sum, between propositions and sentences—which was implied by John XXIII in his opening address at Vatican II, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia: “For the deposit of faith, the truths contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing; the mode in which they are expressed, but with the same meaning and the same judgment [eodem sensu eademque sententia], is another thing.”37 Focusing on the distinction between propositions Ibid., 366–67. For one, Christoph Theobald, S.J., “The Principle of Pastorality at Vatican II,” in The Legacy of Vatican II, ed. Massimo Faggioli and Andrea Vicini, S.J. (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2015), 26–37, at 34–35. 36 Ormond Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II, Some Hermeneutical Principles (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 72–73. 37 “Est enim aliud ipsum depositum Fidei, seu veritates, quae veneranda doctrina nostra continentur, aliud modus, quo eaedem enuntiantur, eodem tamen sensu eademque sententia” (John XXIII, “Allocutio habita d. 11 oct. 1962, in initio Concilii,” 792). The Latin clause eodem sensu eademque sententia has been either omitted in translations, such as the English and Spanish, or translated in the Dutch and German versions of the opening speech. It is also missing in Gaudium et Spes, §62.When that subordinate clause has been translated into English, it has almost always been inadequately translated as “provided their sense and meaning are retained,” “with their meaning preserved intact,” or “retaining the same meaning and message” (which last two translations are used by D’Costa in VII, 30, 45), or as Walter Abbott’s translation renders it: “For the deposit of faith or revealed truths is one thing; the manner in which they are formulated without violence to their meaning and significance is another.” In my view, 34 35 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 269 and sentences, which implies that the truths of faith are distinct from their linguistic expression, we may say that different sentences used to make assertions may express the same proposition, but when someone uses the proposition to assert something he takes to be true, he is judging that proposition to be true. The subordinate clause in this passage is part of a larger passage from the First Vatican Council’s Dei Filius,38 which passage is itself taken from the Commonitórium primum, 23.3, of Vincent of Lérins: “Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and all, in individuals and in the whole Church, at all times and in the progress of ages, but only with the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same meaning, the same judgment.”39 Vincent’s crucial point here is about invariance of meaning and, hence, about unchanging truth; it is about, as John XXIII put it, the Church’s being able “to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion, which throughout twenty centuries, notwithstanding difficulties and contrasts, has become the common patrimony of men.”40 because of the connection between meaning and truth such that what is meant is judged to be true to reality, the most fitting translation is “keeping the same meaning and the same judgment”—I follow Joseph Komonchak’s translation of the official Latin text (available at https://jakomonchak.files.wordpress. com/2012/10/john-xxiii-opening-speech.pdf.), which also happens to be the translation in Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, Latin-English (herafter, DS), ed. Peter Hünermann, 43rd ed., English edition ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 3020. 38 Dei Filius, ch. 4 (“Faith and Reason”): “For the doctrine of faith that God has revealed has not been proposed like a philosophical system to be perfected by human ingenuity; rather, it has been committed to the spouse of Christ as a divine trust to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence also that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother Church has once declared, and there must never be a deviation from that meaning on the specious ground and title of a more profound understanding [can. 3]” (DS, no. 3020). 39 Cited in Thomas G. Guarino, Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 6, referencing The Commonitorium of Vincent of Lerins, ed. Reginald Stewart Moxon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915). On the importance of Vincent for doctrinal development, see Yves Congar, O.P., The Meaning of Tradition, trans. A. N. Woodrow (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 119–20, as well as Guarino’s magisterial study just cited. 40 The Latin text unequivocally expresses John’s concern with transmitting doctrine “integram, non imminutam, non detortam.” 270 Eduardo Echeverria Of course John was not simply urging the Council to repeat what everyone already knew. This is another important aspect of the Council. “What is needed is that this doctrine is more fully and more profoundly known and that minds be more fully imbued and formed by it.” Indeed, “What is needed is that this certain and unchangeable doctrine, to which loyal submission is due, be investigated and presented in the way demanded by our times.” Still, as D’Costa explains, “Revelation would always be greater than its expressions. But its expressions had to be understood in harmony with each other and over time” (VII, 28). Therefore, to carry out this task faithfully and responsibly, John called the Council to distinguish between unchanging truth and its formulation, yet those new formulations or expressions must keep the same meaning and the same judgment (eodem sensu eademque sententia). Here, too, we find with this distinction between unchangeable “affirmations” and changeable “representations” of truth that John made at the opening of the Council, meaning not only the influence of the nouvelle théologie—suggesting that he wanted the approach begun by the nouvelle théologie to be given continued study, as G.C. Berkouwer rightly noted41—but also the manner in which the nouvels théologiens, such as Congar and others, “escaped the accusation of ruinous anti-intellectualism and dogmatic relativism justly brought against the Modernist.”42 O’Malley’s historicism and consequent anti-essentialism or hermeneutic of relativism about dogma prevents him from affirming that the meaning and truth of dogma, its continuity and material identity, endure throughout history and, hence, are unchanged by history. Still, O’Malley raises important objections that must be addressed. In sum, D’Costa explains these objections: “O’Malley argues that an essentialist/classicist view that holds dogma to be immutable and irreversible avoids the fact that dogma is always expressed in historical and cultural contexts. The essentialist position cannot (a) account for the need for new expressions; (b) defend the notion that dogma is immutable and irreformable, for historical expressions are always mutable and contingent and not divine truth per se, which is God G. C. Berkouwer, Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie (Kampen, NL: J. H. Kok, 1964), 68; English trans. (hereafter, ET) in The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism, trans. Lewis Smedes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965), 62.The Dutch historian of the Reformation and Reformed theologian Heiko Oberman (1930–2001) describes Berkouwer’s book on Vatican II as “breathtakingly important” in Evangelische Theologie 28 (1968). 42 Yves Congar, O.P., History of Theology, trans. and ed. Hunter Guthrie, S.J. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), 10. 41 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 271 in Christ; and (c) explain these ‘essences’ apart from the particular historical expression of it. If the medium is the message, then the message is changing, as is the medium” (VII, 31). What, then, is the import of this distinction for understanding the continuity and material identity of dogma over time? I shall return to give D’Costa’s answer to this question when examining type 3 interpreters. For now, I turn briefly to type 2. Type 2 Type 2, according to D’Costa, “emphasizes the importance of tradition and continuity and the enduring doctrinal truths taught by the magisterium.” In my judgment, this is a version of essentialism that identifies dogmatic propositions with the fullness of truth. It comes in two basic shapes: either the “Council did not teach any new doctrines” or it did “teach new doctrines and rejected old doctrines” (VII, 16). Roberto de Mattei is an example of the former. He holds that the Council was pastoral rather than doctrinal in nature. De Mattei then draws this conclusion: “The Second Vatican Council certainly has its specific teaching, which is not without authority, but, as Gherardini writes, ‘none of its doctrines, unless ascribable to previous conciliar definitions, are infallible or unchangeable, nor are they even binding: he who denies them cannot, for this reason, be called a formal heretic. He, then, who imposes them as infallible and unchangeable would be going contrary to the council itself.’”43 In short, on this view, the Council is accepted but many of its pastoral proposals regarding the liturgy, religious freedom, ecumenism, and other religions are all “reversible for they are not of doctrinal nature.” D’Costa adds, “if one interpreted the Council in the light of unchanging tradition then one would see that the doctrinal changes claimed are purely private theological interpretation” (ibid.). As an example of the second shape of type 2, where it is held by some proponents that new doctrines were taught at the Council and old ones were rejected, we find Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X.44 On this view, the claim is that the Council De Mattei, An Unwritten Story, xi. For example, Archbishop Lefebvre, founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, emphasizes rupture with respect to the liturgical reform of Vatican II: “‘It is clear, it is evident that the entire drama between Ecône and Rome is due to the problem of the Mass. . . . We are convinced that the new rite of Mass expresses a new Faith, a Faith which is not ours, a Faith which is not the Catholic Faith . . . that this new rite is misleading and, if I may say, supposes another conception of the Catholic Religion. . . . This is why we are attached to this 43 44 272 Eduardo Echeverria itself has no validity and, hence, no authority for changing the deposit of faith—“no authority to contradict, reverse, and change previous magisterially taught doctrines. . . . Discontinuity in doctrinal truth is not possible” (VII, 16). On the one hand, D’Costa agrees with the main thesis of this version of type 2 that discontinuity in doctrinal truth, authoritative doctrinal teachings, is not possible. On the other hand, he adds critically, “type 2 can be characterized as the other side of the same coin as type 1.” In other words, in the words of Richard John Neuhaus, which D’Costa approvingly cites, “Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X are right: The Council was a radical break from tradition and proposed what is, in effect, a different Catholicism. The irony is in the agreement between Lefebvre and the liberal party of discontinuity. [ John] O’Malley and those of like mind [Giuseppe Alberigo] might be described as the Lefebvrists of the Left” (VII, 38n60). So, then, there is the matter of the formulations or expressions of unchanging truth, the history of those expressions, as well as the development of doctrine over time—all of which seems to be ignored by Lefebvre and his followers.45 D’Costa opts for what I have called the Lérenian option—John XXIII’s option—which distinguishes between the truth of dogma and doctrine and the possibility of their many legitimate expressions. Therefore, on this view, the concrete expressions of these dogmas or doctrines may change so long as those new expressions keep the same meaning and the same judgment [eodem sensu eademque sententia], such that, as D’Costa puts it, “new expressions and doctrinal development, which are not necessarily the same thing, do not logically entail discontinuity of doctrine” (VII, 31). But this conclusion is precisely what is contested by type 2 interpreters. An early critic of the distinction between the truth of dogma and its formulations is Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., in his 1946 article “Where is the New Theology [nouvelle théologie] Leading Us?”46 The crux of Garrigou-Lagrange’s criticism is found in what he regards as the view of truth of the nouvels théologiens. How do Tradition which is expressed in such an admirable manner, and in a definitive manner, as Pope Saint Pius V said so well, in the Sacrifice of the Mass (June 29, 1976),” in The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, A Theological and Liturgical Study (Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 2001). 45 George, “Integrating the Second Vatican Council,” 157. 46 English translation of this article, “La nouvelle théologie où va-t-elle?” which was first published in French in the 1946 volume of the Roman journal Angelicum, is found in Josephinum Journal of Theology 18.1 (2011): 63–78. D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 273 they understand the relationship between language and reality in respect of truth? He asks, “how can one maintain that all of these propositions [of dogma] are invariably true if the idea of truth itself must change, and if one must substitute for the traditional definition of truth (the conformity of judgment to extra-mental reality and to its immutable laws) what has been proposed in recent years by the philosophy of action: the conformity of judgment to the exigencies of action, or to human life, which is always evolving?”47 Although I think that Garrigou-Lagrange is mistaken in his charges against the nouvelle théologie, he does raise a fundamental question regarding the nature of truth: does the truth of dogma depend on its conformity to the reality of things as objective states of affairs or on its conformity to the current measure of human knowledge— on adaequatio rei et intellectus or on adaequatio realis mentis et vitae? The former is a realist view of truth in which a proposition is true if and only what that proposition asserts is the case about objective reality; otherwise, the proposition is false. If the latter is accepted, then we have a historicist view of truth because, on this account, the meaning of dogmatic formulations is continually being reinterpreted; concepts informing such formulations do not possess fixed, unalterable meanings or determinate content. Dogmatic formulations derive their meaning from context and usage. This is the “hermeneutic of relativism” that D’Costa warns against, wherein “nothing is determinate because history is indeterminate” (VII, 35) and, hence, the affirmations of faith do not have a determinable content of truth in respect of their correspondence to reality. How, then, can one be a realist regarding the relationship between dogmatic propositions and reality in respect of truth and yet simultaneously hold that such statements may require further thought and elucidation—being open, as such, to reconceptualization and reformulation—and, hence, that no statement comprehensively exhausts truth? Congar provides an answer to this question by adopting the distinction between contrast (Gegensatz) and contradiction (Widerspruch).48 Says Congar, “The Gegensätze are contrasted positions which Garrigou-Lagrange, “Where is the New Theology [nouvelle théologie] Leading Us?” 64, and again, 66, 73, 77. By “immutable laws” Garrigou-Lagrange is, I believe, referring to the fundamental laws of logic governing reality and thought: the law of identity (P is P); the law of non-contradiction (P is not non-P); and the law of excluded middle (either P or not-P). 48 Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, 205–08.This distinction originates with Johann Adam Möhler, and “Cardinal [Charles] Journet has felicitously 47 274 Eduardo Echeverria express different aspects of reality. When they are held in the living unity of the Church which embraces them, each one is corrected by at least a potential openness to the complementary aspect. They interpenetrate in such a way that they have a mutual relationship. These are diversities in unity.”49 Now, we may get at those contrasts by understanding that (as Berkouwer puts it) “the church’s formulation of the truth could have, for various reasons, actually occasioned misunderstandings of the truth itself.”50 Berkouwer then gives an example of some of the consequences of a polemically defined truth: An unmistakable limitation and even, in a sense, an overshadowing of the fullness of truth is created by the defensive and polemical character of dogmatic pronouncements. Thus, Trent judged the reformation sola fide as a vain confidence, but failed to “delineate what could rightfully have been intended by the phrase sola fide.” The historical and polemical conditionedness of Church pronouncements must be respected. It seems both necessary and almost self-evident that previous pronouncements of dogma must be interpreted in this light. The interpretation need not bear the character of a revision which gives a new and different meaning to the dogma in order to make it acceptable to a new era. But dogma must be understood in the light of revelation and of the intention of the church as that intention came to expression in a given period of history.51 So, Congar and Berkouwer are suggesting that the formulation or expression itself of the truth could be characterized by one-sidedness. Following Congar, we may distinguish two types of one-sidedness: “First, there is the possibility that this formulation, made in reaction to an error characterized by unilateralism, should itself become unilateral in its expression. Next, there is the possibility that the condemnation might include in its condemnation of the erroneous rendered [these ideas] by the words contrast and contradiction” (as cited in ibid., 205). 49 Yves Congar, O.P., Diversity in Communion, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1984),151. 50 Berkouwer, Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie, 20 (ET, 23–24). 51 Ibid., 77 (ET, 69, emphasis added). The quote within the quote is from Hans Küng, “Why are Dogmatic Pronouncements So Difficult to Make Today?” in The Council in Action: Reflections on the Second Vatican Council, trans. Cecily Hastings (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962), 196–208, at 207. D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 275 reactive element the seeds of truth as well, whose original ambivalence unfortunately became deviant.”52 This possibility especially occurs where the Church polemically defines truth. Put differently, as Berkouwer rightly notes, “the church has been constant in truth at its deepest intent, even though it [the church] has not been elevated above historical relativity in its analysis of the rejected errors.” He elaborates in a passage worth quoting in full: Put another way, the question is: Does a judgment by the Church of a given position carry with it the assumption that its analysis of the position under judgment is necessarily accurate? . . . Must these “facts”—the analysis of a condemned idea—be considered part of infallibly proclaimed truth? Or is it possible that the analysis may later be seen as mistaken even though the intention of preserving a truth may have been valid? Can we distinguish between the Church’s positive intention to confess a truth and its analysis of an “error” so that the constructive intention could be admitted without implying that the analysis of the “error” was correct.53 For example, in Mortalium Animos (1928), Pius XI rejects ecumenism because he holds that it implies ecclesiological relativism, which fosters a false irenicism and a religious indifferentism. In polemically defining the truth that the Church of Christ fully subsists alone in the Catholic Church, he denies any ecclesial status whatsoever to the historic churches of the Reformation. I think we can say that Pius XI was right in rejecting these views as false but incorrect in his analysis that the rejected errors where inherent to ecumenism, with the latter jeopardizing the dogma that the Catholic Church is in some fundamental sense the one visible Church of God. So, accepting ecclesiological relativism would be an example of discontinuity in the sense of contradiction or rejection of previous doctrinal truths, and not a matter of doctrinal development. It would not just be a contrast, a complementary aspect of the Catholic ecclesiology. The Church, however, now accepts that there exists elements of truth and sanctification outside the visible boundaries of the Church and that these elements do not exist in an “ecclesial vacuum.”54 Thus, Catholic Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, 208. Berkouwer, Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie, 501–51 (ET, 48–49). 54 Pope John Paul II, Ut Unun Sint (1995), §13. 52 53 276 Eduardo Echeverria ecclesiology now faces the following dilemma: either it affirms that the Church of Christ fully and totally exists in the Catholic Church, implying the implausible denial that the Orthodox churches and the historic churches of the Reformation are churches in any real sense whatsoever, or it accepts that they are churches in some analogical sense and, thus, accepts ecclesiological relativism.55 I must leave this dilemma to the side, given the limitations of this article. Berkouwer is right that we must recognize the historical and polemical conditionedness of Church teachings without embracing revisionist interpretations of them that give “a new and different meaning to the dogma in order to make it acceptable to a new era.” Again, Vatican II embraces ecumenism—thus revising reformable elements in Mortalium Animos—but it still affirms the first principle of Catholic ecclesiology that the Catholic Church is the most fully and rightly ordered expression of the Church that Christ founded. Neither are these claims contradictory nor do they involve rejection of previous doctrinal truths, and hence, there is no discontinuity. Another example of this is given by D’Costa, and it bears directly on the theme of his book. He explains: “The necessity of the Church for salvation is a de fide teaching and contextualized at the Council by the recognition that there are many outside the Church who have not heard the gospel through no fault of their own. This contextualization, called ‘invincible ignorance’ in the tradition, helped Catholic theology move into a new and interesting space” (VII, 4). He continues: Take for example the doctrine “no salvation outside the Church” (X). If it is assumed that everyone who is not a Christian has freely chosen to reject what they recognize as the truth as the truth of the gospel, then we can say that they have sadly, but freely, chosen damnation upon themselves. Assent to X is unproblematic. If however, we find a lost Amazonian tribe who never knew and thus never rejected the gospel, we may wish to add to X another doctrine, Y. Y states: invincible ignorance of the truth of the gospel requires that God, who is just and merciful, offer some other means of grace to the invincibly ignorant. This means X is true, but now Y provides a proper I am grateful to Fr. Thomas Guarino of Seton Hall University for helping me to formulate this dilemma. I consider a solution to this dilemma—again, with his help—in my recent book Pope Francis: The Legacy of Vatican II, 145–81. 55 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 277 context for a proper appreciation of the truth of X. If later, for the sake of argument, we find lots of people in London, not in the Amazon, in 2013 that are invincibly ignorant of the gospel, despite living within a Christian culture, we may have to add Z. Z states: those who are invincibly ignorant may live in a Christian culture. It states this because Y always assumed otherwise. If the Church teaches doctrine J: God is known by Muslins, we would have to work out how these doctrines and their qualifications interacted so as to further parse the meaning of X. Do all instances of knowing God (as in J) count as knowing the gospel? The point is that the truth of X holds, even if Y, Z, and other qualifications are required now to give it a more precise meaning. (XII, 35) 56 One need not entirely agree with D’Costa’s interpretation of Islamic theology and all the conclusions he derives from his qualifications in order to appreciate his hermeneutical strategy of ressourcement or the hermeneutic of continuity in renewal and reform and its attending presuppositions—namely, five teachings: (1) the necessity of the Church as a means of salvation and the corresponding notion of invincible ignorance; (2) the universal necessity of the Church’s missionary mandate; (3) the category of ordinantur to describe the other religions’ relation to the Church; (4) that these other religions can be praeparatio evangelica to the Catholic faith; and (5) sin and Satan (VII, 4–5). I turn now to D’Costa’s defense of this hermeneutic in type 3 interpreters. Type 3 Berkouwer is right: “It would be reckless to pull far-reaching conclusions out of Pope John’s statement [regarding the distinction between Invincible ignorance is not the cause of saving grace; only Jesus Christ is the full and sufficient cause of our salvation. Lumen Gentium, §16, speaks twice of those who, through no fault of their own (“the invincibly ignorant”) do not know the Gospel of Christ, describing certain criteria to determine whether such persons are not culpably ignorant, criteria such as “sincerely seeking God” and being “moved by grace,” which presupposes that they have positively responded to God’s offer of grace. It is important to understand that “a condition that must be fulfilled to avoid culpability, is in no sense a cause of salvation”; see Francis Sullivan, Salvation Outside of the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 77. For an extensive discussion of these matters, see Eduardo Echeverria, “Vatican II and the Religions: A Review Essay,” Nova et Vetera (English) 13.3 (2015): 837–73. 56 278 Eduardo Echeverria truth and formulations of truth] and to brand it with the mark of a strong progressive theological outlook.”57 On this outlook, which advocates for a perpertual hermeneutic, both truth and its formulations are subject to reform—namely, the deposit of faith given in the Church’s dogmatic teaching—that John XXIII held, in light of his Lérinian perspective, to be at once meaning-invariant and, hence, unchanging truth on the one hand, and the expressions and formulations of these teaching in the course of time, on the other. Unfortunately, this is precisely what one finds suggested in recent interpretations—such as those of Richard Gaillardetz58 and Christoph Theobald59—of Pope John XXIII’s distinction between truth and its formulations. The Lérinian point about meaning-invariance and unchanging truth— keeping the same meaning and the same judgment (eodem sensu eademque sententia)—is ignored, and hence, such intepretations misrepresent John XXIII’s basic point.60 Gaillardetz, for one, then historicizes the Berkouwer, Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie, 19–20 (ET, 23). Richard R. Gaillardetz, An Unfinished Council, Vatican II, Pope Francis, and the Renewal of Catholicism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015), 36–38, 52–53, 133–35. David Tracy takes a position on the question of material continuity and discontinuity in respect of doctrine that is close to the one for which I am arguing in this article; see Tracy, “A Hermeneutics of Orthodoxy,” in Christian Orthodoxy, ed. Felix Wilfred and Daniel F. Pilario in Concilium 2014/2: 71–81. His view is more faithful to John XXIII’s Lérinian conception than is Gaillardetz. Tracy says, “Fidelity to orthodox judgment intrinsic to the particular meaning expressed in propositions is what counts, not the language itself ” (74). He writes again, “The judgments endure but always need new cultural and therefore linguistic formulations” (75), and again, “A purely classicist understanding of language believes that a static unchanging, unchangeable, normative language is alone capable of expressing (semper idem) the community’s ortho-dox beliefs” (ibid.). These distinctions totally elude Gaillardetz. 59 Theobald, “The Principle of Pastorality at Vatican II,” 34–35. Theobald claims that the expression “substance of the deposit of faith” should be “taken as a whole and without making reference to an internal plurality [i.e., unchangeable truth and its formulations] that is already part of such an expression.” This suggestion is implausible, given that John XXIII’s distinction is evidence of a clear point of contact with the nouvelle théologie, a movement of renewal that exercised a significant influence upon the Council. In this respect, Berkouwer, the Reformed master of dogmatic and ecumenical theology, is a more reliable interpreter of Vatican II than Theobold or Gaillardetz. 60 Kasper holds that “the infallibility and irreformability of . . . [dogmatic] decision always takes place in a specific historical situation, they use historical human language and ways of expression and are insofar historically conditioned.” But unlike proponents of type 1, his position is similar to D’Costa’s and, hence, to type 3. He adds, “It pertains also to the historicity that dogmas 57 58 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 279 meaning and truth of dogma by expanding the meaning of “pastoral.” He cites fellow theologian John O’Brien to explain this historicist view that underpins the claim that doctrine has a pastoral orientation: “[The] pastoral had regained [with Pope John XXIII] its proper standing as something far more than mere application of doctrine but as the very context from which doctrines emerge, the very condition of the possibility of doctrine, the touchstone for the validity of doctrine and the always prior and posterior praxis which doctrine, at most, attempts to sum up, safeguard, and transmit.”61 This statement is saying much more than “the specific formulation of doctrine represents an acknowledgment that doctrine is always historically conditioned.” It is also saying much more than “the interpretation of church doctrine requires knowledge of the specific historical contexts in which it was first formulated and in which it is being appropriated.”62 Berkouwer is right that it is surely simplistic to ignore the historical context in understanding “the various terms, concepts, images, and propositions that the Church has used to confess its faith.” He is also surely right that the meaning of dogmas is not always immediately transparent. For example, there exist unclear terms “in the Christological and Trinitarian controversies, such words as consubstantial, hypostasis, person, nature, and many others. The terms often evoked misunderstandings, and different interpretations of them created conflict of opinion.”63 Berkouwer’s insistence here is, then, that to grasp the meaning of a dogma, we must understand its historical context. If this is all that Gaillardetz means, then of course he is right.64 But we are not simply interested in the conditions under which these statements were originally asserted, but rather particularly with “what is asserted in them, the theological truth-content.”65 So, Grisez is also right that “if the propositions signified by certain expressions can subsequently be deepened and complemented [not contradicted], obviously always in the same sense and the same meaning [eodem sensu eademque sententia]. In other words, there is growth and progress in understanding the faith. However, within all this historical conditionality they express something that is valid and binding for all times” (The Catholic Church, 264). 61 John O’Brien, “Ecclesiology as Narrative,” Ecclesiology 4.2 (2008): 150, cited in Gaillardetz, An Unfinished Council, 38. 62 Gaillardetz, An Unfinished Council, 52. 63 Berkouwer, Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie, 85 [ET, 74]. 64 I draw here on some material from Echeverria, Berkouwer and Catholicism, 65–81. 65 Paul Helm, Faith, Form, and Fashion: Classical Reformed Theology and its Postmodern Critics (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 176. 280 Eduardo Echeverria were true,” say, the Chalcedonian formula of faith regarding the relationship between the two natures in the unity of the divine person, “subsequent variations in the meaning of the expressions do not affect the truth of the propositions, but only the ability of the expressions to communicate truth without interpretation.” In short, adds Grisez, “If this proposition is true, it will be true always and everywhere.”66 Therefore, the question at hand is, arguably, a matter of judging whether or not what is meant is true to reality. Thus, these two points in the above passage cited by Gaillardetz are correct, but particularly relevant in respect of the conditions under which we come to know that something is true. But those conditions are distinct from the conditions under which something is true. In sum, conditions of truth must be distinguished from conditions of justification. But the above passage seems to blur the distinction between the conditions under which I come to know that a doctrine is true and the conditions that make it true. A doctrinal proposition is true if and only if what that proposition asserts is in fact the case about objective reality; otherwise, the proposition is false. It is not the context that determines the truth of the proposition that is judged to be the case about objective reality. Rather, reality itself determines the truth or falsity of a proposition. In sum, the historical context does not determine the validity—the truth status—of the doctrine. Furthermore, doctrinal essentialism is correct. Characteristic of essentialism is the claim that there is a “dogmatic conceptual hardcore”67 of Catholic dogmas, such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, whose meaning does not change precisely because it is true to reality. The content of the concepts informing the propositions that God is triune and that the Second Person of the Trinity is God incarnate is meaning-invariant, fixed, and determinate. Essentialism as such is, however, not incompatible with the claim, as Thomas Guarino notes, “that every statement requires further thought and elucidation, that every assertion is open to reconceptualization and reformulation, and that no statement comprehensively exhausts truth, much less divine truth.”68 But the linguistic formulations or expressions can vary as Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Christian Moral Principles, vol. 1 (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 172. 67 I borrow this phrase from the British Evangelical philosophical theologian Oliver Crisp, who defends a version of essentialism in his article “Ad Hector,” Journal of Analytic Theology 1.1 (2013): 133–39, at 138. 68 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 139n59; see also 100n20. I have learned much from Fr. Guarino’s magisterial 66 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 281 long as they mediate the same judgment of truth of the same dogma or doctrine. Pace Gaillardetz, therefore, there is no reason to think that the acceptance of truth as propositional leads to the claim that doctrinally correct formulations or expressions of revealed truth completely express such truth.69 There is, then, also reason to reject the claim that the essentialist position “cannot account for the need for new expressions,” as O’Malley charged, and as D’Costa rightly states, “[this] is a false criticism” (VII, 31). Says D’Costa, “X is irreformable and unchangeable, but its truth is expressed in Y, when Y not only carefully preserves the meaning of X (through careful historical exegesis), but now places X within a wider context, making Y a more suitable expression” (VII, 34). An essentialist hermeneutic can then attend to “discontinuous expressions of the same dogma or doctrine” (VII, 47), while at the same time defending the enduring validity of the conceptual and linguistic formulations used to express a divine truth. D’Costa draws on Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973) to explain his point: “‘It sometimes happens that some dogmatic truth is first expressed incompletely (but not falsely), and at a later date, when considered in a broader context of faith or human knowledge, it receives a fuller and more perfect expression’” (VII, 33).70 D’Costa elaborates: “If there is a mystery Ø, and a true expression of it is Z, this does not mean that F and G might not also be true expressions and that G might be more preferable at a particular time. The basic issue is whether Z, when proclaimed and understood in its context, denoted mystery Ø. If it did, it still does [italics added], even if the language of Z is problematic for cultural and social reasons” (VII, 31). For example, says D’Costa, “neither Greek nor Jew accepted the incarnation, understood as ‘truly God, truly man’ (Chalcedon, 451), yet the concept of ‘homoousion’ (Nicaea first, 325, and then Chalcedon) had to be pressed into service to formulate this dogmatic truth. . . . If it was then true in its context, study. Crisp also argues that essentialism is compatible with the view “that our understanding of the concept might develop, becoming conceptually richer, being developed along the lines of a particular model of the Trinity, and so on” (“Ad Hector,” 138). 69 Gaillardetz, An Unfinished Council, 5. 70 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mysterium Ecclesiae: Declaration in Defense of the Catholic Doctrine on the Church Against Certain Errors of the Present Day, §5 (available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19730705_mysterium-ecclesiae_ en.html). 282 Eduardo Echeverria historically we can reframe the context and issues so as to understand homoousion as the ancients did, even though this word is not used in any normal discourse now. It is irreformable in that sense alone: it communicates a truth that was authoritatively taught as de fide” (VII, 33). Significantly, D’Costa rightly underscores that this dogma is taught as de fide because it is itself determinately true in that it bears a relationship to reality. Given that dogma’s relationship to reality, we might say of such dogmatic assertions that they are permanently true because objectively true, really true, and, as I understand D’Costa, not just true in their original context. There is another point to consider here regarding the enduring validity of dogmatic formulations: the truth of dogma is unchangeable and irreformable. Here, too, O’Malley objects, stating that essentialism cannot “defend the notion that dogma is immutable and irreformable, for historical expressions are always mutable and contingent and not divine truth per se” (VII, 31). We need to be careful here in making the point about dogma’s truth status. It is one thing to say that our doctrinal formulations exhaustively grasp the content of revealed truth, and it is another to say—which I would argue we must say—that dogmatic formulations, in D’Costa’s words, “must bear some determinative relationship to truth itself . . . unless one has a view that language has no proper referencing function to reality” (VII, 35).71 In short, the relationship between dogmatic formulations and reality determines the truth status of the dogma. Consider, for example, the creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Is what they assert and, hence, make judgments about (for example, the Trinity and the person and natures of Christ) true to reality? In other words, do they have truth-conveying status, meaning that what is asserted in them is ontologically true? And what about linguistically articulated Thus, there is no need to withdraw the claim that one can express truth determinately because our dogmatic formulations cannot exhaustively grasp the content of revealed truth. We can know something truly without knowing it exhaustively. Some do not see the difference here. For example, Rausch’s claim is unclear when saying that it is “the direction of the judgment contained in the dogmatic statement [that] cannot be reversed” (“Does Doctrine Change?” emphasis added). He implies that the judgment only “points,” as it were, in a certain direction, rather than saying that it is the meaning and determinate truth of the judgment—taught authoritatively and infallibly—contained in the dogmatic statement that is irreversible. I suspect that he does not see how there is dogmatic development and at the same time expressing truth determinately in judgments, and hence he uses the term “direction” (or, as some say, “point”) to signify that truth is only available in an indeterminate way. 71 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 283 doctrine, judgments expressive of propositional truth, supporting the conclusive and abiding assertions of revelation and doctrine, and logically sustaining the affirmations of Christian beliefs, their universality, continuity, and material identity? As Avery Dulles once put it, “if we are to worship, speak, and behave as though the Son of God were himself God . . . is it not because the Son really and ontologically is God, whether anyone believes it or not? By inserting the homoousion in the creed, the Council of Nicaea was indeed laying down a linguistic stipulation; but more importantly, it was declaring an objective truth.” 72 I think enough has been said of D’Costa’s response to O’Malley’s objections to show that a hermeneutics of continuity within renewal and reform can (a) account for the need for new expressions, (b) explain why propositions of dogmas/doctrines are unchangeable, irreformable, or definitive, and (c) distinguish between the message and the medium. Brief Evaluation The question regarding the relationship between unchangeable truth and the human expression of that truth in the variety of historically conditioned forms of thoughts that include different philosophical concepts that have played a role in explicating the content of revelation and linguistically articulated dogma and doctrine is the nub of the dilemma between essentialism and historicism. Berkouwer, for one,73 is persuaded that “Modernism has definitely seen a very real problem—despite its untenable solutions—that has not been seen by anti-modernistic reaction in upholding the ‘semper eadem,’ namely the absolutizing of continuity in a way that had no appreciation for the historical nature of human expression. In more recent times, this compelling problem naturally resurfaced and the distinction between form and content returned.”74 Thus, the distinction between abiding truth and its historically conditioned formulation resurfaced with the nouvels théologiens, and with that came the problem regarding the relation between history and truth. Avery Cardinal Dulles, “Postmodernist Ecumenism,” Review of The Church in a Postliberal Age, by George A. Lindbeck, First Things, October 2003. 73 For another, Aidan Nichols, O.P., writes, “Though modernism had been a false answer it had set a real question”; see “Thomism and the Nouvelle théologie,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 1–19, at 5. 74 G. C. Berkouwer, Nabretrachting op het Concilie (Kampen, NL: J. H. Kok, 1968), 72. 72 284 Eduardo Echeverria Of course Berkouwer is right that the distinction itself cannot “be used as a magician’s wand to clear up every burning question.” 75 The problem was that the presupposition of the hermeneutic of continuity no longer seemed self-evident, given that truth’s expressions are historically conditioned and that these expressions are never comprehensive, adequate, and complete—even if all are true. Berkouwer elaborates: “That harmony had always been presumed, virtually self-evidently, to be an implication of the mystery of the truth ‘eodem sensu eademque sententia.’ Now, however, attention is captivated primarily by the historical-factual process that does not transcend the times but is entangled with them in all sorts of ways. It cannot be denied that one encounters the undeniable fact of the situated setting of the various pronouncements made by the church in any given era.” 76 The question is, then, how exactly a single and unitary revelation homogeneously is expressed, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment, given the undeniable fact “of time-conditioning, one can even say: of historicity.” 77 Says Berkouwer pointedly, “all the problems of more recent interpretation of dogma are connected very closely to this search for continuity. . . . Thus, the question of the nature of continuity has to be faced.” 78 Throughout the past eighty-five years, magisterial attention has, in varying degrees, been given to this question of continuity and its nature: Pius XII’s Humani Generis (1950),79 Pope Paul VI’s Mysterium Fidei (1965),80 John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio (1998),81 and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973).82 Of relevance to this question is also the work of the International Theological Commission, which is the advisory body of theologians to the Berkouwer, Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie, 99 (ET, 84). Berkouwer, Nabretrachting op het Concilie, 52. 77 Ibid., 52–53. 78 G. C. Berkouwer, De Kerk, vol. 1, Eenheid en Katholiciteit (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1970), 236–37; English translation in The Church, trans. James E. Davidson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 190–91 (Davidson’s translation is a one-volume presentation of the two-volume De Kerk). 79 Pius XII, Humani Generis, §§15–16 (available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/ pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html). 80 Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, §§§23–25 (available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/ paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_03091965_mysterium.html). 81 John Paul II, Fide et Ratio, §95 (available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/ john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html). 82 Mysterium Ecclesiae, §5. 75 76 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 285 CDF. It devoted an entire document to this question, “The Interpretation of Dogma” (1989), giving systematic attention to, among other matters, a metaphysical hermeneutic that underpins the question regarding the relationship between language, truth, and reality, with a particular focus on the relationship between truth and history.83 After all these years, we may rightly hold that a consensus exists on this question. First, there is the basic affirmation regarding the continuity and material identity of Christian doctrine over time in respect of its meaning and truth (eodem sensu eademque sententia). Second, doctrinal relativism and its corollary of a perpetual hermeneutic is rejected because of its emphasis on doctrinal discontinuity, not merely discontinuity in expression or formulation, but a discontinuity that denies the enduring validity of truth, recognizing nothing but interpretations of interpretations, with our judgments never reaching the reality that makes them true. Furthermore, a perpetual hermeneutic holds that the truth of dogma can be formulated only either (a) in an indeterminate way or (b) in various ways that are not only different, but fundamentally contradictory. This hermeneutic opposes the teachings of Vatican I and Vatican II, and particular their Lérinian legacy—namely, that the interpretation of dogmas throughout the ages must keep the same meaning and the same judgment (eodem sensu eademque sententia). Third, albeit tentatively and cautiously, some brief attention is given by Pius and Paul to the question of the inadequacy and incompleteness of conceptual and linguistic formulations and expressions of unchanging truths and of whether our understanding can deepen the meaning and truth of dogma and doctrine. The CDF goes further by devoting an entire section of its document to that question: new formulations of the permanently valid content of dogmas or doctrines are not contradictory and do not involve rejection of previous doctrinal truths, and hence, there is no doctrinal discontinuity. It explicitly recognizes the distinction between truth and its formulations, between unchanging truth and the historical conditioning that affects the formulation of it. The International Theological Commission later picks up on this distinction in the “Interpretation of Dogma,” as does John Paul II in Fides et Ratio, arguing that the fundamental question here regarding the unity and authentic diversity of dogmatic formulations of the truth and reality of revelation—about the relationship between universal International Theological Commission, “The Interpretation of Dogma” (1989), A.I.3 (available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1989_interpretazione-dogmi_en.html). 83 286 Eduardo Echeverria truth, always valid, on the one hand, and the historicity of dogmas and doctrine, on the other—requires a metaphysical hermeneutics giving an account of the relationship between language, truth, and reality. Against this background, I shall draw some conclusions about D’Costa’s hermeneutic. Earlier I noted that, although D’Costa embraces the distinction between the truth of dogma and its many expressions or formulations, he cautions against construing the truth of dogma as “a kind of neo-Platonism: a ‘pure idea of dogma that is then implemented in varying circumstances,” for such a view runs the “danger of identifying propositions with the fullness of truth and essentializing and eternalizing them” (VII, 31, 35). D’Costa is right that some versions of essentialism do run the danger of identifying propositions with the fullness of truth. I considered that version in type 2 interpreters of Vatican II. But essentialism as such is not incompatible with the claim, as Guarino notes, “that every statement requires further thought and elucidation, that every assertion is open to reconceptualization and reformulation, and that no statement comprehensively exhausts truth, much less divine truth.”84 Divine truth may be expressed incompletely and inadequately, but neither falsely nor indeterminately. The fact that we do not know everything that there is to know about a particular divine truth does not necessarily mean that what we do know is not determinately true in these doctrinal formulations, but only approximations of that truth (VII, 35). Furthermore, Rahner is correct: “They are an ‘adequatio intellectus et rei,’ insofar as they state absolutely nothing which is false. Anyone who wants to call them ‘half false’ because they do not state everything about the whole of the truth of the matter in question would eventually abolish the distinction between truth and falsehood.”85 So, the new linguistic formulations or expressions can vary as long as they mediate the same judgment. What is more, adds Rahner, “a more complete and more perfect statement does not falsify the one it supersedes.”86 The content of the concepts informing the propositions that God is triune and that Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 139n59; see also, 100n20. Karl Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 1, trans. Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1961), 39–77, at 44. Pace Küng, “Why are Dogmatic Pronouncements So Difficult to Make Today?” 207: “Every proposition can, as far as the verbal formulation goes, be true and false, according to how it is aimed, situated, intended.” 86 Karl Rahner, “Mysterium Ecclesiae,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 17, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 139–55, at 151. 84 85 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 287 the Second Person of the Trinity is God incarnate are meaning-invariant, fixed, and determinate, and that meaning does not change precisely because it is true to reality, to an objective state of affairs. Bernard Lonergan is right that the “meaning of its nature is related to what is meant, and what is meant may or may not correspond to what is in fact so [is the case].” “If it corresponds,” Lonergan adds here, “the meaning is true. If it does not correspond, the meaning is false.”87 What of D’Costa’s worry about “eternalizing” propositions? His worry is unclear. What is wrong with timeless or eternal truth anyway? As Paul Helm explains, “if God is timelessly eternal then at least some propositions about him will be timelessly true in this very robust sense. Presumably the timelessness of God is itself an example of a timeless truth in this sense, if it is a truth. And whatever else is essential to God will, in turn, be robustly timeless in this sense—God is just, God is love, God is one nature in three persons, and so on.”88 Consider also assertions about the Trinity and the Incarnation. Can these doctrines be understood non-metaphysically, even non-essentially? Oliver Crisp rightly states, “If we must confess that God is both one and three, that he is Triune, and that the Second Person of the Trinity is God Incarnate, and so forth, then we are predicating certain things about the divine nature. We are saying that God is Triune; that in some important and fundamental sense it is true that he is both one and yet three; that the Second Person of the Trinity is Incarnate in Christ; and so on. We cannot avoid making such claims as Christian theologians.” Furthermore, he continues, “these claims are metaphysical in the sense that they predicate something about God, about the nature of God, and are claims we think veridical.”89 If D’Costa objects to “timeless propositions” that purport to express eternal truths about God, such as the ones Crisp gives as examples, he does not say. Furthermore, some theologians object to the notion of “timeless truth” because they claim it turns theology into a system of “universal truths,” meaning propositions that are enduringly valid, and hence, “if they are true, then they are true at all times.”90 D’Costa clearly affirms that the truths of the Christian faith are now forever Bernard Lonergan, S.J., “The Dehellenization of Dogma,” in A Second Collection, ed. William F.J. Ryan, S.J., and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S.J. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), 11–32, at 14. 88 Helm, 170. I have learned much from Helm’s book. 89 Crisp, “Ad Hector,” 138. 90 Helm, Faith, Form, and Fashion, 172–173. 87 288 Eduardo Echeverria true, permanently true, and hence, he wonders why there is an objection (see VII, 35n51). D’Costa embraces the distinction between the truth of dogma and its expression. He claims that dogma’s truth “is not exclusively dependent on any particular framework, unless the framework eschews ontology.” I wish that D’Costa were clearer here, too. Is he saying that an account of the truth of dogma requires an ontological framework in which such truths correspond to what is basically an objective reality? And if so, is this ontology about “a relationship between language and reality in respect of truth”? 91 He suggests that it is when arguing that “any dogmatic expression must bear some determinative relationship to truth” and that this is because “language” (one presumes he means assertions) has a “proper referencing function to reality” (VII, 35). Still, D’Costa’s hermeneutic is, as it stands, metaphysically underdetermined: “A metaphysical hermeneutic raises the question of the very truth of reality itself. This begins with the fact that the truth manifests itself in and by means of human intelligence in such a fashion that in the light of the intelligence the very truth of reality itself shines forth.”92 Although his hermeneutic is open to the appeal of metaphysics, given his suggestive claim about the relationship between language, truth, and reality, he never explicitly gives a metaphysical account of that relationship in respect of dogma’s truth. In that account, he would need to “show how it is possible to move from the historical and contingent circumstances” in which the truth of a dogma is asserted “to the truth which [it] expresses, a truth transcending those circumstances.”93 It is not clear why he does not give such an account, given that his hermeneutic is open to metaphysics, but what is clear is that he thinks he can defend the truth of dogmatic formulations without that account. This is evident when he claims, “It is perfectly possible to defend it [dogma’s truth] within a more historicist view” (VII, 31). In other words, D’Costa defends “a historicist form of [essentialism]” (VII, 48). On this view, he explains in response to critics of an essentialist hermeneutic (such as O’Malley and the Belgian philosophical theologian Lieven Boeve), “I am not suggesting that we can somehow jump out of our cultural linguistic world and see ‘truth’ beyond these performances and utterances. Rather, the claim is that a cognitive Ibid., 157. International Theological Commission, “The Interpretation of Dogma,” A.I.3. 93 John Paul II, Fide et Ratio, §95. 91 92 D’Costa’s Hermeneutics 289 grasp of truth is possible through formulations that may change and that a comparison may be possible between these different formulations whereby continuity or discontinuity can be determined” (VII, 48–49). Again, D’Costa leaves me wondering what he means by a “cognitive grasp of truth.” Even if we cannot jump out of our linguistic cultural world, if we focus on the truth of what is asserted, then, surely what is cognitively grasped is not merely true in its context; otherwise, that would be historicism—which he decidedly rejects. As I argued earlier, the conditions under which I come to grasp the truth of that assertion must be distinguished from the conditions that make that assertion true. John Paul II gets it right: “Human language may be conditioned by history and constricted in other ways, but the human being can still express truths which surpass the phenomenon of language. Truth can never be confined to time and culture; in history it is known, but it also reaches beyond history.”94 Thus, the metaphysical question concerning truth and reality is at its nub “the question of the relationship between truth and history.”95 That is to say, “from the theological viewpoint, the question spills over into that of the relationship between universal truth, always valid, on the one hand, and the historicity of dogmas, on the other.”96 Furthermore, a cognitive grasp of truth involves propositions, or assertions, because dogma is truth-asserting. In other words, asserting that P is the case under particular conditions does not make that dogmatic assertion true. “It is the truth content of that assertion that may become the content of countless other assertions.”97 The truth content of such assertions is what may be cognitively grasped through varying formulations, focusing on the truth of what is asserted and expressed in order to give a proper account of the traditional characteristic of doctrinal form, as Guarino puts it, “at least in its essential judgments, [which] include its unity and organic continuity, its material identity and constancy.”98 In sum, D’Costa rejects a hermeneutic of relativism, and hence, not only may truth be determinately known and expressed through formulations that may change, but also he defends the enduring validity of the conceptual language used to communicate the truth of a dogma. Ibid. International Theological Commission, “The Interpretation of Dogma,” A.I.3. 96 Ibid. 97 Helm, Faith, Form, and Fashion, 176. 98 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, ix. 94 95 290 Eduardo Echeverria One final point I want to make concerns D’Costa’s understanding of revelation. He is clear that “God’s self-revelation [is] determinative for faith” (VII, 35). Propositions, or assertions, are surely central and essential to the Christian faith, particularly concerning the nature of revelation. I miss the idea of revealed truth, of propositional revelation—in short, of the mediating role of propositions in God’s self-revelation to man—in D’Costa’s view. Arguably, the International Theological Commission is right: “Catholic theology begins from the certitude of faith that the Paradosis of the Church and the dogmas she transmits are authentic statements of the truth revealed by God in the Old and New Testaments. She also affirms that the revealed truth, transmitted by the Paradosis of the Church, is universally valid and unchangeable in substance.”99 An adequate account of revelation in Dei Verbum, the Vatican II Constitution on Divine Revelation, must understand the inherent connection of words (the verbal element of revelation) and acts in the Christologically concentrated structure of revelation.100 Furthermore, the idea that God’s self-revelation is a word-revelation, forming an essential element of God’s self-revelation, entails the idea of propositional revelation, of revealed truth—namely, that assertions expressing propositions are part of the way God reveals himself. Dei Verbum also affirms the centrality of “assertions,” or propositions, in God’s verbal revelation: “Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation” (§11). Aidan Nichols is right: “Whatever else doctrines are, they are propositions, and no account of revelation which would exclude propositions wholly from its purview could do justice to the role of doctrines in Catholic Christianity.”101 In conclusion, D’Costa needs to explicitly integrate into his hermeneutics a theology of propositional revelation. N&V International Theological Commission, “The Interpretation of Dogma,” A.II.1. 100 On this, see Aidan Nichols, O.P., “De Lubac & Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange [on Divine Revelation],” in Engaging the Theologians (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2013), 113–28, at 124. 101 Aidan Nichols, O.P., From Newman to Congar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 175. 99 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 291–299 Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II, and Islam1 Gabriel Said Reynolds University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN By the end of Gavin D’Costa’s Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims, readers will come to appreciate the particular challenges that the study of Islam poses to Catholic theologians. The study of Islam calls for a certain familiarity with the Qurʾan and with the Islamic religious sciences. It also calls for the careful consideration of magisterial teaching on non-Christian religions and Islam in particular. The Church, however, has said very little about Islam (especially in comparison to Judaism), and so, theologians proceeding with a study of Islam find themselves without many signposts along the way. The study of Islam is also challenging because of the ways in which Christians and Muslims disagree on central religious questions. This point is often neglected or ignored altogether, and I would like to address it in some detail here. It is true, of course, that many things are common in Christian and Islamic teaching, beginning with the doctrine of God. Muslims believe with Christians in one God, the creator, who is at once merciful and just. Lumen Gentium §16 explains that Muslims, “along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind” (an explanation to which Pope Francis alluded in his address before leaders of world religions on March 20, 2013, soon after his election to the papacy). This statement (perhaps modeled after Paul VI’s August 1964 encyclical Ecclesiam Suam) stops short of a simple declaration that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Nevertheless, the Church chose here to emphasize what is common in the Christian and Islamic doctrines of I am grateful to Sidney Griffith for his insights on an earlier draft of this article. 1 292 Gabriel Said Reynolds God, and not what is distinctive to Christianity or to Islam. Islam also recognizes many biblical figures as prophets or, in the case of women (according to Islam only men are propehts), as holy figures blessed by God. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Moses, David, Solomon, John [the Baptist], Jesus, and Mary are all protagonists in the Qurʾan. In a sense, however, this is where the problems begin, as the Qurʾan does not simply follow the Bible in its presentation of these characters. It presents them in a way meant to advance the effectiveness of Muhammad’s own preaching. To this end, the Qurʾan turns many biblical figures who play distinctive roles in the grand salvation history of the Bible, which begins with Adam and ends with Jesus, into prophets who admonish their people to obey them and to worship God alone under the threat of divine punishment. According to the standard Qurʾanic prophetic scenario (or “punishment story,” as Western scholars of the Qurʾan have dubbed them), a prophet is sent by God to his people, the people rejects the prophet and God, and God destroys the people. The various retellings of this scenario (involving Noah, Lot, Moses, and a number of Arabian prophets unknown to the Bible) are all meant as lessons to Muhammad’s own people. The Qurʾan intends for its audience, having heard of the demise of earlier peoples who rejected earlier prophets, to accept Muhammad, the prophet who has been sent to them. While the Qurʾan does not completely erase the distinctive characteristics of biblical protagonists (Adam is still expelled from a garden, Noah still builds an ark, and Moses still confronts Pharaoh), it does seem to have what one French Catholic scholar (Claude Gilliot) has called a “monoprophetism”: one has the impression that the same prophet appears under different names. All of the prophets teach the same basic message. Muslims would add that God has sent a prophet to each people (Qurʾan 10:47; 16:36) but that the last of these prophets is Muhammad, the only prophet whom God has sent to the entire world. Muhammad’s scripture, the Qurʾan, abrogated all earlier scriptures, and his law, or shariʿa, replaced all earlier laws. God’s will is for all humanity to follow that law until the Day of Resurrection. It is perhaps important to add that the role of a prophet is not so much to bring mysterious or inscrutable teachings (although there is some of this) as it is to remind humans of their religious instinct: Islam is the natural religion inherent in human beings. A well-known tradition attributed to Muhammad has him relate that “everyone who is born is born with a sound nature (ʿala fitra); it is his parents who Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II, and Islam 293 make him a Jew or a Christian or a Zoroastrian.”2 According to the standard interpretation, this “sound nature” is Islam. The role of the prophet, therefore, is principally to remind people of their religion, the true religion that has been sown into the fabric of their being. All other religions are man-made perversions of this true religion. In light of all of this, it is perhaps not a surprise that Muslims deny that the Bible is a valid scripture (even if individual Muslims of different eras have turned to the Bible in their efforts to better understand the Qurʾan or the stories of the prophets). According to the standard Islamic perspective God sent down heavenly books to certain prophets before Muhammad, notably Moses, David, and Jesus (sometimes Abraham is added to this list), but these books were changed or falsified by Jews and Christians. Through this process of falsification (tahrif ), new scriptures were eventually written and collected together to form the Bible as Jews and Christians know it. At the same time Muslims generally hold, in light of certain Qurʾanic verses (notably 7:157), that the Bible nevertheless contains references to the coming of Muhammad as a new prophet. Hence it is common to find Muslim jurisprudents who declare that the Bible should not be read for religious guidance, but can be used for the sake of Islamic apologetics (daʿwa). Thus, figures such as Abraham, Moses, or Jesus are common to Islam and Christianity only inasmuch as the biblical and Qurʾanic presentations of them happen to coincide. As we have seen, however, they do not always do so. Indeed, in some cases, the presentations of such figures are so dissimilar that it is reasonable to ask whether we are dealing with different characters who simply happen to share the same names. This question is particularly important—as regards Muslim-Christian dialogue—when it comes to Jesus. The Qurʾan denies that Jesus is the son of God (9:30) and calls Christians unbelievers for stating that “God is Jesus” (5:17; 5:72). In two cases (5:72 and 5:117) the Qurʾan has Jesus himself reprimand Christians who consider anyone but Allah to be God. The Qurʾan, at least according to the standard Islamic reading of it, denies the death of Jesus (4:157): Islamic tradition holds that God transformed another man into his likeness and that this man was crucified in his place. Obviously, then, there is no place for the salvific or redemptive value of Jesus’s death. Indeed, the 2 See Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan (Riyadh, SA: Darussalam, 1997), 6:259 (no. 4775). 294 Gabriel Said Reynolds Qurʾan’s frequent refrain that “no bearer shall bear another’s burden” (6:164; cf. 2:286; 4:111; 17:13–15; 29:12, among others) may be a rejoinder against the Christian doctrine of redemption. It is true that the Qurʾan calls Jesus “Christ,” but it does not seem to give any meaning to this term. “Christ” in the Qurʾan is simply another name given to Jesus (something that presumably reflects the late antique Christian use of this term as a second name for Jesus). The Qurʾan also describes Jesus’s birth through the spirit of God which he breathed into Mary (21:91; 66:12) and names him the spirit (4:171) and word (3:45; 4:171) of God. However, this suggestive Christological language does not seem to have implications for the presentation of Christ elsewhere in the text, and in any case, it is qualified by Islamic traditions, which makes “spirit” and “word” into simple titles for Christ that in no way suggest divinity. Something similar can be said about the miracles that the Qurʾan attributes to Jesus: he brings a clay bird to life by breathing in it (as God brings Adam to life from clay; 3:49; 5:110), heals the blind and the leprous (3:49; 5:110), speaks as a child (3:46; 19:24–33), and brings the dead to life (3:49; 5:110). However, the Qurʾan often (although not always) adds that Jesus accomplished these miracles only with the permission of Allah, and Islamic tradition is quick to add that these miracles were simply signs given to a prophet, like the signs given to other prophets. Indeed, an entire genre of Islamic literature (dalaʾ il al-nubuwwa) is dedicated to the argument that Muhammad himself produced greater signs than those given to Jesus or any other prophet. Finally, the Qurʾan has Jesus predict the coming of Muhammad (61:6; although here he is given the name “A ḥ mad”). The Jesus of Islam, then, is not only different from the Jesus of Christian faith; in some ways, he is an anti-Christian figure. This anti-Christian quality of the Muslim Jesus becomes explicit in Islamic eschatological traditions in which Jesus breaks crosses and kills pigs upon his return in the end times. In light of Islam’s controversial teaching on Christ, it is no surprise that Christian theologians (beginning, perhaps, with John of Damascus) long approached Islam under the category of heresy. In recent times, however, Catholic theologians have sought to categorize Islam in less abrasive terms, and much of D’Costa’s attention in Vatican II is dedicated to a consideration of their efforts. He rightly emphasizes the importance in this regard of Louis Massignon, a French Catholic scholar of Islamic mysticism (and, towards the end of his life, a Melkite priest). In his work Les trois prières d’Abraham (and elsewhere), Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II, and Islam 295 Massignon envisages a mystical connection of Muslims with the Abrahamic covenant. The ideas of Massignon, who died soon after the opening of Vatican II in 1962, are often thought to have inspired the irenic statements of the Council on Islam. D’Costa, however, argues that the influence of Massignon’s ideas on Vatican II has been exaggerated. To this end, he notes that the first draft of Lumen Gentium §16, in reference to Muslims, states that “the sons of Ishmael, who recognize Abraham as their father and believe in the God of Abraham, are not unconnected with the revelation made to the patriarchs.” This reference, however, was deleted and replaced with the simple observation that Muslims “[profess] to hold the faith of Abraham.” The Church’s decision in this regard, incidentally, suggests that Catholics should not hastily embrace the category of “Abrahamic religions,” a category now widely used in inter-religious dialogue (although not without critique: see Aaron Hughes’ Abrahamic Religions and Jon Levenson’s Inheriting Abraham). Nevertheless, at Vatican II, the Church sought to highlight positive aspects of the theological relationship between Islam and Christianity. Lumen Gentium §16, as quoted above, emphasizes what is common in the Muslim and Christian doctrine of God. Nostra Aetate §3 declares that the “Church is filled with esteem for Muslims” and notes a number of doctrines that Muslims share with Christians, including: reverence for Jesus and Mary, acknowledgement of Mary’s virginity, belief in the day of judgment, and the worship of God through “prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.” It also enjoins Christians and Muslims to forget past hostilities and “to work honestly for mutual understanding.” In one place (§3 again), Nostra Aetate employs a Qurʾanic turn of phrase, relating that Muslims “adore the One God who lives [and] exists in Himself.” This seems to be a paraphrase of Qurʾan 2:255(a), the famous “throne verse” that is so important to Muslim piety (and may be connected to Daniel 6:27). In any case, D’Costa is certainly right when he concludes (180, and again 202–04) that the use of Qurʾanic language does not imply an endorsement of the Qurʾan. This language reflects the concern of the Council fathers to articulate Islamic teaching in an accurate manner, and nothing more. Moreover, while Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate express appreciation for the faith of Muslims, they do not make any definitive statement regarding the place (if any) of Islam within divine revelation. Indeed, they say nothing at all about the Qurʾan or Muhammad. The Council’s silence on this count is consistent with the teaching 296 Gabriel Said Reynolds that Christ is the definitive revelation, a teaching expressed clearly in Dei Verbum §4: “The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.“ This statement seems to leave no space for a Catholic theologian to argue that the Qurʾān, which both comes after the “Christian dispensation” and contradicts it, is a revealed scripture. Perhaps this is why some scholars, as D’Costa notes (168n32), simply ignore Dei Verbum §4 in their studies of Vatican II and Islam, or why other scholars look for creative ways to affirm that the Qurʾān is revealed or inspired in some way. Among these is the Franciscan Guilio Basetti-Sani, who argues in his 1977 work The Koran in the Light of Christ that the Qurʾān actually affirms Christian teaching, albeit in a veiled or hidden manner (much as the Old Testament contains hidden references to Christ). Anything that contradicts Christian teaching in the Qurʾan, Basetti-Sani argues, is in fact a refutation of heretical Christian teaching. Perhaps, Basett-Sani suggests, Muhammad himself was never fully aware of the inner Christian meaning of his proclamations and the Church can now help Muslims discover this meaning. Others imagine that Islam could be thought of in so called “paracletic” time (the time of the Spirit); that is, even if Muhammad came after Jesus chronologically, he could still be thought of under the category of praeparatio evangelica, as someone like the prophets of the Old Testament who predicted the coming of Christ. This notion of “paracletic time” has been strongly (and convincingly) criticized by the Egyptian Dominican Georges Anawati, a disciple of Louis Massignon and one of the Catholic experts on Islam at the Council. Anawati comments: “The overlapping of two times, and of Muhammad anterior ‘paraclectically’ to Christ, is a play on the imagination rather than a statement emanating from a firm grasp on reality.”3 Like Anawati, D’Costa is wary of the contrived nature of Catholic arguments for the revealed nature of the Qurʾan (in this regard, he also considers the thought of the French White Father Robert Caspar, another disciple of Massignon and expert at the Council) and of their fidelity to the teaching of Vatican II. The problematic nature of such arguments, D’Costa adds, is now clearer still in light 3 G. Anawati, “An Assessment of the Christian-Islamic Dialogue,” in The Vatican, Islam and the Middle East Kalil, ed. C. Ellis (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 52–68, at 58. Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II, and Islam 297 of the 2000 Declaration Dominus Iesus, which explains: “The theory of the limited, incomplete, or imperfect character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, which would be complementary to that found in other religions, is contrary to the Church’s faith” (§6). D’Costa convincingly concludes that theologians attentive to Church teaching cannot think of Islam as a revealed religion (Vatican II, 184). What is left, he implies, is to think of Islam passing down truths received from Christian revelation. Inasmuch as the Qurʾan recounts biblical narratives and teaches certain things (such as the Virgin Birth of Christ and, perhaps, the Immaculate Conception of Mary) that align with the Bible or Christian tradition, one might conclude that Muhammad learned of these things from Christians and, impressed by them, faithfully passed them on in the Qurʾan. While the Council fathers never explicitly articulate this idea, which D’Costa labels historical “dependency,” one could argue that it is implied by both Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate (D’Costa does as much on 181). The idea of Islam’s dependency is intertwined in D’Costa’s consideration of a second idea: Muslims (like other non-Christians) could be saved because they are “invincibly ignorant” of the Gospel. The idea of invincible ignorance is developed already by Aquinas (although it first appears in a magisterial teaching in Pope Pius IX’s 1854 encyclical Singulari Quadam) and was applied to the case of Muslims by Juan de Lugo († 1660). De Lugo proposed that Muslims’ ignorance of the Gospel, together with their knowledge of true revelation that passed into the Qurʾan from Christian tradition, might mean that they can still be saved by a supernatural faith. In other words, Muslims might be free of the charge of rejecting the Gospel (which they have not truly known) yet still be held to have a sort of salvific faith because of the remnants of Christian truth in the Qurʾan. D’Costa suggests that De Lugo’s ideas (much more than those of Massignon) come closest to the teaching of the Vatican II on Muslims: “In other words, the Council may simply be recovering a pre-modern theological tradition on Islam” (182–83). As D’Costa explains, the idea of Islam’s dependency on Christian revelation was precisely what once led Christians to categorize Muslims as heretics and schismatics. With de Lugo, however (and perhaps in the documents of Vatican II), it is used to locate Muslims within the context of authentic divine revelation: “This very source of condemnation now becomes a positive source of affirmation” (183). 298 Gabriel Said Reynolds Now, it should be pointed out that this idea would be completely unacceptable to Muslims, since a shibboleth of Islamic orthodoxy is the recognition that everything in the Qurʾan comes only from God. This does not mean, however, that the idea of dependency could not be, or should not be, taught by the Church. There are many things that Islam teaches about Christianity that are completely unacceptable to Christians—such as the denial of Christ’s death or the insistence that the Bible is falsified. Muslims nevertheless have the right to develop and articulate their own doctrine. Christians enjoy that same right. This is not to deny that the Church should seek to encourage friendly relations between Christians and Muslims. Indeed many recent papal statements are dedicated to just this thing. In a November 28, 2013 address to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Pope Francis insists: “The Catholic Church is aware of the value of promoting friendship and respect among men and women of different religious traditions.” It would be dangerous, however, if the Church were to say only things which Muslims agree with in the interest of promoting friendship, and D’Costa recognizes this danger: “The Catholic Church wants to build bridges and good relations, but not at the cost of forfeiting analytical rigour and fidelity to the truth” (209). One might say that this danger is especially present when it comes to Islam, a religion that not only differs from Christianity but also explicitly challenges Christian teaching. Through the centuries, Muslims (inspired by both the Qurʾan and the social reality of Muslim-Christian competition) developed a large library of anti-Christian polemic known in Arabic as radd ʿala al-nasara, and Muslims have long celebrated and promoted the conversion of Christians to Islam. The interest of Muslims in converting Christians has reached a fever pitch in the modern period (in part as a response to Christian missions among Muslims). Today there are numerous organizations and innumerable websites dedicated to “daʿwa,” or the “call” to non-Muslims to convert to Islam. Daʿwa missionaries, such as the South African Ahmed Deedat (1918–2005) or the Indian Zakir Naik (1965–), are public celebrities in the Islamic world and among Muslims in the West. Both Deedat and Naik, who was given the 2015 King Faisal Award for “service to Islam” by Saudi Arabia, are particularly concerned to refute Christianity and to invite Christians to embrace Islam. In fact, Muslim daʿwa has often been successful. Gavin D’Costa, Vatican II, and Islam 299 The number of converts to Islam in the West (and in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere) continues to grow. Whereas conversions to Islam in most of the twentieth century in the United States were largely limited to African Americans (many of whom joined the heterodox Nation of Islam movement), more recently, white Americans and Latinos (many of a Catholic background) are also accepting Islam in larger numbers. The numbers of converts to Islam in Europe is also increasing. Some converts have embraced the most radical form of Sunni Islam and have gone to Syria or Iraq to join the holy war. The Church, while affirming freedom of religion (especially in light of Dignitatis Humanae), should not take this apostasy lightly. In thinking about Islam, then, it is important for Catholic theologians both to recognize the piety and devotion of Muslims, which can indeed often serve as a model for Christians, and to have an answer ready for the challenging questions that Muslims ask about their hope in Christ. As D’Costa shows us in Vatican II, the Church calls on us at once to develop a sincere esteem for Muslims and Islam, N&V and to be faithful to the Gospel. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 301–307 A Gordian Knot Richard Schenk, O.P. University of Eichstätt Eichstätt, Germany From Plutarch’s defense of Alexander1 down to Leibniz2 and Sartre, there has long been a well-founded disdain for the “abrupt, rather barbaric fashion of cutting Gordian knots rather than trying to untie them.”3 To untangle the dogwood fibers of the famous knot that had immobilized the wagon dedicated to God and had been left in front of the royal residence at Gordium would require, we are told, first identifying where the fibers begin and to where they all lead, which is not at all evident even to a persistent outside observer. The Christian theology of non-Christian religions before and after the Second Vatican Council is a paradigm of such a Gordian knot. In his new study, Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), Gavin D’Costa has succeeded in unravelling many, but by no means all, of the threads preventing a well-reasoned advance in the Catholic theology of religions. D’Costa begins with a convincing critique of those who would cut Vatican II itself in two by their allowing as normative only texts in continuity or only texts in discontinuity with pre-conciliar theological or magisterial teachings. Somewhat less lucidly, D’Costa identifies Plutarch, Alexander 18 (relying here on Aristobulos to exonerate Alexander). In his opusculum On Nature in Itself or On the Power and Dynamic Activity Residing in Created Things, G. W. Leibniz uses the image to criticize the neglect of philosophically mediated theology. 3 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pt. III, ch. 1, no. III (“Husserl, Hegel, Heidegger”), trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992), 330. 1 2 302 Richard Schenk, O.P. three (actually four) general misinterpretations of the Council that fail in one way or another to be genuinely synthetic: 1. Those who, while claiming to be historical, emphasize the discontinuity or even rupture at the Council and embrace it alone are D’Costa’s type 1, although he might well have noted that the decision to respect only one side of the historically established diversity within the conciliar agreements is—to use D’Costa’s terms—not historically but theologically motivated.4 2. Those who bewail that the Council (or its post-conciliar papal reception) did not change enough in the timely fashion needed to be of use today are D’Costa’s “type 4,” the type he did not elaborate further, despite the fact that some of the loudest voices calling for a new aggressive factionalism and a return to the active battle-lines of the 1960s and 1970s in theological and ecclesial institutions and for a well-orchestrated Vatican III (an acknowledgement of their disappointment in the real Vatican II and its reception) are arguably of this type5, which shares common ground with his type 1. 3. Those who, while considering themselves theological, claim that neither councils nor popes legitimately can change or introduce doctrines are D’Costa’s “type 2,” and those who say that the Council acknowledged this fact (and thus merely reformulated established positions for pastoral purposes) are a subset, “type 2a.” At various points, D’Costa distinguishes theology from what is practical or pragmatic (89, 99), from the historical (43, among others), the canonical (97), the phenomenological (160), and (as we will discuss below) from the magisterium. None of these distinctions is without a fundamentum in re, but without further nuance, they imply a notion of systematic theology divorced from many of the accepted loci theologici. For a congenial counterproposal, cf. the sense of theology with its many subdisciples as a potential whole in Francisco P. Muniz, The Work of Theology (Washington, DC: Thomist Press, 1958). Even outside the theological context, historians are guided by non-historical presuppositions. 5 As a characteristic example of a plea for renewed factionalism, see Massimo Faggioli, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (New York: Paulist Press, 2012), discussed by D’Costa, e.g., 53. 4 A Gordian Knot 303 4. Finally, those who complain that the Council did not acknowledge this, making the Council and its papal development non-normative at best, or even illegitimate, form the subset “type 2b.” D’Costa is most convincing on the principles of his interpretation when he aligns himself with a “hermeneutic of reform” that he labels his “type 3” as the only sensible direction of interpretative strategies, an intentional synthesis of moments of continuity and discontinuity somewhat along the lines of Pope Benedict XVI’s suggestions in 2005 for a hermeneutic of reform in reading and developing the conciliar documents. Unlike Benedict and his best readers, including Cardinal Kurt Koch,6 D’Costa identifies an interpretative strategy that sees in the Council merely a synthesis between doctrinal continuity and non-doctrinal, cultural-contextual discontinuity: “This type argue(s) that there is doctrinal continuity, and many forms of discontinuity—but never regarding authoritative doctrinal teachings. These discontinuous elements are related to the reform of the Church, or the Church operating in new contexts and conditions” (D’Costa, 17). But this sounds closer to D’Costa’s type 2a. His intention in portraying it as the all-too-faint beginning of a genuine alternative seems to be his understandable insistence on excluding the possibility of licit contradictions at the more profound levels of genuine expressions of faith, even while—with Ratzinger/Benedict and Koch—openly insisting on the necessity of true doctrinal development. He admits that this type 3 is at its best (his “type 3b”) when it moves beyond what he terms “type 3a,” mere critique of type 1 (from which D’Costa himself cogently shows how much can be learned), and into a clearer affirmation of doctrinal development than in type 2a. Given the negotiated and voted upon character of the conciliar documents, the variations on D’Costa’s type 3 share a common feature: they represent the only option among the five types listed to respect the maxim pacta sunt servanda. An abstraction of the desiderata of just one “party” to the agreements would violate the principles of fairness, plurality, and liberality rhetorically praised at least by type 1, imposing a closed shop on discussions and on the institutions designed to promote them. By contrast, and as a performative confirmation of his position, D’Costa is able to use literature productively, as well Pope Benedict XVI, Kurt Koch, et al., Das Zweite Vatikanische Konzil: Die Hermeneutik der Reform (Augsburg: St. Ulrich, 2012). 6 304 Richard Schenk, O.P. as ideas drawn from representatives of all the interpretative options listed, even while forging his own alternative to most of them. His position actually deserves to be called “capable of dialogue.” Some of the still tangled strings of the Gordian knot left unravelled by D’Costa are grouped around these questions of doctrinal development in general, questions exemplified but not restricted to conciliar shifts in attitudes towards non-Christian religions. I will name only two such tangles. First, D’Costa seems to embrace the general direction of J. H. Newman’s sense of genuine doctrinal development7 (which D’Costa plausibly finds compatible with conciliar ressourcement, shown in Newman’s own return to early Church history to judge later ecclesial developments), even while passing over most of Newman’s conceptualizations and analyses. Where Newman settled for a vague description of the relationship between unchanging but less clearly thematized principles and the expressed doctrines needing to be developed in order to keep such principles constant and vital,8 D’Costa appeals to the handbook schematic of graded propositions.9 The still inadequate scholarship available on the pre-modern history of the theology of non-Christian religions suggests that those abiding principles are most evident in the unchanging refusal of the Church to settle for statements that, if taken alone, would result in a theological position that one could well describe in its entirety as exclusivist, inclusivist, pluralist, or apophatic (terms whose meaning D’Costa had helped to clarify in earlier works). By different argumentative means, D’Costa reaffirms this basic conciliar insight in the end: Religions are complex realities that call for differentiated judgments and that allow neither unqualified praise nor exclusive critique. Second, D’Costa seems to make too much of the undoubtedly important categorial distinction between magisterium (episcopal, papal, and conciliar) and theology. That a casual remark by Pope Gregory VII in 1076, even if cited by Nostre Aetate 3, becomes a document of the magisterium of greater weight than explicit theological consensus seems obviously doubtful (see D’Costa, 205–08). But even a more solemn pronouncement, such as that of the Council of Florence in 1442 (see D’Costa, 62–64, 154–156), will need to be John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). 8 Ibid., pt. II, ch. 7 (pp. 323–55). 9 D’Costa abbreviates sententia as sentia throughout his work (e.g., 14–15, 143, 214–16); cf. the repetitive anomalies at 50n98, 102, 110, 158, 214. 7 A Gordian Knot 305 contextualized in light of the broad theological consensus that, at least in its apparent meaning, it contradicts. If the definition of doctrine is largely a magisterial task, then a development of doctrine will not exclude a development of magisterial teaching. D’Costa seems, in the end, to understand soberly, but also to accept and celebrate, the doctrinal developments of the Council on non-Christian religions, but he lags behind in connecting within the magisterium the continuity of principles with its own shifts in doctrinal statements. Admittedly, these two larger, more general questions of doctrinal development are ongoing quaestiones disputandae, and it would be unfair to expect an author to solve them in the margins of a work on the theology of religions. D’Costa is nonetheless right to raise them here, as the conciliar developments on religions provide them with what is arguably their most challenging test-case. The adjudication of the questions of continuity and discontinuity in the theology of religions is made even more difficult by an anomaly in present-day theological scholarship: while it is widely accepted that there can be no successful systematic reflection without historical preparation, and although it is widely accepted that the interrelationship of religions belongs to the most urgent and basic themes of systematic theology (and not just today), the present state of the history of the Christian theology of non-Christian religions is at best fragmentary, most often rudimentary. This stems in part from the fragmentary nature of the question in patristic and medieval sources. Statements touching on the relationship to non-Christian religions abound in theological works of all kinds (systematic, exegetical, historical, pastoral, and canonical), but they are rarely united into a single treatise and, thus, never lead to the kind of school-formation through censure and defense that accompanied many of the most valued themes of Christian theology and, eventually, magisterial pronouncements. In his important second chapter, D’Costa points to a few of the pre-modern themes reflected in the Council’s development of them, most notably: implicit faith, Christ as the head of all humanity, and invincible ignorance. The significant work begun on these themes, like Georg Hoffmann’s Die Lehre von der Fides implicita innerhalb der katholischen Kirche (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903) or Max Seckler’s 1974 essay on Thomas Aquinas’s theology of Christ as “caput omnium hominum,”10 deserves to be taken up again and expanded. D’Cos10 Max Seckler, “Das Haupt aller Menschen: Zur Auslegung eines Thomastextes,” in Virtus politica: Festgabe zum 75 Geburtstag von Alfons Hufnagel, ed. 306 Richard Schenk, O.P. ta’s work on religions, including this newest study, help prepare the systematic expectations of differentiated answers offered by older theologies of religions. Without such solid systematic expectations, historical research would be blind. Without the historical narrative, systematic attempts today remain empty. D’Costa cannot be said to have accomplished this synthesis, but he has removed several of the most serious obstacles to it. D’Costa concretizes his sense of a general approach to questions of inter-religious relationality in chapters 3 and 4 with selected themes drawn from the Council’s statements about Judaism and Islam. Drawing on and developing the historical research of the last fifteen years, he is keen to read the documents of the Council in terms both of the genesis of each and the interrelatedness of the entire final corpus, and he is careful to note issues on which the Council intentionally left questions open for future theological discussion (summarized again in brief theses in ch. 5 and including, by D’Costa’s account, several of the vexed questions of ongoing covenant and supersessionism). He heeds his own recommendation (D’Costa, 217) for the synthetic combination of caution, imagination, and adventure and welcomes the openings to this inter-religious pursuit that the Council’s affirmation of nova et vetera made possible. Noting the universal soteriological significance of Christ for all humankind, and seeing the general motivation for proclaiming Christ to every human being, D’Costa refers more than once to reasons alluded to at the Council that might lead to a legitimately differentiated attitude toward mission. His work appeared too soon to benefit from the December 2015 document of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, which justifies just such abstinence from “institutional mission work” (but not from witness of other kinds) by reference to the exceptional place held by Judaism among non-Christian religions.11 D’Costa’s work prior to this study included one of Joseph Müller and Helmut Kohlenberger (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974), 107–25, later published as Seckler, Die schiefen Wände des Lehrhauses: Katholizität als Herausforderung (Freiburg: Herder, 1988), 26–39. 11 “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable” (Rom 11:29): A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 80th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate (no. 4), §40: “In concrete terms this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews. While there is a principled rejection of an institutional Jewish mission, Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews, although they should do so in A Gordian Knot 307 the first critiques from a former adherent of the pluralistic theory of religions (in all its many iterations, always “a crossing of the Rubicon” that involves the denial of the universal soteriological significance of Christ). It was one of the weaknesses of those theories that it could recognize no special significance in contemporary Judaism. This position of the commission, well explained at the presentation of the document by its then-president, and president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as well, Cardinal Kurt Koch, runs contrary to the argumentative goal of some passages of D’Costa’s book, but it represents a continuation of his critique of pluralistic theories and a concretization of the exceptions for which, as he says repeatedly, the Council had reserved a place. Given the restriction of his discussion of Islam to the single question of the idea of God in Islam and Christianity, D’Costa does not take up the question of nuances surrounding the mission to Islam, particularly among the new Muslim immigrants to Europe and the West. The legend of Alexander and the Gordian knot included the oracle that whoever untied it would find the gate open to all of Asia. D’Costa chose in this book to focus on the interpretational strategies for reading the Council, on religion in general, and on the religions associated with Abraham. To deal with the other two religions named by Nostra Aetate, Buddhism and Hinduism, would require, D’Costa tells us, a further study (D’Costa, 5). Given the achievement of this book, but also the questions yet to be unravelled, he should be N&V encouraged to continue his work. a humble and sensitive manner, acknowledging that Jews are bearers of God’s Word, and particularly in view of the great tragedy of the Shoah” (available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relationsjews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20151210_ebraismo-nostra-aetate_en.html). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 309–329 Response to My Respondents Gavin D’Costa University of Bristol Bristol, UK Introduction I am most grateful to Fr. Richard Schenk and Professors Gabriel Reynolds and Eduardo Echeverria for their comments on my book Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims and for their wider reflections. I have learnt much and will continue to learn from their writings. In this article I will briefly summarize the main arguments of my book (part 1) before responding, in turn, to the critical questions they raise (part 2). Summarizing the whole will help when dealing with the parts to which they have responded. Readers can of course skip part 1. Brief Summary of Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims My book seeks to return to the Council documents to find out what they teach in terms of doctrines regarding other religions in general (ch. 2), and in particular the Jewish people (ch. 3) and Muslims (ch. 4). To achieve this, I address two basic questions first (ch. 1): I inspect the hermeneutical debate surrounding the reception of the Council and I clarify what counts as doctrine—including what grades of authority are attached, if any, to such “doctrines.” I do not concern myself with pastoral orientation and practical guidance, only with doctrine, however important the former. Echeverria carefully outlines my discussion of the hermeneutical debates with clarity and grounds them in their wider context. He also outlines the three basic trajectories of reception that loosely map onto admittedly porous labels: “liberal,” “traditionalist,” and “reforming conservative.” 310 Gavin D’Costa The first (“liberals”) are primarily historically oriented, and Fr. Schenk kindly points out that, while I have put many questions to this group, I also learn deeply from them. More importantly, he rightly questions whether this is the best way of labeling them (as “historicists”), as they have implicit theological presuppositions that drive their position. They are not simply historically oriented. Some among their number emphasize discontinuity, novelty, and deep changes within Catholic sensibilities. I am in agreement with some of their findings, and much of their historical research is invaluable. However, others assert doctrinal discontinuity, and this is an important claim that I find problematic. This is Fr. Schenk’s point about their theological presuppositions. I try to show that some of their key claims about discontinuity can be challenged on historical grounds. Briefly, for example, there are the teachings of Florence, in the Bull of Union with the Copts (1442), that at face value seem to condemn “Jews,” along with heretics and schismatics and pagans, to the fires of hell. “It [the Church] firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the catholic church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the catholic church before the end of their lives.”1 I argue that, with historical sensitivity, we can see that those to whom Florence refers as “Jews” do not correspond to those to whom Vatican II refers as “Jews.” The latter are invincibly ignorant; the former are not. Thus the former, at Florence, were (probably wrongly) assumed to be guilty of knowing and rejecting the truth of the Gospel, thus explaining their terrifying and sad final destination. This point negates neither Florence’s authority nor its proper object of doctrinal teaching—that salvation comes through Christ and his Church and is not available to those who knowingly reject this truth in their minds and hearts. Thus, regarding the “Jews,” each Council envisages them quite differently, but without real contradiction or Council of Florence, Bull of Union with the Copts, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman Tanner (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990). The Latin reads: “Firmiter credit, profitetur et predicat nullos extra ecclesiam catholicam existentes, non solum paganos, sed nec iudeos aut hereticos atque scismaticos eterne vite fieri posse participes, sed in ignem eternum ituros, qui paratus est dyabolo et angelis eius (Matt 25:41), nisi ante finem vite eidem fuerint aggregati, tantum que valere ecclesiastici corporis unitatem.” The Arabic is to be found in Eugenio Cecconi, Studi storici sul concilio di Fierenze (Florence, IT: S. Antonio, 1869), last fasc. 61. 1 Response to My Respondents 311 doctrinal discontinuity: they can be construed entirely negatively at Florence; they can be construed very positively at Vatican II. My argument against historicists in this instance is that it is not a discontinuity of doctrine, but a difference related to a contingent judgment: whether all Jews are culpable of willfully rejecting the truth of Christ when they continue to remain Jews. I name this approach “historicist” because it is my belief that their claims can be defeated on historicist grounds. The other major claim regarding doctrinal reversal is related to this same statement at Florence: “no salvation outside the church” (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). Some scholars argue that this is overturned at Vatican II. Here we have a longer and more complex magisterial tradition to deal with both before and after Florence. I argue that this teaching, “no salvation outside the church,” is upheld at Vatican II, not denied. However, its context is made even clearer. The basic truth it conserves is the claim that only through the agency of Christ and his Church is salvation attained. In earlier statements, such as at Florence, those who were taught to be “outside” are named: Jews, heretics, and schismatics. Historical studies might show that these named are not properly named because they were “outside” without culpability and invincible ignorance may apply. Florence was not concerned with this latter issue. At Vatican II, there was a recognition that there are many who are invincibly ignorant to whom this teaching, “no salvation outside the church,” cannot be applied—without qualification. This notion of invincible ignorance was always present in theology, but it became developed and applied to those from other religions particularly during the discovery of the “New World,” and it first appears in a magisterial teaching in Pope Pius IX’s 1854 allocution Singulari Quadam. After stating there is no salvation outside the Church, Pius adds: “But, on the other hand, it is necessary to hold for certain that they who labour in ignorance of the true religion, if this ignorance is invincible, are not stained by any guilt in this matter in the eyes of God.”2 He adds how difficult, if not impossible, it is to make this contingent judgment regarding particular souls. After this, there is no conciliar or magisterial statement of “outside the church there is no salvation” without this careful qualification. This is clarifying the doctrine that has remained true and immutable since it was first taught. Pope Pius IX, Pontificis Maximi Acta: Pars Prima, vol. 50 (Rome: Bonarum Artium, 1864) 620–31, at 626. 2 312 Gavin D’Costa Each claim for doctrinal discontinuity must be tested historically and contextually. In the wider literature, there are many claims, and each must be tested individually with the pertinent historical context carefully examined. My starting point—and here is the chief theological difference between such interpreters and myself—is to assume doctrinal continuity if the doctrine is being taught authoritatively and continually by the magisterium. This is not a historical starting point. It is a theological starting point, but not one that is immune from historical enquiry and critical discussion. To carry out this task, one has to know what is authoritative and binding and what is not. Hence, I sought to articulate the different grades of doctrinal authority of teachings, for one can easily engage in fruitless defense of positions at Councils that do not have significant doctrinal authority. I do not seek to defend continuity in any absolute sense—only at certain levels of formal authoritative teaching. Thus, when Florence starts its teaching with the phrase “[the Roman Catholic Church] firmly believes, professes, and preaches,” one cannot lightly suggest that Florence is reversed, reversible, or wrong, as that would also entail the claim that the magisterium, in the operation of its highest teaching authority, got it wrong on basic doctrinal teaching. However, to hold that Vatican II got it right and Florence got it wrong entails a fatal inconsistency, for there would be no good reason to accept the magisterium’s teaching at Vatican II if, at a de fide level, it got things wrong in the past. This is far from the “traditionalist” position, which is, after all, a mirror opposite to the liberal approach. The latter is delighted that discontinuity happens and celebrates that the Church is now teaching truth. The traditionalist is dismayed, as they see the current teaching as erroneous precisely because of the denial of previously “proclaimed” truths. Scholars like Russell Hittinger, David Schindler, and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., have made strenuous efforts to show that both liberals and traditionalists are wrong on the question of “religious freedom.” Likewise, Cardinal Avery Dulles and others have contested John Noonan’s claims that slavery and usury are examples of “doctrinal” discontinuity.3 See Avery Cardinal Dulles, “Dignitatis Humanae and the Development of Catholic Doctrine,” in Catholicism and Religious Freedom: Contemporary Reflections on Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, ed. Kenneth L. Grasso and Robert P. Hunt (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 43–67; David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religion Freedom, A New Translation, 3 Response to My Respondents 313 It is at this stage that Fr. Schenk and Dr. Echeverria pose probing questions to my own position. Fr. Schenk asks whether I depart from Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict and Cardinal Koch on their hermeneutics of reform when it comes to the question of the Jews. I seem to resist certain changes that they have promoted regarding mission to the Jewish people. Dr. Echeverria and Fr. Schenk ask for clarification of my position regarding the conceptual resources and metaphysics underpinning my alignment with the third group. Should I have employed Newman’s notion of “principles” to articulate what is “continuous” and what gives grounds for “development?” Should I make it clear that, while I am sympathetic with a historicist approach to texts, I can successfully eschew relativizing doctrinal truth in terms of my historicizing doctrinal expressions? I will attend to these important questions below after completing the narrative of my book. I defend the third position, a hermeneutic of continuity and reform, and acknowledge “novel” teachings. By “novel,” I mean that the magisterium had not previously spoken solemnly and positively about Jews and Muslims as it does in §16 of Lumen Gentium. In one sense, there is no novel teaching, as everything must be founded in what is given in Scripture, but novelty can be the recovery of Scripture to address a question that was not addressed before or not addressed with this particular scriptural foundation. The use of Romans 9–11 would be an example of the latter, where this section of Scripture, always within the Church’s treasury and deposit of faith, is now mobilized afresh to consider the Jewish question. Development is using previous teachings as building blocks to develop fresh implications. I also note that reading documents requires a proper hermeneutic in employing Constitutions to interpret Decrees. In the recent anniversary of Nostra Aetate, too often that document is read apart from Lumen Gentium §§14–16, which is the dogmatic backbone upon which the flesh of Nostra Aetate is stretched out. This hermeneutic also freely allows repentance and acknowledgment of deep failings and abuses within Church practices and false notes in non-authoritative doctrinal traditions. Regarding the latter, there have always Redaction History, and Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015); and Russell Hittinger, “The Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae,” in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 359–82. 314 Gavin D’Costa been many unresolved theological traditions, sometimes in downright contradiction to each other. This is how theology grows and is often the context of magisterial intervention, as is the case with post-conciliar teachings regarding the unicity of Christ and the salvific efficacy of Christ, and the intervention of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration Dominus Iesus (2000) is an example of this. Dr. Echeverria rightly notes that, while I learn from other approaches, my main inspirations in employing this hermeneutic are John Henry Newman, Yves Congar, and Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI. From this viewpoint, one can embrace historical critical scholarship of the Council and many of their findings that are not driven by problematic ecclesiological theological underpinnings. One can also appreciate the concerns of the “traditionalists” who wish to uphold previous authoritative doctrinal teachings and are concerned that one cannot simply put them aside or relativize them. One problem with the traditionalists is that they, like the liberal group, see discontinuity when there is none, as they do concerning the “Jews” in the teaching of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Another problem is their absolutizing one particular teaching at the cost of others in an ahistorical manner. The then-Cardinal Ratzinger put it nicely when he said of this group’s stance: “It is an illogical position. The point of departure for this tendency is, in fact, the strictest fidelity to the teaching particularly of Pius IX and Pius X. . . . But why only the popes up to Pius XII and not beyond? Is perhaps obedience to the Holy See divisible according to years or according to the nearness of a teaching to one’s own already-established conviction?”4 It is with this theological, historical, gradated hermeneutic that I turn to Vatican II. To view the doctrines on the Jews and Muslims, without detracting from each of their unique particularities, I first ask: what is the Church’s attitude to non-Christian religions as a generic category? Only within this general framework can one then situate particular religions. To secure this claim, my close exegesis of the first sentence of Lumen Gentium §16 is crucial. The note in this sentence indicates that religions in general, when invincibly ignorant of the Gospel, have an orientation (ordinantur) towards Christ. This telos towards Christ, the Trinity, and the Church frames the paragraph, just as the Joseph Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report: An Inclusive Interview on the State of the Church with Vittorio Messori, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 31. 4 Response to My Respondents 315 closing sentence of §16, on the universal necessity of mission, closes the frame. This leads into §17, which is concerned to reiterate the necessity of universal mission so that the Father, Son, and Spirit may be known and so that the invitation to participate in the divine life be universal. Regarding the latter point, Ralph Martin’s important work has drawn proper attention to this dynamic.5 Hence, while Lumen Gentium §16 allows for the religions to be viewed positively, there are certain earlier theological traditions/assumptions that still bear upon this positive appreciation: those referred to are assumed to be in invincible ignorance of the Gospel; despite any positive statements, the necessity of universal mission toward all religions is required; Christ is the head of all humanity and, thus, of all religions, but only in potentiality, not actuality (for actuality, explicitly confessing Christ is required in this life or at death); the world religions are best viewed as praeparatio evangelica to the Gospel; and at worst, they are viewed as in differing ways particularly vulnerable to Satan and sin, as they lack the full truth of Father, Son, and Spirit. The final salvific destination of those in other religions is not known. They cannot be deemed lost, as salvation is possible for all people. They cannot be deemed as saved, for final salvation is the explicit enjoyment of the triune God in beatific bliss. It is vital to hold these careful qualifications together with the remarkable positive attitudes developed in the Council towards Jews and Muslims. This then is the argument of chapter 2 of my book. The chapter I devote to the Jews (ch. 3) reiterates some of the arguments above and closely inspects what is said particularly of the Jewish people. The conclusions of this chapter show that three doctrinal teachings are advanced. First, not all Jews at the time of Jesus, nor Jews since that time, including contemporary Jews, can be held collectively guilty of killing Jesus Christ. This is now usually taken for granted in most Christian circles today, but this was not the case of many Catholics at the time of the Council. In some ways, this was odd, as the Tridentine Catechism (1566) had already acknowledged that the “principal reason” for Christ’s death was “sin,” which “seems graver in our case than it was in that of the Jews; for the Jews, as the same Apostle says, ‘would never have crucified the Lord of glory if they had known him’ (1 Cor 2:8). We ourselves maintain that we Ralph Martin, Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II actually teaches and its implications for the New Evangelization (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012). 5 316 Gavin D’Costa do know him, and yet we lay, as it were, violent hands on him by disowning him in our actions.”6 In Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate, the Conciliar magisterium clarifies the deposit of faith in the Scripture regarding the culpability for the death of Jesus Christ. The Jewish historian Jules Isaac had presented this as the issue that required reform if Christian traditions of anti-Judaism were to be deconstructed. The second doctrinal teaching is the Council’s recovering Romans 9–11 and placing it before the Church, quite literally in verbatim form in Lumen Gentium §16: they are “the people to whom the testaments and promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh (see Rom 9:4–5), a people according to their election most dear because of their ancestors: for God never goes back on his gifts and his calling (see Rom 11, 28–29).” 7 The Council teaches with St. Paul that God’s ancient people to whom these covenants and promises were made are not rejected by God because of their beloved ancestors, to whom these covenants and promises were given. I argue that the Council did not attend to the two most debated issues after the Council: whether the Jewish people today remained faithful to this covenant in the objective order; and the status of this covenant today (is it abrogated, superseded, or fulfilled?). The implication from the official relatio is that the answer to the second question is that the Jewish covenant is “fulfilled,” but supersessionism is not formally addressed. My conclusion has been criticised in some reviews (elsewhere) as turning the clock back to pre-Vatican II days. Fortunately, the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews has published The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable (Rom 11:29): A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate (no.4) (hereafter, Gift). Gift §39 states that: The Conciliar text is not infrequently over–interpreted, and things are read into it [Nostra Aetate] which it does not in fact Tridentine Catechism, part I, art. 4, pt. 2, trans. John A. McHugh, O.P., and Charles J. Callan, O.P. (ca. 1923; available at http://www.angelfire.com/art/ cactussong/TridentineCatechism.htm). 7 The Latin reads: “In primis quidem populus ille cui data fuerunt testamenta et promissa et ex quo Christus ortus est secundum carnem (cf. Rom 9:4–5), populus secundum electionem carissimus propter patres: sine poenitentia enim sunt dona et vocatio Dei (cf. Rom 11:28–29)” (available at http:// www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_ const_19641121_lumen-gentium_lt.html). 6 Response to My Respondents 317 contain. An important example of over–interpretation would be the following: that the covenant that God made with his people Israel perdures and is never invalidated. Although this statement is true, it cannot be explicitly read into “Nostra aetate” (no. 4). This statement was instead first made with full clarity by Saint Pope John Paul II when he said during a meeting with Jewish representatives in Mainz on 17 November 1980 that the Old Covenant had never been revoked by God: “The first dimension of this dialogue, that is, the meeting between the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God . . . and that of the New Covenant, is at the same time a dialogue within our Church, that is to say, between the first and the second part of her Bible” (no. 3). The same conviction is stated also in the Catechism of the Church in 1993: “The Old Covenant has never been revoked” (no. 121).8 It is one of the wonderful twists of the Council that its greatest gift to the Church is putting St. Paul back into the debate, which the post-Conciliar Church now grapples with. My third and final argument about the Jews is that mission to the Jewish people was implicitly assumed, not explicitly taught (for a host of contingent non-theological reasons, see below). The universal necessity of mission was taught, while respecting the Jewish religion and also holding to the vital importance of religious freedom and the excluding of all coercion in religious matters. Since this was a sort of “negative conclusion,” precisely because there is no explicit teaching about mission to the Jews, this teaching does not, in principle, have a doctrinal status other than in the general injunction during the Council regarding the universal mission of the Church. Fr. Schenk fairly questions me on this point. For these three doctrinal teachings, I indicate speculatively the level of authority attributable to each. None are de fide. The only de fide teaching examined in my entire study is the teaching “no salvation outside the church.” Regarding the Muslims (ch. 4), I isolate two doctrinal teachings. First, the God that Muslims worship is the true God that Christians worship. I note that argumentation for this teaching is complex and certainly not resolved and that it keeps in tension the Christian claim Available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/ chrstuni/relations-jews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20151210_ebraismo-nostra-aetate_en.html. 8 318 Gavin D’Costa regarding Jesus that means that God is Trinity. The Trinity is, of course, unacceptable to Muslims, for many have classically viewed this as tritheism. The second teaching is that the attributes upon which this predication, “same God,” is actually made are related to God as “creator,” “judge,” and giver of the “moral law.” These predicates can be attributed to the God of Islam, even if it is also implicitly thought that Islam has not always applied and understood this moral law correctly. One can see this “implicit thought” clearly in the drafting of the document when polygamy provided a clear example of misinterpreting the law of God and Nostra Aetate was changed accordingly. The steps taken toward Islam are halting and delicately poised. This tentativeness and precariousness properly reflect the state of debate and levels of possible consensus in the Catholic Church at that time (and at present). My reading of Dr. Reynolds’s commentary is that he does not find fault in my interpretation of the Council, and I am grateful to him for adding to the material background I discuss and to the vistas and perspectives that open up in the light of my reading. The basic purpose of my book was to isolate clearly what the Council actually taught in the light of the protracted debate after the Council about its teachings on the religions. If this important foundation is clarified, it should help post-conciliar theology and practice. Of course, post-conciliar theology and practice are not bound by the topics and concerns of the Council, although a clear historiography of this post-conciliar process, guided by a proper theology, is still required in scholarly literature. My book was a first step toward such a task. Responding to Some Critical Issues Doctrinal Continuity and Discontinuity Fr. Schenk rightly wants a more differentiated and complex account of this theme in two particular respects. He wishes that I had employed Newman’s conceptuality more rigorously. He thinks I sometimes play down the genuine elements of doctrinal development that took place at the Council. On Newman, I think he is right. I plead guilty due to shortage of space in the book. However, I am not entirely sure that, “where Newman settled for a vague description of the relationship between unchanging but less clearly thematized principles and the expressed doctrines needing to be developed in order to keep such principles constant and vital, D’Costa appeals to the handbook sche- Response to My Respondents 319 matic of graded propositions.” I appealed to the handbook schematic of graded propositions only to run alongside the theme of developing doctrines so as to more precisely catalogue what cannot be reversed in the process, as it is unchanging because of a very high degree of authority, and what might be reversed, changed, and seen as accidental to the real doctrinal object of teaching, because such elements have little or no authority attributed to it. It is precisely this sifting that allows me to argue that the “Jews” as such are not the object of doctrinal teachings in earlier Council teachings such as Florence. The “Jews” of Florence are not the “Jews” of today, and in that sense, when Florence teaches no salvation outside the Church and relates this to “Jews,” the object of the de fide teaching is not that the “Jews” are damned, but that the particular class of people who know and reject the truth of the Gospel—the “Jews” of Florence— are damned. Whether this actually applies to the Jews at the time of Florence in terms of the dogmatic truth of extra ecclesiam nulla salus is actually a contingent question. It would depend on whether the actual Jews at the time were genuinely in receipt of the Gospel and freely rejected its truth while knowing it in their minds and heart to be the truth. That this group, the “Jews,” are named in Florence does, of course, pertain to the terrible persecutions undergone by the Jewish people at the hands of Catholics. But doctrinally, the “Jews” are not the proper object of the teaching of Florence. This insight allows the changes that happen in Vatican II to be seen without doctrinal discontinuity or contradiction being claimed against the Council. For, by being able to isolate what is de fide (there is no salvation outside Christ and his Church) from what is accidental to the expression of that de fide teaching (that those outside are identified as Jews, heretics, and schismatics), we can argue for both continuity and development at the doctrinal level and discontinuity at the non-doctrinal level. Is Vatican II’s formulation of “no salvation outside the church” in Lumen Gentium a “development” of doctrine or simply a clarification of it? Here I think we can find help in Newman, who suggests that we cannot always tell immediately and that most often we can best make such a judgment in retrospect. The basic principle is retained, clearly, but with this new addition (culpability or invincible ignorance), and there is a step forward at Vatican II (which has a precedence in papal magisterial teaching) in showing that this teaching cannot be used to damn the invincibly ignorant. This achievement, a kind of building block, is then used in Lumen Gentium §16. So, at Vatican II those who 320 Gavin D’Costa had previously been seen as destined for damnation at Florence are now re-conceptualized in §16 as related (ordinantur) to the people of God and potentially included in his salvific plan. We may be better placed to judge whether there is development or clarification through an examination of post-conciliar teachings. In one respect, Fr. Schenk is perhaps right about my book. I may inadvertently play down doctrinal development, but that is because I am not entirely sure that we can isolate genuine and clearly established doctrinal developments in an area where the Council does not draw explicit attention to its teaching authority. To avoid problems like this, I had made the plea for the labeling of teachings in terms of the grades of authority attributed to doctrinal teachings. This is not an idealizing of and wishing to return to earlier neo-scholastic days, although I would be happy enough for such precision to return to theology. It is simply a concern to clarify the level of authority behind conciliar and magisterial teachings, knowing that this would simplify the theologians’ and the faithful’s task in terms of reception, obedience, questioning, and practice. Regarding other religions in general, and Jews and Muslims in particular, I think the Council provides a tentative step forward, opening paths that might be productive and creative. It can do so only through doctrine, not by good will alone. At the end of my book, I isolate the teachings on other religions and on the Jews and Muslims and classify them precisely to help free the debate from misconceptions about what is “authoritatively” taught and unchanging. My finding is that the only de fide teaching in everything that I examine is the “no salvation outside the Church” teaching. That such a teaching has developed alongside a series of other doctrinal teachings requires this careful sifting and grading of teachings. Mission to the Jewish People Fr. Schenk suggests that my argument that mission to the Jewish people is implicit in Vatican II is contrary to the unfolding of the Council as interpreted by Cardinal Koch in his writings and as interpreted in Gift.9 We must recall that the preface to Gift is clear that it has no magisterial status and is a discussion document: “The text is not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church, but is a reflection prepared by the Commission for Religious Relations with See also Gavin D’Costa, “What does the Catholic Church Teach about Mission to the Jewish People?”, Theological Studies 73.3 (2012): 590–614. 9 Response to My Respondents 321 the Jews on current theological questions that have developed since the Second Vatican Council. It is intended to be a starting point for further theological thought with a view to enriching and intensifying the theological dimension of Jewish-Catholic dialogue.” Nevertheless, it is a document produced with the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, so it has two important dicasteries coming together to try to plot out the state of the debate in Catholic teachings. On the subject of mission, Gift §40 (quoted by Fr. Schenk) says: The Church is therefore obliged to view evangelisation to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views. In concrete terms this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews. While there is a principled rejection of an institutional Jewish mission, Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews, although they should do so in a humble and sensitive manner, acknowledging that Jews are bearers of God’s Word, and particularly in view of the great tragedy of the Shoah. The first line is true, even if it raises the issue of whether Muslims (of whom Lumen Gentium §16 acknowledges that they “along with us adore the one and merciful God”) also thus require a different manner of evangelization. Fr. Schenk also registers the same challenge regarding mission to Islam. I agree with him generically that the manner of mission must be related to the truths within a particular religion, and this careful attention to apologetics and sensitive dialogue has characterized the best aspects of Catholic missionary history. There is no general mission strategy, only particular strategies in the light of specific religions at precise times and locations in history. However, in my view, the second line of the quotation from Gift §40 raises some problems. It does not clearly follow from the first. It seems to be contrary to Vatican II, and the principled arguments are never presented explicitly in the document. I think it runs in tension with the Council because Lumen Gentium §§14–16 indicates that, other than separated Christians who confess Christ and are Trinitarian, the Church’s mission is towards all those who do not know Christ. Lumen Gentium §16 acknowledges different types within this group who do not know Christ: those who know God ( Jews and 322 Gavin D’Costa Muslims); those who believe in a transcendent; and those who are not “religious” but follow the voice of God in their conscience. But while these groups are different and some have “revelation” (certainly the Jews in the Old Testament, and by derivation, Muslims through the Qur’an’s dependence on the Old and New Testaments), does Gift overturn Lumen Gentium §§14–16 and Ad Gentes? This is most unlikely. While the Jews are admittedly not “gentiles” (gentes), they do not confess and believe in Jesus Christ and the Trinity. In the context of Lumen Gentium, they are thus the “object” of mission, for God wishes all men and women to come to him through Christ. The problem is further compounded, as Gift argues that it is only Christ’s actions that bring salvation and that this is a non-negotiable truth. Gift openly acknowledges the conundrum: “That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery” (§36). This tension, or “unfathomable divine mystery,” seems to be resolved on one side of the horns of the dilemma (no institutional mission, while mission is the greatest gift the Church can offer—indeed, is the very rationale of the Church). If explicitly confessing Christ is the normal means of salvation, not carrying out mission to the Jewish people is profoundly un-Pauline. Paul did not stop his activities towards the Jews. It is also possibly deeply uncharitable, for mission, properly understood, is nothing other than sharing the best gift that has been freely given to us and is no one’s property: Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the claim is in tension with not only some of the Conciliar teachings. I think there is an internal tension to Gift at this point. One might ask to what other religion is there a “specific institutional mission” in contrast to the disavowal made here? Historically, the Congrégation de Notre-Dame de Sion, the Sisters of Zion, were devoted to the conversion of the Jewish people and sanctioned by the Church (in the late nineteenth century). Even if they now carry out a practice that seems to be an inversion of their founders’ aims, in this historical respect, there has been “specific institutional” missionary activity toward the Jewish people from within the Church. Ironically, there are no religious orders that were founded to convert Buddhists and Hindus and there is no specific institutional mission towards Buddhists and Hindus today. Hence, there is a genuine ambiguity in this second line: to what other religions are there institutional missions? And what is the theological rationale for disallowing institutional mission? Gift cannot and should not be expected to answer Response to My Respondents 323 every theological question it raises, for its purpose was precisely to set in motion a discussion on the agenda it set forth. The third line of the key quotation from Gift §40 does not resolve the problem, but rather deepens it. Personal, sensitive, and thoughtful witness is enjoined, and two paragraphs later, witness is rightly seen as a form of mission: “Christian mission and witness, in personal life and in proclamation, belong together” (§42). Gift thus seems to propound a position that holds that there should be no institutional mission by the Catholic Church to the Jewish people and only that individual personal mission is legitimate. However, this is a most curious distinction in Catholic theology and reverses the normal ordering: the Church is understood to be the person of Christ first and foremost, and only secondarily do the individual people who constitute the unity of the Body of Christ, who partake in the ministry of Christ, carry out its actions. Its institutional character is integrated into its personal sacramental character. But all is not lost, as my own (possibly eccentric) reading of Gift is that it points, inadvertently or not, to a more profound resolution of this issue that is only just beginning to become clear as the Church wrestles with its own Jewish roots and identity. There is textual evidence for this alternative reading. One way to understand this apparently mixed message about “mission” might be to recognize that there is an inchoate and visionary insight that the gentile church cannot partake in mission to the Jews, as this does signal the erasure of Jewish identity—and has done historically. The Catholic Church has a long history of requiring the relinquishing of Jewish identity and practices from either Jewish coverts or even those, such as the Copts who practiced circumcision, to establish a proper claim upon the title “Catholic Christian.” (The discussion of Florence cited above is actually directed toward the Copts, whom the Roman Church was trying to reign in.) Gift recognizes that, in the original Church, there were two communities that co-existed, the church of the gentiles and the church of the circumcised: The first Christians were Jews; as a matter of course they gathered as part of the community in the Synagogue, they observed the dietary laws, the Sabbath and the requirement of circumcision, while at the same time confessing Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah sent by God for the salvation of Israel and the entire human race. With Paul the “Jewish Jesus movement” defini- 324 Gavin D’Costa tively opens up other horizons and transcends its purely Jewish origins. Gradually his concept came to prevail, that is, that a non-Jew did not have to become first a Jew in order to confess Christ. In the early years of the Church, therefore, there were the so-called Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians, the ecclesia ex circumcisione and the ecclesia ex gentibus, one Church originating from Judaism, the other from the Gentiles, who however together constituted the one and only Church of Jesus Christ. (§15) The document returns to this point in an interesting manner, because if this was so then, the question must arise of whether it could not be so again in the light of the recovery of the importance of the Jewish identity of Christianity. And it is only out of that Jewish identity, possibly only through the ecclesia ex circumcisione, that an authentic mission to Jews can happen that does not spell their extinction. I will cite Gift §43 in its entirety, as it could make sense in the terms I have construed (and I would argue that, otherwise it is difficult to make sense of it): It is and remains a qualitative definition of the Church of the New Covenant that it consists of Jews and Gentiles, even if the quantitative proportions of Jewish and Gentile Christians may initially give a different impression. Just as after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ there were not two unrelated covenants, so too the people of the covenant of Israel are not disconnected from “the people of God drawn from the Gentiles.” Rather, the enduring role of the covenant people of Israel in God’s plan of salvation is to relate dynamically to the “people of God of Jews and Gentiles, united in Christ,” he whom the Church confesses as the universal mediator of creation and salvation. In the context of God’s universal will of salvation, all people who have not yet received the gospel are aligned with the people of God of the New Covenant. “In the first place there is the people to whom the covenants and promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh (cf. Rom 9:4–5). On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for he does not repent of the gifts he makes nor of the calls he issues (cf. Rom 11:28–29)” (Lumen Gentium, 16). Response to My Respondents 325 The singular “People of God” from the Council has been pluralized to indicate two very distinct forms of being ecclesia, perhaps one of them in which the practices and religious culture of Judaism, as was the case with Christ and his disciples, might once more flourish within the Catholic Church. Only such a Jewish ecclesia ex circumcisione, such as exists in a inchoate manner in groups such as the Hebrew Catholics, could sensitively carry out an “institutional mission” that is not “bad news” for the Jewish people. Only through such a mission, through the credibility of the new people of God who remain Jewish and Catholic religiously, could Jews realize that the invitation to follow Christ does not mean erasing their religious culture and identity and cutting themselves off from their people and history. Only through such a mission could the Church be confident that it has actually grasped the difficult nettle of its own savage destruction of Jewish culture within its teleologically proper home, its messianic yearnings. In my view, this is the somewhat hidden logic of Gift. Whether this hidden logic can break through when Jewish Christians and Hebrew Catholics are such a sensitive issue in Jewish-Catholic dialogue remains to be seen. There is also another way of explaining the logic of Gift’s prohibition of institutional mission. It is seen in the closing line of the paragraph quoted above (§43): it is about the monumental tragedy of the Shoah. This dark event must form a deep shadow in all contemporary Christian-Jewish relations. Susan Heschel tells of her father’s (Rabbi Abraham Heschel) famous statement that was reported worldwide during the Council: “Some bishops insisted that the ultimate conversion of Jews be included in the final version of the document. My father’s objection was unequivocal: the phrase had to be eliminated. If faced with the alternative of conversion or death, he said, he would rather go to Auschwitz. I was terrified when I heard him say this. My father met with Pope Paul VI to make his objection clear, and he said many times that he was told after their meeting that the pope took his pen and crossed out the sentence.”10 Heschel’s objection indicated unambiguously that any Christian intention at mission toward Jews reminded Jews of an invitation to extinction. That is the historical record for Jews, for Christians had systematically required converted Jews to renounce all Jewish practices and signs of their previous faith. Doris Donnelly, “Lovingly Observant: An Interview with Susannah Heschel,” America, June 18, 2007 (available at http://www.americamagazine.org/ content/article.cfm?article_id=10016). 10 326 Gavin D’Costa They were required to become “gentiles.” Heschel’s quote dramatically conveys this point. Possibly the only way to avoid this problem, this curse, one might say, is to envisage a special Hebrew Catholic witness to the Jewish people, showing that Jews who follow Jesus are not called to revoke their own spiritual heritage—especially if God does not revoke his promises. The radical door opened by Gift calls into question this age old practice of requiring the gentilization of Jews. If the Jewish “covenant” is valid and not revoked (what part or all of it still remains to be clarified?), then Hebrew Catholics may well be viewed analogously to Anglicans who have been granted ordinariate status. They need not and should not renounce their spiritual patrimony when entering into full Catholic communion, although anything that conflicted with Catholic faith would not be compatible. The level of conflict, if any, would have to be decided and determined in close communal exchange. To draw this analogy with the Anglicans is simply to suggest that Lumen Gentium §§14–15 would have to be rewritten if the ecclesia ex circumcisione were to become a thriving reality. I am not clear whether Fr. Schenk would find these suggestions acceptable, but I believe they address his deeper concerns. One other point concerning mission is the Dr. Reynolds’s article draws attention to the fact that the “interest of Muslims in converting Christians has reached a fever pitch in the modern period (in part as a response to Christian missions among Muslims).” Would this asymmetry between Islam and Judaism mean that the Catholic Church would be open in its missionary attention to Islam (for Muslims are open about their own Qur’anic daʿwa, the call to non-Muslims to convert to Islam)? This is a profound challenge raised by Reynolds. It is one that requires an answer, especially as Muslims do not see “mission” as an imperializing force of destruction, as Jews, perhaps quite rightly, have done. In principle, although differently in practice and expression, both Muslims and Jews have resisted the Trinity as incompatible with pure monotheism. Hence, at the level of apologetics, this incompatibility requires addressing. Given the complex power relations that obtain between these three religions, the Council’s call to mission, respecting religions and their freedoms, and the freedom from all coercion, is a most timely reminder. Mission must resist the lure and trappings of making Christianity an “attractive option” (because of wealth, power, status, and so on) and attend to the sheer beauty and truth of the Gospel as being its prime attraction. Response to My Respondents 327 And this question of religious freedom and lack of coercion of any sort regarding religious adherence raises a difficult question for both Muslims and Jews. The Vatican has been consistent since the time of St. Pope John Paul II in raising the question of religious freedoms for Christians in Muslim countries, without ever calling into question Islam’s freedom to practice da‘wa. The Vatican has also made diplomatic representation about Israel’s refusal to accept Jews who are Christians the “right to return” even when they have kept their Jewish religious identity.11 These matters are important for the future of genuine dialogue between Jews, Muslims, and Catholics. Theology of Religions and a Fuller Historiography Fr. Schenk remarks that there is a need for a more historically expansive account of the theology of religions before a better systematic account of other religions is forthcoming. I am in full agreement, and Louis Capéran and Jacques Dupuis have begun this task.12 What is required (and has hardly begun) is a careful sifting of historical genealogies of both theologians and the magisterium in interaction as they relate to questions of mission, general theology of religions, and specific engagement with particular religions such as Judaism and Islam. As such a historiography develops, systematic theology will be better placed both to develop its own discipline and to stimulate further historical researches. My own book is the smallest contribution to this very large task. Propositions, Truth, and Revelation Dr. Echeverria shows that he and I are in basic agreement regarding the hermeneutics of the Council and regarding the critique I provided of differing positions. He is very appreciative of my attempt to build a bridge between the position that affirms eternal truths that the Church teaches and one that acknowledges that all expressions of truth are to be contextualized and historicized. I am grateful for his sensitive appreciation. He isolates two issues that require clarification in my position. See the most interesting story of Oswald Rufeisen, a Catholic Jewish monk, who challenged the government on this matter because he had never renounced his Jewish religious identity and culture and was in fact a Zionist; see Nechma Tec, In the Lion’s Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), esp. 210–22. 12 See Louis Capéran, Le Salut des Infidèles: essai historique (Paris: Louis Beauchesne, 1912); Jacques Dupuis, Towards a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1977). 11 328 Gavin D’Costa First, should I deliver a metaphysical account of language to buttress my historicized account of doctrinal essentialism? Second, do I downplay revelation as proposition—is he correct when he says, “D’Costa needs to explicitly integrate into his hermeneutics a theology of propositional revelation”? On the first, my reticence to do so was primarily because I assume, like him, that language is referential, and thus capable of speaking truthfully. In the history of Christian theology, different forms of philosophy have provided the resources for the prolegomena to theology. Platonism, types of Aristotelianism, certain forms of phenomenology, and, more recently, analytical philosophy have all provided philosophical resources to explicate the basic conviction that language is open, referential, and realist.13 How reference can be verified in this life is another question. Pope John Paul II’s masterly encyclical Faith and Reason (1998) shows the crisis produced by philosophies of functionalism and pragmatism. They fundamentally closed down the metaphysical and, thus, eventually eroded theology’s proper confidence that is based both on philosophy and on revelation. Hence, I accept Dr. Echeverria’s concern that my defense of realism should be given a metaphysical explication. For this, I would turn, if time had been available, to Thomas Aquinas, who is the master of such a synthesis, as Faith and Reason §44 makes clear: “In him, the Church’s Magisterium has seen and recognized the passion for truth”; and, precisely because it stays consistently within the horizon of universal, objective and transcendent truth, his thought scales “heights unthinkable to human intelligence.” Rightly, then, he may be called an “apostle of the truth.” Looking unreservedly to truth, the realism of Thomas could recognize the objectivity of truth and produce not merely a philosophy of “what seems to be,” but a philosophy of “what is.” But the same encyclical also makes it clear that different philosophical approaches could provide what is required. My real concern in the book was not to provide this metaphysical account, but to assume cognitive reference and metaphysical realism for the argument to work. On the second point made by Dr. Echeverria, I think we are in agreement: revelation contains propositions. While I think that he and I would both hold that revelation is primarily the person of Jesus Christ, first and foremost, and the Holy Spirit and the Father of See Theology and Philosophy: Faith and Reason, ed. Oliver D. Crisp, Gavin D’Costa, Mervyn Davies, and Peter Hampson (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 13 Response to My Respondents 329 Jesus Christ, I would wish to emphasize that the Trinity is not first a proposition, but a divine mystery and reality known in history, and also known through propositions. I do not discount a wide variety of ways in which God makes himself known: natural laws, moral laws, the history of revelation begun in and with Israel, and so on. And in each of these instances, propositions are part of the reflective process (as one reflects on the natural and moral laws) or, indeed, part of primary history (the teachings of the prophets). I would like to thank the three respondents and the editors of this journal for paying attention to my book. It is an immense privilege and I hope I have done justice to the generosity of my N&V respondents. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017): 331–350 Book Reviews Medieval Christianity: A New History by Kevin Madigan (New Haven / London:Yale University Press, 2015), xxiv + 487 pp. With the existence of so many great introductions to the history of Christian thought from scholars like Jaroslav Pelikan or Richard Southern, does there need to be another survey of medieval religion? Kevin Madigan’s Medieval Christianity: A New History is an attractive volume boasting a wide array of endorsements from medievalists such as John Van Engen and Bernard McGinn. It is clearly intended to become the new standard narrative, written at a popular level for the typical undergraduate survey course or armchair historian. Yet, what could recommend Madigan’s work over older and more easily obtainable surveys? He declares that his intent is to “produce a volume that integrates the best of traditional scholarship with the rich and important developments that have occurred in the study of medieval Christianity over the past forty years or so.” The present review will primarily judge whether Medieval Christianity successfully accomplishes his stated goal. Is Madigan’s new book just old information placed in a stylish new binding, or does it breathe fresh air into the field of medieval religious studies? Madigan’s decisions about what to include and how to organize his text represent the principal success of Medieval Christianity. By including a short overview of early Christianity, for example, he lays the groundwork for the medieval “faith of our fathers” mentality. Then, allowing equal time to the early, high, and late periods, he avoids the unbalanced focus on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries so common in other surveys. One of the key organizational elements making the book a “new history” is the space it devotes to “marginal” groups in each period: women, Jews, Muslims, and heretics. By bringing nuns and other female saints and mystics to the foreground, for exam- 332 Book Reviews ple, Madigan makes a more truthful presentation of the medieval conception of gender. The sheer numbers and social esteem of these important women problematizes any previous survey that would relegate them to their own isolated chapter as if they were not integrated into the whole of medieval society. Madigan’s narrative makes sense of the twelfth-century upsurge in female monasticism and female integration with reform movements such as the Cistercians, as well as the flood of anchoresses, Beguines, and women mystics in the centuries following. Unfortunately, he often hurts his credibility on the subject of women with repeated value judgments based on his own religio-political opinion: what he calls the “sad predicament” of canon law restricting priesthood to men. By viewing this issue through a purely pragmatic lens (e.g., the monetary disadvantage of an all-lay monastery), Madigan forgets that the religious women who “suffered” this patriarchal subjection would have thought of the restriction in primarily theological, not fiscal, terms. Madigan makes it sound as if the exclusion of women from the priesthood was all about keeping nuns in the poorhouse. Madigan imports a similarly modern worldview to his discussion of medieval heresy. His entire chapter on this subject (and other discussions of Christianization) are symptomatic of a fundamental flaw in the book’s methodology: in his entire survey of Medieval Christianity, Madigan does not provide any definition of “Christianity,” nor does he himself appear to have a clear idea of what it is. In several places, he affirms a relativistic stance on the difference between heresy and orthodoxy in early Christianity (even asserting incompatible Christologies among the Gospel writers) and then extends this theological relativism into the middle ages. Like his discussion of women, Madigan’s narrative about heresy disappoints by painting a picture of the period highly dissonant with the outlook of the primary sources. He uncritically implies several controversial positions: for example, that twelfth- and thirteenth-century heresy was “nearly indistinguishable” from monastic and mendicant reform movements, and that condemnation of such heresies was a form of mimetic rivalry between clerically approved reform movements and anti-clerical heretical groups. In fact, Madigan’s narrative is strongly reminiscent of many polemical anti-Catholic “medieval histories” from the nineteenth century, which praised medieval heretics like the Waldensians for their “proto-Reformation” willingness to seek a pristine Christian faith outside the bounds of the institutional Church. Book Reviews 333 The same tone emerges when he considers paganism and early Christianization. Thus, for example, Madigan can point to the invocation of saints and angels as examples of “grey areas” between Christianity and paganism, even though such practices have always been central to orthodox Christian culture. Though he takes time in the book to caution against the anachronism of modern perspectives, it is clear that Madigan himself is far from guiltless in this regard. These methodological problems stand out as the most troubling and systemic in Madigan’s book. However, lest the verdict of this review appear to be an unqualified condemnation of Medieval Christianity: a New History, several positive remarks can be made. As the book’s endorsers all note, Madigan makes a skilled synthesis and presentation of numerous complex historical moments: the rise of Charlemagne, the lay investiture controversy, twelfth-century monastic orders, and the Avignon Papacy, for example. He includes over forty black-andwhite photographic illustrations that are well-matched to the text. He commendably limits himself to a concise and balanced discussion of almost 1500 years of history, all the while maintaining a clear narrative program. Medieval Christianity is highly readable and without a doubt the work of a professional author. Given the narrow “liberal progressive” view of Christianity (especially Catholicism) for which Madigan has become elsewhere known, I was prepared for a much less balanced treatment of the medieval West. Hence, I was pleasantly surprised to find that biases from modern religious politics were not the book’s most visible shortcoming. Unfortunately, the book’s narrative also suffers in other ways that earn it at best a mixed review. It pontificates on a host of controversial historiographical problems with scant citation of sources; the notes section of most chapters would not pass the evidentiary standards of Wikipedia. This begs the question of why, given the easy accessibility of free online sources, Medieval Christianity would even be worth buying. It also contains many historical errors and misleading statements. For example, in an area of Madigan’s own specialization, medieval scholasticism, he apparently relies on outdated scholarship and seems to misunderstand key concepts. While attempting to give a brief intellectual history of the thirteenth century, he makes demonstrably false assertions about Bonaventure’s illumination theory and Thomas’ view of sense experience. In other chapters, Madigan repeatedly uses anachronistic epithets like “neo-Donatism” that are more vitriolic than historical: “Augustine would have wept,” he writes of Gregorian reforms in the eleventh century. To those attuned to such 334 Book Reviews concerns, they impair an otherwise graceful and engaging narrative. Perhaps the best advice I can offer readers of Medieval Christianity: a New History is a disappointed yet open-minded caveat emptor. As a popular history, Madigan’s book has the value of opening the medieval world to the inquisitive reader. Yet it should be read as an open invitation to ask questions of the historical record, not as a book of answers to those questions. Rather than a “new standard text” to introduce this captivating period of church history, it should be seen as a challenge for other medievalists to produce ever “newer” histories of medieval Christianity that provide a multiplicity of ideological N&V perspectives. Andrew Jacob Cuff The Catholic University of America Washington, DC Revelation as Testimony: A Philosophical-Theological Study by Mats Wahlberg (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), x + 246 pp. This book makes two interrelated arguments: divine revelation involves propositional knowledge, and faith on the basis of testimony is rationally warranted. In his introduction, Wahlberg notes that it is now commonplace to emphasize that “revelation” occurs in historical events, not in the words or propositions that mediate revelation. Wahlberg grants that revelation involves an encounter with a person, Jesus Christ, but he makes clear that the propositional element cannot be excised. He also notes that the act of faith, by which we believe on the authority of the divine revealer, is now often set in opposition to reason, which proceeds largely without appeals to authority. This way of differentiating faith and reason is a mistake, since it is reasonable to believe things on the basis of testimony, as faith does. After this introduction, the second chapter focuses on revelation and propositional knowledge. Wahlberg begins by pointing out that a non-propositional revelation would have difficulty in defending the claim that the revelation comes from “God.” Since non-propositional revelation could give no propositional knowledge about God, believers could suppose that the revelation comes from “God” only on the basis of an incommunicable personal experience or intuition, or on the basis of a strong natural theology, which those who deny propositional revelation are unlikely to affirm. Christian belief in the self-revealing God would thus be a pure fideism, impossible to defend rationally. Book Reviews 335 Furthermore, how could a personal relationship with God be established unless one knows something (inevitably as expressed in a proposition) about God? Wahlberg astutely observes that “the object of knowledge always includes some proposition; it is never merely, say, a physical object” (27). Propositions involve concepts, and we cannot think without concepts. It follows that, in order to know God personally, we must have some true propositional or conceptual knowledge about him. As Wahlberg states, “if there are no true propositions about God that we can grasp, then God cannot have personal communion with us” (28). These propositions must be ones that uniquely specify God, who is the transcendent source of all creatures. What about “manifestational” revelation, in which something is revealed without words? Even in such a case, says Wahlberg, propositions are involved because “God, or any agent, cannot make knowledge of some reality available to a subject except by making knowledge of some proposition available” (30). When God manifests himself without words, we cannot know that God is doing so or has done so without propositional knowledge. Wahlberg gives the following example: “if God manifestationally reveals that he loves a certain person—for instance, by making her feel his love in a mystical experience—then it is the receiver of that revelation who must conceptualize the relevant proposition (that God loves her) herself ” (32). For this reason, even a “manifestational” revelation is in a certain sense propositional, although, in propositional revelation that involves words, the revealer is more fully in charge of the meaning of the revelation. Wahlberg also notes that the symbolic language of prophecy and parable should not be contrasted with propositional revelation, since metaphors and symbols in fact have a central role in propositional communication. Nor should the information provided by propositional revelation be thought to be opposed to spiritual transformation. On the contrary, the latter requires some propositional knowledge. In the case of the self-revelation of God, since “it is highly doubtful that infinity (and other theistic properties) can be represented in experiences” (45), God’s own propositional testimony is needed for us to know that it is God who is revealing himself. To buttress this case, the third chapter reviews various ways of understanding revelation, following Avery Dulles’s fivefold typology in his Models of Revelation: doctrine, history, inner experience, dialectical presence, and new awareness. Doctrine is obviously propositional. Regarding history, we can know that something is an act 336 Book Reviews of God only if God tells us so; otherwise, the most we would be warranted in affirming is that a very powerful being has acted. Inner experience, or an “intuition” that “is not dependent on concepts” (60), also requires propositional knowledge. Wahlberg remarks in this vein that “[a] mental state cannot both be intentional—that is, be about or directed at some object, at least not an object such as ‘the infinite’—and at the same time be independent of concepts” (61). If we had no concept of the “infinite,” then our inner experience could not be intentionally directed to the “infinite.” Still focused on the category of revelation as inner experience, Wahlberg critiques Rahner’s view of a “prereflective, nonconceptual awareness of ourselves as grounded in an infinite, personal mystery” (65). Here Wahlberg points to what Wilfrid Sellars terms the “myth of the given”: if an experience is utterly nonconceptual, the experience cannot justify any particular belief as arising necessarily from the experience. As Wahlberg puts it, “if the content of the transcendental experience lacks conceptual structure, it cannot, by itself, justify the choice of any particular characterization over any other” (68). If it is God who makes clear what particular characterization should be chosen, then this would simply be an instance of propositional revelation. Even in mystical experience, in order for the mystic to know that he or she has experienced God, the mystic must rely upon some propositional knowledge, without which the claim that the experience was specifically of God could not be warranted. Among the advocates of revelation as dialectical presence, Wahlberg highlights Emil Brunner and Karl Barth. While they are known for the view that revelation as an “encounter” with the divine Word, Jesus Christ, as a living man should be strictly separated from propositional revelation—a deeply problematic view, since, as Wahlberg says, “We can only consciously encounter a reality by grasping propositions about it” (81)—Brunner and Barth in fact affirm divine (propositional) testimony to Jesus Christ. Wahlberg observes that “Barth unhesitatingly says that revelation provides knowledge of God” (84) through the work of Christ and the Spirit. The opposition between revelation as event and revelation as propositional is a false one. If the Spirit somehow gave “rise to a conviction in us that ‘God was in Christ,’” then this would already be a form of propositional revelation. Lastly, Gregory Baum and William Thompson represent the model of revelation as new awareness or raised consciousness. Wahlberg points out that, whatever new awareness of the world and the self Book Reviews 337 we might obtain, we cannot call this a revelation of God unless the new awareness also contains the (propositional) insight that the cause of the new awareness is God. Here, as well as in the Barth section, Wahlberg makes use of a distinction between two kinds of propositional revelation: John Locke’s direct divine infusion of knowledge, and revelation through spoken or written words (testimony). To Dulles’s fivefold typology, Wahlberg adds a sixth type: post-liberal accounts of revelation as found in Ronald Thiemann and John Milbank. Thiemann argues that the doctrine of revelation is about the absolute priority of God, not about (foundationalist) epistemological justification of Christian beliefs. But Thiemann’s commitment to “epistemological coherentism”—the view that beliefs are justified by their coherent interrelationships (rather than by their relation to anything outside them)—makes clear that he is in fact concerned with epistemological questions. Wahlberg shows that it would be equally coherent to attribute Christian revelation merely to a very powerful being as it would be to attribute Christian revelation to God, unless God has spoken in some way. Indeed, Thiemann himself supposes that God, in the Gospels, makes promises—speech-acts (through human delegates) with propositional content. Milbank considers that divine revelation consists in an illumination of the mind rather than new information. At the same time, he holds that we can infer from miraculous events that it is God who is acting. If we can make this inference, Wahlberg asks, why would we need the illumination of our mind? Milbank’s answer is to point to the structure of human knowing: all real knowledge depends upon knowing finite realities in their relation to the Creator, and thus all knowledge involves a revelation of God. “Grace” is involved in this knowing as an illumination or intensification of reason. In response, Wahlberg concludes that “Milbank’s denial that revelation provides new information is, in itself, rather peculiar. One would think that the proposition that God will judge all humans at the end of time would count as a piece of ‘new information’ that God has revealed” (101). The fourth chapter, indebted to Nicholas Wolterstorff, focuses upon the theme of “divine speech” in relation to the status of Scripture. Wahlberg explores Wolterstorff ’s account of “double-agency discourse,” in which, for example, a man deputizes someone else to speak in his name and authorizes this speech as his own (111). An example of this is prophecy, in which God is the author of words spoken by the prophet, who is deputized and authorized by God. 338 Book Reviews God can also speak “by appropriating the discourse of humans” as his own (113). In this way, certain books of the Bible are divine speech, even though God does not directly speak through them. In this way, too, God establishes himself as the author of the whole of Scripture by bringing together various texts to form one Bible. God can also speak directly to individuals, who then share this speech with others. Does God speak directly to all believers, or only to the prophets and apostles? Drawing on the work of John Lamont, Wahlberg argues that “to conceive of God’s speaking as direct is to conceive of it as something that directly confronts believers of all times” (115). Direct divine speech, then, can come to us in a publicly available way through Scripture, through the Creeds, and through the Church’s teaching. The Church’s teaching includes the Creeds and also includes (in a certain way) Scripture. Christ thereby speaks to all of us directly and publicly through his Body, the Church. Does this mean that everything we find in Scripture is God’s direct speech to us? Indebted to Wolterstorff (and also to Richard Swinburne), Wahlberg notes that here the key is to determine what the human author actually said and then to interpret “what God is saying by means of the appropriated human discourses in the Bible” (117). This enables us to distinguish between what the human author intended in passages commending the total annihilation of enemies, such as Joshua 11:20, from what God intends by appropriating such passages. The fifth chapter explores the question of whether rationally justified knowledge can come from testimony. The “received view in Western epistemology” (125), first formulated by David Hume, is that testimony can be the source of knowledge, but only if one has non-testimonial reasons for knowing that the witnesses are reliable. On this view, knowledge through testimony must be “reducible to non-testimonial sources of justification, such as perception, memory, and inference” (126). Drawing upon C. A. J. Coady, Michael Dummett, and others, Wahlberg points out that the problem with Hume’s view is that, since so much of our knowledge comes from others’ testimony, we cannot personally check whether each source is reliable. Nor can we rely on other people checking the sources, since to do so would be again to rely upon testimony. Wahlberg’s solution, much like that of Hume’s contemporary Thomas Reid, is that testimony is an irreducible source of knowledge. When we judge that particular speakers are trustworthy, we are rationally entitled to believe their testimony, which thereby counts as knowledge. Book Reviews 339 Drawing upon John McDowell, Wahlberg therefore denies that the justification of our knowledge has “a world-independent status, achievable by our own autonomous powers, without dependence on ‘favors’ from the world” (135). Instead, because our minds are related to the external world, we are justified in believing that we see (for example) a tree in front of us, even if this might be a hallucination. Justified knowledge entails a certain “epistemic vulnerability” (137). We must actively inquire as to whether our source(s) are trustworthy; Wahlberg, following McDowell, terms this “doxastic responsibility” (140). But the fact that some testimony may be unreliable does not mean that we lack justification in accepting testimony as knowledge. We can accept testimony as a real source of knowledge without having to justify it on the basis of other kinds of knowledge that we gain by our own autonomous powers. In chapter six, Wahlberg asks how we are justified in believing the testimony of a prophet that his (or her) words come from God. What kind of “doxastic responsibility” (as distinct from “justification”) is required in order for one to be warranted in believing that the prophet’s words are God’s? Normally, of course, “it would . . . be utterly irresponsible to believe somebody who claims to speak in the name of God” (145). Wahlberg focuses on the instance of Jesus’s speech in the name of God. Would it have been doxastically responsible for Jesus’s contemporaries to believe that he was speaking in the name of God and with God’s authority? Wahlberg rejects the claim that Jesus, in claiming such authority, must be either a madman or a genius; after all, Jesus could have been a madman-genius. For Wahlberg, however, Jesus’s miracles and his Resurrection suffice for ensuring the doxastic responsibility of his disciples. When Jesus told them that he spoke in the name of God, they rightly believed his testimony due to his miracles and Resurrection. Here, miracles provide motives of credibility, not demonstration, and the disciples’ knowledge is irreducibly testimonial knowledge. Christian faith “is an instance of belief in testimony, and testimonial beliefs are not justified by arguments from evidence for trustworthiness” (162). Yet, even if Jesus’s disciples had good warrant to believe his testimony, do later Christians have good warrant to believe the testimony of the early Church as recorded in the New Testament? In chapter seven, Wahlberg examines the question of whether we today should trust the testimony of the Gospels. He notes that many biblical scholars refuse to trust testimony as a source for historical knowledge. As he points out, “modern historical research emerged when historians 340 Book Reviews gradually moved away from treating the sources as testimony and increasingly started to treat them as forensic evidence” (176). This had good results insofar as sources had been approached with too much credulity, but it has been taken too far in the field of biblical scholarship, resulting in the negation of testimonial knowledge. Among biblical scholars who are pushing back against this distortion, Wahlberg names Richard Bauckham and Samuel Byrskog, both of whom argue “that the Jesus material reached the written Gospels through formal, controlled transmission processes in which eyewitnesses played a central role” (179). Given that the field of biblical scholarship is now conflicted on this point, we have no reason not to treat the Gospels as testimony: “No positive reasons to mistrust the Gospels’ general portrait of Jesus have emerged” (181). The Gospels clearly testify that Jesus claimed to speak for God. But the Gospels also testify to a number of miraculous events. Wahlberg therefore pauses to defend these miracle reports against Hume’s argument, widely discredited by theist and non-theist philosophers alike, that no report of a miracle can be rationally believed. For Hume, it is impossible to credit such reports because miracles violate the laws of nature, but Hume’s calculus presumes that God (or at least a powerful supernatural being) either does not exist or cannot act. Having made this case, Wahlberg turns to the Gospels’ reports of Jesus’s Resurrection. He shows that, even from the perspective of forensic historical-critical scholarship, belief in the testimony of the New Testament to the Resurrection is not irresponsible. Drawing especially upon N. T. Wright, he notes that the Resurrection would not have been credible without both an empty tomb and appearances of the risen Jesus, and if the latter had been mere visions (or hallucinations) they would have not been described as “resurrection” by Second Temple Jews. As Wahlberg observes, “the case for doxastic responsibility is further strengthened if we consider the undeniable, intrinsic beauty, depth, and transformative power of Jesus’ message and the story about his life, death, and resurrection, seen in the context of the history of Israel as recapitulated in the Hebrew Bible” (210). Even though we cannot know forensically that Jesus must surely have been resurrected, we can trust the Gospels’ testimony and be rationally justified in possessing secure testimonial knowledge of his Resurrection. What about individuals who do not have the leisure or expertise to assess the evidence—are they rationally justified in believing the Gospels’ testimony? In his final chapter, Wahlberg argues that they Book Reviews 341 are because “the doxastic rights that belong, in the first instance, to the epistemic elite can be extended to the church as a whole” (218). If this were not so, then only scientists, for instance, could be justified in believing scientific discoveries that the vast majority of persons receive on the basis of testimonial knowledge. Why, however, would God reveal himself in a way that makes so many people have to rely on testimonial knowledge? Wahlberg’s answer to this crucial question (indebted to Laura Garcia) is deeply instructive: “The frail and trust-requiring process of human testimony is exactly the kind of means that would be fitting for the God of the Bible to choose for making himself known. . . . An interpersonal God (the Trinity) who saves by making himself vulnerable (the Incarnation) might very well want to make himself known through an interpersonal and vulnerable process” (222–23). Having shown that it is by believing in testimony that we come to believe that it is God who is speaking, Wahlberg inquires into whether such belief is suited to the supernatural virtue of faith as traditionally understood. Faith involves knowledge of God, but the assent of faith, while reasonable, is not compelled by demonstrative clarity. The act of faith therefore requires an act of the free will, moved by grace. All of this fits well, Wahlberg considers, with testimonial knowledge. To accept the testimony of a speaker, one must trust the speaker, and thus, “faith in the sense of cognitive assent and faith in the sense of trust” are “inseparable” (229). Wahlberg argues that the assent of faith can be given without grace—as in the case of demons—but such faith “would not be Christian faith”—that is to say, would not be “conducive to salvation” (230). As a last step, Wahlberg proposes that his approach resolves the tension between those who hold that revelation cannot be measured by or grounded in anything other than itself (e.g., Barth and Balthasar) and those who hold that such claims about revelation would reduce Christian belief to pure fideism. As Wahlberg points out, testimonial knowledge solves this problem because it is not justified by anything other than the testimony, while at the same time, the credibility of the testimony can be measured and assessed. Wahlberg’s masterful book leaves me with only a small caveat: I am not sure that there can be a human act of faith that is not moved by grace, i.e. that is lifeless from the outset. As a question for future study, I would also be interested in how Wahlberg would engage the covenantal election of Israel: would Israel’s election be rooted in the testimony of the prophets (not least Moses) as confirmed by miracles, 342 Book Reviews and would it require the same level of historical-critical plausibility as Wahlberg found for the Gospels’ testimony? This book demonstrates that divine revelation must be propositional, and it also demonstrates the significance of testimonial knowledge. These insights should transform both the theology of divine revelation and the disciplines of biblical studies and apologetics. Wahlberg’s work, which places him immediately in the highest echelon of contemporary philosophical theologians, needs the widest N&V possible circulation. Matthew Levering Mundelein Seminary Mundelein, IL The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: A Counterpoint for the History of the Council by Agostino Marchetto, translated by Kenneth D. Whitehead (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2010), xxiv + 723 pp. In a series of occasional articles and book reviews brought together in this single volume (and originally published as Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II: Contrappunto per la sua storia, Rome: 2005), the former President of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, has opened up a serious academic challenge to the received reading of the history of the Second Vatican Council. He argues compellingly that much of the most influential historiography of Vatican II—that produced by the historians of the so-called Bologna School—depends for its organizational coherence both on a commitment to a hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity and on privileging certain categories of evidence (those that support its own favored discontinuities), as well as on diminishing the significance of, or even simply ignoring, other sources (those that do not support those positions). It is a matter of some debate whether it is strictly accurate to call those who followed in the footsteps of Giuseppe Dossetti a “school” in the proper sense, but it is surely beyond argument that the histories of the Council they have produced, for example the quasi-canonical History of Vatican II (the English language translation of which is edited by Giusseppe Alberigo and Fr. Joseph Komonchak, S.J.), have become the received reading of the event of the Council. Indeed, if the historical accounts of the Council given by those who seek to undermine its very legitimacy are excluded, it would be fair to say Book Reviews 343 that this received reading has been almost the only one presented. It is quite proper, therefore, that its assumptions and methodologies are subject to serious scrutiny, and it is to this task that Marchetto sets his hand. His approach is, to say the very least, robust. He pulls no punches, and Kenneth D. Whitehead’s translation loses none of the pungent tone of the Italian original. Marchetto accuses the authors of the Bologna School of being “saturated with quite evident ideology” (685), “afflicted” with a systematic bias that is “consistently one-sided . . . in the animosity shown against some of the prominent persons in the Council’s minority,” and “neither justified, nor. . . scholarly” (667). Most damning of all, they attend only to that evidence (in the form of diaries and “journalistic” accounts) that supports those theological positions that the proponents of this approach seek to advance (ibid.). These positions are, Marchetto contends, not representative of what happened at the Council, nor of its teaching as expressed in its documents. They are advanced, rather, in support of what was “an extreme position at Vatican II, even among the so-called ‘majority’” (382–83). Most seriously of all, Marchetto suggests, the historians of the Bologna School deliberately and knowingly distort the history of what happened at Vatican II, where there “was a constant and active search for a consensus” (383), in order to present a history of the Council that appeals only to predetermined political and sociological criteria and ignores “what is specific to an ecclesial council” (384). Here he has in his sights the journalistic over-simplification of positions and groups at the Council into what, he suggests, are inappropriate, inaccurate, and inconsistent political categories. These categories are always presented in dialectical opposition: “progressive/reactionary” and “liberal/conservative,” for example. It is, Marchetto argues, history in secular, political terms. Furthermore, the ideology that underpins this historiographical approach, Marchetto maintains, is aimed at winning acceptance for the notion that the Council could have done more, could have been more radical, and that those who wish that it had done so are justified, by the “event” of the Council, in arguing for and behaving in accordance with such more radical positions in the post-conciliar period. It is, he writes, the appeal to “the spirit of Vatican II” (691). The counterpoint that Marchetto proposes is a history that takes as a normative record of the Council the sixty-two volumes of its Acta and (especially) its nineteen formal teaching documents. It Book Reviews 344 seems clear to Marchetto that, in producing the now quasi-canonical History of Vatican II, the members of the Bologna School made deliberate choices about whose diaries, journals, and personal reflections they would consider and whose they would not. In his five chapters reviewing the five volumes of History of Vatican II, Marchetto is relentless in attempting to demonstrate the accuracy of his criticism and the historiographical shortcomings of the authors. He suggests that the authors have “mined” the sources they “prematurely” chose in order to privilege those sources and their perspectives, a method he dismisses as “ad usum delphini” (154). He accuses the authors of “inaccuracies” (155), of “exaggerated language . . . and . . . ‘colored’ adjectives” (171), and—most seriously of all—of the inventing of events for the existence of which there is simply no evidence (199). Marchetto’s analysis is far from dismissive of the work of Alberigo and his collaborators, but he cites so many examples in History of Vatican II of how methodologically and factually suspect accounts are put consistently to serve a particular theological agenda that his criticisms cannot be dismissed, as they have been by James Sweeney, who labels them “pure polemics.”1 Marchetto makes a strong case for his accusation of a systematic bias in this history (a history that certainly can claim to be the received reading), and it is a case that deserves detailed consideration. It is to be noted that such detailed consideration is already being given to Marchetto’s analysis in the Casa Santa Martha. An October 2013 letter from Pope Francis to Marchetto, recently made public on Sandro Magister’s Settimo Cieli blog,2 makes clear that, far from being dismissed as a view from the margins, the crack opened up in the edifice erected by the Bologna School by Marchetto enjoys support at the highest level. Papa Bergoglio writes to Marchetto: “I once told you . . . and I wish to repeat it today, that I consider you to be the best interpreter of the Second Vatican Council.” This book should need no further recommendaN&V tion than that. Stephen Morgan Maryvale Institute Birmingham, UK 1 2 “How should we remember Vatican II?” New Blackfriars 90 (2009): 253. Available at http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2013/11/14/ melloni-c-in-lutto-traditi-da-papa-francesco/?refresh_ce. Book Reviews 345 Origin of the Human Species by Dennis Bonnette, ed. Peter A. Redpath, 3rd expanded edition (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2014), xxviii + 266 pp. The third edition of Dennis Bonnette’s Origin of the Human Species is substantially the same as the first edition, which came out in 2001. There has been a minor emendation of the text, and the footnotes and bibliography have been corrected where that was necessary. This expanded edition includes two articles by Bonnette published since this work first appeared: “The Myth of the ‘Myth’ of Adam and Eve,” from a Polish publication edited by Mary Helen Klinge-Drucker, Humanistyka i realizm, which has not yet appeared, and “The Philosophical Impossibility of Darwinian Naturalistic Evolution,” in Faith & Reason 33:1–4 (2008): 55–67. The index has been revised to include these two appendices. This is fundamentally a philosophical and theological analysis of the issues underlying the theory of evolution from a Thomistic perspective. Bonnette is well-informed on the scientific data brought to bear on the question and the positions taken by atheistic naturalists and “scientific creationists.” Intelligent design proponents are also represented—indeed, Michael Behe wrote the foreword to the second edition. Bonnette will side with paleoanthropologists on the antiquity of true humans. The artistry of the Acheulean tools, for instance, indicates true intelligence but is associated with Homo erectus (and not Homo sapiens). Recent earlier dating of these tools has proved awkward for some theories of evolution, and Bonnette reports the arguments from all sides with considerable detachment, tracing the debate from Darwin’s original theory of gradualistic transformism to the theories of “punctuated equilibrium.” As a philosopher, Bonnette examines the logical, epistemological, and metaphysical foundations of various, at times conflicting, claims of natural scientists. He notes that the process of classifying fossil remains, or of connecting them into a series, is itself a “mental, not an extramental, act,” an interpretation imposed on the empirical data (11). This interpretation is based on a convergence of evidence that “persuades ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’” (13). Bonnette does not challenge this as such (though he is conversant with the inconsistency in the evidence), but he points out that “perinoetic speculations, especially as they extrapolate from present data to prehistorical conclusions, forever foreclose the possibility of apodictic certitude” (14). 346 Book Reviews Metaphysics, on the other hand, is able to achieve such certitude. Thus, for example, metaphysics can establish that there is a Creator. Any theory of evolution that purports to do away with the necessity of God is philosophically incoherent. This does not preclude the possibility of an evolution that “may give greater glory to the First Cause by preserving the natural efficacy of secondary causes” (18). Bonnette’s study begins in earnest in the second chapter. Anti-evolutionists are generally willing to concede that there is variation within a given species and that there can be development in these variations (intra-specific evolution). The problem enters in with claims that “a form has transcended its species” (extra-specific evolution). Bonnette sets himself the task of determining whether “natural species” exist and “how inter-specific transformism, if it occurs, can be compatible with traditional philosophical principles.” The nominalist understanding of “species” as “only convenient words to describe mid-ranges of ever-blending series of unique individuals” (28) is rejected. The “biological species concept” is likewise set aside: “The biologist seeks perinoetic knowledge: knowledge in which, by purely descriptive substitute signs, we conceptually grasp an organism’s sensible or common accidents. The philosopher pursues dianoetic knowledge in which, by careful examination of essential properties or proper accidents, we understand a thing’s essence or nature” (30). He concludes that “several progressively more perfect natural species exist” and that “more than one natural species of animal exist” (38–39). This philosophical definition of species would place mice and elephants within the same species (possessed of five senses) but oysters (not possessed of those senses) in another. He examines only the most important natural species—plants, animals, and human beings—to determine whether they are truly distinct and to determine what would be “the metaphysical possibility and implications of inter-specific evolution.” In the third chapter, Bonnette considers the possibility of abiogenesis, the emergence of living matter from non-living matter. He notes that many biologists, materialistic in philosophy, would “deny any essential distinction between non-life and life” (47), reducing all to sub-atomic entities. Philosophers who would “admit the existence of substantial beings above the atomic level would follow Aristotle in accepting a hylemorphic (matter-form) constitution of physical things” (48). For such philosophers, “truly self-perfective actions (1) are typical of living things, and (2) essentially distinguish living from non-living things.” The chief metaphysical objection would be that Book Reviews 347 “an effect cannot be higher than its cause, and every agent produces a like unto itself ” (52). Still, the “totality of the interacting agents” might “suffice to produce matter’s requisite organization” and not violate the causality principle. Evocation of “chance” can work only if chance is understood in terms of the existence of an orderly universe (contemporary “chaos theory” would presume the same). This leads to a discussion of teleology in the universe. He concludes by saying that “natural extrinsic bioteleologism, many contemporary natural scientists, and Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy agree that some form of abiogenesis is a legitimate possibility or even probability” (63). Bonnette will take this back in his second appendix—“Now I propose to show that even the initial stages of evolution from lower to higher natural philosophical species cannot be explained adequately merely in terms of purely physical agents” (231). Relying on an insight by Austin Woodbury—“the ultimate disposition [of the matter] is never together with the form which is corrupted, but is together with that which is generated”—he argues that “the material organization needed for the new and higher form is never present until that new form itself is present. But it is the form that is the active principle in the hylemorphic (matter-form) composite, whereas matter is the potential, or passive, principle. This means that form places matter into its proper species, and not vice-versa” (235). “Genuine transformism from lower to higher natural species requires preternatural intervention, though such intervention need not be discernible to natural scientists” (238). This conclusion is not really surprising. Alfred North Whitehead, whose process philosophy is generally taken to be connatural with the theory of evolution, comes to a similar conclusion. His philosophy is atomistic, reducing everything to subatomic “actual occasions” that are grouped into “societies” (his equivalent of Aristotelian substances) that “prehend” (from “comprehend”—a perception or taking in of influence from previous reality) all previous actual occasions within their ambit in coming into being. Whitehead discovered, under the force of the same causal consideration influencing Woodbury and Bonnette, that the only way to introduce novelty into the universe was if those actual occasions were also prehending the primordial nature of God—in effect, the divine ideas. The point is not to commend the Whiteheadian God but merely to point out that fashioning a coherent philosophical system requires taking the character of metaphysical causality seriously. 348 Book Reviews Turning to the transition from animals to humans, Bonnette examines recent ape-language studies in chapter 5. The results of those studies underscore the qualitative difference between ape and human language ability and intelligence. Such studies have not been able to escape the training effect that can produce seemingly intelligent activity on the part of animals. Bonnette distinguishes elsewhere between, on the one hand, mere tool use and crude construction of tools that are consistent with animal sensate and instinctual behavior (birds use tools but are not really considered to be intelligent) and, on the other, the design manifested in true human tool-making. The artistry of the Acheulean tools that implies true intelligence has already been mentioned. With this empirically observable qualitative distinction between animal and human intelligence established, Bonnette then, in chapter 6, sets out Thomas’s demonstration for the spirituality of the human soul and the metaphysical need for a direct creation by God. Chapter 9 shifts to theological concerns. The fundamental compatibility between natural science (pursued in a philosophically coherent fashion) and Christian faith is affirmed. Chapter 10 examines what the Catholic magisterium has taught with regard to human origins, beginning with the 1909 Biblical Commission’s statement of the essential facts that may not be called into question “because they touch upon Christian fundamental teachings.” Two of these have already been treated, creation of all things by God and the special creation of man. Beyond these, there are “the formation of the first woman from man, the unity of the human race . . . [the preternatural gifts] . . . the divine command . . . the transgression of that divine command . . . the fall of our first parents from their primitive state of innocence, and the promise of a future Redeemer” (145). Several of these are beyond the ability of empirical science to judge. Bonnette cites Ludwig Ott, who notes that “the teaching of the unity of the human race…is a necessary presupposition of the dogma of Original Sin and Redemption.”1 Bonnette concludes that, “if Adam and Eve did not exist as individual human beings who sinned, thereby communicating their fallen nature to all their descendants, there is no need for redemption or a Redeemer” (153). There must be a first true human who sinned and from whom the human race descended. Chapter 11 examines current theory on human origins. His presumption that the first true human was a Homo erectus is reprised 1 Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 6th ed. (St. Louis/London: Herder, 1964), 95. Book Reviews 349 (167). The special creation of man, he notes in the next chapter (on the origin of Adam and Eve), is to be identified with the infusion of “the first intellective soul into properly disposed matter” (169). He acknowledges that the biological species Homo erectus might have existed prior to this; it is the creation and infusion of the intellective soul that makes such a creature to be a true human. “An absolutely literal reading of Genesis . . . constitutes no metaphysical problem,” but Bonnette is intent on reconciling “biology’s evolutionary theory with the historical Adam and Eve of Genesis” (171). While God could create the human body directly, Bonnette asks “what would possibly be served by creating the appearance, but not the substance of human bodily evolution?” He examines various possibilities for the first infusion of a human soul and for Eve’s derivation from Adam and admits that such discussion is all conjectural. Bonnette returns to the topic of a literal Adam and Eve in the first appendix, asking whether alternate explanations are theologically adequate and whether natural science proves that a first couple is “impossible.” The first question had been answered in the basic text. The second focuses on the sort of objection raised by Francisco J. Ayala, who argued 2 that, “at the time of the Homo (human)/Pan (chimpanzee) split there must have been thirty-two separate versions of this gene [HLA-DRB1] present in the founding population. Since a single mating pair can pass through only four versions, he inferred that a bottleneck of two individuals as founders was not possible then or any time since” (221). Subsequent studies have narrowed the gap, reducing the number of versions perhaps even to just four (222). Even if there are more than this, an original human couple is not necessarily ruled out. Making use of articles by Kenneth Kemp3 and myself,4 Bonnette argues that, to rule out the possibility of a first human couple, one would also have to rule out any and all interbreeding between the first true humans and non-human members of the same animal species. Practically speaking, such a proof would be impossible to verify. Bonnette’s presentation is an excellent example of a nuanced Catholic approach to evolution. His careful distinction between 2 3 4 “The Myth of Eve: Molecular Biology and Human Origins,” Science 270, no. 5292 (1995): 1930–36. “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85.2 (2011): 217–36. “Evolution,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement (Detroit, MI: Gale/ Cengage Learning, 2009). 350 Book Reviews a scientist’s and a philosopher’s understanding of terms such as “nature” or “species” are quite helpful, as well as his exploration of the philosophical and theological implications of various approaches to evolutionary theory. A similar distinction between a scientist’s and a philosopher’s understanding of “matter” would also have been helpful. He slips too easily between a scientific approach to this and Aristotle’s hylemorphic analysis. Likewise, his discussion of the senses that distinguish animals from plants and inanimate objects would benefit from a closer analysis than one would find in Thomas. Taste and smell, which are closely allied, are grounded in chemical reactions—molecules binding to specific receptors; touch and hearing are grounded in electrostatic pressure; and vision is grounded in electromagnetic effects. Binding reactions, electrostatic pressure, and electromagnetic interaction characterize even the most fundamental of particles. What is distinctive about the senses of animals is, rather, how these influences are communicated to the whole. It is the organization that is “novel,” rather than the influences themselves. The distinction between philosophical species, based as it is on “essential properties or proper accidents,” would need to be based on this rather N&V than on sense powers as such. Earl Muller, S.J. Kenrick-Glennon Seminary St. Louis, MO Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide by R B. S “Aquinas was both preacher and enquirer. Randall Smith’s splendid book takes us closer to understanding the relationship between these two vocations than anyone else has done so far.” —Alasdair MacIntyre University of Notre Dame “With this excellent book, Randall Smith has finally provided an interpretive key that allows us to receive the treasure of Thomas’s sermons.” —Reinhard Hütter Duke University Divinity School “St. Thomas is universally known as a theologian, but few people know that he was also a skilled preacher. His sermons represent an integral part of his work. . . . In reading them, one discovers the constant concern of a Master theologian to extend his theology through a pastoral practice adapted to the most humble settings. Professor Randall Smith has perfectly grasped this intention.” —Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P. University of Fribourg, Switzerland Visit EmmausRoad.org to order or call 800-398-5470 to request a desk copy. Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX by A W J Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX argues that the “problem” of Church and State did not exist in the thirteenth century. Rather, the spiritual and the temporal powers were wrapped up together in a differentiated and sacramental social order. The book brings contemporary thought concerning the definition of “religion,” “secular,” and “politics” into the study of the Middle Ages, something that is long overdue. C OMING S PRING 2017 Visit EmmausRoad.org to order or call 800-398-5470 to request a desk copy.