et
Vetera

Nova

Fall 2018 • Volume 16, Number 4

The English Edition of the International Theological Journal

Co-Editors
Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas

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, Catholic University of America
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
Boyd Taylor Coolman, Boston College
Michael Dauphinais, Ave Maria University
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
Dominic Legge, 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., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Trent Pomplun, Loyola University Maryland
Christopher J. Ruddy, Catholic University of America
Richard Schenk, O.P., University of Freiburg
Michele Schumacher, University of Fribourg
Janet Smith, Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Christopher Thompson, St. Paul Seminary
Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Capuchin College
William Wright, Duquesne University
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Nova et Vetera
The English Edition of the International Theological Journal
ISSN 1542-7315

Fall 2018

Vol. 16, No. 4

Commentary
Pope Francis and the Death Penalty: A Conditional
Advance of Justice in the Law of Nations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barrett Turner 1041
Marriage, Sacramental Grace, and Contraception............... Kevin Raedy 1051
Articles
“He Fathers-Forth Whose Beauty Is
Past Change,” but “Who Knows How?”:
Evolution and Divine Exemplarity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Davison 1067
The Study of Theology as a Foretaste of Heaven:
The Influence of Albert the Great on Aquinas’s
Understanding of Beatitudo Imperfecta. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jacob W. Wood 1103
Understanding the Common Good. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven A. Long 1135
Life Is a Stage:
Neoplatonic Participation and Imitation
in Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oration 45.. . . . . . . . . . Athanasius Murphy, O.P. 1153
Veritatis Splendor and Amoris Laetitia:
Neither Lamented nor Celebrated Discontinuity. . . . . Angel Perez-Lopez 1183
Beauty, Transcendence, and the
Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 1215
Symposium: H umanae V itae at 50, V eritatis S plendor at 25,
F ides et R atio at 20
Human Ecology and the Prophetic Value
of Humanae Vitae. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michele M. Schumacher 1227
The Splendor and Gift of the Christian Moral Life:
Veritatis Splendor at Twenty-Five. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Dauphinais 1261
Faith, Realism, and Universal Reason:
MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mats Wahlberg 1313
Symposium: Milbank and Pabst’s T he P olitics of V irtue
“There Is Another Kingdom”:
On The Politics of Virtue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tracey Rowland 1337
Challenging the Terms of Liberalism:
On The Politics of Virtue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D.C. Schindler 1353
Rebuilding the City of God: Locating the Politics of Virtue
within the Politics of Sin and Grace.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jacob W. Wood 1371

Book Reviews
Servitore di Dio e dell’umanità: La biografia di Benedetto XVI
by Elio Guerriero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew C. Briel 1415
General Principles of Sacramental Theology
by Roger W. Nutt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Froula 1421
The Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition
and the Renewal of Catholic History
by Christopher Shannon and Christopher Blum. . . . . . . David M. Emmons 1424
Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy:
Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom
by Anthony Celano. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew R. McWhorter 1430
The English edition of Nova et Vetera is published quarterly and provides an international
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Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1041–1050

1041

Pope Francis and the Death Penalty:
A Conditional Advance of Justice
in the Law of Nations
Barrett Turner
Mount St. Mary’s Seminary
Emmitsburg, MD

In a doctrinal clarification apropos for the feast day of

Alphonsus Liguori, patron of moral theologians, the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF] has modified §2267 of the Catechism
of the Catholic Church on the death penalty at the direction of Pope
Francis. Where the 1997 version left open, at least in theory, recourse
to the supreme temporal punishment, Pope Francis has judged that the
death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability
and dignity of the person,” quoting the Holy Father’s own address of
October 13, 2017.1 These changes build upon prior remarks by popes
John Paul II and Benedict XVI calling for the worldwide abolition of
the death penalty.2
Primo sono, the rescript vindicates the position of E. Christian
Brugger, who has extended the New Natural Law school’s emphasis on the impermissibility of directly intending any death to the

		www.press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/
2018/08/02/0556/01209.html. Of course, the 1997 Catechism of the Catholic
Church [CCC] quotes John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae (1995) in judging the
actual use of the death penalty in certain cases as “very rare, if not practically
non-existent” (EV §56, quoted in CCC §2267).
2
		For a few examples, see Cardinal Ladaria’s “Letter to the Bishops” accompanying the rescript, press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/
pubblico/2018/08/02/0556/01210.html.
1

1042

Barrett Turner

question of state executions.3 Brugger’s position is that the Catholic
Church can and should teach that the death penalty is intrinsically
evil as an instance of intentional killing. The rescript would also seem
a loss for Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette, who have advocated for
a return to the traditional Catholic position not only that the death
penalty is necessary for prevention and deterrence but also that it is a
proportional retributive punishment for certain heinous crimes.4 So
bright a luminary as the late Cardinal Dulles cautioned that a change
in the Church’s position on the death penalty would be a reversal of
doctrine that would portend the loss of the Magisterium’s credibility and any principled basis for development in moral doctrine.5 For
Dulles, even to say that retribution is no longer an acceptable purpose
of punishment would be a partial reversal.6 For his part, Brugger has
agreed that the traditional authoritative position of the Church militates against the new position. Accordingly, he has laid much stress
on prior teaching being non-definitive for that reason.7
Two other interpretive options are available. First, it is possible
that Francis and his two predecessors have simply made a mistake
		E. Christian Brugger, Capital Punishment and the Roman Catholic Moral Tradition
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), cited here. The
second edition was issued with a new preface in 2014.
4
		Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bessette, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A
Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2017).
5
		Avery Dulles, “Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty: Has It Changed?” in
Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning, ed. Erik C. Owens, John D.
Carlson, and Eric P. Elshtain (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 23–30. See
also Dulles, “Catholicism and Capital Punishment,” First Things, April 2001,
www.firstthings.com/article/2001/04/catholicism-capital-punishment.
6
		Dulles, “Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty,” 27–28. Here Dulles also
cites approvingly Steven Long’s position that the public order of society
should include reference to “the somber efficacy of transcendent moral sanctions in social life” (“Evangelium Vitae, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Death
Penalty,” The Thomist 63 [1999]: 519).
7
		Brugger, Capital Punishment, 59–138. See also Brugger’s two chapters in
Where Justice and Mercy Meet: Catholic Opposition to the Death Penalty, ed.Vicki
Schieber, Trudy D. Conway, and David Matzko McCarthy (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2013), 113–36. For this same reason, Brugger has advocated
for a type of doctrinal development that he calls “filtering and reformulating,” based on his interpretation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith’s [CDF] Donum Veritatis (1990) §24, a development that makes it “possible that a definitive teaching contradicting one or more of the propositions
of the traditional teaching could be proposed by the magisterium” (Capital
Punishment, 161).
3

Pope Francis and the Death Penalty

1043

or, at best, spoken imprecisely.8 The rescript modifying the Catechism and the CDF letter accompanying it are instances of the pope’s
ordinary Magisterium, which is not definitive.9 The hermeneutical
criterion of doubt and replacement used by some moral theologians
to argue against purportedly non-definitive doctrines of integralism
and sexual ethics surely would cut here, as well. If prior teaching was
non-definitive, why is this teaching definitive? It is not clear by any
means that a teaching coming later in time makes it more authoritative, any more than a cancer is healthy because someone suffers it in
adulthood rather than in infancy.10 Besides, the CDF is not claiming
heterogeneous development and Catholics owe religious submission
of mind and will even to non-definitive doctrine, either to doctrines
qua true or to prudential judgments qua safe or sure.11
		“When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it
could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all
deficiencies” (CDF, Donum Veritatis, §24). In illustrating the norms for interpreting papal teaching, John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly give the case of whether
the apparently absolute pronouncements of Pius XI and Pius XII proscribing
castration also banned penal castration. Subsequent clarifications by the Holy
Office answered negatively, which shows that “words alone do not always
give us the sense, the true meaning, of a papal pronouncement” (Contemporary
Moral Theology, vol. 1, Questions in Fundamental Moral Theology [Westminster,
MD: Newman Press, 1962], 31).
9
		Avery Dulles, Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith (Naples, FL: Sapientia, 2007), 53.
10
		Compare St.Vincent of Lerins on the unchanging nature of doctrine and also
on the development of doctrine in Commonitorium, esp. chs. 2 and 23.
11
		On ordinary magisterium and religious submission of intellect and will, see:
the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (1964) §25; CDF, Donum Veritatis, §§23–24; and CDF, “Doctrinal Commentary on the Profession of Faith”
(1998), §10. On the question of whether non-definitive teaching is protected
generally by the Holy Spirit as “safe” or “sure” only, or as “true” for doctrine
and “safe” or “sure” for prudential and disciplinary matters, compare (supporting the former position) Charles Journet, L’Église du Verbe incarné: Essai de
théologie spéculative, vol. 1, La hiérarchie apostolique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Desclée de
Brouwer, 1955), 435–88, and (supporting the latter position) Joachim Salaverri’s treatise De ecclesia in Sacrae theologiae summa, vol. 1, 4th ed. (Madrid:
Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1958), 762. Here I differ from Dulles in
categorizing prudential judgments as non-definitive doctrine and not as
merely disciplinary acts, which require only external obedience (Magisterium,
94). While this question deserves further exploration, the fact that the CDF
has regarded both doctrine and prudential judgments as falling under the third
paragraph of the Professio Fidei supports my position against Dulles: “A proposition contrary to these doctrines can be qualified as erroneous or, in the case
8

1044

Barrett Turner

A better interpretive approach, in my mind, draws from the
nuanced way in which the CDF’s prefect, Cardinal Ladaria, calls
attention to the historical circumstances that make the Church’s
judgment appropriate. In his explanatory letter to the bishops of the
Catholic Church, Ladaria notes that Francis’s judgment “is not in
contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium.” How?
By appeal to the social circumstances of the prior teaching: “These
teachings, in fact, can be explained in the light of the primary responsibility of the public authority to protect the common good in a social
context in which the penal sanctions were understood differently, and
had developed in an environment in which it was more difficult to
guarantee that the criminal could not repeat his crime.”12 The prior
teaching in question was that the death penalty was a permissible way
of safeguarding the common good.
Were the death penalty itself intrinsically evil, it must never be
used no matter what the circumstances. Yet we see here that the
death penalty is permissible in one age and impermissible in another
precisely because of a change in circumstances. This obviously rules
out Brugger’s position, which holds that the death penalty is intrinsically evil and that the Church has only lately attained that insight.
Rather, what Ladaria says is that modern social conditions allow for
better means to be used in punishing criminals, achieving both an
effective safeguarding of the common good and also a testimony to
the inherent dignity of the worst criminals as made in the image
of God. As Benedict XVI said, the abolition of the death penalty
would be “substantive progress made in conforming penal law both
to the human dignity of prisoners and the effective maintenance
of public order.”13 According to Ladaria, “the political and social
situation of the past made the death penalty an acceptable means
for the protection of the common good.”14 Under new conditions,
of teachings of the prudential order, as rash or dangerous and therefore tuto
doceri non potest” (“Doctrinal Commentary,” §10). The Professio Fidei demands
“religious submission of will and intellect” for such doctrines.
12
		Ladaria/CDF, “Letter to the Bishops,” §8. Presumably, this includes both the
past permissibility of the death penalty and the primacy of retribution among
the purposes of punishment.
13
		Benedict XVI, General Audience of November 30, 2011, quoted in Ladaria/
CDF, “Letter to the Bishops,” §5. The appeal to both human dignity and
changed conditions is also a feature of the development in the Church’s teaching on religious liberty in Dignitatis Humanae (1963).
14
		Ladaria/CDF, “Letter to the Bishops,” §2.

Pope Francis and the Death Penalty

1045

including not only an increased awareness of human dignity but
also “more efficacious detention systems,” use of the death penalty
today “becomes unnecessary” for the common good.15 This new
prudential judgment activates a deeper participation in the “mercy
and patience of the Lord” in dealing even with our most grievous
and intimate enemies.16
Finally, given that this new teaching on the death penalty depends
on circumstances, it can only be non-definitive. Rather, the inadmissibility of the death penalty is not an absolute judgment, but one
conditional on a certain state of civilization obtaining in which it is
no longer necessary for safe-guarding public order. So long as the
social conditions referred to in the CDF clarification obtain, the
judgment that the death penalty must not be used also obtains. In
other words, the Church’s judgment is simply becoming surer, from
John Paul II to Benedict XVI to Francis, that there are practically no
modern circumstances that allow for recourse to the death penalty,
thereby calling for abolition. This does not imply that the state has
no power to put to death, but that modern circumstances being what
they are, there is moral need not to exercise this power.
My own research has uncovered a concept within the Thomist
tradition that describes such conditional advancements in justice
capable of recognition by the Church. The concept is the “law
of nations” (ius gentium), which is a kind of medium level of law
consisting of universal customs existing between the unchanging,
universal precepts of the natural law and the mutable, particular
laws of this or that political community.17 Precisely because of its
placement in between the immutable and the local, the ius gentium
is a set of universal, adaptable means toward attaining the unchang		Ladaria/CDF, “Letter to the Bishops,” §§2, 7.
		Ladaria/CDF, “Letter to the Bishops,” §9.
17
		The primary expositors of this concept belong to the sixteenth-century
School of Salamanca: Francisco de Vitoria, Comentarios a la secunda secundae de
Santo Tomás, ed.Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, 6 vols. (Salamanca, ES: Biblioteca
de Teólogos Españoles, 1932–1952), II-II, q. 57, a. 3 (3:12–17); II-II, q. 66, a.
2, nos. 4–5 (3:325–26); Domingo de Soto, De iustitia et iure, libri decem (Salamanca, ES: 1553) I, q. 5, a. 4 (44–46), III, q. 1, a. 3 (196–98), and IV, q. 2, a. 2
(288–91); Domingo Báñez, Decisiones de iure et iustitia (Venice: 1595) II-II, q.
57, a. 3 (13a); Luis Molina, De iustitia et iure opera omnia (Venice: 1593–1611) I,
d. 5 (13); Francisco Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore II, ch. 17, nos. 19, 20;VII,
ch. 4, nos. 3–5. The concept is given a different meaning by the neo-Thomists
of the twentieth century, though sometimes they arrive at conclusions very
similar to the Salamancans on particular questions.
15
16

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Barrett Turner

ing ends of the natural law. If better means or a different set of
social conditions arises, the ius gentium is capable of change, often in
tandem with the leaven of the Gospel in the world. We may apply
this concept to the Church’s current teaching on the death penalty
and religious liberty, in which the language of human dignity occurs
right alongside appeal to circumstantial changes in society. One
classic institution of the law of nations was the enslavement of the
vanquished in a just war, a “means” that preserved their lives while
still reducing the threat of future unjust aggression and serving as
retribution for the unjust aggression. Yet, as early modern Thomistic
expositors of the law of nations noted, this “means” was not so natural that it could not be outlawed in Christendom, replaced by the
practice of ransoming prisoners of war rather than reducing them to
perpetual slavery.18
There are two main interpretations of this concept in the Thomistic tradition: that ius gentium consists either in universal customs
added to the natural law by the human race as “morally necessary”
for keeping the ends of the natural law (the Salamancan school of
Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Melchior Cano, Domingo
Báñez, and also later Jesuits); or in conditional deductions from
natural law principles about what is strictly just in this or that set of
“civilizational conditions” (later, Maritain-inspired neo-Thomists
such as Yves Simon and M.-M. Labourdette). The former emphasizes
the positive aspect of the law of nations; the latter, at least in Maritain,
emphasizes the cognitive aspect—namely, that changes in conditions
allow us to realize something true that we missed in earlier sets of
social conditions.19 In either case, a change in circumstances makes
possible a change in the practical judgment regarding certain means
to a natural law end. In the case of the death penalty, a change in
circumstances renders the state’s use of its power over the life of those
guilty of grave crimes a less effective means of fostering the common
		 E.g.,Vitoria, De iure belli, q. 3, aa. 3 and 5;Vitoria, Comentarios, II-II, q. 57, a. 3,
no. 5 (3:16–17); Domingo de Soto, De dominio, no. 25; Báñez, Decisiones de iure
et iustitia, q. 57, a. 3 (13b); Molina, De iustitia et iure, I, d. 5; Suárez, De legibus,
II, ch. 20, no. 8, and VII, ch. 4, no. 6.
19
		It is quite possible that Pope Francis thinks of this question of the death
penalty less in terms of conditions enabling a change in custom than in terms
of conditions enabling a deduction from natural law “in light of the Gospel”
that was not morally possible in prior ages. This line is perhaps more difficult
to reconcile, as Dulles feared, with the credibility of the Magisterium and the
traditional teaching.
18

Pope Francis and the Death Penalty

1047

good, all things considered. Naturally, such a change would leave
untouched the state’s possession of the power itself.
The fascinating thing about institutions included with the ius
gentium is that, while mutable in themselves, their universal scope can
make them existentially indistinguishable from the precepts of the
natural law to the common person in any given age. We can call this
category “universal existential evil,” in contrast to the “intrinsically
evil.” In other words, that certain types of slavery were permissible
then under certain titles would “feel” as natural as our abhorrence
of slavery now. The “inadmissibility” of the death penalty ought to
be understood in the same way and is perhaps the reason why some
“feel” this teaching to be a reversal of the very doctrinal principles
on which the old teaching was based. Just as Salamancan theologians
such as Báñez and Soto appealed to the influence of the Church
in changing the practice of enslavement,20 so Francis now appeals
to “the light of the Gospel” in changing the practice on the death
penalty. What may be a permissible response to evil under certain
conditions can become an impermissible response to evil under other
conditions, especially if greater goods can be obtained or greater evils
avoided. All this still regards what is extrinsically evil, under the
aspect of what and how circumstances can make something extrinsically evil. Yet the very universality of the “law of nations” renders
such extrinsic evils “universal existential evils” that would be hard for
even educated people in this or that age to distinguish from the natural law itself. For this reason, the law of nations may also be called an
“evolving natural law,” distinct from the unchanging natural law, yet
universal and therefore not reducible to civil law. Again, the development of the law of nations occurs in tandem with the Gospel acting
as leaven in a world where evil and good are admixed. In this light,
the Church can identify, suggest, and even command better means
for attaining the unchanging end of our nature: eternal union with
the Most Holy Trinity. Hence, the Church can demand that a certain
means acceptable at one time no longer be used at another.
Accordingly, any new prudential judgment of the Church in such
matters should correlate with an advancement in changeable means
to unchangeable ends. This “law of nations” interpretation is simply
that, in new circumstances, new means are possible that were not
practicable, desirable, or even cognizable in the concrete circum		Báñez, Decisiones de iure et iustitia, q. 57, a. 3 (13b); Soto, De iustitia et iure, IV, q.
2, a. 2 (290b).

20

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Barrett Turner

stances of prior ages.21 Since these are better means, they should
replace, by means of a new universal custom, what was permissible
before but no longer best or even adequate. So, an abolition of the
death penalty can replace its practicable availability in earlier times
without entailing that the Church has taught moral error for her
entire history until 2018. Needless to say, I find the long testimony
of Scripture, the Fathers, and the Magisterium answers affirmatively
and definitively the question of whether the state possesses the power
to put to death.22
In my view, therefore, Francis’s judgment is within the competency of the Magisterium, even as it is also a contingent and non-definitive doctrine.23 The “law of nations” concept involves universal
customs that are proximate to the natural law, and thereby existentially of great authority, since these customs will transcend particular,
civil laws. Many important questions remain, of course. What of less
developed countries, in which the conditions invoked do not exist
to a sufficient degree that the death penalty can be removed from
the legal code? What of prisoners capable of doing damage to public
order or to the lives of other prisoners or guards while in a modern
prison? These are questions that may require that theologians clarify
more precisely the Church’s prudential judgment. Even Ladaria’s
letter to the bishops accompanying the rescript implies that Francis’s
judgment is an ideal toward which nations should move, rather than
a definition of an intrinsic evil that must never be done in whatever
		For an application of this idea to the Church’s teaching on religious liberty at
Vatican II, see Basile Valuet, La liberté religieuse et la tradition catholique: Un cas de
développement doctrinal homogène dans le Magistère authentique, 6 vols., 3rd ed. (Le
Barroux, FR: Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine, 2011), 2:749–96.
22
		On this point, see Feser and Bessette, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, 97–211.
A common theme of the tradition is also that the Church has begged for
clemency and time for reform on behalf of those condemned to death.
23
		Again, I concede the possibility that Francis and his predecessors are wrong
in this judgment. One can find other examples of prudential judgments from
popes that turned out to be wrong. Journet notes the judgment of Gregory
XVI that Polish Catholics should submit to Tzar Nicholas I, despite his persecution of the Polish Church (L’Église du Verbe incarné, 481n1). This prudential
decision was so bad that Gregory XVI himself publicly regretted it. Perhaps
this was simply a disciplinary order, not a prudential judgment. All the same,
the Church’s judgment against the use of the death penalty has received only
growing endorsement and increasingly universal application from several
consecutive popes, so the case requires much more care before identifying it
as a singular failure of judgment directed to a particular region.
21

Pope Francis and the Death Penalty

1049

conditions. He says that the Church, “in respectful dialogue with
civil authorities, [encourages] the creation of conditions that allow for
the elimination of the death penalty where it is still in effect.”24 This
implies that Francis’s prudential judgment does not obviate attention
to concrete local conditions, even as it communicates a firm goal
toward which civil authorities must now strive with all responsible
effort. In any case, these questions should not hinder one from seeing
that Francis is within his office to make such a prudential judgment
and to enshrine that judgment in the Catechism as existentially binding in the way I have claimed.
All this stands even if one were to find fault with the argumentation used by Pope Francis in arriving at a more absolute position
on the use of the death penalty, as the Church allows theologians
to do.25 For example, is Francis implying that retribution is not a
legitimate purpose of punishment where the Catechism now appeals
to “a new understanding . . . of the significance of penal sanctions
imposed by the state”? 26 Perhaps all Francis means to do is distinguish
retribution’s legitimacy in itself from the necessity of a proportional
retribution when other social goods are in question. In other words,
the argument would be that it is not necessary to pursue a proportionality unto death when other social goods are at stake in the use
of the death penalty (e.g., renouncing all violence in a “culture of
death” that may in fact be a tyrannical form of democracy, gaining
time for the criminal’s repentance and reform, rectifying inconsistencies in the justice system such as uncertain convictions, and limiting
the financial costs of death row). Another possibility is to remember
that history contains much evil mixed with even what prior Catholic tradition held were legitimate uses of the death penalty. There
certainly have been social settings in which the death penalty has
		Ladaria/CDF, “Letter to the Bishops,” §9.
		Another part of the Holy Father’s argumentation that deserves further criticism is his point that life sentences are a “hidden death penalty.” Were Pope
Francis to mean that life sentences should be abolished too, this would seem
to undermine part of the rationale for the development of the abolition of
the death penalty: that prison systems are developed enough to protect the
common good from the most dangerous criminals without killing them.
26
		“Novus insuper sanctionis poenalis sensus, quoad Statum attinet, magis in dies
percipitur” (CCC §2267). To say that retribution is not a legitimate purpose
in punishment would not only contradict the Catechism itself (see §2266),
but also the Compendium, the Roman Catechism, and a number of other papal
allocutions, let alone the traditional teaching of theologians.
24
25

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Barrett Turner

been inflicted vengefully. There also have been societies where the
temporal authorities employed cruel forms of the death penalty for
real crimes against the moral order or ordered the death penalty for
false crimes, such as confessing Jesus Christ to be Lord and Savior. To
be sure, there remain today settings in which the concrete application
of the death penalty reinforces a deformed pursuit of the common
good. One thinks of many Muslim countries in which the death
penalty is administered for the false crime of conversion to the Catholic faith from Islam.
Pope Francis’s move is another step in Catholic social doctrine in
the direction of limiting and constraining state authority in response
to the totalitarianisms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
both in the West and elsewhere. Will there be any state authority left
once the Church calls for functional abolition of that power that, in
prior ages, was the basis for proving that the state’s origin transcended
the mere will of men? Perhaps one can situate the advance in a different frame: that the Gospel’s light has shown a way of tolerating evil
in the midst of society for the sake of highlighting Christ’s mercy
and willingness to abjure violence for the sake of our salvation in
this age. Society should therefore renounce even legitimate violence
when it is no longer necessary, in order to better highlight the dignity
of all human life, as John Paul II urged in Evangelium Vitae, further
constraining traditional teachings on the death penalty and war to
N&V
only the purpose of necessary defense.27

		An earlier version of this commentary appeared on the Catholic Moral
Theology blog as “Death Penalty Development: A Conditional Advance of
Justice,” August 3, 2018 (catholicmoraltheology.com/death-penalty-development-a-conditional-advance-of-justice/).

27

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1051–1065

1051

Marriage, Sacramental Grace, and Contraception1
Kevin Raedy
Hillsborough, NC

The teaching of the Catholic Church on the matter of

contraception is deeply controversial. Or, at second glance, perhaps it
is not. Pope Francis, in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris
Laetitia (The Joy of Love), unequivocally affirms the ancient, uninterrupted, and unyielding stance of the Church in opposition to contraception.2 But the anticipation, and hence the subsequent reaction,
surrounding the issuance of Amoris Laetitia was heavily focused on
what have become the hot-button issues of the day: concerns related to
same-sex attraction and the reception of the Eucharist by divorced and
civilly remarried couples. In turn, Francis’s affirmation of the Church’s
condemnation of contraception seems to have attracted relatively little
attention. There may, however, be a second reason for this comparatively muted response: the Church’s teaching on contraception is now
so routinely and comfortably ignored that it has simply lost its ability
to stir up controversy.
There is, it should be acknowledged, a remnant, a small minority
of the faithful who have held firm to two millennia of Christian
thought on contraception. Is there a course to be charted that might
1		I am grateful to Paul Griffiths for both discussions and comments that have
benefited this paper.
2		Pope Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016).
Contraception per se is not a major theme of Amoris Laetitia. Nonetheless,
the explicit references therein to contraception, or the regulation of births,
unambiguously speak against it. Further, the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae is
referenced or quoted six times, always in an approving manner and in a fashion
that clearly affirms the Church’s teaching against contraception (see Amoris
Laetitia §§68, 80n86, 82, 154n156, and 222).

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Kevin Raedy

lead others back into the teaching of the Church? Pope Saint John
Paul II, with his instruction on marriage, forged an intellectual
framework that may well be conducive to this very end—to helping
us think with the Church regarding the problematic nature of contraception. Focusing on the notion of marriage as a sacrament, we can
find in John Paul’s teaching a line of argument that might resonate
particularly well with those who are actively living out a sacramental
life of faith—an argument that might lead them to rethink the very
plausibility of contraception within a Catholic marriage.
Before considering the theological deliberations of John Paul
II, however, I will provide a brief historical sketch of the events
surrounding the issuance of the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae.3 This
background information will be helpful in setting the stage for the
remainder of this essay, but it may also be instructive in its own right,
in part because many of the Roman Catholics who currently reject
the Church’s teaching on contraception have likely been influenced,
whether consciously or not, in important ways by the immediate
and explosive reaction to Humanae Vitae and the aftershocks set into
motion by that reaction.
The Reception of Humanae Vitae—Then and Now
The encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in
July of 1968, offered a steadfast affirmation of two millennia of Church
teaching on the issue of contraception. It also gave birth to a vociferous
outcry of cantankerous dissent. Among the more visible objectors was
Charles Curran, a Catholic priest and, at the time, a member of the
theology faculty at The Catholic University of America. Curran guided
a coordinated rebuttal to Humanae Vitae that included a written statement of protest—signed by eighty-seven theologians and accompanied
by a press conference in Washington, DC—a mere one day after the
official release of the encyclical in Rome. Two days later, Curran held
a second press conference, by which time he had presided over the
mailing of more than 1,200 letters—return postcards included—in a
continuing effort to garner signatures for his statement of opposition.
Curran’s statement plainly stipulates that the Church’s teaching on
contraception is fallible and then proceeds to set forth a laundry list of
claims in opposition to the encyclical (only partially enumerated here):
it arose out of a highly centralized and insular Church hierarchy that
		Pope Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae (1968).

3

Marriage, Sacramental Grace, and Contraception

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overstepped the bounds of its authority; its conclusions follow from
an overly narrow theological analysis; it is inattentive to an impending overpopulation problem; and its dire predictions regarding the
widespread use of artificial birth control are simply unfounded. On
the basis of these shortcomings, the statement concludes by advising
that compliance with the Church’s teaching on contraception is properly relegated to the dictates of one’s conscience.4
Another highly visible dissenter was Bernard Häring, a German
theologian who served on a commission established by Pope Paul VI
to study the matter of birth control. Häring, a teacher and mentor
of Curran and a signatory to his statement of opposition, authored
a lengthy article of protest against Humanae Vitae. Häring echoes
several of Curran’s claims, characterizing the encyclical as the ill-conceived offspring of a poorly advised pope and a Church hierarchy
engaged in an imperious exercise of curial overreach. He matterof-factly labels the document as a case of fallible teaching, indicates
that the arguments provided therein are “unacceptable,” and advises
that adherence by individual Catholics is a matter of conscience. In
turn, acts of disregard by Catholics who discern that the teaching of
the encyclical does not apply to them need not be broached in the
confessional.5
Häring’s article was not published until six weeks after the formal
		The text of the statement referred to here was taken from The Catholic Case
for Contraception, ed. Daniel Callahan (London: Macmillan, 1969), 67–70. The
attribution therein indicates that it was originally published in a variety of
outlets, including the August 7, 1968, issue of The National Catholic Reporter.
Callahan attributes the statement to “Catholic theologians” and does not
mention Curran by name. Curran, however, takes full credit for his leading
role in producing the statement. For his first-hand account of the coordinated
protest against Humanae Vitae discussed here, see Charles E. Curran, Loyal
Dissent: Memoir of a Catholic Theologian (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006), 49–56.
5
		Bernard Häring, “The Encyclical Crisis,” Commonweal 88, no. 20 (September
6, 1968): 588–94. The article militates against Humanae Vitae, but more generally, it is a polemic against a papal and magisterial authority that the author
finds disagreeable. One of Häring’s numerous claims is that Gaudium et Spes
evidenced a shift in thinking at the Second Vatican Council regarding contraception, and thus Humanae Vitae is self-evidently out of sync with conciliar
teaching. This claim stands in contrast to Amoris Laetitia, wherein Pope Francis
appears to signal with approval the continuity of thought between Humanae
Vitae and Gaudium et Spes (as well as the 1930 encyclical letter on Christian
marriage, Casti Connubii). See Amoris Laetitia §§67–68, 80, 154, and 222.
4

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Kevin Raedy

issuance of Humanae Vitae, but the fallout from Curran’s highly
publicized, morning-after jeremiad would have still permeated the
air when, just a few weeks subsequent to the release of the encyclical,
a Gallup poll found that only 28 percent of surveyed Catholics who
were aware of the stance expressed in Humanae Vitae (93 percent
knew the encyclical’s position) indicated that they were in favor of
the Church’s ban on contraception, with 54 percent expressing opposition. (The remaining 18 percent were of “no opinion”). Nearly two
thirds were of the view that one could practice artificial birth control
and retain his or her standing as a “good Catholic.”6
A poll conducted by Gallup three years later in conjunction with
an October 1971 Newsweek cover story—authored by Kenneth L.
Woodward and entitled “Has the Church Lost Its Soul?”—yielded a
similar result on the latter question: 58 percent said a “good Catholic”
could ignore Church teaching on birth control. Perhaps more telling
is that 75 percent of respondents in the eighteen-to-thirty-five age
bracket (intended to capture those of child-bearing age) indicated
that the practice of birth control is of no consequence to one’s standing as a good Catholic.7
Woodward’s article documents that these polls were administered
at a time that was tumultuous for the Catholic Church in the United
States, and one wonders whether those who assented to Humanae
Vitae may have believed that the Church’s teaching on contraception would simply take some time to settle. If recent polls are to be
believed, however, the soil on which the seeds of Humanae Vitae were
sown has proven not fertile, but barren.
Two separate polls conducted in 2012, one by Gallup and the
other by the Pew Research Center, yield the identical result that only
15 percent of Catholics view birth control as morally wrong. The
decline that has taken place over the last several decades is acutely
visible in the Gallup poll, wherein 82 percent of respondents indicated that contraception is morally acceptable.8 The more stunning
result, however, is found in the Pew poll. Although only 41 percent
of Catholics polled by Pew indicated that birth control is morally
		Dr. George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971 (New York:
Random House, 1972), 2157.
7
		Kenneth L. Woodward, “Has the Church Lost Its Soul?” Newsweek, October 4,
1971, 80–89.
8
		
The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2012, ed. Frank Newport (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 227.
6

Marriage, Sacramental Grace, and Contraception

1055

acceptable, that comparatively low figure likely attains because Pew
offered its respondents a third alternative: 36 percent of Catholics
indicated that the use of birth control is not a moral issue at all.9
What Went Wrong?
There is no shortage of speculation and explanation as to why, decades
removed from its issuance, widespread rejection of Humanae Vitae is so
stubbornly persistent. A partial answer to this question may lie within
the province of catechesis. Consider, for example, that the statement of
opposition birthed by Curran, which began with eighty-seven signatories, ultimately accumulated the signatures of over 600 Catholic theologians and philosophers.10 Many of these individuals would have held
faculty positions at Catholic seminaries, colleges, and universities, and
many would have been priests delivering homilies on a regular basis.
Collectively, they likely had a wide audience at their disposal (think
1960s college students and young married couples) that may have been
quite receptive to an alternative magisterium offering a permissive,
guilt-free decree on the matter of contraception.
Stated another way, the immediate reaction to Humanae Vitae and
the subsequent proliferation of that reaction may well have functioned
as its own potent form of catechesis, legitimating a doctrinal position
that was faithfully handed down to subsequent generations, eventually producing a wide swath of Catholics who were (and still are)
casually dismissive, if not entirely benighted, regarding the Church’s
actual teaching on contraception. It places little strain on the imagination to envision the immediate and highly contentious reaction to
Humanae Vitae as a phenomenon so deeply and widely rooted that its
shadow continues to darken the Church to this very day.11
		“Public Divided over Birth Control Insurance Mandate,” Pew Research
Center, February 14, 2012, www.people-press.org/2012/02/14/public-divided-over-birth-control-insurance-mandate/.
10
		Gary Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition
(Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 538.
11
		For an account of the broad and sustained climate of dissent precipitated by
the release of Humanae Vitae, see Ralph M. McInerny, What Went Wrong with
Vatican II: The Catholic Crisis Explained (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute
Press, 1998). Janet Smith paints a grim picture of this phenomenon in the
wake of the Second Vatican Council, and particularly following the promulgation of Humanae Vitae: “Dissenting theologians rightly boasted that they had
won: they had control of the episcopacy, the major Catholic universities and
most of the colleges, professional organizations, and journals. . . . Those preparing for marriage were told that they were free to use contraception; even those
9

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Kevin Raedy

In some sense, a widespread, emotionally charged, and deeply
entrenched counteroffensive in response to a papal encyclical that did
nothing more than reaffirm Church teaching is of little surprise. Not
only do the theological currents that bear the truths entrusted to the
Church move forward through time—they also run deep. And the
official texts in which the Church unfolds the deposit of faith—in
which it proposes these truths—are intrinsically profound, sometimes
even elusive.
This latter notion leads to a second consideration: in the case of
Humanae Vitae, the seeming inability of the Church’s teaching to gain
much traction among the faithful may partially reside in the fact that
its arguments are generally formulated in terms of natural law. The
elevated status accorded to natural law is somewhat unique to Catholic theology, such that its claims and implications may resonate only
faintly, if at all, with those who stand apart from Roman Catholicism.
Within Catholicism, however, one expects a more agreeable reception. And yet, as the polls discussed above suggest, it seems that the
natural law arguments of Humanae Vitae have, to put it gently, largely
failed to gain traction even among the Catholic faithful.12
J. Budziszewski argues that the problem is one of exposition: “
[Humanae Vitae] is both diffuse and elliptical; its premises are scattered and, to non-Catholics, obscure. . . . It seems to lack the sense,
which any discussion of natural law requires, of what must be done
to make the self-evident evident, to make the intuitive available to
intuition, to make what is plain in itself plain to us.”13 The polling
who confessed to using contraception were told there was no sin involved
if they were following their consciences. . . . It was next to impossible for a
theologian who was faithful to Church teaching to get a job in most Catholic
universities and colleges and even many dioceses no matter how distinguished
their degrees, no matter how sophisticated their research and writing” (“What
Comes After the Synod,” First Things, November 5, 2015, www.firstthings.
com/web-exclusives/2015/11/what-comes-after-the-synod).
12
		Some dissenters based their objections in part on the claim that the conclusions of Humanae Vitae follow from a deficient treatment of natural law. For an
extensive rebuttal to that claim, see Janet E. Smith, Humanae Vitae: A Generation
Later (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 161–93.
13
		J. Budziszewski, contribution to “Contraception: A Symposium,” First Things
(December, 1998): 18–19. There may, in fact, be a historical circumstance that
lends credence to Budziszewski’s criticisms. Frank Sheed, in observing what
he considers to be certain curious omissions from the text of Humanae Vitae
(e.g., almost no explicit reference to sin, no explicit command prohibiting
contraception, no mention of exclusion from the Eucharist for those who
continue to contracept), finds it unlikely that such omissions can be attributed

Marriage, Sacramental Grace, and Contraception

1057

data discussed above suggests that these claims apply with equal force
to Catholics.
Quite apart from expositional concerns, others have raised questions about the continuing efficacy of arguments grounded in natural law, even when those arguments are coherently formulated and
clearly expressed. David Bentley Hart asserts that society at large has
acceded to a modernist, neo-Darwinist worldview in which nature
is nothing more than the aggregation and confluence of entirely
impersonal and purposeless forces, the outcomes of which are purely
arbitrary and accidental. Such an outlook is fully removed from a
Christian understanding in which human morality and the created
order both subsist within a single unified and harmonious whole—
necessarily so because both were established by the same providential
and loving God and both find their ultimate end in him. Natural law
arguments may well retain their cogency in this latter setting, but the
formulation of moral doctrine that rests in part on inferences drawn
from nature is fully incompatible with the modernist view of things
that Hart argues has become thoroughly ingrained and ubiquitous in
our contemporary setting.14
to mere chance. He states: “All the same there is something, not exactly chancy
but unfinished, about the whole document. A Cardinal . . . told me that as it
was prepared for publication, it was held by the Pope’s advisers to be too long
for the public’s reading habits: a document half as long would be more likely
to be read. But instead of being rewritten at the new length, it was chopped
about till it was short enough” (The Church and I [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974], 243; emphasis original).
14
		Hart expresses his views, tersely summarized here, in a series of three articles.
The gist of his argument, as it pertains to this essay, can be found in the third
article: David Bentley Hart, “Purpose and Function,” First Things (August
2013): 71–72. It should be noted that Hart is primarily inveighing against
an approach whereby natural law arguments are utilized in a contemporary
setting to, for example, resolve public policy debates. His primary concern
is not to argue against recourse to natural law in theological matters. To the
extent, however, that Christians have themselves been assimilated into the
modernist worldview that he describes, the efficacy of natural law arguments
in a theological context will be similarly compromised. Even in 1968, the
Church seemed to understand itself as competing with such a mindset, as Paul
VI states in Humanae Vitae that marriage, “far from being the effect of chance
or the result of the blind evolution of natural forces, . . . is in reality the wise
and provident institution of God the Creator, whose purpose was to effect in
man his loving design” (§8). Although Hart sparked a good deal of debate with
his provocations, and not all are in agreement with him, others quite quickly
and readily endorsed his views. Rod Dreher, to provide one example, cites
Hart in explaining why natural law arguments gain no traction in discussions

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Kevin Raedy

Whatever the case, there is no need here to bring to closure the
debate over the causes underlying Humanae Vitae’s inability to take
hold among the faithful. The fact of failure is itself sufficient motivation for highlighting and exploring—without in any way subverting
or departing from the natural-law foundations of the Church’s stance
on contraception—an already existing and potentially compelling
path of entry into the matter: marriage as sacrament.
John Paul II and the Totality of Self-Gift
Viewed from a doctrinal perspective, the stance regarding contraception expressed in Humanae Vitae is relatively tame—nothing more than
a reaffirmation of what the Church had always taught. The shock to
the doctrinal system came rather from one particular outcome of the
1930 Lambeth Conference, where the Anglican Church, breaking with
deeply entrenched Christian belief, passed a resolution permitting the
use of contraception for “morally sound” reasons that are consonant
with “Christian principles.”15
Whatever the currents of thought and opinion that led the Anglican Church to break ranks, the Catholic Church held firm. On
December 31 of 1930—a scant five months after Lambeth—Pope
Pius XI reasserted the Church’s enduring condemnation of contraception in Casti Connubii, his encyclical on Christian marriage.16 The
Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, in its
discussion of marriage and the family, unequivocally confirmed this
stance, but it held off on a comprehensive discussion in deference to
an existing papal commission that was actively deliberating on the
matter.17 Less than three years later, with the commission having
completed its work, Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae.18
on same-sex marriage. See Rod Dreher, “Why Natural Law Arguments Fail,”
The American Conservative, February 20, 2013, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/why-natural-law-arguments-fail/.
15
		The Lambeth Conferences (1867–1948):The Reports of the 1920, 1930, and 1948
Conferences, with Selected Resolutions from the Conferences of 1867, 1878, 1888,
1897 and 1908 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1948),
166.
16
		Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Casti Connubii (1930).
17
		Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World, Gaudium et Spes (1965).
18
		John Finnis explains that the deliberation described here did not entail any
kind of reconsideration regarding the Church’s constant teaching on contraception. Rather, given the newness of the birth control pill, there was at that
time a lack of clarity as to whether the pill actually constituted a form of

Marriage, Sacramental Grace, and Contraception

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In keeping with the Church’s long-standing theological premise
for its position, all three of these documents set forth the problematic
nature of contraception on the basis of natural law. They also speak
to varying degrees about marriage as a sacrament—Casti Connubii and
Gaudium et Spes a great deal, Humanae Vitae very little. But they seem
largely unconcerned with specifying a link between contraception
and a sacramental view of marriage.
Pope John Paul II, in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio [hereafter, FC] is less diffident about the connection.19
The manner in which he relates the two can best be seen by first
considering his denunciation of contraception:
When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate
these two meanings [the unitive and the procreative] that God
the Creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman and
in the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as “arbiters” of the divine plan and they “manipulate” and degrade
human sexuality—and with it themselves and their married
partner—by altering its value of “total” self-giving. Thus the
innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving
of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an
objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving
oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive
refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner
truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in
personal totality. (FC §32)
In conveying the moral gravity of the act of contraception, John
Paul does not mince words. But what is critical to emphasize here is
that the notion of the totality of self-gift—exerted in heavy-handed
contraception in line with what the Church had already declared morally
impermissible. The papal commission ultimately concluded that there is, in
fact, no moral distinction between the pill and other forms of contraception
that had already been banned; see John Finnis, Religion and Public Reasons:
Collected Essays Volume V (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011): 346–48.
Finnis relies here in part on a published interview with Catholic philosopher
Germain Grisez (“Germain Grisez on Humanae Vitae, Then and Now,” Zenit.
org, July 14, 2003, https://zenit.org/articles/germain-grisez-on-humanaevitae-then-and-now/).
19
		Pope John Paul II, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio
(1981).

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Kevin Raedy

fashion in this censure of contraception—is also intrinsic to his characterization of marriage as sacrament. Consider, for example, this
statement regarding sacramentally married persons:
The content of [their] participation in Christ’s life is also
specific: conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the
elements of the person enter—appeal of the body and instinct,
power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of
will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond
union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it
demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual
giving; and it is open to fertility. (FC §13; emphasis added) 20
In other words, a true manifestation of sacramental marriage and of
the mutual self-giving that is free of the restraints of contraception find
their origins in one and the same totality.
John Paul’s characterization of sacramental marriage is based in
part on the notion that Christian marriage “represents the mystery
of Christ’s Incarnation and the mystery of His covenant” (FC §13).
That, of course, is not new. But in explicating the sacramental nature
of marriage, Familiaris Consortio helpfully rehearses scriptural and
Church teaching whereby the Incarnation of Christ and his subsequent death on the Cross entailed nothing less than a totality of
self-giving in which he submitted himself entirely to the Father’s
will. And in establishing the new and eternal covenant in the shedding of his blood on the Cross, Christ as bridegroom gave of himself
without reserve—a totality of self-gift—for his bride, the Church.
The sacramental character of marriage is inextricably bound up
with this understanding of covenantal relationship, a relationship
predicated on a totality of self-gift. As contraception represents an act
of the will in which the marriage partners withhold something from
one another—thus refraining from the totality of mutual self-giving
that is the basis of the covenant established by Christ—it strikes at the
very foundation of sacramental marriage.
To be clear, there is no departure from previous Church teaching in Familiaris Consortio. The relationship between Christ and his
Church as the model for Christian marriage is paradigmatic to Casti
		John Paul is actually quoting himself here, taking this text from a speech he
gave to the delegates of the Centre de Liaison des Equipes de Recherche on
November 3, 1979.

20

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Connubii, and Gaudium et Spes narrates this ideal within the context of
covenant. Further, John Paul unequivocally affirms the long-established proscription of contraception based on natural law: “Husbands
and wives should first of all recognize clearly the teaching of Humanae
Vitae as indicating the norm for the exercise of their sexuality” (FC
§34). But his way of conceptualizing matters in Familiaris Consortio—a conceptualization that issues forth in part from the influence
of personalism on the way that he envisages and explicates Church
teaching—also provides us with a basis for thinking about how the
act of contraception is deeply problematic within the context of a
sacramental understanding of marriage.21
The Sacramental Life
Why does any of this matter? Perhaps, ultimately, it will make no
difference. But I will offer one reason as to why we should at least be
thinking about it.The Pew poll discussed earlier contains one result not
mentioned above—responses given by a sub-sample of Catholics who
attend Mass on a weekly basis. The results for this cohort were slightly
better than for the full sample: 33 percent indicated that birth control
is morally acceptable (vs. 41 percent for the full sample), 27 percent
that it is morally wrong (vs. 15 percent), and 30 percent that it is not a
moral issue at all (vs. 36 percent). One can take a bit of solace in these
numbers, particularly in the “morally wrong” category, and simultaneously see compelling evidence that the Church’s teaching has largely
failed to take hold.
One can also see opportunity. Buried in Casti Connubii, in its
discussion of marriage as sacrament, Pope Pius XI states that, “besides
the . . . indissolubility [of sacramental marriage], there are also much
higher emoluments as the word ‘sacrament’ itself very aptly indicates;
for to Christians this is not a meaningless and empty name” (§38). It
is a compelling claim—that there are those for whom the notion of
“sacrament” is of deep import. And what Pius XI said of Christians
in 1930 is almost certainly true of weekly Mass attendees in 2018.
Even if they cannot all express with theological precision and depth
the meaning of “sacrament,” they live out their lives under the influ		Smith indicates that “John Paul’s understanding of natural law and of personalist values permits no conflict between them” (Humanae Vitae: A Generation
Later, 231). For a more extensive treatment of the relationship between natural
law and personalism in John Paul’s theology, see Janet E. Smith, “The Universality of Natural Law and the Irreducibility of Personalism,” Nova et Vetera
(English) 11, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 1229–47.

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ence of a deep-seated, visceral sense of the efficacy and power of the
sacraments.
They are, after all, people who, at least once per week, lapse into
a hushed reverence during the liturgy of the Eucharist, readying
themselves to receive the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ
their savior. When they get married, they get married in the Church,
and when they are blessed with children, they ask that same Church
to wash their newborn in the regenerative waters of Baptism. When
they stray into sin, they seek out God’s mercy and grace in the sacrament of Penance. And when they find themselves in the hospital, they
ask for a priest who, through the Anointing of the Sick, brings to
them the healing touch of the Holy Spirit and enables them to unite
their own suffering to Christ’s suffering on the Cross. The ebb and
flow of their lives is imbued with sacramental grace.
It seems, in turn, a modest proposal to suggest that such individuals
might find Church teaching on contraception more compelling—or
at least more accessible—if viewed through a sacramental lens. The
opening of that lens might begin with a consideration of the Church’s
recognition that the union between man and woman cannot escape
the consequences of sin and, in turn, that this union is inherently
vulnerable to difficulties and trials—“discord, a spirit of domination,
infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and
separation” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] §1606).22
A remedy for this strife exists within Christian marriage, which
is “the sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church” (CCC
§1617). This covenant, entered into by husband and wife, is “integrated into God’s covenant with man” (CCC §1639), and in the
words of Gaudium et Spes, “authentic married love is caught up into
divine love” (§48). And it is precisely by virtue of marriage’s status as
a sacrament that the grace that issues forth from the wounds of Christ
brings to husband and wife “the strength to take up their crosses and
so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one
another, to bear one another’s burdens, to ‘be subject to one another
out of reverence for Christ’ [Eph 5:21], and to love one another with
supernatural, tender, and fruitful love” (CCC §1642).
All of the sacraments are unfailingly efficacious—they communicate grace ex opere operato—because they were instituted by Christ
and it is he himself who acts when they are administered “worthily
in faith” (CCC §1127). But, as is also the case with each of the other
		Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997).

22

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sacraments, the fruit borne by the sacrament of marriage depends on
the interior disposition of its recipients. And it is at this point that
one must wonder how much room God’s grace has to operate—to
strengthen the bond between husband and wife and to perfect their
mutual love—when spouses, through the act of contraception, willfully depart from a genuinely sacramental embodiment of marriage.
Some might object that a purely physical or biological act such as
contraception hardly has the capacity to militate against the spiritual
reality that is God’s grace. I doubt, however, that such objectors—at
least those who are actively living out a sacramental life of faith—
would advocate baptizing without water or seek to deny the occurrence of miracles that involve physical healing. In any case, John Paul
reminds us: “As an incarnate spirit, that is a soul which expresses itself
in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit, man is called
to love in his unified totality. Love includes the human body, and
the body is made a sharer in spiritual love. . . . Sexuality . . . is by no
means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being
of the human person as such” (FC §11).
For husbands and wives who attend Mass at least once per week—
as a manifestation of the deliberate pursuit of a sacramental life of
faith—this way of putting things might well carry some freight. Such
couples may, in other words, find credible the notion that the willful
act of contraception mitigates the fullness of grace that comes to us
from Christ through the sacrament of marriage, and that it is only by
this grace that the disorder—in some cases the devastating disorder—
to which marriage is always vulnerable can be overcome.
Of course, the elucidation of this connection between sacramental
marriage and (the absence of ) contraception is not to function as
an end in itself. Rather, it should serve as a portal of entry into the
Church’s long-standing teaching on contraception as it has developed
and been formulated via natural law, even if, for some, that entry
ultimately amounts to nothing more than a sympathetic hearing for
the conclusions of that teaching and not an immersion into the technical arguments that lead to those conclusions.
Reversing the Tide
The use of contraception among self-identifying Catholics is widespread and pervasive. In the face of an unwavering stance against
contraception that stretches out over two millennia, the vast majority
of today’s Catholics are apparently of the opinion, even if they do not
consciously formulate the matter in this fashion, that the Church, for

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the entirety of its existence, has misapprehended the issue of contraception to the point that it is pronouncing on a matter entirely devoid
of moral valence or, even more confusedly, is mistaking perfectly moral
behavior for sin.
With his encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI reaffirmed
what the Church has always taught about contraception. Perhaps in
anticipation of a less than enthusiastic reception of this reaffirmation, he stipulates that “responsible men can become more deeply
convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on
this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans
for artificial birth control” (§17). Specifically, Pope Paul predicted
an increase in adulterous behavior, a deterioration of the mores that
guide and regulate societal behavior, a reduction of the male estimation of women to one of mere instrumentality, and an imposition of
contraceptives upon the general populace by governmental entities.
Fifty years later, both casual observation and scholarly investigation offer ample evidence that the predictions of Humanae Vitae
have largely come to fruition.23 Catholics, by willingly allowing
themselves to be assimilated into the contraceptive mentality that
now pervades society, have participated in making those predictions
a reality. In so doing, they have brought harm on themselves and the
Church, the latter in no small measure by mitigating the Church’s
ability to provide the world with a witness it so desperately needs.
The precise causes of the assimilation that has taken place are likely
complex, but there does seem to be something of a consensus that the
Church is now populated by several generations of Catholics whose
worldview is the product of, among other things, an abject failure of
catechesis. Such a failure, having taken place within the context of an
increasingly aggressive evangelization by an increasingly secular society, might help explain a laity that finds its own Church’s teaching
on contraception all but incomprehensible. The issue, after all, is not
whether the faithful will be catechized, but rather by whom.
Roman Catholicism offers a deep, expansive, and rich theological articulation of the sacramental economy in which we live out
our lives, and the modest suggestion offered in this essay is that the
		Charles Curran’s statement of dissent summarily dismissed these consequences
as “unfounded assumptions.” For a survey of the evidence regarding the deleterious effects of widespread artificial contraception, including the ways in
which the predictions of Humanae Vitae have been fulfilled, see Mary Eberstadt, “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae,” First Things (August 2008): 35–42.

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authentic and sincere pursuit of a sacramental life of faith might itself
nurture a receptivity to the Church’s teaching on contraception.
More specifically, the theology of Pope Saint John Paul II on sacramental marriage has created an opening that could well be exploited
to offer “sacramental Catholics” a potentially accessible and compelling path of return to a genuinely Catholic apprehension of the harmful and sinful nature of contraception.
There are formal mechanisms already in place that could be leveraged to reach those who are likely to be responsive to the connections
John Paul draws between sacramental marriage and a freedom from
the constraints of contraception. Most dioceses in the United States
have formal offices or ministries in place that are specifically focused
on marriage and family life. In addition to Pre-Cana courses and
marriage enrichment programs, they sometimes offer talks, presentations and retreats for the laity, as well as training programs for those
who provide formal instruction at the parish level.
More generally, those Catholics who are actively partaking of the
sacraments of the Church are those who are listening to their priests’
homilies on a weekly basis. They are also more likely to be among
those Catholics who seek out their priests for counseling or spiritual
direction and who avail themselves of adult catechetical opportunities. They are at the least accessible, and perhaps even well-disposed
to receiving the truth entrusted to the Church. They might be a good
place to start. There is much at stake, and, if recent polls are to be
N&V
believed, little to lose.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1067–1102

1067

“He Fathers-Forth Whose Beauty Is Past Change,”
but “Who Knows How?”:
Evolution and Divine Exemplarity
Andrew Davison
Cambridge University
Cambridge, UK

Writing rapidly in pencil in 1842, Charles Darwin

produced a sketch of ideas that would grow to become his The Origin
of Species.1 Much that would revolutionize our understanding of biology was already present, not least his conclusion that “specific forms
are not immutable.”2 In this article, I consider how that mutability
bears upon the theological conviction that every creature is related to
God as a likeness to its exemplar, drawing particularly on the work of
Thomas Aquinas. It is clear from a letter dated January 11 of 1844 that
Darwin saw his insight as a disruptive one, writing to his friend Joseph
Dalton Hooker that “I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder)
immutable.”3
Theologians before Darwin had little reason to doubt that species,
or kinds, were fixed and stable, created by God alongside one another
at the beginning. Aquinas expresses such assumptions, writing that,
in nature, “like is produced from like,” proceeding right back to “the
first production of corporeal creatures,” when “the corporeal forms
		First edition 1859
		The 1842 sketch, along with an expanded version from 1844, can be viewed,
with a transcription by John van Wyhe, at darwin-online.org.uk/manuscripts.
html.
3
		Letter DCP-LETT-729, image and transcript at darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/
DCP-LETT-729.xml.
1
2

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Andrew Davison

that bodies had . . . came immediately from God.”4 In the same
section of the Summa theologiae, however, we find the suggestion of a
dynamism in relation to specific kinds that we should also consider.5
At the very least, Aquinas was willing to entertain that the earth
was only gradually populated with living things, with God having
first created the fixed forms of organisms as “seeds” that were later
realized, not all at once.6 In his discussion of the work of the third
day, Aquinas notes two contrasting Patristic perspectives without
choosing one over the other. One looks more like what we might
imagine as the classic pre-Darwinian view: “The first constitution
of species belongs to the work of the six days, but the reproduction
among them of like from like, [belongs] to the [subsequent] government of the universe.” The alternative perspective is of creatures
having been produced only latently to start with, in their underlying
causes: “The earth is said to have then produced plants and trees in
their causes, that is, it received then the power to produce them. . . .
They were not produced in act on the third day, but in their causes
only.” 7
Even according to that second perspective God ceased from
making new sorts of things after the six days of creation,8 although
even that rule admits partial exceptions, such as putrefaction and
		Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 65, a. 4, resp., trans. Fathers of
the English Dominican Province, 2nd ed., 22 vols. (London: Burns, Oates and
Washbourne, 1912).
5
		Claims that pre-Darwinian understandings of species were intrinsically and
primitively hostile to variety or change is increasingly recognized as a recent
and ill-founded interpretation of history (see Mary P. Winsor, “The Creation
of the Essentialism Story: An Exercise in Metahistory,” History and Philosophy
of the Life Sciences 28, no. 2 [2006]: 149–74). Aristotle especially seems to have
been more subtle on both points (as discussed by James G. Lennox, “Are
Aristotelian Species Eternal?” and “Kinds, Forms of Kinds, and the More or
Less in Aristotle’s Biology,” in Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the
Origins of Life Science [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], and
in contributions by D. M. Balme in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology,
ed. Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011]). Nonetheless, it is fair to say that the default assumption among
Christian thinkers was of fixity of species, at least for those who eschewed
nominalism (see Richard A. Richards, The Species Problem: A Philosophical Analysis [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010], 39–48).
6
		
ST I, q. 74, a. 2, resp., following Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 5.4.7–5.16 and
8.3.6 and De Trinitate 3.8.13.
7
		
ST I, q. 69, a. 2, resp.
8
		
ST I, q. 74., a. 2, resp.; and see ST I, q. 73, a. 1, ad 3.
4

Evolution and Divine Exemplarity

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hybridization, of which Aquinas writes about “species, also, that are
new, if any such appear.” He goes on to provide examples: “Animals,
and perhaps even new species of animals, are produced by putrefaction,” and “animals of new kinds arise occasionally from the connection of individuals belonging to different species, as the mule is the
offspring of an ass and a mare.”9 Here, effects (such as the mule) are
manifested that nonetheless “existed previously” in causes produced
“in the works of the six days.” Overall, then, we encounter a balance
between some admission of novelty in later history and the sense of
an unfolding of what was conferred “causally” beforehand.
Both novelty and unfolding are found in a discussion in De potentia: “The universe in its beginning was perfect as regards the species
of things, but not as regards all individuals: or [it was perfect] as
regards nature’s causes from which afterwards other things could
be propagated, but not as regards all their effects.”10 Approached in
terms of species and individuals, the emphasis is on a fixed number of
unchanging species, but analysis in terms of causes that unfold in their
effects is considerably more open to an evolutionary interpretation
and to developing species.
In summary, the least evolutionary perspective in Aquinas aligns
with his statement that “the first members of the species were immediately created by God, such as the first man, the first lion, and so
forth.”11 Divine exemplarity would then come through the initial
creation of the first examples: “[At] the first production of corporeal
creatures . . . the corporeal forms that bodies had when first produced
came immediately from God.”12 We can no longer say, however, that
a certain species of rabbit, for instance, has its own limited likeness
to God because a chain of rabbits can be traced back to the first
rabbits, whose form was imposed by God on the initial clay. To put
it succinctly, the evolutionary mutability of species then raises the
question of how the divine likeness “got into” each thing.
There are hints of a greater openness to development in Aquinas’s
writings, and today, knowing that species are mutable, we need to
		
ST I, q. 73, a. 1, ad 3.
		Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 10, ad 2, in Disputed Questions on the Power of God,
trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1952).
11
		Aquinas, In II sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 4, in Aquinas on Creation: Writings on the
“Sentences” of Peter Lombard, Book 2, Distinction 1, Question 1, trans. Steven E.
Baldner and William E. Carroll (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1997), 85.
12
		ST I, q. 65, a. 4, resp.
9

10

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Andrew Davison

revisit our account of how divine exemplarity operates. At his most
open to evolutionary dynamism, we find Aquinas writing about “the
earth” (or, we might say, creaturely being) having “received [at the
beginning] . . . the power to produce,” as a cause produces effects.13 I
explore that perspective in this article, asking how divine exemplarity
functions once the easier option of saying simply that God imposed
“corporeal forms” upon an initial set of creatures is ruled out.
Divine Exemplarity in Christian Theology
Accounts of divine exemplarity have taken a variety of forms within
Christian theology. An article seeking to reconcile an exemplarist
position with evolution will therefore do well to work with some
particular representative example. I remain with Aquinas, first because
exemplarism is integral to his philosophical and theological vision
and thoroughly worked through in his writings, second because of
the significant body of literature on his treatment of this question,14
and third because of his profound influence on later theology. Having
chosen a particular representative of an exemplarist approach, aspects
of what follows will be specific to Thomas’s particular theological
outlook. The task of considering the differences and the alternative
strengths of other exemplarist accounts will remain. Bonaventure stands
as an obvious candidate, since exemplarism is also integral to his own
scheme.15
Proposals of divine exemplarity have been as significant for some
strands of Christian theology as they have been insignificant for
others. The continued place of exemplarism in Catholic theology
		ST I, q. 69, a. 2, resp.
		Mark D. Jordan, “The Intelligibility of the World and the Divine Ideas in
Aquinas,” Review of Metaphysics 38, no. 1 (1984): 17–32; Vivian Boland, Ideas
in God according to Saint Thomas Aquinas: Sources and Synthesis (Leiden: Brill,
1996); John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas on Divine Ideas,” in Gilson Lectures on
Thomas Aquinas, ed. James P. Reilly (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 2008); Gregory Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008).
15
		Jean Marie Bissen, L’Exemplarisme Divin Selon Saint Bonaventure, Etudes de
Philosophie Médiévale 9 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1929); Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy
of St. Bonaventure, trans. Illtyd Trethowan and F. J. Sheed (London: Sheed and
Ward, 1938), 139–237; Leonard J. Bowman, “The Cosmic Exemplarism of
Bonaventure,” Journal of Religion 55, no. 2 (1975): 181–98; Christopher M.
Cullen, Bonaventure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 71–77; Ilia Delio,
Simply Bonaventure: An Introduction to His Life,Thought, and Writings (Hyde Park,
NY: New City Press, 2013), 59–62.
13
14

Evolution and Divine Exemplarity

1071

rests, in part, simply on the continuing influence of Aquinas. It has
also featured in Anglican writing. An example is the Exposition of the
Creed by John Pearson (1613–1686), which was the standard text for
doctrinal instruction in the Church of England for 250 years.16 Pearson takes it as “the unquestionable doctrine of the Christian faith”
that not only the existence but also the essence of creatures comes
from God, as “framed” by him: “[Creation] hath not its essence from
or of itself, nor is of existence absolutely necessary; but what it is . .
. was made, framed and constituted by another.”17 The character, or
goodness, of each thing comes from God “by way of emanation.”18
As we would expect, Pearson associated the origin of kinds with the
creation of originals: “All things were created by God, in the same
manner, and at the same time, which are delivered unto us in the
books of Moses by the Spirit of God.”19
Exemplarism also features in the writings of Reformed Protestantism. The Belgic Confession of 1561 serves as an example: “The
Father by the Word . . . has created of nothing the heaven, the earth,
and all creatures, . . . giving unto every creature being, shape, form,
and several offices to serve its Creator.”20 Among later Protestant
writers, however, the idea faded in importance,21 perhaps in line with
		First edition: John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed (London: R. Daniel,
1659).
17
		John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed, 2nd ed. (London: George Bell and
Sons, 1893), 77.
18
		Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, 2nd ed., 88.
19
		Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, 2nd ed., 97. Anglican examples after the wane
of Pearson’s influence include Francis Joseph Hall, who stressed that both the
substance and the form of things were “divinely created,” since God is “the sole
cause and condition of the first origin of finite being” (Theological Outlines,
3rd ed. [Milwaukee, WI: Morehouse, 1933; originally 1892–1895], 112), and
Darwell Stone, who wrote that, “in creation, all things were made by God in
accordance with the type which already existed in His own mind, so that the
angels and the world and man, from having been as divine ideas, were made to
be in fact under the limitations of time and space” (Outlines of Christian Dogma
[London: Longmans and Green, 1903], 31).
20
		 James T. Dennison, Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English
Translation, vol. 2, 1552–1566 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage
Books, 2010), 431 (article 12). It is notable that the Lutheran confessions deal
with creation in what today might be called a human and existential register
and do not typically address (positively or negatively) such doctrinal points as
divine exemplarity.
21
		Charles Hodge, for instance, interpreted the idea that everything is “from
God” in his Systematic Theology in terms only of God as efficient cause, making
16

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Andrew Davison

an emphasis on divine volition in creation over divine wisdom or
intellect. Where we do find a sense of exemplarism, it is typically in
relation to creation as a whole and to its overall properties, rather than
in relation to each particular creature, and it therefore bears primarily
upon general characteristics, rather than specific ones.22
Two Possible Theological Responses
Accounting for divine exemplarity within an evolutionary scheme is
not a trivial matter, and it deserves greater attention than it has received
in theological discussions of evolution. What treatment there is of
exemplarity is typically limited to asking whether evolutionary theory
undermines the idea that human beings are in the imago dei (or are
alone in the image, in contra-distinction to other animals). In relation
to evolution, exemplarity should no doubt count as a greater problem
for theology than it currently does.
Where the tension is to be faced, two solutions would be worth
considering as simple but ultimately unsatisfying shortcuts. One is
to adopt what has been the general trend in Protestant theology and
to downplay the role of divine exemplarity entirely, or at least with
no reference to formal or exemplary causation: Scripture teaches that “the
universe (τὰ πάντα) is ἐκ θεοῦ of God. . . . [It] is ‘of Him’ as its efficient cause”
(Systematic Theology, vol. 1 [New York: Scribner and Armstrong, 1873], 559).
22
		For instance, despite having written that he wishes to move beyond the sense
of only a “general dependence of the created world on the Creator for its
being,” the Lutheran Philip J. Heffner goes no further than applying exemplarity to creation as a whole: “The nature of God as one and good, together
with the conviction that God has created the world intentionally and freely,
leads inescapably to the assertion that the created world is a unity, that it is
good, and that it has a purpose and meaning” (“The Creation,” in Christian
Dogmatics, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, vol. 1 [Philadelphia:
Fortress, 2011], 306). From a more conservative evangelical perspective, the
closest that Louis Berkhof comes in his Reformed Dogmatics to attributing the
origin of specific form to God is to write that “the glorious perfections of
God are manifested in His entire creation” (Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1 [Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1932], 122 [section III.A.6.b]). Berkhof also upholds
the immutability of specific form, taking it to be one of the principal reasons
to oppose evolution on scriptural grounds: “The Bible teaches that plants and
animals and man appeared on the scene at the creative fiat of the Almighty. . .
. The Bible represents God as creating plants and animals after their kind, and
yielding seed after their kind, that is, so that they would reproduce their own
kind; but the theory of evolution points to natural forces, resident in nature,
leading to the development of one species out of another” (1:148 [section
III.C.6.a]).

Evolution and Divine Exemplarity

1073

respect to specific creatures. The other is to make a rapid recourse to
the doctrine of providence.
Giving up on divine exemplarity diffuses the tensions with evolution, but from the perspective of Christian systematic theology, it
risks ignoring an under-discussed aspect of a nonetheless prominent
doctrine: that creation is ex nihilo. The basic contention of divine
exemplarity is that creaturely form comes from God. To deny or
ignore this risks contravening the central contention of creatio ex
nihilo, that nothing about creation lacks a divine origin (except for
evil), although in a different manner from what was at stake when
the ex nihilo position was first formulated. As it was worked out in
antiquity, the point was typically to stress that the materiality of
creatures is part of what God had created. To speak of creation as ex
nihilo was to deny that God relied upon pre-existent matter. Following Aristotle, however, we can identify in creatures not only matter
but also form: not only the physical substrate but also that which the
physical substrate embodies or happens concretely to be.23 This too is
part of creation, and it is therefore also from God. Such an emphasis
on the significance of form is, in fact, supported by the first chapter of
Genesis, where the story is of matter, initially considered as “a formless void” (Gen 1:1), being shaped, or formed, by God into creatures
of every kind.
To deny a divine exemplarity for form, or simply to pass it over,
risks rejecting the force of creatio ex nihilo, which is to say of creatio
omnium, only not now by assuming matter to have an existence
		Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.7–9; see Aquinas, De principiis naturae, ch. 1. With its
focus on exemplarity, the present article considers evolution from a Thomist
perspective in relation to form. An equally promising avenue for thinking
about evolution relates to materiality, although not primarily with exemplarity
in mind. There is, for instance, the role of matter (through “indisposition”)
in the less-than-perfect propagation of form, which relates to mutation as a
central part of evolution (Aquinas, In VI metaphys., lec. 3, no. 1210; Summa
contra gentiles [SCG] III, ch. 10, no. 8, trans. Anton C. Pegis et al., 5 vols. [New
York: Hanover House, 1955]). More speculatively, there is a question that
follows from matter not being incidental to material things, but entering
into their definition: “In things composed of matter and form the essence or
nature is not the form alone but the composite of matter and form” (Aquinas,
Quodlibet II, q. 2, a. 2, in Quodlibetal Questions 1 and 2, trans. Sandra Edwards
[Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983]). If it is integral to
such a form to be the form of a material thing, we can ask whether the inherent
mutability of materiality also passes into the definition of the specific form of
material things.

23

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Andrew Davison

separate from God, but rather by imagining that the form or characterfulness of creatures could have an origin other than in God.
The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo insists that one must “trace back” the
materiality of all things to God, but its force is also that one must
trace back the forms of all things to a divine source. In the words of
Augustine, “in every mutable thing, the form that makes it what it
is, in whatever measure and of whatever nature it is, can only have its
existence from him who truly is because he exists immutably.”24 This
is also Aquinas’s position:
It is manifest that things made by nature receive determinate
forms. This determination of forms must be reduced [or led
back] to the divine wisdom as its first principle. . . . Therefore
we must say that in the divine wisdom are the types of all
things, which types we have called ideas—i.e. exemplar forms
existing in the divine mind.25
On similar grounds, Aquinas interprets the precise meaning of creatio
ex nihilo in terms of God being the creator of the “whole substance” of
the thing, which would again entail form as well as matter.26
A first theological evasion of the task of thinking about evolution
and exemplarity, then, is simply to ignore exemplarity or to mention
it only in terms of the large-scale order of the universe.27 The second
		Augustine, De civitate Dei 8.6, in The City of God (Books 1–10), trans. William
S. Babcock (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012), 249. In On True Religion,
Augustine wrote that no material creature could exist without the internal
concord of its particular form, calling God the bearer of all form (omnium
formosissima and omnium speciosissimus), from whom all form proceeds (11.21;
parts of this translation are based on that in Augustine, Earlier Writings, trans.
John Henderson Seaforth Burleigh [London: SCM Press, 1953)] 235–36).
Discussing this passage, Mark Clavier cites its parallel in Eighty-Three Disputed
Questions 43.2, where Augustine writes that creatures receive from God both
being (esse) and their form, which he stresses by using four words: ideas, formas,
species, and ratione (Eloquent Wisdom: Rhetoric, Cosmology and Delight in the Theology of Augustine of Hippo [Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 2014], 115–17).
25
		ST I, q. 44, a. 3, resp. Aquinas considered a creaturely “likeness” to God as
universal in scope, but he generally calls it an “image” only for human beings
and angels, using “vestige”/“trace” (vestigium) for other creatures (ST I, q. 93,
a. 6, resp.).
26
		ST I, q. 45, a. 1, ad 2; a. 2, ad 2; a. 3, sc.
27
		Jan Lever offers an unusual example of Protestant attention to exemplarity in
relation to evolution and fixity of species. To square theology with mutability,
he writes, we should abandon exemplarity: “We should eliminate from our
24

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evasion would be to invoke the doctrine of divine providence to
perform the task required here, thus short-circuiting the discussion
and closing it down.28 Our question concerns how one can say that
creatures have their forms as similitudes to a divine exemplar once
we appreciate that those forms emerged gradually, by evolution.
The “providential” short circuit would say that creatures come to
be as they are by the outworking of the divine will, and that is that.
Certainly, from a Thomist perspective, an all-prevailing providence
is perfectly compatible with acceptance of evolution, and of fortune
and process within creation. For Aquinas, God not only achieves what
he chooses, but also in the manner that he chooses.29 His providential
purpose is worked out in part by way of internal creaturely necessity
(of which the laws of nature would be examples) and, in part, as the
result of internal contingencies. That dead sparrows fall would be a
matter of a “necessity” woven into creaturely reality; that this or that
sparrow dies at this or that moment would be a matter of contingency, although no less open to providence because of that. Contingent events—events that, from the internal perspective of creaturely
history, turned out one way but could have turned out another—fall
as squarely for Aquinas under divine providence as does what happens
by worldly necessity: those things that could not have happened
otherwise, God having created the world in this particular way.
Aquinas belongs to a time-honored perspective within Christian
thinking the scholastic notion about ‘ideas of creation’” (Creation and Evolution [Grand Rapids, MI: International Publications, 1958], 138). He criticises
Aquinas and Albert the Great for having associated the forms of creatures with
exemplars in God (103).
28
		Attention to accounts of providence is vital for a theological account of evolution, which requires a robust sense of secondary causation. This is the aspect
of a Thomist approach to evolution where the most headway has been made,
for instance by Armand Maurer, “Darwin, Thomists, and Secondary Causality,”
Review of Metaphysics 57, no. 3 (2004): 491–514, and Fáinche Ryan, “Aquinas
and Darwin,” in Darwin and Catholicism: The Past and Present Dynamics of a
Cultural Encounter, ed. Louis Caruana (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 43–59.
29
		SCG III, ch. 70, no. 8; ch. 94, no. 11; De veritate, q. 23, a. 5; ST I, q. 105, a. 5,
resp.; Expositio libri Peryermeneias I, lec. 14, no. 22, as discussed by William E.
Carroll, “After Darwin, Aquinas,” in Darwin in the Twenty-First Century: Nature,
Humanity, and God, ed. Gerald P. McKenny, Phillip R. Sloan, and Kathleen
Eggleson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 327n8.
“Necessity” here is not akin to divine necessity. It is a “necessity given something else”: it is the internal necessity to the universe given that God wished
to create a universe of a certain sort, often called “hypothetical” or “suppositional” necessity.

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theology that holds that the bearing of providence on contingencies does not rob those contingencies of their contingency at their
own level. Consequently, this theological perspective can be as little
disproved by the investigations of the natural sciences as it can be
proven by them. Nor does it require us to look for ways in which
God might intervene in order to achieve his providential will.30 To
speak of intervention here—at least for the sort of “participatory”
theology especially associated with exemplarism—is already to
accord too much independence to creation, as if it stood sufficiently
over and against God that God’s action would then need to find a way
to enter into it, rather than saying that the whole of creation’s being
already derives from God at every moment.
Just as I find a theological dismissal of divine exemplarity problematic, so with too hasty a recourse to providence. I will, again,
limit my argument here to a Thomist perspective. Within it, as I
have said, providence certainly bears upon creaturely contingencies
as well as necessities. Yet, in that, there is also an insistence on the
integrity of the created order. Providence does not abolish the sense
that creatures have proper, natural, reasonable operations in keeping
with their particular forms.31
While the story of the unfolding of creation’s history is squarely
a topic for the doctrine of providence, that should not be taken—at
least for the Thomist—as undermining the sense of there being a
properly creaturely integrity to that story, which we can examine in
theological terms. In this article, that examination involves asking
how exemplarism might play out in relation to evolution.32
A Thomist vision, we might add, has traditionally aligned with a
sense of the world as ordered according to the divine intellect and
wisdom, rather than primarily or only by the divine will. Also on
those grounds, then, any invocation of providence that truncates
discussion of divine exemplarity by means of a solve-all invocation of
the determination of all things by the divine will sits incongruously
		In the worlds of Carroll: “God does not need a metaphysical intermediary in
nature [such as “quantum divine action” or the chaotic complexity of non-linear systems] so that His actions would not collide, so to speak, with other
causes” (“After Darwin, Aquinas,” 308). I discuss this in my Participation in
God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, forthcoming 2019).
31
		ST I, q. 105, a. 5, resp.
32
		In any case, since God’s providential knowledge of creation is practical, that
practical knowledge is intrinsically already a matter of exemplarism.
30

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within a theological outlook that otherwise stresses the coherence
of a creation founded on intellect and wisdom. Since the Thomist
approaches the world as fashioned after the pattern of the Logos, it
would be incongruous to say that the world has turned out as it has
just because of the providential divine will, with no more to add
about creation’s internal pattern or logic.
Aquinas addressed the compatibility of providence with natural
processes throughout his works, but we might pay particular attention to an account in Summa contra gentiles [SCG] III, ch. 97 (on “how
the disposition of providence has a rational plan”), not least because
we will return to that chapter below. It closes with a defense of the
place of secondary causes against the “double error,” either “that all
things follow, without any rational plan, from God’s pure will,” and
therefore without any internal logic (either in God or in the created
order), or that “the order of causes comes forth from divine providence by way of necessity.”33 According to Aquinas, we must say
instead that there is a proper “proximate cause” for every “natural
effect.” We can trace these back (reducamus) to “the divine will as
a first cause,” but we would do so “inappropriately” if ascription
of divine causation were taken “to exclude all other causes.”34 The
question of how evolution relates to exemplarity, as discussed in this
article, is precisely a question about the role of the evolving creaturely
process as a “proximate cause” in the divinely willed production of
the “natural effects” of creaturely form.
That of Which God is the Exemplar
As we have seen, Darwin’s theory swept away the possibility of saying
that God had bestowed particular forms upon creatures in some direct
way at the beginning by creating a set of first creatures in each kind
whose forms were subsequently perpetuated by reproduction without
change. Our appreciation of evolution has both removed any such initial
moment and complicated the notion of species, rendering it a moving,
and indeed somewhat blurred, category. We might well then imagine
that evolution undercuts an exemplarist scheme. The detail of any such
judgement, however, should rest on the detail of some particular exemplarist proposal (which, in this article, is that of Aquinas), rather than on
any such general assumptions. We therefore turn to some of the detail
in Thomas’s account. In doing so, the recent work of Gregory Doolan
		SCG III, ch. 97, no. 15.
		SCG III, ch. 97, no. 17.

33
34

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on divine exemplarism in Aquinas will be of particular use.35 As a first
question, we can ask what it is about the creature of which God is said to
be the exemplar. Aquinas’s startling reply gives the obviously Platonic
idea of exemplarism a distinctively Aristotelian shape.
Plato (and what we might reasonably call a broadly Platonic
subsequent tradition) identified the truest meaning of form with
the transcendent archetype of the species. Aristotle, however, held
that specific form does not exist other than as it is instantiated in
individuals.36 While he would uphold the idea of a common substantial form in all wolves, for instance, he did not suppose the lupine
form to exist outside them. While Thomas departed from Aristotle in holding to a transcendent origin for form (namely, in God),
he nonetheless followed Aristotle in doing away with the separate
transcendent Forms found in Plato.37 As an Aristotelian, rather than
identifying God primarily as the exemplar of specific form, Aquinas
saw God as primarily the exemplar of individual creatures. As he put
it, in a characteristic interweaving of the Platonic and the Aristotelian: “Singulars have acts of existence more truly than universals
do, because the latter subsist only in singulars. Therefore, it is more
necessary for singulars to have exemplars than it is for universals.”38
Vivian Boland calls this account of divine exemplarism an example of Aquinas’s “radical Aristotelian ontology,” with the emphasis
placed on the individual rather than on the common specific form.39
That might be granted, although the fact that Aquinas talks so much
of exemplarity could be said to be evidence of an equally radical
Platonism. The important point for what follows is that Aquinas
roots exemplarity in the correspondence of individuals to their divine
archetypes.40
		Doolan, Divine Ideas.
		Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.16: “Clearly no universal exists apart from its individuals” (trans. William D. Ross [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924]).
37
		ST I, q. 15, a. 1, resp.
38
		De veritate, q. 3, a. 8. Aquinas relates his belief in divine exemplar ideas for
individuals to God being the cause of the matter of a thing as well as of its
specific form, whereas he attributes to Plato a belief only in the exemplars of
form and species (see Doolan, Divine Ideas, 124–33, and Quodlibet VIII, q. 1, a.
2, and De veritate, q. 3, a. 5, resp.).
39
		Boland, Ideas in God, 226.
40
		Although Aquinas’s language developed over his lifetime, we can say that he
distinguished between three different ways in which the pattern of creatures
can be found in God: first as the productive exemplar (exemplum) of something
35
36

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With this observation in place, a good deal of what may have
seemed to be central to the problem posed by evolution for exemplarism is removed. We could see a conflict between evolutionary change
across generations and a supposition that nothing can change among
species only if species were what is foundational to divine exemplarity.
If, instead, the divine ideas relate primarily to individuals, the change
of species over time is no longer a problem. Nor, for that matter, is
the sense that a biological species is somewhat blurred, not only over
time but even at any given time. God’s single, perfect knowledge of
his essence includes, first of all, knowledge of all the modes under
which he can be imitated by individual creatures. Being perfect, it
also includes knowledge of what those individuals share in common,
to varying degrees—both at any given time and over time—but
secondary to the knowledge of individuals. It is therefore a knowledge that can readily take in the variety and changes of evolution. So
complete, indeed, is this aspect of a reply to evolutionary concerns
about divine exemplarity that the opposite question might now come
into view from what had been imagined at first, the question of
whether such a Thomist account of divine exemplarity does not in
fact begin to look like nominalism.
A response to that question would call for a more involved discussion of the place of specific form in Aquinas’s thought (and in that
of other exemplarist thinkers) than space will allow here.41 It is clear
that he held individuals of a certain kind to share something deteractually created; second in the broader sense of an “idea” (idea), which includes
God’s knowledge of possible creatures that are not realized; and third as a
“notion” (ratio), which refers to something knowable about a creature (actual
or potential) that could not exist in abstraction from concrete individuals, such
as matter, form, genus or species (Doolan, Divine Ideas, 123–55).
41
		In Quodlibet VIII, q. 2, Aquinas addresses the sense in which the divine ideas
are related first of all to the specific nature of a creature. The first in God’s
intention is that which is most perfect, and specific form has the perfection of
determining (and therefore perfecting) both the form of the genus, from one
angle, and the matter of the individual, from another. In the sed contra, Aquinas
argues that creatures are more fully related to God as divine exemplar according to form, which relates to the specific nature, than they are as to matter,
which relates to the individual. That said, what is posterior in the order of
intention (the individual) is prior in the order of execution, where singulars
come first (Doolan, Divine Ideas, 129). In any case, as Doolan points out, this
discussion ultimately serves to address how an individual creature is related to
the idea of that individual: individual exemplarity is the foundation (Doolan,
Divine Ideas, 129–30).

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minative in common, and he was right to do so. A theologian can
be committed to notions of specific form in the mind of God in part
because she recognizes the stability of something like specific form,
or kinds, in the world. Here, alongside Aristotle, Augustine, and
the author of Genesis 1, Aquinas remains more right than wrong.42
The diversity and mutability of species, even within an evolutionary
perspective, is secondary to what the individuals of a species share. A
set of interbreeding organisms and their offspring are far more alike
than different: a common form or ratio far exceeds variation between
them. Indeed, given the potential for evolutionary change that we
now appreciate, the stability and persistence of particular species for
long periods of biological time is at least as worthy of comment as is
adaptive change, when we see it. All that said—and this is the vital
point for our question—in aligning divine exemplarity primarily
with the individual creature, Aquinas very considerably opened the
scope for relating that exemplarity to the variation of species over
time. God’s knowledge of the modes under which he can be imitated
by individual creatures can take in both similarities and differences
within individuals and need not imply fixity of species. That this
aspect of Aquinas’s metaphysics of creation is open to the ongoing
development among species is, it perhaps goes without saying, quite
independent of his own biological assumptions, as a thirteenth-century thinker, about a basic fixity among species.
Evolution and Moving Images
Since Aquinas’s exemplarism does not place the species before the individual, it does not face the challenges that might be expected from the
evolutionary insight that species are mutable. A problem is diffused, but
we can go further than that. Not only does today’s Darwinian developmental view of species poses no threat to an exemplarist vision of
the relation of creatures to creator, it is in particularly positive accord
with that theological vision. There is a place for evolutionary change
and succession in Christian theology—here going beyond Thomas in
a Thomist fashion—not in spite of exemplarism, but because of it. As
notable an exponent of exemplarity as Augustine had written in the
early fifth century that it is precisely through change and mutability
		In the words of Augustine: “Beans are not produced from grains of wheat or
wheat from beans, nor human beings from cattle or cattle from human beings”
(Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 9.17.32, in On Genesis, trans. Edmund Hill
[Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002], 394).

42

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that the goodness of creation is fully achieved: “By the succession and
decession of things is the beauty of the ages woven.”43
For Aquinas also, some degree of change and succession plays a
proper and significant part within creation because of what it adds
to the breadth of creation’s expression of divine perfections by means
of variety. When it comes to forming a likeness to God, Aquinas’s
conviction is that finitude goes hand-in-hand with multiplicity. If
the perfection that in God is one and simple is to find expression in a
world of finite things, it will be by refraction into variety. Multiplicity is the nearest approach that finite things can make to displaying
the plenitude of divine perfection. “For this reason, then,” Aquinas
wrote, “is there distinction among created things: that, by being
many, they may receive God’s likeness more perfectly than by being
one.”44
Aquinas stressed that a plurality of species adds more to the perfection of creation—they add more to creation’s likeness to God through
participation in divine perfection—than does a plurality of individuals within a species.45 This is significant when it comes to thinking
how an exemplarist picture can mesh with evolution. It suggests that
developments down biological history that diversify species would
add more to the display of divine perfection in creation than would
ones that diversify creatures only by the multiplication of individuals
within a certain number of fixed species. Following Aquinas’s logic
further than he was able to follow it himself, we can posit that an
evolving succession of species would add more to creation’s display
of divine likeness than would a succession of individuals within a
certain number of unchanging species. Exemplarism does not compel
the theologian to imagine something like evolution—Aquinas did
not hold to it, nor did his peers—but from an exemplarist position,
evolution is fitting: it exhibits convenientia.
All the same, if such means to engage with an evolutionary
perspective are latent in Aquinas’s writing, they are no more than
latent. While he saw an important place for multiplicity and difference in creation, for him, divine plenitude is nonetheless reflected
more by diversity side-by-side than by change over time.46 There are
		Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.8.14 (my translation).
		SCG II, ch. 45, no. 3. See also: SCG II, ch. 45, no. 5; III, ch. 97, no. 2; ST I, q.
75, a. 5, ad 1.
45
		SCG II, ch. 93, no. 5.
46
		ST I, q. 47, a. 1, resp.
43
44

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creatures of a kind that do not die, and there are creatures of a kind
that come and go. That is not to suggest kinds that develop as kinds.
There is an element of dynamism to his vision, but the expansion
of diversity added by changeable creatures is not that of one species
developing into another. It comes rather from the presence of creatures that are born and die and are mutable and change, alongside
unchangeable creatures such as angels.47
Today, however, Aquinas’s account of exemplarity must be considered in light of evolution, where we find an expansive outworking of
his conviction that creation pays homage to divine plenitude through
its diversity. That diversity is now expanded to include the motion
that is the evolution of species. We might recall Plato’s famous maxim
that “time is the moving image of eternity.”48 Evolution possesses
its own form of motion, and in that way, it extends the capacity of
creation to be a moving image. By evolving over time, species trace
a fuller outline of divine plenitude than if they were static.
In Aquinas, we find an enigmatic parallel to Plato’s description of
the relationship of time to eternity in an aside where he writes that
creatures bear God’s image “though movingly.”49 It comes in the
Christological opening of the third part of the Summa theologiae, in an
article that asks whether it was most suitable that the Son, or Word,
should become incarnate, of the Persons of the Trinity. Aquinas laid
his response out squarely in terms of divine exemplarism, beginning
from the principle that “such as are similar are fittingly united.” He
then associates divine exemplarity with the Son in particular, who,
as “the Word of God” and God’s “eternal concept,” is “the exemplar
likeness of all creatures.” At this point, Aquinas makes his suggestion
about a moving likeness to God:
And therefore as creatures are established in their proper
species, though movably, by the participation of this likeness
		Changeability adds the variety of “the contingent” alongside “the necessary”
(SCG III, ch. 72, no. 3), the corruptible alongside the incorruptible (ch. 72, no.
5), the moving alongside the immobile (ch. 72, no. 6), and the freely choosing
alongside the determined (ch. 73), as also what is contributed by creaturely
fortune and chance (ch. 74, no. 5) and by having “accidental beings” alongside
“substantial” ones, where “accidental beings” are “things that do not possess
ultimate perfection in their substance [and which on that account] must
obtain such perfection through accidents” (ch. 74, no. 5).
48
		Plato, Timaeus 37d. See also Plotinus, Enneads 1.5.7.
49
		ST III, q. 3, a. 8, resp.
47

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[per participationem huius similitudinis creaturae sunt in propriis
speciebus institutae, sed mobiliter], so by the non-participated and
personal union of the Word with a creature [the hypostatic
union], it was fitting that the creature should be restored in
order to its eternal and unchangeable perfection; for the craftsman by the intelligible form of his art, whereby he fashioned
his handiwork, restores it when it has fallen into ruin.50
Aquinas obviously did not have an evolutionary picture in mind
when he wrote this passage. Indeed, it is difficult to know exactly what
he did have in mind, since he simply describes creatures as moving
images of God’s perfection in passing and moves on. Perhaps he was
thinking of the generation, flourishing, and passing of individuals.
Such a sense of individual development and of human flourishing as
something achieved only over time is certainly central to his account
of human nature, and therefore also central to his ethics. Rooted in
a virtue approach, with the virtues as habits—as “had” or acquired
things, as an accumulation of accidental determinations of substantial
form—his ethics and theological anthropology are built on a robust
sense of human development, to the extent that the human being is
seen, to a peculiar degree, as born a work in progress.51 In the words
of Aristotle: “Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the
virtues arise in us; rather, we are adapted by nature to receive them,
and are made perfect by habit.”52
Aquinas would not have had a change to specific form in mind,
but an exemplarist or participatory thinker today can creatively take
his words to suggest more here than he could have meant at the time.
This accords with the recent work of some contemporary Thomists.
Commenting on a participatory relationship of the creator to God,
although not necessarily with evolution in view, Jacob Sherman has
written that “movement itself is understood as the means by which
		Two further exemplarist arguments follow.
		ST I-II, q. 55, a. 1, resp.; see also q. 49, a. 4, esp. ad 1 and ad 2.
52
		Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2.1.1103a24, ed. Lesley Brown, trans. David Ross
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Josef Pieper wrote that ““nature”
implies growth, which means that we are born not as static entities but as
unfinished products, a “rough draft” whose realization is demanded by that
same nature “by virtue of creation”“ (The Concept of Sin, trans. Edward T.
Oakes [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001], 36). On this, see also
Étienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), 184.
50
51

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finite beings most properly participate and therefore image the
perfection of the eternal.”53 For Catherine Pickstock, every creature
is what it is by “borrowing” from God, and since God stands in
infinite excess to the creature, that suggests that creatures therefore
also stand over time in excess of the “snapshot” of any particular
moment.54
Fran O’Rourke has considered how this principle of creaturely
development and diversification fulfills, rather than abolishes, an
Aristotelian account of form and matter.55 As Jacques Maritain put
it, writing in 1966, creatures have a tendency to become “better
than they are or than they were.”56 Here, he draws into an evolutionary frame what he had written earlier in relation to aesthetics:
“[Things] are not only what they are. They constantly pass beyond
themselves, and give more than they have, because from every side
they are pervaded by the creative influx of the first cause.”57 A similar intuition is found in Josef Pieper, whose sense of an inexhaustibility to every finite thing he attributed to its participation in God
as its source.58
Movement and change are far from being inimical to divine exemplarism. Indeed, they are readily compatible, and exemplarist thinking can naturally expand in that direction once the straightjacket of
		Jacob H. Sherman, “The Genealogy of Participation,” in The Participatory Turn:
Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies, ed. Jorge N. Ferrer and Jacob H. Sherman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 85.
54
		Catherine Pickstock, “The Game of the Stone: A Sermon on 1 Peter 2.1–8,”
Theology 115, no. 3 (2012): 192.
55
		Fran O’Rourke, “Aristotle and the Metaphysics of Evolution,” Review of Metaphysics 58, no. 1 (2004): 3–59.
56
		The phrase, and close parallels, is found in Jacques Maritain, “Toward a Thomist View of Evolution,” in Untrammeled Approaches: Collected Works of Jacques
Maritain, vol. 20 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997),
115–18.The language of “better” here would be controversial for many evolutionary biologists, although less so if understood as meaning “better adapted to
a new or changed environment.” Maritain has an only intermittently strong
grasp of the science involved, seeming to imply, for instance, that evolution has
ceased: “The world of living beings was subjected (I say, was, because I think
. . . that this immense adventure was a thing of the past, completely finished
today), was subject in primitive times, during the millions of years of the genesis of the universe, to a long evolution” (111).
57
		Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (New York: Pantheon,
1953), 127.
58
		Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas: Three Essays (South Bend, IN: St Augustine’s Press, 1999), 60, 67.
53

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fixed species is loosened. Aquinas grasped this principle with respect
to the development of each material creature over a lifetime, but he
was held back from seeing it played out in the evolution of substantial form itself. We suffer no such inhibition today, and his thought
provides models for how this might be approached in terms of theological metaphysics.
What in God the Creature Imitates
The most significant question we have asked so far concerns what it is
about the creature that finds its exemplar in God. We might imagine
that, for Aquinas, the reply would primarily be that it is the creature’s
specific form. However, as Doolan has shown, among others, Aquinas
held that it is the whole substance of the individual creature that has
its exemplar in God. We can understand specific form as a secondary
generalization from that: a sense of what a group of creatures hold
in common at any particular time, which is determinative but also
admits of variety and is open to change.59 This observation opened the
way for us to find room, indeed capacious room, for an evolutionary
understanding of species within Aquinas’s exemplarist framework. We
then developed the idea that the change and development of creatures
over time is far from inimical to a participatory, exemplarist perspective.
Indeed, it integrates seamlessly.60
All that said, the question remains as to what the theologian might
say, after an appreciation of evolution, about how it is that a likeness
to God comes to be in the creature, given that we no longer suppose
that it was imparted directly by God to a set of first specimens of each
kind, created together, at the beginning. As we have seen, one option
would simply be to say that these forms were determined to be as
		Indeed, the specific essence of creatures is the basis for that change, both as
its starting point and in providing the mechanism: creatures have evolved
evolvability (see: Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, “Evolvability,” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 95, no. 15 [1998]: 8420–27; John
F.Y. Brookfield, “Evolution and Evolvability: Celebrating Darwin 200,” Biology
Letters 5, no. 1 [2009]: 44).
60
		In this article, I am leaving observations aside concerning ambiguities within
biology over the meaning of species. See: James Mallet, “Darwin and Species,”
in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought, ed. Michael
Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Richards, The Species
Problem; John S. Wilkins, Species: A History of the Idea (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2011), 197–225; and Wilkins, Defining Species: A Sourcebook
from Antiquity to Today (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), especially 193–98.
59

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they are by dint of divine providence. I argued in response that, while
I would wish to uphold the sense that divine providence extends
(non-competitively) to contingencies, that need not, and perhaps
should not, preclude exploration of how divine exemplarity works
out at a creaturely level. After all, when Aquinas, among others, set
out an account of providence along these lines, he sought precisely to
preserve the logic of creation’s unfolding story.
A balance is to be preserved here, and both sides of it feature in
the discussion to be found in SCG III, ch. 76, quoted above. On the
one hand, providence extends to contingencies; on the other, that is
not incompatible with mediation. As Aquinas puts it, it is “in agreement with the Catholic faith” to hold that divine providence works
“through certain intermediary causes.”61 The problem would only be
to suppose that providence is limited to general mediating creaturely
causes and does not also extend to individuals themselves.62 In what
remains of this article, the focus will be on this mediation of a divine
likeness through creaturely processes, without wishing to deny the
place of providence with respect to individuals. I will explore how it
might be said that “all perfections come to other things from God by
way of descent,” through evolutionary mediation, without wishing
in that to deny that “the ordering of singulars” is “under the control
of divine providence.”63 To address that mediation, I turn from the
earlier question of what in the creature finds it exemplar in God to
the question of what it is in God that the creature imitates.
To that question, Aquinas gave not one but two responses, and
while they are related, they are also properly different. One reply
is that creatures imitate the divine ideas, which may be the more
expected answer. Strictly speaking, however, Aquinas counted this
as the secondary and subsidiary response. More properly, he wrote,
what the creature imitates is God himself: creatures primarily imitate
the divine essence. Again, a significant feature of Doolan’s 2008 book
has been to explore this material in Aquinas.
These two angles on exemplarity are closely related: Aquinas
understood the divine ideas as God’s knowledge of the modes under
which his essence could be imitated by creatures. That definition of
		SCG III, ch. 76, nos. 1–2.
		SCG III, ch. 76, no. 4.
63
		“By descent” (per modum descensus) refers to an effect achieved through mediation, not to evolution by descent. The point under discussion here, however,
is whether the latter could be a means for the former.
61
62

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the divine ideas recurs across his corpus64 and is important for allowing him to reconcile two significant aspects of his thought that might
otherwise have been in tension: divine simplicity, on the one hand,
which will not admit multiplicity to God, and divine exemplarity,
on the other, according to which God understands his essence as
the wellspring of many creatures. Aquinas was able to square these
perspectives by understanding the divine ideas as an aspect of God’s
simple, single knowledge of himself. That knowledge, he held, being
perfect, would necessarily include a complete knowledge of all the
modes under which God could be imitated by creatures.65 To speak
about the divine ideas in this way is already to concede a secondary
place to them. It places imitation of the divine essence at the foundation of divine exemplarity.
Aquinas lays this out in terms of the distinction between imitation
according to divine ideas and imitation according to the perfections
of the divine essence. Discussions of this distinction are somewhat
rare in the secondary literature.66 George Klubertanz, however,
distinguishes between the exemplarity of “the divine ideas” and the
exemplarity “of the divine nature as a model.”67 He quotes a treatment from the Commentary on the Sentences:
The exemplar cause of things [exemplar rerum] exists in God
in two ways. First, it is present as something in his intellect;
thus, according to its ideas the divine intellect is the exemplar
of all things which come from it [secundum ideas est exemplar
intellectus divinus omnium quae ab ipso sunt], just as the intellect of
the artisan, through his art, is the exemplar of all his artifacts.
Secondly, it is present as something in his nature [in natura sua];
thus, according to the perfection of that goodness by which he
himself is good, God is the exemplar of all goodness.68
		A detailed treatment is given in Doolan, Divine Ideas, 83–122.
		ST I, q. 15, a. 2, resp.
66
		See Doolan, Divine Ideas, 219–28. Louis-Bertrand Geiger identifies the distinction between these two “radically diverse” forms of participation but devotes
little more than a footnote to them, calling their relation a “difficult problem”
(La Participation Dans La Philosophie de S. Thomas d’Aquin [Paris: J. Vrin, 1942],
233n1), cited by Doolan, Divine Ideas, 219.
67
		George Peter Klubertanz, Saint Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis
and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1960), 26.
68
		Aquinas, In I sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, ad 4 (translation from Klubertanz, Saint
Thomas Aquinas on Analogy, 26). Doolan discusses this passage in Divine Ideas,
64
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For Aquinas, these two angles on divine exemplarity also exhibit
different forms of similitude. A creature’s imitation of the divine
essence must be taken as strictly analogical, as a likeness against the
background of a yet greater unlikeness, since God and creatures
belong to no overarching category and whatever God may bestow
upon the creature, such as being, goodness, beauty, or anything else,
is not in the creature as it is in God. The creature’s imitation of the
divine ideas, however, involves a certain identity in form (although
not in mode): a creature by necessity bears a perfect likeness to its
divine exemplar in the mind of God, since that is precisely the idea
of what that creature is in all its individuality. As Aquinas puts it,
“every single thing attains a perfect imitation to that which it is in
the divine intellect (for any kind of thing is the sort of thing he has
ordained it to be).”69 The idea in the mind of God is of this tiger or
of this antelope, and that does not admit of more or less.
This is brought out in a discussion of these two modes of likeness
in De potentia:
There is a twofold likeness between God and creatures. One
is the likeness of the creature to the divine mind, and thus
the form understood by God and the thing itself are homogeneous [ forma intellecta per Deum est unius rationis cum re intellecta],
although they have not the same mode of being, since the
form understood is only in the mind [tantum in intellectu], while
the form of the creature is in the thing [etiam in re]. There is
another likeness inasmuch as the divine essence itself is the
supereminent but not homogeneous [non unius rationis] likeness
of all things.70
To summarize what will be discussed in greater detail below,
in its likeness to the divine essence, each creature imitates God in
reflecting God’s being, goodness, beauty, strength, and so on, to a
76–77. An example of this distinction in a mature work would be ST I, q. 93,
a. 2 ad 4, although in the judgement of Klubertanz, only in “early texts is a
twofold exemplarity the basic approach” (Aquinas on Analogy, 26).
69
		In II sent., d. 16, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2.
70
		De potentia, q. 7, a. 7, ad 6. It is unusual for Aquinas to describe the divine
essence as a likeness (“supereminent” or not). For him, it is a general, and
indeed obvious, principle that creatures are in the likeness of God, not vice
versa (SCG I, ch. 9, no. 5). His point here would be that the divine essence is
the “supereminent” exemplar for all the likenesses that creatures bear to it.

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different degree and in a different combination. In this way, each
creature also imitates a divine idea, which is to say that it embodies,
in creation, one of the distinct ways in which God knows his essence
to be imitable by creatures. Each of these two descriptions of what
it is in God that the creature imitates—ideas or the combination of
divine nobilities in various degrees—offers a way into thinking in an
evolutionary register about how the divine likeness comes to be in
specific creatures.
The Divine Ideas and Morphological Space
First, I will consider imitation of the divine ideas defined, as we have
seen, in terms of God’s knowledge of all the ways in which the divine
essence could be imitated by a creature. That approach to the divine
ideas, coming to us from mediaeval theology, bears a striking resemblance to a concept in contemporary theoretical biology: morphological space.71
The divine ideas could be said to map, within the knowledge of
God, all of the ways in which a creature could exist. The morphological spaces of the contemporary computational biologist also map,
from their perspective, the variety of forms (morphe) that an organism
could take. This is called a “space” because it typically represents such
possibilities as points plotted in multidimensional space, where each
axis represents a different changeable aspect of the creature. When
put to any practical use, only a limited set of aspects of creaturely
variability is mapped, rather than the totality of creaturely possibility
per se. There is nonetheless an analogy to be drawn suggesting some
circumspect comparison between the biologist’s morphological space
and Aquinas’s notion of divine ideas.72
A simple example involving only two variables might clarify the
concept of a morphological space: perhaps the width and length of
Darwin’s Galapagos finches. Each individual would provide a particular value of length and width, and that would correspond to a single
		George R. McGhee, Theoretical Morphology: The Concept and Its Applications
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); McGhee, “Exploring the
Spectrum of Existent, Nonexistent and Impossible Biological Form,” Trends in
Ecology & Evolution 16, no. 4 (2001): 172–73; McGhee, The Geometry of Evolution: Adaptive Landscapes and Theoretical Morphospaces (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012).
72
		The range of divine ideas, however, incomparably exceeds anything a biologist
is likely to conceive, taking in angels, for instance, and perhaps fundamentally
different universes.
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point on a two-dimensional surface, the x axis perhaps representing
length and the y axis width. The clustering of points on this map,
within clumps, would indicate the distinction of one species from
another. It is easy to visualize a two-variable analysis such as this, as
also with three variables, especially if the three-dimensional plot can
be rotated on a screen. Beyond that, however, with more than three
variables, and more than three dimensions, morphological spaces
are difficult to take in visually, and a notional map of all conceivable creatures along these lines is obviously only the product of an
extreme thought experiment.
Nonetheless, in thinking about divine exemplarity in relation to
particular creatures, the relation between the divine ideas and a “total
morphological space” of creatures provides a useful opening. The
thinnest connection we can imagine between the divine ideas and
the unfolding creaturely story of what is realized by evolution might
be approached in terms of potential. That is to say that, as a first stage
of analysis, we can observe a likeness simply between the vastness of
the divine ideas and the vastness of what is mapped as morphological
possibility. More typically, however, Aquinas placed the emphasis
on actuality, rather than potential.73 A more authentically Thomist
analysis of exemplarity here would therefore focus on being as an act.
The resemblance would not then be one of possibility to possibility,
but the likeness between the creative fecundity of the divine essence,
as expressed in the breadth of the divine ideas, and its image in the
fecundity of created being, as coming to exist in many ways. The
divine ideas would then not be considered in terms of unrealized
potential, in terms of what God could make but, in most cases, has
not. They would be a way of speaking about the intensity of divine
being, already realized in itself, as containing within itself all that
creation could be. The likeness to this in creaturely being would then
be in its irrepressible tendency toward what Darwin called “endless
forms most beautiful and wonderful.” 74
We have so far looked only at morphological space as laying out
the sorts of creatures that could exist. When we start to look at what
actually does exist or has existed, we come upon a more focused
manifestation of divine exemplarity, in the sense that created being
		Aquinas, In X metaphys.; ST I, q. 2, a. 3, resp.
		Charles Darwin, The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the
Origin of Species, ed. James T. Costa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2009), 490.

73
74

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seems already shaped to bring forth certain sorts of creatures.
Any particular corner of our imagined morphological hyperspace
represents some aspect of biological possibility. When we compare
that range of possibility, however, with what actually exists or has
existed in terrestrial biology, we find the latter to be unexpectedly
circumscribed. Only a minute fraction of total morphological space
is occupied—a fraction, indeed, even given the limited time that
evolutionary processes have had to explore it. That observation is
immediately suggestive when it comes to how divine exemplarity
is mediated to organisms through evolution. The crucial point here
is that not only do individuals of the same species “clump” together
in some recurring morphological fashion, as with individuals of a
particular species of finch, but so also do different species. When we
compare species that are profoundly distinct, genetically speaking,
we find surprising overlaps of morphology. Certain ways of being
a creature have been adopted independently, more than once, and
often many times. To underline the point, this is the case not only
when two species share a common ancestor with this same property
but even though they do not. In this way, biologists say, evolution is in
various respects convergent. 75 Its repertoire is more limited that we
might have expected.
An ideal illustration involves comparing marsupial mammals in
Australia with placental mammals elsewhere.76 Australia separated
from the landmass of the ancient continent Gondwana around
100 million years ago, before the extinction of dinosaurs around
65 million years ago had opened the way for the diversification of
mammals, both marsupial and placental. In Australia, marsupials
have largely prevailed; in South America, both groups are found in
diverse forms; in North America north of Mexico, we find only one
marsupial today, the Virginia opossum.77
The point of interest is that, although Australian evolutionary processes took place in isolation, several resulting marsupials
		Writing in 2003, Simon Conway Morris could list nine columns of evolutionary convergences in the index of Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely
Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
76
		The yolk-like placentas of marsupials support only a short gestation period.
Their young have a substantial period of development outside the womb, at
a nipple, typically within a pouch. Placental mammals nourish their young in
the womb, from the mother’s blood, over a much longer gestation.
77
		Otherwise, marsupials are found only in some parts of Asia close to Australasia,
including Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
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nonetheless bear a striking resemblance to corresponding placental
mammals. There are marsupial moles, for instance, and marsupial
mice. The marsupial phalanger is remarkably like a flying squirrel,
bandicoots resemble rabbits, the wombat is like a groundhog, the
numbat resembles an anteater, the spotted cuscus mirrors the lemur,
the bobcat stands alongside the Tasmanian tiger cat, and the (now
probably extinct) Tasmanian wolf was remarkably similar to the
placental wolf. These various marsupial species are far more closely
related to one another genetically than they are to any mammal, and
yet, in each of these cases, we see a strong morphological similarity
between a species or genus of marsupial and a species or genus of
placental mammal. A particular morphology has evolved twice, independently, as well-suited to a similar ecological niche.78
This serves as an excellent example of convergent evolution,
where a similarity of environment has occasioned similar creaturely
ways of flourishing in such a setting.79 The same could be said of
		Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn
of Evolution, 2nd ed. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016), 271–78.
79
		The introduction of a measure of flourishing or adaptive fitness marks the
difference between a morphological space and a fitness landscape. With a
morphological space, we simply consider what might exist and note what
does. Going beyond that, a fitness landscape recognizes that, for any given
environment, certain ways of being a creature are better adapted than others.
Possible forms are not only plotted but also assigned a “height” corresponding to the fitness of such a kind of creature for that ecological setting. This
visualization provided the title of Richard Dawkins’s book Climbing Mount
Improbable (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996). Adaptedness can be described as
an “attractor” in that landscape, employing a term from non-linear dynamics
or complexity theory. This language of “attractors” in evolution has been used
recently by theologians including Ilia Delio and Józef Žyciński: Ilia Delio, The
Emergent Christ: Exploring the Meaning of Catholic in an Evolutionary Universe
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013), 142–46; Delio, Christ in Evolution (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis, 2008), 17–18; Józef Žycińsky, “Evolutionary Theism and the Emergent Universe,” in McKenny, Sloan, and Eggleson, Darwin in the Twenty-First
Century, 349–50; Žycińsky, “Evolution and the Doctrine of Creation,” Caruana, Darwin and Catholicism, 181–89; Życiński, God and Evolution: Fundamental
Questions of Christian Evolutionism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 2006), 161–64. Greater precision is needed in the use of this
idea, however. In both writers, there is often considerable ambiguity as to
whether the idea of an “attractor” is being used in the scientific and mathematical sense or, more generally and colloquially, as an indicator of final
causation (perhaps in relation to God as final cause). Delio also uses it to mean
something like the attractiveness and operation of Christ in human spirituality (Emergent Christ, 142–46). Both authors describe God as an attractor (in
78

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the independent close convergence in body shape among swimming
creatures: for instance, in cartilaginous and bony fish, the Ichthyosaurus (an extinct reptile), and the dolphin and porpoise (mammals).80
For a deeper sense of the mediation of divine exemplarity here, we
should turn to the role of mathematical form in evolution and its
convergences. It is not simply that a particular environment calls for a
certain way of flourishing, but that those ways of flourishing draw on
certain solutions that are woven into creaturely being, often in ways
disclosed by mathematics (as with those sea creatures and the laws of
fluid dynamics).
Many evolutionary biologists today will single out form as a basic
component of any properly comprehensive evolutionary perspective.81 Certain “formal” possibilities are present in reality, available
to be explored, and that is part of the evolutionary picture. This is
one way in which the neo-Darwinian synthesis of the mid-twentieth century has expanded and become more complex and nuanced
in recent years. The evolutionary process, this insight points out,
does not create de novo the various fundamental aspects of creatures
that can be expressed mathematically. Rather, it discovers or works
with them. The liturgy-minded theologian might appreciate a play
that can be made here on two senses of the word “invention.” The
evolution of the bee has not “invented” the packaging properties
of a hexagonal comb in the more contemporary sense of invent (to
“make up”). Rather, evolutionary history “invented” the hexagonal
comb in the same sense in which the feast day marked in the West on
September 14 is called “the Invention of the Holy Cross”: as the day
of its discovery. The evolutionary process discovers what is woven into
the colloquial sense) but leave substantially undiscussed how that relates to
the scientific meaning of the term as the particular adaptedness of a region
of morphological space for a particular environment. Žyciński describes the
relation as analogical, but provides little meaningful detail (God and Evolution,
161). The present article offers some openings for an exploration of how the
proximate “causality” of the attractor on the landscape participates in God,
but further investigation of this relation of mediation will be needed before
the term “attractor” can play a well-considered part in the dialogue between
theology and science beyond its current loose and metaphorical role.
80
		George McGhee, “Convergent Evolution: A Periodic Table of Life?” in The
Deep Structure of Evolution: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal, ed. Simon Conway Morris (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton
Press, 2008), 19–20, 23.
81
		Jerry A. Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong
(London: Profile, 2010), 72–92.

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created being and what can be realized on that account.
The storage of honey in a comb requires the subdivision of the
space. Geometrically speaking, there is no limit to the complexity of
interlocking shapes that can be combined to divide a larger space into
segments. For the bee, however, an evolutionary selection advantage
accrues to solutions that are both rigid and parsimonious in the sense
of using less wax and in terms of how frugally such propensity to
build combs can be encoded in a bee’s DNA. If, with a honeycomb,
we are looking for a solution that is built from prismatic shapes (that
is, from three dimensional shapes with a uniform cross section),
only three cross sections can be repeated as simply as possible to give
coverage without interstices: a triangle, a parallelogram, and a (regular) hexagon. Of these, the first two compromise rigidity, since rows
could slip past one another, which hexagonal prisms do not. It should
be no surprise, then, that bees build hexagonal combs.
This is one of the simplest imaginable examples of a more general
principle. The reality within which evolution is situated, and that
which it explores, is not that of so much neutral possibility. At the
level of what all creatures share (the Thomist could say, at the level
of esse commune), much is already inscribed: being has contours. With
that observation, we begin to perceive how a likeness to perfections
of the divine essence could be said to be mediately woven into reality, to be discovered, deployed, and manifest by evolution and what
it produces.
Moving from the honeycomb to more explicitly theological
territory, consider the “dappled things” so dear to Gerard Manley
Hopkins in his poem “Pied Beauty,” which he took to be likenesses
of divine beauty.82 They include the “couple-colour” of the “bridled
cow,” the “stipple” of shades on “trout that swim,” and the pattern
of “finches’ wings.” Here, Hopkins saw divine exemplarism: God
“fathers-forth whose beauty is past change.” As to how these things
come to be, however, Hopkins was ignorant: “Who knows how?” he
wrote. The answer is a good deal clearer today than it was in 1877,
when this sonnet was written. Patterning, we now understand, is
poised to emerge with ease through the interaction of certain basic
and universal features of diffusion.83 Indeed, underlying each of the
		Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Major Works, ed. by Catherine Phillips (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009), 132.
83
		See: Alan M. Turing, “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis,” Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B 237, no. 641 (14 August 1952): 37–72;
82

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examples given above from Hopkins, we find the same mathematical
propensities, as also with the patterns on the fur of other animals,
and possibly even in the shape of spiral galaxies.84 In this inherently
variegated beauty, Hopkins saw a likeness to God. Today, we understand that such patterning is woven into the mathematical structures
of the universe. God, the theologian would want to say, is the author
of nature and of its fundamental characteristics. Whatever that theologian might want to add about the direct working of providence in
relation to the beauty of any specific finch or trout, it did not have to
work against the grain of nature in producing these contingent details.
As a final specific example, consider the rigidity already mentioned
in relation to the honeycomb. One of James Clark Maxwell’s many
contributions to science was to identify rigidity as inherently characteristic of certain forms of structure. All that is necessary for
rigidity is that a particular relationship holds between a small set of
variables: the number of points to be connected, the number of bars
that connect them, and the number of dimensions within which one
is operating.85 Evolution has arrived at organisms with all manner of
Philip Ball, Nature’s Patterns: Shapes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009),
156–204. This work is notably successful in predicting the basic two forms of
patterning observed in nature: stripes and spots.
84
		Lee Smolin, “Galactic Disks as Reaction-Diffusion Systems,” December 3,
1996, arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9612033.
85
		James Clerk Maxwell, “On Reciprocal Figures and Diagrams of Forces,”
Philosophical Magazine Series 4 27, no. 182 (1864): 250–61; Maxwell, “On the
Calculation of the Equilibrium and Stiffness of Frames,” Philosophical Magazine
Series 4 27, no. 182 (1864): 294–99.This point serves to illustrate quite how far
evolutionary convergences accord with Thomistic hylomorphism, in which
form aligns with that which is instantiated and matter with that in which it is
instantiated. Similarly, form is realizable in more than one material context,
while matter is, by definition, under-determined as to what form it realizes. In
Maxwell’s analysis, rigidity is a formal characteristic belonging to the nature of
the coordinated whole, not a “material” one (with the minimal requirement
that the parts themselves have stiffness). Other examples of convergent evolution illustrate this point. Spatial perception, for instance, is formal and open to
many different instantiations: realized in terms of light, we have sight, realized
in terms of sound, we have echolocation (see Joe Parker et al., “Genome-wide
Signatures of Convergent Evolution in Echolocating Mammals,” Nature 502,
no. 7470 [2013]: 228–31). Considering sight in more detail, it too is formally
under-determined as to its material instantiation, which can be as a “camera”
eye (with a lens) or a compound eye (as in flies and most spiders), to name
two examples (Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale, 1st ed. [London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 2004], 673–74). The scientific question of what is definitely the

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rigid features, some of which exhibit an urge to build rigid structures
themselves. On the one hand, all of that must conform to Maxwell’s
generalization; in another sense, however, all of this is also offered by
what his generalization describes. Structural rigidity (and the stability
it provides) is a feature of reality. Rigidity, like dappling, is a feature
of the universe, there to be exploited in the evolutionary process.
The exemplarist might suppose that here creation is marked with the
imprint of the One to whom scriptural writers have given the name
“Rock.”86
The more broadly one studies convergent evolution, the further
one is taken into theological territory. This is a lesson to be learnt
from the disagreement over convergence between two important
recent figures in evolutionary theory: Steven Jay Gould and Simon
Conway Morris. Until his untimely death in 2002, Gould stressed
contingency, writing that, if the “tape of life” were to be rewound
and played afresh (his image is of a VHS video tape), entirely new
forms would have evolved and survived.87 In contrast, the work of
Conway Morris suggests the opposite: certain solutions would have
recurred, converged toward in those alternative histories, just as they
have been converged toward several times within the one actual
history of life on Earth. With further study since Gould’s death,
convergence has been more and more solidly confirmed. Significantly for our purposes, much of what turns out most clearly to have
been converged toward also bears the greatest theological significance. The color of human skin or eyes and the number of digits
on our fingers may well land with contingency and go to Gould.
On the other hand, the story of evolution on earth shows multiple,
independent evolutions of perception, intelligence, community,
result of independent convergence, when it comes to the eye, and what has
involved parallel evolution from a common ancestor is a matter of scientific
dispute. The significance of parallel convergence is nonetheless clear, as is the
hylomorphic sense of “matter” being that which is under-determined when
it comes to how a formal property is instantiated in it, the lensing properties
required for a camera eye having been “discovered,” independently, several
times, constructed in these cases out of the raw “material” of totally unrelated
protein molecules (Joram Piatigorsky, “A Genetic Perspective on Eye Evolution: Gene Sharing, Convergence and Parallelism,” Evolution: Education and
Outreach 1, no. 4 [2008]: 403–14).
86
		For instance: 1 Sam 2:2; Isa 17:10; Ps 28:1; 95:1; Hab 1:12.
87
		Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
(London: Norton, 1989), 45–52.

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communication, cooperation, altruism, and construction.88 In this
way, convergence—and Conway Morris—gets much that most interests the theologian. Once again, and in highly significant ways, we
see that the cosmos has, in its underlying constitution, a propensity
toward bringing forth certain likenesses to divine excellence.
Likeness to Divine Perfections
As we have noted, Aquinas held out two related accounts of divine
exemplarity, one to the divine ideas and the other to the divine essence,
and it is the latter that is the wellspring of exemplarity in God. Ultimately, the creature’s likeness is to the Godhead. I started our discussion of convergence in evolution with a tentative parallel between
the divine ideas and the morphological space of the computational
evolutionary scientist. I turn now to focus on the creature’s likeness to
the divine essence itself. Aquinas’s texts on this matter proceed most
typically in terms of the creature bearing a likeness to divine perfections.
We can return to the passage from the Commentary on the Sentences,
quoted above. Imitation of the divine essence takes the form of a likeness to various divine perfections,89 and the imitation of those perfec		Intelligence is likely to be considered the contentious item in this list. On
this, see Edward A. Wasserman and Thomas R. Zentall, Comparative Cognition:
Experimental Explorations of Animal Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006), and Robert W. Shumaker, Kristina R. Walkup, and Benjamin B.
Beck, Animal Tool Behavior: The Use and Manufacture of Tools by Animals (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), and also the discussion of
analogy, characteristics and classes of organisms below.
89
		Aquinas uses the language both of “perfections” (perfectiones) and of “excellences” (nobilitates) without obvious distinction. They are coupled in SCG I,
ch. 28, no. 3. Aquinas clearly entertained a wide list of perfections, but his lists
in any one place tend to be short: “wisdom, goodness, and the like” (In I sent.,
d. 2, q. 1, a. 2); “good and the like” (De potentia, q. 7, a. 7, ad 6); “goodness,
wisdom, being, and the like” (SCG I, ch. 30, no. 2); and “being . . . life . . . and
. . . wisdom” (ST I, q. 93, a. 2, ad 4 [sapientia in God but intelligentia in creatures]). Generally, he is taking about “whatever names unqualifiedly designate
a perfection without defect” (SCG I, ch. 30, no. 2). Looking across the first
book of SCG, for instance, we find good, one, intelligent, living, possessing
a will, delight, joy, virtue, and blessedness. “Goodness” is Aquinas’s central
example of what the creature receives from God as a likeness. It would seem
to function as his mediating perfection, encompassing, alongside “being,” all
that is excellent and characterful about each creature. As Aquinas puts it in a
passage from Commentary on the Sentences quoted above, “whatever there is of
being and goodness in a creature is entirely from the creator (In I sent., d. 2, q.
1, a. 2). Goodness here refers more to “ontological” than to “moral” goodness.
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tions admits of degrees. There is a variable pitch of intensity when it
comes to how a creature exhibits what it means to be wise,90 to live,
or to exhibit any other of the perfections of the divine essence—even
what it means to be.91
Likenesses to the perfectly simple excellence of the divine essence
are exhibited by creatures in the form of multiple and circumscribed
creaturely perfections. These are recognized and named differently,
although what those names indicate in God is one: these multiple and
distinct refractions in creatures—goodness, truth, beauty and so on—
are one and the same in their source.92 Aquinas describes the analogical likeness of the particular creature to the divine essence not only in
terms of degrees of participation in these divine perfections but also in
terms of their creaturely combination. The relation of these creaturely
likenesses to the divine essence is seen not only in the variety of their
varied degrees but also in the variety of their varied combinations.
To work this through in relation to evolution, we can start with
the observation that, while any and all talk of divine exemplarity in
an obvious sense proceeds “from above,” from God as exemplar to
the creature as recipient, such talk still admits of a distinction. The
exemplarity of the divine ideas is from above almost without qualification, but in a certain sense, the exemplarity of the divine essence
can also be said to operate in creation “from below,” as an exploration
of what of that likeness is latent in creaturely being as such. While
talk of the exemplarity of the divine ideas stresses that the whole of a
particular creature’s being and character proceeds from God thus and
so, in line with God’s foreknowledge, the exemplary likeness of the
perfections of the divine essence is exhibited by creatures variably and
in different conjunctions. There is considerable promise in saying that
the processes of evolution explore the ways in which the likenesses of
the perfections of the divine essence can be exhibited and combined
in varying degrees.
A creature expresses something of the perfection of God by being excellent in
its own way. Such excellence—“being good at something”—is precisely what
the evolutionary process tends to produce.
90
		Doolan’s example is degrees of cognition: “Consider the perfection of cognition: whereas plants do not possess it, brute animals do; but human beings
possess it in a more excellent way” (Divine Ideas, 67). But see below on plant
cognition.
91
		Fran O’Rourke, “Virtus Essendi: Intensive Being in Pseudo-Dionysius and
Aquinas,” Dionysius 15 (1990): 68–69.
92
		See Doolan, Divine Ideas, 90–91, for texts and discussion.

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Even acknowledging the unease with which some evolutionary
biologists would greet any claim of directionality in evolution, it
would not be scientifically irresponsible for the theologian to note
that life on earth, taken as a sum, has exhibited successively and
more profound embodiments of divine perfection, both as to the
degree to which any particular perfection has been inhabited and
as to the number of divine perfections displayed. Aquinas routinely
demarked forms of life according to such perfections, here following Aristotle, proceeding from inanimate being, to living being, to
sensing being, and finally to intelligent being (even if not every one
of these distinctions is present in every one of Aquinas’s discussions
of this theme).93 These are examples of successive (and cumulative)
exemplarity, “inasmuch as all things, as being, are like to the First
Being, as living, like to the First Life, and as intelligent, like to the
Supreme Wisdom.”94
Today, biology sets something of a question mark against a sense of
clear-cut overarching boundaries between kinds of creature laid out
in terms exhibiting such characteristics. Plants and slime moulds, for
instance, display hitherto unguessed responsiveness to environment
and forms of calculation or problem solving.95 Whether that deserves
to be called awareness as Thomas understood it, and what relation it
bears to intelligence, is not the subject of this article. It does demonstrate, however, an even greater range to creaturely participation in
divine perfections than Aquinas envisaged. In any case, the sort of
participation in divine perfections that Aquinas envisaged, which is
strictly analogical and characterized as a matter of “more or less,” does

		In SCG III, ch. 22, no. 7, Aquinas lists types of form—of an element, a mixed
body, a plant, an animal, and of the human being—as in a hierarchy not of
complexity, but of their degree of self-determination. Each is “in potency” to
the next. The advent of increasingly complex forms underpins Maritain’s only
partially successful essay “Toward a Thomist View of Evolution,” mentioned
above.
94
		ST I, q. 93, a. 2, ad 4.
95
		Paco Calvo Garzón and Fred Keijzer, “Plants: Adaptive Behaviour, Rootbrains, and Minimal Cognition,” Adaptive Behavior 19, no. 3 (2011): 155–71;
Michael Gross, “Could Plants Have Cognitive Abilities?” Current Biology 26,
no. 5 (2016): R181–84; Anthony Trewavas, Plant Behaviour and Intelligence
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Romain P. Boisseau, David Vogel, and
Audrey Dussutour, “Habituation in Non-Neural Organisms: Evidence from
Slime Moulds,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283, no. 1829 (2016): rspb.
royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/283/1829/20160446.full.pdf.
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not in itself require firm boundaries between classes of organism.96
A passage in SCG is of particular interest here, both because it
usefully relates these two ways of thinking about divine exemplarity
(of the divine ideas and of the perfections of the divine essence) and,
more particularly, because it does so in terms of the complexification
of forms of life (albeit not here in an evolutionary or chronological
fashion):
The divine essence comprehends within itself the nobilities of
all beings, not indeed compositely, but . . . according to the
mode of perfection. . . . Thus, by understanding His essence as
imitable in the mode of life and not of knowledge, God has the
proper form of a plant; and if He knows His essence as imitable
in the mode of knowledge and not of intellect, God has the
proper form of animal, and so forth.97
Creatures represent successively deeper participations in, and expressions of, divine perfections. Creaturely forms are interweavings of
different ways of imitating the divine perfection that, taken together,
compose the creature’s form.98
Understanding the exemplarist relation of creatures to God in
terms of this imitation of the perfections of the divine essence allows
us to think of evolution’s trajectories as various ways in which the
history of creaturely being, in its mutability, has explored some of the
innumerable ways in which it is possible for a creature to combine
aspects of divine perfection as they are refracted and combined in
		Aquinas held that the higher part of a lower nature reaches toward the lower
part of a higher nature (for instance De veritate, q. 15, a. 1, resp., citing Pseudo-Dionysius, On the Divine Names 7.3).
97
		SCG I, ch. 54, no. 4.
98
		Aquinas held to a single substantial form for each creature, and participation
in different divine perfections is manifest in that single substantial form of the
creature, not in many (Quaestiones de anima, a. 11). Reading this alongside SCG
I, ch. 55, to say that “Socrates is called an animal inasmuch as he participates
in the Idea, ‘animal,’ and a man inasmuch as he participates in the Idea, ‘man’”
would be to name ways in which the one substantial form participates in what
(in creatures) are distinct divine perfections (see Doolan, Divine Ideas, 192).
In his commentary on the Metaphysics, Aquinas denies that the human being
is constituted by separate participation in distinct exemplars such as “animal”
and “two-footed” as well as “human-in-itself ” (In I metaphys., lec. 15, no. 234),
as well as in De substantiis separatis, ch. 11, nos. 60–66 (both cited by Doolan,
Divine Ideas, 194).
96

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creatures. Evolutionary processes have roved over the contours of
being—over the contours of reality, which bears the stamp of God—
and in this way, they have explored various ways to express something of the plenitude of God in a creaturely fashion.
As we have seen, from one angle, we can talk about an oak tree
participating in God after the manner of the divine idea of that tree.
However, we can also think of the tree’s particular mode of imitation
as combining certain “excellences” and say that this has been arrived
at by evolutionary processes. A tree is nature’s fantasia on themes of
life and light, of stability and reaching out, of loftiness and strength.
Each of these facets, stretching the definition of a perfection more or
less creatively, finds its exemplar in the divine essence; anything that
is good, on an exemplarist view, must do so. Since these excellences
can be blended in the creature in any number of ways, the emphasis
returns to plurality, both of species and of individuals, and change is
by no means excluded. Evolution is a moving image, since there are
always new ways to be explored as to how these divine excellences
can be combined. A species, say the English oak (Quercus robur), can
therefore evolve. Resulting species, still participating in these properties but in a different way, will have found a different combination or
balance between them. The many ways in which such a combination
of excellences can be imitated is reflected in the thousands of species
of tree on the planet and by the variety of ways in which any particular species can be instantiated (i.e., in terms of accidental differences
as well as substantial ones). This, in its way, is another part of the
exemplarist witness of creation to the plenitude of God.
Conclusion
Evolution has forced us to turn away from an account of creation that
imagines God creating and forming the prototypes of species one by
one and side by side: “The first members of the species were immediately created by God, such as the first man, the first lion, and so
forth,” as we saw Aquinas putting it.99 That poses proper challenges for
notions of exemplarity, although there is also something theologically
compelling about having to move away from a scheme that might risk
conceiving of the action of God as akin to an agent with creation
forming clay, supposing instead that divine agency is here mediated
through creaturely processes: God’s work is mediated precisely because
		In II sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 4.

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God is not a thing among things.100 Evolution is part of that mediation
in which, to quote Aquinas again, “the same effect is not attributed to
a natural cause and to divine power in such a way that it is partly done
by God, and partly by the natural agent; rather, it is wholly done by
both, according to a different way.”101
We have found this to be compatible with divine exemplarity:
first, and negatively, in the demotion of specific form as what is
central in divine exemplarity and in favor of the exemplarity of the
divine ideas in respect of individuals, and secondly, and positively, in
the way in which creaturely being itself is not blank and neutral, but
has “contours,” such that it is poised to bring forth certain forms of
creature and certain creaturely propensities. In terms of exemplarity,
we can readily approach that in terms of the creature’s expression of
combinations of divine perfections in varying degrees.
None of this is to say that the understanding of nature presented
by Aquinas, as the theologian under discussion here, necessarily
squares with evolution at every point. Any evolutionary challenges
to Aquinas’s account of nature do not, however, stem from the side
of exemplarity.
Toward the beginning of this article, I argued that a reluctance
to “lead back” creaturely form to God as its cause risks overstepping
the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, just as surely as would holding to
uncreated matter as co-eternal with God. This comes into all the
greater focus now that we have distinguished a twofold exemplarity of God in relation to the world. At stake with the affirmation
of divine exemplarity is not simply the issue of ideas in the divine
mind; also at stake is the contention that any and all of the nobilities
found in creatures have their origin in God.102 A consideration of
evolution will have served theology well if it has served to underN&V
line that point.103

		I have discussed this point in relation to cosmology in “Scientific Cosmology
as Creation Ex Nihilo Considered ‘from the Inside,’” in Creation Ex Nihilo:
Origins and Contemporary Significance, ed. Markus Bockmuehl and Gary
Anderson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), 367–89.
101
		SCG I, ch. 70, no. 8.
102
		SCG I, ch. 29, no. 2.
103
		I am grateful to Professor Hans Boersma, Dr. Gregory Doolan, Dr. Daniel de
Haan, Dr. Nathan Lyons, Professor Catherine Pickstock, and Dr. Jacob Sherman for conversations about topics addressed in this article.
100

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1103

The Study of Theology as a Foretaste of Heaven:
The Influence of Albert the Great on Aquinas’s
Understanding of Beatitudo Imperfecta
Jacob W. Wood
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Steubenville, OH

In the course of the Treatise on Beatitude in the Summa theo-

logiae [ST], Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between beatitudo perfecta and
beatitudo imperfecta.1 Perfect beatitude consists in the vision of God in
heaven.2 Imperfect beatitude, however, is more difficult to define. If we
consider the term apart from related terms such as beatitudo supernaturalis and beatitudo naturalis,3 then, while scholars agree that Aquinas’s use

		Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 3, a. 6, corp.: “Duplex est hominis beatitudo, una perfecta, et alia imperfecta. Oportet autem intelligere perfectam
beatitudinem, quae attingit ad veram beatitudinis rationem, beatitudinem autem
imperfectam, quae non attingit, sed participat quandam particularem beatitudinis
similitudinem [Man’s beatitude is twofold: one is perfect, and the other imperfect. Now, we should consider that which attains to the true ratio of beatitude
as perfect beatitude, while that which does not attain it, but which participates
in a particular similarity to beatitude, as imperfect beatitude]” (Opera Omnia
[Rome: Leonine Commission, 1882–], 6:33). All translations are the author’s.
Latin orthography will follow the best available edition of a given work.
2
		
ST I-II, q. 3, a. 8 (Leonine, 6:35–36).
3
		It is not the intention of this article to enter into recent discussions of the
possibility and meaning of beatitudo naturalis, as the literature on that subject
is so vast that it would distract from the purpose of understanding beatitudo
imperfecta. However, a study of beatitudo imperfecta can shed light on the question
of beatitudo naturalis insofar as it highlights how Aquinas carefully distinguishes
natural contemplation from graced contemplation in his mature thought as two
different but complementary ways of achieving beatitudo imperfecta in this life.
Generally speaking, the discussion of beatitudo naturalis has for the last
twenty years been annexed to debates about the natural desire for God. For
1

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Jacob W. Wood

of beatitudo imperfecta has something to do with Aristotle’s discussion of
happiness in book 10 of the Nicomachean ethics, they diverge widely on
whether or how Aquinas made use of the Stagirite’s thought.
Germain Grisez, for example, asserts that Aquinas improperly
appropriated Aristotelian beatitude and thereby distorted the biblical
understanding of beatitude, making the vision of God a monolithic
beatitude that excludes other aspects of integral human fulfillment.4
Denis Bradley agrees with Grisez’s observation that Aquinas places
the end of man solely in the vision of God to the exclusion of other
ends; 5 ironically, he explains this claim with the opposite view that
Aquinas rejected Aristotelian concepts of beatitude as fundamentally
irreconcilable with Christian revelation.6 Still others have approached
the question from the side of Aristotle. Thus, R. A. Gauthier argues
that Aquinas so thoroughly transformed Aristotle’s Nicomachean
ethics through his own reading of Albert the Great that Aquinas can
hardly be said to be Aristotelian at all.7 Anthony Celano, by contrast,
bibliographies of recent contributions to that debate, see: Thomas Bushlack,
“The Return of Neo-Scholasticism? Recent Criticisms of Henri de Lubac
on Nature and Grace and Their Significance for Moral Theology, Politics,
and Law,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 35 (2015): 100n2; Patrick
Gardner, “Thomas and Dante on the Duo Ultima Hominis,” The Thomist
75 (2011): 416n2; Aaron Riches, “Christology and duplex hominis beatitudo:
Re-sketching the Supernatural Again,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 14 (2012): 44n1.
4
		Germain Grisez, “Natural Law, God, Religion, and Human Fulfillment,”
American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (2001): 34–35. See also the discussion of
Grisez’s work in Benedict M. Ashley, “What is the End of the Human Person?:
The Vision of God and Integral Human Fulfillment,” in Moral Truth and Moral
Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe, ed. Luke
Gormally (Portland, OR: Four Courts, 1994), 85–86. John Finnis offers a more
nuanced understanding of imperfect beatitude from a perspective similar to
that of Grisez in “Practical Reasoning, Human Goods and the End of Man,”
New Blackfriars 66 (1985): 438–51. For a critical evaluation of Grisez vis-a-vis
Aquinas, see Ezra Sullivan, “Seek First the Kingdom: A Reply to Germain
Grisez’s Account of Man’s Ultimate End,” Nova et Vetera (English) 8 (2010):
959–95.
5
		Denis Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Science (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 488–89.
6
		Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good, 404, 408, 484, 487–89. See also
Steven Wang, “Aquinas on Human Happiness and the Natural Desire for
God,” New Blackfriars 88, no. 1015 (2007): 332.
7
		 R. A. Gauthier, “Praefatio,” in Thomas Aquinas, Sententia libri ethicorum, Leonine
ed. vol. 47/1 (1969), *235. Gauthier is speaking more generally about Aqui-

The Study of Theology as a Foretaste of Heaven

1105

defends Aquinas from the charge of misreading Aristotle. For Celano,
Aquinas completes Aristotle’s aspiration to the happiness of the gods
with the Christian revelation that such happiness both is possible
and has been offered by God to humanity.8 More recently, Adriano
Oliva has proposed that Aquinas used Aristotelian contemplation as a
paradigm for Christian contemplation and that Aquinas consistently
harmonized Aristotelian and Christian contemplation from the
beginning to the end of his career as two ways of seeking the vision
of God in loving friendship with him.9
The purpose of the present article is twofold. First, I would like
to propose a way of reading Aquinas historically that can account
for the radical divergence among scholars on his understanding of
beatitudo imperfecta. Generally speaking, the aforementioned readings of Aquinas align with three stages of development in Aquinas’s
explanation of imperfect beatitude, but without always taking into
account the developments from one text to the next. Bradley and
Grisez have a view of Aquinas that most closely aligns with the
Commentary on the Sentences, where Aquinas says that imperfect beatitude is the summit of natural contemplation in this life, juxtaposed
with the contemplation of God by grace in the next life. Celano has
a view of Aquinas that most closely aligns with the Summa contra
gentiles [SCG], where Aquinas says that imperfect beatitude is the
summit of natural contemplation in this life but there is also a sense
in which our contemplation of God by faith prepares us by desire for
the end of man proposed by Christian revelation for the next life.
Gauthier and Oliva have views of Aquinas that most closely align
with ST, where Aquinas refers to the second act envisioned by SCG
as another form of imperfect beatitude through which we not only
grow in the knowledge and love of God but also order our actions
toward the vision of him by charity. Reading Aquinas in this way
leads to the view that, rather than juxtaposing Aristotle with Christian revelation, as Bradley suggests, or of compromising Christian
revelation, as Grisez suggests, we should see Aquinas as ultimately
nas’s reception of Aristotle, not of beatitude specifically, but others have applied
his general approach to the concept of beatitude. See Anthony Celano, “The
Concept of Worldly Beatitude in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas,” Journal of
the History of Philosophy 25 (1987): 215.
8
		Celano, “The Concept of Worldly Beatitude,” 225.
9
		Adriano Oliva, “La contemplation des philosophes selon Thomas d’Aquin,”
Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 96 (2012): 585–662.

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Jacob W. Wood

using the idea of beatitudo imperfecta as a way to harmonize what
reason and faith say about the perfection of man and, therefore, to
affirm the legitimacy of multiple secondary beatitudes in relationship
to beatitudo perfecta. This harmonization does not preclude a place in
Aquinas’s thought for a beatitudo imperfecta inspired by Aristotle that
is formally distinct from a beatitudo imperfecta inspired by faith and
charity, as Gauthier and Oliva could be read to suggest, but it does
elevate Aristotle into a more comprehensive synthesis inspired by
Albert the Great.
The second purpose of this article is to show how developments in
the textual structure of Aquinas’s argumentation in the Commentary
on the Sentences, SCG, and ST coincide with three stages in Aquinas’s
understanding of the rationale for studying theology. In the Commentary on the Sentences, where Aquinas contrasts an imperfect, thisworldly beatitude with a perfect, other-worldly beatitude, we should
study theology so as to please God by learning about the end of man
in the next life. In SCG, where Aquinas describes more explicitly
the role of charity as the ground of a Christian contemplation parallel
to Aristotelian contemplation, we study theology not only to know
God as the goal of the next life but also to increase our desire for
him here and now. In ST, Christian contemplation becomes its own
form of imperfect beatitude. In this context, the study of theology is
described as the locus of an integral spirituality, whereby we advance
in this life toward the perfect beatitude of the next life. The imperfect
beatitude that can be had in the study of theology thus constitutes not
only a participation but also an inchoation of the happiness that we hope
to enjoy in the vision of God.10
The argument will proceed in two stages. First, I will situate
Aquinas’s treatment of imperfect beatitude in the historical context of
the reintroduction into the West of book 10 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean
ethics during the tenure of Albert the Great at the University of Paris.
Second, I will survey the main texts in which Aquinas mentions or
alludes to imperfect beatitude, trace their development, and indicate
		 All three of these elements (faith, love, and inchoation) are taken up in summary
form in Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. Robert Royal, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003–2005), 2:4–9,
where he discusses the relationship between the study of theology and the
spiritual life. However, Torrell does not discuss the historical development of
that synthesis, nor does he therefore provide sufficient resources for sorting out
disagreements about the nature of imperfect beatitude.

10

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1107

their relationship to his discussions of the rationale for the study of
theology in the Commentary on the Sentences, SCG, and ST.
Albert the Great
Considerations of beatitude among thirteenth-century theologians
changed significantly in the 1240s. The cause of this change was the
completion of Robert Grosseteste’s translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics in 1246/1248.11 Prior to that date, the only available Latin
translations of the Nicomachean ethics covered books 1–3.12 After the
completion of Grosseteste’s work, the Latin world had to take into
account the fact that Aristotle attributes the highest human happiness
to our participation in the life of the gods, a life of perfect and uninterrupted contemplation, and suggests that we ought to strive for as deep
a participation in this divine life as possible.13
One of the first thirteenth-century theologians to incorporate
Grosseteste’s newly translated text was Albert the Great. Albert
moved to Paris to study theology at the University of Paris in 1243
or 1244.14 By 1246, the earliest date by which Grosseteste could have
finished his translation, Albert had already finished books 1 and 3
of his Commentary on the Sentences and was working on book 2.15
This meant that he had yet to begin his detailed treatment of beatitude; the locus classicus for that topic was not until the end of book 4
(distinction 49).16
Albert does discuss beatitude in general terms in books 1 and 3. In
book 1, he distinguishes between uncreated beatitude, which is God
himself, and created beatitude, which is the effect in the human soul
of being united with God.17 In book 3, discussing the Beatitudes from
		István P. Bejczy (ed.),“Introduction,” in Virtue Ethics in the Middle Ages: Commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 1200–1500 (Boston: Brill, 2008), 3.
12
		Bejczy, “Introduction,” 2. There were two separate translations: the editio vetus
covered books 2–3; the editio nova included book 1.
13
		Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics 10.7–8.1177a–1179a.
14
		J. A. Weisheipl, “The Life and Works of Albert the Great,” in Albertus Magnus
and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, 1980, ed. J. A.Weisheipl (Toronto: PIMS,
1980), 20.
15
		 Simon Tugwell, Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press,
1988), 8.
16
		Albert did not finish commenting on that book until after March 25, 1249,
following his departure from Paris for Cologne. See: Tugwell, Albert and
Thomas, 32; Weisheipl, “The Life and Works of Albert the Great,” 22.
17
		Albert the Great, In I sent., d. 1, a. 9, resp., in Opera Omnia, ed. Auguste Borgnet
(Paris: Vivès, 1890–1899), 25:25.
11

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Jacob W. Wood

the Sermon on the Mount, he distinguishes between the beatitude
of someone on the way to heaven (beatitudo viae) and the beatitude
of someone already there (beatitudo patriae). He distinguishes beatitudo
viae into beatitude in hope (beatitudo spei) and beatitude in actual fact
(beatitudo rei). The former is the beatitude of someone who hopes for
eternal life without possessing it completely; the latter is the beatitude of someone who has advanced along the way of perfection in
the Christian life and enjoys something of it present in him already.18
Albert does not make any distinctions concerning beatitudo patriae.
In book 1, Albert discusses the study of theology with reference
to beatitude. Having described the multitude of subjects discussed
in theology,19 he identifies beatitude as that which gives theological
science its unity.
We should say that this science is not one in proportion to one
thing as though that thing were the subject of the others, like
a substance is the subject of its accidents; rather, it is one in
proportion to one thing, which is its beatifying end, because
those who can be beatified are considered in this science as
participating in it, because beatifying dispositions are considered as withdrawing them from what is contrary to it, and
because the things of this world are considered as helping and
supporting them.20
Since the whole of theology is ordered toward beatitude, since beatitude is that which is principally intended by the will, and since the
attainment of beatitude therefore entails the satisfaction of human
desire, Albert argues that theology is primarily an affective science,
although it does lead to the perfection of both the intellect and the

		Albert, In III sent., d. 34, a. 2, q. 3, resp. (Borgnet, 28:624).
		Albert, In I sent., d. 1, a. 2, sol. (Borgnet, 25:16).
20
		Albert, In I sent., d. 1, a. 4, sol.: “Dicendum est, quod hæc scientia una est
proportione non ad unum quod subjectum sit aliorum, sicut substantia
subjectum est accidentium: sed proportione ad unum quod est finis beatificans: quia sic beatificabile considerabitur ut participans illud, et dispositiones
beatificantes ut removentes a contrario: et res hujus mundi ut adjuvantes et
adminiculantes” (Borgnet, 25:17). See Mikołaj Olszewski, “The Nature of
Theology according to Albert the Great,” in A Companion to Albert the Great:
Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences, ed. Irven M. Resnick (Leiden: Brill,
2013), 76.
18
19

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affect.21 He does not make an explicit connection with the distinctions
he makes about beatitude in book 3, since this material was presumably
authored afterwards, but if we were to connect this material with the
distinctions in book 3, the conclusion would be that the study of theology constitutes a locus of beatitudo viae, where a person advances along
the stages of Christian perfection from beatitudo spei to beatitudo rei.
Things change in book 4. Having, by this point, encountered
Grosseteste’s translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics, Albert places
the new translation at the forefront of his speculation on beatitude.
In answering the question “what is beatitude?”22 he sets up his solution as though he were simply going to maintain what he had said
in books 1 and 3. In the first half of the sed contra, he merely reasserts
a classic description of beatitude from Augustine, mediated by Peter
Lombard: “He is happy, who has everything that he wants and wants
nothing wrongly,”23 and it appears as though Albert might proceed to
repeat the distinctions concerning beatitude from book 3. But in the
second half of the sed contra, he subtly shifts the focus of the question
from the definition of beatitude in general, which includes beatitudo
patriae (about which Aristotle could not have known) to a discussion
solely of beatitudo viae.24
Having limited the terms of the discussion to beatitudo viae, Albert
carves out a place for Aristotelian beatitude in the solutio within a
		Albert, In I sent., d. 1, a. 5, sol. (Borgnet, 25:18). See: Henryk Anzulewicz, “The
Systematic Theology of Albert the Great,” in Resnick, A Companion to Albert
the Great, 21–22; Mikołaj Olszewski, “The Nature of Theology according to
Albert the Great,” 73, 77; Christian Trottman, “La théologie comme pieuse
science visant la béatitude selon Albert le Grand,” Revue thomiste 98 (1998):
387–410. For a bibliography of articles dealing with various particular questions in Albert’s understanding of theology, see Olszewski, “The Nature of
Theology according to Albert the Great,” 70n3. To Olszewski’s list should be
added Katja Krause, “Albert and Aquinas on the Ultimate End of Humans:
Philosophy, Theology, and Beatitude,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 86 (2012): 213–29.
22
		Albert the Great, In IV sent., d. 49, a. 6 (Borgnet, 30:672). The Borgnet edition
titles the question provocatively, “Whether beatitude is well defined by the
Philosopher?” However, Albert’s proemium frames the question more modestly:
“quid sit beatitudo?”
23
		Albert the Great, In IV sent., d. 49, a. 6, sc 1 (Borgnet, 30:674). The text of
Peter can be found in Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae, 3rd ed.
(Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971), II:550.
“Beatus igitur non est, nisi qui et habet omnia quae vult et nihil vult male.”
24
		Albert the Great, In IV sent., d. 49, a. 6, sc 1 (Borgnet, 30:674).
21

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Jacob W. Wood

long and complex taxonomy of beatitudes. First, Albert distinguishes
between beatitude taken in a prior way and in a posterior way (secundum prius et posterius), and according to this distinction, beatitude
can mean the perfection of someone on the way to heaven (secundum
statum perfectionis viae), or of someone already there (secundum statum
perfectionis patriae). Thus far, Albert is consistent with books 1 and 3.
However, when he considers beatitudo secundum statum perfectionis viae,
he continues not as previously (distinguishing two ways of possessing
beatitude by grace: beatitudo spei and beatitudo rei), but by distinguishing beatitude taken personally (proprie), generally (large), and with
respect to its cause (per causam). Beatitude taken generally is what
all want, but he does not imply a specific object in which it is to be
found. Beatitude taken with respect to its cause can be considered
commonly (communiter), properly (proprie), and most properly (propriissime). Taken commonly, it is those general attitudes that prepare
for final beatitude; properly, it is those acts that are conducive to final
beatitude, such as the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount;
most properly, it is perseverance in a life of Christian perfection.
Albert attributes beatitude taken personally (beatitudo taken proprie
as distinguished from beatitudo taken large and per causam, not beatitudo
taken proprie as distinguished from beatitudo considered communiter and
propriisime) to Aristotle. According to Albert, this is the happiness that
follows an act of moral virtue in this life, as described in book 6 of
the Nicomachean ethics, or the happiness that follows an act of intellectual virtue through the contemplation of the separate substances or
the first cause, as described in book 10. The former, Albert notes, is
ordered to the latter, since the moral virtues give a person the exterior
goods and solitude necessary for contemplation.
Nothing in Albert’s language suggests that he sees a sharp distinction between Aristotelian and Christian beatitude. Rather, he thinks
that Aristotle and Christian revelation are describing different aspects
of a similar reality.25 For Albert, Aristotle is discussing a subjective fact
of human nature: that happiness is to be found in the highest operation of our highest faculty, the intellect. He does not raise the more
fundamental questions that were to occur to subsequent theologians
		On this conflation, see Martin Tracey, “The Moral Thought of Albert the
Great,” in Resnick, A Companion to Albert the Great, 368. This mitigates against
the claim that the difference between Aristotle’s thought and that of the
received Christian tradition was clearly delineated at this time. See Oliva, “La
contemplation des philosophes,” 624.

25

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about the difference between the formal object of Aristotle’s happiness and Christian happiness, even if he does, as we have already seen,
acknowledge that the object of Aristotle’s happiness is the contemplation of the first cause, while the object of Christian happiness is
immediate union with God. Instead of a formal distinction, Albert
limits himself to a linguistic distinction. Grosseteste had translated
Aristotle’s εὐδαιμονία as felicitas, not beatitudo. Following Grosseteste, whenever Albert refers to Aristotle, he calls happiness felicitas.
Otherwise, he tends to refer to happiness as beatitudo.26 In spite of
this linguistic difference, nothing that Albert says conceptually about
Aristotle in book 4 disturbs what may be gathered about the study of
theology from books 1 and 3.
Albert’s harmony between Aristotelian and Christian beatitude
begins to break down in his first commentary on the Nicomachean
ethics, the Supra ethica.27 He gave this commentary as a lectio in
Cologne from 1250 to 1252, a period during which Aquinas acted
as his socius.28 In book 10, Albert initially follows his Commentary on
		On this, consult the edition of Grosseteste’s translation reprinted in Albert
the Great, Opera Omnia, vol. 14/2, ed. Wilhelm Kübel (Münster: Aschendorff,
1968–72), especially at Bekker nos. 1177b–1178b (pp. 755ff.). This edition
of Albert’s works will be abbreviated “Col.” for Cologne, where the institute
responsible for its publication is located. Evidently, Albert also observed this
distinction in later works. See Martin Tracey, “The Moral Thought of Albert
the Great,” 377.
Bradley, Celano, and Oliva all note the importance of the felicitas/beatitudo
distinction. Celano and Bradley map it onto Aristotle’s distinction between
εὐδαιμονία and μακαρία (Celano, “The Concept of Worldly Beatitude,”
215–20; Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good, 398–99). While Bradley
and Celano are focused on Aquinas’s later Sententia libri ethicorum, which relies
in part on Moerbeke’s subsequent revision of Grosseteste’s translation, Valeria
Buffon notes that the same distinction occurs in Grosseteste (“Philosophers
and Theologians on Happiness: An analysis of early Latin commentaries on the
Nicomachean Ethics,” Laval théologique et philosophique 60 [2004]: 457). Oliva
observes the seeming association of felicitas with Aristotelian contemplation and
beatitudo with Christian contemplation, but does not draw the same parallel
with Greek terms in Aristotle (“La contemplation des philosophes,” 587–88).
The fact that Aquinas does not consistently observe this distinction, which
Bradley acknowledges (Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good, 401) may result
from the influence of the pre-Aristotelian tradition mediated through Albert.
27
		On the gradual corrective that Albert undertook to distinguish Aristotle’s
thought from Christian theology, see Tracey, “The Moral Thought of Albert
the Great,” 369.
28
		Weisheipl, “The Life and Works of Albert the Great,” 29. On Aquinas’s role,
see also Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:21. Albert’s first commentary, the Supra
26

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Jacob W. Wood

the Sentences and describes Aristotelian contemplation as an act of the
intellect formed by the habit of wisdom and ordered toward God
and the first principles of the speculative sciences as its object.29 But,
unlike in his Commentary on the Sentences, Albert begins to distinguish the different subjective dispositions required for the exercise of
Aristotelian and Christian contemplation. “Insofar as the intellect is
imperfect, it is not sufficient for the contemplation of the things of
God. However, insofar as it is perfected by the habit of wisdom, it is
in this way sufficient for philosophical contemplation, and, insofar as
it is perfected by theophanies descending from God, it is in this way
perfected for divine contemplation.”30 As the Christian faith requires,
Albert recognizes that the powers of nature do not suffice for the
vision of God. But he avoids devoting any significant inquiry to
whether or to what extent the two different dispositions he describes
would result in two different acts with two different formal objects,
or what that distinction would do to the place of theology in the
spiritual life. That set of questions would mark the starting point for
Aquinas’s reflections on the same subject in the subsequent semester.
Thomas Aquinas
The Commentary on the Sentences: Studying
Theology to Know God
The problem of sorting out the differences between Aristotelian beatitude and Christian beatitude was bequeathed to Aquinas in the state in
which Albert left it in the Supra ethica, with a firm distinction between
the habits required for Aristotelian and Christian happiness but without much of an explicit discussion about how those habits incline
toward different acts and different objects. This topic was fresh in Aquinas’s mind when he began commenting on Peter Lombard’s Sentences
ethica (1250–1252), should not be confused with his second, the Ethica, which
he edited from 1261 to 1263 (Weisheipl, “The Life and Works of Albert the
Great,” 39).
29
		Albert the Great, Supra X eth., lec. 11, q. 1, sol. (Col., 14:748). On God and
the first principles of speculative sciences, see Albert, Supra X eth., lec. 11, q. 1,
ad 4 (Col., 14:748).
30
		Albert, Supra X eth., lec. 11, q. 4, ad 1: “Intellectus, secundum quod est imperfectus, non est sufficiens ad contemplationem divinorum, sed secundum quod
perficitur per habitum sapientiae, sic sufficiens est ad contemplationem philosophicam et, secundum quod perficitur per theophanias descendentes a deo,
sic perficitur ad divinam contemplationem” (Col., 14:752).

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1113

in the fall of 1252, for Aquinas had only just heard Albert’s lecture on
Nicomachean ethics 10 in the spring of that year, just before he was sent
at Albert’s suggestion to the University of Paris.31
The first article of Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences takes
up the question of theology. It asks whether any other teaching is
necessary for man beyond the philosophical disciplines.32 The first
objection and the second sed contra seem to suggest that Aquinas is
engaged merely in a perfunctory apologetic for the studies on which
he is about to embark. The first objection posits, on the authority
of Dionysius, that there is no need for any higher teaching because
“philosophy is the knowledge of existing things” and there is no
knowledge at all unless it concerns what exists. The second sed contra
argues that, since philosophy proceeds from creatures and since creatures, in their finitude, cannot lead to a perfect knowledge of their
Creator, it is necessary that there be some other teaching that makes
up for the defects in philosophy with respect to God.
However, the second and third objections reveal that there is also
a practical component to the question. The second objection moves
from a consideration of philosophy in itself to a consideration of man’s
perfection. It argues that there is no need for anything above philosophy because all teaching is ordered toward the perfection either of
the speculative or of the practical intellect and philosophy can address
these through demonstrative and moral science, respectively.33 The
third objection suggests that, since it is nobler to be able to achieve
one’s end through oneself, and since man is nobler than many creatures that can do so, it follows that man’s natural intellect suffices for
him to achieve his perfection.34
Taken together with the second and third objections, the first sed
contra reveals the full extent of the question’s consequences. “Against
		Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:37. On the gradual integration of these two
traditions of influence, see R. A. Gauthier, “Arnould de Provence et la doctrine
de la fronesis, vertu mystique suprême,” Revue de Moyen-Âge Latin 19 (1963): 95,
cited in Oliva, “La contemplation des philosophes,” 624n95.
32
		Aquinas, In prol. sent., a. 1, in Adriano Oliva, Les débuts de l’enseignement de
Thomas d’Aquin et sa conception de la sacra doctrina avec l’édition du prologue de
son Commentaire des Sentences (Paris: J. Vrin, 2006), 310–314. This edition of
the prologue, albeit only a small portion of the Commentary on the Sentences,
supersedes the Mandonnet and Moos edition of the prologue (see note 36)
until the entire Leonine critical edition is complete.
33
		Aquinas, In prol. sent., a. 1, obj. 2 (Oliva, Les débuts, 310–311).
34
		Aquinas, In prol. sent., a. 1, obj. 3 (Oliva, Les débuts, 311).
31

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Jacob W. Wood

this is Heb. 11:6: without faith it is impossible to please God. But to please
God is supremely necessary. Since, therefore, philosophy cannot avail
for that which is of faith, it is fitting that there be another teaching
that proceeds from the principles of faith.”35 This first question, then,
is not just about human knowledge, its limits and its perfection; it is
also, as Albert had argued, about human action in view of the end to
which God has called human nature. In this light, Aquinas responds
by drawing a distinction between two acts that, following from
Albert’s two habits, lead to two different formal objects:
All who have thought rightly have held that the end of human
life is the contemplation of God. The contemplation of God,
however, is twofold. The first kind, which is imperfect for
the reason already mentioned, is through creatures. The
Philosopher placed contemplative happiness, which is still but
the happiness of the journey [ felicitas viae], in this contemplation, and all philosophical thought, which proceeds from the
knowledge of creatures, is ordered to this. There is another
contemplation of God, by which he is seen immediately
through his essence. This is the perfect contemplation which
will occur in patria and is possible for man according to the
supposition of faith.36
		Aquinas, In prol. sent., a. 1, sc 1: “Contra, Hebr. XI ‘Sine fide impossibile est
placere Deo.’ Placere autem Deo est summe necessarium. Cum igitur ad ea
que sunt fidei, philosophia non possit, oportet esse aliquam doctrinam que ex
fidei principiis procedat” (Oliva, Les débuts, 311).
36
		Aquinas, In prol. sent., a. 1, sol.: “Omnes qui recte senserunt posuerunt finem
humane vite Dei contemplationem. Contemplatio autem Dei est duplex.
Vna per creaturas, que imperfecta ratione iam dicta, in qua contemplatione
Philosophus felicitatem contemplatiuam posuit, que tamen felicitas est vie, et
ad hanc ordinatur tota cognitio philosophica que ex rationibus creaturarum
procedit. Est alia contemplatio Dei, qua uidetur immediate per suam essentiam, et hec perfecta est, que erit in patria et est homini possibilis secundum
fidei suppositionem” (Oliva, Les débuts, 312–13). In his use of the imperfecta/
perfecta distinction, Aquinas also seems concerned to oppose Robert Kilwardby,
who had argued in the first half of the 1240s that man could achieve beatitudo
perfecta in this life and that such beatitudo would be the contemplative happiness
that Aristotle describes (Buffon, “Philosophers and Theologians on Happiness,” 471).
When exegeting this passage in “La contemplation des philosophes,”
639–40, Oliva suggests that, for Aquinas, Aristotelian and Christian contemplation share a common end in the vision of God and that the necessity of
sacra doctrina is grounded in the inability of Aristotelian contemplation to reach
35

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1115

Like Albert, Aquinas still frames the discussion of Aristotle in terms
of the happiness that can be found in via. But, where Albert spoke of
Aristotle in the context of beatitudo viae because his understanding of
Aristotle was incorporated within his understanding of Christian beatitude, Aquinas utilizes Albert’s later linguistic distinction (taken from
Grosseteste’s translation) between felicitas and beatitudo in such a way
that—contrary to Oliva’s interpretation of this passage—the distinction here implies a formal difference; Aquinas explicitly associates
Aristotelian contemplation with philosophical thought, not theological
thought.37
By omitting reference to Albert’s association between Aristotelian
and Christian contemplation in via, Aquinas was able to distinguish
not just two habits, as Albert had done, but also two acts and two
formal objects (God known mediately in this life through creatures
this common end. He then goes on to reject a distinction between natural
and supernatural happiness (642) because he rejects the idea that Aristotelian
contemplation has a proper terminus apart from the vision of God. While such
an emphasis on the material unity of the object of Aristotelian and Christian contemplation is useful in supporting Oliva’s Thomistic humanism (see
626–27), one may ask whether Oliva sufficiently emphasizes the distinction
between their formal objects. Without raising the question of a hypothetical
state of natura pura, one may question on purely exegetical grounds whether
Oliva does justice to Aquinas’s treatment of three subjects: (1) the inability
of natural reason to know the Trinity in In I sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 3, sol. (Scriptum Super Sententiis, 4 vols., ed. Pierre Mandonnet and Fabien Moos [Paris:
Lethielleux, 1929–1947], 1:98), where Aquinas states that, since philosophical
knowledge is per creaturas (the same language he uses to describe philosophical knowledge in the passage above), and since the three Trinitarian persons
act in perfect unity in causing creatures, philosophical knowledge terminates
in God’s unity; (2) The final state of the souls in limbo in In II sent., d. 33,
q. 2, a. 2, ad 5, whom Aquinas says enjoy God “with natural knowledge and
love [naturali cognitione et dilectione]” (Mandonnet and Moos, 2:861–64); (3)
the distinction between the resolution of philosophical conclusions and the
resolution of theological conclusions in In III sent., d. 25, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 1, ad 4
(Mandonnet and Moos, 3:785–86).
Oliva acknowledges that he is indebted to Henri de Lubac in the denial of
the distinction of natural and supernatural happiness (643n136) and supports
his argument with a Lubacian exposition of natural desire (641–54). Yet, even
when de Lubac denied the existence of natural happiness apart from the
vision of God, he still acknowledged that philosophical contemplation has an
act whose perfection is formally distinct from the vision of God, even though
he thought it was concomitant with the vision of God; see Henri de Lubac,
Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946), 462–63.
37
		See Oliva, “La contemplation des philosophes,” 588, 623.

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Jacob W. Wood

and God seen immediately in the next life by grace). Yet this raises
two questions about the influence of Albert’s thought on Aquinas at
this stage. First, what happened to Albert’s beatitudo viae whereby we
participate in this life by grace in the beatitudo of the life hereafter?
Second, if we omit Albert’s beatitudo viae, what happens to the place
of theology within the spiritual life in its progress toward beatitudo
patriae?
It is true that the restoration of Aristotle to a more purely philosophical understanding of beatitude left a seeming lacuna in Aquinas’s
thought. But Aquinas recognized the gap: if we are eventually to
reach Christian beatitude, and if Aristotle’s beatitude is completely
distinct from Christian beatitude, then there must be something
in this life proportioned to Christian beatitude whereby we might
anticipate it:
. . . It is necessary that those things which tend toward the
end [quae sunt ad finem] be proportioned to the end, inasmuch
as man is led by the hand to that contemplation [of the face of
God] in the state of the journey by a knowledge which is not
taken from creatures, but which is rather immediately inspired
by the divine light. And this is the teaching of theology.38
Aquinas does not yet say in the text that theology constitutes in
any way a “participation” or “inchoation” of perfect beatitude, even
if the seeds of such ideas are certainly present at this early stage.39
		Aquinas, In prol. sent., a. 1, sol.: “Vnde oportet ut ea que sunt ad finem
proportionentur fini, quatenus homo manuducatur ad illam contemplationem in statu vie per cognitionem non a creaturis sumptam, set immediate ex
diuino lumine inspiratam. Et hec est doctrina theologie” (Oliva, Les débuts,
313). Aquinas makes a similar comment in In III sent., d. 24, a. 3, qc. 1, sol.
(Mandonnet and Moos, 3:773), as well as In III sent., d. 24, a. 3, qc. 1, ad 3
(Mandonnet and Moos, 3:775). Similarly, see Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super
Isaiam ad litteram 1, lec. 1 (Leonine, 28:9), cited in Oliva, “La contemplation des
philosophes,” 587. Oliva notes that Aquinas speaks there of a visio associated
with the contemplation of the faithful in via, although we may observe that
Aquinas does not speak in the text referenced of a corresponding beatitudo.
39
		The closest Aquinas comes is in In prol. sent., a. 1, ad 2 (Oliva, Les débuts, 313),
where he associates the study of theology with the perfection of the intellect
by infused knowledge and of the affect by gratuitous love. But it is ambiguous
whether Aquinas is discussing the ultimate perfection of these faculties in patria
or a degree of their perfection in via. Even if Aquinas intends the latter, there
remains room for him to associate that degree of perfection more explicitly

38

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But he does acknowledge that theology constitutes a sharing in the
wisdom (sapientia) that beatitude includes.40 As wisdom, it considers
the highest causes as they are in themselves and leads back to them.41
Moreover, since the highest cause is God, the wisdom that theology
teaches is ordered to God as “the contemplation of the first truth in
patria.”42
Aquinas does not write here that theological wisdom implies per
se any connaturality between the one who possesses it and the first
truth toward which it is ordered. Rather, in book 3, Aquinas clearly
distinguishes between the wisdom that is acquired by study, which
does not imply such a connaturality, and the infused gift of wisdom,
which does.43 Only the gift of wisdom necessarily entails the “deiform
contemplation” that causes connaturality between the wisdom and
the one who contemplates it, and even then, the connaturality
between wisdom and the one who possesses it is only secundum quid;
like any gift of the Holy Spirit, wisdom presupposes charity, which
is the ground of connaturality. Although Aquinas will later connect
wisdom to action that is predicated upon it, at this stage of his career,
he does not make such a connection explicitly.44
with beatitudo imperfecta. Oliva is therefore somewhat imprecise when he
speaks of theology in this text as referring to “une participation inchoative” of
contemplation in patria, and somewhat anachronistic when he interprets this
passage in light of texts from ST II-II that were written nearly two decades
later (“La contemplation des philosophes,” 589–91).
40
		In prol. sent., a. 3, qc. 3, resp. (Oliva, Les débuts, 325).
41
		In prol. sent., a. 3, qc. 1, resp. (Oliva, Les débuts, 321).
42
		In prol. sent., a. 3, qc. 1, resp. (Oliva, Les débuts, 320).
43
		In III sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 1, qc. 1, sol. (Mandonnet and Moos, 3:1193).
44
		In III sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 1, qc. 3, sol. (Mandonnet and Moos, 3:1195). This
explains why Oliva, “La contemplation des philosophes,” 599–603, must
appeal to a later text to find a more comprehensive explication of the role of
charity in Aquinas’s understanding of Christian contemplation at this point in
his career to undergird the premise that “l’acte de contemplation des saints
[dans In III sent., d. 35] commence inspiré par la charité” (“the act of the
contemplation of the saints [in In III sent, d. 35] begins under the inspiration
of charity”) (614). A closer reading of the passage that is most central to Oliva’s
argument, In III sent., d. 35, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1 (Mandonnet and Moos, 3:1177–78),
shows that Aquinas says the same about Christian contemplation as he does
about wisdom at this stage of his career. He says that it consists “essentially
in an act of the cognitive faculty” (sol.) and that the end of contemplation
in itself is “only truth” (ad 1), while acknowledging that the action of the
intellect in contemplation presupposes charity in the will. Certainly, the seeds
of Aquinas’s more mature thought are present in this passage, and Oliva is

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To summarize what we have seen thus far with regard to book 1
of Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas develops Albert’s
distinction from the Supra ethica between Aristotelian and Christian
beatitude, acknowledges an act alongside Aristotelian beatitude that
is conducive toward and proportioned to Christian beatitude, and
associates theology with that act. However, Aquinas has not yet gone
so far as to describe that act explicitly as a form of beatitude in the
way that Albert had.45
Having been introduced in the beginning of the Commentary on the
Sentences, imperfect beatitude does not reappear until distinction 49
of book 4, where Aquinas considers the question of human beatitude
and the thought of Aristotle more fully:46
The Philosopher in the same place suggests another opinion
about beatitude [beatitudo], or happiness [ felicitas], in saying that
beatitude has absolute perpetuity and immobility according to
its perfected character. But it is not possible for man to come to
beatitude according to its perfected character. Nevertheless, it
is possible for a man to have some participation of it, however
small, and from this he can be called happy [beatus]. Therefore
it is not necessary that a man be perpetually and immutably
happy simply speaking, but rather according to the condition of
human nature; wherefore he adds: “happy, however, as men.”
Now, such immutability comes to man when the firm habits of
right to draw connections between Aquinas’s earlier and later thought, but it
is anachronistic to read Aquinas’s later thought into this passage as though it
were already present and more fully developed than the text allows. As will
be shown below, Aquinas explicitly changes his mind later about the practical
nature of wisdom, and this correlates with important developments in his
explanation of the role of charity in Christian contemplation and in theological study.
45
		Note that I do not intend to say that Aquinas had given no consideration to
the habit, act, and object associated with Christian contemplation in this life,
only that he had not gone so far as to associate this habit, act, and object, with
what Albert called beatitudo viae.
46
		Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 4, in Opera Omnia (Parma, IT: Fiaccadori, 1852–1873), 7/2:1185–86. Aquinas may allude to Albert’s distinction
between beatitudo spei and beatitudo rei briefly once in In III sent., d. 34, q. 1, a.
4, ad 2 (Mandonnet and Moos, 3:1129). However, since it comes in response
to a short objection and in light of the fact that Aquinas does not integrate it
into any larger discussion of beatitude, there is no reason to suppose that the
distinction forms a significant part of Aquinas’s consideration at this point.

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the virtues are within him, so that he is not able to be deflected
easily from acting according to virtue.47
Like Albert, Aquinas understands Aristotle to be speaking of beatitude
primarily in terms of speculative virtue, and only secondarily in terms
of moral virtue, insofar as moral virtue is ordered toward speculative
virtue. Yet, unlike Albert, who took every care not to criticize Aristotle—a practice that was made easier by not fully distinguishing Aristotelian beatitude and Christian beatitude—Aquinas does not hesitate
to point out the limits of Aristotelian beatitude in the text that follows
any more than he hesitates to distinguish Christian beatitude from it.
According to Aquinas, Aristotelian beatitude is insufficient on its
own. Aristotle held that man could be made happy only by a participation of divine beatitude. However, a creature with an intellect must
be able to attain beatitude in essence, not merely by participation.48
Accordingly, Aquinas argues, “true beatitude cannot be placed in
this life on account of the various changes to which man is subject;
wherefore it is necessary that beatitude, which is the end of human
life, is after this life.”49 Continuing, however, to place Aristotelian
beatitude alongside Christian beatitude, Aquinas hastens to add:
Still, we do not in fact deny that some participation of beatitude can be [possessed] in this life, according to which man
		In IV sent., d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 4, sol.: “Philosophus ibidem ponit aliam
sententiam de beatitudine, sive de felicitate; ut scilicet dicatur, quod beatitudo,
secundum suam perfectam rationem, perpetuitatem et immobilitatem absolutam habeat. Sed secundum perfectam rationem beatitudo non est possibilis
homini accidere; sed possibile est hominem esse in aliqua participatione ipsius,
licet modica, et ex hoc eum dici beatum; et ideo non oportet hominem
beatum esse perpetuum et immutabilem simpliciter, sed secundum conditionem humanae naturae; unde subjungit: beatos autem ut homines. Talis autem
immutabilitas accidit homini quando sunt in ipso firmati habitus virtutum, ut
non de facili possit deflecti ab actu secundum virtutem” (Parma, 7/2:1185).
48
		Aquinas is animated here not just by a concern to overcome Aristotle himself
but also by the various beatitudines perfectae affirmed by the Arabic Aristotelians.
See Richard Taylor, “Arabic/Islamic Philosophy in Thomas Aquinas’s Conception of the Beatific Vision in IV Sent., d. 49, q. 2, a. 1,” The Thomist 76 (2012):
509–50.
49
		In IV sent., d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 4, sol.: “Beatitudo... vera non potest poni in
hac vita propter mutabilitates varias quibus homo subjacet; unde necesse est
beatitudinem quae est finis humanae vitae, esse post hanc vitam” (Parma,
7/2:1185–86).
47

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is perfected principally in the goods of speculative reason, and
secondarily in those of the practical reason; and in his Ethics the
Philosopher passes judgment on this happiness, neither affirming nor denying another [happiness], which is after this life.50
In this way, the young Aquinas sees the harmonization of book 10 of
the Nicomachean ethics with the Christian tradition as simple: the two
can stand alongside each other without conflict. The contemplation
enjoined by each has its own cause, its own disposition, its own act,
its own object, and its own effect. If, per impossibile, Aristotle were
presented with Christian revelation, he might find himself indifferent
about it because it was something that he simply had not considered.
In Aquinas’s commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate, which dates
to the academic year 1257–1258, he follows the doctrine of beatitude from his Commentary on the Sentences but makes the dissociation
between Aristotelian contemplation and Christian beatitude even
stronger.51 He seems to do so not only in order to take into account
the opinion of Aristotle but also to respond to the opinion of the
Arabic commentator Avempace (Ibn Bājjah), who blurred the line
between Aristotelian and Christian beatitude by arguing that we
could rise to a quidditative knowledge of the separate substances
through the science of metaphysics and could, in this way, achieve
ultimate beatitude in this life.52
		In IV sent., d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 4, sol.: “Non negamus tamen quin aliqua beatitudinis participatio in hac vita esse possit, secundum quod homo est perfectus
in bonis rationis speculativae principaliter, et practicae secundario; et de hac
felicitate philosophus in Lib. Ethic. determinat, aliam, quae est post hanc vitam,
nec asserens nec negans” (Parma, 7/2:1186). Bradley’s position that Aristotelian and Christian beatitude are fundamentally irreconcilable is based on a
definition of beatitudo imperfecta taken directly from this text and from other,
similarly early texts (Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good, 398–99).
51
		Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:328. On Aquinas’s use of Pseudo-Dionysius at
this stage in his career, see: John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000),
509–13; Douglas Hall, The Trinity: An Analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Expositio
of the De Trinitate of Boethius (New York: Brill, 1992), 108; Fran O’Rourke,
Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2005), 39.
52
		Aquinas, Super Boethium de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4, arg. 3 (Leonine, 50:169). In this
question, Aquinas speaks of “philosophers” who posit that the most perfect
human happiness consists in understanding the separate substances. The
“philosophers” in question are Averroes and Avempace. The context of the
question, asking whether we come to see God through speculative science,
50

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According to Aristotle, Aquinas says, the knowledge we have
through the speculative sciences is mediated by material things.53 In
some cases that material thing is proportioned to an immaterial thing;
this is so in the case of genera and species. In other cases it is not;
this is the case when God’s effects refer to him.54 In such cases, we
cannot arrive at the vision of the immaterial thing in this life because
our intellect is limited by the knowledge it can attain from the material thing and the material thing is not proportioned to its cause.55
Consequently, in this life, we can know that God and the separate
substances exist but we cannot know their essence or quiddity.56
In itself, Aquinas’s argument was sufficient to meet the proposed
objection. But Aquinas goes a step further and adds a subjective
consideration to his objective reasoning. Following Albert’s distinction of habits in the Supra ethica, Aquinas emphasizes in this context
the difference between the habit of natural wisdom, which prepares
the intellect for Aristotelian contemplation, and the lumen gloriae,
which prepares the intellect for the vision of God:
The happiness [ felicitas] of man is twofold. One is imperfect,
which happens in via. The Philosopher speaks about this one;
it consists in understanding separate substances through the
habit of wisdom of the sort that is possible in via (such that their
quiddity is not known). The other is perfect in patria, in which
God himself is seen by his essence as well as the other separate
leans more toward Avempace’s opinion than that of Averroes, since, although
this objection could be attributed to both, the question under consideration
concerns knowledge acquired through the speculative sciences, and Avempace held that we can acquire knowledge of the separate substances through
the speculative sciences. See Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De
anima libros 3.36, ed. F. Stuart Crawford (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy
of America, 1953), 490–95. Also see Summa contra gentiles [SCG] III, ch. 43, in
Summa Contra Gentiles: Editio Leonina Manualis (Rome: Commissio Leonina,
1934), 261–71. This version of the Leonine edition of SCG will cited rather
than vols. 13–15 of the edition; it will be cited as “Man.” and is superior to
the version originally published by the commission in those folio volumes of
the Opera Omnia.
53
		Super Boethium de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4, resp. (Leonine, 50:170–71).
54
		Super Boethium de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4, ad 2 (Leonine, 50:171).
55
		Super Boethium de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4, resp. (Leonine, 50:170).
56
		Super Boethium de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 3. resp. (Leonine, 50:167). On the background
to this discussion in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, see Oliva, “La contemplation
des philosophes,” 593–96.

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substances. Now, this happiness will not come through some
speculative science; rather [it will come to us] through the light
of glory.57
In this way, Aquinas remains consistent with his Commentary on the
Sentences. He draws a sharp contrast between the habit, act, and formal
object of Aristotelian contemplation and the habit, act, and formal
object of the vision of God. In the distinction of habits, he follows
Albert’s Supra ethica. In the distinction of acts and objects, he continues
to draw out the implications of Albert’s thought.
A second text from the 1257–1258 academic year in which Aquinas treats the question of imperfect beatitude is question 14 of the
Quaestiones disputatae de veritate.58 Here again, Aquinas follows the
pattern of the Commentary on the Sentences of sharply distinguishing
the habits, acts, and formal objects of Aristotelian beatitude and
Christian beatitude:
Now the ultimate good of man, which first moves the will
concerning the ultimate end, is twofold. One of these is
proportioned to human nature because natural powers suffice
for obtaining it; and this is the happiness concerning which
philosophers have spoken: either contemplative, which consists
in an act of wisdom; or active, which consists first in an act of
prudence, and consequently in acts of the other moral virtues.
The other is a good which exceeds the proportion of human
nature because natural powers do not suffice for obtaining it,
nor even for knowing or desiring it; rather it is promised to
man out of God’s liberality alone; 1 Cor. 2:9: “eye has not
seen,” etc., and this is eternal life.59
		Super Boethium de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4, ad 3: “Duplex est felicitas hominis: una
imperfecta que est in uia; de qua loquitur philosophus, et hec consistit in
contemplatione substantiarum separatarum per habitum sapientie, imperfecta
tamen et tali, qualis in uia est possibilis, non ut sciatur ipsarum quidditas. Alia
est perfecta in patria, in qua ipse Deus per essentiam uidebitur et alie substantie
separate; set hec felicitas non erit per aliquam scientiam speculativam, sed per
lumen glorie” (Leonine, 50:171).
58
		 James Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 362–63.
59
De veritate, q. 14, a. 2 resp.: “Est autem duplex hominis bonum ultimum quod
primo voluntatem movet quasi ultimus finis, quorum unum est proportionatum naturae humanae quia ad ipsum obtinendum vires naturales sufficiunt,
et hoc est felicitas de qua philosophi locuti sunt, vel contemplativa quae
57

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This is the point at which Aquinas had concluded his argument
in the De Trinitate. However, in the De veritate, Aquinas introduces
a new axiom into his thought that he had previously encountered in
the course of Albert’s teaching and that enables him to extend his
argument yet further. That axiom is “nothing desires a good except
inasmuch as it has some similarity with that good.”60
But nothing can be ordered unto an end unless a proportion to
that end pre-exists in it, from which a desire for the end arises
in it. This happens according as some beginning of the end
comes to be in it, since nothing desires a good except inasmuch
as it has some similarity with that good; and therefore it is the
case that there is a certain beginning of the good which is
proportioned to nature in human nature itself: for the self-evident principles of demonstrations [sic], which are seeds of the
contemplation of wisdom, and the principles of the natural law,
consistit in actu sapientiae, vel activa quae consistit primo in actu prudentiae et
consequenter in actibus aliarum virtutum moralium. Aliud est bonum hominis
naturae humanae proportionem excedens quia ad ipsum obtinendum vires
naturales non sufficiunt, nec etiam ad cognoscendum vel desiderandum, sed
ex sola divina liberalitate homini repromittitur, I Cor. II:9 ‘Oculus non vidit ’
etc., et hoc est vita aeterna” (Leonine, 22:441).
60
		The idea appears in Albert’s discussion of the desire for the good in all things
in his commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus. See Albert the
Great, Super Dionysius de divinis nominibus, ch. 4, no. 114 (Col., 37:211–12].
While scholars differ as to the dating of this work, we know that it was prior
to Aquinas’s first Paris regency. That Aquinas read it is proven by the fact that
we possess a copy of the work in Aquinas’s hand (Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:21).
The fact that Aquinas does not use the axiom about desire in this way until
now suggests that, even though he was aware of the idea, it may be that some
more recent reading may have brought it to the forefront of his mind, e.g.,
chapter 2 of the De ebdomadibus of Boethius: “Quod appetit aliud, tale ipsum
esse naturaliter ostenditur quale est illud hoc ipsum quod appétit ” (“that which
desires another shows itself to be naturally similar to it [i.e. to the object of its
desire] by the very fact that it desires it”). For the text of Boethius, see Aquinas,
Expositio libri de ebdomadibus (Leonine, 50:270.19–22). There is some difficulty
with regard to the dating of Aquinas’s commentary on Boethius’s De ebdomadibus (see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:68). The question is how it should be
dated with reference to Aquinas’s commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate. While
Torrell, following the editor of the Leonine edition, seems to favor a later date,
the correllation of the De ebdomadibus with De veritate, q. 14, a. 2, might provide a
small piece of evidence in favor of dating the two Boethian commentaries to the
same year while still allowing for the fact that the De Trinitate was written first.

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which are the seeds of the moral virtues, pre-exist in it naturally. By the same reasoning it is also necessary that, in order for
man to be ordered unto the good of eternal life, a beginning
of it come to be in the one to whom it is promised. But eternal life consists in the complete knowledge of God, as is clear
from John 17:3, “This is life,” etc.; wherefore it is necessary
that a beginning of this supernatural knowledge come to be in
us, and this happens by faith, which grasps those things by an
infused light, which exceeds natural knowledge.61
Aquinas’s use of the aforementioned axiom, while consistent with
his argument in the Commentary on the Sentences and the De Trinitate,
advances his thinking a step further. While the Commentary on the
Sentences describes the need for a habit in this life proportioned to
perfect beatitude in the next life, it does not suggest explicitly that
this habit in any way constitutes the pre-existence in this life of the
perfect beatitude of the next life. Although Aquinas does not draw all
the possible conclusions from this inference at this point, it opens the
door to a future retrieval of Albert’s beatitudo viae alongside the place
that Aristotle’s felicitas viae had come to assume in Aquinas’s thought.
That having been said, question 14 of De veritate raises a new
concern that neither Albert’s nor Aquinas’s previous writing had
addressed. Aquinas claims that the pre-existence in this life of the
perfect beatitude of the next life is caused by faith.62 In book 3 of his
		De veritate, q. 14, a. 2 resp.: “Nihil autem potest ordinari in aliquem finem
nisi praeexistat in ipso quaedam proportio ad finem ex qua proveniat in ipso
desiderium finis, et hoc est secundum quod aliqua finis inchoatio fit in ipso
quia nihil appetit bonum nisi in quantum habet aliquam illius boni similitudinem; et inde est quod in ipsa natura humana est quaedam inchoatio ipsius
boni quod est naturae proportionatum: praeexistunt enim naturaliter in ipso
principia demonstrationum per se nota quae sunt semina quaedam contemplationis sapientiae, et principia iuris naturalis quae sunt semina virtutum
moralium. Unde oportet etiam quod ad hoc quod homo ordinetur in bonum
vitae aeternae, quod quaedam inchoatio ipsius fiat in eo cui repromittitur.Vita
autem aeterna consistit in plena Dei cognitione, ut patet Ioh. XVII:3 ‘Haec est
vita’ etc.; unde oportet huius cognitionis supernaturalis aliquam inchoationem
in nobis fieri, et hoc est per fidem quae ea tenet ex infuso lumine quae naturalem cognitionem excedunt” (Leonine, 22:441).
62
		There is a hint of a similar idea in Super Boethium De Trinitate, but it is not
stated as clearly. See Super Boethium de Trinitate, q. 2, a. 1, resp. (Leonine, 50:93),
and q. 2, a. 2, resp. (Leonine, 50:95). Torrell inclines toward the view expressed
at this stage of Aquinas’s career, that faith is the basis of the inchoation of
beatitude in this life, but attributes it to ST (Jean-Pierre Torrell, Christ and
61

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Commentary on the Sentences, he had expressed hesitation as regards the
relationship between faith and the vision of God. In one way, he had
likened faith to sight, since it leads to knowledge of that which would
otherwise be unknown to us. But Aquinas says that this is sight
“improperly speaking”; in reality, faith is the assent of the intellect
to things that are not seen.63 How can we speak of faith making the
object of vision present if faith is distinguished from vision precisely
insofar as the object of vision is not present?
The Summa Contra Gentiles: Studying Theology to Love God
Aquinas continued to develop his thinking about the possibility of an
imperfect participation of perfect beatitude in this life by grace in question 24 of De veritate, which dates to the 1258–1259 academic year.64 In
this text, he develops his argument from question 14 significantly and
anticipates a way of overcoming the seeming contradiction of saying
that faith constitutes the pre-existence of vision:
Although it can be granted to someone on the journey through
the gifts of wisdom and of counsel that his reason should nowise
err concerning the end of the good as well as the particular
means, nevertheless it is not possible that the judgment of his
reason be uninterrupted. This would exceed the state of the
journey for two reasons: first and principally, because it is impossible that reason be always in the act of right contemplation in the
state of the journey in order that God might be the motive for all
that person’s works . . . except in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was
at the same time a sojourner and in possession [of his homeland];
but through the grace proper to the journey a man is also able to
be attached to the good, so that he is not able to sin without great
difficulty. This happens when, through the infused virtues, his
inferior powers are restrained, his will is inclined more strongly
to God, and his reason is perfected in the contemplation of
divine truth, the continuation of which, coming forth from the
fervor of his love, withdraws the man from sin.65
Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Bernhard Blankenhorn [Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011], 23–29).
63
		In III sent., d. 24, a. 2, qc. 1, sol. (Mandonnet and Moos, 3:768).
64
		Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino, 363.
65
De veritate, q. 24, a. 9, resp.: “Quamvis autem alicui viatori concedi possit ut
ratio nullatenus erret circa finem boni, et circa utilia in particulari, per dona
sapientiae et consilii, tamen non posse intercipi iudicium rationis, excedit

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Previously, Aquinas’s treatments of Christian contemplation in
this life were more purely intellectual. Although he had at times
mentioned the role of moral virtue in the pursuit of intellectual
contemplation, he had said that the role of virtue in the will was
dispositive. This had marked a fairly sharp contrast with Albert. Here
we see Aquinas introducing the will into intellectual contemplation
in a manner that is not merely dispositive. Love in the will serves as
the cause of contemplation in the intellect, and love is therefore the
reason for whatever participation our contemplation in this life has in
the uninterrupted nature of divine contemplation.
The principle of pre-existence, deployed in question 14 if De veritate
to suggest that faith makes an anticipation of perfect beatitude present
in this life, together with the idea from question 24 that the driving
force of Christian contemplation is not the knowledge of God so much
as it is the love of God, gets taken up into a more robust understanding
of Christian contemplation and the study of theology in SCG I, which
was composed in the same academic year as question 24 (1258–1259).66
In SCG I, chapter 5, Aquinas synthesizes his rationale for the study
of theology from the Commentary on the Sentences with his developed
reasoning on the desirability of contemplation from De veritate:
No one tends toward something with desire and zeal unless it
is foreknown to him. Since, therefore, our human weakness
is ordered by divine providence to a higher good than can be
experienced in the present life, as will be investigated in what
follows, it was necessary that our mind be called forth into
something higher than our reason can attain in the present life,
so that thus it might learn to desire something that exceeds the
whole state of our present life, and to tend toward it with zeal.
And this especially befits the Christian religion, which promises each person spiritual and eternal goods.67
statum viae, propter duo. Primo et principaliter, quia rationem esse semper
in actu rectae contemplationis in statu viae, ita quod omnium operum ratio
sit Deus, est impossibile . . . nisi in domino Iesu Christo, qui simul viator et
comprehensor fuit. Sed tamen per gratiam viae ita potest homo bono astringi,
quod non nisi valde de difficili peccare possit, per hoc quod ex virtutibus infusis inferiores vires refrenantur, et voluntas in Deum fortius inclinatur, et ratio
perficitur in contemplatione veritatis divinae, cuius continuatio ex fervore
amoris proveniens hominem retrahit a peccato” (Leonine, 22:702).
66
		Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:102.
67
SCG I, ch. 5: “Nullus enim desiderio et studio in aliquid tendit nisi sit ei
praecognitum. Quia ergo ad altius bonum quam experiri in praesenti vita

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Here, as in the Commentary on the Sentences, the need for theology
is grounded in the nature of human beatitude. There it was stated
personally that man cannot please God without knowing about
Christian beatitude in the next life; here it is stated abstractly that
man has been ordered to an end that supersedes his natural powers.
In either case, the result is the same: the need for theology is based on
the exigencies of the present economy of grace. Man has been called
to an end that he cannot reach by natural reason, and it is therefore
necessary that his actual end be both proposed to him by revelation
and investigated by theological reasoning. But the text of SCG goes
further than the Commentary on the Sentences. Making use of the principle of pre-existence from De veritate, it notes that not only could we not
please God without faith; we would not even want to try. Believing
the Christian faith and conducting theological speculation about it are
necessary for us not only so that we may know about the beatitude of
the life to come but also so that we may whet our appetites for it and
avoid succumbing to a despair born of ignorance about our final end.
If Aquinas advances beyond the Commentary on the Sentences by
adding an explicit consideration of the role of love in the act of Christian contemplation, he does so in such a way as to carefully avoid the
difficulty raised by his teaching in question 14 of De veritate that faith
causes the pre-existence of vision in us. Even if we acknowledge the
existence by faith of a remote idea of the vision of God in the intellect, Aquinas does not say that such a likeness produces any sort of
union with the thing known. As he had explained in book 3 of his
Commentary on the Sentences, union between the soul and its object
is brought about by love, not by knowledge.68 This is because truth,
which is the object of the intellect, is in the mind, while the good,
which is the object of the will, is in things.69 In the case of the beatific
vision, there is a quasi-exception to this general rule because the
possit humana fragilitas, homines per divinam providentiam ordinantur, ut in
sequentibus investigabitur, oportuit mentem evocari in aliquid altius quam
ratio nostra in praesenti possit pertingere, ut sic disceret aliquid desiderare, et
studio tendere in aliquid quod totum statum praesentis vitae excedit. Et hoc
praecipue Christianae religioni competit, quae singulariter bona spiritualia et
aeterna promittit” (Leonine, Man., 4–5).
68
		In III sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1 (Mandonnet and Moos, 3:853–58). See also Michael
Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 2005), 68.
69
		In II sent., d. 39, q. 1, a. 2, sol. (Mandonnet and Moos, 2:988). See also Sherwin,
By Knowledge and By Love, 68.

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divine essence is united to souls as its intelligible species.70 But, short
of that vision, the general rule applies: knowledge cannot produce
union, only love, and such is even the case with faith.71
While Aquinas acknowledges the inadequacy of faith to produce
union with God, he does suggest a way forward that he will integrate
into subsequent reflections on the study of theology. Recalling the
principles from questions 14 and 24 of De veritate, he notes:
The ultimate end to which man is led by the help of divine
grace is the vision of God in his essence, which is proper to
God himself. . . . Therefore, man cannot be brought to this end
unless he is united to God by the conformity of his will. This
is the proper effect of love. . . . Therefore, by sanctifying grace
man is made a lover of God, since man is directed by it toward
the end communicated to him by God.72
Since faith cannot unite us with God before it gives way to vision, the
only means that the soul possesses of anticipating in itself union with
the divine essence is a love that seeks the divine goodness in itself, even
before that goodness is possessed in the act of vision.73
By introducing the perfection of the will into the rationale for the
study of theology, SCG begins a return to Albert by suggesting that
the study of theology is not just an intellectual endeavor; it is part of
an integrated response to God’s call to the beatific vision in which
the knowledge of God is inextricably linked to the love of God. Even
if the text of SCG does not explicitly make charity a constitutive
aspect of the reasons for studying theology, it lays the foundation for
Aquinas to do so subsequently by affirming the idea that the study of
theology encourages us to advance toward God by affirming the idea
that we cannot advance toward God unless he is somehow present in
us, by rejecting the idea that faith makes God present in us, and by
affirming the idea that love unites us with God.
		In IV sent., d. 49, q. 2, a. 1, corp. (Parma, 7/2:1197–99).
		SCG IV, ch. 152 (Leonine, Man., 410).
72
		SCG III, ch. 151: “Finis autem ultimus, ad quem homo per auxilium divinae
gratiae perducitur, est visio Dei per essentiam, quae propria est ipsius Dei. . . .
Non potest igitur homo ad hunc finem perduci nisi uniatur Deo per conformitatem voluntatis. Quae est proprius effectus dilectionis. . . . Per gratiam
ergo gratum facientem homo constituitur Dei dilector: cum per eam homo
dirigatur in finem ei communicatum a Deo” (Leonine, Man., 409).
73
		SCG III, ch. 151 (Leonine, Man., 409–10).
70
71

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The Summa theologiae: Studying Theology as a Foretaste of Heaven
The first article of ST (1265) largely follows SCG I on the reason
for studying theology.74 Aquinas begins by grounding the need for
theology in God’s having ordered us to an end beyond our power and
in the need for God, as our end, to be foreknown to us. But Aquinas
does not say at this point that the end needs to be foreknown to us as
something about which we would be otherwise completely unaware
(as in the Commentary on the Sentences) or needs for us to desire it as
something yet unknown (as in the SCG); rather, he suggests that the
end must be foreknown to us in order for us to order our actions
toward it intentionally:
It was necessary for man’s salvation that there be some doctrine
which follows from divine revelation, and which is beyond the
philosophical disciplines . . . because man is ordered toward God
as toward an end that surpasses reason’s comprehension. . . . But
the end must be foreknown to the men who have to order their
intentions and their actions toward it. Wherefore it was necessary for man’s salvation that some things which exceed human
reason be made known to him by divine revelation.75
In view of Aquinas’s previous teaching that it is only charity that
advances us toward and unites us with our final end, this suggests that
he is beginning to make room for charity as an integral component of
theological study.76
Another way in which we can begin to see Aquinas beginning
here to emphasize the role of charity in theology is in his description
of wisdom.77 As in the Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas explains
that we call “wisdom” that which considers the highest causes of
		ST I, q. 1, a. 1 (Leonine, 4:6–7).
		ST I, q. 1, a. 1: “Necessarium fuit ad humanam salutem, esse doctrinam
quandam secundum revelationem divinam, praeter philosophicas disciplinas,
quae ratione humana investigantur, . . . quia homo ordinatur ad Deum sicut
ad quendam finem qui comprehensionem rationis excedit. . . . Finem autem
oportet esse praecognitum hominibus, qui suas intentiones et actiones debent
ordinare in finem. Unde necessarium fuit homini ad salutem, quod ei nota
fierent quaedam per revelationem divinam, quae rationem humanam excedunt” (Leonine, 4:6–7).
76
		Cf. ST I, q. 1, a. 5, corp. (Leonine, 4:16), where Thomas says that the end of
theology, insofar as it is practical, is beatitude.
77
		ST I, q. 1, a. 6 (Leonine, 4:17–18).
74
75

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Jacob W. Wood

things;78 he draws a firm distinction between the wisdom that is
acquired by study (theology) and the wisdom that is infused (the gift
of wisdom).79 But unlike in the Commentary on the Sentences, where
Aquinas sees both kinds of wisdom as speculative, in ST, he speaks of
wisdom in its generic sense—including both theology and the gift of
wisdom—as also inherently practical, for the purpose of wisdom is to
“order human actions toward their proper end.”80 This correlates with
a subsequent change to his teaching about the gift of wisdom in the
prima secundae that brings his teaching about wisdom in general in line
with his teaching about wisdom in theology. Aquinas could no longer
maintain, as he had in the Commentary on the Sentences, that the gift of
wisdom is in itself purely speculative. He continues to acknowledge
that the gifts are practical in the sense that they presuppose charity,81
but he also adds that the gift of wisdom is practical in itself, since it is
both speculative and practical. The truly wise man does not consider
the highest causes without also ordering his actions toward them.82
Seeing both kinds of wisdom—theology and the gift of wisdom—
as inherently practical opened to Aquinas a way of developing a
full-fledged account of imperfect beatitude based on Christian
contemplation, such as Albert had proposed, and for holding it in
tandem with an imperfect beatitude based on Aristotelian contemplation. Aquinas developed this more robust account of imperfect
beatitude based on Christian contemplation while commenting on
the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew in the academic
year 1269–1270,83 the same text in relation to which Albert had
		ST I, q. 1, a. 6 (Leonine, 4:17–18).
		ST I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 3 (Leonine, 4:18).
80
		ST I, q. 1, a. 6, corp. (Leonine, 4:17). Many commentators have corrected a
rationalistic reading of Aquinas’s understanding by pointing to the association
in ST between theology and wisdom. See, e.g.: James Weisheipl, “The Meaning of Sacra Doctrina in Summa Theologiae I, q. 1,” The Thomist 38 (1974): 49–80;
Brian Davies, “Is Sacra Doctrina Theology?” New Blackfriars 71 (1990): 141–47;
Mark Johnson, “The Sapiential Character of the First Article of the Summa
theologiae,” in Philosophy and the God of Abraham: Essays in Memory of James A.
Weisheipl, OP, ed. R. James Long (Toronto: PIMS, 1991), 85–98. As helpful as
the theology–wisdom association is for overcoming rationalistic readings of
Aquinas, the aforementioned commentators tend to overlook the association
between wisdom and action noted in Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Love, 170.
81
		ST I-II, q. 68, a. 5, corp. (Leonine, 6:452).
82
		ST II-II, q. 45, a. 3, corp. (Leonine, 8:341–42).
83
		Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 329. We should advert here to the approach of
Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, DC: Catholic
78
79

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explained his own doctrine of beatitudo spei and beatitudo rei.
While Aquinas was working on his Commentary on Matthew, he
was busy drawing up a tabula libri ethicorum, an index to the Nicomachean ethics and to Albert’s commentary on it.84 The extra time spent
with Albert’s work was not without consequence. Evidently returning to the teaching of his magister, Aquinas reached back into Albert’s
work to redeploy the distinction between beatitudo spei and beatitudo
rei as two degrees of possessing a foretaste in via of the beatitude that
we are to expect in patria:
Some suggest that the vision of God is in the contemplation of
truth in via; the Lord, however, promises it in patria; wherefore
blessed are the pure of heart etc. And it should be noted that this
reward, which the Lord here mentions, can be possessed in two
ways: perfectly and consummately, and such will it be in patria;
and inchoatively and imperfectly, and thus it is in via. Wherefore the saints have a certain beginning of that beatitude. And
since in this life those things are not able to be explicated as
they will be in patria; Augustine’s commentary focuses on the
fact that they are in this life; blessed, therefore, are the poor in
spirit: not only in hope [in spe], but also in actual fact [in re].
Luke 17:21: the Kingdom of God is among you.85
To say that Aquinas returns to Albert in the Commentary on
Matthew is not to say that he rejects Aristotelian contemplation and
the imperfect happiness it entails altogether, as Bradley implies.86 If
University of America Press, 1995), who rightfully sees this text as central to
Aquinas’s theology.
84
		 Thomas Aquinas, Tabula Libri Ethicorum (in Leonine vol. 48). See Torrell, Saint
Thomas Aquinas, 1:229.
85
Super Matt 5, lec. 2: “Aliqui ponunt visionem Dei in contemplatione veritatis
in via; Dominus autem promittit in patria; unde beati mundo corde et cetera.
Et notandum quod ista praemia, quae Dominus hic tangit, possunt dupliciter
haberi, scilicet perfecte et consummate, et sic in patria tantum: et secundum
inchoationem et imperfecte, et sic in via. Unde sancti habent quamdam inchoationem illius beatitudinis. Et quia in hac vita non possunt explicari illa sicut
erunt in patria; ideo Augustinus exponit secundum quod sunt in hac vita beati
ergo pauperes spiritu: non spe tantum, sed etiam re. Lc. XVII, v. 21: regnum
Dei intra vos est” (ed. Raffaele Cai [Turin, IT: Marietti, 1951], 66).
86
		Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good, 487. Failing to appreciate the
manner in which the doctrine of beatitude in the Commentary on Matthew
paves the way for the treatment of Beatitude in the prima secundae of ST,

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Jacob W. Wood

we proceed to the prima secundae of ST, we can perceive there that
Aquinas prefers to synthesize the two strands of thought rather than
reject one in favor of the other. In the Treatise on Beatitude (qq. 1–5),
he speaks in Aristotelian terms; in the discussion of the Beatitudes (q.
69), he follows Albert.
Although the primary aim of the Treatise on Beatitude is to establish man’s perfect beatitude in the vision of God,87 such an aim does
not preclude a discussion of the possibility of an imperfect participation or beginning of that perfect beatitude in this life. Throughout
the treatise, Aquinas describes a variety of ways in which an imperfect share of perfect beatitude in this life can be ordered to our one,
perfect beatitude. In the first place, Aquinas establishes that imperfect
beatitude is imperfect insofar as it lacks perpetuity and unicity. Its
mutable character arises from the problems that affect the reason,
such as illness, and those that affect the will, such as the practicalities
of everyday life.88 Yet, even if imperfect beatitude falls short of our
final beatitude in its temporal finitude, it still bears a similarity to it
insofar as it constitutes a good of the speculative intellect.89 In particular, imperfect beatitude consists in the activity of contemplation
supported by the exercise of moral virtue.90
Aquinas makes it explicitly clear that, when he mentions imperfect
beatitude in the Treatise on Beatitude, he has Aristotelian contemplation primarily in mind.91 But we should not therefore suppose that
Aquinas meant to exclude all consideration of Christian contemplation alongside it as an alternative form of imperfect beatitude, as
though his Commentary on Matthew were somehow an anomaly in the
Bradley wrongly interprets Aquinas as taking a critical stance toward Aristotle
in this work.
87
		ST I-II, q. 3, a. 8 (Leonine, 6:35–36). For an historical discussion of the context
of this article, see my To Stir a Restless Heart: Thomas Aquinas and Henri
de Lubac on Nature, Grace, and the Desire for God (Washington, DC: CUA
Press, forthcoming 2019).
88
		ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4 (Leonine, 6:27); I-II, q. 5, a. 4, corp. (Leonine, 6:49–50).
See also ST I-II, q. 5, a. 3, corp. (Leonine, 6:49), in which Aquinas presents a
list of concerns similar to those of article 4 but including some more of the
concerns voiced in SCG III, ch. 48 (Leonine, Man., 277–79), including the
insatiable character of the will’s desire for good in this life, the ephemeral
nature of the goods of this life, and the fact that man is subject to death, in
addition to the fear of death.
89
		ST I-II, q. 3, a. 5, corp. (Leonine, 6:31–32).
90
		ST I-II, q. 3, a. 5, corp. (Leonine, 6:32).
91
		ST I-II, q. 3, a. 6, ad 1 (Leonine, 6:33).

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development of his thought. Aquinas’s re-engagement with Albert’s
distinction between beatitudo spei and beatitudo rei in his Commentary
on Matthew was also taken up into the prima secundae; it was simply
taken up into the discussion of the Beatitudes rather than the Treatise
on Beatitude.
In his discussion of the Beatitudes, Aquinas once again employs
the distinction between beatitudo spei and beatitudo rei that had been
reintroduced in the Commentary on Matthew. He sees in this distinction a fitting manner of describing the degrees of happiness in this
life attendant upon degrees of Christian perfection without therefore rejecting the Aristotelian happiness he had described in the
Treatise on Beatitude.92 Beatitudo spei consists in merits, insofar as
these prepare a person to receive beatitude; beatitudo rei consists in an
imperfect beginning of future beatitude in the saints, according as
they begin to receive the rewards of the Beatitudes in this life.93 This
leads to a brief discussion of the difference between the active and
contemplative lives. The active life, Aquinas says, gains merit, which
predisposes a person to receive the rewards of the beatitudes. The
contemplative life, however, conveys the very beatitude promised in
the Beatitudes. This reward is received either inchoatively in this life
or perfectly in the next.94
Conclusion
If we read Aquinas’s texts on beatitudo imperfecta chronologically and
in the context of Albert the Great, it becomes clear that Aquinas did
not pit Aristotle against Christian revelation. Quite the reverse: he
distinguished in order to unite and gradually integrated Aristotelian
beatitude with Christian beatitude over the course of his career. In his
mature work, Aquinas arrived at a twofold account of beatitudo imperfecta. One form of it is the happiness found in Aristotelian contemplation; Aquinas consistently and explicitly acknowledges the existence

		ST I-II, q. 5, a. 3, ad 1 (Leonine, 6:49).
		ST I-II, q. 69, a. 2, corp. (Leonine, 6:457). Cf. ST I-II q. 69, a. 2, ad 3 (Leonine,
6:457). See also ST II-II, q. 9, a. 3, ad 3 (Leonine, 8:77), where Aquinas explains
that no beatitude corresponds to the gift of knowledge, since the gift of
knowledge concerns creatures, whereas the gifts of wisdom and understanding
concern divine things. Once again, in connection with the Beatitudes, he associates beatitude “on the journey” with a certain graced beatitude as opposed
to one attainable by nature.
94
		ST I-II, q. 69, a. 3, corp. (Leonine, 6:458).
92
93

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Jacob W. Wood

of this beatitudo imperfecta throughout the course of his career.95 This
beatitudo imperfecta is formally distinct from another beatitudo imperfecta,
which is the result of Christian contemplation in faith and charity.
While the seeds of this latter beatitudo imperfecta are present in Aquinas’s
early work, he arrives at a robust and explicit description of it only in
his mature work.
Parallel with the development of Aquinas’s thought on imperfect beatitude, we have also seen the development of his reasons for
studying theology. In the Commentary on the Sentences, the study of
theology is needed to supplement the insufficiency of Aristotelian
contemplation by adding knowledge of our supernatural vocation
to Aristotle’s observations about contemplation in book 10 of the
Nicomachean ethics. In SCG, the study of theology not only makes our
supernatural calling better known but also increases our desire here
and now to be united with God in the future fulfillment of that vocation. In ST, where Christian contemplation is associated with a kind
of beatitudo imperfecta, the study of theology becomes—as it was for
Aquinas’s magister, Albert—a locus of this beatitudo imperfecta in which
we advance by degrees from beatitudo spei to beatitudo rei. Undertaken
in the spirit of Christian charity, it looks forward to, makes present,
and advances in this life toward the beatitudo perfecta of the life to
come, and in so doing, constitutes for us an inchoation and a foretaste
N&V
of heaven on earth.

		Having shown that the act associated here with one form of beatitudo imperfecta
can be found consistently in the Thomistic corpus, it is important to reiterate
that the abstract, speculative question of whether such a beatitudo imperfecta is
possible mutatis mutandis must be distinguished from the concrete, historical
question of the conditions under which the act associated with it may be
performed (in integral nature versus in postlapsarian nature; with grace versus
without grace, in via versus in patria, etc.) and the further speculative question
of whether its performance can be associated in any sense with a beatitudo
naturalis. I take up some of these questions in To Stir a Restless Heart.

95

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1135

Understanding the Common Good
Steven A. Long
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

The principal object of this article is to explain the

centrality and transcendence of the common good. To correctly
address the nature of the common good of political society, one must
first understand that, (1) before it is a political or social principle, the
“common good” is an intrinsic constitutive principle of the moral,
metaphysical, and theological orders, (2) it is a political principle on
the condition of being first moral, metaphysical, and theological, and (3)
it is an essentially teleological principle, an end. My aim is to focus on
the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, which articulates a teaching found
throughout the Catholic tradition and normative for it.
I will first refer to the common reading of the account of the
common good in the Second Vatican Counilc’s Gaudium et Spes
and attempt to clarify the strategic difference between this common
reading and the stronger understanding to be found in the Catholic
tradition. Second, I will offer an initial account of the transcendence
of the common good as a central analogical principle within Catholic
thought. Third, I will offer a few words about the common good of
political society and the virtue of legal justice. Fourth, I will address
the essentially teleological and theonomic character of the common
good and its defining role for both natural and divine law as participations of the eternal law, especially in their normative relation to
political and social order.1
		Allow me to recommend on these questions the analysis of Charles de
Koninck in his essays in The Primacy of the Common Good Against the Personalists and in his In Defence of St. Thomas. These works offer invaluable guidance

1

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Steven A. Long

Contemporary Ecclesial Formulation
Gaudium et Spes §26 articulates the nature of the common good in
this way:
Every day human interdependence grows more tightly drawn
and spreads by degrees over the whole world. As a result the
common good, that is, the sum of those conditions of social
life which allow social groups and their individual members
relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment,
today takes on an increasingly universal complexion and consequently involves rights and duties with respect to the whole
human race. Every social group must take account of the needs
and legitimate aspiration of other groups, and even of the
general welfare of the entire human family.2
This definition draws attention to the wider order of which one is
a part, an order that is required in defining the rectitude of the part
with respect to the whole. Yet “the sum of those conditions of social
life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively
thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment” may suggest that
the common good is being viewed here as what we might identify
as a “common utility” in economic language, a utility that finally
reduces to the good of individuals qua individuals. Viewed in this
way, the role of communio, of solidarity in good, and of noble higher
good would be excluded from the account of common good. Were this
reading to be construed as the most formal account, then the common good
and constitute a sui generis contribution to the commentatorial tradition. On
this subject, I would also wish to direct readers to the excellent analysis of
the political common good by Prof. John Goyette in the issue of the National
Catholic Bioethics Quarterly that I guest edited (Spring, 2013), titled “On the
Transcendence of the Political Common Good: Aquinas versus the New
Natural Law Theory.”
2
		Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World, Gaudium et Spes, §26: “Ex interdependentia in dies strictiore et paulatim ad mundum universum diffusa sequitur bonum commune—seu summam
eorum vitae socialis condicionum quae tum coetibus, tum singulis membris
permittunt ut propriam perfectionem plenius atque expeditius consequantur—hodie magis magisque universale evadere, et exinde iura officiaque
implicare, quae totum humanum genus respiciunt. Quilibet coetus necessitatum et legitimarum appetitionum aliorum coetuum, immo boni communis
totius familiae humanae, rationem habere debet.” Unless otherwise noted, all
English translation of magisterial documents are from the Vatican website.

Understanding the Common Good

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would be understood in a purely instrumental manner and the truth
that certain common orderings of individuals in society are requisite
to the good of individuals would exhaust the formal character of the
common good.
Gaudium et Spes does not seem to be intended formally to address
the question of whether the good of the individual itself is merely
an “individual good.” It does not overtly address the foundational
issue of whether good is reducible to private and incommensurable
goods of individuals. It merely identifies that a common ordering is
requisite to the good of individuals, whatever “good” may mean,
leaving aside the issue of whether all goods of individuals are individual, private goods. Thus, Gaudium et Spes often is read as treating the
common good materially and instrumentally. It appears to treat it
materially in two ways. First, whatever the good for the human person
is, there are aspects of the ordering of society that are requisite to,
and instrumental for, this good—the good is treated not formally
and in its nature, but merely materially as something to which
other things must generally be ordained if it is to be achieved by
individuals. Second, it is treated materially in that “the sum of these
conditions”—clearly and unequivocally a quantitative formulation—is
taken to comprise the “common good.” So, the formulation of Gaudium et Spes, apart from further reference to the tradition, can appear
simply to assert that there are conditions that must generally obtain
for the sake of human good and that the totality of these is what is
intended by common good.
Yet it is one thing to say that methodologically there is room for
an analysis of common utilities such that, in one plausible meaning of
“common good,” we can refer to these as common goods, but quite
another thing to answer the question of whether all goods of human
persons are private goods. I wish to note that it can be argued that
the proper translation of Gaudium et Spes §26 should be not “their
own flourishing,” but rather “their proper perfection,” as the Latin is
propriam perfectionem. This opens the reading of the document to the
wider tradition. Yet, without more specific reference to the tradition,
propriam perfectionem is not of itself adequately specified and may tend
to be taken to refer to private goods. Since the right way to read such
a document as Gaudium et Spes is always in accord with the universal
tradition, we need to advert to that tradition.

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Steven A. Long

The Transcendence of the Common Good
in the Catholic Tradition
What I have called the “common reading” of Gaudium et Spes falls
short of the normative treatment of the common good articulated
in the Catholic tradition. Two points formally articulated within the
Catholic tradition manifest this.
The first is that the common good, precisely as good, is not
merely a totality of conditions that are instrumentally helpful; it is
distinguished from private good not merely quantitatively, but formally.
Aquinas has articulated the tradition on this point with great precision in question 58 of Summa theologiae [ST ] II-II:
The common good of the realm and the particular good of the
individual differ not only in respect of the many and the few, but
also under a formal aspect. For the aspect of the common good
differs from the aspect of the individual good, even as the aspect
of whole differs from that of part. Wherefore the Philosopher
says (Polit. I. 1) that they are wrong who maintain that the state and
the home and the like differ only as many and few and not specifically.3
Thomas amplifies this teaching later in the secunda pars, arguing:
“Now every part is directed to the whole, as imperfect to perfect,
wherefore every part is naturally for the sake of the whole.”4 Note
the emphasis on the normative order of part to whole—the relation
is not merely materially and extensively quantitative, but addresses the
formal ratio of part to whole as a commensuration of part to whole, a
		
Summa theologiae [ST] II-II, q. 58, a. 7, ad 2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod
bonum commune civitatis et bonum singulare unius personae non differunt
solum secundum multum et paucum, sed secundum formalem differentiam, alia
enim est ratio boni communis et boni singularis, sicut et alia est ratio totius et
partis. Et ideo philosophus, in I Polit., dicit quod non bene dicunt qui dicunt civitatem et domum et alia huiusmodi differre solum multitudine et paucitate, et non specie.”
All Latin quotations are taken from the University of Navarre’s Corpus Thomisticum site (www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html). This is not because the
author fails to value the Leonine texts, but because (a) no sufficient difference
in the cited material exists to weigh against relying on the editions cited, and (b)
the editions cited are somewhat more accessible. All English translations from
the works of St. Thomas are my own, although I frequently consult and, where
I approve, use the Old Blackfriars (Fathers of the English Dominican Province,
revised ed. of 1920) for ST and Anton Pegis’s translation of the Summa contra
gentiles [SCG] from the University of Notre Dame Press’s edition (1975).
4
		
ST II-II, q. 64, a. 2.
3

Understanding the Common Good

1139

formal ordering of part to whole. This doctrine is of course found
throughout the tradition. One thinks of Augustine arguing in the
Confessions that “there is faultiness and deficiency in every part that
does not fit in with the whole, of which it is a part.”5 Thomas insists
strongly on this principle as intrinsic to his account of the nature of
the good. As he puts it, “the common good takes precedence of the
private good, if it be of the same genus.”6 One may rightly, on this
view, prefer the common good to the individual good, something that
is manifest in his treatment of the death penalty and of just war7 but
that is also a principle of far greater formal importance and generality.
While the semantics of this teaching to American minds raises the
specter of collectivism—of a subordination of the individual to the
collective conceived as an alien good—this would be to materialize the
nature of common good, which is something formal. In other words,
it is the human person as such who is ordered both to private and to
common goods, and common goods are not alien to the person, but
rather the higher perfection of the person. Indeed, the dignity of the
human person is a function of the ordering of human nature to noble
or common good.
The second point where the common interpretation of Gaudium
et Spes falls short is that the common good is an end, is itself a good,
and a good of a radically different kind from individual or private good: it is
a good that is radically more communicable by its very nature. According to
St. Thomas, the common good is “common, not by the community
of genus or species, but the community of final cause.” As he puts it:
Actions are indeed concerned with particular matters: but
those particular matters are able to be referred to the common
good, not as to a common genus or species, but as a common
final cause, according to which the common good is said to be
the common end.8
		Augustine, Confessions 3.8, trans. Rex Warner (New York: New American
Library, 2001), 49.
6
		
ST II-II, q. 152, a. 4, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod bonum commune
potius est bono privato si sit ejusdem generis.”
7
		
ST II-II, q. 25, a. 5, ad 2: “Et tamen hoc facit iudex non ex odio eorum, sed
ex caritatis amore, quo bonum publicum praefertur vitae singularis personae.”
8
		
ST I-II, q. 90, a. 2, ad 2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod operationes quidem
sunt in particularibus, sed illa particularia referri possunt ad bonum commune,
non quidem communitate generis vel speciei, sed communitate causae finalis,
secundum quod bonum commune dicitur finis communis.”
5

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Steven A. Long

The common good has a universality that is not merely that of
predication or of the mode of our conceiving it: it exhibits a causal
universality, consisting in the intrinsically greater communicability of its
goodness as an end. We may all share a pizza, but the food that one eats
is not the food eaten by another, which is numerically distinct. This
is a private or individual good. By contrast, consider the striving of many
persons to discover truth, or to achieve victory in battle, or to see that
justice prevails in some difficult matter. These goods are rejoiced in
by all who labor for them. The truth is the good sought by all honest
inquirers, victory is the good sought by all who fight for it; justice is
the good sought by all who work for it. It is the same numerical good to
which all have ordered their efforts, and while it is the private good
of none of the parties, it is indeed good for each. It is a good of and for
the individual, but it is not an individual good. Such a good is by its
nature communicable to many without diminution; it is more intelligibly
irradiant, more universal, precisely as an end.
By the very nature of truth or justice as ends of noble striving, these
may be enjoyed by many with no diminution. The end or good of truth
is not altered or diminished by being communicated to many. If we
share a pizza and one person has more, the other, by force of necessity, must have less, but manifestly this is not the case with truth.9
		Michael Baur has written well of this in his essay “Law and Natural Law”
in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump
(Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2014), 241: “In virtue of being common
(‘by way of causation’), a common good on Aquinas’s account remains numerically one and undivided while simultaneously being desired by and perfective
of many different parts, precisely insofar as they are parts. In other words, a
good that is common by way of causation is essentially a shareable good.When
one member of a community enjoys the goodness of a common good, this
enjoyment by one part does not in itself entail subtraction from or detriment
to the similar enjoyment of the same common good by another part or parts.
When Lily and Grace discuss philosophy over a bottle of wine, the particular
sips of wine that they imbibe and enjoy while conversing are particular goods.
The very same sip of wine (the numerically one and undivided portion of
wine) that Lily imbibes and enjoys simply cannot be imbibed and enjoyed
by Grace, so when Lily imbibes and enjoys more of the wine, there is less of
the wine to be imbibed and enjoyed by Grace. By contrast, the philosophical
conversation that Lily and Grace are having (while imbibing the wine) is a
common good; it can remain numerically one and undivided while both are
enjoying the conversation. In itself, Lily’s enjoyment of the conversation does
not entail any subtraction from or detriment to Grace’s enjoyment of the
conversation. When Lily enjoys the conversation more, it does not follow that
Grace has to enjoy the conversation less.”

9

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Likewise, if a judge does justice in one case, he is not compensatorily obliged to do injustice in the next. Justice as a common good is
numerically one, but it is the singular possession of none, although
this is the manner in which the tyrant loves the city, as assimilating it
to his own private good, rather than as a noble good to be honored,
guarded, sacrificed for, and served.
In this light, we discern that the common good as truly good is thus
an object of noble striving. It does not properly capture the actual
nature of what is at stake in the first wave at Normandy beach, where
the soldiers bled the beaches red with their blood, to speak of that as
sacrifice for a “common utility.” One may intelligibly sacrifice one’s
private good for the common good, as Socrates so conspicuously did
in refusing even to seem to undercut the law of Athens by fleeing an
unjust verdict, choosing instead to abide by the sentence of death.
One does not reasonably die for the sake of lowering phone bills in
the metropolitan area, but one might reasonably do so in behalf of
justice, truth, mercy, love, noble friendship, or communion with
God. The common good is the nobler and more universal good of
the individual, but it is not an individual or private good. As a parenthetical note, this same observation obtains in a derivative manner
with respect to what Pope St. John Paul II described as the “virtue of
solidarity,”10 something of which man qua man is capable only because
human nature is ordained to common ends or goods that are nobler
perfections.11
		See John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987), §38: “It is
above all a question of interdependence, sensed as a system determining relationships in the contemporary world, in its economic, cultural, political and
religious elements, and accepted as a moral category. When interdependence
becomes recognized in this way, the correlative response as a moral and social
attitude, as a ‘virtue,’ is solidarity [Agitur ante omnia de mutua copulatione,
quae recipitur uti systema praeponderans rationum in mundo nostri temporis,
in eius partibus, seu oeconomia, cultura, res public as administrandi scientia,
religione, et ut genus morale assumitur. Cum ita mutua copulatio agnoscitur et
assumltur, ei respondet, tamquam habitus moralis et socialis, tamquam ‘virtus’
consensio].” See also §40: “Solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue. [Non
est dubium quin solida hominum coniunctio virtus sit Christiana].”
11
		John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis §38, speaking of solidarity: “This then is not
a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many
people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good
of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all [quae
igitur non simplex est et vagus misericordiae sensus vel levis miseratio tot
10

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St. Thomas distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic common
good. Intrinsic common good is the good of a “unity of order,” the
good of right order in a multitude, whereas extrinsic common good
is that for the sake of which the intrinsic common good exists. The right
order of an army is for the sake of the extrinsic good of victory that
is the good of the general, and the general intends the right ordering
of the army for the sake of victory. As Thomas expresses it:
A good existing in the universe, namely, the order of the
universe, is an end thereof; this however, is not its ultimate
end, but is ordered to the extrinsic good as to the end: thus the
order in an army is ordered to the general, as stated in Metaph.
xii, Did. xi, 10.12
The intrinsic common good is specified by and is for the sake of the
extrinsic common good.
The architectonic role of the common good is manifest in Thomas’s understanding of law as such, whether we speak of the law of the
state, the natural law, or the divine law. Law is an ordinance of reason
issued and promulgated by the one with the care of the community
for the sake of the common good.13 As Thomas puts it in ST I-II, q. 90,
a. 2, ad 3:
Just as nothing stands firm with regard to the speculative reason
except that which is traced back to the first indemonstrable
principles, so nothing stands firm with regard to the practical reason, unless it be directed to the last end which is the
common good: and whatever stands to reason in this sense, has
the nature of a law.14
personarum malis tributa, vicinarum aut longinquarum; sed est contra voluntas
firma et cons tans bonum curandi commune, seu bonum uniuscuiusque et
omnium, quia omnes vere recipimus in nos].”
12
		ST I, q. 103, a. 2, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod finis quidem universi
est aliquod bonum in ipso existens, scilicet ordo ipsius universi, hoc autem
bonum non est ultimus finis, sed ordinatur ad bonum extrinsecum ut ad ultimum finem; sicut etiam ordo exercitus ordinatur ad ducem, ut dicitur in XII
Metaphys.”
13
		ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, resp.: “Et sic ex quatuor praedictis potest colligi definitio legis, quae nihil est aliud quam quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum
commune, ab eo qui curam communitatis habet, promulgata.”
14
		ST, I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod, sicut nihil constat

Understanding the Common Good

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Every genuine common good is a participation in the ultimate extrinsic
common good of the universe: God. For the common good, absolutely
speaking, is God, whose good is participated in every created good,
and toward whom—both naturally and supernaturally—all things are
ordered.
Of course, at this point, it should be clear that “common good,”
as a good that is, by its nature, one in number but communicable to
many, is an analogical perfection that may be found in progressively
greater radiance, from the common good of political society, through
the immanent common good of the right ordering of the universe
with respect to God, and onward to the ultimate extrinsic common
good of the universe, who is God. The law of the state is indeed
reached either by conclusion from the natural law or by determination
of the natural law in respect of some contingent matter that must be
ordered in accord with the natural law in one of the ways in which it
is prudently orderable.15 Further, the very natural order of ends that
specifies human action and human virtue is itself a common good,
inasmuch as it formally constitutes the natural good so that conformity with it becomes itself a noble end of striving.
We see the theonomic character of common good in the following
lines of St. Thomas in the Summa contra gentiles [SCG]:
Further, a particular good is ordered to the common good as
to an end; indeed, the being of a part depends on the being of
the whole. So, also, the good of a nation is more godlike than
the good of one man. Now the supreme good, namely God,
is the common good, since the good of all things depends on
him: and the good whereby each thing is good, is the particular good of that thing, and of those that depend thereon.
Therefore all things are directed to one good, namely, to God,
as their end.16
firmiter secundum rationem speculativam nisi per resolutionem ad prima
principia indemonstrabilia, ita firmiter nihil constat per rationem practicam
nisi per ordinationem ad ultimum finem, qui est bonum commune. Quod
autem hoc modo ratione constat, legis rationem habet.”
15
		ST I-II, q. 95, a. 2.
16
		SCG III, ch. 17: “Praeterea, Bonum particulare ordinatur in bonum commune
sicut in finem: esse enim partis est propter esse totius; unde et bonum gentis est
divinius quam bonum unius hominis. Bonum autem summum, quod est Deus,
est bonum commune, cum ex eo universorum bonum dependeat: bonum
autem quo quaelibet res bona est, est bonum particulare ipsius et aliorum

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This is decisive for law as such, since all true law is a participation
in the eternal law and must derive from it and be in conformity
with it:
Since then the eternal law is the plan of government in the
Chief Governor, all the plans of government in the inferior
governors must be derived from the eternal law. But these plans
of inferior governors are all other laws besides the eternal law.
Therefore all laws, in so far as they partake of right reason, are
derived from the eternal law. Hence Augustine says (De Lib.
Arb. i, 6) that “in temporal law there is nothing just and lawful,
but what man has drawn from the eternal law.”17
It is precisely here that we must understand Thomas’s doctrine of
natural law in order to grasp the profound unity of the common good
and its spiritual, moral, political, and social normativity. Nonetheless,
before turning to this more complete context for the understanding
of the transcendence of the common good, it is reasonable first to
speak of the limited but real transcendence of the political common
good and its necessary relation to virtue.
The Transcendence of the Political Common Good
For Aquinas and for the Catholic tradition, the political common good
is the good of an ordered multitude in relation to the happiness of
the community, which is found in virtuous living. As Thomas writes
regarding Aristotle’s teaching in the Politics:
For it is of the nature of the city that in it should be found
everything sufficient for human life. . . . Third, he shows to
what it is ordered: for it is originally made for living, namely,
that men might find sufficiently that from which they might
quae ab ipso dependent. Omnes igitur res ordinantur sicut in finem in unum
bonum, quod est Deus.”
17
		ST I-II, q. 93, a. 3, resp.: “Cum ergo lex aeterna sit ratio gubernationis in
supremo gubernante, necesse est quod omnes rationes gubernationis quae sunt
in inferioribus gubernantibus, a lege aeterna deriventur. Huiusmodi autem
rationes inferiorum gubernantium sunt quaecumque aliae leges praeter legem
aeternam. Unde omnes leges, inquantum participant de ratione recta, intantum derivantur a lege aeterna. Et propter hoc Augustinus dicit, in I de Lib.
Arb., quod in temporali lege nihil est iustum ac legitimum, quod non ex lege aeterna
homines sibi derivaverunt.”

Understanding the Common Good

1145

be able to live; but from its existence it comes about that men
not only live but that they live well insofar as by the laws of the
city human life is ordered to the virtues.18
It might be thought that this is simply what the common reading
of Gaudium et Spes affirms, that the common good is the sum of the
social conditions requisite to the good of persons. Yet, what is considered is not merely instrumentality toward goods that are private
goods. Rather, what is at stake is the right ordering of a multitude
for the sake of the community’s happiness, which consists in virtuous life.
Granted that the common good concerns also the survival and material flourishing of the community, all this is further ordered for the
sake of the community’s happiness and virtue. Virtuous life is, as it
were, the extrinsic common good for the sake of which the common
ordering is undertaken, and as every order is specified by its end, this
ordering is specified by the nobler, more universal, more communicable common
good, rather than by the merely private goods of citizens. Neither the
private good of the individual nor the private good of the family is
wholly sufficient for happiness and virtue. The dignity of the political
community consists in the importance of its role in ordering citizens
not merely to material prosperity but also to the life of virtue:
But every law aims at being obeyed by those who are subject to
it. Consequently it is evident that the proper effect of law is to
lead its subjects to their proper virtue: and since virtue is “that
which makes its subject good,” it follows that the proper effect
of law is to make those to whom it is given good, either simply
or in some particular respect. For if the intention of the lawgiver
is fixed on true good, which is the common good regulated according
to Divine justice, it follows that the effect of the law is to make men
good simply.19
		Aquinas, In I pol., lec. 1, no. 31: “Secundo dicit, quod civitas est communitas perfecta: quod ex hoc probat, quia cum omnis communicatio omnium
hominum ordinetur ad aliquid necessarium vitae. . . .Tertio ostendit ad quid
est civitas ordinata: est enim primitus facta gratia vivendi, ut scilicet homines
sufficienter invenirent unde vivere possent: sed ex eius esse provenit, quod
homines non solum vivant, sed quod bene vivant, inquantum per leges civitatis
ordinatur vita hominum ad virtutes.”
19
		ST I-II, q. 92, a. 1, resp. The Latin here is one of the crucial passages: “Si enim
intentio ferentis legem tendat in verum bonum, quod est bonum commune
secundum iustitiam divinam regulatum, sequitur quod per legem homines
18

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He continues here: “If, however, the intention of the lawgiver is fixed
on that which is not simply good . . . then the law does not make men
good simply, . . . [and] thus a man is called a good robber.”
This is, quite frankly, merely to point out that law is teleological,
that it is ordained to good, either real or merely apparent, and that
real good must consist in a genuine ordering to the life of virtue that
alone can make the life of the community to be happy and peaceful.
Yet there is no implication that the political common good exhausts
or totally comprises the good for man: in fact, the political community itself is further ordered to the good, in relation to which it may be
judged as good only secundum quid but as bad in itself (as its citizen
may be made good by it only secundum quid and not properly: for
example, when a citizen becomes a good communist or a good Nazi,
this falls short of being good simpliciter). Yet the common good of
political life consists in the direction to the good life and virtue, and
as we have seen, it is a formal and normatively defining aspect of law
that it direct to the final end:
Nothing stands firm with regard to the practical reason, unless
it be directed to the last end which is the common good: and
whatever stands to reason in this sense, has the nature of a law.20
Thus also, legal justice, in commanding the moral virtues, is
noblest of the moral virtues precisely because it causally directs all
the other moral virtues to the common good that transcends private
good. Thus, Thomas states that, “if we speak of legal justice, it is
evident that it stands foremost among all the moral virtues, for as
much as the common good transcends the individual good of one
person.”21 Indeed, for this very reason, the political common good
fiant boni simpliciter. Si vero intentio legislatoris feratur ad id quod non est
bonum simpliciter . . . tunc lex non bonos facit homines simpliciter, sed secundum quid, scilicet in ordine ad tale regimen. Sic autem bonum invenitur etiam
in per se malis, sicut aliquis dicitur bonus latro.”
20
		ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 3.
21
		ST II-II, q. 58, a. 12, resp.: “Respondeo dicendum quod si loquamur de iustitia
legali, manifestum est quod ipsa est praeclarior inter omnes virtutes morales,
inquantum bonum commune praeeminet bono singulari unius personae.”
One might say that praeeminet means only “excels,” but the clear sense is an
“excelling” that is of its nature intrinsically more excellent, that the common
good of its nature “excels.” The sense of the proposition is best rendered by
“transcends.”

Understanding the Common Good

1147

is subordinate to and is judged in relation to essentially nobler common
goods. Limitation on the power of the state flows not merely from
below but also from above, owing to the teleological ordering of
lower common goods to nobler common goods. Just as private good
is ordained to common good, so a less diffusive common good is
ordained to a more diffusive or communicable common good.
There is a tendency to suppose today that the only thing impeding a “nanny state” or a thoroughgoing collectivist disregard for the
person is the health of private institutions. This is important, but
even more important is the existence of authority that supersedes that
of the political state and is associated with common goods that are
nobler than that of the political state. For, the good of the political
community cannot be a “good” if it is sealed off from the ordering of
the person—either in nature or in grace—to the ultimate common good.
The very definition of law expresses this, and it is the foundation of
the judgment mala lex, nulla lex—an evil law is no law—a judgment
that makes the same kind of distinction about the body of laws in a
society that we make with respect to the biological good itself. As
a tumor in some particular case is factively but not normatively a
“part” of the body, so a putative law is in some case factively but not
normatively a “part” of the body of laws. And, as in the former case
no immediate particular therapy is dictated, so too in the latter: in
each case, the effort to limit the bad effect of the disorder may take
the form either of direct removal or some other form of mitigation.
But the prudential limitations in correcting disorder do not imply
that any command can in itself genuinely obligate anyone when it is
contrary to the common good. Nor can such an edict be part of the
normative body of law, just as the prudential limitations in treating
bodily tumors do not constitute tumors as normative parts of the
human body. The tumor and the unjust command are said to belong,
respectively, to the body or to law only by a weak analogy of attribution. Thus Thomas writes:
As Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5) “that which is not just
seems to be no law at all”: thus according as the law is just,
so far does it have the force of law. Now in human affairs, a
thing is said to be just inasmuch as it is right according to the
rule of reason. But the first rule of reason is the law of nature,
as is clear from what has been said above (q. 91, a. 2, ad 2).
Wherefore every human law has just so much the nature of law
according as it is derived from the law of nature. But if some-

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thing it is at variance with the law of nature, it is no longer a
law but a perversion of law.22
The person is not subject to the political common good in all that
he is and has precisely because the person is ordained to common
goods nobler than the political common good, goods that norm and
that are constitutive for the authentic common good of political
society. Yet, while the degree to which the political community can
conduce to virtue is limited both ontologically and prudentially, its
contribution is nonetheless both real and essential.
The common good of the community must be a good, a bonum
honestum, and so it must be in accord with the nobler good of the
society of persons and encourage this good to the degree possible and
certainly and minimally at least not undercut it. This is to say that
there is a teleological hierarchy of common goods—of noble, universal ends—that terminates in the beatific vision itself, the celestial city
of the beati, the saints. The virtuous life of the community cannot
be furthered by the opposition of the political common good to the
divine good, whether at the level of nature or at the level of grace;
it can only be impaired by such opposition, or possibly even destroyed by it.
Deontology—rights, duties, and obligation—within such an account
pertains to that which is necessary for the sake of the end, for the sake
		ST I-II, q. 95, a. 2, resp.: “Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut Augustinus dicit,
in I de Lib. Arb., non videtur esse lex, quae iusta non fuerit. Unde inquantum
habet de iustitia, intantum habet de virtute legis. In rebus autem humanis
dicitur esse aliquid iustum ex eo quod est rectum secundum regulam rationis.
Rationis autem prima regula est lex naturae, ut ex supradictis patet. Unde
omnis lex humanitus posita intantum habet de ratione legis, inquantum a lege
naturae derivatur. Si vero in aliquo, a lege naturali discordet, iam non erit lex
sed legis corruptio.” Thomas also notes, in ST I-II, q. 93, a. 3, ad 2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod lex humana intantum habet rationem legis, inquantum
est secundum rationem rectam, et secundum hoc manifestum est quod a lege
aeterna derivatur. Inquantum vero a ratione recedit, sic dicitur lex iniqua, et
sic non habet rationem legis, sed magis violentiae cuiusdam. Et tamen in ipsa
lege iniqua inquantum servatur aliquid de similitudine legis propter ordinem
potestatis eius qui legem fert, secundum hoc etiam derivatur a lege aeterna,
omnis enim potestas a domino Deo est, ut dicitur Rom. XIII [Human law has
the nature of law in so far as it accords with right reason; and it is clear that, in
this respect, it is derived from the eternal law. But in so far as it deviates from
reason, it is called an unjust law, and has the nature, not of law but of violence.
Yet still, even an unjust law, in so far as it retains some likeness of law according
to the order of the power of the one who made the law, is derived from the
eternal law; since all power is from the Lord God, according to Romans 13:1].”

22

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of the common good. Thus, rights—which articulate just claims that
others have a duty to acknowledge and respect—are claims of justice
that pertain in some way to what is positively or negatively required
by the end. This means, however, that the truth about the end, and
about the order to the end, is prior to any claim of right. Human rights
are thus not the foundational discourse of political life, but derive
from prior consideration of the nature of the good. Nor are rights
absolute or unlimited, for they are limited from above—in relation
to the hierarchy of ends that norms the political common good—and
from below, in relation to the judgment of prudence indicating the
constraints on such claims that may be placed by circumstance. Thus,
rights as deontological functions are derivative of the truth about the
order to the end. This is why rights claims and their proliferation
today in Western society tend to engender radical disagreement.
Lacking strong moral and legal consensus regarding the order of ends
normative for the political common good, the proliferation of claims
of right can lead only to mutual antagonisms and oppositions.
I have spoken repeatedly about the order of ends—which to a
certain degree is to speak of the order of common goods—as itself
constitutive for the common good of political society. I would like
briefly to place these propositions in the context of the doctrine of
natural law before saying a last word about the common good.
Natural Law and the Common Good
In ST I-II, q. 92, a. 2, Thomas formally speaks of the natural law as a
rational participation in the eternal law. Yet he also speaks of a participation in the eternal law common to all things, from which all things
derive their inclinations to their proper acts and ends. This mode of
participation commonly is understood to be a passive participation
whereby all creatures receive their being, nature, powers, and the
ordering and activation of these powers toward objects and ends from
God. Since this order terminates in the ultimate end proportionate
to nature—because all things, according to their natures, are ordered
toward the good of the cosmos and toward God as the First Cause and
Last End of the cosmos, as the “beginning and end of natural good,”
as Thomas says in differentiating it from God as supernatural beatitude23—this order is a passively participated teleological order, an order of
ends. Thomas makes it very clear that the order of precepts follows the
		ST I-II, q. 109, a. 3, ad 1.

23

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order of inclinations.24 And what does the order of inclinations follow
if not the order of the ends that specify those inclinations? The order of
precepts follows the order of inclinations, which follows the order of ends.
Thus, in his famous analysis in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, St. Thomas teaches
first that there is first of all the inclination of all creatures toward perseverance in being according to their natures and the precepts deriving
from this inclination, second that there are inclinations that befall man
because of the nature we share with other animals and the precepts
derived from these, and third that there are those inclinations specific
to reason and the precepts that follow.
Of course, precept as such is rational, but the order of precepts
follows the order of inclinations, which follows the order of ends.
Because this order normatively specifies the natural good, just so far it
is itself a common good; and it specifies the complete and integral good
of natural virtue. Because this is a less diffusive good than the good
of the supernatural order, it is itself further ordered in grace to the
supernatural good. For this reason, a private good of a higher order
may be super-ordinate to a common good of a lower order—as the
least subjective participation of grace, as a supernatural principle, is
superior to the natural common good of the universe. Nonetheless,
the supernatural common good—for instance, God as supernatural
beatitude—absolutely transcends the private good of the individual.
The passive participation of the eternal law is often treated as
merely physical, a brute necessary condition for natural law to obtain
that, however, provides no normative content for the law. But clearly
the eternal law—as the type of the governance of things in the divine
mind, as Thomas defines it25 —cannot be directly cognized through
man’s natural powers. It can be known only insofar as this ordering
wisdom of God that is the eternal law is impressed upon nature.26
		ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, resp.: “Secundum igitur ordinem inclinationum naturalium,
est ordo praeceptorum legis naturae.”
25
		ST I-II, q. 91, a. 1.
26
		The teaching known as “ontologism,” holding that there is a direct natural
essential knowledge of God—as distinct from an indirect knowledge that
pertains to the essence but is not direct knowledge of the essence—remains
under anathema. This persists in a statement signed by then-Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on
July 1, 2001, explaining that Rosmini may be read di.fferently, but stating the
following: “At the same time the objective validity of the Decree Post obitum
referring to the previously condemned propositions, remains for whoever
reads them, outside of the Rosminian system, in an idealist, ontologist point
24

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Thus, the passively participated teleological order is the impress of
the eternal law not merely on physical creation but also on creation as
such: it is that from which all things receive their inclinations to their
proper acts and ends. This purely passive participation does not yet
occur in the mode of law, since law passes from the mind of the legislator
to the mind of the one who is governed, whereas passive participation of
the eternal law is the ontological foundation for natural law. Only
when and insofar as this passively participated order is received rationally
and preceptively, as providing authoritative direction about what is to
be done and what is not to be done, as communicating reasons for
action, is this order received as natural law. These reasons for action—
ends—are not discrete and disconnected, in that what is a good in itself and
an end will, in all but one case, be also further ordered toward nobler good.
The reason for this consideration of the normativity of the order of
ends, and hence of the order of common goods, is, I hope, manifest. Absolutely speaking, as St. Thomas teaches, the common good is God.
All goods are analogical participations of the divine good via divine
efficient, final, and exemplar causality and are teleologically ordered
to God according to their natures. Thus, there is an order of goods
wherein private good is ordained to common good; and there is an
order of common goods rising through the political common good
and surpassing the political common good. Political common good
transcends private good and is irreducible to it. But there is an order
of ends that encompasses progressively more irradiant and profound common
goods, all of which are ordered to the divine common good both naturally and
supernaturally. It is this order that norms all human action whatsoever, and of
which the political common good forms a part that is commensurated to it as
to its proper whole. It is for this reason that Dignitatis Humanae needed
to insist, and did insist, that its teaching regarding religious liberty
“leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty
of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one
Church of Christ.”27
of view and with a meaning contrary to Catholic faith and doctrine.” (www.
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_
doc_20010701_rosmini_en.html).
27
		Dignitatis Humanae, §1: “. . . integram relinquit traditionalem doctrinam catholicam de morali hominum ac societatum officio erga veram religionem et
unicam Christi Ecclesiam.”This doctrine also opens another window onto the
contemplation of the imago dei in man. Although the common good is not
common merely according to predicability or logically speaking, but rather
causally, nonetheless: the capacity to be consciously guided in one’s conduct by

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Steven A. Long

Conclusion
The common good of political community is constituted in relation
to nobler common goods of justice, truth, friendship, virtue, and
friendship with God, and proportionately to the life of the community, it
either promotes motion toward these goods or at least seeks to preserve
them from harm. The intrinsic common good of the right ordering
of the commonwealth toward the specifying extrinsic common good
of virtuous life and the happiness of the community is itself a limited
conformity to the divine good.
Common good is an analogically central principle for Catholic
theology and philosophy, as well as for the mystical life, precisely
because, as Thomas affirms in chapter 17 of SCG III, “the supreme
good, namely God, is the common good, since the good of all things
depends on him” and, as he states a few lines further on, “therefore all
things are directed to one good, namely, to God, as their end.” The
common good truly is the higher, more universal, more communicable good of the individuals who participate it—who in one sense
are as “parts” with respect to that good. Less diffusive common good
also is subordinate to more diffusive and nobler common good, is
specified in relation to it, and thus in a distinct sense, stands to it as
part to whole. Subordinate common goods are further specified by their teleological order to loftier common goods. Thus, man is teleologically ordered
to God through the hierarchy of progressively more communicable
common goods, terminating in the common good who is God
himself, communicated in beatific vision.
In the speculative order, there is a great deal to say about this
owing to the illumination of the metaphysics of participation by the
Aristotelian distinction of act and potency; and in the practical order,
there are profound implications for contemporary discussions of religious liberty. But for the present, stopping short of these, nonetheless, perhaps the considerations taken up in this article may serve to
underscore the transcendence of the common good and its normative
N&V
centrality for theology, metaphysics, and the practical life.

the understanding, willing, and intention of common good and the ordering
of one’s life in conformity to it is possible only for a creature whose nature
contains a spiritual principle.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1153–1182

1153

Life Is a Stage: Neoplatonic Participation and
Imitation in Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oration 45
Athanasius Murphy, O.P.
Saints Phillip and James Parish
Baltimore, Maryland

Introduction

The character Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It

famously said that all the world is but a “stage”: “And all the men and
women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and
one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”1 In his
Oration 45, on the holy Pascha, Gregory of Nazianzus treats his listeners as if they are on a similar stage, as he encourages them to imitate
and participate in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ
in their daily lives.2 But there is ambiguity as to how the hearers of
Gregory’s preaching actually participated and imitated in the Paschal
mysteries of Christ’s life. Some have asked for greater precision when
discussing Gregory’s use of participation and imitation. In his review
of Andrew Hofer’s treatment of Christ’s paradigmatic suffering in
Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus, Lewis Ayres seeks
such clarity: “Where are we imitating, where are we participating, and
precisely what difference does it make that our imitation is ‘framed’
by participation? Hofer is most certainly onto some very important
		 From William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, act 2, sc. 7.
		Andrew Hofer, O.P., Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 182–93. See also Nonna Verna
Harrison, “Introduction,” in St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Festal Orations, trans.
Nonna Verna Harrison, Popular Patristics 36 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 2008), 11–56. All English quotation of Oration 45 will be
taken from Harrison’s translation.

1
2

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Athanasius Murphy, O.P.

themes, but there is still more to be said.”3 In partial answer to Ayres’s
questions, this article will attempt to provide context and clarity as to
how Gregory speaks of participation and imitation in his preaching on
the holy Pascha.4
Participation and Imitation in Late Antiquity
Participation in its late-antiquity context has been described as the
process by which what is lower is made “real and becomes related
to other (peer or higher) realties, by somehow receiving its intrinsic
reality from what is higher.”5 Imitation, as understood by classicists
and scholars in patristics, has been described as a pattern of thought in
which people sought to represent and identify themselves with exemplary figures from the past.6
The patristic use of participation and imitation language has often
been categorized under the theology of deification.7 In his work The
Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, Normal Russell
offers different kinds of patristic models of deification, some of which
refer to participation: the nominal, the analogical, and the metaphorical, with the metaphorical being characteristic of the ethical and the
realistic. He says that participation (methexis) in God is behind the
realistic approach, whereas attaining likeness (homoiosis) is behind
the ethical. The ethical approach, which is derived from attaining
likeness to Christ, is also spoken of as an imitation of Christ both
interiorly and exteriorly in a person’s life. Even with a delineation of
		Lewis Ayres, Review of Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus
by Andrew Hofer, O.P., The Thomist 80, no. 2 (April 2016): 314–17.
4
		Not only is Ayres’s question a concern for scholars today; it was also one for
Gregory. Although he does not directly pair participation and imitation in
Oration 45, Gregory does use both in a paired manner to discuss the means by
which the believer can share in God’s divinity in heaven by imitating the life
of Christ on earth.
5
		Torstein Tollefsen, Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian
Thought, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University, 2012), 6.
See also Leo Sweeney, S.J., “Participation and the Structure of Being in Proclus’
Elements of Theology,” in The Structure of Being: A Neoplatonic Approach, ed. R.
Baine Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982).
6
		Hofer, Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus, 160; Harrison,
“Introduction,” 29.
7
		For a comparison of Gregory of Nazianzus’s treatment of deification to
Neoplatonism, see Boris Maslov, “The Limits of Platonism: Gregory of
Nazianzus and the Invention of Theōsis,” Greek, Roman & Byzantine Studies
52, no. 3 (2012): 440–468.
3

Life Is a Stage: Neoplatonic Participation and Imitation

1155

these different approaches, Russell advocates for a spectrum of participatory language, rather than a wooden separation of categories.8 He
concludes his brief introduction by saying that there are four basic
approaches: nominal, analogical, ethical, and realistic.9 It is in the
realistic approach that we find the participation model, and in the
ethical approach that we find the imitation model.
According to Russell, in the realistic-participatory sense, complete
and total deification occurs only in the humanity of Christ, since it
alone is “mingled” with the divinity of the Logos. Human beings,
since they are not God, are not deified in the realistic approach, but
they are nevertheless called to an imitative ascent of their soul toward
God and to a transformation of their lives through the sacraments.
For Russell, Christianity is essentially the “imitation of the incarnate
life of Christ, who deified the body which he assumed in order to
enable us to return to the likeness we have lost.”10 Christ’s humanity
fully participates in his divinity so that we human beings can imitate
the Godhead, whose likeness we once had. The believer’s imitation
is both external and internal, consisting of overcoming the passions,
putting on Christ in baptism, and the practice of virtue. But, according to Russell, for Gregory Nazianzen and the other Cappadocians,
the Christian’s deification was never more than a figure of speech to
express his imitation in the likeness of God.
In response to Russell’s categories of deification, Daniel Keating finds that the four categories are applied well to some patristic
authors but unfittingly to others. For example, Keating concurs with
Russell that some texts expounding Athanasius’s doctrine on deification rightly reveal an ontological and ethical (a synonym for realistic) approach to deification.11 At the same time, however, Keating
disagrees with Russell’s grouping of the Cappadocians (Basil, Greg		Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 2: “Analogy, imitation, and participation thus form a continuum rather than express radically different kinds
of relationship. Furthermore, the realistic approach, which is based on the
participation model, has two aspects, one ontological, the other dynamic.”
9
		Russell, The Doctrine of Deification, 2, 13.
10
		Russell, The Doctrine of Deification, 13.
11
		Russell refers to Ps. 82:6, “you are gods and all of you sons of the Most High,”
a verse that Athanasius and other patristic figures refer to in their writings
on the Incarnation of Christ and the Christian’s sharing in his divinity (see
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr [Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 2012], 30).
8

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Athanasius Murphy, O.P.

ory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) as providing their hearers
with merely an ethical or metaphorical sense of deification by way
of imitation.12 Keating holds that, while the ethical and metaphorical
may apply aptly to Basil’s approach, for example, it would not be
fitting for the Nyssan, who sees the sacraments as the means by which
the Christian participates in the deifying effect of the Incarnation,
or for Nazianzen, who identifies Christ’s Incarnation as the basis of
man’s deification.13
Though there is disagreement over the extent to and manner in
which Gregory of Nazianzus utilized participation and imitation
language in a realistic and ethical framework for speaking about the
deification of his hearers, it is clear that he was borrowing some of his
terms from the Neoplatonic tradition. Russell writes that Nazianzen,
like the other Cappadocians, adapted the doctrine of deification to
a “Platonizing understanding of Christianity as the attainment of
likeness to God so far as was possible for human nature.”14 One way
to understand Gregory’s use of the terms “participation” and “imitation” is to examine the philosophical background from which Gregory would have derived these terms in antiquity.15 While Gregory
has been noted for his “philosophical eclecticism” due to his broad
education at Cappadocian and Palestinian Caesarea, Alexandria, and
the academy in Athens, there are significant streaks of Neoplatonism
in his treatment of participation and imitation in Oration 45.16 In this
		See Russell, The Doctrine of Deification, 13. For the critique of Russell’s categorization, see Daniel Keating, “Typologies of Deification,” International Journal
of Systematic Theology 17, no. 3 (July, 2015): 270.
13
		Keating, “Typologies of Deification,” 270.
14
		Russell, The Doctrine of Deification, 13.
15
		Other ways to consider Gregory’s use of participation and imitation would
be through the background of Scripture, the liturgy, and other early Christian
authors. Without excluding the liturgical context in which Gregory wrote
his oration, the main focus of the present study is to view the Neoplatonic
background from which Gregory derives some of his philosophical and theological vocabulary for discussing imitation and participation. For other ways
to consider imitation and participation, see, for example, Erich Auerbach,
Mimesis:The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). See also Matthew Potolsky,
Mimesis (New York: Routledge, 2006), 75–79.
16
		Brian Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus (New York: Routledge, 2006), 34–35.See
also Hubertus R. Drobner, The Fathers of the Church: A Comprehensive Introduction, trans. Siegfried Schatzmann (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2007), 284.
12

Life Is a Stage: Neoplatonic Participation and Imitation

1157

article, I will examine how Gregory uses the terms of participation
and imitation in his Or. 45 in light of his Neoplatonic background,
exemplified in the writings of Plotinus. This reading of Gregory’s
Or. 45 through Neoplatonic eyes is not meant to paganize Gregory’s
writings. The Nazianzen had a distaste for philosophy when it cast
doubt on the truths of the faith.17 My aim is to present any connection between Gregory’s ideas of participation and imitation in Or. 45
in order to show the distinctively incarnational difference Gregory
utilizes when discussing the possibility of human beings sharing in
and imitating the divine. To accomplish, this I will first examine
how Plotinus uses participation and imitation language in his Enneads, giving attention to his treatment of the soul’s mid-rank position
and its contemplation of its higher principle. I will then reveal the
similarities Plotinus’s structure of reality has with the beginning of
Gregory’s Or. 45 and then demonstrate that Gregory’s beginning
remarks in his festal oration provide the fertile ground from which
he cultivates a rich understanding of the Christian’s participation and
imitation in the life of Christ as beginning with Christ first participating in and imitating human life.
Plotinus’s Enneads
Participation
Several scholars have written on how Plotinus’s treatment of participation have influenced Christian thought in middle and late antiquity.18
In his Enneads, Plotinus constantly speaks of how the individual soul
comes to share in some higher principle through its middle position
in the cosmos, a theme that Gregory adopts in some fashion in his
Oration 45.19 And yet, participation has a wide connotation for Plotinus
that undergirds his entire philosophical system of unity and plurality
and the hierarchy of beings that permits degrees of perfection in the
		Claudio Moreschini, “Gregory Nazianzen and Philosophy, with Remarks on
Gregory’s Cynicism,” in Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus: Essays on History,
Theology, and Culture, ed. Christopher A. Beeley (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2012), 106.
18
		 See: Tollefsen, Activity and Participation, 14–31; John Dillon, “Origen and Plotinus: The Platonic Influence on Early Christianity,” in The Relationship between
Neoplatonism and Christianity, ed. Vincent Twomey (Dublin: Four Courts,
1992), 7–26; Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental
Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 40.
19
Gregory, Or. 45.7, 45.11, 45.26, 45.28.
17

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Athanasius Murphy, O.P.

created realm.20 For Plotinus, participation requires both identity and
difference.21 Unity alone is perfect for Plotinus, and all other things
are perfect only insofar as they relate to or participate in this unity,
meaning that their imperfection, conversely, is measured by their difference or distance from that unity.22 The highest principle for Plotinus
is the One, or Good, which, while participating in nothing itself,23 is
the principle in which all things participate and toward which they
are all directed.24 Although the One is present to all things, that presence is limited or shaped by the capacity of each thing to receive it.25
Degrees of perfection, then, are constituted by degrees of participation
in the higher principle. The Intellect, or “Intellectual-principle,” for
		All references to the Enneads are taken from Plotinus: The Enneads, trans.
Stephen MacKenna (Burdett, NY: Larson, 1992), available also at sacred-texts.
com/cla/plotenn/index.htm (references will follow the format of ennead,
section, and tractate number: En. 1.2.3). The Greek texts for the Enneads and
for the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus are taken from Thesaurus Linguae
Graecae: A Digital Library of Greek Literature (Irvine, CA: TLG, 2001), stephanus.
tlg.uci.edu/index.php. In the Enneads, Plotinus uses the term “participation”
when speaking of the material world (En. 4.4.38; 6.4.13), degrees of participation (En. 3.2.3), the particular soul (En. 4.7.9; 6.8.12), the body’s relation to
the soul (En. 4.3.23; 6.4.16), the higher realities of the Intellect (En. 1.8.2) and
the Soul (En. 4.4.32), the ideal forms (En. 1.2.2), the cosmos’s partaking of the
One (2.9.16), accidents in relation to substances (En. 6.3.6), the necessity of
likeness (En. 1.2.2), and the ability to participate according to one’s capacity
(En. 1.8.2; 6.4.5, 11; 6.5.3).
21
Plotinus, En.5.1.4; 6.3.2; 6.4.13.
22
		Plotinus, En. 5.3.15. See D. C. Schindler, “What’s the Difference? On the
Metaphysics of Participation in a Christian Context,” The Saint Anselm Journal
3, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 13.
23
Plotinus, En.6.8.21: “He is that to which nothing can be added. To add to him
would be to lessen him.”
24
Plotinus, En.1.7.1; 2.9.16; 3.8.8; 3.6.13; 5.3.15, 17; 6.5.3, 10. This is why
Plotinus says the One as Real-Being is “poised over all beings at once” (En.
4.2.1). The cosmos (En. 2.9.16), all individual souls (En. 3.8.8), and every
higher principle share in the One as their origin. The One remains within
itself (μενεῖν) while all other things turn toward (ἐπιστρέφειν) it as their source
of being (En. 1.7.1).
25
Plotinus, En.1.8.2; 6.4.5, 11; 6.5.3. See also En. 6.4.11: “While Being is omnipresent to the realm of Being, never falling short of itself, yet only the competent possess themselves of that presence which depends not upon situation but
upon adequacy.” Almost paradoxically, participation in a higher principles such
as the One occurs “without partition” of the higher principle (En. 6.4.8: “Any
movement toward it is movement toward its entirety, and any participation
attained is participation in its entirety”).
20

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example, is the first derivation of the One and is its perfect image
and self-thought; it participates in the One perfectly and purely. The
Soul is the second derivation in Plotinus’s system; it is an image of the
Intellect, just as the Intellect is an image of the One.26 Plotinus states
that, unlike the Intellect, which simply contemplates the One, the Soul
has a double activity that makes it both contemplator and actor. The
higher part of the Soul is its purely contemplative part, which remains
in constant contact with the Intellect. The lower part of the Soul is
responsible for the production of the material cosmos, which Plotinus
calls “nature.”27 The goal of the Soul’s lower part is to have the entire
material cosmos image, to the best of its ability, the ordered existence
of the higher principles (Soul, Intellect, and One). Differentiated souls
arise from the one Soul’s production and governance of material bodies
in nature.28 Yet all souls remain united to the one Soul in virtue of their
communal contemplation of their prior, the Intellect.29 Since they are
essentially united to the one Soul, individual souls participate in and
image the same Intellect from which the one Soul is derived.
Mid-Rank of the Soul, Conversion, and Contemplation
In virtue of their essential unity with the one Soul, all individual souls
possess a double-tipped nature with a higher and lower part, which are
respectively contemplative and active.30 The higher part of the individual soul aims through its intellective powers to perceive the Intellect.
The lower part of the soul is directed toward observing, administering,
and governing the material cosmos so that it may more readily reflect
the source of its existence in the higher principles of reality. Plotinus
remarks: “So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine
Plotinus, En. 5.1.3. As the Intellect eternally contemplates the One as its
source of being, the Soul is the productive fruitfulness of the Intellect’s
contemplation (En. 5.1.7).
27
Plotinus, En.4.3.9.
28
		Plotinus will also refer to the supreme, undivided Soul and the Soul divided
among living bodies (En. 1.1.8).
29
Plotinus, En. 4.1.1–3; 4.2.1–2. These souls, which Plotinus calls “living beings,”
are distinct from each other insofar as they possess material bodies. The individual souls and the one Soul that presides over the cosmos, however, are
considered by Plotinus to be an essential unity. The one Soul and all individual
souls form a single, indivisible entity (En. 4.1.1). There is only one essence
(ousia) of the individual soul, which, like the one Soul, has its origin in the
Intellect (En. 5.7.1–3).
30
Plotinus, En. 4.8.3.
26

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Athanasius Murphy, O.P.

Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a
power apt to administration in this lower sphere.”31 In seeking to know
what is above it, the soul “looks towards its higher and has intellection; towards itself and conserves its peculiar being; towards its lower
and orders, administers, governs.”32 In this way, the rational soul has a
mid-rank among existents:
Better for the soul to dwell in the Intellectual, but, given
its proper nature, it is under compulsion to participate in
the sense-realm also. There is no grievance in its not being,
through and through, the highest; it holds mid-rank [ μέσην
τάξιν] among the authentic existences, being of divine station
but at the lowest extreme of the Intellectual and skirting the
sense-known nature.33
Out of these activities, the better is for the soul to participate in the
higher Intellectual-principle. But, given its dealings with the material world, the soul’s journey will necessarily be downward at times.
Inasmuch as it governs matter, the soul will take on characteristics
of the material world.34 The soul can then fall into error by falling
in love with the “types” of the true images it already contains in its
higher part, and then by mistaking these types for realities.35 But
when the soul returns to itself and realizes its own middle existence,
it can begin to perceive again the origin of its being. The result of
such self-reflection is a spiritual desire and longing for unison with
the Intellect, from which it derived its existence.36 This turning and
desiring on the soul’s part is what Plotinus calls its conversion or
return (ἐπιστρεφής ).37 The soul’s return to face its intellective principle in which it participates is part of the dramatic act that constitutes
the soul’s middle position in the realm of created beings:

Plotinus, En. 6.8.4.
Plotinus, En. 4.8.3.
33
Plotinus, En. 4.8.7.
34
Plotinus, En. 1.8.8.
35
		Plotinus, En. 4.8.4: “It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense, it is a
captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.”
36
Plotinus, En. 4.4.18; 6.4.3; 6.6.7
37
		Plotinus will also refer to the soul’s return, following its desire, as “retracing the
way” (ἐπανελθεῖν, ἐπανέρχομαι; En. 2.9.4).
31
32

Life Is a Stage: Neoplatonic Participation and Imitation

1161

But in spite of all it has, for ever, something transcendent: by
a conversion towards the intellective act [ἐπιστραφεῖσα δὲ πρὸς
νόησιν], it is loosed from the shackles and soars—when only it
makes its memories the starting point of a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have place in both spheres,
living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the
upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously
with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character
or circumstances are less favorable.38
While emphasizing that the soul’s higher activity of contemplation
is superior to its activity of governance, Plotinus clearly sees the soul
living in both spheres. He states that the soul, unlike the material
cosmos, is “more nearly complete and therefore more contemplative.”
But the soul is not able to contemplate its higher principle without
turning to see it. Though the soul’s lower part can take it away from
its contemplative activity, it is also the lower functions of the soul that
aid it in turning back to a vision of the divine realm. The lower part
of the soul is concerned with ordering the material realm, but ordering the material realm also includes ordering one’s own life, the body,
the passions, and the exercise of virtues, which aid in this process of
return. Because it is not yet perfect, the soul is eager to “penetrate
the object of contemplation [τὴν τοῦ θεωρηθέντος καταμάθησιν],”
and through its lower part, the soul does this by seeking “the vision
that comes by observation [ θεωρίαν τὴν ἐξ ἐπισκέψεως].”39 The soul’s
lower activity of self-ordering, therefore, leads to its higher activity
of contemplation. In Plotinus’s words: the soul “returns [ἐπανιοῦσα ],
and it possesses its vision by means of that phase of itself from which
it had parted.”40 When the soul returns to itself, it can better contemplate, and hence participate in, the higher realities from which it
derives its existence.
The Steps of the Return
Plotinus explains that, for the soul to contemplate higher realities, it
must undergo a series of stages that purify its intellectual vision. Plotinus refers to these stages as (1) the exercise of the virtues and (2) the
process of dialectic (ἡ διαλεκτική). First, Plotinus mentions different
38
39
40

Plotinus, En. 4.8.4 (the soul’s descent into a body).
Plotinus, En. 3.8.6.
Plotinus, En. 3.8.6.

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Athanasius Murphy, O.P.

types of virtue that purify the soul. Civic or natural virtues (aretas
politikas . . . phusikas), such as prudence, fortitude, and restraint, are the
lowest kind.41 These keep the passions of the body from controlling
the movements of the soul. Above these virtues are those that purify
the soul more intensely. Through the higher virtues, the passions are
entirely checked and disengagement from the body is seen as attainable.42 This purification allows the soul to stand in a new orientation
to the Intellectual-principle, from which it came.43 In a later section
of his Enneads, Plotinus discusses the process of dialectic, a philosophical conversational method that redirects the soul’s thinking upward
toward the Intellectual-principle. in which it participates.44 Freed from
undue attachment to sensible things, the now-virtuous soul is able
to converse and pronounce about the true “nature and relation of
things, what each is, how it differs from others, . . . in what rank each
stands,” and whether a thing’s “being is real being.” 45 Plotinus calls
dialectic the “most precious part of philosophy” because, through it,
the soul receives another virtue, that of wisdom, which allows it to
engage in perfect contemplation.46 Through the virtue of wisdom, the
soul contemplates all things insofar as they exist, including itself and
its Intellectual-principle.47 The soul’s contemplation can become so
Plotinus, En. 1.2.1; 1.3.6.
Plotinus, En. 1.2.3.
43
		Plotinus, En. 1.2.4: “By the purification the true alignment stands accomplished.”
44
		Plotinus borrows the idea of dialectic from Plato’s dialogues, in which conversation begun in free play aims at the self-disclosure of the Good, whose light is
the very means by which we see (see, e.g., Repulic 6). Similarly, Plotinus begins
with free-play conversation (En. 3.8.1) for the sake of a more serious goal
of contemplating the higher principles (En. 3.8.6, 16; 3.8.32; 7.17.17–18). “I
and all that enter this play are in contemplation: our play aims at vision” (En.
3.8.1). See Kevin Corrigan, Reading Plotinus: A Practical Introduction to Neoplatonism (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2005), 103.
45
Plotinus, En. 1.3.4.
46
Plotinus, En. 1.3.6. Wisdom is the “virtue peculiarly induced by dialectic.”
For Plotinus, contemplation is a simple vision of all things that are. The soul’s
contemplation is a participation in its higher principles: “Since the supreme
realities devote themselves to contemplation, all other beings must aspire to it,
too, because the origin of all things is their end as well” (En. 3.8.7).
47
Plotinus, En. 1.2.6. Wisdom, for Plotinus, consists “in the contemplation of all
that exists in the Intellectual-principle, and as the immediate presence of the
Intellectual-principle itself.” Plotinus explains that the individual soul has as
its virtue the same wisdom that the Intellect has as its proper act and essence.
“Philosophy uses dialectic: by dialectic it comes to contemplation” (En. 1.3.6).
41
42

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perfect that what is contemplated “becomes progressively a more and
more intimate possession”; the soul becomes more “one thing with [it]
. . .well on the way towards the Intellectual-principle.”48 In his treatment of the virtues, dialectic, and contemplation, Plotinus is concerned
not simply with the soul’s moral purity or absence of sin, but with its
participation in the divine life: “Our concern is not merely to be sinless
but to be God [θεὸν εἶναι].”49 The goal is always to transition from this
life to another that is more divine.50 The conversion of the soul to the
divine life occurs through its contemplation of and eventual identity
with its higher principle:
If this is the soul once it has returned to its self [ἐφ’ ἑαυτὴν
ἀνέλθῃ ], how deny that it is the nature we have identified with
all the divine and eternal? Wisdom and authentic virtue are
divine, and could not be found in the chattel mean and mortal:
what possesses these must be divine by its very capacity of the
divine, the token of kinship and of identical substance.51
The soul’s higher activity of contemplation is so important in Plotinus’s
system because it unites the soul to the divine realities from which it
came to be. The soul participates in what is above it by means of its
contemplative vision of the divine. This perfect vision of the soul in
turn transforms it to mirror the object of its contemplation. At the
same time, the soul would lack such a clear vision through its higher
part if it failed to undergo the purification process that began with its
lower part, its ordering of the material cosmos and exercise of virtues.

48
49
50

51

Plotinus, En. 3.8.8.
Plotinus, En. 1.2.6.
Plotinus, En. 1.2.7. Here, the solution in understanding the virtues and dialectic is to see the degree of perfection each soul has: “Thus the man will learn
to work with this or that as every several need demands. And as he reaches
to loftier principles and other standards these in turn will define his conduct:
for example, Restraint in its earlier form will no longer satisfy him. . . . He
will live, no longer, the human life of the good man—such as Civic Virtue
commends—but, leaving this beneath him, will take up instead another life,
that of the Gods.” See also En. 1.2.2: “Any participation in the ideal-form
produces some corresponding degree of likeness. . . . Participation goes by
nearness: the soul nearer than the body, therefore closer akin, participates more
fully and shows a godlike presence, almost cheating us into the delusion that
in the Soul we see God entire.”
Plotinus, En. 4.7.10.

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Imitation for Plotinus
Plotinus will speak on occasion of the soul’s imitation of its higher
principle through its governance of the material cosmos. The role
of the soul’s lower part is to establish an order in the material realm
that mirrors the true order (logos) persisting in the intelligible realm.52
Where the soul finds diversity and multiplicity in the world, it will
establish a unity that reflects the order of the divine sphere. Plotinus
portrays the soul’s imitation in terms of an actor on a stage who follows
the instructions of a director, but doing more than merely repeating
the words it receives.
In the dramas of human art, the poet provides the words but
the actors add their own quality, good or bad—for they have
more to do than merely repeat the author’s words—in the truer
drama which dramatic genius imitates in its degree, the soul
displays itself in a part assigned by the creator of the piece [ἐν δὲ
τῷ ἀληθεστέρῳ ποιήματι, ὅ τι μιμοῦνται κατὰ μέρος ἄνθρωποι
ποιητικὴν ἔχοντες φύσιν].53
Plotinus uses the imagery of a theatrical play because it reveals how
the soul must mimic the dramatic sequence revealed to it by its higher
principle but accomplish the drama of its life in a way that adds its
own quality and personality, as any actor would while putting on a
play. Each soul, in its lower activity of cosmic observation and governance, is as an actor in the drama of the universe, making itself a part
of the play by putting forth its own personal vice or virtue, which
hinder or aid it in this life. As imitators of the higher sphere, souls
are actors in a place far vaster than any stage. The Author of all has
made them “masters of this world,” and “they themselves determine
the honor or discredit in which they are agents,” since their place and
part is dependent on their quality of living.54 Through their imitation
of what is above, the souls of persons “fit into the Reason-principle
of the Universe” according to their own adjusted mode of existence.55
As strings of an instrument, souls are “set in the precisely right position, determined by the Principle directing musical utterance, for
		Edward Moore, “Plotinus,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Peer-reviewed
Academic Resource, iep.utm.edu/plotinus/.
53
Plotinus, En. 3.2.17.
54
		Plotinus, En. 3.2.17.
55
		Plotinus, En. 3.2.17.
52

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the due production of the tones within its capacity.”56 Imitation, for
Plotinus, occurs when what is below and less real identifies itself in
some activity or state of being with some higher and more perfect and
real existent. In the case of the soul, it imitates the Reason-principle
of the universe by governing the material world through a virtuous
life. As Plotinus pairs together the soul’s dual activities of contemplation and action, there is another unspoken pairing between the soul’s
participation and imitation.
For Plotinus, the soul’s participation in its higher principle requires
its purification and contemplative vision of that reality. In a similar
way, the soul’s imitation of its higher principle occurs through the
exercise of its lower activity that orders the material cosmos and its
own life through the exercise of the virtues. Even the soul’s lower part,
however, is ultimately aimed at imitation of the divine. Lesser virtues
may be useful in imitating virtuous men, but the higher virtues are a
participation in divinity. In Plotinus’s words: “It is to the gods, not to
the good, that our likeness must look.”57 For, to model ourselves upon
good men is “to produce an image of an image.”58 What is greater is
to “fix our gaze above the image and attain likeness to the supreme
exemplar.”59 To summarize: Neoplatonic participation is, for the soul,
by way of its higher faculties, to share in the Intellectual-principle in
order to become like it; imitation is the activity of the rational soul in
governing the world and so ordering it to reflect the virtue that the
soul finds in itself. It is through the soul’s imitation of what is above
itself that it participates in the higher realities.
Gregory’s Oration 45
Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration 45 is one of his more prominent festal
orations, where he expounds some reality of Christ’s life based on the
liturgical time of the year. Or. 45 was written some time before Gregory’s retirement from the see of Nazianzus in 383. It borrows much from
his Oration 38, On the Nativity of Christ, written in 380 at Constantinople with the goal of expounding an orthodox position on Christ’s
Plotinus, En. 3.2.17.
		Plotinus, En. 1.2.7.
58
		Plotinus, En. 1.2.7.
59
Plotinus, En. 1.2.7. For more on the distinction between image and likeness
in Plotinus, see Daniel E. Wilson, Deification and the Rule of Faith: The Communication of the Gospel in Hellenistic Culture (Bloomington, IN: WestBow, 2015),
132–34.
56
57

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Athanasius Murphy, O.P.

Incarnation.60 Though Or. 38 is seasonally written at Christmas and
Or. 45 at Easter (the Pascha), they share much in common concerning
the ability of the believer to share in the fullness of God by way of
the Word’s assumption of our humanity. When Gregory mentions the
Pascha in Or. 45, he does not speak of it as a merely historical and
completed event. It is something all of his listeners can participate in
and celebrate at present in the festal liturgy.
In Or. 45, Gregory uses the term “participate” in a number of
ways: participating in the law and the Gospel (45.23); our sharing in
the divine image as a rational soul and our failure to keep it (45.9);
our participation in the Pascha and its Old Covenant symbols; our
sharing in the fullness of God and the Word (45.9, 16); the Word’s
participation in our flesh to make us immortal; and lastly, our passing
through this life, from one reality to another, in order to have a more
perfect participation in the next life (45.23). He likewise enjoins
his listeners to imitate Christ in his Passion and suffering (45.23) as
Christ has mimicked our poor condition (45.27), and he lists specific
ways different members of the faithful are called to replicate the life
of Jesus (45.24). Each of these places where Gregory discusses participation and imitation will be examined in detail, but even a brief look
at these instances makes clear what Gregory means by participation
and imitation. To participate is to have one reality share in another
without restriction on the lower sharing in the higher or vice-versa,
whether it be the Word’s sharing in our flesh or our sharing in the
next life. And to imitate is for the believer to live in a way that replicates the life of Jesus after a pattern first lived by the Savior for others
to follow.
The Call to Return, for Christ Has Returned
Though clearly a Christian exhortation, much of what Gregory says at
the beginning of Oration 45 about the Pascha has a Neoplatonic ring
to it. The hierarchy of being, the mid-rank of the soul, and humanity’s sharing in the divine life through a reason-endowed nature are
all present. 61 His discourse is about the Pascha, but the Pascha in the
context of how the rational minds of his listeners are drawn into the
		Harrison, “Introduction,” 17. See also John Anthony McGuckin, St. Gregory of
Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 2001), 386.
61
Gregory, Or. 45.2: “But we will contribute a discourse, the most beautiful and
most honorable thing we have, especially when singing the praises of the Word
for a good deed done for reason-endowed nature.”
60

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Paschal mysteries by coming to know God and things divine. Gregory
must, like Plotinus, start from the source of reality and run “back to
God [πρὸς Θεὸν ἀναδραμεῖν]” so as to give the clearest description to
man’s rational ascent to higher things. It is this ascent to higher things
that forms the context in which Gregory will discuss participation
and imitation. As he begins his oration, Gregory asks his listeners to
have their mind, hearing, and reason purified in order to feast on the
mysteries of the Pascha as he presents them. In covering these topics
through his discourse, Gregory hopes to open the minds of his listeners to the reality of the resurrection. It is through contemplating the
realities of Christ’s life that his hearers will be led to return to God, as
Christ has already returned to the Father:
Today salvation has come to the world, to things visible and to
things invisible. Christ is risen from the dead; rise with him.
Christ has returned to himself; return [ Χριστὸς εἰς ἑαυτὸν,
ἐπανέρχεσθε ]. Christ is freed from the tomb; be freed from
the bonds of sin. The gates of Hades are opened, and death
is destroyed, and the old Adam is put aside, and the new is
fulfilled. If anyone in Christ is a new creation, be made new.62
Gregory gives the goal of his discourse at its beginning. In a
language similar to Plotinus’s treatment of the soul’s conversion to
its higher principle, Gregory tells his listeners that, just as Christ
has returned to himself, being fully man and fully God, so they are
commanded to return with him on the same path of the Passion and
resurrection Christ took. To celebrate the feast of the Pascha means
to understand that things begin with God and that the destination of
reason-bearing humanity is heavenward, toward the same God from
whom all things came.
Gregory’s description of the believer’s return to God by way of
Christ’s Pascha is similar to Plotinus’s framework in that both rely
on the principles of unity and plurality, similarity and difference,
all of which yield degrees of perfection in a hierarchy of beings. For
Gregory, this hierarchy relies on the perfection, unity, and eternity of
the Godhead. God, who is “he who is,” holds “everything together
in himself.” In one sense, God “possesses being,” but he does this
without beginning or end; he is a kind of “boundless and limitless
sea of being surpassing all thought and time and nature” who eter62

Gregory, Or. 45.1.

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nally contemplates his own goodness.63 Gregory considers God’s act
of creation in terms of the communication of divine goodness. A
person’s contemplation of God and Christ’s Paschal mystery is first
dependent on God contemplating his perfect goodness. “Yet it was
not sufficient for goodness to be moved only in contemplation of
itself [τὸ κινεῖσθαι μόνον τῇ ἑαυτῆς θεωρίᾳ], but it was necessary that
the good be poured forth and given paths to travel, so that there
would be more recipients of its benevolent activity, for this was
the summit of goodness.”64 Gregory then treats different levels of
creatures made by God. He speaks of the creation of the angels as
the second splendors that serve the first Splendor, the Word of God.
Following the creation of the spiritual world, God wished to create
a second material and visible world, composed of heaven and earth
and the realities existing between them. In doing so, God showed the
harmony of the entire created sphere: “Thus God has shown that he
was able to create not only a nature akin to himself but also what is
entirely foreign to him.”65 Like Plotinus, Gregory in his oration first
sets up a cosmology in which he can speak of likeness, difference, and
degrees of perfection, all of which provide a context for discussing
the rational soul’s middle position and its return to God by sharing
in the life of Christ.
The Mid-Rank of Humanity
In his act of creation, God had made intellectual minds in the angelic
sphere and animals in the sensible sphere but had yet to join the two
spheres together. For, angels and all spiritual natures apprehended by
the mind are “akin to the divine, but those apprehended by the senses
are entirely foreign to it, and those which are entirely without life or
movement are still farther removed.”66 Different creatures could praise
their creator in a way pertaining to them, but there was no middle
position uniting the two spheres together. There was no “blending out
of both, nor a mixing of opposites,” which is, for Gregory, the sign of
a greater wisdom and a divine outpouring of goodness. 67 This mixture
of opposites arose in God’s creation of a human being:

63
64
65
66
67

Gregory, Or. 45.3.
Gregory, Or. 45.5.
Gregory, Or. 45.6.
Gregory, Or. 45.6.
Gregory, Or. 45.7.

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The Creator Word also makes one living creature out of both,
I mean invisible and visible natures, that is the human being.
And having taken the body from the matter already created, he
breathed in breath from himself, which is surely the intelligent
soul and the image of God of which Scripture speaks.68
The rational soul, imaged after the Creator Word, joins with its
body to form a new creature standing at the middle position between
the spiritual and material spheres. Gregory sees the human being as
a kind of second world that parallels and unites the harmony of the
entire cosmos, both sensible and spiritual. As Plotinus spoke of the
soul’s dual activity of contemplating what is above it and governing what is below it, so Gregory comments that the human being,
as flesh and spirit, holds a double function in life. He is “great in
smallness” like another angel placed on the earth to be a “composite
worshiper,” a “beholder of the visible creation, an initiate into the
intelligible, king of things on earth, subject to what is above, earthly
and heavenly, transitory and immortal, visible and intelligible, a mean
between greatness and lowliness.”69 Because of his dual nature, the
human being will undergo the trial of balancing his spiritual and
fleshly components without falling into sin. “He is at once spirit and
flesh, spirit on account of grace, flesh on account of pride, the one
that he might remain and glorify his Benefactor, the other that he
might suffer and in suffering remember and be corrected if he has
ambition for greatness.” The goal of humanity’s burdensome trial
is its training and purification in this life and its divinization in the
next. The human being is “a living creature trained here and transferred elsewhere, and, to perfect the mystery, deified through inclination toward God.” 70
The Incarnation and Christ’s Mediating Role
In order for the human being to participate in the divine life, Gregory
appeals to a divine condescension that Plotinus would not consider:
the Incarnation of the divine Word. Because mankind’s sin wrought
the continual spread of evil, God realized that a greater remedy
required a greater help. Working within a framework akin to Plotinus’s hierarchy of being, Gregory explains how the Word of God, as
68
69
70

Gregory, Or. 45.7.
Gregory, Or. 45.7.
Gregory, Or. 45.7: “τῇ πρὸς Θεὸν νεύσει θεούμενον.”

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Athanasius Murphy, O.P.

the principle of all things, became a creature for the sake of redeeming fallen humanity. It was the Word of God, the eternal, invisible,
incorporeal “Principle from the Principle,” who “approached his
own image” in the Incarnation. The Word bore humanity’s flesh and
“mingle[d] himself with a rational soul” because of our souls, “purifying like by like,” becoming a man in all things but sin.71 Gregory’s
language of the union of contraries is noticeable on its own, but it is
even more striking when considered in relief to Plotinus’s system of
participation. For Plotinus, participation requires simultaneous likeness
and difference and a hierarchy of existents, with the lower attaining to
the higher through its contemplative return. Gregory seems to turn
this Neoplatonic notion of participation on its head, beginning with
Christ’s sharing in our humanity, so as to make any further progress
of humanity toward God possible. Because of the divine Word’s likeness to our feeble human nature, humanity in turn could participate
in the divine life of the Word, a difference mankind could not bridge
on its own.72 Gregory speaks of this exchange as a paradoxical mixing
of opposites. “He comes forth, God with what he has assumed, one
from two opposites [ἓν ἐκ δύο τῶν ἐναντίων], flesh and spirit, the one
deifying and the other deified [ὧν τὸ μὲν ἐθέωσε, τὸ δὲ ἐθεώθη].” 73
God, whom Gregory named before as “he who is,” now “comes into
being,” the uncreated being created.
Gregory certainly puts forward the “incarnational difference,”
which puts the believer on a different road map than Plotinus would
have constructed for the soul’s ascent and return. But this difference
of the Incarnation also leads to a difference of directionality when
it comes to participation and imitation. The rational soul no longer
merely participates in the higher levels of being by way of its return;
that higher Principle himself has now shared in what is below in
order to redeem and make whole again what has fallen away. Likewise, there is also for Gregory a priority to the Principle participating
in what is below itself in order for the lower to be raised up to the
Gregory, Or. 45.9.
		Absent from Gregory’s theology of the Word’s creation and Incarnation is the
subordination of any one divine person to another. See Christopher Beeley,
Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We
Shall See Light (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 20–21, 125–30.Yet
Beeley does bring out well, for Gregory, God the Father’s monarchia in relation
to the Son (“Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus,” Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 2 [2007]: 199–200).
73
Gregory, Or. 45.9.
71
72

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higher. Though humanity was first created having a likeness to God,
the divine Word initiated his participation in lowly flesh before man
could fully share in the image of the divinity he had lost through sin.
The priority of Christ’s participation and imitation of our humanity
allows there to be a complete road map laid out for the believer to
follow, with the arrows pointing in the direction of the divine and
Christ himself as the road to travel upon.
Unlike Plotinus, Gregory sees the need and possibility for the
highest principle, God himself, to condescend and assume human
flesh and spirit. Like Plotinus, however, Gregory sees that at the heart
of this mixture is the rational soul acting as a mediator between the
divine and created spheres: “The uncontained is contained, through
the intervention of the rational soul [διὰ μέσης ψυχῆς νοερᾶς], which
mediates [ μεσιτευούσης] between the divinity and the coarseness of
flesh.” 74 By his taking on a rational soul, Christ joins the opposites
of flesh and spirit in a way that perfects the mediating role of the
individual soul in Plotinus’s hierarchy of beings. As Plotinus had
discussed, degrees of perfection do indeed constitute degrees of
participation. But Gregory sees that our humanity was so drastically
imperfect because of sin that God foresaw that our participation in
the perfection of his divine life would be possible only by his assumption of our poverty:
The one who makes rich has becomes poor, and he is made
poor in my flesh, that I might be enriched through his divinity.
The full one empties himself for he empties himself of his own
glory for a short time, that I may participate in his fullness [ ἵν’
ἐγὼ τῆς ἐκείνου μεταλάβω πληρώσεως ]. What is the wealth of
his goodness? What is this mystery concerning me? I participated in the divine image and I did not keep it [ Μετέλαβον τῆς
εἰκόνος, καὶ οὐκ ἐφύλαξα ]; he participates in my flesh both to
save the image and to make the flesh immortal [μεταλαμβάνει
τῆς ἐμῆς σαρκὸς, ἵνα καὶ τὴν εἰκόνα σώσῃ, καὶ τὴν σάρκα
ἀθανατίσῃ ].75
God’s perfection is brought to humanity so that human beings can
be made perfect by participating in divine goodness. The perfection
and unity of God’s divinity with humanity is found in the mediation
74
75

Gregory, Or. 45.9.
Gregory, Or. 45.9.

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Athanasius Murphy, O.P.

of Christ. For, Christ is perfect, “not only because of his divinity—
for nothing is more perfect than the divine—but also because of what
was assumed.” The humanity Christ assumed has been “anointed
with divinity and become that which anointed it”; in Christ, our
humanity has become “one with God.” 76 It is significant that Gregory says that Christ “participates in my flesh.” Every aspect of our
humanity is redeemed by Christ, including our flesh, both to save
our image and even to make the flesh immortal. Such a statement
distances Gregory’s theology from Plotinus. Nevertheless, there are a
number of similar traits between the two thinkers. Gregory’s description of humanity’s union with God is similar to Plotinus’s treatment
of the soul’s participation in the Intellectual-principle to the point of
being identified with it. Using the language of conversion and return,
Gregory explains that Christ’s Incarnation and resurrection are the
perfect type of descent and ascent: “He is one year old as the sun of
righteousness [ἥλιον δικαιοσύνης], starting from above [ἢ ἐκεῖθεν
ὁρμώμενον],” but then “circumscribed by that which is visible [ἢ
τῷ ὁρωμένῳ περίγραπτον],” and then “returning to himself [καὶ εἰς
ἑαυτὸν ἐπιστρέφοντα ].” 77 This circle of descent and return is similar to Plotinus’s description of the soul’s movement from its higher
principle into the material realm before it returns back to its source.
Gregory’s treatment differs from Plotinus’s, however, in that God
himself, the principle of all things, is the one descending into creation
in order to draw human beings to participate in his divinity. This
kind of descent by a higher principle would not fit within Plotinus’s
framework. Gregory, unlike Plotinus, is adamant in the need for the
higher principle, God’s divine Word, to condescend to our level if we
are to be raised above our current state of existence: “For in no other
way does the coarseness of a material body and a captive mind come
to comprehension of God except by being helped.”78
Participating in the Pascha
Because the Word united himself to our human nature, he opened
up a path to the divine life that was not available before. Throughout
the remainder of Gregory’s Oration 45, he speaks about the manner in
which his listeners can take this path opened by God, and so participate in the Paschal mysteries of Christ’s life. Gregory’s treatment of
76
77
78

Gregory, Or. 45.13.
Gregory, Or. 45.13.
Gregory, Or. 45.11.

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participation when he speaks of the Pascha is always direction- and
action-oriented. Gregory tells his listeners that the meaning of the
word “Pascha” implies both a “passing over”—in reference to the
historical flight of the Jews from Egypt to Canaan—and the spiritual
“progress and ascent from things below to things above” into the eternal land of promise, which is heaven.79 For Gregory, to participate in
the Pascha is to share in the liturgical rite of Eucharistic communion,
which has its figures and types in the Old Testament. But even the
Eucharistic rite uses signs that point to a further reality:80
Now we will participate in a Pascha [ Μεταληψόμεθα δὲ τοῦ
Πάσχα ] that is still a type even if more clearly unveiled than
the old one, for the Pascha under the law, I boldly declare, was
a more indistinct type of a type. But a little later, our participation will be more perfect and more pure [τελεώτερον καὶ
καθαρώτερον].81
If the Pascha celebrated by Gregory and his listeners is but a type,
then there is more to sharing in the Pascha than recalling its typological imagery. Gregory uses the imagery of food and drink to describe
how his listeners learn to participate in the Paschal mystery. When
the Word “drinks anew with us in the kingdom of the Father,” he
will “reveal and teach that which now he has shown in a limited

		Gregory, Or. 45. 10. Gregory borrows his etymology of the Pascha from
Origen’s treatise on the Passover. Hofer writes: “Origen altered previous
Christian interpretations of Pascha by going back to the Hebrew and finding that the Hebrew word does not mean suffering, as in the Greek pathos,
‘passion,’ or paschein, ‘to suffer,’ but, rather, a ‘passage’ with the Greek equivalent
of diabasis. Following Origen, Gregory makes the same distinction, but in a
somewhat different manner. Gregory speaks of both a historical sense of diabasis, in the movement from Egypt to Canaan, and a spiritual sense of a journey
from things below to things above and the land of promise. Both the historical
flight and the spiritual ascent involve suffering and trial by the pilgrim” (Christ
in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus, 184–85).
80
		Hofer, Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus, 188.
81
Gregory, Or. 45.23: “Μεταληψόμεθα δὲ τοῦ Πάσχα, νῦν μὲν τυπικῶς ἔτι, καὶ
εἰ τοῦ παλαιοῦ γυμνότερον (τὸ γὰρ νομικὸν Πάσχα, τολμῶ καὶ λέγω, τύπου
τύπος ἦν ἀμυδρότερος)· μικρὸν δὲ ὕστερον, τελεώτερον καὶ καθαρώτερον,
79

ἡνίκα ἂν αὐτὸ πίνῃ καινὸν μεθ’ ἡμῶν ὁ Λόγος ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ Πατρὸς,
ἀποκαλύπτων καὶ διδάσκων, ἃ νῦν μετρίως παρέδειξε. Καινὸν γάρ ἐστιν ἀεὶ τὸ
νῦν γνωριζόμενον.”

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way.” 82 For drinking and enjoyment is “ours to learn, but it is his
to teach and to share the word with his disciples [τὸ διδάξαι, καὶ
κοινώσασθαι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ μαθηταῖς τὸν λόγον].”83 For, the teaching “is
nourishment, even for the nourisher ( Jn 4:34).”84 The dietary imagery that Gregory employs not only uses the typological language of
the Paschal sacrifice but also reveals that his treatment of participation
in the divine life images a kind of educative and noetic consumption
of the divine Word’s teaching offered to humanity.85 Clearly, the
typological imagery is important for Gregory, for it aids the people’s
understanding of the meaning of the Pascha they celebrate. But Gregory is also exhorting his congregation to participate in a reality that
is more perfect and pure. The typological language Gregory uses in
this oration about the old covenant Passover sacrifice is meant to steer
his listeners to understand the further reality awaiting them. Gregory
exhorts his congregation to partake of the law, but in the manner of
the Gospel, “perfectly, but not imperfectly, eternally, but not temporarily.”86 Gregory’s exhortation to participate in the Pascha is as direction-oriented as God’s invitation for humanity to live in the kingdom
of God in heaven. “Let us make our head not the Jerusalem below but
the city above, not what is now trampled by soldiers as a campground
but what is glorified by angels.” Participation in the Pascha means
citizenship in a new Jerusalem not of this earth. It entails living in a
society where membership implies union with God’s holiness: “Let
us pass through the first veil, let us approach the second, let us peep
into the Holy of Holies.”87

Gregory, Or. 45.23.
		Gregory, Or. 45.23. Another instance of participation language through
κοινώσασθαι.
84
Gregory, Or. 45.23: “Τίς δὲ ἡ πόσις καὶ ἡ ἀπόλαυσις, ἡμῶν μὲν τὸ μαθεῖν,
82
83

ἐκείνου δὲ τὸ διδάξαι, καὶ κοινώσασθαι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ μαθηταῖς τὸν λόγον. Τροφὴ
γάρ ἐστιν ἡ δίδαξις, καὶ τοῦ τρέφοντος.”

85

86
87

Gregory, Or. 45.28. Taking the activity of contemplation in stages allows there
to be an education of soul: “We then fasted since before we did not fast, being
overcome by the tree of knowledge. For the commandment was old; it came
into existence at the same time as us and reasonably enjoined on us a kind of
education for the soul. . . . We needed a God made flesh and made dead, that
we might live. We were made dead with him that we might be purified. We
have risen with him since we were made dead with him. We were glorified
with him since we rose with him.”
Gregory, Or. 45.23.
Gregory, Or. 45.23.

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Gregory’s Return through Contemplation
Gregory both inherits and diverts from Plotinus’s conception of participation. Insofar as this language of participation pertains to the divine
Word who assumes our flesh in order to mediate our sharing in divine
life, Gregory’s treatment of participation differs from Plotinus’s system.
However, insofar as Gregory teaches that the individual person is able
to partake of the divine life through some process of purification in the
person’s soul, then there is much in common between Gregory’s and
Plotinus’s use of participation. One of the largest similarities between
Plotinus’s treatment of participation and Gregory’s preaching on participation in the Pascha is their common emphasis on contemplation.
Both view contemplation as an activity of the mind that is part of the
soul’s upward ascent to participate in the life of God. For Plotinus,
contemplation meant having a view of reality as it is, how one exists
in oneself, and how one can come to participate in a higher reality.
Gregory encourages his congregation to contemplate the mysteries
of the faith, and in so doing to participate in the divine life to which
God invites them. As God, the divine mind, is moved to contemplate
himself, so we, as reason-bearing creatures made in God’s image and
likeness, are moved to contemplate God and all things through him.88
To keep the Paschal feast well is to incorporate the saving events of
Christ’s life in one’s own identity and way of life by contemplating
Christ’s Paschal life. 89 The act of contemplation, however, is not immediately accessible to everyone. For, God is “without limits and difficult
to contemplate” but we are limited creatures who share but an image
of the divine.90 One can, in fact, be either too coarse in mind or “too
contemplative” (τῶν ἄγαν θεωρητικῶν) for his state in life.91 Gregory
gives the example of the first man placed in the garden, who was
not prepared to contemplate the mysteries of the tree of knowledge
but hastily grasped for its fruit. God gave him “a law as material on
which his free choice could work,” a commandment indicating which
fruit to partake in (τε μεταληπτέον) and from which to abstain.92 The
tree of knowledge was good in itself, but it was good for man only if
“possessed [μεταλαμβανόμενον] at the right time.” Gregory then idenGregory, Or. 45.5.
		 Harrison, “Introduction,” 26.
90
Gregory, Or. 45.3.
91
Gregory, Or. 45.12.
92
Gregory, Or. 45.8: “Ὁ δὲ νόμος ἦν ἐντολὴ, ὧν τε μεταληπτέον αὐτῷ φυτῶν, καὶ
οὗ μὴ προσαπτέον.”
88
89

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tifies the tree with contemplation (θεωρία γὰρ ἦν τὸ φυτὸν), which is
safe only for those of “perfect disposition,” and unsafe for people of
harmful extremes, those “still simpler and those greedy in their desire,”
as adult food is harmful to the infant needing milk.93
Gregory teaches that to contemplate well in this life is to possess
the proper object of contemplation at the right time. 94 Within Or. 45,
Gregory reminds his listeners that the contemplative process occurs
in stages. As Plotinus had discussed, there needs to be a certain level
of virtue before contemplation is possible. Contemplation involves
purification of all the members. In order to partake of the Pascha
purely, for example, one needs to put down the passions by self-control and mortification of the members.95 Healthy contemplation
“binds desire on all sides” and does “not allow it to aim elsewhere,”
for “that which wishes to be disposed lovingly towards one thing
does not have the same impulse towards other pleasures.”96 There are
some matters that are to be contemplated only by those of a certain
level of virtue and learning, akin to that of Moses.97 The law of
Scripture in the Old Testament offers a certain level of contemplation, and a higher contemplation is found in spiritually reading the
realities in Scripture through its symbolic language.98 One can also
contemplate the Word as human as well as divine.99 In any of these
instances of contemplation, the human mind cannot approach God
without his divine help.100 Toward the end of his oration, Gregory
commands his congregation: “Come into paradise with Jesus so as
to learn from what you have fallen. Contemplate the beauties there;
leave the murmurer to die outside with his blasphemies.”101 The goal
of contemplating the mysteries of the faith is to follow Christ through
his earthly life and into heaven.
Like Plotinus, Gregory teaches that one needs to undergo stages of
purification before contemplation is possible. Because of our differGregory, Or. 45.8.
		Harrison, “Introduction,” 50: “In this way they would grow over time, as one
does through the practice of virtues and the resistance to temptations, so as to
be ready for the contemplation for which man was created.”
95
Gregory, Or. 45.18.
96
Gregory, Or. 45. 18.
97
Gregory, Or. 45.11.
98
Gregory, Or. 45.17, 20.
99
Gregory, Or. 45.30.
100
Gregory, Or. 45.11.
101
Gregory, Or. 45.24.
93
94

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ences, “not all appear to be deemed worthy of the same rank and
position,” but one person is “worthy of this, another of that, each,
in my opinion, according to the measure of his own purification,”
and others have been “altogether excluded” from contemplation and
are “allowed to hear the voice [only] from above, as many as are like
beasts in character and unworthy of divine mysteries.”102 Through
his discourse, Gregory hopes to open the minds of his listeners to
the purification God wishes to give them. In discussing how we
come to knowledge of God, Gregory writes that God is sketched
“only by the mind, and this in a very indistinct and mediocre way,”
not from things pertaining to himself but from things around him.
The human can gather impressions and glimpses of who God is, but
even these can flee before they are grasped and understood. Yet the
fact that God is hard to grasp is part of what makes the human mind
desire to possess him, and so be purified by him in the act of contemplation: “Insofar as it is graspable, the divine draws [us] towards itself,
for what is completely ungraspable is unhoped for and unsought.”103
Connected to man’s wonder and desire for God is God’s purification and divinization of man. “One wonders at the ungraspable,
and one desires for intensely the object of wonder, and being desired
it purifies, and purifying it makes deiform [καθαῖρον δὲ, θεοειδεῖς
ἐργάζηται].”104 The movement from wonder to desire, to purification,
and to deified contemplation is akin to Plotinus’s description of the
soul’s desire to return to the higher principle from which it came.
Gregory also mentions that the one undergoing purification is in
conversation with the God who purifies him: “With those who have
become such [God] converses as with those close to him.” 105 This
relationship between the human mind and God is akin to Plotinus’s
discussion of dialectics, where the mind is drawn to the Intellectual-principle through a conversational process of reason. For Gregory,
the result of this purification is contemplation of divine things and
union with God: “God is united with gods, and he is thus known,
perhaps as much as he already knows those who are known to him.”106
102
103
104

105
106

Gregory, Or. 45.11.
Gregory, Or. 45.3.
Gregory, Or. 45.3. For more on the theme of divinization in Gregory’s writings, see Torstein Tollefsen, “Theosis according to Gregory,” in Gregory of
Nazianzus: Images and Reflections, ed. Tomas Hägg (Copenhagen, DK: Museum
Tusculanum, 2006), 257–70.
Gregory, Or. 45.3.
Gregory, Or. 45.3.

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Imitating Christ and the Saints
Participation and imitation are interrelated themes in Gregory’s
preaching. Participating in the Pascha through prayer and contemplation of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection allows the Christian
to more easily imitate Christ’s Paschal life in his thoughts, words, inclinations, and actions. Imitation is, for Gregory, a way that a Christian can
represent or portray the life of Christ in his own daily living. A simple
way to pair these two themes together in Gregory’s writings is to say
that participation is the contemplation of the life of Christ and that
imitation is the practical implementation of identifying one’s life with
Jesus and those who surrounded him in his earthly life. Gregory desired
to show his hearers that they could represent and identify themselves
with exemplary figures from the biblical time period of Christ’s life. In
his preaching, Gregory uses scriptural images that portray the mysteries
of the faith as unfolding before the eyes and ears of his listeners. The
point is for the congregation to listen to the descriptions of Christ’s
life and so seek to imitate them in their own lives. Gregory reminds his
listeners that Christ first became an imitator of us by participating in
our humanity: “He was sent, but as human, for he was twofold. For he
was tired and hungry and thirsty and endured agony and wept through
the law of the body.”107 Earlier in his oration, Gregory had mentioned
that Christ comes to participate in his flesh (μεταλαμβάνει τῆς ἐμῆς
σαρκὸς).108 Because of Christ’s initial participation in the weakness of
our human flesh, Gregory encourages his congregation to be imitators
of Christ.
Yet I will tell you something greater: let us sacrifice ourselves
to God, or rather offer sacrifice every day and in every movement. Let us accept all things for the Word. By suffering let us
imitate his suffering [ πάθεσι τὸ πάθος μιμώμεθα ], by blood let
us exalt his blood, let us willingly climb up on the cross. Sweet
are the nails, even if very painful. For to suffer with Christ and
for Christ is preferable to feasting with others.109

Gregory, Or. 45. 27. For more on Gregory’s mixture of scriptural imagery in
his rhetorical mode of teaching see Ben Fulford, “Gregory of Nazianzus and
Biblical Interpretation,” in Beeley, Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus, 41.
108
		Gregory, Or. 45.9.
109
Gregory, Or. 45.23.
107

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Christ participates in our flesh in order that he might imitate our life
completely, save for sin. By Christ’s imitation of our life, we are able to
imitate his suffering.
But not all are meant to imitate Christ so directly. There are also
many ways to imitate Christ’s life in the saints who were part of the
earthly life of the Savior. Toward the end of his Or. 45, Gregory
exhorts his listeners to imitate those who were with Christ in his
crucifixion and death. “If you are Simon of Cyrene, take up the cross
and follow. If you are crucified with him as a thief, come to know
God as kindhearted; if he was counted among the lawless because of
you and your sin, become law abiding because of him.”110 Imitation
of those who surrounded Christ in his earthly life is equivalent to
following the saints, but in a way that leads to deeper conversion
in the average Christian. Gregory’s goal is always a deeper worship
of Christ even if it entails gaining some good from Christ’s loss.
“Worship the one hanged for you even if you are hanging; gain
something even from the evil, purchase salvation by death.”111 The
same goes for those who identify with Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, a certain Mary, or another figure who followed Christ.
In a way similar to that in which Plotinus spoke of the soul’s theatrical activity in the drama of life by following its author’s directions
in its own personal way, so Gregory speaks of his congregation’s
imitation of the saints who preceded them, albeit in a manner specific
to their way of life. Though God is the ultimate director of the
dramatic sequence of events in a person’s life, Gregory’s own preaching could be seen as a director’s stage commands to the actors under
his care. Gregory uses a number of imperatives that would have his
listeners mimic the very actions of Christ or those close to him. Say
something to Christ; hear his voice; be as Peter or John; run with
zeal to the tomb.
And if he descends into Hades, go down with him. Know also
the mysteries of Christ there: what is the saving plan, what is
the reason for the twofold descent, to save everyone absolutely
by his manifestation, or there also only those who believe. And
if he ascends into heaven, go up with him. Join with the angels
escorting him or those receiving him.112
		Gregory, Or. 45.24.
Gregory, Or. 45.24.
112
Gregory, Or. 45.24.
110
111

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Concluding Remarks
A few notable points can be made about Gregory Nazianzen’s use of
the language of participation and imitation in Oration 45. It is clear that
Gregory is in debt to Plotinus’s treatment of participation and imitation to some extent. And, as a result, there is a deeper understanding
and context from which to consider Gregory’s use of participation and
imitation in Or. 45 than what might appear at first glance.
First, through his Neoplatonic background, Gregory borrows the
language of participation, but he adopts it in a way that allows him to
speak of a Christian’s participation in the Paschal mystery in a manner
different from how Plotinus would treat the soul’s upward ascent to
the Intellectual-principle. Gregory’s treatment of how the Christian
participates in the Pascha relies on an eternal and unchangeable God
who is identical with being itself. He also relies on the middle position of the human being, composed of spirit and flesh, to be halfway
between the heavenly and earthly spheres of reality. Nevertheless,
Gregory departs from Plotinus’s cosmological system in that he
accepts God’s entrance into the created, material realm through the
Word’s Incarnation. The Word incarnate adopts mankind’s middle
position by becoming the mediating principle between fallen humanity and divinity. Mankind is able to participate in God’s divine life
only because the Word has first participated in our humanity. In
this way, the priority of Christ’s participation and imitation of our
humanity precedes man’s participation in and imitation of the divine
through the Word incarnate. Like his much younger and better
known contemporary Augustine, who mingled with Neoplatonic
philosophy as he began to understand the Christian faith, Gregory
realizes that true contemplation of the divine arises only from the
prior Incarnation and condescension of the one contemplated.113
Therefore, Gregory’s emphasis on Christ participating in his flesh sets
his theological framework of redemptive suffering apart from Plotinus’s procedure of the soul’s return to its heavenly reality.
		The need for contemplation to arrive at beatitude and the priority of Christ’s
Incarnation to accomplish it are important themes for both Gregory and
Augustine. John Kenney has written much on Augustine’s evaluation of
Platonic contemplation and the importance of the Incarnation to accomplish
the Christian’s ascent to God, e.g.: “‘None Come Closer to Us than These’:
Augustine and the Platonists,” Religions 7, no. 114 (2016): 16 pp. (PDF link at
europub.co.uk/journals/958?page=29); Contemplation and Classical Christianity: A Study in Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3.

113

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Second, the purification of the mind for the sake of its turning and
participating in a higher principle is important for Gregory, as it was
for Plotinus. Though Gregory does not have as exact of a treatment as
Plotinus does on the stages of purification (the virtues, dialectic, and
contemplation), he refers to each of these in some manner in his festal
oration. While he does not mention dialectic explicitly, Gregory’s
own preaching could be considered as the conversational discourse
that enables his listeners to participate in the heavenly realities. His
discourse, like the dialectics of Plotinus, has become the human
mode through which contemplation and apprehension of the Word
become flesh is made possible.
Third, it seems that the locus of participation in the divine life is,
for Gregory, the mental activity of contemplation. Gregory encouraged his listeners to contemplate the mysteries of Christ’s life as a
noetic vision of reality, each according to his state of perfection. The
object of their contemplation is the Word, his divinity and humanity,
and different events in Christ’s life. Gregory sees his preaching on
the Pascha as a type of noetic education that allows his listeners to
contemplate the mysteries of Christ’s life in their own.
Lastly, for Gregory, imitation is the fruit of the Christian’s contemplation. By gazing on the saving mysteries of Christ’s life, one can
receive the grace needed to imitate Christ and the saints. The imitative aspect of Gregory’s preaching corresponds in some way to the
dramatic acting Plotinus attributes to each soul caring for itself and
the material realm. Gregory saw his listeners in a dramatic theatrical performance called life. Members of his congregation were the
actors, and their lines came from the saints who preceded them. God
is the playwright and director of the entire performance, but Gregory
is like the stage manager or director who guides each figure into his
proper role at the right time.114 His congregation follows the example
of the saints who came before them, but ultimately each soul’s performance relies on its own particular and graced manner of imitating the
Paschal mysteries of Christ in its life, just as any actor would give his
lines in his own personal style.
Although Russell may be right that a spectrum of types of deification exist among different patristic authors, there does seem to be
more than a rhetorical or analogical sense to Gregory’s use of participation and imitation language. Gregory does indeed mention that we
		For more on the theme of life as the theatre of the world (theatrum mundi) see
Potolsky, Mimesis, 75–79.

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not only imitate but also participate ( μεταλάβω) in God’s fullness and
divine image (45.9) by participating in the Pascha itself (45.23). To
the question “where are we participating?” Gregory would answer
that it is primarily in our minds, which contemplate the mysteries
of the Word. And when asked, “where are we imitating?” Gregory
could say that we mimic the lives of the saints and of Christ in our
daily lives as the fruit of our contemplation. It is not easy to differentiate Gregory’s exhortation to participate in the Paschal mysteries
from his exhortation to imitate Christ’s life. After all, is it not the
case that the way we are sure to be in union with Christ is for us
to conduct ourselves just as he did (1 John 2:5–6)?115 There is some
pairing between the soul’s contemplation and virtuous life and its
participation and imitation, but the pairing is not a perfect fit when
moving from Plotinus to Gregory. Imitative Christic living appears
to be the means to participatory contemplation of the divine. Yet, at
times, for Gregory, the means taken can also become the end sought,
just as the suffering Christ is also the divine Word and the Paschal
mystery is conversed with as a living person for each of the faithful to
N&V
contemplate within the liturgy and within one’s daily life.

		Taken from the Liturgy of the Hours Office of Readings for the sixth week
of Easter, Monday.

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Veritatis Splendor and Amoris Laetitia:
Neither Lamented nor Celebrated Discontinuity
Angel Perez-Lopez
St. John Vianney Seminary
Denver, CO

Introduction

The year 2018 of our Lord is very noteworthy for Catholic

moral theology. Providentially, we are celebrating the silver and golden
anniversaries of two key magisterial documents: twenty-five years for
Veritatis Splendor (VS) and fifty years for Humanae Vitae (HV).1 In light
of these anniversaries, I propose to reflect on the contemporary debate
around the correct interpretation of Amoris Laetitia (AL).
The rival interpretations of the last document, AL, could be gathered into three major groups.2 The first group celebrates AL’s alleged
		All quotations from magisterial or curial documents and papal addresses are
taken from the translations available on the Vatican’s website.To avoid an excess
of footnotes, I will make parenthetical references to both Scripture and the
magisterial documents. All scriptural quotes are taken from the New Revised
Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
2
		This grouping does not claim to be exhaustive. Nor does it deny different
nuances and degrees within each group. However, the division itself is helpful
to illustrate my main point. I would also like to clarify why this division does
not include those members of the hierarchy who have expressed their doubts
to the Holy Father. By definition, those who doubt about which interpretation
of AL is correct have not yet formulated an opinion.Thus, they are not included
in any of these three groups. The state of doubt consists in, when faced with an
alternative, not having arguments for or against. Those who have an opinion,
instead, have arguments for one of the alternatives. The other possibilities would
be that of nescience, ignorance, error, and evidence. Our intellect is in nescience or
invincible ignorance when it does not know and does not have the capacity
1

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Angel Perez-Lopez

discontinuity with previous moral magisterium, especially with VS
and Familiaris Consortio (FC). Within this division, discontinuity is
another word for rupture. It does not mean “organic evolution.” Insofar as it entails a direct opposition between these documents, it clearly
proposes “a before and an after.” Thus, a strict follower of VS could
not be, at the same time, a strict follower of AL. To this group belong
those who have already dissented, not only from John Paul II, but also
from Paul VI’s HV. In this way, the proportionalist moral theology
condemned by VS seems to be making a “comeback.” Its “corpse,”
as it were, is being “dug up.” It is being “resuscitated” by this whole
controversy.3
The second group instead laments such an alleged discontinuity.
Their lamentation is mainly motivated by their fidelity to the truth. But
it is also due to their inability to reconcile AL’s texts with those from
VS and FC. In this manner, discontinuity is not forcefully defended.
It is only lamented, and reluctantly.
The relationship of these two groups, nevertheless, is quite interesting. They feed on each other. The second group’s mourning and
lament is fueled and augmented by those who celebrate discontinuity
and cause confusion among the faithful. The second group laments
the way AL was written, especially its openness to potential misinterpretation. Yet, their public lament defeats their own cause. It adds
to the public celebration of the first group. It confirms the reason
for their joy, discontinuity. Therefore, these two groups do not offer
much of a way out of the quarrel. It would seem as if tertium non datur.
However, against appearances, there is a de facto third option,
another logical alternative that constitutes a third group that provides
“a way out” unto the future, some light at the end of the tunnel.
Indeed, some have emphatically taught that AL offers no revolution,
no change in doctrine. It may offer some organic evolution, a certain
novum in the pastoral realm, but without rupture or contradiction to
the truth declared in the past. They argue that AL could and should
to know about something. This is not the case with respect to the true interpretation of AL. However, one could be (vincibly) ignorant about the right
interpretation of AL if one does not know but has the power to know it.
Another possibility is that of error. A theologian, for instance, could confuse
what is false for what is true when it comes to AL’s interpretation. Lastly, the
human intellect could be in the state of perfect act when it reaches certainty
based on objective evidence.
3
		See Charles J. Chaput, “The Splendor of Truth in 2017,” First Things, October
2017, firstthings.com/article/2017/10/the-splendor-of-truth-in-2017.

Veritatis Splendor and Amoris Laetitia

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be read in continuity with VS and FC.4 Cardinal Müller, when he
was still the head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, took this third option, and he is not alone. Many other bishops
have done the same. Just to name a few, we could speak of Spain’s
Cardinal Cañizares and, in the United States, we have Philadelphia’s
Archbishop Chaput, as well as the local ordinary in Denver, Archbishop Aquila.
Considering the title for this article, it is quite clear that I am going
to argue in favor of a version of this third option. The thesis that I
will defend is this: both lamented and celebrated discontinuity are
hermeneutically flawed interpretations of AL, inconsistent with the
very letter of the document.
I intend to reach my goal in three steps, resembling the way articles from Aquinas’s Summa theologiae [ST ] proceed: first, the arguments against (or objections); second, the responsio (or the corpus);
and only then, the reply to the arguments or objections proposed at
the beginning.5 Accordingly, I will begin by going over the difficult
texts that have caused the lamented or celebrated hermeneutics of
discontinuity. Then, I will propose a correction to the way in which
these texts were read. I will base that correction, above all, on Karol
Wojtyła’s teachings regarding the correct interpretation of magisterial documents. Thereby, I will establish a parallelism between the
correct ways of reading the Second Vatican Council and AL. Lastly,
I will revisit the difficult texts previously mentioned, offering an
interpretation of organic continuity that shows the novum proposed
by Pope Francis.
Lamented or Celebrated Texts
The lamented and celebrated texts by the first and second group seem
to be concerned with five interrelated questions: (1) Does accompaniment mean gradualness of the law? (2) Is there a double status of moral
truth, one for general rules and another for concrete behaviors determined by circumstances and one’s moral conscience? (3) Does attention
		See José Granados, Stephan Kampowski, and Juan José Pérez-Soba, Accompanying, Discerning, Integrating: A Handbook for the Pastoral Care of the Family According
to Amoris Laetitia, trans. Michael J. Miller (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road,
2017).
5
		All English quotations from the Summa theologiae [ST] itself will be taken from
The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas [Latin–English], vols. 13–20 , ed. J. Mortensen
and E. Alarcón (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute, 2012).
4

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to circumstances entail the possibility of exceptions to the doctrine of
intrinsically evil acts? (4) Is one’s conscience capable of granting such
exceptions in special circumstances? (5) Does AL propose a tolerated
concubinage in which communion could be given, in certain special
cases of diminished subjective culpability, to the unrepentant divorced
person who lives in a second union and remains sexually active? These
five questions amount to three objections to the organic continuity
between AL and VS: (1) the gradualness of the law, (2) the double status
of moral truth, and (3) the argument from diminished subjective culpability in favor of giving communion to the divorced and remarried.6
Some of those who lament or celebrate discontinuity believe, with
Italian journalist Sandro Magister, in a certain “conspiracy theory.”
Such a theory argues that the premises in our first and second objections were already planted at the 2014 and 2015 synods. The story
goes that Pope Francis wanted to reach an affirmative answer to the
last question, concerning communion for the divorced and remarried. However, to avoid more chaos, Magister reports that Francis
instructed Archbishop Bruno Forte to insert the needed premises in
the relatio synodi. The plan, according to Magister, was that AL could
later draw the desired conclusions with one added advantage: the
capacity to claim a certain collegial agreement about them.7 Be that
as it may, if one answers the first and second questions in the affirmative, then affirmative answers to the third through fifth questions are
also in place. But does AL, in fact, take this direction? Our response
must be grounded in the texts from the document, not in rumors,
suspicions, or sensationalist media reports.
Accompaniment as Gradualness of the Law
Accompaniment is one of the most central notions to AL’s chapter
8. However, it could be interpreted as “gradualness of the law.” AL
proposes “a gradualness in the prudential exercise of free acts on the
		In reality, the third and fourth question, those about circumstances and
conscience, are only an offshoot of the second, about the double status of
moral truth.
7
		Magister reports the following conversation between Pope Francis and Archbishop Bruno Forte when the latter was heading the two synods as secretary:
“If we talk explicitly about communion for the divorced and remarried, you
have no idea what a mess these guys will make for us. So let’s not talk about
it directly, you get the premises in place and then I will draw the conclusions” (magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2017/03/20/archbishopforte-professor-melloni-and-the-undigested-four-cherries/?refresh_ce).
6

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part of subjects who are not in a position to understand, appreciate, or
fully carry out the objective demands of the law” (§295). Those who
lament or celebrate discontinuity might soon refer to FC §9. John Paul
II teaches there that married people “cannot however look on the
law as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future: they must consider
it as a command of Christ the Lord to overcome difficulties with
constancy.” Yet AL repeatedly use the word ideal (over thirteen times)
to refer to the law.8 Hence, those who lament or celebrate discontinuity
would soon zero in on VS §103 and its condemnatory words against
proportionalism: “It would be a very serious error to conclude that
the Church’s teaching is essentially only an ‘ideal’ which must then be
adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities
of man, according to a ‘balancing of the goods in question.’”
The interpretation of those who lament or celebrate AL’s discontinuity seems to imply that there are different gradual sets of laws
adapted to the subjective possibilities of different kinds of Christians.9
At the lowest level, one would have a set of minimum laws valid for
all, but peculiar to the average Christian. One could include in these
laws precepts such as not to kill the innocent, not to oppress and steal
from the poor, not to abuse children, and so on. With respect to
these basic laws, a decisive break with sin and a realistic purpose of
amendment would be requested to admit anyone to the sacraments.
However, there would be another set of more “refined” laws that are
more pertinent to those who are in a higher spiritual state of development in the Christian life. These other, more perfect laws would
amount to a future “ideal,” a sort of utopic standard beyond the reach
of the majority. These laws would contain more sophisticated things,
such as not to be proud, slothful, or envious, not to masturbate, not
to use contraception, and so on.
Considering the weakness of the average Christian, or even more
the frailty of the person who is coming back to the Church as a “field
hospital,” the gradualness of the law would require a certain lax attitude
with respect to the utopic ideal. It could not be upheld too rigidly.
This laxity would be essential to being merciful and would consist in
granting exceptions to the moral law. At the same time, this “mercy”
would entail that not everybody in the Church is required to have a
real purpose of amendment about sins, dictated by these higher and
more sophisticated laws, in order to be admitted to the sacraments.
		See AL §§34, 36, 38, 119, 148, 157, 200, 230, 292, 297, 303, 307, 308.
		I am drawing here from what is said in FC §34.

8
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Angel Perez-Lopez

An authentic conversion in which there is an interior detachment
from every evil would not be needed.10 One could simply commit
to improve, while still intending to continue committing individual
sinful acts. Hence, the gradual movement is placed not in the ascent
toward the good, but rather in the renunciation of sin. For this reason,
the gradualness of the law is usually associated with one version of
the double status of moral truth: the power of one’s conscience to find
exceptions to general rules about intrinsic evil acts, such as adultery.
These exceptions would be “granted” in defense of a more “realistic”
understanding of the capacities of the moral agent. In this way, the
gradualness of the law adapts to and excuses the moral agent to the
point that he or she does not even have to comply with the moral
law in question.
The Double Status of Moral Truth and Circumstances
AL calls for pastoral attention to the circumstances of those who are
weak and do not live up to the ideal of the Gospel of marriage. Pope
Francis reminds everyone that “there is a need to avoid judgments
which do not take into account the complexity of various situations” (§296). Following this same logic, AL applies this principle to
the divorced and remarried: “The divorced and remarried who have
entered a new union, for example, can find themselves in a variety of
situations, which should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid
classifications leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral
discernment” (§298).11
Beyond a doubt, AL emphasizes the circumstances that surround a
moral act. Pope Francis invites pastors to take them into consideration.
The responsibility of a grave action can be lessened by many kinds
of circumstances that have to do with either ignorance or violence.12
Hence, pastors should pay attention to them and follow the logic of
mercy, rather than that of a disheartening and legalistic approach to
pastoral care. This point is not contentious. The real question posed by
those who lament or celebrate discontinuity is not found here.
		“The pastoral ‘law of gradualness,’ not to be confused with the ‘gradualness of
the law’ which would tend to diminish the demands it places on us, consists
of requiring a decisive break with sin together with a progressive path towards
total union with the will of God and with his loving demands” (Pontifical
Council for the Family, Vademecum for Confessors Concerning Some Aspects of the
Morality of Conjugal Life, § 9).
11
		See also Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §44 and §47.
12
		See ST I–II, q. 6, aa. 4–8.
10

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The real question concerns the power of circumstances in moral action.
AL speaks of circumstances in their relationship with general rules:
“It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide
absolutely for all particular situations. At the same time, it must be
said that, precisely for that reason what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level
of a rule” (§304). This same point is applied to the natural law itself:
“Natural Law could not be presented as an already established set
of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather,
it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process
of making decisions” (§305). To elucidate his point, Pope Francis
appeals to Aquinas in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4, where Thomas asks whether
the natural law is the same for all. The Angelic Doctor explains there
that, “in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same
for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles.”
Circumstances can transform the moral quality of some moral acts.
They can turn a morally good act into a morally bad one. For instance,
the consummation of marriage is a morally good act in kind. It could
be done with the intent of having a family. But the circumstances of
“where” and “when” are also important. A public place, like a park,
in the middle of the day, can transform an otherwise morally good
conduct into a really bad action. According to AL, can circumstances
do the same with a morally bad action? Can they transform morally
bad conduct into a morally good or indifferent action? Does attention
to circumstances entail the possibility of exceptions to the doctrine
of intrinsic evil actions? Those who lament or celebrate discontinuity
answer positively to these questions.
The hermeneutical key behind such a conclusion is that of situation ethics, which views itself as the only alternative to legalism and
antinomism that respects the commandment of love. “The situationist
follows a moral law or violates it according to love’s need.”13 Situation
ethics accuses the traditional Catholic morality based on the natural
and revealed law of being blind to the needed exceptions to universal
norms, according to particular circumstances. However, situation
ethics admits that not all Catholic moral theologians are strict and
pure legalists. Out of common sense and respect for the commandment of love as the fulfillment of law (see Rom 13:10 and Gal 5:14),
		Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 1997), 26.

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some admit casuistry and exceptions to general rules, even to rules
about negative precepts concerning grave matter. Indeed, for situation
ethics, “casuistry is the homage paid by legalism to the love of persons,
and to realism about life’s relativities.”14 Nevertheless, the error of
casuistry would consist in deducing the particular from universal laws.
The only true universal laws would be those of love and of following one’s conscience to do what is right, as it varies according to the
different circumstances. As Joseph Fletcher puts it, “our obligation is
relative to the situation, but obligation in the situation is absolute.”15
Catholic theologians influenced by this “new morality” can, on
the one hand, uphold the truth of the passages from Scripture that
condemn adultery (e.g.: Exod 20:14; Lev 20:10; Deut 5:18; Matt
5:32; 15:19;19:9; 1 Cor 6:9). They are valid in general. However, they
argue, there can be exceptions to general rules, such as this one, in
different and special existential situations.
Read within the parameters of legalism as interpreted by situation
ethics, AL §304 is in direct opposition to VS §56. A strict follower
of the former could not be, at the same time, a strict follower of
latter.16 John Paul II censured, in the latter text, this double status of
moral truth: “Beyond the doctrinal and abstract level, one would have
to acknowledge the priority of a certain more concrete existential
consideration. The latter, by taking account of circumstances and
the situation, could legitimately be the basis of certain exceptions to
the general rule and thus permit one to do in practice and in good
conscience what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law.”
The Double Status of Moral Truth and Conscience
AL strongly appeals to moral conscience for the pastoral praxis of the
Church: “Recognizing the influence of such concrete factors, we can
add that individual conscience needs to be better incorporated into
the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively
embody our understanding of marriage” (§303). This incorporation
		Fletcher, Situation Ethics, 19.
		Fletcher, Situation Ethics, 27.
16
		This would also amount to a direct opposition to the Council of Trent: “No
one however much he be justified, should consider himself exempt from the
observance of the commandments; and no one should say that the observance of the commandments is impossible for the man justified” (Heinrich
Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum [DH], 43rd ed., ed. Peter Hünermann,
English edition ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash [San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2012], no. 1536 [p. 380]).
14
15

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acknowledges the need for formation: “Every effort should be made to
encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and
guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and
to encourage an ever greater trust in God’s grace.”
So far, what AL proposes is very standard in moral theology.
However, after saying the uncontroversial truth that conscience does
not consist only in acknowledging when an action is morally evil, AL
§303 argues that conscience “can also recognize with sincerity and
honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be
given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it
is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s
limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal.”
Those who lament or celebrate discontinuity see in this passage
a direct contradiction to VS §56. Speaking there about that double
status of moral truth, John Paul II explained: “A separation, or even an
opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the
precept, which is valid in general, and the norm of the individual conscience,
which would in fact make the final decision about what is good and
what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called
‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify
a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is
in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept.”
Diminished Subjective Responsibility and Tolerated Concubinage
If accompaniment means a gradualness of the law, if concrete circumstances have the power of changing morally bad conduct into a morally
good action, and if conscience has a creativity such that there is a
double status for moral truth, if all these things are indeed taught by AL,
there would be undeniable discontinuity with VS. Nevertheless, even if all
these premises are not upheld, one could still retain that AL §305 and
footnote 351 suggest a rupture with FC §84 and Sacramentum Caritatis
(SC) §29’s magisterial teachings: “It is possible that in an objective situation of sin—which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such—a
person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the
life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end”
(AL §305). AL specifies in the already infamous footnote 351 some
ways in which the Church could help: “In certain cases, this can include
the help of the sacraments. Hence, ‘I want to remind priest that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the
Lord’s mercy’ (Evangelii Gaudium §44). I would also point out that the
Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and

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Angel Perez-Lopez

nourishment for the weak’ (Evangelii Gaudium §47)” (footnote 351).
Those who lament or celebrate discontinuity interpret this text to
mean that, in certain cases, communion could be given to the unrepentant divorced person who lives in a second union and remains
sexually active. Therefore, AL would be promoting a new state of
people in the Church: tolerated concubinage. One explanation would
be that double status of moral truth. Another explanation, complementary but somewhat independent from the previous one, would be
the diminished subjective culpability of some divorced and remarried
people who are still sexually active within their second union. If it
is determined in certain cases that these people are not subjectively
guilty of mortal sin (even if their sin is grave matter), giving them the
Eucharist would be of help to them.
Those who lament or celebrate discontinuity would corroborate
the latter interpretation by pointing to a passage from AL §301: “The
Church possesses a solid body of reflection concerning mitigating
factors and situations. Hence it can no longer simply be said that all
those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and
are deprived of sanctifying grace.” The Angelic Doctor’s authority is
invoked here as well: “Saint Thomas Aquinas himself recognized that
someone may possess grace and charity, yet not be able to exercise
any one of the virtues well; in other words, although someone may
possess all the infused moral virtues, he does not clearly manifest the
existence of one of them, because the outward practice of that virtue
is rendered difficult.”
Is this the real argument of AL §305? If so, is it in continuity with
VS? How could one reconcile it with the following words from FC
§84? “The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred
Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced
persons who have remarried.”
In conclusion, it is possible to read AL in discontinuity—that is, in
opposition and rupture—with VS, FC, and SC. Such a reading would
be based on an understanding of accompaniment as gradualness of
the law and as a resurgence of that double status of moral truth characteristic of the proportionalist moral theology condemned by VS.
Accepting that double status, special circumstances have the power
to alter the moral quality of adultery into something else. Moral
conscience would be capable of granting exceptions to that kind of
behavior. Communion could be given, in certain special cases, to
the unrepentant divorced person who lives in a second union and
remains sexually active.

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A Parallelism Between Vatican II and AL
At the end of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI said that, in his experience, there were two very different versions of Vatican II. One was the
real and objective Council that took place in aula. Another “council,” so
to speak, was the one presented by the media. The first one was found
in the text of the documents. It was an expression of faith. It was an
authentic fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). It was
a gift from the Holy Spirit. However, as we know, while many people
talked about Vatican II and its “spirit,” few studied its documents in
depth. Few people knew the objective and authentic Council. Instead,
the second version of Vatican II, that presented in the media, was the
most commonly known. It did not correspond to the objective texts.
It had a very different hermeneutic than that of “faith seeking understanding.” Its hermeneutic was worldly. It was not one of faith. Rather, this
version of the Council was made political. It concentrated on a power
struggle between different trends in the Church.17 That was its main
hermeneutical key.
Three Versions of Amoris Laetitia
Inspired by Pope Benedict’s testimony, I would like to propose a parallelism between Vatican II and AL. In my experience, there are three
different versions of the apostolic exhortation. The first version is the
one present in the objective text itself. It is an expression of “faith seeking understanding.” That is its proper hermeneutical key. This authentic
version is the one that will remain in the future of the Church. I am
convinced that this version is in organic continuity with VS. However,
		“I would now like to add yet a third point: there was the Council of the
Fathers—the real Council—but there was also the Council of the media. It
was almost a Council apart, and the world perceived the Council through
the latter, through the media. Thus, the Council that reached the people with
immediate effect was that of the media, not that of the Fathers. And while the
Council of the Fathers was conducted within the faith—it was a Council of
faith seeking intellectus, seeking to understand itself and seeking to understand
the signs of God at that time, seeking to respond to the challenge of God
at that time and to find in the word of God a word for today and tomorrow—while all the Council, as I said, moved within the faith, as fides quaerens
intellectum, the Council of the journalists, naturally, was not conducted within
the faith, but within the categories of today’s media, namely apart from faith,
with a different hermeneutic. It was a political hermeneutic: for the media, the
Council was a political struggle, a power struggle between different trends in
the Church” (Benedict XVI, Meeting with the Parish Priests and the Clergy
of Rome, February 14, 2013).

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unfortunately, just as happened with the actual texts from Vatican II,
very few have calmly read and carefully studied the actual text of AL.
Still fewer have studied the objective text with a receptive spirit of
faith, setting aside the “noises” from the media and the theological
controversies that surrounded the two recent synods on the family.
Another different version of AL is the one in the media. This is
the version most people know and talk about. Just like the Vatican II
of the media, this second version of AL has also turned political. It has
resuscitated the old power struggle between different trends in the
Church. This political power struggle has also become the worldly key
of interpretation of the document.
However, I believe that there is something like a third version of
AL. This version is the one that most interests me. It results from
reading the objective document with a narrowed hermeneutical key,
“filtrating,” as it were, the text through the reports of the media and
the resuscitated power struggle just mentioned. In my opinion, this
third version has caused some serious thinkers to lament and others
to celebrate AL’s discontinuity with VS. It roughly corresponds to the
interpretation presented above.
Moreover, this third version has also made it difficult to receive
Pope Francis’s claim according to which “everything written in
Amoris Laetitia is Thomistic, from beginning to end.”18 Few have
taken his words to mean that, when a passage from AL is unclear, one
should consult the Angelic Doctor for clarification. Instead, many have
interpreted the Pope’s words within the power struggle publicized
by the media during the two recent synods. Many have “filtrated”
the Pope’s statements through the filter of Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s
interviews. As is known, Cardinal Marx explained to the media that
the German group of bishops at the synods made a very important
study of Aquinas before agreeing with Cardinal Kasper’s proposal
that communion could be given, in certain special cases, to the
divorced and remarried.19
		Pope Francis, Address at the Opening of the Pastoral Congress of the Diocese
of Rome, June 16, 2016.
19
		For Cardinal Kasper’s proposal, see Walter Kasper, The Gospel of the Family,
trans. William Madges (New York: Paulist Press, 2014). One should also take
into consideration his longer treatment of mercy in Mercy: The Essence of the
Gospel and the Key to Christian Life, trans. William Madges (New York: Paulist
Press, 2014). For a good evaluation of Kasper’s proposal see Juan Jose PerezSoba and Stephan Kampowski, The Gospel of the Family: Going Beyond Cardinal
Kasper’s Proposal in the Debate on Marriage, Civil Re-marriage, and Communion in
the Church, trans. Michael Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014).
18

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The Pope’s words could be interpreted through the filter of this
mediatic report, in which case, they end up becoming an attempt
to manipulate Aquinas for political purposes. They turn into a mere
attempt to “baptize” or to give “lawful magisterial citizenship” to
Cardinals Marx’s and Kasper’s theological opinions. Such would take
place, according to this interpretation, thanks to the authority of
Saint Thomas.
However, I personally believe that it is impossible to reach Kasper’s
conclusions after a serious and hermeneutically correct study of Aquinas. The only way to do so, in my view, is by picking and choosing
some of Thomas’s statements without paying any attention to the
internal coherence of his thought. Yet, could it be that Pope Francis
means exactly what he said? Could it mean that the objective version
of AL is not in contradiction with the thought of Thomas Aquinas?
The Principle of Integration
Because of the strong parallelism between AL and Vatican II, the
correct hermeneutical approach to Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation must be based on what Wojtyła calls the principle of integration.
This principle is quite providential for our times. It was the key to John
Paul II’s interpretation of Vatican II during the whole of his pontificate,
in a time when there was a confusion very similar to the one we are
experiencing today.20 Thus, this same principle can be the best way
out of the controversy between those who lament or celebrate AL’s
discontinuity with VS. It can be the faith-filled hermeneutical grounds on
which to argue in favor of AL’s organic continuity with VS.Wojtyła writes:
“[The principle of integration is] an organic cohesion expressing itself
simultaneously in the thought and action of the Church as a community
of believers. It expresses itself, that is, in such a way that on the one
hand we can rediscover and, as it were, re-read the Magisterium of the last
Council in the whole previous Magisterium of the Church, while on the other
we can rediscover and re-read the whole preceding Magisterium in that of the
last Council.”21
Wojtyła’s principle is certainly faith-filled. It is not a worldly and
political hermeneutical key. It was the best way to get out of the
confusion created by the media and by the power struggle between
		 See Angel Perez-Lopez, Procreation and the Spousal Meaning of the Body: A Thomistic Argument Grounded in Vatican II (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017), 11–29.
21
		 Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council, trans. P. S. Falla (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 40–41 (emphasis
added).
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conservatives and liberals. Cardinal Wojtyła was not naïve.22 He knew
very well that the Holy Spirit does not abandon the Church in her
magisterium, despite human weakness.23 Thus, without denying
such weakness, he proposes to go beyond politics. Both liberals and
conservatives should leave politics aside and adopt an attitude of faith,
following the principle of integration:
In judgments passed on the work necessary for the Council and
on the Church’s activity in the post-Conciliar period, undue
emphasis was laid on divisions and differences between so-called
integralists and progressives, while too little was said about the fact
that both groups, in their responsibility towards the Church,
must be unswervingly guided by the principle and demands of
its identity, and that they must both therefore respect the principle of
integration which is a precondition of the Church’s identity.24
Pope Benedict XVI expressed a very similar principle when he
argued in favor of the hermeneutic of “reform and renewal” over
against the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.25 Following
Wojtyła’s principle of integration and Benedict’s hermeneutic of
reform and renewal, we should rediscover and, as it were, reread AL’s
teachings in light of previous magisterial pronouncements. In turn,
we should also rediscover and reread previous magisterial teachings in
light of AL. Considering this principle, what I have called AL’s “third
version” is intrinsically vitiated. It is a false version of the document,
resulting from a flawed hermeneutical principle. Allow me to draw
the following comparison to illustrate this last point.
Imagine that today someone proposes to discern the magisterial
value of Gaudium et Spes (GS). However, the proposed method of
interpretation is not reading GS in light of the previous councils,
but instead adopting as GS’s chief hermeneutical key Cardinal Suenens’s
		See: Cándido Pozo, “Juan Pablo II y el Concilio Vaticano II,” Scripta Theologica
20 (1988): 405–37; Angelo Scola, “Gli interventi di Karol Wojtyła al Concilio
Ecumenico Vaticano II. Esposizione ed interpretazione teologica,” in Karol
Wojtyła: filosofo, teologo, poeta (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1984),
289–306.
23
		See Robert Skrzypczak, Karol Wojtyła al Concilio Vaticano II (Verona, IT: Fede
& Cultura, 2011).
24
		Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal, 41 (emphasis added).
25
		See Benedict XVI, Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, December
22, 2005.
22

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theological opinions and the discussions they generated back in the
day, in the sessions when GS was being drafted. Although that enterprise would have a certain historical value, it would be inadequate to
ascertain the magisterial value of the Pastoral Constitution.
If something is not said in GS, we do not assume that the Church
in her magisterium agrees with Suenens or with the discussions
recorded in the acta.26 If a passage says something unclear or ambiguous, we do not assume that it is siding with the Cardinal’s controversial proposals. Rather, in cases of doubt or ambiguity, we appeal to
previous magisterial teachings in such a way that, when the document
is silent, we presuppose that the previous doctrine is still current; and
when the document is unclear or open to different interpretations,
we read it in light of previous magisterial teachings. In other words,
we follow Wojtyła’s principle of integration.
Cardinal Suenens agreed with the theologian Herbert Doms27 and
proposed to abolish the traditional doctrine according to which procreation is the primary end of marriage. Do we believe that GS offers such
a change? The document is silent about the matter. Nowhere can one
read in the text of GS such a change. Nevertheless, there are passages
which could be misinterpreted in that direction. Since we need clarification, we appeal to previous magisterial teachings. Wojtyła was part
of the commission for GS and knew very well the controversies and
the “noise” Cardinal Suenens’s theological opinions created. However,
already exercising his magisterial office as Pope, John Paul II confirms
exactly the methodology inherent in the principle of integration.
Thus, in his celebrated theology of the body, he clearly affirms that the
traditional doctrine according to which procreation is the primary end
of marriage was present at Vatican II and is still valid today.28
To be sure, some of the participants who sided with Cardinal
Suenens at Vatican II did not share that view. Yet, despite their own
position, GS is to be read in another light different from their own
proposals and controversies: it should be read considering the principle of integration. To lament GS’s discontinuity with the previous
		See Horacio Antúnez, “Karol Wojtyła y Gaudium et spes: Historia de Juan
Pablo II en la elaboración de la Consitución Pastoral” (PhD diss., Pontifical
University of the Holy Cross, 2005).
27
		See Herbert Doms, The Meaning of Marriage, trans. G. Sayer (New York: Sheed
and Ward, 1939).
28
		See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans.
and ed. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 127. See
also Perez-Lopez, Procreation, 239–68.
26

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magisterium would not make much sense to us today. Rather, we
celebrate its continuity with the past. We also see in it an organic
evolution and continuity of our understanding of the deposit of faith.
Likewise, when a passage in AL raises a question, the question should
always be answered not by appealing to a worldly hermeneutics, but
rather by adopting the principle of integration. AL could and should
be interpreted in continuity and harmony with previous magisterial
teachings. The corollary implication is also quite clear. As a matter
of fact, AL could be interpreted in discontinuity, disharmony, and
rupture with previous magisterial teachings. As we know, some
interpreters are already following that path. But such a potential
interpretation is, in reality, a misinterpretation.
Revisiting Texts
The replies to the objections previously raised affirm an internal coherence to AL’s objective text. For this reason, any sound interpretation
of a given passage must square with its literal meaning. It must also be
compatible with all the other affirmations of the apostolic exhortation.
There cannot be plain contradiction within the document.
Additionally, the replies to the objections mentioned before are
also based on the principle of integration. Thus, I will read past
magisterial teachings into AL and AL into past magisterial teachings.
This will always happen when AL is silent on a given issue. As is
obvious, in such cases, the previous magisterial teachings on the
matter remain valid and normative. The same principle will also be
applied when the literary genera of the apostolic exhortation does not
offer the desired theological precision that belongs to other styles of
writing. Hence, if one passage is unclear and clarity cannot be found
within the document itself due to its pastoral nature, we must appeal to
previous teachings to elucidate its exact meaning.
Furthermore, I am going to take very seriously Pope Francis’s
words about the Thomism of AL. I will do so by placing myself
outside the “noise” of worldly hermeneutics and the theological
controversies that surrounded the last two synods on the family.
Instead, I will adopt a filial attitude of faith seeking understanding
within the context of the due obsequium religiosum that this kind of
document deserves.29 In this manner, following all these hermeneu		See Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, §25; Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Veritatis, §23 and §§31–38. It is would be
important to review, within this context, Paul VI’s Paterna cum Benevolentia.

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tical directives, I will try to show that the resulting interpretation of
the difficult passages already identified is in continuity not only with
VS, FC, and SC but also with Aquinas.
Gradualness of the Law and Gradual Exercise of Prudence
The first difficulty proposed by those who lament or celebrate AL’s
discontinuity with VS concerned the nature of accompaniment. It
assumed that it meant a certain “gradualness of the law.” If accompaniment is gradualness of the law, it also follows that AL grants circumstances the power to alter the moral quality of an intrinsically evil act.
Consequently, it would be possible to give communion to the divorced
and remarried who are still sexually active. There were two arguments
in favor of identifying accompaniment with the gradualness of the law.
First, the objective demands of the moral law are often referred to by
AL as an “ideal.” Second, AL §295 argues that those who cannot fulfill
the whole objective demands of the moral law—natural and revealed—
can have a gradual exercise of prudence.
To the first argument, we must respond that AL’s usage of “ideal” is
not problematic. It is in perfect continuity with VS. John Paul II also
referred to the objective demands of the moral law with the word
“ideal.” VS §16 explains that the rich young man “has followed the
moral ideal seriously and generously from childhood.”30 Hence, there is
nothing wrong with using the word “ideal” for the moral exemplar.
According to Aquinas, and exemplar is one particular kind of idea.31
The problem would have been to say that the objective moral law is
a future ideal, somehow unrealistic and utopist for the human person,
invalid for the present.32 However, AL never affirms such a thing. In
fact, the apostolic exhortation clearly states the opposite. The Latin
normative text uses the term exemplar in this Thomistic sense.33
AL §295 directs the reader to FC §9 and §34 to clarify precisely
that there is no gradualness of the law. Pope Francis says in a lapidary manner here: “This is not a ‘gradualness of the law.’” The Pope
continues: “The law is itself a gift of God which points out the way,
		See also: FC §46; John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, §88, §98.
		See ST I, q. 15, a. 3. For the role of the exemplary ideas as metaphysical foundations of the moral norm, see Karol Wojtyła, Person and Community: Selected
Essays, trans. Theresa Sandock (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 73–94.
32
		See FC §9 and VS §103.
33
		I am grateful to Dr. John Grabowski for pointing out to me this felicitous
coincidence.
30
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a gift for everyone without exception; it can be followed with the help
of grace.” Later on, he clarifies that, “given that gradualness is not
in the law itself [AL here cites FC §34], this discernment can never
prescind from the Gospel demands of truth and charity, as proposed
by the Church” (AL §300). It could not be otherwise. Not even love
dispenses one from observing God’s commandments. “We know that
we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And
his commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God
overcomes the world” (1 John 5:2–4).
The response to the second argument on the gradual exercise of
prudence as gradualness of the law is based on AL §300. We also
find a response here to that other difficult passage in §303 concerning conscience and discernment, because the exercise of prudence is
exactly what discernment means. 34 A gradual exercise of prudence
is a gradual discernment. This discernment could ask of one to do
something that is not yet the full objective ideal. However, not to act
on the full objective ideal is not the same as to contradict the ideal.
If the moral ideal in question is conjugal chastity, I can do good
things that lead me there. But, I can never do something in good
conscience that contradicts that virtue. Moral discernment, according
to §300, can never prescind from the objective and ultimate norm
of morality.
The act perfected by the virtue of prudence is the act of conscience,
the act of practical reason whereby we judge the morality of an action
that is already performed or is about to be performed.35 Prudence
perfects conscience.36 This perfection consists, among other things,
in empowering the rational forum of conscience with the capacity
to conform to the universal and objective norm of morality. For this
reason, in reality, AL §300 is reiterating what is taught by VS §60:
“The dignity of this rational forum [the forum of conscience] and
the authority of its voice and judgments derive from the truth about
moral good and evil, which it is called to listen to and to express.
		For an excellent monographic study on prudence in Thomas Aquinas see
Santiago Ramírez, La Prudencia (Madrid, ES: Biblioteca Palabra, 1981).
35
		See ST I, q. 79, a. 13.
36
		See: Ralph M. McInerny, “Prudence and Conscience,” The Thomist 38 (1974):
291–305; Graziano Borgonovo, Soggetto Morale e Chiesa: Lutero, Erasmo,
Newman, e Guardini a Confronto (Casale Monferrato, IT: Edizioni Piemme,
2000); and Ramón García de Haro, La Conciencia Moral (Madrid, ES: Ediciones
Rialp, 1978).
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This truth is indicated by the ‘divine law,’ the universal and objective
norm of morality.”37
True prudence can never contradict the Gospel demands of truth
and charity. Obviously, AL is not talking here about “the prudence of
the flesh” (Rom 8:6). That is simply false prudence. It can make one
a “good” robber or a “prudent” thief, but it is not really prudence. It
can never make someone good as a human being. Nor is AL talking
about the “prudence” or skillfulness that makes one a “prudent” businessman or a “good” soccer player. Rather, the prudence referred to
by AL §295 is moral prudence. It is the intellectual and moral virtue
that takes counsel and commands how to reach the moral goal of our
lives.38 For this reason, §300 is not only in direct harmony with VS
§60; it is also very Thomistic. In saying that true discernment never
contradicts the law of the Gospel, AL §300 is affirming what Aquinas
taught about true or moral prudence: “It cannot be in sinners.”39
Consequently, those who lament or celebrate discontinuity in
proposing that accompaniment is gradualness of the law or that
conscience grants exceptions to intrinsically evil acts based on AL
§295 or §300 are simply wrong. Their interpretation is flawed. It is
inconsistent with the very letter of the document, with the principle
of integration, and with the Thomistic foundation of the apostolic
exhortation. What AL proposes, instead, is to see the law as a path,
as Torah, as an instruction that is a gift of grace and a call to responsibility. In this path of the moral law, we cannot leave people by the
wayside by granting them exceptions. Rather, we need to accompany
them in this walk, helping them to stay on track in their journey
		AL §300 is also in organic continuity with SC §29: “Pastoral care must not be
understood as if it were somehow in conflict with the law. Rather, one should
begin by assuming that the fundamental point of encounter between the law
and pastoral care is love for the truth: truth is never something purely abstract,
but ‘a real part of the human and Christian journey of every member of the
faithful.’”
38
		In this sense, we need to move beyond Kant, who identified this sort of
skillfulness with prudence. Martin Rhonheimer, however, explains: “This
‘prudence of the flesh,’ however, is no virtue, even if it is accompanied by
a great deal of skillfulness. It is not prudence because it does not help one
become a better human being; it is a counterfeit, bearing only the name of
prudence. True prudence, nevertheless, is always the ‘skillfulness’ of reason
for the good” (The Perspective of Morality: Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic
Virtue Ethics, trans. Gerald Malsbary [Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 2011], 224).
39
		ST II–II, q. 47, a. 13, corp.
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toward God. The point of departure in accompaniment is the grace
of conversion, for which one needs to pray while making room for
the weak in the Church so that the Gospel may be proclaimed to
them. The goal, as AL §160 teaches, is the holiness of a virtuous
life: “Such perfection is possible and accessible to every man and
woman.”40 The gradualness of the law destroys every accompaniment. It centers neither on the grace of conversion nor on holiness. It
leads people astray. It is anti-pastoral.
The Double Status of Moral Truth and the Call to Conversion
The second difficulty we identified at the beginning of this article had
to do with the double status of moral truth. There are two versions of
it. The first had to do with the power of circumstances and the attention we need to give to them before we pass judgment on the moral
situations in which those who are weak find themselves when they
do not conform to the objective demands of the Gospel (see AL §296
and §298). The second had to do with the power of moral conscience.
Since we have already dealt with the latter, we will concentrate now
on the power of circumstances.
Those who lament or celebrate discontinuity believe that AL
ascribes to circumstances the power to transform a morally bad
action into a good, or at least an indifferent, one. There were two
crucial texts in this regard: AL §304 and §305. Based on these texts,
could a priest grant exceptions to intrinsically evil moral acts, such
as adultery, based on extraordinary circumstances? Paying attention
to the internal logic of AL, the answer must be a categorical no. For
instance, the general rule “do not commit adultery” sets forth the
good of conjugal chastity. This good, according to the literal meaning
of AL §304, can never be disregarded. It can never be neglected. But
to give permission in one particular situation to commit adultery
would be to disregard and to neglect the good of conjugal chastity.
Hence, AL §304 cannot be proposing such a course of action. As AL
§300 already said, “discernment can never prescind from the Gospel
demands of truth and charity, as proposed by the Church.”
AL §304 is saying, however, that no general rule can ever exhaust
the many different concrete ways in which one can “incarnate,” as
it were, conjugal chastity. No rule can do that because the virtue
of conjugal chastity needs the discernment of prudence. Without
		See also AL §§62, 297, and 316, as well as footnote 170.

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prudence, there is no moral virtue at all.41 And, as Thomas Aquinas
explains, part of prudence is circumspection, attention to circumstances.42 Conjugal chastity meant for Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary
something very concrete and not contained in a general rule. Yet, it
was somewhat different from what conjugal chastity meant for Aquila
and Priscilla, or for Saint Gregory and his wife Saint Nonna (parents
of Saint Gregory Nazianzus), or for the parents of St. Thérèse of
Lisieux (St. Louis Martin and St. Marie-Azélie Guérin Martin).
These particularities cannot be a general rule for everyone. The only
thing that is contained in a general rule is a perimeter, a boundary, a
clear limit beyond which there is no chastity. Thus, the general rule
“do not commit adultery” contains such a limit. Yet, it loses most of
the richness contained within the territory, the perimeter, the province, as it were, of the virtue of conjugal chastity.
AL §304 cannot be separated from AL §297. The latter clearly
states that, if a person has incurred an objective sin, we have to be
understanding but, at the same time, we cannot abandon this person in
that profound state of misery, for that would be contrary to mercy:
“Such a person needs to listen once more to the Gospel message
and its call to conversion.” As the document clarifies a little later, “to
show understanding in the face of exceptional situations never implies
dimming the light of the fuller ideal, or proposing less than what
Jesus offers to the human being” (AL §307). Pope Francis also warns
about priests giving exceptions. AL calls us to “avoid the grave danger
of misunderstandings, such as the notion that any priest can quickly
grant ‘exceptions’” (AL §300).
Not only is this reading of AL §304 consistent with the letter of the
paragraph; it also respects the internal coherence of the document,
the principle of integration, and AL’s Thomistic foundations. There
is continuity, therefore, with VS §67: “The negative moral precepts,
those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behavior as
intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They
do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the ‘creativity’
of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species
of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized,
the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of
refraining from the action which it forbids.”
		See ST II–II, q. 47, a. 14.
		See ST II–II, q. 48, a. 1. See also Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).

41
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AL §304 and §305 need to be read together with §297, §300, and
§307. Then, all of them also square perfectly with VS §104, where we
read: “Appropriate allowance is made both for God’s mercy towards
the sinner who converts and for the understanding of human weakness.
Such understanding never means compromising and falsifying the standard of good and evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances.
. . . What is unacceptable is the attitude of one who makes his own
weakness the criterion of the truth about the good, so that he can
feel self-justified, without even the need to have recourse to God and
his mercy.”
Moreover, there is also an organic continuity among AL, FC, and SC
on this very point. FC §84 also explains clearly that “pastors must
know that, for the sake of truth, they are obliged to exercise careful
discernment of situations.” There are different degrees of responsibility
in the case of the divorced and the remarried. For this reason, as AL
§298 clearly says, “the divorced and remarried who have entered a
new union, for example, can find themselves in a variety of situations,
which should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications
leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral discernment.”
Pope Francis is in strict continuity here with John Paul II: “There
is in fact a difference between those who have sincerely tried to save
their first marriage and have been unjustly abandoned, and those
who through their own grave fault have destroyed a canonically
valid marriage. Finally, there are those who have entered into a
second union for the sake of the children’s upbringing, and who are
sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and
irreparably destroyed marriage had never been valid” (FC §84).43
However, none of these circumstances have the power to justify adultery. AL never affirms such a thing. On the contrary, it affirms that
the Gospel of marriage and Jesus’s teachings on adultery can never be
abandoned.
Furthermore, the Thomistic background of AL does not allow
for the lamented or celebrated interpretation of discontinuity. In his
discussion of natural law, Aquinas affirms that it is not the same in

		Benedict XVI also called our attention to mitigating circumstances and to
the need for discernment, as it is important in one’s pastoral approach to the
divorced and remarried: “The Church’s pastors, out of love for the truth, are
obliged to discern different situations carefully, in order to be able to offer
appropriate spiritual guidance to the faithful involved” (SC §29).

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all men and women with respect to the positive precepts.44 However,
there are negative precepts that are valid for all and under every
circumstance. The reason for this teaching has everything to do with
prudence and discernment. In the positive actions commanded by the
natural law, one needs to pay attention to circumstances in order to
establish the medietas of virtue, what is the mean between extremes.
However, there are actions that have no such medietas. Their very
name signifies their intrinsic evil nature: “Certain actions and
passions by their very name imply vice: . . . envy and actions such as
adultery, theft, murder. All of these and their like are evil in themselves and not only in their excess or defect. Hence in such things a
person cannot be virtuous no matter how he acts, but he always sins
in doing them. . . . Without qualification sin is present whenever any
of these is present, for each of them implies an act opposed to what
is right.”45
What AL does propose is to get beyond legalism. The latter goes
against the Gospel of mercy. Indeed, as VS §23 explains: “Love and
life according to the Gospel cannot be thought of first and foremost
as a kind of precept, because what they demand is beyond man’s abilities. They are possible only as the result of a gift of God who heals,
restores and transforms the human heart by his grace.” Legalism
views something as good because it is prescribed. Conversely, something
is morally evil only because it is prohibited (mala quia prohibita).46
Hence, the authority can dispense from the law. However, AL understands that something is prescribed because it is good. Thus, it makes no
sense to grant exceptions or permissions to negative precepts of the
moral law. The latter are always the limit beyond which one encounters sin. No one can give another permission to sin.
Consequently, those who lament or celebrate discontinuity in
proposing that circumstances have the power to justify adultery
based on AL §304 or §305 are simply wrong. Their interpretation is
		ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4, corp. For an extended study on the natural law that answers
very effectively the proportionalist errors, see Martin Rhonheimer, Natural
Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy, trans. Gerald Malsbary (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000).
45
		Thomas Aquinas, In II eth. lec. 7, no. 329, in Commentary on the Nicomachean
Ethics, trans. C. I. Litzinger (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993). See also
Servais Pinckaers, “A Historical Perspective on Intrinsically Evil Acts,” in The
Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2005), 185–235.
46
		See Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason, 475.
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flawed. It is inconsistent with the very letter of the document, with
the principle of integration, and with the Thomistic foundation of the
apostolic exhortation.
Subjective Responsibility and the Logic of Mercy
The last difficulty pointed out at the beginning of the present article
concerned whether or not AL §305 and footnote 351 permitted Holy
Communion to be given, in certain special cases, to those divorced and
remarried who are sexually active but whose culpability is lessened by
circumstances. The first way to answer this objection is to appeal to
the internal logic of the document itself. Within this logic, the Church
is like “a field hospital.” Moreover, as we already know, John Paul II
and Pope Francis accept the law of gradualness. But both plainly reject the
gradualness of the law. If a person has incurred an objective sin, “such a
person needs to listen once more to the Gospel message and its call to
conversion” (AL §297).
For this listening process to take place, this person needs to be
involved in some way in the life of the Church (see AL §211). It
would be incorrect to forbid all divorced and remarried people any
kind of participation. They are not excommunicated. The same
would apply to those who are thieves, adulterers, envious, or proud.
Their sins are mortal ex genere suo. Yet, the Church is always ready to
welcome them in her mercy and to call them to conversion. Depending on circumstances, the degree of responsibility in each case could
be different. Objectively speaking, those sins are all grave matter.
Subjectively speaking, it is quite difficult to determine the exact
degree of responsibility of each moral agent. It would be rash and
even dangerous for a priest to judge the state of grace of another.47
Until here, there are no signs of discontinuity whatsoever. John
Paul II also said in FC §84: “I earnestly call upon pastors and the
		See Thomas Aquinas, Super Rom 2, lec. 1, no. 174, in Commentary on the Letter
of Saint Paul to the Romans, trans. Fabian R. Larcher, ed. J. Mortensen and E.
Alarcón, Works of St. Thomas Aquinas [Latin–English] 37 (Lander: The Aquinas
Institute, 2012). Trent also explains that “no one can know with a certitude of
faith that cannot be subject to error that he has obtained God’s grace” (DH,
no. 1534). St. Thomas explains that there are three ways in which a person may
know he or she is in the state of grace. First, one could know it by private revelation. Second, by oneself, one can never know with certitude that he or she is
in that state.Third, without a private revelation, one can only conjecture by signs
such as being conscious of delighting in God, despising worldly things, and not
being aware of having committed a mortal sin. See ST I–II, q. 112, a. 5, corp.

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whole community of the faithful to help the divorced, and with
solicitous care to make sure that they do not consider themselves
as separated from the Church, for as baptized persons they can, and
indeed must, share in her life.” Pope Benedict XVI even used the
word accompaniment, just as Pope Francis did when talking about this
same reality: “The divorced and remarried continue to belong to the
Church, which accompanies them with special concern and encourages
them to live as fully as possible the Christian life through regular
participation at Mass, albeit without receiving communion, listening
to the word of God, Eucharistic adoration, prayer, participation in
the life of the community, honest dialogue with a priest or spiritual
director, dedication to the life of charity, works of penance, and
commitment to the education of their children” (SC §29).
At this point of the reasoning, AL begins to address the special
situation of those who are divorced and remarried. The document
invites pastors to look at the circumstances around each case. Without denying the objective evil involved, there can be a situation in
which separation is not good for the children who are the fruit of
the second union. AL §305 is very reminiscent here in its language
to FC §84, which also affirmed: “The Church, which was set up to
lead to salvation all people and especially the baptized, cannot abandon to their own devices those who have been previously bound by
sacramental marriage and who have attempted a second marriage.
The Church will therefore make untiring efforts to put at their disposal
her means of salvation.”
Both AL §305 and FC §84 affirm that the divorced and remarried
should receive the help of the Church, even the help of the sacraments.
Now, attending to the internal logic of AL, the needed help from the
Church must begin with listening to the Gospel message, with a call to
conversion, and with the sacrament of reconciliation. That is in fact the
path pointed out by the disputed footnote 351. Those who accept the
Gospel’s call to conversion (see AL §297) are to receive the sacrament
of reconciliation (see AL §305). AL reminds priests, in this context,
that this sacrament should welcome the penitent and facilitate an
encounter with God’s mercy. Once this encounter has taken place,
thanks to an authentic purpose of amendment, then the Eucharist
could be given. At that time, the Eucharist can be true and effective
medicine.48 AL is silent about the concrete merciful ways in which
		This is also the path delineated by Aquinas in ST III, q. 80, a. 6, and III, q. 90,
a. 4.

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the confessor should address the situation. Hence, according to the
principle of integration, any priest should presuppose that what FC
§84 and SC §29 taught remains in place.
There can be no absolution without purpose of amendment.49 This
purpose of amendment, in certain cases, entails the separation of
those living in a second union. In others, separation is not possible
for the good of the children. Then, living as brothers and sisters is
the path to take, making sure that no scandal is given. In any case,
only after absolution can the Eucharist be an effective medicine for
the weak because “there are medicines which, if taken prematurely,
do more harm than good.”50 We can never forget Saint Paul’s
words: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of
the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body
and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of
the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without
discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves” (1
Cor 11:27–29).
Where can these wounded members of the Church find the
needed strength and grace to resolve to live in continence, as
brothers and sisters? As I have argued somewhere else, according
to AL’s teachings, for validly married people, the answer must be
found in the spirituality of the bond and the conjugal charity that is the
specific effect of the sacrament of matrimony (see AL §211).51 This
can also be true in the case in which one of the spouses has been
unjustly wronged. The marital bond exists (until the death of one
of the spouses) to grant the needed graces to live in that state of life.
Thus, it also contains the needed graces to live in continence and
be a remedy for concupiscence. Such continence can be lived, out
of love for Christ, as a fulfillment of the spousal meaning of our
bodies. For this to happen, one needs to foster supernatural friendship with God.
Hence, as FC §84 explains: “[The divorced and remarried] should
be encouraged to listen to the word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of
		This principle is also the key to reading adequately the sixth criteria of
the document from the Argentinian Bishops of the Pastoral Region of
Buenos Aires concerning the application of Amoris Laetitia’s chapter 8
(See w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/es/letters/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160905_regione-pastorale-buenos-aires.html).
50
		Granados, Kampowski, and Pérez-Soba, Accompanying, 79.
51
		See my “Conjugal Charity and the Pastoral Care of the Conjugal Bond in
Amoris Laetitia,” Scripta Fulgentia 26, no. 51–52 (2016): 83–119.
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the Mass, to persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and
to community efforts in favor of justice, to bring up their children in
the Christian faith, to cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and
thus implore, day by day, God’s grace. Let the Church pray for them,
encourage them and show herself a merciful mother, and thus sustain
them in faith and hope.” As AL §305 delineates in organic continuity,
we need to accompany them from their sin toward conversion, from
conversion to the sacrament of reconciliation, and from the sacrament
of reconciliation to that of the Eucharist.
Now, what about the argument constructed with AL §301 and AL
§305 about the mitigated subjective responsibility of the weak person
who commits adultery? This argument is clever and it has a certain
independence from what has been said thus far. However, it does not
lead to the conclusion that communion can be given to the unrepentant divorced and remarried person who still wants to be sexually
active. AL §305 sends those people to confession first. To be sure, no
one can really determine with total precision the exact degree of
responsibility of a person who is sinning in grave matter. “The judgment of one’s state of grace obviously belongs to the person involved,
since it is a question of examining one’s conscience.”52
In case of reasonable doubt, one should always confess before
receiving communion. But confession requires an authentic purpose
of amendment not to sin again. This is the real point. The subjective
responsibility of past sins may be have been affected by circumstances.
Instead, the question here is about future sins. Since AL is silent on
this topic of future sins, the only way to proceed is to be governed
by previous doctrine. There cannot be absolution without conversion
and break with sin. As the Catechism and the Council of Trent clearly
explain: “Among the penitent’s acts contrition occupies first place.
Contrition is ‘sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again.’”53
The purpose of AL §301 is not to grant communion to the divorced
and remarried. Rather, it is an important consideration so that
confessors are understanding and do not transform the confessional

		Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §37.
		Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1997), §1451 (emphasis
added). See also: the Council of Trent in DH, nos. 1551 and 1676; Code of
Canon Law Annotated. Latin-English Edition, ed. E. Caparros, M. Theriault and
J. Thorn (Montreal: Wilson & Lafleur Limitee, 1993), 959 and 987.

52
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into a torture chamber.54 Since AL §305 never says that communion
could be given to those who are unrepentant and have not gone to
confession, the valid teaching still remains that the reason why they
need to go to confession is not their subjective responsibility of past sins.
Rather, the reason given by FC and SC, which is never abolished or
even discussed by AL, is their objective situation. Subjectively, they may
be more or less culpable. Yet, objectively, their situation contradicts
Christ’s union with the Church and the Eucharist itself.
Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI acknowledge that there can
be mitigating factors and situations. But the divorced and remarried
cannot receive communion (without repentance and confession)
because of their objective situation: “They are unable to be admitted
thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively
contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which
is signified and effected by the Eucharist” (FC §84). Moreover, FC
also points at the great potential for scandal: “If these people were
admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and
confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility
of marriage.” Pope Benedict XVI also reaffirmed this same teaching.
The Eucharist expresses God’s irrevocable and indissoluble love for
the human person. On the basis of Mark 10:2–12, SC §29 explains
the Church’s practice “of not admitting the divorced and remarried
to the sacraments, since their state and their condition of life objectively
contradict the loving union of Christ and the Church signified and
made present in the Eucharist.”
AL §305 never denies such a teaching. It never affirms anything
to the contrary. And it never grants permission to give communion
to these people without their going first to confession. Moreover,
precisely because AL is Thomistic, it will never contradict Aquinas’s
lapidary affirmation that “one may not commit adultery for any
good.”55 As the Angelic Doctor clearly explains, some human actions
“have deformity inseparably attached to them, such as fornication,
adultery, and others of this sort, which can in no way be done in a
morally good way.”56
		For a detailed analysis of the factors that affect the imputability of a moral
action, see Angel Rodríguez Luño and Enrique Colom, Chosen in Christ to Be
Saints: Fundamental Moral Theology (Rome: EDUSC, 2014), 194–202.
55
		Aquinas, De malo, q. 15, a. 1, ad 5. See also ST I–II, q. 100, a. 8, and II–II, q.
33, a. 2.
56
		Aquinas, Quodlibet IX, q. 7, a. 2.
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1211

Consequently, those who lament or celebrate discontinuity in
proposing that AL §305 accepts a new state in the Church of tolerated
concubinage are simply wrong. Their interpretation is flawed. It is
inconsistent with the very letter of the document, with the principle
of integration, and with its Thomistic foundation.
The Pastoral Novum
What is AL’s real purpose in emphasizing a certain graduality in one’s
moral conversion, the important role of circumstances, the need
for a well-formed conscience and prudence, and the real impact of
mitigating factors that lessens one’s responsibility in moral evil? I am
convinced that AL’s chapter 8 is proposing a novum in its emphasis on
the pastoral attitudes of accompaniment, discernment, and integration.
In a certain sense, this pastoral novum is best illuminated by the
contrary attitudes from which we need to repent. I would call them
the attitudes of abandonment, legalistic lack of prudence, and uncharitable
attitude of exclusion. In this manner, I think that Pope Francis emphasizes the graduality in one’s moral conversion, the important role of
circumstances, the need for a well-formed conscience and prudence,
and the real impact of mitigating factors that lessens one’s responsibility in moral evil in order to accomplish two goals: first, to promote
the positive attitudes of accompaniment, discernment, and integration; second, to call to conversion those who are “infected” by the
negative attitudes of abandonment, legalistic lack of prudence, and
uncharitable attitude of exclusion.
A pastor has the attitude of abandonment when he simply drops
the truth on the weak and then walks away. He uses the moral law
to rashly judge the state of grace of the penitent. Then, due to the
pastor’s lack of investment, the weak person is dismissed unaided,
without any further accompaniment. The incipient and still growing
desire to come back to the Church is not nurtured. It is not encountered by a fatherly pastor who goes out of his own house to see if that
would be the day his prodigal son finally returns. Thus, the attitude
of abandonment springs from a lack of evangelical zeal rooted in
one’s love for God and neighbor. It leads to a preservationist pastoral
approach in which the Church offers some services and rules for those
who want to come and are already strong enough to comply with the
requirements.
Related to the attitude of abandonment is that of a legalistic lack
of discernment. For the pastor who has the attitude of abandonment,

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Angel Perez-Lopez

the exception-less negative precepts of the law, and not the virtues,
contain the whole of his pastoral ministry. His governing prudence is
drastically impoverished to a false version of discernment, limited to
the application of universal laws to particular situations. The pastoral
work centered on the virtues requires more time and involvement.
One does not really discern whether or not God is calling him to
commit adultery or another grave sin. However, much discernment
is needed to understand the exact way in which God is calling one to
grow in a given virtue. For this reason, the pastoral work centered on
the virtues requires a pastor who is a discerning father.
The Church’s pastoral work cannot be limited to an immediate
juridical solution. Of course, juridical solutions are important. But
when the whole of pastoral work is limited to them, we have no time
to dedicate to sinners. We have no time to accompany them in their
journey of repentance. To accompany the weak, we need a point of
departure and a point of arrival. The point of departure is wherever
a sinner finds himself. The point of arrival is the holiness of a virtuous life via moral conversion. To accompany someone is to dedicate
time to another, to walk with him, and to help him to discern and
to grow in the journey toward a virtuous life. A good pastor would
never lead his sheep beyond the limits of the negative commandments
to the precipice of sin. However, although the negative precepts of
the law indicate where the road ends and where the precipice begins,
they do not contain the full path. The line that marks where the
perimeter ends does not contain in itself the vast territory within the
perimeter. The positive things to do in the life of virtue are countless. Discernment is always needed here. There is no law that could
contain them all.
A pastor has an uncharitable attitude of exclusion when sinners and
weak people have no room in the Church that he shepherds. They
are neglected, abandoned, and considered a disposable burden. This
attitude is the logical conclusion resulting from abandoning the weak
and adopting an approach of legalistic lack of discernment. The pastor
who is sick with the attitude of uncharitable exclusion is quick to
“excommunicate” the weak. Spiritual acedia possesses such a pastor.57
Instead of having the joy of searching for the lost sheep, the joy of the
Gospel, this pastor is infected by one kind of grave and sinful spiritual sadness that directly harms his pastoral charity and paralyzes his
		See: ST II–II, q. 35; Dom Jean-Charles Nault, The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the
Unnamed Evil of Our Times (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2015).

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Veritatis Splendor and Amoris Laetitia

1213

missionary spirit. Thus, he is quick to condemn others and exclude
them from the life of the Church without taking into account the
complexity of their existential and concrete situations.
In my opinion, AL’s pastoral novum is a program of conversion for
pastors (and other pastoral work agents in the Church) based on the
joy of the Gospel. It is a path of “pastoral conversion.”
Conclusion
Both lamented and celebrated discontinuity are hermeneutically
flawed interpretations of AL. Such discontinuity leads to inconsistent
conclusions with the very letter of the document, with the principle
of integration, and with AL’s Thomistic foundation. AL’s guiding principle is the logic of mercy (see AL §309). To be merciful is to exercise
one particular kind of love of benevolence as specified by its object. It
consists in willing a good for another that alleviates or destroys his or
her misery, everything that is an obstacle to their salvation.
AL is not saying that, in some cases, the unrepentant divorced and
remarried persons could receive communion. In fact, that would be
diametrically opposed to the logic of mercy. Instead of alleviating
or destroying their misery, that practice will sink them even further
into the abyss of their sins. Any pastor who practices that approach is
not being merciful. Rather, he is being a mercenary who takes an easy
solution that, instead of leading the sheep and accompanying them
to Christ, abandons them to the wolves. He is falling into the attitude
of abandonment. He is giving up the task of true discernment within the
perimeter of virtue, within the realm of life and happiness. He is leading
people to the precipice of death. He is excluding them from the joy of
God’s Kingdom. Precisely because AL promotes true accompaniment
and discernment, it does not suggest a tolerated concubinage in the
Church with access to the sacrament of the Eucharist. In reality, no
pope or bishop has authority to do such a thing. Aquinas explains:
“The apostles and their successors are God’s vicars in governing the
Church which is built on faith and the sacraments of faith. Wherefore, just as they may not institute another Church, so neither may
they deliver another faith, nor institute other sacraments.”58
In conclusion, the new pastoral path outlined by Pope Francis
in AL is a path in organic continuity with VS. It is a pastoral path of
conversion from the attitudes of abandonment, the legalistic lack of
		ST III, q. 64, a. 2, ad 3.

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Angel Perez-Lopez

discernment, and the uncharitable exclusion of the weak from the
Church. AL proposes a pastoral path of true mercy and for merciful
pastors who repent from the ways in which they lack pastoral charity.
Pace those who lament or celebrate discontinuity, AL does not propose
N&V
a pastoral path for mercenaries.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1215–1226

1215

Beauty, Transcendence, and the
Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation1
Thomas Joseph White, O.P.
Thomistic Institute
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Rome, Italy

Interpreters of Thomas Aquinas have long argued
about whether he holds that beauty is a “transcendental,” a feature of
reality coextensive with all that exists, like unity, goodness, and truthfulness.2 In the first part of this article, I will argue that Aquinas can
		This article has benefited from the support of the John Templeton Foundation
grant “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.” An earlier version of the
essay appeared in the official annals of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas
Aquinas.
2
		A helpful survey of modern scholarly opinions is presented by Jan A. Aertsen
in Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought: From Philip the Chancellor (c.a.
1225) to Franciso Suárez (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 161–76. Jacques Maritain argues
that beauty is a transcendental in Art and Scholasticism: with Other Essays, trans.
J. F. Scanlan (New York: Scribner’s, 1939). Etienne Gilson speaks of pulcrum
as “the forgotten transcendental” in Elements of Christian Philosophy (New
York: Doubleday, 1960), 159–63. John Wippel does not include beauty in
his account of the transcendentals in Aquinas in The Metaphysical Thought of
Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of American Press, 2000), 192–94. Aersten himself seems to
be of two minds. In his earlier Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The
Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1996), he speaks of beauty as a kind of
transcendental (335–59), while in the later work noted above, he expresses
reticence. See also the brief but insightful interpretation of Pasquale Porro,
Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile, trans. J. Trabbic and R.
Nutt (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 203–5,
who treats beauty as a transcendental in Aquinas’s thought.
1

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Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

be read to affirm in an implicit way that beauty is a transcendental. In
the second part, I will consider what it might mean from a Thomistic
point of view to speak of a transcendent divine beauty, given Aquinas’s
metaphysical commitments, particularly with respect to his doctrine of
divine simplicity. In the final part, I will treat the question of how the
beauty of the creation both manifests and conceals divine beauty.
Beauty as a Transcendental Feature of Reality
Aquinas does not list beauty as a transcendental term in texts on transcendental notions. Perhaps, then, one should simply exclude it from
a responsible account of his teaching on this subject. However, at least
two well-known texts should give us reason to pause before reaching
such a conclusion. One is found in his Commentary on Dionysius’ Divine
Names, chapter 4, lectio 5. The other is in his discussion of the beauty
of the eternal Son of God in a discussion of the Holy Trinity in the
Summa theologiae I, q. 39, a. 8.
In the first of these texts, Aquinas is commenting on Dionysius.
The extended text is analytically dense. Aquinas is discussing ways
in which one might say that God is beautiful and in what ways one
might not say so. I will return to his topic below. Here, however, it
is pertinent to consider Aquinas’s discussion of the presence of beauty
in all that exists. He makes six main points.3 First, all beauty comes
		
In divinis nominibus, ch. 4, lec. 5, no. 348–49: “Pulchrum de Deo dicitur secundum causam. . . . Dicit ergo primo quod ex pulchro isto provenit esse omnibus existentibus: claritas enim est de consideratione pulchritudinis, ut dictum
est; omnis autem forma, per quam res habet esse, est participatio quaedam
divinae claritatis; et hoc est quod subdit, quod singula sunt pulchra secundum
propriam rationem, idest secundum propriam formam; unde patet quod ex
divina pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur. Similiter etiam dictum est quod
de ratione pulchritudinis est consonantia, unde omnia, quae, qualitercumque
ad consonantiam pertinent, ex divina pulchritudine procedunt; et hoc est quod
subdit, quod propter pulchrum divinum sunt omnium rationalium creaturarum
concordiae, quantum ad intellectum; concordant enim qui in eamdem sententiam conveniunt; et amicitiae, quantum ad affectum; et communiones, quantum
ad actum vel ad quodcumque extrinsecum; et universaliter omnes creaturae,
quantamcumque unionem habent, habent ex virtute pulchri” (“The beautiful
is said of God according to cause. . . . He [Dionysius] says therefore first that
from the Beautiful esse [existence] comes to all existing things: for it is clear
from the consideration of beauty, as was said; but every form, through which a
thing has esse, is a certain participation of the divine brightness; and this is what
he adds, that singulars are beautiful according to a proper notion, i.e., according
to a proper form; whence it is apparent that from the divine Beauty the esse
of all things is derived. Similarly, also it was said that consonance is from the

3

Beauty, Transcendence, and the Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 1217

from God insofar as God is the cause of all that exists. Second, he
gives a first definition of beauty: beauty can be defined ontologically
as the splendor (claritas) that results from form; everything has a
formal determination of some kind insofar as it has existence (esse);
therefore, insofar as anything exists (and has some formal ontological content) it has some degree of beauty. Third, the splendor of the
form in created things is a participation in the divine splendor from
which it originates. The divine nature is the transcendent exemplar
of beauty in diverse finite created realities. Fourth, then (and perhaps
most importantly), “ex divina pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur”: literally, the existence of everything originates from divine
beauty. Fifth, a second definition of beauty is considered: beauty can
be defined ontologically as a property of being that emerges from
proportion or harmony (consonantia). For example, authentic relationships of personal friendship imply spiritual harmony or concord
and are beautiful and noble in this respect. Sixth, then, the concord
or beautiful harmonies we find in the created order are expressive of
the wisdom of God, who is the author of creation.
Evidently, if the existence of everything derives from divine beauty,
and if everything that has existence is in some way beautiful by
virtue of its intrinsic form, then it would seem to follow logically
that beauty, for Aquinas, is a characteristic of being that is coextensive
with all that exists. We see a similar idea expressed in the aforementioned passage of ST. Here, however, Aquinas gives a more synthetic
definition of beauty in things that combines both the definitions
found in our previous discussion, claritas and proportio, but it also adds
a third, integritas: ontological integrity or wholeness.
Species or beauty has a likeness to the property of the Son. For
beauty includes three conditions, “integrity” or “perfection,”
notion of beauty; whence all things, which pertain to consonance in any way,
proceed from the divine Beauty. And this is what he adds, that because of the
divine Good there is concord of all rational creatures with respect to intellect:
for they agree who come together in the same opinion and friendship with
respect to affection; and communication with respect to act, or something
extrinsic; and universally all creatures, whatever unity they have, they have
from the power of the Beautiful”). All Latin for this work will be taken from In
librum beati Dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio, ed. C. Pera (Turin, IT: Marietti,
1950); all English translations will be from Harry C. Marsh, “Cosmic Structure
and the Knowledge of God: Thomas Aquinas’s In librum beati Dionysii de divinis
nominibus exposition” (PhD diss.,Vanderbilt University, 1994), here at 361–62.

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Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

since those things which are impaired are by the very fact
ugly; due “proportion” or “harmony”; and lastly, “brightness”
or “clarity,” whence things are called beautiful which have a
bright color. 4
The implication of this point of view is readily apparent. God is
essentially beautiful, and God has created all that exists in light of the
eternal Word and Wisdom of God, who is the Son. Consequently,
all that exists and that derives from God is in some way beautiful.
The beauty in things themselves has a threefold foundation. Most
fundamentally, there is the integrity or wholeness of a thing. A given
tree is beautiful because it is integral, having all its limbs, leaves, and
flowers, having reached its maturity and magnificence. Second there
is proportionality. A tree is beautiful because of the proportions that
emerge from the form. The quantitative arrangement of the branches
in proportionate arrangement to one another is beautiful, but so
are the arrangements of the colors of the trunk, leaves, and flowers, which are harmonious in both qualitatively and quantitatively
proportionate ways. Most ultimate in the order of beauty is splendor.
When the form is integral and perfect and expresses itself through
the right proportion of harmonious perfections, what emerges is
an innate splendor or clarity of form. A tree that is beautiful has a
splendid magnificence that derives from its ontological perfection, its
integrity and harmonious proportions.
If this is the case, we must ask about the relationship between
truth, goodness, and beauty. Beauty is the splendor of the species or
form, and its attraction is that of the truth or formal determination of
a reality insofar as it has the power to garner our admiration. In other
words, when beauty does attract, whether intellectually or sensibly,
it does so by virtue of the splendor of the form, which is capable of
eliciting the appetite. We might say that beauty is the goodness of the
truth of a thing, the delightfulness (or appetibility) of its intelligibility. To state things in this fashion is to place emphasis on the formal
determination as the key element, rather than the splendor, a decision
that gives primacy to the truth of the beautiful reality, emphasizing
its goodness only secondarily. However, we could also say that beauty
is the species or intelligible determination of goodness. This way of
		Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 39, a. 8. All translations of ST are taken
from Summa Theologica, trans. English Dominican Province (New York:
Benziger Brothers, 1947).

4

Beauty, Transcendence, and the Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 1219

speaking places emphasis on the goodness of beauty but notes that it
implies formal determination (and thus a truth) of a definite kind.
This is why beauty invites admiration, while goodness perfects.
Goodness is grounded in final causality, while beauty is grounded in
formal causality. Beauty has the power to hold our gaze. Goodness
has the power to give our lives ultimate purpose or meaning. The
two are not to be confused, even if they are often found together.
The Beauty of God
Aquinas clearly affirms that God is beautiful, but what can it mean to
say this? St. Thomas typically avoids offering any definition of God in
his writings, and instead makes thematic appeal to the threefold viae
taken from Dionysius the Areopagite in his On the Divine Names, ch. 7,
lec. 3.5 According to this way of thinking, creatures do resemble God
as the effects of the creator resemble their cause, by similitude. Therefore, they allow us to signify positively what he is essentially by analogy.
However, this process of signifying must be qualified by a series of
well-thought-out negations, since God is also in many respects unlike
or dissimilar to his created effects.
Aquinas makes clear in his Commentary on the Divine Names that one
can speak of the uncreated beauty of God. However, when considering this procedure in accord with the threefold viae mentioned above,
one must take into account first and foremost Aquinas’s doctrine of
divine simplicity. In ST I, q. 3, Aquinas considers divine simplicity
in several respects, four of which are particularly consequential for
our considerations.6 First, St. Thomas affirms that God does not have
		
ST I, q. 12, a. 12: “From the knowledge of sensible things, the whole power
of God cannot be known; nor therefore can his essence be seen. But because
they are his effects and depend upon their cause, we can be led from them
so far as to know of God whether he exists, and to know of him what must
necessarily belong to him, as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things
caused by him. Hence, we know of his relationship with creatures in so far
as he is the cause of them all; also, that creatures differ from him, inasmuch
as he is not in any way part of what is caused by him; and that creatures are
not removed from him by reason of any defect on his part, but because he
super-exceeds them all” (translation slightly modified). Note that, just after
this text, Aquinas proceeds to clarify (in q. 13) the analogical character of the
knowledge this way of thinking permits. For similar texts employing the triple
viae, see: Summa Contra Gentiles [SCG] I, ch. 30; In divinis nominibus, ch. 7, lec.
4; De potentia Dei, q. 7, a. 5, ad 2.
6
		The summary offered here of Aquinas on divine simplicity is a succinct echo
of two longer treatments: Thomas Joseph White, “Divine Simplicity and the
5

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Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

a body.7 Second, there is no distinction of individuality and natural
form in God.8 There are no other gods than God. Third, there is in
God no distinction of essence and existence.9 God’s being is not in a
genus. He gives existence to all that is. God is intelligible for us only
as the origin and author of all that falls within the transcendental
range of being, and not as that which is ontologically common to all
created being. Fourth, there exists in God no distinction between
substance and properties (or “accidents”).10
How do these four considerations of divine simplicity affect our
understanding of divine beauty? God is the cause of perfections in
creatures, such that perfection names like “goodness,” “wisdom,” and
“beauty” can rightly be attributed to God. All that exists is beautiful,
and beauty is in some way an expression of the splendor of a form or
nature. Consequently, the divine nature or essence may be said to be
beautiful as the transcendent, hidden cause of the beauty present in all
things. However, we must remove from perfection terms attributed
to God any notion of ontological imperfection (by way of negation)
so as to posit them of God in a super-eminent way. Furthermore,
beauty was defined in creatures by recourse to three notions: integrity of form, proportionality or harmony, and splendor. However, in
light of the metaphysics of divine simplicity, we clearly cannot attribute the modalities of beauty we find in creatures directly to God.
What might we say, then, about the beauty of God when employing
Aquinas’s Dionysian framework for divine naming?
First, God is not a body or a hylomorphic subject, composed
of matter and form. But beauty as we experience it in physical
realities always emerges in a material form, with its own integrity, quantitative and sensibly qualitative proportions, and physical
splendor. By contrast, if God is beauty, his beauty is literally hidden
from view. There is no icon of God, no sensate representation of
the ineffable divine essence. Nor can the formal beauty of God be
conceived after the pattern of a nature or essence abstracted by us
from a material subject, like the beauty of a human being, a star, or
Holy Trinity,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 1 (2016): 66–93;
White, “Nicene Orthodoxy and Trinitarian Simplicity,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90, no. 4 (2016): 727–50.
7
		
ST I, q. 3, aa. 1–2.
8
		
ST I, q. 3, a. 3.
9
		
ST I, q. 3, a. 4.
10
		ST I, q. 3, a. 6.

Beauty, Transcendence, and the Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 1221

an orange tree. The immaterial beauty of God transcends all our
abstract conceptual notions.
Second, God is not an individual of a common kind, nor is he a
member of a larger genus. Therefore, the beauty of God is not that
of a particular kind of reality.11 Rather, it is the uniquely transcendent
beauty that is the cause of all else that exists, the beauty that gives
being to the world.12
Third, God does not receive his existence from others and is not a
member of the transcendental set of all created beings (ens commune).
Therefore, the beauty of God is not a part of the transcendental
range of beauty found in all existence. Rather, this beauty is known
only by analogy as the unique total cause of all created existence,
as the beauty that gives being to all else that is beautiful. Nor can
God be alienated from this attribute, since God is not contingently
beautiful. Rather, this property must be attributed to him eternally
and in ontological distinction and independence from the whole
created order.
Finally, there is no composition in God of substance and properties, and so one must also say that God is his own beauty and that, in
God, beauty is identical in some way with being, goodness, wisdom,
and power.13 These divine names are appropriately drawn from
		In divinis nominibus, ch. 4, lec. 5, no. 345.
		Aquinas makes this point quite clearly in In divinis nominibus, ch. 4, lec. 5, no.
343: “Excessus autem est duplex: unus in genere, qui significatur per comparativum vel superlativum; alius extra genus, qui significatur per additionem huius
praepositionis: super. . . . Et licet iste duplex excessus in rebus causatis non simul
conveniat, tamen in Deo simul dicitur et quod est pulcherrimus et superpulcher;
non quod sit in genere, sed quod ei attribuuntur omnia qaue sunt cuiuscumque generis” (“But excess is twofold: one in genus, which is signified through
the comparative or superlative; the other outside of genus, which is signified
through the addition of the preposition ‘super’ [outside]. . . . And although this
twofold excess in caused things does not come together simultaneously, nevertheless it is said in God simultaneously both that God is most beautiful and super
beautiful [beyond all created beauty], not that God is in a genus, but since all
things which are in any genus are attributed to God”).
13
		In divinis nominibus, ch. 4, lec. 5, nos. 345–47: “Sed Deus quoad omnes et
simpliciter pulcher est. Et omnium praemissorum assignat rationem, cum
subdit quod ipse est pulcher secundum seipsum; per quod, excluditur quod non
est pulcher secundum unam partem tantum, neque in aliquo tempore tantum,
neque in aliquo loco tantum; quod enim alicui secundum se et primo convenit, convenit et toti et semper ubique. Iterum, Deus est pulcher in seipso, non
per respectum ad aliquod determinatum et ideo non potest dici ad aliquid sit
pucher et ad aliquid non pulcher et neque quibusdam pulcher et quibusdam
11
12

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Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

distinct features of created reality to denote by analogy something
that is mysteriously one in God himself.
If we return to the threefold definition, we can consider the
apophatic character of God’s super-eminent beauty. There is integritas
in God because the divine essence is one and integral. Surely we may
say by analogy that God’s divine essence is splendid and eternally
beautiful. May we attribute a beauty of proportionality or harmony
to the divine essence? In a human being, spiritual properties may
emerge progressively that are beautiful but also complex due to their
proportionate arrangement. A discursive philosophical argument may
be beautiful due to its integrity as expressed through a proportionate
chain of reasoning, attaining to a kind of intellectual splendor. But
in God, divine knowledge is of a higher order that is non-compositional. In a human being, a spiritual moral virtue like charity may
emerge over time and appear beautiful. But God is eternally charitable and his properties are identical with the divine essence as such.
We may conclude, then, that there is no compositional proportionality of quantity or quality in God, and therefore no strict analogy of
beauty between creatures and God in this particular sense. However,
non pulcher. Iterum, est semper et uniformiter pulcher, per quod excluditur
primus defectus pulchritudinis, scilicet variabilitas. Deinde, cum decit: et sicut
omnis . . . ostendit qua ratione dicatur Deus superpulcher, in quantum in seipso
habet excellenter et ante omnia alia, fontem totius pulchritudnis. In ipsa enim
natura simplici et supernaturali omnium pulchrorum ab ea derivatorum praeexistunt omnis pulchritudo et omne pulchrum, non quidem divisim, sed uniformiter per
modum quo multiplices effectus in causa praeexistunt” (“But God is beautiful
in every respect and simply. And he [Dionysius] designates the reason of all
the foregoing, when he adds that God is beauty in himself; through which
it is excluded that God’s beauty is not according to one part alone, nor in
some time alone, nor in some place alone; for what is befitting to something
according to itself and first, befits it wholly and always an everywhere. Moreover, God is beauty in himself, not with respect to something determinate
[according to a finite form], and for this reason neither can it be said that in
some respect God is beautiful and in some respect he is not nor that in some
ways God is beautiful and in some ways not beautiful. Again, God is always
uniformly beautiful, through which is excluded the first defect of beauty,
namely of variability. Then when he says ‘and as of all beautiful etc.’ he shows
why God is called ‘beyond’ the beautiful. And he says that God is excellently
and before all others the fountain of all beauty. For in God’s simple and supernatural nature itself all beauty and every beauty of all beautiful things derived
from it preexist, not indeed dividedly, but uniformly through the mode in
which multiple effects preexist in a cause”) (translation slightly modified from
Marsh, 661).

Beauty, Transcendence, and the Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 1223

the beautiful proportions of complex created things, both within
themselves and among themselves (as diverse realities related to one
another), are beautiful by virtue of the existence and formal determinations that God has given them. Therefore, they are expressive
in their created complexity of what must exist in God in a wholly
other, higher, and utterly simple way. The wisdom of God is eternally
beautiful, and he expresses this wisdom within the complexity of
creation by giving radiantly intelligible forms to so many diverse and
complementary beings. The goodness of God is eternally beautiful,
and he expresses this goodness within the complexity of creation by
giving spiritually and sensibly attractive forms to so many diverse and
complementary beings. The wisdom and goodness of God’s beauty
are expressed outwardly by the giving of existence to the created
world, in its innately attractive intelligibility, and in the splendor of
its diverse and manifold created forms.
Created Order as Concealment and
Manifestation of Divine Beauty
How does this monotheistic vision of creation relate to the question of
created beauty? From what we have argued, it follows that the created
world is a kind of iconostasis of God. On the one hand, it serves to
manifest, however imperfectly, the hidden beauty of God. The creation
is not God, but God is omnipresent within all things, more interior
to them than they are to themselves, as the inward cause of their very
being. Consequently, their beauty is an expression of God’s eternal
wisdom. On the other hand, the world of finite beings is so utterly
unlike God and wholly disproportionate to God ontologically that
it cannot communicate directly any knowledge of what God is in
himself. Therefore, the same beauty that is present in all that exists also
conceals God. He remains hidden from sight, as the unknown ground
of creation.
The world that God has created is beautiful in diverse ways. Based
on Aquinas’s threefold definition of beauty, we can note that each
thing that exists is beautiful by reason of its inherent form: its integral
wholeness, its manifold proportionate properties, and its expressive
splendor. As already noted, such formal beauty in things reflects, in
however faint a way, the transcendent beauty of God and relates each
individual reality, however seemingly insignificant, directly to God
as the primary author of its beauty. However, there is also an integrity of order between diverse individual forms of created reality and a
corresponding proportionality and splendor that emerges from that

1224

Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

order that exists between them. From collective order, natural beauty
emerges on a much larger scale.
Aquinas accepts the basic understanding of created reality as
hierarchically differentiated, as one finds in classical Neo-platonic
authors, Christian and non-Christian alike.14 There are realities that
have being and are physical in kind but that are not alive. There are
realities that are physical and living but that do not have knowledge.
There are realities that are living and have sensate knowledge but
have no rational knowledge or deliberate freedom. And there are
beings that are alive and are characterized not only by sensate knowledge but also by intellectual understanding and the capacity to love
by means of deliberate freedom. Each of these kinds of realities reflects
something unique about the beauty of God.15 At the same time, each
of these kinds of realities can contribute to the good of the others,
but in a hierarchically differentiated way. Aquinas thinks that it is
possible for living things to emerge ontologically from non-living
things, but he also argues that, even if such emergence takes place,
the specific form of living things is different in kind from that of
non-living realities.16 Non-living things exist principally to create
		See, for example, SCG III, ch. 22, where this metaphysical view of the ontological hierarchy of being is clearly presented.
15
		The non-living physical universe does not need living beings in order to
reflect something of the governing wisdom, grandeur, and power of God.
Its physical magnitude, vastness, intricacy, intelligible historicity, and temporal order all seem to reflect something of the divine beauty. But this also
is refracted amidst the physical contingency, ontological fragility, and sheer
material and accidental arbitrariness that characterize much of its internal
order. Living beings are unlike non-living things and like God by virtue of
the fact that they are alive, but of course, their life is physical in its realization
and not spiritual or everlasting. Consequently, they can be said to imitate the
eternal life of God primarily by reproduction and self-propagation, a form of
ontological persistence through time that resembles the unchanging eternity
of God in an ontologically faint and imperfect but real way. Ecosystems of
living creatures depend on one another even when their inhabitants prey on
one another, or especially in such cases, and evolutionary systems suggest that
the realization of new differentiations among various living things occurs in
great part in reaction to, and thus ontological dependence on, the pressures
brought to bear from the operations of other living and non-living things in
a shared environment.
16
		St.Thomas thinks that it is possible at least in principle for living things to arise
historically from non-living material bodies, even if life represents a principle
not merely reducible to material parts and their quantitative arrangement (see:
ST I, q. 69, a. 2; q. 71, a. 1, ad 1; q. 73, a. 1, ad 3; q. 118, a. 1, sc). Consequently,
14

Beauty, Transcendence, and the Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 1225

a context or setting in which living things can emerge. Plants exist
for the sake of animals, and plants and animals exist for the sake of
human beings. Human beings exist for the sake of life in community
with one another, and ultimately for God. The visible cosmos exists
so that human beings may live in pursuit of union with God by grace,
in friendship and society with one another, and in harmony with the
wider created order.17
The interdependent hierarchy that emerges from differentiated
kinds of beings gives rise to a larger overarching order, one that
implies all three notes of beauty. This cosmic and ontological order
has its own relative integrity, its own proportionality or harmony between
distinct kinds of beings, and its own splendor that is present in the
ontological “mystery” of the universe. Distinct kinds of beings
are characterized by distinct operations, and therefore they pursue
distinct ends.18 Nevertheless, the distinct kinds of beings we find in
the universe can be seen as profoundly complementary, set within a
larger cosmic framework. This physical world is capable of supporting
Aquinas is able to situate a differentiated hierarchy of being (from non-living beings to plants to animals) within a gradated ontological spectrum that
allows for the progressive emergence of higher forms from lower ones. On
this topic with regards to evolution, see Lawrence Dewan, “The Importance
of Substance,” in Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 96–130.
17
		SCG III, ch. 22, no. 8–9: “And since a thing is generated and preserved in
being by the same reality, there is also an order in the preservation of things,
which parallels the foregoing order of generation. Thus we see that mixed
bodies are sustained by the appropriate qualities of the elements; Plants, in
turn, are nourished by mixed bodies; animals get their nourishment from
plants: so, those that are more perfect and more powerful from those that are
more imperfect and weaker. In fact, man uses all kinds of things for his own
advantage: some for food, others for clothing. . . . Other things man uses for
transportation. . . . And, in addition to this, man uses all sense objects for the
perfection of intellectual knowledge. Hence it is said of man in the Psalms
(8:8) in a statement directed to God: ‘You [have] subjected all things under
[your] feet,’ And Aristotle says, in the Politics I [5.1254b 9], that man has natural dominion over all animals. So, if the motion of the heavens is ordered to
generation, and if the whole of generation is ordered to man as a last end
within this genus, it is clear that the end of celestial motion is ordered to man,
as to an ultimate end in the genus of generable and mobile beings” (in Summa
Contra Gentiles III, trans. V. Bourke [New York: Hanover House, 1957]).
18
		Aquinas’s understanding of natural end is analogical and quite flexible, modest
enough to accommodate even the operations of atoms or minerals as realities
having intrinsically oriented and statistically predictable agency that stems
from their intrinsic forms.

1226

Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

the existence of living things and is capable of becoming a theatre for
human rationality and freedom where specifically human communities can flourish. This overarching ontological order is beautiful in its
own way, even if it is strange and vast and the detection of its deeper
purpose can seem elusive or enigmatic to the human mind.
Conclusion
A theocentric understanding of beauty interprets the created world in
light of God, who is uncreated beauty. An anthropocentric account of
the centrality of the human community within the larger cosmos sees
the beauty of the world as being of utility to the flourishing of the
human community. These two visions are not opposed to one another.
Nor are either of them opposed to a metaphysical and ethical vision of
beauty in non-human creatures, one that acknowledges their intrinsic
ontological worth apart from human beings, as creatures of God. The
hierarchy of being is inclusive. Human beings should acknowledge the
order of nature that preexists them precisely so as to live in the midst of
nature with wisdom and aesthetic moderation. In one respect, God has
created the vast, beautiful cosmos and the strange and wondrous development of living creatures in view of the emergence of human beings,
in whom the created world becomes spiritually self-aware and capable
of personal love. Acknowledging this means accepting and respecting
the structures of nature that precede the human community and that
sustain it in being. In another respect, God has created all things in view
of himself, of his own eternal goodness. One can learn to receive the
beauty of the created order from God and to offer that order back to
God through the religious acknowledgement of God. Human beings
can learn to acknowledge, then, not only the beauty and dignity of the
creation that preexists them and their own hierarchical status within
creation but also, and especially, the Creator, the uncreated beauty from
whence all things come forth and to which they all inevitably return.
Aquinas’s metaphysics provides key insights for thinking about the
N&V
beauty of existence in an integral and balanced way.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1227–1260

1227

Human Ecology and the Prophetic Value of
Humanae Vitae
Michele M. Schumacher
University of Fribourg, Switzerland

“Inquiry into final causes is sterile, and, like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing.” —Francis Bacon1

At the heart of empirical science is—as these words by the

father of modern science reveal—an eradication, or “sterilizing,”
of what had previously been the hallmark of all scientific inquiry:
the conviction that natural beings are really inclined from within to
nature-specified and nature-perfecting ends. Faulting previous scientists
and philosophers for imposing their own logical or mental order upon
nature, which in itself was judged to be orderless, Bacon inaugurated a
new scientific era. Introducing the “new instrument” (novum organum)
of inductive reasoning, he ousted the deductive method that reasons
from “ordered” hypotheses. Rather than anticipate nature, we must
interpret her, the founding father of empiricism argues. To be sure, this
would require long hours of painstaking observation, but the efforts—
as Bacon accurately predicted—were quickly rewarded by knowledge
hitherto unimagined.
Of course, this new treasury of knowledge was likewise forged
by the conviction that scientific advancement need answer to no
moral code other than its own advancement. Given Bacon’s denial of
nature’s own normative value, the only values governing empirical
science are, as Pope Francis observes in his encyclical Laudato Si’,
		Francis Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum (1623) 3.5: “Nam causarum finalium
inquisitio sterilis est, et, tanquam virgo Deo consecrata, nihil parit.”

1

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Michele M. Schumacher

those of “utility or security.”2 Moreover, because this science understands nature as “formless” and “completely open to manipulation,”3
it encourages “a Promethean vision of mastery over the world”
whereby the divine command to exercise dominion over nature (e.g.,
Gen 1:28–30) is transformed from stewardship to domination.4 Technology tends “to absorb everything” into its “ironclad logic,” Pope
Francis continues, including “the naked elements of both nature and
human nature”:5
Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for
a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the
possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of
receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand.
Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things,
attempting to extract everything possible from them while
frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us.6
Perhaps nowhere is the logic of empiricism as portrayed by Pope
Francis so manifest, I will argue in these pages, as in the prophetic
character of the popularly designated “birth-control encyclical,”
Humane Vitae: “prophetic,” the bishops of the 1980 synod on marriage
and family recognized, “not only in [its] defense of the freedom of
conscience of the Third World [i.e., against pressure from first-world
nations to control local population growth],” but also and most especially, Joseph Ratzinger reports, “as a defense of the human being and
of creation in general” from a common disregard for “God’s creative
intentions” (Schöfungsidee Gottes) for the world, including his intentions for human persons.7
		Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (2015), §105, with reference to
Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books,
1998), 83.
3
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §106.
4
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §116.We are reminded of the dual etymological root
of both “dominion” and “dominate”: dominus (lord) and domus (house).
5
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §108, with reference to Guardini, The End of the
Modern World, 56.
6
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §106.
7
		Joseph Ratzinger, “Rückblick aud die Bischofssynode zu Ehe und Familie
1980,” in Einführung in das Christentum. Bekenntnis-Taufe-Nachfolge, vol. 4
of Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Gerhard Ludwig Müller (Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 2014), 622–49, at 645 (translation mine).
2

Human Ecology and the Prophetic Value of Humanae Vitae

1229

To be sure, as Ratzinger notes, it is commonly argued that we
must protect nature “from the human being; but [the fact] that the
human being is also a creation and that he [or she] must protect
creation in himself [or herself ], that [fact] the human being does not
want to see.” To disregard, even “scorn” (Verachten), the “reason”
(Vernunft) of creation is, however, Ratzinger continues, to ironically
deny the very foundation of technology, including contraceptive
technologies in the case at hand. For, “technology could not exist if
creation did not bear reason within itself,”8 if it were not meaningful
as the expression of “a creative reason.”9
Pointing in this way to the normative value of human nature
qua created, Ratzinger likewise points to the foundation of a sound
ecology whose importance—he acknowledges many years later as
Pope—“is no longer disputed.” Nonetheless “neglected,” he regretfully observes in words that would eventually inspire Pope Francis, is
what he calls “an ecology of man”:
Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot
manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom.
Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he
is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his
nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one
who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true
human freedom fulfilled.10
Or, as Pope Francis argues in Laudato Si’, “human ecology” entails an
acknowledgement of “the relationship between human life and moral
law, which is inscribed in our nature and is necessary for the creation
of a more dignified environment.”11
In this way, a human ecology calls also for the reversal of “an
epistemological paradigm” based on “the method and aims of
science and technology” that continues to shape “the lives of individuals and the workings of society.”12 “The technological mind,”
		Ratzinger, “Rückblick aud die Bischofssynode,” 645.
		See Pope Benedict XVI, “The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law,” Visit to the Bundestag, September 22, 2011, w2.vatican.
va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2011/september/documents/hf_
ben-xvi_spe_20110922_reichstag-berlin.html.
10
		Pope Benedict XVI, “The Listening Heart.”
11
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §155; see also §115.
12
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §107.
8
9

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Michele M. Schumacher

Francis explains in words borrowed from Romano Guardini, “sees
nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere
‘given,’ as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered
into useful shape.”13 Hence, the human body, for example, is “no
longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of
relations with others, with God and with the world,” as John Paul
II also observes, “but rather as ‘pure materiality’ . . . a complex
of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole
criteria of pleasure and efficiency.” As for human sexuality, it is
likewise “depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place
and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance
of another, in all the other’s richness as a person, it increasingly
becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts.”14
In short, as Pope Francis mournfully acknowledges, “modern
anthropocentricism paradoxically ended up prizing technical thought
over reality,”15 over the world that God has created—whence Francis’s invitation to recognize the norm and measure of human knowledge, and thus also of human action, in what St. Thomas calls, “the
thing itself [ipsa res]”:16 the creature qua created. “The acceptance of
our bodies as God’s gift is,” Pope Francis argues, “vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our
common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over
our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation.” Hence, “learning to accept our body, to
care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of
any genuine human ecology.”17
This challenge of preserving and even fostering, by way of our
actions, the specific good of human nature, and thus human sexuality as created, is—I will argue in agreement with the 1980 synod
fathers to whom Ratzinger refers above—one that was already
launched by Paul VI in what has fittingly been designated “the
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §115. See also Guardini, The End of the Modern World,
55.
14
		Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae (1995), §23.
15
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §115.
16
		 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 64, a. 3, ad 2. Such, I would
suggest, is the origin of Francis’s repeated insistence that “realities are greater
than ideas.” See, for example, his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium
(2013), §231, and Laudato Si’, §§110 and 201.
17
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §155.
13

Human Ecology and the Prophetic Value of Humanae Vitae

1231

most controversial encyclical in history,”18 Humanae Vitae (1968).
His purpose, he tells us, was most especially (praesertim)19 to respond
to a “recent evolution of society” whereby mankind’s “stupendous
progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces
of nature” had been extended to a domination of “his own total
being: to the body, to psychical life, to social life and even to the
laws which regulate the transmission of life.”20 Such is the origin of
his plea to “all men of good will” to exercise stewardship over their
own lives and actions in accord with the Creator’s design and purpose,
especially in the noble act whereby husband and wife “collaborate
freely and responsibly with God the Creator” in the “transmission of human life.”21 Encouraging us “not to abdicate” from our
“own responsibility” by “rely[ing] on technical means” that do not
respect the “integral wholeness”22 of the conjugal act as specified by
the “inseparable connection”23 between its unitive and procreative
meanings, he simultaneously encourages us to recognize that we are
“not the master[s] of the sources of life but rather the minister[s] of
the design established by the Creator.”24
Meanwhile, in a society that was increasingly conditioned by
technology—even, as Paul VI had feared, in the personal and intimate sphere accorded by the Creator to conjugal relations—it was
becoming less and less apparent, as Ratzinger observed in 1991, “that
man’s Being contains an imperative, . . . that he does not himself
invent morality on the basis of calculations of expediency but rather
finds it already present in the essence of things.”25 For the same
reason, I will argue, it is increasingly difficult for our contemporaries
to discern the distinction between contraception and natural family
		 George Weigel, A Witness to Hope (New York: Cliff Street Books, 1999), 206.
		To be sure, mention is made of the more obvious reasons—new economic
and educational demands making it difficult to raise a large family, the threat
of overpopulation, and a “new understanding of the dignity of woman and
her place in society” (Pope Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae [1968],
§2)—but these take on a lesser (secondary) motive.
20
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §2.
21
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §1.
22
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §18.
23
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §12.
24
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §13.
25
		Joseph Ratzinger, A Turning Point for Europe? The Church in the Modern World:
Assessment and Forecast, trans. Brain McNeil, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1994), 33, 34 [Original: Wendezeit für Europa? Diagnosen und Prognosen
zur Lage von Kirche und Welt (Einsiedeln, CH: Johannes Verlag, 1991)].
18
19

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Michele M. Schumacher

planning as rooted within two fundamentally opposed anthropological and ethical perspectives: perspectives differentiated according
to whether one’s knowledge of nature is in service of its manipulation, as determined by one’s own subjectively determined ends—as is the
case in the Baconian project at the origin of modern science—or
in service, rather, of virtuous actions. These, more specifically, are
those of ordering, or governing, one’s own impulses, dispositions,
and behavior in accord with the Creator’s end or purpose for marriage
and family, indeed, for the human person as such (as specified by
human nature). In the second option (when responsible parenthood
is exercised by conjugal chastity), there can be no question, as is the
case in the first option (when fertility is controlled by the use of
contraception), of—I will argue—opposing person and nature, and
thus of human reason “impos[ing] its own categories on reality.”
Rather, the doctrine of Humanae Vitae implies, as Karol Wojtyła
put it eight years before his election to the papacy, “the attitude of
reason discerning, grasping, defining, and affirming, in relation to
an order that is objective and prior to human reason itself ”: the order
originating from “the divine source of law,” from “divine reason.”26
The Epistemological Challenge of Seeing Beyond
the Manipulation of Nature
To be sure, such an attitude of reason “discerning, grasping, defining
and affirming” an order that is prior to reason appears congruous with
Bacon’s insistence on scientific objectivity. It is thus highly ironic that
the technological advances forged by his method—those of contraceptive technologies, in the case at hand—have impacted the reasoning
process of those living under its regime in a highly counterintuitive
manner. Despite amazing advances in the life sciences, including an
ever-more precise knowledge of the female fertility cycle, modern men
and women are, to be more specific, apparently incapable of drawing
very basic inferences concerning the conjugal act. What was evident
to the contemporaries of Paul VI—or so he believed—is apparently
no longer the case for our own. “We believe,” he wrote in 1968, “that
our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching
[regarding the ‘inseparable connection . . . between the unitive signifi		Karol Wojtyła, “The Human Person and Natural Law,” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993),
181–85, at 184 (the original Polish was published in 1970).

26

Human Ecology and the Prophetic Value of Humanae Vitae

1233

cance and the procreative significance . . . inherent to the marriage act’]
is in harmony with human reason.”27 Whether or not that conviction
was accurate when the encyclical was first issued, “the majority of Catholics in the West now find the basic principle of the inseparability of the
unitive and procreative dimensions of sexual activity simply unintelligible”28—even “unbelievable”29—the Scottish Dominican Fergus Kerr
observed in 2007.30
This so-called “unintelligible” principle of Humanae Vitae might
be summed up as this: sex = strengthened conjugal unity + babies.
So what really is blinding in this proposition? Certainly biology is
not being called into question. Modern men and women know the
“nuts and bolts” of conception, of course. We likewise know—as did
Paul VI31—that not every “act of insemination (intercourse) is of itself
procreative,” as Richard McCormick nonetheless deems necessary to
point out in his accusation that the magisterium still ascribes to “Aristotelian biology.” 32 Thanks to the discovery of the ovum in 1827,
we now know by deduction (on the basis of scientific fact and not of
mere hypothesis, in keeping with the requirements of the empirical
method) what men and women throughout human history knew by
induction: that—it bears repeating—the vast majority of conjugal acts
do not lead to conception. It is, moreover, precisely this knowledge
that has served Catholic doctors and scientists in their successful
work of determining, with amazing precision, a woman’s (relatively
limited)33 period of fertility, and they have used this precision to help
couples to both achieve and avoid pregnancy without recourse to
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §12.
		Fergus Kerr, Twentieth Century Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial
Mysticism (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 214.
29
		Kerr, Twentieth Century Theologians, 216.
30
		Kerr, Twentieth Century Theologians, 214. See also Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae,
§§11–12, and Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], §§2366 and 2369.
31
		See, for example, Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §11.
32
		See Richard A. McCormick, “Humanae Vitae 25 Years Later,” America, July 17,
1993, americamagazine.org/issue/100/humanae-vitae-25-years-later.
33
		Given the lifespan of sperm (five days) and the lifespan of the ovum (24 hours),
pregnancy is possible only during the five days preceding ovulation (during
which sperm might be kept alive in a woman’s very clear mucus) and the
actual day of ovulation, and doctors and scientists have become very precise
in determining those days based on signs from a woman’s body: her body
temperature, the opening of her cervix, and the presence and character of her
cervical mucus.
27
28

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Michele M. Schumacher

contraception.34 In fact, it is arguably in response to the mandate of
the Second Vatican Council, which is taken up directly in Humanae
Vitae, that they have done so.35
Meanwhile (to return to Kerr’s observation), a great number of
men and women of our time find “unintelligible” the very basis of
what Pope Francis designates a “genuine human ecology”: the recognition by human reason of a “message contained in the structures
of nature,” including a “meaning” proper to our bodies in view of
the properly human act of governance or stewardship. The failure
to recognize this message or meaning is, I suggest along with Pope
Francis, a casualty of the empirical method itself, precisely insofar as it
is “already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation.”36
To be more precise, given the manipulation of the human (especially
the female) body and/or the human act of intercourse by means of
widespread contraceptive use, even among Catholics,37 the experiential component prescribed by Bacon’s method has been tainted at the
outset. Because at least two—possibly three—generations of men and
women in the Western world have regularly experienced the sexual
act quite literally devoid of its intrinsic meanings, it is not surprising
		Notable is the Paul VI Institute in Omaha, NE, which has created the Creighton Model FertilityCare System and NaProTechnology. See their website at
popepaulvi.com/.
35
		On the mandate, see Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §24.
36
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §§117, 155, 106.
37
		In the United States, for example, see: Mary Rice Hasson and Michele
M. Hill, “What Catholic Women Think about Faith, Conscience, and
Contraception: Preliminary Report,” August 2013, eppc.s3.amazonaws.com/
wp-content/uploads/2013/07/What_Catholic_Women_Think_Contraception-Aug_2012.pdf; Mark M. Gray and Mary L. Gautier, Catholic Women
in the United States: Beliefs, Practices, Experiences, and Attitudes (Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), 30–31 (cara.georgetown.edu/
CatholicWomenStudy.pdf); Richard Fehring and Andrea Schlidt, “Trends in
Contraceptive Use among Catholics in the United States: 1988–1995,” Linacre
Quarterly 68 (May 2001): 170–185. Questionable is Rachel K. Jones and Joerg
Dreweke, “Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion
and Contraceptive Use,” Guttmacher Institute, April 2011, guttmacher.org/
report/countering-conventional-wisdom-new-evidence-religion-and-contraceptive-use. On the inaccuracy of the latter report, see Glen Kessler, “The
Claim that 98 Percent of Catholic Women Use Contraception: A Media
Foul,” The Washington Post, February 17, 2012, washingtonpost.com/blogs/
fact-checker/post/the-claim-that-98-percent-of-catholic-women-use-contraception-a-media-foul/2012/02/16/gIQAkPeqIR_blog.html?utm_term=.
07fa1e3da449.
34

Human Ecology and the Prophetic Value of Humanae Vitae

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that the epistemological association between sex and procreation has
practically disappeared from our mental registry.
Take, for example, the case of a certain Judith Schwartz, writing in a popular women’s magazine in 1993, who identifies herself
as belonging to the first generation “to define a good girl not as
someone who abstains from sex but as someone who ‘takes precautions.’” Schwartz—one such “good girl” who “conscientiously”
avoids “being in a state of potential motherhood”—attributes to
this contraceptive “diligence” and “hygiene” her inability to draw
the logical connection between sex and pregnancy. “That it takes
egg and sperm to make a baby is among the more obvious facts that
women live with,” she admits; “Yet somehow we don’t live with it.
As daughters of the sexual revolution, we’ve been surrounded all our
lives by the images and temptations of recreational sex. Consequently,
basic, species-preserving, reproductive sex occupies a separate, wholly
unexplored territory in our mind.”38
Because, as this example serves to illustrate, we have effectively
manipulated our own human nature by manipulating the human
(again, especially female) body in accord with our own (often)
contorted intentions—those of, for example, reproductive “freedom”
or sexual “liberation”—it is not surprising that our conceptions of our
nature’s purposes, meanings, and ends have also changed.39 When, in
fact, human nature is altered by the human will and intelligence in a
way that is arguably in conflict with nature’s own purposes, it (nature)
cannot be brought to the witness stand to testify against itself. To do
so—to question nature’s purpose according to the assumption that
it must be “assumed into the human sphere and be regulated within
it [presumably by way of technological and scientific domination,
as differing from virtuous abstinence],”40 as the popularly desig		Judith D. Schwartz, “How Birth Control Has Changed Women’s Sexuality,”
Glamour, March 1993, 236.
39
		As Lisa Sowle Cahill points out, “the connection between sex, love, and babies
cannot be apprehended, much less credibly advocated, in any individualist or
act-oriented concept of sex” (Sex, Gender and Christian Ethics [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996], 206). Cahill concludes here that, “the
defenders of official Catholic teaching are not wrong in their uneasiness about
the prevalence of social attitudes toward sex which, in divorcing sex from
procreation, also seem to divorce it from commitment and responsibility.”
40
		“The Birth Control Report, III: The Argument for Reform,” The Tablet
221, no. 6624 (May 6, 1967): 510–513, at 512; also published in Latin in
Contrôle des naissance et théologie, ed. Jean-Marie Paupert (Paris: Editions du
38

1236

Michele M. Schumacher

nated majority report of the famous papal birth control commission,
charged to advise Paul VI, put it one year before Humanae Vitae was
issued41—is to divide the human being into “parts, organs, functions” that are “conceived as contra-distinct from him [or her].” This
division, in turn, serves the subordination of man’s “parts” to his or
her spiritual nature “almost as are plants and animals” in reason of
“cultural values,” as the minority report put it in that same year.42
“Humanization”: Technical Mastery of
the Human Body or Virtuous Self-Control?
Implied in this divisive thinking is a radical spiritualization of the
human being and a reduction of the human body “to raw material
for human activity and for its power,” as Pope John Paul II observed
nearly thirty years later, as if to foreshadow Pope Francis’s own
insights. Hence, this “nature needs to be profoundly transformed, and
indeed overcome by freedom,” John Paul II continues, “inasmuch
Seuil, 1967), 156–62, at 159 (“in sphaeram humanam assumi et in ea regulari
debet”). This “report” is, in fact, a rebuttal to the so-called “minority” report
cited below under the title: “The Birth Control Report, II: The Conservative Case”).
41
		For more information on the reports and the controversy they stirred at the
time of the publication of Humanae Vitae, see: Weigel, Witness to Hope, 206–10;
Janet E. Smith, Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1991), 11–35; and Richard J. Fehring and Elizabeth McGraw, “Spiritual Responses to the Regulation of Birth (A Historical
Comparison),” Life and Learning 12 (2002): 265–86 (uffl.org/vol12/fehring12.
pdf). The original “majority” report was printed as “Birth Control Report,
I: The Majority View,” The Tablet 221, no. 6622 (April 22, 1967): 449–55.
The report was also published under the title “Majority Papal Commission
Report” in The Catholic Case for Contraception, ed. Daniel Callahan (London:
Collier-Macmillian, 1969), 149–73 (credit is given there to the National
Catholic Reporter, April 19, 1967), and in Latin as “Schema documenti de
responsabili paternitate” in Paupert, Contrôle des naissance et théologie, 179–89.
See also the so-called “Final Report to the Pope” dated May 26, 1966: “The
Papal Commission on Birth Control,” The Tablet 222, no. 6696 (September 21,
1968): 947–51.
42
		“The Birth Control Report, II: The Conservative Case,” The Tablet 222, no.
6623 (April 29, 1967): 478–85, at 482; also published as “Minority Papal
Commission Report” in Callahan, The Catholic Case for Contraception, 174–211,
at 194 (credit here is given to the National Catholic Reporter, April 19, 1967).
The Latin text (“Status quaestionis”) is available in Paupert, Contrôle des naissance et théologie, 163–78, at 171: “Elementa, organa, functiones quae sunt in
homine, concipiuntur quasi ab ipso contradistincta ; eidemque pro valoribus
culturalibus subordinata, fere sicut plantae aut animalia.”

Human Ecology and the Prophetic Value of Humanae Vitae

1237

as it represents a limitation and denial of freedom.”43 Completely
disregarded in this dualist anthropology is the mediating role of the
passions, which, the Catechism instructs us, “form the passageway and
ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of
the mind.”44 Consequently, the fundamental moral task of moderating
the passions in accord with reason and an upright conscience and that
of ordering and directing them to the specific human good of virtuous
living are also neglected.45 From the perspective of a holistic anthropology, on the other hand—one that understands moral perfection as
consisting “in man’s being moved to the good not by his will alone,
but also by his sensitive appetite”46—the decision to space children and
to limit the size of one’s family is to be made with respect not only
to “physical, economic, psychological and social conditions.” Nor is it
enough to complement these principles of discernment with respect
for “the biological processes,” with “an awareness of, and respect for,
their proper functions.” Both of these factors must be further complemented, Pope Paul VI teaches, by a specific regard for “man’s innate
drives and emotions.” Indeed, from the latter perspective, “responsible
parenthood means that man’s reason and will must exert control over
them”47 in view of ordering them to the authentic good of the person,
the couple, the family, and society, a good that is specified by human
nature as simultaneously spiritual and physical.
The challenge of exercising “responsible parenthood”48 is, in
short, one that Paul VI exhorted couples to assume not by way of an
aggressive “domination and rational organization”49 of our sexual
nature by way of technical and chemical contraceptives that have
proven harmful to the human body-person,50 to the couple and to
		Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor (1993), §46; see also Pope
Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est (2005), §5.
44
		CCC, §1764.
45
		CCC, §1767: “It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that
the passions be governed by reason.” See also CCC, §1768.
46
		CCC, §1770; see also §1775.
47
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §10. Cf. Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, §97.
48
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §10.
49
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §2.
50
		See, for example: Lina S. Mørch et al., “Contemporary Hormonal Contraception and the Risk of Breast Cancer,” New England Journal of Medicine 377
(December 7, 2017): 2228–39; Anthony G. Jay, Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics
are Making You Fat, Sick, and Infertile (Tallahassee, FL: Pyrimidine, 2017); Nicolas Lambert, La pilule un bienfait pour ma santé, ma fertilité ? (Saint-Denis, FR:
Connaissances et Savoirs, 2016); Charlotte Wessel Skovlund et al., “Association
43

1238

Michele M. Schumacher

the family,51 to society,52 and even to the natural environment,53
but rather by way of “self-mastery”54 : the virtuous ordering of our
passions to the authentic human goods of procreation and marital
communion.

of Hormonal Contraception with Suicide Attempts and Suicides,” The American Journal of Psychiatry, November 17, 2017, ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/
abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17060616; Jennie L. Lovette et al., “Oral Contraceptives Cause Evolutionarily Novel Increases in Hormone Exposure,” Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, June 5, 2017, 97–108, doi: 10.1093/emph/
eox009; Lori Smith, “Ten Most Common Birth Control Pill Side Effects,”
Medical News Today, January 21, 2016, medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290196.
php; Unity Blott, “‘I Produced Breast Milk for a Year’: Women Reveal the
Terrifying Side Effects They’ve Had after Taking Contraception as #MyPillStory Trends on Twitter,” Mail Online, April 22, 2016, dailymail.co.uk/femail/
article-3522509/Women-share-terrifying-effects-contraceptive-pill-MyPillStory-hashtag.html; and Urmie Khan, “Men Under Threat From Gender
Bending Chemicals,” The Telegraph, December 7, 2008, telegraph.co.uk/news/
health/3660141/Men-under-threat-from-gender-bending-chemicals.html.
51
		See, for example: Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men,
Marriage and Monogamy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Jennifer
Lahl, “Modern Families and the Messes We Make,” The Public Discourse,
November 1, 2013, thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/11/11111/; Laura Sessions
Stepps, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both
(New York: Riverhead, 2008); Donna Frietas, The End of the Sex: How Hookup
Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused about
Intimacy (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
52
		See, for example, Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the
Sexual Revolution (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012); see also note 136 below.
53
		See, for example : Karen A. Kidd et al., “Collapse of a Fish Population After
Exposure to a Synthetic Estrogen,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
of the United States of America 104, no. 21 (May 22, 2007): 8897–901; Maëlle
Cargouët et al.,“Assessment of River Contamination by Estrogen Compounds
in Paris Area (France),” Science of the Total Environment 324, no. 1–3 (May 25,
2004): 55–66; Douglas B. Chambers and Thomas J. Leiker, “A Reconnaissance
for Emerging Contaminants in the South Branch Potomac River, Cacapon
River, and Williams River Basins, West Virginia, April–October 2004,” U.S.
Department of the Interior and U.S. Geological Survey, Open-File Report
2006-1393, usgs.gov/of/2006/1393/pdf/ofr20061393.pdf); Ramji K. Bhandari et al., “Transgenerational Effects from Early Developmental Exposures
to Bisphenol A or 17 α-ethinylestradiol in Medaka, Oryzias latipes,” Scientific
Reports 5 (March 20, 2015): 9303; Donna W. Kolpin et al., “Pharmaceuticals,
Hormones, and Other Organic Wastewater Contaminants in U.S. Streams,
1999–2000: A National Reconnaissance,” Environmental Science & Technology
36, no. 6 (2002): 1202–11.
54
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §21.

Human Ecology and the Prophetic Value of Humanae Vitae

1239

Whereas modern men and women tend, Pope John Paul II
observes, to transfer “the methods proper to the first sphere to those
of the second”55 —to regulate the properly human sphere by means
of science and technology—the dominion that the human person is
called to exercise over himself belongs more properly to the order
of ethics, by a positive modification of one’s own actions and a
corresponding growth in virtue. Such, as I have argued elsewhere,
is a confusion between what classic philosophy distinguishes as the
technical, or artistic virtues that govern production (techne), and
those that govern human action (praxis).56 In the case of responsible
parenthood, “it is not merely a question of a certain ‘technique’”—that
is, of one means of contraception rather than another (as goes the
argument of many dissenters of Humanae Vitae)—“but of ethics in the
strict sense of the term,” as John Paul II explains. As governing the
properly human sphere, it is “the morality of a certain behavior”57 that
concerns us here.
This important distinction is hardly to be taken for granted,
however, as is apparent in John Noonan’s presumption—in his now
classic work on contraception—that “sexual continence is contraceptive in effect.”58 In this way, the former U.S. federal judge does
not simply invite couples to divert attention away from their own
transgressions by highlighting those of others, like children who
		Pope John Paul II, General Audience of August 22, 1984, in Man and Woman
He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston:
Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 630–631.
56
		See Michele M. Schumacher, “Gender Ideology and the ‘Artistic’ Fabrication
of Human Sex: Nature as Norm or the Remaking of the Human?” The
Thomist 80 (2016): 363–423, and Georges Cottier, “Quelques réflexions d’un
philosophe sur les méthodes naturelles,” in Défis éthiques (Saint-Maurice, CH:
Editions Saint-Augustin, 1996), 145–55. Given this distinction, it should not
be surprising that Jean-Yves Calvez recognizes a difference in the Church’s
manner of addressing economic and political systems within the context of its
social teaching and its manner of addressing questions in the domain of sexual
ethics. See Jean-Yves Calvez, “Morale sociale et morale sexuelle,” Etudes 378
(May 5, 1993): 641–50.
57
		Pope John Paul II, General Audience of August 29, 1984, in Man and Woman
He Created Them, 635 (emphasis original).
58
		He reasons to this conclusion from the premise that “sexual intercourse when
an ovum will not be fertilized avoids procreation as much as intercourse where
a physical barrier is used to prevent the meeting of spermatozoa and ovum”
(John T. Noonan Jr., Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965], 1).
55

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Michele M. Schumacher

would avoid punishment by pointing to the disobedience of their
siblings.59 More significantly, he blurs the moral distinction between
controlling fertility by technical means and controlling passions by
way of virtue, that is to say, by way of “marital chastity,”60 or “periodic continence.”61 Advanced is, more specifically, the underlying
assumption that natural law need not imply respect for the natural
ends of the (presumably healthy, and therefore fertile) human body,
but that these might be manipulated by the human will in view
of what the French Dominican Michel Labourdette refers to as
“human” ends.62
Labourdette, who played an important role in drafting the
so-called majority report of the papal birth control commission
charged to advise Pope Paul VI, reasons that, because the vast majority of conjugal acts are infertile (he approximates 199 out of every
200), we “cannot conclude that the nature of each one is to be fertile,
nor to be ordained directly [prochainement] to fertility”: “There is, for
nature itself, an intermediary justifying end,”63 that of conjugal unity.
“The problem, then,” as Labourdette saw it, “is that of the two-hundredth coitus. Should it be left entirely to chance?”64
By this statement, Labourdette—a moralist of the Thomist tradition—obviously does not mean to imply that couples might manipulate their bodies at will in order to avoid an “accidental” pregnancy.
He clearly opposes sterilization, for example, and he furthermore
joins Paul VI in recognizing that even natural family planning
might be misused if it is followed for the wrong (presumably selfish)
reasons.65 It might moreover be granted to Labordette (since he holds
		To be sure, the decision to avoid pregnancy can be “motivated by selfishness” even in the case of periodic continence, the Catechism teaches (CCC,
§2368). But that does not render it a contraceptive act: one “which either
before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended
to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means” (Pope Paul VI,
Humanae Vitae, §14).
60
		 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, §51.
61
		CCC, §2368.
62
		Such, more specifically, is his proposition to “fully HUMANIZE [sic] fecundity, by regulating it according to ends which are no longer animal [presumably biological] but human” (Michel Labourdette, Cours de théologie morale, vol.
2, Morale spéciale, Bibliothèque de la revue thomiste [Paris: Parole et Silence,
2012], 944 [all translations from Labourdette are my own]).
63
		Labourdette, Cours de théologie morale, 2:944
64
		Labourdette, Cours de théologie morale, 2:943.
65
		See Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §10, and CCC, §2368.
59

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to what the majority report wrote) that human persons are charged
with “the responsibility . . . for humanizing the gifts of nature and
using them to bring the life of man to greater perfection.”66 What
is questionable, however, is to cater—as did the majority of this
commission, and likewise Labourdette in the passage cited above—to
“a certain change in the mind of contemporary man” such that “he
feels . . . more conformed to his rational nature, created by God with
liberty and responsibility, when he uses his skill to intervene in the
biological processes of nature [as differing from virtuous abstinence
on fertile days when a pregnancy is judged imprudent] . . . than if he
would abandon himself to chance.”67
Advanced thereby is the assumption that the exercise of responsible
parenthood—in this case, the lawful decision to limit one’s family
size in accord with a number of prudential decisions that belong to
couples themselves “in the sight of God,” as the Council put it, and
to “no one else”68 —implies, contra the position that Pope Paul VI
would eventually adopt,69 a license to obstruct the natural (in this
case, the biological) end of the fertility cycle or of the sexual act.
Of course, it might be granted to the majority position of the papal
commission (and thus to Labourdette) that, “the order of creation
		“The Birth Control Report, III: The Argument for Reform,” 511 (Latin in
Paupert, Contrôle des naissances et théologie, 156–62, at 157: “debiti hominis
humanizandi et ad maiorem perfectionem pro vita hominis perducendi data
naturae”). Cf. Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §16.
67
		“The Birth Control Report, III: The Argument for Reform,” 512 (Paupert,
Contrôle des naissances et théologie, 159: “quaedam mutatio apud hominem
actualem, quod ipse se sentit magis conformari suae naturae rationali cum
libertate et responsabilitate a Deo creatae, quando cum arte sua efficaci intervenit in processus biologicos naturae et fines institutionis matrimonialis in
conditionibus actualibus vitae attingeret, quam si seipsum ad casualitatem derelinqueret”). Similarly, he feels himself free, as the papal commission’s minority
summarized the argument of its opponents, to “frustrate his own biological,
sexual function, even, when voluntarily aroused, because it is subject to reason
for the bettering of the human condition” (“The Birth Control Report. II:
The Conservative Case,” 483; “Minority Papal Commission Report,” in Callahan, The Catholic Case, 200; “Status quaestionis,” in Paupert, Contrôle des naissance et théologie, 174: “Ideo potest frustrare functionem biologicam sexualem
propriam, etiam voluntarie actuatan, quia rationi est subiecta pro melioranda
condicione humana”).
68
		Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, §50.
69
		“Excluded,” Pope Paul teaches, “is any action which either before, at the
moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent
procreation—whether as an end or as a means” (Humanae Vitae, §14).
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Michele M. Schumacher

does not require that all things be left untouchable just as they are
but that they reach the ends to which they have been ordered.” 70
Hence, for example, the use of therapeutic means in view of curing
bodily diseases is deemed fully licit by Paul VI, “even if a foreseeable
impediment to procreation should result there from.” 71 Similarly,
Paul VI apparently granted to the majority of the commission that the
natural “orientation [of sexual intercourse] toward fecundation must
be rationally directed by man,”72 in accord with what he (Paul VI)
recognized as their “duties toward God, themselves, their families
and human society.” 73 However, the Pope who issued Humanae Vitae
was not willing to infer from the naturally infertile days of a woman’s
cycle that the act of willfully rendering infertile an otherwise fertile
body or a fertilizing act—even in the name of responsible parenthood
and/or marital unity—may be said to “correspond entirely to the
divine decrees,” as the majority report put it.74 Nor was Paul VI willing to conclude—as does Labourdette—that it is “not the materiality
of the [birth control] method that is important,” but that the morality
of the conjugal act is determined instead by what the latter calls the
“human finality” 75: presumably the fostering of conjugal unity and
responsible parenthood without necessarily respecting the procreative
end of that same act.
Of course, “the Church is the first to praise and commend the
application of human intelligence to an activity in which a rational
creature such as man is so closely associated with his Creator,” Paul
VI insists, “but she affirms that this must be done within the limits
of the order of reality established by God.” Pointing more specifically
		“The Birth Control Report, III: The Argument for Reform,” 512 (“Documentum syntheticum de moralitate regulationis nativitatum,” in Paupert,
Contrôle des naissance et théologie, 159 : “Ordo Creatoris non requirit ut omnia
intanibilia relinquantur, sicuti sunt, sed ut attingantur fines ad quas ordinata
sunt”).
71
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §15.
72
		“The Birth Control Report, III. The Argument for Reform,” 512 (Paupert,
Contrôle des naissance et théologie, 159: “itsa finalitas ab homine rationalitur
formulari debet”). Cf. Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §16.
73
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §10.
74
		“Birth Control Report, I:The Majority View,” 449 (“Majority Papal Commission Report,” 150; “Schema documenti de responsabili paternitate” in Paupert,
Contrôle des naissances et théologie, 179: “ut tales decretis divinis omnino correspondent”).
75
		Michel Labourdette, Cours de théologie morale, 2:944: “Ce n’est plus la matérialité de la méthode qui importe, c’est la finalité humaine” (translation mine).
70

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here to the responsibility of respecting a woman’s natural fertility
cycle, he encourages couples seeking to avoid pregnancy (in accord
with the principles of responsible parenthood) to take “advantage
of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and [to]
engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile” in view of fostering marital unity. “Neither the Church nor her
doctrine is inconsistent,” he explains here, “when she considers it
lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but
condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent
conception,” even, he adds, when the decision to do so is motivated
by “upright and serious” reasons:
In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the
former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them
by nature. In the latter they obstruct the natural development
of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case
the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly
clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure
that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively
in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain
from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And
when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity
toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of
a true and authentic love. 76
Such, in short, is the difference between “two irreconcilable
concepts of the human person and of human sexuality”: one, John
Paul II explains, in which sexuality is separated “from its essential
reference to the person” so as to be “‘used’ as an ‘object,’” and another
in which “sexuality is respected and promoted in its truly and fully
human dimension,” in “the personal unity of soul and body.”77

		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §16.
		Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (1981), §32. Cf.
Pope John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane (Letter to Families; 1994), §19, and CCC,
§2332.

76
77

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Michele M. Schumacher

Respecting God’s Creative Intentions:
Harmonizing Subjective and Objective Ends
From the foregoing, we are invited to distinguish—within the context
of arguing for an integral human ecology—between nature’s own ends,
as bespeaking the Creator’s intention, and ends that are projected onto
nature by the human will in view of nature’s manipulation. In fact, as
the arguments advanced by Labourdette and Noonan illustrate, much
of the controversy surrounding the encyclical Humanae Vitae presupposes a confusion between the objective end of the moral act—what the
Catechism designates as the “good toward which the will deliberately
directs itself,”78 in this case the inseparable goods of marital unity and
procreation—and the subjective end or intention of that act, which
“resides in the acting subject.”79 Such is also, and perhaps still more
clearly, what Robert Sokowloski presents as the distinction between
an end and a purpose:
An end, a telos, belongs to a thing in itself [i.e., in virtue of its
nature], while a purpose arises only when there are human
beings [or other spiritual beings]. Purposes [such as achieving
or avoiding pregnancy and fostering marital unity] are intentions, something we wish for and are deliberating about or
acting to achieve. Ends [such as the conception of a child and
the uniting of the couple], in contrast, are there apart from
any human [as distinct from divine] wishes and deliberations.
They are what the thing is when it has reached its best state,
its perfection and completion in and for itself [and such is
manifestly the perfection of our procreative powers]. Ends and
purposes are both goods, but goods of different ontological
orders.80
		CCC, §1751.
		CCC, §1752. See also ST I-II, q. 12, a. 1, where intention is presented as
willed, and I-II, q. 21, a. 1, ad 2, where the distinction is made between the
last end and the proximate end.
80
		Robert Sokolowski, “What is Natural Law? Human Purposes and Natural
Ends,” The Thomist 68 (2004): 507–29, at 508–9. Such is also the distinction
that Robert Spaemann makes between the object (objectum) and the goal (finis)
of an action: “The objectum is the content of meaning that we name when
we are asked what we are doing. The finis is that to which we point when we
are asked why we are doing what we do” (“Individual Actions [2000],” in A
Robert Spaemann Reader, trans. and ed. D. C. Schindler and Jeanne Heffernan
Schindler [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015], 139–53, at 148).
78
79

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The so-called “human finality” to which Labourdette refers is
clearly to be understood in the second (subjective) sense: the couple’s
intention is to avoid (presumably for legitimate reasons) the procreative
end of the conjugal act. Again, this is not to deny that the decision to
avoid pregnancy is clearly one that belongs to the couple. Nonetheless, in acting upon their decision, they are called by both Vatican II
and the Catechism “to conform their behavior to the objective character of morality.” In the case at hand—that of harmonizing “married
love with the responsible transmission of life”—“the morality of the
behavior does not depend on sincere intention and evaluation of
motives alone,” the Council teaches, “but it must be determined by
objective criteria, criteria drawn from the nature of the person and
his acts, criteria that respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving
and human procreation in the context of true love.”81
Such, more specifically, are criteria based on the body–soul unity
of the human person. As Robert Spaemann explains:
Men are not spirits, who move a machine from within. They
are living beings, and this means that their subjectivity is not a
pure transcendental freedom vis-à-vis a world of exterior facts.
If such were the case, then constituting a motive for action
would be all together incomprehensible. . . . In reality, we do
not at all “pose” the ends, but we find them already in ourselves
and in others, in the form of inclinations.82
This does not mean, of course, that we are powerless over our own
inclinations. “The fact that we are hungry does not constrain us to
eat,” Spaemann explains.83 It does mean, however, that it is not sufficient to regard our own intentions in judging the moral character of
our acts, that we must also, as Elizabeth Anscombe explains, consider
“whether the act itself is all right, and the former [our intentions]
		Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, §51, cited in CCC, §2368.
		Robert Spaemann, “Le ‘naturel’ et le ‘non-naturel’ sont-ils des concepts pertinents pour le droit et la morale,” in Chasser le Naturel ? trans. Stéphane Robilliard (Paris: Les Presses universitaires de l’IPC, 2015), 101–27, at 116 (English
translation mine). The citation does not occur in the original German: “Sind
‘naturlich’ und ‘unnatürlich’ moralisch revelante Begriffe?” in Was lehrt uns die
Natur? Die Natur in den Künsten und Wissenschaften, ed. Venanz Schubert (St.
Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1989), 253–80.
83
		Spaemann, “Sind ‘naturlich’ und ‘unnatürlich’ moralisch revelante Begriffe?”
266 (translation mine).
81
82

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Michele M. Schumacher

might be all right while the latter [the act itself ] was not.”84 In other
words—and Labourdette would certainly agree—objective moral
criteria are founded in objective anthropological norms that are to be
discovered in our own God-given nature, which in turn conditions
our actions.
In fact, in using the term “significance” to describe the procreative
and unitive aspects of the conjugal act (Humanae Vitae § 12), rather
than “ends,” Paul VI wished to express, Cardinal Carlo Caffara
argues, “a correlation between the conjugal act which signifies and a
subject to which the significance, the ‘significant message,’ is made.”85
In other words, “the order of nature”—the order implied, in the
case at hand, when “using the sexual urge in accord with its nature
and purpose”—has, as John Paul II put it in one of his pre-papal
works, “been turned over to human beings for conscious realization,” whence his insistence—long before he ever assumed St. Peter’s
Chair—on the unity of natural law and “the personalistic norm.”86
This correlation between the subject and the objective significance
of his or her act points in turn to a classic understanding of truth as
the conformity of human knowledge (and thus also human willing)
to reality, to the world that God has made.87
Similarly—to return to Kerr’s comment regarding the “unintelligibility” of the connection between the unitive and procreative
significations of the conjugal act—we might ask whether it does
not betray a confusion between what Caffara also refers to as “the
manifesting function (of the truth), which belongs to the conscience”
and “the constitutive function of the truth, which . . . cannot in any
way be attributed to man’s moral conscience.”88 In other words, the
		G. E. M. Anscombe, “On Humanae Vitae,” in Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on
Religion, Philosophy and Ethics by G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. Mary Geach and Luke
Gormally (Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2008), 192–98, at 194.
85
		Carlo Caffara, “Conscience, Truth, and Magisterium in Conjugal Morality,” in
Pontifical Council for the Family, Marriage and Family: Experiencing the Church’s
Teaching in Married Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 21–36, at 33–34.
Cf. Pope John Paul II, General Audience of July 18, 1984, in Man and Woman
He Created Them, 620.
86
		Karol Wojtyła, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics: Reflections and
Postulates,” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok
(New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 279–99, at 293. The original Polish version was
published in 1965.
87
		See, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 1.
88
		Caffara, “Conscience, Truth, and Magisterium in Conjugal Morality,” 22.
84

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epistemological error of attributing to the human intellect the possibility of establishing—rather than that of discovering—what Caffara
calls “ontological truth”89 might be perceived as a slippery slope for
according to the human conscience the possibility of determining
(rather than accepting or refusing) moral truth. Such is the origin
of the confusion between, on the one hand, anthropological norms
and normative practice 90 and, on the other hand, “the supernatural
sense of the faithful” specified by Vatican II91 and the “consensus of
the faithful.”92
In short, what is in question in much of the debate surrounding the
doctrine of Humanae Vitae is the relation between, on the one hand,
our spiritual acts of knowledge and volition and, on the other hand,
a created world order of which we are a part—an order that is not
of our making. Hence, for example, we might ask ourselves whether
our marital relations entail, as I put it in another context, “a manipulation of reality,” a sort of “bending” of the real—in this case, the
		Caffara, “Conscience, Truth, and Magisterium in Conjugal Morality,” 34.
		Such is what Georges Cottier signals as the confusion between the “normal”
and the “normative” (see Georges Cottier, Défis éthiques [Saint-Maurice, CH:
Editions Saint-Augustin, 1996], 90ff). Spaemann points out: “Normality is not
a statistical concept. If 90% of all men have a migraine, they should not be
considered the healthy ones to whom the remaining 10% should adapt” (“Sind
‘naturlich’ und ‘unnatürlich’ moralisch revelante Begriffe?” 260; translation
mine). As a case in point,Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler maintain that:
“[For] people with a permanent homosexual orientation who do not choose
that orientation . . . a homosexual orientation is normative. . . . Homosexual and
heterosexual are further specifications of sexual orientation, and this further specification constitutes what is normative for homosexual or heterosexual persons”
(The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology [Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2008], 108–9).
91
		 See Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, §25.
92
		Hence, for example, we read the following in a September 25, 2015, letter to
the editor by Patricia Southward in The New York Times: “A mechanism already
exists for the church to change its prohibition on artificial birth control in a
theologically sound, well-established and face-saving way. It is called ‘sensus
fidelium,’ or the ‘sense of the faithful.’ It holds that a widespread (approaching
universal) agreement among the clergy and the faithful on an issue indicates
truth. Your editorial cites statistics that suggest that this has already been
achieved regarding birth control, and, further, that Pope Paul VI acted in
opposition to the sensus fidelium” (nytimes.com/2015/09/25/opinion/artificial-birth-control-and-the-catholic-faithful.html). On the distinction between
majority opinion and the sense of the faithful, see Pope John Paul II, Familiaris
Consortio, §5.

89
90

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Michele M. Schumacher

objective meaning of the human body, with its fertility—“according
to my field of interest,” my own subjective meaning of love, or even
my “best” intentions, or whether instead those marital relations entail
“a conformity of my knowing [and consequently of my volitional]
powers to an objective reality” that is given, both as a fact (datum)
and as a gift (donum).93 In other words, this teaching challenges the
presumption that the human person is free to impose a meaning upon
his or her own (corporal-spiritual) nature in a manner that is arguably
at odds with the intrinsic (creational, or God-given) meaning of this
same nature.94 As Anscombe puts it, rather matter-of-factly: “To take
steps to render the act infertile in case it is fertile is to denature your
intension.”95
“What is at stake” in Humanae Vitae is thus, as Pope John Paul II
puts it, “the truth, first in the ontological dimension (‘innermost structure’) and then—as a consequence—in the subjective and psychological
dimension (‘meaning’).”96 Two planes—nature and person—are thus
organically joined in this doctrine, because the person is presented
as “a subject who is conscious of the order of nature [including
his or her own nature as a physical-psychological-spiritual whole],
and responsible for preserving it.”97 Not surprisingly, the challenge
launched by John Paul II’s theology of the body thus consists, in his
		Michele M. Schumacher, “A Woman in Stone or in the Heart of Man? Navigating between Naturalism and Idealism in the Spirit of Veritatis Splendor,”
Nova et Vetera (English) 11, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 1249–86, at 1270.
94
		Such is also what Pope Benedict recognizes as a confusion of ends and means,
and likewise as a failure to recognize freedom as “profoundly shaped by our
being, and by its limits”: “No one shapes his own conscience arbitrarily, but we
all build our own ‘I’ on the basis of a ‘self ’ which is given to us” (Pope Benedict
XVI, Encyclical Letter Caritatis in Veritate [2009], §68 ; on the confusion of
ends and means, see §71).
95
		 Anscombe, “On Humanae Vitae,” 196.
96
		Pope John Paul II, General Audience of July 11, 1984, in Man and Woman He
Created Them, 620: “‘Meaning’ is born in consciousness with the rereading of the
(ontological) truth of the object. Through this rereading, the (ontological) truth
enters, so to speak, into the cognitive, that is, subjective and psychological
dimension.” We are not far from the insight of Caffara, cited above, regarding
the “correlation between the conjugal act which signifies and a subject to which
the significance, the ‘significant message,’ is made” (Caffara, “Conscience, Truth,
and Magisterium in Conjugal Morality,” 33).
97
		Wojtyła, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” 293. See also Veritatis Splendor, §48, where Pope John Paul II expresses concern that the human body not
be reduced to “a raw datum, devoid of any meaning and moral values until
freedom has shaped it in accordance with its design.”
93

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own words, of analyzing “the personalistic aspects contained in this
document [Humanae Vitae]” in an effort to determine “what true progress consists in, that is, the development of the human person,”98 by the
practice of virtue at the heart of an integral human ecology.
Integral Human Fulfilment:
The Unity of Naturalism and Personalism
In this way, the doctrine of Humanae Vitae is, John Paul II suggests,
inscribed within the goal, proper to Vatican II, of “recapturing the ultimate meaning of life and its fundamental values” in view of renewing
Western civilization. “Only an awareness of the primacy of these [ethical] values”—which John Paul II identifies as “the values of the human
person as such”—“enables man to use the immense possibilities given
him by science in such a way as to bring about the true advancement
of the human person in his or her whole truth, in his or her freedom
and dignity. Science is called to ally itself with wisdom.”99 Such an
alliance is, he also suggests, the means whereby the self-sufficiency
of modern man, who ironically submits himself to “the demi-god of
modern technology,”100 might be overcome. Meanwhile, the editor of
the Latin-French edition of the papal birth control commission documents argues in the opposite direction that “one cannot legitimately
take from spouses the disposition of their own bodies, and submit them
instead to some unknown and unpredictable Nature goddess.”101 Such,
as we have seen, is also the proposition of Labourdette, who considers it
morally justifiable “to intervene [by artificial means] so that the fecundity of the [procreative] act does not depend upon chance (hasard), nor
simply upon biological rhythm, but that it be willed in a responsible
manner, which takes into consideration the whole of human finality.”102
To be sure, the human being is “not a collection or juxtaposition
of diverse and autonomous natural inclinations, but a substantial and
personal whole,” as the International Theological Commission points
out. For this very reason, however, there can be no contradiction or
opposition between nature and freedom, nor between the natural and
		Pope John Paul II, General Audience of November 28, 1984, in Man and
Woman He Created Them, 662 (emphasis original).
99
		Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, §8; cf. Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, §15.
100
		Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, trans. Jenny McPhee and
Martha McPhee (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 55.
101
		Jean-Marie Paupert, “Introduction,” in Contrôle des naissances et théologie, 10–48,
at 40 (all translations from Paupert’s introduction are my own).
102
		Labourdette, Cours de théologie morale, 2:944 (emphasis original).
98

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moral structure of the human being. Rather, “in this organic whole,
each part preserves a proper and irreducible meaning, which must be
taken into account by reason in the elaboration of the overall mission
of the human person.”103 As differing from irrational creatures, who
are subject to divine law uniquely by their natural inclinations,
human beings are thus subject to the Creator’s governance both by
way of their natural inclinations and by way of their knowledge, as
St. Thomas teaches.104 Or as Labourdette himself correctly reasons:
because the human person is “ONE,” that which is “most human in
him [or her] assumes and integrates . . . the requirements of vegetative
and animal life: not precisely as vegetative and animal, but as having
to be [devant être] HUMANLY experienced.”105 Hence, the natural
inclination to reproduce, in the case at hand, must be experienced in
a “concretely human” manner, in a “manner worthy of man,” within,
Labourdette specifies, the specific context of marriage and in accord
with the principles of “responsible parenthood.”106
In this way, the French Dominican apparently agrees with Pope
John Paul II when the latter explains that it is to “the person himself in
the unity of soul and body, in the unity of his spiritual and biological
inclinations and of all the other specific characteristics necessary for
the pursuit of his end,” that natural law refers. Hence, John Paul II
continues, “natural inclinations take on moral relevance only insofar
as they refer to the human person and his authentic fulfilment.”107
Labourdette’s proposition, however, challenges the notion that natural (including biological) inclinations are, as the International Theological Commission suggests, formulated by spiritual creatures “as
fundamental norms of their moral action,”108 and even as manifestations
		International Theological Commission, “In Search of a Universal Ethic: A
New Look at the Natural Law” (2009), §79.
104
		See ST I-II, q. 93, a. 6.
105
		Michel Labourdette, Cours de théologie morale, vol. 1, Morale fondamentale,
Bibliothèque de la revue thomiste (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2010), 676: “ Cela
même qui est en lui le plus humain assume et s’intègre, comme étant en un
sens antérieures, des exigences qui concernent la vie végétative et animale :
non précisément en tant que végétative et animale, mais comme devant être
HUMAINEMENT [sic] vécue au plan même de la vie végétative et animale”
(all translations of Labourdette from this work are my own).
106
		Labourdette, Cours de théologie morale, 1:677.
107
		Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §50.
108
		The International Theological Commission, “In Search of a Universal Ethic,”
§63 (emphasis mine).
103

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of “the divine intentions,”109 for the good or perfection of human
nature, and thus also of the human person.
Because, moreover, the precepts of natural law are “according to
the order of natural inclinations,” as St. Thomas maintains—and
Labourdette apparently agrees—“all those things to which man has
a natural inclination” (including the inclination to reproduce and
to educate offspring) are “naturally apprehended by reason as being
good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as
evil, and objects of avoidance.”110 Similarly, the appetitive powers are
naturally drawn—by way of pleasure—to those activities that are, St.
Thomas continues, “necessary for man’s well-being, as regards the
preservation either of the individual or of the species.” To willingly
“reject pleasure to the extent of omitting things that are necessary for
nature’s preservation” is therefore considered sinful by Labourdette’s
own (Thomistic) tradition.111
Of course, this is not to deny that it might be “praiseworthy”
or “even necessary” to abstain from these pleasurable acts, Aquinas
explains, as when one refrains from sexual intercourse for reasons
of health.112 There is no question, however, that a man might seek,
in good conscience, to retain the pleasure of a life-giving act while
simultaneously renouncing the very good that nature has thereby
prescribed for its own preservation. In the words of St. Thomas,
“chastity takes its name from the fact that reason chastises concupiscence, which, like a child needs curbing,”113 not because “the free
act of reason . . . is incompatible with the aforesaid pleasure [of the
conjugal act],”114 but because the ordering principles of responsible
parenting and justice toward one’s spouse and even toward the human
species or human society might be diverted by self-indulging lust.
That is why the Catechism teaches that “sexual pleasure is morally
disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and
unitive purposes.”115 To isolate sexual activity from its proper meaning is not simply to oppose biological ends, therefore, “but also to
contradict,” as the International Theological Commission recog		The International Theological Commission, “In Search of a Universal Ethic,”
§70.
110
		ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2; cf. Labourdette, Cours de théologie morale, 1:676–77.
111
		ST II-II, q. 142, a. 1.
112
		ST II-II, q. 142, a. 1.
113
		ST II-II, q. 151, a. 1.
114
		ST II-II, q. 153, a. 2, ad 2.
115
		CCC, §2351.
109

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Michele M. Schumacher

nizes, “the interpersonal values that a responsible and fully human
sexual life must promote.”116 Of course, as C. S. Lewis reasons in
his ever-witty manner: “The Christian attitude does not mean that
there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about
the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get
the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing
things and spitting them out again.”117 To be more specific, natural
inclinations are humanized when they are consciously and willfully
appropriated or even refused for good and noble reasons, not when
they are altered with respect to their ends. When the ancient Romans
vomited their meals in a vomitorium in order to eat still more, far from
elevating the natural act, they actually denigrated it.118
The Intrinsic Evil of Contraception
and the Threat to Human Life
As these examples serve to illustrate, human freedom is responsibly
exercised when one acts from what St. Thomas designates “a habit that
is suitable to his [man’s] nature.”119 Such is the virtue of chastity, which
the Catechism presents as “the successful integration of sexuality within
the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual
being.”120 “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of
life and love placed in him,” an integrity that “ensures the unity of the
person.”121 When, on the other hand, one acts from a habit opposed
to his corporal-spiritual nature (that of contracepting, in the case at
hand), he or she acts according to what St. Thomas designates as “some
corruption affecting that nature.”122 And let us not fool ourselves:
contraception does indeed corrupt our sexual powers and acts by willingly rendering them infertile.
By reason of such a corruption, contraception may be considered an evil123 in the most basic sense of the term: it represents the
		International Theological Commission, “In Search of a Universal Ethic,” §80.
		C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Collins, 1952), 93.
118
		The example is provided by Spaemann, “Sind ‘naturlich’ und ‘unnatürlich’
moralisch revelante Begriffe?” 268–69.
119
		ST I-II, q. 108, a. 1, ad 2.
120
		CCC, §2337.
121
		CCC, §2338.
122
		ST I-II, q. 108, a. 1, ad 2.
123
		Indeed, the Church considers it an “intrinsic evil.” See: CCC, §2370; Pope
Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §14; and Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §80. This
116
117

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absence—indeed the willing removal—of a good that belongs to
human nature and to the conjugal act in virtue of creation;124 whence
the irony of the popular reference to contraception as a form of reproductive “health.” As every infertile couple desirous of children knows
only too well, healthy reproductive systems are fertile—whence the
scandal of doctors prescribing contraceptive “medicine for women
in good health,” as French sexologist Thérèse Hargot remarks.125
Thanks to hormonal contraception, it is possible, Hargot observes,
to be “sick without an illness,” and medicine is put at the service
of our desires: “ [desires] of not becoming pregnant, of interrupting a pregnancy, then of provoking it or of engendering some years
later.”126 The logic of contraception is thus based on the assumption,
as Archbishop Charles Chaput recognizes, “that fertility is an infection which must be attacked and controlled, exactly as antibiotics
attack bacteria.”127 Indeed, scientists are currently developing contraceptive “vaccines” that work by “stimulating the immune system to
shut down some body functions necessary for pregnancy, analogous
to the way vaccines given to infants cause the body to fight childhood
diseases such as smallpox, mumps, and measles.”128
To contracept, in sum, is to deprive the human reproductive
system of its inherent power: not just any power, moreover, but
the natural and nonetheless “quasi-sacred”129 power of procreation.
This is arguably among the most distinguished of all human powers,
because, as the Vatican II teaches, “human life and the duty of transmitting it are not limited by the horizons of this life only: their true
was also the conclusion of the minority papal commission report (see “The
Birth Control Report, II: The Conservative Case”).
124
		See CCC, §2366, and ST I-II, q. 21, a. 1.
125
		Thérèse Hargot, Une jeunesse sexuellement libérée (ou presque) (Paris: Editions
Albin Michel, 2016), 123. All translations from Hargot will be by own.
126
		Hargot, Une jeunesse sexuellement libérée, 132.
127
		Archbishop Charles Chaput, “Humanae Vitae: A Misunderstood Papal Intervention,” Origins 28, no. 14 (September 17, 1998): 248–51, at 248. Cf. Pope
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, §23.
128
		Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of
Liberty (New York:Vintage Books, 1999), 146. See also Rajesh K. Naz, Satish K.
Gupta, Jagdish C. Gupta, Hemant K.Vyas, and G. P. Talwar, “Recent Advances
in Contraceptive Vaccine Development: A Mini-Review,” Human Reproduction
20, no. 12 (December 1, 2005): 3271–83 (academic.oup.com/humrep/article/20/12/3271/2913771/Recent-advances-in-contraceptive-vaccine).
129
		“The Birth Control Report, II: The Conservative Case,” 480 (“The Minority
Papal Commission Report,” 185; “Status quaestionis,” 168).

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evaluation and full significance can be understood only in reference
to man’s eternal destiny.”130 Hence the important warning of Paul VI:
“Unless” we are willing to leave “the responsibility of procreating life
. . . to the arbitrary decision of men,” it is necessary to admit “certain
limits, beyond which it is wrong to go.”131
As a case in point, one might consider the irony of the position
advanced by the Jean-Marie Paupert. It is “proper to man,” he
explains in his summary of the majority position in 1967, “to transform nature, including his own [nature], to struggle against ‘natural’
processes when they go against humanization, against the fullness of
life, against the good of the individual and of the species.”132 This
presumably worthy goal—which conjures up the images of persons
fighting disease, storms, landslides, and tornados—takes on a whole
new twist, however, when the so-called enemy is presented as the
“threat” of an unwanted, or even an “unworthy,” child. Paupert
points, more specifically, to the so-called “grave biological danger”
of the “various trisomies of chromosomes,” which he links to the age
of the ovule and sperm, and thus also – or such is his claim – to the
practice of natural family planning. Addressing more specifically the
“problem of eugenics,” the French theologian asks: Whereas “the
selection of the race” was once effected “by the ‘natural’ means of
the death of the weakest, is it not now fitting to supplant” natural
selection “by a possibility of restraining the right [sic!] to procreation
[i.e., by more or less compulsory contraception] in function of the
good of the species?” He claims that “the theologians of the majority
[position] and likewise the specialists [presumably in science] do not
hesitate to respond affirmatively to this question.”133
One can hardly help but recognize, with astonishment, the accuracy of Lewis’s warning, already in 1947, “as regards contraceptives”:
There is a paradoxical, negative sense, in which all possible
future generations are the patients or subjects of a power
wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they
		Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, §51, also cited in CCC, §2371. In fact, the “union
of man and woman in marriage” was called to be “a way of imitating in the
flesh,” as the Catechism puts it, “the Creator’s generosity and fecundity” (CCC,
§2335).
131
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §17.
132
		 Paupert, “Introduction,” 38–39.
133
		 Paupert, “Introduction,” 28.
130

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are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made
to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to
prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over
Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over
other men with Nature as its instrument.134
Moreover, beyond “exercises of power . . . in breeding,” Lewis
recognized that “the thing called ‘Man’s power over Nature’ must
always and essentially be . . . the power of one nation over others”
or “the power of majorities over minorities,” or again “of a government over the people.”135 We could hardly be closer to Pope Paul VI’s
prophecy of the slippery slope between the so-called right to contracept and the obligation to do so. “It could well happen,” he argued in
1968—and it subsequently has happened, not only in China, as is well
known, but also in Peru, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Puerto Rico,
and other parts of the so-called third world, notably under pressure
from “first” world nations136 —that people may “give into the hands
of public authorities the power to intervene [by way of mandatory
contraception, sterilization and/or abortion] in the most personal and
		C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 68–69. As
a case in point, It should thus not be surprising that the chair of Stanford
Center for Biomedical Ethics and director of Stanford’s Center for Law and
the Biosciences predicted in 2012 that, within fifty years, “‘most children [in
the Western world] will be conceived in IVF clinics’—as selecting your kids
for health traits gets not only cheap and easy but outright encouraged by
insurance companies and governments trying to rein in health-care expenses”
(Bruce Goldmann, “The End of Sex,” Stanford Medicine, January 19, 2012,
scopeblog.stanford.edu/2012/01/19/the-end-of-sex/).
135
		Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 69.
136
		See: Roberts, Killing the Black Body, 142, 145; Marielle Sala,“Forced Sterilization
and Impunity in Peru,” 50.50, February 10, 2014, opendemocracy.net/5050/
mariella-sala/forced-sterilization-and-impunity-in-peru; Michael Cook,
“Remembering the Dark Story of Peru’s Population Control Campaign,” Mercatornet, December 17, 2014, mercatornet.com/demography/view/remembering_the_dark_story_of_perus_population_control_campaign/15347; Liz Ford,
“Peru’s Forcibly Sterilised Women Find Their Voice,” The Guardian, January 4,
2016, theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/04/peru-forced-sterilisation-quipu-project-alberto-fujimori; Soutik Biswas, “India’s Dark History
of Sterilization,” BBC News, November 14, 2014, bbc.com/news/world-asiaindia-30040790; Kathleen A. Tobin, “International Birth Control Politics: The
Evolution of a Catholic Contraceptive Debate in Latin America,” Journal for the
Studies of Religions and Ideologies 1, no. 2 (2002): 66–80.
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intimate responsibility of husband and wife.”137 Similarly, Pope John
Paul II warned in 1995 that, unless we are willing to put ourselves
“at the mercy of the unrestrained will of individuals or the oppressive totalitarianism of public authority,” we must acknowledge our
“inherent condition” as “creature[s]” to whom “being and life” have
been entrusted “as a gift and a duty.”138
Conclusion: Human Ecology and Conjugal Chastity
Of course, the challenge of caring for our bodies and of developing
habits suitable to our nature confronts us once again with the question
of norms in the traditional sense of the term: as rooted within nature,
qua created. “For the fact that a creature subsists according to a certain
standard and certain limits indicates that it comes from some source,” St.
Thomas reasons.139 From this perspective, Josef Pieper has good reason
to believe that the condemnation of birth control by the Catholic
Church has its origin “not in a ‘conception of nature that is confined
to biology’”—as is often maintained, as we have seen—“but in nothing other than a profoundly responsible earnestness, which attempts
to do justice to man’s status as creature.”140 When, however, the notion
of creation is lost, not only is “the acceptance of our bodies as God’s
gift”141 compromised, but so too is the notion of “a moral law written
into human nature itself,” as Pope Francis acknowledges.142 Hence,
for example, members of the pontifical birth control commission are
reported by Paupert as reasoning in much the same way: whereas moral
norms were once considered from the perspective of natural teleology,
“today, now that we know nature better, we are obliged to ask if the
intentio naturae still has a value.”143
		 Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §17.
		Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, §96.
139
		ST I, q. 93, a. 6.
140
		Josef Pieper, “Creatureliness and Human Nature: Reflections on the Philosophical Method of Jean-Paul Sartre,” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the
Nature of Philosophy, trans. Roger Wasserman, ed. Berthold Wald (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 173–84, at 181.
141
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §155.
142
		Pope Francis, Address to the Members of the General Assembly of the United
Nations Organization, September 25, 2015, w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/september/documents/papa-francesco_20150925_
onu-visita.html.
143
		Paupert, “Introduction,” 30. Hence, the natural rhythms of the human body
have no significance in discerning God’s will for our lives. Instead, Paupert
proposes, God’s will should be discerned uniquely by way of revelation and
137
138

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Spaemann, on the other hand, argues that the normative value of
nature is necessarily taken for granted by most men and women today.
Indeed, we would never act at all if we had to justify every premise
of our actions. “So long as the natural [realm] served this [normative] function, the fact of not wanting to have a child or not wanting
to have others required justification.”144 The “invisible” character
of oral contraceptives has, however, as I have argued, reversed this
logic. Indeed, it is ironically the natural fact of pregnancy that is now
presented as the “exception” that requires explanation. To decide
for the life of a child at the beginning of the twenty-first century
is simply taken as synonymous with having “planned” his or her
conception.145 No place is left to ambivalence in this contraceptive
age, at least not as far as human life itself is concerned. When a doctor
poses the question of whether or not a pregnancy is desired, it falls
almost entirely upon the woman to decide the value that she will
accord to the so-called “mass of cells” within her uterus. “At that
instant,” Hargot observes, “she becomes god: her desire alone can let
live,” or let die.146
Readily available contraception thus “considerably increases the
weight of [parental] responsibilities” at the very moment in history
in which “individualism and the ‘passion of self ’ have,” as Elisabeth
Badinter recognizes, “never been so powerful.”147 Given the serious
grace.
		Robert Spaemann, “Vivere viventibus est esse: Procréation, naissance, mort,” in
Chasser le naturel ? 129–61, at 133. This is an unedited conference paper delivered by Professor Spaemann in Louvain in March of 2002.
145
		Indeed, as Pope John Paul II diagnosed the situation already in 1995, when
the unitive and the procreative meanings inherent to the conjugal act are artificially separated, “its fruitfulness is subjected to the caprice of the couple.”:
“Procreation then becomes the ‘enemy’ to be avoided in sexual activity: if it is
welcomed, this is only because it expresses a desire, or indeed the intention, to
have a child ‘at all costs,’ and not because it signifies the complete acceptance
of the other and therefore an openness to the richness of life which the child
represents” (Evangelium Vitae, §23).
146
		Hargot, Une jeunesse sexuellement libérée, 145. “Because ‘to desire’ signifies ‘to
plan,’” within the context of our present Western culture, “no place is left to
ambiguity,” Hargot observes (144).
147
		Elisabeth Badinter, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status
of Women, trans. Adriana Hunter (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2011), 15.
See also Michele M. Schumacher, “Women’s Self-Interest or Sacrificial Motherhood: Personal Desires, Natural Inclinations and the Meaning of Love,” The
Thomist 77, no. 1 (2013): 71–101.
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responsibilities that motherhood entails moreover, the influential
French feminist urges young women to make rational, level-headed
decisions for or against parenthood by “calculat[ing] clearly the pleasures and hardships, the benefits and sacrifices,” on the one hand, and
one’s personal “capacity for altruism,” on the other. In this way, she
suggests, reason should exercise the upper hand: not against concupiscence, but against an ever-present “halo of illusions.”148 Badinter thus
recommends that “responsible” parenthood be determined according
to the empiricist paradigm, which, as Pope Francis explains, “exalts
the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures,
progressively approaches and gains control over an external object.”149
We could hardly be further from Spaemann’s earthbound remark:
“To engender a child is not an activity issuing from an instrumental
rationality.”150
As if to mock three generations of pill users who seem to have
forgotten the “inseparable connection” between the unitive and the
procreative meanings of the sexual act, the ninety-some-year-old
philosopher reminds us of a fact that was still obvious to members
of his own generation: far from requiring “a superior lucidity of
attention,” as is required in a work of production or fabrication, the
act of procreation entails the very surrender of rationality. “Don’t
go believing that I thought of you [my son] when I was with your
mother,” Spaemann writes in words borrowed from Gottfried Benn.
“Her eyes became so beautiful while we made love.” At the moment
of conception, Spaemann explains, “individualizing consciousness is
relinquished within the non-individualized [dare we call it natural?]
current of life.” 151
With these words, the German philosopher does not mean to
challenge the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood. Nor,
		Badinter, The Conflict, 13–14.
		Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, §106.
150
		Spaemann, “Vivere viventibus est esse,” 131. Nor, for that matter, can love itself
be calculated. “No lover in the world ever sought the embraces of the woman
he loved as the result of a calculation, however unconscious, that they would
be more pleasurable than those of any other woman,” C. S. Lewis points out
(The Four Loves [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960], 94).
151
		Spaemann, “Vivere viventibus est esse,” 131. The same passage from Gottfried
Benn is cited by Spaemann in “Sind ‘naturlich’ und ‘unnatürlich’ moralisch
revelante Begriffe?” 217: “Bildet euch doch nicht ein dass ich an euch gedacht
habe, als ich mit eurer Mutter gin. Ihre Augen wurden mimmer so schön bei
der Liebe.”
148
149

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however, would he suggest that we simply abandon ourselves to
hedonism, a presumed “value” in Badinter’s own “rational” calculation for or against motherhood. He does, however, think it necessary to remind us of the natural character of both the sexual act and
its fruit. As Lewis remarks, the “preservation of society, and of the
species itself, are ends that do not hang on the precarious thread of
Reason.” Rather, “they are given by Instinct.”152
Lewis’s point, of course, is to unveil the truth of our sexual desires
as ordered to ends in virtue of nature itself, a truth that has been
obscured by the scientific manipulation of nature by contraception.
At the same time, however, and in virtue of the same logic, he argues
for the need of governing principles, or natural moral norms—based
on the corporal-spiritual unity of the human being, and thus also on
the unity of the sensitive and the rational appetites—to order these
impulses or desires in accord with the overall purpose and meaning of
human life inscribed within our nature as created. “The old [sexual]
taboos,” which likewise acted as ethical-cultural norms, “served
some real purpose in helping to preserve the species,” he observes,
“but contraceptives have modified this and we can now abandon
many of the taboos.” “For of course,” Lewis adds in his ever-provocative manner, “sexual desire, being instinctive, is to be gratified
whenever it does not conflict with the preservation of the species.”153
In their insistence that procreation is a natural process, both Lewis
and Spaemann suggest that it is also governed by a divinely ordained
moral norm: the “inseparable connection” between the unitive and
the procreative meanings of the conjugal act, as specified by Humanae
Vitae. The underlying moral challenge is that of aligning our minds,
bodies, and wills with the creative and redemptive intentions of God
so as to make of that which is “most impersonal, namely sexual relations . . . the highest expression of personal love.”154 This requires, of
course, that we acknowledge the goodness of the created order, but
also that we recognize our own weaknesses, including our tendency
to worship and serve “the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom
1:25); whence the recent plea of Pope Francis: “Let us not fall into
the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not
		Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 44–45.
		Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 45.
154
		Robert Spaemann, “The Paradoxes of Love,” Love and the Dignity of Human
Life: On Nature and Natural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2012), 1–25,
at 22. This is a collection of lectures given in English.
152
153

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Michele M. Schumacher

omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At
the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means,
in the first place accepting it and respecting it as it was created.”155 For,
“not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with
respect for the original good purpose for which it was given,” Francis
reasons in words borrowed from Pope John Paul II, “but, man too
is God’s gift to man . . . [and] must therefore respect the natural and
N&V
moral structure with which he has been endowed.”156

		Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016), §56 (emphasis
mine).
156
		Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centissimus Annus, §38, cited by Pope
Francis in Laudato Si’, §115.
155

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1261–1312

1261

The Splendor and Gift of the Christian Moral
Life: Veritatis Splendor at Twenty-Five
Michael Dauphinais
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

I recall reading Veritatis Splendor for the first time. It was

the fall of 1993 in Stanley Hauerwas’s graduate seminar on theological ethics. Hauerwas had led his students through Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Barth, as well as contemporary figures such as Gene
Outka and Alasdair MacIntyre. Hauerwas’s approach cannot be easily
summarized without falling into caricature, but it is safe to say that
the course centered on the role of character and virtues as they were
lived out within the particular narrative and practices of the Christian
community, the ongoing witness to the life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.1 There was an extended argument that the universalizing
project of the Enlightenment had stripped Christianity of its graced
message and stripped ethical discourse of its intelligibility. At the end of
that seminar, he assigned Pope John Paul II’s recently promulgated Veritatis Splendor. Although Hauerwas’s approach diverges at points from
the Catholic tradition expressed in the encyclical, there remain significant points of agreement: the encyclical was a clarion call for a robust
renewal of moral theology grounded in the encounter with Christ’s
call to “come, follow me,” an encounter to be lived out concretely in
the Church up to the point of martyrdom. The encyclical, furthermore, situated immediate disagreements about moral teachings within

		For a summary of Hauerwas’s thought in his own words, see The Hauerwas
Reader, ed. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2001).

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Michael Dauphinais

problematic trends in modern thought that, among other errors, placed
freedom in opposition to law and truth.
Twenty-five years later, after having studied and taught Veritatis
Splendor on many occasions, I have taken up the encyclical again
for consideration. The encyclical as a whole manifests a unity of a
number of themes that has not always been appreciated. The current
article aims to highlight how the splendor of veritas in its manifold
forms illuminates the entire encyclical and, more importantly, sheds
light on the entire moral life of the Christian community. While
interweaving philosophical threads into its theological considerations,
Pope Saint John Paul II works and thinks through the realities of the
moral life as revealed by God as Creator and Redeemer. Since the
encyclical has been the object of thorough study and argument over
the past twenty-five years,2 rather than a summary of the scholarly
discussion or an engagement with particular points of controversy, I
have opted to mark the encyclical’s twenty-fifth anniversary by offering reflections on central themes that might be of particular benefit
to the next generation of theologians and students in the collective
pursuit of the ongoing renewal of moral theology.3 The splendor of
truth is a multi-layered splendor, illuminating faith and reason, freedom and law, conscience and morality, sin and mercy, and Creator
and creation. Because of this, the splendor of truth resists attempts at
separation or reduction.
This article will consider the splendor of truth as manifested in
a sevenfold splendor. Each individual splendor considers a different
insight of John Paul II’s encyclical. The article proceeds in seven
hierarchically descending sections that each highlight an aspect of
the splendor of the Christian moral life seen through the lens of gift.
In offering an account of what makes the moral life intelligible and
achievable, the order of these seven steps described here begins with
the gift of God’s revelation in Christ and then moves to show how
such a life should be received by particular members of the people of
		See the extensive bibliography on Veritatis Splendor at the end of this article,
including many such responses, expositions, and analyses. The bibliography
was compiled by my graduate assistant, Aaron Henderson.
3
		Readers looking for a comprehensive treatment of the encyclical’s background, key themes, and controversies should examine Servais Pinckaers,
O.P., “An Encyclical for the Future: Veritatis Splendor,” trans. Sr. Mary Thomas
Noble, O.P., in Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology: Studies by
Ten Outstanding Scholars, ed. J. A. DiNoia, O.P., and Romanus Cessario, O.P.
(Chicago: Midwest Theological Forum, 1999), 11–72.
2

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God in particular acts so as to recognize their true happiness, with
the ongoing gift of mercy for failure along the way as the necessary
concluding element.
First, the article considers the priority of divine revelation for
understanding the moral life. Second, it addresses the specification of
that divine revelation in the lived history of the incarnate Word, he
in whom the law is perfectly fulfilled and who offers himself as the
perfect gift of self. Third, the article addresses the role of faith as the
decisive acceptance of that perfect gift in Christ, an acceptance that
then grounds the moral life. Fourth, it looks at both the natural law
and the divine law as God’s creative and redemptive acts, respectively,
that allow the redeemed human creature, as part of the ecclesial Body
of Christ, to identify and move along the path to true happiness.
Fifth, it considers the role of conscience as the intelligent judgment
of the person encountering and living out the moral law. Sixth, the
article considers how such judgment leads to concrete gifts of self—or
specific moral acts—that are recognizable precisely as moral acts by
their specific objects. Seventh, having descended through each step
from the highest view of divine revelation in general, the article
concludes with the splendor of mercy, in which the gift of Christ’s
redemption is offered continually to each person in anticipatory realization of the fullness of God’s kingdom.4
		Cardinal Pio Laghi briefly summarizes the structure and unity of the document: “As you know, the Encyclical is composed of three chapters, each with
a specific character: the first one is ‘Biblical,’ centered on the dialogue of Jesus
with the ‘rich young man’ (Mt 19:16); the second is ‘doctrinal,’ in which
the problem of the discernment of some tendencies of contemporary moral
theology is addressed in a language which at certain points is technical; the
third is ‘pastoral,’ concerned with indicating the consequences of this reflection for the concrete life of the Church and the world. Notwithstanding this
apparent diversity in literary genre, the document in its entirety has a profound
interior unity. A kind of unifying element pervades the whole document and
assures its solidity. It is the fundamental question of the relationship between
freedom and truth, or better, in Christ’s own words: ‘You will come to know
the truth and the truth will make you free’ (Jn 8:32). So much so that the
title of the Encyclical, instead of Veritatis Splendor, could be Libertatis Splendor”
(“The Impact of Veritatis Splendor on Catholic Education at the University
and Secondary Levels,” The Thomist 60, no. 1 [1996]: 1–18). Richard McCormick, who disputes the encyclical’s depiction of proportionalism, contrasts
the “beautiful Christ-centered presentation” in chapter 1 with the “dense and
technical” character of chapter 2 as “an in-house conversation” (“Killing the
Patient,” in Considering Veritatis Splendor, ed. John Wilkins [Cleveland, OH:
Pilgrim Press, 1994], 14–20).

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Michael Dauphinais

The seven sections are connected by the theme of the gift: the gift
in itself, the reception of the gift, and the use of the gift. The first
two sections, revelation and the specification of revelation in Christ,
belong to the gift in itself. Faith, law, and conscience, the middle
three sections, have to do with our acceptance of the gift. Then
the final two sections, specific moral acts and mercy, pertain to our
use of the gift. The present article will serve as a prism that aims to
highlight the spectrum of truths at work in the encyclical and how,
together, they form an unbroken and radiant splendor of the gift that
is the Christian moral life.
The Splendor of Divine Revelation
The encyclical shows forth the splendor of revealed truth that is at the
heart of the human being’s pursuit of happiness. This is true in terms
of the ground of the intelligibility of the Christian moral life, insofar
as appeals need to be made to divinely revealed truths in Christ in
order to discover the fullness of the truth about how to live well. This
is also true in terms of the content of the Christian moral life, insofar
as its very existence is not an achievement based on human effort, but
rather needs to be received as a gift from God. The emphasis on the
priority and necessity of divine revelation, however, in no way diminishes the intelligibility of the created order with its natural tendencies
and inclinations.
Veritatis Splendor presents an admittedly complex view of human
reason and its need for divine revelation. The encyclical frequently
repeats the role of and need for divine revelation to assist human
beings in coming to know the truth of the moral life. It seems the
encyclical offers an implicit distinction concerning reason: what
human reason is capable of knowing when functioning in its full
operation versus a narrowed human reason along rationalist and
empiricist models (§112). There is a strong emphasis on the inadequacy of reduced visions of reason to address questions about the
moral life. The term “revelation” occurs twenty-nine times; “reveal”
twenty-eight times; and “divine wisdom” seven times. Before we
address particular questions about human reason, let us consider the
various ways in which the document highlights that the shape of the
moral life is inextricably outlined by divine revelation.
As its subtitle indicates, the encyclical seeks to address fundamental
questions about the Church’s moral teaching and does so from the
perspective opened up by divine revelation. Notice the way in which

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the encyclical situates the meaning and truth of moral action within
the divine oikonomia: “It is [Christ the Teacher] who opens up to the
faithful the book of the Scriptures and, by fully revealing the Father’s
will, teaches the truth about moral action. At the source and summit
of the economy of salvation, as the Alpha and the Omega of human
history (cf. Rev 1:8; 21:6; 22:13), Christ sheds light on man’s condition and his integral vocation” (§8). The truth about moral action
must be situated within who man is and who he is called to become.
The reference to “man’s condition and his integral vocation” places
moral action within the drama of creation, fall, redemption, and
glory. The encyclical describes the moral life as a following of the
incarnate Lord: “The way and at the same time the content of this
perfection consist in the following of Jesus, sequela Christi, once one
has given up one’s own wealth and very self ” (§19). It is not merely
that the way Christians follow the moral life is inspired by Christ’s
example of moral excellence. Following Christ is both “the way” to
and “the content” of this perfection embodied in the Church.5 Once
the Word has taken on human nature, the way to and content of
human nature’s perfection is now something objectively and necessarily “in Christ.”
Depicting the moral life as a sequela Christi confronts and completes
rational human inquiry in different ways depending on the tenor of
the inquiry.6 Christ is now the norm of human nature. The norm
disclosed in Christ perfects and completes much that was found in
		Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explains the importance of this moral
excellence derived from following Christ: “A Christianity that is no longer
a common way of life, but simply proclaims an undetermined ideal, would
no longer be the Christianity of Jesus Christ and his immediate disciples. . . .
Therefore, it is the enduring task of the Church to be a community of ‘the
Way’ and to show forth in the concrete the way of right living. The words of
the Psalm, ‘You have made known to me the paths of life,’ stand significantly
in the first address which an apostle made, in the Pentecost preaching of St.
Peter (Acts 2:28). The Church must always show forth ‘the Way’ by reason of
her very being. She must make the moral content of faith ever newly visible”
(“Christian Faith as ‘The Way’: An Introduction to Veritatis Splendor,” Communio 21 [1994]: 199–207, at 200).
6
		Lorenzo Albacete affirms the importance of the sequela Christi in Veritatis
Splendor: “The theological concept of the sequela Christi is thus the interpretative key to the encyclical Veritatis Splendor. This doctrine is at the heart of the
entire first chapter of the encyclical, and this chapter is, I believe, the interpretative key to the entire encyclical” (“The Relevance of Christ or the Sequela
Christi?” Communio 21 [1994]: 252–64, at 252).
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Michael Dauphinais

the best of moral teachings found in philosophical and religious
traditions. The encyclical affirms: “In this witness to the absoluteness of the moral good Christians are not alone: they are supported
by the moral sense present in peoples and by the great religious and
sapiential traditions of East and West, from which the interior and
mysterious workings of God’s Spirit are not absent” (§94). Yet, the
norm disclosed by Christ necessitates a profound rejection of much
secular thinking about the moral life that tends to equate human
nature with empirically observable trends in human behavior. Such
empiricist approaches fail to discern the encounter of the individual
person before the moral law. As such, they cannot be elevated to
participate in the revelation of that moral law in the person of Jesus
Christ. The encyclical specifically critiques the behavioral sciences for
contradictory tendencies to, on the one hand, downplay the role of
human freedom and, on the other hand, argue from the observations
of a variety of customs and institutions to the false conclusion of “a
relativistic conception of morality” (§33). Rational inquiries must
remain open to the revealed truth about God. Otherwise, moral
norms become products of human making instead of discoveries of
the human person as created, that is, in relation to the Creator.
As previously suggested, when the encyclical refers to the necessary
role of human reason, it gently corrects a false vision of autonomous
reason and places human reason as receptive of the truths revealed by
faith. The encyclical thus explains the basic understanding of moral
theology as inextricably theological:
The Church’s moral reflection, always conducted in the light
of Christ, the “Good Teacher,” has also developed the specific
form of the theological science called “moral theology,” a science
which accepts and examines Divine Revelation while at the
same time responding to the demands of human reason. Moral
theology is a reflection concerned with “morality,” with
the good and the evil of human acts and of the person who
performs them; in this sense it is accessible to all people. But it
is also “theology,” inasmuch as it acknowledges that the origin
and end of moral action are found in the One who “alone is
good” and who, by giving himself to man in Christ, offers him
the happiness of the divine life. (§29)
The reason here described is a reason open to theological truths at
both the natural and supernatural level. In this sense, it is “accessible

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to all people” as long as they do not use their reason in a self-limiting
manner that would deny the ability of reason to know the truth about
the human person, the world, and the Creator who made both. This
does not necessarily imply that people must have already used their
reason to come to these truths, but it would be a false reading of this
text to put reason on one side and revelation on the other as though
revealed claims must stand before the judgment seat of a secularized
reason. Reason operates within moral theology by seeing the inner
intelligibilities of the orders of creation and redemption. The encyclical grounds reason within its illumination by revelation: “Man is
able to recognize good and evil thanks to that discernment of good
from evil which he himself carries out by his reason, in particular by his
reason enlightened by Divine Revelation and by faith” (§44). The origin
and end of moral action are in God—God not only revealed in
Christ, but God who has acted definitively in giving himself to man
in Christ. The Christian moral life is a life responding to this gift:
“The Christian, thanks to God’s Revelation and to faith, is aware of
the ‘newness’ which characterizes the morality of his actions” (§73).
The “newness” stems from the reality that the human being has been
liberated from sin and made a child of God by grace. The encyclical does not shy away from affirming the necessarily supernatural
context of the Christian moral life, but rather presents the splendor
of its supernatural character.
The encyclical critiques a false rationalism that would eliminate
revelation from intelligent reflection on the moral life. Human reason
properly leans on supernatural revelation and should acknowledge
“the dependence of human reason on Divine Wisdom and the need,
given the present state of fallen nature, for Divine Revelation as an
effective means for knowing moral truths, even those of the natural order” (§36, citing Humani Generis). The opposition here is not
between some varieties of fideism and rationalism, but between a
reason that can recognize truths of the natural order when illumined
by faith and a reason that excludes divine revelation. When the latter
occurs, human reason becomes a pseudo-reason by claiming an
undue authority: “Some people . . . have actually posited a complete
sovereignty of reason in the domain of moral norms regarding the right
ordering of life in this world” (§36). The encyclical here emphasizes that human reason both needs and depends on truths revealed
by God. Whatever the legitimacy of appeals to human reason or to
finding truths that are recognizable to all human beings (described in
§36), these cannot form the basis of an exclusion of divine revelation.

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The framework of Veritatis Splendor is the divine truth as it exists in
itself and in the created world. The truth thus could not be reduced
to human reason, since it has its source in the one true God. Truth
is not equated with human reason, but rather truth is reason’s proper
object, as human reason discovers truth within the world by means
of both natural reason and revelation. The encyclical affirms the
goodness of divine revelation by showing how it articulates a recognizable path for human flourishing. Divine revelation is not merely
some awareness of transcendence or general religious experience; it
includes specific cognitive dimensions. The encyclical thus critiques
the “denial that there exists, in Divine Revelation, a specific and
determined moral content, universally valid and permanent” (§37).
To exclude such content from revelation would mean that “the word
of God would be limited to proposing an exhortation, a generic paraenesis, which the autonomous reason alone would then have the task of
completing with normative directives which are truly ‘objective,’ that
is, adapted to the concrete historical situation” (§37). Human reason
plays a role in receiving and communicating divine revelation, but
never based upon what human reason can know without revelation.
Revelation illumines human reason with specific truths about Jesus
Christ and his commandments; revelation centers on the person of
Christ and in the content of that revelation. The encyclical deftly
avoids false dichotomies between interpersonal and propositional
accounts of revelation. Propositional truths of revelation are, at least
in part, what allow for personal communion with the Triune God.
The encyclical turns to the character of divine revelation when it
defends the “intransigence” of the Church’s moral teaching in the
face of contemporary criticism about her alleged failure to adapt to
the trends of modern society. As has been shown, the moral teachings of the Church are not properly the result of autonomous human
reason, but rather the fruits of reason operating within a receptive
mode to divine revelation.7 The true good and authentic freedom
		Some place the authority of the Church in opposition to individual moral
judgment. Jean Porter suggests that relying too strongly on ecclesial authority
can undermine the capacity for moral judgment, a capacity necessary for a
“humane moral community.” She argues further that the Church is not a
consistently reliable guide with respect to morality: “At any rate, we cannot
rely on the Catholic church, or on any other institution, to offer an interpretation of the norms of morality that will always safeguard ‘the inviolable
personal dignity of every human being’” (“Moral Reasoning, Authority, and
Community in Veritatis Splendor,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 15

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of the human person will “not result, certainly, from concealing
or weakening moral truth, but rather from proposing it in its most
profound meaning as an outpouring of God’s eternal wisdom,
which we have received in Christ, and as a service to man, to the
growth of his freedom and to the attainment of his happiness” (§95,
citing Familiaris Consortio, §34). The Church may not change her
teaching, since her teaching is not properly her own. The encyclical’s vision of the human person and the accompanying moral norms
are not those achieved by human effort, but are “received in Christ”
from “God’s eternal wisdom.” The encyclical continues to fix the
gaze of the Church on Jesus Christ. There is a marked absence of
a tendency to translate moral norms into secular language or into
rational justifications.8
The priority of divine revelation does not merely cover the overall scope of morality and the content of morality. Divine revelation
extends all the way down to specific actions. The analysis of the
human act will be necessarily incomplete apart from an openness to
divine revelation. The encyclical does not hold that human actions
are unintelligible apart from revelation, but that their full understanding is revealed in the light of faith: “The morality of acts is defined
by the relationship of man’s freedom with the authentic good. This
good is established, as the eternal law, by Divine Wisdom which
orders every being towards its end: this eternal law is known both by
man’s natural reason (hence it is ‘natural law’), and—in an integral
and perfect way—by God’s supernatural Revelation (hence it is called
‘divine law’)” (§72). Revelation discloses “in an integral and perfect
[1995]: 201–19, at 215). On the contrary, if the Christian moral life is at every
stage characterized by divine gift, such a dichotomy (between the magisterium
and individual moral judgment) cannot obtain. For, the Church receives the
teaching of Christ as a gift and hands it on in its integrity to her members.
This gift elevates and complements the gift of reason given to human beings
by which they make moral judgments.
8
		Russell Hittinger observes that the encyclical consistently combats a secularized reading of the natural law: “Once again, what the pope has to grapple
with in this respect is not only decades of neglect ad intra, where the theme
of natural law was detached from the fundamental principles of theology, but
also the history ad extra, where natural law and natural rights betokened that
ground of liberty in which men find themselves under no mundane authority.
This secular myth, which was developed as a counter to Genesis, is contrary to
the most fundamental principles of Christian theology” (“Veritatis Splendor and
the Theology of the Natural Law,” in DiNoia and Cessario, Veritatis Splendor
and the Renewal of Moral Theology, 97–128, at 119–20).

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way” the authentic good that guides the morality of human actions.
The adjectives “integral” and “perfect” ensure that the revealed law
does not evacuate the natural order. Once the authentic good is fully
seen via revelation, the always already present natural good is also
seen more clearly. The encyclical shows that the integrity of the natural order is not something that easily reveals itself to human experience. On the contrary, our understanding of ourselves and of the
world witnesses to a broken dimension of human life. The encyclical
observes, “reason and experience not only confirm the weakness of
human freedom, they also confirm its tragic aspects” (§86). Because
of this history of weakness and tragic rebellion, the fundamental
ordering of the human person to God that is the natural moral law
is most clearly affirmed in the acceptance of the revelation of God’s
salvific actions in Jesus Christ.9
By opting for a message grounded in divine revelation, the encyclical maintains its evangelical mission in service to the new evangelization. Such an evangelical outlook is crucial for understanding the
document, since it does not offer a more stringent moralism. Such an
approach would not serve the encounter with Jesus Christ that alone
is saving. Moreover, the challenge is to present that encounter to
people who live in societies that already have a surface-level acquaintance with the message of Christianity or with its visible institutions.
A particular problem with post-Christian cultural attitudes is that
people may have heard of a handful of individual Christian beliefs
but have not yet embraced them as the truth and so lived in accordance with their transforming power. The encyclical presents this
mission of moral teaching within the new evangelization as follows:
“Just as it does in proclaiming the truths of faith, and even more
so in presenting the foundations and content of Christian morality,
the new evangelization will show its authenticity and unleash all its
missionary force when it is carried out through the gift not only of
the word proclaimed but also of the word lived” (§107).
Two aspects merit particular notice. First, the new evangelization consists in sharing the truths and content of Christian faith and
morality. Although the encounter with Jesus Christ is primary, the
		Germain Grizez observes that the encyclical makes frequent reference to
God’s word in Scripture as divine revelation and to how this is communicated through the Church: “Once again, the Pope’s critique finally invokes
revelation” (“Revelation versus Dissent,” The Tablet 247 [October 16, 1993]:
1329–31, at 1330; repr. in Wilkins, Considering Veritatis Splendor, 1–8).

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way of this encounter treads the path of intelligible content about
who he is, what he has done, and how he asks us to live. Second, the
new evangelization is a gift. It is something grounded in the divine
mission of the Church. As Christ and the Holy Spirit are given for
our salvation, the Church is the extension of that same gift. Certain
divine mysteries may be known only by divine revelation; divine
revelation, moreover, offers genuine access to those same mysteries
and harmoniously helps demystify the natural order as well. Since
Christ is the definitive revelation of God, his own gift of self necessarily guides a full understanding of the moral life.
The Splendor of Christ
The encyclical offers a profound call to preach Jesus Christ and to
make him known in the world: “Dear Brothers in the Episcopate, we
must not be content merely to warn the faithful about the errors and
dangers of certain ethical theories.We must first of all show the inviting
splendour of that truth which is Jesus Christ himself ” (§83). As will be
shown, the encyclical itself often practices what it preaches by consistently presenting the splendor of Christ.
In the context the of the realities of law and freedom and the
current tendencies to see these in opposition, the encyclical teaches
that it is Christ’s gift of self alone that fulfills the law and perfects
human freedom. What exactly does this mean? His fulfillment of the
law allows us to enter into the commandments as a path to perfection
(§15). Christ’s own gift of self invites us likewise to enter imitatively
into a new gift of self. Perfection is the perfection of the gift of self.
It is important not to think of Christ’s fulfillment of the law in an
ahistorical manner, as though human reason might attain an understanding of the fulfillment of the law apart from the oikonomia, the
historical economy of salvation. After describing the Sermon on the
Mount as the “magna carta of Gospel morality,” the encyclical shows
that this perfection cannot become a rationalistic ideal: “Christ is the
center of the economy of salvation, the recapitulation of the Old and
New Testaments, of the promises of the Law and of their fulfillment
in the Gospel” (§15). Christ accomplishes his fulfillment of the law
in a specific historical time and place. He fulfills not only the natural
law, but the natural law as it is revealed and manifested in the Old
Law and as communicated in the New Law. To center all things on
Jesus Christ does not detract from or lessen in any way the natural
or old laws. When Christ recapitulates the Law and the Prophets, he
anchors their meaning more significantly in their prefiguring role.

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The encyclical thus continues: “Jesus himself is the living ‘fulfillment’
of the Law inasmuch as he fulfills its authentic meaning by the total
gift of himself: he himself becomes a living and personal Law, who invites
people to follow him; through the Spirit, he gives the grace to share
his own life and love and provides the strength to bear witness to
that love in personal choices and actions (cf. Jn 13:34–35)” (§15).
All historical times and places are now transformed by the gift of
self that is Jesus Christ. The encyclical describes this perfection in
the language of the gift of self: “Perfection demands that maturity
in self-giving to which human freedom is called” (§17).10 The gift
of self, however, is not a moralistic replacement for the Gospel, but
rather a shorthand for participating in Christ’s gift of self. The law is
the call to give oneself to God and to neighbor. The height of human
freedom is not merely the absence of restraint, but the freedom to
give oneself to another, first of all to God, who alone can make a
proper claim on the love of one’s whole heart, mind, and strength.
The emphasis on the sequela Christi can offer the illusion that Christ
is but another moral teacher or that he is an exemplary member of
the genus of moralists. The encyclical, however, presents Christ’s
crucifixion as an irreducibly theological act in which Christ offers
himself in charity to the Father for the love of neighbor: “The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the
total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom” (§85).
Thus, when the encyclical teaches that “following Christ is thus the
essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality” (§19), it is
helpful to recall that Christ often spoke of the need for his disciples
to take up their crosses and follow him. To follow Christ is to receive
		Janet Smith offers an insightful analysis of the manner in which Veritatis Splendor incorporates the personalist language of self-gift and the dignity of the
human person within the Aristotelian/Thomistic language of metaphysics, law,
and virtue in “The Universality of the Natural Law and the Irreducibility of
Personalism,” Nova et Vetera (English) 11, no. 4 (2013): 1229–47. Christopher
Thompson argues that the emphasis on personalism is inadequate unless it is
understood apart from broader metaphysical considerations and an objective
good that guides the moral life: “Any moral theologian who wishes to take
‘the perspective of the acting person’ seriously, then, must also be willing
to take up the task of helping people ‘acknowledge their sins, so that [they]
can move beyond the state of image-restoration, which entails sorrow and
conversion, to that of image-perfection, which is the state of general freedom’”
(“Moral Theology in a Sapiential Mode: Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of
Moral Theology” The Thomist 65 [2001]: 465–73, at 473, here citing Romanus
Cessario, “Moral Absolutes in the Civilization of Love”).

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first the gift that he has given, the gift of his own self-offering. This
is why the encyclical speaks of the way in which the moral teachings of the Bible are perfected in Christ: “The moral prescriptions
which God imparted in the Old Covenant, and which attained their
perfection in the New and Eternal Covenant in the very person of
the Son of God made man, must be faithfully kept and continually put
into practice in the various different cultures throughout the course of
history” (§25). The precepts of the Old are not merely taught more
perfectly in the New. Rather, while indeed having been taught more
perfectly in the New, they attain their true perfection in the very
person of the Word incarnate. Once the moral teachings are perfected
in Jesus Christ, they cannot be set aside, but must be kept faithfully
across different historical settings. The reception of the Old Law’s
moral teachings forms a necessary part of the entrance into the New
Covenant. The New Covenant here is more than the document of
the New Testament, which gives witness to the New Covenant. The
New Covenant is fulfilled and perfected in the person and work of
Jesus Christ. This deepens, and thus changes, the entire perspective of
the moral law.11 To consider the distinctiveness of Christian morality
is not to look at specific instances of teachings unique or original to
Christianity. Instead, the distinctiveness of Christian morality centers
on the fulfillment of the Law: it has already been fulfilled perfectly in
Jesus Christ. The moral life no longer is the product of human effort,
but is received as a gift.12
		Livio Melina writes: “In the encounter with Jesus, desire is saved from its
withdrawal into itself and lifted up toward a goal, in which one can find
fulfillment in a form heretofore unknown. Christian revelation proposes a
surprising and superabundant fulfillment of the desire for happiness; and this
resolves the paradoxical tension between the necessity of finding an answer
for living and acting reasonably and the impossibility of full satisfaction of this
desire in this world” (“Desire for Happiness and the Commandments in the
First Chapter of Veritatis Splendor,” in DiNoia and Cessario, Veritatis Splendor
and the Renewal of Moral Theology, 143–60, at 153).
12
		J. A. DiNoia emphasizes the priority of the divine initiative in Jesus Christ:
“The principal message of the encyclical lies in this: without the mysteries,
morals do not make ultimate sense. In the Christian vision of things, we can
understand the significance of human action only within the context of the
prior divine action. It is only in the perspective of the divine invitation to
ultimate communion and the concrete initiation of this communion in Christ
that the full significance of morality can be experienced and understood”
(“Veritatis Splendor: Moral Life as a Transfigured Life,” in DiNoia and Cessario,
Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology, 1–10, at 10).
11

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The encyclical situates the call to follow Christ within the character of the gift of Christ already given. This makes the ability to
follow Jesus possible, since the ground of its possibility has been
opened in his death and resurrection. The encyclical expresses the
point in stages: “Following Christ is not an outward imitation, since it
touches man at the very depths of his being” (§21). As if recognizing
that this expression is unclear, it continues to describe the marvelous
manner in which we are invited to be conformed to Christ, who
in turn dwells in us. Thus, the only way we can be conformed to
him is when he lives in us. His obedience, his love, is the ground
of our renewed existence, the ground of our discipleship and our
following of him. The encyclical thus continues: “Being a follower
of Christ means being conformed to him who became a servant even to
giving himself on the Cross (cf. Phil 2:5–8). Christ dwells by faith
in the heart of the believer (cf. Eph 3:17), and thus the disciple is
conformed to the Lord” (§21). The identification with Christ forms
a radical renewal of the person: “By the work of the Spirit, Baptism
radically configures the faithful to Christ in the Paschal Mystery of
death and resurrection” (§21). The encyclical then quotes Augustine’s
words to the newly baptized: “Give thanks for we have become not
only Christians, but Christ. . . . Marvel and rejoice, we have become
Christ!” (§21).13
The moral life must be received as a gift, the gift of nothing less
than Christ’s very own self-offering. Consequently, as creatures
called into fellowship with their Creator who reveals himself to be
their loving Father, any response less than perfect love is inadequate
for the gift’s reception. The encyclical therefore indicates that awareness of sin accompanies the awareness of the moral law in its reference
to Jesus’s disciples’ question “then who can be saved?” and to Jesus’s
response: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things
are possible” (Matt 19:25–26). Veritatis Splendor develops the theme
that the impossible—perfect love—becomes possible in Christ: “To
imitate and live out the love of Christ is not possible for man by his
		DiNoia offers this summary of the encyclical: “One of the overriding objectives of Veritatis Splendor is to affirm that the Christian moral life makes
sense only with this understanding of our calling to ‘life on high in Christ
Jesus’ (Phil 3:14). . . . As the encyclical makes clear, this transformation will
be a conformation: the more we become like Christ, the more surely do we
discover our true selves, the unique persons created by the triune God to share
in the divine life and to enjoy the family life of the Trinity” (“Veritatis Splendor:
Moral Life as a Transfigured Life,” 2).

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own strength alone. He becomes capable of love only by virtue of a gift
received” (§22). The law calls for perfect fulfillment, but such fulfillment is made possible only in Christ: “We are speaking here of a
possibility opened up to man exclusively by grace, by the gift of God, by
his love” (§24). The encyclical emphasizes that this is a gift of God
to be received: “Precisely the awareness of having received the gift,
of possessing in Jesus Christ the love of God, generates and sustains
the free response of a full love for God and the brethren” (§24). It is not
a generic gift of God in creation or human reason; the gift of God is
Jesus Christ and the perfection of the love of God found in his person
through his death and resurrection. The necessary role of revelation
and Christ, who, in his person, teaching, and work, is God’s definitive revelation, leads to the role of faith, which is the graced response
of the human creature to divine revelation. Once divine revelation is
accepted in faith, faith then becomes the foundation of an authentically Christian moral life.
The Splendor of Faith
The encyclical never shies away from emphasizing the necessary role
of faith in the Christian moral life. Faith is not an embarrassment to
ethical considerations, but rather forms the context in which the overall integrity of the moral life may be understood. The encyclical calls
for greater emphasis to be placed on faith as part of a renewal of the
Church: “In order to carry out her prophetic mission, the Church must
constantly reawaken or ‘rekindle’ her own life of faith (cf. 2 Tim 1:6),
particularly through an ever-deeper reflection, under the guidance of
the Holy Spirit, upon the content of faith itself. The ‘vocation’ of the
theologian in the Church is specifically at the service of this ‘believing
effort to understand the faith’” (§109). As seen earlier, the encyclical
gently reminds the reader that faith is an act infused with particular
content. There are truths that faith communicates to the human race
as part of its salvation. Faith is a saving reality when we cling to God
as the first truth and when our intellectual embrace of the truth of his
revelation is moved by charity. The encyclical exhorts its readers to
recover the splendor of that same faith in Jesus Christ.
Christ gives himself completely to the Father and to us. For us to
be in Christ and to receive the gift of his fulfillment of the law, we
must turn completely to him, and so go through him, in the Spirit,
to the Father. This turn to God impacts our entire being, or it is
no turn at all. In an interesting manner, the encyclical makes some
positive use of the language developed from the erroneous posi-

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tion held by proponents of a fundamental option in morality.14 The
encyclical rejects as false the approach to the moral life that separates
out a fundamental option at the transcendental level of the subject
from specific moral acts in the subject’s categorical engagement with
the world (§65). While rejecting the erroneous fundamental option
theory, the encyclical calls for the person’s fundamental commitment
to Christ. Without this commitment, there may not be any discussion
of Christian morality. More specifically, the encyclical speaks of the
fundamental commitment of faith:
There is no doubt that Christian moral teaching, even in
its Biblical roots, acknowledges the specific importance of a
fundamental choice which qualifies the moral life and engages
freedom on a radical level before God. It is a question of the
decision of faith, of the obedience of faith (cf. Rom 16:26) “by
which man makes a total and free self-commitment to God,
offering ‘the full submission of intellect and will to God as he
reveals.’” (§66, citing Dei Verbum §5)
The moral life thus engages the full person before the fullness of
reality, which necessarily includes God. A decision must be made
about what is ultimately true, good, and beautiful. This decision is
carried out with the full intelligence and will of the human person.
Faith, then, is that decision in favor of the God who reveals himself
as the Creator and Savior. The encyclical’s use of the word “faith”
here includes the threefold virtues of faith, hope, and love, in which
faith perfects the intellect and hope and charity perfect the will. This
holistic usage of faith describes the fullness of the creature’s relationship before the Creator in the New Covenant.
The document places great emphasis on the existential commitment, both intellectual and voluntary, of the person in response to
the God who reveals. The encyclical presents the importance of the
person’s decision before the fullness of reality encountered in God.
Moral theology thus cannot be reduced to teachings apart from the
divine Teacher, and as we will see later, the divine Teacher cannot
		 See William Mattison, “Veritatis Splendor and the Fundamental Option: Seeking Guidance from Thomas’ Doctrine of Infused Cardinal Virtue,” in Reason
and the Rule of Faith: Conversations in the Tradition with John Paul II, ed. Christopher J. Thompson and Steven A. Long (Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 2010), 143–58.

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be separated from his specific teachings. The encyclical focuses on
the need of each person to turn to Christ: “People today need to turn
to Christ once again in order to receive from him the answer to their questions
about what is good and what is evil. Christ is the Teacher, the Risen One
who has life in himself and who is always present in his Church and
in the world” (§8). The reference to turning to Christ “once again”
shows that this exhortation is first offered to the Christian faithful
and perhaps to those in societies of a formerly Christian orientation.
The crisis of morality goes beyond dissent from specific moral teachings. The widespread phenomena of dissent and indifference about
moral teachings are rather symptoms of a more general loss of the
sense of the intrinsic relevance of the Christian faith. Faith is above
all a conversion, a turning from falsehood to truth, from false idols to
the true icon of God, Christ (Col 1:15), from the way of death to the
way of life. The encyclical encourages the faithful to consider Christ
once more and to renew the decision to follow him.
The moral life is the response of each person to the invitation of
God to enter into covenant with him by living in faithful obedience
to his revelation. This invitation is addressed to each person to enter
into the unity made possible in Christ. The covenant is neither individualist nor collectivist, since it is the realization of the call to love
God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. There is one covenant
with God so that, as one, we may become his people. The encyclical
emphasizes this call to covenantal faith by showing that the Decalogue is more than a list of commandments, but rather comes with
the introduction “I am the Lord your God” (§66). The commandments in this manner form an interpersonal context of a listening and
attentive relationship, and indeed, a relationship recalling to memory
the actions of God’s redemptive love (e.g., “I am the Lord your God
who brought you out of the land of Egypt”).15 The encyclical argues
		In short, the Decalogue ought to elicit from us a response. God says, “I am the
Lord your God,” and to him we say, “and we are your beloved people.” Servais
Pinckaers comments on the Decalogue in the context of Veritatis Splendor:
“The Decalogue is not simply a list of commandments demanding obedience
under pain of sin and punishment; it is a gift of God’s Goodness, a manifestation of his Wisdom and Holiness. And here is the decisive point: more than
legal obedience, the Decalogue requires of us a response of love, a love that
will take on the twofold form of love of God above all and love of neighbor;
these in turn are refracted into the precepts of the first and second tables”
(“The Use of Scripture and the Renew of Moral Theology:The Catechism and
Veritatis Splendor,” The Thomist 59 [1995]: 1–19, at 6).

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that “the morality of the Covenant” receives “its aspect of completeness, unity and profundity” from the decision to listen to “the Lord
your God” (§66). This decision in favor of God impresses “upon the
numerous and varied particular prescriptions their primordial meaning” (§66). What does such an affirmation mean? Consider the way
in which the human mind grasps a form, the form of a living being,
when it sees that all of the various parts are not simply conglomerated
together, but each belong to a larger whole. In this way, the parts of
the Decalogue remain and may be considered and discussed on their
own, but this is to consider a part without the whole, similar to the
dissection of an animal, in which true knowledge is acquired, but not
the true knowledge of the living animal as a whole. The primordial
meaning of the Decalogue is the confession “Hear, O Israel: The
Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut 6:4). The individual commandments describe parts of the proper relationship of the human creature
to its Creator and to its neighbor. Taken together, however, they
reveal a God who is both Creator and Redeemer and the nature of a
people in covenantal relationship with him, a relationship that may
be entered only by way of a decision. The encyclical emphasizes this
decision: “Israel’s fundamental decision, then, is about the fundamental commandment (cf. Jos 24:14–25; Ex 19:3–8; Mic 6:8)” (§66).
Faith is the commitment of the person to recognize the truth about
God and to live in accord with his ways. The idea that faith could
somehow ignore human morality is alien to the biblical revelation.
The decision-laden character of morality continues in the fulfillment of the promises to Israel in Jesus Christ: “The morality of the
New Covenant is similarly dominated by the fundamental call of
Jesus to follow him” (§66).16 Without reducing morality to a voluntarist expression of arbitrary law, as we will see later in the treatment
of the natural law, the encyclical reiterates the role of the fundamental decision to follow Christ: “The Gospel parables of the treasure
and the pearl of great price, for which one sells all one’s possessions,
are eloquent and effective images of the radical and unconditional
nature of the decision demanded by the Kingdom of God” (§66).
		See David Cloutier’s and William C. Mattison III’s broad review essay “Method
in American Catholic Moral Theology after Veritatis Splendor,” Journal of Moral
Theology 1, no. 1 (2012): 170–192. Among many other observations, they point
out that moral theology after Veritatis Splendor typically approaches moral
reflection within the scope of revealed Christianity and of the universal call to
holiness.

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Christian morality finds its form or shape in this radical and unconditional decision to follow Christ. This commitment and call to
follow Christ is not only moral but also sacramental, and it reveals
the moral dimension of the Christian’s baptismal vow to follow
Christ unconditionally.17
The encyclical seemingly never tires of repeating this evangelical
appeal. Human freedom is “real but limited,” and it “belongs to us as
creatures; it is freedom which is given as a gift” (§86). Freedom exists
for a purpose, which is to say “yes” to God: “Within that freedom
there is an echo of the primordial vocation whereby the Creator calls
man to the true Good, and even more, through Christ’s Revelation,
to become his friend and share in his own divine life” (§86). To
become friends of God and sharers in the divine life! This is a gift that
could never be achieved by mere human effort, even if we had not
fallen into sin. God has shared his life with us in Jesus Christ and the
Holy Spirit. We may follow the path that Christ has carved into the
middle of human history through his death and resurrection.
The Christian moral life, then, is a response to the creative and
salvific actions of God in Jesus Christ. One might say that the Christian moral life is a gift of self now possible in Jesus’s perfect gift of
self. The purpose of freedom is revealed in Jesus: “Jesus reveals by
his whole life, and not only by his words, that freedom is acquired
in love, that is, in the gift of self ” (§87). Freedom is the ability to give
oneself to another. Freedom thus must respect the reality of “the
other” as something beyond merely the projection of my will. The
erroneously exalted view of freedom that would turn the subject’s
freedom into the creator of values prevents a true gift of self, since
all moral actions would be an imposition of self upon others. The
		William E. May comments on this same section of Veritatis Splendor, §66: “Here
the Holy Father is referring to our baptismal commitment, to our free choice
(made for most of us in our name by our godparents and reaffirmed at various
times in our lives, for instance, during the Easter vigil service) to renounce
Satan and to follow Christ, to be Christians, that is, to be other Christs in the
world. This baptismal commitment is the fundamental choice or option of the
Christian. In and through this choice, which henceforth ‘shapes the Christian’s
entire moral life and serves as the framework within which other particular
everyday choices can be situated and allowed to develop’ (Veritatis Splendor,
no. 65), Christians freely take on themselves the task and honor of sharing in
Christ’s redemptive work” (“The ‘New’ Evangelization, Catholic Moral Life
in Light of Veritatis Splendor, and the Family,” Nova et Vetera [English] 2 [2004]:
393–402, at 398–99).

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encyclical is not content simply to express this truth of the human
person’s dignity before others, but elects to consider it within the
new view of reality opened by the mystery of the Incarnation and the
crucifixion: “Contemplation of Jesus Crucified is thus the highroad
which the Church must tread every day if she wishes to understand
the full meaning of freedom: the gift of self in service to God and one’s
brethren” (§87). The gift of self is possible as a fulfillment of the law.
The encyclical here wishes to confirm not only that morality
needs faith but also that faith needs morality.18 The radical opposition between freedom and truth is “the consequence, manifestation
and consummation of another more serious and destructive dichotomy, that
which separates faith from morality” (§88). Such a privatized “faith alone”
mentality would result in a dissolution of Christian morality into the
majority trends of contemporary society (§4). Under this worldliness,
faith is no longer transformative, but rather “is weakened and loses
its character as a new and original criterion for thinking and acting
in personal, family and social life” (§88). The encyclical expresses
concern that decision making now occurs by criteria drawn from
“a widely dechristianized culture,” criteria that are “extraneous or
even contrary to those of the Gospel” (§88). A faith separated from
morality would cease to be the Christian faith. The encyclical urges
that “Christians should rediscover the newness of the faith and its power
to judge a prevalent and all-intrusive culture” (§88). The power of the
faith must allow Christians to offer a “yes” to this and a “no” to that.19
Faith necessitates a submission to the authority of God who
speaks. This submission is not enslaving, since it is the full purpose
of freedom. Faith that does not listen or obey is not true faith. Faith
		Cardinal Laghi frames the false opposition between faith and morality as the
theological aspect of the crisis of morality: “A crisis which has developed, as
regards fundamental moral theology, around two aspects of the present culture:
a) the more philosophical aspect, leading to the claim of human autonomy
in the area of morality, beginning with the discussion of freedom and truth;
b) the more theological aspect, that is, the loss of awareness of the authentic
relationship between faith and moral conduct”( “The Impact,” 7).
19
		John Finnis quips that “faith, not sex, is the theme of Veritatis Splendor”
(“Beyond the Encyclical,” in Wilkins, Considering Veritatis Splendor, 69–76,
at 69). Finnis argues that an ever greater reform of ecclesial preaching and
practice is needed to renew faith: “Only robust faith in the revelation consummated in the life, death, resurrection and teaching of Jesus, and transmitted
by the apostles, will sustain the hope for the heavenly kingdom and for some
share in it” (75). Without disagreeing, one might add that the good news is, in
part, that human realities such as sex participate in this robust faith.
18

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necessarily includes a moral dimension; faith is “a lived knowledge of
Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be
lived out” (§88). The encyclical critiques the separation of faith and
morals as something that prevents human beings from truly encountering Christ in their lived existences. A lived knowledge includes the
fullness of Christ and his commandments. Just as the faith may not
be separated from morality, morality may not be separated from faith.
Both include an existential commitment on the part of the human
creature before the whole of reality, both created and uncreated, as
disclosed in divine revelation.
The act of faith as existential commitment before the whole of
reality may not be separated from the daily life of the believer. The
encyclical affirms that “faith is a decision involving one’s whole existence” (§88). As we have seen so many times, the encyclical steadfastly resists reductionist trends in modern thought that make faith
and morality merely inner dispositions of the subject before transcendental values or projections on a world bereft of meaning. Instead,
Christian faith and morals center on the person of Jesus Christ. The
encyclical describes faith as “an encounter, a dialogue, a communion
of love and of life between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way,
and the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6)”: “It entails an act of trusting
abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (cf. Gal
2:20), in profound love of God and of our brothers and sisters” (§88).
To deprive faith of a specific moral content would be to deprive faith
of its transformational reality. Faith would no longer be capable of
offering a renewed life. The encyclical affirms that faith “possesses
a moral content” and that, “through the moral life, faith becomes
‘confession,’ not only before God but also before men: it becomes
witness” (§89). Faith finds its splendor in the life of discipleship to
the Master. Such a life of discipleship finds its expression in the laws
by which the Creator calls his creatures back to himself.
The Splendor of Law
Perhaps the greatest source of the contemporary crisis in morality is
from the widely shared view that law opposes freedom. Such an understanding shares an anthropocentric view placing the human subject
and human experience at the center of the universe, rather than God.
The relationship between law and freedom requires a proper understanding of the reality of the human person as a creature coming from
and called to return to God. The encyclical describes its purpose as
reflecting “on the whole of the Church’s moral teaching” in light of a

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crisis about morality both inside and outside the Christian community.
Dissents from particular teachings are placed within a larger context of
dissent from the foundations of the moral teaching of the Church. The
encyclical summarizes the problem as follows: “At the root of these
[anthropological and ethical] presuppositions is the more or less obvious influence of currents of thought which end by detaching human
freedom from its essential and constitutive relationship to the truth”
(§4). The encyclical develops this point by affirming that “certain
currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to
such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of
values” (§32). One of the chief burdens of the encyclical is to rescue an
understanding of human freedom from this false exaltation so that it
may serve the purpose for which human freedom was intended.
Drawing on the rich young man’s question before Christ, the
encyclical highlights the need to understand freedom in its proper
connection to the truth, to the good, and to the law: “The question of
morality, to which Christ provides the answer, cannot prescind from the
issue of freedom. . . . But what sort of freedom?” (§34). Genuine freedom
is found in the status of the human person as made in the image and
likeness of God (§34). This way of grounding freedom in the image
of God works to identify God as the source and end of human freedom. To be free is to be made in the image of God; to be free is not
to enjoy limitless choice without a purpose, but to see that one’s freedom will be perfected in coming to know and to love God. Grounding freedom in the image of God also rejects a problematic trend in
modern thought that wrongly considers freedom as something realizable apart from God. A proper understanding of freedom instead
depends upon a proper, theological metaphysics: created freedom is
not uncreated freedom; the freedom of the creature is distinct from,
yet dependent on, the freedom of the Creator.
The distinction between the Creator and creation becomes the key
to understanding the proper role of human freedom and its intrinsic
ordering to the good. The encyclical quotes Sirach 15:14, “God left
man in the power of his own counsel” (§38, citing Gaudium et Spes
§17). Since this is interpreted in light of the image of God, man’s
dominion is a “sharing in God’s dominion to which man has been called”
(§38). Here the encyclical discusses the relationship between freedom
and law, a troubled relationship in much of modern thought as a result
of Kant’s obsession with the autonomous, or self-legislating, self and
the accompanying separation of morality from human inclinations to
happiness, as well as from human (and revealed) traditions of moral

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wisdom. Rather than merely condemning autonomy, however, the
encyclical attempts to recover a “rightful autonomy” from its false
exaggerations. The rightness or wrongness of autonomy turns on its
ability to recognize the Creator. This means more than simply the
ability of the human person to admit something greater than oneself
to which one might submit. Rather, to recognize the Creator is to
recognize the being whose perfection of existence and sheer actuality
is the source and cause of all created perfections and actualities. The
encyclical reaffirms the centrality of this proper metaphysics when
it closes this section with a reference to the Augustinian teaching of
Deus semper maior, God ever-greater (§57). The encyclical avoids the
tendency in modern theology, however, to replace this ever-greaterness of God with an over-stated apophaticism that would deny our
ability to know concrete truths about God and his plan for our salvation. God’s majesty, instead, is cause for a great love of his revelation
and for “the holiness of the law of God” (§41).
In defending a rightful autonomy, the encyclical speaks of “theonomy,
or participated theonomy” (§41). Theonomy holds an equipoise between
a false exaggeration of autonomy, on one side, and heteronomy, on
the other. Theonomy recognizes that the law comes from God, but
also that the entire existence of the human creature comes from God.
Modernity’s false understanding of autonomy seeks to make the human
being independent of God’s gift of existence. The encyclical affirms
that “the autonomy of reason cannot mean that reason itself creates values
and moral norms” (§40). The proper autonomy of the human creature
receives the enabling gift of God’s law. Such obedience is not correctly
described as “heteronomy,” because God’s law does not violate human
reason and human will. There is no reduction of the law to the power
of the will, as the encyclical states that God’s law is “an expression of
divine wisdom.” The law is not arbitrary, but discloses the necessary
paths for the human creature to participate in the harmonious order of
the whole. When the human person submits to the law as coming from
God, “freedom submits to the truths of creation” (§41).
The law is irreducibly theological.20 Recognizing this ensures
		Veritatis Splendor’s account of law safeguards law’s theological character. With
respect to the natural law, Russell Hittinger comments: “It is important to
understand that the problem is not simply the application of natural law to this
or that issue in moral conduct (e.g. contraception), but what the natural law
is in the first place. Whereas the classical theological position situated natural
law within the economy of divine laws, some contemporary theologians hold

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that human reason does not become a separate starting point of the
moral law, but sees itself in relation to the moral law of the provident Creator. Here there is an explicit affirmation of the “Thomistic
doctrine of natural law” (§44).21 The central emphasis in this affirmation is to exclude a reduction of the natural law to autonomous
human reason. Instead, human reason and its orientation to the
moral good in the natural law is rooted in divine reason. Quoting
Leo XIII, the encyclical teaches: “The natural law is itself the eternal
law, implanted in beings endowed with reason, and inclining them
toward their right action and end; it is none other than the eternal reason
of the Creator and Ruler of the universe” (§44). Similarly quoting
Aquinas, it teaches that “the participation of the eternal law in the
rational creature is called natural law” (§43). In these quotations,
the ability of human reason to know good and evil is framed within
God’s providential ordering of creation. The moral life is thus not
an act of rebellious independence, but an intelligent and voluntary
participation into the moral order.22
that natural law denotes the human practical reason. Once the natural law is
equated with the human power to make practical judgments, its specifically
legal character as a received (or participated) law is muted, if not abandoned”
(“Natural Law as ‘Law’: Reflections on the Occasion of ‘Veritatis Splendor,’”
The American Journal of Jurisprudence 39 [1994]: 1–32, at 11).
21
		The encyclical elsewhere affirms that it does not impose “any particular
theological system, still less a philosophical one” (§29). Nonetheless, its central
teachings on law, freedom, and moral action are expressed in an irreducibly
Thomistic approach.
22
		Herbert McCabe suggests that the encyclical would have been more faithful to
Aquinas’s moral teaching by attending more to virtues and less to conscience
and laws: “The encyclical Veritatis Splendor is, in great part, an attack on those
who want to read the rule book as through it were a training manual by those
who want to read the manual as though it were a rule book. Neither seems
to have adverted to the fact that they are logically quite different kinds of
discourse. The rule book, for example, is about individual acts, whereas the
manual is about how to acquire dispositions” (“Manuals and Rule Books,” in
Wilkins, Considering Veritatis Splendor, 61–68, at 63). McCabe, however, also
affirms that there can be no training in dispositions without certain rules that
make the practice. No stranger to the need for language of virtue, Alasdair
MacIntyre observes: “One central moral and theological lesson of the encyclical is that without understanding of and obedience to God’s law, we become
self-frustrated beings” (“How Can We Learn What Veritatis Splendor Has to
Teach?” in DiNoia and Cessario, Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral
Theology, 73–97, at 93). MacIntyre continues at this same place to observe the
real problem that confronts the moral life when theologians fail properly to

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Once the natural moral law is recognized as properly theological,
it is easy to see how the natural law relates to the divinely revealed
laws of the Old and New Testaments. As reason discovers the moral
law in its historical encounter with the world, human beings, and
God, it also finds a heightened moral law in its historical encounter
with the graced revelation of God in his covenant with Israel and in
Christ. The reception of the law by Israel was an occasion of joyful
remembrance: “Israel was called to accept and to live out God’s law as
a particular gift and sign of its election and of the divine Covenant, and also
as a pledge of God’s blessing” (§44). Many of the Psalms express this
gratitude for the gift of the law and exhort the people to meditate on
the law and keep it (§44). The attitude of the Church imitates this
joyful remembrance: “The Church gratefully accepts and lovingly
preserves the entire deposit of Revelation, treating it with religious
respect and fulfilling her mission of authentically interpreting God’s
law in light of the Gospel” (§45). What distinguishes Israel and the
Church from those outside of God’s covenants is the remembrance of
the gift of God’s law. For Israel, it is the remembrance of the Torah.
For the Church, it is the remembrance of Jesus Christ, who fulfills
the Old Law in the New Law.
Drawing on the Thomistic explication of the New Law, the encyclical shows how the New Law is primarily “the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:2), the Holy Spirit dwelling in the hearts
of the faithful (§45). It explicitly remarks that the emphasis in this
present context is to show how all the laws, natural and revealed, Old
and New, have “one and the same God” as their author and “support
each other and intersect” in the accomplishment of God’s plan for
men and women “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (§45;
citing Rom 8:29). The revealed laws thus do not diminish human
freedom or human reason, but rather allow the human person to
reach fulfillment by sharing in the perfect love of God as manifested
in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
In order to maintain the theological orientation of the moral law
and the accompanying anthropological implications, the encyclicommunicate God’s law: “Yet if this is so, if, that is to say, both our moral lives
and our philosophical enquiries are bound to be ultimately frustrated unless
we are able to learn what the Gospel has to teach, then it would be tragic
and seeming paradoxical if what interposed itself between us and the Gospel,
obscuring what the Gospel has to say about these errors, was some aspect of
the discipline of Catholic moral theology.”

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cal emphatically rejects the reduction of the natural moral law to
so-called “laws” of human behavior as seen through the lenses of
the empirical sciences. Though true norms, moral norms are not
empirical norms of typical behavior among human societies. Thus
contrasting empirical norms and their development to a discovery of
the truth of moral norms, the encyclical states:
In fact, while the behavioural sciences, like all experimental sciences, develop an empirical and statistical concept of
“normality,” faith teaches that this normality itself bears the
traces of a fall from man’s original situation—in other words,
it is affected by sin. Only Christian faith points out to man
the way to return to “the beginning” (cf. Mt 19:8), a way
which is often quite different from that of empirical normality.
Hence the behavioural sciences, despite the great value of the
information which they provide, cannot be considered decisive
indications of moral norms. (§112)
Here there is a realism about the fallen condition of the human
race. Since human action and behavior share in the alienation from
God, from our neighbor, and from ourselves, the mere observation
of typical human behavior will not amount to a proper understanding of the law that truly frees the human person. Even were human
beings capable of seeing the moral law in its clarity, such perspicacity
would not be enough for them to live in accord with its demands.
It is not enough to know that “in the beginning, it was not so”; one
needs to find the way to return to the beginning. The way to the
beginning is provided only by the Christian faith. The natural law is
thus illumined by the gift of the New Law: the natural law began to
be fulfilled in the Old Law; both were fulfilled in the New Law. One
finds human flourishing and happiness not via empirical studies, but
in the drama of salvation history (see §45).
The encyclical addresses the notion of the development of moral
doctrine from the perspective of the economy of salvation history.23
		Christopher Kaczor offers an overview of John Paul II’s understanding of the
development of doctrine across his teachings, but with a focus on Veritatis
Splendor, in “John Paul II on the Development of Doctrine,” Nova et Vetera
(English) 11, no. 4 (2013): 1173–92. He writes: “John Paul summarizes that
authentic development does not involve a contradiction to the truths explicated in previous centuries. Even if truths need to be reformulated and reexpressed, they remain substantially the same” (1188).

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Moral doctrine may experience development in a manner analogous
to the development of doctrine of the faith (§28). Unfortunately, for
the modern listener, the language of development typically connotes
a sense of substantial change. When one speaks of a development, one
is often thinking of a change. “Can the Church develop its teaching
on X?” is often thought to be synonymous with “can the Church
change its teaching on X?” The theological usage of “development,”
however, is an argument for continuity and an argument against
evolution of teaching. To explain that the current teachings of the
Roman Catholic Church in his day were the same as the teaching of
the apostolic Church was the burden of Cardinal Newman’s argument for development. The encyclical places the development of
teaching in the context of the spirit-filled contemplation of the Word
incarnate. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ offer a
fixed form of divine revelation that may not be superseded, but only
deepened in the receptive understanding of the Church.
In other words, the encyclical employs the notion of development
to argue for the immutability of the natural law. What is one and the
same may need, nonetheless, better formulations:
There is a need to seek out and to discover the most adequate
formulation for universal and permanent moral norms in the
light of different cultural contexts, a formulation most capable
of ceaselessly expressing their historical relevance, of making
them understood and of authentically interpreting their truth.
This truth of the moral law—like that of the “deposit of
faith”—unfolds down the centuries: the norms expressing that
truth remain valid in their substance, but must be specified
and determined ‘eodem sensu eademque sententia’ in the light of
historical circumstances by the Church’s Magisterium, whose
decision is preceded and accompanied by the work of interpretation and formulation characteristic of the reason of individual
believers and of theological reflection. (§53) 24
		After the quote from Vincent of Lerins, this section cites both Trent’s Dei Filius,
ch. 4, and Pope John XXIII’s opening address to the Second Vatican Council.
The extended quotation here helps to show also that there is no opposition
between the authoritative decisions of the magisterium and the theological
reflection proper to individual believers. Underlying some objections to
Veritatis Splendor is an erroneous notion of the Church. Richard McCormick
perceives that “the issue behind other issues” in the encyclical is ecclesiology:
“The primary context of Veritatis splendor is the Church. Here the encyclical is

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The Latin expression here means “in the same sense and in the same
meaning” and is a quote from Vincent of Lerins’s Commonitorium
Primum, a fifth-century document concerned to show that new formulations did not entail innovations in the conciliar creeds and teachings.
If the Church’s teachings could change at will, then they would simply
be the results of human inquiry. Instead, the power of the Church’s
message is that “Christ is the ‘Beginning’ who, having taken on human
nature, definitively illumines it in its constitutive elements and in its
dynamism of charity towards God and neighbor” (§53).
Here there is a reference to St. Thomas’s teaching on moral
norms in Summa theologiae I-II, q. 108, a. 1: “St. Thomas bases the
fact that moral norms, even in the context of the New Law, are not
merely formal in character but have a determined content, upon the
assumption of human nature by the Word” (§53, note 98). This is
fascinating to consider. The encyclical offers a metaphysical as well
as a historical argument for the immutability of the natural law as
taught by the Church. Because the human person is created in the
image and likeness of God, there is a universality and immutability
to the way that the human creature may return to God via love of
God and neighbor. Simultaneously, because the Word has assumed a
human nature and lived and taught among us, the law’s universality
and immutability have now been inscribed in a particular historical
place and time.
The treatment of law illumines a distinct approach to the bodily
dimension of human life. Law is an act of reason, but it is not
self-creating reason. Instead, the natural law is rational because it
flows from the divine reason in the providential ordering of creation.
God, however, did not merely create the human soul, but created the
human person, body and soul. Thus, the body shares in the rational
disposition of the natural law as an expression of divine and human
linked . . . with a pyramidal, noncollegial ecclesiology. . . . For me, Veritatis splendor is a symbol of a notion of the Church—the Church as a pyramid where
truth and authority flow uniquely from the pinnacle” (“Some Early Reactions
to Veritatis Splendor,” Theological Studies 55 [1994]: 481–506, at 505–6). On the
contrary, the pronouncements of the magisterium are “preceded and accompanied by the work of interpretation and formulation characteristic of the
reason of individual believers and of theological reflection” (§53). Further, far
from rejecting the Second Vatican Council’s ecclesiological vision, John Paul
II adverts often to the Council and considers his work to be at the service
of its proper implementation, as evinced by his citation of Pope John XXIII’s
opening address.

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reason. The encyclical eschews the contemporary tendency to see the
body as “a raw datum” that the inner subject may reconfigure at will
(§48). There is a unity of body and soul by reason of which the moral
life of the human person finds expression not merely in the physical
body, but in the moral body, the body taken up into the rational
soul. Moral actions involving the body do not use the body as an
independent instrument. There is a strong emphasis on the unity of
the body and soul to avoid the charge of “physicalism” occasionally
made against the Church’s teaching of the natural law (§47). To give
an example, to hug a loved one who is grieving is an embodied act
of love and compassion. It is radically inadequate to describe such a
moral act in its physical dimensions of placing arms around a person
at such-and-such an angle and applying so many pounds of pressure.
The natural law is the law proper to that rational embodied soul. It
is not a description of a neutral physical body in action subsequently
overlaid with moral significance. The encyclical describes this unity
of body and soul in terms of both the gift of self and the natural law,
since these are but two parallel manners in which the encyclical sees
the moral dimension of the human person. Using the language of
self-gift, the encyclical teaches that “the person, by the light of reason
and the support of virtue, discovers in the body the anticipatory signs,
the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with
the wise plan of the Creator” (§48). Explained in the language of
natural law, “the true meaning of the natural law can be understood:
it refers to man’s proper and primordial nature, ‘the nature of the
human person,’ which is the person himself in the unity of soul and body,
in the unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations” (§50). Here
the citation is to Gaudium et Spes §51, and so corrects a false reading
of Gaudium et Spes that would separate its personalist approach from
the natural law approach employed in teachings on sexual ethics. The
proper understanding necessitates a harmony between the emphasis
on the person and the natural law, since the nature of the human
person is to be embodied. The body discloses the soul. It is not raw
material to be manipulated. The human being, however, does not
rest in a proper understanding of the moral laws informing and guiding embodied moral acts. The moral law is a law to be lived out and
encountered in and through individual and concrete acts. Knowledge of the law thus works through the judgment of conscience as
the human person acts either in accord with or in opposition to the
objective law.

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The Splendor of Conscience
Veritatis Splendor returns conscience to the realm of judgments about
truth. It is no longer situated within the free will as though it were
simply what the individual decides is right for him or herself. Just as
there is a theoretical reason by which the person makes judgments
of truth about the nature of reality, so there is a practical reason by
which the person makes judgments of moral truth about how to
live in response to the nature of reality. The error of the separation
of conscience from truth finds strong rejection here: “Conscience is
no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of the person’s
intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge
of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment
about the right conduct to be chosen here and now” (§32). Conscience
describes the ability of the human person to act as a moral agent—not
only to know universal moral truths, but to act in accord with those
truths in the given particularities of each day.25
The need for one’s conscience to judge in accord with the truth
forms the basis of the critique of a “‘creative’ understanding of moral
conscience” (§54).26 Although the encyclical does not use the explicit
terminology, one might summarize its teaching by saying that it
rejects a “creative” conscience and affirms a “created” conscience.
Once the human person recalls its status as a creature with a certain
orientation to the Creator, then the illusion of conscience as a realm
in which moral values are imposed upon the world disappears.27
		Ratzinger considers the first part of conscience, synderesis, as a mode of amanesis or “primal remembrance of the good and the true . . . a tendency of man,
who is created in the image of God, to tend toward that which is in keeping
with God” (“If You Want Peace . . . : Conscience and Truth,” in Values in a
Time of Upheaval, trans. Brian McNeil [New York: Crossroad, 2006], 75–100, at
92; originally published as “Wenn du Frieden willst, achte das Gewissen jedes
Menschen: Gewissen und Wahrheit” in 1992, a year before Veritatis Splendor).
26
		Brian Johnstone observes that, when the encyclical rejects a “creative”
conscience, it is not rejecting the “creative” role that conscience may play
within particular societies when human laws contravene the natural law, a
phenomenon that might be observed in the witness against unjust laws such as
racial segregation and abortion: “What is rejected in the encyclical is an exaltation of freedom, such that conscience could itself constitute the moral law,
instead of discerning the objective law and submitting to it” (“The Encyclical
Veritatis Splendor,” The Ecumenical Review [1996]: 164–72, at 169).
27
		Reinhard Hütter offers a helpful distinction between seeing freedom as a
given, versus as a gift. When freedom is seen as a gift, “genuine freedom
denotes the truthful enactment of created existence”; see “(Re-)Forming
25

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Instead, there is a distinction between the decision and the judgment
of conscience: “In their desire to emphasize the ‘creative’ character of
conscience, certain authors no longer call its actions ‘judgments’ but
‘decisions’: only by making these decisions ‘autonomously’ would
man be able to attain moral maturity” (§74). Conscience is not
properly a decision, but a judgment. A decision implies an act of the
will. In this limited understanding, conscience would then merely
choose this or that action. Yet, how then could the conscience be
good or evil? There needs to be a judgment of the truth about moral
actions: “I will do this action because it is good,” or “I will not do
this action because it is bad.” Without such judgments about the
truth of moral good and evil, the human being would not be capable
of moral agency.
There cannot be, then, a proper notion of conscience that would
separate universal norms from concrete moral actions. The universal moral truth is judged through the particular moral action. One
concretely affirms that adultery is wrong by choosing to be faithful
day in and day out in a marriage. It is nonsensical to say that one
affirms that adultery is wrong in the abstract while committing adultery in the concrete. Nonetheless, this is a view that the encyclical
deems worthy of criticism:
In order to justify these positions, some authors have proposed
a kind of double status of moral truth. Beyond the doctrinal
and abstract level, one would have to acknowledge the priority
of a certain more concrete existential consideration. The latter,
by taking account of the circumstance and the situation, could
legitimately be the basis of certain exceptions to the general rule
and thus permit one to do in practice and in good conscience
what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law. . . . On
this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called “pastoral”
solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium. (§56)
The encyclical is not here addressing cases of moral weakness when
individuals fail to act in accord with what they know to be right.
Instead, here is a rejection of any ethical theories—even if “pastoral”
in intent—that would judge acts to be good in particular cases while
Freedom: Reflections ‘after Veritatis Splendor’ on Freedom’s State in Modernity
and Protestantism’s Antinomian Captivity,” Modern Theology 17, no. 2 (April
2001): 117–61, at 119.

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the law prohibits the same acts as evil in general.28 Such a confused
view of conscience implies a false view of the concrete experience
of the individual. The experience of the human person as a moral
agent depends upon the ability of moral truths to guide actions. The
erroneous view, here described as supposedly “pastoral,” would separate human beings in their concrete existence from moral truth. This
would be the opposite of genuine freedom. It is the binding character
of moral truths that frees the human person; the person discovers but
does not create the law.
Since conscience is ordered to the truth as part of the human
person’s creation by God, conscience is also necessarily theological.
The conscience is the vox Dei or “the witness of God himself, . . . the
sacred place where God speaks to man” (§58). Such an emphasis on
conscience as the voice of God is not meant in a subjective sense that
would allow persons to claim God’s support for their various actions.
“God told me to do it” remains an inadequate excuse for immoral
behavior. The teaching is that conscience is theological in the objective sense. It has its origin and end in God’s creative and redemptive
actions toward the human race. When one obeys the moral law,
one obeys the author of that law; when one disobeys the moral law,
one disobeys the author of that law. Since human beings are rational agents, they do not simply follow God’s providential order by
instinct, as do non-rational animals. Instead, they form judgments
about the nature of the world and how they should act in that world.
Conscience covers the judgment of the practical reason about the
application of universal moral norms in particular situations. The
encyclical shows how law and conscience work together: “Whereas
the natural law discloses the objective and universal demands of the
		Peter Black and James Keenan summarize a related, and problematic, view of
conscience in which universal moral laws cease to function in their guiding
role as part of conscience because the norms themselves are constantly under
revision: “The laity, like moral theologians before them, realize that norms are
constantly being reinterpreted, modified, and edited. . . . In conscience they
examine the applicability of these norms and finally shape their judgments
through epikeia in which finally well-articulated norms engage the specific
circumstances of the situation whose demands they must respond to. . . . This
in sum is the entire project of those who have advocated for an autonomous
morality in the context of faith” (“The Evolving Self-Understanding of the
Moral Theologian: 1900–2000,” Studia Moralia 39 [2001]: 291–27, at 319).
Such a view of conscience rearticulates the “‘creative’ understanding of the
conscience” rejected by the encyclical.

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moral good, conscience is the application of the law to a particular
case. . . . Conscience thus formulates moral obligation in light of the
natural law” (§59). It is important that one not misread this in a
wooden manner that would imply temporally distinct judgments
about the universal demands and the application to a particular case.
Instead, it is more adequate to describe the process by saying that
moral acts express moral judgments about the good in this particular
situation, such as “I will not steal this fruit from the grocery store” or
“I will smile at my children even when I am tired after work.” That
is to say, the moral action expresses the reality that the human person
may act in a way that is not merely an expression of instinctual behavior, but a proper act of a person capable of knowing good and evil.
The judgment of conscience in particular cases may not be set in
opposition to universal moral norms. It is precisely in relationship
to moral norms and objective moral goods that conscience possesses
a moral dimension. The encyclical thus explains: “The universality of the law and its obligation are acknowledged, not suppressed
once reason has established the law’s application in concrete present
circumstances” (§59). In this context, conscience is seen as “the proximate norm of personal morality” within the truth of God’s law, natural
and divine, which is “the universal and objective norm of morality” (§60).29
This distinction affirms the dignity of conscience in such a way that
an erroneous conscience may be binding, even while conscience “is
not an infallible judge” (§62). If conscience is clearly fallible, should it
be binding? This is easier to explain when one steps outside of the
judgment of the good to be sought and considers other questions of
truth. In the case of mathematics, it is easier to see that there is a
universal and objective norm governing mathematical truth. None29

		Johnstone asserts a questionable contrast between personalist and natural law
interpretations of conscience within magisterial teaching: “Where Vatican II
(Gaudium et Spes, 16) focuses on the personal dimension of conscience and
the dignity of the person, the encyclical stresses the act and the objective law”
(“The Encyclical Veritatis Splendor,” 170). This criticism assumes a dichotomy
between the existential experience of the person acting and the particular
actions in which one engages. It is sufficient to note here that the overcoming
of such a dichotomy is one of the central goals of Veritatis Splendor. Richard
Spinello offers a helpful analysis of the continuity between Gaudium et Spes
and Veritatis Splendor in which he shows how the Latin text of Gaudium
et Spes §16 includes the necessary role of law and truth in the exercise of
conscience (“Pope John Paul II on Conscience,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review,
August 2009).

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theless, a student has properly learned mathematics only when the
student sees the answer personally and is able to think through to its
solution. As teachers know, guessing the right answer is not enough.
A student who guesses the right answer or merely parrots the right
answer has not yet developed the proper mathematical judgment.
When students begin to exercise such mathematical judgment in
particular instances, they are beginning to see the universal norms
properly for the first time. Thus, the student’s mathematical judgment
is the proximate norm by which the rational subject exercises the
rationality proper to the student. So, in the case of conscience, one
cannot guess in the moral life or merely parrot norms that have been
heard. In proper moral actions, one takes ownership and responsibility. One can say, “I did that.” Such is the role and dignity of
conscience. This is expressed in the affirmation that, in the case when
an erroneous conscience is due to invincible ignorance, the person
may be inculpable but the action remains evil, not good, and does
not contribute to the growth of the person (§63). Since conscience
is a personal judgment embodied in moral actions, we have a duty
to “ form our conscience” and to seek the guidance of Christ and his
Church in learning the truth of the moral life (§63).30 Through the
judgment of a conscience submitted to Christ, the human creature
may journey along the path of freedom to the fulfillment of the law
and the achievement of happiness in God.
The Splendor of the Moral Object and Gifts of Self
The encyclical often summarizes the fulfillment of the law in the
gift of self, both as perfected in Jesus Christ and as replicated in his
followers. The gift of self is given through individual gifts of self. Apart
from particular gifts of self, there would be no gift of self. This is one
way of seeing the inner unity of the encyclical and connecting the
various chapters that move from the decisive encounter with Christ
to the correction of some errors among certain moral theologians. In
order for human beings to find their meaning in their own gift of self
in response to the gift who is Christ, they need to be able to translate
this gift of self into their daily lives. Moral actions find meaning both
within the narrative of each person and within the narrative of creation
and redemption. Any attempts to exclude universally binding moral
		Cardinal Laghi notes that the modern mind typically resists instruction in
morality, but Veritatis Splendor consistently proposes that such moral instruction
is necessarily to live well as individuals and societies (“The Impact,” 4).

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norms would disrupt the narrative of creation and redemption, or at
least remove the person from participating willingly and intelligently in
that whole, which is but another way of describing the human person
in its state of alienation. If the Gospel is to retain its power and splendor, then we must be able to say “yes” or “no” to its call in our lived
experience.
The human person’s existential self may not be properly separated
from a binding relationship to particular moral actions. The encyclical reaffirms the traditional teaching that sin is not only a state
of alienation from God but also an act expressing such alienation.
Christians are encouraged not only to confess sin, but to confess sins.
The way to repent from sin is to repent from sins. There is no way
to repent of sin in the abstract. The human person obtains universal
truths in particular judgments. Mortal sin is primarily a rejection of
God as the highest good and the source of goodness of creatures.
The encyclical thus describes mortal sin as a conversio ad creaturam,
a turning away from God and to the creature in an inordinate way
(§70). Just as the path to God is taken one action at a time, so is the
path away from God.
Once it is seen that human acts bear such importance, it is rather
unsurprising that the encyclical rejects ways of depicting human acts
as infinitely re-describable. Human acts are properly describable in
terms of the moral object of the act. Intentions and circumstances
necessarily play a role in the moral life and the evaluation of human
acts, but they play a secondary role. They are “not sufficient for judging the moral quality of a concrete choice” (§77). In a much-analyzed
passage, the encyclical teaches, “the morality of the human act depends
primarily and fundamentally on the ‘object’ rationally chosen by the deliberate
will, as is borne out by the insightful analysis, still valid today, made
by Saint Thomas” (§78). The object here might be described as what
the intelligent agent is actually doing.
At the same time, the object is never merely a physical description, but must involve the agent or “the perspective of the acting person”
(§78).31 Thus an act of theft and an act of borrowing are morally
		The encyclical’s teaching on the moral object has been carefully explicated
and thoroughly debated in many places, e.g.: Steven Long, The Teleological
Grammar of the Moral Act, 2nd ed. (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2013);
Stephen L. Brock, “Veritatis Splendor 78, St.Thomas, and (Not Merely) Physical
Objects of Moral Acts,” Nova et Vetera (English) 6, no. 1 (2008): 1–62; Martin
Rhonheimer, “Intentional Actions and the Meaning of Object: A Reply to

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different actions even if they might look similar as certain property
exchanging hands. As the encyclical explains, “the human act, good
according to its object, is also capable to being ordered to its ultimate
end” (§78). Human acts have a species that either participates in the
true good or is a rejection of that good. Human acts may be good,
and they may be evil.
The grounding of morality in specific human acts is what leads the
encyclical to reject views that separate the person from the act:
One must therefore reject the thesis, characteristic of teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species—its
‘object’—the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behavior
or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention
for which the choice is made or the totality of the foreseeable
consequences of that act for all persons concerned. (§79)
In light of the above, there are necessarily certain acts that, by their
nature, are “incapable of being ordered” to God. Such acts are properly
evil actions. They are “intrinsically evil . . . always and per se.” It might
seem odd at first glance that the Gospel includes the truth that some
acts are intrinsically evil, but this oddness mainly arises when we are
considering our own actions. When we see the harm that some human
beings have imposed upon others, it is not hard to see that certain
actions ought never to be done. God will eventually right all wrongs
and wipe away every tear when the Son judges the living and the dead.
The joy of the Gospel includes that, though we ourselves have likely
engaged in such evil deeds, words, and thoughts, we may repent and
firmly trust in God’s mercy.
Moreover, universally binding norms are actually knowable both
by reason and by revelation. Moral truth may be difficult to know
with clarity, but so is most other truth. Difficulty in discovery should
never be confused with impossibility. The general experience of
human life reveals that a basic moral sense to do good and avoid
evil is shared across cultures and that disagreements about morality presuppose the existence of moral truths beyond our creation:
“Without the rational determination of the morality of human acting
as stated above, it would be impossible to affirm the existence of
Richard McCormick,” in DiNoia and Cessario, Veritatis Splendor and the
Renewal of Moral Theology, 241–68.

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an ‘objective moral order’ and to establish any particular norm the
content of which would be binding without exception” (§82, citing
Dignitatis Humanae §7). Human reason may come to know the truth
of the moral order, the division between good and evil, and this
division is encountered in the human “yes” or “no” expressed in
individual moral actions.
The “yes” to the Gospel and the “no” to the world-in-rebellion
manifest themselves most clearly in the case of martyrdom: “Martyrdom, accepted as an affirmation of the inviolability of the moral
order, bears splendid witness both to the holiness of God’s law and
to the inviolability of the personal dignity of man, created in God’s
image and likeness” (§92). The identification of martyrdom with a
witness to the moral order may be at first surprising, since we usually
think of martyrs not as witnesses merely to the moral order, but as
witnesses to the confession of the true faith in the face of persecution.32 It is helpful to recall, however, that love of the true God is the
highest moral norm. Moreover, the moral norms that are part of the
natural law have been taken up into revealed law. Thus, the natural
law commands the love of God above all things: the Old Law specifies this as the worship of the God of Israel and no other; the New
Law specifies this further as the worship of God and the Lamb (Rev
4–5). The confession that “Jesus is Lord” thus perfects the inclination
of the natural law. The doctrinal weight of the affirmation includes
the moral dimension that flows from charity. Jesus is not only the
Lord; he is “my Lord and my God” ( John 20). Martyrdom reveals
that human beings have been elevated to live in accord with their
deepest inclinations to love what is highest in reality.
The Splendor of Mercy
Conscience is not a flight from mercy, but rather a plea for mercy.When
evil acts have been committed, “the verdict of conscience remains in
[man] also as a pledge of hope and mercy: while bearing witness to
the evil he has done, it also reminds him of his need, with the help
of God’s grace, to ask forgiveness, to do good and to cultivate virtue
		In “(Re-)Forming Freedom,” Hütter observes that, for the encyclical, martyrdom is about fidelity to God’s law and not to the confession of Christ as it
is defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is not an opposition,
however, since the encyclical repeatedly affirms that the law is the law of Christ.
Hütter offers an insightful and detailed treatment of the exaltations and falls of
human freedom over the past several centuries in light of Veritatis Splendor.

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constantly” (§61). The encyclical may be understood only through the
lens of mercy, and this divine mercy is disclosed in God’s revelation in
Jesus Christ and in his fulfillment of the law and gift of the New Law.
Mercy not only forgives sin, however, but also restores the sinner in a
renewed condition of life.
The proper object of mercy is not sin or the law, but the sinner in
his misery. That is to say, mercy requires holding both to the fullness
of the moral law and to the forgiveness of sins offered in the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. In particular, the encyclical quotes Paul
VI’s Humanae Vitae to emphasize the connection between salvation
and forgiveness: “While it is an outstanding manifestation of charity
towards souls to omit nothing from the saving doctrine of Christ, this
must always be joined with tolerance and charity, as Christ himself
showed by his conversations and dealings with men. Having come
not to judge the world but to save it, he was uncompromisingly
stern towards sin, but patient and rich in mercy towards sinners”
(§95, citing Humanae Vitae §29). The message of salvation requires
an acknowledgement that we are sinners. Apart from a sense of sin,
the message of salvation is no longer good news. By erroneously
situating the moral life in the freedom of self-creation, certain trends
of modern thought have tended in two unhelpful directions: either
human beings experience no sense of guilt, since their actions are in
accord with their private consciences, or they experience an all-pervasive sense of guilt, since they fail to live up to the seeming infinite
demands and responsibilities of self-creation. Instead, the Church is
called to bring a message of mercy to sinners.
The recognition of sin makes possible the reception of mercy. Likewise, the reception of mercy takes away the shame of the recognition
of sin. The encyclical offers a compelling twist on the well-known
parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee goes into
the Temple with gracious words about his own achievements; the tax
collector beats his chest and says “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
Jesus says that the latter went home justified (Luke 18). The encyclical
offers the following interpretation:
The tax collector represents a “repentant” conscience, fully
aware of the frailty of its own nature and seeing in its own
failings, whatever their subjective justifications, a confirmation
of its need for redemption. The Pharisee represents a “self-satisfied” conscience, under the illusion that it is able to observe
the law without the help of grace and convinced that it does

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not need mercy. All people must take great care not to allow
themselves to be tainted by the attitude of the Pharisee, which
would seek to eliminate awareness of one’s own limits and of
one’s own sin. In our own day this attitude is expressed particularly in the attempt to adapt the moral norm to one’s own
capacities and personal interests, and even in the rejection of
the very idea of a norm. (§§104–5)
The encyclical contrasts the repentant conscience with the self-satisfied conscience. Notice that the repentant conscience distinguishes
between the objective requirements of the moral law and the subjective justifications we make of our own behavior. This distinction
opens up the path to redemption. The self-satisfied conscience,
however, fails to see beyond its subjective justifications. In this
manner, the Pharisees are exposed as not being the true followers of
the law, as being blinded by their own adaptions of the law to their
subjective views. The tax collector is the true follower of the law
because he sees the reality of the distinction between his actions and
what the law requires. This distinction is a real separation that may be
overcome only through the mercy of God. The moral norms must be
maintained in their objectivity and not adapted to our “capacities and
personal interests” or else rejected as such. Without objective moral
norms, there can be no mercy. The natural moral law thus makes sin
possible; sin, however, allows the divine mercy to be offered to the
sinner. The encyclical makes efforts to distinguish mercy and forgiveness from the mere excusing of sin or erroneous ethical theories that
re-describe the sinful action as morally good.
Divine mercy not only forgives but also teaches: “It is the Gospel
which . . . proclaims to them God’s mercy, which is constantly at
work to preserve them both from despair at their inability fully to
know and keep God’s law and from the presumption that they can be
saved without merit” (§112). The moral law may be partially hidden
or obscured by the brokenness of our societies or the brokenness
of the individual, both self-inflicted and inflicted by others. Thus,
human beings might reasonably despair as a result of their “inability
fully to know and to keep God’s law.” Instead, God’s mercy reveals
both the law in its fullness and our ability to live in accord with that
law. This is the Gospel: that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the law
and communicates his fulfillment to those who believe in him and
walk the path of discipleship. The encyclical speaks of the Gospel as
a source of joy. “God also reminds sinners of the joy of forgiveness,

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which alone grants the strength to see in the moral law a liberating
truth, a grace-filled source of hope, a path of life” (§112). Here the
emphasis is on the revelation of the law and of mercy. The moral law
liberates, since Christ reveals its greatest depth and perfection in love
of God and the love of neighbor and since he reveals simultaneously
that this perfection is a gift that must be received through repentance
and the forgiveness of sins.
Mercy not only forgives; mercy seeks to restore. Mercy seeks to
alleviate the misery of sin and suffering. Just as the Holy Spirit “renews
the face of the earth” (see Ps 104:30), so also the gift of mercy flowers
when it offers true liberation from sin and new strength to live in
accord with the divine law (§118). The Christian faith thus possesses
“profound humanity” and “extraordinary simplicity” (§119). Much
of the encyclical is a return from the complexities surrounding difficult cases to a simple vision of the Christian moral life. The Christian
life is neither too complex to understand nor too impossible to live.
Instead, the faithful are encouraged: “Christian morality consists, in
the simplicity of the Gospel, in following Jesus Christ, in abandoning
oneself to him, in letting oneself be transformed by his grace and
renewed by his mercy, gifts which come to us in the living communion of his Church” (§119). Mercy does not simply forgive; mercy
renews! There is a profound spirit of equality in this message. Each
person may encounter Christ directly through the ministry and evangelization of the Church. Holiness is not only for the few, not only
for those studied in moral theology. “By the light of the Holy Spirit,
the living essence of Christian morality can be understood by everyone, even the least learned, but particularly those who are able to
preserve an ‘undivided heart’ (Ps 86:11)” (§119). The message to the
least learned is a key part of the new evangelization. The Gospel has
been enriched beautifully over time by being received and handed on
by so many, but this enrichment never eclipses the Gospel’s profound
simplicity and beauty.
Conclusion
The late Fr. Matthew Lamb, a colleague, teacher, and friend, was
fond of repeating that “the higher does not negate the lower.” He
judged that it was a common error of certain modern thinkers, such
as Descartes, Hobbes, Bacon, and Kant, to separate out the higher
from the lower and to see the two in competition within each other.
Instead, the view of some of the ancients taken up by the Christian
tradition held that one needed to distinguish—but not separate—the

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higher from the lower. To recognize the beauty and power of the soul
does not negate the body through which one comes to know both
the human body and the human soul. The higher thus does not negate
the lower. The power of the higher is shown in its ability to elevate
the lower into the purposes of the higher without destroying what is
proper to the lower.33 For instance, my body shares in common some
things with inanimate physical objects, some things with plants, and
some things with non-rational animals. But all of those lower things are
taken up, and not destroyed, when my body expresses the thoughts and
judgments peculiar to a rational being, such as when typing this article.
As has been shown above, the seven-fold splendor of Veritatis
Splendor beautifully manifests the insight that the higher does not
negate the lower. We first saw that, although divine revelation is
higher than human reason, it does not negate human reason. Thus,
the encyclical is both pro-revelation and pro–rational inquiry. It
excludes views of reason, such as rationalism and empiricism, that
reject the superiority of what we learn through divine revelation,
but it likewise excludes a fideism that would leave aside any rational
reception of revelation. In short, the encyclical places moral theology
properly within the entirety of sacra doctrina, within the mystery of
Christ, within the drama of salvation history, within the Christian
community, within the oikonomia, within the revealed law, and also
within the metaphysics of creation and the perfections of created
natures. Second, Veritatis Splendor shows that, while Christ fulfills
the law, he does not negate the law. Christ’s perfect act of self-gift on
the Cross fulfills both the natural law and the law and the prophets of
Israel. Christ’s establishment of the New Covenant is a new creation
of restored and elevated kinship with God. Third, the encyclical
displays that Christian faith likewise is a commitment of the entire
person, intellectual and volitional, to the redemption offered in Jesus
Christ. The faith is an entrance into the fulfillment of the law, a
		C. S. Lewis articulates this same principle in different words: “We can understand that if God so descends into a human spirit [in the Incarnation], and
human spirit so descends into Nature, and our thoughts into our senses and
passions, and if adult minds (but only the best of them) can descend into
sympathy with children, and men into sympathy with beasts, then everything
hangs together and the total reality, both Natural and Supernatural, in which we
are living is more multifariously and subtly harmonious than we had suspected.
We catch sight of a new key principle—the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is
truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less” (Miracles: A
Preliminary Study [New York: HarperCollins, 1960], 178; emphasis added).

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fulfillment that human beings in their fallen condition could never
reach. Nonetheless, the acceptance of the higher, the gift of Christ’s
fulfillment of the law, does not negate the lower, our return gift
of an imperfect and incomplete fulfillment of the law. It is Christ’s
fulfillment that gives meaning and hope to our very necessary efforts
to live life in accord with what he has revealed. Fourth, the encyclical nicely unfolds how the revelation of the Old Law and the New
elevates and perfects the natural law. The natural law no longer is a
sufficient guide for assisting human beings to reach their vocation
to be children of God, but it remains a necessary guide. The natural
law is not done away with by the revealed law, for there would be no
elevation by grace were the human person not a moral agent inclined
to love God and love neighbor. In fact, it is the revealed law that
illumines the natural law in all of its splendor. Once the natural law
is thus seen in the light of divine revelation, how the natural moral
law embraces all human beings is likewise more clearly visible. Fifth,
Veritatis Splendor declares that the objective and universal good does
not negate the judgment of conscience about the concrete realization
of that good in the here and now. Conscience is rather the way in
which the human being participates as an intelligent, free creature
in the objective and providential order of creation. If conscience
became an independent source of moral judgment, then the human
being would remain in a state of rebellion, incapable of loving God
and neighbor. Sixth, it was shown how the human being, across
its life and in its deepest realization, is not separate from individual specific actions. Instead, those individual actions, which, yes,
are lower, so to say, or smaller than the entirety of human life, are
nevertheless taken up into that lived narrative and holistic identity.
To exclude concrete and individual acts from the entire mystery
of the human person would wrongly enclose the person within a
subjective prison that could not be expressed within this concrete
world. Seventh, Veritatis Splendor professes that the revelation of
divine mercy perfects rather than negates human nature, despite its
wounded and sinful state. Thus, mercy moves toward the wounds
and sins of human beings in order to heal the person. Sins, while
certainly requiring address and judgment, no longer have the final
word. Mercy shows that the path to healing comes through forgiveness and repentance. Mere human repentance, however, is not the
initiator. The foundation of the Christian moral life is not in human
efforts to begin again and obey the law, but in God’s gracious initiative wherein he himself becomes human and accomplishes what we

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alone cannot. The gift of the Christian moral life is founded on the
splendor of divine mercy.
Pope Saint John Paul II summarizes the splendor of truth by
making reference to the unique and transformative gift of God:
If God alone is the Good, no human effort, not even the
most rigorous observance of the commandments, succeeds in
“fulfilling” the Law, that is, acknowledging the Lord as God
and rendering him the worship due to him alone (cf. Mt 4:10).
This “fulfilment” can come only from a gift of God: the offer of a
share in the divine Goodness revealed and communicated in
N&V
Jesus. (§11)

A Partial Bibliography for Veritatis Splendor
Albacete, Lorenzo. “The Relevance of Christ or the Sequela Christi?”
Communio 21 (1994): 252–64.
Allsopp, Michael E., and John J. O’Keefe, eds. Veritatis Splendor: American
Responses. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1995.
Anderson, Carl A. “Veritatis Splendor and the Family: The Future of
Christianity in the Postmodern Era.” Communio 21 (1994): 298–310.
Anderson, Carl A. “Veritatis Splendor and the New Evangelization.”
Anthropos 10 (1994): 61–74.
Astoraga, Christina. “A Critical Dialogue with Veritatis Splendor and a
Proposed New Ground for Discussion.” Budhi 3 (1999): 29–50.
Bancaso, Nunilon Arnold F. “From Acting Person to Loving Person: An
Integration of Wojtyla’s Concepts of Acting Person and Love in John
Paul II’s Encyclical Letter, Veritatis Splendor.” PhD diss., University of
Saint Thomas, Center for Thomistic Studies, 2007.
Benedict XVI, Pope. “The Renewal of Moral Theology: Perspectives of
Vatican II and Veritatis splendor.” Communio 32 (2005): 357–68.
Berkman, John. “Truth and Martyrdom: The Structure of Discipleship
in Veritatis Splendor.” New Blackfriars 75 (1994): 533–41.
Bretzke, James T., S.J. “Conscience and Veritatis Splendor in the Church
Today.” Studia Moralia 55, no. 2 (2017): 271–95.
Brock, Stephen L. “Veritatis Splendor §78, St. Thomas, and (Not Merely)
Physical Objects of Moral Acts.” Nova et Vetera (English) 6 (2008):
1–62.
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1313

Faith, Realism, and Universal Reason: MacIntyrean
Reflections on Fides et Ratio
Mats Wahlberg
Umeå University
Umeå, Sweden

Introduction

According to the classical secularization thesis, secularization

is a crisis of faith precipitated by the modern ascendancy of reason and
scientific rationality. Charles Taylor has called theories that promote
this thesis “subtraction stories” because they describe secularization in
terms of humans “having lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves
from earlier confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge.”1
A case can be made that such stories represent the exact inversion
of the truth. To the extent that modernity has ushered in a crisis of
faith, this is arguably a crisis precipitated by an even deeper crisis of
reason. Beginning with nominalism in the late middle ages, modern
thought embarked on a path that would lead to great accomplishments in the areas of instrumental and scientific rationality, but also
to a disenchanted world where people think they can have no ascertainable grounds for their existential convictions. In this world, a
conception of freedom has emerged that makes a virtue out of reason’s
proclaimed incapacity to answer the “big questions” about human
life. “At the hearth of liberty,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “is the right
to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe,
and of the mystery of human life.”2 As Max Weber predicted, uncon		 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2007), 22.
		
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/505/833.html.

1
2

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Mats Wahlberg

strained lifestyle choices, arbitrary desires, and agonistically opposed
Weltanschauungen have come to occupy the territory formerly ruled
by reason. Weber’s description of this situation is less upbeat than
Kennedy’s: “Many old gods ascend from their graves; they are disenchanted and hence take the form of impersonal forces. They strive to
gain power over our lives and again they resume their eternal struggle
with one another.”3
Twenty years ago, Pope Saint John Paul II issued Fides et Ratio,
his Encyclical Letter on the Relationship between Faith and Reason,
to address this state of affairs in Western culture: “It has happened
therefore that reason, rather than voicing the human orientation
towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge
and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights,
not daring to rise to the truth of being” (§5).4 At the time of its
publication, many commentators found it ironic that the Pope,
the institutional embodiment of faith, felt called to defend reason.5
However, well aware that reason and faith are communicating
vessels, the Pope knew that the crisis of one necessarily affects the
other: “The religious impulse is the highest expression of the human
person, because it is the highpoint of his rational nature. It springs
from the profound human aspiration for the truth” (§33, footnote 28). A culture in which the human aspiration for truth is not
nurtured is a culture where religion and faith cannot thrive.
The encyclical is incredibly rich and spans many themes. The focal
point, however, is the notion of truth and its importance in human
life. “One may define the human being,” the Pope says, “as the one
who seeks the truth” (§28). Truth is something that calls humans, enticing them to self-transcendence, and faith and reason are the “two
wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”
		Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed.
H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 149.
4
		References to Fides et Ratio will be done parenthetically in text, and all English
quotation of the encyclicals of John Paul II will be taken from the Vatican’s
website.
5
		Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., “The Challenge to Metaphysics in Fides et Ratio,” in
The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays on Fides et Ratio, ed. David Ruel
Foster and Joseph W. Koterski (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 22; Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Faith & Reason,” Books & Culture,
July/August 1999, booksandculture.com/articles/1999/julaug/9b4028b.html;
Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe:The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology; Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of St. Andrews in
2001 (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2001), 236.
3

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

1315

Faith is inherently connected to certain historical events; it is the
grace-enabled response to the Incarnation of Truth in history, a
response that leads to knowledge that we could not otherwise have
had. Reason is a very generic human capacity that draws on sense
perception and logical inference (§9). It can be used independently of
God’s self-revelation, taking the guise of an “autonomous” philosophy. The autonomy of philosophy should be “supported and strengthened” (§75), says the Pope, on the condition that philosophy does not
close the door to supernatural revelation. Reason can also be used in
“dynamic union” with faith (§76) so that it is stimulated by the truths
of divine revelation—this is called “Christian philosophy”—or it can
assist theology in the explication of divine revelation.
Respecting the fact that faith and reason—like the two natures of
Christ—can never be confused or separated, Fides et Ratio emphasizes
their mutual interpenetration, the way “each contains the other” (in
altera enim altera invenitur) (§17).6 “The relationship between theology
and philosophy is best construed as a circle,” and philosophy’s search
for truth helps theology to understand God’s word better, while the
revelation of God’s word entices reason “to explore paths which of
itself it would not even have suspected it could take” (§73). The
encyclical reminds us, however, that reason is fallen—a circumstance
that exposes it to various pathologies (skepticism, agnosticism, nihilism) and brings about a confrontation between the wisdom of this
world and the wisdom of the Cross. This is why “the preaching of
Christ crucified and risen is the reef upon which the link between
faith and philosophy can break up, but it is also the reef beyond which
the two can set forth upon the boundless ocean of truth” (§23).
How, then, should “truth” be understood? This is a central question
in the encyclical, and the Pope sees a close connection between the
crisis of reason in modernity and deficient understandings of truth. In
order to reclaim the notion from false prophets, he turns to “the apostle of truth,” St. Thomas Aquinas, and the philosophical realism that
he espoused. “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’” (§44).
		For the encyclical’s relationship to Vatican I’s conception of the duplex ordo
cognitionis, see Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Faith and Reason: From Vatican
I to John Paul II,” in Foster and Koterski, The Two Wings of Catholic Thought,
200–202. See also Antonio Sabetta, Faith and Reason: Historical Analysis and
Perspectives for the Present (Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 2012), 65–66.

6

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Mats Wahlberg

For John Paul II, as for St. Thomas, truth is objective: it designates the consonance between object and intellect (adaequatio rei et
intellectus) (§82). But a correct understanding of truth involves more
than this formal aspect. The Pope usually means “truth” as “important
truth”; truths about the ultimate structure and nature of reality, and
especially about the place and purpose of humans in the world. This
is why the encyclical exhorts philosophy to recover its “sapiential
dimension” (§81) and its “genuinely metaphysical range.” “We face a
great challenge . . . to move from phenomenon to foundation. . . . We
cannot stop short at experience alone; even if experience does reveal
the human being’s interiority and spirituality, speculative thinking
must penetrate to the spiritual core and the ground from which it
rises” (§83).7
Needless to say, Fides et Ratio’s teaching on truth and metaphysical
reason goes against the current of much contemporary philosophy,
not to mention theology.8 But to read the encyclical merely as a
critique of trends within academic philosophy and theology would
be superficial. As Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, the Pope’s ideas put
him on a collision course with attitudes that are deeply ingrained
in the modern mind to the extent that this mind has been shaped
by non-realist conceptions of truth and anti-metaphysical views of
reason.9 The Pope’s critique of non-realist philosophical doctrines,
		The Pope’s thinking is here in profound harmony with St. Thomas Aquinas’s,
who argues that the “metaphysical range” of reason follows from the very
nature of the intellect: “The name intellect arises from the intellect’s ability
to know the most profound elements of a thing; for to understand [intelligere]
means to read what is inside a thing [intus legere]. Sense and imagination know
only external accidents, but the intellect alone penetrates to the interior and
to the essence of a thing [Nomen intellectus sumitur ex hoc quod intima rei
cognoscit; est enim intelligere quasi intus legere: sensus enim et imaginatio
sola accidentia exteriora cognoscunt; solus autem intellectus ad interiora et
essentiam rei pertingit]”(De veritate, q. 1, a. 12, resp., trans. Robert W. Mulligan,
S.J. [Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952]).
8
		Of course, the encyclical’s promotion of realism and metaphysics will find
resonance in contemporary analytic philosophy. See R. R. Reno, “Theology’s Continental Captivity,” First Things, April 2006, firstthings.com/article/2006/04/theologys-continental-captivity. For the encyclical’s relationship
to and account of modern philosophy, see Timothy Sean Quinn, “Infides et
Unratio: Modern Philosophy and the Papal Encyclical,” in Foster and Koterski,
The Two Wings of Catholic Thought, 177–92.
9
		Alasdair MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks: A Thomistic Reading
of Fides et Ratio,” in The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, vol. 1 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 193–96.
7

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

1317

therefore, is also a critique of a cultural mindset that inhibits humanity’s search for answers to the perennial questions.
In what follows, I will do two things. First, I will draw extensively
on MacIntyre’s analysis of Fides et Ratio10 to argue that the doctrine of
Thomistic realism is entailed by the encyclical’s portrait of the human
being as a seeker of truth. Fides et Ratio can therefore be read as a
philosophical argument in favor of realism, starting from the premise that humans are essentially “philosophizing animals.” With the
purpose of highlighting the contemporary importance of the Pope’s
message, I will then reflect on the consequences—philosophical and
cultural—of rejecting the encyclical’s portrait of human nature and
the Thomistic realism it implies.
Second, I will ask whether the encyclical’s optimism about reason’s
ability to attain universal truth is tenable in light of the alleged demise
of “foundationalism” and the contemporary suspicion—persuasively
voiced by MacIntyre—against “universal standards of rationality.”
Is the Pope’s belief in the viability of perennial philosophy and the
universality of reason blue-eyed?
Truth-Seeking and Thomistic Realism
Fides et Ratio, it has been said, is “both an encyclical about philosophy
and an exercise in philosophy, a contribution to the very same debates
about which it speaks.”11 I will treat the document accordingly and try
to unearth the outlines of an argument.
The Pope’s point of departure is the claim that philosophy is a
business for everybody. “All men and women . . . are in some sense
philosophers and have their own philosophical conceptions with
which they direct their lives” (§30). There are certain “fundamental questions which pervade human life: Who am I? Where have I
come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after
this life?” (§1). Philosophy is a way of answering such questions by
means of rational enquiry. This activity represents an essential aspect
of human life, and professional philosophers are in service of the
common man or woman, whose questions they must pursue with
systematic rigor.
		I will draw especially on “Philosophy Recalled,” but also on: Alasdair
MacIntyre, “Truth as a Good: A Reflection on Fides et Ratio,” in Tasks of Philosophy, 1:197–215; MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of
the Catholic Philosophical Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009),
165–71.
11
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 179.
10

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Mats Wahlberg

This picture of the human being as essentially a philosophizing
animal will perhaps not elicit universal assent, but many secular
persons as well as Christians will find it plausible and appealing.
Taking the next step in the argument, the Pope claims that:
It is unthinkable that a search so deeply rooted in human nature
would be completely vain and useless. The capacity to search
for truth and to pose questions itself implies the rudiments of
a response. Human beings would not even begin to search
for something of which they knew nothing or for something
which they thought was wholly beyond them. (§29)
It seems, then, that the possibility of finding answers to the “big
questions” must be postulated, on pain of making the human situation appear absurd. What are the conditions that must be satisfied
if the human quest for truth is not to be in vain? I will follow
MacIntyre in arguing that the philosophical tenets of Thomistic realism, or something very similar, must be presupposed as a condition
for the feasibility of the human quest.12 Before we can see whether
this move can support the case that Fides et Ratio tries to make, we
must take a look at the content of Thomistic realism.
An important feature of Thomistic realism is the claim that intelligibility is not imposed on reality by the mind. Mind-independent
reality is intelligible per se, which means that objects have properties
that make them “apt for categorization and conceptualization in this
way rather than that.”13 Different conceptual schemes “fit” objective
reality to higher or lower degrees, and intellectual inquiry is to a large
extent about finding the concepts and categories that most closely
align with the structure of reality itself. This does not presuppose
the possibility of comparing conceptual schemes with unconceptualized reality (which would be impossible). Instead, it is by criticizing
and finding problems with our present conceptualizations—with an
eye to replacing them with more adequate ones—that we become
aware that the realities our concepts describe have characteristics that
warrant certain conceptualizations over others.14
Intelligibility is a phenomenon that has an intrinsic reference to
mind. To say that some object or structure is in itself and objectively
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 192.
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 190.
14
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 190.
12
13

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

1319

speaking intelligible or “apt for . . . conceptualization in this way
rather than that” is to say that it is potentially an object of understanding by a mind. But there is no reason to think that mind-independent
reality would have this property of being apt for conceptualization
unless there is some kind of “pre-established harmony” between
mind and world. In modernity, philosophers have tried to solve this
problem either by becoming idealists—claiming that there is no
mind-independent reality—or by denying the intrinsic intelligibility
of mind-independent reality. According to the latter view, intelligibility is created by our conceptual schemes and resides wholly on the
subject side of the subject–object divide.15
In Aquinas’s theistic worldview, however, intelligibility is a fundamental property of the world because the world resembles its divine
cause, which is supremely intelligible. Human intellects are created
for exploiting the world’s intelligibility, which means that they are
teleologically directed at understanding things. So there is a pre-established harmony between mind and world: the world is there to
reflect the divine intellect, and human intellects are there to understand the world and its divine cause.
Truth is what results when the intellect succeeds in this endeavor.
Aquinas defines truth as “the conformity of thing and intellect”—
adaequatio rei et intellectus.16 When the intellect in question is the divine
mind, then truth means the conformity of natural things to it, just
like works of art conform to the ideas of an artist. However, in the
case of human intellects, truth means that the intellect conforms to
the things that it knows.17 When the intellect’s judgments agree with
how things objectively are, the intellect thinks truthfully. It has then
reached its telos, the particular good for which it was created. This
		John McDowell tries to escape this modern dilemma in his Mind and World
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). However, his account of
the inherent intelligibility of the world has been met with consternation.
Charles Larmore, for instance, asks: “How can we avoid wondering why there
should be such a natural sympathy or pre-established harmony between mind
and world?” (“Attending to Reasons,” in Reading Mcdowell: On Mind and World,
ed. N. H. Smith [London: Routledge, 2002], 199). From a Thomistic perspective, Reinhard Hütter takes McDowell’s struggle to make room for the idea of
the world’s inherent intelligibility as a sign of the present “crisis of metaphysics” (“The Directedness of Reasoning and the Metaphysics of Creation,” in
Reason and the Reasons of Faith, ed. Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard Hütter [New
York: T&T Clark, 2005], 163–64.
16
		Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 1, resp.
17
		Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 2, resp.
15

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Mats Wahlberg

telos is most fully realized in the integrated understanding characteristic of sapientia.18
A world with objective teleology and intrinsic intelligibility is
necessarily a world in which things have determinate natures that
orient them to specific goals. The existence of determinate natures,
in turn, implies that a distinction can be made between what a thing
is essentially and what it is accidentally. For the intellect to understand something is for it to grasp it as part of the intelligible order, which
means to discern its nature—distinguishing its essential properties—
and to see how this nature fits into the overall order of things.19
As we have seen, Thomistic realism is a “thick” doctrine, dependent on a number of controversial assumptions about teleology and
mind–world harmony. As MacIntyre points out, this kind of realism
“entails a denial of theses central to contemporary pragmatism and
contemporary nominalism.”20 Nominalism claims that there is no
mind-independent order of things. The categories we use to classify
things have no intrinsic connection to how things objectively are, and
“to understand some phenomenon is no more than to assign a place
to it within some scheme which we have constructed.”21 Pragmatism
claims that the schemes we construct are justified by how well they
work in our dealings with the world. The standards for judging how
well something works, furthermore, are set by the interests and desires
we happen to have. This means that what counts as true and what
counts as a good explanation of some phenomenon are interest-relative. Since our interests can change, there is no final goal or absolute
truth toward which intellectual inquiry is oriented. There are only
temporary goals that are dictated by our present desires and interests.
Pragmatism and nominalism as philosophical theses have counterparts in certain attitudes that have seeped into Western culture at
the level of popular imagination. Taylor writes about the “buffered
self,” a conception of the disengaged self as the sole source of meaning
and value in a disenchanted world.22 MacIntyre similarly talks about
a “pragmatism and nominalism of everyday life.”23 A person whose
		Aquinas, Summa Theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 57, a. 2. See also MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 187.
19
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 186.
20
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 190.
21
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 191.
22
		Taylor, A Secular Age, 134–42.
23
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 196.
18

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

1321

self-image is shaped by the everyday versions of these doctrines will
not see herself as having a determinate nature with characteristic
activities and a telos, which means that she will not see her own
intellectual activity as being teleologically ordered toward objective
truth. Instead she will view herself “as one who defines her or himself
through his or her acts of choice, choices which determine for her
or him not only what use to make of this or that object and what
attitude to take to this or that other human being, but also how to
describe or to redescribe, to classify or to reclassify the objects and
the uses, the other human beings and the attitudes.”24
One way to characterize such individuals is to say that they are
cognitively or epistemically “curved in on themselves” (incurvati
in se). Since they regard their own interests and desires as the last
instance of appeal when it comes to deciding how to conceptually
carve up the world, they are prevented from seeing themselves as
seekers of an existential truth that transcends their present horizon.
So their situation makes it difficult for them to address the big questions. In fact, from this perspective, there can be no inherently “big”
questions, since things have importance only in relation to subjective
interests and desires. “How should I maximize sexual pleasure?” is a
question as big as any other. As MacIntyre argues, “individuals who
learn to reimagine themselves in this way, so that they become what
they imagine, are prevented thereby from understanding themselves
as having an ultimate end, a final good to which they are directed by
their essential nature.” In a similar vein, John Paul II talks about “the
patent inadequacy of perspectives in which the ephemeral is affirmed
as a value and the possibility of discovering the real meaning of life
is cast into doubt.” Such perspectives cause many people to “stumble
through life to the very edge of the abyss without knowing where
they are going” (§6).
It can be argued, then, that contemporary versions of non-realism—culturally embodied in “pragmatism and nominalism of
everyday life”—reduce the human condition to absurdity. Those
perspectives cannot accommodate the quintessentially human impulse
to seek truth. In order to do justice to the human condition, we must
espouse a form of realism that can support truth-seeking in general
and the search for metaphysical truth in particular. Thomistic realism
fits this bill, and it is unclear whether anything else does. Against
this background, Fides et Ratio can be read as an argument in favor of
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 195–96.

24

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Mats Wahlberg

Thomistic realism. As MacIntyre puts it: “The necessary conditions
for the possibility of the completion of the human questioning enterprise, are just those specified by Thomistic realism. . . . Thomistic
realism is in this way a doctrine presupposed by the questioning of
plain persons.” This conclusion does not imply that Thomism must
be canonized as the only acceptable philosophical system, but it does
implies that any philosophy, if it is to be able to fulfill philosophy’s
proper function, “will have to find some place for those truths that
were classically articulated as the doctrine of Thomistic realism.”25
Since the writing of Fides et Ratio, the influence of “everyday
pragmatism and nominalism” has grown in Western culture. The
idea that one’s gender identity is a given and not an object of choice
is portrayed, in many circles, as an oppressive view, as is the claim
that marriage by nature involves a man and a woman. The radical
rejection of non-chosen “givens” implies, at bottom, a refusal to let
one’s thinking be shaped by mind-independent realities. This attitude
cannot be explained merely by reference to defective philosophical
doctrines; the volitional depravity that St. Augustine emphasized must
also be given its due.26 Non-realist sensibilities, however, can easily be
exploited by a fallen will intent on emancipating itself from the shackles of reality. For many people, it is not a question of whether it is true
that gender identity is established in the womb or whether it is true
that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. It is the very idea that
there could be objective truths in these areas that is rejected as incompatible with personal autonomy. This mentality does not require that
people reject (in a Nietzschean vein) the idea of objective truth as
such. A more common attitude restricts truth to the domain of the
“empirically falsifiable,”27 a move that neutralizes reason in those areas
where it could potentially have an impact on existential choices. This
might explain the peculiar fact that both scientific objectivism and
postmodern relativism have great appeal in our culture.
It goes without saying that a culture that makes it difficult for
individuals to be open to objective reality also, and a fortiori, makes it
		MacIntyre, “Philosophy Recalled to Its Tasks,” 192.
		See Paul J. Griffiths, “How Reasoning Goes Wrong: A Quasi-Augustinian
Account of Error and Its Implications,” in Griffiths and Hütter, Reason and the
Reasons of Faith, 152–59.
27
		Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” Lecture at the University of Regensburg, September 12, 2006, w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/
hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html.
25
26

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

1323

difficult for individuals to be open to divine revelation. Revelation,
as traditionally understood, is a message from God that reveals to
us our deepest identity. From the standpoint of the “buffered self,”
however, the idea that a message from beyond the self can tell us who
we are and what the meaning of our lives is will appear as intrinsically absurd. Identity and meaning are—almost by definition, from
this perspective—the products of the self ’s own volitional or expressive activity. Protestant liberal theology and, following it, Catholic
modernists were sensitive to the needs of the buffered self. They
rejected the idea that revelation is a message—that it has a determinate
cognitive content—and reconceived it as a modification of human
subjectivity. Faith is not a response to a historical revelation, but an
impulse that originates from within the self, and reaches toward an
unknowable divine reality. St Augustine’s “restless heart” is here
transformed into an impenetrable heart: a heart that can yearn for
God but not get to know him by receiving his word.28
The liberal/modernist theological project is part of a more general
anti-metaphysical trajectory of thought that portrays humans as cut off
from cognitive contact with ultimate reality.29 This anti-metaphysical
mentality—which the Pope describes as a “mistrust of reason”—has
gone hand in hand with the rejection of supernatural revelation and
the separation of faith from reason. When reason is no longer credited
with the ability to penetrate the veil of phenomena and attain ontological truth, then belief in a divine revelation will soon deteriorate
into fideism or be given a non-cognitivist interpretation, eventually
to be rejected altogether. An intellect that is curved in on itself is not
an apt receptacle for a divine gift from without.
So, non-realist and anti-metaphysical understandings of truth have
devastating consequences for both faith and reason. One of the great
merits of Fides et Ratio is that it helps us see the deep structural similarity that unites these two routes to truth. Correctly understood,
both are means to self-transcendence. Reason’s orientation toward
objective truth allows human beings to transcend their subjective
		For a far-sighted critique of modernist doctrines of revelation, see Pius X,
Encyclical Letter Pascendi Dominici Gregis (on the Doctrines of the Modernists), w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_
19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html.
29
		 See Quinn, “Infides et Unratio.” For a contemporary critique (from a Thomistic
perspective) of modern doctrines of God’s unknowability, see Paul Macdonald,
Knowledge and the Transcendent: An Inquiry into the Mind’s Relationship to God
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009).
28

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Mats Wahlberg

experiences and conceptual schemes and reach “to the very being of
the object which is known” (§82). Metaphysical thought, moreover,
penetrates to the fundamental building blocks of reality, and ultimately to the transcendent ground of being. Divine revelation is a gift
received by faith that completes this movement. It offers to humans
“the concrete possibility of reaching the goal which they seek”: “In
Jesus Christ, who is the Truth, faith recognizes the ultimate appeal to
humanity, an appeal made in order that what we experience as desire
and nostalgia may come to its fulfilment” (§33). As two paths to
transcendence, faith and reason stand or fall together, and they both
stand or fall with a realist conception of truth.
Universal Reason and Its Cultured Despisers
Does reason’s capacity to attain metaphysical truth, so forcefully
defended by the Pope, entail that there is a universal, tradition-independent
rationality? The claim that there is such a thing has been the object of
sharp critique in academic theology and some sectors of philosophy
during the last decades. The demise of “foundationalism”—a concept
associated with Enlightenment reason—was confidently proclaimed
long before the appearance of Fides et Ratio,30 and non-foundationalist or post-foundationalist perspectives on epistemic rationality have
carried the day in theology, together with more radical approaches.31
Theological non-foundationalism is often motivated by a laudable
desire—apparent in some post-liberal and post-secular theological
programs—to protect the Christian tradition from the epistemological
imperialism of secular modernity.32
The encyclical’s position in relation to these debates has been
variously assessed. Richard Bernstein interprets Fides et Ratio as a
		See, for example, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), ch. 4.
31
		For a brief overview of the debates surrounding foundationalism as they relate
to theology, see Olli-Pekka Vainio, Beyond Fideism: Negotiable Religious Identities
(London: Routledge, 2016), ch. 2. For a more comprehensive account and a
defense of moderate foundationalism, see Randal Rauser, Theology in Search
of Foundations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Non-foundationalist
and post-foundationalist perspectives are presented in: John E. Thiel, Nonfoundationalism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1994); Stanley J. Grenz and John
R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001); Wentzel van Huyssteen, Essays
in Postfoundationalist Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997).
32
		James Fodor, “Postliberal Theology,” in The Modern Theologians, ed. David F.
Ford and Rachel Muers (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 229–48.
30

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1325

misconceived defense of “foundationalism,” a view he identifies as “a
substantial and extremely controversial conception of what constitutes
human knowledge.”33 Stanley Hauerwas, on the other hand, seems
to find in the encyclical a tradition-dependent view of rationality
according to which “there is no standpoint external to the practice of
Christianity for assessing the truth of Christian convictions.”34 “From
John Paul II’s perspective,” Hauerwas writes, “modern philosophy
has made a philosophical mistake by trying to develop epistemologies
that insure that our knowledge is true.”35
These divergent interpretations testify to the fact that the encyclical moves between two poles that can seem to pull in different directions. First, there is a Christocentric pole that emphasizes reason’s
weakness after the Fall and the healing, purification, and guidance
that reason must receive from faith. This is the side of the encyclical
that Hauerwas appreciates. On the other hand, there is a universalist
pole that highlights the universal nature of reason and the autonomy
of philosophy. Writing about “the fathers of philosophy,” the Pope
praises them for wanting to “provide a rational foundation for their
belief in the divinity,” a foundation that “opened a path which took
its rise from ancient traditions but allowed a development satisfying
the demands of universal reason” (§36, emphasis added). In some other
passages, the Pope also mentions “foundations” and refers to the
universal character of reason.36 This is the side of the encyclical that
Bernstein criticizes. Before we can judge whether his accusation of
“foundationalism” is true, however, we must distinguish between
three different senses of the term.
First, thinkers influenced by continental philosophy often use
“foundationalism” in a very broad sense, signifying any attempt
to establish some sort of prima philosophia or universal framework
for thought or reality—no matter whether this framework is of an
ontological or an epistemological kind or whether it is formulated
independently of Christian revelation.37 It is obvious that Fides et
Ratio endorses “foundationalism” in this wide sense. This simply
		Richard Bernstein, “Faith & Reason,” Books & Culture, July/August 1999,
booksandculture.com/articles/1999/julaug/9b4030.html.
34
		Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 231.
35
		Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 235–36.
36
		For example, in §59, §75, and §90.
37
		For this understanding of foundationalism, see Thomas G. Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), 40.
33

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Mats Wahlberg

follows from the fact that the encyclical believes in objective truth
and rejects historicism, linguistic idealism, cultural relativism, and
related doctrines.38
Second, theologians in the postliberal tradition, as well as analytic
theologians and philosophers of religion, usually understand “foundationalism” as an epistemological position. Two different views of this
kind can be distinguished. Sometimes foundationalism is identified as
a thesis about the structure of epistemic justification, the doctrine that “all
knowledge or justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief.”39 Foundationalism in this
sense can be roughly subdivided into “strong” and “modest” versions.
Strong foundationalism (also called classical foundationalism) requires
that the foundation consist of indefeasible beliefs (beliefs that are
infallible, indubitable, or incorrigible). Modest foundationalism (or
“moderate”), on the other hand, holds the foundational or “basic”
beliefs to be defeasible, and therefore only prima facie justified.40
Another epistemological conception of foundationalism identifies
the doctrine with the claim that the proper criteria of epistemic justification are universal.41 This third sense of “foundationalism” should not
be confused with the commonsensical claim that some criteria of
justification are universal. Few people would deny that acceptance of
certain laws of logic is a universal criterion of rationality, for example.
What the view says, instead, is that there is a universal set of criteria
sufficient for rationally settling important epistemic disputes between
different intellectual and cultural traditions. Presumably, the reason
why this view is regarded as “foundationalist” is that the criteria are
		Guarino agrees with this judgment (Foundations of Systematic Theology, 41).
		Ali Hasan and Richard Fumerton, “Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic
Justification,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, October 24, 2016, plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-foundational/. See also Michael Bergmann, “Foundationalism,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology, ed. William
J. Abraham and Frederick D. Aquino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),
253–73.
40
		Another name for modest foundationalism is “minimal foundationalism,” as
used by William P. Alston, Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge
(New York: Cornell University Press, 1989), ch. 2. “Weak foundationalism,”
however, is a different (and even more modest) version of epistemological
foundationalism; see Laurence BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 28–29.
41
		See Eduardo J. Echeverria, “Divine Revelation and Foundationalism: Towards
a Historically Conscious Foundationalism,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 19,
no. 2 (2012): 291–92.
38
39

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

1327

thought of as a rational “foundation” of sorts, but not in the sense
that they are basic beliefs from which other beliefs must be derived.
Alasdair MacIntyre is an influential critic of foundationalism in
the third sense. While he accepts the existence of some universal
criteria of justification, he denies that those criteria are sufficient to
settle important epistemic disagreements between different traditions
of inquiry.42 The kind of substantial standards or criteria that would
be relevant for addressing such disagreements are internal to particular traditions and cannot claim universal acceptance. The idea that
“truth is guaranteed by rational method and rational method appeals
to principles undeniable by any fully reflective rational person” is an
Enlightenment misconception.43
So where does Fides et Ratio stand with respect to foundationalism
in the last two senses? The encyclical says very little about the structure of epistemic justification. What is clear, however, is that it is not
committed to the doctrine of “strong” foundationalism, which has few
defenders today, if any. True, the Pope sometimes talks about a “solid
foundation” (§41) or “rational foundation” (§36), but in most cases,
what he has in mind is not an epistemic but a metaphysical foundation
(thereby endorsing foundationalism in the first sense, which is a position that, arguably, is entailed by the Christian faith itself44). Moreover,
when it seems that he has an epistemic foundation in mind, the text
gives us no reason to identify that foundation with a set of indubitable
or incorrigible beliefs in the manner of strong foundationalism.
Modest foundationalism, on the other hand, has many contemporary defenders, including some theistic philosophers who reject
universal criteria of justification. Alvin Plantinga, for example, denies
that the proper criteria of epistemic rationality (or “warrant”) can
be established in a worldview-neutral way,45 but argues that some
beliefs, including Christian beliefs, can be “properly basic” and hence
		Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth,
1988), 351.
43
		MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 353.
44
		See, e.g., Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 41.
45
		A “criterion,” as I use the term, is something that can figure in an internalist
account of epistemic justification. A criterion must, in other words, be accessible “by reflection alone” or in some other internalistically acceptable way.
This is why Plantinga’s externalist conditions for warrant (which are universal
and refer to the proper functioning of cognitive faculties in their proper environments) do not count as “criteria”; see Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian
Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
42

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Mats Wahlberg

foundational (for Christians) in the sense specified by modest foundationalism.46 However, it is also possible to construct versions of
modest foundationalism that entail universal criteria of justification,
for example by requiring that only beliefs that meet certain universal
criteria can belong to the foundation.
Whether John Paul II is a modest foundationalist or not is hence
a moot question. The answer to it is of little consequence for the
debate about the Pope’s attitude toward universal reason. The decisive issue, instead, is whether the argument of Fides et Ratio entails or
presupposes that the criteria of justification are universal. Is the Pope
a foundationalist in the third sense?
Some elements in the encyclical seem to point in this direction.
For example, the Pope says that “to argue according to rigorous
rational criteria is to guarantee that the results attained are universally
valid” (§75).47 Moreover, the autonomy of philosophy in relation
to theology, which the Pope fully endorses,48 can seem to require
universal, tradition-independent criteria of rationality. By “philosophy,” the Pope does not mean a particular, historically constituted
tradition of enquiry. Philosophies exist and have existed in the East
as well as the West, and “every people has its own native and seminal
wisdom which . . . tends to find voice and develop in forms which are
genuinely philosophical” (§3). If there are no substantial, universal
standards of rationality, what constitutes philosophy as such? What is
it that makes certain forms of inquiry “genuinely philosophical” as
opposed to (say) superstitious or ideological?
Furthermore, the Pope claims that “it is possible to discern a core
of philosophical insight within the history of thought as a whole”
(§4). As examples of such insights, he mentions here “the principles
of non-contradiction, finality and causality,” as well as “certain
fundamental moral norms which are shared by all,” and speaks of
how reason “intuits and formulates the first universal principles of
being.” This can seem to imply the existence of universal criteria
that embody what the Pope calls “right reason” (recta ratio).
However, does the claim that reason is universal necessarily entail
		Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief. See also Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 47–49.
47
		In the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, there are also clear indications of John Paul
II’s attitude toward universal reason: “The natural law involves universality. Inasmuch as it is inscribed in the rational nature of the person, it makes itself felt
to all beings endowed with reason and living in history” (§51).
48
		See §75, §77, and §79.
46

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

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that there are universal criteria of rationality (in the demanding sense
specified above)? Perhaps not. Maybe there is a universal epistemic
rationality—a “right reason”—that cannot be reduced to a set of
rules or criteria, or only to a set of rules or criteria so extensive and
complicated that it would be of no use for guiding epistemic behavior. If this is the case, there must certainly be some common patterns
in rational epistemic behaviors across cultures. However, the rational
resolution of disagreements would not proceed with reference to a set
of universal rules or criteria.
It seems to me that MacIntyre’s account of “the rationality of traditions” exploits this possibility.49 In my reading, MacIntyre is not an
enemy of “universal reason,” but a sophisticated ally (although there
are some unclarities in his position50 ). His aim in Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? is to “provide an account of the rationality presupposed
by and implicit in the practice of those enquiry-bearing traditions
with whose history I have been concerned.”51 Although the traditions
to which MacIntyre refers have different criteria of rationality, they
display common patterns in their development over time, patterns
that, according to the philosopher, embody an implicit, common
account of rational enquiry. The existence of such an implicit
“rationality of traditions” could explain the “core of philosophical
insight” held in common—according to the Pope—by all rational
traditions. It is hence possible that Fides et Ratio’s endorsement of
“universal reason” could be understood in MacIntyrean terms: rationality-as-such does exist, but it is always historically and culturally
embodied and cannot be specified (at least not fully so) in terms of
tradition-transcending criteria.
It must be asked, however, whether a MacIntyrean account of
rationality can support the claim of the First Vatican Council—
unambiguously endorsed by Fides et Ratio52—that “God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the
		MacIntyre, Whose Justice? ch. 18. See also MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of
Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).
50
		See John Haldane, “MacIntyre’s Thomist Revival: What Next?” in After
MacIntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair MacIntyre, ed. John Horton
and Susan Mendus (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), 91–107.
51
		MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 354.
52
		§53: “The Council began with the basic criterion, presupposed by Revelation itself, of the natural knowability of the existence of God.” See also §67:
“Acceptance of God’s Revelation necessarily presupposes knowledge of these
[naturally knowable] truths.”
49

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Mats Wahlberg

things that were created through the natural light of human reason.”53
This claim seems to imply the existence of one or more sound
demonstrative arguments for God’s existence, in principle available
to any person in possession of the natural light of reason. Postliberal
and other theologians who endorse MacIntyre’s tradition-dependent
model of rationality are usually skeptical about the existence of arguments of this type. William Placher writes: “Appeals to explanations
and arguments accessible to ‘any intelligent, reasonable, responsible
human being’ presuppose the kind of universal standard of rationality
that the Enlightenment championed.”54
Are there arguments that can elicit rational acceptance from “any
intelligent, reasonable, responsible human being”? The main problem with this idea is that arguments start from premises, and which
premises a rational person finds acceptable depends on the background
beliefs that he has. For a rational person in tradition A, a certain
premise will appear plausible in light of the background beliefs of
that tradition, while the same premise might appear implausible for
a rational person in tradition B, whose background beliefs are different. “Strong foundationalism” promised to solve this problem by
proposing a universal criterion for the rational acceptability of any
premise—namely, that the premise in question must be indubitable or
incorrigible, or logically derivable from some other propositions that
have these properties. So there are certain premises that any rational
person will accept irrespective of what other beliefs he happens to
have, and only premises of this kind are legitimate as absolute starting
points for arguments. However, if strong foundationalism is untenable,
and if there is no other theory that can solve the problem that strong
foundationalism was created to solve, it is unclear whether there are
arguments—at least of an interesting kind—that must be accepted by
any rational person irrespective of which background beliefs he has.55
It is quite possible, however, to accept this conclusion and still
		Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on
Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed., ed. Peter Hünermann, English ed. Robert
Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 3004.
54
		William Placher, Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1989), 19.
55
		See the discussion of starting points and presuppositions in Charles Morerod,
O.P., “All Theologians Are Philosophers, Whether Knowingly or Not,” in
Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting against Reason Is Contrary to the Nature of God,
ed. Matthew L. Lamb (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2016), 14–17. See also Ralph McInerny, Aquinas (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), 30.
53

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1331

claim that some theistic arguments are “accessible” to any rational person as long as we do not understand “accessibility” in a too
demanding or hyper-inflated way. Suppose there is a certain kind of
fruit—a very good and nourishing one—that grows on trees all over
the world. However, in some places, people have come to believe, as a
result of a false but seemingly credible rumor that has spread, that this
fruit is extremely poisonous. People in those places will abstain from
eating and even touching the fruit, since they believe that doing so
would kill them. In this scenario, the fruit is accessible to everybody
but a false belief prevents many people from accessing it.
An analogous situation could obtain with respect to knowledge
of certain premises needed for demonstrating the existence of God.
Perhaps there are no premises that all rational persons will accept
irrespective of background beliefs, or perhaps those premises that all
rational persons will accept are insufficient for an argument to God’s
existence. Still, it is possible that there are a sufficient number of
premises such that any rational person would accept them unless he
or she is prevented from doing so by some false beliefs that he or she
has. Take, for example, the empirical premise of Aquinas’s First Way:
“change is a real feature of the world.”56 I contend that this premise is
“accessible” to any rational person in the sense that knowledge of its
truth is easily available to anybody, like the fruit in the analogy above.
Of course, Parmenides did not accept that change is a real feature
of the world, and his arguments against this truth are not that easily
dismissed.57 However, if change is a real feature of the world, then
either Parmenides’s arguments must be based on some false premise
or premises or they must be invalid, in which case Parmenides had a
false view of their cogency. In either case, what prevented him from
accepting that change is a real feature of the world was the fact that he
had some false beliefs. It is very reasonable to assume that, if he had not
had those false beliefs, he would have accepted the reality of change.58
		In Aquinas’ words: “Certum est enim, et sensu constat, aliqua moveri in hoc
mundo” (ST I, q. 2, a. 3). Aquinas’s First Way is a version of an Aristotelian
argument that Edward Feser has given a convincing contemporary formulation. It is Feser’s version of this argument that I have in mind in what follows,
and I have borrowed his formulations of key premises (Edward Feser, Five
Proofs of the Existence of God [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017], 35–37).
57
		For discussion and refutation, see Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A
Contemporary Introduction (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014), 31–36.
58
		Note that the fact that a person has false beliefs is not necessarily a proof of
irrationality or epistemic culpability. Sometimes false beliefs can be acquired as
56

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Mats Wahlberg

It is possible that all the premises needed for the argument from
change to go through are accessible to any rational person in this
sense. So, perhaps the metaphysical principles that the argument
requires for its success59 are such that they, like the premise about
change, will be accepted by any rational person who understands
them unless that person has some false beliefs that prevent her from
accepting them (and, of course, unless some irrational factor, such as
“volitional depravity,”60 prevents such acceptance). In other words,
the circumstance that some people reject some of this argument’s
premises on the basis of some false beliefs that they have does not
entail that knowledge of those premises is not universally accessible.
It should be noted that this proposal for how to understand what
a universally accessible argument is presupposes something like the
Thomistic realism recounted in the previous section. This is because
there must be an objective fact of the matter as to whether a certain
belief is true or false; truth cannot be relative to conceptual schemes
or cultural context. Moreover, the teleological conception of the
intellect that Thomism espouses makes it unproblematic for Thomists
to hold that false beliefs represent objective cognitive failure, not in
the sense that the person who believes a falsehood must necessarily
be epistemically culpable—for instance, by having neglected some
epistemic duty or the like—but simply in the sense that his intellect
has missed its telos and been led astray. MacIntyre writes:
False assertions, when believed, interpose themselves between
the individuals who assert them and the realities of which they
speak. In doing so they are always apt to disable those individuals
in their everyday activities as well as in their enquiries. . . . To
assert that “p is false” is to ascribe to the assertion of p and to
belief that p an injurious causal property. . . . So long as I believe
and judge that p, when p is in fact false, I debar myself from
recognizing how things are.61

a result of bad luck, or a person can inherit—without personal culpability—
false beliefs from his community or tradition.
59
		Such as the premise that “change is the actualization of a potential” and that
“the occurrence of any change presupposes some thing or substance which
changes” (Feser, Five Proofs, 35–37).
60
		Griffiths, “How Reasoning Goes Wrong,” 152–57.
61
		MacIntyre, “Truth as a Good,” 202–3 (emphasis added).

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

1333

The good news is that false beliefs are like blindfolds: they can
be removed, enabling the person whose access to objective reality
they have blocked to recognize “how things are.” This is the aim of
rational debate. MacIntyre has explained how such debate can take
place between traditions of enquiry that approach reality armed
with different and incompatible background beliefs, and even
with conceptual frameworks that are incommensurable in certain
respects.62 If Thomistic realism is true, some conceptual frameworks are objectively more apt to capture the intelligible order of
mind-independent reality than others and it is in rational debate
that concepts are trimmed for this task or rejected as inadequate.
The goal of this process is to open the intellect to the structure of
the objective world by removing false conceptions and inadequate
conceptualizations.
Let us take an example. A common objection to the above-mentioned theistic argument from change is that it presupposes an obsolete conceptual framework. The objectors say that the distinction
between potential and actual being—presupposed in the premise
“no potential can be actualized unless something already actual
actualizes it”63 —is explanatorily redundant in light of the modern
natural sciences. If Thomistic realism is true, there is an objective
fact of the matter as to whether the distinction between potentiality
and actuality is really redundant, or whether it is needed to make
sense of the world and the practice of science itself.64 If the latter
is the case, then we must say that those who reject the mentioned
premise on conceptual grounds have been prevented—by a false
belief about conceptual inadequacy—from recognizing how things
really are. Again, the way to remedy this is through rational debate.
A universally accessible argument cannot be expected, by itself, to
clear away all conceivable obstacles to its acceptance, whether in the
form of false beliefs or inadequate conceptual frameworks. That there
are many (interesting) arguments capable of this is a dream that died
with strong foundationalism.65

		MacIntyre, Whose Justice? ch. 18.
		Feser, Five Proofs, 35.
64
		Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, 36.
65
		My claim here is compatible with the possibility that there are some interesting
arguments—perhaps also arguments for the existence of God—that all rational
people must accept, irrespective of beliefs.
62
63

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Mats Wahlberg

Against the background of the suggested way of understanding
universal arguments, it becomes clear why reason—as Fides et Ratio
forcefully argues—cannot do without the guidance of faith. Left
to its own devises, reason very easily ensnares itself in webs of false
beliefs that obstruct its view of reality. This is the result of reason’s
fallenness. The Fall “so wounded reason that from then on its path
to full truth would be strewn with obstacles,” but “the coming of
Christ . . . redeemed reason from its weakness, setting it free from
the shackles in which it had imprisoned itself ” (§22).
The positive effects of faith on reason have both subjective and
objective aspects. Faith purifies reason by instilling humility and
protecting it against presumption (§76). Faith, however, also helps
reason by presenting it with new objective content. It offers to
humans “the ultimate truth about their own life and about the goal of
history” (§12), a truth that “stirs the human mind to ceaseless effort”
and “impels reason continually to extend the range of its knowledge”
(§14). Faith, hence, gives reason cognitive directions about its inquiries and about which philosophical views to avoid as dead ends. By
doing so, faith disentangles reason from webs of beliefs that close our
minds to objective reality. Faith is therefore correctly seen as a light
that can assist philosophy as it struggles through rational debate to
overcome the obstacles that false beliefs and inadequate conceptual
schemes constitute. “Faith liberates reason in so far as it allows reason
to attain correctly what it seeks to know” (§20).66
The weakness of reason separated from faith does not mean that
the validity and soundness of philosophical arguments, or the universal availability of the premises from which they proceed, in any
sense depend on faith, grace, and revelation. Thomas Joseph White
explains:
Perhaps, in our frail and fallen state, it is only under the stimulating and strengthening effects of grace that weakened reason
is healed. It does not follow that there are no such things
		As Pope Leo XIII put it: “The Christian faith, reposing on the authority of
God, is the unfailing mistress of truth, whom whoso followeth he will be
neither enmeshed in the snares of error nor tossed hither and thither on
the waves of fluctuating opinion. . . . Faith frees and saves reason from error,
and endows it with manifold knowledge” (Encyclical Letter Aeterni Patris [on
the Restoration of Christian Philosophy], §9, w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/
en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html).

66

MacIntyrean Reflections on Fides et Ratio

1335

as essentially necessary rational arguments, but only that in
openness to a philosophical argument more is at work than the
operation of a mere neutral rationality.67
In the words of John Paul II: “If human beings with their intelligence
fail to recognize God as Creator of all, it is not because they lack the
means to do so, but because their free will and their sinfulness place an
impediment in the way” (§19).
Conclusion
Drawing on the resources of Catholic tradition, Fides et Ratio manages
to hold together two theses. The first is the primacy of faith, and
the second the universality of truth and reason. Even though reason
is needed to “purify” faith and to explicate the contents of divine
revelation, faith still provides a higher vantage point, and reason must
submit to faith’s guidance. On the other hand, natural reason has the
capacity to attain truth—even truth about God and the “first principles of being”—by operating according to its own rules and inherent
principles. The autonomy of philosophical inquiry must therefore be
respected.
Paradoxically, in contemporary theology, the second thesis is
more likely to meet resistance than the first. As Christian beliefs lose
their credibility in the eyes of the majority in Western societies, it is
tempting for theologians to give up on universal reason and emphasize Christian particularity. It can seem that the only viable way to
defend counter-cultural adherence to Christian beliefs is by means of
a tu quoque argument: “Yes, the Christian tradition cannot pass muster
before the bar of a supposedly universal reason, but neither can any
other tradition, including secular modernity.” Exemplifying this attitude, John Milbank writes: “At the limits of disagreement it will take
the form of a clash of rhetorics, of voices addressing diverse assemblies. And decisive shifts within traditions, or from one tradition to
another, have to be interpreted as essentially ‘rhetorical victories.’”68
Pope John Paul II avoided falling into this trap of “contending
discursive strategies and their agonistic positings.”69 Instead, he chose
		Thomas Joseph White, “Whether Faith Needs Philosophy,” First Things, July
2011, firstthings.com/article/2011/07/whether-faith-needs-philosophy.
68
		John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell, 1990), 347.
69
		Hütter, “The Directedness of Reasoning,” 164.
67

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to defend reason from the standpoint of faith, emphasizing reason’s
universality and its capacity for attaining metaphysical truth while at
the same time making clear that faith provides the bigger picture. In
this article, I have argued that the Pope’s apologia for reason is of great
importance today and that his commitment to universal reason—
correctly understood—withstands the “demise of foundationalism.”
The Pope brings out the importance of metaphysical realism for a
correct understanding of human nature and shows that faith itself
can be correctly understood only against the background of humanity’s universal quest for truth. Revelation, received in faith, gives the
answer that reason seeks. If there were no asking—no philosophical
quest for truth—then whatever revelation would give us, it would
N&V
not be an answer.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1337–1351

1337

“There Is Another Kingdom”:
On The Politics of Virtue
Tracey Rowland
University of Notre Dame Australia
Sydney and Fremantle, Australia

John Milbank’s and Adrian Pabst’s The Politics of

Virtue could be described as the theo-political analogue to Rupert
Brooke’s The Soldier, Blake’s Jerusalem, and Sir Cecil Spring Rice’s I
Vow to Thee my Country all rolled into one. It pulls no punches and is
unashamedly in favor of aristocratic and monarchical forms of government, as well as the establishment of the Church of England. God,
Queen, and Country Anglicans who read it are likely to recall the
words of Simeon’s prayer upon the presentation of the Christ-child:
Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace: Quia
viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum; Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum:
Lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuae Israel.
Another way to describe it would be a twenty-first-century Tory
manifesto or “Blue Labor” handbook. (The difference between the
British political classifications “Red Tory” and “Blue Labor” seems
to be more a matter of class identity than substantive policy preference). Whether one is an aristocrat with a strong sense of noblesse
oblige—that is, a Red or Turquoise Tory (turquoise is red combined
with green ecological interests)—or a person from a lowlier social
position who appreciates the value of an aristocratic element within
the social order—a Blue Labor type—the same substantive political
positions can be arrived at assuming a common Christian intellectual
foundation.
The Politics of Virtue is therefore in the genre of works that offer
a critique of liberal political theory from a Christian perspective. It

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Tracey Rowland

shares something of the flavor of Alasdair MacIntyre’s many publications on the subject, especially the need to reclaim virtue and
unmask the confidence tricks and coercive character of liberal ideology. However, where MacIntyre and others have been criticized for
offering no alternative to the present liberal political order other than
building more monasteries, home schooling children, out-breeding
liberals, and praying for another St. Benedict or Joseph Ratzinger
(all reasonable strategies in my judgment), Milbank and Pabst have
dared to offer some concrete proposals about the structure of political institutions, as well as offering a robust defense of a Christian
commonwealth where both politics and economics are rooted in
virtuous practices.
While a wave of communitarian and specifically Catholic criticisms of liberalism began to be published in the 1980s, often in
response to John Rawls’s liberal classic A Theory of Justice (1971), at
a time when it seemed as though the end-of-history theorists and
a chorus of neoconservative Catholics might be right about the
triumph of liberalism, and hence the enthusiasm (especially among
American Catholics) to quickly baptise it, Milbank’s and Pabst’s
book comes after the outbreak of Islamic terrorism in 2001 and the
financial crisis of 2008. They note that both of these events “exposed
the limitations of the two liberalisms that have dominated Western
politics for the last half-century: the social-cultural liberalism of
the left since the 1960s and the economic-political liberalism of the
right since the 1980s.”1 The social-cultural liberalism of the left and
the economic-political liberalism of the right share the same starting position of a merely negative conception of liberty. A negative
conception of liberty is about “freedom from” something, rather than
“freedom for” something.
This negative liberty rests on two pillars: “a procedural, formalistic
conception of justice and an instrumental notion of reason.”2 The
combined result is that “individuals are proclaimed ‘autonomous’
when all the while they are subjected to the instrumental logic of
bureaucratic control and commercial exchange.”3 Worse yet, “the
scale of self-worth that the individual is encouraged to adopt is the

		John Milbank and Adrian Pabst, The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the
Human Future (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 1.
2
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 18.
3
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 19.
1

“There Is Another Kingdom”: On The Politics of Virtue

1339

very same scale by which she is subjected to mass manipulation.”4
The “double paradox at the heart of liberalism” is therefore the
“relentless privatisation of the public sphere and yet the ever-greater
invasion of the private sphere, coupled with an oppressive moralism masquerading as liberal impartiality and procedural fairness.”5
Milbank and Pabst strongly affirm the judgment of the Slovenian
philosopher Slavoj Žižek that negative liberty has led to “an explosion of legal and moral rules, an endless procession of legalization and
moralization, presented as the fight against all forms of discrimination.” Žižek rhetorically asks: “If there are no shared mores in place
to influence the law, just the bare fact of subjects ‘harassing’ other
subjects, then who—in the absence of such mores—will decide what
counts as harassment”? 6
Today, Milbank and Pabst conclude that “a new, rootless oligarchy
now practises a manipulative populism while holding in contempt
the genuine priorities of most people.” 7 The Milbank-Pabst solution is the blend of “two older and nobler traditions: a combination
of honourable, virtuous elites with greater popular participation; a
greater sense of cultural duty and hierarchy of value and honour,
alongside much more real equality and genuine creative freedom
in the economic and political realms.”8 Included here is a notion of
positive liberty as the search for objective truth and substantive goodness. The true and the good, understood as transcendental properties
of being, are a magnet for human desire, but they do not force it.
Unlike the operation of negative conceptions of liberty, they are not
stealthily coercive.
This recipe for a political order based on virtue harkens back to
the seventeenth-century division between Whigs and Tories and
champions the Tory line of vision. As Milbank and Pabst describe
the history:
The crucial lines of political division appear to have run, after
all, not between court and country, but between Whigs and
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 19.
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 19.
6
		Slavoj Žižek, “Liberalism and its Discontents,” ABC Religion and Ethics, October 26, 2012 (http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/10/26/3619378.
htm), quoted by Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 20.
7
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 2.
8
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 1–2.
4
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Tracey Rowland

Tories who were divided over the questions of the legitimacy of
the Hanovarian line and the primacy and independence of the
Church in the constitution. Just this latter stress rendered the
Tory version of commonwealth constitutional politics (remarkably instigated in part by none other than Charles I) more
genuinely hospitable towards diverse corporate privileges and
to the cultivation of genuinely virtuous roles—architectonically guided by “gentlemen”—within communities of purpose,
purposively pursuing a collectively shared end of national and
human excellence. By contrast, the Whigs tended to override
all inherited rights in the interests of property—demolishing
and removing villages, executing youthful deer-stealers and
legitimising the ownership even of people.9
As Samuel Johnson famously said, the devil was the first Whig!
Milbank and Pabst conclude from this that “at the heart of liberal
self-undoing lies the primacy of the economic and the political over
the social and thus the subordination of both social bonds and civic
ties to the abstract standards of law and contract.”10 This was also the
thesis of Karl Polanyi’s seminal work The Great Transformation (1944).
For a historical understanding of the triumph of the economic and
political over the social, Polanyi remains a leading authority.
In the United Kingdom, the effect of the Whig ascendency
included the replacement of the primacy of kingship as the source
of constitutional privileges in favor of a contractual view of power.
Virtue and honor got trumped by economic utility. Their rout was
aided and abetted by Scottish Calvinist soteriology. In France, a similar social trajectory was fostered by the Jansenist movement, which
is often described as Calvinism’s Catholic “twin.” According to this
genealogy, developed in the work of Jean Rohou and endorsed by
Milbank and Pabst, liberalism has been promoted by both secularizing hedonists and Christian puritans of both Protestant and Catholic
disposition. However, this is only part of the historical jigsaw puzzle.
Added to the unholy alliance of secularist hedonists and Christian
puritans, there is another ideological army, the Rousseauian romantics
or “Guardian/New York Times-reading, granola-eating left Liberals,”
as Milbank and Pabst describe them. These types invert the pessimism
of Thomas Hobbes (the idea that life in the state of nature is nasty,
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 40.
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 58.

9

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brutish, and short) and see life in the state of nature as basically good.
For these types, the “fall” occurs when one human being enters into
a society with other human beings. They are therefore distrustful of
what sociologists call “mediating institutions,” such as the family,
village communities, churches, and local cultural and philanthropic
associations. They prefer to locate all power in the state. These “new
left” types not only influence political and economic processes but
also exert a massive influence over educational institutions. Since they
abhor notions of hierarchy and other gradations of excellence, including moral excellence, their understanding of education is nothing
like the old Greek paideia or the Christian cultivation of the various
faculties of the soul, such as intellect, will, imagination, memory, the
heart, and so on. Their very thin idea of education is something like
the transfer of data from a supplier (formerly a teacher) to a consumer
(formerly a student).11 Their opposition to notions of excellence is
so intense they go to war against the idea that some families might
be more excellent than others or some forms of human relationships
are better than others or some literature or music is superior to other
books or other scores. According to these granola-eating left liberals,
the greatest sin is to use the human intellect to make value judgments.
What they despise is the kind of thoroughly Christian mentality
that Jacques Maritain displayed when he wrote that Christian habits,
the discipline of the will, and so on are “metaphysical letters patent
of nobility.” For these types, there can be no nobility, not even of
the spirit. Not only do such new left ideologues control most of the
humanities departments in the world’s elite universities; they are also
highly influential in departments of education, family and women’s
affairs, health, and child welfare.
In their account of the intellectual history of Western civilization, Milbank and Pabst also observe that liberals cannot pretend
to have invented values such as freedom, equality, toleration, individual rights, constitutionalism, mixed and balanced government,
the rule of law, limits on both state and market power, fair deten		The author is aware that different Catholic theologians recognize different
faculties of the human soul and some want to argue that the heart is merely
an organ that pumps blood around the body and should not be included in a
list of human faculties. The author, however, disagrees with this judgment and
follows in the tradition of scholars such as John Henry Newman, Dietrich von
Hildebrand, and Joseph Ratzinger, for whom the human heart is very much a
concept of theological (not merely biological) significance.

11

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Tracey Rowland

tion, fair trial, right to defense, habeas corpus, good treatment of the
convicted, trial by peers, need of proof for guilt, and requirements
for restitution, reparation, and rehabilitation of offenders.12 These
ideas, they emphasize, are all of Greco-Roman or Germanic law or
Christian provenance. They suggest that one can have all of them
without any recourse to liberal ideology, which is a claim worth
serious consideration.
Milbank and Pabst do acknowledge the argument, often presented
by American neoconservatives, that nineteenth-century French
liberalism a la de Tocqueville and Benjamin Constant is not as bad
as British liberalism a la Hobbes and Locke, but they also argue that
even this more benign form of liberalism gives priority to rights over
duties and priority to the individual over the community, and thus is
part of the noxious inheritance of late-medieval Scholasticism. Not
only did late Scholasticism fuel the intellectual rebellion that became
known as Protestantism, thus destroying the unity of Western Christendom and its sacramental cosmology; the late medieval notions of
univocity (the denial of inherently different qualitative degrees within
being), nominalism (the denial of the reality of universal modes of
existence), and voluntarism (the insistence that divine and then
created will is the primary determinant of reality) also reverberated
through the field of politics. In the intellectual history recounted by
several scholars from the Radical Orthodoxy stable (not just Milbank
and Pabst), this trilogy of intellectual falls creates the slippery slope
that ends with the liberalism of Rawls and other theorists who deny
the existence of any substantive good. Rawls famously said that, if a
man wants to spend his life counting blades of grass, then that is the
good life for him and no one can stand on the outside of this decision
and judge it to be a complete waste of the gift of life.
While thus acknowledging that some instantiations of liberal
political theory may be better or worse than others, Milbank and
Pabst nonetheless argue that, whatever good the more benign forms
of liberalism may permit, this good is never stable. In particular, it is
vulnerable to Hobbesian arguments about the freedom of the individual being best served by strong, centralized governments.13 The better
of the nineteenth-century’s theories expect “tradition” (understood
in something like a Burkean sense as long-standing social mores) to
do the social cohesion work previously undertaken by the Christian
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 29.
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 32–34.

12
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and Neoplatonic metaphysics of participation that was destroyed
by the trio of univocity, nominalism, and voluntarism, mentioned
above. However, Burkean notions of tradition have proven to be
powerless before the waves of Nietzschean deconstruction.
Milbank and Pabst also dismiss the idea that the Renaissance
republican tradition, with its secularist conception of virtue, is a serious contender as a solution to the crisis of contemporary liberalism.
They argue that the price of the secularization of virtue in Machiavelli is a “re-primitivisation and re-paganisation which returns virtue
understood as virtù to its etymological root of male aggressive prowess” and renders modern virtue “proximate to liberal norms, whose
formal negativity is predicated on the latent violence of an assumed
initial lack of consensus.”14 In summary:
Under the aegis of liberalism, the realm of society is corroded
from two opposite directions. On the one hand, everything
human is declared only natural—we are a bunch of greedy apes
with bigger brains. On the other hand, everything human is
declared entirely artificial, just stuff that we have made up such
as the social contract, which reflects nothing other than the
arbitrary whims of human volition and can be simply undone
by other acts of will. In this way, liberalism tends to make the
human vanish in two directions: first, archaically in the face
of the tide of pre-human nature by appealing to the lowest
instincts such as greed, fearfulness and enmity; second, futuristically, in favour of a “post-human” project that can hopefully subordinate human egotism and the unpredictabilities
of desire to a cybernetic future that will augment the liberal
“peace of a sort” into an absolute bio-politics. In this way, the
consummation of liberalism’s inevitable utilitarian inversion
ushers in a phase of history that is both post-democratic and
post-humanist.15
Milbank and Pabst conclude that the history of the century
(1914–2014) suggests that, “if the state does not acknowledge the
need to be guided by higher principles than power or wealth, then
one of two consequences will ensure: either the state invests politics and the economy with quasi-sacred significance, like Fascism,
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 37.
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 58.

14
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Tracey Rowland

Communism and Neo-liberalism, or else the state ends up adopting
a political religion with theocratic tendencies.”16 Like MacIntyre,
William Cavanaugh, David L. Schindler, and several other leading
Catholic scholars, Milbank and Pabst declare the liberal tradition to
be flawed in its foundations. They therefore seek to re-weave the fabric
of the social tapestry that got torn apart by the successive waves of
univocity, nominalism, and voluntarism and to rescue what remains
intact of the tapestry and give it a new lease on life with some strong
arguments in favor of its superiority over liberal social forms.17
Their concrete proposals include directly electing mayors, affirming local government and regional identities, reviving the old guildhalls, reforming the Privy Council so that it is not merely another
arm of the executive branch of government, reforming the House
of Lords so that it becomes a House of a diverse array of social and
professional elites, reforming the House of Commons by getting rid
of the simple “first past the post” principle, allowing for some of the
larger electorates to return more than one Member of Parliament and
bringing in other changes to break up the monopoly of the two-party
system, and finally, establishing more Royal Colleges for a wider
range of vocations.
In relation to the reform of the House of Lords, it is recommended
that hereditary peers be included, not dropped, and that their role
should include a special brief for ecological guardianship. Precisely
how this might look in practice is not developed, but one thinks of
Prince Charles’s many projects to promote the economic viability
of the British villages and to protect the countryside from being
destroyed by philistine property developers. It is probably this kind
of work that Milbank and Pabst have in mind. There has always been
a close association between the National Trust and the aristocracy.
Both try to preserve the natural and cultural treasures of the United
Kingdom.
Milbank and Pabst want to retain the aristocratic element in British society and to affirm all the good community work that many of
the aristocratic families already do, especially in the fields of ecological and cultural treasure preservation. Above all, they want the
Royal Family to have a significant political role and not be reduced
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 234.
		The “re-weaving the tapestry” metaphor is taken from the title of Hans Boersma’s book Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011).

16
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to a “mere ceremonial apex upon a capitalist spectacle.” They argue
that missing from contemporary liberal democracies are “genuine
elites”—“virtuous inspirers and architectonic leaders that act honourably and lead by example in all sectors of society.”18 They further
argue that there needs to be a symbolization of the pursuit of the
good at a hierarchical summit.19 The monarchy serves this purpose,
which they describe in the following terms:
The personal role of the monarch exceeds the impersonal forces
of the nation, the state or the market, reminding us at the top
that the entire edifice of structure and process is in the end a
human worker, a human emergence, dependent on an amalgam of private human decisions. For this reason, monarchy can
today symbolically and actively uphold the sanctity of labour
(human beings are first and foremost works), land (the shared
commons) and life (the dignity of the human person). The
House of Windsor has to some degree already, and commendably, started to take on this international role—even if it could
be greatly extended, to potential global benefit, potentially
somewhat reviving at a supranational level the lapsed (but arguably theo-politically indispensable) role of the Holy Roman
Emperor in the older polity of Christendom.20
The pair even go so far as to refer to the “Christological mediation” of the British monarch, who is “answerable to a higher authority than simply his own private inner conscience.”21 As Roger Trigg
explains:
In England, the Cross on top of the Crown, coupled with the
symbolism of the Coronation service, demonstrate the fact
that temporal power is not the final source of authority, but is
itself answerable to a higher Power. The Queen, personifying
all government in this land, is subject to principles and standards that are not the making of herself or her ministers. All
are under the ultimate judgment of the God who created all.
Denying that is to make something else, whether the interest of
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 205
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 219.
20
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 40.
21
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 219.
18
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Tracey Rowland

the stronger, or the fickle will of the people, an untrustworthy
guide.22
Such an exhortation in favor of monarchical forms of government
is rarely to be found in contemporary Anglophone Catholic literature, with the notable exception of the works of the English Dominican Aidan Nichols. As Robert P. Kraynak has noted, according to
thinkers like Nichols, “the deficiency of democratic and republican
forms is the inability to sustain the high culture and civic piety that
monarchical and aristocratic forms once cultivated as a matter of
course and that helped to sustain a Christian civilisation with loftier
aspirations than bourgeois culture.”23 Nonetheless, perhaps because of
the lingering Fenian influence in Anglophone Catholicism, the natural Catholic affinity for some form of Christian monarchy is far less
pronounced in Anglophone publications than it is in French publications. A contemporary joke is that the French College in Rome is
politically divided between the Légitimistes and Orléanistes, the absolute monarchists and the constitutional monarchists. Republicans,
apparently, are nowhere to be found. Although it is hard to believe
that a few Gaullists have not slipped through the net somewhere,
the caricature is not hard to believe, since the Republican tradition in France is so notoriously anti-Catholic. The memory of the
Republican suppression of the Vendée, not merely the Republican
defeat of the Royal and Catholic Army, but the wholesale genocide
of the civilian population, women and babies included, runs so deep
in French Catholic culture that it makes a “baptism” of the French
revolution very difficult. The English historian Simon Schama has
described the suppression of the Vendée in 1793 as the first example of genocide in modern history. Even the largest buckets of holy
water are inadequate to heal the lesion caused by the murder of some
hundreds of thousands of people, including the so-called Republican
“baptisms,” or deliberate drowning, in the Loire River. Famously,
the only uniform of those peasants and aristocrats who together
formed the Royal and Catholic Army was a cloth badge in the shape
of the Sacred Heart sewn into their shirts.
Recently, the memory of the heroism of the Vendeans was recalled
by Cardinal Robert Sarah, whose home is the former French colony
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 219.
		Robert P. Kraynak, Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in a
Fallen World (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 233.

22
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of Guinea. He described advocates of abortion and population control
in Africa as being like the Republican revolutionaries who massacred
the people of the Vendée, and he rhetorically asked: “Who will dare
to confront the modern persecutors of the Church? Who will have
the courage to rise up without any weapons other than the rosary
and the Sacred Heart, to face the columns of death of our time?” He
further described the “columns of death” as relativism, indifferentism, and contempt for God. He said that the contemporary revolutionaries, like the revolutionary Republicans, want to exterminate
families. He predicted that Africa, like the Vendée, will resist, and
he exhorted the French people to do the same. He concluded with
the statement: “My friends, the blood of martyrs flows in your veins,
be faithful to it! We are all spiritually sons of la Vendée martyrs.”24
While Milbank, Pabst, and Nichols agree about many aspects of
the argument in favor of the British monarchy, where they differ is
over the significance of the Church of England. Quite simply, Nichols, on the one hand, and Milbank and Pabst, on the other, offer two
different meta-narratives about the place of the Church of England
in British history. According to Milbank and Pabst, “after Henry
VIII’s break with Rome, the Church of England eventually sought to
preserve the balance between priesthood and monarchy that reflects
the patristic and medieval emphasis on Christ’s priestly and kingly
authority.”25 According to Nichols:
With the Protestant Reformation—first Henrician-Edwardine
and then, after the intermezzo of Mary’s reign, Elizabethan—
the English Crown (in Parliament or not as the case may be)
destroyed the relative autonomy of sacerdotium in its relation to
regnum. In Western Christendom that autonomy had always
been guaranteed in principle, however fluctuating it was in
practice, by the “de-centredness” of the national Church which
recognised the chief seat of ecclesial authority in the See of
Rome. . . . The English reformation was, then, the action of
the Crown in establishing control over the Church, far more
fully than in the Middle Ages and with a systematic repudia		Nick Hallet, “Cardinal Sarah: The New Revolutionaries are Trying to Destroy
the Christian Family,” The Catholic Herald, August 16, 2017, catholicherald.
co.uk/news/2017/08/16/cardinal-sarah-the-new-revolutionaries-are-tryingto-destroy-the-christian-family/.
25
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 233.
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Tracey Rowland

tion of the claims of the See of Rome. Within this broadish
framework much that was Catholic could survive, but in a form
vulnerable to theological fashion, political events and—in the
setting of mass democracy in the twentieth century—cultural
trends.26
Milbank and Pabst defend the established position of the Church
of England and argue that the political role of the established Church
is “neither to sanctify the state nor to supplant the government as
elected and representative, but, rather, to ‘inform’ public institutions
in the direction of both individual virtue and public honour, without which democracy cannot function or thrive.”27 The Church of
England is also praised for sustaining a parish system that helps to
structure and coordinate local life in diverse ways.28 Other faiths,
they suggest, can come to occupy the same space in a “quasi-established fashion.” Specific mention is made of the Catholic, Jewish, and
Islamic faiths in this context.
Notwithstanding this offer to somehow “share the space,” we are
still left with an Act of Settlement that precludes the monarch from
ever being a Catholic and we have the Church of England occupying
property that was taken from the Catholic Church in a civil war that
destroyed almost all the Benedictine monasteries. The monastic treasure and property was plundered by the crown and often distributed
to socially significant families who would support Henry’s cause.
The parish structure that currently offers tea and sympathy across the
villages of the Kingdom pre-dates the Church of England. England,
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were Catholic territories for
some 1,000 years before Henry VIII had a fight with Pope Clement
VII about divorce and remarriage. Bishop John Fisher, the Lord High
Chancellor Sir Thomas More, and some of the best and brightest men
and women of the Kingdom went to the gallows because they refused
to accept Henry’s new morality.
In one place, Milbank and Pabst observe that “to do something
wrong is also to do something badly, to botch things up in a way that
is bound sooner or later (even if decades or centuries later) to fail,

		Aidan Nichols, The Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England
(Oxford, UK: Family Publications, 2007), 51–52.
27
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 232.
28
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 238.
26

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because vices are hard to sustain and ultimately self-defeating.”29 The
fundamental difference of Milbank and Pabst from Catholic monarchists is that the Catholics believe that Henry VIII and those social
climbers who supported him got something wrong and botched things
up and so his project is bound to fail, even if centuries later, because, as
they say, vices are hard to sustain and ultimately self-defeating.
The “vice” at the root of the Church of England is its weak moral
theology, beginning with Henry’s attack on the indissolubility of
marriage. It is precisely the area of sexual morality and the theological
significance of gender distinctions that today is most definitive of the
difference between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.
Edmund Adamus has gone so far as to argue that it is precisely because
of decisions made by Church of England leaders in the twentieth
century in these fields that London has become, in his judgment, “the
epicentre of the culture of death.” Adamus traces the contemporary
culture of death to the decision of the Lambeth Conference of 1930
to permit contraception, thereby accepting a severance of the procreative from the unitive dimensions of human sexuality. In his “The
Body’s Grace” lecture, Dr. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop
of Canterbury, acknowledged that this decision about contraception
had, as a matter of logic, opened the gate to an acceptance of homosexuality, though he does not see this as a problem.
In the context of a discussion about liberalism’s failure to recognize
the existence of the human soul, Milbank and Pabst refer to Belgium’s
euthanasia laws as an instance of the triumph of what St. John Paul II
called a “culture of death.”30 A whole doctoral thesis could be written
on the subject of whether London or Leuven (home of the “Catholic” University where a philosophy professor was recently sacked for
presenting a prolife argument to his students) is the epicentre of the
culture of death.31 Indeed, one may well conclude that London is the
epicenter of the culture of death in its Protestant form and Leuven
in its Catholic form. Whatever of that issue, the fact is that, from
a Catholic perspective, Milbank’s and Pabst’s anti-liberalism is not
quite anti-liberal enough, since they have missed drilling down to
one of the major roots of Britain’s social decay—the botched jobs of
the Henrician and Elizabethan “root canal fillings” as they manifest
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 6.
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 274.
31
		Tom Heneghan, “Catholic University in Belgium Sacks Lecturer Who Called
Abortion ‘the Murder of an Innocent Person,’” The Tablet, April 10, 2017.
29
30

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Tracey Rowland

themselves today in the almost complete failure of the Church of
England’s leaders to offer any kind of intellectual and spiritual resistance to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. As many have noted,
today it is neither the Anglo-Catholics nor the Calvinists who dominate the Church of England, but the liberal party. Thomas Howard
in his “Lead Kindly Light” interview summed up the situation in the
following terms:
The Anglicanism/Episcopalianism of today differs violently
from the Church (of England) into which I was received in
l960. Back then, the worst feature of the Anglican communion was sheer Modernism, which had taken over 100% of the
seminaries in the U.S., and 19% of the parishes and priests. But
now, that Modernism (springing as it did from l9th century
German biblical criticism whose axiom was that miracles don’t
occur, hence the Bible is a tissue of fairy tales) has reached its
tentacles into the moral realm, and, whereas most Episcopal
clergy back then would have vaguely espoused the general
tradition of Western decency, now they are loud and vicious in
their insistence on re-drawing the moral map of the universe.
It is an inevitable development, but nonetheless shocking and
dismaying.32
In the final analysis, The Politics of Virtue may well become as
influential as MacIntyre’s After Virtue or Rawls’s Theory of Justice. It is
certainly a powerful critique of the crisis of modern liberalism and
the economic and cultural orders it has engendered. In these most
unaristocratic times, when the liberal tradition now takes the form of
a totalitarian intolerance of almost all standards of excellence, Queen
Elizabeth II is a quietly dignified counter-force. She is also arguably
the most widely respected world leader today. She has taken her coronation oath to defend the Christian faith in the countries of her realm
seriously, even though, by Catholic standards, she has not been as
heroic as King Baudouin of Belgium, who abdicated for a day rather
than have his name attached to pro-abortion legislation, or Archduke
Henri of Luxembourg, who refused to have his name associated with
pro-euthanasia legislation. Queen Elizabeth II is often held up as
the quintessential example of a servant leader, since she has devoted
		Thomas Howard, “Lead Kindly Light,” ignatiusinsight.com/features/thoward_intrvw_oct04.asp.

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decades of her life to self-sacrificial public service. British Commonwealth Catholics who care about the Christian fabric of their nations
should be natural supporters of the monarchy. However, this does not
mean that they have to give up on the project of restoring the “old
faith” in the British Isles. Rather, they should rally behind the cause
of the Servant of God Fr. Ignatius Spencer, great-great-great uncle
of Diana, the Princess of Wales, and pray for the conversion of the
British crown.
There is a story that, when Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham,
who was a lineal descendent of St. Thomas More, had a meeting with
St. John Vianney in 1854, Vianney said to Ullathorne: “Monseigneur,
I believe that the Church in England will one day be restored to her
former glory.” If only the British Catholic bishops were to believe
this and pray for it and encourage Her Majesty’s Catholic subjects to
do the same! Until such time, however, scholars like Milbank and
Pabst and their Catholic sympathizers need to work together against
all those forces who seek to snuff out every spark of grace and nobility
N&V
in what Shakespeare called “the sceptred isle.”

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1353–1369

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Challenging the Terms of Liberalism:
On The Politics of Virtue
D. C. Schindler
The John Paul II Institute
Washington, DC

With their recent book The Politics of Virtue,1 John Milbank

and Adrian Pabst take a decisive step in the ongoing critique of liberalism. Not only do they articulate in a compelling way why the current
crises of liberal institutions (which only those blinded by ideology
can still deny) were all but inevitable given the founding principles
of liberalism, but they also show, in relentlessly concrete terms, what
a “post-liberal” alternative might look like. This latter contribution is
something quite new, and quite helpful.
The fundamental significance of this contribution ought not to
be overlooked, and reflecting on it gets us immediately to the heart
of the matter. One of the primary reasons for the triumph of liberalism in the West—and indeed, at this point, arguably in the world
simply—is that it changed the very terms of the debate, so to speak,
and did so in such a way as to make its triumph inevitable. To put
the matter somewhat oversimply, it deposed truth as the standard by
which reality is measured and, in a certain sense, replaced it with
nothing at all, insofar as having a standard of any genuinely transcendent sort inevitably brings one back inside a horizon set by truth
(as Plato showed over and over again). Radically new approaches to
theology, metaphysics, anthropology, and physics are entailed by this
shift that may, on the surface, appear to be little more than a new
		John Milbank and Adrian Pabst, The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the
Human Future (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). Citations to page
numbers in this book will be made parenthetically in text and notes.

1

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D. C. Schindler

approach to politics and economics. This shift is a disruption of the
previous tradition that is more radically new, at least in a certain
respect, than even God’s self-revelation in Christ, since the latter
is the revelation of the God who created all things, including the
nature presupposed and perfected by the gift of grace.2 Ultimately,
liberalism is in this sense a breaking of the analogy of being, and if
there is a metaphysical equivalent of the sin against the Holy Spirit,
the destruction of the analogy of being would be it, insofar as it
finally renders metaphysics itself impossible. Because the shifting of
terms entails a new theology and metaphysics, a critique of liberalism
must address it at this level. But because liberalism is most directly
a political philosophy, the critique has to be carried through to the
level of prudential judgments concerning concrete matters. There are
few who can do both, and the present authors are among those few.
According to the authors, liberalism is a kind of absolutizing of
the individual: “Liberalism . . . exhibits in all its variants an individualist consistency” (45). And, as we see clearly in Hobbes, Spinoza,
Harrington, and Locke, it is committed to a reductive rationalism in
politics that coincides with its ontological individualism: “A reigning
individualism is inseparable from this rationalism and from opposition to any Catholic conception of the role of the Church” (46).
This ontological individualism relentlessly undermines any gathering
up of genuine unities, genuinely cohesive wholes, whether this be
understood at the level of social or political order, culture, economics, philosophy, or others. It is just this fragmentation that ensures the
victory of liberalism: it no longer needs to give reasons for its superiority, for reason itself has been emptied of substance. The only thing
left is effective force in its various manifestations, above all technology, majority opinion, the machinery of state, and the movement of
history, which gets dubbed “inevitable.” Liberalism wins because it
has always neutralized in advance any competitor.
It is in relation to this point that the authors’ achievement stands
out so brilliantly. By introducing a concrete alternative to liberalism,
they not only provide a competitor, or at least outline in plausible
terms what a competitor might look like, but even more fundamentally, in doing so, they reinstate, at least in principle, the classical
terms of the debate, terms that are necessary for there even to be any
		Because of the unity between creation and redemption, there will always
necessarily be in Christianity a certain continuity with pre-Christian thought
that coincides with the essential discontinuity.

2

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue 1355

kind of debate in the first place. In impressive detail, Milbank and
Pabst show that the liberal institutions that we have come to take
for granted—capitalism, democracy, and so forth—were far from
eternally necessary, but are contingent realities founded on certain
philosophical assumptions that were adopted in lieu of others and
in particular historical circumstances that were not in fact inevitable. At the same time, this contingency, by its very nature, raises
the possibility of genuine alternatives, which the authors lay out in
exceedingly concrete terms—to the point of making realistic policy
proposals. If the concreteness of the proposals, which venture into
properly prudential matters, makes some of their positions difficult
to extend beyond the particularities of England (for one example
among many, see the section entitled “Changing the Composition and Selection of the House of Lords” on 257), the very fact of
presenting concrete proposals has general significance. (One of the
most striking things about this book is the compelling argument that
liberalism can only pretend to be realistic; as a matter of fact, the
“post-liberal” alternative has firmer grounds for making that claim.)
Such concrete detail, resonating with an articulation of its governing
assumptions, allows the full engagement of the imagination along
with one’s reason. The book thus enables one genuinely to envision
a non-liberal reality. In the face of a real alternative, liberalism finds
itself in the unusual position of having to justify itself by giving an
argument for its basic positions.
It becomes quickly apparent that, having never really exercised
these muscles, as it were, liberalism simply cannot defend itself.
Milbank and Pabst set the problems of liberalism into stark relief by
characterizing them not simply as a crisis in the various institutions,
but as a “metacrisis.” This characterization serves to reveal that the
crisis, in each case, concerns not just some discrete element inside
the system that can be redressed by the resources the system itself
provides, but the very principles on which the system is founded
and brings to realization. The problem lies in the very terms of the
problem: the very resources liberalism would use to remedy its crises
serve only to reinforce them. In this respect, a response that would
aspire to adequacy demands the broadening and deepening of the
imagination in just the way described. In saying this, it is nevertheless
important to recognize that Milbank and Pabst are not presenting a
facile dismissal, a “root and branch” critique that can afford to be as
outrageous as it wishes because it can take comfort from the secure

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D. C. Schindler

knowledge that it will never be taken seriously. Instead, the authors
are perfectly clear about both the shortcomings and the achievements
of liberalism, specifying what is at stake in each case with a dispassionate objectivity that gives their basic assessment great force.
Given the present context, and because of the concreteness of
their various proposals, it would not make sense to attempt to present a general exposition of the arguments in the book. Instead, in
the brief remarks that follow, I will first set into relief an aspect of
their critique that I have found especially illuminating, which is the
basic logic they identify that turns up analogously in the various
spheres of the political order they address. I will then try to formulate the logic they articulate in more directly metaphysical terms in
order to connect it, so to speak, more obviously with the classical
tradition. Finally, I will suggest what seems to me to be a way in
which they themselves fall into a liberal logic at the highest level
of their analysis: their particular interpretation of religion, or even
more specifically, in the way they privilege the Anglican model of
the Church–state relation.
In the course of their discussion of capitalism, one of the most
powerful of all the liberal institutions, the authors uncover a particular phenomenon that they say lies at the foundation of this particular
institution but arguably governs analogously all of the institutions
and cultural realities they address: “The division of cultural symbolic
reality into pure abstraction and pure materiality” (114). “Cultural
symbolic reality” is not simply one aspect of reality among others; it
is rather a point of convergence around which all of human existence
turns. To break this reality apart, then, is to undermine precisely that
which holds human existence together. What the authors mean by
this “division” is the dissociation of the symbol, which is originally
an organic whole, into its constituent parts, meaning and matter,
each of which is radically transformed in itself in its isolation from
the other. The material thing, in this case, becomes mere stuff, without meaning, and thus comes to present objects of manipulation,
exchange, thoughtless exploitation, and so forth. These impoverished
pieces of matter lose any of the ontological “density” that comes with
having an intrinsic meaning of their own that would anchor whatever
use might be made of them in a sphere that transcends that use. To
refer to this meaning as “symbolic” reveals that its intrinsic character
is not opposed to the relativity implied in art and culture, but is inclusive of the creativity involved in these spheres. It also immediately

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue 1357

implies a rooting of intrinsic meaning in a material substrate, as it
were. Thus, on the other hand, when the symbolic unity is broken,
the meaning loses, in a parallel fashion, the substance of real extension in space and time. It becomes, in this respect, altogether abstract,
and thus itself meaningless, a manipulable cipher, turning at best into
the ideal that the authors so carefully distinguish from the idea in the
properly Platonic sense (which is close to the “symbolic” as they use
the term; see 293). The result is what one might call a metaphysical
schizophrenia: “For the new human construct [offered by liberalism]
is . . . schizophrenic—a hybrid of the purely animal and the purely and
arbitrarily artificial, as if reason, sociality, creativity, and the political
architectonic of virtue were in no way our natural destiny. But this
model does not work, as we now know, even for beavers” (51).
The example the authors offer in this particular context of such a
convergence of meaning and matter is the house, which is of course
a real thing in the world but is obviously much more than mere stuff:
it is a bearer of deep “emotional significance” (114) that is inseparable from its material existence. A house, indeed, has more than
simply emotional significance: it also communicates and actualizes
one’s “place” in a community and the community’s “place” in one’s
existence; it organizes one’s family life, which lies at the basis of
human existence; it opens space in which one receives guests, and
thus represents a kind of crystalizing of the “self–other” relation; it
has, in short, personal meaning, economic meaning, aesthetic meaning, social meaning, and political meaning. One could even show its
metaphysical meaning (as Heidegger, for example, has done) and its
theological meaning. But the notion of symbol is not limited simply
to artifacts, even if these are the most obvious examples. In the end,
every real thing is analogously a symbol: it is a complex whole, interwoven, so to speak, of meaning and matter, which belong inseparably
to each other.3 The key is the givenness of this unity, which is to say, its
a priori character: if the elements are sundered from each other, they
can never simply be reassembled without converting the thing into
something else. A genuinely symbolic reality can be recognized only
as such; it can never be fabricated simply de novo. Whatever elements
of creativity and “construction” symbols invariably include, these
always have their place inside a more fundamental acknowledgment
		If the “utility” dimension, the meaning for others (as distinct from intrinsic
meaning), is more obvious in artifacts, the “inseparability” is more obvious in
natural things, but neither of these can ever simply be separated from the other.

3

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D. C. Schindler

of what is already given.4 Symbols are always more basically received
than they are made.
Now, this last point is what reveals liberalism to be more than just
a particular political philosophy alongside others. Instead, it indicates
a basic disposition toward the whole of reality, and thus at the same
time toward the origin of all reality, God himself. Is the world most
basically a gift, or is it most basically an object, an instrument of human
projects? In the former case, the symbol takes a certain preeminence;
it acquires an analogously sacral character that demands protection,
cultivation, and the formation of character adequate to it—in a word,
it demands a full-fledged “politics of virtue.” In the latter case, by
contrast, we have a relentlessly self-subverting dialectic between
mere matter and abstract meaning in which functions, instrumental
purposes, and exchange values trump every given thing. Instead of a
politics of virtue, we have a “biopolitics,” an artificial organization
of mere animal existence, a reduction of the eu zein, which Aristotle
said defines the essence of political life, to the mere zein he says is
simply its occasioning condition. This dialectic represents an ever-futile attempt to remedy the original dissolution. Milbank and Pabst
present the various faces of this fragmenting dialectic with great
perspicacity: there is the technocratic governance of liberalism (48ff.)
that both absolutizes the preservation of the individual (rights and
property) and at the same time builds violence into the foundation
of political order (57–58); there is the reduction of the world to an
instrument ordered to abstract value (capital), which coincides with
an essentially boundless, primitive accumulation of sheer matter
(114–18); there is an undermining of political representation (which
is of course essentially symbolic in the deep sense of the term), and
a transformation of democracy “into a [passively received] spectacle
of general mass opinion” (193); we have the relegation of meaning
to the purely subjective, private sphere, which removes it from the
public realm wherein it would acquire cultural substance and thus
provide the foundation for education (253); there is the evacuation
from the body (and so gender) of intrinsic significance (271ff.) so
that it becomes itself mere matter that functions publicly as nothing
		The authors insightfully link the logic of symbol and that of gift: “Liberalism
has exacerbated the ‘bio-political’ power of impersonal rule by endorsing the
modern separation of nature from culture that rests upon the undoing of gift
and symbol, which had rendered physical thing and implicit meaning inseparable” (253).

4

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue 1359

more than a springboard for identity politics; and, finally, we have
the pursuit of national self-interest turning inexorably into imperial
power (332ff.).
The reason that these are all forms of dialectic is that, in each case,
we have a contradiction that demands a resolution, which turns out
to be only another instance of the same contradiction. This is why
liberalism has brought about various forms of a “metacrisis.” When
matter and meaning are severed from each other, the matter demands
a recognition of its significance, which it always excludes by its own
definition, and the meaning demands realization, which it likewise
excludes by its own definition. Each becomes absolute in itself, which
means it cannot be integrated in a real way into anything else. And
yet, because any given reality is inescapably part of some whole, its
“absoluteness” will simply be violently overridden by the subsequent
absoluteness of the greater whole. There is nothing more basic than
the “unbuffered” individual in liberalism, but because the individual
as thus abstracted and “atomized” is reducible to a mere unit without
a face, without the intrinsic qualities given by belonging to a nature,
a people, a world, and so forth, that individual counts for nothing at
all in the larger view. The liberal individual is both everything and
nothing, just like every other “token” at play in the various liberal
institutions.
It has seemed to me helpful to connect the dialectical logic that
Milbank and Pabst have brilliantly identified at work in these institutions with the classical metaphysical theme of the relationship
between act and potency.5 From this perspective, we may define
liberalism as the inversion of the classical order, which recognizes
actuality as having ontological, logical, and in one respect, chronological priority over potency.6 The classical view affirms the relative
priority of potency over actuality only in a secondary chronological
sense, the sequentiality of moments in relation to a particular thing:
whereas chicken in truth comes before egg, this particular egg precedes
the chicken that will eventually emerge from it in the passing of
		For a fuller exposition of the argument that will follow, see D. C. Schindler,
Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), esp. part 2.
6
		To summarize Aristotle’s view, which he expounds in book 9 of the Metaphysics, in a brief compass, act is prior to potency: ontologically, insofar as an end is
always presupposed in any change; logically, insofar as we define a potency by
the act it is able to achieve, and not conversely; and chronologically, insofar as
eternity always “precedes” the passage of time.
5

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D. C. Schindler

time. The nominalism, positivism, and rationalistic empiricism of
liberalism entail the isolation and absolutization of this latter sense,
which undermines any genuine primacy of act. In the place of
symbolic unity, we have its etymological opposite, a “diabolical” logic
(sym-ballō vs. dia-ballō, “to join together” vs. “to set at odds”), which
breaks things asunder and pits what originally belonged together in
a given whole against each other as entities in competition. In this
case, a whole is not prior to its parts as an actual reality that informs,
perfects, and orders the parts as parts, giving them a proper substance
of their own and thereby “liberating” them (the authors’ observations
about the role of hierarchy in this regard, though quite contrary to
prevailing sentiments, are extremely important; see 192–93). Instead,
the “potential” parts becomes more “real” than any actual whole
they might happen to configure in one moment or another, and that
whole becomes a mere function of the parts as a relative instrument.
This means that the parts cannot be understood as belonging together
in any larger reality that would give them a genuinely intrinsic relation to one another, but can only at best “co-operate” in the form
of accidental convergence or deliberate contract. At the same time,
because potency has been sundered from any prior ordering actuality,
it comes to be “defined” as sheer indeterminacy, as generating order
always de novo and wholly from below, as it were, which means the
order is altogether contrived and has any reality at all only as long as
the originating power actively sustains it. A liberal marriage can last
only as long as the individual parties expressly want it to last.
While this inversion of potency and act might seem to grant
unprecedented significance to the individual, the genuinely tragic
irony is that potency, thus cut off from actuality, becomes wholly
unreal and nothing at all from the perspective of any reality outside
of itself. The granting of essentially unlimited (because indeterminate) power coincides with the elimination of any real significance.
This irony comes to expression, for example, in the coincidence the
authors perceptively describe of the absolutizing of atomized individual self-interest, on the one hand, and the unlimited subjection of
all individuals to essentially bureaucratized, centralized-state power,
on the other hand (see, e.g., 51), or the destruction of real, qualitative property in favor of “paper money,” wholly abstract purchasing
power now become an end in itself (102). If this analysis is true (and
it seems hard to deny), we can see why characterizing liberalism as
a “metacrisis,” a crisis that reaches down to first principles—in this

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue 1361

case, the rock-bottom classical principle of the priority of act over
potency—is perfectly apt.
In the light of this formulation of the critique of liberalism, we
may now turn to assess what is arguably the most fundamental question in the theme of political order, especially in the modern era: the
relation of Church and state and the interpretation of the nature of
religion (and indeed the nature of God simply) that is implied by that
relation. At the root of the classical priority of act over potency, and
altogether inseparable from that metaphysical principle, is a recognition of God as pure act, the fullness of perfection. If act is prior
to potency, then the absolute first cause of all things cannot but be
the highest actuality, that than which nothing can possibly be more
actual. It follows that liberalism cannot invert the classical relationship
between potency and act without at the very same time transforming
the nature of God, so to speak. At the heart of the rise of liberalism,
its very first order of business, as it were, is the potentializing of
God, and along with this, the potentializing of religion. There is no
space here to work out all of the details, but it is worth noting that
the late-medieval school of thought known as nominalism, which
identified potentia absoluta (i.e., potency unrelated to any actuality),
as distinct from potentia ordinata (potency in relation to actuality),
as God’s most essential trait, is typically identified as the deep root
of modernity. More proximately, the profound revision of reality in
liberalism coincides with a recognition of religious pluralism, which
is to say a notion that (generic) religion is taken to present a number
of (specific) options, each of which performs the same function to
a more or less adequate degree. This particular description of religious pluralism, it is crucial to note, differs fundamentally from
the Western pre-modern inter-action of relatively distinct religious
traditions—the Christian, the Jewish, the Muslim—precisely because
these were recognized as traditions, or even more properly as belonging in a meaningful way to a single tradition, rather than as options.
To recognize that one belongs in fact to a tradition is to acknowledge
the primacy of actuality in relation to potency: I do not “choose” a
religion, but rather receive it as something given, as part of the tradition to which I belong (indeed in a fundamental way as encompassing
that tradition), as part of a whole, membership in which constitutes
my identity prior to any choice. (This does not at all exclude free
assent or the conversion to a particular faith, which of course includes
freedom, but it interprets these as a being taken up into tradition

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D. C. Schindler

rather than as the fundamentally indifferent selection of an option.)
Hegel was therefore correct to say that the Protestant Reformation,
the fragmentation of the Christian tradition, is the sine qua non for
the emergence of modern political thought—of liberalism.7 While
some think of liberalism as a practical response to the problems of the
historical violence this fragmentation entailed, the truth is that whatever practical decisions the emergence of liberalism entailed—like
every single practical decision without exception—were made possible by a particular conception: in this case, the conception of one’s
religion as an option. In other words, in this transformation, that
which is highest and most fundamental, one’s “religion,” the concrete
reality of one’s relation to God, is rendered one possibility among many,
even if it is the possibility one has wholeheartedly chosen, which
means that actuality is in an ultimate way subordinated to potency.
Now, Milbank and Pabst do not discuss the historical, philosophical, and theological origins of liberalism in this particular book, but
one can gather, both from other publications and from implications of
things they do in fact affirm in this book, that they would not fundamentally disagree with the (very brief ) account I just gave, even if
they would put the matter in different terms (and perhaps would not
simply be of one mind themselves on the details). Their affirmation of
the classical priority of act over potency and whole over parts at this
“ultimate” level comes to expression, for example, in two positions
they adopt that are about as contrary to the regnant liberal mind as
anything one can find in print: a defense not only of a monarchy, but
specifically of an anointed king, responsible in a basic way both for men’s
bodies and also for their souls,8 and a defense of an established church
in a commonwealth, which they take care to distinguish from a theocracy.9 Obviously, they have England in mind as a model in both cases.
		In the remark on § 270 in his Philosophy of Right, Hegel writes: “Far from it
being, or ever having been, a misfortune for the state if the Church is divided,
it is through this division alone that the state has been able to fulfill its destiny
as self-conscious rationality and ethical life. This division is likewise the most
fortunate thing which could have happened to the Church and to thought
as far as their freedom and rationality are concerned” (Hegel: Elements of the
Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991], 302).
8
		See 215–20.This point is so fundamental to the argument of the book that the
striking quotation from Hooker the authors use to make it (220) also appears
as one of the book’s epigraphs.
9
		230–32. In fact, they argue, persuasively, that such a thing is one of the best ways
to avoid a theocracy (232). Aquinas, too, makes this argument in De regno 15.
7

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue 1363

While these positions may be controversial enough to cause many
readers simply to dismiss the entire book and its claims out of hand,
thus bearing witness to the fact that liberalism simply cannot tolerate
any alternatives to itself and refuses to give reasons for its own positions in relation to alternatives, a more genuinely open mind might see
how much wisdom and good sense there is in these defenses. There is
no space here to enter into a detailed exposition and evaluation of the
cases they make, but it is worth highlighting their excellent argument
that an established church actually enhances the meaning of religious liberty more generally, insofar as it opens up a space of genuine
substance in the political order that would allow, in principle, a more
adequate role, and so respect, for other religious traditions.
It lies beyond my competence to make a proper judgment on the
matter of the nature of kingship as it exists in England and how it
has developed over history, or on the matter of the precise character
of the Church of England and its official status. But I wish simply to
raise a question in light of the critique of liberalism that the authors
themselves mount, and specifically in light of the formulation I have
proposed above in terms of the relation between potency and act. Is
it, in the end, possible to make the Church of England the highest
religious authority, even for this particular people, without building the liberal paradigm into the very foundation and accepting the
inversion of the classical priority of act over potency as ultimate? I
mean to raise this as a genuine question, though there seem to me to
be grounds for answering the question in the negative.
From what I understand—though I confess again the limits of my
knowledge of such matters—there are among Anglicans those who
call themselves “Anglo-Catholic” and mean by that, among other
things, to acknowledge an organic link, a continuity, between the
Church of England and the original Christian tradition, and to distinguish this church from Protestantism in general, which understands
itself as protesting, as breaking with the Christian tradition in its actuality (a break compatible with efforts to recover the “early Church”
beyond the mediation of the actual tradition). But even with respect
to “Anglo-Catholics,” the question remains whether one can recognize the actuality of the Christian tradition without acknowledging
an actual office representing that tradition specifically in its universality.
In other words, the priority of actuality over potency, of whole over
part, requires—I submit—the acknowledgment of an actual magisterium as interpreter of the tradition and an actual chair as representing
the objective unity of the Church throughout the ages and beyond

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the particularity of the churches belonging to specific nations and
communities.10 In a word, the priority of act over potency requires
the recognition of the pope.11 As the authors themselves recognize,
it is not at all an accident that Locke’s Letter on Toleration, one of the
“founding documents” of liberalism, expresses a capacity to accommodate any version of Christianity, even the Church of England,
apart from Roman Catholicism: “The advocacy of toleration by
Locke and others was in reality an advocacy of civic indifference,
and his exclusion of Catholics from toleration was not an ‘exception’
to his theory, but, rather, its whole basis, since for Catholic doctrine,
such indifference is unacceptable” (46).12 Because the head of the
Church of England is not actually outside of the state, but simultaneously its head, at least in a certain respect,13 this church too can be
		For an argument on both sides of this issue, see the well-known debate
between Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Kasper: on September 19, 2001,
the English edition of L’Osservatore Romano published an address entitled
“Ecclesiology of the Constitution on the Church,Vatican II, Lumen Gentium”
that Ratzinger had given at a symposium in November of the previous year
(2000); between the symposium presentation and the L’Osservatore Romano
publication, Kasper had responded to the presentation in “On the Church: A
Friendly Reply to Cardinal Ratzinger,” America 184, no. 14 (April 23, 2001);
and Ratzinger’s further response to Kasper appeared as “The Local Church
and the Universal Church: A Response to Walter Kasper,” America 185, no. 16
(November 19, 2001).
11
		There are of course questions that would have to be sorted out regarding the
history of the emergence of the papacy, perhaps especially in its modern form,
in relation to the college of bishops, but in sorting these out, one has to face
the basic question of whether it is good and fitting that there be an actual—i.e.,
a concrete and real—embodiment of the unity of the Church that transcends
the particularity of times and places that belongs to local churches. It is also
necessary to recognize that there is a fundamental difference between a more
general openness to actual Christian unity that existed prior to the historical
emergence of the papacy and the kind of openness to the universal Church
that is possible after an actual rejection of papal authority.
12
		As we will argue below, the incompatibility of Catholicism and the liberal
notion of toleration espoused by Locke turns specifically on the Chair of
Peter, and only thus on things like the continuity of tradition, an organic and
non-individualistic sense of the Church, and so forth.
13
		The authors insist, quite helpfully, on the importance of the fact “that it is the
independent sovereignty of the Crown and not the Crown in Parliament that
was made head of the Church at the outset,” thus underscoring the distinction
between the king as head of the Church and the king as head of the state, and
also that the Church of which he is the head exceeds England in the narrow
sense. But one may nevertheless wonder whether this formal distinction can
be sustained as such. Can such a distinction do justice in the end, for example,
10

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue 1365

taken up under the liberal umbrella. It seems that, in the end, it is
only that “foreign potentate,” the pope, whose headship embraces the
churches of every country, that stands outside the umbrella.14
The problem characterized here in very general terms comes to
expression in the Politics of Virtue when, for example, the authors
appear to concede a liberal description of religion at a decisive point
in their argument and explicitly connect this with what appears to
be a liberal conception of political order: “Even though the Church
of England represents one particular religious option assented to by
a national majority across time, the perceived basis of the collective assent in individual conscience logically requires respect for all
consciences, including dissenting ones—as has come to be accepted
in the course of time and was advocated by some from the early
modern outset” (231). There are many things to highlight in this
sentence. (1) The Church of England is presented as a “particular religious option,” rather than as an embodiment of the actual Christian
tradition, the extension of this tradition, so to speak, into the particularities of England. (2) Even more revealingly, though ultimately
connected with the first point, the reality of the Church of England,
its actuality as the established Church, is characterized explicitly as
resulting from the will of the majority (in other words, the actuality
is generated by the accumulated potency, and so ultimately subordinated to it). Note that there is nothing said about the truth of the
Church of England: its being the established Church is not an expression of the truth of Christianity. One can imagine Chesterton asking,
“is there ultimately any other reason to establish a Church other than
because it is true?” (3) The majority will, in typical liberal fashion,
to the subordination of the king to the priest (ultimately the pope) that Aquinas affirms in the De regno as essential to the unity in difference of a Christian
political order? The English sovereign does indeed receive anointing from the
bishop, but the bishop is subordinate to him insofar as he is the actual authority of the Anglican Church. Logically, the king ought to anoint himself, but
only after he has already anointed himself, which implies, of course, an insoluble contradiction. The only way out, it seems to me, is for the king to receive
his anointing from the actual head of the Church, from the pope, according
to the ancient Christian tradition.
14
		To be sure, a properly Catholic understanding of the relation between Church
and state is an extremely complex and delicate matter that we cannot address
here. For the beginning of an attempt to think through this relation in terms
of the classical metaphysical theme of act and potency, see my article “Liberalism, Religious Freedom, and the Common Good: The Totalitarian Logic of
Self-Limitation,” Communio 40 (Summer/Fall 2013): 577–615.

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is interpreted as the collective expression of individual consciences.
And (4), ultimately, it is specifically the collective expression of individual consciences, in their self-generating actuality, that is posited as
the basis for the common assent, and therefore as the ground of respect
for other individual consciences in their possible dissent. In other
words, it is not the (non-liberal) truth of the dignity of the human
being, and therefore of individual conscience, a truth that is by no
means the result of majority will but is taken as given a priori and so
as non-negotiable, that grounds respect, but the power of individuals
qua individuals. This is nothing other than Locke’s conception of
natural law put in more contemporary terms.
As we saw, Milbank and Pabst are insistent that what most essentially characterizes liberalism is an atomized individualism. It is
difficult to see how this final collapse into the particularity of individual conscience regarding what is in fact most fundamental is not
a paradigmatic instance of what the authors criticize. They rightly
argue that real democracy must necessarily have a non-democratic
foundation (191), but how do they then justify interpreting this
ultimate case, the reality of one’s relation to God, as a finally democratic foundation of a non-democratic reality, so to speak? Because it
concerns the most ultimate matter, it is hard to see how, once one
has founded actual religion on individual conscience, one can avoid
having everything else said be colored by the basic tones of liberalism.
It ought to be noted that, if actuality is subordinated to potency in
the matter of religion, the language of truth will necessarily tend to
disappear from the public sphere. In its place, one will tend to justify
the highest things by the virtue of their social utility, which is what
Robert Spaemann has described as the replacement of philosophy
by sociology and, thus, as the origin of modernity (i.e., liberalism).15
As we suggested at the very beginning, there seems to be no third
possibility in the end: either truth is supreme or we cannot escape
from the insatiable maw of liberalism. Unless the a priori character
of truth is acknowledged, there will be a tendency to collapse into
majority opinion, no matter how broadly or thickly this may be
conceived. Thus, Milbank and Pabst raise the obviously very difficult
		See Robert Spaemann, “The Traditionalist Error: On the Sociologizing of the
Idea of God in the Nineteenth Century,” in Philosophical Essays on Nature, God,
and the Human Person: A Robert Spaemann Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 37–44. If it is only theology, and not also metaphysics, that
represents an alternative to sociology, then even theology cannot finally resist
becoming a form of sociology.

15

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue 1367

question of the standard by which truth is ascertained as such and
determine the response in the following way:
If coercion is abhorrent, then only the persuasion of the majority should prevail concerning questions that must be generally
decided. But this seems to subordinate truth and the morally
non-negotiable imperative to “do the truth.” What if the
majority happen to be wrong? On the other hand, the imposition of perceived truth upon people against their will is not
only distastefully violent, but also ineluctably risks a twisting
and dilution of truth, if it is in consequence not “done freely.”
The resolution of this conundrum must lie in a sense that,
while new truth may first dawn upon the gaze of the lone
visionary and be developed by her disciples, the ultimate clue
to the certainty of the most important and fundamental truths
is their general acceptability—not just to each and every one of
us in dispersal but also to all of us taken together in community. For it is the communal realisability and illustration of
truth that tends eventually to confirm it. (235)
We may leave aside the odd language of “new truth.” The authors
take care here to avoid making popular acceptance the ultimate criterion for what counts as true (a “clue” is importantly different from
a “criterion”), and it must be admitted that the ultimate criterion
of truth is an extremely difficult and delicate matter. But one must
nevertheless offer more than “general acceptability” as determinative in matters of foundational meaning. What is at stake here is the
ratio of truth. In order to maintain a distinction between “clue” and
“criterion,” one has to make clear that the aim of common deliberation in fundamental matters is finally a recognition of what is
true, and not simply what is generally acceptable. In other words, to
use the authors’ language, the “perceived basis of collective assent”
cannot ultimately be individual conscience, but must be actual truth.
Otherwise, there is in the end nothing beyond the vox populi to
present the vox Dei (236; which, it must be said, has been a rule of
thumb, so to speak, rather than a foundational principle).16 Does it
		When Milbank and Pabst cite the adage, they clarify that it does not imply that
the “collective will, simply because it represents the highest common factor
of arbitration, should always prevail” (236). This is a crucial point, but it begs
a basis for this distinction.

16

1368

D. C. Schindler

not remain the case that the majority of people can come to see things
falsely? The authors, for example, go on (courageously) to defend the
traditional notion of marriage and argue against the hubris of a state
that would redefine marriage, simply disregarding what the world
has recognized for ages (237). But is it inconceivable that a majority
of thoroughly liberally formed individuals might come to accept
so-called “same-sex marriage” as a matter of individual conscience?
In this case, does their vote constitute the vox Dei? It is revealing to
note on this question that the authors appear to have no recourse
beyond an appeal to tradition: they cannot—or in any event, they do
not—appeal simply to the truth of marriage, the essential meaning of
nature, the abiding teaching of the magisterium of the Church, and so
forth. In the end, if religion is potentialized, it seems we have nothing
other than individual consciences to determine what is real. We have
nothing other than liberalism.
The raising of this question is not at all a rejection of the argument
of the book, but instead a suggestion that the book’s basic argument
would seem to bear on this ultimate question in a manner subtly, but
significantly, different from what the authors admit. A recovery of
the priority of act over potency would seem to resonate with, and be
enhanced in turn by, the invariably profound and insightful explorations and assessments of the institutions that surround us, enclosing
virtually every aspect of our lives, and inform the world at large.
Milbank and Pabst are two of the greatest living critics of liberalism,
and their capacity to critique the form that virtually everyone takes
for granted as a ne plus ultra horizon from within which we must
think and do everything we think and do enables them to see things
no one else can see. It is likely that the authors have a profound
response to the question raised, but in any event, The Politics of Virtue
will stand as one of the most provocative and fruitful contributions to
the great conversation that continues to define our age, an urgently
needed defense of the humanity “that liberalism tends to make . . .
vanish in two directions: first, archaically in the face of the tide of
pre-human nature by appealing to the lowest instincts such as greed,
fearfulness and enmity; second, futuristically, in favour of a ‘post-human’ project that can hopefully subordinate human egotism and the
unpredictability of desire to a cybernetic future that will augment the
liberal ‘peace of a sort’ into an absolute bio-politics” (58).
As the authors powerfully show, a way of being, thinking, and
doing that tends to dissolve the symbol and eliminate the properly
human is diabolical indeed. An adequate response requires that we

Challenging the Terms of Liberalism: On The Politics of Virtue 1369

challenge the terms of liberalism and recover the genuinely integrating center, the properly human, which itself images the most
perfectly actual mediator, who outstrips both false directions because
N&V
he is the Alpha and the Omega.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1371–1414

1371

Rebuilding the City of God:
Locating the Politics of Virtue within
the Politics of Sin and Grace
Jacob W. Wood
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Steubenville, OH

In T he P olitics of V irtue ,1 John Milbank and Adrian

Pabst propose that liberalism is undergoing a “meta-crisis.” On the
presupposition that “to do something wrong is also to do something
badly, to botch things up in a way that is bound sooner or later (even if
decades or centuries later) to fail, because vices are hard to sustain and
ultimately self-defeating,”2 the authors combine Milbank’s critique of
liberalism with Pabst’s critique of capitalism to argue not only that the
liberal-capitalist order is wrong in principle but also that it has failed at
its task of achieving peace and justice.3 In order to save liberal society
from collapsing in on itself, Milbank and Pabst propose a politics of
soul-craft,4 a virtue ethic built upon Christian virtues of “love, trust,
hope, mercy, kindness, forgiveness and reconciliation,”5 which could
		John Milbank and Adrian Pabst, The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the
Human Future (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016).
2
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 6.
3
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 2–3. Milbank’s critique of liberalism
was initially expressed in Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1990; 2nd ed., 2006) and later developed in Beyond Secular
Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People (Malden,
MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2013). The foundation of Pabst’s critique of capitalism
can be found in Adrian Pabst, “Modern Sovereignty in Question: Theology,
Democracy and Capitalism,” Modern Theology 26 (2010): 570–602.
4
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 30.
5
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 7.
1

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Jacob W. Wood

replace the ethic of absolute freedom and conflict inherent in the
liberal political order. Since all virtue is received as a gift of grace and
can be accepted only in gratitude,6 this new, post-liberal order would
be based on “gift-exchange or social reciprocity as the ultimate principle to govern both the economic and the political realms.”7 The polity
resulting from such a view of virtue would be horizontally socialist
and vertically aristocratic:8 socialist because it would be built upon the
re-formation of trust and solidarity among the members of society
through virtuous interactions among them;9 aristocratic because virtue
cannot be thus practiced without exemplars,10 each standing at the head
of a corporate mediating institution with a real and subsidiary share of
sovereignty,11 leading the members of that corporation in the virtuous
pursuit of the common good,12 in harmony with other corporations.13
Such an aristocratic socialism, being itself born of Christian ideals and
arising from Christian history,14 could prepare society for a return to
Christendom and the Church for a return to unity.
The book contains a number of familiar themes from the Radical
Orthodoxy movement: the critique of ontological violence and the
substitution of an ontology of peace; the critique of coerced equality
and the substitution of relational difference; the critique of philosophical dialectics and its subordination to theological metanarrative;
the critique of egalitarianism; and the exaltation of aristocracy as
exemplar. Although each of these themes deserves a critical discussion
in its own right, for reasons of space, I would like to take up only
the first of them here. Milbank and Pabst rightly prioritize an Augustinian-Thomistic ontology of peace in their rethinking of political
theology. However, their metanarrative inadequately accounts for
the way in which sin corrupts ontological peace into non-ontological
violence in the fallen state. Consequently, when Milbank and Pabst
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 208.
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 3. See also 47, 71, 78, 143.
8
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 70–71.
9
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 206.
10
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 7–8, 74, 209.
11
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 81–88, 206, 213–15, 298.
12
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 288–89.
13
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 373.
14
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 44: “Socialism and certain other
post-romantic radicalisms . . . revived the ancient and Catholic projects of the
pursuit of substantive, shared ends of flourishing through mutual cooperation
and reciprocal exchange.”
6
7

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1373

propose the adoption of aristocratic socialism as part of their plan for
rebuilding Christendom out of liberalism, they overlook the extent
to which John Courtney Murray’s liberal critique of socialism still
applies. Murray’s proposal for limited government is better suited to
the theological demands of a human nature that has fallen from grace,
since it was based on a sober theological account of ways in which
the wounds of sin corrupt any attempt to construct a political order
outside of the sacramental economy of grace, while Andrew Jones’s
very recent study of the sacramental kingdom of King Louis IX
suggests that the politics of virtue are inseparable from the sacramental grace that heals the fallen will, and that the politics of grace entail
a more radical vision for the political order than Radical Orthodoxy
has as of yet proposed.
The present essay will proceed in six sections. In the first, I will
identify two forms of liberal Catholicism: that arising from the
doctrine of a natural desire for a natural end, and that arising from
the doctrine of a natural desire for a supernatural end. In the second,
I will review Radical Orthodoxy’s critique of liberalism as found
in The Politics of Virtue and the major works of Milbank leading up
to it. In the third, I will reexamine the liberal Catholicism of John
Courtney Murray, showing how he embedded it within a metanarrative of sin and grace. In the fourth and fifth, I will confront Murray
and Milbank/Pabst with the turn toward doctrinaire liberalism in
American politics and ask whether or to what extent their respective proposals are likely—as a matter of fact—to be widely agreed
upon or widely practicable in that context. By appealing to faith
and grace, received principally in a liturgical context, Milbank’s and
Pabst’s proposal appears to overcome the challenge of explaining
how fallen man can be expected to know and agree widely upon
common principles as the basis for a socio-political order. However,
their proposal falls short by underemphasizing the need for charity,
received through the sacraments in that liturgy, to heal the fallen
will so that people will want to act consistently on the principles
that they agree upon. In the sixth, I will show how Jones supplies
the emphasis on sacramental charity that is missing in Milbank’s and
Pabst’s theological politics and, in so doing, offers a vision for politics
marked by the mystical ascent from sin to sanctity. Jones’s picture of
thirteenth-century polity cannot and should not be replicated in the
present, but it does challenge the Church to reimagine the ultimate
goal of the New Evangelization.

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Jacob W. Wood

Catholicism and Liberalism
To say that Catholic theology had an uneasy relationship with liberal
democracy in the nineteenth century is to state the obvious.15 To say
that Catholic theology still persists in that uneasy relationship after the
publication of Dignitatis Humanae in the twentieth century is not. For,
whether one holds that the Declaration on Religious Liberty from
the Second Vatican Council marked a dramatic development of the
Church’s understanding of freedom or was a juridic accommodation
to the political structures of the modern age, there has been a general
scholarly consensus over the last fifty years that, while the Church
continues to distance herself from the most ideological forms of
doctrinaire liberalism, she has somehow (and finally) made peace with
the political developments that followed the American and French
Revolutions.16 The basis of this peace is a compromise in which the
		For a thorough and balanced account of the plight of liberal Catholicism
in the nineteenth century, see Bernard Reardon, Liberalism and Tradition:
Aspects of Catholic Thought in Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1975). For a more critical view of the Church’s approach to
liberalism, see Peter Steinfels, “The Failed Encounter: The Catholic Church
and Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century,” in Catholicism and Liberalism:
Contributions to American Public Philosophy, ed. R. Bruce Douglass and David
Hollenbach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 19–44.
Accounts of Catholicism and liberalism in the nineteenth century typically
focus on two magisterial interventions. The first is Gregory XVI’s condemnation of liberalism in the encyclical Mirari Vos in 1832, as well as his condemnation of Hugues Robert Félicité de Lamennais in Singulari Nos in 1834. The
second is Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors in 1864. In spite of these condemnations,
a more limited form of liberalism did enjoy popularity in French Catholicism
under the patronage of Henri-Dominique Lacordaire. See my “Ressourcement,” in The T&T Clark Companion to Henri de Lubac, ed. Jordan Hillebert
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2017), 101–5.
16
		For the view that Dignitatis Humanae is a juridic accommodation without a
shift in anthropology, see Joseph Komonchak, “Vatican II and the Encounter
between Catholicism and Liberalism,” in Douglass and Hollenbach, Catholicism
and Liberalism, 895. For the view that it represents a shift from neo-Scholastic
to personalist anthropology, see David Schindler, “Freedom,Truth, and Human
Dignity: An Interpretation of Dignitaries Humanae on the Right to Religious
Freedom,” in Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy Jr., Freedom, Truth, and Human
Dignity: The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 39–209. For the view that it represents a moderate embrace of liberal anthropology in view of natural rights, see Thomas
Bushlack, Politics for a Pilgrim Church: A Thomistic Theory of Civic Virtue (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 61–64. All of the aforementioned authors agree
that Dignitatis Humanae does not in any way embrace “doctrinaire” liberalism.
15

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1375

Church agrees not to demand of the state anything above the natural
law, while the state agrees not to demand of the Church anything
contrary to it.17
Among Thomistic scholars, explanations of how this Catholic–liberal peace functions vary if we take into account the recent
debates about nature and grace in Thomistic anthropology, as well as
corresponding differences in natural law theory.18 Reinhard Hütter,
		John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960), 56, 78. Murray describes the
first two articles of the American Constitution as “articles of peace,” which he
juxtaposes generally with “articles of faith.” Articles of the latter sort are held
as a matter of principle; articles of the former are held as a matter of prudent
compromise (49) and of agreement in matters of procedure, not principle (84).
18
		An initial attempt at reading Murray in light of the contemporary nature–
grace debate can be found in James Dominic Rooney, “Murray’s Balancing
Act:The Harmony of Nature and Grace,” Journal of Church and State 58 (2015):
666–89. While, for reasons of space, I will take as my point of departure the
views expressed by Murray in We Hold These Truths, Rooney provides an indispensable history of the development of Murray’s theological anthropology in
its relationship to his political theology, as well as a careful analysis of how an
appreciation for the fallenness of man in the order of history forms an essential
component of Murray’s political theology.
One shortcoming of Rooney’s work is that he summarizes the debate
between neo-Thomists and ressourcement Thomists in the mid-twentieth
century as being about whether man has a natural end or not. Since Murray
admits that man has a natural end and that this natural end is achieved in
the political order, Rooney categorizes Murray among the neo-Scholastics
and argues that Murray’s neo-Scholastic anthropology was to blame for
the fact that his views were not more widely adopted in the post-conciliar
period, when the ressourcement anthropology of de Lubac was widely adopted.
This categorization relies on a false dichotomy. Initially, the debate between
neo-Scholastics and de Lubac was not about whether man has a natural end
at all, but about whether the natural end of man, such as it may be conceived
apart from the beatific vision, is found in contemplation or politics. See Henri
de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946), 463–65. Read
against that background, Murray appears to us not as a neo-Scholastic, but as
a ressourcement thinker whose anthropology and political theology aligns very
closely with that of de Lubac.
In point of fact, it is only the more radical figures of postmodernity who
refuse to acknowledge any natural end for man at all, even in politics. Thus,
Milbank admits in The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 104–8, that, in order
to deny a natural end for man simply speaking, he has to part ways from de
Lubac. Bernard Mulcahy recognizes that Milbank has developed de Lubac, but
he sees that development as the logical consequence of de Lubac’s anthropol17

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Jacob W. Wood

Steven Long, and Bernard Mulcahy have shown how those who see
pure nature as normative for our understanding of nature can center
the state’s observance of the natural law in the promotion of natural
happiness through the virtue of religio.19 Speaking concurrently with
the majority of the Dominican and Jesuit Thomistic commentatorial
traditions, they observe that the natural end of man is the contemplation of God as first cause;20 since the virtue of religio falls under the
virtue of justice, and since justice is a natural virtue, the state can be
ordered by justice through religio toward God as its highest end.21 The
state thus ordered pursues the worship of God “within the limits of
reason”—so to speak—but according to a classical sapientia that transcends the boundaries placed on reason and religion by Kant, permitting reason to ascend by analogy to the contemplation of its efficient
and formal exemplar cause, and prescribing the civic actions of its citizens based on man’s natural desire to know and to worship that cause.22
On the other side of the nature–grace debate, John Courtney
Murray speaks in harmony with a minority position in the Dominican commentatorial position that posits that man’s natural happiness
is not a naturally achievable contemplation, but rather the exercise
of political virtue in itself.23 Politics thus conceived does not direct
ogy (Not Everything is Grace: Aquinas’s Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian
Integralism of Henri de Lubac [New York: Peter Lang, 2011], 215).
19
		Steven Long, Nature Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 10–51, and Mulcahy, Aquinas’s
Notion, 202–20, speak of the centrality of the natural law and natural theology.
Reinhard Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas
Aquinas (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 102–26, connects similar observations to the importance of the virtue of religio.
20
		Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas Aquinas and his Interpreters (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010), 211–76.
21
		Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven, 104–5. Hütter acknowledges later on that the
political practice of that virtue requires grace to heal the fallen will (124–26),
a theme to which we will return below.
22
		See Matthew Levering, “Christians and the Natural Law,” in Natural Law;
A Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Trialogue (New York: Oxford University Press,
2014), 66–110. Levering provides a bibliography of moral theologians and
philosophers who support this view on 73n19. To that list may be added
more: Steven Jensen, Knowing the Natural Law: From Precepts and Inclinations
to Deriving Oughts (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2015); John Rziha, The Christian Moral Life: Directions for the Journey to Happiness (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017).
23
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 191–92. Murray contrasts this view of the state
not with a view that is based on a natural desire for a natural end, but with a

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1377

man to a natural end beyond itself; no such end exists apart from
the beatific vision of God in heaven.24 Rather, politics arranges for a
supposedly “Augustinian” view that uses the natural desire for a supernatural
end, together with an emphasis on the woundedness of fallen nature, to locate
all of man’s natural perfection only in heaven (184–89). Tellingly, Murray does
not see these two views as conflicting in any point of doctrine, but rather only
as laying alternative emphases on the goodness and woundedness of human
nature (193). In fact, he explicitly affirms that both emphases have a place in
the Church and that each is necessary to avoid the potential pitfalls of the
other (193–94).
Prescinding from the question of the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas,
we may note as a matter of historical record that Scholastic discussions of the
relationship between Church and state came to maturity only after Aquinas’s
death, in the thirteenth-century dispute between King Philip IV and Pope
Boniface VIII over the temporal power of the papacy. Murray’s distinction of
positions reflects the positions taken in this dispute. All participants agreed that
man has a supernatural end. Where they disagreed was on whether man also
had a natural, temporal, political end. Jean Quidort argued for Philip IV in
the affirmative in De potestate regia et papali, ed. Jean Leclercq in Jean de Paris
et l’ecclésiologie du XIIIe siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1942); English translation: John of
Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, trans. J. A. Watt (Toronto: PIMS, 1971). Giles
of Rome argued for Boniface VIII in the negative in De ecclesiastica potestate,
ed. R.W. Dyson, in Giles of Rome’s On Ecclesiastical Power: A Medieval Theory
of World Government, A Critical Edition and Translation (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2004). As Rooney notes, Murray’s mature political theology was based upon his reading of Jean Quidort (“Murray’s Balancing Act,”
671–78). See also John Courtney Murray, “Contemporary Orientations of
Catholic Thought on Church and State in the Light of History,” Theological Studies 10 (1949): 177–234. Among the Thomistic commentators, Jean
Quidort’s view is taken up in broad strokes by Domingo de Soto, De natura et
gratia 1.4 (Paris: Jean Foucher, 1549), fols. 9v–13v. For contemporary discussions of de Soto, see Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 197–207.
24
		Murray, We Hold These, Truths, 286. Murray sees this separation of man’s
spiritual end from his temporal end as the chief contribution of Christianity
to human polity, disrupting the naturalist integralism of the Roman Empire
(202–4, 289).
In support of the idea that Murray should be classed with those who see
in human nature a natural desire for a supernatural end, rather than a natural
desire for a natural end, we may point to Murray’s understanding of the virtue
of religion. In We Hold These Truths, he explicitly affirms that God’s “existence
and sovereignty as the Author of the universe” are knowable by natural reason
(80). However, it is not clear that he views acting on that knowledge as the
achievement of a natural end. Hence, when Murray otherwise describes the
manner in which the American state prescinds from “transcendental truth,” he
carves out one exception, the motto “In God We Trust,” which he associates
not with the natural law, but with divine law (75). Speaking later of the rela-

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Jacob W. Wood

degree of human happiness by securing the general benefits of peace
and prosperity among citizens.25 Observing a Kantian distinction
between the is of natural desire and the ought of civic virtue, Germain
Grisez, John Finnis, Robert George, and other proponents of New
Natural Law theory articulate the basis of this natural peace and prosperity in terms of incommensurate basic goods that are self-evidently
intrinsic to human nature.26 While there exists no single natural end
for man, the work of the Church is safeguarded otherwise by the
inclusion of religion among the basic, incommensurate goods that
pertain to human nature and of a right to religious liberty among the
rights that protect those goods.27
tionship between the Ten Commandments and the natural law, he mentions
only the second table of the Decalogue (332). This is reminiscent of the
tension he expresses in The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today (New Haven,
CT:Yale University Press, 1964) between Thomistic natural theology (66–76)
and postmodernity (101–21).
25
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 62: “In [the concrete order of jurisprudence]
the highest and most general norm is the public peace, the common good in
its various aspects. This is altogether a moral norm.” For Murray, the virtuous
achievements of the state serve as a praeparatio evangelica because they arrange
for the perfection of man according to his rational nature, and grace builds
upon this nature (191). The state—even the secular state—thus serves as an
instrument of Christ in the evangelization of culture to the extent that it
follows the natural law (192–93).
26
		See the works listed in Levering, “Christians and the Natural Law,” 73. To
these could be added: Robert George, “Natural Law and Human Nature,” in
Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays, ed. Robert George (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 31–41; Patrick Lee, “Is Thomas’s Natural Law Theory
Naturalist?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1997): 567–87.
Murray himself had a pre-Kantian view of the derivation of the natural
law: “The order of being that confronts [man’s] intelligence is an order of
‘oughtness’ for his will; the moral order is a prolongation of the metaphysical
order into the dimensions of human freedom” (We Hold These Truths, 328).
Hence, Tracey Rowland is right to observe that “the relationship between the
Whig Thomist Project,” which gives a public face to liberal Catholicism, “and
the New Natural Law project is not clearly defined” (Culture and the Thomist
Tradition: After Vatican II [New York: Routledge, 2003], 172n18).
27
		On the relationship between religion as a basic human good and the right
to religious liberty, see especially: Robert George, “Religious Liberty and the
Human Good,” in The Crisis of Religious Liberty: Reflections from Law, History,
and Catholic Social Thought, ed. Stephen M. Krason (Lanham, MA: Rowman
and Littlefield, 2015), 1–10; George, “Natural Law, God and Human Dignity,”
in The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, ed. George Duke and
Robert P. George (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 57–75.

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1379

Radical Orthodoxy’s Critique of Liberal Democracy
Post-liberal theologians have consistently critiqued Christianity’s relationship with liberalism on the basis of an exegesis of Augustine’s De civitate Dei.28 In Theology and Social Theory, Milbank argues that Augustine’s
two cities offer two rival metanarratives for contemporary society.29
The civitas terrena lives, acts, and thinks as though it were ontologically
independent of God. Separated from God, it inhabits an ontology of
violence in which the presupposition of scarcity turns the perception
of difference into a conflict of domination.30 Within this world of
conflict, it attempts to create a language and a system of thought to
justify its ontological rebellion against God. The resulting philosophy is
“secular reason” whose purpose is to legitimate the community’s prior
choice to conceive itself apart from God. By contrast, the civitas Dei
lives, acts, and thinks from the standpoint of ontological communion
with God. It inhabits an ontology of peace in which the perception of
difference entails an ordered harmony of beauty. According to Milbank,
nominalist and voluntarist theologians from the fourteenth century
onward substituted the ontology of the civitas terrena for that of the
civitas Dei and Locke’s social contract theory, which stands at the basis
of liberalism, arose primarily out of the insights of those theologians.31
To live as citizens of the civitas Dei in the world, Christians must reject
the anthropology of the civitas terrena, together with the liberalism on
it, in favor of a post-liberal ontology of peace.32
In Beyond Secular Order, Milbank develops a more complete
critique of liberalism, as well as a strategic vision for responding to it.
He develops the critique in terms of four themes: univocity, knowledge by representation, possibilism, and concurrence. Of these four,
univocity concerns us most here because of its implications for the
politics of virtue.
		See: Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political
Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); William Cavanaugh,
The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 62–65; Cavanaugh, Migrations of
the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2011), 56–67. For a more sanguine approach to contemporary
politics in light of the two cities, see Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society
in the Thought of Augustine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
29
		Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 389–92.
30
		Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 431–32.
31
		Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 13–15.
32
		Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 434.
28

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Milbank understands the medieval world to have been marked
by a radical apophaticism concerning the knowledge of God that
resulted in a priority of equivocity and analogy over univocity. The
equivocal distance between humanity and God could be overcome
only by symbolic analogy in communal liturgical worship.33 In political terms, just as knowledge was embodied in corporate worship, so
was politics embodied in corporate action.34 In this context, secular,
nonliturgical reasoning arose from the substitution of univocity for
equivocity and analogy.35 The shift from equivocity to univocity
meant the substitution of an abstract, detached notion of politics for a
corporate, participatory one because the kataphatic term of univocity
removes the need for worship to overcome the epistemological gap
of apophaticism.36
Following from a univocal worldview, a shift from knowledge
by identity to knowledge by representation led to the idea that
a detached government “represents” the people the way that the
concept “represents” its object. It “flattened” society by removing
the aristocracy and the corporations of which they were the heads,37
because, “without an assumption of continued identity of form,
there is no guarantee of the reliability of the copy.”38 This shift from
realism to possibilism led to the idea that the monarch, like God,
possesses potentia absoluta above and beyond his or her potentia ordinaria
		For a development of the relationship between liturgy and language from
within the Radical Orthodoxy movement, see Catherine Pickstock, After
Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998). Denys Turner points out in Faith, Reason, and the Existence of God
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) that the decrees of Vatican I
mitigate against apophatic absolutism in Catholic theology. For a more kataphatic approach to analogy in the medieval period, see: Bernard Montagnes,
The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being according to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M.
Macierowski, Pol Vandevelde, and Andrew Tallon (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette
University Press, 2004); John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 2000), 501–75.
34
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 215.
35
		Milbank associates this shift with the thought of John Duns Scotus. For a
critical view of Milbank’s interpretation of Scotus generally, not just on the
question of univocity, see Daniel Horan, Postmodernity and Univocity: A Critical
Account of Radical Orthodoxy and John Duns Scotus (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg
Fortress, 2014).
36
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 138.
37
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 176.
38
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 140.
33

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1381

to act by means of mediating institutions, and thus excluded the very
possibility of aristocrats and mediating institutions sharing in real
governance.39 A corresponding shift from influence to concurrence
theories of primary and secondary causality separated divine law from
human judgment in such a way that it “reduce[d] jurisprudence to
a system of repeatable procedures and rules for handling precedent,”
which were but the expression of a voluntaristic human will.40 That
will was the will of the sovereign, which now claimed an absolute
authority rivaling that of God.41
Having identified what he believes to be the origin of liberalism
in the creation of the sovereign state, Milbank proposes a three-part
vision for the recovery of Christendom from liberalism: the democratization of virtue, the democratization of grace, and the call to a
new, global ecumenism.
For Milbank, the move toward an ontology of peace happens
through the replacement of democratized violence with democratized virtue. This democratization of virtue is achieved through what
we might call “aristocratic socialism.” On the leftward side, “[this]
socialism . . . believes that the most important human goods are in
principle achievable by all,” while on the rightward side, “it does
not equate these goods with what people—individually or collectively—‘happen to want.’”42 In Milbank’s aristocratic socialism, the
many, led by the example of the few, participate with the one as
“rational, social, artistic and grace-imbued animals, on the way to a
‘deified’ unity with the Triune God.”43
Given the reference to deification, it goes without saying that,
when Milbank speaks of the democratization of virtue, he intends
the democratization of infused rather than acquired virtues.44 For
this reason, he argues that the democratization of virtue must be
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 203–4.
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 153.
41
		Milbank here arrives at the fundamental concern of de Lubac in The Drama
of Atheist Humanism, albeit by a different genealogy.
42
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 264.
43
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 269.
44
		Milbank works around this distinction by reducing virtue to the category of
gift (Beyond Secular Order, 236–40). In Thomistic theology, the question of
whether infused and acquired virtues can coexist in the same person simultaneously has generated a significant amount of literature recently. For a bibliography of significant contributions to that debate, see William Mattison, The
Sermon on the Mount: A Virtue Perspective (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2017), 159nn139–40.
39
40

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Jacob W. Wood

supported by what we might term the “democratization of grace.”
Milbank articulates this second democratization in Blondelian terms.
In Maurice Blondel’s L’Action, the “givenness” of human action (it
is received from without) and the ecstatic nature of human action
(it transcends the inner resources that seem to produce it) serve as
an immanentist apologetic for the existence of God on the natural
level.45 Milbank imbues these categories with supernatural significance. Identifying what Paul calls our “spirit” with the locus of
transcendence in the human person, Milbank argues that the transcendent dimension of human action is not just an anticipation of
grace (as it was for Blondel), but already the reception of grace.46
Elaborating Blondel, I would suggest that the priority which he
gave to the surplus of the achieved act over this innate drive (in
contrast to Karl Rahner) implies that the “inspiration” involved
in every cultural product is already the actual work of grace,
which alone sustains our very being since the fall of Adam,
and which is always a typological anticipation or repetition
of the saving work of Christ. The “cultural supplement” to
which our purely animal natural reason is already, through our
“trans-naturality,” obscurely drawn by the lure of the supernatural implanted within us, simply is, as revealed in the light of
the Incarnation, the supplement of grace, the beginning of the
work of deification which is always (as Sergei Bulgakov saw,
		See Maurice Blondel, L’action : Essai d’une critique de la vie et d’une science de la
pratique (1893), 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950, originally
1893), 352–56. For the details of Blondel’s life, see Oliva Blanchette, Marice
Blondel: A Philosophical Life (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010).
46
		Here Milbank echoes the early-twentieth-century Thomist Francisco MarinSola. Marin-Sola’s understanding of grace is worked out in three articles: “El
sistema tomista sobre la moción divina,” La Ciencia Tomista 17 (1925): 5–54;
“Respuesta a algunas objeciones acerca del sistema tomista dobre la moción
divina,” La Ciencia Tomista 18 (1926): 5–74; “Nuevas observaciones acerca del
sistema tomista sobre la moción divina,” La Ciencia Tomista 18 (1926): 321–97.
For an English translation of these articles, see Michael Torre, Do Not Resist
the Spirit’s Call: Francisco Marin-Sola on Sufficient Grace (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013). The most significant work on grace
that relies on Marin-Sola’s thought is Charles Journet, Entretiens sur la grâce
(St-Maurice, FR: Editions St-Augustin, 1969); English translation: The Meaning of Grace (Princeton, NJ: Scepter, 2016). More recently, the view is defended
in Michael Torre, God’s Permission of Sin: Negative or Conditioned Decree? A
Defense of the Doctrine of Francisco Marin-Sola, O.P., Based on the Principles of
Thomas Aquinas (Fribourg, CH: Academic Press Fribourg, 2009).
45

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1383

through his eastern appropriation of western [sic] experience)
the work of a further participation in divine creativity.47
As already noted above, Milbank locates the principle locus of our
reception of grace in liturgical worship.48 If we therefore place the
democratization of grace in a liturgical setting, this means that there
is an element of grace that anticipates (and indeed, participates in) the
grace of Christian liturgy even in pagan worship:
Might it not be, despite Christianity’s indeed authentic and
salutary breaking of fetishistic boundaries and questioning of
pagan metonymic-synecdochic closure, that this religion does
not rather, at its liturgical and sacramental heart, propose a
heightened enchantment able to charm down even the absolute
(though by and through his ordaining of such cultic means),
and therefore able also to include, resume and perfect all local
enchantments which it must perforce respect out of its own
very incarnating logic? So whereas historical Christianity has
excessively tended to wreck all local “magic,” in such a way
as to give rise to an abstractly formal secularity or “enlightenment” as the only shared human discourse and practice, it
might be argued that a genuine Christianity uniquely offers a
shared theurgic carapace.49
Thus, the democratization of virtue is inseparable from and dependent
on the democratization of grace. Milbank sees in all the great cultural
practices and religions of the world the works of grace and charity
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 213. See also 224: “But as [Blondel] also
stressed, every action is a work of love and of sacrificial love, since we cannot
act without self-limitation as well as self-extension (as Chesterton also realised). To act, then, is not just ecstatically to anticipate grace, but also actively to
receive grace in advance by ‘typological anticipation’ of the content of the act,
besides that subjective anticipation of grace which is somehow neither grace
nor nature, and yet both at once.”
48
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 235–36.
49
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 17. Here Milbank’s thought verges on the nexus
of questions that relate to the balance struck in Lumen Gentium §8 in the claim
that, while the Church of Christ “subsists” in the Catholic Church, there are
“many elements of sanctification and of truth . . . found outside of its visible
structure.” For a bibliography of that debate, see Paolo Gamberini, “A Leap
Forward in Understanding Subsistit in,” Irish Theological Quarterly 81 (2016):
363n2.
47

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deifying not just the one or the few, but also and especially the many.
The democratization of grace means that the democratization of
virtue is not a purely political project (if the “political” is conceived
in liberal terms as distinct from the “religious”). Rather, since
Augustinian grace “pre-vents” virtue, the corporate political unity
sought in aristocratic socialism cannot be achieved without corporate
ecclesial unity. Milbank proposes that such a unity would take place
in the institutional reunification of the Catholic, Orthodox, and
Anglican churches. This could pave the way at the political level to
the creation of a world government that was either informed by or
“not opposed to Christian aims.”50 The intentional goal would be
the restoration of Christendom.51 But, while this new Christendom
would gradually assume the political order into itself, it would need
to be continually guarded against the late-medieval tendency to drag
the Church downward into the political order.52 For, in the early
fourteenth century, Giles of Rome (as theologian) and Boniface VIII
(as pope) both tried to assume the temporal order into the Church
in such a way that they actually ended up dragging the Church into
the violence and sin from which it is her vocation to save the world.53
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 257.
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 257.
52
		Milbank, Beyond Secular Order, 256.
53
		The criticism of Giles is misplaced.The real trouble with Giles is similar to the
trouble that de Lubac observes with regard to Jansenism (Surnaturel, 48–54).
Giles thinks that natural concupiscence is so strong that human nature would
have been created “averse” from God had God not given it original justice
at creation (Giles of Rome, In II sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 1, corp., in Commentarius
in Secundum Sententiarum, 2 vols. [Venice, 1581], 2:fol. 443A). Original justice
in integral nature and grace in fallen nature are therefore necessary for Giles
in order to constitute any stable socio-political order (De ecclesiastica potestate
1.4–6, 2.7, trans. R. W. Dyson [Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1986], 16–39,
131–41). The consequence of these anthropological presuppositions is that
Christendom is the only possible stable socio-political order (De ecclesiastica
potestate 2.9–13 [pp. 152–247]). This marked a departure from the thought of
Giles’s magister, Aquinas, who thought that human nature as such was capable
of forming connected virtue and expressed the opinion in De regno 2.3 that,
in a state of pure nature, kings would be sufficient for directing humanity to
its end (Leonine ed., 42:466).
The utopian nature of Giles’s political theology was already sensed by his
student, James of Viterbo, who obliquely criticized his master for failing to
account for the reality of temporal regimes outside of Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New. See James of Viterbo, De regimine christiano
2.3, in De regimine christiano: A Critical Edition and Translation, ed. R. W. Dyson
(Boston: Brill, 2009), 130–131.
50
51

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1385

If Beyond Secular Order gives us a strategic vision for returning to
Christendom, The Politics of Virtue proposes a tactical plan for beginning the realization of that vision. Of course, any talk of a return to
Christendom raises the specter of a rejection of all modern values and
a return to the absolute sovereignty that Milbank had criticized in
Beyond Secular Order as the fourteenth-century corruption of a genuine medieval polity. Milbank and Pabst are careful here to state that
they are seeking a post-liberal solution, not a pre-liberal one.54 For this
reason, they extend Milbank’s democratization of grace to include
what we might term the “democratization of truth.”55
Milbank and Pabst reject liberal Catholicism’s reliance on the
natural law as the basis upon which people of different religious
traditions can agree upon a socio-political framework. Instead, they
believe that the same grace that empowers the wills of the demos in
virtue can illumine their intellects with truth. Since “the people are
potentially the ecclesia, and since nature always anticipates grace, truth
lies finally dispersed amongst all people, since the Holy Spirit speaks
most infallibly through the voice of all.”56 This democratization of
truth legitimates a progressive approach to the restoration of Christendom, since it empowers democracy outside of the visible Church
to find an orientation toward the true and the good: it empowers
the various corporations in society to be legitimate possessors of
shared sovereignty and empowers the aristocrats associated with those
corporations to lead them as moral exemplars.57
However, since the democratization of truth is made possible
only by the democratization of grace, and since the possibility of
grounding the democratization of truth in a “secular” knowledge of
the natural law is therefore excluded from the outset, the democratization of truth necessarily entails a fourth democratization, which
we might term “the democratization of faith.” Seeing grace as
dispersing faith in the intellects of the demos as it disperses virtue in
What is often missed in discussions of Boniface VIII and of Unam Sanctam
is that, whatever one may wish to make of the decree, Boniface pulls back
from Giles’s more radical claims about temporal government. Unam Sanctam
does not argue for the direct submission of temporal to spiritual power the
way that Giles does, nor does it deny the possibility of a stable socio-political
order outside of Christendom.
54
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 2.
55
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 21, 307.
56
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 235 (see also 210).
57
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 236.

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their wills, Milbank and Pabst argue that the liberal state must abandon its preferential option for disestablishment (e.g., in Wales and
Northern Ireland) and give public expression to the democratization
of grace and truth by expanding the notion of establishment where
it still exists (e.g., in England and Scotland). In England, this means
seeing the Church of England not as the possessor of a pre-liberal
monopoly on truth and faith in England,58 but as one corporation of
faith among many,59 which happens to enjoy its privileged position
because a majority of people who have lived or do live in England
have happened to belong to it. Even so, its establishment should not
exclude contributions from other religious corporations.60 The same
goes for the Lords Spiritual. The bishops from the Church of England
who sit in the House of Lords are aristocratic leaders of one religious
corporation. Milbank and Pabst propose opening up the House of
Lords to participation from the leaders of other faith communities61
so that the aristocrats of other religious corporations may contribute
equally to civil government, so that a broader “voice of faith [may
be] heard” in it,62 and so that religious corporations may take the
place in society previously occupied by the mediating institutions that
collapsed under liberalism.63
Liberal Catholicism and the Wounds of Sin
One of the potential weaknesses of Milbank’s and Pabst’s work is that
it does not engage substantively with the liberal Catholic tradition.This
seeming oversight causes the authors to overlook genuinely post-liberal
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 232. Here Milbank and Pabst
acknowledge that the Church of England is “one possible, very imperfect but
still surely authentic, mode” of ecclesial reality.
59
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 229.
60
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 231: “Even though the Church of
England represents one particular religious option assented to by a national
majority across time, the perceived basis of the collective assent in individual
conscience logically requires respect for all consciences, including dissenting
ones—as has come to be accepted in the course of time and was advocated
by some from the early modern outset.” Milbank’s and Pabst’s appeal to a
Chestertonian “democracy of the dead” could make one legitimately wonder
whether they have not confused the Church in England with the Church of
England in their argument for the preferential treatment of the latter. See G.
K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane, 1908), 85.
61
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 227.
62
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 228.
63
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 186, 330.
58

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1387

considerations that appear in the midst of the liberal Catholic tradition.
The most significant of these considerations can be found in the work
of John Courtney Murray. Although Murray is most often identified
with the view that political philosophy can and should be separated
from theology,64 he was acutely aware of the importance of taking the
wounds of sin into account when articulating any political-theological vision. In fact, he embedded his account of liberalism and sin in
an Augustinian theological metanarrative that offers us an alternative
vision—and in some ways preferable one—for the future of liberal
states today.
While the idea of the freedom of conscience in religious matters
is in theory accessible to natural reason, John Courtney Murray
thought that, as a matter of historical record, the idea came to the fore
in Western society as a development in theology of the doctrine of the
freedom of the Church, not as a development in philosophy.65 In the
nineteenth century, it was commonly thought that the most prudent
way to ensure the freedom of the Church was by its establishment
in a confessional state. This understanding was reflected in Pius IX’s
Syllabus of Errors, where the proposition was condemned that “the
abolition of the civil power that the Apostolic See possesses would be
extremely conducive to the liberty and prosperity of the Church.”66
Looking back on the history of confessional states a hundred years
later, Murray argued that they often had the opposite effect. The
governments of Catholic states tended to exact very powerful concessions from the Church, including rights that the Syllabus of Errors
had in fact condemned, in order to allow the Church to maintain
her established status.67 Thus, although Pius IX condemned the idea
		In this, he is most often portrayed as a proponent of “Whig Thomism.” See
Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition, 16. For a bibliography of foundational works from the Whig Thomist movement, see Tracey Rowland,
“Theology and Culture,” in Being Holy in the World: Theology and Culture in
the Thought of David L. Schindler, ed. Nicholas Healy and David L. Schindler
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 79n85.
65
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 201–6. He even goes so far as to call the freedom
of conscience a “Christian revelation” in this regard (215).
66
		Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, §76 (H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum [DH],
43rd ed., ed. Peter Hünermann, English edition ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne
Englund Nash [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012], no. 2976).
67
		Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, §71. Recalling the story of the Apostolic Nuncio in
Paris who asked Benjamin Franklin for the United States Congress to approve
the erection of a Catholic hierarchy in the United States and noting the reply
in which Franklin disclaimed any authority of Congress in this matter one
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that the liberty of the Church could be increased through the separation of Church and state, the implication of Murray’s argument is
that such a condemnation should be classed among what Ratzinger
later described as “magisterial decisions that cannot be and are not
intended to be the last word on the matter as such, but are a substantial anchorage in the problem and are first and foremost an expression
of pastoral prudence, a sort of provisional disposition,”68 instead of a
definitive condemnation as such.
It is not that Murray thought that a rapprochement between
Catholicism and liberalism would be utopian for the Church. In the
final chapter of We Hold These Truths, where Murray discusses the
role of the natural law and its importance for the composition of the
liberal state, he makes a casual, almost catechetical remark on the
limits of natural law that should give us pause about the extent to
which he thought that liberal states would succeed at ensuring the
Church’s freedom. The implications of his remark for our understanding of the wounds of sin can be used to explain why he thought
that confessional states ultimately resulted in a loss of that freedom:
Natural-law theory does not pretend to do more than it can,
which is to give a philosophical account of the moral experience of humanity and to lay down a charter of essential
humanism. It does not show the individual the way to sainthood, but only to manhood. It does not promise to transform
society into the City of God on earth, but only to prescribe,
for the purposes of law and social custom, that minimum of
morality which must be observed by the members of a society,
if the social environment is to be human and habitable. At
that, for a man to be reasonably human, and for a society to be
essentially civil—these are no mean achievements. The ideal
of the reasonable man, who does his duty to God, to others,
way or the other, Murray remarks: “The good nuncio must have been mightily
surprised on receiving this communication. Not for centuries had the Holy
See been free to erect a bishopric and appoint a bishop without the prior
consent of government, without prior exercise of the governmental right of
presentation, without all the legal formalities with which Catholic states had
fettered the freedom of the Church” (We Hold These Truths, 81). The idea of
a right of presentation is condemned in Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, §50 (DH,
no. 2950).
68
		Joseph Ratzinger, “Theology is Not Private Idea of Theologian,” L’Osservatore
Romano, English weekly edition, July 2, 1990, 5.

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1389

and to himself, is not an ignoble one. In fact, it puts such a
challenge to the inertness and perversity which are part of the
human stuff, that Christian doctrine from the day of St. Augustine
has taught the necessity of divine grace for this integral fulfillment of
the natural law.69
At the outset, we are told that the natural law should be the charter of
the liberal state; at the conclusion we are warned that basic Christian
doctrine teaches that it is impossible for anyone to fulfill the natural
law without the aid of grace.70 To extend Murray’s argument a bit
further, we might say that, in a hypothetical state of pure nature, mutatis
mutandis, the liberal state would be a practicable means of organizing
humanity’s common life.71 But man does not and has never existed in a
state of pure nature. In the state of integral nature, man could have kept
the natural law even without grace but required grace to achieve the
supernatural end to which he was called. In the state of fallen nature,
man still requires gratia elevans to raise him up to a supernatural end,
but he also requires gratia sanans to heal him from sin so that he may
keep the natural law.72
Individual human actions may be directed toward a natural end
without gratia sanans (if it is granted that such an end exists), but
individual human persons will never form true and perfected virtue
by means of those actions. The wounds of sin leave human nature
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 297 (emphasis added).
		Murray goes so far as to reference Freud in this regard. “When Freud fulfilled
his promise, ‘Acheronta movebo,’ he shattered forever the ‘angel-mindedness’
of the Cartesian man, and the brittle rationalistic optimism founded on it with
the aid of eighteenth-century mechanicism, which supposed that there were
‘laws of reason’ in human affairs that needed only to be discovered to be acted
upon, and likewise (with Rousseau) supposed that all men would, as has been
said, cease to be evil, if only no one tried to compel them to be good” (We
Hold These Truths, 310–311). So shattered does he consider the Enlightenment
naiveté about the integrity of human nature that he describes it jokingly as “as
‘dated’ as the clothes Locke himself wore” (311).
71
		Aquinas, De regno 2.3.
72
		Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 109, a. 2, corp. (Leonine ed., 7:291). On
man’s ability in a state of integral nature to keep the natural law without grace,
see also ST I-II, q. 109, a. 8, corp. (Leonine ed., 7:303). on man’s inability in
a state of fallen nature to keep the natural law without grace, see ST I-II, q.
109, a. 4, corp. (Leonine ed., 7:297). Murray thought that the wound to the
will was much deeper than the wound to the intellect, hence he appealed to
our knowledge of the natural law more often than our performance of it (We
Hold These Truths, 195–96, 289).
69
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in too unstable a moral state to allow for the formation of connected
virtue without grace.73 At most, a person may form imperfect virtue
in one area while he yet succumbs to vice in another.74 In recognition
of this truth of theological anthropology, Murray thought that liberal
Catholicism had to support strict limits on the state so as to make
it as difficult as possible for the state outside of grace to act like an
individual outside of grace.75 The lack of such limits was the problem
in confessional states. Even in a state of grace, man must continually
contend with concupiscence and the lust for power;76 even in a state
of grace, the political order will struggle with the same temptation.
Murray proposed three ways of limiting the state in a liberal society so that it would not encroach upon the freedom of the Church
the way that confessional states had. The first limit comes from
without: the distinction between the state and society.77 The state
must recognize that, even in the sphere of nature, it does not have
a universal claim to authority over human action. In virtue of the
principle of subsidiarity, its authority over its citizens is mediated
through cultural institutions.78 The second limit comes from within:
the division of power and authority among individual components
in the state, together with a series of checks and balances against the
corruptive use of that power and authority. In virtue of the division
of powers and the checks and balances among them, one person’s sin
		On the connection of the virtues, I generally follow the interpretation of
Aquinas in Thomas Osborne: “The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas’s
Moral Theory,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 279–305; “Perfect and Imperfect
Virtues in Aquinas,” The Thomist 71, no. 1 (2007), 39–64. The latter contains
a detailed discussion of the nexus of texts in the Thomistic corpus relevant to
this issue.
74
		Osborne observes that there is significant disagreement among the Thomistic commentators as to how Thomas thinks that this imperfect moral virtue
relates to perfect moral virtue, and Osborne takes the view that it is true virtue
but unconnected to the other moral virtues (“Perfect and Imperfect Virtues,”
57). In this, he is responding principally to Angela McKay, who argues that
even imperfect virtues are connected by prudence (“Prudence and Acquired
Moral Virtue,” The Thomist 69 [2005]: 535–55).
75
		On the necessity of such limitation, see Murray, We Hold These Truths, 68–69.
76
		ST III, q. 69, a. 3, corp.; a. 4, ad 3 (Leonine ed., 12:107–9).
77
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 35, 182.
78
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 35, 70, 73, 204–6. Murray identifies Locke with
the destruction of these mediating institutions, particularly in France (334),
but he notes that Locke’s ideas were not able to have their full effect on
English, and a fortiori American, society (306–8).
73

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against the natural law in one area would (ideally) be checked and
balanced by another’s observance of it in that area (and vice versa) in
such a way that the risk of abuses (which follow inevitably from the
“rule of [ungraced] men”) would be mitigated by the “rule of law.”79
But here again, the state’s action is subject to a third limitation, since
the state that seeks to embrace the natural law cannot legislate the
entirety of the natural law’s particulars into existence.80 The state’s
particular sphere of authority does not concern every act associated
with the natural law, but only those external actions that affect public
goods that the state is bound to promote.81
Murray thought that, without this threefold limitation, the state
would inevitably enjoin upon its citizens a unity of force rather than
of love, a “demonic” unity rather than a humanistic one,82 in which
the state usurps the role of society and attempts to remake man in
its own image through a tyrannical over-legislation arising from
the conflation of the moral order and the judicial order, as well as
an equally tyrannical violence that results from the state’s attempt
to enforce its over-legislated, wrongly grounded vision for society.83
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 32–33, 313. Murray thinks that, in the exaltation
of law over the people who govern, Locke preserved an inherently medieval
approach to government, albeit in a minimalistic form (313–18).
80
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 156, 166.
81
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 166.
82
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 133. Murray here sounds reminiscent of a
post-liberal Augustinian: “Since St. Augustine’s description of the ‘two cities,’ it
has been realized that societal unity may, broadly speaking, be of two orders—
the divine or the demonic. It is of the divine order when it is the product of
faith, reason, freedom, justice, law, and love. Within the social unity created by
these forces, which are instinct with all the divinity that resides in man, the
human personality itself grows to its destined stature of dignity at the same
time that the community achieves its unity. Societal unity is of the demonic
order when it is the product of force, whether the force be violent or subtle.”
83
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 165–67. Murray associates such a desire for
political hegemony with Rousseau and Hobbes, whom he notes complained
about the Church’s insistence on the separation of the Church from the state
(206–7). He thought that such an idea of the state had, as a matter of fact,
gained more ascendency than the one he was proposing. Prior to Murray,
such concerns were articulated more fully in Henri de Lubac, Le drame de
l’humanisme athée (Paris: Éditions Spes, 1944); English translation: The Drama
of Atheist Humanism, trans. Edith M. Riley, Anne Englund Nash, and Mark
Sebanc (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988). More recently, similar concerns
can be found in the criticism of Marxism by Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est
(2005), §§26–29.
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There is no sense in Murray’s writing that confessional states are
exempted from this possibility; they fall under same critique as any
other form of excessive government.
Liberalism in a Doctrinaire Setting
While Murray initially crafted his vision for liberal Catholicism in
an American context only half a century ago, there have been signs
that the American Catholic–liberal relationship of the late twentieth
century has already begun to deteriorate. Regardless of whether religious freedom has been positively supported by the American courts
(as in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Masterpiece Cakeshop v.
Colorado Civil Rights Commission), negatively affected by them (as in
Obergefell v. Hodges), or ultimately remains unaffected by them because
of a settlement (as in Zubik v. Burwell), the very existence of these and
other challenges raises the legitimate question of whether the state—in
the United States—is or remains as interested as the Church continues
to be in a relationship of natural-law-based compromise, and whether
any lessening of interest in that regard results from a change in understanding, a change of desire, or both.
Robert George argues that the current uneasiness in American
Church–state relations is due to the Rawlsian understanding of
liberty that undergirds recent challenges to religious freedom.84 This
was a possibility that Murray foresaw.85 If George is correct in his
assessment of present circumstances, then the Church finds herself
in a setting that poses new challenges to her teaching on religious
freedom. As noted above, contemporary scholars may differ on
their understanding of how and why the Church accommodated
herself to liberalism after Dignitatis Humanae, but they generally
agree that doctrinaire liberalism represents an ideological worldview
to which the Church did not and never intended to accommodate
herself. While one may legitimately debate the question of whether
the recent turn toward doctrinaire liberalism in the United States
		The contrast is briefly noted in Robert George, “Two Concepts of Liberty
. . . and Conscience,” Journal of Christian Legal Thought 4 (2014): 4–6. It is
treated more expansively in relation to recent legal challenges in George,
Conscience and its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2016). See also Ryan Anderson,
John Corvino, and Sherif Girgis, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
85
		Murray foresaw this possibility (We Hold These Truths, 42–43, 52–53, 130–131,
322–27).
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Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1393

represents a change from the founding ethos of the nation’s Constitution,86 the fact of contemporary challenges to religious freedom
and the question of what to do about them remain pressing issues of
political-theological orthopraxy.
One consequence of the state’s gradual turn toward doctrinaire
liberty that is not as obvious from the standpoint of the Church is that
it results in the state’s subtle reinterpretation of the terms of the natural-law-based compromise that forms the basis of liberal Catholicism.
Murray may have initially articulated liberal Catholicism to protect
the freedom of the Church, but the Church’s insistence on religious
freedom in an atmosphere of doctrinaire liberalism often makes her
appear as encroaching on the freedom of the state. The precise guise
of this illiberal appearance will differ, depending upon whether one
articulates liberal Catholicism on the basis of a natural desire for a
supernatural end or a natural desire for a natural end.
On the side of the natural desire for a supernatural end, there are
two ways in which liberal Catholicism can appear illiberal to the state.
The first, as Thomas Bushlack observes, is by placing the end of man
outside of the reach of the state and only within reach of the Church.87
In a similar vein, Milbank points out that the natural desire for a
supernatural end was initially articulated in the middle ages by Giles of
Rome as part of a system that proposed not just the indirect subjection
of temporal power to spiritual power, but the intentionally direct subjection of temporal power to spiritual power;88 Henri de Lubac’s support
		The contrast between these two kinds of freedom was an important theme
for Murray, who associated positive liberty with the American Revolution and
negative liberty with the French Revolution, seeing in the American Revolution an attempt to realize the freedom to do what “ought” to be done and
in the French Revolution an attempt to engage in a rationalist and voluntarist
exercise of absolute freedom to create society in man’s own image (We Hold
These Truths, 37–38, 57, 67–69, 182–83).
87
		Thomas Bushlack, “The Return of Neo-Scholasticism? Recent Criticisms
of Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace and Their Significance for Moral
Theology, Politics, and Law,” Journal for the Society of Christian Ethics 35 (2015):
86. Bushlack is responding to de Lubac, whose natural desire for a supernatural
end he thinks “leaves few tools that could enable Christians to think about the
pursuit of the temporal common good as a penultimate, created, natural good
that has inherent worth for the human community.” However, this misinterpretation of de Lubac depends on a failure to distinguish de Lubac from his
subsequent interpreters, as was noted above, n18.
88
		On Giles’s understanding of natural desire, see my “Henri de Lubac, Humani
Generis, and the Natural Desire for a Supernatural End,” Nova et Vetera
(English) 15 (2017): 1209–41, especially 1212–14. Giles used his anthropology
86

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for the liberal democracy of de Gaulle over the authoritarianism of
Vichy France occurred in some ways in spite of his understanding of
natural desire, not because of it.89 Thus, for the Church to preach that
the end of man can be found only above and beyond the political order
seems to imply the dissolution of the state into the Church.90
The second way in which a liberal Catholicism built upon a
natural desire for a supernatural end can appear illiberal is in the
manner in which it prioritizes rights claims hierarchically. It has
been a hallmark of the Church’s response to recent challenges to
religious liberty to describe it as our “first liberty.”91 Yet, when a
state that is guided by doctrinaire liberalism happens to recognize a
right to religious liberty, it finds itself compelled to perform a Rawlsian balancing act between this claim to a right and other claims to
rights, as though all rights were on equal footing.92 Without what
Long calls a “theo-normative” account of human teleology, the state
feels compelled to temper the claim of religious liberty in view of
claims to other supposed rights. In a doctrinaire setting, claimants
of other rights—whether grounded in the natural law or not—can
easily appear to be equally or more justified in their claims than those
claiming a right to religious liberty.93
desire to support the direct subjugation of the temporal power to the spiritual
power in De ecclesiastica potestate 1.8 (pp. 46–54).
89
		Milbank, The Suspended Middle, 59.
90
		Mulcahy, Not Everything is Grace, 187–89.
91
		The United States Council of Catholic Bishops’ document, “Our First, Most
Cherished Liberty” (usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/upload/
Our_First_Most_Cherished_Liberty.pdf) makes this explicit, distinguishing
the historical fact that religious liberty was enshrined in the first amendment
to the Constitution of the United States from the moral claim that religious
freedom is also humanity’s “first liberty” as such.
92
		The paradigmatic instance of such a “balancing act” can be found in Justice
Anthony Kennedy’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 14-556: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain
specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express
their identity” (1–2). When Kennedy describes the rationale for the decision
to enumerate a right to same-sex marriage within those rights, he establishes
as “a first premise” that “the right to personal choice regarding marriage is
inherent in the concept of individual autonomy” (12) because “through its
enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality” (13).
93
		For an example of such a balancing act, see Zubik v. Burwell, 14-1418: “We do
not question the sincerity or importance of petitioners’ religious beliefs. But
as seven courts of appeals have held, their legal claim stretches RFRA [the

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1395

A liberal Catholicism built upon a natural desire for a natural end
avoids the difficulty of seeming illiberal by claiming that the end of
human nature as such can be found only in the Church, but its hierarchicalization of rights claims on the basis of theo-normative natural
inclinations can still appear to encroach upon the freedom of the state.
As Bushlack also observes, to the extent that Catholic accounts of
liberalism take the wounds of sin into account, they tend to hold that
a given person may experience desires contrary to his or her natural
inclinations, that these desires will obscure that person’s ability to
experience the teleology of natural desire and natural inclinations as
such, and that the person will therefore be less able to judge competing rights claims correctly in view of them. Although the Church and
her members may intend to adopt a posture of dialogue with the state
focused on the natural law, significant numbers of individual citizens
of the state can therefore be expected to reason incorrectly about the
natural law because they lack a consistent basis in their subjectively
experienced desires from which to begin that reasoning. To add
to what Bushlack says and to put it simply, they will derive other
“oughts” from the “is” of their fallen desires, such as “reproductive
rights” and “marriage equality rights.” The existence of such rights
claims, based upon such desires, puts the Church into the ironic
posture of preaching the natural law alongside its preaching of the divine
law.94 Thus, for all the liberality of her intentions, the Church ends
up appearing illiberal to the state once again, as her appeals to the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act] too far. In our diverse and pluralistic
Nation, the right to the free exercise of religion does not encompass a right
to insist that the government take measures that ‘unduly restrict other persons,
such as employees, in protecting their own interests, interests the law deems
compelling’” (5–6 [Brief for the Respondents]).
94
		Bushlack, “The Return of Neo-Scholasticism?” 93–94; Bushlack, Politics for a
Pilgrim Church, 145–49. Bushlack is correct to note the incongruity between
the claim that the natural law is accessible to natural reason and the reality
that it is often only those with faith who are thought to possess an accurate
knowledge of it, but he is simply incorrect in attributing to Long and Hütter
the idea that “all forms of natural law reasoning will be intrinsically flawed if
they are not subsumed into revelation and the Church’s magisterial authority”
(“The Return of Neo-Scholasticism?” 94; see also Politics for a Pilgrim Church,
148). Bushlack’s mistake here is to conflate our knowledge of the natural law
with our fulfillment of it.
Murray was aware of the possibility that the Church could appear to the
state as a preacher of the natural law, though he denied the legitimacy of
arguments claiming that an assent to the natural law requires an assent to the
Catholic faith (We Hold These Truths, 109).

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natural law, while technically distinct from any appeal to divine law,
seem like dogmatic impositions upon perceived rights that arise from
the experience of disordered desires.95
In addition to the fact that the Church often appears illiberal to the
state concerning the knowledge of the natural law and the judgment
of rights claims based upon it,96 the Church can also appear illiberal
to the state concerning the performance of the natural law. That is
because, as Murray, Milbank, and Pabst all agree, no citizen of the
state could ever fulfill the natural law without grace. While there is
no mistaking Milbank and Pabst on this point, it is worthwhile to
ask what Murray thought on the matter. To those used to seeing him
as a proponent of the idea that the state as such can direct its citizens
toward the fulfillment of the natural law, his response is sobering:
The community, as [Ulpian] knew, is neither a choir of angels
nor a pack of wolves. It is simply the human community which,
in proportion as it is civilized, strives to maintain itself in some
small margin of safe distance from the chaos of barbarism. For
this effort the only resources directly available to the community are those which first rescued it from barbarism, namely,
the resources of reason, made operative chiefly through the
processes of reasonable law, prudent public policies, and a
discriminatingly apt use of force. . . .
The necessary defense against barbarism is, therefore, an
apparatus of state that embodies both reason and force in a
		Bushlack, Politics for a Pilgrim Church, 149. Bushlack accurately diagnoses the
problem, but his proposed solution, which he grounds in supposed “humility” (151–53) and calls “intellectual solidarity” (161), overlooks the extent to
which the grace of faith, being an effect of gratia gratum faciens, is not only gratia
elevans, which adds to what we know by natural reason, but also gratia sanans,
which heals our ignorance of what we could have known by natural reason
(e.g., the praeambula fidei and the natural law) but as a matter of fact may not
have known because of the wound of ignorance.
96
		Murray was aware of this difficulty and expressed his concerns about it in
We Hold These Truths, 86–89. Hence, he proposed not that the natural law was
already the basis of an American public political philosophy, but that such a
basis needed to be adopted by American society because the philosophical
pluralism of American society (as distinct from its religious pluralism) was
negatively affecting its achievement of peace. So keenly did he experience the
general absence of natural law reasoning in American society that he admits
that, among the American people, “the tradition of reason, which is known as
the ethic of natural law, is dead” (293).
95

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1397

measure that is at least decently conformable with what man
has learned, by rational reflection and historical experience,
to be necessary and useful to sustain his striving towards the
life of civility. The historical success of the civilized community in this continuing effort of the forces of reason to hold at
bay the counterforces of barbarism is no more than marginal.
The traditional ethic, which asserts the doctrine of the rule of
reason in public affairs, does not expect that man’s historical
success in installing reason in its rightful rule will be much
more than marginal. But the margin makes the difference.97
In Murray’s view, the hope of avoiding barbarism depends as much
on Providence as it does on human ingenuity. That is why Jacques
Maritain, and Murray after him, could say that the preservation of
democracy requires “faith”—not the theological virtue of faith, but
faith in the democratic process itself together with God’s providential
guidance of it.98 Murray’s own fides democratica required belief that
Providence would guide the actions of a liberal government in such
a way that, in view of checks and balances, the entire government
would not fall into the same sin together. If it ever did, it risked
quickly slipping below the margins of civility and into the realm of
barbarism.
Post-Liberalism in a Doctrinaire Setting
It goes without saying that, although Milbank and Pabst do not deal
directly with Murray, they find the sort of democratic faith that he
espouses to be ill-placed in the order of nature, because they think the
democratization of virtue can be caused only by the democratization of
grace. For Murray, such a reliance on grace would overstep the terms of
the liberal Catholic compromise and represent a step backward toward
confessional states and toward the limits on the freedom of the Church
that those states imposed. But, since Milbank and Pabst think that the
democratization of grace causes the democracy of truth and faith, they
are able to claim that their proposal is one “that can be shared for the
most part by people of other faiths and by non-religious people of
metaphysical sensitivity”99 without appealing to natural reason and the
		Murray, We Hold These Truths, 289.
		Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1951), 111. See also Murray, We Hold These Truths, 34, 206.
99
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 383.
97
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natural law. This reliance on grace and faith helps Milbank and Pabst
to avoid the difficulty in Murray’s proposal arising from the fact that
fallen nature without grace—especially in a doctrinaire setting—struggles not only to perform the natural law but even to attain an adequate
knowledge of it.
However, while Milbank’s and Pabst’s reliance on grace saves them
from the difficulty of accounting for fallen man’s knowledge of the
natural law, it inevitably leads them to another, similar difficulty. For,
while there are, no doubt, “‘many elements of sanctification and of
truth’ . . . found outside the visible confines of the . . . Church,”100
classical Christian theology also recognizes that those elements have
differing degrees of explicitness and that, to the extent that they are
implicit, they are typically admixed with varying degrees of error
because of the fact that sin wounds the intellect along with the will.101
Not everyone in a given society can be expected to agree concretely
on matters pertaining to Revelation, and where that agreement can
be found, it will not be complete.102 There are a variety of forces at
work in the world that compete for a hold over people’s minds, and
the Christian faith in all its fullness is not always the victor in every
given individual.
To illustrate this point, let us look at to two examples in Milbank’s
and Pabst’s text in which they imagine encounters between people
who disagree on matters of religious faith. The first concerns how
a person ought to reconcile his own religious commitments with
those of people with whom he disagrees only somewhat. We may
perhaps imagine here two Christians of different denominations.
We are told that, “even if there are groups with whose ideals you
do not fully agree, you can, nevertheless, acknowledge that in one
sense they are pursuing social goals that are compatible with yours,

		Catechism of the Catholic Church, §819, quoting Lumen Gentium, §8.
		Prior to the sixteenth century, the topic of implicit faith was generally treated
with regard to laity and clergy. See, for example, ST II-II, q. 2, a. 5 (Leonine
ed., 8:31–32). After the sixteenth century, it tended to be treated in terms of
unevangelized peoples. See Avery Dulles, “Who can be Saved?” in Church
and State: The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures, 1988–2007 (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2008), 522–34.
102
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 262. Milbank and Pabst seem to
admit this when they say here that “what tends to prevail in the public light
and amongst most people, especially under the influence of the contagion of
opinion, is not necessarily truth but, much more certainly, plausibility.”
100
101

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1399

and promote a shared sense of human dignity and respect for life.”103
This statement is self-evident only if we grant two premises: (1) the
ideals upon which these two people do not agree—whatever those
ideals may happen to be (Milbank and Pabst do not specify)—have
negligible social consequences; and (2) human dignity and respect
for life are mutually acceptable ideals whose social consequences can
substitute for the negligible social consequences of the controverted
ideals. The first premise is inconsistent with the post-liberal structure
of Milbank’s and Pabst’s argument, which consistently emphasizes
the fact that theological beliefs have non-negligible political consequences. This brings us to the second premise. One way to understand the second premise is as an appeal to common truths accessible
by reason when there is no shared ground on the basis of faith. This
is how Murray employs the natural law in a humanistic (and Thomistic) attempt to find common ground in nature where common
ground in faith does not exist.104 But Milbank and Pabst exclude
the possibility of an appeal to any religiously neutral territory from
the outset. Thus, their appeal to human dignity and respect for life
cannot be an act of humanism so much as an act of ecumenism, in line
with Milbank’s proposal at the end of Beyond Secular Order for a
renewal of Christendom.
The trouble with this line of reasoning is that, while it has laudable
intentions that only the most intransigent of denominationalists would
question, it can function only in a society whose cultural presuppositions arise at least originally from the same faith. But what if a given
religious faith, albeit operating in a post-Christian society, has ideals
that conflict with those of Christianity? This is what we find in the
radical forms of Islam that typically sponsor terrorism. Moreover, what
if those ideals are irrevocably tied to a socio-political program that is at
odds even with human dignity and respect for life, such as is the case
with some aspects of shari’a law? This is the point at which Thomas
Aquinas, and Murray after him, saw the necessity of appealing not to
“secular” reason (ratio saecularis), but to “natural” reason (ratio naturalis),105 a reason based not in the separation of man from God, but
in the indelible nature that God gives, sustains, guides, and by grace

		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 82.
		Aquinas expresses this principle most clearly in Summa contra gentiles [SCG] I,
ch. 2 (Editio Leonina Manualis, p. 2).
105
		SCG I, ch. 2 (Editio Leonina Manualis, p. 2).
103
104

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befriends,106 a reason whose goals may be modest in the fallen state but
whose successes are nevertheless real.107 By excluding the possibility
of such a humanism through their rejection of the “secular,” Milbank
and Pabst are left with only one other option: the demonization of
an “ideological, civilizational enemy” in which the prospects for
ecumenism are grim.108 This gives their supposedly post-liberal political program a certain pre-liberal edge. Democratized faith evidently
has its limits, and beyond the limits of ideological compatibility we
find crusade (though Milbank and Pabst do not use the word).
Milbank and Pabst are comfortable with Islam acting as a corporate
mediating institution and with non-radical Muslim leaders taking a
place in the House of Lords alongside religious leaders of other
faiths. But in a somewhat pedantic note, they admit that their hope
is that the shared sovereignty conferred upon the Islamic community
thereby will somehow relieve that community of the perceived need
to govern itself according to shari’a law.109 This, too, is inconsistent.
If Milbank and Pabst are right about the socio-political consequences
of religious faith, then we should see shari’a as every bit as much
the socio-political consequence of those forms of Islam that entail
it as Milbank and Pabst want us to see aristocratic socialism as the
socio-political consequence of Christianity. This inevitability forces
Milbank and Pabst to admit, albeit obliquely, that the post-liberal
must at some point become pre-liberal:
Society cannot and should not tolerate at all dissenting practices that do not exaggerate shared common principles so much
as reject them altogether. For example, it is fine if shari’a law
brokers marriages according to Islamic custom, so long as this
does not permit polygamy or the coercion of women disal		ST I, q. 8, a. 3 (Leonine ed., 4:86–87); II-II, q. 23, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 8:163–64).
		Here we should avert to the view of A. Patfoort, “Le Somme contre les
Gentils, école de présentation aux infidèles de la foi chrétienne,” in Saint
Thomas d’Aquin: Les clefs d’une théologie (Paris: FAC, 1983), 103–30 (cited in
Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and his Work, trans.
Robert Royal, revised ed. [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 2003], 105–6), which argues that SCG is aimed at the formation of
Christian missionaries. For, it is in SCG I, ch. 2 that Thomas counsels the use
of natural reason where there is no common faith. Thomas does not counsel
the use of natural reason as an alternative to preaching, but in support of it.
108
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 370.
109
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 242n29.
106
107

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1401

lowed by either Roman or Common Law as informed by the
Christian Canon law tradition. That would violate the necessarily organic element in post-liberal pluralism, in the name
of a diabolical combination of liberal pluralism and barbaric
disrespect for the female sex and human dignity.110
In the face of a religion whose socio-political consequences contradict
the vestigium Christianitatis that may yet be found in Europe and that, in
a variation on a theme by C. S. Lewis, we might call “Mere Post-Liberalism,” Milbank and Pabst are forced into a pre-liberal corner, to
condemn, demonize, and suppress a political enemy as the promoter
of heresy and sin.
This brings us to a second question that it is necessary to ask
Milbank and Pabst: whether their proposal can be widely practiced.
We saw above that Murray considered it a basic point of Christian
doctrine that man, outside of a state of grace, cannot fulfill the natural law, and so the state, constituted outside of the Church, cannot be
expected to fare much better.111 Here again, Milbank and Pabst seem
at first to provide a solution: democratized grace, which is necessary
for the formation of any true democratized virtue, can form the
basis of our actions in the civil order. This transforms Maritain’s and
Murray’s democratic faith into what Milbank and Pabst call a “trust
in ‘common decency,’” which is really an implicit recognition of
democratized faith.112
The difficulty here is that faith cannot stand alone. As the Apostle
says, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead,”113 and as Milbank
and Pabst also admit, “principles of themselves engender no concrete
unity or power.”114 Alongside a democratized faith, there is need for
a democratized charity, healing the wills of the demos in such a way
that people will actually want to live out the ideals that Milbank and
Pabst propose. Milbank and Pabst are aware of this need. They admit
that “there is simply no truth in the liberal (and Marxist) assumption that, once freed from the shackles of oppression, people will
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 82.
		This follows even if we grant, with Murray and against Aquinas, that the
actions of the state should not be thought of on analogy with the actions of
the individuals in it.
112
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 79.
113
		James 2:17.
114
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 335.
110
111

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‘by reason’ choose equality and justice.”115 Rather, the ideals have to
be “incarnate[d] . . . in some possible degree” because, without an
exemplar and as purely abstract, they do not actually guide anyone to
do anything.116 Accordingly, Milbank and Pabst refer several times to
the role of charity in their proposal. But almost every time that they
explain what they mean by the word, it is described as another set of
ideals to be thought of and attained in liturgy,117 not as a gift that heals
the will through the sacraments received in the midst of that liturgy.118 Thus, we are led to same problem that Murray tried to avoid
through checks and balances: the fallen state entails a fallen state. A
man without Christian charity may believe in a number of Christian
ideals, but without charity healing his fallen will, he is not likely to
act on those ideals with the consistency required to constitute a stable
and just socio-political order.
Murray was aware of the pull of concupiscence on fallen man, and
so sought to place strict limits on the state’s activity so as to ensure
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 195.
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 339.
117
		We are told, for example, that charity entails “locating the logic of gift-exchange at the heart of ordinary economic practices” (Milbank and Pabst, The
Politics of Virtue, 146, emphasis added), that it is a “notion . . . which, in certain
dimensions, means a generous giving of the benefit of the doubt, as well as
succour, even to the accused or wicked” (194, emphasis added), and that it
is equivalent to “social reciprocity or gift exchange” as “objectives beyond the
realization of freedom and justice” (239, emphasis added).
118
		For the distinction between liturgy as dispositive and sacrament as causative,
see ST III, q. 83, a. 4, ad 1 (Leonine ed., 12:278). Milbank deals with the
relationship between desire and sacrament in John Milbank and Catherine
Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 100–111. Milbank
and Pickstock argue: “Aquinas . . . insists that what is primarily salvific even if
one does receive, is desire for the Body and Blood of Christ. And this tends
to make sense of the fact that we can never receive once and for all, and
have to go on receiving. If there is no end to receiving the Eucharist, and we
have never received enough, this does indeed imply that desire is as good as
receiving, just as receiving the Eucharist with the right desire is essential. Thus
Aquinas repeatedly suggests that the whole of the liturgy is primarily directed
towards preparing in people a proper attitude of receptive expectation” (107).
Milbank thus reduces the sacrament to the liturgy, and so collapses the distinction between desire for the Lord in hope and union with the Lord in charity.
It is union with the Lord in charity that Aquinas identifies as the principal
effect of receiving communion, not desire for union (ST III, q. 79, a. 1, corp.
[Leonine ed., 12:217]), and the daily need to be refreshed in that union that
he identifies as the principal reason for frequent communion, not the daily
nourishing of its absence (ST III, q. 80, a. 10, ad 1 [Leonine ed., 12:242]).
115
116

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1403

the freedom of the Church to form consciences. Milbank and Pabst,
by contrast, remove those limits both vertically (in the revival of
aristocracy) and horizontally (in the call to corporatized socialism).
They propose, in essence, the matter of Christendom (such as they
understand it) without the form. Yet, without the form of charity
received from the sacraments and healing the wills of aristocrats and
bureaucrats alike, what is to stop their proposed aristocratic-socialist
behemoth from assuming the form of an uncontrollable Hobbesian
Leviathan before adequate preparations are made for its baptism?
Since liberal Catholicism admittedly lacks even the ideal of Christian
charity in its program for the socio-political order, Milbank and Pabst
are critical of the way in which it establishes relationships among various
branches of government because it views those relationships in terms of
checks and balances, rather than as a reciprocal gift exchange.119 This
criticism is important; one could hardly deny that checks and balances
are not the ideal way to envision human relationships. Then again,
humanity does not live in an ideal state; it lives in a fallen state. Without the democratization of sacramental charity, Milbank and Pabst
are themselves forced to admit the necessity of checks and balances as
well.120 Examples abound. We are told that monarchy acts as a “check”
against aristocracy and democracy,121 elections as a check on aristocracy,122 the constitution as a check on a “populist demotion of high
culture,”123 corporatism as a check on political bureaucracy.124 The only
person who is not “checked” is the monarch.125 But why the exception?
Here at last we have an appeal not just to liturgical knowledge, but to
sacramental charity. The monarch can go unchecked because he or she
is answerable to God in virtue of his/her baptism.126
It seems, therefore, as though Milbank and Pabst really envision
two distinct socio-political realities. One is that of the monarch, who
needs no check or balance because his/her will is healed by charity
through the sacraments of the Church; he/she inhabits a world of
peace. The other is that of the demos, who need to be checked and
balanced because their wills cannot be assumed to be so healed;
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 182–83.
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 288.
121
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 212, 216.
122
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 289.
123
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 289.
124
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 380.
125
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 218–19.
126
		Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue, 219.
119
120

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they inhabit a world of violence in search of peace. The irony is that
these two worlds are in fact the same because evil is always privative
of some good. The world of violence that the demos seeks to escape
through liturgy is but the corruption of the world of peace that the
monarch inhabits through the sacraments. This suggests that there
is another vertical axis that Milbank and Pabst do not adequately
account for: it is not the vertical axis of aristocracy; it is the Dionysian
ascent from sin to grace and glory through sacramental purgation,
illumination, and perfection.
Conclusion: Searching for the Politics of Virtue
among the Politics of Sin and Grace
Outside of the post-liberal tradition, an historical reading of Augustine’s
City of God has recently emerged in the work of Robert Dodaro that
offers a more thorough account of Augustine’s understanding of the
wounds of sin in the individual and supplies the necessary, corresponding emphasis on sacramental charity in the community.127 Dodaro’s
work arises out of a conversation different from those of Murray and
Milbank. It is not a work of contemporary political theology so much
as a work of patristic historical theology, implicitly correcting liberal
readings of Augustine on virtue and politics by offering an alternative
to the historical framework of Robert Markus upon which they tend
to be based.128 By placing Augustine’s City of God in the context of the
Pelagian controversy,129 Dodaro is able to show how Augustine’s discussions of justice—in the intellect and the will, individually and communally—always presuppose that justice in a fallen world can come only
from Christ.130 As C. C. Pecknold argues, this means that the only truly
just society is therefore the Church as totus Christus, the hearts of whose
members are healed by sacramental love in such a way that they receive
from Christ the humility required to renounce the lust for power over
others and to live as a virtuous community in the world.131
		Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
128
		Robert A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Markus, Christianity and the
Secular (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).
129
		Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society, 27–71.
130
		Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society, 72–114.
131
		C. C. Pecknold, “Church and Politics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Catholic
Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2018); Dodaro,
Christ and the Just Society, 210. Theologians have generally failed to see the
127

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1405

Given that Dodaro’s work focuses on the period right after the
collapse of the Roman Empire, it gives us a theological vision for the
relationship between grace and human society without a concrete
account of how that relationship might function. Yet, by applying
a similar understanding of sin and grace to a later period in history,
Andrew Jones is able to supply a concrete example of one way in
which Dodaro’s anthropology has been lived out in history.132 Like
Dodaro’s, Jones’s work is historical; it focuses on the kingdom of
France under the reign of Louis IX. Yet, irrespective of its historical
context, the picture that Jones presents of a sacramental kingdom in
the thirteenth century can offer us at least one way of seeing how sin
and grace, faith and charity, and the temporal and the spiritual can be
related to one another in a single socio-political order.
Where Milbank and Pabst see the ontology of violence and
ontological of peace as competing ideologies, Jones argues that
thirteenth-century France was marked by analogous categories that
existed alongside one another.133 Jones agrees with Milbank and
Pabst on the ontological priority of peace. Peace, marked by original
justice in human persons, an original hierarchy of relation-in-difference among them, and original grace elevating them in charity, is
the original historical setting for humanity and for its socio-political
order.134 Empowered by charity, those who live in this peace inhabit
hierarchy, but they renounce what we now call “sovereignty,” for
they desire the good of the other as other.135 Sin disrupts this order.136
consequences of Dodaro’s anthropology for our understanding of political
community in the way that Pecknold observes. Eric Gregory, for example, is
approving of the Christological focus of Dodaro’s anthropology (Politics and the
Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008], 255–56) and positively references Dodaro’s claim
that there can be no true justice apart from Christ (“Augustinians and the
New Liberalism,” Augustinian Studies 41 [2010]: 322), but he fails to appreciate
the difference between Milbank’s liturgical conception of grace and Dodaro’s
sacramental one. Consequently, some scholars have read the two as proposing compatible visions of Augustinian liberalism. See, for example, Benjamin
Wood, The Augustinian Alternative: Religious Skepticism and the Search for a Liberal
Politics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2017), 85–88.
132
		Andrew Jones, Before Church and State: A Study of the Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2017).
133
		Jones, Before Church and State, 13–15, 146, 424, 444.
134
		Jones, Before Church and State, 13, 401–2, 415, 421.
135
		Jones, Before Church and State, 416–19, 451–52.
136
		Jones, Before Church and State, 13, 290, 402.

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By separating man from God and from grace at the fall, it introduced
concupiscence into human persons, violent competition into their
relations, and idolatry into their religion; by separating man from
God and from grace here and now, it removes from us the ability to
withstand the corruptive influence of these temptations on human
life, both individually and communally.137
The kingdom of France under Louis IX was an attempt to incarnate the socio-political consequences of these beliefs about sin and
grace.138 The heart of this socio-political order was the sacramental
economy of the Church.139 The liturgy, more than a place to overcome
an apophatic knowledge of God, was the setting for a dynamic ascent
from sin to sanctity though the sacraments received in the midst of it.140
Standing atop the sacramental hierarchy was the pope. While Milbank
accuses successive late-medieval popes of gradually falling prey to an
Augustinian cupiditas dominandi, and so entering into the City of Man
by amassing absolute sovereignty,141 Jones observes that, in the thirteenth century, both pope and king sought the City of God together.142
Jones’s pope thus appears to us very similar to Milbank’s and Pabst’s
monarch. He is “unchecked” not because of absolute sovereign power,
but because his action at the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the
spiritual order is the very source of everyone else’s ability relinquish
the desire for that power.143 Even then, the pope could dispense release
from the lust for power only because he had first received it by the same
sacramental means and ascended to what was commonly called “a state

		Jones, Before Church and State, 403–8.
		Jones, Before Church and State, 419–20.
139
		Jones, Before Church and State, 72.
140
		Jones, Before Church and State, 27, 154, 443. For an example, see 45–47. Jones’s
emphasis on the centrality of the sacramental finds resonance in recent contributions to Thomistic sacramental theology, e.g.: Reginald Lynch, Cleansing of
the Heart: The Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 111–53; Roger Nutt,
General Principles of Sacramental Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 2017), 99–150.
141
		Jones, Before Church and State, 13.
142
		Jones, Before Church and State, 449–54.
143
		Jones, Before Church and State, 146, 168–70. Read in light of the idea that sacramental charity renounces sovereignty, Giles’s De ecclesiastica potestate appears in
some respects as the culmination of the medieval worldview, rather than the
inchoation of the modern, as Milbank claims ( see especially De ecclesiastica
potestate 1.2–3 [pp. 6–17]).
137
138

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1407

of perfection.”144 Not that he was necessarily perfect in himself—pure
perfection was recognized as something that could be possessed only
in our heavenly homeland.145 Rather, the pope occupied a state of life
externally marked by the trappings of perfection. Consequently, he was
unable to use any physical violence;146 his “sword” was spiritual, the
sword of excommunication.147 It was an ironic weapon. By wielding
it, he could cut off those who spurned grace from the sacraments by
which they might be healed of their hubris in the hopes of preaching
to them so that they might realize their error and repent.
The king was situated at the head of a temporal hierarchy just as
the pope was situated at the head of a spiritual one. In essence, the
king’s task was the same as the pope’s, “the business of the peace and
of the faith”: the peace because his role was to promote ontological
peace within the realm; the faith because it was only by the practice
of the faith in the reception of the sacraments that the peace he was
supposed to promote could exist.148 But, while king and pope had the
same material task, they had formally differentiated and non-competitive roles in accomplishing it.149 The pope concerned himself
primarily with the goods of the soul, and the king with the goods of
the body; the pope offered spiritual assistance through the sacraments
in the ascent to God and wielded a spiritual sword against those who
spurned it, while the king offered material assistance through the
administration of the realm and wielded a temporal sword against
those who corrupted it.150
		Jones, Before Church and State, 153. In his own reading of Augustine, Dodaro
points out the need for such an account of sacramental humility among the
ordained. The fundamental error of the Donatists in this regard was to suppose
that the Church imparted its own justice to the faithful, rather than being a
humble mediator of Christ’s justice. See Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society,
201–2.
145
		Jones, Before Church and State, 416. See ST II-II, q. 182, a. 4, corp. (Leonine ed.,
10:444).
146
		While Jones thus agrees with Milbank that the high medieval synthesis insulated the spiritual power from physical coercion, that very insulation suggests
that Milbank is wrong to conclude that the close relationship between spiritual and temporal power at the end of the thirteenth century caused the
descent of the spiritual into the temporal. See Giles of Rome, De ecclesiastica
potestate 1.3 (pp. 14–15).
147
		Jones, Before Church and State, 429–30.
148
		Jones, Before Church and State, 29–165.
149
		Jones, Before Church and State, 75–94.
150
		Jones, Before Church and State, 426–29. The complementarity of body and soul
as it relates to the temporal and spiritual powers is taken up in by Giles in De
144

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Although the pope and the king each sat atop his own hierarchy, Jones shows that the two hierarchies were not unrelated to
one another. The king was a member of the Church and ruled—as
Milbank also notes—in his capacity as a baptized Christian, through
the sharing in the royal office of Christ that was conferred upon him
by this sacrament.151 This did not make the king a mere functionary of the pope, nor did it make the kingdom the equivalent of a
diocese.152 As the purpose of the sacraments was to heal people from
the lust for power, there existed in the thirteenth century a sense of
subsidiarity in spiritual and temporal governance. The pope administrated spiritual affairs, while the king administrated temporal affairs.
In his administration of spiritual affairs, the pope acknowledged
the legitimate jurisdiction of a variegated harmony of other authorities: cardinals, bishops, abbots, religious superiors of the mendicant
orders, and even kings.153 This latter instance of shared governance
may seem surprising, but Jones shows how the pope claimed no
jurisdiction over the temporal affairs of the king except in certain
very limited respects: the clergy were exempt from direct temporal
subordination to the king in their persons, and so they could not be
tried in civil courts;154 the king was subject to direct spiritual subordination to the pope only in those matters that concerned sin (that is,
ratione peccati).155 The reason for the first was that the clergy occupied
ecclesiastica potestae 1.6–7 (pp. 28–47). James of Viterbo’s attempt at preserving
the analogy of matter/body/kingship to form/soul/priesthood while yet
allowing for the existence of kings apart from priests may be in part responsible for the views on matter he expresses in James of Viterbo, Quodlibet 2.5, ed.
Eelcko Ypma (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1969), 59–96.
151
		Jones, Before Church and State, 137, 145–65, 247.
152
		Jones, Before Church and State, 280–281, 451–52.
153
		Jones, Before Church and State, 226–27. Most instructive is Jones’s treatments
of cardinal legates de latere, who were seen as so united to the pope that they
could be relied upon to render an accurate account of his intentions even after
his death (312–38, 371–91, esp. 384).
154
		Jones, Before Church and State, 228–29. The clergy were also, by decree 46 of
Lateran IV, exempt from direct civil taxation (Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils,
ed. Norman Tanner [Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990],
1:255).
155
		Jones, Before Church and State, 320n14. For instance, we may consider the
account that Jones records of the king ordering a group of monks to absolve a
seeming unjust excommunication “unless . . . their excommunication was on
account of a sin against God” (231). This is where Giles of Rome falls short
(De ecclesiastica potestate 3.5–6 [pp. 318–41]), because his understanding of ratione peccati is already embedded within a narrative of the direct subordination

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1409

an external state that represented a higher form of spiritual perfection
in the ascent to God; the reason for the second was that the king, like
any other Christian, constantly depended on the sacramental economy of the Church to make the interior ascent that the clergy signified. Assuming that the king remained in a state of grace, he enjoyed
a high degree of freedom in the administration of temporal affairs
because those temporal affairs were his affairs.156 Even so, he did not
possess sovereignty in the modern sense.157 Freed of the lust for power
through the sacraments, his was a subsidiary rule that acknowledged
the temporal jurisdiction both of temporal nobility and of certain
spiritual prelates.158 The coordination of all of these various spheres of
authority was not by force; it was by oath, which established charitable networks of counsel and aid (consilium et auxilium) among all the
various spheres of temporal and spiritual jurisdiction.159
An individual person’s experience of this socio-political order
would depend upon the state of his soul.160 If he were inhabiting ontological peace by living in a state of grace, he could expect minimal
external interference in his affairs from the temporal government.
Instead, his life would be marked primarily by an inward ascent to
God through sacramental grace. If he corrupted that peace by living in
a state of mortal sin, he would become at once a danger to the Church
and to the kingdom: to the Church because he might lead others to
abandon their ascent to God; to the kingdom because, by doing so,
he would gradually corrupt the otherwise peaceful temporal order.
Consequently, if he persisted, he might find himself subject to the
two swords: to the spiritual sword of excommunication that would
prevent him from harming the Church and call him back to mystical
ascent, and to the temporal sword of the king’s coercion to compel
him to cease his harm to the realm.161 This modeled the experience of
the people of God in the two Testaments of Sacred Scripture. In the
Old Testament, when humanity was still being prepared for grace, the
of temporal to spiritual power. For a more careful treatment of that provision,
see James of Viterbo, De regimine Christiano 2.8 [pp. 242–43].
156
		Significantly, this even included the temporal consequences following excommunication, in which the king’s rights were separate from those of the pope
(Jones, Before Church and State, 133, 220–222, 234–47).
157
		Jones, Before Church and State, 126–28.
158
		Jones, Before Church and State, 114–15, 167–217, 233–34.
159
		Jones, Before Church and State, 249–74, 339–69.
160
		Jones, Before Church and State, 420, 418–26.
161
		Jones, Before Church and State, 53–73, 426–27.

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people of God were given an external law that coerced their bodies,
but only within the context of a covenanted relationship with God;162
in the New Testament, when all of humanity was offered grace, the
Church was given an interior law that calls the souls of the faithful by
love, again in the context of a covenanted relationship.163
By its attention to the wounds of sin, Jones’s account of the
thirteenth century can acknowledge with Murray the difficulties
that liberalism has encountered concerning the knowledge and
performance of the natural law in the contemporary world. By
its connection of the wounds of sin with the cupiditas dominandi, it
can help explain more clearly than Murray how the move toward
limited government is integral to the move away from sovereignty.
By its recognition that the solution to sin and sovereignty is found
in a particular faith, it can explain the difficulties that Milbank’s and
Pabst’s proposal would encounter in finding widespread recognition
without preaching.164 Finally, by its recognition that this faith’s key
contribution to overcoming sin and sovereignty is charity, understood not as an ideal but as a sacramental virtue that heals the wills
that have been corrupted by sin, it offers the “one thing necessary”
to realize Milbank and Pabst’s vision for a post-liberal Christendom.
As Bernard Mulcahy has shown, the principal fear that tends to
animate criticisms of Radical Orthodoxy’s political theology, and
that any use of Jones’s theological history is sure to animate all the
more, is that of an integralism in which nature is dissolved into grace,
the state into the Church, and man into God, an integralism in which
the created order loses the integrity that God himself, in the language
of Sacred Scripture, thought it “good” to confer upon it.165 If Jones’s
consistent denial of a division between the spiritual and the temporal were read with a systematic lens rather than the historical one, it
could easily lead to this conclusion. But this would be a mistake of
genre, and it is the same mistake that we could make with regard to
Thomas Aquinas if we were to fail to distinguish the systematic from
the historical in his work as well. The same Aquinas who gave us five
proofs of God’s existence in the prima pars tells us that, as a matter of
history, most people believe in God’s existence because they do not
		Jones, Before Church and State, 407–15.
		Jones, Before Church and State, 415–18.
164
		Jones, Before Church and State, 292.
165
		Mulcahy, Not Everything is Grace, 179–200; Edmund Waldstein, “An Integralist
Manifesto,” First Things, October 2017, 52–53.
162
163

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1411

understand the arguments for it.166 The same Aquinas who gave us a
careful exposition of the natural law in the prima secundae tells us that,
as a matter of history, most people need the Ten Commandments
because they do not reason out the precepts of it.167 The same Aquinas
who gave us a careful exposition of the cardinal virtues in the secunda
secundae tells us that, as a matter of history, all people need sanctifying
grace in order to form them in a true and perfected way.168 The denial
that two things are usually or ever found apart from one another in
history does not mean that those two things (faith and the summit of
metaphysical knowledge, grace and perfected virtue, the spiritual and
the temporal orders) are not metaphysically distinct.169 As a matter
of fact, nature may have fallen from grace. But the same grace that
raises nature to glory (gratia elevans) also sets nature on its own two
feet again (gratia sanans).170
If Jones is correct about the relationship between violence and
peace in the present, then his work can help to give us a sense of the
breadth of the axis along which the politics of virtue may be sought.
The first pole of that axis is the politics of sin. As Murray argued,
the cupiditas dominandi had made such great inroads into the hearts of
temporal rulers that, even in Catholic countries, the Church had lost
		For the proofs of God’s existence, see ST I, q. 2, a. 3, corp. (Leonine ed.,
4:31–32). For Thomas’s reticence about their becoming widely known, see ST
I, q. 1, a. 1, corp. (Leonine ed., 4:6).
167
		For Thomas’s exposition of the natural law, see ST I-II, q. 94 (Leonine ed.,
7:168–73). For Thomas’s reticence about our knowledge of it, see ST I-II, q.
99, a. 2, ad 2 (Leonine ed., 7:200).
168
		For Thomas’s exposition of the cardinal virtues, see ST I-II, q. 61 (Leonine
ed., 6:394–400), and II-II, qq. 47–170 (Leonine ed., 8:348–10:364). On the
relationship between grace and moral virtue, see notes 73–74 above.
169
		On the distinction between natural and supernatural habits, acts, and ends in
Aquinas, see my “The Study of Theology as a Foretaste of Heaven: The Influence of Albert the Great on Aquinas’s Understanding of Beatitudo Imperfecta”
in this issue of Nova et Vetera. On the distinction between the spiritual and the
temporal, see Jones, Before Church and State, 158–65, 172–76. In his treatment
of Aquinas on integral nature, Jones mistakenly says that man, without grace,
would be “not capable of the perfect virtue for which he was created, which
was ‘infused virtue’” (402; similarly on 415). For Aquinas, virtus perfecta is not
a superlative; it refers to a virtue that has all the characteristics pertaining to
proper virtue, and so is connected with the other virtues. Thus, in a state of
integral nature, virtus perfecta could have been connected by prudence, though
as a matter of historical record, it was connected by charity.
170
		For a treatment of this theme in the thought of Augustine, see Dodaro, Christ
and the Just Society, 113–14.
166

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the vast majority of her freedom over the intervening years since the
thirteenth century. Murray called for extremely limited government
not because he was a partisan of the Republican party, but because he
thought that Western society had reached the point on the axis of sin
and grace where any serious extension of government (even that of a
confessional state) would inevitably lead to the manipulative control
of the people and of the Church. In this respect, Murray’s liberal
Catholicism can be rehabilitated in a post-liberal context. To propose
Murray’s liberal Catholicism as a post-liberal model for political
theology is really to restore to Murray the Augustinian theological
metanarrative in which he originally embedded his thought. It is to
recognize with Murray that his thought was not intended to be an
indelible set of abstract truths, but rather a prudential response to a
situation in which the human community occupied a particular point
on the axis of sin and grace.
To think, however, that the politics of sin is our only option is
to succumb to political-theological “despair.”171 If we supplement
Milbank’s and Pabst’s proposal for a post-liberal order with Murray’s
awareness of the effects of sin on the state, as well as Jones’s reworking of the categories of violence and peace as an historical continuum upon which persons and nations live out the drama of sin and
grace, then a second option opens up to us: the politics of grace. In
an age in which the ruler was a saint and the people were saintly, it
was possible to in-corporate man’s sacramental journey into the very
structure of the temporal order without tarnishing the freedom of
the Church or of the state. It was a short-lived age because the lust
for power—which is a temptation for every man and every nation in
every age—gained too much ground in the following century among
less saintly rulers, less saintly popes, and less saintly people. To the
extent that a similar lust for power reigns in presidents, prime ministers, and people today, it would be not only unwise but also impossible to recreate Christendom as Milbank and Pabst propose, even if
only materially. For, while it would be a mistake to suppose that the
ultimate freedom of a man or of men could be found anywhere other
than in the Church of Christ,172 it would be a contradiction in terms
		Jones, Before Church and State, 442–44.
		This is the argument behind Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux
du dogme (Paris: Cerf, 2003); English translation: Catholicism: Christ and the
Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).

171
172

Locating the Politics of Virtue within the Politics of Sin and Grace 1413

to compel a person or a people to embrace that freedom.173 That is
because the move from liberalism to Christendom is not effected by
replacing one set of ideals or laws with another, however Christian
the new ideals or law may be (or may have been). The move from
liberalism to Christendom in the temporal order, like the move from
sin to grace in the spiritual order, is vertical. “Every perfect gift”—
in the soul and in the polis—“is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights.”174 It is received as a sacramental gift into the hearts
of the faithful through that humble act of sacrificial thanksgiving
that makes the Church175 and—to the extent that the members of the
Church cooperate with the fullness of its effects—remakes the world.
Jones’s study focuses on a particular point in history. It does not,
because it cannot, furnish us with a program for political action in
the present. But it does suggest for us that the other pole on the axis
of secular and sacred governance is more radical than Radical Orthodoxy. To bring about socialism within a sacramental kingdom would
be to corrupt it from the inside by replacing charity with sovereignty.
To bring about socialism in anticipation of a sacramental kingdom
would be a political and theological disaster, because it would introduce the corruption of society without its salutary remedy. Murray
was right to turn toward limited government in order to rescue the
Church from encroachments on her freedom by modern sovereignty.
Milbank and Pabst were right to identify that sovereignty with a
violence that is rooted in sin. But Jones is also right to show how
violence and peace are not opposing ideologies that can be exchanged
for one another without the healing of the will by sacramental charity.
To the extent that the Church now finds herself beset by a form of
liberalism in the state other than the one that confronted Murray, she
has “the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting
them in the light of the Gospel,”176 which is to say, she must chart her
course in the light of the unchanging truths that God has revealed to
		ST III, q. 68, aa. 7 and 10 (Leonine ed., 12:98, 102–3).
		James 1:17.
175
		Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: l’Eucharistie et l’église au Moyen Age: Étude
historique (Paris: Cerf, 2010), 104: “l’Eucharistie fait l’Église [the Eucharist
makes the Church]” (emphasis original; unfortunately, the emphasis, which
brings out the constitutive nature [fait] of the Eucharist in the Church, has
not been preserved in the published English translation: Corpus Mysticum: The
Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages: Historical Survey [Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1983], 83).
176
		 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, §4.
173
174

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Jacob W. Wood

her about sin and grace, and of her prudential estimation of how sin
and grace are at work in the hearts of persons and nations here and
now. In the meantime, it would be salutary for her to recover the
theological vision behind Murray’s political theology and, by a grasp
of the principles at work in that vision, to read the present the way
that Murray read the past. Murray offered the Church a careful path
to tread so as not to be ensnared by the lust for power in the evangelization of the secular order. That vision was based on reason and
the natural law because Murray thought that the people to whom the
Church needed to bring the Gospel in that age were virtuous enough
to be receptive to it. Yet, to the extent that the natural law begins to
fall on deaf ears and the lust for power corrupts classical liberalism
into doctrinaire liberalism, Murray’s very own methodology challenges the Church to consider the practical effectiveness—though not
the objective validity—of natural law arguments in the public square,
as well as to rediscover the importance of embedding those arguments in the theological metanarrative of the Cross. Doing so means
seeing Murray’s proposal for limited government as a prudential
accommodation to the politics of sin. But the moment we place the
socio-political order on the axis of sin and grace, Murray, Milbank,
Pabst, and Jones all challenge us to set our sights above politics of
sin and to imagine the redemption of the socio-political order in
the politics of grace. St. Louis’s sacramental kingdom gives us one
concrete example of what the politics of grace can look like. Contemporary political theologians have yet to explore what another might
be for the present day. It cannot be a mere replica of St. Louis’s society; the temporal order has moved on from medieval monarchy, and
the Church’s work of evangelization faces different—but not for that
reason less valid—political structures today. Nevertheless, whether
the world’s vision for the temporal order is taken from ancient Rome,
from medieval France, or from modern America, the Church’s vision
for the spiritual order remains consistent. As Dodaro rightly observes,
that vision is fixed in Christ. And while Christ unfailingly calls fallen
man to sacramental deification, the same Christ invariably calls fallen
N&V
men to the same perfection.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2018): 1415–1432

1415

Book Reviews
Servitore di Dio e dell’umanità: La biografia di Benedetto
XVI by Elio Guerriero (Milan, IT: Mondadori, 2016), x + 539 pp.

We have entered a new era of Ratzinger studies. With the

establishment of the Ratzinger Foundation in 2007, the Institut Papst
Benedikt XVI and the first volume of the Gesammelte Schriften in
2008, the annual Ratzinger Prize in 2011, and the tenth volume of the
Ratzinger-Studien in 2016, we are moving beyond the initial surveys
of his thought such as those of Aidan Nichols and Tracey Rowland and
into deeper explorations. While there have been a number of studies of
individual aspects of Benedict’s thought in the past ten years, we have
lacked a synthetic analysis of the man and his thought that goes deeper
than the accounts of John Allen and George Weigel, which were written at the beginning of his pontificate and are particularly concerned
with the state of the Church in 2005. In French, we have the study of
Bernard Lecomte (but it is too brief to carry us far beyond the portraits
written by Georg Ratzinger), Peter Seewald’s 2005 Benedict XVI: Ein
Porträt aus der Nähe, or Ratzinger’s own brief recollections in Milestones,
which are limited to his time before he was consecrated a bishop.
Guerriero’s biography, however, is important because it accounts
for the whole man. If it is not translated into English (although it is to
be hoped that Ignatius Press or Catholic University of America Press
may publish a translation; all English translations in this review are
my own), its influence in English scholarship may not be apparent.
But it will be a landmark in Ratzinger studies in a similar way to that
in which Guerriero’s biography of von Balthasar was, in that it draws
together all of the previous work on Ratzinger and provides a coherent account of the man and the thinker. We are now in a position to
measure Ratzinger’s theological achievement, evaluate it, and carry

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Book Reviews

forward those various avenues that he has opened up and we deem
likely to carry us to new vistas.
Rather than attempting a superficial synopsis of this lengthy book
(it is over 250,000 words) that would, at any rate, be largely familiar
to readers of Nova et Vetera, I instead organize my comments around
five themes. The first regards the character of the book as a whole. In
the second section, I briefly discuss how the thick texture provided by
Guerriero to Ratzinger’s life and intellectual development (1) allows
us better to see the man as a whole and perhaps to empathize with
the difficult situations that led him to make some controversial decisions, (2) allows us to understand the broader context of individual
works, and (3) clarifies just how deeply involved Benedict XVI was
in the magisterium of John Paul II. The third section addresses the
treatment of Ratzinger’s theology in this volume. The fourth draws
attention to what I would call moments of irony or surprise for those
who are tempted to categorize Benedict as a mere reactionary. In the
fifth and concluding section, I draw attention both to a moment in
which Gurriero sounds a disagreement with Ratzinger and to one or
two limitations of the book as a whole.
The Character of the Book
It may be helpful to compare and contrast this biography of Ratzinger
with two well-known modern studies of theologians and hierarchs:
that of John Henry Newman by Ian Ker (1988) and that of John Paul II
by George Weigel (1999 and 2010). Unlike Weigel’s work on the life of
John Paul II, Gurriero’s did not have extended access to Benedict XVI.
In many ways, this is a sympathetic look at the man from a historical
viewpoint rather than the product of live interviews. It further differs
from Weigel’s book in that the two men have such different lives and
personalities: Wojtyla the actor became a charismatic pastor and media
sensation, while Ratzinger the retiring professor became the shy and
reluctant successor of Peter. Unlike Ker, Guerriero explicitly tells us
that he does not hope to contribute to the canonization of Benedict
XVI, and in fact argues with von Balthasar that the Church should
abandon the practice of canonizing pontiffs (4).
And yet Gurriero’s book is similar to both books. It is like Weigel
and Ker’s respective studies in that it is a comprehensive landmark
in the study of the subject. Like both critical studies, this volume
is likely to be the definitive biography for the foreseeable future.
Like Ker’s study of Newman, the focus or most exciting part of the
book is the intellectual development of the man, and several pages

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1417

are given to analyze and provide the context for most of Ratzinger’s
major works.
The Benefit of Historical Context
Many biographical details of Benedict’s life have slipped out in interviews, but they are scattered. Gurriero draws them together and presents a rich tapestry that has some coherence. His basic thesis about the
man Benedict is that he was drawn to a monastic life but was often
called out of it (5, 312–13, 394–95, 413). Indeed, it is the monastic
humanism of the Collège des Bernardins that would perhaps have been
the ideal fit for his personality and style of work. We get a sense of the
continuity of his life and the context for his theological interests from
the extensive family history and political and cultural developments of
his youth. This serves two purposes. First, it provides a touching human
dimension to this shy Bavarian, and secondly, we see not only the influence of World War II and the Nazi occupation on his character but
also how the political developments of Western Germany during the
Wirtschaftswunder following the war shaped the thought of the young
theologian.
The most striking aspect of Ratzinger’s personality that one sees
in this overview of his life, however, is how retiring a man Benedict
is. He accepted the episcopal appointment because his confessor told
him he must (176–77). He refused John Paul II’s request to have him
become head of the Congregation for Catholic Education in 1980,
but after the Pope was shot in 1981, Ratzinger had a change of heart,
perhaps both because he empathized even more deeply with John
Paul and perhaps because he realized that he was not suited to be a
pastor. In the following pages, as we trace his time in Rome from
1981 on, I am struck by how entwined his own work was with John
Paul’s magisterium (207, 296, 335), and indeed how much his work
at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith meant the abandonment of his own theological work, and to a certain extent his
own personality. Guerriero recalls a conversation with von Balthasar
about Ratzinger from this period in which the Swiss theologian
tells him: “You just don’t get it. He is sacrificing his very self for the
Church” (231).
Once we get to a discussion of his own pontificate, the burden
of office becomes even more apparent and, in this section, a more
critical approach may perhaps have improved the book. It is almost
certainly misleading, for instance, to characterize his pontificate
in the following way: “The defining feature of Pope Benedict’s

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Book Reviews

governing is that rather than paying attention to concrete details, he
preferred to be called in to adjudicate when needed, leaving those
involved the freedom to adapt to various situations” (349). In the
following pages we are led through a series of mistaken appointments: men who made a good impression on Benedict and to whom
he was too loyal. The result was that these mistaken appointments
greatly harmed the Church. By the end of chapter 17 (“The Church
in the Storm”), the reader seems to have participated in Benedict’s
exhausting pontificate and, like him, is ready to retire: “For me the
resignation was a duty” (476).
Ratzinger the Theologian
As Ker does in his treatment of Newman, Guerriero describes Ratzinger’s mind by regularly focusing on particularly important works, and
not always his well-known works, but rather those that are more
revealing of the thinker. This dimension is the most important contribution of the book. We learn of the breadth of Ratzinger’s reading as
an undergraduate seminarian (Scholasticism but also Heidegger and
Nietzsche) and his early attraction to Newman, who “then became for
us the foundation of that theological personalism which was so fascinating” (41). Guerriero draws attention to some central developments
in Ratzinger’s thought, such as his growing awareness of worldwide
Christianity (110) and his increasing concern with truth (275–76). His
analysis of many of Ratzinger’s theological achievements is important.
We can see, for instance, Ratzinger’s style of ressourcement—which is
not merely a historical analysis—in his Habilitationsschrift on Bonaventure: “Here Ratzinger showed himself not only capable of carrying on
independent scientific research, which was required in order to receive
the academic venia docendi, but every writing of his demonstrates his
extraordinary talent to find original and innovative aspects in the
works of the great theologians of the past. In sum, he knew how to
enter sympathetically with past masters, and furthermore know how
to use them to enrich and improve contemporary theological debate”
(71; cf. 132).
One gets the sense in reading Guerriero that the contrast between
Rahner and his disciples and Ratzinger and his Schülerkreis is the
following: while Rahner attempts to look at reality (through the lens
of Heidegger and Husserl), Ratzinger works through the monuments
of tradition to get a feel for that tradition. Rahner attempts to stay
within the boundaries established by Denzinger, tending not to work
through the thick texture of tradition. Indeed, this approach can also

Book Reviews

1419

be seen in the diversity of theses that Ratzinger supervised. This is
not because he had a scattered mind, but rather because, according
to one of his assistants, Professor Stephan Horn: “The professor was
not interested, as Rahner or Pannenberg were, in investigating reality
from his own point of view. On the contrary, he drew abundantly
from Scripture and tradition to enter into critical and constructive
dialogue with contemporary problems. His intent was to introduce
[into contemporary discussions] the breadth and wealth of living
tradition considered not only in its organic development, in its
heights and depths, but also in its elements of fracture and polarity
that give impetus to other questions and possible insights” (145).
Déjà Vu and Liberation Theology’s Colonial Heritage
The moments of irony (only occasionally intentional) and foreshadowing in this book are quite delicious. In the 1950s, Guerriero tells
us, Ratzinger’s interests were not confined to theology or philosophy,
but included drama and a particular interest in Reinhold Schneider’s
Il gran rifiuto (76). Ratzinger’s arguments about the danger of clericalism inherent in the Church’s excessive focus on the bishop after the
Second Vatican Council (115) and the clericalism of liturgists who
carry forward “a furious iconoclasm that eliminates the law of continuity that one cannot transgress with impunity” (129) are examples
of his penchant for pinning the same criticism on those who tend to
accuse others of being clerical, siding with the wealthy, rigid, unthinking dogmatists (see 287, 293). (Note that Ratzinger’s point about the
clericalism of liturgists was already said in Joseph Jungmann’s 1948
Missarum sollemnia.)
Two other moments in the story show the irony of wealthy Europeans rushing to identify themselves with the poor. In 1979, Hans
Küng’s mandatum was revoked by the Catholic bishops, allowing
him to teach religion but not Catholic theology at the University of
Tübingen. After this, an invitation to speak at a Catholic institute was
revoked at the insistence of the local ordinary. Ratzinger addressed
this issue with a group of youth from his diocese in November 1979,
particularly Küng’s self-identification with the “Church of the Poor.”
Guerriero recounts: “Ratzinger further encouraged the young people
not to take too seriously the air of martyrdom that surrounded Küng.
Perhaps with the exception of the Pope, there was no bishop in the
world who had as much access to the media as Küng did. Moreover,
a professor of Tübingen was not the most appropriate spokesmen for
the Church of the Poor” (197).

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Book Reviews

Guerriero returns to the question of liberation theology later in the
book and articulates Ratzinger’s ironic claim that liberation theology
is actually a product of colonialism: “For it was born under the influence of European and North American theologians and tended to
spread to other areas of the third world from there. The theologians
who began the school are European and those who made it grow in
Latin America are Europeans or European-trained. From this point
of view, Liberation Theology is just one more export product of the
opulent west” (229).
Another foreshadowing of the present ecclesial situation is a
debate that broke out in Germany in September 1993. Bishops Karl
Lehmann, Walter Kasper, and Oskar Saeir coauthored a letter to
the faithful in their dioceses that exhorted the priests and faithful to
respect the consciences of those divorced and remarried Catholics
who choose to come forward to receive the Eucharist. Rather than
condemning their decision, the bishops called for a “pastoral accompaniment” (271).
Concluding Remarks
In sum, this is a very, and perhaps overly, sympathetic portrait. I note
only one substantial criticism of Ratzinger, in which Guerriero
disagrees with him on the question of the novus ordo mass (367). It is
an excellent work and I hope that it will be translated before too long.
My one reservation about the book is that it does not seem to
give sufficient attention to Ratzinger’s great achievement in biblical
exegesis. Both the Jesus of Nazareth volumes and his writings on Scripture are a great achievement and display the assimilative power of the
truth: the Church can accept historical criticism when done well,
and yet, according to the principles of Dei Verbum and the tradition
of the Church, the meaning of Scripture is by no means exhausted
by historical-critical research. The Jesus of Nazareth volumes model
how this might be done. A more detailed examination of just how
Ratzinger achieved this and what import these books might have
N&V
remains a desideratissimum.
Matthew C. Briel
Assumption College
Worcester, MA

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1421

General Principles of Sacramental Theology by Roger W. Nutt
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), viii + 206 pp.

True to its title , Roger Nutt’s book is about the general

principles of sacramental theology.While delving into significant pastoral, historical, and ecumenical issues concerning individual sacraments
when doing so is an aid to the overall exposition, the book focuses
on an understanding of the seven sacraments as a whole. The book is
solidly Catholic, rooted in biblical Christology, Thomistic, and engaged
with modern scholarship both critically and favorably. But General
Principles of Sacramental Theology is not simply a reflection on magisterial teachings, a gloss on Aquinas, or a response to current claims. It
is well-informed, faithful, sapiential theology. Moreover, it is timely in
that it closes up a major gap in contemporary Catholic academics.
Nutt’s pedagogy seems to be that he is intent on his reader actually
understanding his points. His explanations are sometimes accompanied by analogies and concrete examples that sustain the flow and
development of thought. He gives reasons for his positions that go
back to the fundamentals of Christian ecclesial life and common
experience, as well as theological sources. Nutt explains sacramental
principles without always entering into the myriad of debated points
surrounding them, though his footnotes are rich in resources for
anyone inclined to further research.
General Principles of Sacramental Theology does not engage in cheap
polemics. It avoids distortion of the traditional understanding of the
sacraments that could occur by an unbalanced reaction to reductionist views or by correcting errors without a holistic account. It is
decidedly not a book of false dichotomies, such as sacraments being
either signs or causes, either metaphysical or personal, either binding
God or optional for us, either instituted by Christ in every detail
or not instituted by him at all, and so on. But the book does fill in
a vacuum left by a naturalistic understanding of the sacraments. It
corrects prejudices against causality, personal agency, supernaturality,
and non-empirical spiritual realities. It sees through the rationalistic denial of sacramental character and grace, or any denial of real,
supernatural, ontological effects of Christ’s action within a rite of the
Church. With true open-mindedness, Nutt embraces the revealed
tradition of the Church with respect to those things that are not
directly perceptible.
The chapters in General Principles of Sacramental Theology are not
isolated treatments. There is some account of the interconnection

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Book Reviews

between the various sacramental truths. But more prominently,
Christ comes through consistently as the unifying key to understanding the sacraments, whether as first principle or as final end: the living
instrumentality of Christ’s humanity is the principle of the dynamic
instrumentality of the sacraments, which are an application of Christ’s
saving work; Christ’s intentional institution of the sacraments gives
them definition and causative sign value; sacramental character is
conformity to Christ’s priesthood; and friendship with Christ is
consistently put forward as the reason for the sacramental system.
Someone with exclusively sacramental interests may be tempted
to skim the first two chapters, which lay out the theological and
methodological backdrop for the rest of the work. Those chapters,
though, are integral to the book in that they give the reasons for a
relative lack of sacramental theology done today, and moreover, why
it is so necessary that the lack be remedied if one is to have a complete
theological picture of God and his saving works. Nutt shows that the
sacraments are a vital part of God’s wise plan for his creation and that
a radical misunderstanding of creation jeopardizes an understanding
of the sacraments. Nowhere is the axiom that grace presupposes
nature more pronounced than in sacramental theology, and these first
two chapters show how that is so.
The topics that make up the bulk of the work, chapters 3–11, are
sacraments as signs, matter and form, intention, the necessity of the
sacraments, sacramental causality, sacramental grace and character,
and the institution and authority of the sacraments. Nutt roots the
consideration of sacraments as signs in the biblical notion of mystery.
He makes it clear that sacraments, while employing natural signs,
cannot be mere natural signs on a horizontal level because they were
providentially instituted to confer holiness. Nutt deals with matter,
form, and intention as conveying the sacramental sign, not only
of the conferral of grace but also of Christ’s Paschal mystery and
our future beatitude. He explains matter, form, and intention in a
commonsensical way as firmly underpinning sacramental validity,
but without entering the casuistic morass.
On the necessity of the sacraments, Nutt is particularly Christological. He is guided by Dominus Iesus, conscientiously avoiding
hypothetical assertions about salvation and limits to God’s power.
Sacramental causality, a sort of lynchpin for current debate, is the
longest chapter, with the most appeals to magisterial teaching and
the most detailed argumentation against contrary positions. Nutt
dispels the idea that causality equals the mechanical, which equals the

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1423

non-personal. In so doing, he does not merely dismiss his interlocutor’s concerns. He shows that, far from sacramental causality being
some cold thing that separates us from a relationship with Christ,
friendship with Christ comes about by sacramental causality.
The Trinity and the missions of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
form the basis of the chapter on sacramental grace, which explains
sanctifying grace and its specific application by the different sacraments for growth in holiness and healing. The way sacraments cause
grace is a crucial way in which the New Law fulfills the Old. The
sacramental dimension of worship, specifically how sacramental character is a conformity to Christ’s high priesthood such that the Church
can worship truly, provides a complement to the understanding of
character as a seal. The explanation of sacramental character leads
into an explanation of the classical division of sacramentum tantum,
res et sacramentum, and res tantum. These categories, which could pose
difficulty, are clearly explained and put in their Patristic and perennial context of how to approach the question of sacraments that are
unworthily but validly celebrated. The final chapter treats of the
key teaching that Christ instituted the sacraments and acknowledges
differences in rites with regard to non-essential sacramental elements
that fall under ecclesial authority.
The conclusion of the book explores principles of sacramental spirituality, a theme that consistently runs through the background. Nutt
lays out the classic doctrine of the seven sacraments corresponding
to different times of life. There is also an explanation of the unique
importance of each sacrament, with some deference to the Eucharist
as the center of the Christian life, as well as an explanation of the
sacramental dimension of liturgy and a life of prayer.
General Principles of Sacramental Theology is an excellent text for
use in any sacraments course. It is brief enough to be accompanied
by biblical or primary sources, a work on liturgical theology, or a
work on individual sacraments. The book would also be of help as a
resource to anyone teaching a general theology course or leading an
advanced catechetical class that includes a section on the sacraments.
Finally, anyone with serious religious interests who wants a reliable
and systematic account of sacramental theology will find this book
N&V
accessible and enlightening.
John Froula
Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity
Saint Paul, MN

1424

Book Reviews

The Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition and the Renewal
of Catholic History by Christopher Shannon and Christopher Blum
(Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 2014), xiv + 174 pp.

Christopher Shannon and Christopher Blum have writ-

ten a fascinating and challenging book. It is directed to historians who
are also Catholics, not Catholics who happen to be historians. I am
one of those, part of the target group they hope to reach and persuade
to bring their faith life to bear on their work. I need little persuading—but am greatly appreciative of their instructions on how to do it
well and in the proper spirit. Alasdair MacIntyre, whose ideas inspired
and inform their book, said that the study of the past should have a
virtuous, “sacred” component, that it should be part of the practice of
“right judgment.”1 The Past as Pilgrimage is Shannon’s and Blum’s affectionate tribute to “virtuous history,” to “research” as a re-searching for
something substantial, even noble.
I am not a student of medieval Europe or eighteenth-century
France, where being a Catholic historian gives one a certain built-in
advantage, a “hermeneutic of affection,” as it was once described to
me. I was responsible for courses in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, meaning the history of the most purposeful
amnesiacs ever to trod God’s earth at the time when forgetfulness was
thought a necessary prerequisite to progress. Whatever pilgrimages
they set out on were not to the past. They scarcely acknowledged that
they had had one.
My field of research, however, was more specialized. I am, and
remain even in retirement, a student of the lives of immigrant/ethnic
working people. Even more specifically, I am re-searching into the
lives of those in that demographic subset who were from Ireland,
exiles, as they preferred to call themselves, of that sainted and Catholic-saturated land, and quite possibly the least forgetful people ever to
trod God’s earth. A hermeneutic of affection was and is as available
to me as to anyone.
And Shannon and Blum’s book may be as relevant to me as to
anyone. In any event, I claim the indulgence of making it such, and
for what I hope is one very good reason: America did not just experience periodic anti-Catholic movements; “America was an anti-Catholic movement.” My source for this clear truth was Sydney Ahlstrom,

		Shannon and Blum touch on this on xi–xii.

1

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1425

the dean of historians of American religion.2 Ahlstrom’s conclusion
was a bit nonchalant, but it was intended seriously; it may even have
been celebratory. The likes of me must be counted among America’s
apparently perpetual Others. For an American historian, outsidedness
is a signal blessing, an advantage that is mine and my fellow “Papists”
alone. What Shannon’s and Blum’s book has done is convince me of
the historiographical foothold that “Ahlstrom’s truth” provides. The
role of outsider gives my hermeneutic special traction. Maybe it gave
me a second hermeneutic, one of disaffection. The one may well
require the other; I will try to use both.
Exploring the differences between Catholic and non-Catholic,
taking Ahlstrom’s point literally, is the only way to understand the
Catholic experience in America. But reverse the order. It is also the
case that it is the key to understanding U.S. history. Like it or not—
and most Americans will not—American history cannot be understood without reference to the experience of Catholics as a Catholic
experience. It is here that Shannon’s and Blum’s plea for a “renewal
of Catholic history” is especially relevant for Americanists. Looking
at the American past through a Catholic lens, asking Catholic questions of that past, in sum, putting a Catholic hermeneutic of affection
to work in a place where the Catholic presence was not always—or
ever—welcome, is the best imaginable way to challenge the established narrative.
Take, for example, G. K. Chesterton’s semi-famous remark that
traditional societies—Catholic ones by way of obvious example—
practice a “democracy of the dead.”3 Past generations do not lie
moldering in their graves; they are enfranchised, they have a vote,
and their vote must be counted. In Shannon’s and Blum’s words, we
find “the present in the past.” The self-consciously Protestant/secular American society was of a decidedly different mind: the earth,
they told themselves, belonged to the living, and to no one else.
Walter Lippmann spoke for them all when he complained that the
“past has been used to throttle the present”4 and stated: “Men can
		Quoted by Robert Orsi, “U.S. Catholics between Memory and Modernity:
How Catholics Are American,” in Catholics in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History, ed. R. Scott Appleby and Katherine Sprows
Cummings (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012): 11–42, at 15.
3
		G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane, 1908), 85.
4
		Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest
(New York: Mitchell Kennerly, 1914), 302.
2

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reverence the dead if they are buried. But they will no longer sit at
table with corpses, ghosts, and skeletons [or—to insert the obvious—
allow them a vote]”; Society “must [reject] a confusion of life and
death.”5 MacIntyre’s call for the cultivation of the “‘virtue of having
an adequate sense of the traditions to which one belongs or which
confront one” (4) is not on conspicuous display here.
The “virtue of right judgment” was one “rooted in lived experience;” it had a “grasp of [the] future possibilities which the past
has made available to the present.” The past does not “throttle the
present;” it liberates and instructs it by passing down what it—and
it alone—knows. It makes available, in other words, “the data of the
past, for the sake of the future thriving of our communities” (4). I
would have preferred a word other than “data,” which is too technocratic for something as intensely human as this, but I get the point.
I also get this one: right judgment of the sort MacIntyre called for
is the “historian’s standard;” it alone is capable of the “transmission
of cultural” sensibilities from one generation to the next. It is “the
quality or ability with respect to which the historian may most properly be called good or wise” (2–4). And it calls Catholic historians
to their duty.
This returns the discussion to Chesterton, who also wrote—
rather more famously—that, in America, “even the Catholics are
Protestants.”6 If he is right, then I have been stripped of my status
as outsider. My hermeneutic has been silenced. But I believe that
Chesterton was wrong about that second remark, and I believe that,
if asked, Shannon and Blum would be of that mind too. So I will
presume to speak for the three of us: we hope that Americans generally and historians in particular will take to heart Seamus Heaney’s
poetic rendering of what the democracy of the dead meant. Heaney,
who knew something about traditional and Catholic society, wrote:
“I cock my ear / . . . / in the shared calling of blood / arrives my
need / for antediluvian lore.” 7 The verdict of right judgment has had
no lovelier or more apt expressions.
We all—Irish blood or no—need our daily allowance of antediluvian lore; it is the historian’s responsibility to provide it, and that is no
		Lippmann, Drift and Mastery, 300.
		Quote by E. J. Dionne, “We Are All Liberals Now,” Commonweal 126 (November 19, 1999).
7
		Seamus Heaney, “Gifts of Rain,” in Selected Poems, 1966–1987 (New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990), 23.
5
6

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paltry responsibility. Lore—history, memory, stories, songs—is what
holds society together and keeps it from running away with itself.
The most “discerning” of Catholic historians qua pilgrims know
and celebrate that. Shannon and Blum cite the work of both Eamon
Duffy and—somewhat problematically, I think—Joseph Ratzinger /
Pope Benedict XVI, as exemplars. Both put right judgment on full
display in their work; both tell “the stories necessary for the transmission of the virtues that support Christian life” (133). The Irish told
more of those stories than most and counted on their consoling grace
more than any. I will let another English convert, Evelyn Waugh,
speak to these points. Waugh once wrote that, alone among America’s Catholics, only the Irish possessed the “hard, ancient wisdom”
sufficient to the task of spurning the “multifarious frauds of [American] modernity.”8 I am not sure it was wisdom that allowed that; it
may simply have been incomprehension. It matters not.
Obviously, the canvas of The Past as Pilgrimage is far broader than
Catholics in America. Indeed, it is about as broad a canvas as can be
imagined. Shannon and Blum believe that historians, by definition,
are time travelers: they travel only on one-way roads, but even at
that, there is a blurring of time in the nature of what they do. Who
better for the trip than Catholics? We are certainly well practiced—
or should be. Membership in the Mystical Body does not end at grave
sites; once a member, always a member. Which gives to the dead a
special status and to the study of their lives a special, sacred meaning.
Shannon’s and Blum’s book not only makes that clear but also presents unassailable reasons why the historians’ craft is time-travel of a
special sort. It is a pilgrimage, a journey of moral and spiritual significance. Historians should be discerning pilgrims. I mean discerning in
the Ignatian sense of self-discovery as well as in the sense of historical
discovery—Catholic pilgrims with Catholic banners flying. We call
ours a “pilgrim church.” It is time to take that seriously and for each
of us to take our “pilgrim souls” seriously as well.
Shannon and Blum also make the very good point that, even secular historians are coming to a greater appreciation of traditions, of the
“present in the past.” They cite specifically—and quite appropriately—E. P. Thompson’s monumental The Making of the English Working Class and Thompson’s “radical reappraisal” of the importance
		Quoted in James P. Shannon, “The Irish Catholic Imagination,” in Roman
Catholicism and the American Way of Life, ed. Thomas McAvoy (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960), 204–5.

8

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Book Reviews

of “pre-modern customs and traditions” (115). They do not quote
Thompson’s description of Catholic customs and traditions as “the
hocus-pocus of Romanism,” what Max Weber, who inspired much
of Thompson’s work, called Catholic “enchantment.” “Hocus-pocus”
is dismissive and edges toward offensive. What counted, however,
was not Thompson’s lapse in manners, but that he took cultural
sensibilities seriously, just not seriously enough to want to share in the
religiousness of them. His Marxist hermeneutic, among other factors,
would not permit that.
Catholic historians like Duffy and Pope Benedict are not similarly restrained. Nor should any Catholic historian be. Pilgrims are
not tourists; they are seekers. They visit with the dead; join them at
table; go to Mass with them; share the enchantment, the hocus-pocus. In other words, they sustain the “moral community” by entering
fully into it and carrying its stories forward. Right judgment means
understanding that history, as Shannon and Blum remind us, is not
biography. The individual, ripped from her or his social moorings,
cannot be the carrier of tradition because the individual verdict, as
such, is entirely subjective. Historical truths are communal truths.
Morals and virtues can be comprehended only through their relation
to the community from which they come. And so Shannon and Blum
instruct us: study either communities or individuals in community,
including the communion of saints; it is there that “the sinuous
strands of cultural transmission” (2) are to be found.
In Shannon’s and Blum’s minds, there is no higher calling for
historians than finding those cultural and moral strands. Moral virtue
is passed down through traditions, memories, narratives, and stories,
including the non-rational, enchanted ones. Genuinely rational
enquiry requires membership in a particular type of moral community. Some are Catholic; some are not. These communities can be
held together by the non-rational. It is the community that is rational,
not the traditions embedded within it. They can be hocus-pocus, but
they must be studied and understood. And so we go on pilgrimages
to the past; that is where our ancestral sorrows are to be found, our
ancestral communities rediscovered, and the lessons derived from
both carried lovingly forward.
What, however, of the by now tired argument that the “past (the
land of the dead) is a foreign country; they do things differently
there”? Dealing with foreign countries demands “objectivity.” But,
regardless of how far “back” one goes or to how “foreign” a country,
women and men will be found doing what women and men always

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1429

do: tending to the stories that sustain the life of their communities
and trying to figure out where, what, and who they are in the world
and what God has to do with all that. In this context, objectivity is
sterile; it requires that God and the gods be rejected and ignored,
made “obsolete,” as one of America’s best historians, Robert Orsi,
has put it. Historical objectivity is the denial that the “transcendent”
God ever “[breaks] into [present] time.” That is a seriously limiting
perspective. In Shannon’s and Blum’s terms, it blocks historians from
the “stories that uphold the good” (1–36). Objectivity is the noble
dream that so often ends ignobly. There is nothing of substance
behind it.
Jackson Lears, another whose work I greatly admire, once wrote
that, without a “moral dimension,” history is mere pedantry and not
worth the time.9 Shannon and Blum would agree. Moral dimensions
come in various shapes and sizes, and Catholics have one. Historians who are Catholic must not, then, disarm themselves and check
their Catholicism at the door. On the contrary, they should approach
the past with the same attentive reverence with which they would
approach any other holy place to which they had come on pilgrimage.
I have one minor cavil with Shannon’s and Blum’s very fine
book: there is a professional price to pay for having “too Catholic” a
hermeneutic. I wish Shannon and Blum had said a bit more on that
point and on the related ones of leaving Catholicism out of American
history and confessed Catholics out of non-Catholic history departments. Nothing is more “heretical” than an even semi-confessional
approach to historical inquiry. Historians whose “moral dimensions”
are less “heretical” are given a pass. Historians who are Catholic are
asked, seldom politely, to separate their “popery” from their teaching,
research, and writing. No other “moral dimension,” from socialism
to feminisms and everything beyond and in between, is similarly
proscribed. Not only is this patently unjust; it distorts and degrades the
entire academic enterprise. Shannon and Blum, however, have written
a historiographical guide, not an instructional manual on academic
career building. And it is a splendid guide, morally informed, beautiN&V
fully written, and, above all, thoughtfully Catholic.
David M. Emmons
University of Montana
Missoula, MT
		Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American
Culture,1880–1920 (New York: Pantheon, 1981), xix.

9

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Book Reviews

Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness
and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2016), ix + 263 pp.

Anthony Celano’s Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy

is a recent collection of studies from a veteran scholar of medieval
philosophy who has conducted more than thirty years of research into
the ethical doctrine of Aristotle and its reception by thirteenth-century
Latin thinkers. Celano observes that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is the
seminal kind of cultural achievement that admits of numerous interpretations and developments (7). At the same time, Celano promotes a
central thesis in this volume that underscores that the content of the
Ethics must be differentiated from how it was understood by medieval commentators. The hermeneutical key that should be used to
understand Aristotle’s original doctrine, Celano contends, is one that
recognizes practical wisdom (phronesis) as having a broader scope than
that which was admitted by the medieval commentators, a scope that
includes the ability to originate moral norms (viii–ix). In contrast,
Aristotle’s medieval commentators were influenced in their reading of
the Ethics by the natural law doctrine found in Scripture and Patristic
thinkers (5) and as found in the works of Cicero and Seneca (238).
The medieval commentators, Celano maintains, read Aristotle with an
“acceptance of natural law and synderesis” and, due to these presuppositions, subsequently “transform Aristotle’s Ethics from one based upon
a human standard into one that depends upon a divine foundation”
(viii). The interpretational result is a truncated understanding of practical wisdom that is no longer recognized as able to originate “moral
universals,” that is restricted to the prudential ability to apply the “eternal principles of action” (ix). Elsewhere, Celano refers to this as “the
evolution from practical reason to prudence” (241). He points to Albert
the Great as the primary medieval thinker who significantly restricted
the scope of practical wisdom in this regard (169).
Celano’s volume is divided into nine chapters. The work includes
selections from Aristotle’s Greek and extensive Latin quotations,
as well as frequent citation of relevant English and international
secondary sources. Celano begins his study by briefly outlining
certain moral topics that can affect one’s interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics. These topics include how one understands the nature
of happiness (eudaimonia), the relation of Aristotle’s ethical doctrine
to a natural moral law, and the structure of moral acts. Celano then
provides a longer treatment of the issue of happiness in connection

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1431

with Aristotle’s doctrine of practical wisdom. The study then shifts
and proceeds chronologically through the works of important thirteenth-century thinkers. His third chapter begins this chronological
survey by focusing on William of Auxerre and Philip the Chancellor.
The fourth chapter examines commentaries on the Ethics authored
prior to 1248 (an anonymous commentary, a commentary ascribed
to Robert Kilwardby, and the pseudo-Pecham commentary). Celano
then dedicates two chapters to Albert the Great and his treatment of
Aristotle’s Ethics. This discussion is followed by a chapter focused on
Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, and then a chapter examining
two late-thirteenth-century commentaries, one of which is ascribed
to Parisian arts master Radulphus Brito. Celano closes the volume
with a short concluding chapter that returns to discuss in part the
themes outlined in his first chapter (namely, the issues of natural law
and practical wisdom).
Celano states that he developed this book out of a desire to
understand what he describes as Aristotle’s two different accounts
of happiness that are found in separate sections of the Nicomachean
Ethics (vii). These distinct accounts, Celano maintains, also indicate different understandings of human goodness (23). He contends
that one account, in book 1, describes happiness as resulting from
a combination of contemplative and practical activities (2). Reading the Ethics in light of this first account results in what Celano
(appropriating terminology from W. F. R. Hardie) calls the “inclusive” interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine of happiness (2 and 16).
In contrast, a second account that Aristotle provides, in book 10,
describes happiness as the result of contemplative wisdom only (see
especially 1178b8–9 in 10.8, which Celano discusses on 24, perhaps
as read along with 1177a13–25 in 10.7 of the Ethics). Reading the
Ethics in light of this second account results in what Celano calls the
“dominant” interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine of happiness (2 and
16). These interpretive differences, he maintains, can also be found in
the various medieval commentaries on the Ethics: Thomas Aquinas,
Celano states, subscribed to the former viewpoint, while Albert the
Great to the latter (3). Albert’s doctrine of happiness, Celano notes
elsewhere, involves a reinterpretation of Aristotle (241) that Aquinas
rejected (169 and 174).
Celano observes that, over time, he realized that treating practical wisdom as “Aristotle’s primary moral concept” and “the central
theme of the Ethics” enables an interpreter better to understand how

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Aristotle affirmed these two accounts of happiness simultaneously
(vii–viii; see also 16–17). Contemplation should be construed as one
part of overall human practical activity (20). While contemplative
wisdom might be “the supreme virtue of the human soul,” Celano
maintains that Aristotle should be read as affirming practical wisdom
as “the most important virtue,” since it “regulates all human activity
including theoretical pursuits” (vii–viii). In this way, Celano argues,
Aristotle’s account of practical wisdom should be understood apart
from how it was transformed and limited by his medieval commentators. For example, practical wisdom does not, for Aristotle, receive
universal moral norms from contemplative wisdom: “[Aristotle]
rejects any universal moral imperatives that do not arise from human
action” (viii). At the same time, Celano respectfully treats Aquinas’s
reading of the Ethics that proceeds in accordance with a natural law
account (187–92 and 240–242).
I cannot agree with every interpretation that Celano gives to
the authors under consideration (for example, supporting W. F. R.
Hardie’s nominalist reading of an important passage in 2.6 of the
Ethics). Likewise, I believe much more extended consideration must
be given to Aristotle’s ethical doctrine in relation to the topic of
whether he acknowledged a natural moral law. At the same time,
Celano’s chronological survey of the medieval reception of the Ethics
illuminates the different ways in which thirteenth-century authors
approached this work. His discussion of the previously unedited
commentary of Robert Kilwardby (ms. Cambridge Peterhouse 206
[C], fols. 285ra–307vb) is particularly helpful for scholars who do not
have access to this manuscript (79–98). In general, Celano’s central
thesis in this volume is one that encourages readers to revisit the Ethics
on its own grounds. And rather than leading one to dismiss medieval
readings of the Ethics as aberrant, the spirit of Celano’s discussion can
also encourage one to appreciate the careful reflection that medieval thinkers gave to the Ethics. Celano’s work recognizes that such
commentaries are valuable and illustrate how a philosophical tradition
can be revitalized and enriched in a different cultural context. His
volume requires careful consideration and makes a substantive contribution to existing scholarship concerning the thirteenth-century
N&V
reception of the Ethics.
Matthew R. McWhorter
Divine Mercy University
Arlington, VA