et Vetera Nova Winter 2020 • Volume 18, 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 Book Review Editor James Merrick, Franciscan University of Steubenville 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, University of Dallas 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., Ave Maria University 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 the Editors within ten days of receipt. Corrections should be confined to typographical and factual errors. 5. Submission of a manuscript entails the author’s agreement (in the event his or her contribution is accepted for publication) to assign the copyright to Nova et Vetera. Nova et Vetera The English Edition of the International Theological Journal ISSN 1542-7315 Winter 2020 Vol. 18, No. 1 Commentary On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 1 Symposium: Catholicism and Secularization The One Who Is; the One Who Gives: Derrida, Aquinas, and the Dilemma of the Divine Generosity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bishop Robert Barron On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum. . . . . . . . . . Thomas Pfau Philosophical Myths of the End.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judith Wolfe 15 29 55 Articles Ars Christiane Philosophandi: John Paul II and Jacques Maritain on Christian Philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew DuBroy Paleae: A Clarifying Look at the Meaning of Saint Thomas’s Final Words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Samuel Klumpenhouwer The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense: Ambroise Gardeil, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Yves Congar, and the Modern Magisterium. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Guy Mansini, O.S.B. Incarnational “Intrinsicism”: Matthias Scheeben’s Biblical Theology of Grace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? Lawrence Dewan and De veritate, Question 1, Article 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nelson Ramirez The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae: The Action of the Holy Spirit at the Heart of Moral Theology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anton M. ten Klooster The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity according to St. Thomas Aquinas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barrett H. Turner 67 103 111 139 161 179 201 Symposium: Retrieving Veritatis Splendor Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mariusz Biliniewicz The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life: The Influence of Pope Saint Paul VI on Veritatis Splendor.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Renée Köhler-Ryan 237 255 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Helenka Mannering Catholic or Utopian? Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral “Ideals” in Veritatis Splendor . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christian Stephens 279 295 Book Reviews Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church by Matthew Levering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Baptist Ku, O.P. The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in Aquinas by Anthony T. Flood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John M. Meinert Paul’s “Works of the Law” in the Perspective of Second Century Reception by Matthew J. Thomas.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Curtis J. Mitch Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives edited by Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Whidden 313 322 326 331 The English edition of Nova et Vetera is published quarterly and provides an international forum for theological and philosophical studies from a Thomistic perspective. Founded in 1926 by future Cardinal Charles Journet in association with Jacques Maritain, Nova et Vetera is published in related, distinct French and English editions. The English edition of Nova et Vetera welcomes articles and book reviews in theology, philosophy, and biblical studies that address central contemporary debates and discussions. We seek to be “at the heart of the Church,” faithful to the Magisterium and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and devoted to the work of true dialogue. Nova et Vetera (ISSN 1542-7315; ISBN 978-1-64585-022-9) is published quarterly by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. Nova et Vetera is distributed to institutional subscribers for the St. Paul Center by the Catholic University of America Press. Institutional subscriptions, notifications of change of address, and inquiries concerning subscriptions, back issues, and missing copies should be sent to: JHUP Journals Division, PO Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966. 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I would like to speak in this essay about each of these, internal to a historical narrative. The first part of the narrative begins in the Reformation and the second in our own time. Each is about crisis in the priesthood, and they come together in the consideration of the sanctification of the priesthood, for our own historical moment. I “To say this is to construct a new [and different] Church, [distinct from the Church of Jesus Christ]” (“Hoc enim est novam ecclesiam construere”). These words were spoken by Thomas de Vio Cajetan in October of 1518, in the course of public debate with the young Martin Luther, at a time when the Augustinian monk was still in communion with the Catholic Church. Earlier that year Pope Leo X had sent Cajetan as his representative from Rome to the Diet of Augburg, from which he was dispatched for theological dispute with the aspiring Reformer. Cajetan at the time was the Master of the Dominican Order, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, and archbishop of Palermo. He was a vocal promoter of reform within with the clergy and the curia, advocating for clerical asceticism and learning, himself pioneering early-modern commentary on Aquinas, while also favoring the emergence of Renaissance biblical This essay was read at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas, Angelicum, in Rome on March 10, 2019, for the first Fr. Val McInnes Chair Annual Lecture. 1 2 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. studies. He and Luther shared a common concern for the reform of the Church. The debate took place on October 12–15, approximately one year after Luther’s promulgation of ninety-five theses, and two years before the publication of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which was to mark a more definitive break with Rome. The subject under discussion was the so-called power of the keys. How is it that the forgiveness of God is commuted to a penitent through the sacrament of confession? Does this depend upon the apostolic authority of the pope and the episcopacy as well as the juridical delegation of a priest who grants absolution? It was no accident that Luther raised radical questions on this front. Behind this specifically sacramental question stands a more fundamental issue of authority and the Church. Does God give grace to us through the descending mediations of the Church, and if so, how? As Cajetan saw at the time, the treatment of apostolic authority in one domain carries over logically into others. How one treats the sacrament of reconciliation touches immediately in turn upon such topics as the perennial truth of Catholic dogma (defined by the authority of the Church), the nature and number of the sacraments, and the nature of apostolic succession. In their debate with one another, Luther and Cajetan elaborated two vastly divergent visions of Christianity which anticipated developments in early modernity. Christendom stood in the balance. Luther for his part is finding his way in this early text toward the notion that justification occurs by faith alone, apart from works of the law or any mediations of sacramental agency. He claims against Cajetan that the classical tripartite of sacramental confession of sins, contrition, and ensuing satisfaction are not sufficient to procure forgiveness in Christ except insofar as they are accompanied by the penitent’s inward act of faith in Christ, as well as—significantly—the subjective certitude that the sins which are being confessed have been definitively forgiven. He goes so far as to say that in the absence of certitude in my particular salvation by Christ for these sins, the sacrament leads not to salvation but condemnation. What is noteworthy about this, in context, is that there is no priestly mediation of the forgiveness of sins. The subject’s interior judgment of his own righteousness before God by grace is the determining condition for the reception of grace, prior to and in a sense apart from any external rites and ecclesial measures of evaluation. Furthermore the individual sincerity of the subject in the act of faith is sufficient proof of the spiritual authenticity of the person before God. Luther would later stipulate: A penitent’s confession of sins to another person serves merely as a cathartic external occasion to formulate an internal act of repentance and receive vocal confirmation On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood 3 from another of the forgiveness that comes from Christ alone. In his mature period Luther would famously claim that justification by faith alone is the article on which the Church stands or falls. Indeed, as Yves Congar pointed out, significant ecclesiological consequences stem directly from Luther’s powerful idea. For if Christ is related directly to each individual by the gift of righteousness mediated only through the subject’s personal conscience, when reading Scripture, then the hierarchy of mediations is abolished in a twofold way. The believer does not depend on sacramental mediations to obtain justification by faith. Even baptism, for Luther, serves as the outward evidence and seal of election, but need not be understood as the instrumental cause of the grace of faith. And indeed there are no sacraments of ordination or penance as classically understood in the Catholic tradition. Secondly, there is no direct dependence on antecedent teaching tradition. It is Scripture alone that guarantees the believer’s cognitive encounter with God. Councils of the Catholic Church are considered merely fallible reflections of preceding generations, of potentially varying worth. It follows from all this of course that there exists no apostolic, papal, or episcopal jurisdiction of the visible Church as a condition for one’s integration into the spiritual communion of the body of Christ. The life of the Church is identified essentially with the invisible communion of the predestined, not the visible political society of the Catholic faithful. Luther’s theology was a response to what was widely perceived in his own era as a profound crisis in the Church, a crisis of faith in Catholic teaching and sacramental practice, and a crisis of priestly witness of life, affected by corruption of morays among the clergy, including in the episcopacy. Luther’s response was simple, if radical: do away entirely with the priestly vocation as traditionally understood. In the face of priestly scandal one option is simply to reject the medieval structures of mediation that the Church has always claimed are of apostolic origin. Luther’s brilliance as a theologian is matched by the consequential character of his thought, for in effect, along with Zwingli and Calvin, he created the conditions of a new age, one in which the individual, in his religious conscience, is the primary mediator of truth and grace. The modern era of the liberal subject who is free from dependence on the mediation of preexistent religious institutions is hard to envisage without the anticipation of the Reformation. Immanuel Kant was a self-consciously secular moralist who sought to renegotiate the sense of his Lutheran roots. He nonetheless maintained an essential emphasis on the immediate access of the internal conscience to the procurement of the conditions of ethical righteousness. For the procedural liberalism to which his thought has given rise, each individual 4 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. is responsible for the construal of his own evaluation of meaning and value, without dependence on preceding standards of nature, tradition, or any religious institution. Personal self-evaluation and inward moral sincerity are the primary means by which one attains genuine authenticity. Some today have argued that the primacy of the internal forum in Protestant life has given way to the secular culture of private judgment and the Lutheran option of a merely therapeutic confession of sins has given way to the culture of psychological therapies, no longer connected with traditional Christianity. Luther might abhor aspects of our secular liberal world, but his theology also helped inadvertently to create it. And indeed the cultural vitality of contemporary liberalism is quite powerful even today, especially in countries that were formerly Protestant. Let us return to the debate of 1518 and its other interlocutor. For Cajetan, the essential mediations of the Church are of divine institution and apostolic origin. The episcopal authority of the Church has its source in the community of the New Testament. Christ instituted the seven sacraments. The visible Eucharistic communion of the Church is a perpetual source of grace for believers, not merely a sign of the invisible activity of God.2 Cajetan argues against Luther that faith alone is not sufficient for union with God. Theological hope and love are also necessary. The Church is a communion in the authentic love of God. Here we find an echo of Aquinas on justification, one that also prefigures the later teaching of the Council of Trent. Justification occurs by grace, not natural human works, but grace is at work in us by way of faith, hope, and love. At the same time, for Cajetan, private judgments of our subjective self-estimation are fallible. We cannot be certain that we effectively love God. We can only form a practical judgment of this based on prudence. Consequently, we need to In responding to Luther, Cajetan first seeks to mark out a clear distinction between the infused faith of the theological virtues and merely human psychological confidence in one’s own personal integrity as a Christian. Supernatural faith provides us with the certitude that Christ forgives sins by means of the sacrament of reconciliation which he himself has instituted. Psychological confidence stems from the judgment we make as to whether we have approached the sacrament with requisite interior dispositions. The fact that I might doubt the quality of my contrition need not belie the presence of grace. We can after all have firm trust in the power of the sacrament while being uncertain about the perfection of our interior inclinations, or the quality of our subjective contrition. Or we could have sincere confidence in our own fiduciary righteousness while in fact standing in moral and theological error. Cajetan is identifying here a basic distinction between truth and sincerity. To transpose to a contemporary idiom: Modern liberal sincerity is not a reliable guide to moral authenticity. 2 On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood 5 refer ourselves to external references of the Church’s teaching regarding the Christian life and the natural law. By consulting the teaching and practice of the Church we acquire practical certitude over time that we are living effectively with God, by recourse to the sacraments, and the disciplines of the spiritual life. Here the individual acquires moral authenticity by referring himself to the institutions and authorities of the preexisting Catholic community. Cajetan’s vision of confession of course also has implications for ecclesiology. The Scriptures are read and interpreted rightly within the context of sacred Tradition and infallible dogmatic pronouncements. The Church is able to identify the spiritual customs of the Gospel as objective standards of human sanctification (i.e., in the canonization of saints), and these are not determined by the private interpretations of individuals or sectarian movements. Grace is given to us through the objective mediations of the Church, notably her sacraments. If Luther is indirectly making room for the conditions of modern life without dependency on Catholic mediations, Cajetan is articulating a modern Catholic vision of reform through the self-conscious, disciplined re-appropriation of Tradition, in an age of intense ideological conflict and cultural fracturing. The modern world has turned out to be one of secular contestation of the Catholic Tradition in many respects, but also of irremediable ideological pluralism. In that space, the Church and the priesthood have thrived where there has been a discernment of what is essential to the life of the Church, a preservation of this life in estuaries of sanctification and learning, and a coherent missionary witness to the mystery of Christ in the context of new circumstances. One characteristic of priestly sanctification then, entails the taking of responsibility for the authentic transmission of the sacred mediations of the Church. In short, the priesthood is renewed in holiness when its members convey the integral teaching of the Church compassionately, eloquently, and effectively and celebrate the sacraments of the Church in a worthy and sublime way. Numerous major priestly initiatives would emerge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that would seek to take renewed responsibility for the mediations of the Church, her sacramental life, and the teaching of sound doctrine in accord with a life of priestly holiness: the seminary of Charles Borromeo, the founding of the Oratorians, the vast and consequential work of the Society of Jesus, and the extraordinary work of the Vincentians and Sulpicians. This is only to name some of the sacerdotal organizations, without forgetting the contribution of the Ursulines, Carmelites and other major early modern religious orders of women both active and contemplative. The paradox of the counter-Reformation was 6 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. that there was a co-existence of death and fecundity. In a moment of crisis it is essential to create estuaries of sanctification, where the learned transmission of the faith is maintained as allied with authentic love of Christ, devoted service of God, a societal cultivation of virtue, and a missionary spirit. If the priesthood is in crisis in our time, it is in part because we have failed in some sectors of the Church to believe sufficiently in the objective mediations of the Church and the organic life of institutions required for the transmission of the priestly vocation. Cajetan himself was a person of profound cultural invention, writing modern commentaries on Scripture, engaging in controversies of the day, interpreting Aquinas to speak to his own epoch, so as to bring the riches of the past into the age of the Renaissance, and he did all this within his own religious order in an effective way. He also did so in such a way as to anticipate the later forward-thinking work of his Dominican colleague St. Pius V. Today we could do worse than to imitate their example. II The most significant secular and religious disputes of our own age are not about sacramental confession; in fact, they are about human sexuality. Luther saw that the forgiveness of sins constituted symbolically the neuralgic point of his medieval civilization and asked the key question of his age, “How can I find a gracious God?” However, for our contemporaries, the symbolic locus of controversy is the human body and the core question is: “How can I enact my freedom, and therefore achieve genuine autonomy, in and through my sexual life?” In our own age, it seems that sex has become the symbolic medium that both evokes and depicts our concept of individual autonomy and self-determination. Why is that the case? Aquinas notes three significant and relevant things about human sexuality. First, it naturally leads to the generation and social education of children. Consequently, it inevitably has a political and a religious dimension. It is the family that procreates and educates children and that therefore replenishes society and builds up the common good. Likewise, God creates the human spiritual soul of each individual human being, which is the basic reason why we treat the life and death of human beings differently from those of other animals. Consequently, the use of the sexual powers inevitably borders upon the domain of the sacred. How we relate to our own human sexuality in its openness to life is always bound up with how we relate to the divine, and vice versa. Second, Aquinas notes that sexuality is the human activity that produces the greatest pleasure in the sensible domain. It provides a psychological catharsis, then, that can readily prove addictive and render human beings dependent. By this very On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood 7 fact it also can create intense bonds of attachment between persons or lead persons to seriously mistreat one another or betray one another in the pursuit of pleasure. Consequently, there exists a perpetual challenge of the human community to orient the search for pleasure under, within, and for the rational pursuit of other human goods, including the life of the family and human justice, so that sexual activity contributes to the spiritual maturation of persons and the common life of society, in friendship with God. Third, and perhaps most mysteriously, Aquinas notes that the search for sexual pleasure apart from and independently of the goods of marriage leads almost immediately to alienation from God and sacred things, for individual persons and societies at large, as human beings seek solace from human companionship and sensible pleasures divorced from the religious and familial ends of sexuality. The human inclination toward reproductive coupling and parenthood remains ineradicably inscribed in each human person, but it is resistible. Consequently, our desire for reproduction and parenthood can become a neuralgic domain that evokes profound inner conflict with our own deepest desires for happiness, and social tensions can emerge from those frustrated desires, tensions that are in part about religion. When people seek the communion that sexuality portends or promises outside of the reproductive family unit, they tend to do so in ways that are cut off from the context in which those promises can actually be delivered. We might speak here of a frustrated search for transcendence, often undertaken in ways that lead to anti-religious antipathies. Let us now add another consideration, one taken from our own era, not from Aquinas. We can readily observe that a unique relationship has developed in the wake of the sexual revolution between modern technology, human sexuality, and personal autonomy. The modern liberal person understands her or his own sexual identity especially in the wake of the technological innovation of modern contraception. My claim here is not so much a moral one as an anthropological one. Mainstream secular feminism, for example, takes it to be axiomatic that for women to be socially and politically free and self-determining, natural fertility must be rendered optional technologically. Philosophically speaking this is a claim that is significant, historically innovative, radical (in the etymological sense of the term), and entirely philosophically questionable. But it goes largely unstudied. Instead, the effective practice of separation of sexuality from reproduction is taken for granted and has given rise to a culture that is continuously seeking to renegotiate the boundaries of autonomy in relation to sexual identity. Why, for example, has active homosexuality become such a significant political symbol of secular self-determination for the denizens of contemporary liberal culture? Presumably because in 8 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. the wake of the sexual revolution all sexual activity has been redefined according to a new ethic as moral sexuality just to the extent that it is concerned with the freely agreed upon pursuit of pleasure and companionship between mutually consenting persons. In short, if there is consensual pursuit of pleasure, sexual activity is sufficiently morally justified. Perhaps more profoundly, it is ethical precisely to the extent that it serves to facilitate the exploration and therefore the augmentation of basic human freedom. It is good because it makes people freer. In other words, the culture in which previous taboos are transcended is also the culture in which human freedom is continually augmented. If we follow this line of thinking then the profound cultural shift on same-sex marriage in Western culture in so short an amount of time makes sense as a kind of wide-scale cultural conversion to a new moral calculus. Its widespread acceptance has come to function practically in our culture as a litmus test for the ethical terms of engagement in liberal society at large. To be in favor of it is to be in favor of this new ethics, and even in a sense a new and better way of being human, a new ontology of human liberal freedom. There is coherence here with the aims of the transgender movement. Its advocates readily concede that human beings are truly biologically male or female, organically speaking, and are not naïve about this. But this is only a physiological “given” inherited at birth. Human beings retain the freedom to consign their biological condition to new purposes based on their psychological wishes or needs and in view of the realization of their own greater moral autonomy and theoretical view of the world. The respect of another to redefine his or her sexual identity is the sign of an ascendant freedom that is prophetic in character, indicative of a forward march of history. And so, logically, the freedom to redefine one’s bodily identity is essential to the very social contract of liberal political culture. You can choose your own sex as an expression of your own freedom. But then those who deem this act of self-redefinition contrary to the common good and the natural law are themselves opponents of the very principles of political life under modern conditions. They are, in short, enemies of the common good because they are the enemies of freedom. Analogous things can be said about artificial reproduction technologies, genetic manipulation of human embryos, and abortion. These are all litmus-test areas of symbolic import, because they are frontiers of human autonomy with regard to sexuality that modern technology affords. If we refer back to Aquinas’s analysis, we might say that the de-sacralization of sexuality and the denial of natural finalities lead, by a kind of inexorable logic, toward the framing of human reproduction in artificial terms, literally as a subject of artistic creativity, meant to expand the range On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood 9 of human options in confrontation with our nature’s physical limitations. Basically the body is given as a kind of material substructure we can and indeed must refashion in accord with our own desires. III The symbolic cases of controversy regarding sexuality and human liberation are not external to the culture of the Catholic Church. Today Cajetan would find himself debating not so much with Martin Luther as with Michel Foucault or Jacques Lacan. The controversies of our age obviously affect the laity directly, with regard to neuralgic areas of marriage, cohabitation, and contraception, but clerical culture is affected in particular by the scandals of sexual abuse of minors or adults. The Church’s great difficulty in responding justly to poignant cases of priestly misconduct appears to her secular critics to belie her insistence on social justice and chaste temperance in other domains. A kind of performative contradiction results. An analogy exists to the misuse of indulgences in the sixteenth century. We have moved from clerical power and money to clerical power and sexual abuse. Luther claimed that under such circumstance the Church could not convey an effective witness to the mercy of God. Today we could ask: Can the Church convey a plausible witness to the clerical love of God and of justice toward one’s neighbor? But also behind this, does the Church truly have a plausible vision of human sexual freedom, or in fact, is the secular liberal model of sexual ethics more realistic, precisely because it is so modest? After all it requires nothing more than the mutual consent of adults and need not have any reference to the common good of society or the family. From this issues the question not of “how can I find a gracious God?,” but “what are the authentic conditions in which human freedom flourishes, particularly with regard to human sexuality?” And here we touch upon a more fundamental question that is neuralgic to our liberal epoch, and that the priesthood has to help us answer today if it is to address secular persons of our own age and help resolve our age’s own internal crisis, which can be stated in this question: “What is our human autonomy for?” It is not an accident that the culture of autonomy so characteristic of our secular age is marked by an ambient materialism that appeals to the natural sciences, so as to argue that human consciousness evolved as a mere accident of evolution. This contemporary ontology of “original purposelessness” proclaims the primal vanity of human freedom as a mere metaphysical aberration that emerged by chance. Deep down what we call freedom is nothing but a space that opens up within the interaction of atomic forces. It has no real significance. But paradoxically this nihilistic intuition assures the primacy of autonomy, unhindered by any reference to 10 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. necessary purposes or ends, especially those that would correspond with a divine wisdom. After all, in a meaningless universe, no one should be able to tell me what to do. So what does a Catholic reformation look like in our own era, after the revolutions of the 1960s? Modern Catholic sexuality is going to be different from pre-modern Catholic sexuality, but perhaps not in the way some might think. It is going to be different not because of a fundamental change in the Church’s teaching regarding human nature, but because the modern Catholic choice of the natural and of the human body is now going to exist in the face of contestation and in the midst of differentiated social ideologies. Paradoxically, the Catholic couple who today follow the teachings of the Church signal an autonomy of freedom, in fact, not a conformity to conventions, and in that sense are characteristically modern while being deeply Catholic witnesses to the nature of marriage, the human body, and its ethical purposes. The couple that chooses freely to act chastely before and within marriage, or wed in sacramental matrimony, do so not due to the force of social pressures restraining their freedom, but by a free assimilation of the natural ends of marriage in view of a countercultural choice. Their choice is natural but also a decision marked by very profound autonomy in the face of alternative options. But what about the priesthood and human freedom? How can Catholic priests today promote an understanding of the real purposes of human freedom, in a culture threatened by materialism, blind consumerism, and vague intuitions of cosmic purposelessness? They can do so precisely by bearing witness to the primacy of the love of God as the purpose of human freedom, in the celibate consecration of themselves to Christ. In doing so they also bear witness to the reality of God as the true horizon of human meaning, one that surpasses the domain of sensuality, entertainment, consumption, and politics. Aquinas has an interesting theory for why priests fittingly should be celibate. He does not refer to the utility to the Church, or the selflessness the practice is meant to instill, or even the growth in charity that the sacrifice of a family might entail. Instead he refers to contemplation. The priest is celibate so that he can exist for the contemplation and study of the truth about God, for loving prayer to God, and for the communication of the truth about God to others. In short, the priest exists as a symbolic referent to God, to the fact that our human freedom exists ultimately for God. This theory, which has its remote origins in Western monastic views of the clergy, would be questioned by many today, including some within the episcopacy. But it has a suggestive relevance in our own historical moment. What if the human being can exist freely for something ultimate On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood 11 that transcends the life of the senses as such? Then the materialist idea of a purposeless human existence is false. What if the drive toward human sexual exploration is relative to a deeper drive toward religious exploration and the discovery of God in his transcendence, as the deepest sense of liberation for the human person? In that case, our freedom to love is first and foremost a freedom for God, made possible by the grace of Christ. The witness of celibate consecration to the truth stands as a visible indication of the possibility of genuine hierarchical priorities, grounded in the real nature of things. If God alone is first, everything else is second, and only when it is understood as second does it acquire its genuine meaning and plenary innate value. This is true of our human sexuality as well, which in its domains—both sacred and profane—is rightly lived out as free human sexuality only when it is oriented toward and within the acceptance of God. We should note how all this ties in with the vindication of the sacramental mediations. If priestly consecration signals to the world that God is first, then it is also a fitting sign that the sacraments that the priest celebrates are true instruments of grace that derive from the invisible God, visible signs of the active presence of God, loci of holiness manifest in our world. The priest who celebrates the sacraments worthily does so in loving devotion to God. When the priest truly loves God in his own personal life, his celebration of the sacraments is a more effective manifestation of the presence and activity of Jesus Christ in our world. When Aquinas talks about the essential features of priestly holiness, he notes at least four. First, the priest is ordained sacramentally by a bishop of the Catholic Church, and in doing so receives from God the grace of his state of life. The ordination stems from outside but in some way changes the being of the priest from within, by the character of ordination, so that the priest is made capable of serving the Church in his whole being. The principle way this occurs is through the celebration of the sacraments and the sacrifice of the Mass. If the priest does what the Church intends while being in a state of grace and friendship with God, then he is sanctified qua priest. It is precisely in this office and its works that he is invited to a life of sanctification. Second, then, to be holy, the priest must live in a state of grace and orient his own life freely and effectively toward God by means of faith, hope, and charity, as well as the moral virtues, including justice and temperance. It is in this second registry that we can locate the primacy of contemplation, a life oriented toward God where everything else is brought into perspective and integration, relative to the absolute. Third, the priest has to have prudence not only for himself, but also for others, so as to counsel others well, especially the laity but also religious and other priests, in view of their respective end in God. It is not enough 12 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. to be personally devoted to God. An effectively holy priest has to be able to give advice and make reasonable evangelical decisions with and for others, so that they progressively learn and are effectively encouraged to offer their lives to God with practical wisdom. Finally, the priest must be instructed in sacred doctrine and sound philosophical understanding about the human condition. He must not only know the truth and be able to live for it, but also be able to speak the truth and explain it to the faithful and to take some responsibility for the wider process of the transmission of divine revelation in the life of society. I hope my conclusion is clear. Priests today have to witness to the fact that human freedom has final purposes. In effect, the core error of our age is not about the sacramental mediation of grace, but about human freedom and the heresy of aimlessness. Our secular academic culture is increasingly merely pragmatic, transitioning from an era of the Enlightenment humanities to one of modern technological bureaucracy and international commerce. The speculative horizon of human wisdom is shrinking while the practical aims of modern technological culture are expanding. This dynamic only augments the drama of human freedom and intensifies the question of why we exist at all, a question our secular contemporaries are hard pressed to answer. In this context, even with all its contemporary miseries, the Catholic priesthood is of essential importance as a witness to the truth. By his ordination, the priest is a visible sign that the mediation of Christ is present and active in the world, in the sacramental economy of the Church and the visible society of the faithful. By the integrity of his life ordered toward God, the priest conveys the existential and concrete message that one can truly live for God alone above and before all else. By his counsel to others, the priest teaches people how to orient their lives effectively to God in the midst of a dizzying array of human complexities. By his teaching the mystery of Christ and the doctrine of the Church, the priest recalls the final destiny of the human person, created in view of the life of grace in this world and the vision of God in the next. In all these ways, the priest stands as a sign of contradiction against the dignitaries of secularism who promote the false notion that human freedom exists for merely temporal purposes or arbitrary ends. The freedom of the priest to exist for the truth and grace of Christ is itself a source of principal witness amidst the confusions of history, so that human beings may discover the absolute truth about God, and in that truth acquire safe passage toward God as the authentic homeland of their being, now and for eternity. On the Sanctification of the Catholic Priesthood 13 IV For the Christian, of course, human freedom finds its most perfect expression in Christ himself, the Son of God, a human being who was most perfectly human and perfectly divine. The human desires and intentions of Christ are irradiated with transcendent significance, and expressive of his divine identity, in which he is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The original mediator between God and man is Jesus Christ. Mediation is in the DNA of the Catholic Church because she teaches that Christ himself merited our salvation as the great high priest, and freely instituted the apostolic hierarchy and the seven sacraments, so that we could live in union with him. He sent the Holy Spirit into the world to sanctify the Church and actively safeguard the apostolic deposit of faith that descends from the first era of the Church down to our own time. It follows from all this that, when the priesthood is on trial, in a derivative way, it is our acceptance of Christ himself that is at stake. It also follows that the Catholic priesthood can and cannot fail, each in important ways. It can fail because the image of Christ that is meant to be impressed on the soul of each priest can be obscured, in more minor or extremely serious ways, by the absence of justice, chastity, wisdom, holiness, or zeal in the life a given person. But by another measure it also cannot fail, since Christ sustains the mystery of the sacramental priesthood in being within the Church in every age, so as to remain the one true mediator of all grace, within, amidst, and despite the poverty of his human servants. By his preservation of the infallible truth of the Catholic faith, and by his action in sacramental mysteries over and above human failings, he is always alive, present, and active. The resplendence of Jesus cannot be completely concealed, as his excellence and holiness continue to shine forth in the midst of all things, and through all things, safeguarding our encounter with Christ. Jesus continues to raise up holy priests. He calls poor human beings in every age to be conformed effectively to himself, despite their human weaknesses. Peter is archetypal, crucified upside down, a paradoxical inversion of Christ, unworthy to imitate him but still bearing witness to his Master, mediating truth to the world, drowning in his blood. The Cross is a living tree, putting out shoots and runners, moving men from within, in each age, to become priests. By its effect Christian freedom flowers in all its splendor and beauty, as the love of Christ crucified, and as the contemplation of the truth, even in our own era, and also here in this estuary of the truth. So that we in the Catholic Church may speak to Christ alone those words that Cajetan uttered in another context in 1518: “Herein you N&V are constructing a new Church.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 15–28 15 The One Who Is; the One Who Gives: Derrida, Aquinas, and the Dilemma of the Divine Generosity Bishop Robert Barron Archdiocese of Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA It is a favorite technique of those trained in the Derridean deconstructionist method to find a loose thread—an anomaly, a contradiction, an unresolved tension—in even the most venerable philosophical weave and then to pull on it until the fabric comes undone. A prime example of this is the way a number of postmodern thinkers, including Jacques Derrida himself, tugged on the thread of the aporia (or dilemma) of the gift in order to problematize central claims of the religious traditions.1 I would like to turn the tables on the postmodern philosophers by using their own method, pulling the loose thread of their very critique of the aporia of the gift. For it is my contention that their analysis of the anomalies within the idea of giftedness can actually serve to clarify what stands distinctively at the heart of the Christian spiritual and philosophical tradition. I will use the texts of Saint Thomas Aquinas to make my argument. The Aporia of the Gift The postmodern preoccupation with the theme of the gift founds its roots in the sociological work of the French thinker Marcel Mauss. In his studies of primal peoples, Mauss uncovered the dynamics of an economy of exchange, whereby the giving of a gift by one tribal chief would prompt in his rival an answering gift, lest the latter be shamed by the former.2 See Jacques Derrida, Given Time, vol. 1. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Knauf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Derrida, Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993). 2 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Expanded Edition, trans. Jane I. Guyer (Chicago: Hau 1 16 Bishop Robert Barron Émile Benveniste engaged in similar research, which revealed that, in some cultures, one act of hospitality would awaken in the one who received it an act of even more extravagant hospitality, which would in turn compel the original giver to give even more generously, until the two communities essentially ruined one another through a kind of mutual shaming. This is why Benveniste could playfully suggest an etymological link between “hospitality” and the Latin word hostis (enemy).3 In texts such as Given Time and Aporias, Derrida elaborates upon this phenomenon in a more strictly philosophical vein. It appears, he says, that the first condition of the authentic gift is that it is offered without consideration of compensation. Were strings attached to a present that I have made, one would be hard-pressed to refer to it as a true gift. Indeed, were I to receive such a present, I would not feel gratified and grateful, but manipulated. Even a gift as seemingly uncomplicated as a birthday present from a relative carries with it at least the implicit obligation of writing a thank-you note as compensation. Anyone who has ever had the exquisitely awkward experience of confronting a person who plaintively and resentfully observes, “I hope you received the gift I gave you,” feels the force of this demand. The second fundamental condition for the possibility of a gift is presence, that is to say, the appearance of the gift qua gift. If some boon appeared simply out of the blue, with no indication as to its provenance, one might consider it luck or good fortune, but one would hardly call it a gift, except in the most blandly metaphorical sense. Derrida argues that, once we acknowledge these two indispensable conditions, it is difficult to see how a true gift is even possible, for the moment something appears qua gift, it would seem, necessarily, to awaken in the recipient the need to reciprocate. Precisely as a present, a gift can never be free, and in order to be free, it cannot be present. On this score, Derrida rejoices in the delicious link between the English “gift” and the German “Gift,” designating poison: the need for a response or reciprocation poisons the waters, so to speak, of the pure gift. Finally, any gift is noxious for both giver and receiver, since it locks both into a mutually destructive economy of exchange. Now, the full exploration of this motif in the postmoderns would take us way too far afield, but for our purposes, it might be worthwhile to note some troubling implications for the classical Christian tradition, for which the notions of gift and grace are obviously so crucial. It is elemental Books, 2016), 55–75, 85–87, 113–17, 120, 121–30, 144. Émile Benveniste, Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society, trans. Elizabeth Palmer (Chicago: Hau Books, 2016), 46–47, 61, 66–67, 70–71. 3 The One Who Is; the One Who Gives 17 for Christian philosophy and theology, and perhaps from the Derridean perspective most problematically, that worship is an act of thanksgiving, an obligation to return to God what God has given. That Derrida himself was aware that the aporia of the gift poses problems for Christianity in particular is made manifest in his insistence that the only kind of messianism that is viable is a messianism without a messiah, that is to say, an expectation of a divine gift that never really arrives. His famous characterization of deconstruction as the attitude of “viens, oui, oui!” is conditioned by the assurance that the definitive Other, the final answer to our longing, never actually comes.4 God as Giver of Gifts Far from undermining central claims of Christianity, the Derridean dilemma provides, in fact, a route of access to understanding central Christian mysteries more fully. It serves, if you will, as the grit in the oyster around which the pearl forms—and Thomas Aquinas helps us to appreciate this. Indeed, the term “gift” (donum) and its variants appear 1,756 times in the writings of Saint Thomas.5 As we shall see anon, the word turns up with special frequency in regard to the Holy Spirit, but another particularly prominent context for its usage is Aquinas’s discussion of creation, wherein God is typically characterized as the one who dat esse (gives being). What I shall endeavor to show first is that, granted the Derridean prerequisites of presence and utter gratuitousness, the truest gift possible is that which comes from God in the act of creation. Though these issues are broached frequently in Thomas’s writing, perhaps the clearest and most succinct presentation is found in a text from the very beginning of the master’s career, composed in the early 1250s, namely, the De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence). The young Aquinas uses the distinction between essence and existence to clarify both the nature of God and the unique relationship that obtains between the infinite God and finite things. In chapter 4 of the De ente et essentia, Thomas proves the reality of the distinction between the two principles through a sort of thought experiment. It is altogether possible, he says, to consider a quidditas apart from the actual existence of the essence under Jacques Derrida, Parages (Paris: Galilée, 1986), 116; cited in John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 100. English translation edited by John P. Leavey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). 5 Determined using Index Thomisticus search engine found at www.corpusthomisticum.org/it/index.age. 4 18 Bishop Robert Barron consideration.6 One can think, he suggests, of the nature of a phoenix, even though no such animal exists.7 Putting the matter in an even broader context, we can notice the demarcation in the very fact that nothing in our immediate experience has to exist, that nothing in the world, in a word, possesses a nature that requires actual existence. Now, in regard to those things in which this real metaphysical distinction obtains, we must look for an extrinsic cause, or to state the matter a bit differently, for an agent that effected the juxtaposition of essence and existence, some cause that actualized this particular potentiality toward being. Following a logical rhythm familiar from many of his later writings, the young Thomas argues that this extrinsic cause is either self-explanatory or itself derived from a cause extrinsic to its nature.8 Because a series of caused causes, subordinated per se, cannot proceed infinitely, we must arrive finally at some reality whose nature is to be, in whom essence and existence coincide, and who is, therefore, responsible for the being of any and all things in whom essence and existence are distinct. This unconditioned reality, Thomas continues, can only be characterized as actus purus (“pure actuality”).9 By definition, this being cannot be limited by either an extrinsic cause or an intrinsic principle.10 Anything marked by the play between essence and existence could be further actualized, rendered more perfect, but the reality in whom essence and existence coincide could not possibly be “improved” in any way or more fully realized. Nothing could add to its being; it could benefit from no ontological gift. It is this utterly distinctive and strange source of finite existence that thoughtful people call God. What does this analysis tell us about the creaturely mode of existence? Here I would like to turn to the great texts on creation in both the Summa theologiae and the disputed question De potentia (On the Power of God). From the essence–existence (esse) distinction Thomas draws the logical conclusion that the coming-to-be of finite things must be continual and ex nihilo.11 Since nothing in the nature of a creature requires it to be, its ongoing existence must be the result of the continual influence of the one Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia, ch. 4, no. 3, in On Being and Essence, trans. Armand Maurer, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, 1968), 53. 7 Aquinas, De ente et essentia, ch. 4, no. 6 (p. 55). 8 Aquinas, De ente et essentia, ch. 4, no. 7 (p. 56). 9 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 9, a. 1. 10 Aquinas, De ente et essentia, ch. 4, nos. 6–7 (pp. 55–57). 11 Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1952), q. 3, a. 3, ad 6. 6 The One Who Is; the One Who Gives 19 in whom essence and existence come together. Moreover, since the entirety of the creature’s being is dependent, the creative act by which it is sustained must be distinguished from all forms of making, or fashioning from something. God does not shape anything preexistent to form a creature.12 Similarly, creation is not a type of motion, since it involves no transition from potency to act; nor is it a temporal act, since time is the measure of motion. In De potentia, Thomas gives this rather apophatic description of creation: “realiter quam relatio quaedam ad Deum cum novitiate essendi [a relation of the creature to the Creator together with a beginning of existence with the newness of being].”13 He is using the familiar Aristotelian category of relation, but, as is his wont, he is giving it a radically transformed meaning. On the standard reading, a relation obtains between two beings, but in regard to creation this cannot be the case, since there is literally nothing independent of the act of creation by which God establishes the relationship. As Thomas says, “God at the same time gives being and produces that which receives being.”14 From this exposition, we must conclude that every creature is a sheer and unadulterated gift, for there is, quite literally, nothing in the to-be of a creature that has not been given by another. The same could not be said of finite things within a standard Aristotelian or Platonic context. Thomas, we might argue, has given careful metaphysical expression to Paul’s observation: “What do you have that you have not received?” (1 Cor 4:7). In the second place, we must conclude that the source of creaturely being has absolutely no need of creation. The entire universe, even in principle, would add nothing to God’s perfection, for any such addition would be repugnant to God’s unconditioned mode of existence. As Robert Sokolowski, one of the most trenchant analysts of the metaphysics of creation, put it, “God plus the world is not greater than God alone,”15 and “After creation, there are more beings, but no more perfection of esse (being).”16 We might usefully contrast this account with the theologies emerging from the Greek and Roman myths, according to which the gods are co-implicated with the world in a range of shared obligations and needs, as well as with Hegelianism and its many offshoots, which call for a rapport of mutual dependency between God and creation. Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 1, ad 12; q. 3, a. 4, resp.; ST I, q. 45, a. 1. Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 3, no. 8. 14 Aquinas, De potentia¸ q. 3, a. 1, ad 17. 15 Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 8. 16 Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason, 42. 12 13 20 Bishop Robert Barron The classical philosophical accounts, the mythic presentations, and the Hegelian construal of the God–world relationship would, accordingly, all be susceptible to the Derridean critique of the gift, but Thomas Aquinas’s account is not. Thomas’s explanation allows for both conditions of giftedness—namely, receiving a gift without necessary compensation and presence of the gift qua gift—to be realized simultaneously. Once we have grasped the truth of the essence–existence distinction in creatures, we understand that their being is not their own, that they indeed present themselves, they show up in the world, in gift form. This metaphysical truth is beautifully honored in the German expression for “there is,” namely, es gibt (“it gives”). Thus the criterion of presence is met. More to it, the one who ultimately gives the gift, the one who by his nature simply is, cannot even in principle benefit from what he offers. And thus the criterion of sheer liberality is met. A beautiful text from the fourth article of question 44 of the first part of the Summa theologiae catches so many aspects of this uniquely generous rapport between the one who is and those things that are. Under the aegis of considering whether God is the final cause of all creatures, Thomas speaks of the manner in which creaturely agents act: “Some things, however, are both agent and patient at the same time: these are imperfect agents, and to these it belongs to intend, even while acting, the acquisition of something. But it does not belong to the First Agent, Who is agent only, to act for the acquisition of some end.”17 Created actors, in other words, even as they influence others are themselves influenced; even as they give to others, they themselves receive. But this type of mutuality cannot obtain in regard to God. As the first objection to this article states: “It would seem that God is not the final cause of all things. For to act for an end seems to imply need of the end. But God needs nothing. Therefore it does not become him to act for an end.”18 Aquinas’s typically pithy response seems to anticipate the concerns of Mauss and Derrida by seven centuries: “To act from need belongs only to an imperfect agent, which by its nature is both agent and patient. But this does not belong to God, and therefore He alone is the most perfectly liberal giver [et ideo ipse solus est maxime liberalis], because He does not act for His own profit, but only for His own goodness.”19 ST I, q. 44, a. 4, corp. ST I, q. 44, a. 4, obj. 1. 19 ST I, q. 44, a. 4, ad 1. 17 18 The One Who Is; the One Who Gives 21 God’s Highest Name The upshot of the foregoing discussion is that God’s capacity truly to give is predicated upon God’s absolutely unique manner of existence, giving following from being. And this clarification brings to mind a debate that was of keen importance to the medievals and that has been resurrected in our time by a former student of Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, who is one of the world’s most prominent Catholic philosophers. Marion, who has wrestled for decades with the aporias and possibilities of the idea of giftedness, argued in his influential text Dieu sans l’etre (God Without Being) that “goodness” is God’s highest or most proper name, 20 and that the title “being” or “the one who is” carries with it the danger of idolatry.21 Showing why he is wrong about this will help us refine our answer to Derrida’s original challenge. Marion argues that the name “existence” or “being” falls so neatly into our cognitive categories that when we ascribe it to God, we run the severe risk of reducing God to the level of comprehensible things. Hence the application of the concept of esse to God, even when pushed and expanded in the direction of total transcendence, tends to foster in the mind of the philosopher a kind of intellectual complacency, a sense of having corralled and understood God. Calling explicitly into question the tradition, running from Thomas Aquinas to Étienne Gilson, that defends the thesis that qui est is God’s highest name, Marion sides with Thomas’s Franciscan counterpart, Saint Bonaventure, who famously argued in Itinerarium mentis in Deum (The Mind’s Road to God) that, though being is God’s highest Old Testament name, goodness or love is a higher name still, since it designates the play of the Trinitarian persons.22 Bonaventure (and Marion) adopt the Platonic-Dionysian view that the good, that which gives, is “beyond the beings,”23 that is to say, metaphysically antecedent Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 73–83. 21 Marion, God Without Being, 33–49. 22 Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, ch. 5, no. 2, in Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God, the Tree of Life, and the Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 94–95; ch. 6, nos.1–2 (pp. 102–4). 23 Jeffrey L. Kosky, “Contemporary Encounters with Apophatic Theology: The Case of Emmanuel Levians,” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 1, no. 3 (2000): 14: “To again cite the classic text from [Pseudo-Dionysius’s] Mystical Theology, ‘Since it is the Cause of all beings we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to beings, and, more appropriately, we should negate all the affirmations, since it surpasses all being’ (MT 1000B). These negations correspond to the movement of return whereby the created soul passes beyond the 20 22 Bishop Robert Barron to the gift of existence itself. And this transcendence of even the most abstract category of the mind implies that the language of goodness, applied to God, is less susceptible to idolatrous misuse and can serve as a properly iconic manner of naming the divine reality. A careful consideration of Thomas’s texts on this matter of the divine naming sheds quite a bit of light on the general problem that we have been examining in this paper. First, no one can possibly doubt that Aquinas had a thoroughgoing knowledge of the Dionysian tradition, which he first took in as a young apprentice to Albertus Magnus and which he continued to integrate into his own work throughout his career.24 Père Marie-Dominique Chenu is certainly correct in asserting that Dionysius’s exitus–reditus program provides the chief structuring element in Thomas’s mature theological program.25 The Dionysian influence is especially clear in Aquinas’s treatment of God’s nature, creation, and theological language. And thus it is of considerable interest to note that Aquinas consciously and repeatedly departs from the Dionysian heritage on the key question of God’s highest name. His reasons must have been serious ones. There are two principal passages from the Summa theologiae worth examining in this regard. The first is ST I, q. 5, a. 2, which considers whether good is prior in idea to being—the familiar Dionysian proposal. In his crisp response, Thomas argues that what is prior in idea is what is first conceived by the intellect. But the first thing that the intellect can possibly conceive is being, since actuality is the objective correlate of any and all acts of knowledge. “Hence, being is the proper object of the intellect, and is primarily intelligible; as sound is what is primarily audible.”26 But what of the explicit Dionysian priority given to the good? Thomas answers this objection by a subtle but crucial elision of terms in an Aristotelian direction.27 For the Stagyrite, and Thomas follows him here, goodness always has the nature of an end, that is to say, as something desirable. As such, it has a sort of causal primacy over being, since even prime matter is moved to form by its attraction to an end. However, precisely as an end, the good must be equivalent to some perfection of being, since actuality is what beings which manifest the divine cause in the direction of the unmanifest, hidden source of creation.” 24 See Bernhard Blankenhorn, The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, Thomistic Ressourcement 4 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015). 25 Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding St. Thomas, trans. A.-M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1963), 304–7. 26 ST I, q. 5, a. 2, corp. 27 ST I, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1. The One Who Is; the One Who Gives 23 any agent seeks. Hence, being reasserts itself in the prime position.28 This Aristotelian transposition allows Aquinas to recover the Dionysian assertion that the good is diffusive of itself, not so much in terms of efficient causality, but of final causality. What permits God to give so dramatically and over such a universal range is, once again, the properly unconditioned quality of his manner of being. The second principal text to examine is ST I, q. 13, a. 11, in which Thomas explicitly asks, “Whether this name, He Who Is, is the most proper name of God.” The second objection cuts to the issue raised from the pseudo-Dionysius to Marion: “‘The name of good excellently manifests all the processions of God’ (Dionysius, Div. Nom. iii). ‘Good,’ however, especially belongs to God as the universal principle of all things. Therefore, this name good is supremely proper to God, and not this name He Who Is.”29 The objector is referring, of course, not simply to the procession of finite things from God in creation, but to the more primordial processions that obtain within the Trinity. Thus, he implicitly gives voice to the Bonaventurian objection that being, however sacred a name, is an Old Testament designation, superseded by the New Testament name of goodness or love. Before turning to Thomas’s answer to this particular argument, let us look at the substance of his respondeo. Since, he argues, the name “being” designates not any particular mode of existence, but existence itself, and since God is uniquely to be categorized as ipsum esse, this term is maximally appropriate to God. His second argument hinges on the universality of the name “He Who Is.” “For all other names are either less universal, or, if convertible with it, add something above it at least in idea; hence in a certain way they inform and determine it.”30 Once again, following his Aristotelian instinct, Thomas says that the name “good” is simply convertible with the name “being,” since the desirable and the actual coincide. Moreover, in the measure that goodness designates causality, it modifies or specifies the idea of being, occupying, therefore, a less universal place in the conceptual hierarchy. And this is precisely the approach he takes in responding to the Dionysian second objector. The name “good,” Thomas insists, is indeed the principal name of God insofar as he is a cause (bonum diffisivum sui [the good is diffusive of itself]), but it does not designate the divine being in itself, ST I, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1. ST I, q. 13, a. 11, obj. 2. 30 ST I, q. 13, a. 11, resp. 28 29 24 Bishop Robert Barron for “existence considered absolutely comes before the idea of a cause.”31 This sentence is perhaps the best one-line summary of my argument. In line with the adage “nemo dat quod non habet” (“no one can give what he does not have”), Thomas maintains that whatever truth is conveyed by the name “good” is necessarily subordinate to and conditioned by the truth conveyed by the name esse. Or to transpose this discussion from the linguistic to the metaphysical dimension, it is only because God exists in such a distinctive manner that he is able to give in such an utterly generous and gratuitous way. The Holy Spirit as Donum To this point, we have been following Thomas’s teaching regarding God as such in relation to the created realm. I would now like to move into even deeper waters, searching out the play between being and gift that can be found within the Trinitarian relations. One of the deftest moves that Aquinas makes is to show that the simplicity of the divine nature and the plurality of the divine persons are not only not mutually repugnant, but in point of fact mutually implicative. We might characterize the logical moves as follows. Because God is simple, God must be perfect, since simplicity implies pure actuality.32 But if God is perfect, he must be in possession of every ontological perfection, including intelligence.33 And if God is intelligent and his intelligence unlimited, then he must be able to form an imago of himself, an interior Word. Further, through his intelligence, he must grasp the interior Word as supremely good, and hence must love it, since will is a consequence of understanding the good as good. Therefore, the very simplicity of God implies a relationship between Father (the generator of the interior Word), the Son (the interior Word), and the Holy Spirit (the love that obtains between Father and Son).34 Though “love” indeed is a principal name of the Spirit, the other great name for the third person of the Trinity is donum (“gift”), and this brings us back to our central theme. Saint Thomas explores the ramifications and implications of this mode of nomination in ST I, q. 38, a. 2, in which he asks “Whether ‘gift’ is the proper name of the Holy Spirit.”35 In his respondeo, Aquinas cites Aristotle to the effect that “a gift is properly an unreturnable giving” (“donum proprie est datio irredibilis”) and hence ST I, q. 13, a. 11, ad 2. ST I, q. 4, a. 1. 33 ST I, q. 4, a. 2. 34 ST I, qq. 33–38. 35 ST I, q. 38. 31 32 The One Who Is; the One Who Gives 25 carries with it the sense of gratuitous donation.36 However, the ratio or intelligible form of gratuitous donation is love, since we give a person a gift only “forasmuch as we wish him well.”37 Therefore, it follows that love “has the nature of a first gift, through which all free gifts are given.”38 And this is why Saint Augustine can say, “Many gifts, which are proper to each one, are divided in common among all the members of Christ by the Gift which is the Holy Spirit.”39 The Holy Spirit is the metaphysical matrix of both the act of creation and the gracing that enables human beings to participate in the divine life. But what I want to make clear is that the condition for the possibility of this kind of donation, even within the inner life of the Trinity, is the simplicity shared by the Father and the Son. Were the Father to benefit in any sense from the Son or the Son from the Father, then the love that they share would not be absolute; it would in fact be marked by a kind of Derridean economy of exchange. Therefore, in singling out the proper name of the Holy Spirit, Thomas has uncovered the ultimate solution for the aporia of the gift. The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit After this rather heady exploration of the nature of God, the act of creation, and the Trinitarian relations, let us return, in this final section, to the ground and the very concrete observations of the postmoderns regarding the impossibility of interpersonal gift-giving. I believe that the observations made by Derrida and his colleagues are, in point of fact, quite right: it is virtually impossible, within a purely natural framework, to offer a true gift, especially when we take our fallen condition into account. Most realistic political philosophers and ethicists—Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Adam Smith, John Rawls—take for granted the elements of self-interest that inevitably mark every type of human interaction at the natural level. A society, great or small, based on authentic gift-giving is correctly viewed as utopian. But what makes all the difference is the peculiar Christian claim that the divine manner of being and action, which we have been exploring, can, through grace, become our manner of being and action. Those who are, naturally speaking, utterly incapable of escaping the economy of exchange, ST I, q. 38, a. 2, resp. ST I, q. 38, a. 2, resp. (slightly different translation). 38 ST I, q. 38, a. 2, resp. 39 Augustine, De Trinitate 15.19.34, in The Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna, The Fathers of the Church 45 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 500. See ST I, q. 38, a. 2. 36 37 26 Bishop Robert Barron can become sons and daughters of the God whose very nature is disinterested love. And this brings us to a consideration of the divine missions and the indwelling of the one whose proper name is donum (gift). Saint Thomas treats of the divine sendings in ST I, q. 43. To be sure, all three persons of the Trinity are in any and all creatures through “essence, presence, and power,”40 in the measure that God the creator sustains them in being. However, particular divine persons are said to be sent inasmuch as they commence to exist in rational creatures in a new way, dwelling in them “as in his own Temple.”41 Specifically, the Son is “sent” in the sense that he becomes the object of a rational creature’s intellect and the Spirit in the sense that he becomes the object of that creature’s will.42 Possessed by the Holy Spirit, the human will becomes radically ordered to the love that the Spirit is, or to state the same thing in other words, it receives the theological virtue of charity. In ST I-II, q. 62, a. 3, we find this extraordinary description of this greatest of the theological virtues: “A certain spiritual union whereby the will is, so to speak, transformed into that end,” that is to say, into the Holy Spirit himself.43 Throughout his treatment of the divine missions and the theological virtues, Thomas occasionally references the text of 2 Peter, according to which we become “participants of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).44 This discussion segues neatly into the description of charity in the secunda secundae as a type of friendship with God. Following Aristotle’s famous description, Thomas argues that friendship is indeed a relationship in which each partner wills the good of the other, distinguishing it from relationships of utility.45 But the Angelic Doctor moves beyond Aristotle and says that real mutuality and communication must obtain in an authentic friendship: “Talis autem mutua benevolentia fundatur super aliqua communicatione” (“For such well-wishing is founded on some kind of communication”).46 This ecstatic communication occurs when God wills our happiness, and we will the glory of God, which redounds, in turn, to our greater happiness. Possessed by the Holy Spirit, we can love with the very love with which God loves; therefore, we can give gifts as generously as God does. How do we resolve the aporia of the gift? We can do so only through recourse to God and those whom God deigns to make saints. ST I, q. 8, a. 3. ST I, q. 43, a. 3, resp. 42 ST I, q. 43, aa. 5, 7. 43 ST I-II, q. 63, a. 3. 44 ST I, q. 13, a. 9, obj. 1; I-II, q. 62, a. 1, sc and resp.; Summa contra gentiles IV, ch. 4. 45 ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1. 46 ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1, resp. 40 41 The One Who Is; the One Who Gives 27 So there we have the abstract description of the central dynamic, but what does this transformed life look like? How does the solution to the aporia of the gift show up in the world? Here we have to turn to the moral teaching of Jesus, which can indeed be construed as a series of commands, but commands given not to the natural person, but to the one who has been supernaturalized, the one to whom Jesus can reasonably say, “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). The new life that Jesus urges—indeed that he makes possible—is one of absolutely radical gift-giving. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:43–44). In the ordinary dispensation, one loves those to whom he is already connected and therefore from whom he can expect some sort of compensation, emotional or otherwise; but in the new dispensation, love must be given precisely to those who will not return the favor. Jesus makes the principle eminently clear: “For if you love those who love you, what recompense do you have?” (Matt 5:46a). In Jesus’s Sermon on the Plain recounted in the Gospel of Luke, we find something similar: “For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? . . . If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back” (Luke 6:32–35a). In doing so, you will indeed be like your heavenly Father, “who makes his sun rise on the bad and the good” (Matt 5:45). And to give just one more example of the principle, we have this from the fourteenth chapter of Luke: “Then he said to the host who had invited him, ‘When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. But when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you’” (Luke 14:12–14a). This is the undoing of the hostis–hospitality problem raised by Benveniste47 and the dissolving of the Gift–gift dilemma presented by Derrida.48 What cuts the Gordian knot is nothing other than the grace—the gift-giving capacity—of the one who cannot even in principle be repaid. Benveniste, Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society, 46–47, 61, 66–67, 70–71. 48 Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (New York: Continuum, 1981), 180. 47 28 Bishop Robert Barron Conclusion In a way, the dilemma of the gift is a particularly eloquent way of expressing the spiritual struggle at the heart of every person in our finite, fallen, and conflictual world. On the one hand, we want to give, for giving is the nature of God, and consciously or not, we are all striving for union with God. But on the other hand, we cannot give, for we are, as Derrida and company have correctly intuited, caught in the grip of the economic exchange. What becomes clear is that the aporia of the gift is not merely an intellectual conundrum, but a spiritual predicament. Thomas’s technical descriptions of God, creation, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit clarify the mind to be sure; but they also, and more importantly, liberate the captive soul. What the postmodern thinkers considered an obstacle to religious belief in point of fact functions as a particularly N&V radiant light, to illuminate the Christian mystery. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 29–53 29 On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum Thomas Pfau Duke University Durham, NC Let me begin with some remarks about the title of our Thomistic Institute symposium, “Intellectual Origins of Secularization and Catholic Intellectual Responses.” To engage in speculation about origins, particularly where a phenomenon as complex as secularization is concerned, is bound to entangle us in the condition we are asked to diagnose. Thus, Alasdair MacIntyre has observed how genealogical inquiry, itself a distinctly modern endeavor, tends to “repudiate all the key features of accountability, understood in terms either of Socratic dialectic or of Augustinian confession.” Implicitly, that is, a genealogical narrative about origins embraces the project of intellectual emancipation and demystification that drives David Hume’s and Immanuel Kant’s Enlightenment critiques of reason, and that is subsequently radicalized (and predictably turned against the Enlightenment itself ) by Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. Hence, MacIntyre notes, “the genealogical stance is dependent for its concepts and its modes of argument, for its theses and its style, upon a set of contrasts between it and that which it aspires to overcome—the extent, that is, to which it is derivative from and even parasitic upon its antagonisms . . . drawing its necessary sustenance from that which it professes to have discarded.”1 Genealogical accounts of secularization and its putative “intellectual origins” are liable to remain beholden to a distinctly modern, secular conception of time that will alternatively take the form of a stridently progressive or an inexorably declensionist narrative. Not coincidentally, genealogical accounts of either kind first came to 1 Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 205, 215. 30 Thomas Pfau be championed both by major proponents of the secular Enlightenment and by some of its fiercest critics. We think of William Robertson’s A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century (1769), David Hume’s History of England (1754–1761), Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789), and Immanuel Kant’s Conjectural Beginning of Human History and Ideas for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (both in 1783). Concurrently, an equivocal or outright declensionist account of history, understood as a fatal and irreversible lapse from an original state, informs Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s essay On the Origin of Language (1749) and his second Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755), which are unique in this regard and present him as both one of the major progenitors of a secular modernity and one of its sharpest critics. The list of writers engaged in fashioning origin-and-progress or decline-and-fall narratives could be extended almost indefinitely, to include Lord Monboddo (James Burnett), Edmund Burke, Johann Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Georg Hegel, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Jules Michelet, Leopold von Ranke, Heinrich von Treitschke, Max Weber, Oswald Spengler, and so on. Suffice it to say, to frame our topic in terms of origins and the intellectual genre of a “genealogy” is to be implicated in a historicist conception of time that (for better or worse) bears the imprint of homo faber and to embrace what Charles Taylor has labeled modernity’s “immanent frame.” Whatever its particular “findings” may turn out to be, genealogical inquiry constitutes an implicitly secular undertaking, and as such, cannot elucidate the meaning of a secularity it already presupposes.2 A second set of questions arises from the invitation that we specifically attend to the intellectual origins of secularity. To be sure, any attempt to understand our present, secular condition will take the form of some intellectual account or argument. We may identify major patterns and topoi that seem palpably secular in kind and contrast them with the robustly theist metaphysics that gradually shaped Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, and 2 MacIntyre’s incisive critique of it notwithstanding, the genealogical model still holds considerable appeal even today; examples would include Michael Gillespie’s The Theological Origins of Modernity (2008), Jonathan Israel’s triumphalist Revolution of the Mind, subtitled Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (2011), or Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2012), a charmingly simple-minded paean to Lucretius as the progenitor of our anthropocentric, secular modernity. For a far more nuanced and reflective account, see Louis Dupré’s The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004). On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 31 in time the Slavic East between the third and the tenth century. While reconstructing such patterns and motifs is indeed an intellectual activity, it does not follow that the phenomena under investigation will themselves be of an intellectual nature. Arguably the most significant case in point, and the backdrop for this paper, concerns the rise of modern entrepreneurial and financial capitalism in late-seventeenth-century England. What in time came to be known as political economy had been unfolding as a set of loosely coordinated practices at least half a century before it would receive any coherent intellectual account and moral justification. Long before Hume, James Steuart, and Adam Smith set out to conceptualize the dramatically altered role of money, interest, and commerce, various institutional and political developments had unleashed an unprecedented “passion” for primitive accumulation and a distinctly secular ethic of “possessive individualism.”3 As a result, a normative moral vocabulary insistently cross-referencing economic self-interest with the sins of pride, envy, and greed—and thus holding individual economic choice answerable to norms of custom, conscience, and the Church—came to be supplanted by a new, strictly calculative and instrumental type of economic rationality. As real things and the soil that had sustained all forms of life since time immemorial were being transmuted into endlessly fungible commodities, the normative and transgenerational idea of a common good vetted by the authority of custom and conscience quickly vanished. Its place was filled by an a-social interestedness and a pathological acquisitiveness no longer tempered by considerations of social responsibility and intergenerational symmetry, but subject only to the impersonal, systemic super-ego of the modern marketplace. Starting in the early 1700s, such interestedness challenged, and in time displaced, outright central metaphysical tenets of the pre-modern era, including those of charity and the common good, the moral virtues, an understanding of the created world not as inert res 3 On the disciplining of the economic “passions” (greed, avarice, etc.) by the market that converts them into “interests,” see Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 7–66. On the emergence of a “post-civic man [who] has ceased to be virtuous and no longer lives in the present, except as constituted by his fantasies concerning a future,” see J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 51–72 and 103–24 (quote at 112). The phrase “possessive individualism” was coined by C. B. Macpherson who, in his eponymous 1962 book, traces how from Hobbes to Locke a political theory was being formulated according to which the individual proprietor of skills and assets no longer stands in any material or moral obligation vis-à-vis other people, let alone the community at large. 32 Thomas Pfau extensa but as manifesting the Divine logos, and a conception of the human person as defined by her capacity for responsible choice and by the will as rational appetite. Viewed in progression, the classics of eighteenth-century political economy (from Hume’s 1754 Essays, via Steuart and Smith, to Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo) tell a clear story: early capitalist practice not only preceded intellectual argument in time but positively shaped (and constrained) the “conclusions” subsequently drawn by economic, social, and moral theory.4 Still, to contend that economic practice preceded the recalibration of intellectual and theological culture, first in Anglo-Protestant England and eventually across the Continent, is not to deny the impact of more distant theological shifts, particularly that of fourteenth-century voluntarism. For by untethering rational agency from the Aristotle-based logos metaphysics that had furnished the normative (intellectual) foundation for religious and social life from the late-patristic era into the early modern period, Ockham and those following him created a kind of metaphysical and ethical vacuum that, in time, would be filled by the “immanent” frames of seventeenth-century scientific culture and, soon afterwards, by the secular practices and institutions constitutive of modern political economy. Quite inadvertently, that is, voluntarism’s fateful disaggregation of will and reason ended up reconfirming Augustine’s and Aquinas’s key insight into sin as an entailment of both man’s wounded will and his propensity to intellectual error; one begets the other. Hence, the hedonistic and covetous practices that came to define modern, secular, and “post-civic” man (as Pocock has termed it) were not so much originated as merely unleashed and legitimated by the triumph of instrumental reason in the era of modern political economy. Symptomatic of what John Paul II has called “structures of sin,” and of particular relevance to arguments I will unfold later, is the increasing stigmatization and eventual criminalization of poverty after 1700, and the consequent, dramatic erosion of human solidarity.5 Until the late seventeenth century, poverty (not to be confused with outright destitution) had not only been See: Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 93–119; Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), 157–253; Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Belknap, 2006), 90–145; John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 26–47; Thomas Pfau, Minding the Modern: Intellectual Traditions, Human Agency, and Responsible Knowledge (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 160–82. 5 John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis [SRS] (1987), §36. 4 On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 33 the material reality for most people across Europe, which on a global scale remains the case even now; it had also been considered a legitimate, indeed a spiritually dignified condition. Drawing on the regimen of material and spiritual self-humbling pioneered by third-century desert monasticism and codified in Benedict’s Regula, the ideal of poverty was revived by Francis of Assisi, Thomas à Kempis, the followers of the Devotio Moderna in the low countries, as well as other late-medieval mystics and religious movements. Their insistence that our material existence ought in all respects reflect and be ordered toward the overarching good of a beatific vision was influentially contested for the first time by John Calvin and John Knox (vide Weber’s controversial thesis) and, subsequently, displaced by the rise of sentimentalism as the new paradigm of moral reasoning, particularly in Richardson, Rousseau, and Smith, among others. This is not to deny that expressions of contempt vis-à-vis the poor have likely been a feature of human society since time immemorial and, as the prologue to Chaucer’s “Man of Law Tale” shows, also informed a new “realist” tone in fourteenth-century literature. Yet the systematic isolation and criminalization of the poor, culminating in the abolition of the poor laws and the introduction of compulsory labor in work-houses around 1800, shows how a utilitarian conception of social order had effectively supplanted older models of charity and compassion.6 Once an ethos of humility and cooperation was replaced, in the wake of the Reformation, by essentially competitive forms of economic behavior—such as when Parliamentary Acts of Enclosure transformed the common lands that had been the foundation of cooperative subsistence farming into the new commodity of “real estate”—the once noble ideal of “poverty,” with its time-honored ethos of communal solidarity and local improvisation, came to be redefined as the moral failing of a distinct social group now known as “the poor.” 7 A strictly instrumental model See Smith’s revealingly entitled chapter “Of the Effects of Prosperity and Adversity upon the Judgment of Mankind with regard to the Propriety of Action,” in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; pt. 1, no. 3), and his early formulation of a utilitarian theory of moral action in pt. 4 of the same work; see also “Virtue without Agency: Sentiment, Behavior, and Habituation in A. Smith,” in Pfau, Minding the Modern, 327–73. 7 On the abrupt revaluation and aggressive stigmatization of poverty as a moral failing on the part of “the poor,” unfolding in the 1780s and 1790s across England, see: Mitchell Dean, The Constitution of Poverty: towards a Genealogy of Liberal Governance (New York: Routledge, 1990), 18–105; Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 60–141, and Karl Polanyi’s classic The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 6 34 Thomas Pfau of rationality came to define modern, secular homo economicus, whose “reason” now became convertible with his “interest.” No longer intelligible in terms of action grounded in reflective judgment and responsible choice, the economic practices now shaping the modern saeculum instead take the form of strictly calculative, quasi-feral behavior, cued by an instinct for economic opportunity and fueled by a desire for unlimited acquisition.8 That said, my contention that received forms of social praxis and the ethical values undergirding them tend to shift often well before the development in question becomes an object of intellectual comprehension and moral (re)legitimation does not necessarily commit us to a Hegelian position. In fact, this persistent asymmetry between praxis and knowledge that, in a fine Augustinian turn of phrase, Samuel Taylor Coleridge calls “a mysterious diversity between the injunction of the mind and the elections of the will” ought not to be framed as an epistemological puzzle, but more fundamentally attests to humankind’s disposition to sin.9 Hence, it is no coincidence that one of Catholicism’s most significant and enduring responses to modernity’s secular and rapacious anthropology—its ethic of 3–80. Arguably, the eighteenth-century’s most vituperative and influential indictments of the poor were those by Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Malthus, especially the latter’s An Essay on the Principle of Population, first published anonymously in 1798, and then, vastly expanded and with the author’s name, in 1803 (recently: ed. Quentin Skinner [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]). The latter edition marks the displacement of the Judeo-Christian view of “procreation” by the naturalistic language of “reproduction,” Malthus (a member of the Anglican clergy) drew a sharp rebuke from his Church when suggesting that actions long qualified as “vicious” (e.g., prostitution, abortion, infanticide) whose “general tendency . . . is to produce misery, . . . in their immediate or individual effects, may produce perhaps exactly the contrary” (1992, 24, note 6); see also Thomas Pfau, Wordsworth’s Profession: Form, Class, and the Logic of Romantic Cultural Production (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 341–62. Few figures better illustrate the antagonism between a metaphysical and a naturalistic account of human flourishing than Malthus, who signally fails to recognize his own abandonment of a normative-realist ethic for a consequentialist one. Yet precisely “how we conceive utility . . . depends on our prior formation and commitments, so that it cannot provide a standard independent of them” (Alasdair MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: an Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016], 77; italics mine). 8 The distinction between (intelligible) action and (unreflective) behavior is anticipated by Aquinas, who distinguishes between actus humanus and actus hominis, with the latter not involving moral choice and responsibility, even as it is accomplished by a human being; see Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła: the Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 126. 9 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, ed. John Beer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 349. On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 35 solidarity grounded in the dignity of the human person—refutes modern secularism’s most cherished axioms, namely, moral and intellectual autonomy, and its wholly immanent and naturalistic outlook on human existence. Into the Post-Realist Void: Tabulating the Conceptual Losses of Secular Modernity At this point, we need to broaden our perspective by taking three successive steps. First, in highly compressed form, let us tabulate at least some of the ways in which practices associated with classical liberalism and modern capitalism progressively atrophied the intellectual and spiritual framework that had defined medieval and early modern culture. For strategic reasons, special emphasis will be placed on shifts that ended up distorting, if not eclipsing outright, the relational concept of the human person as modeled for us by the Trinity. Second, accepting as fact (not to be reargued here) that by the late nineteenth century the British system of financial and entrepreneurial capitalism had metastasized to all of Western, still nominally Christian, society and, by then, had effectively become the global norm, we must ask: how did the Catholic intellectual tradition respond to these developments, and what aspects of Catholicism’s contestation of secular modernity during the past century and a half still hold lessons for us today? Third, we must inquire into the success or failure of Catholicism’s comprehensive response to a secular modernity. Yet here I shall argue that it is still too soon to make a judgment, because Catholicism’s most essential test may only now be upon us. For only over the past couple of decades, that is, at the start of what is now called the Anthropocene—when “man has discover[ed] his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world”—has humanity had to confront in earnest the spiritual, intellectual, and material devastation of both the human person and the world that God freely gifted to humanity—a devastation that to a significant extent has been perpetrated by modern political economy for the past twelve generations or so.10 We shall return to this issue later. Many of the challenges confronted by the Catholic intellectual tradition for the past two centuries resulted from the emerging, closely intertwined languages of political economy and moral theory that, starting in the mid-eighteenth century sought to explain and legitimate the already John Paul II, Centesimus Annus [CA] (1991), §37. The Pope here notes that, in so remaking the world in its own transient image, the human species of the Anthropocene “forgets that this is always based on God’s prior and original gift of the things that are, . . . as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray.” 10 36 Thomas Pfau widespread practices of entrepreneurial capitalism and speculative finance that had leapt onto the scene following the establishment of a system of public credit in the 1690s. As I have argued elsewhere, this process at first atrophied and, in time, explicitly repudiated basic concepts long deemed indispensable for achieving a comprehensive and responsible perspective on human existence.11 Among those fundamental concepts whose unraveling may alternatively be considered a symptom or a cause of secularization are the following. The Disaggregation of Will and Reason The conceptualist parsing of God’s omnipotence (potentia absoluta) and his created order (potentia ordinata), that is, of will and logos, can be observed as early as Ockham’s Quodlibetals. In time, a strictly non-cognitive understanding of the will was formulated by Martin Luther (On the Bondage of the Will). It informed Hobbes’ characterization of the will as “the last appetite” and of reason as sheer interested computation (“reckoning”), and it culminated in Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s conception of the will as a wholly opaque ens metaphysicum. The Shift from a Realist to a Heuristic Conception of Teleology and the Displacement of Final Causation The rise of mechanistic explanatory models (e.g., Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke) and the monopoly status accorded to efficient causation have rendered the Platonic and Christian concepts of reason (logos) and intelligible order (kosmos) inoperative. Knowledge of creation no longer unfolds as our loving “participation” (methexis) in it, but as the ascription of complex, albeit inherently mindless, causal mechanisms to it. Efficient causation is increasingly construed as a quantum of physical “force” projected onto passive matter, such that in our modern, mechanist “understanding of nature, the least intelligent has become the most intelligible, the least reasonable the most rational.”12 By the early eighteenth century, the Aristotelian conception of life as an entelechy had become attenuated, first as a cosmological hypothesis (Gottfried Leibniz) and eventually as but a heuristic fiction (Kant).13 Hence, the Aristote See Pfau, Minding the Modern, 9–75. Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 69; for an earlier, influential version of this argument, see Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences (1935). 13 On the changing conceptions of teleology in pre-modern, metaphysical and modern, secular thought, see Robert Spaemann and Reinhard Löw, Natürliche 11 12 On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 37 lian-Thomist teleological framework in which moral deliberation, judgment, and choice, guided by the operation of the moral and intellectual virtues, are intrinsically ordered toward a normative, supreme good was supplanted by a prudential concept of “decision.” Progenitors of this incipiently algorithmic model—which conflates rationality with the pursuit of self-interest—include Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville, and Joseph Priestley; and their heirs can still be found among the proponents of so-called “rational-choice theory” today. The Shift from a Spiritual to a Chronometric Conception of Time Related to this shift toward a materialist and mechanistic view of human agency, we can observe the displacement of Christianity’s multidimensional conception of time (ordinary, liturgical, contemplative, eschatological, etc.) by a chronometric, existential notion of time as invariant durée, untethered from eternity and incessantly subdividing into the no-longer and the not-yet. Hence, with Christianity’s overarching, eschatological conception of human time (sub specie aeternitatis) fading from view, so does the spiritual significance of the present. Another significant casualty of this development is the dynamic concept of Tradition that Catholicism had evolved since the early patristic era.14 The Naturalistic Redefinition of the Human Person The ascendancy of seventeenth-century mechanism flagged above also caused the concept of “intelligible action” to be supplanted by quasi-mechZiele: Geschichte und Wiederentdeckung des teleologischen Denkens (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2005), esp. 81–122, and Thomas Pfau, “Romantic Bildung and the Persistence of Teleology,” in Brill’s Companion to German Romantic Philosophy, ed. Elizabeth Millán Brusslan and Judith Norman (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 143–72. On modern economic theories of rational behavior, see MacIntyre, who notes how, within the Chicago School of economics, “nothing turns on how a particular agent may have arrived at her or his preferences. . . . To be rational [simply] is to be a consistent maximizer of preference satisfaction, . . . a view of practical rationality deeply at odds with the accounts advanced by Aristotle and Aquinas” (Ethics, 102). 14 See: Taylor, Secular Age, 54–61 (on the “gathering and re-ordering of secular time”); Hans Urs von Balthasar, Das Ganze im Fragment (Einsiedeln, CH: Johannes Verlag, 1990) 17–59, and A Theological Anthropology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 1–42. See especially Balthasar’s fine discussion of Max Scheler’s account of “conversion” (Bekehrung) and “remorse” (Reue) as effectively implying the “a reversibility of time” (Das Ganze, 54, and Theological Anthropology, 35); and Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 2nd ed., trans. Michael Waldstein and Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press), 1988, 104–12 and 181–90. 38 Thomas Pfau anistic theories of “behavior” as the (supposedly) predictable result of some input–output ratio.15 The shift from responsible choice and intelligible (moral) action to reflexively mimetic behavior can already be observed in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments; by the middle of the nineteenth century, literary and theological writings of a wide variety began to tabulate the spiritual and social damage wrought by the Enlightenment’s mimetic conception of personhood and socialization. The resulting spiritual and psychological desiccation of the human person also shaped a wide variety of intellectual and fictional plots, such as we find them articulated by Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot, John Henry Newman, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Soloviev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Theodor Fontane. The Disaggregation of “Conscience” from Truth A logical consequence of Luther’s solifidian theology, seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century denominationalism continued to oppose the Catholic conception of faith grounded in a sacramental order and a normative ecclesiology as it had been articulated and refined in some fifteen-hundred years’ worth of theological reflection and magisterial pronouncements.16 Intimately entwined with broader currents of secularization, the fragmented landscape of Enlightenment denominationalism in particular was characterized by a weak ecclesiology, a still weaker or altogether absent concept of sacramentality, and a wholly subjective notion of “belief.” Having received programmatic expression in Locke’s writings on toleration, religious culture increasingly pivoted on “private judgment” and an eighteenth-century culture of “enthusiasm” found in German Pietism and English Methodism. With spiritual life becoming progressively untethered from a realist metaphysics that had conceived God as logos, ostensibly “private” and sentimental conceptions of “belief ” flourished alongside the deregulated economic passions of modern, “postcivic” man. Increasingly, private judgment and a supposedly infallible personal conscience became the sole arbiters of religious meaning, which now unfolds seemingly independent of any metaphysical, normative foundations. Within the immanent frame of modern liberal-secular life, conscience no longer furnishes “the redemptive road to truth, . . . [but On the concept of “intelligible action” as taking logical precedence over “behavior,” see Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 208–09. 16 On Luther’s problematic equation of faith with justification, see Paul Hacker, Faith in Luther: Martin Luther and the Origin of Anthropocentric Religion (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2017), 8–36 and 83–93. 15 On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 39 instead] becomes the justification for subjectivity, which would not like to have itself called into question.”17 The Shift from a Communio of Persons to a Society of Individuals The pre-modern framework of communio grounded in charity and in what John Paul II elaborates under the heading of “solidarity” had been understood to be eternally modeled for humankind by the Trinity, visibly expressed in the corpus mysticum of the Church. Following earlier, skeptical or pragmatic conceptions of political life as essentially separate from a normative order (Niccolò Machiavelli, Michel de Montaigne, Hobbes), the communio model at the heart of (Catholic) Christianity was implicitly or overtly challenged by secular, social-contract theories advanced by Locke, Rousseau, and Hume. What Michael Oakeshott has described as a pervasive shift from purposeful “civil association grounded in moral practice” to a strictly contingent “enterprise association”— that is, a polity comprised of hermetically constituted, self-interested individuals—effectively abolished the relational, imago dei conception of the human person.18 Four Paradigmatic Responses to Secularity: Tradition, Analogia, Liturgy, Personalism The Catholic response to the practical and intellectual decreation of man and world since the seventeenth century has taken many forms. Let me Joseph Ratzinger, On Conscience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 16 and 21–22: conscience thus is reduced to “a pseudo-rational certainty, a certainty that has in fact been woven from self-righteousness, conformity, and lethargy. . . . The reduction of conscience to subjective certitude betokens at the same time a retreat from truth.” See also John Henry Newman’s critique of “private judgment” in his eponymous 1841 essay (newmanreader.org/works/essays/volume2/private.html). For a particularly strident account of this development, see Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2012), 74–128 and 180–233; for a critical reading of Gregory, see Thomas Pfau, “‘Botched Execution’ or Historical Inevitability: Conceptual Dilemmas in Brad S. Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 46, no. 3 (2016): 603–28. 18 See Michael Oakeshott, Of Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 60–61: “A moral practice is not a prudential art concerned with the success of the enterprises of agents; it is not instrumental to the achievement of any substantive purpose or to the satisfaction of any substantive want. . . . It is concerned with the act, not the event; with agents as doers making an impact upon one another and not in respect of the particular wants for which they are seeking satisfaction.” The following pages (70–78) suggest that Oakeshott’s project involves a qualified retrieval of virtue ethics. 17 40 Thomas Pfau identify four areas in which Catholicism’s intervention seems both particularly cohesive and consequential, all of which also turn out to be interconnected in ways that cannot, however, be unfolded in requisite detail here. The first shift concerns Catholicism’s reappraisal of Tradition, a process that gathered momentum by the mid-nineteenth century and that unfolded in two distinct ways: first, as an inward turn that had Catholicism reexamine and deepen the scope of its theological and intellectual resources; and, second, as a concerted effort to engage a saeculum disfigured by economic greed, ideological strife, and the commodification of the human person. As regards the first, it can be fairly said that in one way or another, the Catholic response to secularization was only made possible by a concurrent, profound rethinking and broadening of the concept of Tradition. The project gets underway with Newman’s Essay on the Development of Doctrine (1845) and related efforts such as those of the Tübingen Catholic School (Johann Adam Möhler, Johann Sebastian von Drey). Their understanding of Tradition as a dynamic “development” not only rejected the liberal-Protestant historicism project of overcoming and containing Christianity as past matter; they also sought to break free of a neo-Thomism that, toward the end of the century, was increasingly experienced as arid and inert. Newman’s conception of tradition as a progressively deeper and fuller understanding of Christianity’s far-flung sources was carried forward by Maurice Blondel, whose Letters on History and Dogma (1904) may be read as a manifesto of sorts for the ressourcement theology of Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Joseph Ratzinger. Ambitious editorial projects, such as Edward Bouverie Pusey’s Library of the Fathers (50 vols. published between 1838 and 1881) and de Lubac’s and Daniélou’s monumental Sources Chrétiennes (some 580 vols. published since 1943) provide the Catholic retrieval of Tradition with a textual foundation of unprecedented scope and depth. A second cluster of responses to secular modernity has involved reaffirming the central and indispensable role of metaphysics for theology and philosophy and, in particular, reviving and deepening the concept of analogia (in the work of Erich Przywara, Gottlieb Söhngen, von Balthasar) as the most compelling antidote to modern rationalism’s view of the natural world as inert and dumb res extensa passively awaiting the imprint of human desire. Crucially, the analogia model posits that visible phenomena are not only formally related to the invisible as the metaphysical source of their existence, but that by their distinctive mode of appearance they also actively participate in their divine source. On this view, “the world is itself invested with meaning, ethical purpose, and intelligibility, of which it cannot be rationally divested. . . . However, the world invested with such On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 41 meaning, purpose, and intelligibility is itself suggestive of a higher and more mysterious logos, or reason, that underlies the creation and has given it being out of love.”19 What the metaphysics of analogia fundamentally rejects is the supposition “that visible being could intelligibly manifest itself without being indexed to an anterior concept of form”; not until the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century did such a “rendering accidental the relation of each thing to its own form” even become conceivable.20 Most crucially, perhaps, the concept of analogia also presents us with a metaphysical ethic in that it enjoins humanity to respond to creation as a gift to be honored, loved, and passed on—which is to say, to relate to creation as guardians rather than consumers. A third cluster of responses to secular modernity involves the liturgical movement that took shape after the cataclysm of World War I and found rich and enduring expression in the writings of Romano Guardini, de Lubac, von Balthasar, and Ratzinger (with Newman’s Tracts for the Times as important precursor texts). Its abiding significance is at least threefold: first, by drawing attention to the liturgy’s eschatological significance, the movement countered the modern, secular devaluation of time as but empty durée and as an essentially fungible commodity. Ratzinger specifically emphasizes how “the liturgy gives precise expression to [our] historical . . . ‘between-ness,’” that is, to our inhabiting the provisional “time of images”; by mediating the redeemer “through earthly signs,” the symbolic structure of the liturgy effects a “kind of turning around of Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “Introduction,” in The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or Wisdom of God?, ed. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 27. 20 Michael Hanby, “Creation as Aesthetic Analogy,” in White, Analogy of Being, 341–78, at 355. The analogia framework furnishes a particularly vivid illustration of the continuity between Platonist thought and Christianity. Thus, the great scholar of the Platonist tradition, Werner Beierwaltes, points out: “However dispersed it is into manifold, finite being, the world never degenerates into a diffuse, aimless array of contradictions, nor into some caricature of the archetype [Zerrbild des Ur-Bildes], which would constitute—as a radical dualism of the Gnostic variety maintains—a mere perversion of all positive predicates adhering to the first Principle. Instead, the empirical world preserves within its own realm and in a unique modality [auf eigentümliche Weise] what it has received from the intelligible domain. Hence, even as we may speak of two discrete worlds, their difference [Verschiedenheit] is nevertheless ‘relativized,’ not only because an equivalent relationship between the two but also an active participation [Teilhabe] of the phenomenal in the intelligible world is being maintained. . . . For every singular being there is, within the realm of the intelligible, its founding idea” (Denken des Einen [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2016], 85; translation mine). 19 42 Thomas Pfau exitus to reditus.”21 Second, by showing how “the prayers of the liturgy are entirely governed and interwoven with dogma” and thus seek “humility by renunciation,” the liturgy offers the dissociated modern individual the gift of participating in a trans-historical and supra-personal community of Truth and experiencing “release from the thralldom of individual caprice.” Third, through “the united body of the faithful as such—the Church—a body which infinitely outnumbers the mere congregation” and by saying “not ‘I’ but ‘We,’” the liturgical movement affirmed the primacy of communio—comprised of both clergy and laity—over the dissociated sensibility of the modern, liberal-secular “self.”22 More recently, Ratzinger has developed that point further by arguing that, already in Paul’s letters, the filial identity of Christ with God becomes the blueprint for an ontological understanding of brotherhood that “points beyond the act of will involved in election toward a union which involves our very being.”23 As a reality anterior to any historically contingent, social-contract type of association, Christian brotherhood arises—and is modeled for us—in the event of grace, Christ’s becoming man and sacrificing himself for humanity—that is, grace unconditionally received, commemorated, and affirmed in the sacramental and incarnational order of the liturgy. The final instance of Catholicism’s comprehensive response to our secular modernity, and the one to be considered in more detail here, returns us to a question already broached above, namely, whether and to what extent Catholicism’s response to the secularization of reason that had manifestly denatured both man and creation was successful, and what role Catholic social teaching in particular may play in the future. At stake here is the distinctive synthesis of Thomism and phenomenology that has informed Catholic thinking about the human person and community throughout much of the twentieth century and into the Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 60–61. As he later remarks, the liturgy presents to us “Christ himself [as] the bridge between time and eternity. . . . Now the Eternal One has taken time to himself. In the Son, time co-exists with eternity. God’s eternity is not mere time-lessness, the negation of time, but a power over time [Zeitmächtigkeit] that is really present with time and in time” (92). 22 Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. Ada Lane (New York: Herder & Herder, 1998), 19–23, 36, 39. 23 Joseph Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 32. As Ratzinger goes on to note, it is by “being incorporated/ embodied in Christ [Einverleibung in Christus],” principally in Baptism and recurrently in the Eucharist, that the sacramental structure of the liturgy impresses on us an ontological, rather than biological, understanding of kinship (50). 21 On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 43 twenty-first.24 More than the other Catholic movements just sketched, the twin projects of personalism and communio theology have furnished a resource at once intellectually compelling and materially effective in a modern world that had acquiesced in its own desecration by either surrendering or rejecting outright the fundamental moral and intellectual concepts sketched in the first section above. In part, the superior impact of personalism and communio theology stems from the uncommonly direct and vivid ways in which they bring metaphysical insight to bear on conceiving of an ethical and sustainable model of human community today—be it comprised of Christians, other faith groups, or indeed those with no particular faith at all. That Catholicism’s account of person and community (as developed by Blondel, Max Scheler, Jacques Maritain, and Robert Spaemann, among others) should have had such enduring and conspicuous resonance for the past century is in no small part due to the larger-than-life pastoral and intellectual persona of Karol Wojtyła, in particular the way that he mobilized this intellectual tradition so as to revive and deepen Catholic social teaching, to which Leo XIII had given such forceful, programmatic expression. In passing, we note the curiously inverse relationship between the evolution of secularity and Catholic responses to it. Whereas the unleashing of economic self-interest after 1700 initially unfolded in pragmatic and, for the most part, adventitious ways that would receive conceptual legitimation well after the fact, Catholicism’s response to a morally and materially deregulated modern saeculum proceeds from a comprehensive reexamination of its own rich traditions of moral and intellectual reasoning (sketched above), an undertaking whose practical significance and global impact would not fully reveal itself until the mid-twentieth century. Let us briefly recall some conceptual features of personalism as we find them in the work of Maritain and, especially, that of Wojtyła. Consistent with “existentialist” inflection of the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, Maritain distinguishes “between individuality and personality,” with the individual, or soul, understood as the very form of the body and, thus, inseparable from it. Even so, taken “as an individual, each of us is a fragment of a species” and, thus, defined by “the immense web of cosmic, ethical, historical forces and influences—and bound by their laws.”25 Hence, On phenomenology’s origins in Catholic thought and its response to neo-Thomism, see Edward Baring, Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 23–54. 25 Jacques Maritain, Person and the Common Good, trans. John J. Fitzgerald (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 33, 38. On Maritain’s consid24 44 Thomas Pfau freedom and our spiritual destiny toward which it points are the province not of the human being understood as a species, but of the human person, that is, “the subsistence of the spiritual soul communicated to the human composite.” In attesting “to the generosity or expansiveness in being, . . . personality, of its essence, requires a dialogue in which souls really communicate.” Whereas sociality may indeed be understood as a preferential option of the individual, “community”—being integral to our spiritual flourishing—is constitutive of personhood. As Maritain notes, “personality tends by nature to communion,” and the “common good is received in persons, each one of whom is a mirror of the whole.”26 Maritain’s distinction between “the common good of human persons” and the flourishing of societies—such as interpreted by mid-twentieth-century totalitarianism— resonates strongly in Wojtyła’s account of the human person. While that framework can only be taken up in cursory form here, it bears recalling some of its basic tenets, since they would anchor pronouncements on the dignity of the human person, solidarity, and community subsequently found in the social encyclicals of John Paul II. As early as 1951, in an essay closely related to his dissertation on faith in John of the Cross, Wojtyła notes: “To the extent that the human person consciously grasps his own interiority he palpably encounters the sphere of Grace. God not only shows Himself as above and beyond, but also within [the person] as the one who continually forms and at the same time transcends human interiority.”27 For Wojtyła, the ontological reality of Divine Grace and transcendence finds its phenomenological analogue in the self-transcendence that defines the acting person. To act—deliberatively, purposefully, and responsibly—is to experience one’s personhood as both constituted by and participating in the reality of God. To be sure, every human act constitutes an instance of self-creation and self-authorization that is often understood in strictly immanent ways. Considered on strictly formal grounds, that is to say, “‘I act’ means ‘I am the efficient cause’ of erable influence in shaping the modern concept of human rights as enshrined in the 1945 United Nations Charter, see Samuel Moyn, Christian Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 65–100. 26 Maritain, Person and the Common Good, 41–42, 47, 49. As Maritain goes on to note, “the common good is not only a system of advantages and utilities but also a rectitude of life, an end, good in itself, . . . a bonum honestum”; hence, “the human person’s vocation to goods which transcend it is embodied in the essence of the common good” (53, 64). 27 Karol Wojtyła “Humanism in John of the Cross” (1951), quoted in Wojtyła, Was ist der Mensch? trans. and ed. Hanns-Gregor Nissing (Munich: Pneuma, 2011), xxvii (translation mine). On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 45 my self-actualization as a [personal] subject.” Yet such a formal description only signifies if we understand human action as embedded within a horizon of values and goods from which a specific act (and our account of it) derives its intelligibility. Hence, as Wojtyła is quick to point out, “the concept of self-determination involves more than just the concept of efficacy.”28 Human action not only effects determinate change within the ambient world but, concurrently, authorizes the agent as a person. Following Aquinas, Wojtyła understands act and being as intimately entwined, such that to do good or evil means eo ipso to create oneself as a good or evil being. Action not only seeks to realize a concrete object of will, but in its very performance also reveals the moral status of its agent: “[Action] brings to light the particular composition that is proper to me as a person.” It is this revelatory dimension of the human act that prompts Wojtyła to align action with self-transcendence. Revealed by action in general, most conspicuously in “decisions of conscience,” is the ontological fact that “as persons [we] fulfill ourselves by going beyond ourselves toward values accepted in truth and realized . . . with a deep sense of responsibility.”29 Unsurprisingly, Wojtyła rejects the hermetic and non-cognitive understanding of agency that can be traced back to fourteenth-century voluntarism. In fact, he insists, “neither self-determination nor self-possession . . . implies being closed in on oneself.” Quite the obverse, in fact, is the case in that the will, understood as a rational appetite, “impl[ies] a special disposition [on the part of the acting person] to make a ‘gift of oneself.’” Alluding to Gaudium et Spes, Wojtyła thus remarks that “only if one can determine oneself . . . can one also become a gift for others.”30 Not only, however, does Wojtyła reject the voluntarist model of act and agent as unconstrained by the logos; he also demurs at Kant’s more guarded, formalist understanding of volition as “spontaneity.” For any spontaneity of willing can only ever “appear in man as a ‘necessity’ of choosing among Karol Wojtyła, Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, O.S.M. (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 189, 192. 29 Wojtyła, Person and Community, 215. As Wojtyła puts it elsewhere, “through an act [performed in accordance with conscience] I become, and am, good as a man. The moral value reaches to the entire depth of the metaphysical structure of the human subject” (“The Person: Subject and Community,” Review of Metaphysics 33, no. 2 [1979]: 273–308, at 286). 30 Wojtyła, Person and Community, 194. See also Wojtyła’s considered rejection of a “certain solipsism” to which his concept of action as moral self-determination might at first glance seem to give rise (“The Transcendence of the Person in Action and Man’s Self-Teleology,” Annalecta Husserliana 9 [1979]: 203–12, at 206). 28 46 Thomas Pfau values and deciding.” The “values which correspond to [spontaneous willing]” are not created by the human act but are antecedent to it; they themselves “constitute the peculiar material of choice and decision proper to the will.”31 Echoing positions previously developed by Scheler and Roman Ingarden, Wojtyła insists that a strictly hermetic, formal notion of action fails to recognize the person’s “living contact with the whole reality, . . . with the world of values, hierarchized and differentiated within itself.” Precisely because “willing by nature refers to value, it is never constituted in the subject and in consequence does not appear in consciousness except for this reference.” Hence: It is not the willing itself as an intentional turning toward values that constitutes the dynamic essence of the act, but the determining of one’s self, or in other words self-determination, which engages the personal subject in a manner proper to himself. And so the true voluntarium is not contained in the very experience of willing something, but in the experience of determining oneself.32 Still, such an account of “self-transcendence” in action, whereby a member of the human species determines him- or herself as a person, as someone rather than something, remains incomplete as long as we think of self-determination only in “horizontal” terms.33 Indeed, once we acknowledge While “some realists are disturbed by [Wojtyła’s] use of the term ‘value’ in discussions of the good,” Kenneth Schmitz notes that “the term is shorn of its merely subjectivist sense” and, instead, “proposes a truth that is constituted by the good” (At the Center of the Human Drama: the Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press], 56). Kevin Doran points to Scheler’s critique of Kant’s concept of value as strictly subjective and notional, rather than interpersonal and act-based, as a major influence on Wojtyła (Solidarity: A Synthesis of Personalism and Communalism in the Thought of Karol Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II [New York: Peter Lang, 1996], 30–34). 32 Wojtyła, Person and Community, 205–06. On the “auto-teleological structure of the human act,” see Wojtyła, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 282–83. On Wojtyła’s act-based concept of the human person, see Doran, Solidarity, 125–41, and the detailed readings of Person and Act by Miguel Acosta and Adrian Reimers in Karol Wojtyła’s Personalist Philosophy: Understanding Person & Act (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 105–243, and Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 117–76. 33 On this foundational distinction, see Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between “Someone” and “Something,” trans. Oliver O’Donovan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), esp. 5–33 and 62–80. Echoing Wojtyła, Spaemann notes here that “the conception of being as an act befalling an entity raises the logical 31 On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 47 that the human being’s act of moral self-determination as a person unfolds within an antecedently given framework of moral norms, it follows that the values affirmed by an agent’s judgment and choice cannot be functions of subjective preference, but are ontologically given. As Wojtyła notes: “Each choice or mature willing of a definite value presupposes an objective reference to truth. . . . [Hence] the reference to truth, which in the case of the conscience is, above all, the truth of the good (or about the good), indicates a different dimension of the transcendence proper to a person than that which is expressed in the very transcending of the horizontal limit of the subject.”34 What Wojtyła calls “vertical transcendence” is prima facie experienced by the individual person through her participation in a community. His contention that, in the actus humanus, an agent “actualizes those potentialities which are proper to him insofar as he is a person, . . . [and] to some extent creates himself” delineates the metaphysical implications of his phenomenological method. That is, to be an agent not only involves contingent projections of our will but, anterior to it, the recognition of the person’s “ontological kernel.” The act does not constitute the very being of the human subject as such, but instead realizes its potential.35 It thus confronts the agent with her anterior givenness, the very gift of being through which her transcendent orientation is prima facie revealed. In his long, programmatic essay “The Person: Subject and Community,” Wojtyła acknowledges that his major philosophical work, The Acting Person (1969) did “not sufficiently elaborate the theory of community.” It is no coincidifficulty that the entity is presumed to be already there in some sense.” Spaemann continues that “the ‘metaphysical realism’ that characterizes our relation to other persons . . . is no pure subject-object relation, and a situation vis-à-vis reality is always and at the same time a relation of ‘coexistence’”; metaphysical realism does not as such favor a specific epistemological stance but, being a more elemental stance, “amounts simply to this: if we cannot transcend appearance and get through to the being that reveals and conceals itself, there can be no persons. For persons are themselves beings that reveal and conceal themselves. They are not simply subjects in a ‘subject-object relation’; they are essentially subject and object at once” (79). 34 Wojtyła, “The Transcendence of the Person,” 207. What Wojtyła here distinguishes as a “vertical” transcendence reveals the constant operation of the natural law within human agents. As he puts it elsewhere, we “must grasp correctly the transcendental character of that law along with its simultaneous immanence in man and in the world. . . . The natural law is inscribed in the very being of man” (Man in the Field of Responsibility, trans. Kenneth W. Kemp and Zuzanna Maslanka-Kieron [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2011], 71). 35 Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła, 135–36. 48 Thomas Pfau dence, then, that following Wojtyła’s election as pope, the publication of this essay in 1979 should have been succeeded by his three groundbreaking social encyclicals: Laborem Exercens [LE] (1981), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis [SRS] (1987), and Centesimus Annus [CA] (1991). Already in his 1979 essay, Wojtyła specifies that community cannot be conceived as a mere “plurality of subjects, but always [as] the specific unity of that plurality.” Unlike the modern understanding of “society” as a contingent aggregation of individuals based on contingent political and economic interests, a purely “horizontal comradeship” (as Benedict Anderson terms it),36 community is “something more essential, . . . a reality essential to human coexistence and cooperation, and also a fundamental norm.”37 Whereas society tends to be construed as a contingent aggregation of individuals holding formally identical claim rights, community is grounded in the mutual recognition of persons as “the indestructible image of God the Creator, which is identical in each of us” (SRS §47). Being anterior to the “lateral” domain of historical and material reality, this recognition can never be achieved by economic interaction, nor be legally compelled by the state. Yet neither can it be reduced to a vertical (religious) option or “preference.” For, any political and social order that ignores the transcendent dignity of the human person will end up desecrating both the human community and the natural world by subjecting them to a strictly instrumental, means–end rationality. A Conceptual Framework for a Precarious Future: Person, Solidarity, and Communio John Paul II’s Sollicitudo Rei Socialis opens with a searing indictment of precisely this “fragmentation” of the human community into “First, Second, Third, and even Fourth World” (SRS §17). As he repeatedly notes, authentic “development” involves far more than “the mere accumulation of wealth and the greater availability of goods and services” (SRS §9), or what in secular (economic and political) shorthand is called “progress.” In fact, the purely instrumental rationality and material focus at the heart of “progressive” politics—both in the Communist East Block and the liberal-democratic West—risks making “people slaves of ‘possession’ and imme Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991), 7. 37 Wojtyła, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 288–91. As is the case for the late Coleridge, Marin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas, it is the I–Thou relationship that, for Wojtyła, frames community as a normative, ethical reality rather than a discretionary and contingent situation. 36 On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 49 diate gratification” (SRS §28), guaranteeing as it does the “domination of things over people” and life-forms “directed toward ‘having’ rather than ‘being’” (CA §§33, 36). Even before the East–West divide came to an end two years after Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, John Paul II already grasped their shared and ultimately fatal obsession with man’s total material dominion over the earth and, consequently, over one another.38 As he notes, it is the essence of dominion over things to redound on the person or community of persons in the grip of such desire: “A person who is . . . no longer able to control his instincts and passions, or to subordinate them by obedience to the truth, cannot be free” (CA §41); and as the current fusion of radical economic neo-liberalism with technologies of digital “tracking” and surveillance has borne out, “the individual today is often suffocated between two poles represented by the State and the marketplace. At times, it seems as though he exists only as a producer and consumer of goods, or as an object of State administration” (CA §49). Hence, he urges, we must never “lose sight of that dimension which is in the specific nature of man, . . . a bodily and a spiritual nature”; it becomes clear that “development cannot consist only in the use, dominion over, and indiscriminate possession of created things . . . but rather in subordinating the possession, dominion, and use to man’s divine likeness and to his vocation to . . . the transcendent reality of the human being” (SRS §29). Against the “structures of sin” of a world divided and desecrated by rapacious economic practices that manifestly violate the dignity of the human person, John Paul II urges a “diametrically opposed attitude: a commitment to the good of one’s neighbor with the readiness, in the Gospel sense, to ‘lose oneself ’ for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him” (SRS §38). The concept of “solidarity,” which is here introduced, carries both a political and a spiritual meaning, just as a decade earlier Wojtyła had distinguished between “horizontal” and “vertical” self-transcendence.39 On the first plane, solidarity is realized when we “recognize one another as persons,” not only within a given society but when entire societies have the moral clarity to “see the ‘other’—whether a person, people or nation—not as some kind of instrument, . . . to be exploited at John Paul II pointedly rejects a misconstrual of “solidarity” and “communio” as but an alternative policy proposal: “The Church’s social doctrine is not a ‘third way’ between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism. . . . Rather, it constitutes a category of its own”; precisely because the concepts of solidarity and community are grounded in a personalist ontology, they constitute not an “ideology, but rather that accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the complex realities of human existence” (SRS §41); see also CA §13. 39 On the concept of solidarity in Wojtyła / John Paul II, see Doran, Solidarity, 38 50 Thomas Pfau low cost and then discarded,” but as “our ‘neighbor,’ a ‘helper’ (cf. Gen. 2.18–20), to be made a sharer” (SRS §39). For John Paul II, “solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue” (SRS §40), for it reminds us that in our relationship with others what is at stake is not merely our contingent interaction with members of the same species, but our recognition of the other as a person. As Wojtyła had already remarked in The Acting Person, “the notion of neighbor differs essentially from what is contained in the notion member of community,” for even those who “remain strangers . . . never cease to be neighbors.”40 Sollicitudo Rei Socialis reiterates the salient point of a relatedness and moral obligation constitutive of personhood and, as such, antecedent to any political, ethnic, or cultural community: “Beyond human and natural bonds, . . . there is discerned in the light of faith a new model of the unity of the human race, which must ultimately inspire our solidarity. This supreme model of unity, which is a reflection of the intimate life of God, one God in three Persons, is what we Christians mean by the word ‘communion’” (SRS §40). In closing, let us return to the question previously flagged as regards Catholicism’s response to secular modernity: having been forged by its long-standing confrontation with an increasingly secular and avowedly anti-realist culture, in what ways may the Catholic intellectual tradition provide spiritual, intellectual, and practical guidance to gravely disordered human communities as they struggle to achieve a just, responsible, and meaningful existence within a world that has been suffering massive and potentially irreversible ecological damage. Thirty-two years later, John Paul II’s remarks on humankind’s “radical interdependence and consequently of the need for solidarity” arising out of an awareness of being “linked together by a common destiny” (SRS §26) ring even more true and urgent. So, too, does his warning about man’s desire for limitless possession and consumption that, as he foresaw in 1991, was bound to “consume the resources of the earth and his own life” (CA §37). Having evolved over some three hundred years into a global system of production, trade, and speculation callously indifferent to notions of distributive justice and intergenerational responsibility, our secular modernity today appears to have lost sight of an ontological datum altogether essential to Christian teaching: namely, that “there are goods which by their very nature cannot and must not be bought or sold.” Such neo-liberal “‘idolatry’ of Karol Wojtyła, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: Riedel 1979), 292–93. Due to the lingering questions about the quality of its translation, my remarks here largely bypass Wojtyła’s magnum opus, of which a new translation is apparently in progress. 40 On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 51 the market” (CA §40)—no less secular and materialistic than the twentieth-century totalitarian regimes it supplanted—has for the past four decades further compounded forms of alienation of which John Paul II speaks so eloquently in Centesimus Annus.41 Long ignored and subsequently accepted as the price to be paid for the triumph of a global system of production and consumption, pervasive human suffering and ecological destruction have only in the last few decades been recognized as a potentially catastrophic and irreversible legacy of secular modernity. With all reputable scientific models now forecasting climate change accelerating in its pace and bound to reach new extremes, the remainder of our century is destined to be shaped by unprecedented levels of population displacement, more frequent and more extreme weather events, patterns of drought and coastal flooding, which in turn is predicted to entail growing food insecurity and deteriorating standards of public health. Already, these trends, exponentially growing in frequency and severity, are putting immense strain on established political and economic institutions (governments, credit systems, regulatory agencies, disaster relief agencies, etc.) historically entrusted with maintaining social stability, ensuring (however selectively) the material flourishing of our secular society, and with remedying or at least containing modernity’s more pernicious side-effects.42 In many countries these institutions are exhibiting signs of fracturing, due to either unprecedented strain placed on them or political attacks directed against them from without, or because those placed in charge of them have been undermining their core ethos and mission. Indeed, not since the Great Plague, the Black Death, have so many human communities had to confront such material and spiritual dangers, even as their institutional resources are “Alienation is found . . . when [work] is organized so as to ensure maximum returns and profits with no concern whether the worker, through his own labor, grows or diminishes as a person. . . . When man does not recognize in himself and in others the value and grandeur of the human person, he effectively deprives himself of the possibility of . . . entering into that relationship of solidarity and communion with others for which God created him” (CA §41). 42 For a survey of current research and conclusions, see the site United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (https://www.ipcc.ch/); for different climate scenarios and probable consequences, see skepticalscience.com/ climate-best-to-worst-case-scenarios.html; for the latest gathering of data within the United States, see the Fourth National Climate Assessment (nca2018.globalchange.gov/). For an exceptionally powerful and richly informed account of our ecological crisis and what it portends for future human communities, see David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2019). 41 52 Thomas Pfau variously being attacked from without or discredited from within. Sadly, the list of internally fractured and externally discredited institutions includes the Catholic Church, and in the eyes of not only self-described secularists, but a good deal of the laity too. Let me, then, close with two interlocking observations—one sharply critical and the other one more constructive and hopeful. As regards the first, the immeasurable damage homo faber has inflicted on creation cannot be reversed unless the human community charts its future course on the basis of tenets that we find most profoundly and richly developed in the Catholic intellectual tradition, in particular its conception of human solidarity and community grounded in a transcendent and normative conception of the human person. For, as the past three centuries have made horrifically apparent, no purely “horizontal” political framework—of neither the social-contract nor the neo-liberal variety—can on its own ever issue in a responsible and sustainable community. For that to happen, our political and social order must be explicitly grounded in an ontology of the human person, understood as created (not made) and divinely enjoined to realize its ethical and spiritual potential in self-transcendent, active solidarity and communion with other persons. Should the communities of the Anthropocene ignore this framework and rely on strictly pragmatic or technocratic “solutions” to secular modernity’s catastrophic legacy of unrestrained production and consumption, the human community and the creation it was gifted will face global decline and eventual collapse on a scale and of a kind never before experienced. Now, it is the mission of the Catholic Church and all its affiliated institutions of learning and public advocacy to raise awareness of the normative, moral, and spiritual foundations that humanity has ignored at its own rapidly growing peril for the past several centuries. Yet for that ethical message to resonate loudly and effectively, the Catholic Church must decisively cleanse itself of the stain of abuse and other forms of moral and material corruption. Provided the Church summons the spiritual discernment and institutional will for such a cleansing, yet only then can we expect Catholicism’s humane and intellectually profound social teachings to speak to a world that, more than ever, is in desperate need of them. Only if moral integrity and intellectual clarity have been fully restored to the Church’s social teachings, yet also to its liturgical practice and pastoral care, will it be perceived as a communion exemplifying what, as the mystical body of Christ, it was meant to have been all along. And only then can it effectively impress on the dissociated and self-interested (yet also deeply frightened and disoriented) individuals of today’s saeculum their ethical responsibility toward themselves and one another. At both an On Catholic Responses to Our Devastated Saeculum 53 intellectual and a practical level, a Church cleansed of the sin of abuse and corruption may once again speak forcefully and credibly the core truths that I have sought to sketch above: namely, that the dignity of the human person and the viability of human communities rests on a spiritual ecology, at once normative and fragile. At its heart, this ecology asks us to recognize that the acting person stands in a relation of ethical responsibility not only vis-à-vis other persons and non-fungible goods in the present but also to human beings as yet unborn, and indeed to entire generations as yet unconceived. It is here that the metaphysical foundations of Catholic intellectual tradition reveal a profound link between the contents of the faith and their lucid, if ever incomplete, realization in social and spiritual practice. As the young Joseph Ratzinger put it half a century ago: “Christian belief is not an idea but life; it is, not mind existing for itself, but incarnation, mind in the body of history and its ‘We.’ It is not the mysticism of the self-identification of the mind with God, but obedience and service: going beyond oneself, freeing the self precisely through being taken into service by something not made or thought out by oneself, the liberation of N&V being taken into service for the whole.”43 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 100. 43 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 55–66 55 Philosophical Myths of the End Judith Wolfe University of St. Andrews St. Andrews, Scotland This essay traces the course of eschatology in the modern West as a site and tool of secularization, but also as a powerful resource for its resistance, one that Christians cannot ultimately do without. First, though, a set of definitions. By “eschatology,” of course, I mean the study of the last things. Traditionally, these have been itemized as death, judgement, heaven, and hell. But my use of the term is inflected structurally. I am interested specifically in thought about the “last things” as they relate to present systems of life and action; and about those systems insofar as they are seen as determined by their end. This delineation of eschatology admits of a widening of the term (one that is not mere obfuscation) beyond the four traditional loci, to capture wider thinking about the shape and end of human life and history. In this domain, eschatology goes beyond teleology in that the end-relatedness it envisions is often other than simply teleological: many eschatological accounts involve a peripeteia, whether this “turn” be that of divine judgement, Tolkienian eucatastrophe, or Ragnarök. Eschatology does, however, require that the “last things” be thought of as relating to, and in some sense determining, the system they cap. The pragmatic prediction that a nuclear war may end the world is not in itself eschatological; a narrative of the human condition as an arc of human progress that bears the seeds of its own ultimately inevitable destruction is. Eschatology in both its traditional and this wider sense, perhaps more immediately and starkly than any other theological field, reflects the state and role of the Christian Church in the world at any particular time. For Christians of the first to third centuries, as for their Jewish forebears, political oppression and persecution found their correlate in vivid apocalyptic 56 Judith Wolfe visions of liberation, triumph, and a messianic kingdom of peace. During periods of secular Church government, much theological effort and imagination were invested in intricate maps of the next world, detailing eternal rewards or punishments for moral and civic obedience or subversion. This is not to suggest that eschatological beliefs have merely been a product of social and political circumstances; indeed, they have often contributed to such circumstances. Still, it is undeniable that eschatology often projects onto the screen of eternity the concerns, priorities, fears, and hopes of the present. Eschatology is therefore a good “weather cock” for the state of Christian culture in different periods, and its course over the last few hundred years charts remarkably incisively both the causes (or at least contours) of modern secularization and the potential of compelling Catholic responses. This is particularly true because eschatology acts as the framing device for the way we understand and experience the shape of the world, and our place within it, more broadly. For most of Christian history, the biblical promise of Christ’s Second Coming, followed by the resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgement, and the advent of the heavenly Jerusalem, guided people’s understanding both of their own actions and of the times they lived in. That promise had both a moral and a historical dimension. Morally, it set all actions within the purview of an omniscient judgment to come: regardless of current inequalities and deceptions, at the last the all-seeing God would weigh all deeds and judge all people equitably. Historically, it ordered all events within a divine drama leading through anguish to triumph: suffering, humiliation, and persecution were no more than the biblically foretold birth pangs of the messianic kingdom. Throughout Christian history, religious conflicts arose from disagreements over how rightly to map biblical prophecy onto the present time: whether, for example, the pope should be understood as the vicar of Christ presiding over the thousand-year messianic reign preceding the Second Coming, or as the antichrist beguiling the faithful. But these disputes did not touch the explanatory framework itself. The pressing religious question, in other words, was not how the drama of life and history was plotted, but only what role each was playing in it. The Enlightenment, challenging the reliability of revelation as a source of historical and metaphysical knowledge, inevitably changed this. After all, the last things were paradigmatically revealed knowledge. It was from the dominical sayings and actions, and from biblical (and sometimes extrabiblical) prophecy, that the divine plan of salvation and judgement was known. The Enlightenment crisis of revelation was therefore, perhaps foremost, a crisis of eschatology. If Christian morality and world history were determined by their end, and the reliability of knowledge about that Philosophical Myths of the End 57 end was radically in question, how should one continue to talk about moral and historical action? The form as much as the content of Pascal’s wager was a paradigmatic response to that crisis of scepticism. Friedrich Schleiermacher’s apocatastatic eschatology was the first fully developed attempt to meet that challenge. But he was merely one of many theologians who no longer felt able to rely solely on biblical testimony for their assessment of moral action or their expectation of the direction and end of history. Instead, they tried to find supposedly more reliable sources of knowledge about the last things (still framed in broadly biblical terms) in reason and experience. This led to a large-scale shift, shaping much of nineteenth-century thought, from understanding the eschatological kingdom foretold by Scripture as the act of a transcendent God judging his creation, to reading it as the outworking of an intrinsic movement of creation in which God was seen, to some extent, to be immanent as a guiding world spirit. In the former view, it had been questions of judgement that naturally loomed largest; in the latter view, it was questions of potentiality. Nineteenth-century eschatology, particularly in its Protestant forms from Schleiermacher to Albrecht Ritschl, was accordingly dominated by a theological optimism about the continuation of human progress beyond death or crisis, and a corresponding scepticism about traditional doctrines such as the eternal duration of post-mortal punishment in hell. The growing consensus in nineteenth-century Protestantism that hell could not be eternal, and the more scattered, yet powerful renewal of anticipation of a millennium of messianic peace are fascinating developments that bear on our topic, but I will not pursue them further here.1 I will only note briefly that Roman Catholicism was the only major Western denomination largely exempt from these developments, largely because of the insulating effect of its traditional belief in purgatory and in a-millennialism (that is, the idea that the millennium is already underway). For now, however, it is the larger philosophical and cultural, rather than the narrowly theological, shifts in eschatological thought that primarily concern us. I deliberately speak about “shifts” rather than “abandonment.” The standard philosophical narrative is that philosophers overleapt the crisis of revelation by formulating theories of ethics and of history that no longer depended on a divinely ordained end; that is, by making eschatology obsolete. But eschatology as a structuring frame of historical and moral thought was not obsolescent; it was merely reworked. 1 I discuss this shift in detail in Judith Wolfe, “Eschatology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, ed. Joel Rasmussen, Judith Wolfe, and Johannes Zachhuber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), ch. 40. 58 Judith Wolfe “Don’t Immanentize the Eschaton” This middle section of my essay examines a few ways in which this philosophical reworking took the form—always an ultimately unstable one—of “secularization.” Secularization has a precise sense in this context, namely the transposition of the eternal into the saeculum, the age of the present world. If the crisis of revelation was a crisis of eschatology, the rise of secularization was, among other things, a transposition of eschatology: a multi-faceted endeavor to immanentize the eschaton. Two main modes of immanentization concern us here: historico-political and existential. One structural move these modes have in common is their interlocking of eschatology and freedom. A basic move of those historians of philosophy who claim to have left eschatology behind in the ruins of received tradition is to argue that with the Enlightenment, freedom rather than expected judgement became the chief principle of action. This may be so. But if it is, then these historians decisively overlook the extent to which the valorization of freedom did not eclipse eschatology, but itself relied on new eschatological narratives. In thinkers from Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel to Søren Kierkegaard and Nicolas Berdyaev, eschatology became, among other things, the framework within which conflicting conceptions of freedom were articulated and defended. Concretely, in philosophical systems that conceived freedom as a nomological or rational power (such as Kant’s, Hegel’s, and Ernst Cassirer’s), eschatology came to legitimate, sustain, or direct the entire system through the postulate of a final state of freedom, without which that system would be incoherent or powerless. By contrast, in philosophical theories that defined freedom as an anti-nomological power, that is, as a sheerly indeterminate or creative force (such as Berdyaev’s or, focusing not on human but on divine freedom, Kierkegaard’s and Karl Barth’s), freedom found its consummation in the eschatological overturning or rupture of all systems. As Jacob Taubes put it, expounding Kierkegaard: “The holy is the terror that shakes the foundations of the world. The shock caused by the holy bursts asunder the foundations of the world for salvation.”2 This brief sketch already suggests the main contours of the two modes of secularization we are examining here. The historico-political has generally (paradigmatically in and after Hegel) been nomological, even when it has taken revolutionary forms. The existential has generally been anti-no2 Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, trans. David Ratmoko (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 193; I discuss this in more detail in Judith Wolfe, “The Eschatological Turn in German Philosophy,” Modern Theology 35, no. 1 (2019): 55–70. Philosophical Myths of the End 59 mological, and therefore sceptical of notions of progress in life or history. Brief case studies in each will flesh out their shapes, and so also prepare the ground for possible Catholic responses. Although existential eschatologies arose, historically, in reaction against historico-political ones, I will discuss them first, via the outstanding example of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger has been a subject of my research for over ten years, and those who know my work will be familiar with the following, brief account; but his path is so significant for twentieth-century European thought that it is worth reiterating here. Heidegger’s early philosophical path was guided, among other things, by a strong though idiosyncratic interest in eschatology. In the years 1909 to 1915, Heidegger—who was born into a devout Roman Catholic family in 1889 and espoused anti-Modernism in his youth—gradually dissociated himself from the Roman Catholicism of the First Vatican Council, against the background of his growing sense of the importance of philosophical questions “as questions.” By this he meant two things: one, the epistemological questions about metaphysics posed first by Kant and now by Husserlian phenomenology; and two, the problem of “historicity” for an understanding both of individual human existence (as inherently temporal) and of Christianity (as a historically situated and developing religion). Searching for a theological method capable of doing justice to lived experience rather than assuming the spurious god’s-eye view of the neo-Scholastic philosophia perennis, Heidegger, after 1915, began to synthesize Schleiermacher’s and the medieval mystics’ “proto-phenomenology” with the emphasis on suffering and mortality he found in the early Luther, Friedrich Hölderlin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, and Franz Overbeck. The result was a phenomenology of religious life that took affliction—suffering our own finitude—as the basic religious experience.3 These concerns converged on a re-appropriation of early Christian eschatology in Heidegger’s thought of the early 1920s, within the context of similar but competing appropriations by other theological thinkers of the time, especially Barth and Eduard Thurneysen. In concord with a dominant approach in early twentieth-century Protestant scholarship, Heidegger posited, in the early 1920s, a profound irreconcilability between the earliest (“authentic”) Christian experience, centrally characterized by eschatological expectation, and the subsequent development of Christian philosophy and culture when this expectation failed to materialize. Building on his phenomenological analysis of affliction with our 3 See Judith Wolfe, Heidegger’s Eschatology: Theological Horizons in Martin Heidegger’s Early Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), chs. 1–3. 60 Judith Wolfe own finitude as the basic religious experience, Heidegger now found in early Christian eschatological expectation an instantiation par excellence of authentic religious existence. His description of this expectant restlessness, however, turned out to be at odds with its original Christian context, for Heidegger’s commitment to a phenomenological description of the human situation—that is, a description of that situation solely from within—led him to divorce the “existential” experience of expectation from its (from this perspective merely “existentiell” or derivatively postulated) object, the “blessed hope” of the coming kingdom of God. As a consequence, that hope no longer appeared as constitutive of, but rather as inimical to eschatological unrest as Heidegger understood it, because it projects an end to that unrest, and so a cancellation of the nexus of authentic existence. Against the Christian vision, Heidegger thus developed, in the mid-1920s, an eschatology without eschaton that culminated in his account of being-unto-death in Being and Time. On this account, its own being is, at the deepest level, a question for each person. This question cannot be answered or resolved in any traditional sense, because as soon as a person’s existence is complete and therefore in theory intelligible, that person is no longer there to be capable of understanding it. The consummation of one’s existence—death—is at the same time its negation. To live authentically within these conditions can only mean to live in resolute anticipation of this perpetual, inavertible, and inescapably personal possibility: an attitude that Heidegger labelled, after Luther and Kierkegaard, “being unto death.”4 This is an eschatology in the vein of Overbeck, who wrote forty years earlier: “Eschatology teaches us exactly what death teaches us, no more and no less.”5 If Heidegger’s is (as Hans Urs von Balthasar argued in The Apocalypse of the German Soul, though in different terms) the defining existential eschatology of late modernity, then the ten years following the publication of Being and Time in 1927 bent the philosopher’s mind—unexpectedly, but not perhaps improbably—toward the other main mode of modern secular eschatology, the historico-political. In raising the issue of historico-political appropriations of eschatology, I am conscious of retelling well-known narratives. Classic accounts by Berdyaev, Taubes, and Karl Löwith, as well as much recent work, have long See Wolfe, Heidegger’s Eschatology, chs. 4–6. From the unpublished Kirchenlexikon (a collection of several thousand index cards), on a series of cards entitled Christentum Eschatologie Allg., 2–3; quoted in Rudolf Wehrli, Alter und Tod des Christentums bei Franz Overbeck (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1977), 297–98. 4 5 Philosophical Myths of the End 61 established the debts that “political theologies” on the left and right have owed to Christian millenarianism—that is, the expectation of a messianic reign of peace in advance of the Last Judgement.6 We can trace these debts in American as well as European nationalisms, and in movements on the left (as Roland Boer has done for Marxism) as well as the right (as Klaus Vondung has done for Nazism). Lest the broad scope of this claim threaten to render it meaningless, however—if everything is eschatology, after all, then nothing is—I will give a brief sketch of one of its lineages, that of German nationalism. It is well-documented that the nationalism of nineteenth-century Germany was always eschatologically inflected.7 The nationalism of the educated middle classes had, from its beginnings in the Napoleonic Wars, been a glorification of the German national “spirit” (Geist) as nothing less than a pure expression of the quasi-divine “world spirit” which would, in its self-realization, perfect the world. Johann Fichte and Hegel consciously appropriated the Christian apocalyptic tradition especially of Joachim of Fiore, whose apocalyptic periodization of history into the empires of God the Father (Old Testament), the Son (New Testament and Church), and the Holy Spirit (the age to come) served as the model for Hegel’s own periodization in the Philosophy of Religion, and for his eschatological Germanic Realm in the Philosophy of Right.8 The identification of the World Spirit harnessed by Germany with the Holy Spirit of Scripture made this appropriation of the biblical foretelling of an eschatological outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh (e.g., Joel 2:28–9; Acts 2:17) a natural one. See, e.g.: Fritz Gerlich, Der Kommunismus als Lehre vom Tausendjährigen Reich (Munich: Bruckmann, 1920); Nicolas Berdyaev, The Origins of Russian Communism, trans. R. M. French (London: G. Bles, 1937); Taubes, Occidental Eschatology; Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949); Klaus Vondung, The Apocalypse in Germany, trans. Stephen D. Ricks (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Roland Boer, The Criticism of Heaven and Earth, 5 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 7 See, e.g.: Vondung, Apocalypse; Judith Wolfe, “Messianism,’” in The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought, ed. Nicholas Adams, George Pattison, and Graham Ward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 301–24. 8 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942), nos. 352 and 358; Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, trans. Peter Hodgson, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). See also: Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany: State Univeristy of New York Press, 1994); Jayne Svenungsson, Divining History: Prophetism, Messianism and the Development of the Spirit, trans. Stephen Donovan (New York: Berghahns, 2016); Wolfe, “Eschatology.” 6 62 Judith Wolfe This nationalism was, at heart, a matter of education as much as of political or military action, and played into the rise of the German research universities. In 1808, Fichte published his conviction that it was in Germany that “the seed of human perfection is most decisively planted, and to whom progress in this development is entrusted.” “If you perish in this your essence,” he exhorted his countrymen, “then all hope of the entire human race for salvation from the depths of its evils perishes with you.” In 1821, Hegel declared that Germany’s ascendancy would mark the “absolute rule” of Spirit, in which “all peoples would find their salvation.” This nationalism of Geist was so deeply rooted that during the early years of the First World War, it was widely exploited to romanticize German militarism, not only by politicians but also by intellectuals. Publishers in Berlin, Gotha, Jena, and Stuttgart issued war booklets by philosophers including Rudolf Eucken, Friedrich Gogarten, Adolf Lasson, and Heinrich Scholz. They commonly identified the German military force as an embodiment of its national spirit, and that national spirit in turn as the agent of eschatological freedom: “Our army and navy too are a spiritual power” (Lasson);9 “To our highest thoughts, the German people and the German spirit are the revelation of eternity” (Gogarten).10 A German defeat, consequently, was strictly unthinkable: it would “rob world history of its deepest meaning” and “signify the downfall of human history” (Eucken).11 Even Franz Rosenzweig, who wrote his dissertation on Hegel’s philosophy of states, at that time (still under the influence of Hermann Cohen’s assimilationist project) shared the expectation that the war would “serve as a theatre for the triumph of German ideals.”12 The attitude was so common as to furnish the satirical epilogue of Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind), in which engineer “Dr. Sunset from Berlin” appears as a self-declared “knight of the Spirit” who concocts lethal gas in order “finally to achieve the final final victory, so as finally infinitely to triumph.”13 Even the horrors of the war did not initially confound this optimism. After all, Hegel had predicted a phase of radical negativity as the neces Adolf Lasson, Deutsche Art und deutsche Bildung, speech given on September 25, 1914, at the University of Berlin (in the speech collection Deutsche Reden in schwerer Zeit [Berlin: Carl Heymans, 1914–1917]; translation mine) . 10 Gogarten, Religion und Volkstum, col. 55; cited in Vondung, Apocalypse, 191. 11 Rudolf Eucken, Die weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung des deutschen Geistes (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Austalt, 1915), 22 (translation mine). 12 Peter Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 82. 13 Karl Kraus, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (Vienna: Fackel, 1918), 278 (translation mine). 9 Philosophical Myths of the End 63 sary “birth pangs”14 of the final phase of the self-realization of absolute Spirit, that is, the Germanic empire.15 But the colossal disappointment of post-war politics dispersed these eschatological hopes and fomented the crisis of historicism to which conceptual removals of eschatology from world history by existential thinkers influenced by, for instance, Overbeck formed one urgent response. It was primarily those who were to become the intellectual leaders of the National Socialist movement who, in a textbook case of apocalyptic prediction revision, recast the Weimar settlement not as a failure of the expected messianic kingdom, but merely as its delay. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, author of the programmatic Dritte Reich (1923), chose “the Third Reich” as an epithet for the Germany of the future not only in succession to the two preceding “German” empires, but above all by reference to Joachim of Fiore’s apocalyptic “third empire” of the Holy Spirit.16 The condition from which this Reich would be born, he warned, was one of pain and mourning, a condition symbolized by the “sable flag of need, humiliation and utter bitterness.”17 Hitler encouraged the apocalyptic terminology of a “Third Reich” until 1938, when he discarded it for more pragmatic language.18 This rhetoric was initially ambiguous as to its philosophical underpinnings, and was interpreted by many philosophers as a straightforward return to the eschatological nationalism of Fichte and Hegel: a nationalism of spirit rather than (as in the emerging mainstream of Nazi ideology) of blood. When the German Philosophical Society under Bruno Bauch pledged its allegiance to Hitler in 1933, it was with such a vision in mind.19 At its October meeting, to which Hitler sent greetings, Bauch spoke of See the accounts of the onset of the eschatological kingdom in Matt 24:8, Rom 8:22, and the book of Revelation. 15 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, no. 358. 16 Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Germany’s Third Empire, trans. E. O. Lorimer (London: Allen & Unwin, 1934), 12–13. On Nazism’s appropriation of apocalyptic language more generally, see, e.g.: Ekkehard Bärsch, Die politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus, 2nd ed. (Munich: Fink, 2002), B.I.1–3; Klaus Vondung, “National Socialism as a Political Religion: Potentials and Limits of an Analytical Concept,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 6, no. 1 (2005): 87–95; Wolfe, “Messianism,” 310–15. 17 Moeller van den Bruck, Germany’s Third Empire, 242–43. 18 For a fuller account, see Wolfe, “Messianism.” 19 See Mitteilungen der Deutschen Philosophischen Gesellschaft 10 (April 1933): 1. See also George Leaman, “Reflections on German Philosophy and National Socialism: What happened and Why It Matters to Philosophy,” in Philosophie und Zeitgeist im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Marion Heinz and Goran Gretic (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006), 233–50. 14 64 Judith Wolfe National Socialism as the beginning of a “wonderful national revival” of the Fichtean dream, destined to “radically overcome the malign spirit of pragmatism and materialism”—a vision, he added, which German philosophy would support as a “sacred duty and task.”20 This superimposition of a spiritual conception of Germany on the blood-and-soil nationalism of the political leadership was one of the chief ways in which philosophers came to support the Nazi regime; it later appeared as if they were, as Hannah Arendt reported of Heidegger to Günther Gaus, “caught in the trap of [their] own ideas.”21 There are many conclusions Catholics can draw from this second case study in secularized eschatology; the most obvious is that expressed so pithily by C. S. Lewis: “Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”22 That a towering thinker like Heidegger, who had formulated an existential eschatology that would shape philosophical thought in twentieth-century Europe, was nevertheless seduced by the will-o-the-wisp of a national apotheosis, testifies to the depth of this human need. Transnational secular eschatologies like those of transhumanism are contemporary vehicles for the promises pursued by secularizers who have merely immanentized, not overtaken, religious hopes.23 “Behold, I Make All Things New” How do we as Catholics respond to these forms of secularization? We can be guided by their inherent instability. Secular eschatologies mark deepseated desires, but (is this one of the curses of human existence?) cannot help but pursue them in such ways as to destroy their objects. Heidegger’s call to being-unto-death, of course, does so intentionally. Human existence, for him, just is to live not toward fulfilment but towards its impossibility. And yet for all its heroism of finitude, his tale depends for its pathos entirely on the assumption of a desire to transcend finitude Published as Bruno Bauch, “Wert und Zweck,” Blätter für deutsche Philosophie 8 (1934): 39–59. 21 Television interview given on October 28,1964, on Gaus’s programme Zur Person (ZDF). I have written about Heidegger’s distinctive reception of this tradition in Judith Wolfe, “Religion in the Black Notebooks: Overview and Analysis,” in Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and the Future of Theology, ed. Mårten Björk and Jayne Svenungsson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 23–48. 22 “Equality,” in C. S. Lewis, Essay Collection, ed. Lesley Walmsley (London: HarperCollins, 2000), 668. 23 Michael S. Burdett, Eschatology and the Technological Future (New York: Routledge, 2015), broaches but does not nearly exhaust this topic. 20 Philosophical Myths of the End 65 which he cannot and does not attempt to account for. The passionate acts of “shattering oneself against death” or bearing its “affliction” which characterize authentic human existence24 are predicated on a contrary longing which Heidegger’s analysis assumes as consistently as it obfuscates it. Historico-political eschatologies, by contrast, usually pursue collective fulfilment. Yet they achieve it, if at all, only at the cost of redefining out of recognition either “fulfilment” or those who obtain it. This is most obvious in those political theologies on the left and right that tend toward totalitarianism. The German Catholic convert Erik Peterson (1890–1960), almost unknown in English-language scholarship, was an incisive critic of such systems’ failures to observe an “eschatological reserve” (eschatologischer Ausstand), and his thought has not yet been exhausted as a resource for future Catholic responses.25 More complex collective eschatologies, like Heidegger’s Hölderlinian nationalism of the late 1930s,26 or ascendant varieties of transhumanism, also pursue fulfilment, but acknowledge that this fulfilment is likely to bring “the end of the world as we know it”: it is not humans, but their successor AIs, who will inherit the kingdom. This encapsulates what we might call the antinomy of secular eschatology: the irreducible tension between end as cessation and end as fulfilment.27 This tension is sublated in Christian eschatology, which embraces both dissolution and fulfilment, and understands each through the other—Cross through resurrection, and resurrection through Cross. The New Testament Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), nos. 46–53. 25 Not much of his work is available in English, but see Erik Peterson, Theological Tractates, trans. Michael J. Hollerich (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); in German, see esp. also Peterson, Der Brief an die Römer, ed. Barbara Nichtweiß, Ausgewählte Schriften 6 (Würzburg: Echter, 2012[1924]), which contrasts so interestingly with his friend Karl Barth’s eschatology. Recent German scholarship has shown a vivid interest in Peterson’s eschatology; see esp.: Kurt Anglet, Messianität und Geschichte: Walter Benjamins Konstruktion der historischen Dialektik und deren Aufhebung ins Eschatologische durch Erik Peterson (Berlin: Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, 1995); Anglet, Der eschatologische Vorbehalt: Eine Denkfigur Erik Petersons (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 2000); Barbara Nichtweiß, ed., Vom Ende der Zeit: Geschichtstheologie und Eschatologie bei Erik Peterson: Symposium Mainz 2000 (Munster: LIT Verlag, 2001). English-language engagement with Peterson’s eschatology has been sparse and conducted mainly in the context of Carl Schmitt scholarship, inspired by Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). 26 See Wolfe, “Religion in the Black Notebooks,” 37–40. 27 See Wolfe, “Eschatology,” 691; Wolfe, “The Eschatological Turn,” 57. 24 66 Judith Wolfe promises of the kingdom, in other words, are not simply utopian: they do not project the linear (or even dialectical) completion of human potentiality. Instead, they require the death of the old Adam, and renewed birth with Christ, “the firstborn from the dead.”28 This rebirth or re-creation extends not just to humans, but to the whole world: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”29 Nor is this an arbitrary requirement. It is rooted in the human vocation to be drawn, at the last, into the triune life of God: that love between Father, Son, and Spirit which defines the divine nature or life, and overflows into the creation of a non-divine world. This “deification” is not a calling that is attainable by human capacities, because “to be like God” does not consist (as Adam and Eve were tempted into believing) in achieving autonomy, but in being drawn “above the condition of [our] nature to a participation of the Divine good.”30 Therefore, although “man by his nature is ordained to beatitude as his end,” he is ordained to attain this end “not by his own strength,” but only by the “help of grace,” which draws him into the love of God.31 This grace is poured out through the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ; as the Church Fathers never tired of saying, “God became man so that man might become god.”32 Death, once the punishment for sin, was here transformed from within into a means of sharing in the action and life of Christ, and so moving toward that life with God which is the innermost human calling. Catholics cannot ultimately overcome secularization without preaching this vocation beyond the saeculum. As Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann, Robert Jenson and other Protestant theologians have already shown, we must reclaim eschatology not as a slightly awkward appendix to our dogmatics, but as illuminating with the light of glory our path through the present valley of the shadow of life. N&V Col 1:18; see also Rom 5:18, 1 Cor 15:22. Rom 8:22–23. 30 St. Thomas, Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 110, a. 1. 31 ST I-II, q. 114, a. 2. 32 E.g., St. Athanasius, De incarnatione verbi 54.3; quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, §460. 28 29 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 67–101 67 Ars Christiane Philosophandi: John Paul II and Jacques Maritain on Christian Philosophy Matthew DuBroy The Thomistic Institute for Ongoing Formation Cleveland, OH In §76 of Fides et Ratio (1998) , Pope Saint John Paul II confirmed the legitimacy and the importance of “a Christian way of philosophizing, a philosophical speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith.”1 The meaning and reality of Christian philosophy was long debated in the 1930s by eminent thinkers such as Emile Bréhier, Étienne Gilson, Maurice Blondel, and Fernand van Steenberghen.2 More recently other authors have taken up the question anew, like Monsignor John F. Wippel,3 Quotes from Fides et Ratio are from the official translation on the Vatican website, where the Latin can also be found. 2 For a history of this question in the 1930s see Gregory Sadler, ed., Reason Fulfilled by Revelation: The 1930’s Christian Philosophy Debates in France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 8–96, and for some of the speculative drama and a sampling of Thomists at key meetings of the French Société Thomiste in 1933, see Ralph McInerny, Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 91–107. 3 John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 1–33, and Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 11–30. Wippel focuses on Gilson’s views before giving his own reflections on the matter where he makes a distinction between the order of discovery which can be Christian and the order of proof which cannot be Christian. See, for example, Metaphysical Themes II, 24. 1 68 Matthew DuBroy Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J.,4 Steven Baldner,5 and Nicholas J. Healy Jr. 6 In this article, I will take up the thought of Jacques Maritain to offer an in-depth look at his doctrine. I argue that Maritain’s teaching unfolds speculatively what John Paul II says in nuce about Christian philosophy in Fides et Ratio.7 The question of Christian philosophy is the question of whether or in what manner faith influences philosophy. Fides et Ratio allows for the use of the term “Christian philosophy” and is clearly concerned with clarifying its proper meaning so as not to be misunderstood. 8 There are two basic concerns when considering the relationship of faith and philosophy: on the one hand and noted by Fides et Ratio, there is a concern about a philosophy separated from faith (rationalism) which is the staple of most modern philosophy, and yet, on the other hand and noted by the Congregation for Catholic Education’s Decree On The Reform Of Ecclesiastical Studies Of Philosophy, there is a concern about a confusion of philosophy and theology (fideism).9 We need to have a philosophy that is not separated from faith nor confused with faith. Thinkers must be Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Can Philosophy Be Christian? The New State of the Question,” in The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays on Fides et Ratio, ed. David Ruel Foster and Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2003), 3–21. Cardinal Dulles here reads John Paul II in line with Henri de Lubac on this question: “On the whole, [ John Paul II’s] positions coincide most closely with those of de Lubac, who sought to mediate between Blondel and Gilson” (18). For de Lubac’s position, see Henri de Lubac, S.J., “On Christian philosophy,” Communio: International Catholic Review 19 (1992): 478–506. 5 Steven Baldner, “Christian Philosophy, Étienne Gilson, and Fides et Ratio,” in Faith and Reason: The Notre Dame Symposium 1999, ed. Timothy L. Smith (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 153–66. Baldner sees many similarities between John Paul II and Gilson, while noting key differences. 6 See Nicholas J. Healy Jr., “Praeambula fidei: David L. Schindler and the Debate over ‘Christian Philosophy,’” in Being Holy in the World: Theology and Culture in the Thought of David L. Schindler, ed. Nicholas J. Healy Jr. and D. C. Schindler (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 89–122. Healy reads John Paul II in line with Schindler, who follows in his own unique way Gilson and Blondel, and argues that faith affects the nature of philosophy: “Christian faith permanently influences philosophy as such” (11). 7 This perhaps is less surprising when one realizes that Cardinal Cottier supervised the writing of Fides et Ratio—himself a follower of Maritain on this score (see Gianni Valente, “‘If Everything Is Grace, Then Grace Is No More,’” 30 Days, 30giorni.it/articoli_id_3545_l3.htm). See Cardinal George Cottier, O.P., Les chemins de la raison: Questions d’épistémologie théologique et philosophique (Paris: Parole et Sagesse, 1997). 4 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 69 acutely aware of both of these possible errors, and so we need to protect both philosophy’s integrity and philosophy’s proper union with faith. It is precisely at this point where Maritain seems most helpful guiding us between these potential pitfalls. In fact, John Paul II cites Maritain as a significant example of how to philosophize in light of Christian revelation.10 Moreover, Maritain does well to apply the principles of St. Thomas Aquinas, to whom John Paul II is also dedicated.11 St. Thomas Aquinas provides the principles which Maritain interprets and applies to the question of how Christian revelation can influence philosophy. Consequently, the aim of this article is to explore the contribution and develop the argument of Maritain concerning the question of “Christian philosophy” in light of Fides et Ratio.12 Therefore, first I will lay out briefly what Fides et Ratio says about Christian philosophy before, second, giving a fuller treatment of Maritain. John Paul II and Christian Philosophy Fides et Ratio sets out certain principles for a proper understanding of Christian philosophy. There are six main points. First, philosophy can legitimately relate to the Gospel in different ways (completely independent of the Gospel, Christian philosophy, and as used within theology), or in other words, philosophy exists in different states (statibus; condicio).13 Second, philosophy has a proper autonomy and is universally valid. This proper autonomy means that philosophy “must obey its own rules John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §74. To be fair, John Paul II cites other authors as models too. The clincher that Maritain is particularly helpful at unfolding Fides et Ratio on Christian philosophy is the speculative doctrine of Maritain. 11 In Fides et Ratio §43, John Paul II affirms that “this is why the Church has been justified in consistently proposing Saint Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology.” In fact, John Paul II thinks so highly of St. Thomas’s doctrine on faith and reason that he judges that “in his thinking, the demands of reason and the power of faith found the most elevated synthesis ever attained by human thought, for he could defend the radical newness introduced by Revelation without ever demeaning the venture proper to reason”(Fides et Ratio, §78). John Paul II personally attests that he is part of the Thomistic school when he says: “We in the Thomistic school, the school of ‘perennial philosophy’ . . .” (Karol Wojtyła, “The Human Person and Natural Law,” trans. Theresa Sandok, in Person and Community: Selected Essays [New York: P. Lang, 1993], 181–85, at 181). 12 For what I intend in developing Maritain’s argument and why this is necessary, see note 31 below. 13 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §§75–77. Being completely independent of the Gospel is distinct from a separated philosophy insofar as the latter is a rejection of the faith and the former is ignorant of the faith. 10 70 Matthew DuBroy and be based upon its own principles.”14 This means, for John Paul II, that philosophy “moves under the light of the intellect alone.”15 Moreover, this autonomy is opposed to a separated philosophy.16 A philosophy separated from faith is a philosophy which has rejected the faith; it is a philosophy that is rationalistic.17 Third, Christian philosophy is philosophizing in a Christian manner, that is, philosophizing in such a way that the Christian faith gives life to it: “The term seeks rather to indicate a Christian way of philosophizing, a philosophical speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith.”18 Fourth, Christian philosophy refers to the advances in philosophy caused by the faith in some way (that some advance was caused by the faith is seen if such an advance might not have happened without the faith). Faith causes this advance by helping or aiding philosophy: “The term Christian philosophy includes those important developments of philosophical thinking which might not have happened without the direct or indirect contribution of Christian faith.”19 See John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §79. See also §73: “Philosophy [is] pursued in keeping with its own rules [suis servatis legibus].” 15 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §9 (translation slightly emended). See John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (1979), §17, where he characterizes natural law as “purely human [simpliciter humanae]” and based on premises given by man’s experience, i.e., human reason. 16 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §75: “It is clear that this legitimate approach [to autonomy] is rejected by the theory of so-called ‘separate’ philosophy, pursued by some modern philosophers. This theory claims for philosophy not only a valid autonomy, but a self-sufficiency of thought which is patently invalid. In refusing the truth offered by divine Revelation, philosophy only does itself damage, since this is to preclude access to a deeper knowledge of truth.” See also Fides et Ratio, §§16, 45, 53, and 77. 17 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §45: “As a result of the exaggerated rationalism of certain thinkers, positions grew more radical and there emerged eventually a philosophy which was separate from and absolutely independent of the truths of faith.” On a separate philosophy being rationalism, see Baldner, “Christian Philosophy,” 158. In addition to damaging philosophy, a separated philosophy leads to a mistrust of reason (Fides et Ratio, §45), a loss of its proper goal, and a forgetfulness of being (§48). That a separate philosophy diminishes man’s capacity to know the world, see Fides et Ratio, §16. 18 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §76 (emphasis added). For Latin text, see the Vatican’s website. 19 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §76 (emphasis added). I have altered the official English translation from “would” to “might”; contigissent can be taken either way, but the more modest “might” fits better because it makes a statement about historical contingent realities. If meant speculatively, namely, that faith was necessary to know certain natural truths, then it would be problematic throwing into doubt 14 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 71 Fifth, there are two kinds of help that faith gives to philosophy, resulting in a Christian philosophy. The indirect or subjective help comes from faith purifying reason, while the direct or objective help comes from the content of revelation offering certain truths to man which reason is able to attain but might not have attained without this help: “Christian philosophy therefore has two aspects. The first is subjective, in the sense that faith purifies reason. . . . The second aspect of Christian philosophy is objective, in the sense that it concerns content. Revelation clearly proposes certain truths which might never have been discovered by reason unaided, although they are not of themselves inaccessible to reason.”20 This last phrase means that the truths which revelation provides as objective help to philosophy are truths that reason is, in principle, able to attain. (This is more obvious in the Latin, which expresses this point positively: revealed truths, “which reason is able to attain . . . .”) Sixth, philosophers have not entered into theology, for they do not begin with revelation and they do use the powers of reason alone or pure reason (mera ratione): “In speculating on these questions, philosophers have not become theologians, since they have not sought to understand and expound the truths of faith on the basis of Revelation. They have continued working on their own terrain and with their own purely rational method, yet extending their research to new aspects of truth.”21 It is my contention that Maritain’s teaching unfolds these basic points, as we will see next, and so serves as a helpful guide in understanding Christian philosophy. Jacques Maritain—Nature and State Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) wrote his first essay on Christian philosophy in 1931.22 He revised and expanded it in 1932 in an essay also reason’s natural capacity to know its proper object (we will consider this more below). 20 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §76 (emphasis added). 21 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio §76 (emphasis added). This corresponds to John Paul II’s characterization of natural law as being based on “purely human” things such as reason, and this is distinguished from theology. See John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, §17: “This is the document called Dignitatis Humanae, in which is expressed not only the theological concept of the question but also the concept reached from the point of view of natural law, that is to say from the ‘purely human’ position, on the basis of the premises given by man’s own experience, his reason and his sense of human dignity.” 22 Jacques Maritain, “La notion de philosophie chrétienne,” presentation in the March 21, 1931, session, Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie 31, no. 2 (1931). 72 Matthew DuBroy entitled “La notion de philosophie chrétienne.”23 Finally, in 1933, this was incorporated into his more well-known work De la Philosophie Chrétienne.24 Even though he wrote his first essay on the subject in 1931, his thoughts on the nature of philosophizing as a Christian had already been developing.25 He began his philosophical work with critical works on Descartes and the consequences from Descartes’s work in modern philosophy; specifically he argued against Descartes’ separation of faith or theology, on the one hand, from reason or philosophy, on the other.26 From this he developed his understanding of philosophy as in some way Christian. As Frank Keegan writes, “if modern philosophy was criticized [by Maritain] because it was independent of faith and theology, and antagonistic to them as well, then Christian philosophy [according to Maritain] must have some more intimate relationship to faith and theology.”27 Therefore early in his career he strongly emphasized philosophy’s great need of faith over against this rationalism, and only later on in this early period does he establish explicitly the autonomy of philosophy.28 My focus will be on his more mature work beginning in 1931. I will use Jacques Maritain, “La notion de philosophie chrétienne,” Revue néo-scolastique de philosophie 36 (1932):153–86. 24 Jacques Maritain, De la Philosophie Chrétienne (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1933); reprinted in Jacques et Raissa Maritain Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5 (Fribourg: éditions Universitaires, 1982), 225–316, and translated as An Essay on Christian Philosophy, trans. Edward H. Flannery (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955). 25 For an exhaustive treatment of Maritain’s development of “Christian Philosophy” from 1910 to 1929, see Frank L. Keegan, “The Development of Jacques Maritain’s Conception of Christian Philosophy: 1910–1929” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 1959). The following brief comments rely on this work. 26 See Jacques Maritain: “L’esprit de la philosophie moderne: I—les préparations de la réforme cartésienne,” Revue de philosophie 24 (1914): 601–25; “L’esprit de la philosophie moderne: II—l’indépendance de l’esprit,” Revue de philosophie 25 (1914): 53–82; Antimoderne (Paris: Editions de la Revue des Jeunes, 1922); Le songe de Descartes (Paris: Correa, 1932). The last was translated as The Dream of Descartes, trans. Mabelle L. Andison (New York: Philosophical Library, 1944). While it was published in 1932, some chapters were published earlier: “L’esprit de Descartes I,” Les Lettres, February, 1922, 175–204, and “L’esprit de Descartes I,” Les Lettres, March, 1922, 371–448. See notes 16 and 17 above for John Paul II on a “separate” philosophy. 27 Keegan, “Development of Jacques Maritain’s Conception,” 77. 28 Keegan outlines three periods of Maritain’s early work: 1910–1914 is the first period, 1918–1926 is the second period, and 1926–1929 is the third period. It is in the first period that the importance of faith is stressed and in the second that the autonomy of philosophy is outlined more explicitly. The years during World War I were left out due to Maritain’s lack of production during this time. 23 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 73 this work, which is characterized by Maritain as being the “doctrinal” or speculative viewpoint that complements the historical work of Gilson’s L’Esprit de la Philosophie Médiévale, as our guide into the question of Christian philosophy from the same speculative viewpoint.29 My purpose in the remaining part of this article is to unfold the meaning of Christian philosophy with the help of Maritain’s distinction between the nature and state of philosophy. Maritain’s thought helps us navigate the middle way, between guarding philosophy’s proper nature and philosophy’s unity with faith, which was the aim of Maritain’s work on this question: “The notion of Christian philosophy carries a double consequence: it demands that we should recognize the subordination of philosophy to the superior orders of wisdom; and it demands that, in face of these orders of wisdom, we shall maintain and affirm the specific character, and the autonomous existence of philosophy in its own right and method.”30 Therefore, first I will proceed to explain the distinction between nature and state. Second, I will focus on the autonomy of philosophy within a Christian philosophy and so focus on protecting the nature of philosophy. Third and finally, I will focus on the unity that philosophy has with faith by considering faith’s influence on philosophy as intrinsic. Nature In trying to understand Christian philosophy in light of Thomistic principles, Maritain finds the solution to how faith influences philosophy in the classical distinction between the order of specification and the order of exercise or between the nature of something—what it is in itself—and its state—the mode of being or exercise.31 When applied to philosophy this means we must distinguish between the nature of philosophy and its Étienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, trans. A. H. C. Downs (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991). Maritain makes this connection in Essay on Christian Philosophy, 4. 30 Jacques Maritain, Science and Wisdom, trans. Bernard Wall (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), 101 [French: Science et Sagesse: suivi d’éclaircissements sur la philosophie morale, collected in Jacques et Raissa Maritain Oeuvres complètes, vol. 6 (1984), 9–250]. While subordination does not have the ratio of “unity” it is similarly opposed to a separated philosophy, because a separated philosophy denies this proper subordination. 31 While in the section that follows I closely follow Maritain’s argument in Essay on Christian Philosophy, 11–33, I also expand his arguments and explanations, since his account is at times quite brief. I expand them in line with his own principles— first by using what he has said elsewhere, and second by referring to St. Thomas— Maritain’s prime teacher. See Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 79–81, for his own brief summary of his conclusions. 29 74 Matthew DuBroy state of being or its concrete exercise.32 I will consider first what “nature” in general means before, second, considering the nature of philosophy. There are many ways in which “nature” can be understood, but we will limit this discussion to the pertinent meaning.33 Much light can be shed on the meaning of “nature” by consideration of the two-fold meaning of “substance” or the distinction between essence (nature) and first substance because, in a way, this distinction parallels the distinction between nature and state. Thomas teaches us about this distinction especially in De potentia, q. 9, a. 1.34 Thomas, following Aristotle, distinguishes between two meanings of the word “substance” according to whether it can be predicated of another (or not). Consequently, according to the first meaning, “substance” is that which cannot be predicated of another and therefore is a subject (supposit), and this is an individual or a particular within the genus of substance.35 According to the second meaning, the form or nature, which can be predicated of another, is called “substance.” This Ralph McInerny in re-articulating Maritain’s distinction here says: “Better to think of the activity of philosophizing . . . and to distinguish what characterizes it formally as such from what characterizes it as undertaken by so-and-so in suchand-such circumstances” (“Reflections On Christian Philosophy,” in One Hundred Years of Thomism, ed. Victor B. Brezik [Houston, TX: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1981], 63–73, at 65). 33 For the various meanings of nature, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 2, a. 1. In summary “nature” can signify at least six things: (1) the generation of living beings (the word “nature” is taken from the Latin word which means “being born,” (2) the principle of this generation, (3) any intrinsic principle of movement (because the principle of the generation of living beings is interior, this is a natural extended sense), (4) form (an intrinsic principle), (5) matter (an intrinsic principle), (6) essence (because the end of natural generation is the essence). The meaning we will be focused on is the last. See Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 206–8. See also ST I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 4, and Thomas Aquinas, In III sent., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2. 34 See: Thomas Aquinas, De ente de essentiae, ch. 3 (nos. 2–3); Summa contra gentiles IV, ch. 49; ST I, q. 29, a. 2; and Thomas Aquinas, In V metaph., lec. 10 where Thomas initially distinguishes substance used in four ways before reducing it to first substance and essence. Thomas also lists different ways substance can be taken in In VII metaph., lec. 2. See John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 198–208. 35 “Individual” is a mode of being which means that it is said analogously. Hence, it is necessary to designate that by “individual” we mean in the genus substance. See Dewan, Form and Being, 229–47. First substance is also called hypostasis or supposit, or in the genus of rational nature—person. For the different names of first substance, see ST I, q. 29, a. 1, and Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibet II, q. 2, a. 2. 32 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 75 distinction is made to account for the fact that there are many things with the same nature, and so the distinction is between what is one and what is many. That which is one is called “common nature” and is what the definition signifies.36 Now whatever is signified by the common nature of the thing is signified by the essence, so that the common nature and the essence are identical in intelligible content (ratio). However, this is not true of the individual substance, because otherwise there would be no distinction between the common nature and the individual substance (within the same species or nature); in fact, there is a difference of intelligible content between the common nature and the individual subsisting thing. What distinguishes them is what makes the substance an individual—namely, individual matter, and secondarily individual accidents.37 Therefore, everything that is attributed to the nature is attributed to the individual substance but not everything that is attributed to the individual substance is attributed to the nature. Consequently, in material substances (where there are many individual substances existing in one species—that is, sharing one common nature) nature is a formal part of the individual substance.38 In summary we can simply note with Thomas that nature used in this way is the “quiddity of a thing which its definition signifies.”39 It follows that the “quiddity of a composite is not the composite itself,” because only the essential principles are contained in the nature or quiddity, and not what pertains to the individuation of the nature.40 For example, “humanity” signifies only the essential principles of man while “man” signifies both these essential principles and what makes this an individual. Hence, we never predicate humanity of Socrates (“Socrates is humanity”) but we predicate of him “man” (“Socrates is a man”).41 ST I, q. 29, a. 2. In this sense other terms can be used here like essence, ratio, or even form (as is used earlier in the text). 37 Individual matter is matter designated by quantity. Quantity renders matter this matter, here and now, and this is necessary because matter is pure potency. Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 351–71, esp. 360–61. 38 See In V metaph., lec. 10, no. 903. Thomas again distinguishes between these two kinds of substance and lists three differences: particular substance (individual substance) is not predicated of anything inferior like universal substance (common nature) is; universal substance does not subsist except by reason of the singular substance which subsists per se; universal substance is present in many things while singular substance is separable and distinct from all. See Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 239n4. 39 In III sent., d. 5, q. 1, a. 3. See also Quodlibet II, q. 2, a. 2. 40 In III sent., d. 5, q. 1, a. 3. 41 “Man” signifies the individuating features in an indeterminate way so that “man” 36 76 Matthew DuBroy Abstraction Maritain notes that abstraction—the process by which man comes to know material things—is how we reflect on nature and consequently on the nature of philosophy.42 While it is unnecessary to go into detail concerning the different kinds of abstraction, the important point to stress is that the end result of abstraction is the nature insofar as we abstract the universal from the particular. This helps to delineate what we mean by “nature” more clearly, that is, what is contained in the notion of nature and what is not. Secondarily, it helps us to see the difference between what is essential to nature and what is essential to existing thing. St. Thomas is instructive on what it means to abstract the universal from the particular: Likewise, the things which belong to the species of a material thing, such as a stone, or a man, or a horse, can be thought of apart from the individualizing principles which do not belong to the does not exist, but this man, that is, with determinate features. See De ente de essentiae, ch. 2: “The term ‘man’ expresses it as a whole, because it does not prescind from the designation of matter but contains it implicitly and indistinctly, as we said the genus contains the difference. That is why the term ‘man’ can be predicated of individuals. But the term ‘humanity’ signifies the essence of man as a part, because its meaning includes only what belongs to man as man, prescinding from all [determination] of matter. As a result it cannot be predicated of individual men” (On Being and Essence, trans. Armand Maurer [Toronto : Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968], 44; translation altered at bracket). 42 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 12. Some might think that abstraction does not allow us to know the thing as it exists, but for argument to the contrary, see Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 88–89: “However incomplete our view is when we abstract nature as a whole (abstractio totius), we do in fact thereby acquire knowledge of a real principle in man—however true it may also be that in the practical order we will need the perfection of further guidance (in order to know how this principle actually exists within the given concrete order and in relation to the realities of grace and original and actual sin) to make prudential judgments with respect to action. . . . But, speculatively speaking, affirming human nature of each and every human individual irrespective his relation to grace or sin will be correct: whatever enhancements or deprivations pertain to the individual will not invalidate but only qualify the possession of the nature in question.” McInerny considers the objection that abstraction falsifies the real because it considers things in a way other than they exist. He notes, however, that this can be understood in two ways: first to consider something without something essential to it, and second, to consider something without considering what is peculiar to an instance of it. It is only in the first case that a falsification takes place. This is simply our way of knowing real things. See McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 201–2. Ars Christiane Philosophandi 77 notion [ratio] of the species. This is what we mean by abstracting the universal from the particular, or the intelligible species from the phantasm; that is, by considering the nature of the species apart from its individual qualities represented by the phantasms. 43 The phantasms then are produced by the imagination, and they relate to the intellect as the material element by which the intellect understands, because it is the individual thing immaterialized but not yet universalized. This means that it is the thing existing in an immaterial way but not yet in a way that separates it from all its characteristics that are particular to this one thing (and not just the nature of the thing).44 For example, if I have a phantasm of a man I have all the things that make this man, say Ryan. The likeness has black hair (even if its hairline is receding). It is on the shorter side and is scrawny, and so on. Now if I have another phantasm of Fr. Brown, it is short and stumpy, and so on. Now when the agent intellect acts on these phantasms (for we can have many phantasms that result in one intellectual species) and separates these from their individuating characteristics (and we are left with the intellectual species), we have simply the nature of man and not any of the characteristics that make these particular men unique. We have the form (of the whole) or the ratio or the nature of man. The reason we can abstract the nature from the particulars is because the individual parts are essential to this thing but not essential to the nature. In other words, they are accidental to the whole, since they do not enter into the definition of the thing. It is accidental to the nature of man to have this body and these bones, but it is not accidental to the nature of ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 1. A phantasm is the likeness of the individual thing known produced by the imagination (after the work of the senses). It is a phantasm which the agent intellect acts upon. The agent intellect is the power by which forms are abstracted from their individuating (material) conditions. This means that the individual form is separated from what makes it individual, namely, matter. By so separating the form it is universalized and makes what is potentially intelligible actually intelligible; in other words, the agent intellect allows the passive intellect to receive the form of the thing in an immaterial way. For example, by abstracting the form of man we consider man universally. Man taken universally is, in other words, the nature of man, or man as such. By so abstracting, the agent intellect makes this form intelligible, since in its material conditions the form is unintelligible. What is received then in the passive intellect is what is called the intellectual species. The intellectual species is that by which the thing is understood. On abstraction in St. Thomas, see In Boethii de Trinitate, q. 5, a. 3, and ST I, q. 85, a. 1. For a review of the De Trinitate text, See McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 205–9, and Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 44–49, who focuses on separation especially. 43 44 78 Matthew DuBroy man to have flesh and bones. 45 These are called parts of matter and are distinguished from the parts of the form or of the species. These latter parts are essential to the whole as such and so cannot be excluded from the abstracted nature. For example, it is not accidental for a triangle to have three sides, and so when the nature is abstracted from a triangle, it must include this part. Nature of Philosophy Maritain closely follows St. Thomas in determining the nature of philosophy inasmuch as he sees that just as powers are specified by their acts and acts by their objects so too will philosophy be specified by its (formal) object.46 Among existing things there are those which are of their nature attainable through the natural faculties of the human mind, and this (taken as a whole) is the object of philosophy.47 Elsewhere Maritain speaks of its formal object, here specifically metaphysics, not as God in his deitas as it would be for theology, but ens secundum quod ens.48 Ens as such and taken as a whole is the object of philosophy. To be more explicit, the formal object is essentially different in the two sciences: for philosophy it is being and for theology it is God in himself.49 Hence, philosophy is intrinsically See In Boethii de Trinitate, q. 5, a. 3. See also McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 208. Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 13. See ST I, q. 1, a. 7. 47 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 14. See also Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 97: “Speculative knowledge does not bear on the existential situation of man but on the nature of things: and as ‘being’ and ‘intelligibility’ are convertible, things must have, in their very nature, a natural intelligibility, and this natural intelligibility must be the specifying object of a form of knowing natural in itself.” Maritain also points out that St. Thomas teaches that philosophy is, unlike theology, not one science, but many specifically distinct sciences, such that mathematics, philosophy of nature, and metaphysics are distinct philosophical sciences. See also Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 101n1, and ST I, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2. 48 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 24. Maritain continues: “It is a rational wisdom, and is natural in its essence. It is wholly resolved in natural and rational evidence. In itself it does not imply the divine communication and supernatural descent of the Godhead of which we have spoken, but only natural communication and that initial creative generosity, by which the supreme Intelligence enlightens every man coming into this world.” 49 See Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 104–5. See also Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 34: “In real fact, theology possess an object, a light, and a method that differ entirely from those of philosophy.” See also Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy, trans. E. I. Watkin (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005 [French: Introduction Générale à La Philosophie in Jacques et Raissa Maritain Oeuvres complètes vol. 2 (1987), 19–272]), 84–85: “But if philosophy and theology are entirely distinct, they are not therefore unrelated, and although philosophy 45 46 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 79 a natural and rational form of knowledge of ens so that its highest form— wisdom—St. Thomas understands as “the perfect achievement of reason.”50 The denial that philosophy is within the reach of the natural faculties or the natural capacity of the mind denies philosophy itself.51 The following text of St. Thomas text makes evident that the capacity of the intellect, and consequently the work of philosophy, is directly connected to the first principles of the intellect: For there are in us by nature certain complex first principles which are known by all human beings. From these principles reason proceeds to know in act the conclusions which are potentially known in the aforementioned principles—either through our own discovery, or through somebody else’s teaching, or through divine revelation. In all these modes of knowing man is supported by the principles which are known by nature: either in such a way that the principles themselves are sufficient for acquiring knowledge through the assistance of the sense and of imagination, when we acquire knowledge through discovery or through teaching; or in such a way that the aforementioned principles are not sufficient to acquire knowledge, though, nonetheless, the principles guide in knowing such things, insofar as the latter are found not to contradict the principles which are known by nature. If this were the case [i.e., if the principles were contradicted], the understanding would in no way assent to those things, as it cannot dissent from the principles.52 The capacity of the intellect, as we can see in this text, is determined by the first principles of the intellect.53 When the first principles are sufficient for knowing something, then it is present to the mind and within the capacity of the intellect to know.54 When the first principles are not sufficient is of all the human sciences pre-eminently the free science, in the sense that it proceeds by means of premises and laws which depend on no science superior to itself, its freedom—that is, its freedom to err—is limited insofar as it is subject to theology, which controls it externally.” 50 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 14. See ST II-II, q. 45, a. 2. Maritain quotes “perfectum opus rationis,” but the Leonine has “perfectum usus rationis.” 51 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 14. 52 Quodlibet VIII, q. 2, a. 2. 53 For an analysis of these first principles, see Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 1. 54 For the distinction between something being present to the mind or not being present to the mind as the basis for faith and reason see De veritate, q. 14, a. 9: “Yet those things are said to be present to the understanding [facultatem intellec- 80 Matthew DuBroy for knowing something, that thing can never be present to the mind and therefore can never be an object of philosophy (even though that which is beyond the capacity of the principles still depends upon them inasmuch as nothing can contradict them).55 Thomas shows the great importance of the first principles for reason since they are both necessary for beginning but also for judging (completing): For to understand is simply to apprehend intelligible truth: and to reason is to advance from one thing understood to another, so as to know an intelligible truth. . . . Reasoning, therefore, is compared to understanding, as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession; of which one belongs to the perfect, the other to the imperfect. And since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest; hence it is that human reasoning, by way of inquiry and discovery, advances from certain things simply understood—namely, the first principles; and, again, by way of judgment returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found. 56 This description of knowing through the principles shows how philosophy moves from the principles to conclusions (but always in light of the principles). Consequently, this description also reveals why the capacity of the tus] which do not exceed its capacity, so that the gaze of understanding may be fixed on them. For a person gives assent to such things because of the witness of his own understanding and not because of someone else’s testimony. Those things, however, which are beyond the power of our understanding are said to be absent from the senses of the mind. Hence, our understanding [intellectus] cannot be fixed on them. As a result, we cannot assent to them on our own witness, but on that of someone else. These things are properly called the objects of faith” (Truth, trans. James V. McGlynn, S.J., vol. 2 [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994], 249–50; all translation from De veritate is from this edition). 55 For discussion concerning how the first principles are in the mind, see Dewan, Form and Being, 35–46. For an opposing view, see Rupert Johannes Mayer, O.P, “Abstraction: Apriori or Aporia? A Remark Concerning the Question of the Beginning of Thought in Aquinas, Aristotle, and Kant,” Angelicum 87, no. 3 (2010): 709–46. 56 ST I, q. 79, a. 8. See also ST I, q. 79, a. 12: “Man’s act of reasoning, since it is a kind of movement, proceeds from the understanding of certain things—namely, those which are naturally known without any investigation on the part of reason, as from an immovable principle—and ends also at the understanding, inasmuch as by means of those principles naturally known, we judge of those things which we have discovered by reasoning.” Ars Christiane Philosophandi 81 mind is what is within reach of the first principles, namely, because it has both its source and, in a way, its standard in these principles. This is not to deny that the standard of knowing is real things, because these first principles are properties of being. When the first principles, in cooperation with the senses and the imagination, are sufficient to acquire knowledge, this is the work of reason.57 The Work or Range of Philosophy Philosophy, being wholly rational, never includes reasoning from faith within its proper work because faith is beyond the first principles and philosophy is always judged insofar as it is evident to reason.58 In the words of Thomas: A person gives assent to such things [that do not exceed the capacity of the mind] because of the witness of his own understanding and not because of someone else’s testimony. Those things, however, which are beyond the power of our understanding . . . [are not Since the senses are necessary for man to know, they, in their own way, limit man’s capacity to know by his own power. See ST I-II, q. 109, a. 1: “The human intellect has a certain form, viz., the intelligible light itself, which is of itself sufficient for the knowing of some intelligible, i.e., for knowing those to the knowledge of which we can come through sensible things. But the human intellect cannot know higher intelligibles unless it be perfected by a stronger light, such as the light of faith or of prophecy: which is called ‘the light of grace’ inasmuch as it is added over and above nature.” Hence it is said that the natural object of the intellect is the essence of a material thing. See ST I, q. 84, a. 7: “Whereas the proper object of the human intellect, which is united to a body, is a quiddity or nature existing in corporeal matter; and through such natures of visible things it rises to a certain knowledge of things invisible.” For why the proper object of the human intellect is a quiddity of a material thing, see ST I, q. 12, a. 4: “For knowledge is regulated according as the thing known is in the knower. But the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Hence the knowledge of every knower is ruled according to its own nature. If therefore the mode of anything’s being exceeds the mode of the knower, it must result that the knowledge of the object is above the nature of the knower.” 58 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 15. See also Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, 84: “The premises of philosophy, however, are independent of theology, being those primary truths which are self-evident to the understanding, whereas the premises of theology are truths revealed by God. . . . Similarly the light by which philosophy knows its object is independent of theology, since its light is the light of reason, which is its own guarantee.” See also Jacques Maritain, The Peasant of Garonne: An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968), 135–41, where Maritain argues that Thomas’s philosophy has nothing theological about it. 57 82 Matthew DuBroy assented to based] on our own witness, but on that of someone else. These things are properly called the objects of faith.59 Consequently, things can never be held in philosophy on the basis of the testimony of faith, but philosophy is of the realm of the purely rational, as is attested to by Steven A. Long: But if natural metaphysical knowledge is possible, then to seek it by natural means (“purely rational”) is not unreasonable. And even inasmuch as reason is aided by revelation to avoid pitfalls, nonetheless that which is proportionate to natural reason is indeed proportionate to it. One may be helped by the inspiration of faith in rational inquiry, but in philosophy at the moment of demonstration either one’s premises do, or do not, include something knowable solely through revelation. If they do not, and they validly demonstrate, then we have purely rational knowledge. 60 Since philosophy is purely rational in this sense, it “depends on the same strictly natural or rational criteria.”61 As a result Maritain concludes that “Christian” when applied to philosophy cannot refer to its essence. In its essence, “philosophy is independent of the Christian faith as to its object, its principles, and its methods.”62 However, that philosophy’s essence is independent of the Christian faith does not entail what Maritain calls a “separated” philosophy, because a separated philosophy is speaking about it in practical terms—not about its essence. Moreover, the independence De veritate, q. 14, a. 9. Thomas goes on to describe two ways in which an object can be “of belief,” namely, inasmuch as the object is simply beyond the capacity of the intellect—and these are the mysteries of faith which man can only believe—and inasmuch as the object is accidentally believed, being above the mind of some men but in principle within the capacity of the intellect. So while the latter kind of objects can be both known and believed, they cannot be both known and believed by the same man at the same time. Proper knowledge of such things prevents believing it just as knowing by seeing something prevents one from knowing on the basis of another’s word. Faith, therefore, is the type of thing that cannot by its very nature enter intrinsically into philosophy, formally speaking, because it is of things unseen. As soon as faith enters into a philosophical argument—it is not philosophy. 60 Long, Natura Pura, 218–19. See Wippel, Metaphysical Themes, 23–24, and Metaphysical Themes II, 24–25, who makes a similar point that at the moment of proof, faith cannot be necessary for holding one of the premises. See McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 6–26, for the classic Thomistic distinction between knowing and believing. For John Paul II on philosophy as purely rational see note 21 above. 61 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 15. 62 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 15 (emphasis added). 59 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 83 of the essence of philosophy entails that in however way philosophy exists in practice it includes this essence or nature even if it includes more than this nature. We must remember that this is an abstract essence and so ought not to be confused with it as really existing; in other words, we ought not confuse the difference between nature and state. State In considering the state of philosophy we must consider the conditions of its exercise or the manner of philosophizing. The state of philosophy is its nature existing in a certain way. Philosophy can exist as a habitus of the mind in one of three states: pre-Christian, Christian, or anti-Christian.63 When it exists in a Christian state by means of the change of man’s state (through the elevation of nature by grace), it is aided by faith.64 This aid comes in two forms according to Maritain: (1) from within as an inner strengthening or (2) from without as an offering of objective content.65 Objective Aids Within the realm of objective contributions Maritain proposes two things that aid philosophy. First, revelation offers data which is properly attainable by reason.66 There are things explicitly revealed by the Chris Maritain adds this basic point in his summary in Science and Wisdom, 79; see also 99–100. However, instead of “anti-Christian,” he lists “a-Christian.” This is difficult to understand since those who come into contact with the Gospel cannot be neutral with respect to the Gospel; there is either acceptance or rejection. Maritain does not seem to mean anti-Christian either, since he also argues for an anti-Christian philosophy in the following pages. The best reading I can give to it is to say that pre- and a-Christian are the same thing but one is actually before Christ and the other is after Christ. In other words, the a-Christian is one who has not explicitly come into contact with the Gospel after Christ has already come. Anti-Christian philosophy is a sort of Christian philosophy because it is intrinsically dependent upon the Christian faith for its positions. He notes one page earlier (98) that there are errors of which only an anti-Christian is capable. See the similar point by John Paul II that philosophy can exist in different states, including both independent from the Gospel and in a Christian state (note 13 above). Maritain does not consider philosophy’s use within theology as another state of philosophy, even though he considers that such a use can result in philosophy being aided, as we will see below. 64 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 18. 65 For the same distinction in John Paul II, see note 20 above. 66 Wippel’s distinction between the moment of discovery and the moment of proof focuses on this kind of aid. For Wippel a Christian philosophy is at least a philosophy which can learn about natural truths from revelation and then work them out philosophically (Metaphysical Themes, 23–24, and Metaphysical Themes 63 84 Matthew DuBroy tian faith that are philosophically knowable (revealed truths of the natural order) but were not actually known by philosophers explicitly—these are included within the praeambula fidei.67 We can give four examples from Maritain: the doctrine of creation, God as subsisting Being itself, God as love, and sin as an offense against God.68 Philosophy receives these II, 24–25). For John Paul II’s position that the objective contributions that faith makes to philosophy happens through content that is already in principle attainable by reason, see note 20 above. 67 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 18. Some praeambula fidei were of course already known by philosophers, e.g., that God exists. 68 In Essay on Christian Philosophy, 19, and Science and Wisdom, 91, Maritain notes that, while Aristotle suggested that God is subsisting being itself, it was necessary for philosophy to be helped by Moses (Exod 3:14) for that doctrine to be made explicit and for Aristotle’s principles to bear fruit. Maritain adds the example that God is love in Science and Wisdom, 91. It should be noted the doctrine “God is love” is of the natural order. Here is not meant Trinitarian love, for of course knowledge of the diversity of persons is beyond reason’s grasp, but love as the first act of the will is signified. Since there is a will in God we can attribute love to him, and since everything that is “in” God or “attributed” to him is him (based on his simplicity), then we can say that God is love. See ST I, q. 20, a. 1. In giving examples in Science and Wisdom, 90, Maritain brings two sets of data together—the philosophically knowable but not actually known and the philosophical knowable that are known in a hesitant way, which we will consider next. He understands these examples as being of those things capable of being known to unaided reason but either not “formally conceived” or “not fully affirmed” without Christian faith. These kinds of examples then necessarily depend upon how well one thinks a philosopher has understood these truths. Since this is done to varying degrees and is impossible to measure, such examples will be better or worse because of this difficulty of judging. For example, if St. Thomas rightly attributes a doctrine of creation to Aristotle (or even Plato), then this will be a lesser example, and if he rightly judges that this doctrine is “fully affirmed” then maybe not an example at all. On the other hand, if this doctrine is denied entirely of the ancients, then this will be among the best of examples here. On whether St. Thomas himself attributed a doctrine of creation to Aristotle, see Mark Johnson, “Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Creation to Aristotle?,” New Scholasticism 63, no. 2 (1989): 129–55, and Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “Thomas Aquinas, Creation, and Two Historians,” Laval théologique et philosophique 50, no. 2 (1994): 363–87. See also Gilson, Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, 69, and the endnote 4 on 438–41. Gilson agrees with Maritain on this point that no doctrine of creation was attributed to Aristotle. For Maritain’s expressed doubt about creation in Aristotle, see Jacques Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, trans. Mabelle L. Andison (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2007), 367n1. In exploring which of the different aspects of the doctrine of creation are philosophically knowable, Wippel challenges the assumption that a cause of esse is necessarily a creative cause. Nevertheless, he concludes that in some texts Thomas does attribute a doctrine of creation to Aristotle, see Wippel, “Aquinas on Creation and Preambles of Faith,” The Thomist 78, Ars Christiane Philosophandi 85 doctrines, and the rest of the praeambula fidei, from Christian faith but examines them in its own (natural) order. It is not so much that these were totally new concepts, hinted at or implied by no philosopher, but rather that these concepts being revealed usually helps philosophers go from seeing something dimly, as in a shadowy twilight (as distinct from the total darkness found at night), to seeing something clearly, as in “the full light of day.”69 In fact, if they were completely new concepts they would be unintelligible. Even essentially supernatural truths are prepared for by some natural truth (by God’s providence)—even if there are essential differences between the philosophic concept and the revealed concept. For example, the natural idea of the logos prepared for the understanding of the revealed logos.70 The data offered by revelation which is attainable by reason includes, Maritain argues, philosophically knowable things which philosophers knew well but were very hesitant about.71 Revelation corroborates the truth of these things not as things explicitly revealed, but as fitting or harmonious with things revealed. For example, in the order of knowing the Christian sees reason divinely confirmed by the fact that the act of faith is eminently reasonable. In the second place, philosophy is aided objectively when philosophy is involved with data that is essentially supernatural.72 This involvement happens when philosophy is used as an instrument within theology. From such work, philosophy’s field of inquiry is broadened.73 For example, it is unlikely that philosophy would have come to the problem of the person without Trinitarian theology and Christology.74 In addition, the philosno. 1 (2014): 1–36. For an argument that Aristotle held a doctrine of creation, see Michael Augros, “The Creator in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” The Aquinas Review 17 (2010): 71–94. 69 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 20–21 (quote from 21). 70 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 20. 71 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 21. 72 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 22. 73 See Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, 88: “Insofar as [philosophy] is the instrument of theology, it is led to define more precisely and with more subtle refinements important concepts and theories which, left to itself, it would be in danger of neglecting. For example, it was under the influence of theology that Thomism elaborated the theory of nature and personality, and perfected the theory of the habitus.” This objective aid is also described in Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 80: “Moreover, these objective data are also concerned with the repercussions of truths of the supernatural order on philosophical reflexion: and here the connexions and echoes really extend indefinitely.” 74 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 23. 86 Matthew DuBroy opher’s experience itself is enlivened by being able to see the world as the work of God.75 Subjective Aids Philosophy is subjectively aided through an “inner strengthening.”76 This purification or perfecting of philosophy happens in three ways. The first kind of purification of reason happens through healing of the wounds of nature.77 Human nature is wounded as a result of original sin, and these wounds are made worse through actual sin. Man is wounded through a loss, in some way, of the goods of nature. There are three goods of human nature: (1) its principles and properties, (2) its natural inclination to virtue, and (3) the gift of original justice.78 Original sin leaves the first good entirely intact and destroys the third good completely. The natural inclination to virtue, the second good, is neither left entirely intact nor completely destroyed but is diminished. The diminishment does not take place at the root of the inclination, for this is left untouched, but the diminishment happens by means of obstacles.79 This diminishment is called in the tradition a “wound.”80 These wounds affect the work of the intellect in differing ways. The intellect has a natural order to truth, and it is this inclination which is weakened through sin. This wound is called “ignorance.”81 The inclination is further weakened the more one sins because human acts produce an inclination to similar acts. 82 Insofar as the inclination to sin grows so does the inclination to truth diminish. But in addition to this, there is a myriad Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 23: “The philosopher’s experience itself has been revitalized by Christianity. He is offered as a datum a world that is the handiwork of the Word, wherein everything bespeaks the Infinite Spirit to finite spirits who know themselves as spirits. What a starting point!” 76 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 18. For John Paul II on this inner purification, see note 20 above. Maritain describes this form of aid as a purification of the philosophical habits in Science and Wisdom, 80. See note 91 below. 77 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 28. 78 ST I-II, q. 85, a. 1. 79 ST I-II, q. 85, a. 2, ad 1. 80 ST I-II, q. 85, a. 3. Thomas receives this teaching from Bede. It should be noted that original sin first affects the essence of the soul and consequently its powers. See ST I-II, q. 83, a. 3. See Jacques Maritain, Untrammeled Approaches, trans. Bernard Doering (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 207–42, for his reflections on wounded nature. 81 For a detailed, if brief, account of this wound given by Maritain (of which St. Thomas says very little), see Maritain, Untrammeled Approaches, 213–19. 82 ST I-II, q. 50, a. 1. 75 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 87 of ways in which the wounds (and their deepening through actual sins) of the other powers—will, concupiscible appetite, and irascible appetite— indirectly affect the work of the intellect. For example, Thomas points out that chastity most of all (maxime) makes man fit for contemplation because sexual pleasure most of all (maxime) weighs man’s mind down to sensible objects. More generally, he says that since a disordered concupiscible power especially (maxime) blinds reason, the virtue of temperance is especially helpful.83 This is only a brief analysis of the ways in which sin affects the work of the intellect. Suffice it to say that the wound in each power of the soul in addition to the intellect—will, concupiscible power, irascible power—negatively affects, each in their own way, the work of the intellect. 84 Therefore, in addition to giving man divine life, grace is necessary to heal nature. This healing (which is not complete or total) helps the intellect both directly through the healing of the wound of ignorance and indirectly through the healing of the other wounds. 85 The gratia sanans does not replace the proper philosophical habitus, nor does it prevent even serious philosophic errors. However, it is clear that the more the philosopher is faithful to grace, the more easily he frees himself from difficulties that are a result of sin. 86 The second way Maritain offers that reason is perfected by faith is by way of the perfection of lower virtues by higher virtues. Philosophy, inasmuch as it is a perfection of the mind, is affected by higher virtues, for the higher virtues aid the lower virtues.87 Above philosophy (in order of ST II-II, q. 180, a. 2, ad 3. See also A. G. Sertillanges, O.P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary Ryan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1998), esp. 17–29, for the role of virtues in the work of thinking. 85 The indirect help here consists in the aiding of the whole moral life of man. 86 This is why it is within the Catholic intellectual tradition that philosophy has been, and continues to be, at its strongest. 87 See Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 26–27: “Now the higher virtues succor the lowlier in the proper sphere of the latter. The virtue of faith, for examples, enables the philosopher, who knows of the existence of God by purely natural means to adhere rationally to this truth with a sturdier grasp. Or to take another example, the contemplative habitus clarifies and soothes, spiritualizes the philosophic habitus within its own order. And in the light of theology, metaphysical truths take on a radiance so immediate and convincing that in consequence the philosopher’s labors are blest with a new facility and fruitfulness.” See also Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 86–89, e.g., 87–88: “In the order of formal causality the subjective reinforcement deriving from superior planes of knowledge passes through the object and is explained in this order by the simple and luminous objec83 84 88 Matthew DuBroy highest to lowest) are the theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and theology. 88 One example of this kind of perfecting is that faith allows reason to adhere more firmly to natural truths in a natural way. Therefore, metaphysical truths become more evident in the light of theology, and so in order for metaphysics to attain its fullest perfection, theology is necessary as it helps, precisely through this greater certitude, guide and confirm the work of reason. 89 Here we have a dynamic union among habitus (philosophy and theology) which provide a subjective reinforcement for philosophy by refining it.90 tive light which thus passes from one habitus to another: the light which irradiates, for instance, at the level of the wisdom of grace or of theological wisdom the object which on an inferior plane belongs to the specific field of philosophy. So that henceforward the proper act of philosophising is the better accomplished on that object. And by this the vitality of the philosophical habitus is fortified, while at the same time a real motion or impression deriving from the habitus of faith passes also into it.” See also the footnote to the text just quoted: “Cajetan and John of Saint Thomas teach that the superior Angel illuminates and fortifies the intellect of the inferior Angel by the mere proposal of the object. A fortiori, the putting of the object in a superior light will have an effect of inferior and vital reinforcement on the operative dynamism itself, when it is a habitus of the soul which is thus aided by a higher habitus. For then a ‘physical’ motion or impression of one on the other will take place. Evidently this sort of motion could not take place from one angel to another, but it would be ridiculous to conclude from this that it is equally impossible between the habitus’ of the same soul. On the contrary, thomist psychology maintains that the powers of the soul move one another (the potentiae vegetativae make use of vires naturales in a quasi instrumental way: the will moves the intelligence and the sensitive appetite, etc.). Posse unam potentiam, vel habitum unius potentiae aliquam impressionem realem ponere per suam motionem in alia potentia vel habitu, valde commune est inter thomistas ( John of St. Thomas, Curs. Phil. De Anima, q. 12, a. 6).” The density of this point in Maritain calls for an in-depth study of the Thomistic tradition on powers or habits giving a “real impression” on other powers or habits. 88 The gifts, while not virtues in every way, are at least similar inasmuch as they perfect man. See ST I-II, q. 68, a. 1. 89 This does not mean that faith is necessary for philosophy tout court. Rather it means that while philosophy can attain any particular truth in practice, it needs help in order to attain all the truths perfectly. 90 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 27. See Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 81: “First of all it is quite clear that the views I advance involved the conception of a certain synergic and vital union of philosophy with faith and theology, and a declaration that this union is practically indispensable (as a condition, though not fully sufficing) for a development of philosophy in the strict and formal line of truth.” See also Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 85–86. On the dynamic union of philosophy with faith in John Paul II, see the quote from §76 of Fides et Ratio with which the present essay opened: “a Christian way of philosophizing, a philo- Ars Christiane Philosophandi 89 The third subjective aid to philosophy comes in the order of finality.91 Christianity changes the condition of philosophy in the human mind because there are two wisdoms above it (theology and wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit) just as to be a prince or a minister changes a man’s state but not his nature. Philosophy is thereby ordered to a higher wisdom inasmuch as philosophy is insufficient to completely know the highest things.92 Through such an ordering philosophy is no longer so glorious and achieves a degree of self-detachment.93 This humbling of philosophy makes it easier for philosophers to avoid having too much confidence.94 The Reason for These Aids Having seen how faith aids philosophy, we can inquire into the reasons for these aids. Faith is extremely helpful in aiding philosophy on account of sin and its wounding of nature, as we have seen.95 Since the intellect and other powers of the soul are damaged through sin, it is clear that there is a great need for philosophy to be aided in order for it to reach its own natural capacities. Secondly, philosophy has a practical need for help simply because of the natural difficulty of philosophy: even if we had a nature without original sin (and did not need the wounds of sin to be healed) faith could still aid philosophy. This is especially true for metaphysics and knowledge of God, because these things are by nature very difficult. They are difficult because they are furthest from the senses and beyond our natural object in some way (quiddity sophical speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith.” Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 27. The first and third subjective aids are described together by Maritain in Science and Wisdom, 80: “And from subjective reinforcements which also extend indefinitely philosophy receives the superior wisdoms, theological wisdom and infused wisdom, which rectify and purify in the soul the philosophical habitus with which they maintain a continuity not of essence but of movement and illumination, fortifying them in their proper order, and lifting them to higher levels.” 92 This does not mean that theology is necessary for philosophy, because there is only a natural longing to know its proper objects as well as possible. See Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 30. This means philosophy’s natural order is to know being and being’s principle (God) as well as it can; reason alone can know God only as the cause of creatures. 93 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 27. 94 While Maritain does not make this point directly, it is certainly an effect of this third subjective aid. See John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §76: “As a theological virtue, faith liberates reason from presumption, the typical temptation of the philosopher.” 95 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 17. 91 90 Matthew DuBroy of a material thing).96 Lastly, the difficulty arises simply because so much effort and focus are necessary that other practical matters (earning a living, raising children, etc.) simply do not allow many to take up this long journey of knowing the highest things. As a result of faith, more people are able to overcome these obstacles and develop philosophical habitus. We can summarize this section by simply noting that Christian faith helps philosophy both by objective material proposed and in the life of the thinker—especially in the intellect. Moreover, faith guides philosophy without violating its autonomy or destroying it because philosophy still follows its own proper laws and principles.97 In fact, the opus philosophicum is entirely autonomous and is only regulated positively by reason.98 Philosophy must follow its own proper order in answering questions raised by experience.99 The Autonomy of Philosophy In his foundational text An Essay on Christian Philosophy, Maritain praises Maurice Blondel for his constant fight against a separated philosophy which in many places is identified with Cartesianism or rationalism.100 In See note 57 above. Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 29. On autonomy in John Paul II, see note 14 above. 98 See Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 100. See also Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, 84: “The premises of philosophy, however, are independent of theology, being those primary truths which are self-evident to the understanding, whereas the premises of theology are truths revealed by God. The premises of philosophy are self-supported and are not derived from those of theology. Similarly the light by which philosophy knows its object is independent of theology, since its light is the light of reason, which is its own guarantee. For these reasons philosophy is not positively governed by theology, nor has it any need of theology to defend its premises. . . . It develops its principles autonomously within its own sphere though subject to the external control and negative regulation of theology.” Within the passage just quoted, a note (Introduction to Philosophy, 84n2) reads: “Theology can turn the investigations of philosophy in one direction rather than another, in which case it may be said to regulate philosophy positively by accident (per accidens). But absolutely speaking theology can regulate philosophy only negatively, as had been explained above. Positively it does not regulate it either directly, by furnishing its proofs (as faith for apologetics) or indirectly, by classifying its divisions (as philosophy itself classifies the sciences).” 99 See Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 103. 100 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 8. Keegan notes in “Development of Jacques Maritain’s Conception,” 4: “It was against this background of criticism, both of Descartes and of Cartesian consequences in modern philosophy, that 96 97 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 91 Maritain’s own words, a separated philosophy cut[s] off reason in its own proper activities from higher sources of light, and, on the pretext that his object is purely natural, [looks] upon the philosopher himself as dwelling in a condition of pure nature; and again, on the pretext that his form of wisdom has no other inner criterion than reason alone, [sees] him as identified with Reason in itself, and as self-exempt from all need of natural or supernatural aids in the successful pursuit of his undertaking.101 Maritain also notes elsewhere that a Cartesian conception of philosophy includes receiving nothing from the outside.102 Hence, Maritain opposes this rationalist understanding of autonomy as receiving nothing from the outside or, in other words, he opposes understanding the autonomy of philosophy as absolute. There is no need that autonomy be absolute, for there are autonomous natures or virtues which exist in an ordered way or in differing degrees so that even those that have a lower degree remain autonomous while receiving from others—just as man is free (autonomous) while receiving from God. Against the need of the rationalist to have an absolute autonomy, Maritain affirms that autonomy of philosophy is strengthened by its union with faith within man.103 At first glance, this Maritain’s conception of Christian philosophy was formed and brought to maturity.” The “background” Keegan refers to is “Descartes’ separation of faith and reason, [and] philosophy and theology.” For Maritain’s early work in this regard, see note 26 above. For John Paul II on a “separate” philosophy, see notes 16 and 17 above. 101 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 8. See Science and Wisdom, 106, where Maritain describes the Cartesian revolution as a proper aspiration for the autonomy of philosophy but an improper demand for absolute independence—separating itself from theology. See also Introduction to Philosophy, 85, where Maritain describes a separated philosophy: “In the seventeenth century the Cartesian reform resulted in the severance of philosophy from theology, the refusal to recognize the rightful control of theology and its function as a negative rule in respect of philosophy. This was tantamount to . . . claiming that philosophy, or human wisdom, is the absolutely sovereign science, which admits no other superior to itself. Thus, in spite of the religious beliefs of Descartes himself, Cartesianism introduced the principle of rationalist philosophy, which denies God the right to make known by revelation truths which exceed the natural scope of reason.” Maritain notes in a note to this passage that “the result of [Descartes’s] reform was the assertion of the absolute independence of philosophy in relation to theology.” 102 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 85. 103 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 85: “The autonomy and liberty of speculative philosophy, far from being destroyed or diminished, are fortified by their union in 92 Matthew DuBroy seems hard to understand; how could philosophy’s autonomy become stronger if it was already autonomous? Thomas Joseph White, O.P., gives us an indication when he says: “But it is equally the case that [theological faith and human philosophical reason] also tend precisely insofar as they mutually influence each other to become each more themselves, in terms of their own inner tendencies and capacities.”104 This means that it is not so much in the order of specification that philosophy’s autonomy becomes stronger, but in the order of exercise, insofar as the mutual influence of the two does not result in a mixing but in a proper preserving of grace and nature. In fact, Maritain envisages this explicitly in the practical realm, stating that this fortifying of philosophy within its union to faith should be understood “from the standpoint of the internal synergy of the soul in its vital movement towards truth.”105 He continues: “Philosophy discovers the sovereign rational truths, and the consubstantial thirst which makes it naturaliter christiana, by itself and within itself, in the immanence and interiority of its own proper life.”106 Faith strengthens autonomy and as a result, for Maritain as for White, makes philosophy be more itself. Faith makes philosophy more its own sovereign thing—more free to be itself— thereby making reason’s inclination to know its proper object stronger, and strengthens reason’s impulse to be philosophical (so it more carefully considers the evidence, it concludes only when there is sufficient evidence to conclude etc., including all the things that make reason reason well). Therefore, in practice, philosophy’s proper autonomy is more protected in its proper unity with faith. According to Maritain, for philosophy to be autonomous it must: (1) follow its own proper laws and principles, (2) follow its own method, and (3) judge things according to reason alone.107 Granting then that the living subject with the light of faith.” Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “Engaging the Thomistic Tradition and Contemporary Culture Simultaneously: A Response to Burrell, Healy and Schindler,” Nova et Vetera (English) 10, no. 2 (2012): 605–23, at 622. Before this point, White noted how these two orders are not meant to be separated. 105 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 85–86. 106 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 86. 107 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 29: “It must be affirmed that faith guides or orientates philosophy, veluti stella rectrix, without thereby violating its autonomy; for it is always in keeping with its own proper laws and principles and by virtue of rational norms alone that philosophy judges things.” The translator adds in the appendix, at 114: “Veluti stella rectrix: As a guiding star, that is to say, as an exterior and superior orientation.” For the position that philosophy follows its own proper laws even when used within theology, see Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 35. See also: Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 101 (“The notion of Chris104 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 93 philosophy is autonomous, it follows that philosophy receives no positive regulation from outside of reason.108 No positive regulation or government means two things: (1) that the premises or principles of philosophy are independent of theology (for of course philosophy is not sub-alternated to theology) and (2) that the light of reason is independent of theology.109 The light of reason being independent of theology in the ontological order means that it is sufficient of itself to attain its object.110 Moreover, in practice, autonomy also means that philosophy, when not being used as an instrument of theology (but for its own purposes), ought to proceed from questions raised from experience and not by theology. That philosophy is distinct and follows its own procedure is seen insofar as the preambula fidei (properly philosophical truths) are presupposed for the study of theology.111 In other words, philosophy has its own order of procedure and its tian philosophy . . . demands that . . . we . . . maintain and affirm the specific character, and the autonomous existence of philosophy in its own right and method”); Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 93 (“The Christian philosopher proposes and must propose the universe of speculative wisdom as it is in essence, a universe of purely rational knowledge and of pure philosophy, depending only on the primary evidences of intelligence and the senses”). For John Paul II on autonomy, see note 14 above. 108 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 100. 109 See Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, 84n2, quoted in note 98 above. See further his Introduction to Philosophy, 84–85, quoted in note 49 above. 110 Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, 84n1: “[The light of reason] is its own evidence and in philosophy is sufficient of itself. But this does not prevent it serving also . . . as the instrument of a superior light; neither, of course, does it imply that human reason is not subordinate in its very principles to the First Intellect.” See also Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 84: “Philosophy can’t be impotent in the face of its own proper object.” See also In Boethii de Trinitate, q. 1, a. 1, sc: “The human mind is divinely illumined by a natural light. . . . Therefore, if this light, because it is created, is not adequate to know the truth, but needs a new illumination, the added light with equal reason will require another light, and so on to infinity—a process that can never be completed. And so it will be impossible to know any truth. Therefore we must depend on the first light, so that the human mind can see the truth by its natural light without anything being added” (in Faith, Reason and Theology, trans. Armand Maurer [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987], 15–16). See also ST I-II, q. 109, a.1: “[Man] does not need a new light added to his natural light, in order to know the truth in all things, but only in some that surpass his natural knowledge.” Concerning John Paul II’s doctrine that the objective content that aids philosophy is attainable by reason, see note 20 above. 111 See Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, 87. For an exposition of the praeambula fidei see McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 26–32, John F. Wippel, “Philosophy and the Preambles of Faith in Thomas Aquinas,” in The Science of Being as Being: Metaphys- 94 Matthew DuBroy own work that is presupposed to theology. If it is presupposed, then this means that it cannot also at the same time and in the same way be dependent upon faith or theology. Yet, the only way philosophy can exercise this proper autonomy is by recognizing its proper subordination to higher wisdoms or, in other words, the proper autonomy can be exercised only when it is not an absolute autonomy, as we saw above. Philosophy must know its proper limits by knowing its own nature and its proper relation to faith.112 Maritain affirms a pure reason and a pure philosophy. Yet, none other than Ralph McInerny, a great lover of Maritain, objects to a “pure” philosophy. He notes that the defenders of it are those who think Christians are the only ones who come to philosophy with convictions and certainties about things.113 And David L. Schindler has been at pains, beginning with his doctoral dissertation, to show that philosophers who are Christian are not thereby unable to be critical thinkers simply because of this influence, for again, all have some sort of influence in their philosophy (and hence are not “pure”).114 Consequently, it seems difficult that Maritain (or John Paul II for that matter) could consistently hold to a notion of pure reason or pure philosophy. While this is not explicit in John Paul II or Maritain, it seems that we can have our cake and eat it too. Both insights can be affirmed if we keep in mind the distinction of nature and state. In order of exercise, McInerny and Schindler are exactly right. There is not—and there can never be—a pure philosophy, because there are always certain existential factors that will influence the philosopher. But in the order of specification, and this includes the formal argument, there is and always ical Investigations, ed. Gregory Doolan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 196–220, and “Aquinas on Creation and Preambles of Faith,” The Thomist 78, no. 1 (2014): 1–36. For a defense of the praeambula fidei against modern tendencies, see McInerny, Praeambula Fidei. Their importance is summed up in a review of McInerny’s book by Thomas Joseph White, O.P.: “The study of the praeambula fidei guarantees a sense of the potential harmony between faith and reason, since it demonstrates that there exists for natural reason a final term (knowledge of the existence of God) which revelation both complements and completes” (The Thomist 71, No. 4 [2007]: 633–37, at 634). 112 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 106–7. 113 See McInerny, “Reflections on Christian Philosophy,” 67–70, and McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 107. 114 See David L. Schindler, “Knowing as Synthesis: A Metaphysical Prolegomenon to a Critical Christian Philosophy” (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate School), and “God and the End of Intelligence: Knowledge as Relationship” Communio: International Catholic Review 26 (Fall 1999), 510–40, at 513. Ars Christiane Philosophandi 95 will be pure philosophy. In other words, when we look at philosophy’s nature we are looking at a pure philosophy. Therefore, we can affirm with John Paul II and Maritain a pure philosophy in the formal order, and we can affirm with McInerny and Schindler that pure philosophy taken in the order of exercise is a myth. Intrinsic Relation Between Faith and Philosophy? Finally, we are able to see that Christian philosophy signifies not a simple essence but a complex reality—an essence in a particular state. While the expression “Christian philosophy” unavoidably lacks precision, it stands for something real.115 It is not a determinate body of truths; in the words of Maritain: Christian philosophy is philosophy itself insofar as it is situated in those utterly distinctive conditions of existence and exercise into which Christianity has ushered the thinking subject, and as a result of which philosophy perceives certain objects and validly demonstrates certain propositions, which in any other circumstances would to a greater or lesser extent elude it.116 This agrees with Gilson, who says: “Though their relationship is intrinsic, the two orders remain distinct.”117 What does it mean to say that faith is Maritain has some difficulty with the use of the term “Christian philosophy.” For such difficulties, see Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 78. For brief remarks that Maritain offers parenthetically about a better expression, see Maritain, Untrammeled Approaches, 421. 116 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 30. 117 Maritain explicitly notes this agreement citing Gilson’s very words in Essay on Christian Philosophy, 30. Maritain also cites Gilson in the preface to the effect that Gilson himself also judges the two to be in agreement. This agreement was with Gilson’s early work (Essay on Christian Philosophy was written in 1933). This is important to note, since some have noted that Gilson, in his later work, takes on a more fideistic position reducing philosophy ultimately to theology. See: Wippel, Metaphysical Themes, 16–20, esp. 20; McInerny, Praeambula Fidei, 134–44, esp. 139–40; Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2009), 116–20, 129–31. White specifically mentions that this shift in his position begins in 1950. Wippel’s account focuses specifically on Christian philosophy itself, while McInerny and White focus more broadly on the relationship between philosophy and theology through discussing whether, in Gilson’s view, the esse–essentia distinction can be demonstrated. Gregory Sadler provides a summary text of this early position of Gilson from Bulletin de la Société française 115 96 Matthew DuBroy intrinsically related to philosophy and yet the two orders remain distinct? Maritain himself is not very explicit about the meaning of this intrinsic relationship even though he is clear that he does mean to account for it as intrinsic: Philosophy receives from outside itself, that is true: but the gift received transfigures it interiorly, and strictly speaking is not received unless it is caught up in its very life. That is why we do not merely say that Christian philosophy is Christian in the cultural order, but also in its very function of philosophy. Not specifically (at least so far as speculative philosophy is concerned, which with the Christian as with the non-Christian is in itself pure philosophy, a purely rational discipline) but intrinsically and vitally.118 Despite the lack of development of Maritain on this point he does give a principle by which to understand his thought on the matter: “Philosophy is as affected by this Christian state as intimately as nature is affected by the state of grace.”119 Now grace is an accident of the soul and inheres in the essence of the soul.120 Therefore, since grace is accidental to the essence of man, so too must faith be accidental to the essence or nature of philosophy. Faith is accidental to philosophy simply because, if we recall what nature de Philosophie, 39, quoted from Sadler, “Saint Anselm’s Fides Quaerens Intellectum as a Model for Christian Philosophy,” The Saint Anselm Journal 4, no. 1 (2006): 32–58, at 42: “If philosophical systems exist, purely rational in their principles and in their methods, whose existence is not explained without the existence of the Christian religion, the philosophies that they define merit the name of Christian philosophies. This notion does not correspond to a concept of a pure essence, that of the philosopher or that of the Christian, but to the possibility of a complex historical reality: that of a revelation generative of reason. The two orders remain distinct, even if the relation that unites them be intrinsic.” See Gilson, Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 38; see also 40: “True philosophy, taken absolutely and in itself, owes all its truth to its rationality and to nothing other than its rationality.” Later on, he takes Christian philosophy to be included in a broader notion of theology, with its work “transcend[ing] the distinction of scholastic philosophy and scholastic theology.” See also Etienne Gilson, The Philosopher and Theology, trans. Cecile Gilson (New York: Random House, 1962), 198 (see also 101). 118 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 97–98. See McInerny, “Reflections on Christian Philosophy,” 70–71: “So too Maritain, having provided a modal religious context within which philosophical thinking takes place, goes on to suggest that the objects of religious faith, believed truths, exercise an intrinsic influence on philosophical content, on philosophical truth.” 119 Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 97 (emphasis added). 120 See ST I-II, q. 110, a. 2, corp. and ad 2, as well as a. 4. Ars Christiane Philosophandi 97 signifies, faith is not included within the definition of philosophy; philosophy is still philosophy without faith. This is in the order of specification and is how the two orders (natural and supernatural) are distinguished. What about in the order of exercise? It is manifest that grace is not accidental to man, for it is essential to his life whether or not he has grace. Consequently, we must say that faith too is not accidental to the exercise or state of philosophy. This understanding of grace in relation to man is confirmed by Maritain himself: [Grace] is accidental to the human essence taken in itself, but it is not accidental with regard to the earthly existence and conditions of life of mankind, with regard to the way in which man’s activities develop and his achievements are built up.121 One might say, following Maritain, that just as it is essential for the way a man’s life develops whether or not he has grace so it is essential for philosophy’s concrete development whether or not it is influenced by faith. With grace and with faith, a man’s life and his philosophy (all other things being equal) will be more perfect than without grace and faith. Therefore, it seems Maritain is saying that the intrinsic relation of faith to philosophy happens in the concrete situation in which philosophy is exercised. Faith is united to philosophy (or separated from it, for that matter) only in the soul of the believing philosopher. Consequently, while faith and philosophy are two distinct things, in the exercise of philosophy they are closely united in Christian philosophy. Further clarity is helpful with regard to the difference between saying that faith (or grace) is accidental to the nature of philosophy (or man) and saying that it is not accidental to the exercise of philosophy (or this particular man). In the first case, we are speaking in the ontological order about the relation between two things (an accidental form and substantial form), and in the second case we are talking about the importance it holds for the individual man. This means that something which inheres in a substance— that is, exists as an accident—can be absolutely essential for man’s life!122 Or, Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 98–99. This preempts the contemporary misunderstanding that accidents are superficial or not important. The response here is that on the contrary accidents can be very important for the creature. Consider another example: the relation of creation is an accident and yet, obviously, without it no creature exists. Though I recognize that even this is disputed by some thinkers. Engagement with those thinkers is beyond the scope of this article. 121 122 98 Matthew DuBroy in this analogous case, something which is accidental to philosophy in the order of specification can be something essential for the one who philosophizes. However, we must remember that here “essential” is not taken in the formal sense because we are not speaking in the order of specification but in the order of exercise. Consequently “essential” here means something like “of utmost importance” or in certain sense a “practical necessity.”123 This follows our analysis of nature in the above section that the particulars or individual parts are essential to this thing but not essential to the nature.124 It follows then that while the Christian faith affects the philosophical habitus intrinsically it does not affect it specifically.125 No matter its state, philosophy entirely depends on reason and what matters is whether it is true. The goal is not for a philosophy to be Christian, but to be true. This means that philosophy can be Christian and still be bad philosophy. An integrated Christian thought requires philosophical wisdom, theological wisdom, and wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit. No one of them can replace the others.126 The point of the distinction between nature and state, therefore, is to be able to say this: philosophy is the kind of thing which is the work of reason, though it is greatly aided by grace or faith—especially because of original sin. There is a natural structure which is not destroyed by the aid of grace (grace perfects and does not destroy nature). The balance that is therefore kept is between the integrity of this natural structure and the real help that faith is to philosophy. In other words, faith does not transmute philosophy. Philosophy has the same definitional content when it is considered in its pre-Gospel form and in its Christian form, even if philosophy is further perfected through its relation to faith. For philosophy to be Christian, it precisely presupposes philosophy in its integral natural structure. Philoso The sense of “practical necessity” is that, while man is structurally capable of attaining every particular natural truth, he needs faith to practically attain more of them and attain them in a more perfect way. 124 Recall p. 79 above. 125 This means philosophy does not change in the order of specification or its nature. 126 Maritain, Essay on Christian Philosophy, 34: “In real fact, theology possesses an object, a light, and method that differ entirely from those of philosophy. Rooted in faith, it conducts its reasoning on the authority of the revealed word and proceeds ex causa prima; its object is the revealed datum itself, which it seeks to elucidate rationally. When, therefore, a particular theological inquiry happens to provide an answer to a philosophic question, this answer is not given philosophically; the whole philosophic endeavor is to move along another plane. Philosophy, moreover, is not paralyzed but rather stimulated by this state of affairs.” See also Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 112. For John Paul II on this threefold wisdom, see §44 in Fides et Ratio. 123 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 99 phy existing in the mind is more than simply the nature of philosophy (and sometimes also less).127 Conclusion In this article, we first saw what Pope John Paul II taught on Christian philosophy and its key issues. We saw that when John Paul II spoke of autonomy he strongly opposed a philosophy that would be separated from faith, although he affirmed that philosophy moves “under the light of the intellect alone” (sub intellectus solius lumine).128 Further, he affirmed that philosophy uses its own method and principles and is purely rational (mera ratione).129 Yet, finally, even though philosophy is purely the work of reason, John Paul II affirms Christian philosophy—that is, affirms the influence of faith on philosophy. His language and doctrine are remarkably similar to that of Maritain, distinguishing first between different states of philosophy. Found among these different states is the Christian state, which is a way of philosophizing. John Paul II is also careful to show, albeit in a very brief way, how faith aids philosophy: both in an objective way through new content and in a subjective way through the purification of reason. In the end, we are left with what seems like a primer to Maritain’s doctrine on Christian philosophy.130 Maritain himself distinguishes between the nature of philosophy and the state of philosophy, thereby giving a foundation for being able to distinguish between differing states of philosophy. Through this distinction, Maritain is able to show how in practice or in the exercise of philosophy faith intimately aids philosophy, while still preserving the distinct nature of philosophy. One could say that the definition or essence of philosophy does not change—its object and principles are the same—while faith helps the philosopher intimately with his task of thinking philosophically. In other words, faith helps the philosopher perfect his philosophy—though to be sure, not in such a way as to be able to go beyond what is already in reason’s capacity, which is to say that faith does not take philosophy Long gives this analysis with respect to human nature but I have transposed it to philosophy. See Long, Natura Pura, 85–86. Human nature or philosophy can be “less” due to the wounds of original sin. 128 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §9. 129 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §76. 130 One could say, in a way, also Gilson’s doctrine, but John Paul II does not take the more historical route to establish Christian philosophy like Gilson does, but rather the more speculative route as Maritain does. Also, it is questionable to the extent that Gilson continued to agree with Maritain throughout his life. See note 117 above. 127 100 Matthew DuBroy beyond what it is capable of in principle (without faith). If faith does add something to what philosophy or reason is in principle capable of, then we have obviously changed the capacity of reason; if faith is in principle necessary for the perfection of reason’s natural capacity to understand anything attainable by the principles of reason, then this throws into question reason’s capacity to know its proper object.131 Such a teaching would result in a destruction of our nature and that of philosophy. After Maritain has shown the distinction between nature and state, he shows how in the Christian state philosophy is aided: as in John Paul II, both objectively through new content, and subjectively, through the purification of reason. The new content given through revelation, at least those revealed truths which are accessible to reason, is not new in principle. It is already content that is in the reach of reason’s capacity, and yet this new content aids philosophy. The new content is an aid to philosophy because some truths are quite difficult to attain with great accuracy on account of their being most separated from matter, and therefore naturally difficult, or on account of the wound in our powers due to sin. Such truths being believed, the philosopher can then more easily and more resolutely seek to understand and demonstrate them. Though, as we have seen, there is even a way in which the content of revelation that is beyond the capacity of reason This is where I see the principles and doctrines of the North American Communio school leading by the logic of their principles and explicit doctrine—however unintentionally—namely, to the destruction of reason on account of faith being necessary in principle for reason to know some natural truths; again this destruction happens despite the explicit desire to affirm a proper philosophical autonomy. For an indication of this, see Healy, “David L. Schindler and the Debate over ‘Christian Philosophy,’” 118 (see note 6 above for the text about revelation affecting the nature of philosophy) and 121: “Schindler would be the first to acknowledge that the love of God revealed in the Incarnation ‘adds’ something radically new to philosophy from outside its properly rational consideration of reality. In this respect, Schindler agrees with Gilson that Christian revelation has contributed, not just new inspiration, but also new content, to the philosophical enterprise.” It is helpful to consult David L. Schindler, “The Person: Philosophy, Theology, and Receptivity,” Communio 21 (Spring 1994): 172–90, and Schindler, “God and the End of Intelligence,” 511–19. This is a large and complex issue that is beyond the scope of this article and cannot be done justice in a footnote. Further study is warranted and would have to consider Schindler’s teaching (1) on philosophy’s anterior openness to revelation which may result in philosophy’s being revised by revelation, (2) on philosophy as constitutively related to faith, and (3) on revelation as offering new content, in principle, to philosophy. I take up this deeper analysis in parts of chs. 3–4 of “Relation and Person: The Likeness and Unlikeness Between the Human and the Divine” (STD diss., Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, 2019). 131 Ars Christiane Philosophandi 101 helps philosophy when it is used as an instrument of theology. Here, faith pushes reason to go deeper into the nature of things—though again not beyond what reason is already in principle capable of. Faith also purifies reason insofar as it perfects man’s nature. This perfection happens insofar as grace heals nature so that the powers of nature can work more according to their natural capacities, and insofar as the supernatural virtues themselves perfect the natural virtues (theological wisdom perfects philosophical wisdom). Further, the philosopher knows his proper role through the manifestation of a higher science, and so he does not seek to know things qua philosopher which are in principle beyond his powers. Therefore, the aid of new content and the perfection of man obviously help philosophy attain its own perfection. While philosophy is dynamically united to faith (union synergique et vitale), Maritain preserves the autonomy of philosophy in much the same way John Paul II does: by strongly opposing a separated philosophy and by seeing how philosophy operates under its own laws.132 This purely natural reason follows its own method and principles and has its own proper object. Finally, we were able to see how Maritain understands that faith is intrinsically related to philosophy, namely, in the order of exercise. This means that while faith is accidental to the nature of reason (order of specification)—and hence it is not necessary in principle that faith perfect reason’s natural capacity to know what its principles extend to—faith, because it is of the highest import for philosophy, is not accidental to N&V philosophy in the order of exercise. 132 Science et Sagesse, 89–90. Compare Maritain’s French with John Paul II’s Latin vitaliter in Fides et Ratio §76 (for the Latin text, see the Vatican website). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 103–110 103 Paleae: A Clarifying Look at the Meaning of Saint Thomas’s Final Words Samuel Klumpenhouwer Saint Theresa Catholic School Sugar Land, TX In an iconic moment of the medieval Church, the aging Thomas Aquinas looked back upon his life of scholarship after undergoing a mystical experience.1 It was still the morning of a wintry day in 1273, and Thomas had just attended a Mass for the feast of Saint Nicholas. According to Bartholomew of Capua, Thomas was in the midst of composing the third part of his Summa theologiae, on the section dealing with penance. After the Mass, Thomas’s secretary, brother Reginald, asked him to continue writing as was their custom. Thomas replied: “Reginald, I cannot—for all that I have written seems to me as straw [paleae].”2 Readers of Thomas have long puzzled over the statement. Brother Reginald was similarly puzzled, and later urged Thomas to continue writing, demanding an explanation. Thomas replied again to his secretary: “All that I have written seems to me as straw [paleae] in comparison to what I saw and what has been revealed to me.”3 Generally, paleae is translated as “straw” or “chaff,” as distinguished from the kernels of grain. Some scholars argue that paleae should only be translated as “chaff,” which refers to the outer husks of grain that were removed during the wind-winnowing process, and which had no practical use.4 Straw, on the other hand, refers to the stalk or stem of the plant, which has many uses. As straw, paleae can also refer by extension to several material products in which straw is used, such as fodder, thatching, and bricks.5 In Latin sources, one will find paleae used in both ways. The See especially the detailed entries for palea in the following resources: Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. R. E. Latham (London: British Academy, 5 104 Samuel Klumpenhouwer Vulgate, for example, uses paleae to refer to straw and chaff in multiple instances.6 Given the significance of the Thomistic corpus, both now and in the medieval period, it seems odd for Thomas to have described his writings as paleae, whether translated as straw or chaff. Yet that is precisely what the Angelic Doctor did. In order to better understand why that word was chosen, this essay will first provide an overview of how Thomas’s paleae have been understood by modern readers. It will then examine other instances of paleae in the Thomistic corpus. Finally, it will detail a largely unknown—although well known to Thomas—use of the word among medieval canonists. Modern readers of Thomas generally fall into two groups in regards to the word paleae: those who think it indicates that Thomas repudiated his writings, and those who do not. Those who consider it a repudiation sometimes present Thomas as having come to the realization that his life’s work had been pointless. Perhaps he realized the ultimate invalidity of human knowledge or systematic thinking.7 As such, he would have seen the intellectual edifice that he previously constructed as truly “chaff”—useless, perhaps even the antithesis of a simple Christ.8 The second group are those who do not think that Thomas repudiated his work, but rather came to see it with a higher perspective. They see the paleae as “straw” that is of little value in comparison to God, but which still has many good uses. For Étienne Gilson, the straw of Thomas is what made the bricks to build European civilization.9 Simon Tugwell points to how straw sometimes represented the literal (which is the lowest) sense of Scripture.10 In a different regard, others have pointed out that it was 1975–2013); Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Latinitatis, ed. Du Cange (Niort, FR: L. Favre, 1883–1887); Thesaurus linguae Latinae compendiarius, rev. William Ellis (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1843). 6 For instance, in Gen 24:25 and Exod 5:10, palea is best translated as “straw.” In Matt 3:12 and Luke 3:17, palea is best translated as “chaff.” 7 See Philipp Rosemann, “A change of Paradigm in the Study of Medieval Philosophy: from Rationalism to Postmodernism,” The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 73. See also W. J. Richardson, “Like straw: religion and psychoanalysis,” in Eros and Eris: contributions to a hermeneutical phenomenology, ed. P. van Tongeren et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), 93–104. 8 O’Rourke Boyle and O’Rourke Boyle, “Chaff,” 394. 9 “Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in Proceedings of the British academy, vol. 21 (London: British Academy, 1935), 32. 10 Simon Tugwell, Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 266 n636. Paleae: A Clarifying Look at the Meaning of Saint Thomas's Final Words 105 straw that filled the manger of Jesus.11 In one way or another, these interpretations build on the clarification that Brother Reginald extracted from his fellow Dominican. Thomas had said in his second reply that his work seemed (videtur) as paleae in comparison to what had been revealed to him. As such, to people who have not had such revelations, the paleae of Thomas remains of much value.12 In order to clarify how paleae was understood during the medieval period, it will be helpful to examine the rest of the Thomistic corpus, where I have counted sixty-eight usages of the word.13 These usages come both from Thomas’s own compositions and from passages of earlier authors that he reproduced verbatim. They typically draw from the biblical image found in Matthew 3:12—“Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his floor and gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff [paleas] he will burn with unquenchable fire.”14 The Gospel image is well known, which describes the process of wind-winnowing, by which the wheat was separated from the chaff, and any unneeded chaff then burned. Thomas, like other Scholastics of his age, would have read this passage alongside the Glossa ordinaria, which is a collection of glosses collected from authoritative authors and written in the margins of medieval Bibles. The gloss to paleas in the Matthean passage reads as such: Paleae come from the origin, that is the seed, from which wheat comes; tares come from diverse [seeds]. Therefore paleae are those who are initiated with the sacraments of faith, but who are not solid; but tares are those who separate from the elect both in deed and profession. Concerning them it is said: “he who does not believe is Peter Kwasniewski, “Golden Straw: St. Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology,” Nova et Vetera (English) 2 (2004): 72. 12 According to Jean-Pierre Torrell: “Straw is a stock expression used to distinguish, by giving it proper weight, the grain of reality within the chaff of the words; the words are not the reality, but they designate it and they lead to it. Having arrived at reality itself, Thomas had a certain right to feel himself detached with respect to the words, but this does not at all signify that he considers his work as without value. Simply put, he had gone beyond it” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1. The Person and his Work, trans. Robert Royal [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996], 293). 13 To produce this number, I used the Index Thomisticus assembled by Roberto Busa and his associates, web ed. by Eduardo Bernot and Enrique Alarcón, available at www.corpusthomisticum.org/it/index.age. 14 The translation is from the Douay-Rheims. The Vulgate reads as such: “Cuius ventilabrum in manu sua: et permundabit aream suam: et congregabit triticum suum in horreum, paleas autem comburent igni inextinguibili.” 11 106 Samuel Klumpenhouwer now judged” [John 3:18]. And on that account no mention of them is made here.15 Thomas included this same passage, which is attributed to Rabanus (ca. 780–856), in his Catena aurea in Matthaeum.16 Two thirds of the occurrences of paleae in the Thomistic corpus resonate with how the word is negatively used in Matthew 3:12 and the accompanying gloss. They typically discuss how the paleae (here, “chaff”) is mixed in with the grain, and then blown around and destined for fire. For Thomas, as in the Matthean passage, the winnowing process represents the final judgment. The process of separation by wind represents the judgment itself,17 and the fire represents the fires of either purgatory or hell.18 Another theme from the Matthean passage is frequently repeated. Thomas explains how paleae come from the same seed as the grain. They are distinguished from the tares, which may be mixed in with the grain but come from diverse seeds. As such, paleae represent bad Catholics. This theme is repeated with variation, with paleae representing Catholics who are incredulous,19 evil,20 schismatic,21 reprobate,22 vain,23 and weak.24 As well, Thomas reproduces several times a famous statement from Gregory that, under the same fire, gold (good Catholics) will shine and paleae (bad Catholics) will burn.25 However, here paleae is still said to be better able to endure fire than the Devil can endure the fervor of charity.26 In the remaining one third of occurrences, paleae has an assortment of Glossa ordinaria to Matt 3:12: “Paleae de origine unde et triticum oriuntur id est de semine, zizania vero de diversa. Paleae ergo sunt qui fidei sacramentis imbuuntur, sed solidi non sunt, zizania vero qui et opere et professione secernunt ab electis. De his dicitur: ‘Qui non credit, iam iudicatus est.’ Et ideo non fit hic mentio de illis” (Bibliorum sacrorum cum glossa ordinaria [Venice: 1603]). 16 Catena in Matth 3, lec. 5: “Rabanus. Verum hoc inter paleas et zizania distat, quod paleae non alio quam triticorum semine prodeunt, zizania vero diverso. Paleae ergo sunt qui fidei sacramentis imbuuntur, sed solidi non sunt; zizania vero qui et opere et professione secernuntur a bonorum sorte.” 17 Catena in Matth 3, lec. 5. 18 Super Matth [rep. Petri de Andria] 3, lec. 1. 19 Catena in Luke 3, lec. 5. 20 Super Matthaeum [rep. Leodegarii Bissuntini] 13, lec. 2. 21 Catena in Matth 13, lec. 4. 22 In IV sent., d. 47, q. 2, a. 3, qc. 3. 23 Catena in Matth 3, lec. 5. 24 In IV sent., d. 47, q. 2, a. 3, qc. 3. 25 In IV sent., d. 15, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 2. 26 Catena in Luke 10, lec. 8. 15 Paleae: A Clarifying Look at the Meaning of Saint Thomas's Final Words 107 meanings. In a straightforward sense, paleae is used by birds for making nests,27 as fodder for bulls,28 and by some people for making sandals.29 It can also refer to the literal sense of Scripture which covers the hidden meanings.30 By extension, as paleae cling closely around the grain, it can signify how people cling to the law,31 or how the kingdom of heaven or some other thing of value is hidden as a kernel of grain.32 In this overview of paleae in the Thomistic corpus, there is no consistent way in which it is used, whether negative, positive, or neutral. While some insight into the meaning of paleae can be gained by examining the Thomistic corpus, the interpretation of paleae should not be limited to how the word is there used. This is especially true since Thomas’s final words were made in a spoken, non-academic setting, and were not reported by Thomas himself. Given this situation, it will be helpful now to broaden the examination to sources outside the Thomistic corpus. There is a generally unknown usage of paleae in the books of medieval canon law, specifically Gratian’s Decretum. The Decretum was written in the mid-twelfth century and became the foundational book of the Corpus iuris canonici, which was the law of the Church until the first Codex iuris canonici was promulgated in 1917. Every Dominican house was responsible to have a copy of it in their library for ready reference.33 Thomas knew the Decretum well, and frequently cited it in his works, from his early commentaries on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard to his final work on the Summa theologiae. The Decretum is a collection of canons from Church councils, papal letters, and patristic writings. It is also known by an alternate title, Concordantia discordantium canonum—“the harmony of discordant canons.” While there were collections of canon law before Gratian, the genius of the Decretum is that it gathered together canons that were seemingly at conflict and then used a dialectical method to harmonize them. As such, Gratian added his own dicta, interspersed between the canons, which explain how he thought certain tensions should be resolved. The Decretum was an immediate success and captured the imagination of medieval Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4. Super Isa 11. 29 Super Matt [rep. Leodegarii Bissuntini] 10, lec. 1. 30 Super Psalmos 8, no. 1 31 Catena in Matth 15, lec. 7. 32 Catena in Luke 3, lec. 5; Catena in Ioan 6, lec. 1; Super Ioan 6, lec. 1. 33 Leonard Boyle, “The setting of the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas—revisited,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 7. 27 28 108 Samuel Klumpenhouwer jurists. It is for this reason that Gratian is known as the father of the science of canon law.34 Throughout the Decretum, one often finds some canons under a rather odd heading: palea. There are around 169 of these paleae, with the exact number varying among the manuscript witnesses. Historians of canon law have long known about these passages, but remain puzzled by the use of paleae to describe them. What the legal historians have determined is that this rubric is typically used for two reasons. This first is to designate when Gratian included the same canon in two different sections, with the repetitious canon placed under the rubric palea. The second is to designate supplemental canons later added by the masters of Bologna. These were inserted in the Decretum shortly after it was completed in the mid-twelfth century. These paleae provide additional canons that were not given by Gratian, but which medieval jurists considered relevant. The Gelasian Decree and Donation of Constantine, for instance, were not included by Gratian, but later added as paleae. However, these canons did not merit the same authority or attention among medieval jurists as those in the original composition.35 As with modern legal historians, medieval canonists were puzzled over why palea was used to describe these supplemental or superfluous passages. Several explanations were offered. The first came from Huguccio, the most renowned of the twelfth-century canonists. Huguccio thought that palea meant chaff that had been added to the good grain. That is, it referred to canons later added the original Decretum.36 This explanation still has some support among modern scholars.37 Johannes Andreae, a contemporary of Thomas, thought that palea came from the name of one of Gratian’s students who first added material to the original Decretum. This theory Stephan Kuttner, “The Father of the Science of Canon Law,” The Jurist 1 (1941): 2–19. 35 Peter Landau, “Gratian and the Decretum Gratiani,” in The History of Medieval Canon Law in the Classical Period: 1140–1234, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 47. For details about the composition process, see Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 36 See Jacqueline Rambaud-Buhot, “Les additions,” in L’Age classique 1140–1378, ed. Gabriel Le Bras, Charles Lefebvre, and Jacqueline Rambaud (Paris: Sirey, 1965), 100–101; Walter Ullmann, “The Paleae in Cambridge Manuscripts of the Decretum,” Studia Gratiana 1 (1953): 161–216; Franz Gillmann, “Paucapalea et paleae bei Huguccio,” Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht 88 (1908): 466–79. 37 See Jacqueline Rambaud-Buhot, “L’étude des manuscrits du décret de Gratien,” in Congres de droit canonique médiéval: Louvain et Bruxelles 1958 (Louvain: Bibliothéque de l’Université, 1959), 38. 34 Paleae: A Clarifying Look at the Meaning of Saint Thomas's Final Words 109 is also widely held today, that the word comes from Paucapalea (literally—“little straw”), a Bolognese canonist and student of Gratian.38 In the sixteenth century, when the Roman Correctors were preparing an edition of the Corpus iuris canonici to serve the Church’s legal needs, they offered another explanation of the paleae in the Decretum. They speculated that palea was connected with the Greek παλαιἀ (“old”), or πάλιν (“again”), signaling the ancient or repetitious nature of those canons.39 Conversely, modern etymologists typically connect palea with πάλλω (“to swing, sway”), perhaps from the movement of the chaff during the winnowing process.40 This usage of paleae in the rubrics of the Decretum is unique among medieval texts. While in the Thomistic corpus it typically has the meaning of “chaff” or “straw,” in the Decretum it has the additional meanings of “not original” or “duplicate.” However, the same qualification should be made as above—that this only shows the rich and varied meaning of the word. It does not lead to the conclusion that Thomas’s final remarks should be interpreted a particular way. The one conclusion that does emerge from this investigation is that medieval readers were more comfortable with polysemy than modern readers. This is true even when the different meanings were at tension, as is the case with “chaff,” which is useless, and “straw,” which has many practical uses. It is also true when new meanings, as in the case of the Decretum, were developed. Medieval readers would be puzzled, for instance, at the insistence of some modern scholars that paleae be translated as “chaff” and not “straw.”41 They would be similarly puzzled at people who insist the reverse. In fact, the narrative about Thomas’s mystical experience invites the reader to understand paleae in multiple senses simultaneously. When one reads Thomas’s words earlier quoted, the sense is that paleae is useless chaff Landau, “Gratian and the Decretum Gratiani,” 47; Stephan Kuttner, Repertorium der Kanonistick: 1140–1234 (Rome: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, 1937), 125–27; Friedrich von Schulte, Die Paleae im Decret Gratians (Vienna: Karl Gerold’s Sohn, 1874), 11–12; see also the first entry for palea in Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Latinitatis, ed. Du Cange. 39 Corpus iuris canonici (Rome: 1582), prol. 40 See the entries in Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Boston: Brill, 2008), and Thomas Tucker, A Concise Etymological Dictionary of Latin (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verland, 1931). Some of the derivatives of palea have mystified linguists, who are unsure how it gained an additional meaning as a rooster’s wattles or the dewlap of other animals. 41 O’Rourke Boyle and O’Rourke Boyle, “Chaff,” 395n11. 38 110 Samuel Klumpenhouwer in comparison to what had been revealed to Thomas. At the same time, however, the reader is invited to reject Thomas’s own evaluation of his written corpus. The narrator does this not only by emphasizing that it seemed as chaff, but by recording elsewhere that God himself declared his approval of Thomas’s writings.42 From the enlightened perspective of Thomas, his writings were superfluous, useless chaff. From the perfect perspective of N&V God, they were straw which could be put to great use. Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, 108. 42 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 111–138 111 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense: Ambroise Gardeil, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Yves Congar, and the Modern Magisterium Guy Mansini, O.S.B. Ave Maria University Ave Maria, FL Beyond the men in the title of this article, many distinguished Dominicans gave themselves over in the twentieth century to engaging questions raised by Catholic Modernists such as Alfred Loisy, George Tyrrell, and Édouard Le Roy about the historicity of dogma. There were also M. M. Tuyaërts, Francisco Marín-Sola, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Claude Geffré. Tuyaërts and Marín-Sola concerned themselves with the question of how identity of meaning is maintained from Scripture to doctrine and on to more developed doctrine, and how it can be known to be maintained. Beyond the provocations of heresy and the invitations of cultural circumstance, what generates developments, and does so in such a way as to guarantee that they really are developments of and not departures from the deposit of faith? They worked out logical answers to this question, although Marín-Sola devoted considerable attention to the role of affective knowledge in provoking and weighing putative developments. Chenu, Schillebeeckx, and Geffré, on the other hand, were so impressed with the necessity to conform the Gospel to various hearers of quite differing cultural circumstance that in the end they seemed to deny that doctrine remained homogeneous in meaning from Scripture to the ancient councils to the medievals to Trent and beyond. They were concerned to guarantee the accessibility of the Gospel to people of various times and places, but did not altogether save 112 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. their position from the historical relativism of the Modernists themselves.1 While Ambroise Gardeil, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, and Yves Congar certainly concerned themselves with the prior issue of what the engines of development might be—logic, connatural knowledge, exegesis—they also concerned themselves with this second issue, the communicability of the Gospel to every land and nation, in every time and age. They maintained the universal and trans-temporal accessibility of doctrinal formulations, formulations that nonetheless stayed identical in meaning with the original Gospel, even across the quite various venues of evangelization and catechesis the Church has known. This question of the universal accessibility of dogma, furthermore, has also concerned the modern magisterium. It is precisely because of this question about the universal accessibility of dogma that the notion of “common sense” enters the discussion of doctrine both theologically and magisterially. This essay, therefore, treats the role attributed to “common sense” in assuring the universal intelligibility of the Church’s dogmatic teaching. This is traced out first in Gardeil and second in Garrigou-Lagrange, who wrote earlier than Gardeil but whom I think to be best understood within Gardeil’s more comprehensive fundamental theological understanding of dogma. Third, there is Congar. Fourth, we turn to Étienne Gilson’s trenchant criticism of Garrigou-Lagrange’s understanding of common sense. Fifth, modern magisterial documents from Humani Generis (1950) on are canvassed for their teaching on the accessibility of dogma and their invocation of, or failure to invoke, “common sense” such as it functions in Gardeil, Garrigou-Lagrange, and Congar. Then, sixth, we return to Gilson before presenting a summary conclusion. Responding to Modernism: Ambroise Gardeil (1859–1931) The Modernists asserted a break, a radical discontinuity, between revelation and the language it evokes in prophet and apostle. Strictly, revelation itself is an ineffable experience, and the language it evokes turns out never to be properly about God, who remains confined in unknowable transcen1 See Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “The Precarity of Wisdom: Modern Dominican Theology, Perspectivalism, and the Tasks of Reconstruction,” in Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 92–123, at 97–101. For Marie-Dominique Chenu, see Un théologien en liberté: Jacques Duquesne interroge le Père Chenu (Paris: Éditions du Centurion, 1979), 69–70. For Edward Schillebeeckx, see his God and the Future of Man, trans. N. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), 39–40. And for Claude Geffré, see his The Risk of Interpretation, trans. D. Smith (New York: Paulist, 1987), 14–15. The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 113 dence beyond the strictures of Kant’s second critique. The language we find in Scripture and religious traditions may recall or evoke the experience (Tyrrell) or tell us how to act in relation to divine reality (Le Roy), but it carries no news about God.2 Further, there are subsequent conceptual discontinuities. There is a discontinuity between the original language of prophet and apostle and later New Testament constructions of narrative and myth (Loisy).3 There is a discontinuity between the language of Scripture and the language and meaning of ecclesial dogma. If dogma is understood to say anything positively informative about divine things, it turns out to be so bound to its time and place and culture as to be cognitively worthless for subsequent times and other cultural places (Tyrrell; Le Roy).4 Strictly speaking, it too is cognitively empty relative to what it purports to speak about, namely, God and divine things. Last, there is a discontinuity between dogma and theology, for theology does attempt to say positive things about divinity.5 Gardeil undertook by contrast to demonstrate continuities at all these points, to throw a reliable bridge from one side of the abyss to the other, to show the homogeneity—his word—of the language of the New Testament and the dogmatic language of the Church, and a like continuity of meaning between the Church’s discourse and theological discourse. This he does in Le donné révélé et la théologie.6 For the revelation as ineffable experience, see George Tyrrell, “Revelation,” in Through Scylla and Charybdis: or the Old Theology and the New (London: Longmans and Green, 1907), 264–307. For dogma as purely directive of action, see Édouard Le Roy, “Qu’est-ce qu’un dogme?” in Dogme et critique (Paris: Librairie Bloud, 1907), 1–34, at 25–26. For the modernist view of revelation as religious experience, see Pope Pius X, Pascendi Domenici Gregis, §§7–8, 14–15 (English at w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/ hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html). It is sometimes said that Pascendi is no accurate guide to what the many and, of course, divergent thinkers tagged as “Modernist” thought. This depends on whether the modernism of Loisy and Tyrrell consists of maintaining a historical and logical link between revelation conceived of as an ineffable experience and a transformist notion of dogmatic development across cultural difference, as the encyclical maintains. 3 Alfred Loisy, Autour d’un petit livre, 2nd ed. (Paris: Picard et Fils, 1907), part 4. 4 George Tyrrell, “Semper Eadem II,” in Through Scylla and Charybdis, 133–54; Édouard Le Roy, “Qu’est-ce qu’un dogme?” 11–12; dogma exercises a kind of veto, but endorses nothing positive. 5 George Tyrrell, “The Rights and Limits of Theology,” in Through Scylla and Charybdis, 200–341; that is, there is a discontinuity between dogma and what Tyrrell calls “theologism,” for which see also Tyrrell, “‘Theologism,’” in Through Scylla and Charybdis, 308–54. 6 Ambroise Gardeil, O.P., Le donné révélé et la théologie, 2nd edition, with preface 2 114 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. In the first place and foundationally, however, he had to establish the nature of revelation as discourse, as opposed to some purely non-linguistic experience. This he does by defending the unrestricted breadth of human affirmations, affirmations that mediate the receptivity of thought to being, and of being itself to being known. And since the idea of being can be analogically extended to the divine,7 then human affirmations of faith can really inform us about God, and God can use our language to tell us about himself. In this way, Gardeil vindicates the possibility of a revelation that truly reveals God and the things of God and the decisions of God. Furthermore, the actuality of revelation is a matter of God’s elevation of the prophet’s or hagiographer’s ability to affirm, since the affirmations now will touch on things beyond the horizon of our native cognitive capacity. Nonetheless, such affirmations are necessary for the public character of revelation, which is directed to human beings who exist in a natural and social unity. As a result, we may therefore trust the record of revelation deposited in Scripture.8 I observe that, since the original Revealer and the principal Author of Scripture is the same God on Gardeil’s account, we should expect no discontinuity between the first and subsequent layers of the New Testament, though he does not much concern himself with Loisy’s New Testament criticism. Then there is dogma. Gardeil first enlists Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s defense of the “common sense” language and conceptuality of dogmatic affirmations, where common sense is styled a rudimentary philosophy of being, whose developed form stretches to metaphysical precision and necessity, but which makes dogma even so articulated accessible in some measure to all Christians.9 Second, he defends the capacity of analogous terms to save us from the metaphysical equivocation alleged by Modernism, which functioning of analogy he explains as an analogy of proper proportionality in which we have imperfect but still proper knowledge of things divine.10 Third, he maintains the logical development of dogma in the course of the Church’s history, and therefore the homogeneity of dogma with the original deposit of revelation and any prior dogmatic decisions.11 by Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P. (Paris: Cerf, 1932 [1st ed. 1909, from a course at the Institut Catholique of 1908–1909]). 7 Gardeil, Le donné, 1–40. 8 Gardeil, Le donné, 41–76. 9 Gardeil, Le donné, 77–114. 10 Gardeil, Le donné, 118–50. 11 Gardeil, Le donné, 151–84. The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 115 Following revelation and dogma, there is theology. The immediate point of departure for theology is the present teaching of the Church in its fullness as held by divine faith, whence the theologian works back (the “regressive method”) to its sources prior to categorizing this teaching as to its probative force in the various loci of theology.12 Following upon this positive theological task, theology proceeds to its constructive work, the exploration of what can be revealed in the deduction of what is virtually contained in the teaching of the Church,13 the ensemble of which conclusions, organized systematically,14 finds a premier expression in the work of St. Thomas.15 Questions can be raised about Gardeil’s execution of his program. First, there are some onto-theological lapses in defending the metaphysical objectivity of the original statements of revelation and subsequent statements of the Church and theology, where he can be read as including God and creatures in a common, univocal category.16 Some onto-theological Gardeil, Le donné, 196–223. Gardeil, Le donné, 224–51. 14 Gardeil, Le donné, 252–84. 15 Gardeil, Le donné, 285–318. Dogmas, held to by faith in the God who reveals them, join the science founded on them, theology, to the science of God and the blessed, where their intrinsic evidence is manifest (Gardeil, Le donné, 203–04). The immediate given from which theology takes its point of departure is not established apologetically (which would make of theology a purely human science, with only human certitude, for the credibility that is the object of apologetics is arrived at by reason; 204–05), nor by critical assessment of foundational documents (197; which would give theology a conditional and only human certitude [208], as with contemporary Protestants and A. Loisy [209]). The point of departure for theology is established by theology itself, which like metaphysics takes charge of its own principles (191–92). Taking the present and actual teaching of the Church as his more immediate point of departure, the theologian works back by what critical science he possesses, but under the direction of faith, to the sources of this teaching in the word of God—hence the so-called “regressive” method. Thence he marks the differences of its expression (209), not taking faith as a merely extrinsic directive and safeguard for historical and critical studies (210), for that will produce only an inadequately minimalizing foundation (211), and one that reduces certitude to a human certitude for what remains (211). Rather, he will establish a truly positive theology (211), which proceeds in faith from the present teaching of the Church, with whatever means he has available for critical appreciation of this teaching, since it is easier to see the beginnings of things from the point of view of their end (213), thence coming to behold the unity of development in admittedly fragmentary documents (214). Then comes the classification of monuments, documents, and teachings into loci (216), which classification also takes place under the light of faith. 16 For instance, Gardeil, Le donné, 122–23, 129. 12 13 116 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. trouble may be said to return where the analogy of proper proportionality is privileged as the way to control the metaphysical relativity of dogma.17 Both these things are easy to fix. Second, there may be some narrowness in conceiving the engine of dogmatic development as a mostly logical machine. Congar fixes this. Last, with the “regressive method,” some think there is a risk of narrowing theology’s point of departure to the more recently produced and prominent magisterial teaching of the Church and so ignoring the wealth of Scripture and Tradition as a whole.18 In fact, Gardeil’s proposal is rooted in the ancient insight that we read Scripture aright only within the framework of the Rule of Faith. It remains that none of the responses to Modernism in Gardeil’s construction have lost their urgent claim upon our theological attention. But the keystone of the arch is doctrine—the doctrinal proposition, deployed in revelation, deposited in Scripture, distilled by the magisterium, defended by and intelligibly displayed in theology. Gardeil recognizes a twofold relativity of dogma: a first, metaphysical relativity, from the transcendence of God relative to our intellectual capacities; and a second, historical relativity, a function of the phantasm or image whence we derive our concepts.19 Within this framework, the same topics capture our atten The same problem emerges in Ambroise Gardeil, O.P., “La structure analogique de l’intellect,” Revue thomiste 27 (1927): 3–19. For discussion of this issue, see Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology, 2nd edition (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2016), 21–27, 88–98, 217–25. 18 On the regressive method, see Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis (1950), §21, which nonetheless encourages a return to the sources as such (English at w2.vatican. va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html). For criticism of the regressive method in light of the Second Vatican Council’s Optatam Totius, the Decree on the Training of Priests (1965), §16, see Juan Alfaro, S.J., “Il Tema biblica nella teologia sistematica,” in Cristologia e Antropologia (Assisi: Citadella, 1972), 11–45, at 19–21 ([1] it reduces Scripture to dogma in failing to distinguish the differing contexts of Scripture and dogmatic formulation; [2] it takes account only of logical development of doctrine; [3] it prevents Scripture itself, the word of God, from posing questions, shaping theology); opposed to the “regressive method” is the “genetic progressive” method, which starts from a delimitation of “biblical themes” (21–45). See also Jared Wicks, S.J., Doing Theology (New York: Paulist, 2009), 20–21 (on Humani Generis) and 27–29 (on Optatam Totius). Wicks sends us to René Latourelle, S.J., Theology: Science of Salvation (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1969), 69–75, on the regressive method in Gardeil, in contrast with a “genetic” approach. 19 This is clearest elsewhere; see Ambroise Gardeil, O.P., “La réforme de la théologie catholique: La relativité des formules dogmatiques,” Revue thomiste 11 (1903): 633–49, at 646–47 (the article continues in Revue thomiste 12 [1904]: 48–76). 17 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 117 tion today: (1) the metaphysical and more-than-metaphysical objectivity and scope of dogma; (2) how it unfolds (“develops”); (3) its role as the point of departure for theology (“regressive method”); and what especially concerns us in this essay, (4) how its “historicity,” the second kind of relativity Gardeil acknowledges, is governed and controlled by “common sense” within his overall view of dogma.20 Gardeil alleges that the Church’s doctrine is couched in the terms of common sense. And these terms, universally accessible to every land and time, assure the accessibility of doctrine to the entire universal Church, wherever she is planted and in whatever culturally divergent circumstances. Is there some epistemological over-reach in asserting the universal intelligibility of the notions of “common sense” with which to express revelation? To answer this question, we need to look more carefully at what he means by “common sense.” Gardeil, however, says he means what Garrigou-Lagrange means by it. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877–1964) The subtitle of Garrigou-Lagrange’s Le sens commun hints at the program to be executed: La philosophie de l’être et les formules dogmatiques.21 “Common sense” is the ordinary man’s implicit possession of the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas. This philosophy encompasses a philosophy of nature, a philosophy of man, and an ethics. But man and the cosmos are regions of being, the subject of metaphysics. So we have, in shorthand, “the philosophy of being.” The relation of common sense to this philosophy is as follows: the common-sense notions of thing or substance, of feature or accident, of cause and effect, of change and becoming, and of person and freedom and moral responsibility are made precise, are more adequately expressed, and are defended by the philosophy of being. As to dogma? According as dogma is expressed in the core concepts of common sense (person, nature, causal dependence, etc.), then it not only has the objectivity the philosophy of being vindicates on its behalf but is also universally intelligible and assimilable by men of every time and nation, or I have addressed the issues of the objectivity of human affirmations and the logical development of dogma elsewhere. 21 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Le sens commun: la philosophie de l’être et les formules dogmatiques, 3rd ed. (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1932 [originally 1909]). See the brief comment by Aidan Nichols, O.P., Reason with Piety: Garrigou-Lagrange in the Service of Catholic Thought (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2008), 39: “Garrigou is careful to state that a dogma is not identical with its own formulation. In this way, he recognizes, up to a point, the issue of the historicity of language.” 20 118 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. at least is tantamount to being understood and appropriated, for common sense is common in virtue of the nature of man and the constancy of the object—being—of his intellect. Garrigou-Lagrange’s goal in Le sens commun is to establish the “conceptualist realist” theory of common sense. This distinguishes his understanding from the contemporary and very popular Bergsonian understanding of common sense espoused by Édouard Le Roy, the distinguished exponent of Henri Bergson’s metaphysics and epistemology. He, too, thinks dogma is expressed in common-sense terms. But for Bergson, common sense does not tell us how things are, but only how we are to deal with them: it is an organ of practical wisdom, but does not tell us anything of the nature of the real. The nature of the real is the nature of Bergsonian durée, the pure mobility of both nature and consciousness whose expression in discrete and spatializing concepts necessarily deforms it.22 It is known only by pre-conceptual intuition. Expressed in language, however—that is, in common sense terms—the real is automatically deformed when such expression is taken to represent the real.23 Such language tells us how to navigate in the world to meet our needs, and of that world, it tells us only that it is patient of being so traversed. When Le Roy applies this understanding of common-sense terms to dogmatic formulas, agreeing with theologians like Ernest-Bernard Allo, O.P., Jules Lebreton, and Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, O.P., that dogmas are cast in common and non-technical terms, then it results that dogma tells us nothing about how things are, but only how to act relative to things divine. Such a view of dogma makes it easier to handle the alleged historical discontinuities Loisy and Tyrrell asserted. But it also seems to present us with one of those moments where the scientist or savant tells us, “you used to think in your naïve and simple-minded way that all Xs are Ys, but now we know that no X was ever a Y,” and so on and so forth. It could not be that the real nature of dogma was discovered in early-twentieth-century France and that what we used to think about it—that it informed us about divine things and told the truth about them in just the terms of its expression—is false. Hence Garrigou-Lagrange’s project of dismembering Le Roy’s Bergsonism, metaphysical root and theological branch, lest it bear what promised to be a poisoned fruit. Henri Bergson, Matière et mémoire (Paris: Alcan, 1933), 207, 218, 223. Bergson, Matière et mémoire, 218–24; Édouard Le Roy, “Science et philosophie: I: Les donnés du sens commun,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 7 (1899): 375–425, at 379. 22 23 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 119 Common sense is to be vindicated, but precisely in such a way that its concepts tell us about the real. The “conceptualist realist theory of common sense,” Garrigou-Lagrange claims, is a “classical” theory, the theory of Aristotle and St. Thomas, of Gottfried Leibniz and Thomas Reid. Its vindication consists just in showing that it is a rudimentary philosophy of being, establishing the relation of its notions and certitudes to being, the formal object of the intellect, and to the principles of being. That is to say, its vindication consists in showing the relation of common sense to the metaphysics of Aristotle and St. Thomas24 More narrowly, the vindication consists in showing, first, that the key common-sense concepts such as person, substance, nature and so on are a nominal and confused grasp of what the philosophy of being grasps perfectly and distinctly in real definitions.25 Second, it consists in showing that the illations that establish such common-sense certitudes as those of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul can be turned into satisfactory and valid demonstrations of the truths in question. The ensemble of common-sense knowledge is therefore small, but strategic relative to all other human knowledge: it contains an implicit grasp of the principles of identity and non-contradiction, of sufficient reason and causality, both efficient and final; it contains nominal definitions of substance, accident, cause, person, man, life, and miracle; it contains also affirmations of the existence of God, of immortality, of final reward.26 So justified, common sense will be shown in fact to be in uncritical but real possession, though “in a confused way,” of “the certain solution of the great philosophical problems.”27 So also the mot of Bergson, which Garrigou-Lagrange never tired of repeating, according to which the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle “is the natural metaphysics of human intelligence.”28 Just because of the continuity between common sense and the philosophy of being, dogma expressed in the language of the philosophy of being is relatively if not completely accessible to all people everywhere. Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 84. Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 55, 96, 282; see also Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “De methodo Sancti Thomae speciatim de structura articulorum Summae Theologiae,” Angelicum 5 (1928): 499–524, and “De investigatione definitionum secundum Aristotelem et S. Thomam. Ex posteriorum Analyt. L. II, C. 12–14; L. 13–19 Commentarii S. Thomae,” Acta Pont: Academiae Romanae S. Thomae Aq. et Religionis Catholicae 2 (1935): 193–201. 26 See Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 131, for a good summary. 27 Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 89. 28 For instance, Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 94; see Henri Bergson, L’Évolution créatrice (Paris: Alcan, 1934), 352. 24 25 120 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. So for instance, common sense distinguishes person and nature in a rough and ready way—it is inscribed in the difference between speaking of “my arm,” “my body, “my intellect,” “my will,” “my decision,” on the one hand, and saying “I run,” “I think,” “I decide,” on the other. “We thus oppose to an ‘I,’ to one and the same I, all that we attribute to it: our spiritual and bodily nature, our existence, our faculties, our acts.”29 Common sense is thus close to the language of Chalcedon with its talk of the one person and two natures of Christ, and is but a few steps away from an initial, but real, understanding of the teaching. On the other hand, Garrigou-Lagrange points out, Chalcedon is unthinkable—that is, it disintegrates into gibberish—if one supposes a person is an accidental collection of sense data and ideas with Hume, or is an élan vital et libre with Bergson. In the Eye of the Storm: Yves Congar (1904–1995) An introduction to revelation and theology comparable in scope to Gardeil’s Le donné can be found fifty years later in Yves Congar’s La foi et la théologie (1962).30 Congar wrote this great and vastly under-appreciated introduction to theology after the Holy See’s intervention in the controversies surrounding la nouvelle théologie and before the confusion of Catholic theology after the Second Vatican Council. At least outwardly, the late 1950s were calm, but only in the way the eye of a cyclone is calm. Congar readily acknowledges his debt to Gardeil’s Le donné in treating his material.31 But there are some differences, too. In the first place, the understanding of revelation is thoroughly rooted in a theology of the word of God.32 Second, revelation is understood as an economy of word and deed.33 Third, the analogy invoked to understand our language about God is the analogy of attribution (unum ad alterum).34 Fourth, the explanation of why and how doctrine develops is more than seeing how logic applies Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 324. Yves Congar, O.P., La foi et la théologie (Tournai: Desclée de Brouwer, 1962). The work was conceived and written in 1958–1959. I will cite it usually according to the running section numbers in the margins. 31 Congar’s own immersion into the historicity of all things human, faith and dogma and theology included, might also be attributed to Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., another of Gardeil’s heirs; Congar followed one of Chenu’s courses in 1927–1928 (see William Henn, O.F.M. Cap., The Hierarchy of Truths according to Yves Congar, O.P. [Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1987], 19–20). 32 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, nos. 1–12. 33 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, nos. 6–10, esp. 10. 34 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 30. 29 30 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 121 to the donné of revelation, and Congar includes a lengthy consideration of historical factors.35 On the other hand, the “regressive method” is maintained, and there is good discussion of the loci theologici.36 The place of St. Thomas and the pluralism of theologies are addressed, as in Gardeil.37 Most important of all, the objectivity and capacity of discourse, of the proposition, to express the word of God, and thus subsequently the word of the Church and the word of theology, is maintained. So his Thesis IV reads: “The word that God addresses to men under many forms presupposes, as a transcendental condition, the value of the analogical language that we use of God, and thus a capacity of our intellect to grasp that word. (Proximum fidei.)”38 The difference from Gardeil and from the post-conciliar scene is that there is no sense of responding to an immediate crisis of theological method. Congar faces the historicity of dogma most directly with Thesis VIII: “That sense of the sacred dogmas which holy mother Church has once and for all declared is perpetually to be retained (D1800, 1818).” Garrigou-Lagrange and Gardeil are acknowledged in the note to this thesis, but there is no report or development of Garrigou-Lagranges’s “conceptualist realist” theory of common sense in the text or the notes.39 We will have to think about that momentarily. Congar begins by emphasizing the importance of the formula, the form of words to which orthodoxy has historically been bound (e.g., transsubstantiatio and homoousios), and raises two objections against such fixity of expression. First, this would bind dogma to a particular culture or philosophy. Second, words cannot always be well translated, and their sense changes in the course of time. To meet both objections, “it is necessary that the terms taken up not be used by the Church except as instruments or servants, and that they be used in order to translate the intention of an idea of which the precise Congar, La foi, pt. 1, nos. 98–117. Congar, La foi, pt. 2, nos. 18–24, 25, 40. 37 Congar, La foi, pt. 2, nos. 87–98. 38 Congar, La foi, p. 32. For discussion of Congar on dogma, see Henn, Hierarchy, 137–49. 39 Fifty years later, Fernando Ocáriz and Arturo Blanco do the same thing, sending us to Gardeil and Garrigou-Lagrange for a defense of the validity of dogmatic formulas “consistent with cognitive realism, the reality of analogy, and the infallibility of the Church” (Fundamental Theology [Woodbridge, IL: Midwest Theological Forum, 2009; originally 1998], 71), but with no elaboration of the “conceptual realist” theory of common sense in the text. 35 36 122 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. content has gone before them in the consciousness of the Church.”40 The Church is indebted to a surrounding culture or philosophy only for the form of its expression, and this is what the history of doctrine shows us. Congar illustrates with the homoousios, a word employed by Denis of Alexandria, abjured by the Council of Antioch (269), and canonized by Nicea. Nor was Athanasius “tied to the word as such but only to the sense of the gospel affirmation.”41 So also transsubstantiatio does duty for conversio or transformatio and is no riff on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Congar returns again and again to the point that the definition serves to maintain the right religious relation between the believer and saving reality.42 But the core of his answer to the objections is Gardeil’s: the expressions seemingly borrowed from this or that particular and distinctive cultural or philosophical milieu do not have more than a “common sense” meaning.43 “If the Church borrows expressions apparently philosophical, it is only for their content of truth as such, not for the technical value that they can have in a system.”44 Thus, the Church is indebted to what is beyond her for an external form, expressing some truth “in a universally accessible language,”45 but at the same time “she frees the notion from its systematic connections and appropriates it to signify her own thought.”46 Her own thought, expressing a revelation that comes from beyond her, is nonetheless expressible in universally accessible terms. This is a delicate proposal and cannot be recommended, I think, except given a robust confidence in the unity of the created order with the economy of salvation: in principle, the dogmatic language of the Church both is common to mankind and is her own invention.47 To the renewed objection that the doctrines of the Church were worked out in a Mediterranean world, Congar concedes that, indeed, God truly has entered history, and therefore a particular history; on the other hand, Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 57. This is not to say this “precise content” has gone on before the formulation of the doctrine without other words. 41 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 57. 42 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 57. 43 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, nos. 58, 59, 60, 63. 44 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 59. 45 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 59. 46 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 60. 47 See also Congar, La foi, pt. 2, no. 60. Congar’s recognition of this twofold relativity was one of the reasons his Chrétiens désunis (Paris: Cerf, 1937) was placed on the Index in 1939 (see Joseph Komonchak, “Humani Generis and Nouvelle Théologie,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012], 138–56, at 141). 40 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 123 “where it is a question of dogmatic formulas, they have not assumed in a Greco-Latin form anything but common notions, able to be translated into the everyday language of all men.”48 Summing up, we can say first that there is a twofold relativity of dogma just as in Gardeil. The transcendence of the object requires the stratagem of analogy; the historical conditioning of our knowledge makes for the peculiarly human relativity of doctrine.49 Second, we have the assertion that the terms used in dogmatic formulas, the concepts employed, are not so much always simply adopted as such, but Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 63. Congar’s last section on Thesis VIII, no. 66, on the relativity of dogmatic formulas, juxtaposes the definition of an article of faith as perceptio divinae Veritatis tendens in ipsam, which is ascribed to Isidore of Seville by Aquinas in Summa theologiae [ST] II-II, q. 1, a. 6, sc, though it is probably from William of Auxerre, with St. Thomas’s own statement of the terminal object of faith, according to which the act of faith non terminatur ad enuntiabile sed ad rem (ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2). It is difficult to read Congar here. He says that dogma “is joined to the very object of his [the Catholic’s] faith,” but at the same time, faith “goes beyond the canonical formulation.” “Beyond that [beyond the formulation] it wants to reach the divine Reality.” The first citation from St. Thomas surely asserts that faith “goes beyond” and “tends” to divine Truth itself, and subsequently, Congar understands this as indicating an eschatological, anagogical dimension to faith (pt. 1, no. 69). But does he mean that the “enuntiable,” the proposition, likewise points beyond itself in some way in addition simply to delivering to us the reality it speaks of, just as any true proposition does and as St. Thomas makes clear, comparing the propositions of faith to those of science? It seems that he does in speaking of faith “going beyond the canonical formulation” and speaking of a “perception,” “a perception in which this Reality can be savored.” In this respect, Congar seems to impute something to the propositions of faith that belongs to them uniquely because they are articles of faith, a cognoscitive quality beyond that of an ordinary, true proposition. That he means to do so is also indicted by his citation at this point of Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., “L’unité de la foi: Realisme et Formalisme” (La Vie Spirituelle Supplément 51 [1937]: 1–8), which, without express citation of St. Thomas, makes much of faith as a perception, a loving tending to the reality of God, but one inseparably conjoined with the assertion of the propositions of doctrine. The text of ST II-II, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2 lies just underneath the text of Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir (Paris: Cerf, 1985 [1937]), 135, too, where the realism of the act of faith, reaching beyond the proposition, “terminating” in divine reality, is ascribed, not to the simple and natural force of the proposition itself, but to the light of faith. This light, or “word,” puts the believer in a “commerce direct” with God. To my lights, the supernatural intentionality of faith, something consciously present (as Gardeil and Garrigou-Lagrange argued) is mistakenly being held to do what St. Thomas ascribes to the native force of propositional assent, which for faith as for science, “terminates in reality.” 49 Congar, La foi, pt. 1, nos. 53, 55–65. 48 124 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. are worked out in the working out of the dogma (person, nature). This is new or at least a new emphasis, I think. This thesis about how the fathers and councils worked out the terms in which to express dogma distances Congar somewhat from the idea that some stockpile of common-sense notions was ready to hand for the formulation of doctrine. 50 Nonetheless, Congar maintains the “accessibility” hypothesis, and this is a noteworthy appropriation of what Gardeil and Garrigou-Lagrange held before him. Third, then, “common sense” is indeed invoked to defend the accessibility of dogma, but there is no philosophical apology for “common sense” in Congar. He does not report the detail of Garrigou-Lagrange’s “conceptualist realist” account of common-sense notions as a philosophy of being in embryonic form. Congar takes the same bottom line as Gardeil and Garrigou-Lagrange, asserting the availability of dogma to ordinary people, even when it borrows technical terms that it does not mean technically. Still, it may be that he distances himself from the elaborate and detailed claims Garrigou-Lagrange makes for common sense. And this distancing may perhaps be provoked by the criticism of the neo-Scholastic version of common sense made by Gilson, criticism it is hard to believe Congar was not aware of. “Common Sense” Historically Located: Anti-Historical and Naturalizing? The “common sense” to which Gardeil, following Garrigou-Lagrange and followed by Congar, appealed to explain the accessibility of dogma both across the ages and to all manners of men and to all cultures provoked an extended critical essay by Gilson. He maintained that the various scholasticized theories of “common sense,” those of Matteo Liberatore, Tommaso Zigliara, and Garrigou-Lagrange, were incoherent amalgams of Thomas Reid, David Hume’s eighteenth-century critic, and Thomas Aquinas.51 The scholasticized “common sense” of Reid Gilson recognizes in Garrigou-Lagrange contains, as we have seen, not only the first and self-evident principles of reason, what St. Thomas sometimes calls the communes conceptiones, but also what Reid (and Cicero, for that matter) identified But see Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 270, where revelation has an impact on the common-sense notions, and Gardeil, Le donné, 213 (quoting B. Schwalm), although earlier, 88–89, theologians come “sans effort” to the orthodox meaning of homoousios. 51 Étienne Gilson, “Realism and Common Sense,” in Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, trans. Mark A. Wauck (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986 [originally 1939]), 27–53, at 40; on Garrigou-Lagrange, see 41–42. 50 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 125 as the shared opinions of men on the nature of man and on fundamental moral principles. “Common sense,” as Garrigou understands it, meaning its contents and not some faculty of reason distinct from the speculative and practical intellect, includes the first principles of the intellect, practical and theoretical, but also such things as the conviction of human freedom of choice, of the immortality of the soul, and of the reward for our good and evil deeds on the other side of death, things understood as the shared opinions of men on the nature of man and morals. For Gilson, therefore, Garrigou-Lagrange’s “common sense” is a sort of historical monstrosity, a mélange of Reid and Aristotle. It is also epistemically strange. “First principles” include the principles of non-contradiction, causality, and finality, together with such things as the distinction between substance and accident—all of which are per se nota—and whose evidence is of the first order of magnitude.52 Sens commun leads back the principles of non-contradiction, substance, causality, sufficient reason, and finality to being by establishing that the denial of any one of them leads to the denial of the principle of identity.53 The “conceptualist realist” theory of common sense also establishes the real definitions of things like body, plant, animal, and man.54 And there is a vindication of the common-sense knowledge of God, immortality, and the miraculous.55 But how, Gilson asks, can such things as the existence of God, freedom of will, and the immortality of the soul be rightly placed in the same epistemic company as first principles?56 The upshot of Gilson’s criticism, we might say, is that Garrigou-Lagrange’s Sens commun is nothing more than an elaborate, historically suspect and epistemically misleading stratagem to ignore the historicity of dogma, an excuse to elide the historical studies that, for instance, will tell us what “person” meant in the fifth, seventh, and thirteenth centuries. In this light, Garrigou-Lagrange’s theory of common sense does not wholly escape the charge that it is an attempt to ignore the historical character of dogma. Furthermore, what of the content of common sense, insofar as it goes beyond the first principles of reason? May we not characterize it as a sort See Gilson, “Realism and Common Sense,” 36–37, for such communes conceptiones, the ones known by all (not the ones common only to the learned), things whose denial contains an evident contradiction; Gilson sends us to De potentia, q. 5, a. 3, ad 7. 53 Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 105–17. 54 Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 98–102. 55 Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 117–29. 56 Gilson, “Realism and Common Sense,” 42–43. 52 126 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. of residue of post-Christian, or at least post-Christendom, Europe? It is what deism and rationalism allowed Europeans to keep from the Gospel in a post-Christian intellectual milieu, things like the immortality of the soul and the Golden Rule. In this respect, Garrigou-Lagrange’s attempt to elide history is itself therefore a quite determinate historical artifact. What he parades as a perennial endowment arguably turns out to be a modern European artifact. Thus, it is not just the notion of “common sense” itself and as opposed to philosophy or some forms of it that has a history—of this Garrigou is quite aware in his own fashion—but the content is historically determined, too.57 To the extent this is true, should there not be more account of it? Garrigou-Lagrange’s position can also be criticized as requiring us to pour the wine of revelation into already used and purely natural wineskins. Either the wine-skins will burst, if the wine really is new, which is to say that revelation has to find its own proper terms in which to express itself and we will be beyond “common sense,” or on the other hand, if the notions of common sense do not need to be re-formed and re-tooled, then revelation has nothing new to say to us—we thought the wine was new but it was not, since the wine-skins did not burst. This was of old Lucien Laberthonnière’s criticism of Gardeil.58 We have seen that Congar is sensitive to it. Common Sense, Common Notions in the Magisterial Understanding of Dogma We could be dogmatically indifferent to the alleged role of common-sense notions in the formulation of doctrine and what they are supposed to accomplish, and leave the question to a more speculative day, except that the Roman magisterium itself has not been indifferent to the proposal of Garrigou-Lagrange, Gardeil, and Congar. The magisterium makes rules about how to talk about Christ, the Trinity, the Church, the sacraments, original sin, and grace. It also makes rules about how to talk about these rules. There are several texts of moment to review here. We review the texts, and then return to the just sketched criticisms. 1. In 1950, in §16 of Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII reproves contempt This does not gainsay the fact that Garrigou-Lagrange’s instinct for “common sense” was an effective rhetorical move in opposition to the Bergsonian criticism of “common sense.” The historical location of Sens commun is in this way relevant for an appreciation of its merits. 58 See my “What Is a Dogma?”: The Meaning and Truth of Dogma in Edouard Le Roy and His Scholastic Opponents (Rome: PUG, 1985), 359–60. 57 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 127 of dogma and the traditional terms in which it expressed.59 These can be perfected, but not abandoned. He notes that the Church cannot be bound to any philosophical system, and then continues: The things that have been composed through common consent by Catholic teachers over the course of the centuries to bring about some understanding of dogma . . . rely on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge of created things. In deducing this knowledge, revealed truth, like a star, enlightened the human mind through the Church. Whence it is not surprising that some of these notions have not only been employed but even sanctioned by the Ecumenical Councils, so that it is wrong to depart from them. The principles and notions in which dogma is expressed are deduced from a true knowledge of created things, but this natural deduction is itself guided by revealed truth. This gives a light to the mind for understanding created things that would not otherwise be possessed. This sounds very much like what Gilson counts as “Christian philosophy.”60 To Garrigou-Lagrange, it sounded like an endorsement of his first great work, Le sens commun, and his understanding of the role common-sense terms exercise in the expression of dogma, and he said so.61 2. Just fifteen years later, Pope Paul VI offered a yet more explicit endorsement of this understanding in his encyclical on the Eucharist, Mysterium Fidei (1965).62 He recalls the teaching of St. Augustine that, unlike philosophers, when we speak of the matters of faith, we are bound to “a fixed rule.”63 The dogmatic formulas for the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the Eucharist “express concepts that are not tied to a certain specific form of human culture, or to a certain level of scientific progress, or to one or another theological school.” Rather: They set forth what the human mind grasps of reality through Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis (the English translation here is my own, but the official English translation can be found on the Vatican’s website at the URL given in note 10 above). 60 Étienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, trans. A. H. C. Downes (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), 37. 61 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., ““L’Encyclique Humani generis et la doctrine de Saint Thomas,” Revista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica 43 (1951): 41–48. 62 Pope Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei (1965) (English at w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/ en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_03091965_mysterium.html). 63 Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.23 (a text invoked also by Congar, La foi, pt. 1, no. 55). 59 128 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. necessary and universal experience and what it expresses in apt and exact words, whether it be in ordinary or more refined language. For this reason, these formulas are adapted to all men of all times and all places. (§24) He grants that such formulas can be made “clearer and more obvious,” but they must “retain the meaning in which they have been used” (§25). The concepts or terms in question are not called “common,” but they are understood to be common, not tied to a specific culture or scientific cultivation or school. Just as for Garrigou-Lagrange, they are rooted in necessary and universal experience.64 They assure the universal accessibility of dogmatic truth. 3. The International Theological Commission largely repeats Paul VI in its Unity of the Faith and Theological Pluralism of 1972: Dogmatic definitions ordinarily use a common language; while they may make use of apparently philosophical terminology, they do not thereby bind the Church to a particular philosophy but have in mind only the underlying realities of universal human experience, which the terms in question have enabled them to distinguish (§11).65 And §12 maintains that revealed truth “remains always the same, not only in its substance but also in its fundamental statements.” 4. Next, there is Mysterium Ecclesiae, a production of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1973.66 In the fifth section, the Congregation undertakes a word explanatory of the nature of the Church’s infallibility. The Congregation first notes the transcendence of divine mysteries to human intellect, and marks a second source of “difficulties” in the transmission of revelation, namely, “the historical condition” that affects its expression. The rest of the paragraph is mostly concerned with this second matter. The document distinguishes and then treats successively first the Garrigou-Lagrange, Sens commun, 130–32. International Theological Commission, Unity of the Faith and Theological Pluralism, in International Theological Commission: Texts and Documents, 1969–1985 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 91. 66 An English translation of Mysterium Ecclesiae can be found at www.vatican.va/ roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19730705_ mysterium-ecclesiae_en.html. 64 65 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 129 language of dogmatic formulas and then their meaning. As to the language: first, the “expressive power” of language is subject to historical contingencies; second, not every first expression of some dogmatic truth is complete, which does not mean it is false; third, there is usually some error which serves as a foil to the expression of the dogma; last, the congregation makes an admission that qualifies the universality of the terms employed. Even though the truths which the Church intends to teach through her dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them, nevertheless it can sometimes happen that these truths may be enunciated by the Sacred Magisterium in terms that bear traces of such conceptions. These “traces” do not mean that the formulas are not from the beginning and “forever suitable for communicating this truth to those who interpret them correctly.” The Congregation cites here Pius IX’s Eximiam Tuam (1857), in which there is an appeal to St. Augustine’s dictum about keeping the rule of the Church’s language, and Paul VI’s Mysterium Fidei, but grants also that this “suitability” of the formulas is over time subject to degrees, and may require explanatory comment. So much for what the Congregation refers to as the “language” of dogmatic truths. The document then turns to the “meaning” of dogma. As for the meaning of dogmatic formulas, this remains ever true and constant in the Church, even when it is expressed with greater clarity or more developed. The faithful therefore must shun the opinion, first, that dogmatic formulas (or some category of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can only offer changeable approximations to it, which to a certain extent distort or alter it; secondly, that these formulas signify the truth only in an indeterminate way, this truth being like a goal that is constantly being sought by means of such approximations. Such a view does not escape “dogmatic relativism,” against which the Congregation marshals the First Vatican Council, Paul VI, and John XXIII. From this last reference, the Congregation draws an important argument. At the opening of the Second Vatican Council, John had said: This certain and unchangeable doctrine, to which faithful obedience is due, has to be explored and presented in a way that is 130 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. demanded by our times. One thing is the deposit of faith, which consists of the truths contained in sacred doctrine, another thing is the manner of presentation, always however with the same meaning and signification.67 Whence the Congregation argues: Since the Successor of Peter is here speaking about certain and unchangeable Christian doctrine, about the deposit of faith which is the same as the truths contained in that doctrine and about the truths which have to be preserved with the same meaning, it is clear that he admits that we can know the true and unchanging meaning of dogmas. Mysterium Ecclesiae acknowledges that dogmatic formulas—and here it is a question of the language—are distinct from “the changeable conceptions of a given epoch.” This implies a universally accessible expressive form of language, which, however, the Congregation forbears to characterize or explain further. Of all the recent magisterial pronouncements, this text is the most reticent relative to the thesis about common sense, common notions, and common terms. 5. With less authority than the Congregation, the International Theological Commission addressed the question of dogma and its permanent value in 1990 in The Interpretation of Dogma. The commission refers to Mysterium Fidei on maintaining language of the Church, although it does not report the reasons Mysterium Fidei adduces (section B.II.1). It refers to Mysterium Ecclesiae, recognizing that dogmas are historical creations (B.II.2). The Commission imitates Congar in citing the two texts from Summa theologiae II-II, q. 1, together (B.III.4; see above, note 48). It is the section entitled “The Permanent Value of Dogmatic Formulations” (C.III.3), however, that is most germane to our question. Here, it is said that there can be no “neat distinction” between “content and form of expression,” and it is maintained that “images and concepts are not interchangeable at will.”68 Again, “the symbolic nature of language The text here reports the Congregation’s citation. Pope John’s Latin can be found at w2.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/la/speeches/1962/documents/hf_jxxiii_spe_19621011_opening-council.html. 68 International Theological Commission, The Interpretation of Dogma, in International Theological Commission, vol. 2, Texts and Documents, 1986–2007 (San Fran67 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 131 is not simply an item of apparel, but in some way truth itself incarnate,” and the foundation of this truth is the Incarnation itself.69 The insistence on the inseparability of content and form, image and concept, grounds the document’s recognition of the ineluctable historicity of dogma, even as did Congar where he noted the Greco-Latin provenance of the Church’s formulations. The Commission says: The basic expressions of faith may not be revised, even when it is claimed that the reality they express will not be lost to sight. The effort must always be made to assimilate them more and more, and to push on with explaining them, thanks to a whole range of different forms of evangelization. In particular, the inculturation of Christianity in other cultures may give occasion for this task, or indeed make it obligatory. Revealed truth for all that remains unchanged “not alone in what constitutes substantial content but also [in its] decisive expressions in language” (§12).70 What is unique to the Commission’s statement is the extent to which it emphasizes that the language of the Church is her own invention, though one not apart from fruitful dialogue with philosophy. The study of the history of dogma shows clearly that in these dogmas the Church has not simply taken up already existing conceptual schemes. She has rather subjected existing concepts, imprinted by the upper levels of the language of the milieu, to a process of purification and transformation, or reworking. In that way, she has created the language that fits her message. Take for example the distinction between “substance” (or nature) and “hypostasis,” and the working out of the concept of person which was unknown, as such, to Greek philosophy. In fact, it came about as a result of reflection on the reality of the mystery of Salvation and on biblical language.71 This spells out much more completely what Pius XII seems to mean by cisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 23–53, at 50. This text is also online at the Vatican web site. 69 International Theological Commission, Interpretation of Dogma, 50. 70 International Theological Commission, Interpretation of Dogma, 51. The citation is to a former ITC document, “Unity of Faith and Theological Pluralism” (1972). 71 International Theological Commission, Interpretation of Dogma, 50. 132 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. saying that revealed truth enlightens the mind. It is a point quite expressly anticipated by Congar as observed above: the language is in different respects both borrowed and a work of the Church’s own fashioning. The Commission further explains: The language of the Church’s dogma was then forged partly in debate with certain philosophical systems, but is not bound in any way to any definitive philosophical system. In the process of seeking language for the faith, the Church has created a language of her own in which she has given expression to realities hitherto unperceived and unknown, but which belong now, precisely by means of such linguistic expression, to the Paradosis of the Church and through it to the historical heritage of humanity.72 The Commission seems to me to convey here very exactly Congar’s sense of things. Dogma expresses the truth about divine things. Its expressions and conceptuality are worked out historically with what is at hand but are the Church’s own creation, a creation enriching the common patrimony of humanity. Still, dogma remains accessible to all. The Commission refuses to let the truth about the historicity of dogma defeat the truth of its accessibility, and vice versa. The Commission does this without any express appeal to already available “common” or common-sense concepts, although there is a suggestion that there is a production of such a store common to all mankind. The Commission also says that the dogmatic formula, “as a real-symbolic expression of the content of faith, contains and makes present what it indicates.” 73 The meaning of this last saying is not altogether obvious: it seems to express what Chenu thought Summa theologiae II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2, means: that the light of faith implies there is some special touching by the mind of the revealed reality beyond the proposition.74 But the Commission expresses it in Rahnerian terms (real symbol), and suggests that the content of faith itself comes to its own historical realization in the ecclesial formula.75 6. Last, there is John Paul II’s Encyclical Fides et Ratio, of 1998. We have International Theological Commission, Interpretation of Dogma, 50. International Theological Commission, Interpretation of Dogma, 50. 74 See above, note 48. 75 For real symbols, see Karl Rahner, “The Theology of the Symbol,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4, More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966), 221–52. 72 73 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 133 here, as in Mysterium Fidei, a fuller and more easily recognizable reliance on at least part of what Garrigou-Lagrange called “common sense.” Paragraph 4 evokes the “universal” and “fundamental” elements of knowledge that enable man to understand himself and his flourishing, elements that spring from following the wonder whence philosophy begins and are common to all. Further: Although times change and knowledge increases, it is possible to discern a core of philosophical insight within the history of thought as a whole. Consider, for example, the principles of non-contradiction, finality and causality, as well as the concept of the person as a free and intelligent subject, with the capacity to know God, truth and goodness. Consider as well certain fundamental moral norms which are shared by all. These are among the indications that, beyond different schools of thought, there exists a body of knowledge which may be judged a kind of spiritual heritage of humanity. It is as if we had come upon an implicit philosophy, as a result of which all feel that they possess these principles, albeit in a general and unreflective way. Precisely because it is shared in some measure by all, this knowledge should serve as a kind of reference-point for the different philosophical schools. Once reason successfully intuits and formulates the first universal principles of being and correctly draws from them conclusions which are coherent both logically and ethically, then it may be called right reason or, as the ancients called it, orthós logos, recta ratio.76 This evocation of a body of knowledge “beyond different schools of thought,” an inheritance of humanity itself and as a whole, an “implicit philosophy,” very nicely recalls what Garrigou-Lagrange meant by the conceptual-realist theory of common sense, and the Holy Father details some of the same components as Garrigou-Lagrange first inventoried them: the principles of non-contradiction, of finality, and causality, the notion of the person, and fundamental moral norms. Note that it includes not only first principles, but what can be drawn from them. This thought of §4 is turned to the expression of the Church’s dogma in §§95–96. The word of God is addressed to all, but dogmatic statements sometimes reflect “the culture of the period in which they were defined.” “This prompts the question of how one can reconcile the absoluteness The English translations in this section are all from the Vatican website. 76 134 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. and the universality of truth with the unavoidable historical and cultural conditioning of the formulas which express that truth” (§95). Only metaphysics—that is, the philosophy of being of which, for Garrigou-Lagrange, “common sense” is the outline for the vulgar—“can show how it is possible to move from the historical and contingent circumstances in which the texts developed to the truth which they express, a truth transcending those circumstances” (§95).77 The next paragraph focuses more narrowly on “the problem of the enduring validity of the conceptual language used in Conciliar definitions.” The Pope cites §16 of Humani Generis and refers us to the Commission’s The Interpretation of Dogma. There follows a very recognizable appeal to “basic concepts” universally accessible. The history of thought shows that across the range of cultures and their development certain basic concepts retain their universal epistemological value and thus retain the truth of the propositions in which they are expressed [there is a citation to Mysterium Ecclesiae, §5]. Were this not the case, philosophy and the sciences could not communicate with each other, nor could they find a place in cultures different from those in which they were conceived and developed. The hermeneutical problem exists, to be sure; but it is not insoluble. Moreover, the objective value of many concepts does not exclude that their meaning is often imperfect. This is where philosophical speculation can be very helpful. We may hope, then, that philosophy will be especially concerned to deepen the understanding of the relationship between conceptual language and truth, and to propose ways which will lead to a right understanding of that relationship. Because of these “basic concepts,” the interpreting ego in some way transcends cultures. Notwithstanding the existence of basic concepts that function cross-culturally, however, the further perfection of their expressive power remains a possibility. Fides et Ratio gives us an inventory of common cognitive possessions, from first principles and basic moral norms to conclusions drawn therefrom, together with certain “basic concepts”—one should think of person and nature, for instance; it gives us an inventory markedly similar to He continues: “Human language may be conditioned by history and constricted in other ways, but the human being can still express truths which surpass the phenomenon of language. Truth can never be confined to time and culture; in history it is known, but it also reaches beyond history.” 77 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 135 Garrigou-Lagrange’s inventory of the contents of common sense. There is, however, no claim whatsoever about any “classical theory” of common sense. Rather, as the citations to Pius XII and the International Theological Commission give us warrant to say, the contents in question, in some way common to many cultures, are worked out by the Church herself, with the help of revelation, just as Congar supposed. Just so, they are a common heritage not just of the Church, but of mankind generally. There is a sort of completion with Fides et Ratio, but it may be well to add up the results of our canvass of the documents, a sort of list of the guiding principles of dogmatic expression, re-expression, development, and interpretation. We can sum up nine headings for the six documents (in historical order again: Humani Generis [HG; 1950]; Mysterium Fidei [MF; 1965]; Unity of Faith and Theological Pluralism [TP; 1972]; Mysterium Ecclesiae [ME; 1973); Interpretation of Dogma [ID; 1990]; Fides et Ratio [FR; 1998]). 1. Dogmatic terms (words, expressions) are not tied to a particular philosophy or culture or scientific achievement: HG, MF, TP, ID, FR. 2. They are not technical terms, but common or basic (FR) expressions, though sometimes “refined” (MF): MF, TP, FR. 3. They are rooted in and reflect necessary and universal human experience: MF, TP, FR. 4. They and the dogmatic statements composed of them are true (and not merely “approximations” [ME; though this is merely implied for some statements]): HG, MF, TP, ME, ID, FR. 5. These terms and expressions are universally accessible, or forever accessible, or at least not to be discarded and replaced: HG, MF, TP, ME, ID, FR. 6. Moreover, these terms have found approval by the magisterium: HG, MF, ME, ID, FR. 7. For all that, the expressive terms of dogmatic statements can be further perfected: HG, MF, ME, ID, FR. 8. Their historical relativity or conditioning is acknowledged: ME, ID, FR. 9. Last, they have not been simply received, but have been hammered out by the Church in her own work of giving expression to revealed truth: HG, ID, FR. None of the documents takes up any account of “common sense” as such, although Fides et Ratio comes closest, where it recognizes a “core” of philosophical insight, a heritage common to mankind as a whole, a sort of “implicit philosophy,” whose components are the first principles of reason, basic moral norms, and such things as the notion of the person. This will 136 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. be important in considering Gilson’s objection, to which I turn. The Objections Again How, Gilson asks, can such things as the existence of God, freedom of will, and the immortality of the soul be rightly placed by Garrigou-Lagrange in the same epistemic company as first principles?78 The magisterial documents, on the other hand, generally make no claim even about self-evident principles in defending the terms of dogma, but defend only the accessibility of the terms in which doctrine is expressed. The exception is Fides et Ratio, but it does not adduce the apparatus of Garrigou-Lagrange by which he defended the objectivity of the principles; nor does it repeat any of his productions of the real definitions of basic terms. It seems content merely to register and accept the content of “common sense,” and indeed, as something common to mankind. For St. Thomas, of course, first principles are the instruments by which the agent intellect works to articulate the intelligibility of the things of the world.79 But leaving things just as the encyclical does, there is no unwarranted addition to this Thomist a priori element of knowledge, the light of the agent intellect, a simple location of the ground of manifestation and argument common to all cultures, all sciences, something that includes the principles and adds some further basic apprehensions to them in virtue of the universal experience of mankind. The ecclesial documents rather leave us more with the sense of things we find in Congar. The universal availability of the terms of doctrine to ordinary understanding and their non-technical nature—these are asserted. But there is no justifying theory for these assertions. The documents from the Popes, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the International Theological Commission are more forthright about the historical conditioning of doctrine than was Garrigou-Lagrange, and this historical conditioning proceeds betimes under the light of revelation. In this way, the appeal to universally accessible notions does not necessarily flatten out the novelty of revelation or make us ignore it. The Commission’s The Interpretation of Dogma is noteworthy Gilson, “Realism and Common Sense,” 42–43. See for instance Quaest. de anima, a. 5, resp.: “Some on the other hand say that the agent intellect is nothing else in us than the habit of indemonstrable first principles. But this cannot be, because we know even these indemonstrable principles by abstracting [them] from singulars, as the Philosopher says in I Post. Analytics. Whence it is necessary that the agent intellect exist prior to the habit of principles, as its cause. But principles are compared to agent intellect as certain of its instruments, because it is through them that it makes other things intelligible in act” (my translation). 78 79 The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense 137 here, providing a very Congar-like admission that the language of the Church’s doctrine is in some measure her own invention, and yet, not an invention that prevents communication. This is, as has been said above, a delicate point. Holding to the universal accessibility and maintaining the common-sense intelligibility of the terms of doctrine even as in some fashion borrowed from non-Christian thought requires us to think of the unity of the economy of salvation, the unity of the orders of creation and re-creation in Christ, of nature and grace. The “basic concepts,” the concepts in which dogma is formulated, are provided by reason and yet recount revelation. How can this be, except that the created order is first inscribed in the pattern contained in the very Word that becomes incarnate? There is a great difference between making sense of the things of the world, or of being, and making sense of the word of God. But all these words, natural and supernatural, are included in the Word made flesh. Concluding Synthetic Word Taking our theologians and the magisterial documents together, we end up with a claim that the terms of doctrine are historically conditioned, are yet in some measure universally accessible, and are both provided by natural reason and worked out by faith seeking understanding. For John Paul II in Fides et Ratio, that there be “certain basic concepts” with a “universal epistemological value” is a condition of the possibility of two facts: first, that philosophy and the sciences can understand one another, and second, that they can find a home in cultures other than that of their origin (§96). The human subject is constituted by the ability to discern identities in differences, including differences of time and culture. We assert as much whenever anyone adverts, like John XXIII, to the difference between a truth and its “manner of presentation,” as he did at the opening of the council. Fides et Ratio simply picks out a necessary instrument of recognizing identities of meaning in different expressions across time or from culture to culture. We come closest to identifying the sorts of things to be included in these “basic concepts” when we speak of the principles of non-contradiction, causality, and finality and the distinction between substance and accident, “basic” because universal and presupposed to making sense of the things we experience. Because he speaks from within the unity of a single culture and a determinate age of that culture, Garrigou-Lagrange is more sanguine about counting more and more such basic things as belonging to every man. John Paul II, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the International Theological Commission do not disagree so much as point to the mediating role of the hermeneutical act to make the necessary transitions. 138 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. If we develop this allusion to the hermeneutical act more fully, then we will perhaps distinguish between cultural environments and the culture-transcending horizon of being, which can come to expression only within a determinate culture, of course, and which for us has come to expression within the ancient culture of Plato and Aristotle.80 The magisterial documents and Garrigou-Lagrange therefore do well to privilege the idea of the person, not simply because of its role in the doctrines of Christ and the Trinity, but because of the role of the person in formulating and apprehending doctrine in the first place. For, the Catholic notion of dogma necessarily presupposes that the human person is not culturally bound, but is the “agent of truth.”81 He is no passive registrar of the world, but is defined by his finality to truth and his desire to install it in his action and speech. Most of all is his finality to truth satisfied, however, when he hears the word of God. This returns us to Bernard Lonergan’s appreciation of the constitution of dogma in his De Deo trino. Dogma emerges from the revealed word of God, carried forward by the tradition of the Church; it does so, however, only to the extent that, prescinding from all other riches contained in that word of God, one concentrates on it precisely as true. . . . If one separates the word from the truth, if one rejects propositional truth in favour of some other kind of truth, then one is not attending to the word of God as true.82 Attention to truth, of course, matches the scope and depth of John Paul II’s N&V evocation of metaphysics, the science of being. See Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations: How Words Present Things (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), sect. 70. 81 See Robert Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), ch. 1. 82 Bernard Lonergan, S.J., The Way to Nicea, trans. Conn O’Donovan (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 8; or see The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 11, The Triune God: Doctrines, trans. Michael Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 41. 80 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 139–159 139 Incarnational “Intrinsicism”: Matthias Scheeben’s Biblical Theology of Grace Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. Providence College Providence, RI Throughout the twentieth century and into the current century, one of the central debates in the controversy over the relationship between nature and grace has concerned “intrinsicism” and “extrinsicism.” These somewhat inelegant terms encapsulate the theological question as to whether human beings have a “natural desire” for the vision of God, and if so, in what sense. Do human beings have an intrinsic desire to see God, such that the (supernatural) beatific vision is the one and only true end for human beings?1 Or, is the desire to see God a conditional, elicited desire, that is, a desire not inherent to human nature, but rather one that arises through reflection on the order of the world?2 Recently, two scholars have proposed the nineteenth-century German theologian Matthias Scheeben as someone who can make a fruitful contribution to this debate. In a 2013 article in Nova et Vetera, Thomas Joseph White presents Scheeben’s early work Natur und Gnade as an example of “good extrinsicism.”3 For White, Scheeben’s account of the nature–grace relation Perhaps the most influential exposition of this position is found in Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Herder & Herder, 1998). 2 One of the most recent defenses of this position, explicitly challenging de Lubac’s reading, is Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters, 2nd ed. (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2010). 3 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “Good Extrinsicism: Matthias Scheeben and the Ideal Paradigm of Nature–Grace Orthodoxy,” Nova et Vetera (English) 11 (2013): 537–63. White limits his discussion of Scheeben to this early work. Throughout 1 140 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. rightly affirms the existence of a purely natural end for human beings. At the same time, although the natural desire to see God in the beatific vision is not intrinsic to human nature as such, there is nevertheless a fitting correspondence between grace and nature. White further argues that Scheeben’s Scholastic method equips him well to parse out the distinctions necessary to rightly understand the complex relation between nature and grace. In a study published a year after White’s article, Andrew Swafford proposes Scheeben as a theologian who can reconcile the two camps in the Catholic nature–grace controversy.4 With the “pure nature” camp, Scheeben maintains the gratuity of grace and the integrity of a purely natural end for human beings. With Henri de Lubac, Scheeben provides for a kind of intrinsicism by “securing an inherent connection between human nature and the supernatural order of grace.”5 Swafford’s argument is that, although de Lubac and Scheeben approach the question from different angles, they arrive at similar conclusions with respect to the creation of the human race for communion with God. Both White and Swafford point to significant contributions made by Scheeben, but each of them also misses or underplays an important aspect of his treatment, either in itself (in the case of White) or vis-à-vis de Lubac (in the case of Swafford). While White is correct to underscore the Scholastic elements of Scheeben’s position, he says little about the equally important biblical and patristic aspects of his treatment.6 These emphases in Scheeben’s account shift the discussion away from the philosophical question of natural desire to a more biblical register focusing on divine adoption and the Incarnation. Such a biblical-patristic approach provides a better foundation from which to consider the nature–grace relationship. Swafford, by contrast, underestimates (or at least underplays) the important difference between Scheeben’s account of the question of “intrinsicism” and that of de Lubac. Indeed, one could argue that Swafford’s continued use of the term “intrinsicism” to describe certain aspects of Scheeben’s this paper, translations of Scheeben’s Natur und Gnade are taken from Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, trans. Cyril O. Vollert (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009). 4 Andrew Dean Swafford, Nature and Grace: A New Approach to Thomistic Ressourcement (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014); see also Edward T. Oakes, A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies, Interventions (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 33–46. Oakes acknowledges his debt to Swafford, whose dissertation he directed. 5 Swafford, Nature and Grace, 186. 6 In this regard, Swafford is correct in describing Scheeben as an example of “Ressourcement Thomism” (Nature and Grace, 196). Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 141 position obfuscates rather than clarifies matters.7 Rather than calling it “intrinsic,” I would describe Scheeben’s account of the nature–grace relation as “incarnational.” Such a distinction underscores the advantage of Scheeben’s position vis-à-vis de Lubac’s. Whereas de Lubac leaves himself open to the criticism that his argument calls into question the gratuity of grace by seeming to insist that human nature qua nature is already supernaturally oriented, Scheeben’s incarnational account of how human beings are made for grace preserves this gratuity, while at the same time acknowledging that God has created human beings with the ultimate intention of elevating them by grace.8 Scheeben’s approach thus presents the inherent connection between nature and grace not as a constitutive element of human nature (a charge frequently leveled at de Lubac, though he would deny it), but rather as a part of the divine plan in the Incarnation.9 In order to illustrate the advantages of Scheeben’s position, I will first present the Scholastic elements of his argument, showing how Scheeben preserves the gratuity of grace while, at the same time, maintaining that there is a fitting connection between nature and grace. This connection is not, however, a necessity based on human nature, as de Lubac’s account might seem to suggest.10 Rather, the connection depends on the divine economy and God’s plan for human beings in the Incarnation. In the second and third parts of the essay, I will offer an exposition of the biblical-patristic aspects of Scheeben’s position, looking first at divine adoption and the way it provides a basis for the gratuity of grace in divine revelation, and subsequently at the role the Incarnation plays in his account of the sense in which human beings are made for supernatural communion with God. See Swafford, Nature and Grace, esp. 186–94. To be fair, Swafford does not refer to Scheeben as a strict “intrinsicist.” Rather, he sees in Scheeben a fruitful reconciliation of extrinsicism and intrinsicism. 8 Oakes also sees the importance of this incarnational perspective: “In other words . . . the knotty and still unresolved debate over the nature/grace relationship can be resolved, but only by grounding that secondary problem in the prior and greater mystery of the incarnation” (Theology of Grace, 43; emphasis original). 9 In this emphasis on the Incarnation one can see a similarity between Scheeben and de Lubac. The difference lies in the former’s affirmation of the theoretical usefulness of the concepts of “pure nature” and “obediential potency.” 10 One should note that de Lubac would (and did) strenuously deny this characterization of his position. Rather, he would present his position as a “paradox.” See especially de Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 53–74. Nevertheless, it is a conclusion that several of his interpreters (especially his opponents) have drawn, whether rightly or wrongly. 7 142 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. Scheeben’s Scholasticism The Scholastic nature of Scheeben’s approach to the question is evident from the first pages of Nature and Grace, as he begins by defining the crucial terms “nature” and “supernature.”11 The distinction between these two orders, a commonplace in the commentatorial tradition, plays a central role in his account.12 As Edward Oakes notes, however, in Scheeben we see a quintessential example of the principle of “distinguish in order to unite.”13 The distinction between nature and supernature (or grace) serves to show forth the “nuptial union” between the two orders.14 Scheeben begins his analysis of “nature” with a discussion of the word’s etymology, noting that both the Latin and the Greek words come from verbs associated with birth or begetting.15 On this basis, he argues that nature most fundamentally refers to the essence of living things, that is, things that are begotten. Nature “signifies the essence and substance, not simply as such, but with reference to life and activity, as the principle of motion, as the root and basis of the entire life.”16 Properly speaking, then, nature applies only to living things. Analogously, the word can be applied to inanimate material things, but this is a secondary definition.17 The corresponding adjective “natural” also can have a multiplicity of connotations. Scheeben offers four definitions. First, “the natural” can refer to what “pertains to nature, arises from nature, or is conformable to nature.”18 Second, the adjective can describe qualities or faculties that arise from a thing’s essence or that are not opposed to its essence and conform to it.19 Third, “natural” can designate a good corresponding to a thing, either as something it can attain by its own powers or as something that will bring about the thing’s highest perfection, even if it cannot be attained by Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 19–32. For an extensive discussion of the commentatorial tradition, see Feingold, Natural Desire. 13 See the foreword of Swafford, Nature and Grace, xi. 14 For the marital imagery of the union between nature and grace, see Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 296. For further discussion of this imagery, see Aidan Nichols, Romance and System: The Theological Synthesis of Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nova et Vetera Book Series (Denver, CO: Augustine Institute, 2010), 74–76; Oakes, Theology of Grace, 33–43. 15 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 19–20. 16 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 20–21. 17 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 21–22. Scheeben also notes that the definition can be extended to spiritual beings, but only by analogy because of their simplicity. 18 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 23. 19 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 23–24. 11 12 Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 143 its own powers.20 Finally, the word can refer to “the orientation of a being to its end and to the totality of everything pertaining to the end.”21 The purpose of this extensive discussion of nature and the natural is to set in relief the meaning and significance of the supernatural. Like “nature” and “natural,” the words “supernature” and “supernatural” admit of various definitions for Scheeben. Despite this variety, he makes clear from the outset that the “supernatural” is not the opposite of the “natural”: “Contradictorily opposed to the natural is not, strictly speaking, the supernatural, but the non-natural, that is, that which does not pertain to nature, or does not proceed from nature or correspond to it.”22 While the adjective “supernatural” can apply to a number of features of reality, for Scheeben the most important definition refers to that which goes beyond the natural powers of a creature. Whereas “the natural” describes those things that are part of a thing’s essence, “those qualities and adornments that do not constitute the essence of a thing, but are so exalted that they greatly surpass what the thing is equipped by its origin to have, are supernatural.”23 One of Scheeben’s primary concerns, then, is with how the supernatural elevates our natural powers.24 But, relatedly, the supernatural also concerns the final end of a creature: “Finally, the last end (and in the case of rational creatures, full consummation in beatitude) which a being is meant to attain is supernatural, if the destiny is such that the being can neither make itself capable and worthy of it by its own dignity or its preparatory activity, nor reach it by its own powers.”25 Supernaturally elevated powers, then, inhere in nature. Their supernatural ordering arises, however, not from a creature’s own essence, but rather from divine grace.26 Although supernaturally elevated powers can, in theory, be implanted Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 24. It is worth noting that the last part of this definition leaves open the possibility of speaking of grace or the supernatural as in some sense “natural” to human beings, as Scheeben does in a subsequent chapter and in his later work The Mysteries of Christianity. 21 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 24. 22 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 25. 23 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 27. 24 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 27: “Those powers which in no way emanate from a thing’s essence and substance but transcend its level are supernatural.” 25 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 27. 26 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 28. Although Scheeben refers to these powers as “supernatural powers” (die übernatürlichen Kräfte), this language is imprecise and does not seem to correspond to his actual position. Grace/supernature does not give human nature new faculties, but rather elevates the natural faculties of intellect and will to a new capacity. I am grateful to Matthew Levering for pointing this out to me. 20 144 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. without changing the nature of the one who receives them, Scheeben argues that grace extends deeper than simply the level of the powers. Grace actually elevates nature to a higher plane, a plane he calls “supernature”: “If . . . the entire being of the soul is altered in its deepest recesses and in all its ramifications to the very last, not by annihilation but by exaltation and transfiguration, then we can affirm that a sort of new, higher nature has come to the lower nature, because it has been granted a participation in the essence of Him to whom the higher nature properly belongs.”27 This definition shows that, for Scheeben, grace consists in nothing less than divinization, “a participation in the essence of Him to whom the higher nature properly belongs.” He insists on the term “supernature” to show that the effect of grace is not simply occasional, but rather actually generates a substructure (rooted in the graced essence of the soul) out of which arise supernatural acts in a manner that corresponds to how the natural essence of the soul grounds natural acts.28 Scheeben’s careful delineation of the differences between nature and supernature lays the groundwork for an account of the nature–grace relationship that can be labeled “extrinsicist” yet sees a close correspondence between nature and grace. His description of the manner of grace’s effects on nature and of the integrity of nature point to the extrinsic character of grace. At the same time, for Scheeben grace is not alien to nature— supernature is not, strictly speaking, the opposite of nature. One could call this aspect of Scheeben’s account a “soft” intrinsicism, insofar as—like the neo-Scholastics themselves—he shares the goal of affirming that grace profoundly fulfills nature while transforming it.29 Scheeben repeatedly insists that grace imparts to nature powers that it would not have from its own essence. Indeed, he refers to this as its “most notable feature”: “The most notable feature of the elevation of nature I call supernature is that it imparts to nature new capacities and powers, and hence opens up a new and permanent field of activity in a higher sphere.”30 Supernature resembles the natural virtues in that it becomes “second nature” to the one who receives it. It differs from the virtues Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 30–31. As Scheeben’s phrase “not by annihilation” implies, this new higher nature neither negates nor replaces the lower nature that it modifies. 28 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 31–32. 29 By “soft” intrinsicism, I mean that grace presupposes the integrity of nature and elevates it in a fitting way, but is in no sense required by nature. This seems to be the “good intrinsicism” to which White refers in his essay (“Good Extrinsicism,” 547, 555), though, again, this use of the term “intrinsicism” could be confusing. 30 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 34. 27 Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 145 in that it cannot be acquired by natural power.31 Supernature comes to human beings “from outside and above,” but without violating the essence of nature.32 Moreover, Scheeben maintains that nature has its own natural end, distinct from the end made possible by supernature: Therefore we must unconditionally hold fast to the simpler proposition that every being has a nature which as such is good under all circumstances and relations (human nature in particular remains good even after falling into sin, by which it lost its original goodness), and preserves its active powers and its aspiration toward a good which it can and ought to attain by the development of those powers.33 Part of the reason for this insistence on a natural end is to avoid the error of Jansenism, which denies the goodness of human nature.34 At the same time, this affirmation of a purely natural end also makes clear the extrinsic nature of grace. Despite this extrinsic character, however, for Scheeben grace is not alien to nature. Rather, grace fittingly corresponds to nature, but is not demanded by nature per se, as though nature’s inbuilt exigencies were already ordered supernaturally without the aid of grace. Scheeben adopts the Scholastic concept of “obediential potency” to elaborate the fittingness of the relation between nature and grace. Grace does not destroy or change the essence of human nature: “For supernature is not a substitution or change of essences; the essence of nature remains, it is only elevated and transformed. Therefore it must have a capacity for such elevation and transformation; and, as was said above, fundamental powers must already be present in it to form the substructure of the new powers.”35 Not only is supernature not contrary to nature; human nature is suited to receive supernature in a way that other creatures are not. Thus, Scheeben goes on to note that stones and animals are not capable of receiving supernature, because they lack intelligence.36 Scheeben even argues that supernature can be called “natural” in a certain sense: “This is the reason why supernature is not contrary to nature (and hence Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 35. Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 38–39. The phrase “from outside and above” shows why “intrinsicism” is not the best label for Scheeben’s understanding. 33 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 55 (emphasis added). 34 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 55. 35 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 39 (emphasis added). 36 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 39. 31 32 146 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. unnatural) but is quite in harmony with nature, and can even be called natural, in the sense that it is conformable with nature and is not unnatural.”37 Supernature does no violence to nature, but rather perfects it and brings it to its highest end.38 Nevertheless, supernature is not something owed to nature as such. Scheeben describes supernature as “a good which nature may not demand as belonging to it by right, but lovingly, gladly, and thankfully receives as a welcome gift that has been offered.”39 Despite the gratuity of supernature, there is a fitting, even natural, union between the two: “Therefore, although the two orders are not so connected that the lower encloses the higher, they are united in such a way that the higher encompasses the lower and presupposes it as its substructure and prerequisite condition.”40 Scheeben’s Scholasticism thus enables him to strike a proper balance between gratuitousness and fittingness. Grace is completely distinct from nature, and so is in this sense extrinsic: “Because this principle presupposes that nature exists and is complete in its species, it does not belong to nature as a necessary element.”41 At the same time, grace is not alien to nature, but rather perfects it: “By elevating nature, this principle [grace] gives to nature the highest perfection it is capable or susceptible of.”42 Two passages toward the end of Nature and Grace beautifully capture the heart of Scheeben’s account, underscoring both the gratuity of grace and the fittingness of its union with nature. First, he writes: “Grace alone, coming as it does to man from outside, cannot give him the first capacity for the spiritual life or for union with God. It necessarily presupposes that such a capacity is already found in man’s nature.”43 In other words, in order for grace to be effective, there has to be a point of contact with human nature. As already noted, rocks and even animals are incapable of receiving grace. For this reason, Scheeben goes on, one can speak in a certain sense of a natural desire for grace: “All the wants of nature are fully met through grace; and to that extent nature has a natural desire for union with grace. But this desire merely makes nature capable of receiving grace; that it may lead nature to grace, it must, as we said above, be enkindled by the first Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 39–40. The capacity of nature to be elevated in this manner is how Scheeben defines “obediential potency” (Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 40). 39 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 40. 40 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 40. 41 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 109 (emphasis added). 42 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 111. 43 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 322. 37 38 Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 147 rays of grace itself.”44 This natural desire, then, is not constitutive of human nature, but rather is aroused by grace in a way fitting to human nature. Divine Adoption and the Gratuity of Grace While Scholastic analysis plays an important part in Scheeben’s account of nature and grace, by no means does it play the only part. One could argue that his attention to Scripture and to the Church fathers shapes his approach at least as much as his Scholasticism, if not more. Moreover, his appropriation of Scripture and the fathers actually sharpens his twofold description of the nature–grace relation, underscoring the extrinsic character of grace, while at the same time affirming its fundamental role in God’s plan for human beings. Describing grace in terms of divine adoption brings out grace’s utter gratuity—no human being has a right to be adopted by God. At the same time, the connection Scheeben draws between divine adoption and the Incarnation results in a more robust account of grace in the divine plan, one that goes deeper than mere “fittingness” and maintains some of the merits of de Lubac’s approach without its seeming drawbacks. In this section, we will consider Scheeben’s account of divine adoption. The third and final section will address the role the Incarnation plays in his approach. The gift of divine sonship plays a crucial role in Scheeben’s theology of grace. Indeed, he sees in this divine adoption the pinnacle and summation of the glory given to believers: We come now to a property of grace which contains the sum of all its aforementioned glories and reveals them in their nature and importance with very great clarity. Since grace makes us partakers of the divine nature, we are taken into the very family of God. God becomes our Father, His only-begotten Son our brother, and we ourselves children of God.45 Scheeben bases his understanding of divine adoption on several biblical texts drawn from the Pauline epistles (Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians), as well as 1 John 3:1. Shortly after the passage cited above, he reiterates the grandeur of what we receive by grace: “Indeed, we can say that nothing shows so well the glory of divine grace than the fact that, according to its Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 325 (emphasis added). Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace: A Fervent Exhortation to All to Preserve and to Grow in Sanctifying Grace, trans. Patrick Shaughnessy (Rockford, IL: Tan, 2000), 91. 44 45 148 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. very nature and activity, it makes us children of God.”46 What makes this aspect of grace so spectacular is that it is in no way earned or deserved— that is, it is extrinsic to us.47 In his earlier work Nature and Grace, Scheeben elaborates on the gratuity of this divine adoption by discussing the various kinds of sonship. One can see in this discussion a biblical analogue to his Scholastic account of the relationship between nature and grace. That is to say, in the realm of sonship, there is an utter gratuity to the gift, but there is also a certain fittingness to this adoption by grace. At times, he notes, Scripture refers to God as the father of all creatures, especially living things, in a figurative sense, insofar as he created them and provides for their needs.48 In a more fitting way, God may be considered the father of spiritual and rational creatures: “For they have personality, are capable of reaching beatitude, and receive a higher, spiritual life from God. In their existence and life they resemble God in a special way, even by their nature.”49 Valid though this likeness to God may be, however, it does not come close to the dignity given through divine adoption by grace: “This [natural likeness to God] is a true relationship, but not the highest and noblest; it is not the relationship that Christianity sets before us as the reality; it does not exhaust the full wealth and meaning contained in the idea of sonship.”50 By nature, human beings are not, strictly speaking, sons of God. Nevertheless, because of their likeness to God with respect to the capacities for a spiritual life, there is a fittingness to the union of nature and grace that does not obtain in lower creatures. For Scheeben, the sonship entailed in divine grace establishes a much deeper relationship between God and the believer. True sonship includes a closer resemblance between a father and his son: “The child is like the father not only in a vague way, but in all the features and traits that distinguish the father. . . In a word, the son is completely one with the father in Scheeben, Glories of Divine Grace, 91. See also Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert (St. Louis, MO: Herder & Herder, 1946), 489: “We could never, in all eternity, attain to such an intimate, spiritual union with God even by the most perfect development of our natural spiritual powers, and by the conformity of our natural life with the divine will. This union is contained only in the supernatural grace of divine sonship, which makes us, as children of God, partakers of His nature and His life.” I owe this reference to Swafford, Nature and Grace, 170. 48 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 116. 49 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 116 (emphasis added). 50 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 117. 46 47 Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 149 nature, life, possessions, and love.”51 The nature of true sonship shows the exalted dignity that grace bestows on nature, because this sonship belongs by nature to Christ alone: “No created being, no created spirit is a son of God in this way by nature. The eternal Word alone is the Son of God by nature and is consequently the Only-begotten of the Father.”52 Scheeben repeatedly underscores the uniqueness of Christ’s sonship. Whereas the eternal Son proceeds from the Father by a natural generation, creatures, even the highest spiritual creatures, exist solely by the will of God.53 This emphasis on the distinction between the Word’s eternal, natural sonship and our status as creatures complements and closely maps onto Scheeben’s Scholastic analysis of human nature and the extrinsic character of the nature–grace relation. If at its most basic level grace bestows divine adoption on human beings, and if that adoption is in no way owed to nature, then grace must be extrinsic in at least some sense. Moreover, for Scheeben the distinction between nature and grace corresponds to the more fundamental distinction between the creature and the creator: “No creature, therefore, can by his nature be a son of God in the full sense of the word, precisely because he is a creature. For the creature was not begotten of God’s nature, but was called into being from nothing by God’s will, and consequently has a nature that is infinitely different from the divine nature.”54 Creaturely status corresponds not to sonship, but rather to the status of a servant. Scheeben appeals to the fathers, particularly Augustine and Cyril, to show that this understanding of grace goes back to the early Church. In opposing the Manichees, who suggested that at least some souls were given a part of the divine spirit by nature, Augustine “insisted that the creature, whether man or spirit, as portrayed in Catholic teaching, was made a son of God by grace, yet was not such by nature.”55 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 117–18. Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 118; see also Scheeben, Glories of Divine Grace, 94: “Only the Eternal Word—which was not created, but rather created us and all other things—only he is by nature the Son of God in the strict sense.” 53 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 119: “Such a relation to God is impossible for all other natures because they do not proceed from the Father’s nature within the divinity by generation, but are summoned forth from nothing by God’s almighty will, and exist outside God as the works of His hands.” 54 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 120; cf. Swafford, Nature and Grace, 173: “[Scheeben] makes this same point by distinguishing between God’s ‘creative’ power and His ‘generative’ power, the latter referring to the eternal generation of the Son—a filiation in which man shares by virtue of the supernatural grace of divine adoption.” 55 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 121, citing Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum. In the subsequent footnote, Scheeben adds that Augustine’s doctrine of sonship by 51 52 150 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. Similarly, Cyril affirms that, based merely on creation, we are no more than servants or subjects of God, not children.56 The reason we sometimes use the language of sonship or childhood even on the natural level is not that we (or any other creature) are naturally sons of God, but rather to reflect the benevolence of God. Although we are by nature servants, God is not a tyrant, but rather the one who gives us everything we need in life.57 Indeed, so generous is God that, by grace, he elevates creatures to a status far above what they could hope for based solely on nature: “Since we do not become God’s children and sons by our own nature which we receive from God, our sonship is not natural or the product of literal generation, but is an elevation to the status of sonship imparted by God out of free and overflowing love.”58 The gratuitousness and the nature of this adoption show both the generosity of God and the sublime gift he gives us by grace. Divine adoption by grace, on Scheeben’s account, is more profound than earthly adoption. Whereas earthly adoption is juridical and does not impart a natural generation, the divine adoption received by grace brings about a relation between the redeemed and God closely analogous to the Son’s relation to the Father. Grace transforms the recipient, elevating him to a higher plane: “God’s love, with which He loves us in His only-begotten Son, gives us not only a new external dignity, but a new internal goodness and beauty. It is so powerful that it makes us conformable to the image of his Son, inaugurates in us a new, higher man, and, in a certain sense, establishes in us the beginning of a new substance.”59 Scheeben takes the language of conformity to the image of Christ from Romans 8:29, and he appeals to several other biblical texts to support the notion that grace grace shows that the bishop of Hippo did have an ontological understanding of grace, analogous to Scheeben’s use of the term “supernature.” 56 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 122. See also Scheeben, Glories of Divine Grace, 94: “By reason of our nature we are not, properly speaking, children of God, but only his servants and bondsmen, and the least of these. We are far below the Angels, who themselves are by nature only servants of God. For we are, as they, only creatures of God and the works of his hands. . . . If we had remained in this, our natural condition, God would not be, strictly speaking, our Father” (emphasis added). 57 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 121. 58 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 125. 59 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 127. Elsewhere Scheeben suggests that grace elevates us to the same level as the Son himself: “What we cannot claim by right, the infinite liberality of God gives us in grace. Although we are not by nature children of God, we become such through grace, and so true is this that, as adopted children, we are put on a par with the natural Son of God. We become by grace what He is by nature” (Glories of Divine Grace, 96; emphasis added). Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 151 brings about a new birth.60 Developing the seed imagery found in 1 John 3:9, Scheeben reiterates that, even though grace comes to human beings from without, it engenders an actual change to and elevation of nature: “Divine adoption communicates to us a new, incomparably higher life, a life for which no seed is produced by us, but has to be planted in us. As the new life is divine, the seed that is planted in us must likewise be divine.”61 This seed, he suggests, is none other than the Holy Spirit dwelling within the believer.62 Scripture uses several images to describe this life, which Scheeben takes to be the best indication that God actually shares his own life with believers.63 In particular, he points to Jesus’s discourse in John about the vine and the branches, as well as Paul’s notion of the Church as the body of Christ.64 Both images suggest that the whole organism (the vine and the branches in the one case and the head and the members in the other) shares in one life flowing from Christ. It is because of this kind of unity that Paul can speak of Christ living in him and of the Spirit living in believers.65 Scheeben’s account of divine adoption thus holds two elements in tension. On the one hand, God’s act of adoption is a free gift, not at all demanded by any aspect of our human nature in itself. On the other hand, the nature of that adoption differs from human adoption in that it is not only juridical: “Although the sonship we receive from God by His freely given love is not natural, as it does not come to us from our own nature, it is not a mere juridical adoption, because it communicates to us a new existence and life by an act that implies a kind of generation.”66 The divine adoption, then, has similarities with both human adoption and natural generation. The adoptive aspect of the relationship underscores that this relationship cannot be earned in any way. No one has a right to be adopted by anyone else. Nevertheless, unlike human adoption, divine adoption imparts “a vital power and tendency enabling us to lead and attain a life that in itself belongs to the divine nature alone.”67 Whereas human He cites John 3:5, 1 Pet 1:23, James 1:17, and 1 John 3:9 (Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 127). 61 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 128. 62 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 128. 63 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 129. 64 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 129. 65 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 129 (citing Gal 2:20 and Rom 8). 66 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 131; cf. Swafford, Nature and Grace, 176: “For Scheeben, the gift of divine sonship entails a real ontic share in the filiation of the Eternal Son.” 67 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 131. Although Scheeben at times seems to speak of 60 152 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. adoption changes only the status of the one adopted, the divine adoption elevates human nature to a level unattainable by natural human capacities alone. While Scheeben repeatedly makes clear that the divine adoption is neither merited nor owed to human beings, he nevertheless at the same time maintains that this adoption necessarily stems from the effect of the Incarnation on the human race as a whole. Scheeben even goes so far as to suggest both that the Incarnation is necessary for divine adoption to be effective and that the Incarnation makes divine adoption more than simply fitting. A lengthy passage in The Mysteries of Christianity captures this dynamic: [Divine adoption] is pure grace, motivated exclusively by God’s overflowing kindness: and by itself alone this grace would not be powerful enough really to usher us into the personal relationship of the Son of God to His Father, in such wise that in Him and through Him this Father would in very truth be our Father also. By the Incarnation, however, we are in all truth embodied in the person of God’s Son and have become His members. God looks upon us no longer as situated upon the low level proper to our own persons; He sees us in His Son, and His Son in us. He beholds us substantially united to His Son, and kin to Him. Consequently we are perfectly worthy, and not merely worthy in some indefinite way, to be adopted as His children.68 Once again, Scheeben emphasizes that divine adoption is a pure gift, in no way merited. Nevertheless, because of the Incarnation—not by virtue of any aspect built in to human nature—human beings in a sense have a “right” to this adoption. Scheeben’s emphasis on the Incarnation thus achieves one of the primary goals of de Lubac’s account without the problems inherent to the latter’s proposal. As we will see, Scheeben’s discussion draws much of its strength from its rootedness in biblical statements about the Christological purposes of God in creating and redeeming the world. Incarnational “Intrinsicism” In the epilogue of his early work Nature and Grace, Scheeben concludes by this adoption providing a “new nature,” elsewhere he makes clear that grace does not do away with human nature, but rather gives it a new quality (e.g., Nature and Grace, 130, 134). 68 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 383 (emphasis added). Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 153 citing a portion of a homily by St. Peter Chrysologus on the close connection between the mystery of the blessed Trinity and the life of grace.69 The passage underscores the importance of union with God for all aspects of the believer’s life. In this union, Scheeben sees the key to several aspects of the Christian mystery. For the purposes of this paper, the most important point he makes concerns the role of the Incarnation in the divine economy: “Through [union with God] he [Chrysologus] explains how the Incarnation is the supernatural foundation on which the system of Christianity is erected above nature and reason. By it he helps us to grasp the necessity as well as the absolute transcendence of grace.”70 For Scheeben, the Incarnation is the key to reconciling “extrinsicism” and “intrinsicism” (though he, of course, does not use those terms himself ). Grace is absolutely transcendent because it comes from without; at the same time, it is in a sense necessary because of the relationship the Incarnation establishes between God and human nature. If one wants to talk about “intrinsicism” with respect to grace, then, it seems that one should locate it not in some characteristic of human nature, but rather in God’s plan for human beings revealed in the Incarnation. Scheeben develops this understanding at greater length in his later work, The Mysteries of Christianity. For Scheeben, because of the solidarity of the human race, the Incarnation has implications not just for the human nature that the Son assumes, but also for all human beings, and even for creation as a whole. Scheeben argues that human nature is a more fitting recipient of the Incarnation than is that of pure spirits, and this for at least two reasons. First, because man contains aspects of both the material world (in his body) and the spiritual world (in his soul), he serves as a microcosm that encompasses the whole created order. Thus, by becoming Incarnate as a man, Christ points to God’s purpose for all of creation.71 Additionally, though, Scheeben notes that, because of the specific unity of human nature, human beings “constitute a single great body, an immense whole.” 72 The Incarnation thus takes up the entire human race into the divine life: This is the reason why all its individuals can assemble in a unique association under a single head. This is the reason, too, why the God-man, by entering into human nature, can closely unite the whole race in Himself to form His mystical body, and so can most Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 346 (citing Chrysologus’s Homily 71). Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 347 (emphasis added). 71 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 362. 72 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 363. 69 70 154 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. perfectly and universally carry out the idea of His mission in this body as in His own. This objective is attained by the fact that the communication of the divine nature is extended to the entire body as to one solidary whole, and this body in turn is gathered up in its totality into the infinite oblation of the Son of God.73 Through the human nature of the Son, which is common to all human beings, the whole human race is in a sense united to the Son, making him its new head. Scheeben returns frequently to this image of the Son’s headship, as it plays an essential role in his account of the relation between nature and grace. Christ’s status as the head of the human race belongs to him alone because of his preeminence, a preeminence that extends to all creation. Drawing on the language of Colossians 1, Scheeben writes: “For this reason He is called the first-born of all creatures and the head of the heavenly powers, which in itself makes Him immensely superior to Adam, who is merely the head of the human race.” 74 Scheeben goes on to compare the members of the human race to the branches of a tree, suggesting that, even on the level of nature, there is a close connection between all human beings.75 On the natural level, it is Adam rather than Christ who is the head of the human race. But on a deeper, more important level, Christ himself is the head of the race by virtue of the Incarnation: The God-man occupies a like position [to that of Adam] for the reason that, although the race did not proceed from Him, He took it to Himself by His entrance into it, united it to Himself, and made it His own. . . . This He did by making His own and assuming to His person a member of the race that is ontologically connected with all the other members. Thereby He becomes the new head of the whole race, its natural head included.76 As we will see, Scheeben sees in Christ’s headship of the human race important implications for divine adoption. The Incarnation makes divine adoption both possible and, in a qualified sense, necessary. The reason for this qualified necessity stems from the relationship that Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 363. Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 364. Scheeben borrows the images of Christ as “firstborn” and “head” from Col 1:15–20. 75 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 365. 76 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 366. 73 74 Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 155 the Incarnation establishes between Christ and the whole human race. Scheeben goes so far as to suggest that in a sense the whole race becomes the body of the Son through the Incarnation. Those born of Adam are sometimes referred to as one body on the natural level. For Scheeben, the union effected by the Incarnation is more profound than this natural unity: Indeed, [the human race] becomes one body with Christ in a far higher and fuller sense than it does with Adam. This is so because it belongs to Christ more than it belongs to Adam, because Adam himself is taken up into Christ, and as the natural head of the race belongs to Christ along with all its members, and so must acknowledge Christ as his own supreme head.77 Even before the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, then, a union exists between Christ and every human being. In this regard, Scheeben’s account anticipates the teaching of Gaudium et Spes: “For, by his incarnation, he, the son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man.”78 The union established by the Incarnation serves as the basis for the deeper union of adoption brought about through baptism. Before he expounds on the nature of this adoption, Scheeben addresses a potential objection to his argument. Turning to one of his favorite images for the nature–grace relation, he compares the Incarnation to the nuptial union between Adam and Eve.79 For Scheeben there are two kinds of union with Christ. The first, which applies to all human beings, corresponds to Eve’s coming from the side of Adam. This union between Adam and Eve, though real, was incomplete, only to be consummated by their marital union. Analogously, the relationship that the Incarnation establishes between Christ and the human race is ordered to its consummation through the sacraments. It is only through the sacraments that this deeper, more significant union between Christ and human beings comes about.80 For Scheeben, then, the Incarnation serves as a crucial basis for divine Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 367–68. Scheeben’s claim is thus stronger than that of St. Thomas Aquinas, for whom Christ is the head of all men at least in potency (see Summa Theologiae [ST] III, q. 8, a. 3). 78 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (1965), §22. See also Swafford, Nature and Grace, 192. 79 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 374. On the importance of nuptial imagery for Scheeben, see Nichols, Romance and System, 289; Oakes, Theology of Grace, 38. 80 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 374–75. 77 156 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. adoption. Without it, he suggests, this adoption would have lacked something. Although it is true that God could have adopted human beings by grace apart from the Incarnation, the divine economy has made possible a more perfect relationship between human beings and God: “But without the Incarnation this dignity [adoption] would have lacked a basis in us, and would have been less perfect in its value for us. It is too high above us; so much so that of ourselves we could not have even the slightest prospect of ever possessing or acquiring it.”81 Scheeben’s emphasis on the Incarnation shows that the “intrinsicism” of his account is rooted not in human nature as such, but rather in the change that the Incarnation brings about for human beings. This change elevates the dignity of the entire human race, even making supernatural gifts in a sense “connatural” to human beings. At the same time, Scheeben constantly reaffirms the utter gratuity of this new dignity. It is something in no way owed to human beings because of their nature, but rather something Christ won for them: Thus the dignity which the human race receives on account of its connection with its new, divine-human head, is so great that all supernatural goods, which in themselves immeasurably transcend its natural dignity, become connatural and proper to it. Because of His personal, divine dignity, the God-man merits for the race the entire series of supernatural gifts which the race could not merit in any other way. 82 By virtue of the Incarnation, the supernatural gifts that humans receive by adoption—gifts that are in no way owed to their nature—are now received in a fitting manner. Grace is “connatural” to human beings not because they have an intrinsic natural desire to see God, but rather because Christ has elevated the entire human race to a new capacity for the supernatural. Swafford and Oakes both note the similarities between Scheeben and de Lubac with respect to what I have termed “intrinsicism.”83 While it is true that Scheeben and de Lubac come to similar conclusions to the extent that both affirm that the entire human race is inherently ordered to union with God, one cannot stress enough the significance of the different ways by which each of these theologians arrives at that conclusion.84 For de Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 382–83. Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 388 (emphasis added). 83 Swafford, Nature and Grace, 186–94; Oakes, Theology of Grace, 37. 84 To be fair, both Swafford and Oakes acknowledge this difference, noting the 81 82 Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 157 Lubac, the intrinsic character of grace lies within human nature as such, albeit in its concrete historical reality. An instinctual desire for the vision of God, or at least a lack that can only be assuaged by the vision of God, is inscribed in human nature in such a way that to remove that end would alter human nature.85 De Lubac frequently speaks of the desire to see God as constitutive of human nature, indeed, as the only true end of that nature: “No other finality now seems possible for men than that which is now really inscribed in the depths of my nature.”86 For de Lubac, human nature has only one end, and a failure to attain that end inevitably results in frustration and suffering.87 Contrast de Lubac’s position with this lengthy passage from Scheeben’s The Mysteries of Christianity: Only a complete misunderstanding of the absolutely supernatural character of the last end actually appointed for us can give occasion to such an assumption [that the possibility of the beatific vision can be known by reason]. For the fact of the beatific vision, or our actual destination to it, could be known by reason only if it were an end physically necessary for the created spirit, an end to which God had to destine the spirit, in order to give its nature the perfection required of it. But on that hypothesis the entire Catholic doctrine of grace would go by the board; the beatific vision would not become our inheritance through a gratuitous adoption into the sonship of God, but we would have a true title to it by nature.88 If one did not know that Scheeben wrote this passage before de Lubac was even born, much less had begun his academic career, one would be tempted to see it as a direct response to the French Jesuit’s position. Scheeben anticipates the primary critique commonly leveled against de Lubac: that by making the beatific vision intrinsic to our nature, he evacuates grace of its gratuitous character, making it something owed to human beings. Note also that Scheeben closely associates the desire for the beatific vision with crucial role the Incarnation plays for Scheeben; see Swafford, Nature and Grace, 186, and Oakes, Theology of Grace, 43. 85 De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 54–55: “For this desire is not some ‘accident’ in me. It does not result from some peculiarity, possibly alterable, of my individual being, or from some historical contingency whose effects are more or less transitory.” 86 De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 55. 87 De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 54. 88 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 658 (emphasis added). 158 Isaac Augustine Morales, O.P. divine adoption. This confirms the point made above, that Scheeben’s appeal to divine adoption underscores the gratuitous, extrinsic dimension of grace. One might argue that de Lubac’s emphasis on “concrete” human nature—that is, nature as it exists in history—corresponds to Scheeben’s emphasis on humanity transformed through the Incarnation. 89 The primary difference, however, lies in the fact that Scheeben, even as he affirms the change the Incarnation has brought about for human nature, nevertheless still maintains the integrity of a purely natural end.90 By doing so, Scheeben can more effectively avoid the danger of collapsing grace into nature, and he more clearly shows the gratuitous character of grace. The orientation of the human being toward God is a direct result of the Incarnation, not, as de Lubac seems to imply repeatedly, something that stems from human nature as such. De Lubac considers human nature as such in light of the Incarnation—in light of God’s concrete plan for humanity— but he gives human nature a supernatural charge or ordering that suggests that, qua nature, nature is already graced. By combining Scholastic analysis with a biblical-patristic retrieval, Scheeben presents a more compelling account of what I have called the “intrinsic” character of grace in the economy of salvation. The intrinsicism of grace lies not in human nature as such, but rather in the divine purposes as described in biblical texts such as Romans 8:29 and Colossians 1:15–20. Scheeben offers an incarnational intrinsicism that holds together the possibility of understanding human nature apart from grace with the importance of seeing in Christ the ultimate destiny of the human race.91 Good “Intrinsicism” In the epilogue of Nature and Grace, Scheeben writes: “The Incarnation of the Son is the mystery of the reconciliation of our nature with the divine nature. The Son of God takes our nature to Himself to make us His brothers by our participation in His divine nature.”92 In this text one can clearly For the distinction between “concrete” and “abstract” or “generic” with respect to human nature, see de Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 54–55, 59–63. 90 See again Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 55. 91 In this respect, Scheeben’s account is also more satisfying than that of Hans Urs von Balthasar, who seems to suggest that we can understand human nature only in light of Christ (The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992], 332: “Christ is especially the ‘ground and measure of human existence,’ so that what being human actually means can only be determined by him”). 92 Scheeben, Nature and Grace, 340. 89 Incarnational "Intrinsicism" 159 see the patristic influences on Scheeben’s thought (God became man that man might become God). This patristic (and biblical) focus on the Incarnation shapes his approach to the nature–grace question, supplementing the Scholastic elements of his account and providing the basis for a more robust “intrinsicism” than that of a mere fittingness between nature and grace. Grace is intrinsic to concrete human nature, because the Incarnation has elevated human nature, though without altering its essence. In this regard, his Scholastic approach, combined with his emphasis on the biblical category of divine adoption, allows him to maintain the utter gratuity of grace. By locating the “intrinsicism” of grace in the Incarnation rather than in the constitution of human nature, Scheeben can hold together without contradiction what many participants in the nature–grace debates have held apart.93 N&V I am thus in basic agreement with the argument of Swafford, Nature and Grace, 195: “The theology of Matthias J. Scheeben is best able to capture the Christian mystery of nature and grace in all its fullness, both in its Christocentric dimension, as well as in regard to the necessary distinction between nature and grace.” 93 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 161–177 161 Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? Lawrence Dewan and De veritate, Question 1, Article 4 Nelson Ramirez Sam Houston State University Huntsville, TX The purpose of this essay is to look at whether Aquinas teaches in De veritate [DV], q. 1, a. 4, that truth is a form inherent in things. I take up this investigation because I am examining Lawrence Dewan’s account of Aquinas’s teaching on truth.1 On Dewan’s account, a significant development occurs in Aquinas’s teaching as regards truth as it is found in things. Before the Summa theologiae [ST], Aquinas thought that in addition to truth being in the intellect, it was also in things. In ST, most explicitly in I, q. 16, a. 6, Aquinas no longer thinks that it is in things, but only in the mind. When Dewan says that before the ST truth is “in things” and in the ST it is not “in things,” in both cases, by “in things,” Dewan means “as a form inherent in things.” What exactly this means for Dewan will be gradually brought out as I examine the text Dewan thinks most clearly teaches that truth is a form inherent in things: DV, q. 1, a. 4. The essay will be divided into two parts. In the first part, I will lay out Dewan’s reading of DV, q. 1, a. 4, and why he thinks it definitely teaches that truth is a form inherent in things. In the second part, I suggest an 1 To my knowledge, only J. A. Aertsen has replied to Dewan’s reading of Aquinas on truth; see Aertsen, “Is Truth not a Transcendental for Aquinas?” in Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007). In this article, Aertsen replies to Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “Is Truth a Transcendental for St. Thomas Aquinas?,” Nova et Vetera (English) 2, no. 1 (2004): 1–20. Aertsen, however, does not examine Dewan’s actual argument, which is based on his reading of De veritate [DV], q. 1, a. 4. The present article examines Dewan’s argument. 162 Nelson Ramirez alternative reading of the text, first based just on the article 4 text itself and then based on other texts throughout Aquinas’s works. Dewan’s Reading of De veritate, Q. 1, A. 4 This article in DV is not the only text where, according to Dewan, Aquinas is thinking of truth, as found in things, as an inherent form in things. Dewan cites other texts from Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences and other places in DV. I focus on this text because Dewan himself singles it out as “definitely teach[ing] that truth is a form inherent in things, even if one identical with the entity of things.”2 Regarding the other texts, Dewan does not seem to be as sure as he is with this one. Why Dewan seems surer on this DV text will be brought out. First, the Latin in article 4 in which Dewan sees Aquinas teaching that truth is a form inherent in things is: Denominantur autem res verae a veritate quae est in intellectu divino vel in intellectu humano sicut denominatur cibus sanus a sanitate quae est in animali et non sicut a forma inhaerente; sed a veritate quae est in ipsa re, quae nihil aliud est quam entitas intellectui adaequata vel intellectum sibi adaequans, denominatur sicut a forma inhaerente, sicut cibus denominatur sanus a qualitate sua, a qua sanus dicitur.3 The text, in Dewan’s translation, is as follows: For THINGS are called “true” from the truth which is in the divine intellect or in the human intellect [!] as food is called “healthy” from the health which is in the animal and NOT AS FROM AN INHERENT FORM; but from the TRUTH which is in the thing itself [a veritate quae est in ipsa re], which is nothing else but the entity [entitas] conformed with the intellect OR CONFORMING THE INTELLECT TO ITSELF, it is denominated AS FROM INHERENT FORM [sicut a forma inhaerente], just as food is called “healthy” from its own quality, from which it is called “healthy.”4 Dewan, “Is Truth a Transcendental for St. Thomas Aquinas?,” 11. Unless otherwise noted, the Latin from De veritate is taken from the Leonine edition (vol. 22). 4 Dewan, “Is Truth a Transcendental for St. Thomas Aquinas?,” 10–11 (all-caps and italics original to Dewan). 2 3 Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? 163 Dewan goes on to say regarding this text: It is not the first part of this that surprises, for it is the usual doctrine of how things are called “healthy” (though I once again salute the relation to both intellects). It is the startling assertion that food can be called “healthy,” not merely relative to the health of the animal, as causing it, but also in itself, based on its own quality. Why would one call something not taken in relation to the animal “food,” let alone “healthy”? We do not find this doctrine elsewhere in Thomas, as far as I know. It seems designed to make possible a doctrine of an intrinsic form of truth in things, even if identical with the entity of the thing.5 In an earlier article of Dewan, he also comments on this passage: “Thomas is ready to grant a usage according to which there is a formality within the thing itself, whereby it is called ‘true’: this ‘truth’ is the thing’s own entitas, and is as multiple as there are things.”6 Dewan also comments on this passage in yet another article of his: This is difficult to cope with. It appears that the second part of the statement is at odds with the first part.7 The second part still seems to be about something called “truth” in the thing and so called as related to the two intellects. How, then, is it being called “truth” as from an inherent form. It seems one should say, rather, that it is being called “being” as from an inherent form, and that form is that in virtue of which it is called “true” relative to intellect. That is what Thomas will say in ST 1.16.6.8 I will focus on Dewan’s first comment, for only there he seems to give the reason why this passage definitely teaches that truth is a form inherent in things. The reason goes back to Aquinas’s remarks about “healthy.” Dewan, “Is Truth a Transcendental for St. Thomas Aquinas?,” 11. Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “St. Thomas’s Successive Discussions of the Nature of Truth,” Studi tomistici 58 (1995): 153–68, at 167. 7 The first part Dewan is referring to is one not quoted in the other two articles where Dewan treats this passage. The passage is as follows, in Dewan’s translation: “If ‘truth’ is taken as improperly said (improprie dicta), in which way all are called ‘true,’ thus of several (things) there are several truths, but of one true (thing) only one truth” (Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “A Note on Metaphysics and Truth,” Doctor Communis, n.s., 2 [2002]: 143–53, at 151). 8 Dewan, “Note on Metaphysics and Truth,” 151. 5 6 164 Nelson Ramirez Dewan thinks that Aquinas is using “healthy” as said of food in order to explain how truth is a form inherent in things. According to Dewan, what is it that Aquinas is saying about “healthy” as said of food? As he states it: “It is the startling assertion that food can be called ‘healthy,’ not merely relative to the health of the animal, as causing it, but also in itself, based on its own quality. Why would one call something not taken in relation to the animal ‘food,’ let alone ‘healthy’?” So, it seems that Dewan is saying that Aquinas thinks that food can be called healthy apart from any relation to the health that it causes in the animal; food can be called healthy just on account of itself, its own quality. If that is what Aquinas is saying, Dewan seems right in saying that it is a startling assertion if one goes by what could perhaps be said intuitively about the matter. As Dewan asks very well, “why would one call something not taken in relation to the animal ‘food,’ let alone ‘healthy’?” It seems that something is not called food unless one knows what it feeds or nourishes, or who or what eats it. We can confidently say that dead bodies are food because we know that there are animals, such as vultures, that eat and nourish themselves from dead bodies. We cannot go around labeling things as food unless we know the animal or plant or living organism it nourishes. It seems that Dewan is correct in thinking that, indeed, one should not call something not taken in relation to a living organism “food.” Food is always food for some living organism, and if we know that something cannot be eaten, we say that it is not food. The same seems to apply to “healthy.” We think that something is healthy for some living organism. To say just that “this is healthy,” “that is healthy,” or its opposite, “that is unhealthy,” is strictly speaking incomplete. Unless it is clear from the context, we would be left wondering, “healthy or unhealthy for who or what organism?” When the first humans were out looking for things to eat, many of the plants, fruits, and things of that sort they saw were unknown to them. They could not at that point say whether those things were healthy or unhealthy, or even whether it was food for them or not. That could only be said once they had tried the unknown things and no harm came about as a result, but rather nourishment; then they could say, “Food!” or “this is healthy,” or “this is unhealthy”—in other words, “healthy or unhealthy for us.”9 Incidentally, it seems that this would be the first reason for calling something healthy, from the effect of the food. Only later would one know the reason why this food is healthy, and this would involve a quality or characteristic of the food itself, such as that it is rich in calcium, or that it is composed solely of carbohydrates, or that it is pure protein, and so forth. This idea will be developed later on. 9 Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? 165 So, it seems that “food” and “healthy” are relatively said, that is, not said of something except in relation to something other than the thing it is said of. Acorns are said to be food only in relation to something other than the acorn itself, such as a squirrel. Likewise, calcium is said to be healthy only in relation to something other than the calcium itself, such as a human being. Healthy (as said of food)10 is not like white, which can be said of something not in relation to something other than the thing it is said of; for example, white (referring to skin color) can be said of a person just in himself (or a polar bear), without having to bring in anything other than the person himself. When I say that “he is white,” I do not mean that he is white in relation to this or that other thing. He is white in himself. In contrast, when I say “this food is healthy,” though we do speak like that, in reality we mean “this food is healthy for men, or for me, or for so and so.” The food does not seem to be healthy in itself, like the man (or polar bear) is white in himself. Or to put it perhaps as Dewan might put it, “healthy” is said of food not because of an intrinsic form in the food, such as some quality it has, as white is said of a man because of an intrinsic form in the man, namely, his whiteness (or more precisely, the whiteness of his skin), a quality the man possesses apart from any relation to something else. But according to Dewan, Aquinas seems to be saying just this, namely, that healthy can be said of food like white is said of a man, that is, because of an intrinsic form in the food, or a form inherent in the food (these two expressions seem to be used synonymously by Dewan), independent of something other than the food, in this case, an animal, to which food is related, hence the “startling” nature of Aquinas’s remark. That Dewan is interpreting Aquinas to be saying this seems manifest from what he says in the passage quoted above: “Why would one call something not taken in relation to the animal [my emphasis] ‘food,’ let alone ‘healthy’?” Dewan seems to think that Aquinas is calling food, not taken in relation to the animal, “healthy,” food as taken just in itself, based on its own quality, in the way in which a man is said to be white just in himself, based on his own quality and not in relation to something else. Dewan thinks these remarks of Aquinas on “healthy” said of food “seem designed to make possible a doctrine of an intrinsic form of truth in things, even if identical with the entity of the thing.” In other words, the purpose of these remarks on “healthy” said of food is to illuminate some other issue, namely, “true” as said of things. The example with “healthy” said of food is supposed to help us see, with something easier, what is happening at the For if we say “healthy” of the animal, then it is said of the animal like “white” would be said of a man. 10 166 Nelson Ramirez level of truth, which is more difficult to see. Aquinas seems to be setting up a proportion from something more known. Gathering from Dewan’s statements above, the argument seems to go like this. Just as food can be called healthy apart from any relation to an animal, so a thing can be called true apart from any relation to an intellect. This is possible because of something in the food itself apart from any relation to the health of an animal and something in a thing itself apart from any relation to an intellect. This something in the food itself apart from any relation to the health of an animal is some quality of the food itself. This something in the thing itself apart from any relation to the truth of some intellect is the entity of the thing itself. The quality of the food and the entity of the thing are both inherent forms, on account of which the former is called healthy and the latter true. So, the basic thrust of the argument seems to be a proportion: “true” is to a thing as “healthy” is to food. The example with “healthy,” therefore, said of food is supposed to help us understand in some way a conclusion regarding true said of things, namely, that true can be said of things apart from any reference to some intellect, but simply on account of something in the thing itself, some inherent form. Understanding properly what is happening at the level of truth depends on understanding what is happening in the “healthy” example. Alternative Reading of the Text Based on the De veritate Text Itself: “Healthy” Said of Food11 Now, if the reason Dewan thinks that this passage “definitely teaches that truth is a form inherent in things, even if one identical with the entity of things,” is Aquinas’s use of “healthy” as said of food, then if Aquinas’s use of “healthy” as said of food can be understood differently, then perhaps Dewan’s conclusion will have to be reconsidered. Though Dewan’s observation (“why would one call something not taken in relation to the animal ‘food,’ let alone ‘healthy’?”) is correct, as For another reading of DV, q. 1, a. 4 see John Wippel, “Truth in Thomas Aquinas,” The Review of Metaphysics 34, no. 2 (1989): 295–326, at 316–20. Wippel sees Aquinas as concluding in this article that truth improperly speaking is intrinsic to things: “Again, we may ask, does it follow from this that truth of being is intrinsically present to them? No, Thomas would reply, if we take truth strictly (proprie) or according to its proper definition. Yes, he would answer, if we take truth broadly and improperly so as to identify it with the being of the thing which has the capacity to be understood by some intellect.” However, Wippel does not seem to understand “intrinsic to things” as Dewan does. Wippel does not address Dewan’s view, since Wippel wrote his article years before Dewan wrote his three articles on this topic. 11 Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? 167 shown above, it does not seem clear that that is what Aquinas is in fact saying in the passage. First, I will give a reason based on the text itself of DV, q. 1, a. 4, and then some reasons based on other texts throughout Aquinas’s works. It seems that Dewan is taking Aquinas’s words to be excluding any and all relations to an animal. Again, I gather this from his remark: “Why would one call something not taken in relation to the animal ‘food,’ let alone ‘healthy’?” Dewan seems to be saying that Aquinas is calling food “not taken in relation to the animal” healthy. Is that what Aquinas is doing? Is that what he actually says? Aquinas’s words are “sicut cibus denominatur sanus a qualitate sua, a qua sanus dicitur”: “just as food is denominated healthy from its own quality, from which it is called healthy.” At least in terms of the words themselves, Aquinas does not explicitly say “just as food, not taken in relation to the animal, is denominated healthy from its own quality, from which alone it is also called healthy.” So, why is Dewan interpreting Aquinas to be saying that “food, not taken in relation to the animal, is called healthy”? Where is he getting the “not taken in relation to the animal”? Perhaps it could be objected that the distinction Aquinas is making prior to this statement12 has already implicitly established that Aquinas is taking healthy not in relation to the animal. Aquinas has already said that “things are denominated true from the truth which is in the divine intellect or in the human intellect just as food is denominated healthy from the health which is in the animal and not as from an inhering form.”13 Aquinas here is clearly taking healthy as said of food in relation to the health of the animal. But then he goes on to say, “but from the truth which is in the thing itself, which is nothing other than its entity conformed to an intellect or conforming an intellect to itself, a thing is denominated [true] as from an inhering form, just as food is denominated healthy from its own quality, from which it is called healthy.” Aquinas is clearly contrasting this last quoted part with the first. He begins this second part with the word “but,” which normally indicates some kind of opposition with what has been said. The contrast is that healthy in this second part is said of food on account of a quality in the food itself. Aquinas himself expresses the contrast more generally in terms of “inherent form.” In the first case, healthy is said of food “not as from an inherent form”; in the second, “Just as food is denominated healthy from its own quality, from which it is called healthy.” All translations in the present article are mine except where otherwise noted. 13 DV, q. 1, a. 4, resp. 12 168 Nelson Ramirez healthy is said of food “as from an inherent form.” When Aquinas says in the first case that healthy is said of food “not as from an inherent form,” he means an inherent form in the food. The health of the animal, which in the first case is the reason for calling the food healthy, is not an inherent form in the food. The health of the animal is not in the food at all; it is in the animal, an inherent form14 in the animal. Food is related to the health of the animal insofar as the food can preserve or cause the health of the animal, but the health of the animal as such is not in the food at all, and that is why Aquinas says that in the first case food is called healthy not as from an inherent form. Now, because in the second case food is being called healthy on account of a quality in the food itself, it would be called healthy “as from an inherent form,” for a quality of the food itself would be a form inhering in the food itself. The objection to myself—the rebuttal to my point that Aquinas does not explicitly say what Dewan claims him to say—can be summed up as follows. Aquinas seems to be saying that food can be called healthy in two ways: (1) from the health which is in the animal, and not as from an inherent form (a sanitate quae est in animali et non sicut a forma inhaerente), and (2) from a quality in the food itself (a qualitate sua), as from an inherent form (sicut a forma inhaerente). The way Dewan seems to be understanding this distinction is that Aquinas is saying that food can be called healthy in two ways: (1) in relation to the animal, for the health of the animal is in the animal, and (2) not in relation to the animal, but in relation to food itself, for the quality of the food itself is not in the animal, but in the food. So, Dewan might say that, even though Aquinas does not explicitly say “just as food, not taken in relation to the animal, is denominated healthy from its own quality . . . ” the context of the contrast he is setting up clearly says so. However, there seems to be a problem with assuming that Aquinas is taking “food” in his original (2) in the previous paragraph not in relation to the animal (as Dewan’s (2) assumes he is doing with it). It seems that, by definition, as Dewan points out and is obvious to all, food is always food for some living organism. If I consider the grass in front of my house as grass, that consideration involves no relation to an animal. “Grass” as grass simply speaks to the nature of this thing considered in itself. But if I call the grass food, I necessarily bring in what the grass is food for, such as a cow. The grass cannot be thought of as food except in relation to some living organism which feeds on it, which eats it and gets nourishment from it, that is, which maintains or preserves its health from it. As it was said For those unfamiliar with Aquinas’s terminology, “inherent form” can be understood as an intrinsic characteristic or feature. 14 Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? 169 earlier, food seems to be an essentially relative term. So, if Aquinas is indeed using the word “food” as we use the word food and understanding by “food” what we also understand by “food,” as when we say that grass is food for cows, then he must necessarily still be taking food in relation to an animal; but Aquinas is indeed using the word “food” in this common sense, for that is clearly the sense he uses it in the first part of the distinction, which Dewan thinks is correct. Why would he use the word “food” with a different meaning in the second part of the distinction? Is Aquinas not distinguishing two ways in which one and the same thing (namely, food) can be called healthy? It seems that even Dewan’s very objection to Aquinas assumes that Aquinas is taking “food” in the same sense in both cases. So, it seems that Aquinas cannot possibly be saying— as I modified him in order to fit what Dewan is claiming—“just as food, not taken in relation to the animal, is called healthy from its own quality.” Food is taken in relation to the animal in the second part of the distinction as well as in the first. It has to be, if indeed he is talking about food as such. So, Aquinas is not considering food apart from any relation to the animal in the second part. So, it should be said instead that food as food, meaning taken always in relation to the animal, is called healthy from its own quality. If there is any discrepancy in Aquinas’s use of the term from the first to the second part of the distinction, it would seem to be in the use of the word “healthy,” not “food.” Now, in the above objection to myself, I say that “Aquinas seems to be saying that food can be called healthy in two ways.” Strictly speaking, however, it does not seem that Aquinas is saying that food can be called healthy in two ways. Yes, there is indeed a two-ness here, a distinction, but it does not seem to be as regards two ways of calling food healthy. All Aquinas says in this “distinction” is that food is called healthy from the health which is in the animal, and then he adds that food is called healthy from its own quality (which is, indeed, the very point or context of the distinction). The two-ness is not in terms of opposition, an either/or, a disjunction,15 Cruz Gonzalez Ayesta sees a two-ness here as well, though perhaps not the same two-ness that I am bringing out. Nevertheless, regarding the two things she sees here she makes a general remark that can be applied to the two elements I am bringing out—“to distinguish is not to separate nor to oppose” —and she proposes an interpretation of this passage in light of Anselm’s understanding of truth as a measure. Since her interpretation does not address Dewan’s interpretation in his most recent article, it does not seem relevant here. Later, however, when addressing Dewan’s talk of “extrinsic denomination,” her interpretation is relevant; see La verdad como bien según Tomás de Aquino (Pamplona, ES : Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 2006), 179. 15 170 Nelson Ramirez but is rather from two aspects or two elements of one thing, one relation. Food is called healthy, yes, from the health which is in the animal, and that seems obvious and unquestionable, as Dewan well notes, but food is called healthy from its own quality too, that is, from both of these “sides” or for both of these reasons. In other words, two things are involved in calling some food healthy. Food is denominated healthy from two sources, not that food is denominated healthy in two ways, as if implying some sort of disjunction, either this or that, each sufficient on its own for calling food healthy, but not both. Perhaps it should be noticed that Aquinas does use the word “from” (ab) in both cases. Healthy said of food has two parts to it, two aspects, two causes: (1) the animal, or more generally, the living organism, and (2) the food itself, that is, the thing itself that is food for some living organism. That this is so seems manifest from the way we speak. Liver, for example, is said to be healthy for a pregnant woman—aspect/cause (1)—because of the high levels of iron it contains, which is aspect/cause (2). Healthy will always be healthy for this or that living organism, but the reason for some thing being healthy for this or that organism is also because of something in the thing. Aquinas says as much, regarding what I am calling the second aspect, in ST I, q. 16, a. 6, which treats the same issue as DV, q. 1, a. 4. Though Aquinas does not mention food, he does mention the other things of which healthy is also said in relation to the one health of the animal, namely, medicine and urine. Oftentimes Aquinas will explicitly mention food or diet along with medicine and urine;16 so what he says there about medicine and urine can be applied to food as well. He says in ST I, q. 16, a. 6, “and although health is not in medicine nor in urine, nevertheless in Aquinas often puts medicine, food/diet, and urine together when explaining analogous naming. See Summa contra gentiles I, ch. 34, no. 1: “In this way, therefore, from the aforesaid it remains that those things which are said of God and other things are predicated of them neither univocally nor equivocally, but analogically, according to the order or respect to something one. Which indeed happens in two ways: in one way, according as many things have a respect to something one; for example, according to a relation to one health, the animal is called healthy as the subject of health, medicine [is called healthy] as productive [of health], food [is called healthy] as conservative [of health], urine as a sign of health.” See also: Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 60, a. 1, resp. “I answer it ought to be said that all things which have an order to something one, though in diverse ways, are able to be denominated from that one thing, just as from the health which is in the animal, not only is the animal—which is the subject of health—denominated healthy, but also medicine is called healthy inasmuch as it is productive of health, and the diet inasmuch as it preserves that health, and urine inasmuch as it signifies the same health.” 16 Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? 171 each of them there is something through which the former causes health, and the latter signifies health.”17 Applying this to healthy said of food, one may thus paraphrase that, “although health is not in the food, nevertheless in it there is something through which it preserves the health of the animal.” So, for example, milk is said to be healthy for the bones—aspect (1)—from/through the large amounts of calcium the milk has—aspect (2). Oranges are said to be very healthy for the immune system on account of some quality in the oranges themselves, namely, the vitamin C they have. Carrots are said to be healthy for the eyes on account of the vitamin A carrots provide. And just because I do not explicitly say “healthy” for this or that organism does not mean that I am excluding that element from the reasons for calling milk, oranges, or carrots healthy.18 It is implied or self-understood. Am I not allowed to say that oranges are healthy on account of their vitamin C? Are we only allowed to say that oranges are healthy because they make us healthy or preserve our health? If so, the question remains, but why are they healthy for us? So, food, which is always food for some animal, is indeed called healthy (and also unhealthy) from its own quality, but not just from its own quality. Perhaps for the sake of clarifying this point further, two additional things should be noted: first, that there seems to be an order in calling food healthy, an order that goes back to the order in which we know and name things: we name things as we know them. Now, we usually know effects before causes, and therefore we would first name something by its effects, rather than by its causes. As regards calling food healthy, it seems that it would first be named healthy from its effects. If that new, unknown fruit or leaf or plant was eaten and did not make them sick, then it would be called good to eat, healthy; if not, then bad to eat, or unhealthy. The food would be called healthy or unhealthy from its effect, namely, the preservation of the health of the people or the ruining of it. Only later would one come to know the reason why one plant was healthy and the other was not, that is, what was it about the plant, its properties or qualities that in one case caused health and in the other sickness, such as a toxin in the leaves. Then, one would be able to call this plant unhealthy not only on account of the sickness it causes in us but also on account of its own properties: “It is unhealthy from the toxins in its leaves.” And we do speak like this in daily life, saying that so and so food is unhealthy because it has too much fat, or too much sugar, and so forth. ST I, q. 16, a. 6, resp. To not mention something is not to deny it. If in introducing myself to someone I mention that I am a philosopher but do not mention that I am a father, in leaving out that I am a father, I am not saying or implying that I am not a father. 17 18 172 Nelson Ramirez A second thing to be noted is that, as pointed out earlier, “healthy” is said relatively, kind of like “large.” If I say that this cup is large, it is large with respect to something else. It implies a relation. And in every relation there are two terms or two extremes. In the relation of “healthy” as said of food,19 the relation is between food and the animal. Just as I am toward José María a father, milk is toward us healthy, a dead body is toward a vulture healthy, and so forth. “Father” expresses a relation that always involves the man who generated and the human being generated. Likewise, it seems that “healthy,” in this sense, expresses a relation, and thus it involves always food and the animal. Now, I am a father on account of something in me, that generative act, and also on account of the human being that was generated from that act. Likewise, it seems that food is healthy on account of the food itself, some quality or property or characteristic it has, and on account of the animal, whose health is preserved by the food. The same thing can be healthy for one person and not healthy for another. Wheat bread is healthy for me, but not healthy for a person with Celiac disease, but this is on account of something in the wheat bread itself—namely, gluten—and something in the person, such as a deficiency in their immune system. Application to “True” Said of Things Now it seems that it is this alternative understanding of a dual implication of “healthy” as said of food which Aquinas is carrying over to illuminate “true” as said of things. With respect to true, there is also this dual implication, these two ingredients or two causes: namely, an intellect and a thing. As with “healthy” as said of food, which always involves a relation or order of food to some animal, “true” as said of things always involves a relation of a thing to some intellect. Now, just as food is called healthy on account of the health of the animal, as Aquinas says in the first part of the distinction in the passage under examination, so a thing is called true on account of the truth in the human or divine intellect. But just as food is truly called healthy also on account of some property or quality of the food itself,20 but taken always in relation to the animal, so also a thing is called true on account of something in the thing itself, namely, its entity or form, but taken always in relation to some intellect, in other words, without dropping the opposite term of the relation, which seems to be what Aquinas This is a very important clarification, since “healthy” can be said in other ways where a relation is not implied, as when the animal is said to be healthy. 20 But as noted earlier, this reason for calling food healthy comes after in the order of our knowledge, since we usually know causes aftereffects. 19 Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? 173 says in the passage itself under the second part of the distinction: “but from the truth which is in the thing itself, which is nothing other than the entity conformed to an intellect or conforming an intellect to itself.”21 And so, food is called healthy both on account of a form that is not inherent in the food, but rather in the animal, namely, the health of the animal, and also on account of a form that is inherent in the food, namely, some quality, property, characteristic, or element of the food itself. The same applies to “true” as said of things. “True” is said of a thing both on account of the truth of some intellect, a form not inherent in a thing, but rather in some intellect, and also on account of the entity of the thing related via conformity to some intellect, the entity understood as a form inherent in the thing. In sum, “true” said of a thing involves a non-inherent form and an inherent form, just as “healthy” said of food involves a non-inherent form and an inherent form. Therefore, when Aquinas says that “true” is said of a thing on account of an inherent form, just as “healthy” is said of food on account of an inherent form, he does not mean that the inherent form in food on account of In the following text from a later article, Aquinas again includes, perhaps more explicitly and clearly, these two elements of the truth of a thing. DV, q. 1, a. 8, resp. “It ought to be said that in created things truth is found in things and in the understanding as is clear from the aforesaid, in the understanding, indeed, according as they are conformed to the things whose notion it has, but in things according as they imitate the divine understanding, which is their measure just as art is the measure of all things that are made through art, and in another way according as they are naturally apt to cause a true grasp of themselves in the human understanding, which is measured by things as is said in Metaphysics X. Now, a thing, actually existing outside the soul, through its own form imitates the art of the divine understanding, and through the same form is naturally apt to cause true knowledge in the human understanding, through which form any thing whatsoever also has being [esse]. Wherefore, the truth of actually existing things includes in its own notion/definition [ratione] their entity and adds on a relation of conformity either to the human understanding or to the divine understanding” (my emphasis). The next text is from DV q. 1, a. 10, in reply to the third objection on the contrary. Aquinas distinguishes a twofold perfection in things and its connection to truth in things. Again, it is taught that the notion of “truth in things” is constituted by two elements, the form of a thing and its relation to either the divine or human understanding: “To the third, it ought to be said that perfection is twofold; namely, first and second. The first perfection is the form of each single thing, through which it has being; wherefore from it no thing fails while it remains; the second perfection is operation, which is the end of a thing, or that through which it reaches the end, and from this perfection sometimes a thing fails. Now, from the first perfection results the notion of truth in things, for from this, that a thing has a form, it imitates the art of the divine intellect, and gives birth to knowledge of itself in the soul.” 21 174 Nelson Ramirez which it is called healthy alone suffices to call food healthy, as the round shape of and in the tennis ball alone suffices to call the ball round or the whiteness of and in the man alone suffices to say he is white; he means, rather, as examined above, an inherent form, such as calcium in the milk, insofar as related to the health of the animal, such as the bone structure of the animal. Likewise, he does not mean that the inherent form in a thing on account of which it is called true alone suffices to call a thing true; he means rather an inherent form, namely, the entity of a thing, insofar as related to the truth of some intellect. Again, this is exactly what Aquinas says in the text itself: “sed a veritate quae est in ipsa re, quae nihil aliud est quam entitas intellectui adaequata [‘conformed with the intellect’ in Dewan’s translation] vel intellectum sibi adaequans [‘conforming the intellect to itself ’ in Dewan’s translation].” But then Dewan sees this as a contradiction in Aquinas’s text: “Yet, at the same time, this ‘in itself ’ consideration of the thing, as to its entity, is also said to concern the thing’s being ‘conformed with the intellect’ (presumably the divine intellect) and also ‘conforming the intellect to itself ’ (presumably the human intellect). Thomas seems here to be aiming both not to take the thing in relation to intellect and also to take it in relation to intellect!”22 So, Dewan says that Aquinas seems to be both taking the thing in relation to the truth of some intellect when he says, “entitas intellectui adaequata vel intellectum sibi adaequans,” and not taking the thing in relation to the truth of some intellect when he gives the example of healthy said of food as from an inherent form, which Dewan interprets as Aquinas calling food healthy not in relation to the health of the animal but only from itself. But it has been argued that Aquinas cannot correctly be understood as doing the second. If so, then the apparent contradiction is dissolved. This apparently contradictory text actually seems to give some support to the alternative way of interpreting this text as presented above. Just as Aquinas is explicitly not taking the entity of a thing just in itself, as Dewan thinks he does because of the “healthy” example that comes at the end, so Aquinas is not taking food just in itself apart from any relation to the health of the animal. In both cases, he is taking them in relation to another, even though that relation is not explicitly made as regards the quality of the food, as it is with regard to the entity of a thing, but it can be understood to be there, as has been argued. Dewan, “Is Truth a Transcendental for St. Thomas Aquinas?,” 11. 22 Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? 175 Alternative Reading of the Text Based on Other Texts throughout Aquinas’s Works Perhaps another argument against Dewan’s “true solely by an inherent form apart from a relation to some intellect” interpretation regards Aquinas’s general but seemingly consistent understanding of truth throughout his works, namely, that intellect is included in the very notion of truth. In DV, q. 1, a. 2, which is presupposed by article 4 of the same question, he says in the context of answering the question whether truth is chiefly found in the intellect or in things that, if “either intellect [i.e., the divine and the human] were understood to be removed although things remained through an impossible supposition, in no way would the definition/notion of truth remain.” In other texts, Aquinas insists on truth being primarily in the intellect and in things only in relation to some intellect. For example, in ST I, q. 16, a. 1., which answers the same question as DV, q. 1, a. 2, Aquinas again points out that “it is necessary that the definition of true be derived from the intellect to the thing understood so that even the thing understood is called true according as it has some order to an intellect.” In ST I, q. 16, a. 3, he says, “just as good adds the notion of desirable above being, so also true [adds] a comparison to an intellect,” which is what he already teaches back in his Commentary on the Sentences, d. 19, q. 5, a. 1, ad. 2: “Just as goodness expresses the notion through which essence is ordered to the appetite, so truth expresses the notion through which essence is ordered to the intellect.”23 In ST I, q. 17, a. 1, he says: “Since the true and the false are opposed, and opposites are about the same, it is necessary that falsity first be found there where first truth is found: this is in the intellect. But in things, there is neither truth nor falsity except through an order to the intellect.” Therefore, there seems to be some evidence throughout Aquinas’s works that truth implies some order to the intellect.24 In the same text, but in his reply to the third objection Aquinas also says, “just as ‘one’ adds the idea [rationem] of undividedness, and ‘good’ the idea [rationem] of an end, and ‘true’ the idea [rationem] of an order to knowledge.” 24 See, e.g., In I de interp., lec. 3: “For the true, as the philosopher says in Ethics 6, is the good of the intellect. Hence, of whatever true is said, it is necessary that it be through a respect/relation to the intellect” (translated from the Latin editio altera retractata in vol. 1 of the Leonine ed.). This sounds like the way Aquinas explains whatever “healthy” is said of. The medicine, the urine, and the food are all called healthy in relation to one thing, the health of the animal. It is necessary that, of whatever “healthy” is said, that this be through a relation to the health of the animal. Therefore, intellect is to whatever “true” is said of, as the health of the animal is to whatever “healthy” is said of. So, just as everything is called healthy because of some relation to an animal’s health, so everything is called true because 23 176 Nelson Ramirez And even if Dewan were correct in claiming that there was in Aquinas some truth which did not involve in some way a relation to an intellect, it seems that in even more general terms “true” or truth for Aquinas involves a comparison, order, or relation of one thing to another. In speaking of “good,” “true,” and “one” with respect to being in a passage from his Commentary on the Sentences Aquinas says that “true and good add a certain relation.”25 In d. 19, q. 5, a. 1, of the same commentary (on part I), he says that the ratio veritatis consists in a relatio adaequationis.26 In his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, he says that “truth and falsity consist in a certain comparison of one [thing] to another.”27 Close to the previous text is DV, q. 1, a. 1, where Aquinas places good and true under one of two ways of understanding a general mode that follows every being (ens). The first way is insofar as the general mode follows each being (ens) in itself (“uno modo secundum quod consequitur unumquodque ens in se”); the second way is insofar as the general mode follows one being (ens) as ordered to another (“alio modo secundum quod consequitur unum ens in ordine ad aliud”). The second way is further subdivided: in one way according to a division of one thing from another; in another way according to an agreement of one being to another.28 Under the latter are found “good” and “true.” Good and true express a mode of being that follows every being as related to another. Aquinas seems to be saying therefore that order or relation of one to another is of the very essence of the true, more specifically, the relation of convenientia, which can be translated as agreement, fitness, suitability, or correspondence. “The name good expresses the convenientiam of a being to the appetite, whence in the beginning of the Ethics it is said that ‘the good is what all desire’, but the name true expresses the convenientiam of a being to the intellect.”29 It seems that Aquinas does not, throughout all his works, depart from a relational understanding of truth, of some relation to an intellect. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, he says, “for truth of its own definition [de sui ratione] implies a commensuration of a thing to an understanding” (Super Ioan 18, lec. 6; translated from the Marietti ed. as found at corpusthomisticum. org). 25 In I sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 3: “But the others which we said, namely, good, true and one, add above being, not indeed some nature, but some notion/intelligibility: but one adds the notion of indivision, and because of this is closest to being, because it adds only negation: but true and good add a certain relation.” 26 In I sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 1. 27 In III de an., ch. 5. 28 DV, q. 1, a. 1. 29 DV, q. 1, a. 1. Is Truth a Form Inherent in Things? 177 and where it seems that he may, as in DV, q. 1, a. 4, careful consideration seems to show otherwise. It seems that the fact that Dewan finds this startling teaching of Aquinas only in this passage from DV, and nowhere else, as Dewan says, is a sign that perhaps Dewan’s interpretation of it needs to be reconsidered in light of what Aquinas says everywhere else. In other words, this being the only passage with such a teaching does not seem to favor Dewan’s interpretation. In sum, therefore, there seem to be many reasons against interpreting Aquinas at DV, q. 1, a. 4 to be saying what Dewan says Aquinas is saying, namely, that “truth is a form inherent in things,” which means that things can be called true not on account of a relation to some intellect but just on account of something inherent or intrinsic to the thing itself, namely, their entity, just as a man is called white not on account of a relation to something other than the man himself, but just on account of something inherent or intrinsic to the man himself, namely, the color of his skin: like the whiteness of a man, truth would be an intrinsic formal feature of things. Dewan’s understanding of Aquinas’s use of “healthy” as said of food in the DV passage, which underlies his claim about Aquinas thinking there that truth is an intrinsic formal feature of things, does not seem to be the only way of understanding Aquinas in that text. Now, if Aquinas is not teaching at DV, q. 1, a. 4, that truth is a form inherent in things, then the basis of Dewan’s claim for thinking that there is a development in Aquinas’s teaching on the truth of things as one moves from DV to ST may have to be reconsidered. For, according to Dewan, before ST, “definitely” in that DV article, Aquinas teaches that truth is a form inherent in things, but in ST Aquinas no longer thinks that truth is a form inherent in things. Aquinas’s account of truth, though having real and obvious differences in his different systematic treatments of truth, seems to be more unified than Dewan seems to portray it, especially as N&V regards Aquinas’s understanding of “true” as said of things. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 179–200 179 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae: The Action of the Holy Spirit at the Heart of Moral Theology Anton M. ten Klooster Tilburg School of Catholic Theology Utrecht, The Netherlands The question of happiness as the final end of the human person is sufficiently answered by Christ in the Beatitudes, according to Thomas Aquinas.1 Although some have enthusiastically adopted this insight from Servais Pinckaers, the Beatitudes continue to be ignored in many discussions of moral theology—be they specifically Thomist or of a more general nature. In this contribution I will argue that they are in fact the key to a proper understanding of the entire prima secundae of the Summa theologiae as a discussion of the pursuit of happiness. In order to do so, we need to consider them in relation to the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. First, I will briefly argue why it is important to have discussions about the structure of the Summa at all. Second, I will present a number of valuable interpretations of the place of the Beatitudes in the prima secundae. These works of Eleonore Stump, Andrew Pinsent, Pinckaers, and William Mattison contribute to our understanding of the matter, but I believe they still fall short in important aspects. Third, I will offer my own interpretation of the structure, which is a development of the proposals of Pinckaers and Mattison.2 In my proposal the notion of merit is key to reading the prima secundae as a unified discus- Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 183. 2 An earlier and less developed version of this proposal can be found in Anton ten Klooster, Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes: Reading Matthew, Disputing Grace and Virtue, Preaching Happiness (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), 147–54. 1 180 Anton M. ten Klooster sion. Merit is a term that describes acting toward the final end with the help of grace, as I will argue with reference to Aquinas’s commentary on Matthew. When we follow this understanding of merit we find a way of speaking of the value of human action without diminishing the necessity of God’s grace for the attainment of the final end. Fourth and finally I will provide a brief sketch of the implications of my proposal for our understanding of prima secundae and thus for the moral life of the Christian. Why Continue Discussing the Structure of the Summa Theologiae? The most influential proposal to date on the structure of the Summa is Marie-Dominique Chenu’s suggestion of an exitus–reditus structure. Its merit is that it considers the Summa as an integrated work with an underlying pedagogy, rather than as a collection of interconnected treatises. For some, the problem with proposals such as that of Chenu is that they suggest that the Summa is a perfect and flawlessly ordered work.3 Although there is no need to argue for this type of perfection, we cannot but emphasize that the Summa is a work that is driven by Aquinas’s desire to order the discussion of theology in a manner that he thought was helpful to the student. He abandoned the creedal pattern of Peter Lombard’s Sentences and began composing his own introduction to Christian doctrine.4 The Summa was born out of a pedagogical concern, and we can therefore safely assume that its structure is characterized by a very high degree of intentionality. Still, I will not argue that my own proposal for reading the Summa exactly matches Aquinas’s plan. What I do believe is that it is able to address a number of issues with other proposals and can thus provide us with a fruitful way of reading the secunda pars as an integrated discussion of Christian morality. Since Chenu’s proposal is widely acclaimed as providing us with an interpretative key of the Summa, I will address this proposal of the entire Summa first, before moving on to a discussion of the structure of the prima secundae in particular. The exitus–reditus scheme suggests a Neoplatonic order of emanation and return. Rudi te Velde argued that “in spite of its initial plausibility. . . the scheme does not appear to fit in with how, in the prologues, Thomas himself accounts for the divisions and transitions in the text. Instead of clarifying the underlying structure and movement, the I thank Prof. Stephan van Erp (KU Leuven) for confronting me with this criticism after I presented a paper given in preparation of this article. 4 For a discussion of the origin and pedagogy of the Summa, see Mark Jordan, Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 1–16. 3 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 181 scheme rather obscures and conceals some methodical and compositional peculiarities.”5 To this criticism I would add that while the exitus–reditus scheme focuses on the human person’s journey to God, it does not bring to the fore that this journey is in fact the pursuit of happiness. Recent studies of Aquinas, my own included, suggest this motive is key to understanding the Summa in general and the secunda pars in particular.6 The intended final questions of the Summa were about the “last things,” the eternal happiness of heaven. Since Aquinas understands action in light of its end, it seems plausible that this direction to the end of eternal happiness is what guides the pedagogy of the Summa. Some scholars have suggested readings of the Summa that focus on its finality, a back-to-front reading if you will. This approach fits in well with a greater emphasis on happiness.7 This is what God created us for and it is what we act for. In light of this end we can understand everything else. The importance of discussions on the structure of the Summa is therefore that they can provide us with an impression of Aquinas’s pedagogy, of the objective of his teaching. Rather than ordering the known treatises in a more accessible fashion he seeks to organize theology in such a way that its discussion is directed toward the final end of the Christian life: eternal happiness with God. Of course, this has repercussions for how we understand the respective sections of the Summa. And it almost immediately raises the question of how grace features in the discussion. True happiness is had in the vision of God, and to attain the vision of God grace is required. Therefore, grace needs to be more than an afterthought or an ornamental element of the book. In the prima secundae, there are two parts that deal explicitly with the theology of grace. Best known are questions 109–14. However, the questions on the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Beatitudes, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit also deal with the dispositions and acts that spring forth from God’s gracious working in the human soul. The present article considers the relation between God’s grace and human action by studying the notion of merit (q. 114) and the Beatitudes (q. 69). Rudi te Velde, Aquinas on God: The “Divine Science” of the Summa Theologiae (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 10. 6 Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 128–33; Sheryl Overmyer, “Three More Jigs in the Puzzle: The Unity of Analogy, Beatitude and Virtue in Thomas’ Summa Theologiae,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 15 (2003): 374–93; ten Klooster, Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes, 144–45. 7 Harm Goris, “Acquired and Infused Moral Virtues in Wounded Nature,” in The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological Nature of the Moral Virtues, ed. H. Goris and H. Schoot (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 21–46; Jordan, Teaching Bodies. 5 182 Anton M. ten Klooster Discussions on the Gifts, Beatitudes, and Fruits in the Prima Secundae Present scholarship of the structure of the prima secundae agrees on a number of divisions of the work. The first five questions discuss happiness as the final end of the human person; from there the discussion moves on to passions, habits, and virtues in questions 6–67. Questions 68–70 discuss three notions Aquinas derived from Scripture: the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isa 11:2–3), the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3–9), and the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22). Unlike the preceding sixty-one questions, there apparently is no larger scheme that these topics are a part of. There seems to be no gradual development of a deeper insight into the complex matter of the principle of human actions, which we do see in the discussion of habituation and virtue. The questions that follow can also be grouped in larger sections: sin and its effects (qq. 71–89), law (qq. 90–108), and grace and merit (qq. 109–14). Accounting for the questions on the gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits is a technical debate about the structure of a work of medieval theology. But there is more at stake. These questions pertain to Biblical notions. Therefore, they inform our understanding of how Thomas Aquinas interpreted Sacred Scripture. In the course of the last decades, scholarship has increasingly acknowledged that in order to understand Aquinas we should understand him as a scholar of Scripture.8 This means not only that we should study his Biblical commentaries but also that we should study his use of notions he derived from Scripture. And with regard to these notions, we know that Aquinas studied all three of them before or during the time he wrote the prima secundae. The commentary on Isaiah, with remarks on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, was one of his earliest works. It was probably written between 1252 and 1253.9 Aquinas’s commentary on Galatians is harder to date, but the text can be dated to the period 1261–1265.10 Recent For a brief overview of this development, see ten Klooster, Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes, 3–8. 9 Super Isa, introduction to the Leonine edition, 19*–20*; Jean-Pierre Torrell, Initiation à Saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa Personne et Son Oeuvre, rev. ed. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2015), 51–54, 65–66, 432–34. 10 Thomas Aquinas, Commentaire de l’Épître aux Galates, trans. Jean-Éric Stroobant de Saint-Éloy (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2008), 9; Torrell, Initiation à l’Étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 327, 450; Robert Wielockx, “Au Sujet du Commentaire de Saint Thomas sur le ‘Corpus Paulinium’: Critique Littéraire,” in Saint Thomas’ Interpretation of Saint Paul’s Doctrines, Proceedings of the IX Plenary Session, ed. Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2009), 176–77. 8 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 183 scholarship on the commentary on Matthew dates it to 1270–1271, contemporaneous with the composition of the prima secundae.11 In all of these works Aquinas connects virtues, gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits, with the exception of the commentary on Matthew, which lacks an explicit discussion of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. So Aquinas does not simply take up these notions on a whim, nor is their connection to each other an innovation or a haphazard alignment in the Summa. He has thought about them, and in all of these works he consistently discusses them in relation to each other. At the medieval university there was an organic relation between reading Scripture and theological discussions: they were two of the three tasks of the master. These tasks are legere, disputare, and praedicare. First the master reads Scripture attentively and develops a grasp of the text at hand. He then goes on to dispute the questions that arise from it, first with his students and then with other masters. The final step of preaching is the result of this study and discussion of Scripture.12 Considering that Aquinas held three different lectiones involving the gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits makes the question of their place in the structure of the Summa even more pressing. There are two major issues with the present scholarship with regard to the place of questions 68–70 in the structure of the prima secundae. One group of scholars simply ignores the issue while another makes valuable suggestions but does not buttress them properly. The first group includes both those scholars who solve the issue by considering these questions as part of the discussion of the virtues and those who gloss over these questions altogether. This group includes, among others, Brian Davies, Bonnie Kent, Gilles Mongeau, Pasquale Porro, Jean Porter, and Jean-Pierre Torrell.13 In my opinion, these approaches impede a proper understanding Tomasz Gałuszka, Tomasza z Akwinu—Lectura super Matheum cap. I–II: Studium Historyczno-Krytyczne i Edycja Tekstu (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Esprit SC, 2011), 78–95, 302–03. Torrell argues for 1269–1270 (Initiation, 90). 12 Ten Klooster, Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes, 1–3. 13 Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Guide & Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 359; Bonnie Kent, “Habits and Virtues,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. S. J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 116–30; Gilles Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom: The Summa Theologiae as Spiritual Pedagogy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015), 132; Pasquale Porro, Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 281–22; Torrell, Initiation, 198. In a remarkable contribution, Jean Porter includes the gifts but ignores the Beatitudes and fruits (“Right Reason and the Love of God,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. R. van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005], 171). 11 184 Anton M. ten Klooster of the prima secundae. Furthermore, failure to account for the place of the gifts, Beatitudes and fruits in the prima secundae also means that one will have difficulty accounting for their place in the secunda secundae, of which they are constitutive elements. Unfortunately, there is a long tradition of glossing over these questions. Pinckaers noted that gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits were often “relegated to the field of asceticism and mysticism, as to a subordinate, optional science.”14 It seems that this has left its mark on some of the present-day scholarship of Aquinas. Stump and Pinsent: The Non-Aristotelian Reading of Aquinas Other scholars do offer an account of the place of the gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits in the Summa and in the moral theology of Aquinas. Of these I will highlight the contributions of Stump and Pinsent, on the one hand, and Pinckaers and Mattison, on the other.15 In her acclaimed study of Aquinas, Stump acknowledges what she refers to as a “web of Aquinas’s moral categories,” consisting of the deadly sins, principal virtues, gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits of the Holy Spirit.16 There are, however, two issues with her presentation: the lack of an argument about Aquinas’s reason to interweave these topics, and the underlying assumptions about the Beatitudes and fruits in particular. Stump speaks of an “association.” This means, for example, that a certain fruit and Beatitude occur together. But this does not explain why they occur together. What are the threads connecting virtues, gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits in the texture of Aquinas’s moral theology? This question remains unanswered. What further complicates the matter are the assumptions Stump has about what Beatitudes and fruits are. She speaks of the fruits as “either acts—acts of self-discipline with regard to kicking the dog, for example—or else as mental states resulting from such actions.”17 Although the latter is not entirely incorrect, this description is ambiguous. Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P., from the 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1995), 231. Romanus Cessario and Cajetan Cuddy argue that this development marked the shift toward moral casuistry (Thomas and the Thomists: The Achievement of Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2017], 96). 15 The reflections of Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung are also pertinent but fragmentary, and sometimes imprecise—for example when she refers to the fruits as dispositions, as well as when, in spite of Aquinas’s introduction to the article, she considers “fear” a passion rather than a gift in Summa theologiae [ST] II-II, q. 123, a. 3 (“Power Made Perfect in Weakness: Aquinas’s Transformation of the Virtue of Courage,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 11 [2003]: 147–80). 16 Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 360. 17 Stump, Aquinas, 351. 14 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 185 Aquinas explicitly considers the fruits of the Holy Spirit as actions, yet Stump takes them into the domain of the passions through casual remarks on a “passion for goodness,” for example.18 There is a similar problem in her description of the Beatitudes as “moral states.”19 The Beatitudes, too, are explicitly actions to Aquinas. So rather than to consistently speak of both the Beatitudes and fruits as actions, Stump speaks of them as moral states and concomitant emotions.20 The reader of her work cannot but appreciate her splendid discussion of the complexities of human psychology and morality in light of recent history, literature, and modern philosophy. But it seems that Stump considers the discussion of the Beatitudes and fruits as a continuation of the treatise on passions, habits, and virtues.21 It then becomes part of the description of human psychology, without stressing enough that Beatitudes and fruits are acts that spring forth from divinely infused dispositions. This is what one can derive from Stump’s scattered remarks. Her work, and in similar vein that of Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, understands the gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits in light of the preceding questions on the virtues. This is a valid approach, but when speaking of Beatitudes and fruits it is essential that we begin with their definition and their place in the structure before trying to understand how they are related to the virtues. Pinsent, a student of Stump, develops this approach when he presents a more elaborate theory of what he refers to as the “VGBF structure of moral perfection.”22 One of the key concerns of his discussion of questions 68–70, following Porter, is to establish that Aquinas is “non-Aristotelian,” and radically so.23 The merit of Pinsent’s work is that it seeks to understand the discussion of virtues, gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits in the prima secundae as the foundation for the structure of the secunda secundae. He suggests that the lack of attention to this structure is due to the fact that many inquiries into Aquinas’s ethics were guided by questions raised Stump, Aquinas, 353. Stump, Aquinas, 353. 20 See her claim that “the passions also have analogues in the fruits of the Holy Spirit” (Eleonore Stump, “The Non-Aristotelian Character of Aquinas’s Ethics: Aquinas on the Passions,” Faith and Philosophy 28, no. 1 [2011]: 42). 21 She categorizes questions 49–89 as a treatise on the intrinsic sources of human acts (Stump, Aquinas, 9). 22 Andrew Pinsent, The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s Ethics: Virtues and Gifts (London: Routledge, 2012), 23. Note the discussion of “the second-personal in Aquinas” in Stump, “Non-Aristotelian Character,” 36–39. 23 Pinsent, Second-Person Perspective, 22–23, 84, 104–5. 18 19 186 Anton M. ten Klooster by Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.24 In his discussion of the Beatitudes and fruits, Pinsent takes a different trajectory and begins by observing Aquinas’s description of them as the “actualizations of the virtues and the gifts.”25 In his interpretation, the Beatitudes are “promissory narratives,” which means that he underscores the fact that the fulfillment of the promises they contain is yet to be realized, hence his emphasis on hope.26 The Beatitudes “act as a kind of bridge to a state of completeness.”27 He then goes on to suggest that the fruits are at least part of the fulfillment of the promises given in the Beatitudes. The fruits, according to Pinsent, are “the terminating characteristics of the VGBF network, and the very names of some of the fruits, especially love, joy, and peace, convey a sense of finality in an account of human perfection oriented toward a final state of happiness.”28 He acknowledges that the fruits do not mean that human activity ends and that they are not merely the enjoyment of activities well achieved. This proposal is an important step forward in the discussion. Pinsent acknowledges the importance of the connections between virtues, gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits for Aquinas’s theology of human action. He is right in stressing that Aquinas’s ethics cannot be equated with those of Aristotle, nor are we merely reading a baptized version of Aristotle. It is something else. But the issue with Pinsent is that, from the onset, he wishes to move beyond Aquinas. He writes: “In order to show why the beatitudes and fruits form an organic whole, together with the virtues and gifts, a metaphoric understanding is required that can unify Aquinas’s claims and relate them to experience.”29 Pinsent claims that without such a metaphoric understanding, any discussion of the virtues, gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits will remain dry and lifeless. Although he wishes to understand Aquinas, and indeed makes great progress, his project is a push to present a new framework which he finds in the “second-person perspective.” I disagree with Pinsent’s assumption that new metaphors are needed in order to understand the framework of Aquinas’s theory of human flourishing. It leads to a lack of attention to certain important details of Aquinas’s interpretation. Pinsent notes that the Beatitudes and fruits are actions, but with regard to the Beatitudes his discussion is shaped by Pinsent, Second-Person Perspective, 26. This is also one of Stump’s concerns (“The Non-Aristotelian Character,” 29–43). 25 Pinsent, Second-Person Perspective, 84; see also 86. 26 Pinsent, Second-Person Perspective, 86–91. 27 Pinsent, Second-Person Perspective, 91. 28 Pinsent, Second-Person Perspective, 92. 29 Pinsent, Second-Person Perspective, 85. 24 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 187 their definition as promissory narratives. In the fruits he recognizes that they are delightful but does not take it up as the key to their definition. It seems that he takes a somewhat sequential approach to the Beatitudes and fruits: their relation is that one follows the other. There is some textual evidence to back up this claim, but we will see that there is more to it.30 Pinckaers and Mattison: Happiness as Key to the Structure It will be clear to the reader that Servais Pinckaers did not claim that Aquinas’s moral theology can be qualified as simply “Aristotelian,” and the same is true for his student William Mattison. But their discussions of the prima secundae are less driven by the desire to make this specific point. Instead, Pinckaers proposed a reading of the book based on understanding it as geared toward happiness. Mattison explicitly presents his proposal as a further development of that of Pinckaers.31 Both seek to establish the relation between questions 1–5 on the nature of happiness (beatitudo) and the question on the Beatitudes (beatitudines). One would expect some sort of relation between them. Pinckaers and Mattison’s proposal, as I summarized elsewhere, comes down to resolving “this issue by taking away some of the subdivisions that we usually make when discussing the Summa. Rather than separating the first five questions from what follows, Pinckaers suggests that Aquinas perceived of questions 1 to 70 as a single treatise on happiness. In this scheme, the questions 68 to 70 are the culmination of the discussions that precede them, rather than an odd addition.”32 The proposals of Pinckaers and Mattison allow for a reading of the prima secundae that is dynamic, doing justice to the pedagogical concerns of Aquinas and his unceasing attention to the question of the nature of human happiness and its attainment. Still, there are two major issues. First, neither accounts for the place of questions 71–114. Second, both of them mention the fruits of the Holy Spirit but do so only in passing. Addressing the former I will propose a rough draft of the structure of the prima secundae to resolve the former issue. As for the latter: I have discussed them at length in my study of the Beatitudes and have ST II-II, q. 139, a. 2, ad 3. Servais Pinckaers, “Beatitude and the Beatitudes in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae,” in The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 115–29; William Mattison, “Beatitude and the Beatitudes in the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 17, no. 1 (2010): 233–49. 32 Ten Klooster, Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes, 146–48. 30 31 188 Anton M. ten Klooster addressed them further in another publication.33 Merit, Reward, and Happiness In order to account for questions 71–114, we need to return to the opening discussion of the prima secundae, in questions 1–5.34 This provides us with important clarifications about the nature of happiness and the way it can be pursued. The notions from these questions are further developed in what follows. The first thing Aquinas establishes is that people all act for an end, and that there can only be one ultimate end (q. 1). Happiness is sought in many things but it cannot be had “save in the vision of God” (qq. 2–3).35 In these questions it also becomes clear that happiness must be an activity or operation (q. 3, a. 2). This point is crucial to everything that follows. It begs the question of what type of activity this entails, and under what conditions it can be performed (qq. 3–4). Finally and most importantly: how can we gain happiness (q. 5)? In the latter discussion Aquinas raises two issues that will be answered in questions 109–14 on grace and merit: whether the human person reaches happiness by being acted on by some higher creature (q. 5, a. 6) and whether something must be done in order to attain happiness (q. 5, a. 7). Aquinas responds affirmatively to both questions. This means he speaks of the pursuit of happiness by affirming the necessity of both divine and human agency. My theory is that the rest of the prima secundae can be read as an effort to clarify the relation between these two. And it is in the question on the Beatitudes and fruits of the Holy Spirit (qq. 69–70) that we can best see how the two come together and the human person is acting toward the final end aided by grace. This is obscured in many interpretations, due in part to the fact that the gifts are often taken for things they are not, such as dispositions and passions. The main arch connecting the beginning and end of the prima secundae is the notion of merit. We will see that merit is also an important aspect of Aquinas’s interpretation of the Beatitudes. A hot-button issue in ecumenical debates, merit is often misrepresented as a sort of quid pro quo approach to the Christian life.36 The conception of merit that Lutheran theologians objected to can be referred to as mechanical: a certain action necessarily Anton ten Klooster, “Aquinas on the Fruits of the Holy Spirit as the Delight of the Christian life,” Journal of Moral Theology 8, no. 2 (2019): 80–94. 34 One of the initial inspirations for this approach was Thomas O’Meara, “Grace as a Theological Structure in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 55 (1988): 130–53. 35 ST I-II, q. 3, a. 8, resp. 36 Michael Root, “Aquinas, Merit and Reformation Theology after the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” Modern Theology 20, no. 4 (2004): 15–16. 33 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 189 leads to a given reward. Such an idea would indeed be a violation of the theological concept of divine freedom, leaving God no choice but to pay due wages. Aquinas’s mature position on merit is deeply influenced by his concern to avoid (semi-)Pelagian theological positions.37 The problem with the Pelagian position is that, by overemphasizing free will, it fails to establish a balance between divine and human agency. One thing that is clear to Aquinas is that it is not possible to merit initial justification through any form of human action. This would undermine the fundamental principle that God freely gives, to whom he chooses to give. In his mature work, Aquinas develops his own understanding of the subject, as we can learn from the lucid study on merit done by Joseph Wawrykow.38 His argument comes down to this: merit does not place God in debt to the human person. Instead, God by promising certain rewards places himself in debt to himself; God owes God. Wawrykow’s study need not be criticized, but it is possible to add to it. The problem with its description is that merit is still only discussed in terms of divine justice. This definition still comes down to what God owes, even if it be to himself rather than to someone else. In such a definition, merit is considered as a net result, the sum of human action, sin, and grace. Such a presentation suggests that merit is like money in the bank which will be paid out in due time. Wawrykow has correctly presented Aquinas’s position in the relevant question of the Summa. However, it is possible to consider the questions on merit differently. Rather than studying these questions as an isolated treatise, they can be understood as part of the architecture of the Summa. Such an approach takes the topic of merit out of its isolation, and relates it to the discussion of human happiness which forms the starting point for the prima secundae. It is becoming increasingly clear that Aquinas’s theological positions developed as a result of his lectures on Scripture. Therefore, I will first touch upon the discussion of merit in Aquinas’s commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Although this is far from the only source that can inform the present discussion, it is a useful case study that demonstrates how understanding Aquinas through the lens of his biblical commentaries may inform a theological debate. It is also the commentary that Pinckaers referred to in support of his argument for the structure of the prima secundae. Merit and the Beatitudes in the Commentary on Matthew Aquinas’s commentary on Matthew provides us with an integrated discus Ten Klooster, Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes, 136–40. Joseph Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). 37 38 190 Anton M. ten Klooster sion of topics which are divided into different articles in his systematic works.39 It is therefore a useful source in our effort to understand the prima secundae as a unified discussion. We already noted that the discussion of the Beatitudes in the Summa seems to be separated from other questions, the questions on merit included. It is by reading the Matthew commentary that we can see the Summa with fresh eyes and that we can see the relation between these two topics. Keeping that in mind, we will take a closer look at the two more extensive discussions on merit that can be found in the commentary on Matthew. Merit is discussed in the context of two questions: human happiness and divine judgment. The first of these discussions is the commentary on the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3–10, and the second is part of Aquinas’s comments on the last judgment on the basis of Matthew 25:31–46. What is noteworthy about the commentary on the Beatitudes is that it is preceded by a thematic prologue. The first subject is the question of happiness: what do people say it is, and how are the Beatitudes the Lord’s answer to this question? People may seek happiness in an abundance of riches, but Christ says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” In this way, Aquinas describes each beatitude as a statement that precludes a certain conception of happiness. Having established the Beatitudes as the key Christian text on happiness, he then goes on to describe the structure of each Beatitude. It is here that he presents a more extensive discussion of merit. He believes that each begins with a description of a meritum. This meritum refers to a meritorious action that follows the words “blessed are.” It is through this type of action that a person acts toward the end of happiness promised by Christ. This promise is given in the praemium, the reward: “for they . . . .” In the first Beatitude, poverty in spirit is the meritum, and the kingdom of heaven the praemium. When we follow Aquinas’s interpretation of the Beatitudes, we see that he describes the relation between merit and reward as a relation of promise and fulfillment. The poor in spirit receive the kingdom, because Christ promises it to them. Those who mourn will be consoled, because Christ promises it to them. And so on for the other Beatitudes. For the text of the commentary on Matt 5:1–10, see Anton ten Klooster, “Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes: Edition of the Basel Manuscript,” Jaarboek Thomas Instituut Utrecht 36 (2017): 41–87. Many scholars have raised important questions with regard to the reliability of the text. Most of these are addressed in Anton ten Klooster, “The Two Hands of Thomas Aquinas: The Reportationes of the Commentary on Matthew,” Angelicum 91, no. 4 (2014): 855–79. All other quotations from Super Matt below are from the Marietti edition and citations use the Marietti numbers. All translations are my own. 39 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 191 But how does the meritum come about? In the prologue, Aquinas answers this question in detail.40 He begins by describing Aristotle’s concept of heroic virtue. Such a form of action “above the human manner” is also designated by the merit of the Beatitudes. Yet, in the Beatitudes this is a graced form of action, for the merits are “either acts of the gifts, or acts of the virtues according as they are perfected by the gifts.”41 Although the connection of virtue to the gifts of the Holy Spirit may be unsurprising to those familiar with the Summa, it appears rather abruptly in the Matthew commentary. Merit is presented here as a form of virtuous action, performed under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. One of the reasons to perform these actions is that they are part of the new law. To Aquinas everything that is said in the Sermon on the Mount is a concrete application of the merits described in the Beatitudes: “Just as Moses first set down the commandments, and afterwards said many things which were all referred back to the commandments given, so Christ in his teaching first sets forth these Beatitudes, to which all the other things are reduced.”42 To merit means more than obeying the law. The orientation of meritorious action becomes clear in Aquinas’s remarks on each individual Beatitude. To merit means to act toward the final end: happiness. In moving toward this final end, the subject already begins to participate in the happiness that is strived for. The reward will be had fully in the next life, but in this life it is possible to have it “as a beginning and imperfectly [secundum inchoationem et imperfecte].”43 To use the example of the beatitude of the merciful: those who show mercy are promised that mercy will be given to them. Being merciful is a way of acting toward the final end of attaining God’s mercy, which is found in its fullest form in heaven. Yet, divine mercy already begins in this life, in the loosening of one’s sins, and by the removal of temporal defects.44 The further we progress in the commentary on the Beatitudes, the clearer the connection between merit and reward becomes. At the summit, we arrive at the beatitude of the peacemakers. They have established a “tranquility of order” in their life, where they are subject to Super Matt, no. 409–10. Super Matt, no. 410. Cf. Super Matt, no. 416. 42 Super Matt, no. 411. 43 Super Matt, no. 413. 44 Super Matt, no. 431: “This mercy is begun in this life in two ways. First, because sins are loosed: who forgives all your iniquities (Ps 103:3). Second, because he removes temporal defects, such that he makes his sun to rise (Matt 5:45); yet it will be perfected in the future, when every misery, both of guilt and of punishment, will be taken away. O Lord, your mercy is in heaven (Ps 36:6). And this is for they will obtain mercy.” 40 41 192 Anton M. ten Klooster God, their lower motions are subject to reason, and animals are subject to man. Such an exceptional order is the beginning of heavenly peace and is found only in holy people, yet true peace still awaits in heaven. In meritorious action, the person is acting toward the happiness promised by Christ in the Beatitudes and begins to share in it. In the prologue Aquinas spoke of merit as a form of action that is perfected by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This theme recurs in the commentary on each Beatitude, as each one is connected to one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. In this connection, and in relating the Beatitudes to specific parts of the Sermon on the Mount, Aquinas’s dependence on Augustine’s commentary on the Sermon comes to the fore. When both of them speak of the Christian life in terms of living the Beatitudes, with the help of the Holy Spirit, they present an understanding of the Christian life as a life of grace. Because when we speak of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are speaking of grace itself. To realize this is vital for a proper understanding of merit. Merit does not come about without divine action; it requires God’s freely given grace. But at the same time merit is described in terms of human action. Although the form of virtue described in the Beatitudes may be heroic, even above the human manner, it is performed by humans. So there is also no merit without human action. In this way, the commentary on the Beatitudes presents us with a discourse on merit in which God’s grace and human action are intertwined, with the latter depending on the former. But how does merit lead to reward? We saw that Aquinas believes that an inchoate form of this reward can be had in this life, and that its perfection is only given in the next. Still, he is careful to avoid the impression that there is a sort of mechanical relation between them, as if one could set the parameters of life in such a way that a heavenly reward is inevitable. The movement from merit to the eventual reward goes by way of divine judgment. Commenting on Matthew 25:31–46, a passage famous for its presentation of the corporal works of mercy, Aquinas again takes up the terms “merit” and “reward.” In the Beatitudes, the reward of the kingdom of heaven was promised. Here we are at the point where the reward of the kingdom is given: “‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt 25:34). To Aquinas, the last judgment is a judgment of our merits. And the reward of eternal happiness that is given for it finds its cause in two things: “One on God’s part, i.e., God’s blessing, another on our part, i.e., the merit which is from free will. For men should not be idle, but should cooperate with God’s grace.”45 Again, Aquinas ties in merit as an exercise of free will Super Matt, no. 2096. 45 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 193 with the gratuity of God’s gift of the kingdom. Although the treatment of merit in this section is less systematic than it is in the comments on the Beatitudes, it leaves us with a number of relevant insights. It underscores the fact that Aquinas considers merit as a cause for the attainment of the kingdom, and thus meritorious action as a form of action which is principally directed toward eternal happiness. This is an important remark vis-àvis conceptions of merits which restrict themselves to considering merit as an answer to the question “who gets into heaven?” Heaven is indeed the reward, the end toward which meritorious action is directed. But merit is not left at the door of heaven, having secured a person’s entrance into eternal glory. Rather, the person begins to receive the fullness of that which is had in part in this life: participation in the eternal happiness of God. What is also stressed is that grace is the principle of both merit and reward. Human action is considered, but insofar as it depends on grace. Happiness is achieved, but only through grace. By making divine judgment the “bridge” from merit to reward, Aquinas avoids presenting merit as something that leaves God in debt to a human being. Reward is not something which is the sum of one’s actions, but rather that which is granted to a person by God, recognizing what his grace has realized in that person. We began our discussion of the commentary with the Beatitudes. They are given at the onset of the ministry of Christ. There, he promises true happiness to all those who listen to his words and act upon them. The Beatitudes contain the promise of happiness, and by instructing about meritorious action they also describe the way toward happiness. In the last judgment, we have arrived at the last step on the way. All actions are subject to the judgment of God. It is then that each accounts for his merits, or lack thereof. In these two sections of the commentary we have discovered that Aquinas makes use of the term merit to describe actions that are directed toward the final end of happiness. The commentary offers us a fresh perspective on human action and its final end. There, “merit” is a dynamic reality, rather than a mechanical concept. It is the term to describe the form of human action that is properly ordered toward the final end. As we will see, such an understanding of acting toward the final end is also helpful in recognizing the structure of the Summa. The Pursuit of Happiness and the Prima Secundae The opening questions of the prima secundae stress the importance of both human action and the grace of God in the human person’s pursuit of the final end of eternal happiness. In what follows we will speak of the Christian life in light of the prima secundae, without intending to conflate this with the Christian life itself. What relation between human 194 Anton M. ten Klooster action and the grace of God do we find in the Summa? The answer can be found in a proper understanding of the term “merit.” In this notion, God’s grace and human action are both present and directed toward the final end. Merit, more specifically congruent merit, comes down to the human person making the best use of his powers and being compensated by God according to the abundance of God’s powers.46 It is by making use of his powers—by virtuous action—that a person merits. This orders him to eternal happiness, and constitutes the motion toward his eventual enjoyment of the divine goodness.47 Merit thus describes the human person in motion toward the final end, thrust forward by infused charity. Reward is not merely a wage for the laborer; “the recompense [praemium] is the end-term of merit.”48 The two terms used by Aquinas, motus and terminus, are important to our understanding of merit and reward. These terms underline that merit and reward are not the same, since nothing can be at the same time the movement toward an end (motus) and the end itself (terminus). Merit is the motus, a form of graced action, and the end of this movement is achieved in eternal life.49 The reward of eternal happiness is then the terminus ad quem of meritorious action. In the closing lines of the prima secundae Aquinas says: “[The good] are guided by such temporal benefits and misfortunes to blessedness. And let this suffice for what we have to say about the moral life in general.”50 These concluding remarks are a response to the question of happiness. As such, they form a beautiful inclusio with the opening questions of the prima secundae. There, Aquinas famously states that the end of all human action is happiness as it is found in God. He also posits that the moral quality of an action is related to its end.51 In our discussion, it means that an action can be called good, and meritorious, insofar as it is directed toward the final end of happiness. But if we want to consider the question of merit in light of the end of happiness, we should move from the level of individual questions and articles to that of the books of the Summa. Therefore, we will first look at the imago Dei as a structuring element for the Summa as a whole.52 Then we will look at how happiness is the key word to under ST I-II, q. 114, a. 3, resp. ST I–II. q. 114, a. 2, resp.; a. 4, resp. 48 ST I-II, q. 114, a. 8, ad 1; cf. In III sent., d. 30, q. 1, a. 5. 49 ST I-II q. 114 a. 8, resp. 50 ST I-II, q. 114, a. 10, ad 4. 51 ST I-II, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3. 52 I am indebted to Prof. Henk Schoot (Tilburg University) for pointing out the relevance of the larger structure of the Summa to my efforts to understand the topic of merit. 46 47 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 195 standing the design of the prima secundae. This will help us to see that the topic of merit plays a role in other questions as well. At the beginning of the Summa, Aquinas announces that he will speak of God “as the beginning and end of all things and of reasoning creatures especially.”53 The beginning of the secunda pars specifies what this means: the human person is made in the image of God.54 After having treated of God as the exemplar of this image in the prima pars, in the secunda “we go on to look at this image, that is to say, at man as the source of actions which are his own and fall under his responsibility and control.”55 Although this image may be tarnished by sin, through grace it can be restored. The trajectory of restoration is understood in light of the life of Christ, considered in the tertia pars, who “showed in his person that path of truth which, in rising again, we can follow to the blessedness of eternal life.”56 In the prologues, we find words that indicate movement. Human beings are brought forth by God, and try to proceed through this life on the path of virtue, aided by grace, but also stumbling through vice and sin. Through the acta et passa of Christ, and in his sacraments, the completion of this earthly journey is indicated and made possible.57 The way of the restoration of the imago Dei is synchronous with the way toward happiness. Human beings are masters of their own action because they are made in the image of God, and human beings strive toward happiness. These two realities are considered together because they have the same end: God himself. The restoration of the human person to the image of God “by likeness of glory” is achieved in patria: true and full happiness is achieved in patria.58 Human action is directed toward the happiness of eternal life, where the earthly journey to restore the broken imago Dei is completed. As we saw, the order of the imago Dei is most closely mirrored by the life of the peacemakers, which forms the summit of the Beatitudes.59 Because they are so close to the divine ordering of things, they are the closest to true happiness. The prima secundae has the question of happiness at its heart. Traditionally, it is therefore considered as the presentation of Aquinas’s moral theology. But we do well to bear in mind that distinctions between dogmatic theology, ST I, q. 2, prol. See ST I, q. 93, aa. 1, 4. 55 ST I-II, q. 1, prol. 56 ST III, q. 1, prol. 57 For the importance of the expression “acta et passa of Christ,” see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Le Christ En Ses Mystères: La Vie Et L’Oeuvre De Jésus Selon Saint Thomas D’Aquin, vol. 1 (Paris: Desclée, 1999), 20–27. 58 ST I, q. 93, a. 4, resp. 59 Super Matt, no. 438; cf. ST I, q. 95, a. 1, resp. 53 54 196 Anton M. ten Klooster moral theology, and spirituality were made after Aquinas’s time. To him, sacra doctrina encompassed speech about the immanent Trinity, the quality of human action, prayer, Christ, and all other topics that are now categorized in different fields of theology. So it is perfectly natural to consider questions of merit and divine justice, usually relegated to the domain of dogmatic theology, in close relation to what we now call moral theology. In order to do so, we will first discuss the place of the question of happiness in the prima secundae, and we will then expand on how this affects our understanding of merit. It is usually assumed that the discussion of happiness is limited to the first five questions of the prima secundae. There Aquinas posits that all human beings act toward a final end, that the final end is happiness, and that true happiness is found in God. However, as Pinckaers noted, it is rather odd that Aquinas seems to leave the Beatitudes out of his discussion of happiness.60 In light of what we learned from the commentary on Matthew, this is indeed startling. Pinckaers therefore argued that the first five questions laid out the framework for a treatise on happiness that spanned across the first seventy questions of the prima secundae. I would argue that this framework may even overarch the entire volume. As we saw, the prima secundae ends with questions on grace and merit. In similar fashion, Aquinas completes his discussion on happiness at the beginning of the prima secundae by positing the necessity of grace and merit.61 Having established that happiness consists in a perfect operation of the speculative intellect, he asks whether a person reaches happiness by being acted upon by a higher creature. The answer to this question is that indeed he does, because “the Lord will give grace and glory.”62 Although creatures are bound by the laws of nature, grace makes it possible to achieve those things that lie beyond their natural abilities. This section would then correspond to questions 109–13 of the prima secundae. Before moving to the final question—“does every human being desire happiness?”—Aquinas first asks whether good deeds are required in order to gain happiness from God. The terminology of his reply is the same as that of question 114: a human being “reaches [happiness] through many motions of activity, which are called merits.”63 First comes grace, then comes merit. Aquinas’s discussion of the gifts and the Beatitudes follows this principle. He begins by discussing the gifts, which create in the person the dispositions to act according to the Pinckaers, “Beatitude and the Beatitudes,” 123. ST I-II, q. 5, aa. 6–7. 62 ST I-II, q. 5, a. 6, sc. 63 ST I-II, q. 5, a. 7, resp. The Blackfriars translation reads “which are called his merits,” but I find this translation both inaccurate and confusing. 60 61 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 197 prompting of the Holy Spirit.64 Then he expounds on the Beatitudes. This discussion in the Summa presupposes the distinction between merit and reward as it is found in the commentary on Matthew. In the first part of each Beatitude, its merit, we find a description of a meritorious form of action as it is perfected by the gift of the Holy Spirit.65 What is interesting about the questions is that Aquinas presents these actions as preparations for happiness: “Those things which are proposed in the beatitudes in the role of merit are preparations or dispositions for beatitude”; the reward is the attainment of this happiness.66 New perspectives open up when we consider the discussion of merit in the commentary and the use of merit as the main arch connecting the beginning and end of the prima secundae. These insights allow us to speak in a more unified way of the relation between God’s grace and human action. In fact, they allow us to consider the entire prima secundae as a long discussion on the pursuit of happiness. The following is my proposal to do so. The End of Human Action: Happiness Happiness is the final end, the nature of happiness. • It is an activity of the human person. • The pursuit of happiness requires grace. • One merits the final end—human cooperation with grace. qq. 1–5 The Human Person on the Way toward Happiness Human Action The nature and quality of human action Impulses on the acting person, the passions Formation of the acting person, habituation and acquisition of virtue qq. 6–21 qq. 22–48 qq. 49–61 The Transformation of Human Action by Grace Union of the soul with God, infusion of virtues Infusion of habitual gifts: the gifts of the Holy Spirit ST I-II, q. 68, a. 1, resp. ST I-II, q. 69, a. 2–3. 66 ST I-II, q. 69, a. 2, resp. 64 65 qq. 62–67 q. 68 198 Anton M. ten Klooster Human Action Formed by Grace Exterior actions: the Beatitudes Interior actions: the fruits of the Holy Spirit q. 69 q. 70 The Pursuit of Happiness throughout Life Human Frailty and Acquired Vices Distort the Pursuit of Happiness Sin and vice qq. 71–89 Reorientation of Human Action by Divine Law The old law The new law of the Gospel qq. 90–105 qq. 106–8 Attaining Happiness The necessity of grace for attaining happiness Cooperation with grace, meriting eternal happiness qq. 109–13 q. 114 As I have underscored elsewhere in this article, this is a proposal and not a claim to a definitive interpretation of the Summa. It is an effort to do justice to the centrality of question of happiness in Aquinas’s work, a sample of which we saw in the reflections on the commentary on Matthew. My own work has focused on the opening questions, those on the infused virtues, gifts, Beatitudes, and fruits, and the final questions on grace. I hope this will prove a sufficient starting point. Life in the Spirit We have moved from the level of single questions to that of the structure of an entire book of the Summa. Now I will move back to the place of the Beatitudes and fruits in the prima secundae. Earlier we saw that many scholars struggle to account for them. Yet they are far from ornamental. There are literally dozens of questions on the things that influence and form human action: passions, habits and virtues. They are followed by merely two questions in which Aquinas speaks of actus. We should therefore read consider them attentively. Due to constraints of space I cannot discuss the questions on the Beatitudes and fruits in great detail.67 What For a detailed discussion see ten Klooster, Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes, 162–81. 67 The Beatitudes, Merit, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Prima Secundae 199 I will do is clarify a number of things about them that I feel are either ignored or misrepresented, before briefly touching upon the repercussions of my proposal for understanding the moral life of the Christian. As for the major misrepresentation, I hope to have already shown that the Beatitudes are not an ornamental part of the prima secundae. They are the key to understanding Aquinas’s theology of happiness, especially when we consider their discussion throughout his works. Pinckaers has done groundbreaking work bringing this insight to the fore, but there is still a lot of work to be done. The emphasis on the Beatitudes also helps to rebuke criticism that Aquinas’s moral theology is merely a baptized version of the Nicomachean Ethics. There is no doubt about the high esteem in which Aquinas holds the philosopher. But when he speaks of the pursuit of happiness he first establishes the absolute necessity of grace, and speaks of the actus in pursuit of that end by drawing from Scripture. When we use “happiness” as the interpretative key to the prima secundae there is no need to introduce metaphors that were unknown to Aquinas. This approach, as well as some others, also runs the risk of reducing moral theology to a discussion of human psychology. But it is in the concrete actions of human life, in all its messiness, that a person pursues happiness with the aid of grace and instructed and formed by divine law. The actions on the way toward happiness are the Beatitudes. These actions are meritorious: it is through them that a person can merit eternal life. But the perfection of these actions does not depend on human capacities: it depends on the soul’s connection to God through the infusion of the theological virtues. These actions must be formed by the higher habitus of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And it is thus that they are the fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit, even when they are actions of the human person. In an article published shortly after his death in 2008, Pinckaers reflected on Augustine’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount and its influence on Aquinas’s moral theology. He restated his conviction that to Aquinas the Christian life is primarily a life in the Spirit.68 The questions at the center of the prima secundae affirm this by directing the attention to the infused virtues, the gifts, the Beatitudes, and the fruits. Our reading of the commentary on Matthew clarifies notions from the Summa and corroborates the theory that the prima secundae can be read as a theological reflection on the pursuit of happiness. The movement toward this final end takes place through meritorious actions. To attain happiness Servais Pinckaers, “Le Commentaire du Sermon sur la Montagne par Saint Augustin et la Morale de Saint Thomas,” Revue d’éthique et de théologie morale 253, no. 1 (2009): 20. 68 200 Anton M. ten Klooster is to merit it, and the Beatitudes are the words from Scripture that best describe the types of action that lead us toward happiness and give us an initial share in it. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 201–236 201 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity according to St. Thomas Aquinas1 Barrett H. Turner Mount St. Mary’s University Emmitsburg, MD Introduction While reading St. Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of the passions of Christ’s soul in the tertia pars, one may be surprised to encounter a term not previously mentioned in the Summa theologiae [ST]. The term is propassio. Derived from St. Jerome’s exegesis of Christ’s sorrow in the Garden of Gethsemane, the term originally signified a sort of half-passion or first movement of a stifled passion. Perhaps baffled by this Stoic infiltration into Thomas’s discussion of the passions, few scholars link Thomas’s treatment of Christ’s experience of propassio to the moral exemplarity of Christ and thus to moral theology. Even Craig Steven Titus’s article discerning “the quality of Christ’s passions and their relevance for Christian ethics” does not relate the propassiones of Christ to moral theology, despite giving a brief (and slightly mistaken) exposition of this aspect of Christ’s affectivity.2 Perhaps the general reason for this lack of connection An earlier version of this article was presented at the 36th Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference at Villanova University, October 22, 2011. 2 Craig Steven Titus, “Passions in Christ: Spontaneity, Development, and Virtue,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 53–87, at 53 and 81–82. Titus is interested to show that the propassiones of Christ are spontaneous but in accordance with the predisposition of reason. This confuses the principle of a passion with its effect, as Summa 1 202 Barrett H. Turner between Christ’s propassiones and his moral exemplarity is that Christ’s virtuous experience of propassio seems a function of his unique status as the God-Man, and is therefore not a model or ideal for other humans. For this reason, other scholars have raised doubts about the coherence of Thomas’s affirmation both of the exemplarity of Christ’s virtuous passions and also of the unique features of Christ’s humanity. That Christ possessed the Beatific Vision and that he moved all the parts of his soul only insofar as he willed by divine dispensation “introduces significant discontinuities between Christ’s affectivity and ours,” as Nicholas Lombardo posits.3 In other words, the exemplarity of Christ for man is lost when Christ’s humanity is elevated in the hypostatic union to a state beyond all reach. This article aims to strengthen the link between Thomas’s doctrine of Christ’s moral exemplarity for the baptized and his treatment of Christ’s unique humanity by looking at the term propassio as it is applied to Christ and to other men. Thomas’ reliance on Jerome’s terminology gives the concept of propassio an alien air, liable to dismissal as Thomas’s convoluted attempt to retain a Stoic term out of respect for Jerome. Yet Thomas elevates the term propassio from its Stoic provenance to become a term for describing an essential facet of Christ’s fully virtuous human affectivity: that Christ’s passions, even when intense, never deflected his soul from its ordination to God the Father. As we will see, propassio is an integral part of every virtuous passion, and this is why all of Christ’s passions are propassiones. My contention is that the fullness of grace, along with the fullness of virtue and gifts, in the human soul of Christ is a sufficient cause of his experience of the passions as propassiones. Furthermore, propassiones serve as a normative ideal for the justified, thereby linking Christ’s perfected humanity to his moral exemplarity for his members. His soul is both instrumental and exemplary cause of our salvation, insofar as he both theologiae [ST] III, q. 15, a. 4, clarifies. By “spontaneous,” Titus means sudden but consequent passion. In referring to both spontaneity and effect as propassio, Titus follows the mistake of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (see below). Of course, a passion must be both consequent and preservative of reason’s imperium to be virtuous. 3 Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P., The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 217; cf. 216–18. Lombardo cites in agreement Boyd Taylor Coolman, “The Salvific Affectivity of Christ according to Alexander of Hales,” The Thomist 71 (2007): 1–38, esp. 29–31. This article addresses Coolman’s understandable question whether Thomas’s Christ suffered in his reason or experienced compassion, but uses Thomas’ Compendium theologiae to resolve the question in a way different from Coolman, thereby reconciling Alexander’s and Thomas’s treatments (see second section below). The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 203 confers grace and shows how to live by it. At the same time, the experience of even the just in this life will entail discontinuities with Christ’s experience of the passions, on account of the continued presence of the fomes peccati. Even here, however, Thomas assumes that the emotions of the justified will become more conformed to Christ over time, even if never fully attaining the ideal of Christ’s exclusive experience of what I will call fully virtuous propassiones. This discontinuity between Christ and his members arises on account of the unruly first motions of passions attributable to the fomes, even if such first motions do not deflect reason and thereby remain propassiones in a less virtuous sense. In this way, the life of virtue by grace enables the just to experience only propassiones, either in the partially virtuous sense of an incomplete passion from an illicit object or passions that anticipate reason (antecedent passion) or even in the fully virtuous sense of Christ’s own passions, that is, deep passions entirely in accord with reason but never deflecting reason from God’s rule. The first section of this paper examines how Thomas expands the original Stoic meaning of the term propassio from a mere half-passion to a potentially intense yet fitting affective response that does not overwhelm reason. He thereby opens a space for intense passions in Christ that extend the reign of reason into affectivity, including passions of anger and sadness that the Stoics did not allow in the wise man. The second section clarifies that according to Thomas’s doctrine, the sufficient cause of these propassiones of Christ is his fullness of grace and virtue, and that the unique humanity of Christ is not an impediment to his moral exemplarity in this regard. Christ is the exemplar of virtuous living before God for the human race. This section accordingly responds to those who would say that Thomas’s treatment of Christ’s humanity is detrimental to his doctrine of Christ’s moral exemplarity, namely, that Christ’s unique affectivity is more a function of a divine dispensation than the fullness of grace in Christ’s human soul. To the contrary, this section argues that the divine power is necessary more to restrain the Beatific Vision from glorifying Christ’s body before the Passion. Finally, the third section will demonstrate that Thomas thought that not only Christ but other humans, “the just” and “the wise,” were characterized over against “sinners” by their experience of propassiones. Indeed, Thomas holds that propassio is a necessary element of every virtuous passion. At the same time, this final section will highlight the way in which even those in Christ will not attain Christ’s moral perfection in this life on account of the fomes peccati. Throughout the paper, the term “asymptotic” will be used to indicate that, at best, the grace of Christ enables the justified to have increasingly virtuous passions without the 204 Barrett H. Turner total elimination of concupiscence in this life. That is, by Christ’s grace and the infused virtues, unruly passions from the fomes may be reduced in this life but never removed, just as a curve will forever approach an asymptote without meeting it. In this regard, the justified’s experience of only partially virtuous antecedent propassiones is a sign of Christ’s grace working in them, preventing the materially disordered desires of the flesh from becoming formally rebellious against Christ’s reign in his members. Propassio in Christ according to St. Thomas Thomas’s use of the term propassio importantly develops the Stoic suspicion of the passions to suit his own goal of portraying Christ as the God-Man, in whom our nature is brought into such union with the divine nature that his human affectivity is perfected. He employs the term propassio sparsely throughout his career, only twenty-eight times.4 The sprinkle of uses is at its thinnest in his early years, with only twelve occurrences before 1268, most of which are direct quotations of other authors, for example, six from Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the sources therein, and four from Jerome in the Catena aurea.5 Thomas’s treatment of Christ’s affectivity in the tertia pars cites Jerome’s commentary on Matthew 26:37, where the term propassio occurs. The term, however, is of Stoic provenance and was used in anthropological contexts. The Stoics held that a virtuous man would not experience passion resulting from an evil object, especially sadness, According to a search for propassio using www.corpusthomisticum.org/it/index. age on August 28, 2014, excluding spurious works. 5 In III sent., d. 15, q. 2, a. 3, qa. 3, expos. (five occurrences); In IV sent., d. 12, q. 3, a. 2, qa. 3, expos. (one occurrence); Catena aurea on Matthew 5, lec. 16 (four occurrences). Thomas’s two other uses of the term before 1268 occur at Super Isaiam 42 and De veritate, q. 26, a. 8. “Though Thomas exploits the term to his great advantage in the treatise on Christ’s passions in the Summa, his analysis of Christ’s human affectivity in the commentary on the Sentences fails to mention propassion, despite the fact that his reproduction of Lombard’s text includes the term” (Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas [Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2009; originally 2002], 369). To supplement Gondreau’s comment, however, Thomas does have Christ in view when he comments on the Servant of Isaiah 42:4 (non erit tristis). Thomas has to reconcile this with Christ’s sadness in the Gospels. Thomas says that the Servant will not be sad in corde, but he will have propassio tristitiae. Thomas then cites Matt 26, tristis anima mea etc. (Leonine ed., 28:177). Thomas uses this same distinction years later in his commentary on the Gospel of John, though without using the term propassio itself (see below). The division of Thomas’s commentary places the comment about Christ’s “propassion of sadness” right after a discussion of the fullness of grace in Christ’s human soul, which is further evidence for the plausibility of this article’s argument in the second section. 4 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 205 since no real loss could ever befall the virtuous man. At most, the wise man might experience an initial, involuntary movement of the sense appetite. For instance, a wise man might experience the propassio of anger when he perceives an injury, yet he does not experience the full passion of anger, since he does not consent to the desire for vengeance.6 The difficulty for patristic Christian exegetes was that the Gospels portray Christ as angry and sorrowful, even “greatly distressed” (Mark 14:33) and “troubled in spirit” ( John 13:21). Jerome’s appeal to Stoic propassio in order to explain Christ’s sorrow as virtuous tended to deny the Son of God’s passivity, just as Stoics denied such passivity in the virtuous man.7 Christ’s propassiones were exceptional for Jerome, as they were not sinful, but they still smacked of the weakness of the flesh. We may say that Christ’s propassiones were enough to show that Christ had assumed our nature entirely, but not enough to entail sin. Christ experienced only the sudden beginnings of passion from the intense anguish he experienced in Gethsemane. The supreme rationality and virtue of Christ kept such movements from becoming full-blown passions, which would have been sinful. Thus, when Christ “began to be sorrowful and troubled” (Matt 26:37), Jerome emphasizes that Christ only began to be sorrowful and troubled. Hence the words Thomas takes from Jerome’s commentary on the Gospel of Matthew for use in the Catena aurea and again later in the tertia pars: “Our Lord indeed was truly saddened, in order to prove the reality of the man [homo] which he assumed; but in order that passion should not be master over his mind, ‘he began to be saddened’ by a propassion; for it is one thing to be saddened, and another to start to be saddened.”8 Beyond this, Jerome does not clarify why Christ experienced Richard A. Layton discusses this example in Seneca in “Propatheia: Origen and Didymus on the Origin of the Passions,” Vigiliae Christianae 54 (2000): 262–82, at 264–65. 7 Jerome himself “appropriated the concept from Origen and Didymus,” the former using it only in anthropological contexts, and the latter being the first to use it in regard to Christ (Layton, “Propatheia,” 262n2; see also Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 367). 8 Catena aurea on Matt 26, lec. 10, citing Jerome’s In Matth. 26:37 (author’s translation; Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris angelici ordinis praedicatorum Opera omnia ad fidem optimarum editionum accurate recognita, Parmae typis Petri Fiaccadori, 25 vols. [New York: Musurgia, 1948–1950; originally 1852–1873], 11:306b). Checking a Latin database, Jerome does indeed use propassionem instead of passionem in In Matt, indicating that the Latin text used for the Catena aurea is corrupt here. The Parme edition notes that P. Nicolai reads per propassionem. Thomas also records propassionem when citing Jerome at ST III q. 15, a. 4, corp. Therefore, I read the text as per propassionem. 6 206 Barrett H. Turner such a “half-passion.” Was it prior to the judgment of his human reason, leaving Christ liable to the tendency of human affectivity to run ahead of reason, which is itself a result of the fall?9 Ostensibly Jerome was only wanting to affirm of Christ the highest level of human virtue as conceived by the Stoics by denying that he was sad in his spirit. So characterizing Christ in Stoic terms obviously leads to a clash with other Gospel passages. Despite this negative connotation for Christ’s affectivity, the medieval tradition adopted Jerome’s term propassio as a way to hold simultaneously that Christ experienced the Beatific Vision in his human soul and that he had a complete human nature, including affectivity.10 Peter Lombard used the term propassio to describe Christ as one “who voluntarily endures fear and sorrow in such a way that the mind is moved neither from virtue nor from the contemplation of God.”11 After Lombard, Scholastics thus had to describe Christ’s affectivity in a way that preserved his virtue and the possession of the Beatific Vision. In Thomas’s writings, propassio becomes not only a way of harmonizing Christ’s possession of the Beatific Vision with his humanity, but also a way of describing how Christ had strong human passions without losing the direction of reason. In this way, Thomas develops the Stoic inheritance via Jerome. Christ not only began to be sad, pace Jerome, but was sad to a great degree because such sadness was an appropriately deep response to death and sin, the offense of which he knew most accurately as the God-Man. This modification or clarification of Jerome emerges especially in Thomas’s later writings, wherein Chalcedonian Christology meets Aristotelian notions of passion. There he employs the term propassio more frequently than in his early writings, nearly always in connection with Christ’s affectivity, and in conversation with the Stoic objection that the The same question might be asked of St. Maximus the Confessor, who, according to William Cavanaugh, also seemed to discuss Christ’s passions in such a way as to leave room for initial affective movements of Christ’s soul apart from reason and as a feature of our fallen humanity assumed in the Incarnation (Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011], 141–69). Cavanaugh uses Maximus’s Christology to discuss the “sinfulness of the Church.” 10 Kevin Madigan, “Ancient and High-Medieval Interpretations of Jesus in Gethsemane: Some Reflections on Tradition and Continuity in Christian Thought,” Harvard Theological Review 88 (1995): 157–73, at 165. See also Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 67–68, 367–68. Jerome’s appropriation of the concept of propassio “endured throughout the early medieval period to become a fixture in discussions of sin in the school of Laon” (Layton, “Propatheia,” 262n2). 11 Madigan, “Ancient and High-Medieval Interpretations,” 165, commenting on Peter Lombard, Sent. III, d. 15, q. 2. 9 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 207 “wise man” is not sad.12 Propassio, having started as a purely anthropological term, thereby becomes an almost exclusively Christological one in Thomas. Thomas’s mature concept of propassio portrays Christ’s affectivity as intense or deep, yet so moderated by reason’s control that his passions did not overwhelm reason. As Paul Gondreau has made the point: One should not interpret the term propassion as the Thomist equivalent for the Stoic ideal of the virtuous man who is unswayed in any manner by his affective disposition. . . . To understand properly the notion of propassion, then, one must view it in a negative sense, i.e., as that which affirms that Jesus’ imperium of reason was in no sense perturbed or manipulated by the passions.13 Despite the nominal link to Jerome’s Stoic anthropology and “half-passions,” Thomas modifies the term in accordance with his Aristotelean categories. The common element for Jerome, Peter, and Thomas is that propassiones do not disturb or deflect reason and are therefore not sinful, though by this they do not mean the same thing. Thomas’s own treatment of propassio begins with De veritate: A man is completely changed by such emotions when they remain not only in the lower appetite but also drag the higher to itself. In truth, when they are only in the lower appetite, then the man is altered by them only partially, as it were [quasi secundum partem], from which they are called in this way “propassions,” but in the first way, “passions.”14 Whether propassiones are virtuous or venially sinful depends on whether From 1268 until 1273: Super Matth 26, lec. 5 (six times [propassio/propassionem]); Super Ioan 13, lec. 4 (once [propassio]); ST III, q. 15, a. 4, corp. (thrice [propassio, propassionem, propassionis]); a. 6, ad 1 and 2 (twice [propassionem]); a. 7, ad 1 (twice [propassionem]); q. 46, a. 7, obj. 3 (once [propassio]); Super Psalmos 2, no. 3 (once [propassio]); Super Psalmos 54, no. 3 (once [propassio]). Dating taken from Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin. Sa personne et son oeuvre, 2nd ed. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2002), 483–525. Gondreau is right that Thomas “makes significant use of [the term propassio] only near the end of his career” (Passions of Christ’s Soul, 368). 13 Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 371–72. 14 De veritate, q. 26, a. 8 (Leonine ed., 22/3:776a). All translations from this work are by the author. 12 208 Barrett H. Turner the other integral parts of virtuous passion are present: lawful object and arousal consequent to reason’s judgment. Here one can see that Thomas does speak occasionally of propassio in purely anthropological or moral ways, even if only to answer a question about Christ’s passions.15 Other texts applying the term propassio to virtuous humans other than Christ, presented in the third section, will provide a link between Christ’s perfectly virtuous affectivity and his role as exemplar of virtue for the faithful. For now, let us note that Thomas agrees with the Stoics that whatever Christ’s passions, they cannot deflect or trouble his reason’s ordination to God. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, for example, Thomas denies that Christ’s passions “troubled” his reason. Sometimes [a] perturbation remains within the bounds of reason, and sometimes it exceeds the bounds of reason, namely, when the reason itself is troubled. And although this latter condition quite often occurs in us, it is not found in Christ, since he is the Wisdom of the Father. Indeed, it is not found in any wise person; thus the Stoic tenet that one who is wise is not troubled, that is, in his reason.16 The type of passion mentioned here, which does not exceed the bounds of reason so as to trouble reason, is a propassio, though the word does not appear. To be troubled in one’s reason is to have a passion that has welled up outside of reason’s imperium. Here Thomas even assents to the Stoic principle that passions ought not trouble reason, though he understands the principle somewhat differently than they. At the same time, Thomas Therefore, Gondreau and William C. Mattison III are nearly correct in writing, respectively, that “Thomas nowhere speaks of propassion in relation to general human affectivity only” (Passions of Christ’s Soul, 368–69), and, “though Thomas refers to passion vs. propassion in Christ, he never applies this distinction to the human moral life” (“Jesus’ Prohibition of Anger [Mt 5:22]: The Person/Sin Distinction from Augustine to Aquinas,” Theological Studies 68 [2007]: 839–64, at 846n18). The error is minor, considering that Thomas does indeed primarily use the term in his Christological work and nowhere utilizes the term in his systematic expositions of human passion such as in the prima secundae. Thomas’s exposition of Ps 2 is even more an exception, in that Thomas speaks there of human propassio apart from any reference to Christ’s affectivity (see third section below). 16 Super Ioan 12, lec. 5 (emphasis added). Unless otherwise stated, English translations of this work taken from St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 3 vol., trans. Fabian Larcher, O.P., and James A. Weisheipl, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010). When necessary, the Latin of the 1952 Marietti edition hosted on corpusthomisticum.org was consulted. 15 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 209 asserts against the Stoics that Christ truly experienced sadness, which involves a greater troubling of the soul than even fear, on account of a present evil. Thomas notes that “fear, since it is concerned with an evil to come in the future, has less disturbance than sadness, which involves an evil which is present.” Since Christ was truly sad, therefore the Stoic opinion about the wise man “is false because Jesus, who is the highest Wisdom, was troubled.”17 Christ’s passions did not trouble his reason but were true affections, even involving sadness. In order to understand further the nature of propassio in particular, however, one must know what it means for a passion not to transform Christ’s soul completely or for it to drag down reason and yet be a true human emotion. Initially it would appear that the intensity of a passion results in the loss of rational control in the case of a full-blown passion.18 The danger is that the language of “propassion,” “imperfect passion,” and “passion remaining in the sensitive appetite” sounds to our ears as if Christ experiences a “half-passion” in the Stoic sense.19 Jean-Pierre Torrell warns against this line of thinking in reading Thomas. Assigning propassio to Christ “is not to say [Christ’s passions were] like false-passions or selective passions, nor even like the beginnings of passions, but like what they would have been able to be in the state of innocence, so as to remain contained in sensibility without ever carrying along reason in an overflowing tied, for our part, to the very idea of passion.”20 The strength of the “half-passion” objection feeds on the assumption that a genuine passion must overwhelm the soul, carry the person along in an abandonment to the depths of feeling, independent of or even against reason. Aquinas does not share this view, but rather allows for the deep experience of a passion as appropriate for a virtuous individual, without the passion dominating the soul and deflecting one from reason’s direction. “Complete” or “perfect” passion (passio perfecta) does not equal “genuine” or “deeply felt” passion for Thomas. Nor should propassio be conceived as “a ‘spatial’ containment,” but instead we should understand, with Gondreau, that Thomas’s “propas- Super Ioan 13, lec. 4. A similar point is made in ST III, q. 15. See Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 370. 19 Madigan often translates propassio this way when treating Jerome and his Stoic influences, though he rightly notices the inadequacy of that translation with regard to Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’s treatments of Christ’s affectivity (“Ancient and High-Medieval Interpretations,” 169–70). 20 Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Le Christ en ses mystères, vol. 1, La vie et l’œuvre de Jésus selon saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Desclée, 1999), 107 (all translations from this work are the author’s own). 17 18 210 Barrett H. Turner sion is a fully elicited movement of the sensitive appetite.”21 To see this, let us consider how Aquinas describes Christ’s affectivity as rational and yet deeply felt in two concrete instances, the Passion and the death of Lazarus. The first example is Christ’s suffering in the Passion. Thomas holds two positions which seemingly contradict one another. On the one hand, Christ “accepted sadness, the greatest in absolute quantity”; on the other hand, he accepted a sorrow “not exceeding the rule of reason.”22 Christ’s grief surpassed that of every contrite heart, combining sorrow over the loss of his perfect life with grief for the sins of mankind.23 Yet this sorrow was moderate in that it observed the mean. We see the solution to the contradiction once we reject the popular understanding of moderation and remember that Thomas follows Aristotle in setting not a mathematical but a proportional mean for assessing how the passions are moderate.24 Christ experienced great sorrow over the sins of the world, a sorrow following upon his perfect knowledge of their evil, their offensiveness to God, and the loss mankind incurs by them. This uniquely profound sorrow was perfectly reasonable given the facts. Thus, Titus is right as far as it goes to say that “Aquinas distinguishes Jesus’ suffering as a ‘propassion’ since in experiencing His own passion and death, and in sorrowing for the plight of others, He was not deflected from His mission, which involved knowledge, freedom, and surety, that is, a moral act.”25 Yet the suffering of Christ was also at its highest when he sorrowed over the sins of the whole world, and thus his experiencing propassio means that while his sorrow did not deflect reason and struck the proportional mean, he still experienced the greatest sorrow any man had ever had in this life.26 His absolute sorrow was entirely appropriate and fitting while seeing all the sins of mankind, a true response to the ugliness of sin. One must also agree with Steven Jensen, that Christ’s sadness was not final: while it recoiled from his impending death according to voluntas ut natura, this did not prevent his human will from accepting the Passion Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 371. ST III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 2. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of ST are taken from the Benziger edition of the translation by Dominican Fathers. 23 ST III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 4. 24 ST III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 2; see also I-II, q. 64, a. 2, for the concept of the proportional mean. 25 Craig Steven Titus, Resilience and the Virtue of Fortitude: Aquinas in Dialogue with the Psychological Sciences (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 335. 26 In ST III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 3, Thomas excludes comparison between Christ’s sorrow and the sorrow of any soul in hell. 21 22 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 211 in obedience to the Father’s plan (voluntas ut ratio).27 Gondreau also speaks of the intensity of Christ’s fear in Gethsemane, made acute not only by his imminent torture and execution but also by the spiritual suffering he would endure for the sins of the world. In this way the “Son of God suffers unspeakable fear and anguish at the thought of his violent death,” yet this suffering remains in the “conjoined instrument of his sensitive appetite.”28 In other words, Christ’s fear was the greatest ever felt and yet it was a propassio. Torrell speculates that Christ’s passions “were able to be more intense in him owing to his exceptional knowledge of good and evil and because they remained submissive to reason.”29 Torrell means that Christ’s passions always reflected reality accurately through his perfect human knowledge as the God-Man, and because of the strength of his reason and virtue. Thus Christ’s fear is the bodily sign that he understands clearly the coming pain of the Passion, the tragic wickedness of sin, and the loss of his perfect life.30 The second example comes from Thomas’s commentary on the Gospel of John, when Jesus, visiting the grave of Lazarus, “groaned in spirit and troubled himself” (John 11:33; “infremuit spiritu et turbavit se”). Thomas identifies the “trouble” with sadness at the infliction of death on the human race on account of sin and the “groan” with anger at “the cruelty of death and of the devil.”31 In either case, Christ’s passions were proportionate to reality and thus “preserved the moderation of reason.” Christ was saddened at the death of his friend precisely because his reason commanded a proportionate and fitting sadness. Excessive sadness is not excessive because of its depth of feeling but because such sadness “precedes Steven J. Jensen, “Virtuous Deliberation and the Passions,” The Thomist 77 (2013): 216–17. For additional discussion of the “will as nature” versus “will as reason” distinction, see Kevin E. O’Reilly, “‘Father, If It Be Possible, Let This Chalice Pass From Me’: Christ’s Prayer in Gethsemane According to St. Thomas,” Nova et Vetera (English) 15 (2017): 511–13. 28 Paul Gondreau, “St. Thomas Aquinas, the Communication of Idioms, and the Suffering of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 242. 29 Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères, 1:107. 30 See ST III, q. 15, a. 7: Christ had fear “inasmuch as the sensitive appetite naturally shrinks from bodily hurt, by sorrow if it is present, and by fear if it is future.” He did not have the kind of fear which results from uncertainty of the future given his perfect knowledge. On Christ’s sadness on account of the sins of the world, see the text from the Compendium theologiae in the second section below. 31 Super Ioan 11, lec. 5. 27 212 Barrett H. Turner the judgment of reason and is immoderate [i.e., does not hold the mean].”32 Thomas lists three ways in which Christ’s passion of sorrow ought not be conceptualized as arising in his soul: “for an inappropriate reason” (object), “not moderated by reason” (intensity or effect), and “spring[ing] up before the judgment of reason” (antecedent passion).33 The list parallels the three ways in which Christ’s affections differ from ours in ST III, q. 15, a. 4: object, principle, and effect. The concept “not moderated by reason” correlates with the difference in effect found in the Summa, which uses the term propassio.34 That is, Christ’s sadness was neither an antecedent passion nor a “complete” passion dragging down his reason, but was what he calls elsewhere a propassio. Immoderate sadness runs apart from reason’s guidance and thus begins to run blindly, perhaps leading someone to forget Providence. In the case of a friend’s death, moderate passion requires a deeply felt passion. Christ experienced perfectly what human emotions are meant to be: soul–body engagements with the world in light of reason’s apprehension of good or evil. So, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Therefore, to say that a propassio does not drag down reason is to say that the passion goes no further than is reasonable, indeed, no further than the mean set for it by reason’s command. Hence depth of feeling is not necessarily precluded by the notion of propassio, for reason may command the sensitive powers to be moved intensely in light of the situation. Certain events indeed call for depth of feeling as the appropriate human response. In this, Christ is the exemplar not in intensity of passion—for who could suffer as intensely as Christ—but in proportionality. There is an obvious objection to this analysis in that Thomas speaks elsewhere of intense passion impeding reason: “The stronger a passion is, the greater hinderance is it to the man who is swayed by it.”35 As Gondreau notes, this objection stems from the hylomorphic unity of body and soul, as well as the containment of the soul’s powers in its essence. As a result, the intensity of a change in the sensitive appetite and the bodily agitation accompanying it impedes the use of reason.36 Thomas even cites this principle in the context of Christ’s affectivity: “In us the natural order is that the soul’s powers mutually impede each other, i.e., if the operation of one Super Ioan 11, lec. 5. Super Ioan 11, lec. 5. 34 Gondreau also mentions this passage as related to the effects of Christ’s passions (Passions of Christ’s Soul, 363). 35 ST I-II, q. 44, a. 2, ad 2. 36 Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 364–65. 32 33 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 213 power is intense, the operation of the other is weakened.”37 In other words, Christ’s experience of deep emotion under reason’s control may be a point of discontinuity between his passions and ours, perhaps making propassio something proper to Christ only. Yet we should recall that, for Thomas, the “natural order” in us is one in which we are wounded by original sin. In the Garden, the emotions would have been completely obedient to reason and reason ordered to God, on account of the gift of grace (ST I, q. 95, a. 1). In order to better grasp this, let us now consider whether Christ’s propassiones were more a function of his fullness of grace and virtue or a special divine dispensation not found in any other instance of human nature in whatever state. Christ’s Moral Exemplarity and Propassio To prove that Christ experienced propassiones according to the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas is not the same as showing that Christ’s propassiones are exemplary. This section will contend that Christ’s fullness of grace and virtue is a sufficient cause of his propassiones and thus his affectivity is exemplary for us. This prepares for the argument of the third section, that Thomas teaches that propassiones should characterize the affective life of “the just” after the model and in the grace of Christ. Thomas teaches that Christ, in addition to being the mediator of grace, is the exemplar of the life of grace for his members. Christ is the summum exemplar perfectionis, “the supreme model of perfection,” and is exemplum virtutis, “the model of virtue” for mankind.38 The consummate act of this exemplarity was Christ’s atonement. Thomas teaches that one way the Passion saved man was “because thereby [Christ] set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion, which are requisite for man’s salvation. Hence it is written (1 Pet 2:21): Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps.”39 Christ bravely faced his suffering and death for our sake in obedience to the Father’s will. The Passion is an example of virtue, as Titus observes, for “Jesus’ patience offers us a model of well-ordered suffering and sorrow.”40 Christ’s moral exemplarity flows from the fullness of grace, virtue, and ST III, q. 15, a. 9, ad 3. Respectively, Super Ioan 12, lec. 1 (cited in Gondreau, “Aquinas, the Communication of Idioms, and the Suffering of Christ,” 234), and ST III, q. 15, a. 1. 39 ST III, q. 46, a. 3. 40 Titus, Resilience and the Virtue of Fortitude, 334. For more on Christ’s moral exemplarity, see: Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 326–33; Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas d’Aquin, maître spirituel, 2nd edition (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2002), 147–59, 489–93. 37 38 214 Barrett H. Turner gifts in his human soul. Christ had the fullness of grace “inasmuch as grace is possessed in its highest possible excellence and in its greatest possible extension to all its effects.”41 This fullness includes habitual grace because of the human soul’s union with the Word, which would need habitual grace to perfect its operations, and furthermore to mediate habitual grace to the human race.42 Thomas argues that the effects of this grace in Christ’s soul include “the virtues, the gifts [of the Holy Spirit], and the like.”43 In fact, Christ had the virtues so intensely in his human soul that “he had them most perfectly beyond the common mode.”44 Hence Christ had the infused virtues, including the moral virtues, to the greatest degree. The ultimate basis of Christ’s plenitude of virtue is the grace of personal union, whereby the fullness of grace flows from the humanity’s absolute proximity to the divine nature. All other graces existing in Christ’s soul result from the grace of union.45 Thus Christ’s role as the model of virtue comes from his soul’s plenitude of grace, which is a property of the hypostatic union. That Christ was full of grace and virtue means that he would not have experienced the inordinate movements of the passions associated with the material element of original sin, a defect which remains in men who have been elevated to the state of grace.46 Perfect virtue destroys the tendency of sensuality to run against or apart from the mastery of reason. Given that “in Christ the virtues were in their highest degree,” and that the “moral virtues, which are in the irrational part of the soul, make it subject to reason, and so much the more as the virtue is more perfect,” then “the fomes of sin was nowise in [Christ].”47 While the fomes is never eradicated for men born in ST III, q. 7, a. 10. ST III, q. 7, a. 1. 43 ST III, q. 7, a. 9. 44 ST III, q. 7, a. 2, ad 2. By “beyond the common mode,” it is not clear whether Thomas means the infused moral virtues as possessed by those in a state of grace or the blessed (“perfecting” and “perfect virtues,” respectively; see I-II, q. 61, a. 5), or whether Thomas means a mode unique to the assumed humanity of the Word incarnate. It is not clear how any of these differ in species, because they have the same term, differing from the “social or human virtues” (ST I-II, q. 61, a.5). 45 ST III, q. 7, a. 13. 46 ST I-II, q. 82, a. 3. “Aquinas excludes any sinful inclinations from Christ’s person, explaining that since Christ’s passions were virtuous and ordered by reason, his passions were never immoderate or inclined toward sin” (Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 211). 47 ST III, q. 15, a. 2. See Titus, “Passions in Christ,” 69: “Because of this highest perfection of virtue in Christ the fomes of sin never existed in him.” For more on Christ’s lack of original sin in relation to his passions, see: Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 157–66; Gondreau, “Aquinas, the Communication of Idioms, and 41 42 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 215 sin,48 the greater such men grow in virtue and holiness, the more the fomes is diminished and a man approaches the asymptote of Christ’s perfection. The lack of original sin in Christ does not make him less human but more human, for sin is not essential to human nature but is against it.49 As Lombardo explains, “Christ’s affectivity, then, through sanctifying grace, the virtues and the gifts, and his utter lack of sin, is . . . more truly human than ours, which is marked by the wounds of original sin.”50 This general picture of Christ’s moral exemplarity extends to his modeling of virtuous passions, the operations of his perfect virtue. As Lombardo says, Christ “shows us what virtuous affectivity looks like, and therefore what it looks like to be truly human, so that we can imitate him.”51 Commenting on John 12:27, where Jesus looks to his impending suffering and death (“Now is my soul troubled”), Thomas explains why Jesus was willing to be “troubled” in his soul: first, to demonstrate his true humanity; and second, “he wanted to be an example to us.”52 If Christ did not experience trouble in his soul, “he would not have been a satisfactory example of how we should face death.”53 He allowed himself to experience “trouble” in order that “when we are troubled at the prospect of death, we will not refuse to endure it,” but will face it as our Lord did.54 Thomas then cites Hebrews 4:15 to give scriptural warrant for the connection between Jesus’s role as Mediator and his exemplary experience of human passion: “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (RSV).55 Since “the reason of Christ allowed his soul and its inferior powers to act in their own proper way,” he therefore allowed himself to experience the “natural” passion of recoiling from the impending separation of soul from body.56 the Suffering of Christ,” 234–38; Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 211–12. ST I-II, q. 74, a. 3, ad 2. 49 ST III, q. 15, a. 1. 50 Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 206. 51 Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 222. 52 Super Ioan 12, lec. 5. Notice that Thomas has added the aspect of moral exemplarity, whereas Jerome spoke only of an anti-Appollinarian proof in Christ’s affectivity. As a friendly addition to O’Reilly (“Christ’s Prayer in Gethsemane,” 508n21), this text is perhaps a complementary Johannine analogue to the Agony in the Garden, in addition to the high priestly prayer of ch. 17, for here Thomas highlights Christ’s example in facing his death. 53 Super Ioan 12, lec. 5. 54 Super Ioan 12, lec. 5. 55 Super Ioan 12, lec. 5. 56 Super Ioan 12, lec. 5. 48 216 Barrett H. Turner The difficulty that Christ’s exemplarity poses for moral theology is that, according to Thomas, Christ’s experience of the passions differs from our own. After affirming that Christ experienced true passions in his soul, Thomas adds three qualifications: Nevertheless, we must know that the passions were in Christ otherwise than in us, in three ways. First, as regards the object, since in us these passions very often tend towards what is unlawful, but not so in Christ. Secondly, as regards the principle, since these passions in us frequently forestall the judgment of reason; but in Christ all movements of the sensitive appetite sprang from the disposition of the reason. . . . Thirdly, as regards the effect, because in us these movements, at times, do not remain in the sensitive appetite, but deflect the reason; but not so in Christ, since by his disposition the movements that are naturally becoming to human flesh so remained in the sensitive appetite that the reason was nowise hindered in doing what was right. Hence Jerome says (on Matt 26:37) that Our Lord, in order to prove the reality of the assumed manhood, “was sorrowful” in very deed; yet lest a passion should hold sway over his soul, it is by a propassion that he is said to have “ begun to grow sorrowful and to be sad”; so that it is a perfect passion when it dominates the soul, i.e., the reason; and a propassion when it has its beginning in the sensitive appetite, but goes no further.57 The three ways in which Christ’s passions differ from ours are that his passions never tended toward an unlawful object, never arose apart from reason’s disposition (i.e., were always consequent), and never overflowed from the sensitive appetite into the rational part, thereby dominating the soul. This last difference is the aspect of Christ’s virtuous affectivity that Thomas means by the term propassio.58 Similarly, Thomas had earlier ST III, q. 15, a. 4. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., mistakenly identifies all three differences as propassio when he says: “Hence, in Christ the passions never preceded the judgment of reason and the consent of the will, but followed them. Therefore they are preferably called propassion” (Christ the Savior: A Commentary on the Third Part of St. Thomas’ Theological Summa, trans. Dom Bede Rose, O.S.B. [St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1950], 417). As shown above, propassio only regards the movements which remain in the lower appetite and do not “also drag the higher appetite [i.e., rational appetite] to it” (De ver., q. 26, a. 8). For more on this point, see Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 366–72. At the same time, one can say that since propassio is an integral part of virtuous passions, we may speak with Garrigou-Lagrange of 57 58 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 217 affirmed in De veritate that human affectivity in Christ while denying in him the affectivity found in sinners, the passions of the latter being “frequently complete” because they drag away reason. Christ’s passions were never complete in that sense; thus they are propassiones.59 My contention is that these three differences in Christ’s experience of the passions obtain because of the fullness of virtue in Christ’s soul in contrast to our human nature wounded by sin, and not immediately from his being a divine Person or because of Thomas’s affirmation that Christ enjoyed the Beatific Vision in his soul during his earthly ministry. Christ had virtuous human passions because his humanity was full of grace and thus perfect in virtue, however much one might explain the mode of that virtue in relation to the grace of union or his possession of the Vision. It is not simply that Christ is a divine Person but that the divine Person assumed our nature. Therefore the perfection of virtue in his human soul follows. As will be seen in the explanation of De veritate, q. 26, a. 8, below, even Adam had a fully virtuous affectivity before sin. Due to sin men cannot experience passion in the entirely virtuous way in which Christ experienced passion, but in grace they will tend toward his model. An objection to this position stems from Thomas’s treatment of Christ’s unique humanity as the God-Man. How can we imitate someone whose humanity is unique? In particular, Thomas holds that a divine dispensation allowed Christ to experience the joy of the Beatific Vision in his higher reason while he experienced pain and sorrow in his sensitive appetite. This dispensation allowed each part of his humanity to have its proper operation without the joy from the Vision preventing sorrow from arising in his sense appetite, and vice versa. This divine dispensation is an “aspect of [Christ’s] affectivity that even a graced and sinless human person would not have in common with him,” says Lombardo, and “implies that Christ’s affections do not operate according to their nature, insofar as the affections of the will do not fully engage the passions of the sense appetite.”60 Boyd Taylor Coolman expresses a similar doubt in comparing Thomas’s Christology to that of Alexander of Hales.61 This is a legitimate question to raise, especially when concentrated on texts of the Summa theologiae. propassiones in the sense of fully virtuous passions. De ver., q. 26, a. 8. 60 Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 206, 216. 61 Coolman, “Salvific Affectivity,” 31: “Perhaps also Christ’s constant experience of the Beatific Vision in his intellectual appetite or will ‘crowds out’ for Thomas the possibility of some form of compassion there as well. Like Alexander in his early position in the Glossa, Thomas seems to hold to a ‘cleaner’ distinction between joy in the rational part of [the] soul and sorrow in the sensible part.” 59 218 Barrett H. Turner By way of response, Thomas’s earlier treatment of the matter in the Compendium theologiae does not portray Christ’s reason as cordoned off from his sensitive appetite. Since this passage from the Compendium serves as the basis for ST III, q. 46, a. 7 (“Whether Christ suffered according to his whole soul?”), the former should inform one’s reading of the latter.62 In the Compendium Thomas writes: “If, therefore, the suffering [passio] of Christ’s soul is considered on the part of his body, thus his whole soul suffered when his body suffered. For the soul is the form of the body according to its essence, indeed all the powers of the soul are rooted in its essence. Whence it remains that while his body suffered any given power of his soul suffered in a certain way.”63 On the side of “the suffering of his soul from an object” of a given power of the soul, the passions of Christ’s soul did not disturb the joy of the Vision in his higher reason. Now the higher reason “gazes upon eternal things that should be contemplated and considered.” Here Christ had the Beatific Vision. On account of this object his higher reason therefore “had nothing adverse or contrary from which any suffering of nuisance would have a place in it.”64 The lower reason, however, “ponders about temporal things” and could be a locus of suffering in Christ’s soul, since lower reason “apprehended death and any other injury of the body as harmful and contrary to natural desire.” Now a man suffers in his lower reason “from those things he apprehends as harmful to others whom he loves,” because “love makes two men as though one.” Therefore Thomas says that “Christ suffered from this sadness because he recognized that danger from sin or punishment was threatening others whom he loved out of charity; whence not only for himself, but also for others he was afflicted.”65 Thomas therefore does affirm compassion in the human soul of Christ, pace Coolman. Now the higher reason and the lower reason are the same faculty.66 While the divine dispensation did allow Christ a unique joy flowing from the Beatific Vision in his higher reason without rendering his body and soul impassible, his lower reason (and thus the faculty of reason itself) The part of Compendium on the virtue of faith, into which the following chapter falls, was composed during Thomas’s Roman period (1266–1267); see Torrell, Initiation, 509. 63 Compendium theologiae, ch. 232 (Leonine ed., 42:181a). Translations from this work are the author’s own. 64 Leonine ed., 42:181a. 65 Leonine ed., 42:181a–b. Thomas has already expounded upon the idea that fallen men needed a friend to suffer for them in order to explain the fittingness of the Incarnation in Compendium theologiae, ch. 226. 66 ST I, q. 79, a. 9. 62 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 219 was involved in his suffering: “Therefore, regarding the same things about which Christ suffered in his external senses, imagination, and lower reason, he rejoiced in his higher reason, inasmuch as he related those things to the order of divine wisdom.”67 Lombardo has not fully taken stock of this text from the Compendium in positing an incoherence between Christ’s possession of the Beatific Vision and his having a true and perfect human affectivity. Likewise, the text meets Coolman’s concern about Thomas’s Christology precluding a discussion of Christ’s compassion, at least in principle.68 The reasoning of Lombardo’s objection assumes that only the divine dispensation allows all Christ’s powers to act in their own proper way. It is true that Thomas did hold that “the natural order is that the soul’s powers mutually impede each other,” while in Christ, “by control of the Divine power, every faculty was allowed to do what was proper to it, and one power was not impeded by another. Hence, as the joy of his mind in contemplation did not impede the sorrow or pain of the inferior part, so, conversely, the passions of the inferior part nowise impeded the act of reason.”69 But Thomas also describes the proper action of Christ’s faculties in terms of his reason’s governance. For example, Aquinas says that it was “the reason of Christ [that] allowed his soul and its inferior powers to act in their own proper way.” 70 Further, could the divine power be the fullness of grace in Christ’s soul? One should also question whether Adam, having supernatural and preternatural gifts in the Garden, did not suffer the powers of his soul impeding one another; yet he was human. Thus, an effect that seems an avoidance of human nature due to the divine dispensation is due more to Christ’s fullness of virtue, which allows for the action of the lower appetites to participate perfectly in reason’s political rule. A text from De veritate, q. 26, a. 8, confirms that a sufficient cause of Leonine ed., 42:181b. Coolman, “Salvific Affectivity,” 29–31. Regarding Coolman’s question about sorrow remaining in Christ’s sensitive appetite (ST III, q. 46, a. 7, obj. 3, actually uses the term propassio), Thomas regards this as necessary because a complete passion “causes reason to deflect from the rectitude of its act, so that it then follows the passion” (ad 3). The Compendium passage and the later article in the Summa should then confirm Coolman’s conjectural solution regarding Thomas and Alexander on reason and sorrow in Christ (“Salvific Affectivity,” 29). Further, Coolman could appreciate that later in the Compendium passage Thomas utilizes the same distinction between ratio ut natura and ratio ut ratio that Coolman admires in Alexander (31). 69 ST III, q. 15, a. 9, ad 3 (emphasis added). 70 Super Ioan 12, lec. 5. 67 68 220 Barrett H. Turner Christ’s virtuous emotions is his fullness of grace and virtue. Even Adam before sin and the blessed, likewise complete in virtue and not lacking in grace, had virtuous passions of the same type. Thomas accordingly attributes the same rational control over the parts of the soul to Christ, Adam in the original state, and the resurrected just: To be sure, in the blessed, in man in the first state, and in Christ according to the state of infirmity, such passions are never sudden, for the reason that, owing to the perfect obedience of the lower powers to the higher ones present in them, no movement arises in the lower appetite except according to reason’s command. Hence Damascene says, “No natural tendencies preceded the will in the Lord, for he was hungry willingly, he feared willingly” etc. And this should be understood similarly concerning the blessed after the resurrection and human beings in the first state.71 This reinforces the line of those who see in Christ a revelation of humanity as it once was and as it will become. This is all the more reason to regard the rational control of the powers of Christ as sufficiently explained by his fullness of grace and virtue, which he recovers for fallen Adam and secures for the blessed in the resurrection. Gondreau offers a similar solution. He understands Thomas to be speaking of an effect of the fall from grace when he speaks of the “natural order” whereby the movements of man’s soul impede one another, that is, in the state of wounded nature. The higher powers of Christ, “given the tenet of his sinlessness and perfection in grace and virtue, could in no case be impaired.” 72 In other words, the intensity of a passion impeding the other powers of the soul, of which Thomas speaks in his treatise on the passions in the prima secundae, is not the same kind of intensity felt by Christ in his Passion. The former “presupposes the disorder among the soul’s powers (cf. Prima Secundae, q. 77, a. 3), a disorder that Christ’s integrity of soul precludes.” 73 If Gondreau is correct in this analysis, it suggests that when Thomas excludes intense passions from Christ, Adam before sin, and the blessed in texts such as De veritate, q. 26, a. 8, Thomas does not mean they could not experience profound or deeply felt passions. Rather Thomas means that they would not experience passions that drag away reason. In that sense, “intensity” is equivalent to a passion overrunning Leonine ed., 22/3:776b (emphasis added). Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 366. 73 Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 366. 71 72 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 221 reason, which a propassio does not do. If that is correct, then the divine dispensation perfects Christ’s human affectivity qua human affectivity, namely, the virtuous spontaneity of Christ’s passions. This brings us back to the issue of propassio and to the relationship of reason’s command to the elicitation of a passion. In various texts we find Christ’s passions obedient to the command of reason. With Lombardo we should ask, “Does Aquinas mean that passions occurred in Christ only after reason’s explicit command? Or does Aquinas mean to affirm something less dictatorial about reason’s guidance of passion?” 74 Without getting into another subject—that of the political rule of reason over the passions—we can briefly review Aquinas’ position.75 “Aquinas says that the operations of the sensitive powers are ‘rational by participation’ inasmuch as they ‘naturally obey reason,’” says Titus. “Moral virtue makes the sensitive appetites ‘execute the commands of reason, by exercising their proper acts.’” 76 The “command” or “order” of reason is reason’s shaping of the sensitive appetite and its acts, the passions, by the moral virtues.77 Thus the “command of reason” is compatible with spontaneous, elicited passions. Take Christ’s desire for natural goods, which spontaneously arose within reason’s ordering: “Christ’s flesh naturally desired [naturaliter appetebat] food, drink, sleep, and other such things with his sensitive appetite, after the manner and order of right reason.” 78 Christ experienced spontaneous movements of his powers because he willed his soul’s faculties to all have their own proper movement but always in accord with the judgment of reason. We agree, therefore, with Jensen that, when we speak of spontaneity in Christ’s passions, we should mean that their “automatic response is precisely the ability to follow the judgment of reason with ease, not the ability to act independently of reason.” 79 Rather, the sort of “spontaneous passion” Thomas wants to exclude from Christ’s experience is antecedent passion. “Aquinas has no difficulty affirming that Christ’s passions may chronologically precede the conscious judgment of Christ’s reason,” says Lombardo. “He does, however, exclude Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 201. See Jensen, “Virtuous Deliberation and the Passions,” 203–08, for assessment of Thomas’s use of Aristotle’s “political rule” metaphor. Jensen ultimately regards the fact of political rule as a function of humanity wounded by sin, such that reason has to exercise a persuasive rather than tyrannical rule over the passions. 76 Titus, “Passions in Christ,” 73. 77 Thomas holds that the sensitive powers are seats of virtue (ST I-II, q. 50, a. 3). 78 ST III, q. 15, a. 2, ad 2. Cf. the fourth ground of proper passion, “intensity,” in De ver., q. 26, a. 8. 79 Jensen, “Virtuous Deliberation and the Passions,” 205; see also 203. 74 75 222 Barrett H. Turner from Christ those spontaneous movements of disordered passion that Aquinas calls antecedent passion.”80 Titus characterizes these consequent, spontaneous passions of Christ as propassiones which “begin in the sensitive appetite but [do] so in a way that is in accordance with the ‘disposition of reason’ (ST III, q. 15, a. 4).”81 They are both consequent to reason and also spontaneous, because they arise immediately but the response comes from the virtuous disposition of the sensitive part informed by reason’s judgment. Further insight is shed by Thomas’s reminder that Christ’s sense appetite, because it was a fully virtuous human appetite, was rational by participation and therefore one could call “the sensuality. . . a will by participation.”82 Returning to the objection, the divine dispensation in Thomas’s Christology seems more to do with preventing the joy of the Beatific Vision from overflowing into the lower powers, and with preventing the intensity of Christ’s human passions with regard to evils from hindering his higher reason having its proper act in the Beatific Vision.83 This containment allowed Christ to suffer and to die, for otherwise the Vision would glorify his humanity so that it could not suffer.84 Here one should emphasize the reason of containing joy so as to prevent Christ’s humanity from being immediately glorified as the proximate reason for a special divine dispensation. Lombardo himself admits that reason forming the sense appetite so virtuously that the passions do not overflow so as to disturb reason is explainable by the fullness of virtue in Christ’s soul. Thus he says: “The relationship between reason and passion in Christ, then, is not something unique to a God-man, but rather the full flourishing of human nature. The virtuous experience the same thing—albeit imperfectly and without complete constancy, since the fomes peccati can never be completely eradicated from wounded human nature.”85 In this he agrees with Torrell, who responds to doubts concerning Thomas’s doctrine of Christ’s perfect self-mastery over his passions as follows: Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 211. Titus, “Passions in Christ,” 82. Note again, though, that the antecedent–consequent distinction regards the principle of a passion, not its effect on reason, which is what truly characterizes a passion as propassio or passio. 82 ST III, q. 18, a. 2, corp. Jensen rightly points out that the will’s rectitude comes back to right reason’s judgments (“Virtuous Deliberation and the Passions,” 200–201). 83 ST III, q. 15, a. 6; q. 46, a. 8, obj. 2, corp. and ad 2. 84 ST III, q. 15, a. 5, ad 3. 85 Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 211–12. 80 81 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 223 This grip of reason over the passions in Christ is the first sign of what we were calling above the exceptional status of his humanity. At first sight, it awakens a certain incredulity, but if one will recall that this humanity is exempt from original sin and from the moral disorder which follows (the “tinderbox of sin”), and that it is at the same time graced to a supreme degree, the explication is perfectly convincing.86 This supports the thesis that Christ’s experience of perfectly virtuous passion (and thus of propassiones) is sufficiently explained by the fullness of grace and virtue in his human soul. The divine dispensation is required more by other unique features of Christ’s humanity that are a function of his humanity being assumed by the divine Person of the Son. The main example would be that he enjoyed the Beatific Vision even in the unimaginable depths of sorrow and pain in the Passion. The sufficient cause of the fullness of grace can be considered in abstraction from Christ’s possession of the Beatific Vision during his earthly ministry. Furthermore, to identify his fullness of grace and virtue as a sufficient cause of propassio in Christ strengthens the link between Christ’s experience of the passions and his role as exemplar in the virtuous life, which Thomas also affirms. In sum, Thomas’s three ways in which Christ’s passions differ from those of human beings occur in a comparison between his passions and human nature as fallen from grace and wounded by sin, rather than human nature in its original state under the influence of grace. Thomas sees the three differences between Christ’s passions and ours as indicators of our sin, not the inability of human nature healed and elevated by grace to tend toward an ideal of virtuous passion. While the justified must still contend with the fomes peccati, as is further explained below, the gap between their experience of the passions and Christ’s closes when one considers the possibility of growth in virtue according to the power and example of Christ himself. This growth in via will at best be “asymptotic” due to the fomes peccati, but by the grace of the God-Man their affections can become more virtuous according to their exemplar. To complete the link between Christ’s propassiones as a feature of his perfectly virtuous affectivity as caused by his fullness of grace and virtue, and our own life in grace, we now turn to texts in which Thomas discusses Christ’s passions as exemplary for the just, who should in turn experience propassiones. Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères, 1:107. 86 224 Barrett H. Turner Propassio in the Just and in the Wise Further demonstrating that Christ’s propassiones fall under his moral exemplarity and are not merely a function of the divine dispensation are texts where Thomas labels the passions of just or virtuous men as propassiones. These texts indicate that men besides Christ should experience passions that are necessarily propassiones, since propassio is an integral part of every virtuous emotion. This section argues that Thomas did not use the term or concept of propassio for Christ only, but as a necessary element of all virtuous passions experienced by the just and the wise. This section therefore completes the connection of Christ’s experience of propassiones (first section) and his moral exemplarity being sufficiently caused by the fullness of grace in his human soul (second section), to the moral exemplarity of Christ’s propassiones for other human beings. As Thomas says in his Super Ioannem 12, lectio 5, a passion that troubles reason “is not found in any wise person.” Now every propassio is not a passion which troubles reason. If every wise man has propassiones and if some wise man does not have the Beatific Vision, then some who have propassiones do not (yet) have the Beatific Vision (by Bocardo). This section will proceed first to a synthetic presentation of Thomas’s doctrine on the experience of propassiones by the “just” and the “wise.” As far as I know, the texts which follow from the Postilla super Psalmos have not been used in recent treatments of propassio in Thomas. Secondly this section will give a caveat about the asymptotic nature of the passions of the just according to the ideal of Christ, for in this life the just remain beset by the fomes peccati. This second part flows naturally from the first, for Thomas holds that the just or the wise might experience two types of propassio: in the sense of the first movement of an antecedent passion or of a passion arising from a morally illicit object but constrained by reason before becoming voluntary (propassio only partially virtuous and never in Christ himself), and in the sense of fully elicited, appropriate consequent passions that do not deflect reason but arise from its judgment (fully virtuous propassiones as were only in Christ). That the just or wise man experiences the former owes to original sin’s remaining effect, the fomes. That Thomas expects propassiones to characterize the affectivity of “the just man” or “the wise man” even in this postlapsarian life is evident enough. In De veritate, q. 26, a. 8, Thomas discusses the characteristics of passion, one of which is whether the passion draws the rational appetite to the level of the sensitive appetite. If so, it is a “complete passion” or simply a “passion.” If not, it is “incomplete” or a “propassion,” transforming the person in part (quasi secundum partem). Thomas says “sinners” The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 225 (peccatores) experience immoral passions, including that such passions are often complete passions. In contrast, “in the just [in iustis] they are never complete, because their reason is never drawn down by their passions.” Furthermore, Thomas expects there to be growth in experiencing propassio, for “in the imperfect they are vehement, but in the perfect they are incapable [of moving reason], the inferior powers being pulled in by the habit of the moral virtues.”87 Notice that Thomas expects propassiones to differentiate the experience of “the just ones” from “sinners,” and that Thomas further differentiates the just into the imperfect and the perfect. The perfect are characterized by their greater degree of moral virtue, which subordinates the movements of the sense appetite to reason. That these passions remain in the lower appetites is the ratio of a propassio, as Thomas explains earlier in the response. Thus propassio is an integral part of every virtuous passion, a necessary but not sufficient cause of virtuous affectivity. Further buttressing the similarities between Christ’s perfect propassiones and those Thomas expects to see in Christ’s members are certain texts where Christ is held out as the exemplar of the types of passions the faithful should experience. Two passages from Thomas’s Super Ioannem explain that while Christ experienced propassio on account of his perfection, that experience is normative for any wise man (sapiens).88 While visiting Mary and Martha shortly after the death of Lazarus, Christ “troubled himself” (John 11:33). Thomas next gives three reasons why Christ willed to be sorrowful, namely, to show forth his human nature, “so that by controlling his own sadness, he might teach us to moderate our own sadness,” and “to tell us that we should be sad and weep for those who die.”89 This second and third reason touch directly upon Christ’s role as moral exemplar in that Christ moderates his passion here according to reason, including not allowing the passion to become immoderate. Thomas writes, “our Lord willed to be sad in order to teach us that there are times when we should be sad, which is contrary to the opinion of the Stoics; and he preserved a certain moderation in his sadness, which is contrary to the excessively sad type.” Thomas attributes to the “excessively sad type” an immoderate sorrow which would dominate the soul, as discussed in the second section of the paper. Such a person allows his sadness to run apart from his reason in response to a certain evil, thereby losing the guidance of reason and the human character of his emotion. Given Thomas’s comments elsewhere about the appropriateness of Christ’s intense sorrow on the Cross, it is Leonine ed., 22/3:776b. On the dating of 1270–1272, see Torrell, Initiation, 288, 496. 89 Super Ioan 11, lec. 5. 87 88 226 Barrett H. Turner difficult to imagine Thomas meaning by “moderate” here that one ought ever to have only weakly felt sorrow.90 The proportion depends on what reason judges appropriate for the situation, and so one ought to sorrow at a friend’s death (contra Stoic opinion, Thomas says, which “seems very inhuman”).91 The second example from Aquinas’s commentary actually uses the term propassio, relating it to another instance of Jesus’s being troubled (John 13:21: “When Jesus had thus spoken [about his betrayal], he was troubled in spirit”). Thomas briefly reviews that “trouble” correlates to a movement of the soul in the sensitive appetite, that these passions are unlike movements of the intellectual powers in that they entail a bodily change, and that such troubling is indeed a passion, namely, the passion of sadness.92 He adds that “among all the affections or passions of the sensory appetite, sadness involves the most disturbance . . . [and] this is why one who is afflicted with sadness is especially said to be troubled.”93 Responding to the Stoic position that categorically denied sadness to the “wise man,” since, according to them, the wise man could not experience evil, Thomas notes that sadness can arise in someone in two ways.94 The first way is “from the flesh.” A passion might arise because of some apprehension of the senses, but “independently of the judgment of reason,” which signifies antecedent passion. Even if this happens, however, it is possible that the passion will “remain within the limits of reason and not cloud one’s reason; in this case, Jerome would call it a propassion.” Thomas uses the term propassio, citing Jerome as his source. Such an experience of human affectivity, limited to the sensitive appetite and not “clouding” reason, “can happen in one who is wise.” On the other hand, a passion which goes “beyond the limits of reason and trouble[s] reason . . . is not found in the wise.” Admittedly, this seems to be more about a wise man checking a sudden, unformed movement of his sensitive appetite, that is, an antecedent passion, before it troubles his reason and thus dominates his soul. This merely shows that propassio is an integral part of virtuous passions, but not sufficient for fully virtuous passion. All the faithful should have at least these lower-level propassiones. Robert Miner implies that propassio in Thomas is always this kind of antecedent passion that the virtuous person is able to check before Indeed, in De ver., q. 26, a. 8, the passio–propassio distinction differs from whether a passion is “slight” or “intense.” 91 Super Ioan 11, lec. 5. 92 Super Ioan 13, lec. 4. 93 Super Ioan 13, lec. 4. 94 Super Ioan 13, lec. 4. 90 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 227 it drags away reason. Thus Miner says that such propassiones are not “significant” movements of the sensitive appetite and that “Aquinas does not think that we are responsible for experiencing propassions.”95 This is only partially true, for all of Christ’s passions were propassiones, were intense, and were morally perfect. Miner’s position is true in regard to the involuntary, antecedent movements of affectivity found in “the just” on account of the fomes. But this is only the lower level of propassio. The second way describes how Christ’s passion of sorrow is virtuous, though Thomas does not limit this to Christ only. This way begins from the reason, “that is, when someone is troubled in the sensory appetite because of a judgment of reason and from deliberation [ex rationis iudicio et deliberatione].”96 A remaining question is whether this is always a discursive judgment or whether one’s emotions can be shaped by reason beforehand through the formation of virtues, allowing for spontaneous but rational emotional responses. Yet Thomas does say that “in Christ all things arose from the deliberation of reason, even in his sensory appetite; and so there were in him no sudden disturbances of his sensuality.”97 An unresolved question at this point is how Thomas conceives of all things arising from Christ’s deliberation. Does that mean all passion arose after a judgment of reason made immediately and temporally prior to the experience of the passion? One answer, which would introduce greater disparity between Christ’s affectivity and ours, is that Christ never experienced spontaneous movements apart from the discursive judgment of reason and the command of his will. Given that Aquinas seems to allow for spontaneous (though consequent) passion in Christ, it is better to reject this and instead understand Thomas to mean “inordinate movement antecedent to reason” for “from the flesh” in the first way and “in accordance with the sensitive appetite’s own movement as shaped by reason in virtue (consequent to reason)” for “in accordance with deliberation of reason” in the second way. Thomas continues, giving two intended effects of Christ allowing himself to be troubled in spirit: firstly, to deny “the error of Apollinarius” by showing himself to have a true human nature; secondly, “to aid our own progress.”98 The sorrow of Christ, which is here a propassio with a lawful object and consequent to the judgment of reason, was willed by him in Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae 1a2ae 22–48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 106. 96 Super Ioan 13, lec. 4 (author’s own translation). 97 Super Ioan 13, lec. 4 (author’s own translation). 98 Super Ioan 13, lec. 4. 95 228 Barrett H. Turner response to Judas’s betrayal so as to give “an example to superiors that if now and then they have to pass a harsh judgment on their subjects, they should do it with a sad heart.”99 Christ’s emotional response to Judas is a proportionate sadness and accordingly a model for all those who must rebuke their subordinates. In several other texts, Thomas even argues from the affectivity of “the just man” or “the wise man” to the affectivity of Christ to clarify that Christ experienced propassiones, not passiones. The passage above from Super Ioannem correlates with what Aquinas implies about the possibility of human affectivity in ST III, q. 15, while teaching on the passions of Christ’s soul. We have already seen Thomas defend the position that Christ only experienced passions with lawful objects and with the judgment of reason. He never had “perfect” (complete) passions which “dominate the soul,” but propassiones which arise in the sensitive appetite at reason’s command “but [go] no further.”100 Later in the question, Thomas teaches that Christ experienced only the propassio of sorrow and that of fear.101 In the course of doing so, Thomas attributes these propassiones to “the wise man” (sapiens), correlating with the first passage from Super Ioannem above. With regard to fear, Thomas is answering an objection raised from Proverbs 28:1: “The just man, bold as a lion, shall be without dread.” Since Christ was “most just,” how could he fear? Thomas answers: “The just man is said to be without dread, in so far as dread implies a perfect passion drawing man from what reason dictates. And thus fear was not in Christ, but only as a propassion.”102 One can infer that Thomas would also say that all the just in Christ likewise ought to experience the propassio of fear. If the just characteristically experience propassiones, how much more the Just One? In other words, if propassio is an integral part of virtuous passions, Christ’s affectivity could not be lacking in this regard. Regarding sorrow, Thomas is more explicit in linking Christ’s experience of the propassio to the emotional life of mere men: In the soul of the wise man there may be sorrow in the sensitive appetite by his apprehending these [secondary] evils; without this sorrow disturbing the reason. And in this way are we to understand that whatsoever shall befall the just man, it shall not make him sad Super Ioan 13, lec. 4. ST III, q. 15, a. 4. 101 ST III, q. 15, a. 6, ad 1 and ad 2 (sorrow); a. 7, ad 1 (fear). 102 ST III, q. 15, a. 7, ad 1. 99 100 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 229 [Prov 12:21], because his reason is troubled by no misfortune. And thus Christ’s sorrow was a propassion, and not a passion.103 Thomas is replying to the Stoic position that the just man does not experience sorrow because the only evil that can befall him is the loss of his virtue, which cannot happen but voluntarily. By definition, the just man is virtuous. Therefore, the just man can experience no evil. In order to overcome the objection, Thomas distinguishes between virtue and sin as man’s chief good and chief evil, respectively, and the “secondary goods of man, which pertain to the body.”104 The loss of these goods results in the propassio of sorrow in the just man, as the harm of Christ’s Passion and the harm done by the sins of his disciples or the Jews who killed him produced the propassio of his sorrow in Christ’s soul (combining the reply with the article’s corpus).105 This does not conflict with Christ’s deeply felt sorrow for the sins of the world, since even his sorrow for our sins did not remove his virtue from him. In fact, his virtue made his deep sorrow possible. Notice that Thomas argues from the just man’s experience of propassio to Christ’s experience of propassio. This also justifies Lombardo’s observation that Aquinas’s conception of “the instructive role of Christ’s affectivity” is not “unidirectional” but is informed by sound psychology.106 If that is true, then this is even stronger evidence for Christ’s experience of propassio as an ideal for all other human emotional life. At the end of his teaching career, Thomas taught an incomplete course on the Psalms,107 wherein he twice mentions propassio. Teaching on Psalm 2, Thomas encounters words attributing anger to God: “Then he will speak to them in his anger [tunc loquetur ad eos in ira sua].” Thomas comments that anger indicates God’s “pronouncement of vengeance” and that “anger does not befall God, but what pertains to the creature is sometimes attributed to the Creator by antropopatos, namely, a human propassion.”108 ST III, q. 15, a. 6, ad 2. ST III, q. 15, a. 6, ad 2. 105 See Compendium theologiae, ch. 232: “Hence Christ suffered from this sadness because he recognized that danger from sin or punishment was threatening others whom he loved out of charity; whence not only for himself, but also for others he was afflicted” (Leonine ed., 42:181b). 106 Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 223. 107 Postilla super Psalmos, given in 1273. On the dating, see Torrell, Initiation, 376–77, 497, but especially 606–07, where Torrell relates recent scholarship that destroys the doubts of Bataillon and Tugwell about the late date of the work. 108 Postilla super Psalmos 2, no. 3 (Index Thomisticus: S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera omnia ut sunt in Indice Thomistico, ed. R. Busa, 7 vols. [Stuttgart: Bad Cannstatt, 103 104 230 Barrett H. Turner The kind of anger which is applied to God analogically is the kind of anger a righteous man experiences, that is, the propassio of anger. This is a text where Thomas refers to a propassio apart from any consideration of Christ. He makes a virtuous human propassio the creaturely analogue of God’s anger. This would be a righteous anger aiding in the infliction of vengeance and moderated by reason’s deliberation. To understand propassio here as a sudden, antecedent passion makes the analogous relation to God’s justice unintelligible. Of course, what is not attributed is change in God, let alone a bodily transmutation, nor the danger of God’s anger deranging his reason, even slightly. That this is one of the last works we have from Thomas hints at an anthropological appropriation of a term he had been using nearly exclusively for Christ’s virtuous passions. Perhaps at the end of his career Thomas was beginning to associate more freely in his own mind the term propassio with virtue in human beings generally.109 Thomas’s comments later on Psalm 54[55] are interesting for two reasons. First, they provide more evidence for linking propassio with “wise men.” Second, Thomas makes a rare explicit statement that Christ’s passions could arise suddenly. First, Thomas denies that the passion of sadness ever befalls a wise man (“non cadit in virum sapientem”). Thomas then distinguishes the passion of sadness from the propassio of sadness: “The other sadness is called propassio, which is a sudden movement or change; and this sadness was in Christ.”110 The sadness in Christ was propassio, “a sudden movement or change.” It is very unusual for Thomas to describe Christ’s affectivity as “sudden” (subitus). In fact, he denies this elsewhere.111 What Thomas writes could be taken in two ways. He could be attributing to Christ the kind of propassio envisioned by Jerome and discussed in the first section. Given Thomas’s doctrine of Christ’s fullness of virtue and correlative lack of the fomes, it is unfitting to interpret him in this way. The other way in which Thomas’s words can be understood would be to take them as referring to a spontaneous propassio arising in accordance with reason, yet not dragging down reason. This text therefore gives explicit support to an interpretation of what the antecedent–consequent distinction means, namely, that these categories do not refer to a temporal 1980], 6:50b). Without endorsing his view that propassiones are bodily changes occurring within and assisting deliberation, that Thomas would associate propassiones with humans generally supports Jensen’s appropriation of the term for speaking about virtuous passions outside of Christological contexts (“Virtuous Deliberation and the Passions,” 224–27). 110 Postilla super Psalmos 54, no. 3 (Busa ed., 6:129a–b). 111 E.g.: De ver., q. 26, a. 8; Super Ioan 11, lec. 5, and 13, lec. 4. 109 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 231 moment before the command of reason but to the movement as in accordance with reason’s disposition.112 This latter interpretation harmonizes with section two’s discussion of Christ’s spontaneous propassiones. More interestingly, here Thomas speaks of the principle of the passion while calling it a propassio, which elsewhere is used to speak of the effect of a passion. Thus, Thomas regarded propassio as integral to all virtuous passion, such that Christ’s sudden but consequent passions could be named propassiones. As is now clear, Thomas believes that the just man or the wise man experiences propassiones. In them Christ’s grace heals the image marred in Adam’s fall. Christ is the New Adam, head of the Church, perfecting his members through the grace mediated by his assumed humanity and its virtue. Before moving to a necessary qualification of this picture by reference to the fomes peccati, let us return to something provocative said above, that Christ’s propassiones are of the same kind as the first man’s were before sin. Recall Torrell’s identification of Christ’s propassiones with Adam’s, to which he adds: “One is able informally to summarize the intuition of Thomas [on Christ’s propassiones] in saying that if we want to know what the passions in Christ are like, one must not reason from what they are in us, but from what they were in the first Adam before sin.”113 This overlap between Adam’s propassiones and Christ’s reinforces the argument above that Christ’s affectivity is exemplary for our moral life. First, it reinforces that Christ’s propassiones are sufficiently caused by his fullness of virtue. The gifts of habitual grace and original justice in Eden allowed the first Adam to have self-mastery over his passions, experiencing no disorder and having rational command. His reason was subordinate to God, his soul to reason, and his body to his soul; this was a gift of grace.114 Thomas says that Adam had the moral virtues perfectly and thus had regulated passions.115 In that state, Adam’s “sensual appetite was wholly subject to reason: so that in that Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 109–11, 211; Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 337–42; Jensen, “Virtuous Deliberation and the Passions,” 253. 113 Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères, 1:107. This comment by Torrell seems to contradict Lombardo when he says that “in order to understand Christ, it is necessary to reflect on human experience, not just sacred Scripture” (Logic of Desire, 223). The reconciliation is that Torrell speaks of when our passions are disordered, rebelling against our reason, and sinful, as Thomas means in ST III, q. 15, a. 4, while Lombardo speaks of what is best in our passions when our passions are virtuous. Even so, one should not look to human experience without sacred Scripture, as Aristotle did, for then one will regard our lack of control over our emotions as merely natural, rather than a wound of original sin. In that case, one will be somewhat baffled by Christ’s affectivity, as Lombardo is. 114 ST I, q. 95, a. 1. 115 ST I, q. 95, a. 2, ad 3; see also a. 3. 112 232 Barrett H. Turner state the passions of the soul existed only as consequent upon the judgment of reason.”116 We have seen how Christ’s passions were likewise consequent to the deliberation of reason. The difference is that Adam did not have the Beatific Vision,117 and he did not experience fear or sorrow before sin. Even so, the common denominator in both him and Christ is the perfection of moral virtue as the sufficient cause of virtuous passions. Torrell himself uses the word “propassion” in describing such a state, though Thomas does not use the term in the prima pars: “The mastery over the passions by reason such that they remain propassions is one of the characteristics of the state of innocence according to Thomas (cf. ST I, q. 95, a. 2).”118 Adam would have experienced only propassio prior to the fall into sin, and this by the grace of God perfecting human nature and reason’s mastery over the whole person. Additionally, Christ’s propassiones, being not only a restoration of the graced life found in the state of innocence but also a reasonable and perfect human encounter with evil and the world’s brokenness, are more a model for our perfection than Adam’s. As the New Adam, Christ does more than Adam as head. Among everything else, he comes to us in our broken and sinful state to raise us back up to fellowship with the Father. To do so, Christ experiences propassiones that result from an evil object, passions which Adam did not have to taste before the fall. As the New Adam, Christ has added to his experience of Adam’s innocent affectivity the pain, fear, and sorrow of a world corrupted by sin. As Torrell notes: Christ shared in this state, nevertheless with one difference: situated in paradise, the first man did not have any evil to fear; he did not have in him therefore any passions which have an evil for their object: fear, sadness, pain, etc. Christ, to the contrary, having assumed voluntarily the life of man driven from paradise, suffered as all other men the passions provoked by evil like those provoked by good.119 In facing evil with a true manhood, Christ fully entered into the human condition to raise us up out of sin and death. The Incarnation redeems the dark side of human affectivity in that the New Adam experiences passion in regard to evil, thereby facing down the evil of sin inserted into creation by the Old Adam. ST I, q. 95, a. 2. ST I, q. 94, a. 1. 118 Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères, 1:107n34. 119 Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères, 1:107n34. 116 117 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 233 At the same time, the passions of Christ’s members can only asymptotically tend toward the ideal of the God-Man’s perfected humanity, on account of the fomes peccati. In this age the faithful still bear something of the image of the “man of dust” even as they will then completely bear the image of the “man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:47–50). Thomas teaches explicitly that Christ’s passions are exemplary for us who receive his grace. He also teaches that our humanity is wounded by original sin even in the life of grace, for justification does not include a restoration of the integrity Adam had in the Garden before sin. So “the continual corruption of the sensuality . . . understood as referring to the fomes . . . is never completely destroyed in this life, since, though the stain of original sin passes, its effect remains.”120 Even in the text from De veritate, q. 26, a. 8, mentioned above, which speaks of growth in the propassiones, Thomas still cautions that even the perfect “have passions not only foreseen but sudden, not only in respect to good but even in respect to evil.”121 Elsewhere Thomas describes the wounding of human nature by the fall in terms of the loss of the original justice, which includes the gift of integrity, by which reason was subject to God and the sense appetite to reason. Accordingly, “all the powers of the soul are left, as it were, destitute of their proper order.”122 This gives rise to disordered desires, including disordered passions, in humankind in our present state. This wounding is not removed by the grace of Christ in this age: In the state of corrupt nature man needs grace to heal his nature in order that he may entirely abstain from sin. And in the present life this healing is wrought in the mind—the carnal appetite being not yet restored. Hence the Apostle (Rom 7:25) says in the person of one who is restored: “I myself, with the mind, serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin.” And in this state man can abstain from all mortal sin, which takes its stand in his reason, as stated above (q. 75, a. 5); but man cannot abstain from all venial sin on account of the corruption of his lower appetite of sensuality.123 ST I-II, q. 74, a. 3, ad 2. Leonine ed., 22/3: 776b. 122 ST I-II, q. 85, a. 3. 123 ST I-II, q. 109, a. 8. See also a. 9, where Thomas notes that man needs the further help of actual grace generally and “for this special reason—the condition of the state of human nature. For although healed by grace as to the mind, yet it remains corrupted and poisoned in the flesh, whereby it serves the ‘law of sin’ (Rom 7:25),” as well as in the other faculties according to the same fourfold wounding mentioned in q. 85, a. 3. 120 121 234 Barrett H. Turner This distinction between the healing of the reason’s wound by ordering it to God while leaving the sensuality subject to the fomes peccati is the basis for distinguishing below between the two kinds of imitation of Christ found in the faithful in regard to propassio. These features of Thomas’s teaching, Christ’s exemplarity and the presence of the fomes peccati, characterize what I mean by the asymptotic imitation the faithful can give to Christ’s grace. Their affective life will more and more obey, as they go from grace to grace, the Master’s model. Yet they will never in this life be completely free from disordered movements of affectivity. For this reason, I distinguish two levels of affective imitation that Thomas expects to see in the life of the faithful. Both levels may rightly be called propassio. The first level is that the faithful, in experiencing disordered, involuntary first movements of sensuality, will resist them and not approve of them. These are propassiones because they arise in regard to an illicit object or even to a good object but antecedent to the deliberation of reason, yet they do not drag down the reason to sensuality because the “just man” resists the movement, at least to the point of being able to avoid mortal sin. As Thomas notes, “corruption of the fomes does not hinder man from using his rational will to check individual inordinate movements, if he be presentient to them, for instance by turning his thoughts to other things.”124 Such resistance is only successful, however, by the grace of Christ and does not always entail avoidance of venial sin in regard to such movements of the sense appetite.125 Obviously, such propassiones do not characterize Christ’s affectivity except by participation in his reason’s “containment” of his emotions. That is to say, these propassiones have a necessary but insufficient quality in regard to virtue, that they do not deflect the soul’s ordination to God. The second level or type of propassio is that passion which does not deflect reason’s ordination to God but which is also consequent in regard to a licit object. This type is the fully virtuous propassio. It is this level that would include what Jensen has proposed regarding the “propassions,” namely, that they are virtuous, non-final movements of the sensitive appetite,126 though I hold that propassiones will also be consequent to final deliberation, since in no case may a passion drag reason down to the sense appetite. Thomas also uses the word in regard to antecedent passions that are nonetheless restrained by reason, which I am calling here the lower-level version of propassio. These were in Christ and are the ideal for his members, who can experience them but not ST I-II, q. 74, a. 3, ad 2. ST I-II, q. 109, a. 8. 126 Jensen, “Virtuous Deliberation and the Passions,” 224–27. 124 125 The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace, and His Moral Exemplarity 235 exclusively as Christ did in his earthly ministry. The texts adduced above are enough to show this. Again, the faithful, still in the “body of death” (Rom 7:24), are not yet as Christ is in regard to his reason’s imperium, but they will be in the general resurrection. In sum, that Thomas expects propassiones to characterize the affectivity of “the just man” or “the wise man” even in this postlapsarian life is evident enough. Nor can these texts be attributed to Christ alone, for in these texts, Thomas sometimes uses propassio to designate an antecedent passion or a passion arising from a morally illicit object, but which reason constrains before the passion becomes voluntary. At the same time, Thomas expects that propassiones of the sort experienced by Christ may also characterize the experience of the faithful. They have received the Holy Spirit and grace; they are conformed to Christ more and more. Yet the reason why the faithful can only attain an asymptotic conformity to Christ is the presence of the material element of original sin in human souls, the lack of dictatorial control of reason over the passions leading to involuntary movements of affectivity ( fomes peccati). Hence their participation in Christ’s perfect affective life will never fully attain his virtue and glory in this life. Nonetheless, by at least avoiding mortal sin in regard to the passions and at most by experiencing fully virtuous propassiones more and more, they will be more and more conformed to the image of the “man of heaven.” Conclusion St. Thomas modifies his terminological inheritance from Jerome such that propassio becomes a term expressing Christ’s perfectly virtuous emotional life. In Thomas’s theology, it signifies a fully elicited movement of the sensitive appetite in accord with moral virtue sufficiently caused by the fullness of grace and the power of Christ’s reason. The Lord’s propassiones are as deeply felt as the moments of his life call for, and yet they never shake the imperium of reason over his human soul. That is to say, Christ is never led or overwhelmed by his passions but leads them by what is highest in his human nature, his reason elevated by his fullness of grace. At the same time, because propassio is an integral part of virtuous passions, it can refer simply to the effect of a passion not shaking reason’s imperium. While Christ never experienced such antecedent yet reason-controlled passions, his faithful do on account of the fomes peccati. In imitation of their Master’s perfect passions, however, they are at least able to control such antecedent passions by his grace. Furthermore, there is evidence from Thomas’s work that he expected “the just” to experience passions more and more akin to Christ’s own fully virtuous propassiones. 236 Barrett H. Turner Indeed, comments throughout Thomas’s later works, as well as an early reference in De veritate, allow us to apply the concept of propassio to the type of moral life the faithful, having been vivified and constantly assisted by his grace to resist the corruption of the flesh, may experience in imitation of Christ. While pilgrims can never attain to the perfection of Christ given the absoluteness of the grace in his human soul on account of its radical proximity to the fount of grace, the Divine nature, they will tend asymptotically toward the ideal of human sensibility obedient to reason and therefore freely respond to the events of human life. Christ did not have disorder in his soul on account of his grace and virtue, not even the fomes. We will never be rid of such concupiscence in via, but the more deeply grace, virtue, and the gifts take root in a man’s soul, the more he will be conformed to Christ (Rom 8:29), the New Adam, and the more his passions will be propassiones like his head. Again, this will be either in terms of containing antecedent or even evil passions (what I have called lower-level or not fully virtuous propassiones), or the more frequent experience of fully virtuous propassions asymptotically akin to Christ’s own perfectly virtuous passions. Either way, one must be changed into Christ, the likeness of God, from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3:18; cf. 4:4), for he is the man of heaven whose image all must bear (1 Cor 15:49). N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 237–254 237 Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness Mariusz Biliniewicz University of Notre Dame Australia Sydney, Australia The aim of this essay is to examine how the Second Vatican Council’s teaching about the universal call to holiness is contained in Saint John Paul II’s encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor [VS].1 The paper will be divided in three parts. First, the idea of the universal call to holiness—that is, its basic tenets, its recent history, and its exposition in the documents of the Vatican II, especially in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium [LG]—will be examined. Second, the presence of the idea of the universal call to holiness in VS will be discussed. Third, a question about the state of the universal call to holiness today, fifty years after Vatican II and twenty-five years after VS will be asked. It will be argued that the conciliar teaching that every Catholic is called to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of charity is needed today as much as it was at the time of the Council. What Is the “Universal Call to Holiness”? Lumen Gentium was officially promulgated on November 21, 1964, and devotes the entirety of chapter V to the universal call to holiness.2 The John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor [VS] (1993), w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/ en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html. To avoid an unnecessary agglomeration of footnotes, references to this document will be given in the body of the text in parentheses. Emphases given in the official text will be retained. 2 Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium [LG] (1964), §40, www.vatican.va/ archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_ lumen-gentium_en.html. References to this document will be given in the body of the text in parentheses. LG is not the only document of Vatican II that discusses 1 238 Mariusz Biliniewicz placement of this chapter, before the chapter on the religious and after the chapter on the laity, is significant, and could be compared to the decision of placing the chapter on the Church’s hierarchy (ch. III) after the chapter on the “People of God” (ch. II). With regard to the hierarchical order of the Church, the fathers of the Council sought to overcome a certain theological and pastoral dualism that divided the pastors and the faithful into two separate groups in too sharp a manner. In the context of the theological emphasis on the importance of the distinction between the teaching Church (ecclesia docens) and the listening Church (ecclesia discens), or the active element of the Church (hierarchy) and the passive element (the laity), the fathers of Vatican II wanted to clarify that, ultimately, the pastors are also members of the “People of God” and that the sacrament of baptism is more primordial and fundamental for the Christian identity than the sacrament of holy orders. Similarly, with regard to the chapters on the call to holiness and on religious life, it is sometimes argued that by placing it as a bridge between the chapters on the laity and on the religious, the fathers of the Council wanted to stress that, while religious life is a special and unique way in which the call to holiness is lived, the call to holiness itself is not limited to those who have the vocation to religious life, but extends to all Christians by the virtue of their baptism. Lumen Gentium uses this universalist language frequently in this chapter on holiness, which runs for four paragraphs (LG §§39–42): “Everyone whether belonging to the hierarchy, or being cared for by it, is called to holiness” (LG §39); “Lord Jesus . . . preached holiness of life to each and every one of His disciples of every condition” (LG §40); “He sent the Holy Spirit upon all men that He might move them inwardly to love God” (LG §40); and “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity” (LG §40). The Council teaches that “the classes and duties of life are many, but holiness is one—that sanctity which is cultivated by all who are moved by the Spirit of God, and who obey the voice of the Father and worship God the Father in spirit and in truth” (LG §41); therefore, “every person must walk unhesitatingly according to his own personal gifts and duties in the path of living faith” (LG §41). Further, “all Christ’s faithful, whatever the universal call to holiness. Among other documents, which either implicitly or explicitly mention this concept, one could include: Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem (1965), Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (1965), and Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963). However, due to space constraints, exclusive attention in this study will be given to LG. Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness 239 be the conditions, duties and circumstances of their lives—and indeed through all these, will daily increase in holiness, if they receive all things with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father and if they cooperate with the divine will” (LG §41). “Each one of the faithful must willingly hear the Word of God and accept His Will, and must complete what God has begun by their own actions with the help of God’s grace” (LG §42); “all the faithful of Christ are invited to strive for the holiness and perfection of their own proper state” (LG §42). The Council gives the example of martyrdom as “an exceptional gift and as the fullest proof of love” (LG §42), and states that although “few are presented such an opportunity, nevertheless all must be prepared to confess Christ before men. They must be prepared to make this profession of faith even in the midst of persecutions, which will never be lacking to the Church, in following the way of the cross” (LG §42). Paragraph 41 lists the ranks of those who share in this universal call to holiness: bishops, priests, ministers of lesser ranks, laymen, married couples and Christian parents, widows and single people, those who engage in labor. The call to holiness extends also to “all those who are weighed down with poverty, infirmity and sickness, as well as those who must bear various hardships or who suffer persecution for justice sake” (LG §41). The source of the faithful’s holiness is baptism, since it is there that they “truly become sons of God and sharers in the divine nature” and are “really made holy” (LG §40). The means to attain this state include the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, prayer, self-abnegation, and practicing virtues, especially charity, which constitutes “the bond of perfection and the fullness of the law” (LG §42). This emphasis which Vatican II places on the universal call to holiness of all Christians did not transpire in any kind of theological and cultural vacuum. All of the important movements of renewal which became landmarks of the Second Vatican Council, such as the biblical revival, the liturgical renewal, or the idea of the universal call to holiness, were preceded by grassroots movements that existed well before the Council. In this way, the official conciliar proclamations on these matters were results of those movements, rather than their causes. Those pre-conciliar grassroots movements were usually responding to problems that existed within contemporary Catholic life. The biblical movement was a response to the fact that Catholics did not read or know Scripture, and the liturgical movement was a response to the problem that Catholics were too often disconnected from the official liturgy of the Church in their private piety. The movement associated with the universal call to holiness was a reaction to a form of theological and practical dualism which introduced in the 240 Mariusz Biliniewicz Church distinctions that were not warranted by the Gospel and which actually ran contrary to it. A common criticism against the way Catholic spirituality and moral theology were exercised between the Council of Trent and Vatican II is that spirituality and morality were not only divorced from each other but also sharply divided Catholics into two separate groups. In his classic work on the history of moral theology, The Sources of Christian Ethics, Servais Pinckaers, O.P., argued that the so-called “manualist tradition” introduced a distinction between Christian precepts and counsels. Precepts were the moral requirements that were addressed to everyone (they concerned mainly the Ten Commandments), and counsels were requirements addressed to the chosen few who embarked on the way to perfection (they concerned mainly the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount).3 As such, it was often understood that there were two categories of Catholics: the regular ones (usually identified with the laity) called to observe the basic, minimal precepts of natural law, and the heroes and heroines (usually identified with the clergy and religious) who were called to walk the extra mile and observe the Christian call to perfection by going beyond the minimum and actually trying to live the Sermon on the Mount in its fullness.4 However, this distinction between “ordinary” and “extraordinary” Catholics had little to do with the spirit of the Gospel or with the fact that, apart from radical poverty and dedicated virginity, the demands of Jesus are meant for all classes of people.5 Among the most vocal critics of this dualism, which distinguished “regular faithful” from “superheroes,” was Saint Francis de Sales, who attempted to show how every Christian, though living in the world, was called to the interior life and to perfection.6 Of him, Pope Pius XI stated: St. Francis de Sales appears to have been given to the Church by a special plan of God in order to refute by the examples of his life and the authority of his teaching a prejudice already in vogue at his time and still widespread in our days, namely, that true holiness, Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 256–57. 4 Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 256–57. 5 Thomas Dubay, “Holiness, Universal Call To,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., ed. Thomas Carson and Joann Cerrito, vol. 7 (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2003), 5. 6 Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 256. 3 Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness 241 consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church, exceeds the reach of human efforts and at the very least is so difficult to attain that it does not in any fashion concern the common run of the faithful, but belongs only to a small number of persons endowed with a rare energy and an exceptional elevation of soul; that, besides, this holiness involves so much anxiety and trouble that it is absolutely incompatible with the situation of men and women living in the world.7 Among the particular grassroots pre–Vatican II initiatives that exemplified an attempt to overcome this dualism in Catholic morality and spirituality one can name such movements as the Catholic Action, Comunione e Liberazione, Cursillo, and Opus Dei. These movements attempted to involve the laity in the various dimensions of apostolate and in the general mission of the Church, and they paved the way to the teachings of Vatican II on the importance of overcoming the existing dualism and embracing the idea that there exists not two kinds of holiness, with every Christian called to either one or the other but not both, but rather one universal call to holiness which applies to all baptized Christians—clerical, religious, and lay alike. Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness The expression “universal call to holiness” itself does not appear in VS; however, this does not mean the idea it represents is not present in the document. Conversely, the encyclical frequently makes references to the notion that every Christian is called to beatitude and, in fact, talks not only about the universal call to holiness of all Catholics, but also about the universal call for all human beings, Christian or otherwise, to lead a moral life. While holiness is not to be too closely associated with observing moral norms—since there is more to it than simply living a virtuous life—it is precisely in this context of morality that VS adopts the notion of Vatican II and develops it further. When the encyclical mentions universality, it usually refers to moral norms that oblige everyone, regardless of their beliefs, not to mention their position or state in the community of the Catholic Church. As such, VS talks about the “universal knowledge of the good,” or “universal truth” (VS §§32, 61), “universal human values” (VS §33), the “objective and universal Pope Pius XI as quoted by Gustave Thils, “The Universal Call to Holiness in the Church,” Communio 17 (1990): 494–503, at 495. I am indebted to Houda Jilwan for this reference. 7 242 Mariusz Biliniewicz law [of God]” (VS §§43, 51–52), “universal and permanent moral norms” (VS §§53, 55), “objective and universal demands of the moral good” (VS §59), “universal and objective norm[s] of morality” (VS 60), “universal rule[s]” (VS §67), “universal negative norm[s]” (VS §75), “universal and unchanging moral norms” (VS §§85, 96), universal and permanently valid precepts (VS §95), “universal experience” (VS §102), the universal character of the Church, which, having “received the anointing of the holy one (cf. 1 Jn 2:20, 27) cannot be mistaken in belief” (VS §109), and finally, the ultimate, universal call which God addressed to all men and women (VS §123). For John Paul II the call to holiness obliges everyone uniformly. Although it may not be lived by everyone in the same way, it leaves no room for any kind of dualism or degrees of holiness that would depend on a person’s individual circumstances in the Church and in their life in general. When John Paul II talks about man’s constant “yearning for absolute truth and a thirst to attain full knowledge of it,” man’s “tireless search for knowledge in all fields,” and “his search for the meaning of life” (VS §1), he is talking about man in general—the human person, as such—not about some particular group of persons. Similarly, when he recalls Vatican II’s statement that Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, is the answer to the existential questions of every man (Gaudium et Spes §22), he means every man and woman literally (VS §§2, 8, 9). While obviously not every person is immediately aware of this importance of the person of Christ for their life and not everyone pursues the call to holiness and salvation consciously, the Pope reminds us that it is precisely in following the universal moral norms that the way to salvation of every person opens up (VS §3). When the encyclical mentions holiness, it talks first and foremost about the holiness of God (VS §§10–11). Any moral growth in humans is primarily a gift of God (VS §§11, 22–24), but it is a gift which is not unavailable for humans. Conversely, God not only created all humans with a desire to live morally, alongside some general guidelines about how to do it (natural law, VS §12), but also in Christ has given us grace, which enables those who are reborn in the waters of baptism to follow these guidelines and to build their life around them (VS §§15, 17, 21). This law is not extrinsic to us, but it is intrinsic, written upon the human heart and rooted in our redeemed human nature (VS §§12, 18, 24). In chapter I, the Pope addresses the issue of the universality of the Christian call to holiness, or to the perfection of charity, mainly in its conclusion. When commenting on the call of Jesus to the rich young man to sell everything and follow him, John Paul II states in §18: Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness 243 This vocation to perfect love is not restricted to a small group of individuals. The invitation, “go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor,” and the promise “you will have treasure in heaven,” are meant for everyone, because they bring out the full meaning of the commandment of love for neighbour, just as the invitation which follows, “Come, follow me,” is the new, specific form of the commandment of love of God. Both the commandments and Jesus’ invitation to the rich young man stand at the service of a single and indivisible charity which spontaneously tends towards that perfection whose measure is God alone: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes even clearer the meaning of this perfection: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). In the following paragraph, the Pope reiterates that Jesus’s call “is addressed first to those to whom he entrusts a particular mission, beginning with the Twelve; but it is also clear that every believer is called to be a follower of Christ (cf. Acts 6:1)” (VS §19), since “ following Christ is . . . the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality”; thus, “every disciple must follow Jesus, towards whom he is drawn by the Father himself (cf. Jn 6:44)” (VS §19). When discussing the radical, selfless, and unconditional love of Christ exemplified by his whole life, but most evidently by his Passion and death on the Cross, the Pope states that “this is exactly the love that Jesus wishes to be imitated by all who follow him” (VS §20). Everyone who wishes to be his disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him (VS §20). Chapter II of the encyclical is devoted to the relationship between freedom and law. In it the Pope reflects upon the idea of natural law as a “light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided” (VS §40), and as something given to all of us at creation. This light is universal, and John Paul II makes his own the words of his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, who stated that “the natural law is written and engraved in the heart of each and every man, since it is none other than human reason itself which commands us to do good and counsels us not to sin” (VS §44). In the following paragraphs, he states that the natural law is, by definition, universal and immutable (VS §51). However, “this universality does not ignore the individuality of human beings, nor is it opposed to the absolute uniqueness of each person” (VS §51). The opposite is the case: the universality and immutability of natural law “embraces at its root each of the person’s free acts, which are meant to bear witness to the universality of the true good” (VS §51). 244 Mariusz Biliniewicz The universality of the same moral norms is staunchly emphasized in chapter II of the encyclical. Precepts of natural law, such as honoring God and one’s parents, oblige always and everywhere, as they are “universally binding” and “unchanging” (VS §52). They unite in the same common good all people of every period of history, since all are created for the same divine calling and destiny (VS §52). In one of the more famous passages taken from chapter II, we read: The negative precepts of the natural law are universally valid. They oblige each and every individual, always and in every circumstance. It is a matter of prohibitions which forbid a given action semper et pro semper, without exception, because the choice of this kind of behaviour is in no case compatible with the goodness of the will of the acting person, with his vocation to life with God and to communion with his neighbour. It is prohibited—to everyone and in every case—to violate these precepts. They oblige everyone, regardless of the cost, never to offend in anyone, beginning with oneself, the personal dignity common to all. (VS §52) Not only are the negative precepts universal, but also the obligations to do good, which are indicated by the positive commandments, are binding always and everywhere. However, while one can be hindered from doing certain good actions, one can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if one is prepared to die rather than to do evil (VS §52). If this readiness to go as far as laying down one’s life for the truth and for choosing good over evil needs to be universal among all people, it must be even more universal and common for the followers of Christ. Although the concept of the universal call to holiness is not mentioned here by name, it is not difficult to infer it in this discussion. It is not difficult to see the main tenets of this idea also in the background of the Pope’s reflections on conscience. John Paul II repeatedly relates human conscience to objective, universal, and immutable moral norms, which are applied to particular concrete situations through the judgment of conscience (VS §§59, 62–64). When discussing the notion of “fundamental option” and its implications for moral theology, the Polish Pope emphasizes the unity that, by definition, exists between the generic decision of leading a moral life and one’s particular actions in the life of the person. He rejects the idea that some kind of creativity can be exercised by human mind and conscience to admit exceptions from rules that apply universally. The universal call to holiness, or at least to leading an upright moral life, can be recognized Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness 245 precisely in the immutable and exceptionless character of those norms. Without eliminating the uniqueness and singularity with which every human person is endowed, John Paul II states clearly that no diverse sets of rules exist for various kinds of people and their various ways of life. Instead, there are moral principles that oblige everyone, regardless of circumstance: The negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the “creativity” of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids. (VS §67) Two paragraphs later, John Paul II argues that this is because “the fundamental orientation can be radically changed by particular acts” (VS §70), and can never be separated from them. The same principle is applied in the Pontiff’s treatment of the “teleological” character of human morality. By choosing to act in a particular way, we are ordering ourselves to a particular end, and the end of every human person, especially of a Christian, is God (VS §73). There are actions that must be avoided always and everywhere, even at the cost of giving up one’s life (VS §76). John Paul II gives the examples of “the holy men and women of the Old and New Testaments, who are considered such because they gave their lives rather than perform this or that particular act contrary to faith or virtue” (VS §76). The famous Christian axiom “it is better to die than to sin” is indirectly alluded to and recommended here by the Pope to all followers of Christ, not just to the chosen few. John Paul II develops his reflection about martyrdom and moral life in the final sections of the encyclical, titled “Lest the Cross of Christ Be Emptied of Its Power” (ch. III) which, like chapter I and unlike chapter II, is directed more specifically to Catholic Christians. The tenets of the universal call to holiness are articulated in this part very clearly. In the context of the relationship between faith and morality, the Pope talks about the exceptionless character of negative moral prohibitions, and the universality and immutability of the moral norms that serve to protect the personal dignity and inviolability of every person (VS §90). He gives particular examples of biblical figures who preferred to die rather than compromise their moral integrity and, thus, their pursuit of holiness: 246 Mariusz Biliniewicz Susanna who was threatened with condemnation to death for refusing to commit adultery (Dan 23), John the Baptist who could not “refrain from speaking of the law of the Lord and rejecting any compromise with evil” (VS §91), and Stephen and Apostle James who were unwilling to deny Jesus (VS §91). He also speaks about how “countless other martyrs accepted persecution and death rather than perform the idolatrous act of burning incense before the statue of the Emperor (cf. Rev 13:7–10)” (VS §91). They refused to perform “even a single concrete act contrary to God’s love and the witness of faith. Like Christ himself, they obediently trusted and handed over their lives to the Father, the one who could free them from death (cf. Heb 5:7)” (VS §91). He also mentions: . . . the example of numerous Saints who bore witness to and defended moral truth even to the point of enduring martyrdom, or who preferred death to a single mortal sin. In raising them to the honour of the altars, the Church has canonized their witness and declared the truth of their judgment, according to which the love of God entails the obligation to respect his commandments, even in the most dire of circumstances, and the refusal to betray those commandments, even for the sake of saving one’s own life. (VS §91) Martyrdom, in the words of John Paul II, is “an affirmation of the inviolability of the moral order,” which “bears splendid witness both to the holiness of God’s law and to the inviolability of the personal dignity of man, created in God’s image and likeness” (VS §92). It “rejects as false and illusory whatever ‘human meaning’ one might claim to attribute, even in ‘exceptional’ conditions, to an act morally evil in itself” and “is . . . the exaltation of a person’s perfect ‘humanity’ and of true ‘life’” (VS §92). It is “an outstanding sign of the holiness of the Church” and “a solemn proclamation and missionary commitment usque ad sanguinem so that the splendour of moral truth may be undimmed in the behaviour and thinking of individuals and society” (VS §93). With regard to the relationship between martyrdom and the universal call to holiness for the whole Church, John Paul II’s teaching repeats and develops the teaching of Vatican II in LG: Although martyrdom represents the high point of the witness to moral truth, and one to which relatively few people are called, there is nonetheless a consistent witness which all Christians must daily be ready to make, even at the cost of suffering and grave sacrifice. Indeed, faced with the many difficulties which fidelity to the moral Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness 247 order can demand, even in the most ordinary circumstances, the Christian is called, with the grace of God invoked in prayer, to a sometimes-heroic commitment. In this he or she is sustained by the virtue of fortitude, whereby—as Gregory the Great teaches—one can actually “love the difficulties of this world for the sake of eternal rewards.” (VS §93) If even non-Christians have the duty of following the call to lead an upright moral life and recognize that “there are truths and moral values for which one must be prepared to give up one’s life” (VS §94), then this obligation of pursuing heroism and perfection pertain even more to Christians. Of the universal character of both moral norms and the obligation to follow them, the Pope states: This service [of defending universal moral norms] is directed to every man, considered in the uniqueness and singularity of his being and existence: only by obedience to universal moral norms does man find full confirmation of his personal uniqueness and the possibility of authentic moral growth. For this very reason, this service is also directed to all mankind: it is not only for individuals but also for the community, for society as such. These norms in fact represent the unshakable foundation and solid guarantee of a just and peaceful human coexistence, and hence of genuine democracy, which can come into being and develop only on the basis of the equality of all its members, who possess common rights and duties. When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the “poorest of the poor” on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal. (VS §96) Evidently, a just society can be built only when the inviolable character of these absolute norms is recognized and protected (VS §§98–101). John Paul II also acknowledges the practical difficulties in fulfilling this ideal which is laid down by God and likewise desired by our human nature. He refers to uncommon sacrifices that exact a high price, including sacrifice of one’s own life (VS §102). However, he also mentions that God gives humans grace to overcome these temptations. Recalling the declaration of the Council of Trent, he reminds us that “keeping God’s law in particular situations can be difficult, extremely difficult, but it is never impossible” (VS §102). Grace that is needed to pursue a moral life—which, 248 Mariusz Biliniewicz in turn, is a necessary component of the universal call to holiness—is to be found in “the saving Cross of Jesus, in the gift of the Holy Spirit, in the Sacraments which flow forth from the pierced side of the Redeemer (cf. Jn 19:34)” (VS §103). The Pope then develops the theme of a proper understanding of Catholic morality and the commonly raised objection that it is only a lofty ideal that is not attainable always and everywhere, and certainly not by everyone. He states: It would be a very serious error to conclude . . . that the Church’s teaching is essentially only an “ideal” which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man, according to a “balancing of the goods in question.” But what are the “concrete possibilities of man”? And of which man are we speaking? Of man dominated by lust or of man redeemed by Christ? This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ’s redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means that he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence. And if redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ’s redemptive act, but to man’s will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act. God’s command is of course proportioned to man’s capabilities; but to the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin, can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit. (VS §103) John Paul II warns about the unacceptable “attitude of one who makes his own weakness the criterion of the truth about the good, so that he can feel self-justified, without even the need to have recourse to God and his mercy” (VS §104). He complains that “in our own day this attitude is expressed particularly in the attempt to adapt the moral norm to one’s own capacities and personal interests, and even in the rejection of the very idea of a norm” (VS §105). In the section on morality and new evangelization in chapter III, the Pontiff designates an upright morality as a powerful tool for spreading the Gospel. He states that: The life of holiness which is resplendent in so many members of the People of God, humble and often unseen, constitutes the simplest and most attractive way to perceive at once the beauty of truth, the liberating force of God’s love, and the value of unconditional fidel- Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness 249 ity to all the demands of the Lord’s law, even in the most difficult situations. (VS §107) He continues by stating that the life of holiness is the effect and full expression of the threefold office of Christ (priest, prophet, king), which every Christian receives at baptism. By immersion in the sacramental life of the Church, every Catholic is subsequently called to live a life of holiness; the universality of the Church’s sacramental life facilitates the universality of holiness. Essentially, this life of holiness and evangelization is possible thanks to the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is given to every Christian (VS §107). John Paul II’s insistence on the universality of the call to live an upright moral life, and, consequently, to arrive at holiness, is also very visible in the concluding section of the encyclical. Recalling again the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Pope states: No matter how many and great the obstacles put in his way by human frailty and sin, the Spirit, who renews the face of the earth (cf. Ps 104:30), makes possible the miracle of the perfect accomplishment of the good. This renewal, which gives the ability to do what is good, noble, beautiful, pleasing to God and in conformity with his will, is in some way the flowering of the gift of mercy, which offers liberation from the slavery of evil and gives the strength to sin no more. (VS §118) In this final section of the document the Pontiff does not talk only about the gift of following the path of Jesus, but also of the gift of understanding the Church’s teaching about morality. Referring to ideas that “Christian morality is in itself too demanding, difficult to understand and almost impossible to practice” (VS §119), he recalls that it is actually extraordinarily simple and could be summarized as simply following Jesus Christ. Without denying the complexity of everyday realities, the Pope states that “by the light of the Holy Spirit, the living essence of Christian morality can be understood by everyone, even the least learned, but particularly those who are able to preserve an ‘undivided heart’ (Ps 86:11)” (VS §119). He also stresses that following Christ provides the vital energy needed to carry out the reality of living the Christian vocation (VS §119). Universal Call to Holiness Today The question that must now be asked concerns the state of the idea of the universal call to holiness today, more than fifty years after LG and twen- 250 Mariusz Biliniewicz ty-five years after VS. As said before, one key point each document attempts to make is overcoming the unhealthy and un-Gospel idea of a dualism that would exist between various categories of holiness in the Church; that is, that there might be some heroes and heroines who indeed are called to live the Christian life to its fullness, but they are few in numbers and are “special cases” rather than a regular occurrence. Apart from those heroes and heroines, there would be the rest of the faithful for whom it is enough to follow the basic principles of natural law, or the Ten Commandments, and to avoid mortal sin. Both Vatican II and John Paul II argued forcefully against such an understanding of holiness, which divides the Church into “first class” and “second class,” into “ordinary” and “extraordinary,” “radical” and “moderate,” or “extreme” and “mild.” When it comes to holiness, no Christian is called to be mediocre, moderate, average, ordinary, or second class; instead, all should be heroes and heroines, radical, extraordinary, first class, with no exceptions. Moreover, everyone is given means to arrive at this goal, and God does not spare grace in helping us to attain perfection even in the midst of our complex and messy life situations. Naturally, no one achieves perfection here on earth; however, without falling into temptation of Pelagianism, all Christians should strive for it and believe that this is ultimately their goal and mission as disciples of Christ. Has cultivating the universal call to holiness in the post–Vatican II era helped to overcome these dualistic tendencies? In many quarters it has, and experience of the life of the Church—especially of the various ecclesial communities gathering primarily lay people—shows that Catholics become increasingly more aware of their noble calling. However, it seems that in recent times and in certain places a resurgence of pre–Vatican II dualistic tendencies can sometimes be observed. This often happens in the context of interpretation and implementation of Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (AL) from 2016, especially of its famous chapter VIII, which discusses pastoral care of Catholics within irregular unions.8 A lot of ink has been spilt on this topic, and this author has been among those who have been spilling it, and so there is no need to repeat here what was said elsewhere.9 The focus of this part of this paper will not be the document itself, but the reception of the document and its consequences Francis, Amoris Laetitia [AL] (2016), w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/ pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_ amoris-laetitia_en.pdf. 9 See Mariusz Biliniewicz, Amoris Laetitia and the Spirit of Vatican II: The Source of Controversy (London: Routledge, 2018). 8 Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness 251 for our understanding or mis-understanding of the universal call to holiness and for creating an ecclesial atmosphere which will either foster or hinder the pursuit of this appeal. To do this, some official episcopal, diocesan guidelines, which implement the parts of the exhortation relating to pastoral care of Catholics living in irregular unions, will be examined. While reading some of those episcopal guidelines and theological commentaries, one cannot help garner the impression that the kind of universal call to holiness about which Vatican II and John Paul II talked does not really apply always and everywhere. John Paul II insisted in VS that there are rules that bar any exception, regardless of circumstance, that there can be no excuse for breaking of the moral law, and thus compromising one’s attempt to arrive at holiness, that it is better to die than to sin, that martyrs are examples who should be followed by all Christians, and that those who are reborn in the waters of baptism, anointed with the Holy Spirit in confirmation, fed with Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist, and forgiven and given a new life in the sacrament of penance should be ready to give their own life than to compromise with evil. But while these were the emphases which John Paul II made in VS, some of the guidelines regarding the implementation of chapter VIII of AL seem to suggest that this might not always be the case. There are rules, they seem to be saying, but there are also exceptions to those rules. There are ideals, which can, indeed, be achieved by the heroic efforts of some spiritual supermen and superwomen, but there is also “real life,” in which being a “hero” is not always possible. With regard to the famous issue of sacramental discipline of those who live in irregular unions, the ideal of living in sexual continence—that is, of not breaking the sixth commandment—is often being presented in these guidelines not as a universal and unnegotiable precondition for being admitted to the Eucharist anymore, but as a solution that can be proposed to those couples, but with an understanding that it might not be feasible to practice in certain circumstances. For example, the guidelines issued by the bishops of Malta state that, while the possibility of conjugal continence is to be examined, following this “ideal” is not easy. In some cases it is “humanly impossible” without putting at risk other aspects of a couple’s life together and sometimes it can give rise to an even greater harm (e.g., the breakdown of yet another family). If the process of discernment leads to this conclusion (that sexual abstinence is not feasible) and a person in an irregular union feels they are at peace with God, they can be admitted to the sacraments, since they seem to be considered unable to arrive at the ideal situation, at least for now.10 Archdiocese of Malta and the Diocese of Gozo, Criteria for the Application of Chap- 10 252 Mariusz Biliniewicz Guidelines issued by the archdiocese of Braga also state that “the possibility of a commitment to live in conjugal continence can be examined” when the concrete circumstances of a couple make it “feasible,” especially when both Christians walk on a solid path of faith. When they do not and when sexual continence puts at risk the stability of a new family, access to the sacraments can still be granted to them, given the unfeasibility of the “brother-and-sister” solution.11 Guidelines issued in the diocese of Rome (the pope’s own diocese) speak in a similar tone: When the concrete circumstances of a couple make it feasible, meaning when their journey of faith has been long, sincere, and progressive, it is to be proposed that they live in continence. However, if this decision is too difficult to practice and if it threatens the stability of the family unit, Amoris Laetitia does not rule out the possibility of accessing penance and the Eucharist.12 Guidelines such as these—and the list is not exhaustive; one could add the dioceses of San Diego, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, or national guidelines published by bishops of Brazil and Germany—give the impression that “feasibility” and the level of difficulties involved are now the key to pastoral discernment of situations which concern morality. Admittedly, many of these guidelines do not fail to propose the solution of sexual abstinence and to mention the ideal proposed by the Church, but they also do not fail to give the impression that the universal call to holiness (of which an inevitable component is following the moral law of the Gospel) does not have to be put into practice in its fullness readily. In fact, some of these guidelines seem to suggest, as some say that AL itself suggests, that this call to holiness can be realized by not following the law of the Gospel in its radical fullness here and now; after all, in the document it is stated that “conscience can [rightly] . . . come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s ter VIII of Amoris Laetitia, January 2017, ms.maltadiocese.org/WEBSITE/2017/ PRESS%20RELEASES/Norms%20for%20the%20Application%20of%20Chapter%20VIII%20of%20AL.pdf. 11 Bishop Jorge Ortiga, Building the House Upon the Rock, pastoral letter, archdiocese of Braga, December 5, 2017, www.diocese-braga.pt/media/contents/contents_ Dbdf5s/Building%20the%20House%20upon%20the%20Rock.pdf. 12 Agostino Vallini, “La Letizia Dell’amore”: Il Cammino Delle Famiglie a Roma, Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, September 19, 2016, 13, www.romasette.it/ wp-content/uploads/Relazione2016ConvegnoDiocesano.pdf (translation mine). Veritatis Splendor and the Universal Call to Holiness 253 limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal” (AL §303). While there is no doubt that the process of discernment needs to be applied to every case individually and that different situations require different applications of the same principles, dividing the faithful into those who can, with the help of God’s grace, arrive at the ideal now and those who cannot resembles the pre–Vatican II language of two categories of the faithful: the heroes and the rest. The language of “feasibility” appears to suggest that not everyone is called by God to holiness and to following the moral law here and now, but that there are people who, at least for now, have no other option available to them, except for choosing a lesser evil, that is, a smaller sin over a greater one. There might be Catholics who are called and able to put the ideal into practice now; however, there are others who are either not called to do this now, or who are unable, either subjectively or, more disturbingly, objectively to do this at a particular time. Would John Paul II agree that there are situations in which moral agents cannot help sinning and cannot “act differently and decide otherwise without further sin” (AL §301)? It seems that at least in VS he was arguing precisely against such a position. Whatever might be the intention of those who understand and implement AL in such a way that there are rules but also exceptions from the rules for those who cannot abide by the rules, what is actually taken from such texts by a great number of Catholics is precisely this message: there might be certain ideals out there, but, after all, only heroes can arrive at them, and who can be such a hero? In the meantime, the Church can tolerate and does tolerate the non-ideal situations, as well as the fact that not everyone is a hero and that not everyone can become one. What is perhaps most ironic and intriguing in this whole process is that this kind of moral theology, which smacks of proportionalism and situation ethics (which believes that the end can sometimes justify the means), is often considered by those who promote it to be a result of the renewal of moral theology which was called for by the Second Vatican Council. However, ironically, by introducing this distinction between those heroic Catholics who want and can live up to the “ideal” of the Church teaching and those who cannot, a very pre-conciliar mode of thinking is actually being introduced. It is a resemblance of the post-Tridentine dualism against which Vatican II argued in its teaching about the universal call to holiness. With regard to the universality of holiness, not only priests and religious but all Catholics are called to the perfection of charity. Because of their baptism, all Christians essentially have the same vocation, that is, the vocation to beatitude. John Paul II knew that and in VS developed this idea in the area of morality: the same rules of conduct apply to everyone; 254 Mariusz Biliniewicz there are no “first class” and “second class” Catholics. Since there is no division in the grace available in sacraments and no division in God’s call, there should be no distinction between heroes and the rest of the common folk. Everyone is called to be a hero, to live in the fullness of the truth, to respond to God’s calling, and to make use of the available means to respond to this call most fully. Guidelines on the application of chapter VIII of AL that use the language of ideals, heroism, feasibility, and possibility (or non-possibility) of living the precepts of moral law contribute (perhaps unwillingly and even unwittingly) to undermining this landmark teaching of Vatican II and of John Paul II about the universal call to holiness. Regardless of salutary motivations of those who produce such guidelines, the language they choose to adopt does little service to the promotion of the idea that God’s demands are the same for everyone, that God’s grace is available to everyone, that everyone is invited to holiness, and that everyone is expected to accept this invitation. This is what the Vatican II wanted all Catholics to know, and this is what John Paul II insisted upon in VS. The fact that an emerging shift from a universalist perspective to a quasi-pre-Vatican II dualistic way of thinking about morality and holiness can be recently observed these days makes the encyclical of Saint John Paul II and his contribution to this discussion all the more relevant today. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 255–278 255 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life: The Influence of Pope Saint Paul VI on Veritatis Splendor Renée Köhler-Ryan University of Notre Dame Australia Sydney, Australia On the sixth of August, 1993, Pope Saint John Paul II signed Veritatis Splendor.1 That date, the liturgical feast day of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, is significant for several reasons, each of which reveals a dimension of the “splendor” of truth about which he writes. The point most focused on here is that John Paul II’s identification of Paul VI as the “Pope of the Transfiguration” may be an influence on the document. His admiration of his predecessor’s encyclicals, particularly those that highlight the moral life and the importance of the Church in the world, offer various dimensions to consider about the splendor of truth about which he speaks.2 This comes to the fore with a close reading of the homilies and addresses that John Paul gave on the feast of the Transfiguration throughout his pontificate. Thereby, the thesis emerges that Veritatis Splendor may be an extension, a response, and even an homage to Paul’s Ecclesiam Suam (1964).3 Paul’s encyclical, also issued on the feast of the Transfiguration, argues that the Church acts as Christ’s source of illumination at the heart of the world. John Paul seems to consider this further evidence of Paul’s John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (August 6 [Feast of the Transfiguration], 1993), w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_ enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html. 2 John Paul II, “Angelus,” Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1989, §2, w2.vatican.va/ content/john-paul-ii/it/angelus/1989/documents/hf_jp-ii_ang_19890806.html. 3 Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam (1964), w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/ documents/hf_p-vi_enc_06081964_ecclesiam.html. 1 256 Renée Köhler-Ryan deeply personal love of the Church. Such illumination is due to the way that Christians lead their daily lives, in the light of Christ’s law of love. Paul VI says in Ecclesiam Suam that he does not have the space to articulate exactly how the moral life and action work. Yet, he emphasizes how important daily life is for this essential work of the Church. The argument here is that Veritatis Splendor seems to pick up the task of articulating just how such a moral life develops. In John Paul’s chosen title, “splendor” illuminates how the transcendental of goodness is inseparable from both truth (veritas) and beauty. To lead a good life, in charity, is to live in truth and to become beautiful—by imitating Christ and reflecting the light of divine life. Thus God, the true beauty, is known as Creator and exemplar: he reveals the inner form of the Christian life, which constantly in turn announces itself in morally good actions in the world. To see Christ in unveiled glory is to glimpse the contours of divine activity, which human life can reflect when it strives toward the truth. Fittingly then, from the initial statement of the text onward, a major theme in Veritatis Splendor is that humans are made in God’s image; and that this image is most clearly known by contemplating the Son of God, incarnate and glorious on Mount Tabor.4 The encyclical adverts to the revelation that humans may be made to reflect God’s glory, but that their capacity to fully be his image has become corrupted through sin.5 Only when humans freely choose to live the moral law in charity can they become once more untarnished, and radiate the life of Christ: this is the possibility of human transfiguration that is particularly evident in the lives and deaths of the martyrs and saints.6 This link between the Transfiguration and splendor has already been articulated by J. A. DiNoia, O.P., who argues that “the date upon which this great encyclical was signed provides a key to unlocking its meaning, that transfiguration and communion are at its heart.” 7 DiNoia is far See, for instance, the opening “Blessing”: “The splendour of truth shines forth in all the works of the Creator and, in a special way, in man, created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:26). Truth enlightens man’s intelligence and shapes his freedom, leading him to know and love the Lord. Hence the Psalmist prays: ‘Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord’ (Ps 4:6).” See also §§2, 5, 19, 19, 31, 34, 38, 41, 45, 73, 80, 86, 92, 95, and 99, which emphasize the importance of humans as image. 5 In §1, this is discussed as a darkening of the mind, which will then have implications for the human conscience. 6 Discussion in §93, which will be further examined below. 7 J. A. DiNoia, O.P., “Veritatis Splendor: Moral Life as Transfigured Life,” in Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology: Studies by Ten Outstanding Scholars, 4 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 257 from alone in arguing that these themes signify the way that the encyclical fundamentally reorients moral theology toward the heart of why Christians live according to the divinely revealed moral law. This article discusses him more overtly than others because he makes the direct link between the encyclical and the mystery of the Transfiguration. 8 John Paul II states his intentions in writing the encyclical, which are mainly to address certain defects at play in his time in the realm of moral theology. He really goes further than this, though, to emphasize the importance of orthodox moral teaching, within a context of dialogue and loving relationship with Christ. Veritatis Splendor emphasizes the objective reality of the moral law, which then makes possible the subjective experience of responding to truth, in freedom. The Christian understanding of what it means to be good no longer focuses first on following the letter of the law. Instead, why Christians follow divinely revealed laws is central. In this context, the commandments unfold as ways to understand how one’s life can become a glorious participation in the love shared amongst the Persons of the Trinity.9 When humans conform to the life of Christ, they imitate him and reflect the glory of the Godhead.10 ed. J. A. DiNoia, O.P., and Romanus Cessario, O.P. (Chicago: Midwest Theological Forum, 1999), 1. An excellent overview of the importance of the concept of “splendor” in the document, from various perspectives, can be found in: Michael Dauphinais, “The Splendor and Gift of the Christian Moral Life: Veritatis Splendor at Twenty-Five,” Nova et Vetera (English) 16, no. 4 (2018): 1261–312. This article also includes an extensive bibliography of key texts considering the importance of Veritatis Splendor. 8 The term that is very often used to describe the significance of what John Paul II is contributing to moral theology is “renewal.” For instance: Joseph Ratzinger, “The Renewal of Moral Theology: Perspectives of Vatican II and Veritatis Splendor,” Communio 32 (Summer 2005): 357–68. Similarly, Christopher J. Thompson writes “Moral Theology in a Sapiential Mode: Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 465–73. Servais Pinckaers, O.P., finds that the document provides a salient configuration of the modern understanding of autonomy, emphasizing that “the pivotal point of Veritatis splendor lies in the coordination it establishes between human freedom and truth” (Servais Pinckaers, O.P., “An Encyclical for the Future: Veritatis Splendor,” in DiNoia and Cessario, Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology, 38). Livio Melina argues that Veritatis Splendor is a response to the ethical relativism and subjectivism of contemporary society, and at the same time a contribution to the new evangelization (Sharing in Christ’s Virtues: For the Renewal of Moral Theology in Light of Veritatis Splendor, trans. William E. May [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001], esp. 13–33 [ch. 1: “Between Crisis and Renewal”]). 9 DiNoia, “Veritatis Splendor,” 2. 10 DiNoia, “Veritatis Splendor,” 7. 258 Renée Köhler-Ryan To explain how the Transfiguration is so important to interpreting Veritatis Splendor, DiNoia draws upon a sermon by Pope Saint Leo, who argues that the moment of the Transfiguration happened so that the apostles would not despair later, when they saw Christ on the Cross, and so that they—and future Christians—would glimpse something of their future glory. Christ transfigured is, Leo and DiNoia argue, the prefiguration of what humans can become, at the end of an earthly life well lived.11 While Pope Saint Leo’s sermon does aid in understanding the importance of the Transfiguration, John Paul II’s inspiration for thinking about the transfigured life is even more assuredly that of another now officially sainted pope: Pope Saint Paul VI. Reading through the addresses and Angelus messages that John Paul II gave on the sixth of August throughout his pontificate, it becomes obvious that he considered the feast of the Transfiguration inseparable from the life and ministry of this predecessor. Consistently, John Paul II associates Paul VI with the concept of transfiguration; so much is this the case that his statement, cited above, that the prior Pontiff is the “Pope of the Transfiguration” becomes unsurprising in that context.12 On the same date in 1989, John Paul II reasons that not only did Paul VI die on the sixth of August; he also issued his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, on the same date in 1964; and his encyclical brings to the fore the work of transfiguration that the author, Paul VI, envisions for the Church.13 Reading Veritatis Splendor against the background of Ecclesiam Suam reveals that the Christian moral life makes present in the world the splendid light of Christ’s Transfiguration. In particular, Veritatis Splendor extends the earlier encyclical’s claim that the daily lives of Christians shine from the center of the world. Christ transfigured thus remains present, through the members of his Church, in a world that would otherwise lack the means to know that the good life is splendid. A gentle leitmotif throughout the thought of both of these Popes is that what we do in daily life has tremendous significance in both personal and ecclesial dimensions. That is, even in the quietest moments of daily life, the free choices of a Christian are transformative. Conforming ourselves to the image of Christ on Mount Tabor, Christians can provide light to others. DiNoia, “Veritatis Splendor,” 5–7. John Paul II, “Angelus” (August 6, 1989), §2. 13 John Paul II, “Angelus,” §2. John Paul II, “Omelia di Giovanni Paolo II: Messa Nella Chiesa Parrocchiale di San Tommaso da Villanova,” Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1989, §5, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/homilies/1989/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19890806_s-tommaso-villanova.html. 11 12 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 259 Paul VI explains in Ecclesiam Suam that Christians radiate from the center, through a series of concentric circles.14 John Paul II brings to that vision his dynamic, personalist understanding of moral action. The later Pope seems particularly struck by Paul’s insistence that there are no compromises regarding truths concerning the life and actions of human persons.15 For the beautiful human capacity to reflect Christ’s light for others derives from joyous sacrifice, exemplified by the lives of the martyrs. This article considers each of these points in more detail. First, in order to highlight key aspects of the moral life in light of Christ’s Transfiguration, it examines what, philosophically, splendor means and what transfiguration entails for the human person. Secondly, it develops John Paul II’s understanding of the intransitive aspect of human action to develop the foregoing point. Thirdly, it explores his addresses and homilies on the feast of the Transfiguration at various points in his pontificate. Then, it articulates how Ecclesiam Suam forms the backdrop for significant aspects of Veritatis Splendor, making the case that the later encyclical can be read as a continuation and deepening of the earlier document. Finally, it considers how some of John Paul II’s later writings consider vocation as a manifestation of transfiguration. In all of this it becomes evident that what Christians do on a daily basis brings them to transfiguration: the extraordinary happens in the seemingly ordinary, revealing the splendor toward which all humans are called. Splendor and the Transfigured Human Life The term “transfiguration” brings us into the space where philosophy and theology meet. While etymologically this word means to change in appearance,16 the splendor of human transfiguration also refers to the development of form. While in Christ’s case, the revelation of existing form is made manifest, for humans, both form and splendor are constantly in development. John Paul seems to think along these lines in Veritatis Splendor, in that he constantly refers to the need to conform to God’s laws, thereby becoming made in God’s image. This point is particularly striking in §73, where John Paul quotes Cyril of Alexandria’s See discussion below, which focuses on Ecclesiam Suam, §§96–115. See John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §80, where he quotes Humanae Vitae, §14, which underscores that evil acts are never lawful, even in the seeming pursuit of good ; and reference in footnote 5 to Populorum Progressio, §13: “Since the Church does dwell among men, she has the duty ‘of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.’” 16 From trans (“change”) plus figura (“form, shape, figure”); see “Transfigure,” in the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 14 15 260 Renée Köhler-Ryan reflection that the divine image shines through us when we lead lives which are “good and in conformity with virtue.” Effectively, the link between the transcendentals is in operation here, perhaps because of John Paul II’s awareness of the Scholastic development of these ideas. Thereby, the term “splendor” has a particular meaning, referring to the way that the form of something—what is most knowable about that thing—shines its light on the human mind.17 Such knowledge is illuminative—and we often think of human knowledge in this way. A light is shed, for the knower, upon the thing that is known; and a revelation occurs. The interrelationship between the transcendentals of being, truth, goodness, and beauty is such that the splendor (or beauty) of a thing will be greater and more obvious the more a living thing has actualized what it fundamentally is, so that its form is more in view. A rose bush in bloom will appear more beautiful than when it bears no flowers, or has just been pruned. A human person will be more splendid the more he or she is living in relationship to and in alignment with truth, through the freedom particular to the virtuous life. Theologically speaking, that Truth is Christ. Unlike the rose bush, the human person can choose for Truth through living a good life, motivated by Christ-like love. Like no other animate substance on earth, the Christian life is like a dramatic work of art, striving toward splendor: by knowing, loving, and responding to the truly beautiful, transfigured Christ. That Christ’s manifestation of glory to the apostles is called a “transfiguration” is fitting because who he is in that moment is unchanged, but how he appears is momentarily altered. Christ’s Transfiguration constitutes a significant development in his relationship to the apostles and then later to us through the Gospel. Most importantly, his Transfiguration manifests the human vocation to be splendid. Humans can, though, ignore or reject this calling. Crucially, God’s revealed law provides guidance toward fulfillment, but when this is not adopted—to use the language of Veritatis Splendor—deformation rather than conformation takes place. Christ’s Transfiguration reveals who he is, from all eternity, but our transfiguration takes place in time, and One discussion of this can be found in Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, trans. J. F. Scanlan (Minneapolis, MN: Filiquarian, 2007), 28: “The form, that is to say, the principle which constitutes the proper perfection of all that is, which constitutes and achieves things in their essences and qualities, which is, finally, if one may so put it, the ontological secret that they bear within them, their spiritual being, their operating mystery—the form, indeed, is above all the proper principle of intelligibility, the proper clarity of every thing.” 17 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 261 only when we choose for what is good, true, and beautiful. Only then can the splendor of the human form, as an image of God’s beauty, shine forth. Clearly we need guidance during our earthly pilgrimage, which makes it all the more fitting that Christ’s appearance on a mount with Moses and Elijah emphasizes his role as teacher and guide. As the argumentative thrust of Veritatis Splendor maintains, when humans respond to Christ as the Truth, they can resemble him to become transfigured. Thus they can become true to human form, radiating the Light, and Life, of God through their daily actions. Considering the metaphysical and aesthetic dimensions of splendor in relationship to form heightens awareness of the importance of the concept of transfiguration that is only named once but that works in the background of this document. In Matthew’s account of the moment of Christ’s Transfiguration, he uses the Greek term metamorphōthē, which explicitly refers to a change in form and brings with it the resonances of Greek concepts of matter and form. One might think of the synonymous word “transformation” to come closer to the mark. When something or someone metamorphoses, its form changes. This is usually a development of what is already there. Ovid’s ancient work Metamorphoses depicts this occurrence as something radical and strange; a transition from one shape, and even substance, into another. In Matthew’s Gospel, on the other hand, Christ’s Transfiguration refers not to a change in his inner form, but rather in the way that this form manifests itself to others. His apostles see him as they never have before: radiating the glory of the Godhead. The conceptual difficulty is then to know how humans could possibly become transfigured. Ovid’s articulation indicates the profundity of this kind of change; but in the Christian understanding, humans do not morph into something completely different. Instead, they become most fully themselves when they lead the life toward which they are called. In being good, they become beautiful, and this transformation is their share in Christ’s glory—in the splendor of Truth incarnate.18 Furthermore, when they live as Christians in the world, they represent to others what it means for humans to reflect God’s glory. There is, one might say, the capacity for the human person’s form, their moral life, to become so splendid that others recognize its difference from the warped image of God found in the world, as the effect of original sin. The inner light of the Christian life manifests in action that—as the then Karol Wojtyła argued earlier In this respect, the idea of “participated theonomy” can be considered another way in which John Paul II thinks of how humans participate in the light of the Trinity, which is the way of transfiguration (Veritatis Splendor, §41). 18 262 Renée Köhler-Ryan in The Acting Person—is intransitive. That is, he emphasizes how moral action affects the person who is acting as he or she performs the act. Again in more theological terms, a moral action can make a person more or less Christ-like, depending on whether the action is good or bad. To extend the argument a degree further: either the image of God, qua person, will shine forth or it will become occluded. John Paul II and Freedom Such transformation, or transfiguration, according to John Paul II, can only happen when humans experience the freedom of choosing for good. John Paul II’s philosophical work on this point informs how he reorients moral theology, whereby Veritatis Splendor insists that Christian life is first concerned with love, without which following the law is listless. John Paul II’s understanding of the drama of the human life, his contribution to personalism, works throughout Veritatis Splendor, and acknowledging this offers ways to know more deeply how humans can become transfigured. In particular, his concept of self-determination, or self-making, indicates both the metaphysical underpinnings and aesthetic dimensions of transfiguration. John Paul II speaks of the way that truth and beauty merge for Paul VI, when he considers the importance of Christ’s Transfiguration. That is, the theological sense of the aesthetic that Paul VI expresses has Christ as its archetype and concerns the transformation of human life. These observations in turn offer him further insight into how Paul VI can be considered the Pope of the Transfiguration. 19 As a philosopher, Karol Wojtyła is a personalist, who emphasizes both the reality of who we are as humans (this is his metaphysical realism) and the ways in which we experience our relatedness to the world, particularly through human action (this is the phenomenological dimension of his work).20 Developing the concept of intentionality from twentieth-century phenomenology, Wojtyła works with the idea that, through engagement with the world, the human person undertakes a process of self-making. John Paul II, “Celebrazione Eucaristica in Occasione del XVII Anniversario della Morte di Papa Montini: Omelia di Giovanni Paolo II,” Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1995, §4, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/homilies/1995/documents/ hf_jp-ii_hom_19950806_paolo-vi.html. 20 Literature that considers the impact of John Paul II’s personalism on Veritatis Splendor includes: David S. Crawford, “Experience of Nature, Moral Experience: Interpreting Veritatis Splendor’s ‘Perspective of the Acting Person,’” Communio 37 (Summer 2010): 266–82; Jack Healy, “Veritatis Splendor and the Human Person,” Linacre Quarterly 61, no. 3 (1994): 16–26; J. F. Owens, “A Creaturely Ethic: Veritatis Splendor and Human Nature,” Linacre Quarterly 67, no. 3 (2000): 11–21. 19 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 263 This is articulated throughout The Acting Person. As mentioned above, Wojtyła considers that human action includes both transitive and intransitive dimensions, and both are ultimately crucial to cooperation in divinely bestowed transfiguration. Wojtyła explains that every action has inner and outer dimensions, because the human action always has an object of the will; but at the same time what the will intends affects the human person who is acting. He describes: “Because of self-determination, an action reaches and penetrates into the subject, into the ego, which is its primary and principal object. Parallel with this there comes the transitiveness and intransitiveness of the human action.”21 In other words, every human action only potentially affects the outer world in a given way; a chosen action can also be ineffective. The aspect of human action that will always be present is the way that moral and immoral action affect the inner world of the human person. Such ongoing inner transformation is at the core of the moral life, and connections between inner and outer arguably form the terrain on which transfiguration can both happen and at the same time become a recognizable dimension of goodness in the world. A Christian who is motivated by love for Christ participates in the life of the Trinity. The light of transfiguration can become a Christian beacon in the world whenever this occurs. As will be shown, Paul VI had made this argument about the importance of daily human decisions and actions in Ecclesiam Suam, and John Paul II seems to think along similar lines. At a conference after the publication of The Acting Person, Wojtyła explained the principle of “self-determination” more succinctly, and related it to the work of the Second Vatican Council that was so much the focus of both his and Paul VI’s pontificates. Later published in essay form, his address was entitled “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination.”22 The piece offers further clarity about how the Pope, as a philosopher, considered the transformative dimensions of the moral life. Wojtyła argues there that whenever I, a human person, act, “I am not only the efficient cause of my acts, but through them I am also in some sense the ‘creator of myself.’”23 More specifically, if I choose for the good, then I become a better person; if I choose for what is evil, then I become worse. In the former case, one might say, formation is occurring; in the latter, the person is becoming Karol Wojtyła, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969): 150. 22 Karol Wojtyła, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” trans. Theresa Sandok, O.S.M., in Person and Community: Selected Essays, Catholic Thought from Lublin (New York: Peter Lang): 187–95. 23 Wojtyła, “Personal Structure,” 191. 21 264 Renée Köhler-Ryan deformed. By extension, when I choose for what is Christ-like, I can become like Christ, and this is the conforming dimension that runs later throughout Veritatis Splendor. All of this depends upon the understanding that humans are capable of knowing what is true, and that they are free to choose for what is true, which is to say, good. The encyclical accentuates further that one can also choose for what is beautiful in a deeply personal way: reflecting the splendor of the transfigured Christ. Thus, thinking through the implications of what Wojtyła calls the “dynamic reality of action”24 reveals that humans, through their actions, can either reflect luminescence, or retreat, so that the divine image within the heart of man is “disfigured,”25 because the divine law has been rejected. Crucial to all this is that, for Wojtyła, a truly human action constitutes a genuine movement of the will toward what one knows to be good or evil. This provides insight into how each person can uniquely participate in Christ’s splendor, by finding out who they are in the light of divine Law. Their lives transmit the light of Christ into the world. All of this can be understood by considering how following the divine law requires outward action that is fully integrated with a Christ-like disposition. Unaided reason cannot tell us that the life of a martyr or a saint is at the same time a moment of personal self-fulfillment, precisely as an imitation of and participation in Christ’s self-giving action during his life, on the Cross, and in his glorious Resurrection and Ascension. This Christian contribution to human self-understanding, which takes as its touchstone the revealed relationship between splendor and the capacities of persons to become Christlike, can be more clearly known through John Paul II’s insistence on the “ontology” of the human person, within the above-mentioned essay on self-determination. There, he concludes with the reflection that the human person is capable of self-giving only when self-possessing. Such self-possession, he argues, is only possible when one can self-govern—which is to say, when one is virtuous, and capable of moral action.26 The ontology of the human person, and with it the centrality of human freedom, self-determination, and the possibilities of self-giving, are all discernible at the core of Veritatis Splendor. Wojtyła’s personalism entails that everything in the encyclical can be read through the ontology of personhood, magnified through the glory of Christ on Mount Tabor. There we see all that humans are called ultimately to become, by leading the Christian life. This calls for personal transfiguration, possible because persons are made to know Wojtyła, “Personal Structure,” 193. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §12. 26 Wojtyła, “Personal Structure,” 194. 24 25 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 265 and reflect Christ’s divine and deeply personal splendor. When they can govern themselves by acting according to a moral law that is true for every human person, they become capable of such splendor, and at the same time of illuminating the world from within. The call to be transfigured is for humans to reveal their inner form through imitating the humanity of Christ, inextricably linked with the life of the Godhead. Thus, in the same essay on personalist self-determination, it is fitting that Wojtyła refers to §24 of Gaudium et Spes, where the fathers of Vatican II state that “the human being, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself.”27 The cardinal reflects that: “In these words, [the document] sum[s] up the age-old traditions and inquiries of Christian anthropology, for which divine revelation became a liberating light.”28 The revelation received through the Person of Christ, then, illuminates what truly fulfills human persons: when they become, in imitation of him, self-giving gifts to the world, they participate in their own making, in God’s glorious likeness. Such participation is only possible with the profound realization of what it means to love like Christ. Reading a little further into the same paragraph in Gaudium et Spes, one finds that “Love for God and neighbour is the first and greatest commandment. Sacred Scripture, however, teaches us that the love of God cannot be separated from love of neighbour. . . . To men growing daily more dependent on one another, and to a world becoming more unified every day, this truth proves to be of paramount importance.”29 In the modern world, then, where persons are interrelated and interdependent, the daily task of self-giving faces newly configured challenges, possibilities, and responsibilities. Rather than becoming thereby overwhelmed, Christians can manifest how they are Christ-like in ways that meet the needs of their time. Still, the central motivation of the Christian moral life remains unchanged. In becoming Christ-like, each person can bring the splendor of Christ’s self-giving love into the world. This is the truly human vocation to become transfigured. In Veritatis Splendor, this becomes clear at the only moment when the Pope uses the concept of “transfiguration” in order to further his argument—when he speaks about the martyrs and the saints. In §93, he states that: “By their eloquent and attractive example of a life completely transfigured by the splendour of moral truth, the martyrs Wojtyła, “Personal Structure,” 193. Wojtyła, “Personal Structure,” 193. 29 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (1965), Vatican trans. (Strathfield: St Paul’s, 2009), §24. 27 28 266 Renée Köhler-Ryan and, in general, all the Church’s Saints, light up every period of history by reawakening its moral sense.” The splendor of truth, then, emanates from the lives of the martyrs and saints, providing a means for the world to remember the true human calling: to be fulfilled, through daily action, in response to the light of God’s magnificent love. Such splendor reaches into the darkness only when it has become a matter of daily practice. John Paul II emphasizes this quotidian dimension in Veritatis Splendor. He examines human action in its various aspects, accentuating the importance of each. In doing so, he echoes and deepens the work and words of Paul VI. Pope Paul VI: Pope of the Transfiguration That John Paul II takes Paul VI as one of the finest models of transfiguration can be discerned from the addresses wherein he speaks about his predecessor, particularly those given on the sixth of August. This section discusses the main ways through which he articulates the case that both Paul VI’s life, wherein he focused on the role of the Christian and the Church in the modern world, and the moment of his death shed light on what it means to be transfigured. John Paul consistently details Paul VI’s life as exemplary when he reflects on the meaning of Christ’s Transfiguration. Homilies and addresses, given on the sixth of August and recorded on the Vatican website, taken from the years 1979, 1980, 1983, 1985, and 1986, and then from 1989 through to 2004 are all considered here.30 John Paul II’s understanding of Paul VI as the Pope of the Transfiguration is due to the way that Paul lived his life, the date on which he died, and the weight that he gave to bringing the light of Christ—particularly through focus on morality considerations—throughout his pontificate. More specifically still, Paul VI writes about the Transfiguration in order to understand the meaning of the Christian life; and he issued his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, on that feast day. The first feast of the Transfiguration that falls within John Paul II’s pontificate is in 1979 and is a fitting opening for considering these points. On that date, he gave a homily at the funeral of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who had proclaimed the habemus papam when, in 1963, Giovanni Montini took the name Paul VI and succeeded to the Chair of Peter. John Paul comments on the divine coincidence that the funeral is taking place on the first anniversary of Paul VI’s death. The next year on the same date, Where English translations are available, these are used. Where unavailable, the Italian text is used and translated by the author. All texts are those published on the Vatican website, and are cited as they more specifically arise. 30 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 267 John Paul II gave a general audience at the Castel Gandolfo.31 His message focused on how Christ, particularly through the beatitudes, promulgates a “new ethos” from the mount.32 Christ’s law will be one of interiority, he argues, demanding that hard hearts become transformed. A circumcision of the heart is to occur, so that human desires are purified. The Pope argues that the implications of the Sermon on the Mount, for the individual human heart, need to be considered before its more global meaning can be discerned. He adds that he will develop these themes over the coming weeks. Arguably he is already laying some of the groundwork for Veritatis Splendor, which is to come thirteen years later. Quite significantly, when the Pope goes on to speak to the sick in the audience, he recalls the death of Paul VI two years ago and quotes from the Angelus address that his predecessor would have given, had he not passed away in the early hours of that morning in 1978. Over the years, John Paul II reiterates different sections of the same passage from Paul VI’s words. Taken together, the sections that he chooses do not quote the address entirely, but add up to the following (in the order that Paul VI writes them and with ellipses where John Paul II skips sections): The Transfiguration of the Lord recalled by the Liturgy of today’s solemnity throws a dazzling light on our daily life, and makes us turn our mind to the immortal destiny which that fact foreshadows. . . . It . . . shows that the transcendent destiny of our human nature, which [Christ] assumed for our salvation, is destined to be [due to Christ’s salvific action] “children of the light” (Col. 1,12). That body which is transfigured before the astonished eyes of the apostles, and the body of Christ our brother, is also our body called to glory; that light which bathes [him] is and also will be our share of inheritance and of splendour.33 The final word in this quotation is impossible to overlook when considering the title of Veritatis Splendor. John Paul goes on to reflect on the “grand Pontificate” of Paul VI, whose life was entirely dedicated to the Church. John Paul II, General Audience, Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1980, w2.vatican. va/content/john-paul-ii/it/audiences/1980/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19800806. html. 32 John Paul II, General Audience, August 6, 1980, §2. 33 Original text: Paul VI, “Angelus Domini,” August 6, 1978, w2.vatican.va/content/ paul-vi/it/angelus/1978/documents/hf_p-vi_ang_19780806.html. Where parts have been translated into English in the addresses cited, these have been consulted for this passage. 31 268 Renée Köhler-Ryan With Paul VI having passed away on the feast of the Transfiguration, John Paul considers how “Papa Montini” is now with Christ, “alongside Peter and, like Peter,” contemplating the divine glory and reveling in how beautiful and good it is to be there on the Mount.34 John Paul recalls how Paul steered the Church through the difficult times after the Council, ceaselessly articulating its teachings through his catechesis. In particular he highlights Paul’s work in the documents that he names: Populorum Progressio (1967), Humanae Vitae (1968), Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (1967), Octagesima Adveniens (1971), Marialis Cultis (1974), Gaudete in Domino (1975), and Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975). Furthermore, he pays tribute to the way that Paul travelled throughout the modern world, bringing Christ’s teachings and love wherever he could. Recalling the moment of Paul’s death, when Christ called him to contemplate his divine glory in eternity, he recalled that, according to witnesses, Paul’s last prayer was the Pater Noster. With those he addresses, John Paul II prays that Paul VI is being “flooded with the eternal radiant light.” In 1983, John Paul gave an address dedicated to the sixth of August as the anniversary of Paul’s death. Therein, he pays tribute to Paul as someone who dedicated his whole life to Truth. The spirit of Paul remains in the Church, argues John Paul, due to the former Pope’s unfailing defense of the faith: he “illumined the Church and inspired modern society.”35 In particular, John Paul refers to one of the then Giovanni Battista Montini’s texts, “Studium,” where the author meditated on the importance of orthodoxy. Montini reflected there that teaching the Truth of Christ is evermore necessary in a world where Christ is “absent.” Precisely then, Christians need to make him present by proclaiming and living in accord with Truth. That is, in a world where Christ is “deformed” and where humans are “distracted” from their final end of salvation, Christians need to defend orthodoxy. Two years later, John Paul II speaks of Paul VI as a fearless figure who did not close his eyes to the “drama of modern man” but instead responded to the tensions, problems, and agnosticism of his day. This particular address by John Paul II falls on the same date as the fortieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. In this context, John Paul II emphasizes the perennial importance of Paul VI’s proclama John Paul II, General Audience, August 6, 1980, found in the section “Papa Montini a due anni dalla scomparsa.” 35 Full text: John Paul II, “Discorso di Giovanni Paolo II nel V Anniversario della Morte di Papa Paolo VI, Solennità,” August 6, 1983, w2.vatican.va/content/johnpaul-ii/it/speeches/1983/august/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19830806_v-anniversario-morte-paolo-vi.html. 34 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 269 tion of the need for a “civilization of love.”36 The next of John Paul II’s addresses that overtly refer to Paul VI on the feast of the Transfiguration occurs in 1989. At his Angelus address, John Paul considers the meaning conveyed by the fact that Paul died on this feast day. Namely, this fact sheds light on Paul’s exceptional and quasi-prophetic service to the Church. He can be thought of, John Paul argues, as “the Pope of the Transfiguration.”37 The prophetic nature of his life is underscored by the fact that Paul issued his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, on the feast day that was to mark his death. There, Paul set out the program of his pontificate. The significance of this encyclical for interpreting Veritatis Splendor will be considered in the section below. It was a document apparently very much on John Paul II’s mind in 1989, indicated by the fact that at a parish homily on the same day he speaks about it again. He opens by quoting Luke 9:33 and then asks: “What greater joy could there be than to contemplate Christ in his glory? Our eternal beatitude consists precisely in this vision, ‘face to face’ with the incarnate Word, in the light of the Trinity.”38 Contemplating this for a moment longer, he turns again to Paul VI, and speaks of the apostolic exhortation Gaudete in Domino. John Paul considers that exhortation more closely after repeating the quotation from Paul about orthodoxy recalled in 1983 and cited above. Paul VI, John Paul II argues, found joy in his daily participation in the suffering of Christ. Paul VI had stated in Gaudete in Domino that, for the Christian, “The humble human joys in our lives, which are like seeds of a higher reality are transfigured.”39 This happens through the Cross and the Paschal mystery. Such joy, so much appreciated by Paul VI, John Paul II designates to be a foretaste of the heavenly Jerusalem.40 Again, one finds an emphasis on the spiritual Christian significance of what is seemingly merely mundane. John Paul II quotes from the Angelus address of 1978, which Paul VI was not able to deliver, on the day when Christians hope he entered into the heavenly realm. A discussion of Ecclesiam Suuam—the John Paul II, “Messagio di Giovanni Paolo II nel VII Anniversario della Morte di Paolo VI e Nel XL del Lancio della Bomba Atomica Su Hiroscima,” Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1985, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/speeches/1985/ august/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19850806_due-anniversari.html. 37 John Paul II, “Angelus,” Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1989, §2, w2.vatican.va/ content/john-paul-ii/it/angelus/1989/documents/hf_jp-ii_ang_19890806.html. 38 John Paul II, “Omelia di Giovanni Paolo II” (1989), §1. 39 Paul VI, Gaudete in Domino (1975), pt. III, w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/ en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19750509_gaudete-in-domino. html. 40 John Paul II, “Omelia di Giovanni Paolo II” (1989), §4. 36 270 Renée Köhler-Ryan document considered in the section below—takes up almost all of the remainder of this homily, which ends with a prayer that God will help the Church to achieve all that Paul VI had wanted for the people of God. Homilies and addresses for the next thirteen years, on the sixth of August, consistently refer to Paul VI. John Paul highlights his predecessor’s contribution of naming the importance of a “civilization of love,” as necessary for the needs of the modern world.41 The role of the Church in the world is increasingly evident, because in this way not only do Christians become transfigured, but they also make Christ present. This is the continual source of transfiguration within the world. Paul VI modelled how a fruitful exchange can happen between Church and world. He was a living witness of the importance of the Transfiguration, particularly through his life of prayer.42 Because Christ was at the core of Paul’s entire life, the Pontiff was able to enter “into dialogue with contemporary culture, to make known the power of absolute Christianity, of the truth of the salvation of Christ our Lord.”43 Above all then, John Paul’s appreciation of Paul’s testimony to Christianity, his personal life, comes to the fore. In 1996, he quotes from the work Testamento di Paolo VI, where Paul speaks about death as the way that one enters into the light of Christ. Paul’s words reveal this deeply held belief in this mystery, which articulates a movement from darkness into light.44 The following year, John Paul II quotes from Paul VI’s Pensiero alla Morte, in which the author declares his love for and dedication to the Church, which Paul speaks of as the underlying secret of his life.45 John Paul II, “Discorso di Giovanni Paolo II All’Inizio della Celebrazione nel XV Anniversario della Morte di Paolo VI,” Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1993, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/ it/speeches/1993/august/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19930806_xv-ann-paolo-vi. html. 42 John Paul II, “Omelia di Giovanni Paolo II,” (1995), §2. 43 John Paul II, “Omelia di Giovanni Paolo II,” (1995), §3. 44 John Paul II, “Santa Messa in Suffragio del Servo di Dio Paolo VI, Omelia Di Giovanni Paolo,” Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1996), §2, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/homilies/1996/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19960806_paolo-vi.html. 45 “I can say that I have always loved her [the Church],” he wrote in view of his imminent death, “and I believe I have lived for her and for nothing else. But I would like the Church to know it; and that I had the strength to tell her so, as a secret which only at the very end of life one has the courage to reveal” (Pensiero alla morte), quoted in John Paul II, “Address of His Holiness Pope John Paul II on the 19th Anniversary of the Death of Pope Paul VI,” August 6, 1997, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1997/august/documents/hf_jp-ii_ 41 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 271 In keeping with Paul’s evident personal devotion to the Church, in 2001, John Paul explains that Paul’s understanding of Transfiguration was theological and anthropological, but also “ecclesial.”46 This is particularly evident in Ecclesiam Suam, and John Paul’s focus on that encyclical remains particularly pertinent. It should not be forgotten, though, that any aspect of the Transfiguration is, for John Paul II, first and foremost personal. For, like every dimension of Christian life, it concerns the human relationship with the Son of God. John Paul quotes Paul’s desire, found in his personal writings about death, to “in ending . . . be in the light,” in keeping with the mystery that the whole world is “a reverberation, a reflection of the one and only light.”47 That desire is inextricable, for Paul, from his longing that the Church might stand in the light of the divine mystery of Christ. She, here reflecting both Christ and the good Christian life, is in a constant dynamic activity of transfiguration. This is how she conveys the light of Christ in the world. The human call, divinely inspired and sustained, is toward such splendor, and this participation in Christ’s glory is only possible when one lives according to the new ethos, which Christ offers us from the mount. Paul VI echoes this divine teaching about the moral life, by focusing on an orthodox understanding of how to live one’s life. This is evident in his encyclicals which focus on moral issues—it is no coincidence that John Paul II quotes from and refers to Humanae Vitae, in particular, throughout Veritatis Splendor.48 More pertinent though, is that the address of 1989 reveals that another of Paul VI’s encyclicals informs John Paul II’s understanding of transfiguration and the splendor toward which all humans are called. spe_19970806_paolo-vi.html. He quotes a statement from L’Osservatore Romano in 1972, where Paul declares: “I wish . . . you were able to glimpse in the Church the light she bears within herself, to see the Church transfigured, to see, that is, what the Council set out so clearly in its documents. . . . [The Church] contains . . . a deep, immense and divine mystery. . . . The Church is the sacrament, the tangible sign of a hidden reality, that is the presence of God among us” (quoted in John Paul II, “Address of John Paul II, Mass on the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord,” August 6, 2001, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2001/august/documents/ hf_jp-ii_spe_20010806_trasfigurazione-signore.html). 47 This audience honored both the centennial of Pope St. Pius X’s election to the papacy and the anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s death ( John Paul II, General Audience, Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 2003, §3, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/ en/audiences/2003/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_20030806.html). 48 See footnote 15 above. 46 272 Renée Köhler-Ryan Paul VI and Ecclesiam Suam The way in which Catholics, when they live according to the moral law, contribute to that radiating source of light, can be more clearly seen when Veritatis Splendor is read according to what Paul VI says about the relationship between Catholics and the world in Ecclesiam Suam. As has been emphasized, that encyclical was also issued on the sixth of August, almost thirty years before Veritatis Splendor; taken together, these documents can be read as an extended discussion of how Christians can transfigure the world by being transformed by Christ and then bringing Christ’s love, through their lives, into the world. Paul VI wrote Ecclesiam Suam in 1964, toward the relative end of the Second Vatican Council. While distinguishing what he says from the work of the Council, he reminds his fellow bishops of the distinctive and irreplaceable role of the Church in the world.49 Specifically, he warns that to be a Christian does not mean adopting—one might say, conforming to—the norms that the world has to offer. This term, “the world,” he explains, pertains to: either those human beings who are opposed to the light of faith and the gift of grace, those whose naive optimism betrays them into thinking that their own energies suffice to win them complete, lasting, and gainful prosperity, or, finally, those who take refuge in an aggressively pessimistic outlook on life and maintain that their vices, weaknesses and moral ailments are inevitable, incurable, or perhaps even desirable as sure manifestations of personal freedom and sincerity.50 Contrasts between the “world” and the life toward which the Christian is called are not to be underestimated, particularly in the domain of morality. Strikingly, Paul asserts that in living according to the law, the Christian will be freer than those of the world. The true freedom that Paul discusses only briefly and that John Paul elaborates in Veritatis Splendor, is that of the person living according to the objectively good and fulfilling moral law. False freedom denies both faith and grace, in one way or another; and only darkness can follow. It denies the capacity for human nature to flourish into its splendid form. Paul offers an image through which to understand the essential role of the Church in a world that extols false freedom, by writing that God Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §§6–7. Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §59. 49 50 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 273 has “placed”51 Catholics at the center of four concentric circles. The first and outermost of these is that of mankind, which includes everyone in the human race, including those of the “world” who are atheists, some of whom are unwilling to enter into dialogue with the Church. The Church constantly has a role to play in this world, for the Pontiff asserts that “all things human are our concern.” He goes on to say: There are moral values of the utmost importance which we have to offer [the world]. These are of advantage to everyone. We root them firmly in the consciences of men. Wherever men are striving to understand themselves and the world, we are able to communicate with them. Wherever the councils of nations come together to establish the rights and duties of man, we are honored to be permitted to take our place among them. If there is in man a “soul that is naturally Christian,” we wish to respect it, to cherish it, and to communicate with it.52 Thus, the Church is not to dissociate itself from the world, but unabashedly to extend what the world cannot find on its own: the love and the law of Christ. Without such work, which fundamentally occurs whenever a Christian follows Christ’s law to love God by loving neighbor, Christ’s light cannot permeate where it is most needed. The second circle comes closer to the heart of Christianity, and comprises those who worship one God, with whom Catholics agree on some but not all points. These include Jews, Muslims, and some of the Afro-Asiatic religions.53 Christians form the third circle; these are believers in Christ who do not accept the principles of unity that the Catholic Church embodies—including that of the papacy.54 The final circle is that of Catholics, who are united together because, faithful to the Church, they follow the law of Christ. Here, Paul emphasizes the virtues of humility and obedience, through which Catholics accept that the Church preserves and promulgates that law, enabling all baptized to live the life of Christ. To accept the teaching of the Church is to open oneself to the transfiguring light of Christ’s love.55 Paul’s image, or model, of concentric but at the same time intersecting Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §96. Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §97. 53 Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §§107–08. 54 Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §§109–12. 55 Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §§113–15. 51 52 274 Renée Köhler-Ryan circles, is remarkable in several ways. It teaches that, while Catholics bear marks that distinguish them from others in the world, they are not separate from it. Catholics are not outsiders or offsiders; they are at the heart of all that is human. Their distinctiveness lies in their capacity to dwell at the center, and to illuminate from within the true meaning in human desires, needs, and concerns. That meaning is the splendor of Truth: Christ. Each Catholic is called to live out the promise of such splendor, through the grace of baptism. Elsewhere in the same document, Paul speaks about baptism as a gift that . . . thrills the baptized person to the very core of his being. He must look upon it with the eyes of the Christians of the early Church, as an “illumination” which draws down upon his soul the life-giving radiance of divine truth, opens heaven to him, and sheds upon this mortal life that light which enables him to walk as a child of the light toward the vision of God, the wellspring of eternal happiness.56 Paul’s language of illumination, which John Paul uses in Veritatis Splendor, becomes another consideration of the meaning of transfiguration. Taking both encyclicals together, we might say that the gift of baptism enables a response to the moral law by which a person is self-possessing, and therefore capable of self-giving. The grace of baptism shines a light both on who the person is, in the light—or life—of Christ, through his Church, and at the same time, on the human vocation to be a child of the light: Christ-like. That potential to give oneself as a gift is the human vocation to be splendid. The charity that Paul and John Paul extol, which is the life of Christ in unity with Father and Holy Spirit, is self-fulfilling and transformative; it transfigures. Self-giving is, in its own way, a gift from Christ. Through him, our transfiguration is possible. Through him, our joy can be complete, as the human form becomes more integrated with the form of Christ transfigured on Mount Tabor. Such perfection happens after humans, as John Paul says in §13 of Veritatis Splendor, accept the commands of the Decalogue, as a first point on the way to properly human freedom. Having become free in this way, our capacities as persons open onto a new horizon, where the inner center illuminates us and at the same time the world. This, then, is the selfless self-actualization that can transform the world at the same time that it transforms us. A well-lived life—one lived in participation with Christ—can illuminate the world, offering it possibilities it would not otherwise see. Paul and John Paul claim that this Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §39. 56 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 275 happens precisely when the Catholics refuse to capitulate to the false view of human freedom and fulfilment, and instead uphold the ontology of the human person. Christianity speaks for all humans; but words mean little if lives are not luminous. John Paul echoes his predecessor in Veritatis Splendor, quoting some of those definite statements from Humanae Vitae that highlight the importance of the moral life. He also refers to Paul’s “Address to Members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer” in 1967, in which Paul reprimands anyone who embraces “depraved moral relativism” by holding that the Church has changed her teaching about “intrinsically evil” moral acts. This, Paul says, “clearly endangers the Church’s entire doctrinal heritage.”57 That heritage is, according to Paul VI, the Church’s gift to the world, expressed in lives that are lived courageously in accordance with truth.58 This Christian way of life, the subject of moral theology, is not an area that he chooses to elaborate on in Ecclesiam Suam, because he does not have the space to do so, and because his readers are “in any case . . . well aware of the moral needs of our time.”59 This space is one that Veritatis Splendor seeks to fill, responding in particular to the imagery of light in Ecclesiam Suam and prevalent throughout John Paul II’s understanding of transfiguration, mediated by his contemplation of Papa Montini’s life and pontificate. Veritatis Splendor at the Center of Ecclesiam Suam and of the Christian Life From all this one finds that when examining Veritatis Splendor together with Ecclesiam Suam and other aspects of Paul’s life and pontificate, several facets of the significance of transfiguration emerge. They come together to suggest that the moral life John Paul describes is the same as that which Paul VI alludes to in Ecclesiam Suam. That is, John Paul focuses on the kind of life that Christians need to lead, in order for transfiguration of self and world, in the light of Christ’s divine Transfiguration, to occur. He essentially fleshes out Paul VI’s insistence that daily life, and therefore mundane decisions, are at the heart of human transfiguration. It is worthwhile to spell out, here, why Paul VI chooses not to analyze those everyday matters more closely in Ecclesiam Suam. Namely, in §52, he states: We realize that it would take Us too long to describe here, even in barest outline, the way in which the Christian life should be lived Footnote 131 in Veritatis Splendor. Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §51. 59 Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §52. 57 58 276 Renée Köhler-Ryan today, and We have no intention of embarking on such an undertaking now. In any case, you are well aware of the moral needs of our time, and you will not cease in your efforts to bring the faithful to a realization of the dignity, the purity and the seriousness of the Christian life. In other words, the scope of his encyclical is already too great, and the working out of contemporary moral theology will need to wait for later. Nonetheless, Paul does state two main points about the moral lives of Catholics: that they must embrace a spirit of poverty and reject the world’s emphasis on wealth;60 and they must recognize that the moral life is one of charity. This comes again to the main concerns of Veritatis Splendor, which seeks for freedom in a life of the spirit, motivated by love and drawn toward divine light. “We are convinced,” Paul says, that: Charity should today assume its rightful, foremost position in the scale of religious and moral values—and not just in theory, but in the practice of the Christian life. And this applies not only to the charity we show toward God who has poured out the abundance of His love upon us, but also to the charity which we in turn should lavish on our brothers, the whole human race. Charity is the key to everything. It sets all to rights. There is nothing which charity cannot achieve and renew. Charity “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” Who is there among us who does not realize this? And since we realize it, is not this the time to put it into practice?61 In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II explicates how to put charity into practice in the moral life, in his extended discussion of Christ’s encounter with the rich young man. Interestingly, Veritatis Splendor does not thereby exhaust John Paul II’s own understanding of how Christian life is the work of everyday transfiguration. In at least two other documents, Vita Consecrata and Rosarium Virginis Mariae, he considers daily Christian morality. These documents offer the opportunity for a final reflection on the role that transfiguration plays in finding one’s way to Christ. From all that has now been discussed, evidently to consider Christ transfigured is, in one significant respect, to think of his illumination of the moral life. In §§13–16 of Veritatis Splendor, John Paul points out that Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §§54–55. Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, §56. 60 61 The Splendor of Transfiguration at the Heart of the Christian Life 277 the mount—where we see Christ in his glory—is the place from which the Lord teaches about the moral life. This splendid encounter with Christ in his glory is one in which, John Paul argues in 1995, Jesus “reveals the dimension of glory that is properly of the Son of God, because he emerges with the fullness of his true humanity, according to his will of the love of the father, in his life on the cross.”62 Such glory might seem overpowering and beyond our reach; and yet both Popes considered here think that humans are called precisely to participate in this divine manifestation. One way of doing so is, of course, through prayer, and this becomes evident in John Paul II’s meditation on the Transfiguration, when he offers to the Church the Mysteries of Light of the Rosary. That is, the link between the Transfiguration, splendor, and the moral life is captured in Rosarium Virginis Mariae, where in 2002 John Paul says that every Christian is called to look continually upon the face of Christ, and to find how that “mystery” is present “amid the daily events and the sufferings of . . . human life.”63 Splendor ultimately refers to that sense of quotidian commitment, and is linked to the drama of human action, lived in loving, self-giving response to the objective moral law. It begins, though, with an encounter with Christ in his full humanity: glorified on Mount Tabor, calling us to participate in the fullness of life. John Paul II thinks that Paul VI was a great pontiff because he made contemplation of Christ in his glory a focal point of his entire life. As Veritatis Splendor also argues, the moral life begins with an encounter with Christ. That encounter may make certain demands, but the relationship with Christ establishes the freedom of the Christian life which continually unfolds in all its richness—and light enters into and then radiates from the human heart. Another way John Paul extends this reflection is in his analysis of how human vocation is a participation in transfiguration. Christian marriage, he argues for instance, is the transfiguration of the Old Covenant of the marriage law.64 Particularly striking is the discussion of vocation in Vita Consecrata (1996),65 a document replete with twen John Paul II, “Celebrazione Euristica in Occasione del XVII Anniversario della Morte di Papa Montini, Omelia di Giovanni Paolo II,” Castel Gandolfo, August 6, 1995, §2, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/homilies/1995/documents/ hf_jp-ii_hom_19950806_paolo-vi.html. 63 John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002), §9, w2.vatican.va/content/johnpaul-ii/en/apost_letters/2002/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20021016_rosarium-virginis-mariae.html. 64 John Paul II, “God’s Gift of Life and Love: On Marriage and the Eucharist,” Communio 41 (Summer 2014): 462–71. 65 John Paul II, Vita Consecrata, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_ 62 278 Renée Köhler-Ryan ty-nine instances of variations of the term “transfigure.” This exhortation contemplates the mystery of Christ’s Transfiguration, in order to show how those who consecrate their lives to Christ’s service can change the world through participating in that mystery. It should now be unsurprising that John Paul II’s thinking is very much aligned with Paul VI’s model of the Christian life illuminating the world from its center. This entails responding to divine teachings from the mount: responding both to the Decalogue and to the Beatitudes. John Paul argues that: “A particular duty of the consecrated life is to remind the baptized of the fundamental values of the Gospel, by bearing ‘splendid and striking testimony that the world cannot be transfigured and offered to God without the spirit of the Beatitudes.’”66 Those who choose the path of consecrated life serve to remind of how each Christian is called to participate in Christ’s Transfiguration. Such a way of life is freeing, and fulfilling. Paul VI and John Paul II both maintain that the glory of the Transfiguration is something in which Christians participate when they respond to the moral law. Contemplation of Christ on Mount Tabor is at the center of the human movement toward splendor. The splendor of Truth is, for John Paul II, the revelation of the form of the human person: when humans respond to Christ’s teaching, they can participate in the fulfilment of humanity. Paul VI considered that this is the main way in which Christians can bring the light of Christ into the world. Illuminating the importance and then the intricacies of responding to Christ the Teacher on a daily basis, both Paul and John Paul, each in his own way, articulate the splendor of everyday Christian life. Perhaps, after all, both Paul VI and N&V John Paul II can be considered Popes of the Transfiguration. exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_25031996_vita-consecrata.html. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §33. 66 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 279–294 279 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals Helenka Mannering University of Notre Dame Australia Sydney, Australia According to Livio Melina , in Veritatis Splendor John Paul II sought to address two ruptures in contemporary moral theology: that between freedom and truth, and between faith and morals.1 In this article, following a brief exposition of the first rupture, the second rupture will be analyzed in detail. It will be contended that the second rupture occurs in two modes: the first can be summarized as a focus on faith which fails to translate into a lived pursuit of holiness (faith without morals), and the second as an approach to morality which claims religious neutrality and denies the importance of faith (morals without faith). Although both these modes of the second rupture are regarded as inadequate in Veritatis Splendor, they continue to affect Catholic moral theology today. John Paul II, however, critiques both modes of the rupture, and, seeking to overcome the rift, presents an alternate vision of a unitive approach to faith and morals, which has a deeply biblical foundation. The first rupture addressed by John Paul II—that between freedom and truth—is immediately evident even from a cursory reading of Veritatis Splendor. In fact, it is possible to claim that the main theme of the encyclical is a very clear and deliberate attempt to heal the rift between freedom and truth prevalent in society today. This theme is evident not only in Veritatis Splendor, but as a leitmotif throughout John Paul II’s papacy. In his very first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, which set the 1 Livio Melina, Sharing in Christ’s Virtues: For a Renewal of Moral Theology in Light of Veritatis Splendor, trans. William E. May (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 3–4. 280 Helenka Mannering tone for his entire pontificate, John Paul II wrote: Jesus Christ meets the man of every age, including our own, with the same words: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” These words contain both a fundamental requirement and a warning: the requirement of an honest relationship with regard to truth as a condition for authentic freedom, and the warning to avoid every kind of illusory freedom, every superficial unilateral freedom, every freedom that fails to enter into the whole truth about man and the world. Today also, even after two thousand years, we see Christ as the one who brings man freedom based on truth, frees man from what curtails, diminishes and as it were breaks off this freedom at its root, in man’s soul, his heart and his conscience. What a stupendous confirmation of this has been given and is still being given by those who, thanks to Christ and in Christ, have reached true freedom and have manifested it even in situations of external constraint!2 Hence, Cardinal Avery Dulles observation that “the rootedness of freedom in truth has been a constant and central theme in the writings of John Paul II”3 seems well founded. However, in Veritatis Splendor John Paul II himself contextualizes this rupture between freedom and truth as a symptom of a more fundamental rupture: that between faith and morality. In §88, he writes: The attempt to set freedom in opposition to truth, and indeed to separate them radically, is the consequence, manifestation and consummation of another more serious and destructive dichotomy, that which separates faith from morality. The dichotomy between faith and morals has a multitude of manifestations apart from the rupture between freedom and truth. John Paul II gesticulates to two of these in the paragraphs following the statement just quoted: “In a widely dechristianized culture, the criteria employed by believers themselves in making judgments and decisions often appear extraneous or even contrary to those of the Gospel.”4 This problem can be John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (1979), §12. Avery Dulles, “John Paul II and the Truth About Freedom,” First Things, August, 1995, https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/004-john-paul-ii-and-thetruth-about-freedom. 4 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993), §88. 2 3 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals 281 referred to as a morality which does not recognize the essential foundation that a living faith furnishes for a Christian morality, or, in other words, a morality without faith. John Paul II continues, also emphasizing the necessity also to address the opposite problem, which consists of an attitude to the faith which does not translate into the moral life. Against such a paradigm, he writes: Faith is a lived knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in any event, is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is put into practice. Faith is a decision involving one’s whole existence. It is an encounter, a dialogue, a communion of love and of life between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6). It entails an act of trusting abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (cf. Gal 2:20), in profound love of God and of our brothers and sisters.5 Adopting the exegetical approach towards Veritatis Splendor proposed by John Paul II himself in §88 of the encyclical, let us now turn to a deeper analysis of these two direct manifestations of the rupture between faith and morality: a faith without morals, and a morality without faith. Faith Without Morals First let us explore the attitude of faith without moral content. A preeminent example of an approach to the Christian faith and morality is a radical version of the “fundamental option” theory, which John Paul II addresses within the encyclical. He explains the logic undergirding the “fundamental option” theory, and theories like it, very early on in the encyclical. In §4, he writes: An opinion is frequently heard which questions the intrinsic and unbreakable bond between faith and morality, as if membership in the Church and her internal unity were to be decided on the basis of faith alone, while in the sphere of morality a pluralism of opinions and of kinds of behavior could be tolerated, these being left to the judgement of the individual subjective conscience or to the diversity of social and cultural contexts. The theory of “fundamental option” had been proposed decades before the John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993), §88. 5 282 Helenka Mannering promulgation of Veritatis Splendor and, in 1966, had been lauded by Richard McCormick as “one of the most fruitful areas of recent scientific analysis”6 in moral theology. This focus on the “scientific” character of moral theology was in response to the Second Vatican Council’s call that “special care . . . be given to the perfecting of moral theology,” and, in particular, that “its scientific exposition, nourished more on the teaching of the Bible, should shed light on the loftiness of the calling of the faithful in Christ and the obligation that is theirs of bearing fruit in charity for the life of the world.”7 Fundamental option theory aimed to unite the morality found in the Gospels with the lived experiences of contemporary Christians. McCormick described the theory as follows: The term “fundamental option” is used by theologians to refer to the free determination of oneself with regard to the totality of existence, the fundamental choice between love of self and love of the saving Lord. Because man’s eternal salvation, his basic position for or against the God of salvation, is at stake in such choices, they must involve a man’s total disposition of himself, out of the radical center of his being. Since this is the case, these choices will involve a depth of the person’s being beyond formulating (or reflex) consciousness, and hence will escape adequate conceptual formulation.8 While as early as 1966, McCormick was almost unqualifiedly enthusiastic about the exciting new promises of fundamental option, by 1973, he had somewhat nuanced his approval of the theory. In fact, he had turned to agree, with qualification, with Enda McDonagh, who wrote that the fundamental option is not the effect of one grand and unrepeatable choice, but that our everyday choices also have an effect on this fundamental option.9 This developed understanding of fundamental option is closer to John Paul II’s analysis in Veritatis Splendor than the earlier radical accounts of the theory. In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II recognizes that there is a “fundamental option” that the Christian must choose in order to live as a Christian and live a Christian moral life. He writes, Richard McCormick, “Current Theology: 1965,” in Notes on Moral Theology: 1965 through 1980 (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981), 70. 7 Second Vatican Council, Decree on Priestly Training, Optatam Totius (1965), §16. 8 McCormick, “Current Theology: 1965,” 70–71. 9 See Edna McDonagh, “The Moral Subject,” Irish Theological Quarterly 39 (1972): 3–22. 6 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals 283 There is no doubt that Christian moral teaching, even in its Biblical roots, acknowledges the specific importance of a fundamental choice which qualifies the moral life and engages freedom on a radical level before God. It is a question of the decision of faith, of the obedience of faith (cf. Rom 16:26) by which man makes a total and free self-commitment to God, offering “the full submission of intellect and will to God as he reveals.”10 In other words, John Paul II agrees with the proponents of “fundamental option” theory that a scientific—and therefore biblical—understanding of moral theology must take this “fundamental option” into consideration. However, he also acknowledges that a radical version of the theory has significant problems and stands in contradiction to Gospel morality. He addresses what he claims to be the most significant problem faced by the “fundamental option” theory as follows: A distinction thus comes to be introduced between the fundamental option and deliberate choices of a concrete kind of behavior. In some authors this division tends to become a separation, when they expressly limit moral “good” and “evil” to the transcendental dimension proper to the fundamental option, and describe as “right” or “wrong” the choices of particular “innerworldly” kinds of behavior: those, in other words, concerning man’s relationship with himself, with others and with the material world. There thus appears to be established within human acting a clear disjunction between two levels of morality: on the one hand the order of good and evil, which is dependent on the will, and on the other hand specific kinds of behavior, which are judged to be morally right or wrong only on the basis of a technical calculation of the proportion between the “premoral” or “physical” goods and evils which actually result from the action. This is pushed to the point where a concrete kind of behavior, even one freely chosen, comes to be considered as a merely physical process, and not according to the criteria proper to a human act. The conclusion to which this eventually leads is that the properly moral assessment of the person is reserved to his fundamental option, prescinding in whole or in part from his choice of particular actions, of concrete kinds of behavior.11 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §66. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §65. 10 11 284 Helenka Mannering The problem identified here by the Pope is the very troubling rupture between faith and morality that lies at the heart of a radical “fundamental option” theory. At its core, this theory claims that, on the one hand, good and evil applies only in the transcendental realm of faith, and on the other, in the existential realm of lived experience—the moral realm—the human person cannot make truly good or evil choices, only right and wrong decisions. In contrast to this radical “fundamental option” theory and seeking to heal this rift between faith and morals intensified by it, John Paul II argues that it is necessary to recognize that the choices a person makes, and the acts he or she carries out, impact and transform that person’s “fundamental option.” Their choice for or against God is not a transcendent, immutable choice which remains firmly in place regardless of the everyday choices one makes. In fact, according to John Paul II, the contrary is true. While he agrees that there is a “fundamental option,” he emphatically maintains that this “fundamental option” is really affected by choices and acts. He writes, It thus needs to be stated that the so-called fundamental option, to the extent that it is distinct from a generic intention and hence one not yet determined in such a way that freedom is obligated, is always brought into play through conscious and free decisions. Precisely for this reason, it is revoked when man engages his freedom in conscious decisions to the contrary, with regard to morally grave matter.12 There is a real and important synergy between faith and morality that the radical “fundamental option” theory fails to acknowledge. While faith consists of a radical union with Christ, this union can be strengthened or weakened, and even destroyed, through the free decisions of the human person. Hence, in the words of John Paul II, it must always be maintained that “faith also possesses a moral content. It gives rise to and calls for a consistent life commitment.”13 The fundamental option for Christ gives rise to certain ethical demands and a certain manner of life. Denying this connection, as the radical “fundamental option” theory does, leads to an approach to morality that is in direct contradiction with the Gospel. John Paul II emphasizes that: The Apostles decisively rejected any separation between the commit John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §67. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §89. 12 13 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals 285 ment of the heart and the actions which express or prove it (cf. 1 Jn 2:3–6). And ever since Apostolic times the Church’s Pastors have unambiguously condemned the behavior of those who fostered division by their teaching or by their actions.14 Later in the encyclical, John Paul II elaborates on the problem of separating faith and morals in a manner that denies the necessity to live according to Christian moral norms if one upholds the fundamental option for Christ. He writes, In their desire, however, to keep the moral life in a Christian context, certain moral theologians have introduced a sharp distinction, contrary to Catholic doctrine, between an ethical order, which would be human in origin and of value for this world alone, and an order of salvation, for which only certain intentions and interior attitudes regarding God and neighbor would be significant. This has then led to an actual denial that there exists, in Divine Revelation, a specific and determined moral content, universally valid and permanent. The word of God would be limited to proposing an exhortation, a generic paraenesis, which the autonomous reason alone would then have the task of completing with normative directives which are truly “objective,” that is, adapted to the concrete historical situation. Naturally, an autonomy conceived in this way also involves the denial of a specific doctrinal competence on the part of the Church and her Magisterium with regard to particular moral norms which deal with the so-called “human good.” Such norms would not be a part of the proper content of Revelation, and would not in themselves be relevant for salvation.15 For John Paul II, the synergy between faith and morals means that, contrary to the proponents of a radical “fundamental option” theory, there is “a specific and determined moral content, universally valid and permanent” that is particular to Christianity. There is something unique in Christian morality that sets it apart from secular and rationalistic theories. Denying that one’s moral choices have any impact on one’s faith—upholding a radical “fundamental option”—leads to an obscuring of this foundational truth. While the radical “fundamental option” theory may have lost popu John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §26. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §37. 14 15 286 Helenka Mannering larity following Veritatis Splendor and does not seem to be advocated by many moral theologians today, its main tenets continue in an alternate guise. This is evident in the juxtaposition of the so-called “pastoral” approach over against the doctrinal moral teaching of the Church. Proponents of a pastoral approach which is not necessarily aligned with the perennial moral teaching of the Church are likely to be operating according to a covert radical “fundamental option” model. In order to advocate for pastoral practices which are not in harmony with doctrinal moral teaching, doctrine is relegated to the transcendental level, what we could refer to as the level of “fundamental option.” On the other hand, the pastoral level is the existential level of lived morality, which, according to these theorists, does not necessarily impact on one’s faith.16 It is easy to see the correspondence here between this so-called pastoral approach and the radical “fundamental option” theory condemned by John Paul II. The following passage from the encyclical, although written twenty-five years ago, reads as if it could have been written today in order to address the so-called “pastoral” approach: Some authors have proposed a kind of double status of moral truth. Beyond the doctrinal and abstract level, one would have to acknowledge the priority of a certain more concrete existential consideration. The latter, by taking account of circumstances and the situation, could legitimately be the basis of certain exceptions to the general rule and thus permit one to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law. A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid in general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called “pastoral” solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a “creative” hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept.17 On this problem, Melina writes, “Some have spoken of a latent, but nonetheless real, ‘moral schism,’ through which an every-increasing number of the faithful and of pastors, while not openly contesting ‘official’ teaching, keep their distance from it, no longer granting it the value of a criterion decisive for Church membership” (Sharing in Christ’s Virtues, 16). 17 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §56. 16 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals 287 In the separation of the pastoral from the doctrinal we see a repetition of the problem found in the radical “fundamental option” theory, namely, a hermetic separation between faith and morality, and a relegation of faith to a transcendental realm so that what is done and chosen in life ultimately is believed to have no effect on one’s faith and doctrinal beliefs. Against both of these manifestations of what is ultimately the same problem, that is, the attempt to hold a faith that makes no moral demands, John Paul II emphatically claims: No damage must be done to the harmony between faith and life: the unity of the Church is damaged not only by Christians who reject or distort the truths of faith but also by those who disregard the moral obligations to which they are called by the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor 5:9–13).18 Morals Without Faith Let us now turn to the second part of this paper and approach the rupture from the other side. The rift between faith and morals can also be manifested in the opposite manner than that proposed by a radical “fundamental option” theory. Rather than seeking to ground Christianity in a transcendental faith and minimize the importance of moral choices, some theologians have focused excessively on the moral aspects of Christianity to the extent that they minimize the importance of faith in rendering the Christian moral life unique and essentially different from secular moral proposals. John Paul II expresses his concern with this approach to moral theology as follows: Some people, however, disregarding the dependence of human reason on Divine Wisdom and the need, given the present state of fallen nature, for Divine Revelation as an effective means for knowing moral truths, even those of the natural order, have actually posited a complete sovereignty of reason in the domain of moral norms regarding the right ordering of life in this world. Such norms would constitute the boundaries for a merely “human” morality; they would be the expression of a law which man in an autonomous manner lays down for himself and which has its source exclusively in human reason. In no way could God be considered the Author of this law, except in the sense that human reason exercises its autonomy in setting down laws by virtue of a primordial and total John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §26. 18 288 Helenka Mannering mandate given to man by God. These trends of thought have led to a denial, in opposition to Sacred Scripture (cf. Mt 15:3–6) and the Church’s constant teaching, of the fact that the natural moral law has God as its author, and that man, by the use of reason, participates in the eternal law, which it is not for him to establish.19 This inclination in moral thought has been a trend present in Catholic theology for centuries. Melina traces this desire to provide a rational basis for morality that does not take into consideration any aspect of the faith back to the second half of the sixteenth century. During that time, according to the work of Protestant theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, the wars of religion fragmented the Christian universe and led contemporaries to turn to “reason as the sole source of universal moral evidence.”20 This led to a reworking of natural law theory by Hugo Grotius that would be valid “even if it were granted that God does not exist.”21 Ultimately, this attempt to divorce morality from all aspects of faith culminated in the work of Immanuel Kant, who claimed that “Christian morality . . . is the expression of truly universal ethical demands, valid for all men of all times,” but only if the rational content is detached from “every historical reference to and from faith in the person of Jesus.”22 This historical background is essential to help us understand the Catholic moral theology of the 1970s and 1980s. Melina explains that “postconciliar theology . . . follows the path that seeks a universal communicability based exclusively on reason.”23 He continues, “the specifically Christian John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §36. John Paul II acknowledges that the desire to explain the rationality of Christian morality is undergirded by positive concerns: “In response to the encouragement of the Second Vatican Council, there has been a desire to foster dialogue with modern culture, emphasizing the rational—and thus universally understandable and communicable—character of moral norms belonging to the sphere of the natural moral law. There has also been an attempt to reaffirm the interior character of the ethical requirements deriving from that law, requirements which create an obligation for the will only because such an obligation was previously acknowledged by human reason and, concretely, by personal conscience” ( John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §36). However, he is concerned by the over-emphasis on the rational character of moral norms at the expense of recognizing the foundational situatedness of all morality within faith. 20 Melina, Sharing in Christ’s Virtues, 21. 21 Hugo Grotius, De iure ac pacis, proleg. no. 11: “esti daretur Deum non esse” (cited in Melina, Sharing in Christ’s Virtues, 21). 22 Melina, Sharing in Christ’s Virtues, 21. 23 Livio Melina, “Christ and the Dynamism of Action: Outlook and Overview of Christocentrism in Moral Theology,” Communio: International Catholic Review 19 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals 289 dimension of action is put between parentheses or relegated to a transcendental level,”24 and, later in the same article, he writes: The heavy emphasis on the rational and universal character of morality, the adoption of a Kantian notion of autonomy, and the prevalent attention granted to the human behavioral sciences led to a bracketing, if not an outright elimination, of the specifically Christian element in morality. What occurred was a “secularisation of morality,” which was cut off from the determinative influence of faith: its epistemological character as a specifically theological science was undermined in both its sources and its method.25 Thus, on the one hand, while John Paul II must respond to a radical “fundamental option” theory that relegates faith to the transcendental sphere that cannot be substantially altered by one’s moral choices, on the other hand he must address the trend in moral theology that seeks to ground Catholic morality purely on natural reason divorced from faith. Ultimately these two problems are two sides of the same coin. They are both manifestations of the same problematic rupture between faith and morals. John Paul II addresses the trend towards a de-Christianised rational moral theology in three ways. First, in §9 of Veritatis Splendor, he emphasizes that goodness has its ontological source in God, and therefore any theory that divorces morality from God, divorces morality from goodness, and is therefore ultimately rendered unintelligible. Morality is based on the question of what is good, and, according to John Paul II, “only God can answer the question about what is good, because he is the Good itself.”26 Furthermore, “to ask about the good, in fact, ultimately means to turn towards God, the fullness of goodness.”27 Ultimately, “the goodness that attracts and at the same time obliges man has its source in God, and indeed is God himself.”28 God alone is “goodness, fullness of life, the final end of human activity, and perfect happiness.”29 A morality based purely on human reason and closed to transcendental reality fails to recognize that God is the supreme goodness that every human heart longs for. Hence, John Paul II writes that: 28 (2001): 119. Melina, “Christ and the Dynamism of Action,” 119. 25 Melina, “Christ and the Dynamism of Action,” 124. 26 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §9. 27 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §9. 28 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §9. 29 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §9. 24 290 Helenka Mannering Only God, the Supreme Good, constitutes the unshakable foundation and essential condition of morality, and thus of the commandments, particularly those negative commandments which always and in every case prohibit behavior and actions incompatible with the personal dignity of every man.30 John Paul II’s line of reasoning is consonant with the conclusion expressed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who, in affirming the observation of Leszek Kolakowski, pithily stated: “When there is no God, there is no morality and, in fact, no mankind either.”31 Second, but related to the first point, John Paul II firmly situates natural law within the divine, eternal law. In contrast to Grotius’ project mentioned above, John Paul II concurs with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1987 document Donum Vitae, from which he quotes the following passage: [Natural law] cannot be thought of as simply a set of norms on the biological level; rather it must be defined as the rational order whereby man is called by the Creator to direct and regulate his life and actions and in particular to make use of his own body.32 John Paul II also draws attention to the writings of Leo XIII, who emphasized the “essential subordination of reason and human law to the Wisdom of God and to his law,”33 and who wrote that “all prescriptions of human reason can have force of law only inasmuch as they are the voice and the interpreters of some higher power on which our reason and liberty necessarily depend.”34 The human person cannot act as a supreme law-giver to himself, even if the human law corresponds to his or her own nature, but must receive the law from above, from an authority with the competence to give the law. As Elizabeth Anscombe explained in her landmark 1958 paper, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in a society that fails to recognize God as lawgiver, moral obligations no longer hold.35 Natural law retains John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §99. Joseph Ratzinger, On Conscience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 68. 32 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation, Donum Vitae (1987), Introduction.3 (“Anthropolgy and Procedures in the Biomedical Field”). 33 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §44. 34 Leo XIII, Libertas (1888), §8. 35 G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33, no. 124 (1958): 6. 30 31 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals 291 its internal logic only by being situated within the eternal law. Thus, as Matthew Levering wrote in 2008: Law has its ground in God, not in human beings. Our participated wisdom cannot be understood without adverting to its divine source. We do not constitute wisdom, but rather we receive it by seeking to discern and participate in it.36 Ultimately, for John Paul II, “acknowledging the Lord as God is the very core, the heart of the Law, from which the particular precepts flow and towards which they are ordered.”37 Through emphasising the intrinsic link between natural and eternal law, he sets the trajectory for moral theology to cease striving for a rational natural law theory that excludes God, but rather to recognize natural law’s situation within the rich context of God’s constant loving and wise relationship with humanity.38 Finally, the third way that John Paul II addresses the problematic trend toward a de-Christianised rational moral theology is by affirming that there is a radical newness to Christian morality that exceeds all secular moral codes based on human reason alone.39 This newness of Christian morality consists in the incorporation of the human person into the life of Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit whose impulses transform the moral life from within, and the vocation to eternal beatitude made possible by Christ’s redemption. John Paul II’s insights into this radical newness of Christian morality in Veritatis Splendor can be read as an extended commentary on the second chapter of St Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and particularly, his exhortation that: Matthew Levering, Biblical Natural Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 65. 37 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §11. 38 This trajectory has been recognized and developed by several Catholic theologians since 1993. For example, Tracey Rowland writes: “Catholic scholars need to go beyond a theologically neutered conception of natural law as a lingua franca with which to engage proponents of hostile traditions. . . . The Church’s scholars should not waste their energies performing all manner of linguistic gymnastics, transposing her teachings into the idioms of hostile traditions, in order to entice neo-pagan elites to buy their intellectual package” (“Natural Law: From Neo-Thomism to Nuptial Mysticism,” Communio: International Catholic Review 35, no. 3 [2008]: 394–95). 39 John Paul II writes: “The Christian, thanks to God’s Revelation and to faith, is aware of the ‘newness’ which characterizes the morality of his actions: these actions are called to show either consistency or inconsistency with that dignity and vocation which have been bestowed on him by grace” (Veritatis Splendor, §73). 36 292 Helenka Mannering You must live your whole life according to the Christ you have received—Jesus the Lord; you must be rooted in him and built on him and held firm by the faith you have been taught, and full of thanksgiving. Make sure that no one traps you and deprives you of your freedom by some second-hand, empty, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ. (Col. 2:6–8; Old Jersualem Bible) Jesus Christ is the supreme norm of the Christian moral life. To use Hans Urs von Balthasar’s words, Christ is both a “formal, universal norm of moral life, which can be applied to everyone” and also a “concrete and personal norm.”40 He is the “exemplar in whose image we are created and then recreated by grace and the exemplum whom we must imitate.”41 Very early in the encyclical, John Paul II writes: The decisive answer to every one of man’s questions, his religious and moral questions in particular, is given by Jesus Christ, or rather is Jesus Christ himself, as the Second Vatican Council recalls: “In fact, it is only in the mystery of the Word incarnate that light is shed on the mystery of man. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of the future man, namely, of Christ the Lord. It is Christ, the last Adam, who fully discloses man to himself and unfolds his noble calling by revealing the mystery of the Father and the Father’s love.”42 Moral reasoning and moral action, for the Christian, must occur within this intimate relationship with Christ, which always comes first. Hence Christian morality is essentially different from any secular moral code, while simultaneously not being contradictory to reason.43 All of the Christian moral life, therefore, occurs within the context of Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Nine Propositions on Christian Ethics,” in Principles of Christian Morality, ed. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar Heinz Schürmann (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1975), 79. 41 Michael J. Dodds, “The Teaching of Thomas Aquinas on the Mysteries of the Life of Christ,” in Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction, ed. John Yocum, Thomas Weinandy, and Daniel A. Keating (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 108. 42 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §2. 43 Leo XIII expressed this conclusion in similar terms, writing: “As to morals, the laws of the Gospel not only immeasurably surpass the wisdom of the heathen, but are an invitation and an introduction to a state of holiness unknown to the ancients; and, bringing man nearer to God, they make him at one the possessor of a more perfect liberty (Libertas, §12). 40 Veritatis Splendor and the Rupture between Faith and Morals 293 this relationship with Christ. John Paul II writes, emphasizing by the use of his trademark italics, “Following Christ is thus the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality.”44 The Christian “by his actions . . . shows his likeness or unlikeness to the image of the Son who is the first-born among many bretheren (cf. Rom 8:29).” John Paul II continues, claiming that the Christian “lives out his fidelity or infidelity to the gift of the Spirit, and he opens or closes himself to eternal life, to the communion of vision, love and happiness with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”45 This life of following Christ, of which the Christian moral life consists, has some essential elements, which are listed by John Paul II in §28. These are: 1. the subordination of man and his activity to God, the one who “alone is good”; 2. the relationship between the moral good of human acts and eternal life; 3. Christian discipleship, which opens up before man the perspective of perfect love; 4. and the gift of the Holy Spirit, source and means of the moral life of the “new creation.” Any attempt to formulate an adequate account of Christian moral theology must take these essential elements into consideration. Within the paradigm of this paper, these elements provide an approach which integrates faith and morality, avoiding both extremes of either positing a purely rational morality based on a natural law that refuses to acknowledge its dependence on the eternal law, or of maintaining that faith is on a transcendent level and one’s moral choices do not impact one’s relationship with God and eternal salvation. In conclusion, in Veritatis Splendor John Paul II presents a priceless analysis of the state of moral theology in 1993 and clears the way for fruitful work in moral theology today. His identification of the ruptures between freedom and truth, and between faith and morals, provides an important paradigm for reading the recent history of moral theology, understanding contemporary problems within this field, and indicating a trajectory for the future. In this paper the second, and deeper, of the two ruptures has been analyzed. This has shed light on some contemporary problems in moral theology and indicated pathways toward some rich solutions proposed by John Paul II. In the final analysis, in the thought John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §19. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §73. 44 45 294 Helenka Mannering of John Paul II, emphasis must always be maintained on the importance of recognizing the synergy between faith and morals. The following quote from §71 of Veritatis Splendor offers a succinct summary of what it means to live as a Christian: Following Christ is not an outward imitation, since it touches man at the very depths of his being. Being a follower of Christ means becoming conformed to him who became a servant even to giving himself on the Cross (cf. Phil 2:5–8). Christ dwells by faith in the heart of the believer (cf. Eph 3:17), and thus the disciple is conformed to the Lord. This is the effect of grace, of the active presN&V ence of the Holy Spirit in us.46 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §21. 46 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 295–312 295 Catholic or Utopian? Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral “Ideals” in Veritatis Splendor Christian Stephens University of Notre Dame Australia Sydney, Australia The post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia sparked criticism that some language used in chapter 8 could lead the reader to arrive at the view that the moral good, generally understood as at least requiring adherence to the commandments, is an ideal.1 While this essay was instigated by such concerns, it is not its goal to assess their veracity. Rather, this essay will show that there is a history of describing the moral good as an ideal in papal teaching since at least Leo XIII, but that these Popes at the same time flag an illegitimate use of the term “ideal” to describe the moral good. It will then be claimed that Saint John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor gives a sufficient outline of both the way in which the moral good can be referred to as an ideal, and the way in which it cannot. Finally, these two senses of “ideal” will be contrasted with each other, focusing especially on the capacity of the false understanding to rationalize sin. Magisterial Usage of “Ideal” Since at least the time of Pope Leo XIII, the popes have been using the word “ideal” in a positive sense to refer to what is desirable, normative, and 1 E. Christian Brugger, “Five Serious Problems with Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia,” The Catholic World Report, April 22, 2016, https://www.catholicworldreport. com/2016/04/22/five-serious-problems-with-chapter-8-of-amoris-laetitia/; John Finnis and Germain Grisez, “The Misuse of Amoris Laetitia to Support Errors against the Catholic Faith: A Letter to the Supreme Pontiff Francis, to All Bishops in Communion with Him, and to the Rest of the Christian Faithful,” November 21, 2016, http://www.twotlj.org/OW-MisuseAL.pdf, 6–14. 296 Christian Stephens objectively fulfilling for Christians.2 These three properties (desirability, normativity, and objective fulfilment) can be taken to be properties of the moral good itself. In all the papal documents analyzed where the moral good is referred to as an ideal, even though the language may emphasize the desirability or difficulty of the good, it never implies a separation from what is normative for the individual. If the magisterium does wish to use “ideal” in a different sense, and one in which it is not referring to the true moral good, it is generally accompanied by an adjective such as “pagan,”3 “Communist,”4 “pseudo,”5 “earthly,”6 “simple,”7 “selfish,”8 “mere,”9 “abstract,” or “false utopian.”10 While references to a true or false sense of “ideal” are not uncommon in magisterial documents, there has been no attempt to define the distinctions and implications of the two senses of the term. Since Veritatis Splendor intentionally sets out to explore and state the foundations of the moral life, it is not surprising to find that we are provided with the tools to draw out this distinction between a legitimate and illegitimate description of the moral good as an ideal.11 While these are not defined in one place in the encyclical, one could suggest that the entire encyclical unpacks what are two irreconcilable views, each hinging on a particular description of the moral good as an ideal. These clashing views will be called the “Catholic” and the “utopian.” The Catholic Sense of “Ideal” Commenting on Jesus’s encounter with the rich young man, Saint John Paul II states that, “even though he has followed the moral ideal seriously A sample of each Pontiff and Council’s usage includes: Leo XIII, Pastoralis (1891), §§5, 8; Pius X, Il Fermo Proposito (1905), §§4, 5; Benedict XV, Humani Generis Redemptionem (1917), §§4, 8–9; Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (1932), §§8, 29, 41–42, 45, 48, 57, 69; Pius XII, Evangelii Praecones (1951), §§36, 54; John XXIII, Sacerdotii Nostri Primordia (1959), §§7, 35; Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (1965), §46; Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (1967), §§19, 23, 24, 63, 95; John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (1991), §§4, 46; Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (2009), §13; Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (2013), §§31, 39. 3 Leo XIII, Au Milieu des Sollicitudes (1892), §29. 4 Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris (1937), §15. 5 Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, §8. 6 Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus (1939), §3. 7 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007), §39. 8 Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §54. 9 Pius XI, Mortalium Animos (1928), §7. 10 John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §41. 11 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993). 2 Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral "Ideals" in Veritatis Splendor 297 and generously from childhood, the rich young man knows that he is still far from the goal.”12 I will be referring to this usage of “ideal” as the Catholic sense, and suggest that it is simply synonymous with the moral good itself. In that sentence one is able to exchange the word “ideal” for “good,” “law,” “rule,” or “norm” and its meaning would be essentially the same. Therefore the following section will now attempt to present a synthesis of the notion of the good as found in Veritatis Splendor, intending it to be simultaneously an explanation of the Catholic sense of the word “ideal.” By stating that “only God is good” (Mark 10:18), Jesus himself indicated to the rich young man that it is he who is “the absolute Good which attracts us and beckons us.”13 It is the divine nature which is the source and model of the moral law and virtue.14 The goodness of the creature, whether it be in the order of nature, grace, or glory, is always a participation in the one, eternal, perfect goodness of God.15 These metaphysical roots of the good (or ideal) which Jesus immediately directs the young man to consider show that God himself is the one unique ground of all other goods, and that aspects of the moral good such as desirability and objective fulfilment (“eternal life”) are inseparable from its normative aspect (“what must I do?”).16 Hence, in the Catholic sense, ideal is intrinsically related to the nature of both God and creation. While many aspects of the reality that surrounds us are beyond our capacity to change, in every choice there is “a decision about oneself and a setting of one’s own life for or against the Good, for or against the Truth, and ultimately for or against God.”17 The entire moral life is “the obedience of faith” or “fundamental response” to the gratuitous initiative of, and invitation to, the divine communion.18 The “ultimate purpose of our life” is that each of our actions manifest the truth that we are “made in the image of the Creator, redeemed by the Blood of Christ and made holy by the presence of the Holy Spirit,” for the glory of God.19 In choosing and performing good acts, “man strengthens, develops and consolidates within himself his likeness to God.”20 As we are transformed more into the Image of the Son, we increase our participation (and therefore manifestation) of John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §16 (italics mine). John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §7; cf. §§9, 35. 14 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§10, 40, 99. 15 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §12. 16 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §8. 17 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §65; cf. §§72, 78. 18 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§10, 66–67, 88. 19 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §10; cf. §73. 20 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §39; cf. §§51, 71. 12 13 298 Christian Stephens God’s glory. While this transformation is only completed in the beatific vision, the wayfarer is already a child of the kingdom insofar as they live and act from the grace they have received, which is the seed of glory that constitutes that very kingdom.21 The best description for this whole structure of the moral ideal (or good), ranging from the natural law to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, is “participated theonomy.”22 That is, degrees of natural and supernatural participation in the eternal wisdom and love of God by which the rational creature guides himself to his beatific end.23 Both the natural and divine law are the promise and sign of this life, and they reach their highest expression in the new law by the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Beatitudes.24 The incarnate Word is the fulfilment of the law in that he first exegetes its fullest significance, and then lives it out by making “a total gift of himself.”25 Christ’s call to follow him and live out the law of the Spirit is meant for everyone regardless of their circumstances.26 He “transcends a legalistic interpretation of the commandments,” and empowers others to do the same by his grace.27 In this Catholic sense of the moral good as ideal, “the commandments . . . represent the basic conditions for love of neighbour; at the same time they are the proof of that love,” apart from which “genuine love for God is not possible.”28 The multiplicity of precepts (which reflects the multiplicity of human powers and circumstances) should not obscure the reality that Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 114, a. 3, ad 3 (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province [New York: Benziger Bros., 1948]). 22 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §41. 23 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§41–43, 72. 24 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§12, 16, 24, 45, 51, 72. Servais Pinckaers, whose entire career has been committed to emphasising this point, applauds the encyclical which, without denying the truth about obligation of obeying the Ten Commandments, situates them properly in the context of the new law as understood by St. Thomas (Servais Pinckaers, “The Use of Scripture and the Renewal of Moral Theology: The Catechism and Veritatis Splendor,” The Thomist 59, no. 1 [1995]: 8–9). 25 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§15, 20, 83, 85, 87, 89. 26 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §18–19. See also Reinhard Hütter, “(Re-)Forming Freedom: Reflections ‘After Veritatis Splendor’ on Freedom’s Fate in Modernity and Protestantism’s Antinomian Captivity,” Modern Theology 17, no. 2 (2001): 131: “Yet the freedom that is the Spirit’s presence, does not lead away from God’s will as expressed in God’s commandments. Life in the Spirit does not mean that the Decalogue . . . is abolished.”’ 27 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §16; cf. §§17, 21, 102. 28 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§13–14, 17, 26, 35, 76. 21 Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral "Ideals" in Veritatis Splendor 299 they simply reflect the simple goodness of God and the unified good of the whole person.29 This is the basis of the inseparable unity of the commandments, and also the reason why they must be kept in every time and place.30 To the extent that we do this we are truly free, since we are prompted to act from the center of graced personality. Alternatively, those who act from “blind impulse or external pressure” experience God’s law as a burden.31 If this leads to an act in which one “knowingly and willingly, for whatever reason, chooses something gravely disordered,” the person’s fundamental orientation to God is lost.32 This is not due to an external, arbitrary punishment by God, but because these acts harm deeply and profoundly those who choose them.33 Finally, in regard to the Catholic sense of ideal, while apparent conflicts may be endless, since Christ cannot contradict himself there cannot be a real conflict between the magisterium and the Catholic conscience. Both are at the service of proclaiming and applying the truth about the moral ideal. The magisterium is the external voice of Christ authentically interpreting and proclaiming these moral principles, and the Catholic conscience is the internal voice of Christ, judging here and now whether this or that act is to be done or avoided.34 The source of the great dignity of both the magisterium and the conscience is that neither is the ultimate author of the law they speak of. The Utopian Sense of “Ideal” Yet as seen above in the section on the magisterial usage of the term, not all uses of the term “ideal” are compatible with Catholic moral truth. Saint John Paul II explicitly states this in §103 of Veritatis Splendor: “It would be a very serious error to conclude . . . that the Church’s teaching is essentially only an ‘ideal’ which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man.”35 In his encyclical, John Paul II John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§13, 45, 48–50, 72, 79, 90. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§14, 25–26, 80, 82, 90. 31 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§17–18, 35, 42, 84–87, 96. 32 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §70; cf. §80. 33 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§80, 92. Romanus Cessario puts it this way: “Every disordered deed yields its own punishment, each attempt to construct a pattern of moral behaviour outside of what conforms to God’s wise providence for the human race leads to some form of moral dissolution’ (Introduction to Moral Theology, 2nd ed. [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001], 98). 34 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§27, 29, 32, 54, 59. 35 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§103. 29 30 300 Christian Stephens targets a variety of these false moral theories which share a common underlying denial that makes them incompatible with reason and revelation: the denial of universal negative norms. This false usage of the word “ideal” to describe the moral good will be called the “utopian” ideal.36 What follows is a synthesis of this general approach as described in Veritatis Splendor. The most distinguishing feature of this illegitimate use of the word “ideal” to describe the moral good is that it is constantly being contrasted with the “real,” “personal,” or “concrete.” The commandments cannot be absolutely normative for “daily decisions,” since one “cannot be expected to foresee and to respect all the individual concrete acts of the person in all their uniqueness and particularity.”37 Proponents of the utopian sense “stress the complexity typical of the phenomena of conscience, a complexity profoundly related to the whole sphere of psychology . . . emotions . . . social and cultural environment.”38 In light of this, absolute negative norms could only be exhortations which the individual’s reason adapts to “the concrete historical situation.”39 This would be an instance of adopting a “pastoral solution” which involves prioritizing the “more concrete existential consideration” over “doctrinal and abstract” laws; that is, by taking account of circumstances, one may allow an “exception to the general rule,” even if it is considered by the magisterium to be something intrinsically evil.40 In order to understand how it is that one may act contrary to the natural and divine law with moral sanction, a distinction is made between two orders of the good.41 The first is the ethical order, which consists in “innerworldly” norms about how we act toward the world, others, and self. The second order is the order of salvation, and involves how one acts toward God and considerations regarding divine wisdom. Accompanying this two-tier structure of the good is a two-tiered freedom: “a ‘fundamental freedom’ (which is) deeper than and different from freedom of choice,” with the former playing the key role in the order of salvation and the latter regarding particular acts in the ethical order.42 In the ethical order, to make the “right” decision, the individual should weigh the various values and take note of the proportion between good and evil effects.43 John Paul II uses this phrase himself in Centesimus Annus, §41. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§4, 55, 75. 38 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §55. 39 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §37. 40 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §56. 41 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§36–37, 88. 42 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §65. 43 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§74–75, 79. 36 37 Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral "Ideals" in Veritatis Splendor 301 It is essential to note that the “rightness” or “wrongness” of the chosen act does not affect the “goodness” or “evil” of the choosing person, since this would depend on their intention in choosing the act, an intention which assumedly is in positive or negative relation toward God apart from others.44 Since the order of salvation concerns only “certain intentions and interior attitudes toward God and neighbour,” one cannot say that God has revealed some acts to be intrinsically evil always and everywhere in the ethical order.45 The magisterium’s clear stance on certain kinds of acts as evil is “the cause of unnecessary conflicts of conscience.”46 An individual could “remain faithful to God independently of whether or not certain of his choices and his acts are in conformity with specific norms or rules.”47 What is most important is that the conscience adopts “a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and ‘being at peace with oneself.’”48 Only an explicit rejection of God could be categorized as a mortal sin.49 This means that one is able to make choices which positively neglect or even attack the realizing of the ideal. They can consider themselves children of the kingdom as long as they do not deny the ideal as ideal, even though it does not have actual normativity for them at present. A Tale of Two Ideals Describing the moral good as an ideal in the utopian sense attempts to retain the sense of the moral good’s desirability for a given subject, but disjointed from truths about God and nature in such a way that it is not considered possible, and therefore not normative for them in this concrete situation. The problematic conceptual framework of the utopian ideal is not merely a post-Conciliar phenomenon. In a prophetic address on April 18, 1952, ten years before the Second Vatican Council and forty-one years before Veritatis Splendor, Pope Pius XII identified a danger so serious that he said there are “few . . . as great and far-reaching.”50 He called this by various labels such as “the new morality,” “ethical existentialism,” and “situation ethics.” According to him, its distinctive mark is that “it does John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§75, 82. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§4, 37, 75. 46 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §55. 47 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §68. 48 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §32. 49 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §69. 50 Pius XII, Address to the Participants in the Catholic World Federation of Young Women, April 18, 1952, w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/fr/speeches/1952/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19520418_soyez-bienvenues.html. 44 45 302 Christian Stephens not rely on universal moral laws, such as the Ten Commandments, but on the real or concrete conditions or circumstances in which we must act, and according to which the individual conscience must judge and choose.” Its criteria for choice are “good intentions” and “sincerity.” What Pius XII describes bears an uncanny resemblance to John Paul II’s description in the above section. This is indicated by two key features of the utopian sense of “ideal”: firstly, the explicit contrasting between a universal moral law and real, concrete circumstances; secondly, in light of the alleged incapacity for universal negative laws to apply to all scenarios, a falling back upon a subjective sincerity as the criteria of acting well. This is an excellent example of the Holy Spirit ensuring the Church is prepared for a future crisis by preempting it in her teaching. Unfortunately however, it is also an excellent example of how this warning is able to be neglected or overlooked in the decades that follow. The call to repentance was foundational in the preaching of Jesus (Matt 4:17; Luke 5:32) and his apostles (Acts 2:38; 17:30), and therefore it retains a permanent and essential place in Catholic moral teaching (Luke 24:47). Those who do not repent of their sin reject the call to be an adopted child in the Son and thereby bring judgment on themselves (John 3:19). In fact, failure to repent provides the unique condition for blocking the forgiveness of God, whether it be in this life or the next (Matt 12:31–32). If one does not repent of their sins, they cannot consider themselves immune from the punishments received by those who have gone before them (Luke 13:1–5; 1 Cor 10:6–11). Since the fullness of Revelation has taken place, culpability for sin and the hardness of heart involved in failing to repent are worse than in the past (Matt 11:20–24). In the light of all this, it is fair to conclude that any set of ideas which makes the idea of repentance unintelligible, or which blocks an individual’s capacity to repent of their own sin, is a lethal threat to the spiritual life. The rest of this paper will show how describing the moral good as an ideal in the utopian sense leads to the rationalizing of sin, and therefore failure to repent. It Confuses Knowing with Doing Good Firstly, the Catholic sense of “ideal” correctly distinguishes the knowledge of what is good from the actual pursuit of the good in such a way that merely knowing what is good does not make one a good person. This is why the intellectual virtues can only be called virtues in a restricted sense.51 Unlike the moral virtues, they do not make a person good per se. This is an essential distinction, since in light of synderesis, the natural law, and revela Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 57, a. 1, ad 1. 51 Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral "Ideals" in Veritatis Splendor 303 tion, people can be expected to grasp at the level of knowledge the distinctions between good and evil in general. This does not mean the majority of people are wise, but only that they know enough for the proper “guidance of life.”52 If this is the case, merit is not in simply knowing what is good, but in actually doing it (Luke 6:46; Matt 7:21). In fact, failing to distinguish good from evil on some occasions, far from allowing one to revel in a lack of culpability, could be a sign of serious moral degeneracy (Rom 1:20–21). The reason these observations are important is that, as seen above, the utopian ideal isolates Church teaching (and the moral law) to the level of intellectual apprehension, and hence it cannot provide the direction or measure of a concrete decision. One can know that adultery or contraception is forbidden by his church, but not believe it is thereby ruled out as a legitimate option for him. It is an impotent belief with no practical import, and as such is capable of accompanying acts of the will which would seem to contradict it. As long as one nods respectably to such teaching in public forums as general advice and acknowledges the undesirability of everyone contravening the law, one is able to believe it does not apply to him in his particular circumstances. For example, Jack may hear the priest preaching about the impossibility of remarriage and consent to it at some intellectual level as ideal. Yet Jack believes that factoring in the infidelity of his wife, as well as his overwhelming sexual desires, it is not reasonable to think it is applying to him personally. He believes that if he was with a wife that did not cheat on him, and if he had a different temperament, it truly would be sinful to seek out another marriage—but those are not his concrete circumstances. Jack thinks the main thing is that he loves God, and that it would be unreasonable for the Church to suggest failing to meet this ideal would affect that. Hence for Jack, his adoption of the moral law as ideal in the utopian sense means the promulgation of the law is not a call for him to repent. It is simply a call to acknowledge an ideal. It Makes the Object of Moral Analysis the Circumstances and not the Acting Person The Catholic sense of ideal provides an explanation for how it is that people can be convicted by their conscience that they sinned, and hence potentially repent. In many cases, it is simply that this particular act violated what they understood to be a general moral precept. However, on the basis of the utopian sense of ideal, how can one repent from violating what was always merely an ideal, and one which they continued to acknowledge as an ideal the whole time? At most, one could regret the Aquinas, ST I, q. 23, a. 7, ad 3. 52 304 Christian Stephens circumstances they find themselves in and wish they were different, so that they could act differently. This is a judgment about one’s situation and not one’s own choice in that situation, and yet it is the latter which must be the focus for moral analysis. The question about whether a situation is ideal must be distinguished from whether the moral law is an ideal. Often, perhaps even most of the time, it is appropriate to refer to the circumstances surrounding one’s act as not ideal. For example: “If you are going to go out for dinner, it would be ideal to leave before 5pm to avoid the traffic”; “Only sleeping two hours last night was not ideal for doing an exam today”; “This is not the ideal chair to be sitting in for eight hours a day”; “Ideally, it won’t be too hot on the day of the marathon”; “I know it’s not ideal that your mother left us, but we have to work out our new dinner roster.” In all these cases, the lack of an ideal situation affects exactly how the virtue of prudence instantiates a positive precept, and it may even force the acting person to rule out good acts they would otherwise have liked to accomplish. However, as will be seen further below, unideal circumstances can never hinder a person from not doing an evil act.53 Every situation in our fallen world is not an ideal situation, not merely externally, but also internally with regard to our physical and psychological make-up.54 If one insists that given the ideal situation and the ideal internal state, the ideal would be morally binding and they would have chosen it, then one fails to take account of the nature of moral choice in our fallen and redeemed world. Contrary to being made for an alternative reality, since the Christian moral life involves the redemptive dimensions of forgiveness of enemies, carrying one’s cross, and offering up of one’s sufferings, it is manifest that the Christian ideal is for this world, since in a perfect world none of those things would be required.55 It Leads the Faithful to be Swept Away by False Ethical Theories The capacity for Jack (our hypothetical character attempting remarriage) to sustain this rationalization is maintained by the utopian sense’s distinction between the other-worldly order of salvation and the this-worldly ethical order repudiated in Veritatis Splendor. This is revealed by Jack’s belief that the command to love God can require no particular demand on (at least some of ) his activity in the world. Yet if Jack believes this to be true, he must subscribe, consciously or not, to an ethical theory from elsewhere in order John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §52. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §1. 55 See Germain Grisez, Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1983), ch. 28, question B, no. 6. 53 54 Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral "Ideals" in Veritatis Splendor 305 to assess what to do here and now. By calling the moral law an ideal in the utopian sense, the faithful are turned to the surrounding culture to discover daily or practical guides and norms. In a previous period of history this may have led to the adoption of a this-worldly capitalist ethic.56 Yet there can be no doubt that in the post-Conciliar period it has generally meant the adoption of various secular, post-modern, or leftist ideologies by the faithful.57 The end result is that people dress up the moral norms and concepts of liberalism, relativism, or Marxism in a now hopelessly vague Christian language. It leads to entirely different views of Christ’s teaching, since he has simply become the front-man for an alien ideology. For example, one person insists that Jesus taught simply to forgive, do not judge, and let people be. Yet behind them is a person who insists that Jesus was an anti-institutional revolutionary who put social activism ahead of all else. In any case their willingness to look past the Church’s moral tradition flings the door open to the disordered influence of the popular or academic ethical theory of their time, all made possible by an adoption of the Christian moral good as an ideal in the utopian sense. Not only is this a failure to “not be conformed to this world . . . that you may prove what is the will of God” (Rom 12:2), but it is the confusing of the will of God with the flux of human culture. This confusion of the ways of the world and the ways of God is part of the reason for the Pope’s plea to return to Jesus for answers about good and evil, not the latest sociological or philosophical school of thought.58 Not to look to God’s revelation for the answers or to insist he has only revealed general guidelines because he is unaware of the complexity of life bespeaks “a lack of trust in the wisdom of God, who guides man with the moral law.”59 It Fails to Appreciate Moral Realism Moral realism is at the heart of the Catholic moral tradition.60 John Paul Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells (London: Penguin Books, 2002). 57 See James V. Schall, Liberation Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982). 58 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §8. 59 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §84. John Paul makes this accusation of failing to trust the wisdom and providence of God also in an earlier address: “It is believed that it is not suitable for every man, for every situation, and you therefore want to replace it with an order different from the divine one” (Address to Priests Participating in a Course on Responsible Parenthood, September 17, 1983, §3, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/speeches/1983/september/documents/ hf_jp-ii_spe_19830917_procreazione-responsabile.html [translation mine]). 60 Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology, xvi-xvii. 56 306 Christian Stephens II reminds the faithful that, since the moral precepts are grounded in the permanent nature of God and man, and not the flux of human culture, it is the role of the moral precepts to judge culture; culture does not judge them.61 When we “disregard the law . . . whether culpably or not, our acts damage the communion of persons, to the detriment of each.”62 Ignorance, even widespread, cannot make the false true, or the evil good.63 One cannot change the moral quality of an act by pointing out the vast quantity of those acts in a particular culture.64 Intrinsically evil acts always harm the acting person and those around them, and this is why their accompanying universal precepts “oblige everyone, regardless of the cost.”65 Describing the moral law as an ideal in the utopian sense subscribes to a nominalist metaphysic which suggests that any given act can be “rubberstamped” as good, since this goodness is accidental to the act, and is simply the approval of the will of the legislator. This leads to the rationalizing of sin in that one falsely believes there is no harm done as long as one was “sincere.” It also undermines the Church’s evangelistic call to repentance in that the faithful can wonder whether others would be “better off” not knowing the Church teaching, as it may unnecessarily distress the others’ consciences. After all, if the evil associated with sin is only imputed by an external authority and God cannot demand that people obey laws they do not know about, is it not perhaps malevolent to make them aware? These are all questions and lines of argument which undermine the call to repentance, even in the face of the most manifest signs of moral crisis. In an ironic twist, the utopian sense leads one to believe that the more disastrous the moral climate becomes, the more one needs to compromise the law rather than manifest it. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§53, 97, 99, 101. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §51. Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Herald, 1993), ch. 9, question E, no. 7. 63 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §63. 64 This is simply a more elaborate version of every child’s favorite excuse: “But everyone was doing it!” 65 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§51–53, 77. See also Alasdair MacIntyre, “How Can We Learn What Veritatis Splendor Has to Teach?,” in Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology, ed. J. A. DiNoia and Romanus Cessario (Chicago: Midwest Theological Forum, 1999), 78: “Obedience to these negative precepts. . . frees us from a variety of hindrances and frustrations that would otherwise bring to nothing the pursuit by each of us of our own positive good and that of others.” John Finnis gives a good historical overview of the Church’s Tradition in regard to exceptionless norms in “Grounds and Preparations for the Main Thesis of Veritatis Splendor,” Studia Philosophiae Christianae 51, no. 2 (2015): 11–21. 61 62 Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral "Ideals" in Veritatis Splendor 307 It Promotes Discerning the Application of Negative Precepts Another way in which the utopian sense of “ideal” allows for the rationalizing of sin is that it confuses a basic distinction made between the positive and negative precepts of the law. The Catholic sense makes room for discerning the application of the positive precepts in a given time and place, but not the negative.66 The utopian wishes to extend discernment even to the negative precepts. Father John Neuhaus explains the fault in this reasoning in a succinct way: “We cannot always do the good that we would, but we can always refuse to do evil.”67 As creatures who are essentially finite, on any given occasion in our life we will be unable to accomplish all the goods we could conceive of. We must inevitably choose which good to instantiate amongst a range of possible goods. For example, a husband and wife discover they have another baby on the way, and this forces them to decide between getting a larger car and renovating the house. Each is possible on its own, but they cannot afford both. They discern which to choose. However, even the range of goods we choose from may not itself include all the goods desirable in the abstract. For example, the husband may have loved to be a religious and dedicate his whole life to contemplative study, but it is not reasonable for him to have this on the table as a possible option to choose. Yet regardless of how limited one’s options are for attaining various goods through various means, one never has to choose evil. The choice of evil is the refusal of the reason and will to acknowledge one’s finiteness and select among the options that the Father in his providence has made possible at this time. One cannot claim in any way whatsoever that God wills them to sin, since this would amount to a denial of what he is. This mistaking of the legitimate role of discernment in the execution of positive precepts, with a false discernment about whether the universal negative precept applies to oneself here and now, leads to rationalizing sin. The reason this is the case is that when one has set before them the range of acceptable actions, they must choose which to enact. They may choose one which is less good though not evil, and there would be no need to repent properly speaking. For example, the husband in the above situation bought the reliable car with the better paint job, although later he thinks the reliable car that has travelled fewer kilometres but is slightly scratched would have been better. All things being equal (that is, he was not motivated by vanity for example), he may regret his decision, but he Thomas Aquinas, De malo, q. 7, a. 1, ad 8. Richard John Neuhaus, “The Splendor of Truth: A Symposium,” First Things, January 1994, firstthings.com/article/1994/01/the-splendor-of-truth-a-symposium. 66 67 308 Christian Stephens should not repent of it. The car salesman may like the idea, but the priest should not. Rather, the husband should take it as a lesson in humility, intend to take more counsel before deciding next time, and make an act of trust in divine providence. However, say the husband adopts the moral law as an ideal in the utopian sense. Due to his family’s apparently desperate financial situation, he considers it a valid option to threaten to beat the car salesman if he does not receive a staff discount. This would already be a sign of moral corruption. Say the husband were to choose this means and act on it but later come to regret it, it would be entirely wrong for him to treat this as the equivalent of choosing a lesser good. In fact, apart from repenting of the act under the ratio of evil, he may only regret it because of accidental effects of the action which could have been prevented or contained by a more cunning plan. Hence the utopian sense of “ideal” frustrates the capacity to repent, since it allows people to see their sins only as mistakes. It Pretends to Assess the Culpability of Future Chosen Actions In Catholic moral thought, one can evaluate a past action and come to the conclusion that a properly human act (one which originates in knowledge and freedom) was not performed, and hence the merit or blame for an action is reduced. If there was a lack of freedom or control, one would expect the person to repent of their act immediately on regaining that freedom or control. If it involved a lack of knowledge of the facts of the situation or the moral law, one would expect repentance once those facts or law became known. It is essential to note that this assessment of culpability cannot take place in regards to future actions. It is impossible for one to evaluate in advance the culpability of actions they are planning on carrying out. If one is planning on having inhibited freedom or control, then they are choosing it and they are culpable.68 If one is planning on being ignorant, this too is self-defeating.69 In contrast to this, the utopian sense of ideal, in light of its presuppositions, is willing to grant pardon or reduced culpability to the person who plans in the future to freely and knowingly carry out an act in violation of a general precept. For example, next month when I choose to sleep with this person who is not my spouse, I will not be culpable because we have known each other for a long time and have a common set of commitments. A person must be converted away from the utopian sense of ideal for the process of contrition to even begin. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 77, a. 7. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 6, a. 6. 68 69 Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral "Ideals" in Veritatis Splendor 309 It Views God as Absent or Impotent in the Moral Life The utopian sense of “ideal” aids in rationalizing sin in that it leads one to see God as essentially absent and not able to help in the moral life. It promotes speaking much of God’s mercy, yet separated from the moral law in such a way that God’s mercy is not effective, powerful, and transformative. Rather it simply appears to be some superhuman capacity to empathize and forget. On the one hand, God is thought to be so far away that he is either uninterested or unable to help one choose the good. On the other hand, he is thought to be so immanent to the circumstances that it is as if he himself is bound by the unfortunate, unforeseeable situation and condones merely “doing your best.” But this is exactly John Paul II’s question: what is one’s best? Is it the best of one “dominated by concupiscence or man redeemed by Christ? For this is what is in question: the reality of Christ’s redemption.”70 This is not an abstract theological question, but the essence of the moral life since, “only in the mystery of Christ’s redemption do we discover the ‘concrete’ possibilities of man.”71 Allowing the wounded human condition to dominate one’s moral thinking is a failure to appreciate that it is the second Adam, not the first, “who fully discloses man to himself and unfolds his noble calling.”72 This is why the Council of Trent declared it a dogma that obeying the commandments is possible for the justified: “If anyone says that the commandments of God are impossible to observe even for a man who is justified and established in grace, let him be anathema.” 73 Yet it also anathematized those who say that the commandments can be fulfilled without God’s grace: “If anyone says that, without divine grace through Jesus Christ, man can be justified before God by his own works, whether they be done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law, let him be anathema.” 74 John Paul II took up this two-pronged attack, realizing exactly what is at stake.75 In order to preserve the great truth of the redemption, the Church can compromise neither on the truth of the John Paul II, Address to Priests Participating in a Course on Responsible Parenthood, March 1, 1984, §4, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/speeches/1984/ march/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19840301_procreazione-responsabile.html (translation mine). 71 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §103; cf. §102. 72 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §2. 73 Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum [DH], ed. Peter Hunermann, 43rd ed., English ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 1568. 74 DH, no. 1551; cf. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 109, a. 8. 75 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§22–24, 44. 70 310 Christian Stephens moral law nor on the transformative power of Christ’s grace.76 Either one without the other is unintelligible. Once again we see that it is a theme that Pius XII also addressed when he said, “It is clear: he who does not want to master himself is not able to do so, and he who wishes to master himself relying only upon his own powers, without sincerely and perseveringly seeking divine help, will be miserably deceived.” 77 Hence the promotion of the utopian sense encourages failure in regard to the supernatural hope. The willingness to depart from the law for the sake of personal gain or avoidance of loss could only be an act of despair or presumption: on the one hand, despair of God’s capacity or willingness to save and the denial that in his wisdom he has provided what is needed to endure all temptation (1 Cor 10:13), or on the other hand, presumption in that one believes they can attain the joy of Christ apart from being supernaturally conformed to him in mind, heart, and body (Matt 10:38). Hence, yet again, the utopian sense of ideal leads to the rationalizing of sin. Centuries before the Council of Trent and Veritatis Splendor, Saint Thomas Aquinas addressed this question of our future sins. In response to the question of whether it is lawful to kill oneself, the objector suggests that if one knows they are going to commit a grave sin in the future, they may kill themselves to “avoid a greater evil, for example an unhappy life, or the shame of sin.” 78 Thomas gives a beautiful response which includes the nature of free will, the problem of consequentialism, and what true love of self requires. But at the end, he includes a brief word which those who promote the utopian sense ought to remember: “It is uncertain whether one will at some future time consent to sin, since God is able to deliver man from sin under any temptation whatever.” 79 This reveals the mindset of one who has allowed the Second Adam to determine what the “concrete” possibilities of man are. It Shirks from the Cross The definitive blow against the anti-witness of the utopian sense of “ideal” is the witness given by the martyrs whom the Church has never lacked and John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §104. See also Hütter, “(Re-)Forming Freedom,” 141: ‘Thus God’s law awakens from both the daydream of Promethean freedom— by unmasking human entanglement in sin—and the nightmare of a total eclipse of freedom—by precisely holding humans accountable for their deeds.” 77 Pius XII, Address to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives, October 29, 1951, w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/it/speeches/1951/documents/hf_p-xii_ spe_19511029_ostetriche.html (translation mine). 78 Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 64. a. 5, obj. 3. 79 Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 64. a. 5, ad 3. 76 Two Irreconcilable Views about Moral "Ideals" in Veritatis Splendor 311 never failed to revere from her birth until now.80 Yet at the same time, the Church did not venerate them for discerning with their pastors whether their conscience would convict them of sin in light of their physical, psychological, emotional, cultural, and financial conditions. Even if they had attempted such, it would have been futile, as it is impossible to predict and evaluate all the effects of even a single act over the course of a one day in one’s own life, let alone its effects on generations over the next century.81 Rather, the martyrs are the true role models of discernment for the rather plain reason that they were everyday Christians. Their life in Christ was essentially no different from that of any faithful Catholic. On a given day, under a very specific set of circumstances, they simply found themselves in a situation where they had to pay the ultimate price for their fidelity to God, and their refusal to disintegrate the humanity of either themselves or others.82 They understood that the carrying of one’s own cross is an essential part of one’s transformation in Christ, not an unfortunate accident. Their unideal concrete circumstances did not suffocate the Catholic ideal but became its hour of glory. Contrary to the utopian sense, no one can say a heroic commitment may not be asked of them by the crucified Christ.83 Conclusion The Catholic sense of “ideal” is not some mere imaginary place full of imaginary people carrying out imaginary acts—rather, it is always and everywhere present. This is because Jesus insists that the Catholic ideal is not merely an idea, an image or any written code, but the living God himself: “Why do you call me good, only God is good?” (Mark 10:18). In virtue of being the eternal Act of Being who creates and sustains us at all times, he is the Good who is in contact with everyone in every situation. Since he is always present and we are in a real dependence on him, there can be morally neutral acts in the abstract (like walking), but not once individualized in reality (where are you walking and why?).84 Every choice is for or against God, either perfecting or tarnishing his image within us.85 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§90–91. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §77. The completely unpredictable effects of decisions are well recorded in the narratives found in Scripture. 82 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §92. 83 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §§93, 102. See also John Paul II, Address to Priests Participating in a Course on Responsible Parenthood, 1983, §4: “We are all, including spouses, called to holiness, and this vocation can also demand heroism. We must not forget it.” 84 Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 18, a. 9. 85 Aquinas, ST I, q. 93, a. 4. 80 81 312 Christian Stephens The kingdom of God truly is at hand (Mark 1:15), and one chooses for or against it in everyday situations even when they do not realize it (Matt 25).86 Far from being something to be contrasted with the ideal, the concrete is the only place one encounters the ideal himself. It was in a particular time and place that the rich young man met Jesus, that Peter let down the nets, that Judas kissed Jesus on the cheek, that the woman at the well answered Jesus’s question, and that Stephen was stoned. Jesus is adamant that an encounter with him entirely trumps the complexity of one’s situation up until that moment: one is to let the dead bury the dead, accept the wedding invitation, and sin no more (Matt 8:22, Luke 14:15–24; John 8:11). Any use of the word “ideal” to describe the moral law that does not take these truths on, does not factor in the one who, as Aquinas said, “is able to deliver man from sin under any temptation whatever.”87 This paper has demonstrated that describing the moral law as an ideal has some history in magisterial teaching. Nonetheless there is the need to be careful, since the word can also apply to erroneous or evil positions. It was then shown that Saint John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor provides the explicit distinctions required for separating a Catholic from utopian sense of the moral law as “ideal.” Finally, these distinct and incompatible approaches were compared, and it was proposed that the utopian sense is most dangerous in its capacity to rationalize sin and, therefore, provide an N&V obstacle to repentance. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §67. Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 64, a. 5, ad 3. 86 87 Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2020): 313–335 313 Book Reviews Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church by Matthew Levering (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), vii + 440 pp. Matthew Levering’s Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church advances the thesis that “the Holy Spirit should be praised and contemplated under the proper names ‘Love’ and ‘Gift,’ with respect both to his intra-trinitarian identity and to his historical work in Jesus Christ and the church” (2). Levering has it in mind to overcome “the disastrous separation of theology and spirituality along with the modern separation of philosophy and a way of life” (50n131). One reason for writing this book was that Levering wished to know God intimately now, and not just be a student of a God whose presence he would ward off (vii). This volume comprises seven chapters, preceded by a substantial introduction (fifty pages) in which Levering lays out objections to his central thesis, devoting special attention by way of critique to three contemporary authors: Thomas Weinandy represents “trinitarian theology that seeks to retrieve and accentuate the role of the Spirit”; Sarah Coakley stands for “postmodern or contextualized trinitarian theology”; and William Hasker exemplifies social rinitarianism (16). Levering will embrace Aquinas’s approach of naming the Spirit “biblically and analogously” (9). In the introduction, Levering focuses on the Old Testament and Paul in order to emphasize that the root of naming the Spirit “Love” and “Gift” is the “urgent love between God and Israel, the holy people” (49). And he observes a salutary spareness about the names Gift and Love (35). In chapter 1, Levering takes on the foundational question of the names Love and Gift. He begins by examining Hans Urs von Balthasar’s contention that the Scriptures associate love with the Father and the Son perhaps even more than with the Holy Spirit. For instance, in John’s Gospel, the Spirit is overwhelmingly associated not with love but with truth; and Paul’s letters more strongly link the Spirit to power (dynamis), to God-given ability (charisma), and to God’s salvific thoughts than to love (52). Levering then moves on to St. Augustine’s rich and dense exposition of the names Gift and Love. Admitting that Augustine’s interpretation 314 Book Reviews of Scripture in support of these names for the Holy Spirit goes beyond what contemporary exegetes would allow, Levering reviews Augustine’s arguments to show that while the Holy Spirit is not explicitly named Love and Gift, these names for the Spirit are based on Scripture (1 John 4:7–13; Rom 5:5; 1 Cor 13:2; Gal 5:6; and John 7:37–39). And he insightfully notes that patristic mindset admits of a more synthetic reading of Scripture, expecting God to speak to us in the sacred text about his triunity (54, 68). Augustine reads “love is of God” (1 John 4:7) in view of “God is love” (1 John 4:8) to infer the truth that a divine person proceeds as love from the Father. That is, since God is love, and love is of God, then God is of God, and this God of God is himself Love. But is this Love proceeding from the Father, the Son, or is he the Spirit? Since “if we love one another, God abides in us” (1 John 4:12) and “by this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit” (1 John 4:13), we can interpret John to be teaching here that Love names the Holy Spirit. And since God has given us of his own Spirit, the Spirit can be named Gift (56). Levering traces out other scriptural themes that Augustine connects to the Spirit as Love and Gift, such as the love poured into our hearts (Rom 5:5), the living water (John 4:14, 7:37–39; 1 Cor 12:13), the gift of grace (Eph 4:7; Ps 68:18; 1 Cor 12:4; Heb 2:4; Eph 4:11), forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38), and the gift of God (Acts 8:20, 10:45, 11:17) (59–62). Levering recognizes that Augustine’s work is decisive in naming the Spirit Gift and Love, but he rejects the notion that the basis of this naming cannot be found in Scripture. He also draws our attention to the less well-known fact of Augustine’s reliance on Hilary for this inspiration (54). Levering also discusses Augustine’s understanding of the Holy Spirit as the communion of the Father and the Son, for which the Spirit is rightly associated with charity (63). In his second chapter, Levering treats four eastern theologians, St. John Damascene, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Basil the Great, and Dumitru Stăniloae, as well as St. Thomas Aquinas, the lone western representative, to whom he devotes half of the chapter. He begins with the question of apophaticism, reporting on diverse opinions on whether Augustine’s names of Love and Gift should offend eastern apophatic sensibilities (72). Levering finds that Balthasar and Robert Jenson speak overconfidently about the inner life of the Trinity (72–74) while Aquinas respects apophatic concerns (76). Levering documents that eastern patristic apophaticism does not rule out discussion of the distinction of the Holy Spirit’s procession. For instance, Damascene writes that “whatsoever pertains to the cause, proceeding, revealing, and perfecting power must be attributed to the Book Reviews 315 Holy Spirit,” the one “proceeding from the Father,” because “without the Spirit, there is no impulsion”; the Spirit is “the median of the Unbegotten and the Begotten,” who “proceeds unceasingly from the Father and abides in the Son” (79). This description of the Spirit as “the median of the Unbegotten and the Begotten” already appears in Nazianzen (80), who also speaks of the example of Eve who proceeded from Adam but not by way of birth (81). Basil, who uses more analogies and titles for the Spirit than Gregory, speaks of the Spirit’s character as the Perfecter in creation and draws a connection between the Holy Spirit and the gift of holiness (83). The Spirit “comes forth from God, not begottenly as the Son does, but as the breath of his mouth”; he is the Spirit of the Son by being related naturally to the Son (84). “The Spirit is glorified through the communion that he has with the Father and the Son” (84). Basil and Gregory were concerned to show that the fact that the Spirit is the “gift” of God in us does not suggest that the Holy Spirit was not truly God (84). Levering observes that Stăniloae falls under his own condemnation of speculation about the Trinity, of which he accuses Augustine (85–89). Levering defends Aquinas against accusations of rationalism, pointing out that Thomas deploys the analogy of the Word and Love in order to manifest the intelligibility of revelation, aware of the analogy’s limitations and not pretending to grasp the Triune God (98, 103). Aquinas clarifies that the name “Love” tells us who the Spirit is: he is the fruit of the immanent procession in the divine will as the Father and the Son love themselves and each other (99–103); he is the radiance of divine communion (100), the bond of love between the Father and the Son (103). He proceeds not by way of similitude, as the Word does, but by way of imprint or impulse (107). Levering observes that, arriving at the same conclusion as Augustine but from a different angle, Thomas teaches that because the Spirit proceeds as Love, he must proceed as Gift. This is because, whenever one gives a gift, he first gives love; so love is always the first gift (107). Thomas too deals with the suggestion that as a gift given to men, the Spirit’s true divinity might be called into question. He affirms that the Spirit himself, and not just created gifts, is given; and he clarifies that Gift is an eternal name not because the Spirit is given eternally to anyone, but because of his aptitude to be given (105–6). Chapter 3 examines the Filioque—on which the names Love and Gift depend in certain ways (163). Levering notes numerous eastern figures who reject the Filioque from the fourteenth century on, and some contemporary Western authors who believe that it should be dropped from the creed in the Western Church (114–15). Levering points to the solution proffered 316 Book Reviews by St. Maximus the Confessor and taken up in 1995 by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, which recognized that (a) the Greek verb ekporeuesthai means to proceed from an original source, that is, from a principle not from a principle, which could only be the Father, but (b) proïenai refers to procession in a more general sense that would be the equivalent of the Latin procedere. Thus a possible reconciliation would be to say that the Spirit ekporeuetai from the Father alone but proeisi from the Father and the Son—that is, he ex Patre Filioque procedit (118–19). In light of the Filioque, the Pontifical Council reflects on the Spirit as the Gift of Love that “characterizes the relation between the Father, as source of love, and his beloved Son” (121). The Council, notes Levering, argues that Gregory of Palamas’s theology of the Spirit is broadly in accord with that of Augustine and Aquinas, who understand the Spirit as Love and Gift. Having established this background, Levering raises the question that will occupy the remaining pages of the chapter: is the Filioque, especially as formulated by Aquinas and taught by the Councils of Lyons II and Florence, the flowering of Augustinian rationalism? (123). Levering reviews the arguments of Sergius Bulgakov and Vladimir Lossky, who answer this question in the affirmative (133, 137), before turning to Thomas to show that the answer must be in the negative (157, 163). Aquinas holds that the Filioque is present in Scripture not per verba but per sensum (141). Based on passages like John 16:15—“All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that [the Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you”—Thomas argues that the Son receives everything that the Father has, including the power to spirate the Holy Spirit (144). With Aquinas’s understanding of the divine person as a subsisting relation— advancing the concept of relation introduced by Basil the Great—the Filioque is an open and shut case (145). That is, the only possible way that persons who are each equally the divine essence can be distinct in the real order is by relative opposition, on account of one person proceeding from another; therefore, if the Spirit does not proceed from the Son, then there is no relative opposition between him and the Son, and he cannot possibly be distinct from the Son (154). The Father and Son are not two but one single principle of the Spirit; nevertheless, they are always two distinct persons: they are one Spirator but two supposita spirating (145, 161). This preserves the Father’s unique status as the one without origin, the Son’s total equality in power to the Father, and the Son’s intimacy with and distinction from the Holy Spirit. Regarding the pope’s authority to add the Filioque to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, Aquinas notes that previous creeds may not be contradicted, but they may be clarified, as in the case of Constantinople I’s adding to the Nicene Creed by way Book Reviews 317 of clarification, not revision (146). Levering comments that this indicates that the Church is alive today (146). Aquinas makes use of philosophical tools to lay hold of the intelligibility of revelation and show that faith in the Trinity is not irrational; this is the opposite of rationalism (163, 167). In chapter 4, Levering considers the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. He goes out of his way to emphasize the central indispensable definitive place of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus Christ our Savior. One simply cannot understand Christ, his sonship, or his mission without understanding that he was a man filled with the Holy Spirit. Levering appeals to James Dunn’s work on the Holy Spirit, because although Dunn does not subscribe to the divinity of the Son and the Spirit, he, more than any other contemporary biblical scholar, creatively explores the Holy Spirit’s role in the life of Jesus (171–72). Levering’s task in this chapter will be to show that Aquinas’s account of the mission of the Spirit to Jesus agrees with and can be enriched by Dunn’s research (172). Dunn concludes that Jesus was conscious of his eschatological power especially in his exorcisms, the prophecy of Isaiah 61 (about being anointed with the Spirit to bring good tidings to the afflicted), and his baptism. Dunn maintains that Jesus’s “consciousness of his sonship and consciousness of Spirit are two sides of the one coin” (178). Dunn also points out that while there are other intercessors in Second Temple literature, such as archangels, Melchizedek, and Abel, only the ascended Jesus is the Lord and dispenser of the Spirit (181). Aquinas teaches that Christ received the plenitude of the Holy Spirit’s invisible mission at the moment of his conception; the visible missions of the Spirit that he received at his baptism and transfiguration are expressive of Jesus’s unique power to communicate grace to make his people holy (188). Naturally, the mission of the Spirit causes no change in God but effects a new relationship in the one receiving the mission—that is, a new presence of and relation of intimacy with the Spirit (189). A mission signifies the divine person’s eternal procession with the temporal effect of indwelling in the sanctified (190). Levering connects the Spirit’s names of Love and Gift to this theme in recalling Dunn’s observation that, in contrast to John the Baptist’s foretelling of the Spirit-filled messiah through imagery of judgment, Jesus emphasizes grace and mercy (178). Levering explains that the mission of the Spirit to Christ attunes Christ supremely to Love and Gift precisely in the unfolding of his historical existence; it is most fitting that this be from the moment of his conception, given that, as Thomas teaches, the Son is not just any sort of word, but one “who breathes forth Love” (193). Aquinas understands the scriptural appropriation of the Incarnation to the Spirit to be on account of the Spirit’s property as Love, as God became man on account of exceeding love (194). Levering concludes that 318 Book Reviews Dunn and Thomas agree on the radical and unique character of the Spirit’s presence in Jesus for his eschatological mission (196). Chapter 5, “The Holy Spirit and the Church,” considers how we should understand the Holy Spirit’s activity in constituting, building, and sustaining the Church. Levering notes that Jesus’s eschatological baptizing with the Holy Spirit and fire should be understood “not only in relation to his cross, but also in relation to the community of believers united by the Spirit in Jesus’s body—the temple ‘not made with hands’” (210–11). Levering clarifies that the scriptural data that suggest that the kingdom is coming imminently may be reconciled with the data that suggest that the kingdom will come at some future time, by recognizing that even now, the Church participates in Jesus’s “hour”—the moment of his eschatological fulfillment of all things by his Paschal mystery (211). So, during this time, Jesus’s Spirit-filled Church lives by sharing in his holy self-offering to the Father (212). To make his case, Levering examines the portraits of Christ as an eschatological prophet of the kingdom of God drawn by N. T. Wright, James Dunn, and Dale Allison before turning to Aquinas for an understanding of the Church as the fruit of the missions of the Son and the Spirit—which understanding conveys the intensity and intimacy of the Church’s reception of the eschatological Spirit (213). With Aquinas’s help, we can properly value the work of the Spirit, who “having filled Jesus with his Love and Gift, now fills Jesus’s Body, the church—the inaugurated kingdom of God—with ‘the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Phil. 4:23)” (215). Levering observes that we would do well to retrieve Thomas’s detailed conception of the Spirit-filled Church, marked by radical participation in divine Love and Gift (234). Aquinas understands the kingdom of God to refer to (1) the indwelling of Christ through the grace of the Holy Spirit, (2) Scripture (the law and the prophets) interpreted authoritatively, (3) the Church on earth, or (4) the heavenly court or banquet (234–35). The reason why there is a delay between Jesus’s Pasch and the final consummation is that the preaching of the Gospel has not yet produced its full effect (239–40). The two visible missions of the Spirit to the Church—namely, Jesus’s breathing on the apostles, giving them the power to forgive sins (John 20:23), and the descent of the Spirit on the disciples as tongues of fire on the Feast of Pentecost (Acts 2:2–4)—equipped the Church to celebrate the sacraments and to teach, respectively (243). In his invisible mission, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in the soul in sanctifying grace, infusing theological virtues (which perfect our knowing and loving) and giving gifts of the Holy Spirit (which make us amenable to the Spirit’s promptings) (246, 253). Finally, Levering explores Aquinas’s theology of baptism, confirmation, the Eucha- Book Reviews 319 rist, and penance to show that the sacraments mediate the invisible Spirit in distinctive ways. In chapter 6, Levering discusses the Holy Spirit as the cause of the unity of the Church. He deftly critiques the false oppositions set up between diversity within the Church and visible unity, and between an institutional order (e.g., a hierarchy) and charismatic inspiration. Not at all naive about sin within the Church, Levering insists on the Holy Spirit’s power to successfully draw people together into a visible sacramental and institutional unity, as one Church and eschatological community of Jesus Christ, by filling them with the gift of love and a spirit of repentance. The Spirit as Love and Gift cannot fail to produce ecclesial unity (270–71). Levering assesses Kendall Soulen’s exposition on the connection between the Holy Spirit and diversity, namely, that it is characteristic of the Spirit to cause a multitude of people to experience and proclaim the gift of divine blessing and to elicit a limitless variety of names for God from every sphere of life (277, 279). He then traces the theme of the Spirit’s unifying role in Scripture (280–83) before turning to Aquinas’s understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work as unifying the Church—which, he judges, merits emphasis over the idea that the Spirit is associated with diversity. Unity in diversity is the mark of the Spirit (293). For Aquinas, the Holy Spirit even has the aspect of a unifier within the Trinity. While the Father is the principle of unity as the one without origin, the Spirit unifies as Love proceeding, that is, as the mutual love or bond of love between the Father and the Son, who, as a single principle of the Spirit, breathe him forth as Love and Gift. In his very person, the Holy Spirit expresses the relation between the Father and the Son as lover to beloved and vice versa (287). This bond of unity within the Trinity is the basis of the unity and sanctity communicated to the Church (285; 292n80). The Spirit as Love unites the Church by causing us to love God and by giving us hope of forgiveness, through charity and our own imitation of God’s giving of himself (291–92, 296). The Spirit’s work is to unite us to the Father by conforming us to the Son, who is the head of the Church (293). The purpose of the Mosaic law was to form a united people, and with the coming of Christ, who fulfills the law, “the purpose of the eschatological grace of the Holy Spirit that Israel’s Messiah pours forth” is to form a united people on a worldwide scale (299). Chapter 7 takes up the question of the Holy Spirit’s making the Church holy. Levering notes that even as early as the Acts of the Apostles, sin beset the inaugurated eschatological community (311). Acts and the Pauline corpus do not hesitate to affirm both that the Church is truly holy and that members of the Church sin gravely (312). To ponder this mysterious 320 Book Reviews tension, Levering examines the positions of Reformed theologians Kevin Vanhoozer, Todd Billings, and John Calvin himself, before consulting Saints Cyprian, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. For Vanhoozer, the Spirit leads the Church toward holiness, but she is not yet the holy bride that she will be eschatologically (317). Billings finds the language of total depravity helpful (319): God imputes righteousness to us (318); even so, the Church is not simply unholy (319). For Calvin, wherever the Word and sacraments are found, the Church exists, despite defects (325). Christ sanctifies the Church even now through the Holy Spirit, but she is not without spot and wrinkle (330); the holiness of the Church is only perfect in God’s eyes, as he knows the final Church of the elect (329). For the Reformers, the Church can and does err (331). Cyprian connects the Church’s holiness with unity in the Spirit’s gift of charity (332, 335) and in the divine gift of worship, rooted in the sacraments (334). Augustine agrees with this (338–39) and maintains that the Church is holy because of her true doctrine, by which she remains in Christ (337); she is holy on account of being the bride of Christ, not on account of her members (337n110). According to Thomas (Summa theologiae II-II, q. 1, a. 9, ad 5), when we profess in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that we believe in one holy Church, “this must be taken as verified insofar as our faith is directed to the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies the Church, so that the sense is: ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit sanctifying the Church’” (340). That is, the Holy Spirit is the primary object of our confession, and the Church as a human institution has no power to make herself holy (340). As the soul gives life and operation to the body, so the Spirit gives life and operation to the Church (341). The Church is without spot or wrinkle in the sense that her true members are not in mortal sin, and they do not have duplicity of purpose (348); while Calvin maintains that all sin is mortal (352), Augustine and Aquinas distinguish mortal sin—which cuts one off from the Church—from venial sin (337, 348). Levering extends Aquinas’s understanding of condign merit to conclude that the Church may be said to be immaculately holy insofar as her works (such as baptism) flow from Christ and the Holy Spirit—and not from (imperfect) humans. Unlike the Reformers, the Catholic theologians hold that the Church is intrinsically holy in her definitive teachings and sacraments; this holiness is not merely imputed to her extrinsically by God, but given through transformation by grace (339, 353, 365). Regarding possible improvements to this work, Levering could articulate his central thesis of naming the Spirit Love and Gift more explicitly in places, for instance, in chapter 3 on the Filioque. The arguments are in place, but some readers may in some places overlook the last step of Book Reviews 321 connecting Love and Gift with the observations being adduced. Also, in his discussion of the Filioque in chapter 3 (e.g., at 118), Levering could have introduced Gregory of Nyssa’s assertion that the Son is a cause (aitia) of the Spirit; more pointedly, he could have brought it to bear on John Zizioulas’s argument that the Pontifical Council should have gone further and denied that the Son is in any way a cause (aitia) of the Spirit (122n19). Levering only adverts to Nyssa’s assertion in a quotation from Brian Daley in chapter 2 (76n19). To his credit, Levering includes diverse modern authors who hold opinions quite different from his own. However, readers less patient than Levering himself could wish that the treatment of these authors were more streamlined. For instance, should we be that interested in whether Dunn considers Luke 4:18–21 to be authentic (176) or allows that maybe Jesus was a son of God before his baptism (201), or that N. T. Wright appreciates the possibility of Jesus’s having had a particular intimacy with the one called “father” (206)? Modern Scripture scholarship undoubtedly offers a contribution to theology, but one might wonder whether Dunn’s historical-critical reconstructions strengthen Aquinas’s account of “the unique plenitude of Jesus’s experience of the Spirit” as significantly as Levering proposes (205). In this monograph, Levering offers capacious documentation of relevant authors, with helpful commentated summaries manifesting an enviably extensive knowledge of the secondary literature. He engages in a close—at times rigorously technical—reading of Aquinas with attention to background that will benefit even experts who have spent years poring over the Summa theologiae. And he supplies a rich dossier of Scripture in support of his arguments about the Holy Spirit. Levering ventures polite and insightful corrections to modern authors (63n38; 103n131; 105n141; 120n16; 125n26; 137n73; 213n9; 215n12; 232n70; 250n149) and is not afraid to part company with the Angelic Doctor concerning his assertion that Christ had perfect infused knowledge of all things (201). Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church, scholarly but accessible, provides a solid contribution to pneumatology. John Baptist Ku, O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC N&V 322 Book Reviews The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in Aquinas by Anthony T. Flood (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), xix + 164 pp. Wading into the stormy waters where Thomism, personalism, and modern analytic philosophy meet, Anthony Flood’s book is an interesting and robust interjection into the debate concerning self-governance. Though it has room for further development and a deeper exegesis of Aquinas, Flood’s aim (to defend Aquinas against claims of irrelevance and outright heteronomy) is laudable and worthwhile. Flood is clear about his theses and audience. He seeks to present Aquinas’s account of self-governance as an antidote to impasses in modern debates concerning autonomy. In this he defends three theses: “Aquinas’s account of proper self-love is a description of the nature and importance of a person’s subjective self-experience, his notion of self-governance cannot be understood fully unless we grasp its basis in self-love, and his account both satisfies contemporary conditions of relevance for self-governance and offers attractive solutions to issues raised in analytic discussions on such matters” (xi). The six chapters of the book can be subsumed under these theses. The first chapter seeks to defend the first thesis and outlines Aquinas’s thought on the nature of self-love and subjectivity. Its central claim is that self-love forms the basis of experience and subjectivity. In this primal self-experience, we judge ourselves to be fittingly loved and choose to love ourselves out of dilectio. This self-love, when properly ordered and habitual is self-friendship (a unique combination between the union of similitude and the union of possession) and is the ongoing constituent of subjectivity—a person’s ongoing complacentia for himself. In other words, all other love relations are based on this self-relation, and self-love creates the subjective pole of a person’s experience of this world. In addition, self-friendship is based on true knowledge of oneself as a subject with interiority and precludes conflict. Because self-love plays such a role in Aquinas’s thought, so too must a person’s subjective experience of the self. The second chapter elaborates the historical antecedents to Aquinas’s account and introduces the central conditions of self-governance. Flood divides these conditions into psychological and authoritative. The psychological requirements for self-governance are epistemic (access to the moral law or whatever standard will guide acts) and motivational (the ability to bring oneself to perform an action principally from internal, not external, motivational sources). The authority condition requires that one have the authority to act. Flood’s purpose in this chapter is to show that the eudae- Book Reviews 323 monist tradition (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Augustine) satisfies these conditions. His central claim is that virtue is a sufficient condition for both the psychological and the authoritative conditions of self-governance. The Stoics are the first to outline this explicitly, but it is implicit in the other thinkers. The wise person lives under his own law. Flood also seeks to allay fears of heteronomy in Augustine. Contemporary accounts do not claim that an objective moral order threatens self-governance, so the same should be said for theists. A person governs his own life according to the standards set forth by God and motivates himself to act. The third chapter ends Flood’s defense of the first thesis and transitions to his defense of the second thesis. It also concerns the authority condition in Aquinas. For an account of natural law, Flood follows Stephen Brock but adds that it is not the person qua intellectual which apprehends the good, but the person qua self-experiencing and self-loving. Our most basic relation to the good is not of seeking or obtaining, but of possessing the good of ourselves. From this basic unity the natural law flows; humans self-promulgate the natural law through practical reason. In other words, Flood argues that, since the essential properties of self-love include the desire for and activity of pursuing goods and avoiding evils, self-love must be central to Aquinas’s account of natural law. In this, Flood is arguing in a Thomistic way that the authority condition is reduced to the psychological conditions (virtues). The fourth chapter fully transitions to the third thesis. It concerns Aquinas’s satisfaction of the psychological conditions for self-governance. In this Flood focuses on prudence, which integrates all relevant aspects of action and represents the flourishing of self-governance. He also meets some imagined objections concerning the possibly heteronomous nature of docility and political prudence. In both cases, it is a chosen subordination due to lack of knowledge. In neither case is it blind obedience, and so it is not heteronomy. In addition, the subject always carries the trump card—for his reason promulgates the natural law. In the case of an unjust law, “he does not endorse or identify with the law, and thereby has no obligation to follow it” (84). In fact, Flood argues, not even humility involves heteronomy. Pride destroys one’s subjection to reason, and so humility is a constitutive factor in self-governance. Pride is bad because it undermines self-governance—it is born of distorted self-love. The fifth chapter revisits both the authority condition and psychological conditions in Aquinas, thereby continuing a defense of the third thesis. We all have access to the natural law, since is it promulgated by reason. What deprives us of this is consequent ignorance; it truly undermines psychological access. Therefore, Aquinas satisfies the epistemic require- 324 Book Reviews ments. He also satisfies the motivational requirements. We can self-motivate; it is our repetitive poor choices that ill form our capacities. The authority requirement is met by Aquinas’s claim that virtue is a sufficient condition for authority. Since we have the resources psychologically to be virtuous, we have the sufficient conditions for moral authority. All of this is, in turn, based on Aquinas’s account of self-friendship, fully flourishing self-love, which is the positive experience of oneself such that one wants to promote, the actualization of himself as a person through self-preservation, desiring of goods for oneself, pursuing these goods, and delighting from entering one’s own heart (internal peace). One must begin by loving oneself rightly and then one will pursue the virtues, which in turn give one moral authority. The final chapter, chapter 6, claims that Aquinas’s thought is the solution to many contemporary challenges. In this, Flood is again in dialogue with Schneewind, but also Frankfurt, Dworkin, Taylor, Christman, and others. Flood identifies three problems typical in modern thinking about autonomy: manipulation (what if someone incepts you?), ab initio (how can autonomy be if it arises from non-autonomous sources?), and excessive individualism (how can autonomy consider all the social factors of agency?). In answering, Flood claims that Aquinas’s account of autonomy is hierarchical and perfectionist but also allows for authenticity, wholeheartedness, and social factors. In addition, Aquinas’s account can answer these objections. The desires of self-love are universal—nobody can plant these in you. The rational will is an extension of personhood, and so autonomy still arises from the person. Political prudence, docility, and exemplarism add a social element to Aquinas’s account. While these allow for a social context and influence, a person never forfeits his authority to self-govern. In all these cases, there is a self-knowledge of ignorance and so submission makes rational sense. Even in friendship, there is no heteronomy, for nobody conforms to another’s will, but only shares in a common end. Indeed, Aquinas’s account is both the perfect blend of relational autonomy and naturalistic enough to appeal to all parties. Despite the tightly knit argument, this account is not without its exegetical difficulties and prospects for development. The first of these stems from the paucity of contact both with Aquinas’s wider thought and with other Thomistic scholarship. In places this omission (even if admitted) is just odd. For example, there is no extended analysis of Aquinas’s thought on obedience or prudence as fully perfected (with the gift of counsel). In other places, the piecemeal contact gives a distorted picture of Aquinas. For example, Flood says multiple times that humans have the wherewithal to motivate, obtain virtue, and self-govern. Aquinas’s thought on original Book Reviews 325 sin, grace, and the gift of perseverance make these claims suspect. In other words, more contact with Aquinas’s thought could deepen the project and result in a more nuanced account of self-governance. The second place for development concerns the root issues distinguishing Aquinas and modern analytic philosophy. There is a lot left in the background. Take freedom as an example. It is almost certain that the modern analysis of autonomy is assuming what Pinckaers calls a freedom of indifference and Aquinas a freedom of excellence. Yet the concept of freedom is not directly addressed. In addition, Flood regularly switches between the modern criteria for self-governance (which apply to both the good and the evil) and Aquinas’s claim that only the good self-govern. Which is it? How do we know? Likewise, it is certainly the case that many moderns hold that God and created causes are in competition. It would have been good to treat Aquinas’s thought on this point: we are only self-governing because we are first governed; we are only free because we are first not free. Finally, I wonder if what worries moderns about Aquinas is not that he posits the necessity for self-governance to conform to an unchanging objective standard, but rather that he requires ultimate conformity to a personal God. Friendship is much more than one party providing an impersonal rule; it is a communing. It makes us want to do and conform our wills to God’s. The third place for development concerns Flood’s account of self-love. He admits that this is likely to be the most controversial part (at least for Thomists), and it is. Undoubtedly, he defends his interpretation in other works, but his analysis is incomplete here. The most conspicuous absence is any analysis of love of self and love of God. No doubt this is because the book is philosophical, but even natural self-love must be propter Deum (in our first free act). To have our self-love be well ordered, we must will ourselves for God’s sake. In contrast, Flood seems to claim that, if we do not relate to ourselves rightly, we will not relate to God rightly (90). At the very least, orders of causality need to be clarified. In addition, I have difficulty understanding (at least on Thomistic terms) what subjectivity and self-experience even mean. It would have been helpful to explain these terms and their provenance for a reader less acquainted with personalism. Finally, it would benefit the book to have more contact with Aquinas’s account of natural love and the metaphysics of the good. Flood needs to distinguish what is necessary about natural love and what can be chosen. His account requires that self-love be voluntary, but he does not deal with Aquinas’s texts that suggest both love of self and the objects of our natural inclinations are necessary. Similarly, Flood needs to develop an account of how we judge ourselves to be fitting objects of love. What we judge a fitting object of love is an aspect of the good, and so perfective. Can we perfect 326 Book Reviews ourselves by loving ourselves? It would seem substantial unity precludes this. Aquinas suggests that self-love is willing something perfective for oneself. Flood needs to wrestle with this more. The final area for development concerns the relation of authority and freedom. Flood regularly assumes that knowledge and authority are the same thing. As a corollary of this, the more virtue one has, the less one needs authority. Submission, docility, counsel, obedience, political prudence, and so on are all assumed to be due to defects in our knowledge. Yet Christ has the gifts of the Holy Spirit and exercises obedience. In addition, the great Thomist Yves Simon has shown that authority is needed even for the virtuous. Flood does not seem to take this into account. Given the good structure, interdisciplinary nature, and robust proposal of this book, I would recommend it to anyone interested in Aquinas and self-governance. Flood has done us a service by wading into this contested area and giving us a proposal worth considering. N&V John M. Meinert Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University Baton Rouge, LA Paul’s “Works of the Law” in the Perspective of Second Century Reception by Matthew J. Thomas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), xv + 230 pp. The present volume is a lightly revised doctoral dissertation written at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Mark Edwards, David Lincicum, and Jenn Strawbridge. It examines one of the most vigorously contested phrases of the New Testament (“works of the law” in the Pauline Epistles) from the standpoint of early patristic reception. Paul, in both Romans and Galatians, formulates a sharp antithesis between “faith in Christ” and “works of the law” (Rom 3:20, 28; Gal 2:16; 3:2, 5, 10). For the apostle, faith in Christ effects justification, while works of the law are denied a role in justification. But what are these works? What do they signify? On what grounds does Paul oppose them? According to M. J. Thomas, modern debates over Paul’s “works of the law” have long been impoverished by inattention to the earliest patristic evidence. His dissertation aims to address this deficiency by ascertaining (1) how Paul’s earliest readers understood “works of the law,” and (2) how these ancient perspectives relate to modern debates among proponents of the Old and New Perspectives on Paul. The parameters of the study extend from the Didache to the death of Book Reviews 327 Irenaeus. The rationale for these endpoints is derived from the work of Markus Bockmuehl, who argues that New Testament scholars can profitably consider the first 150 years of Christian history as a privileged period of living memory in which a vital connection with the apostolic age remains. Methodologically, the author describes his work as a conceptual study of the Pauline phrase ἔργα νόμου, “works of the law,” rather than a purely lexical one. Instead of restricting analysis to occurrences of the expression, which is not attested in early patristic literature before Irenaeus, he identifies texts that evince thematic overlap with Paul’s discussions in Romans and Galatians, especially those that are marked by Christian–Jewish polemics and engage in parallel discussions of law, works, and justification. Evidence gathered on this basis is sorted into three categories, labeled A, B, and C. Works in category A (“direct evidence”) show clear signs of Pauline influence and reference specific Pauline passages dealing with works of the law. Works in category B (“supporting evidence”) have probable Pauline influence and engage Paul’s letters, but not specifically passages about works of the law. Works in category C (“circumstantial evidence”) show possible signs of Pauline influence and canvass debates that are similar to Paul’s in Romans and Galatians, although without reference to Pauline passages about works of the law. Having set forth the scope and procedure of the study (part I), the author moves to examine the views of leading representatives of the Old and New Perspectives on Paul (part II). Once the contours of the debate are framed out, and their views on Paul’s “works of the law” are identified, he proceeds in chronological order through the early patristic sources with the aim of discovering what he calls the Early Perspective on Paul (part III). Finally, he brings the ancient evidence to bear on the modern controversy, comparing and contrasting the Early Perspective on “works of the law” with the Old and New Perspectives (part IV). The Old and New Perspectives divide cleanly down the middle of Paul’s “works of the law” formula. For the Old Perspective (OP), which is represented in the study by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Rudolf Bultmann, and Douglas Moo, Paul primarily denies works the power to justify. For advocates of the New Perspective (NP) such as E. P. Sanders, J. D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright, Paul primarily denies the law the power to justify. (1) What then is the meaning of Paul’s “works of the law”? According to the OP, Paul is talking about any works that one might perform to earn favor with God and attain salvation. According to the NP, the apostle refers mainly to the ritual obligations of the Torah that identify Israel as God’s people, most notably circumcision, Sabbath observance, dietary laws, and a religious focus on Jerusalem and the temple. (2) What is the significance 328 Book Reviews of these works? According to the OP, works of the law represent trusting in one’s individual ability to merit salvation by moral effort rather than trusting in the mercy of God. According to the NP, works of the law identify Jews as distinct from Gentiles and thus serve as communal badges of membership in the elect people of God. (3) And why does Paul oppose works of the law? According to the OP: to perform them is to make saviors of ourselves and thus usurp the role of Christ as Savior (Luther); owing to the sinful condition of humanity, perfect obedience to the law as God requires is impossible (Calvin, Moo); the very attempt to obey the law for salvation is a boastful assertion of self-righteousness (Bultmann); to observe these laws, which belong to the penultimate stage of salvation history, is to deny that Christ has come (Moo). According to the NP: Christian experience shows that Gentiles received the Spirit apart from Torah observance (Sanders); these works embody an attitude of exclusivism, of social boundary-drawing, that contradicts the Gospel mandate to love others (Dunn); these works have been relativized precisely because the separation between Jew and Gentile has been relativized now that God has fulfilled his universal promises to Abraham in Jesus (Wright). The Early Perspective (EP) on works of the law emerges from different patristic sources with different levels of clarity and explicitness. Direct evidence (category A) is found in the writings of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyons. These authors hold virtually identical views on the meaning and significance of works of the law and broadly agree on the reasons for opposing them. (1) At the level of meaning, Paul’s “works of the law” are thought to be works of the Mosaic law specifically. For Justin, these are mainly the ritual obligations that were laid upon Israel in the aftermath of the golden calf apostasy at Sinai, for example, Sabbath observance, Israel’s festal calendar, the food laws, and the cult of animal sacrifice. Irenaeus adopts essentially the same position, namely, that the works of the law are the Mosaic ceremonial laws, which he views as a yoke of bondage. (2) At the level of significance, Justin and Irenaeus both contend that works of the law function to identify the Jews as a people distinct from the Gentiles. For Irenaeus, observance of these works also places one in the intermediate period of salvation history between Abraham and Christ. (3) Among the reasons for opposing these works, Justin offers an array of arguments: the Hebrew prophets foretell an end to the Mosaic law and a future salvation of Gentiles as Gentiles; Christ has brought a new law and a new covenant that retires the Mosaic law as binding for the people of God; Christ has accomplished a transformation of human hearts that gives living proof of prophetic fulfillment; Christians, like Abraham and the patriarchs, are justified apart from ritual observances; the purpose Book Reviews 329 of the Mosaic law was to identify Israel and to restrain Israel from sin, not to impart righteousness. Interestingly, as M. J. Thomas shows, Justin the Christian and Trypho the Jew agree that Israel’s messiah is expected to seal a new covenant and implement a new law; it is only a question of whether Jesus of Nazareth is this awaited figure (Justin’s position) or not (Trypho’s position). For Irenaeus, Christ has brought a new and universal legislation, a law of liberty, that does away with the yoke of bondage imposed upon Israel at Sinai because it resolves the problem of hardheartedness that made that yoke necessary. Supporting evidence (category B) is found in Ignatius of Antioch, the Epistle to Diognetus, and Melito of Sardis. These sources likewise exhibit a broadly consistent perspective on works of the law. (1) At the level of meaning, the works in question are the cultic obligations of the Mosaic law: circumcision, Sabbath observance, dietary laws, the Levitical priesthood, and Jewish feast days (Ignatius, Diognetus), including Passover and a religious attachment to Jerusalem and the temple (Melito). (2) At the level of significance, works of the law represent a Jewish way of life that precedes the coming of messianic grace (Ignatius); they serve as markers of Jewish identity (Diognetus) and forge an association with Israel (Melito). (3) Among the reasons for opposing these works: they implicitly deny the arrival of messianic grace and thus devalue the work of Christ (Ignatius); the teachings of Christ take priority over the teachings of the Mosaic law (Ignatius); the universalism of Christianity moves beyond the nationalism of Judaism (Ignatius; Diognetus); God has no need of sacrifices (Diognetus); and the practices of Israel are shadows and types of Christian realities (Melito). Circumstantial evidence (category C) is found in the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Apology of Aristides. Here too, even where Pauline dependency is disputed, one finds an outlook on works of the law that harmonizes with the evidence in categories A and B. (1) At the level of meaning, these works include the Jewish practice of fasting twice a week (Didache), as well as circumcision, sacrifices, festal days, food restrictions, and Sabbath observance (Barnabas, Aristides). (2) At the level of significance, these works identify practitioners with the Jewish people, either as a race (Aristides) or as a religious community in general (Didache, Barnabas). (3) Among the reasons for opposing them: the Jewish works of the law have been replaced with Christian works (Didache); the new law takes precedence over the old (Barnabas); Christ has accomplished the circumcision of the heart promised in Scripture (Barnabas); and Jewish works are directed to angels (Aristides). Having explored the early patristic evidence in detail, M. J. Thomas 330 Book Reviews notes the “striking degree of cohesion” that emerges on the issue of Paul’s “works of the law” (215). Variation is clearest when the question of opposition is posed, but on the more fundamental questions of meaning and significance, the earliest Christian witnesses share the conviction that “works of the law” are ritual observances of the Torah that associate their adherents with the Jewish people (19–20). On these points, there is unanimity in the early patristic writings. Even the nonorthodox Ebionites agree; they simply affirm the position that Paul denies, namely, that Christian justification depends on observing the cultic and ceremonial rites of the Torah (136–39). The conclusion is inescapable, once this evidence is introduced into the modern debate, that the Early Perspective on Paul’s “works of the law” aligns more closely with the New Perspective than with the Old Perspective (219–26). For both the EP and the NP, Paul’s antithesis relativizes the rituals of the Mosaic law that distinguished Jews from Gentiles and once identified the covenant people of God. Conversely, the author finds no substantial correspondence between the EP and the OP. In the earliest reception of Paul’s letters: works in general are not problematized; Jews are not faulted for trying to earn salvation by moral effort; the dangers of legalism and self-righteous boasting appear to be nonissues; and anthropological deficiencies that make obedience to God’s law impossible are treated very differently (e.g., the problem is remedied not by an imputation of Christ’s righteousness in place of obedience but by a transformation of the heart with Christ’s grace that makes obedience possible). The dissertation is a stellar example of careful historical scholarship. M. J. Thomas has produced an even-handed account of the earliest patristic testimony on “works of the law,” and he has done so without overstating or understating his case. The volume is clearly written, its conclusions are consistently sober, and the ancient texts are allowed to speak for themselves without undue interference from the dissertator. One can imagine scholars quibbling over judgments about the dates assigned to certain patristic sources or about the degree of Pauline influence to be found in them, especially if they subscribe to the “Pauline Captivity” hypothesis or adhere to a perspective on Paul that is unrepresented in the sources reviewed, but the overall impact of the study is compelling. Does the dissertation have implications for exegetical or theological scholarship? To me this seems beyond dispute. If the reception history of Paul’s letters is allowed to contribute to an exegesis of the apostle’s letters, then the New Perspective brings us much closer to Paul’s intended meaning of “works of the law” than the Old Perspective. This is not to say that modern debates over Paul’s intentions in Romans and Galatians have now Book Reviews 331 been settled. It is rather a question of historical probability. Clearly the burden of proof weighs heavily on the Old Perspective to explain how its reading of Paul’s “works of the law” fails to register in any of the earliest patristic sources (227–28). If the “smoke” of Pauline reception in the first and second centuries is preoccupied with the expiration of Jewish laws and practices in the messianic age, then only a radical hypothesis of discontinuity can explain how this smoke billows from a “fire” other than the Pauline letters. It is more convincing on historical grounds to posit continuity between Paul and his earliest Christian readers. I look forward to future publications from this bright young scholar. Curtis J. Mitch St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology Steubenville, OH N&V Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives edited by Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), xvi + 601 pp. One of the curiosities of Thomistic scholarship is that Aqui- nas’s primary role as a Dominican master was to lecture on Scripture, yet until recently there has been relatively little attention paid to his engagement with Scripture. Scholarship on Aquinas’s biblical commentaries has been neglected relative to the size of its presence in his corpus. A positive contribution to redressing this imbalance is in this recent text edited by Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen, who provide us with a collection of essays that investigate Aquinas’s use of Scripture. Including the introductory essay, in twenty essays from international scholars we are presented with a variety of ways of understanding the role of Scripture in Aquinas’s theology, the tools he used, how he thought about Scripture, and how his use of Scripture illuminates a variety of theological and philosophical questions. As with any other good collection of essays, the editors provide a thematic guide and summary of the work in their introduction, beginning by reiterating Étienne Gilson’s claim that Aquinas’s “entire theology . . . is a commentary on the Bible” (vii), and making their own argument that “the thought of Aquinas undoubtedly operates within a biblical horizon” (viii), a claim that is further strengthened by the variety of ways the other nineteen essays reinforce the primacy of Scripture in Aquinas’s thought. The contribution of this book, however, is not just to describe the primacy of Scripture in Aquinas’s thought, but to take into account his hermeneu- 332 Book Reviews tical perspective as we understand it now while pointing to future research directions. Likewise, the essays do not just look backward historically, but also provide fruitful links to contemporary issues. After the introduction, the next eleven essays are organized around the theme of hermeneutical tools. In these essays the authors attempt to provide an understanding of the Aquinas’s basic exegetical approach, both in his theology of Scripture and in the variety of exegetical tools and methods he used. Several themes emerge out of these essays. One theme that is taken up is that of the multiple senses of Scripture and how Aquinas deploys them. On one hand Gilbert Dahan (50–52) argues that, while Aquinas speaks of the four senses of Scripture inherited from Stephen Langton, he also engages with the threefold sense of Scripture from Hugh of St. Victor. But, contrary to Aquinas’s description in Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 10, Dahan argues that the four senses of Scripture are not really functional in Aquinas’s exegesis (52) and that “the backbone of his hermeneutical system” is engaging with the texts through narrative, parabolic, and poetic modes (58). On the other hand, Elisabeth Reinhardt, in an essay describing how Aquinas’s inaugural lectures programmatically shape his future exegesis, shows how the four senses of Scripture are operative in his exegesis of the Book of Romans (80–82). Likewise, Roszak shows how Aquinas’s use of scriptural citations tends to have a more spiritual sense when used in his commentary on the Psalms (135–37), and Jeremy Holmes shows how Aquinas reads the Old Testament primarily through the spiritual sense, a reading based on a participation metaphysics that allows Aquinas to preserve the theological value of the Old Testament through a Christological reading of those texts. These essays helpfully point to a possible difference between Aquinas’s theory of the senses of Scripture and how he actually deploys that theory in his actual exegetical practice, a difference that deserves further study. A second theme that emerges from these essays is the Christological shape of Aquinas’s exegesis. Contrary to modern forms of exegesis, Aquinas sees Christ as the “center and summit of Sacred scripture and ultimately the reason for its unity” (Reinhardt, 88), so much so that, as Dahan points out, it is Christ who “gives the text its truth” (70). For instance, Roszak shows how Aquinas’s use of biblical citations is not random, nor a means of proof-texting, but rather is a means of building a scriptural imagination that is ordered Christologically (125). That Christological imagination, especially as it approaches the Old Testament, is what Holmes argues allows Aquinas to read the Old Testament Christologically. Daniel Keating, taking a slightly different approach, shows how Aquinas uses ancient Christological errors, and their conciliar corrections, to lead to the correct Book Reviews 333 reading of difficult texts in the Gospel of John and Philippians. If it is Christ who gives Scripture its truth, it is Aquinas’s pursuit of exegetical truth that emerges as a third theme of the book. Mauricio Narvaez argues that, for Aquinas, hermeneutics is primarily about grasping “the truth of the text” (142) and shows that, in pursuit of that truth, Aquinas uses various axioms, logical and hierarchical structures, and biblical citations to help achieve meaning (151–57). Reinhardt extends those ideas by claiming that Scripture functions as truth, authority, and utility (78). The root of Aquinas’s confidence in both the truth of Scripture and his ability to grasp it, as Roszak argues, is based on Aquinas’s “conviction about the unity of truth and the holistic understanding of the history of salvation” (119). All of this is predicated, as Enrique Martinez argues, on a theological anthropology in which the object of human knowledge is truth (383); we are by nature and desire inclined to search for the truth of Scripture, a point that Milosław Miróz reinforces in his essay on virtue epistemology and grace in Aquinas’s Pauline commentaries. In fact, Keating argues that Scripture itself has three roles with regard to truth in Aquinas’s exegesis, “to establish the truth, to support the truth already established, and to beautify and illuminate the truth already firmly fixed in place” (515). Lest we mistakenly think that truth is only obtained through propositional thinking, Olivier-Thomas Venard argues that Aquinas’s use of metaphor provides a key link between theology and Scripture, as Aquinas’s exploration of a metaphor can provide divine meaning that is not always available in other ways, which Venard demonstrates by showing how Aquinas derives meaning through a metaphorical exploration of the dove in Jesus’s baptismal scene. As several of the articles mention in a fourth theme, Aquinas shares this pursuit of truth and its scriptural basis with his contemporaries, as well as a shared set of tools to assist in exegesis. As the editors explain in their opening essay, Aquinas’s thought operates within a biblical horizon (viii), but Keating extends that claim to argue Aquinas is “drawing on a deep understanding of the text shared by his readers to establish, support, and illuminate the argument” (527). This shared understanding is ecclesial in nature because interpretation belongs to the Church (Reinhardt, 88; Elders, 257). But it is also made possible by a set of shared sources, tools, and practices that enabled Aquinas and other medieval exegetes to interpret the text. Roszak’s entire essay is dedicated to showing the variety of ways that Aquinas uses scriptural citations to exegete a passage. Dahan points to Aquinas’s use of scriptural glosses and Hugh of St. Cher’s revised Latin text of the Bible as important exegetical tools. Leo Elders describes how Aquinas uses the Church Fathers as mediated in various tabulae and 334 Book Reviews glosses to guide his exegesis, and Margherita Maria Rossi demonstrates the importance of the divisio of the text for structuring his exegesis. And Timothy Bellamah describes how the development of the prologue/ accessus served as a key structure for the exegete to provide foundational information on a text. While Aquinas benefitted from this shared understanding of Scripture and had a variety of tools at his disposal for seeking the truth of the text, the first essay of the collection points out that modern tools may help us better understand the different ways that Aquinas uses Scripture. Marco Passarotti describes the development of the Index Thomisticus Treebank (itreebank.marginalia.it), a project that works from the Index Thomisticus to annotate Aquinas’s texts with semantic and syntactic information in a way that allows researchers to query the data to analyze similarities and differences in Aquinas’s use of language across his works. Passoratti provides a helpful introduction to the field of computational linguistics, as well as examples of how the IT Treebank works, but also explains that the data still require a certain level of theological analysis in order to be meaningful. Given how little has happened in the digital humanities among Thomists since Fr. Bosa’s groundbreaking work, Passarotti points to some future directions for how Thomists might continue to use and develop digital tools to better understand Aquinas’s ideas. While the first half of the essays primarily describe the tools and approaches of Aquinas’s hermeneutical work, the second half provide descriptions of how Aquinas’s exegesis illuminates a variety of theological and philosophical issues. It is well known, for instance, that the Summa theologiae does not have a treatise on the Church, but as Christopher Bagelow argues, a careful and holistic reading of Aquinas’s commentary on Ephesians provides a substantial discussion of the nature of the Church. Matthew Levering extends the work of Servais Pinckaers by showing how important the Old Testament is as a source of Aquinas’s ethics in the second part of the Summa theologiae. Matthew Ramage puts Aquinas into conversation with Joseph Ratzinger on the exegesis of the opening chapters of Genesis. Even though Ratzinger is not a Thomist, Ramage recognizes four points of intersection in their exegesis of Genesis in seeking an open philosophy, recognizing salvation history’s Christological teleology, searching for a text’s essential point, and the need for a rich doctrine of the spiritual sense of Scripture. Both Aquinas and Ratzinger, according to Ramage, keenly attempt to determine “the sense or senses according to which a given text ought to be read” (505). Keating, as previously mentioned, shows how Aquinas uses Scripture, especially the prologue to John and the Christological hymn of Philip- Book Reviews 335 pians 2, to develop a robust Christology in conversation with conciliar decisions and ancient heresies. One would certainly expect Aquinas’s exegesis to produce interesting theological positions, but several essays also describe how Aquinas’s exegesis contributes to philosophical thinking. Robert Wozniak compares the exegetical approaches of Aquinas and Bonaventure and shows how Aquinas’s willingness to find a place of cooperation between Scripture and metaphysics, though a metaphysics shaped Christologically, creates a means to actually preserve metaphysics, so that the more biblical our theology, “the more it will be able to recover metaphysics and restore it to its own place” (434). Lluis Clavell argues that Aquinas’s reading of Exodus 3:14–17 provides a place where Scripture and philosophy most fruitfully collaborate (457) as we come to know and think about the names of God. Both Milosław Mróz and Martinez provide epistemological considerations that are manifested in Aquinas’s exegesis. In case one were to think that Aquinas’s scriptural commentaries were devoid of philosophical sources, Vijgen shows the role that Aristotle plays in the commentaries and even provides a useful chart of all 164 instances of Aquinas’s citations of Aristotle in the biblical commentaries. In concluding this review it would be helpful to return to Rossi’s essay, which provides a useful description of the overall contribution of this book. In her essay she explores the idea of medieval exegesis as a form of intellectual architecture, with the divisio as the primary structure upon which Aquinas’s exegesis is structured. In lesser hands, it has become something of a standard trope to think of medieval theology along the lines of the medieval cathedral, but Rossi provides a more robust exploration of how the intellectual architectural structures Aquinas used provided him an opportunity to become an attentive listener to the word of God (176). Scholars’ treatment of Aquinas’s theology and use of Scripture is too often limited to one article in the Summa theologiae, but these essays provide an in-depth exploration of the entire architecture of Aquinas’s exegesis. Instead of a narrow and one-dimensional understanding, the contributors to this book provide a thorough tour of Aquinas’s hermeneutical building, from its foundations to its heights, from its beginnings to its enduring N&V implications. David Whidden Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University Baton Rouge, LA