et
Vetera
Nova

Winter 2019 • Volume 17, Number 1

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
Instructions for Contributors
1. Address all contributions, books for review, and related correspondence to Matthew Levering,
mjlevering@yahoo.com.
2. Contributions should be prepared to accord as closely as possible with the typographical conventions of Nova et Vetera. The University of Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) is our authority
on matters of style.
3. Nova et Vetera practices blind review. Submissions are evaluated anonymously by members of
the editorial board and other scholars with appropriate expertise. Name, affiliation, and contact
information should be included on a separate page apart from the submission.
4. Galley-proofs of articles are sent to contributors to be read and corrected and should be returned to
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5. Submission of a manuscript entails the author’s agreement (in the event his or her contribution
is accepted for publication) to assign the copyright to Nova et Vetera.

Nova et Vetera
The English Edition of the International Theological Journal
ISSN 1542-7315

Winter 2019

Vol. 17, No. 1

Commentary
Contemplative Homiletics: Being Carried into Reality.. . . . . . . James Keating

1

Articles
Christ Our Ritual Sage? A Chinese Articulation
of Christ’s Priesthood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joshua Brown
Una ratio versus Diversae rationes: Three Interpretations
of Summa theologiae I, Q. 13, AA. 1–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Domenic D’Ettore
On the Separated Soul according to
St. Thomas Aquinas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melissa Eitenmiller
Neo-Thomism and the Problem of
Animal Suffering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Kyle Keltz
Do Thomists Have Rights?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dominic Legge, O.P.
Symposium: Barclay’s Paul and the Gift
Love as the Law of the Gift: Reading Paul with John
Barclay and Aquinas.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Dauphinais
Divine Beneficence and Human Generosity in Second
Temple Judaism: Reflections on John Barclay’s
Paul and the Gift.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bradley C. Gregory
The Ultimate Gift: The Transformative Indwelling
of Christ and the Christian.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Vincent Meconi, S.J.
Paul and the Gift of Sonship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P.
Paul and the Gift: A Mirror for Our
Protestant Faces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew J. Thomas
A Thomist Reading of Paul?
Response and Reflections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John M. G. Barclay

15
39
57
93
127

149

183
197
215
229
235

Retrieving the Tradition
Remarks Concerning the Metaphysical Character of St.
Thomas’s Moral Theology, in Particular as It Is Related
to Prudence and Conscience. . . . . . . . . . . Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

245

(translated article by Matthew K. Minerd)

Book Reviews
Divine Election: A Catholic Orientation
in Dogmatic and Ecumenical Perspective
by Eduardo J. Echeverria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jordan J. Ballor

271

Exemplarist Moral Theory by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski . . . . . Patrick Clark
Mother Teresa’s Mysticism: A Christo-Ecclesio-Humano-Centric
Mysticism by Robert M. Garrity.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew L. Lamb
Ethical Sex: Sexual Choices and Their Nature and
Meaning by Anthony McCarthy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kevin E. O’Reilly
Thomas and the Thomists: The Achievement
of Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters by
Romanus Cessario, O.P., and Cajetan Cuddy, O.P.. . . . . . . . . . . . Jörgen Vijgen

275
284
287

290

The English edition of Nova et Vetera is published quarterly and provides an international forum
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Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019): 1–13

1

Contemplative Homiletics: Being Carried into Reality1
James Keating

Institute for Priestly Formation
Creighton University
Omaha, NE

For about seven years, I taught undergraduate Moral Theology incorrectly. For some reason, I kept putting the emphasis on the agency of the
students while cloaking the agency of God in vague theological language
about grace and “his help.” Then one day, a parishioner came to me to ask
for prayers as she was about to begin a retreat. I assured her I would pray
for her, and we even did so before she left my office. After the retreat, she
sought me out to ask a moral question that arose in her conscience during
her retreat: “Do I have to reverse my tubal ligation?” Now, this was not a
retreat on theology of the body or any aspect of sexual ethics or marriage.
It was simply a retreat on how to pray. I am concerned enough about
the income and financial stability of my fellow moral theologians that I
will not advocate the demise of our discipline; but certainly, I began to
think, the mystical must precede the moral, as Henri de Lubac urged.2 The
approach I took to moral theology often elicited defensive postures on the
part of students. This disposition left little room for them to receive the
beauty of virtuous living as a motivating power to enter the good. Peter
John Cameron, O.P., in his indispensable book on preaching, noted: “If
the final concrete proposal of your preaching puts the initiative on the
hearer rather than on God and grace, it is moralistic.”3
		2018 Marten Lecture, University of Notre Dame.
		Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. 2, The Four Senses of Scripture (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 31.
3
		Peter John Cameron, O.P., Why Preach? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009),
142. See also Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (2005 ), §1: “Being Christian is
not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event,
1
2

2

James Keating

One might ask what is wrong with a moral theologian being moralistic.
In light of my experience with this parishioner, I reimagined my approach
to moral theology and began to qualify the emphasis I placed on human
agency. Certainly the academic process of teaching the moral truths of the
faith has its own ends and purposes, different from the ends and purposes
of a retreat, but I began to see that the encounter one has with Christ in
prayer can enflame persons to live the moral truths of Catholicism. A good
argument about the truth of moral behavior convinces some to enter the
Church, but what sustains that movement is a living relationship with the
Holy Spirit. “Due to the work of the Holy Spirit it will always be possible
for subsequent generations to have the same experience of the Risen One that
was lived by the apostolic community at the origin of the church.”4 So I
began to think that the teaching of theology should be structured in such
a way that one might actually encounter Christ in its teaching, mostly by
welcoming the truth of theology in periods of silence in the classroom. In
this silence, we allow students to relate the content of truth and its effects
upon them to Christ.5 I came to see the classroom as an extension of the
Liturgy of the Word, similar to the way in which Eucharistic Adoration
is an extension of the Liturgy of the Eucharist. As such, the teaching of
theology encompasses what Pope Benedict XVI called a “more generous definition of human reason.”6 Such a definition is not reducible to a
pedagogical method or the demands of hegemonic scientism. Rather our
“studying is always with the Lord, before the Lord, and for Him.” 7
This awakening in me overturned my data-driven classroom, which
yielded to a more contemplative approach of inviting students to encounter the beauty of truth as it is communicated from within doctrine. Space
was opened up, by intermittent silence, for God to initiate the integration
of theological truth with the particulars of each individual student’s life.
Here was a chance for faith to heal reason and for reason to more deeply
a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”
		Joseph Ratzinger, quoted in Tracey Rowland, Benedict XVI: Guide for the
Perplexed (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 53.
5
		James Keating, Resting on the Heart of Christ: The Vocation and Spirituality of the
Seminary Theologian (Omaha, NE: IPF, 2009).
6
		Pope Benedict XVI, “Meeting with Representatives of Science,” 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).
7
		Benedict XVI, A Reason Open To God (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 2013), 150; Joseph Ratzinger, “The Church and Scientific Theology,” Communio 7 (1980): 339.
4

Contemplative Homiletics

3

grasp the mystery of faith.
Following upon these developments, I looked at how I was approaching
my preaching within the Eucharistic Liturgy and found I was perilously
close to Father Cameron’s definition of moralism there as well. After
a period of prayer, I developed a different approach to preaching that I
presented as “contemplative homiletics.”8 The goal of contemplative homiletics was to allow the truth of the Scripture text to silence the worshippers
in order to receive the healing of the Holy Spirit.9 Here, of course, I was
furthering the movement of integrating truth and love. Such integration
is essential to both theological instruction and liturgical preaching. Truth,
when received contemplatively, becomes an occasion not only to “know”
but to love and be loved. Theological instruction is not data, prayer,
knowledge, or love. Rather, theology is the suffering of the integration of
these realities by those who love Him who is Truth. Romanus Cessario
has argued: “All learning is fundamentally contemplative. Study proceeds
successfully within an establishment of real contact with God. . . . It is
God who really does the teaching. . . . There is no theology without prayer.
Prayer is the way we let God instruct us.”10 I would like to expand and
deepen my understanding of the contemplative homily by building on my
approach to theology as truth giving birth to silence. This silence bears a
divine presence allowing God to act within the hearer. Conversion is the
end of receiving truth either in the contemplative silence of study or in
the contemplative silence of worship. The goal has always been to connect
the beauty of truth with the conversion of the whole person, whether as a
result of study or as a result of worship. Encounter yields a body surrendered and eager to act.
I will look at this desire to act on what is heard within an appreciation
of the Holy Spirit’s own power in worship, a power mediating truth and
healing. The Spirit takes the Gospel, which is Christ’s, and carries it into
our hearts, giving life by way of the gift of communion with the Trinity. To
know and to receive truth in and from Love is to be in reality. There is no
setting more enmeshed in reality than the Eucharistic Liturgy. We engage
the depths of reality whenever its door is opened by a priest in the name of
the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Here we begin to participate in the living Word as we progress through hearing to beholding, then
		James Keating, “Contemplative Homiletics,” Seminary Journal 16, no.2 (Fall
2010): 63–69.
9
		Keating, “Contemplative Homiletics,” 65.
10
		Romanus Cessario, Theology and Sanctity (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press 2014),
161–62.
8

4

James Keating

to communion, and then ultimately to living the inevitable fruit of such
progression: witness (martyrdom).
Pragmatically, the priest or deacon always has the same goal when
preaching: to invite the people into communion with God and each other
as they receive the Spirit, who is life and communion. In this way, the
Church is readied from within by the Spirit to participate in Christ’s Body
as His Bride, a Bride bearing spiritual and moral witness to the culture.
In a sense, members of the Church represent humanity experiencing its
deepest ache—an ache that is desire, a desire that is satisfied in God, and
so fulfills both affective longing and intellectual seeking. In its explicit
embrace of faith, the Church longs to have this ache relieved in Holy
Communion with the living Word. In such communion, all that is human
finds its rest.11
The Homily Stirs the Holy Spirit in Worshippers
The Spirit is not the one who acts; He is the act, the event. He Himself is
the prayer within us.12 The homilist invites the Church to “be open” (Mark
7:34) and let the love of God be poured into each member (Rom 5:5). The
homilist invites the Church to let this “act” (this “event”) have its way with
them.13 Only in such a surrender to the truth enmeshed in the words of
the preacher can the Church fully become itself in public. This surrender,
however, is not simply a response to discursive truths, but rather, as Pope
Benedict XVI was fond of repeating,14 it is a surrender to a Person. This
Divine Person emerges from within the proclamation of Scripture. It is
this Person who moves, encourages, and calls the Church to reveal the fruit
of liturgical listening as public witness. In a mysterious way, each homily
carries the potential to ignite a suffering within us, a suffering born of
our engaged listening to the Word of God. Such engagement is like Jesus
poking his finger into our ears and pleading with us: be open. We resist this
poking and pleading because all homilies confront our idols, our hiding
places, those actions and dispositions we love more than the Lord. But if
we are courageous and enter the arena of salvation week after week, the
homily can bear the grace of surrender to us. The result of such surrender,
		Paul O’Callaghan, Children of God in the World (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2016), 545.
12
		Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D., The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2017), 18.
13
		Jeremiah 20:7–9 (in the sense of being enticed, beguiled).
14
		Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Called to Holiness (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2017), 34. Cameron, Why Preach? 87–88.
11

Contemplative Homiletics

5

due to the pleading and poking of Jesus to be open, is clear: the proclamation is received (Mark 7:33). This proclamation bears healing with it, but
it primarily carries to our hearts the man who “has done all things well”
(Mark 7:37). The proclaimed Word can certainly cure and heal people, but
our most common experience is to find in it a release of integrative energy
yielding self-possession.15 Taken into communion with the Spirit by way of
the proclaimed Word, we receive divine love and thus suffer the healing of
lies, fractured emotions, and biased or ideological thinking, which heretofore may have defined our interiority. As worshippers’ silent receptivity is
contextualized within the fullness of the Eucharist as salvific encounter,16
we can say that the homily is therapeutic.17
Therapeutic in this context means that Christianity counteracts
humanity’s wound of sin, a wound that alienates us from God and makes
it easier for us to entertain idols. Such ease invites us to open ourselves to
artificial consolation. Alternately, the homily opens the ears of the heart
with a stark contrast to that ease as it takes us into a true Word from the
real God. In a sense, our preaching is the “spit” of Christ, carrying with it
a healing power.18 For this power to reach both preacher and congregation,
we need the habitus of prayer. With this virtue, we possess a stable disposition of discerning where the homily occasions us to behold the True One in
love; to be affected by He who emerges from the homily as beauty.19
		See Pope John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem (1986), §62: “Through the
Eucharist, the Holy Spirit accomplishes that ‘strengthening of the inner man’
spoken of in the Letter to the Ephesians [Eph 3:16]. Through the Eucharist,
individuals and communities, by the action of the Paraclete-Counselor, learn to
discover the divine sense of human life, as spoken of by the Council: that sense
whereby Jesus Christ ‘fully reveals man to man himself,’ suggesting ‘a certain likeness between the union of the divine persons, and the union of God’s children in
truth and charity’[Gaudium et Spes, §24]. This union is expressed and made real
especially through the Eucharist, in which man shares in the sacrifice of Christ
which this celebration actualizes, and he also learns to ‘find himself . . . through a .
. . gift of himself ’ [Gaudium et Spes, §24], through communion with God and with
others, his brothers and sisters.”
16
		See Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§1067–68.
17
		“Healing is an essential dimension of the apostolic mission and of Christian faith
in general. It can even be said that Christianity is a therapeutic religion. . . . When
understood at a sufficiently deep level, this expresses the entire content of redemption” (Pope Benedict XVI as quoted in Mary Healy, Healing [Huntington, IN:
Our Sunday Visitor, 2015], 30).
18
		See Mary Healy, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), 147: “In
the ancient world saliva was considered to have therapeutic qualities.”
19
		See Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §12: “This is love in its most radical
form. By contemplating the pierced side of Christ (cf. [ John] 19:37), we can
15

6

James Keating

The homilist and congregation, then, agree to enter a dialogue of prayer
occasioned by the words spoken. This prayer is interior, born from the
silent contemplation of the speaker, and received in the silent receptivity of
the congregation. Neither the homilist nor the congregation relinquishes
the drama of freedom being played out in the presence of God as they
sift spoken words for hints of His voice, His call, a voice once heard that
elicits both sacrifice and the communion that is “rest.” Once trust is given
to God and rest received from Him, He summons with a call to action, a
call as singular as is each vocation present in the congregation. This call to
action is one of freedom unto sacrifice or a sacrifice bearing freedom. This
paradoxical freedom that is sacrifice is attainable because it shares in the
power of the One who is Love necessitating sacrifice.20 Hence, to receive
the living Word and the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ as one’s
life commitment is to receive the power to choose love even if it kills you.
It is to become, through the power of the Spirit, another Christ. 21 To keep
receiving the Word of God as proclaimed in each Eucharistic Liturgy is to
regularly receive anew (deepening upon depth, and depth upon deepening) the mystical life as a personal appropriation of Him Who is proclaimed
in the Church as the Living Word.22
If Louis Bouyer is correct23 that, in the Eucharist, we are gathered to
understand the starting-point of this Encyclical Letter: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8).
It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition
of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along
which his life and love must move.” Of course, every celebration of the Eucharistic
Liturgy is a contemplation of the pierced side of Christ. Hence the Eucharist is the
definition of love.
20
		See Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §6: “Love is indeed ‘ecstasy,’ not in the
sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out
of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and
thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: ‘Whoever
seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it’ (Lk
17:33), as Jesus says throughout the Gospels (cf. Mt 10:39; 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk
9:24; Jn 12:25). In these words, Jesus portrays his own path, which leads through
the Cross to the Resurrection: the path of the grain of wheat that falls to the
ground and dies, and in this way bears much fruit. Starting from the depths of his
own sacrifice and of the love that reaches fulfilment therein, he also portrays in
these words the essence of love and indeed of human life itself.”
21
		O’Callaghan, Children of God in the World, 276.
22
		Francis Martin, “Spiritual Understanding of Scripture,” in Verbum Domini and
the Complementarity of Exegesis and Theology, ed. Scott Carl (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2015), 24–25.
23
		Louis Bouyer, Introduction to the Spiritual Life (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 2013), 48–49.

Contemplative Homiletics

7

hear the Word, and thus invited to sacrifice our lives in response to its
proclamation, then surely homilies ought not to be “syllogisms”24 —which
convert few if any. Nor should a homily merely be data. Facts and information already fill the work day of the laity to the point of numbness. Instead,
the homily is “fire,” or rather, as Francis Martin says, a Person bearing fire. 25
The homily is the integration of mystery, God’s action, 26 with our dynamic
response in what we call liturgy. There, in the very midst of mystery, the
homilist longs to elicit a response from the worshippers. It is a response to
the very aspect of mystery carried by the Word proclaimed in the midst of
the Body and Blood being offered. In other words, the homily is mystical
by definition.27 For this to be so, the homilist hopes to reach a level of
contemplative oratory that stirs the Bride (the Church) to see and hear the
Lord and offer herself to the Bridegroom. “What is deepest in the Church
. . . is the spouse like responsiveness of receptivity and obedience to Christ
who, as the Church’s head, ever plunges anew into His own being those
whom He sends out as His disciples.”28
The voice of the homilist must reach what is deepest in the Church so
that a real response may be elicited and desire for communion be born,
heralding a vulnerability to mission. Of course, mystical does not mean the
homilist conjures subjective states of religious emotion from the congregation. Instead the preacher endeavors to leave the members in the Presence,
and if the Holy Spirit wishes to bring about such religious emotions within
the members in relation to His Presence, that is His affair. As the homilist
moves those vulnerable members into the Presence, he possesses only one
earnest hope for the homily’s effect: to leave the people in prayer.29 If the
		John Connolly, John Henry Newman (Lanham, MD: Sheed, 2005), 98.
		Connolly, John Henry Newman, 13. See also Louis Bouyer, The Christian Mystery:
From Pagan Myth to Christian Mysticism (Petersham, MA: St Bede’s, 1990), 84:
“At the outset, and fundamentally, [the Word] is not a word which gives information, like a professor. It is an active word, a personal intervention in the lives of
those whom it addresses.”
26
		Odo Casel, The Mystery of Christian Worship (New York: Herder, 1999), 40.
27
		Bouyer, The Christian Mystery, 181: “Whenever [Denis] produces a concrete definition of what he understands by mystical, it is always in the immediate context
either of biblical interpretation or of liturgical exposition, and often both at the
same time.”
28
		Han urs Von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, trans. Aidan Nichols (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 8.
29
		 Pope Francis has noted that “the first task in life is prayer . . . prayer of the heart: to
look at the Lord, to listen to the Lord, to ask the Lord” (Daily Mass Homily, Casa
Santa Marta, October 8, 2013). In this way we see that the fundamental mission
of the homily, leaving persons in prayer, is a way to serve the “first task in life.”
24
25

8

James Keating

homilist can move the congregation into the Presence, stilling their hearts
enough to receive and to remain in communion with the Spirit, he has
succeeded. For, to usher the people into prayer is to bring them into reality
(i.e., into being another Christ; into taking on the mind of Christ). Since
so many Catholics abide in fantasy throughout the week by the power of
popular culture, such a goal is the contemporary and urgent affair of the
homilist. The homily opens up reality and endeavors to engage the people
in it. Here, as the homily is proclaimed and contemplated, the people’s
concrete lives, their fidelities and infidelities, are taken up into reality itself
in a Holy Communion. The word preached is the antechamber for the
word embraced, and the word embraced is the purification of all fantasy,
as bondage gives way to the freedom of reality. The freedom of reality liberates the congregation to no longer be governed by fantasy and idiosyncratic
obsessions; rather, they are invited to delight in knowing the freedom of
being governed by Christ.30 Reality for the one who worships in spirit and
truth (John 4:23) is very simply understood: sharing in Christ’s own life of
sacrificial love, which becomes gift for all.31 The homily, of course, assists us
to live a life of sacrifice become gift out of the power of the one who defines
reality as such. The homily makes us vulnerable; it elicits desire within us
to participate in the self donation of the Christ as He is missioned by the
Father and sustained by the Spirit. Christ is the one who obeys and heals.
Christ is always sent from the banquet on mission (Luke 14: 15–24).
Hearing a homily and obeying it with our whole body prepares us for a
Holy Communion, one that sends and does not sedate. This conspiracy
between Word proclaimed and gifts received at the altar orders believers
toward perfect freedom, an interior life32 congruent with God’s indwelling
love, a life lived in harmony with the prayer being uttered by the indwelling
Spirit, a life of no longer saying prayers, but of becoming one.
As a good in itself, prayer needs no practical fruit. Nevertheless, history
has shown that, when personal vulnerability meets divine presence, much
fruit follows by way of discernment. Such is the case when a homily born
of prayer is met by the vulnerable and prayer-soaked hearts of the people.
Many a saint has given testimony that mission was unleashed within them
		Elizabeth Teresa Groppe, Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 90.
31
		Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000),
55.
32
		“Perfect liberty is neither license nor conformity to external law but what Congar
called ‘interiority’—the total coincidence of our own desire . . . with the love of
God” (Groppe, Yves Congar’s Theology of the Holy Spirit, 99).
30

Contemplative Homiletics

9

as the Word was proclaimed in the midst of salvation being offered at
Mass (e.g., Francis of Assisi and Elizabeth Ann Seton). Such mission was
perceived because one’s vulnerability to God yielded a new or deepening
relationship with Him. Such a relationship always defines one, and from
such an identity a mission is given. If deepening the worshippers’ prayer
is the goal of the Word proclaimed and preached, then the homily must
always be absorbed into the depths of communal silence. Silence naturally
follows a grace-filled homily, unless artificially thwarted by functionalism.
Silence is natural because, for the vulnerable, the speaker just ushered the
listener into reality. Reality intrinsically hushes. Reality comes upon the
listener as gift, health, or salvation, as a balm to ease the “useless anxiety”
we bear.
Most especially, prayer leaves us available33 to being affected by God.
The homilist who listens to the Spirit attempts to ready the members’
hearts to be loved by God right within worship. It is for this reason that the
Church gathers: to receive such love and then give, or sacrifice, themselves
in return for receiving such. Here is true mysticism and the true end of
homiletics.34 “In the Eucharist we are caught up . . . in the Paschal Mystery
of Christ. . . . His self-giving is meant to become mine.”35 It is this mystery
that the homilist is inviting the people to come into, and once within it,
they can contemplate the beauty of its truth.36 To lead the congregation
into mystery is to lead them into reality, a fecund communion with God
that wounds the conscience, giving birth to mission.37 It is the Holy Spirit
who is roused in preaching, and with our consent, He will penetrate our
consciences even more deeply, for it is there that He dwells.38 The Holy
		Wendy Wright, “Prayer in the Salesian Tradition,” in Prayer in the Catholic Tradition: A Handbook of Practical Approaches, ed. Robert Wicks (Cincinnati, OH:
Franciscan Media, 2016), 271.
34
		“It is implied that all true mysticism . . . is essentially the same in being rooted in
the consciousness of our reception of divine love” (Bernard McGinn discussing the
thought of Bernard Lonergan in The Foundations of Mysticism, vol. 1 [New York:
Crossroad, 1991], 284).
35
		Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 57–58.
36
		Tracey Rowland, Catholic Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 117. See also
Aidan Nichols, The Word has Been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Aesthetics
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 31: “Beauty is
not light falling on the object but light breaking forth from the form’s interior.”
37
		“By real liturgy and preaching I mean those which are really capable of bearing
fruit in the consciences of man . . . . What God wants in his worship is no ceremony, no offering, nothing outward, but man himself, . . . the gift of the heart of
man” (Yves Congar, A Gospel Priesthood [New York: Herder, 1967], 140–41).
38
		James Keating, “Evangelizing Conscience,” Pro Ecclesia 8, no. 4 (Fall 1999):
33

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James Keating

Spirit frees us to obey the homily in its truth, not out of compulsion, but
out of love. Over time and with the proper disposition, the homily can
free people from illusory loves, disordered affections, and idiosyncratic
judgments. In listening to the homily within sacramental worship, we
can come to suffer our own birth as true agents who abide in communion
with God. 39 All the members of the whole Church are being invited by
the Spirit to abide in truth and worship, and thus to progressively become
holy.40 This invitation is given, and holiness effected, by those who respond
to the Spirit at worship in freedom and with desire.
Some instruction before or after Mass is necessary to facilitate this
level of receiving love, as many people do not know how to listen for God
moving within their hearts. Primarily, however, the instruction is given to
ready their hearts to be transported into prayer by the homily. Once within
this silence-enshrouded communion, they can be ushered to the awesome
sacrifice at the altar.
The faithful are invited to listen to the homily in such a way that the
subject of the homilist’s fascination, God, is internalized in the heart. To
listen in this way is the very definition of intimacy, and intimacy is the
occasion for conversion. Such listening is possible within a homily because
it is the occasion for God to speak with a “degree of sacramentality,” as
noted by Yves Congar.41 To welcome God carried and hidden within the
words preached, to respond to this Presence with our own presence (that is,
to be engaged in receiving truth and sharing our own thoughts, feelings,
and desires), is the adhesive of faith itself. In the homily, one cannot guarantee an encounter with God, so it is all the more necessary to surround
the preacher with a skilled and discerning assembly, each working to hear
what God is saying from within the relationship He has with him or her.
If this is to happen, the preacher must give real food,42 and not simply
images, ideas, stories, or data. Paradoxically, he is to preach as one waiting
475–87, at 479.
		Dennis Billy and James Keating, Conscience and Prayer: The Spirit of Catholic
Moral Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 69–84.
40
		Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker, 2016), 339.
41
		Yves Congar, The Word and the Spirit (San Francisco: Harper Row, 1986), 25.
42
Yves
Congar, A Gospel Priesthood, 147; Acts 6:2; Acts 8:31. See also Peter
Williamson on diakonia and the play on words that is found in Acts 6 in relation
to the Word of God being food and service (diakonia) being the Word of God’s
communication to others (“Preparing Seminarians for ministry of the Word in
light of Verbum Domini,” in Verbum Domini and the Complementarity of Exegesis
and Theology, ed. Fr. Scott Carl [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015], 88n4).
39

Contemplative Homiletics

11

on tables, always attentive to the real hunger of people and delivering to
them what is truly needed. The preacher rushes to the Ethiopian eunuch
because he senses his exasperation: “I want to be fed but cannot open the
cupboard.”
The heart must be encouraged to receive the soul’s food during the
homily itself, in the substantial silence afforded by the presider after it, and
in the experiences and interior movements of the heart after the person
leaves the church. Most crucial to all this is increasing people’s devotion to
the Holy Spirit, as He is the one who makes sure the Word of God is heard
in the words of the homilist. 43
The Sprit as Life and Communion, thus the One Who Heals
“Just as the word of God comes to us in the body of Christ, in his Eucharistic body and in the body of the Scriptures, through the working of the
Holy Spirit, so too it can only be truly received and understood through
that same Spirit.”44
It is God who speaks first. In a pale way, the homilist occasions this
“speaking” for the congregation by extending the proclamation, aiding
them to receive and creatively integrate it within the context of their own
lives. In this integration, the homily becomes personal. The liturgy is the
action of God in the midst of a gathering of believers who want to be
affected by divine love offered as salvation. The liturgy is not devotional
prayer, but each person must welcome the movement of God toward the
Church in mercy as his or her own. Hence, the corporate worship is held
together by the cellular movement of each person taking seriously the
Word God uttered as gift. Personal devotion45 in the Eucharistic Liturgy
(a perennial tension) is not the purpose as such, but without personal
appropriation within its structures, worship becomes the occasion for
an institution to order words and gestures while failing as persons to
be affected by God. Thus, the Holy Spirit assists throughout the whole
process of praying the homily. Most powerfully, He assists with the interior listening of people and energizes the integration noted above. The
believer, in essence, conspires with the Spirit through knowledge and love
to give permission to that same Spirit to “make things happen” in his or

		Yves Congar, The Word and Spirit, trans. David Smith (San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1986), 34.
44
		Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini (2010), §16
45
		 Joyce Ann Zimmerman, “Liturgical Prayer,” in Wicks, Prayer in the Catholic Tradition, 521 and 529.
43

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James Keating

her life.46 We contemplate the mysteries unfolding before us in the homily
and around and within us at the Eucharistic altar only so that action may
be born in us (so “things will happen”). When believers receive the homily
in their bodies,47 martyrs are given to the culture. As a result of ingesting
the Word and sacrament, no longer do the mysteries reside in the rites,
but now they reside in the citizen Catholic. Such sacred witnessing is the
public humiliation of the Catholic and, as such, is resisted by the culture
as a contrast to the “passing age” (Rom 12) to which it clings. The homily
tutors us in being Catholic, unleashing hunger for the Spirit’s influence in
our bodies with each present moment, and not simply within the celebration of the sacraments.48
Obviously, the homily can leave a congregation unmoved as well,
remaining lodged within the culture of distraction. In fact, it may seem
that this is the norm, as we are living in a time of waning interest in and
draining desire for the supernatural.49 Can the homily within the Eucharistic Liturgy stir desire for God, or has our desire to “rest” from our labors
(by going out of existence instead of into heaven) claimed a growing part of
the “none” generation? Even this generation hungers within for intimacy,
for some connection and communion with another. Hence, the homily
may become a way to awaken a desire for intimacy with God that can be
satisfied over time in the Eucharistic Lord.
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me
into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:17–18). In
a certain sense, the disciples become “drawn into intimacy with God by
being immersed in the word of God”: “God’s word is, so to speak, the purifying bath, the creative power which changes them and makes them belong
to God.”50 The Word itself—proclaimed, expounded, and received—is the
“change” agent and the occasion for an intimacy that may send others to
bring the Gospel to the culture.
The homilist centers and recenters the congregation, week-to-week
and month-to-month, in the Paschal Mystery. In so doing, the homilist
conspires to unleash an imaginative center within the Church born of intimacy with Christ. It is not the preacher’s imagination alone that matters,
		See Hans urs Von Balthasar, Exploration in Theology, vol. 3, Creator Spirit (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 242.
47
		Balthasar, Explorations, 3:177.
48
		Balthasar, Explorations, 3:181.
49
		 “America’s Changing Landscape,” Pew Research Center, May 12, 2015, pewforum.
org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/.
50
		Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, §80.
46

Contemplative Homiletics

13

but the thinking unleashed within the congregation as the preacher brings
the people to the depths of mystery week after week. From such depths,
imaginations might be inflamed and the Church reformed. 51
But again we are cautioned by “realism,” as some might sense a drift
toward the ideal in what I am saying. And yet what other gathering, except
the Eucharist, is appropriate to call all into mystery to be affected by God,
especially those who have lost the taste for God?
“An appetite is any tendency of a thing toward the good that fulfills it. . . .
Man does not live by bread alone. . . . We also have souls whose appetite is for
fellowship with God. . . . [Original sin] spoiled our appetite for God, . . . and
if our appetite for God would be restored, it must be trained in a new diet,
a Eucharistic diet. Christ was hungry for God and God alone, and when we
eat his body, he gives us his appetite.”52
Luke 14:23 thunders that God wants His house full. Inviting all into
the Word of God by conversion in the Church, by prayerfully reading the
Word and listening to its explanation in catechesis and its power in the
homily, prepares those on the highways and in the hedgerows to regain or
correctly name the purpose of the appetite that moves within them. This
is Eucharistic Hospitality to be sure, but not in the sense of an open buffet.
Rather, only as one correctly discerns the gift before him according to its
substance and according to one’s readiness, is he or she able to receive the
weight of such a sacred banquet.
N&V

		 “The homily is a means of bringing the scriptural message to life in a way that helps
the faithful to realize that God’s word is present and at work in their everyday
lives. It should lead to an understanding of the mystery being celebrated, serve
as a summons to mission, and prepare the assembly for the profession of faith,
the universal prayer and the Eucharistic liturgy. . . . The faithful should be able to
perceive clearly that the preacher has a compelling desire to present Christ, who
must stand at the center of every homily. For this reason preachers need to be in
close and constant contact with the sacred text; they should prepare for the homily
by meditation and prayer, so as to preach with conviction and passion” (Benedict
XVI, Verbum Domini, §59).
52
		David Fagerberg, Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology
(Kettering, OH: Angelico, 2016), 101.
51

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019): 15–38

15

Christ Our Ritual Sage? A Chinese Articulation of
Christ’s Priesthood
Joshua Brown

Mount St. Mary’s University
Emmitsburg, MD

This article concerns developing an account of Christ’s priesthood utilizing concepts and terms from Chinese philosophy. The primary problem
I address is methodological: how can an intercultural reading of Christological doctrine be simultaneously culturally relevant and orthodox?
In answer to this question, I seek to negotiate intellectual complications
that arise in attempting to articulate a doctrine concerning Christ’s historical and cultural embodied person while drawing on a cultural and ritual
milieu vastly different from those of the Christian Scriptures or doctrinal
tradition. Focusing on the question of Christ’s priesthood, I demonstrate
here that a reading that is at once both culturally relevant and orthodox
is possible through cultivating a reading of two concrete programs and
then using these perspectives to analyze and resolve issues in articulating
Christ’s priesthood in a Chinese key. Thus, I base this work here on an
analysis of ritual and ritual agency in the philosophical writings of the early
Confucian Xúnzǐ荀子(310–210 BC) and St. Thomas Aquinas’s account
of Christ’s priesthood in question 22 of Summa theologiae [ST] III.1
The framework in which I pose this reading of Christ’s priesthood is,
		I would like to thank both Matthew Levering for his extensive comments
and suggestions on this article, and the blind-peer reviewer for Nova et Vetera
(English) for his excellent and helpful comments. Any mistakes that remain are
my own.Although Xúnzǐ is not as important to the Confucian tradition as his near
contemporary Mèngzǐ孟子, he was vastly important in the early Confucian period
and has a sophisticated theory of ritual that makes him especially fitting for this
article’s purposes.

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Joshua Brown

then, the relationship between human culture and Christian doctrine. In
the modern West, the difficulties of articulating Christian teaching in a
Western idiom have been by and large negotiated for a long time, and thus
many Western Christians do not have any trouble understanding Christian doctrine in their native intellectual categories. However, especially in
the wake of postmodernism and postcolonialism, this is not true in many
parts of the world. In recent decades, a number of Asian and Asian American theologians have articulated some variety of the claim that traditional
Christian doctrinal categories, especially Christological doctrines, are
products of and are only relevant to the dominant intellectual culture of
the West and that, hence, a culturally relevant and responsive theology for
Asian peoples must find a different foundation to be really “Asian.”2
Modern theology therefore faces a considerable dilemma. On the
one hand, many Asian theologians are suspicious of the possibility of a
truly Asian theology being founded on traditional Christian categories
and discourse. On the other hand, sociologically speaking, it seems that
Christianity itself is fading in the West and that the dominant Christian
culture will be Chinese within a matter of decades.3 We face, then, a very
imaginable situation in which the majority of Christians might be led to
believe that the doctrinal content of traditional Christology is not culturally relevant to them, and thus can be replaced. What is to become of these
categories, then, and the doctrines they communicate? What is to become
of the theological sciences that today seek to better understand and articulate these doctrines and their categories? Will they fall away and, indeed,
		 The strongest statement of this approach can be found in the works of C. S. Song,
such as Jesus, the Crucified People (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), 6–12. A
more recent work that defines “Asian” theology over and against Western theology
is Hwa Yung, Mangoes or Bananas? The Quest for an Authentic Asian Christian
Theology, 2nd ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2012). In common parlance, “banana”
is a derogatory term for someone of Asian lineage whose “insides” (i.e., practices,
language, conceptual framework) are “white.”
3
		See Fenggang Yang, “When Will China Become the World’s Largest Christian
Country,” Slate, December 2, 2014 (online). At the very least, the Chinese cultural
umbrella would pertain to those members of the Chinese diaspora who left China
during the late Qīng清 dynasty (1644–1912) for predominantly economic
reasons, or those who fled China in the republican era, particularly after the rise of
Máo Zédōng毛泽东 (r. 1949–1976). This diasporic community would include,
but not be limited to, Chinese-speaking citizens of nations such as Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the United States, Canada, and Western European countries. If we
take a step further and expand the Chinese cultural imprint to cultures heavily
influenced by Chinese thought, history, and language, we would also have to
include at least Vietnam and Korea, and Japan to some degree.
2

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17

become irrelevant, or will they find ways to speak to a changing context?
In this article, I seek to show that being responsive to the changing
global context enables Christianity to accommodate the concerns for both
cultural relevance and traditional Christian doctrinal categories. Yet doing
so requires a difficult process of understanding how traditional Christian
proclamation can inform and be relevant to the intellectual devices of
historically non-Christian cultures, such as that of China. And so, instead
of making an argument for method, I demonstrate what this work could
look like.
In this demonstration, I focus on the challenge of articulating Christ’s
priesthood in a Chinese idiom, mediated by Xúnzǐ. Ultimately, the
prospects for this articulation will rest heavily on the ability to consider
Christ’s priesthood within the category of the ritual sage, the shèngrén 聖
人, as it functions in Xúnzǐ’s philosophy. But, in order to appreciate why
this move is necessary, we first require a presentation of Xúnzǐ’s broader
understanding of rituals and their role in moral cultivation. Then, we
must understand Christ’s priesthood in traditional doctrinal categories so
that we may explore the relationship between this doctrine and Xúnzǐ’s
thought. Hence, in the second section of the present article, I will analyze
Christ’s priesthood as presented in ST, q. 22, aa. 1–3. In the concluding
section of the article, I will discuss in brief some of the challenges to articulating Christ’s priesthood in the conceptual idiom of Xúnzǐ’s philosophy
and suggest a path to resolution by forging a link between the hypostatic
union and Xúnzǐ’s category of the ritual sage. Consequently, at the end
of this reading, we will arrive at an account of Christ’s priesthood that is
both culturally relevant to Chinese concepts and faithful to the traditional
Christian categories informing the doctrine of Christ’s priesthood.
A Chinese Account of Ritual Agency
Xunzi, a member of the Confucian school (Rújiā 儒家) of early China,
was one of the most important Confucian thinkers, not least because of
his systematic reflections on the importance of rituals and the virtue of
ritual propriety, both captured in the same term, lǐ 禮.4 At the heart of
		 The best literature on Xúnzǐ’s life and thought remains largely written in Chinese,
such as the study by Chén Dàqí陳大齊 (for Chinese names, when presented as
the author of a Chinese-language work, I observe the Chinese tradition of surname
before given name), Xúnzǐ Xuéshuō荀子學說 (Taipei: Zhonghua Wenhua
Chuban Weiyuanhua, 1954). The standard English-language introduction to
Xúnzǐ’s philosophy remains Paul Rakita Goldin, Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy
of Xúnzǐ (Chicago: Open Court, 1999). As for translations of Xúnzǐ, the tradi-

4

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Joshua Brown

Xúnzǐ’s moral philosophy is his insight that rituals are essential for moral
cultivation and formation. Indeed, for him, all of the rituals taught by
the Confucian tradition were fundamental to the moral development of
individuals and to the broader flourishing of society. While we do not have
the space here to sufficiently cover his entire position on the subject, we
can nonetheless sufficiently summarize the major threads of his approach.5
In a work entitled “Discourse on Ritual” (Lǐlùn 禮論), Xúnzǐ begins
with a history of the lǐ: whence did the lǐ come, and what was their
purpose? According to Xúnzǐ, “human beings are born and have desires,
yet they do not obtain what they desire, and then they are unable to stop
seeking what they desire.”6 This observation is distinctive of Xúnzǐ, who
tional eponymous collection of his writings, there are three main texts in English.
For a partial but good translation of important chapters, see Burton Watson, Hsün
Tzu: Basic Writings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963). For an extensive translation with scholarly commentary, see John Knoblock, Xúnzǐ: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1988–1994). More recently, a very good and accessible translation has been
published, with good scholarly references, but not overly burdensome for the
reader unfamiliar with this discourse, and I would suggest this volume for those
interested in reading the Xúnzǐ in English: Eric L. Hutton, Xúnzǐ: The Complete
Text (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
5
		Much of the literature on this topic tends to fall into arguments that make Xúnzǐ
into a conventionalist as regards ritual. Furthering this point, many scholars have
argued that Xúnzǐ sees human beings as crafting the conventions of ritual in order
to create the order of the cosmos and society. This view is difficult to justly portray
and refute in a footnote, but quite simply, I find this categorization of Xúnzǐ to
be indebted to a modern dialecticism between the transcendent and immanent. I
find that Xúnzǐ perceives both a givenness to human life and the ability to “make”
the world. Thus, I do not think his theory of ritual is completely conventional,
but rather includes knowledge of the cosmic Dào道 and the use of human faculties to establish ritual forms that enable humans to conform to the Dao. In my
reading, the key point is anthropological: human acts such as rituals and naming
are in some measure conventional due to the faculties of the human person as an
intellectual creature. Yet there is always a givenness to the faculties that gives them
coherence. This is something not foreign to Christianity, we might add: Adam is
allowed to name the animals, but he never thinks he allows them to exist in their
particular forms. The interpretation I present here resonates with Janghee Lee’s
presentation in Xúnzǐ and early Chinese Naturalism (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 2005). A good example of the type of reading I find problematic regarding Xúnzǐ, while it still has much worth consideration in its proposals,
is Kurtis Hagen, The Philosophy of Xúnzǐ: A Reconstruction (Chicago: Open Court,
2007).
6
		
Xúnzǐ 19.1: “禮起於何也 曰人生而有欲欲而不得則不能無求.” All
citations of the Xúnzǐ (in which “Discourse on Ritual” [Lǐlùn] is a section or chap-

Christ Our Ritual Sage? A Chinese Articulation of Christ’s Priesthood

19

argues elsewhere that human moral nature (rénxìng 人性) is bad (è 惡).7
In this other essay, which is focused on human moral nature, Xúnzǐ argues
there are three types of desires with which humans are born: a love for
profit (lì 利; note the difference from lǐ 禮), a proclivity toward hatred
and viciousness, and desires of the eyes and ears bringing about a love of
sound and color. According to Xúnzǐ, if we nurture a love of profit, this
will lead to contention and taking goods by force, and then discourse
and submission will be vitiated. If we follow our desires for hatred and
viciousness, oppression and thievery will rise, and loyalty and fidelity will
decline. Finally, if we give in to the desires of our eyes and ears, obscenity
and disorder (luàn 亂) will arise and lǐ, appropriateness, culture, and the
pattern of life will disappear.8
For Xúnzǐ, the complication is not necessarily the fact of human desiring as such, but what human beings desire and in what degree. As a gloss
on the Lǐlùn passage, we might say that Xúnzǐ finds it problematic that
human desires are not aimed at particular goods that can be obtained,
but rather are open-ended and self-centered needs.9 In his use, the word
ter) are based on text divisions as found in the Chinese Text Project, at ctext.org,
since it is a widely used resource. I have checked the quotations against existing
manuscripts, including digital copies available from ctext.org. My many thanks to
the editors of this free resource for their assistance in making these texts widely
available. All translations from it are my own work from the Chinese manuals
available at ctext.org, although note 4 above provides information on published
translations for readers wishing to investigate the Xúnzǐ itself further.
7
		Wáng Xiānqiān王先谦, Xúnzǐ Jíjiě 荀子集解, ed. Chén Xiàohuán 沈嘯
寰 and Wáng Xiānqiān 王星贤 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2012), 420. The
commentary on Xúnzǐ by Hǎo Yìxíng (郝懿行) defines the word often rendered
as “nature” (xìng 性) as meaning “what is immediate to the self,” or zìrán自然.
This helps us see that, for Xúnzǐ, the moral quality of xìng is less about faculties
of human nature (which he holds elsewhere are basically equal and are not in
themselves bad) and more about the inherent tendencies of humans to act in
particular ways. As we shall see, for Xúnzǐ, the problem is precisely that humans
need something to help us learn to be moral, that we cannot just do it “naturally”
(zìrán). Aaron Stalknaker has helpfully compared this conception of human
nature and how to correct it in Xúnzǐ with that of St. Augustine (Overcoming Our
Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine [Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006].
8
		
Xúnzǐ 23.1.
9
		 See Winnie Sung, “Ritual in the Xúnzǐ: A Change of the Heart/Mind,” Sophia 51
(2012): 215. Sung argues that Xúnzǐ understands lì利 in terms of “interests that
pertain exclusively to the self.” Thus, for her, Xunzi’s conception of ritual is that it
corrects or reforms the heart-mind (xīn 心) aimed toward self-interest. Generally,

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Joshua Brown

“profit” means a rather abstract sense of more money or material wealth—
but what can be enough? Hence, in the Lǐlùn, after stating the problem of
human desiring, Xúnzǐ shows why human desiring is problematic: “If in
their seeking to fulfill their desires there is no limit to their striving, then
it would be impossible for people to not contend with one another; contention leads to disorder, and disorder to destitution.”10
This, then, is the human condition out of which the need for lǐ arises.
The problem of human desire is that it is neither limited nor measured
and has no guide or rule to channel it properly. Moreover, the desires we
experience are innately unrestrained. Here we must call to mind Xúnzǐ’s
historical context if we are to interpret his reading of human desire properly. Xunzi lived in the later stages of the Zhōu周 dynasty, in a time called
the Warring States period. This period was primarily characterized by the
decay of the Zhōu ruling family, which was not only political but also
cultural in scope. Indeed, by Xúnzǐ’s time, China was embroiled in various
bids for power by various leaders of states who sought to gain imperial rule
over all of China. For scholars like Xúnzǐ, human desires and tendencies
played out on a grand scale of lords marching to war and instituting policies so as to marshal their resources for consolidating power.11
Like many Confucians, Xúnzǐ seemed to take an overall dim view of
the leaders of his day and saw their approaches as participating in and
extending the disorder of human desiring, rather than correcting it.
Hence, Xúnzǐ points to historical models for kingship that brings about
true order and harmony in society, put into practice by a group of sage
leaders known collectively as the xiānwáng先王, the “former kings,” or
more strongly, the “ancient kings.”12 Not only were these rulers not themI find Sung’s position helpful and clarifying of Xunzi’s thought, but I also find that
it brings a slight complication. Self-interest cannot be a categorical problem for
Xúnzǐ; after all, he argues we should pursue becoming like sages precisely because
it is best for us. Hence, I argue that lì is better understood in the sense of excessive
possession, or trying to get as much as one can without regard for proper order
or distinctions. In other words, Xúnzǐ does not seem to me to think the desire to
eat, learn, or have houseroom is problematic, but rather how I desire and move to
acquire these things in excess.
10
		Xúnzǐ 19.1: “求而無度量分界則不能不爭爭則亂亂則窮.”
11
		See, e.g., the policies championed by the legalist philosopher Shāng Yǎng商鞅,
who was an important minister in the state of Qín and advocated aligning the
entire Qín society around agriculture and war, explicitly subordinating moral
questions to these ends (see The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power
in Early China, trans. and ed. Yuri Pines [New York: Columbia University Press,
2017]).
12
		Customarily, in the Confucian tradition, the term xiānwáng at least implies a

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21

selves morally disordered or chaotic; they were also able to provide moral
stability and rectification to the broader society. Rather than nurturing
our desires that lead to contention, the xiānwáng instituted ways of redirecting, guiding, and re-forming desires to prevent disorder. According to
Xúnzǐ, the rituals are the primary means the xiānwáng used to cultivate
the moral rectification of society and bring order in the place of chaos.
He writes that the ancient kings hated disorder, and thus established lǐ
in order to “distinguish things [ fēn zhī; 分之], nourish people’s desires,
and give to them what they seek.”13 This then caused the people to have
moderate desire for things, and the things were not broken apart due to
the desiring.14
Thus did the former kings establish lǐ as a way to guide the people
toward human flourishing. In his chapter on human moral nature, Xúnzǐ
compares our moral tendencies to a wooden branch, and the lǐ of the
former kings to steam. The steam impacts the wood by reshaping it, and
then it can be made straight (zhí 直). The ancient sage kings knew that
people’s desires went astray and tended to disorder, and so they established
laws and rituals in order to “straighten out” ( jiǎo 矯) peoples emotional
desires and help them become rectified (zhèng 正).15 Hence, Xúnzǐ’s
famous argument is that our moral tendencies are bad and that we are
made good only through “artifice” (wěi 偽).
Yet it is vital to see that, for Xúnzǐ, it is not simply ritual behavior or
just any artifice that makes for human flourishing.16 Mark Edward Lewis
reference to the ancient ruling figures who were said to establish Chinese culture
and help it prosper: the Three Sovereigns (Sānhuáng 三皇), who were Fúxī
伏羲, Shénnóng 神農, and Suìrén 燧人; and the Five Emperors (wǔdì), who
were Huángdì 黃帝, Zhuānxù 顓頊, Kù 嚳, Yáo 堯, and Shùn 舜. The list for
Confucians also tended to include the celebrated founders of the Zhōu dynasty.
While Xúnzǐ does seem to hold these kings in high regard, he also seems to prefer
the current ruler to look to models closer to his own time, rather than looking to
the far reaches of the Chinese past for sage guidance. One might argue that Xúnzǐ
interprets the ancient kings as establishing the true nature of virtuous kingship,
such that all other virtuous kings are reiterations of this type. For this reason,
we should read Xunzi’s remarks as understanding the ancient kings as only one
important subset of “former kings” who are useful models of governance.
13
		Xúnzǐ 19.1: “先王惡其亂也故制禮義以分之以養人之欲給人之
求.”
14
		Xúnzǐ 19.1: “使欲必不窮乎物物必不屈於欲.”
15
		Xúnzǐ 23.2.
16
		See Introduction to Ritual and Religion in the Xúnzǐ, ed. T. C. Kline III and Justin
Tiwald (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014), a response to

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Joshua Brown

has argued that, for Confucians, the “dark side” of human nature was
borne out in mere human convention or custom (sú 俗). The fact that
human beings may ritualize behavior is not enough to make it an artifice
that genuinely straightens the poor tendencies of human nature. Rather,
at stake for Xúnzǐ was the Confucian program of education, whereby one
learned the proper “straightening artifice” by studying the ancient texts
and traditions championed in Confucianism.17 For Xúnzǐ, straightening
( jiǎo 矯) human tendencies required a particular, Confucian formation
( jiào 教).
But, at this point, we might pose the following question: why does
Xúnzǐ postulate that it is not ritual behavior per se that constitutes the
path to human flourishing, but only the lǐ as founded by the former kings?
Is this merely a claim that the Confucian way is “better” because it is his
own? Fortunately, Xúnzǐ goes on to build up the substructure of the lǐ
with a discussion of it as founded in nature, not merely as the conventional
whim of certain celebrated governors. Xúnzǐ teaches that the lǐ has three
roots. The first is Heaven and earth (Tiāndì天地), which is the root of life.
Then are the forefathers and ancestors, who are the root of one’s class of
existence (lèi 類). Third are the ruler and teacher, who are the root of order
(zhì 治).18 These three roots make the flourishing life possible, and it is the
lǐ that are established to properly serve all three. Hence, the lǐ concern the
negotiation of the proper relationship between existence, history, cosmos,
and present relationships all at the same time. Such negotiations cannot
be merely “constructed” on the whim of whoever might want to do so,
but rather require particular insight into the cosmological order and the
human person.
Elsewhere, Xúnzǐ speaks of the “methods of the sage king” (shèngwáng
zhī yòng 聖王之用) as, in part, constituted by observing Heaven (chá Tiān
察天), and so, as able to “ornament” (cuò 錯) the earth.19 The introduction
scholars who argue that Xúnzǐ is antagonistic toward religious practicer: “What
we find in Xunzi is not a critique of religious practice as such but rather a critique
of certain forms of religious practice and interpretations of religious practice—the
forms that treat rituals and supernatural beings as mere instruments of personal
advantage and interpretations that fail to appreciate the proper function of ritual
in moral cultivation” (3).
17
		Mark Edward Lewis, “Custom and Human Nature in Early China,” Philosophy
East & West 53, no. 3 ( July 2003): 309–22.
18
		Xúnzǐ 19.5: “禮有三本： 天地者生之本也先祖者類之本也君師者
治之本也.” Zhì治 usually means something like “to rule,” but more basically
means giving order to things.
19
		Xúnzǐ 9.23. The verb cuò usually means to make a mistake or err, but was also used

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23

of Tiān into the shèngrén paradigm is significant, since for many early
Chinese thinkers—including Xunzi, I would argue— Tiān functions as
a divine force similar to Aristotle’s unmoved mover.20 This is related to
another argument from Xúnzǐ that there exists a harmonious, triadic relationship (cān 參) between heaven, earth, and the human being: “Heaven
has its seasons, the Earth has its resources, and humanity has its ability
to govern.”21 Here, Xúnzǐ means to key in on the specific contribution
of humanity within the cosmos and articulate how that contribution is
essential to understanding human life and its responsibilities. The human
capacity for governance, for bringing order into the world, is a response to
the life and resources given by Heaven and earth.
A similar point is found in Xúnzǐ’s observation that “only the sage
does not seek to know Heaven [zhī Tiān’ 知天].”22 In context, the word
zhī (知 typically signifying intellectual comprehension, which is related
to though not completely identified with wisdom, or zhì 智) means an
intimate knowledge of Heaven’s movements, as though the human being
might completely understand, and then indeed mimic, the acts of Heaven
himself. Xúnzǐ means to teach here that the sage recognizes the need for
humanity not to mimic Heaven, but to relate to it properly by providing
ways that order and govern the gift of life and resources Heaven has given
to describe inlaying items with precious metal, polishing, or sharpening objects.
		In early China, Tiān could mean something like the heavens or seasons, or even
nature itself. Hence, the passage cited in footnote 21, Xúnzǐ speaks of Tiān having
seasons. Yet at the same time, there are many occasions when Xúnzǐ speaks of Tiān
as giving life to all things (but not order), which is a more divine quality. Due
to these features of his thought, many modern interpreters have seen Xúnzǐ as a
thoroughgoing naturalist and atheistic philosopher. There is insufficient space here
to argue against this, but there is support for my view among significant scholars
as well. See, for example, Edward Machle, Nature and Heaven in the Xúnzǐ: A
Study of the Tian Lun (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993),
and Machle, “Xunzi as a Religious Philosopher,” Philosophy East and West 26, no.
4 (1976): 443–61, repr. in Kline and Tiwald, Ritual and Religion in the Xúnzǐ,
21–42. The Kline and Tiwald volume develops a broad account sympathetic with
my interpretation of Xúnzǐ on the question of Tiān.
21
		Xúnzǐ 17.2: “天有其時地有其財人有其治夫是之謂能參.”
22
		Xúnzǐ 17.3: “唯聖人為不求知天.” Chén, Xúnzǐ Xuéshuō, 144. Chén contends
that, for Xúnzǐ, “the li are not obtained from Tian and cannot take their model
from Tian” “故禮義不得之於天，亦非取法於天.” He seems to imply
by this that humans ought not have concern for Tiān, but I would argue this is
not the case. It seems to me that Xúnzǐ’s point is that the type of existence of Tiān
(especially in its transcendent aspects) is different from human existence, and thus
cannot be a model (qǔfǎ 取法) of how to flourish as a human being.

20

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Joshua Brown

to humanity. Hence, in the “Discourse on Ritual,” we find Xunzi claiming: “Heaven can bring things into being, but it cannot distinguish them
from each other; Earth can give human beings body and movement, but it
cannot govern them.”23
The cosmological aspects of sagehood demonstrate that, for Xúnzǐ,
while rituals are certainly conventions, they are not merely conventions.
They are rather expressions of qualities within certain exemplary individuals who desire to communicate an interior moral order from themselves
to broader society. Consequently, for Xúnzǐ, the efficacy of rituals in the
moral reformation of human tendencies is rooted in the sage wisdom of
the one who institutes and carries on the ritual framework at a given time.
According to Xúnzǐ, the rituals were established by the former kings as a
means of bringing order (zhì) and distinction ( fēn) to the world, and they
could accomplish this because they knew order and distinction within
themselves.
A last word we can add about Xúnzǐ’s account of ritual is that, because
of his emphasis on sagehood, his philosophy allows adequate space for
the transformation of ritual forms that occur over time. For Xúnzǐ, ritual
forms can be changed, but only by sages. In fact, Xúnzǐ argues for the
historical existence of at least a hundred sages, and advocates following
only those closer in time to our era: “If you wish to observe the traces of the
sage-kings, then look to the most clear of them, the most recent kings [hòu
wáng; 後王].”24 This is no progressivism from Xúnzǐ; rather, he holds that
the later kings who are sages continue the trajectory of the ancient sages,
but in ways that are more fitting to the disorder of the age. Xúnzǐ claims
that, if one desires to know the ancient ways (shàng shì 上世), one ought
observe the dào of the Zhōu dynasty: “By means of the near you may know
the far; by means of the one you may know the many [yǐ jìn zhī yuǎn, yǐ
yī zhī wàn; 以近知遠，以一知萬].”25 Looking forward to our Christological ends, this idea that ritual forms are mutable and dependent on ritual
sagehood is a foundational point of focus. However, before exploring it, we
first must gather an account of Christ’s priesthood in traditional Christian
terms so that we can properly assess and articulate Christ’s priestly work in
concepts taken from Xúnzǐ’s thought.
St. Thomas on Christ’s Priesthood
It should be clear from the preceding analysis that, whatever value there
		Xúnzǐ 19.22: “天能生物不能辯物也地能載人不能治人.”
		Xúnzǐ 5.6.
25
		Xúnzǐ 5.6.
23
24

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25

is in Xúnzǐ’s philosophy for a Chinese articulation of Christ’s priesthood,
this intellectual program is developed in a context and with concerns very
different from those of the traditional Christian teaching. Therefore, we
require a theological account of Christ’s priesthood in order to facilitate
a fruitful and orthodox reflection on this doctrine in Xúnzǐ’s concepts. I
have elected to present this account by referencing Christ’s priesthood as
taught by St. Thomas Aquinas in question 22 of the tertia pars of ST. That
this choice is particularly warranted is seen, for instance, in Jean-Pierre
Torrell’s note that Aquinas is unique among his contemporaries both in
writing a commentary on the Book of Hebrews and in including a quaestio
on Christ’s Priesthood in his most mature work.26 Moreover, Serge-Thomas
Bonino has contended that, although Aquinas’s conception of Christ’s
priesthood does not invoke a concept of a “natural” priesthood, his theology allows for the development of such an account, and thus Aquinas
treats the revealed truth of Christ’s priesthood in ways that prepare us
well to perceive the possibilities and problems of reading Christ in light of
Xúnzǐ.27 Because this theme has been well-treated in Aquinas’s thought, I
		Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “The Priesthood of Christ in the Summa Theologiae,”
in Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Bernhard Blankenhorn,
O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 126–58, at
127–28 (this article by Torrell originally appeard in French as “Le sacerdoce du
Christ dans la Somme de théologie,” Revue thomiste 99 [1999]: 75–100).
27
		 Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., “Le sacerdoce comme institution naturelle selon saint
Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue thomiste 99 (1999): 33–57, at 34–36. Bonino’s article
develops a concept of natural priesthood out of St. Thomas’s discussion of religious virtue. He points out that Thomas also neither possesses a general notion of
priesthood nor seems to have thought such an account necessary: “Non seulement
saint Thomas n’a jamais élaboré pour elle-même une telle notion générale du sacerdoce, mais surtout il ne semble guère en avoir éprouvé le besoin [Not only does St.
Thomas never elaborate such a general notion of priesthood itself, he moreover
hardly seems to have felt the need; translation mine]” (34–35). However, Thomas’s
consideration of human nature allows for a development of a general account of
priesthood, even an interreligious account. Bonino evokes St. Thomas’s description
of marriage as a natural institution, by virtue of the fact that humans may incline to
marriage but must act in free will to fulfill this good. Bonino suggests “priesthood”
in general is this type of natural inclination of human nature: “Il est une institution naturelle dans le mesure où il est une structure sociale universelle qui découle
de la nature humaine comme telle considérée dans sa dimension religieuse [It is
a natural institution inasmuch as it is a universal social structure which follows
upon human nature, when human nature as such is considered in its religious
dimension; translation mine]” (36). Similarly, I argue through Xúnzǐ that “ritual
sagehood” can name a type of priestly inclination of human nature, one preferable
here because it allows for the union of ritual action and intellectual perfection.
Regardless, as I hope to make clear, whether developing a general account of priest26

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Joshua Brown

do not hope to break new ground here and will limit myself to describing
the most concise presentation Aquinas makes of this doctrine.28
Before treating question 22, we require a brief prolegomenon to this
discussion, since, as Joseph P. Wawrykow has noted, Aquinas assumed
some knowledge on the part of his readers. 29 In terms of the context of
ST, Aquinas locates the quaestio on Christ’s priesthood within the division
of the tertia pars pertaining the person of Christ as the incarnate Word.30
Thus, Aquinas interprets Christ’s priesthood in light of the hypostatic
union, indeed, as a consequence of this union and its salvific character (see
ST III, prol. and q. 1). The question is more specifically located within a
discussion of the grace of the hypostatic union and its effects in bringing
Christ’s human nature to graced perfection. Additionally, as his assumed
reader would have been studying theology in the medieval university and
hearing lectures from a magister in Sacra Pagina or cursus biblicus, Aquinas can take for granted his reader will readily profess that Jesus is the
incarnate Word, know Christ as the mediator of salvation, and know that
Christ’s body and blood is received in the Eucharist.31
hood or ritual sagehood, in a Christological trajectory, Christ will be the measure
of these forms, which Bonino also notes (34).
28
		The best literature on Christ’s priesthood in Aquinas is the 1999 volume of Revue
thomiste, dedicated to this theme. In my judgment, the best English-language
treatments of Christ’s priesthood in Aquinas are given by Matthew Levering:
“Christ the Priest: An Exploration of Summa Theologiae III, Question 22,” The
Thomist 71 (2007): 379–417; Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation
According to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2001);
and Christ and the Catholic Priesthood: Ecclesial Hierarchy and the Pattern of the
Trinity (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2010), esp. ch. 2. Regarding Aquinas’s conception
of Christ’s priesthood outside of the Summa theologiae [ST], consult particularly
Gilles Berceville, O.P., “Le sacerdoce du Christ dans le Commentaire de l’Épître
aux Hébreux de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue thomiste 99 (1999): 143–58, and
Martin Morard, “Sacerdoce du Christ et sacerdoce des chretiens dans le Commentaire des Psaumes de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue thomiste 99 (1999): 119–42.
29
		Joseph P. Wawyrkow, “Wisdom in the Christology of Thomas Aquinas,” in Christ
Among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery Jr. and Joseph P. Wawrykow
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 177.
30
		See, e.g., John F. Boyle, “The Twofold Division of St. Thomas’s Christology in the
Tertium Pars,” The Thomist 60 (1996): 439–47. Boyle argues contra M.-D. Chenu,
who had claimed that qq.1–26 of the tertia pars evinced a “scientific” approach
to Christology, while qq. 27–59 were “scriptural.” Boyle argues instead that both
divisions are scriptural and that the distinction between the parts arises out of the
struggle to describe the Church’s proclamation about Christ in keeping with the
historical narrative of his life. Thomas approaches the problem by first discussing
who Christ is (i.e., the incarnate Word) and then understanding what Christ does.
31
		See Leonard Boyle, The Setting of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas (Toronto:

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With regard to the theme of Christ’s priesthood in general, St. Thomas
might have assumed that his reader would also know of the traditional
perspectives unique to each Gospel, specifically that Luke is said to emphasize Christ’s priesthood.32 It is instructive that, in his interpretation of the
location of Luke’s genealogy of Jesus, Aquinas contends that Luke intends
by this location to assert a link between Christ’s priesthood, the sacramental economy (in baptism), and Christ’s work to expiate sins.33 In other
words, there are at least three supporting themes Aquinas might assume
on the part of his reader before they contemplate Christ’s priesthood: (1)
the doctrine of the hypostatic union, (2) the soteriological cause of the
Incarnation, and (3) the link between Christ’s priesthood, the fullness of
grace, and his work to expiate sins.
With this background in mind, we can now focus on ST III, q. 22,
especially articles 1–3. In article 1, Aquinas asks whether it is fitting for
Christ to be a priest (utrum conveniat Christo esse sacerdotum). The objections unfold in two basic trajectories: the ontological dissonance between
the priesthood and the Verbum caro (obj. 1), and the dissonance between
Christ’s ministry and the characteristics of the priesthood of the Old
Testament (obj. 2–3). The first objection contends that, whereas priests are
lower than the angels, Christ is higher, making it beneath his dignity to
think him sacerdos.34 The second objection argues that, since Christ was
not from the tribe of Levi, he cannot be a priest in fulfillment of the Old
Testament typos, and the third argues the same by pointing to the Old
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1982). Boyle argues that ST was written
to fill a lacuna in Dominican education for the iuniores of the order. If this is the
case, then these observations about the assumed reader are intensified, since the
reader would have at least taken the initial vow to join the Dominican order and
would have at the least been taught Scripture daily in the priory, as well as engaged
in other spiritual disciplines.
32
		It is significant that Aquinas attributes this line of thought to Augustine’s De
concordia evangelium both in the prologue of the Catena in Lucam and in Super
Matt 1, lec. 2.
33
		Super Matt 1, lec. 2. “Luke primarily intends to speak of the priestly personage of
Christ, and to this priesthood pertains the expiation of sins. Therefore, it is fitting
that Luke place Christ’s generation after his baptism, in which the expiation of
sins happens [Lucas autem maxime intendit commendare in Christo personam
sacerdotalem, ad sacerdotem autem pertinent expiatio peccatorum, et ideo post
Baptismum, in quo fit peccatorum expiatio, convenientur a Luca ponitur Christi
generatio].” Unless otherwise noted, all English translation from the works of
Thomas are mine, done from the Latin as found at corpusthomisticum.org.
34
		Significantly, this objection draws its force from the comparison between Christ
and the angels in Hebrews 1:7–14.

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Joshua Brown

Testament distinction between the offices of lawgiver and priest.35
The objections in article 1 show the basic shape of concerns Thomas will
develop throughout the question, and so they are worth special attention.
On the one hand, the ontological concern deals with the union of God
and man and the perfections of the latter as cause of the union.36 On the
other, Thomas is unsurprisingly sensitive to scriptural harmony. We see in
the objections an interest in maintaining the rules for interpreting Sacred
Scripture, whereby the literal sense serves as a guide for the allegorical. For
Aquinas, however, the proper interpretation of Christ’s priesthood functions within the broader way the New Law fulfills the Old Law.37
In his response, St. Thomas first defines sacerdos as “handing over divine
things to the people” (divina populo tradit); hence, the priest is a “giver
of sacred things” (sacra dans). He then identifies three divine things the
priest mediates: the law to the people, the people’s prayers to God, and
satisfaction for sins. On the basis of these divine things, Aquinas argues
that it is most fitting that Christ be a priest, for he is the mediator of the
gift of partaking of the divine nature and he effects reconciliation between
the people and God.38
Thomas’ response primarily concerns imbuing the questions of the
objections with an incarnational logic, emphasizing the perfections of
Christ’s human nature flowing from the hypostatic union. To the first
objection he argues that Christ’s dignity is higher than the angels in his
human nature as well as his divine nature, since he possesses the “fullness
of grace and glory” (habuit plenitudinem gratiae et gloriae). Yet, at the same
time, the fullness of grace and glory is given to the human nature assumed
by the Word, and hence Jesus “was conformed to the way-faring men who
are constituted in the priesthood” (conformis fuit hominibus viatoribus
in sacerdotio constitutes). Similarly, because Christ is the perfect union
		ST III, q. 22, a. 1, obj. 1–3.
		Berceville, “Le sacerdoce du Christ, ” 145–46. Berceville, though drawing upon
Thomas’s commentary on Hebrews, here shows well what is at stake in the question of Christ’s priesthood as regards an orthodox confession of the hypostatic
union: “L’attribution du sacerdoce au Fils de Dieu, Seigneur universel, soulève
cependant une difficulté théologique qui n’existe pas pour les titres de roi, de juge
ou de docteur: la notion meme de sacerdoce implique en effet celle de service, et
donc d’infériorité [The attribution of priesthood to the Son of God, the savior of
all, raises, however, a theological difficulty that does not exist for the titles of king,
judge, or teacher: the notion of priesthood itself implies in effect this is an attribution of service, and therefore inferiority]” (translation mine).
37
		See Levering, “Christ the Priest,” 384.
38
		ST III, q. 22, a. 1 resp.
35
36

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of Word and man, it does not matter that the Old Testament Levitical
priesthood and distinction between priest and legislator are not present
in him. Christ is not an instance of priesthood, but its norm and type: the
Old Testament priesthood is a figure of Christ, and Christ contains the
perfect harmony of graces as legislator, priest, and king.39 We can briefly
note that, in view of the larger ends of the present essay, Aquinas’s insight
that Christ is the true archetype of priesthood formally different from his
own ritual agency will prove important to configuring a Chinese account
of Christ’s priesthood.
After it is established that Christ is priest, article 2 poses the question
of the material over which he presides as priest, whether Christ can be
both priest and victim. The objections here are built on the perfections
of Christ that Aquinas emphasizes in article 1. Objection 1 notes that
the priestly sacrifice requires the killing of a victim, and Jesus did not kill
himself; hence, Jesus cannot be both priest and victim. Objection 2 similarly argues that, because human sacrifice is alien to the Jewish priesthood,
Christ would not have exercised his priesthood in treating himself as the
victim. Objection 3 is perhaps the most skillful, given its anti-Nestorian
logic: since victims are consecrated to God in the act of sacrificing, Christ
cannot be the victim of his priesthood because his consecration is due to
his union with God and has always been a characteristic of his existence as
incarnate Word.40
It is very clear that Aquinas is not interested in simply ascribing
priesthood to Christ, but specifically ascribing to Christ’s priesthood the
ministry of the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, in which Christ is
both priest and Host. In his response to these objections, Aquinas first
identifies a sacrifice as “something that is offered to God so that the human
spirit is elevated to God” and then identifies three types of sacrifices. The
first type is an offering for the remission of sin, according to Hebrews 5
and Leviticus 4:3. The second, taken from the peace offering in Leviticus
3, is an offering for the sake of being conserved in a state of grace. Third,
echoing the holocaust of Leviticus 1:1–9, is the offering for being perfectly
united with God.
Building on these three reasons for sacrifice, St. Thomas shows how
Christ’s human nature confers these effects on us through his crucial
sacrifice. First, our sins are forever remitted (deleta sunt). Second, we
receive the grace of salvation through him. And third, we have obtained

		ST III, q. 22, a. 1, ad 1–3 and obj. 1–3.
		ST III, q. 22, a. 2, obj. 1–3.

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the perfection of glory through him.41 Now, it is clear that the priest
cannot have these effects on his own power; he exercises these effects as a
form of mediation through the offering of a victim and God’s accepting
it. In short, a pleasing sacrifice requires not only an empowered mediator
(sacerdos) but also a fitting victim sacrificed in a fitting way. In Leviticus,
even though a cow is required for all three sacrifices Thomas mentions,
there are different stipulations: the offering for union with God requires a
male without blemish, the peace offering can be a male or female without
blemish with only certain parts required for sacrifice, and the sin offering
requires a young, spotless bullock.42
In light of this observation, Thomas’s reply to the objections focus on
why Christ is the most fitting victim for the sacrifice over which he is
the official, or perhaps why Christ is the most ritually proper (Xúnzǐ’s
lǐ) victim.43 To the first, Aquinas emphasizes that Christ exercised his
free will to give himself over to death, and thus is the victim of his own
priestly act. Second, however, Christ’s free will is not to kill himself as a
human sacrifice, but to give himself over to suffering. This is exceptionally
important, for Christ’s place as victim of sacrifice is not simply corporeal. Rather, Aquinas demonstrates that man’s spirit can be offered to
God. In the case of Jesus, his sacrifice is most essentially his surrender of
himself unto suffering, in his acceptance of the mission of redemption as
the God-man.44 As to the third objection, many editions do not contain
the reply, but we can construct a rough sense of what it might have been:
because the Incarnation is entirely aimed toward the salvation worked out
for humanity on the Cross, Jesus’s humanity is, from the moment of his
conception, consecrated as perfect and fitting victim.
So, having secured the proclamation that Christ is priest (a. 1) and is
the perfect victim in his priestly ministry (a. 2), Aquinas next considers
the question of whether Christ’s priesthood has the effect of expiating
sins. Clearly, he will answer affirmatively, but it is important to see what is
at stake. For Aquinas, it is not simply whether Christ can expiate sins, but
whether this expiation occurs in the Passion, with Christ acting as both
priest and victim.
		ST III, q. 22, a. 2, resp.
		See Lev 1:3–4; 3:1–2; 4:3–4 (respectively).
43
		ST III, q. 22, a. 2, resp.: “And therefore Christ himself, inasmuch as he is man,
was not only priest, but also the perfect victim, simultaneously being the victim
on account of sin, the victim of peace-making, and the holocaust [Et ideo ipse
Christus, inquantum homo, non solum fuit sacerdos, sed etiam hostia perfecta,
simul existens hostia pro peccato, et hostia pacificorum, et holocaustem].”
44
		ST III, q. 22, a. 2, ad 1–2.
41
42

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Answering this question properly requires understanding the union of
the Word and man. The first objection is based on apparent limits of the
communicatio idiomatum, arguing that, because only God can forgive sins
and Christ is priest according to his human nature, his priesthood cannot
expiate sins. Hence, the objection calls into question whether Jesus’s
human nature (of which is predicated his priesthood) can bring about
expiation of sins, or whether this must be an act of his divine nature alone.
The second and third objections point again to the relationship between
the priesthood of Christ and the Old Testament. Hebrews 10:1–3 teaches
that the sacrifices of the Old Testament were not able to “make participants perfect” (non potuerunt perfectos facere), proving this from their need
to be offered again and again (alioquin cessassent offerri). As both in the
Lord’s prayer, where Jesus commends us to pray “forgive” us our sins in the
present tense (dimitte), and in the daily sacrifice offered by the Church,
the logic of Hebrews suggests his sacrifice is not efficacious to expiate sins.
Similarly, the third objection argues that, because Christ is the “lamb,” he
does not align with the typology of the proper victims for the sin sacrifice
in the Old Testament, and thus his sacrifice does not expiate sins.
Although there is a formal distinction between the objection couched
in the terms of Ephesus and the two taking a scriptural approach, the
argument is basically the same: all three objections question the efficacy of
Christ’s priestly acts. The importance of these objections cannot be overlooked: if Christ’s expiation of sins is not mediated through his human
priesthood, then this unravels the entire reason for the Incarnation as
St. Thomas has laid it out. For Aquinas, this ritual act of expiating sins is
essential to the Church’s testimony about who Jesus is and what he accomplishes for us, the nature and cause of the Incarnation.
Aquinas responds to the objections by arguing that expiation of sins
requires cleansing in two aspects: the stain of guilt (macula culpae) and the
debt of punishment (reatus poenae). The stain of guilt is forgiven through
grace, which turns the sinner’s heart toward God, and the debt of punishment is fully removed through man’s making satisfaction to God. Aquinas
then states that Christ’s priesthood effects both forms of cleansing. With
regard to the stain of guilt, Christ’s priesthood communicates the grace to
us that turns our hearts toward God, and Aquinas cites Romans 3:24–25
that it is through faith in Christ’s blood that we are justified. Regarding
the debt of punishment, Christ’s priesthood satisfies for us completely,
inasmuch as he “took on our diseases and bore our sorrows” (Isa 53:4). For
Thomas, Jesus mediates grace to us for the redemption of sins through his
blood on the Cross. His sacrifice actually communicates this grace to us
and turns our hearts toward God. Also, Jesus’s sacrifice fulfills the perfect

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offering as priest and what is offered as victim so as to be the perfect satisfaction for our sins.45
As we see in the reply to objection 1, Aquinas is concerned to show that
the logic of the Passion as expiatory requires understanding the mystery
of the Incarnation. Because the Word is united to human nature and acts
through it, Jesus Christ’s human nature can work out the expiation of sins.
Citing Augustine, Aquinas shows that the priestly act of the incarnate
Word is efficacious in four ways: Christ (1) is united with God as the one
to whom the sacrifice is offered, (2) is united with sinners, for whom he
offered the sacrifice, (3) offers it himself, and (4) is the sacrifice offered.
Jesus’s act of priesthood, then, is a product of the unique miracle of the
Incarnation that allows Jesus’s sacrifice to be perfect in each aspect of the
sacrificial act.46
Therefore, Christ’s sacrifice is uniquely efficacious and has no need
to be repeated. Aquinas clarifies that the New Law requires continual
expiation for sins because of the frailty of the covenant members, not due
to deficiency in the sacrifice. Unlike the Levitical priesthood, with its
multiple and repeated sacrifices, the Church offers the same sacrifice daily.
Similarly, just as the Old Covenant featured several types of animals used
in sacrifice, Jesus gives himself as the perfect lamb who was the “consummate sacrifice of all things.”47 According to Aquinas, Jesus’s sacrificial act
is categorically unique because he is the incarnate Word. Hence, the sacrifices of the Old Testament are consummated in him and he is the norm for
understanding the efficacy of the former rituals for communicating grace
and reconciliation with God.
Before redirecting Aquinas’s insights to our aim of constructing a
Chinese account of Christ’s priesthood, we must add a brief coda to the
content of articles 1–3 in question 22. For Aquinas, the soteriological
effect of Christ’s priesthood, the expiation of sins, is his organizing principle, but we must understand the full scope of this effect, which includes
a moral sense. According to Aquinas, sin is, in its simplest definition, an
inordinate and willful departure from the eternal law.48 However, on top
of this, the divine law is God’s perfect knowledge of created things and
their good, and so sin is a departure from the good of one’s own nature and
perfection as well as a rejection of God.49 Following this, the sacramental
		ST III, q. 22, a. 3, resp.
		ST III, q. 22, a. 3, ad 1.
47
		ST III, q. 22, a. 3, ad. 3.
48
		ST I-II, q. 71, a. 6.
49
		ST I-II, q. 93.
45
46

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graces flowing from Christ’s priesthood that expiate sin also lead human
beings into human moral perfection. For example, baptism allows man to
be cut off from sin and instills the virtue of faith, which perfects the cardinal virtues.50 For Christ to expiate our sins has intrinsically to do with
enabling the perfection of the human person. With this clearly in mind,
we can now turn to the ultimate goal of the present essay.
A Chinese Articulation of Christ’s Priesthood
Our analyses of Xúnzǐ and Aquinas have, to this point, been focused on
describing their accounts of ritual sagehood and Christ’s priesthood in
their respective conceptual contexts in order to cultivate two concrete
resources for considering Christ’s priesthood in a Chinese manner. In
this final section, then, we will go about the task of articulating Christ’s
priesthood according to the principles of Xúnzǐ’s moral philosophy while
remaining faithful to the interpretation of Christ’s priesthood provided by
Aquinas. The first necessary step in this process of articulating a Chinese
account of Christ’s priesthood is to carefully delineate theological challenges to cross-cultural reading of Christ’s priesthood, especially in our
case, those concerning Xúnzǐ’s philosophy. Then, we will be able to focus
on what resources from Xúnzǐ can be drawn into a Chinese-Christian
account of Christ’s priesthood in a way that honors both the Christian
tradition and the convictions of Xúnzǐ. For convenience, then, this section
will advance in two parts: the first will describe a principal problem for
reading Christ’s priesthood in Xúnzǐ’s categories and suggest a resolution,
and the second will provide an interpretation of Christ’s priesthood in the
idiom of Xúnzǐ’s ritual sagehood, mutatis mutandis.
It is clear from reviewing Xúnzǐ and Aquinas that they use very different metaphors, authorities, and philosophical worldviews in considering
their respective themes. This is not a shocking observation, yet if we wish
to somehow conjoin these two programs as this article proposes, these
facts illustrate difficulties in our method. This is not merely because the
two guiding projects for this essay are themselves historically separate
and linguistically and culturally disparate. It also because, as a Christian
theologian, Aquinas founds his theology on a salvation history that is
communicated through a concrete, historical people (Israel and then the
Church), while Xúnzǐ’s understanding of proper rituals and ritual propriety is ineluctably tied to an equally concrete, historical people, those of
ancient China.
		ST III, q. 62, a. 2.

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One of the more felicitous results of studying Aquinas on Christ’s
priesthood is that it becomes absolutely clear to what a great degree the
Christian understanding of Christ as priest of the New Law is tied to a
theological account of the Church as fulfilling and extending the life of
Israel. As we saw, at every point in question 22, Aquinas demonstrates
the importance of resolving the connections between Christ’s priesthood
of the New Law and the Levitical priesthood of the Old Law. Although
Christ’s priesthood does not fulfill the typology of the Levitical priesthood exactly, Aquinas articulates Christ’s priesthood as still working
within the typological trajectory of the Levitical priesthood and the sacrifices performed therein.
This continuity between Christ and Israel is important to our Chinese
reading of Christ’s priesthood because it means that the Christian proclamation about this doctrine is, in some ways, inseparable from the concrete
Hebraic nature of Christ’s priesthood. The Hebrew culture and heritage
is the initial context in which Christ performs his priestly acts, and his
priesthood must be interpreted in this light. Hence, if we were to attempt
to merely transport Christ’s priesthood completely into Xúnzǐ’s context,
we might find this possible, but the result would not be a Christian claim
about Christ’s priesthood.
Naturally, this raises the question of what would be missing in such
an account? Theologically, there are a great many things that the Hebrew
cultus provides for explaining the priesthood of Christ but for which
Xunzi’s philosophy cannot account. Most important among these is the
fact that, in the Hebrew cultus, the sacrifices of the priests are offered
to God (the electing YHWH, it must be said) and are meant to mediate
between the people and God. It is possible, of course, to perhaps make
something like this be said through Xúnzǐ’s categories, but this sort of salvific mediation is not native to his thought. Additionally, the notion of the
priestly ministry as actually working to expiate sins is something for which
Xúnzǐ could not account. In part, this is because there is no clear sense that
Xúnzǐ understands human disorder explicitly in terms of sin against God
and human nature. And finally, Xúnzǐ has no way to understand the rites
as able to objectively make a change in the relationship between the people
and God (i.e., from reprobation to justification). By the same token, since
Xúnzǐ’s ritual sages are exemplary humans rather than divine figures, this
is ultimately to his credit and philosophically understandable apart from
the clarifying light of revelation.
In short, then, the formal differences between the Chinese rites Xúnzǐ
knew and the Hebrew rites Aquinas draws on in his theology of Christ’s
priesthood are not merely formal differences. The latter participate in the

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revealed framework of God’s election and work of redemption, and the
former (by Xúnzǐ’s own admission) are products of human ingenuity and
genius. Consequently, “translating” Christ’s priesthood into the idiom of
Xúnzǐ’s rituals is problematic from both sides. From the side of Christian
theology, Xúnzǐ cannot speak clearly enough to the role rituals play in
divine agency to save human beings from our disorder, which is a rejection
of the divine love at its root. From the side of Xúnzǐ’s philosophy, efficacious rituals are those that flow from ritual sages, and thus, if the forms
are not those given and promulgated by a ritual sage like those of ancient
China, the question remains of how these are efficacious to bring about
moral reformation. Would not the rites of Christ’s priesthood be mere sú
俗, or customs?
Felicitously, the Christian and Chinese challenges require a similar
mode of response. What Christian theology demands of a Chinese
account of Christ’s priesthood in Xúnzǐ’s categories is a way to allow the lǐ
of Xúnzǐ be applied to Christ so that it becomes his person and perfection
that principally define his ritual agency. With this definition present, the
Christian theologian can then successfully point out the aspects of the
ritual framework and forms that are fulfilled in Christ’s ministry without
having to equate Christ’s ritual agency with the formal appearance of
Xúnzǐ’s lǐ. Just as Aquinas negotiated the formal differences between the
rites of the Levitical priesthood and Christ by appealing to the logic of the
Incarnation as true archetype of priesthood, so the Christian theologian
can assert Christ as the archetype of all efficacious rituals across cultural
boundaries.
On the other hand, Xúnzǐ’s perspective demands an account of why
we should follow Christ’s rituals rather than those of the sages of ancient
China. Xúnzǐ’s philosophy requires an articulation of the sage qualities of
Jesus Christ in order to plausibly say that, through his coming near to us,
we may know the far away aims of the rites of ancient Chinese culture.
In sum, this requires an account of Christ as a ritual sage so that there
is sufficient ground to say he can alter the forms of the rituals while also
instituting proper, efficacious rituals.
It is plain at this point why Aquinas’s theology of Christ’s priesthood is
a helpful choice. Because Aquinas emphasizes the logic of the hypostatic
union as a way to explain the typological and soteriological concerns of
the biblical character of priesthood, his account also helpfully brings those
Christological doctrines useful in considering Christ as ritual sage to the
foreground. If we are to successfully articulate Christ’s priesthood in the
Chinese idiom of Xúnzǐ, this can be done only by laying the foundation
for considering how Christ’s perfections in the hypostatic union can be

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considered in harmony with the categories and concepts Xúnzǐ employs.
What we require, then, is to understand Christ in the conceptual
framework of the shèngrén, which requires harmonizing this concept with
the traditional Christian understanding of the hypostatic union. Briefly,
we can recall that, for Xúnzǐ, the shèngrén is, in a way, a historical ideal,
but he also does not enumerate a complete list of sages. This is because,
philosophically, Xúnzǐ wishes to leave open the possibility for new sages,
and thus he is forced to articulate a basic typology of the shèngrén. At the
heart of this typology in terms of its ritual aspects is that the shèngrén is
one who properly understands the relationship between Tiān, earth, and
humanity and that the rituals he institutes are meant to establish this
sort of proper order and distinction in the world. This is key: the shèngrén
perceives and understands the proper distinctions in the world himself,
and the rites become ways this perception and understanding can become
communicated to others, and thus practicable.
Can Christ be thought of in this way? Certainly, in the instrumental
aspect of the question, the answer is yes. A Christian theologian has no
issue saying that through the rituals performed by Christ in the ongoing
ministry of the Church human beings are brought out of their disorder
and into the proper order and proportion found in Jesus Christ. We can,
without dilemma, articulate that the sacraments established by Christ’s
priesthood govern (zhì) human desires: they “straighten” ( jiǎo) and
“educate” ( jiào) in the pedagogy of Christ’s true and eternal priesthood.
Thus, it does seem that the rituals of the Church do bring about precisely
the sort of ends that Xúnzǐ imagines the rites of sages are supposed to
accomplish. The question, then, is how we might say that Christ fits the
description of the ritual sage of Heaven, earth, and humanity and communicates these distinctions to us.
The answer lies in the hypostatic union. Because Jesus Christ is the
union of God and man, the Christian can say that Christ’s priesthood not
only meets the requirements of ritual sagehood in Xúnzǐ’s mind but is also
the most perfect form of ritual sagehood in Xúnzǐ’s categories. According
to Christian theology, Christ is the union of God and man but maintains
the distinction between the divine and human natures. In other words,
Christ does not merely perceive and understand the distinction between
Tiān, earth, and humanity; Christ is this distinction in himself.51 In terms
of his knowledge, Christ knows this distinction as well, and in a most
		 Here, I am allowing for an ad hoc Christian interpretation of the Tiān of Xúnzǐ as
an adequate description of divinity of the one God, though admitting that Xúnzǐ’s
conception certainly falls short of the Christian doctrine of God in key aspects.

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perfect fashion, since he knows it from the side of God as the creative
agency that brings about the earth, but he also knows it as completely
human.
We saw above in Aquinas’s discussion of Christ as victim that the
reason Christ is priest over himself is that he is the most perfect sacrifice.
That is because Christ’s sacrifice is not only a corporeal sacrifice, but the
giving of his human nature to the divine salvific will in perfect obedience.
This is a vitally important observation, because in this, we see that Jesus
Christ lived out the proper distinction and relationship between God,
man, and earth that Xúnzǐ ascribes to the sages of ancient China. Jesus
Christ did not seek to “know” God in the way that Adam and Eve strove
to know God, seeking to be like God and, thus, rejecting their role of being
human. Rather, he sought to love and obey God in his human nature, and
in this love and obedience, to demonstrate the proper order of human loves
and properly distinguish human existence from the divine life.
For these reasons, we can also say that Christ understands the roots
of human disorder better than any sage before. Christ knows that the
root of the disordered desires of human beings is not merely the context
of a material world full of limited material goods; it comes from the way
humanity has conditioned itself to live in such a world. Our instincts to
have immoderate desires resulting in a chaotic society stem from a chaos
inside ourselves, a rejection of the proper distinction and relationship
between God, humanity, and the earth we are made to inhabit as stewards.
Ultimately, this is precisely why it is essential that Christ is both the
proper priest and victim of his rites. Christ must be the priest because he
must be a ritual sage in Xúnzǐ’s language: he is the greatest shèngrén to
ever be, and therefore, as an exercise of this sagehood, institutes efficacious
rites. But Christ must be the matter of these efficacious rites because of
his sage properties. Since he knows that human disorder runs so deep,
Christ knows that the only rites that can correct and straighten humanity
in fullness must communicate his own love and obedience. The symbolic
mediation of ritual forms is not adequate for this work. Rather, he institutes rituals that actively draw practitioners into the proper order and
distinction of love and obedience that Christ himself embodies.
Therefore, we can say that, in Xúnzǐ’s conception, Jesus is the perfect
ritual sage who “straightens” humanity through his priesthood both by
removing the debt of sin and by converting our hearts toward God.52 We
		ST III, q. 22, a. 3, resp. “For by its virtue [i.e., Christ’s priesthood], grace is given to
us, by which our hearts are turned to God [Nam virtute ipsius gratia nobis datur,
qua corda nostra convertuntur ad Deum].”

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might even say the Cross is the true artifice (wěi) by which our true sage
not only communicates to humans what propriety and moral rectification
are but also makes them possible from inside the one who participates in
the sacraments. As priest, Jesus not only removes the cause of our disorder;
he also enables us to become reformed and reshaped to become functional
as the carpenter’s square or however else we are meant to be truly used by
God in the world.
In sum, Xúnzǐ’s discourse on rituals offers a fruitful way to consider
Christ’s priesthood in a Chinese idiom if Christian theology is successful
in articulating how Christ meets the standard of the shèngrén of Xúnzǐ’s
philosophy. In this section, I have demonstrated that Christian theology
can indeed make such an articulation about Christ, with the end result
that it gains the ability to understand and articulate an understanding of
Christ as fulfilling not only the Levitical priesthood and its ministry in
service to God but also the typology of the ritual sage of ancient China.
Certainly, just as with the Levitical priesthood, Christ’s fulfillment goes
beyond what Xúnzǐ or the sages themselves thought ritual sagehood to be.
Yet Christ’s fulfillment of sagehood is still continuous with the essence of
the concept and brings it to its perfection.
As China and Chinese culture promises to become increasingly important to living Christians, it is an exigent need for academic Christian theology to undertake the difficult work of composing theology with an eye
toward the fulfillment of Chinese culture. In this article, I have sought to
demonstrate that this work need entail neither an abandonment of classical
Christian categories or doctrines nor a curtailment of Chinese concepts in
an attempt to hold to Christian orthodoxy. Instead, dealing with robust
Chinese concepts such as those provided by Xúnzǐ and robust Christian
interpretations such as those of Aquinas enables rather than attenuates
N&V
theology that is both culturally relevant and profoundly faithful.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019): 39–55

39

Una ratio versus Diversae rationes: Three Interpretations of Summa theologiae I, Q. 13, AA. 1–6
Domenic D’Ettore
Marian University
Indianapolis, IN

Introduction

This essay takes up a dispute pertaining to Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine
that names of pure perfections are said analogously of God and creatures.
Specifically, it addresses the question of whether such names as “being,”
“good,” and “wise” are predicated analogously through one ratio (or
concept) or are, instead, predicated analogously through diverse rationes (or concepts). George Klubertanz defended the thesis that Aquinas
professed una ratio in some early writings but changed his mind to diversae
rationes by the time he composed the prima pars of the Summa theologiae
[ST].1 Unlike Klubertanz, various prominent Scholastic Thomists observe
		See George Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and
Systematic Synthesis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1960), 23–24. Klubertanz
cites three texts from Thomas’s Commentary on the Sentences for una ratio and two
texts each from the prima pars of the Summa theologiae [ST] and the Commentary
on the Metaphysics for diversae rationes, concluding: “These texts show St. Thomas
changing his answer to the question of the plurality of the analogous intelligibility.
In three early texts he speaks of a single intelligibility; in all later texts he denies
a single intelligibility and speaks instead of different intelligibilities attributed to
the same thing or of intelligibilities which are partly the same and partly different”
(24). John Wippel briefly discusses this passage from Klubertanz in a footnote,
arguing that the Commentary on the Sentences passages need not be taken as
endorsing una ratio at all, and consequently that they do not “necessarily have to be

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Domenic D’Ettore

no such development from una ratio to diversae rationes in Thomas’s writings. Instead, they dispute among themselves over whether the una ratio
unequally participated by the analogates is (1) identical to the ratio proper
to one of the analogates or (2) a separate (or distinct) ratio from the diverse
rationes proper to the analogates.
I find at least the following three positions on what Klubertanz called
the problem of “una ratio versus diversae rationes.” I will refer to them as
options A, B, and C. Option A is Klubertanz’s own developmental thesis,
whereby Thomas changes his mind from una ratio to diversae rationes.
Option B proposes that the una ratio is one of the diversae rationes proper
to the analogates. Finally, option C claims that the una ratio is separate
from the diversae rationes proper to the analogates.2
A full consideration of the relative merits of these three positions as
interpretations of the thought of Thomas Aquinas is beyond the scope of
this paper. For now, I will judge the positions’ merits only against ST I,
q. 13, aa. 1–6. I choose this text because it is considered representative of
Aquinas’s mature position, because Klubertanz cites it as providing strong
support for his developmental thesis, and because it has always confused
me. I will conclude that option B provides the overall most consistent and
least problematic interpretation of the passage.
regarded as contradicting Thomas’s later references to analogous rationes as being
partly the same and partly not the same” (The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being, Monographs of the Society for
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy 1 (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 2000), 570n238.
2
		The position I am calling “option B” is put forward with variations by John
Capreolus (d. 1444), Dominic of Flanders (1425–1474), Thomas di vio Cajetan
(1469–1534), and Francis Silvestri of Ferrara (1474–1528). I find option C with
variations in the writings of Paul Soncinas (d. 1494) and Chrysostom Javelli
(ca.1470/72–1538). For a direct treatment of these Renaissance Thomist authors
on the number of rationes involved in analogous predication, see Domenic
D’Ettore: “The Fifteenth-Century Thomist Dispute Over Participation in an
Analogous Concept: John Capreolus, Dominic of Flanders, and Paul Soncinas,”
Mediaeval Studies 76 (2014): 241–73; “‘Not a Little Confusing’: Francis Silvestri
of Ferrara’s Hybrid Thomist Doctrine of Analogy,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90, no. 1 (2016): 113–17; and “A Thomist Re-consideration of
the Subject Matter of Metaphysics: Chrysostom Iavelli on What is Included in
Being as Being,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 89
(2015): 215–17. The disagreement between these Thomists (and others, including
Hervaeus Natalis and Thomas Sutton) over “One or many rationes” is treated as
“The Rationes Problem” in Domenic D’Ettore, Analogy After Aquinas: Three Logical Problems and Some Thomists’ Solutions (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 2018).

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41

Summa theologiae I, Q. 13, AA. 1–6: Summary of Principle Points
Thomas Aquinas’s discussion of analogy in articles 5 and 6 of ST I, q. 13,
picks up on his treatment in articles 1–4 of how the human intellect can
signify names about God. Article 1 establishes that a name signifies things
through a “mediating concept,” which Thomas also calls a ratio.3 Since our
intellects do not know God through his essence, but through creatures, it
follows that we can name God only through creatures and that the names
we use do not express the divine essence as it is in itself.4 Articles 2 and
3 lay out the different ways in which names of creatures are said of God.
		See ST I, q. 13, a. 1, resp.: “I answer that it must be said that, according to the
Philosopher, vocalizations are signs of understandings, and understandings are
likenesses of things. And so it is clear that vocalizations are referred to things to be
signified by a mediating conception of the intellect [Respondeo dicendum quod,
secundum philosophum, voces sunt signa intellectuum, et intellectus sunt rerum
similitudines. Et sic patet quod voces referuntur ad res significandas, mediante
conceptione intellectus]” (all translations from the works of Thomas are my own,
done from the Latin as found at corpusthomisticum.org unless otherwise noted).
In this passage, Thomas draws on Aristotle, De interpretatione 1.16a. See also
Aquinas, In I peri hermeneias, lec. 2, in In Aristotelis Libros Peri Hermeneias et
Posterioum Analyticorum Expositio, ed. R. M. Spiazzi, 2nd ed. (Turin, IT: Marietti,
1964), 9–12, and In V metaph., lec. 5, in In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum
Aristotelis Expositio, ed. R. M. Spiazzi (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1950), 223b. For a
discussion of signification in Thomas’s work and in the period following him,
see Giorgio Pini, “Species, Concept, and Thing: Theories of Signification in the
Second Half of the Thirteenth Century,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8
(1999): 21–52. See also E. J. Ashworth, “Signification and Modes of Signification
in Thirteenth-Century Logic: A Preface to Aquinas on Analogy,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 43–53.
4
		See ST I, q. 13, a. 1, resp.: “Therefore, something can be named by us insofar as it
can be known by us in the intellect. But it was shown above that God is not able
to be seen through His essence by us in this life. Rather, He is known by us from
creatures, according to the relation of principle, and through the mode of excellence and removal. So therefore, He can be named by us from creatures, although
that name signifying Him does not express the divine essence according to what it
is in the way that the name ‘human’ expresses with its signification the essence of
human according to what it is. For [‘human’] signifies its definition, declaring its
essence; for the ratio which the name signifies is the definition [Secundum igitur
quod aliquid a nobis intellectu cognosci potest, sic a nobis potest nominari. Ostensum est autem supra quod Deus in hac vita non potest a nobis videri per suam
essentiam; sed cognoscitur a nobis ex creaturis, secundum habitudinem principii,
et per modum excellentiae et remotionis. Sic igitur potest nominari a nobis ex creaturis, non tamen ita quod nomen significans ipsum, exprimat divinam essentiam
secundum quod est, sicut hoc nomen homo exprimit sua significatione essentiam
hominis secundum quod est, significat enim eius definitionem, declarantem eius
essentiam; ratio enim quam significat nomen, est definitio].”
3

42

Domenic D’Ettore

Names are said either negatively or affirmatively, and if affirmatively, then
either absolutely or relatively, and if absolutely, then either metaphorically
or properly. A name signifies the divine substance or essence itself (albeit
very imperfectly) only if it is being said of God properly. Names of pure
perfections, such as “being,” “wise,” and “good,” can be said of God properly
(see Figure 1).5 Article 4 addresses the divine simplicity by affirming that
the human intellect employs different rationes when predicating different
names of God properly, even though there are not different perfections in
God answering to the different rationes.6
		See ST I, q. 13, a. 2, resp.: “I answer that it must be said that concerning names
which are said about God negatively or which signify His relation to a creature,
it is clear that they do not signify His substance in any way. Rather [they signify]
a removal of something from Him, or [they signify] His relation to another, or
rather [a relation] of something to Him. But concerning names which are said
about God absolutely and affirmatively, such as ‘good,’ ‘wise,’ and the like, . . . it
must be said that indeed names of this kind signify the divine substance, and they
are predicated about God substantially, but they fall short from a representation of
Him [Respondeo dicendum quod de nominibus quae de Deo dicuntur negative,
vel quae relationem ipsius ad creaturam significant, manifestum est quod substantiam eius nullo modo significant; sed remotionem alicuius ab ipso, vel relationem
eius ad alium, vel potius alicuius ad ipsum. Sed de nominibus quae absolute et affirmative de Deo dicuntur, sicut bonus, sapiens, et huiusmodi . . . dicendum est, quod
huiusmodi quidem nomina significant substantiam divinam, et praedicantur de
Deo substantialiter, sed deficiunt a repraesentatione ipsius].” See also ST I, q. 13, a.
3, ad 1: “To the first therefore it must be said that certain names signify perfections
of this kind proceeding from God into created things. In this way, that very imperfect way by which the divine perfection is participated by a creature is included
in the very thing signified by the name, just as ‘stone’ signifies something existing
materially. And names of this kind can only be attributed to God metaphorically.
Certain names, however, signify the very perfections absolutely, without any
mode of participating being included in their signification, such as ‘being,’ ‘good,’
‘living,’ and the like, and such names are said about God properly [Ad primum
ergo dicendum quod quaedam nomina significant huiusmodi perfectiones a Deo
procedentes in res creatas, hoc modo quod ipse modus imperfectus quo a creatura
participatur divina perfectio, in ipso nominis significato includitur, sicut lapis
significat aliquid materialiter ens, et huiusmodi nomina non possunt attribui Deo
nisi metaphorice. Quaedam vero nomina significant ipsas perfectiones absolute,
absque hoc quod aliquis modus participandi claudatur in eorum significatione, ut
ens, bonum, vivens, et huiusmodi, et talia proprie dicuntur de Deo].”
6
		See ST I, q. 13, a. 4, resp.: “Therefore, just as one simple principle answers to
diverse perfections of creatures [and is] represented by diverse perfections of creatures variously and multiply; so too, one altogether simple thing answers to various
and multiple conceptions of our intellect insofar as conceptions of this kind are
understood imperfectly. And, therefore, names attributed to God are not synonymous, even though they signify one thing, because they signify it under multiple
5

Una ratio versus Diversae rationes

43

Figure 1: Ways names are said of God in Summa theologiae I, q. 13, a.
1–6

affirmatively
Names said
of God

negatively
(e.g., “living” signifying “not inanimate”)

relatively
(e.g., “good” signifying
“cause of goodness in
creatures”)
absolutely

properly
(e.g., “being,” “wise,”
“good,” “true”)
metaphorically
(e.g., “stone,” “lion”)

Article 5 continues the previous article’s interest in the role of the
mediating conception or ratio in names said of God. Thomas rejects the
possibility of a name being said of God and creatures univocally on the
grounds that the same name cannot be said of God and creatures through
the same ratio. As Thomas argues in the first sed contra of article 5, when a
name is predicated of many things, it is predicated of them either through
the same ratio or through diverse rationes. A ratio that does include a
particular genus cannot be identical to a ratio that does not include that
same genus. Names of pure perfections are said about creatures through
rationes that include a particular genus. For example, “wisdom” said of a
human signifies a perfection in the category of quality. But wisdom is not a
quality in God (since God is simple, and therefore outside of every genus).
Hence, the ratio of a name must be altered for the name to be predicated of
God and a name is said of God properly through a ratio different from the
ratio through which the same name is said of a creature properly.7 Thomas
and diverse rationes [Sicut igitur diversis perfectionibus creaturarum respondet
unum simplex principium, repraesentatum per diversas perfectiones creaturarum
varie et multipliciter; ita variis et multiplicibus conceptibus intellectus nostri
respondet unum omnino simplex, secundum huiusmodi conceptiones imperfecte
intellectum. Et ideo nomina Deo attributa, licet significent unam rem, tamen, quia
significant eam sub rationibus multis et diversis, non sunt synonyma].”
7
		See ST I, q. 13, a. 5, sc 1: “On the contrary, whatever is predicated about some
things according to the same name and not according to the same ratio is predicated about them equivocally. But no name belongs to God according to the
ratio according to which it is said about a creature. For wisdom in creatures is a

44

Domenic D’Ettore

repeats the point in the respondeo, and he emphasizes that, although the
names of pure perfections signify complexity in creatures, they do not
signify complexity when said about the divine essence.8
Analogy first comes up in article 5 as the alternative between pure
equivocation and univocity. An alternative is necessary because, if names
were said only purely equivocally about God and creatures, then the fallacy
of equivocation would occur in all attempts to learn about God from
creatures,9 while as noted above, naming God and creatures univocally is
incompatible with divine simplicity. Thomas writes that analogy in names
occurs in two ways. In the first way, called analogy of “many to one,” the
same name is said of two things that stand in different relations to a third
quality, but not in God; a variation in genus, however, changes the ratio, since it
is part of the definition. And the same reasoning applies to other cases. Therefore,
whatever is said about God and creatures is said equivocally [Sed contra, quidquid
praedicatur de aliquibus secundum idem nomen et non secundum eandem rationem, praedicatur de eis aequivoce. Sed nullum nomen convenit Deo secundum
illam rationem, secundum quam dicitur de creatura, nam sapientia in creaturis est
qualitas, non autem in Deo; genus autem variatum mutat rationem, cum sit pars
definitionis. Et eadem ratio est in aliis. Quidquid ergo de Deo et creaturis dicitur,
aequivoce dicitur].”
8
		See ST I, q. 13, a. 5, resp.: “In the same way, as was said above, all the perfections
of things, which in created things exist dividedly and multiplely, preexist in God
unitedly. So therefore, when any name pertaining to a perfection is said about a
creature, it signifies that perfection as distinct from others according to the ratio
of the definition. For example, when the name ‘wise’ is said about a human, we
signify a perfection distinct from: the essence of a human; from the power; from
its existence; and from all things of this kind. But when we say this name about
God, we do not intend to signify something distinct from His essence, power, or
existence [Eodem modo, ut supra dictum est, omnes rerum perfectiones, quae
sunt in rebus creatis divisim et multipliciter, in Deo praeexistunt unite. Sic igitur,
cum aliquod nomen ad perfectionem pertinens de creatura dicitur, significat illam
perfectionem ut distinctam secundum rationem definitionis ab aliis, puta cum hoc
nomen sapiens de homine dicitur, significamus aliquam perfectionem distinctam
ab essentia hominis, et a potentia et ab esse ipsius, et ab omnibus huiusmodi. Sed
cum hoc nomen de Deo dicimus, non intendimus significare aliquid distinctum ab
essentia vel potentia vel esse ipsius].”
9
		See ST I, q. 13, a. 5, resp.: “Consequently, no name is predicated univocally about
God and creatures. But neither also [are they all predicated] purely equivocally, as
some have said. Because, by this [position], nothing could be known or demonstrated about God from creatures. Rather, one would always fail by the fallacy of
equivocation [Unde nullum nomen univoce de Deo et creaturis praedicatur. Sed
nec etiam pure aequivoce, ut aliqui dixerunt. Quia secundum hoc, ex creaturis
nihil posset cognosci de Deo, nec demonstrari; sed semper incideret fallacia
aequivocationis].”

Una ratio versus Diversae rationes

45

thing, such as when “healthy” is said of both urine and medicine, which
relate differently to the health of an animal. In the second way, called analogy of “one to another,” the name is said of two things where one receives
the name due to the relation it has to the other, such as when “healthy” is
said of medicine and the animal made healthy by the medicine.10 Having
divided the ways names are said by analogy in two, Thomas insists that
some things (aliqua) are said of God and creatures in the second way (i.e.,
analogy of one to another).11
Figure 2: Ways a single name is said of many things in ST I, q. 13, a. 5

through one
ratio
(univocity)
Name said
of many

related rationes
(analogy)

through diverse
rationes
(equivocity)
unrelated rationes
(pure equivocity)

Two rationes of a name
relate diversely to
one other ratio of the
same name.
(many to one; e.g., urine
and medicine to the
health of an animal)
One ratio of a name
relates to one other
ratio of the same name.
(analogy of one to
another; e.g., medicine
to the health of an
animal)

		See ST I, q. 13, a. 5, resp.: “Therefore, it must be said that names of this kind are
said about God and creatures by analogy, that is proportion. Indeed there are two
ways [analogy] occurs in names: either because many have proportion to one,
as ‘healthy’ is said about medicine and urine inasmuch as both have order and
proportion to the health of an animal, of which the former is the sign, but the
latter is the cause; or because one has proportion to the other, as ‘healthy’ is said
about medicine and an animal inasmuch as medicine is the cause of the health
which is in the animal. And some things are said about God and creatures analogously in this way, and not purely equivocally, nor univocally [Dicendum est igitur
quod huiusmodi nomina dicuntur de Deo et creaturis secundum analogiam, idest
proportionem. Quod quidem dupliciter contingit in nominibus, vel quia multa
habent proportionem ad unum, sicut sanum dicitur de medicina et urina, inquantum utrumque habet ordinem et proportionem ad sanitatem animalis, cuius hoc
quidem signum est, illud vero causa; vel ex eo quod unum habet proportionem
ad alterum, sicut sanum dicitur de medicina et animali, inquantum medicina est
causa sanitatis quae est in animali. Et hoc modo aliqua dicuntur de Deo et creaturis
analogice, et non aequivoce pure, neque univoce].”
11
		See ST I, q. 13, a. 5.
10

46

Domenic D’Ettore

Thomas gives no reason in ST I, q. 13, a. 5, for analogy of many to one
being unsuited for predicating pure perfections about God and creatures.
This marks a departure in practice, if not in doctrine, from the parallel
passage written a few years earlier in chapter 34 of Summa contra gentiles
[SCG] I.12 Thomas there observes that, if names were said of God and
creatures by analogy of many to one, then “it would be necessary to assert
something prior to God.”13 This reason refers the reader back to Thomas’s
rejection of univocity for naming God and creatures in chapter 32: “What
is predicated of many univocally is simpler than each of those things, at
least according to understanding. But something cannot be simpler than
God either according to thing or according to understanding. Therefore,
nothing is predicated univocally about God and other things.”14 A variation of the line that nothing is “simpler than God [either] according
to thing, or according to understanding” appears in ST I, q. 3, a. 5, sc
(where the question concerns the divine simplicity). Substituting the word
“prior” for the word “simpler,” Thomas writes: “A genus is prior according
to understanding to that which is contained in it. But nothing is prior to
God, neither according to thing, nor according to understanding. Therefore, God is not in any genus.”15 In the respondeo of ST I, q. 3, a. 5, Thomas
argues that God has not genus, difference, or definition.16 From these
passages, one can conclude that the problem that Thomas has both with
univocity and with analogy of many to one for the divine names is that
they presume complexity (at least definitional complexity) in the things
signified by the name. Since God has no such complexity and no definition

		On the similarity of St. Thomas’s doctrine in Summa contra gentiles [SCG] I, ch.
34, to what he writes in other mature works such as De potentia, q. 7, a. 7, and ST
I, q. 13, a. 5, see Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 82–83.
13
		SCG I, ch. 34: “Therefore, names of this kind are not said about God and other
things analogously by the first mode—for it would be necessary to assert something prior to God—but in the second mode [Huiusmodi igitur nomina de Deo
et rebus aliis non dicuntur analogice secundum primum modum, oporteret enim
aliquid Deo ponere prius: sed modo secundo]” (Leonine ed., 13:103a–b; translation mine).
14
		See SCG I, ch. 32: “Quod univoce de pluribus praedicatur, utroque illorum ad
minus secundum intellectum simplicius est. Deo autem neque secundum rem
neque secundum intellectum potest esse aliquid simplicius. Nihil igitur univoce
de Deo et rebus aliis praedicatur” (Leonine ed., 13:97b; translation mine).
15
		ST I, q. 13, a. 5, sc: “Sed contra, genus est prius, secundum intellectum, eo quod
in genere continetur. Sed nihil est prius Deo, nec secundum rem, nec secundum
intellectum. Ergo Deus non est in aliquo genere.”
16
		ST I, q. 3, a. 5, resp.
12

Una ratio versus Diversae rationes

47

knowable to us,17 names cannot be said univocally or by analogy of many
to one about God and creatures.
Proceeding to article 6, Thomas adds that names must be said per prius
of God when they are said of God properly. The article’s respondeo begins
with a general rule: “In all names which are said about many analogously, it
is necessary that all are said by relation to one; and therefore, it is necessary
that that one is asserted in the definition of all.”18 Thomas connects being
named per prius to being the “one” in the definition of the other or others:
And because the ratio which the name signifies is the definition, . . . it is
necessary that that name is said per prius about that which is asserted in
the definition of the others, and per posterius about the others according
to the order by which they approach to that first, either more or less:
as “healthy” which is said about an animal falls in the definition of
“healthy” which is said about medicine, which is called “healthy” inasmuch as it causes health in an animal; and in the definition of “healthy”
which is said about urine, which is called “healthy” inasmuch as it is the
sign of the health of an animal.19
The final portion of the respondeo in article 6 adds a distinction between
the order of the imposition of a name and the order of thing signified by
a name. Speaking about names said properly about God, Thomas writes:
For when it is said “God is good, or wise,” it not only is signified
that He is the cause of wisdom, or goodness, but that these preexist
in him eminently. Hence, according to this, it must be said that, as
far as the thing signified through the name, they are said per prius
about God as compared to creatures, because perfections of this
		Besides his remarks in ST I, q. 13, a. 5, see the same point made in other words
when Thomas argues that God’s existence is not self-evident to us on the grounds
“quia nos non scimus de Deo quid est” (ST I, q. 2, a. 1).
18
		ST I, q. 13, a. 6, resp.: “Respondeo dicendum quod in omnibus nominibus quae
de pluribus analogice dicuntur, necesse est quod omnia dicantur per respectum
unum: et ideo illud unum oportet quod ponatur in definitione omnium” (emphasis
added).
19
		ST I, q. 13, a. 6, resp.: “Et quia ratio quam significat nomen, est definitio, ut dicitur in IV Metaphys., necesse est quod illud nomen per prius dicatur de eo quod
ponitur in definitione aliorum, et per posterius de aliis, secundum ordinem quo
appropinquant ad illud primum vel magis vel minus, sicut sanum quod dicitur
de animali, cadit in definitione sani quod dicitur de medicina, quae dicitur sana
inquantum causat sanitatem in animali; et in definitione sani quod dicitur de
urina, quae dicitur sana inquantum est signum sanitatis animalis.”
17

48

Domenic D’Ettore

kind remain in creatures from God. But as regards the imposition
of the name, per prius they are imposed by us to creatures, which we
know first.20
At this point, the reader finds that St. Thomas has given a sic et non
answer to the article’s question. Yes, the names are said of God per prius,
but only insofar as God is first in the order of thing signified by the name.
God is prior to creatures in this order because the perfection signified by
the name must preexist eminently in God. The name is quite specifically
not said first of God in the order of imposition. That is, when signification
is first attached to a name (or, more precisely at this stage, to a vox) such as
“being,” “wise,” or “good,” the signification relates the name to the perfection in a creature.21
From the above summary, I conclude that ST I, q. 13, aa. 1–6, requires
of any adequate position on “Una ratio versus diversae rationes” that it be
consistent with at least the following criteria. (1) One is in the definition
of all analogates (article 6). (2) Pure perfections can be properly predicated
about both God and creatures, and not merely negatively, relatively, or
metaphorically (as per articles 2–4). (3) Names are said analogously of
God and creatures by the analogy of one to another, rather than by that of
many to one (article 5); Finally, (4) the fallacy of equivocation is avoided in
reasoning from creatures to God (article 5).
Una ratio versus Diversae rationes
With these four criteria in mind, I return now to the three positions laid
out at the beginning of the article on the number of rationes or mediating
conceptions through which the name of a pure perfection is said about
		ST I, q. 13, a. 6, resp.: “Cum enim dicitur Deus est bonus, vel sapiens, non solum
significatur quod ipse sit causa sapientiae vel bonitatis, sed quod haec in eo
eminentius praeexistunt. Unde, secundum hoc, dicendum est quod, quantum ad
rem significatam per nomen, per prius dicuntur de Deo quam de creaturis, quia a
Deo huiusmodi perfectiones in creaturas manant. Sed quantum ad impositionem
nominis, per prius a nobis imponuntur creaturis, quas prius cognoscimus.”
21
		 On the relation between imposition and signification, see Ria van der Lecq, “Logic
and Theories of Meaning in the Late 13th and Early 14th Century,” Handbook of
the History of Logic 2 (2008): esp. 347–48: “The basic function of language is to
signify things, and imposition is the way words acquire their meanings. This is
supposed to work as follows: a first impositor investigates things and their properties and then decides which sound (vox) should be used to signify the object.
When this sound has been imposed to signify some thing, it becomes a sign and it
has acquired signification.”
20

Una ratio versus Diversae rationes

49

God and creatures by analogy. Option A: Thomas abandons una ratio for
diversae rationes. Option B: the una ratio is one of the diversae rationes.
Option C: the una ratio is separate from the diversae rationes.
It seems to me that option A is incompatible with criterion 1: “In all
names which are said about many analogously . . . it is necessary that that
one is asserted in the definition of all.” Insofar as this “one” is “asserted in
the definition of all” the analogates, it functions as either the whole or an
identifiable (and thereby intellectually separable) part of the definition of
the name.22 As the whole or as a separable part of a definition, the “one . .
. in the definition of all” is a mediating concept, a ratio. With this rule in
mind, it is clear that there being diverse rationes for a name said of many
by analogy does not prevent there also being one ratio for a name said of
many by analogy. On the contrary, it is necessary that there be una ratio in
some way contained in all the diversae rationes. At least insofar as option
A proposes that Aquinas simply replaces una ratio with diversae rationes by
the time he composes ST, option A fails to satisfy criterion 1, and is thereby
inconsistent with and unsupported by the text.
Options B and C face the challenge of consistently meeting both
criteria 1 and 2. They must be able to explain how it is that a name such
as “wise” can be said properly about God and creatures (as required by
criterion 2) and analogously about God and creatures, which (according to
criterion 1) entails that “one is . . . in the definition of all.” This is a challenge because, as presented by Thomas, when a name is properly predicated
of one thing, then it is not said of that thing by reference to another. And
yet, it is reference to another that occasions the presence of one ratio in the
definition of all. The difficulty of reconciling criteria 1 and 2 is attested
by the historical practice of the Thomists who propose either option B or
option C. A standard move among these Thomists is to deny that criterion
1 applies to names said of God and creatures. They do this by appealing
to remarks Thomas makes either in De veritate, q. 2, a. 11, ad 6, or in In I
sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1.23
		According to Klubertanz, “to be in the definition of something” either means “to
be one of the constitutive intelligibilities of an essence” or means “to be part of the
complete intelligibility of the creature as creature, or again, of God as Creator”
(St. Thomas on Analogy, 34). Recalling that “intelligibility” is Klubertanz’s translation of ratio, I think that the account I have given of what it means for one to
be “asserted in the definition of all” is consistent with Klubertanz’s. Klubertanz
himself does not acknowledge any obstacle between what I am calling criterion 1
and his developmental solution to the problem of “una ratio versus diversae rationes.”
23
		See the table below for a presentation of the different ways in which Renaissance
22

50

Domenic D’Ettore

Thomas demonstrates that it is reference to another that distinguishes
naming negatively, relatively, and metaphorically from naming properly by
the examples he gives in ST I, q. 13 of the signification of negative, relative,
and metaphorical names. For example, he says that: if God were called
Thomists explain away criterion 1. Specifically, these authors deny that names are
said of God and creatures in the way in which “healthy” is said analogously about
an animal and medicine.
Option
Letter

Thomist

Preferred text(s) for explaining away criterion 1

B

Capreolus

Both In I sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1, and De veritate
q. 2, a. 11, ad 6

B

Dominic of
Flanders

De veritate q. 2, a. 11, ad 6

B

Cajetan

De veritate q. 2, a. 11, ad 6

C

Soncinas

In I sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1

C

Javelli

In I sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1

		For the texts of these authors, see: John Capreolus, Defensiones 1, d. 2, q. 1, a. 2,
and d. 35, q. 2, a. 2; Dominic of Flanders, In duodecim libros Metaphysicae Aristotelis, secundum expositionem eiusdem Angelici Doctoris, lucidissimae atque utilissimae
quaestiones XII, q. 9, a. 1, ad 3; Cajetan, Thomas di Vi Cajetan, Commentaria in
summam theologiae St. Thomae I, q. 13, a. 6, nos. 2–4 (Leonine ed., 4:151a); Paul
Soncinas, Pauli Soncinatis ordinis praedicatorum, Quæstiones metaphysicales acutissimæ: nunc demum summo studio, et accuratius quàm antehac vnquam castigatæ,
repurgatæ, & multis in locis illustratæ. Cum triplici earum indice, quorum primus,
quæstionum titulos promiscuè: secundus, ad hos, iuxta librorum & alphabeti seriem
simul materiam: tertius verò digna notatu circa hæc omnia, demonstrat IV, q. 4, ad 1;
Chysostom Javelli, Quaestiones, In Metaphysicam Aristotelis: Ab innumeris mendis
repurgatae & in gratiam Philosophiae studiosorum denuo editae Accessit in hac editione, Tractatus de natura Metaphysices ex Epitome Metaphysica eiusdem autoris huc
translatus, & duplex Index . . . IV, q. 1.
		For Klubertanz’s interpretation of this “rule,” see esp. St. Thomas on Analogy,
32–34. According to Klubertanz, the passages in which Thomas affirms, denies, or
affirms and denies that “one is in the definition of the other” are not contradictory.
Rather they are instances of a “confusing terminological shift.” Klubertanz sums up
his own conclusion on the matter by stating: “It is true that its relationship to God
is part of the complete intelligibility of a creature as creature; and also true that we
human knowers know God naturally inasmuch as He is the cause of creatures, and
so the relationship to the creature is part of the intelligibility of God for us” (34).
Inasmuch as Klubertanz’s resolution of the (at least) apparent conflict between
Thomas Aquinas’s texts relies on considering creatures and/or God relationally,
rather than properly, Klubertanz’s resolution resembles the solution proposed by
Francis Silvester of Ferrara (to be discussed further below).

Una ratio versus Diversae rationes

51

“living” negatively, then the name “living” would signify “that God in this
way is not like non-living things”;24 if God is called “good” by the relation
of causality, then the name “good” would signify “cause of goodness in
things”;25 and if God were called “lion” metaphorically, then the name
“lion” would signify, “God relates similarly as He works strongly upon His
works, as a lion upon its.”26 In each of these cases, one thing receives a name
properly and at least one other receives the name by reference to another,
and the ratio of the name as said properly of one appears in the ratio of the
name as said of the other. So, when the name “wise” is said properly about
a creature, there is not some other ratio of the name contained within the
definition of the name that is distinct from the proper ratio of the name
as said of the creature, and the same is true when the names are said of
God properly. But if one ratio does not appear in the definition of all the
recipients of the common name, then the name is not being said about
them by analogy.
I draw inspiration from an unusual proponent of option B to consider
whether this option is able to hold together criteria 1 and 2.27 It is consistent with ST I, q. 13, to suggest that, in those cases of analogy of one to
another where the name can be said properly of both analogates, the name
can also be said relatively of both analogates. For example, a creature can
be called “wise” properly, thereby signifying an accident in the creature,
and a creature can be called “wise” relatively, thereby signifying its accident qua effect of divine wisdom. The same name “wisdom” can be said of
God properly, thereby signifying the divine essence, and said of God relatively, thereby signifying a causal relation to creatures. When the intellect
compares how it signifies one of these names about God to how it signifies
one of these names about creatures, it considers either the perfection in
God as the cause of the creature or the creature’s perfection as an effect
of God. Either way, when a name is said of one relatively to how the name
		ST I, q. 13, a. 2: “Cum dicimus Deum esse viventem, significamus quod Deus non
hoc modo est, sicut res inanimatae.”
25
		ST I, q. 13, a. 2: “Cum dicimus Deus est bonus, sit sensus, Deus est causa bonitatis
in rebus.”
26
		ST I, q. 13, a. 6: “Sic nomen leonis, dictum de Deo, nihil aliud significat quam
quod Deus similiter se habet ut fortiter operetur in suis operibus, sicut leo in suis.”
27
		The unusual proponent is Francis Silvestri of Ferrara. For a discussion of his position, see Ralph McInerny, The Logic of Analogy: An interpretation of St. Thomas
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), 23–31, 164–65. See also the comparison
of Francis Silvestri with earlier Thomists in Domenic D’Ettore, “One Is in the
Definition of All: The Renaissance Thomist Controversy over a ‘Rule’ for Names
Said by Analogy,” The Thomist, 82 (2018): 89–111.
24

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Domenic D’Ettore

is said properly of another, the ratio of the name proper to one analogate
appears in the ratio of the name as it is being said of the other. By considering how the same name can be said both relatively and properly about the
same thing, it is apparent that option B can satisfy both criteria 1 and 2.
I have not yet come across a historical proponent of option C who parts
from the practice of explaining away criterion 1. So, this tentative solution
on behalf of option C is original. One prominent proponent of option
C identifies the una ratio with the ratio of the name as first conceived.
The intellect generates more determinate and diverse proper rationes after
comparing how its first and absolute concept for a name applies in different
cases.28 By this account, the rule that “one is . . . in the definition of all”
entails that the proper rationes of names as said properly of God and their
rationes as said properly of creatures are both determinations of the ratio
of the name as first conceived absolutely. This approach does not seem to
me to be incoherent, and perhaps it even could be reconciled with ST I,
q. 13, as a whole. But the examples Thomas uses in the question strongly
suggest option B, not option C. For example, the “one health” in the ratio
of the name “healthy” said of medicine and of an animal appears to be the
health of the animal, rather than a “healthy” absolutely considered that is
indeterminate to either the health proper to an animal or to medicine. So,
even if option C is not incapable of satisfying both criteria 1 and 2, option
B can satisfy them in a way much closer to the text of ST I, q. 13.
Another consideration in favor of option B over option C is that the
former fits easily with criterion 3: names are said of God and creatures by
the analogy of one to another. If the ratio of a name as said of God falls in
the ratio of the name as said of a creature, or vice versa, then clearly the
name is said of God and creature by analogy of one to another. By contrast,
if, as required by option C, the una ratio is a separate ratio that appears in
the rationes proper to the analogates, then it becomes difficult to explain
why the name is said by analogy of one to another rather than by analogy
of many to one. For reasons mentioned above, this particular line of consideration is even stronger when Thomas’s decision against analogy of many
to one in ST I, q. 13, a. 5 is read in the light of the parallel passages in the
SCG. Since I am deliberately isolating ST I, q. 13, I will say no more on
this point.
The one consideration that I find weighing against option B in favor of
option C is criterion 4, by which an adequate interpretation of the passage
should be consistent with Thomas’s intention to use analogy in naming
as a means of avoiding the fallacy of equivocation when reasoning from
		See Javelli, In IV metaph., q. 1.

28

Una ratio versus Diversae rationes

53

perfections first known in creatures to the existence and attributes of
God. The problem for option B is that the fallacy of equivocation occurs
in at least some cases in which the ratio proper to one analogate appears in
the definition of another. Indeed, option B appears to be entirely consistent with the standard Scholastic example of the fallacy’s second species:
“Every healthy thing is an animal, and urine is healthy; therefore, urine
is an animal.”29 To follow option B without qualification in this passage
would be to find Aquinas saying that names of pure perfections are said
by the analogy of one to another about God and creatures in precisely the
way that “healthy” is said in the fallacious argument above. This could
be a philosophical problem with Thomas’s position, rather than an interpretative problem with option B. In fact, some historical proponents of
option B notice this very problem and explain it away by appealing to other
texts by Aquinas.30 Option C does not share option B’s problem of lining
up exactly with a well-known fallacy, and in part, C has been developed
historically to answer objections that demonstrations using terms analogously are fallacious.31
Conclusion
I do not propose that I have settled the overall question of which of the
three positions on “Una ratio versus diversae rationes” agrees with the mind
of St. Thomas, and I have deliberately avoided interpreting ST I, q. 13, in
light of Thomas’s other works, choosing to focus on one particular part
of the wider dispute involving the range of Thomas’s works. Within that
range of Thomas’s works, Klubertanz identified real variations in the way
that Thomas Aquinas wrote about names said of many by analogy. One of
those variations is whether a name is said by analogy through one ratio or
through diversae rationes. Klubertanz cites ST I, q. 13, a. 5, as evidence that
Thomas had abandoned una ratio for diversae rationes in his mature works.
I have argued that this text does not provide the evidence Klubertanz
claims from it. Rather, the passage requires both diversae rationes and one
ratio that is in all the diversae rationes. I have argued further that the most
internally consistent reading of the text regards the one ratio said of many
		See Peter of Spain, Peter of Spain: Summaries of Logic, ed. Brian P. Copenhaver,
Calvin Normore, and Terence Parsons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014),
277 (for the editors’ discussion of the fallacy of equivocation, see 50–52; on this
text as a standard textbook of logic, see 9–12).
30
		For example, see the first reference to Capreolus in footnote 23 above.
31
		See the references to Soncinas and Javelli in footnote 23 above. Both of these
authors are following the example of Capreolus.
29

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Domenic D’Ettore

by analogy as one of the diversae rationes proper to the analogates, although
even this interpretation is not without difficulties.
Table 1: Evaluating the Three Positions
Option A:
Option B:
Aquinas
The una ratio
changes his
is one of the
mind from una diversae rationes
ratio to diversae
proper to the
rationes.
analogates.
Criterion 1:
In all names that
are said about
many analogously, . . . one
asserted in the
definition of all.”
(a. 6)
Criterion 2:
Proper predication of pure
perfections
about God and
creatures (aa.
2–4)

Option C:
The una ratio is
separate from
the diversae
rationes proper
to the analogates.

Inconsistent

Consistent

Not as obviously consistent
as option B.

Consistent

Consistent

Not as obviously consistent
as option B.

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Una ratio versus Diversae rationes

Criterion 3:
Pure perfections
said of God
and creatures
by analogy of
one to another,
not by analogy
of many to one
(a. 5)

Consistent

Criterion 4:
Reasoning from
creatures to
God through
Problematic
an analogous
philosophically
name does not
commit the
fallacy of equivocation. (a. 5)

Consistent

Problematic
philosophically

Problematic
textually

Not as obviously problematic as options
A and B.

N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019): 57–91

57

On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas
Melissa Eitenmiller
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

Introduction

There is an ongoing debate between two predominantly analytic1 groups of
Thomists, those holding the “survivalist”2 view of the human person after
death and those maintaining the “corruptionist”3 view. Those who defend
		Although this debate appears to be particularly intense among analytic Thomists
(see those cited below), others have also weighed in on the topic, such as: SergeThomas Bonino, “L’âme séparée,” Revue thomiste 116 (2016): 71–103; Stephen
L. Brock, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (Eugene, OR: Cascade
Books, 2015), 51–82 and 109–144; Joseph G. Trabbic, “The Human Body and
Human Happiness in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae,” New Blackfriars 92, no. 1041
(September 2011): 552–64; and Gilles Emery, “The Unity of Man, Body and Soul,
in St. Thomas Aquinas,” chapter 8 in Trinity, Church, and the Human Person:
Thomistic Essays (Naples, FL: Sapientia, 2007), 209–35.
2
		Examples of the “survivalist camp” include: Lynne Rudder Baker, “Why Constitution is Not Identity,” The Journal of Philosophy 94 (1997):599–621; Eleonore
Stump, “Resurrection and the Separated Soul,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (New York: Oxford University Press,
2012), 458–66; Mark Spencer, “The Personhood of the Separated Soul,” Nova et
Vetera (English) 12, no. 3 (2014): 863–912; and Christopher M. Brown, “Souls,
Ships, and Substances: A Response to Toner,” American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 81, no. 4 (2007): 655–68.
3
		Examples of the corruptionist view are: Patrick Toner, “St. Thomas Aquinas on
Death and the Separated Soul,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (2010): 588–99;
Toner, “Thomas versus Tibbles: A Critical Study of Christopher Brown’s Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81, no.
1

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Melissa Eitenmiller

the survivalist view wish to claim that the human person does not cease
to exist at death, and although, according to Mark Spencer, the survivalist camp does not identify the human person with the separated soul, it
nevertheless “contends that, in the separated state, a person is constituted
by a soul, while remaining an individual rational animal and individual
substance of a rational nature.”4
The corruptionist view, on the other hand, will be represented in the
present article by Patrick Toner5 in his “St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and
the Separated Soul,” in which he argues that St. Thomas held that “human
beings cease to exist at their deaths,”6 at least until the resurrection of the
body. Toner presents this in the following manner: (1) “human beings” are
composites of body and soul (therefore, as he quotes Aquinas, “my soul is
not me” 7); (2) death is a substantial corruption of the composite; and (3)
4 (2007): 638–53; Christina Van Dyke, “Not Properly a Person: The Rational
Soul and ‘Thomistic Substance Dualism,’” Faith and Philosophy, 26, no. 2 (2009):
186–204; Herbert McCabe, On Aquinas (London: Continuum, 2008), 65, 123;
B. Carlos Bazán, “The Human Soul: Form and Substance? Thomas Aquinas’s
Critique of Eclectic Aristotelianism,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire
du Moyen Âge 64(1997): 95–126; Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (London:
Routledge, 1993), 138–39; Brian Davies, Aquinas (London: Continuum, 2002),
109–14; and Turner C. Nevitt, “Aquinas on the Death of Christ: A New Argument for Corruptionism,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90, no. 1
(2016): 77–99.
4
		Spencer, “The Personhood of the Separated Soul,” 869.
5
		 I chose Toner not because his version is the most extreme of the corruptionist view,
but because he clearly lays out the corruptionist argument in “St. Thomas Aquinas
on Death and the Separated Soul.”
6
		Toner, “St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and the Separated Soul,” 587.
7
		Toner, “St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and the Separated Soul,” 588, quoting
from Aquinas’s Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where Aquinas
comments on 1 Cor 15:12–19 (particularly vv. 17–19), in which St. Paul exclaims:
“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only
we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.” Since the passage
is obviously emphasizing the resurrection of the body, St. Thomas comments:
“Therefore, if the dead do not rise, we will be confident only in this life. In another
way, because it is clear that man naturally desires his own salvation; but the soul,
since it is part of man’s body, is not an entire man, and my soul is not I; hence,
although the soul obtains salvation in another life, nevertheless, not I or any man.
Furthermore, since man naturally desires salvation even of the body, a natural
desire would be frustrated” (dhspriory.org/thomas/SS1Cor.htm). Brian Davies
explains the above quotation of Aquinas thus: “Aquinas thinks that I can be there
as myself after my death. How? Because God can raise my body from the grave. But
if there is only my soul, . . . [Aquinas] argues, then I do not exist” (Aquinas, 110).

On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas

59

“hence, humans stop existing at their deaths.”8
In this article, I would like to propose that Aquinas’s view is more
nuanced than either side appears ready to acknowledge.9 It seems to me
important to emphasize that, although death truly involves a separation
of body and soul (thus constituting a corruption of the human person as
such), nevertheless, the soul remains the “essential part” of the person and
maintains a certain identity with that person as a subject of attribution10
		Toner, “St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and the Separated Soul,” 594.
		Although I have chosen in the present article to focus on the corruptionist view,
one should also note the serious metaphysical difficulty involved in the survivalist
position, in which a substance (i.e., the human person) once composed of body
and soul (matter and form), is said to be after death “constituted by” only its form,
though not identical with (see Rudder Baker’s and Stump’s respective articles
above), although at the resurrection, it will again be composed. This raises the
question of the type of relationship that exists between body and soul before and
after the interim state, with the danger of a kind of Cartesian dualism, due to an
apparently merely accidental union of body and soul, such that, at least during the
interim state, the soul “constitutes” the person, as the thinking subject. For example, Spencer states, “on my revision of Thomistic principles, the human person can
be said to be ‘essentially’ material in the sense that this is its natural state and is
necessary for the human person’s ordinary and perfected life, but not in the sense
that actually having matter is necessary to be a human person” (“The Personhood of
the Separated Soul,” 908; emphasis added). However, Spencer believes that: “The
survivalist view does not turn Thomistic hylomorphism into substance dualism.
There is only one substance and one nature for each human person. . . . In the state
of separation, the one substance is constituted just by the soul. The human person is
incomplete without matter, since matter is needed for the complete explication of
its nature; matter is substantially, not accidentally, united to the soul” (906; emphasis
added).
		 Nevertheless, the survivalist view raises at least two questions: First, since Aquinas
appears to agree that “in mere men, a person is constituted by the union of the
soul to the body” (Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 2, a. 5, ad 1: in puris hominibus
ex unione animae ad corpus constituitur persona; translation mine), would he also
agree that, in the interim state, one can rightly say that the person is constituted
by only the soul, especially since he states that “the form does not constitute the
species, except inasmuch as it becomes the act of matter” (ST III, q. 2, a. 5, resp.;
my translation)? Secondly, is it metaphysically possible to hold both that matter is
substantially united to the soul and that, in the interim state, the soul constitutes
the same substance, which is the human person, without being united to matter? It
would appear that the latter question could be resolved only by simply admitting
an accidental union of body and soul (i.e., Cartesian dualism), reducing the human
person to a mere res cogitans.
10
		By “subject of attribution,” I mean that the separated soul remains a hoc aliquid in
the first sense of being subsistent, and as such, remains the first principle of its own
act of being and of its own operations.
8
9

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Melissa Eitenmiller

already capable of enjoying the absolute bliss of the Beatific Vision (or the
suffering of temporal or eternal punishment in purgatory or hell, respectively), even before the general resurrection.11 Consequently, it would be
wrong, and even spiritually dangerous, to ignore the importance of the
intermediate state. It is not at all clear to me that Toner means to do this,
but in emphasizing the destruction of the human person at death, he and
other corruptionists do appear to leave themselves open to that sort of
interpretation.
In fact, Serge-Thomas Bonino, who calls these two camps12 the “minimalists” (i.e., corruptionists) and the “maximalists” (i.e., survivalists),
points out that:
According to the minimalists, the refusal to attribute personhood
to the separated soul not only means that St. Thomas calls into
question the identity between the current “me” and the separated
soul, but also implies a minimal conception of the activity of the
		See Pope Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus, Constitution On the Beatific Vision of
God (1336), which proclaims that the souls of the just, “already before they take up
their bodies again and before the general judgment, have been, are and will be with
Christ in heaven . . . [and] have seen and see the divine essence with an intuitive
vision and even face to face . . . and in this vision . . . enjoy the divine essence,” and
he continues with regard to the damned: “We define that . . . the souls of those
who die in actual mortal sin go down into hell immediately after death and there
suffer the pain of hell” (Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum [DH], ed.
Peter Hünermann, 43rd ed., English ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash
[San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012], no. 1000). The text also explains that those
in need of purification will be “purified after death.”
12
		A third option, which proposes to mediate between the preceding two views, has
recently been proposed by Jeffrey Brower in Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material
World: Change, Hylomorphism, & Material Objects (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014): “Insofar as Socrates . . . retains his human soul as a proper part or
constituent after death, he will also retain a natural disposition to be human.
Evidently, therefore, Socrates can be said to survive his death as a human person
(in my broad sense) [i.e., insofar as he retains the aforesaid disposition]” (295–96).
Therefore, continues Brower, “all human beings survive their death along with
their souls as human persons (in my broad sense), despite ceasing thereafter to
be human beings, precisely because their souls cease to be united to their matter,
and hence the substances to which they are identical cease to belong to the kind
animal” (297). Consequently, Brower advocates a “non-human survivalism.” In
other words, he says, “we can also describe non-human survivalism as the view
according to which all human beings survive their death as human persons but
not as human beings” (300). However, as will be seen below, I would advocate the
opposite view: the soul continues to be essentially human in its nature even after
death, although it would be metaphysically incorrect to call it a person as such.
11

On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas

61

separated soul, reduced to a comatose state of prolonged vigil. The
separated soul would have . . . an existence similar to that . . . which
the Ancients would concede to the shadows which haunt Sheol.13
As an example of this, Bonino cites B. Carlos Bazán, who declares, “a soul
without its ontological correlate [i.e., matter] cannot operate, and consequently does not live.”14 This statement will be shown to be false when we
speak of the operations of the separated soul. First, however, I would like
to review each of Toner’s three points mentioned above.
The Composite Human Person
With regard to Toner’s first point, it is certainly true that, according to St.
Thomas Aquinas, the human person, “an individual substance of a rational
nature,”15 is a composite of both body and soul, together with a human esse.
Gilles Emery explains that “since the person is an individual substance, it is
a reality that possesses its proper being in a complete manner, in itself and
through itself, and which exercises on its own the act of existing. . . . [Therefore,] what accounts for my uniqueness is not only my concrete individual
essence (my own humanity), but my proper act of existing in the human
nature common to all human beings.”16
In other words, other than in the case of Christ, the union of body and
a rational soul necessarily implies the act of existence proper to a human
person (since the act of being comes to the composite through the soul).
Therefore, Aquinas explains in the Summa theologiae [ST], “the body is
not of the essence of the soul; but the soul by the nature of its essence can
be united to the body, so that, properly speaking, not the soul alone, but
the ‘composite,’ is the species.”17 He also notes in the Summa contra gentiles
		 Bonino, “L’âme séparée,” 75 : “Selon les minimalists, le refus d’attribuer le statut de
personne à l’âme séparée non seulement signifie que saint Thomas remet en cause
l’identité entre le ‘moi’ actuel et l’âme séparée, mais implique aussi une conception minimale de l’activité de l’âme séparée, réduite à un état comateux de veille
prolongée. L’âme séparée aurait, . . . une existence assez semblable à celle, . . . que
les Anciens concédaient aux ombres qui hantent le shéol” (emphasis added ; all
translations of Bonino are my own).
14
		 Bazán, “The Human Soul,” 125. Another example is Davies, who states that, “when
it comes to our life after death, Aquinas does not believe in the immortality of the
soul” (Aquinas, 114; emphasis added), although Davies does admit that Aquinas
thinks the soul is incorruptible.
15
		Aquinas cites this Boethian definition of person in ST I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 1.
16
		Gilles Emery, O.P., “The Dignity of Being a Substance: Person, Subsistence, and
Nature,” Nova et Vetera (English) 9, no. 4 (2011): 991–1001, at 995.
17
		ST I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 3. Unless otherwise noted, quotations from ST are taken from
13

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Melissa Eitenmiller

[SCG] that “body and soul are not two actually existing substances, but
one actually existing substance is made from them.”18 Additionally, in
asking the question of “whether the soul is man,” Aquinas affirms that
“man is not a soul only, but something composed of soul and body.”19
But what sort of composite are we speaking of here? In what manner
does it come about? St. Thomas explains that the human soul is the form of
the body—“For that whereby primarily anything acts is a form of the thing
to which the act is to be attributed”20—and that by which the body lives is
the soul. The soul, in fact, is the principle of all bodily operations. Aquinas
clarifies: “For the soul is the primary principle of our nourishment, sensation, and local movement; and likewise of our understanding. Therefore
this principle by which we primarily understand, whether it be called the
intellect or the intellectual soul, is the form of the body.”21
Consequently, it is the soul that gives being to the composite. In De
principiis naturae, Aquinas points out that there are two kinds of esse,
essential/substantial (as in “man exists”) and accidental (“man is white”).22
What is in potency to each is a kind of matter (prime matter in the case
of substantial being, and the subject in the case of accidental being.) The
substantial form gives esse to prime matter (which has an incomplete
being),23 whereas the subject (which has complete being in itself) gives
being to the accidental form, rather than vice versa. Therefore, there are
two kinds of generation (with two corresponding kinds of corruption):
(1) generation and corruption simpliciter, which “are only in the genus
of substance,” and (2) generation and corruption secundum quid, which
“are in all the other genera.”24 Since death involves the separation of the
the translation of the Dominican Fathers of the English Province (New York:
Benziger, 1947) as presented in the NovAntiqua Latin–English edition (Ypsilanti,
MI: NovAntiqua, 2009–).
18
		Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles [SCG] II, ch. 69, n. 2. Unless otherwise noted, all
quotations from SCG are taken from translation of the Dominican Fathers of the
English Province (London: Aeterna, 2014).
19
		ST I q. 75, a. 4, resp.
20
		ST I, q. 76, a.1, resp.
21
		ST I, q. 76, a.1, resp.
22
		St. Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae, no. 1: “Sed duplex est esse: scilicet
esse essentiale rei, sive substantiale ut hominem esse, et hoc est esse simpliciter.
Est autem aliud esse accidentale, ut hominem esse album, et hoc est esse aliquid”
(trans. R. A. Kocourek, dhspriory.org/thomas/DePrincNaturae.htm; all further
quotation will be from this source).
23
		Aquinas, De principiis naturae, no. 4: “Hence, simply speaking, the form gives
existence to matter [forma dat esse materiae].”
24
Aquinas, De principiis naturae, no. 7.

On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas

63

substantial form (i.e., the soul) from matter, the composite is corrupted
simpliciter. Nevertheless, in the case of the human person, the soul (which
has being of itself) is not corrupted, although it lacks the completeness due
to its nature (which is to be the form of a body).25
Death as a Substantial Corruption of the Composite
From what has been said, therefore, we can see that Toner’s second
point, that death is a substantial corruption of the composite, is undoubtedly true. So then, how can we say that the soul remains once it has separated from the body, and in what state does it remain? Is it something like
Joe’s old hat, which is laid aside in the corner until it is time to put it on
again?
At this point, I would like to look, step by step, at Aquinas’s explanations of the incorporeality, subsistence, incorruptibility, immortality, and
(even when separated) individuality of the human soul. With regard to the
incorporeality of the soul, St. Thomas points out:
It is indeed clear that by means of the intellect man can know the
natures of all corporeal things. However, it is necessary that whatever can know some things must not have any of them in its own
nature; because that which inheres in it naturally would impede the
knowledge of other things. . . . Therefore, if the intellectual principle
were to have in itself the nature of some body, it would be unable
to know all bodies. Moreover, every body has some determinate
nature. Therefore, it is impossible for the intellectual principle to
be a body.26
		See ST I, q. 76, a. 1. In the Supplement, it is stated, “For the soul, even after separation from the body, retains the being which accrues to it when in the body, and
the body is made to share that being by the resurrection, since the being of the body
and the being of the soul in the body are not distinct from one another, otherwise
the union of soul and body would be accidental. Consequently there has been no
interruption in the substantial being of man, as would make it impossible for the
self-same man to return on account of an interruption in his being, as is the case
with other things that are corrupted, the being of which is interrupted altogether,
since their form remains not, and their matter remains under another being” (ST
Suppl., q. 79, a. 2, ad 1; emphasis added).
26
		ST I, q. 75, a. 2, resp.: “Manifestum est enim quod homo per intellectum cognoscere potest naturas omnium corporum. Quod autem potest cognoscere aliqua,
oportet ut nihil eorum habeat in sua natura, quia illud quod inesset ei naturaliter
impediret cognitionem aliorum; . . . Si igitur principium intellectuale haberet in
se naturam alicuius corporis, non posset omnia corpora cognoscere. Omne autem
corpus habet aliquam naturam determinatam. Impossibile est igitur quod princip25

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In other words, the intellect is open to understanding many different
kinds of corporeal objects and is not determined to one. It would not be
able to transcend corporeal things, however, if it were itself corporeal.27
Likewise, says Aquinas, it is “impossible for [the soul] to understand
by means of a bodily organ; since the determinate nature of that organ
would impede knowledge of all bodies,”28 just as looking through colored
glass determines the color of everything one sees. Consequently, the soul
must be incorporeal, and because it is incorporeal and is an intellectual
principle, the soul “has an operation through itself, in which the body does
not communicate,” but “nothing . . . can operate through itself, except that
which subsists through itself.”29
An important aspect to this argument of subsistence through itself is
explained by St. Thomas: “For nothing operates, except it be a being in act,
thus, something operates, according to the mode by which it is.”30 In this,
ium intellectuale sit corpus” (translation mine).
		It is important to note with Emery that there are two senses of corporeity. The first
sense is that of “an accidental determination such as quantity” (“The Unity of
Man,” 225), which is the sense Aquinas is denying here when he argues that the
soul is not corporeal. However, Emery continues: “On a deeper level, corporeity
can also be considered in terms of substantial determination of this corporeal
being, that is, man: Here then, corporeity is that which makes the body to be a
body, that which makes man corporeal. In this case, corporeity must be the body’s
substantial form, that is, the principle of actuality of the body, from which derive
the dimensions of extension” (225). Based on this explanation, therefore, Emery
stresses: “It is on account of the soul that the human body is a human body, and
specifically on account of its substantial union with the soul. . . . Man’s corporeity is
his soul” (226). Emery explains that St. Thomas is following the Fourth Lateran
Council, which teaches that “all will rise with their own bodies, which they now
wear” (Constitution on the Catholic Faith [DH, no. 801]). But the only way to
explain the identity of the earthly and resurrected body is by making the previously
mentioned distinction of the two senses of corporeity. For Aquinas, says Emery:
“At the deepest level, corporeity is the substantial form of man, since it is from the
soul that the human body has all its reality as body. . . . Since the soul is by nature
the form of the body, it is permanently ordered toward this body. The material and
quantitative elements that constitute this body today constitute it only in virtue of
the soul. In this way, the soul is defined in terms of its relationship to the body, and
the body is defined by the soul. Thus the primary raison d’être of corporeal identity
is found not in matter, but rather in the soul of the human person. The identity of
this subsistent soul sustains our hope in the resurrection” (227; final emphasis added).
28
		ST I, q. 75, a. 2, resp.
29
		ST I, q. 75, a. 2, resp.: “. . . habet operationem per se, cui non communicat corpus.
Nihil autem potest per se operari, nisi quod per se subsistit” (translation mine).
30
		ST I, q. 75, a. 2, resp. (translation mine). Interestingly, most English versions of
the Summa leave the second half of the sentence untranslated. But see the Latin:
27

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Aquinas shows that a thing operates insofar as it is in act, insofar as it has
being. In other words, it can act only as it is. It is the soul that gives being
to the composite,31 as noted above. Consequently, the fact that a soul can
operate per se without the body indicates that it is not dependent on the
body, but rather is subsistent through itself.
Someone might object at this point that the soul clearly needs the senses
in order to understand, which it does by means of phantasms. It would
seem, consequently, that the soul cannot act apart from the body. To this
objection, Aquinas replies that, although it is true that the body is necessary for the intellect to act, this is “not as the organ by which such action is
exercised, but by reason of the object; for the phantasm is compared to the
intellect as color is to the sight.”32 He goes on to explain that this does not
mean the soul is not subsistent, because if that were true, a living animal,
as such, would be nonsubsistent, “since it requires external objects of the
senses in order to perform its act of perception.”33 However, the souls of
nonrational animals are not subsistent: they do not continue to subsist
once the animal dies. This is because of the above-mentioned principle,
commonly referred to by the Scholastics as operari sequitur esse (“acting
follows on being”), and the kind of act possible to one depends upon the
kind of thing one is. The soul of a nonrational animal is not able to operate apart from the body (since the nonrational animal has only a sensitive,
rather than intellective, soul), and so is not subsistent.34
This argument is also important with regard to our understanding of
the condition of the separated soul, about which we will speak more later.
As noted above, phantasms are necessary as objects by which the soul
understands, but as Bonino points out, “cerebral activity is not the cause of
thought.”35 In other words, Aquinas believes that the soul is not dependent
on the corporeal organ of the brain. Rather, the soul exercises a kind of
“Non enim est operari nisi entis in actu, unde eo modo aliquid operatur, quo est”
(emphasis mine).
31
		See ST I, q. 76, a. 1, ad 5: “The soul communicates that existence in which it
subsists to the corporeal matter, out of which and the intellectual soul there results
unity of existence; so that the existence of the whole composite is also the existence
of the soul. . . . For this reason the human soul retains its own existence after the
dissolution of the body.” See also ST I, q. 29, a. 2, ad 5, and q. 75, a. 5, ad 3.
32
		ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 3: “. . . non sicut organum quo talis actio exerceatur, sed ratione
obiecti, phantasma enim comparatur ad intellectum sicut color ad visum” (translation mine).
33
		ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 3.
34
		See ST I, q. 75, a. 3.
35
		Bonino, “L’âme séparée,” 73: “L’activité cérébrale n’est la cause de la pensée.”

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autonomy with regard to its understanding. Therefore, Bonino notes, “this
noetic autonomy of the human intellective soul at the level of acting is the
sign of its ontological autonomy in virtue of which it subsists post mortem,
despite the corruption of the composite.”36
However, although the soul is subsistent, this does not mean it is a
complete substance. It is still naturally part of the body–soul composite
referred to as “man.” St. Thomas differentiates between a particular thing
(hoc aliquid) that is subsistent and a particular thing (hoc aliquid) that is
both subsistent “and is complete in a specific nature”:
The former sense excludes the inherence of an accident or of a material form; the latter excludes also the imperfection of a part, so that
a hand can be called “this particular thing” [hoc aliquid] in the first
sense, but not in the second. Therefore, as the human soul is a part
of human nature, it can indeed be called “this particular thing” [hoc
aliquid] in the first sense, as being something subsistent; but not in
the second, for in this sense, what is composed of body and soul is
said to be “this particular thing” [hoc aliquid].37
From the fact that Aquinas lumps together the human soul and the
hand as both subsisting in the first sense, it is evident that, although they
are very different in other ways, the human soul and the hand have in
common that they are parts. Yet the hand is obviously not incorruptible.
Consequently, something more than simple subsistence in the first sense is
required in order to be able to claim that the soul is in fact incorruptible.
A few articles later, St. Thomas notes that a thing can be corrupted
in two ways: per se (i.e., through itself) or per accidens (accidentally, i.e.,
through something else). However, no substance can be generated or
corrupted per accidens (through something else), because a thing is generated or corrupted in accordance with its esse. (Recall our discussion of
substantial being above.) “Therefore, whatever has esse per se can only be
generated or corrupted per se, whereas those things which do not subsist,
such as accidents or material forms, are said to become and be corrupted
through the generation and corruption of the composite things.”38 On the
		Bonino, “L’âme séparée,” 73: “Cette autonomie noétique de l’âme intellective
humaine au plan de l’agir est le signe de son autonomie ontologique en vertu de
laquelle elle subsiste post mortem, malgré la corruption du composé.”
37
		ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 1.
38
		ST I, q. 75, a. 6, resp.: “Unde quod per se habet esse, non potest generari vel
corrumpi nisi per se, quae vero non subsistunt, ut accidentia et formae materiales,
36

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contrary, from the fact that the human soul subsists through itself (i.e., per
se), it could not be corrupted except through itself, which is impossible,
since the soul is a form only, without any matter.
For it is clear that what belongs to a thing by virtue of itself is
inseparable from it; but existence belongs to a form which is an act,
by virtue of itself. Wherefore matter acquires actual existence as it
acquires the form; while it is corrupted so far as the form is separated from it. But it is impossible for a form to be separated from
itself; and therefore it is impossible for a subsistent form to cease to
exist.39
In other words, being (esse) belongs to the form (which is act) and comes
to the composite through the form. Therefore, matter receives its being
through the form, and so is corrupted when separated from the form. But
the form that is subsistent cannot naturally be separated from its own act
of being, and so is not corruptible.
In the Disputed questions on the soul, St. Thomas points out two additional reasons for saying that the soul is incorruptible. One is the fact that
the intellect can understand things (which are corruptible in themselves)
in a universal way, with the result that those things become incorruptible
insofar as they are understood by the intellect. The second argument for
the incorruptibility of the soul comes from the natural appetite:
Natural appetite [desire springing from the nature of man] cannot be
frustrated. Now we observe in men the desire for perpetual existence.
This desire is grounded in reason. For to exist [esse] being desirable in
itself, an intelligent being who apprehends existence in the absolute
sense, and not merely the here and now, must desire existence in the
absolute sense and for all time. Hence it is clear that this desire is not
vain, but that man, in virtue of his intellective soul, is incorruptible.40
dicuntur fieri et corrumpi per generationem et corruptionem compositorum”
(translation mine).
39
		ST I, q. 75, a. 6, resp.
40
		St. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de anima [QDA], a. 14, resp., trans.
Patrick Rowan (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1949; and at dhspriory.org/thomas/QDdeAnima.htm). St. Thomas also states: “The thing that is properly corrupted is
neither the form nor the matter nor the act of existing itself but the composite.
Moreover, the body’s act of existing is said to be corruptible inasmuch as the body
by corrupting is deprived of the act of existing which it possessed in common with
the soul; which act of existing remains in the subsisting soul” (QDA, a. 1, ad 14).

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For Aquinas, since the soul is incorruptible, it simply follows that it is
immortal. For example, he notes in SCG, “Now the corruption of the body
does not cause the soul to cease to exist, for the latter is immortal, as we
have proved above.”41 However, elsewhere, St. Thomas also explains that “a
thing ordained to an eternal end must be capable of enduring forever. That
is why the soul’s immortality can be proved from the eternity of intelligible
truth.”42 Earlier in SCG, he offered another proof for the immortality of
the soul:
The Philosopher thereupon adds: That alone is separate which truly
is. This remark cannot apply to the agent intellect, since it alone is
not separate, for he had already spoken of the possible intellect as
being separate. Nor can that statement be understood to refer to the
possible intellect, since Aristotle had already said the same thing
concerning the agent intellect. It remains that the above remark
applies to that which includes both intellects, namely, to the intellect in act, of which he was speaking; because that alone in our soul
which belongs to the intellect in act is separate and uses no organ;
I mean that part of the soul whereby we understand actually and
which includes the possible and agent intellect. And that is why
Aristotle goes on to say that this part of the soul alone is immortal
and everlasting, as being independent of the body in virtue of its
separateness.43
In saying that “this part of the soul alone is immortal,” St. Thomas does
not mean that the soul can be divided, which is impossible, since it is a
form, but rather that it is the rational soul that is immortal, whereas the
vegetative and sensitive powers do not actually remain in the soul, but only
virtually,44 or “in root,” and cannot be activated without the senses, which
require corporeal organs.
Yet, one might ask how it is that, if the soul was created to be part of a
		SCG II, ch. 86, no. 9 (referring to ch. 79, which is on the incorruptibility of the
soul).
42
		SCG II, ch. 84, no. 4.
43
		SCG II, ch. 78, no. 12.
44
		What Aquinas means by “in root” can be seen in the Supplement of ST: “The
sensitive and other like powers do not remain in the separated soul except in a
restricted sense, namely radically, in the same way as a result is in its principle:
because there remains in the separated soul the ability to produce these powers if
it should be reunited to the body; nor is it necessary for this ability to be anything
in addition to the essence of the soul” (q. 70, a. 1, resp.)
41

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composite as the form of the body, it does not lose its individuation once
it has separated from the body. It would in fact appear that, if the soul, as
form, is individuated by matter (i.e., the body), once it leaves the body, it
would lose its individuation, and therefore would no longer subsist as this
particular thing. On the other hand, if it were individuated in itself, either
it would need to be a simple form, which is its own species, as in the case
of the angels, or it would itself have to be composed of matter and form.
Aquinas answers this objection by explaining that, even though the soul
has a relationship to the body, its act of being comes not from the body,
but from God. For this reason, “the soul’s act of existing does not cease
when the body corrupts, nor does the soul’s individuation cease when the
body corrupts.”45 He notes that this is because: “The act[s] of existing [esse]
and individuation [individuatio] of a thing are always found together. For
universals do not exist in reality inasmuch as they are universals, but only
inasmuch as they are individuated.”46 Consequently, since the soul has its
own act of being, it also retains its individuation. In summary, then, we
can say that the soul, which is the substantial form of the body, is incorporeal, subsistent, and incorruptible, and thereby immortal and individual,
even when separated.
What It Means to Say That a Human Person Ceases to Exist at Death
This brings us to Toner’s third point. Is it true that human beings stop
existing when they die? Yes, if you mean existing as composites of body and
soul, but no, if you mean there is nothing personal left after death. The soul
remains “personal” in the sense of retaining the individuality of the person
(even to the point of being judged in place of the person), and as a subject
of attribution, it continues to be the first principle of the act of existence
and of the operations of the person. Toner stresses that “the soul which
survives my death, is not me,”47 reiterating Aquinas. Yet there is a danger
that one may stop at this point and fail to clarify what it is that remains
between death and the final resurrection and that the soul is not like the
old hat we mentioned earlier.
Avoiding the danger of stopping there, St. Thomas calls the soul the
“chief part” of man,48 and Cardinal Cajetan does not hesitate to call
the separated soul a “semi-persona, and not only a semi-natura,”49 when
		QDA, a. 1, ad 2.
		QDA, a. 1, ad 2.
47
		Toner, “St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and the Separated Soul,” 593.
48
		ST III, q. 50, a. 4, ad 2.
49
		 Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Commentaria summa theologiae III, q. 6, a. 3: “Imaginan45
46

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commenting on Aquinas’s article regarding whether the soul of Christ was
assumed to the Divine Person before his flesh. After noting St. Thomas’
reply that it would not be fitting for Christ’s soul to be created from the
beginning and assumed later by the Word (which would either result in
the corruption of its subsistence or mean that it was not united according
to its subsistence), Cajetan goes on to say that “the Author is speaking here
concerning the subsisting thing [i.e., the soul] just as if he were speaking
of personhood [personalitate]:50 because the separated soul differs from a
person only by the fact that it is incomplete in its species; because it is not
the species, but a part of the species.”51
Cajetan then explains in a second note that, if the soul of Christ preexisted its being assumed by the Word, it would be corrupted, which could
be understood in two ways: “First, as to the act of subsisting. . . . In another
way, not only as to the act of subsisting, but as to that which underlies
the act of subsisting.”52 The subject of the act of subsisting would also be
corrupted:
And thus it seems that this text should be understood in keeping
with what has already been determined with respect to personhood
[personalitate]. Indeed, it should be imagined that the separated
soul is a semi-person, and not merely a semi-nature. For united to
flesh it is a semi-nature, since it is the essential part of human nature.
But it does not subsist through itself as such, but through the hypostasis, to which as soul, as the defining principle [ratio] of subsisting
according to its proper genus, namely, the immaterial order, it
conveys the act of being and subsisting. But as soon as it is separated
dum est enim quod anima separata est semi-persona, et non solum semi-natura”
(Leonine ed. 11 [Rome: S. C. de Propaganda Fidei, 1903]). All the translations
here of Cajetan are mine, with the help of Sr. Tamsin Geach, O.P., and Fr. Timothy
Bellamah, O.P., a collaborator of the Leonine Commission.
50
		As Fr. Bellamah pointed out to me, the term that best expresses the concept
“person” in an abstract form is “personhood,” rather than “personality,” which is
really a concrete term used in the modern age “to designate the external (visible
and audible) aspect of a person’s being.” However, it is clear from the context that
Cajetan wants to speak of “person” in an abstract, universal way, for which the
word “personhood” is a better fit.
51
		Cajetan, Commentaria III, q. 6, a. 3. “Auctor loquitur hic de subsistentia tanquam
si loqueretur de personalitate: quia anima separata differt a persona solum per hoc
quod est incompletae speciei; quia non est species, sed pars specie.”
52
		Cajetan, Commentaria III, q. 6, a. 3: “Primo, quoad actum subsistendi. . . . Alio
modo, non solum quoad actum subsistendi, sed quoad id quod subiicitur actui
subsistendi.”

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from the body, from this very fact by which it is constituted in separate being, it is constituted in a certain totality and completeness, so
that it be that which subsists (inadequately, however, with respect to
its being, in which even the body has been born, and [in which] the
whole man subsists). For it has already been said that the separation
gives a certain totality and completeness. And therefore, once separated, the soul is a semi-person, and as such is delimited by its own
limit—though, while existing in the body, it was delimited by the
limit of the whole man.53
Cajetan seems to be saying that St. Thomas’s point is that, just as the
Word assuming a preexisting angel would corrupt the personhood of that
angel, so also the Word assuming a preexisting soul would corrupt the
terminus of that soul, “by which it is constituted in being that which it is:
both of a semi-person and of a subsisting thing.”54 However, if the Word
assumed a soul that was not pre-existing, “only then would it be assumed
and united as a semi-nature.”55 This view of the soul as a semi-person would
seem to accord well with Aquinas’s answer to an objection that states that
“each man is his intellect,”56 to which St. Thomas replies: “Man is said to
be his own intellect, not because the intellect is the entire man, but because
the intellect is the chief part of man, in which man’s whole disposition lies
virtually; just as the ruler of the city may be called the whole city, since its
entire disposal is vested in him.”57
		Cajetan, Commentaria III, q. 6, a. 3: “Et hoc modo intelligendus videtur hic
textus, conformiter ad praedeterminata de personalitate. Imaginandum est enim
quod anima separata est semi-persona, et non solum semi-natura. Nam unita carni
est semi-natura, cum sit pars essentialis humanae naturae: sed non subsistit per
seipsam ut quod, sed per hypostasim, cui ut anima, ut ratio subsistendi ex proprio
genere, scilicet immateriali ordine, defert actum essendi et subsistendi. Sed statim
ut separata est a corpore, ex hoc ipso quo constituitur in esse separato, constituitur in quadam totalitate et completione, ut scilicet sit quod subsistit (inadaequate
tamen ad suum esse, in quo natum est etiam corpus, et totus homo subsistere):
iam enim dictum est quod separatio dat quandam totalitatem et completionem.
Et ideo statim separata anima est semi-persona, ac per hoc proprio termino terminatur: quae, in corpore existens, terminabatur termino totius hominis” (emphasis
added).
54
		Cajetan, Commentaria III, q. 6, a. 3: “. . . qua constituitur in esse quod est, et semipersonae et subsistentis.”
55
		Cajetan, Commentaria III, q. 6, a. 3: “. . . tunc solum ut semi-natura assumitur et
unitur.”
56
		ST III, q. 50, a. 4, obj. 2.
57
		ST III, q. 50, a. 4, ad 2.
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In other words, as Steven A. Long points out, even though the soul is
not the person as such, it “is the noblest and most formal subsistent principle, root of the noblest operations of the ‘I.’”58 In addition, as shall be
explained below, the soul continues to understand, continues to remember
(with its intellectual memory), and continues to love (as a simple act of
willing), even after it is separated from the body. While it can no longer
perform the operations proper to its sensitive powers (which, although
originating in the soul, belong to the composite as such), it is still able to
perform other operations that do not require the body:
The proposition advanced, . . . namely, that no operation can remain
in the soul when separated from the body, we declare to be false, in
view of the fact that those operations do remain which are not exercised through organs. Such are the operations of understanding and
willing. Those operations, however, do not endure which are carried
out by means of bodily organs, and of such a kind are the operations
of the nutritive and sensitive powers.59
In other words, the separated soul continues to act, though in a way much
different from the way it did when it was in the body. We will now discuss
more in detail some of its operations.
The Understanding of the Separated Soul
In speaking of the knowledge of the separated soul, Aquinas presents the
difficulty in the following way. In the Platonist understanding of the soul
as being only accidentally tied to the body (which would mean that death
would be a release for the soul from the impediment of the body, such
that it would, as Aquinas states in ST I, q. 89, a. 1, resp., “at once return to
its own nature, and would understand intelligible things simply, without
turning to the phantasms”), it would appear that there is no real difficulty
with explaining how the separated soul understands: it would understand
in a way similar to the angels. However, that view of the soul would seem
to require all who held it to also hold that “the union of soul and body
would not be for the soul’s good, for evidently it would understand worse
in the body than out of it; but for the good of the body, which would be
unreasonable, since matter exists on account of the form, and not the form
for the sake of the matter.”60
		I thank Steven A. Long, of Ave Maria University, for his comments.
		SCG II, ch. 81, no. 11.
60
		ST I, q. 89, a. 1, resp.
58
59

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St. Thomas continues with the dilemma: “But if we admit that the
nature of the soul requires it to understand by turning to phantasms, it
will seem, since death does not change its nature, that it can then naturally
understand nothing; as the phantasms are wanting to which it may turn.”61
In short, then, if we do not wish to hold that the soul is only accidentally
tied to the body, it would appear that, once the composite is corrupted,
the soul is no longer able to understand anything, since the senses and
imagination, which belong to the sensitive part of the soul, make use of
corporeal organs to produce the phantasms the soul uses to understand.
Nevertheless, Aquinas resolves this problem by returning once again to the
axiom of operari sequitur esse:
To solve this difficulty, we must consider that nothing acts except
so far as it is actual, the mode of action in every agent follows from
its mode of existence [modus operandi uniuscuiusque rei sequitur
modum essendi ipsius]. Now the soul has one mode of being when
in the body, and another when apart from it, its nature remaining
always the same; but this does not mean its union with the body is
an accidental thing, for, on the contrary, such union belongs to its
very nature. . . The soul, therefore, when united to the body, consistently with that mode of existence, has a mode of understanding, by
turning to corporeal phantasms, which are in corporeal organs; but
when it is separated from the body, it has a mode of understanding,
by turning to simply intelligible objects, as is proper to other separate substances.62
One might ask here why it is not better, then, for the soul to simply
remain separated from the body, as the Platonists would have it, rather
than be reunited to the body in the final resurrection. Aquinas explains
that this mode of understanding (i.e., turning directly to intelligible
objects, rather than to corporeal phantasms) is not really suited to the
nature of the soul: “While it is true that it is nobler in itself to understand by turning to something higher than to understand by turning to
phantasms, nevertheless such a mode of understanding was not so perfect
as regards what was possible to the soul.”63 The reason for this, he says, is
that every separated intellectual substance understands by means of the
divine light, and the further away one is from the First Principle, “the
		ST I, q. 89, a. 1, resp.
		ST I, q. 89, a. 1, resp. (emphasis added).
63
		ST I, q. 89, a. 1, resp.
61
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more this light is divided and diversified,”64 and so the greater the number
and the less universal are the species that can be possessed by the intellect.
The result is that the degree of comprehension is also less. “If, therefore,”
he adds, “the inferior substances received species in the same degree of
universality as the superior substances, since they are not so strong in
understanding, the knowledge which they would derive through them
would be imperfect, and of a general and confused nature.”65
Aquinas likens this to human understanding in this life, where more
universal concepts are less easily understood by those of a “weaker intellect,” who need these things explained to them in greater detail. The same
is true of the human soul, which is the lowest of the intellectual substances.
If it were meant to understand in the same way as the angels, it could
possess only a more confused and general knowledge, rather than perfect.
St. Thomas continues:
Therefore to make it possible for human souls to possess perfect and
proper knowledge, they were so made that their nature required
them to be joined to bodies, and thus to receive the proper and
adequate knowledge of sensible things from the sensible things
themselves; thus we see in the case of uneducated men that they
have to be taught by sensible examples.
It is clear then that it was for the soul’s good that it was united
to a body, and that it understands by turning to the phantasms.
Nevertheless it is possible for it to exist apart from the body, and also
to understand in another way.66
Consequently, it is through a certain participation in the species given
by means of the divine light that the separated soul is able to understand,
although not in a perfect way, but in a way that is rather “confused and
general,” since the soul was created to naturally turn to phantasms for
its understanding. Yet Aquinas insists that this way of knowledge (i.e.,
turning directly to the species given through the divine light) is not in
itself unnatural, “for God is the author of the influx both of the light of
grace and of the light of nature [i.e., the light of reason].”67 These new real		ST I, q. 89, a. 1, resp.
		ST I, q. 89, a. 1, resp.
66
		ST I, q. 89, a. 1, resp.
67
		ST I, q. 89, a. 1, ad 3. Without getting into the debate of whether or not the state
itself of the separated soul can properly be called unnatural, I will simply cite two
authors on this point. First, Emery states: “In a certain way, the immortality of the
64
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ities, however, although they have God for their cause, are known by the
separated soul “directly through its essence.”68 In other words, as Bonino
explains, “the separated substance knows other realities by way of introspection, that is to say, in knowing itself.”69 The separated soul knows in a
similar way, although more imperfectly than the angel.
The Intellectual Memory
But will the soul continue to remember the things it knew in this life? Yes.
Aquinas states that the habit of knowledge acquired in this life remains in
the separated soul, not with regard to the sensitive powers, but with regard
to the intellect itself:
Because, as it is said in the book, On the Length and Shortness of
Life [Aristotle], some form may be corrupted in two ways; in one
way, per se, when it is corrupted by its contrary, as heat, by cold;
and another way, per accidens, namely, through the corruption of
its subject. Now it is clear that knowledge which is in the human
intellect cannot be corrupted through corruption of the subject,
since the intellect is incorruptible. . . . Similarly, neither can the
intelligible species which are in the passive intellect be corrupted by
their contrary, because nothing is contrary to intelligible intentions,
soul implies its union with the body, since a perpetual existence in a state ‘contrary
to nature’ is hardly thinkable. The immortality of the soul must be considered in
terms of its relation to the resurrection” (“The Unity of Man,” 231). However,
Bonino argues that, although Aquinas speaks of the state of the separated soul as
unnatural when emphasizing the resurrection of the body, “the expression praeter
naturam [preternatural] applied to the state of the separated soul and its knowledge is found in St. Thomas [L’expression praeter naturam appliquée au statut
de l’âme séparée et de sa connaissance se trouve chez Thomas]” (“L’âme séparée,”
79n23, citing ST I, q. 89, a. 1, and q. 104, a. 6–7, and In II sent., d. 18, q. 1, a.
3). The use of “preternatural,” for Aquinas, would indicate a state that is neither
strictly speaking against nature nor completely natural, but rather something
above its nature, “modes of being and knowing which transcend its connatural
mode of being and of knowing” (“L’âme séparée,” 87: “des modes d’être et de
connaître qui transcendent son mode connatural d’être et de connaître”). Bonino
explains that, “from this perspective, human nature, without ever losing its essence
or formal identity, enjoys a certain plasticity” (87: “Dans cette perspective, la
nature humaine, sans jamais perdre son essence ou identité formelle, jouit d’une
certain plasticité”).
68
		Bonino, “L’âme séparée,” 84. “. . . directement par son essence. ”
69
		Bonino, “L’âme séparée,” 84 : “La substance séparée connaît les autres réalités par
manière d’introspection, c’est-à-dire en se connaissant elle-même.”

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and especially with regard to the simple intelligence by which is
understood that which is.70
St. Thomas goes on to explain that, although knowledge can be
corrupted directly by forgetfulness or deception, neither of these can take
place in the separated soul.71 Therefore, the soul retains its habit of knowledge insofar as this habit of knowledge is in the intellect. But this applies
only to the intelligible species the soul knew in this life, not to sensitive
memory, which relies on phantasms. Therefore, as Bonino puts it, “the
separated soul continues to know by means of the ideas acquired during
the course of this life and conserved in the intellectual memory,” 72 whereas
new knowledge, as noted above, is received by the soul in a way analogous
to the angels, by means of intelligible species infused by God.
The Will in the Soul
As has been mentioned, although all the powers have the soul as their
principle, some powers inhere in the soul alone73 (as the intellect and will),
whereas others have the whole composite for their subject (the sensitive
and nutritive powers). Once the composite is corrupted, only the intellect
and will remain (the intellectual memory also remains in the mind, but not

		ST I, q. 89, a. 5, resp.: “Quia, ut dicitur in libro de longitudine et brevitate vitae,
dupliciter corrumpitur aliqua forma, uno modo, per se, quando corrumpitur a suo
contrario, ut calidum a frigido; alio modo, per accidens, scilicet per corruptionem
subiecti. Manifestum est autem quod per corruptionem subiecti, scientia quae est
in intellectu humano, corrumpi non potest, cum intellectus sit incorruptibilis. . .
. Similiter etiam nec per contrarium corrumpi possunt species intelligibiles quae
sunt in intellectu possibili, quia intentioni intelligibili nihil est contrarium; et
praecipue quantum ad simplicem intelligentiam, qua intelligitur quod quid est”
(translation mine; emphasis mine).
71
		ST I, q. 89, a. 5, resp. Cf. SCG II, ch. 81, no. 14: “Now, recollection, being an act
performed through a bodily organ, . . . cannot remain in the soul after the body,
unless recollection be taken equivocally for the understanding of things which one
knew before. For there must be present in the separate soul even the things that it
knew in this life, since the intelligible species are received into the possible intellect
inexpugnably.”
72
		Bonino, “L’âme séparée,” 83 : “L’âme séparée continue de connaître au moyen des
idées acquises au cours de cette vie et conservées dans la mémoire intellectuelle.”
73
		 Although Aquinas points out that “we may therefore say that the soul understands,
as the eye sees; but it is more correct to say that man understands through the
soul” (ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 2). When the soul is united to the body, it is really the
composite that understands or wills. However, these acts are performed without a
direct dependence on the body, as shown above.
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the sensitive memory, as we have said74):
All the powers of the soul belong to the soul alone as their principle.
But some powers belong to the soul alone as their subject; as the
intelligence and the will. These powers must remain in the soul,
after the destruction of the body. But other powers are subjected in
the composite; as all the powers of the sensitive and nutritive parts.
Now accidents cannot remain after the destruction of the subject.
Wherefore, the composite being destroyed, such powers do not
remain actually; but they remain virtually in the soul, as in their
principle or root.75
One of the objections in the article then asks how it is that, without
the body, the blessed soul can experience joy and the condemned soul
suffer sorrow? Interestingly enough, Aquinas replies, “in the separate soul,
sorrow and joy are not in the sensitive, but in the intellectual appetite, as in
the angels.” 76 He explains further in SCG that, with regard to operations of
the soul such as loving and rejoicing, a distinction must be made between
passions of the soul (which are acts of the sensitive appetite) and the simple
act of willing:
Sometimes [these types of operations] are taken for passions of the
soul: and thus they are acts of the sensible appetite in respect of the
irascible and the concupiscible faculties, together with a certain
bodily transmutation. And thus they cannot remain in the soul
after death. . . . But sometimes they are taken for a simple act of the
will, that is without any passion. Wherefore Aristotle says in the
seventh book of Ethics that God rejoices by one simple operation;
and in the tenth book that in the contemplation of wisdom there
is wonderful pleasure; and in the eighth book, he distinguishes the
love of friendship from the love that is a passion. Now since the will
is a power that uses no organ, as neither does the intellect, it is clear
that these things in so far as they are acts of the will, remain in the
separated soul.77
		See ST I, q. 77, a. 8, ad 4: “The recollection spoken of there is to be taken in the
same way as Augustine (De Trin. x, 11; xiv, 7) places memory in the mind; not as
a part of the sensitive soul.”
75
		ST I, q. 77, a. 8, resp. (emphasis mine).
76
		ST I, q. 77, a. 8, ad 5.
77
		SCG II, ch. 81, no. 15.
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It is important to note, however, that the soul, upon being separated
from the body, immediately has its will fixed either in good or in evil.
Unlike in this life, where the will is changeable, upon death, the will can
no longer change from good to evil or from evil to good:
So long as the soul is united to the body, it is in a changeable state;
but not after its separation from the body. For a disposition of the
soul is accidentally [per accidens] subject to change in accordance
with some change in the body: because, since the body serves the
soul in the soul’s proper operations, it is natural that while the soul
is in the body, it should be perfected by being moved to perfection.
Hence, when it departs from the body, it will no longer be in a state
of mobility towards the end, but of quiescence in the end. Consequently the will, as regards the desire for the ultimate end, will be
immovable.78
In other words, whatever ultimate end the soul had chosen at the
moment of death, whether it be God or something else, is the ultimate
end upon which the will of the soul is fixed for all eternity, just as the
angels, “as soon as they adhere to an end, due or undue, . . . abide therein
immovably.” 79 Aquinas also warns that the adherence of the will to the
object chosen as its ultimate end does not alter even once the soul has been
reunited to the body at the resurrection. “On the contrary,” he states, “it
will remain thus, because . . . at the resurrection, the body will be disposed
according to the exigencies of the soul, and the soul will not be influenced
by the body, but will remain unchangeable.”80 That is, it will remain
unchangeable with regard to the ultimate end, although, according to
Aquinas, there will still be a kind of changeability in the soul with regard
to the desire of lesser things that are ordered to whichever ultimate end the
soul had previously chosen. “Therefore,” he notes, “the will of the separated
soul is not changeable from good to evil, although it is changeable from
the desire for one thing to the desire for another, provided the order to the
[same] ultimate end be observed.”81
Consequently, adds St. Thomas, the will of the separated soul remains
free. He declares, “it is now apparent that such immutability is not in
		SCG IV, ch. 95, no. 5.
		SCG IV, ch. 95, no. 8.
80
		SCG IV, ch. 95, no. 9.
81
		SCG IV, ch. 95, no. 6.
78
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conflict with the power of free will whose act it is to choose, for choice is
of the things for the end; choice is not of the ultimate end.”82
On the Particular Judgment of the Soul
According to Aquinas (and the teaching of the Catholic Church), the soul,
upon its separation from the body, will be immediately judged by God and
will receive “the recompense he has deserved.”83 In other words, it does not
have to wait until it is rejoined to the body to be judged. Rather, as noted
above, the souls of the just “immediately after death and, in the case of
those who need purification, after the purification . . . already before they
take up their bodies again and before the general judgment, have been,
are, and will be with Christ in heaven . . . [and] enjoy the divine essence
[by means of the Beatific Vision].”84 On the other hand, the souls of the
wicked “go down into hell immediately after death and there suffer the
pain of hell.”85
One might think it strange, however, that the separated soul is immediately judged, since one would normally think of judgment as being a
judgment of the person.86 Therefore, it is evident that the soul is so personal
that it “stands in” or “takes the place of” the person who is judged in the
particular judgment. Nevertheless, there is a certain fittingness to the fact
that the soul is judged even before the resurrection, as Aquinas explains:
As soon as the soul is separated from the body, it is made capable of
the divine vision, which it could not arrive at while it was united to
a corruptible body. And moreover, man’s ultimate happiness, which
is the reward of virtue, . . . consists in the vision of God. Now there is
		SCG IV, ch. 95, no. 7.
		St. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology I [Faith], ch. 242: “. . . retribuitur
quantum ad animam secundum quod meruit” (trans. Cyril Vollert [St. Louis: B.
Herder, 1947; dhspriory.org/thomas/Compendium.htm]).
84
		Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus (DH, no. 1000).
85
		Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus (DH, no. 1002).
86
		The two judgments are explained in this way: “Each man is both an individual
person and a part of the whole human race: wherefore a twofold judgment is due
to him. One, the particular judgment, is that to which he will be subjected after
death, when he will receive according as he hath done in the body [see 2 Cor.
5:10], not indeed entirely but only in part since he will receive not in the body but
only in the soul. The other judgment will be passed on him as a part of the human
race: thus a man is said to be judged according to human justice, even when judgment is pronounced on the community of which he is a part. Hence at the general
judgment of the whole human race by the general separation of the good from the
wicked, it follows that each one will be judged” (ST Suppl., q. 88, a. 1, ad 1).
82
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no reason why a punishment or reward should be deferred, after the
moment in which the soul can be a participant [in these]. Therefore,
as soon as the soul is separated from the body, it receives its punishment or reward, for those things which it did in the body.87
St. Thomas goes on to clarify further why it is appropriate for the soul to
be judged first:
The order in punishment and reward should correspond to the order
in fault and merit. Now merit and fault are not ascribed to the body
except through the soul: since nothing is deserving of praise or
blame, except in so far as it is voluntary. Consequently both reward
and punishment are awarded to the body through the soul: but it
does not belong to souls on account of the body. Hence there is
no reason why the punishment or reward of souls should await the
resumption of their bodies: indeed it would seem more fitting that
souls, in which there was first fault or merit, should also be first in
being punished or rewarded.88
However, with regard to the souls of the just who are not yet completely
purified in this life, Aquinas notes that they will not immediately receive
their reward, which consists in the Beatific Vision (the vision of God
himself), until after their purification is complete:
The rational creature cannot be raised to that vision, unless it be
wholly purified. . . . Now the soul is defiled by sin, whereby it adheres
inordinately to things beneath it: and in this life it is cleansed
from this defilement by Penance and the other sacraments. . . .
Sometimes, however, it happens that this cleansing is not entirely
completed in this life, but the soul still owes a debt of punishment,
through either neglect, or occupations, or because it has been
surprised by death. Nevertheless, it does not for this reason deserve
to be wholly deprived of its reward, since these things may happen
		SCG IV, ch. 91, no. 2: “Ex hoc enim quod anima separatur a corpore, fit capax
visionis divinae, ad quam, dum esset coniuncta corruptibili corpori, pervenire non
poterat. In visione autem Dei ultima hominis beatitudo consistit, quae est virtutis
praemium.... Nulla autem ratio esset quare differretur poena et praemium, ex quo
utriusque anima particeps esse potest. Statim igitur cum anima separatur a corpore,
praemium vel poenam recipit pro his quae in corpore gessit [cf. II Cor. V, 10]” (translation mine; Latin from the Leonine edition).
88
		SCG IV, ch. 91, no. 4 (translation modified).
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without mortal sin, which alone takes away charity, to which the
reward of eternal life is due. . . . Consequently, after this life, the
soul will need to be cleansed before it can receive its final reward.
Now this cleansing [purgatio] is effected by means of punishment.
. . . Therefore, the souls of the just, who have something that could
have been cleansed in this world, are debarred from receiving their
reward, until they have suffered a purgatorial punishment: and this
is why we hold that there is a Purgatory.89
It is clear, then, that the separated soul is so personal that it is even held
accountable for the sins of the person, and made to atone for whatever it
did not atone for while still in the body before it is allowed to participate
in the Beatific Vision.
The Separated Souls of the Damned
The greatest suffering of the souls of the wicked is, of course, the loss of
the Beatific Vision, the forfeiting of their enjoyment of God forever. This
is known as the pain of loss. However, the souls of the wicked will also
receive the punishment known as the pain of sense. With regard to this, it
is interesting to note that, according to Aquinas, the condemned separated
soul, even before being reunited to its body, already suffers the corporeal
fire of hell (which the devils also suffer). In explaining how this is possible,
St. Thomas points out that there are two kinds of suffering in an intellectual being. The first is by being directly acted upon in a way that effects
change and corruption. This, however, is impossible for the soul (as well as
for the evil spirits), and so it does not suffer sensible pain from the fire in
this manner. Aquinas continues:
However, the soul can suffer by corporeal fire according to the
second kind of suffering, inasmuch as it is hindered from its incli		SCG IV, ch. 91, no. 6. The Supplement of ST offers an interesting explanation of
the separate purgation of the body versus the soul: “The soul is compared to the
body, not only as a worker to the instrument with which he works, but also as
form to matter: wherefore the work belongs to the composite and not to the soul
alone, as the Philosopher shows (De anima i, 4). And since to the worker is due the
reward of the work, it behooves man himself, who is composed of soul and body,
to receive the reward of his work. Now as venial offenses are called sins as being
dispositions to sin, and not as having simply and perfectly the character of sin, so
the punishment which is awarded to them in purgatory is not a retribution simply,
but rather a cleansing, which is wrought separately in the body, by death and by its
being reduced to ashes, and in the soul by the fire of purgatory” (ST Suppl., q. 75, a.
1, ad 3).

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nation or volition by fire of this kind. . . . For the soul and any incorporeal substance, inasmuch as this belongs to it by nature, is not
physically confined in any place, but transcends the whole corporeal
order. Consequently it is contrary to its nature and to its natural
appetite for it to be fettered to anything and be confined in a place
by some necessity; and I maintain that this is the case except inasmuch as the soul is united to the body whose natural form it is, and
in which there follows some perfection.90
Therefore, the separated soul suffers from the pain of sense, as well as
from the pain of loss, inasmuch as it is weighed down by the corporeal fire.
And, in case anyone should scoff at the possibility of a spiritual substance
being hindered by a corporeal one, Aquinas quotes St. Augustine:
If men’s souls, having been created incorporeal, are now in this life
incarnate in bodily members, and shall one day be bound thereto
forever, then why cannot we truly say, though you may marvel at
it, that even incorporeal spirits may be afflicted by corporeal fire?
Therefore these spirits, even though incorporeal, shall dwell in
tormenting corporeal fires . . . and, instead of giving life to these
fires, they shall receive punishment from them.91
Aquinas notes that this corporeal fire acts on the soul as an instrument
of divine justice, by means of divine power. The fire afflicts the condemned
soul with great interior sadness. St. Thomas explains that this sadness is
“because the soul, which was born to be united to God through possession,
meditates on the fact that it occupies a place below the lowest things in
existence.”92 In summary, then, “the greatest affliction of the damned will
be caused by the fact that they are separated from God; secondly, by the
fact that they are situated below corporeal things, and in the lowest and
meanest place.”93
The Happiness of the Souls of the Just
In speaking of the invisible mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit to all
those who are in grace, Aquinas points out that this mission continues to

		Aquinas, QDA, a. 21, resp. (emphasis mine).
		St. Augustine, De civitate Dei 21.10, as found in Aquinas, QDA, a. 21, resp.
92
		QDA, a. 21, resp.
93
		QDA, a. 21, resp.
90
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be directed toward the blessed “at the very beginning of their beatitude.”94
He adds: “The invisible mission is made to them subsequently, not by
‘intensity’ of grace, but by the further revelation of mysteries; which goes
on till the day of judgment. Such an increase is by the ‘extension’ of grace,
because it extends to a greater number of objects.”95
In this we see that the separated soul is able to understand and enjoy
further revelation even before being united again to the body up until the
final judgment. In fact, Aquinas explains elsewhere that the separated soul
already enjoys the perfect happiness of the Beatific Vision even before the
resurrection of the body:
But as to perfect Happiness, which consists in the vision of God,
some have maintained that it is not possible to the soul separated
from the body; and have said that the souls of saints, when separated
from their bodies, do not attain to that Happiness until the Day of
Judgment, when they will receive their bodies back again. And this
is shown to be false, both by authority and by reason. 96
With regard to the argument from authority, St. Thomas points to St.
Paul’s statement that, “while we are in the body, we are absent from the
Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor 5:6), and he explains
that “the souls of the saints, separated from their bodies, are in God’s presence . . . whence it is evident that the souls of the saints, separated from
their bodies, ‘walk by sight,’ seeing the Essence of God, wherein is true
Happiness.”97
As for the argument from reason that he mentions, St. Thomas again
points out the fact that the intellect is not dependent on the body for its
operation, except with regard to the forming of phantasms, which are
unnecessary for the Beatific Vision, in which the soul contemplates the
divine essence. “Consequently,” he says, “without the body the soul can
be happy.”98 However, the question remains as to whether the separated
soul’s happiness constitutes human happiness. Joseph Trabbic thinks we
can designate it only loosely as human happiness: “Indeed, the intellect is
perfected in such a state and human happiness consists primarily in the
perfection of the intellect. But if, as Aquinas believes, neither the body by
		ST I, q. 43, a. 6, ad 3.
		ST I, q. 43, a. 6, ad 3.
96
		ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5, resp. (emphasis mine).
97
		ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5, resp.
98
		ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5, resp.
94
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itself nor the soul by itself is a human person, then true happiness cannot
be had by a disembodied but perfected human intellect.”99
Two points must be made in reply to this objection. First, although
the mode of being of the soul has changed, as mentioned above, from a
mode of being united to the body to the mode of being separated from the
body, the soul nevertheless remains “human” in its nature (as it is the soul
that causes the composite to be human, since the form gives the species,
according to Aquinas),100 although it is not a person in the metaphysical
sense mentioned above. (That is, it is not a complete, individual, rational
substance, a composite of body and rational soul with its own act of being.)
In fact, if the soul were no longer “human” in its nature, it would have to
have been changed into some other species at death, which is absurd.101
Therefore, one can and should say that the happiness of the separated soul
is human happiness.
The second point regards the meaning of “true happiness.” If “true
happiness” means “essential” happiness, then the soul already experiences it even prior to the resurrection of the body. St. Thomas explains
		Trabbic, “The Human Body and Human Happiness in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae,” 560 (emphasis added).
100
		See ST I, q. 76, a. 1, resp. In this article, Aquinas explains: “The nature of each
thing is shown by its operation. Now the proper operation of man as man is to
understand; . . . Whence Aristotle concludes (Ethic. x, 7) that the ultimate happiness of man must consist in this operation as properly belonging to him. Man
must therefore derive his species from that which is the principle of this operation.
But the species of anything is derived from its form. It follows therefore that the
intellectual principle is the proper form of man.” But the intellectual principle to
which St. Thomas refers is the rational soul. Therefore, it is the soul that makes the
composite human in its nature. However, by saying that the soul remains human
at death, I do not mean to imply that only the soul belongs to the human species,
something that Aquinas clearly denies: “Some held that the form alone belongs to
the species; while matter is part of the individual, and not the species. This cannot
be true; for to the nature of the species belongs what the definition signifies; and in
natural things the definition does not signify the form only, but the form and the
matter” (ST I, q. 75, a. 4, resp.) However, just as the soul, although individuated by
matter, retains its individuality at death, together with its act of being, I contend
that the soul also retains its humanity, although it is not a complete substance,
since the soul is meant to be the form of a body, and therefore is a part. For this
reason, although Aquinas declares that “whatever subsists in human nature is a
person” (ST III, q. 16, a. 12, resp. and ad 1), one could still argue that the soul is
not a person, since it is not complete in its nature.
101
		 Bonino points out that, “with death, the human soul does not change [its] nature,
but it changes [its] state, [its] mode of being” (“L’âme séparée,” 76: “Avec la mort,
l’âme humaine ne change pas de nature mais elle change d’état, de mode d’être”).
99

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85

that “something may belong to a thing’s perfection in two ways”: first, as
constituting its essence; second, as “necessary to the perfection of the thing
which pertains to the good of its being.”102 The Angelic Doctor continues:
Wherefore though the body does not belong in the first way to
the perfection of human happiness [ad perfectionem beatitudinis
humanae; to the essence of human happiness], yet it does in the
second way. For since operation depends on a thing’s nature, the
more perfect is the soul in its nature, the more perfectly it has its
proper operation, wherein its happiness consists.103
Notice that Aquinas says here that the body does not belong to the
essence of the perfection of human happiness (beatitudinis humanae).
Therefore, although the essence of the soul’s happiness does not require the
body, the fact that the soul is not yet complete in its nature (as the form of
the composite) indicates that it still lacks some degree of perfection, and
therefore lacks happiness secundum quid. Aquinas further expounds on
how the happiness of the soul is affected by the absence of the body in his
reply to the fourth objection:
One thing is hindered by another in two ways. First, by way of opposition; thus cold hinders the action of heat: and such a hindrance to
operation is repugnant to Happiness. Secondly, by way of some kind
of defect, because, to wit, that which is hindered has not all that is
necessary to make it perfect in every way: and such a hindrance to
operation is not incompatible with Happiness, but prevents it from
being perfect in every way. And thus it is that separation from the
body is said to hold the soul back from tending with all its might to
the vision of the Divine Essence. For the soul desires to enjoy God
in such a way that the enjoyment also may overflow into the body, as
far as possible. And therefore, as long as it enjoys God, without the
fellowship of the body, its appetite is at rest in that which it has, in
such a way, that it would still wish the body to attain to its share.104
However, Aquinas is quick to add that “the desire of the separated soul
is entirely at rest, as regards the thing desired [i.e., it is completely satisfied
		ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5, resp.: “. . . requiritur ad perfectionem rei quod pertinet ad bene
esse eius” (translation mine).
103
		ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5, resp. (emphasis added).
104
		ST I-II. q. 4, a. 5, ad 4 (emphasis added).
102

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by God himself], . . . but it is not wholly at rest, as regards the desirer, since
it does not possess that good in every way that it would wish to possess
it [i.e., it does not yet possess the fullness of its nature until it is reunited
to the body].”105 For this reason, says Aquinas, “after the body has been
resumed, Happiness increases not in intensity, but in extent.”106 Consequently, although there seems to be little doubt that the soul can be truly
happy simpliciter even apart from the body, it is still apparent, from what
we have said, that the soul without the body is incomplete in its specific
nature (which is to be the form of a body), and so, lacking this perfection,
thereby lacks some happiness secundum quid.
What Is a Person?
It would appear from the debate regarding whether or not the soul is a
person that there are at least two equivocal notions of “person” at play
here. The first notion is the objective, metaphysical view, the one that is
clearly indicated by Aquinas in citing Boethius’s well-known definition of
person as an “individual substance of a rational nature.”107 The second view,
however, is one of the modern notions of person108 as a sort of reified center
of consciousness, which I would like to call the subjective, “existential”
view. St. Thomas’s understanding of “person” is obviously that of the objective, metaphysical sense, which presumes that the individual substance be
complete, and not only a part.
Emery points out that Aquinas makes a distinction “between the
common notion of person, and the special notion that applies distinctly to
God and to humans.”109 With respect to the common notion, there is the
Boethian definition of person mentioned above, which, Emery notes, “is
applied by analogy to the divine Three, to angels, and to human beings.”110
		ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5, ad 5 (emphasis added).
		ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5, ad 5: “. . . corpore resumpto, beatitudo crescit non intensive, sed
extensive” (emphasis mine).
107
		ST I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 1.
108
		 Emery points out that there are “various conceptions that put the principal accent
on the subjective aspects of the person, either in terms of thought (a person is a
subject who thinks and who has self-consciousness), or in terms of moral autonomy and freedom (to be a person is to be able to dispose freely of oneself and to be
autonomous in one’s action), or in terms of relations (to be a person is then defined
by his or her insertion into the network of social relationships, or the person is
understood as being constituted by the otherness of other persons), . . . or in terms
of forming projects, or again in terms of the capacity to enjoy something, and so
on” (“The Dignity of Being a Substance,” 993).
109
		Emery, “The Dignity of Being a Substance,” 998.
110
		Emery, “The Dignity of Being a Substance,” 998.
105
106

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With regard to human beings, Aquinas explains that:
The “individual substance,” which is included in the definition of a
person, implies a complete substance subsisting of itself and separate
from all else; otherwise, a man’s hand might be called a person, since
it is an individual substance; nevertheless, because it is an individual
substance existing in something else, it cannot be called a person;
nor, for the same reason, can the human nature in Christ, although
it may be called something individual and singular.111
However, unlike Christ’s human nature or a hand, the separated soul
does subsist of itself. Nevertheless, it is not a complete substance in itself,
but as noted above, is a part of a greater whole. This brings us to what
Emery regards as the special notion of person, which “is applied distinctly
either to human beings, or to God the Trinity.”112 With regard to the Trinity, it signifies a subsistent relation, but with respect to the human person,
Aquinas explains that “formally a term signifies that which it was chiefly
intended to signify and this is the definition of the term: thus man signifies
something composed of a body and a rational soul.”113
One should also note here, with regard to Boethius’s definition of
person, an important objection Aquinas addresses: “The separated soul
is an individual substance of the rational nature; but it is not a person.
Therefore person is not properly defined as above.”114 To this, St. Thomas
replies: “The soul is a part of the human species; and so, although it may
exist in a separate state, yet since it ever retains its nature of unibility, it
cannot be called an individual substance, which is the hypostasis or first
substance, as neither can the hand nor any other part of man; thus neither
the definition nor the name of person belongs to it.”115 Clearly, then, Aquinas
		ST III, q. 16, a. 12, ad 2. Emery also points out, with regard to the second half of
Boethius’s definition (i.e., “of a rational nature”): “This is the ultimate determination that makes of an individual substance a person: a nature endowed with a
power of understanding the truth and of loving the good” (“The Dignity of Being
a Substance,” 996).
112
		Emery, “The Dignity of Being a Substance,” 998.
113
		Aquinas, De potentia, q. 9, a. 4, corp. St. Thomas goes on here to say: “Materially a
term signifies that which is requisite for that definition: thus man signifies something that has a heart, brain and such parts as are required in order that the body
be animated with a rational soul” (trans. Dominican Fathers, at dhspriory.org/
thomas/QDdePotentia9.htm).
114
		ST I, q. 29, a. 1, obj. 5.
115
		ST I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 5 (emphasis added).
111

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does not consider the separated soul to be a person.
Nevertheless, he clearly believes that the soul has a continued act of
existence and operations, even once separated from the body. In fact, in
speaking of the knowledge of the separated soul, St. Thomas declares that,
“when, however, it is separated from the body, it understands no longer by
turning to phantasms, but by turning to simply intelligible objects; hence
in that state it understands itself through itself,”116 an obvious reference to
a kind of self-consciousness in the soul. In the same place, Aquinas cites
Augustine as saying, “our mind acquires the knowledge of incorporeal
things by itself,” to which St. Thomas immediately adds that it does so by
knowing itself: “Therefore from the knowledge that the separated soul has
of itself, we can judge how it knows other separate things.”117
How, then, is the self-consciousness of the soul to be understood? In
speaking of the Trinity, St. Thomas also utilizes Richard of St. Victor’s definition of person as an “incommunicable existence of the divine nature.”118
Generally, corruptionists point to the argument of incommunicability as
a reason why the separated soul cannot be a human person, since as an
essential part, it is communicated to the whole, and so cannot be termed
“incommunicable,” and therefore is not a person.119 This is absolutely true,
metaphysically. But might it not also be true that the self-consciousness of
the person can be said to be incommunicable? My consciousness is mine,
and no one else’s. Even if others experience similar events, their consciousness of the same happenings will be somehow different from mine.
One may reply, however, with Edouard Hugon, that “consciousness
and freedom, although they do not essentially constitute the person, are,
however, properties of the person.”120 They are not entities in themselves,
but properties. So, my soul is conscious and performs incommunicable
acts but is not itself incommunicable, since it remains a part. Therefore, as
Hugon also points out, although the soul does retain a degree of individuality: “It lacks that complete individuality which is the totality, autonomy
[and] absolute incommunicability. It is not a definitive whole; it demands
to be united to another [i.e., to the body.]”121
		ST I, q. 89, a. 2, resp.
		ST I, q. 89, a. 2, resp., citing De Trinitate 9.3. Cf. ST I, q. 88, ad 1.
118
		ST I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 4.
119
		See Spencer, “The Personhood of the Separated Soul,” 895–96.
120
		Edouard Hugon, O.P., “Si l’âme séparée est une personne,” Revue thomiste 17
(1909): 590–96, at 593. “La conscience et la liberté, bien qu’elles ne constituent
pas essentiellement la personne, sont cependant des proprietés de la personne”
(translation mine).
121
		 Hugon, “Si l’âme séparée est une personne,” 594: “Il lui manque cette individualité
116
117

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Consequently, in order to balance Aquinas’s metaphysical understanding of “person,” on the one hand, with the self-consciousness of the separated soul, on the other, it seems helpful to follow Bonino’s view:
One should not exaggerate the consequences of the thesis of the
non-personhood of the separated soul. Saint Thomas gives here
a very precise, and so, limited, metaphysical sense of “person”: the
person is a complete, subsisting whole, of a rational nature, a definition which does not effectively apply to the separated soul, since it is
only a subsisting part of a whole, which no longer exists as such. But
that does not at all imply that Saint Thomas refuses to the separated
soul the properties which define what we today call personhood,
that is to say, the cognitive activity, the movements of affectivity, the
consciousness of oneself.122
In other words, on the one hand, it is clear that Aquinas is not an anachronized Cartesian, let alone a Platonist. He clearly is not a dualist, and he
places a great deal of emphasis on the fact that the soul is the form of the
body, not a separate, complete substance. On the other hand, the soul is
also not a mere shadow of existence. In some way, it remains a conscious
subject of attribution, capable of acting. This is not to say, however, that the
continuation of consciousness is sufficient for one’s existence, as Descartes
might have it. Rather, it is because the separated soul retains its act of existence, with its own proper operations even apart from the body (although
less perfectly performed without the body), that it also retains a certain
consciousness of itself, of God, and of others, and is still able to experience
sorrow or joy.
That is, as Emery notes, unlike in the case of Cartesian anthropology,
here the soul is not to be identified with thought (or consciousness). It

achevée qui est la totalité, l’autonomie, l’incommunicabilité absolue. Elle n’est pas
un tout définitif, elle demande à s’unir à un autre” (translation mine).
122
		 Bonino, “L’âme séparée,” 75–76 : “Qu’il ne faut pas majorer les conséquences de la
thèse de la non-personnalité de l’âme séparée. Saint Thomas donne ici à ‘personne’
un sens métaphysique très précis et donc limité: la personne est un tout complet
subsistant de nature rationnelle, définition qui ne s’applique effectivement pas à
l’âme séparée puisqu’elle n’est qu’une partie subsistante d’un tout qui n’existe plus
comme tel. Mais cela n’implique aucunement que saint Thomas refuse à l’âme
séparée les propriétés qui définissent ce que nous appelons aujourd’hui la personnalité, c’est-à-dire l’activité cognitive, les mouvements de l’affectivité, la conscience
de soi” (emphasis added).

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is not simply a res cogitans, first because it is not a complete substance123
as Descartes proposes, and secondly, because there is a “real difference
between the soul and its powers.”124 As stated above, the soul is a substantial form. Emery explains:
Since the soul is a form, it is in act, not in potency. To identify the
soul and thought would signify that we are always engaged in the
act of thinking, which experience clearly disproves. Thus St. Thomas
holds that the soul is act and form (first act) as regards its essence.
The soul’s operations (second act: to know, to will), for their part,
are really distinct from the soul’s essence.125
In other words, the separated soul should not be reduced to its act
of understanding or its act of willing. It is more than the operations it
performs and is really distinct from these. Consequently, it seems that this
modern, more subjective account of “person” (i.e., the individuality and
incommunicability of one’s self-consciousness, act of existence, and continued operations, particularly that of understanding) is incomplete. The
separated soul should not be thought of as simply a “center of consciousness” in the Cartesian sense, but as a “conscious quasi-substance”126 that is
perhaps better called a “semi-person,” to use Cajetan’s term. Any modern,
existential sense of “person” must be subordinate to and ordered to the
metaphysical notion of the human person found in Aquinas. As Hugon
also notes, “The separated soul exists a bit in the manner of a person—it is
what lives, that which acts with consciousness and freedom—but it is not
the person in the strict sense, because it remains essentially the form of the
human body, the essential part of the human composite, and because it
necessarily aspires to this reunion, from which will result, once again, the
human personhood.”127
		This is my addition, although Emery makes it clear earlier in his article that the
soul is not a complete substance, because “the complete substance is the human
individual, not the soul; thus we can speak of the soul as a substance only in a
derivative sense (per reductionem)” (“The Unity of Man,” 222).
124
		Emery, “The Unity of Man,” 223.
125
		Emery, “The Unity of Man,” 223.
126
		 As a form, the soul is in reality a substantial principle, not a complete substance of
itself, or as mentioned above, it is a hoc aliquid, only in the first sense. I thank Fr.
Raphael Mary Salzillo, O.P., for all his helpful comments.
127
		Hugon, “Si l’âme séparée est une personne,” 594 : “L’âme séparée existe un peu à
la manière d’une personne, elle est ce qui vit, ce qui agit avec conscience et liberté;
mais elle n’est pas la personne au sens strict, parce qu’elle reste essentiellement
123

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Conclusion
From all that we have seen, therefore, it should be evident that, while it is
true that the human person is a composite that is corrupted at death, nevertheless, one should not downplay the fact that the soul that remains is not
only incorporeal, subsistent, incorruptible, and immortal but also—even
when separated—individual, personal, and a free and conscious subject of
attribution, the principle of its own act of being128 (caused by God) and its
own operations. It is the “essential part” of the human person, the noblest
principle of the composite, whose being is the being in which the composite subsists.
The separated soul is not something thrown aside until the resurrection
of the body. It continues to understand, remember, and love, although
in a manner different from the way it did in the body. It is something so
personal that, even before the general resurrection, the soul will be judged
for the deeds the person did in this life and will immediately either begin
its purification (if still necessary for a just soul) or receive its eternal reward
or punishment, for which it will experience either great joy or sorrow,
respectively. In fact, the separated soul retains a kind of consciousness, and
so can perhaps be termed a “semi-person” or a “person” in a wider, existential sense, although it is not a person in the objective, metaphysical sense.
However, it is most fitting for the soul to be reunited with its body again
in the final resurrection, since it will only then be complete in its specific
nature (as the form of the body), and its then-incorruptible body will also
be able to participate in the overflowing joy (or sorrow, in the case of the
wicked) experienced by the soul. In this way, the composite will now be
perfected in both body and soul, adding to the happiness (or unhappiness)
of the human person in extension, although not in intensity.
N&V

forme du corps humain, partie essentielle du composé humain et qu’elle aspire
nécessairement à cette réunion d’où résultera, une nouvelle fois, la personnalité
humaine” (translation mine).
128
		Aquinas explains that “being is consequent upon form through itself; for by
through itself we mean according as that thing is such; and each and every thing
has being according as it has form” (SCG II, ch. 55, no. 3).

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93

Neo-Thomism and the Problem of Animal Suffering1
B. Kyle Keltz

South Plains College
Levelland, TX

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions
and their motives—of approving of some and disapproving of
others; and the fact that man is the one being who certainly deserves
this designation, is the greatest of all distinctions between him and
the lower animals.
Charles Darwin2

It has been over ten years since Michael Murray and Glenn Ross
published their article “Neo-Cartesianism and the Problem of Animal
Suffering.”3 The arguments in that article later served as a major aspect
of Murray’s defense of theism in his work on the problem of animal
suffering titled Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem
of Animal Suffering.4 Murray’s book was especially significant at the time
because few, if any, monographs had been published covering the problem of animal suffering.5
		 I am grateful to Michael J. Murray, J. Thomas Bridges, and an anonymous reviewer
for their helpful comments on previous versions of this essay.
2
Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, 2nd ed. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998
[originally 1874]), 633.
3
Michael J. Murray and Glenn Ross, “Neo-Cartesianism and the Problem of
Animal Suffering,” Faith and Philosophy 23 (2006): 169–90.
4
Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of
Animal Suffering (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
5
		Christopher Southgate’s work was published the same year: The Groaning of
1

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B. Kyle Keltz

The argument in “Neo-Cartesianism and the Problem of Animal
Suffering,” inspired by René Descartes, emphasizes that there is no
evidence proving that nonhuman animals phenomenologically experience
pain. Murray and Ross argue that, although some nonhuman animals
have physiological systems that are analogous to the systems in humans
that make the phenomenological experience of pain possible, there is no
evidence necessitating the conclusion that nonhuman animals do phenomenologically experience pain.6
They suggest it is possible that nonhuman animals exhibit pain-averse
behaviors even though they might not phenomenologically experience
pain. Murray and Ross mention that it does not seem that the actual
awareness of pain would add to the evolutionary advantage of pain-avoiding behaviors.7 Thus, if one has good reasons to believe that theism is true,
then there is room to believe that nonhuman animals do not phenomenologically experience pain, since it would seem that God would not allow
them to do so.8
Murray’s and Ross’s article is significant regarding the problem of
animal suffering in that, if nonhuman animals do not phenomenologically
experience pain, then there is no problem of animal suffering. However,
few scholars have found the neo-Cartesian position compelling. Many,
including theists, have argued that neo-Cartesian arguments fail and that
the problem of animal suffering still stands.9
Indeed, some theists have even argued that the problem is probably
worse than many have thought.10 So, although there have been a few other
major attempts at defending theism from the problem of animal suffering
(involving evolutionary and soul-making theodicies), it seems that theists
Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2008).
6
		Murray and Ross emphasize that they do not necessarily believe that neo-Cartesianism is true, but rather that the possibility of its truth is significant for the
problem of animal suffering ( “Neo-Cartesianism,” 186).
7
		Murray and Ross, “Neo-Cartesianism,” 177.
8
		Murray and Ross, “Neo-Cartesianism,” 171–72, 186.
9
		For examples, see: Nicola Hoggard Creegan, Animal Suffering and the Problem
of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 31–32, 51–53; Robert Francescotti, “The Problem of Animal Pain and Suffering,” in The Blackwell Companion
to the Problem of Evil, ed. Justin P. McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder (Somerset, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2013), 114–21; and Trent Dougherty, The Problem
of Animal Pain: A Theodicy for All Creatures Great and Small (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014), 56–95.
10
See Dustin Crummett, “The Problem of Evil and the Suffering of Creeping
Things,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 82, no. 1 (2017): l 71–88.

Neo-Thomism and the Problem of Animal Suffering

95

have not been successful at providing compelling arguments against the
problem of animal suffering.11
With this situation in mind, the present article attempts to provide a
solution to the problem of animal suffering similar to Murray and Ross’s
neo-Cartesian arguments. Particularly, I will discuss a solution to the
problem of animal suffering involving concepts taken from the medieval
philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas. First, I will briefly discuss the
problem of animal suffering and how the possible neo-Cartesian positions
regarding nonhuman animal minds avoid the problem. These positions
will help provide a contrast when I next describe Aquinas’s positions
regarding animal souls and human self-awareness. After describing the
neo-Cartesian and Thomistic positions, I will discuss contemporary philosophical and scientific viewpoints regarding animal rationality, metacognition, and episodic memory. The contemporary evidence will help me to
propose a neo-Thomistic view of animal minds in relation to the problem
of animal suffering. After considering an objection, I will conclude that
the neo-Thomistic view provides a more compelling alternative to the
neo-Cartesian solution to the problem of animal suffering.
Animal Minds and the Problem of Animal Suffering
The problem of animal suffering slowly emerged over the years as modern
science made discoveries regarding the age of the earth and the number of
creatures that lived prior to the arrival of anatomically modern humans.
Traditional answers to the problem of evil did not cover these new discoveries. For example, fossil remains indicating that animals lived and died
much earlier than humans suggest that animals were dying and suffering
before Adam and Eve could have sinned. This not only sheds doubt on
		Creegan and Dougherty both reject neo-Cartesianism, but neither provides
compelling alternatives. Creegan does not offer a theodicy because she thinks
we may never fully understand why evil exists in creation (Animal Suffering, 55).
Dougherty offers an animal soul-making theodicy in The Problem of Animal Pain
that seems to contradict the very raison d’être of soul-making theodicies. For example, although Dougherty provides plenty of argumentation as to why God should
resurrect animals in the eschaton, he does not explain how the earthly lives of
animals can give rise to personality traits that cannot surface without the existence
of actual or possible suffering (Michael J. Murray, review of The Problem of Animal
Pain: A Theodicy for All Creatures Great and Small, by Trent Dougherty, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 78 [2015]: 138). Elsewhere, Southgate
makes little progress with arguments that he mentions are not necessarily meant
to solve the problem of animal suffering, but merely to explain why God cannot
prevent/eliminate animal suffering (The Groaning of Creation, 15–17).

11

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traditional Fall theodicies but also causes problems for free-will and
soul-making theodicies. Indeed, before Darwin, theodicies seemed to be
solely concerned with solving the problem of human suffering. In light
of this, proponents of the problem of animal suffering emphasize that an
all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God would most likely not include
millions of years of animal suffering in the process by which he decided
to create humanity. Thus, given the amount of animal suffering found in
the earth’s natural history, an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God
most likely does not exist.
Neo-Cartesianism
As mentioned, the neo-Cartesian answer to this problem is to deny that
nonhuman animals are aware of any pain. If nonhuman animals lack
phenomenological awareness of pain and suffering, then there can be
no problem of animal suffering. Murray and Ross discuss four similar
but different options from which neo-Cartesians can choose regarding
animals and pain. (1) “Many non-human creatures are conscious inasmuch
as they are alive, awake and have sensations. . . . Yet, unlike the sensory
states possessed by humans, the mechanisms whereby these organisms
have access to the world lack any phenomenal character whatsoever.”12
(2) “For a mental state to be a conscious state (phenomenally) requires an
accompanying higher-order mental state (a HOT) that has that state as its
intentional object. . . . Only humans have the cognitive faculties required
to form the conception of themselves being in a first-order state that one
must have in order to have a HOT.”13 (3) “Some non-human creatures
have states that have intrinsic phenomenal qualities analogous to those
possessed by humans when they are in states of pain. These creatures lack,
however, any higher-order states of being aware of themselves as being in
first-order states.”14 and (4) “Most creatures lack the cognitive faculties
required to be in a higher-order state of recognizing themselves to be in a
first-order state of pain. Those [non-human creatures] that can on occasion
achieve a second-order access to their first-order states of pain, nonetheless
do not have the capacity to regard that second-order state as undesirable.”15
So, more briefly, according to Murray and Ross, neo-Cartesianism
entails that animals either (1) lack phenomenal consciousness, (2) lack the
higher-order mental states required for phenomenal consciousness, (3) are
		Murray and Ross, “Neo-Cartesianism,” 175.
Murray and Ross, “Neo-Cartesianism,” 176.
14
		Murray and Ross, “Neo-Cartesianism,” 176.
15
Murray and Ross, “Neo-Cartesianism,” 177.
12
13

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phenomenally conscious of pain but lack higher-order mental states, or (4)
are phenomenally aware of pain, with some having higher-order mental
states regarding the pain but lacking the capacity to regard such higher
states as undesirable. If any one of these four options were true, then the
apparent suffering found in nature would be illusory and the problem of
animal suffering would dissolve.
These four possible options are called neo-Cartesian because they draw
inspiration from Descartes famous position regarding animal minds.
Descartes’s philosophy entails that the immaterial mind/soul provides
human beings with the capacity for conscious mental states.16 Thus, if
animals do not demonstrate the capacity for rational thought, then it
seems they would lack both minds/souls and phenomenal consciousness.17
These four neo-Cartesian positions emphasize that there is no evidence
necessitating the conclusion that animals possess phenomenal consciousness. Thus, they conclude that God’s non-existence does not necessarily
follow from the appearance of animal suffering.
Thomism
Thomas Aquinas is also famous for his position regarding animal minds.
Following Aristotle, Aquinas believed that human beings possess rational
souls while animals possess only sensitive souls.18 Humans are capable of
consciousness and movement, as are other animals, but humans are the
only animals with the abilities of the intellect and will. This crucial difference entails that nonhuman animals lack the ability to understand what
they experience and are unable to act rationally:
In the souls of brute animals . . . there is no operation superior to
those of the sensitive part, since they neither understand nor reason.
This is evident from the fact that all animals of the same species
René Descartes, Discourse on Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking
the Truth in the Sciences, part IV.
17
		Some of Descartes’s writings indicate that his mature view regarding animals was
closer to the Aristotelian/Thomistic view than to the view that many attribute to
him (see Gary Steiner, “Descartes, Christianity, and Contemporary Speciesism,”
in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed. Paul
Waldau and Kimberly Patton [New York: Columbia University Press, 2006],
118–23, and John Cottingham, Descartes’ Treatment of Animals,” in Descartes,
ed. John Cottingham [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 225–33).
However, much of his philosophy entails that animals lack phenomenal consciousness.
18
		For example, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles [SCG] II, ch. 60.
16

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operate in the same way, as though moved by nature and not as
operating by art; every swallow builds its nest and every spider spins
its web, in the same manner. The souls of brutes, then, are incapable
of any operation that does not involve the body.19
As will be discussed below, the nonhuman-animal lack of intellect and
will entails that they are not moral agents and that their suffering is not
morally significant.
This might seem to be almost identical with the Cartesian position.20
Indeed, Cartesianism and Thomism are similar in that rationality serves
in both as a criterion for moral agency and personhood. However, there are
significant differences between the two positions. Cartesianism believes
that the mind/soul is what gives humans the ability to possess consciousness and rationality. Nonhuman animals are thought to be alive, but
irrational and nonconscious. This, of course, is why neo-Cartesianism is
concerned mainly with determining to what degree nonhuman animals
possess phenomenal consciousness. Thomism holds that the soul is the
principle of life in biological organisms and is that which distinguishes
life from nonlife. There are different types of souls (vegetative, sensitive,
and rational), and they possess different types of abilities (reproduction,
movement, and rationality, respectively).
For Cartesianism, testing for rationality in nonhuman animals is only
one way for trying to determine if they are conscious. If they possess
rationality, then they necessarily possess a mind/soul and are conscious.
So, neo-Cartesianism is mainly concerned with whether animals have
any degree of phenomenal consciousness, not necessarily whether they
exhibit human levels of rationality. For Thomism, testing for rationality
and self-consciousness is the main ways to determine if animals are persons
capable of moral agency. This is because, according to Aquinas, consciousness is necessary to explain many animal behaviors:
For the type of every act or operation is determined by an object.
Every operation of the soul is the act of a potentiality—either active
		Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] II-II, q. 25, a. 3. All quotes from the
ST are from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English
Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947).
20
		 Regardless of the debate regarding Descartes’s position on animals, for sake of ease,
I will use the terms “Cartesian position” and “Cartesianism” to refer to the view
often attributed to Descartes entailing that animals lack phenomenal consciousness because they lack immaterial minds/souls.
19

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or passive. Now the objects of passive potentialities stand to these as
the causal agents which bring each potentiality into its proper activity; and it is thus that visible objects, and indeed all sensible things,
are related to sight and to the other senses.21
Here he is mentioning that objects in nature act on the passive senses
of organisms. If an organism reacts to sights, sounds, smells, and so on, it
is inferred that such an organism possesses the sense or senses that explain
such behavior. Aquinas was not concerned with “what it is like” to be an
organism, but only whether an organism possesses the ability to sense its
environment. John Haldane helps to explain this further:
There is an old Aristotelian principle according to which acts are
distinguished by their respective objects, powers are known by
their acts, and substances are defined by their powers. . . .What is
of prime importance in determining if an individual is sensate is
not the question of what it is like to be it, or even whether that
Nagelian question arises; but rather the issue of how the individual
is related to its environment. We do not need telepathy in order to
attribute sensory awareness, for perception shows itself in the eye of
the perceiver—vultus est index animi. On this basis there can be no
serious doubt that dogs see other dogs.22
So, as Haldane suggests, Thomism does not entail a skepticism toward
animal consciousness, while neo-Cartesianism does. If an organism reacts
to its environment, it is assumed that the organism is conscious of that to
which it reacts.
Aquinas on Reasoning and Self-Knowledge
In Thomism, rationality and self-awareness are the main criteria for moral
agency and personhood for two major reasons. One is that the intellect and
will are thought to be immaterial, making it possible for rational animals
to possess free will. The other is that Aquinas’s theory of self-knowledge
entails that animals without intellects cannot be self-aware. To better
understand these concepts, it will be good to discuss them further and
		Thomas Aquinas, In II de anima, lec. 6, no. 305, found in Aristotle’s De Anima,
in the version of William of Moerbeke and the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas,
trans. Kenelm Foster and Sylvester Humphries (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1951).
22
		John Haldane, Reasonable Faith (New York: Routledge, 2010), 122–23.
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draw out their implications for personhood.
Reasoning
The Aristotelian/Thomistic concept of reasoning sometimes gets confused
in the contemporary discussion regarding animal minds. Indeed, the term
“rational” can mean many different things, depending on the discipline of
the person using it. For example, Alex Kacelnik has emphasized that there
are at least three different meanings of “rational” used across the disciplines
of philosophy, psychology, economics, and biology.23 Thus, it is crucial to
be clear on the meaning of this term as understood in Thomism.
Following the Islamic philosopher Avicenna, Aquinas believes that
nonhuman animals possess an “estimative power” that allows them to
recognize intentions that are not directly perceived by their senses.24 The
estimative power is similar to animal survival instincts and, among other
things, recognizes whether something is useful or harmful to the animal
perceiving.25 This power involves nonhuman animals processing and reacting to sense data they perceive and resembles empirical induction.
While nonhuman animals only appear to use logical reasoning (as they
really use their estimative power), rational animals (humans) are able to
reason because they possess immaterial intellects. For example, in a simple
syllogism, there are both universal and particular concepts involved. The
intellect is necessary to know and understand the universal statement that
“all men are mortal.” The senses are necessary to observe the particular
statement that “Socrates is a man.” The intellect concludes that “Socrates
is mortal” based on the relation between the particular Socrates (who
is judged to be a man) and the universal concept of humanity (which is
known to always include mortality). Without the intellect, it would be
impossible to know universal concepts, because universal concepts are
immaterial.26 When universal concepts (forms) are conjoined with matter,
they become particular instances of themselves. But observing a particular human will never give full knowledge of humanity. It is only when
the universal and immaterial concept of humanity is abstracted from a
particular human and stored in the immaterial intellect that knowledge of
humanity is possible.
Thus, Aquinas believes that nonhuman animals are not capable of
		Alex Kacelnik, “Meanings of Rationality,” in Rational Animals? ed. Susan Hurley
and Matthew Nudds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 87–106.
24
		ST I, q. 78, a. 4; Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de anima [Q.D. de anima], a. 13.
25
		Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2003), 258.
26
		See ST I, q. 75, a. 5, and De veritate, q. 10, a. 8.
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complex abstract reasoning. Nonhuman animals are completely physical
and do not possess immaterial intellects.27 Thus, they are unable to “know”
universal forms and make judgments based on these forms and their
relations. All they are able to do is observe particulars and react to their
observations through their estimative powers.28
Self-Knowledge
Besides reasoning, Aquinas believes that the immaterial intellect makes it
possible for rational animals to possess self-knowledge. The intellect makes
this possible in two distinct ways: the self can be known through philosophical argumentation and also through the act of understanding.29 The
latter way is the most important for the current discussion.
The intellect, according to Aquinas, is composed of two distinct powers:
the passive intellect and the active intellect.30 Aquinas believes that, when
the active intellect abstracts a form and deposits it into the passive intellect, the knower not only knows the form but also knows that they are
knowing.31 So, in the act of knowing, the mind perceives itself. This is intuitive self-knowledge, since it is gained through direct cognition, as opposed
to the discursive reasoning involved in philosophical argumentation.32
Aquinas says that, in the act of knowing, the intellect judges that there
is an “I” that is distinct from the object that is known.33 This is because,
as it gains knowledge, the intellect not only knows but also knows that
it knows. The knower cognizes objects as objects that are known by
a knower, an “I,” and this creates an intuitive subject–object relation
between knower and thing known.34
When the “I” is perceived in the act of knowing, the intellect judges
that the “I” exists.35 Aquinas believes that, when the intellect cognizes

		SCG II, ch. 82.
		This would not qualify as rationality for Aquinas, but it is similar to the understanding of “rationality” in biology, which understands it as performing actions
that are conducive to fitness. See Kacelnik, “Meanings of Rationality,” 87–106.
29
		 Therese Scarpelli Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), 63–64. See ST I, q. 87, a. 1, and De veritate, q. 10, a. 8.
30
		ST I, q. 79, aa. 2–3; Q.D. de anima, a. 4.
31
		ST I, q. 87, a. 3; q. 93, a. 7, ad 4; SCG III, ch. 46.
32
		For an in-depth treatment of this process of intuitive self-awareness see Cory,
Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, 69–133.
33
		Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, 84.
34
		Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, 204.
35
		Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, 84.
27
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something, it judges that the thing exists.36 Thus, if the intellect cognizes
an “I” in the process of knowing, it also judges that the “I” exists.37 Over
time, this awareness of an “I” produces a diachronic unity of consciousness
in that it is known that the same “I” remains throughout all experiences.38
Nonhuman animals are thought to lack self-awareness because they
are unable to perform acts of the mind such as simple apprehension and
reasoning. They can sense and remember things, but this happens only on
the level of particulars. Their lack of an immaterial intellect renders them
incapable of storing universal concepts. Accordingly, they do not experience the act of knowing like rational animals do.
Contemporary Theories Regarding Rationality and Self-Consciousness
Now that Aquinas’s position has been discussed, it will be good to review
contemporary research regarding nonhuman animal minds. Since Thomism doubts the existence of abstract reasoning and self-awareness in
nonhuman animals, I will discuss only contemporary research regarding
these concepts. So, in what follows, I will focus on contemporary findings
regarding animal rationality, metacognition, and episodic memory.
Abstract Reasoning
As mentioned, research into nonhuman animal rationality can be confusing because of the many different uses of the term “rationality.” However,
there has been plenty of contemporary research conducted on the specific
type of abstract reasoning that Thomism entails. The literature on nonhuman animal rationality is massive, and space precludes a proper review.
Thus, I will emphasize only the most relevant theories and their objections.
There are many researchers who believe there is evidence suggesting
that some animals are capable of various types of logical inferences, including exclusionary inferences (great apes and dogs39), transitive inferences
(monkeys, baboons, and sea lions40), and causal inferences (apes, monkeys,
		De veritate, q. 10, a. 8.
		Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, 84.
38
		Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, 207.
39
		For examples, see: Josep Call, “Descartes’ Two Errors: Reason and Reflection in
the Great Apes,” in Hurley and Nudds, Rational Animals? 219–34; Call, “Inferences by Exclusion in the Great Apes: The Effect of Age and Species,” Animal
Cognition 9 (2006): 393–403; and Ágnes Erdőhegyi, József Topál, Zsófia Virányi,
and Ádám Miklósi, “Dog-Logic: Inferential Reasoning in a Two-Way Choice Task
and Its Restricted Use,” Animal Behaviour 74 (2007): 725–37.
40
		 For examples, see: Brendan O. McGonigle and Margaret Chalmers, “Are Monkeys
Logical?” Nature 267 (1977): 694–96; McGonigle and Chalmers, “Monkeys
36
37

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and rats41).42 For example, in an experiment involving several different
breeds, researchers tested for the existence of the ability for exclusionary
inference in dogs.43 The tests involved a ball and two containers. In the
tests, an experimenter would call the dog, show the dog a ball, and place
the ball under one of the identical containers in a way so that the dog could
not see the location of the ball. Afterward, the experimenter would provide
the dog with information regarding the location of the ball by either lifting
both containers, the empty container, or the container with the ball. The
dog was then allowed to attempt to find the ball for a reward. A second
version of the tests involved the lifting of the containers by strings without an experimenter present. The tests revealed that the dogs performed
significantly higher than chance results and led the researchers to conclude
that dogs are able to perform exclusionary inferences.44
However, there is no consensus on the issue of abstract rationality in
animals, as its existence is doubted by other researchers.45 For example,
Are Rational!” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 45B (1992):
198–228; Ronald J. Schusterman, Colleen Reichmuth Kastak, and David Kastak,
“The Cognitive Sea Lion: Meaning and Memory in the Laboratory and in Nature,”
in The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition, ed. Marc Bekoff, Colin Allen, and Gordon M. Burghardt (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2002), 217–28; and Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney, “The
Structure of Social Knowledge in Monkeys,” in Bekoff, Allan, and Burghardt, The
Cognitive Animal, 379–84.
41
		For examples, see: Anthony Dickinson and David Shanks, “Instrumental Action
and Causal Representation,” in Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate,
ed. Dan Sperber, David Premack, and Ann James Premack (Oxford: Clarendon,
1995), 5–25; Call, “Descartes’ Two Errors,” 219, 234; Aaron P. Blaisdell, Kosuke
Sawa, Kenneth J. Leising, and Michael R. Waldmann, “Causal Reasoning in Rats,”
Science 311 (2006): 1020–22; and Marc D. Hauser and Laurie R. Santos, “The
Evolutionary Ancestry of Our Knowledge of Tools: From Percepts to Concepts,”
in Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representation, ed. Eric
Margolis and Stephen Laurence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007),
267–88.
42
		 Jacob Beck, “Do Animals Engage in Conceptual Thought?” Philosophy Compass 7
(2012): 225–26.
43
		Erdőhegyi, Topál, Virányi, and Miklósi, “Dog-Logic,” 725–37.
44
		Erdőhegyi, Topál, Virányi, and Miklósi, “Dog-Logic,” 734–35.
45
		For examples, see: José Luis Bermúdez, Thinking Without Words (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 109–32; Derek C. Penn and Daniel J. Povinelli,
“Causal Cognition in Human and Nonhuman Animals: A Comparative, Critical
Review,” Annual Review of Psychology 58 (2007): 97–118; and Derek C. Penn,
Keith J. Holyoak, and Daniel J. Povinelli, “Darwin’s Mistake: Explaining the
Discontinuity Between Human and Nonhuman Minds,” Behavioral and Brain

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José Bermúdez argues that it is possible that animals are not using the
same kind of abstract logic as humans use, but are instead using a type of
proto-logic.46 Bermúdez believes that nonhuman animals are unable to
perform abstract reasoning without language. Since nonhuman animals
can think only nonlinguistically, they are unable to make truth judgments
regarding their thoughts, since they lack the means to label their thoughts
as true or false.
This would entail that the dogs were not performing an exclusionary
inference such as:
1. Either the ball is in container A or the ball is in container B.
2. It is not true that the ball is in container A.
3. Therefore, it is true that the ball is in container B.
Instead, they would perform a proto-logical process similar to:
1. The ball is absent from container A.
2. The ball is in container B.
Without the ability to form thoughts about thoughts, such as “either A
or B,” the dogs would be unable to formulate the proposition that establishes
a disjunctive syllogism. Furthermore, even if they were able to establish the
first proposition, they would be unable to formulate a truth-conditional
thought such as “it is not true that A” so as to guarantee the truth of the
conclusion. Instead, utilizing a type of proto-logic, the dogs would be able
to quickly learn to associate two subcontraries: “The ball is absent from
container A” is associated with “The ball is in container B.”
Thus, it could appear that the dogs use exclusionary inferences, when
in fact they are simply associating subcontraries. They may not consider
abstract logical relations, but merely perform the action that usually leads
to a reward upon observing the absence of the ball in one of two containers.
Their actions appear logical, but the process that determines their actions
is not based on logic and does not produce necessarily valid conclusions.
Regarding the other types of reasoning, researchers have proposed ways
in which it is possible that animals appear to use abstract reasoning but do
not.47 For example, in addition to Bermúdez’s proposal, Michael Rescorla
Sciences 31 (2008): 109–30.
		José Luis Bermúdez, “Animal Reasoning and Proto-Logic,” in Hurley and Nudds,
Rational Animals? 127–38.
47
		Beck, “Do Animals Engage in Conceptual Thought?” 226.
46

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suggests it is possible that the appearance of exclusionary inferences can
be explained by a process of Bayesian updating (named for Thomas Bayes)
over cognitive maps.48 Associative learning and/or innate biases are also
thought to provide an explanation for the appearance of transitive and
causal inferences.49
Alongside this debate, there is a major position in the field of psychology called “dual-system theory” that is pertinent to the current discussion.
Dual-system theorists hold that there are two distinct reasoning systems
involved in human cognition.50 System 1 involves associative and intuitive
processes, while system 2 involves rule-based and analytical processes.
System-1 processes are thought to be automatic and non-conscious, while
system-2 processes are thought to be controlled and conscious.51 Table 1
illustrates the two types of systems involved in dual-systems theory.

		Michael Rescorla, “Cognitive Maps and the Language of Thought,” The British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2009): 377–407.
49
		 See: Thomas R. Zentall, “The Case for a Cognitive Approach to Animal Learning
and Behavior,” Behavioural Processes 54 (2001): 65–78; C. De Lillo, D. Floreano,
and F. Antinucci, “Transitive Choices by a Simple, Fully Connected, Backpropagation Neural Network: Implications for the Comparative Study of Transitive
Inference,” Animal Cognition 4 (2001): 61–68; Collin Allen, “Transitive Inference
in Animals: Reasoning or Conditioned Associations?” in Hurley and Nudds,
Rational Animals? 175–86; and Penn and Povinelli, “Causal Cognition.”
50
		For a somewhat recent explanation and review of dual-system theories, see Keith
Frankish, “Dual-Process and Dual-System Theories of Reasoning,” Philosophy
Compass 5 (2010): 914–26.
51
		Frankish, “Dual-Process and Dual-System Theories,” 914.
48

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Table 1: Features Attributed to Aspects of the Dual-Systems

Process

Content

Evolution

System 1

System 2

Automatic
Nonconscious or preconscious
Heuristic
Associative
Actual
Concrete
Contextualized
Evolutionarily old
Shared with animals
Nonverbal
Serves genetic goals (“shortleash” control)

Controlled
Conscious
Analytic
Rule-based
Hypothetical
Abstract
Decontextualized
Evolutionarily recent
Unique to humans
Language-involving
Serves individual goals (“longleash” control)

Source: Condensed from Frankish, "Dual-Process an Dual-System Theories of Reasoning" (see note 50), 992.

Dual-process and dual-system theories have been prominent in the
field of psychology for decades, starting in the late 1970s.52 Researchers
argue for these theories mainly based on findings from studies performed
on human reasoning processes.53 But there are dual-system theorists who
believe that processes in system 2 are evolutionarily late and uniquely
human.54 For example, Jonathan Evans explains:
		 Frankish, “Dual-Process and Dual-System Theories,” 916; Jonathan St. B. T. Evans
and Keith E. Stanovich, “Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing
the Debate,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 8, no. 3 (2013): 223–41, at 223.
53
		See: Seymour Epstein, “Integration of the Cognitive and the Psychodynamic
Unconscious,” American Psychologist 49 (1994): 709–24; Eliot R. Smith and Jamie
DeCoster, “Dual-Process Models in Social and Cognitive Psychology: Conceptual
Integration and Links to Underlying Memory Systems,” Personality and Social
Psychology Review 4 (2000): 108–31; Arie W. Kruglanski and Edward Orehek,
“Partitioning the Domain of Social Inference: Dual Mode and Systems Models
and Their Alternatives,” Annual Review of Psychology 58 (2007): 291–316; and
Frankish, “Dual-Process and Dual-System Theories.”
54
		For examples, see: Jonathan St. B. T. Evans and David E. Over, Rationality and
Reasoning (Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 1996); Jonathan St. B. T. Evans, Thinking Twice: Two Minds in One Brain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010);
and Keith E. Stanovich, Rationality and the Reflective Mind (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
52

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It is evident that humans resemble other animals in some respects
but are very different in others. Quite obviously, no other animal
can engage in the forms of abstract hypothetical thought that
underlie science, engineering, literature, and many other human
activities. More basically, we propose that other animals are much
more limited in their metarepresentational and simulation abilities,
thus leading to limitations (compared with humans) in their ability to carry out forms of behavior that depend on prior appraisal
of possible consequences. Thus, a key defining feature of Type 2
processing—the feature that makes humans unique—is cognitive
decoupling: the ability to distinguish supposition from belief and to
aid rational choices by running thought experiments.55
There are many critics of dual-system theories, despite their major influence in psychology. Opponents have argued that dual-system theories are
often formulated using vague terms, contain unreliably aligned attributes
(i.e., supposed attributes of systems 1 and 2 are not consistently observed
together), view different processes as types when they should view them as
styles, and are supported by ambiguous or unconvincing evidence.56 These
critics often suggest that the evidence put forward for dual-system theories
can just as easily support single-process theories.57
However, Evans and Keith Stanovich emphasize that these critics often
overgeneralize and make attacks that are aimed at all dual-system theories
but do not apply to many of the nuanced dual-system positions.58 They
argue that there is plenty of evidence to be found that supports a carefully
		Evans and Stanovich, “Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition,” 236.
		Evans and Stanovich, “Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition,” 227.
57
		For examples, see: Arie W. Kruglanski, Woo Young Chun, Hans Peter Erb, Antonio Pierro, Lucia Mannetti, and Scott Spiegel, “A Parametric Unimodel of Human
Judgment: Integrating Dual-Process Frameworks in Social Cognition from a
Single-Mode Perspective,” in Social Judgments: Implicit and Explicit Processes,
ed. Joseph P. Forgas, Kipling D. Williams, and William von Hippel (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 137–61; Magda Osman, “An Evaluation of
Dual-Process Theories of Reasoning,” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 11 (2004):
988–1010; Gideon Keren and Yaacov Schul, “Two Is Not Always Better Than
One: A Critical Evaluation of Two-System Theories,” Perspectives on Psychological
Science 4 (2009): 533–50; Arie W. Kruglanski and Gerd Gigerenzer, “Intuitive and
Deliberate Judgments Are Based on Common Principles,” Psychological Review
118 (2011): 97–109; and Peter Carruthers, “Animal Minds Are Real, (Distinctively) Human Minds Are Not,” American Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2013):
233–48.
58
		Evans and Stanovich, “Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition,” 223–35.
55
56

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defined dual-process theory: “The evidence [for dual-process theories]
is compelling and . . . a very clear theoretical basis for the two-process
distinction has now emerged. Such theories can account for a wide range
of phenomena in the reasoning, judgment, and decision-making literatures
that have been the subject of several recent books.”59
Although the debate continues regarding whether animals are capable
of abstract reasoning, there is plenty of evidence to support the conclusion
that animals most likely are not capable of such reasoning. Although it
might appear that they are able to perform what could be labeled as logical reasoning, there is often an explanation for their behavior that does
not necessitate invoking abstract logic. At a minimum, it is reasonable
to conclude that nonhuman animals do not act rationally, but rather are
guided by system-1 processes.
Self-Awareness
There are several theories regarding which attributes would provide
evidence of self-awareness if found in nonhuman animals. The most widely
researched include whether nonhuman animals possess mind-reading
capabilities (i.e., theory of mind), mirror self-recognition, metacognition,
and episodic memory.60 In what follows, due to space constraints, I will
mainly discuss the debates regarding nonhuman animal metacognition and
episodic memory.61
Metacognition
An area of research that is extremely pertinent to this essay is the scientific
and philosophical study of human and nonhuman metacognition. As with
rationality, there is more than one understanding of “metacognition” in
		Evans and Stanovich, “Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition,” 237.
		 For a good discussion of contemporary research into animal self-consciousness, see
Kristin Andrews, The Animal Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animal
Cognition (New York: Routledge, 2015), 70–77.
61
		I will not discuss mirror self-recognition because I do not think it provides
compelling evidence for self-awareness. Skeptical researchers have argued that
nonhuman animals might simply recognize their own bodies, not their own selves
(e.g., Cecilia M. Heyes, “Reflections on Self-Recognition in Primates,” Animal
Behaviour 47 [1994]: 909–19, esp. 915), or recognize that their body and the
body in the mirror are similar (for example, see Thomas Suddendorf and David L.
Butler, “The Nature of Visual Self-Recognition,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17
[2013]: 121–27). Similarly, as will be shown below, it seems that self-recognition
can be explained through anoetic awareness instead of autonoetic awareness. Also,
I will not discuss nonhuman animal mind-reading for space reasons and because
metacognition and episodic memory are more pertinent to Aquinas’s concepts.
59
60

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the literature. Metacognition is often narrowly defined as “thinking about
one’s own thoughts.” More broadly, Joëlle Proust defines it as “the kinds of
processes involved, and the self-knowledge gained, in thinking about, and
in controlling, one’s own thinking.”62
However, it is highly debated as to what qualifies as metacognition.
Some researchers believe that metacognition necessarily involves representing one’s own mental state as a mental state.63 This is known as the
“self-attributive” view. A self-attributive thought would be a self-referential second-order representation of a first-order representation (e.g., “I
believe that I know/perceive/believe/feel/etc. that it is raining”).64 Other
researchers believe that metacognition merely requires controlling and
monitoring one’s own cognitive processes.65 This is thought to possibly
involve nonconceptual, representational processes and is known as the
“self-evaluative” view.
The main debate regarding nonhuman animals and metacognition
is not whether they are capable of self-attributive metacognition, but
whether they are capable of self-evaluative metacognition. Accordingly,
many researchers argue that nonhuman animals are capable of self-evaluative metacognition.66 For example, in one study conducted by Kazuo
Fujita, two tufted capuchin monkeys were tested for the ability to recognize their own memories.67 In the study, they were presented with a sample
		Joëlle Proust, “Metacognition,” Philosophy Compass 5, no. 11 (November 2010):
989–98, at 989.
63
		Proust, “Metacognition,” 989.
64
		Santiago Arango-Muñoz, “Two Levels of Metacognition,” Philosophia 39, no. 1
(2011): 71–82, at 73.
65
		Proust, “Metacognition,” 989.
66
		For examples, see: Wendy E. Shields, J. David Smith, and David A. Washburn,
“Uncertain Responses by Humans and Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) in a
Psychophysical Same-Different Task,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
126 (1997): 147–64; Robert R. Hampton, “Rhesus Monkeys Know When
They Remember,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America 98 (2001): 5359–62; David A. Washburn, J. David Smith, and
Wendy E. Shields, “Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Immediately Generalize
the Uncertain Response,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior
Processes 32 (2006): 185–89; J. David Smith, Michael J. Beran, Joshua S. Redford,
and David A. Washburn, “Dissociating Uncertainty Responses and Reinforcement Signals in the Comparative Study of Uncertainty Monitoring,” Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General 135 (2006): 282–97; and Nate Kornell, Lisa K.
Son, and Herbert S. Terrace, “Transfer of Metacognitive Skill and Hint Seeking in
Monkeys,” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 64–71.
67
		Kazuo Fujita, “Metamemory in Tufted Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus apella),”
Animal Cognition 12 (2009): 575–85.
62

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shape on a computer screen. After a delayed period of time, they were given
the choice to bring up a screen that would present them with nine shapes
(one of which matched the initial shape) or bring up a screen that had an
escape button. If they chose the matching task and then correctly chose the
matching shape, they were rewarded with food 100 percent of the time. If
they chose the wrong shape, they received nothing and a buzzer sounded
for half a second. If they chose the escape screen, they were rewarded with
food 50–75 percent of the time. One of the monkeys was found to reliably
opt out of the matching task when there was a significant enough delay
between the initial shape and the choice screen. If the delay between the
screens was short enough, the same monkey regularly chose the matching
task and its accompanied guaranteed reward for a correct answer. This
suggests that capuchins are capable of monitoring and/or recognizing their
own memory traces.68 However, Fujita noted that the capuchins seemed to
have access only to the strength of their memories and not the contents.
So, although they seemed to possess metacognitive abilities regarding their
memories, these were limited.
Other researchers believe that apparently self-evaluative behaviors
in nonhuman animals are explainable through associative processes
alone, without metacognition.69 For example, David Smith notes that it
is possible that the rewards coinciding with the escape option in experiments like Fujita’s become more attractive as the monkeys associate
them with an easier reward.70 Likewise, Mike Le Pelley argues that the
behavior of the monkeys can be explained as learning to associate harder
trials with unpleasant stimuli, such as the buzzer sound.71 Thus, instead
of monitoring the strength of their own memories, it is possible that the
monkeys are simply learning to associate longer waiting periods with
unpleasant buzzer noises.
		Fujita, “Metamemory,” 583–84.
		For examples, see: Peter Carruthers, “Meta-Cognition in Animals: A Skeptical
Look,” Mind and Language 23 (2008): 58–89; Robert R. Hampton, “Multiple
Demonstrations of Metacognition in Nonhumans: Converging Evidence or
Multiple Mechanisms?” Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews 4 (2009):
17–28; J. Jozefowiez, J. E. R. Staddon, and D. T. Cerutti, “Metacognition in
Animals: How Do We Know that They Know?” Comparative Cognition and
Behavior Reviews 4 (2009): 29–39; M. E. Le Pelley, “Metacognitive Monkeys or
Associative Animals? Simple Reinforcement Learning Explains Uncertainty in
Nonhuman Animals,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition 38 (2012): 686–708.
70
		 J. David Smith, “The Study of Animal Metacognition,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences
13 (2009): 389–96, at 390.
71
		Le Pelley, “Metacognitive Monkeys or Associative Animals?” 686.
68
69

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Regardless, there are many researchers who believe that nonhuman
animals lack the physiological capacity for metacognition.72 Indeed, the
evidence has led some to formulate bold hypotheses in regard to human
uniqueness. For example, philosopher Derek Penn, psychologist Keith
Holyoak, and psychologist Daniel Povinelli have proposed what they call
the “relational reinterpretation hypothesis.” 73 The hypothesis entails that
“the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds extends . . . to
any cognitive capability that requires reinterpreting perceptual relations in
terms of higher-order, structural, role-governed relations.” 74 In particular
the hypothesis suggests that:
Animals of many taxa employ functionally compositional, particular-involving, syntactically structured mental representations about
observable features, entities, and relations in the world around
them. Furthermore, they form abstract representations about statistical regularities they perceive in the behavior of certain classes of
physical objects (e.g., observable causal relations) and other animate
agents (e.g., affiliative interactions) and are capable of using these
representations off-line to make decisions in a flexible, reliable, and
ecologically rational (i.e., adaptive) fashion. Human animals alone,
however, possess the additional capability of reinterpreting these
perceptually grounded representations in terms of higher-order,
role-governed, inferentially systematic, explicitly structural relations—or, to be more precise, of approximating these higher-order
features of a PSS [physical symbol system], subject to the evolved,
content-specific biases and processing capacity limitations of the
human brain.75
Santiago Arango-Muñoz believes that, in addition to the hypothesis
		For examples, see: Daniel J. Povinelli and Jennifer Vonk, “Chimpanzee Minds:
Suspiciously Human?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (2003): 157–60; Povinelli
and Vonk, “We Don’t Need a Microscope to Explore the Chimpanzee’s Mind,” in
Hurley and Nudds, Rational Animals? 385–412; Carruthers, “Meta-Cognition
in Animals,” 58–89; Joseph Call and Michael Tomasello, “Does the Chimpanzee
Have a Theory of Mind? 30 Years Later,” Trends in Cognitive Science 12 (2008):
187–92; and José Luis Bermúdez, “Mindreading in the Animal Kingdom,” in The
Philosophy of Animal Minds, ed. Robert W. Lurz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 145–64.
73
		Penn, Holyoak, and Povinelli, “Darwin’s Mistake,” 127–29.
74
		Penn, Holyoak, and Povinelli, “Darwin’s Mistake,” 127.
75
		Penn, Holyoak, and Povinelli, “Darwin’s Mistake,” 127.
72

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of Penn, Holyoak, and Povinelli, the evidence supports a two-level view
of metacognition that is compatible with dual-process theories.76 He
believes the self-attributive–self-evaluative debate is the result of both sides
arguing that only one view is correct, when both views are correct in that
each describes a distinct level of metacognition. Similarly to dual-process
theories, Arango-Muñoz proposes that the self-attributive view is describing a high-level (system 2) form of metacognition in which subjects use
concepts and theories to interpret their behavior.77 The self-evaluative
view describes a low-level (system 1) form of metacognition in which feelings guide their subjects to adjust cognitive activities without engaging in
second-order thought.78 He believes that nonhuman animals are capable of
only low-level metacognition, while humans are capable of both low- and
high-level metacognition.
Similarly, Janet Metcalfe and Lisa Son believe the evidence suggests
a distinction between anoetic, noetic, and autonoetic metacognition.79
Anoetic metacognition involves judgments that are stimulus-bound,
spatially and temporally bound to the current time.80 In other words, it
is an animal making judgments about what it is currently experiencing.
Noetic metacognition involves making judgments about representations
of objects and events that are not physically present.81 Finally, autonoetic
metacognition involves self-referential judgments (similar to self-attributive metacognition). Metcalfe and Son discuss there not being sufficient
evidence to conclude nonhuman animals are capable of autonoetic metacognition and the fact that it is even debated whether nonhuman animals
possess anoetic and noetic metacognitive abilities.
The existence of hypotheses such as these indicates the amount and
compelling nature of the evidence against higher forms of nonhuman
animal metacognition. Also, it is striking that some researchers believe the
evidence points to dual types of metacognition in humans and nonhuman
animals. This adds to the strength of dual-process theories regarding rationality. As it stands, nonhuman animals are not viewed as serious candidates for self-attributive or autonoetic metacognition.
		Arango-Muñoz, “Two Levels of Metacognition,” 71–82.
		Arango-Muñoz, “Two Levels of Metacognition,” 77.
78
		Arango-Muñoz, “Two Levels of Metacognition.”
79
		 Janet Metcalfe and Lisa K. Son, “Anoetic, Noetic, and Autonoetic Metacognition,”
in Foundations of Metacognition, ed. Michael J. Beran, Johannes L. Brandl, Josef
Perner, and Joëlle Proust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 289–301.
80
		Metcalfe and Son, “Anoetic, Noetic, and Autonoetic Metacognition,” 291.
81
		Metcalfe and Son, “Anoetic, Noetic, and Autonoetic Metacognition,” 292.
76
77

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Episodic Memory
Besides self-attributive metacognition, episodic memory is probably one
of the most promising attributes that indicates self-awareness. Episodic
memory is a type of memory in which the subject remembering an event
remembers the event from the subject’s perspective. This is distinguished
from semantic memory, which is simply remembering facts about the
world apart from personal experience. Episodic memory is associated with
self-awareness for reasons already mentioned. When people remember
that events have happened to them, they develop a diachronic unity of
consciousness over time.
Many researchers have argued there is evidence of episodic (or episodic-like) memory in nonhuman animals.82 For example, one study involved
testing for episodic memory in scrub jays, which are known for their food
caching abilities.83 The scrub jays were allowed to cache differing types of
food that were either perishable (mealworms and crickets) or nonperishable (peanuts). The study showed that, if the scrub jays were released before
their preferred food became inedible, they would return to the locations of
their preferred food. If they were released after their preferred food became
inedible, they would return only to their nonpreferred food caches. These
findings suggested that the scrub jays remembered at least the where, what,
and when aspects of their food caching.84 This is evidence of episodic-like
memory, and possibly episodic memory.
However, as with metacognition, some researchers believe it is possible
to explain episodic-like behavior in simpler terms.85 For example, it is
		For examples, see: Nicola S. Clayton and Anthony Dickinson, “Episodic-Like
Memory During Cache Recovery by Scrub Jays,” Nature 395 (1998): 272–74;
Stephanie J. Babb and Jonathan D. Crystal, “Episodic-Like Memory in the
Rat,” Current Biology 16 (2006): 1317–21; Gema Martin-Ordas, Daniel Haun,
Fernando Colmenares, and Joseph Call, “Keeping Track of Time: Evidence for
Episodic-Like Memory in Great Apes,” Animal Cognition 13 (2010): 331–40;
Miranda C. Feeney, William A. Roberts, and David F. Sherry, “Mechanisms of
What-Where-When Memory in Black-Capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus):
Do Chickadees Remember ‘When’?” Journal of Comparative Psychology 125
(2011): 308–16; and Jonathan D. Crystal, Wesley T. Alford, Wenyi Zhou, and
Andrea G. Hohmann, “Source Memory in the Rat,” Current Biology 23 (2013):
387–91.
83
		N. S. Clayton, D. P. Griffiths, N. J. Emery, and A. Dickinson, “Elements of
Episodic-Like Memory in Animals,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:
London B 356 (2001): 1483–91.
84
		 Clayton, Griffiths, Emery, and Dickinson, “Elements of Episodic-Like Memory in
Animals,” 1490.
85
		For examples, see: Howard Eichenbaum and Norbert Fortin, “Episodic Memory
82

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possible the scrub jays simply possess real-time semantic (nonpersonal)
knowledge of the locations and ages of their food caches.86 Recalling the
possibilities involving the capuchins and their memories, it is possible
that the scrub jays learned to associate longer time intervals with rotten
food. Thus, they could simply return to food caches of which they possess
stronger memories or perishable-food caches only when shorter intervals
have lapsed.87
One of the most interesting aspects of episodic memory, and also relevant to this essay, is that episodic memory has been found to coincide with
the ability to mentally “time-travel.” Mental time-travel is the ability to
remember or to imagine oneself in the past or the future. Psychologists
believe that the two coincide due in part to studies involving damage to
the human brain.
For example, in 1981, a man known as K.C. was involved in a motorcycle accident in which he suffered brain damage.88 K.C. exhibited a rare
type of retrograde amnesia in which he cannot remember anything that
happened to him from a personal perspective (episodic memory), although
he retained knowledge of facts about the world and himself (semantic
memory). For example, K.C. knew the address and appearance of the
house in which he spent his first nine years of life, but he did not remember
a single event that took place there. Moreover, K.C. had a similar problem
regarding thinking about his future. Endel Tulving explains that:
K.C. cannot think about his own personal future. Thus, when
asked, he cannot tell the questioner what he is going to do later on
that day, or the day after, or at any time in the rest of his life, any
more than he can say what he did the day before or what events have
happened in his life. When he is asked to describe the state of his
mind when he thinks about his future, whether the next 15 minutes

and the Hippocampus,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12 (2003):
53–57; Thomas Suddendorf and Janie Busby, “Mental Time Travel in Animals?”
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (2003): 391–96; and Robert R. Hampton and
Bennett L. Schwartz, “Episodic Memory in Nonhumans: What, and Where, is
When?” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 14 (2004): 192–97.
86
		Hampton and Schwartz, “Episodic Memory in Nonhumans,” 194.
87
		Eichenbaum and Fortin, “Episodic Memory and the Hippocampus,” 55.
88
		 See R. Shayna Rosenbaum, Stefan Köhler, Daniel L. Schacter, Morris Moscovitch,
Robyn Westmacott, Sandra E. Black, Fuqiang Gao, and Endel Tulving, “The Case
of K.C.: Contributions of a Memory-Impaired Person to Memory Theory,” Neuropsychologia 43 (2005): 989–1021.

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or the next year, he again says that it is “blank.”89
Studies of K.C. have led researchers to conclude that episodic and
semantic memory are based in different sets of neural mechanisms.90 Thus,
if a human or nonhuman animal possesses semantic memory, this does
not necessarily entail that they will possess episodic memory. Also, as
mentioned, K.C.’s case has led to the conclusion that episodic memory is
necessary for mental time-travel. This is striking because it entails that, if
nonhuman animals do not possess the ability for episodic memory, then
not only can they not remember the past from a personal perspective, but
they also cannot think of or anticipate future personal events. As will be
explained below, this has major implications for the problem of animal
suffering and the status of nonhuman animals regarding moral agency.
Additionally, Tulving emphasizes that the capacity for episodic memory
does not just enable personal mental time-travel; it also enables a present
sense of self:
To describe autonoetic consciousness with regards to episodic
memory, there is a natural bias to cast the discussion in terms of
awareness of the past. Autonoetic consciousness is not limited to
the past, however; it encompasses the capacity to represent the self ’s
experiences in the past, present, and future. When one is autonoetically aware of one’s experiences in the past, one recollects the past
and, therefore, retrieves information from episodic memory. But
also dependent on autonoetic consciousness and, we argue, closely
related to episodic memory is the ability to be aware of the self ’s
present.91
Thus, the absence of episodic memory in nonhuman animals suggests
that they are not only unable to personally experience the past and future
but also unable to personally experience the present.
As with rationality and metacognition, some researchers believe that
episodic memory and the ability for personal mental time-travel are
		 Endel Tulving, “Episodic Memory and Autonoesis: Uniquely Human?” in The Missing Link in Cognition: Origins of Self-Reflective Consciousness, ed. Herbert S. Terrace
and Janet Metcalfe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4–56, at 26.
90
		Tulving, “Episodic Memory and Autonoesis,” 24.
91
		Mark A. Wheeler, Donald T. Stuss, and Endel Tulving, “Toward a Theory of
Episodic Memory: The Frontal Lobes and Autonoetic Consciousness,” Psychological Bulletin 121, no. 3 (1997): 331–54, 335.
89

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unique to humans.92 This is another area where the evidence points to
dual processes in humans and nonhuman animals. Regarding memory, it
seems that some nonhuman animals have episodic-like memory (knowing
the impersonal where, what, and when of events), while humans uniquely
possess both episodic-like and episodic memory. For example, Tulving
explains that:
Many kinds of complex behaviors of many kinds of animals can be,
and have been, interpreted as manifesting episodic memory, and
in many cases these behaviors do have many features in common
with behaviors that are grounded in episodic memory. Practically
invariably, however, the same behaviors can also be interpreted
more parsimoniously, as manifestations of semantic or declarative
memory, which do not provide for, and do not require postulation
of, the apprehension of subjective past or subjective future time.93
Thus, to date, it seems that most, if not all, nonhuman animals do not
have the capability for self-awareness that is found in humans. For one,
the evidence suggests that humans uniquely possess the ability for higher-order metacognition. Nonhuman animals are not able to think about
their thoughts, and thus are unaware of themselves as the possessors of
such thoughts. Additionally, episodic memory is believed to be unique to
humans. This entails that nonhuman animals cannot remember the past as
it happened to them personally or personally experience the present. This
also means nonhuman animals are unable to anticipate or think about
their personal futures.
Implications of Neo-Thomism for the Problem of Animal Suffering
So, the Thomistic view of nonhuman animals needs updating. It certainly
is outdated to explain animal cognition and behavior solely through the
broad term “estimative power.” However, the crucial aspects of the Thomistic view of nonhuman animals are in no danger of replacement.
In light of the Thomistic view of nonhuman animal minds, it was
		For examples, see: William A. Roberts, “Are Animals Stuck in Time?” Psychological Bulletin 128, no. 3 (2002): 473–89; Suddendorf and Busby, “Mental Time
Travel in Animals?” 391–96; Tulving, “Episodic Memory and Autonoesis,” 3–56;
Thomas Suddendorf and Michael C. Corballis, “The Evolution of Foresight:
What Is Mental Time Travel, and Is It Unique to Humans?” Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 30 (2007): 299–313.
93
		Tulving, “Episodic Memory and Autonoesis,” 48.
92

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shown that there is no conclusive evidence that nonhuman animals possess
either higher-order (system 2) rationality or higher-order abilities associated with self-awareness, such as self-attributive or autonoetic metacognition and episodic memory. Thus, nonhuman animals are not rational, do
not have higher-order access to their mental states, and cannot remember
or imagine themselves in the past, present, or future. This is similar to the
neo-Cartesian option 3: “Some non-human creatures have states that have
intrinsic phenomenal qualities analogous to those possessed by humans
when they are in states of pain. These creatures lack, however, any higher-order states of being aware of themselves as being in first-order states.”
Thus, the evidence suggests that there is no problem of animal suffering. If nonhuman animals are neither rational nor self-aware, then they
are not suffering as persons. For one, nonhuman animals most likely lack
higher-order access to their suffering regardless of whether it is experienced
phenomenally or not. If nonhuman animals are incapable of higher-order
thoughts regarding their lower-order experiences, this means that nonhuman animals are incapable of higher-order thoughts such as “I believe that
I feel pain” or “I believe that I wish to avoid pain.” As humans, we have
higher-order access to our lower-order mental states throughout our entire
lives. So it is hard to imagine what this would be like. However, the nonhuman animal’s lack of self-attributive or autonoetic metacognition sheds
light on the nonpersonal nature of their experiences. As Aquinas argues,
nonhuman animals do not know that they know or make judgments in a
self-referential manner. As hard as it is to imagine, there are experiences
of pain and suffering in nonhuman animals but there are no personal
thoughts/experiences/awarenesses of these experiences.
Also, nonhuman animals are most likely incapable of abstract rationality. This is relevant to the problem of animal suffering because nonlinguistic creatures could never form abstract concepts regarding their suffering.
For instance, arational animals cannot reach the understanding that they
ought not to be in a state of pain or suffering. Moreover, it is important
to remember that their lack of rationality entails that they do not act for
logical reasons. Thus, arational animals cannot be said to have any logical
reasons for acting in ways that avoid future experiences of pain. Pain
behaviors are simply explainable through associative learning and, at most,
anoetic and noetic metacognition.
In addition to the Thomistic distinctives of metacognition and rationality, it was found that nonhuman animals most likely lack episodic memory,
and thus any sense of a personal past, present, and future. So, if they experience pain and suffering, these are experienced only in a nonpersonal
present. Nonhuman animals neither self-referentially remember suffering

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they have experienced, nor self-referentially experience current suffering,
nor self-referentially anticipate future suffering they may encounter. This is
evidence for Aquinas’s notion that nonhuman animals lack a sense of self,
diachronic or otherwise, because they are not aware of a personal process
of abstracting and storing knowledge of universals.94
These considerations provide an answer to the problem of animal suffering not only as it relates to animal pain but also as it relates to any other
type of suffering that animals might experience, such as fear and sorrow. If
nonhuman animals are not self-aware, then they lack higher-order access
to any of these unpleasant states. Thus, there is no person, qua person, that
experiences pain or suffering in the nonhuman animal kingdom.
An Objection to the Neo-Thomistic Solution
A major objection at this point could be that the neo-Thomistic concept
of arational and nonpersonal animals does not avoid the problem. For
example, when arguing against neo-Cartesian option 3 (which was noted
as being similar to the neo-Thomistic position), Robert Francescotti states:
It is not clear that position 3 is even coherent. We are to imagine
that some other animals have mental states with “intrinsic phenomenal qualities analogous to those possessed by humans,” but they are
not aware of being in those states, and so, Murray explains, “there
is simply no victim or subject for whom it can be said that there is a
way it is like for it to be in such a state of pain” (Murray 2008, 56).
However, if these states are phenomenally similar to those we have,
as 3 claims, then there would be a “what it is like” character to these
states, and in particular they would have something similar to the
distressful feel of our pain states. So there would be a clear sense in
which some other animals suffer.95
Regardless of whether animals are persons, if they are experiencing
unpleasant mental and physical states, then the evils remain. This objec		For further evidence along these lines, see Hans J. Markowitsch and Angelica
Staniloiu, “Memory, Autonoetic Consciousness, and the Self,” Consciousness and
Cognition 20 (2011): 16–39. Markowitsch and Staniloiu argue that autonoetic
consciousness and episodic memory are required for “episodic-autobiographical
memory,” or EAM (a diachronic sense of self ), and that EAM is probably unique
to humans.
95
		 Francescotti, “The Problem of Animal Pain and Suffering,” 115–16 (citing Murray,
Nature Red in Tooth and Claw).
94

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tion, however, seems to be avoidable through noting important distinctions and reemphasizing the Thomistic concept of consciousness.
First, it will be helpful to discuss a distinction that has been emphasized
by Tulving. Tulving and his associates make a careful distinction between
consciousness and awareness. He says that “consciousness” is “a general
capacity that an individual possesses for particular kinds of mental representations and subjective experiences.”96 “Awareness” is “a particular manifestation or expression of this general capacity.”97 Tulving explains that:
Consciousness, like other capacities of living systems, has no object;
it is not directed at anything. It is like a stage that allows some
actions, but not others, to take place on it, but it does not prescribe
action. Awareness always has an object; it is always of something.
Thus, awareness presumes consciousness, but consciousness does
not imply awareness: Consciousness is a necessary but not sufficient
condition of awareness.98
Accordingly, I have been careful throughout this essay to use the
terms “consciousness” and “self-awareness” when referring to humans and
nonhuman animals.
Regardless, Francescotti says that pain states having a “what it is like”
character are “clear” cases of nonhuman animal suffering. But it is not
clear that these are “clear” cases of suffering. This is because, as concluded
above, it is likely that nonhuman animals are conscious of pain, but not
that they are self-referentially aware of their pain. If nonhuman animals
lack metacognitive abilities, then they can only be conscious of pain and
suffering. Pain and suffering would be just one part of the kaleidoscope
of their conscious experience. They would react to it according to their
instincts and associatively learned behavior. If they possess lower-order
metacognitive abilities, then they can be aware, yet not self-referentially
aware, of pain and suffering. They would experience, focus upon, and make
judgments regarding pain and suffering, yet they would not do this on a
personal level.
Tulving’s three levels of consciousness and awareness (anoetic, noetic,
and autonoetic) are helpful here as well. Of anoetic consciousness, he
explains: “[It] is temporally and spatially bound to the current situation.
Organisms possessing only anoetic consciousness are conscious in the
		Wheeler, Stuss, and Tulving, “Toward a Theory of Episodic Memory,” 335.
		Wheeler, Stuss, and Tulving, “Toward a Theory of Episodic Memory,” 335.
98
		Wheeler, Stuss, and Tulving, “Toward a Theory of Episodic Memory,” 335.
96
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sense that they are capable of perceptually registering, internally representing, and behaviourally responding to aspects of the present environment,
both external and internal.”99 Concerning noetic consciousness, he further
states in the same place: “[It] allows an organism to be aware of, and to
cognitively operate on, objects and events, and relations among objects
and events, in the absence of these objects and events. The organism can
flexibly act upon such symbolic knowledge of the world.” As explained,
nonhuman animals possess anoetic consciousness and possibly noetic
consciousness, but not autonoetic consciousness.
If neo-Cartesian option 3 is necessarily tied to the “intrinsic phenomenal qualities” of states possessed by nonhuman animals, then perhaps
Francescotti’s objection holds here. But as explained above, neo-Thomism
does not necessarily focus on “what it is like” for animals to experience
the world, but only that they are conscious. Thus, regardless of whether
autonoetic consciousness is the only type of consciousness accompanied
with qualia, noetic, or anoetic consciousness is all that is needed to meet
the Thomistic standard for consciousness.
However, even if there is “something it is like” for animals to experience
pain and suffering, this does not mean that the experience is necessarily
intrinsically evil. Getting back to Francescotti’s objection, as mentioned,
it is not clear that the anoetic and noetic experiences of pain and suffering
constitute suffering. This can be shown by emphasizing two Thomistic
concepts.
Evil as Privation Theory
First, it is important to remember that Thomism entails what is known as
the “evil as privation theory.” Aquinas discusses evil in many places in his
writings, but he probably defines it most clearly in his discussion in the
Summa theologiae [ST]: “Evil is the absence of the good, which is natural
and due to a thing.”100 It is important to note that, according to Aquinas,
not all absences of good are evil, although all evils are absences of some
good. In this regard, he is careful to make a distinction between “negative”
and “privative” absences of good.101 Aquinas explains:
Absence of good, taken negatively, is not evil; otherwise, it would
follow that what does not exist is evil, and also that everything
		Endel Tulving, “Memory and Consciousness,” Canadian Psychology 26 (1985):
1–12, at 3.
100
		ST I, q. 49, a. 1.
101
ST I, q. 48, a. 3. See also Aquinas, De malo, q. 1, a. 2.
99

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would be evil, through not having the good belonging to something
else. . . . For instance, a man would be evil who had not the swiftness
of the roe, or the strength of a lion. But the absence of good, taken
in a privative sense, is an evil; as, for instance, the privation of sight
is called blindness.102
As can be seen in Aquinas’s definition of evil, an absence of a good is
evil only if the good is “natural and due” to a particular subject. For example, it would be an evil for a human to be blind because sight is something
humans should possess according to their natures. But it would not be an
evil for a rock to be blind, as rocks do not naturally possess the ability to
see.103 The absence of sight in a human is a privation of a natural good,
while the lack of sight in a rock is merely an absence of a good.
With this definition of evil in mind, it is clear that pain and suffering
cannot be evils according to the Thomistic concept of “evil.” The sensation
of pain is thought to be a homeostatic emotion, similar to itching, hunger,
and thirst.104 Without pain, the lifespan of humans and most nonhuman
animals would be significantly shorter.105 It is no secret that the ability
to feel pain is crucial for nonhuman animal flourishing. Additionally,
researchers believe that other types of suffering, such as sadness, fear, and
even depression, are likewise homeostatic emotional responses that are
conducive to physical and social survival.106
It is easy to conclude that God, as the creator of all human and nonhuman life, intended for animals to possess the abilities to anoetically and
noetically experience pain and suffering. He endowed his creatures with
ST I, q. 48, a. 3.
ST I, q. 48, a. 5, ad 1.
104
		See A. D. Craig, “A New View of Pain as a Homeostatic Emotion,” Trends in
Neurosciences 26 (2003): 303–7.
105
		For example, see Elna M. Nagasako, Anne Louise Oaklander, and Robert H.
Dworkin, “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain: An Update,” Pain 101 (2003):
213–19.
106
		For examples, see: Norbert Schwarz, “Warmer and More Social: Recent Developments in Cognitive Social Psychology,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998):
239–64, at 245; Dacher Keltner and Ann M. Kring, “Emotion, Social Function,
and Psychopathology,” Review of General Psychology 2 (1998): 320–342, at 324;
Arne Öhman and Susan Mineka, “Fears, Phobias, and Preparedness: Toward
an Evolved Module of Fear and Fear Learning,” Psychological Review 108, no. 3
(2001): 483–522, at 483; and Nicholas B. Allen and Paul B. T. Badcock, “Darwinian Models of Depression: A Review of Evolutionary Accounts of Mood and
Mood Disorders,” Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry
30 (2006): 815–26, at 819.
102
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these homeostatic emotions so that they would flourish in their natural
environments.107 In this way, pain and other forms of suffering are not
evil, since God wills creatures to possess these metaphysically and instrumentally good abilities. Both humans and nonhuman animals experience
pain and suffering, although nonhuman animals do not self-referentially
experience pain and suffering.
Suffering as the Privation of the Willed Good
However, there is a particular sense in which Aquinas thought pain and
suffering could be viewed as evils. For example in ST, he mentions that
evils are rightly divided into two categories: evils of punishment and evils
of fault. In describing evils of punishment, Aquinas says:
Intellectual creatures also suffer evil when they are deprived of
forms or dispositions or anything else potentially necessary for good
activity, whether the things belong to the soul or the body or external things. And such evil, in the judgment of the Catholic faith,
needs to be called punishment.
For three things belong to the nature of a punishment. . . .
The second characteristic of the nature of punishment is that it is
contrary to the will of the one suffering punishment. For everyone’s
will inclines to seek the person’s own good, and so it is contrary to
one’s will to be deprived of one’s own good.108
Aquinas is here explaining that natural evils are rightly called punishments in humans because the deprivation of the form or disposition of a
human is against the will. In other words, no human wants to experience
natural evils in his own body. This would include the experience of pain
and suffering because such things are unwanted and unpleasant and entail
a loss of user control.
However, if nonhuman animals do not possess immaterial intellects
and if all of their actions are determined by the laws of nature, then they
cannot possess free will. Pain and suffering cannot be evils for them in the
subjective sense, since they can neither understand that they are in pain
		To be clear, I am not saying that pain and suffering are good in the sense that they
ought to be sought for their own sakes. Instead, they are instrumental goods that
help creatures flourish.
108
De malo, q. 1, a. 4, in Aquinas, On Evil, trans. Richard Regan, ed. Brian Davies
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 77.
107

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nor freely will to stop experiencing it. Of course, it may appear that they
will to avoid pain as humans do, but they are not willing in a morally relevant sense, as their pain-avoidance behavior is due to lower-order processes
and not the higher-order wish to avoid the lower-order suffering.
Thus, from a Thomistic perspective, animal pain and suffering are not
evil. They are not intrinsically evil states because they are good physiological processes that are natural to nonhuman animals and necessary
for flourishing. Also, they are not evil in that they are not experienced
self-referentially by nonhuman animals and cannot be against the will of
nonhuman animals, since nonhuman animals do not possess free will.
Before concluding, it will be good to note an interesting aspect of the
neo-Thomistic answer to the problem of animal suffering. As the evidence
suggests, it is most likely that nonhuman animals are neither rational nor
self-aware. While there are a few promising candidates, such as dolphins,
elephants, and great apes, the majority of nonhuman animals are not
considered to be possibly self-conscious.
Yet if it were conclusively determined that one of these candidates
were in fact self-aware, this would not overturn the neo-Thomistic
answer to the problem of animal suffering. This is because, if it were
determined that an animal is rational and self-aware, this would entail
that the animal would possess a rational soul along with an immaterial
intellect. The reason that it would not be problematic is that Aquinas
believed that rational animals can survive the death of their bodies due
to the immateriality of the intellect.109
Thus, if an animal were found to be rational and self-aware, it would
follow that the animal could participate in the resurrection of the dead at
the end of days. Since nonlinguistic animals do not know the difference
between right and wrong and also could never understand the Gospel
message, it is possible that they could live in the new heavens and new
earth with human saints at the end of days. Thus, a relatively short life
involving suffering would ultimately result in eternal life in the presence
of God. The suffering of rational nonhuman animals (if such creatures
were found to exist) would be allowed by God for the purpose of communicating his goodness. Perhaps God decided that the hierarchy of beings
he creates to achieve his purpose should include rational nonhuman
animals.110 So, even if a theist is in doubt as to the personhood of any
ST I, q. 75, a. 6; SCG II, ch. 79–81; Q.D. de anima, a. 14.
		For a discussion of the Thomistic concepts of God’s purpose for the universe, the
necessity of a hierarchy of beings, what it means for God to “communicate his
goodness,” and what these entail for the problem of animal suffering, see B. Kyle

109
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particular animal, they can conclude that, if the animal is self-aware, the
animal will ultimately experience a fate similar to that of humans who join
God in eternity.
Conclusion
So it seems that the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, along with contemporary philosophical and scientific evidence, provides a solution to the
problem of animal suffering. Aquinas believed that the difference between
human and nonhuman animals is that the former possess rational souls
and the latter possess merely sensitive souls. As rational animals, humans
possess immaterial intellects, which give them the abilities of rationality
and self-awareness. The lack of an immaterial intellect makes it such that
nonhumans animals are neither rational nor self-aware, and therefore lack
moral agency and personhood.
Contemporary philosophical and scientific evidence supports Aquinas’s
medieval theory of animal minds. The evidence suggests that nonhuman
animals are incapable of abstract reasoning and lack higher-order metacognitive abilities and episodic memory. Thus, nonhuman animals do not
experience pain and suffering as persons. They do not have higher-order
access to their lower-order mental states and they cannot self-referentially
remember or anticipate painful experiences. Also, they cannot come to the
understanding that they ought not be in pain.
It could be objected that this does not solve the problem, since animals
are phenomenologically aware of pain and suffering. However, it was
shown that this cannot be understood as evil because pain and suffering
are metaphysically and instrumentally good physiological processes. So,
pain and suffering are not evil because they are not privations of proper
goods and are conducive to flourishing. Moreover, pain and other unpleasant states are not evils in nonhuman animals because nonhuman animals
do not possess free will.
The evidence suggests that nonhuman animals are most likely not selfaware and that there is no problem of animal suffering. However, even if
a certain kind of nonhuman animal were found to possess self-awareness,
this would not eliminate the neo-Thomistic answer. Instead, all it would
entail is that the certain kind of animal would most likely be rewarded
with eternal life at the end of days. Thus, neo-Thomism not only provides
an answer to the problem of animal suffering but also provides a more
compelling answer than does neo-Cartesianism. Most researchers believe
Keltz, “God’s Purpose for the Universe and the Problem of Animal Suffering,”
Sophia (2017): 1–18.

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that nonhuman animals are conscious, but few, if any, believe that nonhuman animals are self-aware like humans.
N&V

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127

Do Thomists Have Rights?
Dominic Legge, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

In the standard account of the historical development of the idea of
natural rights, the watershed innovation is typically said to be the notion
that individual persons themselves “possess” rights: not only that we
judge something to be “right” by nature, in an objective sense (“objective
right” or “objective rights”), but that individual human subjects “have
natural rights” that they can maintain over against others (“subjective
rights”). Some view this development of the idea of subjective rights in
a positive light as the crucial foundation for contemporary doctrines
of human rights; others regard it as a corruption of classical theories of
justice and the beginning of the decay and decadence of contemporary
liberal regimes.1
For centuries, Thomists—those who lay claim to the principles and
heritage of St. Thomas Aquinas—have played a prominent role in this
history. In the early sixteenth century, Dominican Thomists like Francisco
de Vittoria, Domingo de Soto, and Bartolome de las Casas were instrumental in the development of a theory of natural rights that would serve
to limit the power of the Spanish crown and of colonial masters over the
natives of the new world. In the twentieth century, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Jacques Maritain mounted a principled campaign
as a Thomist for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And contem1

For a moderate critique of the contemporary discourse that views rights as absolute, see Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse
(New York: The Free Press, 1991). Patrick Deneen has offered a more trenchant
critique along different lines in “Unsustainable Liberalism,” First Things, August/
September 2012, 25–31.

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porary interest in Aquinas’s approach to law and justice is increasing, as is
evident from several recent publications.2
Yet a lively debate has developed in recent decades over the Thomistic pedigree of subjective rights. Were these Thomists in fact faithful to the principles
of Thomas Aquinas?3 Is a doctrine of subjective rights found in Aquinas?4 If
not, is it an organic development from Thomas’s own views? Or can Aquinas’s
thought be used in a more general way to ground a theory of subjective natural
rights? To put it in the terms of Leo Strauss, does Aquinas truly belong in what
he terms the classic natural right tradition, or is Aquinas actually a precursor
and forerunner of the modern doctrine of natural rights? (In Natural Right
and History, Strauss himself seems to regard Aquinas as a liminal figure, still
within the classic tradition but sowing the seeds of its demise in post-Enlightenment modernity.5) The participants in the debate over these questions,
whether or not they think subjective rights are a positive development, generally take it for granted that the crucial shift is from a focus on duties based on
an objective sense of “what is naturally right, or just, or due” to a subjective
theory of “natural rights” that I “possess” as an individual person.
It is my claim that such questions miss the point and, worse, hide the
fact that, in the centuries after Aquinas, some putative Thomists diverged
in important ways from Aquinas’s own principles. The resulting (so-called)
Thomistic theories of natural rights involved a shift in perspective that has
		For example, J. Budziszewski’s recent Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise
on Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) revives the medieval
practice of commenting, line by line, on the text of an eminent authority. That
something like this would be published by a major contemporary academic press
is a good indication of the growing appeal of scholarship on Aquinas in this area.
See also: Douglas Kries, The Problem of Natural Law (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2007); Russell Hittinger, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in
a Post-Christian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003).
3
		 Alasdair MacIntyre criticizes Maritain’s putatively Thomistic argument for human
rights as “quixotic,” “an uncharacteristic lapse,” and producing “a conception of
rights alien to and absent from Aquinas’s thought” (Three Rival Versions of Moral
Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition [Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1990], 76).
4
		 Two prominent scholars on the history of natural rights disagree sharply on many
issues, but they agree in opining that Aquinas did not have such a doctrine: Michel
Villey, La formation de la pensée juridique moderne: cours d’histoire de la philosophie du droit (Paris: Montcrestien, 1975), and Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural
Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150–1625,
Emory University Studies in Law and Religion 5 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press,
1997), esp. 257–60.
5
		Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1950), 163–64.
2

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worked much mischief in the domain of natural rights theory. Recovering
Aquinas’s own view is, I believe, quite important if we are to think aright about
a healthy political order. But contemporary commentators have generally
failed to recognize that some supposedly Thomistic theories are only Thomistic masquerades.
In order to bring this to view, I will first discuss what I consider to be the key
principles of Aquinas’s own account and how the distinction between objective and subjective rights is a relatively unimportant side issue compared to the
critical insight of Aquinas’s position: that law and justice, and consequently
any theory of natural rights, should always be understood in terms of an overarching order to the good. Then I will speak about how that key dimension
was eclipsed, first in the thought of late-medieval thinkers opposed to Aquinas
(like William of Ockham), and then in the thought of Francisco Suarez and
subsequent Jesuit and Jesuit-influenced Thomists. Finally, I will discuss how
the eclipse of this key dimension has widespread and damaging repercussions
and will attempt briefly to make the case that, if we wish to have natural rights
in a healthy political order, it is important to recover Aquinas’s central insight.
Thomas Aquinas on Law, Justice, and Ius
Did Thomas Aquinas recognize subjective natural rights? In essence,
the answer is yes. But focusing exclusively on this question obscures Aquinas’s understanding of the complex interrelationship among justice, law
(lex), right (ius), and the common good.
Let us start with justice. In his great synthetic Summa theologiae, Aquinas first discusses justice as an attribute of God. In doing so, he affirms
a key principle: justice always refers to a wise or reasoned ordering among
things. When we speak about justice in God, we are referring first of all to
the divine intellect, insofar as God’s intellect conceives the perfectly wise
plan by which all things are ordered to himself. Justice is only secondarily
in God’s will, insofar as, by his will, he acts according to the wise order he
has conceived.
Since the object of the will is the good as understood [by the intellect], it is impossible that God would will anything but the plan
[ratio] he conceives by his intellect, which is like a law of justice,
according to which his will is right and just. Hence what he does
according to his will, he does justly, just as we act justly when we act
according to the law.6
		Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 21, a. 1, ad 2: “Cum bonum intellectum sit obiectum voluntatis, impossibile est Deum velle nisi quod ratio suae

6

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Dominic Legge, O.P.

Here we are very far from later voluntaristic theories according to
which the decree of God’s will, which we are bound to obey, is the
ultimate root of justice and law. For Aquinas, law is not primarily
the expression of God’s will, but rather, the wisely ordered plan
of creation in God’s intellect is like the “law” that guides the
perfectly just willing of God. Law is an expression of reason, an
ordering according to reason, even in God. And so justice results
from rightly willing according to the wise or reasoned ordering of
all things to God.
This understanding of justice, order, and reason is echoed by Aquinas’s
famous definition of law as “an ordination of reason for the common good,
made by one with authority, and promulgated.” 7 Aquinas crafted this definition with care, intending it to account not only for human written laws
but also for natural law, divine positive law, and the eternal law in the mind
of God. Like justice, law designates for Aquinas an order of reason. It is a
rule and measure of acts not primarily because a subordinate is bound to
obey his superior, but because the law sets forth the ordered plan to attain
the end. Insofar as an act fails to conform to that plan, it does not conduce
to attaining the end, and so lacks the rectitude of order.
Later in the Summa theologiae, Thomas treats of justice in human
affairs. There, he speaks of it as a moral virtue in the soul by which man is
made good. That is, he treats human justice as part of a broader account
of how man is ultimately ordered to God within the complex network of
overlapping relationships he has with others, like his family, his neighbors,
his city, and so forth:
Justice by its essence implies a certain rectitude of order . . . insofar as
it implies a right order in man’s very act. And thus justice is held to be
a virtue, either as particular justice, which rightly orders man’s act in
relation to another individual man; or as legal justice, which rightly
orders man’s act in relation to the common good of a multitude.8
sapientiae habet. Quae quidem est sicut lex iustitiae, secundum quam eius voluntas
recta et iusta est. Unde quod secundum suam voluntatem facit, iuste facit, sicut et
nos quod secundum legem facimus, iuste facimus.”
7
		
ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4.
8
		
ST I-II, q. 113, a. 1: “Iustitia de sui ratione importet quandam rectitudinem
ordinis . . . secundum quod importat ordinem rectum in ipso actu hominis. Et
secundum hoc iustitia ponitur virtus quaedam, sive sit particularis iustitia, quae
ordinat actum hominis secundum rectitudinem in comparatione ad alium singula-

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This text brings into the foreground another key dimension of justice
for Aquinas: it implies a reasoned or wise ordering, and more specifically,
an ordering to the good, an ordering that makes man good.
At this point, we have identified three key elements in Aquinas’s
account of justice: it involves (1) an ordering (2) according to reason (3) to
the good. And with these elements in mind, we are now ready to take up a
key Latin term for theories of natural rights: ius.
Thomas’s says that ius is the object of justice. One is just when one
renders to another his ius. What does this mean? Ius is hard to translate
into English. Standard translations usually render it as “right,” but it can
also mean “the just thing,” or “what is due.” We could also say that ius is
“what is right,” or perhaps “the fair.” The term is drawn from the Roman
legal tradition, from Roman legal judgments: a judge would declare the
ius in a case. (That Aquinas uses this Roman term in an otherwise Aristotelian definition of justice provides a good example of how Aquinas
integrates and synthesizes Aristotle with the Roman and Augustinian
traditions.) Sometimes ius can even be translated as “law,” but that is not
quite correct, according to Aquinas. Especially when we are speaking of a
written law, he explains, the ius is the measure and the intelligible form of
a law in the same way that the artisan’s idea of the table he is going to make
is the mental exemplar and measure of what he carves in wood. And more
generally, law is a kind of expression of ius.9
Aquinas’s point is that we judge whether an action is just, or whether a
law is just, by reference to this objective measure or object of justice: have I
rendered to another his ius, that is, what is fair, what is due? This has led to
a misunderstanding, however. Aquinas certainly thinks that justice always
has this objective dimension of ius as the object of justice, as something
that expresses what is fair or equal in a given human relationship or set
of relationships, but this has led some to argue that Aquinas presents an
understanding of ius, and thus of “right” (or “rights”), as exclusively objective, or at least in a predominantly objective sense. This objective sense of
ius is then contrasted with later natural rights theories that begin to use
the term ius to designate a right or claim that belongs to an individual, one
that he can assert over against others. Here, the argument goes, we find the
origin of a modern understanding of subjective rights: rights as belonging
to a person, a kind of moral faculty that characterizes individual subjects.
rem hominem; sive sit iustitia legalis, quae ordinat secundum rectitudinem actum
hominis in comparatione ad bonum commune multitudinis.”
9
		
ST II-II, q. 57, a. 1, ad 2.

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Dominic Legge, O.P.

Yet, if one accepts Aquinas’s account of ius as the object of justice, it
does not at all follow that ius cannot also be understood as a subjective
right, as a claim that one person has over against another. Indeed, this
is merely to reformulate Aquinas’s account from a different perspective.
The reason he emphasizes that ius is the object of justice and that it has an
objective character is to underline that what is due in a particular case does
not depend on the characteristics of the just man, but is rather a measure
external to him. This marks a significant distinction between justice and
the other moral virtues, which do depend on the subjective characteristics
of the person who possesses that virtue. You cannot judge whether a man is
temperate in eating unless you know what is the right measure of food for
him, and that measure will depend on his subjective qualities (for instance,
whether he is an offensive lineman on the college football squad or a sedentary professor who lives in the library), whereas you can judge that an act
is just simply by looking at whether one has rendered what is due, the ius.
This means that justice has a certain objective quality, because there is a
kind of “out-there-ness” to the ius, to “what is due,” that is a function of
the relationship or order between the parties and does not directly depend
on their personal qualities.10
Even so, it is entirely possible to speak about this objective ius from the
perspective of the person to whom it is owed, and even to suggest that a
person can make a claim for what is due to him—he has a “right” to it. This
is simply to regard the objective ius from the point of view of the person
to whom it is due. The objective “due” thus becomes a subjective claim or
right.11
My argument on this point cuts against the grain of most of the scholarship of recent decades on Thomistic natural rights. No less an authority
than Ernest Fortin, the eminent priest and Straussian, claims that the
notion of subjective rights based on natural law or natural justice is absent
		Some additional qualifications are needed here. For example, for Aquinas, more
is due to one holding a particular office than to the average citizen. In the United
States, we recognize this in many ways: all in the courtroom stand when the judge
enters, whom they address as “your honor”; the president, even though he will
someday return to private life, is surrounded by honors and is “due” a personal staff
and an executive mansion in virtue of the office.
11
		John Finnis makes this point quite persuasively, if briefly, in “Aquinas on ius and
Hart on Rights: A Response to Tierney,” Review of Politics 64 (2002): 407–10.
Jean Porter makes a similar argument at much greater length, specifically about
Aquinas’s conception of ius, in “Justice, Equality, and Natural Rights Claims: A
Reconsideration of Aquinas’s Conception of Natural Right,” Journal of Law and
Religion 30 (2015): 446–60.
10

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from, and even foreign to, Aquinas’s thought. Fortin concedes that the
research of Brian Tierney (a historian of natural rights) shows that, in
the century before Aquinas, canonists formulated subjective rights based
on positive law (like the Church’s canon law). But this is a far cry, Fortin
argues, from grounding subjective rights on natural law principles.12 For
his part, Tierney—whose scholarship is regarded as the standard historical
account of the development of subjective rights—accepts the dichotomy
between objective and subjective rights and regards Aquinas as a representative of the objective rights tradition, in opposition to both earlier and
later subjective rights proponents.13
In my view, both Fortin and Tierney are mistaken. In fact, if you read
beyond the narrow slices of the Summa theologiae that political theorists
are wont to consult, Aquinas very explicitly speaks of what is objectively
“due” to someone as a subjective ius or right that he possesses and can
assert. I have come across at least twenty-three different examples of
“subjective ius” in Aquinas.14 For example, he says that “free men . . . have
the right and capacity [ius et facultatem] in some cases to resist the precepts
of a king or prince.”15 In other words, the king’s just authority is limited,
and this same truth can be expressed as a right or faculty belonging to free
citizens. Elsewhere, Aquinas says that, in some matters, a free citizen has
a right of contradicting a ruler, ius contradicendi, which suggests a right to
contradict in speech or even oppose a ruler, as well as to refuse compliance
with the ruler’s commands.16 Aquinas also says that, if one has suffered
an injury, a private person “is able to prosecute his right [ius suum] in the
		Ernest Fortin, “On the Presumed Medieval Origin of Individual Rights,” in
Collected Essays, ed. J. Brian Benestad, vol. 2, Classical Christianity and the Political
Order: Reflections on the Theologico-Political Problem (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1996), 243–64, esp. 246–47.
13
		Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, 257–60. Annabel Brett offers a more nuanced
perspective when she identifies different types of subjective right that she contrasts
with the objective right tradition exemplified by Aquinas (Liberty, Right and
Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997], 89–97; 123–24). Even so, the subjective–objective
distinction animates important parts of her analysis.
14
		It is not clear in all twenty-three examples that a subjective ius would correspond
to what we would call a “right.” In some of these texts, ius might be translated as
“authority” rather than “right.” My point here is not that Aquinas has a full-fledged
enumeration of subjective rights, but that it is commonplace in his thought that an
ius would “belong to” a person who could assert or make a claim based on it.
15
		Aquinas, De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 4: “Liberis . . . habent ius et facultatem repugnandi
quantum ad aliqua praecepta regis vel principis.”
16
		ST I-II, q. 58, a. 2: “Liberis . . . habent ius in aliquo contradicendi.”
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Dominic Legge, O.P.

tribunal of his superior.”17 In other contexts, Thomas speaks of an adopted
child having a right or ius in the adoptive family’s inheritance,18 of the
finder of buried treasure having a right in it,19 of a baptized person having
a right to receive the Eucharist, 20 of the Church as having rights [iura] that
should be defended against usurpation by civil rulers (referring explicitly
to Thomas a Becket and King Henry II of England),21 and even of certain
communities having a right to provide themselves with a king, and thus
also having the capacity to depose a king who becomes a tyrant.22 Many
of these are, in fact, quite close to what later theorists will label natural
rights.23
		ST II-II, q. 40, a. 1.
		ST I-II, q. 114, a. 3.
19
		ST II-II, q. 66, a. 5, ad 2.
20
		ST III, q. 67, a. 2.
21
		Contra impugnantes IV, ch. 3.
22
		De regno I, ch. 7.
23
		In addition to the eight examples just cited, and the ninth discussed just below,
I have found fourteen other examples, across twenty-three different texts, of a
“subjective ius” in Aquinas: ST I-II, q. 96, a. 3 (to protect the right of one’s friend
[ius amici sui] may be a virtuous act of courage); I-II, q. 96, a. 4 (in some cases, a
man should “go the extra mile” by ceding his ius to avoid scandal or disturbance
); II-II, q. 87, a. 3 (a cleric with the care of souls has the right of receiving tithes
[ius accipiendi decimas] from those he serves); II-II, q. 100, a. 2, ad 5 (ius in a
bishopric or any other dignity or prebendary, acquired either through election or
provision); a. 4 (a right of patronage [ius patronatus]—that is, a right to present
clerics for an ecclesiastical benefice); III, q. 67, a. 6 (a cleric in certain cases has a
right of baptizing [ius baptizandi] those under his care); III, q. 57, a. 6, ad 3 (Christ
“acquired for himself and for us, in perpetuity, the right [ius] and the worthiness
of a heavenly dwelling-place”); De decem praeceptis, prol. (charity acquires for us
an ius to the inheritance of God, which is eternal life); Quodlibet II, q. 5, a. 1 (a
father has a right of governance [ius prelationis] over his children for the sake of
the good management of the household); In orationem dominicam, a. 5 (we take
away the ius of God when we prefer our will to his); Super Rom 13, lec. 1 (a king
has rights [iura] to receive tribute from his subjects); In orationem dominicam, a.
2 (a king has an ius in his reign even before that reign is declared); Super Rom 9,
lec. 3 (a king has rights [iura] in his kingship which he rightfully defends against
others); ST II-II, q. 12, a. 2 (the ius dominii of a prince to govern his subjects); I-II,
q. 105, a. 1, ad 5 (it is the king’s ius to draft young men into military service and
to take things from his subjects in order to secure the common good, though this
is often turned into an unjust usurpation by tyrants); I-II, q. 114, a. 1 (paternal ius
and lordly ius); II-II, q. 100, a. 4, ad 4 ( Jacob received a right of inheritance [ius
promogeniturae] by divine election; Super Heb 2, lec. 3 (the ius of primogeniture);
Super Rom 8, lec. 6 (a son has an ius in sharing in the inheritance); Super Matt 25,
lec. 3 (Marietti no. 2095; to take possession of an inheritance belongs to one with
an ius); ST III, q. 46, a. 3, obj. 3 (“the devil had no ius in man because he deceived
17
18

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One more notable example is worth mentioning because, in it, Aquinas
expressly argues that a right possessed by an individual is based on natural
law. It is found in one of his quodlibetal disputations at the University of
Paris. Quodlibet literally means “ask whatever you please,” and it was a
demanding academic exercise in which other members of the university
could publicly pose to Aquinas a question on any subject they liked, and
he would be expected to give a magisterial answer. In this case, a questioner
asked whether one may baptize Jewish infants even if their parents object.
Aquinas writes:
It would injure Jewish parents if their children were baptized
notwithstanding their objections, because it would violate their
right of parental governance [ius patriae potestatis]. . . . [The reason
is that] it is of natural right [de iure naturali] that a son is under the
care of his father until he gains the use of reason, and hence it would
be contrary to natural justice if, before a child has the capacity for
free choice [liberi arbitrii, the full capacity of free will in someone
who has attained the use of reason, normally around the age of
seven], he were taken away from his parents’ care, or if something
were ordered concerning him notwithstanding his parents’ objections. But after he begins to have the use of free choice, then he
begins to be his own [incipit esse suus], and he is then able to provide
for himself with respect to those things that concern observing
divine or natural law. At that point, he can consent to the faith
and be baptized even if his parents object, though he must not be
induced to accept the faith by coercion, but only by persuasion—yet
not before he has the use of reason.24
In this remarkable text, Aquinas speaks of the parents as suffering an
him by fraud”); Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (the devil has no ius regarding the innocent);
Super Ioan 14, lec. 8 (Marietti no. 1975) (because the devil attacked Christ, over
whom he had no right, he deserved to lose what he held justly).
24
		Quodlibet II, q. 4, a. 2, sc and corp.: “Fieret autem Iudaeis iniuria, si eorum filii
baptizarentur eis inuitis, quia amitterent ius patriae potestatis in filios iam fideles.
. . . De iure naturali est quod filius, antequam habeat usum rationis, sit sub cura
patris; unde contra iusticiam naturalem esset, si puer ante quam habeat usum liberi
arbitrii, a cura parentum subtrahatur uel de eo aliquid ordinetur inuitis parentibus.
Postquam autem incipit habere usum liberi arbitrii, iam incipit esse suus et potest,
quantum ad ea quae sunt iuris diuini uel naturalis, sibi ipsi prouidere, et tunc est
inducendus ad fidem non coactione, set persuasione, et potest, etiam inuitis parentibus, consentire fidei et baptizari. Non autem ante quam habeat usum rationis.”
ST II-II, q. 10, a. 12, duplicates this text, nearly word for word.

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injury if they are deprived of their ius to raise and govern their children.
No positive law can contravene this right, in Aquinas’s view, because,
according to the order of nature, children are entirely under the care of
their parents until they attain the age of reason. Ius clearly has here a
subjective dimension that is grounded in the natural order of things, and
hence it pertains to the natural law: it is the ius of the parents to raise their
own children, and to violate this ius would do an injury to the parents.
Once the children reach the age of reason, Aquinas thinks the situation changes. Parents still have a right to care for their children, and
children still have to obey their parents with respect to the good ordering
of the household and their education in virtue.25 But as persons now fully
possessed of the use of reason and free will, children come into full possession of themselves, which means that they now enjoy the right to worship
God according to the judgment of their own minds, notwithstanding a
contrary wish of their parents.26 Indeed, this kind of possession of self is,
according to Aquinas, the ultimate root of the equality of justice between
human beings, and it is what makes it possible for us to be due something
in the proper sense of the word, to possess a “right” or ius.
It would not seem a great leap from Aquinas’s reasoning here to an
account of natural rights as belonging to persons in virtue of their nature
as free and rational creatures.27 This was precisely the sort of reasoning
that later Dominican Thomists did articulate in the controversies over the
enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the New World. Indeed, in the
very text I have been quoting, Aquinas expressly says that, even where the
civil law places a man in a state of servitude, he retains his right of parental
governance of his children, and also his right to determine how he himself
will worship God, because these derive from “the order of natural or divine
right [ius].”28 “Nor should anyone disrupt the order of natural right, by
which a son is under the care of his father.”29
This mention of order brings us back to the key dimension of Aqui		Quodlibet II, q. 5, a. 1.
		It is hardly surprising that Aquinas takes this position about parental authority,
since he himself, as a teenager, defied his parents and joined the then-fledgling
Dominican Order.
27
		Porter emphasizes this aspect of Aquinas’s thought and argues that it is a feature
of Aquinas’s core commitment to our natural equality, which is grounded in our
“equality of status as free, self-directed rational agents” (“Justice, Equality, and
Natural Rights Claims,” 455–60).
28
		Quodlibet II, q. 4, a. 2, ad 3.
29
		Quodlibet II, q. 4, a. 2, ad 2: “Nec aliquis debet irrumpere ordinem iuris naturalis,
quo filius est sub cura patris.”
25
26

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nas’s account that I emphasized earlier. Aquinas never considers law, nor
justice, nor ius (the object of justice), as belonging to an individual person
abstracted from a wider teleological order. Rather, a subjective ius or right
is, for Aquinas, always a way of looking at how an individual belongs to a
larger order and is himself teleologically ordered, according to reason, to
a good.
This is true even of the right to worship God according to one’s
conscience, which belongs to individuals who have the use of reason and
free choice. For Aquinas, this right does not belong to them as pure or
absolute individuals, abstracted from the wider order in which man exists.
Rather, that subjective right is itself another way of expressing how man is
ordered to God. Man possesses reason above all so that he can be ordered
to God through it: “Man is ordered to God through reason, by which he
is able to know God. Hence a child, before he has the use of reason, is, by
natural order, ordered to God through the reason of his parents, to whose
care he is naturally subject.”30
Subsequent Thinkers
Let us now shift our focus from Aquinas to subsequent thinkers. The standard historical account generally accepted by all sides in the contemporary
debate over natural rights is that Aquinas lacked a doctrine of subjective
rights, and that the development of such a doctrine in later thinkers involved
a crucial shift from an objective sense of ius to a subjective one. Some praise it
and others decry it, but most agree that the shift from objective to subjective
marks a major change in approaches to law, justice, and rights. As we have
seen, however, Aquinas clearly does sometimes speak of an ius as a right or a
faculty of an individual derived from natural law or natural justice that he can
assert over against other individuals, or even against a civil ruler, the deprivation of which causes him injury, and which he can vindicate by making a legal
claim. To be sure, later thinkers develop a much more substantial account of
subjective rights than Aquinas has. Some also have a theory of natural rights
very different from his, but it is my claim that such theories are different not
because they shift from objective to subjective rights, but primarily because
they have lost sight of the truth that justice, law, and ius all depend on, and
are facets of, a wise or reasoned ordering of individuals to the good.

		Quodlibet II, q. 4, a. 2, ad 4: “Homo ordinatur ad Deum per rationem, per quam
Deum cognoscere potest: unde puer antequam usum rationis habeat, naturali
ordine ordinatur in Deum per rationem parentum, quorum curae naturaliter subiacet; et secundum eorum dispositionem sunt circa ipsum divina agenda.”

30

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William of Ockham
In the history of moral theology, William of Ockham, the fourteenth-century Franciscan nominalist, is typically identified as the primary culprit
on this score. As we saw earlier, when Aquinas spoke of justice in God, he
held that the plan of God’s wisdom by which all things are ordered back to
God, a plan conceived by the divine intellect, is like a law for God’s willing:
God’s will is just because he always wills in accord with his wise plan of
order. Ockham reverses this because he thinks it denigrates God’s omnipotence to suggest any limitation on what God could will. He thus places
the divine will in the first and highest place, so that whatever God wills is
thereby necessarily just.31 Likewise, where Aquinas had defined law as an
ordination of reason for the common good (a definition that even applied
to divine law), Ockham understood law as ultimately rooted in God’s will,
as a function of God’s command.32
For Ockham, then, law and justice cease to have a reference to a plan of
order to the good and are principally matters of divine will or precept. The
divine will becomes a source and measure of justice, and even of reason—a
position nearly the direct opposite of Aquinas’s. Indeed, Ockham even
thinks that God could change what is just and right merely by changing his command: although God presently forbids us to hate, steal, and
commit adultery, and therefore these acts are wrong, they would be right
and meritorious if God were to command us to do them.33
These changes to the conception of justice and law are the backdrop to
Ockham’s transformation of the meaning of ius in his political writings.34
		William of Ockham, In I sent., d. 17, q. 3: “Eo ipso quod ipse vult, bene et iuste
factum est” (Opera theologica, vol. 3, Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum
(Ordinatio), distinctiones IV–XVIII, ed. Girardus I. Etzkorn [St. Bonaventure, NY:
St. Bonaventure University, 1977], 478].
32
		 Francis Oakley discusses this point in Ockham’s thought in “Medieval Theories of
Natural Law: William of Ockham and the Significance of the Voluntarist Tradition,” Natural Law Forum 60 (1961): 65–75.
33
		Ockham, In II sent., q. 15 (Opera theologica, vol. 5, Quaestiones in librum secundum
Sententiarum (Reportatio), ed. Gedeon Gál and Rega Wood [St. Bonaventure, NY:
St. Bonaventure University, 1981], 352–53). God could even command the souls
in heaven to hate him, in which case it would be right for them to do so, according
to Ockham in In IV sent., q. 16 (Opera theologica, vol. 7, Quaestiones in librum
quartum Sententiarum (Reportatio), ed. Rega Wood, Gedeon Gál, and Romaldus
Green [St. Bonaventure, NY: St. Bonaventure University, 1984], 352). For Aquinas, such a view is nonsensical, since the beatitude of heaven consists in knowing
and loving God.
34
		Armand Maurer’s judgment is correct (pace Tierney and other recent interpreters
of Ockham’s political thought on rights): Ockham’s political works should be read
31

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Whereas Aquinas had spoken of ius as the object of justice, or what is due
to someone in view of the complex ordering of individuals and communities to the good, such a conception of ius no longer makes any sense in
Ockham’s system of thought. Law and justice are principally matters of
precepts handed down from above, demanding obedience of the will. For
Ockham, the exterior act that one performs (such as eating, drinking,
dressing, writing, reading in a book, or riding), considered as a matter of
factual occurrence, is morally neutral.35 What gives it its moral character
is the will of the person who acts, namely, whether the person is actually
willing prudently to act in conformity with the divine will according to
the judgment of his or her conscience.36 Consequently, he conceives of ius
as a function of a positive grant of a privilege, a kind of positive enactment
by the will of the sovereign. For Ockham, therefore, most rights are positive rights had “by some enactment or human agreement.”37 Ockham does
acknowledge the existence of natural rights, ius “had from nature,”38 but
he seems to think of this along the same lines as a positive right: this ius
arises from a kind of divine grant by which God gives a privilege to man
that can be used as man sees fit. Thus, according to Ockham, in creating
man, God gave to him a certain dominion, a legitimate sphere of activity
and agency on matters not directly controlled by a precept of justice or

in continuity with his theological works (The Philosophy of William of Ockham
in the Light of Its Principles [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1999], 537). When one does so, one can see the deep coherence between them.
After all, Ockham was one of the most brilliant minds of the fourteenth century,
and one should expect that the core principles in one domain of his thought would
not be abandoned another.
35
		Ockham, Opus nonaginta dierum 2, in A Translation of William of Ockham’s Work
of Ninety Days, vol. 1, trans. John Kilcullen and John Scott (Lewiston, NY: The
Edwin Mellon Press, 2001).
36
		This is evident if one examines Ockham’s understanding of “actual prudence”
(which he distinguishes from “habitual prudence”). Actual prudence, on his view,
is something that “in no way is in our power,” but rather is generated in us, moment
by moment, by God. If God generates this actual prudence in you directing you
to do some act and you then will to do it, the resulting act is virtuous. But if, in
the midst of carrying out that act, God should cease to generate in you the actual
prudence telling you that this act is to be done but you continue to carry out the
act, your action is transformed from being virtuous into being vicious (Ockham,
Quaestiones variae, q. 8, a., in Opera theologica, vol. 8, Quaestiones variae, ed. Girardus I. Etzkorn, Franciscus E. Kelley, and Josephus C. Wey [St. Bonaventure, NY:
St. Bonaventure University, 1984], 409–20).
37
Ockham, Opus nonaginta dierum 61.
38
		Ockham, Opus nonaginta dierum.

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divine command.39 It was here that Ockham located a person’s natural
ius, which he defined as a “licit power of a subject.”40 Within this sphere,
an individual can freely use, or not use, whatever belongs to him, his ius.41
In sum, then, order, reason, and the good have been displaced in
Ockham’s thought from the central role they played in Aquinas’s. For
Ockham, justice and law do not necessarily involve an ordering to the good
according to reason. Rather, they are matters of moral obligation: a precept
of the divine will calls for man’s will to obey. Consequently, ius is no longer
understood as a function of an ordering to the good, but rather is a feature
of the sphere of personal dominion granted to man by God, where man has
the licit power to act as he sees fit as long as he remains within the bounds
of the commands of God.
Francisco Suarez
It is important, however, that we not stop here, because some subsequent
figures—including those who oppose Ockham’s nominalism and claim to
be interpreting Aquinas’s thought—also lost sight of this crucial dimension
of St. Thomas’s thought. This is particularly the case with Francisco Suarez,
the great Jesuit who, in the early part of the seventeenth century, stands at
the origin of the distinctive Jesuit line of interpretation of Aquinas. (The
founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius of Loyola, had designated Aquinas as
the preferred theologian for his new society, and the Jesuits subsequently
adopted Aquinas as their principal teacher in “Scholastic theology.”42) In
1612, Suarez published his De legibus ac deo legislatore, a massive treatise
of moral and legal theory. As an obedient Jesuit, he consistently cites
Aquinas throughout, which might give the impression that he is simply
handing on and elaborating on the teaching of the Angelic Doctor. But he
in fact consistently alters the meanings of the terms of Aquinas, ultimately
producing a doctrine of law, justice, and rights that is different from the
great Dominican thinker in some notable ways.
At the start of his treatise, Suarez sets out to define law, lex. For Suarez,
the essence of law is not an ordination of reason to the common good, as
Aquinas taught. Rather, Suarez reframes it thus: “Law is a certain measure
		Ockham, Opus nonaginta dierum 14: “complete power to subject and rule all
temporal things and power to use such things.” See also: Opus nonaginta dierum
2; Brett, Liberty, Right, and Nature, 65–66.
40
		Ockham, Opus nonaginta dierum 61.
41
		Brett, Liberty, Right, and Nature, 62–68.
42
		 See Andrés I. Prieto, Missionary Scientists: Jesuit Science in Spanish South America,
1570–1810 (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011), 161.
39

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of moral acts, in the sense that such acts are characterized by moral rectitude through their conformity to law.”43 He then adds: “In the strict
sense of the term, only that is law which imposes an obligation of some
sort.”44 Entirely absent from Suarez’s initial definition is any reference to
an ordering to the common good. Law is first of all about moral precepts:
one’s actions are good when they conform to the commands of a superior.
As a result, even the terms “good” and “end” (which pepper Aquinas’s
discussion of law and justice) largely disappear from Suarez’s treatment,
replaced instead with the terms “right” and “wrong,”45 measures not of
whether an action produces the good or leads an actor to his proper end,
but rather of whether an actor’s will is conformed to the moral command
of his superior.
To be sure, Suarez does discuss the common good seventy-five pages later
in his treatise, in chapter VII. But his understanding of the common good is
far less robust than Aquinas’s, and it does not enter into the very definition
of law. Rather, having defined law as a binding moral rule that imposes an
obligation, he later adds, as a subsequent “characteristic condition,” that it
should be enacted for the sake of the common good.46 To put this another
way, the central element of law—that law imposes an obligation—is derived
from the will of the lawgiver who hands down the rule, whereas the fact
that a law is ordered to “what is good and necessary” pertains to the lawgiver’s intellect.47 And in the final analysis, Suarez affirms that the will of the
legislator is primary and that his act of intellect gives shape to what his will
has determined. Law, for Suarez, is therefore principally an act of the will of
the legislator: “Law . . . as it exists in the lawmaker himself, is the act of a just
and upright will, the act whereby a superior wills to bind an inferior to the
performance of a particular deed.”48
A similar transformation is also evident when Suarez examines the
meaning of ius. While he acknowledges that ius can designate the object of
justice, the true meaning of the word ius—its more strict and proper mean		Francisco Suarez, De legibus 1.1.5. All quotations from the De legibus are taken
from Francisco Suarez, Selections from Three Works, ed. Thomas Pink, trans. Gwladys L. Williams, Ammi Brown, and John Waldron (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty
Fund, 2015).
44
		Suarez, De legibus 1.1.7.
45
		John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980),
46.
46
		See Suarez, De legibus 1.1.7: “It shall be formulated particularly with reference to
that good.”
47
		Saurez, De legibus 1.5.21.
48
		Suarez, De legibus 1.5.24.
43

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Dominic Legge, O.P.

ing—is, he says, “a certain moral power which every man has, either over
his own property or with respect to that which is due to him.”49 Suarez’s
definition differs from Aquinas’s not so much in the fact that ius can refer
to a subjective right or faculty, but rather in that ius no longer, for Suarez,
has any intrinsic reference to a wider order of relationships, nor is there any
reference to a teleological ordering to the common good. (For Aquinas, it
was precisely an individual’s place in a wider teleological order that gives
rise to the ius.)
What is more, Suarez reverses the relationship of ius and lex, or law. In
St. Thomas, ius is the just thing, the form of law, and thus the exemplar
according to which a written law is crafted. For Suarez, however, law is the
moral rule handed down by the will of a superior, and ius is the faculty or
moral power that an individual possesses in virtue of the law.
Drawing Conclusions: Do Thomists Have Rights?
Because Suarez’s teaching was so influential among Catholic natural
law thinkers, and especially among later Jesuit Thomists, contemporary
commentators often assume that Suarez offers standard Thomistic natural
law teaching. Fortin is a good example. He holds that the key break with
Thomistic natural law teaching—the line between classical natural right
and modern natural rights, if you will—is located not somewhere in the
three centuries between Aquinas and Suarez, but in the three decades
between Suarez and Hobbes.50
Yet, as I hope is now evident, Suarez’s account of law, justice, and rights
has a character fundamentally different from Aquinas’s, though not
because of a shift from an objective sense of ius to a subjective one. Rather,
the difference is twofold: (1) the loss of the recognition that law is fundamentally an ordination of reason to the common good, not the imposition
of an obligation by the will of a superior; and (2) the loss of the sense that
ius is a feature of the overarching teleological order to the good in which
the rational creature is placed, rather than a moral power of the creature
considered without reference to that order. Suarez may not be the source
of these changes (one might wonder whether William of Ockham bears
		Suarez, De legibus 1.2.5.
		Fortin, Collected Essays, 2:273: “The real ‘watershed’ in the history of the rights
doctrine is not to be located somewhere between Thomas and Suarez; it occurs
with Hobbes, who set the stage for all subsequent discussion of this matter by
denying that human beings are political by nature (something that Suarez and
Grotius never did) and by proclaiming the absolute priority of rights to duties.”
See also 2:248.

49
50

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143

some responsibility for them, or even Duns Scotus51), but he is a major
figure in their history. And it seems to me that these two changes together
constitute the mainspring of the development of modern theories of natural rights, with their strengths but also the notable weaknesses identified
by Strauss and others.
Should we try to return to the purity of the original Thomistic doctrine?
Jesuit Thomists after Suarez may have modern rights, but do Dominican
Thomists have rights? Can we formulate a Thomistic doctrine of rights
that would be plausible today?
I would like to answer by summarizing the essentials of what I take
to be Thomas’s position. The ius, or what is due to another, the object of
justice, depends, first, on the overarching order of the cosmos, which is
laid out according to God’s wisdom, and is therefore both intelligible and
teleological, and which is composed of persons endowed with reason and
free choice who are members of various communities that are themselves
arranged in hierarchical order. Then, second, this ius is a function of the
relationality that follows from the place that these persons have in this
order.52 Nor is this order an abstraction: it is the concrete, particular, historical order in which I find myself. Man comes into the world as the child of
parents, living in a human community, as a creature under God. He has
not himself created or generated this order. Consequently, man necessarily
and inevitably exists in an interlocking web of relationships, of belonging
as a part to other wholes: his family, his clan, his city, the whole human
race, the whole body of Christ, the whole of creation. These relationships
are not constituted by man’s choice. Rather, we could say that man is naturally and originally in these relationships.
Aquinas’s understanding of justice, and thus of rights, is therefore
quite different from the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment accounts
derived from social contract theory, which postulate that man exists first
as a kind of independent individual in a primitive “state of nature,” and
therefore brings to the relationships he chooses to enter certain fundamen		MacIntyre, for one, identifies Scotus as a seminal figure, a precursor to Ockham
and Kant, in the philosophical line of thought that accords primacy to the will
over the intellect, and consequently that sees natural law as a matter of obedience
to divine commands (Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 155).
52
		On this theme generally, see Christopher A. Franks, “Aristotelian Doctrines in
Aquinas’s treatment of Justice,” in Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, ed. Gilles Emery
and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 143–47. I got
from Franks the idea to conceive of justice as relational. Of course, Aquinas transforms this idea from Aristotle because he understands all men to be in relation to
God and to all other men in the civitas Dei.
51

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tal rights that are, in a sense, anterior to those relationships. Such theories,
whether we are speaking of Hobbes, Locke, or more recent authors like
John Rawls, tend to abstract from the concrete historical relationships
and, we might say, the initial conditions into which we are in fact born.
They aim at developing an account of the basic or fundamental rights
that human beings have purely in virtue of being human, such that justice
becomes, at least in part, granting what is due in virtue of those rights, and
so that individuals can then pursue whatever goods they deem worthy of
their choice.
For Aquinas, in contrast, the ultimate end of man is not a matter of
arbitrary choice, not even for God. The whole plan of divine providence
originates in God’s wisdom as an ordination of reason with respect to
the good. And so, we are born into the world as creatures who naturally
occupy a place in that order, and who are naturally ordered to a final end,
a good, that we do not choose. Neither are our relationships matters of
choice; we simply are in certain relationships: familial relations, relations
with our neighbors, membership in a larger political and civic community,
and so on. Justice thus has to do with our right ordering to the good that
we do not determine for ourselves. It is based on a reality outside of us, in
the order of relations in which we inevitably exist.
For a Thomist, then, rights are not properties of individuals as moral
monads. Nor can we find the source of rights in an abstract definition
of human nature, but rather by considering man as a rational and free
creature ordered to God and to the common good of the hierarchy of
communities to which he belongs. This allows us to see, then, how rights
are connected to justice, to teleology, and to the common good.
In relation to Justice: Rights are a way of looking at what is due, the ius or
iustum, insofar as it is due to someone who can then seek to have that “due”
vindicated. This is, in Thomistic terms, a “right.” Because of man’s nature,
we can draw certain conclusions about what man is, what man ought to
be, and therefore how we should treat other persons, since they are equal
to us insofar as they are human. Yet rights are not functions of individuals
as individuals, but rather of persons who belong in a hierarchy of ordered
wholes (families, cities, the whole human race, the whole cosmos), each of
which has its own common good.
In relation to Teleology and the Common Good: Law is teleological. It is
always ordered to the common good, either real or merely apparent. And
rights are likewise teleological: they affirm what is required for persons to
be rightly ordered to each other and to the political authority in view of the
common good. Thus, to respect the rights of another, to give him what is
due to him, not only pertains to his private good, but means acting in right

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relationship to the order of the whole, to the common good.
Indeed, Aquinas teaches that man’s ends are not arranged side-by-side
on a horizontal plane, but exist in an ordered hierarchy: he is ordered to
individual goods (like the good of his biological life), and then to higher
and nobler common goods (like the good life that he shares in a virtuous
family, a flourishing and friendly neighborhood, and a just city), and ultimately to God, the universal common good of the whole universe. Laws of
various kinds direct man toward these various levels of good. Rights can
therefore also be understood as a function of a just ordering of each person
toward the common good.
Note, though, how this view differs from a typical contemporary theory
of rights. In the classical Thomistic view, the end (the common good) and
the ordering of the community to that end are primary. Rights articulate
claims of justice in relation to the end. Consequently, rights are not absolute or unlimited claims, nor are they themselves the ultimate foundation
of or reason for our political community. Rather, rights always point to
something further and nobler than an individual or private good: the
common good of the whole. This is not to say, of course, that individual
rights must always bow before the demands of the political authority. To
the contrary, Aquinas holds that some rights are a function of the order of
man to a good that is prior to or transcends the political community (as we
saw him argue concerning the right of a parent to care for his child). But
even these rights do not stand on their own; rather, they stand in virtue of
their relation to a good.
Contemporary rights theorists might object that this classical Thomistic view subordinates the liberty that individual rights guarantee under the
common good in such a way that those rights will be endangered whenever
the government (or the majority) find them inconvenient. Is this not, they
would ask, precisely the reason why we should affirm the primacy of individual rights understood as anterior to political society and independent
of the common good? A complete answer to this objection would require
much longer treatment than can be provided here, but we can at least
identify the confusion about the common good hiding in such questions.
From Aquinas’s perspective, the common good is not something that
competes with the good of individuals, nor is it like other private goods
that are diminished when they are shared (e.g., more people invited to the
party means a smaller slice of cake for each). A common good is precisely
the kind of good that can be shared by many without diminishment, like
the good of victory for a sports team, or the good of justice in a city, or
the good of peace among states. To say that rights stand in relation to a
good, then, is not to say that some kind of alien or hostile “common good”

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trumps or even destroys the good of the individual. Rather, the common
good is a good for the individual, a good of a higher and nobler sort in
which the individual participates, and without which it is impossible to
have a full measure of human happiness. Human beings are ordered not
only to private goods like food and shelter but also to common goods
like justice, truth, civic friendship, and peace, and without at least some
measure of these common goods, they will neither flourish nor be truly
happy. As Aquinas puts it (paraphrasing Aristotle’s Politics), the city exists
“not only that men might live, but that they might live well.”53 That individuals have rights that they can assert, rights that the positive law should
recognize, pertains, therefore, not only to the private good of individuals,
but to the common good of the community: the “Blessings of Liberty”
(as the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution puts it) should not be thought
of as describing a merely private good, the individual property of discrete
individuals, but rather a dimension of the common good. It is part of the
common good that the community be just, that it recognize what is due to
its members, that it be governed by the rule of law, and that it be composed
of free citizens capable of directing their own lives by their own responsible choices. When the law acknowledges and protects the just right of a
citizen, it is doing something quite different from pork-barrel spending
that hands out material benefits (that is, essentially private goods) to the
favored clients of the ruler. Acknowledging what is due to individuals is (at
least in part) what makes a society just.
On this view, then, individual rights are not set over against the
common good, as if an increase in the common good necessitated a diminishment of individual liberty. Rather, that individuals be secure in their
liberties as citizens—that they “possess rights”—is precisely an aspect or
dimension of the common good, and the protection of those rights in
law is a means for securing the common good of a just republic. In all of
this, subjective rights are understood as a function of an overarching order
toward a good. To put it another way, rights are important (or even fundamental and indispensable) precisely because of the overarching primacy of
the common good and the place that each individual has in the order of
the whole.
Does this theory of rights offer a plausible alternative for our present
political culture? Whether it would win many votes in a popular election,
I will not presume to judge, but I think Aquinas would say that, no matter
what theory we construct, in actual fact, by the very nature of the case,
rights unavoidably and always are founded on some prior judgment about
		Aquinas, In I pol., ch. 1.

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the good, either the good for individual persons or the good for the human
community. If that is true, then our epoch’s shrill and proliferating claims
of incompatible rights should tell us that, behind this camouflage, there is
a deeper and more radical disagreement about what is good. Our political
life can improve only if we bring this disagreement out into the open,
where we can have an honest debate about the true end of our common
life together.
There are some contemporary critics of the rights claims found in
classically liberal political regimes who view such rights as the product
of an Enlightenment mode of thought, containing a kind of poison pill
ultimately destructive of the justice of such regimes. On such a view, one
might argue that the American project was doomed to failure from the
start: we should not be surprised that expanding rights claims have become
the source of deep and enduring political conflict, and they are producing
a regime that is increasingly illiberal. This is the inevitable corruption and
self-contradiction of a regime built on a foundation of natural rights.
I hope it is evident that my argument is in a way the opposite of this
view. While it may be true that certain Enlightenment versions of rights
create mischief—namely, they set up insoluble political conflicts—it is not
clear that the notion of rights must necessarily produce this kind of situation. My claim is that, underlying all rights claims there is always an orientation to some good, and so there always remains a real possibility to have
a classical debate about how a community should order itself to the good.
In other words, a regime that recognizes natural rights has not necessarily
swallowed a poison pill, and a good Thomist can be a proponent of rights.
What is more, our present regime does not necessarily need radical surgery
to fix the problem. Rather, we need to recognize what is in fact already
there: that rights necessarily involve an ordering to the good. Once one sees
this, one can see how a regime like ours can be defended on Thomist terms.
So, in the end, do Thomists have rights? Yes. Does anyone else? Maybe
not, at least, perhaps not the kinds of rights that work for a healthy
N&V
political order.

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149

Love as the Law of the Gift: Reading Paul with John
Barclay and Aquinas
Michael Dauphinais
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

“Christmas is an irrational season.” This charming and poetic phrase has
always struck me as profoundly wrong. Far from being irrational, Christmas
is reason at its greatest height and depth: the manifestation of the Word,
the divine reason, becoming flesh. Yet there is something understandable in
the quote, since the gift of the incarnate Word in Bethlehem surely exceeds
anything that human reason could have expected or deserved—and the
incarnate Word is certainly opposed by fallen human reason. The actual
quote is an excerpt from a poem by Madeleine L’Engle:
This is the irrational season
when love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
there’d have been no room for the child.1
		 Madeleine L’Engle, “After Annuncication,” in L’Engle and Luci Shaw, WinterSong:
Christmas Readings (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1996), 69. In another Christmas
poem, L’Engle writes: “But now is the hour // When I remember // An infant’s
power // On a cold December. // Midnight is dawning // And the birth of
wonder.” (“Birth of Wonder,” in Wintersong, 99–100). It is worth observing that,
in her poetry, L’Engle describes Advent/Christmas as both the “irrational season”
and the “birth of wonder.” In so doing, she may well be objecting only a certain
kind of rationalism that has been pervasive in modern thought. On the topic of
reason versus rationalism, consider John Henry Newman’s distinction between
implicit reason and explicit reason and his criticism of British empiricism, in
particular for reducing reason to explicit reason (see Sermon 13 in his Fifteen
Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1826 AND 1843).

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My interest here is not in L’Engle’s theological views, but rather in considering the expression “the irrational season” as emblematic of a peculiarly
modern way of thinking about God and his actions toward humanity.
The typically modern way of considering gifts is to see them as opposed to
reason. “Love blooms bright and wild” in the “irrational season,” whereas
a rational season in Mary would have shut the doors on the gift of love.2
According to this typically modern view, the gift of the Christ child is
neither self-interested nor calculated. Christ, according to this view, has
entered the world to free us from the rational cycle of economic exchange
and selfishness to enter a new world of gift, one in which human beings give
freely to each other without any thought of return.
Yet we need to pause at this supposed dichotomy between reason and
gift, between order and love. Such a dichotomy would undermine some of
the most significant bonds within a society, particularly those of obligatory familial roles. For instance, a mother and father are obligated to love
and provide for their children, an obligation discernable by reason; yet
such loving support is also a gift given by loving parents, with those who
give more in relationships often receiving more from such relationships.
Moreover, gifts can be understood as gifts only to the extent that they
possess an intelligibility open to human reason. Gifts have to participate
somehow in the order of goodness and have to be recognized as such. A
gift that purely does harm is no gift at all. The problem with opposing gift
and order is that gifts both presuppose an order and establish new orders.
In his magisterial Paul and the Gift, John M. G. Barclay challenges
many modern assumptions about the nature of the gift, assumptions that
Barclay argues have clouded the interpretation of Paul and his teaching
on redemption offered in Jesus Christ. Barclay draws on the anthropological investigations of the gift over the past several decades to remove
some of our modern views of grace in order to allow us to see more clearly
how Paul might have understood the climatic event of human history,
the gift of Christ. The present article proceeds in two major parts. First,
it will consider some themes from Barclay’s book on the nature of the
		It is worth noting that the Catholic tradition has viewed Mary’s “yes” to Gabriel
as something rendered possible through her preservation from sin: Mary’s “room
for the child” requires more than the common “filled with reason.” Hans Urs von
Balthasar writes: “The Maria fiat, unequalled in its perfection, is the all-inclusive,
protective and directive form of all ecclesial life. It is the interior form of communio, insofar as this is an unlimited mutual acceptance, far more than a human
‘getting along together’ or fraternization” (The Office of Peter and the Structure of
the Church, trans. Andrée Emery, 2nd ed. [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007;
emphasis added], 223).

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gift and Paul’s unique understanding of grace as both incongruous and
transformative. Second, the article will examine similar ways of reflecting
on the Christian life in light of Aquinas’s theology, with particular attention given to his commentaries on Paul. I will argue that Aquinas both
confirms many of Barclay’s insights and deepens—and gently corrects—
the understanding of the gift of Christ as perfective of the Torah and
creative of the new order in the Church.
Barclay: Pauline Grace as a Uniquely Transformative Gift
The Modern Distortion of the Gift
The phenomenon of the gift is reminiscent of Augustine’s comments
on time. We think we know what time is until we try to speak about it.
Gifts are similar in many ways. We exchange gifts commonly. We use the
language of “self gift” in the areas of the moral life and sexuality. We speak
about God’s gift of his Son. May gifts be taken back by the giver? Refused
by the receiver? Do gifts come with an expectation of reciprocation? Is
there such a thing as a “pure gift,” and is this the ideal of the gift? Is a gift
with strings attached a gift at all? The theme of gift is complex among
humans, and only more so when considered between God and creation.
Certain strands within modernity developed the idea of gift in ways
that have left it largely unrecognizable in comparison with its ancient and
more standard approach. Barclay suggests that the modern Western idealization of the “pure gift” extended themes within the nature of the gift
that also created distortions, distortions that are problematic in general,
but particularly so for the interpretation of Paul. Barclay suggests that the
ideal of the “pure gift” as something given freely without any expectations
of a return created two new ideologies: first, that of the purely disinterested gift (the perfection of nonreciprocity); and second, that of the purely
interested exchange (the perfection of reciprocity).3 These two ideologies
create the modern tensions surrounding the nature of the gift and have led
to the postmodern tendency to unmask putative gifts in society as merely
exchanges.
So, are reciprocal gifts really gifts? Post-Luther, the emphasis has fallen
on the ideal of nonreciprocity to such a degree that a gift that demands
reciprocity is seen as no gift at all.4 The nonreciprocity of the gift pervades
		John Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2105), 55. For the
remainder of the present article, Barclay’s book will be cited parenthetically in text
simply by page number.
4
		Barclay identifies, and limits, the role of Martin Luther in the “distinctively
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typical modern thinking. It can be seen in the common opposition
between egoism and altruism and between eros and agape. If the nonreciprocal gift arose in the Christian theological imagination in Luther, it has
survived in the post-Christian imagination of Jacques Derrida, in which
no gifts are possible and all exchanges are violent impositions of powers
standing in judgment of the impossible pure gift (61–63). Yet this elevation
of the gift to nonreciprocity comes at a cost, insofar as the gift no longer
exists within the temporal history of humanity. Since all gifts, according
to this view, can be shown to have some layer of exchange or intended
reciprocity, no true gifts exist. Barclay helpfully shows that this view of
the gift is not shared by the ancient world or much of the non-Western
modern world. Instead, gifts form significant parts of the bonds that
sustain human communities. Gifts given do expect return. Reflection on
common experience supports this view. Parents give life, support, and love
to their children; children give back such love, support, and care to their
parents. Of course, such expectations may be abused, but this does not take
away their proper use.
Barclay identifies Luther’s break with the Augustinian and medieval
tradition in his development of “pure altruism” as a possible perfection of
grace.5 Luther saw the “instrumental reciprocity” in the work of Gabriel
Biel as Pelagianism. Luther worried that, if grace is “I give this in order to
get that,” human beings would be the main agents in their own salvation.
Moreover, Barclay identifies Luther’s rejection of Aristotelian understandings of natures and habitus. In this way, the medieval tradition read Paul’s
teaching about grace as a new habitus influencing the Christian. Barclay
has a powerful insight here that the Aristotelianism of Aquinas allowed
him to read Augustine in a manner that shows the Christian life as powerfully elevated through the new habitus of divine grace.6 Luther’s rejection
modern ideal of the gift-without-return”: “This latter may have roots in Lutheran
theology, but was universalized in Kantian ethics with its resistance to externally
imposed obligation. We have thus become wary of the protestations of Derrida
and others that a gift is truly such only if it entails no reciprocity or return. That
peculiarly modern presumption does not correspond to the assumptions of antiquity and should not be allowed to determine what Paul or his fellow Jews might
have understood by the grace or gifts of God” (185).
5
		For the purposes of this article, I am following Barclay’s presentation of Luther as
a particular interpreter of Paul, one who emphasizes the nonreciprocity of grace.
Whether Luther’s actual theology allows for a more transformational notion of
grace is not considered.
6
		 Barclay, however, appears hesitant to endorse what he identifies as the “narrowing”
of grace in Augustine. According to Barclay, Augustine narrows his understanding
of grace to a tightly interwoven complex of grace’s priority and superabundance

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of Aristotelianism thus created a misreading of Augustine on the transformative power of the Christ gift (100–101). Luther dropped the perfection
of the gift identified by Barclay as efficacy. Grace is no longer effective in
transforming the ungodly into the godly, who are thus capable of merit.
Luther shifted the view of grace in the Christian imagination and in much
of the modern world by emphasizing the “permanent state of incongruity”.
Barclay highlights how this modern idealization of the gift as pure gift
separates the recipient from the giver. Without real gifts in the existing
world, social bonds among particular individuals fail to be created and
nourished. The rise of the modern understanding of the individual as
existing prior to familial and social bonds might be viewed as a logical
corollary to the deconstruction of gifts and reciprocity. Unity becomes an
ideal unreachable in the actual self interests that drive human interaction.
Barclay rightly expresses concern over how a one-sided notion of grace
undermines the missional characteristic of modern Christian communities. Instead, grace properly understood as incongruous and reciprocal
allows for a rebirth of such communities: “It is the incongruous grace that
Paul traces in the Christ-event and experiences in the Gentile mission
that is the explosive force that demolishes old criteria of worth and clears
space for innovative communities that inaugurate new patterns of social
existence” (572).
Paul’s Incongruous Grace
Barclay develops this anthropological background into a substantive
contribution to the role of grace in Paul. Specifically, he distinguishes
among six unique perfections within the larger concept of gift and grace.
Barclay’s notable contribution to the debates surrounding Paul and grace
is to disentangle the following aspects of grace. First, grace almost always
includes a superabundance in which God gives according to the extravagant
scale and “excessive” scope of his greatness, not according to that of his
human recipients (70). Second, grace can be erroneously understood to
require singularity, in which the omnibenevolent God gives exclusively
according to his “pure benevolence” in such a manner that problematizes

with its efficacy and incongruity (95–97). On the theme of the way in which
Aquinas marshals Aristotle’s understanding of nature and motion (motus) to
articulate the dynamic power of grace, see Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., “Aristotle’s
Philosophy in Aquinas’s Theology of Grace,” in Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, ed.
Gilles Emery, O.P., and Matthew Levering (New York: Oxford University Press,
2015), 94–120.

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“the punishment of evil” (70–71).7 Third, almost all accounts of grace
entail priority, in which God’s gift always takes place “prior to the initiative of the recipient,” and is thus in no way obligated “by a previous gift”
(71–72).8 Fourth, grace may be understood to be perfected in incongruity
when God gives his gifts “without regard to the worth of the recipient”
(72–73).9 Fifth, grace can be associated with efficacy, seen as perfect when it
“fully achieves what it was designed to do” (73–74).10 Sixth, grace could be
perfected—or perhaps distorted—in noncircularity, in which God’s gift is
a “one-way, unilateral donation” without any expectation of a return, either
because it is not desired or because it is not possible (74–75).11 Having
offered this classification of six distinct perfections within the broader
concept of “gift,” and in particular divine gift, Barclay states, “to perfect one
facet of gift-giving does not imply the perfection of any or all of the others”
(75). This allows him to survey the historical tradition and contemporary
world of Pauline interpretation and identify various threads by showing
which cluster of perfections are grouped together or predominate.
Barclay’s contributions may be seen by considering the role of two of
		 Barclay here offers Marcion as the prototype of emphasizing this possibility within
grace.
8
		Barclay notes how this may be understood in various ways relating to predestination. His central point, however, is that the perfection of the priority of grace may
be seen as common to all Second Temple Judaism, as in E. P. Sanders’s “covenantal
nomism,” but also that the other perfections of grace are not commonly shared and
are often held in tension.
9
		A central achievement of Barclay’s book is to show that the perfection of incongruity is not necessary to the notion of grace. Many classical thinkers would have
considered gifts perfected by congruity, when the best gifts are given to those
worthy of them.
10
		Barclay identifies this perfection above all with Augustine’s theology of grace,
although he affirms that some amount of efficacy is entailed in all accounts of
grace, “In some form or other, everyone can agree that God’s gifts are effective: the
extent to which they are the sole and sufficient cause of the human response is the
degree to which this facet of grace has been perfected” (74).
11
		Barclay identifies this perfection especially with Luther and the modern idealization of the “pure gift.” One of Barclay’s central insights could be summarized as
showing that ancient cultures in general—and Paul in particular—did not perfect
grace in this nonreciprocal manner. Barclay observes some of the negative consequences of such nonreciprocity: “The one-way gift establishes no relation, creates
a permanent and potentially humiliating dependency, and frees the recipient of
all responsibility. Nonetheless, its emergence in the modern era as a powerfully
alluring perfection of grace, identified with ‘pure’ altruism or disinterest, makes
this an important facet of the perfected gift to place alongside the others we have
outlined” (75).
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these perfections: incongruity and noncircularity. The notion of incongruity deals with the question of whether the recipient of the gift is worthy
of the gift. Barclay helpfully shows that the common ancient understanding was that gifts typically did not share the perfection of incongruity.
Instead, the more perfect the gift, the greater the congruity between the
worth of the gift and the worthiness of the recipient. Consider Jesus’s
saying in Matthew when he speaks of not giving pearls to swine. A giver
would be imperfect who gives good gifts to those unworthy. So to perfect
incongruity within the gift is quite a distinct perfection within the ancient
and biblical notion of the gift. The perfection of the noncircularity aspect
addresses the question of whether the gift given expects a return. Notwithstanding the modern emphasis on the pure gift, the ancient understanding was that gifts received oblige the recipient to return something. This
sense of reciprocity was not viewed negatively as giving a gift “with strings
attached,” but as assisting in the formation of the very fabric of a society
and establishing varied roles, responsibilities, and mutual obligations.
By distinguishing between the aspect of congruity and circularity,
Barclay ably disentangles a number of arguments about Paul. For instance,
many interpreters have assumed that grace or gift always implies a lack of
congruity or a lack of desert or worthiness on the part of the recipient.
Here Barclay acknowledges the contribution of E. P. Sanders’s recovery
of grace in Second Temple Judaism, but also parts ways with his analysis.
Sanders’s “covenantal nomism” showed that the law was understood to be
something given by God and not in any sense earned by Israel’s keeping of
the law. Thus, Torah observance did not get one into the covenant, but it
was the condition for staying in the covenant. Thus, the Torah was broadly
understood to be a prior grace or a gift from God, not something that was
earned by human effort. Sanders’s work and the broad “new perspective”
movement it ushered in have demonstrated persuasively that Judaism was
not a religion of works righteousness in which human beings became
righteous through their own good works. Instead, Judaism was a religion
of grace, especially emphasizing the priority of grace in terms of God’s
initiative in all covenant making.
Barclay observes that it is insufficient to show that the Second Temple
authors agreed on the priority of grace (191). He shows that these authors
do not agree on other facets of grace, with the result that they end up with
diverse accounts of divine grace. Barclay faults Sanders for uncritically
accepting the perfection of the incongruity of grace and, so, assuming that
grace and desert are incompatible in the Second Temple period. Barclay
employs the classification of grace-perfected-in-incongruity and grace-perfected-in-congruity to offer a more fine-grained analysis of the period to

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show Paul’s distinctive approach. Some texts and authors from this period,
such as the book of Wisdom and Philo, present grace and desert as going
hand in hand (for example, see 309–11). Thus, these authors emphasize
the congruity of grace: God gives his good gifts to those who are deserving
and worthy, the faithful Jews who suffer at the hands of the unrighteous.
The gifts are not earned in any sense, since they come from the priority and
superabundance of God’s goodness and are not proportionate to human
works, but nonetheless, God gives them to the worthy, not to sinners. This
approach sees such congruity as a necessary implication of the overall order
of the universe and the justice of God. What kind of king would give his
greatest gifts to his evil subjects and give his greatest punishments to his
good subjects? Barclay shows, however, that Second Temple Judaism does
not always hold to congruous grace. Other texts form this period, such
as Qumran’s Hodayot and those of Paul, perfect grace along the lines of
incongruity (for example, see 311 and 324).12 God’s goodness is given to
the unworthy because all of humanity is seen as worthless, misaligned, or
incapable of pleasing God.
Barclay deploys the distinction between reciprocity and congruity to
address particular questions within the reading of Paul. For instance, he
quotes James Harrison as arguing for the distinctiveness of Paul’s understanding of grace in comparison to the rest of Second Temple Judaism:
“only the grace of Christ . . . is unilateral, non-reciprocal,” in contrast
to ancient religious systems that were reciprocal (18).13 Barclay argues,
however, that Harrison here confuses incongruity with noncircularity.
Barclay makes the case that Paul does hold the incongruity of grace but
does not hold its noncircularity. In short, this means that the Christ gift
is given to the unworthy, and yet it is given to the unworthy to transform
them into the worthy. Paul is not against works righteousness, but rather
		 Barclay writes: “In comparison with Philo, what stands out is Paul’s refusal to trace
any line of congruence between God’s mercy and its recipients, even if it risks
making God seem arbitrary or unfair. . . . Paul’s remarkable emphasis on the incongruity of God’s grace, while shocking to Philo, would not have shocked the authors
of the Qumran Hodayot” (324). The manner, however, is quite different in the
Qumran versus Paul. Barclay sees the Qumran as a “cosmic plan, rooted in creation
as part of its design,” whereas “Paul’s contemporary experience of the Christ-event
and of the Gentile mission has convinced him that the central dynamic of God’s
plan is constituted not by nature, but by an event, not by primordial cosmic design,
but by the enactment of God’s ‘glory’ in the worldwide reach of the gospel (cf. Rom
10:14–21)” (325).
13
		James R. Harrison, Paul’s Language of Grace in Its Graeco-Roman Context (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 288.
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Torah righteousness. The Christ gift is given to both the just and the
unjust, yet it requires just acts, as did the gift of the Torah. Christ replaces
the Torah for both Jews and Gentiles (544).
Reciprocal Grace and Eschatological Congruity
Gifts constitute new relationships and, thus, new obligations. As we have
noted above, Paul perfects grace along the line of incongruity but not
along the line of noncircularity. Barclay sums up this point by saying that
the Christ gift is unconditioned but not unconditional.14 It is freely given
to the unworthy, but it expects worthiness of life in return. Because Paul’s
theology of calling and theology of sin are founded on the incongruity of
the Christ gift, he does not preclude a radical transformation in the new
life opened up by the Christ gift (568–69). Christ offers a new life, a new
habitus, a new standard of worth, judgment, and communal living.15 The
gift, however, is always prior to the recipient’s worth. Moreover, the gift
is incongruous, meaning that it is given only to the unrighteous, to the
unworthy. Barclay emphasizes that Paul discovered the incongruity of the
gift in the context of his mission to the Gentiles.16 If the Gentiles, who
were without the Torah, were called into God’s covenant, then they could
be called only in their very unrighteousness. The calling of the Gentiles
also reinterprets the calling of Israel such that both Jews and Gentiles are
seen to have been under sin. As Barclay summarizes his conclusion, the
observance of the Torah, also known as “works of the law,” ceases to be
definitive for God’s election; now the community is formed through “faith
in Christ.” The community of the new covenant is not meant to remain in
sin, but to be redeemed and liberated from sin for righteousness.
The resurrection of Jesus opens up a new dimension in the moral life of
believers. In a certain way, this means that grace moves partly from incon		Barclay writes: “Thus, throughout this book, we have been suspicious of the
modern (Western) ideal of the ‘pure’ gift, which is supposedly given without
strings attached. We have been able to make sense of the fact that a gift can be
unconditioned (free of prior conditions regarding the recipient) without also being
unconditional (free of expectations that the recipient will offer some ‘return’)”
(562). Elsewhere, he also states that “the grace of God in Christ is ‘unconditioned’
(without prior considerations of worth) but not non-circular or ‘unconditional,’ if
that means without expectations of return” (446).
15
		Barclay writes: “The new creation is evident precisely in (and not independently
of ) reordered patterns of social and personal behavior” (445).
16
		Barclay writes: “Paul’s Gentile mission reflects his reading of the Christ-event as
God’s fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises in the mode of incongruous grace”
(491).
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gruity to congruity. This mode of life needs to be properly distinguished
from the manner of existence that is normally part of human existence.
Barclay uses the language of an “eccentric” or “pneumatic” existence to
distinguish it from a mere anthropological phenomenon.17 Grace is not
merely part of human experience, but something that is given on a higher
level. Barclay thus shifts the paradoxical character of the Christian life: no
longer the Lutheran paradox of simul iustus et peccator, but a new paradox
of simul mortuus et vivens (502). Barclay notes the transformation within
the power of grace: “This permanent incongruity of new life in dying
bodies is expressed in the congruity or fit between the new human obedience and the purpose or will of God” (503). The mystery of Christian existence thus is not the drama between sin and grace, but that between life
and death, between the new life of grace communicated and present in the
new ecclesial community and the ongoing realities of suffering and death.
Barclay emphasizes the way in which Paul comes to relativize the role of
the Torah and Torah observance. The Christ gift alone comes in as the new
criterion of worth that relativizes other criteria of worth, including both
Gentile understandings and Jewish Torah observance. Barclay argues that
this revaluation of all things in light of the Christ gift comes out of the
radical newness of the Christ gift and the context of Paul’s mission to the
Gentiles. Barclay grounds this argument in his treatment of the manner
in which Paul steps behind the Law to the promises given to Abraham in
Galatians and Romans. In doing so, Barclay deftly steps out of the paradox
of Luther’s emphasis on the introspective self to the objective character of
justification.
Barclay offers a helpful distinction between the Christ gift in history
and the Christ gift at the end of time: in the present, the Christ gift is an
incongruous gift, a gift given to the unworthy that opens up a future of
transformation; at the eschaton, the Christ gift is a congruous gift, a gift
given to those worthy (495). The eschatological dimension of gifts allows
for a suitable resolution to the paradox of incongruous and congruous
gifts. If the Christ gift were completely incongruous, then how would the
God of cosmos be just? If the Christ gift were totally congruous, then why
would it have been necessary for Christ to die on the Cross? Barclay argues
that the gift is incongruous in its being given to the ungodly. Christ is the
free gift of life—through his own death and resurrection—given to those
who were unrighteous. Yet, ultimate rewards and punishments cannot
be given indiscriminately. Thus, while Christ may offer righteousness to
		 Barclay writes: “[The new life in Christ] is an ‘eccentric’ phenomenon, drawing on
the ‘life from the dead’ that was inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection” (501).

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the unrighteous, he cannot offer heaven to the unrighteous who remain
unrighteous. Heaven and hell, eternal life and death, must be suitably
given to congruous recipients. So, is the gift of Christ incongruous or
congruous? Barclay solves this conundrum by distinguishing the incongruity of the Christ gift itself from the effect of the Christ gift. It is given
freely by God to the undeserving, the ungodly, the unrighteous. As such,
it must be received by faith in God’s goodness and knowledge of one’s own
unworthiness; it must be received as the reception of an undeserved gift.
In this way, the gift is a promise that the unworthy will receive worthiness,
that the unrighteous will receive righteousness and, so, become righteous, performing works of righteousness.18 The gift parallels the promise
made to Sarah and Abraham, who were barren and yet were guaranteed
descendants in the midst of their barrenness. So also, the barren Jews and
Gentiles who remain under death are promised eternal life in the final
judgment and the resurrection of the dead.
The gift of life and death is thereby congruous. Eternal life is given
to the worthy, to those who have received righteousness from the Christ
gift, whereas to the unworthy is given death. Once this eschatological
dimension of the two stages of the Christ gift is established, then the sheer
unmerited, incongruity of the Christ gift remains, but also the transformative power of that gift to make the ungodly godly is recovered. As Barclay
aptly summarizes in his treatment of Romans, “the purpose of the unfit-

		 Barclay repeatedly develops this interplay between initial incongruity and eventual
congruity: “If there is reason to believe that Romans, like Galatians, is structured
around the incongruity of grace, there is no reason to assume that it also perfects its
singularity (which would rule out the just condemnation of sin) or its non-circularity (which would rule out the significance of the believers’ works as the necessary
response to grace)” (465); “If we can show that this eternal life is, for Paul, both an
incongruous gift (6:23) and the fitting completion of a life of good works (2:6–7),
we will have solved a conundrum that renders the early chapters of Romans the
greatest stumbling blocks for interpreters of Paul” (466); and “This [divine] power
is incongruous in its impact on sinful human material, but its transformative results
are finally congruous with the just judgment of God” (467). Richard Hays offers a
different approach that also attends to the question of God’s righteousness and the
need to move beyond certain categories of Protestant polemics of the sixteenth
century: “The Reformation theme of justification by faith has so obsessed a generation of readers (Protestant readers, at least) that they have set Law and gospel in
simplistic antithesis, ignoring the sign of coherence in Rom 3:1–26; consequently,
they have failed to see that Paul’s argument is primarily an argument about theodicy, not about soteriology” (Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul [New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1989], 53).

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ting gift is to create a fit” (473),19 the unconditioned gift (congruous) that is
not unconditional, since it calls for a response (circular). Barclay describes
this as a new habitus of Christian living in response to the Christ gift.
This way of separating the incongruous and congruous aspects of God’s
actions removes the Lutheran trope that the justified remain ungodly. This
allows for a retrieval of Augustine without Luther. Luther’s Augustinianism removes the transformative aspect of the covenant. Aquinas’s Augustinianism highlights the unconditioned character of the gift while also
emphasizing its transformative character.20 Interestingly, Barclay notes
that Aquinas presents grace as a transformative habitus in a way similar
to Paul, but he does not develop the connection. Yet, I would suggest that
Aquinas presents a systematic manner of developing many of Barclay’s
readings of Paul. As we will see in the subsequent parts of the present article, Aquinas remains the Augustinian theologian who emphasizes both
the undeserved and transformative aspects of the new law—the law of
Christ (Gal 5) and the law of the Spirit (Rom 8).
Barclay argues for an objective genitive interpretation of pistis Christou.
This allows him to avoid the emphasis on our religious subjectivity. “What
matters now is not the subjectivity of belief, but the focus and basis of that
faith: the unconditioned gift of God in Christ,” (382) “faith in (what God
has done in) Christ” (371). In Barclay’s treatment of Galatians 2:11–21,
the alternative to faith in Christ is “the practice of the Torah,” erga nomou.
Which gives value? The Christ event now sets the standard for all worth
and upsets all other standards of worth, including both Gentile standards
and the standard of Torah observance.21 Because of the Christ gift, God
		Barclay writes in the same paragraph: “This is the crucial Pauline point—the basis
for that fit, the foundation and frame of the patient good work that leads to eternal life,
is an act of divine power, an incongruous gift to sinful humanity whose transformative
effects will be evident at the judgment.”
20
		Although Barclay acknowledges a difference between Augustine and Luther, he
tends to summarize their approaches as a single approach held in common. Their
difference is that Augustine thought that God made the ungodly godly whereas
Luther thought that the ungodly remain ungodly. According to Barclay, their
similarities are that they both misread Paul by taking him out of the context of his
mission to the Gentiles and saw in Paul’s language of justification a general warning
against trusting in one’s own strength as opposed to God. The alignment of Augustine and Luther should also be complemented, and corrected somewhat, by the
alignment of Augustine and Aquinas. Aquinas opens another way of continuing
the Augustinian line that emphasizes the transformative character of justification.
21
		The contemporary theologian Gilles Mongeau employs the subjective genitive
reading of pistou Christou to argue for a similar reevaluation of the standard of
worth in Jesus Christ: “Faced with the insistence of the Judaizers that belonging
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now considers righteous those who have received the gift of righteousness
in Christ.22
Yet we might ask whether Barclay attends sufficiently to the manner
in which the Torah remains present as fulfilled even if not outwardly
observed. The Torah remains, albeit transformed and fulfilled, within the
Christ gift. The new life made possible by the Christ gift allows for the
moral law of the Torah to be lived more fully. Circumcision is clearly set
aside in Romans 3:30, but the moral law clearly remains, as in 13:8 (“Owe
no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor
has fulfilled the law”) and 13:10 (“Love is the fulfilling of the law”). The
same pattern of rejecting circumcision but retaining the moral law is in
Galatians 5:6 (“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumto Israel is necessary to salvation in Christ (belonging to the group as a measure
of authenticity), for example, Paul exposes this demand as an overly ‘cosmos-centered’ stance in his Letter to the Galatians (it would be a return to the world of
the principalities and powers) and proposes instead the human consciousness of
Christ (saved by the faith of Christ) as the measure of authenticity” (Embracing
Wisdom: The Summa theologiae as Spiritual Pedagogy [Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2015], 37–38). It is not clear, however, that
Mongeau’s contrast of an objective view to a subjective view is adequate to Paul’s
reevaluation of worth in Christ.
22
		It is interesting to note some of the earlier pedigree of viewing Paul’s theology
through the lens of gift. In the middle of the twentieth century, the French Catholic biblical theologian Lucien Cerfaux published Christ in the Theology of St. Paul
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), originally published as Le Christ dans la
Théologie de S. Paul (1958). The second part of the work was simply entitled “The
Gift of Christ,” and Cerfaux offers some of the following comments on the centrality of gift in understanding Paul’s theology of Christ. “This new status reveals itself
first of all as an opposition to Judaism. Christ is our justice, and we are no longer
justified by our works, but only through God’s gift. This gift is a reality, and the
justification we receive far surpasses any juridical idea of ours. Second, there is an
opposition to the Greek mind, in that God condemns human wisdom and grants
us wisdom in the Spirit—wisdom of a higher order than our own, having Christ as
its object” (362). “‘Christ our life’ is the most significant of all of the formulas used
in connection with the gift of Christ. . . . The person of Christ is always basic to his
thought in respect of Christ’s gift to Christians, and conversely, the gift unites us
to the person of Christ” (362–63). “A Christian himself is a gift from Christ. God
grants us the grace of being through Christ’s redemptive work, or since Christ’s
person takes the place of this work more and more in Paul’s mind, we can say that
our Christian being comes from Christ. Through Christ we achieve a new religious
status, which is realized in fact both now and hereafter” (362). “All the gifts are for
all Christians. It is the gifts that create the new race of men, forming the Church,
which is at one and the same time a visible institution founded on Christ’s authority, and a spiritual body in which Christ’s gift is received” (363).

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cision is of any avail, but faith working through love”) and 5:14 (“For the
whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself ’”). So the moral law of the Torah remains.23
Gift and Order: Wisdom and Paul
Barclay presents the book of Wisdom and the writings of Paul in opposition. Wisdom focuses on the cosmic order of righteousness and safeguards
God’s ultimate justice and goodness in his ultimate congruous rewards
and punishments to the righteous and the unrighteous. Paul, in contrast,
views everything through the Christ event and his particular mission to the
Gentiles, which together disclose the incongruous mercy of God.24 Barclay
ably summarizes the conclusion of his argument: “In place of Wisdom’s
structured moral universe, Paul appears to hang every hope on a single
thread, the mercy of God” (327). Yet, are Wisdom’s cosmic order and Paul’s
Christ event truly in opposition to each other? I suggest that this opposition follows from some of the Lutheran dichotomies between order and
event, between incongruity and congruity, that Barclay otherwise dispels
in his interpretation of Paul. The ultimate harmonious character between
Wisdom and Paul (or between order and event) can be seen in two main
ways.
First, the cosmic order of Wisdom contains an eschatological horizon
in which God’s actions are necessary for the restoration of justice. In this
world, it is the unrighteous who will seek out and destroy the righteous.
The ultimate reward of the just and punishment of the unjust requires
God’s actions in the next life (Wis 3:1–4). God, who did not create human
beings to die, restores the faithful to eternal life (Wis 1:13–16; 2:23–24).
Of course, there is not yet the reference to Christ’s death and resurrection
as in Paul, but there is a reference to the just man who will suffer at the
hands of the unrighteous and yet will be vindicated (Wis 2:16–20; 5:1–5).
So, Barclay is correct that Wisdom emphasizes the congruity of grace and
		Hays offers a distinct approach and yet argues for the complementarity of the
Torah and Christ: “Paul agonized over the fact that his Jewish contemporaries
failed to understand that Israel’s Law pointed to the righteousness of faith; now,
Christians make the same tragic error when they fail to acknowledge that the Law
and the Prophets bear witness to the righteousness of God and when they think
that Torah and Christ are antithetical” (Echoes of Scripture, 77).
24
		Barclay writes: “Like Wisdom, Paul’s vision is universal and comprehensive, but
on a very different basis. Wisdom appeals to the universal truth of a regulative
cosmic order, a pre-existing reality to which all things conform. Paul appeals to an
event—the resurrection of Jesus and his installation as ‘Lord’—that makes a claim
on all (Rom 10:12)” (326).
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not the incongruity of grace on the unrighteous, but this is not due to
Wisdom’s remaining in a vision of cosmic order that would deny eschatological divine action. Moreover, Wisdom’s emphasis on cosmic restoration
includes God’s mercy on those who will be rewarded, since all need God’s
mercy.25
Second, the centrality of the Christ event in Paul requires a cosmic
order. Barclay summarizes Wisdom by saying that “the universe is fitly and
morally ordered.” In this way, Paul’s articulation of the Christ event reveals
a continuity and discontinuity with Wisdom. It is necessary for Paul that
the cosmic order of creation and the goodness of the Creator remain. This
order is necessary to make sense of exactly what the Christ gift has accomplished, and the Christ gift thus presupposes Wisdom’s cosmic order. The
new thing that God does in Christ is added to that order. The Christ gift
opens up righteousness to all who enter into the new covenant.26 Yet, as
Barclay adroitly observes, even in Paul, the ultimate rewards of eternal
life are congruous gifts: eternal life given to those who have received the
righteousness of the Christ gift and eternal death given to those who
have rejected that gift and, so, remain in unrighteousness of evil works.
The meaningfulness of the Christ gift is intelligible to the extent that the
cosmic order of Wisdom is maintained, even while it is expanded.
In Wisdom, the cosmic order also includes a cosmic history of disorder.
The goodness of creation includes the history of sin and evil. Orders have
histories. God is a good and wise Creator who made human beings for
eternal life and communion with him. Human beings are free and moral
agents who can act for good and for evil, who can become righteous and
unrighteous. The existence and goodness of God can be known by reflecting on the order of the created world. Nonetheless, the devil has acted to
create a cosmic disturbance: “Through the devil’s envy, death entered the
world” (Wis 2:24). Moreover, this rebellion has been joined by the unrighteous, “those who belong to his party,” and those who seek to follow God’s
law will suffer at their hands. Finally, God will right these injustices and
sufferings through the resurrection of the dead (Wis 4:7,16; 5:15–16).
Paul draws on this same cosmic order and cosmic history of disorder.
		 On mercy needed even by the faithful, see Wisdom 12:22; on mercy to the wicked
in terms of giving warnings before final punishments, see Wis 12:10–11.
26
		As typical of Barclay’s contrast between cosmic order and event, he writes: “As
Galatians has shown, his interpretation of this gift is Christological in focus, and
therefore centered not on a general truth about divine benevolence but on an
event—the death and resurrection of Christ—that has effected a transformation of
reality. This divine gift is here coordinated neither with creation nor with Torah,
but with a particular event endowed with universal significance” (445–46).
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Human beings can know the existence of the invisible God through the
created visible things (Rom 1:20; see also Wis 13:1). Human beings can
know the law of right and wrong (Rom 2:14). God will judge human
beings with justice according to their works (Rom 2:13). The death and
resurrection of Christ disclose at least two new truths: first, that human
beings cannot attain righteousness through following the law of the
Gentiles or the Torah; and second, that human beings can attain righteousness through the gift of God in Jesus Christ (Rom 3:23–26). The
incongruity of the gift of Christ renders possible the final congruity of the
universe (Rom 8:18–23). The deeper harmony between Wisdom and Paul
is theologically necessary, since it grounds a metaphysical dimension to
God’s saving actions in Jesus Christ. The Christ event both fulfills the old
and establishes a new cosmic order.
Aquinas: Charity as the Law of Grace
Aquinas’s New Law of Grace: Incongruous and Reciprocal
St. Thomas Aquinas’s theology of charity and grace parallels—as well as
develops—Barclay’s thesis on the gift in Paul. Aquinas expresses grace as
a new habitus that operates within human life. Aquinas’s new law of grace
balances the incongruity of the gift and the congruity of the response and
final judgment. Aquinas presents Christ as the teacher of the new law. In
Barclay’s language, Christ is the giver of the new gift. Christ gives that
which he alone can give, a divine gift that communicates a share in the very
life of God. Aquinas contrasts the old law to the new law by drawing on the
biblical motif that the old law was given through the mediation of angels.
Instead, the new law is given by God himself in the incarnate Word. The
gift of the new law, however, is not merely an affirmation of life. Instead,
the new law must solve the problem of human sinfulness and death. Thus,
Christ offers the forgiveness of sin and the resurrection from the dead. As
the Apostles’ Creed affirms, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic
Church, the communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of
the body, and life everlasting.” In this way, Christ’s followers are renewed
via faith, hope, and charity. Aquinas summarizes this under the heading of
the new law of grace.
The gift of the new law properly situates the treatment of grace and
justification within the dramatic action of the life, death, and resurrection
of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. Aquinas refers to the new law as the
new law of grace. How might this be illuminated by considering the interpretation of grace through the lens of gift as proffered by Barclay? Aquinas

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speaks of Christ as the legislator and teacher of the new law.
Aquinas’s treatment of grace should be viewed within his treatment of
the dynamic between the old law and the new law. When grace is situated
within its context of the new law of grace, then grace is always seen as a gift
both incongruous and, yet, transformative. If grace were congruous, then
the old law would have been enough, since it would have been the right
path opened up to those worthy of receiving the divine law. Yet, the death
of Christ manifests the incongruity of the gift by revealing the unworthiness and sinfulness of both Jews and Gentiles.
In this way, Aquinas and Barclay share a view of grace as incongruous
yet transformative, but Aquinas develops the understanding of grace and
its sacramental character. The new law of grace is a new principle or habitus
of human existence, one that transforms the moral life in the Church and
is received from the sacramental life of the Church. For Aquinas, grace is
a habitus in the essence of the soul giving us a participation in the divine
nature and flowing into the powers of the soul.27 Thus, this habit in the
essence of the soul that gives us a participation is the divine nature and life
perfects the powers of intellect and will by the infused virtues of faith (in
the intellect) and hope and charity (in the will).28 The ceremonial precepts
of the old law, such as circumcision, yield to the ceremonial precepts of
the new, such as baptism.29 Aquinas treats the Christ gift as present in the
sacraments of the new law with respect to Christ’s Passion, Christ’s grace
in us, and the eternal life with Christ.30 Christ establishes a new horizon
of human existence made possible through his life, death, and resurrection.
Christ thus replaces the Torah as the new standard of worth and meaning.
Nonetheless, the gift of Christ is not a mere idea or a mere belief. Aquinas
holds that the new covenant includes the new ceremonial precepts of the
		Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 109, a. 1; q. 110, a. 2. All English translation from
ST is taken from that done by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province
(New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), in its 1981 reprint by Christian Classics
(Westminster, MD).
28
		ST I-II, q. 62, a. 1, ad 1, in which Aquinas shows how the theological virtues make
us sharers in the divine nature: “By participation, as kindled wood partakes of the
nature of fire: and thus, after a fashion, man becomes a partaker of the Divine
Nature, as stated above: so that these virtues are proportionate to man in respect
of the Nature of which he is made a partaker.”
29
		Note the role of baptism in conferring the gift of Christ in Rom 6:3–4.
30
		ST III, q. 60, a. 3: “A sacrament properly speaking is that which is ordained to
signify our sanctification. In which three things may be considered; namely, the
very cause of our sanctification, which is Christ’s passion; the form of our sanctification, which is grace and the virtues; and the ultimate end of our sanctification,
which is eternal life. And all these are signified by the sacraments.”
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sacraments in order to communicate the reception of this gift. In this way,
Aquinas presents a more deeply sacramental view of the gift of Christ than
does Barclay.31
The modern deformation of gift as unilateral and nonreciprocal
creates a social dynamic and theological universe in which actual gifts are
tarnished by participation in reciprocity and exchange. Consider how the
giver’s separation from the recipient would impact Christian theology:
God gives a gift that could never be returned; God’s gift would not establish communion; God’s gift would remain a transcendental or eschatological ideal that equally condemns and forgives all human actions and efforts.
In this extreme consideration, God’s gift is never properly received. In fact,
one might ask whether such a gift is ever truly given.
In contrast, an understanding of gifts as reciprocal opens up theological dimensions of communion. In Aquinas’s presentation of the
virtue of charity or caritas, caritas is human friendship with God. This
divine–human friendship is established by the communication of God’s
goodness to his human creatures.32 The gift is unilateral insofar as it may
be given only by God, but it is reciprocal insofar as it may be given back by
human beings to God; the divinely revealed friendship of charity becomes
exemplary and transformative of all other friendships.33 Moreover, the
Aristotelian language of grace as a motion (motus) shows how the gift
is continually given by God to allow us to give ourselves back to God.34
		Wilhelmus Valkenburg writes: “In the Summa, the soteriological effects of the
resurrection of Christ are discussed in the theology of Christ the Savior, between
the soteriological effects of his passion, and the sacraments as signs of our sanctification through Christ” (Words of the Living God: Place and Function of Holy
Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas [Leuven, BE: Peeters, 2000], 119).
32
		ST, II-II, q. 23, a. 1.
33
		See Guy Mansini, OSB, “Aristotle and Aquinas’s Theology of Charity in the
Summa theologiae,” in Emery and Levering, Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology,
121–38, at 130: “For St. Thomas, charity is not beyond friendship, but rather true
friendship, even truest friendship: it is founded on the surest communicatio of the
best foundation of what potentially unites God and the angels and men, the divine
beatitude; its first act is an act of divine love, where God estimates us as worthy
of himself, and so makes us to share his nature; and its answering act is our own
love of God above all things, and in the power of the love proper to him, and so,
supernaturally.”
34
		See Gaine, “Aristotle’s Philosophy in Aquinas’s Theology of Grace,” 101, where
Gaine shows that the gift is both given and continually being given: “While
Aquinas makes use of Aristotle’s concept of nature to clarify his position on the
purposes for which we need grace (elevation and healing), he makes use of the
concept of motus to clarify what we need from grace. According to Aquinas, our
need here is not only for some kind of stable ‘gift’ (donum) from God by which we
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Aquinas presents the Trinitarian dimensions of this divine gift when he
presents the missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit through the Incarnation and Pentecost.35 Thomistic charity thus may be viewed as an authentic
development of Paul’s understanding of grace.36 Charity may be seen as the
lens that allows us to understand the gift of Christ.
There is a kind of perfection to the new law that often catches the eye
of the reader of Aquinas. Aquinas will state simply that the old law is
imperfect, the new law perfect. The old law foreshadows the gift of Christ;
the new law contains the gift of Christ.37 Nonetheless, the new law itself
foreshadows the new law of glory. In this way, the new law of grace is
imperfect: only heavenly glory is perfect.38 Aquinas employs this distinction when he presents the three stages of the imago Dei in human beings:
the image according to nature, the image according to grace, and the image
according to glory.39 To say that the new law of grace prefigures the law of
glory recalls the reality that the new law has an eschatological dimension.

are healed and elevated, but also for God himself to move us to act in relation to
this gift” (citing, e.g., Summa theologiae, q. 109, a. 9).
35
		ST I, q. 43, a. 1.
36
		Interestingly, Augustine describes holiness as this same charity in his Catechizing
the Uninstructed.
37
		ST I-II, q. 106, a. 4: “No state of the present life can be more perfect than that of
the New Law, since the nearer a thing is to the last end the more perfect it is.”
38
		ST I-II, q. 106, a. 4, ad 1: “As Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. v), there is a threefold state
of mankind; the first was under the old law; the second is that of the new law; the
third will take place not in this life, but in heaven. But as the first state is figurative
and imperfect in comparison with the state of the Gospel; so is the present state
figurative and imperfect in comparison with the heavenly state, with the advent
of which the present state will be done away as expressed in that very passage (1
Cor. 13:12): ‘We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face.’”
Matthew Levering traces the importance of 1 Cor 13 in Aquinas’s understanding
of the new law of grace in ST in his Paul in the Summa Theologiae (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015): “The main role of 1 Corinthians 13 in the prima secundae, therefore, is to explore the virtue of charity” (247).
39
		ST I, q. 93, a. 4. Romanus Cessario, O.P., writes: “The first image is found in
all men, the second only in the justified, and the third only in the blessed. This
tripartite division of the imago Dei is not peculiar to Aquinas. Christian tradition
returns frequently to the image of creation, the image of grace, and the image of
glory, although some recent spiritual and theological authors eschew this tripartite
understanding of man’s relationship to God” (Theology and Sanctity, ed. Cajetan
Cuddy [Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia, 2014], 80].

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Faith in Christ and Works of the Law in Aquinas’s Commentaries on
Galatians and Romans
Let us consider how Aquinas treats some central passages in Galatians and
Romans and how these might illuminate Barclay’s insights, and vice versa.40
Aquinas presents all of the Pauline epistles as unfolding the mystery of the
grace of Christ: “This entire teaching is about Christ’s grace.”41 He summarizes Romans as considering the grace of Christ “as it is in itself.”42 In his
division of the text for Romans, Aquinas shows how he sees the grace of
Christ as the unifying theme of the letter:
Part I. Romans 1:16–11:36: “the power of the Gospel of grace”
Romans 1:18–4:25: “the Gospel of grace is necessary for salvation”
		 For introductions to the historical, philosophical, and theological context of Aquinas’s biblical commentaries, see Nicholas M. Healy, “Introduction,” in Aquinas on
Scripture: An Introduction to his Biblical Commentaries, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy,
Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 1–20,
and Eleonore Stump, “Biblical Commentary and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzman and Eleonore Stump (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 252–68. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., suggests
that the Expositio et lecture super epistolas Pauli apostoli as we have it now may
represent multiple teaching periods. Torrell dates Super Rom “very probably” to
the end of Aquinas’s life, 1272–1273, as Aquinas corrected the first eight chapters
in his own hand, and the commentary also includes broader theological development, while Super Gal is included in a section that is a reportatio from Reginald
of Piperno, likely recorded from Aquinas’s teaching in 1265–1268 (Saint Thomas
Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal [Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 1996], 340). Pasqual Porro reports Torrell’s
findings, but ultimately concludes that “no precise date can be fixed with regard to
the course [of the Pauline commentaries], its revision, or its publication” (Thomas
Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile, trans. Joseph G. Trabbic and Roger
W. Nutt [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016], 189).
41
		Super Rom prol. (Marietti no. 11). All English translation from Super Rom will be
from an unpublished translation by Fabian Larcher, O.P. Aquinas identifies the
first nine Pauline letters, Romans through 2 Thessalonians, as addressed to the
church of the Gentiles and says those are concerned with the grace of Christ “as it
is found in the Mystical Body itself, that is, the Church”; the next four, 1 Timothy
through Philemon, consider the grace of Christ “as it exists in the chief members
of the Church, namely the prelates”; and the final letter, Hebrews, which Aquinas
attributes to Paul, considers the grace of Christ as “it exists in the head of the body,
Christ himself.”
42
		Aquinas notes that Romans is placed before 1 Cor not because of its chronological priority, which it lacks, but because “the order of teaching requires that grace
should first be considered in itself before being considered as it is found in the
Sacraments” (Super Rom, prol. [Marietti no. 12]).
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Romans 5:1–8:39: “the Gospel of grace is sufficient for salvation”
Romans 9:1–11:36: “the origin of grace, of whether it can be given
by the sole election of God or by preceding merits of works, taking
occasion from the seeming rejection of the Jews”
Part II. Romans 12:1–16:27: “the use of grace, which pertains to moral
instruction.”
This division of themes resonates with some of Barclay’s treatment and
insights. Although Aquinas is interested in theological questions with
respect to election and grace, he nonetheless attends to Paul’s mission to
the Gentiles, as does Barclay. Aquinas presents all of Romans as addressing
a central theme of the grace of Christ, while Barclay centers Paul’s theology
on the gift of Christ. Aquinas shows that the grace of Christ is properly
understood as the new foundation of God’s covenantal relationship with
his people. In other words, it is the new standard of worth, as Barclay says,
replacing Torah observance. The grace of Christ is also incongruous and
circular, as Barclay argues. Aquinas shows that the grace is incongruous,
since it is necessary for salvation because no one can achieve the needed
righteousness before God apart from the gift of Christ. The grace, however,
is circular, since it is also sufficient for salvation, showing that it does
transform the unworthy into the worthy. “Necessary for salvation” and
“sufficient for salvation” parallel Barclay’s wording of the grace of Christ
as incongruous and circular.
Having seen the overall centrality of the grace of Christ in Aquinas’s
treatment of Romans, let us begin with Aquinas’s treatment of faith and
the law first in his Commentary on Galatians and then, second, in his
Commentary on Romans. He summarizes Galatians as considering the
grace of Christ as it exists in the sacraments of the Church, “in which
superfluous sacraments are rejected against certain men who wanted to
join the old sacraments to the new ones.”43 Aquinas addresses Galatians
2:16, where Paul says that he and Cephas had been “justified by faith in
Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no
		Super Rom, prol. (Marietti no. 11). Aquinas offers an outline of the entire Pauline
corpus in the prologue of Super Rom. Barclay summarizes the difference between
Galatians and Romans thus: “Galatians has a Christological focus whereas Romans
has a theological focus. The theological focus on Romans allows Paul to situate
the Christ-gift more clearly with the salvation history of Creation and Israel. It is
definitive, final, complete, decisive, and comprehensive. The Christ-event explains
God’s dealings with Israel, which are not revealed always to have been a gift to the
unworthy” (560).

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one be justified.” Aquinas first situates this verse in its context by showing
that Paul is here explaining how he, Peter, and the other apostles were justified: even though Jews, they were justified by faith in Christ.44 The Latin
wording here is illuminating. Aquinas refers to the apostles’s conversationem, or way of life, conduct, and behavior. In this way, justification refers
to the apostles’s new way of living, and thus a new manner of being. The
apostolic way of life no longer seeks righteousness from the works of the
law, but is defined by its faith in Christ.45 Aquinas interestingly contrasts
the works of the law (opera legalia) with the precepts of faith (praeceptis
fidei): a Torah-observance way of life versus a faith-observance way of life.
The contrast is between works and precepts, the old law and the new law.
In this pre-Lutheran interpretation, faith and the precepts of faith go hand
in hand: faith submits to all that Christ has taught in the new law of grace.
Aquinas supports his interpretation of Galatians 2:16 by quoting Romans
3:28 (“For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of
law”) and Acts 4:12 (“For there is no other name under heaven given to
men whereby we must be saved”). Faith is not contrasted with works in
general, but specifically with the works of the old law.
Aquinas, however, is aware of the peculiarity of Paul’s expression that
we are not justified by works of the law. He then asks how Paul’s expression here is to be squared with Romans 2:13—“For it is not the hearers
of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who
will be justified.” Aquinas distinguishes two senses of justification. It may
be considered as doing what is just or as being made just. With respect to
doing what is just, it depends on which part of the law one is observing.
Aquinas notes that “some works of the Law were moral and some ceremonial.” The ceremonial parts of the law are properly the “works of the Law,”
because their force comes from the law itself. The moral parts of the law
are not properly “works of the Law,” since human beings have a natural
instinct and are led to them by the natural law.46 With this distinction in
		Super Gal 2, lec. 4; all translations of Super Gal are taken from dhspriory.org/
thomas/SSGalatians.htm.
45
		 Valkenburg illumines such references to the apostolic way of life: “Another important aspect of this intellectual and spiritual horizon was the identity of the mendicant orders as presenting a new ideal of apostolic life. This passion for the apostolic
life and for the newness of the Gospel leads to a form of hermeneutics in which
the person of Christ and the Gospel gained a central position in the new law. . . .
In Aquinas’ commentaries on Scripture, his sermons, and his polemical writings,
this ideal of a new life of poverty and preaching was presented as an imitation of
the apostolic life of the disciples of Christ” (Words of the Living God, 214).
46
		Aquinas clarifies that this natural inclination needs the guidance of the revealed

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hand, Aquinas thus solves the apparent contradiction between Romans
2:13 and Galatians 2:16: Paul refers to the moral law when he says that
“it is the doers of the law who will be justified” and to the ceremonial law
when he says that “by works of the law shall no one be justified.” Faith in
Christ will include both moral works of love and new ceremonial works
of the sacraments. Aquinas then considers justification as being made just.
Here, he clearly affirms that “no one is made just save by God through
grace.”47 This grace is not a general divine benefaction, but specifically “the
grace of Christ.” The gift of Christ is communicated through the sacraments of the new law.48
Following up on Galatians 2:16, Aquinas comments on the conclusion
of chapter 2 to show that the gift of Christ is something new that cannot
be absorbed into the old law. In this section, Aquinas emphasizes both the
newness of the life Paul now lives and the irreplaceable role of the death of
Christ in bringing about that new life. Paul writes in Galatians 2:20–21:
“The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose.” Aquinas
interprets this passage as showing the incapacity of the old law to deliver
the righteousness to which it pointed. If justification could have been
achieved from the Torah, “the death of Christ would have been superfluold law so that human beings can come to know the requirements of the moral
law. ST I-II, q. 100, a. 11, reads: “The judicial and ceremonial precepts derive their
force from their institution alone: since before they were instituted, it seemed
of no consequence whether things were done in this or that way. But the moral
precepts derive their efficacy from the very dictate of natural reason, even if they
were never included in the Law. Now of these there are three grades: for some are
most certain, and so evident as to need no promulgation; such as the commandments of the love of God and our neighbor, and others like these, as stated above
[a. 3], which are, as it were, the ends of the commandments; wherefore no man
can have an erroneous judgment about them. Some precepts are more detailed,
the reason of which even an uneducated man can easily grasp; and yet they need
to be promulgated, because human judgment, in a few instances, happens to be led
astray concerning them: these are the precepts of the decalogue. Again, there are
some precepts the reason of which is not so evident to everyone, but only the wise;
these are moral precepts added to the decalogue, and given to the people by God
through Moses and Aaron.”
47
		Super Gal 2, lec. 4: “non autem iustus fit aliguis nisi a Deo, per gratiam.”
48
		Super Gal 2, lec. 4: “The sacraments of the old law were certain declarations [protestationes] of the faith of Christ, just as our sacraments are, but not in the same way,
because those sacraments were configured to the grace of Christ as to something
that lay in the future; our sacraments, however, testify as things containing a grace
that is present.”

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ous.”49 The death of Christ achieves righteousness because Christ himself
now lives in Paul. Aquinas explains this reality by saying that, as Paul’s
body is moved by his soul, now his soul is moved by Christ. Paul lives then
at two levels according to Aquinas: Paul himself lived according to the life
of the flesh, subject to death and temptations; but, “as to his relation to
God, Christ lived in Paul.”
Now let us turn to see how Aquinas takes up the issue of the works of
the law and justification in his Commentary on Romans. As we previously
saw, in his Commentary on Galatians, Aquinas addresses Romans 2:13:
“[It is] the doers of the law who will be justified.” Aquinas comments
that “this point seems to conflict with [Paul’s] own statement below that
‘no human being will be justified in his sight by the works of the law.’”50
To unravel this apparent contradiction, Aquinas focuses on the cause of
justification. What makes us righteous before God? Aquinas says that the
doers of the law do not acquire justice from the works of the law. Here in
Romans, he does not distinguish between the ceremonial and moral works
of the law as he did in Galatians. Here, he includes both the ceremonial
works and the moral works, saying that neither impart justifying grace.
Instead, he writes, “we do such works in virtue of an infused habit of
justice.” In this manner, doers of the law are truly justified before God, but
they cannot become doers of the law apart from the grace of God given in
Jesus Christ.51
The same emphasis on the unilateral direction of grace comes forward
in Aquinas’s commentary on Romans 3:28: “For we hold that a man
is justified by faith apart from works of law.”52 To begin with, Aquinas
examines the prior verse, 3:27, in which Paul asks what is the basis for our
boasting: “On the principle of works? No, but on the principle of faith.”
The word “principle” here is translated from the Greek nomos or the Latin
lex. Aquinas observes that “the Apostle alludes here to two laws, that of
works and that of faith.” Aquinas first asks whether the law of works and
the law of faith refer to the old law and the new law. He answers negatively,
		Super Gal 2, lec. 6.
		Super Gal 2, lec. 3 (Marietti no. 212).
51
		Aquinas considers it the proper role of theological exegesis to discern principles.
Christopher Baglow writes: “Thomas would consider the appropriation of Scripture in sacred doctrine to be, first and foremost, a quest for certain principles in
Scripture that are characterized by their centrality and their preeminently irreducible status” (“Sacred Scripture and Sacred Doctrine in St. Thomas Aquinas,”
in Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction, ed. Thomas Weinandy, Daniel
Keating, and John Yocum [New York: T&T Clark, 2004], 1–25).
52
		Super Rom 3, lec. 4 (Marietti nos. 314–17).
49
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since the old law also requires faith and the new law also requires works.
Instead, the “law of works” is “outwardly presented and written [law],
through which men’s external works are directed,” and the “law of faith”
is “inwardly written [law], through which are directed not only external
works but even the very motions of the heart, among which is the act
of faith first.”53 Aquinas thus eschews any interpretation of “justified by
faith” that opposes law and Gospel.
In his treatment of Romans, Aquinas emphasizes the unity of the old
law and its fulfillment in the new. Here, he interprets the “works of the
law” as both the ceremonial works and moral works of the old law. In
commenting on Romans 3:28, he writes: “Not only without the ceremonial works, which did not confer grace but only signified it, but also
without the works of the moral precepts, as stated in Tit 3:5, ‘Not because
of deeds done by us in righteousness.’” This interpretation shows that the
mode of Torah observance, including the moral precepts, was not sufficient for full righteousness before God. That righteousness was opened up
only through the gift of Christ, received by faith.
To deal further with the role of works, Aquinas employs the temporal
distinction between before and after justification, or before and after
receiving the gift of Christ. Justification begins without works, but it does
not continue without works. Aquinas writes that justification is “without
works prior to becoming just, but not without works following it, because,
as it is stated in Jas 2:26, ‘Faith without works,’ i.e., subsequent works,
‘is dead,’ and, consequently, cannot justify.”54 Aquinas here summarizes
Barclay’s fundamental insight into Paul’s teaching on grace: the Christ gift
is incongruous, since it is given to the unworthy, but it is also circular, since
those who receive the gift participate in Christ’s worthiness, and so offer
works back to God.
It is worth noting that the ceremonial works and the moral works of
the old law are treated in the same vein as oriented to the gift of Christ.
Apart from the Christ gift, such works do not justify. Nonetheless, this
way of putting it suggests that they are disconnected from the Christ gift.
Aquinas approaches the gift of Christ, however, as the intelligible fulfillment of the moral and ceremonial precepts of the Torah. Commenting
on Romans 3:31—“Do we then overthrow the law by faith? By no means!
On the contrary, we uphold the law”—Aquinas avers that “by faith we
complete and fulfill the law” and includes the dominical saying from
Matthew 5:17: “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.” The
		Super Rom 3, lec. 4 (Marietti no. 316).
		Super Rom 3, lec. 4, (Marietti no. 317).

53
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ceremonial precepts are fulfilled because, “being figures, they were upheld
and fulfilled by the fact that the truth signified by them is shown forth in
the faith of Christ.” The moral precepts are likewise fulfilled because “the
faith of Christ confers the help of grace to fulfill the moral precepts of the
Law and even adds special counsels, through which the moral precepts
are more safely and securely kept.”55 Thus, the gift of Christ is not given
to dispense us from the burden of the moral precepts, but rather to allow
the moral precepts to be fulfilled. Barclay employs this same dimension by
stating that the gift of Christ is “unconditioned” (given by the goodness of
God to unworthy recipients) but not “unconditional” (as if it were given by
the goodness of God without an eye to the recipients becoming worthy).56
Nonetheless, Barclay separates the Torah from the covenant promise
and shows how the Christ gift completes the promise, and so eliminates
the role of the Torah in the transformative dynamic of the Christ gift.57
Aquinas shows that the Christ gift is the intelligible fulfillment of the
ceremonial and moral precepts of the old law. This insight allows for a
more sacramental understanding of the new law for Aquinas and a more
cohesive and comprehensive understanding of salvation history in which
the ceremonial precepts of the old law pointed toward the Paschal mystery
they prefigured.
Law as Charity in Aquinas’s Commentaries on Galatians and Romans
Having considered how Aquinas presents the grace of Christ through the
lens of faith and works of the law, let us now turn to how he presents the
grace of Christ as a new law of love. Two central passages are Galatians 6:2
(“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ”) and Romans
		Super Rom 3, lec. 4 (Marietti no. 321). Aquinas identifies the three evangelical
counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience in his treatment of the new law in the
ST I-II, q. 108, a. 4.
56
		Bruce Marshall argues that Aquinas’s commentary on Romans 4 shows that he
considers grace as both transformational and dispositive: “In just this twofold way,
God not only cleanses our souls, but covers our sinful acts. For God to forgive
sins is not only for him to be undeterred by the foulness of what he intends to
change, but for him to overlook—to cover—what cannot be changed” (“Beatus
vir: Aquinas, Romans 4, and the Role of ‘Reckoning’ in Justification,” in Reading
Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais
[Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012], 216–37, at 233).
57
		Barclay writes: “What was entirely unnatural for anyone reared in the Jewish
tradition was to decenter the Torah, to limit its role in history to an interlude, and
to distinguish it categorically from ‘covenant’ and ‘promise.’ But this is precisely
what Paul does in Galatians 3–4, a narrative account of the purposes of God whose
interpretive center is the Christ-event itself ” (401).
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8:2 (“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the
law of sin and death”). Commenting on the former, Aquinas summarizes
the law of Christ in the one word “charity” in three ways. First, the new law
is a law of love, not fear. Second, Christ promulgated his law as the new
commandment to “love one another as I have loved you” ( John 13:35).
Third, Christ himself fulfilled this commandment when he “bore our sins
out of charity.”58 The grace of Christ transforms the believers to be able to
fulfill the law of Christ, the law of love.
In Romans 8:2, Paul speaks of “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus.” In this context, Aquinas sees the new law not merely in terms of
the goal or terminus of the law of love, but as the process of making that
love possible. He paraphrases Romans 8:2 thus: “The law of the spirit frees
man from sin and death.” Such a gift is clearly incongruous, since it is given
to those under sin and death. Aquinas develops this incongruity, however,
by viewing the gift as it is presented here by Paul as a law. Drawing on
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Aquinas considers that all laws are given
to make us good. Aquinas then distinguishes between human law and the
law of the spirit in terms of how each helps us to be good: whereas human
law can only indicate what ought to be done, the “Holy Spirit dwelling in
the mind not only teaches what is to be done by instructing the intellect,
but also inclines the affection to act aright.”59 The emphasis thus moves
from the incongruity of the gift to its efficacy and circularity as it frees the
recipient to become worthy. In addition to considering the law as given to
make us good, Aquinas considers the law of the spirit as the proper effect
of the Spirit. Here he summarizes this effect as “faith working through
love”: “[This] faith teaches us what is to be done, ‘His anointing teaches
you about everything’ (1 John 2:27) and inclines the affections to act, ‘The
love of Christ controls us’ (2 Cor 5:14).”60 Aquinas identifies this law of the
spirit as “the new law, which is the Holy Spirit himself or something which
the Holy Spirit produces in our hearts, ‘I will put my law within them,
and I will write it upon their hearts’ (Jer 31:33).”61 The law of the spirit is
both the gift of the Holy Spirit and the movement of the Holy Spirit in the
members of the new covenant.
Aquinas then considers how the law of the Spirit frees us from sin
and death through the Incarnation taken as a whole. Here he speaks in
a manner similar to Barclay’s treatment of the Christ event. The gift of
		Super Gal 6, lec. 1.
		Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 602).
60
		Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 603).
61
		Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 603).
58
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the new law of the spirit is not something other than the Incarnation as
a whole, but rather is intimately connected to the Incarnation. Aquinas
shows this by observing that the Spirit is in an individual only insofar as
that person is connected to Christ as head.
Aquinas shows how the law of the spirit of life depends on the Incarnation’s power to justify the sinner.62 He points out that the first effect of the
Incarnation is “the removal of sin” and that the second is “the justification
of the law,”63 and he expands upon the latter: “The justice which the Law
promised and which some hoped to obtain from the Law” is now fulfilled
in us, but justification can be accomplished only “through Christ.”64
Aquinas contrasts Christ’s power to justify and the law’s inability to do
so: “It was necessary that Christ be incarnated, because the Law could not
justify.” Interestingly, Aquinas points out here that this is not “due to a
shortcoming in the Law, but because it was ‘weakened by the flesh’ (Rom
8:3), . . . a weakness in man due to the corruption of the inclination to sin
[ fomes], . . . [and] sinful desire [concupiscentia].”65
The Incarnation as a whole, including the death and resurrection, is
given to make human beings worthy before God. The Torah was good and
wise and showed forth “the path of righteousness” (Ps 23:3), but according to Aquinas, Paul came to see that his relationship to the Torah was
changed in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. Christ’s death
reveals a deeper sense of human weakness and a deeper inclination to sin
than did the Torah: the gift of Christ is given to those who are unworthy,
who see themselves as unworthy, and who see themselves in need of the
forgiveness Christ offers. In this way, Christ’s death and resurrection
perfect the Torah, insofar as Christ makes possible the path of righteousness that was previously outlined. The gift actualizes the drama of forgiveness and repentance that is necessary for human beings to live in right
relationship with God.
Consider how Aquinas treats Paul’s teaching on the love of neighbor
as fulfilling the Law. Two central passages are Galatians 5:14—“For the
whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself”—and Romans 13:8–9: “For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled
the law. The commandments . . . are summed up in this one sentence, ‘You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Let us consider first the passage from
Galatians. Aquinas notes the parallel verse in Romans 13 and then asks
		Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 606).
		Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (Marietti nos. 609–10).
64
		Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 611).
65
		Super Rom 8, lec. 1 (Marietti no. 611).
62
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whether it is appropriate to speak only of the love of neighbor, and not of
the love of God.66 He answers that the love of God and the love of neighbor
include one another, since “he who loves God should love his brother also”
(1 John 4:21), and that “we love our neighbor for the love of God.” Following Paul, Aquinas reduces all of the law to the “one precept of charity.”67
Aquinas then explains how this is true.
In Aquinas’s exegesis of Galatians 5:14, he emphasizes the unified character of the divine law by showing how the old law and the new law have
the same ratio, at least in the order of precepts. Aquinas unpacks the unity
of the law by beginning with the unity of the old law. He makes his customary distinction among the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts, yet he
does not thereby separate them into three laws. The threefold distinction
reveals a deeper unity: the moral precepts are the Decalogue and show that
“three precepts concern the love of God, and the other seven the love of
neighbor”; the judicial precepts offer specification of the love of neighbor;
and the ceremonial precepts offer specifications of the love of God. So all of
the law is fulfilled in the “one precept of charity.” Aquinas then concludes
by citing Leviticus 19:18 as the source of this teaching: “You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” Aquinas does not oppose the old law as bad and the
new law as good. Instead, the precepts of the two show a profound unity,
insofar as both may be reduced to the one precept of charity, the love of
God and the love of neighbor for his sake. The difference that the gift of
Christ makes is not primarily in the precepts, although the specifications
are certainly changed, but in the power of justification.68 The most perfect
and righteous gift is given to the imperfect and unrighteous so that they
may become perfect and righteous.
Aquinas elsewhere affirms the profound unity of the law that comes
from God. When he describes it in the Summa theologiae, he speaks of
one divine law with two parts.69 The new law and the old law share the
		Super Gal 5, lec. 3.
		Super Gal 5, lec. 3.
68
		See Super Gal 1, lec. 2, in which Aquinas argues that Paul contrasts the “grace of
Christ” as not properly “another gospel” to show that Christ properly fulfills the
old law: “Although [the new law] is another gospel according to the tradition of
the deceivers, yet according to [Paul’s] preaching it is not. It is different in the
promises, but not in the figure, because the same thing is contained in the Old
Testament and in the New [idem continetur in veteri testamento et in novo]: in the
Old, indeed, as in a figure, but in the New as in the express reality. Therefore it is
another gospel if you consider the outward appearances; but as to the things that
are contained and exist within, it is not another gospel.”
69
		ST I-II, q. 91, aa. 4–5.
66
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same end, and in this way, “the new law is not distinct from the old law:
because they both have the same end, namely, man’s subjection to God.” 70
The distinction between the new law and the old law is found rather in
the way in which the new law is closer to the goal than the old: “The new
law is distinct from the old law: because the old law is like a pedagogue of
children, as the Apostle says (Gal 3:24), whereas the new law is the law
of perfection, since it is the law of charity, of which the Apostle says (Col
3:14) that it is ‘the bond of perfection.’” 71 In this way, Aquinas interprets
the Pauline image of the law as pedagogue to emphasize a discontinuous
continuity.
When Aquinas turns to the parallel passage of Romans 13:8–9, he
develops the theme of love in the language of debts and gifts. He begins
by observing the full passage: “Owe no one anything, except to love one
another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” 72 While we
ought to seek to pay back all debts, there are some debts “from which a
man can never absolve himself.” Aquinas considers the love of God and
the love of neighbor as debts that ever remain with us. He quotes Psalm
116:12—“What shall I render to the Lord for all his bounty to me?”—to
show that the excellence of God’s gifts are such that equal payment could
never be made.73 Aquinas then also presents the love of neighbor in this
same context: “The debt of fraternal love is paid such a way that it is always
owing.” 74 He says this because we owe our neighbor love on account of
God, because we continue to love those to whom we are “alike in nature
and grace,” and because the cause of love does not diminish, but “grows by
loving.” 75 There is a delicate balance in this treatment of the gift of love:
Aquinas emphasizes the incomplete circularity of the gift in this context.
The gift of love expects and deserves return even when that return is inadequate to the original gift of God’s love or to the ongoing deepening of a
friend’s love.
Aquinas situates the gift of love within the context of perfection.
Romans 13:8–9 falls within the larger section of 12:1–13:14, summarized
by Aquinas under the theme of Paul setting forth “the use of grace that
man might be perfect.” This section he further subdivides, “first with
regard to the holiness that man maintains for God (ch. 12), second with
		ST I-II, q. 107, a. 1.
		ST I-II, q. 107, a. 1.
72
		Super Rom 13, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 1045).
73
		Super Rom 13, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 1046).
74
		Super Rom 13, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 1047).
75
		Super Rom 13, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 1047).
70
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regard to the justice that he shows his neighbor (13:1–10), and finally with
regard to the purity that he preserves in himself (13:11–14).” 76 The gift of
grace has power to assist the human creature in attaining holiness.
Aquinas questions how the reader should understand Paul’s teaching
that the love of neighbor fulfills the law. Is Paul speaking of the law of the
old law versus the law of the new law? In his Commentary on Galatians,
Aquinas discussed how the love of neighbor fulfilled the law by referring
back to the old law. Specifically, Aquinas showed how the entire old law,
including the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts, could be reduced
to the love of neighbor that entails the love of God. In his treatment of
the parallel passage in his Commentary on Romans, he makes no reference
to the ceremonial or judicial precepts, but only to the Decalogue, following Paul’s reference in Romans 13:9. Aquinas first argues that the love of
neighbor is included in the love of God, “as the effect in its cause,” 77 affirming that Scripture sometimes uses interchangeably the love of God and the
love of neighbor as though either one were sufficient for salvation. Here,
Aquinas follows Paul and suggests that the law and the precept of charity
are synonymous. Thus, although Aquinas may at other points distinguish
between the old law and the new law, here he sees the deeper shared telos
of the laws God revealed. The gift of Christ fulfills the law, since Christ
fulfills perfect love of neighbor in laying down his life for us while we
were sinners and in loving the Father. Aquinas concludes his comments on
Romans 13:8–10 by saying: “Paul draws the conclusion mainly intended,
saying: ‘Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law,’ i.e., the Law is fulfilled
and made perfect by love, ‘Above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (Col 3:14).” 78 With an emphasis different from that employed by Barclay, Aquinas affirms the fulfilled presence
of the Torah in the new law, since both are ordered to love. Love does not
eschew order, but both reveals and creates its own deeper harmony, drawing on the history of Israel and the gift of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
Barclay offers a much-needed insight into Paul’s notion of grace/gift that is
simultaneously incongruous and reciprocal. The gift of Christ thus comes
as a kind of habitus that has the power to transform us both interiorly and
		John Boyle, “On the Relation of St. Thomas’s Commentary on Romans to the
Summa theologiae,” in Levering and Dauphinais, Reading Romans with St. Thomas
Aquinas, 75–82.
77
		Super Rom 13, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 1049).
78
		Super Rom 13, lec. 2 (Marietti no. 1059).
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communally. Aquinas offers a specification of this habitus that allows for a
better understanding of how grace is circular/transformative/not-unconditional, and thus the fulfillment of the law in charity.
Aquinas argues for the primacy of charity in the new covenant. So,
the transformed life of the Christian is principally a life of charity: love
for God and neighbor that is a participation in God’s own love. These
insights of Aquinas develop an idea shared with Barclay, namely, that grace
is unconditioned, but not unconditional. Aquinas, however, presents a
deeper understanding of the nature of the habitus of grace and the fulfillment of the old law in the new law of the Christ gift.
By attending to Paul’s emphasis on love as the fulfilling of the law,
Aquinas shows forth the necessary relationship between gift and order.
The deepest order and law of the cosmos is that of love, the Trinitarian
love of God disclosed through the Incarnation of the second person of the
Trinity. The ultimate order and love of the cosmos finds its meaning in
divine friendship that exceeds the grasp of a darkened human reason and
a disordered human will. To receive this higher order of gift and love one
must escape the rationalism of the modern age. How can love be ordered
with evil? Justice ordered with injustice? How can the creator’s love be
received and returned by the creature? Human reason on its own can
merely affirm that these are not per se contradictions. The ultimate gift
of divine love, however, has to be received from above and acknowledged
from below. The Christ gift exceeds and yet perfects the drama of human
existence. By following Barclay’s lead—with slight corrections from Aquinas’s treatment of grace, law, and love in his theological exegesis and doctrinal writings—we see that the Christ gift establishes a new order of living in
communion with the Triune God and the members of the body of Christ.
The new order is nothing other than the Christ gift given, received, and
returned through the sacramental and moral life of the Church.
For a final consideration of the gift in Paul, we turn from L’Engle’s
earthly opposition between love and reason look instead to Dante’s depiction of the beatifying vision in his great poem The Divine Comedy. Here,
the incarnate Word strikes as “lightning,” an unexpected gift disclosing a
deeper harmony, and alone perfects and elevates the deepest human desires
to know and to love in accord with Love himself.
O Light that dwell within Thyself alone,
who alone know Thyself, are known, and smile
with Love upon the Knowing and the Known!
That circle which appeared—in my poor style—
like a reflected radiance in Thee,

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after my eyes had studied it awhile,
Within, and in its own hue, seemed to be
tinted with the figure of a Man,
and so I gazed on it absorbedly.
As a geometer struggles all he can
to measure out the circle by the square,
but all his cogitation cannot gain
The principle he lacks: so did I stare
at this strange sight, to make the image fit
the aureole, and see it enter there:
But mine were not the feathers for that flight,
Save that the truth I longed for came to me,
smiting my mind like lightning flashing bright.
Here ceased the powers of my high fantasy.
Already were all my will and my desires
Turned—as a wheel in equal balance—by
The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.79
N&V

		Dante Alighieri, Paradise, trans. Anthony Esolen (New York: Random House,
2007), 357–59.

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183

Divine Beneficence and Human Generosity in Second
Temple Judaism: Reflections on John Barclay’s Paul
and the Gift
Bradley C. Gregory

The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC

In his recent landmark book, Paul and the Gift,1 John Barclay situates
Paul’s theology of grace within the ancient understanding of gift giving.
In order to do this, he outlines six ways that gift giving or grace can be
“perfected,” understood in its “purest essence.” A gift may be “perfected”
in terms of superabundance (size, importance, permanence), its singularity
(it is the defining characteristic of the giver), its priority (it comes before
any initiative by the recipient), its incongruity (the recipient is unworthy
of such a gift), its efficacy (it accomplishes the purpose for which it was
given), and noncircularity (it is given without any expectation of return)
(66–78). These different dimensions of gifts/grace provide a helpful
schema for understanding how both ancient authors and their interpreters
throughout history have understood what grace is and what it is not. For
example, the different understandings of Paul found in Augustine and
Luther largely stem from each of the latter’s different conceptions of how
grace is perfected.
The upshot of this approach to grace for the study of Paul is twofold.
First, in examining the anthropology and history of gift giving from antiquity to the present, Barclay shows that the “disinterested gift,” one that is
given with no expectation of return, is an almost exclusively modern, Western notion. In contrast, for the ancient person, gift giving always expected
		John Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015). This work
will be cited parenthetically by page number.

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some sort of reciprocal exchange because gift giving was always embedded
in an interpersonal dynamic of creating and developing social ties (11–65).
Thus, it is no surprise that, in the second part of the book, when Barclay
explores how different Second Temple Jewish authors perfect divine grace,
not a single one perfects noncircularity. In each of the five works, some
sort of return is expected, even if it is “only” profound gratefulness to God.
Second, by reading Second Temple works with these six different
perfections in mind, Barclay shows convincingly that “grace is everywhere;
but this does not mean that grace is everywhere the same” (319). For example, while Wisdom of Solomon and Philo do not perfect divine grace in
terms of incongruity, the Qumran Hodayot and Pseudo-Philo do; yet all
perfect grace in at least one way. In fact, each Second Temple Jewish author
represents a different constellation of grace, perfecting it in different
combinations of the six dimensions, and each perfection in different ways.
In turning to Paul, then, it becomes quite clear that one cannot simply ask
whether Paul agrees or disagrees with Second Temple Judaism on the topic
of grace. Rather, the question is how his view of grace is situated among
this diversity. On one hand, Paul is continuous with other ancient authors
in not perfecting noncircularity. Like his contemporaries, he firmly
believed that God’s grace creates a new relational dynamic and demands
a response from the recipients. On the other hand, Paul’s view of divine
grace as radically incongruous and centered on God’s gift in Christ was
largely discontinuous with ancient views of (human) gift giving, though in
different ways in comparison to Judaism and Greco-Roman culture. Key
to this aspect of Barclay’s thesis is the claim that, for ancient authors, gift
giving was routinely viewed as congruous in some way with the worth or
status of the recipient, and then further, the question of how gift giving
in early Judaism aligned with this broader Greco-Roman perspective. It
is this aspect of Barclay’s work that I would like to engage for this symposium. I hope the following discussion will help to supplement Barclay’s
treatment and to suggest some further ways that divine beneficence and
human generosity are interrelated among some Second Temple Jewish
authors.2
Social Worth and Well-Placed Gifts
One aspect of gifts in the ancient world that Barclay rightfully highlights
is that the status or worth of a potential recipient was generally a significant factor in the decision to give: “What distinguishes the sphere of gift
		Barclay notes his hope to write a subsequent volume on social gift giving in Paul
and early Christianity (63n172).

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is not that it is ‘unilateral,’ but that it expresses a social bond, a mutual
recognition of the value of the person. It is filled with sentiment because it
invites a personal, enduring, and reciprocal relationship” (31). Because the
proper context of gifts was friendship, whether created or continued, and
involved an expectation of back-and-forth return, it was imperative that
gifts be placed with those who would represent desirable social connections. For this reason, giving to those who would be unable or unwilling
to reciprocate was considered a waste (see Theognis 105–12). For many
Greek authors, the poor were simply unworthy of gifts and even their
gratefulness was worthless. Notably, Aristotle thought it was unbecoming
of a great person to give money to those of no importance, and he criticized
Odysseus for giving alms to the poor for this reason (Nicomachean Ethics
1122a26–27; see Homer, Odyssey 17.420).3 As Barclay aptly summarizes
it: “Nobody wants to think that they have voluntarily tied themselves to
people who degrade their social capital” (39).
While cautions about the recipients of gifts can be found in early
Judaism (e.g., Sir 12:1–6; 20:10, 14), the poor are viewed quite differently.
Barclay is certainly correct to note that the Torah’s legislation and the
demands of Jewish piety grounded care for the poor in religious obligation,
and therefore that those who gave to the poor could expect to be blessed by
God (see 41–44). Yet, we can press the point further to note that these religious obligations derived from a more profound theological understanding of the relationship between the poor and God. Throughout the Old
Testament, there is the conviction that Israel’s God stands in solidarity
with the poor (e.g., Exod 22:20; 1 Sam 2:8; Isa 11:4; Sir 4:4–6; 11:12–13;
35:20–22). For this reason, how a person treats the poor was understood to
have a corresponding “double effect” toward God. For example, Proverbs
14:31 says:
Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are
kind to the needy honor him.4
Since God has a special relationship with the poor, God responds to
the treatment of the poor as though the action had been done to himself.
Distinctively, this “nexus” between God and the poor is actually intrinsic to Israel’s self-understanding as God’s people. For, their origins as a
people are to be traced to their redemption from being poor, marginalized,

		These ancient authors are cited in support of this point by Barclay (34).
		Unless noted otherwise, all translations of the Bible are from the NRSV.

3
4

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oppressed slaves in Egypt (see: Exod 22:21–23; Lev 25; Deut 15:1–10).5
Thus, unlike much Greco-Roman thought, early Judaism did not view
gifts to the poor as a “waste,” but as an affirmation of the special status of
the poor, both as specially loved by God and as emblematic of Israel’s own
identity as God’s elect.
This recognition of the poor’s theological status provided one important motivation for giving to those in need that was, to a degree, independent of the social dynamics of reciprocity: in doing so, one was understood
to be imitating God.6 For example, in Deuteronomy we read:
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great
God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe,
who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves
the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also
love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deut
10:17–19)
Here God’s care for the poor and Israel’s own past as poor are linked as the
foundation for Israel’s obligation both to render justice to the poor and to
provide for their material needs. Similarly, the claim in Psalm 68:6 that
God is a father of orphans and protector of widows is appropriated by both
Job (31:16–18) and Ben Sira (4:10) to describe the ethical obligations of
each Jewish person. In this way, human acts of charity mirror the way God
cares for the poor and even can serve as God’s designated means of caring
for the poor. Importantly, gifts to the poor are often unconditioned: the
poor are to be helped simply because they are in need, not necessarily
because they are righteous, worthy, or a potential social benefit to the giver
in some way.7 In particular, Second Temple Jewish literature attests the
view that giving to the poor qua poor is predicated on the fact that God
is also good and merciful to all (see, e.g., Aristeas 207, 227; T. Benj. 4; cf.
		On this see Bradley C. Gregory, Like an Everlasting Signet Ring: Generosity in the
Book of Sirach, Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Series 2 (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 2010), 172–81.
6
		This motif is not completely absent from Greco-Roman society, but it is less
common there. For an example of generosity being understood as godlike, see
Brad Inwood, “Politics and Paradox in Seneca’s De beneficiis,” in Justice and Generosity: Studies in Hellenistic Social and Political Philosophy; Proceedings of the Sixth
Symposium Hellenisticum, ed. André Laks and Malcolm Schofield (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), 241–65, at 241–42.
7
		 The alternate view that it is better to give to the righteous poor than to the wicked
poor can also be found (e.g., Sir 12:1–6; Tob 2:2; cf. b. B. Bat 9b).
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Matt 5:38–48).8
A particularly vivid example of unconditioned gifts in early Judaism
was the obligation to show kindness to the deceased. Consider two examples. The first is from Ben Sira:
And also to the needy stretch out your hand
in order that your blessing may be complete.
Give a gift to anyone alive
and even from the dead do not withhold kindness. (Sir 7:32–33)
The second is from Tobit:
In the days of Shalmaneser I performed many acts of charity to my
kindred, those of my tribe. I would give my food to the hungry and
my clothing to the naked; and if I saw the dead body of any of my
people thrown out behind the wall of Nineveh, I would bury it.
(Tob 1:16–17)
In the first passage, Ben Sira employs a merism to advocate generosity to
anyone, whether living or dead, and there is no sense that the person should
be worthy in some way. What is meant by “kindness [he̟ sed] to the dead” is
not completely clear, but it likely means the provision of a proper burial.9
This is precisely what is in view in the passage from Tobit. Alongside gifts
of food and clothing to the needy, Tobit’s charity is exemplified by burying
the dead. It is highly significant that, in this story set in the Assyrian exile,
such actions pose a great personal risk to Tobit because they contravene
the king’s decree and subject him to his neighbor’s taunts. Nevertheless, he
continues to provide this kindness to the slain, and the concern for proper
burial is one of the most important elements in the unfolding narrative.
By focusing on the burial of the dead as the preeminent act of charity, the
book of Tobit is able to encourage the faith required to trust God as the
only one who can give a reward in return. Francis Macatangay observes,
“that the dead cannot reasonably be expected to repay favors or reward
any good deeds may have constituted the practice of burying the dead as
		See David Flusser, “Love Your Fellow Man,” in Judaism of the Second Temple
Period: The Jewish Sages and Their Literature, trans. Azzan Yadin (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 156–61.
9
		Another possibility is the providing of assistance to the family of the deceased.
See Georg Sauer, Jesus Sirach/Ben Sira: Übersetzt und erklärt, Das Alte Testament
Deutsch 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 94.
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a paradigmatic act of charity,” and he goes on to quote Israel Abrahams:
“Charity to the dead is the type and acme of disinterested love, of disinterested love which, by the strange ways of Providence, does find its reward.”10
Abrahams aptly characterizes a central point of Tobit, though as we will
see, such charity is disinterested only with respect to the human recipient
and not in the absolute sense found in modern Western understandings of
the “pure gift” (see Barclay 43–44 and 51–63). The inability of the dead
to reciprocate obviously eliminates any motivation based on forging or
furthering social bonds with them and points to the conviction among
early Jewish authors that the ultimate guarantor of reward for charity was
God. The argument of these authors is that God can be trusted to repay
such gifts both because of God’s faithfulness and because of God’s special
relationship with the poor.
Reciprocity: Gifts to the Poor, Loans to God
Given the differences between Greco-Roman gifts, which were embedded
within social reciprocity, and the Jewish view that generosity to the poor
should be unrelated to their status or “worth,” the question arises as to
whether gift giving in Judaism was wholly different from that of the larger
Mediterranean world. A recent and influential answer to this question
has been proposed by Seth Schwartz in his book Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society?11 He argues that, in contrast to the reciprocity of the
rest of the Mediterranean world, with its concomitant systems of power
and dependency, the Jewish ideal expressed in the Torah is a society based
on solidarity, equality, and love. Examining key sources from the Second
Temple period, Schwartz finds that these two antithetical systems (reciprocity and solidarity) are often mixed, creating an inherent tension. Here
Barclay objects to Schwartz’s characterization of assistance of the poor in
Judaism as “pure, unreciprocated gift” that stands in stark contrast to reciprocity. He rightly argues that “the Torah’s legislation regarding care for the
poor is best seen not as a rejection of ancient assumptions regarding gifts,
but as a Jewish modulation of those assumptions, wholly dependent on
the expectation of reciprocity—in a different form” (41; italics original).
Barclay goes on to describe care for the poor as an obligation of Jewish
		Francis Macatangay, When I Die, Bury Me Well: Death, Burial, Almsgiving, and
Restoration in the Book of Tobit (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016), 47; Israel Abrahams, “Tobit and Genesis,” Jewish Quarterly Review 5 (1892–1893): 348–50, at
350.
11
		 Seth Schwartz, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? Reciprocity and Solidarity in
Ancient Judaism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
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piety and a requirement of the legislation of the Torah whose fulfillment
will be rewarded by God.
While I agree with Barclay’s critique of Schwartz on this point, there
is an additional aspect of this “modulation” of reciprocity that should not
be missed and, in light of Barclay’s discussion, is all the more striking.
A straightforward modulation of the reciprocity dynamic would simply
incorporate God into the circle of gift and countergift: one would give to
the poor and then God would return some favor to the giver and it would
all remain in the conceptual sphere of gift giving. But, interestingly, the
way early Jewish authors actually describe this repayment by God is not
so much in language of gifts and counter gifts, but in the dual language of
gifts, on the one hand, and loans and debts, on the other. The classic verse
in this regard was Proverbs 19:17:
Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and will be repaid
in full.
As Gary Anderson has shown, this verse reckons gifts to the poor as
simultaneously loans to God: “What one does toward the poor registers
directly with God. It is as though the poor person was some sort of ancient
automatic teller machine through which one could make a deposit directly
to one’s heavenly account.”12 In fact, as he goes on to demonstrate, the
metaphor of a “heavenly account” is not just a vivid, contemporary illustration; it emerged already in the Second Temple period. Once the word
for righteousness, ṣĕdāqâh, came to have the meaning “almsgiving,” it was
quite natural to read verses like these in a particular way:
Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness
delivers from death. (Prov 10:2)
Wealth is of no avail on the day of wrath,
But righteousness saves from death. (Prov 11:4)
If one simply reads ṣĕdāqâh (righteousness) in these two verses as “almsgiving” (natural, since the contrast in each is with other uses of wealth), then
these verses speak of a contrast between wealth put to evil use and wealth
put to good use, with the latter understood as a stored up treasure that
		Gary A. Anderson, “Redeem Your Sins by the Giving of Alms: Sin, Debt, and
the ‘Treasury of Merit’ in Jewish and Early Christian Tradition,” Letter & Spirit 3
(2007): 37–67, at 47.

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provides deliverance from death.13
The ideas of generosity to the poor as a loan to God in Proverbs 19:17
and of accrued credit that can deliver from death in Proverbs 10:2 and 11:4
are combined in the book of Tobit. In the fourth chapter, on his deathbed,
Tobit gives a series of admonitions to his son Tobias, among which is the
following:
Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor, and the face
of God will not be turned away from you. If you have many possessions, make your gift from them in proportion; if few, do not be
afraid to give according to the little you have. So you will be laying
up a good treasure for yourself against the day of necessity. For
almsgiving delivers from death and keeps you from going into the
Darkness. (Tob 4:7b–10)
If Anderson is correct that Tobit is integrating these concepts from Proverbs, and it is difficult to resist this conclusion, then the language of the
(heavenly) treasury explicitly refers to credit generated by gifts to the poor
that can be “drawn upon” for future benefits.14 This shows that Proverbs’s
notion that gifts to the poor were simultaneously understood as loans to
God was not restricted to Proverbs 19:17, but had begun to gain wider
currency in the Second Temple period.
Further confirming Anderson’s observations is the fact that the same
language of a treasury funded by almsgiving and its resulting future deliverance occurs in Ben Sira’s discussion of giving to the poor:
However, with the poor person be patient and do not keep him
waiting for alms. For the sake of the commandment help the poor
and according to his need do not turn him away empty-handed.
Lose (your) money for a kinsman or a friend and do not place it
under a stone to go to ruin. Lay up your treasure according to the
commandments of the Most High and it will profit you more than
gold. Store up almsgiving in your treasury and it will deliver you
from every calamity. More than a strong shield and robust spear it
will fight for you against an enemy. (Sir 29:8–13)15
		Avi Hurvitz, “The Biblical Roots of a Talmudic Term: The Early History of the
Concept ‘tzedaka’ [Hebrew],” Language Studies 2–3 (1987): 155–60; Anderson,
“Redeem Your Sins,” 48–49.
14
		Anderson, “Redeem Your Sins,” 49–50.
15
		 Translation is my own. For the textual criticism and a more extensive discussion of
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While many of the same elements from Tobit 4 are found here, what is
particularly notable is that this passage is spliced in between a discussion of
lending in 29:1–7 and one on going surety in 29:14–20. In both sections,
Ben Sira acknowledges that most people are rightfully cautious about
lending to humans because they so often do not repay. The disjunction
at the beginning of verse 8, “however,” suggests that giving to the poor is
like a loan, but one in which such caution (in vv. 6–7) does not apply. The
reason is that, in giving to the poor, a person is lending to someone who is
sure to repay: God. The placement of the discussion of almsgiving in the
midst of a discussion of lending and surety, but in a way that contrasts its
sure repayment with the riskiness of “normal loans,” makes senses only on
the presupposition that the treasury that is funded by almsgiving is backed
by God, not by fickle humans. To put it another way, if a person’s peers are
unlikely to repay (29:6–7, 18), someone who is poor must have been judged
an even bigger risk, if what is in view is human reciprocity. The overwhelming and sure benefit of almsgiving in 29:12–13, especially when viewed
alongside Tobit 4 and Proverbs 19:17, makes it very likely that, in Second
Temple Jewish texts, the language of “stored up treasure” from almsgiving
refers specifically to credit with God, not to human return or reciprocity,
as is sometimes thought (contra Barclay 44).
It is worth pausing to consider how remarkable it is that Second Temple
authors viewed gifts to the poor as loans to God. On one hand, the integration of these two concepts to describe what happens when someone gives
to the poor is not surprising. As Barclay points out, even though loans and
gifts were distinct kinds of transactions, the obligation to reciprocate a
gift meant that “debt” language could be used of both and there was some
overlap between the dynamics of the two, and in fact, in some cases, recipients of gifts could feel burdened by a gift, since the obligation to make a
countergift felt like repaying a loan (27). Nevertheless, despite this, Seneca
could still hold that gift giving should not be “reduced” to the level of loans
or impersonal financial calculation (46–47).
Thus, to characterize almsgiving as a loan to God, who is then required
to repay, is potentially scandalous. This point was not lost on the ancient
rabbis, some of whom reacted with shock that God would be “in debt” to
the almsgiver, since, according to Proverbs 22:7, “the borrower is slave to
the lender” (see b. B. Bat. 10a and Lev. Rab. 34:2).16 Yet, by characterizing generosity to the poor as a loan to God rather than a gift, the Jewish
tradition underscored the certainty that God would repay in kind. And
these verses see Gregory, Like an Everlasting Signet Ring, 181–200.
		Anderson, “Redeem Your Sins,” 47.

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while Pericles observed that people tend to repay loans more slowly than
they do gifts (see Sir 8:12–13; 29:1–7),17 it cannot be imagined that God
would allow his debts to linger. Rather, God would be certain to be like
the upright person who pays his debts on time (see Sir 29:2, 15), seeking to
escape his indebtedness at first opportunity (see: Prov 6:1–5; 4QInstructionb 2 II, 4–6; 4QInstructionc 2 I, 21–24). Thus, the use of loan-debt
imagery reinforces the virtue of generosity to the poor by presenting gifts
to the poor as a “no-lose proposition” precisely because God is the indebted
party and his righteousness prevents him from defaulting. It also releases
the poor recipient from any pressure to try to reciprocate, and thereby alleviates the resulting social dependency that typically accompanies a patron/
reciprocity system.18 Attention was instead redirected to God as the one
under obligation.
There is a potential problem with conceptualizing gifts to the poor
as a loan to God who is certain to repay. Despite the help that such gifts
provide for the poor, is there not the possibility that this triangular relationship will result in the “instrumentalizing” of the poor as part of a
shrewd calculation by the giver?19 I think the answer is “no” for a couple of
reasons. First, as Anderson has argued, to accept the claim that gifts given
to the poor will result in such a repayment (or reward) actually requires a
great deal of faith, because it is, on the surface, not the “safest” (or maybe,
“lowest risk”) way to use one’s money. To participate in this “triangular”
relationship with the poor and God requires a view of life that is in many
respects counterintuitive and that views oneself, like the poor, as entirely
dependent on the goodness of God.20 This is why, for example, before
speaking of the heavenly treasure that would accrue through almsgiving,
Ben Sira acknowledges that giving to the poor looks like a “loss” that is
riskier than protecting one’s money and possessions (Sir 29:10).
Second, as discussed above, this theological framework is built on the
convictions that God has a special relationship with the poor, endowing
them with a unique dignity, and that care for the poor is an act of imitatio
Dei. Since God does not depersonalize or instrumentalize the poor, neither
		Cited in Barclay, Paul & the Gift, 27n65.
		Barclay hints in this direction (44–45n121).
19
		On this, see also Paul Veyne, Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political
Pluralism, trans. Brian Pearce (London: Penguin, 1976), 26–33. My thanks to
Gary Anderson for this reference. For Seneca’s worries about human giving becoming simply one of self-interested calculation rather than the fostering of friendship,
see the discussion in Barclay, Paul & the Gift, 48–50.
20
		Gary Anderson, Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 3–6.
17
18

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should their human benefactors. This is not simply a point of morality, but
a recognition that God’s presence is specially with the poor.21 While Second
Temple authors like Ben Sira and Tobit present almsgiving as an opportunity to “lay up treasure” for future benefit, they equally emphasize God’s
love for the poor and the importance of treating the poor with dignity, of
showing concern for their emotional well-being, and they even encourage
positive social interactions with them. In Sirach 4:1–10, Ben Sira advocates prompt giving and warns his students against ignoring, turning away
from, or failing to greet the poor. But more than that, they are to engender
positive social relations with the poor through seeking justice for them
and becoming like a father to orphans and a husband to widows. Later in
the book, he says that gifts should be accompanied by kind words and that
graciousness when giving to the poor is the most important part of giving
(Sir 18:15–18; similarly, see b. B. Bat. 9b). In fact, the Talmudic tractate
Ketubbot even encourages giving anonymously or as a loan (that may or
may not be repaid), instead of as alms, if it helps to avoid shaming the recipient (b. Ket. 67b). Thus, to reduce this triangular theological structure to a
crass financial calculation in which the poor are simply a means to an end
would be to miss the larger theological understanding of the poor in early
Judaism. For these authors, charity ought never to be simply a “drive-by”
affair; to be charitable is to invest oneself in a worldview where the poor
are deeply valued.
Divine Beneficence and Generosity to the Poor in Paul
Finally, I would like to suggest a couple of ways these features of Second
Temple Jewish theology regarding gifts to the poor may help illuminate
some passages in Paul’s letters. First, Paul’s notion of incongruous grace,
which Barclay beautifully elucidates mainly in the epistles of Galatians
and Romans, finds an analogue not just in works like the Hodayot and
Pseudo-Philo, but also more broadly in the Jewish understanding of the
poor as those who enjoy a special relationship with God irrespective of
human systems of value and worth, especially insofar as the poor were
considered emblematic of God’s chosen, favored people. The influence of
this theological perspective on Paul’s understanding of Christ as the gift
of God is especially clear in 2 Corinthians, where, in 9:8–9 for instance,
Paul describes the abundance of God’s blessing to those at Corinth as a
fulfillment of Psalm 112:9—“He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor, his
		 Gary Anderson (personal communication). For the sacramental character of helping the poor as those in whom God can be encountered see Anderson, Charity,
6–11.

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righteousness endures forever.” Further, this generosity then enables the
“poor” Corinthians to “share abundantly in every good work.” Here we see
God’s kindness to the poor used as a theological template to characterize
God’s beneficence to the Corinthians in a way that combines superabundance and incongruity (and possibly efficacy, to a degree), while excluding
noncircularity. In the previous chapter, Paul states: “you know the generous act [τὴν χάριν] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet
for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become
rich” (2 Cor 8:9). Here again, the idea of gifts to the poor is employed to
describe grace, but the “poor” Corinthians are given the riches of Christ’s
incongruous grace in his own sacrifice of his “riches” through the Incarnation and crucifixion (cf. Phil 2:6–8).
Second, the kind of “triangular” relationship of giving to the poor,
loaning to God, and God’s certain repayment can also be found in Paul’s
letters to describe his understanding of the ecclesial context of his apostolic
mission. Perhaps the most striking instance comes at the end of the letter
to the Philippians:
For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs
more than once. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that
accumulates to your account. I have been paid in full and have
more than enough; I am fully satisfied, now that I have received
from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice
acceptable and pleasing to God. And my God will fully satisfy every
need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Phil
4:16–19)
What is most interesting in light of the above discussion is that Paul
considers their financial gift (τὸ δόμα) to him as someone who was needy,
to further his mission, as something that is “profit that abounds to your
account” (τὸν καρπὸν τὸν πλεονάζοντα εἰς λόγον ὑμῶν). Although Paul does
not speak of a “treasury” per se, this “credit” is clearly something that God
will repay out of the heavenly resources of Christ’s riches to satisfy the
Philippians’ needs. While the “triangular” dynamic is usually noted by
commentators, the conceptual background of Second Temple Judaism’s
development of Proverbs 19:17 rarely is.
In his discussion of the perfections of grace and the background of
gift giving in the ancient world, John Barclay has brought greater nuance
to the understanding of grace in Second Temple Judaism and Paul that
has provided the scholarly world with a much deeper understanding of

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the complex topic of God’s grace. By exploring the way Second Temple
authors understood giving to the poor and its relevance for Paul’s theology,
it is hoped that Barclay’s already rich discussion may be extended in some
N&V
fruitful ways.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019): 197–213

197

The Ultimate Gift: The Transformative Indwelling of
Christ and the Christian
David Vincent Meconi, S.J.
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis, MO

All those ἵνα and ut clauses should have given it away. As a patrologist with
a special interest in the soteriology of Christian deification, I had always
seen that the Church Fathers depicted the descent of Christ in terms of
a purpose and a plan. His kenosis demanded our theosis, for he did not
intend to visit in vain. The more modern understanding of God’s descent
into humanity and the consequent gift of divinizing grace as an event
that required absolutely nothing in return, therefore, never quite squared
with how I was interacting with these ancient texts. Instead, what I was
encountering on those pages insisted that “this is why the Word became
man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering
into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might
become a son of God.”1 We see the same construction of purpose clauses in
Clement and Origen and throughout the Cappadocians, as well as at the
heart at the most legendary and lapidary formula, the Athanasian dictum
that “God became human so that humans could become gods.”2 Obviously
this was no disinterested descent.
Surely the Incarnation was effected in order to achieve some end, an
exhortatory truth not limited to the ancient world, but seen throughout
the best of Christian thought. Take St. Thomas Aquinas, for example,
		 Irenaeus of Lyons, Aduersus Haereses 3.19.1 (PG, 7/1:939), as quoted in Catechism
of the Catholic Church [CCC], 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana,
1997), §460.
2
		Athanasius, De Incarnatione 54.3 (PG, 25:192B), quoted in CCC, §460. For more
on such statements, see Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek
Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
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whose lengthy meditations on the grace of the Incarnation led him to
teach that “the only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in
his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men
gods.”3 From Athanasius to Aquinas, the greatest Christian minds have
understood that the gift of the Son’s human nature was so that humans
could come to partake of the divine nature.
Yet, in many strands of modern Christianity, such an expectation
would be piously disregarded as some merit- or work-based soteriology
wherein God does something only in order to have something in return.
There is (rightful) caution that the old pagan adage and the crux of their
civil creed, do ut des, would erase the agapic covenant in favor of a commutative contract. But how does one speak of the utter gratuity of God
without making his gift an undemanding frill or a favor so void of power
that it refuses a return on its investment? Perhaps that is what every fallen
soul, however, desires—a God who only gives but wants nothing really in
return?
In his inimitable way, C. S. Lewis realized this when he teasingly wrote
that no one really wants a Father-God who makes demands on those
brought into his household, but rather a cognitively diminished deity who
simply provides us with what we need to have fun and then apparently
turns in early:
By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His
lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context,
most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others than the self
happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would
really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened
to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’
We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather
in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, liked to see young
people enjoying themselves, and whose plan for the universe was
simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time
was had by all.’ . . . I should very much like to live in a universe which
was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I
don’t, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is
Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction.4
		Thomas Aquinas, Opusculum 57, lec.1–4 (On the Feast of Corpus Christi),
quoted in CCC, §460.
4
		 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperOne, 1986 [originally 1940]),
31–32.
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Lewis rightly sees that the modern notion of love is in need of correction,
especially as regards whether it is congruent with any language of reciprocation, expectation, or bidding.
The most recent contribution by the biblical theologian John Barclay
sets out to rectify not so much our modern understanding of God’s love,
but that of God’s grace.5 Accordingly, the present article explores how
Paul’s understanding of grace, as Barclay reads it, opens up for us a more
robust theology of the Mystical Body, arguing that Paul expects the kenosis
of the Son to result in the theosis of many adopted sons and daughters now
gathered into one body, the Body of Christ.
To do this, we shall first extrapolate those parts of Barclay’s study
that help us understand this expectation of the Incarnation. Barclay very
adroitly draws out six characteristics of “gift” from Paul’s world, proving
very illuminating to us today when asking “why?” God became flesh. A
second section of the present article examines Paul’s theology of the Mystical Body and its possible roots and sources. Among all the New Testament books, the Pauline epistles exhort the Christian people into a unity
unknown outside the ecclesia to which they are invited. The third and final
section moves with Barclay more explicitly to Paul’s letters to the Romans
and Galatians in order to read anew the Apostle’s theology of deification.
John M. G. Barclay’s Paul & The Gift
This most recent Nova et Vetera symposium has chosen to focus on Durham
University’s biblical theologian John Barclay’s wonderful Paul & the Gift,
as he offers both a confirmation and a rectification of modern readings
of Paul on the crucial concept of grace. Biblical scholars have recognized
Barclay’s work and have rightly received it as a very welcomed study, as it
attempts to reconcile the so-called recent “new perspectives on Paul” with a
more historically steeped reading of Paul’s cultural and intellectual milieu.
In so gathering his study and focusing his interest on the history and
theology of gratia, Professor Barclay inevitably brings into dialogue some
of the positions and readings of Paul advanced by such scholars as James
D. G. Dunn (who coined the term “new perspective”), E. P. Sanders, and
of course, N. T. Wright. A deepening of Paul’s theology will always need to
be done, and Paul & the Gift proves a definite way forward, as Barclay both
highlights the surprisingly rich pre-Christian roots of grace and shows how
we should read Paul rightly today.
For the past 2000 years, the majority of Christian thinkers have held
		John M. G. Barclay, Paul & the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015). This
work will be cited parenthetically by page number in the text.

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a robust theology of the Mystical Body as the key to understanding one’s
new life in Christ, having drawn mainly from the imagery in John’s Gospel
and Paul’s theology of grace. Thus, this would prove to be an illuminating
lens through which we study the key insights of Paul & the Gift. In so
doing, we just might come to see a more pervasive and far-reaching appreciation for how this soteriological tenet is found throughout the Pauline
epistles. Such a lens also allows us to see both how Barclay understands
such deification and perhaps where this ancient Christian doctrine could
be even more effective in the analysis offered here.
Barclay opens his study by canvassing various theories of what constitutes a gift, how it is different from, say, a loan or an investment. While he
canvasses many modern thinkers, the real fruit comes when he turns to
those Second Temple texts that surely constituted the intellectual world in
which Saul of Tarsus lived and studied. Here Barclay highlights six crucial
components to the classical notion of gift or grace.
The first is superabundance. A true gift in antiquity was marked by a
sense of permanence and magnitude. While one category may be temporal
(a gift was never transient or ephemeral) and the other ontological (a sense
of boundlessness and inexhaustibility), they converge in the idea of an
opulence that could hardly be demanded by the beneficiary, a most fitting
description of the interaction between the divine and the mortal.
The second tenet is singularity. Sheer benevolence marks a gift in the
ancient world, described by Barclay in terms of an unparalleled solicitude
with which the gift is given. Here, motivation and intent not only define
the obvious gratuity of the gift but also determine the giver’s purity and
purpose of intention as well.
Third of the tenets is priority. As the name suggests, timing also
factored into the beauty of a gift. Here, factors of initiation, preference,
and prerogative come to light. By definition, a gift is the origin and not the
consummation of personal interaction: favor originates in the giver and is
the means by which those gifted are enabled to enjoy something otherwise
unavailable to them.
Fourth is incongruity. As prodigal as a gift may seem, it is always given
with a certain discrimination and selectivity. The incongruity here is not
between giver and gifted, but between all those to whom the giver could
have potentially given. Qualifications and criteria do matter, as benefactors
would never bestow blindly, but instead gladly on those whom they have
intentionally chosen.
Fifth is efficacy. Although freely given, a gift is expected to achieve
some purpose. Food was widely distributed to satiate hunger, games were
financed to provide entertainment to citizens, and so on. Benefactors are

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rarely described as wholly selfless individuals, but rather calculate their
gifts in such a way that either a personal or a social outcome they desire
may (or may not be) realized. Those with gifts to give are generally those
who know how the world “works,” and they do not scatter their largesse
indiscriminately or without an eye to some ameliorative upturn.
Finally, the sixth tenet is noncircularity. Whereas the post-Enlightenment concept of gift is marked primarily by a sense of “purity,” with
absolutely no strings attached to the content of the giving, here we come
to see how favor in antiquity did expect some effect to occur. Of course,
the “value” of the beneficence could not be matched or returned in toto,
but that did not necessarily negate any expectation of honor or some sign
of gratitude. Of course, a gift might never be “returned” in the slightest
(Barclay explores this raw possibility through the adverb δωρεάν as at Gal
2:21, meaning “to no effect” or “for nought”), but nonetheless, gifts were
given and favors were bestowed in order to establish relationship and to
accomplish some recognized results (70–75).
After laying out the mechanics of a gift in the time of Second Temple
Judaism, Barclay makes sure the reader understands that there was no one
monolithic understanding of grace during these years. A gift may exhibit
but one of these characteristics only; one or more of these may be more or
less intense depending on the nature of the benefactor, the favor involved,
or the status of the recipient(s). Some systems and societies stressed, say,
efficacy over incongruity, or any one of the other characteristics analyzed
here. It becomes clear that there was no inflexible and static conception
of grace and how it had to operate. Barclay then applies these criteria to
reading of Pauline grace as found throughout Galatians and Romans (one
hopes he will do the same in the future for the remaining epistles), and a
new light is cast on many classical texts employed when trying to understand how the apostle understands the new favor available in Christ.
This towering convert and apostolic authority has been described as
the first Christian teacher to be “motivated by a Hellenistic desire for the
One.”6 According to Margaret Mitchell, for instance, the entire point of
Paul’s theologizing was to foster concord and unity within an otherwise
disparate and divergent demographic.7 For, the reigning philosophies of
Paul’s time all tended in this direction, tending to equate that which was
		Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) 181.
7
		 Margaret Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Compositions of 1 Corinthians (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), esp. 20–64.
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David Vincent Meconi, S.J.

real with that which was one. The concept of henosis or unitas became the
distinguishing characteristic of that which had meaning, value, and reality. St. Paul’s exhortations toward unity played out most manifestly and
missiologically in his many calls for ecclesial harmony as an extension and
emblem of Christ’s own life. Paul wanted his interlocutors to understand
that the essence of their newly embraced Christian faith was not a matter
of law, not measured by the good works accomplished, but neither could
it be reduced to a discardable ornament that made no demands on their
bodies and minds.
The gift Paul longed to share with the first generations of Jesus’s followers
was a theology of mutual indwelling: to live this new life in Christ is ultimately to be conformed to Christ as mortal creatures surrendering to the
organic unity offered and effected only in Christ’s own body, the Church.
Alongside John the Evangelist, the Apostle Paul was the source from
which most Church Fathers and medieval Doctors drew when explaining
the indwelling that transformed a Christian into another Christ (perhaps
telling in this regard is that Paul is the opening citation in Pope Pius
XII’s 1943 classic Mystici Corporis, Col 1:24). This trajectory reveals an
unbroken reliance on Paul: from the foundational centuries of Christian
theology through the tumultuous times of modernity, it is Paul on whom
the Church has most often depended when explaining the Christian life
in terms of incorporation into Christ. And Barclay knows this, analyzing
Paul’s theology of grace in the thought of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and
significant twentieth-century Protestant figures. Yet an even richer study
comes into view when Barclay’s own tools are used to focus more precisely
on the Pauline understanding of the deifying body of Christ.
Most important in this study into the transforming and deifying union
of Paul’s understanding of the Mystical Body is Barclay’s emphasis that
grace is at once both a gift and a reward that seeks to achieve its implicit
expectation:
There is no antithesis here between gift and merit; grace and recompense stand in conjunction, not opposition. This is not to make the
gift any less a gift or something akin to “pay.” Those who deserve the
gifts are still the recipients of gifts, given voluntarily and without legal
requirement. They do not cause the gift to be given (that is always a
matter of the benefactor’s will), but they prove themselves to be its suitable recipients and thus provide the condition for its proper distribution.
We must insist, against our instincts, that the ancients knew, and had
reason to celebrate, a form of divine grace that rewarded those who were
fitting recipients of its free and lavish beneficence. (316)

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Reading Barclay on these many excellent points reminded me of much
of the work Peter Brown has done as of late, not on Augustine (as Barclay
cites), but on euergetism in late antiquity. Gifts were freely given out of a
benefactor’s largesse to those whom such a donor chose to trust with his or
her wealth. People who knew the world well enough to work (or, perhaps
more often, inherit) their way to the proverbial top were not careless
spendthrifts or irresponsible do-gooders. They were savvy men and women
enjoying a respectful social stratum and whose beneficence was meant to
accomplish something noble and beautiful for those who drew near to
their care.8
Both Brown and Barclay are sensitive enough to the ancient sources
available to realize how the nature of gift and covenant in Judaism and in
the Hellenic Roman world worked. Writing particularly about the book of
Wisdom, but applicable to the overall point here, Barclay notes how Solomon obviates the worldview that God’s goodness will always be futile with
humanity’s depravity, and so “might is right.” For instance, for all posterity
to hear, Solomon appeals to an undeserved yet efficacious wisdom: “God’s
generosity toward all of humanity is celebrated throughout this text, but
its emphasis on a just and non-arbitrary cosmos requires that God’s gifts
are fairly distributed to those ‘worthy’ to receive them. Wisdom is a gift
freely offered to those who desire and seek her and, like all the good gifts,
is fittingly given” (309). The active favor of the benefactor is to be met by
the humble receptivity of the beneficiary. Only in this way is a unilateral
enslavement eschewed. The fittingness of the gift thus allows those in need
to realize their own dignity and free decision to respond accordingly.
Let us now turn to that free and fitting gift as evidenced in St. Paul’s
theology of the Mystical Body of Christ, where the followers of Jesus
surrender to love, and thus become other Christs extending the Incarnation in their own human and participatory ways. In doing so, I do not wish
to imply that this is the only way grace operates in Paul’s letters, nor do I
see this as a major part of Paul & the Gift. What I do see is how the work
Barclay has achieved here helps open for us today the ways Paul uses the
ancient imagery of the body’s working in unison as a foundational metaphor for the Christian life.
		See Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the
Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2012). See also my review essay, “Earthly Treasure, Spiritually
Refined,” Harvard Theological Review 108, no. 4 (2015): 621–28. For a more
recent and much shorter study, see Brown, Treasure in Heaven: The Holy Poor in
Early Christianity (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016).

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Paul’s Theology of the Mystical Body
When taking up the Christian beginnings of the concept of the Mystical
Body, the first voice we hear is fittingly that of the Lord himself as he
instructs his listeners that whatever they do to the least of his brothers
and sisters they inevitably do unto him as well. We hear, for example,
the Gospels describe that relationship between Christ and these “least”
as an organic unity between vine and branches ( John 15) and as a union
so intimate and unifying that it courses through one’s very body ( John
6). In Acts, we also hear Jesus cry from the heavens, “Saul, Saul, Why are
you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4; 22:7).9 For, it is the Lord himself who
realizes how love unites and transforms lover and beloved. No longer Saul,
the Apostle Paul translates this insight (and personal experience!) into
language of head and body. Emile Mersch, S.J., observed in his classic on
the Mystical Body: “What launched [Paul] on his apostolate and gave him
a gospel to preach was the revelation that he had received that Christ is
everything in the Church. . . . He sums up his entire gospel in this teaching,
just as Christ sums up everything in Himself (Eph 1:10).”10 As one surely
immersed in the culture and intellectual atmosphere of Hellenic Roman
culture, Paul realized well how the body was the most apt metaphor in the
pagan Mediterranean world by which to represent both civic cohesion and
the intellectual ideals that bound otherwise disparate individuals into an
organic whole.
This metaphor of the needed unities and sympathies of a body, stressing not only concord but also the needed hierarchy that ensures proper
oversight and effectiveness, is found easily in Aesop’s fable on The Stomach
and the Body. This tale was originally intended as a cautionary warning
against military brass abusing those below them, as well as a statement that
foot soldiers stand in need of leadership from above. According to Aesop,
every member of a body politic must listen to one another if any level of
harmony, and thus survival, is to be realized:
The stomach and the feet were arguing over their strength. The feet
constantly alleged that they were much superior in strength because
they carried the stomach. To this the stomach replied: “But, my
friends, if I don’t provide you with nourishment, you won’t be able
to carry me.”11
		All quotations of Scripture are taken from the NABRE.
		Emile Mersch, S.J., The Theology of the Mystical Body (St. Louis, MO: Herder,
1951), 56.
11
		Fable no. 66 (no. 130 in Melvin Perry’s standard numbering) in Aesop’s Fables,
9

10

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Such imagery abounded in other early writers, the best-known probably
being in Plato’s likening his city-state, the Republic, to the human soul.
Plato held that, since the invisible soul was impossible to behold, it must
be seen in magnification in the republic in which one lives. For Plato,
governmental and societal structures are therefore nothing other than the
magnifications of each of our own individual selves, the manifestation of
our own priorities and ensuing desires. The body politic is a reflection of
the values of each found within that body.
As insightful as Aesop and Plato were, by the time Paul developed his
reflections on the Church as a body, the most common story on the body
came from more contemporary authors like Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (d. ca. 7 BC) and Livy (d. AD 17). It recalls how a Roman consul
in 503 BC, Menenius Agrippa, was sent to call the Roman army to greater
harmony, as a great fissure had developed between a particular legion and
its leaders. The senators who sent Menenius Agrippa, of course, stood in
fear of conspiracies and assassination attempts by unruly and disgruntled
military men. They therefore sent this eloquent statesman, and Menenius
Agrippa relays this story:
In the days when man’s members did not all agree amongst themselves, as is now the case, but had each its own ideas and a voice of
its own, the other parts thought it unfair that they should have the
worry and the trouble and the labor of providing everything for the
belly, while the belly remained quietly in their midst with nothing
to do but to enjoy the good things which they bestowed upon it;
they therefore conspired together that the hands should carry no
food to the mouth, nor the mouth accept anything that was given
it, nor the teeth grind up what they received. While they sought in
this angry spirit to starve the belly into submission, the members
themselves and the whole body were reduced to the utmost weakness. . . . [And a bit later, Livy concludes] drawing a parallel from this
to show how like was the internal dissension of the bodily members
to the anger of the plebs against the Fathers, he prevailed upon the
minds of his hearers.12
It is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to conceive how a story
trans. Laura Gibbs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 35.
		 As related in Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 2.16.33, in The Rise of Rome: Books One to Five,
trans. T. J. Luce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 104. The same apologue
is found in Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.3.18, and Cicero, De officiis 3.5.22.

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as old as Xenophon (d. 354 BC) and one kept alive in Cicero and Livy
might have been readily known to a rabbinically trained scholar like Saul
(Acts 22:3).
Of course, we cannot know for sure what Paul had read and had studied, but this classical speech finds a very similar tone in his warning against
civic discord in 1 Corinthians, surely the most Hellenic and learned of all
of his addresses:
As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the
body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit
we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves
or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. Now
the body is not a single part, but many. If a foot should say, “Because
I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this
reason belong any less to the body. Or if an ear should say, “Because
I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this
reason belong any less to the body. If the whole body were an eye,
where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where
would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God placed the parts, each
one of them, in the body as he intended. If they were all one part,
where would the body be? But as it is, there are many parts, yet one
body. (1 Cor 12:12–20)
Many recent scholars have argued that Paul here translates the pre-Christian understanding of the civic body into the Mystical continuation of
God’s own Incarnation. Here, heavenly charity transforms Christian into
Christ, and since the Christian has been originally created in the divine
image and likeness (Gen 1:27), this is neither an obliteration nor an
obfuscation of the human nature, but its only true consummation and
perfection.
In his work on Christ’s Body in Corinth, Yung Suk Kim, for instance,
argues that the “space” of Christ’s Body, his ecclesia on earth, was the
only locus of incorporation where first-century Christians could know
that they were no longer alone or without meaning or purpose. But just
as importantly, they knew they were not being subsumed into a faceless
hegemonic body. They were perfected as individuals precisely because they
were being perfected as a body, what Professor Kim calls “the Christic
body,” where even the forgotten, sick, and enslaved, the abused and the
downtrodden, found a meaningful participation because they were now

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part of a lacerated yet eternally glorified body!13
Similarly, David Litwa, of the Australian Catholic University, grounds
Paul’s main soteriological message in his multivalent use of body metaphor:
The destiny of Paul’s converts, in other words, is to be assimilated
to the pneumatic/glorified body of Christ—a divine being regularly
worshipped in Paul’s churches. To bear this divine image is to be
isomorphic with a divine being. Such strong assimilation to a divine
being (believers become “the same image” as the divine Christ, 2
Cor 3:18) can fairly be recognized as a form of deification.14
Assimilation and imitation are the primary exhortations Paul uses to
instruct his people on where their desires should lie: “Be imitators of me,
as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).
Paul clearly commits himself to the position that the historical Messiah
Jesus is also the Mystical Christ and that the years separating the birth
and the death of the Savior from Paul’s own time are traversed, and thus
united, by grace of the sacraments: “We were indeed buried with him
through baptism into death” (Rom 6:4), and the elect have been “crucified
with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might
no longer be in slavery to sin” (Rom 6:6). As God, the Palestinian Jew Jesus
Christ is not constrained to any one place or time, but is now mystically
and sacramentally available in a new body of which he alone is Head.
Such union and charity were synonymous for St. Paul. Sin shatters and
death divides; love unites and enables true life. This is where the apostle’s
theology of the Mystical Body and his understanding of divinization
coalesce: Love not only wants to be in union with the beloved, but actually
wants to become like the beloved, and vice versa. Love is an exchange of
selves, and that is why Paul can so confidently boast that, in Christ, he,
this separated aloof sinner, is no longer alive, but it is Christ who now lives
in him (Gal 2:20). Eros and ecstasy unite otherwise disparate individuals
into the body of Christ, where his divine headship allows each within the
body to become one with him and with others: “For as in one body we have
many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though
many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another” (Rom
		Yung Suk Kim, Christ’s Body in Corinth: The Politics of A Metaphor (Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress, 2008), 93ff.
14
		M. David Litwa, We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul’s Soteriology
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 163.
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12:4–5). Or, as Augustine would preach so beautifully a few centuries later
(Paschaltide, 407), in the end, there will be only one Christ loving himself
(et erit unus Christus amans se ipsum).15 This view on transformative power
of love forces everyone to ask, “what ought I love?” So that others might
answer this question rightly, Paul sets out to teach all that we must clothe
ourselves with Christ (Gal 3:27) if we would ever know the effect the great
gift of God was always meant to have. While this putting on of Christ will
receive different images throughout his epistles—a new building (Eph
2:20) or a new, developing body (Eph 4:13–16; Col 2:19) —the point
Paul wants to make is that creatures are able to enjoy communion only in
Christ and that, in his drawing near to each individual, Christ draws those
individuals into each other. This is no extrinsic covering; the resurrected
Christ envelops every person and every nation in a binding so tight that it
renders dissimilar sinners into his own living Body (1 Cor 12:12–13). Each
is now committed to the needs of every other as the pilgrim people of God
begin to see themselves in their neighbor, to see the Christ in the least of
their brothers and sisters.
This doctrine of the Mystical Body is wholly Pauline in nature, so it
should not surprise us to see it throughout Romans and Galatians, the two
epistles Barclay treats at length. These two missives are easily enlisted as
showing the myriad ways Paul tries to explain the Christian life in terms
of incorporation and imitation. Since these are the two works Barclay
examines specifically, we should now take up his treatment of the concept
of grace as he sees it in these two Pauline epistles.
Barclay on the Deifying Body in Galatians and Romans
What strikes Barclay about Galatians is its utter either–or schematic. Here
there is no room for lukewarmness or indecision, as its “starkly antithetical
rhetoric” demolishes any third option between self and God, between
slavery and freedom, between a moribund Judaism and a Christocentric
ecclesia. Between these two unalloyed alternatives, there is no natural
progression and no healthy liminality. One is not allowed to stand and
wait. When it comes to Paul’s preaching of Christ, it is all or nothing. So,
whereas Paul’s two major concerns regarding his flock at Galatia—that the
Abrahamic promise was originally meant for all the nations of the world
and that the advent of Christ has inaugurated a radically new opportunity
for these nations to realize the fullness of God’s promise—can be realized
only by turning from the old ways to the good news, this can be done
		St. Augustine of Hippo, Commentary on the First Letter of John 10.3 (Corpus
Christianorum: Series Latina [Turnhout, BE: Brepols, 1953–], 36:216).

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only as a people: “It is no accident that the superordinate authority of the
Christ-event becomes clear in the context of communal activity. Peter’s
alignment to this ‘truth’ is tested in commensality, the conditions of possibility for community and reciprocity in Christ” (368). A new community
is now to be fostered: not the old political bodies of earthly rule, but
a divine heavenly body that disregards any differences not essential to
Christ’s presence (Gal 3:28). The truth of the Good News (Gal 2:14) is
now the only valid demarcation.
It is at this point that Barclay highlights the logic of Paul’s use of “we” in
Galatians 2:15–21, thus stressing the organic unity meant for both “Jew”
and “Gentile.” What is at stake here is not mere table fellowship, but the
worth one has in the eyes of the wider community. Such dignity is now
reducible only to the basis of faith in Christ: “. . . not because this faith in
itself establishes a kind of ‘worth,’ but because it is directed to the event in
which was created, without regard to worth, a new source of life in relation to God (2:19)” (379). This, what Barclay labels a “genitive of quality,”
points to a personal reconstitution by and in Christ that renders one now
not just a new person in and of himself, but a desired and needed member
of a new kind of communal body:
Paul has broken with the authority of the Torah not because of a
willful decision on his part, but under the impact of the Christ-event,
which has wholly reconstituted his existence. The crucifixion of
Christ—not just a death, but a cursed and scandalous execution (3:13;
5:11)—marks a radical disjunction. The reference to the “Christ who
lives in me” gestures to the resurrection (1:1), which founds a radically
new existence . . . that collapses the distance between past and present.
“Living to God” is not just a reorientation of the self, but a mode of
existence founded on, and shaped by, the life of another, the life of
“Christ in me.” The Christ-event therefore founds not only a change
of vision and value, but a change of “self.” Out of that newness, every
value is newly evaluated and every norm reassessed. (386)
Barclay’s insight here is key: in Christ, a new sense of self emerges and
what is wholly radical is that my “self” was actually constituted to be an
other-centered, covenantal ego. When Christ takes up life in the soul of
a believer, that believer does not become two, but it is now, Paul knew, a
Christ who lives in me. Because one has been made for the divine life (Gen
1:26–27), when that divine life finally takes root in one’s self, that self
finally flourishes and is enabled to realize its only true vocation.

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If Paul’s great contribution is a call to communion in the body of
Christ, this is a new sense of cohesion that actually begins with Christ
living his life, extending his life, in each individual who comes to him in
order to find the fullness of their life in the first place. Such a theological
anthropology is not of interest to Barclay, but the historical and biblical
principles he presents help those interested in the Mystical Body and
the deifying transformation available there. The gift of Christ’s own life
demands a response, an eternally binding response. The priority of the
gift is wholly the descent into humanity well preparing the ascent into
divinity, but the efficacy is an all-or-nothing event. The human person is
the only animal who has been given the vocation to become God (talk
about “superabundance”).16 Paul’s interlocutors are therefore instructed
repeatedly: do not try to straddle the old and the new, do not attempt to
live in both worlds, for the former world is passing away and you have been
made not for an enervating enslavement to some code, but for the freedom
of the children of God.
This is why righteousness and identity, questions of worth and societal allegiance, are no longer defined by Torah and striving toward its
fulfillment. What matters with Christ’s coming is the incongruity of God
coming into humanity, reflected by new societal relations between rich
and poor and between keepers of the Law and the Gentile peoples. We are
all made to become one in this divine body. The old divisions that once
separated and discriminated horizontally are eradicated vertically as the
Jewish and the Roman worlds discover that they are both in the line of the
Abrahamic family brought into existence not for the Law, but for Love:
Paul traces a deep homology between the incongruity of divine
grace and the incongruity of divine power. That God operates in
the fashion here described is Paul’s justification for his conduct of
the Gentile mission, requiring neither circumcision nor submission
to the Law. But it also grounds Paul’s hope for the future of the
world (Rom 8:18–39) and for the salvation of Israel (11:11–32). By
tracing God’s creatio ex nihilo in the story of Abraham, the starting
point of election, Paul can place Israel, believers, and the world on
a common trajectory, since nothing is impossible for the mercy of
God (11:28–36). (489)

		See Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 43 (Eulogy of Basil the Great), no. 48 (PG,
36:560).

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It is surely not coincidental that Paul’s appeal to corporate unity is more
cosmic and more imperial in Rome than anywhere else. The unity God
intended for all people everywhere and at all times through his offer of self
begins not even in the Christ, but in the Abrahamic covenant. Aged like
Abraham and barren like Sarah, pagan Rome stands in need of the only
antidote that saves a people from decrepitude and death.
Barclay rightly acknowledges how this (what he calls a) mismatch
between divine mercy and human error is greater in those addressed in
Rome than in Galatia. Romans 9–11 accordingly shows how the incongruity of the gift softens these differences by calling both Gentile and
Jewish believers to unity in Christ and among one another. Such a call
demands response, exacts obedience, and calls forth a change in one’s way
of life. Henceforth, once one has encountered the Christ, one cannot stay
as one was. Transformation is thus at the heart of Paul’s entry into Rome,
and there he draws from his earlier reliance on the new divine body of
believers to tell those close to imperial power that they must surrender to
divine rebirth:
Developing the body-motif from its earlier use in 1 Corinthians
12:12–31, Paul imagines a community so interdependent that all
are figured, individually as organs of one another (12:5): everyone
is essential to everyone else. . . . By fostering this new communal
life, oriented to God through Christ in service and worship (12:11;
15:6–13), bodily practice is reoriented and newly regulated in its
post-baptismal form. “Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ” (13:14)
enlists every organ of the moribund body for a new allegiance,
whose social shape reflects the capacity of the Christ-gift to question
every norm. (510–11)
The message to the Romans outweighs that to the Galatians exactly in this
incongruity of the gift: the undeserved gift is received by both rich and
poor, by the powerful as well as the weak. All stand as debtors before God,
with the consequence that all now stand before God in a new identity, as
new creatures.
In Christ, incorporation is transformation. Only the gift who is the
incarnate Son can perfect one’s intended identity as a member of God’s
body, as only here can one grow in individual perfection as he or she grows
in mutual intimacy with the rest (Rom 12:5: “So we, being many, are one
body in Christ; and every one members of one another”). The Mystical
Christ is humble enough to gather all and any, based not on their natural

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merit, but on his own holy desire that all respond rightly to what has been
offered them. From start to finish, all is gift, but what I have taken away
from Barclay is that God lavishes gifts in order that societal relationships
continue and peoples are formed anew, formed in him and—we dare
say—as him.
Conclusion
As there was no one monolithic view of the nature and workings of grace
in Paul’s time, Paul himself emerges as one more view of how divine favor
works. If anything, we close Barclay’s monograph realizing just how much
grace was very truly a multidimensional reality in antiquity. Yet, in the Jesus
Christ of St. Paul’s letters, the superabundance, priority, and incongruity of
such a gift are utterly unmatched: there is nothing a sinful creature could
do, no mortal voice strong enough, to demand membership in the Body of
Christ and participation in the divine nature. Yet that is precisely why God
created men and women, and that is exactly why the Son of God entered
the human condition. No longer should status and subjugation form
societies and bind peoples; no longer should individual worth be wholly
reducible to works and wealth.
It is clear throughout Paul that, just as a corporeal body is one with
various and diverse parts, the Mystical Body of Christ is also to be a unity
in diversity. Accordingly, true Christians are those who forfeit a monadic,
solipsistic life and allow Christ to live his own life in them, the blood of
Christ now able to tear down all walls of enmity and division, thereby
creating one new person in those who are organically bound together into
a new type of body. Barclay’s magisterial study helps us understand how a
gift, classically conceived, had a particular expectation built into its giving.
As is so refreshingly laid out at the beginning, the “pure gift” idea is a
construct of the modern, and particularly Western, mind. Post-Enlightenment constructs of gift and favor became the lens through which most read
Paul’s unmatched emphasis on grace. But modern systems of eleemosynary
activities are usually set up institutionally blind, reducing benefactor and
recipient to anonymous accounts, allowing for no sense of second-person
relationship or demands on those who stood in favor.
Of course, this is not to say that human response and obedience to the
gracious gift of God are preconditions that must be made before divine
favor comes. But Christ comes to every human soul so that each might
know the true meaning of Israel: a people called to come to the living God,
now incarnate, the one body where the Hebrew children and the Gentile
races converge, as both originate in, are sustained by, and are oriented

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toward the same divine favor. This is how the Christ event is no mere afterthought, nothing artificially external to the history of Israel: Jesus Christ
is the ultimate gift the Father gives those made toward his image and likeness. Adam, as Paul knew, is the first form of the one to come (Rom 5:14).
In this one who has come into the world, humanity and divinity commune
and become one in the person and presence of Christ.
Now all the children of Adam and Eve can finally understand this
journey of life, finally realize the purpose of their very existences. As far
as this great gift, there was no other reason, but reason there was. This is
the ultimate gift, that God becomes human so humans can become God.
Christian baptism admits each to this life, and Paul makes it clear that the
graces offered in that font would cost each one his or her own natural life.
That is why all those instances of ἵνα and ut fill the best of theology, for
the ancient and wise Doctors of the great Christian Tradition understood
that, while Paul may have preached a grace freely given, such freedom
would come with a cost.
N&V

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215

Paul and the Gift of Sonship
Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P.
Providence College
Providence, RI

In recent years, the world of Pauline scholarship has seemed like a competition to publish the longest book on the apostle or on one of his letters.
One thinks, for example, of the nearly one-thousand-page tome of Douglas
Campbell, focusing primarily on the Letter to the Romans.1 Not to be
outdone, N. T. Wright subsequently published roughly sixteen hundred
pages in two volumes on the thought of the apostle, the lengthiest in his
ever-expanding series Christian Origins and the Question of God.2 Among
commentaries, there is, of course, Robert Jewett’s massive 2006 commentary on Romans, weighing in at over eleven hundred pages.3 While John
Barclay’s recent contribution to the discussion does not quite attain to
these unwieldy page counts, neither is it a slender volume.4 Given the
relatively narrow range of the topic (grace and gift) and its limited discussion of the Pauline corpus (the work covers only Galatians and Romans),
one might be tempted to chide Barclay for excessive verbosity. To do so,
however, would be a failure to see the significance of Barclay’s project for
Pauline scholarship, and indeed, for theology in general.
		Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009).
2
		 N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Christian Origins and the Question
of God 4, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2013).
3
		Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress,
2007)
4
		John M. G. Barclay, Paul & the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015). With
bibliography and indices, the book comes to 656 pages. Unless otherwise noted,
subsequent parenthetical page numbers in this essay refer to Barclay, Paul & the
Gift.
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Grace and Gift in Contemporary Context
The reason for the heft of Barclay’s work can be seen in one of the primary
targets of his argument: E. P. Sanders’s classic Paul and Palestinian Judaism.5 It is fitting that the two works come out to roughly the same length, as
they share similarities in both approach and aim. Both authors seek to situate Paul in his Jewish context, as well as to offer a fair-minded assessment
of the Judaism of Paul’s day. One of Sanders’s goals in writing the book
was, in his own words, “to destroy the view of Rabbinic Judaism which
is still prevalent in much, perhaps most, New Testament scholarship.”6
Later in the introduction, Sanders notes the reason for his strident tone:
“Milder statements [about the nature of Judaism] have fallen on deaf ears
and are now cited as if they supported views which in fact they opposed.”7
In order to accomplish his goal, Sanders devotes some four hundred pages
to discussing various Jewish texts from the early rabbinic and Second
Temple periods, nearly four times the space devoted to his discussion of
Paul.8 Toward the end of the first section on Judaism, Sanders concludes:
“On the assumption that a religion should be understood on the basis of
its own self-presentations, as long as these are not manifestly bowdlerized,
and not on the basis of polemical attacks, we must say that the Judaism of
before 70 kept grace and works in the right perspective, did not trivialize the
commandments of God and was not especially marked by hypocrisy.”9 A
little later in the same paragraph, he notes: “By consistently maintaining
the basic framework of covenantal nomism, the gift and demand of God
were kept in a healthy relationship with each other.”10 One of the central
points Sanders seeks to make in his monumental work is that Judaism, no
less than Christianity, is a religion of grace.
All of this may seem like a digression, but it actually touches on the
heart of Barclay’s project. While Barclay agrees with Sanders that Judaism
is indeed a religion of grace, he nevertheless suggests that Sanders’s work
flattened out the meaning of grace and that discussions of both Judaism
and the apostle Paul have suffered from imprecision ever since. In the
prologue to Paul & the Gift, Barclay asks: “If ‘grace’ is everywhere in
		E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1977).
6
		Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, xii.
7
		Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, xiii.
8
		 More than one reader of Sanders has suggested that the book would be more aptly
titled “Palestinian Judaism and Paul.”
9
		Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 427 (emphasis added).
10
		Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 427 (italics original).
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Second Temple Judaism—in the celebration of divine beneficence, goodness, and mercy—is it everywhere the same?” (2). This question drives the
study, leading inexorably to the conclusion that “grace is everywhere in the
theology of Second Temple Judaism, but not everywhere the same” (565).
Barclay arrives at this conclusion after a careful and nuanced study that
traverses the history and anthropology of the gift, the history of Pauline
interpretation, five Second Temple Jewish authors, and close readings of
Galatians and Romans. The result is a magisterial study on grace in Paul
and in antiquity, one that should benefit both exegetes and theologians
interested in the topic. Because of the richness and the importance of
Barclay’s work, I will spend the bulk of this essay highlighting some of
the major advances it presents—in methodology, in the study of Second
Temple Judaism, and in the reading of Paul—before offering one humble
suggestion for moving the discussion forward. In particular, I will suggest
that Barclay’s treatment of grace could itself use some more precision by
specifying the content of the “gift” of his title. I propose that interpreting
the gift as sonship would provide a clearer definition and can connect
various aspects of Barclay’s study to the important Pauline category of
participation in Christ.
Grace and Gift in Historical Context
Barclay begins the work with a historical and anthropological consideration of the category of “the gift.”11 Attempts to incorporate theory
into exegetical studies can often seem gimmicky or faddish, but Barclay’s
appropriation of the anthropology of the gift pays significant dividends.
One of the main goals of this first section is to problematize and challenge the widespread modern understanding of “gift” as something that
is given with no expectation of a return. Surveying the various ways that
ancient Mediterranean cultures (Greek, Roman, and Jewish) practiced
and understood gift giving, Barclay shows that the notion of giving a gift
with no expectation of a return would have been utterly foreign to most
ancients. In contrast to the modern notion of “no-strings-attached” gifts
as the ideal, Barclay notes from the outset: “Even the slightest knowledge
of antiquity would inform us that gifts were given with strong expectations
of return—indeed, precisely in order to elicit a return and thus to create or
enhance social solidarity” (11). Gifts in antiquity formed an integral part
		 It is important to note that Paul & the Gift is not a simple word study, but rather a
treatment of the concept of the gift. Understandably, much of the discussion hinges
on the Greek word χάρις, which can mean either “gift” or “grace,” depending on
context.

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Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P.

of a system meant to establish bonds between the givers and the receivers.
Far from being opposed to the notion of gift, then, obligation and reciprocity play a central role in gift giving. In most ancient cultures, then, people
discriminated carefully when bestowing gifts upon a recipient. As Barclay
notes, in the mentality of the Romans, “one does not want to tie oneself
to a disreputable, ungrateful, or otherwise worthless beneficiary” (39). For
this reason, giving to the poor, although not totally absent from Roman
society, was uncommon.
As Gary Anderson has shown in two recent works, however, giving to
the poor played a fundamental role in ancient Judaism, and thus in early
Christianity.12 This emphasis on the practice of charity might seem to set
the Jews (and the early Christians) apart from the reciprocal understanding so prevalent in the ancient world, but a closer look at the dynamics
of charity shows otherwise. While it is true that the poor were unable to
repay in kind for gifts received, according to the Jewish Scriptures, gifts to
the poor nevertheless included the expectation of a return. In the case of
charity, God is the one who completes the cycle of the gift. Thus, Barclay
notes, “Jewish giving to the poor is fully enmeshed in the expectation of
reciprocity, and its distinctive elements are justified not by an ‘anti-reciprocal’ ethos but by the modulation of the reciprocity-ethos into the
expectation of reciprocity from God” (44). Across Mediterranean cultures
in antiquity, then, reciprocity was a firmly ensconced aspect of gift giving.
How, then, did the idea of the “pure” gift that is so commonly accepted
today arise? Several complex social, theological, and ideological factors
played a role, but Barclay suggests that the two figures most responsible
for this shift were Martin Luther and the Lutheran philosopher Immanuel Kant (56–59). Luther was driven by theological motivations, resisting
the reciprocal understanding of gift still prevalent in Catholic circles. For
the reformer, Christ’s love for his people, exemplified in his sacrifice on
the Cross, was a gift with no strings attached, the quintessential modern
understanding of the gift. Kant transposed Luther’s theological ideal into a
philosophical key, turning the notion of the pure gift into a “universal ethical ideal” (57). This notion reaches its epitome in the thought of Jacques
Derrida, for whom any kind of reciprocity renders a gift null. For Derrida,
“what makes [something] gift (as opposed to economic exchange) is that
it does not come back” (61; original emphasis). On his definition, then, the
giving of gifts becomes impossible. In light of the history and anthropol		 Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009);
Anderson, Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2013).

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ogy of the notion of gift giving, however, Barclay concludes that Derrida’s
understanding is a historical anomaly, one that “speaks of everything but
the gift” (63).
It may seem that I have devoted excessive space to one chapter out
of eighteen, but this opening chapter is crucial for the project. Barclay
concludes by noting that any analysis of the language of grace and gift
must take into account the historical context of the writings that use this
terminology (64). Such an approach is particularly important for modern
interpreters, all of whom have been influenced to one degree or another by
the notion of the “pure” gift of Kant and Derrida. If we are to understand
premodern uses of the language of gift, we must be aware of the different
connotations and implications the term had in earlier times. While a plea
for historical awareness may seem obvious, perhaps even banal, given the
stark contrast between ancient and modern understandings of gift, it is
perhaps nowhere more important than in interpreting gift language.
The Perfect Gift
Building on his historical analysis of the concept of “gift,” Barclay develops
a taxonomy of gift and grace relying on the notion of “perfection.” Barclay
borrows this term from Kenneth Burke, describing it as “the tendency to
draw out a concept to its endpoint or extreme, whether for definitional
clarity or for rhetorical or ideological advantage” (67). Barclay proposes
six different modes of perfecting the concept of “gift.” Some concern the
nature of the gift itself, others the nature of the giver. A gift might be
perfected in “superabundance.” On this understanding, the perfect gift is
the most excessive, the most lavish, the all-encompassing gift (70). A gift
can also be perfected with respect to the giver. Barclay calls this perfection
“singularity,” a term that refers to the giver’s character as purely benevolent (70–71). The perfection of “priority” concerns the timing of the gift.
This perfection has at least three features: it is given spontaneously, not
in response to anything; it is, therefore, “free,” since nothing precipitated
it; and it indicates the superiority of the giver (71–72). “Priority” seems
to be the primary perfection that drives Sanders’s study, leading him to
the conclusion that Judaism was indeed a “religion of grace.” A fourth
perfection, “incongruity,” points to the lack of merit on the part of the
receiver. The giver bestows gifts in spite of the lack of worth in the recipient
(72–73). This perfection was rare in antiquity, since it seemed unfitting,
given the reciprocal nature of gift giving. The fifth perfection, “efficacy,”
focuses on the effectiveness of the gift. The efficacious gift accomplishes
that which its giver intended (73–74). The final perfection, “noncircular-

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ity,” was rare in antiquity. As the name implies, this perfection implies that
a gift expects nothing in return (74–75). The modern conception of the
“pure gift” is the most obvious example of this sixth perfection.
Barclay follows this taxonomy of perfections with a number of qualifications and implications. First, it is not necessary to perfect grace in any
one of these modes, either in the human sphere or in the divine sphere. In
fact, doing so can lead to problems such as eliminating notions of justice
or mutuality (75). Second, these perfections are not mutually exclusive.
While it is rare for an interpreter to embrace all six perfections, it is not
uncommon to choose two or three when interpreting grace, and some of
the perfections tend to cluster together (76).13 Third, and perhaps most
importantly, Barclay suggests that disagreements between interpreters of
Paul on the question of grace—as well as between Paul and his contemporaries—stem not from a denial of grace or of its importance, but rather
from their different definitions of grace (77).
This taxonomy is one of the most significant contributions of Barclay’s
work, a twenty-first-century analog to the medieval distinguo (“grace” can
be said in many ways, Thomas might say). Exegetes and theologians alike
would benefit from applying these categories to the endless debates about
grace. In the rest of the study, the taxonomy functions as an analytical tool,
applied in turn to the history of interpretation, a variety of Second Temple
Jewish texts, and finally to two of Paul’s letters, Galatians and Romans.
Grace Among Christians and Jews
Barclay first turns his attention to the history of interpretation, considering
a few representative “theologians of grace” before turning to more recent
exegetes. Some of his selections and omissions may surprise the reader.
Few would think of Marcion as a “theologian of grace,” but Barclay argues
that he exemplifies the “rhetoric and ideology of perfection” (83). Marcion
perfects the singularity of grace, insisting that God is purely benevolent and
contrasting the God of his narrower Christian canon with the evil, wrathful God of the Old Testament (80–85). Less surprising are his selection
and analyses of Augustine, Luther, and John Calvin. Barclay rightly notes
that Augustine perfects grace with respect to priority, incongruity, and efficacy, and that the bishop of Hippo’s influence has significantly shaped the
way that many since his time have understood grace (97). Neither should
it surprise us that noncircularity plays a crucial role for Luther (115), marking a decisive step toward the modern notion of the “pure gift.” A bit more
		Barclay suggests that Campbell is the only example he has come across of a reader
of Paul who embraces all six perfections of grace (173).

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controversially, though not without support, Barclay suggests that noncircularity does not figure into Calvin’s understanding of grace. Rather, in his
thought, the accent falls on incongruity and efficacy (129–30). Jumping
forward to recent history, Barclay then applies his taxonomy to Karl Barth
and a number of Pauline interpreters from the twentieth century up to our
own day.
This foray into the history of interpretation avoids some of the weaknesses that commonly beset wirkungsgeschichtliche approaches, which can
easily turn into museum pieces. Barclay does not treat these interpreters
out of mere curiosity. Rather, this section shows how his taxonomy can
help us better understand longstanding disagreements over grace, as well
as how the history of interpretation has influenced these debates. One can
quibble over his selection of interpreters. Interesting though the French
philosopher Alain Badiou may be, devoting four and a half pages to his
thought seems disproportionate to his significance. The selection becomes
all the more puzzling in light of the omission of one of the great theologians of grace, Thomas Aquinas. This criticism stems not from Dominican
chauvinism, but rather from the close affinities between Aquinas’s reading
of Paul on grace and Barclay’s. One could even argue that, in the history of
interpretation, Aquinas comes closest to Barclay’s account.14 Despite this
glaring omission, the survey of theologians and exegetes of grace underscores the usefulness of Barclay’s taxonomy of perfections.
The same can be said for the second part of the book, which considers
the notion of grace in Second Temple Judaism. It is in this section that
Barclay most forcefully and effectively problematizes Sanders’s characterization of Judaism. As already noted, Barclay sees Sanders’s account
as overly flattened. While it is true that Second Temple Judaism was a
religion of grace, Sanders’s presentation can, with some exceptions, make
the Jewish texts he considers seem monolithic. Barclay seeks to offer a
more variegated description of the Jewish understandings (plural) of grace,
exhibiting his mastery of the literature of this period. Not surprisingly,
the picture that emerges in many ways reflects wider ancient understandings of the gift. The Wisdom of Solomon, for example, agrees with many
		Consider but two examples. Although less detailed, Aquinas’s discussion of the
essence of grace in the Summa theologiae [ST] maps well onto Barclay’s discussion
in the appendix (“The Lexicon of the Gift”) of Paul & the Gift (see ST I-II, q.
110, a. 1). Similarly, Thomas’s noncompetitive metaphysics supports Barclay’s
suggestion that “Paul’s language requires us to banish ‘zero-sum’ calculations of
agency (the more God, the less the human), it seems better to speak of a pattern of
‘energism’ in Pauline agency” (442).

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Greek and Roman thinkers that an incongruous gift would be unfitting:
gifts ought to be given to those who are worthy, and so the text seeks
to explain why the Jews deserve to be the object of God’s affections.
Instead of incongruity, the text perfects the notion of superabundance,
the lavishness of God’s gift to Israel (211). Similarly, Philo of Alexandria
is not interested in perfecting incongruity. Instead, Barclay suggests, he
emphasizes superabundance, singularity, priority, and efficacy (237). The
Hodayot of Qumran, the Liber antiquitatum biblicarum of Pseudo-Philo,
and 4 Ezra all likewise perfect different aspects of divine grace in a variety
of combinations.
While by no means exhaustive, Barclay’s study of these texts certainly
gives a representative sample of the range of interpretations of grace in the
Second Temple period. Significantly, he finds only two areas of agreement
among all five authors: “All of them perfect the superabundance of divine
‘grace’; . . . none of them perfect the non-circularity of grace” (314; original
emphasis). Apart from these agreements, however, the texts vary greatly in
the details. The question then becomes not whether Jews believed in grace
as Paul did, but rather how they understood grace and where Paul fits on
the map of Second Temple Judaism.
An Incongruous Gift
It should come as no surprise that Paul’s characterization of grace is neither
unique nor identical to that of his fellow first-century Jews. Barclay sees in
the Pauline version of grace three distinctive elements. First, in agreement
with some of the Jewish texts surveyed, Paul perfects the notion of incongruity. God gives his gifts “without regard to worth” (e.g., 350; original
emphasis). Second, the fundamental nature of God’s gifts is to be seen in
the Christ event, Christ’s self-gift on the Cross (e.g., 331). Third, Paul’s
understanding of grace undergirds his mission to the Gentiles (e.g., 350).
It is because God’s grace comes to people regardless of their worth and
through Christ that this grace is open to Jew and Gentile alike: “Since no
one is granted this gift on the grounds of their ethnic work, no one of any
ethnicity is excluded from its reach” (361).
Much could be said about the final two parts of Paul & the Gift, which
treat Galatians and Romans. For the sake of brevity, I would like to
highlight three significant aspects of Barclay’s treatment before offering
a suggestion to develop his reading further and give it greater precision.
The first noteworthy aspect of Barclay’s reading is his critique of
so-called “new perspective” readings of Paul. According to these, particularly as expounded for the past several decades by James Dunn, the “works

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of the law” to which Paul objects refer to boundary markers, those Jewish
practices that separate Jews from Gentiles (especially Sabbath, circumcision, and food laws). The problem that Paul addresses with his doctrine
of justification, according to Dunn, is nationalism, the insistence that
Gentiles become like Jews in order to become a part of the people of God.
Barclay rightly suggests that this reading is too narrow and fails to get to
the heart of the matter. With Dunn, Barclay agrees that Paul’s concern
with the insistence on performing works of the law (the Torah) has
nothing to do with works righteousness. Against Dunn, he convincingly
argues that the problem is not ethnocentrism, but rather a denial of the
incongruity of grace.
While several factors may have contributed to Paul’s understanding
of works of the law after the Christ event, Barclay traces its roots to his
conversion, which neither took account of Paul’s position in Judaism
nor continued it (358–60). Paul’s encounter with Christ was a totally
incongruous gift, and in working out the nature of this event, Paul saw
that grace, because it does not depend on one’s ethnicity, be it Jewish or
Gentile, is open to all. There are two advantages to this aspect of Barclay’s
reading. First, it better explains statements, such as those in Galatians
5:6 and 6:15, that devalue both Judaism and Gentile existence (“neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything”). If the problem for Paul was
Jewish ethnocentrism, then there would be no reason for him to devalue
Gentile status (393). This leads to the second strength of Barclay’s reading:
it not only better explains Paul’s argument but also manifests more clearly
its relevance for today. “Because the Christological event of grace is both
highly particular and impacts on any criteria of worth that are not derived
from the good news itself, Paul’s theology does not remain encased within
its first-century Jewish context” (573; original emphasis). The gospel of
grace challenges any and all systems of worth that rival Christ’s self-gift,
and so it has a perennial relevance not seen as clearly in new-perspective
interpretations.
A second significant, though narrower, aspect of Barclay’s approach also
relates to the new-perspective approach, specifically his reading of Romans
4. Most interpretations of this chapter account for only one part of the
argument: either they make good sense of Paul’s emphasis on Abraham’s
faith in the opening verses or they explain well the picture of Abraham
as the father of a multinational family later in the chapter. A satisfactory
reading that accounts for both parts of the chapter is hard to find.
Once again, for Barclay, the theme that unites the chapter, as it does
Paul’s theology of grace more broadly, is the incongruity of grace: God’s
election of his people does not consider the inherent worth of those chosen.

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Paul appeals to the example of Abraham to show that this incongruity is
not a new development, but rather the way God has always operated with
his people. God chose Abraham not because of any merits on his part, but
rather by a completely incongruous gift. This is the point Paul establishes
in Romans 4:1–8. On this basis, Paul can then show in Romans 4:9–12
the fittingness of God calling both Jews and Gentiles, since God calls not
on the basis of human worth, but simply on the basis of his generosity.
This very particular understanding of grace, not universally accepted in
antiquity, thus plays a major role in Paul’s argument. Barclay wisely notes
that, while Abraham appears first in the order of the argument, it was
Paul’s experience of the Christ gift that made possible this rereading of the
Abraham story (486).
Given the emphasis in the first chapter of Paul & the Gift on the novelty
of the notion of a “pure gift,” no discussion of the work would be complete
without showing how this analysis influences Barclay’s reading of Paul.
It should come as no surprise that, for Barclay, Paul does not oppose
grace to an expectation of some return: “None of Paul’s hearers would
have been surprised to learn that as recipients of the divine gift they were
placed under obligation to God” (498). He develops this idea with the
help of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. One of the consequences of
the incongruous grace of God is a later congruity in the eschaton (493).
Although God chooses people by his grace who are in no way fit for the
gift he offers, he renders them fit for reward in the afterlife by means of
that same grace. Grace accomplishes this in the body by transforming the
dispositions of the baptized, moving them from the “mindset of the flesh”
to the “mindset of the Spirit” (506; citing Rom 8:6).15 This reorientation
equips the baptized to live lives worthy of the gift they have received.
This emphasis on habitus makes much better sense both of Paul’s theology of grace and of his moral exhortations. For Paul, grace is not simply
a gift, but rather a transformative gift, one that demands a fitting return.
Readings that stress the noncircularity of the gift have a much harder time
explaining the rationale behind Paul’s exhortations: “Christian obedience
is thus vital, but only ever in a responsive mode: it arises in conjunction
with faith and gratitude as the answer to a prior gift. The gift is entirely
undeserved but strongly obliging: it creates agents who are newly alive,
required to live the life they have been given” (518). Once again, we see how
		Again, one could note the congruence between Barclay’s account and Aquinas.
Centuries before Bourdieu, Thomas’s virtue ethics emphasized the importance of
habitus as a disposition (see ST I-II, q. 49). Thomas himself builds on the much
earlier explication of Aristotle.

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distorting the modern notion of the noncircular gift has been on readings
of Paul. Thoroughgoing fear of “works righteousness” makes it far more
difficult to make sense of Paul’s exhortations.
The Gift of Sonship
For all the precision that Barclay’s study offers in the general notion of
gift, in understanding the history of interpretation, and in Second Temple
Jewish perfections of grace, there remains some ambiguity in his account.
What exactly is the gift that Paul has in mind? Barclay speaks at times of
Christ’s gift on the Cross, but at other times, the term remains more nebulous. The passage just quoted comes closest to giving a definition of the gift:
“the life [the baptized] have been given.” While Paul’s understanding of gift
is, no doubt, multifaceted and nuanced, I would like to propose a category
that can integrate a number of Barclay’s proposals, as well as connect his
reading of Paul with those interpretations that emphasize participation in
Christ. For Paul, the gift, particularly in Romans and Galatians, seems to
consist in divine sonship, received by the grace of adoption. Reading the
gift in this way closely connects it with Christ’s self-sacrifice on the Cross,
fits with the incongruity of the gift, and gives clearer definition to the
habitus that Paul seeks to cultivate in his audiences. Moreover, it accounts
for the circular nature of the gift and more clearly connects grace with
participation in Christ, one of the lasting contributions of Sanders’s work.
The notions of adoption and sonship, though not frequent in Paul’s
letters, nevertheless appear at climactic points in his arguments in Galatians and Romans. There is a hint early on in Galatians that Paul closely
associates grace with sonship. In the autobiographical portion of the letter,
Paul writes: “But when the one who set me apart from my mother’s womb
and called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his Son ἐν ἐμοί” (Gal
1:15–16a). Interpreters disagree over the translation of the phrase ἐν ἐμοί.
Some take the preposition as pleonastic, thus reading the phrase “to me.”
Others, however, argue that we should give full weight to the preposition,
suggesting that God revealed Christ “in” Paul. If the latter reading is
correct, then we see here a close connection between the grace of God and
participation in Christ, as well as Christ’s own sonship. While such a reading is intriguing, we should not hang too much on it. Nonetheless, at the
very least, Paul’s autobiography connects the grace of God with Christ’s
sonship, whether it was manifested to him or in him.
Later in the letter, Paul twice emphasizes the importance of the Galatians’ newfound status as sons, and in both cases, he connects this newly
received sonship with the status of being heirs. At the end of Galatians 3,

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in the context of an appeal to baptism, Paul reminds the Galatians: “For
you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus through faith” (Gal 3:26). He then
grounds their newfound status in baptism, which leads into precisely the
kind of statement that reflects the incongruity of the gift: “There is neither
Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female”
(Gal 3:28). Barclay rightly notes that, in these verses: “What is altered . .
. is the evaluative freight carried by these labels, the encoded distinctions
of superiority and inferiority. In common solidarity with Christ, baptized
believers are enabled and required to view each other without regard to
these influential classifications of worth” (397; original emphasis). Disappointingly, however, Barclay takes no notice of the new status of sonship
with which the passage begins. It is precisely by belonging to Christ as
sons of God that earthly distinctions lose their significance and that the
baptized become heirs of the promise.
A similar pattern, but without the relativizing of social status, appears
in the passage that immediately follows. Developing the contrast between
slavery and sonship, Paul describes the purpose of Christ’s redeeming act
as leading to divine adoption: “But when the fullness of time came, God
sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem
those under the law, in order that we might receive adoption” (Gal 4:4–5;
emphasis added). This divine adoption is the gift that the redeemed receive
in baptism, the gift that transforms them from slaves into sons, and therefore heirs (Gal 4:6–7).
Romans 8 develops the theme of adoption with slightly different
nuances. Here Paul connects divine adoption with being led by the Spirit:
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom
8:14). The Romans received the Spirit as a gift that enables them to call
on God as Father: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery leading again
to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by which we cry, ‘Abba,
Father!’” (Rom 8:15).16 The Spirit testifies to believers’ new status as children of God (Rom 8:16), and once again, Paul connects this adoption with
receiving the status of “heir,” a status believers share with Christ (Rom
8:17). Most significantly, in this text, Paul signals the circular nature of the
gift: “And if children, then also heirs, heirs of God and fellow-heirs with
Christ, provided we suffer with [him] in order that we might be glorified
with [him]” (Rom 8:17; emphasis added). The gift of sonship cannot be
earned, but those who receive it are expected to act in conformity with the
		 It is worth noting that Galatians also closely associates adoption with reception of
the Spirit: “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our
hearts crying, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Gal 4:6).

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gift. A little later, Paul reiterates that this newfound status hinges on being
sons of God with Christ: “For those whom he foreknew, he also designated
beforehand to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might
be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom 8:29). Again, we see that the
fundamental gift from which everything else flows is adopted sonship.
Seeing the gift as sonship neatly ties together several of Barclay’s central
categories. For Paul, divine adoption in Christ is utterly incongruous,
as can be seen by his references to the Spirit. In both Romans and Galatians, Paul connects adoption with the reception of the Spirit, and in
Galatians, he makes it abundantly clear that the Spirit cannot be earned
(Gal 3:1–5). Moreover, sonship explains both the circularity of the gift
and the bodily habitus that should inform the life of believers. Those who
have been adopted as sons are expected to act like sons, particularly by
conformity to Christ’s suffering and death (Rom 8:17). This is the habitus
that Paul expects of the baptized: the habitus of a son, conformed to the
Son. And this habitus is nothing other than living out the symbolism of
their baptism, whether seen as being clothed with Christ (Gal 3:27) or as
dying and rising with him (Rom 6:3–4). Barclay rightly notes: “One could
hardly imagine a more effective demonstration of this ‘rescue’ than the
physical rite of baptism, which Paul interprets as a transition from death
to life performed on and with the body” (508; original emphasis). The result
of the rescue, though, is not simply death and resurrection, but death and
resurrection as sons and daughters in Christ, a new status that must be
lived out in the body in imitation of and participation with Christ. One
of the clearest examples of this participation in Paul’s letters combines gift
language with Christ’s status as Son of God: “I have been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; but what I now live
in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself
for my sake” (Gal 2:19b–20). In the following verse, Paul asserts, “I do not
reject the grace of God” (Gal 2:21a). Here grace, sonship, and participation
converge in a compact summary of Paul’s understanding of redemption.
A Gift to Scholarship
As should be clear, my proposal in no way detracts from the abundant
merits of Barclay’s magnificent work. It seeks rather to develop the many
strengths of his reading and to find a clearer unifying thread that can tie
these elements together. Others could be suggested, and Barclay no doubt
has thought of some on his own. As he himself notes in the preface to Paul
& the Gift, there remain aspects of gift giving that he was unable to cover
in this book and to which he hopes to devote a future volume (xv). As we
eagerly await his next contribution, we can thank Barclay for this gift to

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exegesis and theology. The clarity and precision with which he has treated
so many important issues stands as a model for all future work on Paul, on
the history of interpretation, and on the theology of grace.
N&V

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Paul and the Gift: A Mirror for Our Protestant Faces
Matthew J. Thomas
Regent College
Vancouver, BC

John Barclay’s Paul and the Gift is a monumental work, one that will
represent a landmark for later generations of scholars who tell the story of
how the Apostle’s theology has been understood.1 In a book replete with
valuable Pauline analysis and insights, there are three points in particular
that have left an enduring impression on me, the first two of which I believe
are major achievements. First, Barclay shows that while E. P. Sanders is
right that grace is everywhere in Second Temple Jewish sources, it is not
everywhere in the same way; as Barclay’s study makes eminently clear, it is
essential to understand how grace functions in different sources, not simply
to note that it is present. Second, Barclay demonstrates that contrary to
modern notions, ancient conceptions of gift do not imply noncircularity,
and to project this onto Paul is anachronistic; the difference between
wage and gift is not circular versus noncircular, but that gift implies (and
creates!) relationship with the giver.
The third point is a curiosity, and it is the one that I wish to reflect on
here. No doubt the first two points will be rightly recalled by posterity as
more significant, but it is the third that has recurred to me most often in
the months since finishing Paul and the Gift.
Imagine an academic volume of Church history, one that tells the story
of Christian thought by examining key figures in the faith. Say that in
		 For full disclosure, I admit from the outset my positive connections with Barclay: I
was his teaching assistant at Regent College in 2012, and he has played a formative
role in shaping my own work, eventually serving as the external examiner for my
dissertation at Oxford in 2016. Unless otherwise noted, parenthetical citations of
page numbers in the remainder of this article are from John Barclay, Paul and the
Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015).

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covering the first fifteen hundred years of Christian history, this volume
engages precisely two figures, and that these two figures are Marcion
and Augustine, those most commonly identified by later claimants as
proto-Protestants. Imagine that this history then devoted the vast majority of its space to covering the five hundred years since the Reformation,
featuring nine key players and a host of minor ones, and that apart from
the occasional atheist, all of these were Protestants as well.
Within the field of ecclesiastical history, to label such a volume as a
Christian history at all would be impossible; it might be a confessional
or denominational work of some sort, but with such a scope no one could
regard it as actually representative of Christian thought. But if one does
quite the same thing in the field of biblical studies, hardly anyone blinks
an eye—for in its lengthy historical survey of Christian interpretation on
Pauline grace, this is precisely the framework that Barclay’s volume adopts.
Modern academic biblical studies operates under an assumption of
confessional neutrality, in which our judgments are thought to be characterized by a disinterested fairness to all sides. And Barclay himself is
well-attuned to how this is often an illusion, with our standard evaluative
standpoints actually reflecting smuggled-in theological assumptions. For
example, in responding to common objections that Second Temple Jews
diluted grace by including “recompense,” Barclay astutely notes that such
critiques take for granted a particular understanding of grace: “What
is not considered is whether grace and recompense may be a perfectly
normal combination in antiquity (gift to the worthy, gift as reward). As
we have seen, this is not a self-contradiction; it simply entails that grace is
not perfected as an incongruous gift, as espoused by Augustine and in the
Protestant tradition” (169; italics original; see also 211). Barclay similarly
defends Philo against his scholarly detractors by shedding light on the
Protestant framework that underlies their judgments:
If we rid ourselves of the assumption that divine grace is, by definition, given to the unworthy, an assumption that (for ideological
reasons) makes one perfection of grace its defining characteristic,
it is perfectly possible to hail Philo as a profound theologian of
grace, even though he does not perfect its incongruity. As we have
seen, there are good reasons why Philo finds God to give to the
‘worthy,’ reasons that have nothing to do with ‘synergism,’ ‘legalism,’ ‘works-righteousness,’ or other such categories. (238; italics
original)

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Likewise, Barclay pinpoints the confessional paradigm that leads to scholarly critiques of 4 Ezra’s conception of grace according to equity: “There is
no reason to dub this fitting reward as a form of ‘legalism’ or ‘works-righteousness’—terminology that reflects distinctly Augustinian and Protestant theologies, and that presumes as natural or necessary a perfection of
grace as an incongruous gift to the unworthy” (306).
Barclay’s perceptiveness of latent Protestant frameworks makes it all
the more surprising that his reconstruction of the history of interpretation
on Pauline grace takes the shape that it does. For the five hundred years
since the Reformation, the reader finds in-depth treatments of Luther
and Calvin; Barth, Bultmann, Käsemann and Martyn; Sanders and the
“new perspective”; various Protestant reactions to the “new perspective”;
and Alain Baidou and (later) Brigitte Kahl. For the fifteen hundred years
between Paul and the Reformation, the reader is presented with Marcion,
for whom we possess no writings, and Augustine. Outside of this history
are the great early interpreters: Irenaeus, whose sustained Pauline exegesis
places Paul “at the centre of Christian theology” (so James Dunn2); Tertullian, whose fifth book Against Marcion presents in short form our earliest
commentary on Galatians (a far more complete witness than any we have
from Marcion); Origen, whose Romans commentary lays the interpretative foundation for all later commentators.3 Outside is Chrysostom, the
definitive expositor of Paul for the Eastern half of the Church, whom
the Catholic Fr. Lagrange similarly identifies as holding antiquity’s greatest insights into Paul’s thought in Romans and Galatians.4 Outside is
Jerome, “undoubtedly the greatest biblical scholar that the Latin church
ever produced” (so Gerald Bray5), whom Augustine himself confesses as
his superior in knowledge of the Scriptures.6 The Spirit sleeps a familiar
		James D.G. Dunn, Christianity in the Making, Vol. 3: Neither Jew nor Greek
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 722.
3
		 See the work of Thomas Scheck, Origen and the History of Justification: The Legacy
of Origen’s Commentary on Romans (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University
Press, 2008).
4
		 M. J. Lagrange, Épitre aux Romains (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1916), viii; Lagrange, Épitre
aux Galates (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1926), viii, noted in Maurice Wiles, The Divine
Apostle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 3–4.
5
		Gerald Bray, Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 91. See also Lightfoot, identifying Jerome’s as “the most
valuable of all the patristic commentaries on the Epistle to the Galatians”; in J.B.
Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (London: Macmillan, 1914), 232.
6
		Augustine to Jerome, Ep. 73, AD 404; see The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, ed. John Rotelle, vol. 2/1 (Hyde Park, NY: New City
Press, 2001), 275.
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slumber for the eleven hundred years from Augustine to Luther, and none
are able to wake him; neither the encomiums of grace in William of St.
Thierry’s Romans commentary, nor the clarion commentaries of Aquinas
are of any avail; while the old couplet states, “if Lyra had not played, Luther
would not have danced,” here Nicholas makes no sound, and Martin
dances alone. With such a foundation, is it a surprise that once the Spirit
is roused at the Reformation, no later Catholic or Orthodox interpreters
are found necessary to tell the history of grace?
The obvious defense of Barclay is that he is only following in a tradition;
many of the later Protestant interpreters he engages choose one another as
their conversation partners, and so the limited guest list is in some ways
set for him. This is at least partially true, but for two reasons is not entirely
sufficient. The first is that his hundred-page history of Pauline grace does
not claim to be a confessionally circumscribed project, but rather a real
history of interpretation.7 We would rightly object if an Orthodox scholar,
writing from an academic standpoint, identified the only significant
historical interpreters of Paul as his fellow Orthodox. The second is that
Barclay himself is keenly aware of the consequences of a limited historical
viewpoint. Thus Barclay begins his history of interpretation: “To understand our past is to understand ourselves. No contemporary interpreter
of Paul can afford to remain ignorant of the history of interpretation,
which influences us at levels deeper than we tend to recognize” (80). Here
Barclay certainly speaks well, but his counsel is only partially followed. If
we construct for ourselves a warped view of the past by examining only
Protestant or quasi-Protestant interpreters, remaining uninformed of the
mainstream of interpretation throughout most of Christian history, then
it will scarcely be possible to accurately understand the past, or to understand ourselves in relation to it.
Just as much as its profound insights into the variegated and reciprocal
nature of grace, then, this for me has been the enduring value of Barclay’s
book: as a mirror by which we in the discipline can see our own Protestant faces. There is no questioning Barclay’s acumen as a scholar, nor his
sensitivity to hidden confessional biases, and it is for these reasons that the
way his study is circumscribed is all the more striking. Within academic
biblical studies in general and Pauline studies in particular, ours is a
		See e.g. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 5. On 79, Barclay offers as source criterion that
“it would be hard to deny the significance and influence of each of the authors
here discussed.” And this may be so; but it is a narrow Protestant few who find
Käsemann more significant than Chrysostom, and Baidou more influential than
Aquinas.

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discipline that is deeply and unconsciously rooted in Protestant pre-judgments. It is witnessed in our curiously selective engagement with historical
and contemporary interpreters; in our assumed framework of “authentic” Hauptbriefe—governed in essence by Romans and Galatians—and
“deutero-Paulines,”8 which we forget was constructed in the context of
contra-Catholic polemics in the nineteenth century;9 in our identification
of a reading tradition as “the old perspective,” which we demonstrate by
including one interpreter from the fifth century, two from the sixteenth,
and one from the eighteenth.10 The scope of Barclay’s book, though a
limitation, can be of serious value in helping us recognize who we are as
a discipline, and help us to move away from assumptions of a detached
fairness or neutrality. Without such a recognition, even our best biblical
scholars are likely to remain unfamiliar with the great interpreters of the
majority of the Church’s history, and our own scholarship will continue
in isolation from the bulk of non-Protestants, who will recognize from
the guest list in our histories of interpretation that ours is a discipline that
need not interest them. And this would be perhaps the greatest loss of all:
because Barclay’s Paul and the Gift is a masterpiece of Pauline scholarship,
a true gift that merits to be encountered by readers of every confession.
N&V

		 I write as a pot amongst kettles, as my own dissertation, like Barclay’s book, focuses
its analysis on Romans and Galatians. On the “deutero-Pauline” designation, note
the recent reflections in N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (London:
SPCK, 2013), 56–61.
9
		See the excellent recounting of the Hauptbriefe’s origins in chapter 2 of Benjamin
White, Remembering Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 20–25.
White’s comments on Pervo’s recent work hold true for the discipline at large:
“[Pervo] never connects the fact that the ‘real’ Paul discourse of the nineteenth
century is part and parcel with the Lutheran reading of Paul. This is regrettable.
The standard historical narrative that moves from Galatians (Paul) to Ephesians
and Acts (pseudo-Paul) to the Pastoral Epistles (really pseudo-Paul) is ultimately
built upon Luther being read through Baur” (65).
10
		See Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The ‘Lutheran’ Paul
and His Critics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). The parochial quality of our
categories becomes clear when we try to articulate them for non-Protestants: try
telling an Orthodox priest that the “old perspective on Paul” is Augustine, Luther,
Calvin, and John Wesley!
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235

A Thomist Reading of Paul? Response and Reflections
John M. G. Barclay
Durham University
Durham, UK

I am enormously grateful to all five of my respondents and to the editor
for commissioning this enriching dialogue. I am truly honored to have my
work read in such depth and with such generosity by this range of experts,
who genuinely advance the discussion that I had hoped to evoke. The
theological interpretation of Scripture is as important to me as its historical
elucidation, and the interdisciplinary nature of these exchanges is a delight.
Since many of these responses represent a distinctively Catholic approach
to Paul, I will focus on that dimension of our dialogue. Both the agreement
and the push-back in my response spring from my deep appreciation for
the thoughtfulness that has gone into this symposium.
A theme running through these essays is appreciation of the way that
Paul & the Gift disaggregates meanings and “perfections” of grace, and in
particular the distinction I make between incongruity (gift to the unworthy) and non-circularity (gift that expects no return). As Isaac Morales
notes, there is a touch of the scholastic distinguo in my method, and if that
serves to clarify confusions and to challenge the modern idealization of
the “gift with no return,” so much the better. I am glad to receive Bradley
Gregory’s endorsement of my thesis that even gifts to the poor in Second
Temple Judaism operated by a kind of circularity, so long as one factors in
the promise that the return will come not from the poor themselves, but
from God. I would hesitate, however, to put so much weight on the notion
of charity as loan to God. Proverbs 19:17 is, I think, unique in using that
particular striking metaphor, which could be taken to suggest that God
is indebted by our giving and under contractual obligation to make a
repayment. Widespread through the wisdom literature (Proverbs, Sirach,
etc.) and on through Tobit into the New Testament, one finds the notion

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that God will ensure that gifts to the poor are reciprocated, in one form or
another, in this life or in the next. This is normally expressed in metaphors
of harvest (you will reap what you sow), of return gift (what you give will
be given back to you), of pay (there will be reward/wage [misthos] in return
for work), or of investment (gifts constitute treasure laid up in heaven).
In all cases, God is the overseer and guarantor of this return. But the
particular concept of the loan (where one gives directly to God, who is then
figured as a debtor, under legal obligation to give us what is owed by right)
is rarely, if ever, carried through in our Second Temple or New Testament
literature, even where Jesus says that those who give to the least give, in
effect, to him (Mark 9:37; Matt 10:40; 25:31–46). In other words, one can
have a robust sense of a proper and fitting return that is underwritten by
God without the specific metaphor of the loan. But, on the fundamental
point, we are fully in agreement: our texts factor God into human systems
of gift, and promise divine reciprocity for gifts that are not, or cannot be,
reciprocated on a human level (Matt 6:4 and Luke 14:14 are classic cases
in the Gospels). And as some of the other essays note, at the deepest level,
both John and Paul figure this divine return not merely as “payback,” but
as the fulfilment of human potential that derives from participation in
God’s generosity toward the world.
Several of my interlocutors highlight the extent of resonance between
my reading of Paul and that offered by Thomas Aquinas, both in his
Summa and in his commentaries on Paul. At times, my readers may be a
little over-eager to find (or inclined to exaggerate) these resonances, but
they certainly include: the transformative power of grace that is designed
to turn its unworthy recipients into fitting, congruous children of God;
the coinherence of faith and love, by which the trusting receipt of grace
finds its necessary expression in recalibrated values and reordered relationships; the notion of the habitus (although, in my case, more in the
sociological sense derived from Bourdieu than in the Aristotelian sense
adopted by Aquinas); and a noncompetitive account of divine and human
agency (which I learned from Aquinas via Katherine Tanner). Morales, Fr.
David Meconi, and Michael Dauphinais gently suggest that my reading of
Paul would have been deeper, at some points corrected, and certainly more
systematic, if it had been more in line with Aquinas, and that is a challenge
that, with some hesitation (given my inadequate knowledge of Aquinas), I
wish to address here.
It is certainly notable that, as several of these responses note, Aquinas’s
rich account of grace was not part of my survey in chapter 2, headed “Interpreting Paul on Grace.” Matt Thomas reads this as a kind of Protestant
myopia, to which I plead only partly guilty. Augustine (who was included)

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can hardly be regarded merely as a “proto-Protestant,” given the enormous
influence of his theology of grace throughout the medieval period and his
constant presence in the work of Aquinas. More importantly, I was not
attempting to offer in that chapter “a history of interpretation on Pauline
grace” (Thomas), but a survey of “Shifting Patterns of Perfection” (the
subtitle of the chapter). “Perfections” are not just any readings of grace, but
readings that draw one or other element of this motif to an end-of-the-line
extreme. Hence, to take one example, although I was very conscious of the
theology of John Chrysostom on this topic and often use his work in class,
what is notable is how often he refuses to perfect grace in some of the ways
that other Christians did or do. That is, of course, both interesting and
important, and it might have been noted in the book, but the examples
chosen in that chapter are all notable for the “perfecting” tendencies in
their theologies of grace, and my point was to indicate how different these
can be and how relative to particular theological contexts and purposes.
But it is still the case that Aquinas (at least) could and should have been
in the survey, since he does interestingly and carefully “perfect” grace in
certain respects. I will try to make amends for that omission if there is ever
a second edition of the book.
But the bigger question here is what would have been gained by fuller
engagement with Aquinas in my reading of Paul. Behind that lurks the
more fundamental question of what constitutes a good reading of Paul. A
reading that situates Paul well in his first-century historical and cultural
context is certainly one part of the answer, and in that respect, historical
scholarship has moved on considerably since the thirteenth century. But
I am not so enthralled to a “historicist” method as to believe that that is
the whole of a “good reading” of Paul. In some cases, modern, historically
informed readings of Paul are seriously deficient in elements that may be
considered to make a reading “good.” A reading that respects the flow
and dynamic of Paul’s letters as rhetorical arguments is another part of
an answer, although opinions will divide on what textual frame should be
considered (each individual letter? the whole Pauline corpus? the whole
biblical canon?).1 And beneath the question of the textual frame is the
question of the theological (or other) basis on which one decides what
is most central in Paul or what the “principles” are that undergird his
theology. On a number of grounds, I doubt that there is, or ever will be,
one final, complete, and fully “adequate” reading of Paul (or indeed of any
		There are complexities behind each of these potential answers that we cannot
discuss here. It is notable, for instance, what difference it makes that a Catholic
biblical canon includes Wisdom of Solomon while a Protestant canon does not.

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text, sacred or secular). There will be some that are (on historical or textual
grounds) impossible, but among the many possible readings of Paul, some
will be better or worse, from a theological perspective, according to how
well they recontextualize Paul’s theology and render it theologically relevant and powerful in their own day. That is why I do not look to any figure
in the past as definitive for our reading of Paul today and why, conversely,
although I have my differences from Luther in his reading of Paul, I
recognize his reading as “a brilliant re-contextualization of Pauline theology in the conditions of the sixteenth-century church” (Paul & the Gift,
572). Could the same be said of Aquinas in the context of the thirteenth
century? I believe so, and in many respects, not least in his harvesting of
the rediscovered Aristotle in order to fashion a theological system capable
of embracing, within a single scheme of interpretation, both creation and
salvation, both nature and grace. But, of course, the tendency of philosophy is to regard itself as “timeless,” such that Aquinas’s contextual rereading of Paul can be presented as universally and timelessly true. But, to
my mind, there is much in Aquinas’s (and Aristotle’s) metaphysics that is
time-bound and simply impossible for us today, eight centuries later, just as
there is much in Luther and Calvin that we cannot merely repeat if we are
to fulfil our contemporary responsibility in offering a theological reading
of Paul. And this follows partly from the nature of Paul’s theology, which
was born in and for mission. A missionary theology that announces and
explains the Gospel has to make itself contextually clear with a responsibility that is answerable both to the text of Scripture and to what constitutes
life-giving “good news” today (and thus to the Spirit who speaks through
Scripture). Thus, as a provisional response to my generous readers, I would
like to reflect with them on some of the gains and losses that ensue from
reading Paul through Aquinas. For the sake of simplicity, and to take up
central themes in these essays, I focus here on just three areas of interest.
Nature and Grace
Aquinas’s great achievement was to offer a theological vision that was both
comprehensive and cohesive, embracing not just salvation and eschatology (the rescue and perfection of humanity) but also creation, or nature
(including the design of humanity and of the world, before salvation, and
even before the corruption of sin). This required not only an Aristotelian
sense of God as the Prime Mover of all things, including all human agency,
and an ontology of substance (including the rationality with which humanity is endued), but also a strong reconstruction of what humanity was like
and was capable of being in its state of “integrity” before it was spoiled by

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sin. On this basis, Aquinas could trace a crucial continuity between divine
design and human fulfilment in salvation in which the grace of Christ
exceeds, elevates, and perfects nature as something superadditum and supernaturale but does not destroy, counteract, or contradict creation or human
nature as they once were and are designed to be. There is no doubt that this
provides an integrative framework for theology that continues to prove its
worth (not least in Catholic social teaching) and that is able to draw richly
on the whole biblical canon. But does it constitute a good reading of Paul?
One could certainly point in support to the cosmic Christology of
Colossians and Ephesians and to those hints in Romans 1–2 (including
2:14–15, if this is read as an allusion to “natural law”) that suggest that
Paul’s soteriology has some connection to categories of “creation.” But
much here has to be supplied to Paul from (Aristotle-inspired) speculation
about the original human state of “integrity.” Paul himself appeals very
little to the category of nature (or to “the image of God” in humanity), and
where he does (e.g., in 1 Cor 11), he seems to use it to legitimate gender
hierarchies that are in-built into ancient (including Aristotelian) versions
of “nature” but are clearly cultural constructs and deeply unhelpful today.
More to the point, Paul’s theology revolves around the great, stark antitheses between human sin and divine grace, between flesh and Spirit, between
“the present evil age” and “the new creation” (Gal 1:4; 6:15). Paul seems
to know only two kinds of human, the fallen human and the saved, not a
third, pre-fall human whose rationality and morality is still partly intact
in the midst of sin. Paul’s theology of inversion and contradiction, of the
God who “raises the dead and calls into being the things that do not exist”
(Rom 4:17), of the structuring symbols of Cross (death) and resurrection (newness of life), is not easily squeezed into a Thomist mold, or if so
squeezed, it would be in danger of losing its creative, radical edge. One may
protest that Paul’s vision, if taken on its own, is too narrowly focused on
soteriology and on the great reversal of the broken human condition and
that its horizons need to be expanded by the more comprehensive Thomist
vision. But it may be that the sharp Pauline edges of discontinuity, change,
and reversal (dangerously dualistic as they may sometimes seem) may be
precisely what we need to hear in a contemporary context of mission and
of increasing global dysfunction, where the wisdom of the Cross is needed
to “destroy” the wisdom of the world (1 Cor 1:19). A subversive questioning of taken-for-granted norms and of the social order (which usually
poses as “natural”) may be Paul’s greatest gift to contemporary theology. I
have argued in Paul & the Gift that Paul’s theology of incongruous grace
stood at the root of the creative social experiments that took place in his
churches because it had the capacity to bring traditional, engrained value

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systems into question. We would not want that voice to be muffled by its
integration into a larger whole.
A Cosmic Order of Justice
Dauphinais makes an eloquent case for a theology of cosmic order, aligning
Paul with (not, as I do, against) Wisdom of Solomon and locating a deep
resonance with Aquinas if one traces through Paul the transformative
power of grace, leading believers from incongruity (grace to the ungodly)
to final congruity (godly and fitting heirs of eternal life). There is no
doubting the appeal of this nonarbitrary justice in which human free will
(and thus moral responsibility) is maintained, grace makes us pleasing to
God (gratia gratum faciens), and one can speak of a human merit that God
in justice properly, even necessarily, rewards. There are some overlaps, of
course, between Calvin and Aquinas in their visions of an overarching
cosmic justice: they disagreed on merit, but both spoke of “sanctifying
grace,” both stressed final judgment, and both traced significant continuity between the old law and the new. And there is something profoundly
satisfying in a Thomist account of this matter: does the unexpected, incongruous gift of Christ expose, as Dauphinais puts it, a “deeper harmony,” a
cosmic order of wisdom to which the incongruous gift grants entry?
It would be foolish to deny that Paul can be read that way, especially if
one places particular weight on Romans 2 and its image of just deserts at
the final judgment. My reading of Paul is significantly different, however,
for at least four reasons.
(1) Historical and philological research on the phrase “the righteousness
of God” has shown that this means in Paul, as in his scriptural sources, not
God’s distributive justice (as the Latin iustitia implies), but God’s saving
power to right what is wrong. And the flow of Romans 1–3 indicates that
the preliminary announcement of this “righteousness” in 1:16–18 points
forward to 3:21–26, where that righteousness is revealed precisely in the
saving and incongruous gift of Christ.
(2) What impresses Paul as the essence of the Christ-gift is that it is
given to the ungodly, not the righteous (Rom 5:6–10), and this is impossible to reconcile with the careful way in which Wisdom traces God’s saving
power as distributed to the righteous throughout history.2
		For a careful elucidation of the overlaps and contrasts between these two texts,
see J. Linebaugh, God, Grace, and Righteousness in Wisdom of Solomon and Paul’s
Letter to the Romans: Texts in Conversation (Leiden: Brill, 2013). I note that Fr.
Meconi’s essay at points attributes to my reading of Paul what I said, in fact, about
Wisdom of Solomon, whose perspective I placed in contrast to Paul’s.

2

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(3) Although it is true, and significant, that Paul sees God’s incongruous grace as transformative and designed, through the Spirit, to create
moral congruity between believers and the will of God, everything that is
said about that congruity depends, continually, on the resurrection life of
Christ, and thus on an incongruous power of grace in weak and mortal
human beings. As I argued with reference to Romans 5–8: “Christian life
is an impossible newness given as an unfitting gift, such that everything in
this new life refers back to its source and foundation in the Christ-gift, and
forward to its eschatological fulfilment as eternal life. . . . Hence, the obligation now incumbent on believers is not to ‘gain’ grace (or salvation), nor
to win another instalment of grace. There is a single charisma of eternal life
(Romans 6:23), that runs from the Christ-event to eternity (cf. Romans
8:32), not a series of ‘graces’ won by increases in sanctification” (Paul &
the Gift, 517–18). The Pauline confidence—“if God is for us, who is against
us?”—is built on the Christ-gift (Rom 8:31–35) and indicates that there is
something definitive about that incongruous grace of Christ that is not
simply a mechanism within a larger scheme of justice.
(4) There is a strong strand of Pauline theology, not least in Romans
9–11, that indicates that, if there is an order in the cosmos, it consists,
finally, of mercy. This mercy is not answerable to some final or deeper
system of justice or law; it is God’s unconditioned Love that “moves the
sun and the other stars.” This gives to the tragic story of the cosmos an
irrational, and finally inexplicable, hope: God has consigned all things to
disobedience in order that he may have mercy on all (Rom 11:32). That
makes the order of the gift ultimately untidy and, since we do not know
fully what God’s mercy means, also beyond our understanding (note the
apophatic conclusion in Rom 11:33–36). But it also gives us hope at such
times as these, when both the church and the world (and each one of us
within them) are far from displaying the consistency of virtue that could
be counted as merit in any full sense of that term.
Sanctifying Grace
In critiquing some aspects of the Lutheran simul justus et peccator, in speaking of the transformation of believers and their congruity with God, and
in stressing participation in Christ and a model of noncompetitive agency
(what I call “energism”), my reading of Paul certainly resonates at points
with the Thomist tradition. Among the strengths of this tradition are its
refusal, finally, to play divine and human agency off against one another,
its sense of God’s engagement, through grace, in all the believers’ works
(which are also, in an important sense, their own), and its insistence that

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transformation is integral to salvation, not a supplement. The question
is whether Aquinas’s Aristotelian anthropology maps well onto Pauline
discourse, or whether Paul’s paradoxical language invites a more complex
ontology of relation that is also, ultimately, more accessible and more effective in our communication of the Gospel today.
Aquinas’s language of the “infusion” of grace, as if it were a substance
that becomes immanent to the life of a believer, seems to stray beyond the
range of possible meanings for Paul’s Greek. Charis is the favor of the giver
or the benefit or favor given, but it is not a substance that can be absorbed
within the essence of its recipient, and there is a danger here that the
“otherness” of God’s intrusion into human life in grace is obscured. Even
at those moments when Paul speaks of God’s grace operative within his
Christian life (e.g., 1 Cor 15:9–10 and 2 Cor 12:7–10), he seems at pains
to highlight the notion of grace as a power that comes upon a believer. The
“newness of life” in which believers live (Rom 6:4) is, and remains, the life
of the resurrected Christ, without which they, in themselves, are simply
dead or dying. In Paul & the Gift, I spoke of the believer’s “eccentric”
existence, trying to take seriously Paul’s paradoxical expression that “it
is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:19–20). How
we interpret these verses in Galatians reveals, perhaps best of all, how we
understand Paul’s anthropology.3 Aquinas’s tendency to see here a distinction between Paul’s “soul” and his “flesh,” with the latter understood as the
body’s sensual desires, maps an Aristotelian anthropology onto an author
who persistently defies such categories. “The flesh,” in Paul, is not reducible
to “the physical body” or its desires, but often represents the whole self, in
its entirety, as turned away from God: it is not a part of human existence,
but a mode. The dialectics that run through Paul’s anthropology (e.g., Gal
5:17 and 2 Cor 4:10) suggest that the believer’s life is defined relationally:
if one may speak of an ontology here, it is an ontology not of substance,
nor of mere subjectivity, but of relation.4 And a believer’s relationship with
the grace of God seems, in Paul, neither stable nor linear: there is a drama
about the way he speaks of the Christian life, a dynamic of interruption
and event that suggests a constant and repeatedly renewed experience of
dependence on grace. Indeed, the experiential (and affective) dimensions
of Paul’s language at this point are readily accessible and powerfully
evocative today. At a time when mental health seems increasingly fragile
		For the history of reception, see J. K. Riches, Galatians through the Centuries
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).
4
		 For a fresh approach along such lines, see S. Eastman, Paul and the Person: Reframing Paul’s Anthropology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017).
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and when our young people are suffering crises of self-worth of epidemic
proportions, a voice that persistently and repeatedly affirms our worth
before God on the basis of his grace alone—a voice from outside and
beyond ourselves—is good news indeed.
If Paul’s anthropology is configured in terms of relation, the believer’s
state is one of participation in the life of Christ. Morales presses me to spell
out the content of the Christ-gift, and if I had to choose one Pauline phrase
to sum this up, it would be “being found in Christ” (Phil 3:9). Morales is
right that the metaphor of adoption is a central Pauline expression of this
reality, though its comparative rarity in Paul’s letters (in the undisputed
letters, only in Galatians and Romans) makes me hesitate to grant this
metaphor the status to which he elevates it. However, its (necessarily)
metaphorical language is unusually rich, since it evokes not only an analogy between the believer’s and the Son’s relationship with God but also,
in some respects, a sharing in that relationship (believers cry, like the Son,
“Abba, Father,” according to Gal 4:6 and Rom 8:15). But precisely what
that status of “son/child” means and what it means to “participate” in
Christ are questions that need careful handling. Fr. Meconi utilizes a rich
range of terms and phrases: “assimilation,” “imitation,” “transformation,”
“divinization,” “partaking of the divine nature,” “deification,” “theosis,”
“becoming gods,” “incorporation in Christ’s body,” “continuation of
Christ’s Incarnation,” and even “becoming God.” The current fascination
with such language across several confessional traditions can mask deep
differences in meaning arising from incompatible assumptions about
humanity and the ontological structures of reality. We can all agree that
the believer, in Paul’s theology, is in some sense “transformed.” But what
kind of change are we talking about? It seems that the Pauline language
of participation and transformation can spawn a huge variety of readings,
some of which are in danger of pulling his theology out of shape. Paul
appears, in fact, rather little interested in God’s “being,” or “essence,” or
“nature,” and much more concerned with God’s actions and activities: to
be “found in Christ” is not to be absorbed into Christ’s being, but to have
one’s self remade and redefined relationally, both in relation to God (in
obedience and faith) and in relation to others (in love). Perhaps more can
be said than that, but unless we are able to articulate and defend a theologically robust anthropology, we need to be cautious in what we claim.
Let me conclude by expressing again my gratitude for these essays and
for the enormous stimulation they have evoked. For too long, the modern
study of Paul has been the preserve of Protestants (as Matt Thomas
complains), and I sincerely hope that this dialogue will be just the opening
stage of a new phase of engagement between Pauline scholarship and Cath-

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olic theological interpretation. Even if there will be no ultimate, definitive
reading of Paul, we have much to learn from our varied traditions of scriptural interpretation. And that is part, at least, of what it means to live in
an age of receptive ecumenism.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019): 245–270

245

Remarks Concerning the Metaphysical Character of St.
Thomas’s Moral Theology, in Particular as It Is Related
to Prudence and Conscience
RÉginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

Translated (with notes) by Matthew K. Minerd
Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius
Pittsburgh, PA

Originally: Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Du charactère métaphysique de
la Théologie morale de saint Thomas, en particulier dans ses rapports avec
la prudence et la conscience,” Revue thomiste 30 (1925): 341–55. Permissions for translation (and publication thereof ) have been granted by Revue
thomiste via email by Fr. Philippe-Marie Margelidon, O.P.
Translator’s Introduction
Given that I already have provided two appendices to address technical
points that are raised by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s vocabulary, I will here
only provide a summary statement regarding why this translation is being
presented to the reading public. A shortened, edited form of this article
appeared in his Le réalisme du principe de finalité.1 That version of the text
is not thematically concerned with the implications of this topic for moral
theology. These implications are discussed in this article from the Revue
thomiste.
In this article, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange voices concerns that he likewise
echoes elsewhere2 about casuistic trends in moral philosophy, as well as the
		 See Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Le réalisme du principe de finalité (Paris: Desclée
de Brouwer, 1932), 285–99. A translation of this volume is anticipated by Emmaus
Academic.
2
		See Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange: De revelatione per ecclesiam Catholicam proposita, 5th ed. (Rome: Desclée et Socii, 1950), 31–33, esp. 31n1; De beatitudine
1

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danger of separating moral theology off as a separate theological discipline.
This connects him to certain aspects of Fr. Servais-Pinckaers’s attempts
at renewal in moral theology, although the latter Dominican differed
from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange on significant topics such as the importance
of the Thomistic commentators and the vexed questions raised by Henri
de Lubac’s Surnaturel. Nonetheless, I believe that it is important to bring
together as intellectual friends authors whose works mutually reinforce
each other.
Likewise, in this article, we find Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange critiquing
aspects of the tradition of ecclesiastical manuals, a theme to which he
returns on occasion in various works,3 registering his concern that the
manuals too frequently do not exposit topics by drawing attention to the
subordination of principles that dominate the topic under discussion.
Thus, instead of seeing him as being an uncritical “neo-Thomistic manualist,” one should have a more nuanced (albeit, critically aware) appreciation
of his place in the tradition of Thomist authors. This is important so that
the current generation of Thomistic philosophers and theologians can
have a healthy sense of vital continuity with past thinkers without naively
“turning back the clock.”
Finally, in this article, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange makes some important
points regarding the nature of prudential truth. Indeed, we could say that
he presents prudence as the answer to many vexed problems concerning
conscience and the personal character of moral acts. Likewise, the reader
will find him touching on older debates surrounding probabilism. Perhaps
current ecclesiastical discussions of conscience could be significantly
deepened by incorporating this older debate into the Thomist doctrine
on prudence. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange suggests this himself in this article,
expressing a profound appreciation for the personal self governance virtuously exercised through prudence.
These are my reasons for presenting this article to the reader. Well aware
of the limitations of any presentation, I believe that the text provides great
illumination on the topics of discussion that I have highlighted above.

(Turin, IT: Berruti, 1951), 1–12. Note that the English translation of De beatitudine published by Herder is somewhat periphrastic in nature. One should consult
the Latin text for the full treatment provided by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange on these
topics.
3
		See Garrigou-Lagrange, Le réalisme du principe de finalité, 171–75, 239–41,
243–45, 250.

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Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s Text
In this article, we would like to briefly examine the principal characteristics
of St. Thomas’s moral theology with an eye to certain modern objections
that are rather prevalent. A great difference separates his idea of moral
theology from that which can be found in a number of works written on
this subject from the seventeenth century onward. This difference is so
marked that many modern theologians scarcely still know the treasures
that they can find in the moral part of the Summa theologiae. At the same
time, they no longer see that its profundity and elevation—indeed its
great originality—nonetheless are in perfect conformity with the surest of
tradition.
Above all else, it is certain that, in St. Thomas’s thought, moral theology
is not a science that would be specifically distinct from dogmatic theology:
Sacred doctrine, being one, extends to things which belong to
different philosophical sciences, for in each of these things, it
considers the same formal aspect, namely, inasmuch as they can
be known through divine revelation. Hence, although among the
philosophical sciences one is speculative (metaphysics)4 and another
practical (ethics), nevertheless sacred doctrine includes both [kinds
of knowledge]—just as God, by one and the same science, knows
both Himself and His works.5
In a word, in dogmatic theology and moral theology, we are always
concerned with the same formal subject—namely, God, whether God in
Himself, God the Creator and Author of the supernatural order, God
the Ultimate End of human acts, God the Legislator, God the Author of

		 [Trans. note: The parenthetical point is added by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange. Certainly,
he is not reducing all of speculative philosophy to metaphysics. However, knowing
well that the dignity of other speculative philosophical tasks derives from their
orientation to the study of being as being, he places metaphysics as the primary
type of speculative philosophy. Although Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s vocabulary is
marked by his era’s use of terms like “cosmology” and “rational psychology,” he is
well aware not to fall into a kind of post-Wolffian curriculum of philosophy. On
this, see his remarks in Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Dans quel ordre proposer
les sciences philosophiques,” Revue thomiste 40 (1924): 18–34. This essay is also
included in a slightly redacted form in Le réalisme du principe de finalité.]
5
		
ST I, q. 1, a. 4. [Trans. note: This translation is taken from the English Dominican
Fathers’ edition of the Summa theologiae from Benziger in 1947, which is popularly available.]
4

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Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange

grace and of the sacraments, and so on.6 Thus, all is considered in light
of the same formal motive—namely, virtual revelation7—from which
theology wholly takes its specification, as the sense of sight is specified by
light, which renders all colors actually visible. Thus, the profound unity of
sacred science is admirably respected, for “that which is divided and scattered in inferior orders, is found under a form that is simple and perfectly
one in more elevated orders.” Thus, like the uncreated knowledge of God
Himself, sacred theology is formally and eminently speculative and practical.8 Therefore, specialization in a given part of theology is not possible in
the same way that it is in inferior sciences, which are specifically distinct
among themselves. Nobody can have profound knowledge of moral theology without being an expert in dogmatic theology.
Moreover, it is certainly the case that moral theology cannot be reduced
to casuistry, which presupposes (but does not treat) the fundamental questions concerning the last end, the nature of human acts, the foundation of
morality, the nature of law, the nature of the virtues and the Gifts of the
Holy Spirit, the various states of life, and so forth. Casuistry is only the
inferior application of moral theology, with the simple goal of discerning
		[Trans. note: This point is well expressed in a late-career teaching text written by
a student of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Fr. Emmanuel Doronzo, O.M.I., the author of
an impressive sequence of texts in sacramental theology, as well as of the first two
volumes of an impressive manual in theology. Doronzo was a professor of theology
at the Catholic University of America into the 1960s. See Emmanuel Doronzo,
Introduction to Theology (Middleburg, VA: Notre Dame Institute Press, 1973), 16:
“This property of theology [namely, its specific unity] follows from the specific
and indivisible unity of its formal object, the concept of Deity, which is constantly
and equally considered in all the parts and treatises of this science. In fact, such
treatises may be given the following formal titles: On the One God; On the Trinity
in God; On God creating and Elevating; On God sanctifying through grace; . . .
On the sacraments, sanctifying instruments of God; On God the Rewarder, or the
Last Things. This is the reason why the divisions of theology into its various parts
or treatises is not an essential division, that is, a division into specifically distinct
treatises. It is only an accidental division, that is, into integrative or complementary
parts which make up one total and single science.”]
7
		[Trans. note: See the first appendix below.]
8
		[Trans. note: On the way that theology is formally and eminently speculative and
practical (though, more speculative than practical), see not only ST I, q. 1, a. 4, but
also John of St. Thomas (Poinsot), On Sacred Science: A Translation of Cursus Theologicus I, Question 1, Disputation 2, trans. John P. Doyle, ed. Victor M. Salas (South
Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2019), a. 10, especially nos. 8–12 and 20–22. I
would like to thank Dr. Salas for providing me with helpful feedback regarding
the contents of this upcoming volume, which has been somewhat delayed in its
publication.]
6

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what is to be avoided in a given case, whether as a mortal sin or as a venial
one. Asceticism and mysticism are moral theology’s superior applications
for conducting souls according to true progress in charity and the other
virtues toward intimate union with God.
If moral theology were reduced to casuistry, as all too often happens,
it would become the science of sins to avoid rather than the science of the
virtues to be exercised and perfected—as if optics were the science of shadows instead of the science of luminous phenomena! Moral theology would
thus lack the ability and impulse for directing men in the practice of lofty
and solid virtues.
This is one of the reasons why St. Thomas does not divide moral
theology according to the division of precepts (which are often negative,
having defense against sin as their end), but instead divides moral theology
according to the division of the virtues. Thus, the very organism of the
virtues, their subordination, stands forth in complete relief, enabling a
scientific knowledge of human acts, a knowledge through their principles
or through their causes (whether radical or proximate). Therefore, it is not
astonishing that, in the moral part of the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas
treats of grace as the principle of human acts. On the other hand, it is
surprising that numerous modern theologians, more or less reducing moral
theology to casuistry, remove the treatises on grace and the infused virtues
from moral theology, providing expositions on them in dogmatic theology.
Thus, the supernatural character, profundity, and integrity of moral theology are all very diminished, for from such a perspective, moral theology
no longer expressly treats the supernatural principles of meritorious acts,
namely, the nature and necessity of grace, the essential character of the
infused virtues and the Gifts, and the nature of merit. However, it is clear
that these treatises belong to moral theology, not in an accidental way but
in a proper and wholly preeminent way. These profound questions are like
the marrow of moral theology and show its intimate connection with the
other part of sacred science, dogmatic theology.

***

However, we would like to insist above all else on the metaphysical character9 of the Angelic Doctor’s moral theology. Also, we intend to answer an
objection that is often made today against his methodology.
St. Thomas’s speculative manner of proceeding in the very exposition
		[Trans. note: By this he means that St. Thomas’s moral theology proceeds not
merely in an empirical manner, but in a philosophical one, though elevated by faith
into the proper domain of theology as a science of that which is virtually revealed.]

9

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Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange

of his moral doctrine disconcerts certain modern thinkers who barely can
see beyond the practico-practical10 aspect of questions. If they do at times
read the Summa theologiae, many difficulties come to their minds, and
they search in vain for a solution, although one may well be present there
for them in the Summa in a very precise (and, indeed, elevated) manner—
though, perhaps too elevated for those who are preoccupied almost solely
with cases of conscience.
Indeed, a good number of modern theologians, not undertaking an
adequately speculative study of moral questions, want to be able to determine immediately how one must act in a given concrete case. Thus, they
settle for a kind of moral empiricism without rising to true moral science,
to knowledge of the precise reason why a given concrete case of conscience
ought to be judged one way instead of another. And because they do not
elevate themselves to true principles (which are abstract, necessary, and
universal), they cannot consider the concrete facts themselves as they
should be considered (i.e., in light of these principles that, in reality, govern
the concrete facts).
If one wishes to have a clear and easily understandable example of
this defect, one need only compare the majority of modern treatises on
conscience with the treatise on prudence in St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae.
In nearly all of the modern works of moral theology from the time
of the discussions concerning probable conscience onward,11 the greatest
importance is given from the start to the treatise on conscience considered
not only in its general scope (which St. Thomas discusses quite excellently
at the beginning of the prima secundae in the treatise on human acts12)
but also in relation to specific questions of moral theology (even very
specific ones) that certainly do not pertain to general morality. Indeed,
many modern theologians in all of the various theological schools, scarcely
allowing themselves to be engaged with this general part of moral theology, not only ask whether conscience is the proximate rule of human acts
and if it must always be right and certain, but furthermore pose numerous
questions about how one is to form a right and certain conscience and
		[Trans. note: See the second appendix at the end of this article.]
		 [Trans. note: He is referring here to the debates concerning the binding obligation
of conscience that is organized under the doctrinal headings of rigorism, tutiorism,
probabiliorism, equiprobabilism, probabilism, and laxism. See Benedict Henry
Merkelbach, Summa theologiae moralis, vol. 2, 5th ed. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer,
1947), no. 77 (pp. 70–72). For a recent study devoted to this period of Catholic
theological history, see Stefania Tutino, Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism: A History of Probabilism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).]
12
		[Trans. note: See ST I-II, qq. 6–21.]
10
11

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251

about how one is to correct an erroneous conscience. Likewise, they ask
questions about the species and gravity of sin entailed by every action
against conscience, about cases of doubtful and of probable conscience,
about a lax or a scrupulous conscience, and so on. And then, in the portion
of moral theology not dedicated to general questions but instead to specific
matters,13 when these authors should speak about prudence among the
different virtues, they barely speak about it at all or discuss it in only six or
eight pages—something we can find even in the excellent Billuart.14 This
has led to a situation in which students do not see the importance of this
virtue. (Indeed, this is perhaps true for many teachers as well.)
As was well noted recently by Fr. Merkelbach, a professor at the Dominican College in Louvain, it is truly astonishing that the principal cardinal
virtue holds such a small place in moral science today.15 Prudence, which
directs all of the moral virtues and is called the charioteer of the virtues,
is so fundamental that no human act is good without, at the same time,
being prudent. However, despite this fact, numerous modern manuals of
moral theology pass over this virtue in near silence. This quasi-suppression
of the treatise on prudence would have been a kind of scandal in the eyes
of the Thomists of yore.
In contrast to this state of affairs, in St. Thomas, at the very beginning of general moral theology, in the treatise on human acts, matters
are discussed only as is suitable for the general questions pertaining to
		[Trans. note: The French expression “moral spéciale” describes the portion
of moral theology covering the virtues in the secunda secundae. The distinction between “general moral theology” and “special moral theology” (without,
however, separating them as independent disciplines) can be rendered clear if one
thinks of the types of questions asked in the various treatises on the virtues in ST
II-II in contrast to those in the treatise on habits and virtues in ST I-II, qq. 49–70,
or the treatise on vice and sin in ST I-II, qq. 71–89. In the latter two treatises,
one is concerned with articulating the nature of virtue, vice, and sin, all in light
of the common principles of all virtues, vices, and sins. By contrast, in the secunda
secundae, one is concerned with articulating the nature of various virtues and vices
in light of their own proper principles. This point is addressed in Benedict Henry
Merkelbach, “Quelle place assigner au traité de la conscience?” Revue des sciences
philosophiques et théologiques 12 (1923): 170–83. This article will be cited below
by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange. A translation of the admirable text is scheduled for later
this year in Nova et Vetera (English).]
14
		Indeed, Billuart discusses prudence in eight pages, whereas earlier in his text, he
devoted seventy pages to the treatise on conscience.
15
		See Merkelbach, “Quelle place assigner au traité de la conscience?” [Trans. note:
Josef Pieper notes this same point, indeed citing this very page in Garrigou-Lagrange: Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, trans. Richard and Clara Winston et al.
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 6.]
13

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conscience: Is it the proximate rule of human acts? Must it always be right
and certain? Other specific questions remain: how is one to form a right
and certain conscience? How is one to correct an erroneous conscience?
What is the nature of doubtful or probable conscience? What is the nature
of lax or scrupulous conscience? For St. Thomas, these kinds of questions
are not at all treated in the general part of moral theology [i.e., in the prima
secundae].
For this reason, many modern thinkers have appeared to accuse St.
Thomas of having failed to discuss nearly all of the content needed for
the treatise on conscience in his Summa theologiae. Hence, certain writers
introduce this entire treatise, by way of appendix, after the two articles
of ST I-II dealing with right reason and erroneous conscience, q. 19, a. 3,
“Whether the Goodness of Human Acts Depends upon Reason,” and a.
5 of the same question, “Whether an Erring Reason Obliges.” Thus, the
entire treatise on conscience, introduced as an appendix, seems out of
harmony with the structure of the Summa theologiae and seems to be, as it
were, a blemish on St. Thomas’s face.
Thus, would the holy Doctor have committed the imprudent act of
omitting a great portion of the treatise on conscience? Not at all! On the
contrary, he spoke about it where it was necessary, when it was necessary,
and as it was necessary, according to his purposes. He did not wish to
determine immediately what one must necessarily and practically do in
a given case. Instead, he raises himself first and foremost to the highest,
most abstract, most universal and necessary principles that govern actions,
which themselves are concrete, singular, and contingent. Thus, he separates
himself from moral empiricism in order to erect a true science.
The treatise on conscience as it pertains to specific matters is found
in the Summa theologiae in its legitimate place, namely in the treatise on
prudence, for right and certain conscience is nothing other than an act of
prudence, which takes counsel [or, deliberates], practically judges, and
commands. Commanding is the proper act of prudence, and it presupposes
good counsel and good judgment. Already, Aristotle had well determined
all these acts by relating them to their principles. Thus, he acknowledges
eubolia and synesis as two virtues annexed to prudence. These two virtues
respectively are the source of good counsel and good judgment.
In this treatise (ST II-II, qq. 47–57), St. Thomas has done something
that no casuist would ever dream of doing: he undertakes a metaphysical
study of the very nature of prudence, considering its object, its subject, its
three acts, its extension, its genesis and progress, its mutual relations with
the other virtues, and its parts and annexed virtues, including the Gift of
counsel which corresponds to it. All of this is precisely concerned with the

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formation of right conscience (through good counsel) and certain conscience
(through good judgment). He even discusses how one is to form a
conscience that is free from doubt concerning the most difficult and exceptional cases which require particular perspicacity (gnome).16 Moreover, in
studying the vices opposed to prudence (above all imprudence, negligence,
precipitation, and so on), he thus discussed the topics of lax conscience,
perplexed conscience, and scrupulous conscience,17 and in every case, one
can easily develop there the questions that are relevant to moral theology
in its specific questions [i.e., in the secunda secundae].
As Fr. Merkelbach18 rightly notes, the ever-relevant importance of this
treatise on prudence would be obvious to modern thinkers if only several
words were added to its title: “On Prudence and the Virtues Annexed to
It, in Relation to the Formation of Conscience.” Indeed, all the specific
questions concerning conscience could easily be exposited in this treatise,
while the general questions would belong to the treatise concerned with
human acts in general [i.e., in the prima secundae].

***

Moreover, by speculatively considering the intimate nature of prudence,
its formal object, and its mutual relations with the other moral virtues, St.
Thomas thus determined the very nature of its acts (and of right conscience
in particular) and was equally able to resolve from on high the difficult
questions of the treatise on conscience that, according to the majority of
contemporary authors, remain without truly scientific solutions.
The first of these difficulties is this: How can we arrive at certain
conscience, despite invincible ignorance concerning the numerous circumstances of human acts (for example, when it is a question of future contingencies that one must prudently predict in order to take the necessary
precautions)? Or again, how could I determine with certitude here and
now, in relation to what concerns me (and not you), the golden mean to
keep in a matter of chastity, meekness, humility, courage, or patience,
while this golden mean depends on particular circumstances (known only
in a vague manner, or even sometimes unknown) of my temperament (e.g.,
as high-strung, sanguine, or phlegmatic), of my age, of the season (whether
summer or winter), of my social condition, and so on? To what must we
have recourse in order to have this practical certitude of conscience in the
		See ST II-II, q.52, a.4.
		 [Trans. note: These were standard general categories used for discussing conscience:
conscientia laxa, conscientia perplexa, et conscientia scrupulosa. See Merkelbach,
Summa theologiae moralis, 2:122ff. (no. 112ff ).]
18
		See Merkelbach, “Quelle place,” 178.
16
17

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Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange

presence of conditions that are so varied and that often can be known
only in a vague manner? Should I weigh the probabilities for and against
this action? Does this suffice, even if one were to add to it some more or
less certain reflex principles:19 A doubtful law does not oblige? The one in
possession is in a better position (lit. melior est conditio possidentis)? This
kind of investigation into probabilities will be lengthy. It will even exceed
the capacity of many and often does not lead to anything that is actually
certain.
St. Thomas provides a rather profound solution to this question. He does
not disdain the consideration of probabilities for or against a given action,
nor does he disdain the reflex principles that are commonly received.
However, he insists above all else on a formal principle to resolve this question. Few modern theologians speak about this principle. However it is
nonetheless found even in Aristotle.20 This principle can be expressed thus:
the truth of the practical intellect (i.e., prudence21) consists in conformity
with rectified appetite, meaning conformity with the sensitive appetite rectified by the virtues of temperance and courage, as well as (and especially)
conformity with the rational appetite rectified by the virtue of justice
and the other virtues of the will. In other words, practico-practical truth
consists in conformity with the habitually and actually right intention22 of
the will because, as Aristotle adds, “As each is well or badly disposed in his
will, so does a given end appear good or bad to him.”23 For example, the
		 [Trans. note: In various scholastic treatments of conscience, it became very normal
to discuss the role of a variety of received “reflex” principles like those mentioned
here. These are the sorts of propositions that one integrates into one’s reasoning
to bolster moral certitude when direct, proper certitude is not possible. Thus, one
would speak about the acquisition of indirect certitude by means of the prudential
application of such principles. By themselves, however, they still remain rather
general, calling for further specification depending on the matter being considered. One could, perhaps, think of such principles providing guidance (whether
implicit or explicit) to the prudential reasoning process that ultimately arrives at
a terminal practical judgment. Doubtlessly, some applications of such principles
could end up appearing to be nothing more than bloodless, formalistic casuistry.
On this topic, see the text of Beaudouin cited below.]
20
		See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 3.4 and 6.2.
21
		[Trans. note: On the primacy of prudence in practical truth, see especially Yves
Simon’s highly accessible Practical Knowledge, cited in appendix 2 below.]
22
		[Trans. note: Both parts are important. It is right (i.e., rectified) intention. This
depends on the moral species of the object, which gives the formal specification to
the will.]
23
		 [Trans. note: For an approximation of this point, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
10.5. This was a famed scholastic maxim: Quails unusquisque est, talis finis videtur
ei (“As a given man is, so does the end seem to him”). Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s
19

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person who is chaste, even if he has no knowledge of moral science, judges
rightly (by the inclination of this virtue) concerning things that are related
to chastity. They appear to him as being good and obligatory.
St. Thomas explains the truth of this point very well in ST I-II, q. 57, a.
5, ad 3, as he likewise does in the entire treatise on prudence. Indeed, he
says in the aforementioned response:
The truth of the practical intellect (i.e., the practico-practical intellect or prudence)24 is understood in another, different sense than
is the truth of the speculative intellect, as is said in Nicomachean
Ethics 6.2. This is so because the truth of the speculative intellect is
understood in terms of conformity to the known reality [per conformitatem ad rem]. Now, because the intellect cannot have infallible
conformity in contingent matters (especially future things to be
prudently foreseen) but can have such conformity only in necessary
matters, therefore no speculative habitus25 concerning contingent
matters is an intellectual virtue; only those habitus that concerned
with necessary matters are intellectual virtues. However, the truth
of the practical intellect (i.e., the practico-practical intellect or
prudence) is understood in terms of conformity with right appetite.
By right appetite, St. Thomas means right intention of the will. And
this suffices for having PRACTICAL CERTITUDE even when invincible ignorance or a speculative error exists alongside it. For example, consider
student and founder of the Aquinas Academy in Sydney Australia, Fr. Austin
Woodbury, S.M., seems to have organized the oral delivery of his moral philosophy
courses under this guiding principle, as is attested to by the notes taken by Dr.
Anthony Russell, which can be found in the John N. Deely and Anthony F. Russell
Collection in the Latimer Family Library at St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA. Fr.
Garrigou-Lagrange explicitly cites the importance of this maxim in The Sense of
Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life, trans. Matthew K. Minerd
(Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2017), 274n43. More importantly, in his
altered form of this essay, he made this dictum central to the discussion. See Garrigou-Lagrange, Le réalisme du principe de finalité, 285–99.]
24
		[Trans. note: All parenthetical remarks are the added interpretations of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange.]
25
		 [Trans. note: With good reason, one should refrain from referring to the virtues as
habits, which could lead the reader to think that they are mere subjective dispositions and not ones that give objective capacity with regard to choice. Accepting the
conclusions of Simon’s life-long reflection, I am choosing to leave habitus untranslated; see Yves Simon, The Definition of Moral Virtue, ed. Vukan Kuic (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1986), 47–68.]

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someone invincibly ignorant of the extraordinary strength of a particular
wine, judging that he can drink a glass of it to quench his thirst. Such a
person can become drunk without being at fault. This prudential judgment is practically true according to its conformity with a right intention,
though it is speculatively false (i.e., not conformed to the object, the nature
of this wine).
Certainly, it often happens that modern theologians, in treating the
formation of right and certain conscience, present their readers with an
edifying statement: “In order to form your conscience, virtue is required
and even the practice of the virtues.” However, they do not explain well
enough why virtue is thus required, and they do not see well enough that
this element concerning the conformity of the practical judgment to rectified appetite enters as a formal element into the practical certitude of the
prudential judgment. In order to better determine the necessity of this
element, one must have recourse to a metaphysical study of the nature of
prudence and of its relations with the moral virtues. Indeed, prudence
presupposes habitual rectification of one’s appetite by the moral virtues,
and the prudential judgment presupposes actual rectification of the intention of the end. This right intention must persist so that prudence can
determine what are the best means in view of the end that is willed, so that
it can direct here and now, as it must, the particular and passing acts of the
moral virtues by determining the golden mean that pertains to each person
according to his temperament, age, and one’s circumstances—all of which
admit infinite variation.
To wish to silently pass over this metaphysical study of the virtues in
the Summa would be like merely preserving the setting of a ring without
keeping the very diamond contained therein. In contrast, it is the role of
great commentators to show precisely where the most beautiful diamonds
are in St. Thomas’s work, just as great art critics make known the beauties
of Raphael and Michelangelo. So too, the work of someone like Cajetan or
John of St. Thomas begins where superficial commentators stop, commentators who barely exceed the letter of St. Thomas. Sometimes, these
commentators respond saying, “if you wish to understand Cajetan, read St.
Thomas.” However, without the help of the great interpreter, few would be
able to resolve certain objections raised by Scotus. It is very easy to neglect
them, but one sometimes is content with juxtaposing conclusions without
seeing how they are rigorously deduced from the principles that give the
doctrine of St. Thomas the very spirit that animates its letter.
Cajetan excels in placing these principles in relief. In particular, one
should consult his remarks concerning the matter occupying us here in ST
I-II, q. 57, a. 5, and q. 58, aa. 3 and 5, and in the treatise on prudence in ST

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II-II, qq. 47–57. He insists on this Aristotelian and Thomistic doctrine,
noting that Scotus did not understand it. Indeed, this is an astonishing
fact, for Scotus, who generally is a voluntarist, becomes, in the treatise on
prudence, an intellectualist to excess, for he places prudence solely in the
intellect as though (like synderesis and moral science) it did not presuppose
the rectification of appetite. This is why, as Cajetan notes (in his comments
on ST I-II, q. 57, a. 5, ad 3), Scotus does not explain the fact that the
judgment made by prudence concerning every particular action to be
performed is not only true in most cases, but instead, is always true. This is
why prudence has a worth that surpasses probable opinion, which is not an
intellectual virtue; for, in order to be a virtue, an intellectual virtue must
always incline reason to the truth, never to falsity. Indeed, the prudential
judgment cannot ever be practically false, for at that very same moment it
would be imprudent (or, not prudent).
Therefore, as a result of its conformity to right appetite (i.e., to right
intention), prudence succeeds at attaining practical certitude in the direction of particular and contingent acts in the midst of the most varying of
circumstances. Thus, it is superior to opinion and deserves to be called an
intellectual virtue. However, it is inferior to synderesis and moral science,
which have necessary and universal principles as their objects and which
do not presuppose rectification of the appetite, though they contribute to
establishing it in the virtuous person or establish only advertence in the
sinner.26
Therefore, St. Thomas has profoundly understood, much better than
Scotus, as well as many modern thinkers, the double axiom of Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics: “As each is well or badly disposed in his will, so does a
given end appear good or bad to him”—“The truth of the practical intellect
(i.e., of prudence) consists in conformity to rectified appetite” (or, right
intention).
This conformity to rectified appetite is not something artificial or
mechanical, like the comparison of probabilities for or against some action,
or like various reflex principles that are more or less certain. Rather, it is
something vital and excellent. It is the virtuous life itself, which contributes
to forming the rectitude of prudential judgment on the condition—it goes
without saying—of presupposing knowledge of the first moral principles
(i.e., synderesis) and ordinary diligence in examining the circumstances,
something that is possible for everyone.
Given that a particular man is truly humble, that which pertains to
true humility (and not to false humility) pertains also to him. He has a
		[Trans. note: Reading “pécheur” for “péché.”]

26

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sensitivity that enables him to discover what precisely must be done in
this difficult matter. That which here and now for him is the golden mean
between pusillanimity and vainglory has a profound relation of suitability
to the virtuous inclination found in him, with his humility of heart. Thus,
the virtuous man has this judgment by inclination or sympathy (iudicium
per modum inclinationis) precisely where the universal and necessary syllogism cannot descend, namely into the domain of individual, ever-variable
contingencies, where one must, nonetheless, act without going astray,
without confusing true with false humility, magnanimity with vainglory,
firmness with inflexibility, indulgence with softness, or true charity with
that form of liberalism which is only a lack of intellectual and moral rigor.
Here, one must have the sensitivity given by virtue, indeed great virtue,
sanctity that does not deceive in these matters.
Therefore, every virtuous man, above all when he is aided by the counsel
of others, can generally succeed at forming a right and certain conscience
without recourse to a meticulous comparison of probabilities for and
against an action, and likewise without needing to consider the reflexive
principles known only by theologians. Thus, we here have a principle that
is at once vital, dynamic, organic, and virtuous, a principle of rectitude and
of prudential certitude loftier than an empirical knowledge that is more or
less artificial and that would not generally surpass the level of probability.
Thus, St. Thomas has well determined the specific character of the
certitude proper to prudence, as he likewise did in relation to the certitude
of faith27 and the certitude of hope.28 He was able to succeed in doing this
only because he undertook a metaphysical study of these great questions.

***

In order to bring matters to a close, we will say a few words regarding
another difficulty pertaining to the treatise on conscience, which can
be resolved by means of St. Thomas’s principles: In the formation of one’s
conscience, why is the use of probability sometimes permitted and sometimes
not? From the time of the condemnation of laxism, all theologians agree in
recognizing that the use of probability is not permitted when there is a danger
of an evil that one must absolutely avoid and that is independent of the forma		See ST II-II, q. 4, a. 8: “Faith is, without qualification (simpliciter) more certain
than the intellectual virtues, namely than wisdom, insight into first principles, and
science.”
28
		See ST II-II, q. 18, a. 4: “Certitude . . . essentially is found in a cognoscitive power;
however, it is found participatively in everything that is infallibly moved to its end
by a cognoscitive power .” [Trans. note: These remarks are well compared with
Garrigou-Lagrange, The Sense of Mystery, 40–46.]
27

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tion of one’s conscience. For example, this is so in the administration of the
sacraments, if one is concerned about their validity (unless there is a grave
necessity). Likewise, if one is concerned with things that are necessary
for salvation, with a necessity as a means, one must choose the course the
most morally certain course of action—tutior pars elegenda est (the safer
way must be chosen). One cannot make use of a probability that would be
contrary. This also holds when there is a question of some right of a third
party, as well as a grave danger of spiritual or temporal harm to oneself or
to others, something that must absolutely be ruled out. In all of these cases,
recourse to probability in favor of freedom is illicit. However, in other
cases, it is permitted, and the matter is explained differently depending
on whether one holds to probabiliorism, equiprobabilism, or probabilism.
It would be truly useful to relate this common teaching of Catholic
theologians to a superior principle, and as Fr. Reginald Beaudouin has
rightly shown in his Treatise on Conscience,29 such a relation to a superior
principle can be established by means of St. Thomas’s distinction between
the medium rationis tantum [the mean of reason alone] and the medium
rei [the mean of the thing].30 Before St. Thomas, Aristotle himself had
already said that the equitable mean of justice is the medium rei (e.g.,31 the
just measure or just price established according to the very thing that one
buys), while the golden mean of temperance (e.g., the quantity of food to
eat) or of courage (and the virtues annexed to these) is the medium rationis
tantum, non rei (i.e., the just measure constituted in the interior dispositions of the subject who acts, dispositions that vary according to age,
temperament, circumstances of time and place, etc.).
By this, we can easily see that the use of probability is illicit when the
measure of the action to be performed is the medium rei (i.e., the golden
mean established according to the exterior thing that one absolutely must
		See Reginald Beaudouin, Tractatus de conscientia, ed. Ambroise Gardeil (Tournai,
BE: Desclée, 1911), 84–87.
30
		 St. Thomas explains this matter in the treatise on virtues in general (ST I-II, q. 60,
a. 2; q. 64, a. 2) and in the treatise on prudence (ST II-II, q. 47, a. 7).
31
		[Trans. note: I translate “c’est-à-dire” here as “e.g.,” though the meaning would
be “that is to say,” “that is,” or “i.e.” ”E.g.” is used here so as to avoid confusing the
reader regarding the very limited case cited by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange. Later, for
the case of temperance, he states “par exemple.” The simplest example of justice can
be found in purchases, which can be reduced to quantitative exchanges admitting
of strict equality. However, even here, matters quickly become difficult, for all
monetary value must reduce to human use, i.e., artificial wealth to natural wealth.
As distributive justice plays a role in the “value” of such wealth, the matters become
very complex very quickly.]
29

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do or avoid whatever may be our age or the circumstances in which we
find ourselves). This is the case when one is faced with a matter of justice
in matters pertaining to sales and purchases, when one is concerned about
the validity of sacraments to be administered, and always when there is a
danger of evil that one absolutely must avoid and that is independent of the
formation of one’s conscience.
On the other hand, the use of probability is licit when the measure of the
action to be performed is a medium rationis tantum, meaning the golden
mean constituted not by the exterior thing that one should do or avoid, but
rather according to the interior dispositions of the subject who acts, as in a
matter pertaining to temperance or courage (as well as the virtues annexed
to them). Indeed, when the golden mean of one’s action is only a medium
rationis, practical reason itself (i.e., prudence) must determine by itself
what this mean is, according to the probabilities in play and according to
its conformity with rectified appetite. However, in the other case (namely,
when the golden mean of the action is a medium rei), prudence must only
direct the execution of the action, the measure of the matter already being
determined in accord with an external thing or in accord with a given right
of the other party in question. In that case, prudence cannot respond to a
given obligation by commanding a doubtful or only probable satisfaction
of the matter at hand but, instead, must without doubt render that which
is without a doubt due.
And thus, this other difficulty—that concerning recourse to probabilities (a recourse that is sometimes licit and sometimes illicit)—is resolved
by St. Thomas’s principles concerning the intimate nature of human acts
and of the virtues, especially that of prudence, to which the act of right and
certain conscience properly belongs.

***

What then should we conclude? In the moral domain, we do not at all
need to leave aside abstract speculation in order to determine here and now
what we ought to do in a given concrete case. Were we to do this, we would
disregard the universal and necessary principles that are the rule of particular and contingent actions. Even in moral science, we must first, in light of
nominal definitions, raise ourselves upward by means of abstraction from
concrete facts both to real definitions and to universal and necessary principles, as is done by the intellect in its purely speculative use [lit. comme le fait
l’intellect spéculatif]. Second, we must descend, as is done by the intellect in
its practico-practical use (i.e., by prudence), from abstract, universal, and
necessary principles to particular and contingent concrete acts in order
to direct ourselves well toward the proper ends of the virtues and toward

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the final end. Without this outlook, nearly all of moral theology would be
reduced to its inferior application (i.e., to casuistry). Moreover, casuistry
itself would be abolished, since it cannot apply principles to concrete
practical cases unless these principles of morality are in themselves known
in themselves.
This is why, although the metaphysical study of the virtues at first seems
useless to many people, it is in fact very useful, more than useful—indeed,
supra-useful. It is a befitting good (i.e., something that is good in itself).
If we say with Aristotle that “metaphysics is useless,” we must understand
this adjective “useless” as meaning that it is above usefulness, not below
it—like the befitting good, which is good in itself independent of every
delightful or useful consequence.
Such is the moral theology conceived of by St. Thomas. It is not specifically distinct from dogmatic theology. It has a distinctly metaphysical
character in the supernatural order. And if it truly remains at this loftiness,
it will then proceed not only to casuistry but, by way of its superior applications, to asceticism and mysticism, the latter opening the way to contemplation of the mysteries of salvation. Thus the circle of sacred theology is
brought to perfection, proceeding from faith in supernatural mysteries,
then directing the human person toward contemplation of these mysteries,
a contemplation that is, here below, along with charity, the normal disposition to the Beatific Vision in heaven.
Translator’s Appendix 1: Concerning the Formal Object
of Acquired Theology
The contemporary reader may not be familiar with the scholastic terminology being deployed above by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, using the term
“virtual revelation” to distinguish theological assent from the assent of
faith. Strictly speaking, that which is known by faith is formally revealed
or, we could say, “revelation in the formal and strict sense.” The motive for
such assent is precisely that God has supernaturally revealed this truth, not
the mere rational credibility of the contents of what is believed, nor even
the faith-directed reasoning of the believer about the contents of what is
believed. An assent based on rational credibility remains natural, whereas
an assent involving revealed truths but based on the inferential processes
of human reasoning is properly theological as a form of knowledge acquired
by studious activity. The inferential process32 of human reasoning “colors”
		Note well, however, that acquired theological wisdom is a form of wisdom, not
merely a form of science. Hence, the acquisition of objectively inferential (or
“objectively illative”) conclusions is not the only task standing before the theo-

32

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the objects studied in theology, thus presenting the knower with a form of
knowledge that is supernatural but not infused. It is both supernatural and
acquired. The epistemological character of the formal object of this latter
kind of knowledge—both supernatural and acquired—came to be termed
“virtual revelation” by the later Thomist school, especially under the precisions of vocabulary offered by John of St. Thomas.33
To articulate this point, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange elsewhere34 utilizes
an important distinction that derives its terminology from Cajetan. As
he notes, one must distinguish Deus ut res from Deus ut objectum. The
language is stilted, but the point is obvious once we formulate the matter
aright. It is one thing to refer to God as he is in himself (ut res) absolutely
speaking, prescinding from any knower whatsoever. However, to be an
object implies that God is known by some intellectual being. Speaking
in a general manner, we have the distinction between the material object
(=Deus ut res) and the formal object (=Deus ut obiectum).35
logian. Theology’s highest office, at least according to the tradition in which Fr.
Garrigou-Lagrange stands, is the task of reflecting on the revealed principles of
theology. See Doronzo, Introduction to Theology, 21–24. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “La théologie et la vie de foi,” Revue thomiste 40, n.s. 18 (1935): 492–514;
De revelatione per ecclesiam Catholicam proposita, 13-16.
		This point is summarized very well in Jacques Maritain, Science and Wisdom,
trans. Bernard Wall (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1944), 236: “This argument [from
Fr. Ramirez] is very interesting because it shews what has happened to a certain
conception of theology. Thus, only theological conclusions alone (that is, new truths
not formally revealed, but deduced from the truths of faith) belong to the science
of theology; and truths such as the existence of the last supernatural end and the
fact of the fall and redemption of human nature, because they are truths of faith
and not theological conclusions, cannot be truths of theology? As if the essential
aim of theology was not to ‘acquire some intelligence’ as the Vatican Council says
of its formal subject which is the divine reality under the ratio of Deity, and as if,
consequently, the principal thing in theology were not to know in a more detailed
and organic form the truths of faith themselves, and to penetrate ever deeper into
these principles. The science of theology is not confined to theological conclusions
which expand the area of its field of knowledge. It includes also, and chiefly, the
very truths of faith which are penetrated and connected one to another with the
aid of human inference—ut connexae said John of St. Thomas, et penetratae modo
naturali et studio acquisito. For a theological inference which starts from a truth of
faith can join up with another truth of faith. This augments theological knowledge
in depth and is of primary importance to it.”
33
		See the forthcoming volume John of St. Thomas, On Sacred Science, translated by
John Doyle, cited in note 8. The point is deployed on many occasions and is noted
in the introduction provided by the volume’s editor, Victor Salas.
34
		See Garrigou-Lagrange, The Sense of Mystery, 126n9.
35
		As regards the distinction between res ut res and res ut obiectum, no dualism need

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Thus, God is known sub ratione entis mobilis in natural philosophy,
sub ratione entis in metaphysics, and sub ratione Deitatis (i.e., in his inner
mystery) by faith (and theology, as well as by the gift of wisdom). Thus,
the general character of one’s knowledge is colored by the way that one
approaches one’s object. The distinction between knowing God as Prime
Mover and knowing God as Source of created being is attested to in
Aquinas, De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 2, ad 3. The fifteenth-century Dominican
Dominic of Flanders takes a similar view, noting that natural philosophy
proves the existence of God as cause of motion, while metaphysics proves
his existence as cause of being.36
In St. Thomas, the distinction between faith and theology is a little
blurry at times. Nonetheless, see especially the remark in ST I, q. 1, a. 7:
“[That God is the object of this science] is clear also from the principles
of this science, namely, the articles of faith, for faith is about God. The
object of the principles and of the whole science must be the same, since
the whole science is contained virtually in its principles” (emphasis added).
The conclusions are drawn out “from the power” (i.e., virtually) from the
principle of the science. Also, the distinction between formal revelation
and virtual revelation is at play in ST I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 3, as well as in ST I, q.
1, a. 8. However, it is not fully spelled out by Aquinas.
Therefore, to fully articulate the point with which I opened, we need
to make a further distinction so as to understand these matters aright.
For all its limitations, the vocabulary of Cajetan is helpful here. When we
are considering something as an object, we should distinguish between the
ratio formalis obiecti ut res and the ratio formalis obiecti ut obiectum.
The ratio formalis obiecti ut res is the formal object quod (i.e., the formal
object that is known or the formality taken from the side of the thing
known). Jacques Maritain has felicitously referred to this as the “intelligibility appeal” of the thing known. When it is known, the thing (ut res)

be presupposed. Instead, as Maritain has ably shown, the notion of object includes
that of thing. For a rather clear expositions of this point, see: John C. Cahalan,
“The Problem of Thing and Object in Maritain,” The Thomist 59, no. 1 (1995):
21–46; Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, trans. and ed. Gerald Phelan et al. (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 96–107, 127–36; Maritain,
An Introduction to Philosophy, trans. E. I. Watkin (London: Sheed and Ward,
1932), 159, 193, 205n2, 253n1.
36
		 Indeed, he explicitly states his view as being part of a longer conversation in agreement with Avicenna. See Phillip-Neri Reese, “Dominic of Flanders, O.P. (d. 1479)
on the Nature of the Science of Metaphysics” (PhL thesis, Catholic University of
America, 2015), 22–23n40.

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offers itself to the given power from a particular perspective.37 However,
we can go further so as to understand how this given perspective (i.e., of
the object, considered as a thing) can be approached under several different lights. In other words, the “intelligibility appeal” of the thing can be
considered under several different “objective lights.”
In his presentation of this matter, Maritain focuses on the traditional
Thomistic division of types of immateriality involved in the orders of
natural knowledge. These represent various kinds of rationes formales sub
qua, rationes formales obiecti ut obiecti, or “objective lights” under which
the given “intelligibility appeal” is known. (Also, one could call this the
formal object quo.) In his account concerning the various types of sciences,
Maritain notes the role of objective lights in giving distinct specifications
to, for instance, natural philosophy and mathematical physics.38
This brings us, at last, to the important point regarding the formal
object of theology as an acquired form of wisdom. A text from Maritain
articulates this very well:
It may happen that, given a certain sphere of fundamental intelligibility determined by the intelligibility-appeal of the thing, the
corresponding objective light be diversified into several different
objective lights each specifying a type of knowledge. In such a case
it is clear that what ultimately specifies a scientific habitus is the
formal perspective sub qua, the objective light, more than the formal
perspective quae.
Such is the case for theology—and this is Cajetan’s point: theology has the same intelligibility-appeal, the same formal perspective
of reality (as does the beatific vision: Deitas ut sic) and consequently
belongs to the same sphere of fundamental intelligibility. The intelligibility-appeal, the ratio formalis quae of theology is deity as such,
		 I would note, as well, that one could perhaps apply this kind of reasoning to virtues
in appetitive powers. Thus, the same formal object quod is involved in all of the
theological virtues (i.e., God in the inner mystery of the Deity). However, faith,
hope, and charity are each objectively differentiated with regard to the way that
they perfect the given powers in question. Thus, roughly speaking, we have faith
specified by the-supernatural-Godhead-known-obscurely, hope specified by the-supernatural-Godhead-as-he-who-faithfully-aids-in-salvation, and charity specified
by the-supernatural-Godhead-as-loveable-in-Itself.
38
		Let this suffice for our purposes, though discussions of this matter could provide
much clarification on a number of important points regarding the various sciences,
especially the transitions among them. See Maritain, The Philosophy of Nature,
trans. Imelda C. Byrne (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 125–35.
37

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the deep depths of the divine nature; its sphere of fundamental
intelligibility is Deitas sub ratione Deitatis, God taken not according
to the intelligibility-appeal of the first cause, but according to that
of the deity itself.
And yet the formal perspective sub qua, the objective light of
theology, is not the light of the beatific vision and of the science of
the blessed; our theology proceeds from a special objective light: the
light of divine revelation, not as evident as it is in glory and not as
inevident [sic], but simply as revealing: for the principles of theology
are received from the intuitive science of the blessed by means of
faith. In this case the intelligibility-appeal, the formal perspective
of reality, has only a generic and not a specific determination, and
the objective light corresponding to this intelligibility-appeal,
(the formal perspective sub qua which corresponds to this formal
perspective quae) also has a generic unity which is diversified into
several species.
The lumen divinum is divided first into lumen divinum evidens,
which is the perspective sub qua, the objective light of the theology
of the blessed; secondly into lumen divinum revelans abstrahendo
ab evidentia aut inevidentia, the divine revealing light considered
neither as evident nor inevident, which is the objective light of our
theology; and finally lumen divinum inevidens, the non-evident
divine revealing light which is the objective light of faith. Three
different objective lights for the one same sphere of fundamental
intelligibility, for one same object intelligibly determined by the
formal perspective of the object as a thing (Deitas).39
We can summarize all of this as follows. In revealing himself, God
opens up the very depths of the intimate nature of the Deity (ratio formalis
obiecti ut res). This same objective formality (considered as an object, but
still from the perspective ut res) can be viewed under various lights. There is
the full clarity of God’s own self knowledge. This knowledge alone is fully
comprehensive of the depths of the Divinity. Then, there is the clear vision
of the blessed souls in heaven, viewing God in the light of glory. Here
below, there is need for the supernatural, though obscure, light of faith.
Formally speaking, the depths of the Deity are seen (though obscurely)
in this light. (Thus, we have the “intelligibility appeal” of the Deity seen
under the “objective light” of faith—formal revelation.) Theology extends
		Maritain, The Philosophy of Nature, 129–30.

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this light, so to speak, by a kind of refraction through faith-directed
reasoning. This is a light that is unique, one that is supernatural as a formal
object quod (i.e., ratio formalis obiecti ut res) but is naturally acquired
through study, thus receiving its ultimate character in terms of its formal
object quo (i.e., ratio formalis obiecti ut obiectum). The latter is the “objective light” (shining on the Deity as such) of “virtual revelation.” It thus has
its own kind of certitude and approach to the Deity that differentiates it
from faith (or, “formal revelation”).40
Appendix 2: On the Speculative, the Speculatively-Practical, and the
Practically-Practical
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange does not introduce the distinction between the practico-practical and the speculativo-practical as a merely verbal distinction.
Maritain deployed this distinction in at least two ways in his works, likely in
dependence on Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange (who himself mediates the tradition
crystallized in Billuart). In the Degrees of Knowledge, Maritain focuses on
the essentially practical (or “operable”) character of all knowledge of human
acts qua operable.41 Thus, he distinguishes between moral philosophy and the
prudential command by qualifying the former as being “speculatively practical”
(because of its mode of knowledge) and the latter as being practical in the highest degree. Here, he is making room for an intermediary kind of knowledge
that would be “practically practical,” making room for moralists’ discussions in
a more practical register than moral philosophy (and also making room for the
		We must direct the reader to other studies on such matters. Further details
regarding the types of explicative and illative reasoning that fall to theology (and
the relation of those forms of reasoning to dogmatic definitions) can be found
in: Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, trans. Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO:
Herder, 1943), 39–93; Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality, trans. Patrick Cummins (St.
Louis, MO: Herder, 1950), 53–60; Garrigou-Lagrange, The Theological Virtues,
vol. 1, Faith, trans. Thomas a Kempis Reilly (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1965),
125–48. Also, one can profitably consult the work of the student of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Fr. Joseph C. Fenton, The Concept of Sacred Theology (Milwaukee,
WI: Bruce, 1941). See also Emmanuel Doronzo, Theologia dogmatica, vol. 1
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1966), 40–49.
41
		One finds resonances of this, as well, in Michel Labourdette, “Connaissance
pratique et savoir morale,” Revue thomiste 48 (1948): 142–79, especially 151–55.
A recent article by Fr. Philip-Neri Reese, O.P., outlines many of these points with
great clarity, though he seems to view moral philosophy in a more speculative light
than Fr. Labourdette, Maritain, and Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange. Nonetheless, his text
is a very clear exposition of the difference between scientific reasoning in moral
thought and action-directing thought in prudence: “The End of Ethics: A Thomistic Investigation,” New Blackfriars 95 (May 2013): 285–94.
40

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267

kind of knowledge used by mystics in theology).42 In Existence and the Existent, Maritain uses a slightly different distinction precisely within the process of
prudential deliberation and judgment. There, he notes that there are two sorts of
syllogisms, one that is speculativo-practical, considering the moral character of
the law without fully bringing this agent here and now into the reasoning, and
one that is practico-practical, passing to the full application of the prudential
judgment to oneself.43 As he summarizes in a footnote:
There are in truth two practical syllogisms, one opening into the speculativo-practical and the other into the practico-practical. Take this as an
example of the first: “Murder is forbidden by the Law. This act which
attracts me is murder. Therefore, this act is forbidden by the Law.” The
conclusion expresses the rule of reason, which I know and from which
I turn away my eyes when I sin. This syllogism considers the act and its
law; the subject does not enter, unless to be submitted to the universal as
any individual x which forms part of the species.
The following is an example of the second syllogism: “Murder
is forbidden by the Law. This act which attracts me is murder, and
would cause me to deviate from what I love best. Therefore, I shall not
do it (and long live [the] law)!” Or it could be contrariwise: “Murder
is forbidden by the Law. This act which attracts me is murder, and I
make it to be what I love best. Therefore, I shall do it (and so much the
worse for universal law!).”
In the second syllogism, it is the existential disposition of the
subject in the free affirmation of the unique self which decides the
question.44
		See Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 327–58 and 481–89. A lucid
exposition can be found in Yves R. Simon: A Critique of Moral Knowledge, trans.
Ralph McInerny (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002). This is a controversial topic that has led to pushback by writers such as Fr. Thomas Deman and
even Maritain’s own disciple, Simon, later on in the latter’s life. These issues cannot
be addressed in appendix such as this. See Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 227–30,
and, Simon, Practical Knowledge, ed. Robert J. Mulvaney (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1991), 79–87, 100–113.
43
		 Granted, the prudential command remains as an imperative applied by the practical intellect to the will, though with mutual causality, the intellect functioning as
the extrinsic formal cause and the will as efficient cause. See Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and His Nature: A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, vol. 2, trans. Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1949), 306–38
and 370–72; see also Le réalisme du principe de finalité, 353–55.
44
		Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent, trans. Lewis Galantiere and Gerald
42

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Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange

This appendix is meant only to introduce the reader to the issue, not to
resolve Maritain’s vocabulary. Likely, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange was dependent on what one can find in Billuart’s discussion of conscience:
Conscience is said to be “a judgment of practical reason” because
the intellect is concerned either with merely speculative truths (e.g.,
“God is triune,” and “All angels are specifically distinct”) as well as
with truths about the substance, value, and quality of things or of
facts, and not about the moral fittingness or wickedness of human
acts, as well as the permissibility [licitate] or impermissibility of
them (e.g., whether a sacrament confected in this manner is valid,
whether a contract entered in this manner is valid, whether there are
robbers along the road, whether a beast or a man is in the woods,
and so forth). In either of these ways of speaking, the intellect is
said to be speculative simpliciter. On the other hand, the intellect
is also concerned with general principles or general conclusions
concerning the goodness or wickedness of human acts, as achieved
through synderesis or moral science. In that case it is called speculatively-practical. Or it is concerned with particular conclusions
concerning the goodness or wickedness of this act here and now to
be posited or fled from, as is achieved through conscience. Then, it
is called practically-practical.45
Thus, we find Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange stating in several passages in
De beatitudine:
A speculatively practical judgment pertains to moral science and
establishes advertence in the sinner. The practically practical judgment to be determined by prudence is not psychologically necessary
here and now. Although the sinner may judge speculatively that
justice is to be maintained by other men, especially in matters of
justice related to himself, nonetheless, he practically [in praxi]
B. Phelan (New York: Pantheon, 1948), 52n3. See also F.-X. Maquart, Elementa
philosophiae, vol. 2 (Paris: Andreas Blot, 1937), 476–86.
45
		C.-R. Billuart, Summa sancti thomae hodiernis academiarum moribus accomodata,
new ed., vol. 2 (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1872), 329–30 (tract. De actibus humanis,
diss. 5, a. 1; translation mine). He goes on immediately after this to contrast this
judgment with the imperative command of prudence (or imprudence). Another
account of these matters, following in Billuart’s line, can be found in Beaudouin,
Tractatus de conscientia, q. 3, a. 1, §1 (p. 49-50).

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269

judges that here and now injustice in relation to another person is
simpliciter something that is good for him to do on account of his
appetite’s evil desire. With the poet, he can say, “I see and approve of
what is better” (speculatively practical judgment), “but follow what
is worse” [Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.20–21].46
And later in the work, he writes:
We must note, along with Billuart [in Summa sancti thomae, tract.
De actibus humanis, diss. 5, a. 1] that probable conscience (as well
as doubting conscience) is subdivided into speculatively probable
conscience and practically probable conscience. Later on, we will
discuss how speculatively probable conscience (i.e., conscience
emanating from a speculatively practical judgment in the abstract)
can become practically certain here and now by means of a given
reflex principle. However, if it remains practically probable, it
cannot be the rule of one’s moral actions. . . . For example, I can
speculatively judge that it is more probably the case that the conferral of baptism with rose water is not permitted. This is a speculatively-practical judgment in the abstract. However, in peril of a child’s
death, if I have no other matter at hand, I practically judge here and
now, in these circumstances, that it is permitted for me to confer
baptism in a conditional manner [sub conditione] with this dubious
matter, basing my judgment on the reflex principle, “Sacraments
exist for the sake of men.” Thus, faced with such a case of necessity
and lacking certain matter, we can even make use of dubious matter
in a conditional manner.47
Given that this is already a lengthy appendix, I will leave the matter
here. However, I have felt that the retrieval of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s
thought on these matters required some pedagogical remarks to direct
interested researchers down paths that hopefully would be fruitful for
further reflection. Too easily could the words “virtual revelation” and
“speculatively practical” be skimmed over without realizing the significant
positions staked out in previous generations concerning these matters.
		Garrigou-Lagrange, De beatitudine, 264.
		Garrigou-Lagrange, De beatitudine, 376. Also, on the two kinds of moral certitude—speculative moral certitude (judged through conformity to reality [ad
rem]) and practical moral certitude (judged through conformity to right intention
[ad intentionem rectam])—see De beatitudine, 383–84.

46
47

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Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange

However, the reader should remember that these appendices, in the end,
only mean to provide these pedagogical notes, not a full treatment of these
quite complex matters.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019): 271–296

271

Book Reviews
Divine Election: A Catholic Orientation in Dogmatic and Ecumenical Perspective by Eduardo J. Echeverria (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016),
314 pp.

This study is an ambitious and wide-ranging effort to articulate
the clear but generous boundaries of Roman Catholic orthodox teaching
concerning predestination within the context of alternatives, both within
and without Roman Catholicism. Eduardo J. Echeverria’s interlocutors
thus range from the Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) to the
Dutch Reformed theologians Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) and G. C.
Berkouwer (1903–1996), as well as the German Protestant Karl Barth
(1886–1968), Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1835–1888), and Hans Urs von
Balthasar (1905–1988). A noteworthy feature of Echeverria’s engagement
with these diverse figures is his care to provide as nuanced and sympathetic
an account of their views as possible. Thus, even where there is disagreement—and in some cases it is sharp—Echeverria provides a model of
principled and charitable ecumenical interaction.
Echeverria’s erudition is on full display in this volume. In addition to
those figures named above, who receive chapter-level attention, Echeverria
brings to bear a wide array of secondary sources and commentators related to
the figures themselves and their respective traditions or schools of thought,
as well as to Scripture and Church tradition. If the doctrine of divine
predestination has been called “a portentous, awesome word in theology”
(Scheeben) and “deep waters, in which every human mind begins to flounder” (Balthasar), then this treatment does justice to its subject matter by
consistently placing the reader into very deep waters indeed.
At the same time, Echeverria provides a very helpful and summative
statement at the end of each chapter, as well as in the concluding chapter
of the book itself, concerning the Roman Catholic orientation for the
elements that have been discussed in the preceding sections. This “Catholic orientation” is one of the clear strengths of the book and provides a
valuable service for those looking to, as Echeverria puts it, understand “the
boundaries of confessional Catholicism” (283). As might be expected,
given the disagreements over predestination and grace that were at issue
during the era of the Protestant Reformation, the Council of the Trent

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figures largely in drawing such boundaries.
Nevertheless, Echeverria is to be commended for making clear from
the outset that predestination is itself an ecumenical topic. Much popular
and even semi-academic writing has characterized predestination as a
specifically Protestant, and particularly Reformed or Calvinist, distinctive.
Not so, contends Echeverria. Predestination is itself a biblical doctrine,
and thereby an inheritance of theological tradition from the Church
Fathers onward, particularly Augustine in the West. Echeverria’s book
thus explores questions that are of ecumenical or universal concern to all
Christians: “The topic of the mystery of God in himself and his relationship with human persons, in short, divine election and human freedom. In
other words, how do we reconcile God’s sovereignty of grace with human
freedom, not just in general but particularly with respect to the Church’s
full understanding of God’s plan of salvation as a work of grace?” (2).
Even if predestination as such is not solely the domain of the Reformed
tradition, Echeverria does consider whether Calvin, perhaps that tradition’s most identifiable figure, is culpable of the heresy of predestinarianism, which logically equates and holds as symmetrical God’s decision to
elect some to eternal life and reprobate others to eternal damnation in the
same manner and mode (62). Likewise, the Reformed tradition, as represented by Calvin, is judged to depart from the “Augustinian Principle,”
which holds that human nature remains fundamentally unchanged in the
states of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation (36). Because this
position holds that human nature is capable only of evil in the fallen state,
“this fallen state is inconsistent with Calvin’s description of the created
will in its pre-fallen condition” (46). Echeverria leaves unexplored how the
basically Augustinian view that humanity in the fallen state is unable to
not sin (non posse non peccare), affirmed and codified by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), differs from Calvin’s view and is itself consistent with
the so-called Augustinian Principle.
A characteristic feature of Echeverria’s treatment of the views of figures
like Calvin and Barth is the use of contemporary analytic categories to
attempt to locate and identify their thought. Thus, writes Echeverria,
“Calvin is a theological compatibilist regarding free will” (39), while Barth
is likewise “a compatibilist regarding freedom” (160), and Bavinck “rejects
libertarian freedom—i.e., the freedom of indifference—as inconsistent
with divine foreknowledge, and hence embraces compatibilism” (52). A
positive aspect of this approach is that it can fruitfully put figures from the
past into contemporary conversations. A concomitant danger, however,
is that such categories impose foreign or anachronistic modes of thought
on historical figures, which can impede a sympathetic and immanent

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understanding of what those figures thought of themselves and intended
to teach.
I have no doubt that Echeverria has attempted in good faith and out of
good will to truly and fairly represent Calvin’s views of predestination. At
the same time, Echeverria admits that he has difficulty seeing the coherence of Reformed views (e.g., 46, 52, 59). Part of the difficulty in understanding might be categorical or terminological. When Calvin is read as
holding to “a theory of a will that is unable to produce any moral good at
all” (44; per Dewey Hoitenga), this is understood as being synonymous
with a rejection of libertarian free will defined as “having the power of
contrary choice between good and evil” (117). But might anyone other
than a Pelagian really affirm that fallen humanity has the innate and
natural capacity to simply choose between good and evil? In such denials
of the free choice of the good by fallen humanity, Calvin is not to be read
as meaning that there is no power of contrary choice in the human will in
any sense. He is not talking in the first place about mundane matters of
sitting down or standing up, staying in or going out. Calvin’s point is thoroughly soteriological: no action by a fallen, sinful human being can satisfy
the conditions of goodness. This is not to say there is no way in which
mundane actions might be distinguished, or that all human action is as
bad as it possibly could be. But it is to say that, whatever civil or mundane
moral good might be possible on the basis of God’s common grace, none of
that reaches the level of what might be called Christian good, and certainly
not to the level of saving or meritorious good.
Echeverria rejects this reading of Calvin, what he calls a “mixed view,”
in a note engaging the work of contemporary analytical theologian Oliver
Crisp (39–40n30). But such a distinction is absolutely fundamental to
understanding the Reformed position on human work and merit. The
Reformed point is not that there is no standard by which human conduct
might be judged to be relatively better or worse. It is rather that no human
work is able to rise to the level of that which is truly good in its fullest
sense. The Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 defines this as that which
“proceed from true faith, and are done according to the Law of God, unto
His glory.”1 If this is the standard that defines good works, then clearly
an unbeliever in a fallen state is not capable of performing good works.
Perhaps unbelievers and pagans can fulfill some external aspects of some
elements of the law of God. Reformers including Luther and Calvin thus
		Lord’s Day 33, Question and Answer 91 (Reformed Confessions of the 16th and
17th Centuries in English Translation: 1523–1693, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., 4
vols. [Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008–2014], 2:790).

1

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Book Reviews

affirm that, for example, the estate of marriage and the ordinance of
government exist among the pagans, which is an acknowledgment of the
universal validity and response (at least at some level) to commandments
against adultery and civil injustice. But such activities, while they may be
identical from an external perspective, by definition cannot flow out of a
true faith or fulfill the interior requirements and final telos of the law.
In this way, at least one cause of the misunderstanding might be the
application of terms or analytic categories in ways that distort or make
unclear the purpose of a thinker in his or her original context. Calvin
is not, in the first place, working out a metaphysical theory of human
action relative to divine omnipotence. He is articulating a soteriological
doctrine of grace and good works relative to divine election. The latter
may well have implications for the former, but broader philosophical
categories of human causality may be applied to specific soteriological
concerns in ways that obscure or unnecessarily problematize a theologian’s doctrinal formulation.
One of Echeverria’s purposes is to lay out the boundaries of Roman
Catholic confessionalism regarding predestination and related issues, and
in this regard, he is correct to criticize the Reformed, who have, since the
time of Trent, been beyond the bounds of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. But
Echeverria is not simply interested in deciding who is out of bounds. He is
also interested in exploring the diversity and dynamism of views that are
within the bounds of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. In this way, he engages
the early modern and contemporary debates over Molinism and middle
knowledge, as well as universalism.
Echeverria rejects Thomistic negative reprobation or preterition as “a
theologically problematic notion that seems to lead to the denial of the
following: the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning work for all men, the universality of God’s salvific will (1 Tim 2:4–6), contradicting the justice of God
as well as man’s freedom” (73). Likewise, he affirms that “a Molinist cum
Congruist account of the reconciliation of predestination and freedom
is within the boundaries of confessional Catholicism’s teaching on grace
and freedom” (284). With respect to universalism, at least the “hopeful”
version espoused by Balthasar, Echeverria is dubious: “Balthasar says, it
is ‘infinitely improbable’ (citing with approval the phrase of Edith Stein)
that anyone is damned, given the complete triumph of grace over all things
contrary to God’s love manifested in his redemptive work in Christ. This
conclusion is not within the bounds of Confessional Catholicism” (273).
Echeverria has done excellent work in identifying and unraveling some
of the major threads of the tapestry of predestination in the history of
Christian thought. In so doing, he shows himself to be an astute and care-

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ful reader of figures from a variety of traditions and persuasions. This book
is particularly helpful for identifying the diversity within orthodoxy that
characterizes confessional Roman Catholicism. Echeverria notably identifies this as a “Catholic form of synergism in which man’s free response
participates in God’s gift of salvation” that “is neither pelagian nor
semi-pelagian, which are its heretical forms” (281). Echeverria’s effort at
exploring and articulating a nonheretical form of synergism according to
Roman Catholic confessional standards is salutary. The broader ecumenical question remains of whether there is a nonheretical form of monergism
that might be identified as legitimate, whether for Roman Catholics or
for Christians more broadly. As a Reformed theologian, I find this to be
one of the most salient features of these debates over the last half millennium, as confessional orthodoxy concerning predestination has been more
narrowly defined by differing ecclesiastical traditions and is increasingly
N&V
identified along denominational lines.
Jordan J. Ballor
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty
Grand Rapids, MI

Exemplarist Moral Theory by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2017), xiii + 274 pp.

This book is the long-awaited culmination of Linda Trinkaus
Zagzebski’s work over the past decade on a comprehensive moral theory
grounded in the admiration of concrete exemplars. The theory appears
in inchoate form in her 2004 book Divine Motivation Theory, in which
Zagzebski first defends the claim that the emotion of admiration is the
primary vehicle by which we apprehend goodness in moral agents. In a
2010 article,1 she provides a more detailed elaboration of the theory and
its transformative potential for the field of moral philosophy. Her 2015
Gifford Lectures, collectively entitled “Exemplarist Virtue Theory,”2 present an even more mature version of the theory and establish the itinerary
that comes to structure the chapters of the monograph. Zagzebski sets out
five distinct aims for the book. The following paragraphs will consider each
in turn.
The first and most general aim is the construction of an ethical theory
that can provide the exhaustive account of human action and perform
		“Exemplarist Virtue Theory,” Metaphilosophy 41, no. 1–2 (2010): 41–57.
		giffordlectures.org/lectures/exemplarist-virtue-theory.

1
2

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the same sort of evaluative tasks as deontological, consequentialist, or
virtue-based theories. That Zagzebski acknowledges from the start that
her book can provide only the initial framework and agenda for this
theory makes this goal no less ambitious in scope. The premise most
fundamental to the project is Zagzebski’s claim that “there are elements
of our pre-existing moral practices of which we are more certain than we
are of any theory” (8). While recognizing that certain practices or judgments may change for the better when subjected to the scrutiny of ethical
reflection, Zagzebski insists that ethical reflection itself cannot begin
without some set of prior convictions that are formed within the context
of personal encounter and that are more reliable than any theoretical
mechanism by which we might try to justify them. Chief among these
convictions, and the most basic element in exemplarist moral theory,
is the admiration we feel for certain people whom we encounter in the
world: “I think we are more certain that Confucius, Jesus, and Socrates
are admirable than we are of claims about the good of pleasure, of what
human flourishing is, or the good of doing one’s duty, or any of the other
claims that are used to ground a moral theory. In fact, I think that we
are more certain that they are admirable than we are of what is admirable about them” (10). The emotion of admiration is the most immediate
effect of our encounter with moral goodness in the world, and as such, it
should form the basis of our account of moral reflection.
Even before we are able to speak about an instance of moral goodness,
the emotion of admiration gives us evidence that we have encountered it.
Thus, we identify exemplars of goodness or virtue through admiration
just as we identify natural kinds such as water through sense perception.
Zagzebski defends this claim by appropriating the direct-reference theory
developed by Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke in the 1970s for the use
of moral terms such as “wise,” “brave,” or “just.” Just as “a natural kind
term like ‘water’ or ‘gold’ or ‘human’ refers to whatever is the same kind
of thing or stuff as some indexically identified instance,” so basic moral
terms such as “good person” emerge not through conceptual definitions,
but rather through acknowledged acts of direct reference (11). In the same
way that people who were unaware of the chemical composition of water
were nonetheless able with consistent success to refer to instances of H2O
within the natural world, a community can reliably identify the kind
“good person” by means of direct reference to prototypical individuals
whose conduct elicits certain characteristic effects. A good, wise, just, or
courageous person is a person like that, where “that” effectively refers to
an exemplar to which a group has common access. Such exemplars can be
so described not because they satisfy the definition of a moral concept, but

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rather because they themselves embody what these concepts seek to name.
They therefore do not correspond to any prior conception of “wisdom,”
“justice,” or “courage,” but rather fix the meaning of these terms by their
own lives and character.
Exemplarism is thus a foundationalist ethical theory built on the
emotion of admiration toward others, rather than any abstract concept,
definition, or principle. According to this approach, moral reflection not
only emerges through this sort of interpersonal encounter but also remains
continually accountable to it as a regulatory point of reference. How we
understand what it means to be good and act well ultimately depends
on what makes us admire certain individuals we encounter in the world.
Reflecting on the nature of morality means reflecting on who these people
are and what it is about them that so attracts us. Yet, even if we succeed
in identifying a trait or pattern they all share in common, Zagzebski will
insist that it is the exemplars themselves, rather than what we take them to
exemplify, that must anchor our moral analysis. This approach places the
encounter between individual persons at the center of ethical reasoning,
such that the identity of the particular “other” can never fade entirely into
the background. Other ethical concepts such as “virtue,” “good motive,”
“right act,” and “duty” retain their basic meaning and function within
the theory, but only insofar as they inhere in exemplars to which we can
directly refer. A virtue is a trait we admire in a person like that; a good
motive is a motive of a person like that; a right act is what a person like that
would decide to do in a given set of circumstances; and so on.
Zagzebski’s second stated purpose in constructing the theory is to
provide a way for the emotion of admiration to exert its full force within
the context of ethical reflection. Integral to the experience of admiration
is an attraction toward the one admired that impels the admirer to bring
about in herself the goodness she perceives in another. To this extent,
placing admiration at the center of the theory cannot but motivate agents
who reflect on their admiration to imitate those they hold up as exemplars.
In this way, exemplarism not only pinpoints and dissects right action but
also moves those who undertake ethical reflection to become better people
themselves. Indeed, it cannot help but do so because its point of departure
is reflective attentiveness to the admirability of concrete exemplars: if the
exemplar in question is truly admirable, she motivates those who attend to
her life to live their own in a similar way; that is an integral part of what
makes her an exemplar.
The regulatory role of the phenomenon of admiration gives rise to
another of Zagzebski’s main purposes in forming the theory, which is
to build a bridge between what she calls the “a priori side of ethics” and

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Book Reviews

contemporary empirical research in fields such as psychology and neuroscience. Central to this aspect of the theory is Zagzebski’s analogy between
the physical structure of natural kinds and the “deep psychological structure” of those identified as exemplars. While claiming that “the exemplarist approach has the advantage that substantive matters about what makes
a person good need not be settled at the outset,” Zagzebski nevertheless
presumes that those taking this approach must “think in advance that
what makes good persons good is their deep psychological structure, just
as we think in advance of investigation that what makes water water is its
deep physical structure” (18). Advancing this analogy allows her to delegate
a great deal of work to empirical studies in psychology and neuroscience,
many examples of which she takes up in the second and third chapters of
the book. One need not entirely grant that exemplars’ “deep psychological
structure” exhaustively accounts for what makes them admirable in order
to appreciate how much empirical studies can add to philosophical or
historical accounts of exemplars. Zagzebski’s own remarkable ability to
synthesize the findings of such studies with accounts of exemplars taken
from other disciplines is a testament to the potential fruitfulness of this
link between theoretical ethics and empirical science. She makes particularly good use of Jonathan Haidt’s work on admiration, as well as various
psychological studies on Holocaust rescuers, such as those by Samuel and
Pearl Oliner, Anne Colby and William Damon, and Kristen Renwick
Monroe. These studies focus principally on common characteristics
shared by people identified as moral exemplars. They suggest that common
features of exemplars’ psychological structure can help explain what makes
them capable of such admirable actions.
Empirical research also plays a central role in the fourth distinct goal of
the project, which is to construct a theory that can more accurately track
the process of moral development. Zagzebski addresses the relation of
exemplars to moral development most directly in chapters 5 and 6 of the
book, entitled “Virtue” and “Emulation,” respectively. Although Zagzebski
relies less heavily on empirical research for her arguments in these chapters,
she is certainly aware of the extent to which such studies could illuminate
the role exemplars play in the development of practical reasoning and the
cultivation of moral dispositions. The crucial claim here is that, in the
course of every human life, concrete exemplars precede the concepts we
eventually come to associate with them. “The meaning of ‘good person,’”
Zagzebski insists, “is determined by something outside the mind—exemplars, or the most admirable persons,” such that “the meaning of the other
terms of most relevance to the moral life are determined by the features of
moral exemplars” (100). By observing or hearing about the actions of good

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people, we come to formulate distinct categories of moral goodness that
we collectively call the virtues. The meaning of these concepts emerges by
way of common reference to these exemplars and remains accountable to
their concrete embodiment as we employ them and reflect on them. Thus,
if our abstract definition of a virtue comes to be at odds with the exemplars
from which the concept arose, our first task should be to reexamine the
concept, rather than exemplar: “Exemplars are not simply stand-ins for
abstract virtues whom we can ignore once we learn the virtues. We need
exemplars all the time” (154). The primacy of exemplars in moral reflection
simply mirrors their primacy in the process of human moral development.
Virtues provide a name to the particular forms of goodness we encounter
in them. We come to reflect on virtues only because we see them displayed
in the lives of concrete individuals. Such is the way we learn to speak of
any virtue, and also the way we begin to acquire any virtue: we must first
see it and admire it, and by admiring it, we are drawn to emulate it, and so
cultivate it in our own lives.
Exemplarist moral theory therefore tracks human moral development
both by acknowledging the way in which exemplars precede ethical
concepts and by characterizing mimesis—which Aristotle rightly identifies
as the chief mechanism for acquiring virtue—in terms of admiration. The
imitation of acts by sheer command has an important provisional place in
the cultivation of virtue, but it is only emulation born out of admiration
that can properly ensure the development of true moral goodness, for it
aligns an agent’s motive for acting with that of the exemplar she imitates.
“She emulates the admired person qua good, not just qua something it
would be fun to imitate,” meaning that “part of what she admires in the
person is the motive” from which the act proceeds (135). Zagzebski does
well to acknowledge that, in emulating an exemplar’s motive, one need not
experience the same subjective resonance with that motive that the exemplar feels, but only the admiration necessary to motivate them to develop
that motive within themselves. Following David Velleman, she argues that
an exemplar’s virtues gradually become part of one’s own character as one
imagines oneself acting in the role or persona of that exemplar. Zagzebski
mentions the phenomenon of method acting as an example of how this
process of development might work. She even provides an intriguing argument for how emotions like admiration could provide justifying reasons
for a particular moral judgment. Yet she is right to call for more empirical
research that may confirm or refute many of the claims she makes about
the role admiration plays in moral development.
One repeated theme that might prove particularly fruitful in this regard
is the dependence of moral development on an agent’s immediate rela-

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tional context. Exemplarism casts the entire process of moral perfection
in relational terms, measuring success not by an agent’s conformity to an
abstract principle, but by her congruity to particular individuals recognized as embodiments of the human good in various ways. An especially
attractive upshot of this view is that, unlike in so many modern ethical
theories, moral growth need not track the expansion of an agent’s cognitive
capacity or practical autonomy. It also implicates others in the characterization of one’s own moral agency in a way that makes it impossible to
describe one’s life as “good” without referring to the part other “good lives”
have played in one’s own. The inextricable dependence of one’s own moral
growth on the influential presence of other people reflects quite accurately,
in my view, the constitutive role that others play in the determination of
personal identity. Simply put, the story of who I am is the story of my
relations to others, and likewise, the story of my moral development is the
story of how my actions have come to relate to those of others. Not only
does this approach to moral evaluation more adequately reflect the relational quality of human life and identity; it also helps to explain the full
moral significance of the lives of those persons who are unable to articulate
or reflect on their own intentionality as “free, autonomous agents.” The
moral development of those with severe cognitive disabilities may look
very different from our own, but like our own, it is a story of how our
agency has intersected with that of others.
The fifth and final aim of the book is to provide an ethical theory that
can adapt to the needs of different communities, and so facilitate moral
discourse between them. Zagzebski demonstrates throughout the book
the possibility of this sort of discourse through her own thoughtful examination of exemplars from many different traditions (figures as diverse
as Confucius, Simeon Stylites, Gandhi, Leopold Socha, Jean Vanier,
and Flaubert’s Felicité). Yet the theory underpinning such cross-cultural dialogue appears in the book’s last two chapters, which deal with
what she calls “the division of moral linguistic labor” and “exemplarist
semantics.” Attentiveness to the various ways moral reflection depends
on an agent’s connection to a social linguistic network allows for a more
nuanced approach to the different ways ethical concepts function within
different communities of discourse. Zagzebski writes: “In order to know
what ‘elm tree’ or ‘diamond’ means, it is not enough to speak English and
to be willing to defer to experts in identifying diamond and elm trees.
There is a linguistic obligation to have a certain minimal competence in
the use of the term in order to count as knowing what the word means”
(184). The same principle applies to terms such as “wise,” “brave,” or “good
person.” Proper apprehension of the meaning of such terms requires that

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one belong to a particular community in which their content is specified
by reference to “stereotypes,” which, for moral concepts like the ones just
mentioned, would mean exemplars. Although communities provide exemplars of different sorts through narratives, there remains an important role
for “experts” who are entrusted with the task of properly determining the
exemplars most worthy of imitation. They are therefore given a certain
linguistic privilege in the use of moral terms, fixing their meaning by properly orienting them to the best available exemplars. Zagzebski is not saying
that the existence or nature of virtue is contingent on the determination of
experts, but only that they perform a necessary task in setting the parameters within which moral discourse can remain intelligible.
Nevertheless, the necessary role that experts play in Zagzebski’s account
appears to threaten exemplarism’s capacity to speak across different
communities of moral discourse. If the terms and concepts used by two
communities are fixed by different experts in reference to different exemplars and different shared practices, how could there be any meaningful
ethical exchange between their respective members? In the book’s last
chapter, Zagzebski makes the fascinating claim that her account of the role
of exemplars in moral reflection and development is even more fundamental than the question of whether moral values are real or not. Regardless
of whether or not we regard a particular community’s understanding of
virtue and a good life to correspond to anything independent of their
members’ own judgment, it remains the case that this understanding
emerges only through the process of reflection, deliberation, and discussion initiated by the emotion of admiration as directed toward particular
exemplars. In this way, Zagzebski makes the bold claim that the emotion
of admiration can serve as a true universal point of reference for any and
all moral communities.
What is more, she contends that this emotion can easily be directed
toward exemplars of different moral communities in a way that establishes
a common ground for discourse built on precisely the same foundation
from which a community’s ethical discourse first arose. She goes on to
argue that, insofar as the emotion of admiration must correspond in all
cases to certain features of the “deep psychological structure” of an exemplar, one may venture to conclude that the exemplars of different moral
traditions will possess many, if not all, of these features in common. “We
can see our highest ideals in the face of our exemplars,” she writes, “and
we can compare that with the highest ideals expressed by the exemplars
of another society” (234). At this point, she again calls for more empirical
research to determine whether her claim is in fact true: do the exemplars
of different traditions really possess a common “deep psychological struc-

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ture” that makes them admirable to everyone no matter who they are or
what ethical language they speak?
As one awaits the findings of such research, one might be forgiven for
expressing some skepticism in this regard and for asking questions as to
the ethical significance of such universality even if it were demonstrated
empirically. Chief among such questions would be whether and to what
degree grounding moral discourse across communities in the findings
of empirical research privileges scientific methodology in a way that
effectively designates psychologists and neuroscientists as the ultimate
experts tasked with determining who is or is not a true exemplar. Discrete
communities whose moral discourse subsists within a particular historical
tradition may assign others this task in light of their eminent competence in the language and practices of a tradition, but when it comes to
discourse between members of different communities, it seems that only
the language and practices of empirical science can provide sufficient
common ground. Perhaps I read too much into Zagzebski’s investment in
the “deep psychological structure” of exemplars, but it seems to me she too
easily grants the scientific account of what makes an exemplar admirable
as the definitive and final account of what in fact constitutes an exemplar.
Another seemingly attractive advantage of the exemplarist model is that,
by beginning with the sheer fact of human admiration and its role in the
emergence of ethical thought and practice, we can bypass the contentious
issue of how to conceive of human well-being and whether there is any ultimate end or telos to human life generally. In my own view, to study human
conduct while entirely prescinding from these questions is to undertake a
form of inquiry methodologically distinct from ethics. Moral philosophy
may and should take the findings of empirical research as proper objects of
its own analysis and debate, but in presuming that only empirical research
can definitively arbitrate the conclusions of that analysis and debate, it
cedes its own integrity as an intellectual discipline. To do so would unnecessarily limit moral philosophy’s understanding of the phenomena into
which it inquires. In the case of exemplars, for instance, to presume that
the final answer to the question of what makes exemplars admirable must
come from an empirical account of their “deep psychological structure”
is to conceive of their exemplarity as residing principally within them as
individual agents. Zagzebski herself appears to take this view. At one point
in the last chapter, she remarks that “the admirable person is the repository
of admirable qualities” (231). But what if we take the view that we direct
our admiration most often and most powerfully not toward the exemplary
actions or qualities of individual agents, but rather toward what those
actions or qualities reveal of the world outside them?

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“In exemplarism, virtues, right and wrong acts, and a good life are all
defined by reference to what the exemplar is, judges, or desires” (231). The
moral community thus looks to the character, judgment, and motives of
the exemplar to inform its understanding of all the various components
that govern ethical reflection. In this book, Zagzebski puts forth a very
persuasive argument for this bold claim. I would only add to her account
that one of the most important contributions of exemplars to moral
reasoning is what they reveal about the human good itself: what a human
life is for, and in what its ultimate value consists. Raimond Gaita follows
Simone Weil in supposing that the measure of a saint is not so much
the degree to which her actions reveal the various excellences she herself
possesses, but rather the beauty and worth her actions reveal in others,
particularly in those who are in some way afflicted or demeaned.3 In many
cases, Gaita goes on to argue, the true value of a human person can come
to light only through the love of saints who not only act as if they believed
that an afflicted person possessed such value but also, through their action,
fully reveal that value. In such a case, the acts of an exemplar simultaneously disclose both what it means to act well and what it means to be
human. In revealing the priceless value of another person, an exemplar also
reveals something about the final ends that befit human life itself. I am far
from certain that any empirical account of an exemplar’s “deep psychological structure” could adequately convey the significance of this “revelatory”
aspect of exemplary action, since it presumes that admiration directs itself
primarily toward the exemplar herself, rather than what her acts reveal.
The thing we find so wondrous in a saint’s care for an afflicted person is
not primarily the virtue it displays in the saint herself—although virtue is
presumably an integral part of the act—but rather the beauty and worth
it reveals in the afflicted person. If this type of act is at the heart of what
makes an exemplar admirable, then the relational dimension of exemplary
acts becomes all the more central to the task of ethical reflection. Such acts
may even suggest that the identification of the moral good on which the
theory is built— “a good person is a person like that”— is derivative of an
even more basic identification of the human good as the good made apparent in the interaction between agents. Perhaps one direction Zagzebski’s
impressive theory might take, then, is a shift in focus from exemplary
individuals to exemplary encounters, friendships, or communities. It may
be the case that these relational foci are able to embody forms of moral
goodness that individuals considered alone cannot.
		Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, 2nd ed. (New York:
Routledge, 2004), 189–206.

3

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The scope of Zagzebski’s overall project in this book is staggering.
Even though, by her own account, exemplarist virtue theory emerged as
a variant of virtue ethics, it departs from such in significant ways, and so
represents a truly innovative methodological approach to moral inquiry.
Yet what makes Zagzebski’s exemplarist approach so compelling is not
so much its novelty or ingenuity as its intuitive plausibility. It just seems
correct that what informs and motivates our moral choices in everyday life
is not any conceptual ideal or worked-out theory, but rather our links to
those others whom we have taken as exemplars of right conduct, as embodiments of the human good whom we trust to guide us in our own pursuit
of the good. On this basic insight, Exemplarist Moral Theory constructs a
ground-breaking approach to ethics whose enormous implications for the
field have already begun to surface.
Moral theologians will likely find this approach particularly fruitful
for their work, given the place it assigns to the historical particularity of
traditions and communal praxis. Christian ethicists hoping to find some
treatment of the unique exemplarity of Jesus Christ in this book will come
away disappointed, but the possibility remains of adapting Zagzebski’s
general framework to a form of exemplarism that incorporates Christological doctrines. Indeed, I see in this approach one of the most promising appropriations for the theory, especially in light of the moves many
past theologians have made in this direction: from St. Paul’s appeals to
imitation to Abelard’s “exemplar model” of atonement to Livio Melina’s
contemporary efforts to develop a Christocentric exemplarism, the Christian theological tradition abounds in material that can be brought to bear
and reread in light of Zagzebski’s work. There is no doubt that this point of
confluence will prove mutually enriching, but it is equally certain that the
exemplarist approach will come to benefit, and likely even reshape, many
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other fields of moral inquiry as well.
Patrick Clark
University of Scranton
Scranton, PA

Mother Teresa’s Mysticism: A Christo-Ecclesio-Humano-Centric
Mysticism by Robert M. Garrity (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio, 2017), 208 pp.

Fr. Robert Garrity has written a fine introduction to St.
Mother Teresa’s life of mysticism in her service of the poor. In the first
part of the book, he introduces the reader to the theological contexts of

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Catholic mysticism that influenced Mother Teresa’s mysticism. In the
second part, he introduces the reader to the contributions Mother Teresa
has made to the development of Catholic mysticism in our times.
Part I has eight chapters. In the first chapter, Fr. Garrity clarifies that
mysticism is a genuinely experiential knowledge of God and his divine
presence. For Mother Teresa, it was both a speculative and an experiential
knowledge of God and his presence in the poor. Chapter 2 introduces the
reader to mysticism understood as experiencing God’s presence. It is, as
John of the Cross states, an “unknowing” that is known, a docta ignorantia
by which God purifies the mind and heart of the mystic.
Chapters 3 and 4 further explore this in John of the Cross and his “dark
night” and the mysticism of “suffering and darkness.” Mother Teresa sees
this in Jesus’s cry of “I thirst” from the Cross. For her, this is a thirst for
love, a thirst for souls to love that Jesus redeems humanity in his suffering on the Cross. Because of Mother Teresa’s letters on the darkness and
suffering of her own soul, Fr. Garrity devotes chapter 5 to a detailed introduction to St. John of the Cross and his insights into the dark night of the
senses, imagination, and intellect as purifying the mystic’s knowing and
loving as she enters a mystical theology springing from God’s indwelling.
Chapter 6 sketches the Christological and ecclesiological dimensions
of Mother Teresa’s mysticism in her service of Christ and his Church
among the poorest of the poor. Her mysticism is Christocentric in its
love and service of the poor, thereby offering a new emphasis to the ongoing traditions of Catholic mystical theology. Chapters 7 and 8 conclude
part I with a preliminary assessment of what is distinctive in Mother
Teresa’s mysticism as a deep appreciation of Christ as present in the poor.
It is a mystical union with Christ in the poor that does not, as Fr. Garrity
shows, in any way diminish the importance, emphasized in St. John Paul
II’s Centesimus Annus, of seeking economic, scientific, and other means
of improving the lives of the poor. Catholic mystical theology is not
opposed to reason and science.
Part II provides eight chapters outlining the contributions Mother
Teresa has made to Catholic mysticism and theology. Fundamental to
these contributions is her insistence on the divine and human natures in
the Person of Jesus Christ, who founded the Catholic Church with her
governance, sacraments, and mission to the world.
Chapter 9 shows how Mother Teresa’s mystical theology both draws on
the long traditions from the Catholic mystics and provides a new emphasis
on the significance of these traditions in fostering service to the poor and
destitute. Mother Teresa was insistent on fidelity to the Catholic Church
and her hierarchy in order to reveal to the secular world that service to the

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Book Reviews

poor is indeed at the heart of Catholic faith and fidelity.
Chapter 10 is an important clarification of Mother’s experiential
Christology. Fr. Garrity shows various aspects of Mother’s mysticism: its
intimate union with Christ on the Cross, its Marian devotion in receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, and how Mary in her earthly life excelled in
faith, hope, and charity. He also warns readers that Mother now and then
engaged in a “spiritual hyperbole” that resulted in misguided statements,
such as that Jesus “became sin” and so was rejected by the Father (101–2).
Chapter 11 acquaints the reader with the universal soteriology of
Christ’s “thirst” for souls. Drawing on St. Irenaeus and St. Bernard,
Mother Teresa seeks to capture the “affections” of ordinary people,
including the poor, to draw them into a love for Christ as redemptive. She
assists the Church in linking the ecclesial and humanitarian affections of
humanity. Chapter 12 continues this exploration by showing the implicit
Trinitarian pneumatology in Mother’s Christological soteriology. Yet Fr.
Garrity mentions that, although Mother’s pneumatology is deficient in
some ways, it will be pastorally effective in winning souls for Christ and
his Church.
Chapter 13 provides insights into the anthropology underpinning the
soteriology of Mother Teresa. Every human being is created in the image
of God. So creation is always united with redemption. Jesus redeems what
the Triune God has created. Fr. Garrity draws on John Henry Cardinal
Newman and Thomas Aquinas to state that the spiritual, intellectual, and
transcending nature of each human being has a “real dynamism toward
infinite truth and goodness, toward God” (128).
The ways in which Mother Teresa has contributed to the renewal of
the Church are sketched in chapter 14. Fr. Garrity shows that Mother
fostered developments in the “communio ecclesiology” of St. John Paul II.
The communion of the Church extends especially to Christ disguised in
the poor and destitute within the Church as his mystical body. Like Pope
Francis, Mother sees the Church as the “instrument spreading divine
mercy” to those on the margins of societies. Fr. Garrity does not elaborate,
but could also call more attention to how St. Teresa’s mystical theology
linked the real presence of Christ in the poor with the Eucharistic real
presence of Jesus. The Missionaries of Charity follow Mother’s daily two
hours in prayer in the real presence of Christ in Holy Mass and in the
Eucharist reserved in the tabernacle. Thus, she insisted to reporters, her
Missionaries were living out their faith and were not social workers.
In chapter 15, Fr. Garrity offers wonderful suggestions on how everyone
can live the spirituality of Mother Teresa in many diverse ways. He counsels against an uninspired copying of specific applications of what she and

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her Missionaries do. Rather, Mother’s mysticism encourages each of us to
deepen our life of prayer and attentiveness to what God is asking us to do
for Christ in his poor. Mother’s private revelation in which Jesus appeared
to her with a call within her call to religious life is not an experience that
others need in order to follow her self-giving love and service of the poor.
In Chapter 16, Fr. Garrity discusses the importance of Mother Teresa’s
mysticism for the Church as she engages in interreligious dialogue. Here
too Fr. Garrity clearly outlines how Mother’s mysticism enables Catholics to be fully faithful to the Church’s teachings and thereby promote
understanding with other world religions. He offers examples of Mother’s
self-giving in service of the poor evoking admiration from other religions,
including Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus.
Fr. Garrity ends his wonderful book on St. Mother Teresa’s mysticism
with an epilogue summing up how her mysticism draws on the great
Catholic traditions of Catholic saints and how this enables her to make
important contributions to the renewal of spirituality as fostering the love
of God and man. Self-giving services to the poor take on many different
forms in fidelity to Mother’s catechetical and mystical theology. I highly
recommend this book to all those seeking a deeper understanding of St.
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Mother Teresa’s mysticism.
†Matthew L. Lamb
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

Ethical Sex: Sexual Choices and Their Nature and Meaning by Anthony
McCarthy (South Bend, IN: Fidelity, 2016), 326 pp.

A dominant contemporary attitude toward the human body might be

said to be totalitarian in nature. This attitude embraces not simply the physical members of the human body; it extends its reach even to the natural
inclinations. It treats human bodily reality “as a raw datum” that is “devoid
of any meaning and moral values until freedom has shaped it in accordance
with its design” (Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor [1993], §48). According to this view, the human body is external to the human person and, as
such, simply furnishes the material condition for the exercise of free choice.
The anthropology in question is dualistic in that it divorces human personhood from human embodiment. Reason is thus left free to manipulate the
bodily conditions of human being, all too often in ways contrary to the
indications inscribed within those very conditions themselves.

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The recent significant trend in Western countries to legislate for homosexual “marriage”—or even, in the case of Ireland, to enshrine this “right”
within the constitution—renders even more important the intellectual
engagement with the inclination to the procreation and education of
offspring, as St. Thomas puts it (Summa theologia [ST] I-II, q. 94, a. 2)—
which is to say, sexual ethics. One reason for a rational defense of Catholic
sexual ethics is precisely the fact that recent developments are the political
expression of a dualistic anthropology and are, as such, as I have intimated,
totalitarian in character.
Anthony McCarthy’s book, which offers such a defense, engages with
a wide array of authors philosophical, theological, and literary. Included
in this array are figures such as Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas,
Immanuel Kant, John Paul II, Aurel Kolnai, Dietrich von Hildebrand,
Josef Pieper, Roger Scruton, Janet Smith, Bernard Williams, William
Shakespeare, Robert Sokolowski, Michel Foucault, and Peter Singer, just
to mention a selection. Manifold arguments are adduced in support of
what ultimately constitutes a Catholic sexual ethic, and countervailing
arguments are rebutted in analytic style.
The first chapter of the book offers a sustained critique of the contention
on the part of “new natural law” theorists that contraception is contralife.
The author then proceeds in the next chapter to look at natural law, functions, and teleology. Arguments are adduced in defense of teleology and of
the idea that any particular organism has a function. This chapter proceeds
to sustain the intimate link between the functioning proper to human
beings and human flourishing. In this regard, the author remains alert to
the demands that attend the hylomorphic structure of human being, albeit
with an exception noted below. The importance of embodiment and teleology carry over into McCarthy’s discussion of marriage and meaning. The
notions of embodiment and teleology ground the objective reality of the
conjugal act. Indeed, for McCarthy, “it is marriage which is that standard
with respect to which sexual activity is judged to be good or not” (107).
I would have to disagree with this formulation, however. Heterosexual
marriage, rather, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sexual activity to be good, a point the author would no doubt accept.
Teleological considerations flow over into the discussion of sexual
desire. In this regard, McCarthy offers some useful reflections concerning
pornography and fantasy. Thus, for example, with regard to the latter,
he observes that “the moral demands of the real world are not being
adequately met when an effect is deliberately produced which properly
belongs to a different cause” (160). Teleological considerations also enter
into the final chapter, on love, virtue, and vice, as also does the notion of

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289

embodiment. McCarthy builds on Karol Wojtyła’s / John Paul II’s observations that the human body in itself is not shameful and that neither are
sensual reactions and sensuality in general. Thus, writes McCarthy, “it
cannot be objectifying simply to appreciate or be aroused by the bodily
features of (in particular) one’s spouse, which surely constitute the valuable
sexual attributes of an inherently valuable person in a marital unit geared
toward the couple’s social and biological fulfilment” (187). Again, the telos
of the sexual act, it is argued, is essentially marital. While all lack of respect
or objectification is anti-teleological in nature, this is particularly so in the
case of sexual activity that is not properly ordered within a marital context.
The foregoing brief delineation of the structure and content of McCarthy’s book shows forth what is valuable in his work: his appreciation of the
notions of embodiment and teleology in formulating an adequate sexual
ethic. Many creative arguments are marshalled with a view to defending
a Catholic position. In elaborating these arguments, as already intimated,
he engages an impressive range of figures from the domains of philosophy,
theology, and literature.
There are however some negative criticisms to be leveled at the author’s
laudable efforts. Thus, one gets the sense that the author at times is not
as familiar with the thought of St. Thomas as one would wish a Catholic
philosopher engaged in sexual ethics to be. Perhaps this lack is a downside
of the wide range of thinkers with whom he dialogues. Thus, in referencing
ST II-II, qq. 23–27, McCarthy writes: “For Aquinas, all kinds of love are
grounded in the will (including desire), which provides the initial framework for seeing different forms of love as integrated” (171). Prescinding
from the confused nature of this formulation (is it “all kinds of love” or
“the will” that includes “desire”?), it is simply wrong to state that Thomas
thinks that all kinds of love are grounded in the will. The confines of this
review do not allow an adumbration of Thomas’s teaching concerning love,
but the following quotation demonstrates that, for Thomas, the notion
of love extends well beyond the human will: “Now to love God above all
things is natural to man and to every nature, not only rational but irrational, and even to inanimate nature according to the manner of love which
can belong to each creature” (ST I-II, q. 109, a. 3).
A little further on, McCarthy asserts: “For Aquinas the approval
expressed in the statement ‘it’s good that you exist’ is an expression of
will” (172). Thomas would, no doubt, agree with this idea, but I know of
nowhere where he actually formulates it explicitly.
Another point pertains to the natural inclinations, concerning which
the author arguably departs from the logical demands of a thoroughgoing hylomorphism. Thus, he writes that “a reproductive organ has a

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‘pre-rational’ inclination toward its proper object (its function)” (91), in
spite of his general insistence on the psychosomatic unity of the human
person. (Admittedly, there are scholars of St. Thomas’s thought who
espouse this view.) Elsewhere, he repeats this idea in a more general form:
“While we might see certain ‘instincts’ as ‘drives’ toward the good, they
are pre-rational” (259n3). In my view, however, the hylomorphic structure of the human person entails that the inclinations that man shares
with other creatures are subsumed into the reality of the rational soul,
the form of human being, and thus can never be simply prerational in
his case. While the natural inclinations are not the result of deliberate
choice, they do nevertheless seem to pertain to what Thomas means by
simple willing (simplex voluntas).
One final observation: this book is written by a philosopher. Its deliberations begin in earnest with a discussion of “thick” and “thin” concepts, a
distinction gleaned from analytic philosophical analysis. The first thinker
quoted in this regard is Bernard Williams, an analytic philosopher. Given
the sharp distinction between philosophy and theology that is the hallmark of much contemporary philosophy—lamentable and all as it is—it
would seem that, as a matter of strategy, it would have been more effective
for the author to keep a distance from quoting Catholic Church teaching.
At any rate, as John Paul II points out in Fides et Ratio, a harmony obtains
between faith and reason so that right reason naturally coheres with
what the faith teaches us. A chance to evangelize contemporary culture
has perhaps been lost precisely by the author’s explicit recourse to faith.
This would be a pity, since his obvious philosophically ecumenical spirit
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deserves to be reciprocated.
Kevin E. O’Reilly, O.P.
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Rome

Thomas and the Thomists: The Achievement of Thomas Aquinas and
His Interpreters by Romanus Cessario, O.P., and Cajetan Cuddy, O.P.
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2017), xvii + 151 pp.

Recent years have seen a large number of publications
introducing Thomas Aquinas and his work to newer audiences. The sheer
number of these publications attests to what Aidan Nichols referred to in
his 2002 introduction as the “new renaissance” in the study of this master

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291

in theology, philosophy, and biblical exegesis.1 This new renaissance seems
to have at least two features. Firstly, Aquinas’s thought is taken on its own
merits, instead of the uncritical adaptations of his thought to modern
forms of thinking. Secondly, and without discarding the necessary contribution of a purely historical approach to Aquinas’s thought, this renewed
interest seeks to delineate Aquinas’s intellectual coherence.
However, it is no coincidence that, alongside this renewed interest,
one can witness a growing appreciation for the intellectual movement of
Thomism that has sprung up from a continuous study of Aquinas’s writings. Just as Aquinas’s thought cannot be separated from his sources, as the
historical approach has rightly argued, so also Aquinas himself cannot be
detached from the tradition of his commentators. Such an abstraction of
Aquinas from the tradition that has brought him to us would, in the words
of the French Dominican Serge-Thomas Bonino, “fall into the trap that
one had hoped to avoid: that is, to make of St. Thomas a thinker removed
from history, and of Thomism a Platonic Idea.”2
The authors of the volume under review have written an insightful
and exciting analysis and a vibrant defense of the concrete reality that is
the Thomist tradition. It all starts with the “unique genius” of Aquinas:
his ability to lead his readers “to discover the real truth about real things
that originate from the real God” (xii). In a dense but accessible analysis,
the authors explain how, from the fundamental real distinction between
being and nonbeing, Thomas discovered the real distinction between act
and potency and how he “applied” this distinction to matter and form, as
well as to essence and existence, resulting in the truth that, whereas God
is his own existence, “everything else enjoys only borrowed existence”
(xiii). The reader might recall at this point the vexed question regarding
the essence of Thomism in which such giants as Gallus Manser, O.P.
(1866–1950),3 and Norberto del Prado, O.P. (1852–1918), took part,
emphasizing (respectively) the distinction between act and potency and
that between essence and existence. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.
(1877–1964), harmonized both approaches and emphasized the unity of
the via inventionis and the via synthesis, since both have as their terminus
and principium “the supreme truth of Christian philosophy,” the clavis
		 Aidan Nichols, Discovering Aquinas: An Introduction to His Life, Work and Influence
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002).
2
		 Serge-Thomas Bonino, “Le thomisme et son histoire,” in Revue thomiste 97 (1997):
5–8. See also Bonino, “To Be a Thomist,” Nova et Vetera (English) 8 (2010):
763–73, and “The Thomist Tradition,” Nova et Vetera (English) 8 (2010): 869–81.
3
		Gallus Manser, Das Wesen des Thomismus (Fribourg, CH: Paulus Verlag, 1949).
1

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aurea totius aedificii of the Angelic Doctor—namely, Deus est ipsum suum
subsistens.4 The veiled presence of these Thomists in the opening pages of
the book is but one of the many instances in which the erudition of the
authors becomes apparent.
Perhaps an even more vexed question concerns the unity of the Thomist tradition. Again, the opening pages are representative of the authors’
approach throughout the book. They start with an insightful negative
criterion when they note that, although St. Augustine has a greater
following in the Christian tradition than St. Thomas, “most will agree
that those who cite Augustine make up a more diverse group than the
Thomists treated in this volume” (xiv). For a positive criterion to discern
“authentic followers” (xv) of Aquinas, the authors turn to his comments
on John 17:17 (“Consecrate them in the truth. Your worth is truth”), in
which he emphasizes sanctification in the truth that is Christ, by faith and
the knowledge of the truth as sent by the Holy Spirit.5 What this means
for the authors is that “those who follow and interpret Aquinas faithfully
commit themselves to the project as an ecclesial vocation” (xvi) at the
service of evangelization. This also explains why the majority of Thomists
treated in this volume belonged to institutes of consecrated life. “These
persons enjoy a privileged starting point on the road toward developing a
sanctified intelligence for service to the church’s ministry” (xvi). Further
defining characteristics are that most Thomists worked during periods of
intellectual conflict and that “[all] Thomists sought wisdom, though without unnecessary accommodation to the intellectual fashion of their day”
(xvi). “They also share Aquinas’s conviction that one’s humanity, academic
achievement, and personal sanctity work together in the search for truth”
(xvi). Naturally, the authors emphasize that the Thomist tradition is
neither a mere repetition of Aquinas nor a monolithic unity. I would also
add that it is precisely because of the unifying elements the authors see at
work in the tradition that Thomists were and are able to apply Aquinas’s
thought to the questions of their time and to respond to them “from
within the author’s historical contexts” (xvii).
As the title of the book suggests, it consists of two parts: “Thomas, or a
Story of Divine Providence” (3–43) and “The Thomists, or ‘The Heritage
of Truth’” (47–140). The first part, in a most eloquent manner (including
the literary Leitmotiv of the archer), tells the story of Thomas’s life and
work. Relying on sound scholarly sources, the authors appreciate Thomas’s
		Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, De Deo uno (Turin, IT: Marietti, 1950), 24–26.
		See also Romanus Cessario, Theology and Sanctity, ed. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. (Ave
Maria, FL: Sapientia, 2014).

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achievements against the background of the medieval context of his life,
but also in light of the differences with respect to contemporary theological reasoning. The reader should therefore not be surprised to find this
part interspersed with references to Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Splendor, Pope
Benedict XVI, and Alasdair MacIntyre.
Two characteristic features come to the fore. First is the radically theocentric nature of theological reasoning as ordering the divine wisdom that
God has bestowed, and second is the distinctively Dominican imprint of
his intellectual achievements: “The Dominican way of life, which Aquinas
chose, . . . favors the acquisition of sacred truth by the distinctive way that
it combines assiduous study with the exercises that one associates with
monastic life, especially the following of the evangelical counsels and the
common prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours” (13; see also, e.g., 17, 28,
and 78, as well as note 28). The authors, therefore, do not view Thomas’s
works as a “playing fields for intellectual gymnastics” (26), but rather as
a teaching “about the living God” (26), as the work of a believer in the
service of the Truth. Referring to the mature fruit of Thomas’s service to
the Truth, the Summa theologiae, they write: “Aquinas recognized that the
successful portrayal of Catholic truth required more than edification by
beauty, inspiration by light, and moral encouragement by exhortation and
example” (33). Aquinas knew, indeed, given man’s rational nature, that the
only way to win him over eventually is to win over his intellect. The same
harmony of faith and reason allows Aquinas, toward the end of his life, to
respond to Christ’s offer for a reward for his theological writings: “Non
nisi Te” (“Nothing but you, O Lord”), which the authors view as having
become “a motto for properly educated Thomists” (38).
The second part of the book immediately draws the reader into one of
its distinctive features. The Korrektorienstreit—the Franciscan William
de la Mare’s Correctorium fratris Thomae and the reactions by five
English, French, and Italian young Dominicans in defense of Aquinas’s
thought—“suggests that, even shortly after his death, an esprit de corps
centered on Aquinas’s teaching had begun to develop among at least some
of his Dominican confreres, including the supervisors,” (50) and reveals
“the birth of a tradition that one rightly calls Thomist” (52). Very early on,
this tradition received institutional support from the Dominican order,
indicating that the participants in the Korrektorienstreit “did not make up
an eccentric band of dissident outsiders” (53). This reasoning is probably
the single most important part of the book, at least from a historical viewpoint, because it gives a persuasive argument for a determinate beginning
of the Thomist tradition.
Equally observant is the authors’ argument that the early-four-

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teenth-century controversy over mendicant poverty and the seemingly
contradictory reactions by two subsequent popes, notwithstanding differences in the question of papal teaching authority, “show unanimity” (58)
in wanting to uphold the Dominican and Thomist position with respect
to the vow of poverty. The subsequent pages contain Thomistic vignettes
of the most influential Thomists in which both the historical contexts of
their lives and works and their main contributions to the development of
the Thomist tradition find concise but apt expression, always informative
and engaging. We read, for instance, about Peter Crockaert (d. 1541), who
at first held a nominalist position and subsequently, after having entered
the Dominican order, started to teach the Summa theologiae. The authors
write: “This work of Aquinas opens with a discussion of God as pure
actuality. Architecture reflects styles of living and outlooks. The monastic
cloister that the classical Dominican priory incorporated into its structure
leaves an open space at its center that directs the mind beyond the skies
towards God” (77–78).
Throughout their depiction of the history of Thomism, the authors
are naturally aware of “fluctuations” that inevitably occur in a seven-centuries-old tradition, but they also emphasize—and rightly so—the ability inherent in the works of St. Thomas to sustain this tradition. More
concretely, “what characterizes the authentic evolution of the Thomist
commentatorial tradition remains its adherence to the first principles of
speculative thought both in the natural and in the supernatural orders”
(81). By placing the history of Thomism in its historical, philosophical, and
ecclesial context, the authors are able to corroborate their claim that, even
if one allows for a certain “elasticity” within the commentarial tradition,
or even for the existence of “eclectic Thomists,” “it is a remarkable thing
that Thomists carried on a lively intellectual existence that ran parallel to
the upstart Protestant and secular initiatives” (95).
In this regard, the authors hold the “Dominican giant” John of St.
Thomas in high regard for his setting down the criteria for identifying a “true
disciple of Aquinas”: “One who follows those who have already commented
on Aquinas, who loves his teaching and seeks to defend and develop it,
who shows sympathy for Aquinas’s intuitions, who values his method of
argument, and, in short, who holds fast to the commentatorial tradition”
(105). This “definition” of what it means to be a Thomist does not entail
the picture of an ivory-tower theologian, engaging in “abstract,” lifeless
speculations. The commentatorial tradition has the ability “to sustain [not
only] truth claims but also the theological life, that is, the life of Christian
faith, hope and charity” (110), as is exemplified by the work of Vincent Gotti
(1664–1742), facing the challenges of the beginning Enlightenment.

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Another important scholarly contribution of this introductory text
lies in the attention it draws to Dominican moral theologians who tried
to deal with the “paradigm shifts” in moral theology towards casuistry
(96–98). Mentioned in particular are Dominicans such as Bartholomew
of Medina (1528–1580), John Vincent Patuzzi (1700–1769), Vincent
Ferrer (1675–1738), and Antoine Massoulié (1632–1706). Their and other
reactions to casuistry are aptly summarized as follows: “Thomists sought
to develop well-tempered moral agents. To the extent that the virtuous
person surrenders to the drawing power of the good, he or she does not
require the assistance of a canon lawyer to discriminate between the
permitted and the forbidden. . . . Thomists prefer to emphasize the priority
of the divine initiative in human life before they begin to specify those
rectified actions that lead to the possession of God’s happiness” (114).
Here, I think, lies a large area for future research that will benefit
contemporary moral theology as well, given its contemporary use (or
avoidance) of casuistry. For instance, the contributions in this respect
of the Dominicans Benoît Henri Merkelbach (1871–1942), Dominicus
Prümmer (1866–1931), and Marie-Michel Labourdette (1908–1990),
whose extensive commentary on the secunda pars is currently being
published, merit further research.
Likewise, Massoulié also provides the authors with another important
defining element of Thomist identity: “Thomists should remember that
Aquinas serves as his own best interpreter. Even today, the best of the
commentators observe this axiom, which separates them from eclectic and
even putative Thomists” (114). A number of times throughout the book,
the authors write about “the self-purifying capacities” of the Thomist
commentatorial tradition, meaning the ability of later Thomists to rectify
earlier Thomists who fell under the sway of a particular cultural matrix,
such as the introduction of the principle of sufficient reason into Thomistic
philosophy. This again is a very insightful and useful concept that paradoxically allows one to discover the unity of the Thomist tradition.
It should therefore not be surprising that the authors express certain
misgivings about the use of terms such as Leonine Thomism or neo-Thomism. In fact, the book’s second part on the history of Thomism does not
employ the usual periodization that most often characterizes this history
in terms of a rise, a golden age, a decline, and a rediscovery: “[Such a
periodization] can suggest wrongly that the thought of Aquinas has only
enjoyed intermittent popularity. In fact, as has been put forward in this
book, Aquinas and his commentators lay claim to a continuity that dates
back at least to his canonization at the start of the fourteenth century, and
even earlier” (130–31).

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The book closes with a commentary on the four qualities of Thomist
method, enumerated by cardinal Georges Cottier, O.P.—confidence in
reason, the courage of the truth, the truth of things, and wisdom—as
providing “guidance for the one who would learn from the Thomist
tradition” (137).
In this modest introductory text, Father Cessario, who is to be lauded
for his many contributions to the history and vitality of the Thomist tradition,6 and Father Cuddy have done the Thomist community an enormous
and groundbreaking service in at least three respects. The newcomers will
find an engaging portrait of the single most important philosophical and
theological tradition—a tradition that does not distort the original by
accommodating it to the passing currents of thought, but rather exhibits the forcefulness of a life of the mind, led in the search of truth and
holiness. The Thomist community now possesses the intellectual and
motivational foundations to investigate in a comprehensive way the unity
of the Thomist tradition. Evidently, such a large-scale project faces many
challenges, but the authors have opened up the horizon (Summa theologiae
I-II, q. 58, a. 5, ad 1: ratio, secundum quod est apprehensiva finis, praecedit
appetitum finis—“reason, insofar as it apprehends the end, precedes the
appetite for the end”). The Dominican community will find in this book a
new stimulus for engaging St. Thomas Aquinas and his Summa theologiae
as the normative source for doing theology within the order, as well as for
exploring the specifically Dominican imprint on the history of Thomism, given that the spirit of the religious order to which Aquinas himself
belonged has shaped significantly the reception and development of his
thought, as Father Cessario and Father Cuddy amply illustrate.
N&V
Jörgen Vijgen
Tiltenberg Major Seminary
Vogelenzang, NL

		See, in particular: Jean Capreolus en son temps (1380–1444), ed. Guy Bedouelle,
Romanus Cessario, and Kevin White (Paris: Cerf, 1997); John Capreolus (13801444): Treatise on the Virtues , trans. Kevin White and Romanus Cessario (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001); Cessario, A Short
History of Thomism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2001),
and many of his articles in Theology and Sanctity.

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